
Ambassador - Peter Heyward
His Excellency Peter Heyward, BA 1979 [UTAS]; and a
Graduate Certificate in Management from Monash University.

Mr Peter Heyward was the Ambassador to Timor Leste
from January 2008 to February 2011. He was also formerly Australia’s
Ambassador to Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
He was High Commissioner to Pakistan, and was a
career diplomat of 25 years.
Other overseas service has included serving as
Counsellor, Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
(2000-2002) and as First Secretary, later Counsellor, in Buenos Aires
(1993-1996).
In Canberra, Mr Heyward has held a range of positions
including Assistant Secretary, Environment Branch in the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade (2002-04), Director, Human Rights and Indigenous
Issues Section (1998-2000) and Director, Refugees, Immigration and Asylum
Section (1996‑98). He has also worked in the Climate Change and Biodiversity
Section (1991-92) and the Antarctic Section (1989-91). Mr Heyward was born
in Brighton, UK in 1955, he holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of
Tasmania and speaks Portuguese and Spanish.
(Source: University
of NSW)
The following
information is taken directly from the
University of Tasmania. At the time of writing he was in Pakistan, his
fifth posting and third as Head of Mission. His story tells how he came to
be a diplomat.

"Unlike many of my diplomatic colleagues, I did
not join the foreign service straight out of university.
My career path shows there is more than one way to
get into the fascinating profession.
While it was not by design, the University of
Tasmania prepared me very well for diplomacy. My course was classic liberal
arts and I revelled in the intellectual freedom it gave me to explore not
only the ideas that shape the world but the historical and social contexts
in which they are developed. The perspectives I gained still inform my life
and work. And importantly Philosophy, in which I majored, gave me the
practical skills in the formation, advocacy and defence of negotiating
positions, and in understanding the positions of others, that are the bread
and butter of my profession. I also think studying in Hobart was important
as the role of the University in that small-scale local environment gave me
insights into the way a society, economy and polity functions that I have
drawn on all my life and that I suspect I would not have found had I studied
in a bigger state or city.
But when it came to the first steps towards a
diplomatic career I faltered. On graduation I applied for a position as a
trainee diplomat. I was flown to Melbourne and interviewed by a rather
daunting panel of learned looking gentlemen (I think they were all
gentlemen). But I made it no further than that. I have never sought the
report of that interview, but I suspect the beginning of my downfall was my
confident assertion (based on undergraduate study of the impacts and
aftermath of colonialism) that the Commonwealth’s value was limited and its
days numbered, which was not then, and is not now, the Australian
Government’s view.
I joined the Public Service anyway, but not the Department of Foreign
Affairs, nor, although I was offered it, as a graduate trainee in the heart
of the bureaucracy in Canberra. Rather I stayed in Hobart as I had recently
married and we had just committed to buying a house in which to start our
family. So I began my working life as a personnel clerk in the Hobart branch
of the Department of Transport. Amongst those for whom I was responsible
were the lighthouse keepers who then manned the lights around the Tasmania
coast as well as those who were busy converting these lighthouses to
unmanned operations.

Australian
Antarctic Division, Headquarters, Kingston Tasmania
While it got me started in the workforce, this was
not how I envisaged spending the rest of my life, so when the opportunity
arose to join Australia’s Antarctic Headquarters when it moved to Hobart
from Melbourne, I took it. I became part of a multi-disciplinary
organisation involving administrators, scientists, logisticians, technicians
and many others in the new purpose-built Antarctic Division complex in
Kingston. I started in personnel, recruiting people for the yearly
expeditions to the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic. While I enjoyed this role, I
was keen to also get engaged in policy development for Australia’s Antarctic
operations as this function gradually moved from Canberra to Kingston. This
was work in which I could draw more effectively on the skills I had gained
in my studies at the University of Tasmania.
I also began to re-establish links with the University of Tasmania which,
apart from playing hockey with the Uni club, had drifted since graduation.
There was already collaboration between scientists at the Antarctic Division
and the University of Tasmania but proximity enabled more partnerships to be
formed and for engagement to expand into management of the science program
and operational policy. At around the same time, the Secretariat of the
Commission for
the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) was
established in Hobart to service its annual meetings, and the CSIRO’s Marine
Science Laboratories were opened in Battery Point. Around these
organisations began to coalesce the network of Antarctic bodies and
activities that is now an established part of the Hobart scene. I formed
many productive relationships through this network, some of which are still
strong today. The University of Tasmania has always played a key role,
strengthened now through its Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.
I worked throughout the 80s with the Antarctic Division. As well as enjoying
the operational side of the Division’s work and several trips to the
Antarctic managing logistics and doing field work, I became increasingly
deeply involved in its international policy work. This focussed on CCAMLR
and the Antarctic Treaty system, and the application of international
environment treaties to the Antarctic. A high point was my first overseas
diplomatic meeting, the 1987 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Rio de
Janeiro (in Brazil, a country in which I was later to serve as Australia’s
Ambassador). It was my first real engagement with Australian diplomats. They
led and managed the delegation in which my role focused on environmental
protection and management of Antarctic operations. I loved the experience
and it reignited my interest in diplomatic work.
Things then came together in my favour. Environmental issues were becoming
increasingly important in international diplomacy with the seminal UN
Conference on Environment and Development, the “Earth Summit”, soon to be
held in Rio. Our foreign service needed expertise in this area quickly and
the diplomats I had worked with on Antarctic issues knew me and my
experience so I was asked if I would like to be seconded to the Department
of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It was a big change for me and my young
family, constituting our first break with Tasmania, family and friends, but
a great opportunity which we accepted with little hesitation.
We moved to Canberra and the secondment turned into a new career for me as a
diplomat. I worked on international environment issues for several years
before going on my first overseas posting, to Buenos Aires, beginning an
ongoing association with Latin America. On return to Canberra, after a stint
on refugee issues, I began working on human rights, which I continued
through my second posting, as Australia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to
the United Nations in Geneva. I then returned to international environment
work in Canberra for a few years before my first appointment as an
Ambassador, to Brazil. This was followed by three years in the very
different environment of Timor-Leste, time in Canberra managing consular
operations and Australia’s relations with Africa, and then to Pakistan where
I am now in my third year as High Commissioner.
Did You Know?

