Reporter: David O’Shea

For 20 years and through many different incarnations, Dateline has forged a reputation for fearless and provocative reporting.

HAROLD KEKE, GUERILLA FIGHTER (TRANSLATION): I’m glad that You answered my prayer and allowed the reporter to come and hear my story, for the truth to be made known to the world and to the nation.

REPORT FROM ACEH

INDONESIAN SOLDIER (TRANSLATION): Who said before there weren’t any GAM here? All liars...

REPORT FROM EAST TIMOR

WOMAN (TRANSLATION): My God! East Timor, you make everyone suffer.

REPORT FROM VENEZUELA

MALE PROTESTER: You want to kill us. You bastards.

REPORT FROM NAURU

BRONWYN ADCOCK, REPORTER: The fence for the detention centre is just behind me now. I’m gonna go up now and see if I can find anyone to talk to.

MOTHER (TRANSLATION): What have these children done, that they can’t see their fathers?

REPORT FROM GAZA

MATTHEW CARNEY, REPORTER: I arrive as fighters are preparing to ambush an Israeli tank with the home-made rockets. They say their religion gives them the strength to confront the might of the Israeli army.

REPORT FROM UNITED STATES

MAN 1: We got some more on the run.

MAN 2: There’s another one.

MAN 1: Where?

MAN 2: Right there...

MAN 1: Ohhh, boy! Slippery little guys.

NICK LAZAREDES, REPORTER: As the migrants are rounded up, it’s apparent that this group contains a number of young children.

MAN 1: Don’t come here and take our jobs - you know, come in legally! Legal, no problemo.

REPORT: HUMAN SHIELDS

GINNY STEIN, REPORTER: The soldiers taunt the children, who retaliate by throwing stones.

WOMAN: What would your mother say if she could see you shooting children?

REPORT FROM VANUATU

SOLDIER: Can you just take out your camera for me?

MARK DAVIS, REPORTER: Where can I go?

SOLDIER: You’re not allowed to take your camera. It’s not your problem.

MARK DAVIS, REPORTER: No, well, I’ll just go wherever you’d like to go but I...

SOLDIER: You just fuck off from here.

MARK DAVIS, PRESENTER: There are just some stories that will never be told, ever be told unless they’re going to be told on your program. So what value do you put on that? What value do you put on that, that a truth is being told?

Tonight on Dateline, we go behind the scenes of Australia’s longest-running international current affairs program.

ANTIGONE HALL, DIRECTOR’S ASSISTANT: ..3, 2, 1.

JOHN FIRTH, DIRECTOR: Dissolve and cue Mark.

MARK DAVIS, PRESENTER: Hello. I’m Mark Davis. Welcome to Dateline.

Tonight’s program is not a walk down memory lane. Instead, I’ll be taking a reporter’s-eye view of Dateline in the making.

Two days ago, our presenter, Mark Davis, suggested I come to Papua New Guinea to film an unusual cultural story. An art collector he knows was stepping in to save one of PNG’s last traditional spirit houses and Mark thought it might make a good story. I don’t know any more than that, but the beauty of Dateline is that it’s flexible enough to take chances.

As usual, you just latch onto someone and jump in the back of their truck and now we’re heading off into Wewak.

MARK DAVIS: We’re very lucky. I promise you, it’s a great privilege. We’re very lucky. I mean anyone else on Australian TV that has to go and do a story somewhere has to look for the Aussie nurse. There is no other story. If it doesn’t have an Aussie nurse, it ain’t a story. If it doesn’t have our Aussie boys, you know, fighting, something, it’s not a story.

Funnily enough, this particular story is about an Aussie art collector and all I have to do is hook up with him at the new Wewak Hotel.

Is that him? Uncle Neil!

HOTEL WEWAK EMPLOYEE: Yeah, Uncle Neil.

Ah, here we are, SBS.

No two rooms are ever the same. This one is particularly uninspiring.

Neil is not around, so there’s nothing to do but wait.

Someone’s coming. Neil? Is it?

This is what we have to do now is sort of - whatever, sit down and actually clear up what’s going on, ’cause this all happened so quickly. Mark said, "Just get up there. Once you meet Neil, he’ll explain everything."

