Happy New Year

With special guests: 

• Sue Price.
    

Dads on the air wish all our listeners a happy new year. We commence the year by speaking with Sue Price from the Mens Rights Agency and look at the vicious bureaucratic backlash against shared parenting by those with a vested interest in maintaining the taxpayer funded industries generated by the Australian family courts sole mother custody models.

While the rest of the world appears to be finally recognizing the massive damage done to both children and parents, by the hysterical anti-father policies of the past, Australia is heading in the exact opposite direction.

We also take a nostalgic look at some of the material we covered over the past year. 2010 is shaping up as the year the Australian government, headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd goes back to the future, undoing laws it once supported promoting the shared care of children post separation.

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2009 The End

With special guests: 

• Barry Williams.
    

A lot of people, including most of the Dads On The Air team, are glad to see the end of 2009. The year which saw the death of Michael Jackson, the triumph of Barack Obama and the failure of the Copenhagen climate change conference, was also the year in which the Australian government, headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, inexplicable moved against the nation’s fathers, holding multiple fundamentally biased inquiries into the previous government’s popular shared parenting legislation, which encouraged the courts to give fathers and their children a fair-go after separation.

The founder of the Lone Fathers Association Barry Williams, the grandfather of the fatherhood movement in Australia and way back in 1972 the first Australian male to receive the parenting allowance, here adds his voice to the chorus of concern over the Rudd governments apparent aims to roll back the legislation which encouraged cooperation between parents post-divorce

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Re-Empowering Dads

With special guests: 

• Ken Thompson
  
• Damien Diecke and
• Greg Stocks.  

First up we speak with NSW Fire Brigade Deputy Commissioner, Ken Thompson (COPAC), whose 5-year- old-son, Andrew, was abducted in 2008. He points out that, “Australia now has the highest per capita rate of IPCA in the world”, highlighting the need for new laws. “It’s far too easy for a parent to abduct a child” he said. 

The Family Law Reform Association (FLRA) has called for the introduction of new laws to protect children from being abducted from Australia. As part of the support for this campaign, Ken Thompson has recently formed a group called the Coalition of Parents of Abducted Children (COPAC).
 
Our second interview is with Damien Diecke, a motivational speaker and Master attraction coach, who asks men to join him at the “Be That Confident Guy” seminar in Sydney 19th December.  
 
Damien points out that if you are a man who finds the following familiar, than you will definitely benefit from his re empowering seminars.
 
“I see a woman somewhere at a club, across a room, or perhaps just in the queue in front of me, who makes my heart race and I want so badly to go over and talk to her - but I don’t, I can’t - for no matter how much I have struggled in the past to overcome it, again, I find myself in the grip of an overwhelming self-consciousness and fear of rejection - once more I feel paralysed”
 
We end the program with an interesting recording of the ‘HEY DAD’ workshop for facilitators presented by Greg Stocks at the recent National Mens Health Conference, which was attended by the Dads on The Air team.
 
It provides an insight into how men are working together to re-engage and re-empower themselves, following years of relentless persecution, stereotyping and isolation from our communities. They are encouraged by the many women who are supportive and who are starting to speak out against the perpetrators, under the banner of ‘We Want Our Men Back’

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Managony

With special guests: 

• David ‘Smiley’ Byrnes  and

• Ian Purdie.  

Dads on the air has witnessed the slow emergence over the last two years of the album Managony by Horizon Shine. It is a collection of songs written specifically for DOTA, dealing with issues that have featured on the program relating to fathers’ experiences during and around the subject of divorce. The songs were written, recorded and produced by David “Smiley” Byrnes and DOTA’s Ian Purdie who has been a presenter on the show for the last 4 years. Today’s program features Ian Purdie and Smiley and most of the other musicians they co-opted to help create Managony, as well as the songs and some insights into their composition and the recording process. The album is available through this website for $20. 

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What Is Family Violence?

With special guests:

• Greg Andresen
  
• Sue Price and
  
• Warwick Marsh.  

