Sunday Night: Nov 8

Sunday Night cleverly profiles history-making jockey Michelle Payne, which has proven to be a great media story.

Plus Derryn Hinch goes deep into Australia’s ice underbelly and a story on ‘driverless’ cars.

Michelle. Our Belle.
She took Australian racing’s ultimate prize, proved the doubters wrong and told them to ‘get stuffed’ anyway. She smiled her dazzling smile, she hugged her brother Stevie and we all fell in love with Michelle Payne. When Michelle rode the bush-trained, 100-1 roughie Prince of Penzance past the winning post in Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup she confounded a few of the horse’s owners who wanted a bloke to ride the gelding, she smashed through ‘chauvinist’ racing’s glass ceiling and announced a new royal order in the Sport of Kings. Queens rule. With millions of Australians fixed on this pocket powerhouse, the book opened on her extraordinary story. The nine brothers and sisters, the scarring loss of her mother, a family raised among horses by a battling father, the injury that almost ended her career. The national spotlight was thrown on an amazing and highly-competitive bunch, but there’s a great deal we still don’t know about this trailblazing Aussie. Sunday Night’s Melissa Doyle sits down with the remarkable Michelle Payne for an extensive interview on the highs, the lows and the secrets that have taken her to the top of her game.

Australia on Ice
It has become the most pervasive and, arguably, the most destructive drug ever to be unleashed. Ice.
And it’s rapidly climbed the ladder to infect and often ravage families from all levels of society. Northern Territory Police Minister Peter Chandler is responsible for the officers who enforce drugs laws in the Top End and yet even he hasn’t been able to keep methamphetamine from reaching his own family and gripping his eldest son. Peter and his wife Robyn have watched ice turn their boy into a desperate thief and they worry the drug will kill him. Young mum Casey Veal lost her beautiful baby boy to an ice-addled home invader. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione says no-one is immune. So, what can be done to stop this horrific drug from claiming a generation or more? In this comprehensive Sunday Night investigation, Derryn Hinch goes deep into Australia’s ice underbelly to explore the devastating dynamics of this drug. But he also goes searching for answers and finds hope in courtrooms and communities across the country. Sunday Night goes inside a specialist drug court to see how it’s changing lives and heads bush to find people coming together to take on the ice menace.

Look World, No Hands!
It’s infiltrated our lives to the point that we’ve all developed a love/hate relationship with technology. It’s great when it works but when something goes wrong it usually goes wrong at the worst possible time. So, would you hand the wheel – in fact all the operating switches and pedals of your car – over to a computer and trust it to drive you safely from A to B? Would you trust a computer with your life? Questions we’ll soon be answering as the companies that already dominate and determine the way we live, race to develop, test and release the driverless car. And so an industry that’s spent all its time developing the relationship between car and driver – and spending billions on the idea that your car defines who you are – will change forever. Already, petrol heads and old-school car lovers are crying foul. How dare Google and other hi-tech companies steal control of the car and rob motoring enthusiasts of their passion and identity. The tech-whizzes behind the revolution say it’s just the way it will be – convenience is the key and time-poor, traffic-jammed commuters will be liberated to do other things while their cars do the driving. Alex Cullen refs the battle between the developers and the drivers in this revealing look at the very near future.

Sunday at 7pm on Seven.