It’s 1980s Australia and everyone wants to be seen with billionaire power couple Christopher and Pixie Skase. They have it all – money, power, fame and big hair. Then, in the blink of an eye, they don’t. This is the story of Australia’s most famous fugitive entrepreneur, his epic fall from grace and the multi-million-dollar chase for Skase.
It's May 1971, and Qantas flight 755 takes off from Sydney on a routine flight to Hong Kong. Then a man calls the airline, saying he wants a half a million dollars, or else 'the plane will blow up'. The public anxiously watch the skies above Sydney, as bomb experts are called in, and the plane's fuel runs dangerously low. How can someone hold a plane full of passengers to ransom? Host Richard Roxburgh takes a deep dive into the events of that fateful day.
Is he a baronet or a butcher from Wagga Wagga? Can he claim the estate of an English aristocrat thought to be lost at sea? Throughout the 1870s, this question attracted global attention, and was the subject of one of the longest, most sensational court cases Britain had ever seen. Guests: Robyn Annear (author) The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant Zadie Smith (author) The Fraud Claire Campbell (former) Wagga Wagga head librarian and Tichborne aficionado Credi...
One of Australia’s craftiest counterfeiters forges two million dollars in his suburban basement in the 1950s. Richard Roxburgh, renowned for playing shady characters on screen, tells the story of Robert Baudin and his brazen ability to make fake money.
After help from the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, the people of Rongelap atoll, in the Marshall Islands, have a new, safer place to live. But at what cost? What does the future hold for them? And will they ever be able to go home? Credits: Writer, producer, host: James Nokise Writer, script editor: Sophie Townsend Writer, producer: Justin Gregory Head ABC Radio Australia: Justine Kelly Executive Editor Audio RNZ: Tim Watkin Content Director ABC Radio Australia: Faleagafulu Inga Stünzner RNZ ...
It’s July 1985, and public anger is at its peak in New Zealand, as the hunt begins for those responsible for bombing the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. Shockwaves ripple around the globe once it’s discovered who is behind the attack.
By 1985, nearly four decades after the US nuclear testing in the Pacific's Marshall Islands, advocate Jeton Anjain has had enough. He decides to act to save his people of Rongelap Atoll. And with the help of some well-connected friends, he pulls off one of the great humanitarian feats of the 20th century.
In the days following the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear detonation, the people of Rongelap, in the Marshall Islands, desperately need help. But when that help arrived, it came with something they didn’t expect and never agreed to.
The Atomic age arrives in the Marshall Islands as the US turns the region into a nuclear testing ground. But after one massive detonation, nothing will ever be the same for the people of Rongelap Atoll.
The crew of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior should have felt safe and welcome when they arrived in Auckland, New Zealand in July 1985. Instead they became the target of a violent attack, which led one person dead. But why – what is the twisted back-story to these events, which led to spies, secrets and bombs?
Miyakatsu Koike was a mild-mannered Japanese bank official who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was working in Surabaya in Indonesia when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Koike was arrested by the Dutch East Indies authorities and sent to Loveday detention camp in South Australia where he spent four long years behind the wire.
Italian anarchist Francesco Fantin fled Mussolini's Italy for the freedom of the Queensland cane-fields, only to find himself locked up in a detention camp in wartime Australia, surrounded by his political enemies.
The extraordinary tale of one man's mind-bendingly long kayak journey that begins in Germany and ends up in an Australian Detention camp during World War 2.
The story of one of Australia's most misunderstood criminals. With nothing to lose, Raymond Denning escapes Grafton prison in a rubbish bin. He has help from prisoner rights groups, and a desire to expose police corruption. The man-hunt for Denning turns farcical when he uses the media to make the police look foolish.
The story of one of Australia's most misunderstood criminals. After a traumatic childhood, Raymond Denning jumps from 'juvie' to jail. When an escape attempt goes wrong, a prison warder is critically injured and the finger is pointed at Denning.
