Patricia Edgar
Patricia Edgar is a sociologist, media researcher, film producer and writer, best known as the Founding Director of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. She won numerous national and international awards for her innovative programs . She is the author of 15 books and an Ambassador for NARI the National Institute for Ageing.
Patricia's recent articles
1 October 2025
Age policy is a shambles. Where to from here? Part 1 & 2
Wherever you look, at residential aged care institutions, at retirement village life, at the home support package scheme, or talk to the people over 65 — called the old — living at home making no claim on the system, just coping by whatever means they can, this stage of life means grappling with overwhelming challenges.
10 September 2025
The central role of government support for the Arts in defining our national culture
Australians emerged from our cultural cringe in the late sixties when our film and television industries thrived. Has that belief and pride in Australia gone for good?
1 September 2025
How the Fourth Estate failed journalists
Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish statesman and political theorist, is credited, with coining the phrase Fourth Estate in 1771.
21 August 2025
Understanding Donald J. Trump
I think I am in a bad dream and soon I will wake and find Donald J. Trump didn’t happen.
12 August 2025
We need media literacy programs for children, not a ban on social media
Western countries are searching for reasons why the anxiety, neuroticism and introversion of young people are increasing. Social media is being targeted as the major cause. So, Australia has decided to ban social media usage for children under age 16.
23 July 2025
Effective philanthropy: A model partnership
Effective philanthropy is hard to achieve. It’s difficult to access money for a worthy cause but also difficult to give money away effectively with impact.
25 June 2025
Banning social media for kids is not the answer. Jonathan Haidt is wrong
Jonathan Haidt is described as a modern-day prophet who claims to have the cure for the epidemic of anxiety afflicting young kids today.
19 June 2025
Jason Clare's monumental task in education
The Labor Government has promised a rethink in education policy and a better future for all children.
7 June 2025
Albanese should remember his childhood – and the rhymes he learnt
There is much wisdom to be had in what was learnt in the first years of life,
21 May 2025
What is education for these days?
Are we experiencing the end of universities? Will the role of academia be simply to service the status quo, not challenge it?
2 May 2025
Where has all the laughter gone?
In August, 1964, Norman Cousins, a former editor of the Saturday Review was diagnosed with a serious degenerative and painful disease of the connective tissue. He was given a one in five hundred chance of recovery.
27 April 2025
When I'm 65...
The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines anyone over 65 as old. You don’t qualify for the means tested old age pension for two more years, and when politicians talk of ageing, they focus on nursing homes and care, dementia and falls. Ageing policy is confused and confusing.
14 April 2025
There is no future without children
Imagine a world without children, a world steadily depopulating like that in the dystopian novel by P.D. James, Children of Men.
7 April 2025
‘Adolescence’, misogyny and the power of television
Rarely does a television series stop you in your tracks, through the heartbreaking power of its content and the creative process employed in its making. Such is the Netflix series from the UK titled Adolescence.
5 March 2025
Medicare skullduggery
Prime Minister Albanese has announced an $8.5 billion boost for Medicare to make bulk-billing available to all adults, not just concession card holders. Within hours, the Leader of the Opposition matched Labor’s bid. Both leaders are acutely aware that health care affordability is a critical issue for the electorate. In his commentary on P&I March 1 Ross Gittins states “Medicare has more problems than just out of pocket payments’.
24 November 2024
It can’t happen here
The novel It Can’t Happen Here, written by Sinclair Lewis was published in 1935 during the rise of fascism in Europe. It tells the story of Berzelius Buzz Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear, and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and traditional values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via a self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force.
20 September 2024
The road to hell is paved with good intentions: Do not ban social media for kids
Social media platforms allow users to interact with others, have conversations, share information and create web content. There are many forms, including games, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more. So, with the government considering a ban on social media for children where do we start this impossible task?
3 September 2024
Ageing policy ignores the majority of older people
‘Old’ is defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as any person over the age of 65. This is a wildly outdated notion given our longer life expectancy and the fact that most of us will live many years beyond that arbitrary date in active service to the community.
25 August 2023
A bonded approach to the education of skilled workers
Education Minister Jason Clare’s important review of education seems to have lost the plot. Secondary schoolers have been told for years that their aim should be university entrance. That approach has distorted the focus of secondary schooling toward achieving a high score in HSC while the technical side has been downgraded in both funding and status.
5 August 2023
Australian Universities Accord lost in a mire of confusion about equity
The Australian Universities Accord Interim Report shows an echidna on its cover, in keeping, Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledges, with the spikey issues he is attempting to address in the education system. His goal is to reduce inequality in Australian society while improving the quality of education across the system.
21 June 2023
The ageing challenge: navigating the pandemic, technology, and identity politics
Ten years ago, I wrote a book titled In Praise of Ageing. I found there is strong evidence that our attitude to life influences our longevity. But the obstacles we face today make slouching towards Bethlehem seem like a walk in the park.
13 May 2023
Budget focus on primary health care; a missed opportunity for ageing Australia
We need a radical rethink of the way we structure a 100-year life.
18 February 2023
Jim Chalmers’ value-added capitalism requires upheaval of old age paradigm
Treasury, along with all economic institutions, must replace their ageist definitions and assumptions about older people and become part of the solution, not the assault. Quelle surprise! We finally have a Treasurer who is an independent thinker, and more surprisingly he is thinking out loud. Jim Chalmers is rethinking capitalism to restore some basic values. But the frenzied reaction of economic journalists illustrates how hard it will be for Chalmers to shift the stubborn neo-liberal ideas of the economic establishment towards ‘a new, values-based capitalism for Australia’, within a new ‘wellbeing’ framework where ‘our private markets create public value’....
20 September 2022
Queen Elizabeth II: The palace is winning the propaganda war
Queen Elizabeth II is dead and ‘the Palace’ is working assiduously to shore up her legacy and the institution of Monarchy. Polls show they are winning the hearts and minds in a propaganda war, with the mass media complicit in its hyperbolic, adulatory, blanket coverage. Debates about the Monarchy are cancelled, demonstrators in the UK moved on by police, politicians universally agreeing it is not the time to question what the Monarchy represents. ‘Tomorrow is another day’ as Scarlett O’Hara famously said. Meanwhile the Queen’s persona is emerging as heroic and mythical.
9 September 2022
The medium is the message: Marshall McLuhan saw the catastrophe coming
It is more than 50 years since the astute cultural critic Marshall McLuhan burst into the academic world with his perplexing insights into the meaning of communications and how they would affect mankind. He declaimed, ‘The medium is the message’. I had just turned 30 and was enrolled for an MA in the Stanford University Communications Department. I didn’t understand what McLuhan meant, but as another popular ‘truth’ at the time was, ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’, I kept my mouth shut and listened.
18 July 2022
Thinking outside the age care trap
Too much of our thinking about aged care is based on outmoded assumptions. It is argued that ageing Baby Boomers will cost the economy dearly, when in fact it is the policy taken that has caused a crisis. Change is essential, for today’s Millennials, facing a century-long life, will be an even larger aged cohort. There are many variations on the story but at the core is a fundamental problem. We have achieved the remarkable medical feat of prolonging life by two or three decades but have done practically nothing to restructure a 100-year life.
8 July 2022
A radical future for ABC children’s television programs
Now that the new Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland is considering a review of the whole broadcasting sector, the lid might be lifted on failures in the system for children. Among all the resets needed for the digital age, the ABC should be charged with the mission for children it should have been on for the last 50 years.
6 July 2022
In our identity culture wars is the ABC promoting cohesion or pulling us further apart?
