We reflect upon the articles gathered in this special issue on transformations in the public sphere, which enables us to identify continuing and emerging problems as well as positive developments, and to think about how to devise appropriate measures and counter-measures. The collection of excellent contributions in this special issue shows us what we're up against, and how we might get there.
Although Katter's Australia Party (KAP) is largely associated with its eponymous founder, Bob Katter, the federal and Queensland state wings have pursued different legislative agendas and different power seeking strategies. Under the leadership of Katter's son, Robbie Katter, the state party has enjoyed a level of legislative success and political expansion not seen in the federal sphere. At a federal level, KAP has not increased its representation and has achieved no legislative successes with its relentless focus on economic interventionism and protectionism. In contrast, KAPQ reached a high point of four seats in the Queensland parliament and passed a number of bills focused on agrarian issues. This article traces the fortunes of KAP at federal and state levels in the first 15 years of its existence. Drawing on Weyland's definition of populism, it argues that the federal and state parties have employed differing power seeking strategies with starkly different results.
As support for Australia's major parties has declined, preferences play an increased role in deciding who wins each electoral contest. Small shifts in vote shares can produce significant changes in results, and a candidate's chance of winning can depend more on the split of opposing candidate s' vote shares rather than their own vote share. There have been an increasing number of examples from the 2022 and 2025 federal elections, along with state and territory elections, of single-member contests where the order of exclusion of candidates can decide who wins, rather than a simple tallying up of which of the top two candidates poll a higher vote after the distribution of preferences.
This article examines the internal dynamics of Australia's Community Independents Movement (CIM) - a diverse, well-resourced political movement with nationwide reach and electoral impact. Using the 'collective action frames' approach from social movement studies, the article draws on empirical data to analyse how the CIM frames: (1) the core problems facing Australian politics (diagnostic frames); (2) what to do about these problems (prognostic frames); and (3) why people should act (motivational frames). The analysis finds that the CIM's multiple collective action frames mostly synergise or co-exist, and this serves to unify the movement. There are, however, some frame tensions within the CIM, particularly with regard to solutions: should the CIM focus on empowering communities to lead democratic change or on running professionalised election campaigns? The article considers the strategies the CIM uses to manage its internal tensions and reflects on its capacity to maintain unity going forward.
Declining votes for major parties and increasing success for independent and minor party candidates (IMPs) are complicating analysis of Australian government formation and representation. While some emphasise voter backlash against major party convergence, others suggest structural realignment associated with economic and social change. Drawing on a unique dataset of 127 IMPs elected to single-member Australian parliaments since 1970, this paper examines the factors associated with initial IMP success in houses of government, how geography and gender shape electoral outcomes, and explores circumstances where IMPs are likely to sustain electoral success. We identify gendered patterns of representation amongst IMPs, and sustained IMP success across most types of IMP representation. We find IMP success is least common in the suburbs, instead concentrated in rural and inner-urban electorates typically identified with the social bases of the major parties. These findings suggest IMP success reflects a deeper realignment of voter attitudes and parliamentary governance.
Non-major electoral players have attracted little interest in the political finance scholarship because such actors are vastly out funded by the major governing parties. As a result, we know very little about the funding regimes of non-major electoral competitors, even though such actors play an important role at Australian elections and in parliament. This paper analyses the funding sources of several non-major electoral competitors using official funding returns, paying particular attention to the amounts raised and the composition by source type. We find (not unexpected) differences in the funding profiles of independents and minor parties and between major and non-major electoral actors. The findings confirm that differences in organisational form - both type and scale - are consequential for fundraising capacity both in the aggregate (amount), composition and the diversity of the funder base. Organisational form is an important factor in shaping variation in donation receipts.
Most published research on political science curriculum design focuses on the United States, leaving unclear whether findings generalise internationally. This paper analyses 218 programs at 140 universities across five English-speaking democracies: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. I examine which institutional characteristics predict adoption of the Wahlke, J. C. 1991. Liberal learning and the political science major: A report to the profession. PS: Political Science and Politics 24, no. 1: 48-60 sequential learning model which comprises introductory courses, research methods training, and capstone experiences. I find three key patterns. First, structured curricula are substantially more common internationally than in the US: 34% of sampled universities require all three Wahlke elements compared to only 18% of US programs. Second, Introduction to International Relations is the most required course (144 of 218 programs). Third, multivariate analysis reveals that PhD-granting status, larger faculty size, and higher percentages of required coursework significantly predict methods requirements and capstone adoption, indicating that curriculum structure reflects systematic relationships between institutional missions, resources, and pedagogical philosophy.
This article builds on Juliet Nebolon's conceptualisation of settler militarism (2024) to argue that settler militarism operates through the process of technification that emerges as a specific mechanism through which settler colonialism and militarisation seek to mutually constitute, legitimise, and conceal each other. By examining the Navajo Code Talkers program during the Second World War, I highlight how technification attempts to systematically transform Indigenous peoples, epistemologies, and sovereignties into technical resources that can then be militarily appropriated, operationally deployed, and rendered obsolete even as it obscures the political violence of this process under the guise of technical necessity. Crucially, through analysis of Navajo oral history interviews I contend that the process of technification must be understood as unstable, contested, and continually perturbed by Indigenous efforts to exceed, resist, and refuse its terms and the broader logics of settler colonial violence.
