All posts by manningclark

The problem of justice – Prosecuting Japanese for War Crimes after the Second World War

Events

22 August 5.30 for 6pm

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle Forrest

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.

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.

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

Non-members $15.00

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

Absolute Power – the pope in the modern world

Events

Speaker: author Paul Collins

13 September 5.30 for 6pm

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle Forrest

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

Non-members $15.00

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

This is the remarkable story of the last two centuries of the papacy. In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away, Rome had been seized by the Revolutionary French armies, and the cardinals were scattered across Europe. With the next papal election uncertain, it seemed that even if Catholicism survived, the papacy was doomed. And yet, just over 200 years later, the pope’s influence reaches across the world—from Cuban politics to gender equality to the refugee crisis.

Speaker: Paul Collins is an historian, broadcaster and writer. A Catholic priest for thirty-three years, he resigned from the active priestly ministry in 2001 due to a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power (1997). He is the author of fifteen books, the most recent of which is Absolute Power. How the pope became the most influential man in the world (New York: Public Affairs, 2018). A former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC, he is well known as a commentator on Catholicism and the papacy and has a strong interest in ethics, environmental and population issues. He has a Master’s degree in theology (Th.M.) from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in history from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra.

Dead Right – how neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next

Events

Author Richard Denniss in discussion with Genevieve Jacobs

31 July 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/WWGW

Dr Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Adjunct Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

Denniss is the author of best-selling Quarterly Essay, Dead Right: How neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next. In Dead Right, Richard explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society, looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics.

Genevieve Jacobs has been a journalist for 30 years, working in print and radio. She is the former ABC Mornings presenter and works with a wide range of organisations including the National Folk Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, M16 artspace and Conflict Resolution Service. She has just completed co-chairing the consultative committee for the ACT’s first Reconciliation Day public holiday. Genevieve has an enduring interest in building and strengthening community engagement.

MCH Poetry

Poetry

Thursday, June 28, 2018.

Venue – MCH, 11 Tasmania Circle, ACT.

Drinks and nibbles 7 pm — Readings 7.30-9.30 pm.

READERS:

Jacqui Malins is a poet, performer and artist. She has featured at poetry events in Canberra, Sydney and Newcastle. Jacqui is also the co-founder and organiser of Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry events in Canberra. In March and April this year, Jacqui curated the public program delivered by Tuggeranong Arts Centre for the exhibition ‘Another Day in Paradise’, featuring the artwork of Myuran Sukumaran. Cavorting with Time, the script of the performance work of the same name, was released by Recent Work Press and Ampersand Duck in 2018.

Martin Dolan is a Canberra poet who has been writing and publishing for twenty-five years. He has given up moonlighting as a public servant to pursue a PhD candidature in creative writing at the University of Canberra. Martin’s latest book of poetry is Peripheral Vision, released this year by Recent Work Press.

Shane Strange works in the Creative Writing program at the University of Canberra, and as publisher at Recent Work Press, a small press imprint based in the ACT, Australia. It publishes poetry,  non fiction, and other short-form textual work. Recent Work Press aims to make all its work available in attractive, paperback editions, priced to make good work.

 

 

 

MCH Poetry – latest program

Poetry

Manning Clark House Program 2018 

Drinks and Nibbles: 7.00 pm

Readings 7.30-9.30 pm

Thursday 28 June
Recent Work Press Poets (Readings organised by Shane Strange)Jacqui Malins, Martin Dolan, Shane Strange.
Thursday 26 July
Limestone Tanka Poets (readings organised by Kathy Kituai).
Thursday 23 August
Russell Erwin (Goulburn) Penelope Layland (Canberra) Lizz Murphy (Binalong).
Thursday 27 September
To be announced.
Thursday 25 October
Paul Collis (Canberra) Jen Crawford (Canberra) Paul Magee (Canberra)
Thursday 22 November
Recent Work Press Poets (readings organised by Shane Strange)

Secret City: Fact, fiction and Australian politics

Events

Speaker : Chris Uhlmann

7-11 Barry Drive Teaching Centre, Australian National University (TBC)

7pm – 12 July 2018

Members $20 (MCH members or govt support concession, full-time students).

Non-members $25

Book here 

The Prime Minister likes to paraphrase Mark Twain saying, “only fiction has to be credible”. Perhaps that’s because he has lived through the incredible last decade of Australian politics.

In 2008 Kevin Rudd was in his first year as PM, enjoying a 70 per cent approval rating and, apparently, settling in for a long run. In November that year, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and America looked like it would finally become the land it imagined itself to be.

What went wrong? Come and find out the details, insights and perspectives!

