PRIME MINISTER
CHECK AGAINST, n.. 1JVER EMBARGOED UNTIL DELI1VERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
AUSTRALIAN WORKERS' HERITAGE CENTRE
BARCALDINE, 4 MAY 1991
Over the past few weeks, I have had the honour, as National
Leader of the Aus tralian Labor Party, to speak on several
occasions through Australia to mark the centenary of this
great Party c-f ours.
No Party, no Movement, no Australian institution as
important, as diverse, as enduring as ours, could owe its
origins to a single event in a single State at a single
point in time.
Our Party sprang up, almost simultaneously, in different
places across this vast continent in 1891.
So no single place can claim to be the birthplace of the
Australian Labor Party.
But if there is a single event and a single place that
brings together all the themes, the spirit, and the meaning
of the events which, together, led to the creation of the
ALP, it is here in the central west of Queensland, here in
Barcaldine. The event itself, the event we commemorate and celebrate
today, can be briefly described.
For sixteen weeks, from March to June 1891, 5,000 shearers
were encamped here as were several thousand others in
camps at Longreach, Charleville and other camps in Western
Queensland. It was one of the greatest shows of_ solidarity
in Australian industrial history.
They were all members of the S hearers' Union, the forerunner
of the Australian Workers' Union. They were striking for a
simple cause, a fundamental principle the right to
organise, the right to exist as a union.
That was the cause; that was the principle at stake.
Now, the Queensland colonial government of the time a
so-called liberal government led by Sir Samuel Griffith
determined to break the Shearers' Union once and for all,
and to bring the full power of the state to bear, in order
to do so.
So, 300 armed police and a detachment of the Moreton Bay
Regiment were despatched from Brisbane to arrest the union
leaders and clear out the camps.
The threat of a bloodbath was real. It was that grim
prospect which inspired Henry Lawson's famous lines:
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle.
But with tremendous self-discipline and just as important,
with the support and solidarity of the people of Barcaldine,
not least the women of Barcaldine the shearers refused to
be provoked.
Here, where we stand, they were rounded up and many were
left manacled in the open for several days. Twelve of the
union leaders were taken by train to Rockhampton, charged
with conspiracy and sentenced to three years imprisonment.
On 20 June 1891, its resources exhausted, the Shearers'
Union declared the strike at an end.
But it was not the end.
It was a new beginning.
Just as the Unions in New South Wales redoubled their
efforts to form a political Labor Party after the collapse
of the Great Strike of 1890, so the organised workers of
Queensland learnt that strike action was not enough, that
solidarity was not enough, if all the powers of the state
were left, uncontested, unchallenged, in the hands of
labour's adversaries.
This was the lesson learnt here here in Barcaldine, under
the Tree of Knowledge, as they called it.
And in all of the 100 years of our party's history so far,
for all the tremendous changes we have undergone, there has
never been a more important decision than the decision the
unionists of Queensland made as a result of what happened
here. It was a simple decision based upon simple facts. They
recognised that the only way to protect their rights, to
advance their cause, to get better working conditions, to
raise living standards for themselves and their families,
was through action in Parliament not through the weapon of
the strike but through the challenge of the ballot box.
And that meant first, getting enough members into Parliament
to wring concessions from the established conservative
parties the tories then and the tories today and second,
to win a majority in Parliament and form Labor Governments
in our right.
The representatives of the men who fought and lost the
struggle here in June took a leading part, with their fellow
unionists from all over Queensland, in the work of forming
the People's Parliamentary Association in Brisbane in July
1891.
And thus arose, from the ashes of defeat, the Queensland
Branch of the great Australian Labor Party.
The lessons we can draw from this splendid story are as
valid and relevant today, as ever.
First, there is the lesson of that fundamental commitment to
Parliament.
And let this never be forgotten:
Australia today is one of the world's great Parliamentary
democracies. The commitment and determination of the
Australian Labor Party has helped to make it so.
And no one understands this better than the people of
Queensland. In this State, for more than 30 years, the people of
Queensland saw their parliamentary democracy distorted and
virtually sto: Len from them.
It is only because of the perseverance and renewed strength
of the Labor Party, under the leadership of Wayne Goss, that
true parliamentary democracy has been at last restored to
Queensland. The second enduring lesson learned from 1891 concerns the
vital link between industrial Labor and political Labor.
The strength of one remains the strength of the other.
It is true that all Labor Governments have an overriding
responsibility to the people as a whole. We can never
succeed if we are merely a sectional party or a sectional
government. Yet it is equally true that cooperation and a common sense
of purpose, bEtween the union movement and Labor
Governments, remain crucial to the success of both.
And I am deeply proud of the fact that, 100 years after the
unions created. the Labor Party, that constructive
cooperation has never been closer than it is today.
And the third lesson of 1891 lies in the very fact of the
defeat itself. It is a lesson for our adversaries as much
as for ourselves.
This party, this movement, could never have survived for a
century unless we had learnt the hard lessons of adversity.
In January 1970 my first year as President of the ACTU
there was not a single Labor Government anywhere in
Australia. Our only significant centre of power for most of that year
was the Brisbane City Council.
Now, we are back there again, and above all, we have this
great Labor Government in Queensland.
The Labor men and women of Queensland know what it is to go
through difficult times. Our opponents, and the self
appointed pundits and doomsayers, have to learn this about
the Australian Labor Party: we know how to fight, and we
know how to fight back.
We learnt that 100 years ago, in struggles like the one we
commemorate here today, from men and women whose courage we
celebrate today, and whose inspiration we honour.
Now, the Labor pioneers of Barcaldine are part of our
heritage. Not just the workers' heritage. Not just the heritage of
the Labor Party. They are a proud part of the heritage of
Australia and the Australian people.
And it is in that spirit, that I declare open Stage One of
the Australian Workers' Heritage Centre. I congratulate
most heartily the Tree of Knowledge Development Committee,
its supporters, donors and patrons on their work and their
vision. On behalf of the people of Queensland and the
people of Australia, I dedicate this Centre to the honoured
memory of the Labor men and women of 1891, and to the great
cause they have handed down to us, the cause which we have
the privilege of advancing into the next century.