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Someone asked me a bit ago to write a brief introduction to Australian politics to allow overseas readers to have the faintest clue what is going on. So, here we go...
A bit of history
Australia was originally inhabited by Aborigines, who lived in a tribal culture was anywhere up to 40000 years before white settlement. A few voyages of exploration reached the continent before official British settlement in Sydney in 1788. Australia was divided into various colonies which eventually became roughly equivalent to today's states.
In 1901, Australian became an independent nation. It is organised as a federation like the USA or Germany - there are two levels of government in our constitution - federal (national) and state. There are six states as well as two internal territories (organised along the lines of the District of Columbia).
The system
The states do administration of a lot of government functions, like primary and high schools, hospitals, police, water, roads, public transport and so on. In fact, they handle anything not specifically assigned to the Federal government in the constitution. The federal government handles things like trade, customs, the national healthcare system (called Medicare, although it's far more inclusive that America's Medicare, covering all Australians), universities, foreign affairs, defence, media and so on.
Each state organises its own local government system consisting of local (elected) councils which organise things like rubbish collection, minor roads, parks, libraries and so on. Councils are also in charge of overseeing building in their areas and ensuring that development does not overly harm the area.
I'm not going to go into state politics because each state has a different system. The Head of State of Australia is the Queen (or King) of the United Kingdom - rather like Canada - represented by the Governor-General. The Governor-General signs bills into law on behalf of the Queen, but he does not wield real executive power like the US President. He is mainly a figurehead.
At the federal level, there are as in America and Britain three arms of government - executive, legislative and judicial. The judicial is a normal system of courts based on a common law system.
The legislature is the Australian parliament, based in the capital Canberra. It has two houses, the House of Representatives (Green) and the Senate (Red). As in America, the House has districts (called electorates or seats) based on population and represented by one member. They are elected to three-year terms. Each state has 12 Senators (internal territories have two) elected to six-year terms, with half the Senate usually elected at each election.
The government is formed by whichever party can gain a majority in the House of Representatives - currently 76 out of 150 seats. The leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister - who holds the real power in the government. The PM appoints his ministers from his party's MPs and Senators.
The ministers and Prime Minister form the Cabinet, which holds executive power. This is the most obvious distinction between the US and Australian systems - executive power is held by people who are also in the legislative branch.
As in most parliamentary democracies, bills must pass both houses of parliament to become law. Usually, the government will not have a majority in the Senate and will have to negotiate with either the Opposition or the minor parties (like the Greens, the Democrats or Family First) to get their bills through. Currently, however, the government has a razor-thin majority in the Senate.
The parties
The biggest parties in Australia are the Liberal Party (which is not liberal as would be seen in America - it is best described as economically liberal but socially conservative) and the Australian Labor Party, or ALP. From the 1940s or so they have been the only parties to form government, the Liberals in coalition with the National party, which represented a mainly country/bush constituency.
The Liberals are currently in government under Prime Minister John Howard, with the ALP in Opposition under Kim Beazley. There is an election due in late 2007, which contrary to popular belief either party could win.
The most important minor parties are the Australian Greens (leftist socially and economically), the Democrats (centrist, traditionally interested in making sure the Senate fulfils its oversight role - they are currently in decline) and Family First (an emerging party with links to the religious right, which has had a swing vote on a number of important issues).
The issues
The perennial issues in Australian federal politics are education and health. The Liberals tend to take a more user-pays approach - in health they have been encouraging private health insurance to partially replace the governmental Medicare scheme, in (higher) education they have been encouraging students to pay a greater proportion of university fees. Labor tends to believe that it is part of government's role to fund these sectors to ensure equal access for all.
In the last half-decade or so, immigration has become an issue, no more so than in 2001 when John Howard's tough line on asylum seekers won him re-election. The centrepiece of his policy was mandatory detention of refugees arriving on boats while their claims were assessed - this was criticised because of the large amounts of time refugees would spend in detention centres like Woomera (in the middle of the desert) while being assessed. Asylum seekers have been arriving less lately, and the issue has fallen off the political radar somewhat.
In the 2004 campaign, John Howard used a scare campaign about interest rates to cement his chances - arguing that under Labor's previous government (1983-96) interest rates had been high, and that this would happen under a new Labor government. His party's slogan for that election was 'Keeping Interest Rates Low'. As interest rates have risen 4 times since that election, it is unlikely that he will rely on it as a centrepiece of his next campaign - Labor has just released billboards attacking Howard for the rate rises, playing on a popular perception of Howard as untrustworthy.
Both parties take a similar line on trade, supporting free trade but tending to keep tariffs if it will protect constituencies of Australian workers. They will kick up a fuss, however, if the EU (for instance) raises tariffs on Australian products like sugar.
Iraq is something of an issue. The Liberals joined the invasion in 2003, and there is a small contingent of Australian troops in Iraq (and in Afghanistan). The Liberals have mainly adopted a 'stay-the-course' policy, while Labor argues for a pullout (possibly not an immediate one, but certainly a plan).
If anyone can think of any other major issues - I've probably forgotten something crucial - please post them below.
