Parties, governments and pollsters: A new form of patronage?

In its first term, the Howard government hired Australasian Research Strategies (ARS), headed by pollster Mark Textor, to conduct market research for several Commonwealth departments and agencies. This was, the Labor Opposition claimed, a case of the Liberals handing jobs to their 'mates'. Textor played a key role in the Liberals' 1996 and 1998 federal election campaigns. However, Labor's attack rings hollow since in the 1980s the Hawke government similarly contracted Rod Cameron's ANOP to conduct opinion research for Commonwealth departments and agencies. At the time Cameron was Labor's strategic pollster and centrally involved in planning Labor election campaigns. On both sides of Australian politics, governments have begun to channel patronage towards their party's pollsters. In this research note, we suggest that this development cannot be explained as 'jobs for the boys'. Instead, this new form of patronage has its roots in the vital role that pollsters now play in guiding election campaigns, and in the commercial reality that Australian politics provides too little work to sustain specialist political pollsters. Parties in government now appear to utilise incumbency to sustain an ongoing relationship with the commercial polling organisations like ANOP and ARS to whom they will entrust much of the planning of their campaign for re-election.

Politics and parties: Neglected aspects of postmaterial value change

Inglehart’s thesis of postmaterial value change is one of the most influential accounts of social and political change in advanced Western nations. This paper uses data from the World Values Survey and the Australian Election Surveys to reexamine the relationship between age and values in 19 advanced industrial nations. We find evidence of a monotonic age structuring of values in a number of countries, but in others, the relationship between age and values is not as Inglehart would predict. In addition, the impact of birth cohort on values differs between countries that are dominated by two major parties and those where there are many smaller parties. The presence of successful Green parties is also important for enhancing the uptake of postmaterialist values. These findings suggest that Inglehart’s arguments about generational value change should be modified to take into account national political institutions and political cultures that might enhance or impede generational-based values change.

Communism and Public Opinion in Queensland, 1939-1951 : An Explanation of Queensland's Vote in the 1951 Anti-Communist Referendum

The starting point of this thesis was a desire to explain the rapid demise in the popularity which the Communist Party enjoyed in Queensland during the second world war. Wartime Queensland gave the Australian Communist Party its highest state vote and six years later Queensland again gave the Communist Party its highest state vote - this time however, to ban the Party. From this I was led into exploring the changing policies, beliefs and strategies of the Party, as well as the many sub-groups on its periphery, and the shifts in public response to these. In 1939 Townsville elected Australia's first Communist alderman. Five years later, Bowen elected not only Australia's first but also the British Empire's first, Communist state government member. Of the five electorates the Australian Communist Party contested in the 1944 Queensland State elections, in none did the Party's candidate receive less than twenty per-cent of the formal vote. Not only was the Party seemingly enjoying considerable popular support but this was occurring in a State which, but for the Depression years (May 1929 - June 1932) had elected a Labor State Government at every state election since 1915. In the September 1951 Constitution Alteration Referendum, 'Powers To Deal With Communists and Communism', Queensland regist¬ered the nation's highest "Yes" majority - 55.76% of the valid vote. Only two other states registered a majority in favour of the referendum's proposals, Western Australia and Tasmania. As this research was undertaken it became evident that while various trends exhibited at the time, anti-Communism, the work of the Industrial Groups, Labor opportunism, local area feelings, ideological shifts of the Party, tactics of Communist-led unions, etc., were present throughout the entire period, they were best seen when divided into three chronological phases of the Party's history and popularity. The first period covers the consolidation of the Party's post-Depression popularity during the war years as it benefited from the Soviet Union's colossal contribution to the Allied war efforts, and this support continued for some six months or so after the war. Throughout the period Communist strength within the trade union movement greatly increased as did total Party membership. The second period was marked by a rapid series of events starting in March 1946, with Winston Churchill's "Official Opening" of the Cold War by his sweeping attack on Communism and Russia, at Fulton. Several days later the first of a series of long and bitter strikes in Communist-led unions occurred, as the Party mobil¬ized for what it believed would be a series of attacks on the working class from a ruling class, defending a capitalist system on the verge of an economic collapse. It was a period when the Party believed this ruling class was using Labor reformism as a last desperate 'carrot' to get workers to accept their lot within a capitalist economic framework. Out of the Meat Strike emerged the Industrial Groups, who waged not only a determined war against Communist trade union leadership but also encouraged the A.W.U.-influenced State Labor apparatus to even greater anti-Communist antagonisms. The Communist Party's increasing militancy and Labor's resistance to it, ended finally in the collapse of the Chifley Labor government. Characteristically the third period opens with the Communist Party making an another about-face, desperately trying to form an alliance with the Labor Party and curbing its former adventurist industrial policy, as it prepared for Menzies' direct assault. The Communist Party's activities were greatly reduced, a function of both a declining member-ship and, furthermore, a membership reluctant to confront an increasingly hostile society. In examining the changing policies, beliefs and strategies of the Party and the shifts in public response to these, I have tried to distinguish between general trends occurring within Australia and the national party, and trends peculiar to Queensland and the Queensland branch of the Party, The Communist Party suffered a decline in support and membership right across Australia throughout this period as a result of the national policies of the Party, and the changing nature of world politics. There were particular features of this decline that were peculiar to Queensland. I have, however, singled out three features of particular importance throughout the period for a short but more specifically detailed analysis, than would be possible in a purely chronological study: i.e. the Party's structure, the Party's ideological subservience to Moscow, and the general effect upon it of the Cold War.

