Australian Journal of Politics and History最新文献

The historiography of the political concept of virtue has been dominated by examinations of western European and North American sources. This article aims to widen the historical scope for our understanding of the influence of the concept of political virtue by examining how Anglophone conceptions of virtue were employed by the framers of the Australian Constitution during the Federation debates and the impact of those conceptions on the Constitution itself. It examines the strands of thought that provided the backdrop for the colonial adoption of the Victorian-era British conception of political virtue, subsequently showing how the Australian constitutional framers adopted these languages and concepts in their own writings and speeches. The Australian framers were concerned with the virtue of both the people and their political leaders, applying this concern in their contributions to legal and political discourse in the latter part of the nineteenth century. However, rather than a direct transfer of the more typical languages of republican virtue, the colonial context examined here offers evidence of a shift of emphasis from virtue into the concept of “character”. The framers demonstrated an interest in the question of character as they wrote and deliberated around the constitutional problems of political parties, bicameralism, and responsible government. So, too, they showed an acute concern for the importance of character in their institutional designs for a future federal commonwealth. This article demonstrates that the framers existed within the tradition of thought which held virtue, or character, to be central to the vitality of the polity, and that the framers adapted that language in their deliberations and the institutional design of the Constitution.

From its establishment in 1921, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attracted political and public critique for flying accidents. This article explores how its nascent institutional ethos developed in relation to a problematic safety record. Military aviators were expected to balance airborne “dash” against obeying flying orders, risking castigation if they proved either too timid or too reckless. Despite vigorous attempts to isolate their service from scrutiny, Air Force leaders were forced to adapt the RAAF's safety culture in response to civilian expertise, media pressure, political machinations, and comparisons with other air arms — particularly Britain's Royal Air Force. Through the 1930s and the Second World War, responsibility was increasingly channelled toward individual personnel. Tactics included severe punishments, signed attestations that confirmed compliance with orders and an “endorsement” system that permanently recorded infractions in errant flyers' log books. These measures risked producing timorous and inadequately skilled pilots, unprepared to exploit their aircraft's capabilities to the full. In 1945, the establishment of a Directorate of Flying Safety profoundly changed the RAAF's institutional safety culture, but its accident record remained problematic. Over 1921–48, the “sweet spot” between initiative and dependability eluded the RAAF's quest to inculcate an enduring “spirit of the service”.

Gough Whitlam was deeply committed to the preservation of history, and keenly attuned to the importance of the documentary record in the writing of it. For Whitlam, the written record — the contemporaneous documentary record of government activity — was central to the production of historical knowledge and the “verification” of history. As he reflected on the release of his government's 1975 Cabinet papers, “the publication of these records confirms my belief in the contemporary document as the primary source for writing and understanding history”. This paper takes us through the shifting historiography of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Governor-General Sir John Kerr. In doing so, it is a reflection also on the role of archives in the writing of history, recognising as Peters does, that the construction of an archival record is “a deeply political act”. This is particularly so for contested, polarised, episodes — of which the dismissal is surely the exemplar — for which archival records have been transformative. In this process of historical correction, revelations from Kerr's papers in the National Archives of Australia have been pivotal. Kerr's papers were also central to my successful legal action against the Archives securing the release of the “Palace letters” between Kerr and the Queen regarding the dismissal. This paper explores some critical “archival encounters” during that research journey — revelations, obstructions, missing archives, and even burnt archives. From the destruction of Whitlam's security file, missing Government House guestbooks, the denial of access to records, to royal letters of support for Kerr's dismissal of Whitlam “accidentally burnt” in the Yarralumla incinerator, these encounters illuminate the critical relationship between archives, access, and history which continue to shape our understanding of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

The House of Representatives election of 2 December, 1972, was a watershed in Australian political history. That election saw the Australian Labor Party terminate the Liberal–Country Party (LCP) Coalition's twenty-three-year hegemony and bring to office not only a different type of Labor government but a different prime ministerial style in leader Gough Whitlam. Yet, just six years before, Labor at the 1966 election had suffered a 4.30 per cent two-party preferred (2PP) swing and the loss of nine seats following Labor's lowest primary vote since 1934. Labor's dramatic reversal of fortunes in just six years therefore remains of enormous historical interest. But, given the 1972 election saw a modest 2.5 per cent 2PP swing to Labor, with the party seizing twelve seats from the Coalition and losing four back to the LCP, the 1969–72 triennium offers little insight into Labor's recovery. In that context, this article, via analyses of House of Representatives election results and public opinion poll data, explores the chronology, demography, and geography of Labor's electoral recovery to argue the 1966–69 triennium remains of far greater value when identifying exactly when, among whom, and where Labor began its pathway to power.