Bridget is the Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, and the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate. She is a former Cabinet Minister, and the first federal female Agriculture Minister and has held a number of portfolios including emergency management, national recovery and resilience, sport, regional communications, education and health. Bridget was elected Senator for Victoria in 2010. She holds a Bachelor or Applied Science and Education, specializing in mathematics and physical education. She lectured at Monash University.
Bridget is the author of a biography of former Country Party Prime Minister: John McEwen
– Right Man, Right Place, Right Time.

Rupe (Rupert) Hoskin will deliver a keynote on the human aspects of delivering community infrastructure. Technical expertise in governance and project management is essential, but true success relies on the human side: listening and communicating well, understanding the underlying issues, balancing competing priorities, and achieving results while maintaining goodwill and trust. Rupe is a civil engineer, whose global career spans the military, diplomacy, humanitarian sector, and private industry. He served as a Brigadier in the Army, with deployments to Bosnia, PNG, Tonga, Timor Leste, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. He was the Commandant of the Royal Military College of Australia, and the Director-General of Army Leadership. He has been a diplomat in France, Algeria and Morocco, and a Parliamentary Adviser in Canberra. As a construction engineer, he worked on the London Underground’s Jubilee Line Extension and on Woodside’s North West Shelf project in Dampier. He has led major Defence infrastructure projects throughout Australia, all with environmental and cultural sensitivities. He worked in Niger for the UN, delivering essential water supplies for Touareg refugees. In 2020, he worked extensively with local governments and communities on bushfire recovery projects, as part of the Business Council of Australia’s BizRebuild initiative. He then spent three years as an Associate Partner in McKinsey & Company, with the role of Senior Expert for Leadership and Culture. In 2024, Rupe co-founded the consulting firm Balance Partners, serving diverse clients on the topics of strategy, culture and leadership.

Associate Professor Ben Beck is Head of Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (SPHPM) at Monash University.
Ben works at the intersection of transport, public health and climate change. He is an internationally renowned leader in active transport research. He established and leads an interdisciplinary program of research that brings together experts in public health, urban and transport planning, engineering, complex systems science, behaviour change and road safety to advance the safety, accessibility and equity of active mobility. Ben’s program of research is underpinned by developing world-leading data systems, cutting-edge methods and data-driven solutions, and partnering with government, industry, not-for-profit organisations and the community to untap the potential of active transport to transform population and planetary health.

Jay is an organisational success specialist. He has had two decade-long careers that share a common path, strategy and leadership, and the skills required to achieve highly in both. He applies focus and integrity that he learned through his time as Australian Army Officer, and a pragmatic and contemporary approach that he learned through his time working with local councils. He has completed the Company Directors Course, and recently commenced a PhD to determine the impact unmanaged trauma has on leadership decision-making. Jay has assisted and advised councils on their governance, budgets and financial management, council reports, infrastructure and assets management, and policies procedures.With his professional experience, Jay has developed a planning process that combines strategic analysis, outputs, costs, and enterprise risk management to assist organisations with their future direction, budgets and other required resources. He was inspired to create this planning process because he observed organisations that spent too much time planning and not doing – and – organisations that spent too little time planning and not knowing what they were doing. Jay is now a Director at HIGHER Corporate Consulting that provide governance and financial services. HIGHER provides trusted, tailored solutions to improve an organisation’s performance.

Colin Steele is the Managing Director of Section51. Grants Consultants. Prior to establishing Section51, Colin worked for over thirty years across three levels of government. Ten years as a local government planner in NSW, followed by eleven years in the NSW Government in Regional Planning and Premiers Department. He moved to Canberra to work for the Commonwealth Government with eleven years in assessing and managing grants in environment and infrastructure. Colin worked for four years as the manager of the team designing and delivering LG grant programs in the Department of Infrastructure for the then Minister Albanese In the 15 years of Section51, the company has worked with a diverse range of councils to access funds for infrastructure, community, environment and economic development projects. The firm has advised more than 100 councils across every State and Territory and over 1,500 council representatives have attended Section51 grants and funding workshops.

Steve Verity is the Principal Advisor – Asset Management at the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA), a not-for-profit professional association supporting excellence in public works and infrastructure asset management. With a career spanning over 30 years in local government and the asset management sector, Steve has extensive experience in infrastructure planning, lifecycle management, and strategic investment decision-making. He has contributed to national and international initiatives focused on sustainable service delivery, data-informed policy, and capability building across government sectors. At IPWEA, Steve leads the technical development of tools and resources including the NAMS+ toolkit and plays a key role in national projects such as the ALGA National State of the Assets Report. His work supports councils and public sector organisations to strengthen long-term financial planning and resilience through improved infrastructure governance and evidence-based practice.