The Barbara Biggs Show

With Special Guests:

• Barbara Biggs and
• concerned citizens.

Barbara Biggs has become the new “poster girl” for the anti-shared parenting movement. While many fathers have been disturbed by her comments in the media against shared and co-operative parenting after divorce, this is the first opportunity for many to hear what she has to say directly. Barbara Biggs spoke at a Fellowship of the Roundtable forum at NSW Parliament House with the subject Family Law - Is The Man The Loser? This is the speech she gave followed by her answers to questions from the floor. Family law reformers around the country have been alarmed at the scurillous campaign, including a number of demonstrations outside family courts and other locations, to return family law to the dark ages when more than half of all children entering the Family Court arena rarely if ever saw their fathers again and almost no fathers were ever given any substantial time with their children.

The campaign is being conducted under the guise of preventing domestic violence against women and sexual abuse against children. Biggs claims that the shared parenting laws have forced children to spend time with abusive parents, but her target is clearly fathers. One simple point reformers make: child abuse is committed by both genders, it is a crime, and is a police matter, but Biggs only focuses on sexual abuse of children ignoring child homicide, infanticide, neglect, emotional and physical abuse where women make up the majority of perpetrators. Most sexual abuse of children occurs at the hands of other siblings, step parents, mother’s boyfriends/defactos and other relatives. Fathers are the least likely to sexually abuse their children.

For the vast majority of family law cases, the research is clear: children benefit from a continued relationship with both parents after separation.  Barbara Biggs has made a career out of her colourful life, including alleging she was sold as a sex slave by her grandmother at 14 as well doing stints as a prostitute, mental health patient and property developer. Her books include In Moral Danger, The Journey Home, The Accidental Renovator and Money and Sex: How To Get More. Whether Biggs is a dangerous hysteric promoting irrational hatred against men or a true champion of the nation’s abused children, you can decide for yourself.

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Family Law - Is the Man the Loser?

With special guests:

• Mark Yousseff
• Peter van de Voorde and
• Warwick Marsh.

Dads on the Air was pleased to accept an invitation from the debating group Fellowship of the Round Table. We were asked to contribute to their debate called Family Law: Is the Man The Loser? We argue men, women and children are all losers under the present system. With the current left-wing Labor government preparing to wind back the modest family law reforms of the previous conservative Howard government which encouraged shared and cooperative care of children after divorce or separation, there could hardly be a more controversial subject in Australia today. Prior to the reforms more than half of the country’s dads barely if ever saw their children again after divorce. With the enormous pain this was causing parents, and the enormous damage the destruction of the relationship between children and their fathers was doing to the kids and to society at large, these reforms were long overdue. This week we play a fascinating speech from senior family law lawyer Mark Yousseff as well as speeches from DOTA representative Peter van de Voorde and Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation.

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Forgotten Men Forgotten Women

With Special Guests:

• Uma Challa and
• Marijke Alida.

For the first time Dads On The Air takes a look at the family law and gender situation in India, where less than one per cent of fathers gain custody of their children after separation. Uma Challa is the founder of the group All India Forgotten Women and talks movingly about the damage being done to men, women and children across the subcontinent by the adoption of the West’s anti-family anti-father ideologies. First off we begin the show talking with psychologist Marijke Alida, the organiser of this week’s Fellowship of the Round Table forum at NSW Parliament House on the topic Family Law - Is The Man The Loser. We’ll be playing extracts of the forum’s speaches, including from family lawyer Mark Youssef and the infamous Barbara Biggs, next week.

But this week we concentrate on India, with a fascinating interview with Uma Challa.

She says that in India there is not only have a Ministry dedicated to women’s welfare but also a National Commission for Women and several regional and local organizations representing the cause of women.

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Turbulent Tales

With Special Guests:

• Ben Peacock and
• Dr Ray Seidler.

Being International Men’s Health Week, we’ve decided to talk to two of Australia’s most entertaining characters: author of the new book Lessons From My Left Testicle: A Turbulent Tale to Put Life Into Perspective, survivor of testicular cancer Ben Peacock and the so-called Kings Cross Doctor, a leading expert on men’s health and addiction, Dr Raymond Seidler.

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Fatherhood and Politics

With special guest:

• Ray Barry.

Ray Barry is the Religious Affairs Co-Ordinator with Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) and Party Leader for the Equal Parenting Alliance (EPA) in the UK. This is a must-listen interview, succinctly summing up the state of Family Law in the UK and the challenges that lie ahead.

