Moment of Truth

With special guest:

• Prof Mark McKenna
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In the Quarterly Essay Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future Professor Mark McKenna presents a significant contribution to the general debate and he is our respected guest in today’s program. At a time when Australians are searching for their national identity on Anzac Day and there is talk of a Republic once again Professor McKenna asks why has a dispute arisen regarding Australia Day?

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Black Pearls

With special guests:

• Colin & Paul Tatz
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

This program is dedicated to the memory of Professor Colin Tatz.

Black Pearls: The Aboriginal and Islander Sports Hall of Fame is a celebratory book about the earth shattering sporting performances of our Aboriginal and Islander Australians since the arrival of the white man in 1788.

This handsome work is presented by the Aboriginal Studies Press. As our guest Colin Tatz explains, the book is also a Hall of Fame that unlike bricks and mortar halls can be on display in our own homes and carried around with us.

With its beautiful pictures and stories about its 276 members covering 36 sports this is a project that began in the Bi-Centenary year of 1988 after Colin spoke to some communities about the absence of recognition for these sports stars.

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SHINE for Kids

With special guest:

• Dennis van Someren
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Dennis van Someren is getting the word out that we have a crisis in the community, a crisis involving some of our most vulnerable children that impacts on all of us.

Governments have responded to concerns about crime rates by building more jails with there being nearly 40,000 inmates in overcrowded jails around the country. This is up from 21,000 inmates only 10 years ago. At a cost of $292 per inmate per day the numbers are frightening. But when you consider that these inmates have in the order of 60,000 children and that the children of prisoners are 6 times more likely to end up in prison themselves you can see the problem.

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The Yield

With special guest:

• Tara June Winch
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The Yield is a big book that in Paul Kelly’s words “sings up language, history, home, blood – all the important stuff” with its focus being on an area of some 500 acres in western New South Wales.

This is a novel by Indigenous author Tara June Winch that she has been working on for the last fourteen years. It tells of the experiences of the fictional Goondiwindi family based on the real history of Aboriginal people in Australia. The novel is set in Massacre Plains and one of the places is called Poisoned Waterhole Creek. These are real place names. The town in the story is somewhat ironically called Prosperous.

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National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project

With special guest:

• Gerry Georgatos
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

We are honoured today to have as our special guest a social warrior, Gerry Georgatos. Gerry is the founder of the National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project (the Project) set up in 2019. His colleague Megan Krakouer appeared recently on The Drum to talk about the work Gerry and she are doing with young Aboriginal offenders in Western Australian prisons. Footage has emerged of young children being hog-tied by prison guards and Megan spoke of the need for help.

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Purple House

With special guest:

• Sarah Brown
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Twenty years ago in Central Australia the Aboriginal people called kidney disease “never return home.”

When kidney transplant is not available survival from end stage renal failure means dialysis where the patient is hooked up to a machine for five hours every second day for the rest of the patient’s life. And if Central Australians can only access the machines in Alice Springs and Darwin then that is where they will spend the rest of their lives.

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Still a Pygmy

With special guest:

• Isaac Bacirongo
  …in conversation with Bill Kable

When you are born and raised in Australia you know little about life as a refugee despite it being a frequent topic for conversation and opinion. Most of us have never spoken to a refugee.

Our guest today is Isaac Bacirongo who arrived in Sydney in 2003 with his wife and ten children as refugees after surviving the effects of Rwanda’s civil war in his own country, Congo.

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The Opera House

With special guest:

• Peter FitzSimons
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

As well as being a 20^th century marvel in its soaring design it remains a source of marvel that the Opera House was even conceived in the parochial, conservative backwater that was 1950s New South Wales.

One thing that was typical then and remains so is the Australian love for a gamble so it was a brainwave of the NSW government to think of financing the construction by way of a lottery. All of a sudden there were more than enough funds to do the work of construction.

But the bigger gamble was to construct a building like no other that would be on display at the heart of the city with techniques that had not been invented based on the imaginings and sparse drawings of a Danish architect who had never taken a building design through to completion.

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Paul Kelly

With special guest:

• Stuart Coupe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Paul Kelly is woven into the fabric of Australia. But it was not always so, as our guest today Stuart Coupe tells us. After first picking up a guitar at the age of 18 and writing his first song at 20, it did take a while and a number of rejections before Paul Kelly was accepted as a performer.

In his new book called Paul Kelly: the man, the music and the life in between, Stuart shows that he knows his subject well; so well that he can add this book to the canon on Paul Kelly’s life which already includes Paul Kelly’s lengthy autobiography.

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Deadly Connections

With special guest:

• Keenan Mundine
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Dreamer, nothing but a dreamer. That might be where it started for our guest today Keenan Mundine after a beginning in life that really didn’t give him a chance.

But after Keenan had spent the first half of his life in the criminal justice system he came to a realisation. Keenan either had to change his ways or face up to spending his life behind bars. Fortunately for us and for Keenan he decided to make a worthwhile contribution to society. And so was born Deadly Connections where he is the co-founder along with his wife Carly.

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What a great school!

