Australia's welfare : connected challenges, connecting response - speakers

Dr Ken Baker

Dr Baker has been the Chief Executive of ACROD since 2000. In that time he has provided advice to governments and information to service providers on a broad range of disability policy matters. He has worked in areas of social policy development and public affairs for more than 20 years and, before joining ACROD, was Chief of Staff to the Victorian Minister for Youth and Community Services. He is based in Canberra. Ken is a member of the Advisory Committee on Australian and International Disability Data, convened by AIHW.

ACROD is the National Industry Association for Disability Services. Its membership includes 550 non-government non-profit organisations, which collectively operate several thousand services for Australians with disabilities. ACROD has a National Office in Canberra and Offices in every State and Territory.

Peter Collins:

Mr Collins is a former Health Minister, Shadow Health Minister and Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales.

He spent 22 years in the NSW Parliament as the Member for Willoughby, in Sydney's north, and served as the NSW Treasurer, Attorney-General, and in a variety of other ministerial roles including Minister for the Arts, Minister for State Development, and Minister for Consumer Affairs.

Mr Collins' has a wide range of experience as a lawyer, as a State Minister, and former ABC journalist and researcher.

Dr Diane Gibson:

Dr Gibson has undertaken extensive research into welfare policy and social issues in Australia, and has published widely on topics relating to ageing and aged care, community health, ethnicity, program evaluation, gender issues, and paid and unpaid work.

She joined the Institute in 1993 as Head of the Aged Care Unit, where she was responsible for numerous internally and externally funded projects. Dr Gibson was promoted to the position of Head of the Welfare Division in 2002.

Dr Gibson has participated on many steering committees, working groups and advisory bodies for government departments, university-based projects and other stakeholder groups, and has developed a wide range of successful strategic relationships within the community services sector.

Prior to joining the Institute, Dr Gibson lectured on welfare policy and social issues at Griffith University and the University of Queensland. She also held positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU, where she was involved in the school's Reshaping Australian Institutions Project, and the Ageing and the Family Project.

Through her involvement on the boards of professional journals, Dr Gibson maintains a detailed knowledge of current research and publishing in her field.

Justin Griffin:

Justin joined the AIHW in 1997, he has had over 20 years of experience in the development, operations and presentation of social and economic statistical collections, acquired at the ABS. He has particular expertise in questionnaire design, including interviewer- and self-administered questionnaires, and paper and electronic collection methods.

His first project at the Institute was coordination of the collection, processing and tabulation of data for the National Survey of Mental Health Services, as well as assisting with the development of institutional and community mental health minimum data sets.

Since 1999 Mr Griffin has managed the SAAP National Data Collection Agency, responsible for the development, collection, processing and publication of data about the Supported Accommodation Assistance program.

Mr Griffin has also managed the dispatch, collection and processing of other homelessness and crisis services data, such as the Youth Homelessness Pilot Project.

Justin represented the AIHW at the 4th Rio Group Meeting on Poverty Statistics in October 2001. He also recently presented a seminar at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in Rio de Janiero on strategies to collect quality health and welfare data from administrative sources

Dr Jeff Harmer:

Jeff is currently Secretary of the Department of Family and Community Services. He began his career in the Federal Public Service in early 1978 following 5 years as a doctoral scholar and tutor at the University of NSW.

After a range of policy analysis and advising positions in the Departments of Housing, Social Security and Finance, Jeff was promoted into the Senior Executive Service in early 1985. Since then Jeff has occupied a range of executive positions across a range of Commonwealth Departments spending some seven years at the senior executive level in the Department of Community Services and Health.

In 1994 Jeff was promoted to the Deputy Secretary position in the Department of Housing and Regional Development and in 1996 Jeff was recruited to the position of Deputy Secretary of the Department of Social Security.

Jeff was appointed Managing Director of the Health Insurance Commission in April 1998. In March 2003 Jeff was appointed Secretary of the Department of Education, Science and Training. He was appointed Secretary of the Department of Family and Community Services in October 2004. He has a keen interest in management, leadership and organisational change and development.

Professor Alan Hayes:

Professor Hayes took up his appointment as Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies on 9 September 2004. Before coming to the Institute, he was Dean of the Australian Centre for Educational Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is immediate past Chair of the Australian Council for Children and Parenting (ACCAP), and currently Deputy Chair of the Stronger Families and Communities Partnership. He also served as a Board Member of the Australian Institute of Family Studies for several years, prior to his appointment as Director.

Professor Hayes' qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts (with first class honours) and a PhD in Psychology. His research and scholarship have been disseminated in books, chapters, refereed journal articles, conference proceedings and films. In addition, he has completed substantial reports flowing from commissioned major evaluation and policy projects. He has had a longstanding interest in issues related to early intervention and prevention, and their implications for the pathways children and adolescents take through life. The role of families in supporting and sustaining development, across life, is the focus of his current research and scholarship.

Cynthia Kim:

Cynthia Kim joined the AIHW in April 2005. Cynthia comes to us from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and has an Economics degree majoring in Econometrics and is a Master of Public Policy. After joining the ABS in her honours year at university through the cadetship scheme, Cynthia has worked in a number of different areas at the ABS, with particular strength in Economics Statistics research.

Cynthia was the ABS Outposted Officer to Australian Department of Health and Ageing prior to commencing her current position at the AIHW as the Head of the Children, Youth and Families Unit.

Ros Madden:

Ros Madden has led the disability statistics work program at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) since 1992. Her unit has published a range of population data analyses including: a series of AIHW reports on definition and prevalence of different disabilities; reports on disability and ageing, disability and related factors (exploring the ICF model statistically), children's disability; and three reports, commissioned by Australian disability administrators, on unmet need for disability support services. Administrative data is a key aspect of the work, and the unit works in partnership with Commonwealth, State and Territory governments on a number of disability and health related data collections.

