I’ve been on holidays to Spain. Old houses, monasteries, castles, everything I was told to see. My wife takes amazing photo’s, I make very clever, funny, insightful, acerbic comments, mostly on Facebook for all to see. The only place I insisted on visiting was Bilboa and one of my exceedingly clever comments attracted a response,…
I’ve been doing some work. Just a little consulting, and I’m enjoying it. Not because I am chasing the work, but because it’s good to be helpful. Good advice unfettered by the need to find the next job or grow a business. It’s probably what I always really wanted to do but life and other…
This article was published in The Mandarin 24 July 2026. I have added some commentary for subscribers. In hindsight, I am not sure I really homed in on the message I was trying to get across. This isn’t an article about procurement, it’s about trust. Governments lose confidence when the options presented appear incomplete or shaped to favour a…
Why have we raced to appoint a Fuels Tzar to manage the “crisis”? It’s not that we haven’t had warning or been here before. We do not have a plan to distribute fuel from import terminals to end users, particularly in regional areas. Now is not the time to debate fuel rationing. The triggers, processes…
First published in The Mandarin (18 February 2026) I was taken by the recent speech of the Secretary of PM&C’s words reporting Kennedy: Flexibility needed for uncertainty in a dangerous world “Efforts around the world by authoritarians to control information and politicise data underscore the need for the public service to value transparency, honesty and…
First published in The Mandarin 9 February 2026 The Digital Transformation Agency has released the strategic review of the whole of Australian government single seller arrangements (SSAs). The review, by IT consultancy SolsticeIT, found the arrangements delivered the government “significant value for money” – more than $1.6 billion. $1.6bn is savings? No! To be fair,…
After stepping away from running a business, I found the hardest part wasn’t the work, it was letting go of the identity that came with it. These are some thoughts on that journey, still at its beginning.
No one has cracked defence procurement. How will Marles’ plan make a difference?
Here we go again. Both sides of politics claim they want an independent, high-performing APS. Yet neither side can resist the urge to interfere, and the APS leadership seems to continually tread the path of least resistance. The latest is the reported forming by the APSC of a consultative committee with representatives from 11 unions,…
First published in The Mandarin 26 March 2025 AI, and all that I fear “It’s too new. It’s just guessing. I don’t know how it works. It’s just a probabilistic word generator. It’s taking my job. I don’t know how to use it”, These are a few of the reasons raised at a recent Australian…
