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Social media is used by all aspects of society from citizens to businesses, but it also now used by political parties. Political parties use social media to engage with voters as a method of attract new voters or reinforcing the views of political parties' current supporters. An important consideration is the ethical conduct of political parties and politicians in how they use social media. It is now recognized that social media can also have negative aspects seen by the introduction of Fake News. These negative aspects of social media are often overlooked and have not been explored from a research perspective. This paper looks at the Australian 2019 General Election and discusses a major Fake News example that occurred during that election. The paper will also describe the different types of social media data was collected during the study and also present the analysis of the data collected as well discussing the research findings including the ethical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political representation of ethnic minorities in a liberal democratic system is a crucial step towards having the interests of ethnic minority groups heard. The under-representation of ethnic minorities in a political institution can exacerbate inequality between majority and minority populations and increase feelings of alienation among minority groups. As a country observing increasing ethnic diversity, Australia saw record-level ethnic minority candidates elected in the 2022 federal election. However, the shares of candidates and elected Members of Parliaments with ethnic minority backgrounds are still much lower than their relative shares in the population. In this regard, Australia has lagged behind other major settler countries. In this paper, we examine the political representation of ethnic minorities in Australia's federal election. Drawing on data from the 2022 federal election and 2021 population census, we find a positive association between ethnic minority concentration and ethnic representation. However, for the two major parties, ethnic minority candidates are less likely to be in safe seats, even when the seat observes high ethnic minority concentration. Findings suggest that ethnic voting is evident but it is perhaps too early to celebrate higher levels of ethnic representation in Australian politics as political parties act as gatekeepers in safe seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political processes are shaped by the gendered ways in which women and men are selected to run for political office. This paper examines the increase in women entering the parliamentary arena and employs a feminist historical institutionalism approach to understand how and why change in female representation occurs. We examine the interplay between formal rules and informal practices on candidate selection through the case of Queensland, Australia. Drawing on policy developments and analysis of election reports, we explore the difficulties in changing the gendered nature of political parties, the formal and informal processes, the pace of change and the political struggles and opportunities along the way. Factors supporting increased representation included leadership, sanctions, placement mandates, as well as vacancies and a 'glass cliff' political environment. Support for formal rules and quotas – despite resistance at the informal level – has gradually improved opportunities for women in one political party in this jurisdiction and achieved very positive outcomes. In contrast, the other major party has opposed quotas relying instead on informal practices and rules, which result in less positive outcomes for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The 2011 NSW election produced the largest two-party swing in recent Australian election history, ending 16 years of Labor government. It raises the prospect of the end of Labor's dominance of NSW politics. This paper focuses on the consequences of ALP instability for the Party's electoral opportunities and strategy in the lead-up to its 2011 defeat. The authors single out the mass departure of Labor MPs prior to the election and the loss of Greens preferences as interesting problems for empirical analysis. They explore both loss of incumbency and preference effects in a seat-level (n = 93) regression model and comment on the significance of the findings for NSW Labor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Calls for increased regulation are sometimes made in response to what is dubbed an ‘arms race’ in elections – a cost explosion in electoral expenditure driven by the competitive dynamics of elections. In 2010, New South Wales (NSW) adopted the first comprehensive caps on electoral expenditure in Australia on this basis. This paper examines the evidence for a cost explosion over the course of three NSW elections (1999–2007). It finds a significant but unevenly distributed increase in electoral expenditure – over 3 per cent per annum over and above inflation and the growth in voter population. In terms of explaining this spending increase, it finds a close relationship between electoral expenditure and the availability of campaign funds but a less clear one between such expenditure and the ‘winnability’ of the elections. 由于选举中发生的“军备竞赛”——选举的你追我赶造成选举成本的暴增——人们呼吁加强管制。2010年，新南威尔士对选举开销出台了封顶的详细规定，在澳大利亚尚属首次。本文考察了新南威尔士三个选举过程（1999—2007）中成本激增的情况。作者发现选举开销重要但分布不规则的增长——高于通货膨胀及选民增长百分之三。如何解释选举开销的增长呢？作者发现选举开销与选举资金获得的难易程度关系密切，而与选举获胜机会的大小的关系模糊。