On the eve of the American election, polls say Harris and Trump are neck and neck. Of course, Donald Trump says that’s not true. It’s nothing new for the former president to deny facts. What is new is the way America’s biggest cable news network is handling it: Fox News has started cutting away from rallies when Trump lies. The network’s support of the big lie – that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, led to a defamation lawsuit that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to settle. And now ...
Nov 05, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1390
One of the first things David Crisafulli did when he became premier of Queensland was order the state’s Truth-telling inquiry to stop immediately. The Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry, which launched earlier this year, was examining the impacts of colonisation on First Nations people. Work was underway, with witnesses already having testified about racial discrimination and abuse. The premier gave the order to stop in a press conference, without talking first to the man running the process. Tod...
Nov 04, 2024•14 min•Ep. 1389
The prime minister’s relationship with former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, and whether he likes a free upgrade, has been the talk of Canberra, prompted by the publication of a new book called The Chairman’s Lounge . Speculation about what the book would reveal had been swirling for months, and it was widely known in political circles that some of it would be bad for the prime minister. But when the book was finally published, Albanese and his office seemed unprepared. The saga, which played out over a...
Nov 03, 2024•16 min•Ep. 1388
In just three books Robbie Arnott has established himself as a writer to trust. Flames (2018), The Rain Heron (2022) and Limberlost (2022) were all rapturously reviewed and garnered a hefty swag of award nominations and wins. On this episode of Read This , Michael Williams sits down with Robbie to discuss his new novel, Dusk , which explores loss, redemption, and survival in Tasmania’s high country. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 02, 2024•26 min•Ep. 1387
On a street in downtown Beirut there’s a five-storey building – a derelict hotel. It was empty for years, until recently, when hundreds of displaced people started arriving. Their experience of fleeing southern Beirut to find safety in the city’s busy neighbourhoods is being repeated across Lebanon right now as Israel’s bombardments continue. There has been a massive effort to help shelter the one million displaced Lebanese, but in this building and in many others they aren’t always welcome, wit...
Oct 31, 2024•19 min•Ep. 1386
When the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme handed down its findings, the commissioner in charge went to great lengths to refer six individuals to the National Anti-Corruption Commission for investigation. What followed outraged many, particularly the victims of the scheme: The NACC announced that it would not act on the referrals. That decision generated so many complaints that it has since been investigated by the inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness. Now, that investigation has found th...
Oct 30, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1385
In a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, just over a week from the election, Donald Trump took to the stage with a vision for the first day of his presidency. Trump is promising to deport more than 11 million people if he wins, making it “the largest deportation program in American history”. Immigration has been one of the most pressing and divisive issues of the presidential race, with fears of “border chaos” and misinformation about immigrants eating pets dominating headlines. But the ...
Oct 29, 2024•13 min•Ep. 1384
When West Australian mining billionaire Chris Ellison was accused of a decade of tax evasion, his lawyers responded by trying to cut a deal with the Australian Taxation Office. The terms of that deal included an 80 per cent reduction in the penalty payable and an assurance that his conduct wouldn’t be referred to police or the corporate watchdog. The reason that Ellison, managing director of the company Mineral Resources, would push for those terms is obvious. The real question is why the tax of...
Oct 28, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1383
When Elon Musk took the stage at a pro-Trump rally in Pennsylvania to announce he would start giving a million dollars a day to randomly chosen people who had signed an online petition, it begged the question, is this legal? To win, people had to be registered to vote in one of the seven key battleground states and have signed the petition saying they support the First and Second Amendments, which guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. The stunt attracted huge publicity, but for...
Oct 27, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1382
Melanie Cheng began her writing career as an author of short stories. Her first collection, Australia Day, was published in 2017 to much acclaim. Her second novel, The Burrow, follows a Melbourne family forced to confront the tragedy of their shared past. On this episode of Read This , Michael sits down for a conversation with Melanie about family, connection, and the power of narrative medicine. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 26, 2024•30 min•Ep. 1381
King Charles’ first visit to Australia as monarch laid bare a lot of unfinished business. Moments after the king sat down following an address to the Great Hall in Parliament House, independent Senator Lidia Thorpe was escorted out after shouting “you are not our king” and “this is not your land”. It didn’t just bring home the fact that, despite a failed referendum in 1999, the Australian republican movement is still alive – it also highlighted that the more recent failed referendum on a Voice t...
