Proud Willman Noongar woman Gina Hill, a senior public servant in Western Australia, has been awarded ANZSOG’s 2024 First Nations Scholarship and will accept a place in the Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) program in 2025.
The First Nations scholarship has traditionally been awarded every two years, with 2024 being the first year to provide scholarship support on an annual basis going forward.
An annual scholarship will allow more Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori public servants to benefit from a funded place in an ANZSOG program, and prepare them to become First Nations leaders within the public services of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand
Ms Hill is currently the acting Deputy Director General of Strategic Reform at WA’s Department of Justice. She will begin the EMPA next year, through the Monash University pathway.
She says that the EMPA will shift her skills and strategic thinking to a higher level and further advance her career as a senior leader in the WA public service. It will also increase her capacity to inspire other Aboriginal people and support her to be a positive and influential role in the public sector.
Ms Hill is about to move from her role at the Department of Justice to a new role as Assistant Director-General, Aboriginal Outcomes Division, at the WA Department of Communities, where she can continue to lead improvements that support the lives of Aboriginal people and their communities in Western Australia.
“In my current role with Justice, one of the biggest challenges is the complexity of the circumstances and underlying reasons why people came into the Department’s care,” she said.
“My hope is that I can positively influence and shape policy and system reform for the betterment of Aboriginal people, to positively impact the Closing the Gap priority reforms, targets and outcomes.”
She says she will continue to collaborate with Aboriginal people, and advocate Aboriginal led decision-making and implementation, including culturally appropriate service system responses, whilst working more in the prevention and early intervention space.
“My mentors and members of the senior executive at Justice have supported and enabled my career development within the Department and I am grateful for the opportunities afforded me in the almost eight years I have been here.
‘The executive has entrusted me to carry out significant reforms such as the establishment of the Aboriginal Justice Transformation Directorate and the Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committee” Ms Hill said.
She said finding solutions to complex issues requires a whole of community effort, involving not for profit, Aboriginal community controlled, philanthropic, Local, State and Federal Governments, peak organisations, industry, and Aboriginal people themselves.
ANZSOG Dean and CEO Caron Beaton-Wells said that the scholarship reflects ANZSOG’s ongoing strong commitment to supporting First Nations leadership in public sector agencies.
“When First Nations voices are heard at senior levels of the public service, we get stronger partnerships with and better results for First Nations communities,” Professor Beaton-Wells said.
“The First Nations Scholarship has now been awarded three times, and the 2024 Scholarship will give another Indigenous public servant the skills and strategic perspectives they need to reach senior levels and have a positive impact on the way the public sector develops and delivers policy that affects First Nations.
A career of making positive change
Making positive change has been a priority for Ms Hill since she joined the public service in 1990, wanting a change and a chance to serve the community after working for commercial law firms in Perth for more than seven years.
“I enjoyed working in law firms, but I did not see any Aboriginal clients come to any of those law firms along St Georges Terrace. I felt isolated, and I could see all these things that were happening within my community that were worrying me. There was hopelessness and despair – and I thought, I really want to make a positive impact for my mob, Aboriginal people, but I also want to serve the broader community.”
After passing the Commonwealth public service test, she went into the Commonwealth Employment Service (precursor to Centrelink) and started working in the public sector.
“I helped people arriving from other countries to settle in Western Australia by supporting them to have their qualifications validated or top up their study so that they could begin work, which was immensely rewarding.”
“And then I just continued to grow my career in the Commonwealth public sector in several different business areas and eventually landed into the Aboriginal space. And collaborated with Aboriginal people, my people, which was far more rewarding, but far more complex and challenging.”
She is a champion for greater Aboriginal representation at senior executive levels. Aboriginal leadership is different for a completely unique range of reasons, and cultural diversity in leadership must be seen as a strength.
“There’s a feeling of loneliness because my contemporaries and my peers are not Aboriginal, and with that comes a significant cultural load and expectations that permeate beyond employment,” she said.
“We all have diverse leadership styles as individuals, but I believe Aboriginal people lead differently. I lead in a more collaborative way, in a unique way, because I was raised in an Aboriginal household, by extraordinarily strong Aboriginal parents and culture is so much a part of who I am. We bring with us learned cultural leadership, in an Aboriginal context, and when I look at what is required in relation to leadership, that cultural element is not yet infused in the public sector.”
She said recognition of the value of Aboriginal leadership required urgent attention, and thought-through deliberate, conscious affirmative action.
“At Justice I have been driving our Closing the Gap priority reforms, targets and outcomes and the WA Aboriginal Empowerment Strategy. Having Aboriginal people at the table as decision-makers helps infuse culture into the heart of everything we do.”
She said that committing to and embedding diversity would also unlock greater recruitment and retention of Aboriginal people at senior executive levels and yield better services for Aboriginal communities, as determined by Aboriginal people.
Ms Hill said she hoped the content of the EMPA, and the network that came with it, could help her in her new role.
“I want to be able to challenge myself and to keep serving the community and influencing the way government works in partnership with Aboriginal people and their communities.
“I want to show Aboriginal people aspiring to come into the public sector that anything is possible.”
Ms Hill says that it is crucial to have diversity of leadership that encompasses Aboriginal people and their cultural perspectives, understandings, and ways of being, and to have Aboriginal people in decision-making, which really goes to self-determination and empowerment.
“If we can get a new generation of Aboriginal leadership in the public sector and influence it to shift ever so slightly to change outcomes for Aboriginal people, this will help in a myriad of ways.”
While Ms Hill is looking forward to learning the business of Department of Communities, she is also eager to offer mentoring to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal colleagues in her new role.
“To see Aboriginal people thriving, communities strong, families supported and safe and to serve the Western Australian and Australian community, is what is important to me,” Ms Hill said.
ANZSOG’s First Nations Scholarship is awarded to either an Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or Māori public servant and provides for a funded place on our Executive Master of Public Administration, Deputies Leadership Program, Executive Fellows Program or Towards Strategic Leadership Program. For more information visit the First Nations Scholarship page on our website, or subscribe to ANZSOG’s First Nations e-news