A Long Path to Freedom

With special guest:

• Jeff McMullen
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is Jeff McMullen, a household name in Australia after his many years on television for both the ABC and Channel 9. For more than 20 years Jeff has campaigned for the Indigenous people in Australia and other countries.

In recent times Jeff has focussed on a particular threat to the well-being of Aboriginal children but which can affect any children. We are talking about fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. This condition puts up a hurdle for children to live a normal happy life yet is difficult to diagnose in babies. Unfortunately when young children are affected it is obvious enough when they behave outside normal limits. We know that the condition occurs due to alcohol consumption by the mother in the first trimester but we do not yet know when the amount of consumption becomes dangerous. We need to get the word out to communities black and white about the risks of drinking any alcohol at this time of a baby’s life.

When discussing Aboriginal issues more generally we are immediately confronted with some pretty big fictions that are most likely still promulgated today. Think of the doctrine of Terra Nullius, the description of the Aborigines in 1788 as hunter-gatherers who did not grow crops, that there were no frontier wars. It may be questioned that Australian Aborigines lived and prospered in this land more than 60,000 years ago. Jeff points out that with the reality as described in Bruce Pascoe’s book “Dark Emu” we have so much to be proud of with this long history. There is evidence of bread making in this country 25,000 years ago, long before the Egyptians. It is time that we dispense with the fictions used to justify taking the land from the original custodians so that Australia and Australians can be as great a society as possible. We eventually learned to say “Sorry” but now we should be able to say “Thanks”.

Jeff tells us that what first drove him to pursue Aboriginal causes was a sense of injustice. More than twenty years later he is still inspired by what an old wise man once told him. The path to freedom is long. Jeff suggests that justice for the Aboriginal people will not come initially from politicians. Jeff is pursuing other means and he tells us how we should use the Uluru Statement of the Heart, not necessarily as a road map to a brighter future but as a step along the path.

It is great to hear Jeff’s scholarship, wisdom, courage and patience. And this is topped off by Jeff’s optimism that we are moving in the right direction at an accelerating rate.

Jeff McMullen

A journalist, author and film-maker Jeff McMullen’s work includes many decades as a foreign correspondent for the ABC reporting for Four Corners and as one of the original journalists in Sixty Minutes. Throughout his professional life Jeff McMullen has written, filmed and campaigned around the world to improve the health, education and human rights of Indigenous people.

Jeff has been honoured with Doctorates of Journalism from Central Queensland University and Doctorates of Letters from the University of Newcastle, Australia and Macquarie University, Sydney. He was awarded a United Nations Media Peace Prize in 1984.

While Jeff McMullen has been a household name in Australia, his stories also have appeared on CBS Sixty Minutes and the PBS network in America, as well as the BBC, CBC, South African networks and even Russian television.

Among many memorable interview subjects were Chile’s President Salavador Allende, US President Jimmy Carter, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Australian Prime Ministers Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Howard, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Rwanda’s President Paul Kigame. Interviews screened around the world included the anti-war dissident Philip Berrigan; the feminists Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Bella Abzug; singers and musicians including John Lennon; Ray Charles; Sting; Stevie Wonder; Barbra Streisand; Janet Jackson; Neil Diamond; Cher; Eric Clapton; Mark Knopfler; Mariah Carey; Michael Hutchence; Jimmy Barnes; Elton John; George Michael and BB King; film directors including Peter Weir; Martin Scorsese; Steven Spielberg; actors Kevin Costner; Warren Beatty, Lauren Bacall; Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson; comedians Ben Elton and Paul Hogan; athletes and sports stars Ian Thorpe; Cathy Freeman; Dawn Fraser; Steve Waugh; Shane Warne and Brian Lara.

Much of McMullen’s film work over the past two decades has focussed on the human rights of the First Peoples, the impact of the NT Intervention and the chronic illness taking many lives.

Jeff’s autobiography, “A Life Of Extremes – Journeys and Encounters” (HarperCollins Australia) examines the global pattern of conflict, environmental degradation and species extinction, as well as sharing ideas from some of the world’s bravest individuals on a brighter future for the human family.

Song selection by our guest: Is That What You Heard by Neil Murray

Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 26 September 2019.

Podcast (mp3)