
Issue No 102		13 July 2001

LaborNET	Ask Neale	Tool of the Week

News

Mick Young Play Award

A new $8,000 scholarship for a young playwright is being offered in memory of one of Labor's true icons. mick Young.

Applicants are invited to submit an outline or summary or treatment of about 2000 words of the proposed play. Entries close 31 August 2001.

The prize is a joint initaitve of the Mick Young Scholarship Trust and NIDA.

For full details contact Tonya Grelis at NIDA on 9697 7604 or mailto:[email protected]

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Mick Young, whom this Scholarship commemorates, was a remarkable Australian political figure. Much of his boyhood was spent helping his mother to care for her family of seven boys. He was therefore deprived of a full education himself, leaving school in the early 1950s at what was then intermediate level. Mick, however, never lost respect for education, nor his appreciation of its importance for young people of all backgrounds.

Having completed his own enforcedly brief education, Mick worked briefly in Sydney and then headed for western New South Wales where he became a shearer. With this, he began a career unique in Australian Labor Party history. From an ordinary beginning, Mick went on to fill every position from lowest to highest in the Australian Labor movement.

As a shearer, he was a rank and file member of the Australian Workers' Union. In 1956, he became an organiser with that Union. Later, his talent was recognised and he was recruited as an organiser for the Labor Party in Adelaide, became Assistant State Secretary and later State Secretary in that State. In 1969, he became Labor's Federal Secretary, possibly the most successful the Party has known.

Mick's elevation came at a critical time for the Party. For the first time in a generation, there were signs that Labor, having lost office in 1949, might once again become the Government. With the new Labor leader, Gough Whitlam, he guided Labor to victory in the 1972 Federal election - its first in 23 years. Whitlam paid tribute to Mick's role in this success at his funeral in 1996 when he described Mick as "the good luck which Labor had to have".

Mick entered Federal Parliament as an ALP member in 1974 for the seat of Port Adelaide, became a Minister in Government regained in 1983 and was also Leader of the House during this successful period. In 1987, he realised his final ambition, becoming President of the ALP.

Mick began work helping needy people in the field of education while he was still the Member for Port Adelaide. His family, friends and supporters decided it would be fitting to carry on the work in his name after his premature death in April 1996. Mick at the time was 59.

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Issue 102 contents

Interview: Jolly Green Giant
Senator Bob Brown on the upcoming federal poll, balances of power and what the Greens can teach the trade union movement.

Workplace: Call Centre Takeover
Theresa Davison brings us this real-life story from the coal face of the call centre industry.

E-Change: 1.2 Community � The Ultimate Network
Peter Lewis and Michael Gadiel look at the potential for network technologies to reconnect communities.

International: Child's Play
Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has recently entered a new alliance with the Child Labour Schools Company to support a project for child labourers in India.

History: Flowers to the Rebels Faded
With the departure of our own Wobbly, a look at the development of the Wobblies in Australia and their view of Labor politicians and the work ethic seems timely.

East Timor: A Dirty Little War
In this extract from his new book, John Martinkus recounts the scenes in Dili immediately following the independence ballot.

Satire: Telstra Share Failure Ends City-Bush Divide: Everybody Screwed Equally
Communications Minister Richard Alston today claimed that the government had fulfilled its promise to ensure that the bush was not disproportionately disadvantaged by Telstra's privatisation.

Review: Cheesy Management
Currently climbing Australian best-seller lists is the 'life-changing' motivational book 'Who Moved My Cheese?' Rowan Cahill has a nibble but doesn't like the taste.

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» Cleaner Wins Right to Attend Family Reunion

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» Mick Young Play Award

» Activist Notebook