At the fag end of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era in 2013 his ministerial staff included the scholar and speechwriter Nick Dyrenfurth. Bill Shorten as AWU secretary in 2002. Credit:James Davies When he was a Shorten staffer, Dyrenfurth was urged in private (if only by me) to write an insider's chronicle of Labor's downfall in 2013. Realistically a candid account of this kind will never see the light of day, but all is not lost. The next best thing has just appeared in the form of a new history of the AWU, Shorten's old union, written by Dyrenfurth, his former staffer. This AWU book is entitled A Powerful Influence on Australian Affairs. Such a title is well-justified. Dyrenfurth's message is one of persistence in a harsh environment. His account shows how the AWU's entrenched power and influence dates back to the earliest years of the Australian federation. But for the AWU, the nascent Labor Party in the 1890s would have become cooped up in a few easily gerrymandered urban electorates.

The ALP escaped this fate and went to enjoy lusty adolescent growth because it was linked to the AWU. The AWU unionised pastoral and mining workers scattered across regional and rural Australia. Its paid full-time organisers set up and ran local Labor branches across the wide brown land. AWU newspapers proclaimed the gospel of Laborism. The AWU, because of its pivotal role in propagating the Labor message, came to be seen as the embodiment of an Australian ethos of egalitarianism and mateship. It helped to consolidate support for key early federal initiatives such as compulsory arbitration and, regrettably, the White Australia policy. Dyrenfurth is right to stress the AWU's resilience over the years. In the less heady decades that set in after World War I, AWU leaders saw off repeated perceived challenges. Throughout this long tussle employers and business people have often been the least of the AWU's worries. As Bill Shorten demonstrated in his years with the AWU, his union prefers to do deals with the business sector. Where there is animus, it is usually generated against the AWU and other unions by assorted free market ideologues. The AWU's atavistic enemy instead is other labour people. Dyrenfurth's book is peppered with accounts of conflict with other unions (such as the Federated Ironworkers' Association in its various guises) and with rebellious grassroots industrial activists. Over the years the AWU waged war against the Labor hero Jack Lang, the Communist Party of Australia and the trade union disciples of BA Santamaria.