"The Week on Wednesday" with Van Badham & Ben Davison

Van Badham and Ben Davison break down why Donald Trump was arrested and in a Manhattan court this week, how the alternate reality of Donald Trump has infected American politics and what might happen next in the saga that is Donald Trump, the Republican Party and American politics. Peter Dutton has announced he will be campaigning for the NO vote in this year's Voice referendum.  Van and Ben analys...

Ben Davison breaks down the Aston by-election result which has seen Labor's Mary Doyle win a the formerly safe Liberal seat.  The result is the first time in over 100 years a sitting government has won a seat away from the opposition at a by-election.  The first time a woman has won Aston. Ben looks at how a proud feminist, unionist, single mum was able to win such a "blue ribbon" Liberal seat aga...

Van Badham and Ben Davison discuss what the latest inflation figures might mean for working people when the high priests of neo-liberal monetary policy at the Reserve Bank meet again. Van and Ben discuss how the bosses lobby groups think they can argue the RBA needs to raise interest rates to create more unemployment but also not that the Fair Work Commission shouldn't raise minimum wages because...

Ben Davison returns with the Weekend Wrap to breakdown the landslide Labor victory in NSW.  With Labor set to win its biggest ever majority when coming into government from opposition.  Labor's lower house performance was only bettered by its performance in the upper house where it has achieved a 9% swing and battered the Liberal/National coalition.  Ben breaks down some of the seats that Labor wo...

Van Badham and Ben Davison return home from their award winning run at the Adelaide Fringe Festival to discuss the NSW State Election, on March 25th, the issues, the leaders, the optional preferential system and the seats to watch.  It is looking like a tight election but if NSW wants, as the polls are suggesting they do, guaranteed minimum staffing levels in hospitals, public schools that have re...

Van Badham and Ben Davison do their FINAL Week on Wednesday LIVE at Adelaide Fringe with special guest South Australian Aboriginal Affairs Minister and Attorney General Kyam Maher discussing how South Australia became the first part of Australia to create a Voice to parliament and what lessons it provides for the national Voice referendum. Van and Ben also look at how Peter Dutton has decided to f...

Ben Davison looks at (rants about?) how Insiders managed to spend three quarters of the show talking about submarines in the same week that the robodebt royal commission ended, the national reconstruction fund became law, the RBA put up interest rates for a record 10th consecutive time, the Aston by election is only three weeks away and the NSW election is only two weeks away! Ben discusses how th...

Van Badham and Ben Davison LIVE from the Adelaide Fringe Yurt cover the broccolini boycott, Qantas refusing refuelling workers pay rises and the 10 big wins for women that unions have won in the last 12 months. Van and Ben discuss the socialist foundations of International Women's Day, the struggles that are still to be won and Van's view of why being a woman shouldn't be an "economic class" but h...

Ben Davison takes a look at Angus Taylor's dreadful performance on Insiders and the disproportionate focus on tax concessions for the wealthiest at a time when more people than ever are working multiple jobs and wages are making up less and less of our national income.  Unions keep raising these issues and reminding us that superannuation is for retirement, not tax evasion, and you can join your u...

Van Badham and Ben Davison are LIVE in the Yurt at Adelaide Fringe talking about how the week's news shows us that, for some bosses, if they can get away with it they will and that we need strong, democratic movements to curb the excesses that create greed-price spirals, shorten people's lives for the sake of a kitchen bench and funnel our commonwealth to the 0.5% richest people in the country at...

Ben Davison wraps up a huge week where the scale of corporate profiteering, what Sally McManus calls the Greed-Price Spiral, has been exposed as driving 69% of inflation, the nation is debating whether 11,000 people who have more than $5M in super should get a tax concession or whether that money is better invested in the 24,000,000 other people struggling under a 4.5% real wage cut, record rises...

Van Badham and Ben Davison deliver The Week on Wednesday LIVE! from the Adelaide Fringe!  Live from the Yurt Van and Ben expose that "broccolini" is a trademarked term and that some of the agri-corp businesses, many around Adelaide, may not be all they seem.  The United Workers Union are encouraging people to contact Coles and Woolworths to demand that exploitation doesn't make it on Australian ta...

