Australian Treasury runs interference on the economy

Former senior Australian Treasury official David Pearl gave a fantastic interview on the John Anderson podcast where, among other things, he highlighted the decline in the Treasury, which he claims has become overly ideological and politicised.

“Treasury very sadly is now run by people who are not just politicised, because Treasury has never been independent of government. Treasury secretaries have always seen themselves as advisers to governments, not as people who lecture or frustrate governments. But now it’s swung the other way”…

“The real shift in Treasury came from above with secretaries who saw themselves as political players who traded on the department’s influence to run a political line”…