Sir John Quick Public Lecture Series
The Sir John Quick Lecture is presented annually on the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University with the support of the Sir John Quick Lecture Committee and the City of Greater Bendigo.
The lecture series has been established to revive the memory of the acknowledged 'father' of Australia Federation.
As a delegate from the Bendigo A.N.A., John Quick attended the 1893 Corowa Conference where he presented the famous resolution which took Federation's fate away from Parliaments and gave it directly to the people via elections for representatives and a referendum on the draft Constitution.
He was awarded a knighthood in 1901 for his work for Federation. Sir John Quick was Bendigo's first Federal MP, holding the seat until 1913.
2008 Lecture
Politics and the Public Language
Presented by Mr Don Watson, La Trobe alumnus, author, public intellectual and former speechwriter to Paul Keating.
Don Watson is one of Australia's most distinguished writers and public speakers. He grew up on a farm in Gippsland and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books about Australian history before turning his hand to the TV and stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with writing political speeches for the Victorian Premier John Cain. In 1992 he became Paul Keating's speech-writer and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year. In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis.
His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Essay Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. It was published in the UK and the US. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and more recently Don contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys, is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States in 2005, post Hurricane Katrina. Travelling the railways and highways, he writes about religion, race, class, places, politics and people; the noble dreams and confounding paradoxes of the world's greatest democracy and superpower. This book, published by Random House in March 2008, recently won the 35th Age Book of the Year Award.
- Date & time:
- Tuesday 23 September, 2008 at 5.45pm
- Location:
- McKay Lecture Theatre,
La Trobe University, Edwards Rd, Bendigo - RSVP:
- 19 September 2008
Enquiries
Shioban Downing
Events and Communications Officer
- T: +61 (0)3 5444 7374
- E: Bendigo-Events@latrobe.edu.au