Toni Hassan (born 1972) is an Australian journalist, a writer with an interest in contemporary social issues, [1] and emerging artist who works predominantly in painting. [2] [3]
Hassan was born in South Africa, settling in Australia with her parents in the late 1970s. [4] She attended Mackellar Girls High and completed a Bachelor of Arts, Communication at Charles Sturt University, before pursuing a career as a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Canberra Times, Fairfax Media and Nine Newspapers.[ citation needed ]
In 2001, she was awarded a Walkley Award for her radio documentary "The Health of Asylum Seekers in Detention". [5] Broadcast as part of the ABC's Health Report, Hassan explored the services available to asylum seekers and the implications of long-term detention. [6] Hassan was also awarded a Human Rights Media Award by the Australian Human Rights Commission for excellence in journalism. [7]
Hassan is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Charles Sturt University. She is well-known for her ongoing interest in community development, government policy and human rights and contributes to the online public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. [8]
Hassan is an emerging artist: her work has been influenced by her early years living in South Africa during the Soweto Riots, as well as ongoing issues of human trafficking and social justice. Hassan's social art practice can be seen as "an intersection of the secular and the sacred". [3]
In 2018, she was awarded the ACT Legislative Assembly's Speaker's Emerging Artists Support Scheme Award (EASS). Her painting "Shifting ground and King Billy" is now in the collection of the Legislative Assembly of the ACT. The acrylic paintings depicts a "Wiradjuri man, Jimmy Clements, who walked for nearly a week to attend the opening of Australia's Federal Parliament in 1923" and the image is described as "being immediately recognisable as a reflection on race and power". [3]
Her book, Families in the digital age, was highly commended in the Nonfiction section of the 2020 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards. [9]
Hassan is married to economist, journalist and commentator Peter Martin.[ citation needed ]
Charles Sturt University is an Australian multi-campus public university located in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. Established in 1989, it was named in honour of Captain Charles Napier Sturt, a British explorer who made expeditions into regional New South Wales and South Australia.
The Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory is the unicameral legislature of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It sits in the Legislative Assembly Building on Civic Square, close to the centre of the city of Canberra.
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Creative Australia, formerly known as the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia.
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Jennifer Jane Hocking is an Australian historian, political scientist and biographer. She is the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, and former Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her work is in two key areas, counter-terrorism and Australian political biography. In both areas she explores Australian democratic practice, the relationship between the arms of government, and aspects of Australian political history. Her research into the life of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam uncovered significant new material on the role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This has been described as "a discovery of historical importance". Since 2001 Hocking has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lionel Murphy Foundation.
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