Cf) EUREKA STREE I UNSW u PRESS (D n BORDERLINE -· by Peter Mares PJ- When journalist Peter Mares wanted to find out why asylum seekers were protesting at the Curtin detention centre, he found scant information in the national media. co In Borderline, Mares goes directly to the sources to report 0 the story that we have not yet heard about Australia's most recent refugees. He talks to asylum seekers and other 0 - eyewitnesses, clearing away the cloud of disinformation 7\ and sensation that has obscured this critical moment in ·- Australia's history. u Thanks to UNSW Press, Eureka Street has 10 copies of 0 Q) Borderline to give away, each worth $29.95. Just put your name and address on the back of an envelope and I ~ 0... send it to: Eurel The world can be your cathedral. You can be the winner in the Jesuit Publications Raffle, and can celebrate with the trip of a lifetime. You make your own choice of up to $10,000 worth of travel and accommodation from Harvest Travel. Entering the Jes uit Publications Raffle is a way you can help us at Jesu it Publications to ensure our continuing financial viability, and is also an opportunity for you to win a great prize. FIRST PRIZE Second Prize - Digital Video Disk $10,000 worth of Player to the value of $1000 air travel and Third Prize - Colour TV to the value accommodation for of $800 two people, Fourth Prize - Camera to the value available from of$600 HARVEST TRAVEL Fifth Prize - $250 worth of books With this issue of Eureka Street, you will receive your raffle book. Please return in the repl y- paid envelope by Monday 25 June 2001. Drawn on Monday 16 July 2001 . Results published in Th e Australian, Saturday 21 Jul y 2001. EUREKA STREE COVER STORY ---i I 11 Globa l warning )> ;;o Ka thryn O'Connor and fohn Hart ---i V1 report on the national and )> international ramifications of z 0 foot-and-mouth disease. ---i I rn 0 r 0 Cl -< AUTUMN BOOKS 28 For th e re cord Ta cl< Waterfo rd reviews Robert Manne's essay, 'In Denial: T he Stolen COMMENT Generations and the Right'. 4 Andrew Hamilton The weight of office 30 Chequered history Margaret Coffey reviews Bruce Duncan's Crusade or C on spira cy~ LETTERS Catholics and the Anti-Communist Publisher Andrew Ham ilt on SJ 7 Neil Bu chanan and Roslyn Beer Struggle in Australia. Editor M orag Fra se r 32 Grecian turn Assis tant editor Kat e M ant on Graphic designer SioiJhan Jackson David McCooey scans the poetry of General manager M ark Dowell THE MONTH'S TRAFFI C Dimitris Tsaloumas. Marketing Ki rs ty Grant Advertising represe nt ative Ken Head 8 Juliette Hughes Garrett's pitch 33 Short blacks Subscription manager W endy Marl owe 9 Peter Pierce Doubting nags Peter Cra ven reviews a fine pair Editori al, production and administrati on 9 Jon Greenaway Thai plane scandal of novels by Don De Lillo and assistants Juliett e Hughes, Paul Fyfe 5), Geraldine Batt ersby, B n H ider, John Banville. Mrs Irene Hunter 36 Read ing into it Contributing ed itors Adelaide: Greg COLUMNS O ' Kell y SJ, Pert h: Dea n M oore, Sydney: Paul Tankard takes issue with Edmund Ca mp ion & Gerard Windso r, 5 Capital Letter Alberto Manguel's In to the Queensland: Peter Pi erce Jack Wa terfo rd Democrats roleplay Looking-Glass Wood. United Kin gdom Denis Minns or Sou th Ea st Asia Jon Greenaway 1 0 Summa Theologiae 39 Bred in the bone j es uit Ed itorial Boa rd Peter L'Estrange St, Kate Hird reviews Amy Tan's Andrew Bullen SJ, Andrew H ami lton 51 Richard Treloar Divine comedy Peter Steele Si, Bill Uren 51 23 Archimedes The Bonesetter's Daugh ter. Patrons Eureka Street gratefull y ackn owledges th e support of Tim Th waites A Mir bagatelle C. and A. Ca rt er; th e trustees of the esta te 46 Watch ing Brief OPERA of Miss M . Condon; W.P. & M .W. Gurry Juli ette Hughes Let them eat cable Eureka Street magazine, ISSN 1036-1 758, 40 Light on its feet Australia Post Print Post approved pp349 18 1/003 14, is published ten ti mes a John Carmody reviews The Flight of yea r by Eureka Street M agaz ine Pt y Ltd , FEATURES Les Darcy. 300 Victori a Stree t Ri chmond VIC 3121 PO Box 553, Ri chmond VIC 3121 14 London's bearable I ightness of being Tel : 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 Jim Da vidson finds resilience in the email: eurcka@ jes pu b. jes uit.org. au THEATRE http:// www.eurekas treet.com.au/ old city. 42 High water mark Res ponsibility for editori al content is 17 From th e in si de accepted by Andrew H amilton SJ, Geoffrey Milne applauds Tasmania's 300 Victoria Street , Richmond Catriona Jack son investiga tes the 10 Days on the Island festival. Printed by Doran Printing archives of horror in Cambodia's Tuol 46 Industrial Drive, Braes ide VI C 3195. © jesuit Publicat ions 2001 Sleng Museum. Unsolicited manu sc ripts w ill be returned 20 Two women only if accompanied by a stamped, FLASH IN THE PAN se lf-a ddressed envelope. Requests for Anthony Ham on familial constraints perm iss ion to reprint materi al from th e in India and Turkey. 44 Reviews of the films Th e Gift; magaz ine should be addressed in wri ting Croupier; Best in Sh ow; Amores to th e ed itor. 22 Too many hats Moira Rayner questions the future of Perras; The Goddess of 196 7 and This month: Westminster-style government. The Contender. Cove r des ign by Siobhan jackson. Cover photograph and photograph s 24 When was our nation born ? pp11- 13 by Michael Coyne. In this May month of federation Cartoon pp8-9 by Peter Fra se r. SPEC IFIC LEV ITY Graphics pp14, 15, 22, 24-26, 36, 39, 40 celebrations, historian fohn Hirst asks by Siobhan jackson . the big question. 47 Joan Nowotny Cryptic crossword COMME T ANDREW H AM I L TON The weight of office M OST coMMeNTATORS on Mchbishop Gco,gc acceptance within his church. If communities are Fell's appointment to Sydney have asked who made reconciling, then relationships arc robust, leaving the appointment, why he was appointed and what is room for difference and for sharp differences. But these the agenda. They have presented it as a story of church arguments arc played out in direct and affectionate politics. relationships between human beings who share vul This perspective has precedent. In the fourth nerabilities, foibles and humanity. Not to mention a century, the golden age for bishop-watchers, the common faith and commitment to love one another. Council of Nicaea forbade The hagiographies of Augustine and Gregory, bishops to move from church though, leave the reader in no doubt that the story of to church, and gave the metro their episcopal appointments was ultimately God's politan bishop the right to story. And if the appointment of bishops som etimes vet o other local appoint causes bitter controversies, perhaps it is because we m ents. Such rules hint at inarticulately see the Bi shop as a sym bol of God. If personal rivalries within we have a Bishop who likes us and favours our views, churches, mercenary motives, then we are m ore easily assured that God likes and careerism , and different favours us. And a Bishop who is not one of us m akes visions of Gospel and church us ask if God is on our side. which could divide bishops. But the God of the Gospel stories is m et, not fi rst But the fourth cen tury in hierarchies and roles, but in h uman vulnerability also had other, less strident, and in mutual love and fo rgiveness within a com st ories to tell abo ut the munity. So, we step back fr om controversy for a appointment of bishops. Men m om en t to wish Archbishop Pell well in Sydney, like Gregory of Na zianzen recogn ising the human cost which his move to and Augustine, private m en another city will entail for him. We hope that even who valued their leisure, were when the life of his church is turbulent, he will fi nd dragooned into public respon himself welcom ed and at home in his com m unity.• sibilities within the church, and often spoke poignantly of Andrew Ha milton SJ is publisher of Evrekn Street. its burdens-particularl y of their isolation from fri ends and confidants, and the lone EUREKA STREET Mondays liness which their respon at Newman College sibility oft en entailed. Even now, when relationships be THE ASYLUM SEEKER DEBATE tween bish ops, clergy and A conversa ti on between auth or Peter Mares people are less stratified than (AB C Asia- Pacific) and broadcaster previousl y, bishops rem ain Ramona Koval (Books and W riting) vulnerabl e human beings to mark the publ icati on of Borderline, with need for companionship Peter Ma res' stu dy of Austra li a's treatment of and s upport . The m ore so refugees and asy lum seekers. wh en their appo intments Fo ll owed by open d iscuss ion. arouse high passions. The tension between the Pope Gregory I In conjunction\\ ith L ~<..,\t\ PRE,.., public and the private stories of episcopal appoint inclini ng to his ta sk A ll welco me. Enqui ries: Kirsly Gr 4 EUREKA STREET • MAY 200 I Jack Waterford Democrats roleplay A,TH' DeMOCRATS ' pO VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 5 classifieds G OD, SANTA AND T H E C LINI CAL PSYC HOLOG IST TOOTH FAIR Y Dr Ju lie Erskine God bet ween Credulity and BA ( l-I ons), M Psychol, D isbel ief. A semin ar exam ining how PhD (LI NS W ), MAPS, AAC BT the gospel may be heard in a world An xie ty, d e pressio n , bc n 'o a \·c m c nt, whi ch ranks God \\'i th Santa and the beha,·ioural medi cin e, acade mi c/ Tooth Fairy. Queens College, study d iffi culties. Melbourne, 19 May 200 I . $ 30, Strath f'i cld All ied Hea lth Sc n ·iccs some discoun ts. Sponsored by the 52 Rcd myre Road Doctrine and Liturgy Con1mittcc of Strathfie ld NS W 2 1 35 the Victorian Un iting Church. T he Dominican Friars of Melbourne are Phone: (02) 9763 1585 Contact Paul Stephens, (03) 5229 pleased to announce the opening to the 8866, steph ens@pipcli ne .com .au general public of the renovated Library of DISC IPLI NE FOR BOOKS GOT T H AT GAGGED FEELI NG? their Centre of Studies . Arc books eating your living space' She lve t he m in style in a space- 1-'o r fi ve years, 1-'rce Speech Victori a has d rawn attention to The Library is a collection of 50,000 sav ing, classic revok ing bookcase, or display the m on an elegantly attacks on free speech. W c ha \T volumes of theology, philosophy, biblical designed fo ld ing stand made by a helped those \\'ho h3\·e spo ken out. m e t icu lo us craftsmen . Australi an In 1999, \\'e awarded the studies, liturgy, church history, ti mbers ava il able. Strong construe- o utspoken Victorian Audi tor- spirituality and religious studies, lio n, pe rfect fini sh . Models ready Gene ral, Ches Baragwanath, o ur ava il able or made to measure. first Vo ltaire Award. II' you arc specialising in the Catholic, Dominican Contact Graham W illi s. interes ted in f' ree Speech Victoria, and Thomist traditions. Tel: (03) 9439 7 149, contact Terry Lane, J> O Box 9 3, jengra@ ne tspacc. net . au Forest Hi ll VIC 3 1 3 1 Card catalogue and online computer access C OLLECTED WORKS COMMUN ITY ON LI NE (under construction) - extensive reference The Australi an Poetry Bookshop Australia's 500,000 communi ty Check out the new shop at th e gro ups can now find practi cal section - journals -free reading rights and ad,·icc and access to Australi a's Base ment o f 256 Flinders Street , m ost cxtcnsi\'c grants database at low borrowing fee (conditions apply) - Melbourne VIC 3000. Yo u' ll fi nd www .ourcomm unit y .com .au the biggest , broadest co ll ecti on of Call 03 9320 6800 for more detail s. car parking- refreshments available poetry titles on sale anywhere bet ween the In dian and Pacifi c FLOWERS WITH FLA IR Opening hours Oceans. So me second hand and J'rom Fle ur De Fc liss Tuesday, 9.30 am- 8.00 pm o ut-of-prin t volumes ava ilable. Australian ll owcr arrangements fo r Mail o rders welcome. fu ncti ons a specialty Thursday, 9.30 am-9.30 pm Tel: (03) 9654 8873, I 32 Bo lton Su·eet , Eltham 3095. Saturday, 9.30 am-5.00 pm coll ected works@m ailcity.com Tel: 03 9439 6677 (Out-of-hours access by appointment) Cla"ificds arT now abo OLD FINE & RARE BOOKS published on our "cbsilc, bo ught and sold. Address .11 http://""" · Loue ll a Ke rr & Lo rrain e Reed , St Dominic's Priory t~ ureka~tl · eet . t o1n .au I I 39 St Johns Rd pages/ dassilicds. html 816 Riversdale Road Glebe NS W 2037. East Camberwell Victoria 3124 Tel: (0 2) 957 1 5557 Email : lnlbooks@anzaab .com .au EUREKA STREET CLASSIFIEDS (Tram stop 50- Route 70/Wattle Park) Catalogues iss ued , or browse Got something to sell or lease? Access at rear of Priory, from the car park through our entire stock on o ur W ant to buy? Need staff? W ant to website : w ww .anzaah .con1 .au / offer pro fessional services? ~ lnl b oo k s Eureka Street cl ass ifi eds ads fo r just For further information, contact: $25 are your answer . T he Libra rian, Fr Christopher Dowd, OP Mail your ad and che'luc by the 5th o f the month for display in th e Telephone: (03) 9836 2632 PSYCHOLOGIST fo ll owing month's edition. E-mail: [email protected] Juli e 1-i o uniet 25 words for a single ad ($25) or (B.A. , Dip. App. Soc.Psych ., 55 words fo r a double ad ($50). The Dominican Centre of Studies is a MaPs.S., Member of A.P.S. and cl inical member o fV .A.F.T .) Se nd to: member of the Melbourne College of Indi vid ual I marital/ fam ily therapy; Eureka Street Classifi eds Divinity. anx iety; depression ; relati onshi p PO Box 553 d iffi culties ; phobias; compul sive Ri chmond VI C 3 12 1 disorde rs; add iction. All Welcome Tel: (0 3) 948 1 7836 Ne xt deadline : 4 May for June 200 1 editio n LETTERS Eurcl-:.a Street welcomes letters from its Temple, and Christ himself became 'the readers. Short letters arc more likely to Temple' which would be raised up in three More is less be published, and all letters may be edited. days. Historically, it was important for Letters must be signed, and should include Christians, but it was not to be a place From Professor Neil Buchanan a contact phone number and the writer's where the Christian forms an earthly T he excellent, thought-provoking article name and address. If submitting by email, attachment. Christ gave the example of by Meg Gurry, 'The Heart of the Matter' a contact phone number IS essential. radical non-attachment to the Temple. (April200l ), struck many a chord for both Address: [email protected] it.org.au As a result, the Christian, even though my wife and myself. Thank you Meg for he or she acknowledges the history of the having bothered to put pen to paper. I am a place, is called to a radical non-attachment medical practitioner with university, to the Temple. It is not to be the focus for hospital and community-based experience spiritual aspirations in the present or the over three decades, and the angst and future. The focus is to be on Christ himself. discomfort expressed in the article is, sadly, The Rabbi, in his conclusion, cites the too fa miliar. Surely not the rule, but still all injunction given in Psalm 22: 'Pray for the too familiar. peace of Jerusalem and may all those who T he feelings of fear and humiliation love you prosper.' represent a loss of identity which people As Christians, we share this prayer but experience as they turn into patients. They we are also called to aspire to a 'Heavenly may be stripped, albeit unwittingly and Jerusalem'. Aspiring to a 'Heavenly Jerusa usually with good intent, of personhood. It lem' means thatforthe Christian the earthly is this loss of personhood which is the Jerusalem is not to be the point of focus. humiliating, dehumanising experience. Too to these questions-they are quite illumi Christ calls the Christian to work for justice often, lip service is paid to fears and nating and keep one pretty much on the for all peoples and not to cling to land and anxieties: 'Of course you are anxious', straight and narrow. possessions. A place where all peoples of 'I understand your concerns', and so on. Perhaps Charles Mayo was right in 1938 every nation live in justice and peace. Pleasant, but often platitudinous remarks, when he wrote: 'The definition of a special Roslyn Beer too often recognised as such. ist as one who "knows m ore and more Maribyrnong, VIC There must be many reasons why Milo