Freedom of Speech is Over-Rated

Michael Gawenda is a former editor in chief of The Age. He is a Walkley Award winning journalist, columnist and former foreign correspondent.

He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of American Notebook, A Personal and Political Journey and Rocky and Gawenda The story of A Man and His Mutt.

Julian Burnside is a Melbourne barrister. He joined the Bar in 1976 and took silk in 1989. He specialises in commercial litigation, and has acted in many very contentious cases - the MUA Waterfront dispute; the Cash-for-Comment enquiry; cases for Alan Bond and Rose Porteous - but has become known for his human rights work and has acted pro bono in many refugee cases. 

He is an outspoken opponent of the mistreatment of people who come to Australia seeking protection from persecution. His latest book is Watching Out: Reflections on Justice and Injustice (Scribe).

Gretel Killeen is a writer, performer, voice artist and journalist. She is currently completing her directorial feature film debut.

Known to many as the host of one of Australia’s history-making television shows, she is also a bestselling author, journalist and humorist. She has directed documentaries in Africa and India, been a travel writer in Namibia, Lebanon and Antarctica, and performed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gretel is a single mum and is currently completing writing and directing her first feature film, Jimmy and Gret Don’t Do Sex.

Catherine Deveny has been a comedian, writer and professional speaker for 23 years.

She’s the author of seven books and over 1,000 columns for the Age newspaper, and is an ABC regular. She has appeared on Q&A five times — sitting next to John Elliott, Tony Abbott, Corey Bernardi, Peter Dutton and Archbishop Peter Jensen.

Deveny has performed five one-woman shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and has been named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Melbournians. Her charity and activist work includes public schools, public housing, feminism, atheism, asylum seekers, child abuse in the Catholic Church and homelessness.

She’s a keen commuter cycling ambassador and the co-founder of Pushy Women. She is the creator of the enormously successful Gunnas Writing Masterclasss — running 50 classes in less than 18 months. 

You’ll find her performing everywhere from debates at Melbourne Town Hall with Julian Burnside to Splendor In the Grass in Byron Bay.

She has never married and lives with her childhood sweetheart in the People's Republic Of Moreland.

Professor Marcia Langton AM holds the Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Her doctoral fieldwork was conducted in eastern Cape York Peninsula during the 1990s, and her experience of the statutory land claim and native title system in this region was informed by a decade of administration and fieldwork in the Northern Territory. She was awarded a PhD from Macquarie University in 2005. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia, a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Chair of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.

She is the editor of a new book: Community Futures, Legal Architecture: Foundations for Indigenous Peoples in the Global Mining Boom, published by Routledge. This book brings together in one volume the critical research and thinking from academic and practitioner colleagues over the last five years.

Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre and chairs the Intelligence Squared debates in Sydney and Melbourne.

Simon Longstaff spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge, before returning to Australia in mid-1991. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy.His research centred on related questions arising in the areas of political philosophy, ethics and the philosophy of education.

Dr Longstaff was inaugural president of The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of its Global Agenda Council. Publications include, Hard Cases, Tough Choices and numerous articles.

Arnold Zable is a highly acclaimed novelist, storyteller and human rights advocate. His works include Scraps of Heaven, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, which was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, and his most recent work The Watermill. Zable lives in Melbourne.