Because I still have no idea how the story will pan out, I start filming anything and everything.

What are we doing? I don’t know. This is... We’ve stopped, so I’m filming. I dunno...

About four years ago, Dateline took the traditional way of producing television current affairs and turned it on its head. Instead of sending reporters out with a crew of producers, camera people and sound recordists, it sent us out on our own. This shift to what we call video journalism has suited me well.

What people are saying and how they’re explaining themselves is more important to me than beautiful pictures. Over the years I’ve got better at shooting beautiful pictures but it’s not the thing that drives me... and I’ve just lost another, just lost another windsock. There you go. You’re always losing equipment on these jobs.

REPORT: ’AUSTRALIA OUT IN THE COLD’ (2000)

I shot my first story at the G-77 summit in Cuba in 2000. On the first day I spotted the Malaysian Prime Minister sitting all by himself. I was so nervous and excited about capturing the moment, I couldn’t stop shaking.

I just wanted to ask you about Paul Keating’s comments - did you hear about this? - when he said that your policy of excluding Australia is racist. What’s your response to that?

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: Well, uh, unless, of course, Australia stops becoming racist.

JANA WENDT, FORMER PRESENTER: Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, then the prime minister, notoriously difficult to get near to, to get any interviews, particularly if you are Australian, and, as I recall, what you managed to do was sidle up to him while he was seated in his chair at the conference and have a chat with him.

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: If Australia wants to be a friend of Asia, Australia should stop behaving as if it is there to teach us how to run our country.

He was lonely, he was sitting there on his own. He looked like he needed some conversation.

JANA WENDT: Well, there you are - he needed a friend and a video journalist managed to provide that friendship that was required at the time. You see that, I think, is one of the great benefits and actually the great charms of this style because you can get in where others can’t.

So do you think, generally, Mr Howard is welcome in the region now?

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: No, I don’t think so, not in Malaysia anyway.

And why is that?

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: Well, because he thinks that we are not democratic, we are unjust.

This is Mr Howard we’re talking about?

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: Yes, that’s Mr Howard.

MARK DAVIS: People always fuss about what sort of camera to get or what this and that but, if the story is good, you can shoot it on VHS and I still think that’s pretty much the philosophy of Dateline - it doesn’t have to be that fancy if what you’re getting is the truth and getting something that you’re not gonna get by other means, that you could make it with sticky tape, it doesn’t really matter.

But that bothers a lot of people. Doesn’t that bother you at all that some of the pictures are pretty ropy? I mean my own stuff at the beginning was appalling.

MARK DAVIS: Your stuff was appalling, yeah. But if you’re getting something. there’s a... Look, people don’t care. If the storytelling is strong, if the revelation is significant, they’re not caring what the pixel count is, you know.

’NORTH KOREA: ON LIFE’S BORDER’ (2000)

JUNG-EUN KIM, REPORTER: An hour’s walk into these forests, a family is living in hiding.

No other Dateline story has had the extraordinary impact of this report by reporter Jung-Eun Kim and producer Peter Charley. Their story showed the plight of a North Korean family, who had fled to China to escape famine.

JUNG-EUN KIM: Kim Kan-su and Kim Young-hee dug this hole themselves and have been hiding from police here with their young son for the past four months. Their crime, in the eyes of China and North Korea, is simply that they left their famine-stricken homeland to look for food. But hiding in the forest isn’t easy with a young family and, one by one, they’ve had to give their children away.

MARK DAVIS: No-one else did it, no-one else could do it, because it meant that an individual had to have something in her belly to cross borders of North Korea and China and camp out in the mud and the muck and avoid Chinese soldiers and North Korean spies and live with a family for a number of weeks to capture that story.

KIM YOUNG-HEE (TRANSLATION): Though we don’t have a house, living like this in hiding, at least we eat rice, which is rarely available in North Korea, even for well-off families. We just hope we don’t get caught.

KIM KAN-SU (TRANSLATION): Everything else is fine, except for the fear and the distress.

