14 Facts About Tim Soutphommasane

Thinethavone "Tim" Soutphommasane is an Australian academic, social commentator and former public servant.

Tim Soutphommasane was Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2013 to 2018.

Tim Soutphommasane has previously been a political staffer for Bob Carr, a columnist with The Age and The Australian newspapers, a lecturer at Sydney and Monash Universities, and a research fellow with the Per Capita think tank.

Tim Soutphommasane is a member of the board of the National Australia Day Council, and an ex officio member of the Council for Multicultural Australia.

Tim Soutphommasane's family was resettled by the Family Reunion Program of the Australian Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs to Sydney's south-western suburbs in 1985, where he was raised.

Tim Soutphommasane graduated from the University of Sydney with a first-class honours degree.

Tim Soutphommasane was then a Commonwealth Scholar and Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College of the University of Oxford where he completed a Master of Philosophy with distinction and a Doctor of Philosophy in political theory.

Tim Soutphommasane was one of six chief investigators on an Australian Research Council Linkage project studying the history of ANZAC Day.

Tim Soutphommasane was a regular writer for The Australian newspaper, to which he contributed feature articles and the Ask the Philosopher column each Saturday.

Loosely based on research undertaken toward his doctoral thesis, the book argues that people with progressive politics must re-engage with ideas of patriotism and national identity, which Tim Soutphommasane claims were surrendered to the right during the Prime Ministership of John Howard.

Tim Soutphommasane was co-editor of All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For.

Tim Soutphommasane was appointed to the Council for Multicultural Australia in August 2011.

Tim Soutphommasane joined the Australian Labor Party in 1998, aged 15.

Tim Soutphommasane later worked on the speechwriting staff of then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, and in late 2007 he returned from Oxford to work as a research officer in the office of Kevin Rudd during that year's federal election campaign.