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The recent past has seen an intense focus on 'financial sustainability' in Australian local government to the exclusion of other important dimensions of local governance. This restrictive emphasis on finance has been unfortunate as it has ignored important developments in the international literature, which is best exemplified in the landmark 2007 Lyons Report in the United Kingdom. In this official inquiry, Sir Michael Lyons reiterates the critical significance of local voice and local choice in contemporary local government and develops the concept of 'place-shaping' as epitomising the modern role of local councils. However, British local government enjoys far broader service provision responsibilities than its Australian counterpart. Accordingly, this paper thus seeks to outline the nature of 'place-shaping', as conceived in the Lyons Report, and consider its applicability in the much narrower Australian local government milieu. [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]

This paper analyses the substantial financial subsidy, alongside other regulatory changes, introduced to support private health insurance in Australia at the end of the 1990s. The concept of policy layering is developed and refined theoretically in terms of changes in policy paradigms in order to chart a lengthy period of tense layering in Australian health-care politics between private and public health insurance and the bipartisan convergence on a universalism plus choice policy paradigm during the 1990s. This is the key dynamic underlying the Coalition's support of private health insurance after 1996 rather than a neo-liberal ambition to dismantle the health-care state and return to a predominately privately financed health-care system with a residual, public safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than passively accepting development, some Indigenous communities have forced their demands into corporate decision-making. Accordingly, recognising and responding to community expectations becomes a matter of prudent strategy and 'enlightened self-interest'. This paper examines the case of Century Zinc Mine in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria where the miner undertook negotiations and reached agreement with local Indigenous communities. It was later held to account by communities concerned about insufficient implementation of this agreement. Discussion then explores the campaign against Jabiluka uranium mine in Australia's Northern Territory, especially why multinational miner Rio Tinto deferred to local community wishes surrounding development. These experiences show that Indigenous communities are most effective in bringing leverage over mining companies when they impact upon profit or future profit (often related to reputation with specific audiences). The parameters and consequent limitations of a company's responsiveness to community demands reinforce fundamental roles for the state as ultimate regulator and provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift away from family immigration and towards skilled immigration is one of the most important changes over the past decade in Australian immigration policy. Yet the implications of this shift for female applicants have remained largely unexplored. Skilled immigration has slipped by as a genderless story in which the androgynous skilled migrant is the central character and economists do most of the storytelling. This paper discusses the gender equality concerns raised by the policy shift towards skilled immigration. It argues that Australia's skilled immigration scheme disadvantages female applicants through its construction both of economic independence and 'skill.' A comparison with Canada's skilled migration law and regulations, which are audited by gender mainstreaming tools, is considered to ascertain what role, if any, gender-based analysis plays in identifying and rectifying the potential gender inequalities produced by skilled immigration selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we re-evaluate explanations, derived from the Australian Election Study surveys, for the Coalition's winning office in 1996 and holding it ever since. We show that, in occupational terms, electoral support for the major parties is less distinct than it was in the Hawke and Keating years. We document the shift to the Coalition, net of other factors, among older respondents, those with little education, and Catholics. And we show the shift to Labor among respondents from non-English speaking backgrounds. At the same time, we point to the failure of respondents on low or middle incomes to move in either direction. This leads us to an explanation for the Coalition's success grounded not so much in Labor's eroding blue-collar base but in terms of Howard's ability to construct a form of populist politics. We also demonstrate the significance of various issues, the part played by perceptions of the economy and the state of household finances, and the importance of voters' thinking that election outcomes matter. If we are right, not only are earlier analyses mistaken, but much of the political history of the period needs to be rewritten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, Australia's interests in the Middle East related primarily to its role in the Commonwealth imperial defence system which resulted in the deployment of Australian forces in the Middle East during both the First and Second World Wars. Similarly, the current involvement of Australian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is driven by the country's strategic alliance with the United States. However, Australia's current involvement reflects a multifaceted relationship that spans economic, political and strategic spheres. Yet it is at the level of cultural and civilisational contacts that this relationship appears at its most vulnerable. This paper argues that a deeper understanding of this cultural dimension combined with a