Sunday, 11 November, 2018

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, ACT

10am – 4.30pm

Tickets include lunch – $30 MCH members, $35 concession, $45 non-members

Book here

Discussion, food and music – this event has it all. Join us and have your say.

One hundred years ago,  World War One, “the war to end all wars” ended. Exactly 57 years later on the 11^th November 1975, the Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

For Australians, both events are linked by more than just coincidence of dates.

World War One was followed by the worst sectarian divide in Australia’s history, partly caused by the bitterness and rancour surrounding the issue of conscription.

This divide was later exacerbated by the terrible economic slump known as the Great Depression.

The Dismissal also left a deep scar in Australian public life. The heroism and loss of life in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 was hailed as the arrival of a distinctive Australian nationalism, but nearly 60 years later The Dismissal raised fundamental questions about the nature and direction of that Australian nation.

The shaping influence of these two key events, and what we should do as Australians to make this a better society, will be addressed in a challenging program of highly respected speakers and discussion.

Program covers presentations and discussion by:

• Professor Nicholas Brown: Introduction: Is the past really with us in the present?
• Dr Emily Robertson: Missing in Action: the German enemy
• Dr Deborah Jordan: Vance and Nettie Palmer, War, Women and Peace
• Professor Frank Bongiorno: Australia, WWI and the Centenary
• Mr Percy Knight, Wiradjuri Man: War and Indigenous Australians
• Professor Jenny Hocking: Why the Dismissal of The Whitlam government matters today.” 
• Ms Leanne Smith, CEO and Dr Mark Provera, Research Manager, Whitlam Institute
• Mr Andrew Clark, Senior Journalist, Fairfax media: Wrap Up.
• Manning Clark Choristers: Fleur Millar, Director – Sam Row, pianist.

MARTIN BAYER: International Remembrance of the First World War

Monday 22 October at 5.30 for 6pm

11 Tasmania Circuit, Forrest, ACT.

MCH members $5, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $10, non-members $15.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/YRJE

Martin Bayer is a German-born photographer and independent scholar of war serving on an Australian-German research group on First World War commemoration. This talk will discuss differing modes of commemorating that war in various countries and will consider the Australian experience as part of a wider narrative arc examining the international perspective on commemorations.                     

Speaker: Martin Bayer holds a Master of Peace and Security Policy Studies (IFSH/University of Hamburg, Germany) and a BA in War Studies (King’s College London, UK) and besides his vocational education as photographer (Lette-Verein Berlin, Germany). He is author of a First World War centenary study for the German Federal Foreign Office, Not just on Flanders Fields – The First World War as Topic of International Cultures of Commemoration.

Under the label www.wartist.org, he gives lectures on topics such as the cultural dimensions of war and organises art exhibitions, such as Landscapes and Memory at the Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt. In 2015-2018, he took part in an Australian-German research group on the contemporary commemoration of the First World War (ADFA/University of New South Wales/Freie Universität Berlin).

His exhibition Germany’s Dead: War, Grief, and Remembrance with photos of German First World War memorials can be seen at the Australian War Memorial, Saunders Gallery, from 5 Oct to 2 Dec 2018.

Wednesday 17 October at 7.00pm

RN Robertson Lecture Theatre, Building 46, ANU

MCH members, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $20

Non-members $25.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/YJQM

Clare Wright’s new book, You Daughters of Freedom, brings to life a time when Australian democracy was the envy of the world—and the standard bearer for progress in a shining new century. For the ten years from 1902, when Australia’s feminist activists won the vote for white women, the world looked to this trailblazing young democracy for inspiration.

This epic new history tells the story of that victory—and of Australia’s role in the subsequent international struggle—through the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, the flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters, and the artist Dora Meeson Coates, who painted the controversial Australian banner carried in the British feminist activist marches of 1908 and 1911.           

 Speaker:  La Trobe University historian Associate Professor Clare Wright has worked as an author, academic, political speech-writer, historical consultant, and radio and TV broadcaster. Her earlier book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, won the 2014 Stella Prize and the 2014 NIB Award for Literature and was shortlisted for many other awards.

Wednesday 19 September at 5.30 for 6pm

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle Forrest

MCH members $5, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $10

Non-members $15.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/XPAP

In December 2017 the Department of Home Affairs was created, assuming many functions from the Attorney General’s Department, including national security policy and coordination, criminal law and law enforcement.

The functions it took over from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet included cyber- and counter terrorism policy coordination, and the new department absorbed the whole of the former Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

Professor Blaxland will discuss the implications of these administrative re-arrangements for Australia’s intelligence agencies.

About the speaker:  John Blaxland is Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU. He is a lead author in the three-volume official history of ASIO, having authored Volume II, The Protest Years, 1963-75 (Allen & Unwin 2015), and co-authored The Secret Cold War, 1975-89 (2016).  John has also published works on the intervention in East Timor, the Australian Army, and on counterinsurgency. He makes regular appearances in the print and electronic media as a commentator on intelligence and security matters.

22 August 5.30 for 6pm

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle Forrest

MCH members $5, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $10

Non-members $15.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/WYXH

After the Second World War in the Asia and the Pacific, the victorious Allied powers prosecuted thousands of Japanese military personnel for war crimes.

The scale of atrocities during the war had been remarkable, but pinning responsibility on specific individuals proved to be more difficult than expected. As a result, some of the justice was rough and ready.

About the speaker: Robert Cribb is Professor of Asian History at the Australian National University. His research focuses on Indonesia, especially issues of national identity, mass violence, environmental politics and historical geography. He has also researched the histories of Japan, Mongolia, Korea and Myanmar. His most recent book, with Sandra Wilson, Beatrice Trefalt and Dean Aszkielowicz, is Japanese War Criminals: the politics of Justice after the Second World War (Columbia 2017), which won the New South Wales Premier’s History Award in the General History category. He is also author of Wild Man from Borneo: a cultural history of the orangutan (Hawai’i 2014, with Helen Gilbert and Helen Tiffin) and the Historical Atlas of Indonesia (Curzon 2000). He is currently working with Sandra Wilson to explain Japanese war crimes in Southeast Asia during the Second World War.