Sunday

The Nine Network today announced the closure of the Sunday program from Sunday, August 3, to be replaced by a weekly one-hour News bulletin on Sundays at 8.00am.

Nine's nightly late night news program, Nightline, will also wind up tonight, with the Network scheduling more newsbreaks through the evening to provide viewers with regular news updates.

The Network's Director of News and Current Affairs, John Westacott, said the decision to close Sunday was difficult but inevitable.

Sunday, October 7, 9am-11am on Channel Nine

He is tagged "China's richest man" but Zhengrong Shi, said to be worth $4 billion, is much more. A brilliant scientist who, importantly, holds an Australian passport, is a human catalyst for the remarkable inroads solar energy is making into conventional energy sources.

Just 10 years ago Dr Shi was waiting on tables to fund his way through the University of New South Wales. While studying there he was recognised as a rising star by his professor, Martin Green.

"He was quite brilliant in the research he was conducting and the results he was gaining. So he completed a PhD at this university that was as good as any PhD ever done and he probably did it in record time."

That PhD - and subsequent work with his professors Martin Green and Stuart Wenham created a breakthrough for the viability of solar energy. But rather than start his revolutionary industry here he was lured to China with the promise of start-up funding and government assistance. The opportunity to keep Zhengrong Shi and the burgeoning industry in this country was lost as former NSW Premier Bob Carr laments.

As election issues go, it should be a huge asset for Labor as the Iraq War has been a foreign policy nightmare for the Howard Government.

Four and a half years after Coalition forces drove Saddam from Baghdad, sectarian violence still fills the country’s power vacuum, and our involvement is hugely unpopular on our shores.

But could Kevin Rudd’s Labor do any better in Iraq than the Howard Government? If elected, will it keep its troops involved in the dangerous work of trying to fix the mess, or withdraw and fail to see through a war we helped start?

This week SUNDAY goes to Baghdad, where the Nine Network’s National Security Correspondent Tim Lester travels with the Australian Defence Force by armoured vehicle along the dangerous Route Irish – the violent 12 kilometre stretch of road which links Camp Victory to the international zone in the middle of the city.

He speaks to Australian and US forces, who give us a Ground Zero overview of the situation in Iraq, their “Overwatch” role and the consequences of early withdrawal.

Sunday, September 2 from 9am-11am

FORTRESS SYDNEY

With the exception of war, the security arrangements for the APEC conference are the biggest ever mounted in Australia. Sydney is being turned into a fortress.

The police are preparing for violence on the city’s streets. They have been handed controversial legislation, specifically for APEC, which many see as an erosion of civil liberties.

This week SUNDAY speaks to both sides of the APEC divide, the police and the protestors, as they accuse each other of planning for violence.

Andrew Scipione, who takes over as NSW Police Commissioner and as commander of the APEC police operation this Saturday, explains to SUNDAY why he feels the need to lock down the city and to arm police with extraordinary powers over the next 14 days.

“Certainly intelligence and the advice I’m receiving to date would indicate that we will have some serious violence and that’s unfortunate, we have to prepare for the worst case scenario and accordingly we’re getting ready for some significant violence in and around the period of the 7th, 8th and 9th of September,” he says.

Sunday, August 26 from 9am-11am
SHAME JOB

You’ve heard revelations of child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities from Crown prosecutors and politicians – cases of unthinkable depravity. The recent ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report found child sex abuse in all of the 45 communities it visited in the Northern Territory. That triggered a $500 million federal takeover of indigenous affairs there.

Now – for the first time – we hear those stories from Aborigines themselves.

In a remote Red Centre community, SUNDAY reporter Sarah Ferguson uncovered a series of child sexual assaults across three generations which ended with a recent attack on a five-year-old boy.

“My cousin came and kicked the door and he saw me having sex with the little boy...”

We hear from the perpetrator who was himself raped when he was a young boy, along with three others, at a community fair.

“We all take our clothes off, then he told us to lay down face against the wall, like floor, on the ground. Then he started hurting us…”

Sunday, August 19 from 9am-11am
DEATH BY LEVEL CROSSING

Australians - it would seem - have a death wish with trains.

This week, SUNDAY reporter Ross Coulthart shows just how irresponsible and stupid some drivers - especially the drivers of big trucks - are being at railway level crossings.

Barely three months on from one of the worst rail disasters in Australian history - Kerang, in country Victoria, where 11 people died and 14 were injured - SUNDAY has been riding locomotives with the train drivers and seeing from the train driver's view just what's happening on our tracks.

And it's horrifying. At a crossing near one of Australia's biggest oil refineries, massive fully-laden lorries speed through ringing bells and flashing red lights in front of an on-coming, and clearly visible, locomotive loaded with dozens of 41,500 litre bulk fuel tanks.

Clearly, there's a need for a massive education campaign by Governments, rail operators, and road transport educators, to alert drivers to the threat at level crossings. But SUNDAY's investigation suggests there is a much broader problem with our road and rail infrastructure.

Sunday, August 12 from 9am-11am
THE HORRORS OF WAR –
A SPECIAL REPORT BY RAY MARTIN

The horrors of the Vietnam War left a generation of Australian men with psychological scars that still remain, and have infiltrated the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Barry Heard is one such conscript. In his book Well Done, Those Men, Barry presents an intensely personal account of his experiences. From innocent country boy to the harrowing 1967 battle Operation Ballarat, where he witnessed the deaths of many of his mates, and the turmoil he faced when he returned home.

In a special SUNDAY report, Ray Martin interviews Barry and many men like him, who were sent off to war unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on them – and their experiences back home as they attempt to make sense of what Vietnam did to their lives.

