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Name on card (Please print) ...... ELJREKA STREE I ~~z> ct:::! s~ 30 The voice of the Vatican ~0 COMMENT Bruce Duncan summarises the major 70-n statements of the Compendium of "'"zC 4 Robert Hefner A hard rain 0~ Andrew Hamilton Dangerous practice the Social Doctrine of the Church A s Tm s A nn THe mPLORABU B• li bombings, the depm t.tion They then build resources for identifying terrorists and their of America n peace activist Scott Parkin m ay seem trivial. But sympathisers. The list of those under surveillance and con both events invite us to ask what kind of an Australia we want. sidered to be dangerous inevitably grows. It com es to include The publicly verifiable facts of the case are clea r. Mr Parkin those who are opposed to government policy. was visiting Australia speaking on non-violent protest. He is an Having identified so m any enemies of t he state, govern opponent of the war on Iraq, which the Australian Government ments further restrict personal liberty and due process. Si nce supports. His activities do not seem to have concerned authori the info rmation on which they act is privileged, they then pro ties in the Un ited States. He was arrested, detained, deported vide misinfo rmation . and charged for costs after an ASIO report that evidently satis This process can be studied in South Africa after it turned fied the Government and the Leader of the Opposition. His law to apartheid. Its excesses always become patent when history yers have appealed against the decision, and the Inspector-Gen turns. The defects, malice and absurdities of intelligence assess eral of Intelligence and Security is reviewing the case. ments become public. But that is small consolation to those The judgment m ade by ASIO and the grounds for it are whose lives have been damaged. Nor does it heal the shame not clear, even though they led to Mr Pa rkin's deportation and with which citizens later gaze on their nation's conduct. affect his reputation and his future ability to travel freely. But In Australia, we m ay believe that it could never come to although the grounds m ay not be m ade public, a version has this. But the treatment of asylum seekers by successive gov been lea ked. ernments shows that truth, human dignity and decency are After brutal bombings it may be necessary or excusable for expendable when they stand in the way of executive will. governments to harm people without disclosing the grounds. As we reflect on what happened in Bali, the Parkin affair But it is a dangerous practice because such measures erode the reminds us that, like bombs, arbitrary powers assu med in the values that they profess to defend. name of national security ca n threaten ou r identity. • The development of national security states usually begins when they identify a group of dangerous people, of terrorists. Andrew Hamilton SJ is the publisher of Eurelw Street. 4 EU REK A STRE ET NOVEMBER- DECEMB ER 2005 to me, is that these priests and their part Thi s special gift ners do not simply see themselves as vic tims in a sad tale, as Hamilton puts it. They Like Andrew Hamilton (S umma theo have taken responsibility to m aintain their L_ letters logiae, September- October 2005) I am commitment to ministry and also to follow reluctant to be the fool who rushes in, a path to becoming authentically human; especially as his column is the first thing in other words, to find a solution to the G. K. Chesterton, especially his biography I read in each issue, and I am conscious problem . (It is difficult to consider these of St Francis. While we need reminding that also of Henry Beard's warning, Et casu untested ideas without resorting to cliche.) it can be gloriously human to have such Latine loqui cum sodale societatis [esu ne H amilton makes it clear from the heroic generosity, we must also rem ember umquam conaris (May you never try out beginning that he is responding to an that this was a special, and not compulsory, your Latin [or anything else] on a Jesu it ). argument about compulsory celibacy for gift. In these times it is di ffic ult for any Like Hamilton, I have some questions to Catholic priests. Anderson and her inter organisation to justify a request for hero ask of Jan Anderson's report of her research viewees also m ake it clear that the gift of ism . People are too suspicious and mindful in her book Priests in Love. They are cen celibacy can and has been a source of grace of past betrayals to hand over what is now tred on the theme of justice. I am deeply for the Church over its history, although seen as their own responsibility. sympathetic to the plight of those men they also m ake the point, I believe, that Times, and the signs of the times, have who, in good faith, answered a call to min the two calls, to ministry and to celibacy, changed and so has the Church, particu istry and find themselves unable to meet are not necessarily tied together. They larly in its recognition of the vocation of the celibacy conditions. Sometimes this also draw on the human history of the the baptised and the call to be fa ithful in is the result of some very unenlightened Church to suggest that compulsory celi m arriage or in partnersh ip. These might training processes in days gone by and lost bacy has a non-graced story as well. be the splendid foolishness that fertilises opportunities to begin the development of Hamilton is correct to point to the deep these challenging new times. To read the a mature personality, or of heavy demands earthing of clerical celibacy in Catholic signs of the times does mean reading with m ade and not supported. I am conscious, history. I believe that Anderson and her the analytic tools available in these times, too, of how easy it is to practise self-decep interviewees do see this as well, but that and I hope Anderson is widely read. tion in these circumstances. In particu her argument points to an equally impor Martin N. Wh ite lar, I am conscious that the partners of the tant issu e, which is simply the social real Prospect, SA priests in this study are vulnerable because ity that for a very large proportion of the of the inequality of their positions and the Church earthing is largely not providing Eureka Street welcomes letters from our readers. impossibility of public recognition. nourishment, and that it is nourishment Short letters are more likely to be published, While Anderson and her interviewees that is the central issue. and all letters may be edited. Letters must be address these issues and she accepts that It is in his fi nal sentence that I believe signed, and should include a contact phone the committed relationships are responsi Hamilton shifts the terms of his contract number and the writer's name and address . ble, I believe the issues must remain rele with his reader. His 'splendid foolishness' Send to: [email protected] or vant. The thrust of her argument, it seems is reminiscent of som e of the writing of PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121 A parting word When I first became editor of Eureka Street, m y Australian N ursing Federation. N o doubt the m ovemen t from predecessor, Morag Fraser, left me a book as prescribed read Church to Trade Union sponsorsh ip will generate more stories! ing. It was James T hurber's The Years with Ross. It described I would like to thank you wh o form th e Eureka Street the early years of The New Yorker u n der its fou n ding edi communit y. Yo u h ave en cou raged me most deeply when you tor, Harold Ross, and t h e peculiar brand of managerial mad h ave t old m e that Eureka Street publishes views and argu n ess h e pion eered th ere. H is system of payin g writers was m ents t h at others do not . It is preciou s because it hosts a notable. H e created a sch edule that only he u nderstood, and foru m for public conversation in Australia, one in w h ich made payments only when he remembered to. His exam ple n ew writers can join . It h as been my privilege to en able t h is h as been infectiou s in publishing h ou ses since. conversation bet ween writers and readers. In her ode to grammar, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lyn ne I would like to thank particularly Morag Fraser, Andy Ham Truss describes an argum ent bet w een Ross and Thurber ilton SJ, Jack Waterford, M ichael McGirr, Anthony H am and abou t t he proper use of the Oxford comma. It ended in fisti Robert Hefner. I am grateful to them as mentors and friends. cu ffs . Thurber in sisted that the only acceptable u sage was Robert H efn er h as k in dly agreed to act as editor of Eureka 'red, w h ite and blue', Ross that it was 'red, w h ite, and blue'. Street fo r the coming issu es. H is sen sitivit y and ex perien ce I tell these stories of quirky passion because I shall treasure will en sure that you will con tinu e to enjoy Eureka Street sim ilar stories of the passion for truthful writin g and of human and to be drawn into t he conversation it represents. vagary as I leave Eureka Street to take up a new role w ith the - Marcelle Mogg NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EU REKA STREET 5 to believers. Its ra zzmatazz is impres up in black shirts or-more recently rthe month's sive and it has an undeniably popular all in white. To sec them at full stretch or should one say populist?-touch. It performing a haka is a somewhat fear traffic doesn't talk, for example, of baptism but some sight, as it is probably meant to of 'being dunked'. be. For those of us with longer memo It communicates enthusiasm, warmth ries, muscular Christians-whether and security. Much is made of Brian and in black or white T-shirts, bodyguard Hannah Tamaki and their three married ing their 'bishop'- brings back very Hallelujah haka children as role models for the movement. unwelcome memories indeed. Populist It sees itself as a 'breakthrough church' Christianity used to get off on anti KIWIS FLOCKING TO A NEW DESTINY that is 'beyond church in the traditional Sem.itism. Now it's the turn of the gays. sense'. Its official statement is somewhat Numbers are hard to estimate, but coy about its own core values, but much they are not insignificant-certainly in is said about 'establishing the Kingdom', the thousands. Destiny says it has 20 pas sCCULAR<>M H" UORWW m•ny and restoring 'biblical order'. tors throughout New Zealand, and some devils, and church inanities deprived us In New Zealand religion is generally 35,000 members. It has developed its own of most counter-availing angels, so it's no treated with courteous disdain. It has been bookshop, health and fitness centre and wonder that into the vacuum rush groups largely written out of the history books bilingual early child-care centre. Leaders like Destiny Church, a Maori-based and the public arena. Almost the only in the mainstream churches, including Pentecostal community with its strength public religious ceremonies taken seri the Baptists, are warning that Destiny is in New Zealand's North Island but with ously are those from the Maori tradition, a force to be reckoned with. There is some outliers in Australia. itself strongly influenced by Christianity. envy of its ability to find a style and a lan After a slow start this seven-year old But Destiny Church is different. It really guage that appeals to young, alienated church now hits the headlines with great stirs the spirits. Its fierce opposition to Maoris, and well beyond. regularity in NZ. On 4 March, for exam recent civil unions legislation, for exam One wonders, however, if it has bit ple, its leader, Brian Tamaki, addressed a ple, which provides legal security for ten off more than it can chew with its lat 'pro-family', 'Defend the Legacy' march gay couples, led to angry and imagina est move into politics. The Labour Party in Auckland that attracted 5000 peo tive counter-demonstrations. Green and had, until recently, rock-solid political ple. He took the opportunity to launch Labour Party MPs such as Judith Tizard support from the Maori Ratana Church, a political crusade against NZ's godless have the church in their sights. but generally Kiwis see off religiously political parties. Prime Minister Helen The Auckland City Council, cit toned parties very smartly. As a niche Clark was denounced as an atheist, and ing safety reasons, gave a firm 'No' to cultural movement Destiny Church has Don Brash, the National Party leader, Destiny Church's original intention of been quite successful. One cannot see it, though of Presbyterian lineage, was also marching right across the Harbour Bridge however, making much headway politi far too liberal to be a true believer. Prayer, to protest against civil unions; so instead, cally in full-employment, pragmatic Tamaki told his supporters, was no longer it proceeded along Queen Street in the New Zealand. Theologically, it is febrile, enough. They were urged to vote in the city centre. Secondary school students and one hardly needs to be a prophet to recent national election for Destiny at Wellington High also wanted to say see the pitfalls ahead for it as a church. New Zealand, the church's political 'No' to the use of their school premises Personally, I feel sad for its gullible fol wing which campaigns under the slogan by the church, but were unsuccessful lowers, and still more for those caught in 'Nation Under Siege'. Although it made in the end. Such awareness of religious its line of fire. It is, no doubt, a sign of our a pitch for the Pacific Island vote, and issues in schools is unprecedented in reactive times. Once again, the shortcom claims God as its main sponsor, it hardly New Zealand. The considerable wealth ings of the mainstream churches come raised a whimper of interest, polling only of Destiny's leaders, Bishop Brian and home to roost with a vengeance. 0.5 per cent. Pastor Hannah Tamaki, offers opponents - Peter Matheson Destiny Church looks, at first glance, hostages to fortune which are, of course, like a typical American-style telc-evan gratefully received. gelist network. It has a simple answer to Destiny Church regularly makes head One last stand everything and is very savvy in its use lines because it thrives on provocation. It of the internet and the media. Tamaki is sees itself as a 'genuine counterculture' SPA IN'S CATHOLICS TAK[ TO THE STREETS a gifted and personable speaker who got and is committed to exposing 'current himself elected as 'bishop' on 18 June, trends, philosophies and mindsets', i.e. though he does go on at considerable anything smacking of 'liberalism'. It has T HESE ARE DIFFICULT times for the length. Like some of its close allies, such 'had enough of liberal behaviour' and cor Catholic Church in Spain. Buffeted by as the City Impact Church in Auckland, rupt media. Soon, it fears, 'expressing a plummeting popularity among Spain's Destiny Church operates with big budg biblical position on homosexuality will once staunchly Catholic population and ets, based on an in-your-face insistence be a criminal offence'. outraged by the secular reforms enacted by on tithing, and appears to suggest that The church presents a militant face Spain's socialist government, the Church personal and financial success will flow to the world, some of its members lining is preparing to make one last stand. 6 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 ,. '?' The Church may thus far have failed summa ll ~ to defeat the government's lega lisation I' of gay marriage-a legal challenge to ' ~ the law's constitutionality is still pend ~ heologiae ~ ..X ing-and fast-track, no-fault divorce. But, undaunted, Spain's major Catholic organ isations are threatening to escalate their campaign of mass street protests and civil disobedience. At issue in this latest battle new understanding is the government's plan to make religious A education voluntary in public schools. Although Spain's 1978 constitution protects religious diversity, the previous conservative Popular Party government which was voted out of office three days F ORTY YeARS AGO, V"ican II pwmulgated one of'" la>t documents the after the Madrid train bombings in March Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Many have said 2004-made a Catholic subject called Religious Fact compulsory for all students. that it was too optimistic about modernity. Some commentators locate that Under the previous law, the Catholic optimism in the heady days of the 1960s and argue that since we are now more Church had exclusive control over the aware of humanity's radical brokenness, the document's optimism should be curriculum in religious education and sole tempered. The Pastoral Constitution is certainly a good deal more optimistic power over the appointment of teachers. than the Church's dismissal of modernity prior to the Council. However, in Other religions could not be taught. Failure my view, the debate over the Council's optimism is a furphy-it distracts in Religious Fact meant that students attention from the fundamental shift in the Church's relationship with the could not qualify for university education. world, articulated by the Council. In a statement denouncing the new In the 150 years before the Council, the Roman Catholic Church's government's plans to remove religious pessimistic evaluation of modernity was intimately related to its understanding education from the list of compulsory sub of its role in the world. The world view of Christendom collapsed as new jects, Concapa, the largest organisation understandings of the individual in society arose and the Church was representing Catholic families, warned: separated from the state. When the Church lost its directive role in the world, 'All actions are legitimate in seeking to it saw the world as lost from God. In the Pastoral Constitution, however, the modify this project, which is an attack Council considered the Church-world relationship in a fundamentally new against freedom of education, the right of way. It finally, officially set aside the hope of re-establishing the Church a school to choose how it teaches, and the state alliance on which Christendom depended. It also set aside the blanket right of parents to educate their children condemnations that characterised the Church's attitude to modernity in the as they see fit.' 19th century: 'The Church also recognises whatever good is to be found in the Concapa also claims to have gathered modern social movement.' up to three million signatures in a peti Yet the change effected was more fundamental than the Church simply tion which, it says, demonstrates 'the shaking off the mechanisms that facilitated the Christendom world view. The unhappiness throughout society against a Pastoral Constitution articulated a better, richer theological description of the law that has no democratic consensus'. Church's role in the world. This new relationship is built on two key insights. Before he became pontiff, then First, the Council recognised that history has intrinsic significance for the Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned Spanish way in which God acts in the world, and that therefore the Church is charged Catholics that they were duty bound to with the task of remaining open to the presence and purpose of God in history. oppose the new laws 'clearly and firmly'. Second, the Council recognised that the Spirit of God is at work in the modern His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, simi larly denounced the government's changes world, both in individuals and in social movements. to religious education, warning that 'new Condemnation would hardly be an appropriate response to a world in generations of Spaniards, influenced by which the Spirit of God is at work. Rather, dialogue and discernment will be religious indifference and ignorance of the Church's crucial tasks. In the Council's words: 'Impelled by the belief that Christian tradition, are being exposed to it is being led by the Spirit of the Lord who fills the whole Earth, God's people the temptations of moral permissiveness'. works to discern the true signs of God's presence and purpose in the events, The Church has alienated a large needs and desires which it shares with the rest of modern humanity.' swathe of the Spanish population with the The Pastoral Constitution does not offer a global evaluation of modernity. stridency of its protests-a recent survey Neither does it advise whether optimism or pessimism is a wiser stance. It found that just 10 per cent of Spaniards does articulate a fundamentally new understanding of the Church-world express significant confidence in the relationship as a dialogue. • Church. The Catholic hierarchy has also been forever tainted by its decision to James McEvoy teaches at Catholic Theological College, Adelaide. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STR EET 7 archimedes stand wholeheartedly alongside the dicta tor General Francisco Franco who ruled Spain for 37 years until his death in 1975. But the Church in Spain-or at least Power politics part of it-has not always been thus. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the arrival in El Pozo de Tio Raimundo-a Madrid shanty town-of a Jesuit priest, CAN BE WRG 8 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 Needle work A ccw WHK< Aco, h•ving been pe<,uadod to pl•n a tdp to a literary person, they suspend hostilities entirely to talk books, steamy Asia, I went along to my GP for an assortment of vaccina announce preferences or test you out. tions. As a traveller mostly to Europe, I hadn't endured the nee And so, true to type, my medico said: 'Lawson. Born in dle since cholera had been struck off the list of evils threatening Auburn.' antipodean travellers. Before that, easily my most memorable 'No, that was C. J. Dennis.' encounter with preventative medicine was a typhoid injection 'Ah yes, of course,' he said, 'Lawson was the one who wrote in the army. Clancy of the Overflow.' This procedure was carried out under a high-noon Puckapun 'Banjo Paterson.' yal January sun. We stood around for a long time for no apparent 'Then Lawson made that famous jump at the Blue Lake.' reason-a penchant for inexplicable hiatus was characteristic of 'Adam Lindsay Gordon.' I grinned deferentially to show that our National Service leaders, and exotic rumours would flower he was allowed to get these things wrong, just as I would make and spread during such intermissions. Eventually, we shuffled a mess of trying to give an injection. To each his own, forward towards the two or three sweating, ill-tempered, needle said my smiling, tolerant visage. jabbing practitioners at the head of the ranks, where those who hadn't already fainted from heat or dread were duly inoculated. ITSET ME THINKING, though. How rapidly, how irretrievably, As I approached the front line, I incautiously watched as the I wondered, are our stories and their tellers and the language medic more or less threw the needle like a dart at the exposed in which they are told retreating into a miasma of internation flesh of the bloke in front of me and then, swearing at some prob alised pop culture so that even the educated are losing track of lem with the plunger, unscrewed the barrel from the needle, the makers of our cultural heritage, the tuners of our original which remained protruding from the patient's arm, and screwed voice. And no sooner had I entertained this well-worn thought on a new one. And so the long day wore on-a signal one for me than the AFL considerately popped up with a resounding answer because since then I have always consciously looked away from by attempting at the last minute to substitute Delta Goodrem the action on the rare occasions when I'm enduring needles for for the long since contracted Silvie Paladino to sing the national this or that no doubt excellent reason. anthem at the Grand Final. But all of that was a long time in the past and my sturdy habit Each woman is a wonderful and successful artist in her field: of looking elsewhere long since established when I fronted up Goodrem, however, is a household word because she is part of the to my GP for a battery of protection against the bacteriological popular culture. Its vernacular is Americanised and its music is and viral assaults awaiting me in our near north. These involved the stuff of international charts. I presume the AFL reckoned typhoid (again'), a pre-emptive strike against hepatitis A, and the that this would speak more loudly to the fans than the operatic painful administration of a disincentive for some encephalitic tones of Paladino. We should hope that they were wrong. pestilence the name of which escapes me. In the end, Paladino did the job, though you wouldn't have seen As I was leaving, I inquired casually if there would be any much of her: the panning TV cameras ignored her physical pres side effects. Instead of reassuring me, he wanted to know why ence almost completely. But the voice was the thing. I'd asked. Anyway, some hours after my needles, and suffering no after 'Well,' I said, 'as a matter of fact, I have to give a talk tonight. shocks, I celebrated John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew's I'm launching a new CD by John Schumann ... ' Henry Lawson in a way Lawson himself would have thoroughly 'Of Redgum fame!' he footnoted, obviously pleased to show approved. In his introductory remarks, and without, I swear, he was up with the pace. any collusion with me, Schumann said that although a Delta 'Right,' I said. 'Anyway, Schumann's made a wonderful CD, Goodrem launch would no doubt draw a larger attendance, per setting some of Lawson's poems to music. And, being a bit of a haps a celebration of Henry Lawson, as one of the founders of our Lawson man myself, I wa asked to advise on the project and ... ' literature and our vernacular, was a more notable and important But he was interrupting again. I don't know if you've noticed Australian event. He was applauded to the echo and even if he but there are certain professional people-CPs, medical spe was preaching to the converted, it's encouraging to think that cialists of one kind and another and dentists prominent among the converted are still around and vocal. • them- who are keen to show they are not prisoners of their own narrow field. Discovering that, prone under the Damocletian Brian Matthews is a writer who lives in South Australia's Clare scalpel, or stretched out on the examination table, or espaliered Valley, whose southernmost town, Auburn, is the birthplace of on the dentist's chair gasping for air and desperate to swallow, is C. J. Dennis. NOVEM BER- D ECEMBER 2005 EU REK A STREET 9 capital letter Tough love L ,mTEREST I 0 EU REKA STRE ET NOVEMBER- DECEMBE R 2005 civil rights:l Katherine Wilson and Stefan Markworth Seeking justice for jack jack Thomas leaves the Melbourne Magistrates Court in February after being granted ba il. Photo: AAP/)ulian Smith Jack Thomas is one of the first Australians charged under the Howard Government's new anti-terror laws, but is he really a threat to national security or merely a sacrificial lamb? A,oRmNARY " A me' of h NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 11 had found a profound sense of rneaning But Thomas missed his family, and He was kept in solitary confinement. He and peace in his new religion.' eventually decided to return home. Pre was locked down for 21 hours a day. In the Thomas married his Indonesian-born paring to board a plane from Pakistan's three hours he was not locked down he wife, Maryati, in South Africa, and the Karachi airport on 4 January 2003, was required to wear handcuffs, leg irons two made their haj pilgrimage to Mecca. he was arrested and detained without and restraints. He was allowed one con In 2001, with baby daughter Amatul charge in military prisons in Karachi and tact visit with his family per month and lah, the family travelled to a number of Rawalpindi. For a fortnight, his family that through glass. He requested contact Islamic countries, including Afghanistan, had no idea of his whereabouts, only to with a psychiatrist, but found it very dif to experience life the Muslim way. learn of his arrest through media reports. ficult to obtain psychiatric support. That 'We pleaded with Jack not to go,' says Thomas was interrogated by the CIA, is a breach not only of his human rights, Les Thomas, 'but he and Maryati were FBI and Pakistan Secret Service. Alleg- but of the law of Victoria.' The question as to why Thomas was arrested and charged in November 2003 The Australian Federal Police have admitted in court to finding remains. Rob Stary suspects it may have been politi no evidence to incriminate Thomas since his return from Pakistan cally motivated. 'The case against Mamdouh Habib is collapsing, the case against David Hicks is on its knees. committed to it. The US was pretty sup edly subjected to a range of physical and So, a school of thought says, well, we need portive of the Taliban during this period. psychological torture, including being a sacrificial lamb in Australia. There was There wasn't a lot of criticism from the chained to walls, strangled to the point one Australian who was detained in Paki West at this time.' of near-death, deprived of food and water stan and that's Jack Thomas.' Thomas says his interest in Afghani and forced to sleep on wet concrete floors, Writing to Attorney-General Daryl stan 'was not in the Taliban but in being he says he reported this to the Australian Williams in April 2003, the Law Insti a good Muslim'. He was, says his brother, Federal Police several times. The police tute of Victoria's president Bill O'Shea 'very sensitive to the suffering of Mus say that Thomas complained only once. noted that Thomas's detention in Paki lims in places like Chechnya. He wanted During a recorded interrogation later stan 'comes within the broader context of to help the people of Afghanistan who had heard by a Melbourne court, Thomas the growing trend across many nations to been abandoned by the world and left to requested a lawyer, but was denied one. disregard the rule of law in the name of clean up after decades of conflict with the The recording was made three months "national security".' O'Shea said that even Soviet Union.' into Thomas's imprisonment, allegedly though Thomas was being held in Paki At the time, Les Thomas points out, following prolonged spells of sleep depri stan, the Government was still obliged to 'there was no law about travelling to vation, violent abuse and threats to harm ensure that Thomas's right to be informed Afghanistan or the north-west frontier of his family. This, says Thomas, is when he of the charges against him and access to Pakistan. People have forgotten what the finally broke. In a March 8 interrogation, legal representation be respected. pre-9/11 world looked like-' he told his captors what he thought they The Australian Government claims In Afghanistan, Thomas became dis wanted to hear. After five months, he was that Thomas is a 'sleeper agent' awaiting illusioned, particularly with the Taliban, released without charge and allowed to instructions from al Qaeda. Based on the which he considered 'excessively cruel'. return to Australia. Here, he sought med interviews recorded during Thomas's He says he and Maryati were planning a ical treatment for psychological damage. detention in Pakistan, the Government return to life in Australia when the planes Australia's foremost expert in torture psy alleges that during his time in Afghani fatefully ploughed into New York's World chology, Professor Patrick McCorry, tes stan, Thomas met and discussed plans Trade Center. Thomas 'was horrified' at tified in court that he had no doubt that with Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir; the events of September 11. Before the US Thomas had been subjected to torture. that he undertook military training at invasion of Afghanistan, the family left for The AFP have admitted in court to al Qaeda's Al Farooq training camp in Pakistan. Amatullah developed pneumo finding no evidence to incriminate Tho Kandahar; and that he was a guest in al nia, so Maryati left for Australia with her mas since his return, even though he has Qaeda safe houses. It is further alleged while Jack planned to follow shortly after. been under near-constant surveillance. that Thomas has seen or met Osama bin Learning that federal police had ques It's this lack of legally obtained evidence, Laden, and was given $US3500 and an tioned his family in Australia, and hearing and his subsequent treatment at the airline ticket to Australia by al Qaeda. BBC reports about Australians David Hicks hands of federal and state authorities in Thomas is alleged to have overheard and Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay, Melbourne's Barwon prison, that enrages a plan to shoot down a plane carrying Thomas got cold feet, fearing he'd face the civil rights advocates. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, same predicament. He decided to wait in 'Mr Thomas, who has been convicted and to have discussed a plan to liberate a Pakistan, staying at the homes of friends of no violent crime at any time,' says prisoner from Guantanamo Bay. In Tho who would later be implicated in state Brian Walters SC, 'was held in the Aca mas's bail hearing, magistrate Lisa Hannan ments allegedly extracted under duress. cia m aximum security prison in Barwon. reportedly said no properly instructed jury 12 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 could convict on the basis of this evidence. Thomas's lawyers have asked for the Thomas suggest that they are willing to Given that his trial is pending, Thomas forthcoming trial to be conducted in an trample on basic civil and human rights can't answer these accusations publicly. open court, believing that justice will in the name of the "war on terror".' Thomas was eventually granted bail more likely be served if the process is con Innocent or guilty, Thomas and his in February 2005. In granting bail, Chief ducted on the public record. family will feel the effects of this trial for Magistrate Ian Gray again questioned the 'The rules, it seems, have been thrown years. Having put their house up for bail likelihood of the Government's evidence out the window,' says Stary. 'Jack Tho security, other costs are mounting. 'The being admissible at trial. But the Govern rnas's case represents a very important Commonwealth has financial means and ment launched an appeal, attempting to milestone in criminal legal history. We resources fo r this case way beyond the have Thomas's bail overturned. While this know that every Western government is capacity of the Thomas family,' says Ian failed, Thomas nervously awaits a Supreme seeking more powers in their so-called Thomas, Jack's father. Court trial that will set a precedent in war against terror. Unless we stand up Now out of prison, Thomas is work Australian criminal legal history. and fight vigorously for Jack Thomas's ing at different jobs to pay the m ortgage To the objection of media organisa rights, there will be people suffering the on the house he planned to buy the day tions, the Government has successfully sam e sorts of repressive circumstances of his arrest, and the legal case he never applied for a closed court for 'national secu that Jack Thomas has been subjected to: imagined facing. rity' reasons, 'which is ironic,' says Stary, solitary confinement in detention, con Of her son, Patsy Thomas says, 'The 'considering the media stunts.' In addi fessions extracted in circumstances in boy that came home is a very meek, very tion to the frenzy generated at Thomas's which they would never be admitted in a scared young man, and I'm hoping that arrest, during his bail hearings, Thomas conventional criminal case.' old Jack's still in there. He's been shat was taken into court shackled, and flak Brian Walters claims the Thomas case tered. We have to fight as a family to get jacketed counter-terrorism officers con demonstrates how Australia's terrorism that old Jack back.' • spicuously checked the court for bombs. laws 'are a win for the terrorists, because 'I've been practising for 25 years and they undermine our democracy'. Katherine Wilson is a freelance writer. I don't think I've seen an accused person In April, N oam Chomsky issued a She was assisted in writing this article by being pursued in as zealous a fashion as I statement saying, 'The actions of the Stefan Markworth, who made a documen have with Jack Thomas,' says Stary. Australian Government in pursuing Jack tary film about the Jack Thomas case. NOVEMBER- DECEMB ER 2005 EUREKA STREET 13 hunger: I Anthony Ham Anatomy of a famine Niger's descent to the world's worst place to live has been paved with greed and good intentions L ,LANDLOCKED Roeu•uc of Nige>, on the 'oothem edge the increasingly global economy. The French guaranteed high of the Sahara, is one of the few countries on earth where famine prices for Nigerien farmers, shielding them from the vagaries of is an everyday fact of life. Niger is officially the worst place on the world m arket. earth to live, according to the United Nations Development Pro The early years were promising. Growth in production to gram's Human Development Index. the late 1960s was almost exponential, with hundreds of thou Every year, more than 80 per cent of Niger's children suf sands of hectares of agricultural land devoted to the humble pea fer malnutrition. One in three die before they reach the age of nut. It was Niger's green revolution, an African success story. five and there are barely three doctors for every 100,000 people. Already, by the early 1960s, more than half of the income of Average life expectancy is 42 years. fa rmers in the Maradi district of southern Niger came from pea The famine that has gripped the country for much of this nuts while 64 per cent of the peanut harvest came from Tahoua, year-and belatedly made international headlines before media farther north. Few if any of the farmers were nomads. attention turned to Hurricane Katrina-had many causes: the At harvest time, the joy of successful crops was tempered Nigerien government's unwillingness to acknowledge there was by new dem ands on farmers to repay the costs of the seeds a famine and jailing of local journalists who dared say other and machinery. New seeds were introduced and productivity wise; the men of southern Niger locking up food supplies when increased. With limited resources to buy the fe rtilisers these they went away to work, leaving their wives and children to new seeds required, and with even less advice forthcoming from go hungry; the international community subsidising its own European salesmen on the benefits, few fa rmers [under five per farmers to outflank impoverished Africans able to produce the cent according to one estimate) chose to fertllise their soil. Out same foo d at a fraction of the cost; and the international com put continued to climb, but this was the result of good rains and munity, which ignored the crisis until images of starving chil increasingly hard-working farmers as much anything else. dren started appearing on their television screens. When Niger became an associate of the European Common Crimes by the powerful men of Africa contributed to Niger's Market in 1965 it lost its price guarantees, although the French chronic food insecurity, but it must be galling for ordinary Afri made up the shortfall through a decreasing system of subsidies. cans who have little power- particularly Niger's nomadic peo Between 1967 and 1969, the price paid to farmers fell by 22 per ples-to know they are also partly responsible for the droughts cent. Many farmers went into debt, so much so that by 1968, and famine that have cursed Niger for decades. more than half of all loans by farmers in the Zinder By forsaking their traditional patterns of life and their fla region were in default. grant overgrazing of camels and cattle, so the argument goes, the nomadic herders of the Sahel and Sahara-primarily the 0 BLIVIOUS TO THE HIDDEN OSTS associated with peanut Tuareg and the Fulani- ruined an already precarious land. farming and drawn by the combination of h igh yields and arti This premise of African responsibility for African woes ficial inducements, more and more farmers chose to plant pea has a long history. At the height of Niger's first great famine, nuts. The peanut is a thirsty crop and the new seeds required which lasted for six years until 1974, and with abject disregard an even shorter growing cycle. Fallow periods, which for cen for more complex realities, Claire Sterling wrote in the Atlantic turies had been used to let the land regenerate, were dispensed Monthly that: with. Without fertilisers, the soil was becoming exhausted. The rising quartz content prevented the anchoring of topsoil, Carried away by the promise of unlimited water, nomads forgo t causing erosion. about the Sahel's all-too-limited forage. Timeless rules, appor With more farmers to accommodate, the boundaries of tioning just so m any cattle to graze for just so many days within agricultural land moved northwards, bringing farmers into a cow's walking distance of ju st so much water in traditional confrontation with pastoralists all along the Sa hara's southern well s, were brushed aside. fringe. The often-strained relationship between the nomads of Niger was once a land of relative plenty. In the 1950s, when the north and the south, between those of the Sahara and those it was still under French administration, farmers in the south of of the Sahel, degenerated into conflict. the country were encouraged to move away from growing the Pastoral nomadism had once sustained an environmental crops that had sustained their families for generations. Encour balance of resources, representing an effective usc of land that aged by international companies, French authorities and, later, was not suitable for agriculture, and enabling regeneration of the the Nigerien government, farmers planted peanuts, a cash crop soil. Now the southern village reserves, which Tuareg nomads that could help meet world demand and integrate Niger into and Fulani herders had used for grazing and pasture in the 14 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 months between their treks north and south, were given over Reports began to emerge from Tuareg areas that people were to the peanut. Short-term gains were outweighed by the loss of forced to eat animal feed, of men abandoning women and natural fertilisers left behind by cattle and camels. children in the desert. The Niger government, with an eye on exports, was com One eyewitness account of the time reported that: plicit in extending farmlands to cover the pastures and grazing Dazed Tuareg men gather in the towns and cities to seek jobs lands that had provided refuge for the northern nomads during and they gaze glumly at a noisy, bustling world they would never dry years; they were no longer welcome in the south. At the same inhabit willingly. Families huddle in relief camps there existing time, advances in animal husbandry-vaccination programs on the grain and powdered milk that is air! ifted in. Some Tuareg and better understanding of animal health-led to increased have committed suicide, some have gone mad. herd sizes. With demand for cattle growing across international markets, large cattle farms, with European backing, fenced off The proud Tuareg were reduced to an existence de cribed large tracts of land for commercial cattle breeding. These by Mohamed Aoutchiki Criska: farms benefited a landowning elite at the expense I have seen these proud men, my brothers, clustered around food of grazing land available to traditional pastoralists. distribution centres. Obliged, like beggars, to receive food ladled out to them by strangers who could not even guess the extent to NOTHER GRAND, APPARENTLY well-intentioned scheme, A which these nomads were forsaking their dignity as men. with European and International Monetary Fund backing, was the construction of wells and watering points along the tradi Others died of tarvation because they waited too late tional migration routes. But there were no pastures to feed the to seek assistance; in traditional nomadic society, it is con increasing numbers of stock using the routes. The landscape sidered ill-mannered to admit an absence of self-control, to became denuded of vegetation with no prospect of regeneration. admit suffering. From the beginning, those with the power to Without ground cover, the soil was scorched by the sun and rectify the situation and halt the land's decline failed to under scoured by the wind. Domestic but hardy desert goats, a main- stand that destroyed land is as much a cause of drought as a con sequence of it. They ignored the reality that over grazing by the herding and pastoralist people of the north was a symptom, not the fundamental cause of the destruction. All the while, they wilfully turned a blind eye to the evidence that massive ecologi cal damage had been wrought for the sake of what remained a colonial economy benefiting interna tional business and African elites. By 1974, there was little that could be done beyond calculating the devastation. By one reck oning more than 60 per cent of the country's live stock-cows, goats, sheep, camels-was lost, includ ing two million head of cattle from 1972 to 1973 alone. At the height of the drought, a USAID study revealed that hundreds of thousands of square kilo metres had been added to the southern Sahara, which was said to be moving south at 50km a year in some places. Previously arable land was forever lost. The quietly dispersed populations of villages and shift ing nomadic encampments slowly emptied from the land, joining Africa's disastrous migration into the cities. In less than a generation, the ecology of West Africa changed irreversibly. Six years after the first famine came a second. Those trees that were left, the last barriers to desert encroachment, were cut down by the Tuareg and stay of the nomadic subsistence, ate what little cover remained, Fulani desperate for fodder and firewood. Conflict was by now even the thorns that had bound the soil, protecting the roots. almost endemic between once interdependent sedentary and With nothing to bind it, the earth turned to sand. Patches of nomadic communities. Hundreds of thousands died between desert began to form around villages and watering holes, then 1980 and 1985 as the rains again failed and the world did nothing. spread to merge with the desert. Soil was picked up by the wind These are the real causes of Niger's 2005 famine, just as and lifted high into the atmosphere as dust, blocking the sun: they were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They will also be the perfect conditions for drought. the causes of the Niger famines of the future, for they will In 1968-some say a year later-the rains failed to arrive surely come. • and did not return until after 1974. By then, Niger was probably the worst-hit of all Sahelian countries. Entire herds disappeared. Anthony Ham is Eureka Street's roving correspondent. OVEM BE R- D ECEMB ER 2005 EU REKA STR EET 15 Sarah Kanowski The book or the world? The book or the world? is the longer of two essays Sarah Kanowski submitted to win the inaugural $2000 Margaret Dooley Young Writers' Award. Entrants were asked to submit two essays, one of 2000 words and the other of 700 words. Second place was shared by Kirsty Sangster and Meaghan Paul, whose work will appear in forthcoming issues of Eureka Street. Baal<, let me go. Greeks and Romans bequeathed a secular J. A. Froude's frank writings on the mag I don't want to walk dressed tradition of moral exemplars to the West, isterial social prophet Thomas Carlyle In a volume ... with Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Gre caused uproar in the 1880s because of let me wall 16 EU REKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 shift and turn according to the situation. states bluntly about his experience of century: like biography, this trial's prov In his reflections on writing the lives of Auschwitz: 'I was a guiltless victim and I ince was private life as well as public, the Romantic poets, Holmes contends was not a murderer.' judging not an isolated act but rather 'the that, instead of drawing moral conclusions Furthermore, regardless of subject, character of the accused in its entirety'. about its subjects, biography rightly 'sees the assertion of truth is not as simple as But I think the reverse is true, that biog a more complicated and subtle pattern. some biographers make it appear: do we raphy can bring us understanding and Even out of worldly "failure" and personal still imagine ourselves to possess some illumination rather than judgment. At its suffering (indeed perhaps especially from kind of defining truth? And when there best, biography shows us the complexity these) it finds creative force and human are conflicting interpretations, who has of the figures we presume to judge, work nobility.' This approach resonates with the authority to decide the truth told? The ing in an opposite direction to Kundera's that of Nicholas Mosley, who has written critical question has shifted from Froude's trial regime. It is in this that biographers biographies of his father Oswald, leader defence of truth-telling to the much most resemble novelists. In 'Against Dry of the British Union of Fascists during knottier one of what constitutes truth. ness', her famous 1961 essay on what lit World War II. 