“You wonder why we’ve got a bunch of Occupy Wall Street People running all around the country, they’ve been indoctrinated literally for years by this kind of stuff whether it was Captain Planet, or Nickelodeon’s Big Green Help, or The Day After Tomorrow, you know, the Al Gore-influenced movie…”
![From the Hawthorn Tram Depot history website:
“Relations were so poisonous between M&MTB [Melbourne and Metopolitan Tram Board] management and the Victorian branch of the ATMOEA [Tramways Union] that when in March 1968 a traffic inspector was transferred away from Malvern Depot, employees refused to operate services until it was discovered that the inspector concerned had been transferred at his own request. Over a period of five years from 1964 to 1969 the ATMOEA had accumulated 40 fines totalling $13,200 as a result of industrial action, none of which were paid by the union. O’Shea was ordered by the Commonwealth Industrial Court to provide the financial records of the ATMOEA, so that the court could determine the union’s ability to pay the outstanding fines. However, he point blank refused to provide the records.
The culmination of this conflict occurred on 15 May 1969 when O’Shea was jailed by Justice Kerr (later Sir John Kerr and Governor-General of Australia, notable for the sacking of the Whitlam Government) of the Commonwealth Industrial Court for contempt over the failure to answer summonses and pay fines totalling $8,100.
This sentencing resulted in national general strike action across a wide range of industries. There were a number of marches in many state capitals, often culminating in violent clashes between strikers and police. The level of public unrest caused anxiety to both Federal and State Governments, but they could not afford to be seen to back down, as they would otherwise appear to be soft on union militancy. This dilemma was only broken by the action of Dudley MacDougall, a former advertising manager for the Australian Financial Review, who paid the outstanding fines acting on behalf of an anonymous public benefactor who was said to have won the NSW State Lottery. O’Shea was released from Pentridge Prison on 21 May 1969.
On his release, O’Shea announced, “My release is a great victory for workers. I am certain that all workers remain adamant in their opposition to the penal powers, which are designed to suppress the workers. The infinite power of the workers when they are really aroused has frightened the life out of the government and the employers … I am certain the workers will continue the struggle for the abolition of all penal powers.”
The jailing of O’Shea was the last use of the penal sections of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, although these provisions have never been repealed, so O’Shea did not get his wish. In order to prevent similar mass action over industrial issues, the Fraser Government introduced in 1977 sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act, which outlaws secondary boycotts within Australia – the very mechanism used to place pressure on the government of the day in the O’Shea case. These secondary boycott provisions still remain in force, but the public outrage generated by the jailing of O’Shea has prevented similar court action by the Federal Government.”
—
From Wikipedia:
“In court O’Shea refused to take the oath, then refused to present the union books, in line with the wishes of the members of his union, and was formally arrested and sentenced for contempt of court on Thursday 15 May 1969 and taken to HM Prison Pentridge. This led to immediate walk outs on the Thursday, and a general strike which paralysed Victoria on the Friday. There were two 24-hour stoppages in Victoria, involving 40 unions. All trains and trams stopped, delivery of goods was severely restricted, the power supply was cut and TV and radio broadcasts were disrupted. Protests and strike action also occurred in regional Victoria with the Geelong Trades Hall Council supporting the strikes and similar action in Bendigo, Ballarat, and the Latrobe Valley. All together, about 500,000 workers struck across Australia on Friday, 16 May.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvgon9JPOb1qd052po1_1280.jpg)
From the Hawthorn Tram Depot history website:
“Relations were so poisonous between M&MTB [Melbourne and Metopolitan Tram Board] management and the Victorian branch of the ATMOEA [Tramways Union] that when in March 1968 a traffic inspector was transferred away from Malvern Depot, employees refused to operate services until it was discovered that the inspector concerned had been transferred at his own request. Over a period of five years from 1964 to 1969 the ATMOEA had accumulated 40 fines totalling $13,200 as a result of industrial action, none of which were paid by the union. O’Shea was ordered by the Commonwealth Industrial Court to provide the financial records of the ATMOEA, so that the court could determine the union’s ability to pay the outstanding fines. However, he point blank refused to provide the records.
The culmination of this conflict occurred on 15 May 1969 when O’Shea was jailed by Justice Kerr (later Sir John Kerr and Governor-General of Australia, notable for the sacking of the Whitlam Government) of the Commonwealth Industrial Court for contempt over the failure to answer summonses and pay fines totalling $8,100.
This sentencing resulted in national general strike action across a wide range of industries. There were a number of marches in many state capitals, often culminating in violent clashes between strikers and police. The level of public unrest caused anxiety to both Federal and State Governments, but they could not afford to be seen to back down, as they would otherwise appear to be soft on union militancy. This dilemma was only broken by the action of Dudley MacDougall, a former advertising manager for the Australian Financial Review, who paid the outstanding fines acting on behalf of an anonymous public benefactor who was said to have won the NSW State Lottery. O’Shea was released from Pentridge Prison on 21 May 1969.
On his release, O’Shea announced, “My release is a great victory for workers. I am certain that all workers remain adamant in their opposition to the penal powers, which are designed to suppress the workers. The infinite power of the workers when they are really aroused has frightened the life out of the government and the employers … I am certain the workers will continue the struggle for the abolition of all penal powers.”
The jailing of O’Shea was the last use of the penal sections of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, although these provisions have never been repealed, so O’Shea did not get his wish. In order to prevent similar mass action over industrial issues, the Fraser Government introduced in 1977 sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act, which outlaws secondary boycotts within Australia – the very mechanism used to place pressure on the government of the day in the O’Shea case. These secondary boycott provisions still remain in force, but the public outrage generated by the jailing of O’Shea has prevented similar court action by the Federal Government.”
—
From Wikipedia:
“In court O’Shea refused to take the oath, then refused to present the union books, in line with the wishes of the members of his union, and was formally arrested and sentenced for contempt of court on Thursday 15 May 1969 and taken to HM Prison Pentridge. This led to immediate walk outs on the Thursday, and a general strike which paralysed Victoria on the Friday. There were two 24-hour stoppages in Victoria, involving 40 unions. All trains and trams stopped, delivery of goods was severely restricted, the power supply was cut and TV and radio broadcasts were disrupted. Protests and strike action also occurred in regional Victoria with the Geelong Trades Hall Council supporting the strikes and similar action in Bendigo, Ballarat, and the Latrobe Valley. All together, about 500,000 workers struck across Australia on Friday, 16 May.”
“The romantic treatment of death asserts that people were made singular, and more interesting, by their illness. ‘I look pale,’ said Byron, looking into a mirror. ‘I should like to die of consumption.’ ‘Why?’ asked a friend, who was visiting Byron in Athens in October 1810. ‘Because the ladies would all say, “Look at that poor Byron, look how interesting he looks in dying.”’ Perhaps the main gift to sensibility made by the Romantics is not the aesthetics of cruelty and the beauty of the morbid (as Mario Praz suggested in his famous book), or even the demand for unlimited personal liberty, but the nihilistic and sentimental idea of ‘the interesting.’”
— Susan Sontag (1977) Illness as Metaphor
![Did I mention I totally submitted the fuck out of my thesis last week? BAM. The title comes from a speech Gough Whitlam gave to the Victorian ALP’s State Conference in 1967, admonishing the state branch executive for being militantly left-wing, beholden to its trade union constituency and utterly shithouse at winning elections:
“We construct a philosophy of failure, which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles. Certainly, the impotent are pure. This party was not conceived in failure, brought forth by failure or consecrated to failure. Let us have none of this nonsense that defeat is in some way more moral than victory…
This conference, comprising a greater number of union delegates than any democratic socialist party on earth, must reject any idea that constant defeat and permanent opposition do not matter, that the Labor [sic] movement can be strong and effective industrially while being weak and ineffectual politically. On the narrowest industrial views, this is patently false. There is not a single union affiliated with the ALP which has not called for the removal of the penal clauses of the Arbitration Act; may of them have suffered severe and unfair penalties because of the operation of the clauses. Yet there is not the slightest chance of their being removed until Labor wins power in the National Parliament…
In the weeks after I was elected Leader on February 8, every trap and inducement was laid for me to concentrate on the two questions of when I would get out of Vietnam and when I would go into Victoria. I was intent on de-escalating these controversies until it would be possible for the Party to have rational discussions and to make constructive decisions on these crucial external and internal issues in the proper place and atmosphere. In the last week, attempts have been made inside this State and outside it to give the impression that the Party’s Vietnam policy would be preserved only if the Party’s present Executive in Victoria were preserved and that the Party’s Victorian Executive must be preserved to preserve the Party’s Vietnam policy.
It is true that some parties can exist only as pressure groups. The Communists support this view because they do not want to win Parliamentary representation or power; the DLP supports it because it cannot win Parliamentary representation or power. Neither our traditions nor our purpose permit us to adopt this role for ourselves. We are in the business to serve and preserve democracy. Parliamentary democracy.”
A 1969 general strike led by the Victorian unions in response to the jailing of Clarrie O’Shea effectively consigned the penal clauses to the dustbin of history, which pulls the rug out from part of Whitlam’s argument. But it’s still the finest piece of political oratory from the man’s long and storied career.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvf39xf2kx1qd052po1_1280.jpg)
Did I mention I totally submitted the fuck out of my thesis last week? BAM. The title comes from a speech Gough Whitlam gave to the Victorian ALP’s State Conference in 1967, admonishing the state branch executive for being militantly left-wing, beholden to its trade union constituency and utterly shithouse at winning elections:
“We construct a philosophy of failure, which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles. Certainly, the impotent are pure. This party was not conceived in failure, brought forth by failure or consecrated to failure. Let us have none of this nonsense that defeat is in some way more moral than victory…
This conference, comprising a greater number of union delegates than any democratic socialist party on earth, must reject any idea that constant defeat and permanent opposition do not matter, that the Labor [sic] movement can be strong and effective industrially while being weak and ineffectual politically. On the narrowest industrial views, this is patently false. There is not a single union affiliated with the ALP which has not called for the removal of the penal clauses of the Arbitration Act; may of them have suffered severe and unfair penalties because of the operation of the clauses. Yet there is not the slightest chance of their being removed until Labor wins power in the National Parliament…
In the weeks after I was elected Leader on February 8, every trap and inducement was laid for me to concentrate on the two questions of when I would get out of Vietnam and when I would go into Victoria. I was intent on de-escalating these controversies until it would be possible for the Party to have rational discussions and to make constructive decisions on these crucial external and internal issues in the proper place and atmosphere. In the last week, attempts have been made inside this State and outside it to give the impression that the Party’s Vietnam policy would be preserved only if the Party’s present Executive in Victoria were preserved and that the Party’s Victorian Executive must be preserved to preserve the Party’s Vietnam policy.