JUNG-EUN KIM: But the break-up of the family has been traumatic. Their young son has now taken to the cheeky habit of puffing on his father’s cigarettes.

I believe this is the most powerful story we’ve ever broadcast. I still find it difficult to watch the part where the Kims are forced to give up their third child.

KIM KAN-SU (TRANSLATION): I wanted to be strong... but this time... (sobs uncontrollably)

KIM YOUNG-HEE (TRANSLATION): It wouldn’t be so sad if we’d parted without crying. When the girls left, I knew it was for their own good. I walked away without crying, but this is so painful. (Sobs)

While I am in PNG, Bronwyn Adcock is about to set off on a fairly typical Dateline story. She’s investigating what happened to one of the two Australian inmates at Guantanamo Bay - Mamdouh Habib.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: If everything that I think is gonna happen or everything that people have promised me comes through, it’s going to be a kick-arse story, it’s going to be fantastic.

Bronwyn’s scoop is that she can prove the Americans sent Mamdouh Habib to Egypt to be tortured. She prides herself on telling stories that haven’t been told before.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: I think one of the things that makes Dateline good is that it doesn’t slavishly follow the so-called news agenda. You know, I think there is a bit of a pack mentality in journalism, in the media, and there’s a story and everyone just follows it like a big herd, and I think - I like the fact that Dateline doesn’t always have to do that.

BRONWYN ADCOCK (ABOUT TO EMBARK ON AEROPLANE): See ya!

OLIVIA ROUSSET, REPORTER: I hope you get the scoop.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: Yeah, me too.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: Well, it’s nearly midnight, I’ve arrived in Doha, here for the big interview, and what do you know, but the airline has lost my bags. So I’ve got my camera, obviously, but I don’t have my tripod, don’t have any clean clothes, I’ve only got a couple of tapes and no battery recharger, so... who knows what’s gonna happen, but yeah, it’s a bit of a blow.

On this trip, Bronwyn will travel to five countries in less than two weeks.

MARK DAVIS: You’re wielding a lot of stuff and you’re having to think - say, in an interview, you’re not just worrying about what you should be worrying about, which is what’s the questioning, what’s the reasoning, where is it going, you’re worrying about is the sun dropping and did I put the battery in that microphone or did I forget to turn it on. So you’re just in this constant panic about... what the framing is. I mean there’s a hell of a lot going on.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: What I’m doing is I’m getting a special outfit ready so I can film safely tomorrow. I want to go film outside some buildings where I shouldn’t be filming. So the idea is to get an outfit that makes me look more like a tourist, and hopefully people will be too shocked by what I’m wearing to worry about the fact that I’m filming.

OLIVIA ROUSSET, REPORTER: When you work for Dateline, you improvise. Even a rubbish bin can be a tripod.

Once Dateline decided to take the plunge into video journalism, it suddenly had a problem - not enough video journalists. Olivia Rousset is one of several reporters who started her career as a contestant in the ABC show ’Race Around the World’.

KIM TRAILL, REPORTER: I’m in the extreme north of Pakistan.

OLIVIA ROUSSET: I’m in Belize in Central America.

JOHN SAFRAN, REPORTER: I was here playing kick-to-kick at the Israeli border.

The program was essentially a nationwide talent quest for would-be foreign correspondents. The racers had to research, shoot and script 10 mini-documentaries on their own, in 100 days of frenetic travelling. Along with fellow racers Bentley Dean and Kim Trail, Olivia was a natural choice for Dateline.

OLIVIA ROUSSET: I suppose where I fit in, in a way, is that I’ll do the more doco-style stories, and the less - the more sort of finding the news and finding the current affairs through always the personal journey, and that’s kind of what I like doing. Um - and in many ways, people won’t like to hear this, but it’s very similar to ’Race Around the World’. You know, you walk around with your bodgie little camera and you look like you’re 12, and people underestimate you and give you access that you’d never otherwise get.

HASSAN JANABI: How did you know?

OLIVIA ROUSSET: Your wife!

Olivia is at Sydney airport to film the homecoming of this man - Hassan Janabi, who was the subject of a remarkable story she made in Iraq last year.

