Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast

In the wake of treasurer Jim Chalmers' budget - and opposition leader Angus Taylor's budget reply - the political battle lines have been drawn over tax. The government will reform negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and discretionary trusts in an effort to address generational inequity, while Taylor has vowed to index tax brackets to inflation. How are Australians responding to the fi...

Food traditions are at the core of a culture's history, storytelling and community - but these traditions are continually threatened by conflict, war and displacement. Michael Shaikh celebrates the food and recipes of these war-torn communities around the world, and calls for food culture to be prioritised for protection, alongside other cultural heritage, like monuments and art.  Guest: Michael S...

Since Federation, there have been 141 royal commissions in Australia into various crises and tragedies. Some have brought about meaningful policy change, while others - like the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody - have been largely sidelined by governments. So what makes a Royal Commission work? Professor of Public Policy Michael Mintrom has studied dozens of commissions to u...

For the last fifty years Australians have been making their mark at the Cannes film festival. Spearheaded by people like Phillip Adams and David Stratton, Aussies stories from Mad Max to Moulin Rouge, the Piano to Priscilla, have been charming the French and the world. But this year there are no Australian films in competition. So what’s happening to the Australian film industry? And who is champi...

When Antoinette Lattouf was fighting her own unfair dismissal case against the ABC, she faced some dark moments and intense anxiety. For help and inspiration she turned to other Australian women who had taken on power and prevailed. “Pressed to my chest like a shield,” she says, “their faces, voices and acts of defiance reminded me I was not alone.”  The result is her new book Women Who Win - Cele...

The King has proceeded with his scheduled speech to open the UK parliament, despite the desperate situation of his Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as Labour MPs revolt against his leadership. But who will launch a challenge?  Guest: Ian Dunt, iNews columnist and regular LNL commentator Producer: Ali Benton 

Hideki Tojo, a senior military officer who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1941 - 1942, as well as Minister for the Army, had advocated for Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and for the bombing of Pearl Harbour, which launched Japan into WW2. Guest: Peter Mauch, author of ‘Tojo: The rise and fall of Japan’s most controversial WWII general’ (Harvard University Press), Senior le...

In 1994, Cabramatta MP John Newman was shot dead outside his home in a crime billed as Australia's first political assassination. But could the conviction of Vietnamese refugee Phuong Ngo for Newman's murder be one of Australia's greatest miscarriages of justice? For the first time since the trials, Phuong Ngo tells his story to the award-winning former ABC journalist Debbie Whitmont. Guest: Debbi...

Whether it’s Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen or Sudan, journalists reporting on conflict zones across the world, want their stories of human suffering on the front pages. The belief: if that suffering is witnessed and documented, the world will do something about it. Now more than ever, that doesn’t seem to be happening. In her latest essay, journalist Cathy Otten argues the relationship between reported suf...

A British nuclear-armed submarine returned home recently after six months submerged, with no fresh air. Its mission is deterrence, with the threat of the worst possible repercussions. Guest: Josh Glancy,  associate editor of The Sunday Times, went aboard the sub when it returned.  Producer: Ann Arnold

Anna Henderson looks ahead to the big expectations on Labor to deliver a budget that will appeal to One Nation voters on issues like migration and housing, without alienating Australian home-owners and pushing up inflation. Meanwhile the Liberal party are facing questions about why they preferenced One Nation in the Farrer by-election and whether there could be a coalition with Pauline Hanson's pa...

When refugee activist and author Mij Tanith was asked to help an Afghan woman and her five daughters escape the Taliban, she hesitated, burned out after years of emotional toil. But once Mij heard her voice over the phone she couldn't say no. The clock was ticking for 'Laila' - not her real name. She had escaped to Iran, but only had 12 months before she would be deported back to Afghanistan, wher...

That power sends men mad, is a rule of politics and of history that goes way way back before Dr Freud. When riding in triumph through Rome, Caesar’s slave stood behind him in the chariot whispering into the Emperor’s ear: “Remember - you are a man.” No one as far as we know, is keeping Donald Trump’s pride in check as he parades through Washington in the back of the Beast. He lives surrounded by s...

