Expendable Australians (2022) | Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Peter Greste, Ian Kemish & Sangeetha Pillai

Festival of Dangerous Ideas

We all have assumptions of what citizenship means. However, in recent years we are starting to see the envelop pushed with more common law rights being taken away. From Australia shutting its doors during the pandemic to authoritarian regimes acquiring the habit of turning travellers into political prisoners, where is it becoming too dangerous to go? And if an Australian passport does not protect you, what are you owed by your government?

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is a scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. She was falsely charged with espionage and imprisoned in Iran from September 2018 to November 2020 before being released in a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Australian government.

Peter Greste is a journalist, author, media freedom activist and professor at Macquarie University. Before joining academia in 2018, he spent 25 years as a correspondent in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. In 2013, he and two colleagues were arrested in Cairo on terrorism charges. They were convicted and sentenced to seven years in a case regarded as an attack on press freedom. Egypt released Peter after 400 days, and he has since become a press freedom advocate.

Ian Kemish AM served as Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Ambassador to Germany, Head of the Prime Minister’s international division, and Head of the consular service in a diplomatic career that spanned twenty-five years. He is an adjunct professor in history at the University of Queensland, a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute, a director of the Australia–Indonesia Centre and an Honorary Fellow of Deakin University.

Dr Sangeetha PIllai is a constitutional lawyer and a Senior Research Associate at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney. She is an expert on Australian citizenship law and the scope of government power over citizens and non-citizens. She has published widely on this topic, and is a regular commentator on legal issues relating to citizenship, immigration and refugees in a range of media outlets.