Foreword to the second edition
This book was originally published in 1994. The author had
just completed work on a second edition when he died in January 2002. At the
request of his widow, Mrs Barbara
Hamer, the Department of the Senate
undertook to edit and publish the manuscript. We did so because Can Responsible Government Survive in Australia? has proved to be an invaluable and
unique repository of comparative information about the powers and practices of
twenty legislatures in Britain,
Australia, Canada
and New Zealand.
I know of no other book like it.
David Hamer,
apart from his career as a great parliamentarian, was an enthusiastic and
colourful writer and a man of firm opinions. Needless to say, in publishing
this book neither the Senate nor its staff endorses all the author’s views.
Much of the content is historical in nature and the overwhelming majority of
the text does not suffer greatly from the fact that it does not cover events
since January 2002. To have brought it up to date would have required not only
the updating of facts but also the modification of some of the conclusions and
judgements that the author had made on the basis of the facts as they stood in
2002. It was considered best therefore to leave the text, apart from copy
editing, largely as David Hamer
left it. We have also retained the author’s original introduction and the foreword
to the first edition by Professor Don Aitkin.
Harry
Evans
Clerk
of the Senate
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