 Hello and welcome. My name is Michael Fully Love and I'm the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to all their elders. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the 2021 Lowy Institute Media Lecture, which is part of a week-long program to mark our annual media award. This award was established in 2013. It's among the richest prizes in Australian journalism. We started the award because we believe the world matters to Australia, and so Australians need to be informed about the world. We also think it's important that Australians get to see the world through Australian eyes. We think that Australian journalists see the news in a way that others can't. Australian journalists on the global beat bring their own sensibilities to the craft of reporting. Qualities that include pragmatism, a lack of deference to authority, and a sense of humour as well as an understanding of Australia's interests. Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic and the closing of the international border means that many Australian journalists have not been able to be out in the world over the past year and a half. And for us here in Australia, the pandemic restrictions mean that instead of a nice dinner in Sydney, at which we celebrate Australia's international journalism, we're online instead to host the 2021 media lecture. Thank you to Rio Tinto for supporting this year's lecture as they have done for several years. In the past, this lecture has been given by a chair and a managing director of the ABC, the global chief executive of News Corp, a federal communications minister, columnists for the New Yorker and the New York Times, and a spy chief, whose father was also a storied Australian war correspondent. Being online this year does have this advantage that we're able to reach across the globe to speak with our 2021 media lecturer, the international correspondent and presenter, Yalda Hakim, who joins us today from London. Welcome, Yalda. Thank you so much, Michael. Before I invite Yalda to give her lecture, let me introduce her properly. Born in Afghanistan, Yalda Hakim was just six months old when her family fled the country during the Soviet invasion, seeking refuge abroad and eventually settling in Australia. She studied here in Sydney before securing a cadetship with SBS News, and she very quickly established herself as a reporter of great talent. She joined the SBS Dateline program, her first report for which was an emotional journey back to the country of her birth. She went on to become the presenter and host of Dateline before jumping to the BBC in 2012, where she's been a reporter and presenter and now host of the program, Impact with Yalda Hakim. And Yalda makes a lot of impact. Her reporting career has taken her from the United States to South Sudan and throughout the Middle East, including Libya during the Arab Spring and Iraq during the rise and fall of Islamic State. When she was on air recently, she received a phone call from Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen during the fall of Kabul, which she calmly put to air. She's also made an impact outside her work, establishing a charitable foundation to support young women in Afghanistan, helping them to access scholarships to attend university. Yalda is a first-class Australian reporter who began by telling Australians about the world and now tells those stories to a global audience. I have admired her work for a long time, so it gives me great pleasure to invite Yalda Hakim to deliver the 2021 Lowy Institute Media Lecture. Yalda. Michael, thank you so much for having me and it really is an honour and a privilege to be part of this event and to be speaking to you and the audience. Thank you so much for having me. As you said, I've spent the better half of the last sort of 15 years of my career really working in some of the most difficult and dangerous places on the planet. I've covered the conflict in Yemen. I've covered things in Iraq. I've travelled to South Sudan. I've covered the rise and fall of the so-called Islamic State. I've been there when we described the Arab uprisings as the Arab Spring and there was hope of better days and of course we saw how things have unfolded in that part of the world. And really, you know, I've seen the horrors of war and what that does, the impact of that on a community and a society. But I think what I didn't really ever grasp or fully understand is when you yourself become very much part of the story, when the story is so personal to you. And of course, as you've said, one of my first reports for Australian television was from Afghanistan. And I went back to Kabul as a 23-year-old armed with a camera which I taught myself to use, having just come out of a cadetship with SBS. And I arrived in Delhi having told, telling my parents that I was sent to India to cover a story which was not true. No one was sending a young cadet to India to cover anything. And I rang them to say that I was going to Kabul and I was going to figure out what was happening in the country of my birth. They panicked and jumped on a plane from Sydney to Delhi and my dad ended up being my fixer for three weeks. And that's when I filmed Yelda's Kabul. At the time I had no network, no contacts, no real understanding of how to film and bring together a half an hour piece. But Yelda's Kabul went on to become one of the highest-rating stories of that year for Dateline. And when I went back to Australia, first of all, SBS and the Dateline crew were mortified that I'd gone off and done this myself. But at the same time, they said, look, if it works and if there is a story there, we'll pay you, but we'll air the story. So there was never any guarantee. And