about less and less" is good and true.' has been replaced by nuclear scans or Viagra. Neil Buchanan Selecting future doctors on their HSC marks Westm ead, NSW (fortunately going out of fashion), an ever increasing amount to know, endless tech n ological change, financial imperatives Temple (p ublic and personal), hungry lawyers, contemplation commercial pressures and the fear of 'not Rid ley College knowing' must all contribute. However, From Roslyn Beer University of Melbourne doctors, like other professionals, reflect the Rabbi John Levi, in his article 'The Peace of mores of society. Presumably the lack of Jerusalem '(March 200 l ), makes several good CONFERENCE humanity and compassion which Meg points. However it is important to point describes is in part a refl ection of the world out the differences between Christians and Oil around u s, where egocentricity reigns Jews. supreme. If so, part of the solution is societal Rabbi Levi says that the denial of the HEALING THE and the remainder educational. Sadly, history of the ruins of the Temple, in a HEALTH SYSTEM within the medical curriculum, doctors are claim made by Yasser Arafat, is alarming. taught to 'do' and not to 'be', while compas At the sam e time, just as alarming is the sion scores few m arks as a non-examinable denial of the present history of the Dome of saturday 26 May, 1.20-Gpm subj ect. The matters which Meg Gurry the Rock- the presence of the Palestinian Stanway A l pha L ecture Theatre brought to our attention are not 'teachable', people and real justice and land rights for 160 The Avenue, Parkville other than by example. them. Recognising that patients are people just To claim that the Temple did not exist SPEAKERS: like us (doctors) and being able to admit 'is a serious challenge to all the monotheis Dr Deni se Cooper-Clark that none of us is infallible- being able to tic faiths'. I concur with Rabbi Levi on this Dr Andrew S loane say 'I don't know ( but will endeavour to point, but he creates at times a nostalgic Dr John Buchanan find out )' is not a crime. In my own case, vision of the Temple, and stresses an Dr David Perkins I try my best to avoid these pitfalls by importance attached to it, to which Chris freq uently asking myself the questions, tians may not subscribe. Chri tians do not registrations by 23 May 'How would I like to be treated?' or 'What hold such a nostalgic view of the Temple. would I reasonably expect in this particular For the Christian, the Temple was also a cost: $40 cone: $20 situation ?' A large part of the solution lies p lace of conflict. C hrist drove the contact: 03 9207 4904 in listening to the answers that come back moneychangers out when he cleansed the VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 7 Tlhe Mont/h'§ Traffic be when the government's own 'S tate of the 'first-mover' effect would, he said, be already Garrett's Environment' report of 1995 lists 75 per familiar to those in business studies: there cent of rainforests, 90 per cent of temperate is a hefty advantage in being the first into a woodland and malice and 99 per cent of new area. (I recalled at that point that BMW pitch south-eastern grasslands gone since white is now developing hydrogen fuel-cell tech L ERE WAS A CROWD, probably over a settlement. He quoted the ACF's publica nology in partnership with Dubai.) So hope thousand in the end, swarming in to attend tion Nawrol Advantage: A Blueprint for a was held out: if science couldn't convince the Dean's Lecture on 22 March at the Sustainable Australia: 'We have a particu the corporate world, perhaps self-interest University of Melbourne. They spilled out larly "hot, heavy and wet" economy; one would. That was it, apart from a potted of the Copland Theatre and into two others that requires large amounts of energy, history of the continent, a swipe at those that were video-linked with jubilant speed materials and water to pro to catch the overflow. Some, possibly a duce a unit of gross domes hundred, gave up and left when they saw tic product. Unless we can the Copland packed to the gunwales. You "cool, lighten and dry" our could have been forgiven for wondering economy we will be stuck in how many would have turned up for the the 21st century peddling the title of t he lecture ('Reconciling the products of the 20th cen Economy and the Environment in a Civil tury-coal, woodchips, iron Society') if the lecturer hadn't been Peter ore-all of which will Garrett, albeit in his manifestation as decline in demand and value President of the Australian Conservation in coming decades.' A cool, Foundation (ACF). As it was, the air of light, dry econom y would excitement was a breathable, infectious be one that used renewable, agent: celebrity had bent clown from less-polluting energy, that Olympus to speak to the little people about favoured industries that their fears. were about research, know The title was a golden question-begger, how and sustainability, and proffering the hope that you could do this that u sed water l ess enormous thing: turn (in the minds of those prodigally. who make things happen in the world) At the end of the lecture, these two nouns from functioning opposites of course, it was what most into a kind of symbiotic, yin-yangy thing. of us must have guessed, or Reconciliation of any kind is a hard, hard known to start with: that thing to do: a k an yonc working in 'the economy', as interpreted ' Aborigi nal people's policy. The same people by current economic regimes, who decide what happens on Indigenous is the opposite of economy, policy issues arc making the decisions in if by economy one means environment, and think we can't have an healthy balance and some 1 environment and an economy at the same sort of life span. In order not to go bankrupt who want to Europeanisc the landscape, time. But voila! The title had done the work very soon in all the things that matter, and a call to community action. already-all the lecture needed to do now including things (such as clean water) that Within a week, George Bush had clumped was to tell unbelievers how it was done. money can buy at the moment, but may not Kyoto and Canberra was looking even more Garrett began by acknow !edging cliffcr be able to quite shortly, we must stop land environmentally embarrassed than usual, cncc: greeting the Melbournitcs 'from clearing, over-fishing, over-consuming and with neither major party within a bull's another planet, Sydney, where the ecological polluting. roar of being on top of the issue. Garrett, footprint of the city has reached 3 7 times The signs of hope that Garrett gave were when asked to comment, said that we arc its actual size'. That was a nifty way of definite, but small. These were that the prepared to 'simply follow the US into getting stuck into the whole thing, the fact yo ung will vote green, that politicians will isolationism, leaving our regional allies and that with high resource and e n ergy take notice as their constituents vote them neighbours and most of the EU to press on consumption still the main driver for the out for not performing properly on environ with one of the most important inter economy, we arc all living beyond our mental issues, and that businesses that national dialogues of the post-Cold-War means. Environmentalists arc Cassandras, have managers with responsible and era'. 'The economy, stupid' has become he said, but added that it is a sane thing to enlightened strategies will prosper. The The Economy Stupid. -Juliette Hughes 8 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 That morning I had gone to my hair gambling annex to the Bundaberg Rum dresser's to inquire into the prospects of her stadium, which was the venue for an AFL Doubting husband Darrel Dean's five rides that day. match between the Western Bulldogs and But she'd trustingly set off for the races Brisbane Lions on th e day in February that while his chances of extending his lead on Cyclone Abigail passed through town. That nags the local jockeys' premiership were dashed. would have been a better excuse to stage a Later in the clay I was introduced to trainer phantom m eeting than today's weather OFFTO T H E CAIRNS racecourse, Cannon Paula D' Addona, for whom Dean rides. She afforded. Cannon Park will have to wait: Park, at last, I caught a Sunbus south and was disgusted, reckoning that she would next stop Chantilly, where they run the alighted in drizzling rain. This was the have saddled four winners (admittedly three French Derby (Prix du Jockey Club) on the much touted Young Guns day, so in a sense of the races had fi elds of four or less: not all first Sunday in June. -Peter Pierce I was there under false pretences. entertainment industries fl ourish in tropi It soon transpired that I wasn't at a race cal Cairns ). At 29 sh e is second on the m eeting at all. Though the track was only trainers' list, a former show-jumper who Thai plane rated slow at 1Oam , the chief steward called works her own horses and would li ke to be things off an hour later. The tottering racing on them in real life. She regaled m e with scandal industry in Cairns had copped another blow. tales of m eeting crocodiles that had strolled 'Jockeys are wimps,' said Kathy the barmaid; out of the mangroves at early-morning track W ILE T HE WORLD watched ever m ore work, of wallabies so tam e they stand still closely the developing stand-off between while the horses gallop around them . I had the United States and China over the spy a tour of the stables round the back of the plane downed on Hainan Island, it forgot course. One is nam ed Euphoria; but an a n o th er air accide nt w ith p olitical other trainer, George Doolan, long in the overtones. game, settles for Poverty Lodge. On Sa turday 3 March, a Thai Airways Fortunately m y touch with the punt Boeing 73 7-400 caught on fire while parked was back. It's been a dreary year, with the at the dom estic terminal of Bangkok's Don quality of horses below par. If a plugger like Muang airport. One m ember of the cabin Tie the Kn ot is hailed a champion and the crew died and seven others were injured. nearest we have to one-Sunline-was last Had the fi re started half an hour later it seen running third in the Dubai desert, the would almost certainly h ave kill ed outlook is grim. N o outstanding two-year Thailand's newly elected Prime Minister, old has appeared, although Hosannah and Thaksin Shinawatra. Red Hannigan impressively won the last T ensions between the new US presiden lead-ups to the Golden Slipper. I was on tial administration and China's increasingly Shags, figuring that if the nam e could sneak confident leadership are m ore significant through on the rails so might the horse: he news, but in Bangkok, the innuendo and paid $6 for third. The three-yea r-olds were fal se leads that followed the public outcry m ore promising: Miss Kournikova won the and rushed investiga tion of the fire made Oakleigh Plate while the crack colts Desert the assassinati on attempt/air-conditioning Sky and Mr Murphy dead-heated in the failure story equally intriguing. 104th running of the Futurity. A spell was Initial reports of the fire that destroyed announced for Desert Sky, who promptly T G 114 declared that authorities suspected turned up and, a tired horse, was beaten in a bomb. Adding to the air of conspiracy was Sydney. Mr Murphy also went north, failing the suggestion that a devi ce was placed twice. Australian trainers are not noted for undernea th seats reserved for Prime Minis their patience. ter Thaksin and his son, even though no while Brian the bookie (left with no program The big event in Sydney this day was fo r one but their inner circle knew they would to field on)g ave a less polite version of minister three-year-olds: th e Rose hill Guineas. I had be on the flight to Chiang Mai in Thail and's Abbott's 'we're rooned'. It doesn't help that scored in the previous when rogue galloper northern region. the track is built on a mangrove swamp. Bello Signor m ended his ways and saluted Thaksin himself fuelled speculation . I looked out on a grey scene, desperately at 10/ l . Universal Prince was evens fa vour Even before the wreckage had cooled, he enlivened by young women who had come ite in the Guineas, so ran without mine. was cl aiming that explosives were planted anyway, wearing 'fa shion '. The stage was Instead I had a big quinella when Sale of on the plane, and-as fa r as he knew fo rlornly set for a band which had been Century at 22/1 bea t Danam ite at eights. 'there were no other important people on cancelled. The crowd of dozens stayed in The fa vourite was unsightecl . Things kicked the plane'. He also pushed for all avenues of touch with racing all around the country on in the other Group One race, the George investiga tion to be pursued. As a result, by television, but I h ad missed m y chance Ryder, where an old favourite of m ine, fo ur separate inquiry team s were set up. to be right-hand m an for Bluey Forsyth as Landsighting, at 15/1 put value in the Two days after the incident, one of the h e called the card . In consolation, I w as quinella, in defeating the honest Shogun tea ms declared it had found traces of Semtex. there, notebook in pocket, at m y first Lodge. By that stage we had abandoned T he Thai press was quick to draw parallels phantom meeting. Cannon Park and were in Cazaly's, the with the Pan Am fligh t brought down over VOLUME 1 1 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 9 Lockerbie by a device that included the plastic explosive. The prime minister continued to cry foul, stating, four days after the fire, that it was clear that a bomb had been planted inside the cargo hold (the seat theory no longer rated a mention). He then set up a fifth investigation team headed by his Divine comedy deputy prime minister. He also threatened the head of Thai Airways and the airport authority with the sack if they did not come up with an answer within the week. A PPARENTLY JEsus would not have enjoyed the recent Melbourne Comedy Some pointed the finger at Thaksin's Festival, for 'Christ never laughed'' Or so Umberto Eco's 14th-century charac Deputy, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a man ter, Jorge, maintains in The Name of the Rose. Jorge, guardian of the great renowned for his ambition. Others sus Benedictine library in northern Italy, is locked in debate with William of Basker pected that Thaksin had planted the device ville, a Franciscan visitor to the monastery, over the virtue-or otherwise-of himself: in the face of corruption allega laughter. Jorge is determined to prevent the discovery of the 'lost' second book tions coming before the Constitutional of Aristotle's Poetics, thought to contain an extensive treatment of comedy. Court he needs all the public sympathy he Aristotle had by this time become the intellectual authority for Christian can get. The Bangl 10 EUREKA STREET • M AY 2001 THE ENVIRONMENT KATHRYN O'CONNOR & JOHN HART rntng• The foot-and-mouth and 'mad cow' disease outbreaks have put the world , not just Europe, on red alert. 0 29 F'"'"AR' 1872 • bull coiled 'Achmet', the property of cattle importer William McCulloch, arrived in Mel bourne on the steamship Nortlnzmber land. He spent two nights at stables in Melbourne and then two months at the owner's property in Darebin before being sold at auction at the Royal Horse Bazaar in Bourke Street, Melbourne. He was then driven by road to Mr Samuel Cob bledick's property in Werribee, staying overnight at Cunningham's stables on the Ballarat road. Soon after, disease broke out among Cobbledick's cattle. Mr J.P. Vincent, a veterinary surgeon, described 'bladders on the tongue ... and also at the heels'. Mrs Bowman, the wife of a tenant farmer, noticed 'illness, the loss of milk, the shivering'. This was foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a disease of cloven-hoofed animals which causes milk to dry up in cows and growth failure in young cattle. It was one of four outbreaks in Australia in the late 19th century. Given that the incubation period is about three to seven days, VOLUME 11 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 11 Achmet probably contracted the disease contain waste meat from a South African The current strain of the virus has in Cunningham's stables on the Ballarat cargo ship which began its journey in spread across Asia and the Middle East road. A prize bull would sometimes be India. The virus can survive for up to six and clown to South Africa over the past granted the comfort of a horse stall where months in mud and up to a month in dry few years. Are we still protected against it was not unusual to use, as bedding, soil. Winclborne spread occurs over dis a full-blown outbreak? Probably not. A straw packing from goods imported from tances of up to lOkm. Why then did the great deal has changed since 1872. People the UK. There was an epidemic of FMD 1872 outbreak not spread further? Why and animals move further, faster and in the UK at the time, so this straw may was it confined to two farms west of more often between places. In the year have been contaminated. (See E.M. Melbourne? 2001, after being sold in Melbourne, a Pullar, Victorian Veterinary Proceedings, In a 1998 paper in the Australian bull like Achmct might be taken by truck 1964-65.) Achmet was killed and burnt, Veterinary Journal, the Department of to NSW. The other cattle in the truck along with 37 pigs and 58 cattle. The Primaty Industries looked at this question. might continue their journey to Queens disease did not spread beyond one They found that late 19th-century Aus land. A handler in the sale yard in neighbouring farm. tralia was protected by minimal move Brisbane might board a plane to visit The virus that causes FMD is incred ment of animals, materials and people, a family in Perth. Within days the disease ibly hardy and highly contagious. Direct lack of mechanised transport and low could spread all across the country. animal-to-animal spread occurs readily livestock densities. The other major Australian livestock densities have via saliva, urine, faeces, milk and semen, factor was the weather. Winclborne increased though they are still not high as well as air. Feeding animals the waste spread of the virus requires a stable on a world scale. Our fanning industry products of other animals increases the atmosphere and low wind speeds. Bureau has grown mainly through progressive probability of direct spread. This practice of Meteorology data for Melbourne expansion into natural environments has been implicated in the current UK around this time indicated high winds (with the regrettable side effect of loss of outbreak, where pigswill was found to and unsettled conditions. complex ecosystems and habitats). This W,comNMCNT; ~n~~~ n :~~n~ ;='To~y~ '''~'~l~! ,~ n dTh: :,,:i;h po\iti~l pmee;; h,; ,\;o to deal with foot-and-mouth disease, criticised for his lack of decisive leader- been caught off-guard because what the there is nothing they can do to prevent it ship. Direct personal involvement by present foot-and-mouth outbreak in in advance or to anticipate the timing and Blair in the crisis was five weeks too late, Britain has exposed is the power of one scale of any outbreak. Governments don't and the conservative press in Britain are particular interest-the farmers, or to be create FMD. They can only respond to it. all too willing to explain this in terms of more precise, the National Fanners The response of the British Govern- his preoccupation with the next British Union (NFU)-over the government and ment to the present FMD outbreak has general election. British public opinion. been far from perfect, sometimes embar- The FMD outbreak is certainly more There is tremendous sympathy with rassingly tardy and may, depending on complicated and quite different in scale the plight of farmers in Britain, a sym- which reports one reads, have even from the last outbreak in 1967. There's pathy reinforced by the horrific images contributed to the rapid spread of the now an intense argument about the on the nightly television news of live- disease. At the very least, politicians and merits of vaccination versus slaughter as stock being slaughtered and the burning civil servants were caught off-guard by the the most appropriate response. There are pyres of diseased carcasses. It matters lit- speed and reach of the infection, which the problems of the tourist industry, tle to British public opinion that all these had already contaminated markets and which is suffering badly (tourism contrib- animals would eventually have been dealers' premises before the first symp- utes far more to the British economy than slaughtered for the market anyway and toms were discovered on 22 February. farming). There are environmental prob- burned by one method or another prior The British Ministry of Agriculture, lems caused by burying vast numbers of to appearing on the British public's dinner Fisheries and Food (MAFF) has been diseased animals. And in 1967, no tables. Much of what the British public much criticised for its role in handling elections were planned or intended in the is reading and viewing about the FMD the FMD outbreak and will probably, in middle of the outbreak. No wonder the outbreak is the farmers' perspective, its current form, not survive this crisis. government gets caught off-guard. encouraged by the activities of the NFU. 12 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 cannot continue; farmers are already Australia is on guard. The Ministry Emergency Service and Emergency reaching environmental limits with for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has Managem ent Australia (a n arm of the salinity problems and limited water suspended imports of all animal products Australian Defence Force) would be supply. Not quite the 'clean and green' from the UK and upped the ante at our alerted to set up roadblocks and quaran which is promoted by our farming indus airports and international mail centres. tine areas, and organise the slaughter of try. But we don' t pack animals on to Sniffer dogs now await nearly every the infected herd. farmland beyond its capacity to feed flight, all travellers from affected We are primed, but is it enough ? The them, as occurs in the UK, where sheer countries are thoroughly searched and current epidemic is the result of a proximity of animals has contributed any disease-carrying item s (such as shoes) changed, more aggressive form of the significantly to the spread of FMD. We are disinfected. virus. But the more significant change haven't had to resort to the di sease CSIRO's Animal Health Laboratory has been in how we farm our world and promoting practice of feeding h erds in Geelong is also ready. As part of how we move between places. There are animal waste. Low-density farming may AUSVETPLAN (th e Australian Vet other diseases. Some also cause illness provide some slight protection erinary Emergency Plan) ea rly detection or death in humans, like the pig-borne against the spread of disease. and managem ent strategies are in place. Nipah virus. It hit Malaysia in 1998 There is an em ergency Animal Watch resulting in 100 human deaths and the 0 UR OTHER RELATIVE protective factor Hotline which vets and farmers can call loss of millions of dollars to the Malay is our geographical isolation. But the dis with information on suspected cases. sian pig industry. In the 18 72 FMD ease managed to survive in straw during If an outbreak were suspected/samples ou tbreak the major out-of-control factor a long journey by ship from the UK in would be taken directly t o a high was the wind. In the year 2001 so much 18 72 in order to infect Achmet the bull. security Animal Health Laboratory in m ore i s beyond our control. And The risk is many times greater now with Geelong. T hey would have an answer Australia is not immune. air travel and fa ster ships. in 24 h ours. The police, the State -Kathryn O'Connor ne result of a changed, more aggressi N'e form of the virus. farm our world and how we move between places. I The farmers have been very success In a significant, but lone attempt to without any government payments in lieu. ful. The NFU has been receiving 'floods balance the farmers' perspective on FMD There is a problem with the political of donations' as a consequence of the in Britain, Polly Toynbee published a process when on e interest group can FMD outbreak and have now set up a most revealing picture of British agricul affect public policy with no competing 'Supporting-Fanners-in-Crisis' fund even ture and what she called 'the non-existent interest to contest its domination. Govem though the government fully compen plight of farmers' in The Guardian's m ent in Britain doesn't mediate between sates every farmer at current market 21 March edition. Taking most of her competing interests over agricultural value for every animal slaughtered as a evidence directly from the Ministry of policy, because there is no competition. consequence of FMD. Farmers have been Agriculture's web page, she pointed out Once the foot-and-mouth outbreak is doing badly over the last five years, but that agriculture accounts for just 0. 8 per under control there will almost certainly the financial plight of fanners cannot be cent of British GDP, just two per cent of be a review of the role played by MAFF attributed to FMD. the total workforce and that farmers are and there's a s tron g likelihood that The NFU is justified in pushing its the most heavily subsidised sector of the present political dissatisfaction with the cause with the governm ent and with the British economy. Ministry's bureaucracy will ensure that British public. But there is no counter The thrust of Ms Toynbee's article it will be radically restructured and vailing force to balance its power and was to challenge the view that the foot renamed. If the power of the MAFF influence. The NFU has a highly privileged and-m outh outbreak is a m ajor crisis bureaucracy is broken up as a result of relationship with govemment- described bringing Britain to a standstill. 'All that review then at least som e of the by the authors of a major study in the proportion and perspective has been unbridled power of its principal client, early 1960s as 'a near monopoly'. Little lost/ she writes, and blam es the media, the N ational Farmers Union, will also be has changed in the intervening years. In particularly the BBC for painting such broken. That will be a healthy develop fact, the relationship between govern an unbalanced view-'mad reporter m ent in British dem ocracy. -John Hart ment and the NFU is almost set in con disease' is what she labels the m edia's crete as a result of the passage of the reaction. She then went on to contrast Kathryn O'Connor is a freelance writer; Agriculture Act of 1947 and the annual the position of farmers with the 6,000 John Hart teaches in the Department of price review process in which MAFF and steel workers and the countless car Political Scien ce at the Australian the NFU are the only participants. workers who lost their jobs last year N ational University. V OLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STR EET 13 THE WORLD:! JIM DAVIDSON IT The countryside might be in mourning, but the city's dancing. IN19 70, when Ifu" ""hed London, the pl,ce w" mobile phones were sold in Britain last Christmas. having an enormous hangover. Carnaby Street was A number of things strike the visitor. One is that spluttering into irrelevance, while Ted Heath (his political correctness is still rela ti vel y restricted in smile straight from the Commedia dell' Arte) some England: it hasn't got into the air-conditioning, as it how managed to slaughter Harold Wilson on the has in Australia. One could say that its constituency anniversary of Waterloo. Within a few years there was runs almost coterminously with the Guardian reader a postal strike so protracted that postboxes were sealed ship; which means that an immense number of people up, a (pioneering) garbage strike, and a miners' strike go about th eir daily business without coming into that, because of power restrictions, led to a three-day much contact with it. The layered complexities of week. Walking around London in January 1974 was a England, together with its size, tend to blunt the bit like finding yourself entrapped in a smudgy litho impact of any new movement. This has even meant graph from Dickens: only every second streetlight was that economic rationalism, while often applied on to direct you through the misty midwinter brutally, has also been applied unevenly. There landscape. remains the famous eagerness to part you from your London is now a very different city. Whereas it money. (In Oxford I was asked to pay for drycleaning then felt as though sooner or later the whole place in advance, and then-after the statutory four or five would crumble away-there was little evidence of days waiting period- discovered that, under the repairs-nowadays those great, long terraces are cellophane, the trousers had not been done. No bull punctuated by regular outcrops of scaffolding. In 1973 charges like a wounding Pom.) a friend of mine joked of pound-Australian dollar The English love intricacy and respect differen parity. 0 hubris! Now, instead of being worth 73 tiation; in consequence their country can still seem, pence, the dollar tarries in the mid-30s. More in some respects, an incomplete democracy. The strikingly, beyond the tourist traps and outside the traditional elements of the constitution have been regular holiday breaks, one did not often hear Euro weakened all right, not least by Tony Blair's reforms peans talking: today they are everywhere. A united of the House of Lords and even, to some degree, by Europe has brought to London more Continentals devolution-so that a recent Scottish decision to to use an archaic term-than at any other time in its increase teacher pay by a hefty 21 per cent is an history. When you approach anybody who is under embarrassment for London. But attitudes in some 25, particularly the people in a shop or restaurant, be quarters still lag behind. Recently a Tory shadow prepared for a foreign accent. minister, in urging stiffer penalties for drug-taking, Other changes are less agreeable. The traffic is qualified her remarks by saying that she didn't mean Thatcherite-more aggressive and more of it with them to apply to middle-class kids experimenting, but each passing year. In a land once famous for its cour to those persistent offenders on the housing estates. tesy on the road, a pedestrian will now find it safer Meanwhile a multi-millionaire businessman, shortly crossing a street (even with the lights) in Sydney than to receive life imprisonment for murdering his wife, in London. PoMo franticity is also evident in the large was able to negotiate himself out of jail on the grounds number of people you see who smoke, despite the that the squalid conditions there would impede the spread of no-go zones. Even more strikingly, gum is preparation of his defence. Concern about new human increasingly chewed and spat out on the pavement. rights requirements elided into the gross inequality (It's the betel of Britain.) Thirty years ago I was struck, whereby he was allowed to pay for his incarceration as an innocent Austral lad, by the number of people in a comfortable house, with a security firm of his seen in the streets talking to themselves. These days own choosing. The ultimate privatisation: a prison of they're still at it, but with a difference. Over four million one's own. 14 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 To return to the housing estates. These have Nonetheless England is changing fast. Recently becom e places of dread: it was here that the 10-year the number of immigrants overtook the natural old Nigerian boy, Damilola Taylor, was stabbed and growth of population for the first time. (The persist bled to death a few months ago . A sense of shame at ence of large-scale illegal immigration causes concern, once spread across the land: the police, sensitive to and repeatedly crops up in conversation.) Meanwhile the recent charge of 'institutionalised racism', went technological growth is having sharp