INTERVENTION BY SENATOR FRED MITCHELL

ON THE CONSTIUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

THE SENATE

23 JANUARY 2002

Mister President, I am pleased to be the lead speaker for the Opposition in this place on these proposed amendments to the constitution.The official position of the party will be put by the Leader of the Opposition in this place.But it is my role to explain some of the nuances of what the Government proposes to do, and what I believe is being thought out in the population about what the Government proposes.

As you know, I have been personally involved in advocacy for constitutional change for almost two decades.But I find myself resenting the circumstances under which we have been brought here, and the method by which we are being asked to deal with this very serious matter.The fact is I had no say in the constitution that I now have.Another generation of Bahamian politicians and British politicians decided that for me.It is now time, after nearly a generation of working with the present constitution to review and amend if necessary.And I say if necessary.I believe that it is necessary.But the changes that are proposed in my view are not fundamental changes.There is nothing that this Government proposes to do by way of constitutional amendment that cannot be accomplished by ordinary legislation.

If I am correct in that view, and this I my personal view, one has to ask oneself the question, why is this being done?The answer is: politics and more politics.What you have is a desperate Government, whose leader is on the ropes, who believes that his fortunes are waning and in order to save his hide, he is trying to trick the country by the use of these amendments to the constitution.

The biggest trick is to try to fool the people of the country that he is really interested in equality of the sexes.The Prime Minister does not believe in equality of the sexes any more than in the man in the moon.What he sees is the political value in making people think that he believes in equality of the sexes.And so he will try to use women and women’s issues to defeat his political enemies.The constitution of The Bahamas in Article 13 already gives Parliament the power.

Mr. President that means that anyone who does not presently come under the provisions of this constitution can be provided by Parliament with the right to acquire citizenship by an ordinary act of Parliament.Article 13 of the Constitution says as follows: “Parliament may by law make provision for the acquisition of citizenship of The Bahamas by persons who do not become citizens of The Bahamas by virtue of the provisions of this Chapter”.So if the Prime Minister and his Government wanted to help eliminate the problem of the perceived inequality of women and their access to citizenship and their children, when the FNM came to power they could have passed a simple act of Parliament to provide for citizenship for these persons affected.Amendment number ten and amendment number one can both be done by simple acts of Parliament.

If the Government really wanted to engage in fundamental change, it would take the bull by the horns and explain to the people of the country why it is necessary for the citizenship laws of the country to be changed to two simple formulations: anyone born in The Bahamas is a citizen of The Bahamas and anyone whose parents are Bahamian whether born in or out of wedlock is Bahamian.That would put an end to all of these tortuous formulations about who and who is not a citizen of The Bahamas.I spoke last week of a potent national security problem of thousands of almost stateless and undocumented persons in this country who have a claim to Bahamian citizenship but can’t get it, and sit here seething with resentment and frustration.And we can’t kick them out of the country.But as long as they are not fully embraced by the society, we do not get the opportunity to use fully their talents.And I said last week that to do what I suggest is very unpopular.And so all the more that this is a position that must be arrived at by consensus, not rammed down people’s throats.It must be patiently explained and both those who are for and against it must have the opportunity to discuss it and we ought to have the fullest regard for what the implications of such a change will be.

That cannot be done before a general election is due.The House must stand dissolved by 14 April.And the unseemly haste with which this matter is being addressed by the Government is a disgraceful display of brazen power and an unethical abuse of power.

I think Arthur Hanna, the former Deputy Prime Minister, perhaps stated the position of many when he said, yesterday on the radio, that he did not read the content of these bills, he did not intend to and he did not need to.He told the country, I don’t do nonsense.And I say amen to that.

Let there be no mistake that this new PLP supports the right of equal access by women to all that this country offers.There can be no discrimination against anyone because of their gender.The point one has to ask is whether this expensive exercise is necessary in order to do so.The point is that most of the mischief about which the FNM complained when they came to office has been cured by administrative action.And the Government has produced no evidence that this is still a problem in The Bahamas.

That is why this can be nothing more than an election trick.One remembers the 1997 General Election when the Prime Minister and his Government ran the largest deficit in the history of this country, a deficit of 137 million dollars, in order to win the 1997 General Election.At least on that occasion, they did not directly use the Treasury to pay for their campaign trips because they had the business community solidly against the PLP and solidly in their favour.So together with their friends in the expatriate business community, the FNM was able to raise five million dollars in order to run the last election and use the public treasury to bump public works in an unseemly manner.But this time, they must be having a problem with their benefactors and now they want to reach right into the treasury in order to conduct and pay for their political campaign.

