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In this conceptual paper, we differentiate between political decisions and the conversations where these decisions are discussed and facilitated. We complement existing work on argumentation in political communication by applying Aristotle's Rhetoric to the study of climate change debate. We show how Aristotle's principles for ethical and rational political speech work toward audience trust and encourage deliberative debate and decision-making. Our deliberative perspective is supported by a case study analysis of Australia's parliamentary climate change debate. We resurrect Aristotle's Rhetoric both as an analytical tool for critical analysis and a potential framework for constructive climate change debate. Following the conceptualisation of parliamentary debate as a conversational space where decision-making processes are facilitated, we introduce Aristotle's Rhetoric and the concept of 'rhetorical responsibility', which is further explored and exemplified in the case study. We conclude with future research questions for discourse and political communication studies. [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]

Like many liberal democracies, there is a gender gap in the Australian Parliament. While there has been growing momentum to increase the number of female parliamentarians in the national legislature, the Parliament of Australia continues to be a male dominated domain. This paper investigates the factors that contribute to maintaining the gender gap by focusing on the ambitions of young women to become a member of the national parliament. We find that the appeal of becoming a parliamentarian for young women is significantly curtailed by beliefs that the institution maintains stereotypical gender norms as well as a masculine, and misogynistic, culture. Furthermore, we find that young women believe they lack the skills and confidence required to occupy public office which further diminishes their political ambition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent theories of democratic representation push beyond 'minimalist' notions that only rely on periodic elections to connect officials and constituents. For example, Jane Mansbridge (2019) calls for 'recursive representation', which seeks ongoing, two-way interaction between representatives and their constituents. Given the scale and complexity of modern representative democracies, how can such ambitious proposals be translated into practice? We analyze two Deliberative Town Halls (DTHs) convened with a Federal Member of Australian Parliament in 2020 to discuss a complex issue, mitochondrial donation, ahead of a parliamentary debate and conscience vote on this issue. Drawing on interviews with participants, we argue that democratic innovations such as DTHs can contribute to realizing recursive representation when three criteria are met: authenticity, inclusion, and impact. We discuss the significance of each criterion and the role of DTHs in advancing recursive representation in a parliamentary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2020, the Australian Parliament legislated what appear to be significant changes in HECS–HELP prices, the tuition charges levied on domestic undergraduate students. Through this policy change, the Government aims to influence student choices in order to help deliver the skill changes presumed to be required for the economy's post‐COVID make‐up. This paper examines, in conceptual and empirical terms, a key aspect of the motivation for the reform, the true meaning of prices in the HECS–HELP world of an income‐contingent loan (ICL). We explain the conceptual basis of ICL charges and, with 2016 Census data, illustrate the meaning of the price changes between disciplines, by gender, and for a suite of expected future graduate lifetime income distributions. Our analysis points strongly to the conclusion that the true price changes are far less than they appear to be, highlighting the potential of there being quite muted consequences for student discipline choices. The paper examines the true meaning of the October 2020 legislated price changes for Australian graduates. We find that in the presence of the HECS–HELP income‐contingent loan, the true price changes are far less than they appear to be, pointing to muted resulting effects on student discipline choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concentration of wealth is a key component of the rise in economic inequality at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While the abolition of taxes on private wealth during the 1990s and 2000s is recognized as an important institutional driver behind this development, comparatively little is known about the justification of tax cuts for the wealthy in advanced democracies. This paper investigates how the abolishment of the personal net wealth tax in Germany, a country with high levels of wealth inequality, has been debated and justified in parliament over a period of 20 years. Using a mixed methods approach that combines computational social science methods and a qualitative analysis, we examine how Germany's two major parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), have