Past Programs
Government and Politics - 2008
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2003
Oriel Grey
09/10/2008
In the late 1930s and 1940s, playwright Oriel Gray was a bright star in Sydney's bohemian literary and artistic milieu. She began her long career writing political revues and plays for the New Theatre, which operated under the stern patronage of the Communist Party of Australia.
Oriel Gray recalls her childhood, her interest in writing and the stage, and her wartime years involved in radical theatre -- a time of rare unity for the Australian left as they came together in the fight against fascism.
Oriel Grey died in July 2003.
Lester Bostock
11/09/2008
Lester Bostock is considered a founding father of the emergence of Indigenous media in Australia. He helped set up Radio Redfern, was involved in the creation of the first Indigenous theatre group, and was also the first Aboriginal presenter on SBS Radio.
Lester Bostock was born in 1934, and spent his childhood on the Box Ridge reserve in northern NSW. He went to school on the reserve, where his teacher was the untrained wife of the reserve manager. He left school at thirteen, and returned to education as an adult. Lester attended Tranby Aboriginal College in Sydney, and ended up teaching there himself.
Fred Daly
04/09/2008
Fred Daly was born into a large family in Currabubula, NSW, in 1913. After the death of his father, the family fell upon difficult financial times, and Fred's older brothers decided to sell the family property. Fred and his mother came to live in Sydney, where he left school and, in the midst of the Great Depression, got a job as a bicycle delivery boy.
In his early 20s, Fred Daly joined the Australian Labor Party, and in 1943, became a minister in the wartime Curtin government, making him, at the time, the youngest member of the House of Representatives. He went on to hold the NSW seats of Martin and Grayndler. His 32 years in office earned him the title 'Father of the House'.
Fred Daly died in 1995. Well known for his wit and humour, his political career has been documented in many books, including his own memoir The Politician Who Laughed.
Hermann Black
28/08/2008
Sir Hermann, or HD, Black was born in Sydney in 1904 and claimed Scottish, Irish and German heritage. He attended Fort Street high school and became a teacher himself, before being offered a position, in 1933, at his old alma-mater, the University of Sydney, in the Department of Economics.
Throughout his time at the university, HD Black was also an economic adviser to Treasury, and was a popular presence on the ABC radio program The World We Live In. But Hermann Black's early life was not one abundant with opportunity, nor material comfort.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
21/08/2008
In the fourth program in a series exploring memories of childhood, the poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal recalls her early life growing up on her tribal country, Minjerribah, or Stradbroke Island, off the coast of southern Queensland.
She was born in 1920 and was given the name Kathleen. As an adult Kath Walker took on her Indigenous name, Minjerribah is the traditional country of the Noonuccal people.
Oodgeroo was one of the first Indigenous Australian writers to be published, and her work has received many accolades and awards, including an MBE which she famously returned to the government in 1988, in protest against the Bicentennial celebrations.
Don Dunstan
14/08/2008
Don Dunstan was born in 1926, and grew up between two very different worlds—the years spent in Fiji, where his Australian father was a manager for the Adelaide Steamship Company, and his time in South Australia, where he lived with relatives in the small town of Murray Bridge and attended boarding school in Adelaide.
This experience, and a childhood set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, had a lasting influence on Don Dunstan's later life—as a lawyer, as a sometime socialist and, later, as a politician. When the ALP won the 1970 election, Dunstan became premier of South Australia. He held the positon until 1979. Don Dunstan died in 1999.
