Race Mathews

The Honourable Race Mathews
Member of the Australian Parliament for Casey
In office 2 December 1972 – 13 December 1975
Preceded by	Peter Howson
Succeeded by	Peter Falconer
Member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for Oakleigh
In office 5 May 1979 – 2 October 1992
Preceded by	Alan Scanlan
Succeeded by	Denise McGill
Victorian Minister for the Arts, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Community Services
In office 1982–1988
Personal details
Born	(1935-03-27) 27 March 1935 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Occupation	Politician, Author

Charles Race Thorson Mathews (born 27 March 1935) is an Australian former politician, academic, author and reformer. He was a member of Australia's Federal Parliament and the Victorian State Parliament for the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Early life and education

Mathews was born in Melbourne, Victoria. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and Toorak Teachers' College, after which he taught in primary schools in Gippsland and Melbourne from 1953 - 1958. In 1961 he began as a clinical speech therapist in the Victorian Education Department after graduating from the Victorian Council of Speech Therapy. In later years he took out degrees from Melbourne University, Monash University and the University of Divinity.

Political Career

Mathews joined the Labor Party in 1956 in Moe. In 1958 he moved to Croydon, where he became active in the party, organising federal and state campaigns and was secretary of the Scoresby State Electoral Council (SEC). In 1964 he stood unsuccessfully for the state seat of Box Hill. In 1963 he was elected to Croydon Council and served there until 1966.

In 1960 Mathews was elected secretary of the Australian Fabian Society. He was secretary or president most of the time until 2006. During his leadership the Fabian Society became a major think tank for the Whitlam and the Hawke - Keating governments.

From 1967 - 1972 he served as Principal Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament, where he helped develop Labor's policies on Education and Medibank (later Medicare).

From 1972 to 1975, Mathews was the Federal Member for Casey, where he served as the chairman of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Specific Learning Difficulties (1974–1975), and the chairman of the Government Members' Committee on Urban and Regional Development (1973 - 1975). He was a member of the Administrative Committee of the Victorian ALP from 1970 - 1977 and 1977 - 1981.

From 1976 - 1979 Mathews was Principal Private Secretary for Clyde Holding and then Frank Wilkes as Leaders of the Opposition in the Parliament of Victoria.

From 1979 to 1992, Mathews served as the State Member for Oakleigh in the Victorian Legislative Assembly during the Cain Government. In this capacity, Mathews served as the chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Co-operatives, the Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Arts 1982–1987. He served as Minister for Community Services from 1987 - 1988.

As Minister for Police and Emergency Services he introduced gun control, a major review of the police force and improved disaster management after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires.

As Minister for the Arts he opened the Arts Centre on Southbank, established the Spoleto International Festival of the Arts, the Melbourne Writer's Festival and oversaw Victoria's 150th celebrations. His two portfolios of Police and Arts overlapped in 1986 with the theft of Picasso's Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria by the 'Australian Cultural Terrorists', who wanted more funding for young artists. The painting was returned two weeks later unharmed.

As Minister for Community Services Mathews introduced a major expansion of child protection and oversaw de-institutionalisation of the intellectually disabled.

He was a member of the Public Accounts Committee 1980 - 1982, the Privileges Committee 1988 - 1992, and the Economic and Budget Review Committee 1989 - 1992.

Mathews is the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books on politics, co operatives and economics. These include Building the Society of Equals: Worker Co-operatives and the A.L.P., Australia's First Fabians, Whitlam Re-visited: Policy Development, Policies and Outcomes, Labor's Troubled Times, Turning the Tide: Towards a Mutualist Philosophy and Politics for Labor and the Left, Jobs of Our Own and Of Labour and Liberty: Distributism in Victoria, 1891-1966.

In the context of co-operative economics, Mathews supports distributism and strongly favours worker cooperatives as the basis of a left-wing economic model.

Academic career and co-operatives

While in parliament from 1990 - 1992 Mathews was part-time Visiting Fellow in the Public Sector Management Institute (PSMI) at Monash University. After leaving parliament he became senior research fellow in the PSMI, then in the Graduate School of Government at Monash University 1995 - 1996 and Senior Research Fellow in the International Centre for Management in Government at Monash 1996 - 2000. While at Monash he published Whitlam Re-visited with Hugh Emy and Owen Hughes and Australia's First Fabians.

