Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Bob Brown is a giant of the environmental movement and Australian politics.

A former doctor, Bob is the co-founder of the Australian Greens, served as a Senator from 1996, and party leader from 2005 until his retirement in 2012. Today at 81 he continues his lifelong work of environmental campaigning with the Bob Brown Foundation. 

The first biography of Bob aptly called him the “Gentle Revolutionary”. The BBC once called him the World’s Most Inspiring Politician.

1976 is the year Bob has called his "year of reformation". The seeds of Australia's most significant environmental campaign were sown when he rafted down the Franklin River for the first time. Calling the Franklin "the river that set me free", that trip led Bob to publicly came out as gay in the same year. He also protested the arrival of a nuclear war ship in Hobart with a hunger strike atop Kunanyi/Mount Wellington.

In his 2025 book Defiance, Bob writes of the “unifying purpose” of “safeguarding life on earth, honouring happiness and securing humanity for its future in the universe”.

Guest: Bob Brown

Footage of Bob rafting the Franklin from The Franklin Wild River (1980)

As Constitutions go, America’s is the most famous and revered document. By contrast, the Australian constitution doesn’t inspire as much interest.

Two lawyers have taken upon themselves the task of promoting awareness about the Australian constitution and the constitutional system that surrounds it with a new book that former Chief Justice and Sunday Extra guest Robert French says is a “comprehensive and readable explanation of its history and working”.

Guest: Rosalind Dixon, Anthony Mason Professor of Law at UNSW, and co-author of The People's Guide to the Australian Constitution

Fiume o Morte! Has been praised as “the funniest and most unorthodox history lesson of the year”. In January, it was awarded Best Documentary at the European Film Awards. 

It wasn’t very long ago that LGBTQIA+ relationships were criminalised in Australia. This creates challenges when it comes to uncovering pieces of queer history, but institutions like the State Library of NSW are dedicated to collecting and preserving huge catalogues of LGBTQIA+ manuscripts, photographs and ephemera that are free and accessible to the community. Guest: Sam Cooling, Librarian ("Queerbrarian") at the State Library of NSW

When Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his rousing speech on middle powers at Davos, he quoted Václav Havel - the Czech dissident, and later president - from his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless.

Carney’s references to Havel’s essay prompted Australian Catholic University Professor of History Darius Von Guttner to write about The Power of the Powerless in The Conversation, where he described it as “eerily relevant today” 

Guest: Darius Von Guttner, Professor of History at the Australian Catholic University

Forty years ago this week, events in the Philippines were underway that would lead to the fall of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who had served as President for 21 years.

The world is coming to grips with the joint American and Israeli strikes across Iran, and Iran retaliatory missile and drone strikes in Israel and in multiple countries across the Middle East.

Guest: Bilal Saab, former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration overseeing US security cooperation in the Middle East, now the senior managing director of consulting firm TRENDS US and an associate fellow with Chatham House.

In November 2025 a bill was introduced to Israel's Knesset by the Jewish Power Party that would re-establish the use of capital punishment in the country's military courts.

Last October, we covered the story of Australian writer and resident of Thailand Murray Hunter, who was arrested in Thailand for articles he had written on Substack that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission deemed to be false and defamatory.

We have an update on that case - a settlement agreement has been reached and the charges against Murray have been formally withdrawn.

Guest: Murray Hunter, retired academic, writer and journalist 

Listen to our previous episode about Murray's case here.

Last week we spoke with Christopher Gunness from the Myanmar Accountability Project about the universal jurisdiction legal case that Timor-Leste has opened against the Myanmar military regime for crimes against humanity. 

This week there has been a fresh development - Myanmar has responded by withdrawing their diplomatic representative from Timor-Leste.

Guest: Salai Za Uk, executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organisation who personally delivered the complaint of Myanmar’s crimes to the Timor-Leste Public Prosecutor’s Office on the 12th of January.

Listen to our previous episode on Timor-Leste's unprecedented legal case against Myanmar here.