Ian Turner’s The Australian Dream and Australia’s “settler transition”

Focusing on radical labour historian Ian Turner’s The Australian Dream (1968), this article reflects on the evolution of Australia’s settler colonial imagination. During a few crucial decades in the nineteenth century, colonial traditions were overcome by settler colonial ones. The former espoused a system where British rulers would paternally manage a colonial environment and all its populations (pastoralists, free settlers, convicts, emancipated convicts, and Indigenous peoples); the latter advocated the establishment of self-reliant agricultural communities of free settlers. In Replenishing the Earth (2009), James Belich distinguished between settler “transition” and settler “revolution”, and emphasised the imaginative elements that underpin and precede the shift to settler self-government. As the global settler transition took hold, locales usually associated with the perception and expectation of degenerative processes were reconfigured as propitious sites for experimenting in sociopolitical regeneration. Following and expanding on Belich’s framework, this article links Australia’s settler transition with its historiography.     

China in Pacific Regional Politics

Abstract

Foreign aid from China to the island countries of the Pacific has grown rapidly over the last few decades and an expanding body of literature has examined various aspects of what this means for politics in the region generally. This article focuses on China’s impact on Pacific regional politics partly from the perspective of identity politics. It suggests that China has substantially increased its engagement with the Pacific island states by making use of its own identity as a South–South development partner in contrast to traditional (mainly Western) donors in the region. Unlike most traditional donors, however, China’s diplomacy and engagement are based largely on bilateralism, and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This approach could continue to limit its impact on Pacific regionalism, regardless of how it projects its image.     

The Rudd Government's Employment Services Agenda: Is it Post‐NPM and Why is that Important?

Perhaps the most potent symbol of the Howard government's faith in New Public Management (NPM) was the Job Network. Interrogating the Rudd government's replacement package, this article assesses whether the recent restructuring of employment services constitutes a post‐NPM environment. It is argued that there are major post‐NPM elements, seen most clearly in: the softening of jobseeker sanctions; greater deliberation on policy direction and results; a more inclusive employment super‐ministry and reliance on other ‘horizontal’ governance reforms; and enhanced government resources for multiple‐disadvantage clients. However, categorising these changes as post‐NPM is problematic because the steering mechanism remains the market‐based contract, a central NPM characteristic. Theoretical difficulties in applying paradigmatic concepts to services provide additional barriers to conclusive assessments, though the Rudd government's employment services regime provides a basis for taking stock in the post‐NPM debate.     

Compulsory voting,turnout, and support for left-wing parties: The case of Australia

Does compulsory voting and the higher voter turnout that it produces increase support for left-wing parties? An influential and highly cited study provides strong evidence for such an effect in Australia. However, several quasi-experimental studies find little support for it in Europe. Given these conflicting findings, this study reanalyzes the crucial Australian case. It uses a unique, more fine-grained district-level dataset (N=4,219) and difference-in-differences designs to more directly test the assumed causal mechanism between compulsory voting and left-wing party support. Overall, it finds little evidence for the commonly assumed positive direct effect of turnout on Labor’s vote share. Further analyses identify an indirect effect of turnout – Labor’s decision to run candidates in more districts under compulsory voting – as an alternative mechanism and electoral system change and the Great Depression as potential confounding factors. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the political consequences of compulsory voting.     

澳大利亚惠特拉姆工党政府福利建设论析

福利政策一直是澳大利亚工党社会政策的支柱,并成为其执政时一面永不褪色的旗帜。1949年工党政府下台后,在野长达23年,社会福利在很大程度上也被忽视。工党领袖惠特拉姆在1972年上台后,进行了广泛干预和社会改良,基本上完成了澳大利亚全国性的保障框架的建设,也使许多弱势社会群体的生活状况得到改善。但工党政府福利建设的庞大及面临的一系列困难使其效果和作用大打折扣。     

Research note: The founders and survivors project

This paper describes the multidisciplinary project Founders and Survivors: Australian Life Courses in Historical Context. Individual life courses, families and generations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are being reconstituted from a wide range of data including convict records; birth, death and marriage registrations; and World War I service records. The project will result in a longitudinal study of Australian settlement, the long-run effects of forced labour and emigration on health and survival, family formation, intergenerational morbidity and mortality, and social and geographic mobility.     

The introduction of data breach notification legislation in Australia: A comparative view

This article argues that Australia's recently-passed data breach notification legislation, the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2017 (Cth), and its coming into force in 2018, makes an internationally important, yet imperfect, contribution to data breach notification law. Against the backdrop of data breach legislation in the United States and European Union, a comparative analysis is undertaken between these jurisdictions and the Australian scheme to elucidate this argument. Firstly, some context to data breach notification provisions is offered, which are designed to address some of the problems data breaches cause for data privacy and information security. There have been various prominent data breaches affecting Australians over the last few years, which have led to discussion of what can be done to deal with their negative effects. The international context of data breach notification legislation will be discussed, with a focus on the United States and European Union jurisdictions, which have already adopted similar laws. The background to the adoption of the Australia legislation will be examined, including the general context of data privacy and security protection in Australia. The reform itself will be then be considered, along with the extent to which this law is fit for purpose and some outstanding concerns about its application. While data breach notification requirements are likely to be a positive step for data security, further reform is probably necessary to ensure strong cybersecurity. However, such reform should be cognisant of the international trends towards the adoption of data security measures including data breach notification, but lack of alignment in standards, which may be burdensome for entities operating in the transnational data economy.     

Rich Country Corruption

Corruption in rich countries is different to corruption in poor countries. There are many analyses and models of corruption in poor countries, and interventions are structured with these in mind. When analyzing corruption in rich countries, borrowing from the experiences in poorer countries does not fit well with public administration practices. Ironically, citizens in rich countries have high levels of perceived corruption, yet they reported very little personal experience with corruption in any form. This article uses data to outline some corruption risks and proposes that any analysis focuses on classifying specific types of corruption in rich countries.     

Reinvigorating the transnational links of sub-national governments between Australia and Japan with special reference to Western Australia–Hyogo sister-state relations

Abstract

The study of transnational links between sub-national governments is a lacuna in the field of international relations yet the issue on inter-sub-national government cooperation has recently gained greater importance at the international level. Since the 1992 Earth Summit recognition of sub-national authorities as key players in global sustainable development strategies, the importance of decentralised cooperation between sub-national governments has been strengthened by a series of international standardisation and domestic incorporation of this principle. Yet our research raises serious questions about the degree to which Australia–Japan twinning of sub-national governments has made progress towards taking responsibility in facing global challenges. Our case study of Western Australia–Hyogo sister-state relationships shows that their 25 year-old cooperation has been suffering from a lack of awareness of the emerging role of sub-national governments. Not surprisingly, national government policy and position has greatly influenced the nature and patterns of their relationships. Australia and Japan twinning, as leading inter-sub-national partnerships in the region, can do more to promote the value of the local dimension in international development cooperation. In light of these challenges, the future of their twinning must lie in a structured long-term commitment for global strategies as well as mutual benefits.