About the speaker: Chris Uhlmann is a leading Australian political journalist. After many years working for the ABC, in August 2017, Uhlmann moved to Nine News replacing Laurie Oakes. He had previously held the positions of the political editor for the 7.30 report, 14th presenter of AM for ABC radio and ABC News political editor. In 2008, Uhlmann received the Walkley Award for Broadcast Interviewing. With Steve Lewis, Uhlmann has written a series of political novels set in Canberra: The Marmalade Files (2012), The Mandarin Code (2014) and The Shadow Game (2016). These feature a political reporter, Harriet Dunkley, investigating a conspiracy involving China, the USA and Australian security organisations. In 2016 the first two books were adapted as the Australian television series Secret City.

Poetry evening

Poetry

Thursday, May 24, 2018

7pm for 7.30 start

11 Tasmania Circuit, Forrest ACT 2603

$10 includes nibbles and wine

Contact Hazel Hall – hazelsshall@gmail.com

A reminder about Manning Clark Poetry this month. It should be a packed night!

Kathleen Bleakley (Wollongong). Kathleen Bleakley lives with her partner – in life and art – ‘pling, between the escarpment and the sea, in Wollongong. She has three collections (with Ginninderra Press) – Azure, (2017) Lightseekers, photography by ‘pling, (2015). and jumping out of cars, with Andrea Gawthorne, images by ‘pling, (2004).

Alison Thompson (Berry). Alison Thompson lives on the south coast of NSW and is a member of the Kitchen Table Poets. Her poems have been published here and overseas. She has published a chapbook Slow Skipping  (PressPress). Alison won the DPP Byron Bay Writers Festival Poetry prize (2011) and the 2016 Poetry d’Amour Love Poem Contest.

Chris Mansell (Berry). Among Chris Mansell’s latest publications are Verge,  Stung, Stung More, Spine Lingo, and Schadenvale Road.  Seven Stations (a song cycle with music by Andrew Batt-Rawden) was released by Hospital Hill on CD. Chris won the Queensland Premier’s Award for Poetry, Amelia Chapbook Award (USA) and the Meanjin Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize and has been short-listed for the National Book Council Award and the NSW Premier’s Award. Her site is chrismansell.com.

Australia without the US Alliance

Events

Wednesday 23 May 5.30 for 6pm

 Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle Forrest

Australia has long depended on America, not just for our own defence but for the security of our wider neighbourhood and the maintenance of a stable order in Asia. For much of the time that has worked, on balance, quite well for Australia. But in recent years our dependence on America has grown while America has for many reasons become less and less dependable either as an ally or as a guarantor of regional stability. So today Australia has to look very carefully at the challenges America now faces in Asia and the risks and benefits to us of depending on it in future as we have done in the past. And we have to ask anew what the alternatives to such dependence might look like.

Speakers: Professor Hugh White and Professor Joan Beaumont

Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. He has worked on Australian strategic, defence and foreign policy issues since 1980.

Joan Beaumont is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. She specialises in the history of Australian foreign policy and the Australian experience of war.

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

Non-members $15.00

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

Manning Clark Choristers

Choir

TERM 2 – April 17 – July 6, 2018

Every Tuesday night – 7.30 – 9.30pm

All welcome – Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, ACT

Members – $50 per term or $5 drop-in

Non-members $60 per term or $10 drop in

Please call Fleur on 0421 187 688 or email: fleurmillar@yahoo.com.au for more information.

Music

Term two of the Manning Clark Choristers is now beginning with choir leader Fleur Millar and pianist Sam Row.

Wonderful concerts are up ahead, including a Choir showcase concert for Manning Clark House members for the Winter Solstice and opportunities to enjoy performing singing in the local South Canberra Community.

We always give a warm welcome to new singers joining our group, and have a great deal of fun, whilst achieving a high level of musicianship with delicious food in the break and always great conversation. 

Music includes beautiful arrangements of the Sky Boat Song, Danny Boy, Wild Mountain Thyme plus loads more.

There are also opportunities to sing short solos in concerts and our concerts include well-known soloists from Canberra as well as young developing artists.

These concerts are in partnership with Fleur-de-lys Vocal Enterprises.

No experience necessary.

The UN Nuclear Ban Treat

Events

Thursday, 3 May 2018  —   5.30 for 6pm start

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, ACT

MCH members, concession (govt support) and full-time students $10

Non-members $15

BOOK HERE

NuclearImage

Speaker: Professor Ramesh Thakur is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (CNND) in the Crawford School, The Australian National University and co-Convenor of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN).

He was Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) from 1998–2007.

Educated in India and Canada, he was a Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Professor and Head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University, during which time he was also a consultant/adviser to the Australian and New Zealand governments on arms control, disarmament and international security issues.

He was a Commissioner and one of the principal authors of The Responsibility to Protect (2001), and Senior Adviser on Reforms and Principal Writer of the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s second reform report (2002).

He was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo (2007–11), Distinguished Fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (2007–10) and Foundation Director of the Balsillie School of International affairs in Waterloo, Ontario.