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Send us a textWelcome back to headfirst: A Concussion Podcast. Today we have the honour and privilege to be hosting Nick Rushworth. Nick Rushworth is the Executive Officer of Brain Injury Australia, a position he has held since 2008. Before joining Brain Injury Australia, Nick worked for the Northern Territory Government setting up their Office of Disability whilst also formerly a producer with the Nine Television Network's “Sunday” program and ABC Radio National, where Nick's journalism has won a number of awards, including a Silver World Medal at the 2003 New York Festival, a National Press Club and TV Week Logie Award. Nick's current primary focus is facilitating a national “community of practice” in brain injury for the National Disability Insurance Agency.  Furthermore, Nick serves as a consumer representative for numerous organisations some of these include but not limited to: Mission for traumatic brain injury: A medial research future fund-initiative providing $50 million in federal government funding over 10 years), the Australian Trauma Quality Improvement Program Steering Committee; the Victorian Neurotrauma Advisory Council;  the Executive of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Directorate of New South Wales Health; the Victorian Transport Accident Commission/ Monash University Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research Behaviours of Concern Project; the Monash Epworth Rehabilitation Research Centre Advisory Board; the Disability Advisory Committee of the Australian Electoral Commission; Nick is also a Director of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and is an Ambassador for the National Organisation for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and the Queensland Brain Institute's concussion research.In April 2024 Nick was appointed to the Australia Government Medical Research Traumatic Brain Injury Mission Expert Advisory Panel. - How Nick Become Involved in the Brain Injury and Concussion Space? (02:30)- Ways the mTBI/ concussion space has change since late 1990's to now? (04:10)- Differences in Mild, Moderate and Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (06:37)- Raising Awareness of mild Traumatic Brain Injury outside of Sports-Related Concussion (12:05)- Indigenous Australian's and Concussion/mTBI (17:02)- Incidences Rates of mTBI (20:30)- Language Around mTBI (22:30)- Falls in the Elderly (23:51)- Difficulties When Talking About Policy Changes and Research Grants? (27:34) - Brain Injury Australia (33:00)  Brain Injury Australia: https://www.braininjuryaustralia.org.au Subscribe, review and share for new episodes which will drop fortnightlySocial media:Twitter: @first concussionFacebook: Headfirst: A concussion podcastInstagram: Headfirst_ Concussion  Email: headfirstconcussion@gmail.com

14 -16 березня 2025-го року відбувся ХХІХ з'зд Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії (СУОА) / Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO). Понад 100 делеґатів і учасників без права голосу, при виборі нових провідників, iнших спостерігачів, взяли участь у цьому зібранні для обговорення підсумків роботи, розгляду насущних питань з життя зорганізованої спільноти та перспективи її збереження та розвитку...

Antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks are on the rise. For months the Coalition has accused the Albanese government of making the country less safe for Jewish people. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has written to Anthony Albanese, calling for urgent action to tackle Islamophobia. Pre-existing dividing lines are being inflamed by our politicians, and by the media, leaving the country further polarised.Bridie Jabour talks with editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor and head of newsroom Mike Ticher about how to report on the rise in acts of hate without further inflaming tensions

How historic are Trump 2.0's first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant, the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It's the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society.Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant:* Historic Transformation: Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement."* Democratic Party Crisis: He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide.* Elon Musk's Unexpected Role: An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk's subsequent endorsement of Trump.* Federal Government Transformation: Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge.* Trump as Revealer, Not Changer: Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America?Nick Bryant: I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict.Andrew Keen: That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.Nick Bryant: It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order.Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II.Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days.Andrew Keen: That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this.Nick Bryant: When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary.J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements.Andrew Keen: The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025?Nick Bryant: Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically.The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into thinking America's forever wars have suddenly ended and Trump has won. The opposition will be back. The resistance will be back.I remember moments in the Obama administration when it looked like progressives had won every battle in America. I remember the day I went to South Carolina, to the funeral of the pastor killed in that terrible shooting in Charleston. Obama broke into "Amazing Grace"—it was almost for the first time in front of a black audience that he fully embraced the mantle of America's first African-American president. He flew back to Washington that night, and the White House was bathed in rainbow colors because the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal across the country.It seemed in that moment that progressives were winning every fight. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. You assumed America's first black president would be followed by America's first female president. But what we were seeing in that summer of 2015 was actually the conservative backlash. Trump literally announced his presidential bid the day before that awful Charleston shooting. You can easily misread history at this moment. Sure, Trump looks dominant now, but don't be fooled. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in two years' time the Republicans end up losing the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections.Andrew Keen: When it comes to progressives, what do you make of the Democratic response, or perhaps the lack of response, to the failure of Kamala Harris? The huge amount of money, the uninspiring nature of her campaign, the fiasco over Biden—were these all accidental events or do they speak of a broader crisis on the left amongst progressives in America?Nick Bryant: They speak of both. There were really big mistakes made by the Democrats, not least Joe Biden's decision to contest the election as long as he did. It had become pretty clear by the beginning of 2024 that he wasn't in a fit state to serve four more years or take on the challenge of Donald Trump.Biden did too well at two critical junctures. During the midterm elections in 2022, many people predicted a red wave, a red tsunami. If that had happened, Biden would have faced pressure to step aside for an orderly primary process to pick a successor. But the red wave turned into a red ripple, and that persuaded Biden he was the right candidate. He focused on democracy, put democracy on the ballot, hammered the point about January 6th, and decided to run.Another critical juncture was the State of the Union address at the beginning of 2024. Biden did a good job, and I think that allayed a lot of concerns in the Democratic Party. Looking back on those two events, they really encouraged Biden to run again when he should never have done so.Remember, in 2020, he intimated that he would be a bridge to the next generation. He probably made a mistake then in picking Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate because he was basically appointing his heir. She wasn't the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump—it was always going to be hard for a woman of color to win the Rust Belt. She wasn't a particularly good candidate in 2020 when she ran; she didn't even make it into 2020. She launched her campaign in Oakland, and while it looked good at the time, it became clear she was a poor candidate.Historical accidents, the wrong candidate, a suffering economy, and an America that has always been receptive to someone like Trump—all those factors played into his victory.Andrew Keen: If you were giving advice to the Democrats as they lick their wounds and begin to think about recovery and fighting the next battles, would you advise them to shift to the left or to the center?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question because you could argue it both ways. Do the Democrats need to find a populist of the left who can win back those blue-collar voters that have deserted the Democratic Party? This is a historical process that's been going on for many years. Working-class voters ditched the Democrats during the Reagan years and the Nixon years. Often race is part of that, often the bad economy is part of that—an economy that's not working for the working class who can't see a way to map out an American dream for themselves.You could argue for a left-wing populist, or you could argue that history shows the only way Democrats win the White House is by being centrist and moderate. That was true of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—all Southerners, and that wasn't a coincidence. Southern Democrats came from the center of the party. Obama was a pragmatic, centrist candidate. Kennedy was a very pragmatic centrist who tried to bring together the warring tribes of the Democratic Party.Historically, you could argue Democrats need to move to the center and stake out that ground as Trump moves further to the right and the extremes. But what makes it harder to say for sure is that we're in a political world where a lot of the old rules don't seem to apply.Andrew Keen: We don't quite know what the new rules are or if there are any rules. You describe this moment as equivalent in historic terms to the fall of the Berlin Wall or perhaps 9/11. If we reverse that lens and look inwards, is there an equivalent historical significance? You had an interesting tweet about Doge and the attempt in some people's eyes for a kind of capture of power by Elon Musk and the replacement of the traditional state with some sort of almost Leninist state. What do you make of what's happening within the United States in domestic politics, particularly Musk's role?Nick Bryant: We've seen American presidents test the Constitution before. Nobody in the modern era has done it so flagrantly as Donald Trump, but Nixon tried to maximize presidential powers to the extent that he broke the law. Nixon would have been found guilty in a Senate trial had that impeachment process continued. Of course, he was forced to resign because a delegation of his own party drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and told him he had to go.You don't get that with the Republican Party and Donald Trump—they've fallen behind him. FDR was commonly described as an American dictator. H.L. Mencken wrote that America had a Caesar, a pharaoh. Woodrow Wilson was maximalist in his presidential powers. Abraham Lincoln was the great Constitution breaker, from trashing the First Amendment to exceeding his powers with the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional—he needed congressional approval, which he didn't have.There's a long history of presidents breaking rules and Americans being okay with that. Lincoln has never been displaced from his historical throne of grace. FDR is regarded as one of the great presidents. What sets this moment apart is that constraints on presidents traditionally came from the courts and their own political parties. We're not seeing that with Donald Trump.Andrew Keen: What about the cultural front? There's talk of Trump's revenge, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., revenge against traditional scientists, possibly closing some universities. Is this overdramatic, or is Trump really taking revenge for what happened between 2020 and 2024 when he was out of power?Nick Bryant: Trump is in a vengeful mood—we always thought Trump 2.0 would be a project of vengeance. Republican presidents have always thought parts of the administrative state work against them, and Trump is dismantling it at warp speed. Elon Musk is going into various government departments acting like he's heading a hostile takeover of the federal government.Reagan launched a rhetorical assault on federal government, which was really a creation of the New Deal years under FDR. That period saw massive expansion of federal government into people's lives with Social Security and the welfare net. We haven't seen this kind of assault on federal government since then. Trump is also trying to dismantle what he regards as America's cultural establishment, which he sees as too white, too elitist, too intellectual. He's trying to remold America, its government, and cultural institutions in his own image.Andrew Keen: You've mentioned Reagan. I came to the U.S. like you—you came as a grad student to study American history. I came in the '80s and remember the hysteria at UC Berkeley over Reagan—that he would blow up the world, that he was clueless, a Hollywood actor with no right to be in politics. Is it conceivable that Trump could be just another version of Reagan? In spite of all this hysteria, might this second Trump regime actually be successful?Nick Bryant: You can't rule out that possibility. The mistake made about Reagan was seeing him as a warmonger when he really wanted to be a peacemaker. That was the point of ending the Cold War—he wanted to win it, but through gambles on people like Gorbachev and diplomatic moves his advisors warned against.There are analogies to Trump. I don't think he's a warmonger or wants to send U.S. troops into countries. He's described some surprising imperial ambitions like taking over Greenland, though Harry Truman once wanted that too. Trump wants to make peace, but the problem is on what terms. Peace in Ukraine, in Trump's view, means a massive win for Vladimir Putin and the sidelining of the Ukrainian people and America's European allies.There wasn't a big cost to Reagan's peacemaking—the European alliance stayed intact, he tinkered with government but didn't go after Social Security. The cost of Trump is the problem.Andrew Keen: The moral cost or the economic cost?Nick Bryant: Both. One thing that happened with Reagan was the opening of big disparities in income and wealth in American society. That was a big factor in Donald Trump's success—the paradox of how this billionaire from New York became the hero of the Rust Belt. When the gulf between executive pay and shop floor pay became massive, it was during the Reagan years.You see the potential of something similar now. Trump is supercharging an economy that looks like it will favor the tech giants and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. You end up worsening the problem you were arguably setting out to solve.You don't get landslides anymore in American politics—the last president to win 40 states was George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan in '84 won 49 out of 50 states, almost getting a clean sweep except for Mondale's home state of Minnesota. I don't think Trump will be the kind of unifying president that Reagan was. There was a spontaneity and optimism about Reagan that you don't see with Trump.Andrew Keen: Where are the divisions? Where is the great threat to Trump coming from? There was a story this week that Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a parasitic illegal immigrant. Is it conceivable that the biggest weakness within the Trump regime will come from conflict between people like Bannon and Musk, the nationalists and the internationalist wing of the MAGA movement?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question. There doesn't seem to be much external opposition at the moment. The Democrats are knocked out or taking the eight count in boxing terms, getting back on their feet and taking as long as they can to get their gloves up. There isn't a leader in the Democratic movement who has anywhere near Trump's magnetism or personal power to take him on.Maybe the opposition comes from internal divisions and collapse of the Trump project. The relationship with Elon Musk was something I didn't anticipate in my book. After that assassination attempt, Musk endorsed Trump in a big way, put his money behind him, started offering cash prizes in Pennsylvania. Having lived at Mar-a-Lago during the transition with a cottage on the grounds and now an office in the White House—I didn't anticipate his role.Many people thought Trump wouldn't put up with somebody who overshadows him or gets more attention, but that relationship hasn't failed yet. I wonder if that speaks to something different between Trump 2.0 and 1.0. Trump's surrounded by loyalists now, but at 78 years old, I think he wanted to win the presidency more than he wanted the presidency itself. I wonder if he's happy to give more responsibility to people like Musk who he thinks will carry out his agenda.Andrew Keen: You've been described as the new Alistair Cooke. Cooke was the father of Anglo-American journalism—his Letter from America was an iconic show, the longest-running show in radio history. Cooke was always very critical of what he called the big daddy state in Washington, D.C., wasn't a fan of large government. What's your take on Trump's attack on large government in D.C.? Is there anything in it? You spent a lot of time in DC. Are these agencies full of fat and do they need to be cut?Nick Bryant: Cutting fat out of Washington budgets is one of the easy things—they're bloated, they get all these earmarks, they're full of pork. There's always been a bloated federal bureaucracy, and there's a long historical tradition of suspicion of Washington going back to the founding. That's why the federal system emerged with so much power vested in the states.Reagan's revolution was based on dismantling the New Deal government. He didn't get that far in that project, but rhetorically he shifted America's views about government. He emphasized that government was the problem, not the solution, for four decades. When Bill Clinton became president, he had to make this big ideological concession to Reaganism and deliver Reaganite lines like "the era of big government is over."The concern right now is that they're not just getting rid of fat—they're getting rid of expertise and institutional knowledge. They're removing people who may be democratic in their thinking or not on board with the Trump revolution, but who have extensive experience in making government work. In moments of national crisis, conservative ideologues tend to become operational liberals. They rely on government in disasters, pandemics, and economic crises to bail out banks and industries.Conservatives have successfully planted in many Americans' heads that government is the enemy. Hillary Clinton saw a classic sign in 2006—a protester carrying a sign saying "get your government hands off my Medicare." Well, Medicare is a government program. People need government, expertise, and people in Washington who know what they're doing. You're not just getting rid of waste—you're getting rid of institutional knowledge.Andrew Keen: One of the more colorful characters in these Trump years is RFK Jr. There was an interesting piece in the National Review about RFK Jr. forcing the left to abandon the Kennedy legacy. Is there something symbolically historical in this shift from RFK Sr. being an icon on the left to RFK Jr. being an icon on the libertarian right? Does it speak of something structural that's changed in American political culture?Nick Bryant: Yes, it does, and it speaks to how America is perceived internationally. JFK was always seen as this liberal champion, but he was an arch pragmatist, never more so than on civil rights. My doctoral thesis and first book were about tearing down that myth about Kennedy.The Kennedys did inspire international respect. The Kennedy White House seemed to be a place of rationality, refinement, and glamor. JFK embodied what was great about America—its youth, dynamism, vision. When RFK was assassinated in California, weeks after MLK's assassination, many thought that sense of America was being killed off too. These were people who inspired others internationally to enter public service. They saw America as a beacon on a hill.RFK Jr. speaks of a different, toxic American exceptionalism. People look at figures like RFK Jr. and wonder how he could possibly end up heading the American Health Department. He embodies what many people internationally reject about America, whereas JFK and RFK embodied what people loved, admired, and wanted to emulate.Andrew Keen: You do a show now on Australian television. What's the view from Australia? Are people as horrified and disturbed in Australia as they are in Europe about what you've called a historic change as profound as the fall of the Berlin Wall—or maybe rather than the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the establishment of a new kind of Berlin Wall?Nick Bryant: One of Australia's historic diplomatic fears is abandonment. They initially looked to Britain as a security guarantor in the early days of Australian Federation when Australia became a modern country in 1901. After World War II, they realized Britain couldn't protect them, so they looked to America instead. America has underwritten Australia's security since World War II.Now many Australians realize that won't be the case anymore. Australia entered into the AUKUS deal with Britain and America for nuclear submarine technology, which has become the basis of Australia's defense. There's fear that Trump could cancel it on a whim. They're currently battling over steel and aluminum tariffs. Anthony Albanese, the center-left prime minister, got a brief diplomatic reprieve after talking with Trump last week.A country like Australia, much like Britain, France, or Germany, cannot look on Trump's America as a reliable ally right now. That's concerning in a region where China increasingly throws its weight around.Andrew Keen: Although I'm guessing some people in Australia would be encouraged by Trump's hostility towards China.Nick Bryant: Yes, that's one area where they see Trump differently than in Europe because there are so many China hawks in the Trump administration. That gives them some comfort—they don't see the situation as directly analogous to Europe. But it's still worrying. They've had presidents who've been favorable towards Australia over the years. Trump likes Australia partly because America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia and he likes Greg Norman, the golfer. But that only gives you a certain measure of security.There is concern in this part of the world, and like in Europe, people are questioning whether they share values with a president who is aligning himself with far-right parties.Andrew Keen: Finally, Nick, your penultimate book was "When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present." You had an interesting tweet where you noted that the final chapter in your current book, "The Forever War," is called "Goodbye America." But the more we talk, whether or not America remains great is arguable. If anything, this conversation is about "hello" to a new America. It's not goodbye America—if anything, America's more powerful, more dominant, shaping the world more in the 2020s than it's ever done.Nick Bryant: It's goodbye to the America we've known for the last 70 years, but not goodbye to America itself. That's one of the arguments of the book—Trump is far more representative of the true America than many international observers realize. If you look at American history through a different lens, Trump makes perfect sense.There's always been an authoritarian streak, a willingness to fall for demagogues, political violence, deep mistrust of government, and rich people making fortunes—from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the tech barons of the 21st century. It's goodbye to a certain America, but the America that Trump presides over now is an America that's always been there. Trump hasn't changed America—he's revealed it.Andrew Keen: Well, one thing we can say for sure is it's not goodbye to Nick Bryant. We'll get you back on the show. You're one of America's most perceptive and incisive observers, even if you're in Australia now. Thank you so much.Nick Bryant: Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I still love the country deeply—my fascination has always been born of great affection.Nick Bryant is the author of The Forever War: American's Unending Conflict with Itself and When America Stopped Being Great, a book that Joe Biden keeps in the Oval Office. He was formerly one of the BBC's most senior foreign correspondents, with postings in Washington DC, New York, South Asia and Australia. After covering the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he left the BBC in 2021, and now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American history from Oxford.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sam is joined by Ross Joyce from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) to discuss the news of federal NDIS minister Bill Shorten's retirement from politics in early 2025. Then we hear from the National Gallery of Australia's Adriane Boag, who joins the show to tell us more about the monthly Art by Description series taking place every second Friday.Support this Vision Australia Radio program: https://www.visionaustralia.org/donate?src=radio&type=0&_ga=2.182040610.46191917.1644183916-1718358749.1627963141See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CripChat Australia is produced and delivered by Australian Disability​, it aims to educate, entertain and inform the community how they can help us create a more accessible and inclusive society for people with disabilities, their friends, and family. Hosted by Jonathan Shar, David Daoud, and Ibby Dee with Ross Joyce We're for a Fair, Dignified and Equal Society for All People with Disabilities

