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Various electronic voting channels have been introduced across a range of countries. In some countries these new channels have proved uncontroversial, while in others, they remain contentious and have even been abandoned. Relatively little is known about whether and why voters have confidence in new and old voting channels. Australia provides a useful case for researching these issues, since it is a mature democracy in which election processes and outcomes are widely accepted. The 2013 Australian Election Study results show that in this context, voters have most confidence in paper-based voting and least in voting via smartphones. Positive political attachments, ease of voting and familiarity with technology are all associated with higher levels of confidence in voting channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is known about the topic? Little is known about the state of mental health reform in Australia. This article describes the struggle to develop the systems of accountability necessary to assess national progress. What does this paper add? We provide some historical context regarding mental health reform and consider recent efforts in particular, before then describing current key opportunities. What are the implications for practitioners? Many people working in mental health are struggling to deliver quality services to Australians. This paper considers the broad policy issues which have led to this situation. This is useful for practitioners who can then better respond and participate in processes of systemic reform. Opportunities to engage now in key policy formulation are identified in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media is used by all aspects of society from citizens to businesses, but it also now used by political parties. Political parties use social media to engage with voters as a method of attract new voters or reinforcing the views of political parties' current supporters. An important consideration is the ethical conduct of political parties and politicians in how they use social media. It is now recognized that social media can also have negative aspects seen by the introduction of Fake News. These negative aspects of social media are often overlooked and have not been explored from a research perspective. This paper looks at the Australian 2019 General Election and discusses a major Fake News example that occurred during that election. The paper will also describe the different types of social media data was collected during the study and also present the analysis of the data collected as well discussing the research findings including the ethical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian elections are digitising. Electronic ballots, electronic certified lists, electronic scrutiny, and electronic data are becoming part of the electoral status quo. The digitisation of elections in Australia induces new vulnerabilities that malign foreign entities can exploit to subvert the nation's democratic sovereignty. Problems such as inauthenticity, data insecurity, and disinformation are amplified in today's epoch of digital era governance. Since these problems have the potential to erode the legitimacy of Australian elections, it is imperative to deepen understanding of these risks to optimise the nation's democratic resilience. Through applying a conceptual framework derived from democratic theory and public policy, this paper assesses the vulnerability of Australia's elections to foreign interference based on the Australian electoral system irrespective of adversary capabilities. It finds that Australia's federal elections are relatively secure from hard cyber security risks due to digital-analogue hybridity in electoral processes, but they are vulnerable to soft cyber risks such as digital disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political representation of ethnic minorities in a liberal democratic system is a crucial step towards having the interests of ethnic minority groups heard. The under-representation of ethnic minorities in a political institution can exacerbate inequality between majority and minority populations and increase feelings of alienation among minority groups. As a country observing increasing ethnic diversity, Australia saw record-level ethnic minority candidates elected in the 2022 federal election. However, the shares of candidates and elected Members of Parliaments with ethnic minority backgrounds are still much lower than their relative shares in the population. In this regard, Australia has lagged behind other major settler countries. In this paper, we examine the political representation of ethnic minorities in Australia's federal election. Drawing on data from the 2022 federal election and 2021 population census, we find a positive association between ethnic minority concentration and ethnic representation. However, for the two major parties, ethnic minority candidates are less likely to be in safe seats, even when the seat observes high ethnic minority concentration. Findings suggest that ethnic voting is evident but it is perhaps too early to celebrate higher levels of ethnic representation in Australian politics as political parties act as gatekeepers in safe seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There has been much work done investigating the adoption of online campaigns in UK general election campaigns. Although some research has focussed on the candidate-level (Gibson, R., W. Lusoli, and S. Ward. 2008. "Nationalizing and Normalizing the Local? A Comparative Analysis of Online Candidate Campaigning in Australia and Britain." Journal of Information Technology and Politics 4: 15-30; Lee, B. 2014. "Window Dressing 2.0: Constituency-level Web Campaigns in the 2010 UK General Election." Politics 34 (1): 45-57; Southern, R. 2015. "Is Web 2.0 Providing a Voice for Outsiders? A Comparison of Personal Web Site and Social Media Use by Candidates at the 2010 UK General Election." Journal of Information Technology & Politics 12 (1): 1-17), this is an under-researched area. This is despite early web-campaign scholars (Margolis, M., and D. Resnick. