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MS THOMAS: Now we’re going to hear from two speakers and then have our panel discussion.

I will answer one question – I feel very awkward doing it but I am getting lots of texts asking where you can buy my book which is very nice of you to ask. The easiest thing to do would be to just go to my website which is nellythomas.com if you want to buy Some Girls. You can do that, under no obligation, but if you want to off you go. Could that be any more awkward?

All right, Kylie I’m going to have to get better at that, aren’t I? Our next speaker is Kylie Kilgour. Kylie has been the Deputy Secretary Criminal Justice Strategy and Coordination since May 2017. Prior to joining the department in 2016, Kylie worked in Sydney at the Redfern Legal Centre and in the UK on a number of Youth at Risk programs. Kylie now calls Melbourne home where she lives with her partner and children.

I should say in relation to Kylie’s bio and of course all the other ones I have read out, all of our speakers have much more extensive bio’s, we’re just not reading them out today. I know that all of their information is in your programs so please have a look at those.

For now, please join me in welcoming our next speaker, Kylie Kilgour.

MS KILGOUR: Thanks very much Nelly.

I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we’re meeting today, the people of the Kulin nation and I would particularly like to pay my respects to their elders past and present and any elders in the room today.

I would also like to acknowledge any Koori women public servants that we might have in the room today. I’m hoping there’s a couple

Empowering Women – Part Three Page 1

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of you particularly from my home department. We certainly in the Department of Justice are seeing some amazing Koori women coming up through the ranks and I thought it would be good to just acknowledge that they have a really important role to play in the VPS.

Today I’ve been asked to talk about my career journey. I’m going to really take you through basically from when I started my career up until May this year when I became a Deputy Secretary and give you a bit of insight into what it’s like to be a Deputy Secretary now.

This is very much my personal story so I don’t claim to be the perfect public servant, I don’t claim to have had the perfect career. Take what you want from what I’ve got to say. Hopefully there’s some things that I say that will resonate with you. Hopefully there will also be some things where you say “god, I would never do anything like what she’s just done.”

I think also I came down in time, luckily, to hear Anna speak. I feel a bit like I’m going to be repeating what Anna had to say. I think that’s kind of interesting that she comes from the retail world and I come from the public service world but our experiences, I guess as women becoming leaders is pretty similar.

Hopefully it won’t be too boring, it won’t be too repetitive and hopefully you will get something out of it. There’s also time for questions as well so please be Tweeting or whatever you’re doing to send those questions to Nelly. I look forward to hearing who I look like.

To begin, I guess what I would say is that I’m a bit of an accidental public servant. I didn’t set out to join the public service or to become a deputy secretary. I also wasn’t even sure at the start of my degree that I even really wanted to be a lawyer which is what my professional qualification ended up being in.

I went to uni to fulfil a bunch of expectations, family expectations really, about being the first woman to go to university. I was lucky enough to get in to law, which at that stage, we were the first intake in a law school where we were 51 percent women. I guess I’ve kind of come up through a university experience that was probably a bit different to maybe some of us in the room. I joined university at a stage where it felt like women had an equal right to be front


and centre in public life.

So, sometimes I think that’s actually not a lot of career navigation really is it, because I just kind of ended up here. Hopefully as I talk about what I’ve done, you will see some common threads and some of what Anna said about picking what you’re passionate about and being clear about your purpose and then sticking to it. I guess that is one of the things I would say is that I have really tried to do in my career.

Way back in the early 1980’s I studied Arts/Law at University of New South Wales. My Arts major is actually in performing arts which actually really comes in handy in the public service at times, but UNSW Law School, where I ended up really practicing my craft, at that time really focused on the intersection between public, social and economic policy and the law. We were really encouraged to think critically about how the law becomes the way it and how we thought the law should be if it’s real purpose is to ensure justice is done.

In particular, I had a criminal justice tutor, a female called Jenny Bargen who is still around these days and is a great criminal justice lecturer and academic. I remember her introducing us to the concept of miscarriages of justice including some real ones that were actually happening in New South Wales at the time and she encouraged us to get involved in campaign work to do that’s called overturning wrongful convictions.

So, at the age of about 20 by this stage, I got involved in some of that campaign work. Really, I was kind of hooked from that moment on into criminal justice system and criminal justice reform.

By my third year of university I had, via that network of criminal justice activists, started volunteering in a legal centre in Sydney called Redfern Legal Centre. I was doing that just one day a week.

For those of you not from Sydney, Redfern Legal Centre was the first community legal centre set up in New South Wales. It was set up in the early 1970’s so by the time I got there in the mid 1990’s, it was full of mostly women lawyers, really clever women lawyers who really were focused on the role that they could play in protecting the rights of vulnerable and disadvantaged people.


For those of you who – I mean, most people know Redfern as a place where there’s a large aboriginal community, it also has one of the biggest social housing communities in New South Wales so it was full of issues.

It was a really good place as a young female lawyer to really find your feet and to be taught how to do really important casework protecting people’s rights.

I absolutely know that really, that volunteering experience and that first sort of foray into that world really kind of set me on the career path that I ended up in today.

Then I found myself in my fourth year, the legal centre actually got some new funding to set up a tenancy service. It was nothing to do with criminal justice, but a couple of the women in the legal centre saw promise in me and they took me aside one day and said “hey, do you want to come and run the service? I’ve set this new tenancy service up for us.”, and I thought, I know nothing about this, what are they asking me for? I thought, well bugger it, they’re asking me. The idea of having a full-time wage was a pretty attractive idea by that stage as well.

So, I dropped back to part-time study to take on that job of setting up that tenancy service and I did that for about five years. Really, again, I had this amazing experience of starting up a brand-new service, running a telephone hotline, doing community legal education all over inner city Sydney and then eventually working on law reform campaigns particularly around the intersection between family violence and tenancy. I guess that’s where I got my criminal justice twist back in to my housing world.

I did some work that Victoria now actually has the laws that I kind of wrote back then that I thought New South Wales should have. New South Wales never implemented them, shame on them. However, some very clever female lawyers down in Victoria did pick up my report and I was very pleased to see that by the time I came back to Australia, having gone to London for a while, Victoria had actually implemented something that I had written back in the mid-1990’s.

I spent about four years doing that tenancy work and I have to say, after about four years of doing that work you really do start to kind of burn out. There’s only so many times you can explain to


someone how to get their rental bond back before you start to go a little bit mad and you start to not care anymore.

So, I really knew I had to step back and think, well, what am I going to do next? I’d kind of exhausted the learning I could get out of running that service.

For me, for a range of reasons, what I decided to do – I was 27 and I was still able to get a working holiday visa to go to the UK. So, I took a year out and again, the women in the legal centre supported me to take a years’ leave without pay to go to London and find out about the law over there and to check out what my job opportunities were over there.

I went for a year and I had a deal with the legal centre that I would go for a year and I had to come back for a year to basically pay them back for having held the job open for me.

To cut a very complicated story short, one year turned into eight and it turned into a husband and two daughters, their names are Esther and Iris.

While I worked in London I did youth rights research and I did legal aid policy work. I was also doing the hard yards of small kids, a very long way from home. It was a pretty tough time but I was still doing interesting work that was deeply connected to the sort of work that I started doing at Redfern. I think that kind of kept me going, even through those hard times of small children and not a lot family support structures.

You know, I couldn’t ring my mum, ever. Although, I did actually ring her one time. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning because my daughter Esther at that stage was about two years old and we were walking home from childcare. In London, it gets dark at about three o’clock, so this would have been about five o’clock. She used to insist at that stage on - I would pick her up from childcare and she would want to drink her juice bottle whilst walking along the road, like this. I would always say to her please don’t do that. Either sit in the pram or put the juice down while you walk because you’re going to trip over. “No mummy, I’m right, I’m right, I’m right.” She’s still like that.

So, she’s walking along and inevitably she trips up the curb and


split her lip very, very badly. My husband was in Paris at the time so I was like, well, he’s no use to me. A very nice man came running out of a garage with a bunch of tissues for me and I have this two year old child who is bleeding profusely. I’m in London thinking I don’t even know where the nearest hospital is really, we don’t have a car and I don’t know how to get there and I remember rushing my daughter home and ringing my mum in Australia because she’s a nurse and saying “mum, what do I do?” She said “um, well, offer her some chocolate,” I was like, “how is that a medical intervention mum, shouldn’t I be getting stitches?” She’s like “no, no, you can’t stitch lips. All you can do is put ice on it, compress it as hard as you can and if she takes chocolate you know she’s alright.” Sure enough, I said to Esther “would you like a bit of chocolate?” and she was like “yes, please mummy.”