This week much media attention is given to the subject of Family Violence and Abuse. While $40 million of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the hysterical  WRD campaign, which by definition promotes the false perception that violence is only perpetrated by men against women, the Rudd Government has not spent one cent on one third of the victims, which happen to be men.  

The insidious WRD campaign which has now infiltrated our schools and is being used to indoctrinate our children, does nothing except cause our daughters to be filled with hate for our sons, and fill our sons with false guilt just for being male. 

However, armed with a dozier of more reliable factual research that indicates a large percentage of the victims are in fact males, men have finally launched the more credible 1in3 campaign.  First up we speak with the Senior Researcher and spokesperson for the One in Three Campaign, Greg Andresen, who exposes a series of falsehoods and misinformation being put forward by the Domestic Violence industry, in order to deceive an unsuspecting public into believing that only men are perpetrators and only women are victims of Domestic Violence.  

Next we speak with Sue Price from the Mens Rights Agency, who draws attention to the way the Rudd Government, which is hell bent on taking us back to the dark old days of the disgraced Nicholson era, is calling on noted anti shared parenting apologists to provide advice to the Government on how to remove the notion of shared parenting.   

We close the show with Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation, who gives a glowing account of the success of last weeks’ International Mens Day. This event was celebrated around the world and contrary to the usual negative media portrayal of men, this positive image of men is now seen by many as one of the important building blocks of the long road back towards achieving justice and equality for men.    

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Threats To The Family

With special guests:

• Barry Maley   
  

• Dr Elizabeth Celi and

• Sue Price.  

We start the program interviewing Barry Maley, who is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Barry has released a report Family on the Edge – Stability and Fertility in Prosperity and Recession in which there are surprising findings leading to some major recommendations. Birth rates have been studied between a low point of 2001 and a recent high point of 1.93 per woman in 2008. The increase is strongly associated with the rising prosperity of that period.  With the financial threats and the continuing prevalence of children bei ng born to single mothers Barry argues for a change in family law and policies to encourage family stability. This would be a major factor in being able to sustain the buoyant birth rate.

Our second interview is with Dr Elizabeth Celi, well known Psychologist and social commentator who in the course of her work in mental health has encountered examples of domestic abuse which are sometimes too subtle to affect our sensibility. Elizabeth discusses recent television advertisements that would cause immediate offence if a female character were to be substituted for the male character in the script. We also talk about communication strategies and ways that can improve relationships and mental health.

Our final interview is with Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency. Sue has been conducting a survey on the Family Relationship Centres and we discuss progress with the survey. One of the problems that has been identified so far is with regard to a particular psychological theory that may be imposed by the Centres. We might have expected that the Centres would use the Government money to mediate and listen to the parties rather than impose a particular theoretical approach on the parties in dispute.

In coming weeks we will be presenting interviews obtained at the National Men’s Health Gathering held in Newcastle last week, at which Dads on the Air was represented by Peter van de Voorde and Greg Andresen.

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The Emasculated Vikings

With special guest:

• Joakim Ramstedt.  

Today we speak with well known Swedish musician, human rights activists and political Blogger, Joakim Ramstedt. He and his popular band Tequila Sunrise have released a new album, with many of the songs referring to the various elements that comprise the destructive International family justice system, which is doing so much harm to unsuspecting separating parents and their children around the globe.

Throughout history, people have found ways to separate children either from one or both of their parents and extended families. This phenomenon can be traced right back to medieval times.

Modern man has fine tuned the methods used to accomplish this insidious practice and has even found a way to make it legal to do so, by creating a court of law that hides behind the mantle of “In the best interest of the children”, while it severs many of the world’s children from half of their biological family tree.

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Facts Versus Myths

With special guest:

• Sue Price.  

Once again we continue with the ever present need to put the record straight and expose the truth behind the myths and disinformation generally being presented in the media, regarding the many factors surrounding the family justice system.

Our editorial position is that, unless policies and programs are formulated as a result of sound research which is grounded in verifiable facts about the nature, extend and causes of the problems, we will never achieve a just and equitable outcome and separating families will continue to suffer as a result.

