The Show of the Year

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney. He is a qualified medical doctor, engineer, physicist and mathematician. This MasterGeek consistently appears on the list of the Top 15 Most Trusted Australians, and was recently named one of Australia’s National Living Treasures.

Zoe Daniel is a three-time foreign correspondent, former ABC U.S. Bureau chief, Southeast Asia and Africa correspondent. Her book Greetings from Trumpland was released in March 2021.

Zoe Daniel is an ABC journalist and presenter. She was the ABC’s South East Asia correspondent from 2009 to 2013 providing on-the-ground coverage of stories ranging from major political events to natural disasters. These included the Bangkok protests, the reform process in Myanmar and the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

In 2005 and 2006, Zoe was the ABC’s Africa correspondent. Prior to that in 2004, she covered the Olympic Games in Athens. Zoe has reported on conflict, famine, natural disasters, repression and poverty across the world in countries as diverse as Sudan, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand.

Zoe began her career in journalism as a radio producer in South Australia. She then reported on rural issues in New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria before becoming a business reporter and then a general reporter working on flagship ABC programs such as 7.30 and Lateline.

Zoe is the author of Storyteller, which provides a personal insight into her life as a foreign correspondent while juggling a family.

Monica Weightman is a musician and Murri woman. She grew up in Townsville, influenced by her Islander father Ray but with the musical genes of her Scottish-English-Italian mother. Although she never really associated with the large Torres Strait Islander community in Townsville, she said she had more recently been seeking out more of the heritage that so clearly shaped her songs.

Weightman came to Melbourne in her 20s and studied jazz for a while before joining an all-girl trio. Monica Weightman walked away from beckoning fame and fortune, along the way writing songs with inmates from the Deer Park women’s prison. ‘It’s a journey of love: I don’t think you essentially get into it for the money,’ she said.

When Weightman released her second CD, Lost Generation, she said it was equally important to give back to and learn from younger musicians and the disadvantaged members of the community.

‘To know where you are from gives you a sense of pride and purpose, a sense of place in the world, I understand that now.’ Nicknamed “Monstar” by her fans, Weightman will capture you with her strong lyrics, groove you with her catchy melodies and inspire and impress you with her guitar licks.

Josh Earl is a comedian with a very weird family. His latest show for children is called My Family is Weider Than Your Family. And believe us, he's not lying.

Lior Attar, better known simply as Lior, is an independent Israeli-Australian singer-songwriter based in Melbourne.

His first album, Autumn Flow, was recorded and released independently, to critical acclaim. His other albums include Corner of an Endless Road, Compassion and Scattered Reflections.

A 2008 graduate from the VCA, Zahra was most recently seen onstage in The Government Inspector (Malthouse/Belvoir). Prior to that she appeared in the Australian premiere of The Mountaintop (MTC), The Cherry Orchard (MTC) and Menagerie (Daniel Schlusser Ensemble) as part of the inaugural MTC Neon Festival.

During 2012 she originated the role of Seegar in the world premiere of An Officer and A Gentleman: The Musical (GFO), and received the Best Actress Green Room Award for her critically acclaimed national tour of Random (MTC/Syd Opera House/Brisbane Powerhouse).

At the VCA, she was awarded the Richard Pratt Bursary for an Outstanding Actor and while studying at the University of Southern Queensland, she was also awarded the Alan Edwards Scholarship for excellence in her first year.

Zahra has also been involved in various developments and workshops for theatre and can be heard on ABC Radio National’s Poetica program. Film and TV credits include the feature film Bound By Blue and Channel 10’s Rush.

Gillian Cosgriff is a singer, songwriter, pianist and performer.

After graduating from WAAPA in 2010 with a Bachelor of Music Theatre, Gillian wrote her debut show, Waitressing…And Other Things I Do Well, which played to sellout crowds in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. She also recorded an EP of original songs from the show with Luckiest Records, which was released on iTunes in 2011.

Her television appearances include Offspring, House Husbands, and Fat Tony & Co., and she was a backing vocalist for Kate Miller-Heidke’s 2012 album, Nightflight. Theatre credits include Pirates of Penzance (The Production Company) and A 3-Handed Mikado with Colin Lane (Lano and Woodley) and David Collins (The Umbilical Brothers). Her performance in the improvised web series Written It Down (featured on Funny or Die) saw her win Best Actress at the LA Webfest Awards 2014.