'One of the points of this It seems that often when we talk about erature offers that philosophy does not, book- biography or autobiography,' Mos truth in life-writing what we really mean Iris Murdoch argues for the moral value ley comments, 'has been the attempt to is explicitness-the demand to know of the 19th-century realist novels which create an attitude by which darkness in what had been hidden-but the biogra were not concerned with 'the human con people (there is always darkness) might pher's art cannot be reduced to the amass dition' in the abstract but 'with real vari be made to be seen not so much as evil ing of details, and an exact portrait may ous individuals struggling in society'. She as somewhat ridiculous: evil may tim be not be a true one. To get to the truth of a argues that the other-realities conveyed exorcised: ridiculousness becomes life person requires interpretation and omis in such works break into our self-centred giving.' In this approach to ethical ques sion and a recognition that life is much fantasies and in doing so perform a moral tions, self-consciousness is central and more opaque and untidy than it is usu function: 'Through literature we can Mosley (whose autobiography is tellingly ally presented in books. It could be that rediscover a sense of the density of our titled Efforts at Truth) uses the degree of what is required is a new form: in 1918 lives.' The same can be said of great biog his father's self-awareness, rather than his Lytton Strachey disrnissed 'standard biog raphies: they invite us to inhabit minds actions themselves, as the measure for raphies' as inadequate to the experience and bodies other than our own, and this moral evaluation. of life, yet the mamm.oth, multi-volumed, is moral work. These new approaches to the rela indexed 'Life' remains dominant. Holmes Examining how we read biography tionship between ethics and life-writing is one biographer experimenting with new necessitates that we ask how we read gen bring their own set of concerns, however. styles to get at a truth flattened by the tra erally and demands we re-examine the Contemporary discussion of biographi ditional approach, using travelogue, radio ethics of that process. It reminds us in cal practice is interested primarily in the plays, and fiction (including the wonder these fiscally obsessed times that reading representation of literary figures, and the fully evocative Dr John son's First Cat). is not simply the private act of a leisured extent to which the methods and values Amid these debates about representation class but a moral practice: stories arc how commonly employed in literary biography and reality, perhaps the central truth to we tell and understand what life is, and can function in the biographies of civic consider is that of the subject's own sense the stories we make about real human figures is debatable. Although the distinc of self. As the historian of fascism Rich lives are the most important of all. That tion between different kinds of subjects is ard Griffiths has noted, 'Nobody holds sly old poet Neruda wrote a second poem necessarily fluid-authors and politicians opinions which they feel to be wrong; about the relationship between writing are not autonomous categories-there are one must therefore attempt to see things and living, and this Ode to the Book (II) significant differences in writing a biog through these people's eyes, to assess celebrates precisely that kind of reading. raphy of a novelist (even one with a taste what they felt to be right and why.' In The two categories with which we began for publicity) and of a politician whose order for biography to consider the moral arc not, it seems, separated by 'or' but character and career determine the condi claims made on it by history, therefore, it linked by 'and': tion of nations. Holmes and Mosley have must first strive to see its subjects as they chosen very different kinds of men, and saw themselves. What was our vicLory{ in writing about a political leader the lat Grappling with these issues is a kind a book, ter is obliged to consider his subject in of ethical practice for writers and readers a book full the light of historical realities. European alike; one that, intentionally or not, pro of human touches, fascism constitutes a watershed in how vides a new form of moral instruction to of shirts, we today conceive of morality, and writ replace the didacticism of previous gen a book ing about figures in that context does erations. The Czech novelist Milan Kun without loneliness, with men heighten the danger of reducing events dera has made a moral critique of the very and tools, and individuals to what Primo Levi has genre of biography as by definition reduc a book called a Manichean view of history. But ing an individual's life to the interpreta is victory. awareness of this risk does not deny the tion of another. Kundera aligns biography • reality of moral difference nor the neces with what he calls the 'trial regime' under Sarah Kanowski is a freelance writer sity of moral accountability. As Levi which much of Europe lived in the 20th and broadcaster. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EU REK A STREET 17 Lucy Turner Guatemala's unforgiven As the government apologises to victims' families for state-sanctioned atrocities during the civil war, the perpetrators remain free BYBAM oN a AuGu" 2005, the H istorical Clarification Commission committed itself to fight impunity in the Sacapulas Municipal Hall is filled with (CEH, for its initials in Spanish) published Global Agreement on Human Rights, one residents of surrounding villages, dressed its report, Guatemala-Memory of of the principal peace accords signed in in traditional traje and speaking quietly Silence, which concluded that the civil 1994. In addition, the nation's constitution in Quiche, the local indigenous language. war had claimed more than 200,000 and a range of international human rights Representatives of the Guatemalan gov victims, 83 per cent of whom were treaties impose a legal duty to investigate, ernment, weary from the five- hour drive indigenous Mayans. The report fo und that try, and punish human rights violators. to t he sma ll highland town, and looking the state was responsible for 93 per cent of The moral imperative is confirmed by uncomfortable in their stiff suits, begin to the human rights violations committed, the proliferation of victims' organisations take their seats on the stage. Despite the which included genocide. since the signing of the peace accords and heat and the crowd, in the early light the The CEH 's recommendations, in their persistent demand that justice is the hall has the reverent hush of a chapel. addition to stressing the importance of only path to real reconciliation. Domingo, Agustin and Ju an sit silently the peace accords, sought to specifically Despite this, impun ity remains a fact in the first row, their faces revealing a sad address victims' needs. These recommen for almost 100 per cent of human rights ness which the events about to take place dations included m easures for dignifying abuses committed during Guatemala's will do little to ease. They are preparing to the memory of victims, a wide-rangi ng civil war. hear government officials publicly accept reparations program, and, impor- There are many reasons for this, state responsibility fo r the 1990 murder tantly, justice. the primary one being a lack of politi of their m other, Maria Mejia, a respected cal will: the political spectrum remains community leader and outspoken critic 0 VER THE PAST S I X YEARS Guatema dominated by right-wing parties whose of the arm y. They will offer formal apolo lan governments have implemented some m embers and supporters among the armed gies, and seek her family's forgiveness. of these recommendations, most notably forces m ight well be the focus of criminal The banner su spended above the offi via the creation of a N ational Reparation investiga tions. cials' heads, bearing a photo of Maria Program, which includes material resti Lack of political will is compounded and printed with stark black lettering, tution (such as building roads), economic by the systemic weaknesses of the jus expresses succinctly the response they compensation, psychological rehabilita tice system. The institutions responsible can expect: No hay perd6n sin justicia tion, and measures to dignify victim s for carrying out criminal investigations No forgiveness without justice. (s uch as monuments and the renaming arc under-resourced, staffed by inade Fifteen years after her brut a 1assassi na of buildings). Little has been done, how quately trained and inadequately experi tion in front of her husband and children ever, to bring those responsible for human enced personnel, and show little interest by members of the military who still live rights crimes to justice. in initiating the investigations as they are in their village, no investiga tions have In contrast to other societies undergo required to do by law. The court system taken place, no one has been charged, and ing post-conflict transitions, Guatemala is renowned for its inefficiency, inconsist the case remains, like thousands like it, did not pass sweeping amnesty laws as ency and corruption. in absolute impunity. part of its reconciliation process. Furthermore, the Ministry of Defense Guatemala is still coming to terms The 1996 National Reconciliation Law, is unco-operative with criminal investi with peace a decade after a 36-year civil which provides for the limited exemption gations indicating military involvement war ended with the signing of peace of responsibility in some cases, specifically in human rights crimes. It has classified accords. Among the challenges it faces excludes crimes against humanity-in par much of the information held by the armed is how to address the profound dam age ticular genocide, forced disappearance and forces as 'state secrets', in order to prevent caused by decades of conflict and state torture-committed during the internal its release. When cases do come to trial, repression, which included atrocities such armed conflict. The CEH recommended the army defends its own by paying law as the massacre of hundreds of indigenous that those responsible for such crimes be yers who employ obstructionist legal tac villages, tens of thousands of 'disappear prosecuted, tried and punished. tics aimed at delaying proceedings and ances' and widespread torture. This means there is no legal barrier to exhausting victims' resolve. As in other countries undergoing proceeding against human rights violators. In light of these obstacles, only a handful post-conflict transitions, Guatemala On the contrary, the government has strong of cases have been adequately investiga ted established a truth commission as part political,lega land moral obligations to bring and tried, and even fewer have resulted in of its reconciliation process. In 1999, the those responsible to justice. Politically, it appropriate sanctions being imposed. These 18 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 few exceptions have been achieved thanks to Herculean efforts by the victims (usu ally supported by church or human rights networks), who have maintained constant pressure on the justice system to complete criminal trials, often at considerable risk to their own safety. Over recent years, victims' associations, human rights activists, prosecutors, lawyers and judges involved in such trials have suffered continual harassment in connection with their work. This has included physical attacks, death threats, intimidation, surveillance, Su rvivors of ma ssacres in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, march to honour the memory of the dead. They are carrying a quilt created from hundreds of smaller pi eces, each naming a victim and giving details of when and where th ey died. Photos: Lu cy Turner genocide, for example-communicates executions, torture, and, for the first time a m essage to Guatemalan society as a in 2004, one of the hundreds of massacres whole about the irrelevance of the rule committed against the Mayan people. of law. While former governments have been The UN Special Rapporteur on reluctant to co-operate with the Inter Judicial Independence, Param Coomar American Commission, and have actively aswamy, made the following observa denied responsibility before the court, tion in his 2000 report on Guatemala: since assuming power in January 2004, . . . impunity is a cancer; if not President Oscar Berger Perdomo has imple break-ins and telephone arrested and excised it will slowly mented a more progressive approach. This intervention, as well as robbery but surely destabilise society. Dis includes recognising state responsibility and the destruction of key information. It enchanted citizens will lose confi for human rights crimes committed by the is believed that the perpetrators of these dence, if they have not already, in the armed forces during the war and signing acts are clandestine groups associated government, and resort to taking 'friendly settlements' with families of vic with military regimes of the past. justice into their own hands.' tims, the terms of which typically include In summary, while governments have a commitment to begin criminal investi made progress in implementing ome of INCREASING LEVELS of conflict gations, compensation, public apologies the truth commission's recommenda and violence in Guatemala today, and the and measures to dignify the memory of tions, impunity for past human rights emergence in recent years of lynching as the victim. It was in compliance with one crimes remains systemic and widespread . a popular response to crime, bears out the such 'friendly settlement' with the family The persistence of impunity is having prediction of Coomaraswamy. of Maria Mejia that the event at Sacapulas a profoundly limiting effect on Guatema Government indifference to citizens' took place in August. la's consolidation of democracy and the demands for justice has led many to file The ability of the Berger government establishment of the rule of law. petitions with the Inter-American Human to tackle the complex phenomenon of Government indifference to impunity Rights System. Via these cases, petition impunity in order to comply with its com is an open wound for thousands of fami ers seek the mediation of their demands mitments in these agreements-and its lies who suffered state brutality during with the Guatemalan state, and in the obligations to Guatemalan society as a the war. In many rural communities vic event that the state fails to comply with whole-remains to be seen. Meanwhile, tims and victimisers continue to live side the recommendations of the Inter-Amer the banner with the stark black lettering by side (such as in Maria Mejia's case), ican Commission or the terms of a set continues to reflect the sentiments felt by which has a destructive influence on such tlement, the case may be referred to the thousa nds of Guatemalans today. • communities and continues to retard rec Inter-American Human Rights Court. onciliation at all levels. To date, this court has handed down Lucy Turner is a Melbourne lawyer In addition, the failure of the justice ten judgments against the state of who has been working with victims of system to try to punish those responsible Guatemala, the majority of which involve human rights abuse in Guatemala since for even the most heinous of crimes- forced disappearances, extrajudicial September 2003. OVEMBER- D EC EM BER 2005 EU REKA STR EET 19 indigenous affairs Andrew Thackrah Through a prism darkly The politics of cri sis is undermining the ri ghts of indigenous Au stra li ans 0 N THE WEEKeND 0' 11 •nd 12 )uno as a betrayal of an entire people. Federal tides of history'. The inadequacies of the 2005 The Weekend Australian reported Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Van courts' views on the comn1on-law notion that the family of Northern Territory stone, for example, condemned ATSIC's of native title, recently criticised by Noel indigenous leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu decision to fund a legal challenge opposed Pearson, have been exacerbated by a had been divided by conflict over the pro to Geoff Clark's sacking as 'hav[ing] no Government which, through its amend ceeds of mining royalties. The central benefit whatsoever for disadvantaged ments to the Native Title Act in 1998, has injustice that the paper trumpeted was indigenous Australians' and 'a waste of watered down the content of native title that fact that 'many of his own clan ... taxpayers' money'. to nothing more than a right to negotiate. live in squalid and impoverished condi Notably the 1998 Wik amendments made tions while Mr Yunupingu has the use the requirement of cultural continuance of a helicopter, four houses and a fleet of harder for indigenous groups to meet by cars, including a Range Rover'. toughening the requirements for regis The Australian's 'expose' of inequal tering a native-title claim and applying ity highlights the manner in which indig standard rules of civil evidence enous issues in Australia are filtered or to native-title cases. understood through the prism of crisis. The notion that indigenous Australia is at 1998 WIK AMENDMENTS are a crucial point, that the clock stands at symptomatic of the broader failure of the five to midnight, and that failure to act to political and legal system in Australia remedy the most basic of social and health to distinguish between substantive and inequalities will lead to the irrevers procedural equality and to recognise the ible destruction of cultures, has spurred importance of this distinction to the pro the creation of much government policy tection of collective indigenous rights. in Australia since the abandonment of The Commonwealth Racial Discrimina assimilation in the 1970s. The politics of tion Act 1975, for example, only acknowl crisis, however, has frequently succeeded Galarrwuy Yunupingu edges that the development of economic in exacerbating existing power dispari and social equality between indigenous ties between indigenous and non-indig A fundamental contradiction lies at and non-indigenous Australians requires enous Australians and has often failed to the heart of the treatment by the media differential treatment, by providing a acknowledge the intellectual and ideolog and the Government of leaders such as 'special measures exemption'. Collective ical complexity associated with recognis Clark and Yunupingu. While non-indige measures-such as alcohol restrictions ing the rights of the first Australians. nous criticism of their actions frequently within indigenous communities-are In the eyes of The Australian's jour emphasises their alleged failure to serve viewed as an exception to the individual nalist, Jennifer Sexton, Mr Yunupingu's their people, the white legal and political focused rights norm and require the issu wealth was inappropriate and immoral system in Australia continues to inad ing of a certificate by the Racial Discrimi when placed in the context of the difficult equately recognise collective rights. It is nation Commissioner. The failure of the living conditions suffered by those of his probable that the view taken by Austral Australian legal system to protect the clan. While little mention is ever made of ian courts, from Mabo no. 2 onwards substantive rights of indigenous Austral the obligations of wealthy non-indigenous that demonstrating the continuity of ians enshrined in international legal doc mining magnates to their less wealthy cultural identity or practice is crucial uments was further highlighted by the