The Westminster Tradition

Like every conference in the land, we’re talking about AI. But this episode isn’t about public servants using it. It’s about citizens using it at you. We start from Sam Freedman’s Drowning in slop, Tom Loosemore’s reply The end to governing in prose, and the Fair Work Commission’s new rules on AI in cases. We look at what’s breaking: the volume, the made-up case law, and a single missed bin that turns into four legal claims. Danielle asks whether some of the spike is people finally getting ac...

In Part 1, a secret deal was struck in a hotel room and walked into Cabinet as a “UFU proposal”. In Part 2, the deal has to survive contact with everyone who wasn’t in the room. We start at the Fair Work Commission, where the “independent umpire” turns out to have far less power than everyone claimed, and where keeping Peter Marshall on side means 381 text messages in four months. We follow the secret through a minister’s resignation, a sacked CFA Board, a federal law change that kills the CF...

In 2016, the Andrews government settled a bitter, years-long dispute with the firefighters’ union in a hotel room, then spent the next two years pretending it hadn’t. In August, Victoria’s anti-corruption commission IBAC tabled its special report on Operation Richmond. It made no findings of corrupt conduct and found no evidence for the blackmail allegation that started the investigation. But most of its 120 pages are about something else: what happens to public servants when a Premier wants ...

We are reliably informed that when this episode dropped a current Cabinet minister rang The Hon Amanda Vanstone and congratulated her. That’s a good enough reason for us to republish this during our hiatus! Note there’s also a follow up episode where we all chat about our takeaways from this episode. **** Former Senator Amanda Vanstone offers a masterclass in ministerial leadership, delivering sharp insights from her 21-year political career that are as relevant today as they were durin...

You might like to get in the mood for AFL footy finals by revisiting this first episode of our three part series on the Essendon Footy club drug scandal! Meanwhile we will keep enjoying our late winter / early spring hiatus 😇 **** “Lack of good governance is why good people did bad things at Essendon Football Club”. So says Lindsay Tanner, former Minister for Finance, and President of the Essendon Football Club from 2015. In this mini-series, Caroline tries to convince us there are lessons f...