For most, substance abuse, marriage and family breakdown and suicide is the norm. And not just for them, but their wives, children and grandchildren are bearing the emotional and physical effects of a war which ended more than 30 years ago.

KIDNAPPING OUR KIDS
Sunday, July 29 from 9am-11am

They are Australia's new Stolen Generation. Every year thousands of Australian families deal with the agony of custody disputes. But in many cases parents take the law into their own hands and disappear with their children, refusing to give their former partners access and even knowledge about their child's wellbeing.

This week, SUNDAY reporter Kirstine Lumb explores the issue of parental child abduction and the devastation it causes to children and to the parents left behind.

Each morning Trayna Simpson wakes to the reality that his two young sons are missing. For almost three years he has heard nothing of them. The two young brothers, Housen and Juha are believed to have been abducted by their mother.

Trayna tells SUNDAY of his daily grief at the authorities not being able to locate his boys, “I get frightened. I’m frightened right now I’m getting deadly frightened about how I feel. I don’t want to show people how much damage it does”.

PURE GREED: A PAUL BARRY INVESTIGATION
Sunday, July 22 from 9am-11am

They thought it would help them live a happy, prosperous retirement. They believed the advertisements which spruiked healthy returns in Australia’s booming property market. But those ordinary Australians were duped. Taken in by greedy companies who preyed on the elderly and the vulnerable, while Australia’s corporate authorities looked on.

An estimated 40,000 “Mum and Dad” investors stand to lose more than $1 billion of their lifesavings following the collapse of Westpoint, ACR, Fincorp and Bridgepoint.

In a special investigation for SUNDAY, investigative journalist and author Paul Barry looks at the collapse of these companies, the people affected and the failure of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to stop it.

Investors in ACR and Fincorp were encouraged to believe their money was in mortgages, backed by bricks and mortar. In fact it was being lent to on risky construction projects – most of which hadn’t started. The advertising campaigns were run in daytime television, and on radio featuring media personality Alan Jones – blatantly directed at retirees looking for an income.

SUNDAY
www.ninemsn.com.au/sundaySunday
July 8 from 9am-11am

DEAD MAN RUNNING

The fight against organised crime within the motorcycle gang fraternity is being seriously compromised by police mistakes and operational failures, according to a former undercover informant from the Bandidos – one of the country’s most notorious bikie gangs. The informant, (who in Queensland must be referred to as “Joe Florida” because of pending charges in that state), says murders have gone unsolved, and illegal drugs and weapons have flooded on to the streets, because Australia’s peak organised crime fighting body – the Crime Commission – was refused permission to run him in an operation in Qld.

In a SUNDAY exclusive, reporter Ross Coulthart presents these explosive claims in an interview with Florida, a convicted criminal, who for a decade was a trusted associate of senior Bandidos motorcycle gang members. In the interview Florida claims that he witnessed, or has knowledge of a litany of crimes including:

www.ninemsn.com.au/sunday
Sunday, July 1 from 9am-11am
THE MYSTERY OF HMAS SYDNEY

The disappearance of the HMAS Sydney without trace in November 1941 with its full war complement of 645 men remains to this day Australia’s single worst naval disaster. The circumstances surrounding the loss have never been fully explained.

Over the years there has been much speculation as to exactly what happened that day and whether there had been any survivors from the Sydney. The wreck of the ship has never been located although there is growing pressure for a full scale search to find the resting place. The only documented finding from the Sydney was a body in a raft washed up on Christmas Island. That body has never been identified but over the last year the navy has exhumed the sailor. Last week they announced they had
narrowed it down to three possible men.

Tim Lester looks at the work that has been done to identify the body and talks to the families of the three possible sailors. He also looks at the growing pressure on the government to locate the wreck and have it declared an official war grave.

www.ninemsn.com.au/sunday
Sunday, June 24 from 9am-11am

ELECTRIC SHOCK TREATMENT:
HOPE FOR DEPRESSION

From the stigma of films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the real-life horror stories from the notorious Chelmsford Private Psychiatric Hospital which closed down in the 1970s, shock treatment or ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) is making a comeback.

And use of the controversial treatment is growing as doctors employ ECT to help treat sufferers of acute depression – often offering them new hope in their fight against the condition.

This week SUNDAY reporter Sarah Ferguson investigates ECT – a treatment the medical profession knows very little about – and the miraculous effects it has had on people who have undergone it. Professor Ian Hickie, clinical adviser to beyondblue: the national depression initiative says: “What we’ve seen is the stigma, the public portrayals of ECT, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, they’re of persecution, of institutionalisation, of treatment against a person’s will and they’re fundamentally about the fear and stigma associated with mental illness.”

Sunday, June 17 from 9am-11am
EVEN LAWYERS GET THE BLUES

When Melbourne barrister Peter Hayes died from an alleged drug related incident last month, it sent
shockwaves throughout the legal fraternity. It also coincided with a recent report which shows lawyers
top all other professions in levels of depression.
This week, Sunday explores why lawyers suffer so greatly from the 'Black Dog" and whether or not it is
turning them towards unhealthy levels of self medication, through drugs and alcohol.
Leading lawyers share their experiences of the stresses involved in their careers, and subsequent
depression which many lawyers quietly and sometimes secretly experience. Some speak out for the
first time to break down the stigma of depression, and to show it affects all levels of society.

GENERATION SINGLE

It seems the traditional family dream of marriage, children and that house with the white picket fence
has been superseded by a new social structure. This week, Sunday looks at Generation Single, with

RAY MARTIN SPEAKS TO THE DALAI LAMA IN HIS ONLY AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION INTERVIEW
People all around the world, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist are fascinated by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political head of the Tibetan people. Ray Martin has secured for Sunday the only television interview with Dalai Lama, while he is on a speaking tour of Australia.