How Australian governments work

Government in Australia is made up of three tiers:

• Federal (or Australian)
• state and territory
• local.

You can find information about how governments work in Australia through a number of official websites, such as:

• Work of the Parliament (Parliament of Australia)
• Understand our Parliament (Parliamentary Education Office)

A dictionary of Australian politics by Robert Corcoran and Jackie Dickenson (2010) defines a range of Australian political terms and expressions and includes international terms which are essential to political discussion.

What you can find in the Library

We hold a rich collection of historical material supporting the study of Australian politics and government, such as:

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

How to search and find items

You can find print publications and links to online government publications through the Library catalogue. Commonwealth departments and agencies are subject to the legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Previously, the Library actively collected publications by way of various government administrative directives, such as the Commonwealth Library Deposit and Free Issue Scheme.

If you’re looking for government gazettes, see our Government gazettes research guide.

Search the catalogue

Learn more about how to use the catalogue

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Keyword search

Use a quick keyword search in the catalogue to find titles, authors or subjects.

• If you get too many results, click into 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, for example, 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.

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:

• Political parties Australia
• Australian Labor Party
• Liberal Party of Australia policies

Items related to special interest groups in Australian society can be found using subjects, such as:

• Pressure groups Australia
• Business and politics Australia
• Labor unions Australia  

Get help with your research

Our specialist staff can help you with your research, to locate resources and use our microform and scanning equipment but they cannot undertake extensive or ongoing genealogical, historical or other research on your behalf.

Find out more in our Information and research services policy.

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