SGI 2022 | Australia | Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Recent Governments Experts

SGI experts on Australia

Zim Nwokora

Zim Nwokora is an Associate Professor in Politics and Policy Studies at Deakin University where he currently serves as Course Director of the Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). He is a comparative political scientist with expertise on constitutions, political parties and political finance. Recent projects include a study of how constitutions can be designed to deal with social change over time, the development of a framework to evaluate political finance reforms, and research on parliamentary ethics and culture. His work has been published in leading journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Governance, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly and Political Studies. He holds BA, MPhil and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford.

Roger Wilkins

Roger Wilkins is a principal research fellow with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. His research activity and publications have primarily focused on the nature, causes and consequences of earnings outcomes and labor force status outcomes, and the determinants and dynamics of household income and individual welfare reliance.

Patrick Köllner (Coordinator)

Patrick Köllner has been director of the Institute of Asian Studies, German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) since 2011. He is also a professor of political science at the University of Hamburg. His research focuses on political regimes and organizations in East Asia and in comparative perspective. Between 2007 and 2013 he co-edited the yearbook Korea: Politics, Economy and Society. Köllner holds a doctorate in political science from the Humboldt University of Berlin and a venia legendi in political science from the University of Trier.

Australia brings significant strengths to the challenge of sustainable governance. Many of these strengths derive from its political system, which has a deep grounding in democratic processes, as reflected by invariably free and fair elections and a robust commitment to the rule of law. Australia’s political parties, operating in a system of compulsory voting, have been successful in bringing the issues, concerns and problems in society into the political realm for public debate and action. A lively civil society and social movement sector has been responsible for rousing public attention on critical issues such as the environment, Indigenous affairs and gender inequality.

These political foundations provide the conditions for an active democracy in which citizens generally have opportunities to participate, and the institutions of government are responsive (to a significant extent) to the changing requirements of good governance across a wide range of sectors. The capacity of governments is greatly enhanced by an effective bureaucracy that takes seriously its commitment to the public good and displays zero toleration of corruption. Australian governments and bureaucracies regularly show their capacity to coordinate large, complex projects, including those that have transformative effects. Furthermore, there are well-established formal and informal processes through which expertise in universities and civil society can be tapped and feed into the policymaking and implementation processes. Governments can be held to account by legislatures, though, in practice, the bigger constraints on what government leaders feel able to do comes from their perceptions of the electorate’s priorities and fears and the demands from within the ranks of their political party. There are also other important checks on the exercise of power in Australia, including independent audit and oversight mechanisms and freedom of information legislation.

The election of the center-left Labor Party to government in May 2022 represented a significant turning point after nine years of center-right Liberal-National Coalition government. Environmental sustainability, and especially the commitment to reducing carbon emissions, immediately became high priorities at the national level. Policy actions have followed, although it is not clear they are sufficient to deliver on the promised reductions. Access to health, education and housing by disadvantaged members of the community has also been given heightened priority, although materially impactful policies have to date been somewhat limited. This is, however, unsurprising in the context of an overheating economy with excessive demand-driven inflation, which has constrained the implementation of fiscally stimulatory policies. Commitments to improve the availability of government data to researchers and to more rigorously evaluate policies are further positive developments under the Labor government.

More broadly, and over the longer term, the structures and operations of the Australian system of governance have generated significant economic dynamism, as shown by the consistently high rates of economic growth that the country has been able to maintain for decades (albeit somewhat lower in the most recent decade). However, despite these successes with the Australian model of governance, it continues to struggle with some serious challenges. These include the difficulties that the country has had in advancing the decarbonization of its energy production and the economic activity that it supports. There remain historic injustices and inequalities in relation to the Indigenous community that remain unresolved. A referendum seeking to create an Indigenous “voice” in parliament in September 2023 was unsuccessful, although it is in any case unclear it would have delivered tangible progress for Indigenous Australians. Gender and ethnic diversity inequalities highlight structural problems in the political system. Additionally, the treatment of refugees and humanitarian entrants is inconsistent with the country’s high democratic aspirations.