Proceedings

INFORMATION ON SPEAKERS, PRESENTERS AND FACILITATORS

(IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)

Professor Carol Adams, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Sustainability), La Trobe University

Professor Carol Adams is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Sustainability) at La Trobe University and leads the La Trobe Institute for Social and Environmental Sustainability.  She is Editor-in-Chief of Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal; Board Member of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI); ACCA Australia and NZ Panel Member; Judge for ACCA Australia and NZ Sustainability Reporting Awards and Vice President (Universities) of Australian Campuses Towards Sustainability.

Professor Adams’ previous roles include Executive Director and Council Member, AccountAbility; Acting Dean, Faculty of Law and Management, La Trobe University; Head of School roles at Glasgow, Monash and Deakin Universities; and Auditor at KPMG.

Professor Adams is an internationally recognised expert in the field of sustainable development strategy, environmental management systems and sustainability reporting and performance management.  She has conducted research, consultancy and advisory work with companies in the UK, Germany and Australia; NGOs in the UK and Australia; and in the public sector in Australia. 

Anna-Maria Arabia, Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS)

Anna-Maria Arabia is the CEO of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, Australia’s peak body in science and technology.

Prior to this appointment Anna-Maria was a senior policy advisor to Minister Albanese, Federal Infrastructure Minister, and has been a policy advisor to former Labor Leader, the Hon Kim Beazley. She has also worked as a policy adviser in the Federal Department of Health and Ageing and collaborated with the Italian Government to foster cooperation in science and technology between Australia and Italy.

Anna-Maria completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne and undertook doctoral research at the Baker Medical Research Institute, and the Mario Negri Pharmacological Research Institute in Milan, Italy.

Dr Hans Baer, Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

Hans A. Baer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Utah in 1976.

Hans has published sixteen books, co-edited several special journal issues, and published some 160 book chapters and journal articles on a variety of topics, including Mormonism, African American religion, socio-political life in East Germany, critical medical anthropology, and medical pluralism in the US, UK, and Australia. He is the co-author, along with Merrill Singer, of Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health: Emerging Crises and Systemic Solutions (Left Coast Press, 2009).

In early 2008 Hans began to investigate climate politics and the climate movement in Australia, an on-going project. He considers himself a scholar-activist and has been involved in various movements over the years, including peace, social justice, anti-apartheid, labour, socialist, environmental, and climate justice movements. 

Adam Bandt, MHR for Melbourne

Adam Bandt is the Federal MP for Melbourne. He was elected in 2010 when he made history by becoming the first Greens MP to be elected to the House of Representatives at a general election.

For many years he worked at the labour law firm Slater & Gordon where he became a partner in the industrial and public interest unit, the same job Prime Minister Julia Gillard used to have. Before being elected to Parliament he worked as an industrial barrister specialising in industrial, employment and public interest law.

Adam is the Greens spokesperson on Banking, Employment and Workplace relations and his election enabled the creation of the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change, on which he now sits.

Dr Michael Borgas, CSIRO Staff Association President

Dr Michael Borgas is President of the CSIRO Staff Association with nearly 3000 members in CSIRO which is part of the broader Community and Public Sector Union covering many government science agencies. He has worked at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research for over twenty years as a scientist studying the atmosphere. Dr Borgas trained as a mathematician at Adelaide and in Cambridge and worked in biomedical engineering in the US before switching to atmospheric science. He has broad interests in the history and governance of science and often interacts with the media.

Ian Bourne, University of South Australia

Ian Bourne has been living simply for thirty years, initially motivated by the ‘oil shock’ of the mid 70s and his naturalist parents.  In the eighties Ian helped design and build the family home with orientation, air flow, thermal mass, solar access and shading, solar hot water and the harvesting of 100% of the water supply in mind. The management of his ¼ hectare property’s gardens are guided by the principles of organic gardening and permaculture. Recent additions are a system to recharge the aquifer with excess rainwater and a sunroom which is shaded in summer by a pergola.

Beyond doing it at home, Ian is a life member of Urban Ecology Australia and was actively involved with Christie Walk Eco-village built in Adelaide’s CBD. Ian is currently a PhD candidate with a research background in semiotics, or sign systems, and is interested in how to get the sustainable building design ‘message’ across with a series of simple signs.

