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PANELS

The media and politics   Federal election 2001 

Caner Bakir, Department of Politics, Monash University
Who needs a review of the financial system in Australia? The case of the Wallis Inquiry
The central premise of the financial regulatory changes proposed by the Wallis Inquiry (1997) and adopted by the Howard government was the reorientation of the then existing institutionally based financial regulation towards a functionally based one with new prudential and disclosure regulators. This paper uses governmental agenda setting framework of John Kingdon (1995) to explain the financial regulatory change. It also examines the role of the Inquiry in the policy process. The abstract financial regulatory model (ie., 'twin peaks') and its specific solutions were already out there. The Treasury sold 'twin peaks' idea to the then Labor government Treasurer and Liberal Party opposition shadow Treasurer before the March 1996 federal election. However, the Treasury's problem was that it had difficulty connecting its solutions to the political leadership during the years when Paul Keating was Prime Minister. The 'political window' was opened following the federal election with the new government which was keen to achieve financial regulatory reforms to address future regulatory challenges proactively and the new Treasurer who wanted to consolidate his power within markets and politics. Treasurer, Peter Costello coupled the Treasury's solutions to problems and to political process as a 'policy entrepreneur.' The Wallis Committee was 'packed' by the government in accordance with its regulatory policy preferences. The role of the Inquiry was to legitimise the government's policy preferences publicly, and to transfer the 'governmental agenda' into the 'public agenda.' However, this was not a case for the government pressuring for its policy preferences over the financial services industry. In fact, the Inquiry was used as a 'venue' to generate the industry and public support for the regulatory changes, and was used to build network of alliances within and outside the parliament.
Email: Caner.bakir@buseco.monash.edu.au

Damien Cahill, History & Politics Programme, University of Wollongong
The markets, morals and civil society project: Conflict and consensus on the Australian Right
Throughout the 1980s there were public disagreements within the Australian intellectual Right — between conservatives and neo-liberals — over the appropriate role of government within the economy. Whilst Labor was in power federally, and while communism still existed as a perceived threat, these tensions were kept in check by the common hostility of both conservatives and neo-liberals to the 'new class'. The defeat of Labor and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe led to the exacerbation of these tensions into quite public splits within the intellectual Right. At the same time, neo-liberalism came under sustained, well publicised attacks from intellectuals and activists on the Left, which helped to brand 'economic rationalism' as a dirty word. It was primarily in response to these attacks that the neo-liberal intellectual movement initiated, what I term, the Markets, Morals and Civil Society Project - an attempt to combine neo-liberal support for small government, with conservative concerns such as the family, virtuous behaviour and community, and to ground support for such structures in free-market theory. The Markets, Morals and Civil Society Project lies at the core of the recent neo-liberal interest in terms and ideas such as 'civil society', 'non-market relationships' and the 'moral underpinnings of markets'. Although reflecting developments in neo-liberal discourse abroad, and whilst also reflecting concern with emerging capitalist economies in Asia and Eastern Europe, this paper will argue that the primary motivation of the Markets, Morals & Civil Society Project has been a strategic one —to defend the virtues of neo-liberal capitalism from its critics on both the Left and the Right. The Project has largely been successful in reconciling tensions on the intellectual Right.
Email: dcc01@uow.edu.au

Bruce Chapman and Linda Botterill, Australian National University
Drought policy in Australia
Since the introduction of a National Drought Policy in 1992, the Commonwealth government has been grappling with the challenge of developing an equitable response to farmers affected by severe drought. Concerns have included the blurring of business and family objectives of the family farm, the need to meet both business and welfare support objectives and the core problem of defining drought. The policy approach has emphasised that drought is a normal part of the farmer's operating environment, to be managed like any other business risk. However, there has also been recognition that rare and severe droughts occur which warrant government support. This paper explores the major policy issues associated with the provision of drought support and canvasses some alternative approaches for further research.
Email: linda.botterill@anu.edu.au

Peter Chen, University of Melbourne
‘They're not like us’: The deamalgamation of Delatite Shire
The forced amalgamation of local councils in Victoria under the Kennett government in the mid 1990s lead to a major period of upheaval and reform across the entire local government sector. Forced into new "mega councils" with appointed administrators and cuts to rate income, all councils struggled to merge political and administrative systems and cultures, manage service delivery, and move to new public management principles of contract management and privatisation of council functions. While most municipalities grudgingly accepted the new centrally-determined boundaries, Delatite Shire in North East Victoria saw ongoing resistance to the amalgamation from the southern community of Mansfield, bitterly opposed to the amalgamation with Benalla and the perceived loss of services and government staff from the region. From the formation of a locally-based residents association, the first democratically-elected council of the new shire was replaced by one comprised of pro-deamalgamation representatives, who successfully lobbied the State government for the opportunity to present a case for splitting the Shire. Following ongoing community consultation, the Council has been given the opportunity to split, an administrative exercise that will increase rates and create a new shire dependent on contracted services from surrounding municipalities. Examining the case, this paper explores the public debate and political strategies employed to advance and realise the deamalgamation policy, examining the problems associated with forming a community of interest within the new shire. Overall, the case presents some interesting comparisons with other pro-autonomy movements, the theoretical analysis of which is normally confined to religious and ethnic separatism. The paper concludes that, while practical limitations in effective public administration resulted from the ill-considered merger of Benalla and Mansfield, much of the political debate surrounding deamalgamation were based on the essential premise that separation was the only solution for significant financial and structural problems within the council. Thus political arguments were constrained within this 'pre-framed' debate.
Email: pche@unimelb.edu.au