The civil rights group Fathers 4 Justice was founded in December 2002 by Matt O’Connor after he experienced first hand the injustices of the secret family courts as he struggled to see his two boys Daniel and Alexander after a traumatic divorce. Started as a vehicle for social change, F4J quickly became the high-wire act of protest groups, whether powder-bombing the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, scaling the balcony at Buckingham Palace in a Batman Costume, invading the Pulpit at York Minster during a General Synod Service or taking the National Lottery Draw live off air on BBC1 in front of ten million viewers.

The Equal Parenting Alliance is a relatively new UK political party, formed in February 2006 which aims to promote a system of family justice in the UK that puts the needs and interests of children first.

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Heaven, Earth, Mankind and Happy Dads

With Special Guests:

• Professor Ian Plimer and
  
• Professor John Jenkins.

This week we opt for variety, beginning the show with one of Australia’s leading climate change sceptics Professor Ian Plimer, whose new book Heaven & Earth: Global Warming The Missing Science has topped the bestseller lists and is already into its fifth edition in Australia in a month. The author of seven books, Professor Plimer is somewhat taken aback to finally find himself the author of a bestseller. Not only are issues around global warming of intrinsic worth to fathers, the propaganda techniques used to convince the general population that only politicians can save us through higher taxes and greater government control is also of direct relevance.

We then move on to Professor John Jenkins, who has just completed a study on separated dads suggesting they should learn to relax, play and have more fun with their kids. For everybody’s sake.

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The Rite Journey

With Special Guests:

• Andrew Lines and
• James Adams

Rites of passage and initiation into adulthood through ceremony and the passing on of wisdom from men to boys has always been a fundamental part of indigenous and tribal cultures but is strangely lacking in the West.

Andrew Lines is a high school teacher from South Australia who has devloped a unique boy’s education initiative which has evolved over the last 10 years. The program is called The Rite Journey and is implemented over a year in the school setting for boys around the age of 14 and is now being adopted in a number of private schools. There is also interest from the public sector. In looking at the racist, sexist and homophobic views that some of his students were expressing, and in the grip of reading Stephen Biddulph’s Manhood, he decided to question how this came about and found a lack of male role models, mentors and teachers in the boys lives.

Following our tradition of tracking Australian family law reform closer than any other media outlet, this week we move on to talk to James Adams from Fathers4Equality about the issue of perjury in the Family Court. He argues that the common practice of making up allegations against the father in the Family Court is a form of child abuse.

In a recent press release Fathers4Equality argued that the Chief Justice Diana Bryant’s personal push to take out the perjury elements in the Family Law Act is a case of poor judgement.

He says: “The Chief Justice of the Family Court, Diana Bryant, has recently launched an extraordinary attack on Australia’s internationally regarded 2006 Family Law amendments, by writing to the Attorney-General and asking him to urgently repeal important provisions within the amendments.

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Men Under Labor

With special guests:

• John Flanagan
• George Potkonyak
• Geoffrey Greene and
  
• Phil York.

This week Dads On The Air, which began with a group of separated blokes damaged by and brave enough to raise a voice against the overwhelming anti-father bias of Australia’s family law system, returns to its roots. We talk with John Flanagan from the Equal Parenting Party, George Potkonyak a solicitor dealing with family law and child support issues, Phil York from Dads in Distress and Geoffrey Greene from the Shared Parenting Council of Australia.

Democracy has failed the nation’s fathers. Issues of concern to dads, including men’s health, long and unreasonable work hours, poor pay, family law, child support and a host of other issues are never or rarely ever addressed by our politicians. The electoral success of leftwing governments hostage to feminist lobby groups in America, Australia and the UK has simply made the situation worse. Corrupt and unaccountable systems thrive in secrecy while the nation’s politicians look the other way.

In Australia there are serious concerns that even the modest reforms introduced by the previous government aimed at creating at least an element of fairness into family law are about to be wiped away. Extreme male bashing taxpayer funded women’s groups are mounting a spirited campaign to return the world to the dark ages when most fathers caught up in family law never or rarely ever saw their children again.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made great play out of his devotion to feminist causes, ignoring the many issues which affect his own gender. He is following the example of his hero Barack Obama, who as made sure feminist causes are a major plank of his government’s operations. Many critics believe that as a result of this abject devotion to fashionable ideologies the situation for many fathers is getting worse under both leaders.

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How Family Courts Contribute to Family Destruction

With special guest:

• “Diana”.

This week we present a compelling interview with a separated Australian mother of three, whose ex-husband successfully resorted to all the malicious tools available to both parents under the family justice system. Her appalling experience as a victim of the system will resonate with many fathers, as statistically these very same tactics are mostly used by mothers in order to separate fathers from their children.