Dr Marty Branagan, Honary Associate, Centre for Peace Studies and the Centre for Research into Aboriginal and Multicultural Studies

Dr Marty Branagan is an Honorary Associate in the Centre for Peace Studies, and the Centre for Research into Aboriginal and Multicultural Studies. He holds a PhD and a Graduate Diploma in Education from UNE, and a BA from Sydney University, where he was a member of the Student Representative Council. During his PhD studies he was awarded the New England Award for extra-curricular activities and contribution to the community.

He is currently working with Dr Bert Jenkins and Dr Tony Lynch in developing a new course - Politics and the Environment. Marty is also engaged in work with indigenous and non-indigenous ‘youth at risk’, through TAFE’s Young Endeavour Programme (YEP).

Having small children, Marty is researching sexism in children’s literature. He also has art teaching commitments at TAFE, and is working towards another exhibition at the New England Regional Art Museum. He is contributing to a sustainability plan for Armidale, working to preserve local bushland, and developing a permaculture garden, preparatory for Armidale’s first permaculture tour.

Aunty Carolyn Briggs, Boonerwrung Elder

Aunty Carolyn helped establish the first Aboriginal child care centre in Dandenong in the 1970s, the Dja Dja Wrung Aboriginal Cooperative in Bendigo, and a large number of other community organisations.

Aunty Carolyn has played a significant role in the struggle for recognition and rights for the Boonwurrung people, which culminated in the first indigenous land use agreement for the Melbourne area. She has also made substantial contribution to indigenous arts through her involvement with the Ilbijerri ATSI Theatre Cooperative and as a patron of the innovative Somebody's Daughter Theatre Company.

Aunty Carolyn has also made a very personal contribution to the welfare of indigenous people in Victoria. She was one of three Victorian Investigators into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and, as well as raising her own family, has acted as a foster parent for older indigenous children. She has also worked to provide culturally appropriate services at the Royal Women's Hospital.

Professor Verity Burgmann, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

Verity Burgmann is Professor of Political Science in a haphazardly restructured and oversized new School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. In 1999 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. In 2002-2003 she served as President of the Australasian Political Studies Association.

She has published widely in the area of the history and politics of radical movements, both labour movements and new social movements such as the green movement. Her books include ‘In Our Time’: Socialism and the Rise of Labor (1985), Power and Protest (1993),Revolutionary Industrial Unionism (1995), Green Bans, Red Union (University 1998), Unions and the Environment (2002) and Power, Profit and Protest (2003).

Her current research interests are international labour movements’ opposition to globalisation, climate politics and the climate movement in Australia, utopianism and autonomist Marxism.

Derek Corrigan, Senior Technical Officer in the Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES). Member of the NTEU National Executive

Derek Corrigan works as a member of the technical instrument design and construction team and has previously also provided laboratory support to the research areas of ANU Earth Sciences.  His work has aided the research effort in a number of the climate related research areas within the school including the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Coral Core climate analysis instrument design and construction.  The Electro-Mechanical design function provided to the research school by Derek allows him access to a broad cross-section of the research undertaken at Earth Sciences and places him at the cutting edge of the instrumentation limitations of the experimental data collection and analysis.

Dr Bruce Fell, Coordinator, Bachelor of Media Communication, School of Communication and Creative Industries, Charles Sturt University

Dr Bruce Fell is the author of ‘Television & Climate Change’. Bruce sketches current environment debates by drawing on his longitudinal research into new and old media and how they influence our current understanding of ecology, Climate Change and wellbeing. Bruce’s ongoing research into media and climate change concentrates on the influence of commercial media.

Bruce is an academic and social ecologist teaching out of the School of Communication and Creative Industries at Charles Sturt University. Bruce lectures in media production and literacy drawing on his writing, performance and production background.  Dr Fell has a practical and teaching association with convergent technology dating back to the early 1980s.

You can read excerpts from Television & Climate Change at http://www.brucefell.com/

Lachlan Hurse, NTEU Branch Organiser, University of QLD

Lachlan is a recently appointed NTEU Organiser at the University of Queensland, bringing significant prior experience in campaigning around environmental issues within a union context to the job. Previously he actively engaged around climate change through workplace union activity, and provided strong support to the Climate Change Committee of the Queensland Public Sector Union.

