Starting from scratch

IT IS self-evident that constitutional reform is badly needed in this country. But the Government’s move to establish an advisory committee to craft a national consultation on this matter begs the question: why start from scratch?

Consultation is a good thing. Indeed, in an ideal world it would be a prerequisite for any form of legislative change, whether relating to our supreme law or not. It is also good for the State to have an up-to-date sense of the will of the people.

Yet we have been down this path before. There have been so many consultations, commissions and studies on constitutional reform in previous administrations, leading to so many reports, drafts and recommendations, that it is clear there is no shortage of ideas in terms of what needs to be done.

With this in mind, the Prime Minister’s announcement on Thursday of a committee to formulate “terms of reference” with a view to “promoting and convening...a national constitutional conference and consultation” feels less like a hopeful moment and more like a political gimmick designed to sway voters.

It is late in the day in the second term of the Rowley administration. Even if consultations begin by June, as mandated, it is hard to imagine all the steps required to actually change the Constitution taking place before the next election, due by 2025.

Presumably, in addition to a nationwide consultation exercise which could run into months, the findings of the exercise will have to be formulated into a policy paper, the Cabinet would have to approve a bill or bills, there would have to be study by Parliament, including opposition MPs and independents, and then the process of debate and passage with the requisite super-majority would have to occur. The chances of all this happening before 2025 are vanishingly small.

Meanwhile, there is a need for legal reform of matters which do not directly involve the Constitution but which, nonetheless, have profound implications for constitutional rights. For example, it was the Rowley administration that pledged, ahead of the 2020 election, to introduce campaign-finance reform to make the process of political campaigning more transparent and amenable to smaller parties. Those efforts have stalled.

Instead, our recommendation would be for single, discrete issues to be addressed.

For instance, the idea of term limits for prime ministers is uncontroversial.

There is also consensus around the need for fixed election dates.

The judiciary should have its own funding.

Nobody favours the arrangements relating to the appointment of a commissioner of police, arrangements which were themselves the fruit of the most recent constitutional reform – all the way back in 2006.

Cabinet does not need to start from scratch. It should simply reach for low-hanging fruit.