Dene Broadbelt opens up to Peter Saxon

The first of a flurry of media releases from Dene Broadbelt arrived last Wednesday with a large Isentia logo in the top right hand corner – Isentia  being a highly respected, publicly listed, media monitoring and business insights organisation.

Something about the poor grammar suggested that either Isentia’s standards had slipped or that the release was not sanctioned by them. On checking, it appears that Dene had signed on to use Isentia’s user-activated media release system. But that did not entitle him to use their logo according to Isentia’s Commercial Director, Luke Allen who told radioinfo, “Yes I can confirm that this is one of our clients, though he should not have sent the release using our branding, so please take it as not a release on behalf of Isentia.” 

Isentia also confirmed that the credit card he’d offered for payment was declined.

It seems that despite all his trials and many errors, Dene has learnt little. His grasp of ethics remains tenuous.  Evidently, he sees no problem in casually cutting the logo of a highly reputable brand and pasting it on to his own media release without seeking permission.

In the same media release Dene boasted of having the support of another reputable organisation, Life Line. Two days later, he was forced to send out an amended release prefaced by the following:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CORRECTION – In its press release dated May 27th, The Management for Dene Broadbelt conveyed inaccurate information regarding Dene’s involvement with Life Line stating that he had “the backing of Lifeline”.

The support that has been received by Lifeline was simply some resources such as wallet cards and other print material, Broadbelt is in no way Sponsored, an ambassador or has any professional affiliation with LifeLine.

The corrected information is provided below. We apologise for any confusion this mistake may have created.

On their own, the two misdemeanours above can be easily dismissed as the inexperience and exuberance of a 21 year old trying to big note himself. But Dene’s been pushing the ethical envelope and running up debts for several years now and as of last week, it seems, he’s still at it.

Dene suggests that any lapses in ethical behaviour he may have had now and in the past are due to his illness – Depression. “What most people don’t understand is that the decisions you make while you are mentally ill, sometimes they are extreme, yet you feel like you’re totally fine. But now that I’m totally medicated I can see clearer,” he says.

I’m willing to give Dene the benefit of the doubt in this regard, although many will not, but it does not absolve him of the fact that he has left a trail of debts and ill will behind him which he must address. Dene reckons he’s doing exactly that by sending out legal demands and media releases. I’m not convinced it’s the best tactic.

Note: Regular readers of radioinfo will be familiar with the history of Dene Broadbelt. The list of events is too long to recap here. For background, click here or use Google. 

From the transcript of the interview to follow and statements he’s previously made here and in other media, his narrative could be summarised this way:

At the base of it is, as Dene himself confirms, that he owes about 30 people, mostly related to radio, a total of around $87,000 dollars despite being declared bankrupt last October for closer to $250,000. In any case a group of his creditors and a swelling contingent of trolls and assorted haters have formed a closed facebook group that follow his every move. They are not only ruining his life but giving themselves little chance of being repaid because they cruel every job and opportunity he goes for by revealing his past to prospective employers.

Dene admits (often) that he’s “not perfect, no one is.” He has made mistakes “in the past.” When asked what these mistakes were he tells us that moving from ZOO FM, Dubbo to The Eagle in Goulburn was the big mistake – not the fact that he ran up debts on the station’s behalf without authority (which he disputes in the interview).

In Dene’s mind he is the real victim here, not his creditors who, he seems to feel, should just get over it. “There are people out there that need to move on and do not want to put this to bed,” he says seemingly with little empathy for their loss as evidenced by this edited extract from the interview.

radioinfo: What did you hope to achieve by becoming a bankrupt?

Dene: Basically, the achievement of declaring myself bankrupt was that I was getting death threats from creditors. My main aim was to get these people off my back. I had no money to pay them back and the sheriff was visiting once a week.

radioinfo: Bankruptcy is a legal instrument that puts a stop to your creditors demands for payment, right?

Dene: Exactly.

radioinfo: But there is nothing in the bankruptcy act that prevents your creditors from resenting the fact that you’ve managed to wriggle out of having to pay them the money that you owe. Can you understand their frustration?

Dene: Yeah – no I can definitely understand it. But there are other people out there that declare bankruptcy on a daily basis and they don’t get this media attention and negative feedback that I’ve received.

Really? Well, maybe not everyone. But plenty do. And, of course, if you keep sending out media releases, you shouldn’t be surprised that you gain media attention or that the feedback isn’t as rosy as you’d hoped.

While I doubt young Dene is a devotee of the works of Oscar Wilde, I feel he could adopt his maxim, “The only thing worse in life than being talked about, is not being talked about.” Yet, unbeknownst to Dene, he may have a little of Wilde in him because it was he that stated in his own media release, “You’re a no one until you’re talked about.”

