Dan Ziffer and Andrew Hudson (Wyvern of the Year 2024) (both Wyverns 1996)

It would be reasonable to assume Dan and Andrew’s ‘day jobs’ as one of Australia’s finest journalists, and international peace-maker, respectively, would make for an interesting friendship but when you add unexpected prosthetics, hashtag-able hair, and death-defying adventures, these two Wyverns are enjoying a wild ride together.

Dan 

When I first met Andrew I thought, ‘Who is this guy? He is really something.’ He was a tall, impressive figure, lanky as hell, and bubbly with excitement and verve. I was a country boy from Sale. When I got to Queen’s I met a lot of big personalities, and he was one. He had amazing energy, which he’s always retained. 

My children call him intense. And he is about the things he cares about, like human rights, the betterment of society, and being in nature with his family and friends. He wants to have adventures, and that’s just what we’ve done since we met, the two of us, and other wonderful Wyvern friends. He measures his year in how many nights he has under canvas. He lives in the inner city but he loves the wild and it loves him back. 

In Queen’s, we did a production of Lysistrata, which is a classic Greek comedy, where essentially the female population goes on a sex strike.  My enduring memory is of him in a toga, with his usual broad smile, wearing an enormous prosthetic erection. There’s a photo of him I need to keep hidden until after he becomes president of the Australian republic. 

I did an arts degree so I started work whilst most of my friends were not even to the half way mark of their degrees. I lived with Andrew in North Fitzroy. He’s not overly domestic but he lived life like a full adult. He had a girlfriend, was studying and working, and was Australia’s first youth representative to the United Nations. I’d get through my day and collapse, because I was just joining the working world, while he was doing a million things, going to an insanely dangerous part of Tasmania to do a hike or heading to Canberra to take 200 students through Parliament House to meet the Prime Minister. He has always had a lot on. 

He has lived a very different life from me, he lost his mother when he was quite young, was raised by his dad who was a law professor, with a similar focus to Andrew. He’s always been very passionate about the world around him. He’s always felt very strongly about human rights and the ability to harness government and the judiciary for good. He has presented at the UN, worked on some of the world’s most intractable conflicts – including in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan. He’s helped get aid to starving people, to prevent foreign conflicts, it’s just bananas. He’s been committed to peace and safety for citizens against the largest obstacles imaginable. He’s such a worthy winner of the Wyvern of the Year award. 

Andrew’s not famous but the stuff he has done has had an enormous ongoing impact, and it’s all largely within institutions that don’t take any credit. At the Centre for Policy Development, where Andrew is the CEO, their whole model is to gather really smart people, then get the bureaucrats that make the policies, put them together…and not take the credit. In Australia, the biggest thing he’s involved with is convincing the government to enact universal early learning – a commitment for all kids to get three days a week of education before school. This will have immeasurable, positive benefits – like billions in GDP, vastly improved lives – and yet you are not going to read ‘CPD or Andrew Hudson did this’. No, they just get it done. The level he is operating at, running these largely silent, ninja organisations, is really astonishing. I was at an event with the Governor General, and she’s waving to him to come and chat. 

He is such a loving friend, he’s so proud of my achievements. Which I always find so humbling because mine are so minor compared with his. He is really proud of all the people in his life and it’s a wonderful, contagious thing. He makes time for his friends, we go hiking with this terrifyingly intelligent group – human rights lawyers, a commercial lawyer, a chiropractor and a journalist. It’s a lovely group but it’s a terrible spread of occupations for complex hiking conditions. We really should take a paramedic. This is not the spread you want on a space shuttle mission. 

He won the John Monash Scholarship in the 2000s, and used it to gain a Master of Laws from New York University, School of Law. When the Prime Minister, John Howard was awarding it, he asked Andrew what he was going to study, and when he said it would be the application of international human rights law in Australia, Mr Howard said he didn’t think he liked the sound of that too much. This was all while they were still feverishly shaking hands. He’s immensely strong in the things he feels. I don’t think many people would tell the PM, ‘Hey, I’m going to study how we can prevent the terrible things you are doing, thanks for the money’. 

He lived in New York City for most of the past two decades, working at the top levels of international diplomacy, ultimately as the CEO of Crisis Action in New York, leading a global team of more than 50 people in 11 countries. We were both in New York for a while and spent a lot of time together. We were able to live in that amazing place, and have lots of wild times. 

Despite the fact he would be so good at it, I don’t think he would ever run for public office. He knows more about politics than just about anyone, knows the political system in all countries, but in Australia the systems are very leaden and mechanical. I think he’s achieving more outside. He spent a lot of his early law career, helping people who were already imprisoned, to have better conditions. He was going to court with people who were recidivist criminals. He’s never taken the easy ride. He has never made a decision where I think, ‘Yeah, that’s the easier thing. That’s why he’s done it.’ He has spent his life doing good and there’s vastly easier things he could have done.

He has taught me to be a better friend. He’s always reaching out, telling people he loves them, always thinking deeply about his time and how he spends it. I pity his digital calendar, there is always a lot going on. He is a lot, his intensity is a lot, I think his wife is a saint. She’s the youngest of four siblings, from a very tight family, Huddo is an only child, they now have three children. He’s been catapulted into a very Family, family.  I’m really glad he doesn’t have as much travel as he used to. Those years in America he was on the ‘never before heard of tier’ of frequent flyer points.

