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The article provides an overview of political developments in Australia from January to June 2023. It discusses the Labor government's focus on trade union concerns and its pursuit of specific ideological agendas, such as increasing wages and job creation. The government faced challenges related to inflation and tighter monetary policy. Notable events mentioned include the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Indigenous Voice referendum. The article also highlights troubles and scandals, including a poorly conceived discussion paper on superannuation, a scandal involving a former senator, and a consultancy firm leaking confidential information. Additionally, it provides updates on various political figures and mentions the announcement of the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines and the release of the budget for 2023-24. [Extracted from the article]

The Greens challenge the Australian two-party system by promoting an alternative political agenda and by facilitating democratic processes. Their recent successes in federal and state elections suggest that the party itself deserves closer scrutiny. This paper shows how the Greens are organisationally different from other parties currently active in Australian politics due to both their internal processes and their parliamentary practices. Recent theories of parties argue that party organisation has changed significantly for major parties, adopting an electoral-professional or cartel model that centralises power and decision-making in party representatives within parliaments. This paper shows how a smaller party uses identity formation processes to establish a distinctive organisational style. We examine the Greens' party organisation by analysing the interdependent relationships between the party membership, the state and national offices, and Green MPs. The paper is based on original research including in-depth interviews undertaken with state and federal Greens members of parliaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's main parties have experienced rapid deterioration in levels of membership but most have been reluctant to follow the lead of many of their counterparts in Western Europe and embrace more radical, inclusive pre-selection formats to arrest declining numbers. This paper offers a partial explanation of why the Liberal and Labor parties have been disinclined to look to reforming candidate selection as a strategy to combat their shrinking rank-and-file membership. It argues that compulsory voting in conjunction with high levels of party identification has reduced the imperative for Australia's major parties to resort to candidate selection reform as a device to stabilise their voter base. This study underscores the important role of the institutional setting in affecting the incentives for parties to use pre-selection reform to combat a shrinking membership base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1996 election campaign, the Liberal-National Party Coalition pledged that if elected it would partly privatise Telstra. The pledge was a central part of its campaign pitch. This paper argues that the proposal came at a time when the tide of public opinion had moved against privatisation; it shows how the Opposition used poll data both to present its own proposal in the most favourable light and to portray the difference between its position and that of Labor Government's as minimal; and, using the surveys commissioned by both sides, it evaluates the success of this strategy. More generally, it suggests that in a "post-ideological" age, party ideology remains important. And it illustrates how polls can be used by parties not just to establish what the majority thinks but to galvanise support, neutralise opposition and convert those who harbour doubts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political situation in Australia during the first half of 2020. Topics covered include the government's response to the bushfire crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the creation of a national cabinet that met frequently to coordinate policy options. Also discussed is the resignation of Richard Di Natale as leader of the Greens party.

The "electoral mandate" serves a useful function as a political weapon in competitive party democracies, notwithstanding the ambiguities, multi‐layered complexities and uncertainty of many of the issues which the concept involves. The diverse uses of "mandate" indicate competing ideas in Australian politics about the responsibilities of parties to pursue commitments made during campaigns and the extent of rights to govern. This article portrays mandate not as a "theory" or "doctrine", but as a rhetorical device that needs to be examined in the context of "contested word use" in political speech. The renewed interest in the study of rhetoric reflects the usefulness of examining multiple and layered meanings that exist under what ostensibly may appear as "empty rhetoric", and to understand how rhetoric is used to persuade an audience of the validity of a particular action or viewpoint. While mandate often comes under attack as "meaningless", it is a useful persuasive tool employed by politicians to consolidate their legitimacy and justify their rights to implement a political agenda and, as such, it contributes to public discourses relating to the nature of political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a 'two-party preferred' vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral 'swing' and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins - the maternity as well as the paternity - of the 'two-party preferred'. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide-ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept - technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed 'uniform swing'- implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article examines recent Australian political speech to discover rhetorical standards for deliberation. Unlike philosophical standards for public reason - such as those developed by Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls - rhetorical standards are not anchored in reason, but in the institutional and linguistic constraints of partisan political speech. Accordingly, rhetorical standards are unwritten, malleable, and permissive. Two standards are apparent. The first is that political parties should not be influenced by factions or vested interests, but must serve the national interest, even as the meaning of that idea is acknowledged to be open to divergent interpretations. The second standard relates to individual politicians, and it prohibits officeholders from acting on the basis of religious beliefs. Both standards can be invoked to attack the reasoning and actions of rival politicians and parties, but both standards also offer generous resources for legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its formation in 1913, the Western Australian branch of the National Party has faced many challenges to its survival. Electoral reform removing rural malapportionment in 2005 prompted changes in strategic direction, including abandoning coalition with the Liberal Party and creating a discrete image, branding and policy approach. Holding the balance of power after the 2008 election, the party adopted a post-election bargaining strategy to secure ministries and funding for its 'Royalties for Regions' policy. This 'WA approach' is distinctive from amalgamation and coalition arrangements embraced elsewhere in Australia. This article updates progress of the strategy following state and federal elections in 2013 and finds that it has been a success measured by increased votes, seats and policy influence and expansion into regional Western Australia to displace Labor. However, its applicability to other branches of the National Party is likely to be limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Australian politics during the early 2010s, including elections held in Australian states and the country's fiscal policies. An overview of the budgets of Australian states, including the role that the governing coalition between the Australian Liberal Party and National Party in Victoria, is provided.

