Stolen Babies

With special guests:

• Geoffrey Greene and
• Christine Cole.

First up we talk with Geoffrey Greene, who as a former head of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia, was a key player in the previous government’s reforms of family law. While DOTA was critical that the reforms did not go far enough to address the extreme bigotry and anti-father bias that saturated family law in Australia, at least there was some movement in the right direction. Unbelievably, it would appear that the present government is trying to wind things back to the dark ages when many fathers entering the court did not see their children again.

We close the show with a deeply moving and fascinating interview with Christine Cole, author of the book Babies Stolen: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies. Bureaucrats during the past century, employed in removing children from their natural parents, claimed to be acting in the best interests of children, despite the obvious harm they were doing. There are many lessons for fathers from this history.

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Making History

With special guests:

• Pascal Gallez and
• Michael Green.

We have a very special program this week. Our guest is Pascal Gallez from Belgium, and the subject of our discussion today is the revelation that we now appear to have a template of Real Equal Shared Parenting Time laws in Belgium. Dads on the Air understands we are making history by being the first to bring this to the attention of the English-speaking world. While not perfect, it certainly is a big step forward in the right direction.

This is an important milestone, because it will provide all those fighting so hard around the world to bring about change to the Draconian Family Justice System, with an example of how “Equal Shared Parenting Time” laws need to be structured and how they can work.

Also on the program we’ll be speaking with Michael Green. Michael currently is the patron and past President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia. He is a Lawyer, a QC, an author of two books on parenting issues, and runs a mediation company. We’ll be speaking to him about his thoughts on Belgium’s new Shared Parenting Laws and how they might work in Australia and other countries.

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Organised Crime

With special guests:

• Tom Gilling and
• Maggie Campbell.

This week we interview the author of Smack Express: How organised crime got hooked on drugs, journalist, author and father of two Tom Gilling. And we close the show with lawyer Maggie Campbell, who is an interesting variation on a theme - as a career woman she lost custody of her son in the Family Court to her husband and his new stay-at-home partner, showing just how barbaric and out-of-date the family law jurisdiction remains. Like so many men, she was incensed by what had been done to her and became a lawyer as a result.

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The Rude Guys

With Special Guests:

• Rich Zubaty and
• Ian Purdie.

The Australian Rude Guy meets the American Rude Guy. This hilarious show covers a great deal of ground, with both men being highly prolific and outspoken non-conformists, ready to fly in the face of many an accepted norm.

Both men publish their own books and produce their own broadcasts, and both men have little time for the establishment. “Everyone who is calm and sensible is insane” is the leading quote at Rich Zubati’s website www.therudeguy.com. “The Rude Guy is the poison mushroom on the pizza of corporate culture. The arrow in the ass of the institutions of our time.”

As well as broadcasting The Rude Guy podcast, Rich Zubaty has published a number of books including What Men Know That Women Don’t, The Corporate Cult and Your Brain Is Not Your Own. You can find out more at his other website www.happyfool.org.

Ian Purdie has been a wonderfully entertaining part of Dads On The Air for more than two years now. His handmade books include: The Imnothero Principle, Splatterpuss, The Book of Nasty and The Daddies’ Split Guide. See more at www.ianpurdie.com.

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Gay Dads and Surrogacy

With Special Guests:

• Corey Irlam and
• Rodney Cruise.

This week Corey Irlam from the Coalition for Equality and Rodney Cruise from Gay Dads Australia talk about changes to surrogacy laws which could see potentially thousands of gay male couples bringing up children around the country. While society is getting more accustomed to the idea of lesbians bringing up children, gay men doing the same is still something of a novelty. Rodney Cruise and his partner are already bringing up a surrogate child in Melbourne.

A paper has been released on a national proposal for public consultation in a move to harmonise State and Commonwealth surrogate parenting laws. The national Standing Committee of Attorneys General (SCAG) and the ministerial councils for Community Services and Health are calling for submissions on national surrogacy regulation. The paper, A proposal for a National Model to Harmonise Regulation of Surrogacy, makes a number of recommendations including that people who use a surrogate mother would be able to apply for legal recognition as the child’s parents and that the differing state laws be harmonised. Other regulations under review include paying a surrogate mother’s medical costs, financial losses during and other expenses during pregnancy. But commercial surrogacy would remain illegal in Australia, the paper recommends. Submissions Close on 16 April 2009.

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Divorced From Reality

With Special Guest:

• Dr Stephen Baskerville.

We are delighted to have the author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, Dr Stephen Baskerville, on the show once again.