In the 1980s Mathews became very involved in the co-operative movement, especially the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, which he visited several times. He was chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Co-operatives 1989 - 1992, and wrote two Fabian pamphlets on co-operatives, Building the Society of Equals and Mondragon Lessons for Australia.

After leaving the parliament Mathews continued his research. In 1998 he completed a PhD at Monash University on Mondragon, Antigonish and 'evolved distributism'. He turned his PhD thesis into Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stake-Holder Society, published in 1999.

Mathews then turned his attention to the history of the co-operative movement in Australia and its link to Catholic Social Teaching in the 1930s to 1950s. He enrolled in the University of Divinity and was awarded a Doctor of Theology in 2014. He turned his thesis into Of Labour and Liberty: Distributism in Victoria, 1891 - 1966 , published in 2017.

Controversy

Mathews' Co-operative Individualism, coupled with his strong Fabian Socialist beliefs, has led to some criticism by other academics. For instance, Jocelyn Pixley has attacked Mathews for his (apparent) support of the Cain Government's Co-operative Development Program, on the basis that Beatrice Webb, a founder of the Fabian Society, was a prominent member of the Federalist school of Co-operative economics, which supports Consumers' Co-operatives linked through co-operative wholesale societies, and was a harsh critic of workers' cooperatives. Pixley writes:

A 'prefigurative' argument, that [Workers] co-ops were 'pioneers of a new exciting territory', a 'testing ground' for socialism... formed the basis of one Labor politician's support [i.e. Mathews], among others. It is an interesting position for a professed Fabian to hold, given Beatrice Webb's harsh judgement that [Workers'] co-operatives were associations of small capitalists as fraudulent as any other."

Mathews disputes this and refers the reader to his publications on the Mondragon worker cooperatives.

However, in spite of being a Minister in the Cain Government, Chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Co-operatives and being a supporter of Workers Co-operatives, Mathews was a critic of the Cain Government's Co-operative Development Program, telling one magazine at the time that they were:

"... 'in most instances wretchedly managed, chronically under-performing and expressive of the attitude that the world owes their members a living.' He said that we should 'wipe what has already happened in this state in the field of co-operation.' It was 'an historical aberration,' and it 'would have been better if it had never been."

Other activities

Mathews developed an interest in science fiction as a boy and at the age of 16 was instrumental in founding the Melbourne Science Fiction Club in 1952. He opened two World Science Fiction Conventions (Worldcons) in Melbourne, in 1975 and 1985.

Throughout his life, Mathews was driven by a commitment to equality, democracy and empowerment, and inspired and mentored others. In the 1960s he helped Whitlam bring about reform of the Victorian ALP, leading to 'Intervention' in 1970. From the 1990s on, Mathews campaigned again for reform of the Labor Party, so that the factions would be "on tap , but not on top" and local members would have more say. He also campaigned for the reform of the parliament, and in 2006 helped establish the Accountability Round Table, and was its first chairman.

Mathews was on the board of the Melbourne Recital Centre from 2004 - 2009 and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) fro 2006 - 2008. In 2009 he was involved in a successful campaign to save the independence of the Victorian College of the Arts.

Personal life

Mathews met his first wife Geraldine (Jill) McKeown at Teachers College in 1953. They married in 1956. She died of cancer in 1970. They had three children.

In 1971 Mathews became close to Ainsley Gotto, personal private secretary to Liberal Party leader John Gorton (prime minister from 1968 to 1971). Most of the media were aware of the relationship with Gotto but did not report on it. Mathews told Whitlam, who was very tolerant, but said, "You've got to be careful about your pillow talk".

In 1972 Mathews married Iola Hack, a journalist at The Age. They have two children. Iola Mathews co-founded the Women's Electoral Lobby and later worked within the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) to achieve workplace gender equality in the 1980s and 1990s, for which she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM).

Biography

Race Mathews: A Life in Politics by Iola Mathews, Monash University Press 2024

External links

• Race Mathews at Library of Congress, with 7 library catalogue records