2025 Annual Oration & AGM:
Ink Against Empire: From Courtroom to Newsroom, Why Human Rights Can’t Survive Without A Free Press
Coinciding with the Annual General Meeting, Conversation at the Crossroads will be hosting its third Annual Oration, co-sponsored by Pearls and Irritations, to be delivered by Antoinette Lattouf, a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster, author and mental health advocate who brings clarity, courage and wit to the hardest conversations.
Lattouf will be joined by, Gabriel Shipton, award-winning film maker and human rights advocate.
Conversation at the Crossroads is delighted to announce its third Annual Oration, coinciding with our Annual General Meeting (AGM), on Friday, November 14, 2025.
This event will be held in-person and online.
Event Details:
Date: Friday, November 14, 2025
Time: 5.45 pm: AGM | 6.45 pm: Light supper | 7.15 pm: Oration
Location: Treacy Centre Melbourne, 126 The Avenue, Parkville VIC 3052
Price: $12-$25, Donations Welcome
Antoinette Lattouf is a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster, author and mental health advocate who brings clarity, courage and wit to the hardest conversations. She is co-creator of independent media company Ette Media, co-host of We Used To Be Journos podcast, co-founder of Media Diversity Australia, and a recipient of AFR’s 100 Women of Influence. She has been honoured with Liberty Victoria’s 2024 Human Rights Medal and the 2024 NSW Council for Civil Liberties President’s Media Leadership Award.
Gabriel Shipton produced, award-wining, Ithaka: A Fight to Free Julian Assange, an intimate look at his family’s struggle against Julian’s extradition. Gabriel has served as producer on Emu Runner (2018), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and was nominated for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Award in 2019. In 2021, he produced the Arabic-language psychological thriller Farah which was acquired by Netflix. Beyond filmmaking, Gabriel was a founding member of AssangeDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation supporting his brother’s legal defence.
Agenda for the Day:
Annual General Meeting (AGM): Our event will kick off with our AGM from 5.30pm, a crucial moment for our organisation as we reflect on the past year's achievements, and chart our course for the future.
Indulgent Light Supper: Following the AGM, join us for a delightful light supper where you can mingle with fellow members and savour delectable treats.
Third Annual Oration by Antoinette Lattouf Known for her refusal to dress truth in euphemism, Lattouf challenges systems while sparking national debate—with wit and plain speaking as her signature style.
“Antoinette is an incisive and insightful speaker. Using research, lived experience and creativity, she has the abiity to resonate with a r range of audiences with frankness and humour, even when the subject matter is sensitive.”
Lattouf has worked across both commercial and public broadcasting, her career spanning television, radio, and digital platforms. Whether reporting or commenting on national and international issues, or standing at the centre of one of the country’s most closely watched legal battles Lattouf v ABC, she has used narrative as both scalpel and spotlight—exposing injustice, interrogating power, and making space for voices too often ignored.
Her books, How to Lose Friends and Influence White People (2022) and Women Who Win (forthcoming, April 2026), reflect the same qualities that define her broadcasting. Even when tackling the bleakest stories, she finds a way to slip in lightness — a wry aside, a flash of humour, or a reminder that the absurd often lives right alongside the tragic.
Our Mission is to bring people back together, to be inspired and energised, and to learn from each other. Through thoughtful and informed conversation, we equip people with the necessary tools, skills and understanding to become drivers of change within their communities.
Co-sponsored by Pearls and Irritations, an independent news and commentary publication that comes from a progressive, liberal perspective. It has taken a principled position on the war in Palestine and the censorship of factual commentary. It specialises in highly informed commentary on politics, public policy, foreign policy and world affairs, defence and security, the economy, media, the arts and religion.