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite a steady erosion of the major parties' share of the vote in Australia, minor parties have been unable to attract more than 15 per cent of the vote. Employing a variation of Katz and Mair's cartel party thesis, this paper argues that the major parties have an advantage in defining and limiting power sharing arrangements and setting and reacting to the policy agenda. They can act together to deny a third-party oxygen, or can deflect criticism of controversial policies onto the third party. A critical appraisal of seven cases of government formation involving the Australian Greens and Australian Democrats, along with two case studies of legislative negotiation shows that the electoral backlash is often borne by the minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper takes issue with the widespread assumption of constancy in the meaning and measurement of party identification over time and space. It holds that the partisan dealignment common to established democracies has eroded the validity of the Michigan scale's assumption that voters can identify with only one party, arguing instead that dealignment can encourage secondary attachments to other parties. To persist with an exclusivist conceptualization of party identification under these conditions is shown to risk the misspecification of voting models since the effects of these secondary attachments can be misleadingly attributed to short-term influences, like leaders, associated with those parties. The dynamics of the voting decision can thereby be seriously distorted. The force of this argument is demonstrated through a comparison of general election outcomes in relatively aligned Australia and relatively dealigned Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the patterns of television news coverage of the political parties, their leaders and the issues they raised during the 2001 Australian federal election campaign. By focusing on some issues, parties and leaders, television has long been argued to constrain voters' evaluations. We find that television news coverage in the 2001 Australian election campaign focused primarily on international issues, especially terrorism and asylum seekers, and on the two major parties - virtually to the exclusion of coverage of the minor parties and their leaders. Within the major party 'two-horse race', television gave substantially more coverage to the leaders than to the parties themselves, thereby sustaining what some have called a 'presidential'-style political contest. John Howard emerged as the winner in the leaders' stakes, garnering more coverage than Labor's Kim Beazley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 Australian federal election established the Australian Greens (Greens) as the third largest political force in the country behind the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party in electoral terms. Despite the Greens’ electoral achievements, the party has been largely dismissed as a radical single-issue political party. This paper will argue that while radicalism is an institutionally entrenched feature of the Greens in both organisational and programmatic terms, there are also strongly pragmatic aspects to the party's modus operandi. It suggests that the Greens are astute political operators who use radicalism in a highly pragmatic way to achieve their political objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses GIS and spatial modelling to relate voting outcomes at the 2001 federal election for polling booths across Australia with the socio-economic characteristics of polling booth catchment areas. The data and analysis used are more detailed and comprehensive than previous studies. It is conducted at a fine level of spatial disaggregation across the whole nation to examine voting outcomes for both major and minor political parties. Because the aim of the paper is to distinguish voting outcomes between political parties rather than to predict voting outcomes for particular political parties, a discriminant analysis is used rather than regression analysis. The statistical discriminant analysis identifies two main socio-economic dimensions that are able to predict polling booth outcomes with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That analysis shows how, at the 2001 federal election, the middle ground, in terms of socio-economic characteristics, was being claimed by the Liberal Party, Country Liberal Party, The Greens, and, to a lesser extent, by the Australian Labor Party. However, the Australian Democrats, National Party and One Nation had more distinctive constituencies, with the National Party and One Nation Party competing for areas with similar socio-economic characteristics. Using GIS mapping tools, examples of actual and predicted polling booth voting outcomes are given, along with selected socio-economic characteristics of booth catchments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of lower-house seats at Australian State and federal elections rely on a distribution of preferences from Independent and small-party candidates before seats can be awarded. Actors have attempted to gain political capital from this situation by claiming that the preferences of particular small parties have affected election outcomes. This paper uses the events of the Western Australian State election held in 2001 to explore the validity of such claims. More specifically, it investigates the widely propagated contention that the One Nation Party' s anti-sitting-member preference strategy was a key determinant of the Coalition's electoral defeat. It concludes that the increased number of candidates contesting elections makes it difficult to assess whether the second and subsequent preferences of any particular small party were critical to the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of New Politics issues, there has been considerable debate about their potential for creating party system realignment. However, this debate has largely ignored the role of political elites in responding to changes in mass electorates. In this paper, we develop a model of realignment based on values and ideology which takes party elites