Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On the mandate principle, yes, Senator Boyce, Labor should have supported those things. They should have said, ‘Yes, you have a mandate because you promised that before the election.’ Perhaps the best example of a mandate theory failing was the 1998 election where the then Howard government went to the election and said, ‘If you re-elect us, we will put in place a goods and services tax.’ It was the main feature of the 1998 election campaign. The Howard government was re-elected. It went to this parliament and said, ‘We now want to legislate to put in place the GST.’ It is a matter of record that the Labor opposition of the day opposed that legislation. So what a mandate is is not clear. A mandate is a slippery concept.