An effective national debut won’t necessarily counter the doubts raised by the party’s origins and backers, writes Haydon Manning in this profile of Family First.

The taxpayer-funded Government Members’ Secretariat is doing party political work, according to former government adviser Greg Barns.

In this article, Sally Young, from the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne, argues that money has become central to the process of political communication in Australia.

In many ways the election was a re-run of the election held in Victoria just 16 weeks before. A Labor government's popularity had remained solid since the previous election: a popular, but policy-cautious premier retained a high degree of community support; the Liberal Party had undermined, then replaced, its leader relatively late in the parliamentary...

The 1999 Victorian election was one of the most remarkable State elections of the last 50 years. It removed the apparently impregnable Liberal-National Coalition Government, it produced the retirement of two of the three party leaders, and it pitchforked into office a party that was remarkably unprepared-a number of its new ministers were sworn into...