Higher education governance in Australia manifests characteristics of other advanced economies, with a division between public and private ideals, institutional practice and political oversight. These characteristics are acute when centre-left governments seek to reform higher education but confront neoliberal material underpinnings, which are resilient in adapting these reforms to neoliberal outcomes. The paper will argue that the contradiction between centre-left labourism reforms and neoliberalism results in the phenomenon of 'failing forward', as markets create conditions for failure, which flow on to subsequent governments. The paper examines how this failing forward phenomenon is evident in the Albanese government's attempts to address the contradictions of Australian higher education, where labourism and neoliberalism collide.
This paper examines whether Australia's majoritarian electoral system remains fit for purpose, given declining major-party support. It tests the "fragmentation hypothesis" - that new political cleavages have emerged which existing parties cannot resolve - against the alternative that voters have simply dealigned in protest. Using k-means clustering on Australian Election Study data from 1998 to 2025, the paper inductively maps political and social attitude groups at each federal election. It finds no evidence that the electorate has become more fragmented. Instead, substantial realignment has occurred: the Liberal-voting professional-class base has declined, and the conservative right has split into two issue-based groups, one clustering on social issues and one on economic issues. Without electoral system change or internal party reforms, the major party duopoly will continue struggling to breach these cleavages.
Elected representatives in established democracies are increasingly positioning themselves as 'not like other politicians' and more 'authentic' than their competitors in response to public disenchantment with mainstream politics. However, authenticity is a complex concept encompassing truthfulness, fidelity, and relatability - each appealing to voters differently and creating tensions politicians must navigate. This paper utilises representative claim making and dramaturgical sociology to contribute a framework for understanding how politicians make and perform authenticity claims through a case study of Federal MP Bob Katter. We show how Katter blends truthfulness, ideological consistency, regional identity, and emotive language to construct a distinctive style of authenticity. He manages tensions between authenticity dimensions using verbal and physical props. While his approach may not be universally replicable, our analysis offers a framework for understanding how authenticity can be performed without sacrificing truthfulness for relatability or fidelity - suggesting alternative strategies for candidates seeking to connect with disillusioned electorates.
This paper examines how the first-term Albanese Labour government navigated temporary labour migration from 2022-2025. Drawing on party documents, ministerial statements and departmental sources, it traces the government's shift from a reformist phase that activated the social democratic dimensions of three competing impulses, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and labourism, to one of political retrenchment in which pursuing rights-based reforms was limited. The paper argues this trajectory reflects a structural condition of social democratic migration politics in Australia: the social democratic elements of these impulses are not sufficiently strong to contest their neoliberal counterparts when migration becomes politically salient. The paper contributes to comparative debates on social democratic parties and migration by demonstrating how the dominance of market logics and the electoral salience of migration together entrench securitisation and undermine social democratic parties' capacity to pursue durable rights-based reform.
Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Australian governments are obliged to support Indigenous people's economic self-determination. More specifically, this article examines how Australian subnational jurisdictions can better enable Indigenous economic sovereignty: the development of independent Indigenous economies for nation-building. It presents a novel taxonomy of Indigenous economic self-determination to show how policies in the United States and New Zealand support Indigenous economic sovereignty to varying degrees, whereas policy in the State of Victoria, Australia (during the period prior to the ratification of Australia's first official treaty) did not. Comparative analysis reveals that treaties provide a foundation for nation-to-nation relationships, which can enable Indigenous economic sovereignty via the genuine transfer of economic authority. Australian jurisdictions can better support nations to exercise their economic sovereignty by prioritising statewide and local treaties that enable the development of independent Indigenous economies and strong institutions.