We did spend a long time inserting chocolate whilst holding ice but she had recovered by the next morning. Babies are so amazing the way they sort of heal overnight. By the next morning all she had was this puffy little lip and you wouldn’t have known that I thought she needed emergency surgery.

It was tough. That’s the only kind of assistance I was getting from my mother at that point in time.

So, I did that for about five years and by the end of five years I was frozen solid. I had a vitamin D deficiency. I think I had Seasonal affective disorder and probably a bit of postnatal depression mixed in there as well. I started saying to my husband that I thought it was really time to go back to Australia, I need some sunshine. It took about another two years to convince him that that would be the right thing for him to do as well.

By late 2006 we moved the family to Melbourne and I got a job in the civil law policy part of the Department of Justice. Again, not criminal justice.

Why did I do that? Well, it was another interesting story about women and how we support each other.

I have this very old friend who is the lady that gave me the first job at Redfern Legal Centre. She had a very old friend who I had supported. We ended up working in London together for a period in time. She came back to Australia before me. I helped her find a


job when she came back to Australia, so she basically kind of introduced me to some people here in Melbourne including the director of the Civil Law Policy unit who had some jobs going. He said to me “well, you sound like you’ve got a really interesting CV, why don’t you apply for a couple of these jobs and we’ll see how you go.”

I got an interview and it was legal profession regulation. I was like, oh god, I’m not sure I want to do that, it sounds really boring. Again, I kind of thought about what I could learn from that role and I decided what was exciting about it, even though it is legal profession regulation, was it would be amending laws and it would be working with all the kind of legal system stakeholders in Victoria. I could see it was a good opportunity to just get my feet firmly on the ground in the industry that I wanted to participate in.

That is where I started in the Department of Justice. I’ve been in the Department of Justice now for 11 years and I’ve worked in a lot of different jobs in that time and I’ll talk to you a bit about those different jobs.

The next twist in the sort of personal-professional career is that one night in late 2007, my husband was upstairs making sure the kids didn’t drown themselves in the bath and his phone rang. I can’t remember why exactly but we must have been expecting the phone to ring. It was one of those odd times where I answered my husband’s phone because we normally don’t do that to each other.

It was Julia Gillard. Hello Julia. She had just become Deputy Prime Minister and she was ringing to ask my husband would he like a social policy job in her new Deputy PM’s office.

I remember she said to me “could I speak to Tom?” and I said, “he’s just with the kids in the bath”. She said “Oh, I don’t want to disturb the kids in the bath,” I said “no, no, I think I can disturb him for you.” That’s the first thing I said to Julia Gillard.

Anyway, so that job offer was an amazing opportunity for my husband and we had to think really carefully about if we could make that work, would it involve working in Canberra?

We decided basically that we would do that but we also decided we wouldn’t move the family to Canberra to make that happen. We


made the decision that I would stay doing my job. We had just bought a house, the kids were just settled and we basically just described him as a fly-in-fly-out dad.

We thought we were going to do that for about maybe two or three years but as you all know Julia Gillard’s story, she became the Prime Minister and he stuck with her through all that time. So, I had six years of no partner pretty much from Sunday night until Thursday or Friday night.

Many of my friends and family thought I was crazy to agree to that arrangement. Many people suggested I should move the family to Canberra to support him or face an inevitable marriage breakdown which was the way it was put to me, which was very supportive.

My response to this was well, I am supporting him by you know, I was working four days a week by that stage. I’m working part-time, I’m taking on the brunt of the parental responsibilities while he goes to Canberra and that’s how I’m supporting him but I don’t need to drop everything and follow him around. I’ve got my own career, I’m doing my own stuff.

During that time, I progressed into VPS 6 jobs, so into a program management role in the courts and tribunals unit of the department. Then I became an assistant director of programs and strategy and then a director of courts policy. So, I spent a lot of time in and around courts. I guess that’s the other opportunity that I’ve had in that six-year period whilst my husband was away, doing what he was doing which was to get this really deep and rich experience working around courts. It’s something which I would encourage anyone who is working in the justice system to do. You really need to understand the courts, they are a very interesting organism.

Late 2010, as we all know, Julia lost her job and so did my husband. He came back from Canberra and basically, to quote my children, sat around in his undies for the next six months getting over it. Again, he needed that time out. You do after jobs like, but that was really the beginning of a shift for us.

I took on the baton of working more hours and he now worked a four-day week with a bit of consultancy on the side. He is now doing things like he’s the president of the girl’s netball club, he runs them to their music lessons. He’s responsible for their dental


appointments and their doctors’ appointments but for some reason I still end up being the one having to take them because they just don’t trust him to get it right.

That then allowed me from sort of 2013 to become the Executive Director of the Office of the Secretary where I took on responsibility for ministerial services, corporate support for our regional officers, a lot of law reform reviews of various tragedies that had happened in the criminal justice system, the response to the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence.

I spent four years doing that job. Again, it’s not all criminal justice but there was enough of a lick of criminal justice in it that I got that passion still kind of met but I was getting all these other skills that I needed to learn to be a good public servant.

I’m a new Deputy Secretary in that I was appointed in May this year. I’m now responsible for leading the justice portfolio - there’s 111 family violence reforms so that’s a huge program of work that we’re doing - child sex abuse reforms, bail reforms and planning for the future of the criminal justice system.

What I would say about my work now is although I say the business model for the criminal justice system should be to put ourselves out of business, that isn’t quite what’s happening right now. We’re in a really rapid and dynamic reform period that’s really stretching people and institutions every day.

On top of that, it’s an area of life where, unfortunately, bad things happen. When that happens, the community expects a pretty instant reaction from the government and that involves the public service really swinging into action.

These day what you’ll find me doing is spending a lot of my time coordinating reform activity across multiple business units across our department, across all the justice institutions and within our central agency. So, there’s a bit of a joke going on at the moment that I can’t have a meeting with less than 40 people in the room. That’s how complex the work is that we’re doing in justice at the moment.

Unfortunately, some of this work is really driven by crises that occur and so it’s under extreme time pressure which can be emotionally


and physically taxing for everyone involved. You’ve got to pay attention to that as well. If I think about you know, after Bourke Street and you know, myself and a team of people basically worked from that Friday afternoon until the Monday after with very little sleep, lots of questions, lots of ideas about what can we do about bail.

People really pulled together in those moments as well but then it was really important to have that sort of reflection afterwards and time out for everybody because everybody was completely exhausted.

Again, the work that I do now isn’t all negative. If I think about the family violence reform work that Victoria is doing at the moment, we’re leading the world. What’s not to like about keeping women and children safe? It’s really great opportunities that I’m getting.

In terms of what my approach has been over the 23 years I’ve been working, I summarise it down into four key things.

I think about my career as a marathon, not as a sprint.

I’ve used flexible working since 2000 in one form or another. Flexible working isn’t new, it’s been around for a long time. It really helps.

I’ve made a network of supported and talented people, especially in my current department.

If you’re like me and have kids the work involved in bringing them up is just as important as the work I get paid for. So, pacing my career to account for what they need from me has probably been more important.

Just to drill into those four points in a little more detail, when I started out in my career – that’s what I did in a list. It’s called What Kylie Did because my daughter Iris loves those What Katy Did books. She listens to them every night as she’s going to bed unfortunately on her iPod a little bit loud. It keeps me awake.

So, I guess this has been my passion. The thing that has really driven me is this idea of using the law for good not evil, which is probably why I’ve ended up in public service land, not corporate


law.

What I mean by that is that I wanted to use law as a tool to help people have better lives, particularly to protect people from being unfairly treated and I wanted to do work where I could see I was making change to the law as well.

Translating that into a career journey, hopefully what you can see from that list is not a kind of random ‘she went to Sydney, then she went to London, then she came to Melbourne’. It’s actually been a deliberate kind of strategy starting with that grassroots experience in a community legal centre and moving my way up to very high-end government.

I’ve kept my original aim of using the law for good, not evil central to every role I’ve done but I’m now much more than a lawyer. In each job, I’ve pushed myself to take on new roles and new subject matter so I’ve been continuously learning new skills.

Public servant things like writing regulatory impact statements, I never wanted to do it but I highly recommend it as a skill to get under your belt. Managing program budgets, again, I don’t like money but it’s a really important skill to have as a senior public servant. Running a business unit, sometimes I really don’t like managing people either because I’m a bit like Anna, I like everyone to be happy but I also want to see people do things. Again, it’s a really important skill to have. Writing state budget cases, you know, we spend a lot of time doing that in justice. Organisational restructures, significant state litigation, coordinating law reforms, all of that stuff I’ve been able to do through all of those different jobs that I’ve done.

