Full Response
Prof. Andrew Parkin and Dr Leonie Hardcastle
Australia
Because 2007 will almost certainly be a national election year in Australia, electoral considerations are
likely to be a strong influence in determining the key issues of domestic and foreign policy during the
coming year.
Australia’s Constitution and Electoral Act allow some timing flexibility around the maximum term of three
years for the House of Representatives (the chamber of the bicameral national Parliament in which, in
accordance with Westminster conventions, the government is formed). Technically, the latest possible
date for the next election is 19 January 2008. However, no election has ever been held in January due
the impracticalities of a campaign coinciding with the Christmas/New Year holiday period. The latest
realistic date for an election is Saturday 15 December 2007. An election in October or November 2007 is
the most likely scenario.
Prime Minister John Howard will be seeking his fifth successive election victory. Mr Howard led his centreright Liberal Party/National Party coalition into office by defeating the Labor government led by then
Prime Minister Paul Keating in March 1996. The Howard government was then re-elected in 1998, 2001
and 2004.
Mr Howard has become the dominant Australian politician of his generation. To the evident
disappointment of the long-serving Treasurer, Peter Costello, who has made plain his own leadership
ambitions, Howard has restated his determination to continue as Prime Minister. Over the past eleven
years, his government’s domestic policies and initiatives, in the context of a consistently strong
economy, are slowly transforming Australian public life. Among the Howard government’s more notable
impacts have been the further deregulation of the labour market, the full privatisation of the former
publicly-owned monopoly telecommunications company and a shift in the balance of the tax system away
from income and towards consumption.
Some of these issues are likely to become electorally salient in 2007. Labour market policies will be a
particular focus, because the opposition Labor Party has signalled its intention to campaign vigorously in
favour of restoring some of the past protections for collective bargaining and trade union involvement. An
ongoing severe drought affecting most of the country may weaken the national economic outlook via
reduced agricultural output if it continues too long into the year.
An emergent structural issue is the future of Australian federalism. Under the Australian Constitution, the
States are the main service-delivery authorities and were originally envisaged as operating with the
autonomy that befits a genuine federation. However, the States have become financially dependent on
revenue generated by the national government. This has led to an increase in the potential policy
influence of the national government in key areas such as public hospitals, public schools, transport
infrastructure and environmental management. To the surprise of some observers, the Howard
government has accelerated this centralising trend. The Prime Minister in particular has articulated a
strong ‘national interest’ philosophy that gives no special status to federalist principles. On the other
hand, the Howard government has also given the States access to the revenue generated by the national
consumption tax, a measure that gives the States increased financial certainty.
In foreign affairs, Australia enters 2007 with its armed forces engaged in a number of difficult arenas
around the globe. Australia has around 1400 defence personnel in Iraq as part of the so-called ‘coalition
of the willing’. The Howard government continues to insist that these troops should remain in Iraq until
the situation there is sufficiently stable but the opposition Labor Party is pressing for greater priority to
be given to withdrawal opportunities. Australia has about 500 of its troops in Afghanistan assisting with
reconstruction and with helicopter services; this deployment is less controversial within Australia. More
than 800 Australian defence personnel plus several hundred civilian police officers are stationed in East
Timor as part of the United Nations-sponsored presence, likewise engaged in a fairly uncontentious
mission. Around 140 Australian troops and more than 100 civilian police officers are deployed in the
Solomon Islands as part of the Regional Assistance Mission to that troubled Pacific state. A number of
Australian police officers remain in Tonga in the aftermath of the civil unrest of November 2006. Close
attention is being paid by Australia to the unstable situation in Fiji following the military coup of
December 2006, and there is also ongoing concern about stability and effective governance in Papua New
Guinea. Meanwhile, cordial relations with Indonesia, which had been severely strained by the events
leading to East Timor’s independence, remain a high foreign-policy priority.
Overall, 2007 may see Australia gradually ease back its commitments to the more far-flung (if relatively
low-key) military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focus more on the troubles in its own
regional neighbourhood. Electoral considerations favour such a reorientation. The Opposition Labor
Party’s new leader, Kevin Rudd, is a former diplomat and former Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. He
is likely to try to take advantage of his perceived credibility in relation to foreign policy issues and he has
indicated support for a more focussed regional engagement. Mr Rudd has the distinction of being a rare
bilingual Australian politician, having kept up the fluency in Mandarin Chinese that he began to acquire in
university studies and later honed as a diplomat. Were Rudd to become Australia’s next Prime Minister,
he would be likely to pay particular attention the Australia’s important relationship with China.
An interesting new issue on the political agenda bridges the foreign and domestic policy arenas. Australia
accounts for nearly 40% of the world’s known uranium reserves but it has never developed a domestic
nuclear power industry. Instead, it relies heavily on its abundant coal and gas deposits for electricity
generation, in the process producing substantial greenhouse-gas emissions. The Howard government has
consistently refused to endorse the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change aimed at reducing these
emissions, but the Prime Minister has recently announced that Australia should seriously consider
establishing a nuclear power industry in part because of its lower emissions impact. Uranium mining and
nuclear issues have long been divisive in Australian politics, not least within the Labor Party. Prime
Minister Howard may have found another way to divide and distract his political opponents on his way to
what he evidently hopes will be a career-capping fifth electoral victory late in 2007.
Professor Andrew Parkin is a professor of political and international studies at Flinders University in
Adelaide.
Dr Leonie Hardcastle is Deputy Faculty Registrar, Faculty of Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide.