History of Ozleft

Ozleft was set up by Steve Painter who wrote here under the pseudonym Ed Lewis. Steve died at the age of 68 in December 2016.

Steve collaborated very closely  for about a decade with an old sparring partner and friend, Bob Gould, to publish Bob’s writings here, as well as some of his own. They spoke often daily for several hours about the posts and then jointly wrote them on line, though the impetus for each article usually was Bob as were many of the ideas. However, Steve and Bob, though members of different political parties, were both Marxists, and held a lot in common politically in these years.

During the years of Ozleft, Steve worked as a sub-editor on The Australian for its computer, business and sports sections. He was a Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance house delegate there. At the time of his collaboration with Bob, he was a member of the NSW Greens. Prior to that, Steve was a leading member of the Australian Socialist Workers Party/Democratic Socialist Workers Party for 22 years and an editor of its newspaper.