John Bernard "Jack" Mundey (17 October 1929 – 10 May 2020) was an Australian

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

trade unionist A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

and environmental activist. He came to prominence during the 1970s for leading the

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

Builders' Labourers Federation The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was an Australian trade union that existed from 1911 until 1972, and from 1976 until 1986, when it was permanently deregistered in various Australian states by the federal Hawke Labor government and some ...

(BLF) in the famous

green ban A green ban is a form of strike action, usually taken by a trade union or other organised labour group, which is conducted for environmentalist or conservationist purposes. They mainly took place in Australia during the 1970s, led by the Bui ...

s, whereby the BLF led a successful campaign to protect the built and

natural environment The natural environment or natural world encompasses all life, biotic and abiotic component, abiotic things occurring nature, naturally, meaning in this case not artificiality, artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts ...

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

from excessive and inappropriate development. Mundey was the patron of the Historic Houses Association of Australia.

Early years

John Bernard "Jack" Mundey was born on 17 October 1929 in

Malanda, Queensland Malanda is a rural town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Malanda had a population of 2,000 people. The economy is based upon agriculture (particularly d ...

on the Johnstone River in the

Atherton Tableland The Atherton Tableland is a fertile plateau, which is part of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, Australia. It has very deep, rich basaltic soils and the main industry is agriculture. The principal river flowing across the plateau is the B ...

s, some 100 km west of

Cairns Cairns (; ) is a city in the Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. In the , Cairns had a population of 153,181 people. The city was founded in 1876 and named after William Cairns, Sir W ...

. He was one of five siblings born to Catholic parents of Irish descent. His father was a lifetime Labor voter. His mother died when he was six. He was educated at Malanda Primary School and at St Augustine's, Cairns. He ran away from the latter due to its "authoritarian methods" of discipline. Mundey moved to Sydney when he was 19, and became a metalworker and later a builder's labourer, joining successively the

Federated Ironworkers' Association The Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia (FIA) was an Australian trade union which existed between 1911 and 1991. It represented labourers and semi-skilled workers employed in the steel industry and ironworking, and later also the che ...

and the

Builders Labourers Federation The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was an Australian trade union that existed from 1911 until 1972, and from 1976 until 1986, when it was permanently deregistered in various Australian states by the federal Hawke Labor government and som ...

. He also played

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

for

Parramatta Parramatta (; ) is a suburb (Australia), suburb and major commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney. Parramatta is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district, Sydney CBD, on the banks of the Parramatta River. It is co ...

under

Vic Hey Victor John Hey (18 November 1912 in Liverpool, New South Wales – 11 April 1995), also known by the nickname of "The Human Bullet", was an Australian rugby league national and state representative and later a successful first-grade and natio ...

for three years. He joined the

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been ...

(CPA) in 1957. The CPA at this time was

Eurocommunist Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties, which said they had developed a theory and practice of social transformation more relevant for Western Europe. During the Cold War, they sough ...

. Mundey was a follower of the Italian communist theorist

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , ; ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosophy, Marxist philosopher, Linguistics, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, Political philosophy, political the ...

. He expounded the theory of "workers' control" which was based on the Gramscian theory of workers control; by working together people were supposed to emancipate themselves from their ideological delusions. Mundey's first wife was Stephanie Lennon; the couple had a son, Michael. 15 months after her son's birth, Stephanie Mundey died at a young age from a brain tumour. Mundey remarried, in 1965, to Judith Ann Willcocks, known as Judy Mundey. Michael, Mundey's only child, was killed in a car accident at age 22. During the 1960s, Mundey was a crusading unionist and an advocate on a wide range of issues from

safety Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings The word 'safety' entered the English language in the 1 ...

reforms on building sites to wider issues such as

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Not ...

and international politics. Mundey considered all these matters appropriate targets for union activism. His second wife, Judy, joined him in these campaigns and later rose to become national president of the CPA.

Green bans

In 1968, Mundey was elected secretary of the NSW Builders' Labourers Federation (BLF). From this position, he became a highly visible individual who, with his union and supportive community members, was responsible for the

s that saved much of Sydney's heritage and built environment. He insisted that the priorities of development be reversed such that the open community spaces and heritage buildings be preserved and that affordable public housing was more important than accumulating empty or underused commercial buildings. In 1975, Mundey and other New South Wales leaders of the BLF were expelled from the union by the federal leadership under

Norm Gallagher Norman Leslie Gallagher (20 September 1931 – 26 August 1999) was a controversial Australian trade unionist, and Maoist who led the militant Builders Labourers Federation as federal Secretary and as Victorian State Secretary. Early life and ...

, who was later to be convicted of corrupt dealings with developers. According to Senator

Bob Brown Robert James Brown (born 27 December 1944) is an Australian former politician, medical doctor and environmentalist. He was a Australian Senate, senator and the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens. Brown was elected to the Australian ...

