Australia is Breaking: The Minefield
One of Australia’s greatest strengths has been the remarkable diversity of its multicultural society. However, is this strength a potential source of weakness? One of the surest means for weakening a liberal democracy is to exploit latent divisions – to ‘divide and conquer’. We explore the internal and external forces that risk undermining our sense of national unity. Where might the remedies be found? How do we stitch together the fraying fabric of social unity?
This session will be recorded and broadcast on ABC Radio National’s The Minefield.
Waleed Aly
Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author, academic and musician. He is a lecturer in politics at Monash University and was awarded his PhD in 2018 on global terrorism (and is a Patron of the Street Library). Waleed is co-host of Network TEN’s The Project and co-presents The Minefield on Radio National with ethicist Scott Stephens every week. In 2014 Waleed was awarded the prestigious Walkley Award for Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique. Within his first year as a full-time presenter on The Project, Waleed took home the 2016 Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Australian TV Personality, Silver Logie Award for Best Presenter and delivered the 2016 Andrew Olle Media Lecture. Waleed won the Silver Logie Award for Best Presenter again in 2017, received another nomination for the Silver Logie in 2019, and was nominated again for the Gold Logie in 2017 and 2019.
Stan Grant
Stan Grant is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Yindyamarra Nguluway Trust at Charles Sturt University. He has a Doctorate of Theology and was formerly ABC’s Global Affairs and Indigenous Affairs Analyst and host of news program Q+A. He is one of Australia’s most respected and awarded journalists, with more than 40 years experience in radio and television news and current affairs. For more than a decade he was CNN’s senior international correspondent based in China and the Middle East. He is the author of seven critically lauded bestselling books and the producer and writer of the Australian Academy Award winning documentary The Australian Dream examining the racist abuse of footballer Adam Goodes. Stan has a strong reputation for independence and integrity and has covered the biggest stories of our world for the past four decades including interviewing many Australian and world political leaders.
Scott Stephens
Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion and Ethics online editor and the co-host, with Waleed Aly, of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. He and Waleed Aly are also the authors of Uncivil Wars: How Contempt is Corroding Democracy (Quarterly Essay 87, 2022). He is editor of Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other Writings by Raimond Gaita (2023), and the co-editor and translator of two volumes of the selected writings of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real (2005) and The Universal Exception (2006). He has published widely on moral philosophy, theological ethics and democratic theory.
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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country in which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
While we believe in freedom of speech, the views and opinions expressed by the speakers are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.