Page 188 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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mandate at all for its attack on the education system. By the way, it has no mandate at all to be there, but today we will look particularly at the education system. This concept of the mandate is an important one.
Mr Collaery: Were you elected?
Mr Humphries: Yes, who voted you into this position?
Ms Follett: You did, actually.
Mr Kaine: When were you elected, Mr Connolly?
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Ms Follett: By the Assembly. It was a unanimous vote.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR CONNOLLY: Indeed, as Ms Follett pointed out, it was a unanimous vote. I am pleased that Mr Kaine, Mr Collaery and Mr Jensen also voted for me. I am sure that many people who are members of their parties will also be voting for me and the other members of the Labor ticket at the next election.
Mr Speaker, the concept of a mandate is an important one. I notice that Dr Kinloch is not present at the moment. The concept is one that he well understands because it is probably one that he has taught in his period while teaching history and politics at the Australian National University. I will quote from Sir Ivor Jennings' The Law and the Constitution, third edition. This is an old book. This book was published originally in the 1930s and the edition I am quoting from came out in 1943. This is no new concept. I say that it is no new concept because, of course, in Australian politics it was Gough Whitlam who really stressed the importance of the mandate. But Sir Ivor Jennings says, in relation to parliamentary conventions:
There is, too, a convention which limits the power of Parliament in respect of internal matters. Apart altogether from political expediency -
that perhaps explains this lot -
it is now recognised that fundamental changes of policy must not be effected unless they have been in issue at a general election.
The reason for this, he says, is clear:
There is, too, a reason for it. It establishes that in major issues the policy of the country shall be changed only after a definite expression of the opinion of the electorate at a general election.
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