dem ographic in strongly, supported by massive media coverage. But effects. H i-tech developments in the Thames valley so far they have not had enough evidence to charge have boosted property values to the point where anybody. The conspiracy of silence is deafening service workers can no longer really afford to live terror, probably, rather than solidarity-while it none there: the plaint is echoed by teachers across the theless serves to underscore the racist nature of the south-east. Meanwhile the new rich, in pursuit of a murder. A racist attack resulting in death or severe traditional lifestyle, have similarly made it harder for disablement would seem to occur every couple of young people-and the impoverished elderly-to weeks. Now there are reports-for the first time-of remain living in attractive villages, which have black gangs emerging in the Midlands, choosing white become yuppified. In myriad ways England is being victims. And, as the culture of violence spreads, of transformed; then there are the statistics of social Sikh and Muslim rival gangs, of mixed-race gangs, and of one place in North London that has become so violent that eight blacks have been shot there in the past 12 months. The black presence is increasingly evident. By 1980 one was struck by the way the black young had begun to speak with London accents; now one is struck by the number of spokespeople for the black and Asian communities. There are black MPs (the Duke of Edinburgh once famously asked one of them which country he was from), an Asian Cabinet minister, and a black newsreader on ITV whose style is as Tory as they come. The BBC, recently described by its new director as 'hideously white', is concerned to increase participation from the black and Asian com munities. Tellingly, the debate in the Inde pendent about whether this should be done by applying quotas or not, took place between two black people. In this context, Prince Charles' remark that he saw himself as a defender of breakdown. Here it is catching up with America. Each faiths rather than Defender of the Faith makes consid year there is one divorce for every two marriages, erable sense. Indeed in Church of England circles there while the level of illegitimate births is the is some speculation about a British Pakistani who highest in Europe. might become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Transformation through the extension of tolerance L ESE DAYS AusTRALLANS are not such a large part of (or in the 19th century the franchise) is the desired the landscape as once they were. Less is heard now English way. from the older generation-Greer, James, Humphries It is easy to m ock that much-vaunted tolerance, and it is perhaps symbolic that the most urbane or indeed the English penchant for order. But the place intermittent commentator on Australian ways these is crowded; if people didn't tiptoe around it, it might days is Howard Jacobson, the English novelist who fall to bits. So-at least in the provinces-crowds are has spent a great deal of time here. In Earl's Court still quiet and orderly. People queue. Gradually you there are a few Australian relics, such as the Down com e to see that the apparent repression and Under Club, but a more telling indicator is the way indifference is really a way of giving people in so that a small Australian flag is usually missing from populated a country the personal space to be them the exchange rates displayed in bank windows. Indeed selves. (I once stayed with a Chinese friend in a flat these days the South African presence is probably in Kowloon: there the principle was taken further. stronger, but in that case the push factors are greater. Different family m embers would carry on their Many Australians have other source countries in activities in the corners of a room as if they had all Europe now, and other destinations available closer of it to them selves-ignoring, and being ignored by, to home. So although a journo friend of mine remarked all the other family m embers.) that at any one time there were 100,000 Australians VOLUME 1 ·1 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 15 in London, the fact is that the figure was much the Which explains why this pair of adventurers got same in 1962-wh en our population was a lot smaller further in London than they would have done in than it is now. Sydney or Melbourne. N evertheless surprising links remain. Recent And what of the possibilities for an English issues of the British Who's Who still list Australian republic? The polls now show a significant segment notables; the Independent carried an obituary for in favour of the idea, while the royals continue to get Mietta O'Donnell. In an Oxford common room it dubious if not outrightly bad press-except for Prince turned out that all three of a group of dons had at William, of course, marketed as a teenage heartthrob. some stage toured or worked in Australia. Australian Princess Margaret 's recent collapse was generally soaps are still popular, and the old stereotypes still reported as though she had it coming to her; Princess sufficiently strong for a pair of rough Sydney Anne ruffled a few feathers when she was reported as lesbians-one of whom had run a brothel-to have saying to an elderly woman, who had travelled a con caused mayhem in the best English society. Count siderable distance to give the Queen Mother a present ing on the English preference for relying on word of as she came out of church at Sandringham, what a mouth, they ran up enormous bills in posh hotels, funny thing to dol Yet the monarchy, I suspect, is in bought expensive cars and conned the social set out a sounder position than meets the eye. For one thing, of their money. The Independent, relishing the bizarre if devolution proceeds further (as surely it must), then nature of this escapade (the girls somehow go t them a union of crowns becomes a practical proposition and, selves invited to the Royal enclosure at Ascot), told following one line of thought, a positive necessity. the tale as 'The Smart Sheila's Guide to Becoming a Similarly, the m onarchy has become an important Bonza-Fide Con Woman'. Which was precisely why token in contesting the considerable opposition to the the pair had got so far. The Poms think all Austral euro: at least, in England, it will have the Queen's ians are a bit rough like that; and so- in these days head on it. So it is possible that the monarchy may when most English accept the inevitability of an Aus continue to symbolise the English (if not the British) tralian republic- they broadmindedly accept that this nation until such time as it has become entirely is the way we are. It's all very puzzling: Australia has leached of meaning. come up so far in the world that these days the English The future of New Labour, now that its high now buy more Australian wine than French. So any priest Peter Mandelson has gone, is more difficult to crudeness must be placed within a broader picture ... foretell. The government will get back in the next election; the Tories under William Hague are in such bad odour that the recent bloodletting in the govern ment hardly dented its standing in the polls. But it is not popular. People are sick of spin, of the world's most smiling prime minister since Harold Holt, of the whiff of corruption arising from all those deals and all that fixing. Hefty donations from big business men to the party make many feel uncomfortable, as did the pronouncement by one developer (and donor) recently that 'Blair is the new Thatcher. He is run ning an enlightened government. Thatcher ran an enlightened government. ' Tony Blair's tokenistic class war against foxhunting-now outlawed by the Commons, not yet by the Lords- is seen as cynical symbolism at best, and as giving into fringe pressure groups at worst. So the question is, how many seats will Labour lose? This is a real question, much more than it would be in Australia: in a country without compulsory voting, people can cause mayhem by just not bothering to turn out. In 1970 the papers prophe sied a landslide Labour victory; but weariness with Wilson and Labour abstentions brought in Ted Heath. So radical a result is not likely, given a continuing recoil from the long period of Tory rule. But stand by for surprises; and for more coming out of England, which-having got its confidence back-is now more changing and vibrant than it has been for many a year.• Jim Davidson, who i writing a biography of the histo rian Keith Hancock, recently spent 10 weeks in England. 16 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 T H E W OR L D:2 C A T RI ONA JA C KSON • From the 1n side What, other th an images of horror, ca n you ta ke away from mu se ums of genocid e? 'IE T Above left: Chan Kim Srun , th e w ife of a foreign ministry offi cial under th e Khmer Rouge; both moth er and child were later killed by th e regime. Centre and left: Unnamed priso ners of th e regime. his skinny chest, and calls th e fat that remained open to sustain and run Eighteen months after they had cheeked statue 'pig'. The rest collapse in the regime. marched in, the Vietnamese turned S-2 1 paroxysms of schoolboy laugh ter. Then Eighteen m onths aft er they took the into Tuol Sleng Museum of they turn and run out into the obliterating city, the Khmer Rouge turned Tuol Sleng Genocidal Crimes. sunshine. Primary and the high school next door Twenty-five years ago boys like into the highly secret S-21 death camp. EoM THE OUTSIDE the building looks like these went t o the school n ext door, Secrecy was maintained by m any m eans, any other school still standing in the city. Tuol Sleng Primary, before the Khmer but most effectively by killing the inmates. It is not until you get inside that you feel Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, capital Between 19 76 and the first week of i ts chill. It is deadly quiet . N o-on e of Cambodi a. After five years of civil war 1979 at least 14,000 people were impris enforces the silen ce, but-as with a the people were desperate for peace and on ed; all but 12 specially exem p ted chu rch or cem etery-the atmosphere they welcomed the victors. inmates were put t o death. T hey died dictates it. T uol Sleng m akes yo u mute. Within days the Khmer Rouge regime after torture or of starvation at S-2 1, or For the firs t tim e, our local guide of Dem ocratic Kampuchea had emptied were murdered at the nearby Choeung Ek would rather not accompany us, and is the capital, sending almost the entire killing fi eld. happy to go off for a cool drink with the population into the country to becom e By the time the Vi etnamese swept the m embers of ou r group w ho share his agricultural workers. Khmer Rouge fr om power in 1979, reluctance. VOL UME 11 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 1 7 The first corridor in building A was The Tuol Sleng brochure explains, in identification numbers accom pany the reserved fo r 'important' prisoners, one to fra ctured English, that the aims of the fa ces of the victims. a cell. In the final days, when the regime museum arc to expose the crimes of 'the Many arc very you ng, and could have had begun to consume even those at its Pol Po t criminal' and to 'educat[e] the lived in the same village, or gone to the head, senior cadres were imprisoned there. young people .. . to comprehend and keep same school as their persecu tors-except As the Vietnamese approached the hatred against the genocidal criminals'. that the cooks and guards didn't go to city, the killers slaughtered their last 14 But this is South East Asia, and it school and neither did the inmates. The victims, and fa ded old pictures of the should com e as no surprise that there is ca dres at S-2 1 were chosen from exactly corpses hang on the walls above the metal m ore than one way to tell the story. The the sam e grou p as the mass of the bed fra m es. Vietnam ese attempts to sim plify such inmates: ill-educated peasants. The 'poor On the floors lie the shackles which great evil are defeated by the place itself. and bl ank', as Mao put it. forced the prisoners' legs apart. T here are The sm aller individual cells in build The workers who made the regime also rectangular ammunition boxes, the ing C arc shabby structures built of bricks function were certainly not possessed of Billl DING C : ,. GROUNDFLOOR .: INGLE CHLS nt..DI Of BRICK ---f:R.(.hl!OO_~ ,',;I ~.Gll(ElLS fi AD{ Of IJJOOD · · - ~. SECO N D FLOOR ( ASS orr OIT1 - ...,. T"E SECURITY RE6ULATIOI1S I. YOU MUST AMSYIERAC1:0RDINGLVTO MYOU!STIONS . DOtiT IURHIHEM AWAY 2. PON TTRYTO ~IDE !~£FACTS BY MA~ NG PRHEm T~ISANO T ~n ~O U !RE STRICTLYPROWBITED TO CONTEST ME . O.OON'T SEA fOOLJOR YOUAAlACIIAP \JIIQ DA RHO TINART TH! RlWLUTION . 4. YOU MUST IMMEDIAUN Am\/Elt Ml®Ul\01\S VITH0\11 VASTIN6Tit1f TO II! FlECT 5. DON'TTHln£ EITH[IAOOUI YQIJR II\IIlRilfi\lSORlHllS!UI(!Of lll RlWlUTION. 6. IJ~Il£ 6HTING lASH!! OR H£CTR\ f(ATION YOU MU!TNOT CRY AT All. 7. DO NOTHlNG,SITSflllAND WAIT FOR MYOIDUIS .If 111[11[\SNIIORO!R.KUP Qil[l. \J\1[" IASK YOU TO DO SOM[T HlHu,YOUMUST 00 IT RJ;IIT IUIY1111100 1 PI\OTfiTIHG . ABOUT KMPiCH!A IROM IMRIIITO HID[ YO\IR JAW Of TRAITOR. fOllOW All TH[ r£0\'!RUUS , ~U Sll! ~liiT 1\\1\Ynlt«ll!llSOfU[(TRKVIRE. 0~08£'1 A\1'1 PIIKT Of 11'1 R l iUllmlll'iWIIII ~Ill lllHER m \JlHUO RfM SIIOCI:! • Of lids swinging open. Som e cont ained stacked sideways. Mortar spills out where revolu tionary fervour. Many said their h u m an faeces when the Vietnam ese no-one bothered to scrape the edges . The lives had been better, freer, as soldiers in discovered S-21. cells are as long as a sm all body, and so the civil war. A yo ung S-2 1 interrogator, Tim e has turned the stains that run narrow that m y outstretch ed elbows Ma Meng Kheang, described the life: 'It's down the walls a uniform, fetid brown, touch both sides. The mass detention difficult to think so much. You get so with darker patches on the fl oors. cells are large, fe atureless rooms with tired. It's a political place. Yo u never Tuol Sleng has been pretty much left numbers painted around the walls. know when the clay is fin ished. Yo u never as it was found by the Vietnamese who In building B the contents of the know if you are correct.' still run it, albeit with increasing local Khmer Rouge picture archive is on the There is no m odern museum para involvem ent. The vanquishers have not walls. What little written explanation phernalia at Tuol Sleng, no shiny cabinets been able to resist a bit of 'explanation', there is is in French. There are great and scrubbed instruments of torture. w ritten in a rhet oric dis tressingl y blocks of uniformly sized headshots. N othing stands between the visitor and similar to that of the regime they are Prison ers and staff would be indistin the barbarous reality of w hat happened condemning. guishable if it weren 't for the fa ct that here. T here is very little space to step 18 EU REK A STRE ET • MAY 2001 back into. The closest thing to a con Now I want to get out. I think about trived display is a filthy pane of glass the frangipani tree and try to maintain an with the clothes of the dead piled up even pace as I walk down the stairs. But MELBOURNE behind it, or the oft en-reproduced map at the bottom of the stairwell the gate is UNIVERSITY PRESS of Cambodia built out of skulls. After pulled right across and padlocked. Just fo r what has gone before, these di splays a mom ent I am stuck with the dust and MESSAGES are strangely unaff ecting. They can' t the weeping walls and the signs of lives FROM BEYOND compete with the bleak horror perhaps still being lived, but probably not. of the place itself. In my haste to get back up the stairs Spiritualism and I kick w hat I later realise mu t have been Spiritualists in A s vou OME close to the busts that a coconut husk. It makes a hollow thud Melbourne's Golden the little boys are slapping (there are two and my stomach lurches. I run up the stairs, Age 1870-1 890 identical ones) you can see a faded black past the cells, and out the way I cam e in. AL GABAY cross painted across each, neatly quarter Outside, the