School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemSingle mothers in society: a study of the causes and consequences of single motherhood for a Melbourne sample of single mothers who kept their children( 1979)Inspiration for the Study: This study draws its inspiration from two main sources. Firstly, from the experience of a new organisation, the Council for the Single Mother and her Child, through which single mothers have come together in an attempt to help themselves and each other personally, practically and through social action to reform their socio-legal position in society. The increasing self-reliance of women and ameliorating social attitudes to single mothers have disclosed what seems to be a new type of single mother, barely glimpsed in earlier research. This mother may be more likely to remain in the community and keep her baby, and less likely to contact the traditional social service agencies. Such mothers have been visibly active in C.S.M.C. The council has encouraged research into the situation and experience of members so that, as an organisation, it can adapt better to serve its members as a grassroots, participatory, self-help welfare agency, and so it can fill out the picture it presents to the community. The council takes the view that any factual evidence presented is likely to improve the community’s understanding of a stigmatised group. In accord with this policy, C.S.M.C. has made this project possible by allowing the sample to be drawn from its mailing list. Secondly, it was designed to help meet a research need. Most of the research that is influential among Australian social workers is based on overseas evidence, often drawn from 'captive' samples of clients of maternity shelters, public hospitals and adoption or casework agencies, clients who are close to what, as Bernstein pointed out, is an emotional upheaval in any circumstances -- birth. From the perspective of knowledge building, it is desirable that the findings and hypotheses to emerge from this research should be re-examined and tested to see how relevant they may be for a contemporary local sample of single mothers living in the community with their children. Many expectant single mothers and the social workers who counsel them about plans for their own and their babies' futures, feel they have insufficient information about what happens to mothers later, since most of the mothers do not return to the social work agency unless they have problems. Dr. Nan Johns' follow-up study of samples of babies adopted, and babies kept by their natural mothers, is designed to meet this need. It is hoped that the present study will provide useful supplementary evidence. In Australia, there has been no large-scale, comprehensive research on the single-mother population, and in the absence of this, as Meredith and Brotherton have pointed out, there is a need for small-scale, particularised studies to develop a general body of data on the characteristics of single mothers. Other studies in this latter category have drawn their samples from welfare institutions that assist single mothers with problems, such as maternity homes, casework agencies or public hospitals, which cater mainly for low-income patients. The present survey concerns a more varied sample, and it is hoped it will therefore contribute a useful extension of existing research knowledge. (From Introduction)
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ItemThe Ryan case: an analysis of the decision of the Victorian Cabinet to impose the death sentence on Ronald Joseph Ryan, and of the public and mass media protest campaign( 1976)Between the years 1955 and 1972 Victorian politics was dominated not merely by the Liberal Party but by one man, Mr. (later Sir) Henry Bolte. Not since the (co-extensive) era of Sir Robert Menzies on the national scene had the political life of a community so completely been in the shadow of a single politician : as A.F. Davies has put it, for most people politics in Victoria for a long time had meant "Henry Bolte". But Sir Henry Bolte has not merely been the longest serving Premier in our history ; his coming to office in June 1955 marked the beginning of an era of continuity and stability in Victorian politics that had never before been experienced in the State. Before Bo1te came to power in 1955, there had been eighteen Governments since 1924, the longest-serving of which had been the Country Party Minority Government of A.A. Dunstan, which had ruled - with Labor support till July 1942 and thereafter with United Australia Party support - from April 1935 to September 1943. What is more, as A.F. Davies has pointed out, all the Ministries from 1924 to 1952 were either minority Governments or composite Ministries. Moreover, only two of the seven governments between 1924 and 1932 lasted a full parliamentary term, and only two of the twelve governments between 1943 and 1958. With the advent of the Bolte era "the inherent instability of Victorian Cabinets", as it had come to be termed, was at an end. While there has already been a searching political biography of Sir Henry, the politics and style of “the Bolte era" has so far not attracted extensive research. This thesis, then, is a contribution to our understanding of that era by concentrating on the most significant issue of the Bolte premiership : the decision by the Bolte Cabinet in December 1966 to hang convicted murderer Ronald Joseph Ryan. Only twice during his record term of more than seventeen years as Premier did Sir Henry Bolte meet with sustained, hostile public criticism and protest. Both occasions involved a decision to invoke the death penalty. The first involved the decision not to commute the death sentence on Robert Peter Tait for the murder of an elderly woman in Hawthorn in 1961. Following involved legal procedures by Tait's counsel, which culminated in a last minute intervention by the High Court to restrain the Government from proceeding with the hanging, the death sentence on Tait was finally commuted. (From Introduction)