families, let a lone their extended clans to establishing a common-law right to High Court's 1998 ruling on the Hind or communities, the behaviour of indig native title-has contributed to the pub marsh Island Bridge case in which Justices enous leaders is scrutinised through the lic political habit of viewing indigenous Gummow and Hayne adopted the view prism of present disadvantage or crisis. issues through the prism of culture. An that section 52(xxvi) of the Australian Dubious administrative decisions that in essentialist view of culture that sees tra Constitution (the 'race' power) could be the normal course of public life would at dition as largely incapable of adaptation used to justify legislation that worked to most be put down to self-interest or insti to the external pressures of colonisation the detriment of indigenous Australians. tutional malpractice are, when made by has been adopted by the courts as they The latest manifestation of the pol indigenous leaders such as former ATSIC have frequently found that native-title itics of crisis in indigenous affairs, Commissioner Geoff Clark, condemned rights have been 'washed away by the the Government's push for 'mutual- 20 EU RE KA STR EET NOVEM BER- DECEMBER 2005 obligation' programs, has continued the posits that Aboriginals must simply politics of crisis and mutual obligation trend of focusing on procedural rather forget about culture and identity, which in indigenous affairs is at the root of the than substantive equality. Notably, while are irrelevant in the modern globalised national campaigns of criticism against claiming that mutual-obligation agree world, and become individual market indigenous leaders such as Galarrwuy ments do not require indigenous Austral driven consumers and entrepreneurs, Yunupingu and Geoff Clark, the confu ians to fulfil any greater obligations to like all other sensible people'. The sions and contradictions of this political enjoy citizenship rights than other Aus Minister's talk of a 'new way of doing discourse do provide a source of hope. tralians, the Government's current policy business' with indigenous communities The way remains open for all concerned obsession has seen the language of crisis certainly supports this observation. and active citizens to highlight that it is deployed in order to justify withholding While the political and legal system illogical to talk of indigenous obligations basic infrastructure features from remote in Australia continues to inadequately to community without giving effect to communities until specified obliga recognise substantive indigenous rights, substantive collective rights that, as yet, tions have been fulfilled. Communities, such as the right to an elected repre are only meaningfully acknowledged by for example, have had to organise child sentative voice, the Government has the body of international law. Whether hygiene initiatives before being rewarded combined the rhetoric of mutual obli the recognition of such collective rights with petrol hawsers that other Australian gation and crisis to justify current pol in Australia will entail the development communities take for granted. icy stances in indigenous affairs. The of a more substantial and useful content While the language of mutual obliga blending of mutual obligation policies to native title is one of the many issues tion suggests that indigenous Australians with a broader community and public that should be placed in the hands of are merely having their welfare benefits policy awareness that indigenous com indigenous communities. • made conditional like any other Austral munities face significant challenges ian welfare recipient, the reality that the has enabled the Government to justify Andrew Thackrah is a fourth-year law delivery of basic services to indigenous the winding back of the rights of indig student at the University of Western Aus Australians is being micro-managed by the enous Australians. The drastic step has tralia and an employee of Yamatji Marlpa Government has been covered up by the been taken of abolishing directly elected Barna Baba Maaja Aboriginal Corpora political fog of crisis. Minister Vanstone, indigenous representative bodies and tion, a native title representative body for example, has spoken of the 'quiet revo making the enjoyment of basic aspects with coverage over the Murchison, Gas lution in indigenous affairs', boasted that of life (such as access to a community coyne and Pilbara regions of WA. The the targeted number of shared responsi pool) conditional upon the fulfilment of views expressed in this article are not bility agreements has been exceeded, and micro-managed obligations. While the necessarily those of his employer. talked of the need for struggling commu nities to get 'more bang for their buck'. While other Australians fulfil punitive welfare obligations at an individual level, indigenous communities, faced with cri sis, are asked to respond with 'quiet revo lution' by formulating collective goals in order to obtain basic services. This policy is imposed upon indigenous communities despite the fact that the pivotal collec tive right of native title is not adequately recognised by the Australian political and legal system. DEPLOYMENT OF THE language of mutual obligation, in particular, highlights the extent to which the Government is content to formulate indigenous policy with both eyes on the aspirational classes of the mortgage belt, where political debate infrequently moves beyond the first principle that all monetary payments should be earned through individual effort. Eminent QC and activist Hal Wootten highlights the nexus between current indigenous policy and the politics of lower-middle class aspirational envy when he notes that 'the developing conservative narrative NOVEMBER- DE CEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 21 Brian F. McCoy Tired of the injustice Fifty years ago Rosa Parks inspired African Americans by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, and her example is still inspiring Aboriginal people today 0 N ' D cccMBU '955, a Thu"day night in Montgom ery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, 42, boarded a bus to head home. It had been a long hard day and she was tired. She and three other African Americans sat in the fifth row, the far thest forward they were allowed. After a few stops the first four rows were fi lled with whites and a white man was still standing. By law in Alabama black and white could not share the sa me row. The other three stood. She refused. The bus driver threatened to call the police. Everyone else stood up except her. 'Go ahead and call them,' she said, 'I'm Rosa Parks, at th e time of th e bus boycott, not moving.' The police came; she was and left, in a 2001 photograph. arrested and later charged. This was not the fi rst time an African American had large assembled church gathering. 'There The Montgom ery bus boycott went for 381 protested against racial discrimination or com es a time,' he reminded them, 'when days and proved a success. In many ways it refused to give up their scat on a public people get tired.' He added: 'We are tired launched a significant but painful chapter bus. But this time was to prove different. of being segregated and humiliated; tired in the journey to achieve American civil Rosa was a committed Christian of being kicked about by the brutal feet of rights. In the following decade there was who belonged to the African Methodist oppression.' The speaker was 26-ycar-old King's letter from Birmingham Jail ('there Episcopal Church. She had worked with Martin Luther King. Ordained a Baptist comes a time when the cup of endurance Dexter Nixon, secretary of the National minister at 19, Nobel Peace Prize recipi runs over'), his 'I have a dream' speech ('In Association for the Advancement of ent at 35, assassinated at 39. spite of the difficulties and frustrations of Colored People, and enjoyed consider Later that night the enormity of the the moment, I still have a dream'), and the able respect in her own community. challenge was revealed. Any protest, the 250,000 peopl e who gathered at the Lincoln When she later said, 'Our mistreat assembled group realised, would need to Memorial to hear him that cl ay in August ment was just not right, and I was tired stand up against the violence that contin 1963. There was the 'bloody Sunday' dem of it,' she gave voice to a feeling many ued to be expressed by white people and onstration in Selma, Alabama, in March others could share. This time, facing a institutions towards them . And, as if that 1965, the hundreds of school children driver who had refused her once before wasn't enough to contend with, the pro and teachers who protested and who were because she would not enter the bus by testers also had to consider possible retal arrested that same year. There were the the rear door, she realised she had taken iation by their own people. In many cases many young university students who an important step. She was found guilty they were the ones most directly affected were spat upon, abused and assaulted as and fi ned $14. by the hardship of a bus boycott. they protested non-v iolently against racial Her charge, violating a city segregation As the imminent danger and risks inequality and injustice. code, provided the opportunity for a legal dawned upon them, King would la tcr recall, Three of those students were Michael test case in the United States Supreme 'The clock on the wall read almost mid Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Court. However, the result of that chal night, but the clock in our souls revealed Chaney. They were only in their early lenge rem ained more than a year away. that it was daybreak.' Whatever his oratory twenties when they entered Mississippi in Her arrest touched and encouraged others that night, and whatever the skills and January 1964 to support the right of peo to act, and within three days a boycott of energy others brought to that meeting, it ple there to register to vote. 'Nowhere in Montgomery buses had been called. On was Rosa Parks who provided the mom ent the world is the idea of white supremacy the evening before the boycott, a you ng others could identify with and support. m ore firmly entrenched, or more cancer Baptist minister stood up and spoke to a She was not the only one who was tired. ous, than in Mississippi,' Schwerner said. 22 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 In June 1964, after returning to visit violence that so often prevented the possi and traditional lands. Not surprisingly, he a community whose church had been bility of achieving that society. once responded with anger to the Prime burned down by the Ku Klux Klan, It was not just the violence of injus Minister's dismissal of the need for an these young men, including one African tice that he and others faced; it was the apology for the Stolen Generations. He American, were stopped by the police temptation to respond in kind. Rosa lives and embodies some of the conse for speeding, jailed for a few hours, and Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. quences, the pain and frustration of that then released. In a plot between the local Facing the violence of others, and allow separation history. deputy sheriff and the Ku Klux Klan the ing those moments of resistance to poten In December 2004, Long walked from three were later ambushed, beaten, shot tially transform the one who continues to Melbourne to Canberra to meet the Prime and buried in an earthen dam. be violent, proved significant examples of Minister, John Howard. 'We need action,' Edgar Ray Killen was involved in the power of non-violence in those long he said. 'We can't wait. People are dying.' years of struggle. Like many others, he was tired of the rhet Some may think it's a oric and frustrated by the denial and the long way from Rosa Parks lack of attention to Aboriginal rights and to Australia, 50 years later. needs. He wanted old, and often forgotten, Maybe not. In late 2004, a issues affecting Aboriginal people to be put group of Aboriginal foot back on the political agenda. He was hop ballers from the Australian ing Australians might unite around health, Football League visited education and employment for Aboriginal Broorne, WesternAustralia. people. He, like Rosa Parks, was tired. He There they listened to Pat wanted to let other Australians know he and Mick Dodson talking was tired. He particularly wanted to let the about the history of strug Prime Minister know. gle for civil and political The winds that blew those hopeful organising the Klan around those deaths. On 22 June 2005, 41 years to the day after the deaths of the rights by Aboriginal people in this coun sails of reconciliation in 2000 have now three young men, a jury found him guilty try. Someone dared to ask: 'How can we become quieter and less powerful. The of manslaughter. After having been make a difference?' Pat told them the story million or so Australians who walked arrested with 19 others in 1964, he was of Rosa Parks. Her single act, her courage for reconciliation that year appear to released in 1967 after a jury was not able to take a stand on injustice, proved the cat have become weary of body and spirit. to come to a verdict. Three young students alyst for an enormous shift in civil rights Yet the social and justice challenges for had been tired of living with an injus consciousness and action. It also encour Aboriginal people remain. Rosa Parks tice that violated the rights of African aged others to act. Michael Long happened sat, Michael Long walked. At the heart of Americans and, like Martin Luther King, to be at that meeting in Broome. their decision to act was their tiredness. had paid the highest price for seeking jus Long was not yet born when Rosa Parks They were tired of what they had expe tice. The American legal sy tem, after 40 refused to give up her seat in 1955. His rienced and what had not been achieved years, might also seem to have tired of own journey from the Northern Territory for their people. Tired of politicians and avoiding the truth and denying to the AFL was as a footballer who played leaders who promised words but offered the racial violence of its past. in two winning Grand Final teams for little action. Not tired enough to give up, Essendon. Then, as now, he has enjoyed but tired enough to draw a line and take M ARTIN LUTHER KIN G1S death 111 the respect of many within the sporting a stand. 1968, and the deaths and sacrifices of and larger community. He is remembered Michael Long hopes to walk again on many others, have served as a reminder for confronting Damian Monkhurst in Sunday, December 4, 50 years after a bus that the costs of achieving civil freedoms 1995 and taking a stand against racial vil ride that led to a nation's discovery of and justice can be very high. As King had ification. Other Aboriginal players would something new and hopeful about itself. once said to Rosa Parks, shortly after the later say that his stand that day made it Who knows what might happen, espe bus protest began: 'If a man doesn't have easier for them to play in the AFL. cially when people are tired? • something that he'll die for, he isn't fit to But like many other Aboriginal peo live.' King gave people reason to hope for a ple Long lives another story. He was born Brian F. McCoy sr is a Fellow at the better society, but he also provided a chal in the north of Australia to parents who Centre for Health and Society, University lenge against the personal and institutional were both taken away from their families of Melbourne. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 23 J 11 Michele M. Gierck Outside the comfort zone As she slowly became a participant in this rural Mexican culture, Cate Kennedy was reminded of what her own culture has forgotten w eN CAn K' NWY 24 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2005 A member of the microcredit co-operative in Queretaro, and village children. Photos: Ca te Ken nedy world and the characters she breathes so the way they continue to celebrate life. who's had the baby?' she asks a co-worker. much life into. But in the first chapter of At a community fi esta, Kennedy asks 'Jose, Maria y Jesus,' she's told. 'Which Sing, and Don't Cry the author writes: a woman why they 'squander' money on community are they from?' Her colleague 'It's hard not to feel a bit like an amateur fireworks, 'instead of putting it aside for stares at her as if she's crazy. 'From Bethle anthropologist, observing these vast cul next year's crop, or saving it for em ergen hem, of course!' tural eccentricities.' cies?' While Kennedy admits how difficult Yet it is her observations, her reflec 'Well, just for the beauty of it.' returning to Australia has been, she also tions on Mexican culture and her com 'But it's all over in five minutes,' stresses that the whole Mexican sojourn parisons with Australian culture, her dry Kennedy says, 'all gone.' and the time after it back in Australia humour, her poetic and at times earthy 'Yes,' the woman replies, 'but you're opened up a precious space-for reflec Australian expression that m ake Sing, here, aren't you?' tion, for imagining, for writing. and Don't Cry such a refreshing read. 'These people survive on so little, and It certainly has provided fertile ground At one point she refers to an Oxfam yet they create a whole life, a whole world, for her literary creativity, and when I ask study in which people from URAC micro with it.' And this is what causes Kennedy why, Kennedy responds: 'I think to be a credit project were asked to rate them to refl ect on the currency of her culture, writer or any kind of artist, you need to be selves in a wealth-ranking exercise. one in which economics and profit have a outside your comfort zone, to see things The context is rural Mexico, only a higher priority than community, partici with fresh eyes. And most of us are much few years after the introduction of the pation and relationships. too comfortable to do this voluntarily. North American Free Trade Agreement The scenes and the whole way of life People often tell m e they started to write (NAFTA), and in spite of all the promises, described in Sing, and Don't Cry-the after a crisis in their life ... They had to poverty for the majority of campesinos has town square, tortillas, conflict, commu write to make sense of it. I'd never felt this increased. On the questionnaire URAC nity meetings, dancing, cactus, celebra before. But after Mexico ... I had so much I respondents invented three categories tions and fiestas, stray dogs, the children, wanted to say, so much I wanted to share, in which they identified their financial as well as the complexity of social and no audience with whom to share it.' insecurity, and placed themselves in one economic woes- bring Mexico richly to When Barry Scott-of Transit Lounge of them: those who've got it, the ground life on the page, particularly as the author Publishing, a small independent publisher down and the buggered. moves from outsider to participant. specialising in 'creative works that give Kennedy writes: Perhaps it is because Kennedy so voice to Australian connections to the admires this vibrant 'developing world' wider world'-asked if Kennedy had any There's a few families around who've 'got culture, one that reminds her 'of what our thing to suit, she responded positively. it'-usually those who have relatives in the culture had but has forgotten', that return Scott said that what drew him to States sending them money. If yo u've 'got it' ing home to Australia has, at times, been Kennedy's work was the way she writes you're not exactl y sipping cocktails by the such hard work. so beautifully with respect, honesty, and pool, of course. It mea ns you have a stove Kennedy has so m any stories to tell, humour; that this book engages with the yo u run on gas, a house with a few rooms, and such a hearty laugh to accompany the wider world, and challenges our priorities. and indoor plumbing. There's an OK ratio telling, that you suspect the book could Sing, and Don't Cry is a book with in yo ur family of workers to dependents. have been twice the size. spine, a delightful read that will leave you Here's a story that isn't in the book. with som ething to think about. • Most people, to use the blunt but unsen It's December. Kennedy has been working timental terms of the respondents, are six months in Mexico. She's told, in such Sing, and Don't Cry: A Mexican Jour ground down and buggered. rapid-fire language that she grasps only a nal, Cate Kennedy. Transit Lounge, 2005. You get the picture-vividly. But this couple of key words, to make an anuncio ISBN Q 975 02281 4, RRP $29.95. is only part of the story. It is the resilience de nacimiento. She figures that's a birth of the people that inspires Kennedy, and announcement to be hung in the office. 'But Michele M. Gierck is a freelance writer. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 25 Gi ll ian Bouras The dance goes on Forty years after she first saw the film Zorba the Greek, an Australian in Greece takes a second look and finds herself deeply shocked E.n Y 2(, CUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 Mikis, and built on a grand scale, as so anyone viewing the Zorba film in maturity Zorba announces that life is trouble; only many Cretans are. Either a statue or would be bound to agree. Crete's form 'is death is not. A man needs a little mad a god. Looking at that shaggy leonine austere. Furrowed by struggles and pain.' ness; else, how is he ever going to break head, I for one felt that he could easily Now the quite terrifying struggles and the thread that binds him, and be free! have flown in from Olympus pain are what I take from the film, which And he asks what Isaac Bashevis Singer just for the occasion. could only have been shot in black and called 'the eternal questions'. Why must white: God forbid any attempt at a remake we suffer! Why must we die! And the IN1980 THERE WERE NO such things of any sort; colour would be unthinkable. viewer can almost feel the constriction of as video shops in nearby Kalamata; now Forty years on I know that the crop Alan Bates's throat as he replies, I don't there are several. And so it came to pass area of Crete is a mere three-eighths know. Inevitably, Zorba cannot let this that I recently watched the Zorba film of its total area, and I have learned that highly unsatisfactory answer pass. again. This time I was not bowled over, there is nothing at all romantic or enno What use are all your damned books at lea t not in the same way; instead, I bling about poverty: in the film the vil then, if they don't tell you this! What do was deeply shocked. There were all sorts lage simpleton is the only person to keen they tell you! All Alan Bates can say is, of reasons for my shock, not the least of over the body of the widow (Irene Pappas), They tell me of the agony of men who which was the sobering reminder of the a woman who was tender, generous and cannot answer your questions. protected, heedless girl I had been way alone, and who was killed for her pride, Despite the harshness, suffering and back then, at the time of my first viewing. for her rejection of an importunate local savagery, there is still always the danc But over my long Greek years, of course, suitor who eventually suicided, and for ing, the method by which Zorba comes to I had been forced to accept that the world choosing Alan Bates instead. After her terms with both death and life. To a Greek, I had once found so hard to believe in had murder outside the church, the rest of the dancing is both catharsis and celebration. actually existed. village turned away in a kind of strategic Each part of Greece has its own tradi Although Kazantzakis's harsh Crete is indifference, the indifference of those tional dances; here in the Peloponnese, a world or even a galaxy away from the who have obeyed the implacable rules men dance a slow solo zembeil NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREK A STREET 27 ' ( . l' l'lll Clare O'Neil A history that gives hope Under different leadership, in different times, changes in attitudes towards asylum seekers have been profound and swift INTm LA 28 CU RFKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECE MBER 2005 • the success of our population policy that no labour shortages, a different defence complex. Post-war refugee migration was failure will spell national disaster.' strategy and a bigger population. It was the a tool for bringing much-needed labour The manner in which the DPs were nation's first test after the White Australia to Australia. settled proved important. Assimilation years, and it passed. Today, we don't have full employ was the goal and the program was pro Many Australians felt trepidation ment or labour shortages. The jobs in moted on the basis that, in a short time, towards these boat people. But with which new migrants might have tradi the New Australians would be the same strong leadership and a history of provid tionally worked are the very jobs that as everyone else. The Department of ing a home for refugees, most Vietnamese are disappearing. The public is being Immigration developed services to assist refugees were allowed to stay and are asked to support a program that is truly in settlement and citizen hip. English now an integral part of the Aus- humanitarian. classes and welfare support were provided tralian community. The history is, however, optimistic. In to migrants. Regular newsletters support recognising the challenges, we acknowl ing the New Australians were funded, s0 WHAT C AN WE LEARN FROM this edge that public opinion in support of along with ethnic tolerance programs. history? The post-war migration program, asylum seekers since Tampa has been Good Neighbour Councils were estab in addition to showing us that dramatic gained under difficult circumstances. lished, which brought together churches change in public opinion about refugees Any such gains illustrate the strong and voluntary organisations to assist is possible in a short period of time, also potential for openness and compassion migrants in understanding Australian demonstrates the challenges we face in under different circumstances. Because life-from essentials such as ban king the current debate. under different leadership, in differ and health care to helping find child care, Support of the government was crucial. ent times, changes in attitudes towards integration into the local com- Contrast the historic campaign to assist asylum seekers have been profound and munity and friendship. refugee settlement with the actions of the swift. This is reason for hope. • Howard Government, which has incited D ESPITE THE COMMON sense of the fear by lying about 'children overboard', Clare O'Neil is a councillor in the City of program and the almost universal view which places proven refugees on tempo Greater Dandenong, which settles more that the population should be much bigger, rary visas to prevent full participation in refugees than any other municipality in despite bipartisan support, government pro the Australian community, which leaves Victoria. She is also a history student at grams and a belief that the migrants would people in detention indefinitely, which Monash University. assimilate, there was still significant rac detains babies and small chil- ism against the New Australians. dren and runs election cam But could we really have expected more? paigns on the theme of 'we'll Until the migration program began in ear decide who comes into our nest, Australia was one of the least diverse, country and the circumstances most monocultural countries in the world. in which they come'. While the As is well documented, Australia had prided Government encourages and itself and bu ilt its national identity on the validates fear and uncertainty notion of a Wh ite Australia. While most of towards asylum seekers, any the DPs were fair-skinned, they were not shift in favour of this cause racially Anglo-Saxon and their migration represents the overcoming of thus ran counter to that policy. a challenge not faced before in Despite the incredible change that the the history of refugee migra immigration program brought, there were tion in Australia. no insurrections, no massive protests, no Political bipartisanship has rise of powerful, anti-immigration politi been a strong feature of the cal parties. On the whole, the fact that the refugee debate. Both the post mass migration program was broadly sup WWII and Vietnamese refugee ported is something we can be proud of. migration programs had broad Doubtless, post-WWII refugee support from the oppositions migration laid the groundwork for of the day. Malcolm Fraser Australia's acceptance of large numbers has noted that, had parties of Vietnamese refugees after the unifi tried to 'make politics' over cation of Vietnam. The first boatload of Vietnamese refugee migra Indo-Chinese refugees arrived in 1976 tion, it probably would not and they continued in a steady flow, have been supported by the Obtain your own corflute sign by reaching a zenith in late 1977 when boats Australian public. arrived almost daily. A further challenge is that calling freecall: 18oo 025 101 In contrast to the post-WWII cam the pragmatic arguments for email [email protected] paign, this was a refugee program with accepting today's refugees, www.ncca.org.au genuine humanitarian aims. Australia had as for the Vietnamese, are NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EURE KA STREE T 29 Bruce Duncan The voice of the Vatican T"VAn CAN eCAYS' !ceding mk The Compendium does not seek to been slow to depict himself in a religious in global debates about violence and war, bind Catholics in conscience to accept its light, as leading a new crusade in defence economic developm ent for poorer coun views as if they were doctrinal statem ents of Christian va lues and civilisation tries, and the distribution of resources. To central to faith. Although the Church against Islamic terrorists. This attempt to m ake its views better known, in 2004 the affirms strongly its moral principles, co-opt religious language and symbols is Vatican published a compilation of Church judgments about social, economic and not ju st a cynical m anipulation of moral statem ents, m any of which oppose key political matters of thei r nature are less tradition s, but has very worrying irnplica policies of the Bush administration, espe definitive. Such judgments do not depend tions if allowed to pass unchallenged. cially on the war in Iraq, the role of social solely on the authority of the Church, but With the invasion of Iraq clearl y in justice, and the need fo r greater equity in more on the force of the arguments them mind, the Compendium states that accord the world economy. selves in changing circumstances. Hence ing to the UN Charter, war is legitim ate The Compendium of there may be room for only in self-defence or when authorised by the Social Doctrine of debate or changes of the Security Council to maintain peace. the Church cannot be position. 'Therefore, engagin g in a preventive war conveniently dismissed However, the Church w ithout clear proof that an attack is immi as the work of trendy takes very seriously nent cannot fail to raise serious moral and lefties in the Church. It Christ's words to feed juridical questions.' It warns against allow is the most considered the hungry, care for the ing m ilitary might to determine right, and comprehensive pub sick, the homeless and declaring that 'international law must lication on such a range people in distress, and so ensure that the law of the more of issues ever issued considers concern about powerful does not prevail'. on the authority of a war, poverty, hunger and pope. Pope John Paul II injustice as part of its I N CONTRAST WITH EARLIER traditions instructed the Pontifical core business. It engages that considered righting an injustice legit Commission for Justice in efforts to improve the imate grounds for war, the Compendium and Peace to prepare human condition, not calls on the international community to the 525-page document, primarily by invoking 'reject definitively the idea that justice and it was revised care superior insight into can be sought through recourse to war .. . fully by Cardinal Joseph technical matters but by N ot only does the Charter of the United Ratzi nger's Congregation for the Doctrine engaging in earnest conversation about Nations ban recourse to force, but it of the Faith. human needs and encouraging the search rejects even the threat to u e force.' Despite its diplomatic language, this for more adequate solutions. On the morality of war, there is some collection of papal and other church state What then does the Compendium tell unresolved tension in the texts quoted. ments is a very strong criticism of US us about the burning issues of war and On one hand, the Compendium strongly unilateralism and its imperial tenden peacemaking? condemns war: 'It is hardly possible to cies. The Church favo urs international Pope John Paul II and Cardinal imagine that in an atomic era, war could co-operation, and insists repeatedly that Ratzinger vigorously contested the moral be used as an instrument of justice.' War is freedom must be secured on the basis legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq by the a 'scourge' and is never an appropriate way of social justice, equity and respect for United States, Britain and Australia. to resolve problems that arise between human rights. They were not alone, of course. The major nations because it creates new and more Significantly, the Compendium opposes Catholic bishops' conferences around complicated conflicts. 'In the end, war is ethical relativism that reduces moral the world endorsed the Vatican views, ... always a defeat for humanity.' principle to self-interest or the imposition and many leaders of other mainstream The document quotes John Paul II, of force. The Church is renewing its claim churches also challenged whether the war that 'violence is evil' and 'destroys what to be a key custodia n of the just-war was just. it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, tradition, but extends this commentary President Bush relied particularly on the freedom of human beings'. It com into the entire realm of social justice in the the political support of right-wing evan mends 'the witness of unarmed prophets, international economy. gelical C hristians in the US, and has not who arc often the objects of ridicule' 10 EURE KA STRE ET NOVEMBER-DECEM BER 2005 but who renounce violence to safeguard service in principle, or to a particular w ith respect for human rights and for the human rights. war, but adds they 'must be open to principles of a state ruled by law.' 'It is On the other hand, the Compendium accepting alternative form s of service'. essential that the use of force, even when is not pacifist . 'A war of aggression is Further, the Compendium recognises the necessary, be accompanied by a coura intrinsically immoral', and states have the right of resistance to unjust authorities, geous and lucid analysis of the reasons duty of defence, 'even using the force of even to the point of violent resistance in behind terrorist attacks', since terrorists arms'. Quoting the Catechism, it adduces extreme cases, although it prefers passive are more easily recruited when rights the standard 'strict conditions' for licit resistance as being more con have long been tra mpled. u se of force: an aggressor is inflicting formable to moral principle. great and lasting damage; all other means of averting war have proved ineffective; T HE SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ, which there must be serious prospects of suc took a huge death toll on civilians-per cess; and the outcome must not produce haps 500,000 or n1.ore were children an even worse result than not fighting. pose an immense moral question fo r ou r The Compendium Yet, incomprehensibly, the Compendi um Western nations, and possibly amount repeats a phrase from the Catechism that to a great crime against humanity. The decla res it 'a profanation was used by prominent Catholic apolo Vatican repeatedly opposed such draco gists for the invasion of Iraq to argue that nian sanctions, but the Western powers and a blasphemy the moral decision fo r war belonged to today wish the whole issue to disappear. governments: 'The evaluation of these In contrast to the intense scrutiny over to declare oneself conditions fo r moral legitimacy belongs the UN administration of the sanctions na m e~ to the prudential judgment of those who regime, there has been almost total a terrorist in Cod's have responsibility for the common good.' silence in our media about the morality of and spurns the idea that These apologists used this sentence to the sanctions themselves and responsibil claim that decisions of government over ity for the catastrophic death toll. those who die ruled the moral views of the churches The Compendium declares that sanc against the legitimacy of the invasion. As tions must 'never be used as a means for in terrorist attacks Cardinal Ratzinger later indicated, the the direct punishment of an entire popu misleading sentence should be withdrawn lation: it is not licit that entire popula are martyrs from the Cat echism . tions, and above all their most vulnerable The Compendi um recognises that members, be m ade to suffer because of defence forces 'make an authentic con such sanctions ... An economic embargo tribution to peace', and especially those must be of limited duration and ca nnot serving on humanitarian or peace-keeping be justified when the resulting eff ects are m issions promoted by the United Nations. indiscriminate'. The document also quotes Pope John This duty of humanitarian intervention Terrorism too is to be condemned Paul II as saying that nothing can justify even overrides the principle of national as 'one of the m ost brutal forms of vio torture. Far from simply endorsing a US-led sovereignty. To enforce the provisions lence', sowing 'hatred, death, and an war against terrorism, the Compendium of international law and punish human urge fo r revenge and reprisal.' But the puts the issues of war and violence in the rights abuses, the Church strongly sup Com pendi um insists that the causes of context of economic justice, social equity ports the International Criminal Court. terrorism must not be overlooked. 'The and international development, including The Church also calls for a 'gen fight against terrorism presupposes the the plight of the poorest countries strug eral, balanced and controlled disarma moral duty to help create those condi gling u nder impossible debts. ment' and banning all weapons of mass tion s that will prevent it from arising or Pope John Paul II stated on World Day destruction, including ending nuclear developing.' of Peace, 2000: 'At the beginning of the testing. The document supports the The Compendium declares it 'a profa New Millennium, the poverty of billions ban on child soldiers and anti-personnel nation and a blasphemy to declare oneself of m en and women is "the one issue that mines, and urges stricter controls over a terrorist in God's name', and spurns most challenges ou r human and Christian the production and sale of sm all arms the idea that those who die in terrorist consciences'". Indeed, 'another name for and light weapons. attacks are m artyrs. 'No religion m ay tol peace is development', as Pope Benedict In addition, 'Every member of the erate terrorism and much less preach it. XVI has since indicated with his support armed forces is morally obliged to resist Rather, religions must work together to for the United Nations and its Millennium orders that call for perpetuating crimes remove the causes of terrorism and pro D evelopment Goals. • against the law of nations and the uni mote fr iendship among peoples'. versal principles of this law.' Nor can One cannot help lamenting the fa il Bruce Duncan CSsR co-ordi nates violations of human rights be justified ures of the US government and military the program in social justice studies at by claiming obedience to superior orders. to live up to their fi nest ideals as the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne The document also supports the right Compendium continues: 'The struggle and is a consultant with Catholic of conscientiou s obj ectors to military aga inst terrorists must be carried out Services Victoria. NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 31 inclu" r1<~l rclatl Scrapping unfair dismissal laws will leave most Austral ian workers vulnerable. The effect on society could be profound. S OON MHR THe LAST fedeml election" b'nne< Where the employer can demonstrate there has been was draped, briefly, from Sydney Harbour Bridge. 'serious misconduct' (such as theft, fraud, assault, or It proclaimed: 'Australians have voted to live in an being intoxicated at work), there is no need to show economy, not in a society.' Within days, the Howard that the employee has been warned or counselled; Government announced it would introduce indus such conduct, if established, warrants summary dis trial relations changes in Parliament once it had missal. Section 170 CA (2) of the Act provides the obtained the majority in the Senate. One of these principal object is 'to ensure that, in consideration of changes would be to exempt from unfair dismissal an application in respect of termination of employ laws companies with fewer than 20 employees, a ment, a "fair go all round" is accorded to both the number that was later extended to 100. It is just one of employer and employee concerned'. many changes the Government intends to make, but The Government says one reason for changing the detail of the new legislation is yet to be seen. the system is the cost. Prime Minister John Howard The Government says removing unfair dis and the Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin missal laws will lead to greater workplace flexibil Andrews, say they have received anecdotal evidence ity, and has won praise for its plans from the Inter from employers complaining about the expense of national Monetary Fund. Of course, the downside having to defend against spurious unfair dismissal of such flexibility is that it will remove protection claims that proceed to arbitration. It should be against unfair dismissal for up to 95 per cent of Aus noted that the number of unfair dismissal applica tralian employees. Although the Government's plans tions filed with the commission dropped from 8109 directly affect only those employees covered by fed in 2000-01 to 7044 in 2003-04. In spite of these fig eral legislation, it is to be assumed the new laws will ures, the Government argues businesses should override state legislation. not have to bear the economic costs involved in In the main, the existing system provides a rel defending against unfair dismissal claims at all, atively speedy, cost-effective and simple process for so the laws should be scrapped. It is clear the Gov resolving disputes between employers and employ ernment has listened closely to the concerns and ees. Those employees covered by the federal Work opinions of employers and business groups; it is place Relations Act 1996 come under the jurisdiction also apparent they have not listened to, nor taken of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. account of, the concerns and opinions of the vast Employees not covered by federal legislation are cov majority of Australian workers whose legal ered by state legislation, and each state has its own n rights will be diminished by the changes. Industrial Relations Commission. Once a claim for unfair dismissal has been lodged in the commission, r ROPON ENTS OF THE PROPOSED industrial rela the matter is listed for a conciliation conference that tions changes will no doubt insist that employees explores whether it can be resolved by negotiation. will still have rights, both at common law and under If not, the applicant can proceed to arbitration. The state and federal anti-discrimination laws, to chal commission's 2003-04 annual report says 75 per cent lenge their termination in circumstances where they of cases are resolved at the conciliation stage. Of the allege the termination was unlawful, discrimina remaining cases, 16 per cent are settled post-concili tory, and/or they were not provided with reasonable ation, six per cent are abandoned and just three per notice. Scrapping unfair dismissal laws is certain to cent actually proceed to arbitration. lead to an increase in litigation under the state and In a nutshell, most unfair dismissal cases con federal anti-discrimination laws and common law, cern two main questions: whether the employer has a but the scope of protection afforded to all employees valid reason for terminating the employee's employ under the current laws will be significantly reduced. ment; and whether the employee was accorded pro Not all employees who have been unfairly dismis ed cedural fairness in all the circumstances of the case. under existing arrangements can bring proceedings 12 EU REKA STRE ET NOVEMBER- D ECEMBER 2005 under common law, or state or federal anti-discrimi that under the new 'flexibility', being repeatedly nation laws. hired and laid off makes it extremely difficult for By way of example, to proceed with a common them to obtain the necessary finance to buy a house. law claim for reasonable notice an employee will That would widen the divide in our society between have to show the notice provided on termination the relatively well off and the marginalised. The was not reasonable in all the circumstances, taking impact this will have on social cohesion is difficult into account such factors as the length of employ to predict but one would imagine it could only make ment, seniority or pay level. Employees claiming dis things worse. crimination will have to demonstrate they are being The costs of the Howard Government's new leg sacked because of their