Divorced From Reality

With Special Guest:

• Dr Stephen Baskerville.

We are delighted to have the author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, Dr Stephen Baskerville, on the show once again.

No one has done more to expose the ideological war against fathers by the welfare, family law, domestic violence and child support industries as Dr Baskerville. While those impacted by these industries, many of whom have seen their lives and their children’s lives destroyed, know all too well the disastrous impacts of the current reigning ideologies, separated fathers are traditionally ridiculed. With his academic credibility and forecefulness of personality, Baskerville has been able to articulate the shocking damage being wreaked not just on fathers and their children but on society as a whole.

In Australia, the Labor Party, now in power, created many of the country’s most despised and destructive institutions, including the Family Court and the Child Support Agency. The conservatives did nothing to stop their ever increasing power.

We last interviewed Dr Baskerville in 2007 on the publication of Taken Into Custody. This week we catch up with activities since, including the establishment of his own blog.

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Insane Levels of Stress

With special guests:

• “Matthew”
  
• “Dave” and
• “Steve”.

In the wake of an appalling tragedy where a four year old girl was allegedly thrown off a bridge by her father, we talk with three fathers about the stresses in their lives. It surprised no long term observers that shortly afterwards the father was found and then arrested in the environs of Melbourne’s Family Court.

While vigilantes have called for the man’s blood, others have called for compassion and understanding. Disgracefully, some feminist commentators have attempted to use the incident in their ideological campaign against the commonsense notion of shared parenting.

While making no direct comment on the case itself - the father has now been charged with murder - we do look at the insane levels of stress that fathers are put under by our reviled family law system.

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The Perils of Ideology

Erin Pizzey

With special guests:

• Erin Pizzey
• Mark Sutton and
• Susan E. Block.

In May 2007 Dads on the Air interviewed the founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women, Erin Pizzey. This interview was circulated far and wide, making it one of the most publicised broadcasts in DOTA’s history. As the Australian Government has recently been raising the issue of domestic violence from a one-sided ideological perspective, including the establishment of the National Council to Prevent Violence Against Women and Children, we thought it would be timely to re-broadcast the Erin Pizzey interview to try and bring some balance and rationality to the domestic violence debate.

Also on today’s program we feature another wonderful contribution by Mark Sutton from Liberal Arts Radio in the US. Alec Baldwin took a lot of heat after an angry voicemail to his daughter was leaked back in 2007. In his recently released book about Parental Alienation, A Promise to Ourselves, he confides that he was suicidal after the voicemail incident. Susan E. Block, a family law attorney and the former Administrative Judge of the Family Court of St. Louis County, looks at the problems facing non-custodial parents as well as new solutions that are being implemented in the US state of Missouri. More at www.liberalartsradio.com.

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The Impending Depression

Scott Longden

With special guests:

• Professor Bill Mitchell
• Scott Longden and
• Sue Price.

This week we feature a fascinating interview with Professor Bill Mitchell from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle. He is one of the academics who is predicting that there could be a million Australians on the dole queues by the end of next year. On this week’s show he explains just how easily this could come about and also talks about the devastating social consequences for the nation - how severe the impacts are on fathers, families and children.

Also this week we run extracts from an interview with Scott Longden from the Fatherhood Project in Northern NSW. He talks about how important it is for fathers to get involved with their children from birth, and how men can help each other in prenatal classes to become the best fathers they can. For too long fathers have been seen as an almost irrelevant adjunct to the birth, whereas in reality fathers are vital to their children from their earliest days.

We finish the show with Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency, who talks about the frequency with which men are being jailed for alleged abuses which occur sometimes decades before they are actually jailed, often on extremely flimsy if not non-existent evidence.

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Get Off the Bench

With special guests:

• Bob Norton
• Larry Holland
• Peter Van de Voorde
• Mark Sutton and
• Angelo Lobo.

This week on Dads on the Air we present excerpts from two popular US radio programs that deal with men’s and fathers’ issues. First up, Dads on the Air recently joined the discussion on popular weekly American radio program Get Off The Bench. Our own Peter van de Voorde together with the co-hosts of the program, Bob Norton and Larry Holland, discuss many of the Family Law issues that are presently faced in so many countries around the world.

This is followed by an excellent interview with filmmaker Angelo Lobo on Liberal Arts Radio. Liberal Arts is a radio show that explores the arts from an unapologetically political perspective. Host Mark Sutton (NPR, Air America, XM Satellite Radio) is joined by politically-opinionated guests from the world of music, art, political cartoons, film and more. The Family Court system is on trial in Angelo Lobo’s documentary film Support System Down, which looks at ways in which people have been trapped in divorce proceeding that can last for years, cost into the millions of dollars, and separate parents from kids.

