Ted Wheelwright

Ted Wheelwright

Ted Wheelwright (1921–2007) was an Australian economist, radio host and anti-war activist who taught at the University of Sydney from 1952 until 1986. He has written on Australian economic history, often from an institutionalist or Marxian perspective, and his published works have included the analysis of capitalism in Australian history and an analysis of the influence and development of transnational corporations. He authored 11 books independently and 5 with co-editors, and made frequent appearances on ABC Radio's Notes on the News program. He is the namesake of a memorial lecture at the University of Sydney and an annual prize in the university's political economy course. While at the University of Sydney, he set up the Transnational Corporations Research Project.

Overseas study

Ted Wheelwright became a Rockefeller Fellow in Social Sciences at Harvard University (1958), which also enabled him to do research at universities in Toronto, London, New Delhi and Jakarta. Later he was an invited Professor in Malaysia (1962, 1984), Argentina (1965–66), the Moscow Institute of Economics (1966), Peking Academy of Sciences (1966–67), University of Chile (1970–71) and the USSR Academy of Sciences (1983).

"The Third Wave"

Book by Abe David and Ted Wheelwright. Launched by unionists Tom McDonald and Ian Peel.

Politics in the Pub

Tribune November 14, 1990

Jim Cairns, Tom Uren, Ted Wheelwright

"Japan and the New Asian Capitalism" Abe David and Ted Wheelwright.

"It's time to act"

"It's time to act" was a 1991 statement calling for the formation of the New Left Party.

Sydney sponsors were : Brian Aarons, Allan Ashbolt, Charles Bowers, Christine Brunt, Jack Cambourn, Peter Cantrill, Denis Fitzgerald, Larry Hand, Beverley Hewett, Robin Hopwood, Betty Hounslow, Sonia Laverty, Carol Matthews, Peter McClelland, Audrey McDonald, Daren McDonald, Tom McDonald, Brian McGahen, Stacey Miers, Jack Mundey, Warwick Neilley, Cristina Pastore, Wally Pritchard, Pat Ranald, Tanya Ritchie, Noeline Rudland, Stan Sharkey, David Simpson, Joyce Stevens, Frank Stilwell, Jenepher Surbey, Don Syme, Margaret Thornton, Ted Wheelwright, Juana Zepeda, Jorge Zepeda, Tom Zubrycki.

Broad Left Conference initiators

The original initiative for the The Broad Left Conference came from a group of 11 in Sydney who in August 1985 sent a letter asking over 300 people to publically sponsor the conference.

The 11 initiators were George Campbell, Pat Clancy, Peter Robson, Barbara Murphy, Meredith Burgmann, Brian Aarons, Ken McLeod, Ted Wheelwright and Nando Lelli.

Draft Statement for the Broad Left Conference

The Broad Left Conference Draft Statement was written by George Campbell, Peter Robson, Barbara Murphy, Meredith Burgmann, Patrick Lee, Brian Aarons, Ken McLeod, Fay Campbell, Ted Wheelwright, Nando Lelli, Pat Clancy, and "endorsed by 300 plus sponsors from around the country."

Draft Statement for the Broad Left Conference

The Broad Left Conference Draft Statement was written by George Campbell, Peter Robson, Barbara Murphy, Meredith Burgmann, Patrick Lee, Brian Aarons, Ken McLeod, Fay Campbell, Ted Wheelwright, Nando Lelli, Pat Clancy, and "endorsed by 300 plus sponsors from around the country."

Panel sessions

Panel sessions The Broad Left Conference.

Friday

Conservatism and the contemporary right wing offensive

• Frank Walker (NSW)
• Humphrey McQueen (ACT)
• Pat O'Shane (NSW)

The economic context

• Ted Wheelwright (NSW)
• Kate McNeil (Vic)
• Laurie Carmichael

The Accord: successes and failures

• George Campbell (NSW)
• Karen Prior (Qld)
• Bill Hartley (Vic)

Social movements, trade unions and Labor governments

• Anne Sherry (Vic)
• Meredith Burgmann (NSW)
• John Wishart (SA)

Aboriginal sovereignty and land rights

• Les Malezer (Qld)
• Les Collins (Qld)

The Broad Left Conference

The Communist Party of Australia, Association for Communist Unity and others organized The Broad Left Conference, which was held 1986 28th-31st March, at the NEW SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Broadway, Sydney.

Ted Wheelwright was among the list of sponsors.

