Think Again

Jennifer and Jacques revisit the conflict in Ukraine, and some of the things that have led to it, including the roles of the US and NATO.They look at US policy relating to Russia and China, and question why we are following the (US) leader rather than investing in multilateral, cooperative arrangements between nations.     Refs:Youtube - examples of racist reporting by western mediaJohn Pilger - w...

Jennifer interviews Mark Zirnsak from the Tax Justice Network Australia, about the federal budget just handed down.     While there are some positives, such as extra refugee visas for Afghan people, and funding for the ATO to target multinationals avoiding tax, in the main it is a regressive budget.     Tax breaks for the wealthy will be continued well into the future, despite some tax offsets for...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about how corruption has taken over national politics, with the open brazenous of politicians misusing and misdirecting funds, and being bought over by big money to further their own ends.   On the whole, ‘plutocracy’ would seem to better describe our current system than ‘democracy’, meaning government for and by the wealthy.   Sign the 'our democracy' petition:https://ww...

Jennifer talks with Kate Colvin from the Everybody’s Home campaign about the housing affordability crisis in Australia, which has very much gone mainstream as more and more people become homeless. The Everybody's Home campaign is asking the federal government to commit to building 25,000 new social homes every year.  Kate invites listeners to join the campaign for everyone to have a home:  Everybo...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the massive displacement of people due to global heating and international conflict, and how this is set to accelerate if we don’t take preventive action.     Starting with the floods in Queensland and NSW and moving 15,000 K North West to Ukraine and the Russian invasion, yet another two examples and instances of the millions of people displaced by the growing numb...

Jennifer talks with Ashlie, who became unemployed after being in the paid workforce for about 40 years.   She has applied for hundreds of jobs and desperately wants to work.   Despite this, she is forced to live on punishingly-low ‘Jobseeker’ payments.   These don’t cover the basic costs of living and, as a result, Ashlie has been homeless for two years. Join the campaign to raise Centrelink payme...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the international system of trade rules and agreements, and they give a bit of its recent history from post-WW2 to the establishment of the World Trade Organisation....   Lately, China has been accused of breaking the rules and undermining the system for its own advantage – especially in the US (and of course, echoed in the US's faithful follower, Australia), but is...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border and the drumming up of war by western leaders, particularly by the US and via the systematic expansion of the NATO now virtually encircling Russia. There's more behind all of this than meets the eye... and looking at recent history does indeed help!  And some of the below alternative bits of information will offer a rather d...

Jennifer speaks with Brendan Coates from the Grattan Institute about his report: A place to call home: It’s time for a social housing future fund. The proposal is for a $20b future fund for the federal government to deliver 3,000 extra social housing units a year into perpetuity – 6,000 per year if matched by state governments. Seems like a good idea, but would it be enough? Could it create real s...

Jennifer speaks with Noongar author Claire G Coleman about the meaning and implications of Invasion Day (officially also known as 'Australia Day').   Claire exposes some of the myths and ‘clangers’ Australians hold about the origins of Invasion Day and Australian history in general.   She places responsibility on the colonists themselves to dismantle colonisation, suggesting they can first inform...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about US global dominance, the various tactics used to maintain this dominance, and how we’re all kept in the dark. The price of this dominance in human and financial terms is enormous... not to speak about the damage to Mother Earth... (and it doesnt mean that other world powers are not doing a bit of the same... but we're kept mostly blined and unaware of what our 'grea...

Jennifer speaks with Andreea Lachsz from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service about the UN anti-torture protocol (OPCAT). This follows their initial discussion on this topic in mid July 2021. Australia signed the Protocol several years ago but has failed to fund and organise for its implementation – even though the extended deadline is 20 January 2022.    The Protocol would establish a system of...

 Returning to Freire’s work for a follow-up program, Jacques explores with some more depth some of the principles underlying his approach as well as some of the sources of his thinking and several of the areas in which his approach has been and continuous to be applied. As so often in Think Again, there’s an argument to reconsider some of the ways in which education and other community programs an...

Jacques remembers one of the most influential educational thinkers of the last 60-or-so years; Paulo Freire, who was born 100 years ago in recife in Brazil, influenced two generations of development and emancipation activists.     This started with his literacy work in Brazil in the early 1960s and after his exile from his country under the military dictatorship in 1964, spreading right across Lat...

Jennifer and Jacques return - again - to the concept of relationality, and how we are all part of a living web of inter-relating and intra-relating.      Our western thinking since the 1600s has set us in a bind that makes it hard to understand this, without some fundamental shift in our perception or ‘metanoia’.      Ignoring this perceptional shift has led and continues to lead to widespread des...

Jacques and Jennifer continue discussion from two weeks ago about the Religious Discrimination Bill being proposed by the federal government. They discuss how it would legalise discrimination and nastiness by religious institutions, based on rather arbitrary Statements of Belief they draw up themselves. Leading up to a federal election, it seems the government thought there was some political adva...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the Religous Discrimination Bill being presented to Federal Parliament. This Bill would expand the powers of religious insititutions to discriminate - not just on the basis of faith affiliation, but on aspects of identity and lifestyle deemed by the institution to be incompatible with their particular brand of faith. Jacques and Jennifer look at the particular insta...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the blatant infiltration of military agendas in our education system, with resourcing from the federal government.     This is in the context of the de-funding of our universities, particularly many humanities departments and subjects that involve critical thinking. Most recently, the ‘culture wars’ have been reignited, as the government wants a white, imperialist t...

Linda Bennett and Rodney Sparke from Scaleitdown talk about their campaign against eight and ten-story developments in the midst of Brunswick parklands.     They describe how the developers , Stocklands and Mirvac, have by-passed local government and taken their proposals straight to the Victorian Government.     This means that community members opposing the developments have to take their case t...

Jennifer speaks with Liz Turner from Renegade Activists about the various campaigns coming together to oppose AUKUS, (the new military pact between Australia, the US and the UK).     Very quickly, this pact has brought a range of groups together across Australia, including anti-nuclear, environmental and peace activists.   This may be a positive upside of AUKUS, generating a groundswell of activis...

Jacques remembers one of the most influential educational thinkers of the last 60-or-so years; Paulo Freire, who was born 100 years ago in recife in Brazil, influenced two generations of development and emancipation activists.     This started with his literacy work in Brazil in the early 1960s and after his exile from his country under the military dictatorship in 1964, spreading right across Lat...

Jacques Boulet interviews Dan McKinley, CEO of B-Corporation Dog and Bone  Dan and Jacques have a conversation about a kind of ‘in-between’ space between the ‘normal’ capitalist ways of running business and the more ‘radical’ alternatives we often pay attention to in Think Again.        In B-corporations real transformational relationships, processes and structures are actually being experimented...

Given the PM’s struggles in public oratory and inspiring leadership, Jacques and Jennifer have written a speech for him and they deliver it in this program.      The PM shares his belated insight and thanks Victorians for the sacrifices they have made during COVID, thereby saving thousands of lives - not just in Victoria but also in NSW and Australia.      The PM also reveals his new astonishing i...

With COVID exposing the cracks in our health system and the marginalisation of certain groups who are vulnerable to the virus, Jacques and Jennifer talk about a different approach led by the World Health Organisation that seems to have gone out of fashion. The WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not just the absence of disease. Health and ill health are...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the abrupt turn in Australia’s defence policy, with the decision to develop nuclear submarines, and enter into a new security agreement with the US and UK.         Simultaneously we have sent out war signals to China, and offended the French by duplicitously breaking a submarine contract without notice – and France isn’t the only power we have put offside.          ...