National Blood Authority Australia
Annual Report 2010–11
appendicies
APPENDIX 4. NBA Board Members
Board members are selected by the SCoH. 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 current Board members took up their appointments on 14 May 2011.
Ms Gayle Ginnane—chair
Ms Gayle Ginnane was the CEO of the Private Health Insurance Administration Council, a government agency reporting to the Minister for Health and Ageing, with financial and regulatory responsibility for the private health insurance industry until May 2008. She has broad experience as a senior manager in an insurance and regulatory environment, and an in depth understanding of governance, risk management and finance.
Ms Ginnane has considerable experience as an independent director on a number of boards, both commercial and not for profit, in the voluntary, government and private sectors. As well as Chair of the NBA Board, Ms Ginnane is a councillor on the Australian Pharmacy Council, a director of the ACT Medicare Local, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority and Police Health. She has also contributed to a number of voluntary organisations at senior and Board levels including Scouts ACT, the Arthur Shakespeare Foundation for Scouting and the Community Living Project.
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 Chair of the NBA Board in May 2011.
Mr Ken Barker—financial expert
Until 2009 Mr Ken Barker had some 42 years of experience in the New South Wales Government. He worked for New South Wales Health for 24 years where his last appointment was as Chief Financial Officer. He is now director of his own company, which specialises in financial management and provision of 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 was involved in the former New South Wales Blood Transfusion Service, and has made important contributions to many of the key decisions and events that have shaped the current Australian blood sector: the establishment of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, the NBA; provision of national indemnity arrangements for blood and blood products; the Stephen Review of the Australian Blood Banking and Plasma Product Sector; 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.
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 and Chief Investment Officer for the Mercantile Mutual (ING) Group in Sydney from 1987 to 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 current roles include independent non-executive director of Zurich Australia Ltd and Credit Union Australia Ltd, and Deputy Chairman, Australian Athletes with a Disability.
Mr Bedbrook was appointed community representative on the NBA Board in May 2011.
Professor Chris Brook PSM—state and territory representative (large jurisdiction)
Professor Chris Brook is the Executive Director, Well-being, 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, a portfolio 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 SCoH meetings and during the year was 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 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 Brook was appointed to the NBA Board in May 2011.
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 Systems in the South Australian Department of Health. He has previously served as a CEO of three separate area health services in New South Wales. He is a medical practitioner and has 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 a member of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee of AHMAC.
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. Ms Murnane was recently appointed to the Human Genetics Advisory Committee of the NHMRC.
She was reappointed as Commonwealth representative to the NBA Board in May 2011.
Professor George Rubin MB BS (Hons) FRACP FAFPHM FAChAM—public health expert
Professor George Rubin is Director of Clinical Governance with the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and is Professor of Public Health at both the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. He is a past President of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine and Board member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. 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.
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 to 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 USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and with the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh.
Professor Rubin was appointed to the NBA Board in May 2011.