Like I'm A Six-Year-Old

Wayne Swan is a former Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. He's the current President of the Australian Labor Party.  In this conversation I ask Wayne about Labor's performance in the recent Newspoll, what it means for Australia to aspire to "full employment" out of COVID, the ideological war over superannuation, whether the Hawke-Keating legacy can be described as "neoliberal" and how he thinks about the relationship between the ALP and the Greens.  If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you @SwannyQLD Wayne's media as ALP President My interview with Wayne on Tonightly in 2018 ARTICLE: Sometimes, Too Much Is...Too Much by Wayne Swan ARTICLE: Already in this crisis we are slipping into over-optimism about the economy and over-pessimism about debt by Wayne Swan ARTICLE: Liberals tearing down the pillars of our superannuation scheme by Wayne Swan ARTICLE: Weakening superannuation is a once-in-a-100-year mistake by Wayne Swan ARTICLE: The Hawke-Keating agenda was Laborism, not neoliberalism, and is still a guiding light by Wayne Swan How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project by Elizabeth Humphrys Cause of the Week: St Vincent de Paul Society (vinnies.org.au)  

Kristin O'Connell is the Acting Communications Coordinator for the Australian Unemployed Workers Union. With more than a million Australians unemployed in this time of recession (and depression maybe?), the AUWU has been coordinating a Mutual Obligations Strike and campaigning against the cruel reduction in the JobSeeker payment. Kristin shares her story with me and explains why unemployed workers are workers (and why the AUWU is definitely a union) and just how fucked up and privatised Australia's unemployment "industry" is. If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you Strike for Climate this Friday! Yeah!  @kristin8X ARTICLE: Australian Unemployed Workers Union calls for strike against ‘pointless and punitive’ job agencies ARTICLE: Australia's jobless to face mutual obligation rule despite few job vacancies ARTICLE: ‘It's a heartless decision’: Morrison government reintroduces welfare mutual obligations ARTICLE: New Disability Support Pension recipients down by almost 60,000 due to Gillard-led crackdown My episode with the AUWU's Jeremy Poxon Cause of the Week: The Australian Unemployed Workers' Union (unemployedworkersunion.com) 

Emma Alberici is a three-time Walkley-nominated journalist. She's the former Chief Economics Correspondent at the ABC and she worked as a foreign correspondent and the host of Lateline. She recently finished up at the ABC after 18 years; in September 2021 she'll release her memoir through Hardie Grant, Rewriting The Story.  In this conversation, Emma shares her thoughts on gender pay equality, unionism and the state of the economy. We reflect on her ABC career and the controversy surrounding the articles she wrote in 2018 about the Liberal government's policy to cut the company tax: how and why she wrote it, the (small) errors that were made, why the crux of it still stands up and why it matters. If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you I’m hosting a trivia night to raise money for the Yarra City Greens Local Election campaign this Saturday night. Come along. @albericie ARTICLE: Emma Alberici and ABC finalise details of their long and messy divorce  ARTICLE: Replacing all of our unpaid work would cost the Victorian economy $205 billion, report finds by Emma Alberici ARTICLE: Why many big companies don't pay corporate tax by Emma Alberici ARTICLE: There's more to jobs and growth than a corporate tax cut by Emma Alberici ARTICLE: Innovation is still the key to jobs and growth by Emma Alberici  The ABC's statement about complaints made regarding Emma's articles The ATO's Corporate Tax Transparency website ARTICLE: 7 charts showing Trump's tax cuts still haven't been the economic rocket fuel 'rocket fuel' he promised, 2 years after the fact (Business Insider) ARTICLE: Qantas boss accuses ABC of anti-business bias over Emma Alberici tax stories (Guardian Australia) Cause of the Week: Camp Quality (campquality.org.au)  

"Aysha" (not her real name) is a Kashmiri activist who advocates for the rights of those suffering under the Indo-Pakistan-Chinese conflict in her home country.  I've previously known very little about the situation in Kashmir and was grateful to Aysha for giving me a crash-course history lesson on the conflict and the 2019 escalation of tensions by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We discussed the nature of India's occupation, the possibilities of democracy in the region, the effects of COVID-19 and what others can do.  If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you I'm hosting a trivia night to raise money for the Yarra City Greens Local Election campaign. Come along!  Kashmir: Explained by Vox Media (good summary of the history of the conflict)  Human Rights Watch articles on Kashmir Amnesty International Australia articles on Kashmir ARTICLE: Kashmir crisis: India's latest steps expose deep fault lines in Australia's Indian and Pakistani communities  ARTICLE: Leave Kashmir dispute out of UN, Australia urges ARTICLE: Does Australia have the courage to challenge India's defiance over Kashmir? by Lee Rhiannon ARTICLE: Faulty tests, poor contact tracing: COVID-19 fight in Kashmir myriad stumbling blocks  Cause of the Week: Stand With Kashmir Australia (standwithkashmir.org.au)

Guy Rundle is a political essayist, comedy writer, activist and the correspondent-at-large for Crikey. He's a former editor of Arena Magazine.  Guy's been writing about the strangeness and politics of COVID-19. Here I ask him about what a collective virus means for certain political ideologies, what it means to be a "post-Marxist" and what he made of the Democratic National Convention and the possibilities of a Biden presidency.   If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you Guy's writing at Crikey ARTICLE: How our lockdown reality became stranger than fiction by Guy Rundle  Cause of the Week: Free Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert (change.org)  