In this episode, we are joined by the incredible Caitlin (she/her), a naturopath, nutritionist and mother of two boys.  Caity's first son, Rieder, is 10 years old, has a physical disability and is autistic. We hear about Caity's story of his birth and her experience raising him and advocating for him over the years. Caity also shares the experience of her VBAC birth with her second son, Odin.  Caity herself identifies as neurodivergent (AuDHD), and she shares with us her journey to finding this out, discusses her evolving identity as a woman and mother, and talks about some of the misconceptions that exist around disability and neurodiversity. We absolutely loved this chat with Caity, she's a natural storyteller and we hope you enjoy listening to her story.  Resources on person first, values based language when speaking about people with disability Language Guide from People with Disability Australia Language Guide from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations  We recognise it's most important to respect an individual with disability's preference on the language they wish to use about themselves.  You can find Caity's personal instagram @c.aity_ And her naturopath/nutritionist instagram @becbycaitlin This podcast was recorded on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Wilam and Boon Wurrung/Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Every month, I Pay The Rent and so can you - click⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to learn more.

Air travel in Australia ground to a halt Thursday after all 1,600 pilots flying for the country's three major airlines resigned in a wage dispute and a government airlift failed to get off the ground. The airlift, the largest ever attempted in Australia during peacetime, was bogged down in red tape and bureaucratic bungling that left tens of thousands of passengers stranded throughout the country. The civilian pilots began a series of rolling strikes last week to back their demands for a 30 percent pay raise in the face of a government-ordered 6 percent ceiling on wage increases. The country's three major domestic carriers suspended the pilots Wednesday and then announced plans for the emergency airlift. On Thursday, the President of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, Capt. Brian McCarthy, announced all 1,600 commercial pilots employed by the domestic carriers had resigned in protest, setting the stage for what could be a long and crippling work stoppage. The grounding of the domestic fleet caused airport chaos, disrupted internal tourist flights and crippled business. Aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force had been mustered to help international carriers ease the problem, but the RAAF was unable to get off the ground because of what was described as 'bureaucratic red tape.'

Kenneth Meshoe was born in Pretoria and is the fourth of seven children.  He completed his Matric Certificate in 1972.  In 1975 he graduated from the University of the North with a Secondary Teachers Diploma.  In 1976, he married Lydia and they have three children, Olga, Esther and Joshua.  In 1983, Kenneth went to Shekinah Bible Institute in Kingsport, Tennessee in the US, where he did the first year of his Theological Diploma.  He later returned to Kingsport in January 1987 to complete his 2nd year Diploma. In 1988, Kenneth and Lydia started a non-denominational, praying church in Vosloorus, Gauteng, called Hope of Glory Tabernacle that is involved in running a number of community projects in the area.  The church strongly advocates the power of prayer and actively mobilises Christians to pray for the nation of South Africa. Kenneth and Lydia are both international speakers, who travel extensively, speaking at conferences in many parts of world. In December 1993, they started a political party based on biblical principles called the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), and Kenneth became it's first President and has remained thus to date.  He also has also served as a Member of Parliament for the ACDP since 1994. In 2006, Kenneth completed a one-year programme in Economics and Public Finance with the Department of Economics at the University of South Africa. In 2008, Kenneth Meshoe completed his Advanced Diploma in Economic Policy (ADEP) with the University of the Western Cape. Notable Achievements Between 1994 and 1996, Kenneth was the only Evangelical Christian represented in the Constitutional Assembly's Management Committee. The Committee was made up of around six to eight Members of Parliament. The rest of its contingent (12 in all) were officials. The Committee was tasked with the organisation and management of the overall Constitution-making process. One of its major responsibilities was to ensure that the Constitutional Assembly worked according to an agreed schedule in order to meet its two-year target in which to complete the drafting of our new South African Constitution by 8 May 1996. This was achieved. During the Constitution-making process, the ANC had made it very clear that it wished to see South Africa declared a secular state, which aimed to separate Church and State. Kenneth Meshoe, however, championed a backlash against this, both in Theme Committee 1 (Character of the State) that dealt with this particular clause  and by raising his concerns over the implications such a status with as many Christians who would listen. As a result, in 1995, a protest march under the banner of the “Christian Voice' was organised which saw Christians in their thousands march to Parliament against the proposed secular state clause as well as other concerning clauses in the draft Constitution, including the right to life and anti-discrimination clauses on the grounds of sexual orientation, all of which undermined our Biblical values. As a result, the Constitution today states that South Africa is a Constitutional Democracy, and churches can, to this day, fellowship in state-owned school classrooms and halls, civic centres and can still pitch a tent in which to meet or hold crusades on state-owned land. In addition, faith-based political parties are able to exist and work to defend their the values and principles of their faith in all levels of government and religious leaders are able to serve as Members of Parliament. Also notable is that South Africa is the only African country to have a Christian Party serving in its Parliament. “The ACDP would like to see a Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, a Constitution that protects not only the rights of individuals but also those of unborn children. The ACDP wishes to see a Constitution that will be legitimate, enduring and that upholds biblical, family and traditional values.” Rev KRJ Meshoe, MP - Constitutional Assembly, 24 January 1995. Kenneth and the ACDP continues to be a voice for Christians at Parliament and other levels of government where attacks on our faith often creep in. One such example is that of proposals made to remove Christian Holy Days such as Easter and Christmas as official public holidays, as had been done with Ascension Day. The overwhelming majority of South Africans claim to be Christian and such a move was unthinkable. Kenneth arranged protest marches aptly branded “Hands Off Christmas and Good Friday!” His call was then reiterated in the ACDP's submission which he handed over to the then Minister of Home Affairs, Ms Naledi Pandor. Through continued awareness campaigns and protests, sufficient pressure was placed on government to ensure the matter went no further. In 2012, Kenneth organised a protest march in defence of Israel after the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies, gazetted General Notice 370 or 2012 that required Israel to label its products as originating from “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. In June 2013, Kenneth established a non-profit organisation called DEISI International, with a mandate to challenge the ignorance of many about the true facts regarding the right of Israel to exist within safe and secure borders, and to dispel the lie that Israel is an apartheid state. DEISI is an acronym for Defend, Embrace, Invest, Support Israel. In 2020, after South Africans were placed under a severe, prolonged lockdowns and had many of their Constitutional freedoms undermined as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kenneth was extremely concerned, particularly given its potential threat to our economy and job security. He was also outraged that churches were not allowed to meet in person, except under excessively strict regulations, and that mandatory vaccination was being introduced by some universities and businesses. Kenneth was at the forefront of fighting for our right to ‘choose' whether or not to be vaccinated. He did not want to see anyone being forced to do so, as “even God gives us the choice of whether or not to choose salvation,” he said. Through the ACDP, he was able to be a voice for workers who had been given an ultimatum by their employers to ‘get vaccinated or lose your job'. He encouraged them to stand their ground and not be pressurised into violating the dictates of their consciences. Some lost their jobs as a result but Kenneth remained resolute and ensured that the ACDP fought for them at the CCMA, a fight that saw a number of these unfair dismissals rightly overturned.  Kenneth led also a similar campaign at various universities that were refusing access to students who chose not to be vaccinated.   Awards On the 18th December 1994, Kenneth Meshoe was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Humane Letters, abbreviated L.H.D.), by Bethel Christian College in Riverside, California, USA, and was also appointed to serve as an Associate Member on the Board of Regents of Bethel College. In 1998, Kenneth was awarded the ‘International Leadership Award' for outstanding leadership in the church and nation by the Australian Federation of Festival of Light Community Standards Organisation at the New South Wales Parliament House. He was awarded a second Honorary Doctorate (L.H.D.) in 2007 by Logos Graduate School, Jacksonville, Florida, USA. In November 2013, the international organisation, Stand With Us, in Michigan, USA, presented Kenneth Meshoe with the ‘Star of David' award. In 2014, Kenneth was honoured with the ‘Jerusalem Award 2014' conferred on him by the World Zionist Organisation. In September 2015, Israel Today Nigeria, in conjunction with the Embassy of Israel in Abuja, gave Kenneth the “Jerusalem Ambassador” award. On this episode of The One Way Ticket Show, Reverend Meshoe (affectionately known as The Rev) shares his one way ticket to a peaceful and prosperous South Africa that is a very close friend of Israel. Given South Africa's national and provincial elections on May 29th, 2024, The Rev provides an assessment of South Africa today, and weighs in on the country's poorly performing economy, high employment and crime and regular power cuts. He shares why people are looking for answers outside of the ANC which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994. He also highlights how South Africa can learn from Israel's water management, science and technological advancements and economic development to create a successful South Africa. Moreover, he shares why it's factually incorrect to call Israel an apartheid state and how those that do, trivialise  the pain and suffering South Africans experienced during those dark years. And when asked what Nelson Mandela would make of South Africa today, The Rev responded: “A heart break which might lead to a heart attack. He would faint.”

Philosopher, author, and activist Peter Singer joins Raghu to chat about his new book, The Buddhist and the Ethicist.Pick up your copy of Peter Singer's book HEREThis week on Mindrolling, Peter and Raghu have a comprehensive conversation on:Singer's coming of age in the 60'sThe background of Venerable Shih Chao-HweiThe ethical outlook of utilitarianismExamining the consequences of our actionsThe problems that come with not thinking about the futureThe Bodhisattva traditionBhakti Yoga and merging with the supreme beingHaving compassion for those that suffer, human and non-humanLooking at theories of human nature and basic goodnessKarma's compatibility with utilitarianismThe ways that we leave traces in the worldAbout Peter Singer:Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He also is also an author, and is best known for his writings about poverty and liberating animals. He wrote the book Animal Liberation, in which he argues for vegetarianism and co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. Most recently, he published a book of eye-opening dialogues with Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei, a Taiwanese Buddhist monastic and social activist. Learn more about Peter Singer on his website.“Compassion is one way of looking at how we ought to be thinking about all sentient beings. We ought to be thinking about them with concern for their well-being. When you use the term compassion, at least to westerners, that suggests a feeling, an emotion, something like we might say empathy that we have with them. That's something that utilitarians would want to encourage because we need to think about what its like for other beings in the various possible states of the world that could result from our doing a variety of things.” – Peter SingerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ukraine remembers - the world acknowledges! The 85th Anniversary Commemoriation - Holodomor. Genocide by famine,1932/1933. Dr Ulana Suprun, MD, Minister for Health from Ukraine and Stefan Romaniw, OAM, President of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisation about the Holodomor - Genocide in Ukraine. Exhibition, SpACE@Collins, Melbourne, 8 November 2018. - 2018-ий рік. З архіву SBS Ukrainian - SBS Ukrainian Archive. Україна пам'ятає - світ визнає! Вшанування жертв Ґеноциду в Україні у 85-ту річницю з часу найбільшого злочину 20-го століття на планеті. З виступу Високодостойної Уляни Супрун, Міністра з питань охорони здоров'я з України та Голови Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії Стефана Романіва, ОАМ. Exhibition, SpACE@Collins, Melbourne, 8 November 2018.

Ukraine remembers - the world acknowledges! The 85th Anniversary Commemoriation - Holodomor. Genocide by famine,1932/1933. Dr Ulana Suprun, MD, Minister for Health from Ukraine and Stefan Romaniw, OAM, President of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisation about the Holodomor - Genocide in Ukraine. Exhibition, SpACE@Collins, Melbourne, 8 November 2018. - 2018-ий рік. З архіву SBS Ukrainian - SBS Ukrainian Archive. Україна пам'ятає - світ визнає! Вшанування жертв Ґеноциду в Україні у 85-ту річницю з часу найбільшого злочину 20-го століття на планеті. З виступу Високодостойної Уляни Супрун, Міністра з питань охорони здоров'я з України та Голови Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії Стефана Романіва, ОАМ. Exhibition, SpACE@Collins, Melbourne, 8 November 2018.

З останніх подій та про діяльність Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії (Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations). Парламент Нової Південної Валії про Україну. Візові питання - у дискусіях СУОА із урядами штатів та федеральним. Про це і багато більше йдеться у розмові Богдана Рудницького із шановною п-і Катериною Арґіров, Співголовою СУОА (AFUO)...

