Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm joined by britt on the other side. I'm on the other side of the world, and yes, i am Brittany. Thank you for introducing me. Laura. You've never done that before. I didn't. I don't really know what to do with it.
Okay, Well, last episode you made a big song and dance about how I never do anything different, so I thought i'd try something different. And now you're really thrown So which one is it going to be, Babe?
Which one? Maybe try something different, but give me the heads up. You're gonna try something different, but just like bear with me, britt I'm going to try something No, that's cool. I'm Brittany. This is Laura. This is my co host, Laura. This is Tuesday's episode. This is our big, meaty and in Laura's words, very very very special episode. Well.
I was gonna try and avoid saying that it's a special episode, but the truth is it really is a special episode today. But before we get into the episode, I just want to.
Make you all aware. I know a great number of you have been listening to the Batch Uncut recaps and this is our home run. Guys.
We are down to finale week this week, and I'm feeling good in Maloyan's I can't wait.
Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa whoah, that's too much information.
Brit It hasn't watched a single episode, so we can't even We can't even talk to her about it.
She doesn't care. She's left us. No, it's something. Look, I will always care about the Bachelor. It was like my foundation, Like I'm better than that now, BLA. I don't need you, Bachelor, No I do, Please, I'll need you. I having followen along social media, I feel like there are so many I mean, I get the recaps from you guys, and I get so many social media recaps. I feel like I have covered all bases. I feel like I know who's gonna win, which I obviously don't.
I feel like I know all the tumultuous situations that have happened. And I don't want anyone to think that I've given up on my Bachelor family, because I absolutely have not. Well, we have been saying this entire time.
Matt and I have no more insight other than our sparty senses as to who's gonna win, he's been saying, Jay and I am just so ready for my girl Holly to bring it on down to the winning town. I don't even know where else going with that, but she's gonna get it. She's gonna make a home run. She's gonna get a man, and I can't wait for Thursday Nights. But anyway, we've got a few things to cover off before we get to Bachelor.
What's been happening in your life this week, Laura, surely you have some exciting updates for me.
Oh yeah, look, we're heading into week what never ending infinity of Lockdown in Sydney. I had some pretty disappointing news actually, which if you are one of my very close friends who listens to this podcast and you've been invited to my wedding, I'm sorry that I'm telling the podcast world before I sent you an email to let you know, I'm like ninety nine point nine percent sure that Matt and I are going to have to postpone
our wedding. Yeah, BRIT's finding out now for the first time, I really am.
This is how it happens. This is how I got my wedding invitation as well. Nothing's changed, It's literally how I get all my information from Laura. I'm like, okay, cool. So we were holding, you know, waiting, We've baited breath to see if you had to postpone the wedding or not, and it looks like you have to, does it. Well.
Also, the thing is is if we didn't postpone, there'd be a very good chance that you wouldn't be able to come like at the moment, and I don't think you guys are even aware of this, but like Britt physically can't come home, Like there's no flights at the moment for Britt to get back. She was actually supposed to be arriving back in the country pretty much this week and then going into two weeks quarantine. But we've been spending like the last gosh like two months trying to figure out a way to.
Get her home.
And unfortunately, for the next unforeseeable future, this is just the situation that we're in and we're going to keep on doing these zoom recordings. But yeah, a big thing now is with Matt, like a big part of his family, his mum and all his brothers, they all live in Brisbane, and so we didn't want to have a wedding, or we don't want to go ahead with a wedding unless it's the sort of wedding that we want to have,
you know. And it is really disappointing, but I kind of I mean, I feel like so many people have experienced their own COVID hardships, and I know that there are so many people who listen to this podcast who have had to postpone their weddings over the past. Yeah, and yeah, I just I mean, it freaking sucks, is what it does. But like it's just a part of the modern world that we live in. Unfortunately.
Do you think that you will reschedule a date or is it just not worth it for now? Is it just like an indefinite pushback and you'll see what happens to the new year. I don't know.
I feel like the problem is is that because everybody's in the same boat and everyone's weddings are getting postponed, it's a situation where you almost have to try and figure out a date quickly because all the dates next year and then the year after getting booked out. But you know, one thing I think that we are lucky for, and I guess this is the thing that I've been
thinking about. Which has made me less sad about the whole fact that we have to push the wedding out is that I know a lot of people when they get married, they're getting married because they think to themselves, Okay, well, once we're married, we're gonna start our life. We're gonna have our kids, we're gonna, you know, do all the big life milestones. And for us, we've kind of already done that, Like we had the kids, we did everything
in reverse. So I know that we just we just want to have a big, old, massive party.
And so until we can have a party where everyone can dare, everyone can embrace each other, no one has to wear a mask. Yeah, until that can happen, I think we're just gonna have to put on hold. So I said, if you're someone who's invited to my wedding, I promise you'll get an email with the real updates soon. Okay. Well that's also great because this would have been me also RSVP to you saying I probably can't come now, even if you were holding it. So I'm glad we stopped this information on air.
Could you imagine, though, Could you imagine if I had a wedding and you didn't come, like what.
Well, I actually from what's happening at the moment, I don't think. No, I know I wouldn't have been I know that the flights there are no flights for the next like eight weeks. It's insane. It's is there's nothing I'd have to swim back. So I actually would not have made your wedding. So it's probably for the best, Laura, not to you. I only appreciate it because of you. I actually have something I want to ask you. Whilst
we're on the topic of weddings. This is something that I don't know if you have seen, but it's circulated online at the moment. Now, there was a couple in America that had a wedding. They put out all their RSVPs. Everyone said they were coming. They put out one more like last call out, this is one hundred percent the last time. Are you sure you're coming to our wedding? Everyone ticked yes. They had the wedding. On the day of the wedding, their cousin who had children, the children
got sick. Now, on the wedding invitation, it was strictly no children, so the children got sick. The babysitter couldn't look after the kids anymore. I mean, you're also not going to bring sick kids to a wedding anyway, So the babysitter can't come. The kids are sick, the parents physically can't go. They're like, we can't go, so they don't go. One month later, they receive in the mail
an invoice. And the invoice was from the couple that got married, and it was a legitimate business invoice, and it had the topic wedding no show, pay for meal, the yeah, and the wedding yeah. And the invoice was for two hundred and fifty dollars. They were invoicing them. They said, you RSVP that you were coming. You failed to show your meal per head cost two hundred and fifty dollars these bank details. Please also fill out the
reason why you did not attend. Now this has gone bonkers online and I wanted to know what your thoughts were on this, because when I first I mean like, I actually don't know how I feel. I know deep down how I feel, but when I first read it and saw the invoice, I was like, how could you send that? How could you get married and then start to build people for your wedding, And then I had a little part of me that was like, well, fuck, it's two hundred and fifty dollars ahead. Someone said they
were coming, so you paid for the meal. Then they didn't come. I was like, that's pretty shitty. And now I'm a bit of a fens sitter. I still think that you can't ask for the money. But I was a bit like, I don't know. I want to know what the world thinks good.
