Australian Journal of Politics and History最新文献

The politics of Australia during First World War have been analysed in depth by many scholars, but little attention has been paid to the politics of the soldiers of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Though often assumed to have been not interested in politics, this article demonstrates that they engaged in politics at multiple levels. They were concerned about decision making and power relationships within the AIF, in international circles and within the British empire. They were also active on a range of domestic political issues, particularly around volunteering and conscription, but also with other federal, state, and local issues. They engaged in the politics of shaping the “digger” legacy. Pre-war ideologies, particularly on class issues and religion, were influential in shaping soldier political engagement and responses. Far from being political innocents, the Anzacs showed themselves to be interested and active in a range of political arenas.

The first half of 2024 in South Australia marked the midway point in the current State election cycle. The Malinauskas government had been elected in March 2022, defeating the Liberal government headed by Premier Steven Marshall. Under the State's 4-year fixed-term electoral provisions, the next election will be held in March 2026.

In just two years, Peter Malinauskas has become the longest-serving current Australian Premier. While that is mainly a reflection on an extraordinary turnover in leadership elsewhere, it is also the case that the Malinauskas regime seems firmly entrenched in office. Events during the period under review reinforced an impression of a government enjoying solid electoral support while pursuing an ambitious policy agenda, alongside an Opposition struggling to define itself.

The March by-election in the inner metropolitan seat of Dunstan, triggered by the resignation of former Premier Marshall from Parliament, epitomised this political situation. For 116 years, no South Australian governing party had won an Opposition seat in a by-election. This was what Labor managed to achieve.

The seat of Dunstan had emerged from the 2022 election as the State's most marginal seat, with Marshall re-elected as the local member with just an 0.5% margin. The expectation was that the Liberals would retain the seat in the by-election. The demographics of the inner-eastern-suburbs seat seem to favour the Liberals, and they could also highlight the difficulty that the government was experiencing in delivering its most prominent 2022 election undertaking: the reduction of ambulance ramping outside of, and patient congestion within, public hospitals.

The by-election campaign was quite brutal in some respects. Labor disclosed that the Liberal candidate had, four years earlier, lodged an expression of interest for a position in the office of Labor's then Shadow Attorney-General Kyam Maher. Brushing aside criticism of the disclosure as a lamentable breach of an applicant's privacy, Labor claimed instead that it revealed her disdain for the Liberal government at that time. The major parties traded accusations that their respective candidates carried inappropriate associations arising from past family business matters.

The result was close but nonetheless swung the seat to Labor, increasing its numbers in the 47-member House of Assembly to 28. The Labor/Liberal two-party-preferred vote split ended up as 50.8/49.2, a swing of 1.4 percentage points from the March 2022 outcome. Both major parties lost ground (each by about 3%) in terms of first-preference votes, with the Greens picking up a 5.5% positive swing.

Premier Malinauskas was able to claim that the Dunstan result showed voters supported the government's “broad agenda to take the state forward” and were not focused on “one singular issue”—a clear allusion to the hospital ramping issue (Advertiser, 28 March 2024).

Geoff Brock, an Independent MP w