Headlines Grace speaks with Australian Council Trade Union's assistant secretary, Joseph Mitchell, discussing their upcoming price gouging inquiry, a chance to see if big business are artificially inflating their prices & taking advantage of the cost of living crisis. Claudia speaks with Professor Igarashi from Vanderbuilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Professor Igarashi is a specialist in modern Japanese cultural studies and war memory, particularly the post-war period and is the author of two books: Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970, and Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan's Lost Soldiers. He speaks to us on the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki - at a time when nuclear power as both a source of energy and war weaponry is hotly contested in political, humanitarian and environmental spaces, and a major cinematic biopic about 'the father of the bomb' J. Robert Oppenheimer has just been released. We dive into a conversation with Australian Financial Complaints Authority's Deputy Chief Ombudsman, Dr June Smith, where we discuss the financial complaints received this year, and the complications and implications of BNPL and delay in insurance claims. Patrick speaks to Australian Federation of Deccan Association volunteer Khalid Mohammed, regarding the lastest round of religious violence in India and how the group is helping and how Australia has a role to play in the situation.Songs Music for Iran- Volume-2 Burnin' - Queasy PiecesThe Night is Dark - Soo LingMono Bar - The Black TambourinesDragonfly – Shangri-Lass    

Phil Carswell OAM is a longstanding community advocate. Forged in the fires of gay and lesbian liberation, Phil was the Founding President of the Victorian AIDS Action Committee, later the Victorian AIDS Council, and today - Thorne Harbour Health. Phil worked tirelessly in leading the community response to HIV and AIDS in Australia both within community organisations and while working in government health departments Phil represented the Victorian AIDS Council on the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations Council which he also co-founded and was appointed as one of two gay community representatives to the National Advisory Council on AIDS chaired by Ms Ita Buttrose. In 2015, Phil received a Medal in the Order of Australia for services to public health, particularly for people with HIV/AIDS. This episode is part of the Community Living Legends series, reflecting on a legacy of community-driven action to improve our health and wellbeing as Thorne Harbour Health celebrates its 40th Anniversary. Check out our other JOY Podcasts for more on LGBTIQ+ health & wellbeing. If there's something you'd like us to explore on the show, send through ideas or questions at wellwellwell@joy.org.au Find out more about LGBTIQ+ services and events in Victoria at Thorne Harbour Health.

Australia's biggest pilots' union last week claimed air traffic control staffing issues are making skies less safe for pilots and passengers. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) has told Australian Aviation that its members have encountered “chronic” and “systemic” staffing problems at Airservices dating back to before the COVID-19 pandemic. It comes after reports emerged earlier this year that there were 340 instances of “uncontrolled airspace” from June to April 2023, with Airservices admitting to “staff availability issues”. What's going on? And who's to blame, if anyone? Adam, Chris and Jake navigate the PR spin to explain.

Australian television is a long way behind other developed countries in providing audio description as an assistive tool for blind and vision impaired people. Lauren Henley, who is Senior Systemic Advocate at the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations and who has been a tireless advocate for audio description on Australian TV, talks to Barbara Sullivan about the challenges in achieving this.  Original broadcast date: 16.06.23See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How have animal rights and the animal rights movement changed in the last few decades? How has the scale of animal product consumption grown relative to human population growth? On what principles ought animal ethics to be grounded? What features of human psychology enable humans to empathize with and dislike animal suffering and yet also eat animal products regularly? How does the agribusiness industry convince people to make choices that go against their own values? What are some simple changes people can make to their diets if they're not ready yet to go completely vegetarian or vegan but still want to be less responsible for animal suffering? What attitudes should vegetarians and vegans hold towards meat-eaters? When, if ever, is it possible to have done "enough", morally speaking? What are the things that matter intrinsically to humans and other sentient beings? What is the most complex organism that is apparently not conscious? Will we ever have the technology to scan someone's brain and measure how much pleasure or suffering they're experiencing? How uncertain should we be about moral uncertainty? What should we eat if it's eventually discovered that plants can suffer?Peter Singer is a philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His work focuses on the ethics of human treatment of animals; he is often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement; and his writings have significantly influenced the development of the Effective Altruism movement. In 1971, Peter co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now called Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization; and in 2013, he founded The Life You Can Save, an organization named after his 2009 book, which aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty and how we can best do this. In 2021, he received the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture for his "widely influential and intellectually rigorous work in reinvigorating utilitarianism as part of academic philosophy and as a force for change in the world". He has written, co-authored, edited, or co-edited more than 50 books, including Animal Liberation, The Life You Can Save, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek); and his writings have been translated into more than 25 languages. Find out more about him at his website, petersinger.info, or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.[Read more]

Bogdan Rudnytski interviewed Stefan Romaniw, OAM, Co-Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations. The Department of Home Affairs has advised the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) that current or former Ukrainian holders of a subclass 449 or subclass 786 visa can consider applying for another visa to stay in the country. The prominent display of a Russian flag amongst the spectators of a tennis match at the Australian Open. Dozens of Australian defence force personnel are to fly from Darwin to the UK this week to begin training Ukrainian troops. More: SBS Ukrainian 24/7 - sbs.com.au/language/ukrainian - Щорічно у січні проходить тенісний турнір великого шолома Australian Open у великому Мельбурні. Відбувається він і цьогоріч. У першому турі АО 2023 українка грала з росіянкою, коли у цей час гри появився російський прапор, незважаючи на певні застереження через війну в Україні... Дізнавайтеся більше: SBS Ukrainian 24/7 - sbs.com.au/language/ukrainian

Use the audio player to listen to this Federation Day special

Use the audio player to listen to this Federation Day special

Have you ever wondered how to support men with their mental health concerns?In this episode of me&my health up, our special guest Pete Shmigel (former CEO of Lifeline Australia) tackles men's mental health and covers his learning from his son's experience. He highlights how differently men communicate regarding their emotions and behaviours. About Pete ShmigelPete Shmigel, currently Public Relations Director for the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations and has over 25 years of experience in environmental sustainability, politics, business, consulting, journalism, mental health and Ukrainian affairs.Pete has served as CEO of Australian Council of Recycling, Lifeline Australia, the Buy Recycled Business Alliance, and the Beverage Industry Environment Council, and in senior roles with Telstra, Veolia, pollster Crosby|Textor, and his own 40 person sustainability consulting business.Pete has been a senior advisor to eight Premiers, Leaders of the Opposition, or Ministers in Australia and Ukraine.Pete voluntarily serves on several NGO boards in the health and wellbeing sphere, and is a founder of Lifeline in Ukraine.Pete is an appointed Member of the NSW Mental Health Review TribunalPete's written work has been published by all of Australia's major newspapers, and he has won two literary awards for short fiction. Pete owns and operates several SMEs, including Revolve Recycling, Australia's first platform for bicycle recycling. He was born and raised in New York City to Ukrainian refugee parents and has very, very proudly called Australia home for more than 30 years.Connect with Pete ShmigelEmail: peter.shmigel@me.comLinks mentioned in the episode:Australian Men's Health Forum websiteAbout me&my Health Up & Hostme&my Health Up seeks to enhance and enlighten the wellbeing of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food is medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.CreditsPodcast editing: Reframing MeIt's time to be seen beyond the frame of motherhood. It's time to reframe me.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifyJoin my 12-month success programwhere you will learn the Demartini Method to:let go of your emotional baggage increase self governance learn how to live an inspired lifeturn resentments into gratitudeturn hate into loveMake 2023 a success for you. To find out more email me: anthony@meandmywellness.com.au Podcast DisclaimerAny information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for moreSupport the show

The chairman of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, Stefan Romanov, has paid tribute to Australian Sage O'Donnell who was killed in Ukraine.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Australian Federation of Air Pilots says a proposal backing single-pilot flights doesn't stack up.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

RNIB Connect Radio's Toby Davey is joined again by Vidar Hjardeng MBE, Inclusion and Diversity Consultant for ITV News across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands for the next in his regular Connect Radio audio described theatre reviews. This week it was on to the dance floor and under the glitter ball for Strictly Ballroom:  The Musical at the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre on Saturday 5 November at 2.30pm including a pre show touch tour with description by professional Audio Describer Caroline Burn. Based on Baz Luhrmann's film Strictly Ballroom: The Musical is currently touring the UK and Ireland.  Starring Strictly Come Dancing's Kevin Clifton and BBC's Eastenders' Maisie Smith, Directed and co-choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood Strictly Ballroom: The Musical follows arrogant, rebellious young ballroom dancer, Scott Hastings (Kevin Clifton). When his radical and daring dance style sees him fall out of favour with Australian Federation, he must dance with beginner, Fran (Maisie Smith). Together they find the courage to defy tradition and discover that to win, your steps don't need to be strictly ballroom! Featuring smash-hit songs Love is in the Air, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps and Time After Time, and all new music written by internationally acclaimed artists including Sia, David Foster and Eddie Perfect. This feel-good ballroom sensation is sure to make for an unforgettable evening under the glitter ball that will send your heart soaring and toes tapping! Strictly Ballroom: The Musical continues on tour around the UK and more details can be found by visiting the following link - https://strictlyballroomtour.co.uk (Image shows RNIB logo. 'RNIB' written in black capital letters over a white background and underlined with a bold pink line, with the words 'See differently' underneath)

The purpose and scope of Project Sunflower is to assist and advise the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) on mechanisms to bring to justice perpetrators of atrocity and crimes committed in the course of the armed conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

The Ukraine Crisis Appeal, set up by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations in 2015 to provide emergency and humanitarian aid to those devastated by Russia's war in Ukraine, became one of the beneficiaries of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery Midwinter Ball Charity Auction.

The Ukraine Crisis Appeal, set up by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations in 2015 to provide emergency and humanitarian aid to those devastated by Russia's war in Ukraine, became one of the beneficiaries of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery Midwinter Ball Charity Auction. - Чи хотіли б ви зіграти в теніс із прем'єр-міністром Австралії Ентоні Альбанізі, або повечеряти в компанії міністрів Пені Вонг і Тані Пліберсек? Саме таку нагоду матимуть учасники благочинного аукціону, який відбудеться в рамках Зимового балу Парламентської Галереї Преси.

CEO of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Dean Long, says it's a perfect storm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine reaches five months, Michael speaks with Stefan Romaniw OAM, Co-chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations and vice-president of the Ukrainian World Congress, who earlier this month joined PM Anthony Albanese to visit the beleaguered country. A deal signed late last week to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports to ease a global food shortage has been threatened following a Russian missile strike hitting Ukraine's southern port of Odesa. The strikes drew strong condemnation from the United States, Kyiv, the United Nations who had had hoped the agreement would be operational in a few weeks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom's super keen to dust off his Bintang t-shirt and head to Bali. It seems everyone is overseas this winter. So how is the travel industry coping, post-pandemic?  Dean Long, CEO Australian Federation of Travel Agents, joins us to talk about the resurgence of tourism: why ticket prices are so high, why places like Bali might be slower than other places to recover, and the growth in an unexpected travel sector.  On today's Briefing, when will travel return to normal post-pandemic?  Today's Headlines: - Hospitals overwhelmed by Omicron wave - National abortion laws to be debated - UK issues red alert for the first time over heatwave - Aussie golfer Cameron Smith wins British Open  Follow The Briefing: Instagram: @thebriefingpodcast Facebook: TheBriefingNewsAUTwitter: @TheBriefingAU See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

20Twenty, weekdays from 10am AESTHelp Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The pandemic is over and Australians are gearing up to travel overseas.  The problem is, many can't get their passport to enable them to leave the country.  The queues to collect passports are hundreds of metres long, snaking outside passport offices in all capital cities. We're joined by Amanda, a Briefing listener whose family had to cancel a holiday in Fiji because they couldn't get passports in time; and Dean Long, a travel industry expert and CEO The Australian Federation of Travel Agents to unpack the crisis. On today's Briefing, how the passport crisis emerged and what you can do to streamline the process and get your passport sooner, rather than later. Today's Headlines PM to reset relationship with France Damning new report on WA's mining industry Report into VIC's Country Fire Authority reveals toxic culture Senior MPs' exodus from VIC government New York's new gun laws overruled Follow The Briefing DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR THE BRIEFING NEWSLETTER. LINK IS IN OUR BIO ON INSTAGRAM Instagram: @thebriefingpodcast  Facebook: TheBriefingNewsAU Twitter: @TheBriefingAU  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO)'s CEO, Darryl O'Donnell, catches up with Jack and Adrian about current topics for our PLHIV and MSM communities. Darryl walks us through the latest on Australian blood donation guidelines and the monkeypox virus (MPXV) outbreak. They also discuss goals for ending HIV transmissions, and the latest on free HIV treatment access for those ineligible for Medicare. For more information about this episode, you can visit: afao.org.au Check out our other JOY Podcasts for more on LGBTIQ health & wellbeing. If there's something you'd like us to explore on the show, send through ideas or questions at wellwellwell@joy.org.au

CEO of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Dean Long, says delays processing passports are expected to persist for months. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael is joined by Dr Cindy McCreery, Senior Lecturer Department of History at the University of Sydney, to discuss the controversy behind Australia's first Royal visit. On a sunny day in March 1868 at Clontarf on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, a bullet fired from the pistol of one Henry James O'Farrell struck Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria.  Although the twenty-three year old prince was only slightly injured, and soon made a full recovery, the wounds inflicted on Australian society ran deep. The assassination attempt was met with shock and horror by Colonists loyal not only to Queen Victoria, but to the royal family the Empire it represented. As Dr McCreery points out, “the assassination attempt was used by the Colonial Premier Henry Parkes (later famous as the ‘Father' of Australian Federation) ‘as the pretext for a witch-hunt against Irish people in New South Wales'.” “Parkes declared O'Farrell part of a wider Fenian (Irish nationalist) terror network determined to bring down the British Empire. He introduced the punitive Treason Felony Act which not only suspended civil rights, but enflamed sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics – divisions that would last beyond the Second World War.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kym Hanton is the Australian Federation Party's Barker candidate. Now a postie, Kym spent almost two decades of his career in the police force and has worked for the Royal Australian Airforce. With concerns about the economy, unemployment, mental health and water rights, he's hoping to have some sway in Parliament. He joins Jennie Lenman in her series of discussions with Federal Election candidates in Mayo and Barker.

New Zealand is wide open and ready to welcome tourists – at least according to our Tourism Minister it is. Stuart Nash is in Australia at the moment promoting us as a tourist destination. However, the Australian Federation of Travel Agents says with our strict pre-departure testing regime in place, travellers are still wary of booking tickets. Dean Long, chief executive of AFTA, joined Heather du Plessis-Allan. LISTEN ABOVE 

Mark Neugebauer is running for the Australian Federation Party in the seat of Mayo this Federal Election. Formerly from New South Wales, the Fleurieu resident has been a foster parent for the past 11 years, working in Warehousing, Transport, Training and Disability Employment and support. Mark says he believes a country's worth should be judged on how it responds and treats its most vulnerable, including those who chose not to get vaccinated. He joins Jennie Lenman in her series of discussions with Mayo and Barker candidates in the lead up to the election.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a massive refugee crisis. More than five million Ukranians have fled their country since the conflict began. Eleven million have been displaced from their homes.   Tetiana Sydoryshyna and her 11-year-old son are now safe in Melbourne after fleeing Kyiv… but they remain in limbo.   We're also joined by Stefan Romaniw, Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations who has been assisting families in fleeing Ukraine and settling in Australia.    What does the future hold for Ukrainians fleeing the war?     Todays Headlines Anthony Albanese tests positive to Covid-19 Scott Morrison apologises over “blessed” comment Ukraine update: USA announces $1B more funding NSW flood victims still waiting for business grants Boris Johnson to face inquiry over partygate Follow The Briefing DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR THE BRIEFING NEWSLETTER. LINK IS IN OUR BIO ON INSTAGRAM Instagram: @thebriefingpodcast  Facebook: TheBriefingNewsAU Twitter: @TheBriefingAU  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations has commissioned a team of legal experts to document Russian war crimes. Named 'Project Sunshine', the small team will work with Ukrainian refugees based in Australia to gather and record information about Russian atrocities.