Lachlan also has extensive work experience in the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management, contributing to State of the Environment reports for Queensland in 1999, 2003 and 2007, and coordinating Queensland’s contribution to the 2001 Australian State of the Environment Report.

Ged Kearney, President, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)

Gerardine (Ged) Kearney commenced as ACTU President on 1 July 2010, and is the third woman to hold the position following the departure of Sharan Burrow to the Brussels-based position of General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.

Ged believes that unions should not just be concerned with the experience of people at work but they should be advocates for change to improve all aspects of Australians lives. She wants to ensure that unions continue to be at the forefront of public debate in Australia.

Ged’s ambition as ACTU President is to build respect from political leaders and the broad community for the values of fairness and the role played by unions in delivering social change so that people feel the need to join.

Ged was elected the Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation in April 2008. The ANF represents more than 175,000 nurses and midwives, and is one of Australia’s fastest growing unions. She had been an elected official with the ANF since 1997, also serving as Assistant Federal Secretary, Federal President and Victorian Branch President.

She is a director of the HESTA Super Fund. Ged became a registered nurse in 1985, and has worked in many settings across the public and private acute sectors, predominantly in Melbourne, and has also been a nursing educator, including manager of the Clinical Nursing Education Department at Austin Health. She has a Bachelor in Education.

As Federal Secretary, Ged saw substantial membership growth of the ANF and the first national combined strategic growth campaign in the private sector aged care industry. Her background in nursing and industrial experience advanced the profession and industrial rights of ANF members.

In collaboration with ANF branches in every state and territory, Ged has worked to improve the working lives and conditions of dedicated nurses, midwives and assistants in nursing throughout Australia.

The second youngest of nine children, Ged grew up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond, where her father was a publican. She was brought up in a household where the importance of the collective, both in politics and society, was emphasised from an early age.

The year after qualifying as a registered nurse, she took part in the famous Victorian nurses’ strike of 1986 which resulted in substantial improvements to pay and conditions.

Ged is the mother of four children aged from 16 to 23, and lives in Melbourne.

Dave Kerin, Project Officer, Eureka’s Future

Dave Kerin became active in the anti-Vietnam War and Moratorium movement in the late 1960’s before starting work in the building industry at the end of 1970, when he joined the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF).

He later became involved with libertarian left elements in the Communist Party, subsequently joining. In the BLF, he was involved in the Green Ban movement in the 1970s and resistance to the deregistration of the union, both in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. In the late 1990’s he helped establish Earthworker, which evolved directly out of his experiences with the Green Bans.

He is still working towards the aims of the Earthworker project. In his current position as Project Worker for Eureka’s Future he is working to establish the first union-supported social enterprise, manufacturing the green technologies, in Morwell.

In the 2000s, he coordinated the "Union Solidarity" movement which mobilised unionists and community members to set up picket lines and other actions in support of aggrieved workers, confronting Howard’s and Rudd’s anti-union laws.

Dr David King, School of Population Health/ Discipline of General Practice, University of Queensland

David is an academic General Practitioner with many decades of involvement in environmental actions. He commutes by bicycle and attempts to have a smaller than average ecological footprint. He is an executive member of Doctors for the Environment Australia, and on the advisory committee of the Environment Justice Society. His research interests include mental health, health promotion and behaviour change.

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper, Co-Convenor, Labor Environment Action Network

Gabrielle Kuiper is an urban planner and sustainability professional. She has particular expertise in sustainable transport, property and urban planning, state of the environment reporting and education for sustainability. Gabrielle was the LEAN NSW Co-convenor before becoming National Co-convenor of LEAN in 2009.

LEAN is the Labor Environment Action Network, a network of ALP members committed to working within the party for better climate change and sustainability policy. LEAN liaises with unions, environmental and social NGOs and think tanks regarding its policies and campaigns. In particular, LEAN supports a just transition and the creation of clean energy jobs in moving Australia to a low carbon economy. More information about LEAN can be found at www.lean.net.au.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Cognitive Scientist, University of Westren Australia

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia. His research examines people’s memory and decision making, with particular emphasis on how people respond to corrections of misinformation. He has published over 110 scholarly articles, chapters, and books, including a recent journal article on how people process information about the Iraq War, which revealed the important role of scepticism in people’s ability to update their memories. Another recent paper revealed that when shown the full data, people uniformly expect global warming to continue.

