Search

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]

Incivility in parliaments is always prominently displayed in media reports, often with the implicit or explicit commentary that the situation is getting worse. This paper processes and analyses the records of verbal interactions in the Australian Parliament for over 100 years to provide a first approximation on the evolution of civility. It provides a framework for understanding the multidimensional nature of civility that examines both 'politeness' and 'argumentation', with the latter grounded in notions of public-mindedness. The analysis focuses on the interactions between parties of the orators and the party in power, the chamber of utterance, and the year. The results indicate that instances of impoliteness have increased since the 1970s but only modestly and remain highly infrequent. Minor parties, particularly those representing right-wing and Green politics are more likely to use dismissive or offensive language than the dominant centre-left and centre-right parties, although direct insults and swearwords are the particular remits of right-wing 'system-wrecker' parties. All these minor parties, nonetheless, also display higher levels of argumentation in their interventions. This combination of aggressive language and increased argumentation highlights the pressures on minor parties to convey their points in a forceful way, a challenge that is particularly pressing in two-party systems like the Australian one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]