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution. Sage) maintaining that e-campaigning could provide the most important advantages to campaigns at the candidate level. In light of this, the paper aims to provide the most comprehensive study of candidate-level online campaigning carried out in the UK to date. This paper employs original data, measuring website and social media use by candidates during the 2015 UK general election campaign. These data allow for a detailed explanation of the normalization thesis, one of the leading theories in the field of e-campaigns. The findings here are significant as there are several instances where normalization does not hold, suggesting that online tools are contributing to campaign change. Green Party candidates subverted normalization to a significant degree, particularly on social media. Assessing the campaign content, a quarter of candidates adopted more than one interactive feature on their website and furthermore, interactive use of Twitter was the most common type of Twitter use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political trust has declined in Australia, reaching its lowest level ever recorded in 2019, there remain very few studies on what explains the variation in political trust and therefore what leads to such change in political trust is less certain in Australia. This paper examines the role of political performance, grounded in the valence model of electoral support, in shaping the political trust of citizens in Australia, using Australian Election Study data from 2001 to 2019. Political performance is measured by economic performance, partisanship, leadership image, political satisfaction, and leadership change, based on the valence model of electoral support. The results demonstrate that economic performance, leadership image, and political satisfaction have contributed to a change in the level of political trust in Australia, whereas partisanship and leadership change have not been significantly associated with variation in political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Like many other regional powers in the Asia‐Pacific, Australia is a middle‐sized state wedged between two great powers, the United States (US) and the People's Republic of China. While Australia continues to rely upon the US alliance for security, China remains its biggest trading partner. Over the past two decades, Australia's public foreign policy discussions have centred upon Australia's "China Choice" in the context of growing strategic rivalry between these dominant powers. This debate has sought to grapple with the options available to Australia in managing its relations with an increasingly assertive China and an unpredictable US. This article examines the public debate on China policy since the election of the conservative Liberal‐National Coalition government in 2013. It argues the appropriateness of a pragmatic foreign policy in relation to the engagement of great powers has been the central question in Australia's China debate. Yet what constitutes pragmatic action in relation to Australia's China policy is varied and based on differing understandings of how middle‐sized states can and do seek to cope with structural shifts. The paper also argues, however, that an emergent anti‐pragmatist tradition has recently emerged that reflects the unprecedented challenges facing Australian foreign policy and presents "pragmatism" as a threat to Australian sovereignty, principles, and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the social media networks and content of four Australian parties, assessing their relationship to the far right at the time of the 2019 Australian federal election. Using social network analysis, I map their relationship to a broader network of far-right actors in Australia on Facebook and Twitter, identifying pathways of communication, mobilisation and recruitment. The structure of the parties' networks points to highly centralised, leader-centric organisations, placing them in a vulnerable position in terms of sustainability. This is combined with qualitative content analysis, which finds little evidence of party organisation or campaign mobilisation on either platform, despite the context of a first-order election. Instead, these parties use social media primarily for the construction of collective identities and the development and dissemination of interpretive frames, practices typically associated with social movements rather than political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political processes are shaped by the gendered ways in which women and men are selected to run for political office. This paper examines the increase in women entering the parliamentary arena and employs a feminist historical institutionalism approach to understand how and why change in female representation occurs. We examine the interplay between formal rules and informal practices on candidate selection through the case of Queensland, Australia. Drawing on policy developments and analysis