Jack Mundey

For me, this period of history is just so inspiring.

But what I found fascinating and thinking about it was, and the way you sort of talked about it was, well, they took all of this precursor work of establishing industrial power, like collective worker power, And these middle-class women were able to call up and say, well, can you use that to affect the city around us and wield this sort of broader social power? And I just wanted to read out a quote from Jack Mundey.

And I think of Jack Mundey as one of the leaders of the BLF in New South Wales saying, I described him as actually the first leader of the Greens in some ways.

It wasn't actually, obviously.

The Greens went around then.

It can be a teacher.

It can be an admin worker in an office, you know, in modern society.

But they have this unique position where they, in order to fulfill their material interest, like improving their wages and conditions, but also transforming society in a way that each and all of them get what they need to live a good life, which I think Jack Mundey articulated so well, like a good life is beyond just a wage and a home.

If you behave, you'll get out earlier than if you dissent a bit.

And of course Australia's had some great dissenters from all sides of politics, from William Charles Wentworth IV right through to Jack Mundey with the unions.

And all of them improved or at least tried to improve Australia in real and material ways.

The French of course, still hold that if things annoy you enough, you can always build a guillotine and start getting rid of the people who are annoying you about this stuff.

In fact, come to think of it, I don't know of one other matter that's garnered such universal opposition, such cross-party opposition, as the plan to sell Victoria Barracks.

And it wouldn't surprise me if very soon we see the union movement come out against the sale as well, with a green band of sorts in the spirit of the late Jack Mundey.

Now, as I said a moment ago, we enter what will be the decisive week in the campaign to save Victoria Barracks this week.

On Sunday, a rally will take place out the front of the barracks on Oxford Street at 1pm.

The ground floor became a cafe, run from 1932 as the Colonial Cafe, and from 1933, the upper floors were let as the Russell Private Hotel.

The area was supposed to be flattened for office towers in the 1970s, and was saved when the Builders Laborers Federation under Jack Mundey refused to work the demolition, the first of the green bans.

In 1981, Victor- Victoria Alexander took the lease and turned it into Sydney's first boutique hotel.

It went on New South Wales State Heritage Register on May 10th of 2002.