My Will - Part 7

(7) IS THERE A PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVE TO THE PARTY SYSTEM?

As was stated in Chapter 5:-
"the only true Constitutional and legal reason for the existence, and the only true legal purpose, of the Parliament, the institution of the Monarchy, and the offices of the Governor-General and State Governors - IS TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THE PEOPLE ASK FOR. NOT WHAT OTHERS THINK THE PEOPLE OUGHT TO HAVE.

Keeping this in mind leads to the logical next step, i.e. to look briefly, but closely, at what the Commonwealth and State Constitutions provide for the establishment and operation of a true democratic Parliament_as previously defined:-

• The Parliament MUST consist of the Queen, or Her Vice Regal representatives, acting in consort with both Houses of the Parliament.

• Including the Senate, but excepting the so-called Upper Houses of the five States, the Constitutions provide that the people shall have the power to elect parliamentary representatives to those other so called Lower Houses.

• The elected representatives have, within limits, the right of laying down rules and procedures for operating their own House of the Parliament and, subject to the boundaries of the respective Commonwealth and State Constitutions (and the judicial interpretations thereof), to enact laws for the order and good government of the people and, where clearly expressed, the written WILL of the people.

• As stated in other chapters, the Queen or Her Representatives have the sole legal right to appoint and dismiss Her Ministers of the Crown.

• If the Houses of the Parliament wish to remove a Minister, the only legal power available to them - short of a special Act of the Parliament to do so - is to petition the Queen or Her Representative to dismiss the Minister or Ministers concerned, and the Queen will do so unless the people ask Her not to do so.

• The removal, or dismissal of a Minister or Ministers does not legally mean the dismissal of a government, for the government is permanently vested in the institution of the Monarchy and the Queen cannot be dismissed unless Her people, i.e., a majority of the electors, request the Queen to divest Herself of ALL AND EVERY POWER AND AUTHORITY WHICH THE MONARCHY HOLDS ENTRUST FOR THE PEOPLE, TO BE USED AS THE PEOPLE DIRECT.

• The removal of Ministers by the Queen, or Her Representatives, only means replacing them with other appointees of the Queen, and has no more legal significance than that. It is only the unwarranted interference of party politics which has given rise to a false understanding of the legal and Constitutional facts.

• Electors, in each electorate, have the legal power to select and elect one Member to the so-called Lower Houses and, in the Federal system, State Senators.

• Upon election, these Members and Senators have the legal power to select and elect their respective Speaker and President and, additionally, to appoint as many standing, or temporary, committees of the House, or Joint House Committees, as they consider necessary within the bounds of the Constitution.

• These committees can hold legal enquiries, command the appearance of any person or persons before them; command the production of any written, printed, typed or photostated material or matter and, generally, commit any person, for contempt of the House to prison, for not longer than the life of that Parliament, i.e., 3 years.

• With proper dignity, and sense of conscience, a Member may speak absolutely freely and fearlessly in his House of Parliament. This right comes down to Parliamentarians from the 'British Petition of Rights' and the 'Bill Of Rights: Both these ancient British quasistatutes are the basis of the judicially defined legal function and duty of a Parliamentarian, as referred to in this work.

• In a correctly functioning Parliament (which no House of Parliament presently is) every Member has the right to ask leave of the House to present a Bill for an Act on any subject matter within the legal boundaries of the Constitution. Although a Member, theoretically, has the right to present a Bill, under the operation of the party system, he is allowed to do so only if the party leaders can see some political mileage for that party in that Bill, to the discomfort of their opponents.

• If he chooses to use them, every Member has unlimited research facilities available to him, both within the Houses of Parliament and within universities, colleges, big and small organisations and so forth. Few of these bodies would not be happy to make their research facilities available to a Member, so it is his own fault if he does not possess a well-informed mind on the various matters coming before him in his House of Parliament.

• In each House of Parliament, the role of House attendants is, within the rules of that House, to assist the Member in every way to fulfil that Member's judicially defined function and duty. The House attendants, in every Parliament in Australia, are an example of the finest service and a credit to themselves and the House they serve.

• Ministers of the Crown, in their paid capacity as administrators of departments of State are legally responsible direct to the Queen, or Her Representative, i.e., the Governor-General or appropriate State Governor. Unless incompatible with the respective Constitutions and Parliamentary legislation, all direction from the Queen must be obeyed by the Ministers who are also legally bound to correctly and properly enforce all legislation relating to their specific department.

• It is not within the Constitutional or legal power of Ministers to determine what business, or order of business, the Houses of the Parliament shall deal with. That is solely in the hands of the Members of each House. Unfortunately party manipulation interferes with the Members direct legal control over their own affairs in their House, and this is a fact that Members of all parties have complained about from time to time but do not exert their legal authority to stop it.