I admit that we did have some lively discussion in the office about the merits of posting this article at all and whether it was wise to give Dene and his cause any more oxygen. Yes, he always makes for good readership numbers but the whole saga is starting become tawdry and we questioned whether radioinfo should continue to be part of it.

What tipped the scales was this section of the interview.

radioinfo: So, you agree that until you get this monkey off your back you are likely to remain stuck in this downward spiral…

Dene: Exactly

radioinfo: So what are you doing to get these people to stop so you can get your life back in order?

Dene: Well, basically, at the moment… I did have a defamation guy on the Gold Coast who was doing some stuff to try and get some things removed from google but it kind of died off. He wasn’t doing too much. The advice from my family was to seek a solicitor locally. And yesterday two defamation letters got issued to the admin of that closed group on Facebook asking them to remove their board. There’s a few other media outlets as well that have been issued with letters to correct the facts and also to apologise as well.

radioinfo: To apologise?

Dene: Yes about the facts that aren’t true. 

radioinfo: To get them to apologise…

Dene: Correct.

radioinfo: So basically, your plan to get them off your back is to attack them through legal means…

Dene: I know if I took the matter to court for defamation, as the solicitor locally said, it would be a back and forth battle and would cost thousands of dollars and would go on for months and years for all we know. So, as he stated in the letter, we want to kind of sort this out of court. So yeah, I guess it’s the only way… I guess if I was to send a letter and say, ‘take this page down,’  I guess it would be, ‘fuck off,’ really.

radioinfo: You said you would be brutally honest and I’m going to ask you a direct question.

Dene: Sure.

radioinfo: Do you find it hard to empathise with other people?

Dene: Yeah, look um, a lot of people out there… in terms of meaning by ‘empathise’ – connect with people? Is that what you’re saying?

radioinfo: Well, put yourself in their shoes… understand where they’re coming from.

Dene: Yeah look, I can understand where they’re coming from. But, like as I’ve said before, there’s a lot of people out there that have done worse things than what I have and also people that are out  there declaring bankrupt almost every day but they don’t get this negative feedback from media and creditors. 

Whether Dene has an illness or not, what is clear is that he needs help. At the very least, he needs good advice. Perhaps a life coach. It is a tragedy that a young man who is as bright and creative as he, is already the recipient of so much negative media at the tender age of 21.

We hope for Dene’s sake that he is able to repair his life and his reputation and if we ever write about him again it will be for something really good that he’s done.

Note: A short time after posting, Dene had contacted us to say the following: 

Transcript of Interview with Dene Broadbelt

(Starting after a short pramble with Dene talking about describing his journey through bullying and depression to school children.)

radioinfo: So you are kind of using yourself as a case study…

Dene: Pretty much. Like there is a lot of other people out there. I guess I’ve read about that have worked in radio who’ve got depression and anxiety as well

radioinfo: Whats the key message you want to leave with the kids

Dene: Basically, I guess, if I get to help other people like me to reach out and help, I guess that’s a good thing because I lived with a secret for so long and the depression only got worse. And it still plays a part of my everyday life and basically I wanted to do something about bullying and depression for ages. People need to stand strong and fight for what they know is right and my message to them is that they are never alone and they can get through this. 

I’ve had, as you know, a lot of negative media in the past and I’ve had to fight through it so I kind of kept my head up high and there was fake suicide messages that went out. I guess you know all about that. 

But the people that I go and talk to, they need to be proud of who they are and if they are suffering depression and anxiety, it’s crucial and important, like, many depressed and unwell individuals suffer in silence. Basically they are afraid and unwilling to seek help even from those closest to them. Some of them fear being rejected or misunderstood. My message is that sufferers should seek professional help, they really should, because many people kind of don’t want to speak out about it. It’s these people that are hurting.

If people are treated with compassion and dignity instead of judgement and scepticism what a great difference it would make. That’s kind of my key message to get across – so many people are suffering that would get really Im pushing for them to get the help that they need because I guess a lot of them take as you’re probably aware the  unthinkable avenue of escape which is suicide. Its a staggering amount of people what the rate of suicide is out there at the moment.

radioinfo: Have you ever been suicidal?

Dene: No. Well, I have been once before in my younger days but not recently, no.

radioinfo: When you say your younger days how old are you now?

Dene: 21

radioinfo: 21, wow. Strange you can talk about younger days when you’re just 21. You’re writing a book too, right?

