The Coalition has “no mandate” for its 2016 election platform and would need to rewrite the budget if it governs in a hung parliament, a key lower house independent has said.
MP for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, made the comments on Radio National on Monday, demonstrating the difficulty the Coalition would have delivering on election promises if it governs in a hung parliament.
Wilkie and fellow independent Cathy McGowan reiterated they would not make a deal with either major party, but rather consider each piece of parliamentary business on its merits.
The Coalition and Labor have both begun courting the independents to prepare to form government, despite warnings from Malcolm Turnbull before the election that a parliament controlled by independents would be a “chaotic disaster”.
Asked what factors they would consider when deciding whether to back Turnbull or Bill Shorten as prime minister, Wilkie said it would depend on a number of factors including who won the most votes and most seats.
“More importantly who is fit to govern? Who is best able to deliver stable, ethical and effective government?”
“If by chance it ends up being Malcolm Turnbull who is given another opportunity to govern, [the Coalition] for a start would have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite a whole lot of their policy positions, and rewrite their budget.
“Because this election was as much a referendum on their proposed budget and it’s been rejected – I don’t think Malcolm Turnbull now has a mandate to implement what he took to the election.”
But Wilkie added that Labor would also need to change some elements of its platform.
He rejected the idea that a hung parliament would necessarily be unstable.
“Some people say that that would be unstable … but stability is born of consistency. Once I have formed a view, so long as circumstances don’t change and I’m consistent in my view, wherever we end up, hopefully, would be very stable.”
“Neither Labor nor Liberal have a god-given right to rule, they do it by virtue of the support they have in the community.”
McGowan criticised what she said were “personal attacks” by the Liberal party against her in the contest for Indi.
McGowan said her community overwhelmingly wanted more consideration of values, trust and respect in Australian politics.
She said she had also detected “enormous disappointment that large percentages of my community … with the way the government has been working”.
“They want me to work with government to bring in really good legislation. The problem with making a deal at the beginning … is that you take away your ability to actually make a decision on legislation at the time depending on the circumstances.”
Radio National host Fran Kelly asked the cabinet secretary, Arthur Sinodinos, how the election result could be seen as anything other than rejection of the government’s economic plan including $50bn of company tax cuts and superannuation changes.
Sinodinos replied there were “a number of issues playing on people’s minds”. “The challenge now is to reconcile all this,” he said.
“The reason we had a jobs and growth plan, and a plan for a company tax cut … was to provide a growth element to the economy.”
Sinodinos said that it was clear from the result that, in addition to the economy, voters were concerned about health. He accused Labor of finding a “cynical” way to exploit voters concern, through what he called its Medicare scare campaign.
Sinodinos said all sides had to work with the parliament the Australian people had delivered. “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, what we need to do is calmly sit down, work through the issues … we have to respect all the people that have been elected to the Senate and House of Representatives.”
“That’s what Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister can do – he has the temperament for it.”
