Australia Day Award Recipients 2023
Ms Chloe Bennett Dallimore AM (1992)
Warmest congratulations to Chloe Dallimore AM (1992) on being made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to the performing arts, particularly as a performer.
An award-winning musical theatre performer, Chloe is also an activist, unionist, director, and choreographer. Chloe is a leading actor of Australia’s musical theatre stage. She is best known as Ulla in The Producer for which she won the Helpmann Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical and she has also performed in Chicago, Annie, The Wizard of Oz, and Oliver!
She has won awards that include the: Helpmann Award – Winner, Best Female Actor in a Musical – Role: Ulla. The Producer 2005; the GreenRoom- Winner, Female Artist in a Lead Role – Role: Ulla, The Producers 2005; Sydney Theatre Award – Winner, Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Role: Ulla. The Producers 2005; MO Awards – Winner, Female Musical Theatre Performer – Role: Ulla, The Producers 2004; and the Australian Dance Award – Winner, Outstanding Performance in a Stage Musical – Role: Ulla, The Producers 2004. In 2013 Chloe was nominated once again in the Helpmann Awards for Best Female Actor in a Musical: The Addams Family.
Chloe left Lauriston at the end of Year 8 and after winning a Cameron Mackintosh scholarship, moved to London at 17 where she undertook a BA in performing arts at the London Studio Centre.
On behalf of all Old Lauristonians worldwide, her cohort from 1992, and the school, we send our very best wishes and congratulations to Chloe for this most prestigious award.
Emeritus Professor Jennifer Jane Hocking AM (1971)​
Lauriston Girls’ School is very proud to congratulate Jennifer Hocking who has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australian Honours and Awards for “significant service to the preservation of Australian political history”.
Jenny is an award-winning author, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. She is the author of numerous books including the acclaimed two-volume biography of Gough Whitlam, short-listed for several major literary awards including the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The Age Book of the Year and the National Biography Award, and winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Barbara Ramsden Award.
During her research into the life of Gough Whitlam, Jenny uncovered significant new material on the role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This has been described as “a discovery of historical importance”.
Jenny has been influenced throughout her life by her father, Dr Frederick Hocking, a psychiatrist who treated survivors of long-term trauma, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, and her mother, Barbara Hocking, who was the first barrister briefed in the Mabo case in 1992.
Jenny attended Lauriston with her sisters Barbara Hocking (1968), and world-renowned ABC Journalist Jillian Hocking (1976) who passed away in 2017. Jenny’s family has a rich connection with Lauriston dating back to the early years of the school. Her mother, Barbara Hocking (Browning, 1945) attended Lauriston, as did her aunt Enid Browning (Gilbert, 1916), Enid’s daughter Margaret Sloan (Browning, 1943), Margaret’s daughters Barbara Dick (Sloan, 1970) and Professor Judith Sloan (1971), right through to now, with Barbara Dick’s daughter and current staff member Kate Collin (Sloan, 1980) and Kate’s daughter Anna Collin (2016).  Now that’s a Lauriston generational family!
After graduating at Lauriston, Jenny went to Monash University where she graduated with both a Bachelor of Science and subsequently a Bachelor of Economics. Jenny holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sydney which examined the establishment of Australia’s counter terrorism framework and was published as Beyond Terrorism: The Development of the Australian Security State in 1993.
Together with her partner Daryl Dellora, they formed the film production company Film Art Doco and have co-scripted several award-winning documentaries including Against the Innocent (1988) and Mr Neal is Entitled to be an Agitator (1991) – the latter, dealing with the former High Court justice and Attorney-General Lionel Murphy about whom Jenny also wrote a biography, Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, published by Cambridge University Press. Since 2001 Jenny has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lionel Murphy Foundation and a National Committee member of the Australian Republic Movement 2020-2022.
In 2016 Jenny Hocking commenced proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against the National Archives of Australia seeking the release of secret correspondence between the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen regarding the dismissal of the Whitlam government. These ‘Palace letters’ were held by the Archives and were under the embargo of the Queen, potentially indefinitely. The case was unsuccessful in the Federal Court and in February 2019 an appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court was rejected by a majority. However, in May 2020 Hocking’s appeal to the High Court succeeded: in an emphatic 6:1 decision the High Court found that the Palace letters are “Commonwealth records” (not personal property) and instructed the Director-General of the National Archives to reconsider Hocking’s request for access to the letters, as well as to pay all of Hocking’s considerable legal costs. The letters were released in full and online on 14 July 2020.
Professor Hocking’s latest book The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam tells the story of this remarkable archival research journey and legal battle to secure the release of the Palace letters, and their impact on the history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government. It was published in November 2020 with a foreword by former Prime Minister the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull and has been described as ‘a political thriller’, an ‘absorbing courtroom drama’, and ‘vital Australian history’. The Palace Letters was awarded a Special Commendation in the 2020 Henry Mayer Award for best book on Australian politics, and a Commendation in the Mander Jones Awards.
Her works include:
Beyond Terrorism: The Development of the Australian Security State, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993,
Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000
Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-terrorism and the Threat to Democracy, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004.
Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2005
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History, Melbourne University Publishing/Miegunyah Press: Melbourne, 2008
Gough Whitlam: His Time, Melbourne University Publishing/Miegunyah Press: Melbourne, 2012
The Dismissal Dossier: Everything you were never meant to know about November 1975, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2015.
The Palace Letters: The Queen, the Governor-General, and the Plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam, Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2020
Anne Louise Hooker OAM (1978)
Together with the Class of 1978, Lauriston Girls’ School is proud to congratulate Old Lauristonian Anne Hooker who has been awarded a Medal of the Order in the General Division for service to the community, particularly to youth, in the recent Australian Honours and Awards.
Anne has been dedicated to young people throughout her career as a Court Counsellor and Probation Officer, Community Corrections Officer and for the last 23 years as a Youth Development Officer within the prison system. Her role involves the responsibility for the design and facilitation of a young offenders unit within a prison facility, that includes developing and implementing programs that target the developmental needs of young offenders.
She has helped design and has implemented an educational small business program called ‘Doin Time’ where all profits are donated to charity.  Anne also designed and implemented an educational DVD called ‘Stories from the Inside’.
In 2007 Anne was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study programs for young male offenders in prisons where she travelled to Amsterdam, UK, New York and Vancouver. She visited 26 prisons including 3 youth prisons and 4 community organisations. Anne experienced first-hand, the latest development in rehabilitation for young offenders and was able to compare Australia’s programs to the rest of the world.
In 2010 Anne was listed in The Age as one of the 100 Most Influential People, and in 2014 she received the Inspirational Women Award issued by Hobson Bay City Council. In 2014 Anne was the recipient of the ICPA Outstanding Correctional Service Employee at the Correctional Excellence Awards.
Anne is testament to Old Lauristonians all over the world who are impacting society and supporting those who are vulnerable.Â
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