Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows a series of dramatisations to indicate that working-class people are unable to afford basic goods, and includes actuality footage that shows workers protesting against low wages and increasing prices. In the final scenes of the clip manufacturers are shown being given approval to raise prices while union demands for a wage increase are rejected by a judge. The clip is narrated and accompanied by a lively orchestral score.

Educational value points

• This clip comes from a film made to persuade viewers to support the 1948 referendum to give the federal government, rather than the individual states, the power to control rents and prices. The Curtin Labor government temporarily assumed this power during the Second World War in order to reduce inflation and profiteering from goods that were in short supply. But making it permanent required an alteration to the section of the Constitution that defines the legislative powers of the Federal Parliament.

• The clip suggests that wages were not keeping pace with the cost of living. The Chifley Labor government argued that federal control of rents and prices was a means of safeguarding people, particularly those on a minimum or basic wage from unjust and disproportionate rent and price increases. Under the system, prices could only be increased by passing on increased costs.

• Despite appeals such as the one made in this clip, the 1948 referendum was soundly defeated by a majority of electors in a majority of states. Opponents, including the federal Opposition consisting of the Liberal and Country (later renamed National) parties, argued that federal government control of rents and prices would undermine the private sector and free enterprise. However Australians have traditionally voted ‘no’ in referendums and, of the 21 referendums held between 1906 and 1999, only six have been carried.

• After the Second World War the trade union movement campaigned to keep wages in line with rising prices, and included protests such as the one outside the Myer department store shown in this clip. The international demand for Australian goods and resources in the postwar period marked the start of an economic boom. However unions argued that workers were not benefiting from this prosperity. In this period the Communist Party was active in some unions and was involved in a series of militant strikes.

• The Realist Film Unit, a group associated with the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), made Prices and the People, to support the ‘yes’ case in the 1948 referendum. However it was also used as a propaganda vehicle to disseminate Party doctrine. The CPA advocated the overthrow of capitalism and the socialisation of industry on the basis that capitalism exploited workers to make profit. The film contends that while low wages and high prices make profits possible, working people’s standard of living is eroded.

• Prices and the People was made for a working-class audience, and this clip deliberately sets up an ‘us and them’ scenario. It presents several scenes in which working people are unable to afford basic goods and suggests that companies are profiting at the expense of workers. It then contrasts a group of manufacturers who easily win approval for price rises with unionists whose request for wage rises to cover cost increases meets with an unequivocal ‘no’.

• While the clip dramatises the injustices faced by ordinary people as a result of price increases, it also depicts people fighting back through a series of union-organised protests. The inclusion of this footage, accompanied by a soundtrack of epic music and the stirring words of the narrator, may have been intended to persuade viewers to take militant action to bring about change rather than passively accept low wages and price hikes.

• Following the failure of the 1948 referendum, the states resumed control of price and rent fixing. Each state had different regulations until the federal government introduced the Trade Practices Act in 1974 and the Prices Surveillance Act in 1983. The Acts are designed to promote competition and fair trade and protect consumers from unfair or dishonest selling practices. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, an independent federal government authority, has administered these Acts since 1995.

• The Realist Film Unit made films like Prices and the People in the tradition of socialist realism that focused on social justice issues such as poverty, homelessness and unemployment. It was established in 1945 by Ken Coldicutt and Bob Mathews, with the support of the CPA, which at the time was quite active, particularly in the more militant unions. The films were shown at trade union and other community gatherings. The film unit was the subject of John Hughes’s documentary The Archive Project (2006).

This silent part of the clip shows a sequence of people wanting to buy goods only to find them too expensive: a woman can only afford cheap meat; a young boy can’t afford a chocolate; a woman is outraged by the cost of vegetables; a man in a café is shocked at the bill; two women can’t afford the dresses displayed in the window.

The narrator’s voice-over and a lively orchestral score then plays over footage of workers’ demonstrations outside Myer department store and the Pricing Branch in Melbourne. Also shown are scenes of manufacturers and industrialists applying for and receiving permission to raise prices and workers applying for and being denied wage increases.

Narrator Australians everywhere are protesting against soaring prices, individually and collectively. The people don’t know how price fixing operates but they know from bitter experience that the system used keeps prices far ahead of wages. They realise that the unceasing stream of price increases wipes out wage gains won by powerful unions after bitter struggles. These battles were fought to bring wages closer to prices and public anger mounts as fresh increases follow every wage gain.

This demonstration of Victorian railway men finished outside the offices of the Prices Branch in Collins Street. Through this entrance go manufacturers and industrialists, seeking higher prices … and generally getting them … No trouble at all … But when the workers ask the Arbitration Court for a wage rise, the answer is nearly always …

A judge shakes his head to indicate no.