Stan Sharkey (1933-2024), NSW and national leader of building workers, former amateur and professional boxer, jockey, apprentice bricklayer, then skilled tradesman, communist, deserves tribute for an interesting, vital, important life.
It is interesting to speculate about what might have been.
The Hon. Michael Rueben Egan AO (1948-2024), who died yesterday, was the longest serving NSW Treasurer, 1995 to 2005.
Simon Crean, who died unexpectedly of heart failure after an asthma attack in Germany yesterday, following a morning exercise, was Australia’s most successful trade minister, whose contributions to the Australian labour movement ranged over fifty years, including as ACTU President during the Accord era.
Notes “dipped” into in delivering remarks at the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University, on 21 February 2023 at the launch of Scott Prasser & David Clune, editors, The Whitlam Era.
This thoughtful, well-researched, yet sometimes frustratingly opinionated book, The Party, covers the history of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) from 1940 to 1970.
This 73-page booklet by David Clune, one of a series commissioned and edited by Scott Prasser for the Connor Court Australian political biographical monographs, provides an excellent overview of the life of Sir William McKell KC KSG (1891-1985; NSW Labor Leader, 1939-47; Premier of NSW, 1941-47; Governor-General of Australia, 1947-53) who in 1939 inherited the leadership of a party in total disarray and then fashioned a winning combination and style known ever since as the McKell Model.
16 July 1931 – 13 March 2022
Peter McMahon, champion of garbologists – as he proudly said, local government union leader, NSW Upper House Labor politician, industrial tribunal member, historian, and community activist, had many significant achievements, including improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of employees, and recruiting Paul Keating to work as a young research officer for the Municipal Employees’ Union (MEU) before the budding politician propelled himself, aged 25, into the Federal parliament in 1969.
It is achingly sad that the whip-smart, vivacious, principled, Senator Kimberley Kitching died on Thursday in Melbourne, aged 52, apparently of a sudden heart-attack.
Chris Bowen, the former Treasurer, now Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, is an avid reader, and curious about the motivation, thinking, and conflicts that rule the hearts and minds of political folk.