The Westminster Tradition

Ranking history

About the show

Latest episodes

• **Revisit** ☎️ The Hon Amanda Vanstone AO - Inside the Westminster Machine

  September 28, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

  We are reliably informed that when this episode dropped a current Cabinet minister rang The Hon Amanda Vanstone and congratulated her. That’s a good enough reason for us to republish this during our hiatus! Note there’s also a follow up…

• **Revisit** 🏉 The Royal Commission we should have? The 2013 Essendon Football Club supplements scandal

  September 14, 2026 · 34 min

  You might like to get in the mood for AFL footy finals by revisiting this first episode of our three part series on the Essendon Footy club drug scandal! Meanwhile we will keep enjoying our late winter / early spring hiatus 😇 **** “Lack…

• **Revisit** 🗳️ Election special 🗳️ Caretaker conventions, IGBs and some 🥳 vox pops 🥳

  August 31, 2026 · 51 min

  In honour of forthcoming Victorian and NSW elections, we are republishing this episode during our late winter hiatus. Enjoy!! **** The starter's gun has gone on Australia's national elections for 2025 and Parliament has been prorogued. In…

• 🐊When the rains come: the gap between policy and delivery in remote Australia with Georgia Heath 🐊

  August 17, 2026 · 1 hr 28 min

  Danielle talks with Georgia Heath from Yup Yup Labs about what becomes obvious when you design services from far away, and why remote communities expose the hidden assumptions baked into policy, technology and “digital by default”. We also…

• 🧪🧮 We CAN test big policy ideas without slowing government down: Eleanor Williams from the Australian Centre for Evaluation 🧮🧪

  August 3, 2026 · 40 min

  We talk with Eleanor Williams from the Australian Centre for Evaluation about making evaluation fast, rigorous, and genuinely useful for public service decisions. We move from a 40,000-person employment services RCT to the practical steps…

• The moment of maximum ignorance: evaluation in public policy part 2

  July 20, 2026 · 49 min

  Three-quarters of government evaluations are commissioned to improve implementation. Two-thirds are commissioned for accountability. They're not the same thing, and building a system that serves both turns out to be harder than it…

• 💰 ‘Not your money’: reflections from government budget season ✂️

  July 6, 2026 · 39 min

  Budget season is here — and it’s tighter than many public servants have been used to. Across Australian jurisdictions, governments are landing budgets with real constraints: restrained spending, savings packages, efficiency dividends, and…

• Grumpy, elusive creatures defending well-defined territory: evaluation in public policy 🦡

  June 22, 2026 · 54 min

  In 1997, Tony Blair’s government inherited a problem: tuberculosis in cattle was rising, farmers were furious, and nobody agreed on whether badgers were responsible. The solution was to commission a gold-standard randomised control trial…