Gary Johns
Gary Johns is a Senior Consultant with ACIL Tasman(Australia)an economic, policy and strategy consultancy. He is also President of the Bennelong Society [1], which is concerned with Aboriginal policy in Australia. He recently wrote a paper, Aboriginal Education: Remote Schools and the Real Economy, for the Menzies Research Centre, launched by the Hon Julie Bishop, Minister for Education, Science and training in the Australian Government.
Johns was elected as a Labor Party representative to the House of Representatives in 1987 and served as the Special Minister for State and Assistant Minister for Industrial Affairs in the Keating Labor Government to 1996. In 1997 he became a Senior Fellow at the conservative Australian think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, and the head of its Non-Government Organisation Unit.
In 2002, he was awarded the Fulbright Professional Award in Australian-United States Alliance Studies, and was based at Georgetown University's Centre for Australian and New Zealand Studies in Washington D.C. [2]. His studies in the US were part of work as head of the IPA's Non-Government Organisation Project which "studies NGO transparency and accountability, particularly in their relations with government and the corporate sector in the formation of public policy." [3]
At an awards ceremony for the Australian Fulbright Award recipients Johns said "I believe Fulbright gives us the obligation to do the best we can in our time in the U.S. and to build relations, and also to deepen and improve our understanding and knowledge and then to apply it and try to make this a better place, 'this' being the U.S., Australia and the world." [4]
While in the US Johns spoke at a seminar organised by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell with the topic "NGOS: What do we do about them?". [5] In June 2003 Johns also spoke at a seminar hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society titled "The NGO Challenge: Whose Democracy Is It Anyway?". [6]
In 2003, he was appointed as an Associate Commissioner of the Commonwealth Productivity Commission, an Australian government policy research and advisory body.
External links
(NB: This article draws on a similar article on the Sourcewatch Wiki.)