Religion and Politics in Australia

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics in Australia has in the past been conditioned by the peculiarities of Australian history. Traditionally religion was related to issues of moral reformation and sectarianism. Changes in Australia over the past forty years have changed this relationship as the public role of religion has waned. In recent times there has been somewhat of a religious comeback in Australian public life. This has been related to a new style of Christian politics, the presence of two strong Church leaders, Cardinal George Pell and Archbishop Peter Jensen, the presence of Islam, the election of a committed Christian Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and the continuing importance of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) as a civil religion.     

Geography in Higher Education in Australia

Within the last 30 years, geographical information systems (GIS) have been used increasingly in the training of geographers. On the basis of the philosophy of technology and instrumental genesis, we sketch how the use of instruments interacts with learning processes and outline how this can be studied. We empirically analyse students' learning processes and the influences of teaching practice in an introductory course in GIS. We show that students have different strategies for creating their personal instrument for spatial thinking and how teaching interacts with the students' learning processes. Finally, we discuss how GIS may gradually alter future professional development of geographers.     

The Liberal Paradox and the Politics of Asylum in Australia

This article interprets the politics of asylum in Australia in light of what James Hollifield calls ‘the liberal paradox’; that is, the trend amongst contemporary states towards greater transnational open-ness in the economic arena alongside growing pressure for domestic political closure. It begins with an outline of Australia's recent history of economic reform and of the discourse of globalisation that has been employed to legitimise the changes wrought by this transition. Focusing on the period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the article provides an account of anxieties associated with these changes and an analysis of government strategies to secure the support of disaffected sections of the electorate. Asylum policy is analysed in this context. The article shows how the policing of asylum seekers constitutes performances of political closure designed to assuage those made vulnerable by Australia's neoliberal economic trajectory. It argues that these politics of asylum are indicative of the tensions between transnational engagement and territorial closure faced by neoliberal states more generally.     

Power and Scale: The Shifting Geography of Industrial Relations Law in Australia

Abstract: In an increasingly complex literature exploring the geographies of socially constructed scale, interest has focused on the relationship between scale, power and the contested political terrains through which these relations are played out. In this paper, I argue that these interactions must be understood in specific contexts, where shifts in scale are inextricably linked to shifts in the sources and instruments of power. By applying a scale perspective to the analysis of recent industrial relations legislation in Australia, I show that the nature and direction of rescaling is “fixed” by the powers of institutional actors and the scope of their jurisdictions. I then draw on the distinctively scaled relations of the Australian context to assess the extent to which Australia's national rescaling processes can be seen as representing a process of convergence toward universal “spaces of neoliberalism”.     

Convergence Theory Reconsidered: The Politics of Pensions in Scandinavia and Australia

Scandinavia and Australia share a similar sequence of pension-political developments. Starting out from means-tested minimum pensions, these countries have moved towards a dual mandatory pension structure in which the working population has access to compulsory second-tier schemes, while marginal groups are served through income-tested minimum benefits or pension supplements. However, different countries have chosen different organisational means to provide both minimum and second-tier pensions. The article accounts for pension-political developments in Scandinavia and Australia, and explains these developments by combining two traditions in the study of welfare politics which are often portrayed as dire opposites: convergence theory versus 'politics matter' theories.     

The Electoral Politics of Economic Reform in Australia: The 1998 Election

Like many other advanced industrial democracies, Australia has experienced major and ongoing economic reform over the last two decades, the pace of which has, if anything, increased since the election of the Liberal‐National government in 1996. These developments have led to a growing sense of economic insecurity among many voters. Many of these concerns were focused on the 1998 election, when the Liberal‐National Coalition advocated the introduction of a goods and services tax. This paper uses the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES) survey to examine the impact of economic evaluations, economic insecurity and economic issues on voting in the election. The results demonstrate the existence of widespread economic concerns across the electorate, but that the Coalition gained a marginal electoral advantage on the tax reform issue. Economic issues were also a cause of defection to the new One Nation Party, although further analysis reveals that its support was motivated more by race and ethnic concerns than by economic discontent.     

The Politics of Party Leader Survival and Succession: Australia in Comparative Perspective

The processes of replacement of party leaders are well-published events in media outlets across the world's democracies, but are scarcely analysed by political scientists. In this article we examine the extent to which incumbent party leaders are able to control their own fate in the face of various types of challenges that herald a possible end to their rule. It discusses three related research questions derived from this main objective: (1) what makes incumbents quit? (2) How do incumbents respond to various types of triggers heralding a possible end to their rule? (3) To what extent does incumbent behaviour prior to and following succession affect the fortunes of their successors and their party? We draw on a four-country–eight-party data set of leadership successions between 1945 and 2005, and on findings of in-depth studies of Australian cases to show that not only do Australian leaders get challenged and replaced more frequently than do other leaders, but they are also forced to combat more internal rivalry than their counterparts elsewhere.     

