Australia’s own ABC Radio Australia has been one of the constants of international broadcasting for more than 80 years. It began as an anti-propaganda service in the opening days of WWII, and has since become a mode of Australian soft diplomacy in Asia and the Pacific, particularly as geopolitical changes in the region brought new challenges in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 2022 Phil Kafcaloudes wrote the history of RA, Australia Calling (ABC Books), which also drew on his nine years as host of the network’s breakfast program. His talk is a timely examination of the on-going value of international communication as security and social issues continue to arise in the Pacific.

Dr Phil Kafcaloudes 

Dr Phil Kafcaloudes is an author, journalist and writer who presented the breakfast program on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Australia for nine years, including the ABC’s first English language program from the Chinese mainland. In 2022 the ABC published Australia Calling, his history of international broadcasting. He has taught journalism at La Trobe University and at RMIT, earning a teaching award from the Journalism Education and Research Association. He has also taught journalism in South Africa, Vietnam, Malaysia, Fiji, Samoa and PNG. For a Churchill Fellowship, he studied journalism trauma training worldwide. He has written a journalism text, and a book of short stories.

In 2011 his novel Someone Else’s War was published in Australasia and translated into Greek for Europe as Olga’s War. His PhD looked at oral history storytelling, which involved adapting the novel into a play called Of Forgetting. In 2023 Phil presented excerpts of the play at the Athens Centre, and in September 2024 the play was staged at the La Mama theatre in Melbourne with his wife Jackie Rees in the title role of Olga Stambolis.

In 2025 his biography of the rock band Deep Purple was published in the UK, the US and Australia. He is currently editing his second novel.