This week's ep is a conversation I had with journalist and author Melissa Davey about her brilliant new book, The Case of George Pell.  The book was launched on Tuesday night and Mel kindly asked me to discuss its details and what the story and trials of Pell mean for us now.  If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you @MelissaLDavey The Case Of George Pell: Reckoning With Child Sex Abuse By Clergy by Melissa Davey  Cause of the Week: Broken Rites Australia (brokenrites.org.au)

It's episode 200! Hurrah.  Dominic Kelly is a political historian and Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University. His 2019 book Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics: The Hard Right in Australia examines the activities and influence of four Australian right-wing single-issue advocacy groups: the H.R. Nicholls Society (focussed on industrial relations), the Samuel Griffiths Society (constitutional issues and federalism), the Bennelong Society (Indigenous issues) and the Lavoisier Group (climate change). All four groups were created and steered by three central figures: mining executive Hugh Morgan, his speechwriter Ray Evans and former public servant John Stone. It's a fascinating and (blackly) amusing history.  Here Dominic lays out just how far these four societies have pulled Australia to the right over the past thirty years, what the Left can learn from them and what it shows us about the role that mining interests play in Australian politics.  If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you I was recently on another episode of The Little Dum Dum Club alongside the very funny Nick Capper Join me online in conversation with Melissa Davey discussing her book The Case of George Pell on Tuesday August 18th @dominickelly_ Buy Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics on Black Inc. Books Cause of the Week: Australian Unemployed Workers' Union (unemployedworkersunion.com)

Max Chandler-Mather is a former union activist and active member of the Queensland Greens. He was the party's candidate for the seat of Griffith in last year's election, where he increased the Greens vote by 7.2%, the biggest Greens swing in the country.  I find the more explicitly Leftist approach taken by Max and the Queensland Party really exciting because they're pushing good, anti-neoliberal polices and, more importantly, it's really working for them. Here I ask Max to explain how a democratic socialist like him is making this happen and why it's been successful. We talk about renters' rights, building the foundations of a mass party, door-knocking, selling "common sense and popular" ideas and the perennial Greens/ALP conflict.  If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you I was on Twink Revolution again with the one and only Aimee Terese to chat about what the "Left" is Join me online in conversation with Melissa Davey discussing her book The Case of George Pell on Tuesday August 18th @MChandlerMather maxforgriffith.com Max's Facebook page ARTICLE: The Right to the City by David Harvey  The Queensland Greens policies for the state election announced thus far How Labour Built Neoliberalism by Elizabeth Humphrys  Max's writing at Flood Media Max's writing at Overland Journal  My episode with Emerald Moon  Cause of the Week: The Queensland Greens (greens.org.au/qld)

Alison Pennington is a Senior Economist at The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work. She has a Masters of Political Economy from the University of Sydney and she rules. After a week of changes to the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments, the government's "mini-budget" announcement, a torrent of shitty "deficit politics" and some ominous talk about industrial relations reform, Alison talks to me about the state of play for Australian workers right now. We discuss the possibilities of reimagining the entire welfare system in this country right now, why debt doesn't matter, why working from home might really suck for workers' rights and what the future of the trade union movement might look like. If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you Join me online in conversation with Melissa Davey discussing her book The Case of George Pell on Tuesday August 18th @ak_pennington The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work The Follow the Money podcast Alison's report for the CfFW: Collective Bargaining “Reform”: What Does Business Want? And What Would Actually Fix the System? ARTICLE: In the Middle of a Pandemic, the Australian State is Pummelling Workers  by Alison Pennington ARTICLE: Woolworths to cut 1,350 jobs and admits it owes at least $90m more to underpaid workers ARTICLE: JobSeeker cut to push 370,000 into poverty, including 80,000 children by The Australia Institute ARTICLE: Jobless opt for dole as business struggle to find workers despite unemployment surge ($)  Cause of the Week: Living Incomes For Everyone Australia (LIFE) (facebook.com/LifeAustralia, on YouTube)  

Dave Donovan is the founder and editor of Independent Australia, a progressive journal focussed on Australian federal politics, democracy and economics.  In a time of a declining media industry slashing jobs left right and centre, I think supporting independent Australian media is vital, and I for one find it refreshing to read explicitly progressive takes on the news in IA. Here Dave talks about his background in the Republican movement, just how much neoliberalism has reshaped Australia over the past 40 years, class confusion, the overwhelming conservatism of Australian media and the attacks on the ABC.   If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you Join me online in conversation with Melissa Davey discussing her book The Case of George Pell on Tuesday August 18th @davrosz IndependentAustralia.net IA's coverage of AshbyGate ARTICLE: Poll finds 62% believe our head of state should be an Aussie ARTICLE: What is really wrong with the country: 10 years of Quiet Australians by Dave Donovan  ARTICLE: Fox News banned in Canada? by Snopes ARTICLE: The palace letters: read the full documents from the National Archive here Cause of the Week: The Federal ICAC Now Party (federalicacnow.org)