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ItemCatholic judgements on the origin and growth of the Australian Labor Party dispute 1954-1961( 1967)This is a study of how Catholics in Australia have assessed the dispute which has affected the Australian Labor Party and Australian Society, from 1954-1961. It examines what Catholics have said and written about the causes of the original dispute and the way it has developed. The study examines seven main themes: -the history of communist activity in Australia's trade unions; the origin and growth of the Catholic Social Studies Movement (better known as 'The Movement•); the role of the Industrial Groups and ‘The Movement’ in the politics of the Australian Labor Party; the growth of two Labor Parties; the divisions which the dispute caused in Australian society generally and in the Catholic community in particular; the problem of conscience for the individual Catholic in politics; the problem of church-state relations in a pluralist society. Part I is a background study (1941-1954) of the various forces that clashed in the dispute. Part II is a chronological account of the course of the dispute from 1954 until 1961. Part III is an evaluation of the four main Catholic viewpoints on the causes and progress of the dispute. I have devoted considerable space to Parts I and II for two reasons. First, there is no one satisfactory narrative of the events that led up to the dispute in 1954 and that followed it. Second, some such chronological account is needed if all that was said about the dispute is to be intelligible. I have chosen 1961 as the year at which to terminate the study because by that time each main Catholic group had stated its case fully. Whatever each group has said since then has been mainly a re-statement of previous positions. A note is needed on the nature of the evidence available. In general there is a mass of written material in Catholic papers which presents problems of selection. But a greater problem is the uneven distribution of such comment; for example, the Melbourne Advocate and the Sydney Catholic Weekly, being weeklies, commented much more frequently on the dispute than did the monthly Catholic Worker. Those persons representing the viewpoint of Catholics who remained in the Labor Party after 1954 have commented even less than the Catholic Worker. I have tried to supplement this lack of written information on some viewpoints by extensive interviewing of some of the key figures in the dispute. (Here, too, there were difficulties: for example, the ALP parliamentary leader, A.A. Calwell, declined to be interviewed). In all I spent 116 hours interviewing thirty of the main actors in the drama in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Here, a problem of evidence was the sometimes fading memories of some of those interviewed ten years after the events they were discussing. With some of this evidence, therefore, allowance must be made for possible, inaccuracies. Yet another problem was striking a balance with conflicting information from interested parties to the dispute. Since a thesis of this type cannot deal in detail with every aspect of this dispute, it might be well to mention some of the issues one would have liked to treat in greater depth had there been room. Some of these questions are: the impact of federalism or the federal structure of bodies like the Australian Labor Party, 'The Movement' and, to some extent, the Catholic Church, on the behaviour of regional units of these bodies; the development of Catholic Social theory as a result of 'The Movement' experience and the Labor Party split; the sociological changes in the Catholic community since the split within the Labor Party and within the Catholic Church; the changing patterns of Australian Catholics' political participation. All these enticing questions can only be touched on more briefly than one would have liked.
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ItemThe structure of Liberal state politics in N.S.W.( 1962)The liberal party of Australia is a collective of six state divisions, each one a different organisation facing different problems at two and sometimes three levels of government. But the academic stereotype of the liberal Party has been based upon its operation at the federal level, where the party has dominated for over a decade the more politically significant legislature, and where the party makes no apology for oligarchic conrol by its parliamentarians….
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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)