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Nov 02 2024 1473 ep. 20 mins 5.8k

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A daily news show from the publisher of The Monthly and The Saturday Paper. Hear from the country’s best reporters, covering the news as it affects Australia. This is news with narrative, every weekday.

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Read This: Robbie Arnott’s Restless Mind

Nov 02 2024 28 mins

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

Israel's war with Hezbollah inflames civil war tensions

Oct 31 2024 24 mins

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

Anti-corruption boss accused of ‘officer misconduct’

Oct 30 2024 20 mins

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

The truth about Trump's “border chaos” claims

Oct 29 2024 18 mins

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 presid

The secret deals between the tax office and Australia’s billionaires

Oct 28 2024 19 mins

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, managi

Elon Musk's million dollar giveaways

Oct 27 2024 20 mins

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 A

Read This: Melanie Cheng, Superstitious Doctor

Oct 26 2024 33 mins

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 narra

King Charles, Lidia Thorpe and the pursuit of justice

Oct 24 2024 22 mins

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 1

How abortion became an election issue in Queensland

Oct 23 2024 23 mins

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

The men who survived Kinchela Boys Home

Oct 22 2024 22 mins

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 t