broader emphasis on good governance and human rights would be conducive to more robust ties in the longer term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a rational consensus has become an increasingly controversial dimension of recent democratic theory as radical democratic theorists have challenged the ways in which liberal democracies deal with political disagreement and contestation. As a result, several theorists within the liberal tradition have attempted to incorporate models of dissent in their democratic arguments but this paper contends that they tend to result in forms of majoritarianism or proceduralism which reflect the original limitations that inspired the radical democratic critique. A more useful approach is one that recognises that contestation is inherent to democratic politics and understands that the paradox of democracy is the need to embrace the impossibility of establishing rational consensus in democratic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2005, the Commonwealth announced changes to the eligibility criteria for a number of farm welfare payments which have resulted in farmers receiving such payments on more generous terms than other disadvantaged groups in the community. The changes passed largely unremarked by the media or political commentators. Farm welfare programs are developed independently of the general welfare safety net and are based on assumptions about the nature, extent and causes of farm poverty. No comprehensive empirical research has been conducted into farm poverty since the Henderson Inquiry of the 1970s. This paper discusses the issue of farm poverty in Australia and how it fits into the broader welfare debate, and proposes a way forward to develop more effective and equitable farm welfare programs. [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]

The Australian Senate is a significant part of the Australian parliamentary system and the electoral contest for the Senate results in representational outcomes that will influence the way the Senate will perform. This paper argues that the 2004 half-Senate election result was significant because it resulted in the Liberal–National Coalition obtaining a majority in the upper house. It accounts for this outcome by examining the contest by way of inter- and intra-party bloc contests. It finds that a particularly strong Right-of-Centre performance in Queensland, to which voters voting for Ms Pauline Hanson made a major contribution, delivered the Senate majority to the Howard government. The significance of the result also lies in the way it confounded previously held views that the combination of proportional representation used for the Senate with the need to elect six senators from each State would make it unlikely for either Labor or the Liberal and National Parties to ever win an upper house majority in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the voting patterns of trade union members in Australian elections conducted between 1966 and 2004 and finds that, on average, 63% of trade union members vote for the Australian Labor Party. Despite the fact that union membership declined from around half of the workforce in the early 1980s to a quarter of the workforce in the early 2000s, unionists have not become more pro-Labor. Analysing unionists' voting behaviour by gender, it is found that male unionists were more pro-Labor than female unionists in the 1960s, but that the reverse is true today. Recognising that union membership may be endogenous with respect to political ideology, this study instruments for union membership and concludes that the observed association between union membership and voting reflects a causal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussing Australia's need to increase taxes to pay for future social security, Michael Keating worries that voters see taxes as a ‘burden’ and that ‘the link between taxation and citizenship has been broken’. This paper deals with the problem of tax resistance (preferring lower taxes even when tax cuts risk public services) for Australia's welfare state. First, I describe how two Australian fiscal institutions—a residual welfare system and visible income taxes—promote tax resistance among voters. Second, I draw on these insights to develop several explanations for tax resistance: voter self-interest, voter hostility to minorities, voter disengagement (low trust and lack of interest in politics), and individualistic attitudes. The main conclusion is that tax resistance in Australia is institutionalised, making it easier to mobilise interests around low taxes, and harder to advocate for alternatives. Results of multivariate analysis using AES 2004 data indicate that an ‘anti-tax coalition’ can build on three diverse publics; one of higher and middle-income earners attuned to self-interest, another hostile to welfare beneficiaries, and another ‘tuned out’ of politics and willing to support any call for tax cuts. Inevitably, the debate about the welfare state is shadowed by a debate about voter willingness to pay taxes that finance it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 Australian federal election established the Australian Greens (Greens) as the third largest political force in the country behind the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party in electoral terms. Despite the Greens’ electoral achievements, the party has been largely dismissed as a radical single-issue political party. This paper will argue that while radicalism is an institutionally entrenched feature of the Greens in both organisational and programmatic terms, there are also strongly pragmatic aspects to the party's modus operandi. It suggests that the Greens are astute political operators who use radicalism in a highly pragmatic way to achieve their political objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Mark Duffield's theory of the merging of development and security. It introduces failed states as a key linkage between these concepts. To subject the