Annual Plunkett Lecture

Year

Speaker(s)

Lecture Title

2026

Jason Eberl

Enhancing Human Beings: Possible? Desirable? Ethical?
Watch on YouTube.Read at ABC Religion and Ethics.

2025

Stephen Parnis

Ethics in Healthcare: Principles or Platitudes?
Watch on YouTube. Read at Croakey.

2024

David Kissane

Demoralisation: Its influence on the will to live
Watch on YouTube.Read at The Catholic Weekly.

2023

John Haldane

Common confusions about the common good.
Read at The Australasian Catholic Record

2022

Xavier Symons

Welcome the stranger! Rediscovering the art of hospitality in a 21st Century hospital.
Read at Bioethics Outlook

2021

John Shine and Amali Mallawaarachchi

The Human Genome Project: prospects for improving healthcare.

2020

Bill Sullivan

Ableism: is it a malady of modern medical decision-making?

2019

Julian Hughes

To thine own self be true: reflections on authenticity, citizenship and dementia.
Watch on YouTube. Listen at ABC Big Ideas.

2018

Daniel Sulmasy

Should we take away Hippocrates’ license? Professionalism, Conscience and Toleration in a Good Society.
Watch on YouTube.Listen at ABC Big Ideas.

2017

Anthony Fisher

Drive-thru healthcare: is there more to the healing relationship than supply and demand?
Read at Bioethics Outlook

2016

Mark Tedeschi

John Hubert Plunkett, the ‘Martin Luther King’ of Colonial Australia.
Read at History, the Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society

2015

Justin Oakley and Tony Grabs

What should surgical patients be told? The value and limits of medical transparency.

2014

Wendy Rogers

Overdiagnosis: when is too much medicine bad for your health?
Read at the ABC

2013

Steve Matthews

Musical memories and the way we were: musical therapy in the care of people with progressive cognitive impairment.
Read in Bioethics

2012

Andrew McGee

Stem cells, organ donation and end of life care.

2011

Paul Biegler

The ethical treatment of depression: shortcomings in contemporary practice.

2010

John Forge

The ethical responsibilities of scientists.

2009

Edward Santow and Greg Craven

Human Rights Laws: would they benefit patients in hospitals, participants in medical research, residents in nursing homes?

2006

Raimond Gaita and Warren Reich

Today’s moral directions, tomorrow moral values.

2005

Raimond Gaita

Helping the needy stranger: two conceptions of the ethical.

2002

Nancy Dubler

Bioethics Consultations in settings beset by conflict.

2001

Warren Reich

Vulnerability as a principle for bioethics.

1998

Nancy Dubler

A clinical ethics service in a public hospital.

1997

Luke Gormally

Why a Select Committee of the English House of Lords unanimously rejected the legalization of euthanasia.

1996

John Moloney

John Hubert Plunkett.

1995

Lynn Gillam

Medical end of life decisions: the law in Australia.

1994

Brian Dwyer

In my prayers I asked outright for wisdom.

1993

Terence Tobin

What should patients be told? The duty to inform and advise.

1992

Robert Young

Resource Allocation: the ethical issues.