He is relentless. He speaks even faster than I do but he gets more across. I am very lucky to be his friend, he is an amazing guy. I’m a good and interesting person but I’m nowhere near his level. He has a drive that can bring people along. I can’t think of anyone who has been such a stable and important part of my life. 

Andrew 

Dan was still growing when I met him, he had the latest growth spurt ever known to humanity. He was the cox in rowing at uni to start with but had outgrown the boat by the time he finished at Queen’s. First impressions have to include the hair, you can’t go past the hair. His hair was famous in Melbourne during lockdown on the ABC news, because we couldn’t have haircuts and his hair just kept getting bigger and bigger on people’s TV sets. There was even a hashtag about Dan’s hair.

Dan is the kindest and most caring person I know.  He is truly selfless and genuinely wants what’s best for those around him. Dan is way kinder than I am, he’s definitely taught me to try to be a better person, and to have time for everyone. He gets hassled all the time; people come up to him on the street and he’s never abrupt, he’s always authentic and genuine. He’s just himself. He’s non-judgmental, that’s one of his great attributes. Whereas I am quite judgmental. It’s a great characteristic that enables him to be a very special human.

Dan is also the most gifted writer. He can communicate so beautifully. He has been on radio and TV but I think writing is his best form of communication. He has an incredible ability to very quickly cut to the chase on a complex issue and work out what is at the heart of it. His book, A wunch of bankers: a year in the Hayne royal commission, is so Dan. The title is so Dan. After sitting through a thousand days of hearings he was then able to make a royal commission into banks funny and accessible to people. I’ve always been drawn not just to his intellect but his ability to connect.

Dan deserves everything he has in his career. When we were living together after Queen’s in the 1990s, he worked his guts out as an editor of a video games magazine. It was horrendously paid, terrible work. Nothing has been given to Dan in his career. He has really worked his way up, and now he’s one of Australia’s finest journalists. He’s a business reporter but that’s not actually his natural suit, he always does the hard tasks as a challenge and thrives. There’s just so much to love about Dan.

Dan and I have been on lots of adventures since Queen’s. We have so much fun on mountains in both winter and summer. A couple of years ago we were climbing Mt Anne in Tasmania. It is really tough. It’s called a hike but it’s mountaineering and there’s a section, called ‘The Notch’, which is infamous. You are climbing a vertical wall, if you fall off it, you are not going to be very well. Dan is very fit but he has vertigo, so he was scared witless most of that hike and definitely on this section. He came up last and I was at the top helping people get up. He was shaking and I reached out my hand and pulled him up and afterwards he said he knew I had him in that moment, that I was someone he could trust when he was scared shitless. Adventures with Dan are always beautiful.

In New York we had formative times together. He came over to cover Obama’s first election campaign. When Obama was elected it was a time of such hope. It also really consolidated our friendship. I was there for almost 20 years. The city is intoxicating and the experiences you have there are so much fun and life-defining. That Obama campaign involved us both, I was door knocking on the streets of Philadelphia. It was a hugely significant event in global affairs.

More recently, we have done some stories together combining his job at the ABC and mine at CPD, showing how some of Australia’s biggest policy problems can be fixed. For example, how we can measure economic growth in a more inclusive way that takes in to account quality of life.

I have spent much of my career working in war zones, eg. Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and of all of them, the Israel/Palestine conflict is by far the most toxic. And somehow Dan, as a Jewish Australian has one of the most balanced and insightful perspectives on this conflict, and the Bondi terrorist attacks. I think that is something quite remarkable. He is able to do so because he is so genuine and because of his ability to analyse deep complex problems and see practical solutions to them. That’s one of his magical powers. That’s why he is such a great journalist.

He’s an incredible source of support, particularly on the parenting front. Dan’s an excellent father, so loving and caring, and doesn’t have a temper, like I do. I learn about that from Dan. He’s so committed. Our generation of fathers are massively leaning in to parenting in a way that our parents didn’t. He is so supportive and empowering of his kids, it’s great to watch.

Dan has no tolerance for getting into trouble, being naughty or being perceived as in any way not behaving like an angel. We finished hiking in the Grampians one time and we put all our rubbish in a bag and I really didn’t want to carry it home in my car, so while I was getting petrol, I asked Dan to put it in the bin. He could not bring himself to do it. He saw the guy in the petrol station and thought he was doing something wrong. He wanted the petrol station guy to look the other way. This went on for 10 minutes. The rubbish remained in the car. At the end of multi-day hikes everyone can get a bit fed up with one another but in a group of six, Dan would be the last person anyone would want to have a fight with. That’s probably as close as we have come to having words.

In America we were driving up to the mountains in the night, using a map. It was before mobile phones. The police pulled us over, not in a blaze of lights and sirens, so I thought they had come to help us. The way I recall it is I got out of the car with a map seeking help and the police asked me to get back in the car. Meanwhile, Dan is yelling, ‘Huddo, get back in the car, they are going to shoot you, what are you doing?’ Dan was petrified, but he was probably right.

Our friendship will only go from strength to strength. We are as close as we’ve ever been. One of the reasons we love each other is we both have a huge zest for life. We really extract every drop out of life whether its politics, sport, conversation or nature. We are lifelong friends and when I need a hand, I know where to look for it. Thanks Daniel Ziffer.