representation and electoral systems - American Political Science ...

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BOOK REVIEWS
Richard Vergroff, Editor
Kennesaw State University
E-Mail: rvergrof@kennesaw.edu
Section members with forthcoming books should notify the book editor to
facilitate the speedy review of their books.
Anne Tiernan. Power Without Responsibility. Coogee, NSW: University of New South
Wales Press, 2007. AUS$34.95.
This volume updates James Water’s book entitled The Minister’s Minders:
Personal Advisers in National Government (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986)
and documents the growing size and influence of ministerial staff and the reduced role of
career civil servants, especially departmental secretaries, during the previous three
decades. Her study raises fundamental questions of democratic accountability in the
Australian parliamentary system that is modeled on the traditional Westminster system.
This system is based upon the Government (Cabinet) being responsible to
parliament whose members are responsible to and elected by voters. Under this system,
the department secretary was the principal adviser to a minister with a departmental
portfolio. The book documents the fact the system has been modified and “secretaries
must share the advisory space with the new legions of ministerial staff” (p. 3). This staff
is larger than counterpart staffs in Canada and the United Kingdom and led the author to
draw a conclusion in Chapter 1: “There is thus growing awareness that personal staff are
an awkward fit in Westminster-style systems.” (p. 13).
Chapters 2 and 3 present an overview of the growth of ministerial staffing
concomitant with a more presidential media style. Ministers and their staff work in their
parliamentary offices and thus are isolated from the staff of their respective portfolio
department. The 1973 parliamentary election produced a Labor Government distrustful of
civil servants and an expanded ministerial staff to ensure ministers would control policy
making and implementation. The report of the Royal Commission on Australian
Government and Administration is noted.
Tiernan in chapter 4 traces ministerial staffing under Prime Ministers Whitlam,
Hawkes, Keating, and Fraser in the period ending in 1996 and refers to a 1984
amendment of the Public Service Act relating to civil servants seconded to ministerial
offices and their roles, including policy advice and their accountability. The amendment
also provides for the rotation of departmental secretaries every five years and in 1993
term limits for secretaries were established.
Chapter 5 focuses upon the agenda of Prime Minister John Howard who became
leader of the Library Party in January 1995 and led the party to victory in the 1996
general election. The new coalition Government had been in opposition for thirteen years
and was suspicious of civil servants. Howard terminated the contracts of six
departmental secretaries and appointed a political figure as cabinet secretary, a post
historically held by a civil servant. Howard continued to reside in Sydney instead of
Canberra which gave his Government “independence from the Canberra mandarins” (p.
89). Although the staff for the twenty-eight Ministers initially was reduced from 364 to