By Bronwen Beechey
As a labour researcher with the metalworkers' union, Peter Ewer went to the Latrobe Valley in 1988 to run shop stewards' training courses and "convince workers of the merits of award restructuring and the benefits of higher skills and career paths".
It was part of the strategy of a large section of the left which supported the Prices and Incomes Accord, seeing it as a way to involve working people in industry policy.
In 1996 he went back to the Latrobe Valley and found it a very different place.
In the meantime, Ewer had changed his thinking on the Accord. "The turning point for me was the introduction of enterprise bargaining in 1991.
"We'd spent five or six years trying to get an award-based approach to restructuring up and running, and for the sake of the Labor Party's need to appease the Business Council of Australia, the union movement jumped tracks and embraced enterprise bargaining without any kind of ideological critique or analysis."
Ewer went on to co-write Politics and the Accord, which critically examined the effect that the Accord had on the labour movement. However, his thoughts kept returning to the Latrobe Valley as "a microcosm of everything that's gone on in the name of restructuring".
Believing that the written word wasn't adequate to do justice to the experiences of people in the valley, Ewer decided to make a film about the impact of industry changes on their lives. The result was Powerplay, a documentary that focuses on the effects of privatisation in the valley — the decimation of the work force and fragmentation of the community.
It traces the history of the carve-up of the electricity industry, from Labor's sale of the Loy Yang B power station to the subsequent selling of the SEC under the Liberals. It shows the effect that unemployment and poverty have had on the community — the break-up of families, the rise of violence and the growing addiction to gambling.
It also portrays the efforts by activists to fight back and halt further privatisations of hospitals and other essential services.
Ewer had no prior experience in film making. He says that this was probably an advantage: if he'd known what it was going to be like, he probably would never have begun.
He also had the assistance of Colleen Jones, a young film maker he met in 1996, who lent her technical expertise to the project and brought others in. Filming began in 1996, with a number of trips to the valley to interview people, and was completed this year.
Ewer agrees that privatisation, downsizing and restructuring have impacted on many other communities, but believes that what happened in the Latrobe Valley was extreme.
"I don't think that other privatisations were as vicious, and I don't think that the labour movement can deny responsibility for the outcome.
"The union movement was beaten before privatisation got under way. The legitimacy of privatisation was established before Kennett came to power, and that allowed a much more vicious right-wing attack on people in the valley than he might have otherwise been able to get away with."
Ewer is distributing the film himself and organising screenings in communities affected by privatisation, including the Latrobe Valley. To arrange a screening or purchase a video of the film, contact Peter Ewer on (03) 9663 4555.
Powerplay will be screening on September 11 with proceeds to go to the ETU strike fund and Green Left Weekly. For venue and time, telephone Green Left on (03) 9329 1277.