into account. The model is tested using data that are based on national voter and parliamentary candidate surveys collected in Australia during the 1990 federal election. A realignment hypothesis predicts that the contemporary Australian party system is being replaced by a system reflecting New Politics/Old Politics conflict. An adaptation hypothesis predicts that the existing parties are adapting to New Politics concerns. The results show more support for the adaptation hypothesis and although a potential for realignment exists, postmaterial values and environmental ideologies have as yet insufficiently penetrated both elites and masses to bring this about. The results have major implications for the development of party alignments in other advanced societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the amount and sources of electoral bias at federal elections in Australia from 1980 to 1993. The main conclusion reached is that the changes to electoral legislation introduced between the 1983 and 1984 elections did not, as has previously been widely accepted, merely act to neutralise the then-existing bias towards the Liberal and National coalition parties but actually resulted in a bias towards the Australian Labor Party. Most of the bias arose from the differential geographic concentration of voters, to which a contributing influence was a 'size effect' caused by increasing the number of members of parliament. However, the introduction of a boundary redistribution criterion which requires equality in electorate enrolments over time (rather than immediately) has also introduced an inbuilt bias arising from differential enrolment levels into the post-1983 electoral system. This bias has favoured the ALP at every one of the four elections held under the new system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article replies to Campbell Sharman's comments on the authors' paper titled "Uniformity in Australian Electoral Patterns: The 1990 Federal Election in Perspective," which was published in volume six, issue 127 of the "Australian Journal of Political Science." The authors believes that the question of variability and uniformity is about more than just patterns at any one election and at any particular election, a state may behave differently from others due to local factors or to the differential impact of a national issue.

The Liberal National Party ('LNP') won 78 out of a possible 89 seats in Queensland's 2012 state election. Facing a budget blowout, the new Government soon used its control of the state's unicameral parliament to implement a contentious public sector reform agenda. The LNP's amendments to Queensland's employment laws struck at the very heart of many of the accepted 'ground rules' of industrial relations. Perhaps most significantly, the Government used its parliamentary majority to remove job security commitments given to public servants, paving the way for the loss of thousands of jobs. This paper sets out the key industrial relations reforms adopted by the LNP. The authors discuss the Government's rationale for the changes, and the reaction from Queensland's trade union movement. The article concludes with some general observations about the changes adopted during the LNP's term of Government; a period which will undoubtedly be remembered as a controversial part of Queensland's industrial relations history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the use of new media by Australian political parties and individual candidates in the 2013 federal election. It updates research undertaken over the past decade on institutional responses to new technological affordances in electoral campaigning. Using content analysis, interview and third-party data, the paper demonstrates that the major political parties in Australia have increased their use of new media in their overall communications mix, with a heightened focus on advertising in social media, the integration of various online channels, and through creative fundraising strategies. It is argued that the major parties considerably professionalised their management of new media for the 2013 campaign, and the lessons from this election will endure into future electoral contests. The data from the content analysis suggests that the online visibility of minor parties and individual candidates appears to be declining, outside of gaffs, and the novelty reporting of 'quirky' candidates. The exception to this remains the Australian Greens, because of their natural affinity with voters most likely to be heavy users of new media. The increasing sophistication of data-driven, targeted advertising further reinforces the capacity of the two major Australian parties to dominate the new media environment due to their disproportionate access to electoral resources. This appears to provide further, but not unambiguous, evidence of the 'normalisation hypothesis' of institutional new media adoption in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While internationally, pre-recorded telephone messages, often referred to as robo-calls, have been used for some time, their use during Australian election campaigns goes back less than a decade. This article tracks the emergence of robo-calls and a complementary technology known as telephone 'town-halling' in Australia. It explores the way Australian parties are using telephonic technology as part of their election campaigns and compares this use to the experience in the United States and Canada. While these countries have seen a push for increased robo-call and telephonic regulation as a result of a number of controversies, this article argues that any regulatory changes in Australia should reflect the different way the technology is being used here. In particular, the evidence shows that it is the telephone 'town-hall' technology which is set to grow most significantly and