12. The list below is in no particular order. I think that some of these no doubt have more influence than others, but I didn't especially think about the importance-vs-influence issue. These are ten thinkers who I think are important and have some influence on public thinking: John Frow; Tim Rowse; Carmel Lawrence; David Marr; Robert Manne; Helen Garner; Inga Clendinnen; Henry Reynolds; Peter Singer; Michelle Gratton

13. I'm afraid I am never very good when asked about league tables of this sort - a few names that come to mind are Noel Pearson, Ghassan Hage , Paul Carter and Moira Gatens, though I can see a University of Sydney bias there!

14. Too hard. Your criteria are contradictory (the ten most influential and/or important thinkers in Australia?). But you would get a very good list of the major public intellectuals in Oz if you were to consult the just issued book Sociology by Peter Beilharrz and Trevor Hogan, published by OUP

15. Obvious people, though, would include high impact intellectual journalists (I'm thinking David Marr), much-quoted authorities in Indigenous issues (I'm thinking Marcia Langton, Henry Reynolds, Mick Dodson, Noel Pearson), the 'brainy' writers (Coetzee), and outside-the-square thinkers from academe (for example, Liz Grosz).

16. This was a nice and somewhat teasing little email question – and an important one at that. I didn’t reply immediately partly because I wanted to think about it and some of the issues it raises.

17. There are a lot of important Australian ‘thinkers’ and I often acknowledge their importance without actually reading them: Peter Singer, Henry Reynolds, Geoffrey Robertson, Robert Hughes. David Marr is a literary/cultural critic whose work I have read and who’s media commentaries I think are always trenchant and valuable. I mostly read literature and literary criticism and hence I think Peter Craven is always interesting and in the public eye. Other literary critics I think are important would include Ross Gibson, Graeme Turner, Elizabeth Webby and Susan Lever. Peter Rose too, for his role in the editing of ABR and Ivor Indyk for his constantly changing work with the interstices between Australian writing and the international context. But the thinkers I think are most important are the novelists and poets whose works change the way I think of myself, Australian culture, art – and all those ‘big’ questions such as the meaning(s) of art/literature; the complexities of personal and social behaviour; whether there are ethical, political and spiritual imperatives etc. In this regard I value highly Christos Tsiolkas for Dead Europe, Peter Boyle’s poems in The Museum of Space, Kate Jennings’ Moral Hazard, Dorothy Porter’s verse novels, Brian Castro’s fiction, Helen Garner’s writing, especially The First Stone. For me, these are crucially important thinkers as their thinking is not only embedded in language, as most thinking is, but it’s interrogating the nuances of its own expression in so many ways that draw attention to ideas, values, consequences and how they might be expressed. I suspect this sounds inescapably postmodern but it’s a tad existentialist too for me. I know this will seem capricious, but I hope it gives you some sense of my thinking about thinkers.

18. Hmmm. Not sure I can help with this – I don’t have things organised in my head along these lines. I’ll give it some thought though and get back to you if I come up with anything.

19. This may be superficial but it's the best I can do at a pinch. Many of these are doers as well as thinkers. Can't get my head around distinctions between influence and importance. I'll leave that to you! I'm not sure whether we are just talking about contemporary thinkers and 'minds'. It would be strange to me if the following people weren't given a mention somewhere: Clendinnen, Manning Clark, Blainey and Reynolds, Curthoys and Lake, Paul Carter as well; Roma Mitchell and Justices Kirby and Gaudron on Law and rights and Hilary Charlesworth; Donald Horne and Turner on Culture; Ian Lowe on the Environment; Smolicz, Ang and Hage on matters of ethnicity; the Dodsons, Langton, Huggins and Moreton-Robinson and Dawn Casey on Indigenous affairs; Williams on the Constitution; Adams on the Media and public media culture; Murcott and Sidler on Architecture; Archer and Crosby on the Arts; Zelman Cowan and Bill Deane as figure heads; Jones as political thinker in office and Viner and Button out of it; Gaita on ethics and Singer, I guess; Nossal on health, Marginson on education etc. etc. Then there's the tribe of ex-pats I'll leave the more specific ones to you (the editors of small mags for instance) but it would be good to see someone like Elisabeth Webby in there. She's supervised and marked more AustLit PhD's than anyone should have to do in one life time. I guess the various Thinkers in Residence schemes and Festivals of Ideas ought to help you in your quest...far better than I can. There are all of those people who have given Wisdom and Songlines and Deakin Lectures to draw on as well.

20 Glad that Bernard Smith is in the running. If we included the dead we would have to start with Gordon Childe. I think that Mulvaney has to be there too because it was he who taught the Aborigines to count to 40,000 years. I don’t see any novelist occupying space hacked out by White. Malouf has too many imitators of fine contentless style. Murray is sui generis, despite the acolytes. Sculthorpe is the most performed etc composer, though I prefer Meale at this peak. Among the settler painters, is there a peak? Certainly no one who is setting the pace for others. In film, again who? There was Paul Cox but the other directors have gone to Hollywood . The closest we have to a crusading editor is at the Australian with Mitchell. So there. Among the judges there is still Kirby who seems to have almost let the battery of his perpetual talking machine run down, though he has a half-life for what he said and perhaps is more influential in law schools than I know, or the views of his Brethren suggest. Is there a lawyer in practice who sets the pace? I have heard of a very conservative man who gets all the big constitutional cases . . . In popular affairs there is Adams . . . I have been conscious that none of the above are women. There my money would be on Fiona Stanley. Among the trade union leaders there is no one who thinks outside the box so that Combet is seen as a leader. We have a couple of scientists with gongs, and they might be pace setting, which is the mark I understand you to want. In the 1960s a Tasmanian geologist led the world by changing the opinion about continental drift. Now we have Flummery who is little more than a brand label to stick on books, written or compiled by god knows whom. Andrew Ford is a gem and deserves to be emulated for his broadcasts if not for his compositions. That is more than enough of that.

21. I had no idea how difficult a task it would be to choose the best 10 minds in the country! The problem is that different people have such completely different styles of thinking and such radically different ways of expressing what they have done as a result of the intellectucal traditions of their areas - so, for example, it is [in my view] relatively easy to identify the best mind among economists, or among environmental scientists, or among the legal profession or broadcasters - but how do you interleave those lists in a fair way? I have assumed you only want people who are physically in the country, so those who are semi-permanent expatriates like Clive James and Germaine Greer are ineligible. I have chosen the ten people I most respect - as good a basis as any. I had better send this list now before it changes again; it has radically altered three times already and I suspect your deadline is upon us...in alphabetical order of surname: Phillip Adams; Jonathan Braithwaite; Peter Cullen; Glyn Davis; Sohail Inayatullah; Michael Kirby; Robert Manne; John Quiggin; Fiona Stanley; Will Steffen. I am ashamed that there is only one woman on my list, a fact that I suspect reflects more on me than on our female intellectuals...

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