Her most recent show, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, has played at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Fringeworld Perth, and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and received the Best Cabaret Award at Melbourne Fringe 2013, the WA Arts Editor Award at Fringeworld Perth 2014, and a Green Room Award for Best Original Songs.

Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian rapper and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He is the former winner of the Australian Poetry Slam and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam. His first book is Here Come the Dogs.

He has released three hip-hop albums, two poetry books (including Parang), appeared on ABC’s Q&A and received a standing ovation at TEDx Sydney at the Sydney Opera House. He is currently working on a play, Bonegatherer.

Astrid and Otto are Die Roten Punkte (The Red Dots). Orphaned as kids when Astrid was 12 and Otto was 9, the brother and sister duo found shelter in a Berlin squat and never looked back. A Die Roten Punkte gig is a wild, rock‘n’roll cabaret ride, full of hilarious, truly catchy and award-winning pop songs, constantly interrupted by the squabbling of the dysfunctional siblings.

Described as ‘a lipstick-smeared, tantrum-loving, sonic collision between the B52s, Kraftwerk and early Ramones’, Die Roten Punkte are truly one of a kind.

Their accolades include being nominated for the TO&ST Cabaret (Time Out London/Soho Theatre), Edinburgh Fringe 2013, winning the Melbourne Green Room Awards for Cabaret 2008, and winning Best Comedy, Montreal & Victoria Fringe 2010.

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney Opera House.

Born in 1969, Bennetto spent his formative years amongst the fragrant meadows and blossoming malls of Greensborough, Melbourne.

He made his way to university, procured a BA and worked variously as a proofreader, a copywriter, an IT specialist and as the lead singer in the band Skin, which garnered national commercial airplay for their 1994 EP, Waking Up With You.

As part of the ‘Drowsy Drivers’ project, in 2004 Casey wrote a musical theatre biography of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, KEATING!.

In late 2008, Casey premiered a new project as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival: A Largely Fanciful History Of The Spiegeltent, in which he also starred; he also wrote and performed in 2009's Evening and provided the songs for the ever-threatening Christmas pantomime The Terminativity in 2010–11. He served as dramaturge on Eddie’s Shane Warne: The Musical as well as making contributions to Company B’s The Adventures Of Snugglepot And Cuddlepie and Die Roten Punkte’s Super Musikant and Kunst Rock.

He scored both series of Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar's Lowdown and was nominated for an AACTA with Shellie Morris and Tim Cole for work on the 2014 musical documentary Prison Songs. He appeared with Alan Brough as underappreciated alternative rock icons The Narelles in 2015, and has hosted A Swingin' Bella Christmas for the past five years. He has hosted The Show Of The Year for the Wheeler Centre since the show's inception in 2013.

Most recently, he scored the ABC TV series Get Krack!n and is currently working on several things at once, obviously to the detriment of all of them.

Casey has also hosted a regular show on 3CR, worked extensively for PBS FM and made many appearances on 774 ABC Melbourne as host, co-host and guest.

His appearances on ABC TV’s Spicks And Specks resurface occasionally to shame him.

Helen Razer was a broadcaster and is now a writer. Her appointments in radio were at the Triple J national network and ABC Melbourne. Her books include A Short History of Stupid, co-authored with national affairs correspondent Bernard Keane, a 2015 work on the history of bad Western thought shortlisted for the Russell Prize; and Total Propaganda, a popular work on Marxism recently published by Allen & Unwin.

Helen has written on social and political matters for the Age and Australian. She now contributes news and cultural analysis to outlets including Crikey, the Saturday Paper, Daily Review, Frankie, SBS and Atlantic digital publication Quartz.

Bernard has been Crikey’s correspondent in Canberra since 2008; he writes on politics, media and economics.

He was educated at the University of Sydney, where he studied history. Before joining Crikey he was a public servant, and worked in transport policy and as a speechwriter before moving into communications policy. He is the author of War on the Internet.

Bernard says, ‘WikiLeaks is the most globally famous example of the connectedness that is rewiring our societies and ourselves. The war on WikiLeaks by governments and corporations is a war on an emerging, more democratic, more connected and more informed society by those with the greatest interest in a status quo they control. It’s therefore a war all of us have a stake in.’