Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Isi Unikowski and John Wanna
Key terms/names
departments and statutory agencies, digital era governance, federalism, new public
governance, new public management, Northcote-Trevelyan, not-for-profit sector,
private sector, public sector, public value governance, Westminster system or
tradition, Woodrow Wilson
Without reading on, try to guess when the following was written:
There is scarcely a single duty of government which was once simple which is not
now complex; government once had but a few masters; it now has scores of masters
…atthesametimethatthefunctionsofgovernmentareeverydaybecomingmore
complex and difficult, they are also vastly multiplying in number. 1
Does it sound familiar? In fact, these comments were made in a classic of public
administration literature in 1887 by Woodrow Wilson, who would become the US’
28th president. Leaving aside the archaic expression, these comments could have
been made today. It is remarkable how frequently speeches by ministers and public
servants, and academic books and articles, mention the increasing complexity of
the public sector and the demands upon it.
Unikowski, Isi, and John Wanna (2019). The public sector. In Peter J. Chen, Nicholas Barry, John R.
Butcher, David Clune, Ian Cook, Adele Garnier, Yvonne Haigh, Sara C. Motta and Marija Taflaga,
eds. Australian politics and policy: senior edition. Sydney: Sydney University Press. DOI: 10.30722/
sup.9781743326671
1 Wilson 1887, 200. Woodrow Wilson was an accomplished practitioner of public administration.
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