Week 1 - Government Affairs - PPP

Hi Everyone,
I have been lucky enough to secure my 4 weeks prac at Australia's largest publicly traded oil & gas company: Woodside Energy. I have been working here on a full-time basis for 4 years as the Travel Services Specialist but I am lucky enough to have a very supportive boss who has agreed to release me to the corporate affairs department for 2 x 2 week hitches. My first two weeks will be spent with Government Affairs and Corporate Communications. Then in April I will spend a week in Karratha with Community Relations and my final week will be spent with the Indigenous Affairs team back in the Perth office.

To be quite honest I was dreading the time with Government affairs. I keep up with news but i'm not particularly interested in politics so I thought it would be very boring working in this team. Man was I wrong! They do so much more than negotiate with politicians. I spent a lot of my time writing a Public Position Paper (PPP) which was a term I had never heard of and made me quite nervous. I was to research the changes in perceptions on FIFO and workforce models use across the industry. I had to give a background on both elements - including what Woodside has done already - and then list any questions (and answers) that may be asked of a Woodside spokesperson. The government affairs team create a PPP for any possible subject that a spokesperson might be asked about. or example, while I was writing mine a colleague was preparing one on the issue of local content that is currently circulating through the media. All spokespeople in Woodside have access to these PPP's so that they can pull them up at any time and brief themselves before answering any questions.

Preparing this PPP was daunting but extremely interesting and I learned a lot about what Woodside does for it's employees and the towns that they operate in. As an example, they are trying to encourage staff to re-locate to the Pilbara rather than work FIFO. As an incentive they are paying all removal costs as well as giving rent assistance or cash incentives to purchase a home in Karratha. FIFO workers rotate on a 2 week on/2 week off basis and get 4 weeks annual leave a year. Residents are offered 6 days on 4 days off rotations with 8 days off after 8 of these rotations plus 6 weeks annual leave. They also do a lot for the towns such as funding the local day care centre, being on the board for Pilbara TAFE and many more projects.

I was extremely pleased to learn that my PPP was being loaded for actual use across the company.