Restorative Justice: Rethinking the history of the impact of representative democracy upon Indigenous peoples

Although the first Australian association of self-declared democrats was formed in Sydney only in 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, the political tides flowing in their favour were anticipated several decades earlier in a short but salient letter by the former President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Writing in the northern summer of 1816, Jefferson pondered the astonishing changes that had come over government and political thinking during his lifetime. Jefferson wasted no words: the arrival of self-government in democratic and representative form, he wrote, was fundamentally altering the dynamics of the modern world. He pointed out that the ancient Greeks knew nothing of the principles of representation. They were unable to think, let alone act, outside a political framework that posed a stark choice between either “democracy” or forms of oligarchy, such as aristocracy and tyranny. According to Jefferson, it did not occur to the Greeks “that where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business in person, they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall transact it.” Greek citizens, political thinkers and orators alike did not see the possibility of breaking free from the false choice between self-government of the people and government based on rule by a few.

The defining novelty of the modern era, Jefferson continued, was its invention of a new type of self-governing polity based on the mechanics of popular representation. The experiment in combining “government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us,” he concluded. Without historical precedent, the new representative system offered “the people” a new method of protection “against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.” In providing such protection, the experiment with representative democracy “rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government.” ¹

Representative Democracy

Jefferson’s letter proved prescient. Its bold words accurately signalled the birth of a new vision of handling power through a form of self-government in which people, understood as voters faced with a genuine choice between at least two alternatives, are free to elect others who then act in defence of their interests, that is, represent them by deciding matters on their behalf. Lord Henry Brougham’s widely-read defence of the nineteenth-century struggle for representation captured its spirit: “the essence of representation,” he wrote, “is that the power of the people should be parted with, and given over, for a limited time, to the deputy chosen by the people.” The job of the representative is to “perform the part of the government which, but for the transfer, would have been performed by the people themselves.” ²

The vision of government by the people through their chosen representatives was charged with radical potential. Wherever it took root, the struggle for representation threw into question the anti-democratic prejudices of those—rich and powerful men—who supposed that inequalities among people were “natural.” New groups, like slaves, women and workers, demanded the franchise. Subjects of empires joined in, as in the Australian colonies, especially during the decade after 1845, when the struggle for self-government came laced in local variants of the principles of representative democracy. While its white-skinned champions often thought of themselves as free born Britons, sang God Save the Queen and professed their belief in monarchy, they were fierce champions of what they variously called “representative government,” “democracy,” “self-government” and “responsible government” based on the will of “the people.” ³ The term “representative democracy” was rarely used, but its substance and spirit commanded increasingly wide support, manifested in the refusal of “tyranny” and “corruption” and calls for adult male suffrage, periodic elections, the supremacy of parliament, a free press, trial by jury and the right of peaceful public assembly. At first, the demand was for “representative government,” with the aim of limiting the power of the Governor, who was seen as a local autocrat responsible to the British government. Legislatures were created, with a blend of nominated and elected members, but the Crown still had a veto on legislation, and Westminster representatives retained control...