variously construed the meaning and purpose of the wealth tax and justified their support for or opposition to it. While the Social Democrats debate the wealth tax primarily from a social justice perspective, the Christian Democrats rely on an efficiency frame that invokes biological metaphors, enabling them to narrate the wealth tax as a threat to the social body. Paradoxically, then, by arguing that the tax is "poison to the economy", conservative discourse succeeds in linking opposition to the wealth tax to a principle of social unity. On these grounds, we suggest that future research should scrutinize how the interrelation between political discourse and institutional architectures has facilitated the rise of wealth inequality in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract cheating remains a significant problem for universities and higher education (HE) generally, both within Australia and internationally. In 2020, the Australian Federal Government passed legislation establishing a new criminal offence, criminalising the provision or advertisement of academic cheating services by individuals and businesses. This legislation represents the Australian Government's formal commitment to a criminal justice response to address the problem of contract cheating behaviour, which seeks to prevent and minimise the use and/or promotion of such cheating services within the higher education sector. This paper provides a political discourse analysis (PDA) and interpretive policy analysis (IPA) of Australian Parliamentary Hansard documents regarding debate of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019. Our findings suggest a discord between the putative purpose of this legislation and the way the contract cheating problem has been represented in Australian Parliament. We argue that debates regarding the solution to, or at least how to address contract cheating first need to understand and agree on the problem if they are to meaningfully prevent crime. Our analysis exposes the politicisation of the higher education sector and associated discourse, where concern about contract cheating, in this case, was used as a vehicle to further rationalise ongoing Government paternalism and interference in tertiary institutions, underscoring the need for critical evaluation of criminological interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of circular thinking is readily attributed to patterns of Indigenous knowledge, characterised as distinct from the supposed linearity of Western epistemology; to approach epistemology through this metaphor is to anticipate identity by difference and underscore the autonomy of knowledge within bounded cultural coordinates. In seeking a more nuanced appreciation of the interwoven contours of human knowing, I consider some leading Indigenous Australian thinkers who understand cultural identities to be consolidated through creative repetition and recognised within dynamic relationality. These explorations include Mandawuy Yunupiŋu's interpretation of Yolŋu thought as a process of making "new connections and new separations"; the performance of manikay (public ceremonial song) by Wägilak singer Daniel Wilfred; Tyson Yunkaporta's conceptualisation of "turnaround"; Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu's framework of ngurra-kurlu (home-having); and Stan Grant's interpretation of an Indigenous Voice to the Australian Parliament. In contrast to the circular demarcation of identity by difference, these voices demonstrate how difference within identity can give impetus to mutual formation and growth, suggesting a Hegelian twist on notions of circularity in which critical differentiation generates an expanding gyre of recognition and meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Safe Schools Coalition Australia's teaching resource All of us, or 'Safe Schools', as it became known, was subjected to unrelenting attack from politicians in the Australian Parliament. This paper draws on analysis of the Australian Parliamentary Hansard, examining 18,000 words spoken about Safe Schools by Senators and Members of Parliament from November 2015 to August 2016. This dataset was interrogated with discourse analysis strategies to examine the ways in which the SSCA's supporters and opponents constructed narratives about Safe Schools, and its intentions and capacities. The analysis found that politicians employed two familiar metaphors: 'the child' and the 'strict father', to meet discursive aims. This paper argues that the invocation of these metaphors had repercussions for the way that the narrative around Safe Schools unfolded and offers Safe Schools as a case study with implications for how to observe future education debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a "secret" conference in January‐February 1899, the premiers of the Australian colonies agreed on an amendment to the draft Commonwealth Constitution Bill to grant New South Wales the permanent seat of government in the Australian federation. One of the conditions placed on that concession, however, was that Melbourne would initially host the Commonwealth parliament. Spanning the decade from that agreement to the Commonwealth parliament's selection in 