"The Week on Wednesday" with Van Badham & Ben Davison

Episode 50: Houston, Canavan, Christensen and Kelly, The company Morrison keeps. Morrison blames developing countries to avoid climate action. COVID gets worse. Good news is whiskey powered trucks!

Van Badham and Ben Davison explore the company Prime Minister Scott Morrison keeps as his pastor faces charges of concealing a crime, one of his senators spouts Bannon neo-fascism and made up numbers on the ABC and one of his members in the lower house regurgitates foreign conspiracy theories and finally gets called out on it by the parliament. Plus there's Craig Kelly, Gerard Rennick and even a bit of Barnaby!

The IPCC, and reality, says humans are slow cooking our only home but Scott Morrison wants the poorest people on earth to do something or a miracle technology before he'll "write a blank cheque" to save us.  Van and Ben explore how the same mouth pieces for foreign propagandists on COVID are also the same people threatening the government if they do anything to improve our environment.

COVID gets worse in NSW with no real end in sight as more areas enter lockdown and Melbourne extends the 6th lockdown for another week.  Van reports from Sydney and asks the question: Do you want the kind of strong decisive leadership that we've seen in the Labor states or the hopeless failure of Morrison and Gladys to continue?  "Because that's the choice people will have to make."

The good news is that whiskey waste is being used to fuel whiskey delivery trucks in closed manufacturing processes!

Weekend Wrap 8 August 2021

Ben Davison recaps a great Olympics for Australia during a difficult time and discusses some of the highlights that bought the nation together.

COVID remains out of control in Sydney with more deaths, record case numbers, growing hospitalisations and a creeping lockdown that feels piecemeal to the rest of the nation.

Brisbane comes out of lockdown as Cairns goes in and Melbourne is back in lockdown as Tasmania and WA record cases.

Wins for workers at McCains, we acknowledge aged care worker day and the passing of Richard Trumka and Lina Cabaero as workers, in union, keep rejecting pressure to accept pay cuts.

Episode 49: NSW suffers 233 new cases of COVID as man in his 20's dies, Morrison's women problem is a problem for everyone, good news about solar cars!

Van Badham, in lockdown Sydney, and Ben Davison, with a crying dachshund, dive into the mishandling of the Sydney lockdown, the spread of Delta, how Morrison's attacks on the public sector have resulted in needing to use the Army for a health crisis and what we can do to remove barriers to vaccination.

The workers at McCain are back at work following their win over the multinational corporation's attempt to lock them out, workers at Coca-Cola in WA are standing strong against attempts to cut their conditions and Van discusses how our greatest PM, John Curtin, was a unionist even while fighting World War II

The "morality of our current leadership" under the Morrison government has been called into question by Grace Tame, Australian of the year, and Van and Ben explore how scandal after scandal has gone unpunished and doing the wrong thing but avoiding responsibility is being rewarded by Morrison. 

The good news is about solar cars and new battery technology!

Weekend Wrap 1 August 2021

McCain in Tasmania locks out the workers for asking for equal to with other McCain workers denying them wages in a cold Tasmanian winter: Listeners can support the workers with a crowdfunding campaign set up by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU)

Gladys' mockdown continues to fail the people of NSW as 239 new cases of COVID are reported with up to 150 of them active in the community while infectious and over 100 not linked to a known case.  People are starting to die in their homes.

Qld has 9 cases and has locked down 11 local government areas while research from Victoria shows how important vaccinations are to staying alive and why Morrison's strollout is putting Australian's at huge risk.

A big win for 2,000 workers who were unlawfully outcoursed by Qantas in an attempt to cut their wages by a collective $100million.  A court has ruled in a case, led by workers from the Transport Workers Union (TWU), that Qantas was trying to "rid itself of the influence of the union".  An unaustralian act from the so called spirit of Australia.

Episode 48: Gladys locks down for another month, Morrison gives a little more but still no wage subsidy as food prices rise. Canavan and the capitol hill riot link. Good news about plastic and PFAS

Van Badham and Ben Davison, still separated by hard borders and COVID lockdowns, analyse what is happening as Sydney locks down for another four weeks, Victoria starts to cautiously reopen and Morrison decides to let 400,000 Sydneysiders both pay their rent and eat!

