Speakers' Biographies 2008 conference

Hon Mal Brough
Mal Brough is a former Liberal member of the House of Representatives from March 1996 to November 2007, representing the Division of Longman, Queensland. He was born in Brisbane and was an Australian Army officer and businessman before entering politics.

Mal was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business 2000-01 and Minister for Employment Services 2001-04. In July 2004 he was moved to the portfolios of Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Revenue. He was Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and a member of the Howard Government Cabinet from January 2006 to November 2007.

Mal was the instigator of the government's Northern Territory Emergency Response, a package of measures designed to combat high rates of child neglect and abuse in the territory.



Dr Sue Gordon AM, Chair Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce
Sue Gordon is a Magistrate in the Perth Children's Court. She was Chair of the Australian Government's National Indigenous Council from 6 November 2004 until 31 December 2007. Sue chaired the Inquiry into Response by Government Agencies to Complaints of Family Violence and Child Abuse in Aboriginal Communities, in Western Australia in 2002. In 2003, she received the Centenary Medal for service to the community, particularly the Aboriginal community and in 1993 she was awarded the Order of Australia for commitment to Aboriginal people and community affairs.



Ms Miriam Rose Baumann AM
Miriam Rose Baumann is Chair of the Aboriginals Benefit Account Advisory Committee. Miriam was principal of St Francis Xavier Catholic School, Daly River until her retirement in early 2008. In 1998 she was awarded an Order of Australia for her services to the community of Nauiyu in the NT as a member of the Community Government Council.



Mavis Malbunka, Vice President NTARIA Council Hermannsburg
Mavis Malbunka is a traditional Arente woman. She was a finalist in the Northern Territory Australian of the Year 2006---the citation for which reads 'She saw the need for her community to provide a safe place for young people with inhalant abuse issues and she did something about it. For the past two years, Mavis has cared for up to a dozen youngsters at a time at her family's outstation, about two hours west of Alice Springs.

She received no funding until this year, drawing on her own pension to support them. Now she has been recognised by NT Children's Welfare, who place young people with her in foster care. 'Mavis draws strength from her traditional values and her love for the young people as well as her sense of responsibility to her community.'



Simon Kearney
Simon Kearney spent five months visiting remote areas in central Australia last year reporting for The Australian on the intervention's early roll out in the Northern Territory. He saw first hand how people reacted to the policy changes and the impact they had during the first few months. For the last three years he was a senior journalist for The Australian, prior to that worked for the The Sunday Telegraph as the paper's chief of staff and before that, national political writer based in Canberra. He has recently taken up a new job working for a Singapore-based investment fund as a senior writer producing reports for the fund's principal on efforts to reduce global poverty through investment in social enterprises.


Keith Windschuttle
Keith Windschuttle is a writer, historian and ABC board member who has authored several books from the 1970s onwards. These include Unemployment (1979), The Media: a New Analysis of the Press, Television, Radio and Advertising in Australia (1984), The Killing of History, (1994), The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 (2002). A second volume, to be published later in 2008 will be entitled The Fabrication of Australian History, Volume 2: The 'Stolen Generations'. Keith has recently been appointed as editor of Quadrant magazine. He is the publisher of Macleay Press.



Hon Dr Gary Johns
Gary Johns is a senior consultant and public policy specialist with ACIL Tasman. He was elected as the Member for Petrie in The House of Representatives 1987-1996, and served in various portfolios: Special Minister of State, Assistant Minister for Industrial Relations, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister. In 2002-2004, he served as an Associate Commissioner of the Productivity Commission, on the inquiry into 'National Workers' Compensation and Occupational Health and Safety Frameworks'. He was Senior Fellow Institute of Public Affairs from 1997 until 2006, and has written extensively and consulted on Aboriginal policy (is President of the Bennelong Society), on Corporate Social Responsibility, and the charity and NGO sector. He is a member of the editorial committee of Agenda (ANU), a journal of policy analysis and reform, and has published widely in the academic literature on political parties and public policy, and is a regular contributor to the opinion pages of Australia's leading newspapers.

In 2003, Gary was awarded the Centenary Medal for 'service to Australian society through the advancement of economic, social and political issues.' In 2002, he won the inaugural Fulbright Professional Award in Australian-United States Alliance Studies, and served at Georgetown University Washington DC. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science) University of Queensland, a Master of Arts (Geography) Monash University, and a Bachelor of Economics Monash University.



Warren Mundine, AO
Warren Mundine is originally from Grafton, New South Wales and was the National President of the Australian Labor Party. He became the first Indigenous Australian to serve as President of an Australian political party. Warren is an Aboriginal person, and was one of eleven children in his family. He has had an extensive career in the New South Wales public service, including as CEO of the New South Wales Native Title Service, and is a long-time member of the ALP. Before becoming National President of the ALP, he had previously served as a Senior Vice-President of the party and member of the Australian Government's National Indigenous Council. He won the 2005 Bennelong Medal for service to the Aboriginal community.



