“There is not a recorded example in Australian political history of an incumbent government laying before the public such a detailed, comprehensive plan and seeking a mandate for it. So if we win the election and it is argued that there is no mandate, then the Australian political rule book has been torn up forever.”
- John Howard, September 18, 1998, campaigning for the GST
THE true madness of the Liberal Party can be seen in its repudiation of the Australian political rule book as John Howard saw it.
The former prime minister believed that if a party won a mandate for a contentious reform, then the Senate had no business obstructing it. Think GST.
And if a former government pushed for a contentious reform, but ran out of time to implement it, then it should help the new government to deliver the change on a bipartisan basis. Think Howard’s support for the Hawke-Keating deregulation agenda, from the float of the dollar in 1983 to competition policy in 1995.
No mainstream political party has ever obstructed the government on an issue that it itself had promoted at the ballot box. But this is the warped logic of Tony Abbott’s election as Liberal leader yesterday, and the partyroom backflip on the Rudd-Turnbull emissions trading scheme.
The new opposition position doesn’t pass the laugh test.
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