Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian liberalism'
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1
Asquith, Nicole. "Positive Ageing, Neo-Liberalism and Australian Sociology." Sage, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/3895.
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NoAustralian sociology has wrestled with most of the big issues facing this society; however, when it comes to one of the most significant changes to face Australia in the next 30 years, it has suddenly lost its capacity to engage with the nexus between demography, social processes and political structures. While governments have forged ahead with responsibilization agendas in health, welfare and unemployment, sociology has voiced its concern about the implications for Australia¿s most disadvantaged. Yet, when it comes to population ageing, sociology has been, in large part, silent in the face of neoliberal policies of positive ageing, which have framed the `problem¿ as a deficit that must be managed primarily by individuals and their families. This article maps the field of positive ageing, identifies key social concerns with this policy approach and asks, where is Australian sociology?
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Scott, Guy. "Resisting liberalism : social democracy and the Australian constitution /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe19282.pdf.
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Johnson, Stuart Buchanan School of History UNSW. "The shaping of colonial liberalism: John Fairfax and the Sydney Morning Herald, 1841-1877." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of History, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/24321.
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The goal of this thesis is to examine the editorial position of the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's oldest continually produced newspaper, as a way of examining the character of colonial liberalism. Analysis will proceed by way of close scrutiny of key issues dealt with by the Sydney Morning Herald, including: state-aid to churches; education policy; free trade; land reform; the antitransportation movement; issues surrounding political representation; and the treatment of Chinese workers. Such analysis includes an appraisal of the views of John Fairfax, proprietor from 1841 to his death in 1877, and the influences, particularly religious nonconformity, which shaped his early journalism in Britain. Another key figure in the thesis is John West, editor 1854-1873, and again his editorial stance will be related to the major political and religious movements in Britain and Australia. Part of this re-evaluation of the character of colonial liberalism in the thesis provides a critical study of the existing historiography and calls into question the widely held view that the Sydney Morning Herald was a force for conservatism. In doing so, the thesis questions some of the major assumptions of the existing historiography and, while doing justice to colonial context, attempts to contextualise colonial politics with the broader framework of mid nineteenth-century Western political thought.
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Ivan, Timbs. "The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement : An analysis of the class divide within Australian society appertaining to globalization." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-7970.
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Global interest in using free trade agreements to expand trade, investment, integration and other linkages has expanded dramatically in the last twenty years. Australia is not alone in this development and has concluded Free Trade Agreements (FTA), with a number of countries, with little division or debate, within Australian society, about their merits. However, the announcement by the Australian Government in December 2000 of its intention to pursue an FTA with the United States ignited significant controversy in the Australian community and exposed deep concerns about the phenomenon of globalization and the future of Australian society. The ensuing debate revealed deep-seated divisions within Australian society.
Utlilizing a combination of Weber’s class-based theory and liberal ideologies (economic, welfare and radical), this research intends to analyze public submissions made to the Australian Parliament Senate Select Committee on the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States (US) in an attempt to identify the reasons for the divisions within Australian society concerning the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). It is expected the results will illuminate the challenges facing both governments and societies alike in a globalizing world and provide fruitful insights for policy makers in future trade negotiations.
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James, Nickolas John. "Power-knowledge and critique in Australian legal education : 1987-2003." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2004. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/15910/1/Nickolas_James_Thesis.pdf.
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While the word 'critique' appeared frequently in Australian legal education texts between 1987 and 2003, the meaning and the emphasis accorded critique varied widely. Michel Foucault's ideas about the close relationship between knowledge and power provide a theoretical framework within which this inconsistency of meaning and emphasis can be described, analysed and explained. Rather than monolithic, the discipline of legal education was by 2003 a dynamic nexus of distinct and competing discourses: doctrinalism, vocationalism, corporatism, liberalism, pedagogicalism and radicalism. Each of these six discourses was simultaneously a form of knowledge and an expression of disciplinary power within the law school. As a form of knowledge, each discourse accorded critique a different meaning and a different emphasis as a consequence of a range of historical, social and political contingencies. As an expression of power, each discourse was an attempt to achieve a set of objectives including the universalisation of a particular approach to the teaching of law and the enhancement of the status of a particular role within the law school. Critique, in a variety of forms, was a strategy employed by each discourse in order to achieve these objectives and to dominate and displace competing discourses.
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James, Nickolas John. "Power-Knowledge And Critique In Australian Legal Education : 1987 - 2003." Queensland University of Technology, 2004. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15910/.