I think that's the one thing I learned early on as a journalist is to be enterprising and to find your point of difference and be able to use it. But I come back to the point about how the last two months has impacted me as a journalist. It's been incredibly personal, incredibly difficult. And I have now sort of eight weeks after the fall of Kabul really started to think about whether this has been a liability or a strength as a journalist. And I'm really having a moment of soul-searching because when I was on the front lines in Mosul when the coalition forces and the Iraqi forces were taking over the city, another place that I care about deeply and love and have covered for many, many years and have many friends in that country, my heart wasn't breaking the way that it broke on the 15th of August. And I remember the sleepless night that I had. I didn't want to sleep that night because as you mentioned, I have a foundation in the country. And I had those young girls on the phone to me, many of them from the Hazara Shia minority community ringing me and saying, we hear that the Taliban are at the gates of Kabul and we're so afraid we've burnt all our documentation that shows that we studied at the American University of Afghanistan. They shut down their Twitter and Instagram accounts. They basically eliminated any sign that they were associated to the Western world. They stopped speaking to me on the phone in English. They deleted all their messages that were in English and we decided that we would only speak in Farsi on the phone from that moment onwards. But in the early hours of the 15th of August at about four o'clock in the morning, we were planning an evacuation through my foundation and those who were supporting my foundation. And we knew we only had a few hours left and we still hadn't managed to figure out how we were going to get a chartered flight into the country. And I had these desperate young girls, 18, 19, 20 years old who were so incredibly frightened. And I remember thinking, I don't want to sleep because if I wake up, what if Kabul has fallen to the Taliban and what if this is the end for so many people who had so many hopes and so many gains from the last 20 years. And I woke up to a call at 6.30 in the morning from my editor saying, we understand the Taliban are at the gates of Kabul and we need you to come into the studio right now. And I said to her, as you know, I'm planning this evacuation and I'm really deep in that now. It was also Sunday and I don't go in and present my show on a Sunday. And she said, no, Kabul is falling and you need to come in right now. And to your point about the Australian work ethic, we don't say no when it comes to work, we work. So I thought, well, I can do both. I can still work on the evacuation while I'm on air and I need to tell this story because it is one of the biggest and most important stories of our time. So as I was making my way to the studio, I started to text to Hale Shahin who I'd met in Doha just a month earlier and who I'd built a relationship with for years but we'd met face to face for the first time in Doha. And I started to text him saying, you know, what is going on? I've got these frightened young women calling me through the night and they're saying the Taliban are at the gates of Kabul. Are you there? And what do you intend to do to the people of Kabul and Afghanistan? And he and I were texting as I was in the tube and as I came into the studio and as I went into makeup and we continued to text each other. And then I went into the studio. I was presenting the program. You know, I was talking to contacts and friends live on air, people I had known for many years talking about them losing their city and losing their country and the impact it was having on them and the fear that they were feeling. And then I saw my phone begin to ring in the studio and I was midway through an interview and I thought, I have to take this call. It is perhaps the call that everyone wants to hear from more than anything, the Taliban, what their intentions are and what's actually going on. And so I answered the call and for the next 40 minutes I sort of at the forefront of my mind kept thinking this isn't about me. It's about asking tough questions but allowing him to speak. It's not about the number of times I can interrupt this man. It's about me being able to put tough questions to him and then allowing the world and the Afghan people to hear from him what the intentions are. And I really thought about the young Afghan women that I'd been speaking to, the international community who were concerned about what was going on in the country at the time. And I felt those sorts of questions to him. And I suppose, you know, it really made me think about the importance of storytelling, the importance of getting to the truth. We often talk about whether the medium of television is critical. Do people really sit down and watch the six o'clock news anymore and gather around the television, you know, as a family? But I think in those moments when the stories are so big and when things are unfolding, people do tune in and people do watch and people want us as journalists to hold those in power accountable. It's not about making it about me. It's about chasing the story. It's about getting to the heart of the truth. And that is what I'm seeking. When I'm told by members of ISIS who have defected or members of the Taliban or people in power, you know, world leaders or those who are shaping policy, you know, how is this going to make me look? I'm not there to make anyone look good. I am there to seek the truth. And if something is the truth, I will report it. If the Taliban are assisting in