Martial arts like Karate, Kung Fu, and Muay Thai might dominate popular culture, but did you know that Greece's own Martial art pre-dates them all? Attributed to Hercules and Theseus in mythology, Pankration was one of the original Olympic sports, and original Mixed Martial Art, combining wrestling and boxing with chokes, locks and kicks into a single system that ended up permeating Ancient Greek society and culture - ultimately inspiring virtually all the forms that followed. Tom and Nick are joined by Pankration advocates, coaches and champions in Kon Pappy and Costas Prasoulas to talk about the origin of the sport, why it isn't in the modern Olympics, and the work being done to elevate its global status.This episode of Ouzo Talk is brought to you by:Mootch & Me: https://www.mootchandme.com.au/Also, check out:The Fight Lab: https://www.thefightlab.com.au/Zeus Academy: https://zeusacademy.com.au/Australian Federation of Pankration: https://www.pankration.org.au/australian-federation-of-pankrationSupport the showEmail us at ouzotalk@outlook.comSubscribe to our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3n85GSdk5Q&t=6sFollow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OuzoTalkFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ouzo_talk/

It's been one month since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Since then, rolling news coverage has brought the horrors of the conflict into our homes, but what is it like for Australian-Ukrainians and those who still have family in Europe having to watch these events unfold on screen? The Quicky speaks to two Ukrainian women about their personal experiences, including how they or their relatives have or haven't escaped, and what we can all do to show our support and offer practical support as we hope for an end to the violence. CREDITS  Host: Claire Murphy With thanks to: Nataliya Murad - Member of Queensland's Ukrainian community who was in Ukraine just days before the invasion began Nadia Mencinsky - Media Advisor for the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, whose 27-year-old daughter had to flee Ukraine in the middle of the night as the conflict broke out, while many of their relatives remain in the country Producer: Claire Murphy Executive Producer: Siobhán Moran-McFarlane Audio Producer: Jacob Round Subscribe to The Quicky at... https://mamamia.com.au/the-quicky/ CONTACT US Got a topic you'd like us to cover? Send us an email at thequicky@mamamia.com.au GET IN TOUCH: Feedback? We're listening! Call the pod phone on 02 8999 9386 or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Just by reading or listening to our content, you're helping to fund girls in schools in some of the most disadvantaged countries in the world - through our partnership with Room to Read. We're currently funding 300 girls in school every day and our aim is to get to 1,000. Find out more about Mamamia at mamamia.com.au  Support the show: https://www.mamamia.com.au/mplus/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rita is joined by Stefan Romaniw, Chairman of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations to discuss the Russian ambassador to Australia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Price speaks to 7News Europe reporter Geoff Parry live from Ukraine as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine as well as Stefan Romaniw, the Co-Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After being elected as president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots in 2018, Louise Pole became the first woman in Australia to lead a pilots' union, and the second female pilot union boss in the entire world. In this episode of Sky's The Limit, hosts Anna Grbas and Hannah Dowling speak with Louise in one of our most frank and honest conversations of this series to date – about the real challenges that she and her female colleagues have experienced since she began flying in the 1980s. Louise tells us about her career path and the solidarity she built with other female aviators, as well as all the forums and programs she has been involved in to support women in aviation, including the AFAP Women's Network. Plus, the crew discusses how the female experience in aviation has changed over the past three decades, and talks about practical solutions for moving ahead.

Christian Hunter, the Vice Chairman of Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) and CEO of Travellers Choice, has called for certainty in the date which will be put forward by Premier Mark McGowan for WA's reopening.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just when you thought it was safe to book domestic and international travel, Australia has joined a number of other nations by imposing new restrictions on people from nine African countries over concerns about the new Omicron variant of COVID-19. But why has this version of Coronavirus caused such international panic less than one week after being reported to the World Health Organisation, and what do we really know about how dangerous it is? The Quicky speaks to an infectious diseases specialist and a travel expert to find out everything you need to know about Omicron, and how it might impact both your health and your travel plans over the holidays. CREDITS  Host: Claire Murphy With thanks to:  Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake - Infectious Diseases Expert based at the Australian National University in Canberra Dean Long - CEO of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) Producer: Claire Murphy Executive Producer: Siobhán Moran-McFarlane Audio Producer: Ian Camilleri Subscribe to The Quicky at... https://mamamia.com.au/the-quicky/ CONTACT US Got a topic you'd like us to cover? Send us an email at thequicky@mamamia.com.au GET IN TOUCH: Feedback? We're listening! Call the pod phone on 02 8999 9386 or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Just by reading or listening to our content, you're helping to fund girls in schools in some of the most disadvantaged countries in the world - through our partnership with Room to Read. We're currently funding 300 girls in school every day and our aim is to get to 1,000. Find out more about Mamamia at mamamia.com.au  Support the show: https://www.mamamia.com.au/mplus/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three years after it was announced, the PM has finally introduced a controversial religious discrimination bill in parliament. He believes people of faith need more protection under the law, but there are concerns that LGBTQI+ students and teachers could be worse off. Plus, Yorta Yorta-Gunditjmara singer Isaiah Firebrace has presented his petition for Aboriginal history to be taught in Australian schools at Parliament House. Live guests: Keysar Trad, Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Jo Inkpin, Minister of Pitt St Uniting Church Sydney, Anglican priest and trans woman Steff Fenton, queer Christian and co-pastor at New City Church Isaiah Firebrace, musician

Australia is a federation. But how much have you ever identified with your state? That is before the pandemic hit. The COVID-sponsored resurgence of the states has revealed how little notice we typically take of our federal compact. On Big Ideas, we look at its history and in particular at Western Australia's relationship to the rest of the federation - a state that has often felt like ‘the Cinderella state of the Australian Federation'.

Australia is a federation. But the COVID-sponsored resurgence of the states illustrated how little notice we typically take of our federal contract. On Big Ideas, we look at the history of the Australian Commonwealth and in particular at Western Australia, a state that has often been deemed ‘the Cinderella state of the Australian Federation'.

The controversial travel ban will be lifted from Monday, making it easier - but not easy - to travel abroad. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is there a lack of diverse career options in health and technology for women? Dr Magdalena Simonis is a GP, researcher, keynote speaker, appears regularly on media advising on numerous health issues, and is the President of the Australian Federation of Medical Women (AFMW).   In this episode, Pete and Magdalena focus on the career opportunities and challenges that exist for women within the healthcare and technology space. They also look at what Magdalena is doing in this space to make a meaningful impact. This episode addresses an issue that has been around for centuries; gender inequality. It focuses on the lack of career options and opportunities women are facing in the technology and health sectors. Tune into this episode to learn how this can be fixed, the options women can currently access, and what the future may hold for women in health and tech.  Check out the episode and full show notes here. Loving the show?  Leave us a review, and share it with some friends, become a THT+ Member for early release, ad-free and bonus episodes of the podcast, access to our online community forum, and free tickets to our quarterly summits.  For more information visit here.

051: What a fabulous talk was this. Thank you Anthony and John for such a humble and authentic discussion. I am so honored to have you both in my network as you are wonderful ambassadors for our profession. Anthony Carthew is a career professional with more than 25 years experience in PA & EA roles across government, corporate and entertainment industries. He joined the Sydney Opera House in 2006, and is currently Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer Louise Herron, as well as the Head of Protocol - responsible for overseeing the arrangements for the Opera House's many visiting dignitaries and VIPs, including heads of state and members of royal families from around the globe. Anthony manages a team of Executive Assistants, and heads up the Sydney Opera House Pride network, to help promote diversity and inclusion at the Opera House for its staff, partners and visitors. His past roles include senior EA roles at David Jones (Australia's leading department store), the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. In 2018, Anthony was awarded EA of the Year Australasia (Executive PA Media), has spoken at many conferences and events in support of the EA profession, and is a highly-regarded mentor for aspiring PAs and EAs. John Shaw is a familiar face on my podcast and I am grateful he agreed to be part of this discussion as well. After 13 years of providing administrative support to award-winning recording artists and celebrities, John left the entertainment industry to broaden his knowledge and skills, and hone his talent further with a move into management consulting. He eventually returned to the world of entertainment, supporting the head of marketing of three major television networks, but John still felt he had something bigger to offer to the world. He found the opportunity he'd been looking for to make a bigger impact as part of his career, when he was hired in 2014 by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, to be her executive assistant. He now works as Executive Business Administrator to the Board of Directors for Microsoft. When John's not at work, you can find him with his family and his beloved dogs. Here is the book link we talked about in this episode. I have this book as well and read it probably 100 times already: https://www.amazon.de/Hit-Refresh-Rediscover-Microsofts-Everyone-ebook/dp/B01HOT5SQA Enjoy this episode. Much love, Diana x

On 12th of May Sydney's Australia-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce & Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations together with Australian Embassy to Ukraine and Ukrainian Embassy to Australia hosted a conference focused on promoting stronger business ties between Australia and Ukraine in the IT sector. - 12 травня в Сіднеї відбулася конференція орієнтована на сприяння зміцненню ділових зв'язків між Австралією та Україною в ІТ-секторі.

"Adolescent mental health, school failure and the juvenile justice system: where are the integrated support services?" Dr Magdalena Simonis, President, Australian Federation of Medical Women (AFMW), MBBS FRACGP DRANZCOG MHHS Magdalena Simonis is a GP, government health advisor, primary care researcher with the University of Melbourne, and a leading women's health expert and advocate. Magdalena holds positions on several not-for-profit organisations, bridging gaps across the health sector, whilst informing their health initiatives. She is on the Expert Committee of Quality Care for the RACGP, President and National Coordinator of the Australian Federation of Medical Women, Medical Women's international Association (MWIA) Scientific and Research Subcommittee co-Chair and chair of the MWIA Mentoring group. Magdalena's interests are in community health, chronic disease prevention, and the development of sustainable, equitable healthcare services.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) has announced the appointment of a new grand mufti, despite the title being held by Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed since 2011. - كان من المفترض أن يُكشف النقاب عن المفتي الجديد الشهر الماضي بعد أن وصلت المشاورات مع مجلس الأئمة الفدرالي إلى طريق مسدود.

Australians are cautiously keen for a trip over the ditch, according to a travel agents industry group. It is less than a fortnight until the quarantine-free bubble begins, on a state by state basis. The New Zealand government has developed a traffic light system to give an idea of what could happen if community Covid-19 cases emerge. Tom Manwaring is head of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents and has been in the business for decades.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://www.eglobaltravelmedia.com.au/australian-federation-of-travel-agents-announces-ceo-departure/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/global-travel-media/message

People with a disability are chronically over-represented in the criminal justice system in Australia, making up 29% of the prison population, despite being only 18% the general population.This is a situation that has to change, something that the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability is hearing very clearly.Today Karenza Louis-Smith from ermha365 talks to Patrick McGee, national manager for policy, advocacy and research at the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and Eileen Baldry AO, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Equity Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Criminology at UNSW Sydney.We have only just scratched the surface of this very important topic – expect to hear more later this year. 

Typically on this podcast, we showcase entrepreneurs and business titans alike who are using the power of commerce to try to solve serious social problems. Occasionally we’ve had on nonprofit leaders, and in this episode, we’ve again got a very special guest who also is not a grinding entrepreneur. But this guest is someone who’s inspired many mission-oriented entrepreneurs, myself included, along with millions of others trying to do good in the world. In fact, it’s hard to think of many people on the planet who’ve led a more impactful life than this episode’s guest.  Peter Singer is an author and ethicist, and has been routinely called the most influential philosopher alive. He’s widely credited with kickstarting the modern animal protection movement with his 1975 mega-bestseller Animal Liberation, and with popularizing what’s now called the effective altruism movement through his early writings on poverty and more recently with his 2009 book The Life You Can Save. Many of the business leaders we feature on this show, especially those in the animal-free protein space, are motivated by philosophical underpinnings to their work that are likely related to or even directly stemming from Peter Singer’s writings. In this interview Peter doesn’t disappoint nor does he shy away from tough subjects. We discuss a wide range of topics, including his views on the role technology and entrepreneurship play in helping animals along with the role charities play, too. We get into whether he has any regrets over publicly taking certain views in his 50-year career. And we discuss whether he thinks animals are better off today than when he first wrote Animal Liberation in 1975. Peter offers his views on the ethics of eating oysters, adoption of children vs. procreation, colonizing other planets, and more. And now that he’s in his mid-70s, he also talks about what he hopes his obituaries will say, which hopefully won’t be written for a long time. Whether you agree with Peter on a particular issue or not, there’s no doubt you’ll come away from this interview with a great appreciation for his commitment to doing the most good he can in the world.  Discussed in this episode We discuss some of Peter’s books, including Animal Liberation, The Life You Can Save, How Are We to Live?, The Most Good You Can Do, Practical Ethics, and a new book Peter edited called The Golden Ass. The latter led us to discuss the Biblical story of Balaam and his donkey. We also discuss The Three Body Problem, a mega-popular Chinese novel in which Animal Liberation plays a role. Peter Singer and Paul Shapiro have jointly published two op-eds (in 2006 and 2012 respectively) about the cage confinement of animals on factory farms.  When it comes to animal-saving technology, Peter personally invested in Gourmey, a cultivated foie gras start-up, and he donates to The Good Food Institute. Speaking of technology advancing ethics, we talk about Susan B. Anthony’s 1896 view that bicycling “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” Peter is an editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Peter recommends Better Angels of Our Nature, Moral Tribes, and The Precipice. A Chinese fast food company swapped eggs from its menu for plant-based Just Egg. Peter recommends donating to charities recommended by The Life You Can Save. Peter hopes there’ll be more investment in fusion nuclear energy. Our past episodes with nonprofit leaders  New Harvest’s Isha Datar and Goodwill’s Lori Dearwester More about Peter Singer Peter Singer is often referred to as the “world’s most influential living philosopher.” He’s best known for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, he’s often credited with starting the modern animal protection movement, and he’s had a major influence on the development of effective altruism.  He’s also known for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics. Several key figures in the animal movement have said that Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals.  To that end, Peter co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. His wife, Renata, and I stopped eating meat in 1971. Peter is the founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization based on his book of the same name.  It aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this. You can view his TED talk on this topic here. His writings in this area include: the 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” in which he argues for donating to help the global poor; and two books that make the case for effective giving, The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015). Peter has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason) and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. His writings have appeared in more than 25 languages. Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, Peter was educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford.  After teaching in England, the United States, and Australia, in 1999 he became Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.  

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has welcomed federal government funding to ensure COVID-19 vaccination information reaches migrants. That story by Julia Carr-Catzel and Biwa Kwan for SBS News, produced by Praba Maheswaran for SBS Tamil. - ஆங்கிலம் தவிர்ந்த வேறு மொழிகளைப் பேசும் ஆஸ்திரேலியர்களுக்காக, COVID தடுப்பூசி பற்றிய தகவல்களை 60 மொழிகளில் மொழிபெயர்க்கவும் அவை மக்களை அடையக்கூடிய விதத்தில் உருவாக்கவும் Federal அரசு சுமார் 1.3 மில்லியன் டாலர்களை ஒதுக்கியுள்ளது. இதுபற்றி Julia Carr-Catzel தயாரித்த செய்தி விவரணத்தை தமிழில் தருகிறார் மகேஸ்வரன் பிரபாகரன்.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has welcomed federal government funding to ensure COVID-19 vaccination information reaches migrants. The Morrison government has allocated 1.3 million dollars to translate and make accessible information in 60 languages, for Australians who speak languages other than English. - Австралиската Федерација на Исламски Совети го поздрави финансирањето на федералната влада за да се обезбеди информација за вакцинацијата против COVID-19 за мигрантите. Владата на Морисон одвои 1,3 милиони долари за превод и правење достапни информации на 60 јазици, за Австралијците кои зборуваат други јазици освен англиски.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has welcomed federal government funding to ensure COVID-19 vaccination information reaches migrants.The Morrison government has allocated 1.3 million dollars to translate and make accessible information in 60 languages, for Australians who speak languages other than English.

