Local + multicultural

Immigrant communities who were brought to Australia by British settlers – as labourers, as brides, as refugees – have all been subjected to the racism which was embedded in colonialism. Southern Italians, as an example, have faced racism, exploitation and often violence. But non-Anglo immigrants also contributed to the dispossession of Aboriginal people and consolidated the settler hold over Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have challenged the racism on which settler Australia has been built – and some non-Anglo immigrants have done so too – trying to build a decolonised future where racism has no place.

The links were made through shared political commitments – like common involvement in the peace movement, in unions and in the campaign to end racism – which brought immigrant community members together with Tranby staff and students.

Aboriginal people knew how racism shaped interactions with immigrants and refugees. By the 1980s, Australia’s population had many cultures living close to each other both in cities and in country areas. In the industrial suburbs near the steel works around Wollongong, Kevin Cook (Tranby General Secretary 1980-97) had grown up with many children of immigrant families:

Living in Cringila, there’s every nationality on earth, plus a couple. In fact, Italians, Greeks, they were the majority of people in Cringila, it’s right next to the steel works, and they all worked at the steel works. So we taught a lot of the kids to speak English. Their mothers and fathers couldn’t speak English. So we taught them to swear first, of course, everybody does it!

- Making Change Happen, 2013, p17

And on the rural NSW North Coast, Gary Foley, (a student of Tranby in the 1970s and today Professor of Aboriginal History and Politics at Victoria University, Victoria) also went to school there with children of the recent immigrants working as agricultural workers in the cane and other farms around the area. As Gary remembered Tenterfield:

When I was a kid in a small country town … I found myself to be an outcast when I went to school along with two other kids. One of them was a Greek kid in the same class as me. Another was a young Italian kid. We found ourselves naturally drawn together and hanging together for the simple reason that the white Australian kids used to give us hell. They used to call us the ‘B.W.D. group’: the Boong, the Wog and the Dago. Which is what Australia is about in many ways, especially in the 50s and it still is today.

- Nuovo Paese, Feb 1988, p3

Kevin’s adult experience had been just as important – as an organiser in the NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation (NSW BLF), he had worked with a range of immigrant groups, with many committed union activists among their number. For decades, unions and the ALP had supported the racism of the White Australia policy, but by the 1970s, some unions were challenging that. The NSW BLF was one of the first Australian unions to routinely translate all their notices to members into many languages, drawing on BLF members, including Portuguese Viri Pires, and fellow unionists like Sergio Zorino, of the FEDFA, to build links with both the multicultural membership and the broader community. (Burgmann and Burgmann, 1998, Green Bans, Red Union)

The Tranby Co-op in Glebe was in the inner west Leichhardt Municipal Council area. Aboriginal people made up the third-largest non-Anglo-Saxon group in the municipality, after Italians and then Greeks. In the early years of the 1980s, the Federal Government had established a ‘Local Government Ethnic Affairs Program (LEAPS) and initially Leichhardt Council had expected Aboriginal people would take part in the Ethnic Community Consultative Committee.

But Tranby, local Aboriginal residents and progressive organisations like FILEF, (an organisation for Italian workers and their families), were not happy. They insisted that Aboriginal people be recognised as the original land owners and be given a separate voice in council. Vera Zaccari, from FILEF, was then a community representative on the Leichhardt Council Ethnic Community Committee. Earlier, Vera had met Kevin Cook and Judy Chester at meetings held at Tranby to organise the opposition to the US Bases at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and Nurrungar in South Australia. FILEF was playing an active role in these campaigns against military bases and against uranium mining. So it was common concerns about militarisation and nuclear weapons had strengthened awareness of Aboriginal demands. Vera and others on the Leichhardt Committee strongly supported Tranby’s stand. As Kevin Cook remembered it:

We sat down and had a meeting with the Council and said, ‘We are NOT migrants!’ And the migrants backed us up 100 per cent!

- Making Change Happen, 2013, p163

After an Aboriginal deputation to the Mayor, Larry Hand, and to councillor Kate Butler, the Council agreed that an Aboriginal Consultative Committee should be established, to be chaired by an Aboriginal person and to be composed of representatives of Aboriginal residents and Aboriginal organisations in the area as well as councillors. This was to be the only committee of Council not chaired by an Alderman. The Committee met in its first years at Tranby and was chaired by Kevin Cook.

At this time, the FILEF theatre group developed a major dramatic production in collaboration with Aboriginal people, called Lasciateci in Pace (Leave Us In Peace) which was performed in 1986, the International Year of Peace. The play traced two time-travelling visitors from outer space, who came to Earth to research how humans understood ‘peace’. In a powerful segment of the play two Aboriginal actors, Dodie Eggmolesse and Shaz Townsend, explained the impact British colonialism had had – and continued to have – on their people.

In 1986 too, UTS researcher Dr Jenny Onyx initiated a project looking into the relationships Local Governments had to Aboriginal communities in rural and urban areas. In partnership with Tranby’s Aboriginal Development Unit (ADU) and the Local Government and the Shires Associations, this project worked with Aboriginal research assistants and others to report in 1989 on Local Government-Aboriginal relations. They researched 6 councils, five in rural areas, including Bourke, Moree, Taree and Batemans Bay, in each of which graduates from Tranby took on the research assistant roles, and one urban council, Liverpool, where women who had completed the NOW course were researchers.

When the Aboriginal Consultative Committee was being set up, Leichhardt did not employ any Aboriginal workers. Kevin Cook and other campaigners for an Aboriginal voice to Council argued at the same time that there should be Aboriginal workers employed. The Council initially suggested two labouring positions, but Aboriginal people insisted that the Council train administrative staff. The Council finally agreed to positions for an Aboriginal trainee Town Clerk and community worker, as well as workers in the Council printing press and its park gardeners’ team. By the early 1990s, a number of Aboriginal people were employed by the Council. One was Coralie Lifu, who had been a student at Tranby in the mid 1980s, and then graduated, with other Tranby graduates like Tom Evans, to complete a BA in Communications at UTS. Coralie worked closely with the Aboriginal Consultative Committee, supporting its regular evening meetings at Tranby and building close links with the Youth program which Leichhardt Council undertook, supporting young Aboriginal people in the LGA in travel, leadership and creative work like the major mural project in the social housing area of Glebe. (Interview, 31st July 2021; Leichhardt Council Annual Report, 1992)

Through the 1990s, Leichhardt – with the support of Italian-Australian and other communities, was to become the location of Boomali Art Centre. Some Italian-Australian artists took up internships there, and Tracy Moffatt, the filmmaker and photographic artist, exhibited in Italian exhibitions in interacting productions with Italian creative artists.

So making change in the politics of communities in local areas – through working in local government like Leichhardt Council – and building alliances with progressive organisations like FILEF - was a strong part of Tranby’s goals. Both students and staff were a part of that process.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Jenny Noesjirwan Local Government & Aboriginal Community Development Project Report Dec 1989