"Ministerial staff have become a threat to good policy advice given their increased numbers and lack of experience as well as their interference in public service processes. Such staff, as one former Keating minister observed, were too often careerists looking for parliamentary seats. Checking those ministerial staff who have sought or won seats would have been illuminating."

A good, but hardly unique, example was the senior advisor to a Queensland Treasurer who reacted with amazement when in a contribution to a speech she was giving, I noted that tariffs had a negative effect on the Queensland economy - something which had been clearly documented, including in Treasury briefs. This was amazing and exciting news to the advisor, who fairly soon thereafter gained a seat in federal parliament