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The Australian teachers’ federation (1921–1991)Andrew Spaull aa Teaches in policy studies and history of education in the Faculty of Education , MonashUniversityPublished online: 26 Jan 2010.

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The Australian Teachers' Federation (1921-1991)

Andrew Spaull

In January 2001 the Australian Education Unions (AEU) Federal Conference inMelbourne observed briefly the centenary of Australian Federation. The centenaryhas become an occasion for stocktaking by historians and others of our nationalinstitutions that owe part of their formation, identity and focus to the Australiansystem of federalism. Teachers' unions should be included in this review processbecause their aspirations for national organisation were derived from both a 'federalspirit' in teachers' professional interests, and the structures and institutions that shapedthe growth of federal/state relations in education, training and employment relations.This article intends to celebrate the twentieth century life of Australia's first and largestnational federation of teachers, especially in the period 1937-1982, of what wascommonly known as the Australian Teachers' Federation (ATF).

Unlike the AEU, which is a recent industrial invention of the state unions, theATF suffered from significant constraints on its capacity to act as a national tradeunion. First, it was always denied by its affiliates any central authority to impose itspolicies on them as state unions because they directly represented teachers employedby the state departments of education. Second, the ATF was denied by federal lawaccess to the federal industrial system (except for its affiliates in the two territories).As such, the ATF's primary orientations were confined to representing teachersnationally (as did state unions independently of the ATF) on a restricted range ofprofessional issues affecting teaching, intergovernmental arrangements in publiceducation, the funding of school systems, and towards the end of its life, internationalteacher unionism and international education. In brief, die ATF was a national teachers'union without an industrial persona or presence for most of its long history. Anystudy of the ATF, therefore, must be framed by its behaviour as an interest group in anemerging national education polity, in much, the same way as historians have beenforced to study the behaviour of the state unions before they were granted access tostate arbitration systems between 1916 and 1926 or special wages boards in Victoriaand Tasmania after 1945. The distinction is well made by John Dunlop, the Americanlabour theorist, who wrote of early public employees' unions in the United States thatthey were forced to act as 'lobbying agencies' by 'virtue of the practical prohibitionson effective collective bargaining'.1 This stands in direct contrast to his labourdevelopment theories that I applied to explain the 'formation' period of Australasian

1 John T. Dunlop, 'The Development of Labor Organizations: A Theoretical Framework' in R.A. Lester and J. Shister (eds), Insights in Labor Issues, New York, 1948, p.193.

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teacher union history in the 1880s, or the 're-formation period between 1915 and1925. In these two periods state unions were formed or restructured to secure theright to represent state school teachers in collective bargaining arrangements that wereavailable to most other groups of workers.2

Although these methodological issues should be acknowledged, they should notdominate a study that is essentially a short, reflective essay on the ATF's historicallocation in the Australian educational landscape. Instead this study draws on myearlier and most recent examinations of the ATF archive, my research papers andaffidavits for the new federal unions cases before the Australian Industrial RelationsCommission and the High Court, my background paper on the ATF, written for theWCOTP General Assembly, 1988 (in Sydney) and my notes and recollections of anumber of ATF annual conferences and other meetings which I observed between1970 and 1992.

This essay is therefore offered as an 'organisational biography' of a nationalteachers' union, some would say, an overdue obituary, and its place in teacher unionismand public education during the first century of Australian Federation.

Ancestry: c. 1886-1920

Leaders of the state school teachers' unions, which had been established in latenineteenth-century Australia, had entertained the notion of an interstate conferenceof teachers' unions since the early days of the new Commonwealth of Australia.Australian teachers had always been outward looking. The unions that they builtwere based on the trade union goals and organisational frameworks found in Britishteachers' unions, or from what they regarded as sound union practice in other Australiancolonies and New Zealand. State conferences always opened with 'fraternal felicitations'from interstate teachers' unions. And on some occasions the messages were moreforthright. Thus at the Federal Educational Congress, convened jointly by theEducation Department of Victoria and the Teachers' union in Melbourne duringJanuary 1901, George Carter, the union president, declared that his union felt thatthe year 1901 'of all others, called for special recognition, in order that the federalspirit might be strengthened amongst the members of the teaching profession'.3 In1906 and 1907 the largest union in New South Wales called for the establishment of

2 A D. Spaull, 'The Origins and Formation of Teachers' Unions in Nineteenth-Century Australia',Melbourne Studies in Education 1984, Melbourne, 1984, pp. 134-68; Spaull, 'The State and theFormation and Growth of Australian Teachers' Unions, 1915-1925', History of Education Review,vol.15, no.1, 1986, pp.34-48; Spaull, 'Invoking Ghosts from the Past, the Formation of theVictorian Teachers' Union, Historical Studies in Education, vol.5, no.l, 1993, pp.87-116.