creating pathways for people to leave the country, I will report it. If they are terrorizing people and going house to house and people are living in fear, I will report it. And I have told the Taliban this in my conversations with them that as a journalist, that's what we do. We seek the truth. And that, I feel, is the most important thing. And I've had those conversations with the Taliban in Doha. I've had those conversations with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And I hope that in the next month or so that I can travel to the country again, and I will be in a position to be able to do those things. And I think that the Australian media landscape, the competitive environment in that country, our work ethic, has armed me with those things as a reporter. That's where I was trained. That's where I learned to be a journalist. And I hope that I am able to be a credible journalist here in the UK and continue to do the kind of work that I do and that I'm able to offer our journalists, our audiences across the planet. Thank you very much. Thank you for those interesting remarks. I must say it has raised questions in my mind about the OH&S standards at SBS News that they sent a young cadet to Afghanistan, not to mention her father as the unpaid fixer. But thank you for those interesting stories. I want to ask you, draw you out on some of the things you said about journalism, about truth, and about Australia and your relationship to Australia. But I want to start with Afghanistan because you told us that remarkable story about your interview with the Taliban spokesman on air. And that, I guess, speaks to the fact that your personal connections to the story have given you information and knowledge and background and context and contacts and enable you to tell that story. But how does a personal connection like that limit your ability to tell the story? How do you maintain a critical distance on a story like Afghanistan, whereas you say in the last two months so much progress for the people of Afghanistan, not to mention, in particular, the women and girls of Afghanistan has sort of fallen away. How do you maintain the distance and maintain your commitment to telling the truth and telling the stories when you feel, obviously, when you naturally feel passionate about the country? Passionately about the country and also, Michael, not just invested as a journalist, but invested as, I suppose, in many ways, by establishing a foundation there. And I was asked by the American University of Afghanistan to set up a scholarship at their campus for young Afghan women. And we decided then to give back to the university to establish a foundation for it to not just be a scholarship that they have in my name, but to do much more. So I became invested in those gains of the last 20 years, especially for the progress of women and girls. And so for that to shut down for the university now to be the southern headquarters in Kabul of the Taliban, a campus that I long admired and traveled to several times. I gave lectures there. I met the students there. I was inspired by them. I funded them. And so they have said to me multiple times that there are two words that come to mind, abandonment and betrayal when it comes to this particular story. And so, yes, it's difficult, incredibly difficult when you're on air. And I remember speaking to someone who my producer had lined up, not knowing that they were a good friend of mine, a young female activist who I'd met 10 years ago and she worked tirelessly for women's rights. And suddenly she appeared on my screen as my next guest. And of course, that's the nature of rolling news where they're just telling me in my ear who the next guest is. And because I know the story so well, there wasn't a brief. I knew her background. I knew her work. And it is heartbreaking to do that interview with her where she was so fearful about how much was going to be lost and the fact that she told me about her day running to the bank to get as much money out as possible, not knowing what her future held for her, not having lived under the Taliban. She was only five years old when the US forces, the coalition forces came to Afghanistan. So she's 25, she's known nothing but freedom and human rights and defending her human rights in that country, which was tricky at times, even with the Western backed governments. So it was incredibly difficult then to go from that interview and turn and answer that call from the Taliban and ask him about human rights and ask him about women's rights and for him to talk about public executions and stoning of women and what law and order and justice and schooling for girls would look like in going forward. But I suppose I've also mastered the art of compartmentalizing and being able to put my personal feelings towards the story to one side and address an issue which is in the public interest and for public good. And I feel like I've done that multiple times in my career. There was a time where I went to Bangladesh when the Rana Plaza collapsed and we went into a building which we were told by clothing companies across the world that they had shut down companies or the buildings that were faulty and looked like they were going to collapse. And of course, 2,000 people died in that Rana Plaza Bangladesh building collapse. But we saw a sign outside of the building that said be aware the building could collapse at any moment. And I had heard that there were hundreds of people still working inside that building. Now call it careless or call it stupid but we entered that building because it was important for viewers and the audience to know and to see that the clothing that they wear, that the garments that they