SBS set to launch new three-part series ‘Dirty Business: How Mining Made Australia’ on Sunday Jan 6 at 8:30pm produced by Renegade Factual
SBS will launch a new three-part series called ‘Dirty Business: How Mining Made Australia’ starting January 6th at 8:30pm produced by Renegade Films’ Renegade Factual.
A provoking and ground-breaking series, Dirty Business: How Mining Made Australia is the story of mining in this country. It explores how this industry has shaped Australia in unexpected and extraordinary ways and how it has influenced the nation, from the first gold rush to current political debate.
Mining has sparked mass migration yet ignited race riots; toppled prime ministers yet laid the foundation for modern democracy; wrenched Aboriginal lands away yet provides perhaps the best hope for the future of many Indigenous communities. With interviews from leading historians, opinion formers and industry experts, this series shows how in 150 years, nothing has influenced government, the economy, and the lives of the majority of Australians, like mining.
From the Gold Rush of the 1850s to the present day, the opening episode charts the key battles and dramatic turning points in the epic struggle to share in the vast mineral wealth of Australia. As mining made Australia rich, the money changed virtually every aspect of society. It forged multiethnic Australia; it caused riots, uprisings and racial violence. It built cities and supercharged the sex industry.
The second episode explores the fractious, drama-filled and utterly critical relationship between business and government and the importance of this affiliation to the nation. This episode illustrates how mining has been a crucible through which both the labour movement and big business have tried to influence, infiltrate and control governments. Prime Ministers from Billy Hughes, through to Chifley, Menzies, and Whitlam to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, are locked in a rocky relationship for better or worse with mining. It has seen the nation prosper and it has seen Prime Minister’s fall.
The final episode looks at the story of the conflict between mining and land rights, mining and environmentalism. It also tells how mining both destroyed and dispossessed many; it may be the best hope for the future of the First Australians.
From the fate of Indigenous Australia, and the land itself, to politics and society, the series tells the story of how deeply mining has shaped the face of the nation and how it will continue to do so, because Australia’s fate is so intimately entwined with the precious treasure trove contained in the primeval rocks of this ancient continent.