3 Report ofProceedings of the Federal Educational Congress, January 1901, Melbourne, 1901, p.80.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

an annual interstate educational congress of the states' teachers' unions.4 In theQueensland Teachers' Union, a section of delegates to the 1913 annual conferencewent further and called on the union to find another sympathetic union interstate tocreate a federal state school teachers' union so that Queensland teachers could obtainan industrial award from the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration.By a narrow vote (23 to 21) the conference refused to debate the motion.5 The moreusual practice was for a union's annual conference to be addressed by the union presidentor secretary from the other side of the border, and once, only once it seems, in 1920,rank and file unionists from Rutherglen, Victoria, joined with their interstate colleaguesin Cowra, New South Wales.6 And as always the parting appeal from visitors at theseconferences was: 'we must do this again' or this type of 'exchange should be put on apermanent basis'.

An Unsettled Childhood: 1921-1936

In January 1921, 'a permanent basis' was realised in the creation of the AustralianSchool Teachers' Federation (ASTF). The background, the influence of the publicservants' federations and the 'making' of this national teachers' federation between 1921and 1936 have been examined in detail elsewhere.7 It is sufficient to recall here thatunion leaders came from most states, all states would be represented the followingyear, and adopted a loose, non-authoritative national federation of state school unions.Each union was entitled to six conference delegates as in the style of the AustralianSenate, and the conference appointed a small executive council and honorary secretaryboth to be based in the one state to run the federation between annual conferences.

The ASTF's main objects of organisation were:(a) To promote the cause of education in the Commonwealth of Australia.(b) ... for the discussion of questions of education interest.(c) ... for the intellectual and professional advancement of teachersThese goals, I would suggest, have in one form or another, and with the addition

of industrial objects inserted in 1926, guided the activities of the first national federationof teachers, and its successors, for the next eighty years.

The ASTF developed a working relationship with the state educationdepartments and the Conference of Directors of Education. Often there was a meetingwith the local director of education during or after the annual conference in the host

4 Australian Journal of Education (Sydney), 15 August 1906, p.6; 15 February 1907, p.1.5 For QTU's and others' interest in interstate federations or unions', see Queensland Education

Journal, October 1899, p.131; February 1913, p.219; October 1914, p.126.6 Education (NSWTF), 15 July 1920, p.225.7 A. D. Spaull, 'The Establishment of a National Teachers' Union in Australia 1921-1937', History

of Education Review, vol.18, no.1, 1989, pp.26-8.

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state. Annual conference resolutions were submitted to all the education departments,and some resolutions, such as the need for a federal bureau of education, the teachingof Australian civics, individualised teacher of pupils, raising the school leaving age orthe interstate exchange of teachers, became part of the agenda for the Directors'Conference. Generally, the ASTFs interest in educational or professional questionswas acknowledged, rather than acted upon by the Directors.8

The ASTF found it more difficult to cultivate a working relationship with theCommonwealth government. The few national education matters were theresponsibility of the Prime Minister's Department. It discouraged the Prime Ministerfrom meeting the ASTF. On matters impinging on federal/state relations, such as afederal bureau of education, a national university or even wireless in schools (all actedupon two decades later), it instructed the ASTF to take their requests to the stategovernments.

The ASTF also provided teacher union leaders with the opportunity to learnsomething of education and union organisation in the host state, with the local directorof education addressing a conference session, and educational excursion. Private noteswere invariably made about interstate delegates, but only a few dared publish them. AVictorian delegation's report of the 1921 conference summed up their appreciation ofthe value of such meetings.9

There was perhaps, little of the spectacular, but there was every evidence of a keen desireon the part of the delegates to perform work that would be of benefit to their fellows ...The immediate results, as we have said, may not be appreciable in financial terms, butthe dignity and status of the profession cannot but be enhanced by the wider outlookand the truer educational spirit that these experiences engender, and it may well be thateventually the most tangible benefits will follow in their train.10

Forty or more years later one could find similar views expressed by some activistsat least on the usefulness of ATF conferences to the state unions' development.

The ASTF was replaced by its amalgamation with the Federated State SchoolTeachers' Association of Australia (FSSTAA) in 1928. The FSSTAA was a federallyregistered trade union of teachers (1924) which had been formed largely by the NSWTFafter it had been removed from the state's arbitration system by a conservative, anti-public service union government in 1922. The union also formed branches in Victoriaand Tasmania, so that it would comply with the legal requirements for federalregistration. The aim of the new union was to seek federal regulation of teachers'

8 Department of Education Victoria, Office of Director of Education, MG/ 4312, D.G.Conferences 1916-40.

9 National Archives of Australia (NAA) A458, 745/1/335. ASTF resolutions to PM.10 The Program (VSTU), 15 February 1921, p.1.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

