Think Again

Jewish author, Marilyn Garson, talks about her experience working with people in Gaza for four years from 2011 through to 2015, as documented in her book, Still Lives. This period included Israel's devastating 50 day bombardment of Gaza in 2014.  As told in Jewish Not Zionist, on returning home to Aotearoa/New Zealand she worked to build Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian people, but met ongoi...

Supriya Pattanayak is Vice Chancellor of Centurion University of Technology and Management in India. She explains its unique, progressive model of working closely with communities in innovative ways, to address their needs and aspirations. Real-life problems are addressed locally with practical applications of knowledge that create goods and services of value to communities especially the systemic...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the 'performance' of the federal Labor government and how its rhetoric about how well it is doing doesn't quite match reality. Examples are responses to the genocide in Gaza, climate policy, the aged care system, and the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. They highlight that the fragile trust of Australians should not be taken for granted.

Annika Reynolds, National Climate Policy Advisor with the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), talks about some important recent developments in Australia's climate policy. These include approval for Woodside to extend the life of its North West shelf gas project by 40 years, the release of the national Climate Risk Assessment report, and the setting of Australia's emissions reduction target...

Starting with the recent clashes on Melbourne's streets, Jacques and Jennifer look at some of the major converging fractures in our society and discuss what we can learn from Europe's Nazi past and from current events in the US.

Jennifer interviews Dr Bob Davidson, who is an honorary Research Fellow at Macquarie University, about the neoliberalism takeover of our human services over the last 40 years or so. The NDIS is discussed as an example. Bob highlights some of the fundamental failures of this neoliberal project, including too many service providers, bad actors, a range of scandals plaguing human service areas (inclu...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the downward spiral of our universities over the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, with the decline accelerating during the COVID pandemic, and only getting worse since. Universities are said to be at breaking point with the corporatist, managerialist focus on cost cutting, exploitation of staff, and selling low quality courses to students. They end the program with...

Jennifer and Jacques discuss the federal government's recent Economic Reform Roundtable, commonly known as the 'productivity roundtable'.They discuss where it went wrong - though a good idea in principle, including assumptions that cutting costs for big business (e.g. via lower tax and regulation) will necessarily lead to higher productivity and not just bigger profits. The hosts unpick the notion...

Jennifer is joined by Belinda Curtis who is National Manager Dementia-Friendly Communities, with Dementia Australia. Belinda begins with an overview of dementia, and corrects a few misconceptions. Importantly, dementia happens within real life social and physical settings, reaching beyond individual medicalised notions. The creation of dementia-friendly communities enables people with dementia to...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the urgent need to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI). They are prompted by the Productivity Commission's hare-brained idea that we should not regulate it too much so as not to inhibit its development (and add $$$ to the coffers of big tech, they add).ReferencesHolten, Emma, (2025) Deficit: How Feminist Economics can change our world, London: WH Allen (Penguin Ra...

Jennifer is joined by guests Cecilia and Enny who talk about their work in communities in Timor Leste, supported and resourced by xpand Foundation. Their work with 'Foundation Rai Matak' and 'WithOneSeed Foundation', focuses on projects that rejuvenate local ecologies, return wealth to local economies, and resource and empower local people and communities. The work is described as creating hope in...

Jacques and Jennifer explore the possibilities of 'community development' for creating social change. They first look at what we mean when we use the word 'community', and the 'development' of community. Then they move to the idea of 'relationality' as probably more meaningful and useful than the over-used 'community' (as introduced in the very first episode of 'Think Again'). This may include gra...

After two previous programs about Iran dealing with its last 70 years of political transformations and its recent and present involvement in the Palestine, Israel and US conflagration, Jacques has a conversation with former journalist and writer Shokoofeh Azar now living in Victoria and involved in our Borderlands library. We learn about the present situation under autocratic Islam/Mullah governan...

Jacques and Jennifer look at the homogenous, so-called 'balanced' middle ground adopted by our two main parties and mainstream media - in particular, in relation to the illegal actions of Israel, and local efforts here to clamp down on pro-Palestine solidarity under the guise of a controversial definition of anti-semitism that includes criticism of the State of Israel. They also look at the compli...

A conversation with Taryn Lane, Manager of Hepburn Energy, the first community-owned renewable energy (wind now complemented with battery and solar) in Victoria. She has published a book Hopeful Action: A handbook for Community-led Climate Transitions offering a combination of practical and philosophical 'hints' to take along your community development journey trying to make our world and our pres...

Jacques and Jennifer continue discussion about the current conflict centred on Iran, to offer a fuller historical and geopolitical context than provided in dominant narratives and the mainstream media. What is clear is that much of the blame belongs to the interference of self-interested western powers, namely the US and Britain. Scott Burchill 24/06/2025 Regime change and blowback in Iran in Pear...

Jacques and Jennifer look at the some of the history and motivations of western powers behind current global conflicts that Australia is once more becoming embroiled in - namely Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, and recent military exchanges between Israel and Iran, and US attacks on Iran. Australia seems fixated on the idea that the US is our friend who we must always support and follow, even wh...

Jacques first continuous the reflections we started last week, especially revealing the 'alternative media' sources we rely on in Think Again to bring news going beyond and beneath what we get daily from the mainstream media; a few of those are mentioned below. He then moves onto the today and tomorrow part, reflecting on how our present political leadership deals (or equivocates out of dealing) w...

Jacques and Jennifer reflect on the last six years of Think Again, while calling for donations to support the program and 3CR.

Jacques and Jennifer discuss some ideas from Rutger Bregman's new book: Moral ambition: Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference. Two themes of interest are: (1) the social and communal nature of making meaningful change: it is not done by lone 'stars' but by people working collectively over time, and (2) the processes of making change are important, not just the end goal or outcome...

Jennifer talks with Kelly O'Shanassy, CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) about the implications of the recent federal Labor victory for climate change, and the preservation of our natural enviornment and endangered species. They discuss the recent 'climate bomb' decision made by new Environment Minister, Murray Watt, to approve an extension of Woodside Energy's North West Shelf ga...

Jacques and Jennifer reflect on the post-election political reality in Australia and the implications for doing something about some of the major issues facing us, like looming catastrophic climate change and the escalating gap between rich and poor. They urge Labor to seize the day, and ask 'if not now, when?'

Jennifer is joined by David Glanz from the Refugee Action Collective to talk about the implications of the federal election result for refugees and asylum seekers. David talks about our cruel system of prolonged temporary visas, offshore detention centres, and deportations. This time round (during Labor's 2nd term) we need to agitate much more strongly and loudly for fair, just and humane treatmen...

Amidst Labor celebrations following their federal election victory, and ruminations that the Greens were punished for being too pro-Palestine, Jacques and Jennifer argue that local politics cannot ignore what is happening internationally - especially in the clear case of genocide against the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. Their conversation draws attention to this, to remedy what has b...

In the context of the federal election on 3rd of May, Jennifer and Jacques talk about disruptions at home and abroad, and how public political discourse has narrowed to exclude the things that we really need to focus on. These things include climate change, military enmeshment with the US, and how the capitalist system is failing most people and evidently in decline. At the same time, right wing p...