The Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) recently announced that the Hon. Bill Shorten will deliver the keynote address at the 2025 conference. This decision is profoundly out of step with this political moment.

The beautiful University of Melbourne could offer the backdrop for disciplinary plurality, critical analysis of power, and the articulation of contours of a caring, just, green, and connected society beyond the overlapping crises that define late capitalist culture.

Any 2025 plenary speaker must acknowledge that Australia has already warmed by unsustainable levels (Moon & Cooke, UNSW, 2024); that the wealth of Australia's richest 200 people has nearly tripled over the past two decades (Richardson & Stilwell, 2024). This political moment calls for denouncing racism, xenophobia, colonisation and genocide; the time for fence-sitting is over (Arruzza, Bhattacharya & Fraser, 2019).

We invite you to add your name to this Open Letter, calling on APSA to replace Bill Shorten with diverse leaders whose work is driving seismic change.

Open Letter to APSA executive: Israel's good friends are not welcome

We, the undersigned, begin by acknowledging the rightful owners of the land, paying respects to First Peoples, and recognising that sovereignty was never ceded.

Who we are

We are academics, policy advisors, journalists, economists, writers, students, and storytellers. We are campaigners, unionists, NGO and civil society workers, board members, and organisers. We are feminist and disability justice advocates, human rights defenders, Elders, and community and cultural leaders. We are current and former politicians, candidates, parents, carers, aunties, uncles, and community volunteers.

We come from diverse backgrounds. We're united by a shared refusal to accept politics as usual in Australia. A major political science conference should reflect our values, uplift diverse and vulnerable communities, and create space to imagine more just, caring, and green worlds for everyone. 

Why APSA's keynote choice betrays its own disciplinary values

Bill Shorten was a key figure in the Albanese government.

As Israel's genocide continues, Australia does little. Worse: Australian-manufactured parts continue to flow to Israel. 

Leaked records reveal that at least 68 shipments of F-35 components were sent from Australia to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025 (Australian Business Journal, 2025). This year, the ABC confirmed Australia's role in the global F-35 supply chain and that an Australian Government factsheet was quietly removed in late 2023 (Burgess, 2025).

But Australians overwhelmingly oppose this. On one sleepy Sunday in late August this year, 40 pro-Palestine protests took place across the country. Millions turned out across every Australian capital city (Al Jazeera, 2025). Research in May showed 82% of Australians, including the vast majority of Labor voters, want decisive government action to protect Palestinians in Gaza (Caritas Australia & Oxfam Australia, 2025).

On the day of APSA's keynote announcement, the UN Commission of Inquiry found Israel guilty of genocide in Gaza (Burke & Henley, 2025). Inflicting catastrophic conditions, Israel is forcibly starving families to death, murdering young men queuing for food, and inserting lethal substances into aid drops.

So, about Bill Shorten. Israeli lobby groups in Australia describe him as "a good friend to Israel" (Kohn, 2024; J-Wire, 2024). Meanwhile, Shorten has dismissed Australians' concerns for Palestinians in Gaza. 

On Sunrise, a TV morning news program, Shorten called pro-Palestine protests "tasteless," said he "doesn't agree", and stated, "you can't go to parts of Melbourne without tripping over a [pro-Palestine] protest" (Minister Shorten interview on Sunrise, 7 October 2024).

From NDIS cuts to a Vice-Chancellor's salary: a revolving door

In 2023, Bill Shorten appointed Lisa Paul, Chancellor of the University of Canberra, and Professor Bruce Bonyhady at the University of Melbourne as Co-Chairs of the NDIS Review. A year later, he pushed through $14 billion in NDIS cuts after just 48 hours of consultation, despite warnings that safeguards were dangerously inadequate. People with lived experience of disability did not lead, nor particularly influence, these reforms.

Shortly after, Shorten left politics to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra. This appointment raised immediate concerns about probity. The NDIS Review Co-Chair, Lisa Paul, announced, from the University of Canberra, Shorten's appointment on a salary of A$850,000 (Hare, 2025; Crotty, 2025). Paul praised Shorten as "exemplifying opportunity for all and reducing inequalities", while others called this late application "the Chancellor's captain's pick" (Hare, 2025). 