theory to a partial empirical test, the use of the term ‘failed state’ in Australian security discourse vis-à-vis three countries in the South Pacific is presented. Evidence from these cases supports the notion that security and development are indeed coming together. This threatens to strip development policy of its meaning, subordinating it to security concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing nature of social policy and social inequality in Australia and New Zealand from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. In response to pressures of globalisation both countries pursued neo-liberal economic policies as they opened up their markets during terms of both conservative and Labor governments. However, poverty and inequality increased more in New Zealand than in Australia. The use of market-oriented policies and the pace of their introduction in New Zealand were more aggressive than in Australia, as was the way in which social policy was used to reinforce rather than ameliorate increased inequality and poverty. By the mid-2000s there were signs that Australia was catching up on both fronts, but in the meantime New Zealand's hardline position had softened. This may suggest that pressures from globalisation are difficult to resist in the long run, but there may be lessons to be learned from the New Zealand experience if more negative outcomes are to be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are no controlled experiments in macroeconomic policy, nor in systematic programs of microeconomic reform, but a comparison between New Zealand and Australia over the period since 1984 provides as close an approach to such an experiment as is ever likely to be possible. From quite similar starting points the two countries pursued liberal reform programs that differed sharply, mainly as a result of exogenous differences in constitutional structures and the personal styles of the central actors. Australia followed a more cautious, piecemeal, consensus-based approach, whereas New Zealand, in contrast, adopted a radical, rapid, ‘purist’ platform. The NZ reform package was generally seen by contemporary commentators as representing a ‘textbook’ model for best practice reform. However, Australia since 1984 has performed much better than New Zealand, whose per capita GDP growth indeed ranked at or near the bottom of the OECD. In this paper, we assess a variety of explanations for the divergences in policies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the drivers behind bilateral treaties implies an assumption that international treaties are entered into primarily to achieve national objectives, not partisan political goals. This paper investigates whether this assumption is valid, using as a case study the recently enacted US–Australia Free Trade Agreement. A stated original purpose for the agreement—increasing access to the US market for Australian agricultural products—would yield significant economic benefits for Australia. However, when it became clear that this goal would not be achieved, the objective of the Australian government shifted. The most plausible explanation for the shift is that domestic political objectives had moved to the fore and prompted the government to pursue and adopt the treaty despite some evidence that it might not be in the national interest to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One strategy used to increase response rates when using mail questionnaires is to prolong the period of data collection. This paper examines the consequences of such a strategy on the Australian Election Studies (1996–2004). The findings suggest that such a strategy has both positive and negative consequences on the overall quality of the survey. On the one hand, prolonging the period of data collection decreases the non-response error by providing a somewhat better representation of hard-to-reach groups of respondents such as the young, full-time employed, and those disinterested in politics. On the other hand, prolonging the period of data collection increases the risk of measurement error. The evidence suggests that post-election events significantly impact on respondents' political opinions. More specifically, the longer respondents wait to return their questionnaire after the elections the more positive their opinions of winning leaders, the more negative their opinions of defeated leaders and the more distant they feel with the policies of defeated parties. Australian investigators thus face a dilemma in deciding when to stop the fieldwork period for their mail election surveys: they must choose between non-response error and measurement error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Torres Strait has 18 local governments, elections for which were held in March of both 2000 and 2004 in conjunction with other local government elections in Queensland. Elections were also held at these times for additional positions on two regional representative bodies for Torres Strait, the Island Co-ordinating Council and the Torres Strait Regional Authority. This paper examines all these elections, focusing on changes in political leadership and also a possible emerging change in political style in Torres Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent comparative studies of the politics of tobacco control have ranked Australia and New Zealand as two of the most restrictive regimes in the world. Yet traditionally Australia and New Zealand were tobacco-growing countries in which the government supported tobacco agriculture with a variety of subsidies. Despite a slow start in comparison to some other countries, by the 1990s these two had developed strong tobacco-control regimes. This paper addresses the rise of tobacco as a policy agenda problem, what policy instruments were utilised to deal with it, the pattern of adoption of policies between the two countries, and what explains the rapid progress of tobacco-control restrictions in these two countries, based on a comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characterisation of the Australian polity as a strikingly ‘secular’ polity is in certain respects misleading. Australian political debate continues to be marked by a religious element. For example, the language of Aboriginal ‘reconciliation’ had several distinctly Christian resonances and ambiguities, including the difficult relation of justice and forgiveness. This paper considers the Aboriginal reconciliation process in the light of three different ideas of secularism: secularism as a doctrine of the two ends of humanity; secularisation as disenchantment or rationalisation; and secularisation as the transposition of theology into a mundane or earthly idiom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of lower-house seats at Australian State and federal elections rely on a distribution of preferences from Independent and small-party candidates before seats can be awarded. Actors have attempted to gain political capital from this situation by claiming that the preferences of particular small parties have affected election outcomes. This paper uses the events of the Western Australian State election held in 2001 to explore the validity of such claims. More specifically, it investigates the widely propagated contention that the One Nation Party' s anti-sitting-member preference strategy was a key determinant of the Coalition's electoral defeat. It concludes that the increased number of candidates contesting elections makes it difficult to assess whether the second and subsequent preferences of any particular small party were critical to the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Howard government reoriented the then existing institutionally based financial regulation towards a functionally based regime with new prudential and disclosure regulators in 1998. This paper uses the governmental agenda-setting framework of John Kingdon to explain this financial regulatory change undertaken in Australia following the Wallis Inquiry of 1996. It also examines the role of the Inquiry in the policy process. It shows that the financial regulatory change was on the bureaucratic agenda of the Treasury Department. A window of opportunity opened for the Treasury following the 1996 election, with the new Howard government keen to achieve financial regulatory reforms to address future regulatory challenges proactively while the new Treasurer Peter Costello wanted to consolidate his power within markets and politics. Costello coupled the Treasury's solutions to problems and to political processes. The Wallis Committee was 'packed' by the government in accordance with its regulatory policy preferences. Its role was to legitimise the government's policy preferences publicly, and to transfer the 'governmental agenda' into the 'public agenda'. However, this was not a case of the government pressuring for its policy preferences over the financial services industry. In fact, the Inquiry was used as a venue to generate industry and public support for the regulatory changes, and was used to build a network of alliances within and outside the parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that many Liberal-National voters are environmentally conscious. However, the lack of importance of environmentalism in influencing voter behavior in Australia, compared with socio-economic ideologies and issues, means that few Liberal-National identifiers are likely to find appeal in the parties which place most emphasis on protecting the natural environment, as these parties are generally Left-leaning with regard to socio-economic policy. Given the balance of influences on the vote, Liberal-National vulnerability on environmental issues would seem to be most exploitable by a Right-of-Centre environmental party. This article examines the case of the 'liberals for forests', a rare example of just such a party, which had some success in Western Australian State elections in 2001. The paper supports the notion that environmental issues, including those such as logging often linked with Left partisanship, have the potential to influence vote choice, in a positive sense, on the Right as well as the Left of Australian politics. Implications for the Liberal Party and the party system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent events—especially attempts to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement and Australia's participation in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq—have thrown Australia's relationship with the United States into sharp relief. While this relationship has historically enjoyed strong bilateral endorsement, such uncritical support is beginning to unravel. At the very least, the relationship is being subjected to a renewed, more critical scrutiny. This paper argues that a dispassionate analysis of the relationship is appropriate and overdue. Not only are the benefits that accrue to 'Australia' from the relationship debateable, even when judged within the limited calculus of the 'national interest', but Australia's uncritical support for US foreign policy is also helping to entrench potentially damaging aspects of American foreign policy and— somewhat ironically—undermining the legitimacy of its pre-eminent 'hegemonic' position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent of State-level influences on federal voting behaviour in Australia has been debated for many years. In this paper, I extend and improve on previous research by using the most advanced techniques (multilevel modelling) available for analysing survey data in this context, and present results based on an extensive investigation of post-war Australian elections. The results show conclusively that the overall extent of measurable State-level effects on federal voting over the period is relatively very small, despite the institutional significance of the States. In an attempt to reconcile these two facts, I therefore propose an institutional explanation of the small extent of State-level effects. I argue that