About Manning Clark House
THE ROLE OF MANNING CLARK HOUSE – a home for ideas to make a better Australia, and a place where we enrich our better selves.
by Andrew Clark
Australia is at an impasse.
It has experienced a decade of revolving door governments, including four party-room putsches against sitting Prime Ministers. The political turmoil has even led the BBC to labelAustralia “the coup capital of the democratic world.”
Underneath the turmoil is a country unable to come to grips with issues like climate change, energy policy, relations with the US and China, a radically different Indo-Pacific environment, refugees, the role of our first settlers, and how we deal with the
extraordinary rate of technology-generated change.
An energetic, well-educated and affluent multicultural society has been crimped by political short termism and mediocrity.
We know we can do better than this.
Manning Clark House, which has been in operation for more than 20 years, is the ideal
institution to foster ideas and policies to help change Australia into the progressive, successful and compassionate country we know it should be.
Manning and Dymphna Clark both believed passionately that Australians should come up with distinctive solutions for the country’s problems.
A fresh and independent approach is needed as politicians become hide-bound by focus groups and opinion polls, and universities are more corporatized and business-like in their approach.
Through events like the annual Week End of Ideas, the Manning and Dymphna Clark lectures, regular talks and discussion groups, Manning Clark House fosters an environment where members are stimulated to express ideas and discuss major issues. It also acts as a cultural incubator in music, song, poetry, literature, and, of course, history.
The daring modernism of the 65-year-old House in Forrest, Canberra, itself reflects the radical and adventurous spirit Manning Clark House fosters among members. It is a place where Australians can be inspired to make their daily lives richer and more meaningful. Join us.
Manning Clark House
Click here for the latest events at Manning Clark House.
Manning Clark House is a not-for-profit venue and organisation and hosts public events in the former home of Manning and Dymphna Clark in Forrest, Canberra.
Manning and Dymphna Clark both believed passionately that Australians should come up with distinctive solutions for Australian issues.
Through events like the annual Weekend of Ideas, the Manning and Dymphna Clark lectures, regular talks and discussion groups, Manning Clark House fosters an environment where members are stimulated to express ideas and discuss major issues. It also acts as a cultural incubator in music, song, poetry, literature, and, of course, history.
The daring modernism of the 65-year-old House in Forrest, Canberra, itself reflects the radical and adventurous spirit Manning Clark House fosters among members. It is a place where Australians can be inspired to make their daily lives richer and more meaningful.
Manning Clark House is funded by donations and membership fees, as well as grants from Melbourne University, the Australian National University, and philanthropic organisations. Please join us.
Annual day of ideas – reinterpretation of Australian political stories around World War One and The Dismissal?
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 11th 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.
Beyond Gallipoli and Anzac Day
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.
2018 Dymphna Clark Lecture – Clare Wright’s ‘You Daughters of Freedom’
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.
Australia’s Intelligence Agencies and the Brave New World of Home Affairs: how we got there and how it matters
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.
The problem of justice – Prosecuting Japanese for War Crimes after the Second World War
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.
Absolute Power – the pope in the modern world
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
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.