I think this is good. I think we should be doing this more. Look, I have a question. Did the person just do a no show or like they obviously didn't call or send a message to the couple who was getting married and say, hey, my kids are sick.
We're not coming like that.
It seems like a very fatal part of the conversation is missing here.
That's a good question. I actually don't I'm going to assume. I don't know. I'm going to assume, because surely they wouldn't have I'm going to assume at least a text message went out being like Bobby and Jane are sick. We're not gonna make it today.
Okay, Look, if it's sick kids and you have let the couple know, then I think it's wildly outrageous that you're asking them to pay for it. But if there is a no if they're just a no show and there's no explanation and you're kind of okay with burning your tires with old Uncle Bob and Arnie Cathy, fucking go for gold.
I am all for this.
Weddings are expensive, and I also think like, why is it the weddings or of a different caliber? Like if it was my birthday, for example, and I had said, like, hey, guys, it's sixty dollars ahead, can you please RSVP and make sure that you're coming, and then four of my friends just didn't show up and I had to pay for
their sixty dollars ahead and they were no shows. I would want one hundred percent send them a text and be like, hey, you owe me sixty bucks, like you said you were coming and I just had to pay two hundred and forty dollars because you didn't come to my birthday. Like that's not cool, are we friends?
Like?
Would you still do that? If they were supposed to come to dinner and exact, one of their little toddlers got horrifically sick and she had to take them to a hospital. Would you still say no? No? Of course, not of course.
But also I feel like if they just didn't tell me and I didn't know the answer or the reasoning, then my reaction to it because the context is important, right, I think that this is the take home message. Context in every situation is important, and without having any context, you just think your auntie and your uncle ghosted you.
You'd been pretty fucking bad if you don't have context and punctuation and things like that. My uncle Jack doff a horse turns into my uncle Jack duffer horse. Do you get that, saint? My uncle Jack goff a horse, my uncle Jack off the horse. Anyway, that was just something that I remembered from like my childhood. Sorry I continue, so I have a story. You can tell me whether I'm a bad person. I kind of was a no show to a wedding, which I think is the fucking
rudest thing you can ever do. So do not like you didn't tell them, guys, wait for it.
This was not intentional. However, it caused a huge riff in our friendship. Maybe I was the asshole and I need you guys to tell me if I'm the asshole.
Okay.
So a girlfriend who I had been friends with for a couple of years. We were more like acquaintance friends. She was the sort of friend who I'd go out partying with, but she was definitely not the sort of friend that we would never catch up for coffee, but we would party together. I would see her on a Saturday night maybe once every few months. And then I went a couple of years without seeing her. You know, my life changed.
I met Matt.
We didn't really connect for ages, and then I ran into her the New Year's just after Matt and I got together, so we'd only been together for a few months, and I ran into her at the news party. Had a great night, like she's such a great girl and I love her as a person. And she texted me the next day and said, Hey, do you want to come to my wedding? And I was like, yeah, when's your wedding? And she said the date, and then that
was the whole conversation. So she was like give me She was like, give me your address, I'll send you an invite.
She didn't send an invite. Yeah, a couple of months later, I mean I never got an invite. And so I just assumed that that was like she was just over excited about the fact that we had seen each other the night before. I was like, I don't really think she's gonna send me an invite, Like it's a throwaway comment. You were like, yeah, when you just like we should
catch up sometimes. Sure, you know you never going to catch up, like you know it, let's get coffee, come to my wedding, you know, same saying tomato tomato.
So I thought it was just her being nice anyway, or I thought that she had thought about it, didn't want to invite me, and then didn't want to have that awkward conversation of like, actually, sorry, I thought about it, I don't want you to come. So I never got an invitation. And then fast forward a couple of months, I get a text message from her and it was, hey, I just want to know why you didn't show up to my wedding.
Oh my god. And you were like, what fucking wedding. We're not actually having coffee. We're not having the coffee. I was like, what are you talking about?
And she said, I sent you an invite, you said you were coming, And I was like, whoa wa, well, I said I was coming on text. I never received an invite ever, and that's why I didn't come. And she was like, but you had said you were coming, And I said, I was sending you an invite, so wouldn't you let me know if you didn't receive an invite?
And I was like, I don't know who's in the.
Wrong, but I didn't show up to her wedding and she has never spoken to me since.
So is she saying is she trying to say that she sent you the invite and I got lost in the mail. I'm gonna call her bluff. I think she didn't send you an invite. I think she sent you the text and then thought that was invite and forgot. And then when you called around and said I never got an invite, she's like, oh, we shouldn't. You should have told me you didn't get it. Like things don't really get lost in the mail anymore, Like they just don't. I don't know.
See, I actually genuinely I think back on this whole thing, she never sent me the details of the wedding, so it's not like I had where to go any of that sort of stuff. I genuinely think she sent me an invite. She was mad when she texted me, And to this day, I still think about it sometimes and I'm like, I'm that person who was.
A no show. There was like a place Matt for me and Matt at her wedding and we just didn't show up.
Oh my god, I'm like scared, this is gonna come back and bite me in the ass. Anyway, guys, let us tell you what is happening on today's episode. This is Oh, this is such a big episode that we are bringing you today.
For those of you who.
Follow along on at Instagram at Life on Cut podcast, you would have seen that on Sunday we were recommending for you guys to go and watch a documentary. It was called Incarceration Nation. It came out on SBS and it was a documentary aired by NITV. Now, if you haven't seen it, you can go back and watch it on SBS Digital. We so hugely recommend that you watch this documentary so that you can fully understand what this episode is about. But we're interviewing Krly, who is the
CEO and co founder of Deadly Connections and Justice Services Limited. Now, Carli is a proud at Worajeri woman, she's from southern New South Wales, and she talks extensively about the overrepresentation
of First Nation people who are incarcerated in Australia. Now, these statistics behind this are incredibly harrowing, and like I said, please go and watch the documentary so that you do get a really full understanding, because there is so much to cover, and unfortunately in this interview we aren't able to cover all of it, but we do get a greater insight into Carl's life, into what her and her husband Keenan, have experienced, and also into what the three
percent of our population, three percent of our population who are the Indigenous population, what they are experiencing.
But one thing I do.
Want to touch on here is that this is not just a conversation around the incarceration of adults, but there is a really important part of this conversation which touches on the incarceration of children. There is also conversation around domestic violence and how the current systems that we have in Australia are failing our First Nation people. So this
is a huge episode for us. We know that some of this is going to be very heavy listening, but we really hope that you can take something away from this, and like I said, there is a content warning on this. We do touch on some pretty heavy topics. So if this isn't an episode that you feel in the right head frame to listen to, maybe it's something you can come back to later, and that's okay too. But we do really think that this is such.
