Australia calls itself a democracy, but there is a rather obvious question that the political establishment seldom wishes to confront. What happens when the people want a law changed, but the politicians refuse? The conventional answer is that voters can wait until the next election, replace one collection of professional politicians with another, and hope that something changes. Unfortunately, the incoming government may be just as unwilling as its predecessor to disturb the arrangements that sustain the political class. What Australians lack is a constitutional mechanism by which citizens themselves can compel a vote upon a proposed law or constitutional amendment, with the result binding upon government. That is the essential case for citizen-initiated referendums, or CIR.
Professor David Flint, writing in The Spectator Australia on 7 November 2026, has revived this neglected constitutional question. His argument is that Australia has departed from the democratic and federalist principles underlying its original constitutional settlement. Power has become increasingly concentrated in Canberra, while political parties, bureaucracies and judicial institutions exercise authority far removed from ordinary Australians. His proposed remedy draws upon the Swiss tradition of direct democracy, giving citizens the capacity to initiate constitutional changes and veto legislation.
The idea is hardly new. Indeed, it is older than the Commonwealth itself. Charles Cameron Kingston, the South Australian reformer and Federation pioneer, advocated citizen-initiated referendums during the constitutional debates of the 1890s. Kingston belonged to a generation for whom democracy was something more than periodically choosing parliamentary representatives. The people were to remain the ultimate constitutional authority, not merely spectators after election day.
There is an irony in the subsequent history. Australia borrowed from Switzerland the referendum mechanism for constitutional amendment, but did not give ordinary citizens the power to initiate those referendums. Under section 128 of the Commonwealth Constitution, the process remains dependent upon parliamentary action. The people may approve or reject a constitutional proposal placed before them, but they cannot ordinarily force Parliament to submit their own proposal to a national vote.
This arrangement leaves Australians in the curious position of being constitutionally sovereign in theory while possessing limited means of exercising that sovereignty between elections. A government can introduce legislation contrary to widespread public sentiment, and provided it maintains sufficient parliamentary support, citizens have no general right to demand a binding national vote to overturn it. Public petitions may be presented, demonstrations organised, and letters dispatched to members of Parliament. Ministers can listen politely, acknowledge the correspondence, and continue as before.
The history of CIR advocacy in Australia is one of recurring enthusiasm followed by political disappointment. The Australian Labor movement once supported direct democracy, and proposals appeared in Queensland during the early twentieth century. The Australian Democrats revived the issue decades later, introducing proposals for constitutional reform. In 1988, Queensland considered a comprehensive CIR proposal that was ultimately abandoned. In 2013, Democratic Labor Party senator John Madigan introduced a federal Citizen Initiated Referendum Bill, proposing a mechanism through which electors could trigger consideration of constitutional changes.
These efforts failed to establish a binding national system. The pattern is revealing. Direct democracy has periodically attracted supporters from different political traditions, yet the parliamentary system has proved remarkably resistant to transferring any substantial part of its legislative authority to the electorate.
One reason is not difficult to understand. Politicians may favour popular sovereignty in speeches while becoming considerably less enthusiastic when it threatens their own capacity to control the legislative agenda. Political parties exist partly to aggregate public opinion, but they also seek to discipline it. Their leaders determine which issues receive attention, which promises are negotiable, and which questions are never permitted to reach the electorate in a decisive form.
A binding CIR system would challenge that monopoly. Under a properly designed mechanism, a specified number of verified electors could initiate a proposal for a new law, the repeal of an existing law, or a constitutional amendment. Once the necessary procedural requirements were satisfied, the proposal would proceed to a public vote without requiring the permission of the government of the day. If approved under the applicable voting rules, the result would have legal effect.
The distinction between binding and advisory referendums is fundamental. An advisory poll can be useful in measuring public sentiment, but it does not compel political action. A government may accept the result when convenient and disregard it when inconvenient. A genuine CIR system must therefore possess legal teeth. Its authority must not depend upon whether ministers approve of the outcome.
The Swiss experience demonstrates that direct democracy can operate alongside representative government. Switzerland employs popular initiatives and optional referendums, allowing citizens to propose constitutional amendments and challenge certain parliamentary enactments. These mechanisms have not abolished political parties, representative institutions or ordinary legislative processes. Rather, they have introduced an additional constitutional check upon government.
Critics sometimes point to California, where the initiative system has been accused of encouraging excessively detailed ballot propositions, fiscal rigidity and campaigns dominated by wealthy interests. These objections deserve attention. A badly designed CIR mechanism could generate confusion, contradictory laws and poorly considered financial commitments. But defects in one jurisdiction do not establish that direct democracy is inherently defective. They establish the importance of institutional design.
Australia should therefore look primarily to the Swiss model while developing safeguards appropriate to its own constitutional arrangements. A workable system would require a meaningful but achievable signature threshold, independent verification by electoral authorities, transparent funding disclosures, clear ballot wording and adequate opportunities for public debate. Constitutional initiatives should remain subject to the federal principle embodied in the double-majority requirement, protecting smaller states against domination by the largest population centres.
