Wedge Politics and Welfare Reform in Australia

The election of the Howard Government has marked a paradigm shift in welfare policy with the implementation of far reaching reforms around the concept of mutual obligation. At the same time, there has been media speculation about the Government's use of 'wedge politics' to sustain its political agenda with respect to welfare and other policies. Wedge politics, however, is yet to receive detailed analysis in Australian political science. We define wedge politics to be a calculated political tactic aimed at using divisive social issues to gain political support, weaken opponents and strengthen control over the political agenda. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: to develop a definition of wedge politics and to investigate how the Howard Government's welfare reform agenda might be understood as an example of such politics, drawing out its longer-term implications.     

for reproductive justice in an era of Gates and Modi: the violence of India’s population policies

This article addresses India’s contemporary population control policies and practices as a form of gender violence perpetrated by the state and transnational actors against poor, Adivasi and Dalit women. It argues that rather than meeting the needs and demands of these women for access to safe contraception that they can control, the Indian state has targeted them for coercive mass sterilisations and unsafe injectable contraceptives. This is made possible by the long-term construction of particular women’s lives as devalued and disposable, and of their bodies as excessively fertile and therefore inimical to development and progress. It further considers how population policy is currently embedded in the neoliberal framework of development being pursued by the Indian state. In particular, it argues that the violence of population policies is being deepened as a result of three central and interrelated aspects of this framework: corporate dispossession and displacement, the intensification and extension of women’s labour for global capital, and the discourses and embodied practices of far-right Hindu supremacism. At the same time, India’s population policies cannot be understood in isolation from the global population control establishment, which is increasingly corporate-led, and from broader structures of racialised global capital accumulation. The violence of India’s contemporary population policies and the practices they produce operate at several different scales, all of which involve the construction of certain bodies as unfit to reproduce and requiring intervention and control.     

The primacy of national security? American responses to the British financial crisis of 1949

The financial crisis of 1949 threatened to bankrupt Britain and destroy the American economic and political system constructed after 1945. The US government was unable to respond effectively to this challenge. Truman's administration was split, as the Treasury and State Departments advocated diametrically opposing responses. Only the secret British decision to devalue sterling, a judgement not shared with the Americans until much later, stopped Washington from offering aid packages to London that would have totally changed US postwar foreign, economic and strategic policies. Therefore, this episode questions the assertion that national security concerns dominated the American government in the early Cold War.     

Adolescents’ Suicidal Thinking and Reluctance to Consult General Medical Practitioners

Appropriate help-seeking is widely recognized as a protective factor, and vital for early treatment and prevention of mental health problems during adolescence. General medical practitioners (GPs), that is, family doctors, provide a vital role in the identification of adolescents with mental health problems and the provision of treatment as well as access to other specialists in mental health care services. The current study examined the association between suicidal ideation and intentions to seek help from a GP for suicidal thoughts, emotional problems and physical health problems, using a sample of 590 Australian high school students that was 56.7% female and aged 13–18 years (M = 15.56 years, SD = .66 years). Higher levels of suicidal ideation and general psychological distress were related to lower intentions to seek help from a GP for suicidal and physical problems. The results suggest that even at subclinical levels, increases in suicidal ideation or psychological distress may lead to help avoidance. School personnel and other gatekeepers need to be aware of this trend in order to be more assertive in encouraging and supporting appropriate help-seeking for mental health problems. School health promotion programs should consider including information to explicitly address the help-negation process.     

Help-Negation and Suicidal Ideation: The Role of Depression,Anxiety and Hopelessness

Help-negation is expressed behaviorally by the refusal or avoidance of available help and cognitively by the inverse relationship between self-reported symptoms of psychological distress and help-seeking intentions. The current study examined the association between suicidal ideation and intentions to seek help from friends, family and professional mental health sources in a sample of 302 Australian university students. Participants were 77.5% female and aged from 18–25 years old, with 85.4% aged 21 years or younger. Higher levels of suicidal ideation were related to lower help-seeking intentions for family, friends, and professional mental health care, and higher intentions to seek help from no one. Moderation effects indicated that higher levels of depressive symptoms strengthen the help-negating effect of suicidal ideation for seeking help from friends, family and no one. The results indicate that, even at subclinical levels, suicidal ideation impedes the cognitive help-seeking process at the decision making stage. The results also highlight the importance of improving our understanding of why young people become reluctant to seek help as their levels of suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms increase. Raising awareness that the experience of suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms can promote intentions to avoid help might reduce the help-negation effect when symptoms are first recognized.     

A Prospective Examination of the Path from Child Abuse and Neglect to Illicit Drug Use in Middle Adulthood: The Potential Mediating Role of Four Risk Factors

This study examines prostitution, homelessness, delinquency and crime, and school problems as potential mediators of the relationship between childhood abuse and neglect (CAN) and illicit drug use in middle adulthood. Children with documented cases of physical and sexual abuse and neglect (ages 0–11) during 1967–1971 were matched with non-maltreated children and followed into middle adulthood (approximate age 39). Mediators were assessed in young adulthood (approximate age 29) through in-person interviews between 1989 and 1995 and official arrest records through 1994 (N = 1,196). Drug use was assessed via self-reports of past year use of marijuana, psychedelics, cocaine, and/or heroin during 2000–2002 (N = 896). Latent variable structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test: (1) a four-factor model with separate pathways from CAN to illicit drug use through each of the mediating risk factors and (2) a second-order model with a single mediating risk factor comprised of prostitution, homelessness, delinquency and crime, and poor school performance. Analyses were performed separately for women and men, controlling for race/ethnicity and early drug use. In the four-factor model for both men and women, CAN was significantly related to each of the mediators, but no paths from the mediators to drug use were significant. For women, the second-order risk factor mediated the relationship between CAN and illicit drug use in middle adulthood. For men, neither child abuse and neglect nor the second-order risk factor predicted drug use in middle adulthood. These results suggest that for women, the path from CAN to middle adulthood drug use is part of a general “problem behavior syndrome” evident earlier in life.

Anthony King and the United States

Anthony King was a keen follower of American politics. His writings on the subject combined his respect for democratic practices with a strong concern for deliberation in governance. These concerns, familiar from his writings on the UK, caused him to worry that American politicians campaigned too much and governed too little.     

Against the odds—a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia?

The European Union (EU) and Australia have embarked officially on a free trade agreement (FTA) negotiation process, a procedure expected to last no less than 5 years. Public pronouncements from both sides which announced the beginning of the process of negotiating an FTA marked a significant departure from the well-known tensions and difficulties which date back to the late 1950s. British entry into the then European Economic Community in 1973 meant that it had to align its trade policies with the much contested European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This had been implemented in the late 1960s and provided limitless reasons for antagonism between Australia and the EU. Yet, over time, the trade agenda changed for both sides with new actors and new agreements, and some of the previous machinery no longer providing the liberalisation of trade as intended. Both the EU and Australia have moved on—some of this change due to new political actors and new economic realities. Despite the tortured history between them, and mindful that some might be sceptical about this change of heart, real politik often imposes its own political will and the new needs may well be in sharp contrast to the past relationships. The prospect of an FTA shows how the trappings of history might be side stepped by a stronger, almost opportunistic, sense of economic benefits however small they might appear.