Dads in Distress

With special guests:

• Tony Miller
• Barry Wiliams
• Phillip York
• Scott Hayes
• Leon Schmeider
• Chris Stokes and
• Peter Smith.

We are pleased to present a Dads in Distress special, looking at the unique work this organisation does in helping fathers in crisis. DIDs aims to provide a safe forum for men going through the trauma of divorce, separation or relationship breakdown to express their grief. It also aims to nurture, validate and stabilise men and by the nautre of the sharing that takes place  guide men to become the cause of their future and not be the result of their past.

With the Rudd government preparing to defund all fathers groups, and the government not providing us with any response to our questions on the issue, we talk to some of the leading figures in Dads in Distress, including founder Tony Miller. He talks about the history of Dads In Distress, what drove him to found the group and the crises it now faces after having established groups around the country.

Barry Williams has been a committed advocate for lone fathers and their families for over thirty years. Leon Schmeider is the convenor of the Dads in Distress Group in Newcastle, and has worked tirelessly as a volunteer for Dids for many years. He has been an inspiration to many men in Newcastle and surrounding areas, as he seems to always go that little bit further in everything he does. Chris Stokes is a dad who also found Dads in Distress at a very tough time in his life. He talks about how DIDs can help blokes at a very difficult time in their lives. Peter Smith is just another dad in a long long line that have been thankful to find a Dads in Distress group in his area.

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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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Men's Sheds and Private Spaces

With special guests:

• Professor Barry Golding, University of Ballarat. With men’s voices almost eliminated from the public debate on gender - and certainly from the formation of public policy - the importance of private spaces where men can simply be themselves is more important than ever [more info]
• Simon Hunt, Family Law Maverick. Simon’s propositions are very much solution based, are well thought through and need to be considered seriously, as an intregal part of the debate to bring about much needed changes to a hopelessly flawed Family Justice System

Plus the next instalment of the radio drama Hero Joe, produced especially for Dads on the Air.

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Post-Election Variety

With special guests:

• Diane Winterling, Bronwyn Hudson and Ann Cheek from Belair Primary School in Adelaide, talking about how they’ve made their school more “boy friendly”. Interviewed at the Working With Boys, Building Fine Men conference in Newcastle in July
• Tom Golden, author of Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing, talking about how and why males and females differ in processing emotion and stress. Interviewed at the Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference in Washington DC in July
• J. Steven Svoboda from Attorneys for the Rights of the Child, talking about protecting boys from infant circumcision. Also interviewed at the Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference.

Plus an Australian Federal Election wrap-up and post-mortem.

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Dads in Schools

With special guests:

• John Andrianus and Dave Turnidge from the Boys in Schools Program, part of the Fathers in Communities Project at the Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle. Begun in February 2006, this 2-year project has 3 objectives: to create stronger families through supporting men in their roles as fathers, create a greater awareness for families and schools of the importance of the role of fathers and to provide guidelines and resources to assist in that work.

Also, Greg Andresen reports in from the Men and Family Relationships National Forum in Adelaide.

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Suburban Heroes

With special guests:

• Allan Turner, Chief Executive of the Zaidee Rainbow Foundation, urging all families to sign up for organ transplants.
• John Ashfield, author of a number of books including Matters For Men, The Nature of Men and Looking After Your Family and
• Harry Hill, author of a new book He Was My Father.

As well our researcher Greg Andresen will be calling in from the UK, where he has been interviewing a number of leading figures in the fatherhood movement and a fortnightly new segment, Research Central with Tom Mok will kick off with a look at a new paper De-constructing the Essential Father.

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Welfare, Debt, Credit, Bureaucracy and Betrayal: the Howard Years

Julie Owens MP

With special guests:

• Peter Saunders, senior researcher, Centre for Independent Studies
• Scott Garman from New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men, the only Commission for Men anywhere in the world
• Tony Miller, founder of Dads In Distress
• Tom Mok on Child Support Agency’s misleading data and
• Julie Owens, Labor MP for Parramatta.

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UK Special - Fathers Direct

Adrienne Burgess

With special guest:

• Adrienne Burgess, author of Fatherhood Reclaimed, and Policy and Research advisor to Fathers Direct - the UK National Information Centre on Fatherhood.

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Supporting New Dads

With special guests:

• Sean Tonnet, facilitator of the Transition to Fatherhood course at Manly Hospital, Sydney, NSW, and
• Joel Edson, creator of the Fathers and Families project in Port Augusta, South Australia

Dads on the Air looks at the growing area of ante-natal services for new dads-to-be.

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New Zealand Special

With special guests:

• Celia Lashlie, author, He’ll Be Okay: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men
• Jim Bailey, outspoken critic of the government-promoted mistreatment of fathers at the hands of the judiciary and the bureacracy
• Jim Bagnall, chairman of the Separated Fathers Support Network

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