The trials & tribulations of Ken Mathers, policy entrepreneur

ABSTRACT

Ken Mathers, long-time roads bureaucrat in the Victoria Public Service, has been a uniquely influential figure on the state’s transport scene since the late 1990s. His projects have dominated the agenda, sometimes against the initial misgivings of the governments he served. This article argues we can explain Mathers’ influence in terms of policy entrepreneurship. It will show that, contrary to the dominant view in recent scholarship, transport policymaking in Victoria is sufficiently messy that an entrepreneur like Mathers could shift the agenda to get his projects up, looking in particular detail at the case of the now-infamous East-West Link. Finally, examining the failure of East–West, it will suggest some doubts about whether we can really expect entrepreneurs to wrangle all the relevant political actors, and whether they are in fact as central to policy change as the theory leads us to think.

肯•马色斯这位维多利亚公共服务部门长期负责道路的官员，自1990年代末以来对该州交通问题有着独特的影响。他的计划主导了政策议题，有时跟他所服务政府的犹犹豫豫形成对立。笔者认为可以从政策企业家的角度理解马色斯的影响。与学界主流观点相反，维多利亚运输方面的政策制定因为过于混乱而使得马色斯这样的企业家能够转移话题，成就他的计划。不妨看看声名不佳的“东西连”这个个案的细节。通过分析东西连的的失败，我们对能否指望企业家吵赢所有相关的政治角色、能否像理论以为的那样在政策变换中占据中心位置表示怀疑。

KEYWORDS:

• Policy entrepreneur
• garbage can model
• transport policy
• infrastructure
• East West Link
• Victorian politics

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Damon Alexander, Dr Julie Kimber and Dr Robert Hoffman for their advice on early drafts of this paper. This work was support with a Research Training Program Scholarship from the Commonwealth Government of Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

James C. Murphy teaches politics and history at Swinburne University of Technology. He specialises in pressure politics, policy theory and Australian political history.

Notes

1 This paper comes out of doctoral research on Melbourne’s East-West Link. 113 semi-structured interviews were conducted, mostly on an anonymous basis. There were a few exceptions – named sources in this paper were interviewed fully on the record and on an identifiable basis. See Appendix 1 for the recruitment process used to obtain these interviews.

2 The relevant Department was called the Department of Infrastructure until 2008.

3 The nomenclature becomes a little slippery: ‘East-West Link’ was the common shorthand for the Baillieu Government’s 2011 proposal — the eastern section of the Eddington project. We use it the same way here. Where the whole Eddington proposal connecting the Eastern with the Western Ring Road is referenced, we use the term ‘full East-West Link’.

4 Mathers confirms he had several conversations with Mulder through 2011 about East-West Link (Mathers 2017).

5 The CRB was the precursor to VicRoads.

6 Brian Negus, head of policy at the RACV, had worked at the CRB since the 1969 Transport Plan. Negus also worked in the Victorian transport minister’s office when SEITA was established. Colin Jordan, then-CEO of the RACV, had been Chairman of VicRoads during Mathers’ work on CityLink.

7 The Roads Australia board in 2011 was: David Stuart-Watt (Parsons Brickerhoff), Ken Mathers (LMA), Ray Fisher (CEO of joint venture with Exxon), Michael Bushby (NSW Road Traffic Authority), Scott Charlton, (Leighton, then Transurban) Denis Cliche (ConnectEast and TransDec; later head of the WestConnex Authority), Peter Duncan (NSW Roads) John Merritt (VicRoads), Marko Misko (Clayton Utz infrastructure specialist), John Pitt (Infrastructure consultant), David Saxelby (LendLease), Neil Scales (Department of Transport, QLD), Greg Steele (Asset management and design firms), Seven Troughton (Main Roads Dept., WA). Roads Australia 2014.

8 This is the approximate cost of cancelling contracts plus the sunk costs of works completed up until the Andrews Government was elected. On the details see Murphy 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was support with a Research Training Program Scholarship from the Commonwealth Government of Australia.