Posted by 
By Anne Tiernan
A raft of modern political scandals in Australia has generated common media and public curiosity within the function and responsibility of ministerial staffers, and their effect on kin among ministers and their public carrier advisers. Such scandals contain the infamous ‘Children Overboard’ affair and the more moderen AWB imbroglio. In strength with out accountability Anne Tiernan describes the modern operating setting of political staffers, their formal and no more formal roles, the demanding situations they face, and the forces that experience escalated the expansion of their numbers and effect.
Read Online or Download Power Without Responsibility?: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard PDF
Similar australia & oceania books
Circle of Death (Damask Circle Book)
In a single, vicious evening, Kirby Brown’s international is torn aside. Her ally is lifeless, killed by way of a madman who's now after her. and he or she has no concept why. Doyle Fitzgerald has been despatched to Melbourne, Australia to seek down a killer. What he doesn’t anticipate finding is a circle of witches able of controlling the weather and a sorceress made up our minds to take that continual for herself.
The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia
The e-book of this ebook in 1981 profoundly replaced the best way we comprehend the background of relatives among indigenous Australians and ecu settlers. It has in view that turn into a vintage of Australian heritage. Drawing from documentary and oral facts, the e-book describes in meticulous and compelling aspect the ways that Aborigines answered to the arriving of Europeans.
An Uneasy Relationship: Norfolk Island and the Commonwealth of Australia
The location of Norfolk Island, as a territory of the Commonwealth of Australia, is among the old anomalies in governance, which has persevered on account that 1914. It displays the direct historic linkages among the British Crown and people Norfolk Islanders who have been descendants of Pitcairn Islanders of Mutiny at the Bounty reputation.
Waitangi & Indigenous Rights: Revolution, Law & Legitimation
This landmark research examines concerns surrounding New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi, concentrating on fresh Fiji revolutions and indigenous normal rights to the seabed and foreshore. during this revised version, the writer techniques those complicated and arguable concerns with a cautious, thorough, and principled strategy whereas facing the large constitutional matters and responding to reviews made via different students.
Additional resources for Power Without Responsibility?: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard
Sample text
In a further consolidation of prime ministerial authority over personal staffing arrangements, all determinations about MoP(S) staff terms and conditions are now made by the prime minister, who has delegated some of his powers under the legislation to the special minister of state (SMOS). 8 Prime ministers also set the tone for the culture within which ministerial staff work. They thus have a decisive influence on the shape and style of ministerial staffing arrangements although powerful and influential ministers, such as the treasurer, the minister for finance and administration and sometimes the government leader in the senate, have a degree of autonomy over the organisation and conduct of their offices.
Our roles are complementary. In the words of Public Service Commissioner, Andrew Podger, the two groups have ‘different responsibilities’ but share a ‘common commitment to serve the Minister’. The public service provides advice which is based on careful analysis, independent assessment and long experience which resides in large stable organisations. It should be responsive to the policy directions established by government but it is not party political. Complementarity has become the dominant account of core executive relationships in Australia.
But as will be seen in later chapters, recent controversies in which ministers have refused to take responsibility for the actions of their staff have called into question the validity of this assumption, raising concerns that staff are operating in a managerial and constitutional vacuum. Constitutionally, the lack of accountability of ministerial staff exposes the shortcomings of the convention of individual ministerial responsibility as a mechanism for regulating and governing their activities.