Graeme Davison is Professor of History at Monash University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne (1978), The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time (1993), and The Use and Abuse of Australian History (2000). In 1988–89 he was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University.

John Hirst is a Reader in History at La Trobe University. His publications include Convict Society and Its Enemies (1983), A Republican Manifesto (1994), and The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth (2000).

Stuart Macintyre is the Ernest Scott Professor of History and Dean of Arts at the University of Melbourne. He wrote volume 4 of The Oxford History of Australia, and his most recent books are The Reds (1998) and A Concise History of Australia (1999).