Anntonette Dailey

Director, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Ceremony: 28 April 2016, 5.30pm

Speech

Good evening

I would like to start by paying my respects and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we celebrate your graduation today, and also pay my respects to Elders both past and present.

Presiding Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Presiding Dean, UTS staff, distinguished guests, graduates and their proud families and friends. It is my privilege to be your occasional speaker today.

Congratulations on achieving a fundamental milestone in your life. Like all your previous milestones, this is a major stepping stone to your next life achievement. This is a very important step, one that I hope will lead you on a rewarding professional and personal life. And whilst you will probably be pleased to be out of the world of lecturers and assignments… your growth and learning is still in its infancy and will continue to be tested.

I sat in this very room, only eight years ago receiving my testamur. My career blossomed early and I have much to thank UTS, my fellow graduands and supervisors for the role in mentoring and guiding me to this point. It gave me the confidence and strength to have a competitive advantage in the industry. In this vein, I hope you to take your experiences from your university life and transform them into a character that you can be proud of.

But the main reason my career grew is that I had the courage to take opportunities, even those that didn’t sit perfectly with my original path.

Now acknowledging that my original path involved pursuing space travel, and I still have high hopes for that, quite frankly, I didn’t sit in this room dreaming of a career as a public servant. A role that I am now proud to own.

This is my message for you; I encourage you to think outside the box/circle/hexagon and to aim to take on socially conscious work early in your career. Do not wait to make a difference in society until you are ‘older and wiser’. Too often the regret of well-respected members of our community is that it took too long for them to act for the benefit of society at large.

For those of you that already have your professional and personal paths planned, I applaud you. For those of you still working through it, I will steal our current Prime Minister’s favourite slogan, there has never been a more exciting time to be part of an agile and innovative environment.

I encourage you to be agile, as your degree provides a catalyst to be an active participant in all aspects of society. By the very nature of your information technology and engineering qualifications, you are right in the core of the innovation economy. Have the courage to get as much experience as possible!

I’ve worked in not-for-profit, consulting, state and now Commonwealth government. It might seem that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but the variety of roles, soon after graduating has given me a strong foundation for the work I am now involved in. Be willing to experiment.

I have the fortunate honour of working within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the centre of advice to our governing leaders. Considered an elite agency, PM&C has traditionally sought graduates in the political sciences and policy fields. But the value of engineering and IT has dramatically grown. It has become so important, that the CEO of the Department wrote late last year in The Australian that he was specifically seeking employees with the very skills you have. This is because there is honestly, never been a better time to have a degree with such a profound capacity for innovation.

And as an engineer, my skills in problem solving, attention to detail and capacity for innovation are valued and sought after within Government.

Let me explain. Late last year, I led a small team to transpose the running of Government, the Prime Minister, many of his cabinet colleagues and members of parliament to a remote community for a week. The government was run from the Torres Strait and the Northern Peninsula Area, incredibly remote. Not an easy task if you think of even the infrastructure required to do so.

From setting up highly classified lines of communication, the IT support infrastructure, noting that all advice to the PM is protected. The logistics involved in moving government across the Island’s of the Torres Strait (many of which only accessed via helicopter or boat) and the reliance on infrastructure in our day-to-day activities was challenging. We worked from tents. This linked into the security needs of the VIPs, the media attention and importantly, the close engagement to the communities in which the Prime Minister wished to immerse himself made for a challenging project. My engineering skills were extensively used in the logistical response, but in also in being able to draw linkages where required, coordinating diaries, solving all sorts of unexpected problems. Most of the issues impacting remote Australia have solutions that lie in the IT and engineering professions.

At the very start of my presentation today, I acknowledged Indigenous Australians. I have found working in Indigenous Affairs profoundly rewarding and not something I intended as a graduate to pursue.

You have the capacity to make a powerful difference early in your career. Recently I worked on a project in the remote Indigenous community of Utopia, approximately 4 hours drive east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. My team was looking at housing and essential services. The simplicity of finding and working on elements of a house we take for granted, simple things like a stove can have a profound impact on an entire community.

Yet the simple stove has innovation potential. By working with suppliers to design stoves that were low maintenance, robust for intense use, simple to use and could manage the harsh remote environment (including power surges and failures), we managed to impact not only on the ability for an Indigenous family to prepare meals, but on their health, safety and wellbeing too. It gave them the ability to prepare healthier meals, reduced the number of accidents, cleaner living (less smoke) and also saved them money by being more efficient. It also gave them some personal pride. Something so simple can have an immediate impact. We continue to transform lives by being innovative and cultural aware in what we do. Whether it is opening up technology to allow information to flow to the remotest areas of Australia, delivering clean water in a desert or powering infrastructure, there is enormous capacity, right here in Australia to take on socially conscientious work. Last year, through my department, $2 billion in funding was made available for Indigenous Affairs.

My public service career has taken me on a wide path of working on fascinating projects. Being part of the Government’s response to the devastating floods in Queensland in 2010-11 and the impact of cyclone Yasi challenged me considerably. There is a difficult line in achieving value of money in responding to disasters, but in also rebuilding communities – over 90% of Queensland was affected and the recovery is still ongoing.

And if I can take a moment of indulgence, the department is currently seeking graduates for admission in 2017; I especially encourage you to consider a career in the public service.

Finally, stay connected to your industry and university. The relationships you have formed now will pay back in dividends later and the connectedness and networks that are available to you as a graduand are enormous. So take every opportunity to use these networks.

I encourage you to leave today with a sense of purpose to make a difference in our society. Take every opportunity to seek experience across a diverse range of work and don’t leave it too long to take on a socially responsible role.

Thank you for your attention this evening, congratulations on your achievements to date, and very best wishes for achieving every success on your journeys ahead.

About the Speaker​

Anntonette Dailey is a Director at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, where she provides policy advice relating to a range of topics, particularly within the Indigenous Affairs portfolio.

In late 2015, she was the lead manager for the Prime Minister’s visit to the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula, where she collaborated with the Australian Army to coordinate logistics, itineraries, and stakeholder relations.

 She directed programmes and policies for the Australian Government following the impact of the Queensland floods and impact of Cyclone Yasi. Furthermore she has also managed the technical assessment and review of over five billion dollars in major infrastructure.

Anntonette was instrumental in establishing over one billion dollars in water projects, and has directly supported major infrastructure achievements in remote Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory.

Shortly after graduating, Annotonette was the National Chair for Young Engineers Australia representing over 40,000 young engineers. She is credited with starting the Young Engineers National Summit and crafting the first strategic and operational plans for Young Engineers Australia.

Since then, she has continued to be an International Ambassador for Young Engineers, and spoken on young professional issues in 15 different countries, including Tunisia, Kuwait and across South-east Asia.

Annotonette completed a Bachelor of Engineering in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Diploma in Engineering Practice with Second Class Honours at UTS.