Murat Dizdar is the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, responsible for more than 2200 public schools and almost 800,000 students. And he's on a mission to stem the flow of students to private schools and claw back funding from the federal government.

For Dizdar, the son of Turkish migrants raised in council housing, this mission is personal.

"I stunk of working class," he tells Australian Story. "I stunk of what work looked like. And I don't mind when I reminisce about that odour because that odour was hard-earned. It taught me that to get your way there was no shortcut. I've always been in the in the corner of the battler, the working class and that's why I'm also so passionate about public education."

Dizdar thrived in the public system and received one of the highest HSC marks in the state. The expectation was that he would study law or medicine, and he chose law. But while working in a law firm as a student he realised he had to follow his true passion – teaching.

A notoriously hard worker, Dizdar worked his way to the top of the department, only resting for nine days after a serious heart attack.

"Absolutely read him the riot act after the heart attack," his wife Ceyda Dizdar says. "And I remember distinctly him saying to me, ‘I'm fine. I'm fine. Can you bring my laptop?'"

Australian Story was granted extraordinary access to Murat Dizdar as he undertook the fight of his life – to secure an extra $800 million per year in funding and start the process of winning back students to public education.

"Murat has got the right idea, in my opinion," former justice of the High Court Michael Kirby tells Australian Story. "For most of the time I was on the High Court, I was the only justice whose entire education had been at public schools. For a long time now, the federal government has been the donor of very, very large amounts of funding to private and religious schools and they've done that to the damage of public schools."

The episode also features interviews with NSW Education Minister Prue Car, former public school alumnus and Socceroo Craig Foster, and former colleague and now state minister Jihad Dibb.

In January 2023, Perth grandmother Donna Nelson flew to Tokyo expecting to meet her future husband, following a two-year online relationship. Instead, customs officers found two kilograms of methamphetamine in a suitcase she'd been asked to carry, and she was arrested.

Last November, Australian Story followed Donna's five daughters as they attended her long-awaited trial for drug smuggling. Despite Japan's 99 per cent conviction rate, Donna's daughters were confident she would be among the fortunate one per cent and be home for Christmas.

"Even though I knew what we were up against, I still felt confident," daughter Kristal Hilaire tells Australian Story. "You can't be guilty of something you didn't know and didn't have intention of doing."

Before her trial, Donna – a 59-year-old Nyaki Nyaki woman and community leader – had spent 22 months in solitary confinement with no family contact.

"She's pretty much confined to her cell for 23½ hours a day," explains daughter Ashlee Charles. "She has to eat in her cell, she isn't allowed to talk loudly, she's not allowed to sing, she's not allowed to talk to other people who are detained."

Says her Japanese lawyer, Rie Nishida: "She actually told me she felt she is suicidal at a certain point. She told me she almost forget how to speak."

Donna Nelson was the victim of a sophisticated love scam. Her fiancé, who called himself Kelly, said he was a businessman based in Japan. After two years of daily online contact, he invited her to Japan to meet in person, booking her a flight with a stopover in Laos and asking her to pick up a sample suitcase for his Japanese boutiques.

"With these romance scams, people's usual reaction is, how could you be so stupid," says lawyer Luke McMahon. "But it really lacks an appreciation for how sophisticated these scammers are. It's this person's job. That's what they do. They do it every day."

Donna was sentenced to six years in prison, despite the court accepting she was the victim of a scam. No effort has been made to investigate ‘Kelly' or the syndicate he belongs to, either in Japan or Australia.

In a dramatic and absorbing episode, Australian Story reveals the details of the elaborate scam that led to Donna Nelson's arrest and provides exclusive behind-the-scenes coverage of the family as they attend the trial, digest the shock sentence and prepare for an appeal.