Search

Much party communication encourages voters to lower issue-related evaluations of rival parties. Yet, studies of such influence are rare. Drawing on research on political parties' negative campaigning, this article starts to fill this gap. We triangulate evidence from four survey experiments across six issues in Denmark, the US, and Australia, and show that a party's negative campaigning decreases voters' evaluations of the target party's issue-handling competence (i.e. issue ownership), but does not backlash on voters' evaluations of the sponsor. Such attack on the target party does not have to be tied to a negative policy development like the crime rate to undermine the target party's competence evaluations. At the same time, a negative policy development only undermines a party's evaluations when it is accompanied by a rival party's negative campaigning attack. The implications for party competition and the mass-elite linkage are important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political situation in Australia during the first half of 2020. Topics covered include the government's response to the bushfire crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the creation of a national cabinet that met frequently to coordinate policy options. Also discussed is the resignation of Richard Di Natale as leader of the Greens party.

Is the Australian Labor Party (ALP) one party, or eight? Academic accounts of the ALP throughout its history have emphasised the importance of state‐based policy‐making and organisation as evidence that the "life of the party" occurs within state and territory branches. However, over the last three decades, changes to the national conference and constitution, the increasing prominence of national leaders and the professionalisation of campaigning practices have arguably created the conditions for a far more centralised organisation, raising the question of whether, in 2019, there is anything distinctive about the ALP state and territory branches beyond the jurisdictions in which they operate. In this article, we investigate the distinctiveness of state Labor branches in terms of their formal organisational diversity and the characteristics and attitudes of their supporters. Using data from an original survey of Australian party supporters conducted in 2016, as well as undertaking an analysis of formal party rules, we show that the ALP exhibits a high degree of organisational uniformity across its branches, and supporters of the party in all states and territories very closely resemble each other. We conclude that even though the party maintains a federal structure it is possible to study its supportership and formal structure as a national organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the concept of labor in the Australian Labor Party's administration of state governments in Australia. Topics discussed include analysis of the ideological and policy profile of state Labor governments, policy mechanisms of state Labor governments based on a framework adopted from policy experts Armando Barrientos and Martin Powell, and the comparative profile of modern state-level social democracy in Australia.

In Australia, two‐and‐a‐half party systems are common with the Liberal and National parties, usually needing to collaborate to form governments. In Queensland, the 2008 merger of two of these state parties to create the Liberal National Party (LNP) created instead a two‐party system. This review examines the forces for the merger and prospects for the continuation of the LNP, the likelihood of change as a result of the Queensland merger in the remaining two‐and‐a‐half party systems, and how the drivers of this merger compare with those observed in studies of other non‐Australian party and electoral systems. Pressures and conditions for a merger similar to those in other, mostly European systems, were evident in the case of the LNP. The particular structure of the pre‐merger party competition and relationships was, however, a likely factor in the merger in that two collaborating parties could avoid a contested switch in party seniority. This aspect, unlikely to occur in other Australian party systems, combined with the very limited success of the LNP in gaining and holding government since the merger, does not suggest an imperative for further mergers in other Australian systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The election of four One Nation Senators at the 2016 Australian Federal election has been seen as part of a world--wide rise of populist movements that criticizes main stream politics and rejects pluralism, putting forward single concepts of "the people", that the movements claim to represent. While it is clear that Australian voters, like voters elsewhere, have been seeking alternatives to the major parties, it is less clear that the preferred alternatives fit this populist framework. Australia provides a good case study as the Australian electoral system makes it relatively easy for independents and minor parties to be elected to Parliament. This paper examines all independents and minor party candidates successfully elected in 2016 and at previous Australian Federal elections to determine whether the alternatives to the main stream parties elected since 1945 fit anti-pluralist populist models. It is concluded that, with the exception of the One Nation Party, most of the independents and minor party candidates elected to the Australian Federal Parliament have not fitted such models. However many of those elected do present a challenge to the electoral claims of the major parties. The article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the hard-line approach to asylum-seekers currently being taken by both the major political parties in Australia, alienated cosmopolitans have been increasingly inclined to disidentify with the Australian nation and declare 'not in my name'. Although sympathetic both to the cosmopolitan position and to these acts of principled dissent, I express reservations about such an approach on the grounds that it distances the cosmopolitan elite from the democratic mass and inclines towards irresponsibility. Drawing on Socrates as an exemplar, I investigate how citizens with cosmopolitan sensibilities