GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Matthew Condon is a prize-winning Australian novelist and journalist. He began his journalism career with the Gold Coast Bulletin in 1984 and subsequently worked for leading newspapers and journals including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-Herald, Melbourne’s Sunday Age and The Courier-Mail, and The Australian. He has written ten books of fiction, including The Trout Opera, and is the author of the bestselling true-crime trilogy about Queensland crime and corruption – Three Crooked Kings (2013), Jacks and Jokers (2014), All Fall Down (2015) and Little Fish are Sweet (2016). His most recent book is The Night Dragon (2019). His novels include a trilogy about police and political corruption in Queensland, the volumes of which have been nominated for a wide range of awards: the third volume won the Australian Book Industry Award for Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year. His other awards include winning the Queensland Premier’s Award (short story) for The Lulu Magnet. In 2019 Matthew was a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Rob Manning considers himself to be the luckiest man alive. When everything went catastrophically wrong he had everything that needed to happen, happen miraculously. After being diagnosed with end-stage liver disease caused by an autoimmune condition and complicated by alcohol consumption, he spent 2 weeks in a coma over Christmas 2021 waking on 2 January 2022 with a new lease on life and the liver of a deceased person. This former executive had his life saved by a selfless and generous donation by a family at the lowest point of grief. A father of one married for 26 years, He now campaigns tirelessly to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation and life-saving transplants. He wants the government to make it possible to celebrate deceased donors as heroes and make a contribution towards the funeral expenses of the deceased donors’ families.