It was the Whitlam Government which began the systematic institutionalisation of personal advisers and it ensured their continuation when its opponents came to power by allowing them for both government and opposition leaders and office holders. The aim was to enhance ministerial power vis-à-vis the bureaucracy by giving ministers alternative sources of advice and information. Whilst the Fraser government trumpeted its intention to reduce ministerial support staff, and there was some initial cutting back when it came to power though mainly at the more junior levels, the position of ministerial advisers was consolidated under Fraser and their role in the prime minister’s private office considerably enhanced. When Hawke came to power it was clear that ministerial personal advisers were here to stay; and their place was further institutionalised by the introduction of procedures for their recruitment which avoided the embarrassment and smell of cronyism that had attached to some of the appointments of Whitlam’s ministers.

The minister’s personal adviser has thus emerged as a new political role, a new way for the politically active to try to influence government policy. What sort of people are filling this new role and where do they come from? Walter argues convincingly that these advisers, recruited outside the traditional political structures of party and bureaucracy which select the ministers and the mandarins, are part of the intelligentsia, bringing their specialist knowledge, commitment to ideas and capacity for intellectual brokerage to the service of political office. They are generally better educated than either the politicians or the bureaucrats and are able to move relatively easily between institutions and jobs. Journalism, academia, the public service, or party office are typical places from which they’ come and to which they go. Peter Wilenski, who has moved between academic, public service, and ministerial staff positions to his present position as chairman of the Public Service Board, is perhaps the clearest example of the new possibilities for careers shaped outside the processes of both electoral politics and the bureaucracy.

Walter discusses the typical psychological and motivational patterns of ministerial advisers. He notes that they generally prefer to remain at a distance from confrontational displays of public aggression and so are not as attracted to political office as they are to behind-the-scenes work. And their commitment to ideas is linked with a need to remain at a critical distance from the exigencies of practical politics. Walter speculates on possible childhood origins of such characteristics but these speculations remain fairly sketchy, partly because of the reticence of the advisers whom Walter interviewed, but also, I suspect, because of Walter’s reluctance to appear too psychoanalytic in his interpretations. Anyone familiar with the work of Alan Davies, particularly his compendious Skills, Outlooks and Passions, or with Graham Little’s recent work on political leaders and followers will see the wider framework from which Walter’s speculations come; but for those not so familiar they probably remain a little too sketchy to be convincing. Walter’s reluctance is, however, understandable when one sees the ignorance which meets such modest speculations as he does present (see Greg Sheridan’s ill-informed remarks on ‘the author’s generally unstated psychological theories and assumptions’ in his review in The Australian, 19 July 1986). Australia’s public discourse still has a long way to go to become psychologically literate.

This lack of widespread public acceptance of psychological discourse may have contributed to the reticence Walter found among his informants. He laments the secrecy which surrounds government decision-making in Australia and which makes it harder here than in the United States to get the sort of insight into policy-making that is afforded by books like David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest or George Herring’s America’s Longest War. Another contributing factor may be the Australians’ general unfamiliarity and awkwardness with reflecting on the emotional and psychological aspects of decision-making, particularly in contrast with their American counterparts.

This is unfortunate for, as Walter points out, the emergence of ministerial personal staff highlights the extent to which political decisions are generally the product of group processes. Political journalists’ stock in trade speculations about the hierarchy of influence in ministers’ – and especially prime ministers’ – offices, and the contribution of particular individuals to decisions, obscure what Walter sees as the centrality of group processes in decision making:

The contribution of individuals is particularly difficult to trace because deliberations are largely filtered through a group process. The modern political executive is best seen not as an individual in a particular role, but as the core of a small work group. Each minister has his/her retinue, and the operation of the private office can thus be thought of in terms of group dynamics as much as in terms of the performance of the minister.

To get at these group dynamics, is going to demand both frankness and self-awareness on the part of those involved. Walter suggests that collaboration is often a condition of creativity and productivity, and it may sometimes be hard for ambitious individuals to admit the dependence of ‘their’ achievements on others. Freudenberg’s reflections on the symbiosis of his relationship with Whitlam, on the dovetailing of the skills and needs that made their collaboration so successful, shows how illuminating this line of enquiry can be.

Walter’s book is the first Australian book to deal systematically with political minders and as such it sets up a framework for later more detailed studies of both individuals and policy making. We can be grateful that this first study is so wide-ranging and fertile for it may encourage more probing, more psychologically aware work from the scholars who will follow.