Penny Wong

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**The ABR Podcast**

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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On our moral watch: The disgrace of homelessness in Australia

by Kevin Bell

This week on The ABR Podcast, Kevin Bell addresses the crisis in housing in Australia – a crisis which he says is at risk of ‘turning into a social and economic catastrophe’. Kevin Bell is a self-described baby boomer who, in his role as a Supreme Court judge, wrote a number of influential judgments on human rights and housing. He is a former director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law and commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Listen to Kevin Bell’s ‘On our moral watch: The disgrace of homelessness in Australia’, published in the September issue of ABR.

Recent episodes:

James Curran on Labor's foreign policy manoeuvres

by Australian Book Review •

The ABR Podcast

Penny Wong and Sitiveni Rabuka (photograph by DFAT/Sarah Hodges)

In this week’s ABR podcast, James Curran considers the response of Asia-Pacific nations to the government’s decision to retain AUKUS, the major foreign affairs initiative of the Morrison government. In seeking to shape this response, Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s message is necessarily complex, argues Curran.

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Penny Wong: Passion and principle by Margaret Simons

by Angela Woollacott •

December 2019, no. 417

Angela Woollacott reviews 'Penny Wong: Passion and principle' by Margaret Simons

Every biographer has a relationship with their subject, even if they have passed away. A real advantage for biographers of the dead is that the subject cannot say what they think about the book. The relationship between Margaret Simons and Penny Wong was fraught. That this mattered is evident from the opening sentence: ‘Penny Wong did not want this book to be written.’ Simons, a journalist, biographer, and associate professor at Monash University, uses her preface to complain about how difficult it was researching the book without Wong’s assistance and against her will.

... (read more)