Notes Preface 1. Work on the Australian core executive is sparse, although some material specifically on the Cabinet (Encel 1962; Weller 2007) deals with the insti- tutional approach in much the same way as Burch and Holliday (1996). It is worth noting that the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) does provide greater access and transparency than the UK Cabinet Office and Number 10. 2. Foley (2000) also points out that this public projection of the leader (‘lead- ership stretch’) creates distance and autonomy not only from government but from other government ministers. However, such autonomy can isolate a leader, when perceived to be unpopular and hence a vote-loser. The 2005 Labour party campaign demonstrated this well when Brown’s prominence in the campaign rose, while Blair’s fell possibly as a result of party strategists viewing the unpopular Blair as a hindrance. 1 Prime Ministers and Political Leadership 1. Chomsky in particular argues that individual leaders matter little. Even Martin Luther King, although an important man, was not an agent of change, according Chomsky. The real agents of change are not the great men but the grassroots (Chomsky 2003: 188). 2. See Lees (2006: 1085) call for a response to this often detached relationship ‘by breaking out of the empirical and intellectual silo of much single coun- try scholarship and becoming more relevant to the wider discipline.’ See Costa Lobo (2001) for an example of a relevant single country study on the Portuguese prime ministerial model. 3. See Kellerman (1986: 70) on definitions of political leadership. 4. See Rose and Sulieman (1980), in particular pp. 312–47. A British prime min- ister may be more powerful, but may be more contextually constrained. 5. See Honeyman on Harold Wilson (2007) and Theakston (2007) on What Makes for an Effective British Prime Minister? 6. Hennessy however is a great believer in the significance and relevance of the continuing debate: ‘premiership and cabinet will matter as long as prime ministers and ministers and meetings called Cabinet exist.’ ‘Sterile it is not. Boring it will never be’. ‘Each new arrival at No10 experiences it and manages it afresh, which is why transitions of governing and prime ministerial power repay especially close attention.’ (Hennessy 2000:10). 7. Hennessy (2000: 497–500) picked up this theme of concentric circles of influ- ence, when looking at Blair in particular. 8. Hennessy provided an update in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee Inquiry into the Power and Role of the Prime Minister, see Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee (2011). 196 Notes 197 9. Weller suggests that Liberal ministers are less inclined to write memoirs and more inclined to display party loyalty (2007: 178). Of several books by former Labor ministers, Neal Blewett’s (1999) diaries have proved the best by far. However, the publication of a comprehensively researched (though hastily put together) biography of Howard by academics Wayne Errington and Peter Van Onselen in 2007 rectified this somewhat. The publication of Peter Costello’s memoirs in 2009 was the first by a senior Howard minister, coming ahead of Howard’s own account in 2010. 10. Prior to Howard’s account, two prime ministers had written detailed autobio- graphical accounts of their premierships (Whitlam 1985 and Hawke 1994); both provide essential background narratives to two of the most significant premierships of the recent Australian political history. Weller’s text on the premiership is still the premier example of an attempt to account for the changing nature of the position in a contemporary context, and Grattan performs the Hennessy role in factual-historical exposure of the incumbents (Weller 1992; Grattan 2000). 11. Little’s work had a great influence on Melbourne based academics James Walter and Judith Brett, who have written extensively on political leadership in Australia. 12. See in particular Poguntke and Webb (2005), Mughan (2000) and Foley (2000). 13. See Bennister (2007) on ‘institution stretch’, a term picked up by Norton (2008) in identifying comparative prime ministerial trends. 14. It is acknowledged that a prime minister cannot jump the species barrier by metamorphosis to become a president; rather the key is the demonstration of characteristics generally identified with presidential regimes (Foley 2000). Heffernan (2005a) directly addresses the comparative concept, in consider- ing why the British Prime Minister cannot be an American style president. 15. See Elgie’s (1997: 220) nine existing models of executive politics. 16. See House of Commons Public Affairs Select Committee Report 2003 on the Royal Prerogative. Note also that some of these powers came under review in Britain under Gordon Brown, leading to ‘The Governance of Britain – Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill March 2008’, but the Bill failed to become law before the 2010 general election after which the government only intro- duced legislation on fixed term parliaments. 