Vale Emeritus Professor Richard Mulgan

It is with great sadness that we share the news that our esteemed colleague, Emeritus Professor Richard Mulgan (1940 - 2024), passed away late last year. This obituary, written by our Director, Professor Janine O'Flynn, reflects on his remarkable contributions and lasting impact on the Crawford community.

It is hard to know how to capture the impact and influence of someone like Richard, with his towering intellect, his ethical and generous leadership, and his deep humility. I do so with great sadness at his passing, but also in celebration of him.

Richard played an important role in my coming to the ANU many years ago, and he has been an important touchstone for me in the years since. I know that news of his passing will be upsetting for many, but it also gives us pause to reflect on what a wonderful colleague he has been over many years. 

To say that Professor Mulgan’s work shaped ideas, institutions, and policy practice is an understatement. Richard was a philosopher first, with his early work exploring the writing and meaning of Aristotle’s work. His fascination with politics, power, and democracy can be seen from the start, and as his work shifted more towards politics and administration, it developed into some of the most impactful work in the field. His work always moved with the times but was rooted in big questions and ideas.

He spoke truth to power, warning early on about the potential impacts from radical reforms to the public sector and tracking these across time. He often wrote - and spoke - about the values that should shape the profession of public administration, and he cared deeply about the ideas of service and integrity. He grappled with these themes as the world changed around us and shared his insights with us all. Across his career he held chairs in multiple disciplines - a rare feat - but one that reflects the breadth and depth of his expertise.

Alongside all of this, he advised policymakers and helped to shape our institutions and the practice of politics and public service. Perhaps the most well-known example is his role in the 1985-86 Royal Commission that recommended changes to the Aotearoa New Zealand electoral system and which fundamentally reshaped politics in that nation.

Few can write like Richard did, even if we all wish we could. He was engaging and to the point, jargon-free and profound. He made no excuses for being intellectual while being impactful. Across the years, it was common for Aristotle to make an appearance in his work. Richard wrote highly cited and celebrated classics in the field, along with regular columns in the press.

He had a deep understanding and respect for public service and for the challenges confronted by those engaging in the practice of it. People read his work and were influenced by it. He made a career out of asking important questions that mattered. His most recent work, commissioned by the Susan McKinnon Foundation and published last year, drew out lessons from the Robodebt scandal to guide the practice of current and future public servants. Up until the end, he was challenging us to look to the values that matter. In between Aristotle and Robodebt were works in the best academic journals, widely read books, awards, and frequent opinion pieces.

Richard was instrumental in building what is now known as the Crawford School of Public Policy. Not only through his leadership, but also through embedding important principles in our culture, like openness, respect, and collaboration. He valued practitioner participation in the classroom, drawing in great contributors to Crawford. He modelled how a close relationship between professional and academic staff could simultaneously fuel friendship, respect, and success. We might now see such a thing as ‘the Crawford way’, but its foundations were shaped by people like Richard.

He formally came into the School when the Graduate Program in Public Policy joined with the Development Administration Program. He was head of the Policy and Governance Program over many years and provided advice and guidance for many that came after him. Richard was an institution builder and generous with his time and praise. A believer in collegiality and incrementalism, he went out of his way to let people know that he had read their paper, enjoyed their seminar, or checked how their teaching was going. He led people through considerable change as the school formed, adapted, and grew, and he was seen as someone with deep insight and wisdom when it came to big decisions. Through all of this, he set a standard for leadership that has profoundly shaped many who were lucky to work with him.

He practiced what he preached and led by example, building a participative and inclusive approach to management and leadership that was also effective and efficient. He made it all look easy, even though we know it isn’t. I remember the anxiety it provoked when Richard announced he would retire. In his own words, he wanted to make room for the next generation and to move out of the way. He did this without fuss, with a commitment to support anyone that asked, and with an eye to the future of a School that he knew could be one of the best.

Richard was a devoted teacher, not just in his classroom but across the School. He believed that the Crawford School could have an incredible impact through education. Several have relayed to me their version of his principle that ‘motivated students, well-selected and well-taught, do well’. He encouraged a focus on whatever was required to enable this, and he had a belief that our students could do great things; our job was to help them do it. Post-retirement, he taught for many years, bringing along new teachers and guiding leaders in and out of the classroom.

Richard’s family requested privacy following his death last year, and so news of his passing only came to me a week or so ago. It has taken me some time to write this message to send out to our community because, for me, this has been very upsetting. Like others, I benefited enormously from being in Richard’s orbit early in my career, and his impact was formative for me. He welcomed me to the School in 2007 and was here to welcome me back in 2023, and he has had such an impact on how I have navigated academic life in between.

Trying to capture all of that has been tough. I am very thankful to Alison Cumming Thom, David Stanton, and Adrian Kay for sharing their reflections with me over the last few days.

Public obituaries have been published in both the Otago Daily Times and The Mandarin.