Category Archives: Commentary

DISCOVERIES OF COOK

 

by Humphrey McQueen

And in a charge of bubbles we go about,
Veering in towards drama and Cape Howe;
Eyried in mist we feel the brush of doubt
As stars congeal, the air thickens. There are warnings now.

Francis Webb, Disaster Bay (c.1970).

Whoever it was who reached what we now call Australia some 50,000 or so years ago they were not ‘discovering’ this continent in the sense employed with the re-expansion of Europe when the word gains several of its current connotations. More is involved in deciding whether it is appropriate to speak of ‘discovery’ than a gap of 50,000 years. Incompatible ways of living fall between a primary communalism and an emerging capitalism, one local in its satisfactions, as Lt James Cook assumed, the other global in the appetites he served.

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With friends like these

Tetchy relations between business and the Liberal Party are far from new

by Norman Abjorensen

A non-Labor government in Canberra might ordinarily expect solid support from business — even if only because it is self-interestedly preferable to the alternative, with its presumed tilt towards the unions. But it’s not quite as simple as that. History tells us that the Liberals’ relationship with the big end of town can be far from cosy.

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A socialist’s republic

The republic referendum – 20 years on

‘A socialist’s republic’ by Humphrey McQueen

November 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful referendum on whether Australia should become a republic. Strange that such an important issue should have lain dormant for so long.

To mark the occasion we present Humphrey McQueen’s article ‘A socialist’s republic’ which originally appeared in ‘Republics of Ideas’ a collection of essays edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos in 2001. The article is republished here with their kind permission.

The republic referendum was soundly defeated with the ACT the only jurisdiction voting in favour. Yet at the time, public opinion polls showed a majority of Australians supported a republic. So why did the referendum fail? Many would argue that the Yes campaign, headed by Malcolm Turnbull, foolishly split the Yes vote by insisting that Australia’s head of state should be chosen by Parliament rather than by direct election. This was a very divisive issue with memories of the Whitlam dismissal still fresh in the minds of many voters.

In his article Humphrey McQueen suggests that republicans would continue to vote No as long as the elected president retained the power to dismiss an elected government – which is precisely what the Turnbull-led Yes campaign wanted.

Link to the article here.

The Catholic Right in SA Labor

Gary Lockwood

 

A speech delivered by Mr Gary Lockwood – (President of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History – Adelaide Branch) at a meeting of the Florey Sub Branch of the ALP on Monday 21st February 2011.

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Foreign workers

  Humphrey McQueen (2012)

Media coverage of the ALP’s deal with Rinehart to import 1,715 skilled and semi-skilled construction workers for Roy Hill has been as intense as it has been shallow. These notes place the 457 visas and Enterprise Migration Agreements (EMAs) in larger contexts – industrial, economic, political and social-cultural. Continue reading →

Pig Iron

3CR,  ‘Solidarity Breakfast’, 14 December 2013

Humphrey McQueen

Seventy-five yeas ago, the wharfies at Port Kembla were in the middle of a two-month strike. They were not out over wages or working conditions, crook though both were. They were in a political strike to stop the export of pig iron to Japan. Continue reading →

Beyond Medicare—Towards Wellness

Humphrey McQueen
Seeing Red, 2003 (slightly updated)

The current campaigns to defend and extend Medicare offer the opportunity to diagnose the commodification of life, both by merchandisers and by corporatised medicine. Whether health care is treated as a human right or as a commodity will always be the outcome of social action. Human rights are brought into existence through imagination and struggle. Continue reading →

Equality – 1972

 

Book Review

Towards a new Australia, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1972, John McLean (ed)
Reviewed in Arena, 30, 1972, pp. 8-12

Humphrey McQueen

In the decade following the defeat of the Labor governments in post-war Britain and Australia there developed the notion that political ideology was exhausted. In the context of the ALP, this assumption meant that nationalisation was no longer accepted as an intrinsic component of the party’s “democratic socialism”. Continue reading →

Art, Transfield and Refugees

Art, Transfield and Refugees
A Russian doll of inhumanities

 Humphrey McQueen  – 18 March 2014

 Sometimes you may need to bribe, to be tough, even to be inhuman, to reach your target. Every contract is a battle. What counts in the final victory. Continue reading →

The Real Battle for Australia

Defending Australia from the Pink Peril

Humphrey McQueen

From a lecture given in Australian History III, Australian National University, July 1972.
Printed in Woroni and then in National U.

In this lecture I want to lead you away from the notion of the Aborigine as a passive recipient of history, as no more than a victim. Instead, we shall recognise the Aborigine as an active agent in European history since first contact. Continue reading →

Asbestos

Humphrey McQueen

Extract from Framework of Flesh, Builders Labourers Battle for Health and Safety, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2009, pp. 134-40

Between 1945 and 1955, Australian production of fibro sheeting from asbestos cement trebled from 8 to 23 million square metres. By 1961, one house in six was fibro. The self-builder favoured this material because it was cheap, easy to apply and available. The advertising said nothing about harms. Continue reading →

Taught to forget

 

 Humphrey McQueen

 If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling (1919).

Did Melbourne’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix allege, early in 1917, that the Great War was ‘simply a sordid trade war’, or did he but repeat as ‘a truism that the war was a trade war’? Continue reading →