tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/abc-tv-2175/articlesABC TV – The Conversation2023-11-14T19:06:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107182023-11-14T19:06:26Z2023-11-14T19:06:26ZHere’s how a TV series inspired the KeepCup revolution. What’s next in the war on waste?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555221/original/file-20231023-15-78v8r3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C0%2C3465%2C2331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lune Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Changing habits can be hard. So when a single episode of an Australian television show prompted a national shift in behaviour, as behavioural researchers, we took notice. </p>
<p>The first (2017) and second (2018) seasons of the ABC TV program <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/collection/1389">War on Waste</a> reached audiences of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/tv/pdf/WoW%20Impact%20Report%2013June19.pdf">3.8 million and 3.3 million viewers, respectively</a>. That’s one in seven Australians. It inspired action, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/tv/pdf/WoW%20Impact%20Report%2013June19.pdf">slashing the waste footprint of hundreds of Australian organisations</a>. So it remains a valuable example of TV driving social change, and one we can still learn from today. </p>
<p>Through focus groups conducted in 2018, we explored how the first season encouraged Melbourne millennials’ to adopt reusable coffee cups. Then, when the COVID pandemic prompted greater <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9248071/">use of disposable consumer products</a>, we revisited the data and delved deeper into behavioural science.</p>
<p>Our analysis revealed people were drawn to the engaging storytelling, confronting visuals and prankster ex-Chaser host <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/people/craig-reucassel/11088556">Craig Reucassel</a>. He demonstrated, step-by-step, how to minimise waste in a relatable and guilt-free way. Our research, recently published <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22041451.2023.2250541">in the journal Communication Research and Practice</a>, can guide others to achieve similar success in behavioural change. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zF9Rd8Cw-Xc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The #BYOCoffeeCup tram in Melbourne from the ABC’s War on Waste series, May 2017.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-people-switch-to-reusable-cups-its-not-discounts-its-what-others-do-142254">What makes people switch to reusable cups? It's not discounts, it's what others do</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Educational entertainment</h2>
<p>In War on Waste, Reucassel confronts Australia’s many waste-management problems and potential solutions.</p>
<p>The series is an example of what behavioural psychologists call “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-63614-2_14">entertainment-education interventions</a>”.</p>
<p>In one episode, Reucassel staged a stunt on a Melbourne tram during peak hour, proclaiming it was filled with 50,000 disposable coffee cups – the amount sent to landfill every 30 minutes in Australia.</p>
<p>Almost overnight, <a href="https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/advice/startupsmart-growth/keepcups-founder-crazy-400-increase-sales-fuelled-abcs-war-waste-program/">KeepCup sales quadrupled</a>, crashing the company’s website. Membership of a <a href="https://responsiblecafes.org/">Responsible Cafes</a> initiative promoting reusable coffee cups <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-16/ditching-disposable-coffee-cups-war-on-waste/8625018">spiked from 400 cafes to 1,800</a>. </p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/ourfocus/waronwaste/WarOnWasteTheSurveyUnderstandingAustralia'sWasteAttitudesand%20Behaviours.pdf">ABC study</a> found more people of all ages bought coffee in reusable cups after War on Waste aired (up from 37% to 42%).</p>
<p>The survey also revealed millennials (aged 18-34 in 2017) were generally less likely to adopt waste-reduction behaviours compared with other age groups. But they excelled in using reusable coffee cups.</p>
<p>Why was the show so successful in encouraging people, and specifically millennials, to use reusable coffee cups?</p>
<p>If we can explain why this behaviour was so readily adopted, perhaps we can promote other sustainable behaviours at scale, in other entertainment-education interventions.</p>
<p>Our research uncovered five tactics used by the show to get these results. </p>
<h2>1. Use a relatable host</h2>
<p>Humans relate to people on TV. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1207/S15327825MCS0502_5?needAccess=true&role=button">Research shows celebrities</a> and people we consider engaging and credible <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Who-says-what-to-whom%3A-Why-messengers-and-citizen-Callaghan-Schnell/157c32b0049a00df29226105bd729ee7832c5027">are more likely to influence us</a>.</p>
<p>Reucassel is a popular host with celebrity status. One focus group participant said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A lot of films […] feel very preachy. It’s often either an expert, or just a narrator, who clearly didn’t know anything about the topic beforehand, who has now researched things, who is telling you things. Whereas in the case of the War on Waste, it felt more like he [Reucassel] was learning it with you, at the same time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the first season, we watched as Reucassel sorted the contents of a recycling bin, sharing the learning experience with the viewer. Research shows we are more likely to adopt a new behaviour <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137348326">if we’re shown how to do it</a> rather than told what to do. </p>
<h2>2. Mix statistics with confronting visuals</h2>
<p>High-impact visuals have lasting effect. Reucassel’s many stunts served not only as an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230964194_Media_communication_strategies_for_climate-friendly_lifestyles_-_Addressing_middle_and_lower_class_consumers_for_social-cultural_change_via_Entertainment-Education">engaging way to present statistics</a>, but also a way to connect with viewers by stirring up emotions. This approach <a href="https://www.econbiz.de/Record/ecotainment-der-neue-weg-im-umweltmarketing-emotionale-werbebotschaften-sustainability-cross-marketing-lichtl-martin/10004597359">builds audience knowledge and willpower</a>, making a change in behaviour more likely. </p>
<p>As one focus group participant put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My favourite thing about the show was all the stunts that Craig pulled – it’s classic Chaser stuff. Like the big rolling ball of plastic bags and the tram full of coffee cups. I thought that aspect of it was the most hard-hitting and interesting.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Craig Reucassel stands alongside a 50m long table covered in food, which is the amount one family wastes in a year" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557626/original/file-20231106-27-s67h8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Craig Reucassel stands alongside a 50m long table covered in food, which is the amount one family wastes in a year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lune Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-found-3-types-of-food-wasters-which-one-are-you-214482">We found 3 types of food wasters, which one are you?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Promote widespread community action</h2>
<p>A common problem with behaviour change initiatives is a person will only change their behaviour if they feel like others are going to change their behaviour too. This often leads to “<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243">the tragedy of the commons</a>”, where no one ends up taking action. </p>
<p>The opposite was true for War on Waste. Focus group participants felt the show created a groundswell for environmental change, so they were more inspired to take action because they felt others were taking action too. In the words of one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really enjoyed how it was a mix of personal actions [and] more systemic changes […] like getting Coles and Woolworths to change cosmetic standards [for fresh produce] but also the episode with the fast fashion, about getting the teenage girls to consider their own personal choices.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/households-find-low-waste-living-challenging-heres-what-needs-to-change-197022">Households find low-waste living challenging. Here's what needs to change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Choose behaviours with an easy learning curve</h2>
<p>Reducing waste may never be “easy”, but by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1043463103154002">choosing behaviours perceived to be low-cost with little inconvenience</a>, we have a better chance of success. </p>
<p>Swapping the disposable coffee cup for a reusable cup was considered relatively easy with a “quick learning curve” – compared to composting or having a worm farm – and so became more readily adopted than other behaviours demonstrated in War on Waste.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Craig Reucassel with a Melbourne tram filled with 50,000 disposable coffee cups" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557929/original/file-20231107-27-zw3mam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The shocking sight of a Melbourne tram filled with 50,000 disposable coffee cups stopped city commuters in their tracks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lune Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Show how behaviour can reveal social identity</h2>
<p>People from all generations prefer to act in accordance with what society deems acceptable. So pro-environmental behaviours are more likely to be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229785954_Strategies_for_Sustainability_Citizens_and_Responsible_Environmental_Behaviour">adopted when social pressure is placed on them</a>. </p>
<p>War on Waste placed social pressure on us all to reduce our waste. Adopting a reusable coffee cup became a visible symbol for millennials to demonstrate to others that they were doing their bit, while expressing their environmental values. </p>
<p>As one participant said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it’s just a trendy, convenient way to maybe look and feel like you are doing something that’s […] the right step.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What can we learn from this, and what’s next?</h2>
<p>Many of the strategies we identified as successful in season one reappeared this year in <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/war-on-waste-series-3-2023/40977/">season three</a>, such as confronting visual stunts, shared learning experiences and targeting easy behaviours. </p>
<p>Based on the findings from our research, we expect to see further positive change generated from this season.</p>
<p>Our research also presents an opportunity to practitioners wanting to create behaviour change at scale by providing them with behavioural science strategies to embed in entertainment-education interventions. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-to-wear-for-a-climate-crisis-214478">What to wear for a climate crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Understanding the success of the ABC’s War on Waste is a lesson in behavioural psychology. Research reveals five ways to guide other entertainment-education interventions to similar success.Danie Nilsson, Behavioural Scientist, CSIRORachael Vorwerk, Science Communicator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS), RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2150742023-11-02T19:13:32Z2023-11-02T19:13:32ZI was a geriatrician on Old People’s Home for Teenagers. Here’s why I joined this TV experiment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555958/original/file-20231025-23-112he5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C6884%2C4565&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EndemolShine Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people will have heard about “intergenerational practice” via the TV.</p>
<p>This is the purposeful <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11254">bringing together</a> of different generations, aiming to benefit all involved. It’s the idea central to ABC TV’s <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-teenagers">Old People’s Home for Teenagers</a>, and its predecessor <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-4-year-olds">Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds</a>. Both show the positive aspects of mixing age groups, for the older people featured, as well as the teenagers or preschoolers.</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://anzsgm.org/publicinformation/">geriatrician</a>, a doctor who specialises in the medical care of older people, one of two geriatricians who took part in this TV experiment. Here’s why I got involved.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-people-get-old-190142">Curious Kids: why do people get old?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The benefits of mixing it up</h2>
<p>The positive aspects of mixing age groups may seem intuitive. Just think of how special it can be when grandparents spend time with their grandchildren. When older and younger people are together, each <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajag.12761">can share</a> their experiences and perspectives. Meaningful connections can develop.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Addison talking with Annalise during filming" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555960/original/file-20231025-19-dsc0zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Meaningful connections can develop, such as between teenager Addison and Annalise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EndemolShine Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in Australia today, many older people have no such opportunities. Multi-generational households are the exception, not the norm. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/older-people/older-australians/contents/housing-and-living-arrangements">One quarter</a> of people aged 65 and over living in private homes live alone. <a href="https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/media-releases/retirement-villages-approaching-capacity-where-will-our-seniors-live-2">Nearly 200,000</a> live in retirement villages and <a href="https://www.gen-agedcaredata.gov.au/www_aihwgen/media/2021-22-GEN-Topic-Updates/People%20using%20aged%20care/People-using-aged-care-fact-sheet_2022.pdf">around the same number</a> live in residential aged care. Both of the latter, by definition, accommodate only a single generation. </p>
<p>Intergenerational programs overcome these barriers by creating a <a href="https://shop.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/product/rip2101/">structured and supported</a> forum in which two age groups can regularly connect. </p>
<p>These programs can involve <a href="https://www.metronorth.health.qld.gov.au/news/grandfriends-reduces-loneliness-isolation">different populations</a>: from toddlers through to university students, from independent, active retirees through to aged care residents and hospital patients.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-project-shows-combining-childcare-and-aged-care-has-social-and-economic-benefits-99837">A new project shows combining childcare and aged care has social and economic benefits</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Programs can take several forms, for example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>playgroups are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1476718X211059662">conducted in</a> aged care facilities</p></li>
<li><p>childcare and aged care facilities are <a href="https://agedcarenews.com.au/2022/06/21/the-herd-proudly-blazing-a-trail-for-the-future-of-intergenerational-care-and-learning/">in the same location</a></p></li>
<li><p>older volunteers in the community take part in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-03/ophft-making-connections-in-your-community/102908402">formal mentorship programs</a> for young adults.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33567363/">common aim</a> is to improve wellbeing, restore purpose, and bring joy to older participants, while helping to develop social skills, confidence and empathy in young people. These programs can potentially also address <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/ageism#tab=tab_1">ageism</a>, by creating understanding and empathy for each generation and by challenging negative stereotypes. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kids-dressing-up-as-older-people-is-harmless-fun-right-no-its-ageist-whatever-bluey-says-212607">Kids dressing up as older people is harmless fun, right? No, it's ageist, whatever Bluey says</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>There are challenges ahead</h2>
<p>There are wide-ranging challenges ageing may throw at us – an <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21925398/">increased burden</a> of chronic disease and frailty, a decline in physical and cognitive abilities, or changes in hearing, vision and balance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Maz with walker, taking a puppy for a walk, Ayden holds out hand to puppy" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555961/original/file-20231025-15-xonqpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The program encouraged both young people, such as Ayden, and older people, such as Maz, to be more active.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EndemolShine Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/steep-physical-decline-with-age-is-not-inevitable-heres-how-strength-training-can-change-the-trajectory-213131">Steep physical decline with age is not inevitable – here's how strength training can change the trajectory</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Changes in occupational and social roles often also occur as we get older, for instance, as older people retire from paid work or care for a sick partner. Conversely, older people may lose their role as caregivers, after grandchildren grow up, or after the loss of a loved one. </p>
<p>All these ageing-related changes can lead to a loss of social connection and <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-tell-everyone-i-love-being-on-my-own-but-i-hate-it-what-older-australians-want-you-to-know-about-loneliness-166109">loneliness</a>. Loneliness itself is bad for health. Loneliness <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41572-022-00355-9">increases risks</a> for depression, cardiovascular disease, dementia and may even lead to a shorter life span. Reducing loneliness in older adults remains a challenge.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-tell-everyone-i-love-being-on-my-own-but-i-hate-it-what-older-australians-want-you-to-know-about-loneliness-166109">'I tell everyone I love being on my own, but I hate it': what older Australians want you to know about loneliness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How I got involved</h2>
<p>So when a chance to become involved in Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds, I eagerly jumped on board. This featured an experimental intergenerational preschool. Young and old took part in a series of structured and supported activities such as playing dress-ups, going on walks and having a sports carnival.</p>
<p>At the time, intergenerational programs were far from mainstream, especially in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Annelise and Alix walking outside on grass, trees in background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555962/original/file-20231025-29-yvrjxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annelise said she was lonely at the start of the series, but formed a bond with teenager Amelie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EndemolShine Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I joined the TV program with a panel of experts including a physiotherapist and psychologist. </p>
<p>We screened the older adults at the start of the experiment for issues such as <a href="https://dementiaresearch.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/geriatric_depression_scale_short.pdf">depression</a>, and assessed signs of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/56/3/M146/545770?login=false">physical frailty</a> including speed of walking, muscle strength and activity levels. We then assessed them again after six weeks.</p>
<p>While we were cautiously hopeful, the overall improvements were better than anticipated, and some of the individual transformations were extraordinary. </p>
<p>For instance, three of four participants who originally screened positive for depression had scores in the normal range by the end of the program. For one woman in her 80s her score improved by eight points on a 15-point scale. Improvements in fitness levels across the group were impressive too.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dale and Abi outside, standing on grass, trees in background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555963/original/file-20231025-15-d2fqb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dale was concerned about how her visual impairment affected her day-to-day life, but soon connected with Abi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EndemolShine Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since then, the series has evolved to involve differing populations: from residents of aged care facilities and retirement villages, to older adults living in the community, and from preschoolers to teenagers.</p>
<p>Each program has been adapted to the needs of each group involved. At times, we have focused on a particular issue, such as loneliness, depression, concerns about memory, physical frailty and falls.</p>
<p>But in each we have continued to see benefits for both age groups, in line with what a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163721001471">growing evidence base</a> is telling us about the potential benefits of such programs. </p>
<p>This is perhaps even more so in the Old People’s Home for Teenagers series, with the second season currently on air. The teenage participants are articulate in describing how truly valuable it is for younger people to spend enriched time with older mentors. Their confidence increases, they take on new challenges, and new meaningful connections develop, many of which continue to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-01/old-peoples-home-for-teens-ongoing-intergenerational-friendships/102885166">enrich lives</a> long after the cameras stop rolling.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-think-my-teen-is-depressed-how-can-i-get-them-help-and-what-are-the-treatment-options-206702">I think my teen is depressed. How can I get them help and what are the treatment options?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>No-one is pretending such intergenerational programs are going to end loneliness for all older people, or can remove all the challenges they may face later in life. And equally, people do not need to be lonely, frail or isolated to participate.</p>
<p>Alongside the TV programs, there has been an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/backstory/2023-10-03/old-peoples-home-4-year-olds-impact-and-success/102868168">upswing</a> in community interest in intergenerational practice, from researchers to educators to aged care providers, to hospitals/health services and schools. </p>
<p>We need continued investment into workforce training, support for such programs to develop, and robust evaluation of each program to ensure they meet the goals of all the stakeholders involved – especially those of the participants themselves. </p>
<p>The “Old People’s Home” model did not invent the concept of intergenerational programs. Nor are the models of practice used in each series the only way intergenerational programs must run. But they do demonstrate what intergenerational programs could achieve. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Learn more about <a href="https://aiip.net.au/resources/">intergenerational programs</a> in Australia and find one <a href="https://aiip.net.au/about-us/intergenerational-programs-in-australia">near you</a>. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215074/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Ward has received some financial compensation for her time spent involved in the Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds/ Teenagers series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and EndemolShine Australia. She has previously been a recipient of a research training stipend for a PhD on sleep apnoea and dementia risk. She is a chief investigator on several studies that have received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund. Stephanie Ward is also a geriatrician at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney.</span></em></p>Could teenagers get on with older people and vice versa? Turned out, they could. And both flourished.Stephanie Ward, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092252023-07-11T20:06:25Z2023-07-11T20:06:25ZWhat would history look like if women were the main characters? Gold Diggers gives us a very funny, refreshingly accurate answer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536723/original/file-20230711-15-hedyc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C40%2C5402%2C3759&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the small Victorian goldfields township of Kingower in 1860, two women, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/199601805">the “notorious” Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll</a>, thrashed a man who had accused the pair of theft. </p>
<p>He was rescued by a crowd, at whom Annie and Poll began pitching bottles. </p>
<p>“Women are allowed an amount of latitude here,” concluded a contemporary newspaper report. </p>
<p>I was reminded of Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll – keepers of a house “not of good repute” – when watching the new ABC series Gold Diggers. Not to sully the good names of Gold Diggers’ indomitable heroines, naturally.</p>
<p>As a screen representation of history, Gold Diggers is often refreshingly accurate.</p>
<p>Gold Diggers displays the demographically diverse population, layers of dirt and grime (women on the diggings wrote of daily struggles associated with <a href="https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/eqp282/cdi_proquest_journals_2479062710">dust and mud “up to the knees”</a>), the variety of dwellings from canvas tents and bark huts to mansions, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mrs-morland-and-isabella-murrell-the-brutal-murder-of-a-domestic-angel-on-the-diggings-169839">potential for violence</a>, interracial relationships and the often easy vulgarity.</p>
<p>In the 19th century and into the 20th century, historians entrenched male-centred and mythologised Australian histories. But contemporary feminist historians have been challenging these notions.</p>
<p>Somewhat surprisingly, comedies like Gold Diggers may well help them with the task. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph: one man, a few huts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cleared goldfields landscape of Maldon, where Gold Diggers was filmed at Porcupine Village. Thomas Hannay, High Street, Maldon, Tarrengower, 1861.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Golden girls</h2>
<p>Gold Diggers tells the story of Gert (Claire Lovering) and Marigold “Goldie” Brewer (Danielle Walker), arriving optimistic and intent on a good time to Dead Horse Gap on the diggings in 1853, apparently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/01/magazine/on-language-on-the-lam-who-made-thee.html">on the lam</a>. This puts them among the many with <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/87983131">convict origins who flocked to the goldfields</a>, embracing the opportunity for riches and reinvention.</p>
<p>In Dead Horse Gap, Gert and Marigold think themselves the only single ladies expecting to claim a pair of well-heeled husbands (“newly minted dumb-dumbs”). </p>
<p>In reality, the sisters would have been among the boatloads of single women who travelled to the Victorian goldfields to secure a new husband and a new life.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOXiMlEGLzw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Played as a farce (reminiscent of theatricals <a href="https://theconversation.com/emancipated-wenches-in-gaudy-jewellery-the-liberating-bling-of-the-goldfields-60449">common on the goldfields</a>) Gold Diggers is almost accidentally accurate in its extremes. </p>
<p>Gert and Goldie are seeking refinement but are helplessly attracted to the tawdry. This reflects historical depictions of women’s opposite roles on the goldfields, either <a href="https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753">helpmate or playmate</a>. In fact, most women were complicated, neither totally one of these tropes nor the other.</p>
<p>Even the seemingly absurd name of Dead Horse Gap is closely aligned with at least two 1850s goldfields, Dead Horse Flat (near Bendigo) and <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/66043295?">Dead Horse Gully</a> (near Ballarat). There is even a Dead Horse Gap, 500 km north-east of the goldfields, in Kosciuszko National Park.</p>
<p>While some historians persist in depicting the early Victorian goldfields as a predominantly masculine, transient and overtly-exuberant environment, the truth was more nuanced. </p>
<p>The goldfields attracted people of all classes, genders and nationalities. Single men, single women and newlyweds all made their way <a href="https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/eqp282/cdi_rmit_apaft_search_informit_org_doi_10_3316_informit_338797648824168">to the Victorian diggings</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike many other international rushes where men typically travelled alone from overseas, women and families were already in the colony. Established families, therefore, were able to travel on to the goldfields quickly and relatively easily.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration: women climbing onto a pier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Leech, Alarming Prospect. The Single Ladies Off to the Diggings, 1853.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flashers-femmes-and-other-forgotten-figures-of-the-eureka-stockade-20939">Flashers, femmes and other forgotten figures of the Eureka Stockade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Wife material is a heavy fabric’</h2>
<p>Gold Diggers presents an answer to a question I often return to: what would history look like if women were the main characters? </p>
<p>Much of history has been written on men, by men. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-historians-smashed-the-glass-ceiling-66778">Feminist historians</a> of the goldfields are working to relocate women back into their own stories.</p>
<p>As the colonial newspaper reported of Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll, women were often allowed an amount of latitude on the diggings. This formed part of its appeal for women, young and old.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-how-mother-of-8-mary-anne-allen-made-do-on-the-goldfields-amid-gunshots-rain-and-sly-grog-161354">own research</a> focuses on the goldfields as a domestic landscape, a place of women and home and family. In February 1852, for example, Englishwoman Mary Ann Allen travelled to the Forest Creek diggings with her husband and eight children. The youngest was aged only five. </p>
<p>Rather than stay behind with her young family in Melbourne, Mary Ann chose to be an equal participant in the adventure.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-how-mother-of-8-mary-anne-allen-made-do-on-the-goldfields-amid-gunshots-rain-and-sly-grog-161354">Hidden women of history: how mother of 8, Mary Anne Allen, made do on the goldfields amid gunshots, rain and sly grog</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Clare Wright’s powerful <a href="https://stella.org.au/prize/2014-prize/the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka/">The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka</a> situates women as critical participants in the political, social and domestic landscape of the 1854 Eureka Stockade. In Wright’s portrayal, women are central to the action of Eureka, not helpless bystanders – much like the Brewer sisters’ determination to “rise up” to both the occasion and the situation.</p>
<p>In 1856, Englishwoman Fanny Finch, the subject of <a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-australias-first-known-female-voter-the-famous-mrs-fanny-finch-112962">Kacey Sinclair’s research</a>, was one of the first known women to vote in an Australian election. </p>
<p>Making the feat even more striking, Finch was of African heritage, a goldfields businesswoman and a single mother of four: a notable example of a diversity that is hard to trace in the archives. While much is known from the archives about the white and Chinese settlers on the goldfields, little is known about those of other backgrounds, other than the fact they were there.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-australias-first-known-female-voter-the-famous-mrs-fanny-finch-112962">Hidden women of history: Australia’s first known female voter, the famous Mrs Fanny Finch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Gold Diggers, Vic (Perry Mooney) and Molly (Kartanya Maynard) provide this often missing voice for women of colour on the diggings. Molly shines as the pithy activist and self-care advocate of Dead Horse Gap, admonishing the colonists to “do better”. It’s not all action, as Molly reminds Vic, “resting is resistance”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration: men and tents in the foreground, houses in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Allan, Forest Creek, Mount Alexander, from Adelaide Hill, c1851.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Girls like us</h2>
<p>The possibilities of reinvention and wealth attracted people from all over the globe. Subsequently, the goldfields became a microcosm of a diverse society. </p>
<p>All living cheek-by-jowl, all intent on leveraging an opportunity they may not be presented with again. All hoping – as with Gert and Goldie – they would claim a new future.</p>
<p>The Brewer sisters’ farcical, theatrical exaggerations show us enticing glimmers of an underrepresented reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Katrina Place Dernelley currently works for Heritage Victoria. Heritage Victoria was recently provided government funding to progress the World Heritage nomination for the Victorian Goldfields. The author is not associated with this project.</span></em></p>The history of the goldfields too often focuses on men – but, as new Aussie TV series Gold Diggers gets right, the settlements were filled with women.Katrina Place Dernelley, Historian and Heritage Consultant, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1967932023-01-26T19:05:37Z2023-01-26T19:05:37ZMolly Meldrum at 80: how the ‘artfully incoherent’ presenter changed Australian music – and Australian music journalism<p>Ian Alexander “Molly” Meldrum is 80 on January 29 2023. </p>
<p>The Australian music industry would not be where it is today without his work as a talent scout, DJ, record producer, journalist, broadcaster and professional fan. </p>
<p>His legacy has been acknowledged by the ARIAs, APRA, the Logies, an Order of Australia and even a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-molly-help-us-remember-australian-culture-54117">mini-series</a>. </p>
<p>Just a couple of weeks ago, Meldrum made headlines again for an appearance at Elton John’s farewell concert in Melbourne when he <a href="https://themusic.com.au/news/molly-meldrum-bares-his-bum-at-elton-john-concert/oL24srW0t7Y/14-01-23">“mooned” the crowd</a> in a playful display of rock and roll rebellion. He later <a href="https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/music/molly-meldrum-apologises-for-mooning-audiences-at-elton-johns-melbourne-concert-3381156">apologised</a> to the audience and old friend Elton, keen to make sure no one else was blamed. </p>
<p>It was an irreverence typical of Meldrum’s long career. But his legacy is not just in the musical acts he supported. It is also in the taste makers who followed in his footsteps.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/countdown-just-nostalgia-or-still-breaking-new-ground-83963">Countdown - just nostalgia, or still breaking new ground?</a>
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<h2>‘Artfully incoherent’</h2>
<p>A journalist at pioneering music magazine Go-Set, a presenter and record producer, Meldrum became a household name with the ABC TV music show Countdown (1974-87). Countdown was a weekly touchstone for the industry and fans, promoting local acts alongside the best in the world.</p>
<p>Meldrum’s approach to interviewing and commentary is legendary. ABC historian Ken Inglis called his interviewing style “artfully incoherent”. </p>
<p>Importantly, his charm put artists and fans at ease. </p>
<p>Meldrum is not a slick player, but a fan. This fandom is felt so deeply that, at times, he became overwhelmed. </p>
<p>One of Meldrum’s most famous interviews was in 1977 when the then Prince Of Wales appeared on Countdown to launch a charity record and event. The presenter became increasingly flustered. </p>
<p>Even now, watching back, it’s hard not to side with Meldrum rather than his famous guest. Pomp, ceremony and hierarchy really didn’t make sense in this rock and pop oasis. </p>
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<p>In another interview, Meldrum spoke to David Bowie on a tennis court. Both men casually talked and smoked (it was the ‘70s!), talking seriously about the work but not much else. </p>
<p>As Meldrum handed Bowie a tennis racket to demonstrate how the iconic track, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkLE1Gno724">Fame</a> (with John Lennon) was born, the Starman was given space to be hilariously human.</p>
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<p>When meeting a sedate Stevie Nicks, Meldrum met her on her level. </p>
<p>Nicks told Meldrum she was only happy “sometimes”, and rather than probing, he just listened. When Meldrum asked about the dog Nicks had in her lap, she opened up: </p>
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<p>I got her way before I had any money, I didn’t have near enough money to buy her […] She’s one of the things I’ve had to give up for Fleetwood Mac, because you’re not home.</p>
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<p>Meldrum approached this, and all his guests, with humanity. This is how his insights into the reality of rock royalty are effortlessly uncovered. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-molly-help-us-remember-australian-culture-54117">How will 'Molly' help us remember Australian culture?</a>
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<h2>New taste makers</h2>
<p>A country boy who came to the city, Meldrum studied music and the growing local industry much more attentively than his law degree. He passionately supported (and continues to support) Australian popular music – and Australian music fans.</p>
<p>He speaks a love language for music that musicians and fans share, and a language which has continued in other presenters.</p>
<p>Following in Meldrum’s footsteps we have seen distinct critical voices like Myf Warhurst, Julia Zemiro and Zan Rowe. </p>
<p>Each of these women have approached the music industry with charm like Meldrum, but also their own perspectives: Zemiro with a love of international influence; Warhurst with pop as a language to connect us to the everyday; Rowe with a way to connect audiences and musicians through conversations about their own processes and passions. </p>
<p>Our best music critics, and musicians, have embraced an unapologetic energy Meldrum made acceptable.</p>
<p>Meldrum is also a pioneer in the LGBTQ+ community, weathering the storms of prejudice during his early career. Today, members of the media and musical community have greater protection from the prejudice common when his career began. </p>
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<h2>The music, of course, the music</h2>
<p>The Australian music industry would not be what it is had Molly Meldrum gone on to be a lawyer. </p>
<p>Through the pages of Go-Set and on Countdown he worked to promote new talent, believing in and developing acts like AC/DC, Split Enz, Paul Kelly, Do Re Mi, Australian Crawl and Kylie Minogue before the rest of the industry knew what to do with them. </p>
<p>He did the same for international artists. ABBA, Elton John, KISS, Madonna and many other now mega-names were first presented to Australian audiences via Meldrum’s wonderful ear.</p>
<p>Today, Australian music encompasses pop, dance, electro and hip hop, and artists from all walks of life. Meldrum’s willingness to listen has contributed to this, and he encouraged others to do the same. </p>
<p>Meldrum remains revered not just for nostalgia but as an example of what putting energy into the local scene can achieve. </p>
<p>Most importantly, Meldrum continues to be a music fan. He loves the mainstream, the place where the majority of the audience also resides. He has never bought into the idea of a “guilty” pleasure – if it works, it works, no music snobbery here. </p>
<p>His catch-cry – “do yourself a favour” – really does sum up the importance of music. It is not a luxury, but something to really keep us going. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/molly-is-lacking-as-a-tv-show-but-millions-including-me-are-hooked-54471">Molly is lacking as a TV show but millions, including me, are hooked</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Molly Meldrum is not a slick player, but a fan.Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1887392022-09-02T02:08:55Z2022-09-02T02:08:55ZMore than a murder mystery, Savage River is a gripping new take on the Australian Gothic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482412/original/file-20220902-18492-1rexnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2150%2C1493&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Savage River, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse.</em></p>
<p>Newly released from prison for a murder she committed in her teens, Miki Anderson (Katherine Langford) has returned to her home town Savage River. She is determined to leave the past behind her, but when another murder occurs just days after Miki returns, the town’s mistrust deepens. </p>
<p>Determined to find out the truth and clear her name, Miki decides to uncover the real killer, unearthing long-hidden secrets along the way. </p>
<p>It might be tempting to assume you know how this story goes, but this new six-part drama from the ABC is not your typical murder mystery. </p>
<p>Savage River explores complex social territory as the town’s class and race tensions emerge as key to the narrative. </p>
<p>Miki is a riveting portrayal of complex, conflicted femininity. Langford is brilliant, bringing a moving combination of toughness and vulnerability to the role, serving up scathing glares and a back-off attitude that belies both Miki’s experience of prison and the way this character remains partially stuck in her teenage identity. </p>
<p>Shiny pink nail polish and sun-drenched memories of bike rides clash against the drab fluorescent dejection of a local pub, and blood pooling on an abattoir floor. </p>
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<h2>The Australian Gothic</h2>
<p>The score (composition by Bryony Marks) creates a haunting, atmospheric quality, and the series works in classic Gothic tropes: a ghostly landscape, an isolated rural setting marked by decay, themes of entrapment and claustrophobia, and an unresolved past intruding on the present. </p>
<p>It represents a contemporary take on <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-gothic-from-hanging-rock-to-nick-cave-and-kylie-this-genre-explores-our-dark-side-111742">the Australian Gothic</a>. </p>
<p>Australian Gothic has been associated with <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/60/">a colonial gaze</a> that sees horror in the “uncivilised” Australian bush or outback, evocatively rendered in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067541/">Wake in Fright</a> (1971) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073540/">Picnic at Hanging Rock</a> (1975). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men in an abattoir" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482415/original/file-20220902-17818-4w5075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">This is a contemporary take on Australian Gothic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span>
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<p>In the colonial imagination, the Australian landscape has been figured as a source of terror hiding any number of unknown threats to colonisers. In Australian Gothic works, they grapple with alienation, melancholy and isolation, mirroring fears inspired by the colonial experience. </p>
<p>This white, colonial gaze is interrogated rather than replicated in Savage River. While the regional Victorian bush provides an atmospheric setting, the sense of threat and violence centres instead on the town’s abattoir. </p>
<p>Facing secret financial difficulties, long past its zenith as the economic saviour of the town, the meat works is a site of white patriarchy. It was founded by the ageing mayor’s father, and is owned by the mayor’s son Kevin (Daniel Hensall), keeping the place afloat by exploiting refugees with precarious visa conditions. </p>
<p>When Miki gets a job at the abattoir we see a brutal reality: Savage River is a town built on blood and slaughter, a truth that references the colonial violence at the foundation of modern Australia. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-gothic-from-hanging-rock-to-nick-cave-and-kylie-this-genre-explores-our-dark-side-111742">Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side</a>
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<h2>Who is acknowledged as missing?</h2>
<p>Australian Gothic is not the only genre Savage River plays with. The plot is driven by a murder mystery when, just days after Miki returns home, a white man goes missing and is then found dead. </p>
<p>Parallel to this man’s disappearance, a refugee woman named Laila (Haya Abbas) has been missing for days. As Laila’s sister Jamila (Maia Abbas) tries in vain to get the men around her to take Laila’s disappearance seriously, the show draws attention to the town’s uneven attitudes to the two missing people. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white male cop and a muslim woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482416/original/file-20220902-17444-oi4w5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Savage River considers how different lives are valued.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span>
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<p>In one scene the town’s resident copper and typical “mediocre white man” - Bill Kirby (Robert Grubb), is setting up for the town’s annual celebration. </p>
<p>As Bill sets traffic cones on the grass he is on the phone, reporting the white man missing with a tone of concern in his voice. Jamila approaches him and appeals to him to help her find Laila, who she says is gone, like the man who is missing. Bill is wilfully confused, asking, “Gone where?”. </p>
<p>When Jamila implores him to please look for Laila, Bill gestures around at the preparations with exasperation, and fobs her off saying, “Well I can’t do anything today,” as if his hands are tied. </p>
<p>The town festivities take precedence over Laila’s disappearance. </p>
<p>Attributed to journalist Gwen Ifill, the term “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/the-missing-white-woman-syndrome-still-plagues-america">missing white woman syndrome</a>” is used to describe this deeply unequal media coverage and public attention, along racial lines.</p>
<p>Murder mysteries often replicate this syndrome, in blonde screen icons like Laura Palmer in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/">Twin Peaks</a> (1990), as well as more recent adaptations <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/">Gone Girl </a> (2014) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3631112/">The Girl on the Train</a> (2016).</p>
<p>Savage River refuses racist, misogynist and classist tropes. Here, the sense of menace emanates from the town’s patriarchal, capitalist leaders who have made their fortune by slaughtering animals. The apathy and racism of police is problematised, and white, male power is explored as a corrupting influence. </p>
<p>The show has a whole lot of heart, too, with some truly endearing characters. With a ripping plot, the story will sweep you away.</p>
<p><em>Savage River is on ABC TV and ABC iView from September 4.</em></p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-beyond-girl-gone-mad-melodrama-reframing-female-anger-in-psychological-thrillers-161583">Friday essay: beyond 'girl gone mad melodrama' — reframing female anger in psychological thrillers</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, this new ABC crime drama Savage River explores complex social territory.Emma Maguire, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1889822022-08-23T20:04:26Z2022-08-23T20:04:26ZBluey was edited for American viewers – but global audiences deserve to see all of us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480500/original/file-20220823-24-z2639u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C2137%2C1496&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Beloved children’s program Bluey has received some backlash. </p>
<p>Not due to the program, but to Disney’s decision to make edits to various episodes for the US market. </p>
<p>Dubbed “<a href="https://mouthsofmums.com.au/7-things-disney-apparently-censored-in-bluey-season-3/">censorship</a>” by some publications, the changes to the third season, released in America on Disney+ this month, include Bandit not being hit in a sensitive area, a conversation about getting a vasectomy replaced with “getting dog teeth removed”, the horse Buttermilk no longer stands next to poo on screen and Aunt Trix is no longer seen on the toilet during a video call.</p>
<p>One episode, Family Meeting, where Bluey accuses dad Bandit of farting in her face, was removed entirely – although due to the backlash it appears this decision has been <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/streaming/bluey-episode-banned-on-disney-in-the-us-for-bizarre-reason/news-story/b5877d7134a6b217234398eb7892d4da">rescinded</a>.</p>
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<p>Episodes in previous seasons have also been <a href="https://twitter.com/blueymoments/status/1261872704237551618">edited</a> or <a href="https://blueypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dad_Baby">unavailable</a> to stream on Disney+. </p>
<p>This decision by Disney comes at a time when there has been a fundamental shift, both in the way audiences consume content and how content is distributed. Through global streaming services, content previously produced for a local market now has a greater opportunity to reach a global audience. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/arts/television/bluey-cartoon-dog-australia.html">The New York Times</a> has said Bluey “could rival The Wiggles as Australia’s most popular children’s cultural export”. </p>
<p>But can screen content truly be considered a cultural export if it is re-edited to reflect cultural aspects of the market it is being distributed in?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-idealised-australian-ethos-why-bluey-is-an-audience-favourite-even-for-adults-without-kids-168571">'An idealised Australian ethos': why Bluey is an audience favourite, even for adults without kids</a>
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<h2>Content for global audience</h2>
<p>Australian media content being changed for the US market is not a new phenomena. </p>
<p>More than 40 years ago, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/alternateversions">Mad Max</a> was dubbed with American accents for the US market. </p>
<p>More recently, Australian television shows like <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2011/06/watch_the_original_australian.html">Wilfred</a> (2011), <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-30/american-version-kath-and-kim-tv-remakes/100689218">Kath & Kim</a> (2009) and <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/the-slap/the-slap-australia-explained/">The Slap</a> (2015) have been reproduced for a US market. </p>
<p>Since these Americanised series premiered, there has been a shift in the commissioning of media. Content distributors no longer solely rely on local broadcasters: they now are able to go direct to a global audience through streaming services. </p>
<p>Since the start of 2022, Netflix has commissioned content <a href="https://www.ampereanalysis.com/press/release/dl/netflix-looks-to-international-commissions-for-growth">from 44 territories</a>, Warner Bros commissioned work across 27 territories for HBO Max and Discovery+, Disney 23 and Amazon 21. </p>
<p>These streaming platforms aren’t looking for local hits: they’re looking for global hits, from anywhere. It’s not just about making the next Stranger Things, it’s <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/netflix-commissions-originals-from-a-record-28-international-markets/5173422.article">about making</a> the next Money Heist – the Netflix hit from Spain – or the next South Korean juggernaut Squid Game.</p>
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<h2>A question of quotas</h2>
<p>In 2021, the federal government removed the quota requiring local children’s programming on Australian commercial television. This has resulted in a significant <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2022/08/2021-content-quotas-soaps-deliver-but-kids-tv-in-freefall.html">decline</a> in the broadcast of children’s content.</p>
<p>We have seen <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/spending-subscription-video-demand-providers-2020-21">increased investment</a> of Australian content by streaming services. Together, Amazon Prime, Disney, Netflix and Stan spent A$178.9 million in the 2020–21 financial year, including children’s television. This is up more than $25 million in the <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/spending-subscription-video-demand-providers-2019-20">previous year</a>.</p>
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<p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-has-a-new-development-funding-initiative-with-the-australian">Netflix launched</a> a partnership with the Australian Children’s Television Foundation to fund the development of original Australian children’s series. Disney has <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/disney-releases-first-wave-of-local-content-commissions-with-9-australian-originals-737567">also announced</a> its planned investment in local Australian children’s content.</p>
<p>This increase by streaming service is yet to fill the shortfall by commercial television.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cheese-n-crackers-concerns-deepen-for-the-future-of-australian-childrens-television-147183">Cheese 'n' crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children's television</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>But is it Australian?</h2>
<p>In June, the <a href="https://makeitaustralian.com/">Make It Australian</a> campaign was launched at the Sydney Film Festival. The campaign calls for Australian stories to be “told on Australian screens by us, to us, about us”.</p>
<p>At the campaign launch, arts minister Tony Burke said international and commercial success for Australian films is “wonderful, but that is a bonus.”</p>
<p>The “first objective” for Australian films, he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>is to make sure our stories are told so that we know better ourselves; we know better each other and the world has a better way of knowing us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is the last point that Tony Burke makes, about the world “knowing us”, that is less considered in the ongoing local screen content debate. Indeed, Australian content is being <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/spending-subscription-video-demand-providers-2020-21">shown to a global audience</a>. </p>
<p>But what happens when Australian content is edited with these international audiences in mind? Edits like those Disney made to Bluey not only impact the humour and the narrative, but also impact the cultural representation within the program.</p>
<p>Increased investment by streaming services will provide opportunities for Australian local content to be successful locally and globally. But for Australian television and films to be true cultural exports, the world should be seeing the version of ourselves we are seeing, too.</p>
<p>The success of this relies on not only focusing on content production and local distribution, but including strategies that allow Australian content to remain free from localised edits, so it can truly reflect an Australian cultural export. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tv-has-changed-so-must-the-way-we-support-local-content-139674">TV has changed, so must the way we support local content</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc C-Scott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the rise of streaming platforms, Australian television can reach a global audience – but what will that audience be seeing?Marc C-Scott, Senior lecturer in Screen Media, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1876992022-07-27T20:12:54Z2022-07-27T20:12:54ZCan Q&A lead us out of the opinion wars it’s helped to fuel?<p>This week’s announcement that Stan Grant will be permanent host of the ABC’s Q&A follows widespread speculation about the future of the program. On some estimates, ratings have fallen by more than 50% from a peak of over 600,000 during its first decade under Tony Jones, who served as host from 2008.</p>
<p>Hamish Macdonald succeeded Jones in November 2019 but resigned in July last year, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/it-was-pretty-isolating-why-hamish-macdonald-left-q-a-to-return-to-the-project-20210818-p58jxz.html">describing</a>his 18-month tenure as “a bruising experience”. Aside from being <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/even-the-abc-types-tuning-out-of-hamish-macdonalds-farleft-qanda/video/681731268676da24829ab656e442a9c2">attacked on Sky News</a> for his “far left Green agenda”, he was relentlessly trolled on social media, with virulent accusations of bias from both the left and the right.</p>
<p>Curiously, the BBC’s Question Time – Q&A’s prototype – has followed a parallel trajectory. Its ratings have fallen precipitously, from nearly nine million to just over a million – and the decline coincides with the replacement of veteran host David Dimbleby by seasoned BBC personality Fiona Bruce, whose own brand of charisma is no match for the gravitas of her predecessor.</p>
<p>Question Time is something of a cuckoo in the nest. In its 43-year history it has consistently featured leading commentators and parliamentarians; its two most longstanding presenters, Dimbleby and Robin Day, were the equivalent of BBC royalty. But since its takeover by a commercial production company in 1998, the program has crossed the line into terrain more generally associated with tabloid media.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="David Dimbleby and panel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476221/original/file-20220727-4217-5afxy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parallels: presenter David Dimbleby and guests during the filming of an episode of the BBC’s Question Time in Finchley, the former constituency of Margaret Thatcher, in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now its producers prefer guests like Brexiteer Nigel Farage, conservative psychologist Jordan Peterson and John Lydon (alias punk rocker Johnny Rotten), who serve to ratchet up the controversy. It’s been claimed that paid audience plants are instructed to ask heavily weighted questions, and that the chairing is biased. And Bruce endures the kind of social media onslaught that drove Macdonald out.</p>
<p>Reports of “disastrous” ratings may themselves be a form of motivated attack. Audiences now have many more viewing options than the original live transmissions, and the BBC has persistently asserted that audience figures are higher than some surveys suggest.</p>
<p>Q&A is in much the same situation: while Sky claims the “lefty lovefest” has scored as low as 228,000, the ABC estimates the regular following through 2021 at more than 400,000. But that’s still quite a drop-off since the program’s heyday.</p>
<h2>Business as usual</h2>
<p>Are we just jaded with celebrity opinion shows, especially those founded in the left–right dramaturgy? The predictability is at times exhausting. </p>
<p>Macdonald’s best episode was his first, in February 2020, when he chaired a session on the bushfires with a panel that included Kirsty McBain, then mayor of Bega, and Andrew Constance, Liberal MP for the area. The panel sat on office chairs in a semi-circle, genuinely sharing what they had all just been through, including Macdonald himself, who had reported from an evacuation centre as the fire front approached.</p>
<p>A few weeks later, though, it was back to business as usual, with the presenter in a glossy suit fielding the play of left–right argy-bargy in the studio.</p>
<p>We don’t need this anymore. In many ways, the conventions of “robust disagreement” and “both sides-ism” are no longer a positive feature of civil society but rather a threat to it. As Republican Liz Cheney put it in a recent <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/sotu/date/2022-07-24/segment/01">statement</a> to the January 6th Committee, “the normal sort of vitriolic, toxic partisanship has got to stop. And we have to recognise what is at stake.”</p>
<p>Stan Grant has several times taken the helm as guest host of Q&A since Tony Jones’s departure. He prompted a furore in March this year when he <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-03/stan-grant-tells-audience-member-to-leave-qanda/100880520">expelled an audience member</a> who expressed support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, asserting the program was contributing to media bias against Russia. There were calls of “propaganda” from the audience as the speaker proceeded to claim that Ukraine was responsible for all the violence.</p>
<p>Aired in the second week of the Russian invasion, this episode included speakers and audience members with family in the war zone. “We encourage different points of view here,” Grant said. “But we can’t have anyone who is sanctioning, supporting, violence.”</p>
<p>Clearly caught off guard by an unscheduled audience intervention, Grant may have missed the essential point: that the statement, intentionally or not, was Russian propaganda. It was a critical moment for many reasons, one of which is that Grant’s subsequent appointment as host could signal a change in direction for the program.</p>
<h2>Expertise versus opinion</h2>
<p>That moment also raised the question of when we should call foul on claims about the right to express opinion, especially in a media culture increasingly subject to influence from organised, even state-run, propaganda. And what is propaganda? How does it manifest and how should we respond?</p>
<p>This, surely, would be a good focus for a Q&A program. Peter Pomerantsev, who has studied Russian propaganda for decades, would be the perfect guest. These are times in which we need sustained, forensic focus on complex issues. We need insight and analysis from people with knowledge and experience, not extemporised opinion from celebrities.</p>
<p>The Ukraine invasion is the starkest manifestation of the transformed geopolitical environment. With Donald Trump already moving to gather support for another tilt at the presidency, and the US justice department taking its time over the evidence against him, the future of American democracy is in jeopardy. In Australia we have a leader of the opposition who talks openly about war with China.</p>
<p>Jones, Macdonald and Grant have all had extensive experience as foreign correspondents. With domestic politics increasingly dwarfed by the massive geopolitical tensions of our era, those issues should be to the fore. Q&A, which originated as a premier platform for the opinion wars, now has an opportunity to lead the way out of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The stakes are too high for business as usual on the flagship programJane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1869122022-07-18T20:06:14Z2022-07-18T20:06:14ZBluey casts a tender light on being childless not by choice. Here’s what women told me about living with involuntary childlessness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474457/original/file-20220718-24-a99s2t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1436%2C780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent episode of Bluey, <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/bluey/series/3/video/CH2003Q044S00">Onesies</a>, six-year-old Bluey asks her mum Chilli what’s wrong with Auntie Brandy, who has come to visit for the first time in four years.</p>
<p>“Is she sad?” Bluey asks. “And why have we only seen her once in our lives?”</p>
<p>It is hinted by the show Brandy is unable to have children. </p>
<p>“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Brandy later says to her sister. “It’s just hard seeing you all, you know?” </p>
<p>“I know,” Chilli replies, reaching for her sister’s hand.</p>
<p>It is another example of the hit program’s gentle and insightful exploration of <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/sc-ent-bluey-disney-1023-20191017-fbd55bc67ncbjph4s6hvzdnwc4-story.html">complex issues</a>, sparking a flood of positive responses from viewers. As one person commented on the show’s Facebook page, “thank you Bluey, for showing the infertility and childless not by choice community”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ra90TmjLIOk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Close to <a href="https://www.jeanhailes.org.au/health-a-z/fertility-pregnancy/having-trouble-conceiving">one in six couples</a> have experienced infertility. Those who haven’t usually know someone – a family member, colleague or friend – who has.</p>
<p>Shining a light on these experiences can help many who are going through it to feel less alone and lessen the sense of shame and stigma that unfortunately so often attends a diagnosis of infertility.</p>
<p>Much media coverage tends to focus only on IVF. But Bluey highlights another important aspect of infertility: the emotional and social toll of involuntary childlessness continues well past the period of actively trying to conceive.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-idealised-australian-ethos-why-bluey-is-an-audience-favourite-even-for-adults-without-kids-168571">'An idealised Australian ethos': why Bluey is an audience favourite, even for adults without kids</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘An apology and a failure’</h2>
<p>As part of <a href="https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/shealy">my research</a> into experiences of infertility, I have interviewed older generations of women living with involuntary childlessness. For these women, now in their 60s and 70s, the invisibility of their experiences in public discussion of infertility has had a lasting impact on their mental health and sense of community inclusion.</p>
<p>Some of the women who shared their stories experienced multiple miscarriages; some never found a reason for their infertility; some eventually had a child, while others did not.</p>
<p>For the women who were unable to have a child, the impact of infertility on their identity and relationships is long-lasting, reverberating through their lives well past the months or years they spent trying for a baby.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1537571146421645312"}"></div></p>
<p>Heather* and her husband are in their 60s. At 36, after having tried to conceive for three years, Heather had a miscarriage at eight weeks. They then underwent eight IVF cycles without becoming pregnant, and eventually decided to stop treatment. </p>
<p>Her miscarriage, which happened after she had seen her baby’s heartbeat and experienced bad morning sickness, was deeply traumatic for Heather. Her pregnancy remains special and meaningful to her.</p>
<p>Nearly 30 years later, there are situations she still avoids because of the emotions they trigger. Since retiring she has become active in University of the Third Age but avoids some classes because of the constant conversation about grandchildren: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And then they ask me about my children and my grandchildren and I’ve got to tell them no, we don’t have any. And it’s almost like an apology […] an apology and a failure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Mary*, in her 70s at the time of our interview, getting older has meant reliving the trauma of friends’ young children’s birthday parties. </p>
<p>She recalled in her 30s having to leave parties because they were “just too hard”, and those feelings are returning as her friends become caught up in being grandparents. She reflected, “I’m losing my friends again.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1537773258119909377"}"></div></p>
<p>Renee*, 59 at the time of our interview, told me she no longer has people ask if she has children. “Now, it’s grandchildren,” she says.</p>
<p>The ongoing repercussions of childlessness are felt within families, too. </p>
<p>Greta* is 54, and has no children while her sister does. Her mother had moved interstate to live with her other daughter and grandchildren in her final months. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m so pleased, now, that she had that time with them, but at the time, it was quite wrenching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She reflected how many people without children miss the connection to a multi-generational family. “That’s the longer-term impact. When I’m old, who’s going to care?”, she said.</p>
<h2>Rich and full lives</h2>
<p>Despite their ongoing grief, the women I spoke to who were unable to have a child emphasised their lives were rich and full. This included successful international careers, further study and career changes, running own businesses, becoming step-parents and step-grandparents.</p>
<p>But people who are childless not by choice continue to live with this reality long after their years of trying to conceive.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1537641376929746957"}"></div></p>
<p>We all need to hear stories that reflect our own life experiences, to feel seen, to feel we belong. Bringing a more inclusive approach and a longer perspective to public discussions about infertility helps to undo the isolation and invisibility so often felt by older women who are childless not by choice.</p>
<p>It is perhaps ironic, and a little bittersweet, it has taken a children’s program to remind us of this.</p>
<p><em>*Names have been changed.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/half-of-women-over-35-who-want-a-child-dont-end-up-having-one-or-have-fewer-than-they-planned-173151">Half of women over 35 who want a child don't end up having one, or have fewer than they planned</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sianan Healy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The emotional toll of involuntary childlessness continues well past the period of actively trying to conceive.Sianan Healy, Tracey Banivanua Mar Research Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1858672022-06-29T05:42:35Z2022-06-29T05:42:35ZHow can we reverse the vaping crisis among young Australians? Enforce the rules<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471498/original/file-20220629-14-emka1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C4%2C997%2C661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">E-cigarettes and vape products are illegally imported into Australia. Some claim not to contain nicotine, but do.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/suffolk-uk-may-18-2019-new-1613347117">Simon Collins/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>ABC TV’s Four Corners this week <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/vape-haze:-the-new-addiction-of-vaping/13948226">reported</a> how unlawful sale of e-cigarettes in Australia is out of control. </p>
<p>The program highlighted the effects on young people, in particular, including how easy it is for them to buy the products.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1539762788876181505"}"></div></p>
<p>How did this slow-moving public health train wreck unfold in broad daylight, almost a <a href="https://www.cancer.org.au/blog/extreme-caution-needed-on-electronic-cigarettes">decade after</a> the Cancer Council warned it was coming?</p>
<p>The answer is poor or non-existent enforcement of good laws.</p>
<h2>A growing problem</h2>
<p>The use of all harmful substances in young Australians is <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/alcohol-tobacco-and-other-drugs">declining</a> – except for e-cigarettes and <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/illicit-use-of-drugs/national-drug-strategy-household-survey-2019/data">smoking in men</a> aged 18-24.</p>
<p>Lifetime use of e-cigarettes <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/illicit-use-of-drugs/national-drug-strategy-household-survey-2019/data">increased</a> by 46% between 2016 and 2019 in non-smokers aged 18-24 – a huge spike in the use of a harmful substance in just three years.</p>
<p>Last week, an updated statement from the National Health and Medical Research Council <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-advice/all-topics/electronic-cigarettes/ceo-statement">reflected</a> increasing concerns from public health officials about the growing uptake of e-cigarettes, particularly by young people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="E-cigarettes: get the facts, public health campaign" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471496/original/file-20220629-16-zlvpua.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Public health officials are concerned about the growing use of e-cigarettes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-advice/all-topics/electronic-cigarettes/ceo-statement">NHMRC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-damning-review-of-e-cigarettes-shows-vaping-leads-to-smoking-the-opposite-of-what-supporters-claim-180675">A damning review of e-cigarettes shows vaping leads to smoking, the opposite of what supporters claim</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>But aren’t these illegal?</h2>
<p>Anyone using a nicotine e-cigarette without a valid doctor’s prescription has obtained the product unlawfully. Its importation was unlawful, as was its storage, sale and promotion.</p>
<p>Yet, as the Four Corners program showed, this is happening on an industrial scale. Merchants with a profit motive are promoting <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-damning-review-of-e-cigarettes-shows-vaping-leads-to-smoking-the-opposite-of-what-supporters-claim-180675">addictive products</a>, with no regard for the health of young people. </p>
<p>Retailers and online entrepreneurs are clearly not complying with current laws. And these laws are not being enforced.</p>
<h2>We need to target importation</h2>
<p>E-cigarettes are <a href="https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-18-harm-reduction/indepth-18b-e-cigarettes/18b-1-the-ecigarettemarket">not manufactured</a> in Australia. If their destination is not a pharmacy or someone with a valid prescription, their importation is <a href="https://www.tga.gov.au/nicotine-vaping-products-compliance-and-enforcement">unlawful</a>.</p>
<p>But it is clear, from the number of illegal e-cigarettes available in Australia, the federal government is not enforcing its own importation rules.</p>
<p>Attempts to amend <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_reg_es/cianr2020202000791723.html">regulations</a> to further restrict imports were proposed in 2020. This would have enabled the Australian Border Force to intercept illegal e-cigarette imports.</p>
<p>However, the government assured the community that requiring all
non-tobacco nicotine products to only be available on prescription (<a href="https://www.tga.gov.au/nicotine-vaping-product-access">schedule 4 of the Poisons Standard</a>) would achieve the same result. It <a href="https://www.tga.gov.au/nicotine-vaping-product-access">said</a> this would protect young people from e-cigarettes.</p>
<p>It’s almost nine months since this came into effect in October 2021. Yet young people, in increasing numbers, are accessing e-cigarettes.</p>
<p>The scheduling standard and the rules underpinning it are clearly being ignored. The federal government must revisit proposals to allow interception of illegal e-cigarettes at the border or find another mechanism to block them.</p>
<h2>We need to target their sale</h2>
<p>Retailers and wholesalers are also breaking rules set out in <a href="https://www.tga.gov.au/media-release/tga-confirms-nicotine-e-cigarette-access-prescription-only">official advice</a> from the Therapeutic Goods Administration and corresponding information on state government <a href="https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/tobacco/Pages/e-cigarettes.aspx">websites</a>. </p>
<p>New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant <a href="https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20220516_00.aspx">has warned</a> that nicotine e-cigarette traders, other than pharmacies, could face prosecution, heavy fines and even jail.</p>
<p>Yet tobacconists, convenience stores and vape shops are still breaking the rules.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rows of e-cigarettes for sale" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471510/original/file-20220629-22-quxfkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">E-cigarettes and vaping products can be sold in plain view.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kievukraine27-october2018-buy-new-vape-juice-1217375503">hurricane hank/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>State and territory governments must enforce their laws, especially those being broken in plain view. Authorities can impose substantial fines for offenders, which would not only deter unlawful trade, it would fund additional enforcement.</p>
<p>There are also laws for the bulk storage and transport of schedule 4 poisons, such as nicotine. Four Corners showed how readily a film crew could expose breaches of these laws.</p>
<h2>If young people can find them, so can the authorities</h2>
<p>Young people told Four Corners they can access products without a prescription from online entrepreneurs importing, storing and selling nicotine e-cigarettes. </p>
<p>Seizing illegal imports will eventually dry up their supply, but there will be stockpiles. </p>
<p>If school children can access these suppliers and their products with a quick search on their smartphones, authorities can also find them and put them out of business.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vaping-is-glamourised-on-social-media-putting-youth-in-harms-way-159436">Vaping is glamourised on social media, putting youth in harm's way</a>
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<h2>What needs to happen next?</h2>
<p>E-cigarette use in young Australians is a crisis, but is fixable. The federal government must stop illegal imports, the states and territories must end the unlawful retail, wholesale and interstate trade.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-damning-review-of-e-cigarettes-shows-vaping-leads-to-smoking-the-opposite-of-what-supporters-claim-180675">harms of e-cigarettes</a> are severe and far outweigh any modest benefits; there are laws to protect young people from them. </p>
<p>If the crisis worsens, more people will ask, how did this happen? The answer will be simple: governments made good laws, but they did not enforce them.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-safest-to-avoid-e-cigarettes-altogether-unless-vaping-is-helping-you-quit-smoking-123274">It's safest to avoid e-cigarettes altogether – unless vaping is helping you quit smoking</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Grogan is employed by the Daffodil Centre, a joint cancer research venture between Cancer Council NSW and the University of Sydney. He is an investigator on a current research project on e-cigarette use in young people jointly funded by the NSW Government and the Minderoo Foundation, with in-kind support from Cancer Council NSW.</span></em></p>If the crisis worsens, more people will ask, how did this happen? The answer will be simple: governments made good laws, but they did not enforce them.Paul Grogan, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, The Daffodil Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1842392022-06-10T06:43:12Z2022-06-10T06:43:12ZEveryone loves Bandit from Bluey – but is he a lovable larrikin, or just a bad dad?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467676/original/file-20220608-22-o10wd4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C11%2C7964%2C4479&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC Kids</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bandit Heeler is a hero. </p>
<p>The cartoon father of Bluey and her younger sister Bingo, Bandit is the much-loved dad dog at the heart of Australia’s favourite four-legged family. He balances the drudgery of housework with the creative escapades of his daughters, repurposing everyday objects and actions for imaginative play and engagement. </p>
<p>Awarded a <a href="https://mouthsofmums.com.au/tv-character-favourite-from-bluey-has-been-awarded-dad-of-the-year/">Father of the Year award</a> in 2019 and widely cited as <a href="https://www.the-father-hood.com/article/bluey-how-a-cartoon-dog-became-your-ultimate-guide-to-fatherhood/">the model of modern fatherhood</a>, Bandit’s engaged presence in his daughters’ lives has been hailed as a watershed moment in children’s television.</p>
<p>In a break from TV’s <a href="https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/wheres-your-daddy-the-rise-and-fall-of-mediocre-on-screen-fathers/">“bad dad” trope</a>, Bandit has been worshipped as a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/28/old-dads-learn-new-tricks-from-australian-childrens-cartoon-bluey?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other">dad-idol</a>”, even inspiring a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1603325766532604">Facebook group</a> of 14,000 dedicated dads who identify as Bluey superfans.</p>
<p>Child psychologists <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-17/bluey-day-bandit-parenting/100512968">have explained</a> how Bandit inspired their approach to pretend play and improvisation. A new article published in The Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpc.15620">lays out</a> “what Bluey can teach us about parenting and grandparenting”.</p>
<p>But there is a darker side to this lovable character.</p>
<p>Bandit never strays far from the reductive stereotype of the Australian larrikin: the likeable roguish male stuck between childhood and adulthood whose disrespect of authority and rough-and-ready masculinity reflects Australia’s emotional attachment to the working-class underdog.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-up-games-is-more-important-than-you-think-why-bluey-is-a-font-of-parenting-wisdom-118583">'Making up games is more important than you think': why Bluey is a font of parenting wisdom</a>
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<h2>A familiar breed of larrikin</h2>
<p>It is difficult to overstate the cultural power of larrikin ideology in Australia. </p>
<p>Generally regarded as a sign of authentic, rugged masculinity and anti-authoritarianism, the figure of the larrikin has been co-opted for car and beer adverts, international tourism, and even <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-lives-on-as-a-conservative-politician-168464">conservative politics</a>.</p>
<p>Today, the image of the larrikin has been sanitised for public consumption; however, the history of larrikinism is firmly rooted in Australia’s colonial literature. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog/qa-the-origin-of-larrikin/">original larrikins</a> of the late 19th century were young urban mischief-makers who sometimes ventured into serious violence and crime.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-lives-on-as-a-conservative-politician-168464">The larrikin lives on — as a conservative politician</a>
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<p>At the turn of the century, these transgressive characters were endowed with hearts of gold in outback drama and literature. In some cases, they were domesticated, as was the case for Dad and Dave from Steele Rudd’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Our_Selection">On Our Selection</a> (1899).</p>
<p>Rudd established the family dynamic that would be replicated in a multitude of Australian dramas, from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingswood_Country">Kingswood Country</a> (1980–84) to <a href="https://theconversation.com/straight-to-the-pool-room-a-love-letter-to-the-castle-on-its-25th-anniversary-176361">The Castle</a> (1997) to Bluey: energetic and inexhaustible children, a long-suffering sensible wife and a larrikin father who knows how to play to an audience.</p>
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<p>From this mythos, we see the birth of Bandit: the underdog who knocks authority, mocks pomposity, and regularly breaks the rules to get what he wants – even resorting to cheating when he can’t outsmart or outpace his children.</p>
<p>In one episode, Bandit holds Bluey back from the finish line so he can win an obstacle course. In another, he lauds victory over his younger brother, Stripe, taunting that “big brothers always beat little brothers” – a jibe Bluey imitates when she teases Bingo: “Big sisters always beat little sisters. That’s just the way it goes.”</p>
<p>Even Bandit’s name conjures up the small-time crimes of bushrangers, Australia’s revered outlaws who also achieved a type of perverse folk hero status.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/straight-to-the-pool-room-a-love-letter-to-the-castle-on-its-25th-anniversary-176361">Straight to the pool room: a love letter to The Castle on its 25th anniversary</a>
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<h2>Bandit the bully</h2>
<p>Undoubtedly, Bandit’s larrikinism contributes to his likeability: he is an entertaining and engaged father who is heavily involved in his childrens’ lives.</p>
<p>Occasionally, however, we catch a glimpse of Bandit’s darker side, with his playful teasing of his young daughters sometimes devolving into bullying.</p>
<p>In one episode, Bandit agrees to open Bingo’s ice block before repeatedly licking her frozen sweet in front of her. Afterwards, Bandit apologises to his daughter for being “a bit mean”.</p>
<p>While the show itself restrains judgement, often it is Bandit’s wife Chilli who pulls him into line. When Bandit forgets to pack sunscreen and snacks for a swim at the pool, it is Chilli (the “boring” parent, in Bandit’s words) who saves the day. </p>
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<p>Yet it is Bandit who is praised for his parenting prowess, while Chilli is figuratively and literally in the background. In fact, the creators of Bluey were recently accused of <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/a-rare-bluey-blunder-chilli-isnt-falling-short-because-she-returned-to-work/">mother-shaming</a> when they described Chilli as “falling a bit short” due to her status as a working mum.</p>
<p>The universal veneration of Bandit is perplexing since, in situations like at the pool, he comes across as a mildly incompetent caricature, lampooned as an overgrown child in need of regular supervision and training.</p>
<p>Bandit is also surprisingly conservative when it comes to gender values. </p>
<p>Bandit is a “traditional” man who wishes to be viewed as the head of the Heeler household. When he reluctantly submits to wearing make-up, he is subsequently mocked by his mates for doing so. He censors himself from engaging in full imaginative play when under the gaze of other men. He teases his wife on the pains of pregnancy and labour.</p>
<p>Taken individually, most of these moments are punchlines. But over the course of three series, Bluey creates a complex portrait of Australia’s favourite dad. Bandit is present and playful, but he is still a larrikin at heart. His continued popularity, despite his personal shortcomings, only speaks to the stereotype’s strength in contemporary Australian life. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-subtle-sophistication-of-blueys-soundtrack-helped-propel-it-to-stardom-153102">The subtle sophistication of Bluey's soundtrack helped propel it to stardom</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He’s been awarded Father of the Year – but there is a darker side to this character we need to talk about.David Burton, Lecturer, Theatre, University of Southern QueenslandKate Cantrell, Lecturer in Writing, Editing, and Publishing, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1819482022-04-28T01:40:25Z2022-04-28T01:40:25ZNo-one is talking about ABC funding in this election campaign. Here’s why they should be<p>The election campaign is well underway and the ABC is barely registering as an issue. Why is that, when according to the Morrison government’s own figures, the ABC’s real funding will continue to decline over the next three years?</p>
<p>Not that the government acknowledges this. </p>
<p>“The evidence is clear,” communications minister Paul Fletcher <a href="https://www.paulfletcher.com.au/print/funding-boost-will-allow-the-abc-to-be-its-best-self">declared</a> in February. “The Morrison government has provided strong and consistent support to the ABC.”</p>
<p>This is a breathtakingly misleading statement. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-abcs-budget-hasnt-been-restored-its-still-facing-1-2-billion-in-accumulated-losses-over-a-decade-176532">The ABC's budget hasn't been restored – it's still facing $1.2 billion in accumulated losses over a decade</a>
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<h2>Accumulated losses</h2>
<p>Two of us, Michael Ward and Alex Wake, have tracked the Coalition government’s support several times on this site, most recently in February, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-abcs-budget-hasnt-been-restored-its-still-facing-1-2-billion-in-accumulated-losses-over-a-decade-176532">writing</a> that the ABC’s budget hasn’t been restored – it’s still facing A$1.2 billion in accumulated losses over a decade.</p>
<p>Ward has also conducted research on how much the ABC has lost and will continue to lose in aggregate over the course of a 12-year period. Ward used a number of public financial sources to build the data sets behind the tables and figures in this article, including <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/publications/budgets">ABC portfolio budget statements</a>, a 2014 <a href="https://archive.budget.gov.au/index.htm">Budget paper</a>, and a 2022 <a href="https://budget.gov.au/2022-23/content/bp1/download/bp1_2022-23.pdf">Budget Strategy Paper</a>. He also used <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/ABCoverview">Australian Parliamentary Library reports</a> and ABC answers to Senate Questions on Notice in <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_Estimates/ec/2018-19_Supplementary_Budget_estimates">2018</a> and <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_estimates/ec/2021-22_Supplementary_budget_estimates">2021</a>.</p>
<p>The evidence is clear: but for a series of decisions made over the nine years of the Coalition government, the ABC would have far more funding at its disposal.</p>
<p>The Morrison government has been neither a strong nor consistent supporter of the ABC. Yes, the ABC benefits from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/26/abc-does-deals-with-google-and-facebook-that-could-see-millions-spent-on-regional-news">deals</a> with Google and Facebook under the government’s <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/news-media-bargaining-code">news media bargaining code</a>, but the government initially <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abc-sbs-exclusion-from-tech-giants-payments-a-government-decision-20200731-p55hfh.html">excluded</a> the ABC from the code and the deals are for a limited period.</p>
<p>As the below table shows, decisions by the Coalition government since 2013 have left the ABC far worse off financially.</p>
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<p>There was the <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/budget/2014_17/upload_binary/bp2_expense.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/budget/2014_17%22">axing of the Australia Network</a>, (a service providing soft power diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region) announced in May 2014, at a cost of $186 million. </p>
<p>There was the simultaneous <a href="https://archive.budget.gov.au/2014-15/bp2/BP2_consolidated.pdf">1% reduction of ABC funding</a>, which has since cost the ABC $72 million.</p>
<p>There have been <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/about-us/corporate-reporting/budgets">“efficiency” savings of $353 million</a>, beginning in November 2014.</p>
<p>There have been <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_estimates/ec/2018-19_Supplementary_Budget_estimates">cuts to tied funding initiatives</a> totalling $122 million, announced in May 2017. (“Tied funding” means grants tied to a specific purpose or project.)</p>
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<p>And, since 2019, there has been <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/about-us/corporate-reporting/budgets">a freeze on indexation</a> for ABC funding that has cost the broadcaster $84 million.</p>
<p>By 2025–26, we project these all decisions will leave the ABC <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_Estimates/ec/2018-19_Supplementary_Budget_estimates">$1.3 billion worse off</a>.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, the government has sought to trumpet the slightest reprieves and slenderest funding increases as evidence of its commitment to the public broadcaster.</p>
<p>Fletcher’s <a href="https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/fletcher/media-release/committed-and-growing-funding-locked-abc-and-sbs-next-three-year-funding-period">declaration in February</a>, alongside his announcement of the government’s plans for the ABC’s next triennial funding period, was entirely in this vein.</p>
<p>The government <a href="https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/fletcher/media-release/committed-and-growing-funding-locked-abc-and-sbs-next-three-year-funding-period">reversed its freeze</a> on indexation for ABC funding and increased the ABC’s operational funding by a total of $38.3 million between 2022-23 and 2025-26.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022-23_infra_pbs_04_abc.pdf">budget papers </a>, released on March 29, stagger the funding increases by 0.7% in 2022–23, 2.0% in 2023–24, and 1.6% in 2024–25. This is an average 1.5% annual increase over the next three years.</p>
<p>But those same <a href="https://budget.gov.au/2022-23/content/bp1/download/bp1_2022-23.pdf">budget papers</a> predict inflation to be 3%, 2.75% and 2.75% over the same period. And already the first prediction has needed to be increased to <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/headline-inflation-surges-to-5-1pc-20220427-p5agdm">5.1%</a> after the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest Consumer Price Index figures on Wednesday.</p>
<p>What this means is that the modest increases in nominal funding will be outpaced by inflation, leaving the ABC worse off in real terms.</p>
<p>The government’s strategy of anaesthetising the ABC’s funding as an election issue appears to be working because few in the media are talking about it. But they should be.</p>
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<p>Reductions over the past nine years have already led the ABC to significant job losses and programming changes. Remember when each state and territory had its own edition of 7.30 on television on Fridays? That level of scrutiny has been sorely missed during the global pandemic when we have all been reminded how important state and territory government services are.</p>
<p>In real terms, analysis of <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/about-us/corporate-reporting/budgets">Budget papers</a> and a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/ABCoverview">Parliamentary Library report</a> show ABC operational funding has declined by 12% since the Hawke Labor government. The table below compares average annual funding for each government since 1971.</p>
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<p>This historical comparison shows that, barring changes to the plans of whoever is in government, ABC funding in 2025–26 will be at its lowest level in real terms in 45 years.</p>
<p>As we (Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins) show in our book, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/who-needs-the-abc-9781922310927">Who needs the ABC?</a>, the environment in which the ABC operates is profoundly different to that of two decades ago. Apart from <a href="https://theconversation.com/constant-attacks-on-the-abc-will-come-back-to-haunt-the-coalition-government-98456">sustained Coalition government</a> hostility, the ABC is under almost continuous attack from sections of the commercial news media.</p>
<p>Yet the ABC does more now than it ever has, running six television channels, more than 60 capital city, local, and digital radio stations, four national radio services, a vast array of online resources, and live music.</p>
<p>On funding, one side, the Coalition, is clearly associated with an overall reduction in ABC funding.</p>
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<p>The ABC is too important a national cultural institution for voters to be denied a clear picture of how it is being treated by the government, and by the Labor opposition. For its part, the opposition has promised to move funding agreements beyond the electoral cycle, to five years, and to reverse the indexation decisions of 2019. </p>
<p>As we have noted, though, this will not restore the funding lost over the past nine years. Both major parties should commit to restoring ABC funding.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-latest-abc-inquiry-really-just-business-as-usual-171824">Is the latest ABC inquiry really just 'business as usual'?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Ward is a Ph.D. candidate in media and communications at the University of Sydney. From 1999 to 2017 he worked for the ABC, including as a senior executive contributing to funding submissions.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wake was a senior journalist with the ABC, and did her last shift with ABC Radio Australia in 2015.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson last year conducted paid in-house feature writing training sessions for journalists in the ABC's Asia Pacific Newsroom. He is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance's representative on the Australian Press Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Mullins has received funding from ArtsACT and the Museum of Australian Democracy.</span></em></p>ABC funding is not registering as an election issue even though it will drop in real terms over the next three years.Michael Ward, PhD candidate, University of SydneyAlexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT UniversityMatthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityPatrick Mullins, Adjunct assistant professor, Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1768042022-03-07T03:02:42Z2022-03-07T03:02:42ZFrom the ABC and the National Gallery of Australia, The Exhibitionists explores the unsung talent of Australian art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447435/original/file-20220221-22-1jdw71c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2150%2C1477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Exhibitionists, ABC TV</em></p>
<p>What do you picture in your mind when you imagine an artist? </p>
<p>Is it a man in a beret? Do you think Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Van Gogh? Odds are it is unlikely to be a woman. Yet there are many famous and highly regarded women artists: Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cindy Sherman.</p>
<p>It is even less likely for the word “artist” to trigger the image of an Australian woman. There are however many of importance to Australia’s cultural life: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Tracey Moffatt, Patricia Piccinini and Margaret Preston among them.</p>
<p>Female artists are nowhere near as well known as their male counterparts. </p>
<p>A new docu-comedy, The Exhibitionists, explains why this dominant image of an artist is man, and describes many fascinating stories of the noteworthy place of women across the history of Australian art. </p>
<p>After a few too many drinks at an exhibition opening, four friends dare each other to get locked into the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). </p>
<p>Having a bit of a lark, they notice there aren’t many female artists on show, and set about rectifying that. This narrative is used as a framing device for fascinating profiles of Australian women artists and interviews with experts. </p>
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<h2>Shaping art practice: the female gaze</h2>
<p>The Exhibitionists defines the male gaze as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the idea that everything we look at is created for a default viewer who is male. It is men’s ideas, men’s needs, that dominate the creation of art and visual media. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, this docu-comedy gives an insight into “the female gaze”, which <a href="http://femalegaze.com.au/reviews-2/">I describe as</a> “the individual way anyone who identifies as female inflects her own female experience or subjectivity” onto her artwork. </p>
<p>The female artists included in the program played a role in elevating female iconography and women’s culture. Through their work, they introduced crafts such as embroidery into the halls of fine art, and avoided exploitative representations of the female body. </p>
<p>Arguably, it was these things that led to their work being disregarded by gatekeepers and critics.</p>
<p>The Exhibitionists chronicles decades of misogynist critics whose point of view arguably worked to hold women out, an issue across most artforms. </p>
<p>In 1933, critic James Stuart MacDonald bemoaned the “tremendous intrusion of women painters since the war”. </p>
<p>As recently as 2008, Brian Sewell wrote in London’s Evening Standard that “only men are capable of aesthetic greatness”. He noted women are prevalent in art schools but tend to fade away – a fact that indicates systemic issues for female artists rather than a lack of talent. </p>
<p>Women artists are subjected to the same discrimination evident in many other fields, including a gender pay gap, under-representation in galleries, and unconscious bias — particularly by gatekeepers. For example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/we-need-more-critics-of-color.html">critics are still often</a> white, heterosexual men over 40 with track records of lacking regard for women’s art. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-league-of-men-why-are-there-so-few-female-film-critics-47470">The league of men: why are there so few female film critics?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>#KnowMyName</h2>
<p>The NGA, which assisted financing The Exhibitionists, has recognised that only 25% of works in its Australian art collection are by women. This situation is <a href="https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/get-facts/">mirrored</a> in galleries nationally and internationally. </p>
<p>To redress this, the NGA launched an initiative called “<a href="https://knowmyname.nga.gov.au/about/">Know My Name</a>” in 2019, aiming to increase representation in the collection while celebrating and recognising Australian female artists.</p>
<p>The initiative has been a call to action and also made visible the work of women across diverse creative practices, highlighting the systemic issues that have been barriers to their participation. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beauty-and-audacity-know-my-name-presents-a-new-female-story-of-australian-art-150139">Beauty and audacity: Know My Name presents a new, female story of Australian art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This example of leadership by a cultural institution comes on the back of a long history of women’s activism to attain recognition. </p>
<p>Often this has been achieved through humour, as it does in The Exhibitionists. </p>
<p>Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous activist group, fight sexism and racism with humour. In 1989 they <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the-met-museum-p78793">printed posters</a> asking “do women have to be naked to get into the Met museum?”, noting only 5% of the modern art collection was from female artists, but 85% of the nudes were of women.</p>
<p>Referring to that phenomena as “the male graze”, the Guerrilla Girls challenged people to count the nudes in other galleries and report back. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Guerrilla Girls’ famous poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/slu-art-gallery/19123342045/">St. Lawrence University Art Gallery/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Brilliant artists</h2>
<p>There are some shocking statistics in The Exhibitionists about how women have been held out of art world circuits, but of most interest are the stellar female artists across eras and styles.</p>
<p>The program creates a potted female-centred history of Australian art. Included is landscape painter Jane Sutherland (1853-1928), the first professional Australian female artist. She was a member of Heidelberg School and one of a small number of women who accompanied Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts on painting trips. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Sutherland’s A cabbage garden, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) was one of Australia’s finest abstract expressionists, achieving the highest price for a painting by an Australian woman artist (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/17/emily-kame-kngwarreye-painting-sells-for-21m-in-sydney">A$2.1 million in 2017</a>). She did this in sourcing her work from her clan country Alhalkere, and not from western art. </p>
<p>Dorrit Black (1891-1951) was the first Australian woman to run an art gallery and the first Australian cubist landscape painter. </p>
<p>It does appear that in order to make this contribution, many of these artists did not have families and devoted themselves to their art. This life choice led to them being regarded as unfeminine or unwomanly. However, along the way they made a substantive contribution to Australian art. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorrit Black’s The monastery church from 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Exhibitionists tells us women’s stories matter, and they attract audiences. </p>
<p>Art is for everyone, and it should mirror society.</p>
<p><em>The Exhibitionists screens on ABC TV on March 8.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new docu-comedy, The Exhibitionists asks why the dominant image of an artist is a man – and places women back in the frame.Lisa French, Professor & Dean, School of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1681912021-09-23T04:53:38Z2021-09-23T04:53:38ZFires review: new ABC drama helps teach important lessons about the realities of bushfires in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422584/original/file-20210922-25-10t0ff0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4992%2C2949&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bushfires are incredibly difficult to imagine, but once experienced are impossible to forget. They are events that most people would <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-living-with-fire-and-facing-our-fears-128093">prefer not to think about</a> — at least not in too much detail. </p>
<p>Just prior to Black Saturday, I was employed by the Victorian Country Fire Authority to research bushfire simulators, similar to earthquake or cyclone simulators, to help people prepare for the realities of a bushfire. </p>
<p>It sounds like a great idea, but it proved difficult to achieve. How do you expose someone to plus 40 degree heat, gale force winds, choking smoke and zero visibility? Never mind ask them to remember complex bushfire defence tasks while wearing fire-proof clothing, gloves, boots and goggles.</p>
<p>How do you simulate the approach of a 15 metre wall of flames that roars like a jet aircraft taking off? How do you simulate someone’s response to that experience without scaring them half to death? Dramatised stories are one approach, simultaneously acknowledging the experiences for those who were involved in the bushfires, and also sharing that experience with those who were not. </p>
<p>The new ABC TV drama Fires is a six-part series of interlinked stories inspired by the 2019-2020 Black Summer fire season. The series loosely follows two young volunteer firefighters from Queensland as they travel south on <a href="https://ausemergencyservices.com.au/emergency-services/firefighters/all-hands-on-deck-as-catastrophic-fire-warning-issued/">strike teams</a> to help fight fires in New South Wales and Victoria. </p>
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<p>Each episode tells a story of the decisions, experiences and responses of different communities and individuals on the way. This clever story structure showcases a wide diversity of circumstances and situations: from the generational losses of farming families to the disrupted holidays of tourists and shattered dreams of tree-change commuters. </p>
<p>The series explores the way in which people make decisions around fire preparation, defence and evacuation: when to protect property and animals and when to save yourself. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-living-with-fire-and-facing-our-fears-128093">Friday essay: living with fire and facing our fears</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Responses to emergency, and its aftermath</h2>
<p>The first episode introduces the linking characters of Tash (Eliza Scanlen) and Mott (Hunter Page-Lochard), highlighting the risks and sacrifices volunteer fire fighters and their families make in helping protect their communities. Tash has been a volunteer for five years, since she was 16, while Mott is a new recruit. </p>
<p>This episode may generate some heated technical discussions among Australia’s nearly 150,000 volunteer fire fighters around safety procedures, equipment and protocols (which are generally much better than depicted here) but hopefully the show will recruit new and younger members for fire brigades, which are currently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/29/australias-volunteer-firefighting-force-declined-10-in-past-decade">at a 10-year low</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production still: two firefighters" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422588/original/file-20210922-23-c1qepj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s nearly 150,000 volunteer firefighters are crucial, and Fires places two young volunteers at the heart of the show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accurately depicting psychological responses to an emergency is probably difficult because few of us experience the hyper-charged adrenalin mode created by the imminent threat of death. It’s not the same as being stressed or worried.</p>
<p>Despite our expectations, people rarely panic or throw their hands in the air in an emergency, rather they develop tunnel vision and become highly focused on the tasks for which they have trained. </p>
<p>The everyday personal tensions that drive the plot of most TV dramas are utterly irrelevant in a fire emergency and quite literally displaced by well-practised drills and procedures. I can’t imagine firefighters failing to prioritise a colleague’s injuries or dithering with anxiety during a truck burn-over. Hyper-focus, not lack of focus, is a more common response. </p>
<p>The second episode more successfully depicts the traumatic aftermath of fires and the messy complexity of grief, anger and loss. Dairy farmers Kath (Miranda Otto) and Duncan (Richard Roxburgh) return to their property to discover their home destroyed and many of their cattle dead or needing to be put down. Otto and Roxburgh skillfully layer the pragmatic stoicism of rural life with the emotional detachment often generated by trauma. </p>
<p>This episode moves swiftly and lightly across the processes of bonding and fracturing that so often occur in fire-impacted communities, the cycles of blame and anger that scorch families and friendships and the pressures put upon relationships by the insistent demands of the media and even by those trying hardest to help.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: Miranda Otto and Richard Roxburgh on a tractor" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422586/original/file-20210922-13-xhtax0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miranda Otto and Richard Roxburgh give rich performances of the experience of grief, anger and loss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/frequent-extreme-bushfires-are-our-new-reality-we-need-to-learn-how-to-live-with-smoke-filled-air-149427">Frequent extreme bushfires are our new reality. We need to learn how to live with smoke-filled air</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A harsh reality</h2>
<p>These early episodes feel somewhat sparsely populated in characters as they focus on just a handful of individuals at a time, rather than the broader community they live in, but I imagine the later episodes will layer these characters and themes and deepen some of the discussions as the show progresses towards its finale.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production still: Anna Lise Phillips, Emil Jayan and Sachin Joab at campgrounds" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422589/original/file-20210922-17-q0hsvf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fires moves swiftly and lightly across the processes of bonding and fracturing so often seen in fire-impacted communities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Black Summer bushfires, occurring as they did over a long season and large area of our most populated seaboard, exposed many more people than usual to the realities of fire. Our changing climate promises to make such fires an even <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-bringing-a-new-world-of-bushfires-123261">more frequent and severe event</a>. </p>
<p>No matter how much we don’t want to think about it, thorough and ongoing bushfire preparation and planning is the only way that people who live, visit or holiday outside urban areas can keep themselves safe from fires. TV shows like Fires play an important role in spreading that message and hopefully making more people take their own fire safety seriously. </p>
<p><em>Fires airs Sunday 26th September, on the ABC.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danielle Clode worked for the Victorian Country Fire Authority as a research consultant on psychological preparedness for bushfires in 2009 and assisted with an Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth funded project on children's bushfire recovery. She is currently assisting the Adelaide Hills Council with their community resilience and readiness strategy. </span></em></p>The new ABC drama Fires is a six-part series of interlinked stories inspired by the 2019-2020 Black Summer fire season.Danielle Clode, Associate Professor (adjunct) in Creative Writing, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1601752021-05-06T03:57:44Z2021-05-06T03:57:44ZABC’s new arts show walks the line between high and low brow — and it works<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398257/original/file-20210503-19-wljdjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C6%2C2127%2C1490&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Art Works hosted by Namila Benson.</em></p>
<p>Critically discussing art in the contemporary era is like walking across a minefield blindfold while juggling bowling balls and lugging an anvil. So, so many ways to go wrong. Too low-brow and you’re populist. Too hip and you’re elitist. Cleave to the moderate middle and you lose everything that makes art special (when it is special).</p>
<p>Premiering last night, Art Works, hosted by Radio National long-time art show’s host <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art-show/">Namila Benson</a>, is ABC TV’s next best attempt to get the formula right. Previous approaches to arts programming include the marathon-like <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/sunday-arts-cut-short-as-abc-shunts-culture-online-20091002-ge84h5.html">Sunday Arts</a> and the metro-speedy <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2021/02/axed-the-mix.html">The Mix</a>. </p>
<p>I remember Sunday Arts for its talking head format and endless footage of ballet rehearsals. The Mix had a coffee shop setting and a whizz-bang feel to its cutting that made it unwise to watch on an empty stomach. Both programs freighted deeper messages about art: in the first case, that it is serious and skilled; in the second that it is risky and cutting-edge. </p>
<p>Art Works is a refreshing alternative. Judging by one episode alone it, well, works. What makes the program genuinely innovative is the art actually in it. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1389890153418674184"}"></div></p>
<h2>Making introductions</h2>
<p>Art Works’ format is straightforward. Over 30 minutes, Benson introduces three artists: actor (and potter, it turns out) <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0153048/">Jack Charles</a>, photographer <a href="https://www.artistprofile.com.au/atong-atem/">Atong Atem</a> and sculptor <a href="https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/artists/ramesh-mario/bio#:%7E:text=Sri%20Lankan%2Dborn%2C%20Sydney%2D,monument%2C%20gender%20and%20organised%20religion.">Ramesh Nithiyendran</a>. These longer segments are intercut with short grabs of stand-up comedians from the Melbourne Comedy Festival talking about gigs that flopped and whether comedy is an art (answer: yes). There is also the odd fun fact: did you know <a href="https://theindustryobserver.thebrag.com/the-odd-story-of-how-brian-eno-composed-the-windows-95-startup-sound/">Brian Eno composed</a> the Microsoft Windows 95 start-up sound … on a Mac? </p>
<p>I say Benson “introduces” these artists because what she doesn’t do is engage them in a long, philosophical debate where the critic’s acumen is on display. Most of the program is the artists talking and, wouldn’t you know it, they are articulate, thoughtful and precise about their art.</p>
<p>Benson herself is a warm and enthusiastic but not overshadowing personality. For someone with purple-black hair, enormous earrings and blue lips and fingernails, she does a good job of blending into the background when she needs to. She has a key skill for a program like this: she can listen.</p>
<p>Art Works aims to be a “new show reframing the way we think about art”. In this episdode at least, it’s the artists doing the reframing. And that feels absolutely right for this moment in time, when artists of all stripes and kinds have been politically forgotten, unless they happen to moonlight <a href="https://theconversation.com/high-viz-narrow-vision-the-budget-overlooks-the-hardest-hit-in-favour-of-the-hardest-hats-147601">wearing a hard hat</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remember-the-arts-departments-and-budgets-disappear-as-politics-backs-culture-into-a-dead-end-128110">Remember the arts? Departments and budgets disappear as politics backs culture into a dead end</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Art in the making</h2>
<p>The emphasis of the program is on process: artists at work. </p>
<p>Jack Charles was a pottery teacher before becoming an actor, and Benson joins him while he sits at his wheel. Atong Atem is interviewed in her studio, setting up a shoot for Benson, now wearing earrings the size of unstrung tennis rackets. Ramesh Nithiyendran more or less interviews himself, showing his parti-coloured sculptures and paintings. </p>
<p>Sometimes the artists talk about their inspirations and intentions; sometimes about how they create their art; sometimes about their lives and the communities to which they belong. </p>
<p>Diversity is a given. The art scene today just <em>is</em> diverse, and there is no contradiction in Benson saying she will bring viewers “the best of the art world” and the fact there isn’t a national gallery curator or symphony orchestra conductor in sight. </p>
<p>On the other hand, these artists aren’t provocateurs of the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hirst-mother-and-child-divided-t12751">sawing-cows-in-half</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-value-of-a-banana-understanding-absurd-and-ephemeral-artwork-147689">banana-on-the-wall</a> kind either. As they make perfectly plain, they aren’t against traditional forms. They want to use them for their own creative purposes.</p>
<p>Each of these artists’ work is truly original and engaging. Constructing a program in which we get a taste of that, however briefly, is a step on from the two other common modes of art talk: artist adulation and critical evisceration. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sorry-part-is-easy-why-true-racial-diversity-in-the-arts-will-take-more-than-words-140933">The sorry part is easy – why true racial diversity in the arts will take more than words</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Do yourself a favour</h2>
<p>For me, watching art programs is too often like seeing someone I knew well while alive laid out on a mortuary slab. I think, “Why talk about art? Why not just go and experience it?” </p>
<p>But my complaints evaporate when artists speak for themselves about what they do and why. In the particularities and complexities of their lives and professions, you get a whiff of what makes art a truly amazing thing in the world, its capacity to offer us what Bertolt Brecht called “complex seeing”. </p>
<p>Art Works has a lively feel to its aesthetic, but not a jump-cutty one. It crosses the art talk minefield adeptly, limbs intact. The proof is that when the episode ended, I immediately called up my 17-year-old art student son and told him to watch it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman with black dress, red hair, blue earrings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398258/original/file-20210503-13-ti6yts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Art Works host Namila Benson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Arts Works airs Wednesdays on ABC TV Plus and <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/category/arts">iView</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For a woman with brightly coloured hair and enormous earrings, Art Works host Namila Benson is adept at fading into the background and letting the artists do the talking.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1574142021-04-06T05:13:26Z2021-04-06T05:13:26ZWakefield — new ABC series looks at mental health and treatment from the inside out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393487/original/file-20210406-13-1pgcday.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3537%2C2360&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Wakefield, ABC TV</em></p>
<p>From the comedy-drama of Josh Thomas’ <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2155025/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Please Like Me</a>, to the documentary series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4167782/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4">Changing Minds</a> filmed inside a psychiatric hospital, the ABC has a track record of collaborating with mental health organisations and people with lived experience to create compelling, compassionate stories about mental health. </p>
<p>Created by Kristen Dunphy and inspired by her own experiences as a patient, new series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13556320/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Wakefield</a> is a fictional drama mystery set in a psychiatric hospital in the Blue Mountains. </p>
<p>Wakefield presents a nuanced, multi-layered story about mental health through its ensemble cast. This eight-part series demonstrates the advantages of television’s long-form narrative over feature film. It provides greater scope to explore a range of mental health stories without resorting to caricatures and stereotypes. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-tvs-troubling-storylines-for-characters-with-a-mental-illness-81456">Friday essay: TV's troubling storylines for characters with a mental illness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Characters on a spectrum of mental health</h2>
<p>Wakefield’s first episode focuses on four characters: two patients and two staff members. Each is at a different stage in their mental health journey, from recognising their needs and seeking support, to taking the first steps towards recovery.</p>
<p>We first meet James (Dan Wyllie), dressed in a suit jacket and tie, talking on the phone with his business partners. The camera pulls back from a tight closeup on James’ face to reveal he is wearing pyjama pants - his office is actually a room in a psychiatric hospital. </p>
<p>This visual conceit suggests a man desperately keeping up appearances and living in denial of his mental health needs, which has led to him being hospitalised following an overdose. James is constantly negotiating with hospital staff for access to his phone and laptop, as he tries to keep up the pretence of a man still in control. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f3PkRz0Qda4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘We’re all mad.’ Wakefield shows patients and clinicians on a sliding spectrum of mental health.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We next meet Ivy, a young mother of a newborn baby, returning to the hospital from a walk to the shops. As played by Megan Smart, her anxiety and fear about caring for this fragile new life are palpable. </p>
<p>By introducing James and Ivy doing everyday activities, Wakefield challenges preconceived ideas about the spectacle of madness. These characters do not look unwell, but their struggles become evident in their interactions with others. </p>
<p>Connecting these two characters is Nik (British actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1454287/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Rudi Dharmalingam</a>), a psychiatric nurse who responds to James’ demands and Ivy’s anxiety with care and compassion. </p>
<p>Nik is clearly good at his job. In the first episode he deescalates a potentially violent situation using a range of strategies (throwing and catching a ball, one-word answers) to help another patient Trevor (Harry Greenwood) calm down and articulate his feelings. </p>
<p>Nik’s empathetic approach to Wakefield’s patients is in stark contrast to the officious and socially awkward head nurse Linda (Mandy McElhinney). There are echoes of Nurse Ratched, the villain in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</a>, in Linda’s characterisation and her adversarial relationship with Nik. This cliche is tempered by the revelation of her own family situation and the way McElhinney conveys Linda’s desperation and vulnerability. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman smokes on balcony." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393056/original/file-20210401-23-13m5hsn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mental health and inpatient care is presented in a more nuanced way than ‘us versus them’. Carers also have their struggles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/you-may-not-like-reality-tv-but-how-mad-are-you-rightly-tests-our-assumptions-about-mental-illness-104764">You may not like reality TV but How 'Mad' Are You? rightly tests our assumptions about mental illness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Initially, Nik is presented as a stabilising influence but he is struggling with his own mental health. He can’t sleep and an 80s pop song is increasingly intruding into his thoughts. </p>
<p>Flashbacks to Nik’s childhood suggest a repressed trauma; the repeated image of him standing perilously close to a cliff edge implies suicidal thoughts. His story reminds us mental illness does not discriminate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C22%2C2121%2C1461&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in intense emotional embrace" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C22%2C2121%2C1461&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393053/original/file-20210401-21-cu9jwc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nik (Rudi Dharmalingam) and Trevor (Harry Greenwood).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Complex stories, real and imagined</h2>
<p>In Wakefield’s second episode we meet patients Genevieve (Harriet Dyer) and Tessa (Bessie Holland) and psychiatrist Dr Kareena Wells (Geraldine Hakewill) who is struggling with anxiety and feelings of guilt about a patient’s death. </p>
<p>This episode includes the experiences of carers through Genevieve’s partner, Raff (Ryan Corr) and Tessa’s mother, Belle (Heather Mitchell). The diversity of perspectives is emphasised by repeating key scenes shot from different camera angles, which present another character’s perspective on the same event.</p>
<p>Wakefield’s multiple stories of mental health issues are told through a mix of realist and non-realist techniques, including vibrant musical performance numbers that put the viewer inside the character’s mind, showing the world as they perceive it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teenage-mental-health-how-growing-brains-could-explain-emerging-disorders-154007">Teenage mental health: how growing brains could explain emerging disorders</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Wakefield credits <a href="https://www.sane.org/information-stories/the-sane-blog/mental-illness/anxiety-book-dr-mark-cross">Dr Mark Cross</a>, who featured in Changing Minds, as consultant psychiatrist. Several mental health organisations are also acknowledged, including Mindframe, Headspace, Lifeline, Black Dog Institute, Beyond Blue, Mind Australia and SANE Australia. </p>
<p>It is encouraging to see Australian screen producers collaborating with mental health experts to create authentic stories about mental health issues. This expertise encompasses many voices. </p>
<p>With Wakefield, Kristen Dunphy has brought to the screen a fictional story inspired by her own experience as a patient and realised by her creativity as a screenwriter and showrunner. The result is an original and complex portrayal of mental health.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Wakefield is <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/wakefield">available now</a> for streaming on iView and premieres on ABC TV on April 18.</em></p>
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<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, please call <a href="https://www.lifeline.org.au/">Lifeline</a> on 13 11 14 or <a href="https://www.beyondblue.org.au/">Beyond Blue</a> on 1300 22 4636. If life is in danger, phone 000.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fincina Hopgood is engaged in ongoing unpaid research collaborations with SANE Australia, including PhD project supervision and membership of the Expert Reference Group for the National Stigma Report Card project. </span></em></p>Set in a mental health facility, Wakefield shows the advantages of television over feature film, giving scope to explore mental health stories without resorting to caricatures.Fincina Hopgood, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1406242020-07-01T20:10:49Z2020-07-01T20:10:49ZIn My Blood It Runs challenges the ‘inevitability’ of Indigenous youth incarceration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342877/original/file-20200619-41221-1mr5mx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C0%2C5760%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">In My Blood It Runs/ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains references to deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In 2019, Dujuan Hoosan travelled from Garrwa country in the Northern Territory, to Geneva where he addressed the <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2019/9/11/the-speech-12-year-old-dujuan-delivered-at-the-un-human-rights-council">United Nations Human Rights Council</a>. </p>
<p>As he sat by his father’s side, he stated the purpose of his visit: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I come here to speak with you because the Australian government is not listening. Adults never listen to kids like me, but we have important things to say.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dujuan, in identifying himself as a “kid like me”, signalled to the world his disempowerment as an Aboriginal child by the Australian state. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/358942768" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As one of the youngest people ever to address the UN, as a powerful child healer in his own community and as the subject of the documentary film <a href="https://inmyblooditruns.com/">In My Blood It Runs</a>, Dujuan is exceptional. </p>
<p>But as an Aboriginal child much loved by his family, alienated by the education system, and under the purview of child welfare and Northern Territory youth justice, Dujuan’s story is all too common.</p>
<h2>The education system</h2>
<p>At one point in the film, Dujuan’s teacher reads Eve Pownall’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30171752-the-australia-book">The Australia Book</a>, published in 1952. The cover features illustrations of imperial soldiers and a naked Aboriginal man and child. The teacher reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now this one isn’t a story. It’s information, or non-fiction. It’s fact. The Australia Book. It’s about the history of our country. At Botany Bay, Cook landed for the first time in the new country […] On an island in Cape York he raised the English flag and he claimed for the English country the whole of this new land.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Throughout the film we witness the disjuncture between Dujuan’s sense of self as a strong Aboriginal child against his mounting disillusion with school. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/captain-cook-discovered-australia-and-other-myths-from-old-school-text-books-128926">Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia, and other myths from old school text books</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>He is increasingly forced to disengage rather than comply with an education system he experiences as inherently problematic. Like many Aboriginal children and young people – and by extension their families – Dujuan is disciplined for his non-compliance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344490/original/file-20200629-155330-40hlll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dujuan becomes disengaged by a curriculum which he experiences as exclusionary of his worldview as an Aboriginal child.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maya Newell/In My Blood It Runs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Families are disciplined through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cashless-welfare-card-38351">suspension of welfare payments</a> and threatened with the <a href="https://nit.com.au/systemic-racism-in-australian-child-protection-systems-must-be-addressed/">removal of children</a>. </p>
<p>Families are told if their kids don’t go to school, it is inevitable their children will end up in prison.</p>
<h2>The criminal justice system</h2>
<p>In this moment where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/02/australia-still-turns-a-blind-eye-to-aboriginal-people-dying-in-police-custody">Black Lives Matter</a> gains global traction, it is vital we remember Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people make up a <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/indigenous-deaths-custody-chapter-9-juveniles">significant proportion</a> of people who are detained and die in prison and police custody. </p>
<p>The 1991 <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/indigenous-deaths-custody-report-summary">Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody</a> signified a watershed moment in the national sensibility around the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the criminal justice system. The Commission investigated 99 deaths; 27 were <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/rciadic/national/vol1/30.html">under the age of 24</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-so-many-indigenous-kids-in-detention-in-the-nt-in-the-first-place-63257">Why are so many Indigenous kids in detention in the NT in the first place?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 2018, on any given night in Australia, Aboriginal young people made up nearly <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/juv/128/youth-detention-population-in-australia-2018/contents/summary">3 in 5</a> young people in detention, despite constituting only 5% of the population under the age of 25. </p>
<p>In May 2019, all children and young people in detention in the Northern Territory <a href="https://territoryfamilies.nt.gov.au/youth-justice/youth-detention-census">were First Peoples</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344491/original/file-20200629-155330-xt51ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In My Blood It Runs captures Indigenous children’s awareness of a racialised divide between rich and poor in the town of Alice Springs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maya Newell/In My Blood it Runs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783318794295">my research</a>, I have found the incarceration and deaths in custody of Aboriginal young people is overwhelmingly framed in policy and the media as “inevitable”. </p>
<p>This “inevitability” is directly tied to whether a young person is compliant with the demands of the school system – a system often experienced as violent and exclusionary. </p>
<p>In 2018, two Noongar teens aged 16 and 17 drowned in the Swan River <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/12/drownings-of-boys-in-perth-being-treated-as-death-in-police-presence">attempting to escape police</a>. The two young men were <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/swan-river-deaths-a-tragic-tale-of-two-truants-trying-to-reform/news-story/4bbaf3886ed78a8880adff4576f9a8a8">labelled truants</a>, their failure to attend school implied as an underlying reason for their death.</p>
<h2>Questioning narratives</h2>
<p>Directed by Maya Newell, in collaboration with the Arrernte and Garrwa families it represents, In My Blood It Runs challenges the way Aboriginal young people’s educational disadvantage and engagement with the criminal justice system is understood as inevitable. </p>
<p>The film represents Dujuan’s life as full, complex and dignified. It counters the dehumanising way Indigenous young people are often depicted as statistics; as criminal and almost (if not already) as at-risk; as educationally deficient.</p>
<p>The film reveals the violence of the education and criminal justice systems. But it also shows how families navigate through, negotiate with, and refuse to comply with these systems.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344492/original/file-20200629-155316-4uqdk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Family is central to this story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maya Newell/In My Blood It Runs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The punitive and assimilatory state intervention into the lives of Aboriginal young people is the problem – not Aboriginal young people themselves. The focus needs to shift from <a href="https://www.alrc.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/final_report_133_amended1.pdf">locking up our kids</a> to supporting <a href="https://childrensground.org.au/">on-the-ground initiatives</a>, keeping young people safe and families together. </p>
<p>In knowing the importance of a future where Aboriginal children and young people are free of state violence, Dujuan closed his address to the UN:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My film is for all Aboriginal kids. It is about our dreams, our hopes and our rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>In My Blood It Runs is currently in <a href="https://inmyblooditruns.com/screenings/">select cinemas</a>, and airs on Sunday, July 5 at 9.30pm on ABC and iView.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lilly Brown belongs to the Gumbaynggirr people of the mid-north coast of New South Wales.</span></em></p>This new Australian documentary follows 12-year-old Dujuan Hoosan from Garrwa country to Geneva.Lilly Brown, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1316732020-03-11T19:17:34Z2020-03-11T19:17:34ZMiss Fisher and her fans: how a heroine on Australia’s small screen became a global phenomenon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318213/original/file-20200303-18275-8jtrd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1499%2C998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Every Cloud Productions </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A heavily disguised Phryne (Essie Davis) is racing through the streets of Palestine, pursued by armed men. Excitement mounts. Having athletically eluded all attempts to capture her, Phryne sheds her indigo robes to emerge in a sparkling gold dress framed against the skyline like the superhero she has indubitably become. </p>
<p>Cheers erupt. </p>
<p>Attending a screening of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9010738/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears</a> at Melbourne’s Sun Theatre surrounded by fans – some who have flown across the world to be here – is an experience to remember. </p>
<p>Miss Phryne Fisher, “that unpredictable whirlwind of a woman” as she is described in the film, has become a global fan phenomenon.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5eZbZ0gK0Fk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Making a hero</h2>
<p>In 1989, Kerry Greenwood introduced readers to her fabulous flapper detective in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41022009-cocaine-blues">Cocaine Blues</a>, the first of 20 books about Phryne Fisher set in Melbourne in 1928. </p>
<p>For producers Fiona Eagger and Deb Cox, Phryne was the perfect lead for a television crime drama, bucking the gritty <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319968865">Nordic noir trend</a> with a heroine who was fun, fashionable and a feminist. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1988386/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries</a> premiered on the ABC in 2012. It has now been sold into more than 179 countries. The series screened on Netflix and Acorn TV globally, Channel 5 in the UK, and on the French public broadcaster France 3. </p>
<p>Globally, the series has made over $A14 million. This makes Miss Fisher the <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/screen-news/2018/06-18-international-tv-sales-snapshot-for-2017/part-1-the-standout-tv-dramas-for-grownups">most successful export</a> for Australian TV dramas over the past five years. </p>
<p>In 2019, the spin-off <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9224216/">Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries</a> aired on Seven. In <a href="https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/tv/miss-fisher-murder-mysteries-series-being-adapted-for-china-ng-b881170072z">another first</a> for an Australian series, the Miss Fisher format has been sold to China where a Mandarin-language version, Miss S, is in production. </p>
<p>Now, Phryne is the big-screen action heroine for those who are ready for a feminist re-imagining of Errol Flynn at his swashbuckling, rooftop-leaping best, or the adventurous Indiana Jones on the track of an ancient relic – but with a much better wardrobe. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B85I4-zA2S4","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Watching the film with fans, it’s the ballroom scene that galvanises the attention. As the camera tracks around the space, I realise many of the on-screen guests are sitting around me. These are the fans who not only contributed to the successful crowd-funding campaign that raised <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/468758721/miss-fisher-the-movie/">A$733,210 from 7,763 fans</a> and helped get the film made, but who also signed up to be extras.</p>
<p>Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears was always going to be a film for the fans.</p>
<h2>Fandom writ large</h2>
<p>Fan studies first gathered momentum in the early 1990s, when American scholars Camille Bacon-Smith and Henry Jenkins alerted the academic community to the significance of <a href="http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2010/02/camille_bacon-smith_and_henry.html">Star Trek fan communities</a>, particularly their creativity, productivity and engagement. </p>
<p>As an academic with a long-standing interest in ethnographic audience research, I’m particularly interested in the stories the Miss Fisher fans tell me about their first encounter with the show, how they found like-minded others online, and how these encounters gradually gathered momentum. </p>
<p>Over the course of a week that includes a premiere in Sydney and two fan screenings, I encounter fans from the US, Canada, the UK, Finland and Germany. </p>
<p>Two young women from Europe have spent ten days travelling to every Miss Fisher location they could find, from a steam train in Castlemaine to an obscure alleyway in the Kensington wool sheds, recreating significant moments from the series. They are medical students who bonded over Miss Fisher and are now enjoying the holiday of a lifetime, which has taken them off the usual tourist route and into the secret heart of Melbourne. </p>
<p>Many of the American fans at the screenings are members of <a href="https://www.missfishercon.com/">The Adventuresses’ Club of the Americas</a>, a society that will be hosting its fourth Miss Fisher fan convention later this year. At these conventions, fans share their scholarship and knowledge not only of the show but also of the fashions, poisons and Phryne’s Hispano-Suiza automobile. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318229/original/file-20200303-18279-1fb6947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Essie Davis and the red 1923 46CV Hispano-Suiza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Every Cloud Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the fans are willing to share intimate and confessional stories of how they came to Miss Fisher, and how she and her world view were of personal value in difficult or trying times. </p>
<p>One woman describes how, working in a male-dominated profession, Miss Fisher has inspired her to be a bit more powerful, more confident and a lot less scared of the world.</p>
<p>The rhetoric is all about empowerment, but also the need to be unapologetically oneself, demonstrating the inestimable value of a fictional character who has found her way onto a global stage and into the hearts and minds of her devoted fans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Turnbull receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Miss Fisher is one of Australia’s highest-earning small-screen exports. But it’s biggest success has come from how it built a community of fans.Sue Turnbull, Senior Professor of Communication and Media Studies, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1185832019-07-15T19:44:17Z2019-07-15T19:44:17Z‘Making up games is more important than you think’: why Bluey is a font of parenting wisdom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283597/original/file-20190711-44457-6jeav1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bluey is not just a TV success story - it also contains important parenting wisdom. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7678620/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bluey</a> is a ground-breaking Australian children’s television series and the <a href="https://www.kidspot.com.au/lifestyle/entertainment/books-tv-and-movies/the-most-downloaded-show-on-the-abc-is-not-what-youd-expect/news-story/6c1fdef918c5890b23695538c8c136b2">most downloaded show</a> in ABC iView history. Since premiering in October 2018, Bluey has been played on iView <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ABCKIDSForParents/videos/bluey-100-million-abc-iview-plays/1305286276287725/">over 100 million times</a>, and it is set to stream internationally on <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/australian-series-bluey-to-stream-on-disney-thanks-to-bbc-and-disney-partnership-583803">Disney’s streaming platform</a> starting later this year.</p>
<p>The show follows the adventures of a blue heeler puppy, six-year-old Bluey, and her close-knit family: her four-year-old sister Bingo and their dad Bandit and mum Chilli. It is a gem of Australian art, carefully distilling the essence of family life and – between laughs – capturing the wonder and joy of parenting, and delivering precious nuggets of parenting wisdom along the way.</p>
<p>In fact, the messages the show subtly imparts are remarkably consistent with the scientific literature on parenting and parental wellbeing. Here, then, are just a few poignant examples of “Bluey” wisdom.</p>
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<h2>Play matters</h2>
<p>Play is the <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1016165.pdf">powerhouse of child development</a>. It is linked to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2017.1314274?journalCode=gecd20">language abilities</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2017.1314274?journalCode=gecd20">creativity</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/imhj.21682">emotional intelligence</a>. Parents can feel so pressured by other demands on their own and their children’s time, though, that it’s easy to forget that play is one of the most important, enriching activities needed for <a href="https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182.full">children to flourish</a>. As Bandit tells his daughter, “Making up games is more important than you think”. </p>
<p>In fact, we are beginning to understand that play is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/153944920502500103">important for adults</a> too. Emphasising the importance of work, at the expense of play, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0149206314522301">undermines</a> long-term achievement, health and happiness, so finding a balance is key.</p>
<p>Bandit and Chilli are masters at maintaining connection with their daughters, squeezing precious moments of play (like pretending to be a sick patient who has swallowed a cat or an employee who really just wants to dance) between work and household tasks. Their playfulness is clearly beneficial for them as well.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/let-them-play-kids-need-freedom-from-play-restrictions-to-develop-117586">Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Be the parent you want to be, even when you don’t feel like it</h2>
<p>Every day, we each have to choose between taking the “easy” option - whatever makes us feel better in the moment – or investing time and energy in doing what really matters.</p>
<p>Psychologists describe this as living in accordance with our <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16300724">values</a>. Although the easy option can bring immediate relief from feelings like sadness or anger – and, let’s face it, we all find ways to avoid negative emotions now and then – it can become a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2998793/">big problem</a> when this way of dealing with challenges becomes a pattern.</p>
<p>Living out our values is not always easy. It can be tough, and making room for difficult emotions is part of moving towards living a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16300724">meaningful life</a>. Bluey’s parents, Bandit and Chilli, frequently give a sigh and a skywards glance before playing yet another game of “hospitals” or “hotels” with their children – it is clear that it isn’t always easy for them – yet, being a fun and playful parent is clearly a core value for both of them. So they jump right in regardless.</p>
<h2>Emotions are opportunities for learning and connection</h2>
<p>We can all can forge deeper connections with others – including our children – through emotional exchange: by listening to their expressions of emotion, validating their emotions and gently exploring them. This process is called “emotion coaching” and has been linked to <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-05875-001">better emotional and social skills</a> in children.</p>
<p>Bandit and Chilli are master emotion coaches. Whether it is Bluey’s sorrow at the death of a bird, or her frustration while trying to learn to ride a bike, they listen, validate and explore their children’s emotional worlds through conversation or play.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283601/original/file-20190711-44457-5ak4jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bluey’s parents recognise the importance of play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
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<h2>Natural and logical consequences</h2>
<p>There’s a trap we will all fall into at some stage in our parenting careers: using a whole lot of talking to get through to our children, all the while protecting them from the consequences of their actions – and then becoming frustrated that they aren’t learning the “lesson”!</p>
<p>Bandit and Chilli aren’t afraid to allow Bluey and Bingo to experience the <a href="https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/30738545">natural consequences</a> of their own actions. For example, Bluey learns that when you spend your money on a toffee apple at the market, changing your mind about your purchase doesn’t mean you get your money back.</p>
<p>Bandit and Chilli skilfully demonstrate the use of <a href="https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/30738545">logical consequences</a> too. Logical consequences are parent-generated, but are comparable to the kinds of consequences that truly happen in the world, so children are learning a genuine and useful life lesson.</p>
<p>For example, in the episode “Wagonride”, when Bluey impatiently interrupts Bandit, wanting to move straight to the monkey bars, Bandit uses a logical consequence – stopping the wagon – to impart an invaluable life lesson: doing activities with other people requires give and take, and a bit of patience. </p>
<p>Bluey is a landmark Australian show for many reasons. But an important one is this: amid the ridiculous and the ordinary, Bluey’s parents regularly find themselves both sharing and receiving the poignant wisdom that comes with the drudgery and absurdity of parenting. And Australian parents can relate to that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Koa Whittingham has received funding from the NHMRC. Koa Whittingham is the author of Becoming Mum, a self-help book for the psychological transition to motherhood.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. The authors of this article have no share or ownership of TPI. TPI had no involvement in the writing of this article. Dr Whittingham, Dr Mitchell and Dr Mitchell are employees at UQ. Dr Amy Mitchell receives funding from the Children's Hospital Foundation (Early Career Researcher Fellowship and Translator Grant, ref. no. 50223).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Mitchell has received funding from RACGP Foundation grants, Australian General Practice Training grants and the University of Queensland eLearning grants.</span></em></p>Children’s show Bluey is not just a gem of Australian art - its messages are also remarkably consistent with scientific literature on parenting.Koa Whittingham, Psychologist and Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandAmy Mitchell, Research fellow, The University of QueenslandBen Mitchell, Senior lecturer, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129612019-03-06T03:40:38Z2019-03-06T03:40:38ZThe Heights - at last, a credible Australian working-class soap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262278/original/file-20190305-48423-30qsyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Heights is a new ABC TV soap opera set on a social housing estate. From a working class perspective, there's a lot to love about the show.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben King/ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I heard about the new ABC TV soap <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8496508/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt">The Heights</a> (set in a fictional suburb of Perth), I was pretty excited. The promos suggested the show would include representation of working-class social housing residents. I tried to recall any Australian show (of any genre) that was set on a social housing estate and couldn’t think of one (happy to be proven wrong on this one).</p>
<p>I was a bit concerned – would this be a middle-class imagining of working-class life? But I was reassured by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/20/your-new-neighbours-why-australias-latest-soap-the-heights-tells-a-different-story">an article</a> written by one of the show’s co-creators, Que Minh Luu. In her piece, she speaks of the need to diversify Australian television and bring the stories of minorities and marginalised communities to our screens. She mentions too that she has lived in social housing, which signalled to me that she understands the experiences of the characters.</p>
<p>The Heights is a soap opera – a television genre that is generally undervalued. Soaps don’t usually have the high production values of so-called “quality television”. They are made in bulk (The Heights already has 30 episodes), and have large ensemble casts. They have fast-moving storylines and require exposition and shortcuts to set the scene. But soaps also require actors to display enormous range, and the production process requires speed and agility, particularly when working with tight budgets.</p>
<p>There is some clunky dialogue in the first couple of episodes, as characters deliver expository lines to bring the viewer up to speed. There isn’t time for lengthy character development – we need to know pretty quickly who is who. Overall though, The Heights is a soap seeped in realism, and by the end of the first series (binge-watched on ABC iview), I was hooked.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t2veH8RP3TM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer for ABC TV’s The Heights (2019).</span></figcaption>
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<p>There is a lot to love about this show, but particularly from a working-class perspective. The residents of Arcadia Heights are believable and the main thrust of the drama comes from their everyday lives, rather than ridiculous over-the top plots (no <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH2zx9lcV44">Bouncer’s Dream</a> so far). Daily life for these characters is represented with nuance and a real understanding of the kinds of struggles and triumphs experienced by working-class people.</p>
<p>There are moments in the show that made me sigh with relief – at last! Yazeed Daher’s character Kam, for example, is a school student living with his older brother, his aunty, uncle and two cousins in a small apartment. Kam is keen to study, but there is no space at home. He is seen studying in the apartment block corridor. </p>
<p>Kam eventually finds a quiet place to study when his neighbour Iris (Carina Hoang), allows him to use the back room of her corner store. This moment demonstrates the obstacles that working-class students face.</p>
<p>Kam’s older brother, Ash (Phoenix Raei), is a builder’s labourer who falls in with a group of rich kids. He is initially enthralled by their excess – they can afford to party every night. They have beautiful clothes and lush homes. But Kam warns Ash that he’ll never fit in with the rich kids. And he is right. It becomes clear that Ash’s rich friends are intrigued by his cultural background (he is Iranian) and they exoticise him. They also display class fetish – he is their “bit of rough”.</p>
<p>Having been that “bit of rough” when I was young, I know how this works. Ash soon realises that unlike his new group, his family and his friends back in Arcadia Heights won’t treat him like a pet or a project.</p>
<h2>The neighbours have your back</h2>
<p>The community in Arcadia Heights is tight. Everyone helps each other. People watching from a distance might find this part rather hard to believe, but those of us who grew up in social housing know that your neighbours have your back. Everyone pitches in when needed. You can rely on the community.</p>
<p>Iris helps Kam. Everyone helps Hazel (Fiona Press) when she takes on the full-time care of her grandchild. Uncle Max (Kelton Pell) helps his elderly and disabled neighbour Audrey (Davilia O'Connor) and the community all comes together to keep the local pub alive (the unofficial community centre).</p>
<p>The working-class characters are representative of social housing communities and are diverse in terms of cultural background, religion, sexuality, gender, ability. This diversity is the reality of working-class neighbourhoods – there is a tendency elsewhere to use “working class” as shorthand for “white”, but this is just not the case.</p>
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<span class="caption">Phoenix Raei as Ash, Yazeed Daher as Kam and Eddie Stowers as Fetu in ABC’s The Heights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bohdan Warchomij/ABC TV</span></span>
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<p>This show demonstrates the intersections between class, race, gender, sexuality, ability and religion. Ash is uncomfortable when his rich friends press him to talk about his experiences as a refugee – they might be “woke” but they don’t understand his lived experience. High school student Sabine (Bridie McKim) moves into the neighbourhood with her mother Claudia (Roz Hammond), an emergency doctor. Sabine has previously lived in an affluent area and has a private school boyfriend, Dane (Nicholas Di Nardo).</p>
<p>Then she makes friends with Mich (Calen Tassone) who is a “class straddler”. His mother is a lawyer and his father is an ex-cop living in the social housing block. Mich is Indigenous and understands racism and discrimination and is also trying to understand his own identity as an Indigenous person. Sabine is disabled and has also experienced discrimination – they form a strong bond.</p>
<p>Social issues abound in the show – the storylines include gambling addiction, teenage sex, gentrification among others, but running through the writing is a great deal of humour and heart.</p>
<p>The Heights isn’t perfect – there is some stilted dialogue at times and some rather unbelievable sets. The house occupied by Renee (Saskia Hampele) and her tradie husband Mark (Dan Paris), is a TARDIS with an unfeasibly large interior. There are some stereotypical characters too – particularly Watto (Noel O'Neill), the drunken Irishman who lives for the pub, and Iris does sometimes border on an Asian stereotype with her “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/happiness-is-overrated--the-secret-life-of-a-tiger-mother-20180226-h0wndg.html">Tiger Parent</a>” impulses. </p>
<p>But overall, the characters feel pretty real to me and there are some stand out performances from the younger cast members. Calen Tassone and Bridie McKim are fantastic and their banter is delivered with great timing.</p>
<p>The Heights has a lot to offer. I look forward to watching the next series and spending more time with the community in Arcadia Heights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Attfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ABC’s new soap opera The Heights is a nuanced representation of the diversity and community of life on a social housing estate.Sarah Attfield, Scholarly Teaching Fellow, Communications, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1037522018-09-24T09:01:53Z2018-09-24T09:01:53ZMedia Files: ABC boss Michelle Guthrie sacked, but the board won’t say why<p>The major question following the sacking of ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie is why? Why did the ABC board move so decisively and why now? </p>
<p>Was it just about tension between her and the corporation chair, Justin Milne, or was it about strategic direction for the national broadcaster? </p>
<p>In this special edition of Media Files, Monash University’s Margaret Simons and former ABC staff-elected director Matt Peacock talk to Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd about what it might mean for the ABC - particularly in the lead up to a federal election. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/constant-attacks-on-the-abc-will-come-back-to-haunt-the-coalition-government-98456">Constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the Coalition government</a>
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<p>Media Files is produced by a team of journalists and academics who have spent decades working in and reporting on the media industry. It’s about how journalists operate, how media policy is changing, and how commercial manoeuvres and digital disruption are affecting the kinds of media and journalism we consume.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/podcasts/mediafiles">Media Files</a> will be out every month, with occasional off-schedule episodes released when we’ve got fresh analysis we can’t wait to share with you. To make sure you don’t miss an episode, find us and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/media-files/id1434250621">subscribe on Apple Podcasts</a>, in <a href="https://play.pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a> or wherever you find your podcasts. And while you’re there, please rate and review us - it really helps others to find us.</p>
<p>You can find more podcast episodes from The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/podcast-3738">here</a>.</p>
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<p><em>Producer: Andy Hazel.</em></p>
<h2>Additional audio</h2>
<p>Theme music by Susie Wilkins.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-files-what-does-the-nine-fairfax-merger-mean-for-diversity-and-quality-journalism-102189">Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dodd receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a former ABC employee.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Simons is working on a book about the ABC. She is a member of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation, a not for profit that advocates on journalism-related issues. She received industry and philanthropic funding for research into journalism futures. It was not from the ABC.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson receives funding from the Australian Research Council as a chief investigator on two projects. He was appointed by the federal government in 2011 to assist Ray Finkelstein QC in an Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation, which reported in 2012. Since 2016 he has been the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance's representative on the Australian Press Council. He is president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia.</span></em></p>ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie was sacked today, despite being less than halfway through her five-year term. The major question is: why? Today on the podcast, we explore the possibilities.Andrew Dodd, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneMargaret Simons, Associate professor, Journalism, Monash UniversityMatthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1013282018-09-05T20:04:57Z2018-09-05T20:04:57ZWhy it’s time to end the policy limbo threatening Australian children’s TV<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234602/original/file-20180903-41723-auyhqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evie Macdonald in First Day (2017), which won a prestigious children's television award earlier this year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epic Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two Australian children’s TV programs, First Day and What’s It Like To Experience a Disability?, won prestigious <a href="https://actf.com.au/news/10514/australia-takes-home-prix-jeunesse-international-awards">Prix Jeunesse</a> awards in May. Both were commissoned by the ABC’s children’s channel ABC ME. Both remind us that Australian children’s television consistently punches above its weight on the international stage. </p>
<p>Yet, despite these recent successes, Australian children’s TV is in a policy limbo. Amid recent and ongoing government reviews into the future of local screen content, uncertainty reigns on issues such as the impact of Netflix and other streaming services, the fate of local content quotas and funding for original local children’s TV more generally.</p>
<p>What we do know is that Australia’s commercial free-to-air networks continue to lobby for the removal of <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/%7E/media/Community%20Broadcasting%20and%20Safeguards/Information/pdf/ACS%2023%20March%202016%20-%20F2016L00392%20pdf.pdf">quotas for locally made children’s content</a> (which they usually only <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/australias-metro-tv-stations-meet-bare-minimum-for-childrens-programming-quotas-acma-reports-520525">just meet</a>). We know too that cuts to the ABC budget threaten local production. </p>
<p>The 2015 cuts <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2015/08/funding-cuts-hit-abc-drama-kids.html">led to reductions in spending</a> on drama and children’s content. For example, ABC ME now commissions 13 episodes of children’s drama at a time, rather than 26.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7M6mN3JrOUQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What’s It Like To Experience a Disability? was another recent award-winning Australian children’s television show.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The 2017 <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/australian-childrens-screen-content-review">Australian and Children’s Screen Content Review</a>, conducted by the regulator ACMA and Screen Australia, was due to complete its report at the end of 2017. It has not yet been made public. </p>
<p>In April, a spokesman for Arts Minister Mitch Fifield told The Guardian the government’s internal review into “the best ways to support the availability and production of high-quality Australian and children’s content in the modern media environment” was ongoing. So, too, is a Senate inquiry into the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent">economic and cultural value of Australian content on broadcast, radio and streaming services</a>. </p>
<p>The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communication and The Arts <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Communications/AustralianfilmandTV/Report">released a report</a> last December that recommended reforming the quota system for Seven, Nine and Ten from hours of specified local content to expenditure-based obligations. </p>
<p>It also recommended extending the quotas to streaming services such as Netflix, introducing local quotas on the ABC and SBS, and establishing a contestable production fund for children’s television to which broadcasters would have to contribute. None of this has happened.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234606/original/file-20180903-41720-hfn1co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Amy Ruffle and Lucy Fry in Mako Mermaids (2013): one of Australia’s most profitable children’s television shows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan M. Shiff Productions.</span></span>
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<h2>Unregulated competitors</h2>
<p>Multiple streaming television services now compete for children’s attention. Most of the new market entrants are not regulated in the way that linear broadcasters are. Recent revelations that videos showing <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/27/children-being-tricked-into-watching-youtube-videos-of-peppa-pig-being-tortured-6536779/">Peppa Pig being tortured</a> were easily accessible by children suggest YouTube’s self-regulation system is failing to protect young viewers.</p>
<p>Disney is also gearing up to launch its own streaming service late in 2019, in an attempt to fend off the Netflix threat. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-local-networks-retreat-netflix-is-filling-the-gap-in-teen-tv-81624">As local networks retreat, Netflix is filling the gap in teen TV</a>
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<p>In the UK, the BBC has announced an extra <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40489812">£34 million (A$61m) for children’s content</a> to counter the growing influence of streaming services. And UK regulator <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/childrens-content-review">Ofcom</a> last month instructed commercial broadcasters to “revitalise” their children’s offerings, particularly for 12 to 15-year-olds. Ofcom’s powers to implement children’s content quotas were recently restored after their 2003 removal led local production levels to plummet.</p>
<p>And in May, New Zealand On Air and TVNZ launched <a href="https://www.heihei.nz/">HeiHei</a>, a children’s streaming service for NZ-made content. An advertising-free service, it’s intended to provide 5–to-9-year-olds with culturally specific, locally made screen fare. </p>
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<p>Without effective policymaking and funding mechanisms here, programs that situate Australian children in their own cultural context – reflecting their lives back to them with local accents, locations and storylines – won’t be made. They’re just too expensive, compared with imported shows. </p>
<p>Live action drama remains the genre most at risk, because of its higher production costs. One of the few live action dramas still being produced by the commercial networks in Australia is Ten’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDTn_54xz2s">The Bureau of Magical Things</a>. The series is made by Jonathan Shiff, whose children’s dramas have sold in 170 countries.</p>
<p>Shiff’s series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mksxYreceMc">Mako Mermaids</a> generated more profit in 2017 than any other television drama in which Screen Australia invested. </p>
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<p>Still, the head of children’s content at Ten, Cherrie Bottger, who commissioned The Bureau of Magical Things, told me last week: “We need some policy answers to allow us to continue to make great content that entertains Australian kids.”</p>
<p>Without the right policy settings and funding mechanisms, investment in Australian children’s television will continue to drop, despite its obvious quality, popularity with local audiences, and international appeal.</p>
<p>The ABC is making some superb children’s television, although Screen Australia’s current funding cap of <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/funding-and-support/television-and-online/production/children-s-tv-svod">$2m for children’s series</a> is making live action drama very difficult to finance. But responsibility for making children’s TV cannot be left to an underfunded public broadcaster, which operates without content quotas. </p>
<p>The longer we remain in a state of policy limbo, the greater the risk. If we believe children, like adults, deserve drama made especially for them, it’s time to start implementing some review recommendations. </p>
<p>The introduction of expenditure-based quotas across all television services, including US-based services like Netflix, would be a good start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Potter receives funding from the Australian Research Council </span></em></p>Amid endless reviews into the future of local screen content, uncertainty reigns on issues such as the impact of Netflix, the fate of local content quotas and funding for original children’s TV.Anna Potter, Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellow, Senior Lecturer Screen and Media Studies, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952962018-04-29T20:13:47Z2018-04-29T20:13:47ZIn the debate about Australian content on TV, we need to look further than the ABC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216065/original/file-20180424-94115-kt9y37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sean Keenan in Australian sci-fi drama Glitch. The show's second season was a co-production between ABC TV and Netflix.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192782/companycredits?ref_=tt_dt_co">ABC TV/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the main functions of the media is to tell a society’s collective story, both to the society itself and to others.</p>
<p>People instinctively grasp the importance of this, and an established way of assessing how well a society does it is to quantify the local content appearing in its media, especially on television.</p>
<p>In Australia, this issue is always lying just under the surface of public debate, and occasionally breaks through to open controversy. It usually takes the form of an argument about how much local content, especially drama, is shown on ABC TV.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/missing-in-action-the-abc-and-australias-screen-culture-76797">Missing in action: the ABC and Australia’s screen culture</a>
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<p>A controversy like this is happening now, as the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent">inquires</a> into the kind and quantity of Australian content on broadcast, radio and streaming services. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent/Submissions">submissions made to the inquiry</a> show that it is misleading nowadays to focus the debate primarily on the performance of ABC TV. </p>
<h2>Going digital</h2>
<p>Digitisation is changing viewer habits radically, and in today’s globalised world there is a significant international component on both the production and distribution sides of the local content industry.</p>
<p>Of course, the ABC remains a very important part of the industry, and its obligation to make and show local content is alluded to in its <a href="http://about.abc.net.au/how-the-abc-is-run/what-guides-us/legislative-framework/">charter</a>.</p>
<p>The charter requires the ABC to broadcast programs that contribute to a sense of national identity; that reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community, and that tell other countries about Australia and Australian attitudes on world affairs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-a-quota-the-key-to-getting-netflix-and-co-to-spend-more-on-australian-content-60308">Is a quota the key to getting Netflix and co. to spend more on Australian content?</a>
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<p>So it matters that the ABC’s <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent/Submissions">investment in local content</a> over the past two years has fallen: in documentaries and factual by 55%; in drama by 22% and in narrative comedy by 17%. </p>
<p>At the same time, the free-to-air commercial television networks are <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/communications-report">meeting their quotas</a> of local content, even as their revenue falls under pressure from online platforms, whose advertising revenue is now more than double that of the networks.</p>
<p>In some respects, they are meeting their quotas comfortably, although it should be noted that their “documentaries” include reality TV programs.</p>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>There are now significant global factors at work, affecting both the program-making and distribution sides of local content.</p>
<p>On the program-making side, data from <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/reports-and-key-issues/reports-and-discussion-papers/drama-report-2016-17">Screen Australia</a>, the federal government’s film-funding agency, show that in 2016/17, the total Australian expenditure on local drama production was $1.28 billion, nearly half of which - $610 million – came from foreign sources. </p>
<p>The $1.28 billion represented a year-on-year increase of more than 50%.</p>
<p>On the distribution side, online streaming has been transformative. Netflix’s <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent/Submissions">submission</a> to the inquiry captures the essence of this:</p>
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<p>The borderless nature of the internet expands opportunities for distribution, pushing Australian content creators to compete with producers from around the world.</p>
<p>This growth was not driven by artificial demand generators such as quotas, funds, or minimum investment requirements. Australian creators are creating high quality content, and succeeding on a global stage.</p>
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<p>This shift in distribution systems presents a challenge to Australian policymakers. Local content rules for the commercial television sector are still based on quotas: the number of broadcast hours devoted to showing local content.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-rise-of-subscription-and-online-tv-we-need-to-rethink-local-content-rules-79496">With the rise of subscription and online TV, we need to rethink local content rules</a>
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<p>Streamed services do not count as broadcast, and so the local content quota system does not apply to them.</p>
<p>Therefore, as streaming services become increasingly dominant, the relevance of the existing quota system as a way of assessing how well Australia’s electronic media tell the national story declines.</p>
<h2>Audience habits</h2>
<p>Data from the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on audience viewing habits reinforce the point. They show that the trend away from broadcast and towards streaming services is accelerating, especially among younger people – those aged 18 to 34. </p>
<p>The generational differences are stark.</p>
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<p>Then there is this killer statistic: among all adult age groups, free-to-air television viewing declined from 88.15% in 2010-11 to 80.70% in 2016-17. In round numbers, eight percentage points in six years.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the ABC and commercial television companies are developing partnerships with big global distributors such as Netflix, to make and export Australian drama content via streaming. Two big-ticket items are <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192782/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Glitch</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7371868/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Pine Gap</a>, both made in a collaboration between Netflix and the ABC. </p>
<p>However, a further challenge for policy-makers is that these global markets are not regulated in the same way as domestic broadcasting. It is an open market, like the market in films, books, magazines and newspapers.</p>
<p>As matters stand, the highly regulated broadcasting system stands separate from streaming. If a commercial licensee is making and showing local content internationally via streaming services like Netflix, why should that not count towards the fulfilment of its local content obligations?</p>
<p>The ABC is already a quite successful player in the streaming market. According to the ABC’s <a href="http://about.abc.net.au/speeches/chief-financial-officer-apm-speech/">chief financial officer</a>, ABC iView remains second only to Netflix as Australia’s most popular video-on-demand service.</p>
<p>However, over the past five years, the ABC’s budget has been cut by <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent/Submissions">$200 million</a>. </p>
<p>Free TV Australia makes the point in its <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AustralianContent/Submissions">inquiry submission</a> that television is a growing export market. It wants government support to assist local producers to participate.</p>
<p>The same applies to the ABC. If the Federal Government wants the ABC to continue growing in this burgeoning sector, and really values the telling of Australian stories to new global audiences, it might consider expenditure in this area to be an investment in exports, rather than a reluctant handout to a cultural enemy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As streaming services become increasingly dominant, the relevance of the existing local content quota system is declining.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/908532018-01-30T18:55:11Z2018-01-30T18:55:11ZFar from white-washing, ABC’s Monkey Magic remake takes us back to its cross-cultural roots<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203908/original/file-20180129-89597-narnn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cast of The New Legends of Monkey</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC/IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The much-anticipated series premiere of <a href="http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/new-legends-of-monkey/CH1613H010S00">The New Legends of Monkey</a> aired Sunday night on children’s network ABC ME and is streaming on iView. While your kids may have been enthralled by the kung foolery of it all, older viewers may have found their inner-child chucking a nostalgia-induced tantrum shouting “It’s not the same!” </p>
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<p>In the 1980s the BBC TV show Monkey found its way into Australian hearts with its colourful characters - Monkey, Tripitaka the monk, Pigsy the pig monster, and Sandy the water monster - and its hilarious English dubbing directly over the Japanese original made by Nippon TV.</p>
<p>It’s true that in the New Legends, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-02/first-look-at-monkey-magic-revamp-divides-fans/9298734">Pigsy is a Kiwi,</a> Sandy’s a woman, and their mouths actually move in time with their voices. But some have criticised the show for “<a href="http://mashable.com/2017/04/25/legend-of-monkey/#LMs.jaZFbiq5">white-washing</a>” the story’s Asian origins. </p>
<p>New Legends have made a lot of changes to the Monkey we hold dear from our childhood; however, we should consider that change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact culture crossing has been part of the Monkey story for hundreds of years. </p>
<h2>Transcultural kitsch</h2>
<p>In Japanese, the 1980s TV show’s title meant “Journey to the West”. This alluded to the 16th century classic of Chinese literature <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West">Journey to the West</a>, itself <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/256955/summary">based on an ancient oral folktale</a> well known throughout East Asia. The novel recounts the pilgrimage of a Chinese monk named Xuanzang to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India during the 7th century with his disciples, including a river monster, a pig monster, and the irrepressible Monkey King. </p>
<p>This diverse crew traversing across the Asian continent embodies the inherently transcultural nature of the story, even before it had reached an English language audience on its journey to the West.</p>
<p>In 1976 the BBC had commissioned writer David Weir to dub an imported Japanese drama entitled <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227975/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">The Water Margin</a>. Weir managed to make a moderate success out of the show, despite the fact that <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/292232651149772/">Weir didn’t understand a word of Japanese</a>. Following the success of The Water Margin, Weir was asked in 1979 to work his magic on a Japanese production of Journey to the West (<em>Saiyūki</em>) which the BBC renamed <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078659/">Monkey</a>.</p>
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<p>Often referred to in English by its theme song “Monkey Magic”, Nippon Television’s Monkey veered away from historical and literary accuracy, pandering to audiences by casting a cavalcade of well-known Japanese celebrities.</p>
<p>Taking a tongue-in-cheek approach, the show broke from traditional retellings by incorporating outrageous fight scenes, slapstick humour, and breaking gender conventions by casting attractive actresses in male roles. Even in Japanese, Monkey was more of a comedy than a drama like The Water Margin.</p>
<p>Considering Weir’s monolinguistic capabilities, the BBC’s translation of Monkey was really more of a complete re-writing. By adding plenty of puns, double-entendres, and pseudo philosophical musings, the BBC made this television show utterly compelling for adolescent audiences, despite the fact it became increasingly distanced to the original. British voice actors speaking in “faux-riental” accents completed the transformation of this tale, an approach that would be seen as rather distasteful by today’s standards.</p>
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<h2>A contemporary remake</h2>
<p>The disparate elements which came together in Monkey created the perfect storm of transcultural kitsch and an instant cult classic, something that could never have been produced by any one country or culture on its own. </p>
<p>Flash forward to 2018, and it would be impossible to recreate anything close to Monkey without it resembling something like the satirical YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/BadLipReading">Bad Lip Reading</a>. So how has The New Legends of Monkey tackled such a challenge?</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.see-saw-films.com/television/the-legend-of-monkey/#about">production company’s media release</a>, The New Legends of Monkey is set in a “universal ‘neverwhere’ world that is a hybrid of east and west… exploring the universal themes of identity, family, and destiny”. </p>
<p>It is worth noting that as an Australian/New Zealand co-production, New Legends seems to be incorporating more gender and ethnic diversity into its casting, making it more accurate in its representations of these ethnically and culturally diverse nations. </p>
<p>As writer/director Craig Irvin noted <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/tv-shows/the-new-legends-of-monkey-writer-responds-to-whitewashing-accusations/news-story/17574ca219894f4ed92d291c3f7364d9">in a recent interview</a> “more than half of [the cast] are non-European” with a diversity of backgrounds such as “Chinese-Thai, South Korean, Maori, Tongan and European”.</p>
<p>In terms of gender, several major characters from the first few episodes are played by women such as the tavern owner Monica (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1344302/">Rachel House</a>) and the demon Princess Locke (Bryony Skillington). However, it is in the main casting where these changes are most apparent. </p>
<p>Water god Sandy is shown as inhabiting a female form played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5949710/">Emilie Cocquerel</a>, while Tripitaka’s character has been altered from being male (which in the original Monkey series was played by a woman, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0622418/">Masako Natsume</a>), to a teenage girl (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4578161/">Luciane Buchanan</a>) secretly assuming the guise of the holy monk. In this way New Legends has attempted to incorporate women into the story in a more meaningful way than previous productions.</p>
<p>It’s certainly not the first time that Australians have tried to recreate Monkey’s magic. Melbourne rapper Phrase created a homage to Monkey in his music video for “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgCNCgzmyXc">Skylight</a>”, while several theatre productions such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuB0vT_bUsw">Theatre of Image’s Monkey Journey to the West</a>, and <a href="https://www.castlemainetheatrecompany.com/monkey-goes-west/">Castlemaine Theatre Company’s Monkey and the Monk</a> also toured shows in the last few years. Perhaps because of the limited reach of these productions, there was little public attention given to them.</p>
<p>As such the production of The New Legends of Monkey is just part of a long history of transcultural adaption of this story. While traditionalists may lament the fact that the story has been taken out of its original Chinese setting, it is important to remember that this isn’t the first time this ancient tale has been adapted across cultures, and it certainly won’t be the last.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Hausler receives PHD scholarship funding through University of Queensland and Department of Education (RTP). </span></em></p>ABC’s The New Legends of Monkey puts a fresh spin on the ‘80s cult classic Monkey’ continuing a long tradition of culture crossing.Rebecca Hausler, PHD Candidate and Researcher in Japanese Studies, School of Languages and Cultures, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847702017-09-27T06:22:46Z2017-09-27T06:22:46ZPolitics podcast: Rob Sitch on Utopia and political satire<p>Canberra politics often seems beyond satire. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Working Dog’s TV show Utopia has more than once foreshadowed reality in its hilarious depictions of life in a federal authority.</p>
<p>Rob Sitch, Utopia’s co-writer and star, says he’s had no need to draw on covert leaks and insights from bureaucrats for material. “90+% of what we find is sitting in front of everybody. It’s on the front pages.” And he’s had plenty of feedback from insiders to confirm the program hits the spot.</p>
<p>Sitch, who relishes political satire, originally studied medicine before becoming one of Australia’s best-loved creatives and performers. Asked about his jump from doctoring to the world of entertainment, he tells The Conversation it was “a hobby that got out of hand”.</p>
<p>Twenty years on from directing the iconic film The Castle, Sitch bemoans the trend in Hollywood that has seen it become too reactive to demographics and economics. He says the government should consider a boost for our own film industry. “Something gets added to the culture when an Australian film pops out.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does commentary for the ABC.</span></em></p>Rob Sitch, Utopia's co-writer and star, says he's had no need to draw on covert leaks and insights from bureaucrats for material for the show.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/777212017-05-17T02:58:14Z2017-05-17T02:58:14ZThe ABC’s Ask the Doctor sends mixed messages about obesity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169442/original/file-20170516-11963-13st5no.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The show's three hosts (left to right) Sandro Demaio, Renee Lim and Shalin Naik tackle obesity in the first episode, but don't quite nail it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the popular dramas of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086689/">A Country Practice</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108757/">ER</a> to news and documentaries, health and medical issues have been a longstanding favourite theme on television. Now health websites, online discussion forums, apps and social media compete for viewers’ eyeballs. </p>
<p>Is there room in the crowded space of medical infotainment for another television series? The ABC is betting on it. <a href="https://tv.press.abc.net.au/make-an-appointment-to-watch-ask-the-doctor-on-abc--abc-iview">Ask the Doctor</a>, its new medical television series, launched this week. </p>
<p>The ABC is promoting the series as “an innovative, fun, and exploratory factual series” looking at health and medicine in Australia. Each of the 12 episodes focuses on a specific health or medical problem, including diet, pain, allergies, sexual health and the common cold.</p>
<p>On the basis of the first episode, the series works hard to meet these aims. The talking heads are three young, smiley people: Renee Lim is a general practitioner, Sandro Demaio is a public health expert and Shalin Naik is a medical researcher.</p>
<h2>The ‘obesity epidemic’</h2>
<p>The first episode tackles Australia’s “obesity epidemic”, a term not everyone is comfortable with. For instance, <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Fat-Activism-Charlotte-Cooper/9781910849002?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base6&utm_source=AU&utm_content=Fat-Activism&selectCurrency=AUD&w=AF45AU96ZH9P2LA80C7TACYM&pdg=kwd-104399949699:cmp-680104063:adg-32696820702:crv-151943499815:pid-9781910849002:dev-c&gclid=Cj0KEQjwo-XIBRCOycL7hsuI_NoBEiQAuS6HtNIEthqXqpgrnvcWWaPXi-hsq0ANjp0tywlNhTewugoaAg7m8P8HAQ">fat activists</a> (who challenge mainstream views of body size) and many <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Epidemic-Science-Morality-Ideology/dp/0415318963">sociologists</a> reject both the terms “obesity” and “epidemic”. They argue these words medicalise fatness and create a <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/moral_panic">moral panic</a> about body size.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, Australians have been treated to <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Fat.html?id=jbHK2hivlSQC&redir_esc=y">countless media accounts of obesity</a>. Researchers <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698575.2010.540648">have criticised</a> much of this coverage for blaming the victims and indulging in fat shaming and stigmatisation. <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-fat-discrimination-look-like-10247">Studies have shown</a> this type of portrayal has a significant impact on the health and well-being of people who are characterised as “obese”, including social discrimination and psychological harm.</p>
<p>Ask the Doctor works to avoid these traps, but only to some extent. The usual shots of unidentified fat people walking around (known as “<a href="http://charlottecooper.net/publishing/digital/headless-fatties-01-07/">headless fatties</a>”) or people scoffing junk food are contrasted with muscular young people playing beach volleyball. These images inevitably contrast the “good” fit and active person with the “bad” fat or over-eating person.</p>
<p>But the program includes a public health perspective in emphasising the contribution to body weight statistics of such factors as <a href="https://theconversation.com/advertising-has-the-power-to-make-children-fat-and-this-needs-to-stop-58899">fast-food advertising to children</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fat-of-the-land-how-urban-design-can-help-curb-obesity-6445">poor urban planning</a> (not enough footpaths or open spaces for active leisure) and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fast-food-restaurants-have-no-place-in-our-hospitals-4292">prevalence of junk food outlets</a>. </p>
<p>These broader social and political aspects contributing to body weight have often been ignored in television reports on fat bodies. Drawing viewers’ attention to these issues and away from personal responsibility for body weight <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-fat-studies-63108">can help to raise public awareness and reduce discrimination against fat people</a>.</p>
<p>The program also addresses the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chemical-messengers-how-hormones-make-us-feel-hungry-and-full-35545">biological reasons</a> why body fat can be so hard to keep off. As Lim says: “Our hormones make us hungry”. </p>
<p>There’s a fair amount of technical and scientific discussion (for example, of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/fat-burning-fat-exists-but-might-not-be-the-key-to-weight-loss-51081">brown fat</a>” and the role of <a href="https://theconversation.com/chemical-messengers-how-hormones-make-us-feel-hungry-and-full-35545">hormones in regulating hunger</a>) and plenty of shots of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-edit-science-part-4-how-to-talk-about-risk-and-words-and-images-not-to-use-74549">white-lab-coated researchers in high tech environments</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169441/original/file-20170516-11963-1hctand.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The idea that self-discipline is the key to losing the kilos undermines what the program is trying to achieve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/408959809?src=0rkzIPDPYqc_VabttJc4xg-1-7&size=medium_jpg">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The message of how hard it is maintain weight loss is brought home with an interview with Sharon, one of the contestants on <a href="https://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/the-biggest-loser-transformed">The Biggest Loser</a> weight-loss reality show. She lost about 50 kilograms on the program, and three years later, has kept it off. Sharon is presented as one of the tiny minority of people who have managed to sustain major weight loss. The difficulties she copes with every day in keeping up this self-discipline are acknowledged.</p>
<p>The show also emphasises the “<a href="https://haescommunity.com/">health at every size</a>” approach; that good health and physical fitness can be achieved regardless of body weight. The program claims “you don’t have to be stick-thin to be healthy”. <a href="https://theconversation.com/obese-does-not-necessarily-mean-unhealthy-72718">Medical research is now supporting this idea</a>. This helps to move away from expecting people to lose unrealistic amounts of weight to instead finding achievable ways to improve their health by eating healthy food and engaging in regular exercise.</p>
<p>The main arguments presented in this episode, therefore, try to avoid the standard portrayals of fat people as lazy, greedy and lacking self-discipline. It is a shame, therefore, the final take-home message is from Sharon. She says people must “work hard, be self-disciplined” to keep the weight off.</p>
<p>The public health perspective and the biological reasons why weight loss is so difficult, which the program has just outlined, suddenly disappear. Instead, there’s this standard individualised message of self-responsibility. </p>
<p>Viewers are left contemplating the rather mixed message the program sends.</p>
<h2>Who is the program for?</h2>
<p>Some features of the first episode are obviously attempts to attract a younger audience used to finding their health information on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. For example, the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Askthedoctor&src=typd&lang=en">#Askthedoctor</a> was used on social media to ask members of the public for their opinions. Some of these are subsequently aired on the program.</p>
<p>The program also tries to portray the presenters as fun-loving and quirky. They aren’t afraid to make fun of themselves. As well as being informed about their scientific qualifications, we get to hear about what the three do in their spare time. Renee Lim likes interpretive dance. Shalin Naik is “a bit of nerd” who is “pretty good at karaoke”. Sandro Demaio is a good Italian boy “who loves his mama”. </p>
<p>As well as being youthful, all are from non-Anglo backgrounds, a change from the television doctors <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/354930/playing_doctor">that once dominated screens</a>: the likes of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054535/">Dr Kildare</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063927/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt">Marcus Welby</a>. This again suggests the ABC is trying to appeal to a more diverse audience than would usually watch such programs. It is also a welcome contribution to ethnic diversity on Australian television, which <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/screen-australia-diversity-report-finds-australian-tv-still-lacks-ethnicity-20160824-gqzoay.html">Screen Australia</a> shows is lacking.</p>
<h2>The verdict</h2>
<p>Based on this first episode, for all its attempts to be entertaining as well as informative, Ask the Doctor generally presents as dull and worthy. It doesn’t really break new ground, and comes across as trying too hard to be cool.</p>
<p>The static delivery by experts is also a problem. Audiences are now accustomed to the 24/7 medical advice offered by <a href="https://theconversation.com/dr-google-probably-isnt-the-worst-place-to-get-your-health-advice-73835">Dr Google</a>, and the more entertaining health stories offered by the likes of <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/health">Buzzfeed</a> and the <a href="http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/">Embarrassing Bodies</a> television series. </p>
<p>They are also used to being able to create and <a href="https://theconversation.com/move-over-dr-google-the-future-of-health-is-social-4249">share</a> health and medical information with each other, rather than simply looking for what the experts have to say.</p>
<p>While the #AsktheDoctor hashtag is a gesture in this direction, it is unlikely to be enough to interest and engage contemporary viewers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Lupton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ABC’s new show Ask the Doctor goes some way to explain the many contributors to obesity. So, why spoil it with the take-home message that willpower is all you need to lose weight?Deborah Lupton, Centenary Research Professor, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.