John Stone
John Stone served as head of Treasury between 1979-1984, and as Leader of the National Party in the Senate, 1987-90. After gaining First Class Honours in Mathematical Physics for his B.Sc. degree and representing Western Australia (Under 21) at hockey, John was selected as the Rhodes Scholar from Western Australia for 1951. At Oxford he was awarded First Class Honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (P.P.E.) and won the James Webb Medley Prize for Economics before joining the Australian Treasury in 1954.

After being employed as an economic consultant by the Queensland National Party to develop Premier Bjelke-Petersen's single-rate tax policy, John joined the National Party and was elected as a Senator from Queensland in 1987.

Since leaving the Parliament John has been a critic of multiculturalism and a principal founder of The Samuel Griffith Society. During 1990-98 he wrote a weekly column, on economics and politics, in The Australian Financial Review. Apart from occasional newspaper articles, he writes regularly in the quarterly National Observer, and most recently has commenced a regular contribution to Quadrant magazine.



Professor Helen Hughes, AO
Helen Hughes is Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia Hughes migrated with her parents to Melbourne in 1939. She completed a BA (Hons) from the University of Melbourne in 1949 and an MA (Hons) in 1951. Her dissertation on the history of the Australian steel industry was later published as her first book, and she completed her PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1954.

In 1985 Hughes presented the ABC's 'Boyer Lectures' on 'Australia in a Developing World'. She was Professor of Economics and Director of the National Centre for Development Studies at ANU from 1983 to 1993, and a member of the Fitzgerald Committee on Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. She also worked at the World Bank from 1968 to 1983 and was a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning from 1987 to 1993.

Hughes current research focus is on the development problems facing the Pacific Island nations and remote Indigenous Australian communities in Australia.

Her most recent book, Lands of Shame, is about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 'Homelands' and reviews demographic trends, law and order, land rights, joblessness and welfare, education, health, housing and governance, and assesses Commonwealth, State and Territory policies.

In 1985 Hughes was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for 'service to international relations, particularly in the field of economics'. In 2001 she was awarded the Centenary Medal, for 'service to economic policy, particularly poverty alleviation and economic development'.



Joseph and Maria Lane
Joe and Maria Lane have worked for a combined forty years in Indigenous tertiary education. Maria is Ngarrindjeri, from the Lower Lakes of the former Murray River in South Australia, Joe is from Sydney. They have been participating in Indigenous affairs since the mid-sixties and were involved in popularising the Aboriginal Flag and in running an Indigenous news journal. In the mid-seventies, they worked for some years in a southern community in the Riverland, but since the early eighties have focussed on Indigenous tertiary student support as a means of boosting the numbers of Indigenous professional people, particularly for the economic development of communities. Maria initiated the ATEP Home Group student support model which has assisted nearly a thousand Indigenous people to graduate from courses at the University of South Australia. Between them, they have qualifications in education, Aboriginal Studies, local government, accounting, policy and management.



Stephen Iles
Most recently Stephen Iles was the project leader of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership's Welfare Reform Project.

Stephen is a former Chief Executive Officer of Bama Ngappi Ngappi Aboriginal Corporation. BNNAC is a not-for-profit, indigenous organisation employing 200 staff and operating in 10 locations across Far North Queensland developing individual capability by creating employment and business development opportunities, delivering CDEP, Job Network and New Apprenticeship services.

He has worked for Westpac in Corporate, Institutional and Retail divisions. He was also a secondee to Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation while with Westpac where he developed business plans for local businesses to be established in indigenous communities. A Bakery, Butchery and Saw Mill are all still successfully operating today as a result. His previous corporate experience includes roles with Bank of Melbourne, Coca Cola Amatil, BP and National Australia Bank.

He is currently completing a Master of Science---Financial Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has a Bachelor of Economics & Bachelor of Arts, Murdoch University.



Alastair Milroy
Alastair Milroy was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) on 1 March 2003. His appointment followed the creation of the ACC in January 2003---bringing together the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, the National Crime Authority (NCA) and the Office of Strategic Criminal Assessments. Mr Milroy has had a distinguished career in law enforcement, and crime and risk management, spanning 40 years. He served with the New South Wales (NSW) Police, the NCA, the Royal Commission into the NSW Building Industry, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the United Nations.



Mike Lane
Mike Lane's career in Indigenous Affairs has spanned nearly 30 years in the Northern Territory with the Australian Government, focused mainly on the administration of the statutory royalty equivalent provisions of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, with the core task of managing the Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA) and its antecedents.

Mike retired from the Australian Public Service late in 2006, and remains engaged professionally with a number of organisations in the Territory, including CPA Australia's NT Branch Council, on which he has held several positions. He retains a keen interest in disclosure and accountability in the Public Sector.