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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Exploding Gender Myths

With Special Guests:

• Professor Mark Wooden
• Warwick Marsh and
• Professor Richard B. Felson.

Prof Mark Wooden, social researcher at the University of Melbourne, is a very courageous man. Last week he was the only male taking part in a National Press Club panel discussion on the gender pay gap. Faced with a mostly female audience, he dared to challenge the myth that the pay gap between men and women in Australia is mainly due to discrimination, instead suggesting that it has “got a lot to do with the fact that women are not prepared to work longer hours.”

Other widespread myths concern the issue of domestic violence. One of them is that husbands engage in more marital violence than wives because they are more controlling. The other is that societal norms permit violence within marriage and that gender roles encourage violence by males moreso than females. Richard B. Felson, Professor of Crime, Law, Justice and Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University in the US, has published extensive research that challenges both of these myths.

Also on today’s show we speak to Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation about the proposed laws in NSW that will remove the word ‘father’ from birth certifcates and consign the term ‘paternity leave’ to the dustbin of history.

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