It all adds up to a significant body of experience and you kind of use different bits of it at different times in the current job that I’m doing now.

I’m also really conscious that I’ve still got another 20 years of work. So, it definitely is a marathon, I’m only halfway through.

My other point about flexible working is just to explain how I’ve done it. When my kids were under two I worked two or three days a week and by the time they were both in primary school I moved up to four days a week. It wasn’t until my eldest daughter started


high school in 2013 that I went back to full-time work.

I think I’m a real-life example that staying connected to work through those baby and young children years pays off over the long term, even when you do part-time.

I think I’m also proof that as long as you do a good job, people don’t need you to always be in the office. These days I have a phone, I have an iPad, I have a laptop so I can just work anywhere, anytime and I do.

In the 24/7 world we live in, the idea that you only work nine to five in an office in a pretty unrealistic idea in modern society. What it’s really about is juggling the work and everything you’ve got to do at the same time.

The other thing that I would also just like to mention is that what has really been key to my career has been the support of the workplaces I have worked in, particularly the Department of Justice. I’m in a room full of public servants but I want to give a shout out to particularly my home department.

That department is a really good example in terms of that we’ve got lots of women in leadership roles who have actively have supported me to come up through the ranks and now it’s my turn to do that for other women.

There’s also heaps of talented women, some of whom I can see in the audience today who are my friends and who I am now supporting in their careers to progress. It’s also got lots of great men, some of whom are on a table over there, who absolutely – they treat me as their colleague, their supporting their own families through flexible working, they recognise the women in the department as being some of the smartest, most capable, hardest working and worth backing and developing people in the public service.

Some of that I think is because we’re a department that has led equal opportunity, we’ve led human rights, we’ve led family violence, we’ve led sexual assault law reforms. Consciousness of gender and inequality I would say is, in our department, is in its DNA. We don’t kind of bang on about it a lot, our department. I don’t know why but we’re very humble but it’s just a core part of


how we work.

At the risk of getting in trouble for poaching, I would also like to say that we’re always on the lookout for other talented women who want to come and work in justice so you can see me after.

My final reflection is that – what I said before about bringing up my kids is just as important as my paid work.

Research tells us that what we do with children in their first three to five years really sets their life course. Their attitude to educational attainment, what they can achieve through educational achievement is set by the family setting, not by what school they go to.

From my line of work, I can absolutely tell you that the best protective factor from getting kids not on the right side of the law is strong family boundaries and support structures.

Pacing my own career to make sure I could pay proper attention to my kid’s early development has absolutely been a core part of what I’ve been focused on. They’re 13 and 17 now and I can see that it has really paid off in spades.

For those of you in the audience who are at the beginning of those child rearing years, remember they will grow up. It doesn’t feel like it at the time. I remember some days it was a struggle to get to work on time, it was a struggle to get to childcare at the end of the day. I’ve never been sicker in my life than in those toddler years and don’t get me started about nits, although I’m very happy to take questions.

Now they’re taller than me, they get themselves to and from school. Like I said, their dad is the president of the netball club and he runs that side of their life. They still want me home every night to cook them dinner but sometimes they just have to accept it’s dads turn and it’s not beyond them to do it themselves as well. I really push for them to take those independent steps away from me.

Although I probably won’t achieve my personal aim of having them both in share housing by the time they start uni, I can see that they are moving away from me and they are becoming more comfortable and confident in their own independence as young women.


Absolutely I’ve used that sift to push myself into more senior and demanding roles and if they were here, they would say I’ve pushed it too far.

In fact, I’m pretty sure they lodged a complaint with Greg when he appointed me as a deputy secretary but as I often have to remind them, I’m not just their mum. It’s an important part of who I am but it’s not everything. Being a family full of girls, we also actively talk about equality at home as well. My girls know those fun facts that women are still doing more housework and more childcare, they’re getting paid less than men, they’re more at risk of violence in the home and they know it won’t change unless everyone, men and women together are deliberate about changing it. Recently, they both joined their high school feminist collective, so I have faith that maybe they’ve been listening to their mother.

As I said at the start, I hope sharing a little bit about my experience is helpful, but also like I said it’s very much about what has worked for me and I would be very interested in hearing any questions from the audience.

MS THOMAS: Thank you, Kylie. Nits, we’ll talk nits later. Let’s talk worms as well.

Okay, so we’re a bit over time so I’m only going to do one question. You got the most interesting questions I have to say, including questions like –

MS KILGOUR: Send them on the email and I’ll answer them later.

MS THOMAS: Including, what keeps you up at night? That was my favourite question of the day. I’m going to give you that to think about later, but a question I think was particularly pertinent was, you talked about the 24/7kind of life, you know the nine to five thing not really being realistic anymore and particularly they said Dep Sec, I’m assuming that means Deputy Secretary, is even less realistic.

So, the question was: how can you support other women whether they have children or not at that level to – work-life balance isn’t a phrase that we’re all that happy with, but life balance, how can you support people to achieve that at that level?


MS KALGOUR: Well, I have it at my level. So, I work flexible hours when I need to. Like, I’m not working a four-day week or anything like that anymore because you do just end up working the hours that you work in these jobs.

If I have to leave to take children to music concerts or dentist appointments or whatever it’s just part of the diary. I have a very good EA who makes sure I’m remembering all the things I need to do for the family as well as the work, it kind of swings in roundabouts –

MS THOMAS: Can I just ask you on that, so if you have to go to a dentist appointment or a concert or whatever, and this is something that a couple of people have talked about today, do you hide that or do you openly model that?

MS KALGOUR: Oh, I’ll say – like last night I said, “I’ve got to go now,” because I had to go to one kid’s music concert for a seven o’clock at Moonee Ponds. So, I had to leave at five o’clock because I had to pick her up, I had to get her some dinner, I had to get her there on time and I said that as I left. I said that I was going now and this is what I’m doing. If I’m going to be late in the morning because there is something at school, you know, like pupil of the week, we all have to go to those, don’t we?

Absolutely I will say I’m doing pupil of the week and I’ll be in at ten and then the day starts then.

MS THOMAS: Talking about women in leadership in a sentence, I’ve certainly seen some speakers say – not today – but say, if you’re going to do things related to children or even if you don’t have children, if you’re going to go and you’ve got a medical appointment or something, you don’t tell everyone that, you hide it. You’re opposite, you model self-care.

MS KALGOUR: Maybe I overshare. No, I think we all talk about that stuff in our workplace. I think it’s really healthy that everyone understands that we’re all juggling different – Emma, who is here up the back somewhere, there she is. So, Emma works with me, Emma has got three daughters and we are constantly talking about juggling school, work, drama, music, all the things that the girls want to do between them. We just make it work between us.


MS THOMAS: All right, excellent.

Join me please in thanking Kylie Kilgour. Thanks Kylie.

Okay, so we’re about 12 minutes behind which at this point of the day is about half an hour ahead so we’re all right.

Please join me in welcoming our next speaker before we get to our panel. I would like to welcome Luke Sayers who is the CEO of PwC Australia and Vice Chairman for PwC Asia Pacific. He leads a team of more than 500 partners and six and a half thousand staff in addition to serving on a number of boards including Carlton Football Club - Carlton is getting quite a look in today – and not-for-profit e.motion21. Luke lives in Melbourne with his wife Cate and four daughters. There’s a theme of daughters today.

Please join me in welcoming Luke Sayers.

MR SAYERS: Thank you for that introduction.

How are we all? Good. What have you been doing here all day, Chris? Are we a little bit vibrant? Give a bit of noise, come on.

Okay, thank you for welcoming me.

I did happen to host the wonderful Kate Jenkins at PwC yesterday and I said to Kate, “oh, I hear you’re presenting tomorrow and I’ve kindly been asked to come along and share some of the trials and tribulations of my learnings,” and I said, “yeah, are you ready to go?”. She said, “yeah, I’m ready. I’m looking forward to speaking to a small handful of public servants,” and I said to Kate, “well, you better go home and rehearse a few times because I think there’s 700 or 800 women.” She looked at me and said “well, okay. 700 to 800?”, I said “yeah, women.” She goes “oh god, the problem is with the blokes, Luke. Where are all the blokes?”

So, some feedback Chris. Maybe next year we need to have more balance because the opportunity definitely is for all, not just for women.

