Few within government would deny that evidence-based policy-making is important to achieving good outcomes.  Australia’s history provides ample support for that. But it is also apparent that practice over the past decade has fallen short of the ideals espoused. 

In this, the third Alf Rattigan Lecture, Professor Gary Banks will consider why that has been so and what might be done, at the political and bureaucratic levels, to moderate the increasing tendency for policy to be made 'on the run’.