John Chesterman and David Tucker, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne
Minority rights in democratic Australia
Two recent and strongly contested political debates in Australia have each resulted in the Commonwealth government's rejection of claims by minority racial groups, and in each case the rejection appears to have received the overwhelming approval of the Australian public. The two debates — concerning the 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act, and the more recent treatment of 'illegally arriving' asylum-seekers —have seen a conservative Australian government, buoyed by vociferous public support and a compliant opposition, take uncompromising stands against what many expert commentators regarded as legitimate claims. In this paper we analyse these debates in search of their democratic implications for Australia, and we examine the extent to which the rejection of the claims constitutes a new approach to minority rights in Australia.
Email: jhc@unimelb.edu.au

Kate Crowley, School of Government, University of Tasmania
Strained relations: Governing in minority in Tasmania
This paper looks at the strained relations in the two green supported minority governments in Tasmania, the Labor-Green Accord (1989-91) and the Liberal-Green Alliance (1996-8), with a particular critique of the policy effectiveness of the latter less formal undertaking. The paper firstly places these regimes in their historical context. It defines the Tasmanian experience of minoritarianism as comprising pre-green consensual minority regimes that enjoyed high legitimacy, stability and effective consensus building, and the more recent green supported conflictual minority regimes that enjoyed little legitimacy, stability or consensus building. Nevertheless, the paper argues that, whilst neither green supported regime was a durable one, both were innovative and reformist with credible, albeit contested legislative performances. Indeed both strongly illustrate Kingdon's notion of policy windows whereby problems, policies and politics come together at certain critical times, in times of crisis for instance, and facilitate fundamental policy innovation and change.
Email: Kate.Crowley@utas.edu.au

Jennifer Curtin and Dennis Woodward,Politics, School of Political & Social Inquiry, Monash University
Whatever happened to the rural revolt?
In the period prior to the 2001 federal election there had been much speculation that voters in rural and regional Australia would punish the coalition. It appeared that there was considerable disenchantment amongst such voters with both the National Party and the Liberal Party over a range of policies which were seen as having an adverse impact on them. These policies which were subsumed under the labels of 'economic rationalism' or 'competition policy', were seen to have reduced services in non-metropolitan areas, to have reduced supports and subsidies and to have threatened the livelihoods of rural dwellers. This disenchantment was reflected in the support for the One Nation Party in the 1998 federal election and in state elections in Queensland and New South Wales, and in election victories for the ALP at the state level. The formation of Country Labor was expected to capitalise on this disenchantment. Yet, the ALP was not swept to victory in 2001 on the wave of a rural revolt. This paper seeks to explain why the 'rural revolt' failed to materialise. It will be argued that the explanation lies in more than simply the exploitation of fears of terrorism and a swamping by refugees. This is not to say that these issues were not important. Indeed the skilful linking of them as 'border protection' with quarantine threats struck a responsive chord and the anti-refugee stance undercut key support for One Nation. Strategically targeted spending initiatives, however, should not be overlooked in mollifying rural disquiet. It will be argued that the coalition reacted to the threatened rural revolt with measures (both substantive and symbolic) which enabled it to meet the challenge when coupled to broader 'security' issues.
Emails: Dennis.Woodward@arts.monash.edu.au

Brent Davis, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
Wealth and voting: Some politico-econometric estimates for Australia
A considerable amount of scholarly effort, in political science, economics and public policy, has been devoted to identifying and quantifying the drivers of voting behaviour, in particular macro-economic (or sociotropic) voting. However, the great bulk of this work has focused on the United States, and generally just two or three macro-economic indicators - the 'usual suspects' of inflation and unemployment, and from time-to-time, economic growth. To the best of the author's researches 'wealth' has been used in only one published study, and then using a proxy indicator, although some other studies have used share prices as indirect measures of 'wealth'. No published studies have used explicit measures of wealth. This paper applies selected politico-econometric modelling methods to a set of macro-economic level measures of wealth made by the Australian Treasury for the period 1960-2001 to evaluate the influence of wealth on voting behaviour over a relatively long-term period, one which covers both Coalition and Labor Governments.
Email: brent.davis@anu.edu.au

Jed Donoghue, Bruce Tranter and Robert White
Australian dreams: Homeownership, shareownership and Coalition policy
From the Menzies years to the continuation of the First Homebuyers Scheme in this year's Budget, the Coalition parties have justified support for homeownership on the grounds that it fosters civic engagement. Although the electoral pay-off has been minimal, the policy has meshed with Australians' aspirations; around three quarters of all adult Australians now either own their homes outright or are purchasing them. Coalition policy on shareownership is a variation on this theme, and again, the Australian public seems to have been responsive. Since the Coalition assumed office in 1996 the number of direct and indirect shareowners has increased by more than 50%, with a majority of adult Australians now participating, at least nominally, in the market. Despite the scale of this shift in Australian patterns of investment, its effects have been little studied. In this paper we use data from the 2001 Australian Electoral Study to present a preliminary analysis. By comparing homeowners and shareowners overall, as well as variations within each category, we show that the two forms of investment have distinct electoral and civic implications. Electorally, homeowners are as likely to vote against the Coalition as for it, whereas shareowners are about twice as likely to support it. Shareholders who have entered the market since the Coalition took office do not differ significantly in this respect from those who had invested previously, which suggests that the pool of investors may have reached a natural limit. Civically, homeowners score more highly on a range of measures of engagement than do shareowners. We conclude that rising shareownership does not bridge divisions in the Australian electorate, as claimed in Coalition policy. Rather it reaffirms those divisions. Given these findings, ALP advocates for shareownership might well reconsider their enthusiasm.

