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Civil coalitions led the country during the
1950s and 1960s. In the early 1970s, the Social
Democratic Labor took over. Thereafter, the government
continued to switch between the blocks. A good economic
development enabled the bourgeois coalition government
under Liberal leader John Howard to win four consecutive
elections from 1996 until 2007. However, in the election
that year Labor, with its new party leader Kevin Rudd,
won. One of Rudd's first steps was to sign the Kyoto
Agreement and to officially apologize to Aborigines for
past injustices.
From 1949 to 1972, the country was ruled by bourgeois
coalitions and the economy grew steadily. In 1972, the
government was taken over by Labor
under Gough Whitlam. The change of power was partly due
to the bourgeois government's support for the US in the
Vietnam War. As in many other Western countries, not
least TV images from the fighting led to a strong
opinion against the war. Contributing also caused more
than 500 Australian soldiers to die in Vietnam.
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ABBREVIATIONFINDER:
List of most commonly used acronyms containing Australia. Also includes historical, economical and political aspects of the country.
A number of reforms were implemented: the social
protection network was strengthened, a public health
care system was introduced and the Aborigines were
granted certain land rights. The Papua New Guinea colony
gained its independence and Australia's contacts were
directed to Asia.
However, the economy did not pass all the reforms;
government spending doubled and the government budget
deficit rose. In 1974 Parliament rejected Whitlam's
draft budget and the Governor-General made the unique
decision to dismiss the Prime Minister. The coalition
between liberals and the National Party that took office
also won subsequent elections. However, dissatisfaction
with economic policy led Labor to a 1983 victory over
the dynamic former trade unionist Bob Hawke.
Broad consensus solutions with business and trade
unions became Hawke's economic recipe. In the almost
liberal spirit, tax cuts, budgetary tightening,
liberalization of the financial market, wage
restrictions and reduced protectionism were taken to
create growth. Financial crises and dissatisfaction, not
least within their own party, followed, but politics
also met with understanding among voters. The divided
and scandalous opposition found it difficult to attack
Hawke's policy from the right.
 Civil coalition gains power
Before the 1996 parliamentary elections, the new
Prime Minister Paul Keating sought to make the state of
affairs a key issue: Labor wanted to make Australia a
republic in 2001, on the centenary of the formation of
the federal state. But the monarchy-friendly opposition
managed to carry over the debate on the economy. The
Labor government, which failed to deliver on promised
tax cuts and forced budget cuts, ended up on the
defensive when the bourgeois opposition promised tax
breaks for families with children. The 1996 election was
a serious loss for Labor. The Liberals
gained their own majority in the House of
Representatives, but still formed a coalition government
with the National Party.
From 1996-2007, the country was ruled by a bourgeois
coalition between the Liberal Party and the National
Party with the Liberal Party leader, John Howard, as
prime minister.
The government's economic policy was successful, but
that did not mean that the criticism did not occur. Cuts
in public spending sparked protests from the left and in
the countryside during the first years of government.
The introduction of a new tax and accounting system in
2000 irritated the government's support troops among
small businesses. In the early 1990s, the government was
more generous with spending. However, growth was so good
that there was still surplus in the Treasury.
During the first half of the 1990s, the rights of
Aborigines had been strengthened, but the Howard
government lowered its contributions to the indigenous
population and allowed the aborigines to limit the land
rights extended by the courts. The contributions to
Aborigines, but especially the increasing immigration
from Asia, were heavily criticized by populist
politicians such as Pauline Hanson whose party,
One Nation, saw success in the 1998 elections.
Refugee policy is tightened
Howard also took a tough stance towards refugees. In
2001, the federal parliament passed stricter refugee
laws to keep boat refugees away and refugees who came to
the country illegally by boat were either returned to
Indonesia or received by Nauru and Papua New Guinea in
exchange for aid. The tougher stance, coupled with
unrest after the terrorist attacks against the United
States in 2001, is believed to have contributed to the
government winning elections that year.
A backlash for Howard came in February 2003 when he
lost a vote of no confidence in the Senate because of
the government's decision to support US plans for war in
Iraq. However, it had no direct political consequences.
In the 2004 election, which was dominated by economic
issues, Howard won a grand victory and succeeded for the
first time in obtaining a majority in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate. In the spring of 2005,
the Government presented major reductions in income tax.
Thanks to increased tax revenues in general, including
increased exports of coal and iron ore to China, the
budget for 2005/2006 was still at a plus. In 2006,
diplomat Kevin Rudd was named new Labor leader.
Fighting terrorism was an important issue for the
Howard government. The terrorist attacks on the
Indonesian island of Bali in October 2002, when 88
Australians were killed, shocked the nation and the fear
grew that Australia would also be attacked by
terrorists. A little over six months later, the Senate
approved a new anti-terrorism law, which gave the
security police the right to detain people for a week
without prosecution. Three years later, the legislation
was further tightened. It was now allowed to keep
suspected terrorists in custody without prosecution for
up to 14 days and the police were given the right to use
electronic surveillance and in some situations "shoot to
kill". It would also take longer to become an Australian
citizen.
After a public investigation revealed that alcoholism
and a lack of education in the Northern Territory led to
a large number of child sexual abuse, it was decided
that the government would take over the administration
in some 60 aboriginal areas. Some Aboriginal
organizations claimed that the measures were racist and
more authoritarian than necessary, while others welcomed
them. The government was criticized for not consulting
the Aboriginal people before taking the measures.
