The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Kay Mundine, of Bundjalung descent, was born in 1947 in Grafton, New South Wales. In the 1960s she was employed at the State Bank of New South Wales before joining the Australian Public Service (APS). In 1975 she became editor of the magazine New Dawn (http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/dawn.htm), published by the New South Wales Department of Youth, Ethnic and Community Affairs. In 1980 she established the first Aboriginal clerks recruitment program in the Australian Public Service.

Between 1984 and 1987 Mundine was, simultaneously, commissioner for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, head of the Victorian section of the equal employment opportunity branch of the Australian Public Service Board, and largely responsible for the Pope’s 1986 visit to Alice Springs.

In 1987 she was transferred to the equal employment opportunities unit in the new Public Service Commission in Canberra. She served as a commissioner on the Toomelah Inquiry and was regional director of the Queensland office of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1988 to 1990. She also worked as a private consultant. In 1991 she acted as an advisor on multicultural affairs to the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory government, and was an official visitor to the state’s Corrective Services. In the same year she was also elected a regional councillor of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.