Maria Maley

The Howard Government and Political Management: The Challenge of Policy Activism

Although the distinctive values promulgated by successive Howard governments have been extensively analysed, less attention has been paid to the manner of their incorporation into policy. This article maps the ways in which policy processes were managed to achieve values-change in the Howard decade (1996–2006), focusing on the policy subsystem at the apex of government. Three case studies are investigated in detail: the development of welfare to work policies; strategies to combat illicit drugs; and industrial relations legislation. We show how Prime Minister Howards leadership was built around a highly personalised system of political control, based on the seizing of opportunities as they arose; the engineering of policy networks; and the alignment of key resources such as the Cabinet Office; the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and senior bureaucratic leadership with the Prime Ministers policy priorities. We show that this system made possible very rapid policy development, but was also associated with deficits in policy-related research and with a degree of implementation risk whereby minimal consultation had occurred. Some comparisons are drawn with governments of the Hawke–Keating period, which were more technocratic in approach.

Too Many or Too Few? The Increase in Federal Ministerial Advisers 1972–1999

This paper examines recently published figures that show the increase in ministerial staff between 1972 and 1996 (Dunn 1997). A careful examination of the table in Dunns book reveals it gives a misleading impression of the number of ministerial staff; the number of advisory staff to ministers; and the growth in advisory resources over the Hawke–Keating period. By re-analysing the figures the paper reveals the reality of the growth in advisory staff to ministers in 1972–1999. It provides an account of the number of staff providing policy and political advice to ministers in ministerial offices, rather than total staff numbers. It reveals advisory resources to ministers have grown significantly since the introduction of ministerial advisers in 1972. However, the growth in adviser numbers over the Hawke–Keating period was more modest than is suggested by Dunns table. The paper provides the base data needed for a discussion of the increase in ministerial staff and whether there are too few or too many federal ministerial advisers.

Australian Ministerial Advisers and the Royal Commission on Government Administration

The role of the ministerial office was one of the key issues investigated by the Royal Commission on Australian Gvoernment Administration (RCAGA) in 1976. At the time the ministerial office was undergoing new and controversial developments. In the 25 years since the Royal Commission the new ministerial office has become a permanent and accepted part of our machinery of government. This paper reviews RCAGA’s analysis of ministerial advisers and uses research on the Keating advisers in 1995–96 to track how the institution of the ministerial office has developed since the time of the Royal Commission.

The Policy Work of Australian Political Staff

It is useful to understand the policy work of Australian political staff as occurring in three arenas: working with the department, with other ministers, and with stakeholders. Each has a different character and purpose. The work in two of these arenas—working with the department on policy and working with other ministers in policy coordination—is a core part of their work and their institutional identity. Working with stakeholders represents an opportunity rather than a responsibility, arising from their privileged location. It is important not to collapse different types of policy work in analyzing the policy role of political staff.

The Iron Butterfly and the Political Warrior: mobilising models of femininity in the Australian Liberal Party

ABSTRACT Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and former Prime Minister Tony Abbotts Chief of Staff Peta Credlin have experienced very different political fortunes. Once the two most powerful women in the Australian Liberal Party, Credlins political demise was mired in controversy, while Bishop continues to enjoy the support of her Party and the public. While there are many reasons for this, the article focuses on the gendered politics surrounding their experiences. Based on analysis of the media representations of Bishop and Credlin between 2011 and 2015, we argue that Bishop successfully negotiates gender politics by deploying the Iron Butterfly model of conservative femininity, while Credlins fierce Political Warrior persona saw her pilloried.

Understanding the divergent development of the ministerial office in Australia and the UK

ABSTRACT Large, politicised and separate ministerial offices are a feature of Australian government, while the UK ministerial office remains a hybrid unit which is part of the civil service. Using an historical institutionalist lens, and focusing on institutional factors, the article analyses why the separate partisan model evolved in Australia. It argues the Australian innovation was an historical compromise made in an unsuccessful attempt to move towards US-style political-administrative institutions. By contrast, the UK ministerial office has remained unified and hybrid, and, despite experimentation, resilient to structural and ideational change. There is ongoing pressure for more committed support for British ministers but strong forces have prevented moves towards larger offices, seen in the collapse of Extended Ministerial Offices. The article argues explanations for these divergent paths can be found in concepts such as critical junctures, path dependency and institutional resistance. The article contributes to an emerging comparative literature on advisory institutions.

Political Chronicles Australian Capital Territory July to December 2014

The period saw some economic optimism with the release of the thirty-year Queensland Plan and a burgeoning LNG industry, but also much pessimism amid growing unemployment and a shift in the Newman government’s plans for asset privatisation. After suffering a massive anti-government swing at the Stafford byelection early in the period, the Liberal-National Party faced more public opinion challenges as allegations of cronyism and conflicts of interest coalesced with messy pre-selection brawls.

The Public Sector

The 1979 government came to office committed to administrative reform and economy in educational spending and as part of it to rationalise public sector organisation and to establish major savings in the universities. Between 1979 and 1983 the university entry was diminished by between 4 and 5 per cent, and understandably a good number of the qualified persons who could not gain admission took up full-time places in the public sector, and the total effect on higher education remained somewhat masked until about 1984, by which time the full-time aggregate in each sector had come much closer together. By 1985 Mrs Thatcher’s government thought that by this take-up in the public sector, combined with the economic, administrative and academic reforms in the universities outlined in the last chapter and the small improvements and recovery shown in overseas student numbers, they were on the way to establishing the revised higher education system with the smaller university population which was more suited to the needs of the country, as they saw them. In one of the earliest reports in 1979–80, preparations were made to set this on foot.1