Russel Ward

Later, it became possible to, especially with the rise of the labour movement, to think of the ordinary Australian, and particularly the ordinary Australian male worker, as the central figure in the narrative, that is, the person whose agency made the greatest difference to how Australia had turned out.

And incidentally, I should say in parenthesis that Russell Ward's The Australian Legend, which came out in 1958, is the kind of classic statement of the idea that that Australian history and the Australian ethos is a product of a male working man.

Then subsequently, in the post-World War II era, There's a series of challenges to the idea of the centrality of the male worker as the figure who really embodies Australianness and Australian history.

That idea, that presupposition, came under attack from, firstly, a number of historians who said, well, what about businessmen and middle-class people? Why is their contribution to the making of Australia being overshadowed by this focus on the ordinary Australian worker? And they threw up a challenge to pay more attention to the middle class and the professionals and the businessmen or women who made Australia successful.