Now, before I sort of get into a few of my learnings, thank you to the previous speaker. I will say that maybe this is the difference between department to department within the public service and


business. I am recruiting overtly this afternoon, so if anyone would like a job, please come and see me afterwards. Sorry Chris.

I guess I certainly don’t want to profess in any way to be the expert on this topic. To be honest, there’s been a number of speakers today that are probably much more credentialed than I am. So, I sort of humbly come here this afternoon to share some of my experiences and some of my learnings along the way because I do firmly believe that it is at its simplest form a discovery for all of us as leaders and as humans.

I offer up this afternoon some thoughts and some perspectives but in no way visit the gospel according to Luke.

I would firstly just like to start by saying that there is lots of things that I have done professionally in life, lots of roles and experiences here and overseas but I would say quite sincerely that this opportunity for me as a leader is around equality.

This opportunity for our firm around equality and true inclusiveness has been the most difficult personal leadership experience that I have ever encountered. In the scheme of growing an organisation, whether it be top line or bottom line, whether it be driving employee or client advocacy, whether it be dealing with the day to day trials and tribulations of working with clients and governments and the like, this has been the most profound and most difficult for me personally.

I guess I go back to my aha moment and I think all of us at different stages in our lives have sort of an aha moment where maybe something becomes illuminated or suddenly you see through a different lens that maybe you didn’t see before. I do think that great leaders are able to sort of see things differently from time to time whether through personal experiences or other experiences such that they can learn, develop and grow as people and obviously as leaders.

I am blessed to have four wonderful daughters between the ages of 12 and 16. It’s a wonderful spinning of plates in the Sayers household, but probably my aha moment came when my second daughter, Alexandria ‘Ally’, was born with Down Syndrome.


Like all 14 year olds today, she’s a wonderful, wonderful girl. Beautifully different to her siblings, has dreams and aspirations just like anybody else but with a disability, or with a minority group, there often comes perceptions or biases and beliefs that often work against that person truly developing to their fullest potential.

I always sort of had a frame and understood that you know, that we were fortunate to have this wonderful girl called Ally and she was going to go on and do amazing things but almost I never – until about four years ago, never truly joined the dots between my personal world with Ally and my personal world with family to an organisation that I was the leader of.

I share that because it probably sounds a bit bizarre, but sometimes you can very much have a different perspective or a different approach to work and the business that you’re running versus your personal life and your home challenges and trials and tribulations.

So, my aha moment came when I joined the dots of my personal life to the professional life and was able to put myself in women’s shoes within PwC, LGBTI shoes in PwC, people who had different disabilities within PwC. I sort of just went, this just is not right. How do I learn and grow through this and how do I inspire the organisation to want to change to truly get the most out of the most different group of people that we possibly can? How do we truly try to bring the difference within the organisation together such that it truly is inclusive of to create a meaningful impact on society but also the work in which we do each and every day?

I show up today, to be honest, three and a half to four years into my personal journey or growth and development and by no means have all the answers locked. However, I would love to share six things that I guess from my perspective over the last three to four years that I think have made a profound difference at PwC.

First off, I truly believe that you need to lead with your values. There needs to be personal alignment and motivation between who you are and the sense of purpose and the values of the organisation.

Values are big for me and I do believe that today’s generation absolutely are looking for organisations that have personal values and organisational values alignment.


I am absolutely convinced that greater diversity and inclusion leads to higher innovation, productivity, staff engagement and ultimately top and bottom line growth.

Not only do our people expect us to act on the issue, but our clients today absolutely expect our workforce to truly reflect the communities in which we operate in.

Diverse teams enable us to bring different perspectives to the table which, without a doubt, will drive better business results.

Despite the strength of the business case to make diversity part of an organisations culture, you have to make it part of your values and truly a part of the cultural story and narrative that you speak about with all of your staff within your organisation.

I was super pleased in 2012 when we went out to our 7,500 staff and engaged with them about what are the values at PwC that bring meaning and motivation to what they do each and every day, that embracing difference was one of our top five values. That gave me great insight into how our people thought and how we needed to hold that value very sacred as we continued to build the organisation.

The second piece that I believe is critical is flexibility. You heard a few words on it with the previous speaker, flexibility in its fullest context and flexibility in its fullest sense.

It is staggering to me the lack of flexibility in many workplaces across Australia and I do believe that it’s a real impediment to achieving true equality.

One way that we sought to tackle this was to move to an All Roles Flex environment. This means that regardless of whether you are a male or a female, have children or no children, each and every person has the ability to talk to their manager about what flexibility could mean personally for them and what was the best and most appropriate way to juggle their life to reach their full potential in the full context of life, not just work.

When we talk about flexibility, we don’t just mean working part-time. For us it means many things including remote working, working


outside standard hours as well as a variety of other arrangements. It means getting the job done in the best way that suits each unique individual.

In a professional services context, there is no doubt that there is a fundamental client service ethos and culture and sometimes this can lead to interesting challenges. It is all resolved through communication with the manager and by flexing up and flexing down depending on the specific environment or issue that you are currently dealing with. It is a journey whereby individual and organisation do need to flex.

What we do find is that when a team takes the time to understand each team member’s needs and each other’s priorities they are all juggling, they work out a way to support each other. With some compromise and flex, everyone gets to work in a way that works for them.

This is not sort of edict from top down. Small teams across PwC are figuring out through dialogue and communication what is the best way to work based on the given team needs and individual needs within the team.

This could mean staggering the day team member’s leave early to do school pick-up or supporting work from home and flexing the hours over the day to get the job done.

It also means from time to time utopia won’t be achieved and employees will have to change their schedules to meet an urgent client need. This is what being flexible is all about: the give and also the get.

We were the first professional services firm in Australia to adopt such a policy and it hasn’t just helped the women, it has also significantly helped the men. It is wonderful to see both men and women working much more remotely, much more flexibly through the use of technology today.

Technology has given us the ability to work any time anywhere, challenging how and where we do our work. I’m often amazed at why so many companies still remain beholden to these old models of work, particularly in a world where the war for talent has never been more significant.


My whole life is flexible. I don’t have a fixed office. I manage my days carefully so I can flex in or flex out depending on the various scheduled meetings plus crises that I’m confronted with each and every day. I sit on five external boards. I’ve got four children that are absolutely fantastic, an awesome wife and occasionally I try to get to the gym.

I guess I am truly trying to role model the approach that we want all of our 7,500 people to understand. That is about outputs, that is not about inputs.

Research by the Diversity Council of Australia found that the majority of men wanted to work flexibly too, particularly young fathers, but very few do due to fear that asking for flexibility will negatively affect their career.

This fear, whether based in reality or an old-world paradigm must be overcome.

To be honest, I think we just need to rip the band aid off that one. We just need to continue to role model the behaviours and we need to encourage the communication and the dialogue between manager and staff at all times.

I am absolutely delighted because in May this year we were voted as the number one company in Australia on LinkedIn’s top companies list with voters citing our flexible work practices as a key reason as to why PwC was so desirable to work for.

The third piece is symbols of change. I do call out the great work that Kate and a large number of leaders across the country have done with regard to Male Champions of Change. The Panel Pledge is a great symbol of change. Upon joining the MCC I made a commitment to the Panel Pledge.

Basically, this means that each time that PwC are asked to be involved in a conference or a panel we check to make sure that women leaders are represented. If you are sitting on a panel that is exclusively male, the audience is obviously being given a very narrow and one dimensional perspective.


You wouldn’t believe how hard this has been. The amount of event organisers and conference speakers that have still not got the point constantly come to PwC asking myself or other partners to be on panels that are exclusively male. The symbol to the organisation is that we just don’t do that. We really encourage you to get other great women leaders and women ambassadors onto the panel. As long as you can do that then we’re ready to go but if you’re not willing to do that then you can count us out.

Symbols and signals of leadership are super critical to getting all people within the organisation to understand that this is really, really important.

Transparency and accountability from my perspective is a must and it does work. Talking about initiatives, actions, high-level esoteric strategies, burning platforms etc. in my opinion, gets you nowhere. You need transparency and you need accountability that goes right to leader’s pockets and I’m very blunt on this fourth piece.

We recognised that three years ago now that transparency plays a critical role in driving change. We decided to publicly release our gender pay gap in 2015. We were the first of the big four professional services firms in the country to be transparent on that and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t pretty but I knew if I didn’t get it out there and hold ourselves accountable to change, to be honest, it wasn’t really going to be the change that I wanted it to be.

Firm wide, our gender pay gap is 11.9%. This firm wide gap measures the average pay of all PwC employees split by gender and the gap exists because there are simply more men than women in senior roles at PwC today.

