Speakers:
Laura Tingle
Rosalind Dixon
George Megalogenis
Chairperson: Fran Kelly
Laura Tingle
Journalist, essayist and author Laura Tingle has reported on Australian politics and policy for more than 35 years. In 2018, she joined the ABC as chief political correspondent for its flagship current affairs program 7.30, after 16 years with the Australian Financial Review where she was political editor, and having held reporting positions with other major Australian mastheads, including The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian and The Age, reporting on both politics and economics. A multi-award winning journalist, she is the author of Chasing the Future – a book about the early 1990s recession; and four Quarterly Essays: Great Expectations (2012); Political Amnesia (2015); Follow the Leader (2018); and The High Road: What Australia can learn from New Zealand (2020). An assembly of her essays, In Search of Good Government, was published in 2017.
Rosalind Dixon
Rosalind Dixon is a Professor of Law at UNSW Sydney. She earned her BA and LLB from UNSW Sydney and was an associate to the Chief Justice of Australia, the Hon. Murray Gleeson AC, before attending Harvard Law School, where she obtained an LLM and SJD. Her work focuses on comparative constitutional law and constitutional design, constitutional democracy, theories of constitutional dialogue and amendment, socio-economic rights and constitutional law and gender. She was the co-Lead of the Grand Challenge on Inequality and is now the co-Director of the New Economic Equality Initiative. Rosalind is the Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and deputy director of the Herbert Smith Freehills Initiative on Law and Economics.
George Megalogenis
George Megalogenis is an author and journalist with more than three decades' experience in the media. He is the author of five books, including The Australian Moment which won the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2012 Walkley Award for Non-fiction, and formed the basis for his three-part ABC documentary series Making Australia Great. George’s other books are Faultlines, The Longest Decade, Australia’s Second Chance, The Football Solution and Balancing Act, which contains his two previous Quarterly Essays, No. 40: Trivial Pursuit – Leadership and the End of the Reform Era and No. 61: Balancing Act – Australia Between Recession and Renewal. He is the author of the new Quarterly Essay, No. 82: Exit Strategy – Politics after the Pandemic
Fran Kelly | Chairperson
Fran Kelly is a highly respected radio presenter and current affairs journalist and was the long term presenter of ABC Radio National’s agenda-setting Breakfast program. In 2001 she became political editor for ABC TV's 7.30 Report. After two years she took up an overseas posting as the ABC's Europe correspondent based in London. In March 2005, Fran called time on London, returning home to Australia to take up her current position. She revelled in Breakfast's wide brief, which has reignited her passion for the arts, sport, issues and travel, and is in the thick of Australian and world politics. Fran has earned a reputation as an intelligent, informed and balanced journalist who has been a key contributor to the nation’s political and social debates for the past 20 years. She has also been described by the Australian electronic magazine Crikey as “one of the most influential media players in the country.”