I’ve been working in the ANAO’s External Relations team for the past five years, which is now part of PSRG. External Relations is the ANAO’s liaison point with both national and international audit offices, and our key stakeholders—which include the Parliament, public sector entities and the public.

I’m currently the ANAO’s Parliamentary Liaison Officer, working with our Executive to engage with the Parliament, primarily through the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit—this is the parliamentary body that has oversight of our audits. It’s engaging and rewarding work building relationships with important stakeholders and learning about the Committee’s processes. In this role I am exposed to work across all sections of the office, giving me a really good understanding of the operations of the ANAO and the opportunity to work with a variety of people, both inside and outside the ANAO.

I’m also responsible for the day-to-day management of the ANAO’s capacity building programs with the audit offices of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. I coordinate hosting of international visits, as well as supporting our staff that are deployed overseas full-time or are travelling for our international programs. I’ve travelled overseas several times as part of my role, including to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and Bandung, Indonesia. These experiences helped me to better see the outcomes we are trying to achieve through our partnership programs and to broaden my understanding of the challenges faced by our secondees. It helped me see why it’s such a huge change coming here to Australia, to live and work for an extended period of time.

External Relations is a very busy environment, and the variety of work combined with the short time frames to deliver on tasks make it particularly challenging. But I feel fortunate to get a wide variety of opportunities, interesting work and support in expanding my skills.