of election reports, we explore the difficulties in changing the gendered nature of political parties, the formal and informal processes, the pace of change and the political struggles and opportunities along the way. Factors supporting increased representation included leadership, sanctions, placement mandates, as well as vacancies and a 'glass cliff' political environment. Support for formal rules and quotas – despite resistance at the informal level – has gradually improved opportunities for women in one political party in this jurisdiction and achieved very positive outcomes. In contrast, the other major party has opposed quotas relying instead on informal practices and rules, which result in less positive outcomes for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Governments have historically offered their workforce a public service bargain founded on stable pay and conditions and job security. However, while the Westminster system aims for public service employment to be protected from the whims of government, public servants are nonetheless affected by the political environment in which they operate and changes to this bargain can occur with a new government. This paper focuses on a Queensland public service change process that resulted in large‐scale forced redundancies, non‐renewal of temporary contracts, and legislative changes that nullified the provisions in job security, organisational change, and redundancy policies. Using communication as a lens through which to understand leadership, it examines how the government communicated with the public service about this organisational change, immediately before and after the 2012 election. In particular, through analysis of public and media commentary, speeches and Hansard records, it examines Premier Newman's change leadership and communication by contrasting pre‐election messages to the public service with post‐election messages about the public service and the justifications for change during this period of downsizing. This analysis is used to reflect on political leadership, communication, fair treatment, and trust in public service change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and Aims: Following several deaths due to drug overdoses at music festivals in Australia, pill testing (or drug checking) has been proposed as a means of reducing the risk to young people. However, pill testing is a politically controversial policy in Australia. This paper examines the political dimension to the debate, its relationship with other social issues and how it divides party supporters. Design and Methods: The data come from the 2019 Australian Election Study survey—a large (n = 2179), nationally weighted representative probability survey conducted immediately after the federal election. Bivariate and multivariate analyses are used to identify the social groups, attitudes and vote preferences most associated with public views about pill testing. Results: Almost two‐thirds of the public support pill testing at music festivals. The young and those who do not attend church are most likely to express support. Supporters of other liberal social opinions, such as the legalisation of marijuana, are also strongly supportive of pill testing. Those who vote for one of the two main conservative parties are less likely to support pill testing. Discussion and Conclusions: While a majority of the public support pill testing, beyond the Australian Capital Territory this has not translated into policy in other jurisdictions. The results show that there is a high level of political polarisation surrounding opinions among both voters and political elites. This issue must be addressed if the policy is to be advanced as part of an overall harm reduction approach to drug use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on the article "Participation of Learning Disabled People in the Parliamentary Election of 2019 in the United Kingdom". Design/methodology/approach: Personal experience of advocating in Australia for the rights of people with learning disabilities to vote and to receive the necessary support to do so. Findings: People with learning disabilities have persistently been excluded from political participation. This is an abuse of their human rights. Originality/value: There are many barriers to the political participation of people with learning disabilities, and advocacy on a number of fronts will be necessary to achieve change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FOLLOWING THE PAPERS ON "GROWING UP CATHOLIC ANDPROTESTANT" BY MICHAEL KIRBY AND GERARD HENDERSON ONTUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2020, SYDNEY INSTITUTE CHAIR JACQUELYNNEWILLCOX LEAD A DISCUSSION WITH THE TWO SPEAKERS Jacquelynne Willcox: Thank you to both Michael and Gerard for that. So, how can you make the Labor Party more right wing inclined, which asyou pointed out, is the way that Labor wins elections, if the people you've got there aremoving to progressive positions? Gerard Henderson: You speak about putting labour back into the Labor Party. AFTER HIS SPEECH FOR THE SYDNEY INSTITUTE, ON WEDNESDAY 16DECEMBER 2020, THE WAS A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE HON JOELFITZGIBBON AND SYDNEY INSTITUTE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GERARDHENDERSON Gerard Henderson: Well, Joel Fitzgibbon, thanks for that. Gerard Henderson: But when you talk about the right path to victory, essentially asthe former convener of the national right, what you're saying is, the Labor right has gotto become more influential within the caucus. [Extracted from the article]

