The Briefing

The Manly NRL pride jersey story has blown up into a complete fiasco. The club introduced a pride jersey, with four rainbow stripes to celebrate diversity in rugby league. Seven players who say they were blindsided by the move said they didn’t want to take the field in the jersey because of culture and religious reasons.  Michelle Bishop is Seven News’ sports reporter. She has the inside story on...

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison stunned Australians on election day by using the interception of a boatload of asylum seekers as a reason to vote for the Coalition.  We all know how the election ended up – the Morrison government was booted from office. A new report has found Morrison and his government pressured public servants on election day, and blatantly politicised an issue, Morrison hi...

The NSW Parliamentary inquiry into the appointment of former deputy premier John Barilaro to a plum trade commissioner post in New York, is up and running. The inquiry is trying to determine how and why Mr Barilaro ended up with the role after more qualified and credentialed people were overlooked. Why do we tolerate nepotism in politics?  Danielle Wood is CEO of the Grattan Institute and co-autho...

This episode came via a message from one of our listeners, Jason on Instagram who wanted to point out the real issues the construction industry in Australia are facing. A shortage of raw materials, worker shortages, supply chain delays and interest rate hikes is threatening the construction industry. Phil Dwyer, head of the Builders Collective of Australia has warned the latest increases, are unli...

Tara Moss is a best-selling Canadian-Australian author who has written 14 books spanning multiple different genres. In addition to her books, Tara is a documentary maker, a television presenter, a journalist and most recently a disability advocate.   In this episode Jamila Rizvi and Tara Moss unpack everything from body image, chronic pain, Tara’s work ethic, to the loss of her beautiful mother wh...

Are our regulators better equipped to deal with a tech company employing the same aggressive tactics Uber did when it was expanding between 2013 - 2017? A massive data leak suggests Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments between 20-13 and 20-17 when the company was rapidly growing. It’s been revealed extreme tactics were deployed in Europe, but the Australian arm of Uber al...

The State of Environment report is out, and the news isn’t good.   Australia has lost more mammal species than anywhere else on earth, along with hundreds of plant species. The losses are down to a vicious cocktail of climate change, land clearing, pollution and feral pests. We take a deeper look with Dr Ian Cresswell, one of the co-authors of the report.    On today’s Briefing, a deep dive into t...

Around eight million Australians are estimated to have been infected with Covid during the pandemic. Experts believe around 5% of those who catch the virus end up with long Covid, so as many as 400,000 people. So what is long Covid? How do you know you have it, and what can be done to treat it? Jess Davis is a journalist with the ABC, based in Canberra and she has long Covid. Jess describes what i...

The ACT has always had a liberal approach to drug use. Cannabis was decriminalised in 2020. Today it opens a pill-testing facility in Canberra’s CBD.    Gino Vumbaca is president of Harm Reduction Australia. He and his team are behind the trial of the new facility which runs tests on drugs to make sure they’re safe for the user to take. He says trials at music festivals in recent years have undoub...

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 t...

Deborah Frances-White is the original guilty feminist.   Deborah is an Australian-born, London-based writer and comedian who is best known for her award-winning podcast, The Guilty Feminist. She is a force to be reckoned with.   In this conversation, Jamila Rizvi and Deborah Frances-White cover everything from Roe V Wade, the age of criminality, being a modern feminist and the need for a refuellin...

Will Elon Musk be forced to buy Twitter? Twitter is suing Tesla CEO Elon Musk –after Musk said he wanted out of a deal to buy the social media platform. Musk says he hasn’t been given enough information on spam accounts, but Twitter executives believe Musk is trying to get out of the acquisition because of the downturn in tech stocks. We’re joined by Meghan Bobrowsky, reporter with the Wall Street...

The latest Census revealed we’re more culturally diverse as a nation than ever before. So, we’re asking the question: ‘should the next census include more questions about ethnicity?' We dive into the pros and cons, which are more complicated than you might think. Historian Dr Amrita Malhi, fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU; and Mohammed Al-Khafaji, CEO of the Federatio...

