The Australian Citizenship Test: Process and Rhetoric

In late 2007, Australia's relatively liberal citizenship eligibility requirements were modified, ostensibly to improve the value of citizenship by restricting access to it. A key change involved the introduction of a citizenship test. This article tracks its development and implementation. We challenge claims of overwhelming support for the test, explore the discourses around the “Australian values” being tested, and outline the process by which the legislation was enacted (during which a number of principles of parliamentary democracy were compromised). Using evidence from politicians' speeches, we argue the citizenship test served to re‐direct the Australian imagination away from a nascent “multicultural” identity, back to one redolent of the times of the “White Australia Policy”, confidently celebrating connections with an Anglo‐Saxon heritage, the European Enlightenment, and Judeo‐Christian roots. As such it was a key aspect of the 1996–2007 Howard Government's retreat from multiculturalism.     

The Reappraisal of the White Australia Policy against the Background of a Changing Asia, 1945–67*

This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian policy‐makers approached the problem of “White Australia” in the years 1945–67. It makes extensive use of original archival material to show how Australia's increasing engagement with Asia in the 1950s and 1960s exercised a direct influence on officials within the Department of Immigration. In response to Australia's changing geopolitical circumstances and the international community's increasing hostility towards racism during this period, Immigration Department officials persuaded the government to introduce a series of piecemeal adjustments which were specifically designed to placate Asian and world opinion. Although cautious, these changes nevertheless involved a corresponding reassessment of the policy's racial assumptions. By accepting in the late 1960s that certain Asians were capable of being integrated into the Australian community, policymakers had discarded the previously inviolable belief that all non‐Europeans were unassimilable by virtue of their race. The White Australia Policy, though not entirely defunct by the end of the decade, was nevertheless crumbling under the weight of Australia's new circumstances.     

The Strategic Fears of the Ruling Class: The Construction of Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877

In early 1877, there were no immigration restrictions in any of the Australian colonies. Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877 was the first of many laws that restricted Chinese immigration, in a movement that ultimately led to the White Australia legislation of 1901–2. This article finds that, contrary to the hegemonic understanding of White Australia, there was no significant working class or popular pressure behind the passage of the Act. Instead, it reflected the agendas of Queensland's elite, and in particular their concern that the large influx of Chinese people to the Palmer River goldfield could threaten their strategic control of Far North Queensland. In support of anti‐Chinese laws, Queensland's conservative newspapers whipped up fears of a Chinese “invasion”, a theme that would continue for nearly a century.     

Australian‐Asian Sociability,Student Activism,and the University Challenge to White Australia in the 1950s

During the 1950s, staff, students and graduates of Australian universities were increasingly critical of the racial restrictions on immigration, and their activism contributed to a broader government and community reassessment of the White Australia Policy. Personal experiences of cross‐cultural interactions between Australian students and an increasing number of international students from Asia, including those sponsored by the Australian government's Colombo Plan, underpinned the university challenge to immigration policy. Tertiary curriculum offering new academic interpretations of Asian history and decolonisation also contributed to a growing awareness among university‐educated Australians of Asia, and fostered empathy for its peoples. The publications of the Immigration Reform Group extended this critique of White Australia, and were driven by a moral indignation towards a policy that affected individuals personally known to the critics.     

Salience‐Based Congruence Between Parties & their Voters: The Swiss Case

Policy congruence between parties and their voters is a prerequisite for the latter's representation. Related research typically focuses on the left‐right dimension. We contribute to this literature by conceiving the alignment between citizens and political elites as congruence on issues that individual citizens consider important (salience‐based congruence). Furthermore, we approach salience from the citizen's perspective and measure it at the individual level. Based on data from the Swiss Election Study (2007), we demonstrate that the assessment of party representation changes once we take salience into account. Policy congruence on salient issues is high and niche parties perform better than mainstream parties. Our arguments and findings about the role personal issue salience plays at the individual and party levels have important repercussions for contemporary debates on representation and policy congruence.     