Summary: We examine the relationships between electoral socio‐demographic characteristics and two‐party preferences in the six Australian federal elections held between 2001 and 2016. Socio‐demographic information is derived from the Australian Census which occurs every 5 years. Since a census is not directly available for each election, an imputation method is employed to estimate census data for the electorates at the time of each election. This accounts for both spatial and temporal changes in electoral characteristics between censuses. To capture any spatial heterogeneity, a spatial error model is estimated for each election, which incorporates a spatially structured random effect vector. Over time, the impact of most socio‐demographic characteristics that affect electoral two‐party preference do not vary, with age distribution, industry of work, incomes, household mobility and relationships having strong effects in each of the six elections. Education and unemployment are among those that have varying effects. All data featured in this study have been contributed to the eechidnaR package (available on CRAN). This paper models all Australian federal elections from 2001‐2016 to examine the socio‐demographic drivers of electorates' two‐party preferred vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The campaigns and the final outcome of the Australian federal election, which took place on 21 May 2022, furnish a unique insight into the essentially right-wing nature of populism. The political phenomenon of populism can be defined as a construction of ‘elites’ based on identity, these being middle class and educated, as ‘the enemy’, while actual elites of wealth become the main policy beneficiaries. This has been termed a ‘bait and switch’ strategy. Before the election campaign, the Coalition had absorbed many aspects of populism, and populism was also being exploited to a very large degree by the One Nation Party, and by the United Australia Party. In addition, a noisy fringe of ‘anti-vaxxers’ were adopting the populist stance. Populism emerged frequently in the campaign, for instance in the transphobic rhetoric of candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves, the media output of Sky News, the publicity stunts of Prime Minister Morrison, and perhaps most persistently, in the propaganda of Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly from the UAP. However, despite all of this, the result of the election was a poor showing for the ONP and UAP, a victory of ‘teal’ independents in Liberal seats, and the Coalition’s loss of 19 seats — a disaster for the Morrison approach. In speculating about the future of populism in Australia, this paper seeks to explore the implications of these results. Such speculation includes the possible replacement of traditional media by social media, and the retreat of the middle-class populist core to a more far-right ideological positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using long panels of industry-specific offshoring information and subjectively reported well-being datasets mainly from Germany, which is also supported by datasets from the UK and Australia, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between offshoring and workers' subjective well-being in the source country. We employ panel data fixed-effects models with time-variant personality measures and industry-specific measures to alleviate the bias stemming from the non-random sorting of individuals in industries. Our findings suggest that offshoring negatively relates to workers' subjective well-being. The result is unexceptionally consistent across Germany, the UK, and Australia, and the effect is larger in business services and among high-skilled workers. We extensively discuss how contextual "fear-factors" prevailing in the source countries interact with the angst generated by the negative framing of offshoring. To single out such angst, we first show that objective and subjective job security concerns, job characteristics, and labor market conditions only marginally relate to the well-being effect of offshoring. Then, we investigate how the effect of offshoring on well-being is amplified by a larger set of contextual factors pertaining to temporary economic shocks, negative narratives about offshoring during electoral cycles, partisan political preferences, and high immigration rates. Finally, we show that a recent skill upgrade significantly diminishes the negative effect of offshoring on well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is general agreement that economic voting matters, there is less agreement on how to measure it. This paper examines the most recent conceptualization of economic voting: the ownership of economic assets or “patrimonial” voting. Using the 2016 Australian Election Study survey, we show that property ownership and, especially, share ownership were significant influences on party choice. By contrast, ownership of an investment property or a personal superannuation fund had no significant effect on the vote. We explain this finding through the specific policies that the parties advanced in the 2016 campaign. While Labor parted ways from the Coalition by proposing radical changes to the tax treatment of investment properties but with no retrospectivity, the parties had similar positions on the tax treatment of superannuation. The findings emphasize how party policies can shape the electoral significance of asset ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explain the nomination of ethnic minority candidates for lower house elections. We argue