page_title: Peter Shergold
section_title: Public service career
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Shergold / Public service career
caption_attribution_description: Australian Ambassador to the US Dennis Richardson, Prime Minister John Howard, and Peter Shergold, secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, meet US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (back to the camera) at the Pentagon.
context_page_description: Peter Roger Shergold AC FRSN is an Australian academic, company director, and former public servant. Shergold has been the Chancellor of Western Sydney University since 2011.
  Between February 2003 and February 2008, he was the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and as such was the most senior official in the Australian Public Service.
  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2016.
context_section_description: In 1987 he began working for the Australian federal government, firstly as head of the newly established Office of Multicultural Affairs. Having become deputy secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1990, he was appointed the CEO of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1991–1994) and Comcare, a federal government workers' compensation authority (1994–1995). From 1995 to 1998, he was the Commissioner of the Australian Public Service. He has also been the Secretary of the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (1998–2001) and the Department of Education, Science and Training (2001–03). In 2003 he was appointed Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
caption: Shergold (right) in his capacity as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; with then Prime Minister John Howard at a 2005 meeting in the United States.
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