regulatory changes need to reflect the distinction between the two forms of telephonic political campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on federal elections for both the Upper and Lower Houses in Australia and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), we explore whether the contestability/concentration varies across elections. Our results show significant movements in contestability over time. The results also imply a smaller degree of concentration than we would expect to find in a two-party system. To the extent that the Upper House (Senate) - until the 2004 election - is not controlled by the executive, this implies a greater level of political competition, and choice for voters, than that associated with two-party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the influence of political personalities on voting in the context of the 1999 Australian Constitutional referendum. With the major political parties taking no formal stance on the referendum question, Australians were placed in the intriguing position of having to respond to campaign messages delivered by two people, external to mainstream politics and who had not been elected through any form of popular vote. Research has shown that major party leaders have consistently influenced voter attitudes on the question of whether Australia should become a republic throughout the 1990s. The ratings of both leaders of the major Australian political parties were considerably more positive than the ratings of the two referendum campaign leaders. By combining the regression coefficients with the relative popularity of the campaign leaders, one can make some hypothetical calculations as to their role in the defeat of the referendum proposal. The article concludes that the personal qualities of a political leader inevitably make a difference to the political choices one makes.

The article focuses on several issues concerning national politics in Australia. According to the authors, the year 1999 was filled with debates on taxation reforms, the move for Australia to become a republic, and its dealings with the future of East Timor. The country is dominated by the Liberal party headed by Prime Minister John Howard who strongly voted no to retain the country's status under the queen of Great Britain, while most Australians were in favor of a republic. Furthermore, the article also includes a list of cabinet members of Howard including the number and percentage of parliamentary seats.

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Speculation about the emergence of conditions for a potential realignment of the political system away from the established parties has led to a growing interest in the current status and prospects of minor political parties and independent candidates. In this paper we explore the social and attitudinal bases of support for minor parties and independents in recent federal elections, focusing in particular on the Australian Democrats and the Greens. In line with previous research, we find that the social profiles of these political groups are not especially distinctive, although higher education and religious secularism emerge as significant predictors of the vote for both Democrats and Greens. The strongest predictors, however, are partisanship and attitudes towards political leaders and, not unexpectedly, pro-environmentalist attitudes for the Greens. In the light of our analysis we discuss the future prospects of minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "Uniformity in Australian Electoral Patterns: The 1990 Federal Election in Perspective," by Clive Bean and David Butler, which was published in volume six, issue 127 of the "Australian Journal of Political Science." The author believes that the patterns of partisan competition in Australia need to be dealt with by appropriate methodologies and they deserve better than the approach used by Bean and Butler which may have had a role in the past, but is not appropriate today.

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Conventional wisdom holds that asset owners favor parties on the center-right. This assumption, however, ignores the possibility that party positions may shift over time and across contexts. The electoral payoff from ownership thus depends on how the policies of the major parties treat those assets. In this article, we argue that the prediction that asset holders support right-of-center parties rests on the position-taking strategies of parties. We test this expectation with evidence from six elections in Australia and with a dataset of post-election surveys in 25 advanced democracies. Utilizing different measures for key concepts, both analyses support our claims. Study findings identify the supply side of electoral competition as an important condition for patrimonial economic voting and, more generally, confirm the role of parties in mobilizing voters around issues on which they have a competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a 'consumer' lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing 'brands' being left behind by disillusioned voters. An initial sample of 200 voters were asked what words or phrases came to mind when they thought of each of four Australian federal political parties. The strength of associations for each party, elicited from this sample, was then validated on a broader sample of 1015 voters, in addition to whether the association was considered positive, neutral or negative. Data revealed distinct brand associations for each party and the extent of penetration and brand equity across subgroups of voters. We find that Australian mass parties are caught in a downward spiral of negative brand associations and low brand penetration, leading to voter dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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.