In this episode, Dr Simon McKenzie talks with Rhiannon Neilsen and Karine Pontbriand on the role of militaries in defending against cyber operations. They argue that the vulnerability of critical infrastructure of many States to cyber operations - particularly due to privatisation - means that militaries need to step up their contribution to cyber defence.  They talk about why NATO militaries are reluctant to do this, the basis for this position, and why it is problematic. Rhiannon Neilsen is a Scientia PhD Candidate at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include atrocity prevention, moral and political philosophy, cyberspace, and the Responsibility to Protect. In 2019, she was awarded the Barbara Hale Fellowship by the Australian Federation of Graduate Women to be a visiting doctoral student at the University of Oxford. Rhiannon has also been a visiting scholar at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (2019). Her published work has appeared in international journals, such as Ethics and International Affairs (2020), Terrorism and Political Violence (2019), and Genocide Studies and Prevention (2015).Karine Pontbriand is a PhD Candidate in International Relations and Cyber Security at UNSW Canberra, and is a member of the Research Group on Cyber War and Peace. She is also a research fellow at the Research Group on Cyber Diplomacy and Cyber Security at the Montreal Institute of International Studies (IEIM). Before starting her doctoral studies, she worked as a policy analyst for Global Affairs Canada where she was focusing on the use of digital technology to advance Canada's foreign policy priorities. She has an undergraduate degree in International Relations and International Law and a master's degree in International and Intercultural Communication (with Distinction, Highest Grade). Her main research interests are international cyber security, cyber diplomacy and cyber war and US-China cyber relations.  

The Australian Federation of Travel Agents says ten billion dollars’ worth of travel was cancelled when borders closed in March last year. Ten months later only six billion of this has been returned, meaning there's at least four billion dollars owed to Australians in unpaid refunds.

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues in favor of veganism and his essay “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, in which he argues in favor of donating to help the global por. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he stated in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian. On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996 he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004 Singer was recognized as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. In 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald placed him among Australia’s ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer is a cofounder of Animals Australia and the founder of The Life You Can Save. Journalists have tagged him as the ‘world’s most influential living philosopher’ as Singer’s work on ethics behind the treatment of animals have been credited to starting the modern animal rights movements. He is a known critic of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics. Several key figures in the animal movement have said that his book Animal Liberation, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals. To that end, he co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. He and his wife, Renata, stopped eating meat in 1971. He is the founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization based on his book. It aims to spread Peter’s ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this. You can view his TED talk on this topic here. He has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason) and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek.)

In conversation with Dr Erica Charters and Robin Gorna. TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events! Performance Week​ Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. How have societies responded to pandemics, throughout the world, and throughout time? What are the new narratives, meanings and cultures that emerge and shape emerging realities? As this conversation will remind us, there is no simple answer to the problem of disease – but disease is also far more than a medical or scientific problem. Robin Gorna will draw on her experiences with social movements and cultural responses to AIDS since the 1980s, which brought hope and massive social change in the midst of rage and death. She will discuss the many connections between the two pandemics - of cultural change, politics and people and emerging narratives, with reflections on her current experience of living with Covid-19 in her own body. Erica Charters will discuss a just-published special issue of Centaurus on ‘The history of epidemics in the time of COVID-19’, reflecting on how the discipline of the history of science and medicine has responded to the current pandemic. Sharing historical approaches to understanding disease, she will explore how historians have framed pandemics and what a long-term context might offer for our understanding of COVID-19. Biographies: Dr Erica Charters (History Faculty and Wolfson College) examines the history of war, disease, and bodies, particularly in the British and French empires. Her current research focuses on manpower during the eighteenth century, examining the history of bodies as well as the history of methods used to measure and enhance bodies, labour, and population as a whole, including the history of statistics. Since disease was the biggest threat to manpower in the early modern world, Erica looks at how disease environments – throughout the world – shaped military, commercial, and agricultural power, as well as how overseas experiences shaped European theories of medicine, biology, and race alongside political methodologies such as statistics and censuses. Erica's monograph Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of British Armed Forces during the Seven Years War (Chicago, 2014) traces how responses to disease shaped military strategy, medical theory, and the nature of British imperial authority (awarded the AAHM 2016 George Rosen Prize and the SAHR 2014 Best First Book). To read more about Erica's recent publication, please visit: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/16000498 Robin Gorna is an AIDS activist and feminist who has led global and local campaigns and organisations, including SheDecides (the global women’s rights movement that she co-founded 2017), the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (hosted by WHO), International AIDS Society, and Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations. She set up the global AIDS Team for DFID (Department for International Development) in 2003, and then moved to South Africa to lead the UK’s regional and national HIV and health programmes. She co-founded, and now chairs, the St John’s College Women’s Network. She studied Theology but spent far too much time involved in student drama until the end of her 2nd year when she saw an early performance of The Normal Heart (by Larry Kramer) and signed up as a volunteer with the UK’s new AIDS Charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust. She remains fascinated by the ways in which culture and the arts inspire social movements, including the global AIDS response. She publishes regularly and wrote one of the earliest books on women, Vamps, Virgins and Victims: how can women fight AIDS? She’s now working on a feminist memoir exploring a life lived between two pandemics. For more information, please visit Robin Gorna's website here: www.robingorna.com

Sean Aylmer speaks to Darren Rudd, CEO of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, about the current state of the industry. The travel industry has been severely impacted by COVID-19, and those effects are set to continue with international borders not expected to reopen for more than a year. Follow or subscribe to Fear and Greed, the business podcast that sets you up for a successful day. It's entirely free, and can be access on any platform: Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneInFind out more: https://fearandgreed.com.auSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James Packer concedes he may have to sell down his holding of Crown Resorts, as the inquiry into the gaming company airs plenty of dirty laundry. Also today: Labor provides an alternate budget, targeting women and blue collar workers. NSW records more COVID-19 cases than Victoria, for the first time in four months. And one of Australia’s best known tourist attractions named as the third best place in the world to visit. Plus an interview with Darren Rudd, the chief executive of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, about the state of the travel industry.Find out more: https://fearandgreed.com.auSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 26 - Desiree YapThis week we get to know one of our members. Suz Cannell presents an entertaining chat with masters player Des Yap who was encouraged into returning to our summer competition four years back and has continued playing ever since.Outside hockey, Dr Desiree Yap is a specialist O&G with a passion for women's health.She is a qualified specialist in both Australia and the United Kingdom and has a Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine from James Cook University. On 26 January 2020, she was appointed Member of the Order of Australia for her ‘significant service to women's health and to medicine.'Des was on the board of Women's Health Victoria for eight years and served as their chair for two. She is the past president of the Australian Federation of Medical Women, The Victorian Medial Women's Society and worked in China as a Team Leader for the World Health Organisation during the initial SARS outbreak in 2003.You can access some great resources from Women's Health Victoria with a focus on health, equality and the prevention of violence against women.Listen to hear about Des' career and achievements and her strong advocacy for women's health and professional equality. Learn about her mentors, leadership role and her thoughts and advice for young practitioners and new mums during a pandemic.00:01:14: Introduction00:06:13: Career00:09:48: Advocate Women's Health00:12:50: Empower Women's Health00:19:41: Mentors00:22:14: Advice for Young Practitioners00:30:47: Order of Australia00:33:14: Achievements00:35:43: Medical Field Equality00:38:11: Being a Leader00:39:39: Health in the Pandemic00:44:52: Advice to New Mums00:48:32: What's Next?

We're talking to the Australian Federation for the Family about ways to protect children from dangerous pornography and wagering. Help Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week the Government focus is finally on getting Australians back to work. But with coronavirus panic still a factor, will the public take the PM's lead or vote with leaden feet? (1:34-21:42) Daniel Andrews has self-isolated in refusing to reopen Victorian schools, but do health risks really out-weigh social and economic impacts? (21:42-34:54) With negotiations for a trans-Tasman travel bubble underway, what's the next stage in the long history of Australia and New Zealand's relationship? (34:54-48:09) Co-hosts Scott Hargreaves and Chris Berg are joined by IPA Research Fellow, Dara Macdonald, to answer these questions as well as share their culture picks. This week's picks include The Great Influenza, Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and Randolph Churchill's Young Statesman. (48:09-1:08:54)   Show Notes Have a COVID-19 Plan; National COVID-19 Coordination Commission https://pmc.gov.au/nccc/have-covid-19-plan COVID-19 information for workplaces; Safe Work Australia https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/covid-19-information-workplaces This could be the start of a terrible friendship; Katrina Grace Kelly (Fair Work & JobsKeeper) The Australian, May 2, 2020 ($) Schools are reopening, so here's a guide to the situation in each State and Territory; ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-04/australian-schools-reopening-after-coronavirus-closures/12211526 COVID-19 in schools – the experience in NSW ncirs.org.au New Zealand and Australian Federation; Ged Martin https://www.gedmartin.net/australia-new-zealand-and-federation-1883-1901-c   Culture Picks The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History; John M. Barry https://www.amazon.com.au/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491 De Profundis; Oscar Wilde https://www.amazon.com/Profundis-Oscar-Wilde/dp/150582480X Young Statesman: Winston S. Churchill 1901-1914; Randolph S. Churchill https://www.amazon.com/Young-statesman-Winston-Churchill-1901/dp/B002KZQTG2

Bogdan Rudnytski interviewed the Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainians Organisations and Vice President of the Ukrainian World Congress Stefan Romaniw, OAM. We spoke about Ukrainian diaspora in 64 countries and newly migration. The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) called on the Australian Government to support the Ukrainian Parliament’s Resolution. The resolution calls for foreign governments to strengthen international condemnation of the the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the illegal annexation of Crimea and the occupation of areas of Donbass, political repressions of Ukrainian citizens and the release of political prisoners. In a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne, and to the Australia-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group, the AFUO advocated for a sign of support from Australia for Ukraine’s call to the international community to reinforce its message of support and sanctions. - Богдан Рудницький розмовляє із Головою Управи Союзу Українських Організацій та одним із головних речників Світового Конґресу Українців, який об'єднує українські спільноти у 68 країнах світу...

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Considered by many as “world’s most influential living philosopher,” Prof. Singer works mostly in practical ethics and is known for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics. In this interview, Prof. Singer discusses how one may reason through triage decisions when it's no longer hypothetical to decide who lives and dies; whether the negatives of the economic shutdown outweigh the benefits; when governments should be allowed to intervene with individual choices for better public health outcomes; why he advocates for the closing of wet markets; and the long-term moral-ethical impacts of Covid-19... The interview is co-hosted by Tiger Gao and Arjun Mani, who will also offer an overview of some of the most interesting philosophical, economic, and political arguments central to the crisis today. Prof. Singer is perhaps best known for his book "Animal Liberation," often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement. A vegetarian himself, he co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. He is also the founder of "The Life You Can Save," an organization based on his book of the same name. It aims to spread ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this. Prof. Singer's writings have also heavily influenced the development of the effective altruism movement. Prof. Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including "Practical Ethics," "The Expanding Circle," "Rethinking Life and Death," "One World," "The Ethics of What We Eat" (with Jim Mason) and "The Point of View of the Universe" (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek). His writings have appeared in more than 25 languages.

Retired travel agent James Kwan has been identified as the first Australian to die from the coronavirus. The 78 year old Perth man was diagnosed with the virus after being infected on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship.  Mr Kwan passed away on Sunday morning at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. The family have released a statement saying “My husband passed away peacefully knowing that his family loved him” Presenter of “Remember When” Harvey Deegan and George Booth, former State President of the Australian Federation of Travel agents both paid tribute to James describing him as a kind, well travelled man who loved a joke.

2019 International Holodomor Memorial Day: Saturday, November 24. Up to 10 million people died in 1932-33 when Soviet leader Josef Stalin engineered a famine in a bid to break the spirit of Ukraine. In November 2018, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) launched a unique photo exhibition in Melbourne to mark 85 years since the Holodomor – Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. The exhibition honoured survivors of the Holodomor (Genocide), who eventually came to settle in Australia. Nine months on, the exhibition has opened in Kyiv through a collaboration between the AFUO and the National Museum: Holodomor Victims Memorial. - Miжнародний День вшанування жертв Голодоморів-Ґеноциду у 2019 році відбудеться 24 листопада. Україна пам'ятає - Світ визнає! Тут - свідчення австралійських українців, думки істориків про факти сумної трагедії, про виставку «Голоси з-за океану: фотовиставка про Голодомор», дещо зі спогадів українців із рідних земель та теперішню війну із Росією як часткове продовження ліквідації українства та українців...

Bogdan Rudnytski interviewed Stefan Romaniw, OAM, Chairman of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations. Also Mr Romaniw is Vice-president of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC). We spoke about Ukrainians around the world, Ukrainian nationalism and the 60th anniversary of Stepan Bandera's death in Germany. We also covered the MH 17 tragedy and the Russian propaganda machine with a documentary titled MY 17 – Call for Justice. In addition, Mr Romaniw spoke about the appointment of Mariia Kupriianova as Executive Director of the Ukrainian World Congress. In her new role, which begins November 1, Mariia will be responsible for leading UWC’s operations, managing staff and supporting volunteer-led committees. In collaboration with the UWC Board and Executive Committee, she will represent and advocate the UWC’s positions to global stakeholders, including governments, civil society and supporters. - Богдан Рудницький веде розмову із паном Стефаном Романівим, OAM, Першим заступником Президента Світового Конґресу Українців (СКУ) та Головою Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії (СУОА). Ми говоримо про відзначення у Німеччині 60-ліття з часу загибелі Степана Бандери, про український націоналізм, самого поняття якого, на жаль, не розуміє значна частина людей. Також ми торкаємося трагедії літака рейсу MH17 та російського пропагандистського фільму про цей злочин. Пан Романів також наголосив на тому, що Світовий Конґрес Українців (СКУ) призначив Марію Купріянову Виконавчим директором. Починаючи з 1 листопада 2019 р., Марія очолить операційну діяльність та команду працівників СКУ, а також забезпечуватиме підтримку роботи волонтерських комітетів. У співпраці з Радою директорів та Екзекутивним комітетом вона представлятиме та відстоюватиме позиції СКУ перед його партнерами в світі, у тому числі й перед урядами, громадянським суспільством та прихильниками СКУ. На світлині: СТЕФАН РОМАНІВ ОТРИМУЄ У ПОДАРУНОК ВІД ГОЛОВНОГО РЕДАКТОРА ГАЗЕТИ «ДЕНЬ» ЛАРИСИ ІВШИНОЇ ДВА ВИДАННЯ З БІБЛІОТЕКИ «ДНЯ»: «ВАШІ МЕРТВІ ВИБРАЛИ МЕНЕ» ДЖЕЙМСА МЕЙСА ТА «AVE», ПРИСВЯЧЕНУ СТОЛІТТЮ ГЕТЬМАНАТУ ПАВЛА СКОРОПАДСЬКОГО (The Day, Kyiv)

Bogdan Rudnytski interviewed Stefan Romaniw, OAM. Mr Romaniw is the Executive DirectorCommunity Languages Australia (Australian Federation of Ethnic Schools Associations), Chairman of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations and Vice-president of the Ukrainian World Congress. We spoke about the war in Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians around the world under an umbrella body of the Ukrainian World Congress. Also we covered the 2019 Ukrainian Festival in Melbourne and Ukrainian community in Australia, the 2019 SBS National Language Competition and ethnic schools in Australia (Australia have 1400 community language schools). - Богдан Рудницький веде розмову із паном Стефаном Романівим, екзекутивним речником об'єднання Етнічні Школи Австралії (Executive Director, Community Languages Australia (Australian Federation of Ethnic Schools Associations), заступником Президента Світового Конґресу Українців (СКУ) та Головою Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії (СУОА)...

The Secretary of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) Iryna Andreeva and Bogdan Rudnytski spoke about the XXVIII Triennial Meeting in Melbourne - Секретар Управи Союзу Українських Організацій Австралії (CУОА) Ірина Андрєєва і Богдан Рудницький розмовляють про ХХVIII-й з’їзд CУОА, що відбувся у Мельбурні...

