Marriage Equality, Migrants and Masculinity

Panellists: Jimmy Barnes, Rock icon and author; Magda Szubanski, Actress and Comedian; Fiona Nash, Deputy Nationals Leader; Tony Burke, Manager of Opposition Business; and Jacqui Lambie, Independent Senator for Tasmania. -- Jimmy Barnes Jimmy Barnes tasted glory as Australia's most successful rock & roll singer but he's also wrestled demons, struggled with the pressures of being a tall poppy, and now authored an autobiography, Working Class Boy. Jimmy Barnes has been there and back. As lead singer for Cold Chisel, he fronted one of Australia's most successful rock bands in the 1970s and ‘80s. Within a month of Cold Chisel finishing in 1984, Jimmy had already started a solo career. His first solo album, Bodyswerve, entered the charts at #1 and was followed by other chart hits. With INXS, Jimmy recorded an Easybeats song Good Times, which topped the Australian charts and subsequently made the charts in the US and the Top Ten in the UK. Love and Fear purged a lot of demons that had been plaguing Jimmy for many years. He confronted issues that he had avoided by being on tour and by drinking and taking drugs. "I was at the height of my alcoholism and addiction," he recalls. "I was literally staring into the abyss." In 2002 Jimmy began the hard road to sobriety and in October 2005 he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in his own right (Cold Chisel had already been inducted in 1993). Two years later he underwent open-heart surgery to repair a congenital heart defect. Jimmy has just released his autobiography, Working Class Boy, a searingly honest account of growing up in an abusive household, and Soul Searchin’, his latest solo album. -- Magda Szubanski Magda Szubanski is one of Australia’s most versatile and popular actresses, best known for her role as Esme Hoggett in the film Babe and Sharon Strzelecki in the popular TV sitcom, Kath & Kim. Her recent memoir Reckoning revealed the challenges of her childhood. Magda created Sharon Strzelecki as a fleshy foil to the whingeing Kim for the1995 sketch show Big Girl’s Blouse, which she co-wrote, co-produced and co-starred in with Gina Riley and Jane Turner. Magda was born in Liverpool in England. Her father was Polish and her mother Scottish. She moved to Australia with her family in 1966 and attended high school at Siena College, in Melbourne. Magda made the transition from university revue to television comedy in the ABC TV’s D-Generation, which fostered some of Australia’s most successful entertainment talent. In 1989 she shot to fame in the sketch comedy Fast Forward, which played for several years and become something of a national institution. She’s twice been named the Most Popular Person on Television (2003 and 2004) and has won seven Logies. Magda has been in the headlines with her weight loss, shedding 36kg in a public campaign with Jenny Craig. Last year she published Reckoning: A Memoir, which told of the challenges she faced growing up and was widely acclaimed. -- Fiona Nash Nationals Senator Fiona Nash is Deputy Leader of the National Party, Minister for Regional Development and Minister for Local Government and Territories. She is the first woman to hold a leadership position in the Federal National Party. She and her husband, David, live on a property at Crowther near Young in the south-west of NSW. For Fiona, balancing family – she and David have two teenage sons – with the business of running a farm and representing the people of NSW shapes and influences everything she does on professional and personal levels. Fiona was raised in Sydney, but the wealth of opportunities that open up to people when they live outside major metropolitan centres became apparent when she moved to Bathurst to study at Mitchell College. She and David moved to Crowther and in 1991 she joined the local branch of the National Party. She was elected to the Senate in 2004 and her term began on 1 July 2005. -- Tony Burke Tony Burke is the Shadow Finance Minister and Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives. He was a minister in the Rudd, Gillard and Rudd governments from 2007 until 2013, responsible at different times for Agriculture, Sustainability and Environment, and Immigration. A National President of Young Labor in the 1980s, he graduated with an Arts-Law degree from the University of Sydney and in the mid-90s he became a founding director of a small business. In 1997 he began working for one of Australia's biggest unions, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association. After a year in the NSW Legislative Council he entered Federal Parliament in 2004 and was immediately given a front-bench position by then leader Mark Latham as shadow minister for small business. He subsequently became Opposition immigration spokesman and entered Cabinet after Labor's election victory. -- Jacqui Lambie Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie was re-elected to the Senate as head of the Jacqui Lambie Network in 2016 after being first elected to the senate as a member of the Palmer United Party in 2013. She is one of the key cross benchers who holds the balance of power in the Senate. Senate Lambie became deputy leader of the PUP Senate team in 2013, but after a rancorous falling out with PUP founder Clive Palmer, she left the party and sat as an Independent. Prior to the 2016 election year she formed the Jacqui Lambie Network and fielded a team of Senate candidates in the 2016 election, but was the only candidate to win a Senate seat. A former soldier with the Australian Army, Jacqui spent a decade serving Australia in the armed forces in the transport management and military policing divisions. Having been medically discharged from the army in 2000, she became an advocate for Australian war veterans and injured soldiers. Jacqui is a single mother of two sons and lives in Burnie, Tasmania