What's your job about?
I’m an analyst in the Health team at the Treasury and over the past two years I’ve been working on the public health response to COVID-19 and health system reform. On the covid response, I work closely with officials at the Ministry of Health and in the Minister of Finance’s office to provide advice on policy proposals and their financial and economic impacts. This involves quite a lot of reading, talking through issues with other policy analysts, and providing oral and written advice to Ministers. For health reform, our team has been working to design the funding settings for the new health system that is being established on 1 July 2022. This work has also involved providing a series of written and oral advice to Ministers to inform their decisions on the new settings.
What's your background?
I grew up partly in Auckland and partly in Melbourne before heading over to America for university, where I also swam on my university’s swim team. I took a bit of a mix of subjects at school and then continued to just take the classes I was interested in when I started at uni (history, French and politics mainly). This led me towards an International Studies major for my Bachelor of Arts degree, which also meant I got to study in Paris for a semester on exchange. After completing my undergraduate degree, I moved back to New Zealand and started a Masters of Public Policy at the University of Auckland. I was always keen to try working in policy and applied for the Treasury grad programme at the end of my Masters programme. I didn’t really know what being a policy analyst would be like before I started at Treasury, but I really enjoy it now and think where I’ve ended up kind of makes sense looking back.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Definitely! As an analyst at the Treasury there’s a lot of room to explore what you’re interested in and make use of the skills and knowledge that you acquired at uni. The grads in our intake had law, finance, economics, accounting and arts degrees. I think the most important characteristics are having a willingness to learn and being curious about what happens around the Treasury. Time management is pretty helpful too.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
There are lots! I really enjoy having my own policy areas to look after, getting to manage my own work programme, the fast-paced nature of my job, and never being bored because there’s always something to learn more about. I also really enjoy all the collaboration that happens across government, getting to work with people around the Treasury and in other agencies, and feeling like we’re making an impact.
What are the limitations of your job?
A limitation of working at the Treasury is that sector teams (like the health team) mainly work on second opinion policy advice, so we usually aren’t designing the policies ourselves. In the case of our team, the Ministry of Health is responsible for designing the policies and then we comment on the financial and economic impacts before the proposals go to Ministers for decisions.
3 pieces of advice for your university-self?