Jack Lang

In 1940, Labor won four seats despite trailing on the primary vote.

Sometimes they benefited from preferences from Jack Lang's breakaway Labor Party, but Labor s- also sometimes benefited from conservative preferences to defeat their former party colleagues.

In 1943, Labor defeated independent Labor MP Maurice Blackburn on United Australia preferences and defeated Jack Lang in Reid on preferences from the UAP and another breakaway Labor party.

In the first half of the 20th century, it was usually the parties of the right who managed to come back and win, thanks to preferences.

But it wasn't exclusively so, with Labor actually doing better on preferences in 1940.

New South Wales moved away from the second ballot system at the 1920 state election.

The government of William Holman, who, like Billy Hughes, was an ex-Labor politician who had allied with the conservatives, legislated to use proportional representation for the Legislative Assembly.

This system was used for three elections, but after the 1925 election, the Labor government of Jack Lang moved to abolish the system.

There is a photo of his uncle Billy, who died on the Sandacan Death March on the left-hand side.

There's a photo of Jack Lang.

There's a photo of him with his mother as a small child.

He'd be only about five, absolutely impeccably dressed, walking through Martin Place in like a trench coat, actually, with a tie.

So there's that reading, right? That clearly has an impact.

I wouldn't want to overstate it, but it is part of the fabric.

The other dimension is, of course, the history that he learns and what he learns about power from Jack Lang, the former New South Wales Premier who he starts to visit very early.

You know, from about the age of 16 or 17, Keating is knocking on Lang's door in Nithdale Street near Hyde Park in Sydney and And Lange is giving him an education in power, how to get it, how to keep it, and how to use it.

It's 8 minutes to 10 on Sunday Extra, which means we're coming up to the end of the show.

We've got a few minutes left, though, and so we thought we'd wind out our Sunday Extra today by taking a little dive into the ABC archives to see what was happening on or around this time back in the day, starting with 1975 because it was on the 27th of September 1975. that Jack Lang died.

Jack Lang, of course, known as the Big Fella, an ALP icon who served as the 23rd Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927, also served as Premier from 1930 to 1932 until the 13th of May when he was dismissed.

by Governor Sir Philip Game, the first time there'd been a dismissal in Australian history.

Let's hear how the ABC News covered the passing of Jack Lang.

JT Lang, the big fellow, will be buried in Sydney tomorrow.

Lang, who died at the age of 98 at the weekend, became a kind of folk hero in the labour movement.

I hear he did, you see.

Kind of

the Jack Lang of that era of the Jedi Council.

Does that make fucking Anakin the King O'Malley?

I think maybe Anakin's Kevin Rudd.

Self-interest plays a large part, right?

Jack Lang always said in politics you can back self-interest.

That's always been true for 100 years since.

Good luck, Barnaby.

No.

He, of course, supported this idea, let's say, let's put it of a blended singularity, I guess, right? Longstanding champion of immigration and multiculturalism, When his political worldview was being formed with Jack Lang, the former New South Wales Premier and firebrand, I mean, Lang was still defending white Australia.

That wasn't...

Paul Keating did not take that from Lang.

He took Lang as a mentor for power, not policy.

But I think, you know, in the 1990s, I think as the world was globalising and, of course, Keating and the Hawke government had played such a primary role in opening Australia up to the world, nevertheless, he believed that Australia still needed... a sense of social bonding, a nationalism of its own.

I mean, that's what distinguishes him, I think, from his predecessors.