Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Secretaries Dinner

"Evidence is (almost) everything"
| Speech
  • About us
  • Secretary
Dr Steven Kennedy PSM.

25 November 2025

Acknowledgements

Good evening, everyone.

I acknowledge that we are gathered on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region.

I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and I extend that respect to all First Nations people joining us today.

I would like to thank the Australian National University and the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation, and your chair, Dr David Gruen, for inviting me to speak.

Thank you, also, to the Australian Public Service Secretaries and agency heads with us tonight.

Lastly, but most importantly, thank you to the Sir Roland Wilson and Pat Turner Scholars mentors, scholars, alumni, and academic supervisors.

Introduction

I thought I would speak briefly this evening about evidence.

The Nobel Prize-winning Australian scientist, Professor Barry Marshall, was someone truly committed to evidence gathering.1

Back in the Eighties, it was generally accepted that stress and lifestyle factors were the major causes of peptic ulcers.

So in 1984, Professor Marshall challenged this by swallowing a culture fluid — one containing a large amount of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.

He proved — using himself as the test subject — that this bacterium can cause acute gastric illness.

Before becoming an economist and public servant, I worked in health care.

Here I learnt about challenging the obvious by focusing on the evidence.2

Amidst the noise, the pressure, and the very human desire to help someone in need, it’s evidence that you must rely on above all else.

Evidence gives us a framework for neutrality, making decisions from data not emotion.

But if it’s a frame, it’s not the painting.

The full picture is only revealed when evidence is paired with expertise.

This is a quality our Sir Roland Wilson and Pat Turner scholars — past and present — all possess, and it’s why they’re so valuable to the APS.

The scholars bring critical thinking …

… new ideas and ways of working …

… and a commitment to champion research …

… as well as analysis and evidence-informed policy.

This is essential for the APS, because it’s how we need to engage with Australians.

Policy is a promise to the Australian people, and that promise is met when evidence meets expertise. 

Some may ask, why not evidence alone?

Because evidence evolves.

Being open to evidence says you’re open to listening. What was once settled can shift with new research and fresh perspectives.  

Expertise is not the same as certainty.

It’s the willingness and confidence to ask questions.

To see what is …

… and to ask what could be.

Just as the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation assesses applicants against the potential of their research proposal.

Ambassadors for expertise

To date, the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation has awarded 114 scholarships to scholars and alumni from 27 APS agencies.3

This includes 43 Pat Turner scholarships, which provide high-performing Indigenous APS staff the opportunity to undertake research on topics of national significance.4

As scholars and alumni, you follow in the footsteps of Sir Roland Wilson and Dr Pat Turner.

Roland Wilson’s history laid the groundwork for academia in the APS.

And Dr Turner’s work — helping drive community efforts to Close the Gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people — inspires us in the present.

The scholarships which bear their names point to the future of policy in Australia.

And the recipients — the many of you here — are our ambassadors for expertise.

I’m thinking of PhD alumnus Dr Nathan Deutscher, who worked with the ATO to build Australia’s first intergenerational tax dataset.

As Treasury’s Chief Data Officer, he’s now guiding the department’s next generation of micro-data analysts.

There is also PhD alumnus Dr Steve Munns, who is unlocking First Nations potential to help solve public policy challenges for all Australians.

Dr Munns led the ‘SES100’ initiative from the APSC, aimed at increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation across the Senior Executive Service.

As of September this year, there are now 100 First Nations staff in Senior Executive Service roles.5

Similarly, Pat Turner PhD alumna Dr Lisa Conway’s award-winning research explored how to uplift the cultural capability of the APS to improve policy effectiveness.

Dr Chell Lyons, meanwhile, is shaping Australia’s response to climate change, developing options for Australian green investment finance to support the transition to net zero.

And Polly Hannaford’s PhD research is strengthening Australia’s biosecurity policy and practices, reducing exotic disease risk in aquaculture.

I’ll stop there or I’ll be going all night.

But you get a sense of the breadth of work scholars undertake — and how fortunate we are to benefit from their expertise.  

Trust is earned

Expertise — or, at least, listening to expertise — isn’t always appreciated these days.

We operate in a world where theories increasingly lead facts.

Or, worse, where facts are done away with altogether.

For some, ‘going with your gut’ may sound or even feel good …

… but like Professor Marshall, I’d encourage you to pause and think about exactly what passes through the gut(!)  

Thankfully here in Australia, we have trust in our institutions — including the APS.  

This trust is something we’ve earned — and something we need to maintain.

We can maintain trust by repeatedly demonstrating our expertise.

Many of you may know the infamous Sir Roland Wilson story when he joined the public service after completing not one but two PhDs.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, university graduates were excluded from the public service.6

When Sir Roland Wilson was appointed to a senior position in the Statistician’s Branch of the Treasury in 1932,7 he was greeted with suspicion.

On his first day in the office, a stop-work meeting was called in response to his presence.

His new colleagues didn't like, quote, ‘this graduate coming in to threaten [our] futures’.8

But, over time, perceptions changed — particularly with the outbreak of the Second World War.9  

Suddenly, as Australia faced an existential threat, numbers mattered a great deal more.

And so, too, did the people who could understand them. 

I observed a similar turn towards evidence and expertise in COVID.

When the pandemic hit, there were plenty of experts and debate.

Governments needed assistance to find the right path in the face of potential devastation. This meant the APS needed to rapidly analyse the evidence and integrate our expertise.