age, impairment, parental sta islation to scrap unfair dismissal laws will take some tus or status as a carer. It will be much harder for the time to become apparent. As the current Act says, its majority of Australian workers to seek legal redress. principal object is to ensure that all parties, employ I would also argue that the litigation process through ers and employees, are given 'a fair go all round'. The the respective courts and tribunals will be far more new laws will extinguish the fair go for employees time-consuming, costly and protracted. seeking legal redress. Where this leads our society, Howard insists that ending unfair dismissal will no one can say. not cause 'the skies to fall in' or 'the walls to come One can say, however, given the way successive crashing down'; that it will have a fairly minimal Australian governments have consistently denied effect on ordinary Australian workers, but will bene outsiders such as asylum seekers and refugees a 'fair fit Australian employers and employees by promoting go all round', it was only a matter of time before the greater workplace flexibility and employment oppor Howard Government decided it could treat insiders tunities. Whether that actually happens is yet to be the same way. • seen. What is clear is that the changes will remove a central plank of protection for ordinary Nicholas Dunstan is a lawyer specialising in employ Australian workers. For them workplace ment law at Galbally & O'Bryan in Melbourne. He flexibility will mean job insecurity. worked as a legal officer for the Jesuit Refugee Serv ice in Sydney (1992), Bangkok (1997), and Phnom T HE KEY BENEFIT OF the existing laws is that they Penh ( ~2000). protect workers from being dismissed in a 'harsh, unjust or unreasonable' way. Employers who act in this way are held accountable before the law, afford ing workers a modicum of protection from an unscru pulous employer. Simply by their existence, the laws protect the vast majority of employees: employers know that if they act capriciously they could face a claim for unfair dismissal. This gives the vast major d ity of Australian workers much needed protection ReJaxwttll-Go and a certain measure of job security. - and - The clear winners under the Government's pro Minister posed changes will be employers who run businesses to Yourself with fewer than 100 employees, although even they may well find they were better off under the existing laws, which in the main provided a relatively speedy, cost effective and efficient way of resolving claims. The clear losers will be the 95 per cent of Aus tralian workers protected by the existing laws, par ticularly those who will not have any legal avenues SAT Sabbatical Program of redress either at common law or under state or fed • Res t Self-contained, free and fl ex ible modules are eral anti-discrimination laws. In the main they will Time • Be Nu rtu red spec ifica lly designed to as sist individuals be relatively unskilled or low-paid workers who have • Be Free to integ.rate theology, spirituali ty, human to ... devel opm ent and ministry with their limited tenure with their current employer. Unscru • Play pulous employers will be able to hire, for example, li,·ed ex peri ence. • Pray unskilled younger or older workers or recently arrived Four-month and Nine-month prOj:,'l'ams • Share New Id eas refugees, pay them the minimum wage, and get rid of SAT • School of Applied Theology them when they like without providing a reason. Graduate Theological Union Howard says the effect of the new laws will not 2400 Ridge Road • Berkeley C.-\ 94709 be felt immediately. He is probably right. The most 1-800-831-0555.510-652-1651 vulnerable workers may well find that, over time, email satgtu NOVEMBER- DECEM BER 2005 EU REKA STREET 33 hunger:2 Robert Hefner Balancing heart and spleen Crossing the border to better understand 'the other' can help not just them, but us as well O NE m THE nan TH 34 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 wait for its first dew. It will drop like a There is so much in that paragraph, 'We are living in an era in which gem. Catch it with your tongue. When from pathos and tragedy to humour and compassion is no longer a part of the dis you eat the heart of the matter, you'll redemption, that is laid out on a platter course,' Bobis says. 'It's all hard-line for never grow hungry again.' to whet the appetite of the reader for the eign policy in how we treat each other, All of the characters who inhabit details, the recipes, the mix of language impregnable demarcation lines, the bor Remedios Street are suffering from their and food and human nature that make der of the other and us. own hungers. Some of them are drawn up this dish. 'I thought you could talk about very together by their mutual hunger, others Remedios Street is a microcosm of a basic things: food, hunger, mother love. The are torn apart; some survive their hard world in which hunger and want coex enemy feels the same hunger, and maybe if ships, others don't. ist with wealth, in which the promise of we can find a connection, then we can put In the opening paragraph of the novel, the church is never far removed from the ourselves in the shoes of the other.' the adult Nenita is looking back at that threat of the volcano. Though it is about a At heart, says Bobis, Banana Heart summer when she was 12: small street in the Philippines, it is also, Summer is 'a book about forgiveness, a book as Sharan Burrow said, about larger 'com about compassion for the mother, compas When we laid my baby sister in a shoe munities of hunger'. sion for even someone who has hurt you. box, when all the banana hearts in our The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 'In a way it is an act of neighbouring street were stolen, when Tiyo Anding New Orleans has shown us that the bal with the enemy, it's crossing the border. stepped out of a window perhaps to fly, ance between wealth and want, between And in that way you're doing yourself a when I saw guavas peeking from Mana haves and have-nots, can tip precariously, favour because you're balancing your lito's shorts and felt I'd die of shame, when and sometimes catastrophically, in unex heart and spleen.' • Roy Orbison went as crazy as Patsy Cline pected places. and lovers eloped, sparking a scandal so After Katrina, which brought a Third Banana Heart Summer, Merlinda Bobis. fiery that even the volcano erupted and, World flood to the First, it was the compas Murdoch Books Australia/Pier 9, 2005. as a consequence, my siblings tasted their sion of ordinary humans that ultimately ISBN 1 740 45590 8, RRP 29.95. first American corned beef, then Mother surfaced, highlighting the muddy real looked at me again, that was the summer I ity of officialdom's inability to cope with Robert Hefner is the acting editor of ate the heart of the matter. basic human needs in a time of crisis. Eureka Street. Anchor your Faith in Understanding Consider taking one of these courses: >- Bachelor of Theology >- Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Theology (double degree with the University of Melbourne and Monash University) >- Graduate Diplomas in Theology, Counselling, Ministry, Spirituality, Spiritual Direction, Liturgy >- Masters degrees in Divinity, Arts, Theology, Ministry Studies >- Doctorates in Theology, Ministry Studies, Philosophy (03) 9853 3177 admin@mcd. edu .au www.mcd.unimelb.edu.au FEE-HELP available f or all courses Research funding also available NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 35 Jud y Ro wley Standing ovation for the letter M You could say the world's a cradle that rocks either side of the equator, a swing of sound controlled by maternal pushing, a continual cooing. When I was small, the letter 'em' changed profile all the time. M begins with 'e' when your mouth first opens: 'eh-m' and slips to mi, 'm-ee', then Mic-kee. Later I added Mouse. In a word, Mummy, was my first true mouth shape. Simplicity ticks inside the classics of anyone's language, my universe of literacy, an irreversible minefield. An accent brings a word to stumpy knees. Listen! Martyr, many hindsights after, may be confused with Mater, Mater, with matter. This mattered to me because I could not hear. A leaf before dying has weight: it rustles, whirls, frisks, cracks and floats, & lands like a curve, a circle, or the dash, or sometimes a question mark. Words like grab-bag, half caste innovations, engorge the language stream. Add a toM, lip sync the result before or after the fact. Ma or Am. The lists grows with any combination you may ruminate upon. Could that be rum-inate? A question. Does rum rhyme with run or room? Practice perfects, and the text reinforces all stories to the deaf. Believe me! Here, my mea culpa to the world: mou; mai; mao & mea clothed in mouth, maid, maui and moat, mean much more. More is more, not less, when the cohorts are called up. Then, a leaf whispers visibly like a haunt with a secret to tell, secrets even I can hear. In a tiny crevice of perception a mellifluous sound lies trapped, a stealth soul tucked inside my ear. Do not listen to red herrings; they distract. A squad of nineteen consonants shoves terrestrials into flesh suits but words will meander. Mellow, mercury and metric expand and flex. Play detective, as I do, with lips. I want to hear the leaf that floats. Excuse me, would you repeat that last spiky word with the round ending; Hah! microphone. Delete telephone, Cote de Rhone and I'm afraid to be alone. Confusion configures a mastery to unravel. The bone I pick with slippery words concerns me only. Tussling for clarity means everything to Me. M! Let's hear applause for your perfect shape. You, who rise out of mouths and tell yourself to Me. Then, only then, are you mine alone. l6 EUREKA STREET OVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 hoh d,1 " Martin Elliott Sundays in Stornoway Locals might find it boring, but this visitor to the Outer Hebrides found more than enough to make the sabbath special L ,LANDLADY AT MY B&B h•d gwen ot th;, • nd I w"n't 'm' how to D'tenU· me the low-down on everything I shouldn't tiously go for a walk anyway. It would be do. Quite a list, including some things I'd some hours before food became available have thought were necessary to life. A pub so I thought I might get in my hire car and that would open mid-afternoon for 'lunch' find some 'rambling' territory. was a recent innovation. Otherwise no Roads on the Isle of Lewis are generally shopping, no port, no music, no work not one-and-a-bit lanes wide. Pile-ups are pre- of 'necessity and mercy', no being outdoors vented by 'passing places'. I followed the for no good reason. No canoodling either. custom of waving when someone pulled This was Stornoway, soul of the Outer into one to let me through. You can tell Hebrides, and Sundays were not to be how tired a person is by the extent of their trifled with. wave. A driver who has come up the long Saturday night had not been wild, but ribbon road from South Uist will barely a few rowdy drunks had milled around raise the pinkie. I'd learned to appreciate the town's latest-opening bar. In contrast, this roadway connection though today everyone I met the next morning was well there were only a few cars ferrying pea- dressed and carrying a Bible. They smiled ple home from church. The traditionalism at each other and at me. I made my way to of the Outer Hebrides is sometimes ridi- stopped going to church years ago. One the local Free Church, as recommended by culed on the Scottish mainland but at least neighbour continued to give him a hard my landlady. I was half-expecting a tirade on Sundays Hebrideans are years ahead time about that. on social issues. But although the tone in car-pooling. Most were packed to the We drove to some standing stone , pick of the sermon was admonishing, and we roof and I enjoyed the communal ing up along the way two of his friends, learned that 'even the smallest sin is worth A sense this gave to the day. who were also bored. They confessed that a crucifixion', the minister was calm and they had been walking along the road in poetic. His words drew out effortlessly in NOTHER FEATURE OF island life is the the hope of meeting someone. The farmer the respectful silence, filling a plain but almost unnerving im.print of early humans. admitted he had been standing outside his elegant wooden nave. I'd spent much time searching for neolithic gate for the same reason. 'Bloody Sundays. Looking about the congregation I was sites, buying books on neolithic sites, and Must be hard for a tourist?' surprised how many were women on their photographing neolithic sites. When I When I returned to Stornoway I felt own. I was later told they were a mix of turned into a gravel lane and stopped, ready the observation of the sabbath had been singles and ladies whose partners were to ramble, I wondered if I'd find more. attraction enough in itself. The next day not churchgoers. I was more surprised at A farmer was standing outside his the shops would be open again, the traffic the number of people asleep, especially on gate. With instant 'I've never lived in would be more than it should be for a town the upper floor, heads on the back of pews, London' friendliness, he asked if he might of 6000 and rowdy drunks would spill from mouths agape. When the minister began accompany me. As it happened, he was the late-opening bar. to sing, in a sonorous vibrato, they awoke an expert on neolithic sites. It felt like My landlady, who had spent the day with a rush. a documentary, where local historians weaving a tapestry, welcomed me into the Immediately after the service the materialise whenever the presenter asks sitting room. How did she feel about Sun socialising began in earnest. The minister a rhetorical question. day? 'Without it, there'd be no difference. laughed and joked with the parishioners He showed me some recently uncovered Every day would be the same.' Did she he'd been admonishing moments earlier. graves on the beach behind his croft. 'No feel that obedience to the rules was wan- The single women mingled. For people one except the archaeologists knows about ing? 'Yes, but it will be a shame if it goes from outlying villages, this was the social them yet,' he confided. I didn't tell him I altogether. You've got six days to do every event of the week. worked for a 24-hour news channel. thing. Surely you can have one day off.' I A fortnight before, a friend in Edin- I asked him what he thought of Sun- thought I could drink to that. • burgh had warned me that even 'going for days. 'Dull. You can't do anything. I a walk' might be frowned on, at least if I used to work in the fields but the neigh- Martin Elliott is a freelance writer living did it 'ostentatiously'. My landlady scoffed bours gave me a hard time about it.' He'd in Melbourne. OVEMBER-DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 37 The nurturing instinct Motherhood: How should we care for our children? Anne Manne. Allen & Unwin, 2005. ISRN 1 741 14379 9, RIU' $29.9S I T'S A RAR< BOOK THAT combines intel and that fathers and grandparents and came to be understood-that it was all lect with sensibility, that acknowledges even child-care workers have significant about individual women 'succeeding'. emotion but doesn't rely on it to make roles to play. She is, in fact, scrupulously Like all social movements, feminism its points. I can't help admiring Anne fair. Though for infants her preference is is a varied proposition, and what we who Manne for treating motherhood as seri for longer parental leave and more gen were involved in setting up a children's ously as it deserves, for delving into every erous 'actively neutral' allowances, she services program wanted was a genuine angle-personal and does support the kind of choice for women and the best of care political-with remarka small-group, parent-con for children. Most of us were mothers ble intelligence and thor trolled care we fought for and the program was developed at a time oughness. Manne writes back in the seventies. when, apart from resistance from fam about the downside of Brave woman that ily and preschool lobbies, such an objec mothering as well as its she is, she even revisits tive was feasible. But times have changed joys, its social dimen the work of John Bowlby, radically since then, government sup sions as well as its most the pioneer of attach port for all kinds of services has con personal, loving aspects. ment theory and once tracted, and children and women have If how we shape soci bete noire to feminists suffered. Nothing could have been fur ety through caring for like myself. Yet to me, ther from our minds than handing over our children is an impor Manne's recounting of taxpayers' money to commercial centres, tant subject, arguably the his story forms one of the which were on the whole lamen most important, it is also book's most interesting table places even then. one of the most conten and illuminating chap tious. Almost everyone's ters. It seems that Bowlby M OTHERHOOD's SPLENDID antepe in favour of motherhood, had been misrepresented nultimate chapter deals with what Manne but who really knows by both sides-those who calls the McDonaldisation of childhood. what it means? Cer in ignorance took hold of It is one of the strongest, most persuasive tainly not those fortunate enough to have his theories to oppose child care and those critiques of the market-driven society I experienced it, for with every new person of us who, knowing they'd been distorted, have read anywhere, but as far as I know entering the world it's a seat-of-the-pants chose to vilify him nonetheless. it hasn't got the airing it should. The cov business all the way. Children arc differ The trouble is that every book has a erage has tended to favour Manne's lyri ent, parents are different, situations vary. context. Indeed, without it the odds arc cal descriptions of motherhood instead. But every parent who reads this book will that it won't get published. The burning Naturally, these are the more printable thank Manne for reminding us that being issue today is that there won't be enough bits, but it's disquieting that this is so, a 'goad-enough' mother is the best kind to people in this country to support our for it has restricted the parameters of the be. We all make mistakes, we all lose it ageing population, a problem that could debate. now and then. What matters is the love be solved a number of ways other than Take the issue of part-time work, we give our children, the love that will encouraging women to reproduce and stay which forms a basis for Manne's propos see them through all the vicissitudes that at home with their children, although this als. There was a huge demand for it in life has in store for them. is what appears to be happening. A related the sixties and seventies as the workforce We might not thank Manne so read concern is the complaint of many older, participation rates of married women ily for reinforcing the view that only a childless women that feminists pressured with children increased. Even those who mother can give this love, or rather, con them to delay bearing children until after disapproved of mothers working tended versely, that without it for lengthy periods their education was finished and their to grudgingly accept it if the work was of the day a child will be at risk. careers were established, and now, having part-time. But part-time employment is I choose my words carefully here. followed this advice, they feel betrayed, exceedingly problematic. The kind of Nowhere in the book docs Manne actually finding they'd left it too late. Though job you might share with someone with say this; in fact, she says the reverse-that I don't think the claim stands up, I can equal qualifications is usually to be found the 'primary carer' need not be a mother, believe that this is the way feminism in white-collar industries or among the !!I EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 200S self-employed. The establishment of pro into stress levels in very young children but because I do. A decade ago I wrote a rata wages and conditions, moreover, has attending child-care centres. The findings book myself to express the love I had for been limited largely to the public sector, of these studies are disturbing, and more a baby and the wonderful life I had when and even there the incidence isn't wide disturbing still is how they've been he was young; how through his compan spread. And because part-time employ rejected out of hand. Yet even here there ionship, as other women have written, ment is often dead-end, even with pro rata are interpretations of the data other than I harnessed my own creativity. It was entitlements in place, back in the seven the one put forward. The aggressiveness a novel, but was based, as novels often ties our preference was for a shorter work and lack of social skills at school linked are, on an incident that happened in real ing week. with early child-care attendance, for life, when my youngest child, the baby Needless to say, we were pushing instance, can be attributed as much to poor I had after I left the Public Service, con against the tide. As a consequence of eco infant-school teaching as it can to early tracted giardia in part-time care. It was nomic rationalism and the anti-human child care, especially when the advanced an awful business, and I learned from the policies that Manne quite rightly deplores, cognitive development reported in these experience that there's a world of differ those in full-time work are working longer kids is taken into account. Often the most ence between the rarefied atmosphere of hours than ever, with the rest condemned obstreperous child, in my experience, is a policymaking and what happens on the to casualisation, to which non-profession child who is bored. ground. Manne is right when she says als particularly are at risk. Yet Manne So while Manne acknowledges that that the love we have for our children is doesn't state just what she means by part high-quality group care should be avail something to be enjoyed and treasured. time work, or allude to the difficulties able to those who need it (and there will But what is equally true is that it's one attached to it. always be those who will), the over thing to have an idea, quite another to This is odd, given Motherhood's whelming thrust of her thesis supports make it work. • scope. Indeed, that scope is one of its other options. Obviously a range of real strengths. Just when you think, ah, options is needed, but in the hard world Sara Dowse is a novelist and essayist. but what about this, a discussion of that of policymaking it's too often either-or. Under her leadership the first women's very topic will appear. But perhaps it's a The funds directed to one option will be affairs section of the Prime Minister's weakness too. In covering all the angles, siphoned off another, and that is exactly Department, established in 1974, became she's not as rigorous in some places as she what has occurred. the Office of Women's Affairs, now the is in others. The place where she's most These points are raised not because Office of the Status of Women. She lives exacting is in her review of recent studies I don't attach weight to Manne's ideas in Sydney. The Hesburgh Sabbatical and the Institute of Religious Formation offer you quality time and superb tools to refocus and revitalize your ministry. Find renewal at Catholic Theological Union, a premier school of theology in Chicago. CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL UNION I 773.753.5316 I www.ctu.edu/whatwedo/ce.htm NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 39 books:2 Herman Roborgh A short history of Islam Islam: The Straight Path (Revised Third Edition), John L. Esposito. Oxford University Press, 2005. r~BN o 195 r!h66 9, RRP $65 T E TERROR"T ATTAC" m ll Sep to authenticate the teachings or beliefs essentially a history of Islam up to the tember 2001 led to an upheaval in the of Islam. Instead, Islam is a dynamic events of 9/ll. West's relations with the Muslim world. project within history, a project that is The book describes the reforms that Many came to interpret these events as not yet finished. Esposito's title, Islam: have taken place in the Muslim world signs of a clash between Islam and West The Straight Path, describes Islam in the during the 19th and 20t h centuries in ern civilisation. Explosive headlines led past rather than as an evolving m ove response to Western colonialism and m any to understand Islam as the cause m ent in the present. His book gives imperialism. Since the author himself of global terrorism. John Esposito's book the impression that Islam is simply admits in his preface to the revised third seeks to put these fears to rest by m aking there waiting to be understood edition, however, that the events of 9/ll a clear distinction between mainstream as a phenomenon in history. 