mariacostel wrote on Nov 21^st, 2015 at 5:39pm:


Work choices was not struck down it was amended so the federal Government could maintain control over industrial relations....The Coalition rejected a mandate to introduce an ETS. FACT. Both Labor and the Coalition have not accepted mandates. FACT. Trying to maintain that it is only the ALP who reject mandates is bullshit....Partisan hacks have no credibility when they routinely ignore failings in the party they support!!!



Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), radio address, October 26, 1939

mariacostel wrote on Nov 21^st, 2015 at 6:23pm:


Did the LNP reject Rudd's mandate to introduce an ETS....That fact alone makes your whole argument mute....I am not the one claiming it is only one party that rejects mandates....You are wrong but are so rusted on you cannot bring yourself to accepting the truth....Are you Tony Abbott be any chance???

The Abbott government did not get a mandate so stop saying they did .

Actually the Abbott government, the majority of Australians didn’t vote for the L/NP, here is a simple explanation.


How a Mandate works. Elections with a large margin of victory, are often said to give the newly elected Government or elected official an implicit mandate to put into effect certain policies.



2013 Coalition Election Results: First Preference by Party:

Liberal – 32.02 %

Liberal National Party- 8.92 %

The Nationals- 4.29%

Country Liberal (NT)- 0.32 %

TOTAL: 45.55 %



45.55% of the Vote is NOT a Majority

45.55% of the Vote is NOT a Mandate.



54.45% of the Votes were for NOT the Coalition so the Abbott government has NO Mandate for their Arse-Backwards Policies.

I have over the last decade or so come to not really believe in the validity of mandates. Though the theory seems to be valid on the surface we have had some doozies that have been claimed where no mandate existed as with the GST the majority vote clearly intended to oppose the GST.

As well as that we seen the Democrats support the mandate principle and no longer exist because of it - the people who voted for them refused to vote for them ever again because of the betrail, almost all of the democrat vote was in the belief that the democrats stated position on the GST would remain consistently in place after the election  and believed that the election result obtained meant that the GST was dead.

We had the last election where Labor voters were clearly voting to support a price on carbon and would lynch any Labor party member who betrayed that position irrespective of any perceived mandate.

I have come to believe that people who vote for a political party in an election have the right to expect the party to respect the platform their supporters had voted for even in opposition.

There was a time where I thought that a mandate was a black and white situation, I no longer see it that way and in fact doubt that the concept has much current validity at all.

John Smith wrote on Nov 21^st, 2015 at 8:52pm:

As to WorkChoices—never mentioned in the campaign. The concept of a mandate died then.

Yup. they tried to claim a mandate saying they had tried to increase the number of employees in a company before unfair dismissal claims could be made.

Not exactly WC!

Nope, mandates are dead.

Labor voter wrote on Nov 21^st, 2015 at 7:53pm:



And in todays electoral education for the dim-witted, we learn the difference between an arithmetic majority and a MANDATE.

Or at least, everyone else does. And yet you think Labor had a mandate to remove WorkChoices. Did they or did they not?

Dnarever wrote on Nov 21^st, 2015 at 8:47pm:



Mandates for many people are a huge problem and the reason is simple: it is a principle, not a vote.  Mandates are understood and respected by men and women of principle while lesser people will never see them. They are the honest and decent acts taken by MPs of character when nothing compells them other than their conscience and morality. For some, they understand it perfectly, while other have not a clue.