Interview by Antony McMullen for BCCM
When you scan the Australian co-operative landscape, there is a humble and persistent leader who has been quietly making a huge impact – Colin Long. His background features a variety of roles with a commitment to solidarity being the common thread. Builder’s labourer, social worker, academic, union secretary, policy and advocacy for Victoria’s union movement, founder or co-founder of half a dozen co-ops and mutuals, Colin has spent three decades weaving solidarity into every corner of his working life.
At the Bunya Fund’s May 2025 Community of Practice session, he sat down with Antony McMullen to unpack four big questions:
- What drives you?
- How did your working life evolve into a co-operative vocation?
- What is the origin story of Earthworker?
- How has The Bunya Fund helped Earthworker’s next chapter?
Below is a synthesis of that conversation – followed by five hard-won lessons from Colin’s journey, captured in his own words.
- What drives Colin Long?
Colin smiles wryly when asked about personal motivation. “I don’t like talking about myself as an individual,” he apologises, before tracing the thread back to his dad, who came out to Australia from Belfast. The youngest of ten, his father “had a strong sense of justice and the need to fight for the little person.” That family ethic, combined with Victorian construction sites in the 1980s and early membership of the union movement, cemented a life-long conviction: solidarity is both principle and practice.
But solidarity, for Colin, must cross lines of difference – economic, cultural, political. “How can we build communities that have a sense of solidarity across really serious difference?” That question explains his simultaneous involvement in climate campaigns, trade-union organising and co-operative start-ups: three arenas where collective effort can trump individual interest.
Read the rest of the interview here.