This article assesses religion and voting in Australia since 1987 and examines how Tony Abbott's status as Liberal leader corresponded with changes in leader evaluations and voting, and with significant changes in Australian parties and the electorate. Religious attendance became associated more strongly with Liberal voting in 2010. Catholics voted Liberal significantly more from 2010, in significantly higher numbers they viewed the Liberal leader more positively in 2013, and they viewed the Labor leader significantly less so. Evaluations of Abbott were structured by attitudes about abortion and same-sex marriage, whereas evaluations of Kevin Rudd were not. The article discusses how these results are not unique to Australia, but fit patterns observed with centre-right parties in other western democracies. 本文考察了1987年以来的宗教和投票，并研究了托尼·阿伯特作为自由党党首如何应对在党首评价及投票方面的变化，以及澳大利亚政党和选举上的重大变化。宗教的参与和2010年的自由党投票关系密切。而自2010年起，天主教徒明显地更多投自由党的票；2013年更多天主教徒对自由党领导人做正面评价；他们对工党领导人评价就要低得多。对阿伯特的评价主要取决于堕胎和同性结婚问题，而对陆克文的评价则不是这样。本文讨论了为什么这样的结果并不是澳大利亚的独特现象，其他中右翼当政的西方民主国家也是这样。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early studies of electoral behavior proposed that party identification could be negative as well as positive. Over time, though, the concept became mostly understood as a positive construct. The few studies that took negative identification into account tended to portray it as a marginal factor that went “hand-in-hand” with positive preferences. Recent scholarship in psychology reaffirms, however, that negative evaluations are not simply the bipolar opposite of positive ones. This article considers negative party identification from this standpoint, and evaluates its impact in recent national elections in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Our findings highlight the autonomous power of negative partisanship. They indicate as well that ideology has an influence on positive and negative partisan identification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The processes political parties use to select their candidates for public office constitute a crucial element of political recruitment in representative democracies and provide important insights into how power is distributed within party organisations. In this article, we develop a typology for understanding the diversity of preselection mechanisms in Australia's major parties that is based on degrees of influence between the central and local components of the party organisation. The typology in turn reflects preselection rules as public expressions of intra-party power sharing arrangements. We also identify the institutional, strategic and normative factors (including electoral systems, the accommodation of intra-party groups, candidate quality, efficiency and social norms) that influence the choices parties have to make when selecting and implementing a particular system. 政党用以选举候选人出任公职的过程构成了代议制民主国家政治遴选的一个关键因素，并提供了理解政党组织内权力分配的一个重要角度。本文根据中央和地方党组织之间影响的不同程度，提出了一种分类法以理解澳大利亚主要政党预选机制的多样性。这种分类法本身反映了作为表达政党内权力分享安排的预选规则。我们还找到了体制、战略以及规范性因素（包括选举制度、党内不同群体的相互适应、候选人品质、效率、社会规范等等），这些因素会影响政党选择和实施某种制度时的决策。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The internet has become important in political communication in Australia. Using Habermas's ideal types, it is argued that political blogs can be viewed as public spheres that might provide scope for the expansion of deliberative democratic discussion. This hypothesis is explored through analysis of the group political blog Pineapple Party Time. It is evident that the bloggers and those who commented on their posts were highly knowledgeable about and interested in politics. From an examination of these posts and the comments on them, Pineapple Party Time did act as a public sphere to some degree, and did provide for the deliberative discussion essential for a democracy, but it was largely restricted to Crikey readers. For a deliberative public sphere and democratic discussion to function to any extent, the public sphere must be open to all citizens, who need to have the access and knowledge to engage in deliberative discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new perspective on the typology of minor parties elected to parliament. In particular, the article analyses minor parties elected to the Australian Senate from 1949 to 2010, and accounts for a shift in the type of minor party winning parliamentary representation. It shows that minor parties