When comparing the average pay of men and the average pay of women undertaking like for like roles, PwC’s gender pay gap sits at 0.3%. The only way that we are going to close the overall gap is to continue to drive gender equality at the senior levels of our firm.

Three years ago, we only had 17% of our partnership being women. That number had not changed over a decade.

Looking back, I see there were lots of really good intentions, lots of talk, occasionally sort of vague, ambiguous goals if you would call them that but there was no accountability, there was no


transparency and there were no tangible actions in place to actually deliver an outcome.

It wasn’t until we decided to put targets in place that things started to really change. We have a 40-40-20 gender target. That basically means that for every year’s partner intake, 40% must be women, 40% must be men and the remaining 20% could be from either gender.

In July for the second consecutive year, PwC met our target and I was delighted that we met this target, but still we’ve only moved the ball from 17% to 23% over a two-year period that we’ve committed to these targets but the momentum and the support is terrific.

Importantly, these appointments have all been made with a fact-based assessment on performance. Whilst there is no doubt that these targets were essential in helping us move the dial and hold ourselves accountable, one of the things we struggled with was some people feeling it was a zero-sum game. If a woman gets promoted then a man misses out.

There is no doubt that I and we could have done a better job helping people understand that with greater diversity comes greater success, more growth, happier clients and the pie in fact can get bigger.

This sense of winners and losers is still a very real struggle that I deal with each and every day but it’s something that we need to continue to educate and talk about as we go forward.

The fifth area is all about self-awareness and understanding your shadow and being educated on unconscious bias.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about diversity and inclusion is that you need to develop much better self-awareness to really understand the impact that you are having on others. It’s not the way in which you see yourself but the shadow and the way in which people feel and see you. You have to take the time to truly role model and to be inclusive and realise that every single one of your verbal cue and non-verbal cues do have an impact on the way in which people see you.

I realised through my leadership journey that sometimes I was too


blunt. I was sometimes in too much of a hurry. I needed slow down, I needed to listen more rather than quickly jump to judgement or to conclusion.

That unconscious bias also plays into how other leaders support your diversity strategy. For example, we now have what I believe are market leading policies at PwC but we have to ensure that we are standing by these policies and our leaders need to have enough self-awareness to encourage our staff and ourselves to take advantage of these policies. That is only when diversity and inclusion become a true part of culture rather than what is in a policy booklet or on a shelf within a human resources department.

We have to reward leaders that role model the right behaviours whilst working and encouraging others that are not. We must tirelessly work cultural terrorists out of our organisation and we must continue to lift the self-awareness and the skills of all leaders to continue to grow and develop and feel comfortable with vulnerability at a personal level such that they can actually change.

If you do not have vulnerability, you cannot change which leads me to the sixth part of the puzzle.

I do believe that you must get this out of compliance and legal. This is not a legalistic topic. In so many organisations, diversity has been seen as a problem which requires policies and training.

Training has normally meant online videos on what to say and what not to say. Often this creates real fear. Worse still a negative perception from men. We need men to feel comfortable that they’re going to say the wrong things. They’re sometimes even going to give off the wrong impressions but their intent is pure and beautiful and wanting to figure out how to learn and grow.

If men or leaders are scared from a legalistic or compliance perspective, they will resort to their cave. They will never come out of their cave and we will not get vulnerability and we will not get personal development and change.

You have to get an honest conversation on the table. Ensure people are not afraid to explore confronting topics and to express themselves in their true, authentic way. That is where learning happens.


In a safe and supportive workplace, honesty can be hugely beneficial to helping grow an open and inclusive culture.

To summarise my top six: lead with values, flexibility flexibility, symbols of change like the Panel Pledge, transparency and accountability, unconscious bias and rip it out of legal and compliance are some of my personal learnings as I have gone about growing as a leader and trying my very hardest to PwC’s cultures.

Two things to close out on before we open it up to the panel.

If I had my time again there would be two things that I would call out that I would do differently based on the learnings over the last three years.

One, make it an organisational priority and be clear in your narrative that it is an organisational priority, not a Luke priority.

Too many organisations make it about the CEO or the person at the top. We did that at PwC and my partners and the staff felt because of my personal situation that is was about Ally, it was about difference and it wasn’t about the organisation.

It took me about another 12 months to engage in lots of conversations that this is about PwC, it is about doing the right thing, it is about commercial benefits and competitive sustainable advantage and it is about both.

At most corporates, you have some that are socially minded and that motivates them but you also have some that are just fiscally motivated and so the fiscal side of the equation is very important. It is about both, it is the ‘and’ there.

The second thing that I wish I would have done is I crept up on this. I was three years into my CEO role, I’m now six years in and I didn’t have the confidence that I do today. I didn’t have the understanding, the awareness and the education to quickly put into place the policies, the structures and the accountability regimes that are needed.

If I had my time again, I would do all of that quickly from day one,


set up the infrastructure if you will with policy structure and accountabilities and then I would get to work on the behavioural or the humanistic side of the equation.

So, for anyone of you that are edging up on it like I three years ago, rip the band aid off, lay out those three frameworks if you will and very much get at it.

To close, everyone I believe has a critical role to play in achieving gender equality including everyone in the room.

I know a common criticism of the Male Champions of Change is that it’s men fixing the women’s problem. It shouldn’t matter who you are or what role you have, there is always, always a way to do a better job at a team level, a department level and an organisational level.

It’s only by having open, honest and courageous conversations that we can progress. To be honest, if we’re not feeling uncomfortable on this topic because it is a vulnerable space for all humans, then to be honest, we’re not actually over the target. If we’re feeling vulnerable we’re over the target.

The reward is incredible when you see the potential of all start to shine through.

Looking back, I can honestly say my only regret is that I didn’t start three years earlier and PwC would have been that much further ahead and I would have seen and grown and learned as an individual that much earlier.

I hope some of those words are insightful. It is a little bit about my personal development journey and thank you again for having me along today, Chris.

Thank you to all of you for coming and I look forward to having some fun with my board member up on the panel now.

Thank you very much.

MS THOMAS: Thank you very much Luke.

I don’t know quite how to put this but we’re out of time. I can’t take


any questions, I’m so sorry.

MR SAYERS: That’s alright.

MS THOMAS: I got about three dozen questions come through, some of them about Carlton which I’ll just pass on to you.

Could you please join me – there’s so much I know I could ask Luke but I know we can’t go much over time so please join me in thanking Luke Sayers.

Thank you so much for coming and we appreciate your time.

Okay, if I could ask our panellists to come up.

Now, I know some of you are furiously Tweeting and messaging me about the air conditioning and everyone is doing their very, very best to get it warmer but it’s a big room and it’s going to take a long time. I’m sorry.

Why don’t you stand up while our panel is coming up and at least, I don’t know, do some yoga or something. How do you get warm? I’m not sure.

Could everyone just come up and sit one by one.

Okay, now do they all have their microphones on? We’re good to go?

All right, I might ask you if you don’t mind to just go one by one and just very quickly introduce yourselves. If you don’t mind can we start up this end?

MS LANGDON: Thank you very much. I’m Elizabeth Langdon, Acting Public Sector Commissioner.

MR LORIGAN: I’m Geoff Lorigan, Director of the Institute for Strategic Leadership.

MS BARTIK: Hello, I’m Jess Bartik. I’m the Senior Advisor in the office of the Secretary at DPC.

MS CHAPMAN: Hi, I’m Marian Chapman. I’m the Director of


Corporate Services Delivery at the Department of Treasury and Finance.

MS JENKINS: Aren’t we wired up?

MS CHAPMAN: Yes, you are.

MS JENKINS: And you know who I am, Kate Jenkins.

MR SAYERS: And Luke Sayers.

MS THOMAS: Excellent.

So, in the interests of time management – I’m sorry to say this publicly instead of to you all one by one, but if you could keep your answers short, that would be fantastic.

One of the questions is a very basic question. Our panel is about what’s holding women back in terms of – it’s been very clear, we know from the research, we know from discussions today that we women and underrepresented particularly at the senior levels.

So, is it an individual or organisational issue, both or something else? If you could all tell me and I’ll give you 40 seconds or less, if you had to pick what’s holding women back, what would be your response. We’ll go from this end and then down to Luke.

MS LANGDON: Alright, 40 seconds or less. Those inner voices in our heads that we’re not up for it, we just have to squash them.

Five out of seven departments have now made progress in the last two financial years on executive numbers. We are making progress in the public service so our job as women is to step in and find the roles that work for us and not let those inner voices deafen our opportunities.