Dr Paul Sutton talks about the Victorian campaign for industrial manslaughter.Belinda from the Australian Federation of Community Legal Centres talks about their upcoming conferenne.Lew Wheeler from Fair Go For Pensioners talks about the facts about poverty with practical work for change.Senator Doug Cameron & Sally McManus give tribute to Laurie Carmichael.   

In this episode we delve into the process in which  Australia went from a collection of British colonies to becoming a sovereign nation in 1901.

Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is soon to receive federal subsidy in Australia, making the game-changing HIV prevention tool more widely accessible to those communities that need it most. On Friday 9 February 2018, Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefit Advisory Committee (PBAC) recommended pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) therefore making this game-changing tool for HIV prevention accessible across Australia. During this week's show, Cal and Michael  speak to Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) CEO Darryl O’Donnell to discuss what this means across for those seeking to access HIV preventative medication across the country. Later, they're joined in the studio by Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, to discuss Victoria's recent outbreak in hepatitis A and the vaccinations currently available to those populations at risk. In addition, for more info on that vaccinations program, head to: www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/timetoimmunise. For more info on PrEP head to: VAC's website  AFAO website to check out their Fact Sheet. PrEP'd for Change and for information on  access options, head to PrEP Access Now (PAN). Furthermore, Clinicians should head to the ASHM and RACGP websites. This show, Episode #610 originally aired Monday 12th February, 2018 Grab this and other podcasts from the Well, Well, Well team on iTunes | Spotify | or your favourite podcast platform - or head to joy.org.au/wellwellwell Head to www.thorneharbour.org for more information about Thorne Harbour's LGBTI health and well-being services Thorne Harbour is social! facebook: facebook.com/thorneharbour  |  twitter: @ThorneHarbour  |  instagram: @thorneharbour

Welcome to the only podcast that's officially banned by the Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants. We'd like to thank our families and our industry colleagues for supporting us thus far! Seriously though, here's another sweet podcast episode, enjoy! • Emily asks for a podcast episode with top tips for new celebrants, we'll release it soon! • Marriage celebrant matters, the AGD newsletter is out and boy is it fun/boring. We deliver a blow by blow recap of this industry-defining PDF file. • CoCA comments "we don't want the right to discriminate" in the SMH • Send in your feedback - why are you, or are you not, a member of an association • The Marriage Act (legislation) has not changed yet, so we can't accept notices (NOIMs) for same sex couples until the marriage act allows us to.  On the 23rd of November the current statement is "celebrants are currently not able to accept a Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) from same-sex couples." • BDM (Births, Deaths and Marriages) chat on the new Queensland BDM online marriage registration system, NSW's Lifelink and Victoria's Marriages online, and why you might want to, or not use them. Facebook post to the new forms in beta release from the Qld BDM. When the new Qld BDM online system goes live, you'll access it here. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/celebrant/message

Currently there is a lot of chatter about HIV Cure.  What role do HIV positive people play in the research for a cure?  Are there different types of Cures? Why would I want to participate in cure research? Realistically, how far away is a cure for HIV?These questions and so much more were discussed during the 2017 ASHM Conference in Canberra.In this podcast, recorded live on 7 November 2017, Professor Sharon Lewin from the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, discusses some of the challenges that researchers face in their search for an HIV cure.  Also on the discussion panel are, Cipri Martinez, President of NAPWHA, Dr Rowena Johnston, Vice President of amfAR and Dr Robert Page, a S100 GP from Sydney.  Moderating this discussion is Heath Paynter from the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.To find out more about HIV Cure research head to http://hivcure.com.au/

Two great people, born on the same day in the same year. They've been through both wars, they saw the invention of the cotton gin, witnessed Australian Federation and imagined, as only they could, what life would be like when decimal currency came in. I'm saying they're old. Happy Birthday, guys. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A conversation with Jack Sonneman from the Australian Federation for the Family on a movement towards what is known as the Nordic Model as South Australia moves to change prostitution laws. Jack Sonneman has an alternative idea on many Christian lobby groups, calling for a complete ban on prostitution. Help Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we replay one of the most popular programs of 2016 an extended conversation with advocate Maryanne Diamond. At the time of this interview (September 2016) Maryanne had just been awarded the Louis Braille Medal. This most prestigious award is granted to individuals who have made a substantial and outstanding contribution to the World Blind Union (WBU) over a long period of time. Maryanne is a former president of the WBU, former Executive Officer of Blind Citizens Australia, the founding Executive Officer of Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) and former General Manager of Advocacy and Engagement at Vision Australia. She is currently the General Manager for the NDIA's Media, Communications and Engagement. Her work has included developing training workshops in Mongolia on leadership for women who are blind and establishing a PNG blind union and to provide leadership and advocacy training to people who are blind or have low vision in PNG. Maryanne has also tirelessly advocated for the Marrakesh Treaty for the Marrakesh Treaty, and for leading World Blind Union's Right to Read Campaign and the global effort to end the book famine. She discusses her school and university years and the choices she made that took her through her adventurous career path for the past 20 years.

This week, Stella enjoys an extended conversation with advocate Maryanne Diamond who was recently awarded the Louis Braille Medal. This most prestigious award is granted to individuals who have made a substantial and outstanding contribution to the World Blind Union (WBU) over a long period of time.   Maryanne is a former president of the WBU, former Executive Officer of Blind Citizens Australia, the founding Executive Officer of Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) and former General Manager of Advocacy and Engagement at Vision Australia. She is currently the General Manager for the NDIA's Media, Communications and Engagement. Her work has included developing training workshops in Mongolia on leadership for women who are blind and establishing a PNG blind union and to provide leadership and advocacy training to people who are blind or have low vision in PNG. Maryanne has also tirelessly advocated for the Marrakesh Treaty for the Marrakesh Treaty, and for leading World Blind Union's Right to Read Campaign and the global effort to end the book famine. . She discusses her school and university years and the choices she made that took her through her adventurous career path for the past 20 years.

Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady were both instrumental in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Alan Porritt and Julian Smith (AAP)This is the first program in a new podcast series, Change Agents. It will focus on examples of ordinary people who have brought about profound social, political and cultural change, celebrating their success and explaining how they did it. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the biggest social reform in Australia this century. By 2022 it will help half a million people access comprehensive disability support at a cost of around A$25 billion. On this program, two of the NDIS’ founders explain how they developed something so radical and comprehensive and then won support for the idea. Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman and Rhonda Galbally is a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, the body that implements the NDIS. You can read the transcript below. Andrew Dodd: Hello, I’m Andrew Dodd and this is Change Agents, a series about change and the people who make it happen. Today, the birth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is Australia’s biggest social reform this century. By 2022 it’s estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, it’ll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy. Today we’ll meet two of its founders: Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman, and Rhonda Galbally is a board member, of the NDIA, the agency that runs the NDIS. They told a forum at Swinburne University that the idea has been around for a long time, as far back as the Whitlam years. Bruce Bonyhady: Whitlam, following the introduction of Medicare, wanted to have a national compensation scheme. A similar scheme was introduced in New Zealand, but covering just people with disabilities who acquired that disability through an accident – so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now. But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workers’ compensation or motor vehicle compensation schemes and apply that to disability more generally dates back to then, and in fact is part of a movement that started in the 1890s when the first compulsory workers’ compensation schemes were developed – in fact in Germany. AD: Am I right in saying it was on the books at the time the Whitlam government was dismissed, and that the Fraser government decided not to carry through with it? BB: Yes, it was due to be debated in parliament on November 11, 1975, and then Fraser decided not to carry on the reform. AD: So obviously then there wasn’t the bipartisanship that characterised what happened with the NDIS later. BB: No, there was no bipartisanship around that, and in fact there was no bipartisanship at that stage around universal health insurance either. AD: I’ve read that it was scuttled in part because the insurers saw that it was against their interests to support something that would undermine their business models. So, they were opposed to it. BB: I don’t know that detail. I think the point about the NDIS, though, is that it provides insurance where there was no insurance before. There is no private insurer who will insure someone who was born with a disability, or acquires a disability through a progressive medical condition, and will insure catastrophic risk. This is a classic case of market failure – there was no insurance available. And it’s a classic issue to which insurance applies – because the whole population is at risk. The consequences of major disability on those directly affected and their families is enormous. And so if we all pay a small amount, then we can insure us all – and it is the most efficient and effective way, as a society, to support people with disabilities. And in fact, if you go back to the work of Kenneth Arrow in the 1960s, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on insurance, he, in his work, where he demonstrated that universal health insurance is the most efficient way for communities to support the risk of adverse health outcomes, he also had a category for what he called “failure to recover” – in other words, permanent disability. So, already in the 1960s the academic work had been done to demonstrate the veracity of this scheme. Rhonda Galbally: But, what was missing then was that the disability rights movement hadn’t started in Australia. And there was no mobilisation or interest. In America, it started – really, for the world – with the Vietnam veterans coming back and just not putting up with being put in institutions. They said “no way” and started the independent living movement. Ours would’ve started just in tiny little seeds towards the end of the 70s. And then in the early 80s they had a small voice, but they were responsible for the deinstitutionalisation movement. But then, by the time it came around for the NDIS, that mobilisation possibility was just as important as the idea – because if the idea had been there, which Bruce designed, without the possibility of the mobilisation then we’d be back to where we were with the Whitlam era. So I think that’s a very important part of the question of: “how come?” AD: One of the people who deserves a lot of credit in bringing about the NDIS is the former deputy prime minister, Brian Howe. It’s said that back in 2005 he went back to the Woodhouse report – this report that had been commissioned by the Whitlam government – pulled it off the shelf, had a look at it, and started thinking about an insurance scheme that could address some of these issues. How fundamental was he to this? BB: He was certainly fundamental to my involvement. In 2005 I was just starting to be interested in disability reform. I was very conscious that there was chronic underfunding; that many people were not getting the support they needed – either not enough support or were missing out entirely. I was on a board with Brian at the time, and I said to him I wanted to talk to him about disability reform. And what he said to me was “you have to stop thinking about disability policy as welfare, and start thinking about it as risk and insurance and investment”. It was one of those lightbulb moments. So, it became a catalyst for me to start to explore how insurance could be applied to people with disability more generally. I very quickly came across the work of John Walsh, who had developed a whole scheme for anyone who was catastrophically injured – not just those who were catastrophically injured in motor-vehicle or workplace accidents. I said to John “could we do this for all of disability?”, and he said “of course, we just need the data”. Both Brian and then John were incredibly important to how we got to where we are today. AD: You were, at that stage, chair of Yooralla. And you came into this sector because of a personal family connection to these issues. BB: Yeah. I’ve got two adult sons, both of whom have cerebral palsy. Prior to them being born – my older son is now in his 30s – I knew nothing about disability, so I became involved on the boards of disability organisations. Initially my focus was on those organisations and their governance. In 2005 I started to think more broadly. The trigger for that was going to an early intervention centre that Yooralla was running near Dandenong and sitting down with the mother of a disabled boy. She said to me: “Why can’t my son get the early intervention services he needs?”. And I went into this long explanation about how we were doing the best we could with the funding we had, and then I went away appalled by the answer. Here I was, with all of my connections and education, and I was defending the status quo. That was really the trigger for me to go and see Brian. I thought it was shocking, so that was how it started. AD: Let’s go forward from 2005 to the election of the Rudd government. The parliamentary secretary for disability services, Bill Shorten, was appointed in 2007. He became very important to what ensued. RG: Well I think Bill was really the important catalyst in a way. And I think he really was very striking from the very first time I met him in that he didn’t characterise disability as a sad tragedy or misery. He characterised it as an outrage, a real abrogation of human rights, and it was sort of like a non-welfare approach to it, and also a waste: he characterised it as wasteful of people’s potential. There was a charitable view of disability. People were very happy to talk at length about raising money for poor disadvantaged people, but nobody was talking about it being an absolute outrage. That was Bill, and behind Bill was Jenny Macklin, who was very seasoned, and he had a view of especially mobilisation. The sector was in complete disarray. And because it had been a charitable sad story, the media was characterised by burden. There were very important programs which probably helped the case but were really fragmenting, because you’d come out of it feeling like cutting your throat as a person with a disability because there you were, you’d ruined everyone’s lives and the families were in tragedy and so people with disabilities organisations didn’t get on at all with carers’ organisations, and both were united – probably quite rightly – in being highly critical of the services that hadn’t changed in about the last 50 years. AD: I think I read something you wrote that said that these sectors were effectively at war with each other. RG: They were at war. And they were at war in every country in the world. I can remember reading a Guardian article by the head of the Disability Rights Commission in the UK, and she said we will not make progress in this country until the carers organisations get together with the people with disabilities organisations and build an alliance. AD: I want to find out more about how you did that and we’ll get to that in a second, but I want to go to the 2020 Summit now, because that also is very important to this. I’ve heard snippets of this story but I want you to tell the full story, Bruce, about how you got this issue on the agenda of the 2020 Summit. I don’t think you were even a delegate, were you? BB: No, I wasn’t a delegate. RG: There’s a club for them, for non-delegates. AD: Are you in that club? BB: I got together with Helen Sykes, who is the chairman of the James Macready Bryan Foundation, and one of my closest long-time friends, John Nairn, who was a director of that foundation. None of us were invited to the 2020 Summit so we got the list of delegates and we wrote to everyone and contacted everyone on that list that we knew. We knew that no-one was going to take our idea to the summit as their top idea, so we knew we were going to be at best their second idea at the summit. So we figured that going into the Summit we were somewhere worse than position 1001, but somehow it emerged as one of the half-dozen big ideas of the summit. And – on reflection – it was undoubtedly the big idea of the 2020 Summit. AD: How many of them put it as their second idea, do you know? BB: I don’t know. Certainly a number of people I know well pushed it. AD: How did you get people to say “OK, I will put your idea down as my second idea” at this big summit? BB: I think it was a compelling case. Everyone knows someone with a disability, or they’ve got a relative with a disability, and they know how broken that old system was. Here was an idea which made reform affordable, and people responded. And I think we had some luck. I think some of these things are: you work hard and you put all your effort in and you get some lucky breaks, so we obviously got some lucky breaks for that to happen. AD: So it emerges as a big idea and – as you say – probably the big idea of the 2020 Summit. And then you were asked by Bill Shorten to look at the feasibility of the scheme and actually shore it all up with the right numbers behind it. BB: Well we’d already started on that process. So a group of us, chaired by Ian Silk, worked for 18 months on this report. When you’re asked to recommend reform to governments you’ve got a choice – you can have a long shopping list of ideas, or you can essentially say “we’ve got one idea”, and that’s what we did. We said: “We’ve got one idea and we think it’s a big idea and we think it requires further examination by government”. AD: And I think this is about the time that Bill Shorten says to you and to the various groups: “come together and start working as a team”, and you led this group that became the alliance. RG: There was internal-to-government and then there was external-to-government, and I facilitated the external-to-government coming together of the three and in fact it was very moving. I think about it now in terms of the maturity of being able to think about what it was like from somebody else’s point of view. I can remember the first time we came together with carers and I was thinking about it from my mother’s point of view – how it had been for her and her life when I was disabled as a tiny baby. It was that expression and then them seeing it from the person’s point of view, instead of just from the family’s point of view, that made it quite a profound connection. Internally to government, because the carers’ networks had been so powerful through the 1990s, there was a view that there should be a separate carers’ council. But because we’d mobilised and come together on the outside, it just didn’t make sense. So that was a persuasion job with Bill and Jenny, because the bureaucrats were pretty convinced that they should be separate. I remember [the bureaucrats] saying “but carers look after old people” and I thought “well you’re not a carer of someone old until they’re disabled, actually, otherwise you’re just a son or a daughter – you don’t play that carer role until they’re disabled too”, so the topic is still disability. So they then agreed to it being set up in joint services and carers, and then Bill insisted on putting business and unions on. I was very opposed and I said “Oh no, it should just be consumers” and he was proven to be right; they were tremendously valuable – they opened it out, they took it back to their networks, to the business council, to the AICD, to all sorts of places that had never heard of these issues, and the ACTU. It was really valuable, that move to broaden that group out. BB: I think the other thing that we need to give Rhonda credit for is the alliance was her brainchild. This alliance outside government – it’s a world-first. This is the first time anywhere in the world that, the sector having split, as part of the disability rights movement, as a sign of its maturity came together to prosecute the case for big reform. You only get big reform when you’ve got unity and a single voice and a single point of advocacy to government and the community. AD: You were saying earlier that some were pushing to include education in the campaign and other aspects of disability reform that were required, and it was about narrowing it down to one achievable – admittedly ambitious – but one achievable goal. RG: Yes, and the trouble also was a matter of us – Bruce and I – thinking that the NDIS should be the focus, but also we decided to only work on something we could agree on. Education is still reasonably controversial in that some of the carers felt special education was good, and the people with disabilities organisations didn’t agree with that, so we put it off the agenda instead of having another war about content. On the NDIS, everyone agreed. BB: The NDIS was and is a unifying idea because it says the support you will receive is based on your need. It’s no longer based on where you acquired your disability, when you acquired your disability, how you acquired your disability, or what your type of disability is: whether you’ve got autism or cerebral palsy or spina bifida. It says need is the determinant, and that the support you receive is commensurate with that need. So, we were able to work through that – because even within that there was still a lot of debate in terms of language and other issues that we had to get right before we could agree that this was the single issue that we were going to pursue above all others. AD: Can I ask you about the mobilisation, because at one stage – in fact you still have these kind of numbers – 150,000 people reachable by email who then have the flow-on effect of contacting others. The alliance didn’t have a lot of money but it had this incredibly powerful tool at its disposal: the people involved. RG: They were very hot, and still are very, very hot contacts … AD: What do you mean by hot? RG: I mean they’ll take action. I mean they’re not just a contact list where half of them are old and you haven’t cleaned it. I mean this is a hot where people have kept up-to-date, where they’re vitally interested. AD: How have you harnessed this resource? RG: It was absolutely instrumental in getting the scheme. Wouldn’t you agree Bruce? BB: Yeah. RG: Very, very important. And it’s watching – it’s a marvellous check and balance, and it’s watching and anything that would not make the scheme happen in the way that everybody thinks that we’ve signed up for, it’s there, and it’s never before been in my experience, in my life, that I‘ve ever seen disability be a really political issue, a hot political issue. It was in America, but that was the Vietnam veterans that did that and they made the American Disability Act that’s a really powerful act. But in Australia it’s never been but now it is, and I think it’s not going to go away – I think it’s just there, and it’s a really important instrument for all of us. AD: Is it true that 120 House of Representatives MPs were visited by people with disabilities and carers in the lead-up to key decisions being made? BB: I don’t know whether it was 120 but it was certainly of that order. People went to see their MPs, they wrote to them just prior to major COAG meetings; thousands of emails were sent to the prime minister and the premiers … RG: Disability teas, do you remember those? BB: Yes. This was a very active group. It’s worth remembering that at about the time the NDIS campaign – the Every Australian Counts campaign – was running, the miners were also running a campaign against a mining tax. They had millions and millions of dollars. What the NDIS campaign had were people. This was an old-fashioned – in many ways an old-fashioned grassroots campaign – mobilised through social media very, very effectively. RG: I was chairing a hospital at the time and hadn’t mentioned it to my hospital – to the board or the staff – that they might have had any interest – I should’ve – but they came to me and said they were having a disability tea. And so they were everywhere, they were in hospitals, in local governments, in NGOs, in businesses – a lot of businesses had disability teas. There were state co-ordinators that were part of the Every Australian Counts campaign – they did a lot of that work. There was Kirstin, there was John, and then there were the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and Carers Australia – a very powerful and important organisation. They’d get it out to their members and they’d all have disability teas so it wasn’t just that 150,000 very warm email contacts of citizens of Australia. They weren’t organisational, it was also all the organisations. BB: And then there were all the people who just told their stories, without any sense of self-pity. They just explained what life was like as a person with a disability, or someone caring for a disability – frankly and openly – and those stories resonated with the Australian public, and the statistics also supported those stories. When we found that in the OECD area, Australia ranked last in terms of people with disability living at or below the poverty line, people said: “In the midst of this great mining boom, we’ve got this?”. So, the sense of, not just shame, but that it can’t be allowed to continue, just spread out from people with disabilities to the community as a whole and culminated in that moment when the government put forward the proposition that the Medicare levy should be increased to fund the NDIS, and 85% of the Australian population said: “we’re happy”. Never before has a tax increase been approved overnight. AD: You referred to John Walsh before, and I don’t want to skip over that because this guy deserves enormous credit. This is somebody who worked at Pricewaterhousecoopers; he was an actuary. He had an accident at the age of 20 when he was playing rugby and became a quadriplegic, and focused as a result on this special skill he had as a number-cruncher and you guys used him throughout the process to shore up the numbers to convince the politicians and the departments that this thing was achievable. BB: This scheme would not have been achieved without John. RG: I agree. BB: His analytical capability, his enormous intellect to apply the actuarial principles to disability as a whole, to get the data, to do the analysis. He was a member of the disability investment group, he was then the other commissioner with Patricia Scott on the Productivity Commission, he’s now on the board of the NDIA and chairs our sustainability committee. His contribution is giant. He worked not just in Australia but in New Zealand so he understood the accident compensation scheme there, he’d worked on most of Australia’s workers compensation and transport accident schemes. His significance is enormous. AD: He came with you both, I understand, to dinner at The Lodge, with Jenny Macklin and Bill Shorten. Have I got that right? How did that dinner go and what happened? BB: We were at a point where this scheme needed true bipartisanship at the tops of all parties … AD: I should say when this happened Julia Gillard was the prime minister … BB: She was the prime minister. The Productivity Commission report had been presented and a number of us got the opportunity to have dinner with her and put the case for why the NDIS should be a priority for her government. Because, at the end of the day, big reforms need prime ministerial approval. AD: Did she need much convincing? BB: I don’t think so. I think she got it. But I think it was very important in the sense of hearing from people who had been deeply involved with the development of the idea. The dinner was not conclusive; we didn’t know what the outcome was. We really put our case. It was actually quite short; the business part of it probably only took about 45 minutes for the key points to be made, and then it went to more general chit-chat. But all of the key points were made. We then waited. Soon thereafter she said: “we’re going to get this thing done”. RG: It was a very quick response after the commissioner’s report. It was about the quickest ever. BB: Yeah, but it was that moment where she said “we’re going to get it done”. And from that point on, the machinery of the Commonwealth government swung fully into action behind the scheme. AD: What does that look like, when it all swings behind you and everyone’s onside and wanting to make it happen quickly? BB: It gets momentum. AD: That word momentum keeps cropping up from this point on … BB: Well I think when you have the prime minister’s department, the Treasury, the Finance Department, the Department of Family and Housing and Community Services, all behind an idea, and they’re the key departments, then it happens. AD: The Medicare levy increased from 1.5 to 2%. How did you manage that? BB: Craig Wallace was very significant in that. He’s the chairman of People With Disability Australia, and so he has always been very influential in disability circles and he wrote an opinion piece on it, and I think that was at a time when the government was thinking through how were they going to fund it. So I think that was certainly influential. I think it’s important to remember that what the Productivity Commission said was that this scheme should be funded out of general revenue, and part of the reason they argued that was because they said this is one of the first things that government should do, it’s like defence. If taxes aren’t going to go up then there are other things at the margin that government should cease doing in order to ensure that this scheme is funded. Their view was this was core government business. RG: I’m just trying to think, though, who did come up with the Medicare levy? I think it is a really interesting question. It might have come out of Jenny Macklin’s office … AD: Well, I remember reading that Jenny Macklin at one stage went to the Expenditure Review Committee [ERC] and, I don’t know how she got away with this, but just coolly asked for A$14 billion over five years to make this happen. She said afterwards it was the biggest thing she ever asked for from the ERC – as you’d kind of hope that that would be the biggest thing she ever asked for – but this is a massive amount of money. RG: But she had a very good case. You make it sound quite casual, whereas she’s a very carefully prepared. She’s a top policy person herself, so she would have had all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. AD: So it gathers this momentum, and I remember the announcement that it would be tied to Medicare and there was a little bit of opposition, there was some discussion about it. But what characterised it was how little opposition there was and how quickly the actual opposition, then the Coalition, fell in behind it. BB: I think it’s not fair to say “at that point the opposition fell in behind it”. I think that the opposition, particularly Tony Abbott and senator Mitch Fifield, understood this scheme and its significance from very, very early on, so the bipartisanship began much earlier. And I think what they grasped was that it was not just a social policy reform, but it was an economic reform, and it was about equity, and about opportunity. And this is about equality of opportunity for people with disabilities, and it was about equity for them and their families. And so there was a basis for that emerging bipartisanship. And one of the things that we knew already at the time of the disability investment group was that this reform was probably going to take seven years in terms of introducing it, that it was going to be a long period of time, therefore it was going to go across multiple governments and so had to win the support of all parties and all governments, both federal and state. AD: Rhonda, when did you know that you’d won the support of Tony Abbott? RD: There was a systematic program of approaching and talking, and I met with Mitch Fifield quite often and he had supported it – he’d been very clear. But I bumped into Tony Abbott in the street in Sydney, and I said to him: “Mr Abbott, I’m hearing you’re supporting the NDIS and I’m so pleased”. And he said: “Well normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes”. And so I had a Press Club appearance about two weeks later and I quoted it. He then picked it up and quoted it everywhere. So it became his phrase! I’ve met millions of politicians over a long, long life – because I’m quite elderly by now – and a lot you don’t get past the goalposts because there isn’t that groundswell. Medicare had a groundswell, which was pretty good for its day when you think about it; this was about 50 times bigger than the Medicare groundswell. And I don’t think a politician in Australia could deny it. AD: Rhonda Galbally, a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, and before her, Bruce Bonyhady, the chairman of that same organisation. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Leadership Institute, and Swinburne University’s Department of Media and Communication. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, or listen on Soundcloud. Production today: Heather Jarvis, Sam Wilson and Jonathan Lang. I’m Andrew Dodd, and I hope you can join me next time for Change Agents. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne University’s Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady were both instrumental in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Alan Porritt and Julian Smith (AAP)This is the first program in a new podcast series, Change Agents. It will focus on examples of ordinary people who have brought about profound social, political and cultural change, celebrating their success and explaining how they did it. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the biggest social reform in Australia this century. By 2022 it will help half a million people access comprehensive disability support at a cost of around A$25 billion. On this program, two of the NDIS’ founders explain how they developed something so radical and comprehensive and then won support for the idea. Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman and Rhonda Galbally is a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, the body that implements the NDIS. You can read the transcript below. Andrew Dodd: Hello, I’m Andrew Dodd and this is Change Agents, a series about change and the people who make it happen. Today, the birth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is Australia’s biggest social reform this century. By 2022 it’s estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, it’ll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy. Today we’ll meet two of its founders: Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman, and Rhonda Galbally is a board member, of the NDIA, the agency that runs the NDIS. They told a forum at Swinburne University that the idea has been around for a long time, as far back as the Whitlam years. Bruce Bonyhady: Whitlam, following the introduction of Medicare, wanted to have a national compensation scheme. A similar scheme was introduced in New Zealand, but covering just people with disabilities who acquired that disability through an accident – so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now. But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workers’ compensation or motor vehicle compensation schemes and apply that to disability more generally dates back to then, and in fact is part of a movement that started in the 1890s when the first compulsory workers’ compensation schemes were developed – in fact in Germany. AD: Am I right in saying it was on the books at the time the Whitlam government was dismissed, and that the Fraser government decided not to carry through with it? BB: Yes, it was due to be debated in parliament on November 11, 1975, and then Fraser decided not to carry on the reform. AD: So obviously then there wasn’t the bipartisanship that characterised what happened with the NDIS later. BB: No, there was no bipartisanship around that, and in fact there was no bipartisanship at that stage around universal health insurance either. AD: I’ve read that it was scuttled in part because the insurers saw that it was against their interests to support something that would undermine their business models. So, they were opposed to it. BB: I don’t know that detail. I think the point about the NDIS, though, is that it provides insurance where there was no insurance before. There is no private insurer who will insure someone who was born with a disability, or acquires a disability through a progressive medical condition, and will insure catastrophic risk. This is a classic case of market failure – there was no insurance available. And it’s a classic issue to which insurance applies – because the whole population is at risk. The consequences of major disability on those directly affected and their families is enormous. And so if we all pay a small amount, then we can insure us all – and it is the most efficient and effective way, as a society, to support people with disabilities. And in fact, if you go back to the work of Kenneth Arrow in the 1960s, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on insurance, he, in his work, where he demonstrated that universal health insurance is the most efficient way for communities to support the risk of adverse health outcomes, he also had a category for what he called “failure to recover” – in other words, permanent disability. So, already in the 1960s the academic work had been done to demonstrate the veracity of this scheme. Rhonda Galbally: But, what was missing then was that the disability rights movement hadn’t started in Australia. And there was no mobilisation or interest. In America, it started – really, for the world – with the Vietnam veterans coming back and just not putting up with being put in institutions. They said “no way” and started the independent living movement. Ours would’ve started just in tiny little seeds towards the end of the 70s. And then in the early 80s they had a small voice, but they were responsible for the deinstitutionalisation movement. But then, by the time it came around for the NDIS, that mobilisation possibility was just as important as the idea – because if the idea had been there, which Bruce designed, without the possibility of the mobilisation then we’d be back to where we were with the Whitlam era. So I think that’s a very important part of the question of: “how come?” AD: One of the people who deserves a lot of credit in bringing about the NDIS is the former deputy prime minister, Brian Howe. It’s said that back in 2005 he went back to the Woodhouse report – this report that had been commissioned by the Whitlam government – pulled it off the shelf, had a look at it, and started thinking about an insurance scheme that could address some of these issues. How fundamental was he to this? BB: He was certainly fundamental to my involvement. In 2005 I was just starting to be interested in disability reform. I was very conscious that there was chronic underfunding; that many people were not getting the support they needed – either not enough support or were missing out entirely. I was on a board with Brian at the time, and I said to him I wanted to talk to him about disability reform. And what he said to me was “you have to stop thinking about disability policy as welfare, and start thinking about it as risk and insurance and investment”. It was one of those lightbulb moments. So, it became a catalyst for me to start to explore how insurance could be applied to people with disability more generally. I very quickly came across the work of John Walsh, who had developed a whole scheme for anyone who was catastrophically injured – not just those who were catastrophically injured in motor-vehicle or workplace accidents. I said to John “could we do this for all of disability?”, and he said “of course, we just need the data”. Both Brian and then John were incredibly important to how we got to where we are today. AD: You were, at that stage, chair of Yooralla. And you came into this sector because of a personal family connection to these issues. BB: Yeah. I’ve got two adult sons, both of whom have cerebral palsy. Prior to them being born – my older son is now in his 30s – I knew nothing about disability, so I became involved on the boards of disability organisations. Initially my focus was on those organisations and their governance. In 2005 I started to think more broadly. The trigger for that was going to an early intervention centre that Yooralla was running near Dandenong and sitting down with the mother of a disabled boy. She said to me: “Why can’t my son get the early intervention services he needs?”. And I went into this long explanation about how we were doing the best we could with the funding we had, and then I went away appalled by the answer. Here I was, with all of my connections and education, and I was defending the status quo. That was really the trigger for me to go and see Brian. I thought it was shocking, so that was how it started. AD: Let’s go forward from 2005 to the election of the Rudd government. The parliamentary secretary for disability services, Bill Shorten, was appointed in 2007. He became very important to what ensued. RG: Well I think Bill was really the important catalyst in a way. And I think he really was very striking from the very first time I met him in that he didn’t characterise disability as a sad tragedy or misery. He characterised it as an outrage, a real abrogation of human rights, and it was sort of like a non-welfare approach to it, and also a waste: he characterised it as wasteful of people’s potential. There was a charitable view of disability. People were very happy to talk at length about raising money for poor disadvantaged people, but nobody was talking about it being an absolute outrage. That was Bill, and behind Bill was Jenny Macklin, who was very seasoned, and he had a view of especially mobilisation. The sector was in complete disarray. And because it had been a charitable sad story, the media was characterised by burden. There were very important programs which probably helped the case but were really fragmenting, because you’d come out of it feeling like cutting your throat as a person with a disability because there you were, you’d ruined everyone’s lives and the families were in tragedy and so people with disabilities organisations didn’t get on at all with carers’ organisations, and both were united – probably quite rightly – in being highly critical of the services that hadn’t changed in about the last 50 years. AD: I think I read something you wrote that said that these sectors were effectively at war with each other. RG: They were at war. And they were at war in every country in the world. I can remember reading a Guardian article by the head of the Disability Rights Commission in the UK, and she said we will not make progress in this country until the carers organisations get together with the people with disabilities organisations and build an alliance. AD: I want to find out more about how you did that and we’ll get to that in a second, but I want to go to the 2020 Summit now, because that also is very important to this. I’ve heard snippets of this story but I want you to tell the full story, Bruce, about how you got this issue on the agenda of the 2020 Summit. I don’t think you were even a delegate, were you? BB: No, I wasn’t a delegate. RG: There’s a club for them, for non-delegates. AD: Are you in that club? BB: I got together with Helen Sykes, who is the chairman of the James Macready Bryan Foundation, and one of my closest long-time friends, John Nairn, who was a director of that foundation. None of us were invited to the 2020 Summit so we got the list of delegates and we wrote to everyone and contacted everyone on that list that we knew. We knew that no-one was going to take our idea to the summit as their top idea, so we knew we were going to be at best their second idea at the summit. So we figured that going into the Summit we were somewhere worse than position 1001, but somehow it emerged as one of the half-dozen big ideas of the summit. And – on reflection – it was undoubtedly the big idea of the 2020 Summit. AD: How many of them put it as their second idea, do you know? BB: I don’t know. Certainly a number of people I know well pushed it. AD: How did you get people to say “OK, I will put your idea down as my second idea” at this big summit? BB: I think it was a compelling case. Everyone knows someone with a disability, or they’ve got a relative with a disability, and they know how broken that old system was. Here was an idea which made reform affordable, and people responded. And I think we had some luck. I think some of these things are: you work hard and you put all your effort in and you get some lucky breaks, so we obviously got some lucky breaks for that to happen. AD: So it emerges as a big idea and – as you say – probably the big idea of the 2020 Summit. And then you were asked by Bill Shorten to look at the feasibility of the scheme and actually shore it all up with the right numbers behind it. BB: Well we’d already started on that process. So a group of us, chaired by Ian Silk, worked for 18 months on this report. When you’re asked to recommend reform to governments you’ve got a choice – you can have a long shopping list of ideas, or you can essentially say “we’ve got one idea”, and that’s what we did. We said: “We’ve got one idea and we think it’s a big idea and we think it requires further examination by government”. AD: And I think this is about the time that Bill Shorten says to you and to the various groups: “come together and start working as a team”, and you led this group that became the alliance. RG: There was internal-to-government and then there was external-to-government, and I facilitated the external-to-government coming together of the three and in fact it was very moving. I think about it now in terms of the maturity of being able to think about what it was like from somebody else’s point of view. I can remember the first time we came together with carers and I was thinking about it from my mother’s point of view – how it had been for her and her life when I was disabled as a tiny baby. It was that expression and then them seeing it from the person’s point of view, instead of just from the family’s point of view, that made it quite a profound connection. Internally to government, because the carers’ networks had been so powerful through the 1990s, there was a view that there should be a separate carers’ council. But because we’d mobilised and come together on the outside, it just didn’t make sense. So that was a persuasion job with Bill and Jenny, because the bureaucrats were pretty convinced that they should be separate. I remember [the bureaucrats] saying “but carers look after old people” and I thought “well you’re not a carer of someone old until they’re disabled, actually, otherwise you’re just a son or a daughter – you don’t play that carer role until they’re disabled too”, so the topic is still disability. So they then agreed to it being set up in joint services and carers, and then Bill insisted on putting business and unions on. I was very opposed and I said “Oh no, it should just be consumers” and he was proven to be right; they were tremendously valuable – they opened it out, they took it back to their networks, to the business council, to the AICD, to all sorts of places that had never heard of these issues, and the ACTU. It was really valuable, that move to broaden that group out. BB: I think the other thing that we need to give Rhonda credit for is the alliance was her brainchild. This alliance outside government – it’s a world-first. This is the first time anywhere in the world that, the sector having split, as part of the disability rights movement, as a sign of its maturity came together to prosecute the case for big reform. You only get big reform when you’ve got unity and a single voice and a single point of advocacy to government and the community. AD: You were saying earlier that some were pushing to include education in the campaign and other aspects of disability reform that were required, and it was about narrowing it down to one achievable – admittedly ambitious – but one achievable goal. RG: Yes, and the trouble also was a matter of us – Bruce and I – thinking that the NDIS should be the focus, but also we decided to only work on something we could agree on. Education is still reasonably controversial in that some of the carers felt special education was good, and the people with disabilities organisations didn’t agree with that, so we put it off the agenda instead of having another war about content. On the NDIS, everyone agreed. BB: The NDIS was and is a unifying idea because it says the support you will receive is based on your need. It’s no longer based on where you acquired your disability, when you acquired your disability, how you acquired your disability, or what your type of disability is: whether you’ve got autism or cerebral palsy or spina bifida. It says need is the determinant, and that the support you receive is commensurate with that need. So, we were able to work through that – because even within that there was still a lot of debate in terms of language and other issues that we had to get right before we could agree that this was the single issue that we were going to pursue above all others. AD: Can I ask you about the mobilisation, because at one stage – in fact you still have these kind of numbers – 150,000 people reachable by email who then have the flow-on effect of contacting others. The alliance didn’t have a lot of money but it had this incredibly powerful tool at its disposal: the people involved. RG: They were very hot, and still are very, very hot contacts … AD: What do you mean by hot? RG: I mean they’ll take action. I mean they’re not just a contact list where half of them are old and you haven’t cleaned it. I mean this is a hot where people have kept up-to-date, where they’re vitally interested. AD: How have you harnessed this resource? RG: It was absolutely instrumental in getting the scheme. Wouldn’t you agree Bruce? BB: Yeah. RG: Very, very important. And it’s watching – it’s a marvellous check and balance, and it’s watching and anything that would not make the scheme happen in the way that everybody thinks that we’ve signed up for, it’s there, and it’s never before been in my experience, in my life, that I‘ve ever seen disability be a really political issue, a hot political issue. It was in America, but that was the Vietnam veterans that did that and they made the American Disability Act that’s a really powerful act. But in Australia it’s never been but now it is, and I think it’s not going to go away – I think it’s just there, and it’s a really important instrument for all of us. AD: Is it true that 120 House of Representatives MPs were visited by people with disabilities and carers in the lead-up to key decisions being made? BB: I don’t know whether it was 120 but it was certainly of that order. People went to see their MPs, they wrote to them just prior to major COAG meetings; thousands of emails were sent to the prime minister and the premiers … RG: Disability teas, do you remember those? BB: Yes. This was a very active group. It’s worth remembering that at about the time the NDIS campaign – the Every Australian Counts campaign – was running, the miners were also running a campaign against a mining tax. They had millions and millions of dollars. What the NDIS campaign had were people. This was an old-fashioned – in many ways an old-fashioned grassroots campaign – mobilised through social media very, very effectively. RG: I was chairing a hospital at the time and hadn’t mentioned it to my hospital – to the board or the staff – that they might have had any interest – I should’ve – but they came to me and said they were having a disability tea. And so they were everywhere, they were in hospitals, in local governments, in NGOs, in businesses – a lot of businesses had disability teas. There were state co-ordinators that were part of the Every Australian Counts campaign – they did a lot of that work. There was Kirstin, there was John, and then there were the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and Carers Australia – a very powerful and important organisation. They’d get it out to their members and they’d all have disability teas so it wasn’t just that 150,000 very warm email contacts of citizens of Australia. They weren’t organisational, it was also all the organisations. BB: And then there were all the people who just told their stories, without any sense of self-pity. They just explained what life was like as a person with a disability, or someone caring for a disability – frankly and openly – and those stories resonated with the Australian public, and the statistics also supported those stories. When we found that in the OECD area, Australia ranked last in terms of people with disability living at or below the poverty line, people said: “In the midst of this great mining boom, we’ve got this?”. So, the sense of, not just shame, but that it can’t be allowed to continue, just spread out from people with disabilities to the community as a whole and culminated in that moment when the government put forward the proposition that the Medicare levy should be increased to fund the NDIS, and 85% of the Australian population said: “we’re happy”. Never before has a tax increase been approved overnight. AD: You referred to John Walsh before, and I don’t want to skip over that because this guy deserves enormous credit. This is somebody who worked at Pricewaterhousecoopers; he was an actuary. He had an accident at the age of 20 when he was playing rugby and became a quadriplegic, and focused as a result on this special skill he had as a number-cruncher and you guys used him throughout the process to shore up the numbers to convince the politicians and the departments that this thing was achievable. BB: This scheme would not have been achieved without John. RG: I agree. BB: His analytical capability, his enormous intellect to apply the actuarial principles to disability as a whole, to get the data, to do the analysis. He was a member of the disability investment group, he was then the other commissioner with Patricia Scott on the Productivity Commission, he’s now on the board of the NDIA and chairs our sustainability committee. His contribution is giant. He worked not just in Australia but in New Zealand so he understood the accident compensation scheme there, he’d worked on most of Australia’s workers compensation and transport accident schemes. His significance is enormous. AD: He came with you both, I understand, to dinner at The Lodge, with Jenny Macklin and Bill Shorten. Have I got that right? How did that dinner go and what happened? BB: We were at a point where this scheme needed true bipartisanship at the tops of all parties … AD: I should say when this happened Julia Gillard was the prime minister … BB: She was the prime minister. The Productivity Commission report had been presented and a number of us got the opportunity to have dinner with her and put the case for why the NDIS should be a priority for her government. Because, at the end of the day, big reforms need prime ministerial approval. AD: Did she need much convincing? BB: I don’t think so. I think she got it. But I think it was very important in the sense of hearing from people who had been deeply involved with the development of the idea. The dinner was not conclusive; we didn’t know what the outcome was. We really put our case. It was actually quite short; the business part of it probably only took about 45 minutes for the key points to be made, and then it went to more general chit-chat. But all of the key points were made. We then waited. Soon thereafter she said: “we’re going to get this thing done”. RG: It was a very quick response after the commissioner’s report. It was about the quickest ever. BB: Yeah, but it was that moment where she said “we’re going to get it done”. And from that point on, the machinery of the Commonwealth government swung fully into action behind the scheme. AD: What does that look like, when it all swings behind you and everyone’s onside and wanting to make it happen quickly? BB: It gets momentum. AD: That word momentum keeps cropping up from this point on … BB: Well I think when you have the prime minister’s department, the Treasury, the Finance Department, the Department of Family and Housing and Community Services, all behind an idea, and they’re the key departments, then it happens. AD: The Medicare levy increased from 1.5 to 2%. How did you manage that? BB: Craig Wallace was very significant in that. He’s the chairman of People With Disability Australia, and so he has always been very influential in disability circles and he wrote an opinion piece on it, and I think that was at a time when the government was thinking through how were they going to fund it. So I think that was certainly influential. I think it’s important to remember that what the Productivity Commission said was that this scheme should be funded out of general revenue, and part of the reason they argued that was because they said this is one of the first things that government should do, it’s like defence. If taxes aren’t going to go up then there are other things at the margin that government should cease doing in order to ensure that this scheme is funded. Their view was this was core government business. RG: I’m just trying to think, though, who did come up with the Medicare levy? I think it is a really interesting question. It might have come out of Jenny Macklin’s office … AD: Well, I remember reading that Jenny Macklin at one stage went to the Expenditure Review Committee [ERC] and, I don’t know how she got away with this, but just coolly asked for A$14 billion over five years to make this happen. She said afterwards it was the biggest thing she ever asked for from the ERC – as you’d kind of hope that that would be the biggest thing she ever asked for – but this is a massive amount of money. RG: But she had a very good case. You make it sound quite casual, whereas she’s a very carefully prepared. She’s a top policy person herself, so she would have had all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. AD: So it gathers this momentum, and I remember the announcement that it would be tied to Medicare and there was a little bit of opposition, there was some discussion about it. But what characterised it was how little opposition there was and how quickly the actual opposition, then the Coalition, fell in behind it. BB: I think it’s not fair to say “at that point the opposition fell in behind it”. I think that the opposition, particularly Tony Abbott and senator Mitch Fifield, understood this scheme and its significance from very, very early on, so the bipartisanship began much earlier. And I think what they grasped was that it was not just a social policy reform, but it was an economic reform, and it was about equity, and about opportunity. And this is about equality of opportunity for people with disabilities, and it was about equity for them and their families. And so there was a basis for that emerging bipartisanship. And one of the things that we knew already at the time of the disability investment group was that this reform was probably going to take seven years in terms of introducing it, that it was going to be a long period of time, therefore it was going to go across multiple governments and so had to win the support of all parties and all governments, both federal and state. AD: Rhonda, when did you know that you’d won the support of Tony Abbott? RD: There was a systematic program of approaching and talking, and I met with Mitch Fifield quite often and he had supported it – he’d been very clear. But I bumped into Tony Abbott in the street in Sydney, and I said to him: “Mr Abbott, I’m hearing you’re supporting the NDIS and I’m so pleased”. And he said: “Well normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes”. And so I had a Press Club appearance about two weeks later and I quoted it. He then picked it up and quoted it everywhere. So it became his phrase! I’ve met millions of politicians over a long, long life – because I’m quite elderly by now – and a lot you don’t get past the goalposts because there isn’t that groundswell. Medicare had a groundswell, which was pretty good for its day when you think about it; this was about 50 times bigger than the Medicare groundswell. And I don’t think a politician in Australia could deny it. AD: Rhonda Galbally, a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, and before her, Bruce Bonyhady, the chairman of that same organisation. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Leadership Institute, and Swinburne University’s Department of Media and Communication. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, or listen on Soundcloud. Production today: Heather Jarvis, Sam Wilson and Jonathan Lang. I’m Andrew Dodd, and I hope you can join me next time for Change Agents. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne University’s Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Jack and Adam discuss with Cerise the upcoming Tilde Film Festival. This Festival was created to support the work of trans and gender diverse storylines and filmmakers. Opening 13-15 November at the Lithuanian Club in North Melbourne. Also they are joined by Bridget Haire the President of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO). This is the first part of a World AIDS Day series featuring the AFAO's International Program.

Despite the recent rhetoric about transferring responsibilities back to the States and ensuring each jurisdiction has sovereignty in its own sphere of responsibilities including to raise the revenues needed to meet its spending commitments, reform of the Australian Federation will hopefully take a more pragmatic form, building on the growing demand for national policies - and growing range of international requirements - to guide public services, improving the way in which shared responsibilities are managed, while allowing service delivery to respond to local and regional needs and preferences. Such a pragmatic approach requires a degree of bipartisanship and political leadership at both Commonwealth and State levels; it also entails engaging with the Australian public, promoting steady reform in the national interest and avoiding short-term or ideologically-driven political fixes. About the speaker Professor Andrew Podger AO is an Hon. Professor of Public Policy at ANU. He has been at the University since 2005 and has published articles on social policy and public management and coordinated workshops of academic experts and practitioners on issues of contemporary relevance to government. This talk was held as part of The Order of Australia Association (OAA)-ACT Branch/The Australian National University Lecture.