National Blood Authority Australia
Annual Report 2010–11
appendicies
APPENDIX 4. biographies of NBA BOARD MEMBERS
Board members are selected by the AHMC. They are appointed by the Australian Government Minister for Health and Ageing to serve a term not exceeding four years and are eligible for reappointment. The Board is required, under section 44(2) of the National Blood Authority Act 2003, to report on its activities on an annual basis.
In accordance with these arrangements, the terms of appointment for all members of the Board concluded on 11 May 2011. A new Board was appointed to take up office as from 12 May 2011.
Continuing members
Mr Ken Barker—financial expert
In July 2009, Mr Ken Barker retired from full-time employment as Chief Financial Officer with New South Wales Health. In that position Mr Barker was 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 worked for New South Wales Health for 24 years and had some 42 years of experience in the New South Wales Government. He is now director of his own company, which specialises in financial management and strategic advice, mainly to government agencies. He is also a member of a number of state government governance boards and of several New South Wales agency audit and risk committees.
Mr Barker has been involved 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 Blood Service.
Mr Barker was appointed to the NBA Interim Board and has served as a full Board member since the inception of the NBA. He was reappointed in May 2011. He served as Chair of the NBA Audit Committee between 2003 and 2007 and continues to serve as an Audit Committee member.
Dr Stephen Christley—state and territory representative (small jurisdiction)
Dr Stephen Christley is Chief Public Health Officer and Executive Director of Public Health and Clinical Coordination in the South Australian Department of Health. He has served as a CEO of three separate area health services in New South Wales. 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 and is also a member of CTEPC.Dr Christley was appointed state and territory representative on the NBA Board in March 2009.
Ms Mary Murnane—Australian Government representative
Ms Mary Murnane is a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing. She retired recently but is continuing to work part-time providing strategic and policy support to the Department of Health and Ageing.
She was re-appointed as Commonwealth representative to the NBA Board in May 2011.
Retiring members
Mr Garry Richardson—chair
Mr Garry Richardson has extensive experience in the health and financial services sectors and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Before retiring from his executive career at the end of 1997, Mr Richardson was Managing Director of National Mutual Health Insurance Pty Ltd (now known as BUPA Australia) for seven years. He was concurrently Vice President of the Australian Health Insurance Association and Board member of the International Federation of Health Funds (based in the United Kingdom).
Since retiring, Mr Richardson has been appointed to several boards in the state, Commonwealth, private and not-for-profit sectors. Mr Richardson was Chair of the NBA Board between May 2007 and May 2011. He serves as Chair of Health Super Pty Ltd, Chair of Health Super Financial Services Ltd, Independent Chair of the City of Stonnington’s Audit Committee, Board member of Calvary Ministries Limited and Board member of Defence Health Limited.
Mr Rob Christie—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 products and the needs of patients with bleeding disorders and their families.
Mr Christie’s commitment to the blood sector as a Board member of Haemophilia Foundation Australia from 1997 to 2006 resulted in his appointment as Life Governor. He spent four years as its National President, was President of Haemophilia Foundation South Australia and Board member from 1995 to 2008. He was also a member of the Coagulation User and Advisory Group with the Australian Red Cross South Australia.
He is currently the Vice-President Finance of the World Federation of Hemophilia, Montreal, Canada. Mr Christie was appointed Community Representative on the NBA Board in May 2007.
Dr Peter Lewis-Hughes AM—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 State-wide 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. In 2009 he received a Queensland Health Australia Day Achievement Award for Clinical and State-wide Services. Later that year Dr Lewis-Hughes left Queensland Health but continues to provide advice on all aspects of health policy, service delivery, review and reform.
In 2010 his contribution to clinical administration and services to public pathology were nationally recognised in the Australia Day Honors List and he was made a Member of the Order of Australia.
Dr Lewis-Hughes was appointed Public Health Expert on the NBA Board in 2003 and state and territory representative in 2007.
New members
Ms Gayle Ginnane—chair
Ms Gayle Ginnane was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Private Health Insurance Administration Council until her retirement in May 2008. Ms Ginnane has spent 29 years working in the public sector, including the Australian Taxation Office, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Defence, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Health and Ageing.
