The mistake of the mandate

In the days when I was much younger and ( perhaps) more naive, a University lecturer reminded me that the Westminster system is not about mandates.
"We elect people to govern, not to implement a narrow raft of policies" he would say ( or words to that effect ).
He was not saying, I suggest, that politicians should be  allowed to make a swathe of promises and then not be held to account; but rather that we, the electorate, should pay attention to the tenor of the discussion rather than the minutiae.
We are not electing people to implement piddling little policies. that would be far too small,  but to govern according to clearly articulated principles.  This is of course easier said than done.
We, the electorate,  by and large have allowed ourselves to be seduced by minutiae...make my tax go down, stop the boats, free beer for all...
Rather than demanding that our politicians GOVERN according to PRINCIPLE.

The reason why the narrow mandate is a mistake, is that we actually discover there is not one but  a number of mandates (plural)....[housing, infrastructure, security, States' rights, increased wealth, closed borders, care for refugees, better education, military expenditure, lower taxes, improved health care, indigenous rights, marriage equality, law and order, water quality, a republic, farmers' rights, housing costs...... you get the idea...and I could go on]

Thinking back to the last election ( which was close... almost too close) all of these things and more were aired.

The electorate votes, I would say, not for one of these issues . But for the Team it believed most closely approximated most of their views in principle.
Some would hold that border control and lower taxes were what they held to be important. Others that water quality and military expenditure, law and order and marriage equality were what suited them.
We could go on and realise that some of us want part of this agenda and others want a different part.

This is NOT a mandate, this is an accomodation to a way of thinking.

So it is not appropriate or accurate to say that if I happen to have been elected, then everyone agrees with everything I said.
It is not even accurate to say that all those who voted for me ( and in this case it was barely 50%) were agreeing about the things that I was proposing.

There was no mandate for anything.
There was rather permission to govern.
Do not use the Mandate Argument to say...I cannot do this. Rather take the cudgels and govern.
Nothing would seem to be black and white, it is rather an invitation to enter into the mêlée of proper discussion.
Not applying the arbitrary mandates, but rather the principles that engender good government.

I fear that the "mandate argument" is the excuse of the craven to not declare themselves.

I do not believe that this wafer-thin government had a mandate for a plebiscite. If anything the reaction of the Houses shows that they clearly don't.

Get on and govern! You do not have a mandate for a plebiscite. And possibly not for much else either!
Get on and govern ...and realise the art of the possible......which after all according to many luminaries (Including J W Howard) is what politics is all about.

The nonsense of the mandate

I grit my teeth every time the modern politician talks about a mandate.
The truth is the Westminster system does not deliver mandates.
It delivers government.
We elect a team to govern, not simply or only to implement the declared and limited list of policies that may have been identified during the election campaign.
I am not saying that these should be disregarded, ....but I will come back to that in a moment...
Then truth is it nonsense for any party to say it has a mandate to implement every single policy that may have crossed their lips during an election campaign simply because they happen to have been elected (and in this latter case by the slimmest of majorities)
Just let me walk you through my logic.
During the last election campaign, just to take the presently elected team, they talked about: Marriage Equality, Superannuation, Budget Reform, Submarines, Education, Refugees and the hideously named  lie "Border Protection", let alone the duplicity on both sides about Health Care
Now I agree with them about some things..and indeed some aspects but not necessarily all of their policies. I do not agree with them about some others
Now I, and everyone else, did not get a chance to say what I was particularly "giving a mandate" for.

Indeed I was NOT giving a mandate! I cast my vote for an individual and/or a party whilst not necessarily agreeing to absolutely everything they were promoting.

Indeed I actively disagree with both major parties about their hideous policies to do with refugee resettlement.

Though they can erroneously claim that they have a "Mandate"...they have no way of knowing which of the broad range of policies people actually approve.

I would suggest that most Australians...however they voted... did not give "mandates", they thought some things were good and other things were not.
We vote not a "mandate" ...but on balance.
Indeed we vote for the team.
We recognise that not everything is solved, or sorted. But by and large one team has got the balance we prefer.  This does not commit us to support the details.
Rather we empower the team.

We do not implement the mandate. We elect a government.

This would rather expose the  current Marriage Equality discussion.

There is NO mandate to implement or not implement Marriage Equality; there is no mandate for a plebiscite.

What there is, is a requirement for the elected member to exercise their conscience.
And not to hide behind the false wall of the illusory mandate.

The Farce. Act II

Could not believe Katter's performance on Q& A last night! I have been spending the week telling folks that he is not as bad as he was. But I am afraid that I have to revise that estimation.

He says many wise things. But he is a bully of a man, who can only deal with criticism by force, shouting down his opponents. Refusing to engage in any constructive dialogue that dares to critique his narrow views.

That was scene 1 of this Act II

Scene 2. Was his appearance at a bizarre Press Conferenece at 1 p.m. today. At which he pontificated and procrastinated. One can only wonder why. He went on and on.

There seemed only one dynamic that was at play here. He was holding a separate Press Conference because his conclusion was different from the other two.

He supported the coalition.

Thank goodness, despite Rob Oakshot's equally tedious prevarication (15 mins), he and Windsor went with Ms Gillard. I will blog later about the one really good thing that Oakshot said and the saintly Fr Spencer Dunkerley who foreshadowed him by 40 years