Of course I have answered your stupid question Longy. You quoted me answering it right after you wound yourself up about me never answering it.

Getting back to the original topic, is there any explanation (other than blatant hypocrisy and mindless partisan cheer-leading) for your previous insistence that political parties should be granted a mandate to rule even if the majority of the voters oppose them, and for your insistence that political parties should impose unpopular changes on us against the will of the majority? This contrasts rather uncomfortably with your more recent harping on about clear and undeniable mandates and the will of the majority in the context of the carbon tax.

I am having trouble understanding how you can hold two diametrically opposed positions at the same time while insisting that yours is some kind of morally absolute position. I think you have managed to avoid addressing this issue once in this thread, which is peculiar to say the least. If it were me, I would be keen to explain myself, lest people assume that I backflip on my moral stances whenever it suits the latest Liberal party propaganda.

Quite simply, the discussion on mandates founders because posters dont really accept the notion of rule of the majority. And you dont either FD. If you did, you would have quickly and unequivocally agreed that parliament is duty-bound to support a plebiscite of all voters. But you dont. Even now, you can no, will not and do not say so.

Your understanding of parliamentary democracy and the conventions that apply are primitive. You desperately want MMP or any other system that gets the voice of minor parties heard in excess of their actual votes but when a clear majority in absolute terms want the carbon tax repealed, you say no.

and even now, when the coalition looks like getting an ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of the votes cast, youi still are not happy about it. not a majority of seats, not a 2PP artificial majority, but an undeniable arithmetic majority.

You will never understand what a mandate is. You will never consider that any party has one for a policy unless you personally agree with it.

you have NO IDEA what a mandate is. while it is a complex notion, when you reject even an arithmetic majority as a mandate then you will never understand it.

John Smith wrote on Apr 7^th, 2013 at 6:18pm:


as previously stated, you don't believe that majority opinion should in any way affect how parties operate. Therefore you don't qualify for an answer to the above question because every answer is irrelevant to you.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 7^th, 2013 at 6:14pm:



So when
Party A gets 40%
Party B gets 30%
Party C gets 30%

Party A supports Policy x,y,z but not w
Party B and C Oppose x,y,z .

Party B supports w while C oppose w.

As party A has more then anyone else x,y,z should be implemented or as no policy has a party total support of more then 50% none of them?

catprog wrote on Apr 7^th, 2013 at 8:55pm:


According to Longy, x, y, and z should be implemented, but not w. He sees democracy as there to serve the parties rather than the people, and being fair to party A is more important than what the majority wants. He appears to have taken this a step further and invented some new kind of morality around this concept of fairness to party A, such that a policy that is opposed by the majority should still be imposed, and that there is a clear and unambiguous mandate for this, despite the majority opposing it.

freediver wrote on Apr 9^th, 2013 at 7:22pm:


I'll re-define it.....

The majority of Liberal Party leaners are employed, work to their potential and pay lots of tax

Whereas

The  majority of Lefties are either unemployed, pay little or effall tax and sponge off the tax payer (see above)

IN virtually EVERY democracy there are more than two parties therefore virtually ensuring that no part gets an arithmetic majority in first preference votes. Therefore to use the simplistic view of majority will almost always fail. However, it should also be noted that a party getting 45% of the vote does not imply that 55% of people disagree with their policies and certainly not with all of them. That is a simplistic notion not worthy of people. the equivalence of 'party' and 'policy' is a juvenile belief.

In our system we call a 'majority' the party that gets 50%+1 of the seats in the lower house. It is a system that has served us well and effectively gives a party a mandate to govern in a general sense. That is not even in debate except to the FD-style people who believe in giving an artificial legup to minority parties. Note also that having a majority of seats in the absence of a majority of first preferences implies that a party's particular policy may not be supported by a majority of people. This is why an opposition exists - to give validation to a policy and to ensure better legislation. The drongos who seem to think that the current opposition is not entitled to oppose legislation do not understand this.

there is a statistical aggregation called two-party prefer ed which presumes to give an aggregated approximation of votes after preferences have been distributed. This usually matches the seat distribution but not always.

So what is a majority exactly? pure numbers of votes? numbers of seats?  Constitutionally, the majority is based purely on number of seats.

I just hope that in the next election that abbott gets >50% of the primary vote so some of you drongos cannot claim he is operating contrary to 'majority opinion'. it is funnily enough the same people who think Gillard has a mandate for her policies while getting less seats, less votes (by far) and not reaching a constitutional majority.

Now I am sure now FD will come back and claim I dont believe in rule of the majority because family firsts 4% of the vote doesnt get representation in the lower house.  Our political system is an adversarial and competitive one. it is not the special olympics. you do not get a medal or a seat just for competing. the seat is won by the winner. the rest are losers and received less votes than the others.

suck it up.

freediver wrote on Apr 10^th, 2013 at 3:40pm:


in the real world getting an arithmetic majority is near impossible so you need to think a little more clearly than that. 2PP doesnt cut it and even if it di, do you then ascribe a mandate to the winner with no boundaries to it?