elected from 1955 to 1983 were created as a result of major-party fragmentation and sought to use their position in the Senate to either frustrate the major parties or act as ‘watchdogs'. Minor parties elected since 1984, however, promoted a specific policy agenda with links to social movements. The article argues that the first minor parties to win Senate representation can be seen as ‘secessionist’ minor parties, while those elected since 1984 can be seen as ‘movement’ minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An article discussing the political preferences of Australian voters based on economic and postmaterialist values is presented. The author uses the example of the 2009 by-election for the Australian legislative seat of Higgins to examine an axis system created by scholars David Charnock and Peter Ellis, which measures the positions of Australian political parties, such as the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal/Nationals (Coalition,) by synthesizing data collected by the Australian Election Study (AES.) An analysis of the data, including voter turnout trends and ideological factors, is also included

Making his first speech to Liberal Party MPs after his victory in the October 2004 Australian federal election, Prime Minister John Howard said that he was 'a great believer in perpetual campaigning' and that the government campaign to win the next election had already begun. The concept of the permanent campaign is important to understanding modern political communication. While an increasing number of voters are claiming to be making up their mind who to vote for in the last week of the formal election campaign, they are influenced in their decision by political messages received well before the formal campaign period. The 2004 Australian federal election displayed many features of permanent campaigning; in particular the advantage permanent campaigning affords the government over the opposition. The Government Members' Secretariat is an example of such advantage. Modern campaign methods such as focus groups, qualitative polling, voter databases, and strategic use of Senate resources for House of Representatives races are used on a permanent basis to build a communications strategy. The resources of the state, including government advertising, postal and office entitlements of members of parliament, are used to research and communicate with the electorate. While many of these techniques have been under development while also being in use for some time, it is only recently that they have been successfully coordinated to the extent that we can now say that the permanent campaign has reached Australia. This article examines this process in the lead-up to the 2004 Australian federal election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of candidates’ and parties’ web use during elections have focused primarily on the contents of their websites and the reasons behind the adoption of the technology. Evaluations of the electoral impact of web campaigns on voters have been limited and inconclusive. This study uses data from the 2004 Australian Candidate and Election studies to investigate the factors determining candidates’ use of web campaigning and its effect on the vote. The findings show that enthusiasm for web campaigning is strangest among established party members. More significantly, we show that despite being linked with traditional campaigning techniques, web campaigning exerts an independent and significant impact on the level of electoral support that a candidate receives. We investigate how this effect may be taking place and conclude that web campaigning, at least under present electoral conditions, constitutes an important component of a winning election strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an overview of the political structure of and issues in Australia in 2004. Issues in national politics, including the performance of the political parties at the 2004 election; Free trade agreement reached between Australia and the U.S.; Political significance of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis within Australia.

Presents information on the victory of the Australian Greens in the Australian National Election on October 9, 2004. Challenges faced by the Greens before the elections; Increase in the Senate vote of the Greens; Reliance of the Greens on attracting the support of voters.