Dene: Yeah. I haven’t got the title yet, but basically It’ll be from when I left high school  right through to now… what kind of lead to what has happened with the negative media out there and really focuses on… it’s a bit of a recap of what’s happened over the years but it’s also about the positives as well which is incorporating the roadshow about depression and anxiety as well.

radioinfo: You say in your media release “You’re a no one until you’re talked about.” What do you mean by that?

Dene: There’s a lot of people out there that I guess have had issues as well similar to what I’ve just had with the bad media. But it doesn’t actually end up in the media and you’re not really someone until you’re talked about online and like in newspaper clippings on tv and on radio. That’s kind of a catch phrase that I use because I was a “nobody.”  I had lots of this media attention in a negative way and as soon as somebody gets wind of it and starts talking about it everybody knows about it.

radioinfo: Is that an important part of your makeup, to be “somebody?”

Dene: No. It’s not at all. If I could get out of the media I would stay clear of it. But the objective now is… I’ve released the truth. And as I’ve said to everyone: unfortunately, I will admit that I’ve made mistakes and my life isn’t perfect. But I feel this ordeal will never end because people out there that have their own opinion about me and unfortunately I can’t change that – no one can. But I’ve admitted I’ve made mistakes like a lot of people have. I’m not perfect. Nobody is but what most people don’t understand is that the decisions you make while you are mentally ill, sometimes they are, just over extreme yet you feel like you’re totally fine. But now that I’m totally medicated I can see clearer.But while these people still in the zone with the private support group on facebook, I’ve actually issued a cease and desist notice to the administrators of that through my solicitors down here on the coast. But I guess while these people are still in the zone pulling me down I don’t think so clear. They need to put it to bed and move on. What’s happened has happened. I guess now it’s a bit like a circus carrying on. Like yesterday I actually got a screen shot from a program director here on the coast that [name redacted] from [station redacted] posted a media release on a closed group and there’s just a lot of hate speech and on the other side I get a lot of positive support as well. So, in a nutshell while those people are still out there is a 50- 50 ratio on opinions.

radioinfo: You say you’re not perfect, like everyone else. And you make mistakes. Specifically, what were those mistakes?

Dene: The specific mistakes were… when I was working in radio, I was in Dubbo at ZOO FM having left Broome, doing Afternoons on Spirit. Leaving Dubbo, I guess, was possibly the worst mistake that I ever made because  when I took the Content Director role in Goulburn, there was a lot of changes going on with Steve Swaddling (who passed away suddenly). There were two managers there at the time. I had a really good relation with Steve Aderman – he was fantastic – but when [Name redacted] took over, all hell broke loose. There was not any professionalism at the start there when I arrived at the station. There was no General Manager, I was learning the ropes myself, thrown in the deep end.

When the “music festival” that was an internal promotion that they had arranged they came to me and said that I needed to get involved. That’s basically where it all broke loose as I stated in the media release. They were well aware what I was doing at the time. The station management had to approve everything that I had done. They were kept up to date they were receiving emails they were always in meetings and I guess at the end of the day a program director can authorise certain things basically in regards to on air talent but what happens outside the station being involved with the community has to be approved by a general manager.

radioinfo: Your mistake was that you didn’t get it approved, is that right?

Dene: The festival was already approved though this is what Im saying. It was already approved by management. They were the ones who came to me and said that I need to get involved and from then on- I said to the general manager at the time that these services need to play a part in making the festival happen and she was looped in to all the emails and all the meetings and was well aware of what was going on . Yet the kind of blame at the end came back on me and as I said in the email coming back from an OB there was a bit of tension in the air and I asked what happened and she got quite rowdy with me, yelling at me  and I left at 5 to 4, mid shift.  And the following morning there were two members of management plus a real estate agent… I was asleep at the time… it was about 6.30 on a Wednesday morning. They gained access to my property with a key from the real estate agent. Woke me at 6.30 in the morning. and asked if I had any intention of returning to work when I did, that afternoon, I was issued with a resignation notice. 

radioinfo: Well, you’re young and you probably should have kept  a proper paper trail.  Last October you applied for bankruptcy. All up how much did you owe at that point?

Dene: The fact is that there is $250,000 that is out there. As I was sitting down working it out the other day – I’m still in the process of working it out with AVIDA as well, which is the credit reporting agency – there is an ANZ home loan on there which I never applied for which is about 100k so that racks it up to quite a fair bit. They have been in touch with ANZ and there is no documentation or any signatory that I have applied for a home loan and I never would have. I never had any intention of purchasing a home.  I had the ace on that. So, I would say the ballpark figure which we’re looking at which include all my debts would be somewhere around about $87,000

radioinfo: Okay. And of that about how many individuals and companies are involved that you say you owe money to?

Dene: I would say about 30.

radioinfo: 30.  Okay. Just ballpark, what’s the biggest amount and what’s the smallest?

Dene: The smallest amount is 1500 and the biggest is probably around about $20,000

radioinfo: What did you hope to achieve by becoming a bankrupt?

Dene: By becoming a bankrupt, as I refer back to the media release that I issued there was a lot of pressure on at the time. Not from Police. The Police didn’t visit me once while this ordeal was happening. The whole time I worked in radio I was never visited by the police once in relation to the allegations that are out there and in relation to the debt as well. But basically the achievement of declaring myself bankrupt was that I was getting death threats from creditors. I was getting death threats from people working in radio. I reported those to the police as well. Im not sure what action has been taken. I haven’t heard anything back though. My main aim of declaring bankruptcy was to get these people off my back. I had no money to pay them back and the sheriff was visiting once a week. It even got to the stage where my next door neighbours- my mother’s next door neighbours were receiving death threats as well and it basically just put it to bed because in reality I had no money at the time now and then as well.

radioinfo: Fair enough, but bankruptcy is a legal instrument that puts a stop to your creditors demands for payment, right?

Dene: Exactly.

radioinfo: But there is nothing in the bankruptcy act that prevents your creditors from resenting the fact that you’ve managed to wriggle out of having to pay the money that you owe. Can you understand their frustration?

Dene: Yeah – no I can definitely understand it. But you look at it as well there are other people out there that declare bankruptcy on a daily basis and they don’t get this media attention and negative feedback that I’ve received  and as I’ve said, there was never intention of going out there and ripping people off. 

The Infinity Music Festival (Dene’s failed venture in Darwin) would have happened. The artist management company that I was running at the time was going smoothly. It’s all because of $1000. There was a $1000 that was paid and there was $1000 that was remainder to [Name redacted] and ever since he came into my life which was back on 2012, he was the one that has basically destroyed it. 

Most of the creditors, I’ve emailed them and said, I’ve declared bankruptcy and here is my trustee number and my bankruptcy case number. And I’m getting a lot who wrote back and said ‘thanks for advising us that you’ve declared bankruptcy. Hopefully you can move on with your life.’ Most of them have put it to bed. It’s the ones, mostly radio related, and its people like [Name redacted] got the word out there about me and they just jumped on his bandwagon.

radioinfo: Suffering from a deep depression. Surely these people hounding you aren’t helping in any way. I mean the more they hound you the more depressed you’re likely to become right?

Dene: Yeah – you flash back to when I was working in Dubbo and Broome, I had a job. I was able to go and visit my family members, I was able to connect with friends, I have no friends now. I don’t have a job. One aunt, unfortunately, won’t even talk to me because her neighbours have read the newspapers, seen what’s in there and the negative feedback they basically have mixed emotions as to what I’ve done. They can see my side of the story but that doesn’t really reflect in the media too much and that’s caused a bit of grief with my family. 

My grandparent’s next door neighbour won’t even let me go there and visit them and they won’t let me go there as well so it’s caused a bit of family break up as well. I used to visit my grandparents every day a couple of years ago. Now things have torn apart… most of it is basically because of that support group out there on Facebook which is tracking my every move. They are obsessed with my moves. Even when I left radio and I was working in Nowra I had seen posts that basically said that  I found Dean Broadbent,These are his details get on to his employer and the employer has provided me with the correspondence that was sent to the real estate as well its just not going to be put to bed. There are people out there that have nothing better in life to do than just watch my every move. Really it’s just like stalking. Now I just sit back and laugh because I think, you must have a lot of time on your hands to be doing what you’re doing.

radioinfo: While they keep hounding you, you will never be able to build a successful career will you?Dene: No.  And I guess that’s what I was saying to the South Coast Register the other day. These people have come out and said that they want me to pay them back. I had intentions to pay them back as much as I could even if I would enter into a part 9 debt agreement where I was paying them back so much a week, I would have done that but I can’t do that if they go running off to future employers and anyone thats employment related and saying that this guy should be sacked because if I don’t have a job I cant pay them back in reality.

radioinfo: So, you agree that until you get this monkey of your back you are likely to remain stuck in this downward spiral…

Dene: Exactly

radioinfo: So what are you doing to get these people to stop so you can get your life back in order?

Dene: Well, basically, at the moment… I did have a defamation guy on the Gold Coast who was doing some stuff to try and get some things removed from google but it kind of died off. He wasn’t doing too much. The advice from my family was to seek a solicitor locally. And yesterday two defamation letters got issued to the admin of that closed group on Facebook asking them to remove their board. There’s a few other media outlets as well that have been issued with letters to correct the facts as well and also to apologise as well.

radioinfo: To apologise?

