Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence: I would like to support the remarks which have been made by the Minister for Human Services in relation to the impending retirement of Helen Williams. It is important, when people who have served so long as a professional public servant leave office, that the parliament, in the cases of outstanding careers, acknowledges that transition. The fact that Helen Williams has been so long a secretary of Commonwealth departments in multiple capacities is itself worthy of note. What is doubly worthy of note, as the Minister for Human Services indicated before, is that she was in fact the first woman to be a secretary of a Commonwealth government department.

This is actually very important in the Public Service when you look across the ranks of the SES and see how the composition of the APS has changed in terms of the representation of women at senior executive service levels. When I first entered the Public Service 25 years or so ago, the number of women who were SES officers was very, very thin indeed. Now I am advised—and I stand to be corrected on this—that we are looking at something like a third of SES officers across the APS who are women. That figure we hope to see improve over time. The contribution which Helen Williams has made as a role model and, as the Minister for Human Services said before, as an encourager of young women and other young officers seeking to carve out a career in the APS should be noted.

The other thing I would say, on a personal note, is that I have worked with Helen as a public servant in the past as well, except we were on different sides of the table. I was working for the Queensland government and she was representing the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in those days. In those days, the states were right and the Commonwealth was wrong. These days the tables have turned! From my earliest experience in working with her as a colleague on complex questions of Commonwealth-state relations, she demonstrated all the professionalism that we associate with the independence of the Australian Public Service.

The last thing I would say is that what we see in Helen Williams is, I believe, a model for the independence of the Australian Public Service that we wish to see evolve into the future as well. Whatever happens in this place with changes of government from time to time, we wish to see that the culture of our independent Public Service is reinforced, strengthened and perpetuated into the future. That is something which I believe the outgoing Secretary of the Department of Human Services has reflected with great distinction in her career so far and therefore I believe represents a symbol of what needs to occur and continue to occur in the future as well. Helen, we wish you all the best in the next stage of your professional life.

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