Gulliver McLean

Research Assistant

Working groups

Alcohol and Other Drugs

gulliver.mclean@burnet.edu.au

Background

Gulliver joined Burnet in 2025 as a research assistant. Gulliver is passionate about advancing the health, rights and dignity of people who use drugs. He has previously worked in health promotion, harm reduction, research, communications, and advocacy roles across several peer-based drug user organisations, including NSW Users and AIDS Association (NUAA), Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy (CAHMA), Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL) and Students for Sensible Drug Policy Australia (SSDP Aus).

He has also volunteered with DanceWize Victoria (a program of Harm Reduction Victoria) and DanceWize NSW (a program of NUAA), providing frontline care and safer drug use education to nightlife and music festival patrons.

Gulliver loves working face-to-face with people who use drugs, and helping them share their stories. Gulliver believes everyone has a story worth sharing, and that storytelling can be a great way to empower individuals, educate communities, and improve policies and programs.

Some of Gulliver’s career highlights include:

playing a key role in creating an education campaign that helps drug users in the ACT understand the nuances of how they are affected by the recent decriminalisation of small quantities of some drugs.
being a journalist and deputy editor of Users News, a magazine for people who use drugs, and Insiders News, a magazine for people in custody in NSW. Both magazines included a focus on harm reduction and the prevention, testing, and treatment of bloodborne viruses, especially hepatitis C.
representing NUAA on NSW Health’s Consumer Reference Committee for Alcohol and Other Drugs and advocating for an increase in the participation of drug users in the co-design of health policy.
representing NUAA on NSW Health’s Standing Panel on Toxicity Risk (SPaToR), which developed drug alerts to warn the public about high-risk drugs in circulation.