What is a mandate?

As Abbott prepares to take over the reigns of power, much has been said in MSM and social media in the last week about "mandate". It is obvious that few understand what it is and how it applies in this case and lots of people are prepared to offer advice to the rest of us based on this ignorance.

What is a mandate?

There are detailed meanings for the word 'mandate' in international law and in State law in Australia, which can be understood only by looking up the Acts that establishes that mandate. But in politics the word 'mandate' has been around since the beginnings of democracy and refers generally to an 'authority to act' a government receives by being elected in a representative democracy.

Legitimate government

Some of the journalists in the MSM and some commentators in social media think that 'mandate' relates to 'legitimacy' of the government, their 'right to govern' and refers to 'numbers of votes'. There were even references to the overall votes cast, with some commentators claiming that because Labor received more votes that the LNP, then somehow, Abbott's new government was an 'illegitimate' government, and he had no 'right to govern'.

This is, of course, an absurd position.

The legitimacy of a government and its right to govern comes from the Constitution. The key to legitimacy and right to govern, as things stand at present, is clearly determined by who has the ability to control a majority in the Lower House and is represented by a Letter from the Governor General assigning this 'right to govern' to a key player and asking him/her to form a government.

The government formed by the recipient of this Letter of Appointment is a legitimate government.

Representation

But the concept of a government having legitimacy based on their winning of an election is a central idea of representative democracy, and is closely related to 'mandate'.

In a representative democracy, voters elect a government to represent their wishes and implement changes that they (the voters) want to see happen. The concept of 'mandate' relates to the incoming government's right to govern free of impediment from an Opposition who may be in a position to block or delay the introduction of these changes. If a government has a mandate, it is said that these changes are 'legitimate' and any attempt by the Opposition to block or delay these changes is 'illegitimate'.

Legitimate policy & right to implement

So mandate relates to the legitimacy of a particular policy. By outlining this policy to the electorate prior to the election and making it a key part of the party's political platform, the incoming government is said to earn a 'mandate' to introduce this policy, free from the fetters of opposition within the parliament, an opposition keen to restrict the ability of the new government to perform. "If you don't want this to happen, don't vote for us. But if you vote us in, this is what you should expect to happen."

So, by explaining this policy to the electorate prior to the election, by making it clear that this is a key policy upon which it seeks to be elected and upon which it agrees to be judged after getting elected, the government earns the right to implement this policy. By opposing this policy and tying the government's hands when it attempts to implement policies that it has a clear mandate to introduce, the Opposition is said to weaken representative democracy and make it less democratic.

So the concept of 'mandate' is an important concept that upholders of the democratic process could be expected to support, whether they like a particular policy or not. If the people have spoken, the opposition should get out of the way of the government and let them get on with it.

But's

But there are a few provisos:

If you are going to argue you have a mandate, you have to have fulfilled the requirements as detailed above:

1. You have to have stated clearly the policy and detailed the impact of the policy, prior to the election. New governments who attempt to introduce a policy that they did not make public during the election campaign are said to not have a mandate to implement that policy.
2. You need to have been open and transparent about the costs and the benefits of the policy. New governments who hide the costs and or the benefits of that policy from the public are said to not have a mandate to implement that policy.

Does Abbott have a mandate?

So while Abbott heads a legitimate government, based on the Constitution and based on his big numbers in the Lower House, there is still a big question about his mandate. He has the right to govern, the right to Supply, but how does he stand on particular policies?

Overall Mandate

There is a sense in which one could argue that Abbott's mandate on any policy is weak. This is because Abbott failed to make clear to the electorate what his policies were, prior to the election (apart from a few slogans that he had been using for more three years to differentiate his party from the party in government). He failed to detail his policies, he failed to discuss the impact of his policies, he failed to cost them and he hid any concept of cost and/or benefit. He even left the publication of any numbers related to cost until after the date/time allowed by the Electoral Commission for proper discussion of policy, so that his costings could not be subjected to analysis by his opponents OR by the electorate OR by the experts in such matters around the country. It is absurd after adopting such a strategy to then turn around and claim that he has a mandate. That is not how representative democracy works. That is not what the concept of 'mandate' means.

NBN Policy

In the case of the NBN Policy, Turnbull is saying, the people have spoken; the policy to dismantle the NBN was outlined before the election, and the petition to ask him to turn about face on the tearing up of Labor's NBN policy will be ignored.

Unlike other prospective ministers, Turnbull did do the work to give some idea of the policy before the election. The costings weren't detailed but he gave some detail as to what Fibre to the Node meant. Even in this case, it is difficult to see that Turnbull has a mandate. This is because Abbott has been less than transparent about the reasons for adopting that policy, especially about benefits.

Beneficiaries of Fibre to the Home

It is easy to see the beneficiaries of the Labor policy for the introduction of fibre optics transmission to the home. Every home in Australia is included and therefore all persons are beneficiaries and especially small business was naturally to be big beneficiaries of the NBN policy. This is because a large number of small business are operating out of home.

Beneficiaries of Fibre to the Node

But in the case of Fibre to the Node the beneficiaries are not easy to see. Every home is going to be worse off, relying on copper wire not speed of light fibre from the node to the home. And if you do go for 'fibre to the home', the costs are likely to be ginormous!

So who benefits from this bad policy?

It seems likely that Abbott

• (who obviously does not understand anything about this issue because he claimed that his introduction of copper wire into the system could result in a network that could go faster than Labor's NBN (which is operationally based on the speed of light) and he claimed early in the campaign that Turnbull was responsible for designing the Internet)

introduced this policy to benefit one person and one person only: Rupert Murdoch, and by doing so guaranteed his own electoral victory.

The reason for Murdoch corruptly influencing the information flowing to the electorate in the months leading up to the election (and thereby killing any notion of transparency) was Abbott's guarantee to kill the NBN Project.

Abbott specifically denied having a conversation with Murdoch about this when they met, but we can only surmise that this is likely to have been high on their agenda. Anyway, whether he spoke to Murdoch about the key thing on Murdoch's mind or not, by hiding this key beneficiary from the electorate before the election, Abbott threw away the right to now claim that he has a mandate.