2026 Festival
Speaker Profile
Tony Abbott
Hon Tony Abbott AC served as the 28th prime minister of Australia. Prior to entering parliament, he was a journalist with The Australian, a senior adviser to opposition leader John Hewson, and director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. He has degrees in economics and law from Sydney University and in politics and philosophy from Oxford which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of four books: The Minimal Monarchy (1995), How to Win the Constitutional War (1997), Battlelines (2009), and now Australia: A History (2025)
Australian History’s Great Divide: How writers view our past
Tony Abbott and Mark McKenna with Sally Warhaft
Books about Australia’s past continue to engage readers and dominate non-fiction bestseller lists. Tony Abbott, Rhodes Scholar, history buff, former parliamentarian and Australia’s 28th Prime Minister, and Emeritus Professor Mark McKenna, of the University of Sydney, will discuss their new books with anthropologist and broadcaster Sally Warhaft.