Born at the Right Time

by Ron McCallum

  A big point of contention was whether the Dockers’ Club provided goods and services to the public or to a section of the public, or whether the club was so private that the Race Relations Act 1968 didn’t apply to it. The Court of Appeal held that in accepting associates, the Dockers’ Club could no longer regard itself as a private body. One Court of Appeal judge said succinctly that ‘here numbers count’ and that it seemed to him that a group of a million associates is ‘a section of the public’. Mr Sherrington remained victorious, so the Dockers’ Club appealed again. The case came before the House of Lords.

  The House of Lords disagreed with the Court of Appeal. By narrowly construing the relevant section of the Race Relations Act 1968, it held that this piece of anti-discriminatory legislation was not intended to penetrate the hallowed sanctuary of the Englishmen’s club.

  The House of Lords essentially reasoned that a private club was akin to a private household, and that the Act did not apply to discrimination in the domestic sphere. While the House of Lords called the Dockers’ Club racist and lacking in human decency, it essentially found there was nothing the judges could do to stop private clubs behaving like this. The Dockers’ Club members had a legal right not to allow people inside their ‘home’, purely because of their colour.

  In answer to the Court of Appeal’s assertion that ‘numbers count’, one House of Lords judge found that the fact that a million associates could come into the Dockers’ Club if they wanted to was ‘too theoretical to be of any importance’.

  This case excited me. It seemed to me the House of Lords had done a terrible job. They said the coloured man was not discriminated against, but that just seemed to be so utterly wrong.

  When I began in academia nearly half a century ago, the English courts played a much more prominent role in our thinking than they do today. We didn’t have a Federal Court until 1977, so we looked to English decisions. Australia had no federal anti-racial discrimination legislation until 1975; the only anti-racial discrimination Act we had was in South Australia, thanks to the then South Australian Premier, Don Dunstan. We also didn’t have federal anti-sex discrimination legislation. That was another reason the Dockers’ Club decision riled me. We really needed to think about looking after minorities and notions of fairness, and introduce anti-discrimination laws in Australia.

  After having the House of Lords Dockers’ decision read to me, I began chatting with Professor Francis Trindade, who was one of my teachers at Monash and was himself a man of colour. I said to him that, in finding that no racial discrimination had occurred, the court had made a significant error. Francis simply said, ‘Why don’t we write a little note about the decision?’ So, we did.

  ‘As most clubs are licensed it is difficult to see why they should be treated as a private household,’ we wrote. ‘… Indeed, without a licence to sell liquor very few such clubs would exist. Furthermore, the proliferation of such clubs in a defined area may diminish the number and variety of other licensed premises in the district, thus reducing the recreational choices of those discriminated against. Clubs which seek legal advantages such as licences to sell liquor ought not to be regarded as being within the private sphere.

  ‘… One may be inclined to tolerate, as a private household, an ethnic club which has only, say, one hundred members, but when a club such as the Dockers’ Club has a potential patronage of one million members, discriminatory practices on the basis of colour will deprive those discriminated against of valuable social and business advantages.’

  Our article was published in 1976 in the Melbourne University Law Review, not long after Australia’s first federal anti-discrimination Act came into force. For me it was a good beginning.

  Over the next few years I wrote a few articles and book chapters. I enjoyed writing with other people, for my life was a little lonely and the camaraderie of co-authoring was a joy to me.

  7

  Dinner Parties, and the World outside Academia

  In some ways, I think that I have lived more of my life inside my head than have most people. In the decade from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s I experienced this to a greater degree than at any other time in my life. In other words, I felt a little divorced from my body and even from my spirit.

  This is a little difficult for me to explain, but perhaps the following musings may throw some light on my situation. In part perhaps, living inside my head may be owing to my lack of vision. While I do have good hearing, the lack of a major sense does somewhat confine my brain. I find it difficult to understand distance and proportion, and I am often tongue-tied when asked to describe a member of the family.

  Even today, I still find size and proportions difficult concepts to apply in practical situations. For example, I don’t fully comprehend the scale of things such as the aeroplanes in which I have flown around the world, the tall buildings where I have worked, and the sweep and length of freeways on which I have travelled in vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Of course I have felt model aeroplanes and as a child I had many toy cars, but the proportionality between these objects and their surroundings is still difficult for me to fathom.

  I also came to realise that living on my own took a great deal of concentration, and after most days of lecturing I found myself quite fatigued. Though I did exercise on my bicycle, I think that during this decade I was less in touch with my physical self than was ideal.

  My focus on living independently, teaching and researching the broad field of labour law continued largely unchanged up until late 1985. Nonetheless, the years from 1977 to 1985 were ones of personal growth and development, including employment in the public service and teaching in America.

