Media Policy Makers and Shakers: What can government do?

Jason Clare is the federal member for Blaxland, and shadow minister for communications. Before entering parliament he worked as a senior adviser to NSW Premier Bob Carr and as an executive at Transurban.

Jason has also been appointed parliamentary secretary for employment, minister for home affairs, minister for justice, and cabinet secretary.

Paul Fletcher is the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Communication and the federal member for Bradfield. Prior to entering parliament, Paul worked in the communications sector.

He was director, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, at Optus for eight years; he also established a strategic consulting firm serving the communications sector. In 2009, his book about broadband, Wired Brown Land, was published by UNSW Press.

Earlier in his career Paul was senior adviser, and then chief of staff, to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, during the Howard government.

He has dual first-class honours degrees in law and economics from the University of Sydney and an MBA from Columbia University in New York, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Julian Thomas is director of the Swinburne Institute for Social Research and Professor or Media and Communications at Swinburne. His research interests are in new media, information policy and the history of communications technologies.

He is the co-author of a new book, Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities (Institute for Network Cultures, 2016). His other recent books are: The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015), Amateur Media (Routledge, 2013), and Fashioning Intellectual Property: Advertising, Exhibition and the Press, 1789-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Malcolm Long, AM was a member of the Media Convergence Review in 2011-12. He has been executive director of the Australian Film Television & Radio School and chair of the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Malcolm was a member of the Australian Communications and Media Authority and its predecessor the Australian Broadcasting Authority and managing director of SBS. He has been a working journalist and broadcaster.

He speaks and writes about media, digital technology and their impact.

Scott Ludlam was a senator from 2008 to 2017 and served as deputy leader of the Australian Greens. He has also worked as a filmmaker, artist and graphic designer. He contributed to A Secret Australia: Revealed by the Wikileaks Expose and his memoir, Full Circle, is his first book, the fruit of a life of activism, study and travel.