His research has been funded continuously since 1990, and he currently holds an Australian Professorial Fellowship. He has also contributed opinion pieces to the national media on issues related to war and terrorism, and climate change. He is particularly interested in the difference skepticism and denial when it comes to climate change.

He is one of the principals of http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org, a new website dedicated to discussing solutions to the multiple crises facing our societies—from responses to climate change to new forms of generating energy.

Dr Colin Long, NTEU Victorian Division Secretary

Colin Long was Senior Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at Deakin University until October 2010, when he was elected Victorian Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). He was also the Deakin Branch President of NTEU.

He taught extensively in Asian history, urban studies and cultural heritage preservation at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, and was Director of the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific at Deakin. He taught at the University of Melbourne and Victoria University, as well as universities in Germany and Thailand and undertook aid and development projects for the Vietnamese and Lao governments, UNESCO and the UN World Tourism Organisation.

His recent publications include ‘Cultural heritage and the global environmental crisis’ (with Anita Smith), in Labadi and Long, Heritage and Globalisation (Routledge 2010).

He was also lead upper house candidate for the Greens in the Southeast Metropolitan Region in the 2010 Victorian election. 

Professor Ian Lowe, AO, Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society, Griffith University and President, Australian Conservation Foundation

Professor Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University and is an adjunct professor at two other universities. His work in the broad area of energy and environment has led to many senior advisory roles and several awards, most recently the Konrad Lorenz Gold Medal of the International Academy of Sciences, Health and Ecology.

He has published books on climate change and the broad area of sustainable futures. He directed the Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council which produced the first independent national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2001 and has been President of the Australian Conservation Foundation since 2004. 

Nic Maclellan, Journalist and Researcher

Nic Maclellan works as a journalist and researcher in the Pacific Islands. He writes for Islands Business magazine (Fiji) and has contributed as a broadcaster and journalist to Radio Australia, The Age, Tahiti-Pacifique, Samoa Observer and other regional media.

Nic has participated in a range of research projects on environment and development, was lead author of “The future is now – climate change and the Pacific Islands” (Oxfam International, 2009) and co-author of “Climate change and children in the Pacific Islands”, a study by the Nossal Institute for Global Health prepared for UNICEF Pacific in 2010. He is currently researching climate adaptation funding in the Pacific islands.

Tony Maher, National President, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU)

National President, Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) 2004 – present
General President , CFMEU Mining and Energy Division 1998 – present
Co-Chair, ACTU Climate Change Group 2008 – present
Member, International Executive, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM)
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) representative COP13, COP14 and COP15
Member, National Carbon Storage Taskforce
Member, Prime Ministers Energy Efficiency Task Force Advisory Group
Member, Climate Change NGO Roundtable 

Dr Helen Masterman-Smith, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University

Dr Helen Masterman-Smith is a labour researcher focussing on labour dimensions of climate change and other environmental issues. She has recently completed projects investigating environmental justice for low paid workers and industrial aspects of healthcare workers environmental initiatives. Helen is co-author of Living Low Paid: the Dark Side of Prosperous Australia amongst other related publications. She is an NTEU state and national executive member with strong involvement in union environmental efforts.

Mark Ogge, Director of Operations and co-founder of Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE)

Mark Ogge is a Director of Beyond Zero Emissions. He is an initiator and key organiser of the Zero Carbon Australia project, and has implemented many of the projects that have shaped the organisation helping to make Beyond Zero Emissions one of the leading climate and energy solutions organisations in Australia.

Beyond Zero Emissions is a project collaboration with the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute which is a practical and detailed blueprint for Australia to transition to 100% renewable energy in within a decade. It has drawn on pro-bono contributions from a multitude of researchers from industry, academia and energy related disciplines, and has been enormously successful in promoting decisive and comprehensive action on climate and energy issues in Australia.

