Learning to Be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities

Drawing on extensive interviews with current and former ministers, ministerial staffers, and senior officials, this in-depth examination offers insight into the Australian political and democratic processes. Exploring the lives of Australia’s federal ministers at work, this revealing account investigates how a new ministry learns and adapts to the responsibilities of governing as well as the means by which ministers learn to juggle time and other resources in their simultaneous, and sometimes conflicting, roles—as members of Parliament and Cabinet, as local constituency representatives, and as media spokespersons.