The Dead Can't Sue

ABC Australia
  • 4.0 (12)
  • History
  • Updated Weekly

Serious academics. Dead subjects. A bit of gossip.  Is it appropriate for historians to gossip about the dead? Associate Professors Alecia Simmonds and Leigh Boucher aren't afraid to find out. In The Dead Can't Sue, they poke around in the entrails of Australian history, dishing up the best dirt and juiciest scoops on our nation's dead. Each week, you'll join us for the best dinner party conversations you've ever overheard, as Alecia and Leigh bring you their unfiltered takes. There'll be big names you'll get to know in new ways, as well as names you've never heard of, with jaw-dropping stories. Rebels, divas, convicts, heroes, scoundrels and everything in between.

  1. 1d ago

    Daisy Kwok: From Sydney to Shanghai to shovelling sh*t

    HELP! We are doing a listener survey and we want to hear from you. It's your turn to tell us what you really think - click here and complete the short survey. The White Australia Policy seems to be the spectre haunting many episodes of our podcast/Australian history. This week we meet Daisy Kwok, just one Chinese Australian whose life was changed by one of the world's worst immigration policies.  Born in Sydney in 1909 in the lap of luxury, Daisy and her family leave Australia, fleeing racism but also chasing further riches in Shanghai in the 1920s, the ‘Paris of the East’.  There Daisy becomes an it-girl of the bustling cosmopolitan boom town before things come crashing down (can you hear the clap of thunder of the communist revolution in the distance?).  SOURCES  Kwok, Daisy. Shanghai Daisy: The Autobiography of Daisy Kwok. Edited by Tess Johnston and Graham Earnshaw. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2019.  Brown, Jeremy, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.  Chen, Danyan. Shanghai Princess: Her Survival with Pride & Dignity. New York: Better Link Press, 2010.  Fitzgerald, Shirley. Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney’s Chinese. Sydney: Halstead Press, 2008  Henriot, Christian, and Wen-hsin Yeh  In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.  Loy-Wilson, Sophie. “Daisy Kwok’s Shanghai: Life in China before and after 1949.” In Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia, edited by Kate Bagnall and Julia T. Martínez. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2021.  Loy-Wilson, Sophie. Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China. London: Routledge, 2017.  Listen to the RN Earshot episode about Daisy Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Daisy Kwok: From Sydney to Shanghai to shovelling sh*t

  2. Oct 5

    Joh Bjelke-Petersen:  The ‘hillbilly dictator’ goes down (part 2)

    HELP! We are doing a listener survey and we want to hear from you. It's your turn to tell us what you really think - click here and complete the short survey. Sharpen your knives and joins us as we dissect the recipe for Joh Bjelke-Petersen's political magic and figure out how he held onto the premiership for decades, despite his truly staggering corruption.  Then we dine out on Joh’s downfall (could the Fitzgerald Inquiry report be the read of 1987?!), before asking whether Joh really deserves his reputation as Australia's number one political villain.  Plus, Leigh comes for the fourth estate (hey, that's us!).  SOURCES  Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. The Joh Tapes on Leadership. Interviews produced by Richard Lancaster and Barry Martin. Seven-part video oral-history collection. Accession 720849. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.  Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. Don’t You Worry about That! The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990.  Queensland. Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. Report of a Commission of Inquiry Pursuant to Orders in Council. Chaired by G. E. Fitzgerald. Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1989.   Megarrity, Lyndon. “The Lion and the Fox: Whitlam, Bjelke-Petersen and the Queensland Electorate, 1961–1975.” ANU Historical Journal II, no. 3 (2022): 23–52  Robinson, Shirleene. “Homophobia as Party Politics: The Construction of the ‘Homosexual Deviant’ in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.” Queensland Review 17, no. 1 (2010): 29–45  Walter, James. “Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: ‘The Populist Autocrat.’” In The Premiers of Queensland, edited by Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb, and Rae Wear, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2003.  Wear, Rae. “‘Never-Ending Story’: Public Accountability and Public Administration Reform in Queensland since 1989.” Queensland Review 18, no. 2 (2011): 175–89  Wear, Rae. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: The Lord’s Premier. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2002.  Whitton, Evan. The Hillbilly Dictator: Australia’s Police State. Crows Nest, NSW: ABC Enterprises, 1989.  Williams, Paul D. “Leaders and Political Culture: The Development of the Queensland Premiership, 1859–2009.” Queensland Review 16, no. 1 (2009): 15–34  Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Joh Bjelke-Petersen:  The ‘hillbilly dictator’ goes down (part 2)

  3. Sep 28

    Joh Bjelke-Petersen: The 40-year-old virgin enters politics (part 1)

