The Messenger The Wheeler Centre

This story echoes many of the challenges refugees in Nauru faced when I worked there in 2015. I hope with all my heart that the men from Manus can one day come to Australia. They are truely deserving and would make Australia a much better place with their presence and with their stories. Australia still needs to mature a lot as a nation and I hope our government can one day admit that they are party to psychological torture and human rights violations.
To Aziz and the men from Manus and the refugees and asylum
Seekers on Nauru, I am sorry for how my government has treated you and I hope we can make it right one day.

This is a beautiful (and painful) insight into Aziz's world. Please, everybody listen.
Some constructive critism though, its too long between actual events on Manus and the episode relating to it, maybe this is purposeful to try and give us a true sense of time moving so painfully slowly for those detained on Manus, but i feel that it is slowing the conversation that is sparked by listeners of this podcast I feel like maybe it is almost a disservice to Aziz and other detainees because his voice is not being heard nearer to 'real time'. It would have been great for example to hear his thoughts as we heard in the media about the death of his friend, about the american interviews, about the other recent events on Manus. It feels like we are missing a valuable voice in current events when we only hear it 6,7,8 months after the events happened. I understand that it is all volunteer hours to make the podcast and i am extremely grateful to able to hear this story at all, and appreciate the extraordinary amount of work that must go into producing something like this. I just hope that we can utilise Azizs willingness to share his pain and positivity to keep peoples attention on the human side of the story and i feel that in this modern world of the 24 hr news cycle and instant information gratiifcation that we will loose many people in the discussion if we dont try to be a little more up to date.
When i hear Azizs perspective on events it makes me want to agitate more, with friends, community and government, his story has so much power to transform peoples opinions, but often i feel like it might be too late to do anything meaningful by the time we hear his voice. It's all old news as far as the governments concerned by the time i have been inspired by the podcast to write letters - 6 months after the event. When Azizs voice is one of the only we hear from Manus i would just love it to have more power by making it current.
Australias treatment of detainees on Manus and Naru is sub human and makes me both ashamed to be Australian and also makes me want to act to prevent this treatment from happening. Thankyou so much for this podcast and bringing us a voice from this tragedy that i hope helps motivate Australians into action.

Heard Michael speak and looking forward to hearing this.