Radio New Internationalist

Mondays 4 - 5PM

Bringing the voices, stories and experiences of people in the Majority World into our kitchens and loungerooms. Unashamedly progressive, each hour program features prominent activists from across the globe who offer social and political alternatives not often heard in Australian media.

In English.

Presented by Chris Richards (in the orange) with technical support by Rachel Maher (in the black).

Contact via New Internationalist website and email

Subscribe to the podcast for the most recent program.

You can listen to previous programs at the New Internationalist website: www.newint.org/radio.

CRAM Article November 2007 : An audio adventure where rebels, radicals, and realists rendezvous

Why would 3CR want to partner with an international magazine run by a workers cooperative with a head office in Oxford, England?

Well, the pivotal moment happened almost two years ago one Spring Sunday, over a luscious lunch with lots of laughter at a friend’s home in Brunswick. Around the long table, food-filled plates passed back and forth between the 14 guests. Our spirited talking twisted and turned, before stopping on the shockingly biased media support in favour of the Howard Government’s new counter-terrorism laws tabled in Federal Parliament during the previous week.

Those amazingly repressive laws allow suspects to be locked up for 14 days without charge. Front page stuff, hey! Alas, no. They were first presented in The Australian on page 5. Then there was the legislation to strip labour conditions down to just 5 minimum standards – 700 pages plus a 560 page explanatory memorandum that were never released to the public, or even to elected politicians – before being ‘debated’ in the Parliament. Editorial criticism about this was noticeable only by its absence.

So the lunch conversation turned toward the need for an international radio program that could bring in speakers from around the world to make connections with issues like these in a way that the Australian media was not. Progressive voices only. Indeed, a radio version of the magazine I co-edit, New Internationalist. Partnering with the most politically active radio station in Melbourne, New Internationalist could produce a program that would really live up to that call to action, ‘Think globally, act locally’. “And,” said 3CR’s Station Manager at the time, Tim Tolhurst, looking at me over his glass of wine, “we could offer it to every community radio station in the country”.

The result is Radio New Internationalist – a program that is quite different in sound and content from those on Australian airwaves. It’s an audio adventure linking up progressive thinkers and campaigners from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

Each week, these strong and brave people step on to 3CR’s audio platform and exchange strategies across continents under our very ears – for instance, a labour activist from China learning from advocates in Africa about the effects of Chinese mining in Mozambique; Afghanistan’s youngest parliamentarian trading stories with workers in Jordan about Iraqi refugees. Always illuminating, their stories can also be inspirational and awakening. A world without armies. Trade without greed. Cooperation without confrontation. Communities that connect. Into our cars and kitchens, they bring us issues we hardly ever hear about.

In the last five weeks, our friends-from-afar have shared their perspectives about the imminent world food supply crisis; crime’s new frontier in cyberspace; tax havens; the growing international campaign to stop stoning; and a new world solution for climate change.

In nearly every program, the Radio New Internationalist team continues to be blown away by the power and passion of our guests’ voices. For they are often the people most affected by Western consumption – people who live in the developing world. They want to be heard. Yet they are not. There are many reasons for this. Some guests haven’t the time to write articles for magazines and newspapers, but will happily spend 15 minutes in conversation. Others speak English easily but don’t write it. Yet others will never be contacted for comment, because Australian journalists choose not to grapple with the inconvenience of international time zones to make the connection.

To clear these hurdles, Radio New Internationalist programs are often recorded at night. It’s not unusual for our microphones to be open after 11pm. While we are constantly plagued by lines that fall out or difficult connections, we almost always get our guest. And after spending a fortune on overseas calls in the first few months, the wonderful 3CR Technician Greg Segal has reconfigured Studio 3 to enable us to record through Skype, so that those big phone bills are a thing of the past.

I bring my international contacts from New Internationalist magazine into 3CR to research, script and present the program. Rachel Maher – the associate producer of the program – brings in her many years of valuable local community-based radio experience. By the time you read this, we’ll have produced 36 one-hour programs for broadcast this year.

Nine other Australian community radio stations are presently broadcasting the program through the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia satellite, and we’ve been delighted by the interest shown for the program by international community radio stations from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and South Africa. Thus far three Canadian stations broadcast the program, and there are plans for four other Canadian and ten Irish community radio stations to include Radio New Internationalist in their schedules. More takers are emerging every month. It’s a wonderful result for the 3CR-New Internationalist partnership.

By reaching out to other alternative radio sectors around the world, we’re taking ‘Think globally, act locally’ to another level; one that we never dreamt of as we talked around the table that Sunday lunch two years ago.

Chris Richards is the Australasian editor of New Internationalist magazine and the presenter of Radio New Internationalist.