Howard Government Research Articles

Australian Skill Shortages: How the Howard Government Did Not Change its Mind

AbstractThis article begins by assessing the evidence that there was, and is, a skill shortage in Australia, and notes that for some years the Howard government initially denied there was a problem of unmet demand for skilled people. It was not until late 2006 that we saw any kind of official acknowledgement of a problem. On 12 October 2006, Prime Minister Howard announced a ‘Skills for the Future’ policy that involved a commitment to spend $837 million over five years, and aimed ‘to help build a more highly skilled and responsive workforce to support Australia’s long-term economic growth’. Acknowledging that policy-making begins with the framing or constitution of a problem, assessments are offered of this federal government’s account of the ‘skill shortage’ problem. The questions posed in this article are: what policy initiatives during the Howard years were designed to address issues of training, and what was their potential for addressing the problem of an apparent shortage of skilled workers in Australia?

Does pragmatism always work?

As with any country, the political objectives of Australian foreign policy are based on Australian national values. Yet, because such values are inherently based on governmental interpretation, political leanings have created legitimate differences in the objectives pursued in Australian foreign policy over time. This article will explore these differences through Australia’s position as a Western, liberal democracy located in the Asia-Pacific. This will be done by examining Australia’s relations with those countries which represent the convergence of the Asia-Pacific’s most significant economic, strategic, and political links – Northeast Asia. What will be apparent is that, while determined in its resolve, the political objectives pursued by the current Howard government have proved to be both contentious and potentially damaging to Australia’s standing in the region.

Assessing the policy trajectory of welfare reform in Australia

Although its roots reach back into the 1980s, the Australian version of welfare reform has intensified over the last decade under the direction of the conservative Howard government. In this article we chart the path to welfare-to-work policies, noting both the discontinuities as well as a degree of continuity with Australia’s traditional approach to social protection. As such, welfare reform in Australia is both revolutionary and evolutionary. Further, its acceptance by the Australian public has been shaped by a sophisticated form of persuasion couched within a discourse of ‘participation’ and ‘obligation’. Finally, we note that in the case of welfare reform, Australia’s approach has switched its traditional reliance on UK social policy models to a social security system designed on the principles of welfare reform as implemented in the US.

Indivisible Partners or Enduring Combatants? Divisions and Triumphs in the EU-Australian Relationship

Casting the spotlight over a complex and dynamic relationship, this article seeks to diagnose the state of relations between the European Union and Australia by contrasting the sources of tension with the forces of unity in the relationship. After illuminating the substantial differences between the EU and Australia in the political, military and economic spheres, the article asserts that the Common Agricultural Policy (‘CAP’) has disproportionately influenced the EU-Australia dialogue and — like the Howard Government’s propensity to bilateralism — needlessly impeded the advancement of relations. The impact of bilateral relations with the United States and the increasingly contentious challenges posed by global climate change have threatened to destabilise the bond between Brussels and Canberra. However, the article insists that the destructive potential of CAP-related disagreement is dissipating. Rather, debates over agriculture in the EU-Australia dialogue have been emasculated by rapidly intensifying social, political and cultural integration. Moreover, the development of Australia’s relationships with its Asian neighbours promises to optimise Australian engagement with Europe. After carefully weighing these competing factors, the article concludes that — despite the transitory phases of discord — the future for the EU-Australia relationship is bright.

Degrading and Managing Risk: Assessing Australia's Counter-Terrorist Strategy

Given the occasionally vexatious nature of academic discussion in Australia on the subject of terrorism, it is surprising that so little has been written regarding Australia's approach to countering terrorism. This gap in the literature stands in marked contrast to the highly charged debate over the direction of terrorism studies in this country. In seeking to fill this lacuna, the article critically examines the three essential pillars of Australia's counter-terrorism strategy that have evolved since 2001: domestic legislation, intelligence, and regional assistance and engagement. I argue that Australia's counter-terrorist strategy exhibits greater cohesion than many of the critics have been willing to acknowledge. However, I also argue that there remain significant flaws in the Howard government's approach, particularly as it relates to a lack of transparency in justifying new anti-terrorism legislation and Australia's unswerving support for a US global counter-terrorism strategy that has lost its way since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Disenfranchisement of Prisoners

David Brown takes a road trip to Canberra for the Roach fixture at the High Court where modernity is attempting a fight-back against the resurrection of civil death. With echoes of Hunter S Thompson as rugby league follower, the author recounts a trip to Canberra to observe a case in which Vickie Lee Roach, an Indigenous woman prisoner, challenged (successfully as it later turns out) the Howard government's 2006 legislation disenfranchising all serving prisoners.