An important topic.
We feel really proud to be able to do this interview, and like we said, we recommend going on watching the SBS documentary when you fill up for it as well.
With that being said, guys, we are not going to be doing Accidentally Unfiltered on today's episode, but you know how much we love them, so we will be bringing them to you on Thursday's Ask Uncut episode. Now, let's meet Kyi. On Sunday night, NITV at a documentary called Incarceration Nation. You can find it now on SBS on demand. But here is what the documentary is about.
Why did it take George floyd sad and tragic, horrible death to bring any attention to what's happening right here right in front of us in Australia. There's been a history of violence in this country from that date when the ships arrived.
Until we deal with the truth of this place and the lies of this place, we're going to continue to see more of the same.
We are probably the most highly legislated race.
You got to really ask yourself the question, how's it work. We started out as a penal colony and we've continued to be whenever since.
It's an injustice to have Australia's original inhabitants thirteen times more likely to end up in prison. In no other community will you see somebody walking to collect their mail and being stopped by police and ask what are you doing? Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are amongst the most incarcerated people in the world, whilst representing three point three
percent of the Australian population. First Nations men make up about twenty seven percent of prisoners and First Nations women constitute thirty four percent of prisoners. There have been at least four hundred and seventy eight deaths of First Nations people in custody in Australia from nineteen ninety one to twenty twenty one, and there have been no criminal convictions for the accused, absolutely none. Four hundred and seventy eight
deaths and no criminal convictions. Incarceration Nation puts First nations voices front and center as they fight for change, visibility, and equality. Joining us today is Carlie Stanley, the CEO and co founder of Deadly Connections and Justice Services Limited, a proud we Raaderi woman. We see Carlie feature throughout the SBS documentary. Carlie, Welcome to Life Uncut.
Thank you. I'm very very happy to be here, Carli.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your childhood was like, where you grew up and what your family makeup is.
So I was raised by my mum, who is also a Roderi woman. I was raised in the inner City in a west of Sydney. Yeah, I had a happy childhood I had. My mum was one of ten children, so we came from a very very large family unit and my family was one of the first Aboriginal families to sort of move from the country to the inner city, even though we remain very much connected to our culture
through our family ties and our kinship networks. Growing up in a big family, I guess there was lots of different things happening, and I felt very loved and I felt very protected. But I now understand that there was a significant amount of intergenerational trauma within my family, and that you know, manifested in many different ways. I had family members who were just as involved, and also, you know, some family members who didn't drink or smoke or do anything,
but then some that did drink and smoke and do drugs. So, you know, I have a lot of fond memories, but I also had, you know, trauma growing up as well.
Carlie, just something you just said, just to clarify for people in case they don't know what it is, intergenerational trauma. You just mentioned that there was a lot of that within your family. Can you just give us a little rundown on what you mean by that term.
Yeah, so intergenerational trauma would be explained as trauma that's carried on through generations. So when we think about colonization Aboriginal people, I sort of explain that as Aboriginal people being in a constant state of grief, loss, and trauma.
First of all through loss of culture, displacement from country, you know, removal of children, and all of the things that have happened to Obiginal people, and then that gets passed down unresolved through generations and generations, so it's almost, you know, you could explain that as well as like, you know, we're born grieving because of the loss that we've experienced.
I think one of the things that Britt and I spoke about after watching the documentary is, and I don't even know what other way to say it, except that it's embarrassing that I learned more about Aboriginal and Indigenous history and what happened in our country than what I learned in school, just from watching a one and a
half hour documentary. I think that there is this huge lack of understanding and awareness, and therefore there is this lack of understanding of what intergenerational trauma actually is and how that manifests itself. Now, Carli, you are the CEO of Deadly Connections and Justice Services Limited. Can you tell us a little bit about what is Deadly Connections and sort of how you go about helping the Indigenous community.
Yeah, So, Deadly Connections Community and Justice Services Limited is an Aboriginal community controlled organization that was established by my husband Keenan Mundine and I in September of twenty eighteen. So we're coming up to our three year anniversary. You know, we started Deadly Connections in community response to the overrepresentation of our people in the justice and child protection systems.
I mean, I've worked in the community services sector for over twenty years, particularly in the justice space, and my husband has lived experience of actually being in both the child protection system and the justice systems, and we just seen the pain and you know, the unfair treatment that our people would get. We thought like, how can we support our mob and how can we do things differently? And that's how Deadly Connections was born.
I think everybody knows this. Australia was colonized by the British and it's been mentioned in the documentary this word that we were a penal colony. Can you explain to us what that means. One of the big messagings that was driven home is that Australia is still effectively a penal colony, which I think would come as a surprise to a lot of people that sort of wording and terminology. Can you explain what that means and why that's case.
The majority of Australia knows that when the first fleet arrived in seventeen eighty eight, it was understood to be a penal colony, so that convicts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were sent over to avoid the death penalty and that was their solution to their imprisonment crisis that was going on over there and over the next eighty years. So from seventeen eighty eight for the next eighty years, there was over one hundred and sixty thousand convicts sent
to Australia. And it still is being used as a method to regulate and control rather than actually deal with the social issues that create crime. We've been very good at just locking people up and expecting them to learn their lesson. And that's I guess what when we talk about a penal colony and the way that it's continued,
that's what we're referencing. I mean, I guess there's a misunderstanding amongst the wider public around prisons and what happens in prisons and the way that locking people up is supposed to keep us safer. But in real police and prisons are not effective crime prevention tool because they become involved once the crimes being committed. What we want to do is resources the community so that crimes don't need
to be committed with the penal colony. There's such I think, you know, the law and order rhetoric lock them up, and it doesn't work for us. Our numbers are the highest they've ever been. And the thing is a lot of people think that it's because crime's going up. We've got some of the lowest crime rates in over twenty years. But the bail systems and the laws that people have to answer to when they appear for the core are changing, and they're the things that they're driving the numbers through
the roof for prison numbers, not crime. A lot of the times when Aboriginal people are coming into contact with the criminal justice system, it's either for violence or for crimes of survival, so stealing and being able to support themselves. And a lot of the things that people are being put in custody for, like there's a number of women on nonviolent drug offenses that are in custody that to
me is such a waste of resources. You know, what they need is drugging, alcohol treatment, not to be incarcerated away from their children. And it's the same. You know, we talk about nonviolent and violent offenders, and the reality is whether they're violent or nonviolent, sending them to jail is only going to increase the violence. It's not going
to deal with anything. We are seeing that a lot of young people are going into custody for really petty crimes and crimes of survival, and that is not helpful. Because they're going into prisons where they're taught other skills from other people who are also engaging in criminal activity. They're not having their trauma delt with. They're not able
to access supports, mental health supports, counseling, supports, healing. They're not able to access any of the things that we know help contribute to a pro social member of society.
