Report launch event
This event has concluded. Click here to read the report.
Creating a world where everyone can breathe safely indoors
The pandemic has driven the acknowledgement that many diseases are airborne and that we need to breathe clean air to minimise the risk of infection in our shared indoor spaces. This is particularly important for people who face increased risks of poor health outcomes from airborne infections, because everyone needs to be able to access public spaces safely.
Join us online for the launch of our report to hear why safer shared air is a critical accessibility and inclusion issue, and how we can together ensure indoor air is safer for everyone to breathe.
Date and time
Wednesday, November 20
11:30am - 1pm AEDT
(Australian Eastern Daylight savings Time)
Location
Online
Agenda
| 11:30am | Welcome and keynote speeches, including Ged Kearney MP, Assistant Minister for Health. |
| 11:55am | Lived experience panel discussion |
| 12:15pm | Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska |
| 12:20pm | Panel discussion |
| 1:00pm | Conclusion |
We have limited spaces available for in-person attendance at Parliament House in Canberra. If you would like to join us please contact us.
Confirmed guest speakers
Ged Kearney MP, Assistant Minister for Health
Ged Kearney is the Federal Member for Cooper and the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health. Ged has served in the Parliament since March 2018, when she was elected in a by-election. She is the first woman to hold the seat.
Ged started her working life as a nurse and rose to become Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation. From 2010, Ged served as the president of the ACTU – the peak body of Australia’s union movement – where she fought for better conditions for Australian workers.
Ged’s working life – from nurse to President of the ACTU to parliamentarian – has been about fighting for the rights of others.
She is a strong voice for social justice, workers’ rights and universal healthcare inside Parliament. Ged is a passionate advocate for the environment and throughout her career she has supported a humane response to refugees.
Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah MP
Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah MP is the Federal Member for Higgins. She is an awarding winning researcher and medical specialist in infectious diseases and general medicine with 26 years experience. During the pandemic Michelle co-founded Healthcare Workers Australia, a grassroots advocacy group leading the fight for a better pandemic response and one that protected our frontline healthcare workers. During this time and now as a parliamentarian she has championed the need for clean indoor air to keep Australians safe and productive.
Tracey Spicer AM, Emcee
Tracey Spicer AM is a multiple Walkley Award winning journalist, author and broadcaster who spent more than 30 years anchoring national programs for ABC TV and radio, Network Ten and Sky News.
The inaugural national convenor of Women in Media, Tracey is one of the most sought-after key-note speakers and emcees in the Asia-Pacific on the topics of artificial intelligence, social justice and equity. Her book about AI, Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future, was longlisted for a prestigious Walkley Award. It won the Social Responsibility category, and was a finalist in the Technology category, in the Australian Business Book Awards.
In 2019, Tracey was named the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year, accepted the global Sydney Peace Prize with Tarana Burke for the Me Too movement, and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership through Women & Leadership Australia. ABC TV highlighted Tracey’s #metoo work in the docuseries, Silent No More.
In 2018, Tracey was chosen as one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence, winning the Social Enterprise and Not-For-Profit category. For her 30 years of media and charity work, she has been awarded the Order of Australia.
Highlights of her outstanding career include writing, producing and presenting documentaries in Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and India. Tracey is an Ambassador for Action-Aid, Your Side, the Ethnic Business Awards, Emerge Australia, the Australian POTS Foundation and Purple Our World, and Patron of the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance.
Her first book, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, is a bestseller, while her TEDx Talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has attracted almost seven million views worldwide.
Plum Stone, Founder of the Safer Air Project
Plum has worked in health policy and public affairs for the last 20 years, with experience in the UK Parliament, international public affairs agencies and in-house for patient advocacy organisations. Plum wrote her undergraduate dissertation on learning the lessons of pandemics of the past to prepare for pandemics of the future and has an MSc in Public Health (Nutrition).
As a result of Plum’s professional background, and personal lived experience with an immunocompromised and high-risk family, she has founded The Safer Air Project, with a mission to get indoor air quality recognised as a critical accessibility and inclusion issue for people living with chronic health conditions, in order to make indoor air safer for everyone to breathe.
A/Prof Robyn Schofield
A/Prof Robyn Schofield is an atmospheric chemist and she has been working on protection of our air since her PhD starting with stratospheric ozone chemistry. She has served on the International Ozone commission and since 2006 has contributed to the International Ozone Assessment - the reporting mechanism under the Montreal Protocol – our most successful environmental treaty to date. Since 2011 she has been in School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne caring for our air – monitoring, informing and advocating for climate science, cleaner fuels, efficient vehicles, clean industry and most recently: safe indoor air. She is the Associate Dean of Environment and Sustainability – she works with wicked complex systems, making the science accessible for the public and policy makers. Clean indoor air is just her most recent challenge - made even more important through her breast cancer treatment last year.
Dr Philip Lewis
Dr Philip Lewis is a biomedical engineer, neuroscientist and medtech commercialisation professional who has worked in healthcare, industry and academia. Now working in technology transfer, Phil is working with researchers, investors and industry partners to translate university innovations into commercialised technologies that deliver positive health impacts for people globally. Phil has cystic fibrosis, for which he underwent a double lung transplant in 1996. A number of serious early complications left Phil with chronic damage to his new lungs, adding to the challenge of now living with drug-induced immunodeficiency to prevent organ rejection. While he has always had to be cautious about circulating respiratory viruses, the onset of COVID brought into even sharper focus the risks of crowded and poorly ventilated rooms. Phil is strongly supportive of measures that will make it easier for him to continue his work.