Elizabeth Eedy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of the Sunshine Coast
Unresolved accountability issues in Australian higher education reform: A case-study
The wave of public sector reforms that have swept through all three levels of Australian government in recent decades privileges the already strong emphasis on technical rationality as a guide to administrative processes and outcomes. Administrative technical rationality has long been subject to criticism on a number of grounds, not least its propensity for depoliticisation of matters that should remain areas of contestation in the public area. The higher education sector has been caught up in this wave of reform and the debate around it, particularly through the development and implementation of institution-specific policies that carry out the current Federal Government's education reform agenda. This paper presents a case-study of several policy areas under development in one university, in order to explore the tension between the assertion and suppression of 'values' that underpins some of the controversy about current education policy, and the reform process in general. Central to this exploration are accountability issues, referring primarily to improved responsiveness to the 'community' and greater fiscal and productivity efficiencies, that underpin performance and output assessments that constitute part of the reform process.
Email: EEDDY@usc.edu.au

Melanie Fisher, Bureau of Rural Sciences
Linda Botterill, BRS Fellow, Australian National University
Magical thinking: the rise of the community development model
In recent years the community participation model has become fashionable among Commonwealth Government agencies. Since the success of the highly acclaimed Landcare program, a number of Government agencies has developed programs based on collective action solutions to a variety of social, environmental and community development problems. Like all fashion, this is not the first time that community-based programs have been popular but like all trends they may not suit everyone. This paper explores the recent popularity of these policy approaches and discusses the limitations of collective action, volunteer failure and burn out, and the nature of participation. It then suggests lessons that policy makers can draw about the application of community participation models to particular policy problems.
Emails: linda.botterill@anu.edu.au

Brian Galligan and Winsome Roberts, Department of Political Science, Melbourne University
The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics (OCAP)
This project funded by the Australian Research Council will produce a scholarly and comprehensive account of Australian Politics in a single volume work of reference accessible to general readers as well as scholars and professionals. The Companion will focus on key ideas used in scholarly writing on Australian politics, from past works to contemporary paradigms and current thinking; include key political institutions and events from the colonial past to the present, covering imperial and international relations, national, state and local government as well as non-governmental organizations, political movements and pressure groups; give coverage of milestones and trends in Australian politics and intergovernmental relations; and profile significant political actors. The Companion will include a compendium of factual information on key topics of Australian politics such as lists of Governors, Prime Ministers, State Premiers and results of referendums. The project will be assisted by a panel of Associate Editors to advise on the proposed framework, list of topics and the commissioning of major entries. The project will consult with colleagues and contributors at the annual Australasian Political Studies Association conferences. The paper will outline the proposal and present the draft framework and headwords.

Katharine Gelber, School of Politics and International Relations, UNSW
The scope of the implied right to freedom of political communication
Since the 1992 free speech cases in the High Court, which elucidated an implied right to freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution, the question of what this implied right actually means has become an important one. This paper examines the scope of this implied right from the perspective of struggles over its meaning and implementation. First the 1992 decisions and selected later High Court delimitations of the implied right are analysed. Within this context, the specific question of the regulation of pedestrian malls is examined. In both Queensland and Tasmania pedestrian malls which would under many circumstances be considered public space, are regulated by local councils in a manner which restricts free expression. These restrictions are examined in terms of what they reveal about the scope and implementation of the negative liberty of an implied constitutional free speech right.
Email: k.gelber@unsw.edu.au

Rachel Gibson, ACSPRI Centre for Social Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
Stephen Ward
State parties use of the internet in Australia
The World Wide Web (WWW) is used increasingly for communication by citizens and governments in most advanced democracies. Systematic study of its uses by, and effects on, traditional political actors such as parties and their voters, however, have generally been confined to the national level (Margolis et al, 1998, 1999; Gibson and Ward, 1998, 2000b and 2000c, 2002; Tops et al, 2000; Newell). This paper seeks to address this deficit by investigating the use of online technologies for parties at the state and territory level in Australia. Specifically, the goals of the paper are three-fold: first, to profile the overall levels of web activity by parties at the state level and the ease with which those sites can be accessed; second, to show how far the sites focus on opening the parties up to greater democratic scrutiny through information provision and feedback; and finally, to compare parties' performance online across states and consider how far other social and political factors are influencing their uses of the Internet. In doing so, not only will we provide a fuller picture of the enthusiasm of political actors in Australia for the new media technologies, but we also begin to build a theoretical understanding of why some are more enthusiastic than others. Does party outlook drive the move to get wired? Does federalism play a role at all in the diffusion of new ICTs.? Do certain states and territories have a greater web activity than others and if so, is this related to demographic characteristics such as the size of the urban population, or institutional factors, such as the electoral cycle or which party is in power. Perhaps none of these are significant and it is party outlook that determines most often who is online. In order to address these questions we focus on the federal, state and territory web sites of the two major parties plus those of the most active online minor party, the Australian Greens.
Emails: rachel.gibson@anu.edu.au

James A Gillespie, Department of Politics, Macquarie University
Political settlements and global bulldozers: Institutional models of Australian political development
A consensus model of political development has dominated recent approaches to Australian political history. Breaking from models of politics driven by class conflicts or the development of national consciousness, the new orthodoxy asserts that during the first decade of the new federation a class compromise or, in Paul Kelly's words, an 'Australian Settlement' was framed. Based on an interlocking and mutually sustaining set of economic and political institutions: tariff protection, industrial arbitration, the White Australian Policy, the Australian Settlement, the benevolent defence provided by the Empire, underpinned by the intervention of a 'paternal' state. Variants of this model, some more sophisticated than others, have dominated political analysis of the history of economic and social policy. This model has importance beyond the influential political narrative - and rationale for 'free market' reform- constructed by Kelly. Transcending a particular choice of policy settings, it identified deeply embedded conventions of governance. The paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of variants of this consensus model: from Kelly's highly influential political journalism through Francis Castles' critique of the 'Working Man's Welfare State' and more recent attempts to posit an 'Australian Way', civilising the rigours of free markets without succumbing to the dirigisme of full blown socialist paths. It looks at the most substantial historical critiques: those who have argued that it neglects the 1940s as a decisive turning point in political history, counterposing rival Keynesian roads. Do these provide more than a modification of the Settlement model? Finally, it looks at alternative models of stability and conflict from federation to the 1980s -those based on the broader fiscal frameworks of the federal system and which turn attention away from national politics to the developmental possibilities of state government. What are the most plausible alternative models of political economic change? What implications do these have for the conventions of governance?
Email: JGillesp@hmn.mq.edu.au

