Stephen Mills is the author of the pioneering study The New Machine Men (1986). He also wrote The Hawke Years (1993), dealing with the prime ministership of Bob Hawke, for whom he worked as speechwriter from 1986 to 1991. He is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney, and was a Harkness Fellow (1983–85) and graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a former journalist and editor with Fairfax.