Defending Country is pleased that Australian journalist, Jeff McMullen AM has agreed to join our list of distinguished Supporters.
A journalist, author and film-maker for 50 years, Jeff's work includes many decades as a foreign correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reporting for Four Corners and Sixty Minutes, on The Issue series on ABC Television, Difference of Opinion, and a host of televised forums on the National Indigenous Television Network. Jeff has written, filmed and campaigned around the world to improve the health, education and human rights of Indigenous people.
For 14 years he was CEO (gratis) of Ian Thorpe's Fountain for Youth, a not for profit organisation which contributed support to early learning of pre-schoolers and literacy development in more than twenty remote communities and programs that support the cultural education of Indigenous children ...
McMullen has been involved in efforts to increase access to affordable food and improve nutrition in the remote Indigenous communities. At Wugularr, 120 kilometres south west of Katherine in the Northern Territory, the Fountain for Youth Foundation has worked with Aboriginal people to establish a Cultural Centre, Art shops, a small hotel and a growing tourism program. McMullen was the patron of the annual Walking with Spirits Festival where Aboriginal dancers and songmen performed at the serene natural amphitheatre of Malkgulumbu (Beswick Falls), just as they have for thousands of years.
In 2006, McMullen was awarded an Order of Australia (AM), for service to journalism and efforts to raise awareness of economic, social and human rights issues in Australia and overseas, as well as service to charity.
McMullen has in recent years published articles on the nuclear arms race, political language, birth and pregnancy, contaminated bore water, enslavement in the South Pacific, and other subjects.
Picture credit: detail of cover of McMullen's 2002 book, A Life of Extremes.