terms and conditions of employment where they were not obtainable under stateconciliation and arbitration. In 1926, the Victorian andTasmanian branches of theunion requested it to apply for a federal award after their logs of claims were rejectedby their governments (the NSWTF had returned to the New South Wales industrialsystem after the Labor Party returned to office in 1925). The Court of Conciliationand Arbitration, however, was not prepared to arbitrate on this dispute because it wasuncertain whether die Commonwealths 'labour power' as expressed in section 51(xxxv) of the Constitution, 'conciliation and arbitration for the prevention andsetdement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one state', couldbe applied to non-manual, state employees. The High Court answered this questionin 1929. It ruled against state school teachers, concluding that education was not anindustry for purposes of the arbitration system to find the existence of an industrialdispute as a necessary requirement to making a federal award. The FSSTAA movedback to the political arena. But despite promises of support from the Scullin Laborgovernment, a referendum question on extending the federal 'labour power' to coverstate public servants and school teachers, was never put to the people.11 Faced withthese legal and political defeats over the question of federal regulation, and the prevailingproblems for any union operating the 1930s Depression, the FSSTAA fell into disrepair.The QTU, the champion of state industrial sovereignty, had already left the union, itdid not return until 1935 and then only for that year - the year that it hosted theannual conference. The Western Australian union followed again unable to pay itsway, and like the QTU, unwilling to accept federal authority, followed by the SouthAustralians. Their withdrawals, they argued, were largely motivated by their desirefor the FSSTAA to return to the primacy of non-industrial interests.

Not that the national body had neglected the other issues during the 1930sDepression. FSSTAA policy on federal aid to schools was extended to technicaleducation and physical education, anticipating the Directors of Education and laterthe Ministers for Education conferences. Another FSSTAA initiative proposed aminimum standard of teacher training in the form of the Australian Teachers'Certificate. However as this proposal was seen as a threat to the employers' prerogativeto determine eligibility and course minimums it was rejected outright by the Directors.In 1932, FSSTAA launched a professional body, the Australian Institute of Teachers,but again this was another unsuccessful attempt to improve teachers' professionalstatus. The Institute was not seen as relevant to teachers themselves, or the directorsof education.12 The idea returned to union favour sixty years later in the form of theshort-lived Australian Teachers Council.

11 A. D. Spaull, 'The State School Teachers' Decision, 1929', Australian Journal of Education,vol.31, no.3, 1989, pp.236-51.

12 Spaull, 'The Establishment', pp.34-5.

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New policies were also accompanied by strategies to arouse public support forpublic education. Thus FSSTAA, co-sponsored as a junior partner, the NSWTF's 'AllAustralian Education Conference' in January 1933. This was the first nationaleducational conference in Australia since the educational congress of 1901. It hadlimited effect, other than gaining some immediate publicity in Sydney for the growingplight of local state education.13 These new strategies helped to reinforce FSSTAA'srelationships with the Directors of Education Conference and Australian Council forEducational Research.

But it was obvious that the union could not continue to command attention orprosecute its ideals and proposals in national or state politics while it was so debilitatedfrom secessions. As in most things then, the New South Wales affiliate took theinitiative by successfully moving at the 1936 annual conference to suspend any furtherattempts to obtain federal awards.14 This opened the way for the union to reinventitself on the 'old ASTF' federation model by creating the Australian Teachers'Federation. It met as such in January 1937, with the South Australian union at theconference table. They would be joined by the Western Australian union in 1939 andthe QTU in 1941.

In the twenty years since 1921, the state school teachers' national organisationhad gone the full circle. In doing so, it had set in place for the next forty years thepatterns of collective organization available to these teachers, the political character ofsuch organization (a sectional interest group) and the internal debate between thosewho favoured a national professional body for teachers and those who favoured anational trade union.

A Working Life: 1937-1982

Between 1937 and 1982, the ATF acted in much the same manner as its twopredecessors. Its major concerns were the same, only they intensified during the1960s. Also, its strategies remained the"same until the very end of the period, whilethe dimensions to the ATF's internal problems and its external identities remainedunchanged, and only became more complicated as a result of the politicisation ofpublic education in the 1970s.

In considering first these internal issues, the ATF of the postwar period, like itspredecessors, suffered from a lack of credibility among teachers. Few activists, or eventhe state teachers' unions, took Federation affairs seriously. The Federation's incapacityto deliver any tangible benefits to its often 'unsuspecting' rank and file in the affiliatesmeant that its strategies seemed irrelevant to the new national educational politics. As

13 Report of All-Australian Education Conference, January 1933, 130pp. (copy NLA).14 Spaull, 'The Establishment', pp.37-8.

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The Australian Teachers' Federation (1921-1991)

a consequence, state affiliates were unwilling to underwrite the growing needs of theFederation, especially after the 1960s, when they required a heavy financial investmentin their own industrial and political struggles with state governments.

To the few observers in the teacher union movement who monitored theFederations activities, it came to be seen largely as extension of the NSWTF s aspirationsfor strategic teacher unionism. The Federation was housed in the NSWTF's buildings,all of its general secretaries between 1921 and 1978 came from the NSWTF and itsday-to-day operations were subsidised by the largest teachers' union in Australia.Moreover, the ATF failed to 'excite' teacher or the education community's interest.The work of ATF committees in the state unions did not occur or was ignored, theATF's circulars largely went unread in teachers journals, the annual conferencespronouncements, although retailed in the major newspapers, escaped most teacherswho were busy relaxing on summer vacation. Finally, the ATF's impact on policy-making in the state unions was negligible as can be seen from any of the publishedhistories of the state unions.15 Local activists had either developed similar policiesbeforehand, or adopted 'ATF' policies as their own.

