For Gorsake, Stop Laughing

In the middle of the year an investigation by Nine Papers alleged that bikies and criminals acting as union delegates were employed on state government-funded projects. Dean Alston addresses the story by alluding to one of the most famous images in Australian history, Stan Cross’s 1933 cartoon ‘For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!’, which featured two men involved in a dangerous mishap while working high up on a skyscraper construction site. The original cartoon depicted the kind of accident that unions such the CFMEU were initially formed to protect workers from.