https://www.theage.com.au/national/victo...58z5n.html
Crisis reveals character and can lead to political revolutions. The Long Depression of the late 1800s sent shockwaves around the globe and, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt credits it with giving birth to the New Imperialism that drove the dire scramble for Africa.
The depression hit Australia hard in the 1890s fomenting a brutal confrontation between employers and trade unions that gave birth to the Australian Labor Party.
In the run-up to Federation, the division that animated politics in Australia’s colonies was the split between the Free Traders, who held sway in NSW, and the Protectionists, who dominated Victoria. The power of labour lay not in colonial parliaments but in its unions.
The battle between bosses and workers exploded in June 1890 when a wrenching maritime strike began with wharfies refusing to handle wool that had been shorn by non-union labour.
A 13-year-old Jack Lang witnessed a clash outside his home on Sydney’s Liverpool Street, as workers tipped wool bales off wagons bound for the port. In I Remember, the future Labor premier recounts that a delegation of employers implored acting Premier Sir William McMillan to issue arms to the troops and put down what they called “an insurrection”. McMillan agreed but an appalled Sir Henry Parkes left his sickbed to countermand the order, reprimanding McMillan whose political career never recovered.
Attitudes were different in Victoria. There, Cabinet ordered the troops to arms and “the city [was] placarded with the Unlawful Assemblies Act”.
On the evening of August 30, ahead of a trade union rally the next day, the commanding officer of the Victorian Mounted Rifles, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Price, addressed his men in a speech that that would ricochet around the nation.
“Let there be no half measures,” the colonel said. “You will each be supplied with forty rounds of ammunition and leaden bullets, and if the order is given to fire don’t let me see one rifle pointed up in the air. Fire low and lay them out ...lay the disturbers of law and order out so that the duty will not again have to be performed. Let it be a lesson to them.”
The protest was peaceful and the Victorian Premier, of course, disavowed the sentiment uttered by the offending officer he had ordered on to the streets.
Much has changed in 131 years and much appears to be much the same. Responding to the same crisis, NSW and Victoria have cut different paths. In the eyes of the neo-protectionist “progressives”, the great crime of former premier Gladys Berejiklian was to have a “mockdown”; that is to err on the side of leaving her people free for as long as possible.
Happily we got to witness a real-time, real-world example of the many benefits of a proper lockdown in a demographically identical jurisdiction. Its world-leading exponent, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, rolled off the bench to fire low and lay the disease out.
And the evidence is in. When the lockdowns are lined up from day zero NSW did significantly better than Victoria on every day in both suppressing the disease and in lifting the vaccination rate. There has also been less civil disorder.
It turns out that when you reflexively imprison people they get sick of it. Some take to the streets in protest and, clearly, a great many others just silently disobey the absurd demands of their overlords. When the dust settles on this pandemic and the world assesses how to deal with a future crisis Victoria will be used as a template of what not to do.
Through Berejiklian and now Dominic Perrottet, NSW is beating the trail for Australia because no matter what the COVID-free states might believe, they are behind, not ahead, on the path out. One day, they will have to exit by the same door. Their great advantage is time, and they are squandering it by not forcing the pace of vaccination.
Soon a royal commission should be called into the COVID-19 responses of all Australian governments, with the sole aim of learning from our successes and mistakes.
That is what Parkes did in an effort to trace the causes of the strikes. It led to the establishment of the first machinery of conciliation and arbitration. Lang recalled that Parkes was invited to address a trade union conference where he offered some telling advice.
“Instead of breaking the law, why don’t you send your own members into Parliament and make the laws so that there will be no need to break them,” Parkes said.
The first branch of what would become the Australian Labor Party was formed in Balmain and 52 candidates were selected to contest the 1891 NSW election. Just months later, in their first electoral battle, the nascent party won 35 seats.
