ANU/Canberra Times meet the author event with Anna Bligh in conversation with The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP

Anna Bligh knows something about hard knocks and high walls. She was raised by a single mother in the working class Gold Coast, a young girl with a soon-to-be-estranged dad who struggled with alcoholism. She spent over 17 years in the rough and tumble of the Queensland Parliament (seven of them as either Deputy Premier or Premier). In 2011, she led Queensland through the devastation of Australia's largest natural disasters. Her Party then lost the 2012 State election and Anna stepped down to start a new life, only to find herself diagnosed with cancer.

Writing with her trademark honesty, warmth and humour about the challenges that public and private life have thrown her, Anna reflects candidly - as a wife, mother, daughter, friend and political leader - on the lessons of leadership, resilience, community and family.

Anna Bligh became Deputy Premier of Queensland in 2005 and Premier in 2007. In March 2009 Anna made history, becoming the first woman to lead a party to victory in a State election in Australia. After losing the election in 2012, she stepped down and is now the CEO of the NSW YWCA.

Anna Bligh was joined in conversation by The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Federal Member for Sydney, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament.

Antibiotic resistance is rapidly rising internationally. Many bacterial infections are now very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat. Gram negative bacteria are the pointy end of this growing problem, including very common bacteria such as E. Coli.

Antibiotic resistance is proportional to use. The more antibiotics used, the more resistance develops and spreads. This is both in individuals (e.g. with the pneumonia bacteria - pneumococcus) and for populations in different countries.

Decreasing the total amounts of antimicrobial used in people and agriculture, decreasing corruption in countries around the world, adopting a One Health approach and ensuring people and food animals have access to “safe” water will all make major contributions to controlling antimicrobial resistance.

Presented by Professor Peter Collignon AM. Exec Director, ACT Pathology. Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist, Canberra Hospital. Professor, ANU Medical School.

The incoming Head of the ANU National Security College, Professor Rory Medcalf, offers some assessments on the long-term policy choices Australians and their governments will need to make to advance their country’s security interests in the uncertain decades ahead.

Professor Rory Medcalf commenced as the Head of the National Security College in January 2015. His professional background spans diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks and journalism. Most recently he was the Director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy from 2007 to 2015.

His Excellency Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão is the Minister of Planning and Strategic Investment for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. He has served as President of his country for five years, Prime Minister for seven and a half years and was a central figure in his country’s 24-year struggle for the restoration of independence.

In this public address he discussed Political Transition and National Unity: The Timor-Leste Story, exploring the lessons of nation building and transition in Australia’s ‘near neighbor to the north’. He reflected on the ways Timor-Leste’s experience relates to international experience and present his views on how emerging global trends are impacting developing nations and fragile States.

His Excellency Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão is the Minister of Planning and Strategic Investment of the Government of Timor-Leste. Until stepping aside in February 2015 to facilitate a generational leadership transition, he was the Prime Minister of his country for seven and a half years. Prior to this role as Prime Minister he served as the first elected President of the Republic after being sworn in on the 20th of May 2002, the day marking Timor-Leste’s official restoration of independence.

Xanana Gusmão was a central figure in the quest for independence and after the Indonesian occupation began in 1975 he became deeply engaged in the resistance struggle. In 1981 he was elected leader of the Resistance and Commander-in-Chief of the National Liberation Armed Forces of Timor-Leste. He went on to conceive and implement the Policy of National Unity bringing together all to work cooperatively to achieve the goal of national sovereignty.

In November of 1992, after 17 years of active resistance, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão was captured in the capital Díli and even though imprisoned in Indonesia until September 1999, he continued to lead the struggle to achieve freedom for his people.

On release he returned to see his dream of an independent Timor-Leste realised and turned his efforts to the task of national reconstruction, continuing his life-long work of service to uphold the independence and dignity of the people of Timor-Leste.

Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão has received recognition around the world for his humanitarian work and his role as a champion of peace and reconciliation.

