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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Friday, March thirteen, twenty twenty six. Don't look down

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Speaker 1: your nose at patriotism. That's the blunt message to Labor

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Speaker 1: from one of its own stars. South Australian Premier Peter Malanowskis.

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Speaker 1: He's seeking reelection at the March twenty one state election

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Speaker 1: where one nation is polling strongly, and Malanowskis says Labor

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Speaker 1: must respect voters with fears about housing and immigration. Two years,

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Speaker 1: five hundred gigabytes of audio and more than two hundred

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Speaker 1: voice actors, The Australian's podcast adaptation of Headley Thomas's best

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Speaker 1: selling book Sick to Death is nearing its conclusion. It's

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Speaker 1: the story of the havoc wrought on the Queensland medical

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Speaker 1: system by the incompetent surgeon Jayant Patel twenty years ago.

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Speaker 1: And there's still more to come. Today and our production

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Speaker 1: team get together to discuss this epic project and why

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Speaker 1: it still resonates.

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Speaker 2: In twenty twenty six, The.

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Speaker 1: Australian's national Chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas was walking among the

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Speaker 1: mango trees at his Brisbane home. When I called him

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Speaker 1: to ask what he was working on. It was late

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and Hedley had taken some leave to

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Speaker 1: work on his book about his blockbuster investigation, The Teacher's Pet.

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Speaker 1: Headley suggested we bring to audio one of his earlier.

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Speaker 2: Books, Sick to Death.

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Speaker 1: Well, we've published sixteen whopping episodes so far, with two

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Speaker 1: more bonus episodes to come. Today, Hedley and I are

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Speaker 1: sitting down with our audio lead, Jasper League, senior producer

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Speaker 1: Kristin Amiot, and producer Karina Berger to talk about this

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Speaker 1: huge undertaking. I should know by now to expect that

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Speaker 1: when heavily Thomas calls up with an idea that he

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Speaker 1: says is going to be quite simple, that it's actually

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Speaker 1: not going to be anything of the sort. He said

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Speaker 1: that about Shandy's story, which turned into an epic multi

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Speaker 1: season investigative podcast, and he said the same thing about

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Speaker 1: Sick to Death.

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Speaker 2: It's a bit of a hybrid.

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Speaker 1: It's an audiobook with a full cast acting out all

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Speaker 1: of the two hundred plus roles in this book. But

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Speaker 1: it's also true to the traditions of true crime podcasting,

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Speaker 1: with follow a journalist unraveling the truth about a big scandal,

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Speaker 1: in this case Headley's reporting on the activities of doctor

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Speaker 1: j And Patel, a surgeon who tricked his way through

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Speaker 1: Queensland Health in the beginning of the twenty first century.

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Speaker 1: Heavy I think this would have been a smaller undertaking

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Speaker 1: if we've done what a lot of audiobooks do, which

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Speaker 1: is just have you read the whole thing? Why did

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Speaker 1: you want this to be a full cast production?

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Speaker 3: Have you tried to do an Indian accent?

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Speaker 4: No?

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Speaker 2: I would never do anything.

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Speaker 3: All jokes aside, it would have been very challenging and

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Speaker 3: I don't think very satisfying for listeners to have heard

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Speaker 3: just my voice droning on hour after hour trying to

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Speaker 3: voice act for the nurses and doctors and administrators, and

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Speaker 3: of course for doctor Ftel and other overseas trained doctors,

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Speaker 3: the judges and victims, and nurse Tony Hoffman. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there were so many people who were part of this,

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Speaker 3: and I think that while incredibly ambitious by us to

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Speaker 3: involve I don't know how many voice actors were there

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Speaker 3: more than one hundred, more than two hundred.

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Speaker 4: I think that if we consult the spreadsheet that was

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Speaker 4: made very early in the piece there's definitely more than

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Speaker 4: two hundred lines in that spreadsheet. There is our wonderful

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Speaker 4: colleagues here at The Australian who have been pulled off

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Speaker 4: the newsroom floor more than once to come and do

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Speaker 4: voice acting for us. There are my parents, my partner,

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Speaker 4: Jasper's partner, Claire's kids, everybody who fit the bill for

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Speaker 4: one of those characters appears in this series.

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Speaker 1: One of my children actually got sacked from her role

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Speaker 1: in this production because of Headley's incredibly high, i would say,

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Speaker 1: potentially unreasonable standards.

