Nick Economou

Accordism and the environment: The resource assessment commission and national environmental policy‐making

This paper explores the reform of environmental policy‐making by the Hawke government through its creation of the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC). The paper pursues two themes. First, it argues that this reform must be seen within the broader context of the Hawke governments approach to public policy generally. The paper argues that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has instituted a model for policy politics based on key strategic and normative approaches—a model this paper refers to as ‘Accordism’. Secondly, this paper looks at the RAC and in so doing argues that, on the basis of the norms that underpinned the reform of environmental policy‐making based on this body, the Commission may be placed squarely within the ‘Accordist’ paradigm.

Parties, Participation and Outcomes: The 2008 Victorian Local Government Elections

In November 2008, voters in Victoria participated in local government elections under a system that has been subject to significant reform since the 1980s. This paper seeks to discern trends from the outcomes and identify significant structural features of the reformed system. With regards to outcomes, the paper highlights the high success rate amongst incumbent councillors and the strong sense of successful candidates being independent of political parties. The paper argues that these outcomes have been particularly influenced by the proliferation of electoral districts with relatively small voting populations or by the use of multimember electoral systems in larger districts. The variety of systems used underpins a localised and ‘clientelist’ politics that militates against the dominance of political parties over the contest. The paper also draws attention to the comparatively low rate of voter participation in an election in which compulsory voting applies. It argues that voter absenteeism was particularly noticeable in municipalities with large numbers of residents renting properties and might be explained as a form of ‘renters’ illusion’ impacting on voting behaviour.

Changing the Rules to Change the House: Electoral Reform and the 2006 Electoral Contest for the Victorian Legislative Council

On 25 November, 2006, Victorians participated in a general State election in which a new electoral system was being used for the Legislative Council. The electoral reform was part of an overall reform of the upper house undertaken by the Bracks Labor government. This article examines the electoral reform of the Victorian Legislative Council and the politics associated with this major change. It argues that this reform was the product of a Labor commitment to reform Australias State upper houses that had already been implemented in three other States. It also reviews the outcome of the 2006 election to assess the extent to which the outcome matched the expectation of advocates of reform.

The Environment in the 2013 Election: Controversies over climate change, the carbon tax and conservation

The environment has been a major part of the national political debate in Australia since the Franklin Dam dispute in Tasmania became an issue in the 1983 federal election. Labor won that election and subsequently sought to legislate to make good on its campaign promise to stop the Franklin Dam project from proceeding. This decision became the first of a series of conservation-oriented interventions that helped construct the notion that the Australian Labor Party— the party traditionally of blue-collar workers and their trade unions—was also the party most willing to respond to the environmental agenda (Papadakis 1993; Economou 2000). For all the ecological rhetoric employed by both government and environmentalists to rationalise the decision, the real reason for Labor’s interest in conservation was electoral. Senior strategists within the Labor secretariat and the caucus were convinced that conservation outcomes could influence the voting choices of electors in marginal seats, especially in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, and that gains in these areas would offset adverse reactions to such decisions amongst the party’s traditional blue-collar constituency—after all, Labor failed to win any lower house seats in Tasmania in the 1983 federal election (Warhurst 1983). This electoral outlook drove national Labor environmental policy most of the time during the Hawke Government years.

A Right-of-Centre Triumph: The 2004 Australian Half-Senate Election

The Australian Senate is a significant part of the Australian parliamentary system and the electoral contest for the Senate results in representational outcomes that will influence the way the Senate will perform. This paper argues that the 2004 half-Senate election result was significant because it resulted in the Liberal–National Coalition obtaining a majority in the upper house. It accounts for this outcome by examining the contest by way of inter- and intra-party bloc contests. It finds that a particularly strong Right-of-Centre performance in Queensland, to which voters voting for Ms Pauline Hanson made a major contribution, delivered the Senate majority to the Howard government. The significance of the result also lies in the way it confounded previously held views that the combination of proportional representation used for the Senate with the need to elect six senators from each State would make it unlikely for either Labor or the Liberal and National Parties to ever win an upper house majority in the future.

Political parties as electoral players

Parties are central to the practice of Australian democracy; however, their patterns of competitive behaviour are more closely aligned with some theories of democracy than others (see Chapter 1). Understanding the development and behaviour of political parties within the Australian electoral system is aided by the behaviouralist approach outlined in Chapter 3, which focuses on the creation of general models of political behaviour backed up by empirical evidence. As suggested by the theories in Chapter 2, the institutional rules of elections provide the political context that enables and constrains the ways parties ‘play the game’. The habitual depiction of the Australian party system as essentially a two-party contest would interest discourse theorists (Chapter 5), not least for the idea that the two-party discourse excludes alternative discourses about how Australian politics might be done. Critical theorists would question whether attention to the party contest really obscures the commitment of all political parties to an underlying pattern of inequality (Chapter 4).

Changing by landslide: The 1996 Australian federal election

The extent of the Liberal‐National Coalition victory in the 1996 General Election in Australia surprised many commentators and signalled the loss of popular support of a government that was managing some key policy issues with apparent success. The election marked the completion of the process in which the electorate tired of the modern Labor approach and became sceptical of its claims of success. Defeat for prime minister Paul Keating was the final evidence of dwindling electoral popularity for the Labor Partys approach which began with the partys loss of control of the state governments it had secured before or during the 13 years of Labor federal government. The Liberal‐National Coalition of John Howard was able to capitalize on the failure of the Labor government to deliver promised economic reforms and the apparent indifference of the Labor prime minister to the economic plight of middle Australia. A realignment of traditional Labor votes benefited the Australian Democrats, which became the third‐l...