Oct 24, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1380
The fight over abortion in Queensland had seemed settled. It was decriminalised in 2018 and has since attained wide public support. But with Katter’s Australian Party promising to introduce a bill to repeal those laws in the new parliament, it’s become a surprise issue heading into this weekend’s election. The leader of the Liberal National Party David Crisafulli has insisted he has no plans to change the laws, but if enough of his MPs choose to vote with their conscience, the decision could be ...
Oct 23, 2024•18 min•Ep. 1379
This week, a group of Stolen Generations survivors visited a site from their childhood that holds a lot of painful memories: the notorious Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home in New South Wales. The gathering marked 100 years since Kinchela was opened – a home that institutionalised hundreds of Indigenous boys, and subjected them to torture, abuse and reprogramming, in order to assimilate them into white society. Now, the survivors and their families want to take ownership of the site, to mak...
Oct 22, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1378
When Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister, he made a call that made the then president of the United States very, very angry. Donald Trump called it the “worst call he’d had all day” – a “killer”, “crazy” and “disgusting”. But Turnbull argues that standing up to Trump, even if it means saying things he doesn’t want to hear, is the only effective way to deal with him. Now, as Australia faces the prospect of a second Trump term, Turnbull says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s willingness to face of...
Oct 21, 2024•16 min•Ep. 1377
The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is a pivotal moment in the war in the Middle East. Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was top of Israel’s most wanted list before he was killed by Israeli troops in Rafah last week. His death represents a significant win for Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing it as a “settling of the score”. While United States President Joe Biden said the war in Gaza could now be ended, Netanyahu has vowed to continue “full force” until t...
Oct 20, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1376
There are few people in this country as obsessed with understanding the cultural and social potential of Australian cuisine as New Zealand-born chef Ben Shewry. And there are even fewer who have managed to combine that passion with the highest echelons of success. On this episode of Read This , Michael sits down with Attica’s head chef to discuss his new memoir, Uses for Obsession. expect. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 19, 2024•30 min•Ep. 1375
The government led by Anthony Albanese is a timid troupe of shivers looking for a spine to run up. That’s the assessment from the Labor wise men who gather for lunch in Sydney once a month – Paul Keating, Bob Carr, John Faulkner and other warriors of the past – who claim the government is too cautious and defensive. For many Labor insiders, both in Canberra and across the country, the carping from the sidelines is an annoying distraction they wish would go away. But there are some within the Alb...
Oct 17, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1374
According to Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Zali Burrows, he is “arguably Australia’s most hated man”. Burrows also told a federal court that her client is too “scared” to attend court, and his reputation has been so tarnished that “the only shot he’d probably ever have in making money is by going on OnlyFans or something silly like that”. Lehrmann has launched an appeal after a defamation trial judge ruled in favour of Network Ten, finding on the balance of probabilities that he raped Brittany Higgins...
Oct 16, 2024•16 min•Ep. 1373
Alice Springs is littered with “For Sale” signs as those who can afford it are packing up and leaving. Punitive government curfews made daily life more challenging, and families struggle to see a future for themselves if things continue the way they are. With the newly elected Country Liberal Party promising to be even tougher on crime – and lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old – more government interventions are on the way. But there’s also the story of those who stay to ...
Oct 15, 2024•29 min•Ep. 1372
Police are everywhere in Alice Springs. You see them driving pursuit vehicles and caged vans on the streets, or stationed outside the bottle shop checking IDs. But more police doesn’t mean less crime – it just means more people are getting locked up. As Alice Springs reels from the police shooting of Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker, and in the wake of an apology from the Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy for systemic racism, Daniel James wants to find out whether it's poss...
Oct 14, 2024•32 min•Ep. 1371
From afar, Alice Springs is a whirlpool of myth and truth. A town with competing interests and few solutions, marked by chaos and decades of government overreach. That all came to a head earlier this year, with what’s been described as a “youth riot” in town. The violence led to the Northern Territory government imposing an emergency curfew. This is when the headlines started: in cities and towns across Australia, we read about a “crisis” about “rampages”. One newspaper described the kids here a...
