‘Changing fortunes: a history of the Australian Treasury’

Paul Tilley’s book is a ‘non-commissioned history’ of Treasury, the equivalent for an institution of an ‘unauthorized biography’ of an individual. It differs from the earlier history of Treasury by Whitwell (1986); studies of Treasury departments in the UK by Rosevear (1969) and Peden (2000) and New Zealand by McKinnon (2003); histories of the Reserve Bank of Australia by Giblin (1951), Butlin (1983), Schedvin (1992) and Cornish (2010, and forthcoming); and the history of the Prime Minister’s department by Weller, Scott, and Stevens (2011); which were all written by academics. Tilley instead was a public servant for 32 years, mostly in Treasury which he joined in 1985.