Radical Australia

A life full of mentors and a-ha moments. That has been the story of this week's guest, Rob Brown, a big tall Scotsman indeed. Rob was born in 1960 in the Gorbals, tenement housing in Glasgow, sharing one toilet among five families. That's just how things were. Rob's mother scrubbed the steps of the school on her hands and knees with a brush. That's where he says he probably got his work ethic from. Rob has gone on to have a very successful career around the world. He's good at leading people and understanding the processes of big companies. Rob now heads up Fruit2Work, a social enterprise hiring people with lived experience of the criminal justice system. They deliver fruit and milk to businesses around Melbourne. Fruit2Work has had a 0% recidivism rate among its employees and now hires over 100 people. Rob also recently began Recycle4Change, a container deposit scheme in North Geelong hiring women and youth affected by the criminal justice system. He's a big fella with a big, warm personality and it was a pl

We spoke with this week's guest, University of Sydney Professor of Law, Simon Butt, on Indonesia's Presidential Election Day. Simon came on to talk about some of the legal infrastructure in Indonesia, during the pre-1998 Suharto era and now. On paper, Indonesians have more legal rights than Australians, but corruption runs right through the system. Simon did a big job researching this during COVID and has released a book titled 'Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia'. It was interesting to learn about the legal institutions in Indonesia, from a Constitutional Court, Islamic Courts and an Anti-Corruption Commission. Indonesia is a sprawling multi-ethnic, socially and economically diverse nation and Simon has been learning about it since high school. We had a great time talking with him. Thanks so much for joining us this week, Simon.mup.com.au/books/judicial-dysfunction-in-indonesia-paperback-softbacksydney.edu.au/law/about/our-people/academic-staff/simon-butt.htmlImage courtesy of Tim Lindsey

The only left-winger in the family. That's Sue Bolton, well-known to many in Melbourne's left and socialist communities, long-standing councillor at Merri-Bek. Sue is always standing up for what is right, for people's rights, in her community. Sue hails from Western Queensland and says the class divide was really vivid in the bush. After boarding school she went and studied psychology for a little bit, then went fruit picking around the country before turning onto the revolutionary movements in Latin America. Sue eventually joined the Socialist Worker's Party and both during that time and before she drove buses and trucks. Sue moved to Melbourne in the early 90's and began full-time organising at the Resistance Centre, getting involved in the student movement, including organising a school walk-off against Pauline Hanson, industrial struggles, anti-nuclear testing, anti-logging and the East Timor struggle. Sue has a good memory of all her activities and what was going on politically in Australia throughout th

This week's guests, Mecedes Zanker and Joe Lorback, are members of the Renegade Solidarity Audio Force crew who have been involved in all kinds of local radical activism, from #freeassange, to Melbourne's Palestinian motorcades, the Park Hotel protest actions and every Sunday Palestine rally to date. Joe joined us from his weekend at the Women's tennis finals where he delivered a pro-Palestine verbal bomb during a heightened moment of the match and from finishing his first day returning to teaching. Joe tells us he was radicalised during the S11 protests in Melbourne and we learn about his experience in collectives. Mercedes is a 3CR broadcaster on Uprise Radio.  It was great having them both in the studio this week. Thanks so much, Mercedes and Joe.renegadeactivists.org/renegade-solidarity-audio-forcefacebook.com/solidaritysoundsysteminstagram.com/solidaritysoundsystemfacebook.com/HARDOUTBARinstagram.com/hardout___

This week's guest, Alexandra, has had an interesting life so far, most of that spent in England with radical collectives. She is a dancer who grew up in Canberra. Alexandra is currently our Wednesday afternoon reception volunteer and has an interesting story to tell. Thanks for being with us, Alex.

A fashion brand for people who give a shit. That's how this week's guest, Nick Savaidis, decribes his label, Etiko, winner of an Australian Human Rights Award and the most ethical fashion brand in the country. Nick started making sports balls under the label before branching into clothing. He has always had a thing for the underdog and has used this feeling for some good deeds. Nick introduced No Sweat sneakers into Australia and helped bring in the Fair Trade label. Nick saw his mother sew garments for a pittance whilst the stores made a buck when he was a child. He was born in Carlton in 1958. Nick set up a number of social enterprises with community in Yuendumu (NT) over the course of  6 years as an adult educator in literacy and numeracy, from driver education, a community laundromat and a commuity-owned digital network for high school students in the area. We think he has a good heart and it was great to hear about the forces that have shaped his life. Thanks so much for joining us this week, Nick, and f

This week's guest, Gatwech Wal, is a war survivor from South Sudan. When Gatwech was 11 years old, he had to flee his village with his older brother and he spent 11 years in a refugee camp on the border of Ethiopia. We hear this story and what it was like. Since coming to Australia, Gatwech has worked incredibly hard to have a successful life and is now a Family Law - Family Violence lawyer. This is the first of a two-part chat with Gatwech and we welcome his return in a little while for a chat about Family Law in Australia. Thank-you for joining us this week, Gatwech, and we look forward to seeing you next time.

