The leaders and the press

Overall, as in 2001 and 2004, the print media provided substantial coverage of the election campaign; and, as in recent campaigns, the Prime Minister received greater coverage than the Opposition Leader. As in previous campaign coverage a small number of topics—including opinion polling—generated the majority of stories. Two features were different in the 2007 campaign, namely the gradual increase in the number of positive stories about the Opposition Leader; and an increase in the number of negative stories about and unflattering images of the Prime Minister.

Race, history, and the Australian faith missions

In 1901, the parliament of the new Commonwealth of Australia passed a series of laws designed, in the words of the Prime Minister Edmund Barton, “to make a legislative declaration of our racial identity”. An Act to expel the large Pacific Islander community in North Queensland was followed by a law restricting further immigration to applicants who could pass a literacy test in a European language. In 1902, under the Commonwealth Franchise Act, “all natives of Asia and Africa” as well as Aboriginal people were explicitly denied the right to vote in federal elections. The “White Australia policy”, enshrined in these laws, was almost universally supported by Australian politicians, with only two members of parliament speaking against the restriction of immigration on racial grounds.

The establishment of the Judicial Appointments Commission in Malaysia to improve the constitutional method of appointing the judges of the superior courts : a critical study

The Judicial Appointments Commission was established in Malaysia in 2009 to ensure unbiased selection of judicial candidates for the consideration of the Prime Minister, who has the final say regarding the appointment of judges to the superior courts. But the provisions concerning Prime Minister’s power to appoint the majority of the members of the Commission and his unfettered power of removing four of the five appointed members without assigning any reason, have calculatedly been devised for ensuring the selection of judicial candidates having right political patronage in accordance with the covert wishes of the Prime Minister. Furthermore, the Prime Minister’s power of rejecting the Commission’s recommendations of multiple candidates renders the undertaking of a lengthy process of selection unproductive and useless. Thus the Judicial Appointments Commission has become a superfluous body with an ineffective modus operandi to attain the stipulated objectives of improving and complementing the constitutional method of appointing judges to the superior courts. Since the Federal Constitution of Malaysia has not empowered the Parliament to enact a law providing for the establishment of a Judicial Appointments Commission, it also appears that the Judicial Appointments Commission Act 2009 is an invalid piece of legislation.

Rethinking grassroots campaigners in the digital media: The ‘grassroots orchestra’ in Italy

The diffusion of digital media allows the emergence of new types of relations between grassroots campaigners and organisers. This article presents the results of a comparative qualitative study of two Italian cases of grassroots online participation: a local electoral campaign and a single-issue social movement. The first case is ‘Tell your Milano’, a project that took place during the electoral campaign for Mayor of Milan in the spring of 2011. The second case is the ‘Purple People’ (Popolo Viola), an Italian social movement started in 2009 to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The article introduces the concept of a ‘grassroots orchestra’: a grassroots campaign aimed at a short-term objective, coordinated by a non-grassroots political actor and performed by a community sharing a uniform and coherent context.

Supersession of the senior-most judges in Bangladesh in appointing the chief justice and the other judges of the appellate division of the supreme court : a convenient means to a politicized bench

The Constitution of Bangladesh has provided the President with the unfettered power to appoint the Chief Justice of Bangladesh. However, the President is required by the Constitution to act on the advice of the Prime Minister, after consulting the Chief Justice, in appointing the puisne judges of the Supreme Court - the apex court of the nation. This Article finds that in the absence of any specific constitutional provisions specifying that the senior-most judge of the Appellate Division - the higher Division of the Supreme Court - should be appointed as the Chief Justice, a convention to this effect was developed for ensuring that extraneous considerations did not play a part in the pivotal appointment of the Chief Justice. In the same vein, a convention of appointing the senior-most judges of the High Court Division, which is the lower Division of the Supreme Court, as the judges of the Appellate Division was developed. But both these conventions have been transgressed at regular intervals by succeeding generations of executives, particularly by the current one, for politicizing the superior judiciary of the nation, thereby undermining its credibility in the eyes of the litigants as an impartial arbitrator of disputes. Accordingly, this article concludes that in order to exclude the possibility of appointments on extraneous considerations, the principles of appointing the Chief Justice and the other judges of the Appellate Division on the basis of seniority should be inserted in the Constitution by means of an amendment.

