We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Nicky
Grigg to the Board of Australia21.
Nicky is a research scientist at CSIRO Land and Water. She
completed Environmental Engineering and Applied Mathematics undergraduate
degrees at the University of Western Australia, and a PhD in Resource
Management and Environmental Science at the Australian National University. She
conducted her postdoctoral work in complex systems science at CSIRO
and has worked on a diverse set of projects ranging from a local scale
(e.g. analysis of stormwater harvesting in Canberra) to a national scale (e.g.
what builds social-ecological resilience in Australia?). Currently she is part
of an interdisciplinary team using integrated modelling approaches to
understand impacts of and responses to global change. Nicky is also
involved with a range of change focussed community activities. She
was a founding member of SEE-Change (www.see-change.org.au), has participated
actively in the CSIRO Scientists in Schools program and over several years
has performed in National Science Week and ‘Canberra Conversation’ events with
A Chorus of Women. Nicky brings not only scientific expertise to
Australia21 but also a lived experience of community engagement which
is very valuable to us.
We are delighted to announce the recent appointment of Dr
Steve Cork to the Board of Australia21.
Steve is a futurist, strategist, and ecologist who has had a
career spanning research (University of NSW, CSIRO, and at the Australian
National University) and public policy (Australian Government, United Nations).
He pioneered research in Australia on the natural environment’s benefits for
humans, managed the Future Landscapes Program in Land & Water Australia,
led the writing team that prepared the Millennium Assessment’s scenarios for
the future of the world, and has worked on forest and coastal policy and
market-based instruments for natural resource management in the Australian
Government. He is currently an adjunct Professor in the Crawford School of
Public Policy at the ANU and provides futures and strategic thinking services
to government and non-government organisations, large and small, as a private
consultant (EcoInsights). For several years Steve has been a valued member
of Australia21's leadership team for the
resilience project and the ecosystems project. We look
forward to his contribution in this new role as a director in a wide range
of areas, particularly futures and strategic thinking.
We are delighted to announce the recent appointment of Lisa
Pryor to the board of Australia21.
Lisa is a journalist, author and medical student. She is the
author of two non-fiction books, A Small
Book About Drugs: The Debate We Need To Have About Recreational Drugs
(Allen & Unwin) and The Pin Striped
Prison: How Overachievers Get Trapped in Corporate Jobs They Hate (Picador). She
was previously the opinion page editor of The
Sydney Morning Herald, where she also worked as an investigative
journalist and wrote a weekly opinion column. She has a law degree with first
class honours, and an arts degree, from the University of Sydney. She returned
to the university in 2011 to study medicine. Lisa first became involved with
Australia21 through the illicit drugs project.
We appreciate her continued
contribution in this area and look forward to drawing also on her
experience in the broader area of media and communications, where she is
known as an incisive and entertaining commentator.
People contemplating donating to a non-profit organisation
quite reasonably want to know how much of the money they donate will be applied
to the purpose for which they make their donation, and how much will be expended
on overheads. Many of them will also wonder what other sources of support the
organisation might have, because they want to know whether their donations will
make a difference.
To deal with the second question first, we have sometimes
encountered in personal conversation and in the media an assumption that
Australia21 receives government funding. For example, one media commentator who
was hostile to the findings of our report on illicit drugs policy described us
as “a government-sponsored think tank”.
There is no foundation whatever in this claim, and in fact while we have
on occasion managed to secure funding from government agencies for specific
projects that were of particular interest to them, we have never sought
government support for our running costs because of the potential for our
independence to be compromised. In order to ensure our independence our preference is for our running costs to
be derived from a widely dispersed group of contributors.
Regarding the running costs themselves, we keep them to what
we regard as the irreducible minimum:
- Because we are a registered non-profit with Gift
Tax Deductibility, as a matter of law our Directors receive no remuneration for
their efforts in running the company, fundraising, or representing the company
at public events.
- We maintain a small secretariat: a part time
Executive Director who works a nominal two days a week and routinely contributes
extra time, for which we are grateful; a part time office administrator who
comes in for a few hours a week, and a part-time book-keeper.
- Our office is a single room in the former
Weston Primary School in the Australian Capital Territory, which the ACT
Administration has renovated as a centre for NGO offices. Our monthly rental is
currently $295.
- We conduct our Board meetings by monthly
teleconference: face to face meetings are a rarity.
- Our accounting and audit costs are provided
at concessional rates, but in order to be permitted to raise funds in some
jurisdictions we are still required to have a full annual audit of our accounts,
notwithstanding recent changes to the Corporations Law.
Averaging all of these costs over the year we need about
$4,000 per month or $48,000 per annum to provide the infrastructure which
enables us to undertake our projects and communicate the results to the public.
We also do our best to keep project costs to a minimum. We can usually find a university willing to
provide us at no charge with a venue for our conferences and roundtables, as
the Australian National University and Melbourne University have done on several
occasions, and as the University of Sydney did for our recent roundtable on
illicit drugs.
We encourage participants in our roundtables to meet their
own travel and accommodation costs where they are able to do so, but always
budget to meet the costs of some participants as we do not want capacity to pay
to be a limiting factor on participation.
Our directors participate in these events without fee. On
occasions we pay a suitably qualified person to write a discussion paper for a
roundtable, or to prepare a major research report. Usually we can identify a person with very
high level expertise who can prepare a top quality review paper quickly and who
is prepared to do so for “mates’ rates”. Where that suitably qualified person
happens to be a Director of Australia21 we will pay them a modest fee, but many
of our Directors waive their right to the fee, or donate it to Australia21.
When all is said and done, the cost of running a roundtable including
preparation of a commissioned paper, and write-up and publication of the
report, typically comes to around $25,000.
The above figures will illustrate why small donations are
important to Australia21. We get a lot
of bang for the buck, and depend upon private donors for our running costs.
To illustrate the point: within a few days of the release of
our report on illicit drugs (see here)
over 3000 visitors downloaded it from our website. If each of these visitors
had donated a tax-deductible $10 to Australia21, that would have covered over
60% of our running costs for a year, or alternatively have funded a new
project, such as the studies we are seeking to finance on Regreening Australia
(see here)
or a roundtable on the applicability to Australia of the Portuguese experience
in the decriminalisation of drug use.
So be assured that small donations really do matter, and
will be appreciated by Australia21. If you want to support our work, please
visit www.australia21.org.au and
hit the Donate button to make a tax deductible
donation. And tell your friends about us.
Former Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer
has joined the Board of Australia21.
Mick is a 33 year career police officer with extensive
experience in police leadership and reform in community, national and
international policing. He served as
Commissioner of the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Service
agency from 1988-1994 and as Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police
(AFP), from 1994 until March 2001.
Since
retiring from policing in 2001 Mick has conducted a range of government
inquiries and re-views, including the inquiry into the immigration detention of
Cornelia Rau. He is currently the
Australian Federal Government’s Inspector of Transport Security with
responsibility to inquire into serious transport security matters and offshore
security matters. He is currently a
member of the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia.
Dr Alex Wodak AM has joined the Board of Australia21.
Alex has been Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service, St
Vincent’s Hospital since 1982.
Working with colleagues, Dr Wodak helped to establish the
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (1987), the NSW Users AIDS
Association (NUAA) (1989), the Australian Society of HIV Medicine (ASHM) (1989)
and, when both required civil disobedience, Australia’s first needle syringe
programme (1986) and first medically supervised injecting centre (1999). Dr
Wodak is President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and was
President of the International Harm Reduction Association (1996-2004). He often
works in developing countries on HIV control among injecting drug users.
