Agricultural policy in Australia: deregulation,bipartisanship and agrarian sentiment

This paper provides an overview of the development of agricultural policy in Australia from a complex web of government intervention in the sector in the first half of the 20th century to the deregulation of the past 40 years. It highlights the close interrelationship between agricultural policy and manufacturing policy as well as the areas in which agricultural policy has been distinctive, namely the largely bipartisan nature of agricultural policy development and the strong cultural attachment across the community to farmers in general and family farming in particular. Recent policy debates suggest that agricultural policy will remain a sector apart in terms of the broadly bipartisan nature of policy and the ongoing influence of non-economic considerations. Australia will retain its comparative advantage in agricultural exports into the future and policymakers will need to continue to balance policies that support the economic performance of the sector with those that reflect community expectations of support for the farming community more broadly.     

Skill,Migration and Gender in Australia and Canada: The Case of Gender-based Analysis

The shift away from family immigration and towards skilled immigration is one of the most important changes over the past decade in Australian immigration policy. Yet the implications of this shift for female applicants have remained largely unexplored. Skilled immigration has slipped by as a genderless story in which the androgynous skilled migrant is the central character and economists do most of the storytelling. This paper discusses the gender equality concerns raised by the policy shift towards skilled immigration. It argues that Australia's skilled immigration scheme disadvantages female applicants through its construction both of economic independence and ‘skill.’ A comparison with Canada's skilled migration law and regulations, which are audited by gender mainstreaming tools, is considered to ascertain what role, if any, gender-based analysis plays in identifying and rectifying the potential gender inequalities produced by skilled immigration selection.     

Swedish wage policy and Australia three years after Australia reconstructed

During the 1980s, and with increasing speed, there have been major changes in the determination of wages in Sweden; changes which involve the substantial breakdown of the ‘Swedish model’ of social and economic policy which had developed since the 1930s. These changes are of much interest in themselves but have a special relevance to Australia because of admiration for the Swedish system within the Australian labour movement, exemplified by the major report Australia Reconstructed, published in 1987. Some of the complexities and difficulties involved in the Swedish system were not fully dealt with in this report, while others have become clear since its publication. Australians, as well as others, need to appreciate what has occurred. Centralised wage negotiation, essential to the Swedish model, has in fact survived better in Australia than in Sweden; though in Australia too it is potentially vulnerable to tendencies towards decentralisation. Those interested in the concept of ‘corporatism’ should also note these developments, Sweden having been thought of as a highly ‘corporatist’ polity.     

Infant mortality in Ottawa, Canada, 1901: assessing cultural, economic and environmental factors

Infant mortality is widely recognized as an indicator of poor living conditions. Scholars have identified economic, housing, environmental, and more recently, cultural determinants of infant mortality. Using individual-level data and record linkage this paper documents and explains the geography of infant mortality in Ottawa in 1901. Infant death in Ottawa mirrored the geography of poor living conditions in the city. The poorest and most densely settled community in Ottawa was Lowertown, a mostly French-Canadian part of the city with a disproportionate share of the city's infant deaths. In addition to environmental factors, infant mortality was linked to economic standing. Poorer families in Lowertown were more likely to have one of their infants die than better off families. After controlling for economic standing, however, cultural factors were stronger predictors of infant deaths. French-Canadian families in Lowertown had a greater risk of infant deaths than did families of other backgrounds irrespective of material circumstances. Supporting conclusions drawn elsewhere, this paper suggests that the interaction of particular cultural practices, such as shorter periods of breast-feeding among French-Canadians and a poor sanitary environment, resulted in high infant mortality rates in Ottawa.     

Irish Protestant migration and politics in the USA,Canada, and Australia: a debated legacy

In the USA, the rediscovery and celebration of Irish Protestant ancestry has extended in recent years to arguments by some scholars, political journalists, and politicians that there exists today an identifiable Scots-Irish socio-political legacy. This essay explores the history and cultural context of Irish Protestant migration and assesses its contemporary ramifications at the national level and in a critical state-level case (Kentucky). To assist in identifying the factors that have fostered or mitigated Irish Protestant identity/ies, comparisons will be made between the American experience and the very different ones of two other major recipient countries: Canada (and the province of Ontario) and Australia (and the state of New South Wales). Source regions, religious affiliation, the timing and magnitude of mass migration, and settlement patterns have all mattered in determining the socio-political roles played by Irish Protestants in the three former British colonies since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even more important have been the local economic and political contexts, including prevailing political party structures and competition. These factors explain why none of the three case countries, the USA included, bears witness to a coherent, identifiable Irish Protestant socio-political legacy.     

The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties,prime ministers,and policy change in Australia

In Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.     

Neoliberalism and gender equality policy in Australia

After a Coalition electoral victory in 2013, the Australian Office for Women was returned from the periphery to the centre of government. This was contrary to the expectation that women’s policy will be given greater salience under governments of the left rather than of the right. To unpack this puzzle, we examine institutional arrangements and policy directions under successive Labor and Coalition governments in Australia, including the abolition of intergovernmental bodies concerned with gender equality. We find that the influence of neoliberalism has resulted in a blurring of patterns of partisan difference over gender equality policy. There are some continuing partisan differences but also a common pattern of increased emphasis on international and regional rather than domestic policy. The notable exception to this pattern is in the area of gender-based violence.     

From liberal to conservative: shifting cultural policy regimes in post-Soviet Russia

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Russian cultural policy from the end of the Soviet era through the current against the framework of welfare state regimes. The end of the Soviet Union 25 years ago ushered in a decade of liberalization marked by a withdrawal of the state from cultural responsibility and hopes that market demand and private support would emerge to fill in the void. With the latter hampered by the economic hardships of the transition and the loss of philanthropic traditions after more than 70 years of communism, a liberal policy regime did not take firmly hold and has gradually been replaced by a new cultural policy consensus more akin to a conservative welfare regime, marked by a return of the state to a more dominant role with the support of core cultural policy constituencies.