MR LORIGAN: I agree with Elizabeth. I think the biggest issue is self-limiting belief. I think it’s for men as well as women, self-belief, self-belief, self-belief.

I’ve seen so many people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and who have achieved incredible results despite all of the environmental factors.


So, my view is that self-belief – where there’s a will there’s a way, I think that’s probably a key thing. Having drive, ambition and passion is a very good start.

MS BARTIK: I feel very empowered today after a fantastic conference and so I find it hard to believe that my own self-belief would be holding me back, but it is a question my friends and I talk about a lot: what is holding us back?

Some of my friends say that there isn’t anything holding them back but given the evidence we’ve heard today: the gender pay gap, the economic insecurity of women, that’s an insidious and ubiquitous structural discrimination.

We can’t deny that, so organisations must absolutely and resolutely be held accountable for that culture that they instil, but organisations are made up of individuals.

So, if we as individuals ignore that fact of if we’re naïve to it then we are accountable for that.

MS CHAPMAN: I agree with all the comments on confidence and I think that applies across the board to men as well, to be honest.

I would like to talk about the organisational side though because at a managerial level, I think we’re often blind to managers making assumptions about us. We don’t have direct conversations so it’s a flip side on both the organisation and the person.

I’m a single parent, I’ve got two kids at home, I work full-time. Assumptions do my head in but I’ve got great bosses who know my situation but I’ve had to grow to have that conversation.

Don’t assume when you’ve got staff or when you talk about your manager that they know you’ve got aspirations, your motivations, what gets you up in the morning, where you really want to go and they’ll also forget that this changes over time.

So, build confidence to have that conversation about the assumptions being made.

MS JENKINS: In short, I think that we know the doors are open.


We have the laws in place but there are deeply embedded structural and attitudinal barriers.

I am absolutely not in agreement about the self-belief. I’ve been through 20 years of “you need to be more confident,” and most of the decisions about my career were made in a room of men when I wasn’t there so it didn’t matter how confident I was.

I just think it’s very complex. I think it’s not part of the attitude of do we or don’t we.

One of my favourite quotes – and this probably won’t be well received, but Miss Piggy, who says “there’s no glass ceiling there’s just a very thick layer of men.”

There’s a whole lot of things going on –

MR SAYERS: Why did you look at me then?

MS BASTIK: I know.

There is a lot of good intent now. It’s really deeply embedded so it’s not as simple as saying “is it women, is it men? Is it managers, is it leaders, is it organisations? It’s all of those things.

MR SAYERS: I’d agree with everything that’s been said that I would say that it’s got to start with the organisation and it’s got to start with the CEO on the board. The CEO on the board needs to set the cultural settings to enable wonderful talent to prosper.

In my experience, it’s not about confidence or not confidence in my organisation, it’s about sponsorship and support and advocacy that happens more for the blokes than for the women.

MS THOMAS: How old is your oldest daughter, Luke?

MR SAYERS: 16.

MS THOMAS: 16. So, just a question without notice because we did get a few questions about this as well and I’ve got two girls as well.

I hate to be deputy downer about it but in some ways, you can see


their confidence erode over time.

In terms of that coming up against the structural barriers that we’re talking about, that it’s not just an issue of personality and trying, that they may be trying and they may be confident and may know that they’re smart and clever, but when you get knocked back, that has an effect.

Do you see that with your daughter?

MR SAYERS: You haven’t met my 16-year-old.

MS THOMAS: No.

MR SAYERS: I’m sure that happens, right, and I think that is why the leaders in the organisation must enable the cultural setting to enable everyone because it’s not just women. If men keep bouncing up then they’re going to be down on confidence or LGBTI or people Asian cultural background or any minority group.

So, I think there is a more enlightened self-awareness to what is potential that needs to come from the top of the house.

MS THOMAS: I guess as I was trying to say, they feed into each other.

What is something from all of you in terms of – obviously, we acknowledged that there are barriers for women in leadership, but what is something effective that you’ve seen help, like a real thing that you’ve seen work to help promote women in leadership?

That might be – Kate, I know we were talking before about the increased discrimination for example that older women face.

You don’t have to talk about women, you can talk about a specific group if you want to but something that you have personally seen work or experienced work.

MS LANGDON: One of the amazing things about the public service is the acting opportunities that sometimes are provided.

I’ve benefitted enormously from opportunities for a short or a long-acting opportunity where I’ve been able to test my skills, grow,


stretch outside of my comfort zone and they’re great opportunities. We’re very fortunate.

MS THOMAS: So, being able to act in a role and give it a go in essence? Yes.

Can I just ask, can everyone hear Elizabeth? I’m just checking. Okay.

MR LORIGAN: My sense is a fistful because I think you’re a pretty fast learner, Luke, because if you learn all you learnt in three years I’d be pretty amazed.

First of all, I’ve been in leadership for 17 years and every single point you’ve made I would endorse. If I could say it as articulately, I would be pretty pleased.

My sense about leadership is it’s not about self. You get so far based on your competencies, your legal abilities, your digital abilities but at the end of the day it’s about growing people.

So, if women aren’t as confident as they should be, they don’t have their voice. If we run a strategic leadership program, I can’t even hear the women, I can’t hear their voice. So, if they’re like that, what does it say about the culture? What does it say about the leaders?

Really, to measure leadership is about measuring how effective is the team that is under their guidance.

I think the science of leadership is becoming about evidence-based and if I was a CEO of a large organisation I would want to know where the great culture is, at what level in the teams and which ones aren’t. the ones that aren’t, I’d send them to get some work.

I believe the issue is really about having a good gender mix because the cultures are normally much better when there is a good mix.

At the end of the day, it’s about performance and outcomes and outcomes in people in terms of growing.

I think that’s the sense. So many people get to the top with a great


CV but it’s not all about them. It’s about people that they are working with and getting the results from.

MS THOMAS: Jess, what have you seen actually work?

MS BARTIK: I think the most important thing to break down barriers for more female leaders is for our current leaders to be authentic.

I truly think that leadership will look different and we would conceptualise it differently as a society when we get a critical mass of women into leadership positions. Not just in the public service but in our corporate, in our parliament, in our news and media organisations, but to do that we need to challenge what it means to be a leader and those experiences and qualities that we see in leaders because for our current leaders to be authentic, it opens up a whole new range of skills for people to look for in leadership. That paves the way for people to be themselves and that’s what women need to be in leadership positions.

MS CHAPMAN: I think it’s very important to be honest about the support that individual leaders got to get where they are.

In my case, I had a lot of push from deputy secretaries up the line for my first leadership position and I can tell all of you, I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time and there was no way I would have applied for that job. Never in a million years. I wouldn’t have thought I was ready, worthy etc. etc.

I think it’s very important to be honest about that and not put up the illusion that you’re coping with everything and your life is perfect and you just got here by some magic formula because it’s not true.

I’m quite honest about the things that are challenges in my job with again, men and women, to try and make my role something that is realistic and a job that other people want to do.

MS THOMAS: Just to pick up on that issue though, I think Luke mentioned this issue of vulnerability as well. Again, it’s really hard to talk about this stuff without stereotyping.

I understand it’s more nuance than this, but do you think it’s reasonable to say in the community at least, there’s this idea that


leaders and especially male leaders cannot show vulnerability? Or find it harder than female leaders to show vulnerability and say everything isn’t perfect, I do need to change, we do need to change?

MS CHAPMAN: Yes, I agree with that.

I also think it’s useful to remember it is bloody lonely at the top. The higher up you go, the lonelier you are and the more lonely you can feel. Sometimes that is one of the few connection points that you have.

I think of myself as this young that came from the country, yada yada yada, that’s not actually me anymore, but I go along and think of myself in that way. I’m then sort of staggered that there are staff that are intimidated to come and talk to me. Me? To think there is a disconnect there that I am completely unaware of and if I don’t tap into my own vulnerabilities and find the courage as a human being to share it, then I don’t think I’m being an authentic leader at all.

MS THOMAS: We could do a whole day on the imposter syndrome. I’m well familiar with that.

How about you Kate, if you had to talk about something you’ve seen work or you know works?

MS JENKINS: Yes, in a really practical sense.

Given that women are often in support roles, one of the quickest solutions which is instead of everyone just going this way is to move women into operational roles or in that acting capacity.

So, I’m reinforcing what Elizabeth said, that idea okay, let’s find different ways to get women in different roles with different experience. That has made a huge difference.

Another huge difference, I think, is the momentum of different leaders being properly engaged with the issues of women diversity.

