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This research note discusses the 2009 Defence White Paper, particularly its focus on the potential threat the Chinese military might pose to the security of the Asia-Pacific in the foreseeable future. It also examines Chinese responses to the White Paper's main theses. It concludes that the White Paper marked a departure from the Howard government's policy of de-emphasising differences in Canberra's dialogue with Beijing and, by re-affirming commitment to the alliance with the United States (US), delineated the limits of Australia's partnership with China. However, its poorly substantiated predictions regarding the rise of China's power, the US economic and military decline and Beijing's geostrategic objectives raise doubts about the Rudd government's capacity to formulate a coherent vision for the future of Australia's relations with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to enter the current debate over the future of the South Australian Legislative Council by critiquing recent reform proposals and then outlining some modest suggestions for reform. The paper contends that a number of recent reform proposals are explicitly partisan and seek to enlarge the role of large parties and majority government. On the contrary others would ban political parties. The paper contends that whilst the Legislative Council exhibits many of the characteristics of an effective and useful upper house, reform of four areas would enable its review function to be improved. These areas include: the size of the Council; the term lengths of members; the method for resolving deadlocks; and the method for replacing retiring members. The paper then critically examines the proposal to ban political parties; and argues instead that instituting the Robson Rotation system would promote freedom of association and freedom of choice by voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Henry Tax Review is a work in progress, but it has already advanced sufficiently to constitute an important case study of state capacity in Australia. Using the Henry Tax Review as a case study, this paper sheds light on the question of whether the national political system is capable of devising and implementing long-term reforms. Whilst specific policy failures inevitably have a contingent dimension in the form of poor strategy and leadership or unfavourable economic conditions, the paper discusses the erosion of institutional and relational structures which, arguably, has diminished systemic political capacity. This is tantamount to a structural weakening of state capacity in Australia, a development which has the potential to erode the potential of any government to enact significant strategic policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two different bill of rights models for Australia: the Dialogue model and a Democratic model. The Dialogue model aims to protect rights through a bill of rights, strong political review mechanisms, intergovernmental dialogue, and rights-based judicial review. The paper argues that, despite its popularity, there are serious problems with the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Dialogue model and it outlines an alternative model, a 'democratic bill of rights', which attempts to avoid these problems by strengthening democratic institutions and political review mechanisms without adopting rights-based judicial review. The paper concludes that a democratic bill of rights is likely to be an effective and more democratically legitimate way of protecting and promoting human rights in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of gender and politics have typically been studies of women and politics. In contrast, this paper places men at the centre of its inquiry by drawing on interviews with 15 current federal male politicians. Of concern is exploring the ways in which men conceptualise the question of gender equity in the Australian parliament. Three frameworks are identified in the men's narratives. These are that the parliament is a masculinised space but that this is unavoidable; that the parliament is now feminised and women are advantaged; and that the parliament is gender neutral and gender is irrelevant. It is argued that collectively these framing devices operate to mask the many constraints which exist to marginalise women from political participation and undermine attempts to address women's political disadvantage as political participants. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the paper beyond the Australian context and calling for further research which names and critiques political men and their discourses on gender and parliamentary practices and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerned by declining interest, trust, and participation by citizens in democratic politics, governments and political institutions worldwide are turning to the internet in attempts to revitalise democracy through online public consultation and citizen participation, referred to as e-democracy or 'government 2.0'. This paper reports research into the planning and conduct of a series of online public consultation trials launched by the Australian federal government in late 2008, and it compares and contrasts Australian experiences with international e-democracy developments, including the Obama presidential campaign and findings of the Digital Dialogues review of online technologies to enhance citizen engagement in the UK, the UK Power of Information Task Force review, and experiments conducted as part of the MIT Deliberatorium. This paper presents qualitative analysis of findings in 10 areas, which it argues can be further grouped into four main areas of management focus of which technology, often the major topic of discussion, is important but less significant than policy, culture and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few people inside or outside government have had a greater impact on public policy in Australia than Ross Garnaut. His report in 1990 provided a blueprint for Australia's economic 'engagement' with Asia, whether or not one agreed with its underlying logic and analysis. The reception of his report on climate change in 2011 could hardly have been more different. Why is it that some ideas enjoy wide support from influential actors and are enthusiastically taken up by policymakers, while others struggle to gain traction, even when backed by government? This paper provides some possible answers to this puzzle by identifying factors that facilitate or obstruct the influence and impact of 'policy entrepreneurs'. 在澳大利亚政府内外，对公共政策影响最大的人士莫过于郜若素了。他发表于1990年的报告，你同意其逻辑分析也好，不同意也罢，反正它都为亚澳经济关系提供了蓝图。他于2011年发表的环境报却得到迥然不同的反应。何以一些观点能够得到重要社会主体的广泛支持以及政策制定者的积极采纳，而另一些观点哪怕是有政府做后盾，也难得推广呢？本文通过寻找有利或有碍"政策专业户"发挥影响的因素，对这个问题作了回答。