’IRAQ, SWEET IRAQ’ (2003)

HASSAN JANABI: I know many of these faces.

Not long after the downfall of Saddam Hussein Olivia followed Hassan, a Sydney water engineer, as he returned to Iraq after 25 years in exile. One of her great strengths is the rapport she builds with her characters.

HASSAN JANABI: These are my brothers.

Hassan had gone back to take up a senior role in the new administration and Olivia was given amazing, behind-the-scenes access to American and Iraqi officials. For several weeks she followed Hassan as he attempted to juggle the dangers of the job, the needs of his own people and the demands of his American bosses.

US MAN: It doesn’t matter what they’ve been working at. We gotta work on what we want, not what they want. Remember that. They’re working for us. That’s what’s important. We define what’s important and we tell them, "This is what you have to focus on. This is what’s important." That’s why we’re here.

HASSAN JANABI: OK.

US MAN: OK?

HASSAN JANABI: (Laughs)

US SOLDIER IN IRAQ: Two guys stay in the car. Prepare this building front, back and side. Secure the front.

Sending reporters out on their own to places like Iraq often worried our former presenter Jana Wendt.

JANA WENDT: I think that was a little scary, there’s no question about that. It is such an enormous obligation to place on a single person - by that I mean, a single video journalist, often untried, often extremely inexperienced, to send a person like that out into the world, sometimes into incredibly hostile situations.

So did you actually support the whole idea?

JANA WENDT: Of video journalism? I had my misgivings, I had misgivings for all the reasons that I’m enunciating now. Because I thought the burden on the individuals was great, the possibility of failure was also high and because, let’s be honest, SBS is not the best-resourced place on the planet.

Right, have I got everything? Camera, microphones, tapes, batteries, headphones, cigarettes.

(Videoing traditional ceremony) It’s not every day you get to come to a ceremony like this.

This is classic Dateline material - filming stories in our backyard that are ignored by most other media. Over the last few years, the Australian Government has also taken a more active interest in Pacific affairs and Dateline has naturally come along for the ride.

I just really like meeting different people and different places.

Ohh! (Waves to people) Have to go! Back to Wewak.

I’ve spent most of the past few years reporting from South-East Asia, so the Pacific is a relatively new patch for me.

’HAROLD KEKE: REBEL OR RASKOL’ (2003)

Just last year I was in the Solomon Islands to track down the notorious warlord, Harold Keke.

(Interviewing Harold Keke) I’ve read in the newspaper that Harold and his men have killed up to 50 people. How many people have you killed?

For years, Keke had been a major barrier to peace in the Solomons. Bringing him to justice was one of the main reasons for the arrival of Australian troops a few days later.

HAROLD KEKE (TRANSLATION): But for now I want to tell you, Howard, we are fighting for our rights. Because we don’t want the government to steal our land and resources. Because these are the root causes of the war.

’PIGS AND POLITICS’ (2002)

MIKE CAREY: Finally, two weeks late, the big day arrived and the capital of Engan province was a buzz.

If anything was required to explain the myriad problems faced by our northern neighbours, it was this story, about the last elections in PNG.

REPORTER: Off to the side, the sitting governor’s son began methodically, marking each paper with a perfect cross against his father’s name. Voting early and often in the best traditions of Tammany Hall.

MARK DAVIS: Australian journalists in general should own this patch. Middle East, BBC does pretty well, South America, someone else can do, but we shouldn’t be relying on the massive news agencies for news about our backyard when we know it better, and we do know it better.

REPORTER: Tribes agreeing to vote en masse was nothing when compared to what happened next. Someone didn’t want the election to succeed and sent in the raskols. Police responded quickly and forcefully, but it didn’t save the papers. They hacked open the boxes, invalidating their contents. In the Engan capital two nights later, more than a third of the completed ballots went up in smoke when the shipping containers in which they were locked were dynamited.

But as important as the Pacific has been to us, it’s the extraordinary upheaval in the Middle East that’s dominated world news over the past few years.