might resist injustice on universal moral grounds without being either condemned by or exiled from their local political community. Ultimately, I argue in favour of an embedded cosmopolitanism that engages critically with the political ethos and calls on citizens to take responsibility for protecting the state in its ideal image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of Australia's border protection policies have focused on attempts to deter the arrival of asylum seekers by boat. These include government 'messaging' in the hope this will influence the decision-making of would-be boat arrivals. This article outlines the findings of an exploratory study on the sources of information accessed by asylum seekers, prior to and during their boat journeys to Australia, about their destination country. The findings suggest that government media and Internet strategies focused on deterring asylum seekers are adopted without full regard to how information is sourced before and during these boat journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a 'two-party preferred' vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral 'swing' and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins - the maternity as well as the paternity - of the 'two-party preferred'. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide-ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept - technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed 'uniform swing'- implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While national election campaigns have become increasingly personalized, it is unclear to what extent this trend has been replicated at the constituency level. Using surveys of Australian election candidates conducted from 1996 to 2010, this article tests the personalization hypothesis at the local constituency level. Three areas that may be affected by personalization are examined: constituency service; geographic proximity between candidates and potential voters; and local election campaigning. Among MPs, constituency service has grown in importance at the expense of local party engagement. However, among the broader group of candidates standing in the election, the results show that party-related activities deliver more votes than personal ones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes the political style and practice of the Australian National Council of Women (ANCW) as it developed up to 1975. The historical significance of this lies in the fact that, during the first three quarters of the last century, the ANCW was effectively the peak body representing the great majority of women's groups in this country: groups whose activities focused on politics, religion, morality, health, education, the media, philanthropy and also peace, women's economic and political rights, child welfare and legal reform. The Council spoke on behalf of these constituents to all levels of government, and internationally through the International Council of Women. It generally did not represent women associated with trade unions and the Australian Labor Party, and the politically active women amongst its leaders tended to be members of the Liberal Party. The conduct of the Council avoided party politics; its leaders co-operated with trade unionists on issues of women's rights such as equal pay, and worked as willingly with Labor governments as with non-Labor ones. An assessment of the effectiveness of the Council's political activities is therefore an assessment of the political practice and achievements of mainstream Australian feminism before the advent of radical feminism in the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of the political conditions in Australia between July and December 2013, focusing on the reported tribalisation of Australian politics and the nation's 44th federal election on September 7, 2013 which featured interim Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. According to the article, Australia's Labor Party-led government was swept out in 2013 after two parliamentary terms in office. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and political campaigns are examined.

Large-scale issue-advertising by third parties appears to be increasing in Australia. This article analyses recent official data on political expenditure, and situates such campaigning in historical perspective with case studies of the bank nationalisation, Medibank, WorkChoices and mining tax campaigns. The success of the latter two campaigns illustrates the potential for well-resourced sectors to employ what has traditionally been seen as an 'outsider' tactic. The various drivers of the phenomenon are discussed, including evolving trends in political engagement and the media, and fluctuations in perceptions of governmental strength or weakness. The most distinctly Australian aspect of the phenomenon is the tendency in recent decades for governments and third parties to engage in a 'call-and-response' cycle of issue-advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the origins of policy agendas and what determines agenda setting? The one robust theory in the literature associates different agendas with different moments in the evolution of the broader party system namely mass, catch-all and most recently cartel patterns. This article explores Australian evidence for this thesis. It also argues the cartel moment has recently mutated. Agenda setting is now circumscribed by a mismatch between the needs of policy making and the political incentive structure. The media have become primary tissue connecting political elites to their publics. But this traps the system in short term, primarily populist stances. Systemic capacities to mediate agenda setting have thus been corrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the views of commentator Ian Marsh on an article published in the issue of the journal that they have edited which surveyed the development of the policy agenda in Australia since 1963. They oppose on the comments of Marsh citing that they overlooked the importance of political parties in the country. They assert that Marsh's views failed to note the role of other significant factors interacting with the party system to drive the policy agenda of Australia.

