BPiA Committee

PATRICK EDWARDS
PATRICK EDWARDSPresident
Patrick was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. After qualifying as an accountant, he joined a Hong Kong based trading company where he enjoyed assignments in Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the UK. He emigrated to Australia in 1989, where he worked for a French merchant bank, GIO, Colonial and Commonwealth Bank. He was Treasurer for Woolworths before retiring in 2006.
Secretary
BRIAN BEAUMONT OWLES
BRIAN BEAUMONT OWLESTreasurer
Brian is a retired Chartered Accountant. His company sent him to Australia in 1983, living in Perth before moving to Sydney. He was part of the initial team at Grant Samuel and involved with establishing Sydney Aquarium. He retired in 2005 and since has been involved with several charitable and voluntary organisations including Rotary.
JONATHON HOBBS
JONATHON HOBBS
Jonathan was born in London and grew up in south-east England. He studied arboriculture in Guildford, Surrey and then set up an arboriculture contracting business that provided services in the south of England, Ireland, France and Israel.
He emigrated to Perth in 2000. He spent a couple of years living and working in each of the southern and eastern states before moving to Queensland to help Brisbane City Council develop and introduce their vegetation protection laws.
Jonathan now has his own arboriculture consultancy company. He served as president of the Queensland Arboricultural Association, Chair of the Veteran Tree Group of Australia, Tree Assessor for the QCAT, Advocacy Committee member of the National Trust Australia (Qld) and Expert Witness for the Planning & Environment Court Queensland.
Jonathan became aware of the plight of UK pensioners living in Australia and the discriminatory way that the UK Government refuses to provide index-linked pensions to thousands of UK pensioners and so offered to assist the BPiA in their campaign for justice.
STUART COLEMAN
TONY WALSH
TONY WALSH
Tony Walsh arrived in Australia in 1982 from the UK joined Telecom Australia and retired as State Sales Manager Victoria in 1993.
COLIN BLOODWORTH
COLIN BLOODWORTH
Born in Wales during WW2. Graduated in Modern Languages from Birmingham University, followed by a Diploma in Personnel Management at University of Wales, Cardiff. Spent 19 years in the oil industry in the UK, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Houston – USA and Jakarta – Indonesia. After a spell in the UK, I returned to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1992 in the Financial Services industry where I have continued to this day. I paid my National Insurance contributions in full, including the years spent abroad, only to find that my UK state pension was to be frozen from the day I first claimed it overseas. I joined the Liberal Democrats party in 2019 primarily due to their pro-Europe stance but then discovered that Lib Dems Overseas were already campaigning for the unfreezing of pensions so I became a member of their Executive team in order to add my support.
JEFF GUNNINGHAM
JEFF GUNNINGHAM
Jeff was born in the Rhondda Valley in Wales UK and emigrated to Australia in 1983. In the UK, Jeff worked for the National Coal Board but in Australia, his entire career has been spent in academia.
Jeff has extensive leadership experience in vocational education and training and higher education both in Australia and internationally. He retired as the Chief Executive of TAFE South Australia in mid-2014 where he was responsible for TAFE activities across the State. Before taking up this appointment Jeff was working as a freelance consultant in Perth, Western Australia. He returned to Perth at the end of 2014.
Until late 2010, Jeff was the Principal and Chief Executive of Swansea College, one of the largest further and higher education colleges in Wales, UK. Prior to this he was the inaugural Managing Director of Education and Training International, responsible for international student recruitment and offshore project work for all government schools and TAFE colleges in Western Australia. He has been the CEO of three other TAFE colleges in Australia as well as the Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates.
His expertise is broad based and covers areas such as training partnerships, strategic management, leadership development, managing change, and international business development. Before moving to Adelaide, Jeff was a Ministerial appointment to the Training Accreditation Council in Western Australia and a Board member for the Australian Vocational Training and Employment Group. He is currently a Ministerial appointment to the Council of Central Regional TAFE in Western Australia,
He has extensive experience in developing innovative learning systems, often in partnership with industry, and particularly the resources sector. Many of these successes have been presented in papers at conferences in Australia and other parts of the world.
Jeff has an Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Graduate Diploma in Management, and a Master of Business Administration. He is a Chartered Engineer, a past Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a past Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, a Senior Honorary Fellow of the LH Martin Institute, University of Melbourne. In addition, Jeff is an elected member of the Convocation Council at the University of Western Australia and, until recently, Chaired the WA Regional Engagement Committee for Central Queensland University.
Jeff is now retired from full time work but does some consultancy work on occasions. He and his wife Kay have one daughter and two grandchildren. He cites keeping fit, travel, reading and spending time with his family as his main interests.