Policy agendas in australian politics: The governor-general's speeches, 1945-2008

Keith Dowding*, Andrew Hindmoor, Richard Iles, Peter John

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    29 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The Policy Agendas Project collects and organises data from official documents to trace changes in the policy agenda and outputs of national, sub-national and supranational governments. In this paper we use the policy agendas method to analyse the changing contents of those Australian Governor-General's speeches delivered on behalf of incoming governments between 1945 and 2008. We suggest that these speeches provide an important insight into how the executive wishes to portray its policy agenda as it starts a new term of government. In mapping the changing agenda in this way we address four questions: which issues have risen or fallen in importance? When and in relation to what issues have there been policy 'punctuations'? How stable is the Australian policy agenda? How fragmented is the policy agenda? We find evidence of a number of policy punctuations and one turning-point: the election of the Whitlam government.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)533-557
    Number of pages25
    JournalAustralian Journal of Political Science
    Volume45
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2010

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