little boys are running ing the former school teacher's face. All about, and a m other is calling to h er In this fas cinatin g hi story, Gabay the photographs of Pol Pot low enough family that dinner is ready as he lays the ex pl ores the ori gins of th e Spirituali st to reach have had the eyes scratched out. rice and meat out on the balcony table. movement and relates its ri se and fall to the wider intell ectual and reli gious curre nts in co lonial Au stralian society. Paperback $32.95 THE MANY SIDED TRIANGLE Adoption in Australia AUDREY MARSHALL I AND MARGARET MCDONALD This is the first compre hensive account of th e history of adoption in Au strali a, its law and practice. Paperback $32.95 As I turn sideways to squeeze through Different people will react differently the almost closed gates that lead up to to Tuol Sleng. Most walk through a few ASYLUM the top floor of building B, I catch a room s and leave, preferring to brea the SEEKERS glimpse of one of my travel companions. what they believe to be the clear air of He is sitting outside, under a frangipani the present. Australia's Response tree. His arms are stretched along the That's not good enough . After 45 to Refugees back of the bench seat; the only move minutes in Tuol Sleng, I can't pretend to DON MCMASTE R ment is the rise and fa ll of his shoulders understand what happened in Cambodia. as he ucks in the clean, outside air. But as m embers of a common race, we Why are some refugees Upstairs most of the doors to the big must force ourselves to stare the grea test for example, the Kosovars-welcomed in cells are locked up, but if you peer evil square in the face-and admit that Australia with open arms, while others between the broken slats you ee the at least part of what we see there 1s especially people fleeing from Asian , African and Middle Eastern countries same open mass detention rooms that ourselves. • housed the bulk of the prisoners. In one are locked up in punitive and isolated detention centres? corner there is a box, with clothes, bones Catriona Jackson is the education and a skull spilling out. reporter for Th e Canberra Tim es. She Asylum Seekers captures the immigration The stairwell at the end of the corridor travelled to Cambodia courtesy of and refugee debate as it is happening is stacked with what looks like rubbish. Goddard and Partners travel consultants, now. As I get closer I see there are shoes, Canberra. Email: catriona.jackson@ Paperback $38.45 mostly plastic cross-front sandals made canberratimes.com.au brown and indistinct with dust. At the Further reading: Voices from S-21: Terror and bottom of the stairs I can see a single, History in Pol PoL's Secret Prison, David Chan www.mup.com.au discarded boot. dler, Allen and Unwin, 2000. JSB 1 86448 638 4. VOLUME 1 1 N UMBER 4 • EU RE KA STRE ET 19 THE WOR L D:3 ANTHONY HAM Two women I ND'-' AND Tmkcy "" count 20 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 Meenakshi the woman she most cared about was Like Meenu, (left) to replicate the cause of her mother's Hilal knew the world and Hilal suffering. And then, typically, only through the people (right). she smiled. visited. It became difficult to distinguish Photographs Hilal, eith er in her dress or apparent laughing by Anthony Harn. A T AROUND THE same time, far away freedom, from the women from Australia, and singing, a in the Turkish Mediterranean village of England, the Netherlands and South dancer to the end. Olympos, another friend of mine was Africa. She skipped from one task to the On the following day when we were facing a reality of no happy endings . next, taking pleasure in the harmless due to leave, Hilal was nowhere to be I had first met Hilal three years before. mischief she caused, cajoling sleepy found. We waited all day and into the It was during one of the happiest periods travellers out of bed, dressing up as a man night, catching the last bus when it was of my life and I had stumbled by accident for one of her nightly performances. Such apparent that she would not be return into her guest house in the wooded was her sense of fun and her confident ing. A week later I learned that her father valleys leading down to the pristine command of her realm that hers seemed had closed the pension and that the coastline. Hilal's place was the last build an ideal life in an ideal place. wedding was imminent. No argument ing in the village and the closest to the I knew from Hilal that it was soon her was to be entered into. The last news beach that you reach only by going turn to marry, although she was evasive, I received was that Hila! had becorne an through Roman ruins-an amphitheatre ever the joker, about when it was to be. unwilling housewife. and an old church with mosaics and stone She laughed off the marriage as if she I think she stayed away deliberately statues that were slowly being consumed hoped it would never happen. on our last day so as not to be confronted by the forest. I returned to Olympos three months with the fact that we were leaving In Olympos, you sleep in tree houses, later to find Hilal still in fine form . She because we could. Like Meenu, Hilal had meals are served in open-sided, roofed took us to one of the village weddings. no such choice. Her future was deter platforms covered with cushions and Gunshots were fired into the air as part mined by her love for her family, the carpets, and the evenings are mellow of the celebrations. Revellers drank duties she owed them and the unwritten affairs, given over to music, backgammon potent raki (a homebrew firewater that obligations that society had decreed for and conversations past midnight. Hila] could start your car) in large quantities. her as a woman. was the energy of the house, if not the And the guests assured us that we could When Meenu smiled she masked the whole town. Her father lurked in the sing along even if we didn't know the pain of a life she could not direct. And shadows and her mother laughed with words. An old man swayed rhythmically when Hilal danced it was because there mock outrage at what her guests got up through the crowd, scarcely able to walk, was no tomorrow. • to. Hilal's brother was on the run from yet with an economy of movement and a his father somewhere in Turkey because stunning sense of grace and poise. Anthony Ham is a Eureka Street cor he owed him money. Throughout, Hilal was a practical joker, respondent. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 2 1 THE LAW MOIRA RAYNER Too many hats UK precedents have raised questions about the continued viability of Westminster-style government. EAm TH 22 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 natural justice, as they are in England. This was, naturally, inconvenient, especially to those making deportation, refugee and asylum application decisions. (Ah Hin Teoh was the custodial father of several Australian children. The Teoh decision would have given him, and them, only the right to make rep resentations before the immigration authorities took their deportation A Mir bagatelle decision.) The then ALP Attorney-General, H owEVER OBJECTIVE and remote from politics scientists like to think them Michael Lavarch, acted immediately to eliminate the 'legitimate expectation' selves, their handiwork will always be viewed through a political filter. Ever that the Australian government intended since the Russian revolution, for instance, Russian science-the good, the bad to be bound by its international promises. and the ugly-has never been treated on its merits. On the Eastern side of the The 'anti-Teoh' bill then tabled was Iron Curtain, it was hailed as the finest flower of the Communist systemi on flawed and bitterly opposed, shelved, the Western side, it was a symbol of the malevolence and shoddiness of the then revived under the Coalition admin Evil Empire. istration in 1997, but again not proceed Which is one of the reasons why the flagship of the Russian space program, ed with. It is very worrying that the the Space Station 'Mir', is so interesting. During its 15 years aloft, the Iron Howard government has just revived a Curtain was rolled back, and its image varied according to the time. similar bill. In 2000 it retreated from When Mir was launched in 1986, the American media regarded it with a co-operation with the UN's human rights somewhat patronising suspicion. (It didn't help that the earlier US version, Sky lab, committee system, after its treatment of had been forced to shut down inside a year, and then plummeted out of control immigrant and Indigenous populations into Western Australia five years later.) But Mir was finally steered back into attracted national and international the south-eastern Pacific earlier this year to grudging admiration. By that time, criticism. The initiative may be linked the Americans had paid it the ultimate compliment-by having the Russians to the growing flow of asylum seekers design and launch Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station. detained in desert camps and the crack The Cold War was still chilling East-West relations when the core module down on their rights to appeal and obtain which formed Mir's living quarters was put into space 15 years ago. In an era of advice on those rights. great secrecy, Soviet officials revealed little about its design except that it was We must not go down that path. equipped with six ports for affixing further modules or docking spacecraft. In Nobody who possesses power can fact, the somewhat ugly structure took ten years to complete. And by that time abstain long from using it, or easily feel one of the docks had been modified to take NASA's Space Shuttle. ing satisfied that the common good is commensurate with their own. It is time In 1995 the Americans began arriving on their Space Shuttle, and US money to demand an expansion of the courts' was pumped into keeping it flying. Even so it's hard to eradicate Cold War legitimate role in balancing the protec attitudes entirely. Most American commentators, for instance, say the research tion of citizens' rights against the con that was undertaken on Mir was 'not up to the Western standard', according to venience and priorities of administrators. a report in the British weekly, N ew Scientist. The Europeans have been much The protective constitutional principles more gracious. One particularly important piece of research showed that plants have broken down. Even the ancient could grow normally in space, to provide a future food supply. natural justice principles are being wound Even in its death throes, the likelihood of a successful splashdown for Mir back by 'pragmatic' governments of both was not always presented objectively. It was only by visiting the NASA website, political camps. Given the centrality of for instance, that I became aware of the fact that the Russians had performed the ordinary courts in interpreting and the same manoeuvre at least 85 times before-putting 80 spacecraft and fiv e applying international human rights smaller space stations into the same area of the Pacific-with only one notable principles within the Common Law failure which ended up in the Chilean Andes. Admittedly, handling Mir was a tradition, Australia should seriously con lot more difficult, but the Russian experience and track record in these matters sider the UK's Human Rights Act as a was far superior to anyone else. model for human rights protection. We Mir was a huge success. As an undeniable illustration of what Russian cannot leave these fundamental rights to science could do, it became a source of huge national pride when its country the discretionary judgment of even the needed it most. And, ironically enough, it even lived up to its name. As a bridge most high-minded ministers. No-one between the Soviet Union and modern Russia, between competition and should be a judge in their own cause. • co-operation in space, between cosmonauts and astronauts, it could hardly have been dubbed more aptly. Mir. Peace. • Moira Rayner is Director of the London Children's Rights Commissioner's Office. Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. V OLUME 11 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 23 WHEN WAS OUR -/ , (NATION BORN? Historian John Hirst offers three options: • 1 january 1901 with the federation of the colonies and the establ ishment of the Commonwealth. • 25 April 1915 with the landing at Gallipoli. • The emergence of multicultural Australia, which might be dated to 1966, the end of the White Australia policy or to 1967, the referendum that removed discriminatory references to Aborigines in the constitution. SOMC "om oouer whcth e< Au 24 EUREKA STREET • M AY 2001 performed magnificently. The deep misgivings that again. When Paul Keating sought advice on the Australians had about them selves were finally swept celebrations in the early 1990s, he set up a com mittee away by the valour of their troops and the recognition headed by Joan Kirner. Kirner, like many Australians, of their efforts. In World War I Australian soldiers had knew little of the federation process and was quite fo ught fo r the empire-but better than anyone else, swept away by how open, how consultative it had including the British . Australians now had the self been . The founding fathers were, it seemed, politicians confidence to think of them selves as a nation. who listened. They had to listen, of course, because The federation of the colonies was a great civic any disgruntled group had the power to vote 'N o' at achievem ent and it gave Australia the formal status the referendum. of a nation, but it did not express the deepest needs The constitution was developed over ten years, and sentiments of the Australians in the way that the via a convention in 1891 and a convention which m et diggers did. So the diggers eclipsed the federal fathers three times in 1897 and 1898. It was assembled by as the founders of the nation. consultation (which is one reason why it is such a But needs change, and we are constantly seeing dull document). It eschews grand principles, fudges past events in new ways. At one stage in the 1960s it and elaborates minor matters in tedious detail. Take, looked as if the mem ory of Gallipoli would disappear. for example, the deliberations over the position of civil Instead, there has been a great revival of interest, servants-the postmen, customs officers and soldiers though now we celebrate chiefly the personal qualities who were to be transferred from the colonies to the of the m en, their doggedness, their stoicism, their Commonwealth's service. The first draft of the mateship. We do not celebrate them as fi ghters for document said simply that their rights would be empire and we are less inclined to say that the nation preserved. But what of the benefits they reasonably was born at Gallipoli. We now have abundant grounds expected to acquire in the colony's service, would they for the self-confidence of nationhood. be preserved when they transferred? And what would And we are also now more open to the view that happen to civil servants who were not chosen for the the nation was form ed on 1 January 1901. There is Commonwealth when their department was trans certainly much more interest at this anniversary in ferred? And who would pay the pensions, the state or the details of how fe deration was achieved than there the Commonwealth? One line in the original draft was in 195 1. Then federation seem ed just another step became 22 lines in the final document. The reason in the progress of this British nation; there was more for such close attention ? All the civil servants would honouring of the deeds of explorers and diggers than be voting in the referendum. of the federation fa thers. Modern readers of the constitution look fo r a N ot that I would claim that there has been stirring preamble or a bill of rights and are disappoint extraordinary enthusiasm for the current federation ed. No constitution, before or since, has given so much celebrations. It is perhaps unsurprising that one attention to the pension rights of postmen . Nonethe person, after seeing the parade in Sydney on 1 January, less, it was a fitting beginning for a federation nam ed said, 'I always wondered what a straight Mardi Gras a commonwealth, a federation which was to be con- would be like.' cerned for the common good and the good But the dem ocratic founding myth is reappear of people previously thought of as common . ing. On the evening of 1 January at Centennial Park, Bob Carr spoke of federation as a great democratic BuT T HERE IS resistance to the celebration of feder achievem ent and h e linked the voting on the ation. The third in the ABC Barton lecture series was constitution at referendum with the referendums on given in February 2001 by Professor Mary Kalantzis, conscription in WWI and the dissolution of the Dean of Education at RMIT. She reminded us that Communist Party in 195 l. The prime minister also alongside the federal story is what she called, arrest spoke of the virtues of a nation that came together ingly, the 'German' elem ent in our history, the one freely through the ballot box. concerned with racial purity and racial segregation, In this pacific age, when the notion of blood eugenics, and the removal of Aboriginal children. 