“Diana” (not her real name because we’re prevented by law from using her real name), describes in great detail how her ex-husband was able to use false child sex abuse allegations and take out an AVO against her, in order to separate her from her children, safe in the knowledge he would not be punished as a result of his perjury.
 
Our Prime Minister made it known in no uncertain terms recently, that “those that trade on the tragedy of others should rot in jail” and in fact “should rot in hell”. In his view, those that do so, “are engaged in the world’s most evil trade and represent the absolute scum of the earth… the lowest form of life”. 
 
Well Mr Rudd, we have a whole industry trading on the tragedy of others, that has done so with the blessing of successive Australian Governments for the past 35 years. This industry has wreaked absolute havoc and destroyed millions of lives during its long reign of terror against separating parents and their children, yet hardly a whisper of concern is raised by our legislators.
 
This week’s program again illustrates how easy it is for both responsible fathers and mothers to be separated from their children when a malicious, vindictive ex-partner decides to make use of false child sex abuse and domestic violence allegations, in order to obtain valuable time to set in motion the insidious parental alienation process, which turns children against their own family.

The perpetrators of this insidious practice are free to do so under the watchful eye of the judiciary, in the perjury-friendly atmosphere of our family courts, and ironically, somehow this is seen to be “in the best interests of our children”.

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Men's Health and Rallying Forces

With special guests:

• Professor John Macdonald
• John Roberts and
• Sue Price.

This week we will be talking with two of the country’s leading experts on men’s health. First up Prof John Macdonald, who is president of the Australasian Men’s Health Forum, Co-Director of the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney and one of the Federal Government’s Men’s Health Ambassadors. He has been closely involved with the government’s community consultation process for the development of the first National Men’s Health Policy, and related matters around men’s health in Australia. He will be bringing us up to date with developments.

John Roberts is the chair of the organising committee for the Men’s Health Gathering to be held at Newcastle University in October this year. John also works for the Benevolent Society in the Hunter Valley of NSW and runs their MARS (Men Accessing Resources & Services) Program which has produced some fabulous resources for blokes such as the Our Men, Our Community posters, the Blokes Booklet and the Blokes Card. He also works with community organisations around the Hunter and Central Coast regions to encourage them to become more “men-friendly”.

We close the show talking with leading lobbyist Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency about the women’s groups organising rallies outside Family Courts amidst concern the courts may be too generous to dads!

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Family Heartbreak System Down

With special guests:

• Michael Jeffries
• Angelo Lobo and
• Chris Amos.

Before getting down to the serious business, this week Dads on the Air starts off with an interview with Chris Amos, the figure behind taking DOTA into the 21st century by setting up a special Facebook group. For those older parents unfamiliar with the technology of social networking sites, so popular amongst many of our listeners’ teenage children, he explains how it all works and how to get involved.

This week we are honoured to have two American activists on our show. First up we have Michael Jeffries, author of the new book A Family’s Heartbreak: a Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation. The book arose from the author’s personal experience and details all the tricks and sick behaviour that separating parents use against each other, poisoning the minds of their children against the other parent. That such behaviour is enormously damaging to the children involved and ultimately destructive to both the perpetrator and the targeted parent should be obvious to anyone. Yet there are no public messages out there discouraging parents from this sick and abusive behaviour. While women most often attempt to poison their kids minds against their fathers during custody disputes, men can be equally guilty.

We close the show talking with Angelo Lobo, Director and Producer of a new documentary on the shocking US Family Law and Child Support System called SUPPORT? System Down. The documentary is nearing completion after four years of work. SUPPORT? System Down explores the fundamental flaws in America’s Family Courts regarding the Divorce and Child Support System. The film explores the problems through over 38 interviews with both custodial and non-custodial parents and the attorneys, judges and county employees on both sides of the paradigm. SUPPORT? System Down was made to be educational and provocative in order to spark a call to action to bring about much-needed reform in the family courts. Children should not have to suffer due to an ineffectual and corrupt legal system!

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Gender-Neutral Approaches to Domestic Violence

With special guests:

• Joep Zander
• Patricia Gho and
• Paddy Murray

In the social justice arena, two small European countries appear to be way ahead of the pack, and Dads on the Air has been among the first to report these important historic developments to the English-speaking world. First, on the 10th of March we reported on the new “50/50 Equal Shared Parenting Time” laws in Belgium, and now we are pleased to report that the Dutch Government has finally recognized the need to provide domestic violence shelters for abused men.

First up we speak with Joep Zander, who is a well known author, artist and fathers rights activist in the Netherlands. He presents his view of the new DV shelters, acknowledging that because it is still very early days he has some reservations about the scheme. However he hopes the shelters will turn out to be successful in providing a much needed escape for men from their violent partners or families.