Carly, can you just explain to us a little bit about how you think stereotypes have impacted the overrepresentation of First Nations people that are currently incarcerated.
I think for as long as the wider public belief give the stereotypes of Aboriginal people that are so widely disseminated through media, through incorrect discourse, that they'll support the fact that the majority of our men are in custody and the majority of our women are now the fastest rising prison population in the world. So for as long as people believe that Aboriginal people have nothing to offer other than the fact that they're drunks or they can't
see anywhere else where we can fit into society. And in fact, if people actually took the time to come into community and to meet Aboriginal people for themselves, they would see that that's not who we are for the people that are engaging in that stuff coming from a deep place of hurt and trauma and no other skills to do things differently, and that's what we want to do.
We're not saying that there are not challenges that we need to address, but we're saying give us the resources and tools to address them in the way that we know how and stop relying on outside people to fix the stuff that we know what's going on.
In the documentary, we were shown that there were young First Nations people that were arrested and put into prison for things like, like you just said, survival crimes. They were stealing bread rolls, They had stolen thirty cents from somebody's car. And I mean, some people might say that I can't say what I'm about to say, but I can almost guarantee you a white child that stole a bread roll would not go to prison and a white child that stole thirty cents from a car would not go to prison.
Yeah, I mean, I agree, And I think that's something that our community sees so often, the disparity between sentencing, where you know, we've got an Aboriginal person and a non Aboriginal person convicted of the same crime with different sentences. It's nothing new to us. But I guess what this documentary is highlighting is making that information readily available for everybody else, which we've always known.
You did mention your husband earlier, and we were introduced to Keenan's story in the documentary. He shared his incredibly traumatic childhood story and how he went on to be incarcerated several times himself later in life. Can you tell us a little bit about his story, what happened and also what happened in his life to break that cycle.
The reason why I asked that is because the statistics around when somebody has been incarcerated, the possibility and the likelihood that they will go on to commit new crimes and be incarcerated again is so high, and it just goes to show that this is a system that isn't built on rehabilitation, but it's a system that's built on punishment, and it's obviously a system that is so incredibly flawed.
Yeah, so I think my husband's story is one of many, but a really important way to highlight the type of people who are in jails at the moment, and that's men and women, men and women who have had and this is across the board, not just for Abriiginal people. It's exacerbated for our people, but across the board, we've got men and women in custody who have got significant
traumatic childhoods. And as we spoke about with intergenerational trauma, you know, it's manifesting into drug use, it's manifesting into criminal activity to support the drug use, and it sort
of goes from there. So my husband grew up in a large Abiginal community in Redfern called the Block, and he lost both of his parents by the age of seven and placed into kinship care and sort of split up from his siblings because they couldn't take them all at once, so they all went to different family members.
And you know, the family at the time didn't really have the skills to understand the trauma that my husband had been through, and they thought that by just giving him a house and a bed that he'd be okay, and obviously he wasn't, and he had so many other things going on and wanting to be reconnected to his brothers, and you know, as he became an adolescent, he had more questions. He had all this unresolved trauma that had never been dealt with, as many teenagers do, starts experimenting
with drugs and alcohol. Wanted to go and seek out his brothers, so gravitated back towards Redfern, where there was a number of people already involved in criminal activity and drug use, and that's who he felt supported and where he felt he belonged. And he went into custody for
the first time at the age of fourteen. That was for stealing a laptop from a car to be able to feed himself, to be able to clode himself, because by this time he was homeless and the people that were caring for him didn't want him in the house anymore. So he left and tried to find his brothers, and then that started his journey with the criminal justice system, and he spent more than half of his life in
and out of both juvenile and adult custody. I met him in a very very short period where he was in the community for six weeks in between custodial sentences when he was still sort of unhealed and unsupported. And he returned to custody when he was twenty five and
came back out when he was twenty eight. But in that time between twenty five and twenty eight he'd met me, but it had also gone into a therapeutic treatment center within custody, which was the first time that he'd been able to understand his trauma and the way that it manifested and the way that that pushed him towards criminal activity and drug use and the wrong your associations in the role modeling, and yeah, and then he decided that's not what he wanted, and from that moment on he
tried to turn his offer. And it hasn't been easy. He's still on that journey.
And I think one of the big things that like a lot of people have heard this saying before, but it's like, do the crime, do the time. And I think that that's a very black and white way of looking at the world when we think about that, and we think about that saying it doesn't take into account people's circumstances and the reasoning behind why these crimes are
being committed. Not all crimes are committed equally. They're very very different, and if one is out of desperation, out of homelessness, out of lack of education, or out of lack of support, there should be a very different outcome in the way that we treat people other than just locking them up and punishing them, because it doesn't really deal with the root cause. It discussed a lot as well,
the privatization of the justice system. How we do have private jails in Australia in the very same way that we have them in the States. And I think a lot of Australians would be aware that the States have private jails, but maybe not that Australia does.
Why is that such a huge problem.
Well, I think any business structure that relies on having people in cells to profit is problematic. We see it with the We call it the prison industrial complex, and it's something that's been highlighted in the US very very well. If anybody's seen the documentary thirteenth, Incarceration Nation reminds me very much of that documentary and the way that it brings everything together and shows that This is a structured way of continuing to oppress marginalized peoples and continuing to
profit off marginalized peoples. When we talk about it's doing exactly what it's designed to do. It's continuing to oppress marginalized minorities. And that's what we're seeing in the strats, what we see across the globe. It's not to say that non aboriginal people don't commit crimes, look at the white collar crimes, but they're not punished in the same way. And that's what makes a difference.
One big thing that I know everyone's familiar with, and that's what rocked the world was the death of George Floyd, and so many of us watch what happened in the United States were absolutely disgusted by it. We are so aware that there is racism, that there is racial discrimination, that there is an issue within the police force and within the justice system. And we kind of watched that from Australian shaw as being like God, that the States
has really messed up. But what I don't think a lot of people may realize, and what I certainly didn't realize prior to watching this documentary, is that we have had a very similar and have had many similar situations to this.
Happened in our own shores.
And one of the stories that were sheard is the story of David Dungey, who was twenty six years old. He was in his prison cell and he was in and Use of Wales jail. He was very close to being released, only a couple of weeks away from being released, and he was in his jail cell and.
He was eating biscuits.
