Professor Malcolm Fisher is a Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care Unit of Royal North Shore Hospital, Senior Clinical Executive, Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service and Advisor to NSW Health on Deteriorating Patients and End of Life Care. He is a Clinical Professor in Intensive Care Medicine, Departments of Medicine and Anaesthesia, University of Sydney. He is a past President of the World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine Societies, and ANZICS.

He was a Foundation member of ANZICS and the Faculty of Intensive Care. He has received a number of awards including the Thomas J. Iberti Memorial Award, the Christer Grenvik Award for international services to Critical Care Medicine, the Alan Gilston Medal, the Harry Daly Medal for research, the Inaugural ANZICS Medal, and the Order of Australia for services to Intensive Care national and International and Research into severe allergic reactions.

He is the author of two books and over 130 scientific articles. His major interests are anaphylactic shock and end of life care.

Peter Saul is a senior intensive care specialist in the adult and paediatric ICU at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, and Director of Intensive Care at Newcastle Private Hospital.

Peter was for many years Chair of the Hunter Area Clinical Ethics Committee, and is the Director of the Clinical Unit in Ethics and Health Law. He was the clinical leader of the NSW Respecting Patient Choices Project. He is on the Clinical Ethics Advisory Panel for NSW Health, and is a board member of the Australasian Bioethics Association.

He is on steering committees for end of life decision-making and advance care planning with NSW Department of Health, and with the NHMRC.

Peter’s research interests centre on the tasks of clinical ethics, particularly in the area of end of life decision-making.

Dr. Annette Street is Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Cancer and Palliative Care Studies in the Faculty of Health Sciences at La Trobe University. She is widely published with research interests primarily focused in taking a health promoting approach to palliative and supportive care, specifically around Advance Care Planning, end of life care and transitions to dying well with dignity. She provides leadership to a number of multi-disciplinary, multi-method research teams and has conducted research and consultancies in many countries.

Dr Detering is a respiratory physician and clinical ethicist with a particular interest in improving end of life care. Karen has completed her masters in health ethics in 2003, with her thesis looking at the option of ventilation in patients with motor neurone disease. Karen has worked in the "Respecting Patient Choices" program since 2003, and has recently conducted a randomised controlled trial of advance care planning in acute medical inpatients. She also works in the long term home ventilation unit.

Associate Professor W (Bill) Silvester is a physician and intensive care specialist at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. He commenced the Respecting Patient Choices program at the Austin hospital in 2002 and it has now spread to many health services and aged care facilities in Australia. He is committed to improving end-of-life care and recognition for patient centered care, patient autonomy, dignity, informed consent and prevention of suffering.

Roger Hunt has worked in palliative care for 25 years, becoming a foundation Fellow in the Chapter of Palliative Medicine in 2000. He achieved a Doctorate of Medicine, and has published extensively on the epidemiology of terminal care, end of life ethics and clinical care. He is Director of Western Adelaide Palliative Care, Clinical Leader of Respecting Patient Choices Program, an AMA (SA) Councillor, and was a member of the South Australian Advance Directives Review Committee.

Jackie Kearney is the manager, palliative care in the Victorian department of health and is responsible for policy direction and program management across inpatient, community and consultancy palliative care services.  Jackie has a BSW and has worked in acute and sub-acute care services.  Jackie has also worked as a researcher in consumer and aged care issues.

After medical training in Medicine and Anaesthetics in the UK Charlie moved via Hong Kong to Australia where he requalified in Intensive Care Medicine.

He has now been a specialist in intensive care for 25 years and was director of ICU in Geelong until last year.

Charlie has a background in psychology and has a strong interest in the factors that cause us to make decisions.

Charlie is the RPC clinical lead in Geelong and has undertaken studies to improve our understanding of how patients doctors and families respond to advance directives.

Jonathan Gillis is a paediatric intensive care specialist and palliative care physician, who until recently was a Senior Staff Specialist at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, when he became State Medical Director, New South Wales Organ and Tissue Donation Service. He has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of New South Wales. Jonathan is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Sydney and has a strong interest in ethics and end of life care. He is a visiting Scholar at the Plunkett Centre for Ethics, St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney.

Julian Gardner is a lawyer. He was the Public Advocate for Victoria from 2000-07. During that time he lead some high profile cases that changed health law and involved complex ethical end-of-life issues. He was a member of the NHMRC Working Group that developed ethical guidelines for the management of post-coma unresponsiveness.

Julian is now a consultant and in that capacity has reviewed the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act, chaired an Expert Advisory Group on the reform of the Mental Health Act and is Chair of the National Reference Group of the Respecting Patient Choices Program.

Iola Mathews OAM, is a former journalist with The Age and the author of ‘How to use the media in Australia.’ She later worked at the Australian Council for Trade Unions as an industrial officer and advocate specialising in women’s employment, for which she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal. More recently she established writers’ studios in the National Trust property ‘Glenfern’ in East St Kilda and published ‘My Mother, My Writing and Me,’ a memoir about caring for an elderly parent and seeking fulfilment as we get older.

Jim Howe was educated in Northern Ireland and graduated from Queens University Belfast in 1970. After early training in Belfast he moved to the North of England for neurology training in Newcastle upon Tyne and Leeds. Until 2005 he was a single handed neurologist at Airedale General Hospital in North Yorkshire. After a life threatening illness he took early retirement from the NHS and moved to Melbourne. Here he works at Calvary Health Care Bethlehem instead of Bethlehem Hospital in what is, in partnership with the Victorian Respiratory Support Service, a comprehensive Motor Neurone Disease service for the whole of Victoria. He also does a cognitive clinic at Monash Medical Centre, and teaches medical students in rural medical schools as well as Monash Medical School.

Dr Peter Allcroft is a Senior Staff Specialist at the Repatriation General Hospital Daw Park South Australia, where he is employed in the Palliative Care unit, Southern Adelaide Palliative Services. He is a respiratory physician by training, completing his FRACP in 1997, and is completing his Masters in Palliative Care at the Flinders University.

He runs the Motor Neurone Disease Clinic in South Australia, and is the Site Investigator for the Palliative Care Clinical Collaboration Studies (PaCCS), a series of multi site studies in Australia examining a number of medications and their application in the palliative care setting. He has specific interests in the management of dyspnoea in end stage disease.

Like Tony Abbott, Peter struggles to fit in work, family and a heavy training regime for triathlon.

Frank Fisher (66) is Professor of Sustainability in Swinburne University of Technology’s Faculty of Design and its National Centre for Sustainability. He was an electrical engineer (power) in Sweden, Switzerland and Australia before retraining in Sweden and Austraila as an environmental scientist and becoming Victoria’s first lecturer in environmental science at Monash University. He has lived with Crohn’s disease and its treatment for 50 years: 30+ operations, 40 pills/day etc. He lives today with 15% of small intestine. This led to being a health consumer advocate for the past 30 years and membership on scores of committees and boards of management of health-related bodies. He has two sons and has been a commuter cyclist for 40 years.