People who talk of the good old days have bad memories.
I grew up in the 1960s. Men spat on the footpaths and you had to walk around the foul spittle gobs. Street signs asked them not to do this because it spread TB, but were ignored, and tuberculosis buses went round doing X-rays to find carriers. When you went into a meeting in winter, men would close all the windows and doors and then light up their cigarettes and pipes.
My mother was deserted by her husband and left with 3 babies aged 6 months, 2 and 3 years old. The Deserted Wives Pension was not enough to pay rent and feed herself as well as her children. So she went hungry. One of my friends was worse off – his mother died. The Department of Health & Human Services in those days didn’t believe that men were capable of looking after children, so they took my friend and his brother and sister away, split them up and put them in separate orphanages. Then their father committed suicide. He couldn’t bear the loneliness.
My mother fought to survive. She got a job while still a full-time mum. But she was paid a lot less than a man, despite working harder in the same job. She went to university as well – so did 3 jobs at the same time. She got a better job but was still paid less than men doing the same work – even though she had kids to look after. Finally she scraped together a deposit for a small home, but then the banks wouldn’t give her a mortgage – because she was a married woman. Maybe she was lucky – many women were sacked when they got married.
At my school the Senior Master preyed on the little boys. By then my mother was the Senior Mistress, but was paid less than the paedophile. The Education Department knew about him but did nothing. The boys were on their own. Finally a parent who was a solicitor threatened to go public, so they promoted the Senior Master to Principal to get him away from the boys. As Senior Master he was the one they were sent to when they were naughty. Somewhere a good candidate missed out on becoming a Principal because he wasn’t a paedophile.
All I had ever known were Liberal governments, and I hated them for all the injustice and lack of compassion I saw in the world. I remember the assassination of JFK and attempted assassination of Arthur Calwell. And the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I remember the destruction of HMAS Voyager and the Liberals blaming it on the HMAS Melbourne Captain because they wouldn’t admit they’d put a drunk in charge of a destroyer. Then they wouldn’t compensate the survivors. I was in the vigil outside Pentridge Prison when the Liberals hanged Ronald Ryan and I was at the front of the Moratorium marches with Jim Cairns.
On top of all the cruelty in Australia, we invaded Vietnam and conscription loomed over me. I became an active Labor supporter in 1969 at the age of 14, and I worked on the Federal Labor campaign. I have a letter of thanks from the branch President wishing that everyone was as eager, hardworking and dedicated as me. I have worked for or been a member of the ALP on and off ever since.
My first job was as a cleaner in a department store after school. I was sacked by the manager, who was Catholic. Even though my work was good he didn’t like my left-wing politics. Then I worked as a labourer in the building trade, and saw the tradesmen I worked with make good money – more than I dreamed of – and then spend it at the pub and on the horses until they went home poor and drunk to their wives.
In 1972 we won and everything changed. Whitlam was my hero. The threat of conscription was lifted, the war ended and when I went to university it was free. I couldn’t have gone otherwise. Then medical care was free too.
I never thought I would ever be in a position where I could be a real part of the Party that did all this. Then I fluked a job with the Lennon Labor government. I only got it because I was recommended by an existing Adviser and an election was coming up and they needed someone quickly.
I thought that others in the Labor Government would share my passion for justice and progress, and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t. Why were they in the Party? Some, like Lara Giddings, were good people but simply too young and inexperienced to understand what Labor stood for and why gaining power was so important. Power had become an end in itself, with no purpose. Others had come through the union movement and become corrupted by money and power given without discipline or supervision. A few were sociopaths to begin with. I became frustrated – no one cared, there was no compassion and no interest in making a better community and life for us all. Lennon’s senior Media Adviser said the problem wasn’t Labor, I just wasn’t “true blue”. Her husband was given a plum government job. He had little relevant experience and the position wasn’t advertised. She’s still there advising Lara Giddings.
I saw two decent advisers who had given up the fight and didn’t even come to work anymore. One even switched off his phone. They were still paid though, and tolerated because they didn’t rock the boat. Other staffers became bureaucratised. Many were put into positions that they were simply unequipped to do, and became defensive and aggressive because they were out of their depth and perhaps secretly knew they shouldn’t be there. Occasionally someone would fight a good fight, like the senior Adviser in Launceston who fought with me to get justice for the Hudson family, who lost their son in an avoidable industrial accident. But they were ignored until they gave up. I never gave up and was pushed and humiliated until finally I reacted and wrote an imprudent letter to Lennon. Then I was sacked. The reforms I was working on were thrown away.
I can’t change the Labor Party. It has lost its way and I cannot see anyone there who even understands, let alone is capable of changing the Party. I’ll always be Labor, but the real Labor Party has gone. The Greens may not be perfect, but they are far closer to the ALP I knew than the ALP is today. So I’ve been voting for them the last few elections and I’ll continue to do so. Maybe one day my Labor Party will come back.
All about Nigel Burch: During the period 2005-2008 I was an adviser to Deputy Premier Steve Kons and also his electorate officer. Immediately prior to that I had been a director of the Tasmanian Farmers & Graziers. In the 1990s I was Managing Director of a listed gold mining company and later assisted the Bosnian government with problems in their state steel industry at the end of the war. I was honoured by the Australian Shareholders Assocation in1991 with a medal for services to small shareholders and assisted ABC 4-Corners with an award-winning documentary “Other People’s Money”. Recently I was a national director of the RSPCA.
