Learning To Be A Minister

In 1981, academic Patrick Weller teamed up with renowned political commentator and journalist Michelle Grattan to publish Can Ministers Cope?, a study of the challenges facing Australia's federal government ministers at that time in the country's political history. In the intervening decades, much has changed in a rapidly developing nation, including reform of the public service, changes of government and the local implications of the global financial crisis.

With the Rudd Labor government just twenty months into its first term in office, it was time to revisit the question can ministers cope? and to broaden the focus to ask how they cope, especially as relatively young and sometimes inexperienced players in the transition to government after a long period in opposition.

Tiernan and Weller draw on extensive interviews with current and former ministers, ministerial staffers and senior officials, to discover how a new ministry learns and adapts to the responsibilities of governing – how ministers learn to juggle time and other resources in their simultaneous and sometimes conflicting roles of member of Parliament and Cabinet, local constituency representative, and media spokesperson; not to mention, in their lives outside work, their roles as partners, parents and friends.

About The Author

Patrick Weller, AO, a graduate of Oxford and the ANU, is the Premier of Queensland Chair of Public Management and director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University, where he has held a chair since 1984. He is the author, co-author or editor of some 36 books on Australian politics and comparative institutions. He was recently a member of the Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration.

Dr Anne Tiernan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University. She is author of Power Without Responsibility: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard (2007, UNSW Press). Her research addresses the capacity and performance of executive advisory systems, and particularly relations between partisan and non-partisan advisers. Dr Tiernan sits on the Board of Commissioners of the Qld Public Service Commission and regularly advises governments on public sector issues.