My first experience of that was working with Ken Lay, he came in as Chief Commissioner and said, “Kate, I’ve got this problem but I don’t understand it. I need to understand it more.” So, from my point of view, the other difference is when you’ve got a boss that


you can really talk to, that has really had some aha moment and is not suddenly is not sending you down that one path. That makes all the difference, finding that.

That’s not easy, but actually the one you have might be convertible is my observation. There’s a lot of men now in managerial roles that when you really start talking to them more deeply, actually can suddenly see the issue like a Magic Eye kind of picture. Suddenly, they say “I can’t believe all the barriers you’ve faced. Let’s get rid of them.”

MS THOMAS: I think also it’s incredibly refreshing when someone – it doesn’t matter if it’s male, female, whatever, it doesn’t matter – when they say “I don’t know. Can you tell me?”

Even the vulnerability in that “I don’t know everything, I don’t know what it is to walk in your shoes. Tell me.” That in itself would be a revolution, I think.

Luke, what have you seen work?

MR SAYERS: I think again I would agree with everything. It’s great being last, I can sort of just agree with everything.

I would not lose heart. I think there’s a lot of good men across the country learning every day. I do think this has built great momentum whereby terrific leaders, men and women, are learning, developing and growing so I would stay very positive.

The one extra build probably would be on sponsorship, rather than mentoring and men leaders sponsoring wonderfully talented women, Asian cultural background, people with disabilities etc. Not just mentoring-coaching, but sponsoring like they would to men. That would have significant impact on the momentum.

MS THOMAS: I think PwC should sponsor female comedians but we’ll talk about that later. I could do with some sponsorship.

Again, we could talk all day but we’re out of time.

In the last statement, I just want to give each of you an opportunity to talk about – we’re really talking about empowering women for the future. That might not be about empowering women individually,


but providing opportunities for women in leadership, opportunities for women in general. What are your final thoughts of that as an issue going forward?

Does that make sense or is that too general?

MR SAYERS: It’s way too general.

MS THOMAS: Way too general, I’ll try not to limit you too much. Basically, I want to hear about what you think we can do next.

Particularly in this context, you’ve got mainly – there are some men here but there are mainly female public servants. What do you want to say to them about empowerment, leadership, the future?

You don’t want me to start with you, do you want me to start with Luke and go the other way? Go on then, Luke.

MR SAYERS: Talk about it. Do exactly what you’re doing today but talk about it with the men and –

MS THOMAS: Do you talk to your daughters about these issues?

MR SAYERS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MS THOMAS: And what do you say?

MR SAYERS: Talk about it.

MS THOMAS: Talk about what?

MR SAYERS: Talk about what you’re feeling. Talk about the limitations that you’re perceiving. How they can help and advocate and help you grow and develop.

It’s a communication and relationship piece. A lot of men would be horrified through the unconscious bias as to how a lot of people interpret them. There is more good in men is kind of what I’m saying.

Some people may laugh and say that’s not the case, but in my experience, it’s more about the unconscious pieces. If you can get over that to talk about and explore it and work through it, I think


you’re going to see some wonderful things happen.

MS THOMAS: I think there’s not a person in the room who hasn’t got unconscious bias about something, let’s be honest and own that. There’s also not a person in the room that’s been defensive when it’s been pointed out, would be my guess.

How do you work through that?

MR SAYERS: I think it’s – and I deal with a lot of analytical people. You talk to people and engage with people but it may take days or weeks for them to go away and reflect –

MS THOMAS: Or years.

MR SAYERS: Well, then you have to come back to it.

It is about how you do it. You’re not a blunt instrument but you need to have that sort of relationship. If you don’t have that sort of relationship, you should go and find another opportunity.

MS JENKINS: It’s tougher isn’t it when you’re first? She was much tougher.

My suggestion to you all, and this is fresh off the back of – so my executive assistant just got sent on a two-day course in Canberra. She came back and she made an appointment time with me. She sat with me and said “I thought I’d like to talk to you about some of the things I learned and also ask you about some other things.” She sat down and it was fantastic with me. She asked me about how I work, she raised with me what were her issues.

So, what I would encourage you to do, if there’s one thing you got out of this conversation, it is there are things you can do but there are also things your organisation can do and your manager can do.

You could all walk away and go back to your busy lives or childcare pickup. However, my suggestion off the back of doing that and realising how good that was for me and I didn’t even go to the course, is to go and think about: in your workplace in particular, who you work with, if you’ve got a manager even if you don’t think they’re on board, talk about it. Use us. You know, “this is what Luke Sayers said,” you don’t have to take ownership of it, but start


the conversation in your workplace on the two or three things that have really hit you today. You’ve has a great smorgasbord or speakers and there’s been some great insights, that would be my approach.

MS THOMAS: “The Sex Discrimination Commissioner said that I should come and have this talk with you.”

MS JENKINS: I thought wow, this is clever. Nobody has ever done this to me before and it directly benefitted me as well as her.

MS THOMAS: There’s a few texts asking for jobs for you so I’ll pass those on to work with you, not a new job for you.

MS CHAPMAN: A similar point, don’t lose the momentum.

Coming to something like this is incredibly empowering and thought provoking having that head space out. Think about the aha moments that you’ve had today and leverage off those, there might have been one or two.

Think practically about what you feel you can do. What do you feel you are able to do? Make a little plan and stick to it.

MS THOMAS: Can I give you a special question? I said I wouldn’t do this but I’m going to do it. It occurred to me several times and several people have texted it as well.

It’s no coincidence because several speakers that have spoken have incredibly supportive partners. Not all of us do. Either we’re single parents or we have partners where there’s a more – I hate the word traditional, but more old-fashioned kind of set up, or there’s a whole range of other issues.

What do you say in response to that? In your case, how do you progress when you don’t have that there?

MS CHAPMAN: How do you progress? I killed myself for a year as a single parent –

MS THOMAS: That’s not a good story.

MS CHAPMAN: Running on guilt and – no, I’m just being honest


again and to be honest, my kids would go and heat up a Sara Lee cheesecake in the microwave and eat it in a liquid form while I’d be harassed. It got to a point where I felt I was at breaking point and I should really have realised this earlier, went and spoke to my boss and said “I need to have more flexible hours,” and she looked at me and went “Yeah?”

It was actually a bit of a stab in the heart. I just thought I’m an idiot because I thought I should actually have articulated to myself earlier and it wasn’t until I felt “I have no other alternative. I have to go and put it on the table and if you don’t let me leave at three o’clock then I’m out.”

I could have had that conversation and saved myself a lot of heartache.

MS THOMAS: But the truth again, in that spirit of honesty and I did the same thing as a public figure of sorts.

I don’t have gender equality in my house. I feel ashamed to say that, but it’s the truth. I think it’s important to say that because otherwise everyone else thinks that they’re the only ones getting it wrong and not achieving it. It is harder, and if you’re a single parent it is harder.

MS CHAPMAN: Yes. I think look it’s hard no matter what your situation is and I’ve only now, after sixteen years as an exec in the public service decided I’m outsourcing some stuff. I pay a guy to mow my lawn instead of struggling with that on the weekend. I have a cleaner which my dead mother would turn in her grave. There’s still a little bit of guilt there but I value my time. I value my time with my children, I value my work and I pay my people properly.

MS THOMAS: If you pay your cleaner properly, there’s no shame in it. I’ve been a cleaner.

MS CHAPMAN: I pay them properly and it gives someone a job.

MS THOMAS: You’ve just got to pay them properly, that’s right.

Jess?


MS BARTIK: I think the best thing we can do is just take action. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s right for you.

Next time you’re negotiating your pay, go one step higher than you think you’re worth because you are worth it. If there’s a job you think you would be good at or you’re interested in, speak to the hiring manager, put yourself forward. If you think the hours are too much or it’s not the right cultural fit, talk to them. The job should change for you, you don’t have to change for the job.

Get a mentor, look around. This is the best network that we have go. There is something so powerful about women supporting other women, so let’s do that.

MR SAYERS: Well said.

MS THOMAS: I want to fist-pump. Yes, excellent. You go, Jess. I don’t want to say girl, I nearly said girl then.

Yes, Geoff?

MR LORIGAN: I would just like to put in a word for men actually. I think men play a very important part in the development of young women.

By way of example, I’ve had three young people from the same Pakistani Muslim family come to work with me over nine years. The first one, the girl when she came, she was an accountant. She couldn’t look you in the eye. When she came, the woman accountant wouldn’t give her anything really powerful to do so I gave her an analysis of our accounts for the last five years. She said, “oh, you mean a vertical and horizontal?” I said yes. Well, she did such an amazing job that the accountant took hold of it and I never got it back again.

