Last amended 2008-11-18

On 2008-11-17 we sent a survey to all political parties registered with the Australian Electoral Commission. The purpose of the survey was to ask what was the party's policy on CIR. We will publish the responses to this survey on 2008-12-01.

CIR Australia will soon conduct the first ever survey of all Australian parliamentarians about their views on CIR. There are 824 members of the nine parliaments in Australia - six states, two territories and the Commonwealth. The full results of this survey, including the individual vote of each member of parliament, will be shown on this site. Respondents will also be given the chance to make comments and have those comments shown here.

For the first time Australians will know who supports and who opposes CIR.

CIR will also be on the agenda for the upcoming Citizens Parliament. This is an important exercise in democracy which could have far reaching consequences for the way we can and should govern ourselves. The Citizens' Parliament will meet in the Old Parliament House in February 2009 and we look forward very much to the outcome. For more information about this please see

'Citizens' Initiative and Referendum - CIR - is the means whereby citizens can demand that a particular issue be put to a binding vote of the whole electorate. For the sake of brevity, Referendum is used to include both Initiative, (which relates to a new law) and referendum (which relates to a vote upon a law already enacted). In either case, CIR Australia advocates that if, say, 2.5% of the electors in any given jurisdiction sign a petition asking for a referendum, then the matter must be put to the electorate at the next general election.

CIR has been in operation in parts of Europe since 1874 and in parts of the USA since 1898. No jurisdiction has ever repealed CIR.

CIR Australia advocates Citizens' Initiative and Referendum in the well founded belief that Australia is as capable as any other country of allowing its citizens to have a full say in their government.