Healthy Men, Healthy Families, Healthy Nation

With special guests:

• Jeff Kennett and
  
• National Men’s Health Press Conference, Canberra.
  

First up we talk with Jeff Kennett, former Victorian Premier from 1992 to 1999, a man always admired for his outspoken directness. He began the National Depression Initiative Beyond Blue after the death of two of his daughter’s acquaintances. As Premier at that time he was shocked when it was revealed that both the deaths in question were actually as a result of suicidal intent. That started his investigation into what was being done and his involvement in the development of Beyond Blue.

Beyond Blue’s mission is “to provide a national focus and community leadership to increase the capacity of the broader Australian community to prevent depression and respond effectively to it. The aim is to build a society that understands and responds to the personal and social impact of depression, works actively to prevent it and improves the quality of life for everyone affected by it. The steps they have taken are to raise awareness of the problem, to de-stigmatize depression and mental illness in general, to conduct research into the problems of depression and impacts on our society, and to advocate for better government and corporate policies to accommodate and support sufferers of mental illness.”

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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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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 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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Get Off the Bench

With special guests:

• Bob Norton
• Larry Holland
• Peter Van de Voorde
• Mark Sutton and
• Angelo Lobo.

This week on Dads on the Air we present excerpts from two popular US radio programs that deal with men’s and fathers’ issues. First up, Dads on the Air recently joined the discussion on popular weekly American radio program Get Off The Bench. Our own Peter van de Voorde together with the co-hosts of the program, Bob Norton and Larry Holland, discuss many of the Family Law issues that are presently faced in so many countries around the world.

This is followed by an excellent interview with filmmaker Angelo Lobo on Liberal Arts Radio. Liberal Arts is a radio show that explores the arts from an unapologetically political perspective. Host Mark Sutton (NPR, Air America, XM Satellite Radio) is joined by politically-opinionated guests from the world of music, art, political cartoons, film and more. The Family Court system is on trial in Angelo Lobo’s documentary film Support System Down, which looks at ways in which people have been trapped in divorce proceeding that can last for years, cost into the millions of dollars, and separate parents from kids.

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Child Support: The Bitter Harvest

Matt Miller

With Special Guests:

• Matt Miller
• Sue Price
• John Flanagan
• Phillip York.

Nothing makes separated dads more upset or more angry than the Child Support Agency, with its constant and brutal intrusions into their lives and its systemic stripping of their income and assets. While the government has built an enormous and ruthless bureaucratic empire around child support, and will pursue fathers literally to the grave for a few dollars, the same government does absolutely nothing to ensure that kids get to see their dads.

This government is now overseeing complex and confusing changes to the child support system which is meant to make it fairer, but in fact will see many if not most fathers paying more, while stripping them of their family allowance.

While he heads the country’s most despised and destructive institution - and has rapidly become the country’s most disliked bureaucrat - at least Matt Miller has had the gumption to come on and attempt to justify the changes. Also on the show this week are John Flanagan from the Fairness in Child Support group, Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency and Phillip York from Dads In Distress.

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Examining Misandry

With special guests:

• Dr. Paul Nathanson and Dr. Katherine Young, authors of two very important books that uncover the underlying contempt for men and boys in our culture today: Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture and Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men.
• Simon Hunt, from Parents Against Institutionalised Child Abuse. A unique voice in the Australian Fatherhood movement by dint of refusing to shut up. Hunt has distilled the problems with the Family Law system down to one key issue: equal time parenting after separation - the solution that removes the problem.
• Sue Price, from the Men’s Rights Agency, talking about the bizarre news that the Child Support Agency has been given an award for it’s work in the area of suicide prevention!

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Fathers' Day Special

With special guests:

• Eric Burch, US serviceman and musician
• Matt O’Connor, leader of Fathers 4 Justice UK
• Jacinta Hawgood, from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, at Griffith University
• Warwick Marsh, from the Fatherhood Foundation
• Colin George, from the Fatherhood Festival in Bangalow (Northern NSW).

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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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