The End of the Ice Age - The first 100 days

It looks like Kevin Rudd is keeping his own list of achievements for me (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see Things that make me happy)

Whitlam and Rudd - the first 100 days

For those of you wondering where Kevin Rudd gets his inspiration, and whether he models himself on anyone in particular - let's take a quick trip back in time... the passage below is from one of Whitlam's own speeches - Keynote Address by the Hon E.G. Whitlam AC QC "Thirty Years Later: the Whitlam Government as Modernist Politics", Old Parliament House, Canberra. December 2, 2002, 0930hrs.

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"... In 1973, Robert Drewe wrote an article for The Australian on the Whitlam Government's first 100 days. He described himself as a '30-year-old child of Robert Gordon Menzies out of World War II' and he was just on the threshold of his brilliant literary career. Bob Drewe wrote:

You're aware of a certain rare feeling of national self-respect these days. It's not as if we're suddenly a big-shot country … but the fact is that Labor restored some dignity to the conduct of our national affairs at a time when we had all come more or less to expect nothing but ill from political action. Without precedent in the history of British-style governments, it set out to make up for lost time by immediately implementing its campaign promises. Australians blinked as within weeks we recognized China, ended conscription, abolished race as a criterion of our immigration policy, began reform of the health service, supported equal pay for women, abolished British honours, increased arts subsidies, put contraceptives on the medical benefits list, took the tax off Australian wine, moved to stop the slaughter of kangaroos and crocodiles and searched for a new national anthem. Along the way, the Government attempted to make our relationship with America … a bit less one-sided. The End of The Ice Age, is how Russel Ward describes the new era in a current Meanjin article.

In his essay, Robert Drewe put the view that to the extent the new spirit reflected the personality of the Prime Minister, it was 'by using (and being seen to use) the idea of the Australian Government, as he prefers to call it, as a direct and intelligent instrument for the general good.' I believe that idea is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Furthermore, I am convinced that relevant and contemporary policies, developed on the basis of that idea, creatively mobilising the resources of the Labor Party, the Parliament, the Constitution and the United Nations, will speed the day when the men and women of Australia will proclaim once again: It's Time."

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I would like to give a future echo to Bob Drewe's "rare feeling of national self-respect"... now here's Kevin's first 100 days:

First Cut: PM reflects on first 100 days

Rudd releases achievement book

Mandate schmandate - the ultimate hypocrisy

My letter today, to the Australian:

To the Editor of The Australian,

RE: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23203982-7583,00.html?from=public_rss

Ms Albrechtsen has spent an entire article arguing against the existence of "Mandate Theory". She makes a very convincing argument. I happen to completely agree with her. In her own words "Mandate theory? Bunkum." I don't support WorkChoices, by the way - but I don't believe the Labor party has the right to roll it back unless it can get its law changes through both houses of parliament in the prescribed manner.

Mandate theory is, indeed, the hypocritical rhetoric of both sides, used, whenever they are in power, to attempt to subvert the checks and balances we have built in to our democracy. Howard was wrong when he claimed the Senate was getting in his way. He was wrong to put forward changes that might have decreased the senate's power to stop laws - and the Labor party is wrong now, to claim they have a mandate over and above the senate's right to stop any law change they wish.

I agree with all of that.

Janet Albrechtsen then commits the ultimate hypocrisy by calling on mandate theory to defend the continuation of IR changes made before 2004. She writes "After all, voters approved those changes at the 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2004 elections. Dare one remind Labor that the Coalition won four mandates for those changes?"

If every government had to maintain the laws of previous governents simply because they were once elected, and enacted them, then the Coalition should have been stopped from ever rolling back laws that Hawke and Keating implemented - after all, presumably they had a mandate to implement them when they were elected. By Albrechtsen's argument, no one should be allowed to change anything that could have ever claimed a "mandate" in the past.

She has gone from "no mandate theory", to the "hyper-mandate theory". Just think of the laws we would never be able to change.

Ms Albrechtsen spends much of her piece gathering evidence of the innate hypocrisy in most arguments that use mandate theory as their basis. Having spent so long making a reasonable argument against mandate theory, to call upon it to argue for anything at all is clearly the greatest hypocrisy of all.

Nicholas Gledhill.