April 2022: It’s just after 6pm on a Monday evening in the small New South Wales South Coast town of Batemans Bay, and as is the case most weeknights – especially drizzly, prematurely dark ones like this – the main shopping area is rapidly emptying. Just a handful of people remain, pushing laden trolleys down … Continue reading The hope and climate catastrophe roadshow: ‘there’s just this thirst for optimistic story’
Electric Monaros and hotted-up skateboards : the ‘genius’ who wants to electrify our world
February 2022: It is late morning at the home of inventor, entrepreneur and CEO, Saul Griffith, in the coastal village of Austinmer, south of Sydney, and the scene is instantly familiar. Beach towels and children’s shoes are strewn by the front door; rogue socks and pieces of Lego line the stairwell; breakfast dishes are stacked … Continue reading Electric Monaros and hotted-up skateboards : the ‘genius’ who wants to electrify our world
Close to home for Katy Gallagher
October 2021: When news that the Australian Capital Territory had recorded its first COVID-19 case in over a year started whipping around the corridors of Parliament House on Thursday, August 12, Labor senator Katy Gallagher suspected – correctly – that a territory-wide lockdown was just hours away. It was the last sitting day of the … Continue reading Close to home for Katy Gallagher
Declaration of independents
December 2021 - January 2022: It’s mid afternoon on a humid, rain-punctuated day in early November when Dr Helen Haines swings her bright orange Mazda – affectionately known as the “Orange Rocket” – into the parking lot at Barnawartha Primary, a little school of 45 children in north-east Victoria. From the boot, Haines, the independent … Continue reading Declaration of independents
Weathering the Cost
The Monthly July 2020 According to a database kept by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, since 1886 Australian governments have held more than 300 inquiries and reviews into natural disasters and emergency management. The decade leading up to 2017 was particularly jam-packed, with 90 such inquiries, delivering over 2000 recommendations. In the wake of … Continue reading Weathering the Cost
Shattered
The Monthly October 2020 All of us, if we stop and think about it, know that life can turn in an instant. That what we value can suddenly be shattered. But truthfully, who really expects it to happen to us? Let alone our entire community. On the last morning of 2019, a Tuesday, people in … Continue reading Shattered
Living Hell
The Monthly February 2020 Early one afternoon in late November 2019, I left Canberra as it was bathing in a sepia haze of bushfire smoke to drive back towards my home on the south coast of New South Wales. As I headed east, past dried-out farm country with paddocks the colour of sand and stands … Continue reading Living Hell
Rising Tide
The Monthly October 2019 Dealing with sea-level rise when private property is at stake Around 10 years ago, upon retirement, Dr Brett Stevenson started spending less time in Sydney and more in a house he owned in a town 200 kilometres south – the beginnings of the classic Australian sea change. The region he … Continue reading Rising Tide
‘Not equal before the law’: Why regional drug addicts are often sent to jail, not rehab
ABC Online 15th June 2018 A retired judge has backed calls for more drug rehabilitation centres in the bush, warning addicts in regional areas are too often thrown behind bars. John Nicholson SC served as a New South Wales District Court judge for more than a decade and regularly presided over sittings in Dubbo, where … Continue reading ‘Not equal before the law’: Why regional drug addicts are often sent to jail, not rehab
Changing habits: Regional city calls for drug and crime rethink
ABC Radio National Background Briefing Sunday 17th June A community in regional NSW is pushing for a different approach to how it handles drug-related crime. While politicians have promised a drug court to divert offenders into rehabilitation, very little has been done. In this Background Briefing investigation reporter Bronwyn Adcock speaks to community leaders in … Continue reading Changing habits: Regional city calls for drug and crime rethink
The Captain Cook connection
The Monthly May 2018 “The most frustrating thing is that everyone gets out there for Australia Day, there’s so much controversy, but April 29 comes around and there’s just silence.” It’s a windy autumn day, and Rodney Kelly is slumped over a wooden picnic table at the Bermagui headland, on the far NSW South Coast. … Continue reading The Captain Cook connection
Sick on the inside
The Monthly April 2018 Over the final few months of his life, 31-year-old David Wotherspoon, an inmate at Cessnock Correctional Centre in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, increasingly believed that prison officers were plotting to kill him: poisoning his food and sending toxic gas into his cell. To protect himself, he barely … Continue reading Sick on the inside
Bronwyn Adcock 