Modern political campaigning is becoming increasingly professionalised to the extent that in Australia today the major parties use electoral databases to assist with their campaigns. The electoral databases of the Coalition ( Feedback ) and the Australian Labor Party ( Electrac ) store information on the constituents of each House of Representatives seat. The information gathered in the databases, such as the policy preferences and party identification of individual voters, are used by candidates for House seats to tailor correspondence to swinging voters, and to identify potential party supporters. Party organisations aggregate the information in the databases and use it to conduct polls and focus groups of swinging voters, and to tailor policy development and campaign strategies. Electoral databases have the potential to improve the level of communication between elected representatives and their constituents. There are, however, a number of ethical problems associated with their use. While the usefulness of the databases to the major political parties is undeniable, their use underlines the trend in modern campaigning towards targeting swinging voters at the expense of the majority of the electorate. Considerable public resources are devoted to the smooth operation of the databases. They would be much less effective were political parties not exempted from the Privacy Act. The use of personal information collected by members of parliament by political parties should be more closely regulated. Despite the wishes of the major political parties to keep their operation a secret, the advantages and disadvantages of the use of electoral databases should be more widely debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representative democracy presumes competitive elections at which voters have a choice of candidates. This is consistent with the current nature of electoral campaigning, which is system-wide and embraces every opportunity for partisan competition. From this perspective, uncontested seats in parliamentary systems are associated with earlier stages of representative government before modern parties emerged. Yet a survey of Australian state and federal general elections since 1890 shows that uncontested seats persisted in most systems well after the establishment of the current party system and, in two states, until the 1980s. In examining various explanations for the existence of uncontested seats in parliamentary systems, the article finds that the nature of the electoral system, the characteristics of the party system and party organization are key factors. Given a single-member district electoral system, the pattern of uncontested seats can be used as an indicator of the evolution of the party system and the structure of partisan competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is now well established that Australian party leaders at the national level influence political choice in federal elections, little systematic study has been undertaken of the equivalent role that State Premiers and Opposition Leaders might play. In the 2001 Australian Election Study (n = 2010), questions were asked of a national probability sample of voters about respondent feelings towards their State Premier and State Opposition Leader, in addition to equivalent questions about Prime Minister John Howard, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley and other major political figures in federal politics. The data generated by this survey thus provide an opportunity to investigate the impact that contemporary State political leaders have on electoral choice. The analysis produces mixed results, but the findings show that State leaders generally do have an impact on voting behavior in State elections, although in some cases this influence is eliminated when account is taken of voter attitudes towards the federal leaders. The analysis also affords an opportunity to test the extent of crossover between State and federal politics, in terms of how much State leaders influence federal voting and vice versa. While the results are somewhat uneven, they do indicate that some State leaders influence federal voting and that the federal leaders do influence voting in some States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on prime ministers who reached office by succeeding another prime minister from the same party rather than by .winning an election in their own right. Successors are found to be as numerous as those who won office through a general election. The odds are currently against successors. Successors who have the highest rate of success are those who waited between one and 12 months before calling an election. Defeated successors are likely to quit as party leaders afterwards. The findings are similar among jurisdictions, except for the Australian states, where successors have rarely been successful in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political issues in Australia in 1994. It provides information on the country's cabinet system, which was governed by Paul Keating II, as well as list of cabinet members. It states that since 1942, the country has not conducted a federal and general elections except in the Northern Territory (NT). It cites that NT is comprised of 4,000 electors and governed by the Country Liberal Party (CLP). In addition, the country has carried out 12 state by-elections within the period brought by the murder and resignations of its political leaders. On May 23, Alexander Downer has replaced John Hewson as the leader of the Liberty Party. Issues on unemployment, budget deficit, airport noise and forestry in the country are discussed.

The 1949 federal election in Australia is widely regarded as one of Australia's most significant elections. This election ended eight years of ALP government and began a long period of unbroken rule by Liberal-Country Party governments. Surprisingly, very little has been written about the 1949 election although various authors have addressed themselves to the question of why the Chifley government lost in December 1949. The orthodox interpretation is that Chifley's defeat in 1949 was to do with the issues of `bank nationalisation' and `communism'. In this article, I offer a reinterpretation of the connection between political issues and voting behaviour in the 1949 election. Following the theory of Fiorina that voters tend to make their decision on the basis of how a party fares in handling problems in the past, I argue that the Australian electorate in 1949 responded negatively to Chifley's handling of the general economy and his policies on two crises in 1949-the national coal strike and the dollar crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]