The spirit still moves Geraldine Doogue

EXCLUSIVE: She has been hosting ABC’s flagship religious programme Compass since 1998, but Geraldine Doogue yearns to talk more about spirituality.

She wants to host a talk format that discusses religion, spirituality and values, in a format that differs from the documentary style of Compass.

“I think it would be great to do something like a Tuesday Book Club,” she tells TV Tonight. “But it’s got to be done in a sparkling fashion.

“If you look in the review pages of the newspapers about once every fortnight in Fairfax, The Australian and in the Fin Review’s very good Friday section there’s something of a genuinely religious, philosophical nature. But there’s nothing of that nature on television. There is on radio, but not on television.”

Ethical and spiritual issues are important to Doogue, who hosted Life Matters on Radio National for 11 years and is a regular speaker on the subject at conferences.

She says she would love to host a talk programme that sits alongside Compass, or as a sub-set.

“Compass is so wedded to the documentary format. We do so much with so little on Compass, because we’re not well-funded. So we make silk purses out of sow’s ears. We have, effectively, a 7 or 8 week turnaround in production, and achieve a hell of a lot,” she explains.

“To do that kind of turnaround you have to really have to come up with a person through whom you tell the story, just in order to make it work. There’s not enough time.

“So some of the more conceptual things, for which I think there is a lot of residual interest, don’t get done.”

ABC already has several talk-based formats such as Q & A, Lateline and even At the Movies, so Doogue is mindful that any new programme would need to be a lively affair.

“I think there’s room for exploring these, but not in boring, sonorous, one-on-ones where everybody trades their credentials and parades their overt knowledge. Something much more engaging, in front of an audience,” she says.

But so far she hasn’t pitched her idea to the ABC.

“It’s working its way through my grey matter!” she laughs.

Instead she is busy hosting Compass which celebrated its 21st year on air last year.

Across the next two weeks the show tackles one of its typically-complex issues, the Same-Sex Marriage debate, and specifically its theological challenges.

In the first of two episodes, we meet three gay couples who want to get married but aren’t legally allowed to, including two families with children and a gay man who is himself a marriage celebrant, partnering a wedding photographer.

A week later Doogue hosts a ‘dinner party’ debate with church leaders and lay people on the issue of Same Sex Marriage. Doogue says attitudes are changing, especially within the Anglican Church.

“Over the course of my journalistic life I can see there is a growth in terms of rights and respect towards people who just have a different attitude to sexuality,” she says.

“I’ve always felt, right back to early times that the churches in particular had a real genuine dilemma with people who were trying to grab commitments to fidelity which they thought were embodied by marriage.

“They were trying to grasp for virtue as defined by the people who teach virtue. So I’ve always felt that was a real problem for the churches.

“When you’ve got people saying they are grasping for the same level of fidelity and long term commitment and ‘won’t you come even half the way?’ then I think it’s pretty difficult for churches not to have a proper answer for that.”

In the dinner-party debate, opinions on the Church and Same Sex Marriage are divisive.

The guests include Professor Dennis Altman, broadcaster Julie McCrossin and Vietnam War veteran Geoff Thomas who told Tony Abbott he had a gay son, when he attended Q & A during the federal election.

Also appearing are Baptist minister Rev. Nathan Nettleton,  Anglican Bishop Rev. Robert Forsyth and Catholic Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan.

“Frank Brennan from a Jesuit point of view was really trying to grapple with the complications of fiddling with traditions and what it might it might lead to. Yet he’s fundamentally believing in the relationships and knowing there are real questions of support that have to be offered to people who are struggling so hard to live virtuous lives.”

But Doogue says that while she expects Same Sex Marriage to eventually be legalised, she isn’t sure it will live up to expectations.

“People like Julie McCrossin feel so passionately that it is the last little tile on the Scrabble board,” she says. “But I’m not sure that’s the case.

“And I don’t think many people will do it. There are a lot of people who really want to feel that they’re exonerated. It’s more than just an acceptance, it’s an exoneration of themselves. But I’m not sure it will do that.”

In the 13 years Doogue has been presenting Compass, she is also noticing shifts in the audience.

“Sunday nights have become intensely competitive among Free to Air and Pay TV and we’re definitely noticing it,” she insists.

“I think it really has hit, with the combination of multichannels or the number of people who tell you they’re watching The Wire on DVD on a Sunday night.”

At least it remains Free to Air television’s only religious programme brave enough to tackle a wide range of secular issues across several religions.

“That’s the good part. We’re out there on our own.”

Compass: State of the Union airs 10pm Sunday July 3 on ABC1.
Compass: Marriage Right vs Rite airs 10pm Sunday July 10 on ABC1.