Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 12 April
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
We love a sunburnt country as long as it stays on the far side of a picket fence. Partitioning off our own little parts of the wide brown land, and replacing the sprawling menace of the Australian bush with the reassuring symmetry of the Hills Hoist, we’re all living the great suburban dream.
Featuring
Mark Davis
Mark Davis is an author and academic. He has written for most of Australia’s major newspapers and is a regular commentator on radio and a blogger. His most recent book is The Land of Plenty: Australia in the 2000s. He is Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
David Nichols
David Nichols is a writer and cultural commentator who is senior lecturer in urban planning at the University of Melbourne.
Dr David Nichols was born in Melbourne in 1965. His books include Community: Building Modern Australia (co-edited with Hannah Lewi), the bestselling The Bogan Delusion (2011) and the forthcoming Trendyville (co-authored with Renate Howe and Graeme Davison), a study of activism in Australia’s inner cities in the 1960s and 70s. Another (sole-authored) book, on the history of Australian popular music, is to be published in October 2013.
His specialty areas include urban, cultural and social history, with an emphasis on Australia but within a global context. He is an advocate for environmentally sensitive planning, but at the same time a supporter of suburbia and decentralisation.
Recently he has presented (with Elizabeth Taylor) the Triple R show The Urbanists, covering urban issues with a Melbourne planning focus.
He lives in Broadmeadows with his wife, artist Mia Schoen, and numerous pets.
Jane-Frances Kelly
Since moving to Australia in 2004, Jane-Frances Kelly has worked as a senior adviser to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Boston Consulting Group, the Vice-Chancellor at Melbourne University, the Chief Commissioner at Victoria Police, and the Victorian and Queensland Premier’s Departments.
Since 2009, Jane-Frances has been Cities Program Director at the Grattan Institute, an independent public policy think tank.
She played a central role in the 2020 Summit, and has also spent two mid-winters working with Noel Pearson.
Previous to this, Jane-Frances worked at the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, where she led the team which produced the first UK Government’s Strategic Audit. She has returned to work in the UK on several occasions, most recently from March-May 2009.
Alan Saunders
Alan Saunders is a broadcaster on ABC Radio National.
Alan Saunders was born and educated in London. He studied philosophy at the University of Leicester where he was also president of the students' union, and Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. He came to Australia in 1981 to pursue research in the History of Ideas Unit at the Australian National University and was subsequently awarded a PhD.
Having joined the Science Unit of ABC Radio National in 1987, Alan Saunders founded ‘The Food Program’. From 1997 to 2004, he was the presenter of Radio National’s ‘The Comfort Zone’, a weekly review of architecture and design, landscape and food and in 2005 he was co-presenter of ‘Saturday Breakfast’. He continues to produce and present ‘The Philosopher’s Zone’ (Saturday 1.30pm, repeat Wednesday 9.35pm) for the station.
Alan has written about food and other topics for various publications including the ABC’s Delicious magazine. He is the author of A is for Apple (Random House) and he had his first novel, Alanna, published by Penguin in 2002. He is in demand as a public speaker and has been a judge for many food, architectural and design awards.
In 1992 Alan Saunders was awarded the Pascall Prize for critical writing and broadcasting.