During the Australian Greens' first two decades of existence, electoral support for the party grew, and it was rewarded with ever-increasing numbers of its representatives occupying seats in Australian parliaments. The bases of electoral support for the Australian Greens are analysed, and its prospects in a two-party dominant system are considered. While the Australian Greens may never transcend small party status, the nature and source of its electoral support, combined with certain features of the institutional setting, provide it with a basis for a relatively enduring institutional and electoral presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a steady erosion of the major parties' share of the vote in Australia, minor parties have been unable to attract more than 15 per cent of the vote. Employing a variation of Katz and Mair's cartel party thesis, this paper argues that the major parties have an advantage in defining and limiting power sharing arrangements and setting and reacting to the policy agenda. They can act together to deny a third-party oxygen, or can deflect criticism of controversial policies onto the third party. A critical appraisal of seven cases of government formation involving the Australian Greens and Australian Democrats, along with two case studies of legislative negotiation shows that the electoral backlash is often borne by the minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The presidentialisation debate centres on the question of whether contemporary political leaders in parliamentary systems are more powerful than their predecessors. This article applies the presidentialisation thesis of Poguntke and Webb (2005) to the period in which Kevin Rudd led the federal parliamentary Labor Party in Australia. Their model identifies three distinct faces of presidentialisation: the executive face, the party face and the electoral face. This article argues that the evidence of presidentialisation under Rudd's leadership is mixed. The most compelling evidence is reflected in how Rudd interacted with the Labor Party, rather than his interaction with the executive or impact on voting behaviour. 关于总统化的辩论集中于当前国会的政治领袖是否比他们的前任更有权力。本文将普刚克和韦博（2005）的总统化理论应用于陆克文领导澳大利亚联邦议会工党的时期。他们二人总结了总统化的三个方面：行政面、党派面、选举面。本文指出，陆克文领导时期总统化的证据含混不清。最有说服力的证据倒是反映在陆克文与工党而不是与政府的互动或对选举行为的影响上。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research note replicates Leigh's (2008) analysis of pork-barrelling in Australian politics and tests the validity of his findings using geographic techniques. Distributive politics is integral to nearly all theories of legislative politics because it is fundamental to the connection between legislators and constituents, and can be used to facilitate coalition-building. This note addresses an aspect of pork-barrelling that has been overlooked in most previous scholarship. It argues that distributive politics is, at its core, a geographic, constituency-centred process. It is therefore essential to reconsider the conventional models and take geography into account in both substantive and statistical terms. To that end, we replicate several of Leigh's results using a relatively new technique, Geographically Weighted Regression, and reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity in the coefficients. Our findings highlight the importance of political geography and have important implications for studies of legislative politics and elections. 本文重复了李（2008）对澳大利亚政治分肥拨款的分析，用地理学技术检测了其发现有效性。分配政治内在于几乎所有的立法政治理论，因为它是立法者与选民之间联系的基础，有利于联盟的构建。本文探讨了分肥拨款被以往学术研究所忽略的一个方面。作者认为，分配政治其核心是一个地理的、以选区为中心的过程。因此有必要重新检讨固有的模式，切实而且从统计的意义上采纳地理的视角。我们使用了一种相对新近的技术，即地理加权回归分析来重复李的几个成果，发现空间同质系数很高。我们的发现突出了政治地理的重要性，对于立法政治以及选举的研究有参考意义。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia's main parties have experienced rapid deterioration in levels of membership but most have been reluctant to follow the lead of many of their counterparts in Western Europe and embrace more radical, inclusive pre-selection formats to arrest declining numbers. This paper offers a partial explanation of why the Liberal and Labor parties have been disinclined to look to reforming candidate selection as a strategy to combat their shrinking rank-and-file membership. It argues that compulsory voting in conjunction with high levels of party identification has reduced the imperative for Australia's major parties to resort to candidate selection reform as a device to stabilise their voter base. This study underscores the important role of the institutional setting in affecting the incentives for parties to use pre-selection reform to combat a shrinking membership base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The defeat of the Australian government's attempts to outlaw communism in 1950 and 1951 was a significant victory for the protection of civil liberties. Yet for the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, which had fought a long battle against the measures, the result was not greeted with a sense of triumph. The campaign to avert draconian powers exposed a Council struggling to adapt to the Cold War, and revealed tensions in the Council's belief in democratic institutions and the popular opinion that underpinned them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislation introduced by Prime Minister Robert Menzies to ban the Communist Party of Australia in 1950 has