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While the word 'critique' appeared frequently in Australian legal education texts between 1987 and 2003, the meaning and the emphasis accorded critique varied widely. Michel Foucault's ideas about the close relationship between knowledge and power provide a theoretical framework within which this inconsistency of meaning and emphasis can be described, analysed and explained. Rather than monolithic, the discipline of legal education was by 2003 a dynamic nexus of distinct and competing discourses: doctrinalism, vocationalism, corporatism, liberalism, pedagogicalism and radicalism. Each of these six discourses was simultaneously a form of knowledge and an expression of disciplinary power within the law school. As a form of knowledge, each discourse accorded critique a different meaning and a different emphasis as a consequence of a range of historical, social and political contingencies. As an expression of power, each discourse was an attempt to achieve a set of objectives including the universalisation of a particular approach to the teaching of law and the enhancement of the status of a particular role within the law school. Critique, in a variety of forms, was a strategy employed by each discourse in order to achieve these objectives and to dominate and displace competing discourses.
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Baines, Coral. "Politics and the family in Australia : liberalism and the oppression of women /." Title page and contents only, 1987. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arb162.pdf.
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Williams, David M. "Financial liberalism and innovation in Australia : the impact on house prices, mortgage markets and consumption." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.543604.
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Harvey, Donna Maree. "Structure and ideology : reworking the labour movement." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2006. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16236/1/Donna_Harvey_Thesis.pdf.
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During the 1990s within Australia, a regulated industrial relations system which had fostered the growth of collective bargaining and trade unionism was dismantled and replaced by a neo-liberal approach to labour law. During this period trade union membership declined dramatically. Although overall union density has dropped, some unions have managed to arrest membership decline. The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union have successfully traversed the neo-liberal environment despite having adopted different processes. Through an analysis of both external and internal contingencies of these two successful but different union types, lessons were drawn as to effective forms of unionism. A comparative analysis of the empirical information suggest the benefits of a participative structure and collective ideology to enact a range of activities including industrial, political, solidarity and service. It is through this process that unions have the best possible means to generate alternative methods of social organisation to protect the rights and wellbeing of wage earners within a neo-liberal political economy.
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Harvey, Donna Maree. "Structure and ideology : reworking the labour movement." Queensland University of Technology, 2006. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16236/.
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During the 1990s within Australia, a regulated industrial relations system which had fostered the growth of collective bargaining and trade unionism was dismantled and replaced by a neo-liberal approach to labour law. During this period trade union membership declined dramatically. Although overall union density has dropped, some unions have managed to arrest membership decline. The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia and the National Tertiary Education Industry Union have successfully traversed the neo-liberal environment despite having adopted different processes. Through an analysis of both external and internal contingencies of these two successful but different union types, lessons were drawn as to effective forms of unionism. A comparative analysis of the empirical information suggest the benefits of a participative structure and collective ideology to enact a range of activities including industrial, political, solidarity and service. It is through this process that unions have the best possible means to generate alternative methods of social organisation to protect the rights and wellbeing of wage earners within a neo-liberal political economy.
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Lane, Jonathon. "Anchorage in Aboriginal affairs A.P. Elkin on religious continuity and civic obligations /." Connect to full text, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/3691.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008.Title from title screen (viewed November, 11, 2008) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of History, University of Sydney. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references.
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Heck, Deborah Anne, and n/a. "Discovering Discourses of Citizenship Education: In the Environment Related Sections of Australia's 'Discovering Democracy School Materials' Project." Griffith University. Australian School of Environmental Studies, 2003. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20030905.115718.
