Lunch with Corey White: 'I'm very conscious of steering clear of tragedy porn'

We order drinks – beer for White, wine for me – and begin with a mini prawn cocktail, the first of several courses.

White grew up in Caboolture in Queensland, and from the age of eight months old was in and out of foster care; when his parents were not in jail, he regularly witnessed domestic violence. He also survived neglect, the death of his mum from a heroin overdose when he was 10, and his own methamphetamine addiction.

A burgeoning comedy career brought him to Melbourne, where he now lives with his fiancee. After dropping out of university ("three times!"), White was persuaded by a friend to try stand-up 10 years ago.

"I really took to it," he says. "I wouldn't say I was like 'I've found what I always wanted to do' – it was like a short man finding out you can be a jockey."

His show The Cane Toad Effect, in which he mined his childhood for laughs (one of the worst abuses he faced, he says, was being taken to the Tamworth Country Music Festival), won the Best Newcomer award at both the 2015 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Sydney Comedy Festival.

On the back of that, he was approached by the ABC – first to be a subject for Australian Story, then to front Corey White's Roadmap To Paradise, screening now.

While he wrung laughs from his childhood for his stand-up, his Australian Story profile was shatteringly sober.

He and Rebecca, the one sister he remains on good terms with, detailed a childhood filled with unimaginable horror, from their hustling, criminal dad, to ongoing abuse in care and White's descent into ice addiction, before comedy became his salvation.

The most striking thing about White is his disarming optimism. The Cane Toad Effect was inspired by a Plato quote, "no man does what is evil to him"; White believes people don't set out with evil intentions.

"I think people do what they think is right, or they justify it. I don't think people are evil, they just have bad ideas," he says.

"My mother was a drug addict; I know that she loathed herself. My father was mentally ill and … at what point does free will come into it? Can you really speak of free will when a man stabs his partner with scissors and says 'I'm god, you're the slave' – is that the product of a rational mind?"

White even finds virtue in his year-long ice addiction.

"I appreciate that I did it – not just for the enormous waterfalls of neurochemicals – but it allowed me to gain a real sense of compassion for my mother," he says.

And there's part of him that hopes for "some kind of reconciliation" with his dad, from whom he is estranged.

"When Australian Story aired, he went off his bipolar medication and they found him in the bush three days later, dehydrated," he says. "I'd asked him to appear on the program but he said no. It's … disappointing because you want someone to face up to the truth. I know that he's slowly dying – kidney stuff, liver illness from years of drug and alcohol abuse – but I … still wait for that moment of truth. Where he's a man."

White bring this sense of hope to Roadmap, in which he offers solutions to Australia's most politicised hot-button issues, from housing, terrorism and democracy, to subjects he has an intimate knowledge of: foster care, the war on drugs and domestic violence.

The premise seems at once audacious (who is this guy?) and obvious (someone who knows better than the usual "experts").

"I like to think that it's unbounded by the political spectrum," White says. "And it is backed up with research. In my head I say that I'm a more rigorous, solution-oriented version of Louis Theroux."

And while he discloses confronting, deeply personal anecdotes, such as his father's violence and details of his abuse inside the foster care system, he was determined it remain positive.

"Political comedy [and] political critique is intensely pessimistic, and negative and cynical and destructive," he says. "I don't want to be a part of that – I don't want to be part of the sarcasm and the irony and the … uselessness."

He'd rather offer ideas, even if they're controversial or naive.

"I don't think these are necessarily solutions," he says, "and throughout the series I draw attention to the fact that I am an idiot – but I think what I have, which few other people do, is sincerity."

He was reluctant to do Australian Story – wary of sentimentality and losing control of his own narrative – but his reasons for participating were political.

"I thought, 'I won those two awards, they're going to do this thing on me, this could be a good opportunity to shine a light on the foster care system,'" he says. "The system isn't talked about enough, and if it is, the solutions are so protean, so nebulous – it's always more money or stronger controls.That may help, but it's one of those difficult areas of public policy because those who have a personal stake in it are so tiny. They're not a voting base anyone has any incentive to try and win over."

During his time in care, White was starved, emotionally and physically abused, and, in one home he lived in for four years, repeatedly raped and beaten by the carer's son.

"I was there when my mum died and I just stayed there after that," he says. "Up to that point, like a lot of foster kids, I was incredibly violent; I had massive anger problems, I would throw things."

But when his mum died, White says he "went into myself".

"It's this weird paradox that I would probably be in jail now if I hadn't gone to [that house]. I had to suffer. It made that anger go inwards. It cowed me."

He talks about the system – the young, overworked social workers, the lax screening of carers, that it's a class issue that "nobody gives a f--- about".

"Foster kids are our country's refugees," he says. "But you'll never see a protest for foster kids. It's really depressing."

By the time our crab arrives, followed by fried chicken and waffles ("I am in heaven here," White says, before disclosing he's "on a weight loss regime" ahead of his wedding), we've discussed Millennial outrage culture ("I think we've given up all hope on the future, we have precarious jobs, we don't think we'll ever own a home – the only thing we can control is to tear people down"), politics ("I was approached by some people in Adelaide to run for the Child Protection Party. Maybe one day …") and the memoir he's releasing next year.

"It did bring up a lot of memories and things that I had repressed, triggered a lot of things – but I'm glad I went through that. That was part of my last psych visit, a year-and-a-half ago," he says of his month-long stay in a psych ward during pre-production of Roadmap.

"It was a difficult period; the machinery of my mind had been dismantled. I think human beings, in our subconscious mind, have great ways to prevent catastrophe – when many people bring things up, they have a complete collapse. I'm very conscious of steering clear of tragedy porn though. The rise of confessional culture – everything is a Sylvia Plath poem now. I want to step aside from that."

As well as depression, White, like many abuse survivors, suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, but has learnt to manage it.

"It's the way my brain is – like, I had to sit here, with my back to the wall, so I could monitor the restaurant," he says. "I also startle very easily. When I take a shower, for example, I have to sit down, in case I get a fright and slip and hit my head."

He's learnt to manage his depressive bouts through therapy, yoga and meditation.

"Loving, healthy relationships and feeling part of a community are a big part of healing for me too," he says. "And it sounds goofy, but talking to my 'inner child' is also very healing. As a comedian I'm like, 'ugh, that's cheesy' but it's very healing."

As well as more comedy he has plans to write books for kids in foster care, and is working in advocacy: he recently gave a keynote speech to NSW Family and Community Service workers and a did stand-up gig at the launch of Home Stretch, a body campaigning for Victorian foster kids to be supported until the age of 21.

He is, he says, "in a good place", and again, reflects on how fortunate he's been.

"Reparations," he says, "from the universe."

Corey White's Roadmap To Paradise is on ABC, Wednesdays at 9.40pm, and iview.

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