Accommodating bureaucrats in Canberra: A history of the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space in the national capital during the Howard decade

Abstract

This article seeks to explore an important intersection of the Commonwealth's administrative and spatial histories by examining the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space accommodation practices between 1996 and 2006 in the urban spatial context of Canberra. After initially conceptualising and describing the experience of the Howard decade and contrasting it with previous policy and practice, the article seeks to theorise the general experience of the last ten years through stressing the interweaving of neoliberalism, path-dependencies, and contingency. In doing so, the piece offers a number of insights into not just the Howard government, the Commonwealth and Canberra, but also of neoliberalism, and the potential impacts of social spaces on policy processes and public sector practice.