This was a talk I gave for the screening of the David Zubrycki film – Friends and Enemies at Kurilpa Commons on 26 September 2025.
Friends and comrades it has been 40 years since the SEQEB dispute and 25 years since I completed my PhD thesis on Left wing documentary in Australia – a thesis which contained a chapter on Tom Zybricki who of course made the film we are viewing tonight -Friends and Enemies. For a long time, I was afraid that anyone would read my chapter on Zubrycki and in particular the section on Friends and Enemies. But truly I need not have worried – there has been little or no interest in my thesis. It has only been cited twice in 25 years!
Why was I anxious? Well, my good friends Bernie Neville and Phil Perrier conducted an unrelenting campaign against the film, and indeed, they tried to go everywhere it was shown and attack the filmmaker for betraying them. I think they made Zubrycki’s life hell. As well, I know they both died bitter and unforgiving about the film. Meanwhile, unbeknown to them, I had written a favourable piece on the film. I considered Friends and Enemies to be a fine film as a film, and I probably will still do so.
I will try and answer why Bernie and Phil felt so betrayed by the film after we view the film if there is any appetite for discussion, then
But I want here to make a few remarks about the SEQEB Dispute and the struggle that took place around it.
1. Firstly, Zubrycki arrived in Brisbane when the dispute had been defeated. The Trades and Labour Council had turned the electricity back on and that was effectively a surrender. But because of Bernie and his dramatic intervention the TLC Bureaucracy and the Labour Party could not simply wipe their hands of the dispute. They had to continue to pretend to fight publicly.
2. So what you are watching tonight is a film about a defeat. But it is made in the Fly on the Wall style and there is no overall commentary. The voice of the film maker has retreated to the editing suite. I dislike fly on the wall docos. I prefer honest commentary up front. I prefer a position taken and argued for.
3. As part of desire for honest commentary, I have to say that Zybricki took an instant dislike to me when we met. I was teaching documentary film and was over awed by meeting him but for one reason or another he avoided me as much as possible and hung around with Bernie and Phil.
4. I also want to put on record that the Left threw everything into the dispute. I wrote the letter to the VC of UQ protesting against the Petersen Doctorate that Bernie read out on the film. I contributed to the Strike Bulletins.
5. I was also arrested 5 times and there were times when it seemed as if I was under house arrest. I would go out in the morning and there would be someone from the Special Branch shouting out “Hi Gary!”
6. I was fined a lot of money, and it seemed to me after the dispute was over that everywhere was depression. One of the few bright notes was when a bailiff turned up to take my car because of the non-payment of a fine and he took a look at my car and decidedly immediately I could have more time to pay.
Lesson from the Dispute – it was the Neoliberalism stupid. We or at least I and the group around me did not understand what the SEQEB dispute was about and its significance for the development of the neoliberal paradigm in Australia. I would put the SEQEB dispute right up there with the 1975 sackings of Jim Cairns and Gough Whitlam as crucial victories for the forces of neoliberalism. The only real difference is that Whitlam was sacked by Marshal Green the American Ambassador in Canberra and the betrayal of the SEQEB workers was led most effectively by Paul Keating and Bill Kelty of the Labor Party and the ACTU respectively.
My final thoughts, when contemplating the images of all the struggles of the workers and the students and then thinking of the subsequent betrayal by the neoliberals in the Labor Party, turn to the Yeats’ line – ‘All that delirium of the brave’. In the poem, September 1913 Yeats contemplated the courage of the Irish rebels and then in his despair wrote ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone”. Just three years Yeats was astonished when Ireland rose in rebellion in Dublin and then fought a bloody war successfully against the British Empire. So we must be honest about the defeat of the SEQEB workers, but we must also always honor their struggle and commit to continue to struggle for a better world. No more Water. The Fire next time.
https://youtu.be/_R-_t0Mvl4o?feature=shared
Gary MacLennan
26 September 2025