What better way to do it than to have a referendum so close to a General Election.The distinction is then blurred.The Government’s funds can be used to fly Ministers up and down the country and their supporters.They will be campaigning for the referendum but what they will be really doing is using public monies to tell you to vote FNM.This is unfair, unprincipled and cynical.This is a travesty, a freak show in which we are all being asked to participate. 

The Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Perry Christie has put the party’s position on a firm footing.He is concerned about the process.The background to his concern is as follows.In his discussions with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister indicated that there would be no advances of constitutional amendments unless there was agreement between the parliamentary parties.In other words, the Prime Minister indicated to the Leader of the Opposition that there would be no referendum if the parties disagreed on what was to be amended.That is clearly the case, Dr. Bernard Nottage has serious reservations about the proposed Boundaries Commission, and I know that we have expressed concerns to the Prime Minister about whether there is a need for a Director of Public Prosecutions.The amendment seems useless, since it largely leaves the Attorney General's powers intact.

But beyond that, it is my personal opinion that there is no need to change the powers of the Attorney General.It is my view that as attractive as this business is about giving the power of prosecutions to a public servant with tenure, we must think carefully.We have only to think about the independent prosecutor that went after the former American President William Clinton with a vengeance, wreaking havoc in his path without any restraint, and who could not be removed for most purposes.There was no accountability.At least the Attorney General as it now stands has to face an election every five years, and also removal if he is appointed in the Senate.He is also accountable to Parliament.To whom will the Director of Public Prosecutions be accountable?A Director Of Public Prosecutions cannot be removed except for cause.

And this is a peculiar position for me to take; having regard to my present circumstances, where, in what I believe is a purely political and spiteful act, the present Attorney General has decided to appeal the matter of the dismissal of the conviction of my brother Matthew Mitchell.It is a pure act of political spite, but I think that making the responsibility that of the Director of Public Prosecutions would not make any difference in the matter.

And also because Mr. President you will know that during the past year, I made the point that I was concerned about whether or not the Attorney General that we have is competent for the job.Here was a man who did not know that you do not have to amend the constitution in order to change the Privy Council as the final Court of Appeal for The Bahamas.And then would not admit that he did not know.

Then I watched him on television from Long Island yesterday at Ellen’s Inn and he was saying how he was surprised when Lord Steyn told him that the fundamental rights provisions in our constitution Articles 15 to 27 were not invented by the framers of the Bahamas constitution but were transposed from the European Convention on Human Rights.I thought to myself where is this fellow living?All one has to do it to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights both of which precede this constitution and you will see that what appears in both of those documents is almost word for word in the Bahamian constitution.

And as I have always said, these fundamental rights provisions are not exhaustive of all the rights that we believe that human beings have.Some believe that the right to housing and the right to employment and the right to education ought to be included in these fundamental provisions.I would like to see the right to vote entrenched in the constitution for all persons above the age of 18.Parliament can abolish the right to vote as it now stands.But when are we going to discuss what we want to have in the constitution, and not have some arbitrary provisions simply picked upon by a power mad politician who sees his time running out and just wants to have it his way?

There is a history to all of this.In 1987, you will remember that the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, I and a number of other persons had left the PLP, following the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Drug Smuggling in The Bahamas.I thought then that the Prime Minister and Mr. Christie had both been unfairly treated by the PLP and I supported them following their expulsion.In Mr. Ingraham's case, I engaged a number of my colleagues in Freeport, Grand Bahama to form an ad hoc group call the Public Interest Workshop.In 1988, we held the Sir Milo Butler Lectures on the Constitution over the span of a week.The speakers at that time were myself, Fred Smith, Harvey Tynes Q.C., Maurice Glinton, Attorney-at-Law; Dr Rodney Smith, an educator and psychologist. The final night was the Honourable AD. Hanna. The venue was the Foster Pestaina Hall at Christ the King.Edward St. George of the Grand Bahama Port Authority sought to intervene with the church to get the lectures stopped.The now Dr. Gilbert Morris was a young student and he was one of the organizers of the lectures.It was perhaps his initial foray into public life.It was shortly after I met him.

