A SOP TO THE "OI POLLOI": CAPITAL, LABOUR AND THE REFORM OF NEW SOUTH WALES MARITIME ADMINISTRATION 1867 TO 1914

Abstract: In 1867 NSW maritime services were rationalised by the formation of a Marine Board comprising government appointees and elected representatives of shipowners. Following several scandals relating to Marine Board administration and an inquiry by the new Public Service Board sitting as a Royal Commission, the Marine Board was replaced in 1899 by a Navigation Department. In 1900 Sydney wharfage was nationalised in response to the bubonic plague outbreak of 1899 and placed under the control of a Sydney Harbour Trust. This dual structure persisted throughout the pre-war period. Calls came from the Greater Sydney movement for wharfage to be placed under the control of an enlarged city council, and from the labour movement of trust tenants and employees for the trust to operate on non-commercial principles. These pressures were successfully resisted by the trust commissioners, despite the presence of a Labor government after 1910. In their administration the commissioners of the Trust favoured capital, but their image of technocratic impartiality enabled them to constrain Labor governments and to carry through substanial extensions of state activity when this was in the interests of capital as a whole.