Alan Bensemer to be new Commissioner of Health

29/6/95

Western Australia's new Commissioner of Health will be Mr Alan Bansemer.

His appointment was confirmed today by Health Minister Graham Kierath.

The Minister described Mr Bansemer as the outstanding candidate in a field of excellent applicants from all over Australia.

Mr Bansemer, who takes up the $218,000 job on July 17, recently resigned from the position of Deputy Head of the Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health.

He will be 50 this year.

The new commissioner has wide experience as a senior health administrator with the South Australian and Federal Governments.

He was executive director, Policy and Finance, as well as deputy chairman of the South Australian Health Commission.

He went to Canberra in 1985 and after being appointed first assistant secretary of the Health Services, Financing Division, he was promoted to deputy secretary of the department.

For a period last year, he was acting head.

Mr Bansemer is a graduate of the University of Adelaide and has done post-graduate studies at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Alan Bansemer will bring a new depth of knowledge to the job," Mr Kierath said.

"He has many years of experience, he has a special expertise in State-Federal funding processes and he has great understanding of health policy and administration."

Mr Bansemer has been and will continue as a Commissioner of the Health Insurance Commission and will remain on the Board of Health Communications Net Ltd.

He has also been chairman of the Medical Schedule Review Board, a member of the Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council, the Institute of Health and Welfare, the Research Advisory Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Media contact: Brian Coulter  222 9595 / 481 2133