Albanese announces first woman Treasury secretary and a ‘roundtable’ on boosting productivity

Treasury head Steven Kennedy will become Anthony Albanese’s right-hand bureaucrat, while Treasury will get its first female secretary, with the appointment of Jenny Wilkinson, who currently heads the Finance Department.

Kennedy, to be the new secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, replaces Glyn Davis, who announced after the election he was leaving the post after just three years.

Kennedy, 60, has had a close working relationship with Treasurer Jim Chalmers. He also served Chalmers’ Liberal predecessor, Josh Frydenberg, during the pandemic, when the Treasury was the main bureaucratic architect of the JobKeeper scheme that provided subsidies to business to keep on workers.

Wilkinson, 58, has been secretary of the Finance Department since August 2022. She was previously a deputy secretary in Treasury, where she worked on the pandemic economic stimulus measures. She is also a former head of the Parliamentary Budget Office.

As Treasury secretary, Wilkinson will take Kennedy’s place on the Reserve Bank.

Chalmers described Kennedy and Wilkinson as “the best of the best”, saying they were “outstanding public servants”.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said Wilkinson’s appointment not only recognised her talent, skills and expertise, “but it also serves as an important reminder for women and girls across the country that all positions in the Australian Public Service – no matter how senior – are roles that women can hold”.

The prime minister announced the bureaucratic reshuffle during his Tuesday address to the National Press Club on his second term agenda.

With Chalmers already having named productivity as his primary priority for this term, Albanese said he had asked the treasurer to convene “a roundtable to support and shape our government’s growth and productivity agenda”.

The summit, at Parliament House in August, will bring together a group of leaders from business, unions and civil society. More details will come in a speech on productivity by Chalmers next week.

“This will be a more streamlined dialogue than the Jobs and Skills Summit, dealing with a more targeted set of issues,” Albanese said.

“We want to build the broadest possible base of support for further economic reform, to drive growth, boost productivity, strengthen the budget, and secure the resilience of our economy, in a time of global uncertainty.

"What we want is a focused dialogue and constructive debate that leads to concrete and tangible actions.”

Albanese said the government’s starting point was clear, “Our plan for economic growth and productivity is about Australians earning more and keeping more of what they earn.” The aim was for growth, wages and productivity to rise together.

The Productivity Commission recently released 15 “priority reform areas” to further explore as part of the five productivity inquiries that the government has commissioned it to undertake.

The commission’s March quarterly bulletin shows a 0.1% decline in labour productivity in the December quarter, and a 1.2% decline over the year.

COVID produced a temporary lift in productivity but that soon passed.

In general Australia’s labour productivity has not significantly increased in more than a decade.

Welcoming the roundtable, Australian Industry Group Chief Executive Innes Willox said it was “critical that this tripartite summit focus on getting private sector investment moving again. Our economy and labour market has been unsustainably reliant on government spending for a prolonged period now.”