Australia's Democracy

Australia's Democracy PDF Author: John Hirst
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781865088457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This work explores what sort of democracy Australians have made. It traces the establishing of democratic rights and freedoms from convict times until the present; from the era when racism limited political rights to today's concern that everyone's human rights be respected; from the demand that governments be free to carry out the people's wishes to the current desire to see all government power checked and controlled. It also examines notable Australian innovations like the secret ballot and the basic wage.

Australia's Democracy

Australia's Democracy PDF Author: John Hirst
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781865088457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work explores what sort of democracy Australians have made. It traces the establishing of democratic rights and freedoms from convict times until the present; from the era when racism limited political rights to today's concern that everyone's human rights be respected; from the demand that governments be free to carry out the people's wishes to the current desire to see all government power checked and controlled. It also examines notable Australian innovations like the secret ballot and the basic wage.

The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy

The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy PDF Author: Lyn Carson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271069074
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Growing numbers of scholars, practitioners, politicians, and citizens recognize the value of deliberative civic engagement processes that enable citizens and governments to come together in public spaces and engage in constructive dialogue, informed discussion, and decisive deliberation. This book seeks to fill a gap in empirical studies in deliberative democracy by studying the assembly of the Australian Citizens’ Parliament (ACP), which took place in Canberra on February 6–8, 2009. The ACP addressed the question “How can the Australian political system be strengthened to serve us better?” The ACP’s Canberra assembly is the first large-scale, face-to-face deliberative project to be completely audio-recorded and transcribed, enabling an unprecedented level of qualitative and quantitative assessment of participants’ actual spoken discourse. Each chapter reports on different research questions for different purposes to benefit different audiences. Combined, they exhibit how diverse modes of research focused on a single event can enhance both theoretical and practical knowledge about deliberative democracy.

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage PDF Author: Judith Brett
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925626814
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
It’s compulsory to vote in Australia. We are one of a handful of countries in the world that enforce this rule at election time, and the only English-speaking country that makes its citizens vote. Not only that, we embrace it. We celebrate compulsory voting with barbeques and cake stalls at polling stations, and election parties that spill over into Sunday morning. But how did this come to be: when and why was voting in Australia made compulsory? How has this affected our politics? And how else is the way we vote different from other democracies? Lively and inspiring, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage is a landmark account of the character of Australian democracy by the celebrated historian Judith Brett, the prize-winning biographer of Alfred Deakin.

Australia

Australia PDF Author: Marian Sawer
Publisher: Federation Press
ISBN: 9781862877252
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
On many criteria, Australia has been a pioneering democracy. As one of the oldest continuing democracies, however, a health check has long been overdue. Since 2002 the Democratic Audit of Australia, a major democracy assessment project, has been applying an internationally tested set of indicators to Australian political institutions and practices.The indicators derive from four basic principles--political equality, popular control of government, civil liberties and human rights and the quality of public deliberation. Comparative data are taken from Australia's nine jurisdictions, as well as from three comparator democracies, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for reform.Some of the findings are disturbing. For example, Australia has fallen well behind in the regulation of private money in elections and in controlling the use of government or parliamentary resources for partisan benefit. Transparency and accountability have suffered from relatively weak FOI regimes and from executive dominance of parliaments.For those studying democracy or wanting to reform Australian politics, The State of Democracy provides a wealth of evidence in a well-illustrated and highly accessible format. Internationally, it is an important contribution to the democracy assessment literature and pushes into new areas such as the intergovernmental decision-making of federalism.

Saving Democracy

Saving Democracy PDF Author: Gerry Stoker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350328278
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Democracy is in crisis. Is there still time to save it? Democracies face external threat from aggressive authoritarian states. Internally, citizens have grown increasingly distrustful of politicians and more cynical about national and global governance institutions. The time is ripe for democracy to renew itself. This text offers a state-of-the art overview of democratic innovations today, moving beyond cries of the 'death' or 'end' of democracy to instead offer a range of practical solutions for how to save it and restore faith in democratic practice. 'Old' democratic power, represented by existing structures, is being challenged. 'New' power involves collaboration and rapid feedback loops, as well as increased citizen participation. The future of democracy, the authors demonstrate, will be about findings ways of melding 'old' and 'new' power practices. Offering a broad and accessible survey of what different forms of democracy and democratic innovations look like today, and how they can develop in future, Saving Democracy shows us the potential for transformation across the entire democratic process. Avoiding a reductive focus on simply getting citizens more involved in decision-making, this book uniquely argues for the importance of refining and monitoring how democratic decisions are made and followed through.

Australia as US Client State

Australia as US Client State PDF Author: E. Paul
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137469358
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
This book explores Australia's role as a US client state and the subsequent consequences for Australian democracy. Examining whether neoliberal and neoconservative interests have hijacked democracy in Australia, Paul questions whether further de-democratisation will advance US economic and military interests.

Government and Democracy in Australia

Government and Democracy in Australia PDF Author: Ian Cook
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Takes the oppostion between politics and democracy as its underlying theme, and examines a variety of factors that affect politics in Australia such as globalisation, the media and the internet as well as the basic aspects of Australian politics.

Stepping Up to the Plate

Stepping Up to the Plate PDF Author: Graham Maddox
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 0522870309
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Americans call themselves a democracy, but they are not. America has redefined democracy to make it conform to the capitalist economy and rule by wealth elites. When American leaders say they wish to make the world safe for democracy, they really mean that they want the world, including Australia, to subsume itself into this US project. Any process resulting in Australia absorbing more of the United States' corporatist political culture will result in the serious erosion of our own democratic ideals. Australia should resist this, especially at a time when such corporatist politics is losing its legitimation. We are better served by our own robust system of democracy.

The Australian Democracy

The Australian Democracy PDF Author: Carmel Reilly
Publisher: Pearson Library
ISBN: 9781740705790
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
The Democracy series is designed to help students learn about democracy and its history. It enables students to see how democracy works in Australia and around the world, and explores the many ways in which citizens participate in the democratic process. Suitable for 10-14 year olds. The Australian Democracy explores democracy in Australia. It examines the beginnings of Australian democracy, the kind of government and electoral systems that have been chosen, and the safeguards put in place to ensure that government is representative. It also explores the Australian democracy in action, and looks to the future of democracy in Australia.

Media and Democracy in Australia

Media and Democracy in Australia PDF Author: Belinda Helmke
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640952642
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Other States, grade: 1, Macquarie University, language: English, abstract: When speaking about democracy one has to be careful to distinguish between its two key areas: direct democracy and representative democracy. Direct democracy is largely associated with self-government of the people in ancient Greece. This Athenian democracy is something which, as population of states grew, was increasingly difficult to sustain. In, for example, Australia with a population of 19 million people direct self-rule which implies "time-consuming and unwieldy procedures", with the likely effect of paralysing and not enhancing governmental decision-making processes, is largely unthinkable. Hence, today in the 21st century when one speaks of democracies what is largely meant is a representative democracy. Although remnants of direct democracy remain in aspects such as referendums, generally voters hand over their power in regular elections to representatives to rule on their behalf. The emergence of the internet has inspired many critics to believe that it can be the answer to overcoming what they see as the temporary solution of representative democracies. They believe that the new media, the internet, will lead to a future in which "major policy decisions can be instigated, formulated, and decided by direct democracy."