Sam Mostyn

speaker

313 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 1 Aug

Sam Mostyn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Full Story · Governor general Sam Mostyn on the ‘growing catastrophe’ in our democracy · 1 Aug 2026 podcast

For a Governor-General to interfere, to use those reserve powers where the matter is not of...

such a crisis that there is no other action available, which I can't see happening.

The matter for me is to always say, at the ballot box, people have the choice to make a decision about who they want to represent them in our parliament, at all parliaments, but in my case, the federal parliament.

And it is not for an unelected

part of the system, the Governor-General, to start interfering and to bring anything other than my particular role to bear by suddenly intervening and thinking I have a way of solving what the Parliament must always solve.

Now, this is a really critical issue because many people look at 75 and say, gee, aren't we in a crisis again?

For everyone, it's a different form of crisis they might be experiencing or thinking, oh, the Governor-General should just do this.

And I get a lot of

anonymous, very direct feedback online telling me that I'm failing because I am not exercising those powers and getting rid of a government.

That assumes that I have any power to do that based on maybe having a political persuasion, which I do not, or having a view that there is something catastrophically wrong with the representative nature of our parliament and its ability to have a responsible government do its job, pass the appropriation bills.

And all of those things are part of modern Australian democracy now.

Our parliaments are stable.

We're seeing a change in the configuration, which is all part of, I think, the work that you look at as a commentator, where people are looking for representation, as it should be, because we are such a successful democracy and we have a system of compulsory voting and preferential voting that then deals with that and reflects the will of the people in the parliament.

And should anything ever be a problem, I think that's when prime ministers decide to go back to the people and go to an election.

Yeah.

And so I can't see a modern Governor-General exercising those powers.

And I think that's part of the civics education, to encourage people to think about the fact, should I start doing that?

Should any Governor-General in this position, when we're not elected, we're appointed, start doing that?

That's interfering, I think, in the political processes that the Parliament must sort out.

And all those mechanisms are there to do that.

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