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Introducing Valedictory Lecture by Peter Shergold
February 8 February 2008
Good afternoon everyone. On behalf of the Australian Public Service Commission, I’m extremely pleased to welcome you all here for a very special event— this afternoon’s Secretaries Valedictory lecture by Dr Peter Shergold, on his retirement today as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
From time to time the Commission hosts these special lectures by Secretaries. Our aim is to invite selected retiring Secretaries to give us their reflections on their careers and their suggestions on the way forward for the Australian Public Service.
The size of our audience today and the fact that we have public service leaders from Australia and New Zealand, highlights that this is indeed a very special event. The retirement from the public service of a leader who will leave an indelible mark on the nation—a man who, for the last 20 years, has inspired, entertained, and won the respect of all in the public service who have worked with him (and many who have not had that pleasure), as well as Ministers and Prime Ministers at home and abroad.
An ardent advocate of change and a self-described ‘public service tragic’, Peter’s career has been varied, colourful, highly productive, and marked by truly impressive achievements.
So where do we start? ………Crawley perhaps.
Crawley in Sussex England possibly isn’t the most exciting of birth places. Derived from the Anglo-Saxon expression for ‘a crow-infested clearing’, it is now right next to Gatwick airport and its website claims ‘there is loads to do in Crawley provided you only want to get drunk or fit’. It can however rightly claim: ‘Peter Shergold was born here in 1946’.
In 1946, it was described as causing a ‘burst of excitement…like the nuclear device’. Although this burst of excitement was for the birth of the bikini, rather than the birth of Peter Shergold, it was a momentous year that also saw the birth of the Xerox machine, the clothes drier and the United Nations General Assembly.
His grandfather drove buses in Brighton and his father rose through the ranks of the Royal Navy. Although he has said that he always wanted to be an archaeologist, as a student in Hull, Peter had more romantic ambitions—to be a poet. Apparently he thought better of it—though, you never know, we may get a lecture today in verse. You can never be sure with Peter. His creative surprises are certainly part of his charm.
He did however turn to less romantic pursuits and received a First Class Honours in Politics and American Studies from Hull in 1968, and then an M.A. in History at the University of Illinois in 1969.
He migrated to Australia to take up a lectureship at the University of New South Wales in 1972, completing his PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics in 1976 with a thesis entitled The standard of life of manual workers in the first decade of the twentieth century: a comparative study of Birmingham UK and Pittsburgh USA.
Then, in 1985 he was appointed Head of the Department of Economic History at UNSW.
This period of academia was an extremely productive one for Peter. During this time he wrote Working Class Life: The American Standard in Comparative Perspective (1982), edited The Great Immigration Debate (1985), and was a major contributor to Convict Workers (1988). He also authored numerous academic articles on a variety of historical subjects, ranging from loan sharks in Pittsburgh, utopian economists, wages, fertility, American spectator sports, the Australian wine industry, convicts, English migration and many more subjects.
He has also taught at the University of Illinois, Southampton University, the London School of Economics and Pennsylvania State University, and has twice been a Fulbright Scholar.
I first met Dr Peter Shergold in 1987 when he joined the Australian Public Service to establish the Office of Multicultural Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Department under the Hawke Government. He established an office that was to be a ‘bridge-builder’, linking community and government to further the policy of multiculturalism. He then conceived and developed the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. He became a Deputy Secretary in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1990 and was described by Mike Codd, the then Secretary of PM&C, as a ‘significant influence’.
From 1991, Peter went on to head the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), remaining there following the transition to Prime Minister Paul Keating and through the early days of the second Keating government. This, one might say, was the beginning of a calling.
These were highly significant times for ATSIC. It played a key role in the development of the Native Title Act 1993 and, after its passage, in relation to funding for native title claims. Peter had a major role in leading these changes, managing the Commonwealth’s response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the administration of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Fund, the Indigenous Land Corporation, measures to further the achievement of social justice for Indigenous people and an expanded CDEP scheme.
Peter has described these years at ATSIC as ‘relentlessly difficult’. He recently observed:
…Sometimes when people say it must be tough being head of PM&C, or it must have been tough when you were working in DEWR during the waterfront dispute, I disagree. I always think that if you’ve done three and a half years trying to administer aboriginal affairs, you can take anything – it is a genuinely difficult area. You know that people’s lives depend upon it … It’s a very emotionally fraught area and it is certainly a great school for toughening you up.
At the end of his term, in July 1994, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Comcare where he raised the profile of the organisation’s role for occupational health and safety and introduced new initiatives relating to the management of stress claims and rehabilitation.
Dr Peter Shergold became Public Service Commissioner from 1995 to 1998, transforming the Commission into a more client-focused, service-oriented agency. Peter played a leading role in promoting legislative and administrative reform in the Australian Public Service in the early years of the Howard Government.