'The sacrifice is abhorrent, the myth may become appealing big picture ideas are no different to those of the V OLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EU REKA STREET 25 Germ an '30s and '40s: of the necessity to create "one spur to federation. The ideal was not wholly racial; people, ... without admix ture of races" (t o use this was racism certainly, but social democratic Deakin's words) .. . ' racism. The upholders of White Australia wanted a How can we unambiguously celebrate federation, racially pure society and of course for them white Kalantzis asks, when unity of race was the strongest ness was best; they also wanted a society where all motive for union and the early Commonwealth was could m eet as equals and which accepted the dignity protecting the industry, trade and wages of white m en ? of labour and paid high wages. Coloured labour in their We do have some things to celebrate, she says: our view was a lesser, degraded form, one that led to escape from this world with the abandonment of exploitation and harsh social division. They had an White Australia, the end of legal discrimination example of such a society before them in the Queens against Aborigines, our success with the migration land canefields where white men did not labour; they program, and the creation of a multicultural Australia. supervised the indentured labourers from Not only is our past the Pacific Islands, the kanakas. racist and m asculinist, Kalantzis argues, but there Ys, THE RACISM of these founders was crude and is also not much that is uncompromising and it is easy to condemn them out credible as democracy in our constitution-making. of their own mouths. Consider, for example, one of the Yes, she grants, the people's approval at referendum famous racist manifestos from the Bulletin, the radical With the was necessary for the acceptance of the constitution. nationalist republican weekly, in its glory days of the But women were excluded, so 50 per cent involve 1880s. But as you read, watch for the social democracy: m ent is as good as you can get. Voting was not disappearance By the term Australian we mean not those who have compulsory. So we end up with only 11 per cent of been merely born in Australia. All white men who the adult population voting on the document. What of social ism, come to these shores- with a clean record- and who sort of democracy is that, Kalantzis asks. I am sure leave behind them the m emory of the class distinc her calculation is wrong. I've seen low fi gures but hers all we have tions and the religious differences of the old world ... are lower than any I've seen before. are Australians. No nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, What these calculations hide is the acceptance, no kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured labour is to put in the Australian colonies of the 1890s, of the amazing an Australian. democratic principle that citizens should be directly against the involved in constitution-making. Where women were So it's to be a society without class and religious accepted as citizens-in South Australia and Western di visions; those are to be left behind in Europe. The forces of Australia-they were in fact included. people named as ineligible to be Australians are those This Kalantzis manoeuvre reminds m e of what who have been used as cheap labour in Australia: 'the global I am always encountering in my work on civics in nigger, the Chinaman, the lascar, the kanaka'; and, schools. We want to introduce the students to demo no matter what his race, the supplier of such labour capita lism cratic Athens, where citizens voted directly on all laws is not to be Australian-'no purveyor of cheap and were chosen by lot to hold office. We commission coloured labour is an Australian'. in this place writers to prepare lessons on this subject. Invariably, T he concern for the dignity of labour and its the first thing they want children to know about proper reward was expressed by the most distinctive democratic Athens is that women and slaves were institution of the early Commonwealth, the Arbit 1s our excluded from citizenship. By applying this test of ration Court. Supported by all parties, the court was inclusiveness, of course, all the past looks the same set up to solve industrial di sputes peacefully, with ega I itarian and children are encouraged to believe that western out the need for strikes. Under Justice Higgins, the civilisation was of no account until the passage of the Court in 1907 es tablished a basic wage calculated on national Equal Opportunity Act. the needs of an average employee living in a civilised What we hide in this view of our history is that community with a wife and three children to support. tradition. m en have frequently proclaimed principles more This used to be a celebrated moment in Austral ample than their interests required and those ian history. But Kalantzis is now only the last in a principles have then been used against them by other long line of feminist historians who for 30 years have men-and by women. And that undernea th the hier been reading the basic wage as a gendered settlement. archies and exclusions, equality has been the great They say its effect was to define women as subordinate sleeper in the Western tradition : and confine them to the hom e. But Justice Higgins was not the inventor of women's subordination nor T here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond of their role as homem akers. The position the basic nor free, there is neither male nor fe male; for yc are wage judgment accorded to women is in fac t quite all one in Christ Jesus. unsurprising. What is truly surprising is its central Kalantzis is right about the racism of our found principle: that wages should not be set by the market, ing fa thers and the centrality of the White Australia not by the ability of the employer to pay, but by the ideal, even though she is wrong to claim it as the chief needs of the worker. 26 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 In recent years, the economic rationalists have nings of nationalism's demise. To them the defining been attacking the Arbitration Court. The frontal of a nation is always limiting and oppressive. They attack has come from big business, organised as the hail Australia's new diversity and do not want H .R. Nicholls Society. But feminist historians have nationalism to be the force that holds it together. been their outriders, softening up progressive opinion Rather, they argue, we should be held together by civic by depicting Justice Higgins as a male villain. They values merely: parliamentary democracy, the rule of see little reason to honour this part of Australia's past. law, respect for diversity. We should not be afraid of Two parts of me will not let me ditch old differences or search for some unifying force; we Australia. First, I am an historian and I know that the simply become skilled at negotiating our differences. new beginning of the 1960s and 19 70s is not a Their aim is community without nation. complete break from the past. The success of multi Imagine an anti-nationalist anthem (not, I has cultural Australia can only be understood by reference ten to say, written by nationalism's opponents-they to the characteristics of old egalitarian Australia, the would hate anthems). world of mateship and the basic wage. Imagine the Australians all, let us rejoice, fate of millions of migrants going to a country which Diversity's our name; cared a lot about who your parents were, or your We're set apart by race and class, schooling, or how you spoke, or whether you had read And gender does the same. the right books, or whether you gave people their right Our land abounds in differences titles. Australia was the opposite of all this. Because Which we'll negotiate; it was easy-going, informal and egalitarian, it was In hist'ry's page, let ev'ry stage more welcom.ing to migrants and wanted them to have Dissolve the Australian state. 'a fair go'. In joyful strains then let us sing We can cormect the ideals of white Australia and Dissolve the Australian state. the basic wage very directly to the success of migrants in Australia. The unions were opposed to the It makes the official anthem sound good. migration scheme. They objected to coloured The puzzling thing about the anti-nationalist immigration most strongly, but they opposed all position is that its proponents declare that national assisted migration schemes, fearing them as a device ism is already dead. In 1988 Stephen Castles, Bill to lower wages. They were afraid such schemes would Cope, Mary Kalantzis and Michael Morrissey pro bring in British paupers or European peasants who duced a book predicated on its demise (Mistaken would accept low wages and not have the gumption Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nation to insist on better. The Labor government that alism in Australia, Pluto Press, Sydney). I think the introduced the migration program after the war had death notice was a little premature. For all our diver to promise the unions that migrants would be paid sity, nationalism is still a very powerful force, as the award wages. Olympics and the East Timor expedition in different So migrants did not start work for low wages in ways demonstrated. sweat shops; they did not become an underclass, Nationalisms come in different varieties. One of which was the fantasy of left-wing sociologists. The the books prompted by the anniversary of federation Italian peasant, within 48 hours of leaving the boat, deals with this issue and deserves more attention. It was working at Holden at award wages and was, by was written by the Monash sociologist, Bob Birrell, compulsion, a member of the Vehicle Builders Union. at first with the title A Nation of Om Own, and Australia: it's an odd place when you look at it. And reissued on 1 January this year as Federation: The yet the migration scheme is, in some quarters, still Secret Story. He classifies nationalisms and rates Aus rendered as a tale of oppression- the huts at the tralian nationalism as middling on the social demo Bonegilla migrant centre were cold in winter cratic scale-not as strong as Sweden, but much and there were no social workers. stronger than the United States, which scarcely scores. He thinks nationalism continues to give a sense of 'IE OTHER PART OF ME that wants tO hold On tO old community, and that social democrats in Australia Australia is me as citizen. With the disappearance of should not pour scorn on the national achievements socialism, all we have to put against the forces of of the federation period. I take my stand with him. global capitalism in this place is our egalitarian And so I say the nation began on 1 January 1901 and national tradition. Our democratic manners, which thereabouts. • I value highly, can still be nourished by the songs and stories of Lawson and Paterson and the deeds of those John Hirst is Reader in History at La Trobe Univer disrespectful diggers. sity and author of The Sentimental Nation: The Let me be clearer about the position held by Mary Making of the Australian Commonwealth (OUP). Kalantzis. She is one of the school that is opposed to The above is an edited version of the first Eureka nationalism. They are not looking for the birth of a Street Monday talk given at Newman College, new nation in the 1960s and 1970s, but the begin- 26 March 2001. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 27 BOOKS:l j ACK WATERFORD For the record 'In Denial: The Stolen Ge nerations and the Ri ght', The A mlralwn () uartcrlv £\\ll\, Issue I. Schwc1rtz Publishing, 2001. 1~\N I -1--l4 XX4X, IUU' $lJ.lJ'i A .;,cN<,CANT pcopotbon of the political, intellectual and cultural debate. Australian population is embarrassed and Each essay is intended to he of at least angry at a seeming impasse in black- white 20,000 words- providing a small book- its relations in Australia. It wants reconcilia publishers hoping 'to m ediate between the ti on. It wants to get to some point where limitations of the newspaper column, where the past can be acknowledged and the talk there is the dange r that evidence and can move to what is ahead. It fears that the argument can be swallowed up by the form, true stolen generation of Aboriginal affairs and the kind of full-length study of a subject is the present one-whose progress and where the only readership is necessarily a li bcra tion seems stalled by almost semantic specialised one.' debates about how much they are disadvan It is aimed 'for the attention of the com taged and why. Those in this camp, who As Robert Manne has demonstrated in mitted general reader'. include most younger Australians, yearn to his pamphlet 'In Denial', it is easy to find If this first essay sets any precedent, the move on; if they want a formal apology to an intellectual focus among the die- hards. form involves polemic, reasonable economy Aborigines from government it is because It is to be found among several gatherings of with footnotes, but ample space either for they wish for a situation in which they have right-wing intellectuals historically based developing arguments or for canvassing the nothing to apologise for. around Melbourne, and closely linked with evidence. This essay is not simply a review Another sector of the community, over the H.R. Nicholls Society, the Samuel of the literature, or the justice, of the stolen whelmingly but by no means exclusively Griffith Society, the Institute of Public children story, though it is these as well. Its older, think that there is n othing to Affairs (IPA) and the patronage of the boss focus is on the way in which right-wing apologise for. There arc many aspects of of the Western Mining Corporation, Hugh commentators have attempted to frustrate modern society, and many notions of Morgan. It has much ga ined in strength the debate upon the stolen children. As the you nger Australians, which irritate and over the past decade, following the Mabo general editor, Peter Craven, puts it, this is annoy them, or which they think arc built and Wih decisions by the High Court, the an account 'of how a failure of sympathy, a on false history or wrong perspectives. For Hindmarsh Bridge affair in South Australia hardening of the imaginative arteri es, is them there is something special about the (if to a lesser extent), the Human Rights and abetted at every point by a form of wishful 'sorry industry' and about Aboriginal affairs Equal Opportunity Commission's Bringing thinking about the past and compounded by generall y which ga lvanises a particular tic. Them Home rcport on the 'stolen children', a woefully impoverished sense of evidence.' Their view of the present lot of Aborigines as well, generally, as the apology and recon Robert Manne makes out his case, in the is not that they are disadvantaged, but that ciliation push. In even more recent times, process shedding some in tcrcsting light