Australia's trade policy dilemmas

In recent years, Australia has had a very active agenda for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) whose net economic benefits remain at best unclear. There has been a strong defensive element to some of this PTA activity but the Howard government also used PTAs to pursue non-economic objectives, such as the promotion of foreign policy and security interests. This article broadly outlines Australia's PTA policy and the problems and dilemmas that it has generated. More importantly, it looks ahead to consider likely scenarios for trade policy under the Rudd Labor government. Each of these scenarios has different implications for policy strategies and outcomes. This article concludes that while there could be significant pay-offs should Labor choose to pursue its traditional preferences for non-discriminatory trade arrangements, the world has changed considerably since the heydays of the multilateral trade system. A commitment to reinvigorating multilateralism will require strong political leadership, imaginative thinking, and creative diplomacy.     

Australia's foreign policy links with Latin America: distant relations

In more recent years, Australia's relations with the countries of Latin America have taken on more importance as the trade and investment links between the two regions have grown. Besides this recent activity, Australia has a long history of diplomatic relations with the countries of Latin America, even though the links between the two regions have at times been fairly superficial. This relationship, like many others, has tended to concentrate on mainly trade relations and, despite Latin America's often turbulent political history, has not been affected much at all by political issues. The purpose of this article is to analyse the development of foreign policy links between Australia and the countries of Latin America in their formulative stage between 1901 and 1973.     

The geopolitics of Antarctic governance: sovereignty and strategic denial in Australia's Antarctic policy

The governance of Antarctica has re-emerged as a geopolitical issue in the past decade due to the increased presence of China, India and Russia; the continent's importance in understanding global climate change; and its economic potential as a source of marine, genetic and mineral resources. This article examines the challenges for the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) in this context and the consequences for Australia's foreign policy in its dual role as both a territorial claimant and supporter of ATS norms of cooperative science and environmental protection. The central argument is that Antarctic ‘bifocalism’ is under pressure as increased commercial activity and problematic jurisdictional interfaces with other regimes create difficult regulatory challenges for the ATS and encourage assertions of sovereignty that cannot be resolved within the existing regime. Consequently, the author argues that it is vitally important for Australia to preserve the legitimacy of the ATS through a policy framework of ‘strategic denial’ that aims to prevent all states from acquiring sovereignty over Antarctic territory. Australia should therefore reject recent proposals to securitise Antarctic policy or pursue World Heritage listing because they involve assertions of sovereignty that risk fracturing the ATS and thus compromise Australia's enduring interest in keeping Antarctica as ‘a continent of international cooperation and peace’.     

From trusteeship to development: how class and gender complicated Kenya's housing policy, 1939–1963

Colonial rule required the control of territory, nowhere more than in cities. In the early twentieth century, colonial policy in Kenya and the rest of East and Southern Africa had only grudgingly accommodated Africans in urban areas. After 1939 policy changed, not only in response to poor local conditions and social unrest but also because London's new colonial development policy made a place for African workers in towns. From 1940, new housing and colonial policies acknowledged the importance of the discourses of class and gender. Administrators stabilised an African working class by building better municipal housing, and then sought to fashion a middle class by promoting home ownership. They began to promote housing for families, having recognised that African women could help to make their men at home in the city, and to educate children to become good citizens. The evolution of Kenya's housing policy illuminates the characteristic pressures, calculations, and responses of colonial rule that were being played out internationally in the late colonial period.     

Australia's Antarctic agenda

Australia has had a long connection with, and significant national interests in, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Territory comprises 42 per cent of Antarctica's landmass. Australia is not only a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty but has played a significant role in the development of what is termed the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This article aims to provide an overview of Australia's key policy interests and government policy goals towards Antarctica, including its commitment to the ATS. In examining key policy objectives we note that despite continuity and development of these objectives, significant changes and challenges have arisen in the period 1984–2006. It is these challenges that will help frame Australia's Antarctic agenda over the next 20 years and beyond.     

Australia's diplomatic asylum initiative at the United Nations: comparing international law rhetoric with foreign policy practice

In 1974, Australia took the initiative to have an item on diplomatic asylum inscribed on the UN General Assembly's agenda for that year. Its original ambition was to procure an international treaty on the subject. This article traces the history of that initiative from its inception to the acknowledgement seven years later that it had come to nothing. It also investigates the impact that Australia's initiative at the UN had on its foreign policy practice in relation to diplomatic asylum through two administrations: the Whitlam government (5 December 1972–11 November 1975) and the Fraser government (11 November 1975–11 March 1983). It demonstrates that, while the initiative generated a great deal of bureaucratic work, it wrought no real change in Australia's practice on the ground.     

Managing Australia's water resources

We have a great power not to destroy and in exercising that power, we will give proof of our consideration for the future, and for the first time in our history we will be recognised as custodians of the earth. Tasmania has rivers flowing to the sea … these are great natural energy resources just crying out to be developed and developed they must be.     

Interviewing Australia's Senior Judiciary

Interview research is ubiquitous in social science, but few political scientists interview senior judges about courts and judicial decision making. Misconceptions abound about the feasibility and pitfalls of interviewing judges. Drawing on interviews with more than 80 senior Australian judges, I assess the study of judicial elites through interview research.     

Western Australia's Royalties for Regions program: a policy response to growth,regional neglect,and perceived disempowerment

Under the right conditions, compounding socio‐political and economic change can dramatically alter government policy. From 2000, Western Australia, a resource‐rich jurisdiction, experienced significant change owing to a once‐in‐a‐generation resources boom, which forced a break with earlier development approaches. In 2008, regional interventionism returned to the State via the State Government's Royalties for Regions program. Departing from the neo‐liberal tradition, the program allocated 25 per cent of the State's royalty income to non‐metropolitan regions, over and above existing regional allocations, and its success remains disputed. While it is easy to question the program retrospectively, the socio‐economic and political circumstances from 2000 to 2008 reveal a “perfect storm” of conditions enabling the transition from neo‐liberalism to interventionism in regional development. This paper sets out to understand the multi‐faceted conditions that enabled the dramatic paradigm shift embodied by the program. To this end, it examines the State's rural–urban settlement dichotomy, its staples economy, and the policy context leading up to the program. Following that, the paper proposes a causal framework mapping out the factors driving and rationalising the program. These factors are then examined in detail and include perceived rural voter disenchantment, ineffectual regional development policy, the State's mining boom, inadequate regional development funding, the contrasting fortunes of two regions (illustrative of the impact of growth, and the lack thereof), and the political manoeuvring during the 2008 election. Finally, the paper concludes by considering how the conversion of these conditions resulted in the State's most significant regional policy redirection in decades.