POWERSCAPE
For our mothers, Jill, Susan and Margareta
Powerscape
Contemporary Australian politics
Ariadne Vromen, Katharine Gelber and Anika Gauja
Illustrations byFionaKatauskas
First published 2009 by Allen & Unwin
Published 2020 by Routledge
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Copyright Ariadne Vromen, Katharine Gelber and Anika Gauja 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Vromen, Ariadne.
Powerscape: contemporary Australian politics/Ariadne Vromen;
Katharine Gelber; Anika Gauja.
2nd ed.
ISBN: 9781741756258 (pbk.)
Includes index.
Bibliography.
Australia Politics and government 20th century.
Australia Politics and government 21st century.
Other Authors/Contributors:
Gelber, Katharine.
Gauja, Anika.
320.0994
Illustrations by Fiona Katauskas
Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Centaur MT by Midland Typesetters, Australia
ISBN-13: 9781741756258 (pbk)
Visit the Powerscape website at
We set ourselves two ambitious tasks in writing this book. In choosing to write about Australian politics we had to recognise that Australians learn little about their political system through school. Therefore the first challenge for us was to present introductory institutional information in a lively and interesting way. Our second challenge was to capture the dynamism and complexity of Australian political processes and relate them to everyday political experiences. Most books on Australian politics tend to do one or the other. In Powerscape we provide our attempt to find an approach that meets both these challenges.
Since the first edition we have received useful feedback on what we tried to do with Powerscape, from both students and lecturers. The Australian political landscape has continued to change, including the recent change in federal government, and this is reflected in the new examples we have focused on. In the second edition we have added two new chapters on political institutions and policy-making.
Allen & Unwin has been a very supportive publisher, and we'd like to thank them for their invaluable assistance and expertise. The special contribution made by cartoonist Fiona Katauskas has made the book more accessible and original. The second edition has also benefited from the talent of our third author, early career researcher Anika Gauja. As a result this has been a women-only projecta somewhat unique event in Australian political science literature.
We would like to thank individuals who either provided us with constructive comments on the development of the first edition, or gave us useful suggestions for development and expansion into the second edition. Thank you to: Rebecca Albury, Nick Economou, Kim Huynh, Carol Johnson, Matt McDonald, Diarmuid Maguire, Susan Park, Shelly Savage, Rodney Smith and John Warhurst.
Ariadne thanks her family for their ongoing; support, especially Diarmuid and his boys. She also thanks the movie group girls and Zelda for providing welcome distraction. Katharine would like to thank the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW, at which she was a Visiting Fellow in 2008 while parts of this book were written. Since the first edition she and Lou have welcomed into the world their son Simon, who makes it all worth it. Anika would like to thank her family for all their support, as well as 'team extreme', the 'agents' and the 'Sydney gang'.
The study of politics is a bit like trying to catch the wind. It is very powerful, you can see its effects all around you, but it is hard to grab hold of and difficult to measure. Politics is all around us, whether or not we consider ourselves 'political'. Perhaps without realising it, we are all members of a number of political communities, including the country to which we belong and the State in which we live. We do not always get a choice about our membership of some political communities. For example, many people acquire their citizenship simply by being born in a particular country They did not ask for it, but having it grants them privileges, such as the freedom to travel, or the provision of social welfare, and also imposes responsibilities on them, such as paying taxes. Those who do not have automatic entitlement to citizenship are obliged to apply for it through complicated legal and administrative procedures, with no guarantee their request will be granted. The political community, in this instance, is a nation, in the sense of a physical, geographically defined entity. However, this is not the only way to define a political community; other ways include shared identities, common histories or mutual experiences.
Between and within political communities there are continuous interactions. A feature of these interactions is that there are always winners and losers, privileged and underprivileged, haves and have-nots. The study of politics is the study of the interactions of this unequal power between individuals and groups within a political communityhow they happen, why they happen, and why some people or groups do better out of the system than others. It is a discipline that tries to make the intangible tangible, the seemingly chaotic systematic, and the apparently random ordered. It seeks to describe, analyse and explain the complex phenomena that affect collective decision-making in a society, the values the people hold and the choices they make. It also tries to discern the assumptions and perspectives that inform people s decisions, values and choices.
In this book we argue that political interactions and decision-making events take place in a continuous process of contestation. There is ongoing dispute over values and choices within any political system that reflects peoples engagement with the system at many levelsthe formal institutions of parliament and government, by pressure groups, through social networks and as individuals.
In Australia (as in all political communities) some people s values and choices win out over others'. Sometimes the political party you vote for wins government, sometimes it loses. Sometimes the school you attend gets more funding, sometimes it gets less. Sometimes new roads are built that make cars travel to and from work faster, sometimes a new train line is built instead. The study of politics is the study of how and why these decisions occur, and how and why people argue in favour of one choice over another. Ultimately, it is a study of power, or more specifically of relationships of power.
The study of politics is the study of interactions of unequal power between individuals and (formal and informal) institutions, groups and organisations within a community
