Dame Juliet Gerrard on what it’s like being the PM’s Chief Science Advisor
Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, puts a cellphone on the table in her office. It’s the “batphone” and has stayed silent for some months now.
“It’s my affectionate name for the government phone that I use for secure calls, emergency alerts and secure emails. It’s on 24/7. Just a few people have the number – the PM, ministers and senior officials. It makes a hell of a racket when it goes off.”
Former prime minister Jacinda Ardern was a frequent caller during the height of the Covid-19 emergency. “She’s someone who likes to just call if there’s a question. During Covid, she might contact me a few times a day on a crucial day when she was really trying to line up all the evidence. But obviously, she wouldn’t normally do that.”
Gerrard says she hasn’t been directly involved in emergencies this year. Since Chris Hipkins became prime minister in January, the batphone has been “blissfully quiet”.
I nearly didn’t answer
When Gerrard received news of her appointment in mid-2018, she “put on Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun, very loudly. I’ve always put that on at key moments. That’s my ‘go to’.”
The opportunity to interview for the role came out of the blue. The position was established in 2009 by then prime minister Sir John Key, and the first appointee was Professor Sir Peter Gluckman.
“I got a ‘no caller ID’ phone call that I nearly didn’t answer. And it was the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet saying they wanted me to interview for this role.
“I almost said, ‘Sorry, wrong number’, because I hadn’t even thought about the role. But I think they’d done a bit of a ring round and pulled out some names, and they told me a bit more about it. And then I rang back in the morning and said, ‘I may not have sounded interested, but, having slept on it, I think I am.’ And said, sure I’ll go for an interview.
“The second interview was the one-on-one with the PM. You’re not going to say no to that. And then they rang to see if I was still interested, because I was the preferred person. I was in at the deep end.”
Gerrard had, however, taken soundings from chief science advisers overseas to get some perspective on the role and, when she started in July 2018, tapped into the collective nous of New Zealand’s network of science advisers across government departments and ministries, and the experience of predecessor Gluckman.