Mercury 22 September 2013
Lethal streets
of Islamabad a world away for High Commissioner to Pakistan
HIGH Commissioner to Pakistan Peter Heyward says visiting his old
home town reminds him of the safety and freedoms that Australians
enjoy every day.
Mr Heyward, originally of Hobart, is 15 months into a three-year
diplomatic posting in Islamabad.
On a rare visit home this week, Mr Heyward said being back in
Australia he was reminded of the ability to walk around in public
without fear.
Life in Pakistan for Mr Heyward and his wife Susan is lived behind
the walled and guarded diplomatic enclave in Islamabad.
"I have close personal protection people when I go out and about,"
he said.
You get used to it but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect you
psychologically. You try to live a normal life and do your job but
there's that threat of violence always lurking in the background so
we have to live our lives accordingly."
"As is shown by the news that comes out of there, it's still a place
where there's quite a lot of public violence and terrorist threats,
but it's very much a fascinating country with a lot of history," he
said.

(Source:
Nationsonline)
Most of Pakistan is subject to the Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade's highest alert level with Australians strongly advised not to
travel to the country due to the threat of terrorist attack,
kidnapping, sectarian violence and the unpredictable security
situation.
"Obviously there are various forms of terrorism and community
violence. Some of it is political and some is sectarian between
different factions of Islam, and some of it is just commercial, such
as kidnapping for ransoms to fund other activities and extortion
falls under some of that," he said.
"There are infrastructure problems. They have an energy system that
is not delivering as much energy as people need so the electricity
goes off a lot of the time.
"There is still quite a lot of corruption in the public sector and
... there are some economic reforms that need to be (implemented).
The Government is in the early stages of plans to deal with all of
that so there is some optimism."
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It has been a rich and rewarding career which I continue to love. It has
ranged from robust interdepartmental negotiation in Canberra to thrashing
out key outcomes in the small backrooms of UN mega summits, engaging with
tribal elders in remote Timorese villages and the survivors of sectarian
bombings in northern Pakistan, helping an Australian company work its way
through the minefields of federal and provincial politics to open the first
large scale mine in Argentina, to promoting Australian tertiary
institutions, including the University of Tasmania, to potential
international students.
Each diplomat will have a different story but all will have at their core
application of the craft of diplomacy - skills in research, analysis and
negotiation. For me and I’m sure fellow University of Tasmania alumni
diplomats, while these skills have been refined and honed through our
diverse career experiences, their roots are in our study at the University
of Tasmania."

Australian Ambassador and Consul-General Peter Heyward and IDPF President &
CEO Irene D. Pritzker
February 2019
(Photography credit: Tom McDonald)

Australian
Ambassadors
Primary
Middle
Secondary
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:
Numeracy
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:
Literacy
Cooperative
Learning Activity
1. In pairs, you are to
investigate the Australian Ambassadors.
2. Create a table with the following headings:
Ambassador's
Name |
Represented Country |
Career Diplomatic Services Officer or ... |
Past Positions |
Qualifications |
Female or Male |
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The number of rows will be 45 - 49
for each student in the pair. So there will be 90+ rows in total including
only Ambassadors and High Commissioners [not Deputies or
Charge d'Affaires]. Divide up the Australian Ambassadors. Add to the rows if
needed.
3. Using the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's [DFAT] information complete
your table.


4.

Analysis.
How many Ambassadors
5. What interesting facts did you
learn about our Australian Ambassadors?
Secondary
only
6. Read the following article from
The Conversation 3 March 2015 about US Ambassadors and their
appointments.


Can you see
any resemblance to Australian political appointments to posts of
Ambassadors? Why? Why not?

Discuss as a class.
Are political
appointments ethical?
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