Social Reform in Melbourne: Past, Present and Future

Lineup

• More details about Kim Carr | Is Social Democracy Finished? Democracy, Inequality and the Battle for Australia's Future

  Kim Carr | Is Social Democracy Finished? Democracy, Inequality and the Battle for Australia's Future

  The Honourable Kim Carr FAHA FTSE is a former Minister for Higher Education, Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and served as Senator for Victoria for over 29 years. He made a significant national contribution in these policy areas.  He was an active interlocutor at Senate Estimates and a key member of many Senate Inquiries into Australia's Innovation system.  He is widely regarded as a staunch champion of Australia's universities, publicly funded research agencies and Australian Manufacturing. He is currently a board member of the Made in Australia Campaign Ltd. Most recently, he was Vice Chancellor's Professorial Fellow at Monash University (2022-2025).  He was awarded the Academy of Science Medal in 2022 – only the second politician, following Bob Hawke in 1990, to be so honoured.

• More details about John Cleary | The Salvation Army - The Melbourne Way Pt 1

  John Cleary | The Salvation Army - The Melbourne Way Pt 1

  Retired veteran ABC Radio and Television broadcaster John Cleary is best known as a specialist commentator on Religion. During his almost 40 years with the national broadcaster he also became known as an advocate for public broadcasting, serving as both President of the ABC Staff Union, and later as Staff Elected Director on the ABC Board of Directors. John grew up as a member of the Salvation Army Corps at Brunswick in Melbourne, a corps where, some years before, at the turn of the 20th century, a young man named John Curtin was, for a short period, also a member. In 1992 John’s book ‘Salvo!'  was awarded Christian Book of the Year.

• More details about Graeme Davison | 'I was a stranger and you took me in' : Social Christianity and Housing Reform in Melbourne 

  Graeme Davison | 'I was a stranger and you took me in' : Social Christianity and Housing Reform in Melbourne 

  Graeme Davison is an emeritus professor of history at Monash University with a special interest in urban history, including the history of housing. His books include The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia and as co-author Trendyville: The Struggle for Australia's Inner Cities. Growing up in a Methodist family, he was familiar with the story of Oswald Barnett and once heard him speak. For over a decade he chaired the management committee of a small social housing organisation based on three churches in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. 

• More details about Alexandra Dellios | Migrants, Multiculturalism and Melbourne

  Alexandra Dellios | Migrants, Multiculturalism and Melbourne

  Alexandra Dellios is a historian and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Her research considers the public and oral history of migrant and refugee communities, and their experiences of working and family life in twentieth century Australia. She is the author of Heritage Making and Migrant Subjects in the Deindustrialising Region of the Latrobe Valley (Cambridge University Press: 2022) and Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing: 2017), co-author (with A Pieris et al) of Immigrant Industry: Building Postwar Australia (Berghahn: 2024).

• More details about Nick Dyrenfurth | Labourism and the Common Good: The Colonial Labour Movement as Australia's Democratic Post-Liberal Tradition

  Nick Dyrenfurth | Labourism and the Common Good: The Colonial Labour Movement as Australia's Democratic Post-Liberal Tradition

  Dr Nick Dyrenfurth is Executive Director of the John Curtin Research Centre. He is the author or editor of twelve books on Australian politics, labour history and national identity, including Mateship: A Very Australian History, A Little History of the Australian Labor Party (with Frank Bongiorno) and A Powerful Influence on Australian Affairs: A New History of the AWU. His latest book, Gutsy Politics: Why Being Right is Not Enough for the Left, will be published by Melbourne University Publishing in 2027. An Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University, he is a regular media commentator on Australian politics, public policy and political history.

• More details about Andrew May | By-Laws and Better Behaviour: Melbourne’s Quiet Progressive Era

  Andrew May | By-Laws and Better Behaviour: Melbourne’s Quiet Progressive Era

  Andrew J. May is Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, where he has been a faculty member since 2000. He directed The Encyclopedia of Melbourne project and was historian member on the Heritage Council of Victoria 2015-2023. His books include Melbourne Street Life (1998), Espresso! Melbourne Coffee Stories (2001), Federation Square (2003, co-author), Welsh Missionaries and British imperialism: The Empire of Clouds in North-East India (2012), and The Story of Melbourne Lanes (2024, co-author). He is currently writing a cultural history of skin cancer in Australia, a social history of the Indian hill station Shillong, and co-editing a history of Government House Victoria in its sesquicentenary year.

• More details about Brendan Nottle | The Salvation Army - The Melbourne Way Pt 2