Next we speak with Patricia Gho of Stichting Wende, director of the men’s shelter in the Hague. Commenting on the radical change in Dutch Government thinking that led to the trial, she states that “the Government simply could no longer ignore all the data that has for many years shown that there is a real need to also provide shelter for the abused men in our community”.

Bringing the issue closer to home, last up we speak with Paddy Murray, the Buddhist chaplain from Goulburn prison. Mr Murray has done some interesting development work in violence-prevention in Campbelltown with both men and women. He ran the first violence prevention course for women, which unfortunately is no longer in operation. His approach, which he calls “peaceful relating”, is to move beyond gender in violence-prevention work, arguing that the gender lens is just a distortion that does not help much with the work.

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DOTA Goes Spiritual

With special guests:

• Archbishop Barry Hickey and
• Fighting Father Dave.

The mainstream churches have long ignored the many issues confronting fathers in Australia today, so we decided to take a look at the issues of fathers and the various churches.

Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey has written that the absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem in our society. “If Father Christmas was offering me gifts, I would ask for peace in every family and a father at the heart of every family,” he was quoted as saying in the publication Perth Now. “The absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem we face today. It is the biggest cause of lifelong difficulties for fathers, mothers and, most of all, for children.”

“The absence of fathers is bigger than anger, aggression, alcohol, drugs, crime and under-achievement by children because it is the biggest single contributor to all of them. This is borne out worldwide by every large-scale, long-term study of family. I know that Father Christmas isn’t going to solve this problem for me, but I keep praying for it,” Archbishop Hickey said.

Fighting Father Dave is Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three. His website is www.fatherdave.org. Author of Sex, the Ring and The Eucharist, is the only Australian in the Holy Order of the Anglican Church who has ever had to box professionally in order to raise the funds to keep his ministry going. He is known as “Sydney’s Fighting Father,” who combines his work as a Parish Priest with a ministry to street kids, heroin addicts and other ‘undesirables’ from the underside of Australian Society. He uses boxing and the fighting arts to teach young people self-control.

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Dads in Distress

With special guests:

• Tony Miller
• Barry Wiliams
• Phillip York
• Scott Hayes
• Leon Schmeider
• Chris Stokes and
• Peter Smith.

We are pleased to present a Dads in Distress special, looking at the unique work this organisation does in helping fathers in crisis. DIDs aims to provide a safe forum for men going through the trauma of divorce, separation or relationship breakdown to express their grief. It also aims to nurture, validate and stabilise men and by the nautre of the sharing that takes place  guide men to become the cause of their future and not be the result of their past.

With the Rudd government preparing to defund all fathers groups, and the government not providing us with any response to our questions on the issue, we talk to some of the leading figures in Dads in Distress, including founder Tony Miller. He talks about the history of Dads In Distress, what drove him to found the group and the crises it now faces after having established groups around the country.

Barry Williams has been a committed advocate for lone fathers and their families for over thirty years. Leon Schmeider is the convenor of the Dads in Distress Group in Newcastle, and has worked tirelessly as a volunteer for Dids for many years. He has been an inspiration to many men in Newcastle and surrounding areas, as he seems to always go that little bit further in everything he does. Chris Stokes is a dad who also found Dads in Distress at a very tough time in his life. He talks about how DIDs can help blokes at a very difficult time in their lives. Peter Smith is just another dad in a long long line that have been thankful to find a Dads in Distress group in his area.

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International Men's Day: The Debate

With special guests:

• Clr Phillip Penfold
• Warwick Marsh and
• Dr. Elizabeth Celi.

Clr Philip Penfold says he is baffled by the opposition to the recognition that men have problems as well as women but is gratified by the media storm he has inadvertently created. Earlier this month The Newcastle Herald recorded that a motion for Maitland City Council to give equal support to International Men’s and Women’s Days has provoked a minor battle of the sexes with the city’s two female councillors voting against the proposal.

Warwick Marsh of the Fatherhood Foundation, who has been one of the leading proponents of the day, says everone needs encouragement: “It cuts both ways. Men need a day of their own. Father’s day has risen in the public sphere in recent years, and we hope that International Men’s Day will do the same. Councillor Penfold is ground breaking, he is a pioneer. Around the world the day is gathering momentum. It will become a very important day in the calendar.”