The guards asked him to stop, and he didn't, and almost just for that cheekiness, for disobeying an order that's been asked of him. He was then taken by six guards into another cell. He was sedated and his last words were also I can't breathe, over and over again. Now this happened in twenty fifteen. It's a story that I think so many Australians are just not aware of. And the question that I have is is why are
we so enraged by what's happening in other countries. Why are we so angry by what's happening in the States, but we aren't even aware of what's happening in Australia.
I think there's a number of factors that play there, but I mean Obviously, we've got social media now that gives us stuff in real time. So I think many many years ago that would have happened to George Floyd and we would have heard about it a week later or whenever we played catch up. But the info has always been here in Australia. Like we've had the Royal Commission to Average on destin custody thirty years ago and that made a number of recommendations that still have not
been implemented. There's a number of people who are families who are fighting for justice for their loved ones who have lost their lives to the justice system. I feel like it's in people's face. It's a bit harder now to ignore because of social media and because of you know, things that are trending. Black Lives Matter was trending just after COVID last year, and the donations for Deadly Connections surged and we've never seen since we've started Deadly Connections,
we've never seen donations like that any time since. There were protests that occurred across different parts of Australia and I think they were the biggest protests that we've ever had for movements like this, for social justice movements because I think a lot of the times it's easy to ignore things that don't directly affect you. And for a lot of the wider public, the criminal justice system isn't something they've ever thought about or isn't something they've ever
been impacted by. But for Aboriginal people, my earliest exposure to the justice system was because my family members were incarcerated, and I remember visiting them from the age of three, four or five years old with my grandmother when I was very very young, So it's normalized for us in a way. We know that the people that are in jail are not terribly bad people. There are some people that are in jail that probably need to be there,
but we know that jails aren't the answer. The reason people have to go to jail at the moment is because we don't have any other alternatives, and that's what we want to change.
A huge part of this problem is that children are at the epicenter. This means that this cycle is just going to continue until we can literally break the cycle with the next generation. We're all familiar with the stolen generation. At least I hope every one of you is familiar with the stolen generation. But the fact is Indigenous children attend times more likely to be taken from their family. So Carlie, how and why is this still happening.
Well, I mean, all of the systems that we have in Australia, the child protection systems, the legal systems, all built off the back of England's systems. So we've got a colonial system that doesn't recognize any of the laws that Aboriginal people had prior to colonization. It also doesn't recognize any of the cultural nuances or differences across different cultures, you know, but particularly for Aboriginal people, where we have different ways of doing things. We have very big families,
we have reciprocal relationships, you know, it's very different. So we're being judged by generally. If we think about a case where a child's removed, the decision to remove that child is in the hands of five or six non Aboriginal people that are bound by practices that we've inherited over the years from colonial systems, and that they don't get us. You know, they don't understand and they don't value our opinions and our knowledge of our own communities.
I mean, we've had instances where we've been supporting women very well, very intensively to try and avoid child protection removals, and they've gone in and removed without even consulting us. Sometimes we work really well with them, and we've had success where we've prevented removals of newborn babies from their mums at the hospital. We've had successes. But I guess when we're not included, and when we're not considered, it
just takes us back so far. But when we are included, we work well together, we're able to get good outcomes for families and for children. We don't want to see
any children removed. And what the government is really really good at doing is investing in the tail end of things, so once people are offending, locking them up, once people are to the point where the child needs to get removed, spending thousands, hundreds of thousands on placing this child with a non aboriginal family, rather than resourcing the family in the way that they need to be resourced.
We actually did an interview with a woman named Jess Hill recently, and Jesse works very heavily within coursive control and domestic violence, and she spoke about coercive control, and she spoke about how hugely that number of Indigenous people are affected by domestic violence within Australia. But what she mentioned is that women who may be the victims of domestic violence, the police aren't necessarily trained to deal with
how those women act or how those women behave. And there have been cases where women have called for help, caught out and actually called the police to come and support them in an instance of domestic violence, but instead of receiving that support, they have been charged for other things. They have been charged for acting in a way that maybe wasn't conducive for being a victim. But I mean, who are we to say, as a victim, this is how you need to behave?
Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean for Aboriginal communities in particular, we're matriarchal society, so we take our bloodlines from our mother. So when we've got a disruption to the matriarch, it's havoc.
That's something that the government fails to understand. And I'm really glad you sort of brought this up because there's a lot of contention with our community around coercive control, because we don't believe that the solutions are found in more legislation, because what we're concerned about is exactly what you've said. If we're criminalizing coercive control and the police get called out there's an incident, what happens is the woman will become criminalized if the story isn't given straight
and given the way it needs to be given. I think a really really good example. I mean it's not a good example. It's a heartbreaking example of the way that this work is a woman in Western Australia, Tamika Malayley. I don't know if you've heard of her. Yeah, she was a victim of domestic violence, severe domestic violence. She was attacked by her partner. At the time police were called. When they presented, she was drenched in blood. A neighbor had wrapped her in a sheet. The sheet was covered
in blood. When the police attended, she became She was distraught. She became aggressive with the police. She swore at them. She asked for her father. They didn't listen. They threw her into the back of a paddywagon. They arrested her. The perpetrator found her four month old baby, recovered the baby killed the baby while she was in custody. Her father was pleading with the police to help them to get the baby back because he knew that the baby was going to be harmed. They didn't listen to him.
The baby died, which was heartbreaking, four month old baby Charlie. And they then charged Tamika and her father with obstruction of justice and proceeded with those charges, and I believe they were found guilty.
The story of Tamika and Charlie is unbelievably horrific. And I did just mentioned Jess Hill. This is actually a really it's an interesting.
Crossover for us because Jess Hill, who has a documentary, See What You Made Me Do? I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with it. We interviewed her a little while ago. Episode number two of her documentary, See What You Made Me Do, actually tells the full story of what happened that night, and it is incredibly harrowing. If anybody hasn't gone and listened to that interview that we did with Jess Hill, it's a very important and
powerful conversation. In Incarceration Nation, we are also introduced to another girl who was abused in her foster homes, and there's twenty something foster homes that she bounced between after she was relocated and separated from her family. We do have a little grab from this from Incarceration Nation to play for you guys.
She says an assault by a care worker when she was eleven has left her traumatized. And then he just kept on look on hit me funny ways.
But I didn't think anything of it.
You know, so young still, you know, and I didn't think think of it. And then yeah, he opened his legs and his flyers down, jumped up, and I went to my room then and then I was just days and off, just hit, you know.
And as I was gone to sleep, he walked in the room, closed the door and does And then I just turned real heartless for a bit for a while, inges did whatever could to make good, good reason to get locked up, you know.
The girl who had been interviewed says that she kept reoffending so that she could go back into custody, implying that that was a better place to be. Being in custody was better than what it was being in the foster homes that she was in. Karlie, what is the noble effect of children being removed from their parents due to them being locked up?
