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Conventional wisdom holds that asset owners favor parties on the center-right. This assumption, however, ignores the possibility that party positions may shift over time and across contexts. The electoral payoff from ownership thus depends on how the policies of the major parties treat those assets. In this article, we argue that the prediction that asset holders support right-of-center parties rests on the position-taking strategies of parties. We test this expectation with evidence from six elections in Australia and with a dataset of post-election surveys in 25 advanced democracies. Utilizing different measures for key concepts, both analyses support our claims. Study findings identify the supply side of electoral competition as an important condition for patrimonial economic voting and, more generally, confirm the role of parties in mobilizing voters around issues on which they have a competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the declining labour share of national income in Australia and its political aspects. Topics discussed include the focus of Australian economy on welfare, fiscal and labour market institutions; the impact of long Coalition rule in the country on class inequality and conflict; and the government's attempts to limit the power of labour unions.

This paper describes and contextualizes placenames on Palmerston Island, a small Pacific island populated by around 50 descendants of a mixed-origin group of settlers in the 1860s. The inhabitants today are monolingual speakers of a dialect that has been described variously as an English dialect or an English-based creole. I show that Palmerston English placenames are rarely complex or detailed descriptive names, and this can be accounted for by the small, isolated and densely-networked nature of the population. The isolation and transience of the community may also contribute to the high number of placenames that index people's names or other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of politics to the refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. It highlights the adequacy of humanitarian assistance of the Australian government for resettling the refugees through a managed programme in the country. It also cites the increase ability of the refugees to gain admission to the refugee resettlement programme in the country.