, former parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens the use of the term "Green" as a political category actually derives from the green bans, by way of

Petra Kelly Petra Karin Kelly (29 November 1947 – 1 October 1992) was a German Green politician and ecofeminist activist. She was a founding member of the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence both nationally in Germany and w ...

's visit to Sydney in 1977. Mundey's autobiography, ''Green Bans and Beyond'', was published in 1981. In 1981 Mundey joined the Quayhole Committee in their effort to save the landing site of the First Fleet at

Circular Quay Circular Quay is a harbour, former working port and now international passenger shipping terminal, public piazza and tourism precinct, heritage area, and transport node located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on the northern edge of the ...

1788 Foundation of Australia Memorial Park

Politics

Mundey was the lead

Legislative Council A legislative council is the legislature, or one of the legislative chambers, of a nation, colony, or subnational division such as a province or state. It was commonly used to label unicameral or upper house legislative bodies in the Brit ...

candidate of the

at the

1978 New South Wales state election The 1978 New South Wales state election was held on 7 October 1978 to elect all 99 members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. The Labor Party Government was returned for a second term,defeating the Opposition Liberal/National coaliti ...

. His party polled almost 80,000 votes – 2.9 per cent of the statewide total – and outpolled the

Australian Democrats The Australian Democrats is a centrist political party in Australia. Founded in 1977 from a merger of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement, both of which were descended from Liberal Party splinter groups, it was Australia's lar ...

. Mundey came close to winning a seat, and was the last candidate excluded from the count. Mundey served as an alderman on the

City of Sydney The City of Sydney is the Local government in Australia, local government area covering the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs of the Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Established by Act of Parliament ...

council from 1984 to 1987. He was chairman of the planning committee of Sydney City Council from May 1984 to September 1985. He ran as the

NSW Greens The Greens NSW, also known as the NSW Greens, is a green political party in New South Wales and a member of the Australian Greens. First formed in 1991, the Greens NSW began as a state-level party before joining with other green parties in Austr ...

4th Senate candidate for the 2007 Federal Election.

Later life

In 1988, the

University of Western Sydney Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus public research university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university in its current form was founde ...

made Mundey an honorary Doctor of Letters and an honorary Doctor of Science in recognition of his service to the environment for the previous 30 years. Mundey was made a life member of the

Australian Conservation Foundation The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is Australia's national environmental organisation, launched in 1965 in response to a proposal by the World Wide Fund for Nature for a more co-ordinated approach to sustainability. One high-profi ...

in the 1990s. In 1995, in keeping with his continued interest in Sydney and the state's urban environment and heritage, he was appointed chair of the

Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales Museums of History NSW is a statutory body of the government of New South Wales that is responsible for historic sites, state collections and archives in New South Wales, Australia. In 2023, the former State Archives and Records Authority of New ...

, and he was also the patron of the Historic Houses Association of Australia. In 2003, Mundey joined the

Australian Greens The Australian Greens, commonly referred to simply as the Greens, are a Left-wing politics, left-wing green party, green Australian List of political parties in Australia, political party. As of 2025, the Greens are the third largest politica ...

, citing their opposition to the

Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...

and their environmental stance. He remained a member until his death. In February 2007, the

Geographical Names Board of New South Wales The Geographical Names Board of New South Wales, a statutory authority A statutory body or statutory authority is a body set up by law (statute) that is authorised to implement certain legislation on behalf of the relevant country or stat ...

renamed a portion of Argyle Street in The Rocks "Jack Mundey Place" in recognition of his leadership "in the fight to preserve such significant sites in the historic Rocks area." During mid 2009, the NSW State Labor Government headed by Premier Nathan Rees, announced the now cancelled CBD Metro rail project for Sydney. Mundey would once again enter the fray to help fight the demolition of historic buildings and space, this time in Sydney's Pyrmont and Rozelle. The government had planned to build a metro style railway between the existing city circle, over to Rozelle. This involved demolishing numerous buildings and businesses along the way. Ultimately, the CBD Metro project was cancelled, after a storm of protest. In 2014, Mundey was named Patron of the Friends of Millers Point as he joined the fight to save the Sirius building which was built for the people of The Rocks when the green bans saved them from eviction and The Rocks from demolition forty years earlier. In 2012, he joined the action to preserve

Windsor Bridge The Windsor Bridge or Windsor Town Bridge, an iron and granite arch bridge over the River Thames, connects the towns of Windsor and Eton in the English county of Berkshire. The Thames Path crosses the river here. The bridge carries pedestrian ...

from further development. In 2017, he was awarded the NSW President's Prize at the NSW Architecture Awards. In 2021, the year after Mundey's death, Eastlakes Reserve was renamed Jack Mundey Reserve at the request of Bayside Council.

References

External links