Leigh Gollop, School of Politics and International Relations, Flinders University
People's assemblies: Giving people a say in government
One of the discontents of politics in the 21st century-not only in Australia but in almost all western liberal democracies-is a perceived unmet demand by people for more say in government. There have been two major responses to this desire: the elite response, favoured by the major political parties, to encourage public consultation under conditions in which they can retain ultimate control; and the populist response, favoured some minor parties and independents, to give power to the people to decide on public policy through citizen-initiated referenda (CIR) There are problems, however, with both these approaches and the outcomes, long-term, may not deliver the benefits the promoters claim in making people feel more involved in political decision-making. In this paper I argue there is a way to meet the desire for greater public participation in decision-making which overcomes most of the objections that have been raised against CIR and the elite response of increased community consultation. I propose establishing a new institution which I have termed People's Assemblies (PAs). These assemblies would operate in a similar manner to Deliberative Polls (DPs) where 300 to 500 citizens, randomly but scientifically selected, deliberate on issues referred to them by citizen petition after hearing the evidence for and against. One important difference would be that the decisions of the PAs, like many CIR, would be binding on the government.
Email: lgollop@ozemail.com.au

Murray Goot, Politics, Macquarie University
Party convergence revisited
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 paper does three things. first, it provides a critical examination of the assumptions that underlie the thesis; in particular, it focuses on the widespread, if tacit, assumption that the only policies that matter are policies in one domain — typically, the economic policy domain. Second, it casts doubt on the validity of the thesis. It argues that those who propound the thesis generally conflate two analytically distinct dimensions of policy space — direction and distance — so that shifts by the parties in a particular direction (most recently, to the right) come to be read as a shift in the distance between the parties (almost always, a narrowing). It shows that, for voters at least, the parties remain distinct, not least in the positions they might be said to occupy on a left-right dimension. Beyond that, it points to the dearth of specific criteria, replicable measures and relevant dates. Third, it explores some features of Australian politics said to follow from the thesis, notably the claim that party convergence around left-right or economic issues accounts for the growth of minor party support, including the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

Sandra Grey, Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
Can we measure the influence of social movements?
For three decades new social movements have undergone scrutiny from political scientists. Much has been written about why social movements exist and how they attract members. Within social movement literature there have been many assumptions about the influence of mass mobilisations, however, the literature provides few tools with which to measure that influence. I will argue that the influence of mass mobilisations on the political realm can be measured using discourse analysis techniques and by drawing on public policy literature.
Email: sgrey@coombs.anu.edu.au

Lisa Hill, University of Adelaide.
Democratic assistance: A template for compulsory voting
Compulsory voting could be a valuable aid in the consolidation of civic habits and the prevention of civic demobilisation in both emerging and established democracies. After the last round of national elections in Britain and North America, interest has grown in compulsory voting as an antidote to the world-wide trend towards civic demobilisation. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of an ideal compulsory voting regime suitable for adoption by established democracies considering a switch from a voluntary to a compulsory system. This 'export' standard template is loosely based on the Australian model with appropriate modifications as suggested by comparative and domestic experience. Recommended changes include limiting, where possible, the more coercive aspects of compulsory voting arrangements. There are also suggestions for reforms aimed at offsetting the charge that compulsion limits democratic choice.
Email: Lisa.Hill@adelaide.edu.au

Sandra Lilburn and Damian O'Leary, Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
The politics of conscience voting in Australia: Case studies in public deliberation
As a deliberative practice, conscience voting has far-reaching implications for public debate. In an ideal sense, conscience voting represents the high-water mark of deliberation, with representatives grappling with substantive issues on their merits, in full view of the public. In a less idealised sense, however, conscience voting permits representatives to assert their own value-bias and interests and to conclude issues with little input from their constituencies. By examining the political impetus behind conscience voting in three key arenas - the Federal Parliament, political parties, and the public sphere - this paper will illuminate the implications of this practice for democratic deliberation and representation. Utilising several case studies where conscience voting has been advocated, adopted, or formally rejected, the paper highlights concrete examples through which the complexities surrounding conscience voting as a deliberative practice can be analysed. The case studies have been chosen to facilitate an analysis of the interactions between the Parliament, political parties, and the public sphere. The case studies deal with a range of controversial issues including the regulation of private sphere relations, individual rights and freedoms, and matters of political and constitutional sovereignty. They are cases in which the conscience vote was called for in the context of a social controversy where a plurality of values or interests was at stake. In these cases the relationship between publicity and deliberation can be clearly drawn. They are all cases in which the occurrence of broad-based deliberation (within and between the Parliament, the parties and the public sphere) has some bearing on the legitimacy of the legislative process. The case studies are Medical Practices Clarification Bill 1973, Sex Discrimination Bill 1983, Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996, and the Sex Discrimination (Amendment) Bill 2000.
Emails: sliburn@coombs.anu.edu.au

