Dockland an ongoing contested site

Waterfront dispute

Monday 7th April 2008 was the 10 years anniversary of the waterfront dispute between the Patricks Corporation and the Maritime Union. The union was holding one minutes silence to commemorate of the event. Protagonists from that time were interviewed on both radio and television and were still quite heated in their views, especially Chris Corrigan, then owner of Patricks. Another key person from the dispute was Greg Combet, who has been prominent recently in the defeat of the Howard government and its WorkChoice legislation. The terminology of both sides is couched in analogies of war and battle – fulfilling the ideological stereotypes of Capital versus the Organised Labour Movement. How unions particularly create Mythology around an event. Also of interest is how each side views themselves as the winning side.

I had previously noticed on informational signs on Dock 9 an historic image of men in a rowboat subtitled “chasing non-unionists down the river.” In terms of the project ImpossibleImprobable it gave rise to considerations of the recurring nature of conflict at the site. How fixed ideologies on both sides gave rise to unresolved tensions, which could be viewed as a notional polemical rapids, a concept compatible with the physical nature of the Staircase site.