Dr Elizabeth Celi, author of Regular Joe versus Mr Invincible: The Battle For the True Man, said International Men’s Day was more than just about men’s health, it is about celebrating masculinity and the wide variety of roles that men play in the community. In her book, when she asked men to list the strengths they bring to their relationships, many fell silent. Celebrating IMD might help men recognise the many strengths and abilities that they bring not only to their relationships but to their workplaces and to the community at large.

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Stolen Babies

With special guests:

• Geoffrey Greene and
• Christine Cole.

First up we talk with Geoffrey Greene, who as a former head of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia, was a key player in the previous government’s reforms of family law. While DOTA was critical that the reforms did not go far enough to address the extreme bigotry and anti-father bias that saturated family law in Australia, at least there was some movement in the right direction. Unbelievably, it would appear that the present government is trying to wind things back to the dark ages when many fathers entering the court did not see their children again.

We close the show with a deeply moving and fascinating interview with Christine Cole, author of the book Babies Stolen: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies. Bureaucrats during the past century, employed in removing children from their natural parents, claimed to be acting in the best interests of children, despite the obvious harm they were doing. There are many lessons for fathers from this history.

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Making History

With special guests:

• Pascal Gallez and
• Michael Green.

We have a very special program this week. Our guest is Pascal Gallez from Belgium, and the subject of our discussion today is the revelation that we now appear to have a template of Real Equal Shared Parenting Time laws in Belgium. Dads on the Air understands we are making history by being the first to bring this to the attention of the English-speaking world. While not perfect, it certainly is a big step forward in the right direction.

This is an important milestone, because it will provide all those fighting so hard around the world to bring about change to the Draconian Family Justice System, with an example of how “Equal Shared Parenting Time” laws need to be structured and how they can work.

Also on the program we’ll be speaking with Michael Green. Michael currently is the patron and past President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia. He is a Lawyer, a QC, an author of two books on parenting issues, and runs a mediation company. We’ll be speaking to him about his thoughts on Belgium’s new Shared Parenting Laws and how they might work in Australia and other countries.

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Organised Crime

With special guests:

• Tom Gilling and
• Maggie Campbell.

This week we interview the author of Smack Express: How organised crime got hooked on drugs, journalist, author and father of two Tom Gilling. And we close the show with lawyer Maggie Campbell, who is an interesting variation on a theme - as a career woman she lost custody of her son in the Family Court to her husband and his new stay-at-home partner, showing just how barbaric and out-of-date the family law jurisdiction remains. Like so many men, she was incensed by what had been done to her and became a lawyer as a result.

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The Rude Guys

With Special Guests:

• Rich Zubaty and
• Ian Purdie.

The Australian Rude Guy meets the American Rude Guy. This hilarious show covers a great deal of ground, with both men being highly prolific and outspoken non-conformists, ready to fly in the face of many an accepted norm.

Both men publish their own books and produce their own broadcasts, and both men have little time for the establishment. “Everyone who is calm and sensible is insane” is the leading quote at Rich Zubati’s website www.therudeguy.com. “The Rude Guy is the poison mushroom on the pizza of corporate culture. The arrow in the ass of the institutions of our time.”

As well as broadcasting The Rude Guy podcast, Rich Zubaty has published a number of books including What Men Know That Women Don’t, The Corporate Cult and Your Brain Is Not Your Own. You can find out more at his other website www.happyfool.org.

Ian Purdie has been a wonderfully entertaining part of Dads On The Air for more than two years now. His handmade books include: The Imnothero Principle, Splatterpuss, The Book of Nasty and The Daddies’ Split Guide. See more at www.ianpurdie.com.

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Gay Dads and Surrogacy

With Special Guests:

• Corey Irlam and
• Rodney Cruise.

This week Corey Irlam from the Coalition for Equality and Rodney Cruise from Gay Dads Australia talk about changes to surrogacy laws which could see potentially thousands of gay male couples bringing up children around the country. While society is getting more accustomed to the idea of lesbians bringing up children, gay men doing the same is still something of a novelty. Rodney Cruise and his partner are already bringing up a surrogate child in Melbourne.

A paper has been released on a national proposal for public consultation in a move to harmonise State and Commonwealth surrogate parenting laws. The national Standing Committee of Attorneys General (SCAG) and the ministerial councils for Community Services and Health are calling for submissions on national surrogacy regulation. The paper, A proposal for a National Model to Harmonise Regulation of Surrogacy, makes a number of recommendations including that people who use a surrogate mother would be able to apply for legal recognition as the child’s parents and that the differing state laws be harmonised. Other regulations under review include paying a surrogate mother’s medical costs, financial losses during and other expenses during pregnancy. But commercial surrogacy would remain illegal in Australia, the paper recommends. Submissions Close on 16 April 2009.

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