buy are made in these factories and that there are children working in these factories and these factories are close to collapse. And so that I felt was important and in the public interest equally. And perhaps I put myself in danger and the team in danger to get to the heart of that story. Equally when it comes to something like this it's so important to get to the heart of the truth and to get to an understanding of what the other side thinks. And there was a lot in what Sahel Shaheen said. He said to me, we're not allowing our forces to enter the city because we do not want a bloodbath. Now hours later we learned that the president of Afghanistan fled the country and there were looters roaming around trying to enter buildings. So it was important actually for the Taliban to enter and that was a test for them to see if they were able to go and maintain some kind of security in the city. And so that was an interesting conversation to have later with him again about the fact that what he said actually did happen. There wasn't a bloodbath. There wasn't a level of insecurity that the Taliban created. It was scary of course. And we saw the horror that unfolded at Kabul airport but that conversation was important for the audience. It wasn't about me. You talk about it being important to understand what the other side thinks or what the interviewee thinks. What do you think, what do you believe the Taliban thinks about women and girls and some of these issues now? There was a lot of discussion after the fall of Kabul that they had reformed, they had evolved in their views. What do you think the evidence tells us about that? Every day on my program I speak to policymakers, experts, people who have been invested in Afghanistan not just for the last 20 years, but for the last 40 years. And yesterday I spoke to the EU envoy to Afghanistan, Michael Semple, and he said to me that the idea that the Taliban have reformed or that there's a Taliban 2.0 is a hoax, that they were his words. He said this is what I suppose those who wanted to withdraw from the country, it's a sort of messaging that they sell almost to justify the actions of the last few months and the last few years. Then in terms of investment in Afghanistan and then the subsequent withdrawal and the horror that we saw, the nightmare that we saw unfold in the country in the days leading up to the withdrawal. So have the Taliban changed or what are their views? I went to meet them in Doha just before the fall and I met members of the political office who said to me, we have reformed, we have changed, mistakes were made, we do want to work with the international community, we don't want to become a prior state, we do want an inclusive government. He said, Sahel Shaheen, when I met him there and other members of the political leadership, they said to me, we've seen the issues that we had in 1996 up until 2001 and so therefore we don't want to repeat of that. When I went to Kabul though, straight after that trip I met with a Taliban commander from Helmand who said to me initially in the conversation girls shouldn't be going to school beyond the age of 12. Then he changed his mind midway through the interview and said up until the age of 10. And by the end of the interview he said, actually in my village no girls go to school and I don't think there's a point in girls going to school and any woman who commits adultery should be stoned to death and there should be public executions. That is our form of sharia law and that is what I'm fighting for and I don't care if it takes me 40 years or 200 years, I'm going to topple this government and I won't stop. And so to your question about whether the Taliban have changed or reformed, it's now day 26 since the announcement about the return of schools in Afghanistan and boys have been able to go to school. Girls under the age of 12 have been able to go to school but teenage girls in secondary school have not. And so read between the lines. They're saying that they're waiting for the situation to become more secure. There is no war as far as the Taliban are concerned. There is no fighting. They then talk about a need to deal with COVID. Well, boys are exposed to COVID and girls under the age of 10 are exposed to COVID. So what is the issue there then with teenage girls? So there are a lot of questions being asked and of course we've seen those images of brave Afghan women taking to the streets and facing the barrel of a gun of a Taliban and saying, well, I've got nothing to lose. Shoot me because I'm fighting here for my basic human rights, which I deserve and you owe me. So there are still a lot of questions being asked about whether the Taliban have reformed. Well, given that they appear not to have reformed, what does that mean for the work of your foundation? At present we've entered a humanitarian phase within the foundation. So we managed to evacuate over 100 people and take some to the American University of Iraq. So they're in Soleimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan at present. And we've taken some civil society judges, journalists, and students to Albania. And the Albanian government, the Albanian Prime Minister has been incredibly generous. We took these people, Michael, to a country without passports, without any form of identification, simply based on my words that these are women and girls who have been part of civil society, who are judges, who are journalists, who are students. And they took my word and they took these people in. And since then they've taken a thousand more Afghans and the Albanian Prime Minister has said that they're open to taking 4,000 Afghans into the country. They are Europe's poorest nation. And