Warwick songwriter Bob Wilson has won the 2022 Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice award with his song, ‘When Whitlam took his turn at the wheel’.
The national award was presented at the final concert of the National Folk Festival in Canberra on Monday night. Bob is the third Queenslander to win the award after Paddy McHugh (2015), and Karen Law (2020 and 2021) – the latter a dead-heat with Newcastle’s John Sutton.
Bob said he was pleased to accept the award “on behalf of Queensland’s unsung songwriters”.
He was unable to attend the festival in Canberra and Brisbane poet Ross Clark accepted the award on his behalf.
“Late last year I had an idea to write a song about Gough Whitlam and the social revolution which followed his election in 1972,” Bob said. “Gough introduced free healthcare and free tertiary education, took our troops out of Vietnam and abolished conscription, to name a few achievements. He created a new family law act, making it easier for people to escape bad marriages through no-fault divorce and the introduction of a single parent’s pension.
“It’s a lot to pack into a song but I persevered with it. There’s an entire generation out there that has no idea how we ended up with free healthcare and other benefits we now take for granted”.
Bob and his wife Laurel (who perform as The Goodwills), recorded the song at Restless Music studios in Stanthorpe with Roger Ilott. The song was released on Bandcamp in November 2021.
The Songs for Social Justice award was set up in 2011 in memory of Alistair Hulett, a songwriter with a strong social conscience, who died in 2010. Alistair was born in Scotland in 1951 and after immigrating to New Zealand with his family, began playing the folk circuit there in 1968. By 1971 he had relocated to Australia, continuing to perform at festivals. In the 1980s he founded the folk-punk band, Roaring Jack. He is best known in Australia for a song he wrote with Dave Swarbrick called ‘The Swaggies Have All Waltzed Matilda Away’.
