Invited Speakers

Paul Boissonneault

Fire Chief Brant County, Canadian Fire Service (Canada)

Paul is Fire Chief and Community Emergency Management Coordinator for the County of Brant in South Western Ontario. He has been a Fire Chief for eleven years and was involved in the fire service in both career and volunteer capacities from firefighter to Chief Officer. He is currently the President for the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs and has been on the executive since 2008.

He has represented the CAFC internationally in Belgium, Ireland and the United States in addition to being a guest presenter across Canada. Chief Boissonneault has been involved with advocacy and change for the CAFC with the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Advisory Council and activities with Transport Canada since the tragedy in Lac Mégantic.

Chief Boissonneault is a proud recipient of the Queens Diamond Jubilee medal in 2013 and continues to work extremely hard for the Canadian Fire Service.

 

Iain Mckenzie

Inspector-General, Emergency Management

Iain served with the Fire Service in Queensland for more than 32 years and held the position of Deputy Commissioner more than seven years. Prior to that Iain spent one year with Counter Disaster and Rescue Services in Executive and Deputy Executive Director roles.

Iain holds a Masters Degree in Leadership and Management, is a graduate of the Institute of Fire Engineers and has attended the United States National Fire Academy, Executive Fire Officer Program. Iain was awarded the Australian Fire Service Medal in 2006.

Iain’s experience in Emergency Management in Queensland is extensive, having played pivotal leadership roles in the responses to most major disaster events in Queensland between 2001 and 2012.

Through 2013 Iain served on the Queensland Police and Community Safety Review and in October 2013 was the inaugural appointment to the position of Inspector-General Emergency Management.

 

Dr Bill Griggs

Director Trauma Service, Royal Adelaide Hospital

Bill is one of Australia’s most experienced emergency medicine specialists and a world leader in his field. He's on the frontline with trauma patients domestically and overseas.

He has completed hundreds of aeromedical retrievals and is Clinical Director of Retrieval Coordination for MedSTAR – South Australia’s statewide retrieval service. Dr Griggs is also the founder of the Roads2Survival™ community road safety program.

He is a member of the RAAF Specialist Reserve and his list of service includes deployment to the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005, 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, 2007 crash of Garuda 737 GA200 in Yogyakarta, 2009 Ashmore Reef SIEV36 explosion/fire as well as heading the SA AusMAT medical team during the 2009 Samoan tsunami disaster. In addition Bill was deployed to the Gulf War in 1991, Bougainville in 1994 and 1998 and East Timor  in 1999 and 2007.

Dr Griggs holds an MBA and in 2003 was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

 

Margaret Allison, Director

Margaret Allison Consulting

Margaret has had a diverse career spanning more than 35 years in the public sector in Queensland and NSW, in both local and State government. With a professional background in human services, she has led services and reforms in areas including youth justice, child protection, disability, legal aid, domestic and family violence, child care and customer services.

Margaret took up her most recent role as Director-General for the Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services in March 2012, following two years as the Public Service Commissioner in Queensland. She retired from the public sector at the end of 2013, and now works in her own consultancy business. She is a member of a number of boards, including the Queensland Police Service Board of Management.

 

Steve Hamm

Director, Chief Fire Officers Association (UK)

Steve is currently a Director of CFOA National Resilience Ltd in the UK and his portfolio deals with business development, assurance of resilience capabilities and overseas opportunities. He has an extensive career background in the UK fire and rescue service, his last appointment being as Assistant Commissioner with the London Fire Brigade until 2014 where he was responsible for Operational Resilience. This portfolio covered aspects such as the Operational Planning for significant events in London, Contingency Planning for a range of scenarios, delivering the London Fire Brigade Emergency Planning responsibilities and the delivery of Specialist Operational Capabilities in London, including components of the Fire and Rescue National Resilience programme.

For the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2012 Steve undertook a Gold Command role in London and was involved in the work required to ensure that specific measures for the games were correctly planned, implemented and tested.

Steve has a broad experience base in strategic operational command and has attended a number of high profile events in London, including the civil disturbances of 2011 and the Vauxhall helicopter crash in Central London in 2013. In 2014 Steve was heavily involved in the command and control arrangements for the flooding that affected large parts of the UK.