the Prime Minister said in multiple interviews and in conversations with me that we were Afghans once too. And we were looking to the international community to assist us when our region, our country was in the darkest days during the crisis in the Balkans. And we were Afghans once too. We wanted assistance and therefore we are willing to help those. So at this present time, the foundation has gone into a humanitarian phase. But what we're hoping to do is to continue to work on education. We've extended and opened up our scholarship to Oxford University. So my foundation has partnership with Oxford University. We had initially only negotiated one scholarship, postgraduate scholarship for one Afghan woman. This was before the fall. We've now opened that up to four, up to four students. And Oxford University is open to that being expanded even further. We've got another scholarship at Georgetown University in Doha. We're working with the University of Texas at the moment. I'm hoping that Australian universities will be able to be generous too. And we can have some kind of partnership with Australian universities as well. So we are still working, but we're taking Afghan girls and students who have been deprived in Afghanistan from continuing their education and being able to form those partnerships outside the country. Alright, let me ask you some questions about journalism, if I may. You were saying earlier that Australian journalists have an appetite for work. You're a hard worker, but are there other ways in which you feel you bring a distinctive Australian touch to the nature of your work? Well, I think it's what you said earlier. The fact that we are tenacious, we're persistent. We don't take no for an answer. I know how competitive the Australian media landscape is and it's shrinking. So even at the time, I had to find my point of difference within that Australian newsroom and work in a tough newsroom. You either sink or swim in those newsrooms and they teach you how to become excellent writers. They teach you how to continue to push to get the best out of a story. As you say, we know how to laugh at ourselves in some of the toughest times, being in some of those internally displaced camps in northern Iraq where I was being told by local population there that there's a massacre. Only one person has survived seeing tens of thousands of people and it curds people from the Yazidi community arriving in those camps and being able to have a moment at the end of the day and just be able to have that kind of ride dark Australian humour and be able to laugh at ourselves and the situation that was unfolding because actually what else can you do other than tell the story? But I think the point about the work, I think, is really important. We don't clock in and we don't clock out. We work and we become invested in a story and we continue to follow that story no matter where we are and what we're doing and what newsroom we're in. I see that here in the BBC newsroom. Some of our best and most talented reporters and producers are Australian. The newsroom is made up of young Australian producers who start in Australia, they come and cut their teeth here and then they return to Australia. We've seen Australian journalism thrive across the globe whether that's Jonathan Swan in the United States who's done some incredible interviewing with Donald Trump and various others. Here in the UK we've seen Australian journalists thrive and so we take what we're taught there and we bring that here and I'm often asked that question, what is it about you Australian journalists? Why is it that you do so well in our newsrooms? And they know the answer to that actually. It's because we're armed with those skills that we learn in Australia and we bring that here and you see how different our work ethic is and our ability to chase a story and our ability to personalise those stories for audiences. There is a different type of style that we adopt and you see that in newsrooms across the globe. One area where the Australian media doesn't have the depth though is international journalism and you're working for one of the great global media institutions that is an incredibly important part of reporting the world news and an incredible part of Britain's soft power. Things are more limited in Australia and foreign correspondents are expensive and very few media organisations can afford them anymore. Do you have any thoughts about how Australian news covers the world? How we could do it better? How important it is for us as a country? Our resources are more limited but as someone who's been an Australian reporting abroad but now also reporting for a global media institution do you have any thoughts on how Australian media could do this kind of journalism better? Well, I learnt how to become a video journalist in Australia 15 years ago. Dateline and SBS were dealing with those limited resources by sort of equipping a single journalist with all the skills that we're now seeing these big newsrooms talk about. As a young reporter you need to learn how to use a camera you need to learn how to cut a piece you need to learn how to produce it you need to have an excellent contacts book. These are the skills that I was taught 15 years ago in an Australian newsroom. That is why today when I travel anywhere on the planet I can open my contacts book and I can have tea and have meetings with officials and civil society and dissidents anywhere in the world. I can go to any country in the world Michael and I have a contact there. If I'm passing through whether it's transit or whether it's forestry or whether it's on holiday I make time for my journalism and these are the skills that I've been taught in Australia but I think Australia needs to understand it's important place in the world and increasingly it is becoming more and more important. You saw that through the security packs the August security pack that was signed between Australia the United States and the UK just a few weeks ago. We see the importance of the Indo-Pacific now and China's role in all of that and great power competition and the focus now on the Quad say and the Indo-Pacific in general and China's position, Australia's position in all of that so more than ever Australian journalism is crucial and one of the first things that China did before they pushed out the BBC's journalist from Beijing was to push out Australian journalists from the country because they know how incredible Australian journalists are and how hard they work to get to the heart of the story and so Australian journalists were booted out of China because we look to the Australian journalism and journalists in the country I still trawl through all of the papers in Australia to find some of the best stories and some of the best storytelling that we've got out there and the perspective on the world and the perspective on how they tell the sort of story of the globe to Australian audiences but also how they view the world is incredibly important so increasingly Australia's position in the global community and in the international community is becoming important and Australian journalism therefore needs to be incredibly important within that story. You're quite right that China is one of the biggest stories in the world that it's one of the hardest stories to report because as you say the Chinese government has systematically turfed out pretty much all Western journalists there are still a few there but very few. You've had some experiences you say in reporting from countries that are very difficult to travel in where it's hard to get to the story. What are your thoughts on how the world's media can report the China story given that so much of what happens in the world in the next decades will emanate from China but they don't want the world's eyes on them they don't want scrutiny from independent minded people who are seeking the truth they want people who toe the party line so how can you rather tell the story about what's happening in China when we don't have Western journalists on the ground in China? I think sometimes we fail to understand the complexities of China we assume that the Chinese Communist Party is the entire nation of China and there are some incredible journalists who are working within China who are trying to make their voices and their stories heard and it's our job as journalists and we've done that before as Australian journalists in places like Zimbabwe for example when that became closed off as a nation we handed small handycams mobile phones to local journalists and we worked with them to tell the story of their country and I've done that in other parts of the world and I believe we can do that with a network within China because there are people who are frustrated with the system in China who do want to speak up about the situation in the country whether it's Uighurs or whether it's the rights of workers or whether it's the treatment of people and human rights in general so I think it's incredibly important as a journalist to have that network to have that contacts book and it's always saved me no matter where I've been I've been able to open up this lifetime and career worth of contacts and be able to draw on people and I make phone calls I don't sort of just read things I build these networks for people, I ask questions I never know more than the local journalists on the ground and I think that is really important that we build these networks within the country of journalists, activists, dissidents who are trying to tell the story of their country to the outside world and I think that will help shape and inform and help us understand what's going on in the country but also then the bigger geopolitical issues around the country because the story of Uighurs again Australia has told that story for well over a decade Dateline was telling stories of the Uighur community in Australia for many many years before it became a global talking point because of the detention facilities within Xinjiang so we have been leaders in this sort of storytelling on China because of course it is in Australia's backyard that we need to continue to push to tell those stories Yalda I want to put a question to you from an audience member Olivia Peary Griffiths who is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Journalists Freedom and the question comes to this this issue of telling the truth and getting at the truth and Olivia asks how do we best distinguish journalism from the rest of the information landscape to rebuild trust when you even look at a story like China or what's happening in a place like Afghanistan there is so much disinformation there is so much fake news out there I mean if you look at and troll social media there was material being used from the war in Yemen in 2018 and being described as the conflict in Afghanistan and it was being retweeted thousands and thousands of times and so verifying the material making sure that it's accurate and truthful it's not about being first it's not about being the first to put out that tweet or the first to have that bit of breaking news it's about being accurate and I think we do that sort of almost religiously here at the BBC no video that I put out has been put out without being verified by a team of BBC producers who have spoken to multiple sources on the ground and elsewhere where we continue to sort of check these videos to