Rowan Dean is an Australian advertising executive and conservative commentator.[1][2] After a career as an advertising industry copywriter, Dean was a panellist on early seasons of Gruen, and became a commentator with multiple newspapers and a co-host of conservative
Sky News Australia program Outsiders. He is currently the editor of Spectator Australia in addition to being a frequent contributor.[3] He is a columnist at the Australian Financial Review,[4] has written for The Age,[5] and has appeared on the ABC's panel talk show Q&A.[6]
Career
Advertising
Educated at
Canberra Grammar School,[7] Dean moved to England in 1978 and worked in a number of advertising agencies. He co-wrote the 'Photobooth' commercial for
Hamlet Cigars, as well as successfully launching
Foster's Lager into the UK market, winning
D&AD Awards and both Gold and Silver
Cannes Lions.[8][9] Dean returned to Australia in 1988 working in the Australian advertising industry, setting up Rowan Dean Films in 1995 to produce advertisements.[8]
In 2016, Dean became co-host of the
Sky News Australia conservative commentary program Outsiders, along with
Mark Latham and
Ross Cameron.[12][13] The stated impetus for the program's launch was as an answer to the ABC's weekly Insiders current affairs talk show which, according to Dean, Cameron and Latham, was "the embodiment of an out-of-touch, inner-city Leftist class".[14] The program has proved controversial. In July 2016, Outsiders guest
David Leyonhjelm remarked on air that
Australian Greens senator
Sarah Hanson-Young was "well-known [in parliament] for liking men", leading to an on-air apology from Dean and a producer being stood down.[15] Dean remains the only original host of the format, with the other two initial co-hosts being fired by the channel for various controversies related to comments made during the program.[16][17]
Dean is a frequent critic of
political correctness and
cancel culture and frequently speaks out on controversial
cultural issues. He produced a special for Sky News titled The Death of the Aussie Larrikin, in which he and a host of guests contended that political correctness was destroying Australia's
larrikin tradition.[18] Dean has also ridiculed the modern push to rename brands and place names with offensive connotations.[19] Dean was criticised in The Guardian in June 2016 after compiling a "Poor Me List" (a parody of a rich list) mocking prominent Australians who he perceived as displaying a
victim mentality in spite of their success, many of whom were
Indigenous Australians or from other ethnic minorities.[20]
Dean has been accused of
misogyny based on his comments about women and
feminism.[21] In December 2018, Spectator Australia published a column that described the
Australian Greens senator
Sarah Hanson-Young in sexualised language, which the Greens leadership called "appalling" and demanded that Sky News and the
Australian Financial Review sack Dean.[22]
In July 2017, Dean suggested on Sky News that the Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner,
Tim Soutphommasane, should "leave the country" after Soutphommasane called for more cultural diversity in Australian media and politics.[23] On Sky News he comically mispronounced Soutphommasane's name and said "Tim, if you don’t like [Australia], join
Yassmin, hop on a plane and go back to
Laos" in what
Junkee's Osman Faruqi called a "blatantly race-based attack".[24] Soutphommasane was in fact born in
Montpellier,
France, to
Chinese and
Laotian parents. Several Sky News presenters publicly distanced themselves from Dean, with Sky's chief political reporter,
Kieran Gilbert, describing Dean's comments as "pathetic", "low" and "reprehensible".[25]
On 13 December 2020, Dean expressed fear about the
Great Reset on Sky News Australia, claiming that "This Great Reset is as serious and dangerous a threat to our prosperity – to your prosperity and your freedom – as we have faced in decades."[34]
^McCrann, Terry (13 December 2019).
"Boris Johnson's win helps us see through climate smoke screen". The Australian. Retrieved 9 January 2021. This is a message which is inescapable. And it is both of those things even if you believe in the climate change — sorry, emergency — hoax, as the great Rowan Dean of the Spectator magazine and our own Sky News so simply yet so precisely describes it. Indeed, especially if you believe in the hoax.