Ben looks at the first two weeks of the parliamentary sitting for 2023 where Labor introduced housing policy, manufacturing policy and emissions reduction policy all of which were opposed by Dutton and the Greens.  Plus our friend Mary Doyle is running for Aston following Tudge's retirement. The bosses pamphlets have argued against working people being involved in the running of the country but yo...

Van Badham and Ben Davison break down the ideological nonsense at the heart of the Reserve Bank Governor's decision to prioritise bank profits over employment, living standards and the well being of the Australian people. With the Commonwealth Bank declaring a record profit and 20% increase in dividends Van and Ben breakdown the fallacies at the heart of the neo-liberal ideology. Of course at the...

Ben Davison looks at the big stories at the end of the first sitting week of parliament in 2023 and neo-liberal skew that Insiders offered up to the ABC audience. While mouth piece for the bosses pamphlet, Phil Coorey, was promoting his friends at the Mineral's council advertising campaign the hidden truth that profitable major corporations will be fighting to keep workers divided and wages low du...

Van Badham and Ben Davison examine former Greens Senator for Victoria Lidia Thorpe's announcement that she is no longer a Green Party member but is now leader of "a grassroots Blak sovereign movement." They look at the commentary around her split from the Greens, events leading up to this moment, what "a grassroots Blak sovereign movement" might actually mean based on Thorpe's public statements an...

Ben Davison reviews the return of the ABC's flagship political discussion show, Insiders.  As host David Speers manages to make incredibly dismissive off hand comment about the Robodebt Royal Commission and another panelist waves off the only first nations panellist's views about the situation in Alice Springs Professor Megan Davis patiently explains that The Voice referendum is about principles,...

Van Badham and Ben Davison took a look at the Revive cultural policy launched by the Albanese Labor government and what it will mean for working people in the arts, in Australian audiences and to conversation about who we are as a nation. Van share's some of her experiences as an artist and just what Revive will mean for the tens of thousands of people working in arts and culture across Australia....

Ben Davison takes a closer look at the situation in Alice Springs and how the end of a 15 year ban on alcohol in some communities coincided with cuts to support services, a federal election and a Morrison government unable to think beyond the news cycle to create the slow moving storm that has now engulfed the community.  And maybe provides the clearest example of why The Voice is needed. Ben look...

Ben Davison examines some of the history, the changing attitudes, the cultural impacts and the evolving community sentiment towards January 26th.  Ben believes there is a need for change to "Australia Day"/"Invasion Day" if we are to have a day that celebrates modern Australia while recognising our complex and painful history.   You can find more info on the views of First Nations Workers and how...

Ben Davison looks at the recent polling showing a surge in support for Chris Minns and the NSW Labor party at the expense of Dom Perrottet's Liberal/National coalition government.  Ben goes through why working people have had enough of the cuts, the costs and the waste during  a decade of mismanagement by the Liberals.  Also how unions are getting organised to win better pay, services and more sec...

Van Badham and Ben Davison look at how Dutton is playing politics over The Voice to parliament, why he's playing a politically dangerous game and just how easy it is to find "the detail" he claims he cannot find.  (Ben reads it out if you're interested Peter) Turns out gas appliances aren't great for our health, our environment or our wallets but, as culture war correspondent Van Badham reports, t...

Ben Davison explores how workers at the Mantle Group stood together in union against a sham agreement that saw hundreds of workers denied their proper wages.  The Queensland and New South Wales based hospitality company continues to deny any wrong doing but the case is damning for the company (who might face criminal charges) and a win for workers.  Join your union at australianunions.org.au/wow T...

Van Badham and Ben Davison take a look at some of the big issues facing working people in the UK and the USA and find that there's an Australian flavour in conservative moves to strip worker's of rights. In the UK Rishi Sunak is trying to ban effective strikes and force people to cross picket lines with a law that one of his own MP's has called "shameful".  The "protecting essential services" appr...

Ben looks at how the dysfunctional Republican Party took a record number of ballots to finally elect the only candidate they had for speaker and why the next two years may be ungovernable for the Party that once saw itself as the "natural party of government". Peter Dutton has kicked on 2023 behind in the polls and desperate to find a pathway into government.  Today's press conference on The Voice...