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In 1931, the All for Australia League and other 'citizens movements' mounted a major challenge to the established conservative parties. Traditional views of the League saw it as a reflection of economic group interests, whether of the business establishment or dissident capitalists such as manufactures. More recent scholarship has stressed middle-class concerns with 'sound finance' as the inspiration of the League. This paper instead situates the League in the historical context of centre party projects in New South Wales, and of progressivism, in particular industrial psychology. The economic crisis and the rightward shift of the nationalists enabled a group of political entrepreneurs to transform the League from a front group ]hr business into a populist movement. However, the shift of mainstream conservatism back to the political centre fatally undercut the League's support base. [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]

Background: The commercial determinants of health include a range of practices to promote business interests, often at the expense of public health. Corporate political practices, such as lobbying and campaign donations, are used to influence policy makers and foster a political and regulatory environment conducive to business interests. Despite recognition of their public health importance, thus far there are relatively few efforts to systematically monitor commercial political practices. Methods: A pilot study was conducted to explore the feasibility of systematically monitoring two political practices – lobbying and political contributions – for 'harmful industries' (alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food and tobacco industries) in Australia. Potential data sources were reviewed to compare data availability and detail. Two publicly available datasets were selected for the pilot: ministerial diaries for New South Wales and annual donor filings from the Australian Electoral Commission. Google Data Studio was used to analyse and visualise findings. Results: The pilot study resulted in the creation of several interactive charts and dashboards that supported analysis and interrogation of the data. These charts helped to easily convey the volume of lobbying and political donations, as well as changes over time. For example, we found that between July 2014 and December 2020, NSW ministers had 20,607 meetings, of which 634 meetings were with harmful industries. And between 1998 and 2020, a total of $576,519,472 disclosed donations were made to political parties and other entities, of which $35,823,937 were from harmful industries. Conclusions: Opportunities to develop a program to monitor commercial political practices face several challenges including access barriers arising from poor availability and detail of data, technical barriers arising from the format of data disclosures and coding challenges arising from the diverse nature of the commercial sector. Despite these challenges, our pilot study demonstrates the potential to implement a monitoring program and to expand its scope to other commercial determinants of health. [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]

Over the past three decades, factions have cemented their hold over the Australian Labor Party. This has largely been due to the entrenchment of the proportional representation of factions. One of the effects of the institutionalisation of factions has been the development of factional sub-groupings ('fractions'). This article analyses the phenomenon by looking at a case study of a single ALP faction — the Left in New South Wales. Since 1971, two major fractions have developed in the NSW Left, based on ideological disagreements, personality conflicts, generational differences and arguments over the role of the union movement in the ALP. This development parallels the intra-factional splits that have occurred in many other sections of the Labor Party. Yet the factional system in the 1980s and 1990s operated relatively effectively as a means of managing power. The question now is whether it can survive the challenge of new issues that cross-cut traditional ideological lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]