17. Section 61 of the Australian Constitution: ‘the executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the governor general as the Queen’s representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution and of the laws of the Commonwealth.’ 18. These bodies are the Commissioner for Public Appointments, House of Lords Appointments Commission and Judicial Appointments Commission. 2 Cabinet as a Resource 1. David Buckingham, interview, 6 November 2006. 2. The cabinet secretariat supported 57 cabinet meetings (including NSC and committee meetings) in 2004–5. This compares with 120 in 1997–8 and the high point of 141 in 1999–2000. Since the streamlining in 2001–2 of cabinet 198 Notes submissions which reduced full cabinet handling of many submissions, meetings have stayed constant at 57–67 per year (PMC Annual Reports 2002, 2003, 2004). 3. David Kemp, interview 6 December 2006. 4. Peter Shergold, interview 28 November 2006. 5. The ALP unsurprisingly used the ‘jobs for the boys and girls’ claim as a campaigning tool in the 2004 election, suggesting that ‘the Howard govern- ment’s record of more than 120 appointments over eight and a half years was well beyond acceptable office cost standards’ (ALP 2004). 6. Peter Jennings, Australia Strategic Policy Institute quoted in The Australian ‘More Power to the PM’, 29 October 2005. 7. Interview 13 November 2006. 8. See Australian Financial Review, 6 June 2005 on Singapore Airlines. 9. The leaks that did occur were investigated by the Federal Police (Errington and Van Onselen 2007: 323). 10. His ‘aversion to the removal of ministers’ is said to relate to the 1997 so- called travel rorts scandal, when five frontbenchers and two staffers resigned over fraud allegations. The departing ministers were Assistant Treasurer, Jim Short, Minister for Small Business and Consumer Affairs, Geoffrey Prosser, Minister for Administrative Services, David Jull, Minister for Transport, John Sharp, and Minister for Science and Technology, Peter McGuaran. Two forced resignations (Ian Campbell and Senator Santoro) in March 2007 hit Howard’s reputation hard, opening questions of ministerial conduct. 11. Disquiet among Liberal party backbenchers regarding the over representa- tion of Nationals in cabinet surfaced from time to time. The Nationals held the Deputy Prime Minister, Trade, and Agriculture portfolios in Howard’s last term of office. 12. See for example evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry by former Cabinet Secretaries Richard Wilson and Andrew Turnbull and the House of Lords Constitution Committee Report into the Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government. For the counter view see Jonathan Powell (2010, Chapter 3) in which he suggests that the mandarins conception of cabinet government does not exist in reality. 13. Michael Cockerell’s (2001) illuminating BBC TV documentary Cabinet Confidential exposed the style of Blair’s cabinet management in the early years. 14. Richard Wilson, interview 11 January 2008. 15. During the late 1940s cabinet met for an average of 87 times a year with 340 papers being formally circulated in the 1970s, 60 times a year with 140 papers and by the 1990s no more than 40 times a year with only 20 papers (Lord Butler in The Times, 22 February 1999 in Heffernan 2003b: 359). This trend has continued under Blair. From 1990 to 1997 John Major chaired 271 cabinets and 189 cabinet committees and had 911 recorded meetings with individual ministers. In his first two years Blair chaired 86 cabinets and 178 cabinet committees and had 783 meetings with individual ministers (Kavanagh and Seldon 2000: 286). 16. In May 2002, the cabinet were presented with 1982 pages of the economic assessment on whether the five tests for Britain joining the euro had been met. Despite Blair’s keenness to present a ‘yes, but not yet’, Brown had already interpreted the assessment as a clear ‘No’. The involvement of the whole Notes 199 cabinet was a presentational issue to bind the cautious together with the euro enthusiasts and make it look like a collective decision (Seldon 2007: 212). 17. Blair gave an interview to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, on the eve of the Labour Party’s 2004 Annual Conference, in which he stated that he would serve a full third term if elected, but then stand down. 18. See for instance: Personal Minute from the Prime Minister to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion, accessed on 6 February 2009 at http:// www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/corp/assets/ publications/ letters/hilary_armstrong/co_and_su_minute.pdf. 19. See Catterall and Brady in Rhodes 2000 on the development of Cabinet Committees in Britain. 20. Hennessy (2005a: 10) assigned schools, health, crime, transport, Northern Ireland, foreign and defence, and intelligence and security to Blair and pensions, child and youth policy, welfare to work, enterprise, science and technology, structural change and regional development to Brown.