Anthony Albanese appoints Glyn Davis to head the public service

Anthony Albanese has named a change agent who shook up the nation’s top-ranked uni to head the federal public service.

Anthony Albanese has named a change agent who helped purge the bureaucracy of a corruption-mired state and shook up the ­nation’s top-ranked university to head the federal public service, in an important marker to how the new Prime Minister intends to govern.

Announcing the appointment of Glyn Davis as secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Albanese said on Monday the one-time academic had “a deep understanding of public policy and will work with my gov­ernment in bringing about positive change for the Australian people”.

He takes over in June from Phil Gaetjens, a former chief of staff to Scott Morrison who was promoted to the PM&C role in 2019.

Professor Davis, 62, spent nearly three decades honing his reform credentials in the Queensland public sector and at the helm of Brisbane’s Griffith University and the University of Melbourne – where as vice-chancellor in 2005-18 he upended how the venerable institution ran and delivered higher education.

It points to a willingness by Mr Albanese to tackle the mach­inery of government with his incoming team, a potentially risky course for a prime minister leading a minority government or, at best, one with a knife-edge buffer in federal parliament.

Professor Davis, however, is no stranger to political tightropes. Or to speaking his mind.

Delivering last year’s Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture at the University of Melbourne, he went after Mr Morrison for rejecting key recommendations of an inquiry into the public service chaired by former Telstra CEO David Thodey to halt departmental restructures, strengthen the independence of senior public servants and “bring accountability” to ministerial advisers.

“What was once a partnership to govern between ministers and public service experts is now described as a command and control system,” said Professor Davis, who had sat on the review panel.

“The minister and their advisers are firmly in control, and the public service becomes the delivery arm of political goals.

“The assumption of a public service which can endure through changes of government, a public service which acts as a deep well of collective experience and intellectual capital for the nation, is lost in this narrow formulation advanced by the prime minister.”

Professor Davis has been a mentor to leading Labor figures including Jim Chalmers, to whom he gave his first full-time job in 1999 while director-­general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet under Peter Beattie.

Fresh out of university, a 21-year-old Dr Chalmers became Professor Davis’ “main offsider” in the engine room of the state government.

“Glyn was so ­generous … he’s one of those truly selfless people you ­occasionally get a helping hand from in life,” Dr Chalmers told The Australian.

Earlier, he was a key member of Wayne Goss’s Public Sector Management Commission, the “razor gang” that cut a swath through Queensland’s public service after Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s National Party government was discredited by Tony Fitzgerald’s corruption inquiry and voters lowered the boom in 1989.

For better or worse – the legacy of the PSMC purge is still contested by the conservative side of politics in Queensland – the Joh-era bureaucracy was turned upside down, as new departmental and government structures were created by the reformist Goss Labor government.

A key initiative, adopted from Nick Greiner’s Liberals in NSW, was the office of cabinet headed by none other than future prime minister Kevin Rudd, a clearing house for policy and all-of-government decision-making.

Professor Davis became director-general of the office when Mr Rudd left to chase a seat in federal parliament and the Goss majority was destroyed in the 1995 state election; the government fell after a by-election loss seven months later.

Mr Beattie credits Professor Davis with driving his signature “Smart State” program to supercharge the biomedical and university research sectors after Labor returned to power in Queensland in 1998, initially in minority.

“Glyn is the best administrator in the country,” the four-time state election winner said on Monday.

“What he did for Smart State as head of the Premier’s Department in Queensland and what he did at the University of Melbourne puts him on the world stage.

“It’s a brilliant decision by Anthony Albanese to bring him in.”

At the University of Melbourne – which consistently features in international ranking tables as Australia’s best placed university – Professor Davis radically changed the degree structure to require students to first choose from a handful of generalist bachelor degrees before undertaking specialist post-grad training in a field such as medicine or law.

While this increased the time students spent at university, he argued it turned out better, more rounded graduates.

Britain’s Oxford University was so impressed it tried to recruit him as vice-chancellor, an approach he cheerfully declined before he went on to run the Paul Ramsay Foundation, Australia’s largest philanthropic trust.

CEO of the Group of Eight universities Vicki Thomson, who has long worked with Professor Davis, said his appointment “augers well for the future of the government and for public policy, in which he has deep expertise”.

“He has a history of running complex organisations, including universities, and has a track record of being considered and thoughtful in his deliberation which is particularly important in these uncertain times,” Dr Thomson said.

Mr Albanese thanked Mr Gaetjens for his service both as outgoing PM&C secretary and across a “distinguished” 45-year public service career.

Professor Davis’s five-year appointment starts on June 6.

Additional reporting: Tim Dodd