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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Too Soon, Too Late

With special guests:

• Ralph & Kathy Kelly
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

There is widespread knowledge of the July 2012 attack on 18 year old Thomas Kelly. The sorrow felt by the community was compounded by the loss through suicide of Thomas’s brother Stuart four years later.

Ralph and Kathy Kelly have experienced the unimaginable but as a measure of the innate qualities of them and their family they have, in the time since, made great strides in reducing the dangers on the streets of Sydney.

In their book Too Soon, Too Late Kathy and Ralph tell how they explored what happened on those July days in 2012 and 2016. They talk about the care and assistance they have received from people such as former NSW Premiers Barry O’Farrell and Mike Baird. They also reveal the human side of the people on the front line such as the NSW Police Force Homicide Squad. Within themselves Kathy and Ralph found the bravery missing from anonymous “trolls” who did not like some of the changes to our drinking laws even if they resulted in a dramatic reduction in hospital admissions on a Saturday night.

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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.

Reflected in these pages are the lives of all those people touched by violence, segregation, abuse and the dehumanising policies and practices of colonisation. We hear about coal seam gas, tin mining and the conflict with sacred sites.

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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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