    Queensland's longest-serving premier is basically the bogeyman of Australian politics, a police-loving proto-Trump 'hillbilly dictator' the Sunshine State is still recovering from.  This week we retrace Joh’s rise from fail son to peanut farmer, and finally to the highest office in Queensland.   Plus... Joh marries a woman named Flo and then begins calling her ‘mum’ (not weird at all).  Also, while you’re here, please do our listener survey. SOURCES  Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. The Joh Tapes on Leadership. Interviews produced by Richard Lancaster and Barry Martin. Seven-part video oral-history collection. Accession 720849. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.  Bjelke-Petersen, Joh. Don’t You Worry about That! The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990.  Queensland. Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. Report of a Commission of Inquiry Pursuant to Orders in Council. Chaired by G. E. Fitzgerald. Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1989.   Megarrity, Lyndon. “The Lion and the Fox: Whitlam, Bjelke-Petersen and the Queensland Electorate, 1961–1975.” ANU Historical Journal II, no. 3 (2022): 23–52  Robinson, Shirleene. “Homophobia as Party Politics: The Construction of the ‘Homosexual Deviant’ in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.” Queensland Review 17, no. 1 (2010): 29–45  Walter, James. “Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: ‘The Populist Autocrat.’” In The Premiers of Queensland, edited by Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb, and Rae Wear, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2003.  Wear, Rae. “‘Never-Ending Story’: Public Accountability and Public Administration Reform in Queensland since 1989.” Queensland Review 18, no. 2 (2011): 175–89  Wear, Rae. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: The Lord’s Premier. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2002.  Whitton, Evan. The Hillbilly Dictator: Australia’s Police State. Crows Nest, NSW: ABC Enterprises, 1989.  Williams, Paul D. “Leaders and Political Culture: The Development of the Queensland Premiership, 1859–2009.” Queensland Review 16, no. 1 (2009): 15–34  Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Joh Bjelke-Petersen: The 40-year-old virgin enters politics (part 1)

  4. Sep 21

    Faith Bandler: Exposing CSR & Australia’s slave trade, aka 'Blackbirding' (part 2)

    Referendum won, tick. Next up, Faith has a new fight on her hands: one that includes exposing the sugar giants who profited from her father’s abduction and unpaid labour. Watch out.  But first, she must return to the island paradise where her father grew up: Ambrym. What she finds there will spur her on for decades of fighting.  Alecia and Leigh get fired up as they retrace Faith’s staggering journey for justice and connect Australia’s 1800s slave history to farming practices still in operation today.  SOURCES Marilyn Lake, Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, Allen and Unwin, 2002  Ryan Butta, Blackbirding, Black Inc, 2026  Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Stabilising violence in colonial rule: Settlement and the indentured labour trade in Queensland in the 1870s, Liverpool University Press, 2017  Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2016   Faith Bandler and Len Fox, The Time was ripe: a history of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956-69), 1983  Faith Bandler oral history interview by Carolyn Craig, MLOH 307, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales  Ryan, M. D. J. (2024). ‘A great many of them die’: Sugar, race and cheapness in colonial Queensland. Journal of Agrarian Change, 24(2), e12574. Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

  5. Sep 14

    Faith Bandler: The ‘gentle’ activist with an ASIO file who changed the constitution (part 1)

    Faith Bandler was the daughter of a slave, who became the face of the 1967 referendum and a celebrity in the process. And she did it all while keeping house and raising kids.  Few know her name now, yet Alecia argues that Faith is just as important to the fight for racial justice in Australia as Martin Luther King was to the USA.  Despite many people’s assumptions, Faith was not a First Nations Australian. So how did a South Sea Islander woman, with Indian and Scottish heritage, become the face of one of Australia’s biggest Indigenous causes?    Special thanks to ABC's senior cultural advisor Miriam Corowa and Waskam Emelda Davis.  SOURCES Marilyn Lake, Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, Allen and Unwin, 2002  Ryan Butta, Blackbirding, Black Inc, 2026  Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Stabilising violence in colonial rule: Settlement and the indentured labour trade in Queensland in the 1870s, Liverpool University Press, 2017  Tracey Banivanuar Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2016   Faith Bandler and Len Fox, The Time was ripe: a history of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (1956-69), 1983  Faith Bandler oral history interview by Carolyn Craig, MLOH 307, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales  Faith Bandler, ASIO file: Mitchell Library 3/55. FCAATSI  Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

  6. Sep 7

    Nellie Melba: How a facelift downed our diva (part 2)

    To rise to stardom, our OG diva needed a rebrand, so she trades her given name - Helen (not exactly giving superstar, no offence to all the Helens) - and takes on Nellie Melba.   In the second part of her story, Nellie becomes the Kylie Minogue of her time, charming the masses in London's best theatres and touring the world drumming up support for the war effort (with some suspicious accidents along the way).  But beneath the glamour, Nellie is in a domestic war of her own. Leigh and Alecia try to make sense of how she faced her own battles, and then how she came to her own sudden, somewhat peculiar death.  Warning: This episode discusses intimate partner violence. SOURCES Melba, Nellie. Melodies and Memories. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1925.  “Melba Remembers—An Interview with Dame Nellie Melba.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 3, no. 2 (June 1, 1922)  “Coombe Cottage: Dame Nellie Melba’s Home—Third of a Series of Studies of Notable Australian Homes.” The Australian Home Beautiful: A Journal for the Home Builder 6, no. 6 (June 1, 1928)  “In Dame Nellie Melba’s Paris Home.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 11, no. 7 (July 1, 1930)  Campbell, Rachel M. “Dame Nellie Melba: Celebrity and the Portrait.” Context: A Journal of Music Research, no. 40 (January 2015): 69–79.  Modjeska, Drusilla, Susan Dermody, and John Docker, eds. Nellie Melba, Ginger Meggs and Friends: Essays in Australian Cultural History. Malmsbury: Kibble Books, 1982.  Blainey, Ann. I Am Melba: A Biography. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008.  Wainwright, Robert. Nellie: The life and loves of Dame Nellie Melba. Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 2021  Davis, Richard. Nellie Melba: The legend lives. Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2025 Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Nellie Melba: How a facelift downed our diva (part 2)