By the time she finished with us, she went from being so shy – that was 2007/2008 when it was so hard to get jobs, particularly at PwC and she walked in and she got a job right there and then. She now lives in Sydney and she’s in a very senior place at a bank.

Her brother came along and he was the same. He is now with the Bank of England and he’s getting married next June and my wife and I have been invited to the wedding.


The third daughter, Sana Khan, she was even more shy than the rest. She now has a senior role in a hospital as a pharmacist.

So, when I talk about leadership, last week I took a whole day off work to support a family friends’ daughter who does self-harm, she wants to be a vet. So, I took a whole day off then another half day off the week after - I am quite busy - to put time and effort into her. There’s nothing quite like time and support. Her brother or her mother could have equally done the same thing, it’s where you get it from.

You women are either now be mothers or will be mothers, most of you, and you pay an enormous role in bringing up young men to be respectful of women as well. I would say don’t underplay the role of men. We need better men and I think leadership isn’t just about getting to the top, it’s about raising good men as well as us men playing a really important role in raising good women as well.

MS THOMAS: Okay, thank you. Elizabeth?

MS BARTIK: A final comment. I totally agree that those of us who don’t talk about the home life might be that there’s a different dynamic. So, my husband is building a business from the ground up and it’s really hard. I have 87-year-old parents who are quite unwell.

So, there’s a story there about priorities and self-care, making sure that exercise is part of stress release because if I don’t exercise, things get thrown around the kitchen a little bit. Things get damaged.

So, I think there’s a very good story in the Victoria Public Service about female leaders, about events like this, about male leaders who want to help all of us succeed.

I think it’s a terrific initiative that DPC set this up today.

MS THOMAS: Thank you. Please join me in thanking our whole panel.

For closing remarks, I will just invite Chris Eccles up as you know is the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Very


quickly please clap for Chris as he runs up to the stage.

MR ECCLES: Good evening everyone, it’s getting towards that time of the day.

It’s been a particular honour for me to stand beside you for at least part of today and witness what it takes to empower women for the future.

I feel variously motivated, uplifted and informed including hearing from the panel members, hearing from Luke and hearing from Kylie. I hope that you do as well.

I’m stealing myself now for the pay rise meeting with Jess tomorrow. Fortunately, I’ve been put on notice and if I was to take a poll of people in the room I’m sure that she has seven to eight hundred supporters. I’ll take that into account when we meet tomorrow.

I think it’s really important first and foremost to acknowledge our workshop facilitators and keynote speakers for their insightful contributions and for giving their time so generously today.

I also want to particularly acknowledge Susan Middleditch, the executive director from my department. Susan and her team fostered the concept of today’s summit from its very inception to its execution. She came to me with the idea, I could see the immediate benefit of bankrolling it. A big shout out to Susan and the team and I think it’s appropriate at this point for us to put our hands together.

I would now also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and future.

This acknowledgement is particularly relevant to my address today because of its focus on respect and inclusion.

We are all here today because we still have ground to cover in achieving diversity and equality in workplaces and society.

We are here because women are underrepresented in leadership positions in both the government and the corporate sectors.


We are here because a significant gender pay gap still exists.

We are here because of #MeToo, everyday sexism and the atrocious prevalence of gender based violence.

These are the facts that we, in the public sector, cannot and will not ignore. Our workforce should reflect the diversity of our community.

How else can the VPS best serve the citizens of Victoria if not through a workforce that understands values and is representative of its constituents.

A workforce who offer different perspectives, different experiences and viewpoints on policy and service delivery issues and understands the needs, barriers, benefits and dynamics of the diverse and changing Victorian community.

Harnessing differences helps us to design and deliver services that best meet the differing needs of Victorians across our regions and across our cities.

The very principles of diversity and inclusion are enshrined in the VPS through our values and our code of conduct. As outlined in our DPC Gender Equity Action Plan, the department is committed to building a workplace that is inclusive and equitable where all people are given opportunities for success and to reach their true and genuine leadership potential. There is a place for everyone in DPC.

We will continue to work to create positive disruption across the Victorian public sector and remove barriers to the success of all people. I am pleased to report that our efforts have actually had an impact.

In December last year, the Special Minister of State and Victorian Secretaries Board introduced a target across the VPS of appointing at least 50% women to executive roles. Since then, we’ve received a positive and continuing trend in increasing female executive number in DPC. As of June 2017, women represented 51% of the total executive officer numbers in core DPC compared to 39% in June 2016. This trend continues along the length and breadth of the Victorian Public Service.


Some recent statistics emerging from the Victorian Public Commissioner testament to the work we are doing to equalise the gender gap. Women now comprise 48% of executives in the VPS, up from 35% a decade ago and almost at our target of 50%.

We also made a commitment that all roles across the VPS will be flexible. We are seeing positive results there too.

DPC’s most recent People Matter Survey results 82% agreement that managers support people to work flexibly, up 13% since 2016.

This move is designed to support and empower all staff to successfully manage all work and life commitments wherever they may be.

As a male Champion of Change, I acknowledge that gender inequality affects us all. Men have a pivotal role to play in acknowledging and removing the barriers that exist in our workplaces.

To all of the men here today, and I sincerely hope that next year we will have a greater representation of men to accompany the representation of women. I encourage you to commit to creating a safer and more inclusive workplace for everyone.

There are powerful actions we can all take to foster a more inclusive and accessible workplace.

These include not supporting sexist humour, instead you should speak up or walk away, including and valuing women’s voices. Both in meetings and in decision making, make sure every single voice is heard. Challenging role stereotyping and asking why men and women seem to be concentrated in different roles within the organisation. Supporting the personal choices of staff when it comes to choices about caring, careers and family and being a role model.

I’m proud to be a Male Champion of Change because I can stand beside women to create a more equal world and I’m public in support of this initiative because visibility is empowering to others.

Today is an opportunity to look forward to the empowered future


that we can create together.

Today you hear from inspiring speakers who have shown courage in sharing their story about their career journeys. You have learnt about leadership and you have learnt about resilience.

You have been exposed to the tools you need to take the next step to move your career in the direction that is right for you. I encourage you to make the most of the tools you have learnt today, use them for your own success and importantly, use them for the success of others.

The change doesn’t end here. Taking up Marian’s challenge for momentum, I am pleased to announce that the Department of Premier and Cabinet will be partnering with several organisations to deliver a range of opportunities in the coming year.

We will be bringing you beneficial workshops and learning and development opportunities during 2018. This will all be in the lead up to our next edition of today’s conference.

I hope the connections you have made today will continue to be a support for the next steps in your career. I encourage you to stay connected and one way it to become part of the VPS women’s group that is being launched in LinkedIn.

The community of today’s attendees will provide a platform for us to share valuable information on the topics we heard and learnt about today as well as enable you to connect with those you have never worked with.

We are committed to creating a more fair and diverse workplace for all and look forward to working with you and for you to achieve this.

Again, I’m delighted and honoured to have been with you today and to be part of the VPS.

I consider notwithstanding the terrific tale that comes from PwC that the Victorian Public Service provides an outstanding opportunity for us all to grow and live and become the best possible members and leaders of the community that we can be.

We are now going to break and I think we are going to network at a


reception. I look forward to catching up with as many of you as I can.

Thank you again.

MS THOMAS: Thank you, Chris. I’m sure everyone in the room joins me again in thanking you for putting on the event today.

We are going to finish and have some drinks and chats and things like that shortly.

I just wanted to very quickly finish by finishing off the story that I started the day with about my nanna right through to my girls. I’ll be very quick about it.

The reason I told you about that story is because sometimes I think - those of us who identify as feminists in the room or who are committed to social equality and justice, sometimes you can despair.

You can actually look at the statistics, the pay gap and violence against women and a range of issues and you can despair. I’m certainly not immune to that.

I also go back then to thinking that within a couple of generations. I think about my nanna who never even had the opportunity to finish primary school, who never learned to drive, who had to give up her job as soon as she was married, who wasn’t allowed to get a bank loan, who had twelve children. It certainly wasn’t her choice to have those children. The opportunities that she had compared to the opportunities that my two girls have are world apart.

We are making progress. We are making significant progress, it feels slow sometimes and it’s five steps forward, two steps back but we are getting there.

You’re all part of that story. We hope that you walk away today feeling empowered. You are the future, you’re the leaders of today and tomorrow.

Thank you so much for coming and on that note, let’s have a glass of wine.


Thanks, everyone. Goodnight.

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