This newsreel segment begins with a title card which sums it up nicely: ‘slums, illegal gambling and SP bookmaking is a real and vital problem confronting the governments of Australia today’. Following newspaper headlines, the …

This clip shows the conditions of those living in low income areas of inner city Sydney. The children living in this environment, according to the narration, ‘start life’s race with a handicap’ placing a …

A young boy is taken to the Police Boys Club. Its aim, according to the narration, is to ‘keep boys off the streets’. It shows the boys working in the gym, boxing, and socialising in …

Waterside workers are seen on the wharf while the voice-over describes their comfortable work conditions and job security, A montage of historical footage shows a queue of workers in the 1930s, and waterside workers using …

We see waterside workers using machinery. The voice-over describes how mechanisation has greatly reduced the hard labour required for the job and the number of employees needed. Current 'wharfies’ confess to little knowledge of 'the …

Four women recall the hardship of raising children during a period of mass unemployment. The government provided a 'baby bundle’ consisting of poor quality clothing.

Unemployed people were forced to build their houses out of scrap and discarded materials. They established a trading post where clothing was donated. Indigenous Australians were not able to receive the dole and were issued …

Timber bosses employed cheap 'scab’ labour to save money. The former employees picketed the mill. Women, led by the Militant Women’s Group (MWG), collected food and money and explained to neighbours the reason for …

Over a montage of slum housing in the city of Brisbane, a voice-over talks of the plight of the poor and ‘indecently housed’. A group of hungry men wait outside the Mission’s premises where …

With the country in the grip of the Depression, Caddie (Helen Morse) has to be smarter and quicker than everyone else if she wants to secure a job. She rises before dawn to read the …

Standing in the House of Representatives Chamber in Old Parliament House, actor Michael Caton provides the context for early newsreels in Australia. This is followed by a Paramount Gazette newsreel from 1929 that shows ex-Prime …

This clip examines the situation for women in the 1930s Depression when many were forced to work as the men in their families were unemployed. Denied equal pay and still being paid piece-rate wages, women …

The workmen, who live in shanty-style houses, also have dreams for a better home. As a child sits and draws a picture of a house, her picture is transformed (by a dissolve) into an architect …

John Riordan (Tony Llewellyn Jones) has lost his job. Joe (Christopher Schlusser) hears about a job as a paperboy selling newspapers on the street. He is warned that is a rough job – the last boy …