2018 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
Speakers include
- Leiza Dessein – SMart Co-operative (Belgium)
- Peter Martin – Fairfax Media (Economics Editor for the Age & ABC Broadcaster)
- Wally Newman – CBH Group Chair
- Hon Matt Kean MP – NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation
- Lorraine Gordon – Farming Together Program Director
- James Brown – Common Equity Housing NSW
- Professor Greg Patmore – Co-operatives Research Group Chair, University of Sydney
- Professor Emmanuel Josserand – Centre for Business and Social Innovation (CBSI) Director, UTS
Keynote Speakers
Lieza Dessein
SMart is a co-operative dedicated to the needs of freelancers. Without creating their own legal structure, freelancers can work within our legally secured framework, stay autonomous and focus on their core activity, whilst easing their access to the best social protection possible. We developed a full range of pragmatic mutualized services to make sure that individual entrepreneurship does not mean isolation or precariousness. Amongst other services our co-operative is providing an online accounting tool, a salary guarantee fund, debt collection, training modules, as well as legal and economic advice to its diverse member base. We are aiming to bring back collective dynamics into an increasing individualized and complex work environment.
Lieza Dessein is a project and community manager for SMart. She acquired expertise in professional development through consulting work with SMart stakeholders in one-on-one and group settings. Lieza built collaborative leadership skills by managing atypical work spaces and cultures. She is in charge of the development of SMart’s creative hub, the Brussel Art Factory.
Lieza also gained an astute awareness of the impact of digitalization on a wide range of contemporary work environments. She is advocating for a fairer digital economy and represents SMart in the Platform Co-op Movement. This advocacy group facilitates the implementation of sustainable and democratic business models for digital companies.
Peter Martin
Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Age. He writes for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times. Former Commonwealth Treasury official, he has reported economics for the ABC and then for Fairfax Media since 1985. With Dr Gigi Foster he presents The Economists on ABC RN, and presents Wednesday Economics on ABC Nightlife.
He was the ABC’s economics correspondent from 1985 to 2002, reporting for its flagship programs AM, PM, and The World Today, covering events including the floating of the dollar, the 1987 Black Tuesday stock market crash, the early 1990’s recession, the Asian economic crisis and the introduction of the goods and services tax.
His passion is explaining economics simply, and he defines economics broadly. For more than a decade he presented Home Economics on ABC Life Matters, using new research in the fields of economics and psychology to explore decision making. He has worked in the Canberra press gallery since 2006. In 1996 he was made Journalist in Residence at Melbourne University’s Economics Department.
Walter (Wally) Newman
Co-operative Bulk Handling (CBH) Group is Australia’s largest co-operative and a leader in the Australian grain industry, with operations extending along the supply chain from storage, handling and transport to marketing, shipping and processing.
Owned and controlled by approximately 4,200 Western Australian grain growers and headquartered in Perth, Western Australia, with offices in South Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Russia, CBH is Australia’s largest exporter of grain, with a market share of approximately 30 per cent of aggregated bulk exports.
Wally Newman has been a Director of the CBH Board since May 2000, was the Deputy Chairman from 2008-2012 and was elected Chairman in 2014. He is currently a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.
Wally is a farmer from Newdegate in Western Australia’s grainbelt. A Director of several private companies, he is renowned as the instigator of the popular Newdegate Machinery Field Days and is its former President and a current committee member. Wally has 25 years of local Government experience, including three years as Deputy President of the Lake Grace Shire.
Wally is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.