Find out more about ANZSOG’s Future public sector leaders’ series, featuring Peter Harris AO

Peter Harris is former Chairman of the Productivity Commission. Mr Harris has previously served as Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and the Victorian Government agencies responsible for Sustainability and the Environment; Primary Industries; and Public Transport.

He has worked for the Ansett-Air New Zealand aviation group and as a consultant on transport policy. He has also worked in Canada on exchange with the Privy Council Office (1993-1994). His career with the government started in 1976 with the Department of Overseas Trade and included periods with the Treasury; Finance; the Prime Minister’s Department and Transport; and he worked for two years in the Prime Minister’s Office on secondment from the Prime Minister’s Department as a member of then Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s personal staff.

In 2013, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia ‘for distinguished service to public administration through leadership and policy reform roles in the areas of telecommunications, the environment, primary industry and transport’. He has a degree in Economics from the University of Queensland (1975) and is married with two children.