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Scott Prasser: ‘The Institution of Last Resort’ Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries Under Menzies

Public inquiries are temporary, ad hoc bodies appointed by executive government with clear terms of reference, bringing in people from outside of the government, and employing open public processes in collecting information and publicly releasing their reports and evidence. The pinnacle of all public inquiries are Royal Commissions, which have wide ranging investigative powers and which can compel people to appear before them. Both are an integral and ever-growing part of how Australian Governments tackle complex issues and policy questions, but their operation and role has seldom received adequate analysis. This is something that is changing with the release of the Second Edition of Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries in Australia by public policy expert Dr Scott Prasser.

In this discussion Dr Prasser elaborates on some of the most important public inquiries from the Menzies era, how they directly shaped Menzies’s policymaking, and why Menzies was more selective in his use of them than many modern prime ministers. Key inquiries from the era include the Murray Report on Universities which was pivotal in informing Menzies’s sweeping reforms to tertiary education, the Royal Commission on Espionage which was formed in response to the Petrov defection and which was one of the most controversial and politically charged Commissions in Australian political history, and the Vernon Economic Inquiry instigated by Country Party Leader Black Jack McEwen and which Menzies scuttled.

Dr Scott Prasser is the author of Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries in Australia. He has worked in Federal and State governments in senior research and policy roles and was the inaugural Executive Director of the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University. Scott was a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He is the editor of the Australian Biographical Monographs series produced by Connor Court Publishing, and he wrote the monograph for Menzies entitled Man or Myth (2020).