Acknowledgement of Country//

Headlines//

Melanie Hawkes

Last week NDIS minister Bill Shorten announced that users of the scheme would be denied access to sex workers and sexual services under planned reforms. The NDIS Amendment Bill has been met with criticism across the board for its heavy focus on budget cuts and a failure to centre the experiences of people living with a disability. Today we will hear from Melanie Hawkes - a member of the management committee of Touching Base and NDIS participant with a physical disability, who joined me to share her experience of sex and disability. Touching Base is a charitable organization developed to assist people with disability and sex workers connect with each other, focusing on access, human rights, legal issues and attitudinal barriers. In response to Minister Shorten’s announcement last week, they have released a joint statement alongside nine other organizations, calling for the right to protect access to NDIS funded sexuality services.//

Mililma May

Mililma May is a Danggalaba Kulumbirigin Tiwi woman, writer and advocate. She is the Independent Candidate for the seat of Nightcliff in the 2024 NT Election, and is chatting to us this morning about her journey through activism, politics and what it means to be a Community Independant.//

Maya Hodge

These Arms Hold Maya Hodge is a proud Lardil emerging curator and writer based on the lands of the Kulin Nation (Melbourne). Her practise explores the power of disrupting colonial narratives to uplift First Nations storytelling, healing and artistic autonomy. In 2022, she co-curated Collective Movements at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) which toured across Victoria and this year curated These Arms Hold, now showing at Incinerator Gallery at 180 Holmes Road, Aberfeldie, VIC from 6 July 2024 - 8 September 2024.//

Prof Jane Williamson
We will hear a segment from "out of the blue" from the 14th of July, where host James Whitmore (Out of the Blue) interviews Prof Jane Williamson (Macquarie University) about surveying the Great Barrier Reef after this summer's extreme sea temperatures. As a result, scientists declared that the reef experienced it's fifth mass coral bleaching event in March this year. Corals were exposed to the highest levels of heat stress ever recorded, and extreme bleaching was recorded on all three regions of the reef for the first time. You can find full length episodes of the show by going to https://www.3cr.org.au/radioblue.//