that these nominations are explained by the incentives that different parties face in different districts. Center-left parties reap greater electoral rewards when they offer descriptive representation, and that they also experience fewer difficulties in recruiting ethnic minority candidates. Therefore we argue that center-left parties have a greater incentive and ability to make their nominations more responsive to district demographics. More specifically, our hypothesis is that district-level ethnic diversity will increase the probability that any party will nominate an ethnic minority candidate, but this increase will be greatest for center-left parties. We look at multiple elections in Australia, the UK, and the US, and find consistent evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Even when center-left and center-right parties are nominating similar overall numbers of ethnic minority candidates, center-left parties’ descriptive representation patterns are more closely connected to district demographics. We argue that this helps explain how descriptive representation effects political competition more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a new framework for understanding the decision-making strategies of first-time voters. Using data from in-depth interviews with young people prior to the 2013 Australian federal election, the paper explores the extent to which our participants were knowledgeable about the upcoming election and the degree to which they invested cognitive effort into making their voting choice. The analysis reveals five distinct voting strategy typologies, which we use to construct a conceptual model that identifies and describes different voting approaches employed by young people. The findings show that young people are not a homogenous group of disinterested and disengaged voters. Instead, within a population of young citizens there are varying levels of interest and effort being invested into electoral participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change discourse is increasingly gaining ground in the political arena, both as a possible explanation and/or outcome of different crises and as "a climate crisis" on its own. With an increasing number of metaphors used to describe the phenomena linked to climate change, "net zero" is one the fastest emerging frames, yet it is understudied. This paper draws on climate security research and looks at the climate change discourse in Australia with a focus on the "net zero" target. Is climate change an explanatory instrument in Australian election campaigns that can be ascribed as a political concern? Climate change has been an appealing but undeveloped topic in Australian political discourse. In Australia environmental concerns have taken ground after the bushfires in 2019 and the climate discourse had an impact on the 2019 and 2022's electoral campaigns. Climate change is arguably the fastest growing concern in Australian politics; it is fair to say that the 2022 election was "the climate election". This research adopts a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis approach for a systematic analysis of the "net zero" target in Australian political discourse, its political significance, and its resonance both in electoral speeches and social media in the last ten years. The corpus consists of presidential speeches during the elections and tweets by the Australia Prime Ministers in the timeframe from 2013 to 2022, also taking into consideration comments by users in Australia and worldwide. The analysis of the "net zero" target can contribute to a better understanding of how climate change is politically construed and communicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more and more political candidates using social media for campaigning, researchers are looking at measuring the effectiveness of this medium. Most research, however, concentrates on the bare count of likes (or twitter mentions) in an attempt to correlate social media presence and winning. In this paper, we propose a novel method, Interaction Strength Plot (IntS) to measure the passive interactions between a candidate’s posts on Facebook and the users (liking the posts). Using this method on original Malaysian General Election (MGE13) and Australian Federal Elections (AFE13) Facebook Pages (FP) campaign data, we label an FP as performing well if both the posting frequency and the likes gathered are above average. Our method shows that over 60% of the MGE13 candidates and 85% of the AFE13 candidates studied in this paper had under-performing FP. Some of these FP owners would have been identified as popular based on bare count. Thus our performance chart is a vital step forward in measuring the effectiveness of online campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the asylum-seeker discourses of prime minister Malcolm Fraser and his minister for immigration and ethnic affairs, Michael MacKellar, during Australia’s 1977 federal election campaign, with those of prime minister John Howard and his minister for immigration and multicultural affairs, Philip Ruddock, during the much-analysed 2001 election campaign. It argues that in 1977 Fraser was not an outspoken advocate for asylum seekers as he was later in life, but that his silence—when considered in conjunction with MacKellar’s emphatic and humanising statements—functioned to depoliticise boat arrivals and calm public concerns. Further, it demonstrates that the arguments prosecuted by the Howard government in 2001 were not new; similar arguments had been made in 1977 but were decisively rebutted by