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2004. Its general aim is to assess the proposition that recent governments have been ‘grave-diggers’ of the welfare state in Australia. More specifically, it tracks the overall level of social expenditure at the household level and the degree of vertical redistribution between households. Since the period in question covers twelve years of Labor and eight years of Coalition government in Canberra, the authors also seek evidence of political effect in welfare state trends. Their general conclusion is that far from succumbing to neoliberalism, the Australian welfare state became if anything even larger over this period. Neither bipartisan economic liberalisation, nor competing party welfare policies, made much difference to the welfare state when viewed through a fiscal incidence lens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of the recent Australian security studies literature has focused on contemporary challenges to Australia's role in Asia, the evolving trajectory of defence strategy, and the various factors that have shaped the nation's 'discourse of threats'. While this body of work is important and valuable, there is a distinct lack of scholarship that discusses the types of future security threats likely to confront Australian policy makers in the twenty-first century. Indeed, there is a tendency among scholars to assume that this sort of 'futures' work is best left to those outside the academy. I argue, however, that it is an area which is too important to leave to the authors of defence White Papers, think tank reports, and classified strategic assessments. Australia's future security environment in a complex international system has not been subject to the sort of systematic scholarly analysis the topic merits. This article seeks to provide a stepping stone for more substantial work in the area and outlines a conceptual framework that can aid us in understanding the factors likely to impact on Australia's security environment in the early part of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiculturalism has been criticised for emphasising cultural recognition over resource redistribution for minority cultural and ethnic groups. Moreover, critics argue that cultural diversity fails to provide enough common ground upon which to sustain civic nationalism. This paper examines the development of multiculturalist and biculturalist policies in Australia and New Zealand, and argues that these have in fact been justified in terms of a negotiated balance between two civic values: the value of diverse cultural expression, and social justice understood in egalitarian terms. The tension between these values has shaped the debate around multiculturalism in both cases. Both the social justice and value of cultural diversity arguments are deployed to reinforce conceptions of national identity in Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the international context it has been argued that institutional reform to leadership in local government can improve the sector in terms of both its democratic legitimacy and its operational efficiency. In Australia, despite two decades of far-reaching reform processes across state government jurisdictions, focused heavily on structural change, local government still faces daunting problems, yet the potential of reform to political leadership as a method of alleviating these problems has not been fully explored. This paper thus examines the applicability of alternative leadership models to Australian local government, in particular the elected executive model which characterises some American and European local government systems. We argue that the introduction of elected executives could prove problematic in terms of accountability and representation in Australian local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection of papers focuses on the domestic and international politics of Australia's recent engagement with Asia. The theme of Asian engagement appears to be of particular pertinence to the current study of Australian politics given numerous pronouncements that we are entering an 'Asian century' during which key Asian economies will gain greater ascendancy and certain Asian states will come to play a more prominent role in global politics. We employ the idea of 're-engagement' in order to show how engagement with Asia has been turned to again and again by Australian governments, albeit in different political and strategic contexts. This collection aims to consider the politics of re-engagement from a number of different theoretical positions, as well as from a number of different perspectives (be it international relations/foreign policy, domestic politics, identity politics, or from the perspective of bilateral Asian partners). Emphasis is placed not simply on the foreign policy prerogatives behind re-engagement but also on the implications of the 'Asian century' for domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's relationship with India stands in apparent contrast with its relations elsewhere in Asia. Most accounts of Australia's links to India liken them to recurrent bouts of amnesia, arguing that Australia has not put the same efforts into engaging with India that it has into fostering ties with Japan, China and Indonesia and that, like a patient with injury to the hippocampus who has lost the ability to lay down long-term memories, Australia appears to approach each episodic moment of contact without recollection of the past. Australia's relationship with India has passed through distinct phases, from a brief moment of warmth in the years immediately after India achieved independence, through frosty decades of the Cold War. In contrast to many other accounts, the paper argues that since the 1980s Australia has sought with considerable consistency to engage with India and that the tenuousness of the relationship is primarily due to Indian indifference. Recent bilateral issues, including the supply of uranium to India and attacks on Indian students, have led to an enlargement of contacts which may signify that the engagement is at last becoming a mutual one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coalition's clear victory over Labor at the 2004 federal election after prominent campaigning by conservative church-based groups - along with the election to the Senate of a member of the Family First party - seemed to many commentators to confirm the growing power of a 'Religious Right' in Australia. This paper argues that two features of the 2007 federal election campaign are impossible to square with the rise of the Religious Right thesis. First, Labor won in 2007 without shifting its leadership, policies or electoral strategy to suit the Christian Right. Second, the contributions of church groups to the 2007 election campaign were not dominated by a single perspective but covered a wide range of issues and expressed competing views on key policy issues. This pluralism allowed Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party and even the Greens room to present themselves favourably to significant groups of Christian voters. The 2007 election suggests that, rather than being dominated by a hegemonic Christian Right, church involvement in Australian electoral politics is pluralistic in character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999 the Australian government dropped its objections to the Italian legislation that contemplated postal voting and parliamentary representation for its Italian citizens resident abroad. This was a significant turning point for the Australian government approach on the question of voting rights for expatriate communities in Australia voting in their homeland elections. Based on undisclosed government sources and interviews with former Australian diplomatic and government officials, this paper will recall and examine the Australian government's reaction to the Italian political debates leading up to, and eventual passage of, the Italian expatriate vote legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the operation of a network governance experiment that accompanied political and policy responses to an economic shock in an Australian provincial city. The economic shock was precipitated by the closure of a steelworks operation, wiping out a significant base of employment in the city. Challenges to the operation of network governance raised in the study relate to: asymmetries of information, capabilities, resources and power; political agendas by higher-tier governments; the diverse calls of interests and, not least, the tensions and indeterminacies of a liberal, market-oriented variety of capitalism. Implications for the development of network governance approaches are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]