School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemResponsible government in Australia 1928-1951( 1952)Do party candidates for Parliament campaign upon reasonably clear and consistent policies? Does the winning party carry out its promises? To find answers to these questions is the main purpose of this study. The writer's thesis is that parties seeking a Parliamentary majority are generally responsible for presenting clear alternative policies and that the winning party is responsible to those voting for it for the implementation of its policies. There is also a responsibility of the opposition party to its supporters, as well as a less definite responsibility of each party to the whole electorate; but these aspects of the subject are not treated in detail. If this approach is valid, it follows that a system of government should encourage, rather than impede, the responsible functioning of the parties. Therefore Part I presents a brief description of the party system, the structure of government and the extent of legislative power. Parts II and III cover the operation of the electoral system and the vital question of party promise and performance. It should be noted that the term responsible will be used in two different ways. First, the term responsible cabinet government will be used where the writer is referring to the arrangement whereby a cabinet is responsible to the popular house, and continues to govern only if supported by a majority of the house members. Second, the term responsible party politics will be used with the broader meaning of parties responsible to the electorate, as summarized above. Ideally, at least, responsible parties should function best where the government has maximum powers to deal with political problems with minimum interference from the structure of the system. Thus it might be expected that severe limits on legislative powers would restrict the scope of government activity and thereby limit the choice of party programs. Similarly, the presence of structural checks, such as an upper house, independent state governments, or courts which can invalidate government policy, may retard or confuse the solution of political problems. But the growth of responsible parties may be influenced by other factors of an economic, historical or geographical character. In Australia, for example, the existence of a strong trade union movement by 1900 provided the basis for the growth of a strong Labor party. Indeed, responsible parties have developed in spite of considerable limitations of the kinds already mentioned. Thus Australian politics offers the possibility of studying responsible parties working under difficult conditions.
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ItemThe Australian Federal Labour Party 1900-1905( 1959)In the ten years before the proclamation of the Commonwealth on 1st January, 1901, Labour Parties established themselves firmly in the colonial parliaments of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia and began to exert and influence on legislative programmes which had hitherto been prepared with little regard for the interests of the workers. In Victoria the Labour Party founded in 1892 developed more slowly, and in Western Australia and Tasmania unionists were still engaged in establishing permanent political organisations in the late ‘nineties, but throughout Australia it was clear by federation that the representatives of organised Labour were to be a permanent feature of the parliamentary scene.
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ItemThe Premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan( 1960)Writers on Australian politics have constantly stressed the need for detailed research into the Country Party's role in its structure, and some have "tended to deplore the Labour Party's almost complete monopoly of such pursuits. Out of a profound sympathy for such sentiments, as well as a desire to unearth something original, I decided to direct my attention to this need. Apart from considerations of domicile, 'which leave little elbow room for an impecunious student, there were other pressing reasons for concentrating my efforts on Victoria. In New South Wales and Queensland, the Country Party has never enjoyed sufficient power in the legislature to form its own government, but has had to be content with participating jointly with other parties of an urban non-Labour stamp, and only during short breaks in long-established Labour ascendancies. In Victoria, however, the coin has fallen on the reverse side. There Labour has achieved power only for short unstable intervals as a minority Government, until 1952 when it commanded a majority over all other parties for the first time in its existence. In its place the responsibility of governing the State has been thrown from one non-Labour party to another, frequently too hot to hold in such an unstable climate. Since 1917 the Country Party has made its own peculiar contribution to this instability, by exerting an influence out of all proportion to its electoral strength. In 1935 this culminated in its seizure of office from the party with which it had shared it for two and a half years, and its enjoyment of an almost uninterrupted decade of office under the record-breaking premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan. Until 1943 he led a minority Government composed entirely of his own party members, deriving his support from a hapless Labour Party which gained little in the way of concessions. Even when the latter withdrew its support, the Country Party under Dunstan was able to continue in office with little loss of influence despite a small grant of portfolios to the Liberals. Such a sweep of political history, with such singular features, seemed at first sight to be too great a gift for a Melbourne research worker to overlook. (From Preface)