This week our guest is Sue Price of the ‘Mens Rights Agency’. As always Sue points out the urgent need for better reporting and the necessity for correct analysis of the operation of the current system and in particular the success or otherwise of the mediation centers which were set up by the Howard government, as a first point of call for broken families.

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Marriage Matters

With special guests:

• Warwick Marsh  and

• Bill Kable.

First we speak with the founder of the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, which is now Australia’s largest pro-father, pro-marriage and pro-family charity, Warwick Marsh.

Warwick, together with his wife and daughter, recently attended the Smart Marriages Conference in Florida, USA. During his US tour in July, Warwick met with leaders in the American fatherhood and marriage movement and recorded many interviews for TV and radio. He speaks with us about his recent tour and his passion to promote marriage and the virtues of staying together for better or worse.

Next we introduce the newest member of the Dads on the Air team, Bill Kable. Bill is a Sydney lawyer who is also a professional mediator with a mission to encourage fathers to take an active role in the lives of their children, and to ensure they remain in the lives of their children should parental separation occur.  

Bill speaks candidly about some of his own experiences with the family justice system, and how it fails non custodial parents and their children, especially in the area of non-enforcement of contact orders.  

Also in the studio were two other new members of the Dads on the Air team, Bill’s wife Catherine, a University lecturer and Trevor Miller, a retired ABC TV editor. All of whom have had extensive experience with the family justice system and realize the urgent need to ensure the nation’s children obtain real equal shared parenting time with both of their  parents, following parental separation.  Welcome aboard. 

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Empowering Gender Equality

With special guests:

• Jeffrey Asher and

• Geoffrey Greene.
  

First up we speak with the newly appointed President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia Geoffrey Greene, who was a key figure in the establishment of the Council 8 years ago and a key figure in pushing through the moderate reforms to family law by the previous Australian government; reforms which now look like they will be wound back by a Labor government and a few key feminist ministers.

Secondly we speak with Canadian academic Jeffrey Asher, formerly of Dawson College, who taught on the statistical merits of sexual politics and in the autumn of 1994, offered students at Dawson College the only course in Canada on ‘Men’s Lives’. Following 6 years of unrelenting pressure from extreme feminists, he was finally forced to resign and abandon the course in 2000. “My father taught me to respect ladies and that human rights were indivisible. In the 1970s, I lectured on sexual equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Like most men, my naivete about feminist politics was sustained by raging hormones”.

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The Canadian Special

With special guests:

• Karen Selick
• Rodger Gallaway and
• Jeffrey Asher.

This week we look at the struggle for family law reform in Canada, the home of some of the world’s most extreme anti-male anti-father legislation. Recently Dads On The Air interviewed Canadian MP Maurice Vellacot, who has introduced shared parenting legislation into the Canadian parliament. This week we follow on from that interview by talking with the highly experienced family lawyer Karen Selick, who has been an outspoken proponent for reform of the system; Roger Gallaway MP, who co-chaired an inquiry into shared parenting in Canada and Jeffrey Asher, a lecturer on men’s studies who taught the last men’s studies course in the country.

With Australia’s left wing government heading in exactly the opposite direction to the rest of the western world and winding back the modest reforms of the previous government promoting cooperative care of children after divorce, now is the perfect time to look at the situation around the world. Canadian society and many tens of thousands of fathers and their children have paid a very high price for the country’s previous embrace of extreme anti-male ideology; and numerous voices are now united in a call for sanity to prevail.

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The Mandarins and the Masses

With special guests:

• Amfortas

Over the past week father’s activists around Australia have been appalled by announcements from the Australian Labor government that it intends winding back the 2006 reforms to family law which promoted more cooperative arrangements after divorce or separation.

The government is conduction three separate inquiries into family law, inappropriately linking the inquiries with domestic violence. Not one of them consults the views of fathers or even the general public. There could be no clearer case of the mandarins regarding the great unwashed with contempt and not trusting their opinions, because after all there is strong public support for shared parenting.

