Assistant Parliamentary Advisor

Agency Purpose

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is an independent statutory authority established by the Australian Government to maintain an impartial and independent electoral system for eligible voters through active electoral roll management, efficient delivery of polling services, and targeted education and public awareness programs.

The AEC’s values and commitments

The AEC values and commitments are an essential component of our operating environment and frame how AEC staff work. The AEC's focus is on electoral integrity through the values of quality, agility and professionalism.

The Tem

The Parliamentary, Governance and Assurance section sits within the Deputy Electoral Commissioner’s Office. The section brings together three critical functions that ensures effective service delivery to portfolio ministers and Parliament, strong governance with integrity, and confidence in achieving business objectives. The section’s role is pivotal in maintaining the integrity of operations across the agency and dedicated to providing high-quality support to both internal and external stakeholders to achieve this.

The Opportunity

As an Assistant Parliamentary Advisor, you will play a critical part in supporting activities within the Ministerial and Parliamentary Services (MPS) team who are responsible for managing the exchange of information between the AEC, its portfolio ministers and the Parliament.

You will be supporting the strategic direction of the MPS function by contributing to team business planning, conducting evaluation, risk management analysis and professional development, including supervisory responsibilities of a highly functional and productive team.

In this role, you will be required to establish and maintain strong working relationships with key stakeholders of varying seniority levels, such as portfolio ministers’ offices and AEC senior leaders. You will be required to provide appropriate support to them utilising your expertise and knowledge, exercising strong judgement and integrity.

To help support key deliverables expecting from the team, you may be required to conduct relevant briefings to a range of AEC colleagues and leaders. Extending any necessary support across the agency and internal business areas with the workflow, quality assurance and, where applicable, authoring of parliamentary products for submission through the Parliamentary Document Management System (PDMS+) and Cabinet workflow system (CabNet+). These may include but not limited to ministerial submissions, Question Time briefs, correspondence and responses to questions on notice.

To excel you’ll have:

• Demonstrate initiative and foresight to plan and project operational tasks to meet organisational goals.
• Possess excellent coordination skills, attention to detail and ability to manage competing priorities with a high degree of integrity, judgement and professionalism.
• Demonstrate experience utilising a document workflow management system, such as PDMS+, and the configuration of web-based applications to share information electronically, or the ability to learn such systems and processes.
• Demonstrate proficiency in research, analysis, writing and communication skills, including the creation of key papers or documents.
• Demonstrate ability to work and lead a small team, able to work independently to meet key deliverables.

Desirable

• Knowledge of, or ability to, quickly gain knowledge of Australian electoral law and practice.
• Knowledge of, or the ability to quickly gain knowledge of parliamentary practice and conventions.

Eligibility

• AEC employees must be Australian citizens.
• Any person who is, and seen to be active in political affairs, and intends to publicly carry on this activity, may compromise the strict neutrality of the AEC and cannot be considered.
• Applicants are required to consent to, undergo, obtain and maintain a character clearance.
• Applicants are required to consent to, undergo, obtain and maintain the security clearance required for this role.