One of the remarkable achievements of that time was the production of what was fondly termed ‘baby buttercup’. Peter was charged with reforming the 1922 Public Service Act—a cumbersome and, by the 1990s, a weighty Act of over 520 pages that had been amended over 100 times—and to secure the passage of a radically simplified and ‘small’ Act.
Although this work led only to the Public Service Bill of 1997 and not at that time its successful passage to an Act, all the major work had been done—providing a statement of the key APS Values; devolution of most employment powers to agency heads; establishing a specific Code of Conduct for public servants; anti-discrimination provisions; provisions for the internal and external review of workplace grievances; and new protections for whistleblowers. As we know the Bill did not pass, but all of this work led ultimately to the Public Service Act we know and love today, the 1999 Act.
And this, for those of you who don’t recall, is “baby buttercup” (Lynelle shows draft Act), described at the time as ‘one of the great pieces of government employee relations legislation—simple, clear and powerful—and it is a credit to the Public Service Commissioner, Peter Shergold, who has been its driving force’.
In 1998 Peter was appointed Secretary of the Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business which, following the election that same year, was expanded to become the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. He served in that capacity for almost four years during very challenging times as the Government sought further amendments to its workplace relations legislation, provision for non-union as well as union workplace agreements, the abolition of the CES and the creation of Employment National and the Job Network, and the process of waterfront reform.
In January 2002, he became Secretary of the Department of Education, Science and Training where he took a leading role in developing the Government’s reform strategy for higher education. Although his time there was brief, in one way it was legendary. The story of Peter dressed in tights as Peter Pan in the Department’s Christmas pantomime is well known. It set a high benchmark for Christmas parties that apparently caused some anxiety in PM&C when Peter became Secretary there in January 2003.
Peter’s time in the top job can be divided into the challenges of developing and implementing Government policy and his leadership of the public service. I won’t go into the detail of the Government policy issues Peter has mastered. A brief summary would include climate change, skills and training, the national reform agenda, the water crisis, emissions trading, APEC, Commonwealth–state relations, avian flu pandemic preparations, Indigenous affairs and the Northern Territory intervention, and many many more.
In all this work Peter has invested enormous effort into ensuring whole-of-government approaches. Alan Fels has noted ‘Besides being a man of action, he is a thinker, with an academic background and a strong ability to conceptualise public administration issues which has helped him form a very broad vision of a whole-of-government approach’.
With his strong support for the notion of a single senior executive service, Peter has fostered a new culture of people working across bureaucratic demarcations. He has encouraged a more collegiate approach both within his own department and across the public service. He's engendered a more common culture, rather than different approaches being taken by different departments.
And on the employment of women in senior positions, Peter, as advisor to the Prime Minister, played a vital role in ensuring women of talent and strong leadership reached the highest levels of the public service. He is a champion amongst us.
He has enthusiastically pursued his interest in the management of the APS through chairmanship of the Management Advisory Committee, and, as we well know, spoken extensively and entertainingly on public service issues. As Public Service Commissioner, I am particularly grateful, not only for the way he has championed the public service and the work of all its employees over the years, but also for his personal support to me in this role and his respect and ongoing support for the Commission and its work.
Dr Shergold is Chair of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Board and is also a member of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) Board. He has served on the Executive Council of the Eastern Regional Organisation for Public Administration (EROPA). In November 2005 he was made a Fellow of The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA). He was on the Board of Centrelink from 1998–2002. From 2002-2003 he was a Board member of the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Dr Shergold received the Centenary Medal in 2001 for his service as Secretary of DEST.
He was appointed a Member in the Order of Australia (AM) on Australia Day 1996 for public service, with special mention also of his roles in Aboriginal and multicultural affairs.
Dr Shergold was promoted to a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC) on Australia Day 2007 for service to the community as a significant leader of changes and innovation in the public sector, particularly through the development and implementation of a whole-of-government approach to policy development and program delivery—an honour that he regards as his greatest achievement.
Dr Peter Shergold is an exceptional public servant and a credit to the Australian Public Service. He has managed to restore collegiality across a devolved system of agencies. He has run some very hard arguments with governments about things ranging from climate change through education to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policies. He has lived the example that the Public Service Act envisages that APS leaders will provide in terms of the values, the code of conduct, and people, policy and implementation leadership. And, he’s done it all with his very own kind of pizzazz.
On Monday, Dr Shergold will again become Professor Shergold. This time at the Centre for Social Impact at the University of New South Wales, and we wish him the very best of luck.
I’d now like to invite, Dr Peter Shergold to present his Secretaries Valedictory lecture.
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