Children's Services, Wages and Workchoices

IN MARCH 2006 the Industrial Relations Commissions of New South Wales and Queensland utilised their equal-remuneration wage-fixing principles to address the gender undervaluation of childcare work. In doing so the tribunals explicitly rejected employer arguments used in the past to limit increases in award rates of pay for childcare workers. While these decisions were thought to have a wide ranging impact on a significant area of feminised work, their influence is likely to be short-lived. The introduction of the Howard Government's new federal workplace relations system under the WorkChoices legislation provides employers with the opportunity to reargue the NSW and Queensland equal-remuneration cases. This opportunity is facilitated by the operation of the award ‘rationalisation’ process and the determination of minimum wages and classification scales by the new Australian Fair Pay Commission. Some employers are utilising these opportunities to argue for cuts to the award wages of childcare workers, both in nominal and real terms. In this context it is difficult to conclude that the federal WorkChoices wage-fixing system is a fair system.

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

The Howard Government, Regulatory Federalism and the Transformation of Commonwealth–State Relations

Various initiatives enhancing Commonwealth power relative to the States have been a feature of the Howard government that has surprised many observers. These developments need to be understood in the context of longer-term political, financial and regulatory changes that are challenging established features of Commonwealth–State relations. The Howard government's allocation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue has offered the prospect of greater State-level financial and policy autonomy. But the Howard government has also inherited, and in some policy domains has significantly enhanced, the further development of a Commonwealth–State regime best described as ‘regulatory federalism’. Its effect, in contrast to the effect of the GST initiative, is to constrain the States' scope for policy autonomy. A similar impact is emerging from the Commonwealth's efforts to ensure that its conditional grants to the States better serve Commonwealth policy goals and priorities. And a raft of Commonwealth initiatives is bypassing the States altogether. Although the Howard government has clearly enhanced the role of the Commonwealth, it remains constrained by aspects of the federal system that are structurally entrenched and that continue to make intergovernmental collaboration, rather than confrontation, a sensible strategy.

The Howard Government, Capital Taxation and the Limits of Redistribution?

Whilst often being overshadowed by debate surrounding personal income and consumption taxes, the Howard government has also devoted significant resources to reviewing and reforming business and capital taxation. This paper provides an overview of the Ralph Review of Business Taxation and the Howard government's mixed record when it came to the implementation of the Ralph reforms. Having documented the subsequent changes in corporate income, capital gains and superannuation taxation, the paper analyses their economic impact. The paper concludes with an assessment of the longer term political significance of these changes and asks whether the concessional taxation of capital that has occurred under the Howard government represents a fundamental shift in the basis of Australian taxation.

Governing in Good Times: Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform in Australia 1996–2006

Over the course of a decade in office since 1996, the Howard government has pursued a policy and a politics of fiscal responsibility. Moving the budget out of deficit, retiring the Commonwealth government's accumulated debt and running continued surpluses to hedge against future demands have been the main expressions of this policy. The virtuousness of this has been contrasted with the record of previous governments, in particular with the record of the Keating government, which left office after 4 years of economic sunshine with an undisclosed deficit of $10 billion on top of a greatly swollen public debt. In addition, the Howard government has staked a claim to being a government of tax reform—having reformed the indirect tax system by introducing the GST in 2000, and having reformed the direct tax system by making a number of accompanying and following adjustments to the personal income tax. The economic and financial data suggest, however, that the Coalition's budgetary achievements must be credited much more to good fortune than to good government. The challenge—unprecedented in a generation—has been of governing in good times, indeed of governing in extraordinarily good times. At the same time, tax reform has been much more modest than many of the Howard government's market-oriented supporters would have liked.