Christopher Mackenzie
The entrepreneurial bureaucrat: A study of policy entrepreneurship in the formation of a national strategy to create an Asia-literate Australia
This paper is based on a PhD thesis and investigates how individual policy actors influence policy making and become catalysts of change. The paper's main proposition is that actors who heavily influence policy making and become agents for change are necessarily involved in specific activities and demonstrate particular characteristics. It employs the concept of "policy entrepreneurship" to analyse an episode of policy making which occurred in Australia between 1992 and 1994 and concludes that in performing certain functions policy entrepreneurs help to effect change but, in doing so, are influenced by contextual forces. Policy entrepreneurship has been employed by numerous American scholars to describe and explain the actions, behaviour and achievements of dynamic and effective policy actors. Policy entrepreneurs display certain characteristics and possess skills which enable them to become catalysts of policy change. These often include, but are not limited to: creativity in developing solutions and connecting them to problems; alertness to political opportunities; a high level of argumentative and persuasive skill in order to build consensus for policy proposals; the ability to define issues so as to appeal to decision makers; the capacity to bargain; to have and be able to exploit a network of trusted and credible contacts; and be able to prosecute strategic manoeuvres designed to outwit one's opponents. This paper analyses the 'National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy' (NALSAS). NALSAS was an initiative of the Queensland government which aims to promote and advance the teaching of Asian languages and studies in Australian schools. The then Director General of the Office of the Cabinet, Kevin Rudd (currently the Federal Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs), was its key protagonist and driver. It examines the policy process, the characteristics of Rudd and the activities in which he was involved from the perspective of policy entrepreneurship.
Email: chris_j_mackenzie@yahoo.com

Elizabeth McLeay, New Zealand Political Change Project, Political Science and International Relations, Victoria University of Wellington
Representation and the Maori: Institutional persistence and shifting justifications
In 1867, the New Zealand House of Representatives established four Maori constituencies. They were intended to be temporary but still exist today, even after radical reform of the electoral rules and the shift from a majoritarian parliamentary system to one based on the principle of proportional representation. The Maori seats have always been controversial, and whether or not they are a democratically acceptable means of representing an indigenous minority has dominated academic debate about them. Equally fascinating, however, is the question of why and how the seats have endured. Arguments derived from approaches such as historical institutionalism and path dependency are useful tools in the analysis of the survival of the Maori seats. Explaining the puzzle fully, however, involves paying special attention to how ideas are embedded in institutions, and how those ideas evolve. Not only have changing ideas about political representation helped the continuance of the Maori seats but also they have transformed political expectations about the role and nature of Maori political action. Successive institutional reforms reinforced the idea of Maori representation as a necessary part of parliamentary politics. As the story of the Maori seats shows, political actors reformulated their justifications of these political arrangements, thus helping the seats to consolidate their place in the New Zealand constitution. Also, however, developing conventions of the circumstances under which political rules can be justifiably changed protected the Maori seats and thus also help to explain their persistence.
Email: emmcleay@matai.vuw.ac.nz

Marion Maddox, Religious Studies, Victoria University, Wellington NZ
Religion and Australian politics: Out of the methodological bog
A number of studies have drawn attention to ongoing questions about the place of religion in Australian politics. Religious effects in political life are relatively straightforward to describe, but have proved to elude ready explanation. In the words of one recent study, explanatory attempts are repeatedly mired in 'conceptual under-development, implausibility and contradiction'. In many cases, this is because the explanatory attempts are built upon assumptions about the nature of religious adherence long discredited in religious studies. This paper examines approaches from the disciplines of religious studies and theology which offer paths out of the methodological bog.
Email: Marion.Maddox@vuw.ac.nz

Maria Maley, Australian National University
The changing role of ministerial advisers
Recent controversies such as the "Children Overboard Affair" have raised questions about what role ministerial advisers play within our political system. This paper reports on research which explored how the role of ministerial advisers grew over the Hawke-Keating period, and outlines what were the key elements of the role that was played by ministerial advisers to the Keating government. The research was based on interviews with ministers, advisers and senior public servants at the end of the Keating period (1995-6).
Email: Maria.Maley@anu.edu.au

Ian Marsh, Australian National University
Interest group participation in Senate committee enquiries
This paper reports the results of a survey of interest groups and social movements giving evidence to Senate Committees in calendar year 2000. The survey covered some 300 groups and the response rate was about 40%. The survey covered groups giving evidence to enquiries of three types: strategic or agenda entry enquiries; oversight enquiries; and legislative enquiries. Approximately equal numbers of respondents came from each category. The survey covered the 'learning' and 'teaching' effects of participation in enquiries, including the internal steps taken to gather evidence and prepare a case, the stimulus to coalition building, attitudes to the enquiry process, reports to members, perceived impact on the process, attitudes to the findings, overall attitudes to the experience. The Australian results are contrasted with the results of an identical survey conducted in the UK in the mid 1980s.
Email: imarsh@coombs.anu.edu.au

Greg Melluish, History and Politics Program, University of Wollongong
The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy revisited: The New South Wales 1859 election
This paper examines the New South Wales 1859 election. This was the first election held in NSW following the electoral reforms of 1858 that had introduced manhood suffrage and the secret ballot. The paper uses the election as a means of exploring the way in which politics was understood by those participating in the political process at a time when such processes were still relatively new to the majority of the participants. Despite recent tendencies to use the word ‘democracy’ as the key term describing political development in nineteenth century Australia, in fact the key term for the participants was liberalism. Almost every politician at this election, and most of their supporters, claimed to be liberals, and the paper examines what liberalism meant by looking at the key policies enunciated by the prospective parliamentary candidates. As well it examines the key features of the emerging political system of the colony. These include: small electorates and the personal nature of politics in an essentially ‘face-to-face’ society, the importance of words (and complaints about their misuse), the significance attached to ‘independence’ for both voter and would-be representative, the high seriousness attached to the act of voting, the extended nature of the election that allowed unsuccessful candidates to stand for more than one seat, and the role played by both meetings and the press in the election process. In this way the paper seeks to build up a picture of Australian political practices in their infancy, a picture that has both similarities and differences with contemporary Australian politics.
Email: gmelleui@uow.edu.au

