Cabinetisation or a Westminster solution? Understanding the employment of public servants in Australian ministers’ offices

This article tracks the proportion of Australian ministerial advisory staff over time who are drawn from the public service. Using a mix of parliamentary and employment data, biographical data and interviews (1984-2018), the paper tests if there has been a dramatic decline in the number of public servants in ministers' offices, and if the Australian ministerial office is evolving towards the cabinet ministeriel model found in Napoleonic countries, a concept known as cabinetisation. The paper shows that the proportion of Australian advisers who are public servants on leave is lower than in the past but has been consistently around 30% since 2010. The central argument advanced in the paper is that Australia's model of ministerial office has critical differences from Napoleonic ministerial cabinets and there is no evidence of cabinetisation. It argues that rather than bending towards European models, Australia's ministerial office is a response to peculiarly Westminster challenges and tensions, provoked by Washington aspirations. The paper shows that the institutional architecture of Australia's Westminster variant produces distinct and in some ways paradoxical dynamics: the separation designed to protect departments' impartiality threatens their marginalisation, leading to a push for greater presence in ministerial offices, despite the inherent frictions and risks of politicisation.