Stepping Up to the Plate

The United States has always exerted a strong, if intermittent, influence on the conduct of Australian politics. Since the nineteen nineties, there has been a growing disposition in Australian politics to follow American example in promoting market ideology, neoliberalism and to advocate small government and lower taxation. Stepping Up to the Plate argues that Australia has experimented with an alternating party system more authentic than the American two-party system and more connected with the people. It mounts a defence of Australian democracy as we have known it.