Genuinely thought i would get something out of this subject, like... some inspiration to join the public policy making system - instead I got a taste of what it's like to have a subject that you don't care about (which for me really sucked because i like learning things!!!!) The two weekly lectures were both super rambly and I think could be condensed into one 2 hour long lecture - the main lecturer himself (Benjamin) was genuinely quite lovely and I think my highlights of his teachings were the practical examples he gave and his personal anecdotes. Alas for a subject about public policy making - you'd think we actually discuss and cover public policy examples (because that's what the subject is called right). The only time we saw any form of a public policy was in our assignments (which I'll get to in a sec), and it's a policy you have to write yourself lol! We didn't revise any previously failed policies, we didn't celebrate successful ones: it was really just a bunch of theoretical explanations and 'Oh yeah this policy happened' and that's it. The subject also put soo much effort into the first assignment, despite the second one weighing way more and having much more room to write things. I fear I didn't do as well as I'd hoped on either, but I think it's because I genuinely just didn't know what to write because we didn't look at practical applications. I also blame my tutor, who I was really disappointed by after having high hopes. My recommendation for the assignments if you do decide to do this mess of a subject is to pick a topic that you already have SOME solution for. It may not be best to pick a great issue and then struggle to find a solution and write something about it. I say it's a mess because we didn't get lecture slides in a timely manner, our template for our second assignment was massively delayed and our tutorials (at least mine) were super unproductive. It was essentially a tutor flexing their knowledge and skills onto us for one and a half hours- actually it wasn't even that long because every week they would leave 15 mins before class ended (and that's on top of the 5 minutes we get to change between classes, so 20 mins before the hour). If I had the chance to have picked a different subject, I totally would have. What the hell!

Interesting subject but I found the structure a bit disorganised. The lecture content is very different to the tutorials it almost feels like a separate course, the lectures are completely theory based and the tutorials focus on different policy topics each week. The assessments were challenging as it was not a traditional essay and there wasn't a lot of information on how to write them. My tutor was okay, most of our tutorials we were just put into small groups to discuss topics which made for good discussion but there wasn't much connection between the tutorials and the lecture content/theory which would have helped with the last assessment. The whole subject is targeted to people who want to work as a public servant (lecturer states this several times) I would only do this if that is your main interest/goal.

Subject was a bit messy- the content from lectures, tutorials and seminars were all different. BUT you will learn a lot from this subject, especially a practical understanding of how policy is implemented. The assessments are not standard arts essays, they are policy briefs/research papers. So it was a struggle to begin them but you will be provided with a very straight forward, comprehensive guide of what to write and how to format. Although it was intimidating (and I thought I was struggling all the way), I got myself a H1 for both assessment pieces. Tutorial topics are very interesting and grounds for excellent debate. Overall, POLS20008 is worthy of your time as a politics student - don't bother if it will be an elective or breath. The subject coordinator was an angel and I consider myself lucky I had her.

Interesting and informative class to learn about the Australian government. The two assessments that you will do for this subject are policy briefs, and there is not a lot of guidance on how to write them, which resulted in some really trash grades for a few people in my class :// Unfortunately the specific instructions only came after the assessments. Tutorials had some good discussions, but we didn't even look at a piece of Australian policy through out the entire course, which would have been really helpful

Interesting and good first look at what policy is all about. The tutor I had literally said to the class 'I don't want to be here' and was not enthusiastic or engaging at all in discussions. She had an attitude of just wanting to leave as soon as she arrived. This has nothing to do with the subject but just didn't enjoy the course as much because of it.