Michael Green

Writer and producer

Cath and Jack and the firestorm in Dale Place

In Audio on

L to R: Dougie, Jack and Cath

For ABC Radio National’s documentary show Earshot, I produced a 35-minute story about one couple’s terrifying experience of bushfire. It’s a thriller, and a love story, and you can listen here, or via Earshot on your favourite podcast app.

When the Black Summer firestorm hits her street , Cath runs for her life—leaving her partner Jack, who’s hellbent on staying to defend their home. They lose each other. Later, among the shock and the chaos, it hits her: Oh my god, where is Jack? What’s happened to him?

As the catastrophe unfolds, Cath Bowdler, Jack Egan, and Channel Ten news journalist Daniel Sutton describe what happens to them on New Years Eve 2019, on the South Coast of NSW.

Listen: Cath and Jack and the firestorm in Dale Place

Producer: Michael Green

Composer and sound engineer: Matthew Crawford

Supervising producer: Claudia Taranto

The Wait podcast

In Audio on

Mozhgan Moarefizadeh is stuck in Jakarta, living without rights—but with a yappy dog named Bella. With journalist Nicole Curby, she brings you into the lives of refugees like her, who are trapped on Australia’s new borderline, in Indonesia.

The Wait is a five-part narrative podcast, two years in the making. Published by The Guardian and supported by the Walkley Foundation, The Wait is a compelling and innovative combination of in-depth interviews, field reporting, audio diaries and conversations. I’m co-writer and supervising producer for the show.

Check out the website for photos and more information. Subscribe now, on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Or just listen below…

We feed you

In Social justice on

For The Saturday Paper and the Walkley Foundation, André Dao and I met four people living in Australia, working along the food chain.  This multimedia story was illustrated by Tia Kass. It won the Melbourne Press Club’s 2020 Quill Award for reporting on multicultural affairs.

Senator WALSH: Can the minister explain why… temporary migrant workers who can’t go home… have been excluded from the JobKeeper program?

Senator CASH: I thank the senator for her question… In relation to the senator’s question: because the government had to draw a line somewhere. 

– Senate Hansard, April 8, 2020

Over the last two decades, low paying work has increasingly been done by workers with no right to stay in Australia. It is especially the case in the food system. Temporary migrant workers plant, pick, pack, slaughter, slice, cook and deliver food for everyone else. 

Twin senate inquiries, into temporary migration and underpayment, are due to report at the end of the year. They have received more than 170 submissions so far, but few contain testimony from migrant workers. 

In this story, you can read about Jennifer Banga, Tiff Tan, Baali and Putri Nazeri—and listen to their voices and watch their videos.

Illustrations by Tia Kass

Manus Recording Project Collective

In Projects on

where are you today, 2020 [sound installation]. Every day throughout August, subscribers received a text message with a new ten-minute audio recording from Farhad Bandesh, Farhad Rahmati, Samad Abdul, Shamindan Kanapathi, Thanush Selvraj or Yasin Abdallah.

These men, seeking asylum by boat, were forcibly transferred to Manus Island by the Australian government nearly seven years ago. Now, they are held in hotels or detention centres in Port Moresby, Melbourne or Brisbane.

The site displayed some additional information: the number of kilometres between you and the person who made the recording, and the number of minutes, hours, or days that had elapsed since the recording was made. Listen to the recordings.

Design, build and conceptual support by Public Office. Commissioned and presented by Liquid Architecture. Supported by the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants.

Mantra Hotel, Preston. Photo by Yasin Abdallah.

how are you today, 2018. A sound installation comprising an archive of 84 ten-minute field recordings by six men on Manus Island. Developed for the Eavesdropping exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, with Samad Abdul, Farhad Bandesh, Behrouz Boochani, André Dao, Shamindan Kanapathi, Kazem Kazemi and Jon Tjhia. how are you today was subsequently exhibited at City Gallery, Wellington, and Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland. Listen to the recordings.

how are you today, 2018, at the Ian Potter Museum of Art.

Still Life

In Projects on

A series of first-person narratives about statelessness, together with still life images. A collaboration with writers André Dao and Nicole Curby and artist Sarah Walker. This project is also an academic collaboration with Associate Professor Jennifer Balint and Dr Ashley Barnwell, from the University of Melbourne, as well as the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the Melbourne Law School.

Forthcoming, 2021.