Howard Government

Our review of the OECD’s recommendations for Australia over the past 48 years is consistent with the oft-cited view that governments in the most recent 20 years have rejected many more significant reforms than governments in the 20 years before them.

Were the Labor years of Hawke and Keating good for the public service? That’s been in dispute, with a senior minister of the time insisting mandarins weren’t subordinate to the government.

The fuel fight facing Joe Hockey today was born from a political solution in 2001. One bureaucrat remembers how staffers frantically fed the Howard government.