Throughout the last few years of the Howard government, anyone who criticised the government, or suggested that Howard was not the best person to be Prime Minister of Australia, could be sure of being labelled a “Howard hater”. A quick Google finds this trope being used regularly by Miranda Devine, Paul Sheehan and Gerard Henderson, and being taken up by their numerous blogospheric supporters.

This was always silly. Perhaps there were people motivated to oppose the government because of a personal animus against Howard rather than his actions and policies, but if so I never met any. Of course, people who disliked Howard’s policies tended to dislike Howard, and some people who hated Howard’s policies hated Howard as a result, but using a term like “Howard hater” to explain opposition to the government is like explaining the effects of opium by reference to its dormitive qualities.

The real motive underlying the use of “Howard hater” as a term of attack was the recognition that he and his government never commanded enthusiastic support from most Australians, merely a judgement that they were better than the alternatives on offer. Once this changed with Labor’s (long overdue) choice of Kevin Rudd as leader, the government was doomed.

Tonight’s Four Corners suggests that much the same was true of Howard’s colleagues. While only Costello and a couple of his closest supporters came across as Howard haters, most of the rest showed a notable lack of enthusiasm, and willingness in retrospect, to blame Howard for the government’s defeat. Tony Abbott’s undiminished loyalty just enhanced the contrast with the rest of the crew.

In terms of policy, the most startling revelation was Joe Hockey’s claim that members of the Cabinet voted for WorkChoices, including the abolition of the “no disadvantage” test, and were then shocked (or pretended to be) that people were disadvantaged. This news ought surely to sink resistance to Labor’s reforms, and may indeed have been intended to achieve this purpose.

With the problems of indigenous Australia at the forefront of national attention, it’s time to look again at the Howard government’s Intervention policy, and try to assess what has worked or is likely to and what has not. Already the Rudd government has reinstated the permit system – whatever the merits of the system its abolition was an ideologically-motivated piece of mischief in a package that was supposed to be about protecting children. Another difficult issue is the extent to which individual and community benefits should be conditional on requirements that might be imposed by the government or negotiated with community leaders. One particular aspect of this is the policy of quarantining some portion of welfare benefits in a manner similar to the US policy of giving aid through food stamp. I’ve attached a piece by Bree Blakeman and Nanni Concu, who are currently living in an Aboriginal homeland in East Arnhem Land, which raises a number of problems with this policy. I found it very thought-provoking and I hope that it will help to inform the debate.
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The culture wars must really be over when I’m getting my ideas favorably cited by Janet Albrechtsen. Admittedly it’s prefaced by “even leftwing academics like John Quiggin …”, but her opening para follows my analysis almost exactly, and I agree with her on the point of principle.

Albrechtsen is quoting this Online Opinion piece on mandates, in which I argue that the idea that a government with a majority in the House of Representatives has a mandate obliging the Senate to pass legislation implementing its election policies is misconceived. Since both houses are elected, and since no party in recent decades has received a majority of first-preference votes for the Lower House, there’s no general reason why the views of a majority of Senators should be regarded as less legitimate than those of a majority in the Lower House.

Albrechtsen applies this argument to defend the decision of the Senate to delay, or maybe block altogether, the government’s legislation repealing WorkChoices. While she’s right in rejecting the mandate idea, there are still some good reasons why the Senate should not block this legislation.

The first relates to the lame-duck nature of the current Senate, half of which will be replaced in July with the senators we elected in November. If we had fixed terms for both houses, this kind of nonsense would be avoided, but as it is, I think there’s a case that the outgoing Senate would be wise to take some account of the results of the election, in which the Coalition lost its Senate majority in an election where WorkChoices was a key issue. It doesn’t make much sense to hold up transitional legislation preparing for changes that can be shown to have majority support in the new Senate.

The more relevant point though is political. You don’t need to count seats in the House of Representatives, or parse the text of Labor’s policy statement, to know that the Australian electorate rejected WorkChoices at the last election, and that they haven’t changed their minds since then. If the Coalition parties choose to ignore that fact, they’ll pay a steep political price, as they should, in future elections for both House and Senate. That’s how the mandate of the people is delivered in modern Australian democracy.