Domestic challenges and international leadership: a case study of women in Australian international affairs

Women in international affairs play powerful and influential roles in shaping laws and policies, negotiating on subjects of war, peace and security, and representing national interest. In Australia, women outnumber men at all levels of public service to executive level one. Yet, women remain under-represented in more senior ranks and appear to experience significant challenges gaining leadership in agencies involved in diplomacy and security. What are the gendered institutions at play in Australian international affairs? Using a comparative case study approach, this paper explores the experiences of senior executive level women leaders across the Australian Federal Government in four case agencies—the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Defence, Department of Home Affairs (DHA), and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Women’s gendered challenges in international leadership are not surprising within a diplomatic history that has often restricted women’s roles based off the ‘appropriateness’ of sending women as envoys to nations of varying safety and respect for their status. What is surprising is that women report greater sexism, discrimination and harassment from within their own agencies, not from countries in which they are hosted. This has important ramifications globally on gaining and retaining women in international affairs leadership.     

Brewarrina: An Australian Story

This short paper discusses Barry Morris's account of the ‘riot’ at Brewarrina, New South Wales, in 1987 and its legal aftermath, which continued for some years. An iconic event in Australian race relations, much can be learnt from its various dimensions, a fact that Morris amply demonstrates. Notwithstanding, this discussion questions a related narrative in his book, which interprets capitalism's impact on self‐determination simply in terms of neoliberalism's ‘political effects’. The paper seeks to broaden the discussion of the relations between the state and self‐determination, and between capitalism and race.     

Telephone traffic dispersion and nodal regionalisation in the Australian states

Telephone traffic is shown to be a reliable indicator of functional ties, with morning peak calls concentratedalong hierarchical pathways andevening peak calls more sensitive to population and distance. Traffic dispersion incident to each centre is systematically related to the size of the centre and to the size and spacing of interacting centres. Metropolitan orientation has a powerful effect on traffic dispersion in all situations and, in the more centralised states, negates the relationship between centre size and dispersion and converts the customary distance-decay cones into an elevated surface of strong metropolitan orientation, broken by inverted cones around a few regional centres. Middle-order nodal regions are delineated and intra-regional flows analysed using primary linkage and standardised scores. Three distinctive systems of regional-ordering are described, namely metropolitan-dominated, provincial-city dominated and multi-ordered.     

Ballistic Missile Defence: An Australian Perspective

The University of Queensland's School of Political Science and International Studies organised a round table in Canberra on 27 June 2001 that brought together a select group of government policy-makers and academic specialists to discuss the issue of ballistic missile defence (BMD). The round table provided useful insights into Australian thinking on the issue. This report seeks to summarise the essence of those discussions in order to contribute to the broader national debate.     

Dendrochronological Flood-frequency Analysis: An Australian Application

Dendrochronological studies have received little attention in Australia and it appears that the methodology is not well understood. This paper describes dendrochronological techniques available in riparian environments and applies them to a small reach of the Hawkesbury River. Results of field investigations into the relationships between flooding and associated tree-ring variability were used to reconstruct partial duration flood-frequency data. The ring-width chronologies of 39 trees were transformed into three indices that made interpretation with respect to flooding possible: (1) a width-index: (2) an annual-sensitivity (AS) index; and (3) a tilting vector. It was assumed that floods would either suppress growth or alter the annual distribution of new wood about the tree bole. Width-indicies and tilting vectors provided the most reliable flooding information. Much reduced growth rates at low elevations supported initial hypotheses and led to the establishment of a relationship between growth-rate and frequency of inundation. The reconstructed flood-frequency curve closely matched the historical data-set although underestimation occured at higher levels due to limited sample size. Analyses indicate that dendrochronological investigations of exotic riparian trees provide detailed flooding information, but techniques may also be used to provide minimum dates of fluvial landforms and date recent channel changes.     

Security,development and the Australian security discourse about failed states

This paper discusses Mark Duffield's theory of the merging of development and security. It introduces failed states as a key linkage between these concepts. To subject the theory to a partial empirical test, the use of the term ‘failed state’ in Australian security discourse vis-à-vis three countries in the South Pacific is presented. Evidence from these cases supports the notion that security and development are indeed coming together. This threatens to strip development policy of its meaning, subordinating it to security concerns.     

Party Democracy: An Audit of Australian Parties

Competition between candidates representing political parties is usually regarded as a central feature of a liberal democracy. However, where competition between parties fails to provide the public with an effective choice of candidates, the real competition between candidates is displaced to a competition for party endorsement within particular parties. The paper examines the democratic implications of this displacement, and reports the findings of an audit of candidate-selection procedures within the principal Australian parties. The paper argues inter alia that the closed nature of electoral competition and the public status of Australian political parties imply that their internal affairs should be conducted democratically. The paper defines internal party democracy in structural and procedural terms. It applies realistic standards - realistic, because too much internal democracy could render a party ineffective and restrict electoral competition - in conducting an audit of the candidate-selection rules and the composition of candidate-selection voting panels for the principal Australian parties. The paper concludes with a suggestion for policy reform.