Within the governing bodies of the ATF, parochialism and factionalismdominated its annual conferences. Most affiliates were wary of the NSWTFs role ina system of equal affiliate representation because the NSWTF insisted that 'its people'should be prominent in ATF administration, or in any of its delegations or in anyformal bodies on which the ATF was represented. The per capita system (less than adollar per teacher for many years) meant that the NSWTF expected to get its ownway on important issues, for it rightly saw itself as the most effective teacher union inAustralia. When it did not, as in the late 1940s, it threatened secession; at other timesit demanded, annual elections for the general secretary and proportional representationat annual conferences.16 This natural wariness by the other affiliates of the strength ofthe New South Wales union was compounded by the NSWTFs ideological positionwhich was markedly Left. Most other affiliates were not of the same sympathies orfirmly believed there was, no place for ideology in teacher unionism.17 Added to thistension was a parochialism based on geography Thus the QTU, admittedly influencedby two chauvinistic general secretaries, viewed anything to its south with distrust. Sostrong was this sentiment that the QTU again left the ATF between 1956 and 1961.18

The Western Australian union had a similar disposition, its suspicion was that theFederation was just another eastern states' organisation, but it remained an affiliate

15 B. Mitchell, Education and Politics, Brisbane, 1975. J. O'Brien, A Divided Unity, Sydney,1984. A. Vicary, In the Interests of Education, Sydney, 1997.

16 NBA, E128/1/1 and 2, ATF Minutes (Council), 1940, p.1, 1943, pp.6-8, 1947, pp.3-6, 12-13.

17 NBA, E128/1/2, ATF Minutes (Council) 1944, pp.4-8.18 Andrew Spaull and Martin Sullivan, A History of the Queensland Teachers' Union, Sydney, 1989,

pp.257-65.

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after 1940." All other affiliates were annoyed with their Victorian colleagues of the1960s for them to have allowed endemic sectionalism to become open fragmentationin the state. The formation, survival and local influence of the VSTA and the TTUVmeant that the Federation could not claim to represent all of Australia's state schoolteacher unions, at least until 1977 when the VSTA became an affiliate, the TTUVhaving affiliated in 1972.20 Both their original applications for affiliation had beenrejected by the ATF on the advice of the VTU, in much the same way as it had heededthe South Australian union's advice to reject the affiliation of the Women TeachersGuild of South Australia in 1941.21

The other dimension to the Federation's identity was related to the image of itsleadership. The Federation found it difficult to shed its 'dub-like' aura at annualconferences. Its leaders were largely state leaders; its president came from the hoststate and its general secretaries were appointed to the position 'almost for life'. Assuch, most prominent Federation figures were head teachers, and almost all weremen, until the 1980s. The 'education statesman' image of the prewar years ran overinto the next decades with a leadership of grey 'inspectorial' eminence.22 This imageof leadership did not sit easily with the younger, and enlarged, rank and file. Certainly,it did not sit well with the 1960s generation of activists who demanded much more oftheir unions than previous generations. But to change the Federation's leadership stylethese activists had to first modernise their own unions. This would come in the early1970s as symbolised in Ray Costello's meteoric rise to power within the QTU andthen president of the ATF in 1973. It would also come later in the rise of urban schoolreformers, Van Davy in New South Wales and Gerry Tickell in Victoria, who sawunionism as an essential ingredient of school reform, and who became ATF presidentsin the late 1970s and early 1980s. Unlike their predecessors, these two presidents wereelected by conference.

The movement to open up the Federation to younger generation of teachersalso included women activists in the branches. Traditionally women occupied a marginalposition at ATF conferences, often a woman was the sixth delegate for an affiliate orthey were observers. For a time, women teachers' involvement in ATF affairs wasencouraging: 4 women attended in 1947 in a conference of 22 delegates, by 1962there were 10 women in a conference of 36 delegates. But in 1976 at the first annualconference after International Women's Year there were only 8 women out of 44delegates at the very conference that received its first ever report on the status ofwomen in education, including their participation in teachers' unions.23 Women's

19 NBAE 128/1/1, ATF Minutes (Council) 1940, p.1.20 ATF, Report of Annual Conference 1972, p.5, 1977, p. 15.21 NBA E128/1/1, ATF Minutes (Council) 1941, pp.3-4.22 B. Bessant and A. D. Spaull, Teachers in Conflict, Melbourne, 1972, p.15.

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The Australian Teachers' Federation (1921-1991)

numbers and proportions in the ATF rose slowly until the mid-1980s, and it was thislater period that would usher in the era of national presidents, Jennie George, DiFoggo and Sharan Burrow and the annual conference women's caucus and women'sspecial conference.