  My little round house near Monash University marked a useful beginning of my growing independence. Its best feature was its proximity to the Monash Law School. However, paying rent was not enhancing my financial security. In mid-1977, Mum helped me to look for a home that I could purchase. We found a nice one in Oakleigh, which I bought. It was one of a block of nine ground-floor home units. It had two bedrooms and a garage, and had just been built. It was a fifteen-minute walk to Monash University, but that walk included big roads that needed to be crossed and I couldn’t do that unaided. The good news was that the unit was close to a pedestrian bridge that spanned the highway. This meant that in the morning I could go to the highway and take a short bus ride to Monash. In the evening, the bus let me off on the other side of the highway, at a bus stop right next to the pedestrian bridge. I could walk up its steps, go safely across the highway and then down the other side.

  Lois helped me to practise going to and from the unit to the university and after a while I found the pedestrian bridge to be pretty easy. I didn’t encounter those living in the other eight units in the block very often; however, I did become secretary of the body corporate and I held occasional meetings in my unit.

  I had never thought much about my vulnerability owing to my blindness. After all, people had almost always treated me with gentleness and courtesy. However, I did have a scary moment in the late 1970s. One Saturday morning there was a knock on my door. I opened it and a youngish man whom I didn’t know walked in uninvited. He said that he had seen me at the nearby shop where I purchased bread and milk. He thought that I might be lonely, and that he would be willing to be my close friend.

  I don’t know whether he thought I was gay, or whether or not he was gay, but his sexual orientation didn’t matter. He touched my arm without warning, which I didn’t like at all. I made it clear that I didn’t need his friendship, and perhaps my facial expression showed him that it was time to depart. When he left, I found myself shaking. I didn’t leave my unit again for the whole of that weekend, until I returned to the Law School on the Monday morning.

  I told Lois about what had happened, and she and I agreed that it would be best not to worry Mum. It was clear to me that I needed some security, so I bought a strong and lockable wire screen door for the front of the unit. It was kept locked, so that when a c
aller pressed the bell I could open up the front door and speak to them with a locked wire screen door between us.

  While my home unit suited me fine, its location meant that it would not greatly appreciate in value. I didn’t like the thought of moving, but in 1983 I decided that I wished to move closer to Mum and Lois and to be back in the Hampton–Brighton area. I spoke to a real estate agent and he showed me a big home unit that had come on the market. It was one of four; it had two bedrooms and a third room, which I could use as a study, plus higher ceilings than my first unit. The North Road bus, which went directly to Monash University, stopped just a few metres away. On top of that, there were some good shops close by; it was perfect. It turned out I had taught one of the sons-in-law of the woman who was selling it to me. This attractive place was to be where I intended to put down strong roots and to live independently.

  From the mid-1970s right up to the late 1980s and no doubt beyond, home dinner parties were an important way of socialising in Melbourne. I enjoyed being invited by friends to their dinners but soon realised that it was essential for me to reciprocate. From about 1978 onwards, I held dinner parties at least once every two or three months. I would work hard all day Saturday preparing the food and ensuring that my home was welcoming. Lois helped me to cook using an ingenious method. She would talk me through a recipe on a cassette tape, saying things like, ‘Darling, you should be up to this stage by now, so you should now do this.’ Perhaps these days one can achieve the same results by recipes explained on YouTube.

  One of my favourite dinner party recipes was roast lamb with either potatoes and other vegetables, or with just a salad. I learned to feel the texture of the lamb with a fork. I also cooked ‘shake and bake’ chicken breast pieces. I filled up a plastic bag with herbs and put in the chicken pieces for a ‘shake’ and then put them in the oven. I wasn’t a great cook, but friends and colleagues didn’t seem to mind so long as there was good conversation and conviviality.

  While I was single, usually all of my guests were partnered. Ever since, I have loved giving odd-numbered dinner parties, be it seven, nine or even eleven guests. The wine and the conversation always flowed but I must confess that I didn’t really relax until I had placed the dessert on the table. Once everyone had left, I would get into my jeans and T-shirt, put on some music and slowly and methodically clean up. It also gave me time to muse on the evening’s happenings and to work out whether or not the gathering had been a success.

  It was often the case that my female friends and female partners of my friends offered to stay and help clean up. I accepted their offers on a couple of occasions, but I soon learned to graciously refuse their kind help. In my opinion, everyone, and especially women, have rather fixed ideas on where plates and utensils should be put away in a kitchen. When I received cleaning-up assistance, I would often spend a week trying to find various utensils that had been placed in, what seemed to me at least, rather unusual spots.

  Some well-meaning friends tried to introduce me to young women at dinner parties. My host would say, ‘Meet Angela. She is going to sit beside you.’ I found this to be very awkward and I always became rather tongue-tied. I told friends that they were very kind, but that I just liked being invited to their houses for my own sake. At that time, I was still trying to find myself, to grow, to broaden and to become a true adult. That was all that I could then handle.

  Listening to audio books on quiet evenings gave me much solace. It’s truly amazing to me how pieces of music, books and even poems evoke strong memories. In February 1980, the Talking Book Library sent me The Herb of Grace by Elizabeth Goudge. (This book is known in the United States as Pilgrim’s Inn and is the second book in a trilogy about the Eliot family, the first and third being The Bird in the Tree and The Heart of the Family.) It is the story of the Eliots just after the end of the Second World War. They lived in two houses in England near the Hampshire coast. What captured my attention and what awakened my inner longings was how The Herb of Grace spoke of the naturalness and the fulfilment of mature love. Whenever I am tense, I still re-read parts of this book and an inner calmness comes over me.

