Australian politics and government

Introduction

Government in Australia is three-tiered: Commonwealth (or Federal), State and Local. You can find information about how government works in Australia through a number of official websites, including

• Parliament of Australia, including The Australian system of government
• Parliamentary Education Office

What you can find in the Library

• Books: including biographies, histories and general works
• Parliamentary papers: documents presented to Parliament and ordered to be printed
• Manuscripts: including papers of ministers and documents relating to political parties
• Oral histories: including speeches and interviews
• Pictures: including portraits, photographs and political cartoons
• Ephemera: including election advertising
• Newspapers: including biographical cuttings files (articles from Australian newspapers from the early 20th century to 2000).

Government publications are deposited with the National Library of Australia under the Library Deposit Scheme (LDS). Previously, the National Library actively collected publications by way of various government administrative directives. You can find print publications and links to online sources through the Catalogue.

Using the Catalogue

Quick search

Use a quick key word search in the Catalogue to find titles, authors or subjects.

• If you get too many results, click in to the catalogue full results and use the Limit Your Results options (at the right of the search results page) to display only the items of interest, e.g. manuscripts or oral histories
• If you need to widen your search, try searching subject headings. You can search by subject directly in the Catalogue (selecting 'subject' in the drop down), or by opening an item’s Catalogue record and clicking on the subject headings to find other material related to that subject.

Browse

You can’t browse the Library’s shelves in person, but you can use the Catalogue to search the collection by title, author or subject.

To search for general works about Australian politics, try searching by subject. Some examples are:

• Australia Politics and Government
• Australia Parliament Senate
• Prime ministers -- Australia

To find information on Australian political parties, search subject headings such as:

• Australian Labor Party
• Liberal Party of Australia Policies
• Political Parties Australia

Items related to special interest groups in Australian society are found using subject searches such as:

• Pressure Groups Australia
• Business and Politics Australia
• Labor Unions Australia

Selected print resources:

Parliamentary government in Australia by Alan J. Ward (2014), combines constitutional history and political science to compare all nine of Australia's political systems, federal, state and territory, from colonial times to the present.

Australian political institutions by Singleton, Aitkin, Jinks and Warhurst (2013), introduces students to the structure and organisation of the institutions and functions of government in Australia, with reference to contemporary issues and debates.

Australian journal of political science includes articles on a wide range of political topics. Also available online from 1997 to the present, through the link in the Catalogue record.

Student texts:

Government and politics in Australia edited by Alan Fenna, Jane Robbins, John Summers (2014)

Politics in Australia by Martin Drum and John William Tate (2012); a source-based approach