The Howard Government and Political Management: The Challenge of Policy Activism

Although the distinctive values promulgated by successive Howard governments have been extensively analysed, less attention has been paid to the manner of their incorporation into policy. This article maps the ways in which policy processes were managed to achieve values-change in the Howard decade (1996–2006), focusing on the policy subsystem at the apex of government. Three case studies are investigated in detail: the development of welfare to work policies; strategies to combat illicit drugs; and industrial relations legislation. We show how Prime Minister Howard's leadership was built around a highly personalised system of political control, based on the seizing of opportunities as they arose; the engineering of policy networks; and the alignment of key resources such as the Cabinet Office; the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and senior bureaucratic leadership with the Prime Minister's policy priorities. We show that this system made possible very rapid policy development, but was also associated with deficits in policy-related research and with a degree of implementation risk whereby minimal consultation had occurred. Some comparisons are drawn with governments of the Hawke–Keating period, which were more technocratic in approach.

The ‘arc of instability’ and Australia's strategic policy

The proposition that Australia faces an ‘arc of instability’ to its north has been an important feature of the Australian strategic debate in the early twenty-first century. Prompted by worries in the late 1990s over Indonesia's future and East Timor's uncertain path to independence, the ‘arc’ metaphor also encapsulated growing Australian concerns about the political cohesiveness of Melanesian polities, including Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. While tending to overlook the divergent experiences of countries within its expanding boundaries, the ‘arc’ fed from Australia's historical requirement for a secure archipelagic screen. As such it has became an important weapon in the debate over whether the locus of Australia's strategic priorities should be increasingly global in the ‘war on terror’ period or remain closer to home in the immediate region. The ‘arc of instability’ metaphor was consequently adopted by leading Australian Labor Party politicians to argue that the Howard Coalition government was neglecting South Pacific security challenges. It became less prominent following the Howard government's greater activism in the South Pacific, signalled by Australia's leadership of the East Timor intervention in 2003. But its prominence returned in 2006 with the unrest in both Honiara and Dili. In overall terms, the ‘arc of instability’ discussion has helped direct Australian strategic and political attention to the immediate neighbourhood. But it has not provided specific policy guidance on what should be done to address the instabilities it includes.

The Howard Government and Indigenous Rights: An Imposed National Unity?

During the Howard decade, numerous controversies emerged in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio: the ‘ten point plan’ on native title; the question of a formal apology to the stolen generations; and the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). Underpinning these contested policy developments is a common issue—the rights of Indigenous peoples within the Australian nation. The Coalition government has consistently opposed measures that give recognition to Indigenous rights. The previous policy of self-determination was rejected on the grounds that it has ‘implications of separate nations or governments’ that are unacceptable (OATSIA 2003a). ATSIC was dismissed because it was deemed a failure, but also because it was said to represent a form of separatism that divided the nation. This was done without consultation or negotiation with Indigenous representatives, imposing a vision of national unity by unilateral decision. This article documents key developments in the portfolio and explores assumptions implicit in the government's rhetoric—that recognition of Indigenous rights and self-determination are divisive and inherently at odds with nation cohesion and unity. In the final section, the ideas of several theorists are outlined to suggest that other approaches are possible—that rather than ignoring or suppressing the demands of Indigenous minorities for recognition, national unity is best served by political accommodation of the special status of such groups.

Managing Expectations: The Howard Government's Workchoices Information Campaign

This article analyses the Howard government's $55 million information campaign to sell its new industrial relations (IR) reforms. The expensive advertising campaign was spread across newspapers, television channels, radio stations and even on internet sites. It was widely criticised by media professionals, politicians and interest groups. The IR information campaign was an example of ‘permanent campaigning’ because it was an overtly partisan information campaign that appeared in the middle of an electoral cycle. It was also emblematic of the blurred lines between government and political advertising. However, the IR information campaign also revealed the limitations of incumbency advantage and the limitations to some aspects of the modern trend towards permanent campaigning. Public anger over the plethora of taxpayer-funded advertisements limited the effectiveness of the messages being delivered. The government persisted with the information campaign — perhaps a signal it was designed not to turn public opinion in favour of the reforms, but to prevent an increase in public dissatisfaction following the negative campaign being waged by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates: Work/Family Policy in Australia 1996-2006

