Our expectations that political leaders should be able to promote a positive agenda for Australia have perhaps never been higher, yet more based in a cynicism about what leaders can actually achieve. In this lecture, based on a forthcoming Quarterly Essay on political leadership, Laura Tingle reflects on our relationship with political leaders and how it is changing around the world.

As a journalist, essayist and author, Laura Tingle has reported on Australian politics and policy for more than 35 years. In 2018, she joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as chief political correspondent for its flagship current affairs program 7.30, after 16 years with the Australian Financial Review where she was political editor, and previously, senior reporting positions with other major Australian mastheads.

A multi-award winning journalist, she is the author of Chasing the Future, a book about the early 1990s recession, and two Quarterly Essays: Great Expectations (2012) and Political Amnesia (2015). An assembly of her essays, In Search of Good Government , was published in 2017. Her third Quarterly Essay on Australian politics will be published in September 2018.

Generously supported by the Myer Foundation