Frustrated, reconciled or divided? The Australian labor party and federalism

Pragmatic Federalism: Australian Federalism from Hawke to Howard

“…As a consequence, successful state premiers, abetted by state Labor machines, challenged the Party's centralist position (Crisp 1983; see also Jaensch 1989:109). Moreover, Parkin and Marshall (1993) argue that Labor was able to implement much of its progressive policy agenda through state Labor governments. In the 1960s, the ALP softened its approach – its platform was revised in 1971 to accommodate federalism – and, prior to his election in 1972, Gough Whitlam, under pressure from the state Labor branches, recognised the need to work with the states (Parkin and Marshall 1993:28; Grattan 1973:399).…”

Federalism: a fork in the road?

“…Over its long history, the Australian Labor Party has had a complicated and sometimes inconsistent engagement with federalism (Galligan and Mardiste 1992;Parkin and Marshall 1994). The Rudd Labor government, over its truncated lifespan of less than three years, earned itself a special place in this history by embodying and projecting many elements of this complicated inconsistency.…”

Swings and Roundabouts? Patterns of Voting for the Australian Labor Party at State and Commonwealth Lower House Elections, 1901-96

“…7;Jaensch 1994, ch. 6;Parkin and Marshall 1994;Sharman 1994b;W ildavsky 1961). In addition, there have been studies investigating the extent and nature of divergence between the party systems of the various states (Bennett 1992, ch.…”

“…Another assum ption is that the ALP is a single entity across the federation but the state-based structure of the ALP m eans that the party is deeply enm eshed in the Downloaded by [Akdeniz Universitesi] at 12:31 21 December 2014 idiosyncrasies of local state politics and government such that each state branch of the ALP can be seen as a largely autonomous party (Holmes and Sharman 1977, 112;Parkin and Marshall 1994). On the other hand, the fact that the ALP is based on a similar set of partisan assumptions throughout the federation and that it plays such an important role in all electoral contests m eans that it is a major factor in reducing federal diversity in voting patterns.…”

“…Since the early years of the century, the ALP has been the largest party in terms of vote share for most state and federal elections (see Table 1), and while its success in gaining votes has not always been matched by a corresponding success in winning seats and government (Sharman 1990), the ALP has consistently been a major player in electoral contests throughout the federation. This has been coupled with an ideological predisposition that, at least until recently, has not been sym pathetic to federalism (Galligan and Mardiste 1992;Sharman 1992) although its organisational structure has always been based on largely independent state branches and it must accom m odate strong regional tensions within the party (Parkin and Marshall 1994).…”