60 Minutes: Oct 18

Free to Air TV will feature Free TV chairman Harold Mitchell in a report on 60 Minutes this weekend.

Charles Wooley looks at the new breed of beef barons, including Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and TEN shareholder Gina Rinehart (who is still amid legal action with Nine over its House of Hancock miniseries).

Dr. Fraud
It doesn’t get any lower than ripping off the dying and the disabled, but that’s exactly what one disgusting scammer is doing to Australians suffering from diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and Motor Neurone Disease. The promise: that a clinical trial for a miracle new stem cell treatment will slow or stop their symptoms. At least 70 patients – many of them Australian – have paid up to fifty thousand dollars each to secure a spot. For some, it is their last hope. This Sunday, we expose this highly sophisticated, multi-million dollar scam that has ruined lives and left families shattered. And we track down the heartless conman – the mastermind who calls himself “Doctor Doug”.
Reporter: Ross Coulthart
Producer: Stephen Rice

No More Dementia
Ageing. It’s inevitable. We all want to make it into our senior years, but no-one wants to get there to find it’s not much fun. The greatest challenge is dementia. It’s estimated 400-thousand Australians will be diagnosed with dementia in the next five years and that number will more than double in 30 years. So the race is on to try and find better treatments, if not a cure. America is leading the hunt, and this week we meet a group of elderly men and women who hold the key. They are taking part in the world’s largest and longest study into dementia, and the results are changing what we know about the disease.
Reporter: Liz Hayes
Producer: Phil Goyen

The Beef Boom
There’s a new boom sweeping across Australia and it’s attracting the shrewdest brains and fattest wallets in the land. It’s beef – it has been branded the new iron ore, and it’s big business. Where mining was the only show in town, now, the cattle industry is riding high. After years of drought, dwindling prices, and the live export controversy, properties you couldn’t give away are today worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The smart money is snapping them up – Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, Gina Rinehart, and the most unlikely cattle baron of them all.
Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producers: Stephen Taylor, Nick Greenaway

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.