Overview: In the history and folklore of Australia’s Commonwealth Public Service, the idea of the ‘Seven Dwarfs’ has been remarkably persistent. Originally a witty epithet applied to a powerful group of senior public servants, the term has come to represent the professionalisation of Australian government administration during the Second World War and post-war reconstruction era...

Overview: Poor implementation of a policy to get better value for PBS spending is costing government $320 million a year and raising questions about pharmaceutical industry involvement in drug pricing. The therapeutic group premium policy, introduced in 1998 to stop the government wasting money on over-priced drugs, has been so watered down that it is...

This Research Paper outlines the public positions taken by the Rudd and Gillard Governments towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Executive summary This Research Paper focuses on the public position of the Labor Governments, in power between 2007 and 2013, towards the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It does so by looking at the Rudd and Gillard Governments’ responses to...

This paper argues that the driving motivation for federalism reform in Australia should be to enhance Australian federal democracy, and sets out ten principles to guide federal democratic reform.

The Budget is the government’s central economic and fiscal statement each year. This paper reviews key aspects of the Budget. Introduction The 2015–16 Budget was introduced into Parliament on 12 May 2015. It is the second Budget of the Coalition Government. This overview provides a summary of the headline numbers, the economic context, the Government’s...