Search

In the debate over constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians since 2010, the high "Yes" vote in 1967 has been recalled as a benchmark of national unity and goodwill towards Indigenous Australians, something to which Australians must return. The 1967 referendum has been evoked as a "step" towards reconciliation, with constitutional recognition presented as the next step. The "recognition" that the 1967 referendum enabled has been (mis)represented as allowing Indigenous Australians to be counted in the Census, hence to "count" more generally. Explaining constitutional changes to voters in the referendum on an Indigenous Voice, "Yes" and "No" campaigns are likely to describe amendments in emotively powerful terms. False memories of "recognition" obscure a political fissure within the myth of 1967. Some who celebrate 1967 have wanted the Constitution to continue to distinguish Indigenous from non‐Indigenous Australians, one understanding of the 1967 amendment to Section 51(xxvi); others have hoped that the next referendum would complete the deletion of distinguishing words that had begun in 1967 with the repeal of Section 127. The myths of 1967 combine to accommodate opposing ideals of national "unity", allowing protagonists in the debate to read the "lessons" of 1967 in ways that reinforce their own political perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the prime minister's announcement, in May 2022, that Australians would be asked to decide whether to have an Indigenous Voice to Parliament inscribed in the Constitution, a large number of polls sought to measure the breadth and strength of support for a constitutionally enshrined Voice. Some also sought to measure the appeals that might make support for a Voice either more attractive or more vulnerable. This article shows that support for a constitutional amendment, while broad, was not strong: that while majorities were in favour of change—nationally and in most states—there was no majority strongly committed to change, and the majority in favour of constitutional change was declining. It shows that while most Labor voters and the Greens supported the change, Coalition supporters increasingly did not. And it shows which considerations appeared to resonate with respondents and which did not. In the course of documenting and analysing these findings, this article offers a critique of the polls: the wording and sequencing of some of the questions, some of the response options, and the questions not asked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reimagines the phrase 'Indigenous constitutionalism' (discussions about how constitutions affect Indigenous interests) and illustrates its application to recent Australian history. Three debates under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments formed the contexts of Indigenous constitutionalism as it is understood here: whether Australia should be a republic; whether Australia's law and government should be disciplined by explicitly stated 'rights'; and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians should 'reconcile'. The article explores the positions on constitutional amendment taken by Indigenous and non- Indigenous leaders and intellectuals, and by government inquiries. Some of the proposed amendments reappeared in Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Peoples in the Constitution: Report of the Expert Panel in 2012. Two issues in the reception of the Expert Panel's recommendations would reflect and continue debates of the Hawke, Keating and Howard eras. One was whether reconciliation was compromised or advanced by recognising distinct Indigenous rights. The other was whether judicial scrutiny of the executive and parliament should be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

None of the polls predicted the winner of the 2019 Australian election, the first such failure since 1993 when all the polls started reporting a two-party preferred (2PP) vote estimate of the vote share as well as the parties' first preferences. But the idea that the polls had enjoyed a very good run until 2019 is misleading: from 1993 to 2016, a fifth had predicted the wrong winner. This paper examines the performance of the polls against several measures: the outcome; margins of error; size of the errors; and estimates of the gap between the Liberal-National Party (LNP) and Labor. It shows that about a third of the estimates of the 2PP vote, Labor's first preferences, and the LNP's first preferences, involved errors greater than those attributable to sampling error. [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]

The distinction between polling and public relations—publicizing particular angles, setting expectations, and encouraging certain actions—is problematic. So, too, the assumptions that accurate predictions depend on pollsters asking unbiased questions, and that opinion polls are miniature referendums. The attempt to predict the outcome of the 1951 referendum on communism in Australia by Roy Morgan’s Gallup Poll illustrates these points. Morgan, wanting the referendum to pass, framed the issue accordingly. But he also thought the Government’s framing offered the best basis for predicting the result. Opponents reframed the issue and the referendum was defeated. This article, in exploring the relationship between polling and public relations, analyses Morgan’s questions, his forecasts, and his explanations for predicting the wrong result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What impact did the emergence of public opinion polls have on politicians and newspaper journalism? Based on interviews in the 1980s with American journalists and congressmen from the 1930s and 1940s, Susan Herbst argued that while “traditional” methods of assessing public opinion remained ubiquitous, attempts to quantify public opinion were also widespread. This paper offers a critique of her methods, questions the notion of a “transition”, and reports a different set of findings. Based on an exhaustive examination of the Australian metropolitan press during the 1951 referendum, it shows the limited impact of polls on political journalism—indeed, on political calculus more generally—and how heavily Australian journalists and politicians relied on “rational” measures of long standing not discussed by Herbst—results of earlier referenda and of previous elections, as well as the betting odds. It also shows the importance of a range of “traditional” sources—the reception accorded party leaders at campaign rallies, politicians and campaign organisers' reports, the extent to which the referendum had divided parties, judgments about the popularity of state governments, and the activities of key interest groups—some of which, again, are not noted by Herbst. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1951 referendum campaign to ban communism produced a massive shift of public opinion, from Yes to No. This article attempts to explain why. It examines the political appeals and rhetoric of the Liberal and Labor Party leaders, their coverage across the entire metropolitan press, and their use of radio. Breaking with earlier interpretations, it argues that Evatt's campaign encompassed wider issues than civil liberties, suggests that Menzies' campaign was damaged by unruly meetings and shows that neither side appealed exclusively to ‘reason’ or to ‘passion’. Ultimately, the success of the No campaign rested on its capacity to mobilise most Labor voters and to attract some Liberals. This was an extraordinary achievement, but it was secured using routine forms of electioneering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the influence of U.S. journalism on the press in Australia during the later 20th century. In particular, the use by the Australian news media of the Gallup poll as a gauge of public opinion is discussed. Specific topics discussed include: the first Australian Gallup poll, conducted in 1941 by the "Melbourne Herald" newspaper; public reaction to the poll; anti-American sentiment and perceptions of the Americanization of Australian politics; and changes in the Australian approach to opinion polling.

