As premier of Western Australia from February 2001 to January 2006, Gallop led a government that introduced significant public sector administrative reforms, many of which were intended to generate a more creative approach to the task of governing the state. In this study, Lesley van Schoubroeck traces the scale and the scope of the most important of these changes and uses the debates over old growth forests, water policy, and the Gordon Inquiry into violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities as case studies to assess the effectiveness of Gallop’s reform agenda.

Despite the title, The Lure of Politics is not a book about politics – or at least not politics with a capital ‘P’. Nor is it a history of the Gallop government. Rather, it is a book about the evolution of public sector management practices during the time of that government. While there is a brief discussion of the legitimate role of state governments in Australia, and limited scene-setting that will assist the non-Western Australian reader to appreciate the specific problems facing the state government when Gallop came to power, the prime focus remains relentlessly on the processes of policy development and articulation at the senior levels of the public service.

Van Schoubroeck writes as an insider. She worked in the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) while Gallop was premier, and uses her own insights, together with those of other (mostly anonymous) senior public servants whom she interviewed, to reflect upon the processes of change. There is no doubt that these perspectives allow a valuable understanding of the day-to-day business of running the government. However, there is not much analysis of what it is that the government actually did. This introspective balance is perhaps best illustrated by the discussion of the emergence of the State Strategic Plan. The process by which the Plan was developed is documented in detail; the points of difference with the other states’ plans are duly listed. But there is almost no attempt to assess the long-term consequences of these and related planning documents. At the end of this discussion, the reader is still no wiser as to whether the average Western Australian citizen’s experience of government was materially improved by the development of the Strategic Plan. Similarly, while we learn much about the ways that New Public Management reforms adopted by earlier governments gave way to more Outcomes Based Management, there is little detail on the way that the actual delivery of services to the community changed. The concentration on administrative process rather than policy outcomes means that the analysis rarely looks past the immediate issue to consider the broader lessons that should emerge from a work like this.

Accordingly, there are long sections dedicated to such matters as the structural arrangements in DPC and other key portfolios, the machinery of government, the relationship between Ministers and Departmental CEOs, and to the role of better community engagement. Similarly, we learn about the formation of Special Purpose Units, Strategic Management Councils, special coordinating units, and various other committees. What is missing is an overview of the achievements of the government under Gallop’s leadership. What were the critical policy (as opposed to administrative) reform priorities that distinguished this government from its predecessors? What concrete initiatives were put in place to improve the delivery of services in health, education, and transport? There is an occasional reference to the ‘constraints’ that the shadow of the Burke government and legacy of WA Inc. imposed upon Gallop, and there is passing recognition of the political imperatives that shape government decision-making. But there is not enough detail on the complex and evolving relationships between state and federal governments, or on the way that the Commonwealth Government’s growing powers have changed the policy scope and role of state governments in Australia. There should have been room to consider how and why a state’s capacity to set policy in relation to environmental debates, water policy, and Indigenous affairs has changed in recent decades as the Commonwealth has managed to reach deeper into what were once unambiguously state policy matters.

There is no doubt that the stories of the Australian state governments do not attract the attention from historians or political scientists that they deserve. A reforming government like Geoff Gallop’s has many lessons that should be seen and understood nationally. What van Schoubroeck gives us in this book is a useful sense of an administrator’s perceptions of a limited part of the reform process. Nevertheless, it remains a narrow account of the way that the senior levels of the public service underwent some significant reforms designed to bring about a ‘creative administration’ while Gallop was premier. This is certainly part of the story that needs to be told, but without a better account of the broader economic and political context, and without some evaluation of the effect of the policy reforms, it remains an incomplete assessment of Gallop’s administration.