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Incivility in parliaments is always prominently displayed in media reports, often with the implicit or explicit commentary that the situation is getting worse. This paper processes and analyses the records of verbal interactions in the Australian Parliament for over 100 years to provide a first approximation on the evolution of civility. It provides a framework for understanding the multidimensional nature of civility that examines both 'politeness' and 'argumentation', with the latter grounded in notions of public-mindedness. The analysis focuses on the interactions between parties of the orators and the party in power, the chamber of utterance, and the year. The results indicate that instances of impoliteness have increased since the 1970s but only modestly and remain highly infrequent. Minor parties, particularly those representing right-wing and Green politics are more likely to use dismissive or offensive language than the dominant centre-left and centre-right parties, although direct insults and swearwords are the particular remits of right-wing 'system-wrecker' parties. All these minor parties, nonetheless, also display higher levels of argumentation in their interventions. This combination of aggressive language and increased argumentation highlights the pressures on minor parties to convey their points in a forceful way, a challenge that is particularly pressing in two-party systems like the Australian one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current Australian carbon sequestration laws have been passed by State Parliaments in anticipation of the overarching national scheme. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, although not yet implemented, is a good indicator of future national policies. This paper analyses the current carbon sequestration laws which employ traditional property categories such as restrictive covenant, profit à prendre, chose in action and sui generis rights for forest property rights and carbon sequestration rights. Multiple problems and potential adverse effects of the current arrangement emerge from this analysis. None of the categories appear to be suitable to operate in the novel climate change scenarios. The other traditional property candidates such as easements in gross and long-term leases seem no better suited. After consideration of overseas experiences - that of the European Union and the United States - the solution to the current problems is found to reside in the Green Paper model proposed by the Australian Government in July 2008. However, the proposal has recurred neither in the White Paper nor in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 (Cth) introduced on 14 May 2009. The main features of the model are: creation of regulatory property rights; use of the National Carbon Accounting System and satellite monitoring; temporary carbon permits issued directly to landowners. The political, constitutional, economic and legal aspects of this model are discussed. It is argued that regulatory property achieves the market-based regulatory goals without any of the adverse effects of the current arrangement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most widely-endorsed norms in Australian politics is the requirement for bipartisanship in the management of defence and security policy. This norm is assumed to lead to good policy creation, foster political unity, and protect those who implement national policy (particularly the military). The paper argues that evidence for all three of these claims is overstated. In addition, the effects of the norm are often counter-productive and even harmful to the conduct and management of Australian policy. The paper concludes by arguing that the norm of bipartisanship for Australian defence and security policy should be abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analogy by reference to statute as a tool of legal analysis in the development of the common law is not prohibited. Recent cases confirm not only the existence of the tool but provide evidence of its use and application. However, to state that the judiciary on occasion develops the common law by analogy to statute - a concept that has been labelled the 'doctrine of analogy' - is simply to make a statement of conclusion. And that statement of conclusion invites several further questions. Is analogical reasoning by reference to statute qualitatively different from the usual type of analogical reasoning on which the common law depends? From what authority is this mode of reasoning derived? Put in different terms - what is the judicial function? This paper proposes that viewing the development of the common law through the lens of formal rules and substantive reasoning can assist in identifying the way the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute, and the basis upon which the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue involving the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in Australia is about which level of government can legislate on the subject of marriage under the distribution of powers provided by the Constitution. The country has an express provision in the Constitution granting Federal Parliament the power to pass laws on the subject of marriage and other correlating issues. Hence, an amendment to the Marriage Act was enacted in 2004 so as to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Firstly, this paper analyzes whether the Federal Parliament has the authority under the Constitution to legislate on same-sex marriage. Secondly, the paper discusses whether any Australian state could grant a right for same-sex couples to engage in marriage that is not recognized under the federal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, drawing on interviews with 13 male and 15 female members of the Australian parliament, has two aims. The first is to contribute to knowledge about the nature of the Australian parliament, an institution which has seldom been subjected to gender analysis. This is particularly pertinent given the significant increase in women's representative status over the past decade. The second of the paper's aims is to demonstrate the efficacy of contemporary gender and organisational theory, particularly work on men and masculinities, for investigating questions related to women's involvement in politics. The paper draws on Joan Acker's (‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations’, Gender and Society, 4, 1990, 139–58; ‘From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions’, Contemporary Sociology, 21, 1992, 565–9.) notion of ‘gendered organisations’ to interrogate the data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the issue of same-sex marriage in Australia, from both legal and social perspectives. First, it places the marriage debate in its Australian context, noting the ways in which same-sex relationships have been recognised in Australia other than through marriage. Second, it assesses some of the legal constraints on recognition of same-sex marriage, in particular the current statutory definition and the allocation of power over marriage to the federal Parliament in Australia's federal system. Third, it examines the social and political debate about same-sex marriage in Australia. Finally, the paper considers whether same-sex marriage in Australia is something worth fighting for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of voters’ gender on leader evaluations in parliamentary systems has been largely unexplored, while the impact of female leaders on voter attitudes and preferences remains to be fully established. This paper uses Julia Gillard’s historic candidacy in the 2010 Australian federal election to explore how voters evaluated Australia’s first female prime minister, and to test the impact of their assessments on vote choice. The authors also examine whether Gillard’s high-profile candidacy affected women’s levels of political interest, awareness and engagement in what had been largely a ‘man’s game’. Their findings confirm that Gillard enjoyed a gender-affinity effect in 2010 in terms of both leader evaluations and vote choice, and women’s political engagement was significantly affected by the Gillard candidacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mash-ups, applications that use data from two or more different online services to create new services, are a slowly growing and relatively new technology being adopted by libraries. The Australian Parliamentary Library has used a mash-up technology, Yahoo Pipes, to innovatively solve the problem of how to collect press releases from Senators and Members for a national repository. Yahoo Pipes is an application that lets any user aggregate, manipulate, and mash up content from around the web. This paper describes how mash-ups are used in libraries generally and the implementation of Yahoo Pipes in the Parliamentary Library to collect press releases of Senators and Members, and describes issues identified through undertaking the project and considers areas for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary libraries provide access to information and analysis and advice to members of parliament and their staff. The need for high quality, impartial and timely information is critical in the parliamentary environment, and it is a challenge to balance these requirements in information delivery. This paper summarises from audio transcripts stakeholder perspectives on the Australian Parliamentary Library from the Joint Chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on the Parliamentary Library, Leader of the Australian Democrats and Clerks of the Senate and House of Representatives. Feedback from a recent client survey and focus groups is included, together with reflections on how strategic planning in the Australian Parliamentary Library should address the issues identified. These are the same issues faced by all research libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Australia''s Federal Government introduced into Parliament the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 on 7 February 2007 to establish its ‘access card’ ID system. The Bill is only half of the blueprint for the ID system: the other half is yet to come in a Bill or Bills not yet seen. This paper analyses the Bill and explains the dangerous opportunities for ‘function creep’ that the Bill provides; how the Register will constitute an unprecedented accumulation of personal information on Australians; how it only defines the ‘Commonwealth area’ of the chip and not the equally sensitive ‘cardholder’ area; how offences which are supposed to prevent abuses are illusory in many situations; and how all governments are exempt from offences. The ‘access card’ proposal carries with it the same dangers as the ‘Australia Card’ proposal rejected by Australians 20 years ago, but is more dangerous because of its greater technical sophistication. The ‘access card’ scheme remains extremely contentious and the Bill''s passage is not a certainty. An Appendix contains a list of amendments to the Bill which would make it less dangerous, though still misconceived. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]