This article provides the first comparison of campaign coverage of candidates in an Australian federal election in the press, on radio and television, and on the Internet. It does so through analysis of a database that records the 50 most frequently cited candidates in news stories across all these media during the 2007 campaign. The analysis suggests: that although the news on the Internet placed less emphasis than television or radio on the idea of the election as a presidential contest, the Internet's emphasis on the Prime Minister compared with the Leader of the Opposition was greater; that, compared with the news provided by the older media, the Internet was more heavily skewed towards Government over Opposition candidates; and that the coverage afforded minor party and Independent candidates across all media was slight, with the Internet falling well below the coverage warranted on the basis of the candidates' share of the vote - a media, focusing more heavily on government candidates and less heavily on Labor candidates than warranted by this criterion. Far from re-ordering old hierarchies, the Internet news may have made the election a less even contest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we re-evaluate explanations, derived from the Australian Election Study surveys, for the Coalition's winning office in 1996 and holding it ever since. We show that, in occupational terms, electoral support for the major parties is less distinct than it was in the Hawke and Keating years. We document the shift to the Coalition, net of other factors, among older respondents, those with little education, and Catholics. And we show the shift to Labor among respondents from non-English speaking backgrounds. At the same time, we point to the failure of respondents on low or middle incomes to move in either direction. This leads us to an explanation for the Coalition's success grounded not so much in Labor's eroding blue-collar base but in terms of Howard's ability to construct a form of populist politics. We also demonstrate the significance of various issues, the part played by perceptions of the economy and the state of household finances, and the importance of voters' thinking that election outcomes matter. If we are right, not only are earlier analyses mistaken, but much of the political history of the period needs to be rewritten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Saddam Hussein was said to possess were central to the justification the Australian Prime Minister gave for Australia's decision to go to war in Iraq. When no WMD materialised, poll data suggested that the public felt misled. But the same data suggested that support for both the government and the Prime Minister was unaffected. Among critics of the war, this generated a moral panic about Australian democracy and the Australian public—its commitment to the end justifying the means, its failure to receive a lead from the Labor Party, its widespread apathy. It also led to an intense debate about why the charge of not telling the truth had weakened public support for Blair and Bush but not for Howard. This article explores the concerns expressed by critics of the war in the face of polling that suggested that Australians were prepared to support a government and its leader that had misled them—deliberately or otherwise. It raises questions about the contrasts drawn between polled opinion in Australia, Britain and the United States. And it argues that the differences in the pattern of opinion across the three countries were not marked and that what had cost governments support were views about how the war was going, not the failure to find WMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the expansion (and contraction) of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander franchise for Commonwealth, state and territory elections, and to a lesser extent local government elections; it outlines the arguments made for (and against) Aboriginal enfranchisement; and it examines alternative accounts of what drove the expansion (and contraction) of the vote. It pulls together data on Aboriginal enrolment, political awareness and party support, particularly in the Northern Territory. And it examines divergent views about the consequences of Aborigines having the vote: claims that the franchise is an empty formality; claims that it has allowed Aborigines to be manipulated; and claims that it has generated benefits — symbolic, expressive and instrumental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the conceptual difficulties and empirical realities politicians, public policy and poll following. Overview of the importance of public opinion to political parties; Impact of basing political strategies either too much or too little on public opinion; Relationship between polls and democracy; Influence of public opinion on the platforms of political leaders in Australia.

