The Australian party system comprises many more parties than just the ALP and the Liberal-National Party coalition. As dominant as the big two parties are, they do not exercise a complete duopoly over the House of Representatives or the Senate. Indeed, with its multi-member proportional electoral system, the Senate has always offered greater potential for a much more diverse set of political parties to win representation, although this was not really realised until the 1980s. Generally, a party is considered ‘minor’ not only because of a small vote share, but also because of a lack of representational success in the lower house contest, or where success is confined to the proportionally representative Senate. While this labelling is contested (Kefford, 2017), it is a useful counterpoint to the ‘major’ party tag of Labor and the Coalition. This chapter discusses a number of the minor parties, their role and function in contemporary Australian politics and the growing number of independents.

This chapter provides the necessary background as to why addressing the issue of the rights and obligations of States prior to delimitation is both pressing and topical. The main objective of the book is to lay out the rights and obligations of States (i.e. claimants and third States) under international law in disputed maritime areas. Particular emphasis in this regard is placed on those areas where States have not agreed upon delimitation (a), neither have been able to agree on cooperative arrangements (b), and for which a modus vivendi has not been developed to regulate activities in a disputed maritime area (c). Apart from that, States are obligated to take certain (unilateral) measures in disputed areas. This is because entitlements to maritime zones come with related obligations for the coastal State regarding certain issues. For instance, with regard to managing and conserving living marine resources, as well as protecting the marine environment, coastal States have significant obligations under the LOSC. Another issue that is discussed is how jurisdictional uncertainty, which is inherent to disputed maritime areas, affects claimant States, third States and their nationals.

In the aftermath of World War I, some politicians, scholars, and lawyers argued that peoples and nations (as distinct from states) ought to be subjects of international law and bear rights within the international order. However, the principle of “national self-determination” at the center of the rhetorical reconstruction of the postwar international order irrevocably confounded law and politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Treaties were signed guaranteeing the protection of minorities within the newly created states of Eastern Europe. But just who were those minorities? Would a Polish speaker who self-identified as German be considered a Polish or a German national? What about those who were both German and Pole? Similarly, as the League placed the former German colonial territories into Mandates, just what would the nationality of the inhabitants be? The problems of nationality continued to be unresolvable and the dream of having sovereign nations rather than states fell rapidly into disrepute with the annexation of Czechoslovakia and the onset of World War II.