  Brendan Nottle | The Salvation Army - The Melbourne Way Pt 2

  Major Brendan Nottle has been a Salvation Army officer for over 30 years. He has served as the chaplain of the Mighty Collingwood Football Club since 2000. Together with his wife and mission partner, Major Sandra Nottle, Brendan runs the Salvos’ operations in the City of Melbourne, from TSA Melbourne Project 614’s historic site at 69 Bourke Street. They have done so since 2003. The Nottles have worked with Melbourne’s most vulnerable and marginalised people for decades. in 2020 Brendan was asked to be the face and voice of the Salvos’ annual national Red Shield Appeal, which raised millions for their social and community work across Australia. Brendan’s 614 team raised a record $190,000. In 2019 Brendan was nominated as a finalist for the 2020 Australian of the Year (Victoria), alongside journalist Adele Ferguson, AFL champion and MND awareness advocate Neale Daniher, and musician Archie Roach. In 2017 Brendan walked to Canberra to highlight the issue of homelessness, and to call on federal politicians to develop a multi-partisan, national plan to solve Australia’s homelessness and housing crises. His 40-day walk traversed 703 km and included an icy swim across the Murray River. (He was happy to fly home afterwards.) During his trek, Brendan spoke to thousands of Australians at public events, raised more than $123,000, and gathered more than 9,340 signatures on a homelessness petition he presented to Prime Minister Turnbull. The Walk to Canberra received more than 400 media hits nationally, estimated to be worth more than $2 million, and reached more than 20 million Australians. In 2013 Brendan was the Melburnian of the Year and was also crowned as one of the Moomba monarchs in Melbourne’s annual community festival. Brendan was a member of the Premier’s Ice Action Taskforce and the Housing Minister’s Rough Sleeping Round Table. He sits on the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner’s Corporate Advisory Group and is a board member of the Australian Intercultural Society. He is a much sought-after speaker across Australasia and overseas. Brendan and Sandra have three daughters and a granddaughter. Brendan treasures spending time with his family, and enjoys reading, watching movies and TV and walking.

• More details about Lynette Russell | Truth-Telling Before 1770

  Lynette Russell | Truth-Telling Before 1770

  Professor Lynette Russell AM is Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor at Monash University, in the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre. An anthropological historian, she specialises in Australian Indigenous history, particularly colonial encounters and the representation of Aboriginal people in archives, museums, and popular culture. She leads Global Encounters, an ARC Laureate Fellowship project examining interactions between Australia's Indigenous peoples and maritime voyagers across a millennium. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Australian Academies of the Humanities and Social Sciences, she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2019 for services to higher education and Indigenous histories. Her Aboriginal ancestors were born on Wotjobaluk country.

• More details about Sean Scalmer | Shorter Hours: The Long Struggle

  Sean Scalmer | Shorter Hours: The Long Struggle

  Sean Scalmer is a Professor of History at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of seven books on political and labour history, including the prize-winning Gandhi in the West (2011), On the Stump (2017), and most recently, A Fair Day’s Work: The Quest to Win Back Time (2025). He is a co-editor of the journal Moving the Social, a deputy-editor of Labour History, and a co-coordinator of the European Labour History Network working group on ‘Histories of Working Time’.

• More details about Bill Shorten

  Bill Shorten

  Professor The Hon Bill Shorten became Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra in January 2025, after a career that included leadership roles with the Australian Workers’ Union and 18 years serving federal politics, including six as Leader of the Opposition. Since joining the University of Canberra, Professor Shorten has focused on building on its impactful history of practical education, mission-driven research and industry collaboration. He strongly believes that a modern university recognises the unique pressures on today’s school leavers and mature students alike and works to widen participation for all who seek an education.

• More details about Zoe Smith | Getting equal: Women’s rights and reform movements, 1850-1900 – Zoe Smith, University of New South Wales

  Zoe Smith | Getting equal: Women’s rights and reform movements, 1850-1900 – Zoe Smith, University of New South Wales

  Dr Zoe Smith is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales. Her award-winning research sits at the intersection of gender history, cultural history, social history, literary history, and feminist legal history, and has been published in leading academic journals including History Australia, Australian Feminist Studies, and Women’s History Review. Her doctoral research, completed at ANU, was a social and cultural history of domestic violence in Australia between 1880 and 1914, and she is now working on the history of coercive control in Australia between 1890 and 1975.

• More details about Shurlee Swain | The Problem of Poverty

  Shurlee Swain | The Problem of Poverty

  Shurlee Swain is an Emeritus Professor at Australian Catholic University. A social historian, her research has encompassed urban, religious and women's history, focused on the interaction of women and children with the welfare system.

• More details about Dr Mark Zirnsak | What does social justice mean now?

  Dr Mark Zirnsak | What does social justice mean now?

  Mark joined the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of Victoria and Tasmania in 1999 as the Social Justice Officer. He became director for social justice in 2004. In 2019, Mark became the Senior Social Justice Advocate. Mark was one of the founders of the Tax Justice Network Australia and is an expert adviser to Transparency International Australia. He is a member of the Attorney General’s National Roundtable on Slavery and Human Trafficking, Modern Slavery Expert Advisory Group and civil society co-chair of the Open Government Partnership.

• More details about Frank Bongiorno

  Frank Bongiorno

  Frank Bongiorno is Director of the Vice-Chancellor's Centre of Public Ideas (CoPI), University of Canberra & Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas. Frank is a historian of Australia, with a focus on political and labour history, and his books include The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (2012), The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015) and Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia (2022). He has previously held academic appointments at Griffith University, the University of New England, King's College London and the Australian National University, where he was Professor of History and is now Emeritus Professor. He was also Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge in 1997–98 and is Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University. Frank is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Humanities. He serves as Deputy Chair of the Advisory Council of the National Archives of Australia and as a member of the Editorial Board of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Documents on Australian Foreign Policy project. Frank is a Past President of the Australian Historical Association and current President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.