Anthony Moran, Politics Programme, La Trobe University
The globalization of Australia: The state and national belonging
For much of its history Australian society has been animated by a consensus: the paternal (or maternal?) state organized and guaranteed social and economic relations, and the Australian people expected it to play that part. As a colonial settler-society (and initially a penal settlement) Australia was organized from the very beginning from the top down. Under the influence of unique geographical circumstance, the state was largely responsible for providing the infrastructure necessary for society-, and later nation-building. At the same time, it contributed to the building of national identity and a sense of belonging for Australians.
Since the early 1980s Australians have experienced a seismic shift as the state has gradually retreated from the more obvious guiding role of the past. This has had unsettling implications for the way that people think about Australian society and their place within it. This paper explores the impact of these changes upon national belonging. It develops a grounded approach to understanding the ways that politics and political change—and in particular the changing role of the state—under the impact of globalization are experienced and lived. This theme is underpinned by the telling of life stories in order to capture the flavor of the mercurial, daily experience of those on the ground experiencing the impact of globalization. The paper draws upon interview material gathered by a research team for a project titled 'Understanding a Changing Australia: Ordinary People's Politics', based at La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia. Feelings about the state, about the individual's relationship to government (explored through interviews) will illustrate the way that long political traditions interact with global transformations.
Email: A.Moran@latrobe.edu.au

Kevin O'Toole and Neil Burdess, Faculty of Arts Deakin University
Governance in rural communities: The case of Victoria
State and federal government policies for rural areas have encouraged local people and organizations to play a greater role in the provision of their local services. This emphasis on local participation has been described as a shift from 'government' to 'governance'. However while there is an emerging research around small towns in Australia there is very little known about the processes of community governance. Of particular concern is the lack of information on the nature, type and level of participation and the implications of the pattern of participation for issues of democracy and accountability in rural governance. Before municipal amalgamations, local decision-making gave small tow some sense of autonomy and some discretion over their affairs. However, following municipal amalgamations these small towns lost many of the resources-legal, financial, political, informational and organisational-associated with their former municipal status. This left a vacuum in these communities and the outcome was the emergence of local development groups. Some of these groups are new but many of them are organisations that have been reconstituted as groups with a broader community focus. The basic aim of this paper is analyse to what degree these local community development groups can be regarded as constituting a form of community governance and the implications this has for democracy and accountability in small rural areas. The paper begins with a discussion of community governance as it represented in the literature. We then analyse ten case studies from across Victoria in the light of the changing political context.
Email: otoole@mail.deakin.edu.au

Rodney Smith, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Political parties in contemporary Australian fiction
In the last two decades, Australian major political parties, like those in other western democracies, have faced a number of serious problems. These include challenges to the relevance of their traditional ideologies and institutional support bases, slipping memberships and rank and file participation, declining party identification, an erosion of confidence in majoritarian party government and the rise of new parties and social movements. This paper explores the ways in which these sorts of problems are treated in three contemporary works of Australian fiction: Stephen Sewell's play The Blind Giant is Dancing (1985), Alan Wearne's verse novel The Nightmarkets (1986) and George Papaellinas' novel No (1997). As with other areas of politics, the study of literary fiction illuminates political parties in ways that compliment traditional political science approaches and suggests new ways of thinking about the problems parties face. The three works discussed here explore the connections between internal party politics and wider political, social and economic structures. Sewell's depiction of the inner politics of a social democratic party suggests the impossibility of the ALP to challenge effectively patriarchal capitalism. Papaellinas focuses on Labor, class and ethnicity at a local level, linking the displacement of immigrant workers and members of the underclass from Labor branch politics to their more general public marginalisation. Wearne explores the possibilities of party politics after the dismissal of the reformist Whitlam Government, pessimistically suggesting that neither the major parties nor a new centre party provide avenues for meaningful commitment. Each work highlights alternatives to the failures of party politics, including protest (Sewell), drugs, music, sex and writing (Wearne) and crime and silence (Papaellinas); however, none of these is depicted as constituting effective political action.
Email: r.smith@econ.usyd.edu.au

Richard Stanton, University of Western Sydney
Mezzanine politics
This paper examines the relationship between public opinion and public policy in a regional Australian city and provides evidence to support an argument that special interest groups have the capacity to escape scrutiny from within the public sphere. It demonstrates why community or special interest groups fail to achieve their goals and why others - which attain what I will refer to as 'mezzanine status' - succeed politically without reference to the Mayhewian notion of the redemption of rhetorical tokens. It follows the work of Habermas and Mayhew presenting evidence that professional communicators have the means of social influence at their disposal. It examines the role of the newspaper in the determination of sociopolitics and attempts to place in context theories of persuasion and influence as they occur at local government level. It analyses newspaper reporting of a proposal by an organisation known as Inland Marketing Corporation to influence local government in NSW to invest in a high-risk low-yield scheme to develop commercial interests using taxpayer funding. It achieves this through a content analysis of articles appearing in The Central Western Daily, in Orange NSW, and The Australian Financial Review. The paper focuses on the central roles played by journalists and politicians - acting as professional communicators - in the NSW regional city of Orange in supporting unconditionally economic development. It attempts to argue that political influence is assisted by mass media and of greater intensity in regional areas. It examines government financial support for the Inland Marketing Corporation based on Andsagar's (2001) proposition that interest groups attempt to shape public opinion using competing news frames. It provides an analysis of the political process of policy making at local level and the precedent to invest ratepayer funds in the high-risk low-yield proposal from the IMC. I will also attempt to show how the IMC has defined itself in media terms through ownership of the issue of fresh 'export produce' transport and logistics.
Email: r.stanton@uws.edu.au

