This talk looks at Syria’s history since the First World War, the events leading up to the Arab Spring uprising in Syria, the nature of the Syrian conflict since 2011, and the reasons for the current refugee crisis. Clive Williams is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Military and Security Law at the ANU. He has worked extensively in conflict zones and was last in the Middle East in August 2015.
Despite the recent rhetoric about transferring responsibilities back to the States and ensuring each jurisdiction has sovereignty in its own sphere of responsibilities including to raise the revenues needed to meet its spending commitments, reform of the Australian Federation will hopefully take a more pragmatic form, building on the growing demand for national policies - and growing range of international requirements - to guide public services, improving the way in which shared responsibilitie...
Australia has offered an emissions reduction target for the Paris talks that is significantly below that of the European Union and which even falls short of the United States target. Australia needs to re-engage with the rest of the world, which is increasingly aware of the impact of dangerous climate change. It is simply too urgent to opt out - we need action now. The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, is a former UK Secretary of State for the Environment and is currently the Chairman of the UK’s...
Malcolm Walter, Professor of Astrobiology (retired) at the University of NSW and Founding Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, presents the 2015 The David Cooper Memorial Lecture. In this talk he examines where the best place to look for life on Mars would be and why discovering life on the Red Planet is so important.
David Marr joins Laura Tingle in conversation to discuss his new quarterly essay on Bill Shorten – Faction Man Bill Shorten's Path to Power. David Marr is the nation's leading writer of political biography. His Quarterly Essay profiles of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were national bestsellers. This controversial and brilliant new essay looks at the making of Shorten. It also addresses a key question: how does the union movement for good or ill continue to shape the Labor Party? May contain some br...
Ten years after his internationally bestselling The Weather Makers, acclaimed scientist and author Tim Flannery argues that Earth's climate system is approaching a crisis. Catastrophe is not inevitable, but time is fast running out. In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris in December, Atmosphere of Hope provides both a snapshot of the trouble we are in and an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new possibilities for mitigating climate change that are e...
In The Luck of Politics, The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP weaves together numbers and stories to show the many ways luck can change the course of political events.This is a book full of fascinating facts and intriguing findings. Why is politics more like poker than chess? Does the length of your surname affect your political prospects? What about your gender? The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Federal Member for Fraser in the ACT. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew wa...
When Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson was on campus last month he sat down for a conversation with Nobel laureate Professor Brian Schmidt to discuss the importance of science, the democratisation of space and the possibility of alien life.
Chris Bowen speaks about his latest book 'The Money Men' an in-depth look at the twelve most notable and interesting men to have held the office of Treasurer of Australia. This talk brings a unique insider perspective to the lessons learned from the successes and failures of those who went before him. The Hon Chris Bowen was appointed Treasurer by Kevin Rudd in 2013 and is the current Shadow Treasurer.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report is the world's most comprehensive evaluation of climate change, its potential impacts and the choices we have for responding to it. The report provides leaders with a scientific basis for developing strategies to address climate change. Most importantly, it will be the leading scientific document to inform negotiations at the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 21) in December 2015, at which negotiators will ...
Professor Sir Richard Evans talks about German history and his advice for budding historians. Sir Richard Evans is Regius Professor Emeritus of History and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and Provost of Gresham College, London. His publications include Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History; The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; The Third Reich at War; Telling Lies about Hitler and In Defence of History.
On average, people who live, or have lived, in a Mr Fluffy house probably have higher exposure to asbestos than other Australians. How much this higher exposure increases their risk of asbestos-related disease is uncertain. There is very limited evidence on the level of asbestos exposure in Mr Fluffy houses. Most of the evidence on the health effects of asbestos comes from studies of people heavily exposed to asbestos in their workplace; and extrapolating from effects at high levels of exposure ...
Australia is a world leader in tobacco control and currently has one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. Reliable quantitative evidence on the relationship of tobacco smoking to mortality in Australia has not been previously available, and has the potential to contribute to what is known internationally about the contemporary risks of smoking. Professor Emily Banks presents data on the smoking epidemic, and its health consequences, internationally. It will provide details of a large-sca...
The specter of massive inequality is haunting modern capitalism, with a small elite – the 1%, 0.01%, 0.001% of billionaires and financiers and the like – gaining the bulk of the benefits of modern economic growth and using their wealth to dominate economies and politics. In virtually every country, labor's share of income has fallen and inequality has increased massively. What, if anything, can we do to restore a more egalitarian distribution of income, with a strong middle class, and restore th...
From one of the leading thinkers of our time comes a landmark book on the case for constitutional reform - No Small Change: The Road to Recognition for Indigenous Australia by Frank Brennan. This timely book is a stark reminder of the tainted relationship between successive governments, lawmen and Indigenous Australians, but also a provocative lesson on what we can learn from the past. Brennan unpacks the laws and philosophies from terra nullius, protectionism and forced assimilation to the 1967...