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Speaker 5: I know that details matter to Headley, and having worked

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Speaker 5: in a couple of investigations with him now, and I

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Speaker 5: think this particular story is so epic it deserved an

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Speaker 5: epic treatment in podcast form as well.

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Speaker 1: I did devour the book, but as always, my much

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Speaker 1: more meticulous and forensic partner in crime, Christian Amiot, who's

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Speaker 1: the producer of the Front and also the producer of

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Speaker 1: this podcast, digested the book with all of her intellect

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Speaker 1: and attention, and she was desperate to find out what

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Speaker 1: had happened at the Curry Bizarre, what was going on

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Speaker 1: with Kristen.

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Speaker 4: This is something that our listeners will have heard by

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Speaker 4: this point that when I was going through the book,

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Speaker 4: and I think I was actually lulled into that saying

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Speaker 4: sense of security about this project as Headley when he

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Speaker 4: first pitched it, because we had just come off the

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Speaker 4: back of, as Headley said, the Teacher's Pet, we'd done

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Speaker 4: two inquiries off the back of Shandy's story Headley's other

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Speaker 4: investigative podcast. We had been probably for the better part

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Speaker 4: of two years at the Mercy of legal proceedings, where

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Speaker 4: the work is happening in the background of a very

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Speaker 4: dense and very important legal proceeding. So I looked at it,

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Speaker 4: this four hundred page pdf, and went, when have we

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Speaker 4: ever had the full story there to just record? And

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Speaker 4: then when I got to the point of sitting down

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Speaker 4: to read it, I thought, well, the first thing I've

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Speaker 4: got to do is extract the voice acting, And so

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Speaker 4: I started doing that, and I was pulling all of

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Speaker 4: these lines out every time I came across a new

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Speaker 4: character or a new line for somebody who I had

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Speaker 4: already met in the past. I'd put it into this

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Speaker 4: gigantic spreadsheet that now barely even loads because there are

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Speaker 4: so many lines and characters in it. But I kept

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Speaker 4: seeing these references to some sort of incident that happened

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Speaker 4: at the Curry Bizarre, and I was saying to you, guys,

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Speaker 4: I'm not getting to this fast enough. I have to

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Speaker 4: know what happened at the Curry Bizarre. And it's really

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Speaker 4: it doesn't appear until quite late in the series, but

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Speaker 4: it is. It's quite scandalous when it does appear. I

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Speaker 4: did think it was actually a really great encapsulation of

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Speaker 4: the failures of the Queensland Health bureaucracy in this story

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Speaker 4: and elsewhere, because that when whistleblowers like Tony Hoffman were

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Speaker 4: saying trying to raise their concerns with the higher ups,

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Speaker 4: with hospital administrators, there was nobody to be found, or

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Speaker 4: she was told repeatedly, everything's okay, don't worry about it.

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Speaker 4: You just go back to being a nurse. And then

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Speaker 4: as soon as they looked bad, or as soon as

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Speaker 4: they had an opportunity to make the people who had

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Speaker 4: exposed this scandal look bad, all of a sudden, affidavits

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Speaker 4: and statements were coming from every direction.

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Speaker 1: Karina Burger is an eminent lawyer in her own right

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Speaker 1: now she's putting her toe into the murky world of journalism.

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Speaker 2: She's working with Headley and ls as a producer.

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Speaker 1: Now, Karina, you had skin in this particular game too.

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Speaker 1: You happened to be an expert in overseas trained doctors.

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Speaker 1: How did that happen?

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Speaker 6: Yeah, I did, Claire.

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Speaker 3: It's a funny story.

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Speaker 6: Back in two thousand and five, I was trying to

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Speaker 6: wrap up my law degree and get an honors degree

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Speaker 6: at the same time, and my supervisor desperately wanted me

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Speaker 6: to do a thesis on pharmaceutical pricing and I couldn't

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Speaker 6: think of anything worse and spending six months of my

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Speaker 6: life on that topic. So I politely declined and said, no,

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Speaker 6: I need something with more of a human element. And

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Speaker 6: he said, oh, there's this situation unfolding in Queensland involving

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Speaker 6: an overseeing trained doctor, and how about you examine the

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Speaker 6: regulation of those doctors, using doctor Patel as a case study.