Ben breaks down the jump in cost of living and how the failure to see through support for working people may be taking fresh food off many household menus. 

Matt Canavan is appearing on the Bannon show while George Christensen's right to support people being organised by far right groups in Germany is defended by Scott Morrison.  That's right folks, the evidence is in and the marches on the weekend were orchestrated as part of a global far right movement. 

Van and Ben discuss how the Capitol Hill hearings are exposing the dangers of pretending tolerance for the intolerant is anything other than a danger to democracy as both Democrats and Republicans take the stand.

And there is good news about making corporations pay for the environmental cost of plastics and on the elimination of cancer causing PFAS.

Weekend Wrap 25th July

Ben responds to the march of the traitors, COVID updates, the need for Australians to stand together as one Commonwealth against the agents of Murdoch.

Episode 47: Gladys "Mockdown" fails, Morrison's leadership failings continue, Is the UK opening up or giving up? And the good news is about oil and gas in Greenland!

Van Badham (locked down in Sydney) and Ben Davison (locked down in Melbourne) examine how the Glady's "mockdown" failed to stop the spread of the Delta variant and now more than half of Australia is in lockdown with almost 1,500 COVID cases in NSW.  Sadly hospitalisations, ICU admissions and ventilations have almost doubled since last week's episode.

Morrison holds a press conference to tell Australian's what a good job he's doing, lie about vaccination rates and pretend $350 a week from the government is somehow a generous act from a man who lives in a waterfront palace and collects over $500,000 a year.  But he's not going to say sorry for failing to roll out the vaccine.  No matter how many times we ask him, no matter how many cases there are and no matter how clearly he has failed.

Boris Johnson has declared "Freedom Day" by removing all COVID restrictions at the same time his health minister, who is vaccinated, gets COVID in what is widely seen as Boris simply giving up on trying to keep people safe.

The good news is from Greenland.  The new Inuit led government has decided to keep the oil and gas in the ground in an act of global solidarity with genuine consequences for their own sovereign goals.

Weekend Wrap 18 July 2021

Morrisons vaccine failures allow 105 new COVID cases in Sydney as Gladys finally suggests people should wear masks outside.

7 are now ventilated and another person has died.

Victoria carries the cost of Morrison's politicking with 16 cases linked to the NSW outbreak.

Australian Unions are calling for Jobkeeper to return but Morrison has refound is ideological goggles are is refusing to help people keep their jobs.

Can you believe that no Morrison Minister has resigned over abandoning 36,000 stranded Aussies overseas?  Well, they've just let in well known British racist Katie Hopkins and Republican politician/Kardashian Caitlyn Jenner for Channel 7.

Sign the megaphone petition to have them booted out.  The ministers and the dangerous right wing loons.

 

Episode 46: Gladys extends Sydney lockdown, Morrison puts party before nation, China watches our wargames and good news about goats!

Van Badham, in lockdown Sydney, and Ben Davison, fresh from a Tier 1 exposure, breakdown Glady's Sydney lockdown extension, the pressure on workers in Fairfield and the growing impact of the Liberal's "confusion first" approach.

Morrison's decision to increase payments to Sydney, in a way not open to Melbourne during Victoria's lockdown, has incensed people as partisan politicking gone mad.  Morrison's government has tried to justify the favourable treatment using the same tricks it has offered up over car park rorts, sports rorts and Sydney airport land payments but even liberals are furious!

Dutton throws a dead cat on the table as China sends the same ship to watch our regular war games with the USA, "Talisman Sabre", as they sent in 2019 and 2017.

And the good news is about how we can turn feral goats into fertiliser!  

Weekend Wrap 11th July 2021

Glady's lockdown lite results in 77 case today, 52 in hospital, 15 in intensive care and 1 death.  Morrison continues to fail with on 9% of Australian's vaccinated

The RBA acknowledges that manipulation of migration policy has resulted in lower wages as the failure of neo-liberal economics continues to be exposed

Ash Barty wins Wimbeldon!