Preparations for the 18th annual conference are well on the way at the School of Philosophy of the University of Tasmania, and the draft program has just been published on the conference website.

The staff of the School of Philosophy is well represented at the conference. Professor Jeff Malpas, an internationally renowned scholar of the philosophy of place and space, hermeneutics and the philosophy of language and the history of philosophy will deliver a keynote address titled ‗The Demise of Ethics‘ on the opening day. The current head of the School, Lucy Tatman, will continue this questioning of our ethical assumptions in her paper ‗Applied What?‘

One of the afternoon sessions is dedicated to the investigation of alternative ethical perspectives by Kristi Giselsson, one of the lecturers at the School of Philosophy and by Cynthia Townley from Macquarie University. I have had the fortune of being one of her undergraduate and postgraduate colleagues at the University of Tasmania. Cynthia‘s paper develops the idea that crossspecies collectives, for instance a household of human beings and their pets can form a moral and legal entity similar to corporations as legal persons. The third speaker of this session is David Wallace, one of Cynthia‘s postgraduate students from Macquarie University. He discusses the application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to child protection work.

Tasmania got its new Integrity Commission in June 2010. Its CEO Barbara Etter, a former West Australian Police Commissioner who holds a Pharmacy degree, an Honours law degree, an MBA and a Master of Laws, will deliver the keynote address on the morning of the second day of the conference. She will speak on ‗Leadership and Its Critical Role in Strengthening Public Sector Ethics‘. Barbara will explore the role of integrity agencies further with two of her staff members, Louise Clery and Clare Mason.

An international dimension to the conference and to ethical thinking is provided by Kiros Hiruy. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute for Regional Development at the University of Tasmania, he is also an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania. He is a graduate of Tasmanian Leaders Program (TLP) 2007 and he holds BSc in Agricul-ture from Ethiopia, Diploma in Dairy Husbandry and Milk Proc-essing from the Netherlands, Masters in Environmental Man-agement from the University of Tasmania and Diploma in Project Management from Tasmanian Skills Institute. In this year de-clared by the United Nations Gen-eral Assembly as the Interna-tional Year of People of African Descent Kiros will speak on ‗People of African Descent – the Moral Reality‘ on the second day of the conference after lunch.

The AAPAE members at various mainland universities, particularly those at RMIT and the University of South Australia have under-taken scholarly research and sub-mitted papers to be presented at the conference. May I take this opportunity to thank Michael Schwartz and Michael John Se-gon at RMIT and Howard Harris at the University of South Austra-lia for supporting me with the organisation of this conference. They have been available at all times with good advice and most helpful suggestions; I could not have done without their kindness and generosity.

We are fortunate in having our colleagues from Waikato Univer-sity in Hamilton, New Zealand, travelling to Hobart to deliver papers a the conference. Richard Varey will discuss ethical market-ing practices; Andrea Bather‘s topic is Corporate Social Respon-sibility and the Law. The univer-sity is further represented by Deborah Stevens and Catherine Syms who are conducting a prac-tical workshop ‗Strengthening Ethics Education‘ for teachers on the afternoon of Thursday June 9. The workshop is free for any delegate attending the main con-ference.

I look forward to seeing you in Hobart in June,

Leila Toiviainen,

School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania.