Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has appointed a left-wing career economist with no defence experience as the first woman to run the Department of Defence.
Mr Albanese announced on Tuesday he had recommended Meghan Quinn, the current Secretary of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, to the role a fortnight after making Susan Coyle the country’s first female Chief of the Army.
At a news conference Mr Albanese highlighted the fact that he has given women other top jobs, including the heads of Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the Productivity Commission, and emphasised that the majority of his cabinet and his caucus are women.
Ms Quinn will now collect a total renumeration package of $1,022,776 per year and replaces Greg Moriarty, Australia’s new Ambassador to the United States, but unlike her predecessor and previous Defence Secretaries Dennis Richardson and Duncan Lewis, she does not have defence or intelligence agency experience.
In 2012 she led work on the Gillard Labor government’s now-discredited and buried Asian Century White Paper, which Opposition defence spokesperson James Paterson said on Tuesday had not aged well.
Mr Paterson called Ms Quinn a “highly competent and professional public servant” in congratulating her, but said he hoped her views on China had changed.
“When the Prime Minister was asked about this today, he pointed to her role in authoring the Asian Century White paper as evidence of her experience in national security,” he said.
“I would say that’s a white paper that hasn’t aged well. It was incredibly optimistic about Australia’s relationship with China in particular.
“To be fair to Secretary Quinn, though, the world has changed, presumably her views have been updated in that time.”
In 2009 Ms Quinn won a Public Service Medal for “outstanding public service in the development of climate change policy”, has worked on the Albanese government’s gas strategy, and is a trained economist who worked for BHP and the Bank of England before starting her public service career.
In 2022 she celebrated her appointment as Secretary of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources in a LinkedIn post about the pro-LGBT “wear it purple day” where she said “thank you to the department’s Pride Network”.
Defence Minister Richard Marles addressed Ms Quinn’s lack of defence experience on Sky News, saying “having a fresh set of eyes is an opportunity”, and denying she was appointed because she is female.
“She comes with such important experience in terms of running a large department, and that’s really what we wanted in terms of running Defence – particularly through this period of time, where we are going through significant reform, experience of public administration of large organisations is going to be invaluable,” he said.
“It is a significant moment, though, that we have the first female secretary, and that’s not something that we should pass over. But it’s not the reason she was chosen.”
Header image: Left, Meghan Quinn (LinkedIn). Right, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles with female Labor MPs (PMO).