make sure that they're accurate we don't just tweet or retweet something and that's why it's so important that in times of crisis people turn to journalists and journalism and you saw that I mean with that interview with Sahel Shaheen people could have easily gone to the sort of web and social media and use those platforms to get their information but actually they were turning to credible journalists across the globe there was an appetite millions of people were clicking on the BBC website to get a better understanding of what was happening in the country and we were having to then peddle really quickly and fast to provide that for our audience but not so fast that we were getting it wrong not so fast that we were not getting the transparency and not getting to the truth of something and that is ultimately what we are skilled to do and what we are trained to do and that's why we have that credibility so while there are people out there that might have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers that doesn't mean that what they're saying and putting out there is necessarily accurate and the truth we also got a number of questions about how COVID has affected your ability and the BBC's ability to tell the world news when there's this real and present threat to reporters who are travelling how have you guys adjusted are you now getting back on to the road what are the implications from the pandemic for your work so I never stopped working or coming into the studio even in the harshest of lockdowns here I wasn't getting the tube I was walking each morning to work but I was getting myself to which was taking me about an hour and a half so it wasn't a short walk but I was coming into the studio every day as were limited teams but I think what the pandemic and I did by the way cover the US election I went and spent almost a month in Midwest in Wisconsin and then I went to Delaware Pennsylvania and I was in Washington when all of those announcements when we announced that Biden had won I was in Delaware at the time so I have been on the road a little bit as have my colleagues and I've done multiple PCR tests it's been tough and difficult but I think what some of the benefits of the pandemic on journalism has been the sort of local staff that we've had in various different bureaus across the globe have had to step up and we've suddenly seen journalists tell stories about their own community people who were there as our support networks whether we were being parachuted into a place or whether we were stationed or based in a bureau suddenly with all of those journalists gone or coming back home those local reporters and producers were having to step up for us and so I was seeing faces that I hadn't seen before who had worked for many many years in our bureaus whether it was in Nigeria or in Indonesia or you know in Iraq we were seeing these people suddenly have to step up and tell their stories and they did it well and that I think has really changed that we've been able to get these people to talk about their own communities to go out into their communities to draw on their own contacts and families to tell the stories and that changed the nature in which we were able to tell the story of the pandemic and the impact on the global community certainly in India some of the worst times in India we had these extraordinary Indian journalists who were working in our bureaus as producers and when our teams were returning because the COVID situation was so bad in the country the Indian journalists were able to tell their story in such an effective personal way that was both heartbreaking and effective let me ask you about COVID as the subject of the news and let me ask you about the way that different countries have reacted or have dealt with the pandemic let me ask you about Australia actually I mean I think there is a sense in which the virus flattered Australia last year but it doesn't flatter us quite so much this year last year there was a lot of international news to the effect that Australia has managed this so well they've dodged the large fatalities that countries certainly such as the United Kingdom have had they've had highly professional medical professional smart decisions they closed the international border now most of the international coverage is a little bit different now it's there seems to be a lot of confusion a lot of people saying that Australia's locked itself in fortress Australia questions as to why the international border is still closed all that time later what's your feeling as an Australian about how Australia has managed the pandemic and how have you seen international coverage of Australia's COVID response changing it's been really interesting I think Michael just as an Australian trying to get home in the last two years has obviously been difficult and frustrating that we haven't been able to do that as Australian citizens no matter where I am in the world I visit an Australian embassy or consulate just to say hello because it makes me feel like I'm closer to home and if I'm in a tricky situation I do call the Australians to let them know that I'm in country and to inform them in case anything does go pay shape so I have my connection with Australia even though I'm now a British passport holder as well so I am Australian and I turn to Australia when I'm looking for help or trying to get home so it has been incredibly frustrating for me as an Australian but I know for tens of thousands of other Australians who have been trying to get home in difficult times trying to get to family and haven't been able to do so someone said to me that it's been interesting watching the pandemic unfold across the globe and what I