Tag Archive for: "parliament"
The growth of the Canberra Minder

Minder (noun): Body guard; staffer working for a politician/minister. Derived from London West End slang for a muscle man who protects a criminal or shady operator. Minding (verb): The act of working as a Minder, …

Reader response: straddling the divide

As someone who has straddled the public servant/ministerial adviser divide I found that the first two parts of Graeme Dobell’s series on the Canberra Minder caused me to reflect on my own experience. During my …

The birth of the Canberra Minder

The Canberra ministerial adviser—the Minder—was born on 5 December 1972, when Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister. Like much that Whitlam did, the birth was attended by high purpose, low politics and scrambling. The short, tumultuous …

The Canberra Minder

The Canberra ministerial adviser—the Minder—is 43 years young. The Minder is the strongest new creation of Oz politics, often more important than the public service in the way policy and politics gets done. The idea …