Ms Ginnane has served on the Management Committee of the Muscular Dystrophy Association ACT Branch, the Council of the Institute of Public Administration and was Chair of the St Jude’s Family Service Management Committee. Ms Ginnane is a member of the Institute of Public Administration and the Australian Institute of Management, a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an affiliate member of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia.
Ms Ginnane was appointed to the Board of the National Childcare Accreditation Council in June 2008, is a member of the Board of the ACT Division of General Practice and is in a similar position on the Police Health Fund.
Ms Ginnane was appointed as Chair of the NBA Board in May 2011.
Mr Paul Bedbrook—community representative
Mr Paul Bedbrook has had a connection with blood issues via his personal involvement with haemophilia for over two decades. He is the father of two adult sons with haemophilia. For much of those two decades Mr Bedbrook has been involved with the Haemophilia Foundation NSW (HFNSW) and the Haemophilia Foundation Australia (HFA). He is a past President of HFNSW and past Treasurer of HFA. He brings his personal experiences with blood issues to the Board as well as feedback from a community of individuals who rely on the blood and plasma products distributed to Australia’s health services under the auspices of the NBA.
Professionally, Mr Bedbrook has over thirty years of experience in financial services. He was a senior executive for over 20 years with the Dutch global banking, insurance and investment group, ING. His early career was as an investment analyst and investment portfolio manager and he was the General Manager Investments & Chief Investment Officer for the Mercantile Mutual (ING) Group in Sydney from 1987-1995. In the decade to 2010, he was President and CEO, INGDIRECT, Canada; CEO and director of ING Australia and Regional CEO, ING Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong. His career experience includes directorships of many ING owned companies in Australia and also many companies offshore, primarily in Canada, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand. As CEO of ING Australia, Mr Bedbrook was an active director of the ING Charitable Foundation and he also served as a director of the industry organisation, the Investment and Financial Services Association from 2004-2008. He brings a wealth of senior executive, board governance and financial services knowledge and experience.
Mr Bedbrook was appointed community representative on the NBA Board in June 2011.
Adjunct Professor Chris Brook PSM—state and territory representative
Adjunct Professor Chris Brook is the Executive Director, Wellbeing, Integrated Care and Ageing for the Victorian Department of Health. This role focuses on prevention and population health, aboriginal health, integrated care, aged care, workforce policy and planning in the health sector and internal departmental human resource functions. He is also the State Health and Medical Commander for Emergency Management. This portfolio is responsible for expenditure of around $3 billon per annum, involving hospitals, residential aged care facilities, community health centres, non-government organisations and local government.
Professor Brook’s original postgraduate training was as a specialist physician but he has subsequently gained specialist qualifications in public health medicine and in medical administration.
Professor Brook is a regular attendee at AHMC meetings and is a member of CTEPC. He has extensive policy and management experience in blood and blood products. He is a former president and an honorary life member of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) and a Fellow of the Victorian Division of the Institute of Public Administration, Australia.
He chairs the Advisory Committee of Deakin University Medical School and is a member of the boards of the HealthSmart program and the Centre for Evidence in Intervention and Prevention Science. In 2011, he was awarded a Public Service Medal.
Professor George Rubin MB BS (Hons) FRACP FAFPHM FAChAM—public health expert
Professor Rubin has been on the executives of the South Eastern Sydney and the Illawarra Area Health Services (now with the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District), first as Director of Population Health, Planning and Performance and since 2009, as Director of Clinical Governance. He is Professor of Public Health at both the Universities of Sydney and NSW and is the immediate past President of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine and Board member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
He served formerly as Director of the Centre for Health Service and Workforce Research, in Sydney’s West. Before that he was Director of Epidemiology and Health Services Evaluation and Chief Health Officer with NSW Health where he was instrumental in developing public health infrastructure and education in NSW. He was chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation from 1997-2005 and served two consecutive terms on the NHMRC Health Advisory Committee.
For 10 years he was a medical epidemiologist working in reproductive health with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and with the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh. He currently works part-time as an addiction medicine specialist at the Langton Centre in Sydney. He has worked internationally in the Americas and Asia and has published more than 150 scientific papers in the peer reviewed literature including reports on the appropriateness of use of blood products.