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This study explores the impact of neoliberal education policies on the discourses of citizenship and citizenship education in an Australian citizenship education project entitled 'Discovering Democracy School Materials.' This project is the largest national curriculum development project in Australia and represents the official discourses of citizenship in Australia. The materials were developed in response to concern about the poor understanding of civics and citizenship in Australia and the lack of quality citizenship education materials and background information for teachers. The scope of the study was managed by focusing on a corpus of twelve text groups, selected from the materials because they related to the environment - an area of citizenship of interest to young people and which allows consideration of recent trends in the practice of citizenship. An approach to critical discourse analysis recommended by Fairclough (1992) was used. This involved a three-step process of identifying and analysing: (i) the discourse evident in the words in the text, (ii) the processes of production, dissemination and consumption of the texts, and (iii) the contextual social and cultural practices that influenced the development of the text. There were six steps in the discourse analysis. The first involved identifying the corpus related to the environment. The second was to identify and describe the discourses of citizenship and citizenship education evident in the text. The third involved interviewing key participants in the processes of text production, dissemination and consumption to ascertain their perceptions of the discourses evident in the texts. The fourth was an analysis of these interviews to interpret the discourses participants acknowledged as being within the text and the discursive practices that operated to establish those discourses. The sixth was an explanation of the impact of neoliberalism on the development of the materials. The results indicate that two discourses of citizenship and citizenship education were dominant within the materials - Legal Status and Public Practice. The same two discourses were evident in the interviews with key participants in the processes of text production, dissemination and consumption. In all cases, the materials lacked any evidence of the citizenship or citizenship education discourses of Democratic Identity, World Citizenship and Democratic Participation, although Democratic Identity was a minor aspect of one of the twelve text groups. A range of discursive practices related to neoliberalism was identified as influential on this pattern of discourses. Perceptions of teacher deficiency were influential in the process of text production as was the power of key individuals and groups such as the national education minister and his department, a government-appointed Civics Education Group, the Curriculum Corporation and, to a much lesser extent, teacher professional associations. Two discursive practices were influenced in text dissemination: the materials were provided free of charge to all schools and extensive professional development was provided. These provided significant inducements to teachers to use the materials. Discursive practices operating in the process of text consumption provided added inducement by showing teachers how to select key components of the materials for local use. However, this concern for local context was undermined by the extreme strength of the presentation of what counts as legitimate citizenship and the lack of opportunity for alternative or resistant readings of the texts. Three aspects of neoliberalism were seen as especially influential in these discursive practices - the strong focus on the development of legitimate knowledge, marketisation, and an emphasis on the need for evaluation. The study concludes with an examination of the implications of the findings to identify recommendations for teachers, teacher educators, materials developers and opportunities for further research.
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Davies, Evan. "Mandatory detention for asylum seekers in Australia : an evaluation of liberal criticism." University of Western Australia. Political Science and International Relations Discipline Group, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0202.
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This thesis evaluates the policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers maintained by successive Australian governments against several core liberal principles. These principles are derived from various accounts of liberal political thought and the major themes and criticisms inherent in the public debate over the policy. The justifications of the policy given by the Australian government and the criticisms enunciated by scholars, refugee advocates and non-government organisations with respect to the policy strongly correspond with the core liberal principles of fairness, protecting the rights of the individual, accountability and proportionality. The claims of the critics converge on a central point of contention: that the mandatory detention of asylum seekers violates core liberal principles. To ascertain the extent to which the claims of the critics can be supported, the thesis selectively draws on liberal political theory to provide a framework for the analysis of the policy against these liberal principles, a basis for inquiry largely neglected by contributors to the literature. This thesis argues that, on balance, the mandatory detention policy employed by successive Australian governments violates core liberal principles. The claims of the critics are weakened, but by no means discredited, by the importance of the government's maintenance of strong border control. In the main, however, criticisms made by opponents of the policy can be supported. This thesis contributes to the substantial body of literature on the mandatory detention policy by shedding light on how liberal principles may be applicable to the mandatory detention policy. Further, it aims to contribute to an enriched understanding of the Australian government's competence to detain asylum seekers.
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Slagter, Marcelle. "Poverty in perception : a study of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2009. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/32090/1/Marcelle_Slagter_Thesis.pdf.
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Australia and New Zealand, as English-speaking nations with dominant white populations, present an ethnic anomaly not only in South East Asia, but also in the Southern Hemisphere. Colonised by predominantly workingclass British immigrants from the late eighteenth century, an ethnic and cultural connection grew between these two countries even though their indigenous populations and ecological environments were otherwise very different. Building a new life in Australia and New Zealand, the colonists shared similar historic perceptions of poverty – perceptions from their homelands that they did not want to see replicated in their new adopted countries. Dreams of a better life shaped their aspirations, self-identity and nationalistic outlook. By the twentieth century, national independence and self-government had replaced British colonial rule. The inveterate occurrence of poverty in Australia and New Zealand had created new local perspectives and different perceptions of, and about, poverty. This study analyses what relationship existed between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand and their perceptions of poverty. Using the existential phenomenological theory and methodology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the study adds to the body of knowledge about poverty in Australia and New Zealand by revealing the structure and origin of the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers.
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Gathercole, Michael University of Ballarat. "Progress in Australia over the 20th century : the ups, downs and reversals that occurred in Australian human wellbeing over the 20th century." 2005. http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/12756.
