In contemporary Australian mass culture, it’s hard if not impossible to find any representation of life as it’s lived by the majority of the population. Few movies, plays, TV shows or documentaries reflect what it’s like spending most of your waking life working to make a boss rich, struggling to keep up with bills, or dealing with sexism, homophobia, racism, and other oppressions – and practically none depict things like going on strike or opposing fascism. With all major media and cultural production owned either by the government or huge corporations, this situation has prevailed throughout virtually the entire post-invasion history of Australia.

In the 1930s, though, a massive experiment was launched to create culture by and for ordinary working people – the New Theatre. Under the slogan ‘Art is a weapon’, the New Theatre put on thousands upon thousands of performances about and for ordinary working-class people, aiming to reflect and validate their lives and struggles, and encourage political activism. Its plays were about workers’ strikes, about protest movements, about fighting the far right, and about taking on racism, sexism and other oppressions. Rather than confining themselves to the halls of physical theatre buildings, New Theatre performers – who operated on a miniscule budget and were almost all unpaid – put on plays in factories, in parks, in people’s homes, inside coal mines, and on street corners. They used avant-garde theatrical techniques, pioneered egalitarian gender relations within their productions, and put on some of the most well-attended plays in Australian history. And yet despite this, the New Theatre has virtually vanished from Australian history.

In this episode, we chat with Lisa Milner, an academic and researcher of working-class cultural production, on her new book on the New Theatre. We discuss the extraordinary popularity and success of their productions, the efforts by the state to repress the New Theatre, and the ways that culture can help build and sustain radicalism and movements for change.

You can buy Lisa’s book on the New Theatre here. Sign up to our Patreon now to have the chance to get a free copy of Lisa’s book and support our podcast!

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design design.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, a powerful and radical new movement arose in Australia challenging the widespread oppression that women faced across the country – the women’s liberation movement.

Women in Australia in this era had plenty to fight about. It was illegal to get an abortion, and divorce was extremely difficult to obtain. Married women were barred from holding jobs in the public service, and were officially and unofficially excluded from a huge range of industries and occupations. Paid parental leave didn’t exist, and there was no support for single parents. Women weren’t even allowed in pubs – if women wanted to drink, they had to go and sit in a segregated “ladies’ lounge” out the back.

Some things however were perfectly legal. It was completely legal for a husband to rape or sexually assault his wife, since marriage was taken to automatically imply consent at all times forever. It was also entirely legal for employers to pay women less than men for doing the same job – ads for jobs would display the male rate of pay for the position, and then the female rate of pay for the position, which was 75% of the male rate. Added to this was a pervasive everyday culture of public sexism and misogyny that touched all areas of life.

Fortunately, tens of thousands of women across the country stood up and fought back, fighting for both reforms and for a new kind of society. In this episode, we chat with Janey Stone, who was involved in the women’s liberation movement both in the US and Australia, about this incredible era.

You can check out Interventions, the Australian radical publishing house which is led by Janey, here, as well as the Interventions book in which Janey mentions, Rebel Women, here. You can read some of Janey’s other recent writings here, while you can watch a short interview with Janey’s mother Rose about her life and activism here.

Check out our upcoming full-day festival on 15 March 2025, Radical Sydney!, here.

We now also have a new Patreon account and you can subscribe to support us here!

Opening music courtesy of Glitter Rats, closing music courtesy of the Victorian Trade Union Choir. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design.

When Australia was invaded in 1788, the new colony’s nascent ruling class deployed violence and repression on two fronts. On one side of the frontier, the colonial administration used troops and pastoralists to wage genocidal war against Aboriginal nations, and on the internal side of the frontier, very often the same troops and the same pastoral employers were then used to repress and crush uprisings by convicts and workers. Whilst the degree of violence and brutality was certainly different, the two groups’ enemies appeared to be the same – the employers and the colony’s ruling class as a whole.

Unfortunately, racism has proven to be a remarkably effective weapon throughout Australian history, and despite often sharing the same enemies, there is minimal history of joint struggle between white workers and Aboriginal people during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and workers and their unions were in fact often extremely hostile towards non-white workers.

In the 1930s, however, things suddenly began to change. For the first time ever, mass meetings of predominantly white union members began passing motions declaring their solidarity with Aboriginal resistance. White unemployed workers fought alongside unemployed Aboriginal workers. And a huge campaign took shape across the country, with the participation of thousands of white workers, against frontier massacres and violence. At the same time, radical left-wing theory began arguing that Aboriginal people and every other working-class person in Australia had a shared interest in opposing racism and waging united struggles together.

To talk about this incredible history and how such a remarkable change took place, we’re joined in this episode by Paddy Gibson, an activist, academic and historian, who discusses socialist anti-racist theory in the 19th century, its flaws and how it was modified and challenged by the Communist Part of Australia during 20th century, and the amazing campaigns led by the Communist Party against anti-Aboriginal racism during the 1920s and 1930s.

You can read Paddy’s PhD thesis here, and you can listen to other talks given by Paddy here.

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design.

In mid-2016, the University of Sydney abruptly announced that it would be closing Sydney College of the Arts, its internationally-renowned arts school. Within the space of a few months, the school, which had produced scores of famous graduates and offered an almost unique education in visual and fine arts, would be closing its doors, its staff would be terminated, and all of its students would be shunted off to another university to finish out their degrees.

Fortunately, students at SCA had completely different ideas about the future of their school. Students responded with explosive fury, howling down university officials and virtually chasing them out of meetings, storming the university senate, holding vibrant mass meetings, and staging a student strike that virtually closed SCA. Then, in a final dramatic culmination, students invaded the SCA administration building, barricaded themselves inside, and vowed that they would not leave until SCA was saved.

In this episode, we chat with Kelton Muir, a historian and Let SCA Stay activist who’s written an honours thesis about the SCA campaign.

You can read Kelton’s thesis here, and you can watch several amazing long-form videos captured during the SCA campaign here and here.

We’re also hosting a party to launch this podcast episode, featuring a panel of SCA activists! It’s on Wednesday 8 May at 6.30pm at Sydney Trades Hall. All welcome! You can find more details and invite others on the Facebook event.

Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy Nissenbaum Design.