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Propaganda

With special guests:

• Robert Belcher
• Geoffrey Greene and
• Sue Price.

The widespread use of propaganda by governments in the climate change debate to convince a naive population to accept yet more taxes and yet more government control has many corollaries with the taxpayer-funded war on fathers. Which is why Dads On The Air has paid particular attention to the debate.

Robert Belcher is the founder of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia. He is one of the few voices speaking out against the Rudd government’s plans to literally change the entire rural landscape of Australia by converting it to carbon sink forests, using generous tax concessions to promote this change.

With the Rudd government rapidly moving to overthrow even the extremely modest family law reforms of the Howard government, it is even more essential to understand how the government has essentially killed a social movement, by marginalising them, ridiculing them and failing to fund them. And by the incessant use of propaganda.

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2008: The Year That Was

Launched in 2000, Dads On The Air has stumbled, triumphed and survived another year. That is a miracle in itself. We would very much like to take this opportunity to thank all our listeners and supporters who have made the show possible.

While we haven’t managed to squeeze everyone in, our much appreciated Rockin’ Pop aka Peter van de Voorde has done a wonderful job of selecting extracts from some of the year’s best interviews, sampling of our core themes around shared parenting and child custody in Australia, and the sad winding back of family law reforms which, however inadequate, went some way to encouraging shared parenting and cooperation after separation. The present system creates nothing but a well of pain on all sides, for men, women and children. Critics argue that the winding back of the modestly improved treatment of separated fathers, so vital in their children’s lives, is a retrograde step, a kowtowing to entrenched self-interests locked in 1970s mindsets. The tragedy and appalling failure of social policy in this country, intertwined with child protection, child support, welfare and even education, has continued to play out during the entire life of Dads on the Air and we have continued to cover these issues in greater detail than any Australian media outlet.

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Take Heart

Ken Thompson

With Special Guests:

• Ken Thompson and
• Maggie Dent.

This is our second-last show for the year, so best wishes of the season to all our listeners. First up we talk with Ken Thompson, the NSW Deputy Fire Commissioner, who has come to understand what many men in this country experience through the loss of his son Andrew. Andrew John Thompson, now aged four, was illegally abducted by his mother Melinda Thompson (also known as Melinda Stratton) from Australia to Germany in April this year. This is a criminal offence under the Family Law Act. The Family Court has ordered that a warning must be issued stating that no one is to approach Melinda Thompson and that any information should be provided immediately to local police and/or Interpol. Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Andrew and Melinda should contact local Police, Interpol, or the Australian Federal Police on +61 (0)2 6126 7777. If you wish to assist Ken Thompson in the search for his son by taking part in an email-circulation effort, please call +61 (0)417 416 024.

Maggie Dent is an author, publisher and a parenting and resilience specialist. She writes a free email newsletter that promotes the healthy raising of children. This week we play Maggie’s keynote address from the Men’s Advisory Network Second National Conference held recently in Fremantle, Western Australia. Titled Dear Boys: About the Healthy Mothering of Boys, her poignant and often hilarious keynote explores the vital role in boys’ lives of healthy mothering. It is especially helpful for mothers and teachers who are confused by the boys in their lives. The impact of abandonment, avoidance and misunderstanding can shape a boy for the rest of his life in very negative ways. This will show you how to engage, connect and enjoy these interesting lads from early years to adulthood.

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European Update

With special guests:

• John Forsyth and
  
• Jiri Fiala.

John Forsyth is a journalist based in Scotland who worked for the BBC in London for 10 years before returning to Scotland to become Political Editor of Scotland on Sunday newspaper. He has recently resumed freelancing for newspapers. John has taken some interest in the Scottish Government’s persistence with a gender-based analysis of domestic abuse to provide 10s of millions of pounds in funding for support groups for female victims of domestic abuse and violence and zero for males in the same situation. The latest 2007-8 domestic abuse statistics were published recently with a government press release saying police reports of domestic abuse had gone up 2%. Somehow they managed to gloss over the fact that police reports of women as victims of men had fallen while incidents of males on the receiving end had gone up by 12%, as they have in each of the last 8 years.

Jiri Fiala is the founder and director of the Czech Republics’ fathers group K213. Jiri has been desperately trying to obtain contact with his two children, which the Czech Courts will not support. After taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights, who incidentally ruled in his favour, the Czech Family Court still refuses to act upon the directions of the European Court of Human Rights, and will not enforce his legal contact with his children.

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Renovations Required

Dr James Cumes

With Special Guests:

• Rainer Sonnenberger and
• Dr James Cumes.

First up we are joined by Rainer Sonnenberger from Germany. Rainer is a member of the board of directors of the largest organization for fathers and childrens’ rights in Germany Vateraufbruch Fur Kinder.

