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Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypothetical, Closing The Gap

NITV EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE - 8.00pm AESDT, Friday 13 February 2009 - National Indigenous TV (NITV) presents a one hour Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypothetical, Closing The Gap at 8.00pm AESDT on Friday 13 February.

On the first anniversary of the Prime Minister’s national apology to the Stolen Generation, Closing The Gap is a landmark television program that explores the way forward between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypothetical programs, that have been seen on Australian television since the late 1980’s, are thought provoking journeys into current socio-economic issues confronting all Australians. The purpose of the Hypothetical is to show things as they are by showing what they may become.
“I am delighted to be able to present our viewers with a Geoffrey Robertson Hypothetical” said NITV CEO Patricia Turner. “This landmark television event will address important questions and problems for our people. Hopefully it will take us all one step closer to closing the gap.”

In Closing The Gap, Geoffrey Robertson QC will lead a distinguished panel of decision makers and stakeholders through hypothetical scenarios and interactions. The panel is made up of lawyers, cultural brokers, politicians, community representatives and other practitioners, through a range of Indigenous issues and dilemmas that affect all Australians.

As counsel in many landmark cases in constitutional, criminal and media law in the courts of Britain and the Commonwealth, Geoffrey Robertson is well skilled to guide the panelists as they confront and discuss a Treaty, the Northern Territory intervention, health, housing, education, employment, compensation, law and order and cultural issues, amongst other subjects facing Australia.

Masterfully crafted, the Hypothetical is a world where scenarios become real; where issues are raised that many politicians and community leaders would rather avoid; where panelists become players in a game of intellectual chess and viewers hang on every dramatic moment. Geoffrey Robertson QC has served part-time as a UN appeal judge at its war crimes courts and today maintains a wide advisory practice in London. In 2008 the UN Secretary General appointed him as one of the three distinguished jurist members of the UN’s Internal Justice Council. He writes and broadcasts regularly and is the founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers, the UK’s leading human rights practice. He is a part-time judge in London and visiting Professor in Human Rights at Queen Mary College, University of London. Geoffrey Robertson recently represented the Tasmanian Aborigines and successfully stopped experimentations on the remains of their ancestors and forced the British Natural History Museum to return them to burial in Tasmania. NITV, established by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and funded by the Federal Government, is a new 24 hour television service, for all Australians, to inform, educate and entertain as well as showcase the rich diversity in culture from all over the nation.

NITV is broadcast via direct to home satellite to Indigenous communities at 150 transmission sites in remote areas, including Channel 35 in Mt Isa and Channel 60 in Bourke. NITV is available on various networks throughout Australia, including Channel 180 on Foxtel, Austar and Optus, Channel 40 on Sydney’s digital television service Digital Forty Four, Channel 502 on Transact services in Canberra, Channel 6 on the Neighbourhood Cable service in Geelong, Ballarat and Mildura. NITV is also broadcast on one of four internal channels inside Parliament House.

Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypothetical Closing The Gap broadcast on NITV at 8.00pm AESDT on Friday 13 February is truly thought-provoking television, which will create debate and change that will affect all Australians.

For further media enquiries, please contact Julieanne McCormack, Publicist.

Source: NITV

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