The very reason we are going to the polls on August 21 is to elect a 150-member citizens’ assembly. It is called the House of Representatives.
What Gillard proposes is to instead outsource what should be the job of Parliament to a group of unelected people, chosen – on the basis of the electoral roll and census data – by “an independent authority”.
SHE is saying, in effect, that Parliament as an institution no longer works.
Also, by promising that her citizens’ assembly would be “genuinely representative of the wider Australian public”, she implies that the Parliament is not.
She may well be right on both counts, but surely the answer is to reform Parliament – not set up other ad hoc bodies to take over its role.
Gold.