ST Lee Lecture

The ST Lee Lecture on Asia and the Pacific was established in 2007 thanks to the generous support of Singaporean businessman and philanthropist Dr ST Lee.

The lecture provides an opportunity for a distinguished figure from the Asia Pacific to speak on developments or trends in the region.

Internationally acclaimed author David Malouf joins Gerard Vaughan AM in conversation for a discussion featuring art, literature and music.

After exploring the idea of home, where and what it is in A First Place, what does it mean to be a writer and where writing begins in The Writing Life, David Malouf moves on to words, music, art and performance in Being There.

With pieces on the Sydney Opera House - then and now - responses to art, artists and architects, and including Malouf’s previously unpublished libretti for Voss and a translation of Hippolytus, this is an unmissable and stimulating collection of one man’s connection to the world of art, ideas and culture.

David Malouf’s Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award and his most recent books are A First Place and The Writing Life.

Dr Gerard Vaughan AM is the Director of the National Gallery of Australia, a position he has held since November 2014.

The rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) on vast swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq, and the US-led military response to it, have introduced another complex dimension to an oil-rich but already very volatile Middle East. The old correlation of forces in support of maintaining the status quo, especially following the Iranian revolution more than 35 years ago, has been changing.

A set of new alignments and realignments along multiple regional fault-lines, including sectarian divisions and geopolitical rivalries at different levels, has come to redefine the region and possibly change its traditional political and territorial contours. IS has confronted all the regional states, from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a common enemy. Yet, it is the United States and its Western allies that have taken the lead in launching a military intervention to ‘degrade and eliminate’ IS, despite lacking a laudable past record in this respect.

This raises a number of questions. Should the problem of IS have been left to the regional actors to handle? Whilst IS may be containable, can it be defeated? Even if IS is eliminated, what guarantee is there that another extremist group won’t replace it? Can IS become a franchise, as al-Qaeda has? What is the possible best way to deal with religious extremism in the Middle East? What can be expected of the on-going air campaign against IS in terms of its consequences for the region, and the US and its allies?

This conversation will focus on these questions in an attempt to unpack the nature of the mess that is the Middle East – a region so turbulent and yet so rich from which the world cannot simply disentangle itself.

Amin Saikal AM, FASSA is Professor of Political Science, Public Policy Fellow, and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (Middle East and Central Asia) at ANU.

He has been a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in International Relations, and Visiting Fellow to Princeton University, Cambridge University and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. He is an awardee of the Order of Australia (AM) ‘for service to the international community and education through the development of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, and as an author and adviser’, and is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Professor Saikal was joined in conversation by Virginia Haussegger.

Virginia Haussegger AM is an award winning journalist and social commentator. With more than 25 years in news broadcasting, her work has taken her around the globe – from the Middle East, Iraq, Europe, Afghanistan and Washington - reporting for Australia’s leading current affairs programs on Channel 9, the 7 Network and the ABC.

Science has evolved over thousands of years of human enquiry to provide a rational basis for understanding and predicting what happens in the world around us.

We rely on science to enhance our standard of living, to keep us healthy and to address the problems and challenges that we face. Science has put men on the moon, probed distant planets, discovered DNA and cured disease.

And yet, there are many who still question the value and legitimacy of science which raises the question: when and why does science matter?

Four of the world’s most eminent scientists come together at ANU for one night only to discuss and deliberate on the biggest challenges facing the science community today. If you don’t think science matters to you, you may think again.

Professor Steven Chu was the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics. He has devoted his recent scientific career to the search for new solutions to our energy and climate challenges. In December 2008 Dr Chu was selected by then President-elect Barack Obama to serve as Secretary of Energy, a position he held until April 2013.

Professor Brian Schmidt AC is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at ANU. Professor Schmidt was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating Universe.

Professor Lawrence Krauss is theoretical physicist and the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. He is an advocate of scientific scepticism, science education and the science of morality.

Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University. Her research connects theoretical insights to puzzles in our current understanding of the properties and interactions of matter. Professor Randall was on the list of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2007 and was one of 40 people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue that year.

