Professor Ruth Wallace delivers the 2022 Hawkes Oration

Renee Leon

Professor Ruth Wallace, Dean of the College of Indigenous Futures, Education & the Arts and Director of the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University.

IPAA Northern Territory recently hosted the 2022 Hawkes Oration, Indigenous co-design: opportunities, challenges and risks, which was delivered by Professor Ruth Wallace, Dean of the College of Indigenous Futures, Education & the Arts and Director of the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University.

Professor Wallace’s research interests relate to the links between social policy that addresses the concerns of people and systems remote from core decision making processes. This work is situated in regional and remote areas of Northern Australia and Indonesia, with a specific focus in research approaches to improve service delivery and adaptation, undertaken with Aboriginal people in remote and regional areas.

View the Hawkes Oration here.

As part of its contribution to the development of public administration in the Territory, the Hawkes Oration is named after, and honours long-serving President, David Hawkes. David made a significant contribution to the work of the IPAA NT over many years, and also played a major role in the development of public administration in the Territory. His leadership was instrumental in placing the Territory at the forefront of innovation in the public sector in the 1990s.

David was Commissioner for Public Employment for thirteen years between 1989 and 2001 and was, at his retirement, the longest serving Commissioner in Australia. In his earlier career as a public sector union official, he played a major role in the development of redeployment and voluntary redundancy arrangements in the Australian Public Service. These arrangements were later used to good effect in the Territory over many years as a means of managing structural change.

David is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration and continues to contribute to the work of the Institute in his retirement.

Previous orations have been delivered by luminaries such as Natasha Stott Despoja, Peter Shergold, Fred Chaney, Annabel Crabb, Professor Simon Maddocks and the Honourable Clare Martin.