THE SPINS FORUMS for 2009

Time to put aside an hour on your Tuesday nights as The Spin Forums hit the airwaves for 2009. On the last Tuesday of each month (or thereabouts) we will devote an entire hour to a single topic. A lot of the topics will be issues that don't get a lot of press or time on air. And some of the topics are ones we choose not to discuss. Some 'taboo'. Well nothing is taboo on The Spin. Both JOY's outstanding new studios will be utilised to get the maximum number of voices to address each topic. Your comments will also be welcomed.

Be prepared to be challenged. The last Tuesday of each month on The Spin . 7 - 8pm.

Tuesday, January 27 - 'Program JOY for a day'
Are we providing what our community wants to hear? The challenges of programming Australia's only gay & lesbian station (or should that be GLBTI... and Q???)

Tuesday, February 24 - 'No Asians please'
Sexual racism in the community. Are WE the worst offenders? Heaven forbid if you're not a white, anglo-saxon, buffed boy in Prahran!

Tuesday, March 31 - 'The pink season'
Too many events? Too predictable? Too clichéd? What works? What needs a rest? What do our events say to the wider community about us? Midsumma, Mardi Gras, Pride, Chill-out, blah, blah.

Tuesday, April 28 - 'The beat goes on'
Love them or hate them, 'beats' are a part of the gay culture in Australia. The vexed issues of violence, public spaces and indulgence. And did you hear about lesbian beat sex?

Tuesday, May 26 - 'GLBTIQ is so PC'
Typecasting, hatespeech, political over-correctness and who the hell we are. Identifying our 'community' and what we stand for in 2009.

Tuesday, June 30 - 'I have a dream'
Look how far we have come.... and where to now? Education v's legislation. The generation gap in our community.

You can always sms JOY on 0427 JOY 949 or email us live on air.... onair@joy.org.au. It's your program so share your views on all the topics.

Maybe you have a topic you would like to discuss on The Spin Forums. Just drop us a line on this blog and we'll be in contact.

'BEST OF Awards for 2008

'Looking for nominations for the 'BEST OF Awards for 2008'. The joint two hour special combining The Spin and Transmission Time next Tuesday will showcase the best and worst in the news from 2008.

We need your help.

Firstly, please forward your most 'profound' story from 2008. Not necessarily the front page story but something that moved or affected you from Australia or overseas. Provide a few paragraphs supporting your nomination so we can share it with the audience during the show.

Also nominations for these categories are also invited....

- Most over-rated news story

- Most overused cliché

- 'Please get off the front page' Award

- Most over-hyped media spin

- Most over-rated media personality

- Best GLBTI journalism

- 'Am I ever going to see you face again' Award (One headline wonders)

Over 20 in the cast, lots of reflection,  and all whilst we are enjoying Christmas Dinner. Join in the fun frm 7pm next Tuesday on JOY 94.9

STEALING THE STOLEN GENERATION

'Australia' brings these 'stolen' children to the big screen

The new Baz Luhrman extravaganza 'Australia' is now up on our screens after an unprecedented wait and extraordinary media blitz. I'm not a movie critic but I know what I like and I liked 'Australia'. It would even be a good name for a country. At three hours my bum was getting a bit sore.... maybe the movie could have a bit of a 'haircut' in the editing room.

Every Australian character actor was summoned to appear. Just about everyone but Paul Hogan! The story was a little predictable but the core theme of the 'stolen generation' was palpable, if not central to the story. And it was ever-present loading the latest Luhrman epic with a large dose of political correctness - certainly a film for its time. In the film it is presented as fact yet it the real world it still is a subject of enormous debate. It's also very unfashionable to discuss the issue, yet alone question the central tenets at the base of the stolen generation story.

Of course, 'Australia' isn't the first film to tackle the issue. Whilst it didn't have the hype, fancy CGI or Nicole, the Phillip Noyce film 'Rabit Proof Fence' tackled the film head on.

The stolen generation naysayers believe that the topic is largely a 'myth'. And certainly it is hard to separate the facts from a lot of the rhetoric and historical re-writing.

