For those of us who aren’t policy wonks, the causal impression you could get of government and its enacting of public policy is one of continuous failure.

A distrusting public fuelled by an ever sceptical media on the hunt for the next “got ya” moment delights when things go wrong – and it certainly can and does.

But rather than focus on the failures, in a new study, researchers have assembled twenty examples of public policy successes from Australia and New Zealand.