• Speaker of the House of Representatives From 2008
• Second Deputy Speaker 2004-2007
• Federal member for Scullin (Vic) 1986- (2013)
• Australian Labor Party

Harry Jenkins was elected to the House of Representatives for Scullin, Victoria, at a by-election in 1986, vice the Hon. Dr HA Jenkins (resigned). He has served as Deputy Chair of Committees (1990-1993) and Deputy Speaker from 1993 to 1996. He has been the Second Deputy Speaker since April 1996.

Mr Jenkins has been a member of numerous House committees in his more than twenty years in federal parliament. He served on the Environment, Recreation and the Arts committee from 1987 and then its successor, the Environment and Heritage committee to 2007. He chaired the Publications committee (1987-1990); the Community Affairs committee (1990-1993) and the Selection committee (1993-1996). He has been a member of the following House committees - Finance and Public Administration; Aboriginal Affairs; Industry, Science and Technology; Family and Community Affairs; Science and Innovation and Members’ Interests. In addition, Mr Jenkins was also a member of the Joint Statutory committee on Public Works, the Joint Standing committee on National Capital and External Territories and the Joint Select committee on the Retailing Sector.

• Federal member for Fraser (ACT) 1984-1996
• Australian Labor Party

John Langmore is a Professorial Fellow in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. He was Director of the UN Division for Social Policy and Development in New York for five years from 1997 and then Representative of the International Labour Organization to the United Nations for two. One of his principal responsibilities while in the UN Secretariat was organisation of the special session of the General Assembly on social development held in Geneva in June 2000. When appointed, he was the most senior Australian working in the UN Secretariat.

Between 1984 and 1996 he was MP for Fraser. In 1987 he chaired a caucus committee which successfully recommended the establishment of the first comprehensive House of Representatives committee system. He later chaired a couple of House committees and several other inquiries. For example, while chairing the House Standing Committee on the Environment, Recreation and the Arts, major reports on employment and the environment, Australia's World Heritage areas, maintaining Australia’s biodiversity, and an assessment of the implementation of greenhouse gas emission reduction measures were completed. As a member of the Joint Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee he chaired several inquiries, on 10  trade, international financial institutions, Third World debt, and Australia’s balance of payments.

His most recent book is To Firmer Ground: Restoring Hope in Australia which was published in October 2007 and which Robert Solomon reviewed in Federal Gallery and described as ‘as good a prescription as you will find for what the new government on 25th November should do to make Australia a better country’.

John Halligan is Research Professor of Government and Public Administration, Faculty of Business and Government, University of Canberra, Australia.

His research interests are comparative public management and governance, specifically government institutions, parliament, corporate governance, political-bureaucratic relationships and performance management. He specialises in Anglophone countries, particularly Australia and New Zealand, and for comparative purposes, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Recent books with colleagues are Managing Performance: International Comparisons, Routledge, London, 2007; Parliament in the 21st Century, Melbourne University Press, 2007.

He is currently completing a book on Centrelink (for ANU Press), and studies of Corporate Governance in the Public Sector and Performance Management are being drafted.

• Speaker of the House of Representatives 1993-1996
• Federal member for Macarthur (NSW) 1984-93 and Cunningham (NSW) 1993-2002
• Australian Labor Party

Professor Stephen Martin is currently Pro Vice Chancellor International at Victoria University in Melbourne. From April he will assume the role of Deputy Vice Chancellor (Strategy and Planning) at Curtin University in Perth.

With a long and distinguished background in the Australian Parliament, Professor Martin represented the Macarthur and Cunningham electorates in New South Wales for eighteen years. In Government, he served as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Chairman of the House Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. As a member of the Shadow Cabinet, he held portfolios in Defence, Trade and Tourism.

Prior to assuming his present role in January 2005, Professor Martin was the Chief Executive Officer of the University of Wollongong in Dubai. Between September 2002 and December 2003, he was a Professorial Fellow and Director of Corporate and Executive Education, Graduate School of Business and Professional Development at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

His interests are international education, politics, corporate governance, financial services, defence and trade policy, and sport.

• Federal member for Menzies (Vic) 1991-current
• Liberal Party of Australia

Kevin Andrews was elected to the House of Representatives in 1991 as the Member for Menzies. He served on a number of Parliamentary Committees and chaired the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee from 1996 until 2001.