the representation entitlements of the States in the House of Representatives would tend to result in the overall extent of State-level effects being relatively small because they introduce a self-correcting 'pendulum' element into party competition. I investigate some hypotheses that follow from this argument, demonstrate that the evidence from the multilevel modelling is consistent with these hypotheses, and conclude that this institutional element is a significant part of the explanation of the apparent unimportance of State-level influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the Internet, specifically the World Wide Web (WWW) and e-mail on Australian parties in two key areas: (1) party communication: what exactly are parties using their Websites for? and (2) party competition: does the Internet lower the threshold for smaller parties to communicate their message compared with the traditional media? We examine these questions with two types of data—a questionnaire of party communication staff and content analysis of a representative sample of party Websites. Our findings show, first, that Australian parties have taken a fairly cautious approach to the new medium, using it primarily as an information storehouse rather than putting it to more innovative use. Second, while almost all Australian parties have a Web presence, there is a divide between those parties with parliamentary representation and those without in terms of their site quality and visibility on the Web. The study concludes by interpreting the findings in the context of research on parties' use of the Internet worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research in Australian sociology and political science has debated the extent to which postmaterialist values and economic self-interest shape voting in federal elections. Some researchers have argued that postmaterialist values have partly displaced materialist concerns with physical security and economic well-being in Australian public life. This displacement, coupled with the adoption by major political parties of postmaterialist 'quality of life' issues such as the environment, has meant that voting in Australia has come to be more dependent on postmaterialist values than on perceptions of economic interest. Other research, however, has found no relationship between postmaterialist values and voting behaviour, while economic evaluations remain a strong determinant of voting behaviour. Part of the disagreement reflects methodological differences in the research. But different methodological problems compromise each of the previous studies. In this paper we use data from the 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1998 Australian Election Studies to investigate postmaterialist and economic voting in the Commonwealth House of Representatives and the Senate. Using various statistical methods, we first explore bivariate relationships between key variables and then use multivariate models of postmaterialist and economic voting to adjudicate between the contending positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) is designed to generate political and economic incentives for industry to move towards cleaner production. It enables community groups to put pressure on polluters and provides an opportunity for firms to identify inefficiencies. The inventory is built upon several liberal-democratic premises regarding the power of knowledge, the right to know, the effectiveness of pressure groups, and the ability of government to correct market failures. An older and more extensive U.S. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) has had significant problems with industry resistance, the restriction of substances covered, and the accuracy of data. There is also the question of the ability of citizens to access and utilise the information provided. This paper analyses the NPI using the TRI as a benchmark for comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a critical analysis of some of the practical implications for disabled people of the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992. Specifically, it raises questions about politics and the role of the law as an instrument of social change—taking greater account of the interests of disabled people—on the one hand, and of the reliance of the social model of disability on a strategy based upon legal rights on the other. The article also suggests that the constraining effects of Australia's constitutional protections of rights and its federal system of government hinder the mildly progressive elements of the Disability Discrimination Act. To illustrate this, the paper employs empirical evidence to suggest that these effects have been exacerbated by the passage of the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Act in 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most federations, including Australia, have systems of fiscal equalisation which transfer income between States. Economists have long studied the economic efficiency and equity arguments for and against such transfers. This paper concentrates instead on the political aspect; namely, it asks whether federal political parties wishing to maximise their expected votes at election time would ever support a system of equalisation, particularly one which mandates efficient transfers of the type studied by economists. The answer, found using a two-State model of a federation in which voters are mobile, is in the affirmative: the political process delivers an efficient and equitable system of equalisation. However, the result depends on certain assumptions. The implications of these assumptions are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science as a distinct discipline only emerged in the Australian academy after the Second World War. By the end of the 1950s it was attracting thousands of undergraduates. Into the 1990s and beyond, political science has remained a relatively 'successful' discipline. However, it would be difficult to argue that