Clive Hamilton and Bob Brown in conversation discussing Clive's memoir, Provocateur. 

DATE: Mon, 19 Sept 2022 

TIME: 5.30pm. 

VENUE: RACV Hotel Hobart, 154-156 Collins St, Hobart, TAS. 

TICKETS: $10. Book your place here. 

Join us at the RACV Hotel Hobart where Clive Hamilton will be in conversation with Bob Brown discussing his new memoir, Provocateur.

Clive Hamilton wanted to make a difference in the world. In his unique memoir, Provocateur, Hamilton shows us why questioning the status quo matters, how powerful arguments can change the country, and how the life of ideas in action actually works.

From why climate change matters and how we understand ourselves as Australians to the dangers posed to us by the new authoritarianism – all this and more has been shaped, for better or for worse, by public researchers and writers such as Hamilton.

His work, and that of the Australia Institute he founded, made him many friends as well as powerful enemies. He’s been denounced in federal parliament, black-handed by the Chinese Communist Party and sued by an angry corporation. He’s had to call in the police after death threats and take a crash course in counter-surveillance techniques. But he has also influenced the quality of the air Australians breathe, the cost of our education and how we see Australia’s place in the world.

In Provocateur, we see the passions, the doubts, the strategizing, the fears, the victories, the mistakes and the questioning. We are shown the importance of asking why and rattling the cage, but also the toll that it can have on the challenger. Provocateur is not just a memoir of change, but a blueprint for changing public debate in our increasingly uncertain times – proof that ideas are powerful and that a different way into the future is possible.

About Clive Hamilton: 

Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and academic. His influential books include Silent Invasion, Growth Fetish, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change and Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. For fourteen years he was the executive director of The Australia Institute, a think tank he founded. A professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, he has held visiting academic positions at the University of Oxford, Yale University and Sciences Po. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The New York Times, Times Higher Education Supplement, Nature and Scientific American.

About Bob Brown:

Bob Brown resigned as leader of the Greens in 2012 and from the Australian Senate in June 2012.  Brown led the Australian Greens from the party's foundation in 1992 until April 2012. In 1978 Bob was appointed director of the Tasmania Wilderness Society and led the campaign to prevent the construction of the Franklin dam. He spent 19 days in prison and on the day of his release, in 1983, he became a member of Tasmania’s parliament. Bob was elected to the Australian Senate in 1996. From 2002 to 2004, when minor parties held the balance of power in the Senate, Brown became a well-recognised politician. He was re-elected in both 2001 and in 2007. Bob Brown was also the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia, and the first openly gay leader of an Australian political party. Bob lives with his partner Paul in Tasmania and travels widely. Bob has published a number of books including his memoir and photographic books and poetry books. He has also won many awards, including from the United Nations.