We sold 1200 copies of the Bahamas Constitution that week at the price of three dollars per copy.Today the document costs fifteen dollars. And so it is not available to all Bahamians.I have a copy of the German Government's Basic Law here in my hand and it is available from the German Parliament free of charge, so that every citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany can get a copy of the document.

Following that successful series of lectures, we moved to Abaco, to Cat Island, to Exuma, and to Bimini.Hubert Ingraham became the final speaker on most nights.And we did that because we believed that he believed in a process.But sadly he has let us all down.The idea was to help people understand the document they were being governed by and the rules of law including the conventions of the constitution and why a Prime Minister ought to step down in certain circumstances, even though it was not in the written law.Sadly, he has missed that lesson as well.

In 1997 when the Government announced that it was going to advance constitutional reform, several civic minded individuals amongst them Alfred Sears, attorney at law, Raynard Rigby, attorney at Law, if I am not mistaken Senator Darron Cash and Felix Bethel of the College of The Bahamas all convened a series of workshops and seminars throughout New Providence on the constitution and how it might be changed.

The Government studiously ignored the seminars and the findings that emanated from them.Today as they present these changes, they have not said how they came to these particular amendments, and as I say there is nothing involving fundamental change in these proposals.All you would call this is tinkering.

What The Prime Minister and his colleagues propose is treacherous and unnecessary.Mr. Ingraham has turned his back on all the work done by younger Bahamians than he, persons who have studied these problems, studiously ignored them and now seeks to impose his petty choices on the next generation.He has got to be kidding.

If we are to have meaningful constitutional change, then there must be a properly appointed Commission.In my view that Commission ought to be a Committee of the whole of both Houses of Parliament.Both Houses of Parliament would then appoint a blue ribbon panel of persons without regard to party political affiliation.They would have the responsibility of canvassing the country and making recommendations to the all party Committee.A report would be adopted by that Committee and from that the Government would deduce a green paper.

The green paper would be circulated throughout the country.Once there is the necessary feedback from the public, the Government would then publish a white paper with its final proposal and then the draughtsmen would go to work.Following upon the passage of any of the Bills in Parliament, then there must be a full and a proper campaign of explanation to the public and - this is the important thing - with public monies provided for both the positive view and all the opposition views to be heard across the country.

That is what the Leader of the Opposition said when he spoke to the bills last week, and he set up the basis upon which the PLP would say to its supporters do not participate in this process or just vote no.

This process is not fair.It clearly is not fair.And as for me, when I get into the ballot box, I will be voting no.

And I am certain that the position is the correct one to take at this time, even as we support some of the ideas contained in the bills.But last week, we just witnessed a shocking example of the ineptness of this Government when their own side was not aware that in the House of Assembly the Minister of Foreign Affairs Janet Bostwick wanted the Inheritance Bill amended so that the property of a married couple cannot be claimed by the children born out of wedlock of the man in the marriage.But they made that mistake last week, and the Bahamian people will have to live with their mistake, unless the PLP when it comes to office repeals or amends it.And so having made mistake after mistake in their drafting of bills, what makes us think that this exercise will be any different?

I will discuss each of these bills in turn.I have already said what my views are on the question of citizenship.This is a matter that can be cured by the statute law. There is no need to put this country through an expensive exercise in a referendum when Parliament can simply pass a law to deal with it.Furthermore, if this Government were not so lazy and inefficient, all the applications that it has now before it should have been dealt with.But the Government comes here with no statistics to tell us how many people are going to be affected by their policies.

And then within amendment Bill number one, there is the call for the inclusion of gender in Article 26 so that discriminatory will include the word gender.But even that is unnecessary since Article 15 of the Constitution says that everyone is entitled regardless of amongst other things sex to the protections of the fundamental rights provisions of the constitution.So what is the necessity for that?One wonders why the Government wants to continue to allow discrimination in gaming against Bahamians, so that Bahamians are not allowed to gamble legally in our casinos.The constitution was for that discrimination and that should be eliminated.It is a relic of the past.

Amendment Number two seeks to establish a Parliamentary Commissioner’s office to run elections.And Amendment number seven seeks to entrench the Parliamentary Commissioner.Again, I believe that these are matters that can be done by statute, and further the Government is not in a position to say whether or not it has been able to meet the objections of Dr. Bernard Nottage with regard to the Independent Boundaries Commission and how the appointment of the Parliamentary Commissioner ought to be done.

