Think Again

Jennifer talks with Lida Hazara, founder and president of Women for Change In Melbourne, an organisation empowering Hazara people in Afghanistan and Australia through education and employment. Lida talks about her life growing up in Afghanistan, fleeing to Pakistan in her teens, and then settling in Australia. We learn what motivated her to establish Women for Change and the difference the organis...

Matthew Rimmer, Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Queensland University of Technology and Jacques talk about the 'medical apartheid' which is confirmed (yet again) and made worse by the maldistribution of the COVID vaccines between the rich and the poor nations. Yet again, a political and economic collection of (i) economic powerholders (read: the pharmaceutical industri...

Jennifer interviews Diana Sayed, who is CEO of the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights. Diana describes the work of the Centre that supports and advocates for Muslim women in Australia in all of their plurality and multiple ethnicities, sects and beliefs. Diana discusses the situation In Afghanistan through a pro-woman, feminist and human rights lens. Given Australia’s 20 year presen...

Jacques and Jennifer look at the botched and devastating withdrawal of the US and its allies from Afghanistan and try to make sense of it through the lens of history. They look back to the carve-up of the old Ottoman Empire by colonial powers after WW1 (creating divisions that last to today), the US-Soviet competition for influence in Afghanistan leading to endemic corruption and a coup in 1978, t...

Monique Hurley from the Human Rights Law Centre talks with Jennifer about the abuse of many people in our prison system, as reflected in a recent IBAC report: ‘Special report on corrections’. Among the routine  abuses are: unjustified use of force, strip searching and social isolation. Monique outlines what needs to happen to change this situation. This includes Australia implementing the UN anti-...

Matt and Jacques have a conversation based on Per Capita’s last Discussion Paper ‘Generation Stressed’: House Prices and the Cost of Living in the 21st Century. It became clear based on research comparing the cost of housing across three generations – in the 1970s, mid- to late-80s and early 2000s -  the latter - Gen X people - who bought their homes around the turn of the Millennium, suffered fro...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the scandalously unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines throughout the world, while a few people and companies make billions by charging exorbitant prices (US$16 to $24 a dose, with the cost of production estimated US$1.18 to $2.85 a dose). Meanwhile the more reasonably-priced AstraZeneca vaccine has fallen flat. While richer countries seem happy to pay the highe...

Having held conversations about Human Rights in several previous Think Again programs, we now propose to widen our purview, wondering whether other species and things might have 'rights' as well...'Western Enlightenment' thinking has located the 'me' and the human - the 'Anthropos' - right in the centre of all there is, everything and everybody else... the 'other'... Jacques talks about a more rec...

Jennifer interviews Lucie Krahulcova from Digital Rights Watch about the Australian Government's increasing powers to surveil us, with minimal transparency and accountability. Australia compares badly with other jurisictions in the protection of human rights (such as the UK and even the US), and Lucie talks about the need for a Human Rights Charter or Bill of Rights. She urges us to contact key po...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about human rights, including a bit about their history and how their focus has changed over time. There have been three generations of human rights in modern times: (i) civil and political, (ii) economic and social, and (iii) cultural and collective. In recent 'neo-liberal' times the focus has been highly individualistic and commercial. While Jacques and Jennifer conside...

Andreea Lachsz explains the UN anti-torture protocol (OPCAT) which Australia has signed but is dragging its feet on implementing. OPCAT would help prevent torture and abuse happening in our places of detention. It is a unique opportunity to address human rights abuses on the most powerless in our society, including Aboriginal people in police custody. Under the Protocol, independent inspectors cou...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the federal government's various ways of deflecting attention and responsibility away from itself  toward 'outsiders' and those most disadvantaged by the system. This is led by our own PM, commonly known as 'Scotty from Marketing' who has developed it to a fine art level... but more and more of us start to notice that not all is well in advertising heaven...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the expanding underclass in Australia and our growing inequality - and how our leaders are distracting us with phony statements about how well we're going, while they conjure up enemies abroad. In particular there seems to be a complete absence of diplomacy in aggressive public statements aimed at China. Ref:Robinson, I W 2021, What are the real reasons behind the c...

