Ideology,Environment and Legislation: South Australian Attitudes to Vegetation

The paper addresses one possible manifestation of the interface between geographical concerns and the law. A brief discussion about aspects of law, images, attitudes and ideology is presented. A broad historical survey of legislation from the South Australian Parliament pertaining to vegetation illustrates that elements of the law, statutes in this case, can be usefully applied to studying geographical problems such as environmental management. It is argued that geographers should more regularly make use of legal materials, concepts and issues in both research and teaching.     

The South Australian Election of 18 March 2006

The South Australian election on 18 March 2006 saw the Labor Party; led by Mike Rann, storm out from the shadows of minority government to record a decisive victory which has the potential to set a platform from which the party could govern for at least the next eight years. Labor won 28 of the 47 seats in the House of Assembly gaining 45.2% of first preference votes. However, the decisiveness of its victory in the Lower House was not matched by the result in the Legislative Council. Voters turned away from both major parties giving 4 of the 11 seats contested to minor parties and independents. This continued a trend that has been evident in South Australian elections for the last two decades, although on this occasion its dramatic acceleration was explained by the extraordinary result of the ‘No Pokies’ independent Nick Xenophon who won 23.5% of the vote and easily secured two quotas. The election campaign itself marked new heights in the trend towards presidential style campaigning on the part of the Labor Party which used extensive television advertising to make the most of its popular leader. The Liberals, on the other hand, lacked both a leader to counter Rann and the funds to match Labor's advertising budget. The election also saw the confirmation of Family First as a significant player in South Australian politics, and may mark the beginning of the end of the Australian Democrats. The Democrats failed to make any impact and were effectively replaced by the Greens, who in winning a seat in the Legislative Council enjoyed their first South Australian electoral success.     

The Political Thought of David Walsh: A Symposium

Abstract

David Walsh has published a trilogy of books on the ideological, political, and philosophical trajectories of modernity. He confronts the crisis of modernity and argues that modernity has the resources within itself to reestablish a collective commitment to the order of existence. This symposium offers four essays reflecting on and responding to Walsh's assessment of modernity and its prospects.     

Explaining the growth of government expenditure: Australian government department appropriations since world war two

Political economists have concentrated on explaining the growth of total government expenditure rather than individual governmental institutions. This paper applies four models of governmental behaviour from the public administration and public choice areas to the growth of the major Australian government departments in the period 1947–1979, and provides forecasts of expenditure for the years 1980–1982. The three models are: budgetary incrementalism, based on the auto‐correlation of departmental appropriations; the degree of bureaucratic monopoly power vis‐a‐vis its financial sponsor; a macro model incorporating social, political and economic incentives for governmental expenditure (e.g. unemployment); and a model based on measurements of the demand of the median voter for government services. The results suggest that a simple budgetary incrementalism model, using a first order autoregression provides the best explanation for institutional growth over the past thirty years and the best forecasts.     

The grotesque in the plays of Enda Walsh

This article attempts to outline the aesthetic of Enda Walsh's dramatic oeuvre, viewing it as fundamentally grotesque. Plays such as The New Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce, and Penelope have generally enjoyed a most enthusiastic reception; however, reviewers and critics have remained largely baffled as to where exactly these intoxicating pieces have left them. A plausible way of addressing the distinctive combination of citationality, the intermingling of genres, linguistic brilliance, circuitous structure, pathological interaction between characters, and the darkest humour, may consist in juxtaposing Walsh's technique with concepts of the grotesque as outlined, alternately, by Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser. The consequent observations on the grotesque in Walsh's plays are followed by a query as regards the moral dimension of Walsh's aesthetic, focusing on their position in relation to Bakhtin's assertion of the liberating potential of the grotesque as opposed to Kayser's insistence on the grotesque coming across as essentially bleak and hopeless.     

The symbolic purposes of sanctions: Australian and Canadian reactions to Afghanistan

Academic and political debates about international sanctions tend to focus on the instrumental purposes of these measures—their ability to hurt a target state sufficiently to cause it to change its behaviour. By contrast, the symbolic purposes of sanctions are commonly assumed not to be as important. Such assumptions are appropriate for states which have the capabilities necessary to achieve these ends—great powers or regional powers targetting very weak neighbours, for example. But are these assumptions useful in explaining the sanctions policies of non‐great powers, particularly those which impose sanctions against great powers? This paper explores the case of Australian and Canadian sanctions against the USSR after the invasion of Afghanistan and demonstrates the fallacy of such assumptions, and argues that symbolic purposes were much more important than the instrumental utilities normally associated with sanctions theory.     

The Samaritan's dilemma: The effectiveness of Australian foreign aid to Papua New Guinea

There is increasing recognition in the development literature that foreign aid can have malign effects on the recipient country, especially in failing states. This paper considers the impact of Australian aid on macro-level development in Papua New Guinea. After a review of official evaluations of the effectiveness of aid, the potential sources of ‘aid failure’ and ‘aid accountability’ in Papua New Guinea, it is argued that the current Australian macro-level aid program needs to be reassessed. In particular, the focus, coherence and impact on civil society of Australian aid should be modified in order to minimise its debilitating effects.