MacKellar at the time. This analysis ultimately suggests that while government discourses have the power to amplify the latent fears and hostilities that can lead to moral panics, they also have the capacity to defuse them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the developed world, recent Australian political history is uniquely turbulent. This situation invokes indecision regarding investment decisions in both the real economy and the financial markets. This paper explores the relationship between uncertainty in Australian federal election polling and resulting financial market uncertainty. Empirical evidence suggests that increasing (decreasing) levels of uncertainty around the election result induce higher (lower) levels of uncertainty in financial markets. The effect is more pronounced as polling day approaches. Industry-level analysis suggests that the base materials sector is most significantly affected by election uncertainty in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various systems have been tried or proposed for filling casual vacancies in legislative Houses elected by proportional representation. Because such Houses involve multi-member constituencies and representatives of a variety of views, the traditional by-election to elect a single member would not be sensible as the majority would win even seats previously held by minorities. Thus, various other methods of filling casual vacancies have been adopted. Some involve a new selection in the form of indirect election by continuing Members of Parliament ('MPs'), while others involve a process which does not require renewed political judgement such as re-examining the ballot papers from the general election. Several other methods of replacing departed members have also been used or proposed in Australia. This article outlines the features of all the systems, past, existing or proposed, and assesses them against a list of criteria which represent the desirable features of such a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon public sphere theories and the “mediatization of politics” debate to develop a mapping of the Australian political public sphere, with particular reference to television. It discusses the concept of a “political public sphere,” and the contribution of both non-traditional news media genres, such as satirical television and infotainment formats, to an expanded conception of the political public sphere. It considers these questions in the context of two case studies: the Q&A program on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and its uses of social media and interactive formats to engage citizens, and the comedy program Gruen Nation, also on the ABC, which analyzed the use of political advertising to persuade citizens during the 2013 Australian Federal election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) is distinguished by its extensive involvement in electoral politics and public policy. This paper traces WEL's development as part of the broader women's movement, considers its engagement with government and situates it in relation to Australian and international political traditions. It describes WEL's distinctive style of political engagement, through its candidate surveys for the 1972 federal election to the online party scorecards of the 2000s, and the more than 900 policy submissions along the way. Personal connections via the ‘femocrats’ and feminist members of parliament strengthened WEL's policy influence and helped it realise (at least for a time) the goal of a feminist policy machinery across the whole of government at both commonwealth and state/territory levels. WEL has also been part of a broader women's movement, generating tensions as well as inspiration and support. With characteristic pragmatism, WEL members made sense of their place in the movement by working for the ‘preconditions of revolution’ from the reformist end of a ‘continuum of radicalism’. They were aiming to broaden the impact of feminism by making gender equality part of the core business of government. This is a project that was undermined by major changes in political conditions, but which WEL continues to pursue through its particular focus on policy analysis and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Liberal Party leader - and now PM - Tony Abbott declared the 2013 Australian federal election to be a 'referendum on the carbon tax', debate on climate change by both major parties, as a problem and as a policy, appeared to be largely absent. This paper examines the discursive characteristics of this debate by examining the election launch speeches of both party leaders and by using the Leximancer text analytics software to map both the frequency and conceptual relationships within mainstream media coverage. The strength of this software is that it allows a researcher to both map the quantitative nature of the linguistic characteristics of a corpus of texts, and to use this conceptual mapping to examine the results qualitatively. The paper concludes that quantitatively, in comparison with the previous two elections, climate change was a second order issue. Further, a qualitative analysis of the debate that did occur, concluded that it was largely framed in relation to the politically contentious 'carbon tax'. Building on these results, it then discusses whether the apparent waning of political will by both major parties to substantially engage Australian voters on the need to take carbon abatement seriously, is a genuine reflection of voter apathy, a reaction to an over reliance upon opinion polls or symptomatic of a