Next we speak to James Cumes, renaissance man and author of, amongst other things, America’s Suicidal Statecraft. James was one of the few commentators to predict the current global economic crisis. We speak to him from Vienna where he explains some of the causes of the global predicament and offers some sensible solutions to resuscitate the Australian and global economies.

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Two Sides to Every Story

With Special Guests:

• James Adams
• Sue Price and
• Warwick Marsh.

There are two sides to every story, but when it comes to gender issues including domestic violence and shared parenting, the Australian public are only hearing one side.

Much of the Australian media has completely neglected to point out that there is a great deal of debate academic and otherwise over the massive taxpayer-funded domestic violence industry and its portrayal of men and fathers as abusers and women as victims.

The Labor Party has now been in power for a year, and the anti-father anti-male propaganda machine is in full swing. The public has been inundated with horror stories of evil men bashing women and how the extremely modest reforms by the previous government to dilute the extreme anti-father bias of our family law system are allegedly placing women and children in danger.

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Resilience

With Special Guests:

• Maggie Dent and
• Michael Woods.

As always, Dads On The Air is covering a lot of ground this week. We begin by talking to author Maggie Dent about her new book, Real Kids in an Unreal World: Building Resilience and Self Esteem in Today’s Children. Then we talk with Michael Woods, Senior Lecturer with the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney, on the controversy surrounding White Ribbon Day. Many critics are now expressing concern over the social consequences of the repeated linking of men with violence in taxpayer-funded public campaigns and the inflamed misuse of statistics to bolster an ideological position which paints men as violent patriarchs. We’ll also be taking a look at the demise of the Federal Magistrates Service in Australia, created in a sense as a counterbalance to the Family Court. While many questions remain over the failure of reactionary elements within family law to embrace shared parenting, the Magistgrates Service was generally seen as faster, fairer and less expensive.

We speak with Habib about his new book My Story - The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, his experiences in Guantánamo, and how he has managed to adjust back to his life as an Australian father and husband.

We also present Maggie Hamilton’s inspirational keynote address from the MAN National Conference in Fremantle titled Capturing the public imagination: securing a better future for our men and boys.

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Rites of Passage

Dr Arne Rubenstein

With Special Guests:

• Arne Rubenstein and
• Ruedi Oswald.

At the Men’s Advisory Network’s Second National Conference back in August, in Fremantle, we recorded Dr Arne Rubenstein’s inspiring keynote address titled Creating contemporary Rites of Passage and the Pathways to Manhood Program. Dr Rubenstein is the co-founder and CEO of the Pathways Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that runs the national award winning Pathways to Manhood Program in schools and communities around Australia. This program for teenage boys and their fathers is a contemporary Rite of Passage that aims to inspire the boys to have a vision and reach their potential.

Ruedi Oswald, is a licensed Swiss social worker who is going to give us an insight into what happens to separated fathers in Switzerland, and how easily they can be separated from their children once one parent is allotted sole custody by the legal system. We’re going to try and find out what differences there are in the way that separation and divorce are dealt with by the Swiss Family Justice System compared to what happens in the rest of the western democracies. While his wife, who is a doctor, lives in the family home and he hasn’t seen his 3 kids for 10 years, he is forced to live out of the back of a converted van. Ruedi is looking for support and can be reached at swiss.socialwork@web.de.

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What Lies in the Hearts of Men

With Special Guests:

• John Simpson
• Sue Price
• Warwick Marsh
• Greg Andresen
• Robert Gordon.

This week we covered a great deal of territory, from a fascinating interview with the creative director of a powerful new movie Men’s Group, to International Men’s Day to the debate which has erupted over the potential jailing of men who dare to get a DNA sample of their children without the mother’s permission.

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Save the Males

With Special Guests:

• Kathleen Parker and
  
• Peter Burns

Author Kathleen Parker has created a furore around the world with her new book Save The Males. Don’t miss this fascinating interview. So disenfranchised have men become, that only a woman can state the bleeding obvious, that the extreme sexism of gender feminism has done a great deal of harm to men, women, children, and society as a whole.

One person who knows all about the brutality of the modern state is Peter Burns, one of the leading members of the fathers’ rights movement in NZ, he hosts a very successful website http://dad4justice.blogspot.com/ where he dispenses a wealth of information from around the world to do with fatherhood issues.

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Princesses and Pornstars - What's Happening to Our Girls?

With special guests:

• Emily Maguire, author of the new book Princesses and Pornstars
• Maggie Hamilton, author of the new book What’s Happening To Our Girls?

This week we are delighted to have two of the country’s leading women authors on the show discussing where gender relations have got to and what is happening to our girls.