The Dimensions of Politics and Voter Behaviour in Preferential Systems: The Case of Australia

This project examines the dimensions of politics and voter preferences in Australia. Evidence from an empirical spatial analysis provides that Australian parties and voters are organised along a unidimensional socioeconomic continuum. Numerous individual-level factors, including party identification, ideology and a host of demographic and opinion variables, predict voters' positions along the continuum. Moreover, voter locations are shown to relate strongly to vote choice, demonstrating the importance of socioeconomic positions to voter behaviour in Australia. Finally, because this approach allows for a full examination of voter preference orderings, it is important to the study of voting behaviour and representation under preferential electoral institutions in Australia and elsewhere.     

Clientelism,Political Culture and Ethnic Politics in Australia

The discussion of political culture in Australia that exists focuses on the supposedly traditional traits of egalitarianism, utilitarianism, conformism, materialism and so on. While not wishing to deny the British influence on political institutions in Australia, to think that the massive nature of non-British postwar migration has not influenced political culture in Australia is not only naive but incorrect. In not paying attention to the impact of immigrants from NESB, political cultures and practices such as clientelism have not been the subject of Australian political discussion. Where ethnic participation in the political system has been examined, some have argued that it is based on corruption and has led political actors to deviate from national political and cultural norms. This paper argues that clientelism can provide a more useful and positive framework for understanding ethnic politics in Australia. After examining various views on political culture and ethnicity in Australia, this paper summarises some of the key points of recent approaches to clientelism. It suggests that clientelism has a positive face, especially as a form of representation for minority groups such as immigrants from NESB. The second section then describes the key features of clientelism in the Australian 'ethnic electorate'. It has evolved in ethnic electorates because of the process of ethnic community formation, the nature of case-work in ethnic electorates and the ability and willingness of political actors and parties to adapt their style to suit the environment.     

Unconventional Gas in Australia: Towards a Legal Geography

Recent commentary on future research directions for legal geography highlights the need for studies that are historically grounded and focused on human–environment interactions in rural settings. As a current, controversial land use in Australia, unconventional gas (UG) development provides an ideal lens through which researchers can investigate these themes. Utilising emerging international literature and current Australian examples, this paper surveys major trends in the Australian literature relating to UG, before exploring some of the ways in which Australian legal geographers might contribute constructively to community debates around this resource. Seeking to encourage further analysis, this paper contributes to this developing literature by focusing on two key areas: the various legal actors involved in UG development in Australia (including their regulatory choices, spatial interpretations, expertise, and influence) and the implications for legal geography where attempts are made to establish ‘social licence’ through contractual arrangements between industry and individual landholders. This article also delves into the place of Indigenous Australians in relation to UG extraction and the questions this resource raises about land use conflicts in Australia more generally – offering suggestions for comparative international studies and further critique at the domestic level.     

Tense Layering and Synthetic Policy Paradigms: The Politics of Health Insurance in Australia

This paper analyses the substantial financial subsidy, alongside other regulatory changes, introduced to support private health insurance in Australia at the end of the 1990s. The concept of policy layering is developed and refined theoretically in terms of changes in policy paradigms in order to chart a lengthy period of tense layering in Australian health-care politics between private and public health insurance and the bipartisan convergence on a universalism plus choice policy paradigm during the 1990s. This is the key dynamic underlying the Coalition's support of private health insurance after 1996 rather than a neo-liberal ambition to dismantle the health-care state and return to a predominately privately financed health-care system with a residual, public safety net.     

The Geography Closest In - the Body… the Politics of Pregnability

This paper aims to make questions of the body explicit in geography. Constructionist and essentialist feminist approaches to the body are outlined and the distinction that is commonly made between them is prob-lematised. Also problematised is the mind/body split. The Pregnant Woman is used to question the epistemology and ontology of geographical discourse. These epistemological and ontological questions underlie the discussion of the geography of pregnant women's experiences of Centreplace mall in Hamilton, New Zealand. Suggestions for further research in the area of ‘embodying geography’ are offered.     

Academic Freedom,Intellectual Diversity,and the Place of Politics in Geography

Abstract: This paper examines the conservative critique of higher education in the USA. I argue, first, that the right's call for greater “intellectual diversity” in American higher education should be understood as an attack on the professional self‐regulation and disciplinary autonomy that are central to academic freedom in this country. Second, I suggest that the right's politicization of politics in the academy brings to light the importance of our developing a vision of the university that accounts for rather than disavows the political nature of the work we do.     

Media Responsiveness to 'Old' and 'New' Politics Issues in Australia

Attempts to transform political agendas are closely associated with the role of the media in shaping perceptions, reflecting programs of political organisations, influencing institutional practices and applying pressure on divergent interests. By examining the role of an influential news magazine in voicing concerns about welfare and environment policies over a 40-year period, this article tests arguments about the salience of 'old' and 'new' politics issues as well as the changing character of debates about these questions in efforts to create a sustainable, competitive and global economy. Apart from examining the capacity of the media to change their storylines (or ways of thinking about an issue), the article considers how they attempt to draw on credible news sources to substantiate their reports.