What is the story behind the woman who appears on Australia's $50 note?

On this week’s Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Hilary Silbert to uncover the remarkable life of Australia's first female parliamentarian, Edith Cowan. Who rose from the familial infamy of having a convicted murderer for a father, to become one of the most influential citizens in the history of Western Australia, and an inspiration to women across the nation.

Hilary Silbert was the inaugural Corporate Events Manager at the newly formed Edith Cowan University. An admirer of Cowan, Silbert has become an advocate for her memory and memorialisation, helping to organise the celebrations marking the centenary of her election to parliament in 2021. She is currently writing a full-length biography of Cowan, which will be the second ever to be published.

EBWF7TTIDVBTW9ML

30 years on from the election of the Howard Government, how does its extensive foreign policy legacy live up to scrutiny?

On this week’s Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Alexander Downer and his biographer Tony Parkinson to discuss A Step to the Right, the new book on Australia's longest serving foreign minister. The man who oversaw one of the most eventful periods in Australian foreign policy, from the successful intervention in East Timor, to the response to 9/11, invocation of the ANZUS Treaty, and of course the controversies of the Iraq War.

Tony Parkinson is a former senior adviser to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and Victorian Premier Dr Denis Napthine. He began his career in journalism, serving as The Age’s International Affairs Editor, The Australian’s European Correspondent, and national political editor of The Herald and Herald Sun in Melbourne. He has reported on elections in Australia, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Germany, and on conflicts in Northern Ireland, Fiji, and the Middle East — including the 1991 Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait. Parkinson has also served as a consultant to the United Nations and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, and held a senior government affairs role with one of Australia’s top 20 ASX-listed companies. In 2000, he published Jeff: The Rise and Fall of a Political Phenomenon (Viking/Penguin).

V5BFS6XCELVRBD64

Do those who denigrate Australia's past hurt Australia's present?

On this week’s Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Tony Abbott to discuss his new book, Australia: A History. An antidote to the 'Black armband' view of our national story, which doesn't downplay the darker aspects of our past, but highlights the overwhelming good. A good we might expect to find if we appreciate the nation that we live in today, and want to understand how it came to be so that we may be better placed to preserve it.

Tony Abbott served as Australia's 28th prime minister and was the member for Warringah in the Australian parliament between 1994 and 2019. He is a Rhodes Scholar and the author of four books: The Minimal Monarchy, How to Win the Constitutional War, Battlelines, and most recently Australia: A History.

AUH2TIGVCWJSIR6H

Do Australians still agree on enough fundamental values to hold society together?

On this week’s Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Perter Kurti from the Centre for Independent Studies, to ponder how Australia's democratic and social cohesion can survive our increasing pluralism and historically high immigration rate. Exploring whether there remain enough common threads to bind us together as a nation.

Reverend Peter Kurti is Director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author or editor of a number of books and has written extensively about issues of religion, liberty, and civil society in Australia. He appears frequently as a columnist and as a commentator on television and radio. Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an ordained minister in the Anglican Church of Australia. In June of 2025 he released The ties that bind: Reconciling value pluralism and national identity.

EXIM0RFAFE9IIWIM

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations’. This seventh & final episode features Paul Brown's paper 'Sons of Empire: Menzies, Downer and their response to Britain joining the EEC', Andrew Kemp's paper 'A very different world: Robert Menzies, Harold Macmillan, and the end of Greater Britain', & Lucas McLennan's paper 'Menzies and Diefenbaker: Navigating the post-British World'.

Paul Brown is a published author awarded a Bachelor of Arts (History Honours) at the University of New South Wales for a thesis on the Balfour Declaration and Palestine 1917 and a Doctorate from the University of Wollongong for his study of Alexander Downer’s Formative Family Policy Influences. He has also contributed to various publications including the chapter ‘The Progressive Conservatism of Alexander Downer’ in Greg Melleuish’s study Liberalism and Conservatism and ‘Alick Downer’s Immigration Program’ in Zachary Gorman’s The Menzies Ascendency.

Andrew Kemp is a Melbourne-based writer and a former economist at the Commonwealth Treasury and the Department of Treasury and Finance in Victoria. He has written for the Australian Financial Review, contributed a chapter to Unity in Autonomy: A Federal History of the Founding of the Liberal Party, and recently launched an Australian history themed Substack titled ‘Australia Past and Present’.

Lucas McLennan works as a Senior History Teacher. He completed an Honours Degree in History and teaching qualifications at Monash University and recently completed a Master of Education from the University of Melbourne. His Masters thesis was on the Education policy of the first Anglican Bishop in Australia, William Grant Broughton, while his earlier Honours thesis examined Australia's compulsory military training schemes between Federation and the First World War. He has a strong interest in Australia's political, religious, and cultural history.

