The British State intervened in the Port of London in 1800. It did so again a hundred years later by appointing a Royal Commission, which provided the basis for eventual reform in 1908. The immediate reason for the Royal Commission was a dock proposal to abolish free entry to docks by river. But the wider context was long-standing, loudly voiced, shipping company grievances about river governance, licensing of lighterage and compulsory pilotage. The Commission’s conclusion that London should have a port authority was generally accepted. However, issues of constitution and compensation bedevilled the Conservative attempt to legislate. In the event, it was a Liberal government, with all-party support, which established the Port of London Authority, effectively nationalising London’s port. In an ironic coda, the port unions soon discovered their new public employer to be a more formidable opponent than their dock company predecessors had ever been.

Chapter 6 argues that inquiries, whether traditional public inquiries, to more innovative and participatory forms of truth and reconciliation commissions, can enable episodic uses of power from victim-survivors and advocates, evidenced in the nature and extent of consultation and ownership of the process and the opportunity to engage with and influence the inquiry’s operations. Inquiries may shape the nature and function of the articulated emotions of victim-survivors but also have a significant emotional and potentially retraumatising effect for victim-survivors. The chapter argues that these episodic uses of power and experiences of emotional disclosure in well-designed inquiries or commissions will necessarily raise the expectations of victim-survivors for other elements of justice, including structural justice, to be addressed through and beyond other mechanisms of transitional justice.

Internal non-public service sources of policy advice cover parliamentary committees, public inquiries and other bodies that operate within the broader public sector. Some units have substantial independence, while others may be at the beck and call of ministers. The spectrum ranges from bodies located within government with permanent standing to those existing under ad hoc arrangements that may include external actors. Advice is distinguished by whether it is solicited or not, the former being commissioned by government (e.g. taskforces) and the latter being about the capacity to influence policy. Three categories of alternative policy advice within government are independent policy advisory bodies; agencies that report to parliament rather than the executive; and ad hoc entities that operate as extensions to government and comprise a range of government appointed inquiry forms.Each has changed with implications for the policy advisory system, although depoliticisation and politicisation are factors. The institutionalisation of independent standing bodies is notable. The trend to flexible instruments has allowed governments to reduce reliance on formal and independent public reviews. The expansion and contraction of alternative sources of advice has occurred over time and varies between countries, but the broad trends have been similar.

This chapter discusses how the argument for a right to equal pay for work of equal value started and how it developed. It starts by noting that equal pay was promised during the Great War and then discusses the promises to implement it as a right in legislation in the following years, the failures to fulfil those promises and false steps, until the right became established. It then discusses the current problems with that right. Overall it explains the refusal to make substantive comparisons between men’s and women’s work.

‘The times will suit me’, John Howard proclaimed some months after he won the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1985. He was convinced that Labor’s attempt to reconstruct the economy through an agreement with trade unions was doomed to fail, and expected a mounting crisis of national solvency that would turn voters to a statesman prepared, like Reagan or Thatcher, to apply the same reforming vigour to the labour market. On regaining the Liberal leadership a decade later, Howard played on the hardship inflicted by the recent recession: ‘The Australian people cannot understand why they should have to suffer the indignity, the denial and disappointment of a bare five minutes of economic sunlight’. Over the past decade, as one prime minister after another has had to introduce herself or himself to counterparts at international gatherings, Australia has gained the reputation of ‘the coup capital of the democratic world’. Each change of leadership is dressed up in policy differences that fail to hide the personal nature of the rivalry and the fickle loyalties of parliamentarians who switch their support according to calculations of the best chance of electoral success.