The Fair Go

Stuart Macintyre has been chair of the Heritage Council of Victoria since 2015, and is regarded as one of Australia's most influential historians.

He's the former Dean of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and is Emeritus Laureate Professor of the University of Melbourne and a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Stuart was president of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia from 2007 to 2009. With Alison Ashford, he edited the Cambridge History of Australia (2013). His most recent book is Australia's Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s, published in 2015.

The Heritage Council of Victoria is an independent statutory body which identifies and protects places and objects of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria.  

Monica Dux is a writer and commentator. She is the author of Lapsed: losing your religion is harder than it looks (HarperCollins ABC Books, 2021), Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting) (MUP, 2013), co-author of The Great Feminist Denial (MUP, 2008), and editor of the anthology Mothermorphosis (MUP, 2015). Monica was a founding board member of the Stella Prize, and the Feminist Writers Festival. From 2013 until 2022 she was a columnist for The Saturday Age. She is currently doing a PhD in Creative Practice at RMIT.  

David Manne is a human rights lawyer and Executive Director of Refugee Legal (previously the Refugee & Immigration Legal Centre (RILC)). He has worked in various capacities assisting refugees and asylum seekers for over 20 years. In January 2001, he joined Refugee Legal, at the forefront of defending the rights, the dignity and the lives of asylum seekers, refugees and disadvantaged migrants.

David sat on the Board of the Refugee Council of Australia for seven years, and currently the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture Ethics Committee, and a number of peak Government consultative bodies. He has also been appointed to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Advisory Board of Eminent Persons. He has been invited to attend and present at the UN High Commissioner's Dialogue on Protection Challenges on numerous occasions.

David has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Law Institute of Victoria Paul Baker Prize for Administrative and Human Rights Law, the Law Institute President’s Awards (2006 and 2011), was shortlisted for the Australian Human Rights Commission Human Rights Medal in 2011 and been frequently named as one of Australia’s Leading Immigration Lawyers in the Australian edition of Best Lawyers.

David headed Refugee Legal’s legal teams in successfully arguing 10 out of 10 High Court challenges, including the cases of Plaintiff M61 (regarding the Government’s ‘offshore processing’ regime in Australia); Plaintiffs M70/M106 (the ‘Malaysia Solution’ case); Plaintiff M47 (challenging security assessment and indefinite detention of a refugee); Plaintiff M76 (regarding indefinite detention of a refugee on security grounds); Plaintiff M150 (challenge by a 15 year old unaccompanied refugee in relation to the Government’s attempt to bar permanent protection through a visa cap); and Plaintiff S89 (challenging a Government regulation designed to bar boat arrivals from permanent protection).

Damien, a qualified lawyer, joined the ABC in 1996 as the producer of ABC Radio National’s Law Report and in 2001 became the presenter. In the past he has worked as a legal writer for the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission and written for Australian Lawyer magazine.

Before his career in the media, Damien worked as a solicitor in various glass towers in Melbourne’s CBD and was a long-time volunteer solicitor at his local community legal centre in St Kilda.

Damien is fascinated by the inner workings of our legal system and by how individuals grapple with its complexities as they strive to achieve ‘justice’.

Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie (Aboriginal) author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Killing Darcy won the Royal Blind Society Award and was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Stella Prize, two Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, two Queensland Literary Awards and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead. Her latest book is Edenglassie.