Lynelle Briggs is a former Public Service Commissioner and former chief executive of Medicare Australia. Lynelle has extensive experience in the Australian Public Service, working in a wide range of fields including social security, health and community services, transport, external territories, employment and labour market support and veterans’ affairs. She has been closely involved in unemployment and retirement incomes policies, health care agreements, transport and infrastructure policy; private health policy and health care delivery.

In the mid-1980s Lynelle was a policy adviser to the Minister for Community Services before spending two years working for the New Zealand Treasury. Ms Briggs was President and is currently a board member of the Commonwealth Association of Public Administrators and Managers.

Lynelle is a current board member of the Australian Rail Track Corporation and Chair of the Jigsaw Theatre Company Board.

 

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John Cahill has more than thirty five years experience in a number of federal government departments and agencies, including some twenty years experience as a senior executive.

Before leaving the APS, John worked for four years as an agency Chief Executive, establishing Biosecurity Australia as a newly independent body. Prior to this, he worked as an Executive Manager and National Manager responsible for complex regulatory operations and the delivery of services across Australia, and for corporate management, governance and services including finance, HR and IT.

He has extensive leadership experience in a commercially operating regulatory authority with budgets exceeding $300 million per annum and more than 3000 staff. He has led and managed organisations and operations that have risk management as the central component of core business and has managed research and policy development critical to Australia's international trade, including dealing with other countries and international bodies.

John has a deep knowledge and understanding of corporate management, strategy, governance and services in large and complex organisations. He has a very strong track record of organisation reform and management, including establishing strong governance arrangements to improve and measure performance, and he possesses an extensive knowledge of the machinery of government at federal and state levels.

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Phone: 0418 694 456

Vanessa is the former Managing Director and CEO of a national Government Business Enterprise in the health sector with a multi-site presence in all states and over 750 multidisciplinary professional staff, a position that she held for 7 years. Vanessa's career in management has spanned both the private and public sectors, and profit and not-for-profit organizations, including 12 years as a Division Head in the Commonwealth public service in the transport and communications portfolios and two years at top management level in a large private publicaly listed company in the private sector.

Vanessa has served as a non executive director on a number of Federal Government Boards including the International Air Services Commission, the Australian Rail Track Corporation and the Council of the Australian National Library as well as having served as an external advisor to a number of public sector audit committees and the Board of a community based non-profit organization. In addition to her high level policy, negotiating and commercial experience she has had an overseas diplomatic posting and led numerous international negotiations.

Vanessa has a particular interest in the leadership and management of change in organizations and in driving superior performance focused around the requirements of stakeholders and clients.

Vanessa is a trained executive coach and is accredited at level 3 with the Australian Institute of Executive Coaching. She has worked with over 90 individual coaching clients. She is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Contact:
0414 363 465

Bruce Glanville has over 35 years experience as a Chartered Accountant, including as Canberra managing partner of Deloitte.

Bruce has served in a wide range of positions including as a director, often as chairman, of companies, including government business enterprises, in industries including open cut coal mining and hard rock quarrying, totalisator agency, grocery and liquor distribution, mezzanine financing and indigenous business. Many of these businesses have turnover exceeding $300 Million per annum.

Professional assignments have often centred on matters related to mergers and acquisitions together with acting for either vendors or purchasers to transactions of business acquisitions. Bruce has worked extensively in strategic, commercial and management matters.

Many of his commercial and professional assignments have required a clear understanding of the interaction of business and Government.

Contact:
0417 32 7466

Geoff Haberfeld has over 20 years experience at the senior executive level, in a range of Federal Government agencies and South Australian Government business enterprises.

Prior to leaving the Australian Public Service, Geoff held the dual roles of Executive Director in the Murray Darling Basin Authority and Secretary to the Authority's Board. Geoff was also Head of Corporate for the Murray Darling Basin Commission and Chief Financial Officer of SA Water, a major South Australian Government business enterprise.

Geoff has a strong interest and experience in corporate governance, business strategy and reform and financial governance and profit improvement. Geoff is an FCPA and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

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Ken Matthews recently retired as Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Australian National Water Commission, a position he had held since March 2005. In this role, he was responsible for working with the State and Territory governments of Australia to implement the National Water Initiative Inter-Governmental Agreement and encourage national water reform.

Mr Matthews was previously the Secretary (CEO) of the Federal Department of Transport and Regional Services from November, 1999 to October, 2004, and from February, 1998 to October 1999, was the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. During 1997, Mr Matthews headed the Australian Government's high level Wik Task Force in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, providing advice to the Prime Minister on Native Title.

Mr Matthews' academic background is in economics, majoring in government (B.Ec. University of Sydney, 1974). Mr Matthews is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration - Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. Mr Matthews was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001 for services to public administration. In 2005 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to regional communities, the national transport system and for his contribution to public administration in Australia.

