Policy bureaucrats, working in diverse public sector agencies, have been the main providers of public policy analysis and advice in modern Australia. In recent years, however, this central role has been seriously challenged on several fronts. This chapter examines: the policy advice capacities developed and exercised by government; the key processes at national level for policy development in Australia, including intergovernmental forums; the rise of alternative (non-government) sources of policy analysis and advice; and the likely future requirements for addressing complex policy issues in an era of uncertainty and fiscal constraint.

Introduction

Within public sector agencies, the policy function comprises analytical, administrative and relational roles, which, in practice, are closely connected. The analytical roles include examining policy options, estimating the costs and benefits of various options, and evaluating current programmes. The administrative roles include managing projects in policy development, coordinating policy alignment across public agencies and reporting on programme performance. The relational roles include testing the acceptability of policy choices, undertaking stakeholder consultation and mediation, and adjusting to the political priorities and financial constraints of government. Within the public policy function, these roles have evolved gradually over many decades, with corresponding adjustments in the skills and attributes required of public policy managers.

As governments expanded their capacities in the 1970s and 1980s to meet ambitious new policy development challenges, public agencies became more professionalised through merit-based recruitment of highly qualified staff, including data analysts and policy advisors (Encel, 1970; Spann, 1979; Kouzmin and Scott, 1989). However, the long-standing role of public agencies as the key providers of trusted and independent expert policy advice became increasingly contested, owing to a powerful ideological backlash against ‘big government’, high taxes, regulatory constraints on business and the public-choice theory critique of bureaucracy as self-serving (Sawer, 1982). Subsequent debates about the core roles and functions of the public sector led to five main outcomes during the 1980s and 1990s. First, improving the efficiency of public agencies became the focus of repeated waves of restructuring, downsizing and the tighter specification of agency goals. Second, many government enterprises were sold as commercial entities to the private sector, for example, in transport and energy infrastructure, financial services, and information services (Colley and Head, 2013).