Mortgage nation : the 2004 Australian election

A comprehensive study of the historic win by the Howard Coalition Government providing analyses of the campaigns, an insight from the key players at the centre of devising the campaigns and covers election results and their interpretation.

The ALP after 2004

In 2004, for the first time in the two decades for which Australian Election Study (AES) data has become available, more blue-collar workers cast their primary vote for the Coalition parties than for Labor. Blue-collar support for Labor had partially recovered under Beazley in 1998 and 2001 following its dramatic drop under Keating in 1996 but it dropped to even lower levels under Latham in 2004. This paper analyses AES survey data, the actual voting results in each federal electorate and the demographic characteristics of those electorates to discuss the nature of Labor’s latest national election defeat and the reasons for it. There is considerable disagreement among commentators as to whether Labor has lost the last four national elections because it has failed to reconnect with its traditional voter base; or because it has failed to go beyond that base. Much of the disagreement centres on how blue-collar workers are to be understood. Are they ‘battlers’ and victims of ‘globalisation’ or have they become prosperous, upwardly-mobile and ‘aspirational’? Related questions include whether the most salient issues for blue-collar voters are economic, or cultural; and whether the most important inequalities in Australian society should be measured in terms of income; or occupation; or geographic location (including degree of distance from the inner-city). This paper analyses the policies presented in the 2004 election and engages with informed journalistic analyses, and contributions from past and present politicians, in addition to the work of political scientists, to help make sense of precisely where and why Labor lost support in 2004 and the implications this has for future ALP policy and strategy. The paper also contributes to the longer-term debates about the reasons for Howard’s electoral ascendancy since 1996; and the role and constituency of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.

Going to a 'double d': the 2016 federal election and the Constitution

This article sets out the key constitutional issues surrounding the 2016 federal election and its aftermath. The authors discuss the double dissolution mechanism in the Australian Constitution which was used to trigger the 2016 election and the recent changes to the Senate voting system. The authors also examine how and why the newly elected senators will divide into long and short term senators after the 2016 election, whether the new Parliament will proceed to a joint sitting, and the prospects of another early election.

Justice in Medicare : recent changes to the public health care system

This article sets out and examines a number of changes proposed by the Commonwealth Government to the Australian Medicare system as part of the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 federal budgets, and the 2004 federal election campaign. In assessing the suitability of these reforms, the idea of justice is discussed. Health, as a basic good, is argued to be a matter of distributional and rectificatory justice. A number of popular material principles of justice are also examined and shown to be unsuited as sole determinants of health care resource allocation decisions. In light of this, various problems with the reforms are identified and improvements suggested.

Employer matters in 2004

n 2004, employers were active in arguing their cases in a number of important hearings of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. However, despite a united position among employer ranks and the federal government, employers were generally disappointed with the Commission’s safety net review decision. Both the Australian industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry found some common ground with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, in a consent position on extending carers leave, but overall employers presented a detailed argument opposing any extension of employee rights in the Commission’s work and family test case. Employers in some sectors were able to reach collective agreements with unions with little industrial disruption, whereas others, such as banking, found the going tougher. Overall, employers, like unions, faced a great deal of uncertainty over what were or were not ‘matters pertaining’, as a number of decisions after the Electrolux case clarified or clouded the issue. Understandably, the year ended on a positive note for most employers, with the Howard Government re-elected with a majority in the Senate, enabling it to pass a further round of radical labour market reforms in 2005.

Herbert Spencer in the suburbs? Class, politics, ideology and the Australian petty-bourgeoisie in the Howard years

A dominant trope of media commentary after the 2004 federal election was the rise of blue-collar self-employment and small business and its negative impact on Labor electoral support. In this paper I examine the evidence on the growth of self-employment and small business in Australia since the 1980s and the political consequences of this growth. I consider why the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated by many observers, and the emergence of a right-wing anti-capitalism in the critique of the dependence of wage-labour. Although the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated it is a real phenomenon. I extract the rational kernel from the largely ill-informed commentary on this issue and place contemporary debates about self-employment in a historical and global context. I consider why the self-employed and small business were once seen as natural allies of the working-class in a populist coalition but why they are now identified by commentators as hostile to class politics.

The 1859 election on the Ovens

The Victorian general election of 1859 occurred during a time of social transition and electoral reformation, which extended the vote to previously unrepresented adult males. Gold discoveries, including those on the Ovens, triggered the miners’ insistent demands for access to land and participation in the political process. The thesis identifies issues, which emerged during the election campaign on the Ovens goldfields, surrounding Beechworth. The struggle centred on the two Legislative Assembly seats for the Ovens and the one Legislative Council seat for the Murray District. Though the declared election issue was land reform, it concealed a range of underlying tensions, which divided the electorate along lines of nationality and religion. Complicating these tensions within the European community was the Chinese presence throughout the Ovens. The thesis suggests the historical memory of the French Revolution, the European Revolutions of 1848 and the Catholic versus Protestant revivals divided the Ovens goldfield community. The competing groups formed alliances; a Beechworth-centred grouping of traders, merchants and the Constitution’s editor, ensured the existing conservative agenda triumphed over those perceived radicals who sought reform. In the process the land hungry miners did not gain any political representation in the Legislative Assembly, while a prominent Catholic squatter who advocated limited land reform was defeated for the Legislative Council seat. Two daily Beechworth papers, Ovens and Murray Advertiser and its fierce competitor, the Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer are the major primary sources for the thesis.