In November 1975, the elected Labor Party government of Australia was sacked without notice by Sir John Kerr, the governor-general. Having single-handedly gotten rid of the elected government, Sir John then personally appointed a new government of his own choosing led by Malcolm Fraser and the Liberal Party. The dismissal – or the Kerr Coup as many…

When the British Empire invaded Australia in 1788, the colony’s new ruling class had a problem – there was no pre-existing working class in Australia waiting around to work for them. Governments and employers could establish all of the farms, workshops, factories and other workplaces that they liked, but without people who had no alternative but to…

In 1977, the premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, abolished the right to hold street protests. “Don’t bother applying for a march permit,” he declared. “You won’t get one. That’s government policy now.” In response to this decision, activists swung into action, launching a massive campaign to win back the right to protest. Rally after rally …

In 1996, newly elected politician Pauline Hanson swept to national prominence after making an extraordinarily racist and inflammatory maiden speech in federal parliament attacking Aboriginal people and Asian-Australians. In the wake of this performance, Hanson’s entire speech was printed word for word in most newspapers across the country, while fo…

In the 1940s, the Communist Party of Australia was approaching the peak of its power as the largest and most influential left-wing organisation in Australian history. The Communist Party of Australia demanded far more of its members than an average political organisation. To be a communist, you were expected not just to become an activist and an or…

Wee Waa, in northern New South Wales, is at the centre of the cotton industry in Australia. Tens of thousands of hectares of cotton crops surround the town, which describes itself as “the cotton capital of Australia”. During the twentieth century, each year Wee Waa would see an influx of more than a thousand predominantly Aboriginal workers over su…

In the late 1960s, thousands of Turkish migrants began moving to Australia as part of a wave of post-World War II immigration that permanently changed the face of Australian cities. For the Australian government and employers, migrants from Turkey and other non-English-speaking countries represented one thing: cheap factory labour that would meekly…

The Pilbara region of Western Australia is one of the remotest places on the planet. It’s also one of the most economically significant regions not just in Australia, but the world, with almost indescribably vast quantities of high-grade iron ore which power steelworks across the globe and generate tens of billions of dollars in profits every year.…

In the early 1900s, radicals and militant unionists across Australia founded the Industrial Workers of the World, arguably the most legendary left-wing organisation in Australian history. The IWW – or the ‘Wobblies’, as they were colloquially known – believed workers should form unions not just to win better wages and conditions, but to overthrow b…

In the decades following the end of the Second World War, Australia witnessed the biggest wave of migration in its history. Millions of people from Asia, Europe and the Middle East immigrated to Australia and changed the demographic makeup of the country forever. Postwar migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds were overwhelmingly consigned t…

In 1978, Sydney’s first ever Mardi Gras took place. The Australia in which the parade happened, however, was profoundly different to today. LGBTQI people faced intense discrimination and persecution, with consenting sex between adult men considered a crime and coming out an act that jeopardised employment, housing and personal relationships. Entrap…

In May 1969, Clarrie O’Shea, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the tram workers’ union, was jailed for refusing to pay fines his union had been hit with under Australia’s repressive ‘Penal Powers’ laws. Within a matter of days, over a million workers across the country had gone out on strike. Electricity and gas supplies were shut off, telev…

Few periods of Australian history are as heavily mythologised as World War I. From school textbooks to Anzac Day ceremonies, we’re told that Australia was born as a nation on the shores of Gallipoli and that the country united as one behind our gallant diggers, who gave their lives to defend our freedom, our democracy, and our way of life. Like mos…

In 1971, Nick Origlass, a Trotskyist revolutionary, was elected as the mayor of Leichhardt Municipal Council in Sydney – one of the most unusual developments in Australian political history. Nick Origlass came of age during the Great depression of the 1930s, and was an indefatigable enemy of all forms of authority, and a lifelong believer that powe…

In 1971, Australia exploded with protest against a sporting tour by the white supremacist South African rugby union team – the Springbok. The Springbok were the ultimate international symbol of South African racism. Under a system known as apartheid, white South Africans, who made up 20% of the country’s population, owned 80% of all its land. The b…

In 1929, the world plunged into the most catastrophic economic crisis in modern history – the Great Depression. The effect of the Depression on ordinary people across Australia was devastating. By the early 1930s, the official unemployment rate stood at over 33%, and poverty, homelessness and starvation were ubiquitous. Newspapers reported soaring …

In December 1981, 300 women working at the Kortex textile factory in Brunswick, Melbourne, rose up against their employer and went on strike. None of the women at Kortex had ever been on strike before, and few spoke English fluently. And yet over the next eight days, the Kortex workers defied violence and intimidation from their employer, the polic…