State

State Government

Since federation, Australia's state governments play a crucial role in shaping the nation's prosperity and wellbeing by delivering essential services such as healthcare and education, driving economic growth through infrastructure development and job creation, ensuring public safety with effective law enforcement and emergency services, promoting sustainability with progressive environmental policies, fostering innovation through policy experimentation, and collaborating with the federal government to address national challenges. They play a key role in enhancing the quality of life for citizens and in positioning Australia as a global leader in various sectors, making state governments indispensable to the country's overall success.

The role of the state public services has been catapulted into the awareness of citizens in recent years through response to health crises, nation defining natural disaster responses and the direct delivery of daily services in new and more accessible ways like digital licencing. With heightened interaction with citizens comes higher expectations and greater scrutiny. Right across Australia, our people are more reliant government service delivery than ever before and more aware of the megatrends and issues facing our nation like climate change, geopolitical unrest, cost-of-living challenges and an ageing population.

Our 1.8 million public servants, more than any time in history, need to be responsive, consultative and contextual, bringing innovative solutions to complex multi-generational challenges in an economically constrained environment. While the federal government is playing an active role in policy coordination and collaboration, our state public services are at the forefront of service delivery for marginalised populations and are seen as the solution providers for complex problems.

At Orchard, our speciality is working with social purpose organisations – government, the care economy and education – to bring new thinking and high-calibre talent to our nation’s most challenging problems. Our ability to work across sectors, to bring context to the talent conversation and to elevate the search for people with new thinking is unparalleled.