Richard Persse was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division for significant service to public administration and to the community of South Australia.
When South Australian under treasurer Rick Persse joined the public service, he had no degree, no experience and no idea what he was doing.
Little did he know he would come to be one of the most significant public sector leaders in South Australia.
Having learnt his craft in the public service, Persse appreciates the importance of working as a team, and is reluctant to take full credit for his achievements.
“You really have two choices with something like this. You can accept it on behalf of all the people who’ve been doing the hard work for you forever. I came down on the ‘accept it’ side,” he said.
“The only advice I give anyone in going into a secretary role is you’ve got to know you aren’t going to be the smartest person in the room. It’s bunkum to feel that way.
“Unfortunately that happens a lot with leaders. They feel that power needs to be exerted. My experience has been the more power I share, the more powerful we are.”
Persse started in the public service as a high school leaver in 1985; he was more interested in footy and surfing than studying at the time.
As he worked his way through the lower ranks of the South Australian public service, he was given the opportunity to study. He attained a graduate certificate of public administration from Griffith University in 1996, and a master of business administration in 1999 from the University of Adelaide.
By this time, he’d already been in the public service for more than a decade. With much to be grateful for, Persse said he was hooked on public service.
He said aside from a brief and unsatisfying experience in the private sector, he’s been a public servant his whole working life.
“I went over to the dark side around 2010, briefly, back when it was still OK to say you worked for PwC,” he said.
“But the history is an incredibly fortunate one … the public service gave me the opportunity to work hard and get an opportunity, but also supported me through study.
“I just have so much to be thankful for.”
After his two-year foray in consulting, Persse was handed the helm of the SA Attorney-General’s Department.
When he joined the department, he said some people were sceptical of his ability to be an effective chief executive of the department without a legal background.
He said while he has a degree of self-consciousness about lacking formal qualifications earlier in his career, he remains a believer in good on-the-job training and the value of having a good generalist in the room.
Many public service leaders across the country have worked hard on more generalised skill sets that allow them to move more fluidly between departments and solve a more diverse range of problems.
He said the experience he gained in the Education and Attorney-General’s departments has allowed him to approach his current role as South Australia’s under treasurer with a perspective a career Treasury and Finance employee wouldn’t.
“Something a lot of my colleagues have commented on is that it’s nice for someone who’s run a big line agency to run Treasury,” Persse said.
“Treasuries are often very narrow but very deep. People who run treasuries have often only ever worked in Treasury.
“It feels like I can be in conversations with my colleagues with a bit more understanding and empathy for their roles and skills.”
The career path that Persse has taken barely exists in the public service anymore, with school leavers replaced gradually with university graduates at the lower levels of the APS.
But he thinks the fact he entered university with a decade of work experience helped him get more out of the process.
He still sees a big role for on-the-job training in the future of the public sector.
“We’re bringing them [those opportunities] back,” Persse said. “They definitely did stop, and we became as a public sector only interested in graduate recruits.
“I reminisce occasionally with our public service commissioner here, Erma Ranieri. She came up the same way – lots of people did.
“We are seeing more and more recruiting, from not only school leavers, but even mid-career transitions … we’ve been absolutely delighted with it. With the skills shortage Australia’s facing, let alone South Australia, we’re going to have to get really light on our feet about attracting and retaining talent.”
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