Listen to Wake Up Australia with Michael McLaren, the Full Show Podcast here.

14/02/2019

The history of St Valentine’s Day is a little mysterious beginning as a feast day for Saint Valentine in the year 496, but it wasn’t until the middle ages that it became associated with romance when the poet Chaucer linked Saint Valentine with romantic love.

This began the tradition of courtly love, a ritual of expressing love and admiration, usually in secret and nearly 650 years later Valentine’s Day is a worldwide celebration.

Michael chats to Professional Matchmaker, Date Coach & Managing Director of Corporate Cupid to find out if it’s time to return Valentine’s Day to those who need it most - the fair dinkum singles, the desperate, the dateless and those who’ve been unlucky in love.

Listen to Wake Up Australia with Michael McLaren, the Full Show Podcast here.

13/02/2019

GP & health specialist Dr Brad McKay joins Michael to discuss a disturbing new report linking bad eating habits to the possibility of early death.

A group of scientists, led by Dr Laure Schnabel from Paris-Sorbonne University, recently wrote that "an increase in ultra-processed foods consumption appears to be associated with an overall higher mortality risk among this adult population."

The scientists studied a large population of more than 44,500 men & women aged 45 and older uncovered a strong link between eating badly and dying… with every 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed food consumption being associated with a 14 per cent greater risk of death from any cause

The 50,000 people who came to Australia by boat under Labor should not be used by politicians to distract us from a proper national debate about the 1,000,000 plus who came here legally in the same period.   

Entering the fray around the legal migration debate is former Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who is a ‘big Australia’ type who made no secret of it when he was prime minister.  It was unpopular then among the voting public although well embraced by the business community. 

Rudd has revived his 2009 push for a bigger Ausralia writing an essay called ‘The Complacent Country’.

He’s outlined his thoughts as a wide ranging tome on identity, population, values, the influence of the Murdoch media etc but the central piece of it seems to be his reignited push for a big Australia.

Michael is joined by Kelvin Thomson, former Federal member for wills in Melbourne and now advisor for Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes who worked alongside Kevin Rudd for years although not seeing eye to eye on this particular issue.

Listen to Wake Up Australia with Michael McLaren, the Full Show Podcast here.

12/02/2019

It was on the 12th of February 1959 that Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl was opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

The venue was constructed by the Sidney Myer Charity Trust at a cost of £200,000 with the first show being an orchestral concert.  Later that month, over 70,000 people attended the appearance of American evangelist Billy Graham.  

The largest crowd ever for a concert event in Australia was the 1967 Seekers homecoming concert which an estimated 200,000 people attended.

To help celebrate the venues 60th birthday, Michael enlists the help of Jeremy Vincent, the Executive Office for Arts Centre Melbourne to shed light on just some of the history for this Australian landmark.

Listen to Wake Up Australia with Luke Grant, the Full Show Podcast here.

11/02/2019

Last week a judgement in a minor NSW court banned The Rocky Hill coking coal mine which had been planned for the Hunter Valley.  

blogger Jo Nova writes that curiously, it was not the much hated thermalcoal mine, it was a coking coal mine – the stuff we use in making steel.

It takes 600 kilograms of coal to make one ton of steel & Australian coking coal is considered some of the world’s best so it follows that either the world uses a bit less steel, or it buys the coal from somewhere else.

This beggars the question of does the judge have something against steel?

Nova joins Luke Grants saying that most likely the world will buy the coal from somewhere else which will most likely be less pure and more polluting with few environmental controls or worker’s rights so effectively, an Australian court decided to increase global pollution by blocking a clean coal mine.

Listen to Wake Up Australia with Michael McLaren, the Full Show Podcast here.

08/02/2019