Shows / Background Briefing
Background Briefing
Background Briefing is the ABC's flagship investigative journalism podcast. Its award-winning investigations and documentaries expose cover-ups, corruption, real-life mysteries, whistleblowing, crime, fraud and miscarriages of justice — often before these stories receive mainstream attention. The Background Briefing podcast brings you true stories not everyone will want you to hear, told by trusted reporters across Australia. This Australian podcast makes investigative journalism bingeable…
Episodes
Background BriefingDeep sea riches could spark Pacific mining boom
A project to dig minerals from the seabed off Papua New Guinea could signal a new era of mining in the world’s most remote and least understood environment…
Background BriefingAn Australian nightmare in Dubai
Australian businessman Matthew Joyce faces 10 years in a Dubai jail for conspiring to trick Gold Coast developer Sunland Group. But this is a story of two…
Background BriefingThe narrowing of politics
From the cult of Kevin to the politics of knee-jerk opposition, the policies and strategies of the major parties are being decided by a handful of people, with…
- Background Briefing
The narrowing of politics
From the cult of Kevin to the politics of knee-jerk opposition, the policies and strategies of the major parties are being decided by a handful of people, with…
Background BriefingA literacy deficit
Half of all adults in Tasmania cannot read or write properly, and many of their children are following in their footsteps as badly needed school reforms are…
Background BriefingCurse of the Frankenfoods
Health and safety fears have restricted the growth of genetically modified foods for decades. But is a hungry world, a new generation of consumers and the…
Background BriefingPost-election special
There will be no Background Briefing program this week. In its place will be post-election analysis and interviews produced by the team at Sunday Extra.
Background BriefingAsylum seekers: drowning on our watch
More than a thousand asylum seekers have died trying to get to Australia by boat. But how many of them could have been saved? Australia’s search and rescue…
- Background Briefing
Evolution in China
The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson has been visiting and reporting on China for a quarter of a century and in this program he returns to Beijing to…
Background BriefingEvolution in China
The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson has been visiting and reporting on China for a quarter of a century and in this program he returns to Beijing to…
Background BriefingAgeing on the edge: the new face of homelessness
For many baby boomers homelessness is just a couple of rent payments away. Up to a quarter of a million older Australians may be at risk. As Kylie Grey…
Background BriefingThe family trap: how the Royal Commission is missing many abuse cases
It is the institution in which the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs but the victims won’t be able to tell their stories at the upcoming royal…
Background BriefingWould you send your daughter to ADFA?
The Australian Defence Force Academy has been dogged by controversy, from bastardisation rituals to social media sex scandals. This week James Woodford returns…
Background BriefingTobacco and the lobbyists
Tough new tobacco laws proposed for Europe have triggered a lobbying war and allegations of corruption that have rocked the European Commission, while in…
Background BriefingThe barbecue stopper: the chikungunya mutation threatening Australia
An aggressive mosquito that’s spread a crippling virus through Asia is now being found at Australia’s border. The chikungunya virus is already being brought…
Background BriefingBulga vs Rio Tinto
How a village in the NSW Hunter Valley won a landmark case against the mining giant Rio Tinto and the NSW government to stop a coalmine expansion. Residents…
Background BriefingClosed shops: Kmart pledges to open foreign factories to inspectors
Australian clothing retailers have been called to account over their use of dangerous and abusive factories in Bangladesh. Unions and big investors alike are…
Background BriefingLegal highs and lethal lows
Sydney teen Henry Kwan became the public face of a new war on synthetic drugs when his death prompted state and federal bans on a range of compounds known as…
Background BriefingPoor fare: the tough life of the Australian taxi driver
The taxi industry is ripe for reform. High fares and the skyrocketing value of taxi plates ensures big returns for the big players—like Cabcharge—but passenger…
Background BriefingAgainst the grain
Australian grain growers say a foreign takeover of the country’s biggest agri-business, GrainCorp, should be stopped, in the national interest. They say…
Background BriefingNo advantage: asylum seekers in community limbo
Thousands of asylum seekers are being released from detention into the community but under the federal government’s ‘no advantage’ policy they are not allowed…
Background BriefingPlutonium Mountain
Britain has accumulated the world’s biggest stockpile of civilian plutonium expecting to turn it into a valuable next-generation nuclear fuel. Now it’s being…
Background BriefingAn ill wind
In less than a fortnight, the small community of King Island will vote on whether a crucial part of Australia's clean energy future should proceed to the next…
Background BriefingThe dogs that ate a sheep industry
Wild dogs are killing the wool industry in Queensland. The dingo fence is useless, poison baiting isn’t working and the law that says land owners must control…
Background BriefingLyme: a four letter word
Australian GPs reveal why they are risking their reputations by diagnosing patients with Lyme disease—from Borrelia bacteria that are not even supposed to be…
Background BriefingAnimal experiments under the microscope
The process of approving the use of animals in scientific experiments is in crisis, with animal welfare and scientific members on key ethics committees at…
Background BriefingA conflict of interest?