Amendment number three seeks to change the functions of the Attorney General.I have already spoken to that.Amendment number four seeks to create the constitutionally protected office of Director of Public Prosecutions.I have already spoken to that.

Amendment five of the Constitution seeks to create a Teachers Service Commission and Amendment six seeks to entrench that Commission.This is a Commission that the Leader of the Opposition has called for and to that extent I agree with it.But am always cautious about supporting new Commissions in this country when we don’t have people to manage the existing Commissions and the existing Commissions do not increase efficiency, nor do they work on a timely basis, nor do we have the resources to man and maintain the existing Commissions.

So I ask myself how is this new Commission going to solve that problem and what are the problems anyway.I note, however that the Bahama Union of Teachers supports the Commission.

Amendment number eight seeks to create a new Boundaries Commission.This is a Commission that will have no politicians, but it is one that the Leader of the Coalition for Democratic reform has a difficulty supporting.

Amendment number nine seeks to extend the retirement age of Judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Most people generally agree that it was a mistake to include the retirement ages of Judges in the Constitution.And I do not personally see why that mistake is being repeated.If there is going to be such an amendment that amendment should be to allow for Parliament to prescribe the age of Judges by a simple act so that if we want to increase the retirement age of Judges again, we don't have to come back to Parliament to do so.

But I have a more fundamental objection.The objection is this.This amendment if it passes should not affect any Judge that is now sitting.Otherwise the Government will be guilty of the same accusation that we made against the former President of the Court of Appeal and Chief Justice Joaquim Gonsalves Sabola who shamefully and improperly accepted citizenship from the Government of The Bahamas while sitting as a Judge of the Court.It was nothing short of a naked gift to a sitting Judge, a gift to a Judge who was adjudicating two cases in which the Government was involved.And in both cases, he ruled in favour of the Government.

In the present situation is it not possible for the argument to be made that in allowing the retirement age of Judges to be extended for sitting Judges that it is the Government again giving a benefit to sitting Judges all of whom now have cases of one kind or another in which the Crown is involved.

Further, this is an appropriate time to point out that the method of appointing Judges in the constitution is not appropriate.And that there need to be fundamental changes made in the way the process is done.It is too secretive and too much influenced by the executive.The Attorney General was trying the other day the best he could to convince people in this country that the Courts are not subverted by the Government.He convinced no one.

The Chief Justice made a statement that the political directorate has never interfered with the Courts of the country.And yet we have on the record the shameful act of naked interference by this Government when in 1993, the Minister for Justice Janet Bostwick stopped a Judge from coming into The Bahamas and from doing his job.That Judge resigned and in his letter of resignation, he accused the Government of guess what: interfering with this job as a Judge.

But what we thought was interesting was that the Chief Justice, while saying that the politicians never interfered with the Judiciary, gave a litany of complaints about the physical state of the Courts that showed that in that respect the Government was subverting the Courts.The facilities for Magistrates are appalling.They are shameful.What Magistrates need to do is go on strike as they did in Trinidad to bring this travesty to a halt.

The public is not well served by it.And some Magistrates complain that some Magistrates are more equal than others.For example the Magistrate in Abaco has a house and a car.No other Magistrate has that privilege.

And the public fares not better.There are constant postponements.There is a backlog of cases still.There is lack of courtesy by Judges for persons who appear before them.The Court of Appeal is the most egregious offender in this regard.I wonder what is going on.It’s as if normally civil people are transformed by power into persons with a lack of civility.And it is clear that both of us have jobs to do.There is no reason to do the jobs with incivility.

In the Supreme Court and in the Court of Appeal we must be concerned about the quality of the Judges and the decisions that they make. We have no idea of the antecedents of Judges; what their decisions are.In fact, judges have come to this jurisdiction without any previous experience at all.And in applying the law they are because of their lack of experience overly technical in their approach to the law, and the result is that formality takes precedent over substance and justice is denied to scores of people in this country.

My personal view is that this ought to be rectified by giving the Senate a say in the appointment of Judges in the way that it is done in the United States.So that we will get to question these people before the public and find out their views with regard to justice and specific legal issues.What we need to find out is whether these people actually appreciate the real life problems of people.

It may be that there needs to be special judicial training to teach restraint of temperament, how to have a fair hearing in a court room and not to interfere with counsel when they are trying to present their client’s case.

