Edmund Bohan Historian, biographer and novelist, Edmund Bohan is the author of fifteen books, and has contributed chapters to another five. An MA honours graduate of Canterbury University, he was in 1995 the resident John David Stout Fellow at the Stout Centre, Victoria University of Wellington and is one of the leading authorities on New Zealand's 19th century political history. His major works include the historical biographies Edward Stafford, New Zealand's First Statesman; O Blest Madman, FitzGerald of Canterbury; and To Be A Hero, a biography of Sir George Grey; the short illustrated New Zealand, the Story So Far; and seven historical novels. The Stafford and Grey biographies were Montana Book Award finalists, and The Irish Yankee was runner up in the Richard Webster Prize for popular fiction. He has also published many articles, book reviews and radio talks, takes part in TVNZ' s historical series Frontier of Dreams, and Prime TV's New Zealand's Top 100 History Makers.
In addition to his writing, Edmund Bohan enjoyed a long career as a professional, international concert and opera singer based in Britain.

David Flint read law and economics at Universities of Sydney, London and Paris. An Emeritus Professor of Law, he was Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, and Associate Member Australian Competition and Consumer Commission from 1997-2004. He is also the President, English Speaking Union, National Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, and National President and Second International Vice-President of the World Jurist Association. Chairman of the Australian Press Council 1987 - 1997, he was in the same years Dean of Law of the University of Technology Sydney, during which term significant changes to Australian legal education were made.
David has published books and articles on topics such as the media, international economic law, Australia's constitution and Australia's 1999 constitutional referendum - including The Cane Toad Republic, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 1999. He contributes frequently to the press, and to the ACM website, www.norepublic.com.au. His recent books include The Twilight of the Elites, 2003, and Malice in Media Land. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1995, was recognised with the award of World Outstanding Legal Scholar, World Jurists Association, Barcelona, in October 1991, and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1995.

Karl du Fresne wrote Free Press, Free Society (1994) and The Right To Know: News Media Freedom in New Zealand (2005) for the New Zealand Newspaper Publishers' Association. He has been a journalist since 1968 and counts himself lucky to have been one of the last to learn on the job, rather than in a classroom under the tutelage of people with no practical experience (a fate that befalls many journalism trainees today). A former editor of The Dominion, he is now a freelance journalist, columnist and editorial consultant living in the Wairarapa, where his cycling excursions provide great sport for magpies.

Dr Gerrit van der Lingen studied geology at Utrecht University. His first job was in Surinam in South America. In 1965 he came to New Zealand to join the Sedimentology Laboratory of the NZ Geological Survey. Since 1990 he worked as a private consultant. He was also a Research Associate at the University of Canterbury. From 1991 till 2002 he was involved in paleoclimate research, studying ocean sediment cores from the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean. He retired from paid research three years ago, but remains active as a anthropogenic global warming skeptic, giving lectures and writing articles.

Owen McShane - Director, Centre for Research Management Studies
Owen has New Zealand degrees in Architecture and Town Planning and also studied Urban Economics at UC Berkeley towards a Masters Degree in City and Regional Planning. In 1996, Don Brash, as governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, commissioned his report on “The Impact of the RMA on Housing Costs”, and in 1998 Simon Upton commissioned his “Think Piece” on “Land Use controls and the RMA”. He writes a fortnightly column for National Business Review, titled “Straight Thinking” and has been published in many magazines and newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review

Keith Windschuttle is a historian, author and publisher. He is a frequent contributor to Quadrant, Sydney, and The New Criterion, New York. His historical books include The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past; The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, and The White Australia Policy. From 1973 to 1994 he was an academic, teaching Australian history, journalism and social policy at the University of New South Wales, the New South Wales Institute of Technology, and Macleay College, Sydney. Since 1994 he has been a full-time author and publisher of Macleay Press, Sydney. He has also been visiting or guest lecturer at Boston University, New York University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of North Carolina, Duke University, Princeton University, Adelphi University, Ashland University, Davidson College, Wellesley College and the National Humanities Center, North Carolina. In 2003 the Governor-General awarded him the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society through history and writing. In 2005 he was nominated to the National Australia Day Council as Australian of the Year.

Dr David Wiltshire is a theoretical cosmologist, with research interests in black holes, the large scale structure of the universe and the theoretical frontiers of quantum gravity. He did his PhD in Stephen Hawking's group at the University of Cambridge in the mid 1980s, followed by research and lecturing positions in Italy, UK and Australia. He returned to NZ in 2001, to the University of Canterbury, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Physics.