Background Briefing

In little over two months' time, the support payments keeping millions of Australians afloat through the pandemic are due to end. Banks' deferrals on mortgage payments are meant to wind up soon after too. This week on Background Briefing, Geoff Thompson shows how the country is driving towards an economic cliff.

As she entered one of Australia's largest male prisons, Mara Ellis was strip-searched by four prison guards: two men and two women. She says it was the last time the justice system acknowledged she is a woman before Mara was locked away in solitary confinement. This week on Background Briefing, Meghna Bali investigates what happens to women in men's prisons.

Could Australia's Black Lives Matter movement bring about real world change? Jared Goyette, Bridget Brennan and Allan Clarke trace how the brutal death of George Floyd has resonated with so many, from the scorched streets of Minneapolis to downtown Melbourne.

Uncle Justin has waited a long time for an acknowledgement that he has survived institutional child sexual abuse. When the National Redress Scheme was established, he was offered help from a private legal firm. But what Uncle Justin and other survivors hadn't realised, Jeremy Story Carter discovered, was their trauma had become a honeypot.

Since Australia's coronavirus shutdown began, there's been a spike in reports of racist attacks, where people are targeted because they just happen to look Asian. Intelligence agencies are now warning that far right groups are exploiting the pandemic to further their own radical agendas. For some, that involves fomenting unrest to bring about a "race war". Mario Christodoulou investigates.