1908 of Canberra as the site for the permanent federal capital, this paper shows that the compact on the seat of government provoked powerful resentments in New South Wales and especially Sydney because of the political and material advantages it was seen to have conferred on Melbourne. While the paper argues that resentment was actuated by residual anti‐federal sentiment and regional chauvinism, it also suggests that hosting the legislature did promote Victoria's pre‐eminence in the early Commonwealth and had enduring effects on the nation. In doing so, it speaks to the shaping influence of place and distance in Australian history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting and adapting the widely cited approach introduced by Hines and Rice, we investigate the extent of cross-border profit shifting activities by foreignowned Australian companies (FOACs) and evaluate the effectiveness of the measures implemented by the Australian Parliament to combat base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs). Specifically, we measure the sensitivity of profit before tax reported by FOACs in Australia to the tax rate differentials between Australia and other countries where the related foreign-based MNE groups operate as an indicator of BEPS. We further examine whether the estimated tax rate sensitivity has decreased since the implementation of Australian BEPS countermeasures. Overall, we find that profit shifting from Australia to lower tax countries occurred throughout the 14-year study period from 2007 to 2020. The higher the Australian corporate tax rate relative to the tax rates of a FOAC's immediate parent entity and ultimate parent entity, and the higher the ranking of the Australian tax rate relative to those of other countries where a foreign MNE operates, the lower is the profit reported in Australia. In general, cross-border profit shifting from Australia to lower tax countries has not reduced in the post-BEPS period from 2013 to 2020 after the implementation of BEPS countermeasures in Australia. Although there is some evidence from breaking down the post-BEPS period by year that shows that profit shifting might have reduced in 2019, this reduction was not sustained in 2020. Perhaps it takes time for the effects of these measures to be reflected in the financial reports of FOACs due to law enforcement or administrative time lags. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As has always been the case, the UK Parliament and the Australian parliaments have much to learn from each other. This paper discusses developments in legislative scrutiny in the UK and in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to bring to attention the problem of genuine reconciliation between the black native population of Australia and its (white) European settlers, who have been dominating the nation in terms of political, economic and cultural power since its foundation in 1901. The focus is on political speeches stemming from open conflict to a formal Parliament's apology for mistreatment of, especially, Stolen Generations of the later 20th century, which also has got its reflections in some prominent works of Australian literature, like Sally Morgan's My Place (1987) and Kim Scott's Benang (1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key financial accountability processes in the Australian system of government is the Budget Estimates hearings of the Senate Legislation Committees. These Estimates hearings focus on undertaking a detailed examination of the proposed annual expenditure of government departments and authorities outlined in the Appropriation Bills. The hearings also provide participating Senators the opportunity to question senior public sector managers about the delivery of government services. This paper, through the application of content analysis of the Hansard transcripts of a government organization, explores the extent to which the Estimates hearings contribute to the financial accountability process of the Senate Legislation Committees and correspondingly the accountability of Parliament and government. The key findings of this study of the selected Hansards is that the Senate Legislation Committees' Estimates hearings do contribute to the discharge of both Parliament's and the Government's financial accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most widely-endorsed norms in Australian politics is the requirement for bipartisanship in the management of defence and security policy. This norm is assumed to lead to good policy creation, foster political unity, and protect those who implement national policy (particularly the military). The paper argues that evidence for all three of these claims is overstated. In addition, the effects of the norm are often counter-productive and even harmful to the conduct and management of Australian policy. The paper concludes by arguing that the norm of bipartisanship for Australian defence and security policy should be abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government introduced a resource rent tax on offshore oil and gas deposits in 1987 and since then it has raised in excess of an additional $1 billion a year in revenue over and above the normal company tax