Wrecking the World Order
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The old ‘world order’ is shifting beneath our feet – with cracks driven by a growing cohort of authoritarian and sometimes erratic world leaders. In a year where half the world is voting in elections, we will look at heightened geopolitical tensions and the destabilisation of long-standing international alliances. Brace yourself for a thought-provoking discussion about living on the precipice of change, where the fate of nations hangs in the balance.
Avani Dias
Avani Dias is a reporter with Four Corners and was the ABC’s South Asia correspondent in India for the past two-and-a-half years. She was previously the host of the national youth current affairs show Hack on Triple J.
Matt Bevan
Matt Bevan is the host and writer of the award-winning ABC News podcast If You’re Listening. He has been a journalist at the ABC since 2008, and spent six years as newsreader for Radio National Breakfast. In 2022 he was awarded Podcast Host of the Year by Radio Today. In 2023 he was nominated for a Walkley Award for Explanatory Journalism.
Cheng Lei
Cheng Lei is a bilingual and bicultural TV journalist who worked in Shanghai, Singapore and Beijing for 18 years for CNBC and China’s state TV English channel. She spent three years and two months in imprisonment in China on espionage charges, despite a lack of basic spatial reasoning skills. Now she works as a presenter for Sky News Australia.
Hamish Macdonald
Hamish Macdonald is an award-winning journalist who has covered wars, disasters, and major world events. He hosts Mornings on ABC Sydney and co-hosts Global Roaming on Radio National – named Best News Podcast by Radio Today. His awards include a Walkley for current affairs journalism, the EU-Qantas Journalism Prize, and the Elizabeth O’Neill Journalism Award. He has reported from Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Egypt, Iraq and Japan, and has worked for Channel 4 News, Al Jazeera English and America’s ABC. In 2016 he became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Johanna Weaver
Professor Weaver is the founding Director of the Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University. Earlier she was Australia’s chief cyber negotiator at the United Nations. A recovering diplomat and a reformed commercial litigator, Professor Weaver is proudly neurodivergent. She champions tech policy as a tool to shape technology for the benefit of humanity.
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We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.