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"This study is an investigation of progress in Australia over the 20th century. Progress is defined here as the enhancement of human wellbeing. For the purposes of this study, human wellbeing will be characterised by five main components: knowledge, environment, economy, individual and social. Enhancement refers to positive directional change in terms of these components. The study firstly develops a framework to conceptualise progress. It then collects and uses statistical data in a descriptive study of what happened in Australia, over those 100 years, in terms of progress in general and in terms of its components. The study also develops a typology of relationships for models of progress, which best explain the Australian data. This study finally explores some of the relationships between the elements that make up the components of progress and looks at ways to best explain what has happened..." --p.1.Doctor of Philosophy
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Gathercole, Michael. "Progress in Australia over the 20th century : the ups, downs and reversals that occurred in Australian human wellbeing over the 20th century." 2005. http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/14593.
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"This study is an investigation of progress in Australia over the 20th century. Progress is defined here as the enhancement of human wellbeing. For the purposes of this study, human wellbeing will be characterised by five main components: knowledge, environment, economy, individual and social. Enhancement refers to positive directional change in terms of these components. The study firstly develops a framework to conceptualise progress. It then collects and uses statistical data in a descriptive study of what happened in Australia, over those 100 years, in terms of progress in general and in terms of its components. The study also develops a typology of relationships for models of progress, which best explain the Australian data. This study finally explores some of the relationships between the elements that make up the components of progress and looks at ways to best explain what has happened..." --p.1.Doctor of Philosophy
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Kilmister, Michael. "Antipodean Imperialist: Sir John Latham, a political biography, 1902 to 1934." Thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1403412.
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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This dissertation examines Sir John Latham’s imperial ideology from the turn of the twentieth century, and traces how it shaped his political outlook and actions in the course of his parliamentary career, 1922-1934. Latham emerged as a very important political figure at a pivotal period for Australia and the British Empire. In response to emergent national sentiment in Australia and other settler societies before the First World War and after, British policymakers and intellectuals developed an overarching ideology that recast the British Empire as an interdependent yet loosely organised Commonwealth. Latham worked to translate and cement this liberal imperial worldview for Australian politics and diplomacy, lending it a conservative inflection in the process. Drawing on overlooked archival material, this thesis demonstrates that he developed and tested his antipodean pro-British imperialism in the exclusive meeting places of like-minded conservatives and applied its core tenets consistently in the making of national and imperial policy. Even though the British Empire rarely demonstrated the cohesion Latham desired, he remained committed to its causes. This dissertation retrieves Latham from a nationalist narrative, revealing that he pursued national interests within a British imperial framework. By re-establishing the all-encompassing importance of the British Empire to his political behaviour, I argue pro-British imperialism permeated the positions Latham took on domestic politics and international issues, notably the Australian Eastern Mission (1934). This thesis also contextualises and examines in detail, for the first time, Latham’s contribution to the canon of interwar imperial thought, using his book, Australia and the British Commonwealth (1929). Overshadowed by the prime ministers under whom he served, this thesis demonstrates that Latham was in many important respects the driving force behind Australia’s interwar imperial orientation.
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Lovell, Melissa Ellen. "Liberalism, settler colonialism, and the Northern Territory intervention." Phd thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/110388.
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In June 2007 the Australian government assumed greater authority over the government of remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Intervention (NTI), also known as the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), was framed as a response to the Little Children Are Sacred report which documented high levels of child abuse and neglect in Aboriginal communities, and which called on the Northern Territory and Australian governments to make the protection of children a priority. The Northern Territory Intervention was controversial because many of the rights, liberties, and processes typically understood as essential elements of liberal government were waived in favour of coercive, disciplinary, and authoritarian strategies of government. In this dissertation I analyse the content of parliamentary debates, political speeches and government reports to develop an understanding of the discursive and rhetorical context in which these interventionist and authoritarian strategies came to be seen as essential to the protection of Aboriginal children's safety and wellbeing. I draw on two analytical perspectives - settler colonialism and liberal governmentality - to argue that both colonial and neoliberal politics contributed to a view of Aboriginal people as dysfunctional and incapable of self-discipline and self-government. I argue that this perception of Aboriginal people played an important role in the justification of authoritarian and coercive policies in remote Aboriginal communities. Whereas conventional perspectives on liberal politics focus on the liberal commitment to securing liberty and human dignity, my analysis of the NTI illustrates the intimate relationship between liberal and authoritarian politics. Previous scholarship on the NTI describes the policy as a return to a colonial form of politics and understand the normalising and authoritarian aspects of the Intervention as the product of an ideological shift toward neoliberal forms of government. From this perspective, colonial and neoliberal forms of politics compromise the ability of a liberal democratic society to secure the liberty, rights and wellbeing of its Aboriginal citizens. Using my analysis of the NTI, I proffer an alternative argument about the significance of the NTI for our understanding of liberal and colonial politics. First, I argue that the NTI demonstrates the tendency of liberal government to use authoritarian and coercive strategies to govern those who are deemed incapable of self-government and the exercise of liberal economic freedoms. This concept of authoritarian liberal government is found in the scholarship on liberal governmentality and contradicts the purely emancipatory view of liberal politics. Second, I argue that the NTI case study enables an examination of the process by which this liberal tendency to authoritarian government can be reinforced in the settler colonial context. An understanding of this process is important because it demonstrates some of the challenges facing attempts to decolonise settler colonial societies.
