Peter Mares

Peter Mares is an independent writer and researcher. He is a contributing editor at Inside Story magazine, a member of the moderating team at the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Development and an adjunct senior research fellow at Monash University’s School of Media, Film & Journalism.

Peter’s most recent book is No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia’s Housing Crisis (Text 2018). A subsequent four-part series Housing the Australian Nation was broadcast on ABC Radio National in June 2020.

Peter is also the author of Not Quite Australian: how temporary migration is changing the nation (Text, 2016) and Borderline (UNSW Press, 2002), an awarding-winning account of Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. In 2018, Peter co-edited an edition of Griffith Review with Julianne Schultz on migration, identity and belonging called Who We Are.

In February 2026, the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute published Peter’s detailed study Improving PALM: the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme. His previous narrative for Scanlon was The Parent Conundrum, which investigated Australia’s troubled approach to parent migration.

From 1987 to 2011 Peter worked as a journalist and broadcaster with the ABC, presenting national radio programs and serving as a foreign correspondent. He worked on urban policy as Cities Fellow at the Grattan Institute (2011-2013) and was Cranlana’s Lead Moderator and Program Director from 2018 to 2022.

Contact Peter here.