The Liberal Party's Obsession over Mandates (Should Fred Nile be concerned?)

Since the Liberal Party has ascended to the dais of power in Australia, a considerable amount of chatter has popped up around the idea of ‘mandates’ and whether or not the Liberal Party has one in its possession. I have to admit, I find the whole concept quite interesting and confusing.

The argument that the Liberal Party seems to running goes something like this:

1.     Party X has supported policies P, R, Q over the last few years leading up to an election.

2.     Party X has won enough seats to form a Government in the Federal House of Representatives.

3.     Therefore, all the other parties should respect the ‘will of the people’ and allow Party X to implement policies P, R, & Q, unimpeded.

This argument seems to be advocating for a kind of ‘winner takes all’ practice, where the party that forms government is given free reign to implement all of their policies (or at-least their most ‘prominent’ policies). One issues I have with this perspective is that it seems to ignore the fact that there are a multitude of other elected representatives, who are not a part of the ‘ruling party’, but who were just as legitimately elected to represent their constituents. In fact, the Liberal Party has just spent the last three years denouncing the Labor Party for not strictly following the policies, which they brought to the 2010 election. Now it seems the Liberal Party are suggesting such ‘breaks with the public’s trust’ are the morally right thing to do.

Despite this concern, my strongest reaction has been one of confusion, as all this speculation over the existence of mandates seems entirely unnecessary. Why do we need to argue about these ill-defined and overly subjective conditions, under which a victorious Party can claim a mandate for certain policies? We already seem to have a very clear and simple test for whether or not a Government has a mandate to enact a certain policy, and that is, for the Government to attempt to have relevant legislation passed by both houses of the Federal Parliament. If you can get it passed, then you have a mandate for that policy. On the other hand, if the Australian people have elected representatives, who choose to block the passage of the legislation, then you don’t have a mandate.

Am I missing something here? Is this not how our system of governance was designed to function? If a Government feels very strongly that the people voted ‘wrong’, then they can always trigger a double dissolution and hope that people 'get it right' the next time. However, if you’re not willing to take that risk, then you should put your energy into effectively governing in the parliament, which you have been given, rather than speculating and whinging about mandates.

“Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey, and about issues.” – Matt Taibbi