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Collard, Jacques R. "Class struggle "from above" "down under" : the politics of antipodean syndical satisfactions." Phd thesis, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/144347.
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Griffiths, Michael. "Unsettling Artifacts: Biopolitics, Cultural Memory, and the Public Sphere in a (Post)Settler Colony." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/71283.
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My dissertation employed intellectual historian Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics—which can be most broadly parsed as the political organization of life—to examine the way the lives of Aboriginal people were regulated and surveilled in relation to settler European norms. The study is a focused investigation into a topic with global ramifications: the governance of race and sexuality and the effect of such governance on the production of apparently inclusive cultural productions within the public spheres. I argue that the way in which subaltern peoples have been governed in the past and the way their cultures have been appropriated continue to be in the present is not extraneous to but rather formative of what is often misleadingly called “the” public sphere of dominant societies.
In the second part, I analyze the legacies of this biopolitical moment and emphasize, particularly, the cultural politics of affect and trauma in relation to this (not quite) past.
Authors addressed include: Xavier Herbert, P. R. Stephensen, Rex Ingamells, Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, and others. I also examine Australian Aboriginal policy texts througout the twentieth century up to the "Bringing Them Home" Report (1997).
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Pearce, Amanda. "Dissonant discourses : othered voices from Australia's workworld, 1994-2002." Thesis, 2004. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/16074/.
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This thesis arose from a series of questions about a group of retrenched non-English speaking background (NESB) workers whom 1 interviewed in 1994-95 and again in 2002. NESB workers lost jobs in large numbers in the 1990-92
recession, but in the recovery period and as employment improved over the 1990s, the employment figures for particular groups remained comparatively poor. Yet
there was little public and policy debate about the fate of these people as a group. The reason, I argue, lies in a discursive transformation that has occurred since the
1980s through the formation and implementation of policy in the areas of work; education and training; English language and literacy, race and ethnicity; and the role of the state. Through dominant .discourses that shape what it is possible to say, do and even think, NESB workers as a group have been constructed as 'other' and thereby marginalised and problematised. Through this process their exclusion from social citizenship - entitlements to employment, education and welfare - has been normalised.
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Webster, Adrian. "Control in a neo-liberal state : three case studies of performance measurement in contemporary government and regulation." Phd thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150918.
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Mitchell, Euan Wallace. "Making noises: contextualising the politics of Rorty’s neopragmatism to assess its sustainability." Thesis, 2005. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/1462/.
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This creative thesis is written in two parts: Volume 1 is a novel and Volume 2 is the accompanying exegesis which explains the process of contextualising a school of philosophy’s politics within the novel. These volumes combine to build a new window onto contemporary theoretical debate regarding the sustainability of so-called liberal democracy. Volume 1, the novel, provides a fictionalised account of federal government involvement with the popular music industry in Australia during the 1990s. The story is told from the point of view of a newcomer to a music industry organisation funded by the federal government called the ‘Oz Rock Foundation’. This organisation is run by a former federal politician who maintains close links with his political colleagues still in government. When the newcomer discovers a young Aboriginal prisoner with exceptional musical talents, the former politician seizes this opportunity to help launch the Oz Rock Foundation in the ‘Year of the Indigenous Person’. This venture, however, has unexpected consequences which emerge as the story develops. Volume 2, the exegesis, employs a narrative framework to explain the process by which an analysis of philosopher Richard Rorty’s version of neopragmatism fed into the creation of the novel. Political issues raised by neopragmatism are thematically linked to fictional contexts informed by the history of government experimentation with the Australian music industry. The process is guided by questions designed to assess whether a neopragmatic version of liberal democracy is sustainable in this form. The novel is further shaped by its attempt to extend a particular tradition, within the genre of the political novel, that contextualises themes related to ‘natural rights’ as the foundation of liberal democracy. The exegesis, in its discussion of issues raised by the completed novel, then draws on existing research into the sustainability of democracy in order to synthesise an overall perspective. NOTE: Due to copyright arrangements with the publisher of Making Noises, the text of the novel (Volume 1) is not available as part of the digital version of this thesis. The novel was published in November 2006 by OverDog Press (Melbourne, Australia). The ISBN is: 9780975797921