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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]

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.

The processes political parties use to select their candidates for public office constitute a crucial element of political recruitment in representative democracies and provide important insights into how power is distributed within party organisations. In this article, we develop a typology for understanding the diversity of preselection mechanisms in Australia's major parties that is based on degrees of influence between the central and local components of the party organisation. The typology in turn reflects preselection rules as public expressions of intra-party power sharing arrangements. We also identify the institutional, strategic and normative factors (including electoral systems, the accommodation of intra-party groups, candidate quality, efficiency and social norms) that influence the choices parties have to make when selecting and implementing a particular system. 政党用以选举候选人出任公职的过程构成了代议制民主国家政治遴选的一个关键因素，并提供了理解政党组织内权力分配的一个重要角度。本文根据中央和地方党组织之间影响的不同程度，提出了一种分类法以理解澳大利亚主要政党预选机制的多样性。这种分类法本身反映了作为表达政党内权力分享安排的预选规则。我们还找到了体制、战略以及规范性因素（包括选举制度、党内不同群体的相互适应、候选人品质、效率、社会规范等等），这些因素会影响政党选择和实施某种制度时的决策。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Are the Australian Greens, as a political organisation, experiencing a similar transformation to green parties in Europe in moving from a movement-based party to a pragmatic parliamentary party? What are the implications of changes in the party organisation, and how key party activists respond to this? The debate surrounding party leadership, and particularly parliamentary leadership, is a central issue. As the Greens have increased their parliamentary representation, the question of access to resources, as much as access to media, has brought the leadership issue to the forefront. The resignation of Senator Bob Brown as federal leader on 13 April 2012 has sharpened that focus. This article explores the role of the ‘party organisational activist’ and, in particular, how party activists perceive and respond to issues of leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]