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This article uses a case study from Queensland to demonstrate the court politics approach's potential to reinvigorate executive studies. Court politics focuses on webs of interdependence within the core executive. It examines the beliefs and practices of elite actors and their fluid and contingent relationships. This article examines the patterns of executive politics that prevailed under Premier Anna Bligh. It seeks to answer three key questions. First, why is court politics a useful approach to studying the Australian core executive? Second, what is the nature and extent of court politics in Australian state governments? Finally, recognising that local traditions shape the beliefs and practices of political elites, how does the court politics approach need to be modified for application in Australia? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments since the 1980s have reshaped the public sector by selling public businesses and other assets, and by introducing competition in the supply of taxpayer-funded services. Explanations for these new directions have focused on political ideologies about the proper role of government, and economic arguments about business efficiency, while noting an international trend towards diffusion of these policy ideas. However, the methods for achieving significant policy shifts have often been overlooked. This study examines the case of Queensland, highlighting a wider range of reform factors, including bureaucratic advice and commission of audit recommendations. 1980年代以来各国政府通过出售公共产业和其他资产，通过在纳税人出资的服务业引入竞争而改造了公共部门。对这类新方向的解释都集中在政府职能以及企业效率的政治意识形态一面，以及造成这类政策思想扩散的国际潮流。不过，他们都忽视了造成如此重大政策转变的方法。本文考察了昆士兰的案例，讨论了更广泛的改革因素，包括官僚咨询以及审计委员建议等等。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents two arguments. The first relates to the relevance of citizen participation vis-à-vis the design and implementation of public policy. More specifically, the article empirically demonstrates how a model of community decentralisation can have a number of practical benefits for crisis-management policy. The second argument relates to a question that has come to characterise studies of citizen participation in public policy. Why is it that there is so much rhetoric in support of participation but so little action in terms of the day-to-day realities of policy implementation? We place this question in a crisis-management context so that we might ask: why is it that crisis-management systems built around the principles of community resilience continue to fail on these very grounds? We find our answer to this question in state-centric governance settings which devolve authority, but do not relinquish it. 本文提出两个观点。第一个观点涉及公民参与对于公共政策设计和实施的意义。具体地说，本文用实证的方法说明社区分权模式如何对危机管理政策产生一系列实际效益。第二个观点涉及公民参与公共政策的问题：为什么对公民参与口头上不吝支持，而日常政策的实施上却不见动静？这个问题可以放在危机管理的语境中重新提问：为什么围绕着社区弹性原则的危机管理体系仍以这样的理由失效？我们的答案是：以政府为中心的治理环境虽然转移但并未放弃权威。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary environmental governance arrangements (VEGAs) are designed to minimise negative outcomes through the use of collectively agreed arrangements. They have attracted a large literature, but issues remain unresolved, especially regarding their effectiveness. This article takes up a small part of this challenge of mapping the role of VEGAs in larger systems of environmental governance by examining the development and implementation of a range of VEGAs in the Australian building sector, here defined as the construction and use of buildings. 人们设计了自愿环境治理计划，意在通过集体认同的安排尽量减少消极结果。它吸引了大量文献的关注，但问题依旧是问题，特别在效率方面。本文试图回答其中一小部分问题，通过考察其在澳大利亚建筑部门（这里定义为建筑和建筑物的使用），看看自愿环境治理计划在更大的环境治理中究竟扮演什么样的角色。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing local community dissatisfaction in some newly amalgamated local government areas resulting from the 2007 Queensland forced amalgamation program has raised the prospect of de-merger in that state. One catalyst has been the Opposition's commitment to de-amalgamation should it acquire government. Apart from some descriptive discussion of actual de-amalgamation episodes, almost no prescriptive analysis exists on the optimal form any de-merger process may take. Using two documented cases of de-amalgamation in metropolitan and regional settings, this exploratory paper seeks to address this gap in the literature on local government by presenting a ‘stylised’ approach to de-amalgamation designed for Australian local government conditions built around five generic principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the events before and during the 2009 Queensland election which saw the Bligh Labor Government returned far more easily than commentators and opinion polls had indicated. This election remains especially noteworthy for its groundbreaking firsts, including the first election of a woman state premier, and the first election for Queensland's single, merged Liberal-National Party. The article concludes that Anna Bligh's then-popular leadership, Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg's alleged poor grasp of economic realities, and fears of job losses during the global financial crisis were the prime motivators of swinging electors' vote choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Torres Strait has 18 local governments, elections for which were held in March of both 2000 and 2004 in conjunction with other local government elections in Queensland. Elections were also held at these times for additional positions on two regional representative bodies for Torres Strait, the Island Co-ordinating Council and the Torres Strait Regional Authority. This paper examines all these elections, focusing on changes in political leadership and also a possible emerging change in political style in Torres Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]