In August 2024, as Shorten announced his move into academia, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) reported $382 million in sector wage theft. Two-thirds of academic staff are in insecure work, with unsafe and unsustainable workloads defining the sector (Evans, 2024). 

Meanwhile, well into 2025, essential NDIS supports remain undefined, funding agreements are unsigned, and families are increasingly anxious about losing access to care (Basford Canales, 2025). In August 2025, the Albanese Government confirmed parents' fears with the removal of essential supports for autistic children from the NDIS. 

Political scientists call this state capture. Shorten's move from a senior government role to leading a university, with those who recommended the NDIS cuts, illustrates the revolving door of power. And, while these political decisions managed to serve a privileged few, the broader Australian public has borne the cost. 

Establishment privilege amid overlapping crises

We face climate collapse, colonial and gender-based violence, erosion of our democracies, a mental health, cost of living, and housing crisis, late-culture neoliberalism, and a rise in far-right, racist politics who want to bring back the White Australia Policy.

In this context, APSA has chosen an older, wealthy, heterosexual, white, non-disabled, male, establishment politician for its keynote. 

Is this the best our discipline can do? Is this really who we want on our most visible platform?

Political science should interrogate power and build more equitable alternatives. A conference themed Challenges for Australia and Beyond in a Changing World calls for a keynote grounded in lived experience and collective struggle, one that speaks to the crises of this moment and the futures we long to build.

Gaza can't wait. People with disabilities and their families certainly can't wait. And no conference held on stolen land in 2025 should proceed without a First Nations keynote.

There is no shortage of brilliant academics and politicians who could speak powerfully to this moment.

• Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah: prominent Palestinian-Egyptian feminist, author, scholar, and advocate.
• Dr Amy McQuire: Darumbal and South Sea Islander scholar, journalist, children's author.
• Dr Mehreen Faruqi: Deputy leader in federal politics, engineer, academic, migrant, climate justice advocate.
• Senator Fatima Payman: founder of a new political party holding power to account.
• Dr Jamal Nabulsi: Palestinian diaspora academic and award-winning researcher.
• Councillor Trina Massey: queer Filipino–African-American politician; arts and trans justice advocate.
• Senator Lidia Thorpe: Gunnai-Gunditjmara-Djab Wurrung Victorian Senator, grassroots leader and Treaty campaigner.

These leaders are already transforming Australian politics, academia, and the broader community. They're not alternatives; they're the front-runners.

We call on APSA to immediately retract its invitation to Bill Shorten and replace him with a keynote speaker whose work embodies courage, care, accountability and vision. The keynote should reflect the pluralism and ethics of our discipline, offering a vision for a more just, green, liberated, and caring Australia and world. 

As Arruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser (2019, p. 82) remind us, the time has come for "nothing less than an entirely new form of social organisation...with people first.”

APSA:

1. Honour grassroots leadership already influencing public debate.
2. Cover costs so that these scholars and politicians, who have community responsibilities or may require support due to living with disabilities, can participate, i.e. with full institutional support.
3. Invite Bill Shorten to sit in the audience and listen.
4. Acknowledge the harm and misjudgement, take public responsibility for its correction.

Silence is harmful. Let's name this so we can build something better.

As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese reminded us recently at Wembley, "relinquish an inch of your privilege so that an entire people don't have to lose everything."

✍🏽 Please sign your name, with your title, pronouns, and field of political science, and the name of the Aboriginal land you are on (for example, Eora land).

📢 Share widely. Collectively, we can expect and require that a professional association invite a keynote that is alive to the world we urgently need to build.

Sincerely, 

The APSA Open Letter Team, including

1. Nasser Mashni, President, Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, son of Palestinian refugees, regular advisor to Australian and international media;
2. Kara Beavis, feminist political economist and gender-based violence scholar and educator, former Policy Manager and Research Director with experience in Sydney, London, and Johannesburg;
3. Antony Loewenstein, award-winning journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, whose writing has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera and translated into more than a dozen languages.