’THE NEW KURDISTAN’ (2002)

MATTHEW CARNEY, REPORTER: To get into northern Iraq, I have been smuggled across two countries. It’s rare for a journalist to get this far. Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq do not want the world to know that a new democracy is flourishing in this Kurdish enclave.

’RETURN TO KIRKUK’ (2003)

Matthew Carney, one of our most experienced reporters, has been based in Lebanon throughout this period and he’s captured some unforgettable moments.

MATTHEW CARNEY: These two girls are the neighbour’s daughters. Zaid has never seen them before. They represent his lost years at Kirkuk.

’WHEN THE CLERICS CLASH’ (2003)

WOMAN (Wailing) My son... My darling son Ali! I’m looking for you in these bags, my son. My son Ali! What did you ever do, my son?

MATTHEW CARNEY: When Hakim arrives, his car is mobbed by people who want to welcome him back.

In Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, Matthew filmed the joyous homecoming of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakim, one of the most revered leaders in the Shi’ite world.

MATTHEW CARNEY: Hakim has prayed for this day - to return to his birthplace and to cast his eyes once more on the holy shrine of Imam Ali.

MEN CHANT: With our soul and blood, we defend you, O Hakim! With our soul and blood, we defend you, O Hakim!

MATTHEW CARNEY: Today is also powerful because the Shia can grieve together. Under Saddam, they couldn’t. For every year Hakim spent in exile, Saddam killed two of his relatives in Iraq.

Not long after Matthew filmed this, Hakim was blown up by a suicide bomber.

MATTHEW CARNEY: The most dangerous place by far is Iraq. I mean it’s - because there - you know, even in places like Gaza, you can choose your level of danger. You can choose to go to the hottest areas and the frontlines and stuff. In Baghdad, you have no choice - because you’re a target on so many levels and by so many people, it doesn’t matter. You’re not safe anywhere and you’re not safe with anyone.

Luckily for me, the most dangerous part of this trip in PNG involves fording two ankle-deep rivers. To complete my story I need to follow up on claims that the church is partly responsible for the demise of traditional culture here. I’m looking for a local priest who I’ve been told had threatened to burn down the spirit house and the way I find what I am looking for is classic Melanesia. There are no taxis or telephones here, so if I want to get to church I just have to start walking.

Excuse me. You know pastor from the Assembly of God?

Then I meet Jesse, who is also on his way to church. He’s not going to the same church I was hoping to visit but it will do.

Today’s our lucky day to meet you.

JESSE: Something was rise inside me and I just call out his name Jesus...

Maybe God wants it to happen.

JESSE: (Laughs) Yeah.

And would you believe it, I was expected.

MAN: Did I say a wise man was gonna come from the East?

Ha ha. Wise man was gonna come from the East, he’s saying now.

I’m not the wise man.

PASTOR: And this one is called L..O..V..E.

CONGREGATION (all): Love.

But I love this sort of stuff. This is great.

PASTOR: But Father, we pray today that this will be a special encounter. God blesses the nation of Australia! God blesses the nation of Australia!

BRONWYN ADCOCK: The source told me about it over the phone, which is making it more and more difficult for us to use because without saying "our source"...

It’s Monday, and Bronwyn has now been back in Sydney for a week.

MIKE CAREY, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, DATELINE: Do you want us to get Ruddock to be interviewed by Mark?

BRONWYN ADCOCK: But yes, to be interviewed by Mark.

MIKE CAREY: The central story that no-one has done is about the torturing of Mamdouh Habib.

She’s already written the first half of the script for her story and, over the weekend, two editors started to put it together. But although she expected to have another 10 days to finish the story, she’s just heard that ’Four Corners’ has interviewed some of the same people for what sounds like a very similar story. Executive producer Mike Carey now wants to run the story in two days time, but Bronwyn and her story producer Martin Butler are afraid that this is an impossible ask.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: Martin? I think we should talk to him now.

MARTIN BUTLER, PRODUCER: Yep, yep, yep. OK. Geez, you got some good stuff in here though. Now we need to talk, Mike.

MIKE CAREY: Can you guarantee that ’Four Corners’ won’t be going to air next week?

MARTIN BUTLER: No, absolutely can’t guarantee that.

