Politics in the Pub: Asbestos Nation
6:30pm Wednesday 28 October 2026
Verity Lane Market, Canberra ACT
A ‘magic mineral’ impervious to fire, Australia was the highest per capita consumer of asbestos in the world, using it to create flat sheeting, pipes, brake linings, insulation, and other products that would be ‘safe’ and ‘useful’ for post-war suburbia. Instead, it created a mass cancer epidemic disproportionately borne by workers, migrants, and Indigenous Australians, with an estimated 40,000 cases of asbestos-related diseases.
Though asbestos was eventually banned in Australia in 2003, its impact is still felt today: 6 million tons of asbestos are still present in the built environment, asbestos products are being discovered in homes and schools, and more than 700 Australians die from mesothelioma each year. And with silica posing a similar hazard to tradies and construction workers today, the spectre of dust diseases will unfortunately still be a part of Australia’s near future.
Join the University of Canberra’s Frank Bongiorno, the Australia Institute’s Deputy Director Ebony Bennett to discuss Asbestos Nation, a new history of Australia’s use of asbestos by Australia Institute Postdoctoral Research Fellow James Watson.
Frank, Ebony and James will discuss the long history of asbestos, how Australia created this large-scale toxic hazard, and how we can avoid producing new industrial epidemics again.
Copies of Asbestos Nation: The Story of the Most Dangerous Dust in Australia will also be available for purchase on the night or can be pre-ordered online on The Australia Institute website.
SPEAKERS:
Frank Bongiorno AM — Director, Vice-Chancellor’s Centre of Public Ideas (CoPI)
Frank Bongiorno AM FRHistS FASSA FAHA is Director of the Vice-Chancellor's Centre of Public Ideas and Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas at the University of Canberra. A historian of Australian political and labour history, he is the author of The Sex Lives of Australians, The Eighties and Dreamers and Schemers. He is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Australian Academy of Humanities. He is President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) and a Past President of the Australian Historical Association.
Dr James Watson — Author, Asbestos Nation: The Story of the Most Dangerous Dust in Australia & Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Australia Institute
James Watson is the Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Australia Institute. James Watson is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australia. A graduate of the Australian National University’s School of History, he is the author of Asbestos Nation: The Story of the Most Dangerous Dust in Australia, The Dismissal from Below (with Frank Bongiorno), and a forthcoming biography of the archaeologist Robert Etheridge junior. His writing can be found in The Guardian, History Australia, and Labour History, and his work has been recognised by the Australian Historical Association’s Serle Award, and the ANU’s John Molony Prize in History and Patrick Troy Memorial Prize in Urban and Environmental Studies. He is currently writing a political history of the gross domestic product in Australia.
Ebony Bennett — Deputy Director, The Australia Institute
Ebony Bennett is the Deputy Director of The Australia Institute and host of its popular webinar series and Follow the Money podcast. Beginning her career as a journalist in the Canberra press gallery for the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review, Ebony has worked in federal politics in a variety of roles for almost 20 years and has published research on climate change and energy, gender and street harassment and contributed a chapter to Morrison’s Miracle: The 2019 Australian Federal Election (ANU Press 2020) and The Nordic Edge: Policy Possibilities for Australia (MUP 2021).
Ebony is a regular commentator and contributor across broadcast and print media, she appears regularly as a commentator on ABC and Sky News and has a fortnightly column in The Canberra Times.