糖心TV

Conspiracy: John Howard鈥檚 battle for Australia鈥檚 waterfront

Speaker, Geraldine Fela, Macquarie University

Short Bio

Abstract 

On 7 April 1998, security guards entered Patrick stevedoring shipping terminals across Australia and escorted the unionised workforce out of the gates. With the backing of the conservative Howard government, Chris Corrigan, the managing director of Patrick Stevedores, sacked and locked out 1400 waterside workers—all of them members of the militant Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). In response to the sackings, the MUA and the broader trade union movement organised a mass industrial, political and legal campaign. Ports across the nation played host to scenes of mass public participation in picket lines, demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience.

As the evidence mounted that that the federal government had not only backed Corrigan, but been intricately involved in orchestrating the lockout, community concern grew - as did pressure for a speedy resolution to the dispute. On May 7, following a High Court ruling, MUA wharfies marched back to work. The MUA had not been broken, but its members returned to the waterfront with diminished conditions. As part of the deal, the union dropped its case alleging that the government had conspired with Patricks to fire the workforce. Both sides claimed victory.

The so-called 鈥榳ar on the wharves鈥� transfixed the public and holds an important place in the collective memory of the trade union movement. Until now however, it is has not been subject to sustained scholarly examination. Drawing on both archival research and interviews with Howard government ministers, this paper will examine the complex political machinations and alleged conspiracy that led to the lockout, consider some of the crucial junctures in the dispute, and offer some preliminary discussion around the legacy and contemporary significance of this landmark moment in Australia鈥檚 political and industrial history.

Faculty of Arts colleagues and students are warmly invited to come along to the next Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies research seminar. The research seminar will take place in the Student Hub (FAB5.49). Drinks and nibbles are provided.

Tuesday 21 October, 5pm, FAB5.49:

鈥淧oetry Undead: Dracula, Romanticism, and the Revamping of Genre鈥�

Peter Miller (University of Mississippi)

Scholarship on Dracula has tended to emphasize the novel鈥檚 late Victorian and proto modernist commitments, perhaps best encapsulated by the modern media technologies (e.g. typewriters, phonographs) that the vampire hunters use to track down and defeat the Count. This talk instead turns the novel backward towards Romanticism, by unpacking its largely overlooked series of allusions to popular, ballad-inflected poems by Scott, Coleridge, Hemans, and most significantly, Byron. Beyond offering compelling intertexts at significant narrative moments, these allusions, Miller will argue, allow Stoker to grip the minds and bodies of his characters, and readers, in a way that only metered poetry can.

Peter Miller is Ottilie Schillig Chair and Assistant Professor of English at The University of Mississippi. He is a scholar of English-language poetry from Romanticism to the present, with particular interests in sound and rhythm, music, and media studies. His first book, Poetry, Sound, and the Matter of Prosody, 1800-2000 (Oxford, 2025), makes the case for conceiving prosodic analysis as a form of media theory. He is currently working on a book project considering the role poetry has played in the modern novel, from Bram Stoker鈥檚 Dracula to Zadie Smith鈥檚 On Beauty.

Best wishes,

Dr Steve Purcell

Director of Research, English and Comparative Literary Studies

Peter Miller (University of Mississippi): 鈥淧oetry Undead: Dracula, Romanticism, and the Revamping of Genre鈥