The race is on to find the minerals we need to enable the world’s transition to clean energy, and vast reserves of those minerals lie untouched at the bottom of the Pacific.
But, while mining them could fuel our green future, scientists warn it risks catastrophic damage to our oceans.
Enter Australian entrepreneur Gerard Barron, the founder and CEO of The Metals Company.
He wants to extract potato-sized balls called polymetallic nodules from the seabed and believes they could be worth trillions of dollars.
His project has gained political momentum after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order supporting seabed mining, even in international waters.
The United Nations affiliated agency responsible for regulating the exploitation of the world’s deep-sea resources says mining under US permits would be unlawful and undermines global cooperation.
With no clear rules in place, and the stakes higher than ever, the future of deep-sea mining is now a global flashpoint.
Reporter Mark Willacy travels from Jamaica to Tonga to Washington D.C. to investigate the battle over who controls the ocean, who profits from its resources, and what the world could stand to lose.
Race to the Bottom is a stunning film that reveals a growing divide between political ambition, corporate interests and environmental responsibility.
Race to the Bottomreported by Mark Willacy goes to air on Monday 8 September at 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
In the streets of suburban Sydney lies the headquarters of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church — a secretive, ultra-wealthy organisation whose $22 billion business empire stretches around the globe.
Critics accuse the religious group, once known as the Exclusive Brethren, of operating like a cult, while its leader Bruce Hales and his family live in luxury, at the centre of a network of thousands of companies worldwide.
This week on Four Corners, former members tell reporter Louise Milligan about the psychological manipulation, surveillance, and threats the church allegedly uses against them, as well as attempts to intimidate them and buy their silence.
Big Brethren charts how companies that support the church have amassed billions and are now under scrutiny from the Australian Taxation Office.
Whistleblowers also reveal the group’s attempts at political penetration, including covert election campaigning, despite members traditionally being discouraged from voting.
Big Brethren,reported by Louise Milligan and produced by Nick Farrow, goes to air on Monday 15 September at 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
I have friends who left the Exclusive Brethren a few decades ago, and it became an abusive sect (probably a cult now) in the 1950/60s after Jim Taylor Jnr took the reigns. They have some crazy stories to tell….
A strange sound, an immaculate crime scene, American diplomats collapsing with unexplained symptoms: This is how one of the most troubling intelligence mysteries of recent years began.
What seemed to start in Havana soon spread around the world, leaving U.S. officials sick and disoriented. Hundreds of national security officers reported unexplained injuries, from vertigo and memory loss to vision damage and brain trauma.
But as reports of these incidents multiplied, some dismissed the victims as suffering from stress or hysteria. For the officers affected, the greatest battle became forcing their own government to take them seriously.
This week on Four Corners, Brotherfilms and CANAL+ bring you exclusive interviews with victims, doctors, scientists and senior officials. Their stories show the toll of what’s been labelled Havana Syndrome and their resilience in pushing for recognition, care and accountability.
What emerges is not only a medical mystery but a struggle for recognition within the U.S. intelligence community.
The officers’ fight to be heard exposes a deeper question: how do governments respond when their own are caught in the shadows of a new kind of conflict?
Havana Syndromeby Brotherfims and CANAL+ will go to air Monday 2 Septemberat 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
In December 2024 the world witnessed the dramatic fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, ending a 13-year civil war. But behind the celebrations is a grim legacy, over 100,000 Syrians disappeared and more than a million imprisoned.
This week on Four Corners, a two-year investigation into one of the most brutal campaigns of state repression in modern history, as told by the victims and the perpetrators.
The BBC’s Surviving Syria’s Prisons gets rare access to more than 40 former regime operatives, from intelligence officers to the prison guards who oversaw torture and execution.
This chilling investigation exposes the mentality and motivation of those who tortured and the regime that enabled it.
Their confessions, told for the first time, are intertwined with the powerful story of two brothers who survived Syria’s most notorious prison Saydnaya, known as the “human slaughterhouse” to start a journey for justice.
The United Nations has said the torture and detention under the Assad regime constitutes crimes against humanity.
Surviving Syria’s Prisons, a BBC production, goes to air on Monday 29 September at 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
Online bookmakers have kept millions in wagers placed with stolen money.
This week on Four Corners reporter Steve Cannane reveals how financial advisers courted with inducements, have gambled away their clients’ investments uninhibited by regulation or oversight. In some cases, while the advisors have gone to jail, and the victims remain empty handed, the companies that accepted the bets have not returned a cent.
More than two years after a landmark parliamentary inquiry recommended sweeping reforms to tackle online gambling harm, the Albanese government has yet to act.
Losing Streak reveals how the defacto regulator charged with overseeing online bookmakers is ineffective. Based in Darwin, it meets once a month, has no full-time staff, and has been accused of being too close to the industry it’s supposed to police.
Cannane and the team ask why the federal government has failed to respond to a cross parliamentary blueprint for reform and what it will take to curb the harms of a sector that turns over tens of billions of dollars a year.
Losing Streak,reported by Steve Cannane and produced by Mayeta Clark, will go to air Monday 6 October at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview. See more at abc.net.au/news and on ABC News social media platforms.
