Summary: The focus of this paper is on free or conscience votes in the NSW Parliament between 1981 and 2013. As such, its purpose is to add to the small but growing body of literature in this field. A full list of free votes between 1981 and 2013 is set out at Appendix A, which...

Overview: All major political parties in Australia recognise that the nation needs strong and effective climate change policies to reduce emissions. There is also bipartisan support for the globally agreed goal to limit global temperature increases to less than 2oC above pre-industrial levels. For Australia to play its fair part in global action, our emissions...

What explains Victoria’s stubborn tendency to vote Labor in state and federal elections? The prolific psephologist Peter Brent recently asked why, in electoral terms, Victoria is different from the other states. He cited Labor’s dominance of the state’s two-party-preferred vote in every federal election since 1990 – even in the comprehensive defeat of 2013 –...

Paralysed leader or bad advice? A new account of the Rudd–Gillard government looks at what it says about the party’s future Troy Bramston’s readable quickie sets out to advise the leadership of the Labor Party on how to avoid the disasters that befell the Rudd and Gillard governments. He summarises the policies of these governments...

This week’s budget raises the question of whom the Liberal Party now represents WE LEARN a lot from a new government’s first budget. Strategic priorities, previously existing only in verbal form, are given concrete expression; promises are sorted into the various categories of core, non-core and empty; scores are settled and favours repaid. But the...