Sir Roland Wilson Foundation

Craig joined the Department of Human Services in 2016, having worked in four other APS departments and agencies and the ACT Government over a period of 20 years. With experience across policy, program administration and human resources in central, state and regional roles, Craig has purposely remained in Indigenous Affairs throughout his career.

Craig combined his professional experience, qualifications in strategic HR, and interest in cultural proficiency in his PhD research. Craig’s research used a mixed methods approach to investigate where unconscious bias impacts practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment in the Australian Public Service. With his research, Craig aimed to turn the organisational focus inward by investigating how Australian Government bureaucracy functions from a culturally proficient perspective.

Shane’s research interests include domestic and international tax policy and fiscal policy. His PhD research focused on examining taxpayers’ understanding of, and responses to, the Australian taxation system. Shane hopes his research will provide insights for the future design, implementation and administration of the tax system.

Shane has also contributed his time and skills to the Australian Taxation Office to help produce the Australian Longitudinal Individuals File, a 10 per cent sample of tax records available for researchers in academia and public service. He also helped produce the Australia’s Future Tax System review. Based on his research from that review, he co-authored a paper with international expert, Peter Sorensen, on options to reform capital taxation in Australia.

Katrina is currently Director, Practice Support and Quality Section, Primary Care Division at the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. Her responsibilities include management of the Practice Incentives Program which aims to support general practices to deliver quality care, enhance capacity and improve access and outcomes for patients. Prior to commencing her doctoral studies, Katrina’s roles included helping patients with rare, life-threatening conditions to access effective treatments; improving the sustainability of future PBS drug supply via pricing reviews; increasing patient access to new and expanded pharmacy programs and protecting public health through the scheduling of medicines and poisons. Prior to joining the department in 2010, Katrina worked on clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies both nationally and internationally.

Katrina’s thesis proposed a novel policy framework specifically designed to incentivise evidence generation, application submission and revenue generation to encourage the evaluation of off-patent repositioned medicines by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). It has the potential to improve affordable patient access to safe and effective off-patent repositioned medicines in Australia and improve the quality use of medicines and alignment with broader National Medicines Policy (NMP) objectives.
 

Background: Australia's NMP aims to ensure medicines meet agreed standards of quality, safety and efficacy. This is achieved when a prescription medicine is evaluated by the TGA to ensure benefits outweigh risks prior to approval. The use of a prescription medicine beyond approved limits is known as off-label use. Medicines prescribed off-label for different health conditions, usually due to a lack of effective approved treatments, are known as repositioned medicines. 

Szabina Horvath joined the Directorate of Operations and International Law at the Department of Defence in 2009. Szabina has provided advice on detainee management issues, maritime operations, domestic implementation of international legal obligations, gender issues, interrogation doctrine, and a range of other international humanitarian law issues, as well as human rights matters relevant to military operations. Szabina is currently seconded to the Australian Submarine Agency.

Szabina’s research examined Australia’s extraterritorial human rights obligations. Specifically, the research considered Australia’s human rights obligations when engaged in extraterritorial armed conflict, with reference to other extraterritorial situations which may enliven Australia’s human rights obligations. Szabina’s thesis includes a decision-making framework for determining when Australia may owe specific human rights obligations.

Christiane joined the Treasury as a speechwriter in 2012. Before that, she worked across a range of areas in the APS, from analysing financial intelligence to providing advice on counter-proliferation, energy, health and rural policy. Along the way, and partly as a result of completing her first PhD in film and literature in 2000, Christiane continued to critically analyse discourse—but, instead of closely reading literary texts, her attention turned to analysing how public policy is communicated to governments and the public.

Christiane's Sir Roland Wilson thesis examined the language of rejected policy advice, with a focus on how policy knowledge is constructed inside public administrations and communicated to governments during controversy. Her analysis drew on three Australian policy case studies: the taxation of investment properties, the role of renewables in the national energy mix, and the Iraq war. A gap in methods with which to dissect the phenomenon of rebuffed language led her to construct a new framework informed by rhetorical, organisational and comparative analyses. She uncovered three different language typologies that: fixated on one strand of enquiry but sidestepped wider context; expunged complexity, thereby imparting an appearance of certainty and solid evidence; and routinely raised the presence of uncertainty, leaving advice unusable as evidence. When publicly released, the advice accompanying each proved problematic as means with which to account for political decisions. Her thesis returned outstanding examiners’ reports due to its unique contribution to political science, public administration, intelligence and policy studies, and communication.

Christiane returned to the APS in 2020 and is now a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science in ANU's College of Science.

Cathy joined the Australian Public Service in 2001. She has since had a broad range of policy and program roles within the health portfolio. Cathy’s recent work has focused on big data strategy and capability. She co-led the establishment of the Social Health and Welfare Analytic Unit and led Health’s cross-portfolio engagement on big data analytics projects through the Data Integration Partnership for Australia.

Cathy’s doctoral research explores how we can realise the collective value of data. Working at the intersection of theories of value and power, and public service practice, she unpacks what collective value looks like and how it can be systematically created. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory, Cathy interrogates how we think and talk about data, develops a collective theory of value and power, and applies that theory to practice. Cathy hopes this work will support the public sector policy and data communities to design, create, and facilitate supported data assemblages that create collective value.

For more information about Cathy’s research findings see: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/phd/cathy-fussell