Oct 13, 2024•30 min•Ep. 1370
Malcolm Knox began his career as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald , back in the 90s. His breakout was in 2004 when, as literary editor, he broke the story of the fake Jordanian memoirist, Norma Khouri for which he won a Walkley Award. Since then he has written more than a dozen books of nonfiction and has been publishing fiction since 2000. On this episode of Read This , Malcolm sits down with Michael to discuss his seventh and latest novel, The First Friend . See omnystudio.com/listen...
Oct 12, 2024•23 min•Ep. 1369
The war in the Middle East is dominating Australian politics. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton spent the week attacking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – claiming he disrespected the Jewish community when he included calls for de-escalation and a ceasefire in a condolence motion to mark the one-year anniversary of October 7. But there are signs that Dutton’s attacks aren’t landing, and that he’s become too focused on the Middle East conflict at the expense of pressing issues closer to home. Today,...
Oct 10, 2024•18 min•Ep. 1368
A five-minute drive from the cliff where Ben Roberts-Smith allegedly murdered Afghan farmer Ali Jan, there is a small mud-brick room used for storing almonds. It was in this room, locals say, that a separate group of Australian soldiers killed two Afghan men in a shocking and brutal way. Despite the intense publicity around the killing of Ali Jan, almost nothing has been heard about what happened in the almond room, and nobody has been held accountable. Today, anthropologist and writer Michelle ...
Oct 09, 2024•19 min•Ep. 1367
For two-and-a-half years, Ukraine has been fighting Russia with the goal of “total victory” – to not only beat President Vladimir Putin’s forces back to the border, but to reclaim all territory annexed by Russia since 1991. But as both President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin’s popularity and resources fade, and as another winter approaches, it’s possible that a more pragmatic end to the war could be in sight. Today, editor-in-chief of The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes, on what it would take for ...
Oct 08, 2024•19 min•Ep. 1366
Protecting Australia’s environment is a matter of urgency – or at least that’s the message the Albanese government campaigned on two and a half years ago. But now, with environmental legislation stalling in the Senate and a series of announcements lacking detail, there’s a sense that the government’s priorities have shifted. Today, director of the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program Polly Hemming, on the rhetoric of “nature positivity” and the inaction it hides. Socials: Stay in tou...
Oct 07, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1365
One year on from the October 7 attacks against Israel, the region is bracing for more war. It seems almost certain Israel will launch a retaliatory attack against Iran, after it fired ballistic missiles at Israel last week. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Israel continued its airstrikes on Lebanon, with multiple explosions reported in the suburbs of the capital Beirut. Today, Israel correspondent for The Economist Anshel Pfeffer on where the Middle East is headed, and how, or if, the fighting can e...
Oct 06, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1364
Charlotte Wood became a mainstay in Australia’s literary firmament in 2016 following the release of her award-winning novel, The Natural Way of Things . Her latest book, Stone Yard Devotional , is a meditation on grief, solitude, what it means to live a good life, and what we owe one another. It has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. On this episode of Read This , Michael sits down with Charlotte to discuss her new book, and she shares the psychic catastrophe that informed its final for...
Oct 05, 2024•26 min•Ep. 1363
There’s a greater than 50 per cent chance that there will be a terrorist attack – or a planned attack – in Australia in the next year. That’s the reality behind the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s recent decision to upgrade the nation’s terror threat level to “probable”. So the need for all states and territories to be working on a united strategy with the federal government to prevent terrorist attacks is greater than ever. But that’s not what’s happening. The states...
Oct 03, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1362
As much as they would hate to admit it, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fit the definition of “coastal elite”. The United States presidential candidates are a wealthy New York businessman and reality TV star running against a San Francisco liberal with a career in public office. That’s why they’re both hoping their vice-presidential candidates and running mates will speak to a specific group of voters – the blue collar, working class area of the Midwest. And yesterday’s debate showed that bo...
Oct 02, 2024•19 min•Ep. 1361
