Jacqui Curtis, the Australian Taxation Office’s long-time chief operating officer, has been named the next Australian Public Service Commissioner and will begin her five-year term in June.
Ms Curtis, who is also the head of the APS Human Resources Profession, comes to the commissioner role as the APS broadens its uses of AI and faces intense scrutiny over the size of its workforce.
After 10 years setting policies to professionalism, capability and integrity at the ATO and previous experience at the former Department of Human Services, she will now be tasked with this job at a service-wide level.
The APSC has been led by deputy commissioner Dr Subho Banerjee since February, following the resignation of Gordon de Brouwer two years ahead of schedule in January this year.
Mr de Brouwer oversaw a controversial period for the public service, marked by a series of industrial relations disputes and the fallout from the Robodebt royal commission.
Top federal government cybersecurity expert Brendan Dowling has been appointed Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator in response to a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
Mr Dowling first joined the Department of Home Affairs in 2015, having previously served as attaché to the Australian embassy in Jordan. He has since held a series of senior roles, including first assistant secretary cyber and technology policy and deputy secretary for critical infrastructure and protective security.
Mr Dowling in 2023 also became Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, succeeded in the role by Australian Signals Directorate veteran Jessica Hunter in October last year.
French financial markets expert Anthony Attia has been purloined to lead the embattled Australian Stock Exchange, dropping Paris for Sydney from September and with a salary to match the shift.
Mr Attia has been a senior leader at Euronext, the world’s largest financial markets operator, since 2014, serving as chief executive of the French stock exchange Euronext Paris, and most recently as global head of derivatives.
Mr Attia’s $2 million contract comes with $6.3 million in stock and the potential to earn a further $6 million in bonuses if he can steward improvements in the Aussie financial market leader’s internal corporate culture.
A report into the ASX from corporate regulator last year lashed its “lack of maturity with respect to practices that support organisational culture, incident response, stakeholder management, risk management and compliance management”.
The market operator has also struggled to implement major tech overhaul projects, including attempts to replace its Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) using blockchain technology.
Mr Attia succeeds Helen Lofthouse, who is yet to say what her next role will be.
Legal scholar and AI expert Professor Kimberlee Weatherall will join the National Open Government Forum (NOGF) to help shape its fourth National Action Plan in pursuit of improved government transparency, due by the end of the year.
Professor Weatherall joins the NOGF by way of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at the University of Sydney, and previously served as a member of the federal government’s short-lived AI expert group.
Former Yahoo7! executive Penny Diamantakiou has joined Australia’s only ASX-listed AI company, corporate workflow service Decidr AI Industries, as its new chief financial officer.
A former Optus-Singtel vice president, Ms Diamantakiou also co-founded Sydney-based renewable energy semiconductor manufacturer 5B and most recently worked as a senior consultant at government air traffic management agency Airservices Australia.
Decidr last month kicked off a $15 million capital raising round after it annual revenue projections doubled across the first months of 2026.
Top bionic expert Professor Nicholas Opie will join medtech developer Control Bionics as a strategic advisor and board member as it moves to strengthen its commercialisation strategies.
Professor Opie co-founded brain-computer interface startup Synchron and has been head of the University of Melbourne’s vascular bionics lab since 2012.
Kinetic IT director Wayne Woodman has stepped into a new role as its head of policing and emergency services, announcing the shift on Friday.
Mr Woodman’s career spans Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu and Cognizant where he was head of cloud and infrastructure services Australia and New Zealand, before joining Kinetic in 2023.
Kinetic IT last year locked in a $100 million, five-year deal for technology services for Victoria Police under Mr Woodman’s stewardship.
Four members of the Australian National University’s governing council have resigned following the departure last week of its Chancellor, Julie Bishop.
Tanya Hosch, Wayne Martin, Rob Whitfield and Padma Raman stepped off the 15-person council on Tuesday, while a fifth – Alison Kitchen – departed late in April.
ACT Senator David Pocock called for the council’s appointment process to shift to something more “merit-based”.
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