The new occupant of the public service commissioner's chair will be a near-lifelong federal public servant with a career spanning diplomacy, the private sector and law. He'll be from a family long part of the Australian Public Service and familiar with its traditions. Mr Turnbull's appointee to the role is also a Canberran.

On August 9 he will start one of the federal bureaucracy's highest paid jobs - earning $706,000 a year - overseeing its workforce of 152,000 public servants as the Coalition government conducts a review of government administration that could bring its largest overhaul in four decades.

As a chief of staff to then-foreign minister Alexander Downer between 2002 and 2004, and a staffer to former Liberal opposition leader Andrew Peacock from 1984 to 1986, his career has tended towards time in Coalition rather than Labor political offices.

Despite the pattern, former bosses in the Foreign Affairs department, and Mr Downer, say he is not a political animal and predict he will respect the non-partisan nature of his new job in the public service commission.

Both Labor and Coalition governments have sent Mr Woolcott, from one of Australia's most distinguished diplomatic families, to some of their most sensitive and complex international negotiations.

Former high-ranking diplomat John McCarthy, who Mr Woolcott worked for, said the incoming commissioner was adaptable.

"He's a pragmatic, can-do sort of guy, who takes care of issues," he said.

The description is supported by a CV that includes four years in law, stints in Liberal MP offices, and between 1989-1990, time as an international advisor for Alan Bond's company.

Mr Woolcott has the praise of former department heads, top diplomats and ministers alike as he begins his tenure at the Australian Public Service Commission. Cool-headed and unexcitable under pressure, he's cast by his former bosses as a problem-solver with a good policy mind.

Former secretary of the Foreign Affairs and Defence departments, Dennis Richardson, worked with Mr Woolcott while he was a diplomat and remembers him as someone staying on the front foot.

"He doesn't necessarily sit back in his crease and wait for the ball to come to him," Mr Richardson said.

"He does come down the pitch and that's a good thing, not a bad thing."

The main public sector union noted Mr Woolcott's appointment with cautious welcome. Mr Richardson was not surprised, saying the former diplomat would not enter his role seeing the Community and Public Sector Union automatically as an enemy.

Mr Woolcott begins the job at the dying ebb of the last, bruising round of enterprise agreement negotiations that left public servants without pay rises for several years and, for the Home Affairs Department, went to the industrial umpire following strikes. The next round of bargaining has already started for some agencies, but the workplace policy blamed for the turmoil remains largely unchanged.

Mr Turnbull called the diplomat home from a posting as high commissioner to New Zealand in July last year as the prime minister's former chief of staff Greg Moriarty left to lead the Defence department, following Mr Richardson's 2017 retirement.

Across the Tasman, Mr Woolcott spent nearly two years as Australia's top diplomat. It wasn't without trials. He was high commissioner to New Zealand last year when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called him in to explain comments from Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop about NZ Labor MPs' role in the dual citizenship saga.

He had long mastered bilateral diplomacy, even before he was called from his posting as ambassador to Italy to make way for former Coalition minister Amanda Vanstone in 2007.

His work in multilateral forums is held up as his most highly regarded achievement in foreign affairs. Mr McCarthy says his role in the 2015 Paris climate treaty talks, and in disarmament, were some of his major contributions.

His role at the climate summit earned him appearances in environmental documentary Guardians of the Earth, which covered the monumental international task of orchestrating a deal. Australia's delegation - in which Mr Woolcott was instrumental - in the lead-up drew criticism from French and German officials for what they regarded as the Abbott government's miserly approach towards preparations for Paris.

The Germans found Australia a reticent and even obstructive participant as officials met in Bonn to negotiate a text for the conference, and claimed Mr Woolcott had appeared to be on a tight leash in what he could contribute.

Mr Woolcott, leading the team that did the negotiating on the conference floor, publicly advocated higher ambitions in detailing Australian priorities for a Paris deal. He said Australia wanted to see all countries, especially major economies, sign-up to robust emissions reduction efforts, building in transparency and accountability to track progress and setting up a durable process to build action towards keeping global warming below two degrees.

The real danger was not whether a new global climate agreement would emerge from Paris, but whether it would be minimal, he warned.

"If this is the outcome, then much of what Australia wants, and I think what we need as a globe ... may be lost," Mr Woolcott said.

His other major multilateral achievement, developing the 2013 United Nations Arms Trade Treaty monitoring trade in conventional weapons, was rewarded last year with an appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia.

As chairman of the negotiations to achieve the treaty, he presided over talks as Australia ratified the global agreement it helped draft to stop the proliferation of weapons across the globe, an issue Ms Bishop made the centrepiece of her UN Security Council presidency.

The Rudd government had earlier thrust Mr Woolcott into the national spotlight putting him to work in 2009 imposing greater rigour on the Immigration Department's refugee selection process, considered by many in Foreign Affairs to be a major pull factor for asylum seekers.

As the first full-time ambassador for people-smuggling issues, he was part of discussions with Indonesia about how the two countries could deal with growing asylum-seeker arrivals, and avoid repeats of the Oceanic Viking and Merak stand-offs. Hundreds of asylum seekers had been detained in Indonesia en route to Australia.

Mr Woolcott, still running the prime minister's office before moving further north up the parliamentary triangle, was unavailable for interview this week.

Mr Richardson said the new public service commissioner saw working in the federal bureaucracy as a career. Mr Woolcott, the son of highly-regarded diplomat and former Foreign Affairs department secretary Richard Woolcott, for long didn't stray too far from its orbit.

Even as chief of staff to Mr Downer, he was on secondment from Foreign Affairs. The former senior Howard government minister said his role was to help the office maintain smooth relations with the department. In returning to the federal bureaucracy as public service commissioner, he becomes, at least in recent years, one of only two children of departmental heads to grow up and become agency leaders themselves. The other is Jane Halton, former secretary of the Finance and Health departments and daughter of Charles Halton, who led the Department of Transport.

The public service, facing a potential reform agenda and coming out of industrial tumult, is unlikely to give Mr Woolcott any rest. But it's possible that under him, the upcoming round of bargaining and change will be, in some way, calm. Mr Downer said his former chief of staff was methodical, sensible and undramatic. When asked if he could remember a difficult situation Mr Woolcott had to resolve, nothing came to mind.

"I suppose that says it all," he said.