MIKE CAREY: Well, if you can’t guarantee that, then I’ve got to guarantee that we’ve got to do the story for this Wednesday.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: I really don’t - I’ve got kind of concerns about how possible that is.

MIKE CAREY: Look, I don’t know what to say. I can’t - we can’t be second. No matter what we do, no matter what we put to air, really, we can’t be second and if we can’t guarantee...

MARTIN BUTLER: That’s a position that I think you’ve got to assess, you know, sort of more coldly than that. I mean to say, "We can’t be second," it seems to me you can’t throw the story away. If you go to air with a half-arsed story that looks dreadful, that’s not thought through, you are throwing the story away. Potentially the best story of the year goes to air...

MIKE CAREY: I understand. Well...

MARTIN BUTLER: ..in a crap form. which doesn’t have the impact that it should.

MIKE CAREY: So you’d let it go second?

MARTIN BUTLER: If that’s the price you have to pay, yes. They’re not going to make the same story. They’ve got a very different story.

MIKE CAREY: Can I refer you... Maybe, go and talk to Phil and see what... I’ll upwardly refer it to him to make the decision. Go and talk to Phil. Go on, go and put your case to Phil. I’ll organise it.

MARTIN BUTLER: But I mean does Phil know...

MIKE CAREY: No, but you can tell him. It’ll be good for him to learn about what it’s all about, yeah, the story. Hang on a sec.

Phil Martin is the director of News and Current Affairs at SBS, and he’s Mike’s boss.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: We’ve been summonsed back in!

MARTIN BUTLER: They have said they’re prepared to let us go on Wednesday week, but if ’Four Corners’ goes before us, or our program is not absolutely brilliant, then we will be, you know, in severe trouble.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: The word was "have your arse kicked."

MARTIN BUTLER: "Have your arse kicked." That’s right. We’ll both have our arses kicked.

In the end, Bronwyn feels she’s left with no choice. She’s now got 48 hours to get a long, complex story to air and the script is still far from finished.

MARK DAVIS: There’s not much of a parachute on Dateline. If you mess up, you messed up big time and it’s all going to be on your head because there’s no-one there to pick you up. But, you know, I think you should sink or swim yourself. I don’t think you really should rely on other people terribly much.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: He acknowledges that Mamdouh Habib passed from Pakistani custody to US custody.

MARK DAVIS: Yeah.

It’s Wednesday morning and Mark is preparing for an interview with the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: If AFP and ASIO are there on the ground in Islamabad, visiting Mamdouh Habib in prison..

MARK DAVIS: Before he goes to Egypt.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: ..before he goes to Egypt...

MELANIE MORRISON, RESEARCHER: Three times.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: ..what information did they have? I tell you exactly what he does - he always dances around this and the line he will give you is that the Egyptian Government never admitted they have Mamdouh Habib in their custody.

In Australian journalism, you’d be hard-pressed to find a reporter as fiercely independent as Mark Davis. His trademark is tearing apart established views on a whole range of international issues.

’BLOOD MONEY’ (2000):

MARK DAVIS: The handiwork of the Indonesian army is fairly plain to see and their involvement has been the focus of most inquiries to date. But were Indonesia’s generals acting as rogue elements in East Timor or under orders? Were the war criminals in the government itself?

In his first story for Dateline, Mark not only shamed the Indonesian government, but showed that international aid money was used to fund the bloodbath in East Timor and that the World Bank did nothing to stop it.

MARK DAVIS: The World Bank was particularly impressed by the government’s commitment to "restore growth, reduce poverty and shield the poor". In fact, it was now cashed up to kill them.

I think Mark’s strongest stories are a product of his outrage at hypocrisy and injustice.

MARK DAVIS: In a forest west of Dili, Filomena’s husband is unearthed. His wife and children now know how he was killed with his ears cut off and his head caved in. But in a ledger in the Department of Finance, this is not a grave, it’s a road project or a canal. Not a murder, but a public service.

MARK DAVIS: Who did you imagine was paying them?

ALI ALATAS, FORMER INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I don’t know.