been studied in great detail, but there has been little discussion about why Menzies considered that an outright ban was the best way to thwart the Communist Party. Australia did not, for example, follow the American example of public show trials, denunciations and informants, characteristics of the phenomenon known as McCarthyism. This article explores the decision to reject the American model by focusing on legislation that the Liberal Party drafted in 1948, but never introduced. It also details the internal division of the Liberal Party over communism and the conflicted nature of Menzies’ own views. As a consequence, Australia did not introduce the equivalent of the anti-communist state apparatus of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its implications, there is considerably less certainty or strength of belief among the general public in some industrialised countries. One explanation for the lack of consensus is the partisan nature of political debate about climate change. A survey of Australian politicians demonstrates that political party affiliation and ideology have a powerful influence on climate change beliefs. Politicians from Labor and Green parties (centre-left and progressive parties) exhibited beliefs that were more consistent with scientific consensus about climate change than non-aligned or conservative leaders. Moreover, political ideology (left–right) emerged as the most important predictor of politicians’ climate change beliefs. These findings highlight the role of political partisanship and ideology in undermining consensus around climate change and suggest the need to build consensus through constructing climate change messages that appeal to closely held values and which advance the discussion of solutions along non-partisan lines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 rise of green parties in Australia follows a path that is well documented in the literature; the inability of other parties to accommodate environmental concerns, the increasing salience of green issues for governments and an electoral regime that permits party insurgency. This article examines how these factors have operated in Australia, and the extent to which a distinctive federal structure and federal electoral regulation of parties served to modify the emergence of a national green party. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We estimate the parameters of a reputational game of political competition using data from five two-party parliamentary systems. We find that latent party preferences (and party reputations) persist with high probability across election periods, with one exception: parties with extreme preferences who find themselves out of power switch to moderation with higher probability than the equivalent estimated likelihood for parties in government (extreme or moderate) or for moderate parties in opposition. We find evidence for the presence of significant country-specific differences. We subject the model to a battery of goodness-of-fit tests and contrast model predictions with survey and vote margin data not used for estimation. Finally, according to the estimated model parameters, Australia is less than half as likely to experience extreme policies and Australian governments can expect to win more consecutive elections in the long run as compared to their counterparts in Greece, Malta, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of federalism on the organizational arrangements adopted by Australia's parties endures. This study examines the organizational structure of the State and Territory divisions of the Australian Greens through an analysis of their local party constitutions. It shows that there are important areas of difference in the organizations of state and territory Greens, despite their shared ideological commitment to inclusive internal party structures. These variations are a function of institutional and political factors, especially those induced by the Australian federal system. It is argued that differences in the organizational formats of state and territory party divisions reflect the historical circumstances in which they emerged and variations in the institutional (regional) setting in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between the growing dominance of career politicians in the Australian federal legislature and models of party organisation. Using data on MPs in the Australian federal parliament, this study maps changes in models of party organisation to the occupational profiles of MPs between 1949 and 2007. The findings show a correspondence between the phenomenon of cartelisation and the appearance of legislators whose previous occupation was in the political sphere. The authors suggest that there is a relationship between different modes of party organisation and both the supply of candidates and the demand-side factors influencing party selectors. The paper concludes that theories of recruitment should include a greater emphasis on models of party organisation to explain better the uniformity of recruitment outcomes across advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do business contributions to political parties convey different messages in different countries, and, if so, why? This article presents a pioneering cross-national study of firm behavior in political