Indigenous Autonomy and the Contradictions of Plurinationalism in Bolivia

The government of Bolivia led by President Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party claims to be constructing a new postliberal or plurinational state. However, this alleged experiment in plurinationalism conflicts with two central elements of government and MAS party strategy: the expansion of the economic development model based on the extraction of non‐renewable natural resources, and the MAS's efforts to control political space, including indigenous territories. This article analyzes these contradictions by examining how Bolivia's constitution and legal framework appear to support indigenous autonomy while simultaneously constraining it. Specifically, it explores how political and bureaucratic processes have seriously limited opportunities to exercise indigenous rights to autonomy. The article makes a comparative analysis of the implications of Bolivia's experience for indigenous autonomy and plurinationalism for other resource extraction–dependent states.     

The Challenges of Transitioning from Opposition to Government: Liberal Party Planning for Government 1983 – 1996

Studies examining opposition transition to government processes and planning usually emphasise the responsibility of oppositions as a legislative institution and the role of party leaders. However, such approaches place too much emphasis on notions of responsible opposition and party leaders. They de‐emphasise the importance of partisan considerations that shape transition planning or how party organisations have attempted to assert control over parliamentary parties. Drawing on archival materials, policy documents, and elite interviews, this study examines both public and internal transition to government strategies undertaken by the Liberal Party of Australia during their opposition years (1983–1996). The paper finds that while party leaders became more important over time, the party organisation's involvement remained significant. The Liberal Party transition planning focused primarily on cabinet processes, Australian Public Service (APS) organisation, particularly the senior bureaucratic level, and selecting political staff. In so doing, the Liberal Party anticipated many of the Hawke government's 1987 reforms to the APS. The Liberal Party was motivated by its desire to restructure the machinery and culture of government and to allocate sufficient political staff resources to government. Its aim was to better equip the party to achieve its political and ideological goals when next in government.     

Re-imagining the Global Colour Line: The Bolt Case and the Politics of Whiteness

This paper revisits the controversy generated by a series of publications in 2009 by prominent Australian journalist Andrew Bolt. The overall argument is that the controversy generated by the Bolt case contributed to a reimagining of a twenty-first century version of the global colour line. Bolt's articles rested on a “racial grammar of whiteness” that enabled him simultaneously to assert and mask the hegemonic naturalness of whiteness. A racial grammar of whiteness mediates what people take to be the norm in representations and writings about the natures, roles and attributes of whites and non-whites in social situations and the social relations appropriate to them. It enables such views to be presented as just so much common-sense. Demonstrating this racial grammar at work is important because his articles appeared to echo an earlier era's narratives about race, power and privilege that were themselves informed by the global colour line, and which culminated in the now defunct White Australia Policy. The paper explores how those echoes were given substance within Bolt's articles and the subsequent court case about them, and how this contributed to a reimagining of the global colour line.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. Aboriginal Dreaming Paths and Trading Routes: The Colonisation of the Australian Economic Landscape. By Dale Kerwin Australia: William Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Edited by Harry Allen Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes. By Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill The Frauenstein Letters: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Emigration from the Duchy of Nassau to Australia. By Kathrine M. Reynolds Not Quite White: Lebanese and the White Australia Policy 1880 to 1947. By Anne Monsour Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist. By David Lee The Australian Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal. By Augustine Meaher IV. Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan. By Christine De Matos A Three‐Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock. By Jim Davidson The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, Volume 3 1962–1983 with an introduction by Harry Evans. Edited by Anne Miller and Geoffrey Browne Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities. By Anne Tiernan and Patrick Weller Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class. By Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For. Edited by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane The Quest for Justice. By Ken Crispin The Politics of Human Rights in Australia. By Louise Chappell John Chesterman and Lisa Hill Australia. The State of Democracy. By Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin. What Were They Thinking? The Politics of Ideas in Australia. By James Walter with Tod Moore Throwing off the Cloak: Reclaiming Self‐reliance in Torres Strait. By Elizabeth Osborne Pacific Ways: Government and Politics in the Pacific Islands. Edited by Stephen Levine The Moral, Social and Political Philosophy of the British Idealists. Edited by William Sweet Churchill's Secret War. The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War Two. By Madhusree Mukerjee Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954–70. By Lawrence Black Confronting Hitler. German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimar Republic, 1929–1933. By William Smaldone Italy Today, the Sick Man of Europe. Edited by Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri Resentment in History. By Marc Ferro, trans. Steven Rendall Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations. By Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain (editors) Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth‐Century Britain. By Peter J. Bowler     

“English Institutions and the Irish Race”: Race and Politics in Late Nineteenth‐Century Australia