on income. At the time it was being introduced a great deal of controversy followed the proposed introduction of the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT). On 2 November 2011, the Australian government introduced the raft of bills into Parliament for the imposition of a Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) on profit generated from iron ore, coal and gas from coal seams from 1 July 2012. Onshore oil and gas deposits will now be subject to a rent tax under the new PRRT regime that was also introduced into Parliament on 2 November 2011. The proposed MRRT has been met with criticism from certain mining companies, the Opposition parliamentary parties and noted economists. However, Australia currently has a budget deficit and a MRRT is being viewed by the government as being a solution to repaying government debt and to redistribute the burden of tax by reducing the rate at which companies pay income tax. A Resource Rent Tax (RRT) has been used by a number of countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway to increase government revenue from their 'North Sea' oil reserves. This paper will address the question raised above: namely, why is there opposition to a proposed MRRT given the continued existence of a PRRT in Australia for over 14 years? The paper will also contend that there are sound philosophical reasons for having this form of taxation and that as a result of the continued existence of a PRRT in Australia together with the fact that resource rent taxes have been adopted in many other countries, that the criticism of the new MRRT is unwarranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, drawing on interviews with 13 male and 15 female members of the Australian parliament, has two aims. The first is to contribute to knowledge about the nature of the Australian parliament, an institution which has seldom been subjected to gender analysis. This is particularly pertinent given the significant increase in women's representative status over the past decade. The second of the paper's aims is to demonstrate the efficacy of contemporary gender and organisational theory, particularly work on men and masculinities, for investigating questions related to women's involvement in politics. The paper draws on Joan Acker's (‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations’, Gender and Society, 4, 1990, 139–58; ‘From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions’, Contemporary Sociology, 21, 1992, 565–9.) notion of ‘gendered organisations’ to interrogate the data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the issue of same-sex marriage in Australia, from both legal and social perspectives. First, it places the marriage debate in its Australian context, noting the ways in which same-sex relationships have been recognised in Australia other than through marriage. Second, it assesses some of the legal constraints on recognition of same-sex marriage, in particular the current statutory definition and the allocation of power over marriage to the federal Parliament in Australia's federal system. Third, it examines the social and political debate about same-sex marriage in Australia. Finally, the paper considers whether same-sex marriage in Australia is something worth fighting for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Committees in the Australian parliament often make recommendations to government and attempt to persuade the government to accept them. Using a sample of committee reports tabled between the 2001 and 2004 elections, this paper measures the government acceptance of committee recommendations as a proxy for committees' influence. On average, the government stated it accepted three majority recommendations out of 11 per report, although this figure drops to two and a half when viewed as recommendations implemented and not merely promised. The government accepted virtually no minority recommendations. The most important report characteristic is the extent to which it affects the government's reputation, but the breadth of political support that it can muster is also relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mash-ups, applications that use data from two or more different online services to create new services, are a slowly growing and relatively new technology being adopted by libraries. The Australian Parliamentary Library has used a mash-up technology, Yahoo Pipes, to innovatively solve the problem of how to collect press releases from Senators and Members for a national repository. Yahoo Pipes is an application that lets any user aggregate, manipulate, and mash up content from around the web. This paper describes how mash-ups are used in libraries generally and the implementation of Yahoo Pipes in the Parliamentary Library to collect press releases of Senators and Members, and describes issues identified through undertaking the project and considers areas for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores 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.)

Copyright of Journal of Defense Sciences / Savunma Bilmleri Dergisi is the property of Turkish Military Academy Defense Sciences Institute 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.)