Well, we know that for children who lose their parents to imprisonment, they have a higher likelihood of themselves being incarcerated, either as a child or an adult or both. It's perpetuating that trauma. I mean, one would have to question how much safer are these children being removed from their families instead of resourcing families with the skills and the
tools that they need to look after their children. Because what we're not understanding, particularly for original people who are part of the stolen generation, who have never experienced that organic family, there's an assumption that people are born with the capacity to parent, and that's not always the case, particularly for our communities. So one would need to question why we're not investing more into the families and why we're investing into taking children like this young girl who
experienced unbelievable abuse. You know, how have we kept this child safer? How is the system keeping our children safer? We know that this is not an isolated story. We've got incidences of children being removed from their families and being put in hotel rooms with twenty four hour support workers. To me, that's just insane. It's insane that we can't be paying somebody to live in home with them and
give these parents the skills it's needed. We know that locking people up and removing children from their families does not work, yet we continue to do it.
Why one of the big things that I think that no one could look away from, but let alone a mother watching that like the doco, was the incarceration of juveniles. Now, what the documentary explores is that there are children who have been incarcerated in our correctional facilities in Australia who have spent twenty three days straight in solitary confinement with only being allowed less than an hour outside of their tiny little cell, and that isn't even in natural daylight.
There were also children who have been very violently strip searched by correctional guards and some of the footage is just harrowing. Karli, how is this happening and how has this been happening for so long? And nobody, well, I shouldn't say nobody. I know a lot of people are very very angry about it. But why aren't more people aware of this? Because I feel like if the general population was aware of it, there would be public outcry.
I think racism in Australia plays a really big part. All you have to do is get on a post on social media where somebody's posted something outrageous, the assault of a child in custody or whatever it is, and then you see all the people on there justifying that behavior and that treatment of that child. We see a young person in the documentary, it looks like he's vandalizing the center. He's just come out of a period of solitary confinement, and that's what the media will go, these
are the people that are being locked up. Look at his behavior, but not giving the context to what's led to him behaving like that. The way that we talk about the work with young people in Deadly Connections is we don't have bad kids. We have hurt kids. A lot of the kids that are in prison, similar to the adults, come from traumatic backgrounds, and their behavior is a manifestation of their trauma and their disadvantage. And until we deal with that, we're going to continue to have
these issues. And they're not bad kids, they just need support.
This or just leads back what we were saying earlier about how incarcerating people. That we know that when someone has been incarcerated, the probability of them being incarcerated a second time increases, and especially when we see these children and the footage that you were referring to, Krli, For anybody who hasn't seen the docer yet, it is this fourteen year old boy. He has spent twenty three days.
This is the boy that I was referring to, is twenty three days in solitary confinement inside a room that is about three and a half meters by two meters. Anybody who spent that long without any natural daylight. He didn't know what time of day it was, He didn't know night from day anymore. One of the guards actually didn't lock his cell and he got out into a more common area, and that's when he vandalized the common area.
And as a punishment for that, all the boys that were in the cell, there were six of them, were tear gased in short range. And now this is I think tear gas is very different to pepys rage us, so people are aware of the significance of it and the pain that that inflicts. But that was the punishment, and that I agree with you, Carli. I think if you saw that out of context, just saw that footage, you would be like, that kid's out of control.
He deserved it.
Needs to be in there's yeah, but that's not the case. That was the hardest thing for me to watch the treatment of the kids in that movie, and it was just like we know it, we see it, but seeing it like bang bang bang, and I was like, wow, this is what people need to see, Like it's so traumatizing, but it's what people need to see. And the other thing is, you know, we're not we're not seeing this
treatment with non Aboriginal kids. At some point last year, I believe when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening, one hundred percent of the young people in custody in the Northern Territory were Aboriginal one hundred percent. Let's let that sink in for a minute. Nowhere else does that happen with any other cultural identity, Nowhere else? And if we had non Aboriginal children being treated like this, they'd
be outrage. And that's why I say, you know, Australia does a really good job at othering and making sure that people see Aboriginal people as less than human. And that's what allows people to permit this behavior to go on as not seeing this as their own children because they're Aboriginal children. It's different. They're not white children, They're
not my children. And when we talk about children and raising the age, we say not my children, not your children, but our children, because they're everyone's children.
Can you tell us? Because there are communities that have implemented successful strategies to help indigenous communities, they're based on things like less policing and more support. What is the solution? What are you pushing to be put in place to break this cycle?
Well, we need structural change. First of all. If you look at the budgets of the justice expenditure, it's like ten billion dollars for New South Wales alone. It's crazy money being put into this disruptive violence system that continues to perpetuate harm on people who who are already harmed. So community led solutions for us is the big one, and it's also incorporating transformative justice. So we in deadly connections we talk about transformative justice, which is one layer
above restorative justice. So to me, if I can explain it, as you know you've had your bike stolen, for example, restorative justice would be I've stolen your bike, we get together, I apologize for stealing your bike. You get your bike back that's what happens. Transformative justice is that still happens, but then we try to understand why did I steal your bike in the first place? What would have stopped me from stealing your bike? Did I steal your bike
because I was hungry? Did I steal your bike because I was bored? Why did I steal your bike? And then we can put solutions in place to stop that from happening again. That's what transformative justice is. Alternatives to imprisonment, diversionary programs, things that we know, healing houses, you know.
Deadly Connections wants to start a healing house for people who were justice involved with child protection as well, whether that's as children or as adults, you know, but we lack the resources to do it.
I'm conscious about how to frame this because I know that it is a perception that I think a lot of people in Australia have and it is what adds to racism in Australia. But there is a thought. You see it in social media, you see it in the comments section. It's the comment of like, we have so many support systems in regards to like you can get funding, like they're on benefits. I think that there is this mentality, well, you can get money from the government, so there's already
things in place. Why is that such an incorrect thought that people have. Why is that so flawed and completely unhelpful to the actual situation at hand.
I think a lot of the information that the wider public get comes from media or comes from people who just don't know. Abitginal people are three percent of the population, So we are trying to convince ninety seven percent of the population that the way that we're being treated is not okay. That's not easy. There's not a lot of people that can go to Aboriginal people or communities and
say is this the case. There was a recent clip that I put on on our Socials where Senator Lydia Thorpe was questioning the government on their expenditure under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, which is supposed to be for Aboriginal communities, and they'd given away over a billion dollars to large corporations like Crown, Casino, Woolworths for Aboriginal employment programs. So this is why people think that Aboriginal people get so
much funding. The funding is directed towards Aboriginal people, but it's been given to non Aboriginal corporations and organizations to do the work, and it doesn't work because they're not equipped to work with our communities. Aboriginal people don't get any more benefits than any other group who require support. We've got different names for things, but we've got abs, study, we've got odds study. The amounts are the same. Nobody get you know, we don't get free houses. We don't
get free cars. If we do, I'd like to know where they are because nobody that I know gets them. You know.