found interesting about what they said was that each country has almost acted true to character and I asked them what they meant by this and they said well you know the western world at the beginning in the first initial stages of the pandemic things were quite shambolic and we couldn't quite sort out the test and trace and we couldn't quite figure out you know how to do the lockdowns and people were confused China managed to do it quite well they clamped down and they shut everything down and they had these lockdowns and the population sort of just followed the rules and they were sort of testing how they should open things up and they created COVID facilities where people could be tested and the South Koreans had their test and trace sorted really quickly but when the vaccine roll out sort of all the work towards the vaccine happened it was western scientists working really hard in western capitals across the globe and the science community came together to be able to create these vaccines for the global community so you know it was our science whether it was AstraZeneca or the Pfizer that was seen to be the best and it was rolled out in that way and then they talked to me about the sort of Israel's position and being able to really quick in vaccinating their entire population but then criticism because they weren't assisting the Palestinians so there was that unfolding and then here in the UK were really good at sort of being working really hard to get everyone vaccinated really quickly even though the Europeans and the European Union had all their red tape and they were right to begin with and then that kicked off and was fine in Australia's case what I found interesting about what this person talked about Australia's character as a nation is that it banded together it said okay we're going to make sure that we deal with this pandemic as a community and people were wearing masks before the federal government sort of enforced it and communities were coming together to ensure that their neighbours were safe and that they were at a distance and following the rules I think what then happened was this sort of criticism that Australia faces that it can sometimes just shut itself down and it's quite happy to shut itself off from the rest of the world and I don't want to use the word parochial because I don't think that's true Australians are well travelled and they have sort of immigration is right in the country and multiculturalism is something that's celebrated in the country but they did shut down as a nation and I was asked why is this sort of something that's part of the Australian characteristic as well and I suppose again it goes back to the point of whether Australia as a nation act true to its character that it came together as a community but then it also shut itself down from the rest of the world I don't know but what I do know is while there has been frustration the death toll compared to the rest of the world has been quite low and even hearing that you know 1400 people or several thousand people may have died in Australia gives me heartache and that's because as a nation when one Australian citizen or one Australian dies anywhere in the world it's difficult for the Australian nation to tolerate and so when you see that over 100,000 people died in another part of the world or the pandemic means that 40,000 people are infected on a daily basis I often talk about the fact that that's just not something that's tolerated in Australia we just wouldn't tolerate 10,000 people dying it just wouldn't be tolerated as a nation and so I think it's been a difficult juggling act for Australia as a country it's been frustrating for us as Australians to be locked down but I also think it is true to our character that we don't think it's sort of acceptable that one Australian should die My last question Yalda as a member of the Australian Diaspora you've been locked out of Fortress Australia for the last little while but you're obviously a proud Australian you're checking in with Australian embassies and high commissions around the world which is something I don't always do you've got an Australian sense of humour what would it take to get you back to Australia working for an Australian media organisation telling the world's stories to Australians? You know Australia is home and it goes back to your point about Australia media landscape being open to telling the sort of story of the world to Australians and for me my passion is international journalism I love going to places that aren't making headlines or are behind the headlines and telling those stories to the world and at present the BBC has given me that platform and allows me to tell those stories and you know it's not about sort of the stories that have the highest ratings or are at the forefront of our minds I can say let's go to Eritrea what's going on in Eritrea and they say okay let's go and tell the story of Eritrea and you know that is the kind of journalism that I'm interested in and I know that that is something that many Australian journalists are passionate about so if there is room for that for me in Australia I would love to come home seeing in the meantime I must say it's a treat to be able to turn on to the BBC and to see the international coverage of the world and to hear those stories being told by you in an Australian accent so thank you very much for making time to speak with us thank you for your remarks, thanks for the conversation congratulations on your work with your foundation that's very important and thank you also for being such a great advertisement for Australian journalism around the world thank you very much Yalda Hakim thank you so much Michael for having me