Sarah Vandenbroek: Brokering democracy on Norfolk Island

First assistant secretary Sarah Vandenbroek’s recent work mapping alternative approaches to civic participation in Norfolk Island was no ordinary desk job.

Melissa Coade January 30, 2025

It takes a special pair of safe hands to sort out tricky government problems when temperatures are running high and strong opinions diverge.

Sarah Vandenbroek is one such public servant, awarded a Public Service Medal for her outstanding public service in rebuilding trust and fostering productive relations between the locals of Norfolk Island and Australian officials.

Over about 20 return flights back and forth to the three main islands of Norfolk, located 1,400 km east of Australia and nestled between New Zealand and New Caledonia, the first assistant secretary was responsible for working through critical freight management, state service delivery and supply issues impacted by the pandemic.

“I was working to find a … governance model where they had more autonomy and more local decision-making rather than just having decisions made in Canberra that affected the island,” Vandenbroek told The Mandarin.

“Obviously, there were [legal] limits to what we could do but the minister’s office was really supportive in terms of looking at innovative and bespoke ways we could achieve a greater level of local autonomy.”

“A lot of it was just brainstorming and trying to be innovative, coming up with new ideas and talking to people on the island about what is it that they needed and would suit their community,” Vandenbroek said.

The PSM is another feather in the cap for a bureaucrat who has forged a reputation for resilience and has a knack for finding resolutions amid complexity.

Ten years ago, the federal government stepped in to assist when financial challenges pushed the island’s legislative assembly to dissolution.

Becoming a non-self-governing territory a decade ago never sat well with locals of the 34.6 km² territory, and Vandenbroek’s team was tasked with trying to develop a governance model that gave Norfolk Islanders a way to exercise a greater level of autonomy.

The senior public servant from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (DITRDCA) said her work for Norfolk Island came with many unexpected challenges.

One of the biggest hurdles was transitioning Norfolk Island’s health and education service providers from NSW to Queensland.

Vandenbroek said NSW had never intended to be a long-term delivery partner for the island and when the time came to renew service contacts, Queensland became a more obvious choice as a jurisdiction already well-versed in deploying services to remote places.

“It was probably the only time in the history of Australia that an operating school has gone from one state to another. It was effectively the equivalent of picking up a school in NSW and moving into Queensland,” she said.

Unlike many other public service roles, “phoning a friend” from another jurisdiction for advice was not always an option.

Oftentimes, Vandenbroeke’s team would start their day only to come up against something completely left of field.

“It involved working hands-on with the community to understand what was going to work for them in their context rather than trying to apply a mainland solution that might not work out there,” she said.

Norfolk Island was first settled by Polynesians as long as an estimated 1,000 years ago but was uninhabited when small loads of convicts landed there in 1788. In later years, the island was used to send banished convicts who were found guilty of re-offending.

By the mid-1850s, people living on Pitcairn Island (and who were descendants of the Bounty mutineers) migrated to Norfolk Island. This group became the first generation who comprise today’s population of nearly 2,200.

“It’s such a beautiful mix of the Pitcairn descendant population that’s been there for a long time, and some of the newer people who’ve come in and brought some fresh ideas into the mix as well,” Vandenbroek said of the group of three main islands where people speak English and the local language ‘Norf’k’ (a mix of Tahitian and Old English from the Bounty descendants).

“And it all just blends together to make it just such a unique but culturally rich place that’s just fascinating.”

The first assistant secretary has spent more than 20 years working for the government, having previously worked as the deputy chief financial officer for PM&C, and across the health and finance portfolios.

From 2020-2024 she led a 230-strong team at DITRDCA throughout Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Norfolk Island, and the Jervis Bay Territory.

“They are the four non-self-governing territories — so the Commonwealth actually stands in the shoes of the state [government],” Vandenbroek explained.

“We employ the doctors and the nurses out in the Christmas Island and the Cocos, as well as the people at the power service, and the policy people.

“In Norfolk Island, we had a team [on the ground and they had a] much more hands-on in service delivery than a lot of Commonwealth public service roles.”

Today Vandenbroek heads a team responsible for developing a national framework to ban social media for under-16s.

The clearest synergy between her efforts to lead direct and ongoing engagement with Norfolk Island’s community leaders and her current job heading up DITRDCA’s digital platforms, safety and classifications division is working with stakeholders.

Getting stakeholder engagement right, and meaningfully engaging with the community in the development of government programs and policies has been a priority for APS reform under the federal Labor and PM&C boss Glyn Davis.

Crucially, top decision-makers have also declared it an essential component of effective government.

Vandenbroek described her latest professional challenge (which began five months ago) as an “interesting and growing area”, also noting it was more policy-focused than operational.

“[We are] looking at how we can combine that with a digital duty of care that the minister has announced to make a whole environment a more safe experience for people online.

“We have to try, and we have to start somewhere. It will take refining over the years, but it’ll be a good starting point,” she said.