A Centenary Symposium
9.00 to 5.30 - 8 November, 2007

Gryphon Gallery
1888 Building
Grattan Street
The University of Melbourne

On 8 November 1907, Justice Higgins, the President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court handed down the decision that has come to be known as the Harvester Judgment, from the name of the agricultural machinery manufactured by HV McKay. It established a male living wage that had to be “fair and reasonable”, sufficient to support workers as “civilised beings” in a standard of living appropriate to a “civilised community”

This centenary symposium reviews a range of questions raised by this pivotal event in Australian history.

• To what extent did the living wage provide a basis for social justice?
• How was it understood at the time and how has it been remembered since?
• How important was Higgins’ own agenda and values to its formulation?
• In what sense did it encode ‘national values’?
• How have feminist writers dealt with how it reinforced a breadwinner model of society?
• To what extent was the centralised arbitration of wages a boon, or a hindrance to economic growth?
• In times when the arbitration system has been undermined by enterprise bargaining, individual contracts and then by the removal of its power to determine minimum wages, what is worth remembering about the ideas behind the Harvester judgment?
• How does public memory in Australia enshrine some historical events while forgetting others?

Speakers include:

Judy Brett (LaTrobe University)
Charles Fahey (LaTrobe University, Bendigo)
Joe Isaac (University of Melbourne)
Marilyn Lake (LaTrobe University)
John Murphy (University of Melbourne)
Paul Pickering (ANU)
John Rickard (Monash University)
Marian Sawer (ANU)

with a keynote address by Sonya Michel (University of Maryland)

The symposium will be followed from 5.30 to 7.00 by a reception to raise a toast to the living wage.
This will also be held in the Gryphon Gallery, 1888 Building. Speakers will be announced shortly.

Registration enquiries: Gabrielle Murphy, +61 3 8344 5961 or g.murphy@unimelb.edu.au

Jointly sponsored by Australian National University, The Centre for Human Resource Management, University of Melbourne and The Australian Centre, School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne.