Mr Kevin Rudd has been the Member for Griffith since 1998. He gained his Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) degree with First Class Honours in 1981 from the Australian National University. He was then appointed to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs as a cadet diplomat. He served in the Australian embassies in Stockholm and Beijing.

Mr Rudd went on to work as Chief of Staff to Premier of Queensland and as Director-General of the Queensland Cabinet Office. Mr Rudd worked in business, primarily as the Senior China Consultant for KPMG Australia. He went on to become Member for Griffith and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, later adding responsibilities for International Security in 2003 and Trade in 2005.

In 2006 Mr Rudd was elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party. In 2007 he went on to serve as Australia's 26th Prime Minister until June 2010. He then held position of Minister for Foreign Affairs , and one of the 19 members of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

In 2012 he continues to help in a range of areas that he is passionate about, including homelessness, indigenous affairs, organ donation and Australia’s future in Asia.

Virginia Bell was appointed to the Court in February 2009. At the time of her appointment she was a judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal.

She graduated from the University of Sydney as a Bachelor of Laws in 1977. After seven years as a solicitor with the Redfern Legal Centre, she was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1984 and was appointed a Senior Counsel in 1997.

Justice Bell practised as a public defender between 1986 and 1989 before returning to the private Bar. Between 1994 and 1997 she was a counsel assisting the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service. Justice Bell was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in March 1999. She served as president of the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration 2006 to 2008.

Thomas Frederick Bathurst was appointed Chief Justice of New South Wales on 1 June 2011.

Graduating with degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Sydney in 1971, he went on to practise as a solicitor in 1972. He was admitted as a barrister in 1977, specialising in corporate law and litigation and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1987. His considerable experience in corporate law saw his appointment as a member of the Australian Government’s Takeovers Panel (2006-2011).

Prior to his appointment to the bench, the Chief Justice served as President of both the Australian Bar Association (2008-2010) and the New South Wales Bar Association (2009-2011), the Executive Committee of which he has been a member since 2002.

Thomas Frederick Bathurst was appointed Chief Justice of New South Wales on 1 June 2011.

The Hon Justice James Allsop was appointed as President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal in 2008.

After graduating from Sydney University with a Bachelor of Arts (1974), and a Bachelor of Law (1980), he spent 20 years practising at the Bar in New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia. He was appointed Senior Counsel in New South Wales in 1994 and Queen’s Counsel in Western Australia in 1998.

He served as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia from May 2001 to June 2008, undertaking the roles of trial and appellate judge on a full range of Federal Court work.

From 1981 Justice Allsop taught part-time at the University of Sydney as a tutor and lecturer in property, equity, bankruptcy, insolvency, corporate finance and maritime law.  He currently teaches part-time in maritime law.

Justice Michael Slattery was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Equity Division) on 25 May 2009.

He was admitted to the Bar in May 1978 and took silk in December 1992.  He served on the Council of the New South Wales Bar Association for 20 years during the period 1980 to 2007. He was the Association’s President from November 2005 until November 2007, when he also served as treasurer and vice president of the Australian Bar Association and as a director of the Law Council of Australia.

Justice Slattery has served as a judicial member of the New South Wales Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB) since 2009 and has been its presiding judicial member since January 2011. He represents the LPAB on the national Law Admissions Consultative Committee (LACC). 

Justice Slattery was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve in February 1990.  He led the New South Wales Navy Reserve Legal Panel from March 2002 until March 2006.   On 10 March 2010 he was promoted to the rank of Commodore, was appointed Deputy Judge Advocate General – Navy, and now exercises judicial functions under the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982.

Mitch Bailin is Associate Vice President of Georgetown University and Dean of Students of Georgetown University Law Centre, one of the world’s premier law schools. Dean Bailin oversees a broad range of student affairs programs and services for Georgetown Law's 2,500 JD and LL.M. students, including 95 student-run organisations and one of the nation's largest and most successful inter-scholastic trial practice, appellate advocacy and alternative dispute resolution competition teams. Over the past four years, he has spearheaded Georgetown Law's development of an innovative co-curriculum focused on leadership and professionalism skills, resulting in the launch of pioneering programs including Lawyers in Balance and The Search Before the Search. Dean Bailin also lectures widely on topics ranging from higher education risk management to campus violence prevention.   

Before coming to Georgetown in 2004 Dean Bailin practiced in the litigation department at the firm Palmer & Dodge LLP in Boston, where he specialised in the representation of colleges and universities.  His practice included the representation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in several nationally-watched wrongful death suits, as well as filing briefs in affirmative action and whistle-blower cases before the United States Supreme Court. Prior to that, Dean Bailin held a variety of positions in law and academia, including law clerk to the Honourable Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and assistant dean of Harvard University's Summer School.

Dean Bailin received his J.D. degree from Yale Law School and is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University. He also holds the M.St. degree from New College, Oxford University.

Following his graduation in Arts and Law from the University of Sydney, Professor Michael Coper spent a year in India in 1970 as the Myer Foundation Asian and Pacific Fellow in the Department of Law at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India. He returned to Australia in 1971 to be one of the founding members of the new law school at the University of New South Wales, where he also completed a PhD on the controversial section 92 of the Australian Constitution (later published as the prize-winning Freedom of Interstate Trade under the Australian Constitution (Butterworths, 1983)). He spent 1978 as Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Virginia.

Professor Coper moved to Canberra in 1988 to take up his appointment as a Commissioner of the Inter-State Commission, a body whose establishment by section 101 of the Australian Constitution belied its ephemeral existence. With the (second) demise of the Commission in 1990, and having produced reports on reform of the Australian waterfront and of interstate land transport, Professor Coper joined Sly & Weigall (later Deacons, Graham & James) in 1991 as Director of Government Advising, and worked in full-time private legal practice until 1995, when he was appointed as Professor of Constitutional Law at the ANU. Professor Coper was appointed as Dean in 1998, and as Robert Garran Professor of Law in 2001.

His books include Encounters with the Australian Constitution (CCH, 1987) and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia (co-editor, OUP, 2001), and he has appeared as counsel in a number of High Court cases, including the landmark Cole v Whitfield (1988). He has held visiting positions in a number of United States law schools, and in 1999 was elected as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He was Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) from 2005-2007, and is a member of the Governing Board of the International Association of Law Schools (IALS).