Men's Health and Rallying Forces

With special guests:

• Professor John Macdonald
• John Roberts and
• Sue Price.

This week we will be talking with two of the country’s leading experts on men’s health. First up Prof John Macdonald, who is president of the Australasian Men’s Health Forum, Co-Director of the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney and one of the Federal Government’s Men’s Health Ambassadors. He has been closely involved with the government’s community consultation process for the development of the first National Men’s Health Policy, and related matters around men’s health in Australia. He will be bringing us up to date with developments.

John Roberts is the chair of the organising committee for the Men’s Health Gathering to be held at Newcastle University in October this year. John also works for the Benevolent Society in the Hunter Valley of NSW and runs their MARS (Men Accessing Resources & Services) Program which has produced some fabulous resources for blokes such as the Our Men, Our Community posters, the Blokes Booklet and the Blokes Card. He also works with community organisations around the Hunter and Central Coast regions to encourage them to become more “men-friendly”.

We close the show talking with leading lobbyist Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency about the women’s groups organising rallies outside Family Courts amidst concern the courts may be too generous to dads!

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Family Heartbreak System Down

With special guests:

• Michael Jeffries
• Angelo Lobo and
• Chris Amos.

Before getting down to the serious business, this week Dads on the Air starts off with an interview with Chris Amos, the figure behind taking DOTA into the 21st century by setting up a special Facebook group. For those older parents unfamiliar with the technology of social networking sites, so popular amongst many of our listeners’ teenage children, he explains how it all works and how to get involved.

This week we are honoured to have two American activists on our show. First up we have Michael Jeffries, author of the new book A Family’s Heartbreak: a Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation. The book arose from the author’s personal experience and details all the tricks and sick behaviour that separating parents use against each other, poisoning the minds of their children against the other parent. That such behaviour is enormously damaging to the children involved and ultimately destructive to both the perpetrator and the targeted parent should be obvious to anyone. Yet there are no public messages out there discouraging parents from this sick and abusive behaviour. While women most often attempt to poison their kids minds against their fathers during custody disputes, men can be equally guilty.

We close the show talking with Angelo Lobo, Director and Producer of a new documentary on the shocking US Family Law and Child Support System called SUPPORT? System Down. The documentary is nearing completion after four years of work. SUPPORT? System Down explores the fundamental flaws in America’s Family Courts regarding the Divorce and Child Support System. The film explores the problems through over 38 interviews with both custodial and non-custodial parents and the attorneys, judges and county employees on both sides of the paradigm. SUPPORT? System Down was made to be educational and provocative in order to spark a call to action to bring about much-needed reform in the family courts. Children should not have to suffer due to an ineffectual and corrupt legal system!

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Gender-Neutral Approaches to Domestic Violence

With special guests:

• Joep Zander
• Patricia Gho and
• Paddy Murray

In the social justice arena, two small European countries appear to be way ahead of the pack, and Dads on the Air has been among the first to report these important historic developments to the English-speaking world. First, on the 10th of March we reported on the new “50/50 Equal Shared Parenting Time” laws in Belgium, and now we are pleased to report that the Dutch Government has finally recognized the need to provide domestic violence shelters for abused men.

First up we speak with Joep Zander, who is a well known author, artist and fathers rights activist in the Netherlands. He presents his view of the new DV shelters, acknowledging that because it is still very early days he has some reservations about the scheme. However he hopes the shelters will turn out to be successful in providing a much needed escape for men from their violent partners or families.

Next we speak with Patricia Gho of Stichting Wende, director of the men’s shelter in the Hague. Commenting on the radical change in Dutch Government thinking that led to the trial, she states that “the Government simply could no longer ignore all the data that has for many years shown that there is a real need to also provide shelter for the abused men in our community”.

Bringing the issue closer to home, last up we speak with Paddy Murray, the Buddhist chaplain from Goulburn prison. Mr Murray has done some interesting development work in violence-prevention in Campbelltown with both men and women. He ran the first violence prevention course for women, which unfortunately is no longer in operation. His approach, which he calls “peaceful relating”, is to move beyond gender in violence-prevention work, arguing that the gender lens is just a distortion that does not help much with the work.

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DOTA Goes Spiritual

With special guests:

• Archbishop Barry Hickey and
• Fighting Father Dave.

The mainstream churches have long ignored the many issues confronting fathers in Australia today, so we decided to take a look at the issues of fathers and the various churches.

Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey has written that the absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem in our society. “If Father Christmas was offering me gifts, I would ask for peace in every family and a father at the heart of every family,” he was quoted as saying in the publication Perth Now. “The absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem we face today. It is the biggest cause of lifelong difficulties for fathers, mothers and, most of all, for children.”

“The absence of fathers is bigger than anger, aggression, alcohol, drugs, crime and under-achievement by children because it is the biggest single contributor to all of them. This is borne out worldwide by every large-scale, long-term study of family. I know that Father Christmas isn’t going to solve this problem for me, but I keep praying for it,” Archbishop Hickey said.

Fighting Father Dave is Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three. His website is www.fatherdave.org. Author of Sex, the Ring and The Eucharist, is the only Australian in the Holy Order of the Anglican Church who has ever had to box professionally in order to raise the funds to keep his ministry going. He is known as “Sydney’s Fighting Father,” who combines his work as a Parish Priest with a ministry to street kids, heroin addicts and other ‘undesirables’ from the underside of Australian Society. He uses boxing and the fighting arts to teach young people self-control.

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