Against this background, this week we play samples from the compelling podcasts compiled by a private practicing psychologist with 25 years experience who is driven by his own experiences and the experiences of many of his clients. He goes by the handle Amfortas, after the keeper of the Holy Grail. “I am a Men’s rights activist who is fighting against the excesses of feminism and the deleterious affects they are having on our public policies, particularly as they affect families and children,” he says. “I am not at all embarrassed by the use of the term Men’s rights, even if its unfashionable. Men’s rights are part of human rights.”

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Shared Parenting - Why It Works

With special guests:

• Maurice Vellacott
• Michael Green and
• Sue Price.

With moves clearly afoot to wind back the modest reforms of the previous government on shared parenting legislation designed to encourage a relationship between both parents and children after separation, we take a look at the very strong case for shared parenting as the norm post-separation, with advocates arguing it works best for both children and parents - as well as saving the government a great deal of money by encouraging single parents to get off welfare and into work.

Maurice Vellacott is a Canadian Member of Parliament who has just introduced a bill promoting shared parenting into the Canadian legislature. He says a recent poll demonstrated that 78% of Canadians support equal shared parenting, with slightly more women than men supporting co-operative care of children post divorce.

Surveys in Australia have shown similar high levels of support, with the main obstruction to the commonsense notion coming from government bureaucrats and the family law industry itself. Regular guest Sue Price from the unfashionably named Men’s Rights Agency will talk about the devastating impacts on individuals and the broader community of the sole-mother custody model which has done so much harm over recent decades. She dismisses the current spirited campaign by feminist lobby groups outside Family Courts as nothing but hysterical male bashing by people with absolutely no knowledge of family law.

We close the show with an extended interview with Michael Green QC, author of the book Shared Parenting, who is also alarmed at the current moves to unwind shared parenting legislation. He argues that with legislation in many jurisdictions now enshrining shared parental responsibility and parenting time, there is ample research which indicates how important it is for children to continue meaningful relationships after family breakdown.

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The Barbara Biggs Show

With Special Guests:

• Barbara Biggs and
• concerned citizens.

Barbara Biggs has become the new “poster girl” for the anti-shared parenting movement. While many fathers have been disturbed by her comments in the media against shared and co-operative parenting after divorce, this is the first opportunity for many to hear what she has to say directly. Barbara Biggs spoke at a Fellowship of the Roundtable forum at NSW Parliament House with the subject Family Law - Is The Man The Loser? This is the speech she gave followed by her answers to questions from the floor. Family law reformers around the country have been alarmed at the scurillous campaign, including a number of demonstrations outside family courts and other locations, to return family law to the dark ages when more than half of all children entering the Family Court arena rarely if ever saw their fathers again and almost no fathers were ever given any substantial time with their children.

The campaign is being conducted under the guise of preventing domestic violence against women and sexual abuse against children. Biggs claims that the shared parenting laws have forced children to spend time with abusive parents, but her target is clearly fathers. One simple point reformers make: child abuse is committed by both genders, it is a crime, and is a police matter, but Biggs only focuses on sexual abuse of children ignoring child homicide, infanticide, neglect, emotional and physical abuse where women make up the majority of perpetrators. Most sexual abuse of children occurs at the hands of other siblings, step parents, mother’s boyfriends/defactos and other relatives. Fathers are the least likely to sexually abuse their children.

For the vast majority of family law cases, the research is clear: children benefit from a continued relationship with both parents after separation.  Barbara Biggs has made a career out of her colourful life, including alleging she was sold as a sex slave by her grandmother at 14 as well doing stints as a prostitute, mental health patient and property developer. Her books include In Moral Danger, The Journey Home, The Accidental Renovator and Money and Sex: How To Get More. Whether Biggs is a dangerous hysteric promoting irrational hatred against men or a true champion of the nation’s abused children, you can decide for yourself.

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Family Law - Is the Man the Loser?

With special guests:

• Mark Yousseff
• Peter van de Voorde and
• Warwick Marsh.

