Bastard Boys

One year out from the 10th anniversary of the Patrick lockout, a new dramatised series seeks to depict the 1998 conspiracy on the Australian wharves that held the attention of the nation and the world. ABC TV May 13-14

It's 11 pm on the Melbourne wharves, April 7, 1998 and Tommo (played by Geelong wharfie/actor John Teague) is up a portainer crane making a call to his mate Tony.

"Ton, There's something going on," he says into his phone. "There's dozens of blokes in boats coming up the river. They've got uniforms. And dogs."

"Dogs?" queries Tony.

"Yeah, mate, and their not flamin' poodles."

Bastard Boys, the gripping ABC doco drama based on the 1998 waterfront conspiracy goes to air on May 13-14, bringing back to life the now legendary bastardry of a ruthless employer and an even more ruthless government hatching a plot to sack an entire workforce and smash a union in one of the greatest spy thrillers ever told.

"This", says Maritime Union lawyer Josh Bernstein (Justine Smith) "is so John Le Carré."

Alongside ACTU heir apparent Greg Combet (Daniel Fredricksen) and then union secretary John Coombs (Colin Friels), Josh meets up with shadowy, gun toting ex SAS commandos - the men contracted by the Patrick boss to do the job on the wharfies.

The first class script by leading writer Sue Smith (Brides of Christ, Leaving Liverpool)is brought to life by film-makers Ray Quint and Brett Popplewell for ABC TV with a host of Australia's finest actors, including real life wharfies and veterans from the picket. Together they help recreate Australia's biggest industrial battle since Eureka.

Jack Thompson stars as Tony Tully, an old-style wharfie who clings to the good old days when the union "owned the waterfront", the days of Big Jim Healy and Tas Bull - tough men who didn't hesitate to shut down the wharves. Tony is against the Gandhian non-violence "bullshit" preached by newly elected state official Sean McSwain (Anthony Hayes), doubled over behind his horse float bunk parked on the picket retching from the tension and fear. Or is it the Scotch used to deaden a broken heart after being dumped by his wife (Justin Clarke)?

Both characters are mostly fictitious - the everymen of Australian waterfront personalities, members, delegates and officials.

"You'd better suspend me, union man," Tony says to Sean. "Using violence and all."

Bastard Boys is painstakingly researched with the writer interviewing the Corrigan family, wharfies, lawyers, unionists, officials and even the mercenary scabs, before weaving together a tightly knit story. It's not a documentary. There's a fair slab of artistic licence taken to cut to the core and expose the plot, the intrigue and the human forces at play at the time. The writer creates some characters, but they are moulded from real life players in the real life drama that was played out in ports around the nation.

Filmed on the Melbourne and Sydney wharves, grinding machinery, straddles, containers and cranes - orange, yellow, red glowing in the dark of night - become the backdrop for the drama. They also provide visual and action relief to the dimly lit interiors where plots are hatched and strategies devised.

Woven into the politics at play are human stories, passions of new love, demands and responsibilities of mums and dads and their children caught up in the intrigue.

But the opening is pure war - an invasion set out with secret military precision. Stomping jackboots and snarling dogs on the wharves, startled workers, some battle hardened straight into the chase towering over the invading army of security guards in whirling, lethal straddles.

Then a kaleidoscope of first impressions

"This is the closest I ever want to get to a war," says Sean. "I've never seen anything like it. Never thought I would see anything like it. Not in this country."

"I was asleep," says Corrigan. "No one believes me. They say how can you mastermind something like that and then sleep through it?"

Part one, Greg's War starts with John Coombs taking a call from friend number one - a deep throat tipping him off that something is afoot.

"How far up does it go?" Coombs queries. "Well, you can start with the PM... From Howard down," says the mysterious voice on the end of the line.

As the pieces fall together, the secret is shared with former union officer and comrade Greg Combet, already making a name for himself at the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Again the tensions between the old guard and the new Turks are played out. The urge to use the old industrial weapon of the strike opposed to the new tactic of outmanoeuvring, not out-gunning them.

The unfolding drama outlines how the then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty gives Greg Combet the job of overseeing the dispute as a rite of passage. "Stuff up and the other unions'll drop like chokos off the shithouse wall," he says.

The Dubai industrial mercenary scheme, a plot to train existing and former soldiers as stevedoring workers abroad, is ambushed by John, Greg and the union using the media and the global influence of the International Transport Workers' Federation.

But when wharfies are evicted from Webb Dock only weeks later and the alternative workforce, recruits of the self serving, right wing National Farmers' Federation, train up for the job of union busting, things look shaky.