  In 1978, once I felt that I had mastered teaching and could publish labour law articles, I began to look for new challenges. Wishing to spread my wings and to learn of life outside Monash University, I came across a federal public service scheme whereby academics could be seconded for a year or so to a government department or body.

  In 1977, the Fraser government established the Industrial Relations Bureau. In brief, this agency dealt with award enforcement, the rights of individual trade union members and also possessed powers to intervene in industrial disputes. Its headquarters were in Collins Street, Melbourne, and in 1979 I met its Deputy-Director, the now late Colin Wood. He was in his mid-forties; he was experienced in the ways of the bureaucracy, wise in the ways of the world and philosophically inclined. Colin and I shared a love of classical music and got on very well. It was soon arranged that I would have a twelvemonth secondment at the Bureau as a Principal Legal Officer, from July 1979 to June 1980.

  I remember my first day at the Bureau on Monday, 9 July 1979. My former student Graham Smith was working there for a short time, and his wife Julia dropped him at my unit early that morning so he and I could catch the bus and the train together to the Melbourne CBD. I had already practised my walk from Flinders Street railway station to the Collins Street office of the Bureau.

  There I was, dressed in a new suit with pressed shirt and clean tie. I had a small office and sufficient secretarial help, and I was ready for action. It took a little while for my colleagues to get used to me, and some were more nervous of me than I was of them.

  My work consisted of writing legal opinions, attending conferences, and going to court with senior Bureau members when the Bureau brought proceedings. By its very nature, the Bureau could not move a hand or a foot in the field of industrial relations without understanding the many legal difficulties and pitfalls that confronted it. In my view, its enforcement of awards—in other words, ensuring that employees received award rates of pay, and terms and conditions of employment—was the Bureau’s strength.

  Initially, I was very nervous, but Lois came into my office for several hours each week to ensure that I was able to keep up to date with the necessary reading. Several of my Industrial Relations Bureau colleagues also volunteered to read to me. One memorable colleague was Brian Lacy. He had completed his career in the army, spoke Bahasa Indonesia and when we met he was completing a law degree. Later, Brian had a successful career as a presidential member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and as the Administrator of Christmas Island.

  I found writing legal opinions to be far easier than writing academic articles and giving lectures. Carrying such a lot of labour law knowledge in my head really assisted me to become a walking textbook for my colleagues; gradually I began to socialise a little with them. On occasion we would go to a hotel bar for lunch and have a couple of beers. Public service life was more relaxed in those far-off days than it is today.

  I found this twelve months of employment outside of the university to be invaluable to my growth and maturity. For example, I learned a great deal about the workings of the federal public service and also about the operations of ministerial offices and even of Cabinet. Colin taught me how to craft memos for ministers and their advisors. If Colin was asked a question by a minister or by a senior bureaucrat, he would often ask me to write a draft memo of advice. These memos had to be no longer than two pages, so it was essential to be accurate and lucid. Appendices could be attached to these memos, but they were not supposed to detract from their stand-alone nature. I found this type of accurate writing to be rather daunting, but it taught me the skill of getting to the heart of each matter with which I had to deal.

  My friendships outside of academic circles also broadened my horizons. After a year I was very much one of the team. The warmth of my farewell dinner in June 1980 lives long in my memory.


  The exposure to our courts during my time with the Industrial Relations Bureau convinced me of the importance of the rules of evidence that operate in our civil and criminal courts. Though my brain did not absorb the rules of evidence as easily as it coped with administrative law and labour law, I ended up teaching evidence on and off for the next twenty years.

  First, of course, I had to learn the rules of evidence. So, during first semester I audited the class before assuming the teaching in second semester. I think that the students had never before witnessed a teacher sitting and learning with them, and then getting up and taking over the class. But while the textbooks were very learned and comprehensive, I was disappointed that few of them really got to grips with the history of the rules of evidence.

  In so many ways, the evolution of those rules—governing how oral and even documentary evidence is produced in court—demonstrates our culture’s changing attitudes to the nature of truth, to women, to children, to people with mental disabilities, to homosexuality and to crimes such as sexual assault. It has always struck me forcefully that, without a knowledge of history, it is nigh on impossible to really comprehend our legal system.

  Around the same time as I was sitting in the classroom and learning about the rules of evidence, Lois and I often sat in the Supreme Court on Mondays. This gave me a deeper understanding of how our senior courts operate on a day-to-day basis.

  In their own special way, the students did become a little protective of me. It’s hard to remember exactly when, but I think in the second semester of 1980 a couple of Monash students started the prank of running into lecture theatres and throwing flour bombs at the teachers. One of these pranksters ran into a class of mine. He didn’t know that I was blind, and he simply threw his flour bomb. This enraged my students and they began to chase after the transgressor. I had to yell out, ‘Please guys, don’t hurt him.’