Bastard Boys


Bastard Boys is an Australian television miniseries broadcast on ABC Television in 2007. It tells the story of the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute.

Plot

The series tells the story of the waterfront dispute, when businessman Chris Corrigan and the Liberal government at the time illegally dismissed the unionised workforce. The story is related from four perspectives: "Greg's War", from the point of view of union leader Greg Combet; "Josh's War", from the point of view of lawyer Josh Bornstein; "Sean's War", from the point of view of dock worker Sean McSwain; and "Chris' War", from the point of view of Patrick Stevedores managing director Corrigan.

Cast

Production

Most of the characters portrayed are real individuals, many of whom were interviewed in the process of writing the drama. However, a number of characters were invented and events were considerably compressed for dramatic purposes. Notably, the waterside workers portrayed in the drama were composites, based on interviews with many waterside workers.
Another example of invention was the placing of lawyer Josh Bornstein at a key protest, which would have been illegal because of a court injunction

Release and home media

Bastard Boys was broadcast on ABC1 in May 2007.
The series was later issued by ABC and Roadshow Entertainment in their "Masters collection" as a two-DVD set, packaged with the tele-film Curtin as a third disc.

Reception

The Age's Debi Enker described it as a "thoughtful, illuminating and superbly cast account of a seminal event in our recent history represents exactly the kind of drama that one would want the national broadcaster to nurture."

Partisan criticism

In 2006 Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, while the series was still in production, called it wasteful spending and criticised it as "anti-government, pro-left propaganda". Journalist Michael Duffy described the series as pro-union propaganda. Chris Corrigan, who was involved in the dispute and attempted to sack the unionised workforce and replace it with strikebreakers, was highly critical of the series. Then-Prime Minister John Howard also labelled the series "political propaganda", saying that it ignored the notorious inefficiency of the Australian waterfront and years of collaborative failures to change this.
Criticism also came from some members of the union movement. According to Phillip Adams, unionist Bill Kelty was concerned that "no researcher, writer or producer - spoke to him about the dispute or his role in it. Yet they haven't hesitated to put words into their Kelty's mouth that the original Kelty never said". Chris Corrigan's brother Derek Corrigan has disputed claims that the broadcasting of Bastard Boys was timed to support Greg Combet's run for politics".

Accolades

The script, published by Currency Press, won the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Television Script.
The film received seven nominations in the 2007 Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Telefeature or Mini Series and Best Direction in Television with Sue Smith winning Best Screenplay and Paddy Reardon winning Outstanding Achievement in Television Screen Craft.