ABSTRACT
The initial responses to meta-regulation at community-political level that have just been explored in Chapter Three did not have a significant practical impact on setting the initial shape of the reform agenda. The real power, particularly initially, lay in the technical-bureaucratic facets of implementing the reform package. This chapter details the institutional context, routines, practices and choices of the network of central agency officials who were key to the implementation process.1 Consistently with the public choice perspective animating the reform package in Australia, the meta-regulatory institutions themselves were designed to be relatively insulated from democratic politics, reflecting anxiety that democratic politics are too likely to engender factionalism when operating in closed arenas. This independence accorded interpretive power to a network of economically qualified central agency officials. However the institutional autonomy of this network was only relative: politics did still play a role, both intended and unintended.