• Through either Mr. Speaker or Mr. President, or both, the Queen or Her Representative may transmit message and requests that the House or Houses amend, reconsider, or introduce any Bill, except in the so-called Upper Houses no Financial Bills shall be initiated in that House.

• If the Queen or Her representative is asked by the Majority of the people to direct either or both Houses to do a lawful thing, then those Houses have no legal alternative than to carry out the clearly expressed written WILL of the people.

• As stated in Chapter 2, the Members of each House are required, within that House, to act with a dignity, decorum and solemnity not less than that of a judge in his court. Members who do not, or who refuse to, act with judge-like solemnity - and few Members do so act - are guilty of a gross violation of their judicially defined function and duty, and of their Oath or Affirmation of Office, and the Speaker or President is equally guilty if he does not, in the strongest terms, and possible lawful ways, strictly enforce that conduct of solemnity amongst the Members.

• The Speaker and the President are the sole direct legal contact between each House of Parliament and the Queen or Her Representatives. Ministers of the Crown illegally usurp the authority of the Speaker and or the President when they try to act as if THEY were the direct contact.

• Contrary to the long-standing cliches, party political and otherwise, Ministers of the Crown are not legally responsible to Parliament or the Houses of the Parliament.

• Parliament, as previously stressed in this work, consists of the Queen, or legal government, and the Houses of Parliament acting in consort. The Queen is the supreme legal government and the Houses of the Parliament are the legislative-forming bodies. The Minister can be legally responsible only to the legal government, that is the Queen or Her appropriate Commonwealth and State Representative.

• Members have complete legal power to bring public servants before the bar of the House for any purpose whenever the House deems it is vital to do so. It is completely outside of the legal jurisdiction of a Minister to direct his departmental officers not to give information to the House when called before the bar of that House. It is only party politics which makes this illegal act of Ministers possible, despite resort to the authority of the Solicitor General and or standing works like "May's Parliamentary Practices". Such authorities are wholly and solely based upon pure party political practices and not upon legal grounds sustainable in court.

• If Members of Parliament really exercised the true legal authority they have to bring top public servants before the bar of the House and make them disclose the real or theoretical basis of much of the advice that these officers give their Ministers, then you would see the beginning of the end of bureaucracy and the emergence of true public service at all levels. It must be obvious to everyone that, because of internal empire-building and internal office and interdepartmental politics Ministers do not always get the impartial factual advice that they are entitled to receive and, of a consequence, many fine departmental officers have to carry a public odium that is not warranted. It is time, therefore, that senior Officers, at least, should be made to carry the full responsibility of the advice they give their Ministers and, from this writer's inside knowledge most such officers would welcome this responsibility.

• The Queen, Her Governor-General and State Governors are directly responsible, not to the Houses of Parliament nor political parties but, to the people in the respective Constitutional areas.

• Except where any Constitution, or a lawful statute within that Constitution, lays down that the Queen - or Her appropriate representative - shall act, in relation to a specified matter, only with the advice of the Executive Council (be it Federal or State) there is no legal compulsion for the Queen to do so. Nor is there any legal compulsion for the Queen or Her Representative to give the Royal Assent to any legislation, unless directed to do so by the clearly expressed written WILL of the people.

• The Federal and State Executive Councils do not legally have to be composed wholly of Ministers of the Crown. This is just a non-legal party political practice to keep party control over the machinery of government and of Parliament. The Commonwealth and State Constitutions all provide that the appropriate Executive Council shall be comprised of all Ministers of the Crown and such other persons whom the Queen, or Her Representative, may care to appoint as advisors in particular subjects or matters.

• The Constitutions of the Commonwealth and State give the Queen, and Her appropriate representatives, the sole power and authority, at anytime of their choosing, to dissolve the so-called Lower House and send those Members back to the electorate. If directed by the written WILL of the people the Queen or Her Representative, MUST dissolve the Lower House.
This is one of the two most vital powers of control over parliamentarians and parliament that the people possess. The other is the power to ask the Queen to give them the specified results they want from the parliamentary machine.

• ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS VITAL FACT: IF IT IS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE, AND THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE WANT IT, THEN THE QUEEN HAS THE FINAL POWER TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT THE PEOPLE GET WHAT THEY WANT, AND NO COURT WOULD RULE AGAINST THE EXERCISE OF THE QUEEN'S POWER IN THAT RESPECT.

• It is obvious that it is not in the best interests of the political parties, and certain other writers, that you should have the above knowledge; for your understanding of, and use of, that knowledge means the end of party manipulations; the end of Party control over the voice and vote of Members of Parliament, and this is unarguable.

