People's History of Australia

In contemporary Australian mass culture, it’s hard if not impossible to find any representation of life as it’s lived by the majority of the population. Few movies, plays, TV shows or documentaries reflect what it’s like spending most of your waking life working to make a boss rich, struggling to keep up with bills, or dealing with sexism, homophobia, racism, and other oppressions – and practically none depict things like going on strike or opposing fascism. With all major media and cultural production owned either by the government or huge corporations, this situation has prevailed throughout virtually the entire post-invasion history of Australia.

In the 1930s, though, a massive experiment was launched to create culture by and for ordinary working people – the New Theatre. Under the slogan ‘Art is a weapon’, the New Theatre put on thousands upon thousands of performances about and for ordinary working-class people, aiming to reflect and validate their lives and struggles, and encourage political activism. Its plays were about workers’ strikes, about protest movements, about fighting the far right, and about taking on racism, sexism and other oppressions. Rather than confining themselves to the halls of physical theatre buildings, New Theatre performers – who operated on a miniscule budget and were almost all unpaid – put on plays in factories, in parks, in people’s homes, inside coal mines, and on street corners. They used avant-garde theatrical techniques, pioneered egalitarian gender relations within their productions, and put on some of the most well-attended plays in Australian history. And yet despite this, the New Theatre has virtually vanished from Australian history.

In this episode, we chat with Lisa Milner, an academic and researcher of working-class cultural production, on her new book on the New Theatre. We discuss the extraordinary popularity and success of their productions, the efforts by the state to repress the New Theatre, and the ways that culture can help build and sustain radicalism and movements for change.

You can buy Lisa’s book on the New Theatre here. Sign up to our Patreon now to have the chance to get a free copy of Lisa’s book and support our podcast! 

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design design.

From the 1880s until the 1980s, telephone operators were at the centre of the communications industry in Australia. Before the invention of the internet or mobile phones, virtually all telecommunication across the country and internationally took place through landline telephones. And operators, who connected calls to their intended destination, were completely essential to that process.

Employed first by the federal government and then by the government-owned corporation Telecom, operators worked in gruelling conditions – a predominantly female workforce, they were subject to low pay, a physically and mentally overwhelming pace of work, and consistent threats to their occupational health. For much of their history, they also had a union which refused to take up their interests and which saw itself as almost an arm of management. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, this abruptly changed, and telephone operators became some of the most militant workers in Australia, staging inspiring strikes and work bans to fight for better conditions on the job.

In this episode, we talk with librarian, union activist and historian Jeff Rickertt about the extraordinary history of the telephonists. We explore how essential their work was to the everyday functioning of Australia’s economy, how the telephonists have been virtually erased from history, how it was that their union became completely co-opted and tamed by management, and how, beneath the surface of a seemingly quiescent workforce, resentment and resistance were always present, and were only waiting to explode into industrial militancy and activism.

You can read Jeff’s PhD thesis on the telephonists here. Sign up to our Patreon now to have the chance to get a free copy of Jeff’s history of the telephonists, Resistance on the line, which is currently retailing for $250. 

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design design .

In the late 1960s and 1970s, a powerful and radical new movement arose in Australia challenging the widespread oppression that women faced across the country – the women’s liberation movement.

Women in Australia in this era had plenty to fight about. It was illegal to get an abortion, and divorce was extremely difficult to obtain. Married women were barred from holding jobs in the public service, and were officially and unofficially excluded from a huge range of industries and occupations. Paid parental leave didn’t exist, and there was no support for single parents. Women weren’t even allowed in pubs – if women wanted to drink, they had to go and sit in a segregated “ladies’ lounge” out the back.

Some things however were perfectly legal. It was completely legal for a husband to rape or sexually assault his wife, since marriage was taken to automatically imply consent at all times forever. It was also entirely legal for employers to pay women less than men for doing the same job – ads for jobs would display the male rate of pay for the position, and then the female rate of pay for the position, which was 75% of the male rate. Added to this was a pervasive everyday culture of public sexism and misogyny that touched all areas of life.

Fortunately, tens of thousands of women across the country stood up and fought back, fighting for both reforms and for a new kind of society. In this episode, we chat with Janey Stone, who was involved in the women’s liberation movement both in the US and Australia, about this incredible era.

You can check out Interventions, the Australian radical publishing house which is led by Janey, here, as well as the Interventions book in which Janey mentions, Rebel Women, here. You can read some of Janey’s other recent writings here, while you can watch a short interview with Janey’s mother Rose about her life and activism here.

Check out our upcoming full-day festival on 15 March 2025, Radical Sydney!, here.

We now also have a new Patreon account and you can subscribe to support us here!

Opening music courtesy of Glitter Rats, closing music courtesy of the Victorian Trade Union Choir. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design.

Throughout Australian history, non-white migrant workers have consistently been stereotyped as docile, submissive, and willing to work for extremely low wages. Nowhere has this been more true than for Chinese workers in Australia, who from the 19th century until the present day have been demonised for their alleged enthusiasm for undercutting white workers and happily embracing terrible working conditions.

Fortunately, these racist myths are precisely that – myths. From the arrival of the first Chinese migrants in the early 19th century, Chinese workers in Australia have an extraordinary history of rebelling, resisting, going on strike, and collectively fighting against their employers for better wages and better working conditions. Chinese workers conducted what was possibly the first strike in the history of Queensland, were active participants in the mass goldfield rebellions of the 1850s, formed unions and went on strike again and again, and consistently declared their solidarity with the struggles of working people across Australia and across the world.

To talk about this amazing history that has been virtually hidden and ignored, we’re joined in this episode by Liam Ward, a filmmaker and academic at RMIT University in Melbourne, who has researched and publicised some of the stories of Chinese workers in Australia and their struggles.

You can read some of Liam’s work about anti-Chinese racism and the struggles of Chinese workers in Australia here and here.

Check out our upcoming full-day festival on 15 March 2025, Radical Sydney!, here.

We now also have a new Patreon account and you can subscribe to support us here!

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design.

When Australia was invaded in 1788, the new colony’s nascent ruling class deployed violence and repression on two fronts. On one side of the frontier, the colonial administration used troops and pastoralists to wage genocidal war against Aboriginal nations, and on the internal side of the frontier, very often the same troops and the same pastoral employers were then used to repress and crush uprisings by convicts and workers. Whilst the degree of violence and brutality was certainly different, the two groups’ enemies appeared to be the same – the employers and the colony’s ruling class as a whole.

Unfortunately, racism has proven to be a remarkably effective weapon throughout Australian history, and despite often sharing the same enemies, there is minimal history of joint struggle between white workers and Aboriginal people during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and workers and their unions were in fact often extremely hostile towards non-white workers.

In the 1930s, however, things suddenly began to change. For the first time ever, mass meetings of predominantly white union members began passing motions declaring their solidarity with Aboriginal resistance. White unemployed workers fought alongside unemployed Aboriginal workers. And a huge campaign took shape across the country, with the participation of thousands of white workers, against frontier massacres and violence. At the same time, radical left-wing theory began arguing that Aboriginal people and every other working-class person in Australia had a shared interest in opposing racism and waging united struggles together.

To talk about this incredible history and how such a remarkable change took place, we’re joined in this episode by Paddy Gibson, an activist, academic and historian, who discusses socialist anti-racist theory in the 19th century, its flaws and how it was modified and challenged by the Communist Part of Australia during 20th century, and the amazing campaigns led by the Communist Party against anti-Aboriginal racism during the 1920s and 1930s.

You can read Paddy’s PhD thesis here, and you can listen to other talks given by Paddy here.

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design.