Large-scale issue-advertising by third parties appears to be increasing in Australia. This article analyses recent official data on political expenditure, and situates such campaigning in historical perspective with case studies of the bank nationalisation, Medibank, WorkChoices and mining tax campaigns. The success of the latter two campaigns illustrates the potential for well-resourced sectors to employ what has traditionally been seen as an 'outsider' tactic. The various drivers of the phenomenon are discussed, including evolving trends in political engagement and the media, and fluctuations in perceptions of governmental strength or weakness. The most distinctly Australian aspect of the phenomenon is the tendency in recent decades for governments and third parties to engage in a 'call-and-response' cycle of issue-advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1932 the Lyons UAP government suspended the operations of the Commonwealth parliament's public accounts committee, allegedly as an economy measure. The role of public accounts committees is, in principle, that of a non-partisan reviewer of the public finances, but in this case the committee had diverged from its charter and become involved in politics and policy. Twenty years later, the Menzies government resurrected the committee. A crucial figure in its re-establishment was F.A. Bland, variously a professor of public administration, member for Warringah in the House of Representatives, and a significant public intellectual from the 1920s to the 1960s. Today Bland is almost forgotten but the role the re-established committee played in its early days was largely a reflection of his interests and commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of federalism on the organizational arrangements adopted by Australia's parties endures. This study examines the organizational structure of the State and Territory divisions of the Australian Greens through an analysis of their local party constitutions. It shows that there are important areas of difference in the organizations of state and territory Greens, despite their shared ideological commitment to inclusive internal party structures. These variations are a function of institutional and political factors, especially those induced by the Australian federal system. It is argued that differences in the organizational formats of state and territory party divisions reflect the historical circumstances in which they emerged and variations in the institutional (regional) setting in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How significant was the role of the Liberal party in dismantling the White Australia Policy? Contrary to recent politicised claims and counter-claims, the answer is not a simple one. The party began well, in the wake of Labor's clumsiness on immigration in the 1940s, but courageous exceptions to the rule during the 1950s were also undermined by enduring timidity. Pressure from concerned opinion, both inside and outside Australia, was making itself felt by the early 1960s, but it took Robert Menzies' retirement and concerted efforts by Peter Hey don, Hubert Opperman and the new Prime Minister Harold Holt to amend policy to provide a more significant number of non-Europeans admission to Australia. The ideal of racial homogeneity died slowly for some, however, and it was left to the Whitlam Labor Government to sweep away what remained of the White Australia Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul D. Williams, Commonwealth of Australia Sean Scalmer, New South Wales Nick Economou, Victoria John Wanna, Queensland David Black and Harry C. J. Phillips, Western Australia Andrew O'Neil, South Australia Richard Herr, Tasmania David Carment, Northern Territory Gwyneth Singleton, Australian Capital Territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three most substantial decisions to reduce Australia’s trade barriers — in 1973, 1988 and 1991 — were made by Labor Governments. Labor’s policy shift preceded the conversion of social democratic parties in other countries to trade liberalisation. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to consider trade policy as being shaped by more than interest groups and political institutions. Drawing on interviews with the main political figures, including Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, this article explores why the intellectual arguments for free trade had such a powerful impact on Labor’s leadership, and how those leaders managed to implement major tariff cuts, while largely maintaining party unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses several political and social issues in Australia from January to June 2001. Economic challenges faced by the country; Budget and public expenditures of the country; Condition of political parties; Appointments and retirements of politicians and public officers.

Focuses on issues related to politics in South Australia from January to June 1998. Proposed sale of the state-owned Electricity Trust of South Australia; Issue on the budget forecasts for the period of 2001-2002; Information on the functionalism in the South Australian Liberal Party and factional disputation on the Australian Labor Party.