by John Pyke, Queensland candidate for the Constitutional Convention
Formal Qualifications: B Sc (Syd), LL B (UNSW), LL M (Syd) - a degree about every 15 years, so I'm due to do a PhD in about 2006!
Interests and Experience: As a boy I remember finding the history of the development of democracy (the American and French Revolutions, the first, second and third Reform Acts in the UK, and Federation in Australia) the most exciting parts of history. I was fascinated by the way that all campaigns for more democracy were always opposed on the grounds that it would be the End of the Western World as We Know It, but the English-speaking parts of the western world, at least, went from strength to strength. Perhaps there's a message for us in that? (The French Revolution did turn nasty in the short and medium term, giving a great feeling of justification to the opponents of democracy - but the French had had no practicein democracy.)
After school I did a degree in Physics and worked for a couple of years at the
Weapons Research Establishment outside Adelaide, building instrument packages
that got shot into the upper atmosphere in rockets - which is why one of my
friends calls me "the rocket scientist"! I then worked for 11 years (a solar
cycle) at the Ionospheric Prediction
Service, studying and forecasting the effect of solar flares on the
ionosphere.
But I was still interested in politics and the Constitution, so I then studied law, practiced it briefly, and have been teaching it (at UNSW, Macquarie, and QUT) for 17 years. I'm interested in the way that law intersects with ethics and politics - so my two main interests within law are the process of common-law reasoning (look for the excellent book by Al MacAdam and myself on Judicial Reasoning coming out in December or January), and Constitutional Law.
I have been teaching Constitutional Law since 1989. In 1992 I did a couple of lengthy submissions to the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) on the need for a Bill of Rights, and for a Constitution over which We, the People have control - which must have impressed them because they engaged me as the principal consultant for their review of the Queensland State Constitution (a Parliamentary Committee is still considering whether to act on the Report).
I have been a member of the Proportional Representation Society for years, and have held office within the Queensland branch a couple of times - see my proposal for enshrining Proportional Representation in the Constitution. [So my explanations in Will Your Vote be Wasted? - Voting Tickets and Below the Line Voting are written on the basis of some expert knowledge...] I have been on the committee of the Queensland Chapter of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation for 2 1/2 years, and was secretary for a year from last October. I relinquished that position last month because the CCF has to be so neutral about everything, and I would rather concentrate on campaigning for change. I'm still interested in the history of the development of democracy, and would like to be part of it - that's why I'm standing for election.
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