澳大利亚的政治体制

PRESENTATION:

EXPLAINING AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

Professor David Lovell

The University of New South Wales, Australia

Thursday 15 September, 2:30pm

Outline of the presentation

Many of you may have some knowledge of Australia, particularly as a supplier of raw materials for China’s extraordinary economic growth (and perhaps as an ‘empty’ continent, full of kangaroos), but few of you will probably know much detail about Australian politics. I will use four events as starting-points to explain some of the features of Australian politics that may seem strange to outsiders:

1. In the past two weeks, the High Court of Australia declared that legislation the government had passed to deal with the influx of asylum-seekers into Australia was not valid, because it broke Australia’s obligations under the international refugee convention that Australia had signed. (There are at least two issues of interest here: first, that the Australian government is seeking ways to deflect the growing numbers of people who arrive in boats seeking asylum as refugees, because many Australian people are worried by this

‘flood’ of refugees; second, that government legislation can be overturned by the highest court in the legal system if it is considered to be against the Australian Constitution. Just because a government has been democratically elected, it is still constrained by the rule of law.)

2. The 26th Australian Prime Minister, from 2007 to 2010, was Mr Kevin Rudd. (You may recall Mr Rudd because he was a Mandarin-speaking Australian; very rare!) Mr Rudd was deposed from his position as Prime Minister by his own party, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and replaced by the current Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard (previously the Deputy Prime Minister). This change of Prime Minister-ship did not take place after an election, at which ordinary people vote for their politicians, but between elections, and because of plotting within Mr Rudd’s own party. Mr Rudd was seen as ‘out of touch’ with ordinary people, and the ALP believed it would lose the next election—held later in 2010—if he remained the Party leader. As it happened, Julia Gillard won the general election late in 2010 and was popularly ‘confirmed’ as Prime Minister, but is currently facing terrible popularity ratings. There are rumours that the ALP will soon depose Julia Gillard and replace her with a more popular leader that will boost their chances at the next election (due in 2013). What’s going on here? Why can Prime Ministers be deposed without any election? (The issue here is the nature of Australian politics, where the Head of Government is simply an elected member of the Australian Parliament, and not elected separately, like the United States President. If an Australian Prime Minister loses the confidence of his or her party,

then he is unlikely to remain PM; if an Australian Prime Minister loses the confidence of Parliament, then the whole government must change.)

3. Australians are currently considering a ‘carbon tax’ as a way of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere, and as a way therefore of reducing global warming. Making things (such as electricity and heating) more expensive are generally effective ways of getting people to ‘economise’, that is, to reduce their consumption. But the problem with the proposed carbon tax—currently being debated before the Australian Parliament—is that the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, went to the people at the last election in 2010 with a promise that she would NOT introduce such a tax. Why has she ‘broken her promise’? The answer lies in part with the composition of the Australian Parliament elected in 2010: the Labor government is in government (meaning that it can pass its legislation in Parliament consistently) only because it relies on the support of a small number of independent politicians and members of the ‘Greens’ party (a party dedicated to environmentalism). We say that the current Labor government is a

‘minority’ government. The independents and Greens who allow Labor to govern have a very important influence over the issues that are adopted by the government. This has affects across many areas of government policy, and it means that when people voted for Labor to govern, they did not realise that Labor would have to negotiate and compromise within Parliament. The result is that the Labor party is losing popular support.

4. In 2000, the Australian public voted at a referendum to decide the issue of whether Australia should become a ‘republic’: essentially a political system where a king or queen is not the ‘Head of State’. (By a historical accident, the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, is also the Queen of Australia.) Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the fact that the Queen of England has no political role in Australia apart from a symbolic one, and in view of the multicultural nature of Australian society, Australians voted against this change to our Constitution. Do Australians love the Queen, or the idea of monarchy, or the British connections? The real answer to the referendum result is that most Australians were not convinced that a change to the existing system would produce a better system; they decided to let things remain as they are. Australians are a conservative people, in terms of their political system, and they are distrustful of major constitutional proposals by their politicians. In general, they do not like (or trust) politicians!

The speaker

David Lovell is a Professor of Politics and Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the University of New South Wales at ADFA, in Canberra, the capital of Australia. During 2004 he was Acting Rector of UNSW@ADFA, and in 2008 he was Deputy Rector. He gained his doctorate in the field of the History of Ideas, and his major research interests are in the problems of democratization. In 1992 he was the Australian Parliamentary Political Science Fellow, and in 1993 was Visiting Professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. He is on the Advisory Board of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, and is co-editor of its journal, The European Legacy. He is also a member of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-

Pacific (CSCAP). He initiated the University’s links with the Shanghai Institute for International Studies in 2001, and has forged university links with Manipal University, India, and Airlangga University, Indonesia. He participated in the Australian Human Rights Commission dialogue in Beijing in 1999, and in 2001 was a member of the Australian delegation to the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption in The Hague. During 2005 he was a Visiting Fellow at the ANU’s National Europe Centre and the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, and concurrently held a visiting professorship at the European Information Centre in Berlin. In 2005 he was invited to the EU’s ‘A Soul for Europe’ initiative in Budapest, and in 2006 he spoke at the Beijing Forum on harmony and governance. He is a participant in the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities, and made a presentation to IAACA’s Third Seminar in Shanghai in July 2011.

He has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics including Australian politics, communist and post-communist systems, and the history of ideas. His most recent books and monographs include: The Transition: Evaluating the postcommunist experience (edited, 2002); Asia-Pacific Security: Policy Challenges (edited, 2003; second edn 2004); Freedom and Equality in Marx’s Utopia (edited, special issue of The European Legacy, 2004); Our Unswerving Loyalty: A documentary survey of relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920-1940 (with K. Windle, edited, 2008); and Protecting Civilians during Violent Conflict: Theoretical and practical issues for the 21st Century (with I. Primoratz, edited, forthcoming 2011).

He is currently supervising two Chinese doctoral students, one looking at the role of the internet in anti-corruption in China; the other—a graduate of South China University of Agriculture—looking at the role of the Communist Youth League in China’s political leadership.