The Federation was always conscious of its problems of identity and its generalinability to deliver on policies. But it was not until the early 1970s that it attemptedto modernise its governing bodies and its administration. Thus its internal reviews of1971, 1976-7 and 1981 concentrated on tapping into the large resources pool whichstate teachers' unions accumulated (as a result in the dramatic increase in basicmembership) so that it could become a more effective national body.24

Outwardly the Federation became a larger organisation. Queensland defied itsown history after 1961 to remain affiliated with the ATF, New teachers' unions in theTerritories affiliated in the early 1970s, including the PNG Teachers Association (until1975). The Victorian 'breakaways' also joined in this decade, but the KindergartenTeachers Association of Victoria application was refused because its members werenot employed by an education authority.25 Finally in 1979, the TAFE TeachersAssociation of Australia affiliated.26 In addition, the overall membership-base grewspectacularly after the 1950s as it absorbed the same growth in teachers numbers asthe states. Thus while ATF had some 52,000 members in 1961 (19,000 in 1946), thisfigure increased to 92,000 in 1972, 147,000 in 1978 to 163,325 in 1983. Withinthis growth it was possible to place the Federation's operations on more extended andpermanent basis. After over a decade of internal pressure, the ATF appointed its firstfull time general secretary in 1970, and a full-time assistant general secretary in 19731In 1977 a research officer was appointed to the national office and in 1981 a secondassistant secretary was appointed to deal with TAFE teachers. The 1976-77 review,which had recommended this expansion in administration, also recommended thatthe Federation pay for a full time president. This was done gradually until 1983 whenVan Davy became the first full-time president.

This growth in the national office, which had moved to Canberra, meant thatthe ATF was markedly more visible in its liaisons with the state unions, and itsdistribution of materials became more systematic, ATF News' became more prominent

23 APT, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1976, pp.27-30. General background on women inteachers' unions, see A D. Spaull and K. Hince, Industrial Relations in State Education in Australia,Melbourne, 1986, pp.77-80.

24 The major internal reviews were: 'Charterand Future of the ATF', ATF, Report of ATF AnnualConference 1971, pp.10-11, 45; 'Status and role of the ATF as national body of teachers', ATF,Report of ATF Annual Conference 1977, pp.27-29 and NBA 2219/Box 252, 'Review of ATF1981'.

25 The Territory unions in the ACT and NT joined ATF in 1973. The KTAV sought admissionin 1977.

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in state journals, and its research notes, and industrial information bulletins (whichcommenced in 1980) were more frequently used by the affiliates.

The involvement of the state affiliates in ATF also changed in this period. Theconference working parties' format of the early 1970s was replaced with standingcommittees in 1980. These attracted participation not only from conference delegates,but from national and state officials and rank and file in the affiliates. That the delegatescould help furnish the five established standing committees was largely due to anexpanded conference base which came after the NSWTF finally convincing the ATFto introduce proportional representation into the annual conference in 1977 (and theATF Executive in 1984). Despite the increase in size of conference and an extensionof its policy-making activities, the annual conference continued to suffer frominformation overload, 'boring' proceedings and limited opportunities for 'real debate'.27

The response to this in the 1980s was to expand the member of ATF executive meetings,especially the use of teleconferences, and devote the early stages of the conference toworkshops and seminars at which conference delegates and observers met with outsideexperts. The 'seminar' approach had been used intermittently between conferences asearly as 1961 in the ATF seminar on Aboriginal education, and it had also providedthe basis for the teachers' public conventions which followed annual conferences inthe early 1970s. But the pre-conference seminars of the 1980s (and beyond) allowedthe conference work to be streamlined, but at the same time, involve more teachersand others in the development of policy agenda.28

Much of this gradual expansion in Federation resources and policy capacity inthe late 1970s was geared to meet three major developments: international teacherunionism; national schooling politics; and new forms of national trade unionism.

One of the most visible signs of the new role of the ATF was its postwarparticipation in international education. Before then, the Federation merely endorsedthe role of state unions who had affiliated with die International Federation of TeachersAssociation (ITFA, estb. 1926) or who sent women teachers to the Pan-Pacific Women'sConference.29 In the immediate postwar years the Federation received indirect officialrecognition from the Commonwealth government when the secretary of SAPTU (TomRaggatt) was part of the Australian delegation to the inaugural meeting of UNESCO

26 The first national technical teachers' union, the Technical Teachers Association of Australia wasformed in 1968; it became TAFE Teachers Association of Australia in 1974, which affiliated asa special 'division' in ATF in 1979 (see NBA Z260 for TAFETAA's papers).

27 'Review of ATF 1981', p.2.28 Between 1974 and 1977 three public conventions followed the annual conference, somewhat

like the state teachers' unions' public meetings in the years before 1914. Today the AEU conductsquasi-public seminars which precede its Federal Conference.

29 NBA, T15/12 (NSWTF records), FSSTAA Minutes (Council) 1934, pp.19-24; E 128/1/1ATF Minutes (Council) 1938, p.7.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

in Paris (1946) and Sam Lewis, the NSWTF president was appointed to a similardelegation to Mexico (1948).30 But the Commonwealth government would.not helpfund an ATF delegate to an early meeting of the American- based WCOTP and so itdid not attend any WCOTP meetings until 1950.31

Within the Federation leadership there was always keen competition to benominated for these overseas conferences, but there was little to return in the earlyyears for ATF involvement with these international bodies. A more practical approachwas found in a proposal from Western Australia for ATF to sponsor formation of anAustralian-Asian Conference of Teachers Associations, but the 1956 annual conferencepreferred to wait for the development of WCOTP regional assemblies. From one ofthese first meetings in Asia a leader of the Indonesian Teachers' union was invited toaddress the ATF annual conference in 1962.