During the 1880s there was fierce debate in colonial Australia and throughout the English‐speaking world about the functioning of increasingly democratic societies and especially who, in terms of race, class and gender, was qualified to participate in the political process. In this formative period of what later became known as the “White Australia policy”, minorities were under intense scrutiny and, within the settler population, the Catholic Irish were the most numerous minority. This paper discusses two controversial and widely‐reported 1881 articles by Melbourne writer, A.M. Topp. He argued strongly that the Celtic Irish were actually an “alien” race, fundamentally antithetical to English governance and morality. Mass Irish migration, in Topp's view, constituted a threat to the political stability and racial superiority of the whole English‐speaking world. Topp drew upon contemporary racial science and the works of leading intellectuals, but he was also influenced by political crises then occurring in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Topp's articles, and the responses they elicited, highlight the complexities of race in colonial Australia by demonstrating that major racial differences were perceived by some to exist within what has often been portrayed as a largely homogenous “white” settler society.     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: Deconstruction and Critique

The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper identifies major themes and recommends preferred strategies in Australia’s engagement with the world. These themes and strategies relate to geopolitics, economics and the ‘new international agenda’; there is also a more specific focus on Australia’s Pacific island neighbours and Timor-Leste. There is a strong emphasis on perceived Australian national interests throughout the document. The geopolitical discussion is primarily ‘realist’; economically the document is pro-globalisation; the discussion of the ‘new international agenda’ involves an Australian-oriented pragmatism; there is an assertion of Australian leadership in the South Pacific. With some minor criticism, Labor has accepted the general direction advocated in the White Paper. The document is thus indicative of the likely future direction of Australian foreign policy. Lack of US response indicates declining US engagement with Australia and the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region. China, as the other major power highly significant for Australia, has been low-key in its criticisms.     

“The Politics of Political Advertising” in Australia and Britain, 1970–1989

The role of advertising in the production of political campaigns deserves more consideration than it has previously received. My study examines advertising agencies associated with election campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, investigating their decisions to accept or reject political accounts. Focusing on Britain and Australia, and using a range of primary sources including the industry press, interviews and memoirs, I demonstrate that an agency's decision to accept a political account is always complex, contested and highly contingent. Accepting a political account may alienate clients and agency staff who support another party. Campaigns are labour‐intensive and may detract from an agency's core business. Involvement in a losing campaign can damage an agency's reputation, just as association with a successful one may attract clients. Agencies are often unsure how to approach political advertising where traditional techniques may not be suitable. Such concerns about accepting a political account will likely be put aside where an agency principal has close personal ties to a party or leader.     

The Ancestry of the Australian Prime Ministership: “the blue ribbon of the highest possible ambition”

More than a century after the birth of the Commonwealth of Australia, the office of prime minister is the apex of the nation's political life. Yet little has been written about the antecedence and evolution of the office of prime minister. This article takes a step towards redressing this neglect by considering how the Westminster‐derived model of the prime ministership was conditioned by the nature and form of executive office in the Australian colonies in the second half of the nineteenth century. The experience of the colonial legislatures predisposed against fears of an overweening executive. The constitutional Conventions of the 1890s were dominated by seasoned colonial politicians with benign attitudes towards executive authority. Yet as delegates grappled with the challenge of marrying responsible government to a federal system, the form of executive was debated rather than treated as fait accompli. These deliberations hinted at their expectations for the prime ministership in a federated Australia: the office would be the most powerful and greatest political prize in the new nation. The article concludes by suggesting that the first Commonwealth decade was a transitional period for the prime ministership (with pre‐Federation patterns still evident) and identifying the Fisher Government of 1910–13 as heralding a shift to a more modern form of (party‐based) executive governance.     

Why Party Organization Still Matters: The Workers' Party in Northeastern Brazil

Does party organization still matter? Much of the party literature suggests that politicians, who can use substitutes like mass media to win votes, lack incentives to invest in party organization. Yet it remains an electoral asset, especially at lower levels of government. Evidence from Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) indicates that party elites invest in organization when they prioritize lower‐level elections and that this investment delivers electoral returns. In the mid‐2000s, the PT strengthened its support across levels of government in the conservative, clientelistic Northeast. Drawing from underutilized data on party offices, this article shows that organizational expansion contributed substantially to the PT's electoral advances in the Northeast. While President Lula da Silva's (PT) 2006 electoral spike in the Northeast resulted from expanded conditional cash transfers, the PT's improvement at lower levels followed from top‐down organization building. The PT national leadership deliberately expanded the party's local infrastructure to deliver electoral gains.     