Housing is the biggest living cost facing Australians. Despite the bluster, major parties aren’t offering anything to help people with the cost of rent.  Anglicare Australia has released its Rental Affordability Snapshot that found less than 2% of rentals are affordable for a full-time worker on the minimum wage. For a person out of work, it’s 0%. Anglicare Australia Head of Government Relations,...

Boris Johnson has resigned as British prime minister after a series of scandals meant his party could no longer support him.       Latika Bourke, the Sydney Morning Herald’s UK correspondent, tells us Johnson will be remembered most for his role in Britain leaving the European Union.  He’s also known for partygate, where Johnson and his staff held parties in Downing Street while the rest of the co...

14 people are in custody following the death of an 8-year-old girl in the Queensland town of Toowoomba back in January. Her parents have been detained since her death, and then last week 12 more people were charged with the child’s murder.   We’re joined by David Chen from the ABC Toowoomba bureau who has been following this story since Day One.  So in this episode of The Briefing, who are these p...

Dr Neela Janakiramanan is a hand surgeon, based in Melbourne. The last two years have been trying for her and her colleagues, there is a significant physical and emotional toll of tending to patients during a once in a generation global pandemic.   Putting patients’ needs ahead of her own is what Neela believes in most, she’s a proud advocate for patient-focused care. She believes it’s an essentia...

Western Sydney and areas in the NSW Illawarra and Hunter have been hammered by yet another round of devastating floods for the fourth time in 18 months.  So, is climate change to blame?  Or are we simply building in the wrong places?  We’re joined by Jason Evans, Professor at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales to explore whether the science is settled.  On this...

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders now have access to a new 24/7 national crisis support telephone service - 13 YARN The service is staffed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.   Suicide accounts for 40% of all deaths of Indigenous children, and the suicide death rate among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is double th...

Everyone knows someone who’s getting Covid for a second time and epidemiologists are warning Covid is back on the agenda.  Why now? And how can you avoid it?  Catherine Bennett, Deakin University chair of epidemiology, joins us to talk about the new Omicron variant BA.5.  It seems to be making people sicker.  So why are we seeing an increase in numbers and should we be rolling up our sleeves for a...

One of the most startling statistics from last year’s census was for the first time, fewer than half of Australians identified as Christian. 90% of Australians identified as Christians back in 1966 - and the number has been in decline ever since. The data shows it’s millennials turning their back on God. Today’s guest is Andrew Singleton, Professor of Sociology and Social Research at Deakin Univer...

Bitcoin made a splash when it was first introduced in 2009. Since then, investors have sunk billions of dollars into cryptocurrencies. Although they were touted as being a hedge against inflation, they’ve been acting as risk assets in the recent downturn – and their value has dived with the sharemarket.  Crypto’s price has fallen 70 percent since November. Paul Vigna, who writes on cryptocurrency...

Miriam Rizvi is one third of the ARIA award nominated children’s band, The Beanies. The Beanies also have a podcast on the LiSTNR app or wherever you get your podcasts.   In this conversation Jamila Rizvi interviews her little sister Mim. They dive into the pressures of growing up in a highly successful family, how imposter syndrome manifests in different ways and the lengths Mim went to supportin...

Aussie music journalist Mawunyo Gbogbo has written a memoir taking us from where she was born in Ghana; to country NSW where she grew up; to how she became a music writer; and eventually to the bright lights of New York, the heart of hip hop. ‘Hip Hop and Hymns’ is about Mawunyo’s two great loves - music and her faith – and how both helped her confront life’s curve balls.  The memoir is about movi...

America has been rocked by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade - the case that has protected the right to abortion in the US for almost 50 years.  Already, states are banning the procedure and it may be just weeks before half of the states across the US ban abortion.    In today’s episode of The Briefing, Nick Sweeney, an Australian born director of a documentary called AKA Jane Ro...