DR-NEGOTIATE - A system for automated agent negotiation with defeasible logic-based strategies

This paper reports on a system for automated agent negotiation, based on a formal and executable approach to capture the behavior of parties involved in a negotiation. It uses the JADE agent framework, and its major distinctive feature is the use of declarative negotiation strategies. The negotiation strategies are expressed in a declarative rules language, defeasible logic, and are applied using the implemented system DR-DEVICE. The key ideas and the overall system architecture are described, and a particular negotiation case is presented in detail.

Knowing your allies: Medical education and interprofessional exposure

Collaborative, team-based, interprofessional approaches to patient management are becoming increasingly recognized as beneficial to health outcomes. This project aimed to develop interprofessional skills among 134 third year medical students that were of clinical educational value to the students, and through activities that directly benefited the rural health professionals in their daily work. Placements were undertaken during a six week rural clinical attachment, mainly throughout South-West Queensland. Pre- and post-placement self-report questionnaires completed by both students and health professionals were used to evaluate the project. Results showed that over 80% of the health professional group reported the medical student placements were useful. Similarly, almost 80% of medical students reported positive changes in their attitude to other health professionals from the placement, and 91% indicated they had derived clinical educational benefit from their interprofessional activity. Despite difficulties due to poor communication between the various parties involved, the project proved successful in improving medical students' skills, knowledge and perceptions concerning interprofessional practice, through a placement and educational project which delivered practical benefits to rural health professionals and rural communities.

'We're not going to take it!' - Academics on the rampage

What are the social factors that can change apathy to action? Two survey-based field studies were conducted with National Tertiary Education Union members, to investigate the interplay between individual and group-based psychological processes in union support. The first study was conducted in an industrially calm context and the second, following a national strike in the Australian university sector. Drawing on social identity theory, the studies investigated both individual and group-related factors including: (a) instrumental and ideological attitudes; (b) employee identity; (c) perceptions of employment-related threat, and of relations with management; and (d) normative support for the union amongst fellow employees. Consistent with predictions, groupbased factors (i.e., perceived context and normative support) moderated the role of instrumental and ideological beliefs in the behavioural expression of union support. A subset of participants, who responded at both times, provided additional evidence for the importance of contextually activated group-processes to changes in union behaviour.

Dating the dreaming? Creation of myths and rituals for mounds along the northern Australian coastline

Shell mounds ceased to be built in many parts of coastal northern Australia about 800-600 years ago. They are the subject of stories told by Aboriginal people and some have been incorporated in ritual and political activities during the last 150 ears. These understandings emerged only after termination of the economic and environmental system that created them, 800-600 years ago, in a number of widely separated coastal regions, Modern stories and treatments of these mounds by Aboriginal people concern modern or near-modern practices. Modern views of the mounds, their mythological and ritual associations, may be explained by reference to the socioeconomic transitions seen in the archaeological record; but the recent cultural, social and symbolic statements about these places cannot inform us of the process or ideology concerned with the formation of the mounds. Many Aboriginal communities over the last half a millennium actively,formed understandings of new landscapes and systems of land use. Attempts to impose historic ideologies and cosmologies on earlier times fail to acknowledge the magnitude and rate of economic and ideological change on the tropical coastline of Australia.

Charles Handy: The exemplary guru

Among many managers Charles Handy might well be described as a ‘world class’ management thinker. He is certainly the first British management author to have achieved international guru status. The author of widely-commended management best-sellers and MBA set texts, known through broadcasting and management videos, he has presented himself more recently as a self-styled ‘social philosopher’. But just how philosophical is he? Does he offer genuinely new ideas? And what explains his vast appeal? Ashly Pinnington considers three works from Handy’s social philosopher period. He argues that they are conservative and focused on the interests of managers and business owners rather than employees or society as a whole. Like a mediaeval friar seeking converts, Handy uses mythic structures and exempla to invest his claims and propositions with plausibility and authority. Drawing on research into management gurus as a phenomenon, Ashly Pinnington concludes that when we read authors like Handy we should attend not merely to the ‘philosophy’ but also to the way narrative techniques are used in conveying ideological and moral messages.

Warranty and preventative maintenance

For products sold with warranty, preventive maintenance actions by manufacturers and/or buyers have an impact on the total costs for both parties. This paper develops a framework to study preventive maintenance actions when items are sold under warranty and reviews the models that have appeared in the literature. It then develops a new model and carries out its analysis.