Australian Marxist Forum

Student protest

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Frank Stilwell has just sat down for lunch at his favourite cafe when he starts dropping - in the nicest possible way - the names of some of his former students.

"This respectable federal minister, I recall, was actually suspended from the university for his activism on one occasion," he says with a smirk. "He broke into the clock tower of the main quadrangle as part of an occupation movement."

He's talking about Anthony Albanese, the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, when a student at the University of Sydney in the early 1980s.

Stilwell played a role in one of the most acrimonious and long-running disputes in the history of Australian academia: the 40-year fight to establish a separate department of political economy at Sydney Uni, finally achieved in 2008.

The dispute was between rival factions of economists and students. The mainstream orthodox economists were on one side, proponents of an alternative program in political economy the other.

Stilwell says when he arrived at the university he found himself at the centre of this aggressive push by radical students to have a range of alternative theories taught.

As the decades unfolded, the protests stirred plenty: tactical police units called in; rooms occupied; the clock tower occupied; vehicles parked on the lawn in protest; tents erected; national conferences and dissident workshops held.

Stilwell says he had actually come to teach the orthodox economics in which he had been trained.

Once he got here his opinions of mainstream economics, and how it was taught, changed thanks to three big influences: the Vietnam War protest movement, his friendship with the late Professor Ted Wheelwright and the enthusiasm and dedication of his radical students.

Albanese says he remembers Stilwell's support for protesters in the early 1980s.

"[Frank] was very supportive of political activism," Albanese says. "There was an attempt by the conservative ideologues to shut down debate about progressive economic thought. That was the context. It was a very interesting struggle because it was overtly political about education and people's rights to learn a diversity of views."

The story of the long struggle is now documented in Political Economy Now!, penned by three of main combatants in the fight – Frank Stilwell, Gavan Butler and Evan Jones. These renegade academics were not deterred by the David and Goliath situation that emerged, as they came up against the likes of Vice-Chancellor Bruce Williams and other orthodox economics stalwarts such as Professors Warren Hogan and Colin Simkin.

Butler, Stilwell and Jones were relatively junior lecturers when they arrived in the early 1970s, but they were backed by other farsighted academics, notably Associate Professor ‘Red’ Ted Wheelwright and Geelum Simpson-Lee, staff-elected Dean of the Economics Faculty.

From the Financial Review:

In February (2022), after his belief in conventional economic theory was questioned in a newspaper article, Albanese sought to table in Parliament an essay he wrote for a Sydney University bachelors of economics degree that he started in 1981.

In the micro-economics paper, Albanese argued that companies will not increase output if costs are rising – and rising costs will discourage new companies from competing with them.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg taunted Albanese by describing the hand-written essay as a high school paper.

But the put-down ignored Albanese’s undergraduate involvement in one of the decisive conflicts in Australian university economics teaching.

In his first year, Albanese enrolled in a conventional economics course and an introduction to political economy, which argues that the economy is shaped by forces that serve specific interests, such as big business.

The head of the department, economist Warren Hogan, believed that political economy was too theoretical and wanted to introduce more rigorous teaching, including complex mathematics and statistics, according to his son, who shares the same name and is also an economist.

About 1983, Hogan proposed ending political economy’s status as a separate stream within the undergraduate economics degree.

The change would have downgraded its status and reduced the influence of two prominent left-wing academics, Frank Stilwell and Ted Wheelwright, who had developed a following on campus.

Albanese and other students protested. They occupied the clock tower in the university’s quadrangle. Several protesters scaled the tower and bent the clock’s hands. A caravan was towed on to campus to function as a protest headquarters and a place to sleep.

After three weeks, a new unit of the NSW police, the tactical response unit, removed the students from campus offices. Albanese and eight others were charged with discipline breaches by the university. Albanese was briefly banned from campus and fined about $100.

In an interview broadcast by the ABC in 2013, Albanese implied the university’s leaders didn’t take stronger action against the protesters because of the merits of their cause.

“The attempt to abolish the course had a very strident response from students, academics and the broader community,” he said. “If you like, a civil disobedience campaign.”

Political Economy Group

In 1975 Sydney University introduced the Economics 1 (P) course, taught by the "disident Political Economy Group" Ted Wheelwright, Geelum Simpson-Lee, Margaret Power, Gavan Butler, Frank Stilwell, Evan Jones, Debesh Bhattachrya, Louis Haddad and tutor Jock Collins.