Three weeks before the end of WWII, the Germans invited the British to liberate the 60,000 prisoners - mostly Jews - being held at Belsen. But for the starving men, women and children of the camp, many seriously ill with typhus, liberation was not what they imagined or hoped for. The British initially refused to recognise them as Jews, and didn't know what to do with the thousands of displaced peo...

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the prospect of running against a rightwing-centrist super coalition in elections later this year, after two of his biggest political rivals - Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid - combined forces to form the new party Beyachad (Together) -  inviting a third party leader to join them. It's not the first time Bennett and Lapid have worked together,...

After the infamous mutiny on the Bounty the mutineers settled on remote Pitcairn Island. The Pitcairn Island Register is the original record of births, deaths, and marriages from the Bounty and it also records their fate. It dates back to 1790 and has, until now, been kept in the National Maritime Museum in London. Their descendants, now living on Norfolk Island, crowdfunded to have it returned an...

One of Sydney’s leading community radio stations faces possible closure as early as July, as it works to close a funding gap left by the departure of a key financial backer last year. The situation reflects broader financial pressures across the media sector, where falling advertising revenue, rising operating costs and shifting audience habits are forcing many outlets to cut back or rethink how t...

In another regressive move, the US Supreme Court has made a ruling weakening America's 1965 Voting Rights Act which helped Black and other minority voters to gain stronger representation in places where they form a large minority. Bruce Shapiro says the decision will see an historic fall in Black political representation. Meanwhile FBI Director Kash Patel is following Trump's footsteps in filing a...

Conventional perceptions of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture tend to emphasise the purity of white marble surfaces. However, as classicist Mark Bradley argues, this view is fundamentally misleading. In antiquity, statues were not conceived as monochrome objects but were instead richly painted in a wide range of vivid colours. Guest: Mark Bradley, Professor of Classics at the University of Notting...

In 2020, North Korea was at a low point. Crippled by COVID border closures, its Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un tried and failed to negotiate sanctions relief. A tearful, apologetic speech at a military rally fuelled speculation that his leadership was in peril. But today, Kim is a resurgent figure, having fostered closer ties with Beijing and Moscow and seen off his internal rivals. With powerful neig...

Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is on her first official visit to Australia to sign agreements on energy, defence and critical minerals. Takaichi wouldn't take questions from the press, so whether a tax on our LNG exports was discussed remains a mystery. Plus ceremonies across the Northern Territory have paid tribute to Kumanjayi Little Baby, while Alice Springs mourns. Guest: Anna Henderson...

David Malouf, who died last week at 92, was a hugely influential figure in Australian culture. A novelist, poet, teacher, arts advisor and board member, ' Boyer lecturer, and enormously generous mentor to many other writers. His friends and peers pay tribute. Guests:  Peter Goldsworthy, Adelaide-based poet Nicholas Jose, Adelaide-based novelist Kate Grenville, Melbourne-based novelist Omar Sakr, w...

In 1895 Sydney solicitor Richard Meagher incited a campaign to free George Dean, a handsome, popular ferryman accused of attempting to poison his own wife, despite knowing he was guilty. The case became a scandal and Meagher was struck off. Meagher subsequently embarked on an ambitious political career, determined to hide this stain on his reputation and rebuild his life.  Guest: Patrick Mullins,...

King Charles has address the US Congress with messages in favour of the rule of law, checks and balances on executive power and an anti-war message. Meanwhile, the Peter Mandelson scandal is continuing to dominate the headlines in the UK, as PM Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney faces questions from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee about Mandelson's appointment as...

On the 30th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre -  and in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack - media scholar Dr Glynn Greensmith's timely new book investigates the power of the press in covering mass shooting events. Coverage that is sensational, speculative and focused on the profile of the killer risks inspiring future mass shootings, because perpetrators are often driven by a desire...