Bron Stevens, University of the Sunshine Coast
R v Burgess, the external affairs power and the battle for control of aviation policy in Australia
R v Burgess was the first substantive case in which the High Court adjudicated on the external affairs power S. 51, 29. It gave it an expansive reading of commonwealth powers. The case came before the Court as part of a protracted dispute between the Commonwealth and state governments over the control of aviation in a saga lasted for almost twenty years from 1919 to 1939. This battle is worth closer examination as a study of federalism in action. It contains all the ingredients that can make policy making in a federation so fraught. During the twenty years it took to develop an effective regime of aviation regulation the state premiers displayed all the worst elements of parochialism. The Commonwealth government performed little better, failing to coordinate or follow up proposed action. Promised legislation failed to appear. Two High Court challenges and a failed referendum occurred along the way. The Premiers conceded in 1920 that only the Commonwealth government could effectively regulate the newly emerging aviation industry and promised to refer power to the Commonwealth. But they failed to do so despite repeated promises. The Commonwealth's Air Navigation Act 1920 was predicated on the Premiers' referral of powers so when it was challenged the Commonwealth sought validation from S. 51, 29, despite uncertainty about the extent of this power. The High Court found that S51,29 did empower for the Commonwealth to implement international treaties but struck down the regulations because they did not conform to the Paris Air Convention. The Commonwealth was left with only partial authority over aviation and failed to have the power transferred by referendum. It was to take a further two years before all states referred the required powers to the Commonwealth.
Email: BSTEVENS@usc.edu.au

Geoff Stokes, Faculty of Arts, Deakin University
The 'Australian Settlement' and Australian political thought
Arguments for reshaping political agendas invariably begin from an appraisal of past errors and achievements. Paul Kelly's notion of the 'Australian Settlement', set out in his book The End of Certainty (1992), attempts just such a task. Kelly identifies a particular ideological and institutional tradition in Australian politics that dominated much of the 20th century and that is now deemed to have broken down. This 'Australian Settlement' is presented as a cluster of interconnected political ideas that became widely accepted among successive governments and their citizens. Kelly delineates five main components of the settlement, which he calls White Australia, Industry Protection, Wage Arbitration, State Paternalism and Imperial Benevolence. Although Kelly offers little more than a brief sketch of an Australian political tradition, his account has gained wide currency in analyses of Australian politics. This paper accepts that the notion of a settlement - which signifies a more or less enduring resolution of conflict - provides certain insights into the evolution of Australian political thought. Nonetheless, the paper takes issue with the specific content of Kelly's version of the 'Australian Settlement' and indicates how it may be reformulated. It is argued that, to the extent that we can speak of a settlement in Australia, it was one reached on a wider range of key conflicts or cleavages than those referred to by Kelly. In particular, it is contended that, Kelly's account ignores the significance of 'terra nullius', state secularism, and masculinism in the dominant tradition of Australian political ideas. Criticism is also directed against Kelly's use of the terms state paternalism, protection and imperial benevolence, as well as his treatment of democracy. By shifting our understanding of an Australian settlement, a somewhat different narrative of successes and failures can be given that, in turn, suggests an alternative program of reform.
Email: gmstokes@deakin.edu.au

Bruce Stone, Political Science, University of Western Australia
Changing roles, changing rules: Procedural reform in Australian state upper houses
Australia is unique among parliamentary systems of government in having strongly bicameral parliaments at regional as well as national levels. Changes over the past half century, principally involving electoral system reform, have transformed the democratic significance of the upper houses of Australian state legislatures (the Legislative Councils). This paper examines the consequences of the changing institutional design of state bicameral parliaments for the rules of procedure which determine how the Councils perform their tasks of the initiation of legislation, legislative review, scrutiny of public administration and control of public finance. The paper aims, through a systematic examination of parliamentary procedure in the five states with upper houses, to identify and explain procedural change, procedural differences between jurisdictions, and the relationship between the institutional ‘architecture’ of state parliamentary systems and the internal operation of the Councils as a major component of these systems.
Email: bmstone@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Paul Strangio, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Jim Cairns
The proposed paper will build upon the pyscho-social analysis of former Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Jim Cairns, which the author presents in his recently published study Keeper of the Faith: A Biography of Jim Cairns (Melbourne University Press, 2002). It will draw upon literature in the field of political psychology, as well as making use of a broad range of material focussed on Cairns, including the author's numerous interviews with Cairns, interviews that were conducted with Cairns in the late 1960s by Dr John Diamond as part of an early experiment in political psychology, and an unpublished Masters thesis (Diane Wieneke, 'Personality and Politics: Three Case Studies', University of Melbourne, 1975), which also attempts a psychological profile of Cairns. The paper will be particularly interested in exploring the characteristic of Cairns that rendered him so rare a political phenomenon, but which also disabled him politically, that is, his ambivalence towards power. The paper will show how this characteristic manifested itself at the personal level of Cairns' political career in the form of muted ambition and an aversion to political infighting, but which was also reflected in the role Cairns carved out in public life as a voice of dissent against the established order and the growing doubts he had about executive government. The paper will argue that Cairns' ambivalence towards power, while consistent with his ideological commitment (particularly the evolving direction of his thinking on social change), was also an outcome of psychological forces at work in the mature Cairns. Those forces will be traced back to the events of his childhood, especially the dichotomous pattern of his upbringing, which was marked, on the one hand, by adulation and, on the other hand, by extreme emotional deprivation.
Email: Paul.Strangio@arts.monash.edu.au

Ann Sullivan and Dimitri Margaritis
New Zealand Maori voting behaviour under MMP
This paper will analyse Maori voting behaviour and attitudes using data from the 1999 and 2002 New Zealand General elections, and survey data from the New Zealand Electoral Studies Project. It will demonstrate that there are distinct differences between Maori and non-Maori voting patterns. An analysis of underlying determinants of such differences will be presented as well as a discussion of Maori attitudes on a number of socio-economic and political issues.