Faster air travel and the holding of international conferences of the variousunions in the same venue allowed greater ATF representation at these assemblies. Thevisit of a Canadian Teachers Federation representative in the late 1960s and the holdingof a WCOTP Assembly in Sydney in 1970 encouraged the ATF to consider theestablishment of teacher development/union development programs in the region.32

The first ATF aid program was directed towards the PNG Teachers Association andin 1974 the Federation adopted in principle the CTF's project program and introduceda Union leadership program in Adelaide from officials in the Asian region, which wassoon extended to the South Pacific.33

In 1978 the Federation boycotted a WCOTP Conference in Jakarta because ofits opposition to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and its gaoling since 1965 ofunion activists. From the debates over this boycott emerged a more elaborate 'ATFInternational policy'.34 It emphasised a strong commitment to human rights, mutualassistance financial schemes to emerging overseas unions, which became the basis ofits International Trust Fund (estb. 1982),35 and a long-term commitment to theunification of the various international associations of teachers' unions into the oneinternational body.36

The second area where the Federation elevated its strategies was in its politicaloperations and representation of state school teachers on national education bodies.Before the 1970s, the Federation had behaved as a marginal pressure group under itsprewar banner of 'Education Consummated on a National Basis'. It overwhelmed

30 NBA, Z 219/13 ATF Minutes (Council) 1946, p.5; 1947, p.9; 1948, p.3.31 ATF Minutes (Council) 1946, p.5, 1952, p.2.32 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1971, p.45.33 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1974, pp.9-10.34 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1978, pp.33-4.35 NBA Z 219/251 (ATF International Trust Fund).36 A. D. Spaull, The Australian Education Union, Melbourne 2000, pp.185-6.

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government, departments and ministerial councils with submissions pleading federalgovernment funding to education, but rarely was it granted a personal audience. Thewar and immediate postwar years of centralised command of the national economysharpened the Federation's arguments for intervention. In 1940, the Federation finallymet a Prime Minister, only to be told by Menzies that while he regarded education asa matter of national importance, the constitutional arrangements for educationprecluded any peacetime intervention. The Federation heard the same speech fromthe same Prime Minister in 1958.37 A decade before the ATF had condemned PrimeMinister Chifley's new Commonwealth Office of Education 'for its failure to achieveanything worthwhile' for school education in the states.38

The Federation was again the junior partner to the NSWTF s national 'citizens'campaigns for federal aid to state schools and technical colleges between 1948 and1960.39 Many of its submissions and petitions were dismissed internally by Canberra'sadministrators as mere 'protest' resolutions.40 It was disappointed, therefore, whenthe Menzies government finally offered financial grants to schools in 1964 (forsecondary school science laboratories and scholarships), but insisted that non-government schools be funded as well as the state systems.41 The State Aid issuedistracted the ATF as much as the Labor Party, though the ATF Conference tookmuch longer than the ALP's Federal Conference to reach a political settlement on thenew realities of state funding of non government schools. By the late 1960s theFederation joined another disappointed national body, the Australian EducationCouncil, in calling for a national rescue-operation for the state systems that was basedon a 'needs criteria' to fund the resource deficiencies in schools, and teachers colleges.42

Before this, the AEC, though not the Directors of Education, had continued to ignorethe ATF, though the ministerial council itself lacked credibility because it had goneinto a long recess between 1952 and 1957- It was not until 1977 that the ATF wasinvited to join an AEC working party on an investigation into the interstate portabilityof teachers' entitlements, an issue that the Federation had urged since 1956.

The 'Education Needs' campaigns became the basis for the Whitlamgovernment's massive injection of funds into the state education systems. TheFederation, however, played no direct part in Labor's election. But while the 1972annual conference avoided asking teachers to support Labor during the election, it

37 NAA, A 461/7, AD 340/1/1: ATF Deputation to PM, January 1940; NBA Z 219/13, ATFMinutes (meeting of State Presidents), 25 July 1958, p.1.

38 NBA, Z 219/13, ATF Minutes (Conference) 1948, p.4.39 NAA, A 463/12,1957/3102: ATF submissions on finance for education, 1957-62.40 NAA, AA 1969/212, item 23, K.N. Jones to Senator Gorton, Minister for Education and

Science, 9 August 1967.41 NAA.AA 1969/212, item 13, ATF and others correspondence to Commonwealth Government,

1964-67.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

did fund television advertisements that depicted ACTU president R.J. Hawke extollingthe virtues of public education. As O'Brien noted: "To the casual observer it seemedthat the teachers' organizations were giving the nod to Labor'.43 The Labor government,however, did not return the nod. While it appointed a former ATF president WilfredWhite to the interim Schools Commission inquiry into the needs of Australian schools,the Federation was forced to protest:

The new Government has therefore started badly as far as consultation (with the ATF)is concerned. It is to be noted that no one member of the committee has close associationwith a school.44

The government did consult the Federation after 1973 when Costello wasappointed to the Schools Commission and George Lees (TTUV) was appointed tothe national committee to inquire into the needs of technical and further education.