Also this idea that like and I think that this is something that a lot of people don't think about, like true poverty, what true poverty looks like. If you don't have a tax file number, if you don't have a birth certificate, you don't get serviced. You slip through
those cracks. Now this is relative to Indigenous people and to non Indigenous people, but there is a gap in our system which doesn't cater for the people who are the most vulnerable because they do not have the ability or the services to be able to access what is available or not even necessarily just having Wi Fi and a computer where you can go cool. I'm going to jump on and get onto my GV.
And that's a really good point, Laura, because that's all part of systemic racism as well. It all contributes to that belief where it separates us from them. It's like Aboriginal people have been given a fair chance, you know,
they've got so much money poured at them. We've got a denial of the Prime Minister that there was slavery when we know that Aboriginal people were not paid wages and their wages were withheld from them, and there's many families and communities who are still battling to this day to recover those wages for their loved ones. We haven't had the opportunity to participate in the economy the way
that everybody else has. Even still now we've got people being released, like you said, no birth certificate, no tax one number. You can't even get center link if you don't have those documents, like you can't even get benefits. And we're seeing this problem as well with the refugees now as well, where if you're not an Australian citizen
you can't access support. These systems that are set up to help vulnerable people further disenfranchise them and even when we think about people coming out of custody, something that Deadly Connections advocates for quite strongly is giving people employment opportunities. If we've got people coming out of custody with no opportunity to get a job, they're left with two options welfare dependency or reoffending. That's it, and people don't think
of it that way. I mean part of our journey with my husband Deny, part of Deadly Connections as well, is giving people with criminal records an opportunity. Every single person that works for Deadly Connections has lived experience of some sort. We employ both Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people. We've got two non Aboriginal people working with us at the moment, both of them have experience, have been to jail, and we've also got an Aboriginal woman who has lived
experience with the child protection and the justice system. So for us being able to give people opportunities like that, we know employment is more than just a job for a lot of those people.
It's so easy for someone to sit back and say, oh, well, they didn't even go and get a job. They got out, they got given another chance, they didn't go get a job. If you physically, Like if everyone just thinks about this for a moment, now you've just been and like your husband said in his story when he was telling his story, he said, they opened the gates when it was time for me to be released, and they said, off you go, and that was it. Imagine standing there with no phone.
You want to go and do the right thing. But how are you supposed to eat? How are you supposed to get a job, How do you get to the job, How do you find the job? You don't have internet access, you don't have a roof over your head. And I think that's really easy for us to forget. But I think if you put yourself in this position, and if everyone goes and watches this documentary, it really is eye opening. So do you think that they're the things that we should be putting this money back into?
Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean everything that you've touched them. I think it's sort of worth acknowledging that change happens at different parts of people's lives, depending on where they're at. So, you know, something that a lot of people get caught up on is advocating for support for young people. But my husband didn't make those changes until he was in his mid twenties, and if he didn't have those supports available,
then what would have happened. He would have gone back to what he knew how to do, and that was to support himself through crime. They were the skills that he had, They were the tools that he had in his toolbox. So the aim for us is to give people different tools, different skills, and different ways of doing things which some of them have never had the opportunity to do. And this is why we need to continue
that journey. We need to provide other alternatives like healing houses where people can come and learn the skills that they need to be the best parent they can be, to be a pro social member of society, and to be able to heal the trauma and the factors that keep them entrenched in the justice and child protection systems.
As someone who is not Indigenous, what can we do to better support our community and better to support that three percent when we are the majority percentage in Australia.
There's many things that you can do. Taking action comes in many forms, So we don't expect to be everyone to be on the streets protesting, because you know your support can come in many ways, but becoming an accomplice. And we use the word accomplice rather than ally because we feel like an ally is sort of someone who's standing beside you. But we want someone who's going to get their hands dirty and who's going to get into it.
And that could be you know, writing to Parliament and demanding change, or writing to your local member and asking them to raise age or to change the legislation that we know entrenches our people in the system. You could also support community led solutions, whether that's locally or whether that's Deadly Connections. There are lots of Aboriginal community control organizations operating across Australia doing the work, the grassroots work
that needs to be done. A lot of echoes similar to Deadly Connections, don't have any funding challenging racism and stereotypes amongst your peers or amongst your families or amongst your colleagues. Supporting our journey to try and get a healing house. Because I know who I'd rather be living next to. I'd rather be living next to somebody that's had the opportunity to address their issues or their challenges.
I don't want to be living next to somebody who's done twenty years in jail and they've opened the gate and just spat them out, because we know what kind of people that that creates. The other thing is volunteer with Aboriginal community controlled organizations. Donate your time, donate your resources. I mean, for Deadly Connections, we're so under resource at the moment. I'm hate JR. I'm social Media, I'm the communications them. My husband sort of does you know partnerships
and marketing and everything that we have done. We've had to learn ourselves and there are so many people that have got expertise that they could lend to us. And promoting our work through podcasts like this and through our socials, spreading the message about what we're doing and changing the narrative. Changing the narrative is the biggest thing, because, like I said, we're three percent of the population trying to convince ninety
seven percent of the population that's happening. What's happening isn't right.
Carl, thank you so much for giving us your time. Thank you so much for all of your work, not just with Deadly Connections, but with put in together this documentary. Guys, if you have not seen Incarceration Nation, it was out on SBS on Sunday night, but you can go and watch it. I think that you will feel the same as Britt and I did. And you know, we're really proud to be able to sit down and talk to you, Carlie,
and thank you for everything that you were doing. Can you please tell all of the listeners where they can find you, and also how they can access more information about Deadly Connections and get involved if there is a way that they can help.
Yeah, thank you so much again for having me, and thank you for taking an interest in such an important topic and you know, trying to create change. It's really important to us. We have a website which you can find out more information is www dot deadly connections dot org dot au. We also have an Instagram page at Deadly Connections, same as Facebook at Deadly Connections, and we have a Twitter account which is at Deadly ccajs.
Calie.
Thank you so much. You have been such a wonderful person to interview. It's such a hard conversation to have, but it's such an important one, and so thank you so much for giving us your time today. I've learned so much and I hope all of you guys can take the time to go and watching Carceration Nation, also because I know that it'll touch you as much as it touched.
Laura and myself. Carlie, thank you for coming and we'll chat to you soon.
Thank you, Thanks Brittany, Thanks Laura. Bye.
All right, guys, you know that we never finish an episode without our sucket and now Sweet, our highlight and our low light of.
Each and every week.
