TV programs worth watching
Sun November 14 — Sat November 20

It took all of history until the year 1804 for humanity's 
population to reach its first billion. Now a billion new people 
are added every dozen years. The relationship between planet and 
population is explored in The People Paradox (SBS Monday 
7.30pm).

The first episode in this two-part series investigates three 
countries where social and economic forces have produced starkly 
different population profiles. In India, women still bear an 
average of three to four children. Within a few decades, the 
country will overtake China as the world's most populous nation.

While India's population pyramid has the classic shape of a 
triangle resting on a wide base with large numbers of youth at 
the bottom and a small number of elderly at the top Japan's 
population pyramid is shifting to look like a triangle standing 
on its head. There are now more people over 60 than under 20.

Meanwhile, the population pyramid in sub-Saharan Africa is 
beginning to resemble an hourglass. Adults between the ages of 20 
and 60 are dying in the prime of life, largely due to AIDS, 
leaving the very old and young to fend for themselves.

The Clunies Ross Family ruled the Cocos Islands for more than 150 
years. The last "king", John Clunies Ross, was a feudal leader 
who walked the islands barefoot with a dagger in his belt, and 
had total control over the lives of his Cocos Malay workers.

Dynasties: The Clunies Ross Family (ABC Tuesday 8.00pm) is 
the story of the Scottish pioneering family that first settled 
this remote island paradise. The Cocos Islands are tiny specks in 
the Indian Ocean, closer to Indonesia than Australia. In 1857 
they became part of the British Empire, and later Queen Victoria 
granted the Clunies Ross family exclusive ownership.

In the early days the family made its wealth by staking a claim 
to the rich phosphate deposits on nearby Christmas Island. With 
the vast fortune a family mansion was built on the Cocos, and 
Malay workers were imported to develop the copra plantations. 
John Clunies Ross and his family lived in the mansion until their 
idyllic existence was shattered by a succession of Australian 
governments.

Before his demise Clunies Ross was the anachronistic colonial 
master, paying workers with plastic tokens redeemable only at the 
company store. Britain passed sovereignty over the Cocos Islands 
to Australia in 1955, and almost immediately Canberra began a war 
of attrition with Clunies Ross. Under the Hawke Government, 
Australia bought out the family's land. They boycotted the 
shipping company owned by Clunies Ross, sending him bankrupt. 
John Clunies Ross went into exile in Perth, broken and 
impoverished.

While the Clunies Ross family maintain they were acting for the 
common good, their history as feudal autocratic exploiters is in 
no doubt.

After the Second World War, Japan embraced the "Peace 
Constitution", which renounced the use of force in international 
disputes, and banned Japan from having its own military forces. 
Yet the country still maintained "Self-Defence" Forces (SDF). 
Whether Japan should or should not have the SDF has been 
controversial ever since, often provoking right-wing 
nationalistic outrage such as the failed coup attempt by author 
Yukio Mishima in 1970 and his subsequent ritual suicide.

The film KT (SBS Wednesday 11.50pm) is based on another 
political incident of that time. In 1973, a Japanese intelligence 
officer became involved in a Korean Central Intelligence Agency 
(KCIA) plot to abduct and murder the South Korean dissident (who 
later became President) Kim Dae-jung.

The southwest of Western Australia is one of the world's most 
bio-diverse areas. But in the last 50 years it has been the scene 
of environmental destruction on a massive scale.

A Million Acres A Year (SBS Thursday 8.30pm) tells the 
story of the way a region now recognised as one of the top 25 
biological hotspots on the planet was opened up for broad-acre 
farming, unleashing an environmental and social nightmare.

During the 1960s a million acres a year were opened up, despite 
the fact that much of the land was unsuitable for farming. 
Nevertheless, the new landholders were obliged to bulldoze and 
burn the native bush or risk losing their allocation under the 
"conditional purchase scheme".

The long term consequences have been devastating, with industrial 
farming and salinity turning most of this priceless natural 
heritage into a biological desert. Fifty years of agriculture had 
effectively undone three billion years of evolution. Through the 
voices of people on the land, the impact of this ecological 
disaster is revealed.

This week's Message Stick timeslot features Leila 
Murray (ABC Friday 6.00pm), the woman whose campaign for 
answers and justice helped spark the Royal Commission into 
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Twenty-three years ago, Leila Murray's son Eddie died while being 
held in police custody in rural New South Wales. Leila refused to 
believe he committed suicide in his prison cell and she was not 
satisfied with the inquest's open finding. Leila fought for the 
truth right up until her death in 2003.

This program looks at Leila's heartbreak at losing her eldest son 
and her struggle to find peace after his death, and features 
interviews with surviving members of the Murray family.

The story also touches on the fact that despite the expense and 
time spent investigating deaths in custody, Indigenous people are 
still over-represented in the prison system and are still dying 
behind bars.