The Senate Order on Agency Contracts aims to ensure parliamentary scrutiny of government activities in the face of increased use of confidentiality as a ground to withhold information from the public and from parliament. This research note examines the Order and the government's response.

Growing urban traffic congestion and public transport concerns have become major issues to city constituents and affect national efficiency. This Current Issues Brief examines these issues and looks at local and international calls for greater Federal Government involvement in urban transport issues.

The governments of New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia argue that current Commonwealth-state funding arrangements disadvantage them. Late in 2001, these states commissioned Professor Ross Garnaut and Dr Vincent Fitzgerald to review these arrangements and recommend changes. The authors' proposals are contained in their final report, which was issued in August 2002. This Research...

This Research Note discusses issues highlighted by a recent attempt by the Queensland government to require local councillors to vacate office if seeking election to federal Parliament.

Professor Graham Maddox writes that in the very moment of its invention, federalism was pitted against democracy. How can a system which in Australia is acknowledged on all sides to be a peculiar impediment to traditional Labor, and indeed to progressive Liberal, politics, be said to be conducive to democracy? Any objective audit of democracy...