broader political and media disconnect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research is ambiguous about the status of Australian regional elections, seeing them as conforming to the second-order election model but also as affected by regional politics. We clarify this ambiguity, drawing on aggregate and individual level data to explore the variable impact of national and regional incumbents on regional elections. Although national incumbents seem to affect Australian regional elections, under some circumstances regional incumbent parties are able to electorally outperform their national incumbent counterparts. We suggest that Australia's uncoordinated national and regional election cycles and federal distribution of policy responsibilities both help to focus voter attention on the performance of regional incumbents. The way that regional incumbents manage key policy issues, including Covid-19 in recent years, appears to matter for their electoral support, making Australian regional elections more than second-order events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public knowledge of what is said in parliament is a tenet of democracy, and a critical resource for political science research. In Australia, following the British tradition, the written record of what is said in parliament is known as Hansard. While the Australian Hansard has always been publicly available, it has been difficult to use for the purpose of large-scale macro- and micro-level text analysis because it has only been available as PDFs or XMLs. Following the lead of the Linked Parliamentary Data project which achieved this for Canada, we provide a new, comprehensive, high-quality, rectangular database that captures proceedings of the Australian parliamentary debates from 1998 to 2022. The database is publicly available and can be linked to other datasets such as election results. The creation and accessibility of this database enables the exploration of new questions and serves as a valuable resource for both researchers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an international trend in recent years towards voters casting an early ballot. In the 2016 Australian federal election almost one in three votes were cast in this way, most of them in person using pre-polling centres. This trend towards early voting raises both normative and practical questions about the purpose of election campaigns and how they are conducted, as well as what party advantage may be gained from the process. This paper applies multivariate analysis to the 2016 Australian Election Study to test four hypotheses related to early voting. The results show that early voters have less trust in politics and are less likely to participate in the election. There are small but consistent electoral advantages to be gained from early voters for the Liberal-National Coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the 56th Annual Surgeons' Meeting (Vic ASM) that was held on October 24-25, 2014 at the Sheraton Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne, Australia. Topics discussed include upcoming Victorian parliamentary elections, a representative group of metropolitan hospitals' surgical directors and Victorian Regional Committee (VRC) members met with key political representatives Health Minister David Davis, Shadow Minister Gavin Jennings and Greens Spokesperson Colleen Hartland.

Economic reforms since the 1980s resulted in weaker wage growth and the retrenchment of the welfare state. Labor's declining share of income in conjunction with consistent asset price inflation, created an environment where the electorate increased its demand for credit to which politicians, driven by opportunistic re-election motives, respond positively. The empirical findings suggest that politicians, irrespective of their ideology, introduce policies and manipulate credit growth to maximize their re-election prospects. Moreover, the results indicate that partisan politics in Australia have become less pronounced, suggesting an ideological convergence of the two major political parties with respect to credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Liberal National Party ('LNP') won 78 out of a possible 89 seats in Queensland's 2012 state election. Facing a budget blowout, the new Government soon used its control of the state's unicameral parliament to implement a contentious public sector reform agenda. The LNP's amendments to Queensland's employment laws struck at the very heart of many of the accepted 'ground rules' of industrial relations. Perhaps most significantly, the Government used its parliamentary majority to remove job security commitments given to public servants, paving the way for the loss of thousands of jobs. This paper sets out the key industrial relations reforms adopted by the LNP. The authors discuss the Government's rationale for the changes, and the reaction from Queensland's trade union movement. The article concludes with some general observations about the changes adopted during the LNP's term of Government; a period which will undoubtedly be remembered as a controversial part of Queensland's industrial relations history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the use of new media by Australian political parties and individual candidates in the 2013 federal election. It updates research undertaken over the past decade on institutional responses to new technological affordances in electoral campaigning. Using content analysis, interview and third-party data, the paper demonstrates that the major political parties in Australia have increased