The APS performed admirably in this challenge. We didn’t have all the expertise ourselves but we were able to collaborate with academia and others to bring to bear all the facts that could be marshalled.

David’s leadership of the ABS was just one example of the power of evidence and expertise combining during this period.

The ideal becomes the real

As scholars, you must continue to navigate the nexus between public policy and academic research.

Your place is where the ideal becomes the real.

This is your opportunity, and your challenge:

To ensure policy-making continues to draw on the evidence and expertise of academia.

To pair a culture of curiosity and experimentation with strong institutions that value evidence.

And to tackle the biggest threats facing Australians.

Because ‘doing what we’ve always done’ will not be good enough.

More than that, it creates risk.

Asking how we can do things differently manages this risk and contributes to better policy in the long run.

Within my own department, the ‘Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government’ — or BETA for short — brings together experts to research, evaluate policy options, and propose evidence-based solutions.10

Just last week, we released the Prompting for a better deal report to understand the barriers Australians face in getting a better deal on banking products.

More than 15,000 people took part in a field trial, which showed that when prompts are prominent — with a clear call to action and personalised interest rate comparisons — this can help consumers by calling their attention to the availability of a better deal.

Beyond this, the growth in the speed and quality of data underpinning the way we support Australians is remarkable.

Geoscience Australia, which launched the Digital Earth Australia Hotspots system in 2023, is a case in point.11

The system uses satellite data to detect possible bushfires in near real-time.12

Satellite feeds scan the entire country every 10 minutes to spot areas that might signal a fire.13

Fire agencies then use this data to protect properties, livelihoods, and lives.14

We’re also innovating in the way we tell stories about data.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is doing an impressive job making official data engaging and accessible to Australians.

And while, admittedly, an Instagram post that explains the seasonal price of apples using a Charli XCX song isn’t my cup of tea, so to speak …15

… rest assured, the ABS has got the stats to back up this approach.

The ABS social accounts boast 470,000 followers16 — a number that has doubled since 2018.17

In this context, expertise matters.

We need experts to use this data — and we need expertise to think about the way we tell the story of data.

In short: more data, more innovation, more expertise.

Conclusion

To all the scholars here tonight, I want to thank you for your ambition …

… for your curiosity …

… and for your willingness to help push the APS and to contribute to a better Australia.

And to the Secretaries here tonight, my message is: A scholar is a terrible thing to waste.

So, please, harness this investment.

Engage with your scholars during and after their study.

And if they change agencies, bring them to the attention of their new Secretary.

The APS must continue to champion evidence-based policy-making, and to draw on academic insights.

Academia should continue delivering timely, policy-relevant and grounded research.

We live in challenging and uncertain times.

As the saying goes – attributed to voices from Danish Physicist Niels Bohr to Baseball icon Yogi Berra – ‘It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future’.18

But when evidence meets expertise …

… no challenge is impossible.

Thank you.

  1. 23 years of the discovery of Helicobacter pylori: Is the debate over? - PMC↩
  2. Nursing the economy: Coming back from Covid STEVEN: I definitely think nursing affects the way you interact with people ... The situations people face; the capacity to talk to people and ask questions, and understand their concerns / SHANE: You have to get a diagnosis / STEVEN: That’s right.↩
  3. 2026 scholarship awardees | Sir Roland Wilson Foundation↩
  4. Pat Turner Higher Degree Research Scholarship | The Australian National University↩
  5. First Nations leadership reaches historic APS milestone | Ministers' media centre↩
  6. Wayback Machine The public service did not begin graduate recruitment until 1933, limiting recruitment to 10 per cent of overall vacancies (Matheson, 2001). Lateral recruits such as Sir Roland were actively discriminated against to maximise the promotion opportunities of ‘insiders’.↩
  7. Biography - Sir Roland Wilson - Australian Dictionary of Biography↩
  8. Farquharson J. OBITUARY: Sir Roland Wilson "outstanding public servant of his generation'. The Canberra Times. Oct 27 1996. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.librarycatalogue.act.gov.au/newspapers/obituary-sir-roland-wilson-outstanding-public/docview/928090309/se-2. “But on his first day there was a stop-work meeting. The people in the Stats office didn't like "the idea of this graduate coming in to threaten their futures" at a time when the more usual entry was as telegraph messenger or inkwell filler”. ↩
  9. Sir Roland Wilson | Sir Roland Wilson Foundation↩
  10. Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government | PM&C↩
  11. https://smartsatcrc.com/new-earth-observation-hotspot-product-launched/"↩
  12. About DEA | Geoscience Australia. “We make petabytes of satellite imagery easier to use.”↩
  13. https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/dea/dea-data-and-products/dea-hotspots↩
  14. https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/dea/dea-data-and-products/dea-hotspots/ “fire agencies have been able to implement more effective pre-planning efforts as well as establish on-the- ground monitoring and warning systems to protect properties, livelihoods, and lives.”↩
  15. https://www.instagram.com/p/C91Fa3ABndz/?hl=en↩
  16. https://www.apsdataawards.gov.au/2024awards↩
  17. https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/the-government-social-media-team-giving-statistics-a-sexy-rebrand-20240918-p5kbjk.html↩
  18. The New Yale Book of Quotations, p 96. “It is very difficult to predict, especially the future”. Attributed in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec 1971. This is often said to be “an old Danish proverb.” K.K Steincke, Goodbye and Thanks (1948), quotes it as a pun used in the Danish Parliament in the late 1930s. ↩