A Matter of Choice

Contributors

The Hon Richard Court MLA, was elected Premier of Western Australia In February 1993. Mr Court was educated at Hale School and the University of Western Australia, graduating in Commerce in 1968. He spent a year as a management trainee at the Ford Motor Company in the USA. Prior to entering politics Mr Court established and operated a number of businesses in Western Australia in the areas of food retailing and in the manufacture, wholesale and retail of a large range of marine and boating equipment. Mr Court was elected MLA for Nedlands in March 1982, appointed to the Opposition front-bench in 1984 and elected Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in September 1987. In June 1990 he was elected Leader of the Opposition in WA.

Lyndon Rowe was appointed Executive Director Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Western Australia, following an amalgamation of the Confederation of Western Australian Industry (CWAI) and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which took place on 1 January, 1992. Prior to this Mr Rowe had been Executive Director of the CWAI. Originally from South Australia, Mr Rowe came to Perth to teach economics at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University of Technology) and then joined the CWAI as its principal economist in 1978. He holds an honours degree in Economics from the University of Adelaide. Mr Rowe has a strong interest in labour economics and has published a number of papers dealing with Australia's industrial relations system.

Ray Evans was educated at Melbourne High School and The University of Melbourne where he graduated in Engineering. He worked in the electrical supply industry and then joined the Engineering School at Deakin University. In 1982 Mr Evans joined Western Mining Corporation as Executive Officer and has been active in debates affecting the mining industry in Australia and overseas. He has been President, since 1989, of The H R Nicholls Society, an Australian society dedicated to the cause of labour market reform. Mr Evans has published widely.

Christopher Peters is currently the Chief Executive of The Printing & Allied Trades Employers' Federation of Australia (PATEFA), a position he has held since August 1993. Prior to this Mr Peters was the Chief Executive of the Canberra based Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Mr Peters was previously the Chief Executive of the Company Directors' Association and foundation Executive Director of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is an author of the Company Directors Course and the Company Directors' Manual and a visiting lecturer on Directors' Duties and Corporate Governance at the University of New England. He was a member of the New South Wales Attorney-General's Corporate Crime Task Force, the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Steering Committee on Corporations and Securities and a member (the only non-lawyer) of the Commonwealth Companies & Securities Legal Advisory Committee.

The Hon Graham Kierath MLA, is Minister for Labour Relations, Works, Services, and Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs in the Western Australian Government. He was educated at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University of Technology) where he studied for an Associateship in Electronic Engineering (1967-1972). Mr Kierath worked as a contract engineer and draftsman before owning a contract cleaning company in 1978. He sold the company, which employed more than 150 people, after being elected to Parliament eleven years later. Mr Kierath gained experience as a negotiator for the cleaning industry and was a member of the Labour Relations Council of the then Confederation of Western Australian Industry. He was also State President of the Master Cleaners Guild. In 1989 Mr Kierath was elected as the first Parliamentary member for the new seat of Riverton and is one of the youngest minister in the WA Government. He is an active Rotarian and has been, amongst other sporting interests, Vice President of the WA Squash Racquets Association.

Khory McCormick has been a partner with Minter Ellison Morris Fletcher in Brisbane since 1982. He holds the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) and Master of Laws, and served as an Associate to the Chief Justice of Australia, Sir Harry Gibbs, in 1980 and 1981. Mr McCormick was admitted as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1981 and a barrister and solicitor in other Australian jurisdictions subsequently. He heads the Labour Law Group and Commercial and Corporate Litigation Group of the Brisbane office of Minter Ellison Morris Fletcher. Mr McCormick has represented parties at such public and private hearings as the Vasta Inquiry, the Ariadne Inquiry, the Qintex Inquiry and before the Criminal Justice Commission. He has had a special and long association with litigation concerning the resources sector. He has conducted several significant industrial cases including disputes involving the Australian meat industry, waterfront reform and the mining industry. He is presently a member of the Queensland Law Society Industrial Relations Committee.

Russell Allen heads the Employee Relations Practice of the Perth office of Freehill Holllngdale & Page and is national chairman of the Employee Relations Practice Group of the firm. Mr Allen has practised in the area of Employee Relations and Employment law for more than twenty years. For the past decade he has been involved with the human resource planning of most major resource projects in Western Australia both during their construction and operation phases. In addition to his resources experience, Mr Allen is particularly active in human resources planning, union coverage and the establishment of agreements and award coverage for both new and existing enterprises in the retail, manufacturing and service sectors as well as in the public sector. For many years he was a member of the Western Australian Tripartite Labour Consultative Council.

More recently he assisted the Western Australian Government in the development of its labour market reform legislation including the Workplace Agreements Act 1993. Mr Alien was admitted to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1974 and has subsequently been admitted to.practice in the Supreme Courts of New South Wales, Victoria and the High Court of Australia.

William Harold Clough, AO OBE, is Chairman of Clough Limited, holding company for the Clough Engineering Group. Mr Clough graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1947 with a first class honours degree of Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering. In 1951 he won a United States Fulbright Scholarship and attended the University of California, gaining a Master of Science degree. Mr Clough remained in the United States with Bechtel Corporation, returning to Western Australia in 1954 to join his father's engineering and construction company Clough Engineering Group. Mr Clough was awarded the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, Office of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, Officer of the Order of Australia, and Honorary Degree of Doctor of Engineering,~ both in 1990. In 1993 he was awarded the James N. Kirby Award by the Australasian Regional Board of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Peter Nicol Russel Memorial Medal by the Institution of Engineers Australia. Mr Clough is President of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, past President of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia, Senate member of the University of Western Australia and a Director of Bunnings Limited, IBM Australia Limited, West Australian Newspaper Holdings Limited and Homestake Gold of Australia Limited.

Shelton Young is Chairman of Sheldon Young Corporation. During the last eight years Mr Young has been operating a busy consulting practice across the whole resource sector for both mainstream construction industrial relations and operations in Australia and New Zealand. He has carried out a wide variety of assignments including investment raising, and has negotiated several joint ventures in China. Mr Young specialises in innovative construction industry industrial relations practices and `re-engineering' of resource companies. He was recently involved in the oil and gas industry in New Zealand and has been involved in labour market reform in New Zealand over the past five years. He spent fourteen years with the Bechtel Corporation in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, with assignments ranging from industrial relations, marketing and executive management as Vice President and Director. Prior to his years with Bechtel, Mr Young had ten years with employer associations in the construction, petrochemical and mining industries.

Ken Phillips was educated at Marcellin College and Deakin University, Victoria. He began his career as a primary teacher and then became the company secretary for a group operating a chain of butchers shops and a substantial property portfolio. He then became a small business proprietor, a tertiary teacher specialising in business training, and then a consultant to the Victorian Affiliated Teachers' Union. He is now a consultant for the small business sector particularly in the field of government relations.

Hal Colebatch, Barrister-at-Law, was educated in Perth obtaining degrees in Arts, Law and Jurisprudence from the University of Western Australia. He has been a journalist, a political adviser, editor, author, solicitor and poet. Mr Colebatch has published widely including five books of poetry, several novels and has currently had accepted for publication a Biography Claude deBernales: the Magnificent Miner, Hesperian Press; a children's novel: The Soldiers, the Doll and the Rates, Literary Mouse; and a science fiction: The Colonel's Tiger, Baen Books, USA.