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Stephen Mills |
| Postgraduate degree you are enrolled for |
PhD |
| Supervisor |
Prof Rod Tiffen |
| When started |
2008 |
| Full time or part time |
Part time |
| Profile of yourself |
Stephen Mills is a corporate affairs and issues management specialist with more than 20 years experience in politics, journalism and corporate public affairs. He managed external relationships for leading financial services companies including ASX Ltd, Citigroup and Bankers Trust; prior to that he worked as a speechwriter to Prime Minister RJL Hawke (1986-91) and as a journalist and editor in the Fairfax newspaper group. He has a Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a BA (Hons) from University of Melbourne. He is the author of The New Machine Men (1986) and The Hawke Years (1993).
Stephen is attached as a lecturer to the Graduate School of Government and the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He serves as chairman of the Australian Business Foundation, a non-profit research organisation and is a director of ShareGift Australia.
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| Thesis topic or title |
‘Planning for Victory’: Changing Campaign Practices of Australia’s major Federal political parties, 1972-2007 |
| Information about your thesis |
Party head offices play a central role in planning and managing Australian election campaigns. While grass roots membership of Australia’s two major political parties has steadily declined over several decades, the parties’ head offices have grown in size, resources, influence, and professionalism. Yet previous studies of Australian political parties have tended to overlook or ignore the role of the head office. Who works in a party head office and what do they do? What are their backgrounds and skills? What does planning and running an election campaign involve and how has this changed over recent decades? What is the relationship between the employed party officials and the external professional consultants they engage: who has the more influential voice? In particular, who heads the head office? The research seeks to address such questions through interviews with those individuals whose experience and knowledge makes them uniquely well placed to provide answers. |
