Articles by: Bill Garner

Author Biography:

Bill Garner is a playwright and historian. He is a member of the citizen activist group Progressive Port Phillip.

Citizens, Arise!

The first and last defence of democracy is in the street where we live.

Informit: Competitive neutrality

The inquiry into the competitive neutrality of the ABC and SBS is under way. It came about because of a deal the government struck last year with Pauline Hanson to secure her support for relaxing media-ownership rules, but Hanson has faded into the background. Now the urgers are Foxtel, News Corp and Fairfax.

Informit: History and myth

Adam Cass's marvellous 'La Mama', which celebrates the theatre's half-century, is an opportunity to look at several books, a documentary film and a website that try to describe La Mama and its belligerent offspring the Pram Factory, home of the Australian Performing Group (APG). Excepting Gabrielle Wolf in her scholarly study, 'Make It Australian: The Australian Performing Group, the Pram Factory and New Wave Theatre' (2008), the makers of these chronicles reflect the collaborative nature…

Informit: Brookes jetty

How local history scripts activism. As a very young boy, on long car trips I would stand up on the back seat serenely looking out the back window. Those were the dangerous days before child restraints. I never looked in the direction we were going. I only saw what had passed by. Along the highway an endless line of electricity poles receded, wires rising and falling hypnotically like waves. I had a long time to…