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This examination of the six states and two self-governing territorial, as well as national, governments reveals the variety and innovation which characterizes the government and politics of the Australian federation. Chapters by leading scholars in the field merge information and analysis for the specialist as well as the general reader. The work is an invaluable source for reference and teaching to anyone concerned with Australian politics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

compare the Australian and American systems of government
If you don't know much about the Australian political system, this book is as good a place to start as any. It describes the 3 levels of government, federal, state and local. Though the latter is only briefly covered. The federal-state relationship is like that in the United States, and historically was directly modelled as such. Just over a century ago, the Australians and British who put together the new nation copied a successful American arrangement. Inspired in part by the sheer size of Australia.

The Australian Senate is the direct analog of the US Senate. Virtually equivalent in powers to the House of Representatives. Unlike Canada, whose Senate has historically been a weak institution.

From the book, you can see an analysis of the Constitution. Like the US, Australia has an explicit Constitution. Which also has rules for how to amend it. But, a key difference from the US is the lack of a Bill of Rights. In this sense, a very British thing. In Australia, then, individual rights are governed by case law, that can in fact stretch back to cases in Britain itself.

Another difference from the US is that Australian states have less power than American states. Taxation is gathered at the federal level, and the federal government then disburses portions to the states each year. So the feds control the purse strings. Plus, there are no state militias. The Constitution was drawn up in the early 1900s, not too long after the American Civil War. So a parsing of the book might suggest, perhaps cynically, that the arrangement was meant to make separation and civil war much harder to achieve. ... Read more

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The Australian media has rarely questioned the government's practice of spending millions of taxpayers' dollars monitoring the opposition's every word and pumping out propaganda to backbenchers to ensure its "spin" reverberates across the country. Yet the cost of these programs grows every year, giving incumbent governments an increasing advantage over their opponents. Greg Barns, a former senior government advisor, provides a revealing insight into the way governments sell themselves, both publicly and behind the scenes, and how their expensive propaganda efforts affects the political process. Drawing on proposals from Australia and overseas he argues for reforms to control this one-way communication explosion. ... Read more

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This book looks at the administrative and leadership style of former Prime Minister John Howard's fourth and final term in government (2004-2007). Organised into three sections, it begins with a group of essays that reflect on key governance issues such as privatisation, the management of the Howard Government's Senate majority, and issues relating to accountability and ethics. The second section examines policy issues that dominated the fourth term, such as management of the economy, rural politics (particularly wheat and drought), industrial relations, indigenous policy and foreign affairs. The third section provides an overall assessment of Howard's leadership style during this period and finally concludes that Howard's faltering political skills on key issues may have ultimately secured his defeat. ... Read more

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The increasing complexities of Australian local government place onerous demands on municipal managers and oblige them to continually upgrade their skills. This book examines the economic environment of contemporary local governance. ... Read more

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Aimed at students of public administration and political sciences, this text describes the administrative changes in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Empire of Political Thought investigates how European colonists in Australia represented the indigenous peoples they found there, and how they governed them using Western political thought. Buchan argues that an ideological framework drawn from Western traditions rendered indigenous peoples familiar to Europeans. Rather than effacing indigenous difference, colonists employed a conceptual language that recognised those differences but assimilated them and rendered them as deficiencies. This is the first study to link the imperial government in Australia with comparative colonial contexts in North America. The contemporary relevance of this book is underscored by the continuing efforts of Indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere to articulate their visions of political and cultural self-government and self-determination. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: J. Ridgway in 1850 in 81 pages; Subjects: Great Britain; Australia; Law / Constitutional; Political Science / General; Political Science / Government / Legislative Branch; Political Science / Constitutions; Political Science / Government / National; ... Read more