JQFLVBJCSBG3DOET

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nationa’. This sixth episode features Michael de Percy's paper 'God, King, and Country: British Identity and the Australian Defence Force', Greg Melleuish's paper 'Being British, Being Australian', & Peter Kurti's paper 'Beyond the Founder's Intentions: Menzies, the Commonwealth and Australian Pluralism'.

Michael de Percy FRSA FCILT MRSN is a political scientist, journalist, and political commentator based in Gunning, New South Wales. He is the Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent for The Spectator Australia and an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Canberra School of Government at the University of Canberra. He was appointed to the Australian Research Council's College of Experts from 2022–2025. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College Duntroon where he received the Brigadier Urquhart Trophy (Royal Australian Artillery Prize).

Greg Melleuish is Professorial Fellow of the Robert Menzies Institute. Before his recent retirement, he was a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, where he taught, among other things, Australian politics. He has written widely on Australian political thought, including Cultural Liberalism in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Despotic State or Free Individual (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014). He wrote The Forgotten Menzies (MUP, 2021) with Dr Stephen Chavura.

Peter Kurti is Director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies and is also Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Law and Business at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He has written extensively about issues of religion, liberty, culture, and civil society in Australia, and appears frequently as a commentator on television and radio. In addition to having written many newspaper articles, he is also the author or editor of a number of books, including The Tyranny of Tolerance: Threats to Religious Liberty in Australia; Euthanasia: Seven Questions about Voluntary Assisted Dying; Sacred & Profane: Faith and Belief in a Secular Society; Beyond Belief: Rethinking the Voice to Parliament; and Beneath the Southern Cross: Looking for Australia in the 21st century. Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an ordained minister in the Anglican Church of Australia.

NOODNKMSRBJJJFJR

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations’. This fifth episode features Dan Brettig's paper 'Menzies, Cricket, and the Cold War', Teesta Prakash's paper 'Menzies, Commonwealth and Kashmir', Stewart Gill's paper 'Canada and Australia in the Commonwealth:

Daniel Brettig is The Age's chief cricket writer and author of several books on cricket. They include Whitewash to Whitewash: Australian Cricket's Years of Struggle and Summer of Riches, Bradman & Packer: The Deal that Changed Cricket, and Bucking the Trend (co-authored with Chris Rogers).

Teesta Prakash is the research fellow (security and geopolitics) at the Australia India Institute. She is an expert on the strategic affairs of the Indo-Pacific, specialising in geoeconomics of India, Southeast Asia, and the Quad. Previously, she was an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute leading the Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Program between 2022 and 2023. Before that she was the inaugural Southeast Asia Research Associate at the Lowy Institute between 2021 and 2022. Dr Prakash completed her PhD in 2021 from Griffith University; the focus of her thesis was Australia-India strategic and economic relations during the Cold War.

Stewart Gill OAM is an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He was formerly Master of Queen’s College. He has a Master of Arts from the University of Toronto and a PhD from the University of Guelph. He is a Fellow of The Royal Historical Society, London and his published historical studies span Canada, Scotland, and Australia.

Tim Rowse is an historian of Australia. Before retiring in 2016 from Western Sydney University, he had held appointments (of various lengths) at: Macquarie University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of Queensland, The Menzies School of Health Research, the Australian National University and Harvard University. Most of his publications have been about the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. He is also the author of two books about the career of Dr. H.C. Coombs. In recent years, with Murray Goot, he has written on the politics of constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, and he and Professor Goot have a book length account of the 2023 referendum in press.

2QLTEVAZQCV0HQP2

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This fourth episode features Selwyn Cornish & John Hawkins's paper 'Menzies, Keynes and the Australian economists', Mark Lunney's paper 'A Judicial Commonwealth?', & Eli Rubenstein Sturgess's paper 'Equally Sacred Precincts: Why Lord’s was as central as Westminster to Menzies’s relationship with the British Commonwealth of Nations'.

Selwyn Cornish is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and the Official Historian of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Selwyn Cornish is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and the Official Historian of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

John Hawkins is deputy head of the Canberra School of Politics, Economics & Society at the University of Canberra. He was awarded a PhD in political science from the Australian National University for his thesis on the Australian treasurers. He also holds an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and an MA in politics and history from Macquarie University. He is co-editor of History of Economics Review. He previously worked in the Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank and served as secretary of the Senate Economics Committee. He was interviewed for the Afternoon Light podcast in August 2023 on Menzies as treasurer.

