Her Excellency Professor The Honourable Kate Warner AM, Governor of Tasmania, is the Foundation’s Tasmanian State Patron.

Her Excellency was a Member of the Board of Legal Education; a Member of the Council of Law Reporting; and Director, Centre for Legal Studies.

In addition to working with the Tasmania Law Reform Institute on its projects, she had been involved in providing advice and submissions on rape law reform, drug diversion and mental health diversion programs and abortion law reform. She also assisted other law reform bodies nationally including the New South Wales Law Reform Commission and the Australian Law Reform Commission.

As the former President of the Alcorso Foundation, Her Excellency supported social and cultural advancement in the community through its programs in the Arts, Environment and Social Justice.

She has received a number of awards and fellowships, including Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law in 2007; Visiting Fellow All Souls College Oxford in 2009; the University of Tasmania Distinguished Service Medal in 2013; and the Women Lawyers Award for Leadership in 2013. She has been nominated as a finalist in the Tasmanian Australian of the Year Awards for her contributions to the law, law reform and legal education.

Her Excellency graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from the University of Tasmania in 1970, and a Master of Laws in 1978. She served as associate to the former Chief Justice, Sir Stanley Burbury, in the early 1970s.

She has published numerous journal articles, book chapters and law reform reports. She first published Sentencing in Tasmania in 1991, which has since become an indispensable tool for judges and magistrates. She is a member of the editorial boards of Current Issues in Criminal Justice; Women Against Violence; and the Criminal Law Journal. She has contributed the annual Sentencing Review to the Criminal Law Journal since 1998. Related to her role with the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute, she has written a number of papers and reports for the Board.

Her Excellency is married to Richard Warner, and has two daughters. Richard was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship in 1999, and is actively involved in the Derwent Valley community. He is a keen horticulturalist, and interested in the re-use of redundant heritage buildings in Tasmania.

She is grandmother to five grandchildren, a passionate gardener, keen bushwalker and occasional cyclist.