Along with the increase in focus on the need for policymakers and the community to implement and support initiatives on countering violent extremism, there has been a tendency to put migration high on the agenda too. The phenomenon of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria – small in number but significant in political impact – is at risk of dominating the migration and security discussion. Recent events in Australia and Europe are causing some to reflect on the apparent failures of integration that...
Are we headed for a geological event horizon? Dr Andrew Glikson explains how the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases of 2-3 parts per million CO2 per year has reached an order of magnitude similar to rates associated with mass extinctions of species. Dr Andrew Glikson, an Earth and paleo-climate scientist, graduated from the University of Western Australia. He has conducted geological surveys of the oldest geological formations in Australia, South Africa, India and Canada, studied large asteroi...
Michael Cooney was Julia Gillard's speechwriter for most of her time in office. He came to the job a true believer in every sense, with years of Labor experience behind him, including Policy Director to Federal Labor leaders Kim Beazley and Mark Latham. But this was the prime minister's office. The stakes were high and the game had changed. From mining to the economy to Afghanistan, Cooney wrote the speeches that helped to define the Gillard project: the prime minister's program and vision for t...
One in five of the world's population is Chinese, 300 million Chinese are under 30, and of these, most are only children as a result of the One Child Policy. What do these only children think and do? A generation burdened with high expectation and unprepared for responsibility. With journalistic acumen and a novelist's flair, Xinran tells the remarkable stories of men and women born and raised under China's single-child policy. Xinran shows how these generations embody the hopes and fears of a g...
In this talk Professor John C Turner, from the School of Psychology at The Australian National University, poses the basic question, "what is the nature of "prejudice"?
If Australian politics and public policy debates are a war of ideas, the National Press Club (NPC) is the battleground. For the past half-century, the NPC has been the epicentre of political and social debate in Australia. Leaders and opinion-makers have used its stage to launch leadership bids, rattle the cage of public opinion with courageous and sometimes outrageous ideas, and make a stand. Stand & Deliver author Steve Lewis joins political historian Frank Bongiorno in conversation to dis...
The South China Sea is a major strategic waterway for trade and energy shipments to Asia’s major economies. It has been the focus of maritime disputes which have continued for more than six decades, with competing claims from China, Vietnam, the Philippines and others. In recent years, growing Chinese assertiveness in pressing its claims has unsettled the regional security order, drawing the attention of the United States, Australia and other powers concerned about freedom of navigation and a ru...
When Kate Grenville’s mother, Nance Russell, died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult and change. Nance’s story reflects the changing patterns of the twentieth century which offered a path to new freedoms and choices. One Life is an act of great imaginative sympathy, a deeply moving homage to her mother by one of Australia’s finest writers. It provides an illuminating window into Austral...
The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China significant ‘strategic space’. Dependent largely on linear extrapolations about the future, such arg...
ANU/Canberra Times meet the author event with Anna Bligh in conversation with The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP Anna Bligh knows something about hard knocks and high walls. She was raised by a single mother in the working class Gold Coast, a young girl with a soon-to-be-estranged dad who struggled with alcoholism. She spent over 17 years in the rough and tumble of the Queensland Parliament (seven of them as either Deputy Premier or Premier). In 2011, she led Queensland through the devastation of Austra...
Antibiotic resistance is rapidly rising internationally. Many bacterial infections are now very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat. Gram negative bacteria are the pointy end of this growing problem, including very common bacteria such as E. Coli. Antibiotic resistance is proportional to use. The more antibiotics used, the more resistance develops and spreads. This is both in individuals (e.g. with the pneumonia bacteria - pneumococcus) and for populations in different countries. Decre...
The incoming Head of the ANU National Security College, Professor Rory Medcalf, offers some assessments on the long-term policy choices Australians and their governments will need to make to advance their country’s security interests in the uncertain decades ahead. Professor Rory Medcalf commenced as the Head of the National Security College in January 2015. His professional background spans diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks and journalism. Most recently he was the Director of the In...
His Excellency Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão is the Minister of Planning and Strategic Investment for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. He has served as President of his country for five years, Prime Minister for seven and a half years and was a central figure in his country’s 24-year struggle for the restoration of independence. In this public address he discussed Political Transition and National Unity: The Timor-Leste Story, exploring the lessons of nation building and transition in Australia’...
Internationally acclaimed author David Malouf joins Gerard Vaughan AM in conversation for a discussion featuring art, literature and music. After exploring the idea of home, where and what it is in A First Place, what does it mean to be a writer and where writing begins in The Writing Life, David Malouf moves on to words, music, art and performance in Being There. With pieces on the Sydney Opera House - then and now - responses to art, artists and architects, and including Malouf’s previously un...
The rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) on vast swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq, and the US-led military response to it, have introduced another complex dimension to an oil-rich but already very volatile Middle East. The old correlation of forces in support of maintaining the status quo, especially following the Iranian revolution more than 35 years ago, has been changing. A set of new alignments and realignments along multiple regional fault-lines, including sectarian divisions an...
