progressivepodcastaustralia

Image from the Maritime Union of Australia.

This episode has been released in two parts. You can download part 1 of this episode on Media Fire here (49MB) and part 2 on Media Fire here (52MB).

On part one of this episode, we bring you a taste of the event Now That’s a Party!, organised by the activist organisation GetUp!, which gave a voice to some of the minor political parties in Australia. You’ll hear from Scott Ludlam from the Greens, Fiona Patten from The Sex Party, Greg Barnes from the WikiLeaks Party, Brendan Molloy from the Pirate Party, and Sam Wainwright from the Socialist Alliance. These parties are so often left out of the mainstream media coverage of Australian politics, which obsesses over the two major parties. These major parties, while having some differences, have many similarities, including both demonising “foreigners” and similarities on so many other issues. We focus on the media quite a bit in this episode, with a return of the segment ‘What you HAVEN’T learnt from the media this week’. In this segment, we mention that 77% of people in the United States don’t trust newspapers and TV news, as well as discussing Nick’s conference paper on elections and the media. We discuss some recent news, including Kevin Rudd becoming Prime Minister of Australia and we bust Labor’s myths about asylum seekers being economic migrants, while also speaking up for those migrating for economic reasons. We also give updates on Bradley Manning and discuss Chris Hedges article ‘We Are All Bradley Manning’, as well as discussing Edward Snowden’s case, Julian Assange trying to help him out and getting in trouble, the documentary: We Steal Secrets and a funny religious pamphlet we got in the mail.

On part two of the episode, we discuss some more points from the Now That’s a Party! event, including: Brendan Molloy from the Pirate Party on changing marriage to civil unions, Scott Ludlam from the Greens on sustainable cities, and Sam Wainwright from the Socialist Alliance on nationalising the mines, public money going to religious organisations, and challenging testing in education. We also discuss Corey Bernadi comparing polygamy to bestiality, iTunes reviews for our show (you can leave iTunes reviews for us here), memrise.com, The Dispossessed, croquet (or crochet??) and social change, Maori lessons from Jon, Turkey’s “standing man” protest, UK tries to deter immigrants with ridiculous billboards, Jeremy from Critical Transit on cars being the problem when it comes to transport, links between human rights and animal rights, Team Earthling’s episode on intersectionality, The Critical Animal Studies Conference in Canberra (we’ll discuss this conference and bring you some of the talks from it on our next episode), Julian Burnside’s talk on refugees, asylum seekers removed from Manus Island, and a recap of the Walk Together event, which we promoted on our previous episode.

Alternative Media:

RTR 92.1FM Indymedia.

Clips (part one):

The Desaparecidos ‘Left is Right’, Peep Show (Series 4, episode 4), Lowkey ‘Terrorist’, Goldfinger ‘Not Amused’, The Thick of it (Series 1, episode 1), Now That’s a Party! event – edited by Nick Pendergrast,* Chumbawamba ‘The Candidates Find Common Ground’.

Clips (part two):

Chumbawamba ‘The Candidates Find Common Ground’, 5 clips from the Now That’s a Party! event, Austin Powers, The IT Crowd, Jon’s Maori Pronunciation Guide, music from the Walk Together event, Critical Transit ‘Episode 33’, Suli Breaks ‘I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate’.

*You can listen to a recording of the entire event here. You can also watch all of the speech from Sam Wainwright from the Social Alliance here. If anyone knows of any of the other talks from the night being available to watch online, please contact us and we will add the link to them.