I also believe that there needs to be an Office of Court Administration.This office would be responsible for the administration of the Courts.The Chief Justice would get an annual budget that cannot be reduced by Parliament or the Cabinet.But the important thing is that the Court would run its own funds.Again, I was surprised to hear the Chief Justice say that he was opposed to this but I cannot imagine why.Nevertheless, I think that it is a good thing and it would prevent the situation that happened a few years ago where the Cabinet had to make a decision about whether Judges, including the then Chief Justice would travel on an overseas trip.

As I said Mr. President, the public suffers because of the inadequacy of our judicial system.Nowhere is this more apparent than in the domestic courts, we have women, mainly women pile up week after week seeking to enforce maintenance orders against their recalcitrant husbands or boyfriends who do not want to support their children.If the Prime Minister had any real feeling for women and not just for cynical political sloganeering he might do something to improve the domestic courts.But those courts will be left when he leaves, the same way that he met them and probably worse.And so his tenure in that regard has been a complete waste.

And in the Family Islands, I just experienced a situation here as attorneys were to report to Long Island to represent clients, and the circuit magistrate could not appear because of death in her family.Except, no one contacted the lawyers to tell them.What happens then is that lawyers travel to Long Island for the day, and their fee has to be paid.In one case a charter had to be paid for, only for the lawyer not to have anything to do but adjourn the case.Surely that can be improved.

And to me the Courts are most important.Because it is perhaps the only place that we have seen the brute force of the state and the anarchy of an impatient people.The rule of law is important because it is the way for the poor and the dispossessed to use moral force to ensure that justice is done.And wherever justice is done, then there is a triumph for our country.

That is what this Government did not seem to understand when the Prime Minister went trekking around the United States and Europe like a grovelling mendicant with his cap in his hand last year and sold this country down the drain by passing a series of financial services bills.Those bills have cost scores of jobs in the country, and have threatened to ruin our way of life by imposing an over regulated banking industry and by invading the privacy of the individual.Privacy is protected by the constitution.It is one of the fundamentally protected freedoms, and yet last year, this Parliament led by the Prime Minister gave in to outside pressure that was more apparent than real and subverted the right to privacy in this country.

The Courts must have judges who believe in their hearts and souls in the rights of the individual and that those rights have primacy over the rights of the state.Speaking to University Professors at the University of the West Indies many of them have come to the conclusion that the Judges in our countries do not see the Judiciary as a separate branch of the Government but rather as an arm of the Executive, that they are there to keep the population in line for and on behalf of the Government for the time being in power.I do not believe this and will always speak to it until the idea is eradicated from the consciousness of the country and from the Judiciary.

Last week, I was speaking to my newsagent who runs a small newspaper stall in the Columbus Arcade.And he was lamenting that the Government unilaterally changed the course of the road, Bay Street, and as a result of that decision, the fall off in his business has been dramatic.No doubt other businesspersons may feel the same way or have experienced the same thing.But when the decision was made to change the road, did anyone ask the businesspeople?Did anyone care what they had to say?

We have only to read about the modus operandi of this Government when we see how they treated the Employers Confederation by introducing labour Bills that will increase their costs in a bad economy by over thirty percent.No consultation, just do it because election time is near.And the Labour Unions are not satisfied either.The PLP’s leader has said that the hallmark of his term of office will be consultation and a collegial style of Government.One biggety man can’t know everything.

Bill ten; I have already spoken to about citizenship.That Bill is entirely unnecessary, since it can be done with the statute law, and so that too should not be supported.

I have spoken to the fact that in my personal view if the constitution is to change, I am not interested in tinkering.There needs to be real change.I am personally in favour of a republic with a Presidency with powers similar to that of France.I am personally in favour of an elected Senate on the basis of proportional representation with a five percent threshold.That would mean that any party that could get over five percent of the vote nationwide would get to have members sit in this place.I would increase the number of Senators from 16 to 20.

I believe that there ought to be a right of recall in the constitution for Members of Parliament who do not perform their jobs.It should allow the constituents in certain circumstances to petition for the recall of their Member of Parliament.I suspect that the people of Fox Hill would employ it today against the present member who paid no attention to the constituency for five years but is now in a mad scramble to put up lights, clear down bush and pave roads trying to impress the people of Fox Hill that she has their back.But a right of recall would have solved the problem of the Fox Hill constituents a long time ago.

None of the proposals that I would like to put forward will have an opportunity to be discussed in this exercise.This is just one man’s agenda, trying to get The Bahamas to dance to his tune.And I don’t know why I should have to learn this dance. 

