Why it's important that you are simpatico with your paid work organisation

The beauty of working in the Department was that I totally 'got' health and family services. My extended family was made up of GPs and nurses, and we had had plenty of conversations about the government's role in health care, the phamaeceutical benefits scheme, the role of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. My personal values accorded with working towards achieving good health outcomes for all Australians - no problem.

The only problem was that the APS 4 position involved the recruitment of senior executives into the Department, and once again I was faced with servility. I was a junior staff member charged with searching around to find 'suitable' housing for senior people, and sourcing 'suitable' schools for their children. This was very interesting to me especially in light of the fact that the paid workplace is said to be separate from the personal sphere... Enough said.

Within a month or so, I was acting in an APS5 role in the administration of the graduate program, specifically, I was working on the graduate learning and development side of things. I liked this role, as life-long learning is one of my personal values, and within weeks I was to deliver and facilitate a week-long orientation course for a new batch of graduates. A year later I had been promoted to the APS6 level and was now assisting the EL1 graduate recruitment manager with graduate recruitment and development. I was now well in my 'groove' and was implementing courses for graduates about the nature of being a public servant, contracting in service providers to undertake more innovative graduate recruitment practices, and developing relationships with the Department's Indigenous staff network to help boost the representation and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates. When the graduate recruitment manager left, I was asked to act in her stead, and was in this role for another 12 months, during which time the graduate intake doubled with the introduction of two recruitment processes per annum.  

Then the bottom of my world dropped out. My daughter Alice, then aged 22, had been to a party at night where illicit drugs were present, and allegedly she had taken them. My husband and I received a phone call at work at 10 am to learn that Alice was in hospital in a bad way. We travelled to the hospital in silence, only to learn that she had died.