No one has done more to expose the ideological war against fathers by the welfare, family law, domestic violence and child support industries as Dr Baskerville. While those impacted by these industries, many of whom have seen their lives and their children’s lives destroyed, know all too well the disastrous impacts of the current reigning ideologies, separated fathers are traditionally ridiculed. With his academic credibility and forecefulness of personality, Baskerville has been able to articulate the shocking damage being wreaked not just on fathers and their children but on society as a whole.

In Australia, the Labor Party, now in power, created many of the country’s most despised and destructive institutions, including the Family Court and the Child Support Agency. The conservatives did nothing to stop their ever increasing power.

We last interviewed Dr Baskerville in 2007 on the publication of Taken Into Custody. This week we catch up with activities since, including the establishment of his own blog.

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Insane Levels of Stress

With special guests:

• “Matthew”
  
• “Dave” and
• “Steve”.

In the wake of an appalling tragedy where a four year old girl was allegedly thrown off a bridge by her father, we talk with three fathers about the stresses in their lives. It surprised no long term observers that shortly afterwards the father was found and then arrested in the environs of Melbourne’s Family Court.

While vigilantes have called for the man’s blood, others have called for compassion and understanding. Disgracefully, some feminist commentators have attempted to use the incident in their ideological campaign against the commonsense notion of shared parenting.

While making no direct comment on the case itself - the father has now been charged with murder - we do look at the insane levels of stress that fathers are put under by our reviled family law system.

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The Perils of Ideology

Erin Pizzey

With special guests:

• Erin Pizzey
• Mark Sutton and
• Susan E. Block.

In May 2007 Dads on the Air interviewed the founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women, Erin Pizzey. This interview was circulated far and wide, making it one of the most publicised broadcasts in DOTA’s history. As the Australian Government has recently been raising the issue of domestic violence from a one-sided ideological perspective, including the establishment of the National Council to Prevent Violence Against Women and Children, we thought it would be timely to re-broadcast the Erin Pizzey interview to try and bring some balance and rationality to the domestic violence debate.

Also on today’s program we feature another wonderful contribution by Mark Sutton from Liberal Arts Radio in the US. Alec Baldwin took a lot of heat after an angry voicemail to his daughter was leaked back in 2007. In his recently released book about Parental Alienation, A Promise to Ourselves, he confides that he was suicidal after the voicemail incident. Susan E. Block, a family law attorney and the former Administrative Judge of the Family Court of St. Louis County, looks at the problems facing non-custodial parents as well as new solutions that are being implemented in the US state of Missouri. More at www.liberalartsradio.com.

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The Impending Depression

Scott Longden

With special guests:

• Professor Bill Mitchell
• Scott Longden and
• Sue Price.

This week we feature a fascinating interview with Professor Bill Mitchell from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle. He is one of the academics who is predicting that there could be a million Australians on the dole queues by the end of next year. On this week’s show he explains just how easily this could come about and also talks about the devastating social consequences for the nation - how severe the impacts are on fathers, families and children.

Also this week we run extracts from an interview with Scott Longden from the Fatherhood Project in Northern NSW. He talks about how important it is for fathers to get involved with their children from birth, and how men can help each other in prenatal classes to become the best fathers they can. For too long fathers have been seen as an almost irrelevant adjunct to the birth, whereas in reality fathers are vital to their children from their earliest days.

We finish the show with Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency, who talks about the frequency with which men are being jailed for alleged abuses which occur sometimes decades before they are actually jailed, often on extremely flimsy if not non-existent evidence.

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Get Off the Bench

With special guests:

• Bob Norton
• Larry Holland
• Peter Van de Voorde
• Mark Sutton and
• Angelo Lobo.

This week on Dads on the Air we present excerpts from two popular US radio programs that deal with men’s and fathers’ issues. First up, Dads on the Air recently joined the discussion on popular weekly American radio program Get Off The Bench. Our own Peter van de Voorde together with the co-hosts of the program, Bob Norton and Larry Holland, discuss many of the Family Law issues that are presently faced in so many countries around the world.

This is followed by an excellent interview with filmmaker Angelo Lobo on Liberal Arts Radio. Liberal Arts is a radio show that explores the arts from an unapologetically political perspective. Host Mark Sutton (NPR, Air America, XM Satellite Radio) is joined by politically-opinionated guests from the world of music, art, political cartoons, film and more. The Family Court system is on trial in Angelo Lobo’s documentary film Support System Down, which looks at ways in which people have been trapped in divorce proceeding that can last for years, cost into the millions of dollars, and separate parents from kids.

