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Speaker Profile
Dr Jeff McMullen AM
Topics:- After Dinner
- Author
- Environment
- Facilitator
- Globalisation/World Affairs
- Hypotheticals
- Inspirational
- Leadership
- MC
- Media
- Motivational
- Society/Social Trends
- World Affairs
Travels From: NSW
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Few living writers anywhere in the world have travelled as extensively or gone to as many extremes for a story as Jeff McMullen.
In 2007 Jeff McMullen made a return to ABC Television as the creator and host of the discussion series, ‘Difference of Opinion’, which brought first rate minds to the challenges of global warming, water shortages, peak oil, alternative energy sources, changes in food production and development of new infrastructure. This 33 part series also examines the greatest social challenges facing Australians including the crisis in Aboriginal health and education.
After over 40 years as one of Australia’s best known and respected journalists, McMullen’s best selling book, A Life of Extremes, captures not only a life of high adventure but how this storyteller literally has gone to the ends of the earth in pursuit of the truth. The prize-winning Australian novelist, Thea Astley, described the book as a “work of perception and reason…beautifully written…compulsive reading.”
Born in Sydney (16.12.47) McMullen was still a small boy when his family went to live on the edge of a warzone. His father, serving in the RAAF, was based at Butterworth Air Base at the height of the Malay Emergency. As a reporter Jeff McMullen experienced over thirty conflicts himself, from “dirty little civil wars in Central America to the grinding trench warfare in Eritrea and then the conflicts that seemed to erupt each year in our Age of Violence”.
From the extremes of horror he always went looking for the beauty of the natural world, filming with remote tribes in the Amazon basin, drinking mare’s milk with nomads in Mongolia, climbing an active volcano, swimming with sea-lions and iguanas. It was this world wandering and encounters with some of the greatest earth scientists that drew McMullen to film making about the connections between human conflict and the dwindling of essential resources. The impact of man’s war on the planet has been a major theme of his work.
Educated at Sydney’s Macquarie University (BA in literature, history and political philosophy) McMullen has a Doctorate of Journalism from Central Queensland University and continues to speak out on the need for ethical reform in journalism.
At 18 he was the youngest ABC foreign correspondent of his day, reporting from Papua New Guinea, then at 20 from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and India. At 24, McMullen began twelve years in the United States, first as the ABC’s New York correspondent, then Washington correspondent. He covered the military coup against Salvador Allende in Chile and the major political story of his era, the Watergate scandal and the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon.
Later, as a roving reporter for ‘Four Corners’ based in New York, he travelled through the old Soviet Empire as it crumbled and produced a triology of documentaries from the war zones of Central America, winning a United Nations Media Peace Prize.
After his first two decades of journalism with the ABC McMullen spent the next sixteen years wandering more of the world as a reporter on Sixty Minutes. He brought the story from Kazakhstan on the irradiation of villagers in the aftermath of Soviet nuclear testing, the expose on abuse in Christian Brothers orphanages in Western Australia and two films on the genocide in Rwanda.
His film making about the impact of colonization and displacement of Indigenous people began in the Amazon and North America. On Sixty Minutes McMullen turned his cameras on the inequity and lack of health and education afforded to Aboriginal Australians.
McMullen has never drawn a line between advocacy and journalism. “Telling the truth and focussing on better ways forward are my main concerns.” Throughout his professional life McMullen has worked on a great many humanitarian projects to help the disadvantaged :
As CEO (gratis) of Ian Thorpe’s Fountain for Youth, Jeff McMullen has spent the last seven years helping build an alliance of people determined to achieve improvements in the health and education of aboriginal children. Working with Aboriginal doctors and teachers McMullen and Ian Thorpe have been helping develop strategies to improve maternal and infant health, with life-empowering education as the key.
Jeff McMullen is a Patron of the Healthpact Research Centre for Health Promotion and Wellbeing at the University of Canberra. He has contributed articles to leading medical journals and international magazines to draw a greater contribution to the front lines of Australia’s health emergency in Indigenous communities.
In 2006 McMullen was honoured with an Order of Australia award, for service to journalism and efforts to raise awareness of economic, social and human rights issues in Australia and overseas, as well as service to charity.
Variety the Children’s Charity declared Jeff McMullen Humanitarian of the Year for 2006. He directed the $10,000 award into the Literacy Backpacks in the Jawoyn communities to enhance this early learning project.
“It is a very beautiful world we have to share and every day is a precious opportunity. Use every breath and you will make a difference.”
Jeff McMullen |
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