This article considers Australia's ecologically sustainable development (ESD) trajectory through the prism of ecological modernisation (EM). As a ‘meta policy’ ESD offered the important animating principles and wide-ranging objectives of environmental reform, with the operational specifics provided by EM theory and practice. EM proposes two key interrelated strategies for achieving sustainable development: the modernisation of production and its practices and the modernisation of the political sector and its institutions. This article focuses on the latter, particularly on the political commitment to ESD at the political elite level. In considering key moments in Australia's political modernisation story, the article finds that, despite important developments and innovations, the ESD and EM experiment in Australia has had limited success in significantly and permanently shifting the government business relations of sustainability in ways that would respect the spirit and goals of ESD. This can in part be explained by the limited capacity of a reform process such as EM to shift the political dynamics of ESD's environment–development relationship.