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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify key similarities and differences between the approach to employing public-private partnerships (PPPs) for provision of infrastructure in the UK and Australia. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides a comparison of published studies together with semi-structured interviews with academics and state government representatives. Findings - There are a number of issues on which similar debates are taking place in both countries and which are summarised in the paper. Such issues include the use of the public sector comparators, the process of initiating PPPs, choice of discount rate and differences in costs of capital between conventional procurement and PPPs. There are, however, also significant differences in that there tends to be fewer social projects in Australia which has a strong emphasis on transportation projects. Importantly there is much more discretion about whether to use PPPs in Australia than in the UK. Research limitations/implications - There are considerably fewer schemes in Australia. Practical implications - The main practical implications are that both countries need to at least reconsider their policies in a number of areas, but particularly the issue of the higher cost of borrowing in PPPs. UK government should consider the advantages of the more flexible approach towards adopting PPPs shown in Australia. This should also mean that the evaluation process will be taken more seriously. Originality/value - There are a significant number of articles about PPPs in both the UK and Australia. The author has never come across a report of a comparative study. There are important insights that can be gained from such a comparative study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns three significant aspects of twentieth-century history in both Australia and Britain: trade unions, railways and war. During the world wars trade unionists in both countries worked under poor conditions, and sometimes endured the loss of hard-won privileges in order to further the war effort, and in the hope that governments and employers would acknowledge their sacrifices and redress their grievances once peace was restored. The paper discusses two instances, one in Western Australia and one in Britain, where these grievances were not addressed after the war, and examines the different outcomes. After comparing the circumstances in which the Australian Standard Garratt and the WD 'Austerity' heavy freight locomotives were produced, it explores the problems with these engines and the outcomes arising from union grievances. Finally, the paper posits that studying the outcomes of these industrial disputes on the railways, arising out of wartime conditions, furthers our understanding of the stresses of war on society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inheritance and continuity of party identification is usually traced to the predominant influence of parental political socialization. This paper applies multivanate analysis to Australian and British data to examine (1) the relative importance of parents' partisanship and social milieu on the respondent's own partisanship and (2) the influence of parents' partisanship on the preferences of the respondent in later life. The analysis shows that, in both countries, the social milieu of the family has little or no effect on the preferences of the children and it is the partisanship of the parents that is the dominant factor. In addition, we show that the influence of parents' partisanship is limited to early adulthood and to the first partisanship of the child; it has little or no direct influence on the respondent's subsequent electoral behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant narrative of post-1945 British migration is that of the ‘ten pound poms’: British civilians who availed themselves of the system of subsidised migration and emigrated to Australia for the bargain price of £10, with the rest of the cost of passage being split between the British and Australian governments. It is little wonder that historians have tended to focus on this scheme, as between 1947 and 1972 around one million Britons used it to resettle in Australia.1However, concealed within huge movement of people is a much smaller, but nonetheless important, migrant stream: the free passage scheme, a program which was open to veterans of the British forces and the Merchant Navy, under which almost 50,000 people settled in Australia. It operated only between 1946 and 1955 and was designed as a part of the package of benefits offered to all British veterans of the Second World War. The research on which this article is based, which was funded by the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh and headed up by Professor Sir Tom Devine, aimed to investigate the background and implementation of the 1946 free passage agreement. The project revealed significant differences between the 1946 scheme and its post-First World War equivalent. The British government's attitude towards the concept of empire migration had shifted from support to reluctance, as post-1945 planners worried about a shrinking British population and potential economic competition from the dominions. At the same time, the dominions were determined to prioritise their own reconstruction programmes, rather than assist Britain in resettling its veterans. Only Australia agreed to take British ex-service personnel, but as part of a much wider immigration plan designed to boost the Australia population and economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The role of advertising in the production of political campaigns deserves more consideration than it has previously received. My study examines advertising agencies associated with election campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, investigating their decisions to accept or reject political accounts. Focusing on Britain and Australia, and using a range of primary sources including the industry press, interviews and memoirs, I demonstrate that an agency's decision to accept a political account is always complex, contested and highly contingent. Accepting a political account may alienate clients and agency staff who support another party. Campaigns are labour-intensive and may detract from an agency's core business. Involvement in a losing campaign can damage an agency's reputation, just as association with a successful one may attract clients. Agencies are often unsure how to approach political advertising where traditional techniques may not be suitable. Such concerns about accepting a political account will likely be put aside where an agency principal has close personal ties to a party or leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have spent most of my career in British Universities, almost always teaching British politics, among many other things. At present, I am based in a Sociology Department in Australia. As such, I am experiencing two degrees of separation, which, perhaps, allows me a different perspective on the current state of the study of British politics. I have dealt before with the two issues considered here, the general paucity of consideration of models of British politics and the relative lack of theoretically or comparatively informed studies of British politics; therefore, my aim is to examine what has changed in the last decade. In essence, my argument will be that much has changed, although much remains the same. As a brief corollary, I will also argue that, although much could be better, the issues I discuss have been much better addressed in the study of British politics than in the study of Australian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders matter again. The study of political leaders, particularly prime ministers, has been an under-researched area, yet the leadership discourse is back on the agenda. This article puts prime ministerial predominance into this context using comparative analysis to examine prime ministerial leadership in Australia and the UK and evidence from the tenures of Tony Blair and John Howard. The article contends that similar centralising tendencies, personal projection and autonomy from established structures were evident in the tenures of these two prime ministers. Ultimately, this created dislocation (of varying degrees) between the leaders, followers and the wider electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the welfare state system and personal social services in Great Britain and Australia. Degree of convergence between welfare states as a result of global economic forces; Framework to describe changes in the countries' social welfare since the 1970s.