Emma Dawson assesses the state of SBS as a public broadcaster reflecting the concerns of ethnic Australia. Dawson discusses how SBS management has responded to being caught up in the culture wars, attempting to adequately respond to the interests of its viewers, and its political masters.

The election of a new government means an opportunity to fix some of the things that have been going wrong with Australia’s electoral system. Australia has been making it harder to enrol and vote, and easier for private money to influence electoral outcomes. Read the Audit's priorities for electoral reform.

With the Rudd government looking at making changes to the Electoral Act, Peter Brent places automatic enrolment as a high priority. In this paper, he highlights the mass of database information which the Australian Electoral Commission has access to, but cannot efficiently use for updating the electoral roll. Brent calls for the AEC to be...

The rejection rate for voters who applied for a provisional vote in the federal election was far higher than normal, rising from about 50 per cent to about 86 per cent. Peter Brent comments on the causes and impact.

In this paper the former Australian Electoral Commissioner considers the issue of electorate boundary changes. The paper provides a comprehensive review of the 2006 redistributions in NSW and Queensland and summarises the history of redistributions in the two states. Colin Hughes analyses the party political competition involved, even when the redistributions are carried out by...