How does the Australian Labor Party govern the climate? Despite a suite of climate and energy policies introduced by the Albanese government, real domestic emissions remain essentially unchanged, and fossil fuel exports continue apace. How should we understand this paradox? This article considers three key spheres in turn: domestic power decarbonisation, the reproduction of fossil capital, and 'renewable energy superpower' imaginaries. Our problematic is explained by a policy approach that elides planning and aims to minimise fiscal expenditure. The ALP is relying on private capital to finance - and own - domestic decarbonisation, while gesturing to an imagined future of renewable exports that might one day replace fossil fuel exports. Such a reliance on private capital is shot through with contradiction, and is largely failing to deliver lower prices or emissions. This Faustian bargain is shaping the terrain of Australian climate politics in the 'overshoot' conjuncture - climate politics already past limits.
The Albanese Labor Government proposed the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) as a centrepiece of its housing policy before the 2022 election. The HAFF funds social and affordable housing through the returns of an off-budget fund invested in global financial markets. This paper analyses the 2023 political debate around the HAFF. It uses the HAFF as a case study to examine the politics of financialised policymaking, investigating the political arguments made for financialised policies and the hegemony projects they represent. It is theoretically and methodologically framed by historical materialist policy analysis (HMPA), which calls for analysing policies in terms of the competing hegemony projects involved in their construction and contestation. I argue that Albanese Labor sees governing through financial markets as a central way to solve policy problems, and that this should give pause to celebrations of the return of social democracy in Australia after the 2025 election.
In June 2020, the Australian Coalition Government introduced the Job Ready Graduates (JRG) policy, seeking to discourage student uptake of humanities and social sciences (HASS) courses by increasing their cost by up 116.9%. This article offers a preliminary investigation into HASS undergraduate course offerings at four Australian universities. It finds no consistently observable effect on course offerings, but rather long-term and unevenly dispersed curriculum rationalisation, shaped by an individual discipline's capacity to act entrepreneurially and articulate their value in economic terms. JRG is illustrative of policymaking within Australia's regulatory state, which has hollowed-out universities whilst driving the creation of internal markets. Simultaneously, JRG demonstrates the role of universities in reproducing market citizenship ideals, fostering greater individual participation in markets in service of national economic priorities. We argue that the Albanese Labor Government's Universities Accord is largely continuous with these processes, with ramifications for those disciplines considered economically unimportant.
Across Western democracies, defence forces face persistent recruitment shortfalls, compounded by declining birth rates, shrinking eligible youth populations, and evolving attitudes toward military service. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is no exception. This reform note makes the capability case for actively recruiting older women to complement existing recruitment approaches and address women's attrition driven by caring responsibilities. These women often bring transferable experience, leadership, and professional maturity; many seek second careers or a return to Defence once their children are older. Despite established imperatives for women's participation under the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, recruitment models have yet to target this high-yield talent pool, largely due to outdated assumptions of the soldier ideal as young and male. Drawing on existing ADF programs and workforce trends, we propose targeted strategies - including a 'Second Career Discovery Program' - to address recruitment challenges, fulfil WPS commitments, and bolster Australia's contribution to peacekeeping.
Within weeks of the catastrophic 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfire season, an event widely linked to climate change, the Morrison government announced a gas-fired recovery response to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, how did the Morrison government construct an economic recovery centred on a fossil fuel? This paper applies a discursive formation methodology developed to study political decisions, to examine how the political discourse of the gas-fired recovery was produced and shaped Australia's energy transition. Our analysis shows that the gas-fired recovery was framed as a bold and comprehensive economic intervention in energy markets, designed to sustain demand for fossil fuels at a time when domestic demand was declining and public support for climate change action was high. If successful, this strategy would have helped secure the long-term position of the fossil fuel industry, potentially extending its role in Australia's energy system well beyond 2050.
This article critically explores counterpublic responses to the overturning of Roe v Wade and the intense contestation on Twitter (now X) between pro-abortion and anti-abortion advocates. Focusing on networked acts of deliberation, this study shows how #ShoutYourAbortion and #RoevWade facilitated the formation of defensive publics and Counterpublics. Hashtag feminism can enable affected groups to share experiences that are often marginalised by traditional media outlets, while witnessing and affirming similar experiences shared by others within their community. In this article, I examine the extent to which the collectivising hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion facilitates deliberation and listening in the context of polarising abortion debates post-Dobbs. The results indicate that while hashtags have the potential to bridge opposing ideological groups, there are significant limitations to their effectiveness in fostering listening and the conditions necessary for democratic uptake. Nevertheless, hashtags perform an important democratic function: creating enclaves that can amplify and support marginalised voices.
Research has documented how the historical past can be mobilised to legitimise policies and political action, yet we know very little about how collective memories are used to support stronger conservation and climate regulation. This paper addresses that gap by analysing public resistance to Aotearoa New Zealand's Fast-track Approvals Bill. After scraping more than 25,000 select committee submissions from the Parliament website, a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on a random sample of 400 texts. The analysis identifies four rhetorical constructions of history deployed to oppose the Bill and press for stronger environmental protections: undoing progress, repeating mistakes, accelerating ecological degradation, and ongoing colonisation. At a more theoretical level, the findings show that collective memory work plays a distinct role in environmental politics: it can prescribe shared norms, reduce uncertainty about environmental change, and open debate about the deeper structural drivers of the global ecological crisis.
Political donations are often linked with concerns about secrecy, corruption and undue influence, prompting scrutiny from political scientists, journalists and the public. Yet in Australia (like many nations), efforts to understand and study political donations are hampered by poor quality data. To support efforts by academics, think tanks and journalists to more quickly and accurately analyse donation data, I describe a method to clean and de-duplicate Australian Federal donation data. I apply this method to analyse the political donations of the largest alcohol industry actors. In doing so, I document inconsistent transparency from both alcohol industry donors and political recipients, and more than 500 donations totalling $8,422,819 over the 26-year dataset.