Presented by http://physics.anu.edu.au & http://energy.anu.edu.au

In today’s classrooms academics and teachers are increasingly expected to incorporate new communication technologies into their curriculum. However, by adopting these new mediums are we reducing the quality of students’ educational experience or is this just the way of the classrooms of tomorrow?

In the final ‘blow up the lecture’ event for the year, our panel of experts examine the future of education in an online world addressing questions such as:

What digital resources can we harness to enhance our massive open online courses (MOOCs)? Are there any resources that need rapid development?

What is our single most relevant hurdle to fully harnessing digital education

What are the key target populations for ANU in online learning?

What do you think are the measures of success for MOOCs?

Armando Fox is a professor in Berkeley's Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department and the Faculty Advisor to the UC Berkeley MOOCLab. With his colleague David Patterson, he co-designed and co-taught Berkeley's first Massive Open Online Course on "Engineering Software as a Service", offered through edX, through which over 10,000 students in over 120 countries have earned certificates of completion.

Gabriele Bammer is a professor at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health and ANU Research School of Population Health. She is developing the new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S) and is working with Michael Smithson from the Research School of Psychology on an ANU edX MOOC on “Ignorance!” which will go live in 2015.

Benjamin Niles is the President of the ANU Postgraduate and Research Students' Association (PARSA). Ben studied at Melbourne High School and went on to complete a Bachelor of Commerce at Monash University. In 2013 he commenced the Juris Doctor with the College of Law. Prior to commencement at the ANU he has worked as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers and as a Coordinator for the not-for-profit tutoring organisation Embrace Education.

Sam Parkinson is a year 8 student from Telopea Park School.

The conversation was facilitated by Philip Clark ABC Canberra Breakfast Presenter.

Professor Steven Chu gives the plenary opening at the Light, Energy and the Environment Congress held on 5 December 2014.

The Australian community has, to an unprecedented extent, become involved in reconciliation through Reconciliation Action Plans and other initiatives. There is acceptance that there is a broad responsibility beyond governments to help close the gap. At the same time we have sharpened political and government focus with a Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, massive reorganisation of how the Commonwealth goes about its business, and all-party support for Constitutional recognition. In these respects, it can be said to be the best of times. But the wide community support this suggests is support for equality, that we all become the same in a social and economic sense. Reconciliation is about more than equality. It involves recognition of the possibility of continuing difference as well. The continuing place of the world's oldest living cultures is still unfinished business. Reconciliation here requires more than the legally mandated post-Mabo requirement to deal with the Aboriginal native title collectives identified by Indigenous law and custom. It requires a largeness of both mind and heart and preparedness to allow space for Indigenous people to determine what collective identities they wish to maintain as they rightly enjoy equal citizenship. Beyond that, we need to settle the relationship between those first nations and the rest of us. Are we big enough to see beyond assimilation?

The Hon Fred Chaney's hard work in support of often marginalised people has never faltered. As founding co-chair of Reconciliation Australia and an early advocate for Aboriginal voting rights, Fred's contribution includes establishing the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia and, between 1978 and 1980, serving as Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. For many years, Fred was Deputy President of the National Native Title Tribunal and, more recently, chaired the Board of Central Desert Native Title services. He was instrumental in establishing the Graham (Polly) Farmer Foundation, which supports Indigenous young people to reach their potential, and is the current Chair of Desert Knowledge Australia. Fred's long history of public service is rooted in his fierce commitment to social justice and a belief in the inherent equality of people. In all his leadership roles, Fred inspires others to work collaboratively, respectfully and ambitiously to overcome the barriers that inhibit people's full economic and social participation in Australian society.

The Annual ANU Reconciliation Lecture is hosted annually by NCIS in conjunction with Reconciliation Australia, ANU College of Law, and National Film and Sound Archive, Australia. The lecture is presented by an eminent member of the Australian community, who speaks on their topic of expertise as it relates to reconciliation in Australia.