Critical Line Item with Tom Ravlic

Entertainment reporter Peter Ford has seen everything in entertainment over many years, and he has seen technology shape the way in which reporters work as well as how personalities and those that report on them get feedback from their audience. He talks candidly in this episode about the pros and cons of social media and the whereabouts of a very special watch.

Australian Greens Senator Barbara Pocock is up to her eyeballs in consulting firms. She and her committee colleagues are busy looking at how the consulting firms are used by the government, how conflicts of interest might be managed and what value the public sector gets from firms. Pocock gives some insight into her thinking on the current problems plaguing Big Four firm PwC as well as a unique perspective on what it was like to try and get funding from government for university research.

Journalist, broadcaster and author Tracey Spicer has been looking at the world of IT and the way in which technology has been shaped by men. Technology embeds all sorts of biases within it and Spicer explores what all of this means. She talks about the way smart technology can help people with disabilities, and how she gets cracking when she writes a book.

Peta Lowe is the Principal Consultant with Phronesis Consulting and Training with extensive experience in dealing with juveniles and programs for countering violent extremism. She is concerned about how debate on the various diagnostic tools used in assessing the threat an individual may pose is being had and that it may not be understood that it is tools as well as practitioner skills and experience that need to be considered when reflecting on how people might be assessed as being dangerous to society.

Journalist and broadcaster Kerry O'Brien has a history in reporting on and observing the way in which Australia has treated its Indigenous communities. O'Brien is as supporter of enshrining an indigenous Voice to Parliament into Australia's Constitution and he outlines why in this conversation. A new book. The Voice to Parliament Handbook, has been published by Hardie Grant and both O'Brien and Indigenous author, Thomas Mayo, explain why they believe a Voice to Parliament is essential. O'Brien also touches on concerns he has had with the way Australia's political institutions have been weakened by a range of factors. What factors? Listen and find out.

It is that time of the year again. EY partner Doug Nixon takes us through some of the key results from and issues face by the banking sector in Australia.

Accounting firms have done it tough like all kinds of businesses during the pandemic but Vito Interlandi, one of the joint managing partners of Nexia Melbourne, and his colleagues went one better. They added a merger with another firm, GAP Accountants, on the to do list. Vito talks about the challenges of COVID, the merger and also the kinds of things that he sees as improtant as the accounting profession moves to get itself ready for the future.

Professor Mia Bloom from Georgia State University has spent more than two decades looking at the area of terrorism and finds it irritating that some commentators overstate the threat of certain radical movements. She talks about the issues underlying the diagnosis and assessment of threat and she offers a perspective that helps people that do not think about terrorism on a daily basis understand the phenomenon better.

One of the leading campaigners for the Voice to Parliament, Thomas Mayo, is midway through a marathon effort to try to win as many hearts and minds as possible to support a constitutionally enshrined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in Australia's foundation document. He talks about the experience of giving evidence to the parliamentary committee looking at the referendum, what Australians are telling him on the road, and he touches on some of the controversies. He is a co-author of The Voice to Parliament Handbook with former ABC broadcaster, Kerry O'Brien.