On our last live show for the year, we welcome the return of popular guest, Robert 'Smokey' Wolfgramm. We find Robert in conversation with Joe about his PhD on the ethnic identity. Robert set out on his research to answer the questions 'What does it mean to be Fijian? What does it mean to be ethnic? How do we know who we are?'. Find out what answers Robert came to in this engaging conversation. We thank Robert for entertaining us once again this year. We wish you all a safe and relaxing Christmas and New Year. We have two great repeats over the Summer break for you, so see you next week for the first of those. Kelly & Joe

Jill Lockwood is a community-minded gardener from the Dandenong Hills, currently volunteering her time at the Knox Environment Society in Ferntree Gully with all the other 'seedy ladies' and 'HAGS' cleaning seeds and preserving the indigenous flora of the area. Jill was born in 1944 at Epworth Hospital, worked in insurance and also as a medical receptionist for 26 years. The greatest love of her life was no doubt her husband, Roger. They used to volunteer for Puffing Billy together. Jill says 'life is for living' and she keeps herself busy with various community groups. She loves cooking, baking and, of course, gardening! Thank-you so much for joining us this week, Jill, and for your contribution to your community.Knox Environment Society: kes.org.auSav Lake Knox campaign: kes.org.au/campaigns/lakeknoxJill with friend and fellow gardener, Zoe

Baba Desi. The Wizard. The Doctor. Desmond Bergen. He is known as many things and has been many things in his long life: jazzer, hippie, bodgie, pirate. In fact, he's 'been them all', he says. We are delighted to welcome Baba Desi to Radical Australia this week to share with us some tales from his long life of 94 years. Baba Desi was born in Wangaratta and also lived in Warrnambool when he was young. He has lived in Melbourne ever since. As a young man he ran Dixieland jazz dances, trained racehorses and beat up American troops with other young blokes hanging around the city. He was a supervisor at George's department stores and has always loved stirring the coppers up. He was into 'every struggle that was going on', inlcluding leading marches against the Vietnam War and nuclear power. He has run for the Senate and knew Father Bob Maguire for decades. He's been in Hollywood movies and caught the eye of Billy Connolly when he was in town. Desi says the secret to life is to be positive and just get on with thin

We are delighted to bring you a very special episode of Radical Australia this week, sharing it with you today on International Day of People with a Disability #IDOPWD, Sunday December 3. This week's guest is intellectual disability self-advocate, Colin Hiscoe. Colin has been an active member of self-advocacy group Reinforce for decades and his story is sure to both move and inspire you. Colin spent his childhood in Leeds, England, until he was 12 years old. He remembers all the kids with their sleds on the hill during Winter and going to the picture theatre. He came to Australia with his mother and started life here in Wangaratta with his Aunty. Colin endured a lot of mistreatment in his early life, from family members and other authority figures, before he stumbled upon a conference that changed his life forever. For the first time he heard peers' stories and through the sharing of these stories he began to heal. He hasn't looked back. Reinforce is a group of peers who talk about issues that their community

"Encouragement is a great thing in practise". We welcome back Percy Rogers to Radical Australia this week for the third and final instalment of our conversation with this amazing medical doctor who has done so much for so many across his years of medical practise in Australia. Percy worked until he was 86 years old. We take up this conversation at a time in his life when Percy was a single father. He worked at the Royal Women's Hospital and was a bulk-billing doctor for years. Afterwards, Percy worked as a locum in medical clinics within aboriginal settlements across Northern Australia. He loved this work and spent this time with his wife, Roz. Percy credits his longevity to a little red wine, running and his wife Roz: his three R's of life. Percy tells us he never lost his curiosity about the causes of illness and he never lost his respect for people, for being welcomed into their lives. We are so thrilled to have gotten this chance to speak with Percy this year. He is a very decent human being indeed. Thank

Imagine being able to boast that one of your claims to fame was getting yellow-carded in a soccer match against a young Maradona. Such has been the life of our lovely guest this week, Tommy Latupeirissa. Tommy's family comes from Maluku (Spice Islands) in Indonesia and they were a military family. Tommy was a young gun soccer player and represented Indonesia in the Junior World Cup in Japan. For the senior team he played around Asia and the Pacific. Tommy worked in the hotels in Bali as a public relations officer and this is where he started learning and speaking English. He came to Australia when he was 29. Tommy has been a welder and now loves his photography. He has captured many moments of the Free West Papua struggle here in Melbourne and we will be encouraging the West Papua Office to hold an exhibition of his works in 2024. In the meantime, Tommy invites you to the final gathering at the office this year on Sunday 26th November, featuring food, talks, a book launch and an auction. See the link for deta

"Advocacy never stops. It keeps going". We were treated to conversing with the lovely Ricki Spencer this week. Ricki is a trans woman, mental health and disability advocate from Footscray who has endured some really rough treatment in her life and she continues to hold her head up high. Ricki tells us that she was stigmatised and bullied throughout primary and high school for being different and she learned very quickly that there was no support for her in society: from the police, doctors and family. Ricki went on to study Community Development and volunteered with the Victorian Aids Council. She and her community were stigmatised most severely during the AIDS crisis. Ricki holds a Bachelor and Masters of Education and is now partway through her PhD on unconscious, binary, heteronormative bias among the teaching population. Ricki has found it close to impossible to secure teaching work despite being more than qualified. Ricki also uses her time as a mental health advocate and co-design practitioner in digita

