In conversation: Don Watson, Margaret Simons, Peter Garrett, Senator Barb Pocock

On July 4, 1776, 250 years ago this week, the Continental Congress in America officially adopted the Declaration of Independence, which severed the 13 American colonies from Great Britain, and established the United States of America as an independent sovereign nation.

To mark the 250th anniversary, I speak to Don Watson, author of American Journeys and The Shortest History of the United States of America, about the contradictions and dynamics that created the nation we know today – and where it is headed under Trump.

“You can’t deny that the real miracle is that out of these 13 fractious colonies they created a republic and it survived for 250 years. These men, for all their hypocrisy, were bloody geniuses – and how they did it really puts to shame a hell of a lot of democratic efforts since.”

“Don’t underestimate the thrilling nature of Trump to his constituency; to hear him tearing into all those things which had long been the glue of America excited people in a classically – shall we say – fascist way.”

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In 2015, author and journalist Margaret Simons and photojournalist Dave Tacon published their investigative essay Fallen Angels on the children of Australian sex tourists who’d been abandoned to live in poverty in the Philippines. The Walkley Award-winning essay has since led to the establishment of a charity to support those children and their families.

I spoke to Margaret about what originally drew her to the story, her first experiences visiting the Philippines, her ongoing journalism and efforts to track down the fathers, her charity providing welfare support to the children and their mothers, and the ethics of her decision to get involved.

More information about Margaret’s charity project can be found here.

“There was a particular little girl, who in the story I call Merrill, who had an Australian father who was refusing to acknowledge her of support her in any way, and she was living in dire poverty and begging in shopping centres … we very quickly realised that Merrill was one of many, many, many, many kids with foreign fathers”.

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The Greens have referred KPMG to the National Anti-Corruption Commission for suspected corruption breaches, in the wake of recent allegations that KPMG has been misusing confidential client information to get more audit work, and also mistreating a whistleblower from inside the company.

Greens finance and public service spokesperson Senator Barbara Pocock tells me why KPMG needs to be held accountable, and how the government must overcome its dangerous over-reliance on KPMG and other big consulting firms such as PWC.

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Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal is reportedly costing the country more than $350 billion, and continues to be shrouded in secrecy. Musician, environmentalist and former Labor minister Peter Garrett is leading a new public inquiry into the deal.

In this interview he unpacks the lack of parliamentary scrutiny that has necessitated the inquiry, the viability of AUKUS for Australia’s security in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, what the inquiry has revealed so far, and what we can expect next.

More information can be found at at the AUKUS Public Inquiry website here.

“All of the signs point to significant and extreme difficulties in actually having these submarines delivered at all … The point is that the Australian public have a massive stake in this; they’ll have to pay for it, if it turns out to be something which is not going to meet and fulfil the legitimate defence needs of the country then they’ll bare the consequences for that. As much as anything else, a public inquiry allows the opportunity for people to be heard, as they should in a democracy.”

Listen here.