'proved a tragic turning point and setback Islam and the kind of Islam espoused by that has challenged and in many cases extremists. But this is to over-simplify the E xCEPT TO orscuss several issues rel undermined the progress of the recent issues. His claim that such extremists can evant to violence and terrorism briefly past', it would have been more helpful if he be found in every religion tends to dismiss in the epilogue, Esposito's book remains had explained how these modern events these attacks as the actions of a fanatical what its earlier editions were, namely (in have undermined what he described as minority that does not need to be taken the author's own words), 'essential cover 'progress in the Muslim world'. Such an very seriously. Esposito's book disregards age of the origins, spread, and developm ent analysis would have helped the reader Muslim voices calling for a critical inves of Islam and its roles in Muslim societies' to m ake more sense of these events and tiga tion into the causes of terrorism and As such, it is a readable and useful intro to place them in the broader perspec into the American response. It also disre duction to Islam. But the preface prom tive of Islamic history. Even though con gards the serious questions non-Muslims ises the reader that it will address 'the key temporary Muslim thinkers are, in fact, are asking about the identity and purpose issues necessary to understand the influ reflecting on these issues, Esposito has of Islam in the modern world. ence of Osama bin Laden and the contin not included their investigations in his Anyone with some personal experi ued growth of extremism, questions about revised edition. ence of the Muslim the relationship of On the last page of his book, Esposito world would be will Islam to violence and mentions three of the ways in which con ing to admit that the terrorism, the m ean temporary efforts at reform have to face word Islam itself is ing of jihad, the ori opposition from within Muslim society. misleading. For there gins of a global jihad But he fails to take note of the pervasive are as rnany Islams as ideology, the role of Western demonisation of Islam as an there are communi suicide bombing, and additional factor working against change ties of Muslims in the the influence of Saudi and reform within Islam. Anyone aware world. Specific his Arabia's Wahhabi of the frustrations felt by Muslims in the torical, cultural and Islam'. These impor face of Western hegemony will feel disap geographical factors tant issues are treated pointed that the book did not do more to have led each Mus rather too summarily articulate these Muslim sentiments. For lim community to in the epilogue, how the book makes little attempt to give a give its own peculiar ever, and the reader is sympathetic ear to those voices speaking stamp to the move left dissatisfied. Since on behalf of marginalised groups of Mus ment initiated by the Esposito fails to ana lims who are suffering various fo rms of Prophet Muhammad lyse these complex oppression because of Western in the seventh cen issues at any depth, arrogance and greed. t ury. There is no one, he cannot claim that monolithic version of his book deals with T HE BOOK rs WEA KEST in its portrayal Islam, just as there is Islam as a modern of reformist tendencies that have emerged no single authority phenomenon. It is in the Muslim world since 9/ll. Esposito 40 EU REKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 mentions only a few of the most important Esposito's book up to date. Bereft of these without further elaboration. Similarly, reformers in passing, failing to recognise reflections, the book tends to over-sim with regard to the status of non-Muslim several other significant Muslim lead plify Muslim attitudes to change, reduc minorities, he refers to their 'protected ers who have emerged more recently. For ing them to four categories, namely: status', resorting to the standard phrase example, there is no mention in Esposito's 'secularist, conservative, neotraditional used in most introductions to Islam rather bibliography of a remarkable collection ist (or neofundamentalist), and reform than exploring some of the more recent of essays written by a group of progres ist (neomodernist)'. This classification no Muslim views on the issue. Esposito may sive Muslim authors (Progressive Mus longer caters for the diverse approaches to rightly counter by saying that his book lims, on Ju stice, Gender, and Pluralism , reform in Islam that are emerging in the is simply a short history of Islam. I have edited by Omid Safi, Oxford, Oneworld, modern world, especially in hinted at some of the oversimplifications 2004). First published in 2003, these essays response to the events of 9/ 11. and inadequacies of such a short history. were, according to the editor, a response The book remains useful as a balanced to the events of 9/ 11 and would have con I N STEAD OF DELVING into the 1nore recent introduction to the generally accepted tributed to an analysis of the basic issue efforts at reform in Islam, the author tends fundamentals of what is commonly known Esposito himself describes in the preface to repeat summaries of earlier Muslim as Islam. • of his own book (revised two years later, reformers. For example, he sums up a in 2005) as 'a new clash in the 21st cen prevalent attitude that prefers to remain Herman Roborgh ST is engaged at Aligarh tury between Islam and Western civilisa satisfied with past formulations as a 'taqlid Muslim University, India, in research for tion'. Awareness of the thinking of these mentality'. The phrase becomes a repetitive a PhD in Islamic studies on a modern progressive Muslims would have brought cliche when it is used again and again commentary on the Qur'an. NOVEMBER- DEC EMBER 2005 EURE KA STREET 41 books. l Peter Pierce British smiles Queenan Country, joe Queenan. Picador, 2005. ISBN 0 330 43943 X, RRP $30 Still Spitting at Sixty, Roger Law. HarperCollins, 2005. I SBN 0 007 18 166 3, RR!' 49.95 I N A 'LURRY m SHHONCRATULATWN built on the beginning, with his birth in 1941 in the secluded Carnaby Street and the Beatles, Britain christened Fen country of eastern England. Law found his way itself home of the 'Swinging Sixties'. This old civili to Art School in Cambridge at the time of the flam sation became a modish place for sociological study boyant entries into then as well, notably with Anthony Sampson's Anat public life of Peter omy of Britain. There were few dissenting voices in Cook and David Frost. this season of optimism, save the resonant 'non' from By the 1960s he was in the president of France across the Channel. the capital, though of Neither the American journalist and aficionado the contrary opinion of arcane rock groups, Jo e Queenan, nor the cartoon that 'Swinging Lon ist and inventor of the Spitting Image puppets, Roger don, so revered in ret Law, has too solemn an ambition in his account of rospect, was very slow Britain (and in Law's case Australia, where he seems getting into its stride'. to have settled). Queenan Country-an irresistible Employed as a cartoon pun that his surname gifted him, is cumbersomely ist by The Observer, STiLL subtitled A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to Law found plentiful the Mother Country. Long married to an English freelance work as well. SPiTTiNG · wife, Queenan has often been to Britain, but not for Moving to the Sunday decades on his own. Now, indulg Times led him to judge AT SiXTY ing whim and disdaining duties to that its mid-sixties relatives, he charts an eccentric, period 'was the most creative phase private course. in newspapers since the war'. It remained Roger Law's Still Spitting at to mark when the decline began. Sixty is more concerned to chart a journey in time. His subtitle I S I NFORMATIVE and incisive about jour explains: From the '60s to My Six nalism in London at this time, not least of the ties, a Sort of Autobiography. Both contributions of so many expatriate Australians. books are stories of long marriages Eventually he and Peter Fluck (hence Luck and and tolerant spouses. Each is written Flaw) hit on the idea of Spitting Image, which ran with a keen eye for the idiosyncra from 1984-86. The technical difficulties of model sies of British society, but also with a ling are intriguingly described, as are the finan sympathy for how people accommo cial anxieties of the enterprise. Perhaps the series date to, and flourish within, them. went too long. Law concedes that when Thatcher Queenan, for example, confesses and Reagan 'departed high office a bright light of that on first reading Lewis Carroll m otivation went out of our lives'. Spitting Image, he encountered 'a phantasmagoric despite its longevity, never translated as happily to society populated by lunatics', only Australia as some other British comedies, although gradually realising that the author Law faced a worldwide demand for puppets for spin was describing Britain rather than off shows in Russia, Portugal and elsewhere. Wonderland. Law reflects ruefully of The last third of this gen ial m em oir is set in his Spitting Image puppets that he had at least cor Australia, but happy as he pronounces himself nered 'the international m arket in grotesques'. to be, this seems the latest site of Law's restless His book begins in a similar tone, with the ness. Certainly the commitm ent has not sapped reflection that 'Eternal Youth simply buckled under his powers as a draftsman, which Still Spitting at the weight of my expectations'. Soon he is back at Si x ty amply illustrates. It has also summoned the 42 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 book that he had in him, the good-humoured but serious survey of a working life. Setting off on a journey that will take him to Liverpool and a taxi-driver for whom John Lennon may have acted as best man, to Wales for a week, to the castle where Edward II met the red-hot poker, Queenan thinks of his project as 'a cross between a valentine and a writ of execution, an affectionate jeremiad'. Confessing that 'the Brits have always puzzled me', Queenan is in good company. As Barry McKenzie put it more demotically, 'I'll never get to the bottom of the Poms.' For one thing, Britain has 'entirely too much history'- And pseudo-history: Glastonbury teems with 'hippies, warlocks, neo-Druids, and people looking for Merlin so they can buy drugs off him'. Travelling to a place of recent historical impor tance, the home of the Beatles, Queenan promises ' No Mersey'. London is much less manageable, 'a tourist's Golgotha' (better to be spectator than par ticipant), 'intractable, insuperable, inexhaustible'. Queenan visits Madame Tussaud's, which he finds insufficiently absurd, and mentally reviews English literature. Of the modern variety he prefers books where nobody has been to Cambridge. His musical adventures range from a private performance in Oxford of Bach played on Handel's harpsichord, to an Eagles tribute band concert in Stroud. Listing ten, 'make that twenty', things he hates about Britain, Queenan begins with 'the twit', not only invented, 'but reluctantly beatified' in that country. He dispar ages the Pre-Raphaelites-'those self-absorbed pol troons had the nerve to demean the Renaissance' along with bad hair and 'rehearsed civility'. Queenan Country is jovially enraged, delight ing in being presented with so many targets for the author's ebullient scorn. The book is often very funny, but Queenan overstays his welcome. At times, too, the mask slips to reveal genuine con tempt for some of what he observes. In the end, perhaps, this amusing and perceptive work is una voidably captive to Queenan's ambivalence. • Peter Pierce is Professor of Australian literature at James Cook University, Cairns. NOVEMBER- DECEM BER 2005 EU REKA STREET 43 Philip Harve y Who was Harold Holt? The Life and Death of Harold Holt, Tom Frame. Allen & Unwin, 2005. JSB 1 741 14672 0, RRP 535 L"' MOST <>AD>RS, I tumcd ficst to parliamentarian, 30 years, and shifting a llcgiances that the death scenes. The details arc assembled before becoming PM, a remain cause for outrage in workmanlike fashion. Harold Holt record the current member and doubt to this day. spends the weekend before Christmas for Higgins wouldn't equate But another factor has 1967 at his Portsca holiday house. There with 'being there for the to be considered. Why the arc dinners and paperwork. On the long haul'. Liberal Party? Menzies and morning in question the one blemish is a Although he was Men Holt wanted a party that phone argument with Billy McMahon, his zies' favoured protege, Holt was over and against what Treasurer, a figure who only gets murkier was fa r from being Men it was not: not illibera l, with time. (How would a biography of zies' epigonc. They had not socialist, not crusty old McMahon read?) worked together since the Tory. Frame quotes Rohan Around midday Holt is with friends on 1930s and could be seen as Rivett from 1954: 'They rep the back beach when he is inspired to go for co-founders of the Liberal resent the liberal, middle of a swim. Where were the minders? The bod Party, two great survivors. the road section of the party yguards? The common sense? Dame Zara He was an enthusiast, a and in most major matters Holt's first question was whether he was man who took to portfolios of policy arc more broad wearing sa ndshoes or flippers. As it hap with smooth and energetic purpose: Sup minded and progressive than the majority pened, sa ndshoes. The surf wa high, the ply and Development, Trade and Customs, of the benches behind them.' water treacherous, Holt had little control Labour and National Service, Air and Australia was comfortable and relaxed over his movements. It did not take long for Civil Aviation, Treasurer. He was good with a government that was neither radi him to disappear below the surface, never friends (' mates' would be a risky word to cal right-wing nor radical left. The book to re-emerge. use) with many in the union movement, is a goldmine for historians of the par Tom Frame rejects motives like suicide, his motivation being productivity, his foes ties and their changing character. Men and elega ntly scuttles the Chinese subma being the Reds. zies and Holt would find alien the closed rine theories. For him, the prime m inis Frame accentuates his uccesses in debate and amoral actions of the current ter's death is one of accidental drowning, negotiation with all sides of industrial Liberal Government. a com mon mishap at Australian beaches, relations, but is honest about such dis What is also missing is much about and only uncommon here because we are asters as Holt's handling of the waterside Holt's family or personal life. Prurience talking about the prime minister. A very workers' strikes in the 1950s and eco sells, and perhaps Bishop Frame wishes to recent coronial inquiry agrees with Frame. nomic reforms that almost lost them the disappoint the headline editors, but he gives He concludes that if there are other rea 1961 election. Cheery moments inter signs of a private world that wouldn't look sons, we probably will never know them, vene, like his pioneering of decimal cur out of place in Euripides. There are clearly and gives murky explanations too for why rency. The book marks out the chronology personal dramas and secrets in Holt's life the sea does not give up its dead. well, though is remarkably uncritical that help explain why he devoted all his The headlines of that summer left of Holt's politics and unanalyti- time to politics. The inner emotional world Australians with a strange feeling that cal of his psychology. of an extrovert would be the perfect subject still lingers. for the next Holt biography. That, and the Here was a national leader who did not wHEN PUSHED TO AY what Holt peculiar widespread view, well expressed vanish after an election defeat, was not stood for, the words that recur lack real in David Man's Barwicl<, that Holt 'was assassinated or forced to retire; he simply definition: progress, stability, initiative, nice to the point that his essential decency disappeared. Holt's disappearance became values, freedom, co-operation. Indeed, was viewed as weakness'. the identifying moment in national mem they come close to the virtues extolled in 'One of the most likeable of Australian ory, the start of the discussion: who was Holt's guiding creed, Rudyard Kipling's 'If'. Prime Ministers,' said the Sydney Morn Harold Holt? There was never a comprehensive vision of ing Herald obituary. Likeable, nice? T he In an age when politicians have change for Australia; it was always steady final word on an Australian prime min biographies written before they even as she goes. Britain was still an ideal, and ister? Perhaps I've been reading too much become prime minister, what do we make unbounded progress a euphemism for Mark Latham. • of the first life of Holt coming out 38 years unquestioned ca pitalism. His infamous after his death? One of the most surprising faux pas during the Vietnam nightmare, Philip Harvey is a Melbourne poet facts is that he had the longest wait of any 'All the way with LBJ', betrayed the anxious and librarian. 44 EU REK A STREET OVEMBER- D ECEMB ER 2005 books:~ Daniel Herborn Curtin's greatest achievement Curtin's Gift: Reinterpreting Australia's Greatest Prime Minister, John Edwards. Allen and Unwin, 2005. ISBN 1 865 08704 1, RRP $35 MANY, JOHN CURTIN was icled here, though this section is not as Australian way of life quickly, efficiently Australia's greatest prime minister: a hero clear or as convincing as other parts of and without question'. His government who was cheered as he walked through the Edwards's argument. assumed control of income tax fro m the streets of Melbourne and later farewelled The notion of Curtin as reluctant leader states, made key changes to social security, by thousands. In many ways, he makes an is more convincingly overturned here. introduced modern central banking and odd choice of national champion, lacking While Curtin was apparently prepared strengthened Australian involvement in as he did the grandeur of Whitlam, the wit to walk away from politics if he lost his the global economy, participating in talks of Menzies, the fabled common touch of Fremantle seat, he was by no means timid that eventually led to the nation's involve Hawke. But what Curtin lacked in per about the prospects of becoming leader ment in the International Monetary Fund, sonal style he made up for in achieve and pursued the post with vigour. A life the World Bank and the General Agreement ments, the kind of inarguable, towering long convert to the Labor cause, he was a on Tariffs and Trade. It was these develop accomplishments upon which history voracious reader and thought widely and ments, Edwards contends, that constitute books were once based. critically about economic issues. As such, both Curtin's greatest achievement and the He brought Australian troops home he came to the national leadership as the foundations upon which Australian pros in defiance of Churchill and Roosevelt, 'best prepared and trained leader perity would once again flourish. re-aligned Australian allegiances from of his generation'. Edwards, formerly one of Paul Keating's the motherland to the new frontier of the economic advisers, holds a PhD in econom United States and saved Australia from I ADDITION TO THROW I G light on some ics and is now chief economist at HSBC. Japanese invasion. He was the reluctant of the misconceptions about Curtin's prime As such, he brings considerable economic hero, the saintly, self-sacrificing fi gure ministership, the book is valuable in that proficiency to the work, and some will no who safely guided the nation through its it traces Curtin's development as an eco doubt find this aspect of the text dry and darkest, most sleepless night, all the while nomic thinker. Born in 1885, Curtin expe somewhat difficult. However, as a look at battling his own personal demons of alco rienced Depression-era poverty fi rst-hand how economic policy is inextricably linked holism and depression. and it was formative in his to social change, the book is Or so the story goes. Curtin's Gift thinking. Later, he became invaluable. And as a study argues that Curtin was indeed the greatest involved with the Victorian in how Curtin's hard work Australian leader, but that the accomplish Socialist Party, where he in establishing the frame ments normally attributed to him have absorbed the teachings of work for Australia's recov been confused or exaggerated and obscure Tom Mann. Also crucial ery was more significa nt his real legacy. The popular claim that he were his observations of the than his more celebrated rescued the nation from Japanese invasion wide-ranging powers held and dra matic moments, is seen here as an overblown and misleading by the government during it's an incisive look at how one, as is the image of Curtin as some kind World War I. Appointed politicians are perceived of Pacific warlord- he m ainly deferred to editor of the Westralian and remembered. the capable American general Macarthur. aged just 25, he possessed Edwards's work is by Nor was Curtin as opposed to Britain as what Edwards calls an 'easy no means the definitive or legend would have it. It is often forgotten familiarity with concepts exhaustive Curtin biogra that he appointed the Duke of Gloucester and numbers'. phy (David Day's tome still to the position of Governor-General, con During Scullin's ill holds that titleL but rather a trary to Labor policy that an Australian fated leadership, Curtin convincing re-examination should be appointed to the role. distanced himself from the of some of the key stra nds Author John Edwards also argues that prevailing wisdom in the party on how to of his life. We may revere Curtin, Edwards Curtin's intervention in bringing the 6th end the Depression, rejecting the conven argues, but we have got him all wrong. For and 7th divisions home was not as crucial tional analysis, which was to cut wages, someone who got it right so crucially and as popular belief would have it. It was a and supported the Key nesian notion that so often, perhaps the least we can do is commonsense move and a popular one, reducing spending would not end the understand him and his precious gift. • he asserts, rather than an inspired and Depression. When he became leader, he idiosyncratic one. The political machina spoke of the urgent need for 'the reshap Daniel Herborn is a freelance writer based tions leading up to the move are chron- ing, in fact, the revolutionising of the in the Blue Mountains. OVEMBER- DEC EMBER 2005 EUREKA STREET 45 book-;· l Godfrey Moase Personal tragedy, wider injustice Rene Baker: File #28/E.D.P, Rene Powel l & Bernadette Kennedy. Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005. ISBN l 920 73199 7, 1uu• $24.95 Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal History in Western Central Australia 1850-1980, Michael Alexander Smith. Aborigmal H1story Inc, 2005. rsnN 0 958 56378 0, RRP $25 A LL TOO OFTEN OVER the course of Driven by her personal friendship with western Central Australia. While the Australian political history Aboriginal and Powell, Kennedy situates her political anal- Cleland Hills are not physically impos- Torres Straight Islander peoples have been ysis of the removal policy of the Western ing, they were of central importance to stereotyped and dehumanised. 'Aboriginal' Australian government in the context of the Kukatja people and their waterholes identity is often thought of, and depicted as, Powell's life story. This makes Kennedy's also attracted early Europeans. fulfilling a fixed criterion without appre- insights and research all the more powerful On this geographical bedrock Smith ciation for the multitude of tribal differ- and poignant. In other words, Kennedy's builds a picture of wider social, cultural ences, the evolution of culture and religion compassion motivates and sharp- and environmental trends ebbing and over time, and individual personalities. ens her insights. flowing over the Cleland Hills. From ini- Aboriginal people become blank canvases T. tial contact with Europeans, the subse- in the eyes of mainstream society, which HERE ARE Two FUNDAMENTAL ideas quent diaspora of the Kukatja, the passing then overlays its own prejudices and world runningthroughKennedy'sanalysis. First, through of the Pintupi people from their views. However, both Rene Baker: File the Stolen Generations issue requires a exodus of the desert and their subsequent #28/E.D.P and Peopling the Cleland Hills shift in focus away from the rights of the return to the desert. The Cleland Hills in their own way break through this con- victims towards addressing the injustice were in a sense a border between two strictive narrative of indigenous history of the policy itself and the actions carried worlds-the desert and the agricultural, and culture. out to further it. Kennedy's hypothesis is the Aboriginal and the European. Rene Bal 46 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 thshort list Snowy River Story: The Grassroots Campaign Yarra: A Diverting History of Melbourne's to Save a National Icon, Claire Miller. ABC Murky River, Kristin Otto. Text, 2005. ISBN 1 Books, 2005. ISBN 0 733 31533 X, RRP $35 920 88578 1, RRP $32 In its real and mythological forms, the The Yarra has always been, in my mind, a river Snowy River is deeply bound up with the too urbanised to be interesting, at least once it Australian story. It represents the strength leaves its forest and wineries upstream. Kristin and mystique of the Australian bush. It Otto's exploration of the past of the river that brought to bear the engineering and labour 'flows upside down', an ambitious popular his feats of Australians working on the Snowy tory, swept me through the stories of the whole Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. It gave of the length and life of Melbourne's river. us that icon of a fearless and sturdy Aus Otto's slim book recounts the variety of tralian, the Man From Snowy River. Claire Miller offers readers life played out along the river's banks over the centuries, from its another angle of the Snowy: a river deprived of its water flow, and geological formation, and significance for the Wurundjeri people, the locals from Dalgety and Orbost who decided to fight for its to the crime, pollution and development since white settlement. environmental restoration. In the process it dredges up old tales of sex and sport and indus Miller tells the story of those who stoked the fires of the cam try. With her background in fine art, she writes best when she paign, including Craig Ingram's unlikely rise to political promi explores the art which the Yarra has inspired- particularly the nence as campaign figurehead. She recounts the constant struggle work of the Heidelberg painters in the 1880s. to engage state and federal governments and persuade them of the These past 170 years since John Batman's 'treaty' with Wur merits of a guaranteed 28 per cent flow. Her final chapter provides undjeri elders have seen constant efforts to control and straighten the personal perspectives of women and men who have lived on the river-and the cultural chaos and deviance which the Yarra, the Snowy, including an important indigenous perspective. It was and Melbourne, have seen. they who first understood that the Snowy gives life. Yarra is in part a cautionary tale about the ways in which At its core, Miller's book is about the potency of grassroots the authorities have sought to regulate and change a river, and politics. It was because of the energy and stoicism of a few impas the unhappy consequences for the health of the river and its cul sioned people that the campaign to save the Snowy reached the ture. It is also an invitation to a journey through the stories of ears of Spring Street and Canberra. a great waterway. -Emily Millane - Joel Townsend A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong. Text, 2005. ISBN 1 920 88587 0, RRP $22 A Many 'enlightened and rational' people today Trinity College SHORT believe we no longer need myths. Karen Arm THE UNIVERSITY Of MELBOURNE HISTORY strong argues that they're wrong: humans OF are myth-making creatures, and myths are 'designed to help us cope with the problem Easy answers not enough? MYTY atic human predicament'. They are not sim Why not explore faith and equ ip ply fairy tales or ancient explanations for yourself for ministry with Trinity College KAREN ARMSTRONG natural phenomena, but emotional and spir- Theological School in 2006? itual necessities for finding meaning in our On Campus Courses lives and in the world around us. • Ministry Formation Prograrn for those Her book traces the development of mythology and its ties to ex ploring ordained or lay ministry human history: paleolithic hunters and shamans gave way to neo • Undergraduate and graduate degrees lithic farmers and artisans; ancient world civilisations eventually Online Courses • Diploma in Ministry led to the Western transformation of the last few centuries. It also • Graduate Diploma in Theo logy analyses the relationships between some of our most fundamen • M aster of Divinity tal myths, from Babylonian culture through Judaism, Christian Parish-based Courses ity and Islam, and on to modern myth creators such as Eliot, Joyce • Certifica te in Th eology and Ministry and Conrad. • Credo Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who writes with author Trinity College Th eological School is part of ity, although the brief examples in this slender volume may leave th e United Fac ulty of Th eology, and teac hes for a novice wanting something more comprehensive. Never mind awards of th e Melbourne College of Divinity. the 'short history'; what's more intriguing are her musings on the For course, unit and enrolment deta ils contact: nature and meaning of myths, and how they allow us to find the Dr Da vid O 'Brien, Registrar Tel: 03 9348 7478 divine aspects in our mortal selves. She concludes that we need Email: [email protected] u a return to myths to bring 'fresh insight to our lost and damaged world'. In today's times, even the rational and enlightened among www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/theology us would have to agree. Shaping women and men in Christian mission and ministry - Ali Lerner NOVEM BER- DECEM BER 2005 EUREKA STR EET 47 knows them . The Alliance wants her back Bumbling, quixotic inventor Wallace and before she comes to her senses. Squeeze his taciturn genius-dog companion Gromit flash 1n the pan Mal and his crew between the Alliance come alive in the appea ling style with and the Reavers (think cannibalistic zorn which British-based Aardm an fi rst caught bie Hell's Angels) and the fun begins. major international attention, in their Whedon does a surprisingly good job classic The Wrong Trou sers. Sets, models of compacting the series-long story arcs, and characters are handcrafted, giving multifaceted ensemble performances and a more solid feel to the action-utterly shifting character perspectives of Firefly refreshing when compared with the high into a two-hour feature without losing too definition machined graphics in Shrel 48 EU REKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 between aristocratic hunter Lord Victor detail that makes you weep, grimace Quartermaine (spoken with vicious pomp and take joy. In performance, writing Saved by the wit by an almost unrecognisable RalphFiennes) and direction, July has conjured a world and the well-meaning, humble Wallace for that is painfully true, visually acute and The Magician, dir. Scott Ryan. Seen Man the affections of Lady Totty. The stak s are delightfully absurd. Any seasoned direc Bites Dog? If the answer is yes, then you've raised when Wallace is called to Tottington tor would be praised for achieving that seen the best parts of The Magician. If the Hall to clear the grounds of bunny warrens combination, but for a first-timer it is answer is no, then I suggest you get it out before the big day. nothing short of breathtaking. on DVD and pop some corn in the comfort 'Nothing wrong with a little mind Me and You and Everyone We Know of your own home. That said, I'm inclined alteration, eh Gromit?' In an attempt to is a story about love, the art of shoe to like the film, but to say it's derivative solve the rabbit problem in the village once would be an understatement. and for all, Wallace attempts an experi Ray (Scott Ryan) is a hit man. Max ment in brainwashing rabbits en masse (Massimiliano Andrighetto) is a documen into thinking that vegetables are bad tary film-maker. Tony (Ben Walker) is the with his 'Mind-Manipulation-0-Matic' hit. Droll wit is the saving grace. device. Gromit watches nervously as Wal The Magician is your classic low-budget lace opens up the laboratory to unleash mockumentary (shot over a handful of days, the light of the full moon, harnessing the spread over a year, with a budget in the low 'mind wave increasing' effects of lunar thousands) following the trials and trig power on a bury of petrified rabbits. gers of a Melbourne killer. Mixing inter The Curse of the Were-Rabbit views with Ray and on-the-job footage, the is stacked with clever reference to film depicts the matter-of-fact professional famous British movies (including due at work and play. Ray discusses subjects as homage to the cheesy Hammer Horror varied as Wayne Cary's indiscretions, the flicks) and performs well on many levels: Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, film criti it is equal parts fun action movie, spooky Miranda july in Me and You and Everyone We Know. cism and body disposal as he waves guns satire, and engaging comedy. Animation and blunt objects at his victims. fans have been waiting for this one. The sales, childhood curiosity, loneliness, The interviewer, Max (just a voice and humour is self-deprecating and British video art, single parenthood and every the occasional limb entering the frame), just as punchy as any American animated thing else we know. It's the perfect mix walks precariously between documen movie on the market, and far more origi of grand themes and minute storytell tary maker and accomplice-a wavering nal. Kids, adults-come one, come all. ing. Watching it unfold with such ease, line that the film plays out with a subtle -Gil Maclean you almost feel as though you're graz intelligence. How guilty is he and when ing on another person's thoughts. The does his documenting become as immoral writing invites you to ponder the tiny as the act it documents? Th e Magician is moments that make up a life-the events plainly aware of that salient issue. Tiny moments that that settle on individuals and make Dirt and raindrops gracing the lens, an ordinary existence into something some rickety camera operation by the direc make a life profound profoundly important and universal. tor's father (Ryan showed him where the Besides the overall charm and wit of record button was) and a cameo from his Me and You and Everyone We Know, it brother all add to the madness of this rough Me and You and Everyone We Know, dir. is brimming with wonderful perform but solid piece of black comedy. And while Miranda July. A man pours lighter fluid on ances. John Hawkes is perfectly awkward its content is insanely derivative, its energy his hand and sets it blazing. He watches it and hapless as the single father, portray and local flavour are very much its own. with the curiosity of a man more pained by ing just the right mix of love and panic. Ryan's performance as the philoso love lost than physical injury. Sounds bleak, Miranda July plays the impulsive roman phising hit man is the film's highlight. but first-time writer/director Miranda July tic with a delight that is infectious. And Comic but restrained, Ryan never pushes turns it into a wondrous sight full of strange Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff, as for laughs, but instead lets understatement possibilities and aching humanity. Richard's two sons Peter and Robby, give and situation do the work. Richard (John Hawkes) is a shoe two of the best child performances I've The Magician is a sound mix of ten salesman, recently separated, with two seen in years. Watching the seven-year sion and humour, and when bleak frank children. Christine (Miranda July) is a old, Robby, meet up on a park bench with ness is called for, the film doesn't shirk. video artist who drives cabs for the eld a woman he's been courting on the inter With much Australian comedy bouncing erly. And while the film weaves through net is nothing short of inspired. between a wink and a quirky nudge, a bit a multitude of loosely connected char I envy anyone who has not yet seen of edge is something to admire. acters and stories, Christine's and Rich this film. I would love to watch it again for Watching a man dig his own grave is ard's relationship is the film's central the first time. It has been showered with hard to make funny and sad, but Ryan suc anchor. We watch them negotiate love awards, every one of which is deserved. ceeds. For that I congratulate him. and life with the sort of idiosyncratic -Siobhan Jackson -Siobhan Jackson NOVEMBER- D ECEMBER 2005 EU REKA STREET 49 watching l brief Pass the remote /G ,vc Me THe ReMOn. You've made me miss Myth- answer a few hard questions. Which is possibly why the powers busters, you young expletive.' at Nine who made the list felt more comfortable with the older, 'In a minute.' less spiky format. 'You arc flicking between hip-hop hoes and the ninth repeat of There were some curious choices in Nine's honour roll of the Seinfeld. Come on, be fair.' 50 top Australian programs: it was done by some process that 'Well, what about the Osbourncs marathon on MTV?' wasn't made plain to me. 'Only if you don't flick to Family Guy in the ads.' It was not really a trip into nostalgia; the really old excerpts 'You 're such a TV nazi, Mum.' were far too short. There was real gold in the tiny snippets of B & There just isn't enough angst in modern domestics. Aeschylus W early programs-bits and pieces of Picl< -A Box, Bobby Limb's would have known how to put it. Dissension in the home was his Sound of Music, Delo and Daly. These didn't count in the list, but thing. How might he have framed such conflict? they left me wanting more: I missed Swami Sarasvati, The Tarax Enter Clytemnestra, mightily fed up. Show, The Magic Circle Club. I would have loved to sec some origi Clytemnestra: Orestes, by the Fates, where is the Zeus-damn nal runs of New Faces just to show the Australian Idol fans that remote! nothing is new. Orestes: Chill out, Mum. I'm watching South Park. They left out some really good programs: Australia, You 're Clytem: Not that crypto-fascist neo-con misogynistic bullshit Standing in it! was intelligent, stylish, perceptive and utterly ig again! By Hera, it must be the 17th repeat. And you've been swig nored. Alas, the ABC had dumped it long ago in favour of the more ging milk from the amphora again instead of using a goblet. slapstick D-Generation that then made it into the 50 gems list as Orest: Aw; Mum, don't keep going on and on. the wooden-spooner. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the 0-Genera Clytem: Ju st wait till your father gets home. It 's nearly time tion but was sad that its success came at the expense of Australia, for Oprah. And have you been pinching my fags again! You're Standing in it! The D-Gen cast became famous, developed Enter Agamemnon, pursued by a Fury. and matured and went on to make wonderful programs and films Agamemnon: Gimme that remote, oh son of my loins. I want (Kath etJ Kim; Big Girls' Blouse; The Castle; Fmntline, to name a to watch The Footy Show. few). The Comedy Company didn't get a mention either; nor did Chorus: Oh rash words, Agamemnon! The house of Atreus The Big Gig, Good News Weel< or Kingswood Country. At least needeth not footy, but Oprah, and possibly even Dr Phil in such they mentioned My Name's McGooley, What's Yours! (it was 24th). perilous times. Restore to thy spouse her rightful remote for she But to put it ahead of Norman Gunston (27th) and Mother and Son doth get right narky about it. (33rd) looked capricious to me. Clytem: Shut up you lot. Oi, Fury-hand me that axe. And that was just in the comedy department: Phoenix and Em Tastes differ: ask anyone you know what their favourite TV bassy were omitted, as were Changi and The Games. They put program is, and you will probably strain the relationship. No, you 60 Minutes (not really an Australian program, being based firmly say, scandalised. You're not telling me you actually watch The Ap on an American template) at number eight, while placing Foreign prentice? Well, says your ex-friend, you did watch Big Br- Correspondent at 48, just above Playschool. They left out Hum I know, I know. Gawd, do I ever have to live that one down! phrey B. Bear and The 7.30 Report. But surely there has to be a bottom line, a measure of quality But what can you expect from the kind of mind that puts Paul that goes beyond brutal self-interest and solipsism. What have Hogan at second place? I'm not knocking it; Hogan was great in you really got in common with someone who prefers The Don the days when he still remembered his working-class roots, before Lane Show to Four Corners and scores Graham Kennedy's ob he went all rich and facelifted. But league tables force you into this scure, forgotten Coast to Coast higher than Media Watchl These ridiculous hierarchical format, and paint you into meaningless were the measured judgments of the pundits at Nine who made corners where you say Number 96 (ninth!) was better than Blue a league table of Australia's 'best SO programs' over the 50 years Murder (35th) or Aunty Ja ck (45th) or indeed, and it bears repeat that TV has been in Australia. And as they carefully pointed out, ing, Media Watch Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent, or even it was not the current Media Watch that gained their accolade. Neighbours (43rd, 18th, 48th, 47th respectively). No, indeed: they praised mightily the erudition of its past glories And what won? Graham Kennedy's I MT, of course. Fair enough, under Stuart Littlemorc, that excellent pedant. With David Marr it can be argued for respectably. But Blanl 50 EUREKA STREET NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2005 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM puzzled Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 13 7, Nov-Dec 2005 ACROSS 1. News of the tides for the regatta, perhaps. (7,6) 10 & 14. Holy poor man who could have said, possibly, 'A cross is stiff as I naturally, initially, know.' (2,7, 2,6) 11. Sort of duel 'e would prefer to dodge. (5) 12. No possible trace of missing mark indicator. (5) 13 . Could be club with dark stain. Can be fun, though' (9) 14. See 10-across. 16 . Pay-off included Moran's omission from the race. (6) 19. Come, let's have some breakfast. I like eggs. (6) 20. Message for Shane, we hear, to keep him on the qui vive? (8) 22. Essential for one's constitution is belonging, naturally. (9) 24. Was some animal taken to the island? (5) 25. Just a vestige of 12-across! (5) 26. Sort of roll everyone is likely to choose? (9) 27. Sergeant slips badly with record of everyone on board. (9,4) DOWN 2. At the furniture warehouse, real poufs are to be auctioned. (2,3,4) Solution to Crossword no. 136, Sept-Oct 2005 3. Severely criticise Sunday dinner, perhaps. (5) 4. Go to French Riviera city, following many directions for refinement! (8) 5. We regret some children's ignorance of the flag. (6) 6. It's not odd you French ate such food, it was bound to happen! (9) 7. Donald likes to outperform everyone, especially at cards. (5) 8. Though unusually shy, I spot clogs in the shops, she tells her Freudian advisers! (13) 9. Expressed opinion on friend-somewhat mawkishly. (13) 15. Samples of glasses, in short, I offer to people. (9) 17. Portable pistols for little limbs? (5-4) 18 . Material evidence, for instance, not theoretical. (8) 21. Like a sea bird at the back. (6) 23. Headdress I wore on a hill in Ireland. (5) 24. 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