According to The Guardian Australia’s Amanda Meade, Four Corners EP Matthew Carney will travel to Timor-Leste in November to receive an award from President Jose Ramos-Horta, for the documentaries Carney made in the 1990s when he embedded in the mountains with David Alex, a leader of the resistance group Falintil as it fought a guerrilla war against Indonesian special forces, Kopassus. Carney will give the keynote address at the official commemoration of the killing of the Balibo Five on 16 October.
US President Donald Trump has long boasted of his wealth, is he now using his office to enrich himself and his family?
The vast network of foreign deals, hotels and cryptocurrency that is business as usual for the Trumps is unlike anything the US has ever seen from a president.
The White House says Trump is abiding by the rules and stepped back from his business ventures while in office. But critics argue the way the President mixes business and politics threatens the very foundations of American democracy.
This week on Four Corners, the ABC’s Americas Editor John Lyons and a team of journalists interrogate just how this plethora of business activities have opened Trump up to accusations of profiting from the presidency, and conflicts of interest.
Lyons’ questions to Trump about his business deals were met with a rebuke that made headlines around the world.
"Your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you,” Trump warned Lyons.
See how the full exchange played out on Monday night.
Chasing Trump’s Billionsis reported by John Lyons and produced by Elise Potaka, and in the U.S. Emilie Gramenz and Phoebe Hosier. It will go to air Monday October 13 at 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
Reporter Tir Dhondy investigates the dark world of online sextortion targeting teenage boys on social media.
In the United States, 16-year-old Evan Boettler was drawn into a cruel web of manipulation — a scam that ended in tragedy.
Dhondy follows the digital trail of Evan’s death from America to Nigeria, confronting those behind the screen and uncovering how they profit from fear and shame.
With unprecedented access to police, tech experts and eventually tracking down scammers themselves, she forensically pieces together how these networks operate, their motivations, and the true devastation they cause.
Blackmailed, produced by the BBC, goes to air on Monday 20 Octoberat 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
The ABC is investigating a former outlaw bikie boss turned Four Corners reporter after he launched an unauthorised podcast series on underworld crime alongside a self-styled “media cowboy”, which ended in a spectacular blow-up after just one episode.
In September, Mahmood Fazal, an ABC investigative reporter and former sergeant-at-arms of outlaw bikie gang The Mongols, launched a new podcast, Word on the Street, with Ryan Naumenko, a “rogue” reporter and controversial figure in Victoria.
On Wednesday, the 42-year-old Naumenko launched a scathing attack on his co-host, alleging Fazal did not tell the ABC about his new paid job as the show’s co-host, in a 12-minute tirade uploaded to YouTube twice, and deleted both times.
In a statement late Thursday, the ABC said that after initial endorsement of the project from Fazal’s immediate manager, the podcast appearance did not receive final approvals as part of its external work guidelines. The ABC said support was withdrawn after the first episode aired with gambling ads present within the video.
Word on the Street was launched as “the ultimate insider’s guide to Australia’s underworld and gang crime scenes”, drawing on the pair’s connections and history reporting on Melbourne’s world of crime. The first episode, about the criminal underworld’s connections to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was published on September 23 and reached 25,000 viewers on YouTube.
In a powerful follow up to her Logie-winning investigation, Adele Ferguson returns to Four Corners with Hunting Ground, a searing expose that reveals the true scale of sexual abuse in Australia’s childcare sector.
Drawing on over a year of reporting and newly obtained data, Ferguson shows the crisis is far worse than previously known, and far from over.
Despite government promises of reform after the first Four Corners investigation, Ferguson uncovers more than a hundred cases of alleged paedophiles who worked or are working in child care, enabled by systemic failures, weak oversight and a profit-driven industry.
The investigation reveals that abuse is not isolated, it is in fact endemic and urgently in need of national attention.
Using more than 200,000 pages of confidential documents, whistleblower testimony, police tipoffs and expert analysis, Hunting Ground exposes how predators exploit loopholes in a broken system. It lays bare how high staff turnover, poor training, and lax supervision have created a perfect storm for abuse and children are paying the price.
This is a story that can no longer be ignored.
Hunting Ground is a wake up call to parents, policymakers and the public: until we confront the deep-rooted failures within child care, predators will keep slipping through and find ways to prey on our children.
Hunting Groundis reported by Adele Ferguson and produced by Chris Gillett goes to air Monday 27 Octoberat 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
As Australia signs a landmark deal to bolster its alliance with Washington, we’re selling China the critical minerals it needs to build hypersonic missiles and nuclear technology.
This geopolitical double game is the focus of the last Four Corners for 2025.
Reporter Angus Grigg and the team have spent months poring over corporate documents to trace the journey of zirconium from the mineral sands of WA all the way to Beijing where it disappears into China’s supply chain.
This mineral, used mainly in bathroom tiles and toilets, is also central to advanced weapons systems and nuclear reactors.
Trading Fire questions if greater export controls are needed for Australia’s critical minerals especially for those with potential military applications.
Trading Fireis reported by Angus Grigg and produced by Alex McDonald airs Monday 3 November at 8.30pm on ABC TV andABC iview. See more atabc.net.au/newsand on ABC News social media platforms.