Many dads are strugling to deal with feisty, determined and often headstrong young daughters, trying to encourage them to be independent and successful young women, while at the same time as hoping like hellthey don’t turn into man-haters.

Told from an early age they can do anything and be anything, young women today are very different to the women of only a few generations ago.

As any parent will tell you, teenage girls are difficult on a good day. How as a father to deal best with them and the many issues they face can be very perplexing indeed.

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Child Support: The Bitter Harvest

Matt Miller

With Special Guests:

• Matt Miller
• Sue Price
• John Flanagan
• Phillip York.

Nothing makes separated dads more upset or more angry than the Child Support Agency, with its constant and brutal intrusions into their lives and its systemic stripping of their income and assets. While the government has built an enormous and ruthless bureaucratic empire around child support, and will pursue fathers literally to the grave for a few dollars, the same government does absolutely nothing to ensure that kids get to see their dads.

This government is now overseeing complex and confusing changes to the child support system which is meant to make it fairer, but in fact will see many if not most fathers paying more, while stripping them of their family allowance.

While he heads the country’s most despised and destructive institution - and has rapidly become the country’s most disliked bureaucrat - at least Matt Miller has had the gumption to come on and attempt to justify the changes. Also on the show this week are John Flanagan from the Fairness in Child Support group, Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency and Phillip York from Dads In Distress.

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Social Justice: Think Twice

With Special Guests:

• Angela Conway
• Toni McLean
• Richar’ Farr
• John Flanagan.

The Australian Family Association is campaigning against the proposed changes to NSW legislation that would remove the word ‘father’ from birth certificates and get rid of the term ‘paternity leave’. We are pleased to have their spokeswoman Angela Conway on the program. “We oppose the change, it is part of the national and international picture of eroding the traditional family and the concept of a natural parent,” she said. “The social science evidence is pointing us in the other direction; that natural parents, both mothers and fathers, are vital to their children.

We are also delighted to have domestic violence counsellor and expert Toni McLean on the show. She has had the courage and integrity to genuinely think outside the square when it comes to violent couples and the best way to promote healthy relationships. Together with supportive and experienced group facilitators, her Think Twice program offers a complete range of options for individuals and couples experiencing difficulty in their relationships from normal conflict through to all forms of abuse, as well as physical violence.

We close the show with the ever entertaining Richar’ Farr, a leading figurehead in the international fatherhood movement. He is the founder of KRights Radio and the nationally syndicated program The Message. Richar’ describes his new internet radio station as “a town hall meeting on radio.” He calls it Kids’ Rights Radio - KRights for short. The unique station began its unusual and compelling broadcast on Aug 1, 2004, and is now on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We also talk with John Flanagan about the upcoming Dads4Kids Rally at NSW Parliament House to protest the removal of the word ‘father’ from birth certificates.

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Exploding Gender Myths

With Special Guests:

• Professor Mark Wooden
• Warwick Marsh and
• Professor Richard B. Felson.

Prof Mark Wooden, social researcher at the University of Melbourne, is a very courageous man. Last week he was the only male taking part in a National Press Club panel discussion on the gender pay gap. Faced with a mostly female audience, he dared to challenge the myth that the pay gap between men and women in Australia is mainly due to discrimination, instead suggesting that it has “got a lot to do with the fact that women are not prepared to work longer hours.”

Other widespread myths concern the issue of domestic violence. One of them is that husbands engage in more marital violence than wives because they are more controlling. The other is that societal norms permit violence within marriage and that gender roles encourage violence by males moreso than females. Richard B. Felson, Professor of Crime, Law, Justice and Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University in the US, has published extensive research that challenges both of these myths.

Also on today’s show we speak to Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation about the proposed laws in NSW that will remove the word ‘father’ from birth certifcates and consign the term ‘paternity leave’ to the dustbin of history.

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Are Our Sex Discrimination Laws Sexist?

Elizabeth Broderick

With special guest

• Elizabeth Broderick, the new Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner Responsible for Age Discrimination.

The Commissioner and her staff have spent the last few months undertaking a National Listening Tour to ascertain the views of Australians on three key themes: economic independence for women, work and family balance across the life cycle, and freedom from discrimination, harassment and violence.

To date the Commissioner and her staff have run men’s and women’s focus groups, spoken to men and women at workplaces, unions, business round-tables, academic round-tables, community groups and public consultations, in both city and regional areas. Information collected from this consultation will be used to inform the agenda for Ms Broderick’s five year term.

It will be a real honour to have the Commissioner on our program to discuss various issues of concern to men, boys and fathers. She is on the record as being very supportive of men and their issues, believing that “working towards gender equality is not about a battle of the sexes.” The question is whether her hands are tied by administering a sex discrimination act that defines discrimination as “discrimination against women”.

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