This chapter recounts the history of labour law in Australia since colonisation. It identifies four key periods – the early convict period, the period of protective regulation; the compulsory arbitration and awards period, and the period of deregulation and the ‘gig’ economy. By taking in the earlier period of convict or penal labour, this framing departs from the conception of labour law as only emerging in the late nineteenth century with the contractual employment relationship. By taking it forward to the new economy of employment, the chapter follows labour law theorists seeking to expand and broaden the field to include all workers and their need for labour protections. Themes of freedom and unfreedom, trade union organisation, gender differentiation, race, immigration and Indigenous labour are threaded through as factors underlying the employment relationship and its changes over this long history. Characteristics of Australia’s system such as compulsory arbitration are shown as divergences in comparison with Britain and US