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Speaker 6: And so that was how I spent half of two

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Speaker 6: thousand and five researching and closely following Headley's articles. And

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Speaker 6: I remember getting so frustrated towards the end because I

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Speaker 6: had to turn in my paper and Headley just kept

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Speaker 6: on posting articles day after day, which necessitated me updating

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Speaker 6: everything day after day, and I just had to draw

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Speaker 6: a line in the sand at one point and think

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Speaker 6: I've done. But yeah, it's really strange now, twenty years

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Speaker 6: later to be working with Headley and to have had

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Speaker 6: a small amount of involvement in the Sick to Death

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Speaker 6: podcast series.

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Speaker 3: But we didn't have any contact then. In fact, we

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Speaker 3: didn't have any contact at all until twenty twenty four

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Speaker 3: when you wrote to us saying I love podcast. Can

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Speaker 3: I help in some way?

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Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, And I did not think it would

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Speaker 6: end up involving Doc to Death and Sick to Death

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Speaker 6: not at all.

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Speaker 1: What's it been like stepping into this story and you,

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Speaker 1: along with Kristen and our reporter Sarah Elks, have been

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Speaker 1: writing some of the stories that have been accompanying the

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Speaker 1: rollout of this show Sick to Death. What's it been

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Speaker 1: like participating and observing this story now from a journalistic

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Speaker 1: point of view?

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Speaker 6: Yeah, a different process because obviously now my role is

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Speaker 6: more about storytelling and less about legal analysis. But the

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Speaker 6: legal issues are still really relevant, and Headley and I

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Speaker 6: have been working very closely on those over the last

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Speaker 6: few days to prepare the final episode or two of

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Speaker 6: the podcast. But I suppose this storytelling function is a

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Speaker 6: different one to critically analyzing the law and critically analyzing

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Speaker 6: all the regulation of the doctors, and there's more of

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Speaker 6: a human element. I've been speaking with people like Tony Hoffman,

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Speaker 6: which is just amazing given I was writing about her

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Speaker 6: twenty years ago. To actually have a phone call with

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Speaker 6: her and get a better sense of who she is

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Speaker 6: as a person has just been incredible. But of course

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Speaker 6: now what we know twenty years on is the effect

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Speaker 6: that the whistleblowing has really had on her and her life,

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Speaker 6: and I've found that really upsetting, to be honest, coming.

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Speaker 1: Up why this shocking story is more relevant than ever

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. While I've got you, I wanted

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Speaker 1: to let you know you can listen to every episode

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Speaker 1: of Sick to Death and all the Australians Award winning

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Speaker 1: podcasts for free this weekend. That includes subscriber only bonus

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Speaker 1: episodes and new episodes of.

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Speaker 2: Stick to Death.

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Speaker 1: Plus you can experience all the Australians journalism for free

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Speaker 1: across our website and app. Check us out at the

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Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au.

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Speaker 2: And we'll be back after the break. Jasper. This was

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Speaker 2: a truly epic production.

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Speaker 1: You and I have talked on the front before about

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Speaker 1: podcasting and audio as a very human medium and why

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Speaker 1: we believe, without any self interest at all, that audiences

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Speaker 1: want to hear human voices, human stories. This is a

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Speaker 1: very human story. What's been your kind of reflection on this,

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Speaker 1: even as you were going through the ordeal of making

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Speaker 1: this massive show, which is like conducting a symphony, on

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Speaker 1: what the story is actually about, what it means?

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Speaker 5: Well, I think to make the comparison with a conductor

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Speaker 5: who's sounding up there in front of a symphony, the

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Speaker 5: point is to be up there, immersing yourself in the music.

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Speaker 5: It's not to be worried about what the second violin

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Speaker 5: is playing, or if the viola player is going to

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Speaker 5: play the melody in tune or something. And so I think,

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Speaker 5: of course, there are a lot of moving parts with

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Speaker 5: a project like this, and from a technical point of view,

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Speaker 5: it's ambitious, but it would be a missed opportunity to

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Speaker 5: get too bogged down in that without really appreciating the

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Speaker 5: story and kind of living in it in a way.

