When she was 17, Sally McManus watched her history teacher lose her job.
Then with thousands of students, she made one of her first visits to Sydney's CBD to march in an "illegal" strike, protesting the cost-cutting.
"I'll never forget that day, the trains coming in from all the suburbs, the banners, the streamers, the signs students had made," she recalls.
The event, which showed her the potential of people power, led her on a path to her new job - secretary of Australia's peak trade union body.
In her first major speech since her appointment, and after she caused headlines by telling Leigh Sales on ABC's 7.30 it was okay to break unjust laws, Ms McManus was not taking a backwards step.
She argued critics were attacking the woman, not the ball.
"The right to strike is a human right," she told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
"It is our government that is out of step, not the Australian trade union movement."
The ACTU secretary first learnt her organising skills in one of her casual jobs - being a Pizza Hut delivery driver.
A few of her colleagues thought they weren't getting enough to cover fuel costs, which were skyrocketing during the first Gulf War.
"We met at a fellow driver's house with an organiser from the SDA and he taught us what we needed to do," she said.
It was one of the first lessons about how to enact change by working together.
But not all the fights were popular.
Deciding to ban smoking in the student bar at Macquarie University because of the health and safety effects on workers didn't go down well, she admits.
Foreshadowing major battles, including for a $45-a-week increase to the minimum wage, Ms McManus said the Fair Work Commission's decision to cut Sunday penalty rates in some sectors was a timely reminder what has been won can be lost.
"We will be running onto the field and we are going to change the game," she said.
Ms McManus said the question of what were just and unjust laws had been debated for decades, referring to the Eureka Stockade, wharfies refusing to load pig iron being exported to Japan just before WWII, the campaign against apartheid, and indigenous workers walking off stations to demand equal pay.
But she later clarified there were limited circumstances where breaking unjust laws was justified.
Taking unprotected industrial action attracts a fine of up to $10,200 per person, with even higher fines for the unions involved.
"I would just like to say that these aren't decisions that are made lightly," she said.
Ms McManus said the union movement would conditionally support the Turnbull government's push for new laws to crack down on corrupt deals between unions and businesses.
But she said the laws should be broader, taking in payments to politicians, and payments between corporations, and be enforced by a national independent commission against corruption.
