Chaired by Kerry O'Brien

Richard Flanagan returns to Writers’ Week for a wide-ranging discussion with Kerry O’Brien. Drawing on his journalism of recent years, particularly his now iconic essay The Australian Disease: On the Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-freedom and his recent bestseller on the salmon industry, Toxic, Richard and Kerry discuss the conformity that blights our national life, along with ideas of freedom, leadership, and the roots of inequality. If we are to find hope, Richard says, we must finally take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful.