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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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James O'Loughlin is a TV and radio host. Before that he was a stand-up comedian and before that he was briefly a lawyer, which means that James is a man who knows everything about everything. But James was at a loss when he got some bad news from one of his best and oldest friends, Jum Walner.
Both James and Jum had grown up in Canberra, where a whole lot of modest bungalows were built in the post-war years to house its army of public servants. But so many of these Canberra houses were given asbestos insulation, asbestos that was often carelessly installed and removed.
And there came the day when James's friend Jum felt a pain in his side and remembered he'd grown up in one of those houses filled with asbestos that had been installed by a local company called Mr. Fluffy. Jum discovered that if you got asbestosis from your workplace, you were entitled to compensation. But if it came from within the home... then no such luck.
So Jum asked James for his help to petition the powers that be to help asbestos victims like himself and their families. James O'Loughlin's now written a book about how a small group of amateurs had to figure out how to get the attention of powerful and busy ministers in the middle of a pandemic before it was too late. James O'Loughlin's book is called The Missing Piece. Hello, James.
G'day, Richard. Tell me a bit about your friend, Jum. How did you meet him?
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Chapter 2: How did James O'Loughlin reconnect with Jum Wallner?
Jum and I were at Wesley College at Sydney University together for three years in the mid-80s. He was studying vet science. I was studying law. We'd been to the same school, actually, Canberra Grammar, but I was a year ahead of him and I took a year off. He was my first friend there and my best friend there. I don't know if I was his best friend. He had about a dozen best friends.
In fact, 10 years later when he got married, there were literally 14 of us who thought we were going to be his best man. And when Jason Williams got picked, the others considered, we considered legal action. He was a big person. He was a big personality.
He was funny, smart, insightful, but also, which I think is less usual with 19-year-old boy men, whatever we were, he was really kind and good-hearted. I think that often humour is a great bonding device for young men, but it's also... and sometimes it can be wielded skilfully and everyone laughs and sometimes it can be a bit of a sword that cuts deep.
And John was amazing at seeing when, you know, when you were bantering in the corridor and someone was copping a bit, he'd just detect it before anyone else and he'd just draw fire and effortlessly pull the attention away, often by kind of something self-deprecating and he took care of people.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Mr. Fluffy homes in Canberra?
Yeah.
So you'd known him in school and then you re-met him at uni.
Well, I was a year above him at school. I knew him a bit.
Okay. So you didn't beat him up when he was a year below you, would you? Sounds like he was bigger than you anyway. Yeah. But nonetheless, what was it when you kind of reunited, that's the phrase with him, as a friend at uni, at your college, that made you think, love him a bit and made you go, what did he do that made you think, oh, I think I really like you?
Yeah. It wasn't just me, by the way. It happened right... All through his life, he just attracted people, effortlessly merged them. His warmth, his career. You know, I think the combination of charisma and modesty aren't that common. A lot of people are charismatic. Some people are modest. But not many people combine the two.
And not only was, you know, he the funniest of my friends, one of the smartest, but he You know that thing where you just feel safe with people? And I have a lot of people I feel safe with now. But at 19, there was always this thing of who am I and who are they? And I'm trying to make my mark.
And just with, even with good friends, you know, there's a little bit of competition, males probably particularly. And you just always felt safe. safe and entertained with him.
Men need sport to hang out with each other once they get past their youth. Yeah. I mean, but when you're at that age, when you're young, you know, you're able to somehow just hang out all the time and not... have purpose-driven social encounters. Like we must have dinner together. It's more you just, I don't know, you just drop in on the guy and hang out, don't you?
We didn't even have to do that. We were all living in Wesley College on Sydney Uni.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Jum face after his mesothelioma diagnosis?
Yeah, there's like 200 people there. And I think I spent most of my years there standing in the corridor, just talking to random groups, often with him in them. And it was great. All you had to do to go out was open your door into the corridor and there'd be some people chatting. I spent, yeah, a lot of it just, as you say, meaninglessly chatting away, bantering with him and others.
It was unreal.
How did your friendship change once you'd finished uni and went out into the big wide world?
We never lived again in the same city.
Chapter 5: How did James become an accidental activist for asbestos victims?
I stayed in Sydney and moved three times in the same suburb. He moved to England, travelled through Africa, lived in Wollongong, Townsville, then back to Canberra. So, you know, who's to say who's the more adventurous of the two of us? And... We both were kind of open about the fact that with families and careers, friendship, something had to give and a little bit of it was friendship.
Neither of us made a huge effort when we saw each other. We kind of laugh about it. You know, I probably won't call you. And I think looking back on it, we just assumed time was abundant. And of course, time isn't abundant, but it takes a while to realise that. And so whenever we saw each other or talked, we were close, but we didn't see each other as much as we could have.
So you did a law degree and you were a lawyer for a while. Now, you and I both know the worlds of comedy and literature are peopled with ex-lawyers, so many ex-lawyers. What was it that made you want to get out of the law and do something different?
Yeah.
I became a corporate lawyer and it just wasn't for me. The first morning they said, just make sure you read the financial review because that's your world now. And I thought, what am I doing here? I've never even been into that section of the paper. And it... I moved into criminal law and I really enjoyed that, but I'd done sort of stuff at uni, reviews and whatnot.
And then a friend of mine said, I'm going down to see a comedian friend of mine, a flatmate. Do you want to come? His name's Peter Burnham. And I said, yeah. And I went, I went to the Harold Park Hotel. It would have been 1990, I think, and saw the open mic section and just like a lightning bolt thought that's something I got to do. And that's the moment my life changed.
So how did you and John, years and years later, decades later, reconnect during the COVID epidemic?
We started doing these Zooms, just a few of us from college, as a lot of people did during COVID, just to pretend we had some semblance of a social life. And then...
A mutual friend, a guy, Loco, a very close friend of both of us, who's a doctor, he rang me and told me that it had begun, Jum had got a, he liked playing golf, he'd got a pain in the backswing, just a little, and he thought it was a muscle thing, and he went to a physio, and after a couple of trips to the physio, the physio suggested he should go to the GP.
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Chapter 6: What strategies did James use to petition the government?
And was this all given as a big information dump with the bad news at the end like that?
It was kind of a bit more incremental than that. It's looking bad. You know, the big thing with mesothelioma is that a small percentage, around 5%, are eligible for an operation if you get it early enough. And if you're eligible for the operation, it's a big operation. It might cut out a lung and some lung lining and some more stuff.
But your lifespan, if you recover from that, is greatly improved. And the The big first question for John was whether he was eligible for the operation. He wasn't definitely in. He wasn't definitely out. Having it was a big risk. It was an awful decision.
He wanted the doctors to make the decision for him, but it was his life, his call, and eventually he decided it was just too dangerous to have it. And after that, you know, that's when you're talking about how long have I got?
Yeah.
How did that news hit you? I know you want to make this about John, but I'm just asking you. How did that hit you?
I just thought when I found out about it, it was like this instant switch where I realized I hadn't really been considered it. I'd had no catalyst to consider it. Jarman is one of the most important people in my life. We were so close in those years and I so valued his friendship.
Whenever I was feeling down or, you know, some girl had dumped me or didn't like me or any of the other things, it'd always be him I went to see and he'd always somehow make me feel good again, like I was valued and a valuable person again. And
And so you remembered, you remembered, or you just, I don't know, it kind of all hit you, what he meant to you?
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Chapter 7: How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact their campaign?
Now, Australians who were exposed to asbestos through the workplace, like, for example, the workers who installed the Mr Fluffy... they would have been covered by compensation, wouldn't they? But, yes.
Generally, yeah. I mean, Mr Fluffy is actually an outlier of a case for a number of reasons, and one of them is because their asbestos can't necessarily be traced to James Hardy. But because of vigorous work by the unions, by victims, by lawyers in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, culminating in a big negotiation between the ACTU, led by Greg Combey and Bernie Banton, and the James Hardy Company.
The James Hardy Company set up a big fund that has now paid out over a couple of billion dollars to victims, and to workplace victims. And essentially, if you get workplace asbestos, which...
near between one and two hundred thousand australians have they've got sick from asbestos that they've incurred because of their workplace nearly it may even be over 200 000 you are you are almost certainly going to be covered you'll either be able to get compensation from the james hardy fund or if you somehow fall through the cracks there are all these government schemes to say look
you know, you're a worker, you got sick from asbestos in your workplace, it's not fair that you should be excluded because you can't prove liability, we'll give you a hand.
And how are they compensated? What support are they given with these funds?
It's essentially, it's significant. You get, you know, pain and suffering, you get a payment for a The fact that your life's ending early, they often calculate from the time you were diagnosed to the end of your working life, all the money you would have earned. So if you get diagnosed at 50, it might be because you're never going to be able to work again, 15 years worth of wages.
Medical funeral expenses.
Yep. Medical, funeral, any other out-of-pocket costs. So it's pretty comprehensive and pretty good.
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Chapter 8: What emotional struggles did James face while supporting Jum?
But we'll step in because it's unfair that you're excluded. You got this disease from some asbestos. We should take care of you. So what we were arguing is that those people who you already helped through various statutory schemes have fallen through the cracks. And this is, it's a bloody big crack. You know, it's a bigger crack than any of the others that you've helped.
But it is similar to that. Now, they had a very good counter-argument if they wanted to use it, the government, saying, well, no, we help people who generally are covered by the James Hardy scream, just the odd person here or there. There's no James Hardy here. You're asking us to use taxpayer money to fully take care of every victim here. So there are arguments in favour, arguments against.
Political lobbying, campaigning, it's not a part-time job, James. How was it really that easy for you to say yes to help your friend, John?
Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, really. So, and I didn't really understand much of it at first, but neither did they, neither did Jum and Bruce.
So, hang on, you've been a lawyer, a corporate lawyer, and you've been in, you know, comedy and in broadcasting. Yeah. You know, you've mixed with kind of quite powerful people, but you really had no idea how to approach them personally. From that end of things. No.
As a comedian, you come at them from one way, which is to heap abuse on politicians, but appealing to them for their help is another thing entirely, isn't it?
Yeah. Look, a couple of people said to me, oh, you should just march. You've been on television. You should march down to Canberra and have a meeting with Greg Hunt and get him to, the health minister, sort it out. It doesn't work like that, thank goodness, but also unfortunately for us. But overall, thank goodness. Maybe if I'd been Chris Hemsworth, but I'm not. I haven't been on TV.
Oh, don't sell yourself short, James. You're a handsome man still, I would say. There we are.
Well, I hadn't been on radio much for like six years beforehand. I hadn't been on TV for 10 years. And I'd always on radio steered clear of as much political stuff as I could. So, I mean, I knew that there were various campaigns, but I didn't know how to make them work.
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