To restructure and systematize the concept of personalization, in this study we introduce a two-dimensional and relational typology of (de)personalization of political representation, comprising a horizontal (individualization) as well as a vertical dimension (hierarchization), and put it to an empirical test. We concertedly utilize content analyses of political newspaper and television coverage as well as of party press releases during the 2008 Austrian election campaign. With regard to the Austrian case, the findings outline that personalization of political representation is not a universal phenomenon; it rather appears as a context- and logic-sensitive communicational phenomenon. Political public relations shows significantly higher levels of horizontal as well as vertical diversification than the media by being more individualized and less monopolized by leaders and executive elites. Additionally, political representation in the tabloid press is more personalized than in quality papers, and the communication of catch-all parties is more individualized than of niche parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the way racism is now hidden behind discourses of 'cultural difference' rather than relying on beliefs of biological inferiority, capturing instances of racism has now become a difficult task. The discourse of 'difference' in recent times has strongly manifested itself as exclusion from a discursively constructed nation: borders of the nation are redrawn along cultural essentialist lines so that undesirable 'others' are always excluded. Taking data from Australian parliamentary debates on immigration and citizenship during 2006-2007, this paper uses critical discourse analysis to explore how politicians discursively (re)construct borders of 'Australia' to either exclude or include immigrants. This paper argues that exclusion and inclusion in national constructions are more conducive ways of seeing how racism and anti-racism towards immigrants are enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of voters’ gender on leader evaluations in parliamentary systems has been largely unexplored, while the impact of female leaders on voter attitudes and preferences remains to be fully established. This paper uses Julia Gillard’s historic candidacy in the 2010 Australian federal election to explore how voters evaluated Australia’s first female prime minister, and to test the impact of their assessments on vote choice. The authors also examine whether Gillard’s high-profile candidacy affected women’s levels of political interest, awareness and engagement in what had been largely a ‘man’s game’. Their findings confirm that Gillard enjoyed a gender-affinity effect in 2010 in terms of both leader evaluations and vote choice, and women’s political engagement was significantly affected by the Gillard candidacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global climate change and its impacts have ethical dimensions, for instance carbon footprint equity concerns. World issues, including the state of the ecosphere and biodiver­sity, regularly see political leaders, NGOs, business representatives, religious/spiritual orga­nizations, academics, and others engage in international aviation-dependent meetings to address critical challenges facing humanity and the planet. Yet, climate scientists and advocates call for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 to cap the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC. Aviation emissions resulting from international meetings raise questions that are not silenced by GHG emissions offsetting. The era of climate change and 'peak oil' poses ethical challenges for holding international in-person religious and academic events, especially when the events propound an environmentalist concern and when aviation use is assumed. This paper raises ques­tions regarding the ecological impacts of large international events and focuses the 'inconvenient truths' associated with international aviation in the era of global warming. The Parliament of the World's Religions, the largest multifaith gathering in the world, serves as a case study. The paper emphasizes the view that faith-based/faith-inspired organizations have a special responsibility for leadership in policy and praxis on the moral imperatives of sustainability, sustainable development and climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary libraries provide access to information and analysis and advice to members of parliament and their staff. The need for high quality, impartial and timely information is critical in the parliamentary environment, and it is a challenge to balance these requirements in information delivery. This paper summarises from audio transcripts stakeholder perspectives on the Australian Parliamentary Library from the Joint Chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on the Parliamentary Library, Leader of the Australian Democrats and Clerks of the Senate and House of Representatives. Feedback from a recent client survey and focus groups is included, together with reflections on how strategic planning in the Australian Parliamentary Library should address the issues identified. These are the same issues faced by all research libraries. [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]

Advocates of foreign aid in OECD countries navigate a unique form of politics. The beneficiaries of foreign aid spending have little voice in elite level decision-making about aid commitments from OECD countries. Thus foreign aid spending has a form of politics unlike other areas of policy where there is more direct budget accountability with citizens. Scholarly attention has increased on this unusual domestic politics of aid spending yet there remains little examination of the opportunities, challenges and tensions for aid organisations in advocating to elected officials. This article focuses on the case of Australian foreign aid, and the Australian Aid and Parliament project, an initiative of Save the Children. This initiative facilitates exposure visits to aid recipient countries for Australian parliamentarians. Most aid advocacy projects in OECD countries rely on mobilising citizens of those countries to act as a proxy, advocating on behalf of aid beneficiaries. This project reveals the potential of advocacy efforts that focus on the direct 'presence' of aid beneficiaries in the experience of elected officials (from donor countries). Yet it also reveals several challenges, and tensions