Grace Brooks is a labor historian at the University of Western Australia. She currently works in the Business School, researching Australia’s social policy landscape with the UWA Centre for Public Value.
In 1948, Australian Labor foreign minister Doc Evatt was instrumental in convincing the United Nations to recognize Israel. Today the ALP continues his legacy by ignoring Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
Later this year, Australia will vote in a referendum on creating an Aboriginal Voice to advise parliament. The Yes campaign is flagging, hobbled by a technocratic strategy and language borrowed from corporate social responsibility values statements.
Twentieth-century Aboriginal workers laboring for sheep and cattle stations in Western Australia’s Pilbara region endured conditions comparable to slavery. In 1946, they walked off the job — and founded the modern land rights movement.
When Tramways Union secretary Clarrie O’Shea refused to pay fines imposed on his union, the authorities imprisoned him for contempt of court. The move triggered a general strike that freed O’Shea and turned Australia’s anti-union laws into a dead letter.