The AIHW is the Australian Collaborating Centre for the WHO Family of International Classifications, and Ros and her unit anchor the work on the ICF.

Dr Richard Madden:

Dr Richard Madden has been Director of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia's health and welfare statistics agency, since 1996. The Institute's mission is Better health and wellbeing for Australians through better health and welfare statistics and information.

Prior to his current appointment, Richard was Deputy Australian Statistician at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He has held a number of senior positions including Under Treasurer with both the ACT and Northern Territory Governments, Deputy Secretary of the New South Wales Health Department and Head of the Disability Services Division in the Commonwealth Government.

Richard is a statistician and actuary. In 2002 he was Actuary of the year. Richard has a Bachelor of Science from Sydney University and a PhD in statistics from Princeton University.

In the Australia Day honours list of 2003, Richard was awarded the Public Service Medal in recognition of the commitment he has made to improve national health and welfare data collection and standards. Richard is a member of a range of national information committees within the Health and Community Services sectors.

Andrew McCallum:

Andrew commenced his working life as a primary school teacher after completing a Diploma of Teaching at Ballarat Teachers' College.
After studying in the United Kingdom he moved into the welfare sector as an Education Office/Supervisor of Residential Services at Orana Children's Homes in Melbourne.

In 1981 he took up the position of inaugural Director of Wimmera Community Care (Uniting Church agency) based in Horsham; a position he held for five years before taking up his current position as Chief Executive Officer of St. Luke's Anglicare in the Loddon Mallee region of Victoria.

Andrew has held many board positions on state and national bodies including five years as President of the Children's Welfare Association of Victoria (CWAV) and Chairperson of the Child and Family Welfare Association of Australia. In 1999 Andrew was awarded life membership of CWAV.

Andrew was the past President of the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS), and during 1999 - 2001 Board and Executive Member of the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS). In 2001 Andrew McCallum was elected President of ACOSS.
He has been a member of the United States based Community Development Society since 1992 and served on the Community Development Society Board for two years from 1999.

Ann Peut:

Ms Peut has extensive experience in policy analysis, research and evaluation of education and social policy and issues in Australia. She also has considerable experience in the development, collection and analysis of data.

Ms Peut joined the Institute in late 2003 as Head of the Ageing and Aged Care Unit, where she has been responsible for a number of internally and externally funded projects.

Ms Peut has participated on many steering committees, working groups and advisory bodies for government departments, and has been successful in developing strategic relationships within the ageing and aged care sector.
Prior to joining the Institute, Ms Peut worked for the Department of Education, Science and Training, where she undertook evaluations of education and income support programs and managed the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth program. She analysed the implications of population ageing for education and training and contributed to policy development associated with youth affairs, higher education and student income support.

Her earlier experience at the Australian Bureau of Statistics included working on the development of the first version of the Australian Standard Classification of Occupations, analysing and reporting on data from the income and housing surveys, and investigating the feasibility of conducting labour force surveys by telephone.

Professor Peter Saunders:

Peter Saunders has been the Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales since 1987. He has worked as a consultant for a range of organisations, including the OECD, The IMF, the Asian Development Bank, the International Social Security Association, the Economic Planning Advisory council and the royal Commission on Social Policy in New Zealand. His research interests include poverty and income distribution, household needs and living standards, social security reform and comparative social policy. He has published widely in these and related areas and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in 1995. He is currently an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow working on the concepts and measurement of poverty and inequality.

Ken Tallis:

Ken trained first as a mathematician and statistician, then as an economist and econometric modeller. For most of his professional life, he has analysed social and economic data. He has worked in the research or statistics arms of several government agencies; he has also worked in the mathematics and economics faculties of several universities.

Ken's interests include the economics of health and welfare services and devising analytical methods that help one use multiple, messy datasets to answer the questions that interest policy-makers, researchers and the community.

David Wilson

David Wilson has been the Head of the Housing Assistance Unit at AIHW since 1996 and has been involved in the development of national data for the Commonwealth State Housing Agreements. This covers data standards, building national data sets, data management and data modelling and reporting.

He has extensive experience in the use of data in policy development and program analysis. This was gained in the period 1990 to 1995 when he was head of the economic and distributional analysis section in the Policy Development Division of the Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health.

David Wilson gained experience in the development and implementation of data systems through his work on various projects at the Australian Bureau of Statistics including the first national health and disability surveys, household income and expenditure surveys and the conduct of the 1987 ABS Fiscal Incidence Study.

Dr Ian Winter:

Ian Winter is Executive Director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), commencing this position in November 2003. The Institute is a national research organization and has an annual program of housing and urban policy research projects to the value of $3 million.

AHURI's mission is to make a real difference to housing and related urban outcomes throughout Australia by the creation and dissemination of knowledge in housing markets, housing policy and programs, and the urban environment in cities, towns and regions.

Dr Winter completed undergraduate and Masters degrees in Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Sussex, England, before gaining a PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1991. From 1990 to 1994 he lectured in Urban Policy and Planning at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He was then appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) in 1995, and promoted to Principal Research Fellow of the Institute's Family and Society Program in 1999.

Dr Winter has conducted research and published in a wide range of social policy matters including housing, social inequality, urban fringe living, family housing careers, community change and social capital.

Dr Winter is a former member of the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Homelessness. He was Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Urban Policy and Research 1993-2002, and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of the international journals Housing, Theory and Society, Housing Studies and Urban Policy and Research.

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