It is true that some parties can exist only as pressure groups. The Communists support this view because they do not want to win Parliamentary representation or power; the DLP supports it because it cannot win Parliamentary representation or power. Neither our traditions nor our purpose permit us to adopt this role for ourselves. We are in the business to serve and preserve democracy. Parliamentary democracy.”
Senator Robert HILL — That is the basis of it, otherwise the Minister might as well not be going down this path, the path that he seems now willing to abandon. What step does the Minister intend to take then? The legitimacy of the Khmer Rouge is enhanced by the process; there is no doubt about that. Once they get a position on the SNC, they get national legitimacy as a result.
During the year - this is the year of the Minister’s program - their military activity has increased. Most experts seem to accept that their influence in the countryside has extended. They are now exerting influence over a much greater proportion of the country as a whole, having moved away from just the mountainous and border areas. The strategy is the encirclement of Phnom Penh with guerillas fanning out from Kompong Thom in the north, to Kampot in the south and Kompong Chhnang in the north-west of Phnom Penh - a process of expanding influence. I mention the practice now of attacking trains, with three trains having been attacked in the past year and ever extending signs of influence - still principally a terrorist exercise, not seeking to take and hold large tracts of land.
We have been disturbed by the allegations that they have now been provided with tanks by China. I see that the Minister in his statement today refutes the fact, indicating that Australian intelligence sources now doubt whether tanks have been supplied. That is interesting - it is the first I have heard of it - because it was reported not in any rag but in Jane’s Defence Weekly—
Senator Gareth EVANS — For fuck’s sake.
Senator HILL — For what?
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Terry AULICH) - Minister!
Senator HILL — For what?
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — Order! I ask the Minister to withdraw that.
Senator EVANS — For goodness sake.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — I ask the Minister to withdraw that comment.
Senator EVANS — It is not on the record.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — I am afraid it is, and I ask the Minister to withdraw it. The speaker responded, it was most disorderly, and I ask you to withdraw any intemperate statement.
Senator EVANS — Of course I withdraw it.
Senator HILL — I think it is probably unprecedented in the history of this place.
Senator EVANS — Well, what a monstrous piece of nonsense—
—
The first recorded use of the word ‘fuck’ in the Australian Senate, December 6th, 1990. Liberal Senator Robert Hill was responding to Foreign Minister Gareth Evans’ statement on the prospects of a peace settlement in Cambodia, which was reached the following year under Evans’ stewardship.
Evans is pictured above in his Parliamentary office in 1978. Among his contemporaries, he was infamous for his casual (0:44) use of profanity.
“In some ways I think my life is less normal now that I’m free, because I’m always so busy. And I don’t think it’s really normal to be working all the time. I think one should be entitled to free weekends, but this is not the case now!
When I say that it embarrasses me to talk of my sufferings, I’m thinking of others who have suffered more. In a situation like ours, people have died. It seems to me that nobody who is still alive has a right to complain.”
In an interview in Burma with the BBC’s David Lloyd over the weekend.
One of the documents circulated at the 22nd Communist Party of Australia congress in April 1972. Delegates camped at Minto, which is now on the suburban fringes of Sydney. Mightve just spent nine hours at the National Library doing thesis shit. Triumph at doing schoolwork for the first time in three plus months tempered by ennui inflicted on my innards as a result of being back in Canberra. The horror.
From a 1972 edition of Vanguard, the official organ of the Communist Party of Australia, which had a special youth supplement ahead of the CPA’s 22nd National Congress.
Item 179: SEC booklet cover / Rosetzky Waddell Design / 1977 « Recollection
While a significant chunk of girls born in late ’80s Australia associate the colours teal, pink and lilac—all in their pastel forms—with their early childhood, the orange and brown of the SEC identity were ubiquitous in my pre-‘94 Valleyite upbringing.
I’m flattered that my journalistic importance is considered on a par with The Age, the biggest talkback stations and the highest rating TV news service on the country (someone must’ve told Socialist Alternative that I have nearly 80 Twitter followers!), but really. Blockading a chocolate store to raise awareness of the BDS movement? Do they strangle puppies to symbolise Israel’s stranglehold over the West Bank?
