Political Parties

This page points to political party sites for the November 2001 federal election and for the October ACT election. It also highlights some of the literature about particular parties.

     major parties

At the federal level the major parties have an online presence:

Liberal Party of Australia (LP)

Australian Labor Party (ALP)

Australian Democrats (AD)

Australian Greens (AG)

National Party (NP)

The Prime Minister's glitzy home page is here. The Leader of the Opposition's underwhelming home page is here.

The ALP's Political BigBrother 'attack site' is here. The Australian Democrats Changepolitics.com site - distinguished by disregard for notions of accessibility or effective navigation - is here.

     studies of the major parties

There are few major overviews of contemporary party organisation and activity. Among recent works we recommend The Paradox of Parties: Australian Political Parties in the 1990s (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 96) edited by Marian Simms.

Overall the ALP's been better served by the chattering classes: it's attracted around three times the number of titles devoted to its opponents and much of the writing's more readable.

There's a loving but not one-sided history in The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party, 1891-1991 (South Melbourne, Oxford Uni Press 91) by Ross McMullin. It's updated in the less dispassionate True believers: the story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin 01) edited by John Faulkner & Stuart Macintyre.

For the pre-Keating years they're usefully supplemented by Brian McKinlay's A Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement 1850-1975 (Melbourne, Drummond 79) or Patrick Weller's The Australian Labor Party and Federal Politics: A Documentary Survey (Carlton, Melbourne Uni Press 76).

Among recent studies are Andrew Scott's Running on Empty: 'Modernizing' the British and Australian Labour Parties (Sydney, Pluto Press 00), Michael Thompson's sea-green incorruptible Labor Without Class: The Gentrification of the ALP (Sydney, Pluto Press 99) and The Machine: Labor Confronts the Future (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 00) edited by John Warhust & Andrew Parkin. Bob Ellis' Goodbye Jerusalem: Night Thoughts of a Labor Outsider (Milsons Point Vintage 97) will appeal to Ellis fans.

For the Liberal Party of Australia Ian Hancock's turgid National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia, 1944-1965 (Carlton, Melbourne Uni Press 00) is an establishment history. We preferred Dean Jaensch's The Liberals (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 94) and A Liberal Nation: the Liberal Party & Australian Politics (Sydney, Hale & Iremonger 82) by Marian Simms.

McKinlay has a counterpart in Graeme Starr's less exhaustive The Liberal Party of Australia: A Documentary History (Melbourne, Drummond 80). The Liberals & the Australian Federation (Sydney, Federation Press 01) edited by John Nethercote colects essays on several aspects of the boys in blue.

Ulrich Ellis's A History of the Australian Country Party (Melbourne, Melbourne Uni Press 63), somewhat indulgent, is a piece for nostalgia buffs by the Country/National Party's leading intellectual. There's been no major work on the Nats since Don Aitkin's The Country Party in New South Wales: A Study of Organization and Survival (Canberra, ANU Press 72). Perspectives on rural resentment are provided in the essays in Country to National: Australian Rural Politics & Beyond (Sydney, Allen & Unwin 85) edited by Brian Costar & Dennis Woodward and in For Better or For Worse: The Federal Coalition (Carlton, Melbourne Uni Press 94) edited by Brian Costar.

For the Democrats see Keeping the Bastards Honest: The Australian Democrats' first twenty years (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 97) edited by John Warhurst.

Shaun Carney's Peter Costello - the New Liberal (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 00) and Tracey Aubin's Peter Costello: a biography (Pymble, HarperCollins 99) are more readable than David Barnett's sleep-inducing John Howard: Prime Minister (Ringwood, Viking 97). For Kim Beazley see Peter Fitzsimons' Kim Beazley, A Biography (Pymble, HarperCollins 98).

     minor parties

Minor parties with a web presence include:

International Socialist Organisation (ISO)

Pauline Hanson's One Nation (1N)

Advance Australia Party (AAP)

Australian Shooters Party (ASP)

Australian Women's Party (AWP)

Christian Democratic Party - Fred Nile Group (CDP)

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CECA)

City Country Alliance (CCA)

Communist Party of Australia (CPA

Democratic Socialist Electoral League (DSEL)

Hemp Victoria (HP)

Hope Party (HP)

Liberal Democratic Party of Australia (LDP)

Natural Law Party (NLP)

Nuclear Disarmament Party of Australia (NDP)

People Power (PP)

Progressive Labour Party - formerly New Labour Party (PLP)

Socialist Equality Party (SEP)

Socialist Unity Party (UP)

     and studies

For minor parties in general see A Plague on both your Houses: Minor Parties in Australia (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 98) by Dean Jaensch & David Scott Mathieson and The Paradox of Parties: Australian Political Parties in the 1990s (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 96) edited by Marian Simms.

Stuart Macintyre's The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality (St Leonards, Allen & Unwin 98) is another piece for nostalgia buffs. Alastair Davidson's The Communist Party of Australia: A Short History (Stanford, Stanford Uni Press 69) and Robin Gollan's Revolutionaries & Reformists: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Australia, 1920-1955 (Canberra, ANU Press 75) have been largely superseded by Macintyre.

For Hanson's poujadist One Nation see The Rise and Fall of Pauline Hanson (St Lucia, Uni of Queensland Press 00) edited by Michael Leach, Geoffrey Stokes & Ian Ward, the more polemical Two Nations: The Causes and Effects of the Rise of the One Nation Party in Australia (Melbourne, Bookman 98) edited by Nadine Davidoff and Off The Rails - The Pauline Hanson Trip (Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin 01) by Margo Kingston.

     and in the ACT

The ACT's notable for single-issue and single-candidate parties (whose support often seems to be in single figures) with a strongly parochial flavour. Sites include

Australian Labor Party (ACT ALP)

Liberal Party of Australia (Canberra Liberals)

Christian Democratic Party (CDP)

ACT Greens (AG)

Among the offline variety are the:

Canberra First Party

Nurses Good Government Party

Liberal Democratic Party

Gungahlin Equality Party

A list of the 98 candidates is here.

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