So Jardine
If I move onto a rich mans land, to feed my family, he wont attack me and use "force" to remove me? Of course he will. You rightists are the violent ones not the left.
Your rabid ideology of "liberty" is only liberty for the haves. The have nots can get stuffed and starve to death in a ditch for all you care.
You selfish randians would be the first to call the cops if someone infringed your "property".
Bloody hypocrites.

I dont believe in a zero sum economy. That is you fantasising again.
It is your political theory that is irrational.

You dont know my political philosophy. As usual with you rightards you seem to think all lefties are the same and believe that the USSR was a success. I dont even think the USSR was communism. It was an authoritarian dictatorship. Get over your 1950s reds under the beds obsession and your anne rand elitist fantasy and maybe you will have something sensible to say.

I never said I supported the state. I dont. Neither do I support the miniature version of the authoritarian state that is a corporation, the fiefdoms and absolute rulers, the exclusion and exploitation that characterises capitalism and your "libertarianism". Especially the idiotic version advocated by mises and his fools.

A good article and a timely caution.

There is, in fact, a view that most people voted for the least worst party; in which case we cannot infer a ‘mandate’.

A more compelling argument, which should appeal to a rationalist philosopher, is that - even if there were a mandate in the sense of clear majority support for a policy, such as in a plebiscite or referendum, that would still not be a reason to support it. Once the policy is law we all have a duty to obey the law, but until then elected members, like the public, are free to oppose it. The reason is that public opinion on a moral issue is not itself a moral argument. The point is discussed in Eureka Street, Oct 10, 2013.

Max Atkinson

The reality is with a 2pp vote of 54% the liberals got a mandate to implement their promises, and to legislate according to their principles. So far they have done so.

Labor, however, had a mandate not to implement a carbon tax and in failing to keep their iron clad promise tore up their mandate to govern.

But, Shadow Minister, as a minority Government did Labor have a mandate for anything? They managed to cobble together a bare majority to hold office for three years, but it would be hard to argue they had the support of a majority of the electorate for any of their policies, which no doubt is why the unrelenting focus of the Opposition was on Julia Gillard'e pre-election statement about 'no carbon tax' rather than the ALP platform.

Poirot, perhaps we should just stop repaying labors debt.

Would that make you happy!

rehctub,

You've been rather quiet lately.

Did you catch Mr Hockey saying this:

".....we are AAA rated and we are in good shape."

http://jbh.ministers.treasury.gov.au/transcript/012-2013/

Did you catch Mr Hockey saying that "The credit rating is what matters."

Did you catch Mr Hockey raising the debt ceiling by 60-odd percent?

.....after banging on for yonks that raising debt limits wasn't on....

Do you know that Australia has the third lowest debt in the OECD?

Mr Hockey does.

He reckons we're "in good shape".

But then he always knew that didn't he....