At a CPD event on 30 June, Greg discussed a process that moves away from seeing a dispute as a static event where mediators are dealmakers or dispute resolvers and instead sees mediation as a pivotal step in the continuous flow of the parties’ lives, working with, not against, change – a process that shifts the focus from ‘mediating the problem’ to ‘mediating the moment’. Such an approach is underpinned by an acceptance of the primacy of change that requires a different way of thinking by the mediator, to allow the new and unexpected to emerge out of human interaction rather than through objective analysis.
Greg Rooney has been a practising mediator in Australia since 1991, mediating more than 1500 disputes in a diverse range of conflicts involving government institutions, commercial and industrial disputes, agricultural disputes, franchise disputes, matrimonial disputes and conflict in the workplace. Greg served a term as an MSB Director, and for the last 11 years, he has mediated over 200 face-to-face mediations between religious leaders and individual victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic, Anglican and Protestant churches in Australia, as well as abuse within the Australian Defence Force.
Greg has lectured in mediation, dispute system design and project alliancing at several Australian universities and has conducted mediation and dispute-management training for a number of public and private institutions in Australia and internationally. Together with Margaret Ross, he has facilitated an annual mediation retreat in Tuscany since 2012. The 2025 retreat is being held in September (Home – Tuscany Mediation Retreat).