between advocates, about how aid commitments change, and the most effective role for advocacy groups to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of legality has been described as a presumption that Parliament does not intend to abrogate or curtail fundamental common law rights, freedoms, immunities and principles (collectively 'fundamental common law protections'), and depart from the general system of law, except by clear and unambiguous language. It is a common law interpretive principle that protects fundamental common law protections from infringing statutes. Nevertheless, a question arises as to whether the principle can and should be extended beyond the realms of the common law, to protect certain statutory rights in Australia. This is yet to be considered at length in academic commentary and is presently unresolved. Such a development would exponentially increase the principle's potential scope of application. This article seeks to examine comprehensively the issue by reference to the principle of legality's origins and rationale, the concept of parliamentary sovereignty and doctrine of implied repeal, and analogous instances where statutory rights are protected through interpretation. This article argues that, on balance, the principle of legality should not be utilised to protect statutory rights from statutory infringement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article explores whether differential time horizons in legislative chambers that result from staggered membership renewal affect legislative behaviour. The analysis focuses on patterns of bill initiation and the introduction of amendments in the upper chambers of Australia, France, Germany and Japan – all four of which contain two or more classes of members that face re‐election at different times. Drawing on original comparative data, clear evidence is found of over‐time variation in legislative activity levels in the upper chambers. Approaching elections lead to increased activity levels, with increases in the introduction of bills, but also, to a lesser extent, amending activity. Such variation is found not only for those members facing the most proximate election, but for all members of the chamber. Importantly, there are no significant differences in legislative behaviour between those members up for re‐election and those not facing the electorate in the most proximate election. These patterns are interpreted tentatively as evidence of the paramount importance of political parties in parliamentary systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article by Ganghof, Eppner and Pörschke discusses the concept of semi-parliamentarism. This concept is very useful and will be used in future empirical studies. This short commentary provides a constructive critique of the concept, noting that only two countries currently meet the definitional criteria for the concept, that normative criteria should be avoided when defining regimes, that the definition introduces new criteria for classifying regimes, and that when it is applied empirically scholars should be careful not to introduce subjective judgments about which countries should be classed as semi-parliamentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Still photography is an important medium for visually communicating — and scrutinising — the power of elected representatives. However, it has been severely restricted by parliaments. Surprisingly, the photographs taken by press photographers have been viewed as a larger threat to parliamentary dignity than other seemingly more powerful media, such as television. This article analyses parliaments’ “extraordinary sensitivity to photography” 1 by conducting a comparative, historical examination of press photography in five national parliaments — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The article discusses historical milestones in media access for each of these parliaments, but focuses particularly upon the unusual case of the Australian Parliament and its rules on still photography. The author draws upon interviews conducted with Australian press photographers, as well as an analysis of primary material — including parliamentary guidelines on media access, photographs, newspaper reports, parliamentary debates, inquiry reports and submissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliament's response to the threat to revenue posed by the occult art of dividend stripping culminated in 1981 with specific provisions targeted at the practice being included in Part IVA. Relevantly, Part IVA applies to schemes by way of or in the nature of dividend stripping or having substantially the same effect as such schemes (s177E). In the intervening period, s177E has been considered by both the High Court and again recently by the Full Federal Court. Against that background, this article seeks to answer the following related questions: "Has s177E achieved its purpose, and who is responsible for that result?" The thesis of this article is that, contrary to early expectations, s177E has achieved its purpose and that it is principally the courts rather than Parliament, tax advisers or taxpayers that deserve credit for this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murphy v Electoral Commissioner is the latest decision of the High Court of Australia addressing the constitutional validity of a federal electoral procedure. The Court upheld longstanding provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth) that temporarily prohibit persons from enrolling to vote or updating their enrolment before a Federal Election. This case note analyses three issues arising from the case. First, it examines the remedial difficulties posed by invalidating electoral legislation while the Parliament is dissolved. Second, it analyses the Court's narrow application of the 'directly chosen by the people' requirement contained in ss 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution. Finally, it evaluates the majority's decision not to apply a structured proportionality test in light of recent developments in the context of the implied freedom of political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores a systematic investigation of parliamentary discourse over the `sports rorts' affair in the Australian parliament in 1993 and 1994. Ethical diversity in the invisible parliamentary culture; Role of parties; Constructing narratives of ethical legislative behavior; Ethical meaning of the community grants narratives; Conclusion.

