Harry Hartog ANU: In Conversation with Marian Wilkinson
Marian Wilkinson will be in conversation with David Pocock on her Quarterly Essay Woodside vs. the Planet. How a Company Captured a Country.
About the Essay
Why is Australia doubling down on fossil fuels? The world may have committed at Paris to hold back dangerous climate change, but Australia's fossil-fuel giant Woodside is doubling down: it has bold new plans to keep producing gas out to 2070. Support from the major parties is locked in, so something has to give.
This is a story of power and influence, pollution and protest. How does one company capture a country? How convincing is Woodside's argument that gas is a necessary transition fuel, as the world decarbonises? And what is the new ""energy realism"" narrative being pushed by Trump's White House. In this engrossing essay, Marian Wilkinson reveals the ways of corporate power and investigates the new face of resistance and disruption. The stakes could not be higher.
"The gas companies and the Labor governments in WA and Canberra had refined their defence: the gas industry was helping the world decarbonise, curbing its emissions and providing energy security. It sounded like the planet could hardly have a better friend than Australia's LNG industry and companies like Woodside." —Marian Wilkinson,.
About the Author
Marian Wilkinson is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, including two Walkley awards, and a reporter at ABC TV's Four Corners, where she was its first female executive producer . She has been a foreign correspondent and deputy editor for The Sydney Morning Herald . Her books include The Fixer, Dark Victory (with David Marr) and The Carbon Club.
David Pocock , a former captain of the Wallabies rugby union team, is currently an independent Senator for the Australian Capital Territory in the Australian Parliament, elected in 2022 and re -elected in 2025.He is a co-founder of Rangelands Regeneration.
About the Event
• Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
• Registration is required for this event.
• Accessible parking spaces directly below the Harry Hartog ANU Bookshop are available should you require them. Parking at ANU/Harry Hartog
• If you do not feel well, please refrain from attending this event.
• Disability Access available - please ask in-store.