Steve has over 25 years of experience in the Fire and Rescue Service following a period of service in the Royal Air Force and he is a Chartered Fire Engineer. He is currently a director of CFOA National Resilience and also a Director and the Vice Chair of the board of the Institution of Fire Engineers, and will become the Institutions International President in July 2015.

 

Adam Dent

Commissioner, NSW Sate Emergency Service

Adam was appointed as NSW SES Commissioner on 5 January 2015. He is responsible for the NSW government agency which is the combat agency for the coordination and control of prevention, preparation, response and recovery for storm, flood and tsunami for NSW.

Adam was previously the Director, Relief and Recovery at Emergency Management Victoria. He was responsible for leading reform of relief and recovery arrangements in Victoria as a part of the broader emergency management reform program. This has included creating a coherent strategic framework for relief and recovery coordination providing improved scalability and partnerships, streamlining governance and coordination arrangements, review, development and implementation of an end-to-end impact assessment system and developing crisis communications and community engagement arrangements.

Deploying and leading over 1,300 personnel, he led the Red Cross relief and recovery effort in response to the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 and the widespread floods that hit northern Victoria in 2011 and 2012. He was also responsible for the management of the National Inquiry Centre following Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

Adam understands what it takes to lead people and ensure that communities are built back better and more resilient.

 

Professor Lyn Gilbert

Clinical Professor- Infectous Diseases, University of Sydney

Lyn is an infectious diseases physician and clinical microbiologist, who, until recently, was Director of Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology-Laboratory Services at ICPMR Westmead.

She is currently:

• Clinical Professor in Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney
• Senior researcher at the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity and at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine
• Clinical Lead in Infection Prevention and Control at Westmead Hospital.

 Lyn was recently appointed by the Chief Medical Officer to chair a committee to provide advice to the Australian Health Protection Primary Committee on infection prevention and control for Ebola virus disease in Australian healthcare settings.

 

Dr Stuart Minchin

Chief- Environmental Geoscience Division, Geoscience Australia

Dr Minchin is currently the Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia. The Environmental Geoscience Division (~250 staff) includes the National Earth and Marine Observations, National Geospatial Information, and Groundwater groups. The Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia is the centre of expertise in the Australian Government for environmental earth science issues and the custodian of national environmental geoscience data, information and knowledge.

Stuart has previously been responsible for the Environmental Observation and Landscape Science (EOLS) research program in CSIRO which supports decision-making for natural resource management and investment. The EOLS research program focussed on Environmental Earth Observation, Soil and Landscape Science and Advanced Environmental Information Systems

Stuart has a strong track record in many areas of environmental science, particularly in the water resources management area. He has an extensive background in the management and modelling of environmental data and the online delivery of data, modelling and reporting tools for improved natural resource management. Stuart has represented Australia in key international forums including serving as Co-Chair of the Science and Technology Committee of the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations and also currently serves on the Editorial Board of the international Journal “Ecological Indicators”.

 

Moira Fahy

Independant Film Producer, Director & Scriptwriter

Moira Fahy is an award-winning, independent film producer, director and scriptwriter. Moira has made five documentaries on the impact of natural disasters in Australia. She is the producer, writer and director of the ABC and Film Victoria documentary on the 1939 Black Friday fires which was a finalist in the 2004 AIMIA Awards, won the Victorian Fire Awareness Community Service Award for Excellence and an ATOM Award in 2004 for Best Documentary.

Her Black Friday documentary was also cited in the 2004 COAG Report to the Federal Government on Bushfire Mitigation & Management as a key recommendation for the recovery of bushfire affected communities. Moira Fahy was also invited to speak at the Victorian Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.

In an excerpt from Professor of History, ANU, Dr Tom Griffiths’, invited evidence to the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday Bushfires, he noted that her work was: “An important example of collaborative community historical scholarship that analyses both the experience and memory of fires…”

Her documentaries have been of enormous value as a cultural and historical record and as an educational resource that speaks to the real costs of natural disasters on individuals, families, communities and career and volunteer emergency services personnel.

She has interviewed and worked closely with leading climate change scientists, ecologists, meteorologists and environmental and social historians across Australia over the last fifteen years and her films are used by state and federal emergency management and recovery agencies; the Red Cross, local councils and the academic and education sector for the valuable role they play in disaster education, recovery and mitigation.