Phil Cleary was a premiership player and premiership coach with Coburg in the VFA/VFL. A writer and former teacher, he was the Independent member for Wills (1992–96) and is a long-time anti-violence campaigner.
In 2007 the union movement mobilised around the Your Rights at Work campaign and the Labor Party's commitment to 'tear up' WorkChoices. Although there was a strongly held view among workers that John Howard and his lieutenants were driven by class hatred and an obsession with weakening the capacity of unions to finance the Labor Party, such concerns were lost in a campaign reduced to one cause, removing Howard from office. This absence of a…
I interjected for the first time in parliament the other day. It was quite spontaneous really. I found it hard to stomach Paul Keating praising George Bush for his commitment to worldwide freedom. The words: 'What about the Gulf war' were out before I could even measure their significance. It was rather quiet at the time, probably an indication of the reverence with which the Parliament holds everything American.