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Speaker 5: And there were so many things I reflected on working

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Speaker 5: on this podcast. I mean one of them was I

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Speaker 5: would just hate to do the wrong thing and find

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Speaker 5: myself in Heavily Thomas's crosshairs. I mean, I also wondered

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Speaker 5: whether Heavily had ever written anything that hadn't resulted in

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Speaker 5: a royal commission or maybe the sort of key figure

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Speaker 5: ending up behind bars. But I think that is a

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Speaker 5: testament to the writing and the attention to detail, and

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Speaker 5: how it was such a fantastic world to live in

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Speaker 5: for the couple of years that I've been working on

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Speaker 5: this show, and there's so many incredible aspects to the story.

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Speaker 5: There's so many aspects of the storytelling that I appreciate,

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Speaker 5: and the whole thing is driven by such a fascinating

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Speaker 5: cast of characters.

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Speaker 1: Chrissy, you're a podcast connoisseur, review podcasts, you're an expert.

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Speaker 1: You listen to more of them than anyone I know,

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Speaker 1: and of course you make podcasts here with us. What

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Speaker 1: was your sense of this as just in terms of

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Speaker 1: pure story and what it meant.

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Speaker 4: It was, actually, in my probably very unique experience, a

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Speaker 4: full circle moment again through the lens of Headley's reporting

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Speaker 4: that was done in two thousand and five two thousand

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Speaker 4: and six and the work that we had just done,

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Speaker 4: particularly on the two commissions of inquiry, into Queensland fraught

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Speaker 4: DNA lab and all of the issues that were going

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Speaker 4: on there and still are to some degree. You could

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Speaker 4: have taken either of those stories, which are very different

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Speaker 4: in their own right, and interchanged the problems with the bureaucracy,

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Speaker 4: the problems with secrecy, the problems with losing sight of

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Speaker 4: what this is all for, which is for Queenslanders, for

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Speaker 4: people who are unwell, who need help, for victims of crime.

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Speaker 4: So it's a pretty amazing view not only of Headley's

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Speaker 4: reporting on health in Queensland and his obvious drive to

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Speaker 4: deliver public interest journalism for Queenslanders, but it's also a

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Speaker 4: cautionary tale for all of us. It's not a world

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Speaker 4: that I would want to find myself in, certainly, and

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Speaker 4: I think the more aware we can make people of it,

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Speaker 4: even years down the track, then we're all better for

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Speaker 4: it heavily.

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Speaker 1: Something I've learned about you is that you never let

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Speaker 1: a story go for good and bad. Sometimes I wish

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Speaker 1: you would allow us to wrap up season twenty four

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Speaker 1: of whatever shew it is that we're working on. But

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Speaker 1: you are tenacious like no one else. Do you feel

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Speaker 1: as though the story of Jant Patel is done?

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Speaker 3: Now the story of doctor Patel is going to be

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Speaker 3: repeated over and over again, but with different people, different doctors,

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Speaker 3: different health systems. And that's because systems improved for a

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Speaker 3: while after a catastrophe like the one we had in

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Speaker 3: two thousand and five and the lessons that came out

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Speaker 3: of the subsequent Commission of Inquiry and so on. But

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Speaker 3: then the bureaucracies and the politicians just revert back to

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Speaker 3: what they did very badly, what they did wickedly that

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Speaker 3: led to the catastrophe in the first place. And that's

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Speaker 3: why this story is so important again now twenty twenty

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Speaker 3: one years later, to remind people, whether they're the doctors, nurses,

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Speaker 3: patients and journalists, that this happens, and that just because

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Speaker 3: this is two decades doesn't mean it won't happen again.

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Speaker 3: It will happen again. There will be across Australia now unqualified,

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Speaker 3: incompetent and even fraudulent practitioners, and we have to be

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Speaker 3: on the alert and we have to demand higher standards

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Speaker 3: because if we don't, and that goes for reporters as well,

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Speaker 3: who are questioning systems and bureaucrats, the norm will continue.

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Speaker 3: For me, reading my book, again and reading it into

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Speaker 3: a microphone as the narrator. It was a really good experience.

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Speaker 3: I had forgotten so much of what went on, and

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Speaker 3: I think that because the story also is interwoven with

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Speaker 3: events in the newsroom that I worked in at the time.