MARK DAVIS: Well, you must have had some suspicion. Who did you imagine was paying...

ALI ALATAS: Why should I have suspicions? We are - the government...

MARK DAVIS: Because people are dying there...

ALI ALATAS: No.

MARK DAVIS: You’ve made pledges to the...

ALI ALATAS: People are dying and we were against it.

I can remember standing behind Ali Alatas as you were filming the interview with him and accusing him of being a murderer and watching the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

MARK DAVIS: Well, look, it took me a while to realise - I used to do interviews that used to go for hours and sort of pussyfoot around and try and be engaging or charming...but, ultimately, you’re only going to get a few minutes of someone’s time and you’ve got to lay it out. I mean, it’s not worth mucking about.

ALI ALATAS: Let’s put the blame where the blame should reside.

MARK DAVIS: Well, where should the blame reside?

ALI ALATAS: Probably with those who are wielding the machetes and who are wielding the guns and so on.

Philip Ruddock is in Perth today and still hasn’t arrived in the studio for the interview. With only a few minutes to go, Mark is still working on his questions.

MELANIE MORRISON: His first name is Mr Hayat...

MIKE CAREY: Mr Hayat. Just call him Mr Hayat. He’s got three or four long names to begin with.

MARK DAVIS: Hayat.

MELANIE MORRISON: H..a..y..a..t.

MIKE CAREY: H..a..y..a..t.

What is it that drives you? You like getting up people’s noses, don’t you, and really confronting them with hard truths, is that it?

MARK DAVIS: I think there’s not much point in messing around. In reality, your career is not as long as you’d probably like it to be, your period of creativity is relatively short in your life and I think you don’t want to waste your time on things that aren’t significant.

JOHN FIRTH: 4...3...2.... Intail up and cue Mark.

MARK DAVIS: Philip Ruddock, thanks for your time.

PHILIP RUDDOCK, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Pleasure.

MARK DAVIS: When did you and the Government become aware that Mamdouh Habib had been sent to Egypt for interrogation.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I’m not in a position to say when I or members of the Government may have known.

Because the issues we cover involve asking difficult questions, Dateline has an often testy relationship with politicians and governments.

SEPTEMBER, 1999

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER: The Indonesians made it perfectly clear that they would not, under any circumstances, have a peacekeeping force in.

JANA WENDT: And you accepted that, Mr Downer?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, whether we accepted it or rejected it was neither here not there - that was...

JANA WENDT: Well, can I put it to you, Mr Downer...

ALEXANDER DOWNER: That was the Indonesian...

JANA WENDT: Can I put it to you that it is neither here nor there?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: I haven’t finished the sentence. That was the Indonesian government’s decision.

’SEE NO EVIL’ (2001)

MARK DAVIS: Australia hasn’t exactly been sort of vocal in calling for international war tribunals or any forms of prosecution of military figures. It’s been silent on this, largely.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, you can ask, again, is this... I mean, how immoral do you think I am? I mean, how bad do you think I am?

MARK DAVIS: I don’t...I don’t know.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Do you honestly think I wouldn’t want people who had committed acts of violence, who had killed people, who’d burnt their houses, brought to justice? You think I’m so bad? I mean, how dumb is that?

MARK DAVIS: You don’t want to be seen as a sort of harping enemy of government, but that’s part of the job of being a journalist is to question government, question ministers. And I think the climate has become quite strange where you’re seen as being partisan in a sort of petty party political way.

KERRIE-ANNE WALLACH, EDITOR: When we get to that point... we’ll cut it in and then just keep...

BRONWYN ADCOCK: But that’s what we’re talking about, whether we have got enough pictures to cut this with what we want.

KERRIE-ANNE WALLACH: Oh, I see what you’re saying.

BRONWYN ADCOCK: But we also need to - I mean, is this the best way to do...

JOHN FIRTH: Still don’t have vision for the closer...

MARK DAVIS: Really, the primary purpose of a program like Dateline is its investigative reporting. Anything else can be interesting, can be colourful, can be an insight into characters, an insight into other countries - all that’s fine, but it’s not what you’re there for and it’s not what your survival will depend upon. The really defining characteristics of Dateline are investigative and that’s our strength. We don’t do it every week, it’s probably impossible to do it every week but we should do it as often as we can.

