Maxine McKew is an Hon Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne.

She also serves on the boards of the State Library of Victoria and Respect Victoria.

Maxine’s background traverses’ journalism and politics. For thirty years she was a familiar face to ABC viewers, as a political and foreign correspondent, then as anchor of Lateline and 7.30 Report.

In 2007 she made a move into politics and secured the Sydney seat of Bennelong for the Labor Party. In so doing she became only the second person in Australian political history to beat a sitting prime minister in his own seat. She served as parliamentary secretary in both the Rudd and Gillard governments.

In recent years she has published two books through Melbourne University Press – a political memoir, Tales of the Political Trenches, and Class Act, an examination of some of the key challenges in Australian schooling.

Maxine is a resident of Melbourne.