The following keynote speakers have been confirmed.

Kenneth Davidson

Ken is a senior writer for The Age and Co-Editor, Dissent Magazine. His regular economics column with the Age is essential reading.

Professor Michael Pusey

FASSA, Professor of Sociology, University of NSW. In the early 1990s Michael Pusey's book on Economic Rationalism in Canberra started a national debate on economic rationalism and brought the term into public useage. It showed how Canberra had been taken over by 'economic rationalists' and warned of the economic and social costs of free market economic reform. Since then he has been studying how Australians experience markets and economic structures. His most recent book, The Experience of Middle Australia, examines the impact of economic restructuring on incomes, jobs, families, communities, politics and Australian culture.

Michael Pusey left school at 15 and worked in Tasmania as a photographer, a farm labourer and a shop assistant before studying at the Sorbonne and later at the University of Melbourne. He was a school teacher in Tasmania before moving to The United States where he completed his doctoral studies in sociology at Harvard University. On his return to Australia in the early 1970s he worked with the Schools Commission and at the Australian National University. Over the last twenty years at the University of New South Wales Michael has taught on social theory, the media and the public sphere, economic ideas, and, most recently on quality of life in Australia. Michael is a Professor of Sociology at UNSW and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His writings on economic reform and on the changing Australian middle class have involved over two hundred and fifty commentaries and interviews on radio, television and in the metropolitan press. He was listed in 2005 by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of Australia's top 100 public intellectuals. From 1995 to 2002 Michael has been Director of the Middle Australia Project. His theoretical and research interests have focussed on quality of life, on the experience of time, on trust and civil society, and the changing nature of political and economic culture in Australia. In 2006 he will begin, with Paul Jones, an Australian Research Council funded study on political communication and media regulation in Australia.

Paul Munro

The Honourable Paul Munro served from 1986 to 2004 as Justice Munro, a Senior Presidential Member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (the AIRC) or its predecessors. He is a graduate of the Sydney Law School and was admitted to the NSW Bar in 1961. Between 1961 and 1986, several periods of full time professional legal practice in Papua New Guinea, Melbourne and Sydney were interspersed with periods of service as a national public sector union official. Paul Munro was Industrial Advocate for the Public Service Association of Papua New Guinea, (1967- 1968); National Secretary of the Council of Australian Government Employee Organisations, (1969 � 1977); Federal Secretary of the Administrative Clerical Offices Association, (1979-1986). His service as a union official effectively included also five years as a member of the ACTU Executive, and about the same time as a Member of the Executive of Public Service International and related committees, regionally and at ILO level including its Committee of Experts on public service matters. He was a full-time member of the 1974-1976 Coombs Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, and later a part-time member of the Administrative Review Council. In his years on the AIRC, Paul Munro had responsibility for industry panels for aluminium, vehicles and cablemaking, paint and printing, transport, education and, since February 1998, the metals and manufacturing industry. Since July 2004 Mr Munro has spoken at a number of industrial relations or law conferences and has maintained an active role as an occasional consultant and mediator. He is Patron of the NSW IRS and a Vice President of the recently formed Australian Institute of Employment Rights.

David Thompson.

David Thompson AM is CEO of Jobs Australia Limited, the national peak representative and services organisation for more than 250 non-profit providers of employment and related services for unemployed people.

David has had more than 25 years' involvement in the development, management and operation of labour market assistance programs and has a strong interest in equity and social justice issues.

In January 2005, David was made a member in the Order of Australia for his contribution to employment, education and training.

David is a founding Board member, and current Deputy Chair of the National Employment Services Association (NESA), and a member of the DEWR/NESA Working Party.

David is also:

• an ACOSS Board and Executive member, and its Principal Policy Adviser on employment, education and training and youth affairs issues and its current representative on the ATO's Charities Consultative Committee;
• Chair of the Jobs Australia Foundation;
• President of the Australian Chapter of the Commonwealth Association for Local Action and Economic Development (COMMACT);
• Chair of Community 21 Limited, a community sector company established for the national community sector bank joint venture with Bendigo Bank, and its representative on the Community Sector Enterprises board;
• A director of Beyond Empathy, an organisation delivering programs to alleviate the cycles of poverty for disadvantaged young people through arts based programs; and
• a member of the Federal government's Welfare Reform Consultative Forum;
• a member of DEWR's Employment Services Disability Advisory Group;
• a member of Telstra's Low Income Measures Assessment Committee.

More information about Jobs Australia is available here.