Dr Hayley Teasdale
Dr Hayley Teasdale is a neuroscientist and entrepreneur, who now works at the science policy interface finding novel ways of providing science advice to inform decision making. She lives with a Primary Immune Deficiency, and is a board member for the Immune Deficiencies Foundation of Australia and Deputy Chair of their Patient Advisory Panel. Hayley is an advocate for the Australian Red Cross LifeBlood to promote the importance of blood and plasma donation, as she is a lifelong recipient of plasma products to treat her immune deficiency.
Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska
Lidia Morawska is Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia; the Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT, a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization (WHO); and the Centre Director for the ARC Training Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection Transmission (THRIVE) hosted at QUT. Lidia also holds positions of Vice- Chancellor Fellow, Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, UK; and Adjunct Professor, Institute for Environmental and Climate Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. An author of over 1,100 publications, Lidia has been involved at the executive level with a number of relevant national/international professional bodies, is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and is acting as an advisor to the WHO. She is the recipient of numerous scientific awards.
Professor Jason Monty
Jason Monty is Head of Department and a Professor with the Fluid Mechanics Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Melbourne. Dr Monty has spent his entire research career at the University of Melbourne where he built a reputation as an experimentalist in fluid mechanics. Dr Monty is also director of the Michell Hydrodynamics Laboratory, where he has built a number of world-class experimental facilities, including the 60 m long Extreme Air-Sea Interaction (EASI) facility that produces hurricane wind-speeds over the huge water tank. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Monty turned his attention to indoor air flows, co-inventing a transmission prevention device for hospital patients and advising on better ventilation principles and methods for industry, government and healthcare settings.
Nicholas Burt
Nicholas Burt is CEO of the Facility Management Association of Australia (FMA). He has over 25 years leadership experience, including appointments at the senior executive level within the community services and facility management sectors for both NGOs and local government. His roles have covered the entire spectrum of policy development and planning, program implementation and management. During his time with the FMA, Nic's commitment to stakeholder engagement, capacity building and education has helped to drive industry development and deliver high-quality services to stakeholders in the facilities management sector. Additionally, he holds multiple key positions on government and NGO committees that influence the built environment sectors.
Liam O’Brien
Liam was re-elected as Assistant Secretary at the ACTU Congress in June 2024.
Before joining the ACTU Liam was the Victorian Assistant Secretary and National Vice-President of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU). It was there where he fought for the rights of workers across the diverse range of industries that the AWU represents. As a national official he led the AWU’s work in the aluminium, aviation, glass and construction sectors.
As ACTU Assistant Secretary Liam is responsible for leading the movements policy, industrial and campaigning work on work health and safety and workers’ compensation matters. Liam is passionate about the rights of all workers to have safe, healthy and decent work, and is a member of Safe Work Australia (SWA) and the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Council (ASSEC).
Liam is also responsible for the skills and VET portfolio at the ACTU, and is a member of the Jobs and Skills Australia Ministerial Advisory Board.
He also holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics, with a major in Economics.
He is the proud father of two kids and lives in Melbourne’s west.
Christabelle Adjoyan
Christabelle Adjoyan is the Project Director of the Pathway to Clean Indoor Air program at the Burnet Institute.
Prior to joining the Burnet Institute, Christabelle was an experienced executive in the Victorian Government, working across health and social policy, medical research and economic development. Christabelle was most recently the Director of mRNA Projects at mRNA Victoria, leading the development of sovereign vaccine manufacturing initiatives to support pandemic preparedness. Prior to that, she held several senior positions at the Victorian Department of Health, leading reforms in mental health and drug policy, health service delivery and public health policy, including leading aspects of the COVID-19 response.
Christabelle is passionate about reducing transmission of preventable diseases, addressing the causes of health disparities and promoting equitable health outcomes.
Professor Quentin Grafton
Quentin Grafton is Professor of Economics, Chairholder UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, and an Australian Laureate Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a former President (2017-18) of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. He is the recipient of several awards for his research including the Eureka Science Prize for Water Research and Innovation (one of Australia’s science ‘Oscars’), Distinguished Fellow of Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, University of Waterloo Water Institute Royal Bank of Canada Distinguished Lecture, etc. He is included in the Top 20 economists in Australia (2023) as determined by the World's Best Economics and Finance Scientists and is ranked in the top quintile of the Top 100,000 World Scientists (all disciplines). He has worked extensively on the economic impact of COVID and Long COVID in Australia and other countries.
Dr Bronwyn King AO
Dr Bronwyn King AO is pleased to be working with Burnet Institute and University of Melbourne to help advance Australia’s progress on indoor air quality, building on lessons from Australia’s world leading approach to tobacco control. Dr King has convened a series of indoor air quality parliamentary roundtables for Australian politicians and led the development of new collaborations and partnerships amongst a broad range of stakeholders from academia, advocacy, industry, business, and government. In August 2024, Dr King was pleased to brief the Australian Prime Minister on the issue of indoor air quality. Dr King is a radiation oncologist by background and founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios, an NGO with a global footprint. In 2019 Dr King was named Melburnian of the Year.