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Propaganda

With special guests:

• Robert Belcher
• Geoffrey Greene and
• Sue Price.

The widespread use of propaganda by governments in the climate change debate to convince a naive population to accept yet more taxes and yet more government control has many corollaries with the taxpayer-funded war on fathers. Which is why Dads On The Air has paid particular attention to the debate.

Robert Belcher is the founder of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia. He is one of the few voices speaking out against the Rudd government’s plans to literally change the entire rural landscape of Australia by converting it to carbon sink forests, using generous tax concessions to promote this change.

With the Rudd government rapidly moving to overthrow even the extremely modest family law reforms of the Howard government, it is even more essential to understand how the government has essentially killed a social movement, by marginalising them, ridiculing them and failing to fund them. And by the incessant use of propaganda.

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2008: The Year That Was

Launched in 2000, Dads On The Air has stumbled, triumphed and survived another year. That is a miracle in itself. We would very much like to take this opportunity to thank all our listeners and supporters who have made the show possible.

While we haven’t managed to squeeze everyone in, our much appreciated Rockin’ Pop aka Peter van de Voorde has done a wonderful job of selecting extracts from some of the year’s best interviews, sampling of our core themes around shared parenting and child custody in Australia, and the sad winding back of family law reforms which, however inadequate, went some way to encouraging shared parenting and cooperation after separation. The present system creates nothing but a well of pain on all sides, for men, women and children. Critics argue that the winding back of the modestly improved treatment of separated fathers, so vital in their children’s lives, is a retrograde step, a kowtowing to entrenched self-interests locked in 1970s mindsets. The tragedy and appalling failure of social policy in this country, intertwined with child protection, child support, welfare and even education, has continued to play out during the entire life of Dads on the Air and we have continued to cover these issues in greater detail than any Australian media outlet.

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Take Heart

Ken Thompson

With Special Guests:

• Ken Thompson and
• Maggie Dent.

This is our second-last show for the year, so best wishes of the season to all our listeners. First up we talk with Ken Thompson, the NSW Deputy Fire Commissioner, who has come to understand what many men in this country experience through the loss of his son Andrew. Andrew John Thompson, now aged four, was illegally abducted by his mother Melinda Thompson (also known as Melinda Stratton) from Australia to Germany in April this year. This is a criminal offence under the Family Law Act. The Family Court has ordered that a warning must be issued stating that no one is to approach Melinda Thompson and that any information should be provided immediately to local police and/or Interpol. Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Andrew and Melinda should contact local Police, Interpol, or the Australian Federal Police on +61 (0)2 6126 7777. If you wish to assist Ken Thompson in the search for his son by taking part in an email-circulation effort, please call +61 (0)417 416 024.

Maggie Dent is an author, publisher and a parenting and resilience specialist. She writes a free email newsletter that promotes the healthy raising of children. This week we play Maggie’s keynote address from the Men’s Advisory Network Second National Conference held recently in Fremantle, Western Australia. Titled Dear Boys: About the Healthy Mothering of Boys, her poignant and often hilarious keynote explores the vital role in boys’ lives of healthy mothering. It is especially helpful for mothers and teachers who are confused by the boys in their lives. The impact of abandonment, avoidance and misunderstanding can shape a boy for the rest of his life in very negative ways. This will show you how to engage, connect and enjoy these interesting lads from early years to adulthood.

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European Update

With special guests:

• John Forsyth and
  
• Jiri Fiala.

John Forsyth is a journalist based in Scotland who worked for the BBC in London for 10 years before returning to Scotland to become Political Editor of Scotland on Sunday newspaper. He has recently resumed freelancing for newspapers. John has taken some interest in the Scottish Government’s persistence with a gender-based analysis of domestic abuse to provide 10s of millions of pounds in funding for support groups for female victims of domestic abuse and violence and zero for males in the same situation. The latest 2007-8 domestic abuse statistics were published recently with a government press release saying police reports of domestic abuse had gone up 2%. Somehow they managed to gloss over the fact that police reports of women as victims of men had fallen while incidents of males on the receiving end had gone up by 12%, as they have in each of the last 8 years.

Jiri Fiala is the founder and director of the Czech Republics’ fathers group K213. Jiri has been desperately trying to obtain contact with his two children, which the Czech Courts will not support. After taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights, who incidentally ruled in his favour, the Czech Family Court still refuses to act upon the directions of the European Court of Human Rights, and will not enforce his legal contact with his children.

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Renovations Required

Dr James Cumes

With Special Guests:

• Rainer Sonnenberger and
• Dr James Cumes.