Dene: Yes about the facts that aren’t true. 

radioinfo: To get them to apologise…

Dene: Correct.

radioinfo: So basically, your plan to get them off your back is to attack them through legal means…

Dene: I know if I took the matter to court for defamation, as the solicitor locally said, it would be a back and forth battle and would cost thousands of dollars and would go on for months and years for all we know. So, as he stated in the letter, we want to kind of sort this out of court. So yeah, I guess it’s the only way… I guess if I was to send a letter and say, ‘take this page down,’  I guess it would be, ‘fuck off,’ really.

radioinfo: You said you would be brutally honest and I’m going to ask you a direct question.

Dene: Sure.

radioinfo: Do you find it hard to empathise with other people?

Dene: Yeah, look um, a lot of people out there… in terms of meaning by ‘empathise’ – connect with people? Is that what you’re saying?

radioinfo: Well, put yourself in their shoes… understand where they’re coming from.

Dene: Yeah look, I can understand where they’re coming from. But, like as I’ve said before, there’s a lot of people out there that have done worse things than what I have and also people that are out  there declaring bankrupt almost every day but they don’t get this negative feedback from media and creditors. 

There are people working in radio that have defamed me on social media and in the support group who’ve had no interaction with me whatsoever. And I haven’t done anything to them. And it just blows me away that there are people out there, bystanders are getting involved, that have had nothing to do with me.

radioinfo: You’re a pretty savvy media guy, right? And you know how social media works. And it’s true, for example when, say, Kyle Sandilands says something outrageous suddenly there are 35,000 signatures on Change.org and the vast majority of those people never listen to Kyle or heard what he actually said. That’s just the way it goes.

Dene: Exactly

radioinfo: You make yourself a pretty big target, though. It’s not as though you’re laying low. You send out these media releases. This one you sent out the other day. You must know that the people who you say hate you, will get hold of it the minute you send it out even though you haven’t specifically sent it to them. So it’s not exactly a way of laying low is it?

Dene: No. And its not my intention of laying low because if I lay low – as a few people have said around here in Bateman’s Bay that I get on with –  if I lay low it’s going to create a bit of negative feedback as well, like ‘he’s trying to hide from police, he’s trying to hide from us.’ That’s why I came out with the media release to express my side of the story. The truth, the facts. And hopefully put this to bed because it’s just dragging on and it needs to be stopped and this is basically the final media release that I am issuing  and then others down the track will just be about the roadshow and the book that’s coming out. But this has happened and it’s dragged on too long.

radioinfo: By your own admission there’s about 30 people you’ve pissed off because you owe them money. Can you understand, putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes, if that somebody was expecting to get a thousand dollars from you that they’d earmarked for their daughter’s school uniform and their son’s footy gear, they would resent the fact that you didn’t pay them – can you understand why some of them wont leave you in peace as long as you live?

Dene: Yeah—no – I can understand that.

radioinfo: What I am suggesting here is have you ever held a meeting with your creditors and put forward a repayment plan?

Dene: Well the problem is that I did actually. There was DCS group that was originally the plans to that agreement they did put the proposal to the creditors as well but the kind of thing that fell back there is when I kept losing my jobs because they were emailing them they said well how you going to pay it back because I had their fees to pay on top of it as well as the debt repayments. And I spoke to a financial councillor locally here and he said that the only option is to declare bankrupt. 

radioinfo: Okay, but you owe about 87 grand, as you say. And in another interview you say that your family was willing to bankroll you into another business. Wouldn’t it be better to take that money that they were going to bankroll you with and pay as much as you could in a mark of good faith to these people because once you pay them out or once you at least pay something it could be remarkable how much they might change their minds.

Dene: I’ve we had several solicitors who have said that as well. That’s something that I did think of very heavily and then I start to think of it what happens if I get my family to lay out this money and pay them back and it still doesn’t stop and I’m stuck in the same predicament. Because I know there will be people out there that will not put this to bed.

radioinfo: Have you ever apologised? I mean a proper apology.

Dene: I have – I’ve said and I’m not going to contact them by phone because  those that I have contacted have told me to go  and do whatever. But I have sent out emails  where I’ve pointed reference numbers to the accountants and that Im deeply regretful that its came to this and Im sorry and heres the accountant numbers and the contact details. I’ve sent to all the creditors that I owe money.

radioinfo: Well Dene I wish you all the best of luck. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Dene: No – I guess basically the key point that I want to get across is  about how theres people out there that need to move on and do not want to put this to bed. I mean what’s happened has happened and hopefully I can put a positive on the story.