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Speaker 3: It's intermingled with stories about my family and professional and

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Speaker 3: personal friends. It's a really significant trip down memory lane too,

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Speaker 3: and it was very touching and moving at times, and

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Speaker 3: particularly in two thousand and five, as right near the

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Speaker 3: pointy end of the health inquiry and all of the

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Speaker 3: events that we were reporting on so carefully and closely

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Speaker 3: back then, and my own mum, Diana, became very sick

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Speaker 3: and was in a public hospital on the Gold Coast,

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Speaker 3: and I was feeling quite guilty that I hadn't been

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Speaker 3: spending nearly as much time with her as I should have,

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Speaker 3: and that was partly because of well significantly because of

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Speaker 3: the commitments to this case and this story. And we

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Speaker 3: had young children at the time as well, and Mum

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Speaker 3: died right at the time of the release of the

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Speaker 3: final report in late October two thousand and five. She

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Speaker 3: died in hospital, and I understood in a very personal

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Speaker 3: way how shattering a sudden and unexplained death in a

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Speaker 3: public hospital setting can be it b all home far

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Speaker 3: too personally.

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Speaker 1: I think it reinforces the role of a journalist. When

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Speaker 1: people are themselves in the middle of grief, they're not

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Speaker 1: in the right place to be pursuing answers or pursuing justice,

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Speaker 1: and their judgment might be clouded. That's the role that

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Speaker 1: we as journalists play, to come in and be dispassionate

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Speaker 1: and be dog good in a way that you were Headley.

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Speaker 2: It's been a wonderful adventure.

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Speaker 1: So thank you guys, and we'll just look out for

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Speaker 1: Headley's next big idea.

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Speaker 4: After a long and well deserved break.

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Speaker 3: Thank you again for making it happen. This book although

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Speaker 3: by Australian standards in two thousand and seven and was

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Speaker 3: a best seller, the numbers of sales are minuscule compared

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Speaker 3: with the listeners and the interest from the public who

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Speaker 3: follow us now and want to listen to our podcasts.

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Speaker 3: And therefore taking a very powerful and important case, a

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Speaker 3: case study of a sick health system, and turning that

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Speaker 3: into an audio production twenty years later, so that it's

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Speaker 3: heard for the first time by many, many people, millions

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Speaker 3: of people that will end up being ultimately over months

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Speaker 3: and years. That's something that is really important. Maybe fifteen

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Speaker 3: minutes before we started recording for this conversation, I finished

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Speaker 3: listening to episode sixteen, the last one in the series

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Speaker 3: that's based on the book, and I got to the end,

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Speaker 3: I just thought, Oh, my god, that was just such

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Speaker 3: an achievement, and by you all, and you in particular Jasper,

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Speaker 3: having pulled together so much material, done thousands of edits,

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Speaker 3: and I know Kristen and Steph wrangled a huge number

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Speaker 3: of voice actors. I was really moved, and I just

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Speaker 3: want to thank you all because I think you've done

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Speaker 3: a stellar job. It was so much bigger than I

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Speaker 3: thought it would be when Claire and I first talked

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Speaker 3: about it, and now we're pretty much there, we're done.

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Speaker 5: It's really lovely to hear. I mean, it's funny to

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Speaker 5: think that we ever thought that this would be anything

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Speaker 5: other than an enormous amount of work. You know, it's

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Speaker 5: turning a three hundred and fifty page plus book into

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Speaker 5: a podcast. I think when I first heard about it,

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Speaker 5: I wasn't one of the people who thought, oh, this

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Speaker 5: should be easy enough. Five panics actually, but I agree

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Speaker 5: if it feels like a really huge achievement to get

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Speaker 5: to the finish line. I think from the very beginning

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Speaker 5: it was a very ambitious undertaking and so to have

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Speaker 5: landed here is something to be proud of for all

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Speaker 5: of us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've got two hundred and fifty unemployed voice

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Speaker 1: actors ready to go and Jaspers available to help. Thanks everyone,

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Speaker 1: Sick to Death is live now wherever you listen. Our

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Speaker 1: team on the show also included Stephanie Coombs, Leat Sammaglu,

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Speaker 1: Slade Gibson, Sarah Elks, Neil Sutherland and many more. Normally

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Speaker 1: we publish episodes early for our subscribers, and this weekend

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Speaker 1: March fourteen and fifteen, new visitors to be Australian dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au can listen to every episode for free,

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Speaker 1: along with all our journalism. It's open house at The

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Speaker 1: Australian and we'd love you to come and sample all

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Speaker 1: our reporting from politics into crime, to entertainment and culture.

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Speaker 1: Check us out at the Australian dot com dot au