Asbestos was once known as the wonder mineral. It's now banned in Australia. But before that happened, companies kept making asbestos products despite growing evidence of its deadly dust and a mounting death toll.
When a vast coal seam was found running through the escarpment around the NSW town of Wollongong it seemed that this beautiful part of Australia had got lucky. But had it? Van Badham heads back to her hometown to explore the deadly cost of coal mining for those who worked the pit.
Van Badham explores the human cost of mining in Australia across the past 2 centuries. Gold may have made Australia rich, but historians are now digging up evidence about the devastating impact of the silica dust that surfaced with it.
This episode explores the shift towards advertising with a social conscience in Australia, focusing on the battle against tobacco advertising in the 1970s. It details the strategies employed by both tobacco companies and health campaigners, including the use of imagery and humor. The episode also covers the rise of social marketing and its impact on issues like drink driving, highlighting the effectiveness of advertising as a tool for social change.
The hunt is on for the winning TV ad — the one that keeps the client happy and the consumers consuming. What's the right method for making the perfect advertisement? In 1970 a young bloke called John Singleton thought he had the answer. Host Dee Madigan continues her adventures through the vaults of Australian advertising.
It’s the 1970s and we're entering Australia's golden age of advertising. The Aussie larrikin makes his TV appearance and liquid lunches get longer. Salaries get bigger and the egos to match them. Join host Dee Madigan as she digs through the history of advertising in Australia.
Join host Dee Madigan for a wild ride through the golden days of Australian advertising. When TV arrived in Australia in 1956, it brought American ad agencies, international sophistication and the rise of the cultural cringe.
In this bonus episode Jan Fran and historian Dr Geraldine Fela discuss how the waterfront dispute has shaped the way we work in Australia today. 27 years later work is more precarious – casual and fixed term jobs have grown, the kind of work we do has changed and employers now have more power over employees. Politics and industrial relations were also changed by the dispute and unions have learned to fight in a very different way.
Was the Howard government the puppet master of the Waterfront dispute? Host Jan Fran reveals new evidence that provides some answers to questions that’ve dogged Australian politics for 27 years.
After Patrick Stevedores sacks its 1,400 maritime union workers the waterfront dispute turns into a courtroom drama as the legal teams battle it out in the Federal Court before heading all the way to the High Court.
The Maritime Union knows Patrick Stevedores is building up to a dramatic move. But it’s shocked when the company sends in balaclava-clad security guards and dogs to forcibly lock out workers in the dark of night. The union's lawyers take the company to the Federal Court where Patrick drops a bombshell on day one of the hearing.
After the collapse of the Dubai plan Patrick Stevedore's boss Chris Corrigan turns to Plan B, training fresh-faced farmers to work as wharfies. The MUA suspect the farmers will take their jobs and so create chaos at the gates of Patricks’ Webb Dock to stop the farmers getting through. Meanwhile the heat remains on Corrigan to fess up to his masterminding of Dubai.
After the collapse of the Dubai plan Patrick Stevedore's boss Chris Corrigan turns to Plan B, training fresh-faced farmers to work as wharfies. The MUA suspect the farmers will take their jobs and so create chaos at the gates of Patricks’ Webb Dock to stop the farmers getting through. Meanwhile the heat remains on Corrigan to fess up to his masterminding of Dubai.
When the Opposition Labor Party breaks the news in Parliament about a secret group of ‘industrial mercenaries’ training in Dubai to take over the wharfies' jobs some big questions are asked: who exactly is behind the training operation, and is the government involved?
When Patrick Stevedores locks out and fires 1400 wharfies overnight on April 8, 1998, it divides the country. But behind all this is a story of high drama and political intrigue, a complex web of double dealing and high-stakes leaks. It's no secret that the Howard government wants waterfront reform but what role is it playing in Patrick owner Chris Corrigan's "revolution"?
