Leadership spills have defined recent Australian politics, but why are internal party tensions played out more publicly than during the Hawke/Keating years? Join Sarah Ferguson, Sam Crosby and Barry Jones for a conversation about party loyalty – or lack of it – in Australian politics.
Sorry, this event is now fully booked. You can catch Barry Jones at INSPIRE: Song and Sam Crosby in action on The Trust Deficit and After Party.
Sam Crosby is executive director of the McKell Institute. He previously served as corporate and government affairs manager for Johnson & Johnson, senior advisor and chief of staff to a number of cabinet ministers in the NSW state government and advisor to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Sarah Ferguson is an ABC journalist. In the same year that she worked on The Killing Season, she also wrote and presented Hitting Home, the landmark series on domestic violence. She has presented the ABC’s 7.30 and worked as a journalist on Four Corners, where she won four Walkleys-including the Gold Walkley in 2011 for ‘A Bloody Business’-the Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill Award, four Logies for most outstanding public affairs report, as well as the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism and the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.
Hon. Dr Barry Jones has been Victorian MP for five years. Federal MP for nearly 21 years, Minister for Science 1983-90, represented Australia at UNESCO and the World Heritage Council in Paris 1991-96 and is the only person to have been elected to all four of Australia’s learned Academies. His books include Sleepers, Wake! (1982), a best seller which ran into 27 impressions, an autobiography, A Thinking Reed (2006), Dictionary of World Biography (revised 2016, ANU, on line and as a book) and The Shock of Recognition (2016). He led the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty and was the first Australian politician to raise the issues of the information revolution (1982) and climate change (1984). He was chair of Vision2020 Australia 2002-14, of the Port Arthur Historic Site 2000-12, a board member of CARE Australia for 20 years, and a Visiting Fellow Commoner, Trinity College, Cambridge 2000-01. He was awarded an AC in 2014.
