Experienced counsellors or adolescent claqueurs? Exploring the professional backgrounds of Australian ministerial staff

Abstract

Australian federal ministers have large, politicised and powerful ministerial offices. Yet little is known about what skills and experiences the staffers who work in these offices bring to the job. Drawing on a dataset of ministerial staff working for the conservative Coalition government headed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott in March 2014, the paper explores the professional backgrounds and career paths of a cohort of contemporary Australian political staff. It considers whether it is true that many politicians, as Allan Behm recently lamented, ‘surround themselves with adolescent claqueurs rather than experienced counsellors’. (A claqueur is someone a hired to applaud an act or performer, a sycophantic follower). Show more