Martin Parkinson - dumped three years ago as Treasury secretary by Tony Abbott for being too closely linked to Labor's climate change policy - has been awarded one of Australia's top honours.
He was recognised for his services to the nation as an economic mandarin and for his work on "climate change strategy," according to the citation for Thursday's Order of Australia winners.
While understandably loath to reflect on the obvious irony of picking up a Companion of the Order - or AC - under those circumstances, Dr Parkinson is quick to credit others for his success over more than three and a half decades at the coal face of economic reform.
"It's an incredible honour to be recognised," Dr Parkinson told The Australian Financial Review.
"But you also have to be realistic and recognise that whatever contribution I've been able to make it's been jointly with other people and on the contributions of others that have gone before."
Working since early 2016 as secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr Parkinson went into exile from the public service for a year after being removed as Treasury secretary in late 2014.
His effective sacking was announced by the Abbott government within days of it taking office in September 2013, which blamed him for being too closely associated with developing Labor's carbon tax.
Critics slammed the move as short-sighted and worsening the politicisation of the top levels of the public service.
After starting his public service career at Treasury in 1981, Dr Parkinson built an early reputation after helping develop the nation's capital gains tax under former treasurer Paul Keating, representing Australia at the International Monetary Fund and at Group of 20 summits.
He has also pushed hard since 2012 as an advocate of putting more women into senior positions as a member of the Male Champions of Change.
Dr Parkinson, a self-described working class kid from the country Victoria, said in many ways his greatest break in life was his family's decision to move to Adelaide from Ballarat in the mid-1970s.
"I was at a tech school, where you learnt woodwork, carpentry and sheet metal if you were a bloke, and typing if you were a girl.
"I was just lucky that the tech school I was at had a very strong maths and science bent."
Once in Adelaide, those skills meant one of the only classes he was qualified to enroll in was economics, which he went on to study at Adelaide University.
Dr Parkinson notes that he shares humble origins with almost every Treasury Secretary since the 1980s - including Bernie Fraser, Ted Evans and Ken Henry.
"We all came from working class backgrounds. Economics and treasury have been places not associated with priviledge."
