On federal election day last year in Australia, I found myself handing out how-to-vote flyers on a marginal seat booth with the film and TV actor Bruce Spence. We were one of many working to oust a government that punished the unemployed, excluded arts workers from Covid relief and responded to the climate crisis by waving lumps of coal in parliament.
I’d recently finished writing a book about the women at Carlton’s Pram Factory theatre, where Spence was a member of the Australian Performing Group (APG) in the 1970s. When I told him, he pulled out his phone and showed me a photo from the federal election campaign 50 years ago. It was Gough Whitlam, looking across a car park driveway, at performers holding up a sign: “The APG”.
