Wayne Errington

Electoral Databases: Big Brother or Democracy Unbound?

Modern political campaigning is becoming increasingly professionalised to the extent that in Australia today the major parties use electoral databases to assist with their campaigns. The electoral databases of the Coalition (Feedback) and the Australian Labor Party (Electrac) store information on the constituents of each House of Representatives seat. The information gathered in the databases, such as the policy preferences and party identification of individual voters, are used by candidates for House seats to tailor correspondence to swinging voters, and to identify potential party supporters. Party organisations aggregate the information in the databases and use it to conduct polls and focus groups of swinging voters, and to tailor policy development and campaign strategies. Electoral databases have the potential to improve the level of communication between elected representatives and their constituents. There are, however, a number of ethical problems associated with their use. While the usefulness of the databases to the major political parties is undeniable, their use underlines the trend in modern campaigning towards targeting swinging voters at the expense of the majority of the electorate. Considerable public resources are devoted to the smooth operation of the databases. They would be much less effective were political parties not exempted from the Privacy Act. The use of personal information collected by members of parliament by political parties should be more closely regulated. Despite the wishes of the major political parties to keep their operation a secret, the advantages and disadvantages of the use of electoral databases should be more widely debated.

Shock troops: The emerging role of Senators in House of Representatives campaigns

Since the 1949 introduction of proportional representation for the Senate there have only been two elections (1983 and 84) at which the ALP has gained more Senators in the chamber than the Coalition. The Coalition has held more seats than the ALP since 1987. The decline in Senate fortunes for the Labor Party has occurred despite (or, perhaps, because of) consecutive ALP Governments from 1972–75 and, more conspicuously, 1983–96. The professionalisation of politics through the 1980s and 1990s has dramatically changed the role major parties expect of their Senate teams. The Coalition and Labor Parties each use their Senators and Senatorial office resources as ‘shock troops’ in marginal seats, as well as points of constituency contact for electors in marginal seats or seats held by the opposition. Given that major party Senators are increasingly being used by the party machines as campaign tools, and are increasingly locating their offices and staffers in marginal seats, the numerical advantage the Coalition enjoys in the Senate is worthy of consideration. The additional campaign resources that Senators provide translates potentially into an electoral advantage in the House of Representatives for the Coalition. The Coalitions majority in the Senate may therefore be of as much interest outside the chamber as it is within it.

Legislative Recruitment and Models of Party Organisation: Evidence from Australia

This paper considers the relationship between the growing dominance of career politicians in the Australian federal legislature and models of party organisation. Using data on MPs in the Australian federal parliament, this study maps changes in models of party organisation to the occupational profiles of MPs between 1949 and 2007. The findings show a correspondence between the phenomenon of cartelisation and the appearance of legislators whose previous occupation was in the political sphere. The authors suggest that there is a relationship between different modes of party organisation and both the supply of candidates and the demand-side factors influencing party selectors. The paper concludes that theories of recruitment should include a greater emphasis on models of party organisation to explain better the uniformity of recruitment outcomes across advanced democracies.

Strengths and Weaknesses in Explorations of Howard's Decade

Nick Cater (ed.), The Howard Factor: A Decade that Transformed the Nation (Carlton North, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), 349 pp.,

Long-term Patterns of Coalition-Building at State and Federal Level in Australia

29.95, ISBN 052285284X George Megalogenis, The Longe...

Establishing Prime Ministerial Leadership Style in Opposition

Australian politics has featured relatively stable conservative coalitions at both national and sub-national (state) level since the advent of the modern two-party system in the 1940s. However, the configuration of those coalitions varies greatly from state to state. While the larger Liberal Party and the rural-based National Party (formerly the Country Party) have shared power in each of the conservative national governments since the Second World War, differences in history, geography and industrial development in a country as large as Australia have produced considerable sub-national differences. The variations in the status of the rural-based party in particular show no signs of disappearing. This is in part due to the federal nature of the parties. State-controlled parties produce some degree of congruence between the two levels of government while retaining variation in the arrangements between states. For example, the National Party is comparatively weak in some states while stronger in the largest states of New South Wales and Victoria, strengths and weaknesses reflected at both state and federal levels. In the National Party’s historically strongest state of Queensland the two parties have combined to form the Liberal National Party (LNP), making arrangements at the federal level even more complicated since LNP MPs can caucus with either of the federal parties.

The Democratic State as a Marketing Tool: The Permanent Campaign in Australia

Those who make the transition from leading the opposition to leading the government are, by virtue of winning an election, successful leaders. Yet, the early months and years of new governments are often mistake-ridden and directionless. Some new prime ministers, like Britain’s Tony Blair, have little or no prior experience in executive government. Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, observed that Blair’s office had ‘hung on to some of the techniques and ways of opposition for too long’ and ‘the spin thing’ became a bigger issue as a result (BBC News, 9 May 2002). Australian Prime Minister John Howard, though an experienced minister in a previous government and ultimately a successful prime minister, struggled to control the issue agenda during his first term from 1996. By contrast, Howard’s successor, Kevin Rudd, steadfastly refused to compromise the relationship he built with the electorate as opposition leader and reaped political dividends as a result.