the identity of Australian political science has been forged by disputes over the 'scientific' core of the discipline. Some Australian political scientists have claimed that this deficit is a fundamental weakness, denying the discipline both a set of common professional values and a basis for the integration of research. By contrast, this paper will argue that the issue of identity is better considered from a historically sensitive perspective rather than purely in terms of profession and methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many other advanced industrial democracies, Australia has experienced major and ongoing economic reform over the last two decades, the pace of which has, if anything, increased since the election of the Liberal–National government in 1996. These developments have led to a growing sense of economic insecurity among many voters. Many of these concerns were focused on the 1998 election, when the Liberal–National Coalition advocated the introduction of a goods and services tax. This paper uses the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES) survey to examine the impact of economic evaluations, economic insecurity and economic issues on voting in the election. The results demonstrate the existence of widespread economic concerns across the electorate, but that the Coalition gained a marginal electoral advantage on the tax reform issue. Economic issues were also a cause of defection to the new One Nation Party, although further analysis reveals that its support was motivated more by race and ethnic concerns than by economic discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key strategies of the current Commonwealth government in Australia is to promote a dynamic entrepreneurial culture by improving the business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper evaluates the contribution of SMEs to innovation and employment in Australia and reviews the international evidence on the value of SMEs. It concludes that a very small percentage of SMEs are responsible for most of the employment generation and innovation in the small-firm sector. The policy implication is that general deregulatory measures designed to support SMEs as a genetic class are likely to create an environment within which low-quality, low-wage employment is generated in SMEs with little future. Instead, the sectoral composition of industrial activity and the social structures and relationships within which firms are embedded require greater policy attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the approach adopted by the recent Report of the National Inquiry into the Human Rights of People with Mental Illness of seeking to protect the interests of the mentally ill by following a human rights model is fundamentally flawed. The application of human rights to the care and protection of the mentally ill is at best irrelevant and at worst actually harmful to their best interests. Human rights are incapable of addressing the personal experience of mental illness and are similarly incapable of addressing the social and political issues that confront the mentally ill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political theory of Australian politics has been dominated, since the election of a Liberal-National Party government in 1996, by claims and counterclaims about electoral mandates. The government has privileged its position in the House of Representatives; opposition parties have pointed to their support in the Senate. This paper provides a historical re-examination of the meanings and merits of mandate theories; it outlines the difficulties posed by strong bicameralism for any mandate theory; and it shows how the rise of survey research has strengthened some claims to a mandate, especially in bicameral systems, while weakening others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western Australia and Queensland are often seen as the most developmentalist states in the Australian federation, largely because they remained less developed for longer and have seen much mineral and agricultural development in the latter part of the twentieth century. Developmentalism is usually seen as anathema to a commitment to environmental policy, which most states have taken on in response to environmentalism in the same period, yet these two developmentalist states exhibit markedly different trajectories in response to this environmentalist stimulus. This paper explores the reasons for these differences, finding a variety of causal factors including both socioeconomic influences (such as affluence and demographics), political structures, and personalities and the force of ideas. It suggests that we should be wary of monocausal explanations of such differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a long-run analysis of the scope and profile of government in Australia using the indicator of ministerial portfolios. By scope we refer to the range and intensity of government activity. By profile we refer to the balance of three categories of activity (defining, physical resource mobilisation and social). Although there has been growth in the scope of government in the twentieth century, the rates of change have varied over time, by level of government and by category of activity. Whilst the intensity of government has decreased recently, its range has not. Government has not evacuated areas it once occupied. Because the three categories of activity have grown at different rates, the overall profile of government has changed. We explain the extent to which the increase in government scope has been a function of the undertaking of new responsibilities as opposed to an intensification of existing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a paper which examined civic education in Australia, and analyzed its consequences for political literacy, competence, and participation. Information on civic education and political knowledge; Extent of political knowledge in the country; Who posses political knowledge.