  7. Aug 31

    Nellie Melba: How the prima donna dodged her sh*tty husband to find fame and fortune (part 1)

    Opera star Dame Nellie Melba is the face of our $100 note, and the inspiration for the famous Peach Melba dessert. In short she’s an icon – one of Australia’s original divas. But how did she go from young Melbourne tomboy to domestic abuse survivor and then global superstar?  Leigh dives deep on Nellie’s life of tragedy and drama, worthy of its own opera, and proves to Alecia this diva is a little saltier than the sweet pudding named in her honour.  Plus, we explore the origins of long service leave and how Nellie falls flat on her face during her first audition in Europe.  Warning: This episode discusses intimate partner violence. Melba, Nellie. Melodies and Memories. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1925.  “Melba Remembers—An Interview with Dame Nellie Melba.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 3, no. 2 (June 1, 1922)  “Coombe Cottage: Dame Nellie Melba’s Home—Third of a Series of Studies of Notable Australian Homes.” The Australian Home Beautiful: A Journal for the Home Builder 6, no. 6 (June 1, 1928)  “In Dame Nellie Melba’s Paris Home.” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 11, no. 7 (July 1, 1930)  Campbell, Rachel M. “Dame Nellie Melba: Celebrity and the Portrait.” Context: A Journal of Music Research, no. 40 (January 2015): 69–79.  Modjeska, Drusilla, Susan Dermody, and John Docker, eds. Nellie Melba, Ginger Meggs and Friends: Essays in Australian Cultural History. Malmsbury: Kibble Books, 1982.  Blainey, Ann. I Am Melba: A Biography. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008.  Wainwright, Robert. Nellie: The life and loves of Dame Nellie Melba. Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 2021  Davis, Richard. Nellie Melba: The legend lives. Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2025  Woollacott, Angela. To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity. Oxford University Press USA, 2001.  Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Nellie Melba: How the prima donna dodged her sh*tty husband to find fame and fortune (part 1)

  8. Aug 24

    Miles Franklin: Our feminist hero flirts with fascism (part 2)

    While the blokes were off on the frontlines of WWI, Miles Franklin used writing as her weapon for changing the world. But was our much-loved matriarch of Australian literature a tad fascist?  In the second part of Miles Franklin's story, we see her go from bush girl to political animal. Starting with Miles’s globe-trotting feminist and labour activist days, to her flirtations with not one but two millionaire brothers, it’s a wild ride.  Warning: This episode discusses sexual assault.  SOURCES  Roe, Jill. Her brilliant career: the life of Stella Miles Franklin. Harvard University Press, 2009  Barnard, Marjorie. Miles Franklin, Hill of Content, 1967  Roe, Jill. Miles Franklin: A Short Biography, 2018  Lapierre, Alexandre. The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin, Allen & Unwin,  2026  Sheridan, Susan. "Louisa Lawson, Miles Franklin and Feminist Writing, 1888–1901." Australian Feminist Studies 3.7-8 (1988): 29-47  Knowles, Sandra. "The not quite real Miles Franklin: Diaries as performance." Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 4 (2005): 185-200  Franks, Rachel. "Miles Franklin." State Library of New South Wales, 2022  Knowles, Sandra. The performances of a psychic privacy: waiting for the real Miles Franklin. Diss. UNSW Sydney, 2007  Bird, David. Nazi Dreamtime: Australian Enthusiasts for Hitler's Germany. Anthem Press, 2014  Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh BoucherSupervising Producer: Hannah ReichProducer: Hannah JoseVideo producer: Christian HarimanowExecutive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric GeorgeHead of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica RadburnTheme: Martin PeraltaArtwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves

    Miles Franklin: Our feminist hero flirts with fascism (part 2)
See All (18)

4
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Serious academics. Dead subjects. A bit of gossip.  Is it appropriate for historians to gossip about the dead? Associate Professors Alecia Simmonds and Leigh Boucher aren't afraid to find out. In The Dead Can't Sue, they poke around in the entrails of Australian history, dishing up the best dirt and juiciest scoops on our nation's dead. Each week, you'll join us for the best dinner party conversations you've ever overheard, as Alecia and Leigh bring you their unfiltered takes. There'll be big names you'll get to know in new ways, as well as names you've never heard of, with jaw-dropping stories. Rebels, divas, convicts, heroes, scoundrels and everything in between.

Information

  • Creator
    ABC Australia
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All right reserved.
  • Show Website
    The Dead Can't Sue

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