ANTIGONE HALL: 10 seconds. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

JOHN FIRTH: Dissolve and cue Mark.

MARK DAVIS: Hello, I’m Mark Davis. Welcome to Dateline.

CLOSING COMMENTS

PAUL MURPHY: For a 6-year period the French drilled their shafts to explode their nuclear devices all along here, all along this atoll. Or to put it bluntly, by 1981 the reef had had enough.

MARK CORCORAN, FORMER REPORTER: The blockade by PNG has had horrific results. The doctors here saying at least 1,500 people have died from largely preventable diseases.

JOHN BUDD, FORMER REPORTER: So what the Israeli soldiers are doing with their beatings and their shootings, is the opposite to what they hope to achieve. Rather than acting as deterrence to these young men, the shebab, it is acting as a sort of badge of courage.

HELEN VATSIKOPOULOS, FORMER REPORTER: The natives of Sarawak are bumiputras or sons of the soil. They have rights far above those Malays of Chinese or Indian extraction. It’s part of the Federal government’s new economic policy and it’s supposed to redistribute wealth to the indigenous Malays.

TONY JONES, FORMER REPORTER: Comrade Chairman Mao would spin in his tomb if he knew that this super capitalist colony would soon be grafted on to the People’s Republic warts and all.

MIKE CAREY: Manaus, the great capital and river port of Amazona state on the banks of the Rio Negro. This city was named after the Manau Indians but today very little remains of that group and it’s not really surprising.

GEORGE NEGUS, FORMER REPORTER: This guy, would you believe, is the international relief effort. He’s an Iranian Kurd taking provisions, food, potatoes they are, to Iraqi Kurds across the border. That’s about as human as an effort can get. It will have precious little impact upon 1 million Kurdish refugees and meanwhile these people are saying "Where’s the US when we need them, where’s the world relief?"

ALAN SUNDERLAND, REPORTER: As soon as they found out the Mass had been cancelled they stood silently outside the church and suddenly there was fighting everywhere. There was people hitting, people falling, we’ve been trying to stop people being more seriously hurt but it’s just wild here at the moment. It’s just out of control.

KERRY BREWSTER, FORMER REPORTER: The soldiers here say they’ve been getting messages from Karen villagers further inside Burma. The villagers have told them that the Burmese army has sent more battalions with heavy guns to reinforce its front line just over there.

JOANNA SAVILL, REPORTER: President Khatami talks a lot about upholding the rule of law, the principles of democracy and free speech enshrined in the Iranian Constitution.

JANE HUTCHEON, FORMER REPORTER: At first glance, Beijing’s authorities appear to have every detail of the bid covered, but if there’s one thing they can’t plan for, it’s the way the people think. During our stay here we’ve encountered several situations where there’s just no room for flexibility. In short, there’s no systematic way for dealing with things that are outside the system.

NICK LAZAREDES, REPORTER: There are another four villages before you hit the Russian border and beyond that is Chechnya. Now the police won’t take us any further than this because they say beyond here the area is lawless and in fact crawling with Chechen rebels.

Well, well, well, well. On a job like this you have to eat what is around and here we are. This is a new one for me. Mmm. Well.

WOMAN: What’s it taste like?

Yum. It’s a root vegetable. It’s a cross between a potato and a sweet potato and a lump of wood. OK, I’ll do my new trick, I’ll show you, it’s a good one. This is the wheel cam. You press that and you just dangle it over the edge.

AMOS COHEN, REPORTER: No, this is not for public consumption.

MARTIN BUTLER: You have to turn the camera off for some parts and this is one of those parts.

One of the telephones that Sarah uses in the office. This is Sarah. Now we can cut to a shot of Sarah at her desk, this is what she looks like.

SARAH PARKER, PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Hello, can I speak to Shirley please?

Yes, sorry about that story, yes, it was a bad story.

SARAH PARKER: OK, thank you.

KERRY-ANNE WALLACH: Get that off, turn that off. Turn that off.