Contact:
Phone: 0419 238 562

John Meert has worked in the Commonwealth Public Service for over thirty five years. His experience includes managing a data processing centre, the provision of corporate support services and as a senior executive with the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

Prior to retiring from the public service in 2008 John managed the strategic planning for and conduct of performance audits covering a range of portfolios including Human Services, Health, Immigration, Defence and Defence Procurement. These performance audits covered all aspects of Commonwealth service delivery, procurement and corporate governance. John also has considerable experience working with and presenting to Parliamentarians and Parliamentary Committees on the outcome of these performance audits. As a senior audit executive John has wide experience on audit committees. Examples of reports on these audits can be found on the ANAO website at ANAO.gov.au website (up to the end of 2006).

Since retiring John has undertaken several reviews into governance aspects of several major Commonwealth purchasing projects and on the development of an annual accountability report to the Parliament on the management of major commonwealth procurement projects.

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Russell Miller has had over 20 years experience in providing strategic advice to Federal Government departments and agencies. His work has included governance advice to the Boards of a range of agencies, including the Murray Darling Basin Authority, National Rail Corporation and the Civil Aviation Authority.

Russell was an adviser on the Access Card Project, the establishment of Centrelink and the National Rail Freight Initiative. He has assisted with the corporatisation of a range of Federal and State entities including the Office of Defence Production and the Government Aircraft Factories.

His government appointments have included the International Air Services Commission and the National Electricity Code Administrator. He has been awarded an Order of Australia (AM) for service to the community through participation in a range of organisations related to aviation, rail transport and energy.

Contact:
Phone: 0411 109 727

John Simpson is a senior corporate executive and company director with more than 27 years in the private sector. John also trained as a journalist with the ABC after completing his BA at the University of Melbourne. Most recently, John was Strategic Adviser in the Office of CEO at National Australia Bank having also held the position as Group General Manager - Corporate Affairs for 3 years. John spent the majority of his career with Shell - working in Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom. He was Director - External Affairs at Shell, and was appointed a Director of Shell Australia Limited in 2002.

John has a particular interest in education and serves on the Boards of the National Science & Technology Centre (Questacon) where he is Deputy Chairman, and of Scotch College where he has been a Director for 11 years.

Throughout his career, John has had an interest in seeing the private and public sectors work more cooperatively and has worked to develop greater understanding in both sectors. In particular he created a series of Shell Seminars in Canberra specifically to improve knowledge within Government of the Upstream and Downstream energy sectors.

In the Not for Profit sector, John serves as a Director of the Food Rescue organisation - SecondBite and as a Trustee of the H V McKay Charitable Trust. He is on the Advisory Board of the Global Foundation and has worked closely with CEDA.

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Meryl Stanton PSM is a former senior public servant who retired in 2005 as Deputy Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Executive Director of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.

Meryl is an organisational psychologist who held a variety of senior positions in the APS, often in the workplace relations and occupational health and safety areas, including as CEO, Comcare. She is a non-executive Director on the Board of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) Ltd and Chair of its Audit Committee. Meryl is or has recently been an independent member on a number of Departmental governance and organisational change Committees, and is a qualified Executive Coach.

Meryl is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the Institute of Public Administration Australia and the Australian Human Resources Institute.

Contact:
0418 481 504

Mike Taylor AO has held senior positions in the Commonwealth and Victorian public services for two decades, including as Secretary for the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and Secretary for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. He recently retired from the chairmanship of the Murray Darling Basin Authority. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 2007 for his contribution to the management of natural resources and industry policy development at the Federal level and also in Victoria, particularly in the area of agriculture, and through contributions to transport, water, food and safety standards.

Mike Taylor is currently Chair of the Geoffrey Gardiner Dairy Foundation, Director of the Melbourne University Business School, Director of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, Member of the Australian Statistics Advisory Council and a Governor of the Crawford Fund.

Mike Taylor has successfully worked with Government over an extended period. This has included working for two Prime Ministers (Messrs. Howard and Rudd), two Deputy Prime Ministers (Messrs. Anderson and Vaile), seven Commonwealth Government Ministers and many State Premiers and Ministers.

At the Chief Executive level, Mike Taylor has been very successful in providing leadership and direction in large organisations, where he has effectively developed and implemented policy and program objectives, successfully facilitated large scale organisational change, adopted new and efficient administrative systems, professionally managed and developed people and teams, and delivered results and outcomes for customers and clients.

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"To succeed in today's world organisations need to keep their governance approaches as straight-forward and coherent as possible."

Ian McPhee, Commonwealth Auditor General 11 Feb 2011