Democracy and the authoritarian challenge: an address by Tim Watts MP

Today, the liberal democratic model faces its biggest challenge in generations. Since the global financial crisis, democratic systems have faced a crisis of public confidence, and open economies have struggled to deliver the broad-based growth of the past.
 
At the same time, in a number of nations around the world, an alternative model of ‘techno-authoritarianism’ has emerged in which mass surveillance and artificial intelligence are being used to build systems of social control.

Please join the Lowy Institute for an address in Canberra by Tim Watts MP, in which Mr Watts will discuss the ways these competing models of organising society are challenging the health of our democratic institutions – political parties, parliaments, and the media.
 
Tim Watts MP was elected to the Parliament of Australia in 2013 as the Labor member for Gellibrand, Victoria. He is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security, and a member of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network. Mr Watts was formerly an executive in the telecommunications sector, and prior to that, a solicitor and senior political adviser. He has master’s degrees in Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science and in Public Policy and Management from the University of Melbourne.  

After the address, Mr Watts will join Lowy Institute Director for International Security Sam Roggeveen for a conversation and Q&A.