The Western world is undergoing a war between cultures and ideologies with the future uncertain. David Anderson the Managing Director claims, ‘the ABC nurtures social cohesion and national unity’. But, in their attempt to be inclusive, is the organisation having the opposite effect and contributing to the spread of contagion and a tyranny of the minorities where individuals are eager to take offence?
4 July 2022
Happy Birthday ABC. Where are you going now?
The ABC celebrates its 90th birthday June 30th this year. There are few Australians alive today who were here at the birth. So, it is timely to ask what the future of our public broadcaster is, particularly given the BBC, its model and guiding star, is in trouble.
3 November 2021
The age-old debate on generational conflict is deeply flawed
Every generation deserves the best chance in life, but achieving this has been undermined by government policy failure and misplaced claims of advantage.
24 October 2021
Housing policy is a failure for young and old
Blaming Baby Boomers for the housing crisis is a diversion. What we need is a complete rethink of our housing supply.
11 June 2021
Ageism and the secret to living a long life.
The Archibald is 100 and Peter Wegner has won the 2021 prize for his portrait of 100-year-old artist Guy Warren who commented, One hundred years is a hell of a lot of experience. I’ve survived the Great Depression, a war, I’ve survived serious medical difficulties and I’ve survived COVID – touch wood. The secret to living a long life is you just have to keep living.
16 April 2021
Are we more depressed or more diagnosed?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), which finds widespread use in Australia and across the world, by physicians, researchers, courts, and schools, lists more than 300 criteria for depression, which makes the meaning of a diagnosis so vague it can potentially cover every one of us. So, are we more depressed or more diagnosed?
5 April 2021
Anything goes, in Canberra
‘Share your truth. It is your power’ Grace Tame, Australian of the Year 2021.
29 July 2020
The Power of Attorney and abuse of the elderly
Australia has a long way to go and COVID is lifting the scab revealing how neglect and absolute indifference have exposed these communities of older people to an end of life nightmare.
8 July 2020
Humanities Fightback: CASSH Skills VS STEM.
Just how do Universities respond to Minister Tehan’s diabolical plan to neuter the brainpower of the next generation through engineering their debt burden by more than doubling fees for Humanities Degrees?
26 June 2020
Proposed University Funding is Policy Ideological Vandalism
Minister Tehan’s targeted university funding proposal is part of an ongoing government plan to destroy the ‘hotbeds of left-wing ideological fervour’ seen as centred in arts and social science faculties.
8 April 2020
PATRICIA EDGAR. Education and Entertainment after COVID-19
COVID-19 has let the genie out of the bottle. Education and entertainment will not return to their traditional forms.
30 March 2020
PATRICIA and DON EDGAR. Who is expendable? Ethics in an age of a pandemic
In 1651, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, writing about the social contract, warned that without a strong central government man reverts to his natural state of self-interest and life is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’. The West has rejected Hobbes’ philosophy and we have seen the erosion of strong central government across decades. And the school girl with her school bag.
20 May 2019
PATRICIA and DON EDGAR Family Views the Election Results
Last Saturday evening we sat as a family to view the election results. There were four grandchildren present, aged 18 to 24 who had voted that day and taken their decisions seriously. They were waiting to see how the evening would unfold. They are rightly concerned about their future, particularly climate change, and as the votes came rolling in they watched in disbelief. One leader had offered them a detailed plan for their future, the other had run around the country, behaving like a clown, spouting slogans: ‘Cut taxes’, ‘I stopped the boats’, ‘Kill Bill’, ‘How good is that?’ Yet...
8 April 2019
DON AND PATRICIA EDGAR. Universities as Failed Critics
Back in 1997, Mark Davis complained that the Baby Boomers were monopolising public comment and should make way for the next generation – meaning him – to lead us out of ‘Gangland’ to ‘a new generationalism’. We’ve heard little since and the key public intellectuals are still (as in Pearls & Irritations) those ‘cultural elites’ he bemoaned, from the Baby Boom years. In an era when we have more graduates than ever before, informed social critique is in serious decline.