There must also be a distinction between ordinary legislation and constitutional amendment. Citizen initiatives concerning federal statutes would require an appropriate constitutional foundation, while amendments to the Constitution would have to be reconciled with section 128. Simply passing an ordinary federal statute purporting to give citizens an unrestricted power to legislate would raise serious constitutional difficulties. The objective should be a carefully drafted constitutional amendment establishing enforceable rights of popular initiative and referendum.
The mechanism should also prevent Parliament from immediately defeating the purpose of a successful popular vote. If voters repeal a law through a binding referendum, politicians should not be free to restore substantially the same measure the following week. Some form of protection against immediate legislative reversal would be necessary, although the precise duration and exceptions would require careful drafting. The same principle applies to proposals adopted by popular initiative: their effect must be legally meaningful rather than merely ceremonial.
A further safeguard would concern the ballot process itself. Citizens should not be presented with obscure legal language, misleading summaries or enormous packages combining unrelated questions. Each proposal should address a reasonably coherent subject, with independent assessment of its legal consequences and financial implications. Supporters and opponents should have opportunities to present their cases, while political advertising and campaign funding should be transparent.
None of these safeguards should become an excuse for creating a bureaucratic veto. That is the central danger. An initiative system requiring approval from a parliamentary committee, ministerial council or politically appointed commission before a proposal can reach the voters would risk reproducing the very problem it was supposed to solve. Administrative scrutiny should concern validity, clarity and compliance with constitutional requirements, not whether officials consider the proposal politically desirable.
The deeper philosophical argument concerns the relationship between representative democracy and popular sovereignty. Representative government is justified because modern societies cannot conduct every legislative decision through mass assemblies. But delegation of authority does not require the permanent surrender of control. Shareholders appoint directors without thereby conceding that directors should possess unlimited power over the company. Similarly, citizens elect parliamentarians without necessarily granting them an exclusive monopoly over every important political decision until the next election.
A CIR system would also change the incentives of government. Politicians aware that an unpopular measure could be challenged through a binding referendum might become more attentive to public concerns before legislating. The possibility of direct intervention could operate as a restraint even when no referendum was ultimately held. Direct democracy would therefore influence not merely the laws decided by referendum, but the everyday conduct of representative institutions.
There are objections. Public opinion can be volatile, complex policy questions are not always reducible to simple choices, and wealthy organisations might attempt to manipulate referendum campaigns. Yet these objections apply, in different forms, to ordinary elections. Political parties already spend heavily on advertising, employ consultants to shape public perceptions, and ask voters to choose between complicated policy packages. It would be strange to insist that citizens are sufficiently competent to elect governments but inherently incapable of deciding particular legislative questions after an extended national debate.
The answer is not to romanticise the electorate. Voters can make mistakes, just as parliamentarians, judges and bureaucrats can. The case for CIR does not depend upon the proposition that the majority is always wise. It rests upon the more modest democratic principle that ultimate political authority should not become the exclusive property of institutions whose decisions citizens cannot effectively challenge between elections.
Nor should CIR be understood as the preserve of any particular political party. Conservatives may favour it as a means of resisting centralisation and regulatory overreach. Progressives may support it as a way of advancing reforms blocked by established parliamentary interests. Libertarians may see it as a restraint upon state power, while community organisations may regard it as a means of making governments more responsive. A genuine system must be available to all citizens, including those whose proposals the government or the political opposition finds objectionable.
This political neutrality is essential. A campaign that promises CIR only because its supporters expect particular referendum outcomes misunderstands the principle. The people must retain the power to reject the very proposals favoured by those who campaigned for direct democracy. Otherwise the reform becomes another attempt to secure political advantage rather than a lasting constitutional improvement.
Professor Flint is therefore right to return attention to the original democratic aspirations of Federation. Australia did not emerge simply from negotiations among colonial politicians. Popular participation and constitutional referendums played an important role in its creation. Yet the constitutional system that emerged stopped short of giving citizens a continuing right to initiate binding national decisions.
After more than a century of parliamentary dominance, the case for completing that unfinished democratic project deserves serious consideration. The obstacles are considerable. Established parties have little incentive to surrender control of the legislative agenda, and constitutional reform requires overcoming public uncertainty as well as institutional resistance. A successful campaign would need sustained public education, broad support across political divisions and a precise constitutional proposal capable of surviving rigorous legal scrutiny.
Above all, it would need to insist upon the distinction between a genuine popular power and a decorative consultation exercise. There is little point in winning a right to petition if Parliament can simply place the petition in a drawer. There is little point in holding a referendum if ministers can ignore the result. And there is little point in granting an initiative power if political authorities retain an unrestricted capacity to prevent proposals from reaching the ballot.
The long Australian struggle for citizen-initiated referendums has repeatedly encountered the same fundamental difficulty: those who possess political power are reluctant to surrender any of it. That is precisely why a constitutionally entrenched mechanism is necessary. The issue is not whether politicians can be persuaded to listen more sympathetically. It is whether Australians should possess an enforceable right to make certain political decisions for themselves.
The final test is simple. If the people are sovereign, they should not have to ask the political class for permission to exercise that sovereignty. A binding citizen-initiated referendum system would give that principle practical meaning. After more than a century of waiting, Australian democracy could finally acquire some teeth.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/11/time-to-restore-aussies-original-intention/