Julia 2010 : the caretaker election

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of one of Australia’s most historic elections, which produced a hung parliament and a carefully crafted minority government that remains a heartbeat away from collapse, as well as Australia’s first elected woman Prime Minister and the Australian Greens’ first lower house Member of Parliament.

The volume considers the key contextual and possibly determining factors, such as: the role of leadership and ideology in the campaign; the importance of state and regional factors (was there evidence of the two or three speed economy at work?); and the role of policy areas and issues, including the environment, immigration, religion, gender and industrial relations. Contributors utilise a wide range of sources and approaches to provide comprehensive insights into the campaign. This volume notably includes the perspectives of the major political groupings, the ALP, the Coalition and the Greens; and the data from the Australian Election Survey. Finally we conclude with a detailed analysis of those 17 days that it took to construct a minority party government.

Abjection and midwifery : towards a revision of Julia Kristeva's theory of the maternal

This paper will develop a specific reading of Julia Kristeva’s analysis of the Mother in psychoanalytic contexts and artistic production. I want to suggest a particular connection between the Mother and a second figure closely associated with her: the Midwife. Such a move opens up the possibility for a new understanding of Kristeva’s correlation of the Mother with the psychoanalytic concept of “abjection”. I wish to identify the Midwife as the crucial intersection of a masculine and feminine subjectivity. I will undertake this project via a historical study of Midwifery, which will include an exploration of the Midwife’s relationship to masculine ideologies of medical thought, as well as an account of the problematic rise of the “Man-Midwife”. My strategy will be to extend the submerged historical and material content of Kristeva’s own theories, with particular reference to Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.

The campaigns

It is arguable that the 2007 election was decided on longer term issues, and longer term campaigning. This article focuses on the campaigning side. The campaigning commenced with the election of Labor's new leadership team of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in December 2006. The Howard Coalition Government, after a minor cabinet reshuffle, pressed on with the promotion of its policies and programmes; but by May 2007 was forced to change tack, making concessions on the unpopular WorkChoices policy, and then introducing a controversial Aboriginal intervention programme. The election campaign was anti-climactic. The article includes a postscript on the election aftermath, comparing Kevin Rudd with Gough Whitlam in his rapid implementation of key campaign policies.

Aiming for change by degrees

Our federal Education Minister believes too many Australians are falling through the cracks, writes Joanna Mather.

Addressing a group of doctoral graduates in Melbourne recently, federal Education Minister Julia Gillard used Barack Obama's election victory in the US to drive home the social and economic imperatives for getting more poor and disadvantaged Australians into universities.

The 1947 bank nationalisation scheme : a prehistory of issues management?

Industry-wide crises emanating from legislative proposals are rare in Australia, and can be classed as once in a generation events, and so merit consideration and research. Currently, there is one such debate over the Mineral Resources Rent Tax, proposed by Prime Minister’s Julia Gillard’s government. Prior to this, the closest comparable event was the 1974 proposal for the establishment of a universal health insurance scheme. The 1947 proposal, by the Ben Chifley-led Labor Government, aimed to nationalise Australia’s banks, and it brought a crisis of massive proportions to Australia’s conservative financial service industry. Although the High Court of Australia finally found Chifley’s proposed legislation unconstitutional, the banks realised they must win in the court of public opinion, generate press coverage in favour of their position, and help defeat the Labor Government at the 1949 election. At the time, and for some decades to come, this was the most expensive and largest public relations campaign waged in Australia. After such a campaign there could be few Australians who could claim that they had not been exposed to the powers of public relations in a modern world. This paper looks at what can be learned from the banks’ collective response to the proposed nationalisation. It does so by applying contemporary issues management evaluation techniques.

Introduction : women as cause – media, gender, responsibility

Introduces the five chapters on Australian media representations of women and men, with a current events related examination of today's news, especially in relation to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's now famous "Misogyny Speech" in Federal Parliament in 2012.

What's 'childless' got to do with it?

Childlessness is increasing in Australia and has resulted in an upsurge of media commentary on the lives of childless women, This paper investigates the use of the label 'childless' in the Australian print media by drawing meaning and understanding from these representations within the context of pronatalist ideologies. Our analysis suggests that childless(ness) is used as an irrelevant descriptor and as a discreditable attribute, which fudher serves to perpetuate negative othering stereotypes of childless women. This is particularly exemplified through the representation of Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard by the print media. This analysis highlights the continued positioning of women in regards to their reproductive status.

What went wrong with the AWU?

The recent drama about Julia Gillard’s activities on behalf of one faction of the Australian Workers’ Union back in the early 1990s is another chapter in the long story of money in Australian unions.