Enter Josh Bernstein, lawyer and nephew of the legendary Harry Bridges. Josh (played by Justine Smith) knocks on Greg's door and offers a conspiracy case and a high profile recruit - corporate QC Julian Burnside.

"It's bottom of the harbour - They'll never get away with it," says Julian (Rhys Muldoon) as Patrick lawyers announce they've shuffled the companies leaving MUA wharfies in an empty shell, a labour hire company with no assets already in receivership.

"Before our very eyes, proof is emerging of the larger conspiracy which we allege," Burnside argues in court. "It's interesting, isn't it, that the events of last night took place a mere 24 hours after we served motion seeking to prevent Patrick from doing this very thing they have just done. At 11pm Mr Reith's office announces the appointment of administrators to Patrick. Not 10 minutes later Patrick announces the workers' termination with redundancies funded by the government. Not 10 minutes later. What a remarkable coincidence."

In the words of Greg Combet it was "the filthiest piece of corporate skulduggery" ever seen.

Part 3 "Sean's Story" is all heart. It is also the story of another rite of passage, the initiation into manhood.

"The night of the big picket, I watched you from behind with your loud hailer," says Sean's estranged wife (played by Justin Clarke). "All those people trusted you... and I thought I want that. I want my sons to have that."

The picket is recreated. Priests and greenies. Comrades huddled in the cold. Mostly rock solid, sometimes questioning.

While mainly based in Melbourne for dramatic purposes, in reality the same scenes were played out in Brisbane, Sydney, Fremantle and other ports.

Last Melbourne winter wharfies from Appleton and Swanson docks joined other unionists and actors on the set. Linking hands they recreated the night of the big picket, the sound of helicopters whirring overhead, facing off the police until their comrade construction workers (CFMEU) march en-mass to the rescue.

In Sydney then CFMEU secretary John Maitland returned from retirement to join MUA assistant secretary Mick Doleman and Sydney branch secretary Robert Coombs for the Port Botany filming. In 1998 it was these three men who ran the Botany picket, the CFMEU taking over when court injunctions made it difficult for MUA officials.

Led by National Secretary Paddy Crumlin, a cast of hundreds from the Port Botany wharves and ships, nurses, public servants, firemen and others, many of them veterans of the dispute, waved placards and banners, cheering on Colin Friels playing John Coombs:

"Chris Corrigan's trouble is he doesn't understand the history of the waterfront," says John. "You take on one of us, you take on all. Men, women and children of the labour movement: One. More. Day. One more day till the Federal Court reinstates us. One more day till we send Chris Corrigan packing to the dunce's corner to learn a history lesson he'll never forget."

Peering out from his 'camouflage vehicle', a laundry van the Patrick boss used to lurk undercover, Chris Corrigan doesn't like what he hears.

His story, the final chapter in the four-hour drama is the story of a man told to fear for his life. Despite the non-violence tactics adopted by the union, his family allege death threats and harassment. His wife and two children take refuge overseas.

It is also the story of how Corrigan took on anyone who defied him - the union, his workforce and the banks - and how his brother, his bankers, his business mates, the government, his military men, public opinion and the courts all turn against him. The seeds for the 2006 hostile takeover of Patrick are sown.

Then the legendary court decision and the return to work.

Justice North in the Federal Court found:

"By dividing the companies into those which employed the workers and those which owned the capital, the Patrick Group put in place a structure which made it easier to dismiss the entire workforce...There is an arguable case that Patrick, the National Farmers Federation and the federal government have breached the contracts of employment and engaged in an unlawful conspiracy. I therefore find that Patrick should reinstate its workers as soon as possible."

In the end Corrigan's enemies, the union and the workers, are the closest things he's got to friends. He makes the first call. Negotiations resume. The rest is history.

Or is it.

Bastard Boys comes at a critical time for the nation's workers. The conspiracy case finished with the agreement where the union and its members reclaimed their jobs on the waterfront in May 1998. But no maritime worker has forgotten the real bastard behind this vicious attack on unions and working families. The war continues, only the ground has shifted.

The battle is now being fought out in the electorate, in the marginals, and the hearts and minds of Australian working families. Most suffer under Howard's oppressive IR regime, or know someone who does, or worry whether their kids' will. And the 2007 federal election is moving towards countdown.

In the spirit of the dispute most workers and their families today are determined to get rid of the Howard Government.

Bastard Boys also stars Lucy Bell (as Petra Combet) and wharfies' wives Daniel Wyllie, Justine Clarke and Debra Kennedy (as Gwen Coombs).

Watch the promo on Youtube or abc.net.au/tv/promos

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