The catch‐all party thesis and the Austrian social democrats

This article examines Kirchheimer's catch‐all party thesis systematically, using the example of the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ). First, five central elements of the Kirchheimer catch‐all party are identified and possibilities for empirical research are explored. Then the empirical evidence on these five dimensions is analysed. As Kirchheimer has expected, the SPÖ's ‘ideological baggage’ has been drastically reduced, its top leadership groups and its electoral leader in particular have been further strengthened, the working‐class clientele has been de‐emphasised, and the party's function in the political system has been substantially reduced. Concerning the SPÖ's link to interest groups, however, Kirchheimer's thesis is only valid when looking at the most recent period. In view of the cumulative effect of the changes in the direction of a catch‐all party the SPÖ of the 1990s can definitely be classified as a catch‐all party.     

Anxious Neighbour: Australian Opposition to Japanese Labour in New Caledonia, 1945 to 1960

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, in the context of the White Australia policy and strong anti‐Japanese sentiment, Australia mounted a successful diplomatic campaign against the use of Japanese contract labour in New Caledonia. Australia also campaigned, but with only partial success, against the use of Japanese labour in the nearby New Hebrides. These initiatives further illustrate Australia's traditional assertiveness, when it saw its interests threatened, in the South Pacific. Blocking the use of Japanese labour probably contributed, as Alan Ward has argued, to increased permanent migration to New Caledonia from the other French South Pacific territories and France, shifting the population and voting balance against the indigenous Melanesian nationalist movement which later emerged. But Ward overstates his case: immigration of this kind would have happened anyway, especially from resource‐poor and over‐populated Wallis and Futuna. In its campaign on the Japanese labour issue Australia profited from its strong relationship with France, which resulted from comradeship in the two world wars, and from the lack of contentious bilateral issues.     

Between haiderisation and modernisation: The German free democrats since party unification

This article examines the development of the German Free Democrats (FDP) since party unification in 1990. Two‐fifths of the FDP's membership now come from the new Lander which adds considerably to the party's internal volatility while it is faced with a dual policy and functional crisis. The current internal debate indicates the extent of the resulting disorientation and illustrates the post‐unification search for a new identity. There now appear to be three principal options for the FDP's future development: firstly, the ‘West German option’, that is the retention of the internal status quo ante; secondly, a radical Haider‐style transformation or the ‘Austrian option'; and thirdly, the ‘modernisation option’, which sees party unification as an opportunity for positive change which could make the Liberals the first truly all‐German party.     

Liberals and Australian Foreign Policy*

Since the Second World War, Liberal governments trying to adapt to a rapidly changing international environment have been mindful of Australian interests, and especially the ongoing search for security. Adapting to declining British power, to militant communism in East and Southeast Asia, and to a new, under‐defined alliance with the United States was no easy task. The Colombo Plan for aid to South and Southeast Asia and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy represented two forms of positive engagement with Asia. Since the 1970s, Liberal governments have played significant roles in the strengthening of the Commonwealth; strengthening ties with key countries in Asia; and maintaining a sometimes problematic security relationship with the United States. On this latter point, however, the most recent Liberal governments have not performed well, in becoming more subservient to the Americans.     

The supervigilantes: the Lebanese Kataeb Party as a builder,surrogate and defender of the state

The Lebanese Kataeb Party (Hizb al‐Kata'ib al‐Lubnaniyya) is the most important example in the Arab world of an organised mass party which is nationally based and competitive. In a country renowned for its individualism and shifting political allegiances it has maintained and increased its solidarity and discipline. In a polity averse from long‐term, coherent, detailed planning it has consistently applied these principles without losing short‐term flexibility. From an overwhelmingly Maronite base in a society moulded by sectarianism it has followed a non‐confessional policy of national advancement, not least for regions where Maronites do not form a majority. And while remaining a competitive party, independent of the state, it has attempted to perform many of those roles of state‐ and nation‐building which are typical of single parties. It is with the Kataeb's self‐appointed duties towards the state that this paper is concerned.