Jacques has a conversation with Meagan Skehill from CISVic, the peak body for the community information and support sector in Victoria. Evidently the much-hyped post-Covid economic recovery is a very one-sided affair, leaving growing numbers of citizens and disadvantaged groups worse off, and in gradually deteriorating situations. This is exacerbated by stagnant wages, lack of meaningful and susta...

In this special fundraiser program, past guests tell us why 3CR and the Think Again program are so important. Amongst the testimonials, Jacques and Jennifer explain what they are intending to do through the program – like ‘joining the dots’ amidst all the fragments of information bombarding us, and providing a platform for  views and voices not heard in the mainstream media. Music played on this e...

In conversation with Jacques, Claire explores her growing desire to discover nature in the middle of what we have come to think about as its opposite: the city. Given that about 3/4 of humanity will soon live in macro-cities, and given that these occupy only 4% of the world's surface, and given that most of the environmental damage humans cause is connected with these facts, we do need to explore...

In a landmark decision, the Federal Court decided that the Environment Minister, Sussan Ley, has a duty of care to protect young people from harm in her decision making. Jennifer discusses this with one of the eight activist students who brought this case to the Federal Court, Bella Burgemeister, and a lawyer representing the students, Jack McLean from Equity Generation Lawyers. They talk about th...

Jacques and Jennifer cast a critical eye over the recent Australian Government budget, looking past the theatre of media announcements and the low expectations of ‘business as usual’.They analyse the budget within the broader context of what’s happening to ‘ordinary’ people in Australia and worldwide in the latest version of neo-liberal capitalism trying to turn to a Keynesian spending frenzy in a...

Jennifer talks with Richard Evans, a criminologist at Deakin University, about the history and role of the police. They discuss in whose interests police operate, and if they are really necessary. Inevitably the program presents more questions than answers, and is hopefully the start of a longer conversation on Think Again    

Borderlands is deeply interested in community, in cooperatives, in localisation and ecological responsibility and how to promote and create living conditions that are mutually beneficial for all, including the non-human species and relationships on which our continued existence depends. Jacques' conversation with Jose Ramos looks across a series of historical and recent attempts at 'experimenting'...

Jacques and Jennifer continue their discussion from two programs ago about five intersecting predicaments facing us: (1) the COVID-19 pandemic,(2) late capitalism and its gross and exponentially growing inequality and destructiveness,(3) racism and how ‘whites’ both socially and culturally seem incapable to acknowledge their racism,(4) the onslaughts our ‘civilisation’ inflicts on our planet’s eco...

Jennifer interviews Nikki Marshall about how community members got together to bring about true participatory democracy in the Hepburn Shire in central Victoria. In the last council election Community Voice had four local people elected out of seven. This grassroots initiative aimed at systems change and the active ongoing participation of community members in key decision making. Nikki shares a b...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about some of the interconnected global-to-local predicaments we’re facing: the pandemic, ecology, racism, and the destructive political-economy of late capitalism.  They talk about some of the directions we need to take to deal with these predicaments. The discussion is based on a book chapter Jacques has recently written in a volume also edited by him and by Linette Haw...

Jacques has a conversation with Matt Lloyd-Cape from the Per Capitathink tank about their research regarding the allocation and distribution ofFederal funds  to victims of the 2019-20 bushfires. Barely half of the promised billions was spent by the end of 2019 and - as we're now gettingaccustomed to with the present LNP federal government - 3/4 of all fundswent to NSW and of that only 1% to Labor...

 Amidst the raging scandals of sexual abuse and discrimination against women at a federal government level, Jennifer and Jacques look at ideas of self-entitlement held by an elite group in positions of power. Where does this notion that they are ‘born to rule’ come from? Jennifer and Jacques take a close look at the role of elite schools in  generating a culture of misogyny and deep disrespect for...