He subsequently served as Minister for Ageing (2001 - 03), Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations (2003-2007) and Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (2007).

• Federal member for Port Adelaide (SA) 1988-2007
• Australian Labor Party

Rod Sawford was elected to the House of Representatives in 1988 and after successive election wins he retired prior to the general elections in 2007. He served as Government Whip during 1994 through to the 1996 election and then as Opposition Whip from 1996 to November 2001.

During his almost twenty years in federal parliament he served on numerous House committees including the House Standing Committees on Employment, Education and Training; Employment, Education and Workplace Relations; Education and Training; Education and Vocational Training and Aboriginal Affairs. Mr Sawford had been a member of the substantive Education House Committee for 18 years (1989 to 2007). He also served on the Joint Statutory Public Accounts Committee and the Privileges, Selection and Members Interests Committees.

Prior to entering the Federal Parliament Mr Sawford was a casual labourer on the wharves of Port Adelaide, teacher consultant and school principal in the South Australian Education Department.

• National Party of Australia Chief Whip

Kay Hull is very passionate about representing the Riverina electorate and her main focuses have been on regional economic development, small business, health and aged care and disability issues.

Kay was elected in 1998 and was the first NSW Nationals woman to be elected into Federal Parliament.

A successful Wagga Wagga business owner-operator since 1978, Kay is also a former Councillor and Deputy Mayor of the City of Wagga Wagga and board member of Tourism NSW.

Kay is a wife, mother and grandmother and is very devoted to caring for her family. The total funding the Riverina has received since she was elected has exceeded $5 billion and continues to increase.

Kay has been honoured as a Paul Harris fellow and is a recipient of the Rod Murdoch Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Tourism in NSW.

During Kay’s time in Parliament she has handed down major reports into substance abuse titled Road to Recovery and the historic child custody titled Every Picture Tells A Story that has seen significant changes in the Family Law Act and the Child Support Act.

Kay has been actively involved in many committees of Parliament. She was chosen to represent The Nationals at the International Parliamentary Union. Kay was elected to represent the Asia Pacific Region on the IPU Women’s Co-ordinating Committee. She is actively involved in humanitarian issues centred around International Child Trafficking. Kay will seek re-election to the committee at Capetown South Africa in April 2008.

Ian Marsh holds the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Chair of Public Management at the University of Sydney. Professor Marsh, a former Senior Fellow of the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, took up his chair at Sydney in early 2005.

A graduate of the Kennedy School of Government, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Professor Marsh was formerly an Associate Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management, Research Director of the Liberal Party of Australia, and Associate of McKinsey & Co, and Private Secretary to the Minister for Defence.

Professor Marsh has been a prolific contributor to public discussion about the role of government through his many books, articles and contributions published over the past 20 years. He is author of several books, including Beyond the Two Party System: Political Representation, Economic Competitiveness and Australian Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1995; Into the Future: The Neglect of the Long Term in Australian Politics (with David Yencken), Melbourne: Black Inc. 2005. He has also three edited collections: Australian Political Parties in Transition? Sydney, Federation Press, 2006,Democracy Governance and Regionalism in East and Southeast Asia, London, Routledge, 2006 and, with Jean Blondel, Takashi Inoguchi and Richard Sinnott, Globalisation and the People London, Routledge, 2006 (forthcoming).

Siobhan Leyne has been an inquiry secretary in the Committee Office of the Department of the House of Representatives since February 2006. Prior to this (after a very short, but informative, detour via the Tax Office) she spent five years as a committee secretary for the ACT Legislative Assembly.

Due to the proximity to the community it serves, committees of the ACT Legislative Assembly come under close scrutiny which is why Siobhan has a particular interest in strategies to effectively engage the community with the parliament through the committee system and how the committee system can be used to promote democratic processes.

Siobhan is currently studying towards a masters degree in anthropology with a focus on the notions of belonging and nationalism and how this impacts on individual participation in systems of governance and democratic processes.

• Speaker of the House of Representatives 2004-2008
• Federal member for Wannon (Vic) 1983-current
• Liberal Party of Australia

David Hawker has been a member of Federal Parliament for 25 years in May this year, having being elected to the seat of Wannon in Western Victoria in May, 1983.

