Nothing Without the People

Switzerland holds binding national referenda on constitutional amendments and on legislation that reaches a petition threshold, with votes on multiple questions several times per year. The result is a legislature that cannot make significant changes to fundamental law without a public vote, which imposes a discipline on the pace and scope of reform that other systems lack. Victoria currently has no mechanism for binding citizen-initiated referenda or for mandatory referenda on constitutional changes. The Australian Constitution requires a double majority (national and four states) for federal constitutional amendments, but Victoria's own constitution can be amended by simple parliamentary majority on most provisions, giving the parliament more unilateral power over fundamental law than citizens have over their representatives.

A Victorian citizen-initiated referendum mechanism would require amending the Constitution Act 1975 (Vic), which itself requires a special majority in both Houses of Parliament or, for entrenched provisions, a referendum. The mechanism could be structured as: (1) an advisory CIR, where a qualifying petition triggers a non-binding public vote that the parliament must formally respond to; or (2) a legislative CIR, where a qualifying petition triggers a binding referendum on whether specified legislation should pass or be repealed. Option 1 requires only ordinary legislation; option 2 requires constitutional amendment. The Citizens' Assembly mechanism (see policy-citizens-in-every-room) is a complementary instrument operating at the deliberative rather than the voting stage.

The economic case for referendum mechanisms is indirect: systems with greater citizen veto power over legislation tend to produce more stable policy frameworks because governments must build genuine majority support before acting, reducing the frequency of policy reversals and litigation that follow contested decisions made without community mandate. The economic cost of the mechanism is the administrative cost of running additional elections, which in Switzerland is managed by holding multiple referenda on the same day to aggregate fixed costs. Victoria already runs multiple election-type processes through the VEC, and the infrastructure for a referendum process is substantially the same as for an election.

Citizen-initiated referenda are vulnerable to capture by well-funded campaign groups who can afford to reach petition signature thresholds and run expensive media campaigns. The Swiss experience includes referenda funded by corporate interests to block environmental regulations, and referenda on asylum policy that produced outcomes subsequently challenged in the European Court of Human Rights. A minimum petition threshold that is too low invites trivial or bad-faith referenda; too high effectively excludes citizen initiative. The deliberative panel requirement (a citizens' assembly must endorse the question before it goes to referendum) is the structural safeguard against the worst-case scenarios, requiring genuine community deliberation rather than just a signature count.

Switzerland holds federal referenda three to four times per year on average, with turnout ranging from roughly 40% to over 70% depending on the question. The Swiss Federal Chancellery publishes full results and campaign spending for each referendum. Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum, produced by a Citizens' Assembly recommendation, is the most recent example of a deliberative-then-referendum process producing a clear democratic mandate for significant constitutional change: 66.4% voted in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment. New Zealand's non-binding citizens-initiated referenda, available under the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993, have been used on matters including election law and retirement savings policy, with governments not legally bound by results but politically affected by strong majorities.

This requires a constitutional amendment, which in Victoria requires a parliamentary supermajority for entrenched provisions or an ordinary majority for non-entrenched ones. A Fusion MP cannot deliver this from one seat. The crossbench role is to introduce the Bill so the model exists on the public record, to publish the petition threshold modelling, and to advocate across the parliament for a voluntary advisory referendum pilot before any mandatory mechanism is legislated. The one-seat deliverable is the advocacy record: every parliamentary debate in which the Fusion MP argues for citizen-initiated mechanisms normalises the concept and builds the legislative coalition that a future majority will need to act on. In a minority parliament, committing to a government-initiated advisory referendum on at least one significant policy question per term is the supply condition that most closely approximates the policy's intent without requiring a constitutional majority.