13 March 2019
PATRICIA & DON EDGAR. The Farce Called ‘Community consultation’.
Yarra City Council touts community consultation as part of its resident-friendly credentials. But our recent experience suggests the process is a farce. It demonstrates why public disillusionment with government and a bureaucratic process is at an all time high for transparency is completely lacking.
6 December 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. Kids Technology and the Future: The Case for Regulation of Australian Children’s content (Part 3).
In the dynamic media environment we have in Australia, broadcasting regulation has become an exceptionally tricky exercise. If regulations are to work, they require creative application and on-going monitoring as commercial players will always seek to outmanoeuvre them, especially when they affect programming decisions. Bureaucracies move slowly. It takes time to define, then to pass legislation and once regulations are in place, too often assumptions are made that the job is done. That may be the case in legislating for seat belts or banning smoking in public spaces, but when the desired outcome is a cultural, educational purpose, where judgments...
5 December 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. Kids Technology and the Future: The programs and projects children want to see (Part 2).
Children are now on the move. Their phone is their companion for reaching out to friends, texting, referencing, looking up what they want and need to know, viewing YouTube, playing games, taking photos and videos. They can click through what’s on offer: a cornucopia from which they are learning and having fun. They have led the way in showing tech companies how versatile a smart phone can be. They go online for a myriad of purposes and attracting their attention for any length of time is a challenge. Yes they enjoy stories but they are looking for diversity and innovation.
4 December 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. Kids Technology and the Future: Technology is not the enemy. The Need for Positive Media Literacy (Part 1).
The Information-technology Revolution is challenging the assumptions on which the education of children and the provision of their entertainment are based. The doomsayers argue the big companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, et al. – despite their rhetoric of preventing evil and promoting global togetherness - are in fact exacerbating inequality, poverty, unemployment, invasion of privacy, breakdown in social cohesion, supporting political disruption and Donald Trump.
3 December 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. Kids Technology and the Future: Radical revamp needed for Children’s TV content quotas.
Today’s kids are way ahead of our broadcasting regulators and television producers in the way they use both television and digital media. It’s time for a radical rethink of content regulations, quotas, and subsidy for children’s media education and entertainment in their best interest.
28 July 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. The Nine Entertainment Co’s takeover of Fairfax
The proposed Nine Entertainment Co’s takeover of Fairfax would be a disaster for journalism and for Australia. Malcolm Turnbull’s changes to the 30 year-old cross- media rule means one owner can control print, radio and television in one market. Of course this will result in serious loss of diversity in information. That it is Nine that will take control of Fairfax is spine chilling. It is a devastating outcome for those Fairfax journalists who have dedicated their careers to accurately informing readers who value objective professional reporting.
6 July 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. The ABC, Facebook and the Meaning of Trust
Trust is an interesting concept. It takes time to develop trust which results from a broad experience of something (or someone) which demonstrates consistent, reliable behavior with integrity, ability, and surety; it involves confident expectation. But trust can be lost irretrievably, quite quickly. Trust allows for mistakes if they are dealt with openly and honestly. It does not forgive manipulation, dishonesty and betrayal.
5 July 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. Going Round the Twist with Telstra and the NBN Co
NBN Co claims their ‘focus remains strongly on improving customer experience on the network including a smooth connection to the network.’ In fact the experience is a fiasco.
26 June 2018
PATRICIA EDGAR. The Circus that has been Government Policy on the ABC for Forty Years
The ABC has been an extraordinarily resilient organisation. It has withstood management and Board upheavals, survived remorseless budget cuts and harassment. But the current attacks on staff and on its role are as overt and vicious as they have ever been. Many of those who were imbued with ABC values have died or moved on. The biggest fear to friends of the ABC today is inertia. This current attack will not be solved by quiet negotiation. The Government’s tactics are neither rational nor honest. This has to be a vocal public fight and once the dangers are understood the public...
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