• It is stressed again that it is the lawful duty and obligation of every elector continuously to inform his Federal and State Members of Parliament, and State Senators, of what his WILL is on everything that comes before Parliament or should come before the Houses of the Parliament. In not performing your lawful duty and obligation you are giving Members and Senators a plausible excuse for not carrying out their judicially defined legal duty and legal function, thus enabling party manipulators and controllers to retain their dictatorship over the voices and votes of your Members and Senators and of the machinery of Parliament to to impose their will upon you.

Shorn of all legal jargon, the Constitutions of the Commonwealth and the six Australian States provide for the operation of an almost perfect form of democratic parliament IF YOU, THE PEOPLE, choose to apply the power and authority which those Constitutions give to you.

THE SOLE AND ONLY LEGAL LIMIT TO THE POWER AND AUTHORITY OF THE QUEEN IS THE UNKNOWABLE EXTENT OF WHAT HER PEOPLE, AT ANY TIME OF THEIR CHOOSING, MAY DIRECTLY REQUEST OF HER.

My Will - Part 6

6) WHAT IS A POLITICAL PARTY?

If you will but pause to think deeply and seriously you will find that a political party, despite its propaganda, constitutions, fine words and phrases, eventually becomes an organisation in the form of a pyramid with final power in the apex of that pyramid. The mass at the base being subject to manipulation by those in the apex, or by those who control the apex from outside of party organisation.

It is not an unreasonable contention that those who finally win through to the apex of the pyramid, both organisational and parliamentary, have to become manipulators of their fellows if they wish to hold their place of power at the top.

A political party, by the very nature of its pyramidal structure, is not, and cannot be, a democratic organisation, and the many years of party politics in Australia since Federation, proves that it is not democratic, despite beautifully worded constitutions, platforms, policies, and philosophies.

Here it might be wise to pause for a moment to define that much used, and much abused, word "democracy" Consensus has it that "democracy" is "Government of the people, by the people, for the people." However, whilst Lincoln's definition, with its tremendous emotive tones, sounds and reads well, experience has shown that in application this concept produces the opposite result "Government of the many by the few in the apex. "

It is suggested here that a far more practical definition of "democracy" would be that it is:
the administration of the affairs of the country to produce the specific results that the people request, not what politicians promise they will give if elected to power.

In the light of the long experience of Australian party politics, it becomes indisputable that political parties are incompatible with this new definition; that the continued domination and control of the Parliamentary machine by party politics must inevitably end in the wrecking of that machine, and the transfer of power to party manipulators. The evidence for this is becoming more painfully obvious each day.

The Australian history of parties demonstrates that every new party comes into being on the claim that existing parties have become dictatorships and that the new party is the only party capable of governing in the name of democracy. However, once its candidates enter a House of Parliament the new party quickly develops in the same mould as those it strove to replace.

Thus, we find the breaking-up and reforming, or splintering, of party groupings as people foolishly seek to overcome the party pyramidal structure and manipulation by replacing it with the same device and mechanism clothed in fine emotive words and phrases. People do not stop seriously to examine the Constitutions of the Commonwealth and the States, and the court interpretations thereof, to find the real nature of the Constitutional and legal powers that the Australian people possess to obtain the specific results they want from their Parliaments and Parliamentarians.

In discussions with politicians and others, the existence of faults in the party system will be admitted, to be immediately followed by the claim that the people traditionally vote on party lines; that the people vote for the party system because the people want the party system.
It is legally unchallengeable that the party system exists and operates ONLY because the Australian people have been deliberately misled into believing that, other than by a dictatorship, there is no other way that Parliament could function effectively and efficiently; that despite its many faults the party system is the only effective and efficient democratic way of governing the country. This is Constitutionally and legally false.

The sole role of a political party, like any other lawful organisation, is simply to recommend to the electors that "so and so " would be a good parliamentary representative and would faithfully carry-out the judicially defined legal function and duty of a parliamentarian. Should the electors accept the party's recommendation and elect that person then the party has no further legal vested interest in that elected person.

Once the Australian people are given the opportunity to learn and grasp that their Commonwealth and State Constitutions, and judicial interpretations thereof, provide the people with a practical legal alternative to the party system to democratically (as defined in this Chapter) operate the seven Australian Parliaments then, save those with a vested interest in the party system and its manipulation, the electors will cease to use the party system.

It is a matter of the printed evidence in the Hansards of all Australian Parliaments that the most honest debating and voting only takes place, with the rarest of exceptions, when the leaders of the parties agree that a certain Bill shall be debated on non-party lines; that their party parliamentarians shall be allowed to speak and vote absolutely freely according to their individual conscience. All other debates and votes must be on strictly party lines.

To summarise the answer to the question "what is a political party?

A political party, in fact and in experience, is a device or mechanism designed to enable manipulators, either elected or non-elected, to obtain and exercise the maximum direct control over the destiny of the people, cliches notwithstanding, in accordance with the will of the manipulators and controllers.