Presenters, Chairs and Facilitators

Session 7
» Ms Kez Hall
» Mr Neil Westbury
» Mr Stephen Hunter
» Dr Manley Begay
» Ms Nicole Kilgour

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6

Session 8
Session 9

Ms Kez Hall
Ms Kez Hall is Chief Executive Officer of the Danila Dilba Aboriginal Health Service and a Board member of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. She is a Kungarakan woman from the Finniss River/Litchfield area and her grandmother is from the Gurindji people of Kalkaringi.

Ms Hall has held positions in the Northern Territory Government as Acting Assistant Secretary in Public Health, Director of Public Health Strategies and Executive Officer of Aboriginal Employment. She has also worked in policy and service delivery areas in Aboriginal legal services, criminal justice programs, social justice programs and Aboriginal education. She has been directly involved as a traditional owner in cultural and resource management of the Litchfield area, and governance of the Kungarakan Cultural and Education Association.

Ms Hall participated in the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva in the early 1990s. She has since worked with displaced Burmese women in the north of Thailand facilitating UN Indigenous nations around the world. She has also established a private company to operate a flora and fauna sanctuary on a tract of river land in her Mother’s country.

Mr Neil Westbury
Mr Neil Westbury has worked in Indigenous Affairs for over thirty years. He commenced his career in the Northern Territory in 1972 and spent a number of years working in remote Indigenous communities, on pastoral properties and in small towns. From 1984 to 1985 he was seconded to the Miller Review of Aboriginal Employment and Training Programs and was responsible for assisting the committee in developing its recommendations on remote areas. He relocated to Western Australia in 1986 and eventually assumed the roles of State Director of the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and subsequently State Manager of ATSIC.

From 1992 to 1994 he was the Deputy CEO of the Office of Northern Development based in Darwin. He then moved to Canberra and was appointed Assistant Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Department and advised the Prime Minister and the Attorney General on native title issues. From July 1996 he was the Secretary to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, within the Prime Minister’s Department, until he left the public service in February 1999.

In April 1999 he took up the position of Visiting Fellow in Public Policy at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, and several months in Canada and the USA examining comparative issues in relation to Indigenous banking and governance.

He was appointed inaugural General Manager of Reconciliation Australia in November 2001 before taking up his current position as Executive Director of the Office of Indigenous Policy, in the Northern Territory Chief Minister’s Department, in July 2002.

He was awarded a Commonwealth Public Service Medal for outstanding public service in the provision of public policy advice in Indigenous Affairs in June 2002.

Link to Abstract

Mr Stephen Hunter
Mr Hunter joined the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) as a Deputy Secretary on 1 July 2003. For the past five years he was a Deputy Secretary with the Department of the Environment and Heritage with particular responsibility for natural resource management including for water and biodiversity issues and in the implementation of the Natural Heritage Trust and the National Action Plan on Salinity and Water Quality. He was also a Commissioner on the Murray Darling Basin Commission.

Mr Hunter has been Director of the Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics and First Assistant Secretary with responsibility for Regional Development in the Department of Transport and Regional Development. He spent over ten years involved in the administration of the Australian Capital Territory before and after self-government. During that time he held senior positions with responsibility for economic development, social policy, development of the planning and land management system, industrial relations, cabinet and intergovernmental relations. Mr Hunter holds a BA (Hons) from ANU in political science and sociology.

Link to Abstract

Dr Manley Begay
Dr Manley Begay is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. He is both Director of the Native Nations Institute at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, and senior lecturer in the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Arizona. He teaches courses on nation building, curriculum development and Indigenous education. Along with Professors Cornell and Kalt, he is a co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Dr. Begay was born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation (Arizona) and raised in Tuba City via Wheatfields, Navajo Nation (Arizona).

Link to Abstract

Ms Nicole Kilgour 
Ms Nicole Kilgour is a Wardaman/Ngaliwurri-Wuli woman whose traditional country extends west of Katherine into the Victoria River Region. She maintains strong family ties with the Ngaringman people of Yarralin through her Grandfather. Her family live on her Grandmother’s traditional country on an outstation called Djarrung, an excision of Scott Creek Station.

Ms Kilgour’s mother is a Stolen Generation and was removed from her mother in Pine Creek and institutionalised in the Retta Dixon Home. Recognition and rights for the Stolen Generation is something that Ms Kilgour is very passionate about.

Notwithstanding her personal affiliation with her people, she has worked within a traditional, semi traditional and urban environment and has been personally and professionally involved with a broad range of Indigenous socio-economic issues.

After completing school Ms Kilgour was offered a trainee-ship with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and then later went on to work with both the elected and administrative arms of ATSIC. She was the Deputy Director of Wurli-Wurlinjang Aboriginal Medical Service, the Coordinator of NT Aboriginal Eye Health Committee, a Senior Training Officer for the Aboriginal Development Unit and a Research Officer with the Office of Aboriginal Development.

In 1996 she was elected to the Northern Land Council to represent the Katherine Region and was later selected by the NLC to form a delegation of Indigenous land owning women from around Australia to lobby the Federal Government during amendments to the Native Title Act.

Ms Kilgour now lives in Darwin and is employed as the Executive Officer for the Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs, providing executive support to the Executive Director of Local Government & Regional Development on matters relating to the Jabiru Town Development Authority and Animal Welfare.