Australia’s public service is no stranger to reform. In the past nine years, it has undergone three significant reviews of its policy advising capabilities, all of which broadly agreed that its policy advice tends towards reticence and needs to be strengthened.
While these reviews triggered reform processes to improve how policy advice is built, a glaring gap remains largely unexplored: the language of policy advice itself. How public servant policy advisers articulate arguments, communicate ideas and influence decision-makers has profound implications for how their policy recommendations land and whether the public interest is served. It’s an area urgently in need of reform.