Work/family reconciliation policies can be harnessed to diverse political agendas, ranging from feminist-inspired equality strategies to coercive, neo-liberal programs. In Australia, such policies have served a range of ends under different governments. This article focuses on developments since 1996 when the conservative coalition parties led by John Howard were elected to government. It explores three policy domains that are central to Australia's work/family agenda: family payments, maternity/parental leave, and child care. Changes in these areas are situated in the context of the government's broader strategies concerning labor market flexibility, tax reform, and declining fertility. The article argues that there has been a substantial retreat from the femocrat strategies adopted under Labor in the 1980s and early 1990s. The general thrust of the Howard government has been to discourage labor force participation of mothers of young children, with the important exception of sole parents. In a number of areas policies are inconsistent, reflecting the government's ambivalence about whether to support women as home-based carers, wage earners, or both.

The Howard Government: The Extent to which Public Attitudes Influenced Australia's Federal Policy Mix

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 1996, and why such a relationship is crucial to evaluating policy trends in Australia's liberal democracy in terms of understanding both policy possibilities and limitations no matter how flawed or divisive certain policies may appear to be.

Non‐Departmental Public Bodies Under the Howard Governments1

There has been both continuity and change in the use of non‐departmental public bodies (NDPBs) during the Howard years. In terms of continuity, the statutory authority and its incorporated version, the statutory corporation (in whose development late 19th and early 20th century Australian governments played such an important part), have remained in wide use. In terms of change, however, two other NDPB forms offered some challenge to its popularity. The government‐owned company came to be a preferred form for government business enterprises (GBEs) and, more recently, for many other non‐commercial public activities as well. And the executive agency, first making its Australian appearance in 1999, seemed initially to be another significant challenger, but its numbers, never great, were soon cut back. The article examines these trends, relating them to several relevant systemic inquiries and policy changes, notably the Humphry review of the governance of GBEs, the final settlement (in 1997) of the package of financial management acts, the Uhrig inquiry of 2003 and the system‐challenging pressures that have followed it. Commonwealth participation in joint (Commonwealth/subnational and Commonwealth/private) activities is also noted, as is the lack of ‘fit’ of the Australian experience with international theorising about ‘agencification’. Finally, the article seeks to identify the leading figures within the Howard governments who have been directing both the changes and the continuities involved in these developments.

Accommodating Bureaucrats in Canberra: A History of the Commonwealth Bureaucracy's Office Space in the National Capital During the Howard Decade

This article seeks to explore an important intersection of the Commonwealth's administrative and spatial histories by examining the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space accommodation practices between 1996 and 2006 in the urban spatial context of Canberra. After initially conceptualising and describing the experience of the Howard decade and contrasting it with previous policy and practice, the article seeks to theorise the general experience of the last ten years through stressing the interweaving of neoliberalism, path‐dependencies, and contingency. In doing so, the piece offers a number of insights into not just the Howard government, the Commonwealth and Canberra, but also of neoliberalism, and the potential impacts of social spaces on policy processes and public sector practice.

Religion and Politics in the Howard Decade

The interaction between religion and politics is varied, complex and often heated. It involves constitutional issues, voting behaviour, party composition and electoral competition, faith-based public administration, advocacy and lobbying by churches, mutual criticism by churches and the state, and the public presentation of religious values. This article is a comprehensive mapping and discussion of a range of the major religion and politics issues in Australia since the election of the Howard government in 1996. This has been a decade in which religion has had a higher political profile than at any time since the 1950s Labor Split. One feature has been the rise to prominence of Catholics in the Coalition parties, whereas they featured heavily on the other side during the Labor Split. It is a more intellectually interesting decade than the 1950s because the influence of religion has crossed denominational and faith boundaries from the mainstream Christian churches to the newer Evangelical Christian churches and to non-Christian religions such as Islam. The overall impact of religious intervention appears to have favoured the Coalition parties, but many unanswered questions remain about the motivation and impact of these developments, and there are numerous opportunities for further research.