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An Unlikely Secretary – Mark Sullivan
The Commissioner
Lynelle Briggs
Lynelle Briggs is the Public Service Commissioner. She has held this position since November 2004.
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Introductory remarks
Lynelle Briggs, Australian Public Service Commissioner
Good afternoon everyone. On behalf of the Australian Public Service Commission and Terry Moran, I’m extremely pleased to welcome you all here for a very special event—this afternoon’s Secretaries Valedictory Lecture by Mark Sullivan, on his retirement as Secretary for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs earlier this month.
The Commission hosts these special lectures by selected Secretaries as a mark of respect and so that they can give their reflections on their careers and their suggestions on the way forward for the Australian Public Service.
Mark Sullivan has served the Government well in senior appointments in several departments and agencies: the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Repatriation and Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commissions, the Department for Family and Community Services, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
Mark grew up and went to school in Sydney. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Economics in 1971 and took his first public service position shortly afterwards as a cadet taxation officer in the Australian Taxation Office in Sydney. He worked there for six years in various positions before moving on to work his way up in the Department of Social Security—where he was recognised widely as a great talent and promoted to the SES in 1985.
He left Social Security in 1986 to take up a position as Head of Corporate Services at SBS, before venturing briefly into private enterprise with Wang Australia.
Mark was attracted back into the public service in 1988 by a position as First Assistant Secretary in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, where he worked through his promotion to Deputy Secretary in 1993. He dealt with some of the challenging refugee, boat people and detention centre issues of the late 80s and early 90s.
Mark became CEO of ATSIC in 1999, and held the position for two and a half years. He has remarked that ‘This was probably the best and worst job I had in my life, all at the same time. You don’t ever forget your time at ATSIC. It’s a job that has highs and lows, all in half an hour.’
During his time as Commissioner, Mark worked hard to build a better and more productive relationship between ATSIC and the Government, especially during major national events, including the Olympic Games, the Centenary of Federation and the presentation at Corroboree 2000 of the final report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Towards Reconciliation. Mark encouraged ATSIC to work with Government to try to achieve tangible gains in health, education, housing and employment, down the path of what was called ‘practical reconciliation’.
As CEO, Mark ensured ATSIC was responsive to the needs of all Indigenous Australians, and this commitment was something he also carried through to his staff. He has always been a popular CEO, who made sure he was accessible and approachable to staff—a practice he went on to exemplify in his leadership of both FaCS and Veterans’ Affairs.
The move from ATSIC to Secretary of the Department of Family and Community Services in January 2002 must have represented a considerable challenge. Family and Community Services was one of the largest Commonwealth portfolios, performing work across a vast range of programmes, covering social security payments, housing support, youth and disability services, and child care and family assistance.
And in handling this, Mr Sullivan managed a huge budget of $65 billion—around one third of all government outlays—with payments to over four million individuals at any given time.
Inevitably, the scale of work during Mark’s three years there was considerable, with a priority being the implementation of Australians Working Together, one of the major ‘connected government’ initiatives of the Howard agenda.
Mark took responsibility for implementing the Government priority of welfare reform, especially in the area of disability, creating increased opportunities for people to participate in work and community life and encouraging people on income support to become as active and self-reliant as they could.
During this time, he managed the Department’s response to the Intergenerational Report, with careful planning to better prepare the country to meet the future challenges of an ageing population.
Mr Sullivan also worked to enhance the relationship with Centrelink as its service provider to ensure consistent, efficient and effective service delivery.
Mark emphasised FAC’s commitment to Indigenous communities and drew together the department’s Indigenous policy functions. With Mark as Secretary, FaCS was the lead agency in the Government’s domestic response to the Bali tragedy and had significant responsibilities resulting from the Canberra bushfire and in providing assistance to drought-affected families.
Mr Sullivan became Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs in October 2004—a position he held until his retirement earlier this month. Mark noted that this role differed from that of other Secretaries in that he managed what he referred to as ‘a three headed place’, being simultaneously Secretary of the Department, President of the Repatriation Commission, and chairman of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission.
The Department, with its role managing compensation and care for veterans who have been afflicted by war, pays pensions for disabilities, provides income support pensions, takes care of veterans’ health problems resulting from war, and runs a veterans’ drug system, while the Repatriation Commission has a policy role in relation to the same territory. The recently established Military Rehabilitation Commission, acts like a compensation broker for serving soldiers, air-force and navy personnel.
Due to the nature of its work and the long history of the Department serving these needs, few departments have such an extraordinarily close relationship with their stakeholders and clients.
Mark Sullivan took on the responsibility of addressing the changing nature and needs of our veterans and declining numbers of WW2 veterans. Entitlements were extended to eligible Australian Federal Police officers who have served overseas. He prepared the Department for a greatly increased focus on women, since women may soon be the majority of the Department’s health services clients, whether as widows or as serving women.
Mark also oversaw the process of moving the Department’s focus towards dealing more with the mental rather than physical impact of war on younger veterans, with the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression resulting from military deployment.
Mr Sullivan managed the issues associated with the raised profile of the Gallipoli site and Anzac Cove.
He drove major change in the Department, through a Service Delivery Review, leading to the introduction of the concept of oneDVA: a single, cohesive entity that offers the same quality service to veterans, serving and former members, police members and their families, regardless of generation, service or location.
In addition to his Secretarial responsibilities, Mark is also a Fellow of the Society of Certified Practicing Accountants and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management.
He was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001 for ‘service as Secretary of the Department of Family and Community Services’.
Mark Sullivan became an Officer of the Order of Australia in January this year for ‘service to the community, particularly Australia's veterans, through contributions to new governance arrangements, and to major public policy developments in the areas of family support, multicultural affairs and Indigenous service delivery’.
Mark Sullivan is a man of considerable accomplishment, and we are proud and delighted that he has agreed to deliver this lecture.
Would you please join me in welcoming Mark Sullivan, until very recently, Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, for his Secretaries Valedictory Lecture.
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