Pretty hit me, you are living a much more sensational life than me at the moment.
What is your highlight and your low light? I definitely am I'm sorry about that.
Yeah, I'm like, it's not even one of those things where you can feel bad by saying that because you're like, your life sucks.
I'm sorry for you. No, that's the hard thing. I actually feel fucking horrendous. I just saw so much, but it's so hard for me to, like, I don't want to say what I'm doing because I feel so horrible for all of you at home. But you know, we do have to do sucking sweet, So I'm going to find one. Stuck it off. Yeah, so suck it up. My suite for the week is that it is the US Open Tennis tournament. Obviously, it's one of the biggest tennis tournaments. It's very exciting to be here. And Jordan
is playing today, so Tuesday, he's playing today. So send all your well wishes my way. Sorry, not my way, Jordan's way. I'm irrelevant. Send them to Jordan. My suck is because it's the US Open here and it's such a big competition. There's only four of these Grand Slams a year. I am sleeping in a separate bed to Jordan. So we're here together where we're together for a we're together for a small amount of the year, and he's kicked me out. He's well, I mean, okay, he didn't
kick me out. I was trying to do this like reverse psychology thing where I was trying to be like the really good supportive girlfriend. I know he needs a lot of sleep and I don't want to interrupt that, so I was like, hey, love, like, do you want me to just like sleep in the other room, you know, just give you the space that you need so get a really good sleep. Reverse psychology. I was thinking he would say, no, I want to see with you. He's like, oh my god, that would be amazing. I was like,
what the fuck. I was like, that was not how this conversation went in my head.
Brittany sleeping in a hotel down the road, and she's like, I swear my relationships, fine, everything's great.
So I'm in another room, not even another bed in the same room. I'm in a whole nother room. I've got a whole nother bathroom. So I feel like we're living this separate life at the moment. But you know, it's more important for him to be able to sleep well and play well. So that's my suck and that's my sweet I understand it.
I understand where like couples get into their forties fifty sixties and sometimes decide to have this different bedroom and they're like, fuck off, Well I wake up in the morning, I wake up right because I'm like, he sleeps in so I can't wake him up in the morning night, so I just have to bide my time on start doing some work in bed until I finally hear, like all the way down the corridor, this really soft noise. I hear cutie, and then I know that's like my alarm, and then I'm allowed to.
Enter the room.
He's of a different breed, I think when you're a professional sports person, like, especially when you're in the key part of your competition, I guess you can be a little bit selfish. You could be like, totally, I'm gonna sleep down the other end of the house and do not disturb me.
Just come and have sex with me and leave. Yeah, I'm looking loving it, to be honest. What's your suck and suite?
Okay, my suck for the week is the wedding. I don't think I can pop that one right now. So I know we've said this a couple of times, but the current state of the situation is this idea that you can't get excited about things anymore. You know that there's not really the potential to like book something in and then look forward to the future. I think at the moment, it's just this groundhog day, and that's probably
the best way of describing it. It just everything feels very gray and we're kind of doing the same thing every day, and that's definitely been my suck is like missing out on things that six months ago I was so looking forward to.
So, yeah, you know, I want to see my mom. Everybody's in the same boat.
I know you guys all feel the same, and this is it's very galvanizing that I think we collectively are all experiencing this and we all have the same feelings towards this my sweet.
For the week.
And I think, you know what, it's the little things I've mentioned at the start that like I went to the park with the kids. I know that that doesn't sound exciting, but like I.
Took Molly and Laula. We went to Centennial Park.
We went bush like, we went right off into like where it's overgrown and foliage, and I just wanted to get away from the people and just be able to walk around with the kids and have a nice time outside out of our apartment. And it meant the world to have these little moments to be able to look forward to. And that was like, by far, I didn't take my phone. It was by far the highlight of my week.
But what you just said, I just want to like pull you up on that for a hot little second when you say, I know it's not that big of a dealer. I know it's not that exciting a it is b But that's exactly what suck and Sweet's about. It doesn't have to be this big, extravagant moment. It's
just something that's special in your life. And that's why we encourage all you guys to do this at home too, when you're at dinner with your family or with your flatmates, just ask each other, what's your stuck on your sweet
what's the best thing in the littlest thing. It's just a it's a way to be grateful for what you've got, it's a way to reflect on what you've got, and it's a way to just enjoy all the little moments exactly like you to said Laura, and I really think like in saying that, if you're in the same situation that we're in, if you're in lockdown, if you're fear feeling like it's groundhole day, if you're feeling all the things that I've just described, like carving out a little
bit of time for yourself, whatever it is. Maybe it's reading your favorite book, maybe it's, you know, watching four episodes in a row of that TV show that you love, Like whatever self care looks like, maybe it is spending some time with your kids and getting out of the house in a way that's safe obviously, but just like going and doing something that's really special, quality time to
break up the monotony. Like for me, I know that I find it really easy just to get into a cycle of work, work, work, and then because I'm constantly around my laptop and I'm not really engaged with my children. And I had a real awakening this week where I was like, I don't want to spend this really precious time with them always with my head in my phone. And Moley's gotten too an age now where she will
say no phone mummy, no phone mummy, and oh that's tough. Yeah, and it just I had a real week where I was like, I want to make some changes so that I don't have to hear my child say no phone mummy anymore. So, yeah, that was big, a big shift for me.
And I just want everyone who's in this situation to know that, like, we are thinking of you, and we hope that we are bringing you content that for some you know, I know today's episode was really heavy, but we really are trying to bring you a lot of escapisms. I hope that you're enjoying the batch on cut. I hope you're enjoying all the bonus episodes that we're putting together.
All of this is because we know that you guys are at home and we just hope that it can bring a little smile to your face.
And on that note, guys, that is it from us, So you know the drill. Please send your accidentally unfilters, end your ask uncuts to our Instagram, which is Life Uncut Podcast. Just make sure you label them ask uncut if it's a question or accidently unfiltered, if it's one of your funny fuck ups. Because we love hearing that, we really really, I can't stress enough, please write that shit in. Also, if there's anything that's funny that has happened to you or we remember we used to do.
I can't believe they said that. We want to hear about anything that is happening in your life. And all the good, juicy, great shit goes down in our Facebook discussion group. So if you're not a member of that yet, that is on Facebook and that is Life Uncut Podcast.
And anyway, guys, you know the drill. Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, Tell your sister and your brother, and your uncle and your cousin and the cheek down the road, and maybe your friend who's in a really shitty ass toxic relationship and she needs a bit of hard love and soft love from life on card and chave a laugh because we will.
Okay, I totally, I totally fucking whispered that because it's two AM and jawns to sleep, and I was like, love love, I love it so much, I'm going to be crucified in the morning. I brought the enthusiasm for you to a