Stop.

I mean it. Resist the temptation to look away.

Bring your eyes back around this way. You won’t regret it.

Rick Morton is the author of the wonderful One Hundred Years of Dirt. He’s senior reporter at the Saturday Paper and has won two Walkley awards for his coverage of the Robodebt Royal Commission. Now, in his book Mean Streak, he makes it personal.

He asks you to consider what it might be like to live in a country whose government callously, but deliberately, condemns its poorest citizens to a Kafkaesque nightmare. As some sort of idealogical crusade. To raise funds. That same government who, when it was revealed what they had done, was obliged to pay it all back, with interest, not a cent of which made up for the emotional pain they had caused.

Money which, of course, came from tax-payers. Not those who’d planned and instituted the regime.

Rick grew up on a remote cattle station in far-west Queensland. When he was seven years old he found his father kissing the governess. His mother was in hospital at the time, dealing with a family crisis. When she returned she discovered her husband was leaving her. She moved with the children into emergency housing in Charleville.

This is part of the story he tells in One Hundred Years of Dirt, of growing up in penury. But it's also a story about class. ‘I didn’t know there was a hierarchy because I couldn’t see the rest of the ladder from where I was.’ It is also a quintessential Australian bush story, but with a wider focus than what we usually expect. It was nominated for a great slew of prizes, was a best-seller.

Now he’s turned his focus to Robodebt, and, by following the lives of those on both sides of the fence with his trademark sensitivity and skill, he finds the thread that unravels the whole sorry story. 

Rick is a remarkable writer and a great speaker, don't miss this event!

Rick will be in conversation with Steven Lang.