This site has regularly lamented the politicisation and loss of independence of Australia’s public service.
I witnessed this phenomenon first hand in the early to mid 2000s while working at the Australian Treasury and Victorian Treasury, whereby governments of either persuasion were too willing to outsource policy development to consultants or erroneously named think tanks.
A classic example of this neutering occurred when I worked on the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (US FTA) in 2003.
