While the founding of the Rochdale Co-operative in 1844 had a significant impact on the development of the co-operative movement, there was a co-operative activity in Australia before 1844, with the ideas of Robert Owen having an influence. There was an awareness of Owen in the early Australian press from at least 1827. The ideas of co-operation also arrived with British immigrants. There is reference to a Sydney Owenite Society in 1839 and the Colonial Society for the Advancement of the Social System (CSASS) was an Owenite discussion group in Sydney in 1840, which struggled with recruiting members.
During the 1840s William Duncan, born in Scotland and editor of Australasian Chronicle, the first and only Catholic newspaper in Australia until 1843, and later Duncan’s Weekly Register, promoted the idea of co-operative community settlements. Like other early co-operators, Duncan saw co-operatives as a response to upheavals of industrialisation. Owenism influenced early ideas of land settlement for both European settlers and Indigenous Australians.
One early co-operative land settlement scheme proposed was by Peter Cunningham, a Scottish naval surgeon and author of Two Years in New South Wales, published in London in 1827. Governor Sir Richard Bourke was inspired by Owen to propose an ill-fated protectorate for Indigenous Australians in the Port Phillip Bay area of Victoria.
There was an interest in Sydney and Geelong in forming flour and bread societies. These societies underpinned two waves of co-operative interest in Sydney from 1833-1836 and 1839-1840. Immigrants would have been aware of these societies in the UK and an important factor underlying their emergence was rising wheat and flour prices in Sydney. Worker co-operatives appear before 1844. They tended to be formed in industries which had relatively low capital investment requirements and where labour was a significant component of production costs such as building and printing. While there are difficulties with distinguishing between early friendly societies, trade unions and co-operatives, there was a Coachmakers Co-operative Society in Sydney in 1834.
There was an early interest in forming retailing consumer co-operatives. Recently arrived immigrants in Sydney in May 1833 planned to establish a co-operative store but rejected the ideas of Owen. There was the Swan River Mechanics and Labourers Agricultural Stock Company formed in 1837 at Perth, WA, in a “co-operative system of mutual benefit and interest.” Whether the company was providing sheep and cattle for agricultural or household butchering is unclear.
For further details, please download Greg Patmore, Nikola Balnave and Olivera Marjanovic, A History of Australian Co-operatives 1828-2023.