During the 41st Parliament Mr Hawker was Speaker of the House of Representatives, concluding his term on the eve of the 42nd parliament on 11 February 2008. Prior to his election as Speaker, Mr Hawker was Chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration which is regarded as one of the Parliament’s key all-Party Committees. The Committee undertook a major inquiry into cost shifting on to local government producing the report Rates and Taxes: A Fair Share for Responsible Local Government. This Committee also established the regular hearings with the Chairman of the Reserve Bank and produced a report on regional banking, Regional banking services: Money too far away, among many other reports.

In addition Mr Hawker was formerly a member of the Defence Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. In his earlier role as Chairman Mr Hawker introduced the Parliamentary Armed Forces Scheme.

Geoffrey Lindell, is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Adelaide and Australian National Universities and a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne University. Before his retirement as a full time academic in 2002, he held senior academic positions at the Australian National University and later the Melbourne University. He has taught and published, widely in the field of Australian constitutional law. He has assisted in some major reviews of the Australian Constitution, as well as having provided (and continues to provide) legal and constitutional advice to governments and parliaments. He also appeared as counsel in two major High Court constitutional cases. He was, until 2002, the inaugural Secretary of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law, a body he helped to form and was a co-opted member of the Council of that Association during 2005.

Geoffrey Lindell has taught and published widely in the field of Australian constitutional law. He has assisted in major reviews of the Australian Constitution and provided constitutional advice to governments and parliaments. He is currently an Adjunct Law Professor at the Adelaide and Australian National Universities and a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University. He has appeared as counsel in two major High Court constitutional cases. He was the inaugural Secretary of the Australian Association of Constitutional Law, a body he helped to form.

Editorial Panel Member, Constitutional Law and Policy Review, Prospect Media Ltd, NSW Member of the Board of Advisors, Public Law Review, Law Book Company, North Ryde, NSW.

• Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly (1988-1995)
• Former member for Hawkesbury (NSW Legislative Assembly) 1973-2003

Kevin Rozzoli was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales from 1973 to 2003. Elected Speaker in 1988 he held the position until 1995. He regards this as the high point of his parliamentary career. He has been an Australian Region representative on the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Executive.

He was admitted to the NSW Bar in 1985 and in 1990 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of Western Sydney in 1990 for his contribution to the University and to Western Sydney. In 2006 he published his first book ‘Gavel to Gavel – an insider’s view of parliament’. Last year he facilitated the Induction Program for newly elected MPs in Papua New Guinea. He has written articles and papers on many aspects of the Parliament.

He is currently an Honorary Research Associate with the University of Sydney and an Honorary Research Fellow at Monash University, He is also a Board member of the NSW Law and Justice Association and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in NSW.

Dr Phil Larkin is in the Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (ANU) and a member of the Parliamentary Studies Centre. He has worked at the Australian National University since October 2005, prior to which he was an advisor to the Trade and Industry Select Committee of the British Parliament. He has recently been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK. This included a secondment to the Senate Committee Office

Since arriving at ANU his research has primarily focussed on comparative parliaments (particularly committee systems) and parties, and on Australian democracy. He is a co–author of a democratic Audit of Australia, Australia: The State of Democracy (forthcoming 2008, Federation Press). He has also written on industrial and competition policy.

• Clerk of the House of Representatives 1997-2009

Ian Harris was appointed Clerk of the House of Representatives on 27 July 1997, having served as Deputy Clerk from 1991. He joined the parliamentary staff in 1972 after postgraduate study (in Australian constitutional history) and short stints as a university tutor, schoolteacher and journalist/radio broadcaster. The appeal of a parliamentary career derived from the opportunity it opened to serve all elements of the political spectrum.

In April 2003, he was elected as President of the International Association of Secretaries- General of (national) Parliaments, having previously served as Vice-President and Executive Committee member since 2000. Member of Society of Clerks-at-the-Table (UK) since 1981.

Ian served in teams reviewing UNDP parliamentary enhancement programs in Timor Leste in 2005, Cambodia in 2006. He has been requested to perform a similar function in Laos in 2006-07.