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Four Corners : Season 47
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Air date: 12 Feb '07 - 39 episodesFour Corners is Australia's longest-running investigative journalism/current affairs television program. Broadcast on ABC1 in Australia, it premiered on 19 August 1961 and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011. Founding producer Robert Raymond and his successor Allan Ashbolt did much to set the ongoing tone of the program. Based on the Panorama concept, the program addresses a single issue in depth each week, showing either a locally produced program or a relevant documentary from overseas. The program has won many awards for investigative journalism, and broken many high-profile stories. A notable early example of this was the show's epoch-making 1962 exposé on the appalling living conditions endured by many Aboriginal Australians living in rural New South Wales.
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List of Episodes (39)
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Four Corners (1961)
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1. The Culture
12 Feb '07It's blokey and it's bolshie, the envy of other unions, with near blanket coverage of its workforce. For decades it has sought to influence election campaigns, dragged concessions out of fearful governments and fought ferociously for its members.
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Four Corners (1961)
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2. Battling the Booze
19 Feb '07You don't have to be sitting on a street corner urinating in your trousers and shadow boxing to be a drunk. I'm living proof of that... - Ian
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Four Corners (1961)
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3. The Denial Machine
26 Feb '07For years the global warming debate has swirled like a firestorm. Science has been tossed about in a tornado of spin from doomsayers and doubters, deep green activists and fossil fuel lobbyists.
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Four Corners (1961)
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4. The Road to Return
05 Mar '07Who's tough on crime? It's an election season ritual: the law and order auction to see which party will put more cops on the streets or increase sentences or build more jails.
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Four Corners (1961)
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5. Firestorm
12 Mar '07Across southern Australia, fire chiefs are anxiously waiting for the cool draughts of autumn to extinguish another stress-filled season of sparks, flare-ups and rushed responses.
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Four Corners (1961)
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6. You Only Live Twice
19 Mar '07Our world might be getting smaller, thanks to technology, but virtual worlds and games are booming. Millions of people venture daily into these new and constantly evolving landscapes where they can conquer mythical armies, slay dragons and embark on other fantastical quests.
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Four Corners (1961)
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7. A Hidden Life
26 Mar '07In May 2005, citizens of Spokane, USA, woke to startling news about their city's mayor, Jim West. The outwardly conservative Republican, who had pushed legislation barring gay teachers from public schools, had whiled away his private hours trawling for young men on an Internet chatroom, the Spokesman-Review newspaper alleged. West reportedly abused his office by offering internships to lure them into more intimate relationships.
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Four Corners (1961)
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8. David Hicks' Story
02 Apr '07With a wispy moustache and long, lank hair, it was a different David Hicks who just faced US military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No longer the clean-cut young man smiling familiarly out of old family snaps - and no longer protesting his innocence.
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Four Corners (1961)
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9. Treechange
09 Apr '07Australia is planting trees. After years of debate about logging old growth forests what could seem more sensible or more worthy? And yet a national quarrel has developed about tree plantations, a quarrel that Chris Master discovers is quietly dividing rural communities and members of the Coalition Government.
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Four Corners (1961)
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10. Earth, Wind and Fire
16 Apr '07Picture a windswept hillside lined with slender white skyscrapers, each crowned by a giant whirring rotor longer than a jumbo jet. Or a swathe of desert covered by a sea of mirrors drawing power from the sun.
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Four Corners (1961)
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11. Painting the Mind
23 Apr '07Imagine surviving a massive brain injury, then waking up in hospital to discover your personality has completely transformed.
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Four Corners (1961)
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12. The Dark Arts
30 Apr '07"Well mate... let me just say this to you. I mean you wouldn't know this but I'm not a f...... good enemy to have..." (Brian Burke on the telephone)
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Four Corners (1961)
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13. Dr Rosanna Capolingua
07 May '07A confronting report in which fit and healthy elderly Australians reveal plans to take their own lives before they lose their independence. Is this a new fact of life in greying Australia?
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Four Corners (1961)
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14. Mississippi Cold Case
21 May '07One spring day in 1964, Charles Moore and Henry Dee were hitchhiking in rural Mississippi. The two black men were picked up by the Ku Klux Klan, tortured, locked in a car boot and driven to Louisiana, then chained to an engine block and dropped alive into the Mississippi River.
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Four Corners (1961)
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15. A Private Affair
28 May '07Nick off, it's not for sale!... Qantas shareholder's answer to the takeover offer.
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Four Corners (1961)
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16. Torture
04 Jun '07"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
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Four Corners (1961)
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17. Ghost Prisoners
11 Jun '07Shackled, gagged and blindfolded, they are bundled on to spy planes, spirited to Third World capitals and dumped in prison hellholes. There they face repeated interrogations that typically include prolonged sessions of torture, crudely inflicted, unimaginably endured.
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Four Corners (1961)
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18. Tough Calls
18 Jun '07"We run an absolute dictatorship and that's what's going to drive this transformation and deliver results... If you can't get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice... then you just shoot 'em and get them out of the way... " - Telstra Chief Operations Officer Greg Winn (at a May business meeting)
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Four Corners (1961)
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19. The Home Front
25 Jun '07While politicians clash noisily over global warming and how to fight it, millions of Australians are trying modestly to cut their energy use, to be a small part of a big solution.
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Four Corners (1961)
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20. Forward Base Afghanistan
02 Jul '07Like Star Wars figures beamed back to the 17th century, Australia's hi-tech, lethally-equipped soldiers cut a surreal presence as they cautiously patrol the baking dustbowl of southern Afghanistan, drawing just casual glances from turbaned tribesmen and nomadic herders.
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Four Corners (1961)
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21. Real Spooks
09 Jul '07Across Britain counter terrorism forces are gathering evidence against the planners of the failed car bomb plots in London and Glasgow. The forensic information gleaned from the vehicles and the arrests in Britain and Australia should allow them to piece together how the conspiracy was formed.
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Four Corners (1961)
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22. The Cape Experiment
16 Jul '07"If they don't take responsibility then we will step in. We want the system to work so that when people don't take responsibility we're able to step in ... you could lose your freedom if you don't abide by the conditions." Noel Pearson.
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Four Corners (1961)
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23. For The Children's Sake
23 Jul '07"My baby was the last thing that I thought about until I pulled that needle out of my arm." Sharon, drug user.
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Four Corners (1961)
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24. Grist to the Mill
30 Jul '07It started with dinner in a Hobart restaurant. The head of Tasmania's biggest timber company and the then Deputy Premier chatted about future plans for the forest industry in Tasmania. Four years on the Tasmanian Parliament is about to decide whether to give the nod to a $1.7 billion giant pulp mill on the banks of the Tamar River north of Launceston.
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Four Corners (1961)
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25. The Behaviour Business
06 Aug '07An angry child, lashing out at the world, struggling at school, labelled a 'problem'. The desperate parents, looking for help, hoping that one day their child will have a normal life. This is the traumatic world of families living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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