Financial Expert
Mr Ken Barker is currently Chief Financial Officer with New South Wales Health and is responsible for controlling and monitoring recurrent expenditure and revenue, establishing New South Wales Health’s financial management policy and strategy, and overseeing the business management services involving insurance, risk management, taxation, benchmarking of public hospital support services, and independent financial review of public and private sector initiatives.
Mr Barker has worked for New South Wales Health for 24 years and has 41 years of experience in the New South Wales Government. In relation to Australia’s blood service, he has been involved from the government financial perspective in the former New South Wales Blood Transfusion Service, nationalisation and establishment of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, establishing national indemnity arrangements for blood and blood products, providing input into defending claims for blood-acquired HIV in New South Wales, providing input into the Stephen Review of the Australian Blood Banking and Plasma Product Sector, establishing the National Blood Authority, and the 2008 KPMG business study of the ARCBS.
Mr Barker was appointed to the NBA Interim Board and has served as a full Board member since the inception of the NBA. He served as Chair of the NBA Audit Committee from 2003 to 2007.
Community Representative
Mr Rob Christie has a long history of community service and experience as a health consumer representative in Australia in connection with blood and blood-related products and the needs of patients with bleeding disorders and their families.
Mr Christie’s commitment to the blood sector has resulted in his appointment as Life Governor and Board member of Haemophilia Foundation Australia since 1997 and four years as National President, Vice President of Haemophilia Foundation South Australia and Board member since 1994, a member of the Coagulation User and Advisory Group with the Australian Red Cross South Australia and member since 1995, and Vice-President Finance of the World Federation of Hemophilia, Montreal, Canada, since 2004.
Mr Christie was appointed Community Representative on the NBA Board in May 2007.
State and Territory Representative
Dr Stephen Christley is Chief Public Health Officer and Executive Director of Public Health and Clinical Coordination in the South Australian Department of Health. Before this appointment, he was the chief executive officer of three separate area health services in New South Wales over twelve years. He is a medical practitioner and has previously worked in rural, public health and community settings.
Dr Christley’s interests are public health, health system improvement, and safety and quality. He has been a member of a number of research fundraising foundation boards.
Dr Christley was appointed State and Territory Representative on the NBA Board in March 2009.
Public Health Expert
Associate Professor David Cooper was recently appointed Regional Medical Director Australasia with International SOS, a company providing medical, security and assistance services across the world. He has extensive experience in emergency and disaster medicine.
Among Associate Professor Cooper’s previous appointments have been Foundation Chair of Disaster Response and Preparedness, Charles Darwin University/National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, Royal Darwin Hospital; Acting Deputy Chief Health Officer, New South Wales Health; and Director of the New South Wales Health Counter Disaster Unit.
Operationally, Associate Professor Cooper’s experience includes the health response to both of the Bali bombings, the tsunami disaster and the Yogyakarta earthquake, where he led the first AusAID disaster medical team. He also has substantial experience in planning for mass gatherings such as the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the Rugby World Cup in 2007, and World Youth Day in 2008.
His interest in the blood sector relates to the safe management of blood and blood-related products in critical care and emergency medicine and in disaster settings.
Associate Professor Cooper was appointed Public Health Expert member on the NBA Board in May 2007.
State and Territory Representative
Dr Peter Lewis-Hughes joined the Commonwealth Department of Health in 1986, working in the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland until 1995 when he was recruited by Queensland Health. His role with Queensland Health was to implement structural reform agendas in key services such as pathology, biomedical engineering services and public health and forensic laboratory sciences. Following the Forster review of Queensland Health in 2005, he was appointed Executive Director of Clinical and Statewide Services with responsibility for development and reform of the Queensland Health blood program, radiology services, medication services and the oral health program. With wide-ranging experience in the health care industry at Australian Government and state levels, Dr Lewis-Hughes is especially interested in contemporary health issues as they relate to strategic and business planning for clinical services across Queensland.
Dr Lewis-Hughes was appointed Public Health Expert on the NBA Board in 2003 and State and Territory Representative in 2007.
Australian Government Representative
(from March 2009)
Ms Mary Murnane is currently Deputy Secretary in the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. Ms Murnane joined the Commonwealth Department of Social Security in 1984 and since that time has had a broad range of responsibilities. Her current responsibilities as Deputy Secretary include the Office of Health Protection, including Health Emergency, the Regulatory Policy and Governance Division and a special focus on the Therapeutics Goods Administration, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, food policy, medical and biological research policy, the National Blood Authority, and ageing and aged care and palliative care.
Ms Murnane also chairs the Australian Health Protection Committee, which advises the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council on emergency preparedness. This committee manages the emergency health component of national emergencies, liaises with other Commonwealth and state emergency-handling structures, exercises leadership and coordination roles in national emergencies requiring a health response.
Ms Murnane was appointed as the Australian Government Representative on the NBA Board in March 2009.
Australian Government Representative
(until March 09)
Mr David Kalisch was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing in June 2006, with responsibility for the Portfolio Strategies Division, the Acute Care Division, the Mental Health and Workforce Division, and the South Australian and Western Australian state offices of the department.
Mr Kalisch is an economist who has worked in a range of social policy areas of government since the early 1980s. This has included policy advising and program management in such diverse areas such as labour markets and employment policy, retirement incomes, family assistance, children’s services, welfare reform and, more recently, health services.
In addition to these appointments, Mr Kalisch was principal adviser to a former Minister for Social Security and has worked at the OECD in Paris, in its Employment Programs Division (1990) and Social Policy Division (1997–98), and at the Australian Delegation to the OECD (1998–99). Apart from his social policy and program management experience, he has an interest in enhancing organisational capability.
Mr Kalisch served as Australian Government Representative on the NBA Board from November 2006 until March 2009.