You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast : Shrek and ideology

In 2002 the Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced that we are living in 'the post-feminist stage of the debate.' As Anne Summers documents in The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women's Choices in Twenty-First Century Australia (2003), Howard cut funding for childcare, for the Office of the Status of Women, and for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He abolished the Register of Women in the Office of the Status of Women for government appointments, the Women's Statistical Unit in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the Women's Bureau in the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Special services for women, given the achievement of gender equality, were obviously no longer required.

Howard, Downer and the Liberals' realist tradition

The successive Howard Governments sought not only to make foreign policy in response to new regional and global agendas, but to respond to and to seek to manage new forms of electoral challenge with new forms of nationalism. This has resulted in a set of important departures from the major Liberal tradition in international affairs, the claim to a realist approach to foreign policy, and has led to the need to manage the consequences of those departures. The boundary that realism sought to draw between the domestic and international politics, as the spheres of values and interests respectively, became increasingly blurred. In relations with the Asian region the expression of strong domestic (nationalist and internationalist) agendas led initially to distancing from Asian engagement. However, from 2002, a more realist-focused external policy led to new forms of state to state re-engagement in pursuit of national interests. In the commitment to military operations in Iraq, the Anzac legend is interpreted to supply nationalist legitimation which would not normally be required for wars fought for realist (i.e. defensive) reasons. A future Liberal prime minister would lack Howard's touch here. In the debate in the Liberal Party over defence doctrine, an attempt by the Defence Minister to reformulate the realist doctrine of Defence of Australia into an expeditionary construct was rejected.

Nervous outsiders : Australia and the 1955 Asia-Africa conference in Bandung

In 1955 29 Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations gathered in Bandung. Indonesia, to discuss a range of issues including colonialism, racialism, economic development, war and peace. India's Prime Minister. Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the key figures at the conference, but the Chinese Prime Minister, Chou En-lai. was the primary focus of world attention and media interest. The conference raised awkward questions for the Australian government. It highlighted the point that Australia was geographically part of Asia and had a vital interest in the region, but the fact that Australia had not been invited to attend the conference emphasised its status as a nation apart, racially and culturally. The Bandung conference provides an ideal opportunity to examine thinking about Australia's place in Asia as key figures in the Department of External Affairs. journalists and Asianist intellectuals debated whether or not Australia should attend.

Real english and english lite : what texts should we teach in the english classroom? (1) or English lite and thick lit : what is the debate about?

Why is it that Prime Minister John Howard wants to micro-manage English curricula? Why does how teachers teach English and Literature regularly make it to the front and editorial pages of the national dailies? The author attempts to critique that phenomenon, to explain her state of mind - that of being both alert and alarmed. The latest round of the debate began with Tony Thompson's article, 'English Lite is a tragedy for students', in 'The Age' on 12 September 2005. He was concerned that VCE English might be reduced to a single print text and he was alarmed about the watering-down of curriculum driven by 'postmodern notions'. The author is at odds with many of Thompson's views and discusses her stance on various aspects of his propositions. Issues examined include Thompson's argument that no multimodal text yields as much significance as a piece of genuine literature; that students are not being 'stretched' far enough; the false dichotomy between aesthetic/formalist manoeuvres on the one hand and postmodern ones on the other; how texts make meaning to students as consumers and the rationale for the use of pop culture texts to connect with students.

Announcement effect on the credit spreads of US dollar Malaysian bonds

We find that international political events have more influence on the changes of bond yield spreads from Malaysian USD issues than domestic events. Significant results are consistent across different issues. The resignation by the former Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir, however created mix response from the market. Using error correction model, this study also found the monetary policy by Federal Reserve have long term and significant impact on the behaviour of the Malaysian USD issues.

Australia's Prime Ministers: Bob Hawke

In the run up to the Federal Election Trevor Chappell has been look at some of Australia’s former Prime Ministers.

Bob Hawke is Australia's longest serving Labor Prime Minister, he was at the helm from 1983 to 1991.

Trevor Chappell spoke to Professor Geoff Robinson, a political historian and lecturer in Australian Studies and Politics at Deakin University about the Bob Hawke years.