MCH people

Phillip Adams AO

Phillip Adams is an author, broadcaster and film-producer, whose films include “The Getting of Wisdom” and “We of the Never Never”. Currently he has a column in The Australian sponsored by Rupert Murdoch and interviews on Late Night Live under the eagle eyes of Alan Jones and Donald McDonald.

Hon Sir Gerard Brennan AC, KBE

Gerard Brennan is a lawyer and judge. He was educated in catholic schools and was President of the National Union of Australian University Students. He was a High Court Judge and member of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

Janet Holmes à Court AC

Janet Holmes à Court is a businesswoman and supporter of the arts. She has been chairman of the board of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, Chancellor of the University of Western Australia and a Director of Heytesbury Holdings Ltd. Janet delivered the first Manning Clark annual lecture in 2000.

Barry Jones AO

Barry Jones is a thinker, particularly about the future of science education. He was the first radio talk-back man, and a member of the Australian Film Development Corporation. Barry has been the federal minister for Science, Technology, Small business and Customs. Currently he is exploring Australia’s future in relation to knowledge.

Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG

Justice Michael Kirby was appointed to the Court in February 1996. He has held numerous national and international positions including on the Board of CSIRO, as President of the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands, as UN Special Representative in Cambodia and as President of the International Commission of Jurists. In 1991 he was appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia.

Justice Michael Kirby delivered the second Manning Clark annual lecture in 2001.

David Malouf AO

David Malouf is a teacher, writer and cultural commentator. He has taught English in England and at Sydney University. As a writer he has been well known with such works as Johnno, An Imaginary Life, and Remembering Babylon. His lectures are always impeccably delivered.

Ann Moyal AM

Dr Ann Moyal AM is a leading historian of Australian science and telecommunications. A former academic at the ANU Research School of Social Sciences, the New South Wales Institute of Technology and Griffith University, she is the author of thirteen books on aspects of science and technology in Australia, biography,and her autobiography ‘Breakfast with Beaverbrook. Memoirs of an independent woman’. She founded the Independent Scholars Association of Australia in 1995. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Doctor of Letters ANU and HonD.Litt. Sydney University, she lives in Canberra. For several decades.Ann was a close friend of Manning and Dymphna Clark.

Jack Mundey AO

Jack Mundey is a conservationist and union leader. He has spent a considerable amount of time working towards the preservation of Australiaâs heritage and countryside, often in conjunction with his work as a union leader.

Neilma Sidney

Neilma Sidney is a writer and philanthropist. She has worked with the Myer Foundation for many years and has created the Four Winds Festival near Bermagui.

Sebastian Clark
Manning Clark House President

Sebastian has been President of MCH since 2000. His teacher’s career took him to Geelong, Melbourne and England. He helped his mother get A Historian’s Apprenticeship and Speaking Out of Turn ready for publication. His interests include the minutiae of history. In 2006 Sebastian wrote an addendum to the new edition of Manning Clark’s A Short History of Australia which brings the book right up-to-date, revealing many enduring parallels between the past and present.

Ingrid Moses
Manning Clark House Vice-President

Professor Ingrid Moses retired to Canberra in early 2006 after 8 ½ years as Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England 1997-2006. Prior to coming to Canberra she had been appointed Chancellor of the University of Canberra, and her second and final term finished 31 December 2010. She keeps being engaged in higher education and social and cultural institutions. She was awarded honorary doctorates from UTS and California State University, Sacramento for her contribution to higher and international education and a Centenary Medal for her contribution to rural education. She has been an academic and executive in four Australian universities and is passionate about educational opportunities. She has done extensive international work for the UNU, UNESCO, OECD and AusAID. As a migrant from Germany she is interested in cross-cultural issues incl literature, food and travel, and social justice.

Ben Power
Treasurer

Born in Cooma NSW 1960 and educated at St Aloysius College in Sydney. Completed a Bachelor of Economics at Macquarie University, Diploma of Education at the University of New England and a Masters in Public Policy at the Australian National University.

Working life spent teaching secondary Economics in Canberra and Kuwait interspersed with capacity building in the then ATSIC, budget development in the Department of Finance and management of community houses for the intellectually disabled. Currently Head of the Economics and Business Studies Department at Canberra Grammar School. Married, two adult children.

Deborah Hamilton
Acting Secretary

Born in Canberra, Deborah Hamilton has a long background in public relations and lobbying/advocacy. Deborah has worked in the fields of disability and human rights, running the only organisation devoted to intellectual disability and spending seven years working with Dr Jose Ramos Horta and the East Timor International Support Centre towards the liberation of East Timor. She has a Graduate Diploma in TESOL and teaches English in the ACT.

David Headon

Dr David Headon is a cultural consultant and historian. Formerly Director of the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies (1994-2004), he is now Advisor on the Centenary of Canberra in the Chief Minister’s Department of the ACT Government, and advisor to Senator Kate Lundy. Dr Headon is a regular commentator on cultural, political and social issues on ABC television and radio and WIN television. A well-published writer, his most recent works include Best Ever Australian Sports Writing - a 200-Year Collection (2001) and The Symbolic Role of the National Capital (2003).

Shobha Varkey

Passionate about social justice and human rights issues, women’s rights, movies, art and theatre. Although born in India, Shobha has lived and worked in Canberra over the last 30 years as a public servant, community worker, director of a preschool, mediator and counsellor. As an Australian Volunteer she was placed with UNHCR in a war zone in Sri Lanka in 96-97, spending two more years in 2004-2005 with her husband after the tsunami occurred, to help rebuild the houses and lives of the affected civilians. She has belonged to various groups and committees abroad and in Canberra and is now focussed on Prisoners’ Aid, Multicultural issues, Quakers and MCH.

Frank Bongiorno

Frank is an Australian labour, political and cultural historian. Prior to joining the Australian National University, where he is Associate Professor of History, he has held lecturing positions at King’s College London, the University of New England and Griffith University. He has also been an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the ANU, a Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Mellon Visiting Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Frank has served on the New South Wales Arts Advisory Council and as a member of the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts Literature and History Committee, including as its chair for three years. He is a regular contributor to the media, especially Inside Story, for which he was London correspondent from 2008 until 2011, and the Canberra Times.

Andrew Clark
Clark Family Delegate

Andrew Clark is a former political correspondent of the National Times, and a former literary editor of The Age. Co-author of the book Kerr’s King Hit, he has given guest lectures at Yale University, the Budapest University of Economics and the Menzies Centre in London.

Matt Byrne

Judith Crispin
Director

Dr Judith Crispin is a musicologist, composer, poet and artist. She holds a Ph.D in music from the ANU and has completed postdoctoral studies at Université de Paris-Sorbonne and at the Humboldt Universität Berlin. Judith has written and edited a number of scholarly books and articles on music, poetry, philosophy and art and has held postdoctoral fellowships from the DAAD and the Humboldt Foundation. She has won international prizes for her music, including the Vienna Masterworks International Composition Prize for Opera. Her artworks are regularly published and exhibited across Australia and Europe. Judith’s poems are published in Australian and German literary journals. She is currently an adjunct fellow at the ANU, a research affiliate of the University of Sydney and an associate composer at the Australian Music Centre.

There is a news item on an Photographic Exhibition that Judith is participating in. To view please click this link.

Jenny Farrelly
Office Manager

Still having the pull towards health and helping people, she works casually as a carer.