their use of new media in their overall communications mix, with a heightened focus on advertising in social media, the integration of various online channels, and through creative fundraising strategies. It is argued that the major parties considerably professionalised their management of new media for the 2013 campaign, and the lessons from this election will endure into future electoral contests. The data from the content analysis suggests that the online visibility of minor parties and individual candidates appears to be declining, outside of gaffs, and the novelty reporting of 'quirky' candidates. The exception to this remains the Australian Greens, because of their natural affinity with voters most likely to be heavy users of new media. The increasing sophistication of data-driven, targeted advertising further reinforces the capacity of the two major Australian parties to dominate the new media environment due to their disproportionate access to electoral resources. This appears to provide further, but not unambiguous, evidence of the 'normalisation hypothesis' of institutional new media adoption in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During elections, alongside more serious political comment, members of the public will use microblogging services such as Twitter to express their feelings about being a voter. This paper explores forms of ambient solidarity that are enacted by such metadiscourse about voting. In particular I focus on the role of iconisation in this discourse - in other words, the discursive processes by which micro-bloggers align around shared values materialised as 'bonding icons' (Martin & Stenglin, 2007; Martin, 2007). The texts considered are a corpus of tweets containing the hashtags #ausvotes and #auspol posted to Twitter during the 2013 Australian federal election. A salient icon in this corpus is the 'sausage sizzle' (a form of outdoor barbeque), employed as a humorous symbol of camaraderie in the context of communal complaints about the voting experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyse the campaign communications of three of the four major parties who contested the 2013 Australian federal elections: the Australian Labor Party (Labor), and the conservative Coalition consisting of the Liberal Party of Australia (the Liberals) and the National Party of Australia (The Nationals). I pay special attention to the message and image strategies of the leaders of Labor and the Coalition, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. I discuss campaign slogans in four overlapping debates, which, at least for Labor, were critical to the election result: (1) the carbon tax, (2) asylum seekers, (3) party reform, and (4) economic management. I arrive at three major conclusions. First, the 2013 elections narrowed the bipartisan language and thinking in which the differences between the rivals, except perhaps on carbon pricing, were fewer than they wanted the voters to believe. Second, the language of electioneering moved from long-term policies in the plural to short-term politics in the singular. And, third, the increasingly irrational discourse of the election period has not dissolved, but rather hardened following the election of the new Abbott government. Today it is affecting many areas of political life, including those that were not contested subjects in 2013, such as international, regional and interethnic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we question commonly held negative perceptions of minority governments and determine whether they can be trusted to deliver on the promises contained in governance agreements, whether they are stable in being able to govern over full terms of parliament, and whether they are productive in being able to successfully pass legislation. We examine eight minority government agreements and the following eight majority government opening parliamentary agendas in Australian national and state governments from 1989 to 2018 and compare their performance using legislative data. The main differences are not how long they last or how much legislation they pass, but rather that majority governments generally make more commitments, particularly more policy-focused commitments. They are also more successful in fulfilling their promises, albeit not completely. We theorise that major parties faced with having to form a minority government agreement will overpromise in order to secure power but can underdeliver due to the risks for minor parties and independents in forcing elections over breaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was RobertMenzies who led the Liberal Party to victory in 1949, andit was the very same Robert Menzies who presided over theLiberal Party's dreadful defeat three years earlier in1946. I think it's unlikely that the Liberal Party will regainsuch seats as North Sydney and Kooyong until there is aLabor government that happens to preside over a period ofeconomic decline which adversely affects the economicinterest of voters in these seats in a significant way. This may be the case, but the factis that the Liberal Party cannot form majority governmentwithout the support of the Nationals, and the Nationalscannot hold Cabinet positions unless they are part of thegovernment led by a Liberal Party prime minister. I think it's unlikely that the Liberal Party will regainsuch seats as North Sydney and Kooyong until there is aLabor government that happens to preside over a period ofeconomic decline which adversely affects the economicinterest of voters in these seats in a significant way. [Extracted from the article]