Insiders and Outsiders

Insiders and Outsiders

August 18, 2026 · 58 min

About this episode

Anna Clark joins Mark Kenny to discuss the evolution of Australian politics and media over the past 25 years in light of technological changes and the feminisation of the political landscape.

Twenty-five years ago,  Insiders  went to air for the first time – the morning after the Aston by-election, before smartphones, before social media, and long before anyone had to explain what a fax machine was. So how much of what's changed in Australian politics since has really been about the politicians, and how much about the technology reshaping how they communicate and how we watch? Is the feminisation of politics and the press gallery a quarter-century story, or something that's only really happened in the last five years? And now that everyone gets their news from a different, algorithmically sorted feed, is there still such a thing as a shared public – or a shared set of facts – for a democracy to argue over?  Historian Anna Clark, Professor of Public History at the University of Technology Sydney and author of  Making Australian History , joins Democracy Sausage to mark  Insiders'  25th anniversary and take the long view on how politics, the media and the public conversation between them have been transformed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Mark Kenny

Guest: Anna Clark

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Technology Sydney, Democracy Sausage, Acast

Books & works: Making Australian History

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