What’s Democracy, Anyway?

Tim Dunlop is a Melbourne-based writer. His four books are an ongoing argument with the status quo, taking on the tired ideas of the political class and offering a better way forward. His new book, Voices Of Us, examines the 2022 election and the emergence of independents as a new political force.

Michael Ondaatje is Head of the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, and Professor of History, at Griffith University. Michael is a prize-winning researcher and teacher and a regular commentator on American history and politics in the media. He is the author of Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press) and is currently writing a biography of Neville Bonner, the first Indigenous Australian elected to federal parliament (Melbourne University Press). Michael has been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and was selected by the US Department of State for the International Visitor Leadership Program, the premier professional exchange program of the US government. He is also a recipient of the Max Crawford Medal — ‘Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities’ — and a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Editor of Meanjin Esther Anatolitis is one of Australia’s leading advocates for arts and culture. With an arts and media leadership career spanning over two decades, Esther is Hon A/Prof at RMIT School of Art, a member of the National Gallery of Australia Governing Council, and Principal of creative consultancy Test Pattern. A prolific writer and commentator, her book Place, Practice, Politics was published in 2022.

Paddy Manning is the author of several award-winning books, including biographies of Malcolm Turnbull and Nathan Tinkler. During almost twenty years in journalism he has worked for Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review and The Australian, and has won several awards for journalistic excellence. His book, Body Count, won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Nonfiction. His latest book is The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch.

Frank Bongiorno is a Canberra-based historian who teaches at the Australian National University. He is the author of The Sex Lives of Australians: A History, The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia and Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia.