Australia has one of the world’s most educated populations. We have stable institutions, a strong economy and advanced technology. Yet we seem to face endless obstacles when it comes to solving our problems with good public policy. Is it the ideas, the culture or the political contest that get in the way?

And if we can’t solve problems – even those with broad agreement for solutions – how can we possibly create space for innovation?

In this conversation, we examine how public policy is shaped today and how the avenues to reform have changed in recent times. How do global political shifts impact on governance and public policy in Australia? What part do vested interests, changes in the media landscape and declining rates of political participation play?

Join host Sally Warhaft and two speakers who are uniquely qualified to tackle these questions: Geoff Gallop, former premier of Western Australia and Peter Hartcher, political editor and international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sally Warhaft, Geoff Gallop and Peter Hartcher

In her latest book, The Helen 100, writer and humorist Helen Razer chronicles the sudden, life-shattering evaporation of her 15 year relationship. This grief (and a subsequent dare from her beauty therapist) prompted her to go on 100 dates over a year – in search of renewal, distraction and good old-fashioned porking.

McCann and Razer in conversation

For no one, least of all a writer in the business of cranky analysis, is dating straightforward. Razer found that in writing and representing herself, whether online or face-to-face with others, the limits of identity tended to shift – often rather nastily. In her own case, she learned that exiting a same-sex relationship came with particular instability; lesbians, she found, were ‘supposed to stay together forever and provide an inspiring liberal example to others.’

In an energetic and hilarious conversation with sex and gender researcher Hannah McCann, Razer talks about what she discovered about queer identity, profound affect and our broad social values about dating, power and desperation.

Socrates railed against the invention of the alphabet, worrying that the written word would erode human memory. Imagine how he would have felt about Google Maps and iPhone calendar alerts.

Technological revolutions have always spawned both opportunity and panic. Today, digital technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and research into its effects on the human brain is struggling to keep apace.

There’s strong evidence to suggest that digital technology really is altering human physiology, affecting our impulse control, attention span, sleeping patterns and, yes, our memory function. But it’s not all bad news, with some research suggesting a link between complex online activities (such as immersive games) and cognitive flexibility.

Host Madeleine Morris is joined by neuroscientist and psychologist Olivia Carter, and philosopher of science Michael Arnold – plus an audience full of questions – to talk brains, technology, policy and wellbeing.

Left to right: Madeleine Morris, Michael Arnold and Olivia Carter

Behrouz and Aziz at Hauwei Island — (Photo: Michael Green)

'I’m excited because … for almost three years I haven’t left the centre, and I was just locked inside there … Now, I’m walking on the streets – every two steps I take, I turn and I look behind me, like, "Where is the security guard?"'

Abdul Aziz Muhamat

It’s July 2016. On the morning Michael flies to Manus Island, Aziz leaves the detention centre for the first time in nearly three years.

In this episode, Aziz and Michael finally meet in person. Michael also meets some people from Manus Island, who explain how they feel about having the detention centre on their island.

Together with Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist and detainee, Aziz and Michael take a boat to a nearby island to swim, eat together, and escape the shadow of the detention centre. For Aziz, it’s an exhilarating time, full of new experiences and unexpected joys – but he knows it will soon come to an end.

Featured videos The Messenger, Episode 8: Michael and Aziz discuss their meeting on Manus Island Watch

In this short video, Michael and Aziz talk about their meeting in Lorengau – and what comes next for each of them

The Messenger, Episode 8: Michael and Aziz on the boat to Hauwei Island.mp4 Watch

Michael and Aziz on a boat trip to Hauwei Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea

Transcript

A transcript of this episode is coming soon.

Further reading ‘Welcome to Manus, the island that has been changed forever by Australian asylum-seeker policy’ by Jo Chandler, Guardian, 16 December 2014 ‘They Call Me Immigration’ by Omar Mohammed Jack, Inside Story, 5 April 2017 (excerpted from They Cannot Take the Sky: Stories from Detention, published by Allen and Unwin)

In this episode

Abdul Aziz Muhamat

Behrouz Boochani

Michael Green

Benjamin Pokarup

Rose

Chris

Allen Muan

Our theme music was composed by Raya Slavin. Music used in this episode includes ‘Capture the Flag’ by Broken Social Scene, ‘Sensuous’ by Cornelius, ‘The North Downs Dimension’ by Broadcast, ‘Sop’ by Monica Brooks, ‘Change’ and ‘Humming Song 2’ by…

The problem of verbal and emotional violence against women online remains insufficiently – or often, mistakenly – addressed. Headlines about online harassment continue to focus on victims rather than perpetrators, while platforms like Twitter and Facebook struggle to define and act upon the difference between free speech and abuse.

But there’s also the upside: social media’s potential for women who are seeking to mark out a space of debate, discussion and disagreement. Largely unmediated, social platforms offer the promise (if not always the purest realisation) of ideas being able to speak for themselves. Women are able to connect with each other, and with their publics, in ways that transcend the ‘motherhood penalty’ and other gendered factors of the traditional workplace.

Jane Gilmore, Rebecca Shaw, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Lucy Valentine are writers who put their words, beliefs and opinions on social media – with the intention of connecting, challenging others and pursuing change. With host Sophie Black, they talk about #writingwhilefemale. How do women participate in digital discussion? How do they end up in arguments, decide when to continue them … and what do they do when argument becomes abuse? And, in this odd amalgam of public and private space, how do women edit their own balance of the political and personal?

Left to right: Sophie Black, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Jane Gilmore, Lucy Valentine and Rebecca Shaw