First up we are joined by Rainer Sonnenberger from Germany. Rainer is a member of the board of directors of the largest organization for fathers and childrens’ rights in Germany Vateraufbruch Fur Kinder.

Next we speak to James Cumes, renaissance man and author of, amongst other things, America’s Suicidal Statecraft. James was one of the few commentators to predict the current global economic crisis. We speak to him from Vienna where he explains some of the causes of the global predicament and offers some sensible solutions to resuscitate the Australian and global economies.

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Two Sides to Every Story

With Special Guests:

• James Adams
• Sue Price and
• Warwick Marsh.

There are two sides to every story, but when it comes to gender issues including domestic violence and shared parenting, the Australian public are only hearing one side.

Much of the Australian media has completely neglected to point out that there is a great deal of debate academic and otherwise over the massive taxpayer-funded domestic violence industry and its portrayal of men and fathers as abusers and women as victims.

The Labor Party has now been in power for a year, and the anti-father anti-male propaganda machine is in full swing. The public has been inundated with horror stories of evil men bashing women and how the extremely modest reforms by the previous government to dilute the extreme anti-father bias of our family law system are allegedly placing women and children in danger.

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Resilience

With Special Guests:

• Maggie Dent and
• Michael Woods.

As always, Dads On The Air is covering a lot of ground this week. We begin by talking to author Maggie Dent about her new book, Real Kids in an Unreal World: Building Resilience and Self Esteem in Today’s Children. Then we talk with Michael Woods, Senior Lecturer with the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney, on the controversy surrounding White Ribbon Day. Many critics are now expressing concern over the social consequences of the repeated linking of men with violence in taxpayer-funded public campaigns and the inflamed misuse of statistics to bolster an ideological position which paints men as violent patriarchs. We’ll also be taking a look at the demise of the Federal Magistrates Service in Australia, created in a sense as a counterbalance to the Family Court. While many questions remain over the failure of reactionary elements within family law to embrace shared parenting, the Magistgrates Service was generally seen as faster, fairer and less expensive.

We speak with Habib about his new book My Story - The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, his experiences in Guantánamo, and how he has managed to adjust back to his life as an Australian father and husband.

We also present Maggie Hamilton’s inspirational keynote address from the MAN National Conference in Fremantle titled Capturing the public imagination: securing a better future for our men and boys.

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Rites of Passage

Dr Arne Rubenstein

With Special Guests:

• Arne Rubenstein and
• Ruedi Oswald.

At the Men’s Advisory Network’s Second National Conference back in August, in Fremantle, we recorded Dr Arne Rubenstein’s inspiring keynote address titled Creating contemporary Rites of Passage and the Pathways to Manhood Program. Dr Rubenstein is the co-founder and CEO of the Pathways Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that runs the national award winning Pathways to Manhood Program in schools and communities around Australia. This program for teenage boys and their fathers is a contemporary Rite of Passage that aims to inspire the boys to have a vision and reach their potential.

Ruedi Oswald, is a licensed Swiss social worker who is going to give us an insight into what happens to separated fathers in Switzerland, and how easily they can be separated from their children once one parent is allotted sole custody by the legal system. We’re going to try and find out what differences there are in the way that separation and divorce are dealt with by the Swiss Family Justice System compared to what happens in the rest of the western democracies. While his wife, who is a doctor, lives in the family home and he hasn’t seen his 3 kids for 10 years, he is forced to live out of the back of a converted van. Ruedi is looking for support and can be reached at swiss.socialwork@web.de.

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What Lies in the Hearts of Men

With Special Guests:

• John Simpson
• Sue Price
• Warwick Marsh
• Greg Andresen
• Robert Gordon.

This week we covered a great deal of territory, from a fascinating interview with the creative director of a powerful new movie Men’s Group, to International Men’s Day to the debate which has erupted over the potential jailing of men who dare to get a DNA sample of their children without the mother’s permission.

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Save the Males

With Special Guests:

• Kathleen Parker and
  
• Peter Burns

Author Kathleen Parker has created a furore around the world with her new book Save The Males. Don’t miss this fascinating interview. So disenfranchised have men become, that only a woman can state the bleeding obvious, that the extreme sexism of gender feminism has done a great deal of harm to men, women, children, and society as a whole.

One person who knows all about the brutality of the modern state is Peter Burns, one of the leading members of the fathers’ rights movement in NZ, he hosts a very successful website http://dad4justice.blogspot.com/ where he dispenses a wealth of information from around the world to do with fatherhood issues.

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