Lavelle (2004) takes me to task on three matters: one, that I neglect `some evidence of convergence'; two, that data `purporting to show voters' belief in the distinctiveness of the parties, actually reveal increasing numbers of voters unable to see much difference between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Coalition'; and three, that I ignore the success in recent years of minor parties and Independents. Since his claim about the minor parties, though only briefly elaborated, is the most substantial of these-indeed, the first two matters help establish the premises for the third-I shall respond to the other matters and then focus on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long gone are the days when the survey research community might have heeded scholar Alasdair Maclntyre's warning, in an essay on whether a science of comparative politics was possible, about the difficulties of `comparing attitudes independently of institutions and practices'; of the dangers, for example, of assuming that when one asks Italian, German, and English respondents to say nothing of Algerian, Jordanian, and Russian respondents about the pride they take in their governments, the concept of `pride' is one for which there is a shared, cross-cultural, understanding. Before the war in Iraq and after the fall of the regime, news media and polling organizations in North America, Britain, and Europe coordinated public opinion surveys on the war and related issues across various parts of the globe North and South, East and West though with a heavy bias towards the 39 `older democracies' and an even heavier bias away from the 62 `non-democracies', the number of countries chosen from the 43 newer democracies and 47 semidemocracies' falling somewhere in between.

That the major parties in Australia have converged is an idea of long standing. But proponents of the idea differ about when it happened, why it happened and what its consequences might be. In revisiting the party convergence thesis, this article does three things. First, it documents the recurrent nature of this thesis and its varying terms, arguing that claims of convergence: focus on some criteria while ignoring others; confuse movements in policy space with changes in party distance; and involve an implicit essentialism, so that any two parties that share an ideology are assumed to share policy positions that can be derived from that ideology. Second, it reviews studies of election speeches since the war, and studies of government expenditure patterns and tax schedules from Whitlam to Hawke, which cast doubt on, or heavily qualify, the idea that the parties have converged or lost their traditional distinctiveness. Third, it shows that on these matters the views of voters are closer to those of the policy analysts than to those of the pundits. Survey respondents continue to distinguish between the parties on particular policies and in Left—Right terms, they care who wins, and they think the party that wins matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While acknowledging that our study represents “a considerable advance on other studies of One Nation, its electoral support and social foundations“, and “correctly identifies the importance of conservative social attitudes of One Nation supporters“, Turnbull and Wilson take issue with three things: one of our key findings, based on the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES), that the vote for One Nation was driven by attitudes to immigration (among other things) rather than by a sense of economic insecurity; our argument around the fundamental difference between explaining the One Nation vote and distinguishing it from the vote secured by any of the other parties; and our refusal to cringe before the “comparative evidence about neo-populist parties“ or to defer to the superior wisdom of that political scientist extraordinaire, Australia’s present Prime Minister, John Howard.17 None of the points they make in relation to any of these things is even partly persuasive; for the most part, they are marred by errors of logic, fact, or interpretation. Each, however, is important - or potentially so. They merit, therefore, a response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper does three things. First, it offers a critique of the academic literature on the One Nation vote, focusing on the limitations of the work of political geographers and the methodological shortcomings of survey researchers. Second, it re-examines data from the 1998 Australian Election Study in order to explore the demographic and attitudinal forces that both drove the One Nation vote and distinguished it from the votes secured by the Labor Party, the Liberal and National parties and the Australian Democrats; this highlights the importance of gender, geography and class, of political alienation and of attitudes to Aborigines and immigration. Third, it suggests that the basis of One Nation's mobilisation did not lie in concerns about economic insecurity so much as in opposition to 'new class' values, particularly around race. In doing so, it challenges common understandings of the Party's constituency and of its distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political theory of Australian politics has been dominated, since the election of a Liberal-National Party government in 1996, by claims and counterclaims about electoral mandates. The government has privileged its position in the House of Representatives; opposition parties have pointed to their support in the Senate. This paper provides a historical re-examination of the meanings and merits of mandate theories; it outlines the difficulties posed by strong bicameralism for any mandate theory; and it shows how the rise of survey research has strengthened some claims to a mandate, especially in bicameral systems, while weakening others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A report into indigenous Australian children taken from their families recommended that the Government apologize. Three polls on the question of whether the Government should apologize produced three quite different results: a ‘yes’, a ‘no’ and one which was more evenly divided. This paper shows why this happened. It relates the results to three quite different understandings of what opinion polls should model: opinion expressed through plebiscites; ‘real’ opinion; and opinion based on some sort of deliberation. And it explores the relationship between what a poll-following Prime Minister might have done and scholarly judgments about ‘quality’ in public opinion polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1996 election campaign, the Liberal-National Party Coalition pledged that if elected it would partly privatise Telstra. The pledge was a central part of its campaign pitch. This paper argues that the proposal came at a time when the tide of public opinion had moved against privatisation; it shows how the Opposition used poll data both to present its own proposal in the most favourable light and to portray the difference between its position and that of Labor Government's as minimal; and, using the surveys commissioned by both sides, it evaluates the success of this strategy. More generally, it suggests that in a "post-ideological" age, party ideology remains important. And it illustrates how polls can be used by parties not just to establish what the majority thinks but to galvanise support, neutralise opposition and convert those who harbour doubts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on Civics Expert Group's formation of a strategic plan for a non-partisan program of public education and information on the Australian system of government, the Australian Constitution, Australian citizenship and other civics issues. Survey of public attitudes; Importance of education for citizenship.

Focuses on author Richard Mulgan's views on mandates. Issues over how mandates are taken by politicians; Guide to how politicians take a government's mandate.