With special guest:

• Mark Morrison OAM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Macleay Vocational College (MVC) caters for students from Year 9 to Year 12 (14 years of age onwards) who have fallen out of mainstream education for a variety of reasons. The Principal of MVC clearly has to have special qualities in order to relate to these students. Our guest today is Mark Morrison who has built up an incredible track record in that role over the last nine years. He has students gaining their Higher School Certificates, and sometimes they are the first in their families to do so. But when the students arrive at MVC their good qualities are often not evident in their personal histories and sometimes their current circumstances are troubling too. Against this background Mark brings an enlightened and flexible approach that allows the students to produce their best.

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Defying the Enemy Within

With special guest:

• Joe Williams
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When his father presented his South Sydney first grade rugby league jersey to Joe Williams it was a special moment. When Joe went straight into the ranks of professional boxers without any need for an apprenticeship as an amateur it was another special moment. Off the sporting field Joe is an established speaker on the circuit in Australia and the USA. So what could possibly be wrong?

We learn in this fascinating discussion that behind all the achievements Joe was battling serious mental illness from a young age. There were inner voices crowding out his thoughts and trying to drag him down. Joe admits that these voices denied him the satisfaction of reaching his true sporting potential but he is now on a course that he sees as more important.

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A Long Path to Freedom

With special guest:

• Jeff McMullen
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is Jeff McMullen, a household name in Australia after his many years on television for both the ABC and Channel 9. For more than 20 years Jeff has campaigned for the Indigenous people in Australia and other countries.

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The Yield

With special guest:

• Tara June Winch
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The Yield is a big book that in Paul Kelly’s words “sings up language, history, home, blood – all the important stuff” with its focus being on an area of some 500 acres in western New South Wales.

This is a new novel by Indigenous author Tara June Winch that she has been working on for the last fourteen years. It tells of the experiences of the fictional Goondiwindi family based on the real history of Aboriginal people in Australia. The novel is set in Massacre Plains and one of the places is called Poisoned Waterhole Creek. These are real place names. The town in the story is somewhat ironically called Prosperous.

Podcast (mp3)

Click to read more ...

Purple House

With special guest:

• Sarah Brown
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Twenty years ago in Central Australia the Aboriginal people called kidney disease “never return home.” When kidney transplant is not available survival from end stage renal failure means dialysis where the patient is hooked up to a machine for five hours every second day for the rest of the patient’s life. And if Central Australians can only access the machines in Alice Springs and Darwin then that is where they will spend the rest of their lives.

Twenty years ago the Aboriginal people with this condition were forced into a place where no one spoke their language and they were lonely and homesick. Family, culture and community relationships were suffering.

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Paul Kelly

With special guest:

• Stuart Coupe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Paul Kelly is woven into the fabric of Australia. But it was not always so, as our guest today Stuart Coupe tells us. After first picking up a guitar at the age of 18 and writing his first song at 20, it did take a while and a number of rejections before Paul Kelly was accepted as a performer.

In his new book called Paul Kelly: the man, the music and the life in between, Stuart shows that he knows his subject well; so well that he can add this book to the canon on Paul Kelly’s life which already includes Paul Kelly’s lengthy autobiography.

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Heart of the Grass Tree

With special guest:

• Molly Murn
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Today we travel back to the time before 1836 and to Australia’s second biggest island, Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia.

This is a big story over different generations of islanders. The modern day story deals with the effect on a family of a grandmother’s death. When Nell died her family returned to Kangaroo Island to mourn and farewell her. Nell’s granddaughter Pearl pulled together the scraps Nell left behind, her stories, poems and paintings and unearthed the early history of the European sealers and their first contact with the Ngarrindjeri people.

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What a great school!

With special guest:

• Mark Morrison
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Macleay Vocational College (MVC) caters for students from Year 9 to Year 12 (14 years of age onwards) who have fallen out of mainstream education for a variety of reasons. The Principal of MVC clearly has to have special qualities in order to relate to these students. Our guest today is Mark Morrison who has built up an incredible track record in that role over the last nine years. He has students gaining their Higher School Certificates, and sometimes they are the first in their families to do so. But when the students arrive at MVC their good qualities are often not evident in their personal histories and sometimes their current circumstances are troubling too. Against this background Mark brings an enlightened and flexible approach that allows the students to produce their best.

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Murder at Myall Creek

With special guest:

• Mark Tedeschi QC AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is the well-known former Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales and author of Murder at Myall Creek, Mark Tedeschi.

Mark has written a deeply moving account of the massacre of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children in 1838 which led to a trial that defined the nation of Australia. If the law of the land in Australia was to have any credibility, if the principle is that we are all equal before the law, then this is a watershed case.

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Deadly Connections

With special guest:

• Keenan Mundine
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Dreamer, nothing but a dreamer. That might be where it started for our guest today Keenan Mundine after a beginning in life that really didn’t give him a chance.

But after Keenan had spent the first half of his life in the criminal justice system he came to a realisation. Keenan either had to change his ways or face up to spending his life behind bars. Fortunately for us and for Keenan he decided to make a worthwhile contribution to society. And so was born Deadly Connections where he is the co-founder along with his wife Carly.

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