Mark Lunney is a Professor at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia. His research interests are the law of tort, and the history of the common law and legal profession. His recent historical work has focused on the relationship between British race patriotism and representations of Australian legal exceptionalism from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. His monograph, A History of Australian Tort Law 1901–1945: England’s Obedient Servant? was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. In September 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

Eliezer ('Eli') Rubenstein Sturgess is a graduate of the University of Melbourne having completed a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Music. In 2024, he undertook an honours year in History under the supervision of Professor Joy Damousi and received first-class honours. He has applied to begin a PhD in History at the University of Melbourne starting 2026. Eli has an interest in the nexus between politics and cricket, and the often-overlooked role of cricket in the lives of Australia's political leaders.

3BKI1PCU7ZE1QQAZ

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This third episode features David Furse-Roberts's paper 'A Twentieth Century Australian Whig: Robert Menzies and the Nineteenth Century British Liberal Tradition', Charles Richardson's paper 'Menzies, Burkean liberal or Burkean conservative?', Alex McDermott's paper 'When Menzies met Baldwin: Australian and English conservatism, difference and convergence', & Kit Kowol's paper 'Australia in the post-war British Conservative Political Imagination'.

David Furse-Roberts presently works as a speechwriter and researcher for a Federal Senator. He holds a PhD in history from the University of NSW and is the author of God and Menzies (2021). He is also the editor of Howard: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches (2017). Since joining the MRC in 2016, he has written for the ABC, Quadrant, Spectator Australia and other publications on the history and contemporary relevance of liberalism in Australia. This has covered such topics as the founding philosophy of Robert Menzies, the remarkable life of Prime Minister John Gorton and the rich legacy of John Howard. David also comments on topical issues such as free speech and education from a conservative and liberal perspective.

Charles Richardson has a law degree from Melbourne University and a PhD from Rutgers University, specialising in ethics and political philosophy. He has worked in a variety of positions in government and politics, and is a former director of Above Quota Elections Pty Ltd. His work has appeared in numerous publications, and he has been featured as a commentator in newspapers, radio, and television. Since 2012 he has written on world politics at his blog, The World is Not Enough, and does periodic consulting work on electoral matters. His research interests include the history of liberal democratic structures and the comparative study of European party systems.

Alex McDermott is a Curator and Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute. He is an author, historian and Executive Producer. He was Historical Curator for the “Democracy DNA” exhibition (2022) at the Museum of Australian Democracy, authored Australian History For Dummies (2022) and various commissioned histories which explore the crucial role played by civic associations in Australia’s democratic history, such as Of no personal influence: how people of common enterprise unexpectedly shaped Australia (2015) to mark the 175th anniversary of Australian Unity. Across more than two decades as public historian he has contributed his expertise to Screen Australia, State Library of Victoria, La Trobe University, the Institute of Public Affairs, Channel 7, SBS, ABC, Sky News Documentaries, and many other organisations.

Kit Kowol received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2014. He subsequently taught at Oxford and at King’s College London where he was an Early Career Development Fellow in Modern British History. His first book, Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill and the Second World War was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. He now lives in Brisbane where he works for the Queensland Government.

OXWIVWOO9M1CFSCV

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations’. This second episode features Lee Rippon's paper 'Britain, Australia, the Empire and prisoner of war diplomacy, 1939–1942', Wayne Reynolds's paper 'Navigating Imperial Overstretch east of Suez: Menzies and Australian foreign and defence policies 1935–1965, & Sue Thompson's paper 'Menzies’s Balancing Act in Southeast Asian Security'.

Lee Rippon is an academic status holder at Flinders University and works as a historian in the Commemorative Events Branch of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. She is the author of the book Australia’s Forgotten Soldiers in the Empire, 1939–1945: Prisoners of War, International Diplomacy and Australian Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Currently, Lee is researching her second monograph, which investigates Australians’ roles in the Special Operations Executive and MI9 in Europe during the Second World War.

Wayne Reynolds is an Hon Associate Professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He has worked on the history of Australian defence and foreign affairs with a focus on nuclear policy. Recent works include Australia and the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty 1945–1974 (Canberra: DFAT, 2013); ‘An Astute Choice: Anglo-Australian Cooperation on Nuclear Submarines in Historical Perspective’, Security Challenges, December 2013; ‘Whatever Happened to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, December 2023. Forthcoming works include a book chapter on Australia in The Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age (2026); Manuscript Australia and Global Power 1756–2021.

Sue Thompson is an Associate Professor at the ANU National Security College and current Secretary of the Britain and the World Society. Her research specialisation examines the history of regional cooperation in Southeast Asia during the Cold War with a focus on foreign and defence policy influences in the post-war evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism. She is the author of The United States and Southeast Asian Regionalism: Collective Security and Economic Development, 1945–75 and British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the Rise of Regional Cooperation, 1964–1973.

03BRBST0TCDQE2Z6