I do not take exception to Federation Square, and this is despite some good effort. It’s a proud Melbourne custom to stay angry at the city’s largest acts of architecture and we would hardly know ourselves if we failed to resent, say, Crown Casino together. But, there’s something about that square that deadens this tradition. You enter the place just once and you think, “Yeah. That’ll do.” We suffer a paralysis of rage.

If you’re from out of town and planning a date with belligerent Victorian relatives, take note: this place will soothe the passions of most, although not that alt-right Blair chap whose passions might only be soothed by the sight and sound of shiny boots. Otherwise, it’s a good place for a potentially bad meeting. Not a good place for a potentially good one though. I do not recommend this venue to those seeking spirited exchange.

On Wednesday night I attended an informal union meeting at a Fed Square joint. This bar, like all the other bars, cafes and cultural institutions in the precinct, had taken on the peculiar non-atmosphere of the concrete territory outside. I am quite sure that my union had not selected this anodyne part of the city to calm its members or persuade them not to agitate—all unions are currently up to the business of Change the Rules, the ACTU’s largest campaign in a decade and one whose success depends on ordinary members becoming extraordinarily cross. I am also quite sure that my union, like all unions, has little real memory of how to provoke real anger.

That our unions are unpopular and have lost the knack of supporting much but ALP campaigns is hardly news. On the day after Gough Whitlam’s dismissal, ACTU boss Bob Hawke addressed a crowd of workers who had walked off the job and told them all not to strike, but save a day’s pay instead to give to the ALP. To “maintain the rage” as a trade union member has been, long before Keating, to support the party. It’s not true rage, but the sort you might feel compromised when dining or drinking at Federation Square.

Change the Rules is a document that is largely addressed to those in insecure work. This is a difficult thing for those outside of the salariat to trust, or even understand, from organisations who have not addressed the rise of greater job insecurity in most industries.

“No, you all have the arancini, I’m fine” joked a nice young bloke with gauged ears. This communications worker had just been granted a twelve-month guarantee of work, which was eleven months longer than anyone else at our table. He said that he was feeling so well-to-do, he could afford to buy a dinner rather than compile a dinner from the snacks.

It was a strangely apt place to be at a very strange moment in Australian industrial history. In their efforts to align with authority, unions have lost all authority in the workplace. To wrest back their authority, they must address that fact. And the fact that that they haven’t addressed the growing cohort of contract and casual workers, whose lack of rights they now recognise, as though it were a surprise that workers lose rights if nobody fights for them.

The rage maintained by workers has not be expressed or noticed much by ACTU officials, who prefer to maintain their rage for people who don’t vote Labor. There hasn’t been an organisation for workers to put their rage. Instead, we grumble at buildings, and other things beyond our control.

In Melbourne, we yell at buildings out of habit, but also to maintain the rage. To be angry at a city for its failure to meet the needs of its people is to believe, still, that you own a bit of it.  

We no longer yell at Federation Square; or, at least, we don’t yell when we are inside it. You take your belligerent relatives to Federation Square, but you don’t take any rage you’d like to organise and maintain. Unless you feel like you own it, your rage will dissipate.

The ACTU is engaged in a tentative attempt to reignite a true rage that they’ve been manufacturing for years. I wonder if they’ll learn the difference. I wonder if any worker will recognise the kind of real anger that exists outside Fed Square.