Dads on the Air was pleased to accept an invitation from the debating group Fellowship of the Round Table. We were asked to contribute to their debate called Family Law: Is the Man The Loser? We argue men, women and children are all losers under the present system. With the current left-wing Labor government preparing to wind back the modest family law reforms of the previous conservative Howard government which encouraged shared and cooperative care of children after divorce or separation, there could hardly be a more controversial subject in Australia today. Prior to the reforms more than half of the country’s dads barely if ever saw their children again after divorce. With the enormous pain this was causing parents, and the enormous damage the destruction of the relationship between children and their fathers was doing to the kids and to society at large, these reforms were long overdue. This week we play a fascinating speech from senior family law lawyer Mark Yousseff as well as speeches from DOTA representative Peter van de Voorde and Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation.

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Making History

With special guests:

• Pascal Gallez and
• Michael Green.

We have a very special program this week. Our guest is Pascal Gallez from Belgium, and the subject of our discussion today is the revelation that we now appear to have a template of Real Equal Shared Parenting Time laws in Belgium. Dads on the Air understands we are making history by being the first to bring this to the attention of the English-speaking world. While not perfect, it certainly is a big step forward in the right direction.

This is an important milestone, because it will provide all those fighting so hard around the world to bring about change to the Draconian Family Justice System, with an example of how “Equal Shared Parenting Time” laws need to be structured and how they can work.

Also on the program we’ll be speaking with Michael Green. Michael currently is the patron and past President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia. He is a Lawyer, a QC, an author of two books on parenting issues, and runs a mediation company. We’ll be speaking to him about his thoughts on Belgium’s new Shared Parenting Laws and how they might work in Australia and other countries.

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Insane Levels of Stress

With special guests:

• “Matthew”
  
• “Dave” and
• “Steve”.

In the wake of an appalling tragedy where a four year old girl was allegedly thrown off a bridge by her father, we talk with three fathers about the stresses in their lives. It surprised no long term observers that shortly afterwards the father was found and then arrested in the environs of Melbourne’s Family Court.

While vigilantes have called for the man’s blood, others have called for compassion and understanding. Disgracefully, some feminist commentators have attempted to use the incident in their ideological campaign against the commonsense notion of shared parenting.

While making no direct comment on the case itself - the father has now been charged with murder - we do look at the insane levels of stress that fathers are put under by our reviled family law system.

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The Best of 2007 - Part 1

With special guests:

• Sue Price: founder and spokesperson for the Men’s Rights Agency
• Dr Ludwig Lowenstein: world expert on Parental Alienation Syndrome
• Maggie Hamilton: author of What Men Don’t Talk About
• Andrew Denton: TV personality from many shows including Enough Rope
• Erin Pizzey: founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women
• Tony Coe: president of the UK’s Equal Parenting Council
• Ann Bressington: outspoken South Australian MP, who is calling for better Child Protection
• Mark Harris and Jolly Stansby: Fathers4Justice UK activists. Mark is also the author of Family Court Hell
• Jim Bailey: New Zealand father’s activist.

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Family Court Hell

With special guests:

• Mark Harris, jailed for waving at his daughters as they drove past in the family car, and author of a new book Family Court Hell, a rare insight into the closed British family court system
• Jolly Stansby, activist from the UK’s Fathers 4 Justice, most famous for dressing up as a superhero and scaling public buildings to bring awareness to the injustice in the British family courts. Jolly was most recently arrested in the USA for scaling the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC
• Damon (not his real name), an Aussie dad who has been fortunate enough to receive 50-50 shared care of his children
• Ted Donnelly, from Lane Cove Community Men’s Shed talking about the 2nd National Community Men’s Sheds Conference.

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Dissident Voices

Christina Hoff Sommers

With special guests:

• Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys interviewed at the Boys and the Boy Crisis conference in Washington DC
• Independent MP Ann Bressington from South Australia who is calling on the Federal Government to take action to protect children from being caught in the middle of divorce and separation disputes
• The Hon Philip Ruddock MP, Australia’s Attorney General, answering questions from dads at the recent Lone Fathers National Conference in Canberra.

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