This paper examines the way in which women elected to Australian parliaments between 1921 and 1981 perceived their role in relation to the representation of women and the way in which they responded to the conflicting expectations they encountered. The comments of these women indicate that improved representation is unlikely to be achieved simply by the election of more women to legislative bodies. Women must be elected who are committed to the pursuit of women's interests, but this is unlikely to be sufficient without a change in the male established priorities of legislatures so that women's interests and those who pursue them are no longer regarded as marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK and Australian literature on free vote patterns highlights that, even under 'unwhipped' free vote circumstances, party membership remains the key predictor of MPs' voting patterns. However, analyses of free votes have focused on single parliaments and as such, it is not clear whether the insights of this literature can be generalised. This article analyses MPs'voting behaviour, during free voting on landmark legislation, which sought to allow equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The article will address the following questions: Which MPs supported proposals to legalise same-sex marriage? What were the main factors that predicted their voting? Why were the majority of MPs in the UK and New Zealand, but not Australia, willing to support law reform? Whilst voting in the UK and New Zealand followed a strikingly similar pattern, there are key differences in the voting in Australia. This is attributed to two main factors: first, the 'whipping' of small T liberal Coalition MPs in the Australian House of Representatives who might have otherwise voted in favour of reform; and, secondly, the different pathways along which the 'centre-left' political parties have evolved in New Zealand and Australia, which led to a larger presence of Catholics in the Australian Labor Party than in either the UK or NZ Labour Parties. It is possible to conclude from the analysis more broadly, that although party remains the best predictor of voting patterns across the three Westminster democracies recently, gender has also emerged as an important predictor of voting patterns. This finding is discussed in the final part of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been surge of critical interest in the study of committees in Westminster-derived parliaments. However, one type of committee has escaped review: Australia's dedicated electoral matters committees (EMC). This article investigates the policy impact of one of Australia's EMCs, the Victorian EMC. Using a mixed-methods case study of the Victorian EMC's 2008/2009 inquiry into voter participation and informal voting, this article argues the Victorian EMC influenced the introduction of direct electoral enrolment in June 2010 through the Electoral Amendment (Electoral Participation) Bill. Consistent with the mixed-methods case study literature in committee studies, the analysis occurs in two parts. To assess the Victorian EMC's impact on the Victorian government, this article conducts quantitative analysis of the number of references made in second reading speeches for the Bill, and then content analysis. Further to this, building on the work of Hawes (1993) and Russell and Benton (2011) on 'non-quantifiable' aspects of committee impact, this article examines the Victorian EMC's impact on the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), another inquiry stakeholder. It contends that the Victorian EMC's impact on the VEC was a defining factor contributing to the introduction of direct enrolment in Victoria in August 2010. This article contributes to the scarce literature on Australia's EMCs, proposing a framework for their analysis at a time when the Victorian EMC and the New South Wales Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters are approaching their tenth anniversaries. To a lesser extent, this article also contributes to the effectiveness branch of the committee studies literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delegation of legislative power to the Executive occupies a unique place within the constitutional division of power. As a matter of necessity, efficiency, responsiveness, and a desire for increased participation from industry, delegation of legislative power is common but surprisingly under-theorised and under-studied. For decades in Australia it has been the domain of the Parliament to determine the appropriate exercise and level of scrutiny for delegated legislative power. But the constitutional landscape may be changing. In the 2012 decision Williams v Commonwealth (No 1), the Australian High Court indicated a greater willingness to scrutinise more robustly the performance of Parliament's supervisory functions. Against the background of the Court's new interest in responsible government, we argue that the current parliamentary practice of review of the exercise of delegated power is unable to achieve robust accountability. Informed by the High Court's jurisprudence in Williams (No 1) and the theories of responsible government and separation of powers, we suggest reforms that will ensure Parliament is meeting its constitutional duty of calling the Executive to account to it and, ultimately, the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]