The FNM’s present Leadership seeks often to lay the blame for what presently exists in this constitution at the feet of the Progressive Liberal Party.I suppose in one sense that might be true since the FNM opposed sovereignty for The Bahamas.But that did not stop them from embracing all of the powers of an Independent Bahamas once it had been obtained and they were in power.

But in the truest sense, the PLP cannot take the blame alone for this, if blame is indeed the word.The fact is that the Constitutional talks in the United Kingdom in 1972 produced a unanimous report.All the delegates, the FNM, the PLP and the British signed the report.The British were of course anxious to get out of having to accept any more persons as citizens of their country than they had to following our independence but in the end the FNM and the PLP signed onto what we have today.That includes the provisions on women.

The provisions on women while they may seem archaic today, one generation ago were not out of line with the practices of the day, and in fact in international law is in many cases still the practice of the day.That practice was that in matters of domestic law, the wife and children take their domicile, residence and nationality from the husband and not the other way around.So there was nothing unusual about the practice.

Social and legal norms have changed, and in most cases what has happened is that countries now recognize in law that a wife can have her own domicile separate and apart from her husband, her own, residence and her own nationality.And many countries grant the right to husbands to obtain the right to work and the right of citizenship in the wife’s country.So I think that there is no quarrel there.But the question here is mainly whether you need a referendum to do so.The answer to that is clearly not.

The FNM was so agreeable on these citizenship matters.These were the last matters to be agreed by the 1972 conference.The conference was coming to an end just before Christmas of 1972 and the FNM delegates were afraid that they would not get reservations to go home for Christmas, so they left the PLP delegation to settle the final details on citizenship but they signed off on the report.The report was therefore unanimous.So no FNM can complain about what they did in 1972 and about what exists in the 1973 constitution.Both sides agreed with what we have.

But of all these freedoms that are protected in this constitution apart from the right to life, I believe those that have to do with freedom of conscience and freedom of information are extremely important and of course freedom of speech.And in this connection, the Parliament is the highest forum for freedom of speech.And last week Bradley Roberts exercised that freedom.Cry foul said the Prime Minister.He is going to deal with Bradley Roberts.I can’t imagine what the Prime Minister is talking about dealing with Bradley Roberts.He certainly can’t beat him in a physical fight so what on earth could he be talking about?

But it is interesting to hear the man scream: ‘he called me a traitor’, he says.‘I am patriot he says’.Poor Prime Minister.This can’t be the same Prime Minister who used his right of freedom of speech to attack an expatriate banker.To attack the Tribune as a front for Bay Street.And to call various and sundry lawyers and bankers crooks.Who came up to Fox Hill and called me a murderer, also a capital crime.The shoe is now on the other foot.Can’t say that I’m sorry at all.Now you know how it feels.

And yet freedom of speech does come with responsibilities and certain restrictions, though not many.But one of them applies to public servants and their right to engage in a political polemic with politicians.The other day, I was shocked to hear the administrator of one of our hospitals attack a Member of Parliament in the most personal terms.And then the Comptroller of Customs held a press conference last week in which he attacked a junior member of his staff, even in the face of a court ruling to the contrary of everything that he said.The Comptroller was trying to revisit a court case that he lost at every stage right on up to the Privy Council.It seemed in flagrant violation of one of the conventions of the constitution.

And just before that he had intervened in a political and policy matter by suggesting that the customs exemptions ought to be eliminated for Bahamians travelling to the US.Now either we are going to agree to keep the conventions in place or we are going to get rid of them.That convention was put in place for good reason one assumes by the British.A civil servant cannot to engage in a polemic with a politician.It is one he is sure to lose.And what it does is it isolates the civil servant from criticism as well, so long as he follows the rule.

Mr. President, these amendments are dubious at best.These are merely ideas for consideration.But the question is given the mischief that we want to cure is this a matter that we really need to take this country through the expense of a referendum?I know that many people that I have spoken to are already saying they will vote no.All Parliamentarians have to consider carefully this process. 

The Senate is finely balanced today.We will require 12 of the 16 votes in order to pass six of these bills.That means when we come to the passing of the bill, the final stage, the count must be at least 12.This must be not the majority of those here but the majority of all the members.Senators therefore as a review body have a special responsibility to think seriously before they vote in favour of these bills.

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