Dr John Rafferty, Research Fellow, Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE), Charles Sturt University

Dr John Rafferty is an Australian researcher and educator with over 20 years’ experience in Australian schools and universities. Dr Rafferty's research interests are concerned with educational reform and education for sustainability. Dr Rafferty is currently developing programs that use the natural and built environments of the Thurgoona campus as a stimulus for engaging with the wider community on key issues concerning sustainability. Through working with community groups Dr Rafferty is discovering ways to improve the learning outcomes of his students and changing the ways the community and the University interact. Dr Rafferty is currently a research fellow with the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE).

Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President

Jeannie Rea is the NTEU National President. Before taking up  this position in October 2010, she was Deputy Dean of Arts, Education and Human Development at Victoria University. Jeannie has been an environmental activist, teacher and researcher for much of her life. She has a Masters in Environmental Science focused upon women, the environment and development. Jeannie has worked on developing and implementing environment policy and inclusive curriculum in schools, TAFE and universities, as well as with trade unions, government and industry. Jeannie is currently particularly concerned with multidisciplinary environmental education for transformative change.

Arthur Rorris, Secretary, South Coast Labour Council

Arthur Rorris is the Secretary of the South Coast Labour Council, a regional peak union body in NSW with 29 affiliated unions covering the Illawarra, South and Far South Coast regions down to the Victorian border.

Arthur studied at the University of Wollongong where he majored in Industrial Relations and Politics for his undergraduate degree before obtaining a Masters specializing in public policy related to comparative economics and industrial relations. Arthur has worked in research and policy positions, at the University of Wollongong, the Migrant Employment Taskforce and The Department of Employment Education and Training before being seconded to the Public Sector Union, a position he held until his election as Secretary of the South Coast Labour Council in March 2000.

In his position as Labour Council Secretary, and in collaboration with a research team at the University of Wollongong, Arthur led a delegation to the NSW Premier seeking endorsement and financial backing for the Green Jobs Illawarra initiative seeking to transform the region’s carbon exposed heavy industrial base into an engine room for the new Green Economy.

Dr Stuart Rosewarne, Dept of Political Economy, University of Sydney

Dr Stuart Rosewarne is a teacher and researcher in the Department of Political Economy.  He has researched and published extensively on global warming, emphasising the shortcomings of market-based mechanisms and the inequitable distributional implications of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.  With other members of a number of unions, he set up the Sydney-based non-partisan forum Trade Union Climate Action Network.

Ellen Sandell, National Director, Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC)

Ellen was recently recognised as Melbourne’s leading environmentalist, winning the Melbourne Award for Individual Contribution to the Environment 2009 and was featured in The Age Melbourne Magazine as one of the top 100 influential Melburnians of 2009. She was previously the Environment Officer in the University of Melbourne Student Union, leading a successful campaign to get the University to commit to carbon neutrality.

Ellen is the founder of the award-winning Leadership in Environmental Action Program (LEAP), an  environmental leadership conference for high school students, held each year in Melbourne.  Ellen has also worked as a Policy Adviser in the Office of Climate Change in the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Ellen was born in Alice Springs and grew up in Mildura, in northwest Victoria.  She had a wide range of jobs, including rehabilitating numbats at Scotia Sanctuary in rural NSW, and researching plant genetics at the CSIRO in Merbein.

Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director, ANU Climate Change Institute

Professor Will Steffen is Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, and also serves on the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (MPCCC) and as a Climate Commissioner. From 1998 to mid-2004, he served as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, based in Stockholm, Sweden.

His research interests span a broad range within the fields of climate change and Earth System science, with an emphasis on incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis; and on sustainability, climate change and the Earth System.

John Thwaites, Professorial Fellow, Monash University, and Chair of ClimateWorks Australia and the Monash Sustainability Institute

John Thwaites is a Professorial Fellow, Monash University, and Chair of ClimateWorks Australia and the Monash Sustainability Institute. He is also a consultant at Maddocks Solicitors and chairs the Climate Group Ltd in Australia, the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. He is also a director of the Australian Green Building Council.

John chairs a project with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to develop policies to assist low-income Australians cope with the impact of climate change. John has also been a special adviser to the Timor-Leste Minister for Infrastructure and helped develop an Infrastructure plan for Timor-Leste.

John was Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1999 until his retirement in 2007. During this period he was Minister for Health, Minister for Planning, Minister for Environment, Minister for Water, Minister for Victorian Communities and Victoria’s first Minister for Climate Change. In these portfolios he was responsible for major reforms in social policy, health, environment and water.