Nevertheless by January 1976, the Federation's president (H.W. Bennett)expressed his concern at the decline in the Federation's influence! He observed that itwas only three years before when his predecessor proclaimed that the ATF 'has comeof age'. Now it was asked: 'where had the hopes and promises gone' and why was itstruggling to survive as a political entity?45

The scenario was not as glum as Bennett portrayed because the Federation wasstill able to secure direct representation on a host of national education committeesspawned by Labor's intervention into all levels of education. But the Federationsinfluence certainly had waned on the various bodies which advised the Commonwealthgovernment on funding levels and directions. Steadily the conservative Frasergovernment treated the Federation and the state unions 'from a position of not simplyirrelevance, but actual hostility'.46

Even before this, the Federation's influence in the community had also declinedafter the heady, but uncertain, days of the early 1970s. In August 1975, the Federationcalled a one-hour national stoppage to protest Labors 'Last Budget', but the effect ofthe protest was diminished after several affiliates did not heed the call, and those thatdid, turned out less than ten per cent of their members. The Federation had moresuccess in April 1976 when it, along with the parents; organisations, orchestrated amass invasion of Canberra. The 'Education Day' rally to protest against the Frasergovernment's proposals to cut educational expenditures disrupted the Parliamentenough to attract major attention from the media.47 'Education Day', and the follow

42 A. D. Spaull, A History of the Australian Education Council, 1936-1986, Sydney, 1987.43 O'Brien, p. 117.44 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1973, p.11.45 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1976, p.6.46 NBA Z 219/263, Bill Leslies report to ATF Executive meeting, March 1985.47 O'Brien, p.122.

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up by teachers and parents in local electorates, may have helped save the SchoolsCommission from dissolution, but general secretary George Smith seemed to overstatethe effect of the protest when he said: 'This was the voice of the Australian electoratearticulating itself in a way rarely seen and impossible to ignore'.48

But ignored the Federation was by the Fraser government, so much so that 'outof frustration', it turned to a revitalised trade union movement for succour.49 Thiswould be the third major change in the strategies of the 'new' ATF, which distinguishedit from the early organisations.

Affiliation with state labour councils and the Australian Council ofTrade Unionshad always been a contentious issue for teachers' unions. Only the NSWTF (1941)and the TTUV (1975) and the VSTA (1976) had made such affiliations, while theother unions had debated and voted to reject any affiliations as long ago as the 1920s.The Federation itself had rejected an affiliation resolution at its annual conference in1944,50 j n 1962,.however, the Federation affiliated with the Australian Council ofSalaried Professional Associations (ACSPA) which had been formed in 1957 as apeakorganisation of white collar unions.

For some years the ACTU had plans for the revitalization of Australian tradeunionism, which included the merging of the two peak councils. This strategy wasput into place largely by the ACSPA's leadership negotiating with its affiliates, includingthe teachers' unions, the practical benefits of a merger with the ACTU.51 In 1977-78the Federation also was active in establishing a public sector unions' campaign againstthe Fraser governments funding cutbacks to public services. The alliance and campaignproved an unhappy experience for the Federation, but it strengthened its interest inACSPA's decision to merge its affiliates into the ACTU.52 As a result, the Federation's1979 annual conference endorsed the ACSPA-ACTU merger proposal and resolvedto apply for affiliation with the ACTU. This was not a unanimous decision and thetwo dissenters, Tasmania and South Australia, disaffiliated from the Federation. (Theyreturned with observer status at subsequent conferences and later both rejoined theFederation). The Federation attended the ACTU Congress in September 1970. Nowknown as the 'White Collars Move In' Congress, the Federation's large delegation of51 helped strengthen the Left's re-emergence in the conference.53 The Federation's

48 ATF Report to ATF Annual Conference 1977, p. 18.49 R. Bluer, Teacher Unions at the national level: the Australian Teachers' Federation (copy with

Spaull).50 NBA E128/1/2 ATF Minutes (Council) 1944, p.23; see background Spaull and Hince, pp.84-

6.51 G Griffin and V. Guica, 'One union peak council: the merger of ACSPA and CAGEO with the

ACTU', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.28, no.4, 1986, pp.483-503.52 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1979, p.10.53 R.M. Martin, 'The ACTU Congress of 1979', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.21, no.4,

1979, pp.485-91.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

leaders were satisfied with its initial entre'e into ACTU affairs. As general secretaryRay Costello observed in his report for 1980.

I am pleased to report chat having been affiliated to the ACTU for two years, a sufficientperiod for sinister tendencies to show up if they are going to, none of the dire predictionsfor its ill effects on our autonomy, finances, political purity or whatever have come topass.'*

The Federation was also pleased with the 1981 Congress's discussion of theeducation report, and the fact that Keith Lawler from the ACTTF was elected ACSPAgroup' to the ACTU executive. Two years later when the Congress voted JennieGeorge to the executive as the ACSPA group seat, she became the first woman to serveon the ACTU Executive.