John Uhr, Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
Effective versus defective voting: Catherine Helen Spence's novel campaign for electoral reform
This paper examines Spence's role in advocating proportional representation (PR). My argument is that Spence saw Federation as her primary opportunity to spread the practice of PR by targetting the Senate as the national institution for 'effective' voting and representation. Unfortunately, few commentators have examined what Spence saw as the 'defective' character of conventional voting and representation. I present a new account of Spence's political project, based in part on a reappraisal of her early novels, which dramatise many 'defective' elements of democratic politics, as well as her more public advocacy of electoral reform for 'effective' democracy.
Email: ohnuhr@coombs.anu.edu.au

Bruce Tranter, School of Sociology, University of Tasmania
Mark Western, School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland
Postmaterialism and age: An Australian anomoly
Inglehart's thesis of value change is one of the most widely discussed accounts of social and political change in advanced Western nations. This research offers a critique of Inglehart's thesis and a clarification of the Australian case. While other critics have attacked the validity of Inglehart's postmaterialism measures, we use Inglehart's own values index to show that even if - as Inglehart claims - his measures are valid, the age/values predictions do not hold as the theory suggests in Australia. In a recent article, Inglehart and Abramson (1999:673) cite Australia among a group of '28 high-income' countries that exhibit 'stronger relationships between values and age' than found in the United States of America. We dispute Inglehart's and Abramson's findings in relation to Australia. We show that the age/values relationship in Australia, like the USA, is very weak, and highlight the problematic nature of assuming a linear relationship between age and values without evidence. We also uncover a new nonlinear relationship between values and age in Australia. This 'Australian pattern' has implications for the study of values research internationally, as similar patterns occur in several other advanced industrial nations.
Emails: m.western@uq.edu.au  Bruce.Tranter@utas.edu.au

James Walter and Tod Moore, Politics, Griffith University
The new social order? Australia's contribution to 'new liberal' thinking in the interwar period
From the outbreak of World War I, and in particular after the conscription debates of 1916, there was a middle class backlash in Australian political thinking against the intellectuals of the labour movement. In the work of writers such as Elton Mayo and Meredith Atkinson, there emerged an idealist theory of industrial efficiency and social solidarity, and an organic view of the state, coupled with a defence of the British Empire, and of Australia's role within it. Their hostility to labour can be partly explained by their intellectual adherence to the interests of the middle class, and also partly by their status as members of university-based intellectual groups who saw their mission as that of promoting incremental change to improve the established order. They gave a distinctive Australian inflection to 'new liberal' thinking in the interwar period. The closing years of World War I had been characterised by militant unionism and increasingly severe industrial disputes, as many workers sought to achieve better rewards through a policy of direct action against their employers, rather than through the arbitration system. The vision of an ideal egalitarian society that had been sustained by pre-war achievements in social policy rapidly dimmed; to many workers, the fall in real wages underscored the reality of social and economic disparities. In reaction, a sustained exposition of an anti-labour position was developed by a clearly identifiable group of writers, and what emerged from this in the 1920s was a relatively large cluster of similar texts. Like the liberal idealists of the Edwardian era, these writers stressed the national ideal of a unified and unselfish society dedicated to the highest good, and not to class-based self-interest. The revival of interest in things like civics education and national efficiency after World War I was marked by a distinctively modern expectation of deference to expert knowledge. Middle-class academics such as Meredith Atkinson, Elton Mayo and Frederic Eggleston presumed to know what was best for 'the workers'. Given wartime experiences, a strong emphasis on national obligation was to be expected. During and immediately after the war, an emphasis on the obligations of citizenship gained ground, partly due to ideas of national unity and common purpose engendered by the war itself. This became the foundation for an impassioned plea for a new harmonious social and political order, which this group of intellectuals posited as a response to concerns about class conflict, economic inefficiency and social inequality in Australia. For the purposes of this paper, the position of the group will be demonstrated through drawing on the writings of Meredith Atkinson, an English born, Oxford educated, Sydney academic with strong liberal-idealist leanings, who had been very active in the pro-conscription cause during the war. Whilst considerable social reform had been achieved, trade unions and workers had become morally lazy, Atkinson argued. They debased their right to vote by using the franchise simply as a mechanism to further their own interests. This selfish obsession with workers' rights was counterproductive, Atkinson claimed, because an equitable distribution of economic goods was dependent on a high level of economic production. This required greater industrial efficiency, which in turn required a more cooperative labour force. Emphasis is placed on the responsibilities of workers which, as will be shown, is characteristic of this type of argument. For Atkinson and the other intellectuals in this group, the crux of the problem was that workers had no civic conscience, no sense of idealism that would sustain a broader vision of the perfect social order. They needed to be shown how to take individual responsibility for ensuring the economic and social health of the nation as an organic whole. How do the ideas of this period compare with developments in liberal thinking elsewhere? What is their relation with post World War 2 liberal thought? And how do they feed into more recent concerns with citizenship, civic conscience and the appropriate roles of individuals and the state?
Emails: J.Walter@mailbox.gu.edu.au

Virginia Watson, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Liberalism and governance in Indigenous affairs
This paper examines the shift from liberal to neo-liberal rationalities of governance in Indigenous Affairs. The reforming tradition in liberal political thought on the question of Indigenous rights and interests has, from the 1970s until recently, informed the development of policies and practices of self-determination through the incitation of collective agency and choice. Land rights, community control of economic, social and cultural resources were central to this conception of a self-determining Indigenous polity. Today, however, it might be said that a specifically neo-liberal (or 'advanced liberal') political rationality is on the ascendancy in Indigenous affairs. Indigenous communities, councils and associations are then redefined as aggregates of individuals whose agency and choices are market-driven. The paper will critically assess the ways these two modalities of liberal political rationality relate to each other, and explore the possibility that neo- or 'advanced' liberal conceptions of 'choice' and agency might in fact be reproducing the older forms of political practice intent on assimilating Indigenous people to a dominant non-Indigenous culture and polity.
Email: v.watson@econ.usyd.edu.au

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