Clearly there are some appalling stories of separation and removal of aboriginal children from their birth parents. So how can people deny this happened? How can there be stolen generation deniers? Who knows the tuth?

On this week's Spin we hope to bring together both sides of the stolen generation debate and look at the 'spin' and hype developed in the film 'Australia' and its effect on the issue.

We recognise that the issue causes a lot of heated emotion and seek to look at the media's treatment of this story and in the film 'Australia' with compassion and care. Of course, your views are also important. The Spin goes to air on Tuesday nights at 7pm.

WHOSE CAMPAIGN IS THIS ANYWAY?

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young bringing it back to topic at Saturday's rally. 

The National Union of Students rally outside the State Library last Saturday, lead by queer officer James Vigus, was all about handing over a petition supporting a reversal in the ban on gay marriage to Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.... or was it?

The 30,000 signatories were proudly paraded in front of the audience of around 100 people who braved an unusually cold and wet Spring day in Melbourne. The carefully wrapped pile of signatures was precariously poised on one of the Library columns as a series of speakers screamed their support into the megaphone.

Great, the National Union of Students getting behind a campaign against homophobia and supporting gay marriage. But hang on, what are they talking about? Student Union fees, blah, blah.... New government legislation about the operation of student unions, blah, blah..... All worthy topics for a Saturday rally but that's not why we were there. Some of us felt a bit cheated. Coming into the city to get behind the campaign for gay marriage only to be confronted by pimply students spitting their venom at the Rudd Government... well just about anyone really. 

But it was their 'day of action' so I suppose they can scream about anything they want. They did get back to the main game eventually and the Senator spoke in support of the petition to reverse the government's stand on gay marriage. Start to finish, 30 minutes.

But I left thinking that with friends like this, who needs enemies. I am not sure whether just lumping the issue of civil unions and gay marriage into the angry custard of student issues is good enough. We were the crowd magnet being hijacked by all this other stuff that had no revelance to anyone who weren't 1) a student or 2) interested in student politics. The protest signs were all about getting rid of homophobia and supporting gay marriage. But the rhetoric was mostly something else altogether.

This week's The Spin will hear from James Vigus and discuss the protest meeting with the Southern Star Observer editor Andie Noonan. From 7pm this Tuesday on The Spin.

JOY GETS A GONG

At last weekend's CBAA Awards JOY was honoured to accept two awards at the Gala Dinner. Two awards to JOY, out of over 450 radio stations around Australia. Goes to show the creativity, quality and commitment harnessed in this wonderful radio station.

The programs were Out and About and The Sport Lounge. Both programs were a true team effort and brought together a range of skills and personnel to make some excellent programming - good enough to be awarded by their peers as the best in Community Broadcasting during 2008.

Out and About was the fill in program for the Rainbow Report over last summer and involved a weekly live recording of discussions about a specific issue. The program tackled a few 'sacred cows' and certainly had its share of controversy and heated conversations.

A special congratulations to the technical team of Jayne and Michael who made the broadcasts possible.

What can we say? JOY is the best.... and we now have the proof!

CLICHÉS DRIVE ME UP THE WALL

Do you have to be a card carrying member of the Labor Party to be a part of the GLBTI community? Do you have to be a feminist socialist to be a lesbian? Do you have to be a buffed, drug-taking partyboy to be young and gay?

Clichés, most of them invented by our own community, have beset wider impressions of the GLBTI community for years. The media repeat them and we get upset.

Of course the wider GLBTI community are as broad and diverse as the rest of the Australian community. There's accountants, school teachers, tradespeople, business-people and truckies.... as well as hairdressers and people in musical theatre.

On JOY we have a fairly broad cross-section of the local GLBTI world. A bit of this and a bit of that. Politically we have people on the far right as well as the far left. And just because your sexuality may be G or L or B or T or I doesn't mean that you vote one way or the other.

Why do we have these stereotypes within our own community. Indeed, why do we have a lack of tolerance to people of diverse political views?

Come and join a few card carrying lefties as well as a guest right wing of Gengis Kahn, as well as someone somewhere in the middle on next Tuesday's Spin from 7pm.

