Monday Conference (1971 - 1979)
Current affairs program
Weekly x 60 minutes
Series synopsis:
A weekly one-hour television debate around the major current affairs issues of the day, usually in the style of a forum, with two speakers representing either side of the topic. The audience is drawn from the community, who represent the range of views about the subject and throw questions from the floor to the two invited guests. The often fiery debate would be moderated by the seemingly mild-mannered Robert (Bob) Moore.
Curator’s Notes:
The program was always enormously popular with viewers. Its prime time slot at 8 pm on Monday evenings guaranteed a good rating. The adversarial nature of the show brought out the extremes on any issue, which made for an entertaining debate on topics ranging from the death penalty to the independence of PNG to a debate about homosexuality held in Mt Isa.
The program’s executive producer and presenter was Robert Moore who began in broadcasting at the BBC. He returned to Australia as a reporter with the newly formed weekly current affairs program Four Corners (2008), becoming its first executive producer in 1965-67. He began Monday Conference after Profiles of Power (1970), a series of very successful interviews with influential Australians, including Sir Frank Packer and Nugget Coombs.
While on a break from Monday Conference, preparing a series of interviews for a new series Faces in the ’80s (1979), he died suddenly from heart disease in 1979.
Titles in this series
Monday Conference – PNG 1971
Robert Moore is the moderator and Donald Hogg and Richard Beckett are the interviewers of the impressive New Guinea politician John Guise, later to be knighted Sir John Guise. They’re asking him about his country’s timetable to independence and the ...
Monday Conference – Rhodesia or Zimbabwe 1973
Robert Moore interviews Senator Glen Sheil from Queensland, who has just returned from a week-long fact-finding tour of Rhodesia. His belief that Rhodesia is a fine and progressive African country is contrasted with the views of Bishop Donal Lamont. The ...
