This week on Four Corners, the ABC’s Voice Correspondent Dan Bourchier travels to the north, west and east of Australia talking to people about what this referendum means to them.
The debate around The Voice has been unsettling and confusing for many Australians; trying to navigate the politics has been hard.
In this report, Dan and the team cut through the confusion to explore what self-determination looks like in different parts of the country.
Dan finds communities ready and willing to say yes to The Voice, and others who are concerned the vote will divide the country.
Muddy Waters reported by Dan Bourchier goes to air on Monday 11 September at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
This week’s Four Corners exposes criminals, opportunists and registered providers who have been busted exploiting loopholes to overcharge and defraud the NDIS.
The revelations come following a three-month crowdsourced investigation which resulted in submissions from hundreds of NDIS participants, families and workers.
Anne Connolly and the Four Corners team reveal that some of the most vulnerable people living with disability are being virtually kidnapped for their NDIS funding.
Consequently, hundreds are “missing” in the system, with the NDIS regulator unaware of where they are and no authorities monitoring their welfare.
The investigation also reveals young people suffering extensive injuries whilst under the care of NDIS-approved providers.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is supposed to protect people living with disability, but Careless exposes it’s failing to monitor our most vulnerable.
The NDIS expose was the first item on ABC News Victoria tonight (September 25).
Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future
Monday 9 October 8:30 PM
This week on Four Corners, reporter Hagar Cohen takes you deep inside the battle between climate activists, the government and energy companies.
The Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia has become critical in the nation’s battle against climate change – with protesters escalating their responses to the proposed expansion of a massive gas project there.
It’s leading to an increasingly combative confrontation between protesters and the state. Four Corners has analysed arrest data and found climate activists across the country are being charged with serious offences in unprecedented numbers.
More than twenty of those charges were directed towards a small group of Perth activists called Disrupt Burrup Hub.
The group made headlines in early August when police arrested them as they attempted to throw paint at the house of Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill.
“Escalation” is a rare insight into the battle over the Burrup. It reveals how far both sides are willing to go for what they believe in.
Escalation reported by Hagar Cohen goes to air on Monday 9th of October at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Next week’s episode will include footage filmed by the Four Corners crew at the protest at Meg O’Neill’s home. In early August ABC issued a correction and a long statement by managing director David Anderson.
Trapped: Inside the hidden system locking people up indefinitely
Monday 16 October 8:30 PM
This week Four Corners reveals allegations of the torture and mistreatment of people living with disabilities and mental illness who are locked up indefinitely by the state.
Around Australia an estimated 700 people who have been charged, but not convicted, of crimes are being detained in the forensic system.
In some of the most extreme cases, they’re locked up for years in solitary confinement with no release date.
Some have been determined too great a risk to live in the community because of their history of violence and complex behaviour.
The United Nations has condemned this treatment, and along with the Disability Royal Commission, has called for an end to their indefinite detention.
Reporter Alexandra Blucher has gained unprecedented access to forensic patients and their families. In this program she enters a facility to speak to one man who’s spent more than two decades in custody.
He remains indefinitely detained.
The program also features another patient who’s spent 11 years secluded in a high-security unit with only a caged outdoor area, sometimes pitching a tent to obscure himself from the constant CCTV surveillance.
Blucher exposes the extent of harm that can be done to patients by forcing them to live in these conditions – in some cases making them more dangerous.
“Trapped” is an unflinching portrait of the forensic system and the dilemma we face in balancing the safety of the community and the basic human rights of people living with a disability.
Trapped reported by Alexandra Blucher goes to air on Monday 16 October at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
ABC journos @withMEAA are demanding the broadcaster refuse to hand over interviews & vision from the #4Corners report on climate protests to WA Police: an oppressive overreach & an attack on media freedom. Please back our campaign. pic.twitter.com/HQB3nqC2MP
Tunnel Vision: The nation-building project that went horribly wrong
Monday 23 October 8:30 PM
Snowy Hydro 2.0 — which was sold as a nation-building project for a low-carbon future – was meant to be feeding power into Australia’s grid by the end of 2024.
Instead, the pumped hydro project, which was once estimated to cost $2 billion, is now five years behind schedule and forecast to hit $12 billion.
This week Four Corners goes beyond the corporate spin to reveal the inside story of Snowy 2.0 and how it all went so horribly wrong.
Reporter Angus Grigg challenges the megaproject’s founding champion, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, on why there are such significant overruns. Turnbull tells Four Corners as much as $2 billion of the cost blow out can be traced back to a massive tunnel boring machine called Florence.
Stuck only 150 metres into its 15km journey, Florence is the perfect illustration of how the project’s progress has stalled.
Drawing on months of investigation, Grigg forensically examines the cost blow outs and asks what next for Snowy Hydro 2.0?
Tunnel Vision reported by Angus Grigg goes to air on Monday 23 October at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
This episode is kind of a follow-up to 3-part documentary Building the Snowy, which aired on SBS recently and mentioned Snowy 2.0 extensively. That documentary was produced with the co-operation of Snowy Hydro.
In the heart of Darwin, private security firms hired by the Northern Territory Government patrol the streets.
This is one of the only places in Australia where the government pays private companies to carry out work for which the police would usually be responsible.
The guards have no extra powers and very little training to provide what’s been described as “quasi law and order”.
And community advocates say they aren’t helping — they’re escalating violence on the streets.
In this episode of Four Corners, Indigenous Affairs reporter Brooke Fryer, uncovers the extent of the potentially unlawful practices of these government-hired security guards.
The companies have a disturbing history in the NT and their officers have been involved in a number of alleged assaults.
In a collaboration with ABC’s Regional Investigations Unit, Four Corners has obtained footage of several altercations including one in which security guards repeatedly drag an elderly Aboriginal woman along a concrete pavement.
Other incidents show guards from one of the companies pinning a teenage boy on the road, as well as hitting a woman in the face.
This episode investigates whether these guards are adequately skilled or qualified, and what accountability or oversight is in place.
Guarded reported by Brooke Fryer goes to air Monday 30 October at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
The ABC have provided WA police with footage of climate activists protesting the Burrup Peninsula gas project from Four Corners, after investigators demanded the ABC breach the confidentiality of its sources and provide the unedited video.
Investigative journalist Matt Shea delves into the perplexing rise of Andrew Tate, a once-obscure figure who leveraged bombastic online courses to become a global sensation.
Shea reveals the dark misogynist underbelly of Tate’s network and his use of affiliate marketing to teach men how to manipulate and coerce women.
Through disturbing chat logs leaked from Tate’s secret society, the War Room, Shea exposes how members are being taught to groom women into online sex work.
The documentary also unveils a mysterious figure, Iggy Semmelweis, as one of the key players behind Tate’s empire.
Semmelweis, an American ‘spiritual leader’, wields control over War Room members raising questions about his motives and influence.
The Man Who Groomed the World? is a BBC production reported by Matt Shea. It goes to air on ABC TV and ABC iview on Monday 6 November at 8.30pm AEDT. It can also be seen on the ABC NEWS channel on Saturday at 8.10pm.
So this was made for the ABC by the BBC, also interesting if they were able to scored a interview with him as well doesn’t look like from the trailer. Considering I thought that he charged a few hundred thousand dollars for it.
