The Lucky Country

Sun 8 Sep 2019

Richard Denniss + Rick Morton + David Fagan

QAG Lecture Theatre

Panel

8136

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

How lucky are we really? Is it all over, now? This panel will examine narratives in Australian politics around hardship and whether our luck has run out.

#Artists

Richard Denniss

Dr Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a Canberra based think tank. A prominent Australian author, essayist and policy commentator he was described by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mark Kenny as “a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for policy". Prior to his current role he held numerous academic positions and was Chief of Staff to then Democrats’s Leader Natasha Stott Despoja and Strategy Adviser to former Greens leader Bob Brown. Despite his public profile the Australian Financial Review placed him on their list of the ten most covertly powerful people in the country. Go figure.

Rick Morton

Rick Morton was born in Queensland and spent his early years on a 1000 square mile cattle station 14 hours west of Brisbane where he began ‘school of the air’ over wireless radio. Later, he moved with his mother, older brother and newborn sister to a small country town in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. Writing was the one thing that captivated him and he became a cadet journalist as soon as he left high school. Rick Morton has, for the past five years, been the social affairs writer for The Australian newspaper where he continues to report on social policy across the country. He lives in Sydney.

David Fagan

DAVID FAGAN is an author and a former decade-long editor of one of Australia's largest newspapers, The Courier-Mail. He spent more than three decades in journalism, mainly in the fields of business and politics at The Courier-Mail and The Australian. He is an adjunct professor of business at QUT and sits on a number of corporate boards. David is the father of three daughters, and it was their questions about the world they will inherit that bore the seeds for his most recent book Has the Luck Run Out?

#Moderator

Felicity Caldwell

Felicity Caldwell is the state political reporter for the Brisbane Times and a member of the Queensland Parliament media gallery. Felicity, who has worked as a journalist since 2008, joined the Brisbane Times in 2016 and has covered a state election campaign from the road, three state budgets and estimates, and spends much of her time in Parliament or chasing politicians. She joined the BT after working at Quest Community News, mX, The Sunday Mail and The Queensland Times. Felicity has covered everything from City Hall, federal politics, court, entertainment, education, youth, transport and employment issues.