finance. It argues that motivations for contributions to parties are either ideological or pragmatic. The author infers motivation by quantitatively relating the payments of 960 firms to various political parties in Australia, Canada, and Germany over periods of between seven and seventeen years. In coordinated market economy Germany, a small number of firms made ideological payments; in liberal market economy Australia and Canada, large numbers of firms made pragmatic payments. Australia's left-right party system creates an awareness of policy risk, which motivated ideological payments, but in Canada's unusually nonideological party system no ideological bias in business financing of politics was found. The statistical analysis is supplemented by a qualitative investigation of discrete and reciprocal exchanges between businesses and political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on candidate preselection in Australian political elections, also known as parliamentary gatekeeping. Topics include how elected politicians shape legislation in Australia, the impact of long-standing dominance by political parties in the Australian government, and calls for primaries for Australian politicians to lessen the impact of party preselections and oligarchical control.

Recent elections in the English-speaking world have thrown up results that were both unpredictable and history-making. In particular, the advent of multi-party and minority government in Britain and Australia, neither of which have proportional representation, raises questions about the capacity of major parties to remain dominant, and the place of minor parties and independents in the future. Here we argue that while the idiosyncrasies of the Australian political system have fostered the rise of independents in ways we are unlikely to see elsewhere, other features of the post-election negotiation process in the wake of the 2010 Australian election highlight the adaptive and innovative potential of major parties seeking office, and the resilience of smaller parties or independents seeking policy and votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article discussing the political preferences of Australian voters based on economic and postmaterialist values is presented. The author uses the example of the 2009 by-election for the Australian legislative seat of Higgins to examine an axis system created by scholars David Charnock and Peter Ellis, which measures the positions of Australian political parties, such as the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal/Nationals (Coalition,) by synthesizing data collected by the Australian Election Study (AES.) An analysis of the data, including voter turnout trends and ideological factors, is also included

This article evaluates the success of the Australian Democrats, a minor party that gained parliamentary representation in federal politics from 1977 until 2008. The party's contribution to Australian democracy is analysed in three areas: electoral, organisational and parliamentary, according to a broader notion of success that incorporates a party's longer term impact on the processes and culture of politics. Somewhat ironically, factors that contributed to the Democrat's success also brought about its downfall: the party's organisation, its electoral performance, parliamentary focus and the balance of power position the party held in the Senate that allowed it to negotiate with the major players. Nevertheless, the Democrats' activities mobilised other minor parties and created a lasting expectation in the minds of Australians that the Senate is an important forum for legislative scrutiny—more than a mere ‘rubber stamp’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In what ways, if any, do campaigns matter? Specifically, what can we say about election campaigns in Australia? If they shift votes, in what direction do voters move? A comparison of opinion poll data taken at the beginning of each of the last ten national elections with the distribution of the vote at the end of each campaign suggests that the gap in first preferences between government and opposition generally narrowed; certainly, it never widened. The data do not suggest that incumbency (being in government) is an advantage. Nor do the figures conjure visions of voters clambering on bandwagons—as we might expect if there were a 'spiral of silence'. Instead, the data point to an underdog effect, with the party that starts behind making up ground on the party that starts ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the leadership attributes and styles of the Prime Minister (John Howard) and the Leader of the Opposition (Kevin Rudd) prior to—and during—the Australian national election of 2007. Although he led his party to defeat, John Howard was still held in fair regard by the electorate. Kevin Rudd achieved high levels of popularity from the time he became Leader of the Opposition at the end of 2006 until the election of November 2007. Both leaders attracted comments about the elusiveness of their political personalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007 results in New South Wales reflect hard work by Labor, as well as the complacency of the Coalition, especially its leadership. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is well and truly back at federal level in NSW, having won a more solid victory in two party preferred terms than the Coalition had in 1996. In 2007, voters in NSW did not distinguish in any substantial way between the House and the Senate in their voting and, overall, voter support for the minor parties seems to have 'settled back' to its 1996 figures. Nonetheless the minor parties continue to play an important role in the marginal seats which went to preferences. The 2007 election in NSW was far from 'normal' because the Prime Minister, John Howard, lost his own seat of Bennelong. That loss was due to several factors, the most important of which was the changed demographic profile of the seat, underlined by the 2005 redistribution. The return of the incumbent Liberal Malcolm Turnbull in the seat of Wentworth (winning the seat on first preferences with a swing of 10.1 per cent) is also noteworthy, not least because he became the leader of the Opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the Australian monarchy—republican debate has considered arguments for and against the republic, the 1999 referendum and interpretations of the republic. Little attention has been paid to the debate's discursive construction. Therefore, this article analyzes the rhetorical strategies with which political parties and organized movements sought to persuade the public to adopt their position in the debate in the 1990s. The article discerns and analyzes various rhetorical strategies in terms of the patterns in their use among these elites. In contrast to the cognitive bias of much research in political communication, the article accounts for the embeddedness of these strategies in their public political, national-cultural and popular democratic contexts. It shows that the use of such strategies is a function of the sociopolitical context of actors' statuses as parties or movements. The article recommends combining deliberative democracy with discourse analysis to comprehend the dynamics of public political language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss the likelihood of the Australian Greens being able to develop into a party that plays an equivalent 'third party' role in the Senate similar to that played by the Australian Democrats for most of their existence. My conclusion, based on attitudes underlying voting behaviour, is that they cannot afford to behave contrary to their position as part of a left-wing bloc without jeopardising a substantial part of their voter base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Australian political parties have maintained official websites for some years, the 2007 Australian Federal election saw the first significant integration of Web 2.0 technologies into a national election campaign. The two major parties - the conservative Liberal Party and the socialist Labor Party - both embraced blogs, flash animation, online video and popular social networking sites in an attempt to win votes, particularly in the 18 to 35 year-old demographic. The Labor Party was far more successful in using Web 2.0 and their online efforts were judged to have played a large role in winning the absolute majority of voters under the age of 35 to its platform on election day in November 2007. Closer analysis of available polling data, though, suggests that the Web 2.0 campaign was largely insignificant in attracting young voters and that the notion that online campaigning will win over young Australian voters is largely misplaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the fusion of the Protectionist and Free Trade parties which established the party system dominating politics in Australia. It recaps some of the basic facts related to the development of Australian politics and tackles the evolution of the Fusion Liberal Party. It emphasizes that the nation was not alone in the socialist or anti-socialist bifurcation.

The article looks at politics in Australia in 2007. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister John Howard are reviewed, noting the replacement of Minister for the Environment and Heritage Ian Gordon Campbell by Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. A chart is presented which compares the number of seats in the Australian House of Representatives won by political parties during the election of November 24, 2007, including the National Party, the Green Party, and the Labor Party. Several major issues in national politics are discussed, including the Workplace Relations Amendment Act, Howard's election loss to Kevin Rudd, and political leadership.

This article explores the implications of the 2007 federal election in Australia as it effects the National Party, which changed its name to the Nationals in 2003. The declining support for this party in federal elections is framed as a function of the declining importance of the rural economy and agricultural values in that country. While all of the remaining Nationals in parliament are from rural areas, they now only represent a minority of legislative districts in those areas. The fact that the seats held by the Nationals are located in Eastern Australian states such as New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria is noted. The political fortunes of the Nationals are addressed in terms of the growth of urbanisation and the decline of protectionism in Australian politics.