By early 1983, the Federation had 'come of age'. It was a large organisationrepresenting all of Australia's state teachers' unions embedded within the politicalaura of the new Labor government's consensus and a vital, but a still learningconstituent, in the national trade union movement. Its one basic weakness which ithad inherited fifty years earlier was it absence of industrial strategies. The-Federationhad never forgotten that it aimed to advance the economic interests of teachers. Thusas early as 1938 it had given moral and physical support to the equal pay for womencampaigns which had been waged nationally and by the affiliates in the states.55

Similarly its new charter of 1972 persuaded the Federation to develop a 'Teachers'Charter' for working conditions in 1976-77.5<s But in the prosecution of basic industrialissues it remained sidelined waving the 'Teachers' Charter' to watch the state unionsdo battle with employers. And when it explored issues like a national registrationscheme for teachers or federal registration of the ATF or a national log of industrialconditions,57 it quickly consigned its working parties' reports to the 'too hard file'. Indoing so it was behaving in much the same way as the national organisation did in the1930s or 1950s.

A Long Farewell: 1983-1991

The ATF dusted pff one of its old files ('FSSTAA', whose registration had beenallowed to lapse in 1950) after the High Court in June 1983 retrenched its longstanding prohibition on state salaried workers' access to the federal arbitration system.The affiliates, acting in concert with the national office, created an industrial union,

54 ATF, Report of ATF Annual Conference 1981, p.13.55 NBA E128/1/1, ATF Minutes (Annual Conference) 1938, p.6.56 ATF, Report of Annual Conference 1973, p.56; 1977, p.43.57 ATF Report of Annual Conference 1973, p.57; ATF, Report of Annual Conference 1974, p.48.

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with 'flesh and blood' members, the Australian Teachers' Union (later to be called theAEU), in order to access the federal industrial commission. But it was some four yearsbefore the new body was registered as an employee organisation in the commission.58

This delay raised serious questions within the ATF about the time, cost and effort increating a federal union, and more importantly, brought into sharper focus questionsof whether, when and where a registered federal union should seek federal awards andagreements for teachers employed by the states. Underpinning these questions was aneven more fundamental one that did not always surface in public: would a new unionsubstantially weaken the power and influence of the state unions by accumulating asits right as a federal union the central authority to run a national organisation? Thisthreat to the state organisations and to some of their officers and power brokers ensuredthat the question of the future of the ATF was debated almost ad infinitum at legalseminars, special conferences, executive meetings'and in most of the state affiliates,throughout the rest of the 1980s.59 The main contenders were the federal office andits officials (transferred to Melbourne in 1994) and several of the larger state unions,especially the NSWTF, which for some years, argued that the dissolution of the ATFshould not occur until 1994! Meanwhile the ATF/ATU continued to enhance itsnew industrial profile by negotiating in a national framework the restructuring ofteachers' careers. The ATF also embraced the first wave of trade union modernisationby: empowering women in the national organisation, creating a special division forthe TAFE teachers' national association, encouraging Victorian state education workersto attempt a single union formation, and encouraging indigenous teachers acrossAustralia to seek more formal representation in the national body as well as a nationalindustrial claim on their working conditions. During this period, ATF also elevatedto new heights its involvement in material assistance and moral support to teachersand their unions in the South Pacific, Asia and South Africa, and as well it entered thefields of educational aid and human rights in several of the countries in these regions.The ATF also made constructive contributions to the movement to gradually mergethe rival international teachers associations into what would become EducationInternational in 1992.

By 1989 the ATF had settled on a transfer-formula and timetable that anticipatedthat the organisation would dissolve itself in mid-1991 and be replaced by the newunion. All of the major roles and functions of the ATF were to be incorporated intothe federal trade union. Formal dissolution was held over to conference time, January1992, when at a specially-convened ATF annual conference it was unanimously resolvedto wind up the affairs of seventy-year old national federation. That evening at the

58 A.D. Spaull, 'Federal Registration of Australia's teacher unions', Australian Journal of LabourLaw, vol.5, no.1, 1992, pp.40-5.

59 Spaull, 2000, pp.l6-48.

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The Australian Teachers'Federation (1921-1991)

ATU's conference dinner the ATF was given a rousing send off with all the usualsongs, humour and irreverence that one has come to expect of modern teachers' dinners.But it was also time to reflect on some of the ATF's policies and personalities ofbygone eras. The celebrations, however, did not recall George Carter's message of1901 that through national meetings of teachers, 'we are able to lift ourselves out ofthe narrow groove in which we are too prone to rest content'.60 As the national voiceof Australian state school teachers, whatever the degrees of its audibility or receptionover seventy years, the Australian Teachers' Federation lived the dreams of the 1901unionists. It had lifted teacher unions and their members out of a number of narrowgrooves into the national educational landscape of twentieth-century Australia.

60 Report of Proceeding (1901), p.79.

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