"Things are not going to change unless we do something about it. Don't sit on the sidelines. Become involved". Bevan did get involved in activism and quit his job to work on the Vietnam moratorium movement in the 1970s. It was when Bevan first went to Africa as an Australian Volunteer Abroad in 1965 that his eyes were opened to African independence movements and other political struggles going on in the world. Bevan was born in Thornbury, Melbourne, in 1939. He was there at the beginning of 3CR and remembers its first transmitter, bought for $200 from the local fire brigade. Bevan has taught electrical engineering at TAFE and was pulled up by the cops in the 70s for his anti-conscription graffiti. He is a veteran of the peace movement in Australia and currently organises with the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network. Bevan wants to tell you that IPAN currently has an important e-petition about the militarisation of Northern Australia on its website and urges you to sign. Thanks so much for joining us th

This week's guest, Sue Smith, has been a trailblazer and a great friend to many in the disability self-advocacy space in Victoria and beyond for many years and has just recently retired. Sue leaves a great legacy. In 2008, Sue and friend began the Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU) at Ross House in the Melbourne CBD, an amazing resource supporting countless disability self-advocacy groups with guidance and support to make groups harmonious and flourish. In the 1990s, before Pink Ribbon, Sue was a Warrior Woman, joining other women in a mixed media project exploring women's experiences with breast cancer and funded by the Australian Council for the Arts. Sue began her activist work at the Janefield Colony, a home for children with intellectual disabilities, where she came in and shook things up. She received death threats. She is a pretty amazing woman and leaves such a strong legacy in Victoria and Australia and all we can do is say Thank-You and we wish Sue many happy times enjoying her retirement. Thank you

This week's guest, David Ayliffe, has had a busy life with lots of different projects and this made for a bit of a rowdy show! David was born in Sydney and spent many years in Queensland, at one stage working for Murdoch newspapers before joining a cult for 21 years after a born-again experience. He met his wife there and raised four children. David is no longer in the cult. Since then, he has worked in bequests at Guide Dog Australia and he recently established Best People Care, a care service for peope with intellectual disabilities. His latest offering to the world is a podcast titled 'No Sex, please: I'm Religious', an irreverent and serious look at the history of the treatment of sex and sexual identities by the world's religions. David also works to support queer refugees in Africa. He's a busy man and was a good-spirited guest in the studio this week. Thanks so much, David!nosexplease.com.au

The lovely, bubbly, Kayla Cartledge joined us on the show this week to rally support for the YES vote and to tell us all the amazing community organising she has been up to on the Mornington Peninsula. Kayla is a Gurindji woman who grew up on Larrakia (Darwin) country, people known for their land rights activism. Kayla carries her mother's strong spirit on the Mornington Peninsula where she has lived since she was 8 years old. She is the founder of the Mornington Peninsula Survival Day events, @oursurvivalday, which have been running at The Briars since 2019 and has been busy this year with the Mornington Peninsula for YES Group. Kayla has worked with the Mornington Peninsula Council, Kinaway Chamber of Commerce and is now with Monash University. She is set to head to Aotearoa soon for an e-safety conference and is collecting experiences of vilification and hate speech in the YES referendum campaign at her site @oursonglines. Thank-you for sharing your positive spirit with us this week, Kayla, and keep up you

This week's guest, Deborah Gough, started out life on a good footing, leading a school strike in Year 7 when the bubble taps didn't work on a really hot day. So they all went home. Fast forward to when she was 12 and it was then that Deborah first thought about the life of a journalist and what that could mean for her. Deborah was a clerk at The Age and worked on Western suburbs newspapers for 10 years, inluding The Footscray Mail and The Advocate. She also worked on the free rag, Melbourne Express, which she said was great fun. Obviously Deborah has amazing writing chops, not to mention excellent people skills. She has gone on to create her own business, Stories To Keep, social and oral histories in the form of books for famlies to treasure. It's such a great thing. Deborah worked with last week's guest, Percy Rogers, to publish his memoir, Taking Action. Deborah's work has a lot in common with us here at Radical Australia and we just had to invite her on. Deborah is one of many talented people giving the tr

Percy Rogers joins us again this week for Part Two of our special as we learn about his professional life as a doctor in Melbourne. Percy has done a lot to change the birthing experience for women in Australia. He was appalled at the treatment of pregnant women in hospitals many decades ago and ushered in breathing techniques that were non-existent and which now are commonplace. Percy has always stood up for what is right, including helping those in dire straits with blanket drives and soup runs, small but meaningful gestures he learnt about during the Depression. He's a marvel. Percy held a position as the municipal health doctor in the Coburg area and claims this was his favourite post of them all. Percy's sense of adventure and love of learning has seen him work as a doctor in remote places such as the Cocos Keeling Islands and Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. We are very much looking forward to our last installment next week when we will learn about Percy's activism, something he still continues today. Than