When the Liberal National Party swept to power in Queensland it proclaimed the most extensive rules in the country to deal with lobbying and conflicts of…
Background BriefingWho's afraid of ASADA?
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority has cast a net over clubs and players in our two biggest football codes as it probes the use of banned substances…
Background BriefingIn Thatcher's Britain
As the long term legacy of Thatcherism is being re-interpreted following the death of the Iron Lady, Background Briefing returns to 1980s Britain. In this…
Background BriefingDon't drink the water
A third of Tasmania’s town water systems don’t meet national drinking water standards and residents in several towns have to queue at a communal tap. Why has…
Background BriefingCasualties in the supermarket war
As the competition watchdog looks into new allegations of the abuse of market power by Coles and Woolworths, food suppliers speak out about what they say is…
- Background Briefing
After Saddam
In the past 10 years Iraqis have endured a foreign military occupation, a brutal insurgency, intense sectarian violence and hundreds of thousands of civilian…
Background BriefingTaming the sharks
Millions are spent each year on shark attack prevention measures that don’t work. In Western Australia, the tagging program could be used to kill protected…
Background BriefingDangerous diesel
Australia’s diesel-reliant industries are on notice following the World Health Organisation’s emphatic conclusion that diesel exhaust is a cause of lung…
Background BriefingSoil carbon conundrum
There’s been a breakthrough with soil carbon trading that could get rural Australia sequestering carbon in the ground and earning credits for it. Soil carbon…
Background BriefingToxic mine water
The Dee River in Queensland is being killed by toxic water from an old gold mine. Mount Morgan is one of thousands of abandoned and unregulated mine sites…
Background BriefingThe NSW (Labor) disease
Factional self interest and extraordinary claims of corruption in NSW have severely damaged the Labor ‘brand’ and threaten to undermine the Gillard…
Background BriefingHighway 1: The black ribbon of death
The lifeblood of hundreds of east coast towns, Highway 1 is also the nation’s longest cemetery with hundreds killed on the road as promised upgrades are…
Background BriefingThe quick and the dead
For years the greyhound industry has accepted the routine killing of injured and failed racing dogs. A leading official reveals thousands are killed each year…
- Background Briefing
Blood, sweat and tears in the cage
Punch, kick, knee, elbow, choke, stomp, almost anything goes in a cage fight. It’s brutal, it’s legal, it’s popular and it’s a public safety time-bomb without…
- Background Briefing
Dischord: music school in turmoil
One of Australia’s top music schools is in upheaval. Worsening debt and a very public fight over the direction of teaching has plunged the ANU School of Music…
Background BriefingFlight of the drones
Unmanned aerial vehicles have spread from war zones to toy shops. Now anyone can use a drone to point a camera into your private spaces and privacy laws can’t…
- Background Briefing
Fatal shore: the deaths of three teenage surf lifesavers
Matthew Barclay, Saxon Bird and Robert Gatenby all died while competing at national surf championship events on the Gold Coast. Their deaths occurred in…
- Background Briefing
Lead poisoning: a silent epidemic
There’s growing evidence that lead poisoning shaves IQ points in children and has an insidious effect on behaviour. While experts debate safe exposure, a boom…
Background BriefingFrom cattle to carbon
Once a cattle empire, Henbury Station in Central Australia is now a multi-million dollar, carbon farming experiment. But with the cattle gone the neighbours…
Background BriefingThe missing emissions
The claim that coal seam gas is 70% cleaner than coal is coming under renewed scrutiny as more science comes in. The government is now reviewing the situation…
- Background Briefing
Undercover: tales of betrayal
Undercover cop Mark Kennedy was unmasked by his activist girlfriend after years infiltrating environmental groups in Britain and Europe. Now other women are…
Background BriefingThe parrot smugglers
Australia has some of the strongest laws in the world to tackle wildlife crime, yet the trade in native and exotic birds continues virtually unchecked. Two…
- Background Briefing
The quick and the dead
For years the greyhound industry has accepted the routine killing of injured and failed racing dogs. A leading official reveals thousands are killed each year…
Background BriefingAn excessive use of force?
Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti died after being chased, pinned down and tasered repeatedly by NSW police officers. The police say the use of force…
- Background Briefing
An excessive use of force?
Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti died after being chased, pinned down and tasered repeatedly by NSW police officers. The police say the use of force…