Leading politicians at the state level accused Prime
Minister Howard of trying to win points ahead of the
upcoming parliamentary elections. Many in Labor felt
that more should be done to solve the problems in the
longer term.
Parliamentary elections 2007
In October 2007, Howard announced parliamentary
elections until November. He hoped that the good economy
would give the government votes, but Labor's opinion
polls showed ten percent, including through promises to
sign the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gases and
withdraw Australia's troops from Iraq as well as new
investment in education and care.
In the November 2007 parliamentary elections, Labor
won a major vote with 53 percent of the vote. Kevin Rudd
was named prime minister. Labor also dominated at the
state level.
The Liberal Party and the National Party, after the
2007 election loss, suffered something of a crisis and
their leaders resigned.
In Rudd's government, Julia Gillard became the first
woman in the post of Deputy Prime Minister. Rudd's first
action as prime minister was to sign the Kyoto Protocol,
something his representative John Howard stubbornly
refused.
In a ceremony in Parliament in February 2008, Prime
Minister Rudd apologized to all Aborigines for the
abuses committed against them for two centuries (see
Population and Languages). Rudd also had the former
government's cancellation of asylum seekers detained on
remote South Pacific islands pending notification if
they were allowed to stay in Australia.
The question of whether the country was to become a
republic was raised again, but according to Rudd, this
was not a high priority, despite the promise of a
referendum on the monarchy in the electoral movement.
Discussions about climate policy
In 2009, Rudd's government encountered major problems
when it sought to enforce a law on a greenhouse gas
emissions trading system. The intention was to get the
law passed in the Senate with the help of the Liberal
Party. Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull promised the
party would support the government. But protests came
from party members who did not consider it
scientifically proven that climate change was caused by
greenhouse gas emissions and also saw financial risks
with the proposal. The brawl ended with Turnbull being
forced to resign as party chairman after losing a vote
against Tony Abbott. As the new leader of the Liberal
Party, Abbott said he intended to stop the government's
emissions trading proposals. Shortly thereafter, when
the Senate raised the issue for a vote, a majority voted
against the proposal.
All trips around the emissions trading caused the
Labor government to collapse in opinion polls. The
dissatisfaction was fueled by another controversial
government proposal to introduce a so-called super tax
for the country's mining industry, where profits above a
certain level would be taxed extra hard. At the
beginning of the summer, confidence in Labor was so low
that Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard openly
challenged Rudd for the post of party chairman and thus
head of government. Rudd found it too good not to stand
in the vote and all the party's MPs cast their vote on
Gillard.
Gillard vowed to reinstate voters' confidence in
Labor ahead of the parliamentary elections later in
2010. She also managed to reach a compromise with the
mining companies on the proposed super tax: a tax rate
of 30 percent instead of the 40 percent of the original
proposal.
The 2010 election
In July 2010, Prime Minister Gillard announced
elections for August 21. The most important issues were
immigration, the economy including the taxation of the
mining sector, climate change and parental leave. Both
Gillard and the new opposition leader Abbott advocated
reduced immigration. Both parties also wanted to tighten
up the asylum policy and deal with the problem of boat
refugees who entered the country illegally.
The election was a disappointment for Labor, who did
not get his own majority in the House of
Representatives. But it also did not get the opposition
coalition between the Liberals and the National Party:
Labor was given 72 seats in the House of
Representatives, while the Opposition Alliance took home
73 seats. The Greens were given a mandate and four
independent candidates were voted into the lower
chamber. After Labor managed to secure the support of
the Greens and three independent candidates, it was
clear that Gillard could continue as prime minister. An
important part of the settlement was Gillard's pledge to
invest in rural areas. Labor thus formed a minority
government. Gillard appointed Kevin Rudd as Foreign
Minister in the new government.
Unusually heavy and sustained rainfall in January
2011 caused the worst flooding in Queensland in the
North East in several decades. The water masses covered
at most a surface of the total size of Germany and
France.
In 2011, large demonstrations were held in the
country against the government's plans to introduce a
tax on carbon dioxide emissions in 2012. The tax was
part of the settlement following the election concluded
with the Greens. The protesters claimed that the tax
would damage the country's economy by increasing
household costs and causing unemployment, and they
received support from the Conservative opposition.
However, the carbon dioxide tax was voted through in
Parliament by a barely margin in the fall of 2011, which
meant that the country's 500 largest emission booths
would be forced to pay tax.
Refugee camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea
The issue of asylum and refugee policy gained
momentum in connection with reports of refugees who
drowned when they tried to get to Australia with the
help of human traffickers. In August 2012, Parliament
approved a new law to re-open Australian camps in Nauru
and Papua New Guinea for asylum seekers. It was also
decided that Australia would receive 45 percent more
refugees than before.
After a long period of power struggles within Labor,
Gillard was deposed as party leader in June 2013 through
an internal vote on the chair. She lost to Rudd with the
numbers 45 to 57. Gillard also left the Prime Minister's
post and Rudd was installed as head of government. A
couple of months later, Rudd announced elections until
September 7.
In their election campaign, the bourgeois parties
highlighted Labour's repeated problems in agreeing on
who would lead the party. In addition, it promised to
withdraw the unpopular carbon tax as well as taxes in
the mining industry.
In the elections, the Liberal Party and the National
Party together secured a clear majority of seats in the
House of Representatives, while Labor made one of its
worst elections in two decades. After the election,
Kevin Rudd chose to step down as Labor leader, which led
to a new power struggle for leadership within the party.
Bill Shorten came out victorious.
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