ONCE YOU'RE DEAD, YOU'RE DEAD!

Well, as the Herald Sun so adequetly described the situation with the Bali Bombers on its website on Sunday morning. It had the headline...

'It's Done'

Indeed it was. At 12.15am Java time last Sunday morning the three convicted Bali Bombers were shot in the heart and killed for their horrific crimes. These three terrorists are now dead but the mess over Australia's attitude to capital punishment lingers. And neither the media nor the government are doing anything to help the situation.

Firstly, let's start off with a selection of the public commentary reported in some of the media....

- They should have been given the death penalty.... The didn't deserve it! They should have been made to sit in a dark cell and rot away.

- Bastards, they get what they deserved. Now let them burn in hell.

- Its my belief that those three bastards showed not an inkling of remorse for the hundreds of innocent people they killed, as well as the hundreds more that were devastated by the deaths. So why should others show the same respects for them?

- Islam never encourage killing innocent people .What Bali bombers did was totally unacceptaple and they got what they deserve .

- Hopefully the survivors of the bombings get closure from this. May they rot in hell after the sins they have committed.

- Why are we still talking about these people?

- Is it now possible to just forget these animals. No media attention please!

So much for that very small selection of a range of the public commentary. Of course, mostly written in anonymity. But so much for the public comment. Check out the spin from our political leaders..... It's a confusing situation because there is an apparent bi-partisan approach in Australia against the death penalty around the world. And with three members of the Bali Nine not too far away from the firing squad themselves we will soon see the rhetoric ramped up to try and save these three from the same fate as the Bali Bombers. Is the government against the death penalty in relation to the crimes of the Bali Nine? Do we have the right to interfere in another sovereign country's affairs?

So the Australian government will plead for clemency for the members of the Bali Nine. At other times both parties have claimed that they are against capital punishment in any circumstance and have indicated their will to campaign for a blanket moratorium in all countries where the death penalty is still applied.

But hang on. You can't be half pregnant. In the same way you can't be half dead. If Australia's government believes that we should actively campaign against capital punishment around the world then where was their pleas to stop the execution of the Bali Bombers. Their crimes might be horrific but it's either one way or the other. How can you be against capital punishment in one case and turn a blind eye in another. Why is it one rule for one life and not another?

Greens leader, Bob Brown was quoted in the Murdoch press yesterday saying....

- “My view is that these murderers should have been kept in jail for the rest of their lives and never released. And of course there's the potential for some martyrdom effect, which would be counter-reactive.”

He also said....

- “I am with the government and opposition in saying the death penalty is never warranted"

But if it’s warranted for the Bali Bombers why not for everyone else convicted under the same law in an independent sovereign state. No one in either the dying days of the Howard Government or the new Rudd government has ever stood up and made the situation clear. Why? Cause it's just one huge mother of a hot political potato. Polls would suggest that the majority of Australians wanted the Bali Bombers executed. It was 74/26 in the HS poll yesterday and I guess that’s probably a reasonable reflection of the wider Australian community. But neither the opposition nor the government wants to tread on this one.

The other term I have heard over the past few days is 'closure'. It's been suggested that the families of the victims of these terrorist bombings will now have closure (that awful American term) and be able to move on with their lives. So do we have to kill every perpetrator of every crime to be able to achieve closure? Even worse, some media stories and commentators have suggested, like Bob Brown, that there could be reprisals and that the bombers could become martyrs for their cause. In that case we better not try and capture Osama Bin Laden, let alone try him and execute him. Surely, with this logic, we are better to leave him roaming around the back blocks of Afganistan rather than seek him out risking retribution and making him a martyr.

This is such an emotive issue and the one thing we probably need, more than anything else, is some consistent and rational leadership on the issue. How can our government plea for clemency for the three members of the Bali Nine currently on Death Row when they didn't plea for the lives of the Bali Bombers, or the Nigerian drug runners executed in Indonesia last July.... or anyone else sitting on death row around the world.

You're either for it or against, whether Australian or otherwise. Once you're dead, you're dead.