on they arc specially and wrongly privileged; it has acquired some discipline, if that is the circumstances of his re moval from the they sec the failure by Aborigines to advance the word, by its capture of Quadrant, now editorship of Quadrant, which he fixes as a group as a function of an unwillingness the leading journal of anti-Aboriginal closely to the earlier Quadrant's open mind to work and take their place in the com sentiment, and by the readiness of som e (under his editorship) on Aboriginal issues. munity as 'ordinary Australians', and of leading conscrvati vc columnists-not least But he is no mere champion of the official their being misled, som etimes del ib cratcly, Quadrant editor Padraic McGuinness, but report of the Human Rights and Equal by hopeless, romantic collectivists. Modern also Frank Devine, Michael Duffy, Piers Opportunity Co mmission (HREOC), accounts of black-white history threaten Akerman and Andrew Bolt-to usc their acknowledging that in places it overstated both thci r own romantic notions of progress newspaper columns ins upport of such ideas. its evidence or occasionally leapt to con since settlement and som e settled comforts Their agendas receive positive feedback clusions. That this is so has bedevilled much of their Christian childhoods. Much the from the Prime Minister, John Howard, of the critical discussion of the report, if same could be said of their irritations with and his erstwhile Minister for Aboriginal onl y because criti cs, by making lists of other aspects of modern culture and what Affairs, John Herron, and some cheers in contentious assertions, have succeeded, in they would characterise as political cor the pub from supporters of Pauline Hanson, some quarters, in crca ting an im pression rectness. But there is some extra ingredient many of whom have more simple hostilities that the report is ri ddl ed with error. Ron giving them the needle when Aborigines towards Aborigines. Brunton, of the IPA, has been one of the arc bci ng discussed; some peetd iar basis for 'In Denial' is billed as the first of a series more trenchant critics of the HREOC report, what seems a desire to prolong the conflict of Australian Quarterly Essays intended to one whose close canvassing of the material and to make Aborigines cave in. present significant contributions to has been much used by other critics as well. 28 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 He has also led the ridicule of the charge of acknowledges that HREOC could have genocide-a legal word which, in retro benefited-and made itself less vulnerable spect, might have been better unused. To to attack- had it been more active in the layperson, 'genocide' must inevitably soliciting the evidence of the public imply a conscious policy of extermination; servants, policemen, patrol officers and wider m eanings, either of forced assimila missionaries involved in implementation tion, conscious breakdown of tribal links of policies of child removal. It would, he Robe rt Manne's and attachments, will be resisted. suggests, also have been wiser to have dis Manne is reasonably respectful of cussed some of the other criticisms and 'In Denial' Brunton's analyses-if more condemnatory concepts of genocide. a controversial essay on the of his motives, and of those who have mis He also brings forward recollections Stolen Generation represented even what Brunton says. made by m en in less self-serving times, and Brunton, after all, does not deny the fact of deals particularly effectively with asser the wholesale removal of half-caste tions by a former cadet patrol officer, Colin Alberto Manguel 's Aboriginal children in all states of Aus Macleod. Macleod's background in child Into the Looking tralia (though he disputes some of the more removal was scanty, and many of his claims extravagant estimates of its scale) and is are wrong. He is often cited by those who Glass Wood unequivocal about acknowledging the almost seem to deny that forced child extent of the breaches of human rights removal occurred- he was called by the involved. Brunton is, however, stringently Commonwealth as a witness in the Cubillo criticised by Manne for his failure to case. In truth, Manne says, Macleod under acknowledge a critical difference between stood rem arkably little about the policy of Bruce Duncan's pre-war 'breed- 'em-white' policies, and post child removal, 'yet, because he was singing war welfarist and assimilationist policies, a tune which many Australians wanted to Crusade or which, if still highly obj ectionable, are of a hear, his opinions carried a very consider Conspiracy? different category in judging a legal able and altogether undeserved weight'. genocidal intent. He is also strongly criti Two others are subjected to stringent a detailed history of cised for his claims that, in effect, Commis criticism. First is Reginald Marsh, with his Australian Catholics and sioners Sir Ronald Wilson and Mick Dodson glib explanations about how 'half-caste' had betrayed the victims of forced removal kids did not fit with moiety structures and Communism by their failure to mount 'a precise, had to be 'rescued'. Marsh 's claim s run / careful and sober case'. counter to the evidence even in traditional areas and in any event provide no explana 1N DENIAL' BEG INS by describing a recent tion of child removal in places where moiety news report in which Andrew Bolt claimed systems h ad broken down. Second is The Australian-Greek that Lowitja O'Donoghue had recanted on Douglas Meagher QC, who led for the Com h er claims of forced removal; Manne force monwealth in the Cubillo case. Then comes poetry of fully underlines the report's tendentious an old but, even in his time, highly ineffec ness. The essay moves to discussion of how tive champion of assimilation , Peter Dimitris the stolen children inquiry was established, Howson, who h as become a latter-day Tsaloumas recounting, in som e detail, four well polemicist against the stolen children case, documented stories of forced removal is demonstrated to be as confused as ever. spanning seven decades of the last century. There might be som e who would see It is not without significance-a significance highly sinister motivations behind the almost invariably lost on the critics-that vehem ence of the hostility to the stolen two of the cases involve forced removal of children affair. There are, after all, interests John Banville's children from NSW and Queensland, where at odds with Aboriginal aspirations, and Eclipse it could not be said that part-Aboriginal some of the critics, and som e of their children were being removed from highly backers, can be closely identified with those traditional communities where they might interests. Annoyance with prevailing trendy Don De Lillo's be alleged to be at risk because the com social morality can provide some basis too, munity did not accept 'half-castes'. The not to m ention som e pleasure at twitting The Body Artist recounting of the stories also provides an what is seen as a 'politically correct' liberal opportunity not only to dem onstrate the establishment. Robert M anne's essay Amy Tan's development of official policies, but to show provides, h owever, som e powerful ammu that statem ents made by senior adminis nition to show som e of the flaws of their The Bonesetter's trators of the 'breed-' em -white' variety were approach; at the end of the day, the very not m ere private expressions of opinion but title, 'In Denial' retains a special ring. • Daughter represented adopted official policy. There follows some discussion of the Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Bringing Them Home report. Manne Times. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 29 BOOKS:2 MARGARET CO FFEY Chequered history Cru~atle or Compiraq ? Catholic~ and the Anti-Communist Stru~; .~le in Au~tralia Bruce Duncan U <; \.\ Pre'' J()()J ,,, () S(,X -1 0 7 ~I ~ ' IUU' S-ILJ .LJ-1 B nwcw"" Glo""Y ' "d Om P"Y"" Bruce Duncan is clear that, despite later m cnt by the church. Until hi s dea th Arch at the r ear of the n ew Me lbo urne denials, B.A. Santamaria ultimately aimed bi shop Mannix had the Melbourne Arch Archdiocesan Year 7 Religious Education to exercise a dominant influence in the diocese provide £6000 per year to the text is a 'Ti mel inc from Abraham to Christ'. Australian Labor Party, by 'getting the Movement's reincarnation, the National It begins with the 'End of the Second Ice numbers', so that it would adopt Move Civic Council. Even in 1967 Mr Santamaria Age' c 13,000BCE and ends eight pages later ment policies which encapsulated his Chris could propose to Bishop Stewart and the with the 'Year of Jubilee to celebrate 20 tian social vision. Further, he aimed to Victorian bishops (in a letter held in the centuries of Christianity'. achieve influence at the behest of reli gious Bendigo Diocesan Archives) that for six Twenty-three significant events arc authorities. years I 0 per cent of the expected $1,800,000 li sted post World War II, including the This important book has been written fro m new per capita grants to Catholic definition of the Dogma of the Assumption out of copious research, much of it in schools be redirected to the NCC. The in 1950, the founding of the Missionaries of archives not previously available, including bishops did not agree. C hari ty by Mother Teresa, the Second church archi ves in Australia and Rome. A Cardinal Gilroy's final frank remarks to Vatican Council, the 'promulga ti on' of the fund of reference and quotation, person and Rome about both Mr Santamaria and Arch Catechi sm of the Catholi c Church and (t he moment, it i nchcs its way from the late '30s bishop Mannix make extraord inary reading: onl y encyclical mentioned) Pope John Paul to the '60s. There are times when reading it 'sadly it must be admitted that Mr II 's 'Verillltis Splendor (on morality)'. seem s like a visit to a much-too-distant and Santamaria and his assoc iates have The United Nations docs not rate a alien past. However, the 2001 Year 7 text succeeded in dividing the Church, even the mention, nor, apart from India, Pakistan calls us to its ever-so-present m eaning. Bishops, more effectively than Commu and Israel, do the accumulation of demo The most graphic contribution Crusade ni sts could ever have hoped to do'. Bruce cratic states that was truly a 20th-century or Conspiwcy! makes to the historiography Duncan notes that 'reflecting in 1966, he achievement. But there arc 11 entries related of 'the Split' is its documentation of the [San tamaria] tho ught Mannix did not to Com munism, including the 1954 disagreem e nts a m o n g the Australian understand the si tuation in the Vatican, 'Communist takeover of North Vietnam. bishops as to the proper role of Mr and lacked good contac ts', h ence the Vietnam divided into North and South', the Santamaria and'his' Movem ent, their final Vatican's routing of the Mannix/San tamaria 1957 'Viet Cong (Communist guerrillas) referral of their difficulties to the Vatican, alliance. It must have been an begin raid on South Vietnam', the 1962-65 and the Roman response in 1957 which instructive experience for him. 'Beginning of US military involvement in obliged the bishops in 1958 to sever the Vietnam', and the 1975 'Both North and church's connecti ons with the Movement. EOR ME, THOUGH, Crusade or Conspiracy! South Vietnam now Communist'. Search Bruce Duncan details the national Move is most significan t for its placement of the the text proper and the only reference to ment's em ergence from the Melbourne Movement saga in the context both of broad Vietnam is to the 18th-century martyrs Freedom Movem ent of 1943 and the ser ocial movements in the aftermath of the canonised by the present Pope; the elates pentine changes both in its structura l 1930s Depression and the evolution of just si t at the back like a bell tolling. It may relationship with the church and its Catholic social ideas in that period. The be that the teachers' guide m akes explicit ambitions. Campion Society of yo ung people in Mel the connection between the truths of the Most Australian Catholics would have bourne, which included B.A. Santamaria, faith and what went on at Dien Bien Phu. had no inkling of the seriousness of the were drawn to Catholic social ideas as part I don't know. But Bruce Duncan's book, accompanying disagreements among their of a more widespread impulse to criticise Cmsade or Conspiracy!, surely docs. bishops-which bega n as early as 1945 and ca pitalism and to explore other m odels of Crusade or Conspiracy! narrates the continued long after the directions from social organisation . We are hea ring echoes evolution of a Catholic response to social Rome-and few would have been aware of of some of their critique now, in the concerns of the 1930s into an orga ni sed the nub of the arguments. Neither would criticism of banks and in the revival of struggle against Communism and, finally, m ost Ca tholics have understood the extent interest in Distributist notions of ordinary into an expanded political vision which of the bishops' involvement in the Move people having control over their own m eans provoked the 1954 split in the Australian ment, which continued even some years of production. Labor Party. It charts the accompanying after the fracture in the ALP. T hey would Campion Socie ty m embers were and continuing division both within the not have known of the bishops' committee influenced strongly by Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Australian Catholic hierarchy and among which had supervised the Movement or the Chesterton and Christopher Dawson, who the clergy and laity. extent of funding provided to the Move- put the impoverishment of the working 30 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 class and the dominance of the new sympathies and modes of action. This is a Italy and France between Christian Demo capitalist class into a framework which complex matter and Duncan approaches it crats and Communists. For Maritain, Com began with the destructive impact of the in a nuanced way. Santamaria emerges in munism, in Spain for example, was in effect Reformation. Duncan's contribution is to Duncan's portrait as no intellectual, but a critique of the failure of Christianity to point to the other influences at work among rather as 'an agile political pragmatist bring about social justice. 'The earth was these Catholic activists. Essentially, these reformulating theory to suit the purpose at strewn with innumerable Christian parts reflected diverging traditions in Europe. On hand'. Duncan the one hand, there was Charles Maurras points to further and L'Action Franr;aise, and on the other, work to be done on writers and philosophers such as Jacques the continuing im Maritain and Charles Peguy. Duncan quotes pact of that agility Robert Speaight writing, in the Dublin on the church in Review in 1944, that Maurras had given his Australia and also on 'pagan doctrines a Christian framework and its relationships and in doing so corrupted the minds of Catholics attitudes to coun all the world over. The responsibility of tries in Asia since Catholics for the rise of totalitarian, or the '50s. semi-totalitarian, regimes cannot be Overshadowing denied.' everything in the Those who became Mr Santamaria's story of course is the most incisive critics, Duncan writes, were spectre of Commu- not his opponents in the ALP but his old Campion friends who had turned increas ingly to the writings of Maritain and thus to a positive view of the freedoms implied in a liberal democracy. Among Santamaria's abandoned. They were picked up by the critics were two women, Jean Daly and adversaries of the Christian name.' In Rosemary Goldie, about whom it would be Duncan's paraphrase of Maritain, Marx had interesting to hear more-otherwise it is an to be listened to before his errors could be all-male cast. corrected. However, in Santamaria's mind, For Maritain the role of the church was Marx was finally 'an even worse enemy of to form Christian consciences, and it was Christianity than the capitalist order', up to Catholics to act independently of the though the Vatican was to 'mistakenly' church in politics and society. Catholics in change its policy on Communism. It is that the civil sphere were able to adopt different viewpoint which is reflected in the timeline and even opposing views and it was intoler of the religious education textbook launched able that a Catholic should claim to speak this year in Melbourne for use in all Catho on a political or social question in the name lic schools. of Catholicism and imply that all Catholics For Bruce Duncan the importance of the should follow that road. As Duncan puts it, story he tells lies in its articulation of the there was an important difference, in possibilities for Catholics to act for justice. Maritain's view, between Catholic Action He presents Catholic social teaching as (the formation and education of Catholics) provisional in the sense that it is develop and the action of Catholics (their independ ing in discussion and in debate-and in ent activities in politics and society). His response to present social conditions. If book is an account of the failure of the advancing the cause of social justice is as bishops to understand the distinction and nism. From this distance it is tremendously important as doctrinal orthodoxy, as Pope apply it. Ironically, it was Maritain's view hard to imagine the fears of the '40s and '50s John Paul II tells us, then it is very neces of the role of the church in a liberal demo that led to the kind of rhetoric voiced by sary that Australian Catholics learn from cracy that came to be the view held in both Santamaria and his opponents. For the history of the Movement and its Rome from Pius XII on. Indeed, Maritain many, Bruce Duncan will be at his most involvement with the church. Crusade or was invited to represent the world of intel challenging when h e argues that it was not Conspiracy~ is the kind of detailed account lectuals at the closing session of the Second inevitable that Australian Catholics should that not everyone will wish to read-and Vatican Council. be mobilised, post World War II, into even at 400-plus pages it bears the signs of According to Bruce Duncan's account, regarding Communism as public enemy culling. It is to be hoped that all those who Mr Santamaria could never be brought to number one. H e presents the threat from ought to read it do so, and that someone, engage with Maritain's ideas. Crusade or communism in Australia as real although somehow, will summarise the content so Conspiracy~ in no way attempts a psycho at times absurdly exaggerated, but, follow that it reaches the widest range of people.• analysis of Santamaria but it does point to ing Maritain who opposed Communism the way in which his experiences as the strongly, he points to the fact of initial Margaret Coffey is a producer of Encounter child of Italian immigrants influenced his 'prudent co-operation' in places such as on ABC Radio National. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 31 BOO K5:3 DAV I D McCOOEY Grecian turn New and Selected Poems, Di mitris Tsaloumas, UQP, 2000. l ~ ll N 0 7022 29 14 1\, RR J> $34.9.') W ,wouw poet> be without pawn-shops of the Upper Quarter'. The the m yths of classical Greece? (Where poem ends: 'how can you hide calam ity w ould reviewers be, for that m atter? ) such as this/ when the sirens tear What a usefu l crew Odysseus, Pan, through/ the nervous system / of m id Icarus, Ariadne, an d Oedipus are. How night/ and the searchlights cross swords/ neat that Hermes is the god of inter inside the brain?' Like any number of pretation and thieves. I rem ember, still poem s by Simic, such poetry creates a at school, labouring through James strange world inhabited by malevolent Joyce's Ulysses. Seeing m e reading, m y fo rces, and its use of m etaphor makes geology teacher looked at m y Penguin connections between history and myth, Modern Classics edition and said that while illustrating the divisions he didn't know I was interested in Greek '"r between society and self. mythology. What do you say to that 1 'I'm not'? Anybody in terested in West .l.HIS IS NOT to say that Tsaloumas is ern literature has an interest in Greek always allegorical. A number of his mythology (or perhaps, as Freud and others translation was by Philip Grundy, who in political poem s are straigh tforwardly out pointed out, it has an in terest in us) . his introduction to this large New and spoken and set in the contemporary world, All of th is rehearses the obvious: Selected claims that T saloumas' poetry but his work as a whole tends towards classical Greece has an enormou s cultural 'rem ains obstinately Greek'. abstraction, the parabolic and the meta weight. There are books on Greek motifs in This is so in its continued use of Greek phorical. O n e line might indicate h is Renaissance literature, classical Greece and history and m ythology, Greek form s and aesthetic project as a whole: 'Earthquakes the Victorians (and the Augustans, and the techniqu es, and tonal and stylistic elem ents have hit the land of dreams'. His attraction Romantics, and the m od ernists), on (which, according to The Oxford Compan to parable can be seen in the eponymous ekphrasis (commentary on working art ) and ion to Australian Literature, range from poem of another prize-winning collection, modern poetry and so on and on. Classical 'epigrammatic simplicity to Byzantine The Harbour (1998). The poet arrives in a Greece is like a black hole where the small lushness'). The m ost prevalen t aspect of town which has a harbour, a ship and est item takes on a massive weigh t due to such stylistic Greekness is usually term ed 'window-panes ablaze/ with the setting sun'. immense gravitational force. (by Grundy and others) 'nostalgia': the sen se But the town is m ysteriously quiet. The The effect of this on modern Greek of melancholy and regret for a lost past and poet comes across a figure who tells him writers (especially poets) has been mu ch a lost country. T his is seen in 'Portents' (a that 'There is no town at all ... The ship discussed. Bu t what of those Greek w riters title that could describe a large subgroup of ferries no passengers,/ he said, carries no who write outside Greece? Dimitris Tsaloumas' oeu vre): 'Within the ribs// of cargo. This town/ is of no substance to the Tsaloumas is interesting in that his poetry this cage all song is mem ory, all praise/ living'. is marked not only by voluntary exile and regret'. Like the poem as a whole this figure is bilingualism, but by large divisions in career Tsalou mas was born in Leros-famous figurative. The poet here is drawing atten (in tenns of time and language) and a shift in ancient times for its honey-and he tion to the fictional status of his own from one language to another. experienced the Italian occupation and a creation. But the poem shows something Since 1983, with the publication of the German attack on the island, and was in that Tsaloumas seems almost intent on prize-winning collection The Observatory, Greece during the Civil War. Tsaloumas hiding: his metaphorical inventiveness. The Tsaloumas has been well-known in Aus tends to write obliquely out of such stranger's voice is 'a staggerofflamestraining/ tralian literary circles, but for nearly 20 experiences. In this respect he is like the to flee its candle in the draughts/ of some years he did not write poetry. He ceased (otherwise very different) American poet wintty island shrine'. And why is the poem writing after his arrival in Australia in 1952, Charles Simic, who grew up in German called 'The Harbour'1 Harbours, of course, and from 1974 he published collections in occupied Yugoslavia during the war. In 'The abound in Greece and Greek literature. Here, Greece, establishing a reputation there. The Conflagration', for instance, Tsaloumas the poet seeks a harbour in the spectral town Observatory links his two careers, since it creates a world in which 'the city is burn as much as in the reality of the world. Is there is a bilingual edition (like his second volume, ing/ and they keep it secret./ Some say that no harbour, we are encouraged to ask, or is The Baal< of Epigrams, 1985). Most of the foreign agents have been caugh t/ in the it that the imagination is our only real 32 EU REKA STREET • M AY 2001 harbour? Perhaps this is an especially David Malouf, Peter Rose, John Tranter, of biography. Duality is the most common pressing question for an exiled writer. Geoffrey Lehmann and Hugh Tolhurst. m otif ascribed to ethnic minority litera This poem shows a number of charac These satirical portraits (often of the literary ture, but in T saloumas' case it has becom e teristic features ofTsaloumas' poetry. He is scene) illustrate a very Australian anti a poetic. His work seeks to praise, but does attracted to those ancient forms, the mono authoritarian stance, present in Tsaloumas so from the realms of the negative; it seeks logue and the dialogu e, to delinea ting a sense almost everywhere, whatever the tone. the demotic speech of the contemporary of place that is both ancient and modern, and In addition, Melbourne, and Australian but places it in a strangely timeless world; to creating a voice that is attached to both myth, are present in numerous poems, often it is often luminous in its imagery, while the archaic and archetypal as well as the in counterpoint to a lost Greece. The new remaining dark in m eaning. Australia itself demotic and quotidian. But such characteris poems, collected under the title 'Exile', is often a source of such duality, not simply tics shouldn't blind us to Tsaloumas' diver show just how equally poised the two an accidental site where it ca n be experi sity. His poems range in tone perhaps more terms-Australian, Greek-are. If anything, enced. 'The Gift' ends: 'In the wastes of my than is initially apparent, and Portwit of a these new poem s have an even greater continent/ one travels on, no longer thirsty,/ Dog (1 993) shows his deep interest in satire. elegiac weight (many are poem s for the seeking the luminous beauty of the mirage/ And as much as that interest could be poet's late brother). But they also show a that carries no despair'. • shown to have Greek precedents (including grea ter tendency to the austerities of old the now-abandoned belief that the word age (Tsaloumas turns 80 this year) through David McCooey lectures at Deakin Univer 'satire' came from 'satyr'), it is here that we immaculately executed lyrics. sity and is the author of the 'Contemporary can begin to see the Australian Tsaloumas. In these late poem s the sen se of Poetry' chapter in The Cambridge Com It is no doubt tempting to see Tsaloumas' doubleness has becom e more than a matter panion to Australian Literature. description of himself as an 'Australian Greek writer' as definitive. But the second adjective seem s so much more important than the first. Given that the status of ' multicultural' writing genera tes less BOOKS:4 anxiety now than a decade ago, it might be PETER CRAVEN time to reverse the order of the adjectives and consider the effect, especially since m ost local critics and gen eral readers would have only a passing or non-existent acquaintance with m odern Greek poetry. Short blaclzs (How m any of us have read beyond Cavafy and Seferis?). In any case, Tsaloumas' own The Body Artist, Don De Lillo, Pan Macmillan, 2001 . efforts demonstrate a two-way poetic ISBN 0 3304 8495 8, RRI' $29.95 economy: he has edited a bilingual (English/ Eclipse, John Ba nville, Pan Macmillan, 2000. Greek) edition of modern Australian poetry, ISBN 0 3303 3933 8, RRI' $38 40 and since Falcon Drinking (19 88) he has "l XT written poetry in English. At first glance this does not seem to v v -!EN DoN DELI LLO pubhshed Under- allowing in all manner of trashiness as well have had a hugeeffect on his writing. Despite world three years ago it looked like the as stylistic highjinks. This summons up the variety of concerns, Tsaloumas' non culmination of a career and the substan- the spectre of postmodernism. De Lillo satirical poetry does tend towards sam e tiation of a reputation that was already as belongs to that strand of more or less itmo- ness. In particular, the abstraction can high as any. He was already the author of vative and caper-cutting fiction which does become wearying. The interest in satire White Noise, with its hilarity and cavern- not overw helm the mind in a stasis of and politics, however, indicates a broader ous sadness, of Libra, which made labyrinths persifl age (as Pynchon does following Joyce) interest in power. Perhaps the nega tivity of of paranoia seem like the codes of realism or pop art routines (as Pynchon does with som e of the poetry reflects poetry's ineffec itself when it came to the Kennedy assas- some grandeur, doing his '60s thing) . Instead, tuality aga inst political and economic sination, and of works like Mao II, in which De Lillo's postmodernism is freewheeling, power. This can be seen in the striking artists and people of violen ce becom e narrative-friendly and conformable to any 'T owards a M etam orphosis' (m etam or enmeshed like so many m etaphors of each level of realism or departure from realism phosis, of course, being stock feature of other. that doesn 't destroy the probability stakes. m yth ): 'The Lords of Markets, soft with De Lillo is by common consent the He has written about rock stars and football oozing fat/ now strut abroad solicitous to reigning American master who has not yet players and things from outer space. He has lead// into the splendours of the nascent disappea red into the kind of afterlife that written spy stories in which the enigma of century/ our diminished years'. com es from being associated with a bygone what is going on looks like the validation of So what of the Australian T saloumas? moment or generation . He is the great artist persecution mania, but he has always done Certainly we can see a change in his lexis of a m om ent that might be thought to start so in an elegant strea mlined prose, admit- (as the Greeks called it). But his satirical in literary terms with Pynchon, a moment ting of poetry but not allowing it to sprawl poem s in Portrait of a Dog are part of a when the distinction between the popular and displace the economy of narrative scale. strange fashion in Australian poetry for and the highbrow gets iffy and when a Underworld, of course, not only looked Roman m odels, seen in poets as diverse as realistic and supple manner is capable of like a masterpiece, it looked like the kind of VOL UME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STR EET 33 masterpiece someone creates when they with the brush of the everyday, is suddenly therefore has no anticipatory understand have the opportunity to create a cathedral. hard, staccato and alienating. Journalistic ing of a rhythm that can render its catas This huge cpical story of baseballs and summary, lacquered and lamenting, tells trophes tolerable. This is an abiding trash disposal and the portrait of the artist us the score. And then we are back to her as fascination to the woman who is experienc in the vicinity of inadvertent murder looks she sleepwalks through a grief complicated ing being-in-language with a new and today much as it did at the end of 1997- by the rescored memory of their last min overpowering fragility because of h er like the unambiguous American master utes together. She resists the overtures of husband's death. At another level the piece of its era. It had the majestic her girlfriend and of her husband's first wife Strange Man is a kind of tabula rasa with no momentum of a surging original story even who says the suicide was fated. After some memory function other than the recording when its ambit was Dos Passos-like rather time she discovers, like an apparition, that one, and h e therefore functions a little as than Joyccan: even when the parts did not the 'noise' her husband heard was a man the Artist does according to most post connect with each other or flow they seemed or was it?-inhis underwear, who had some romantic and modern notions of how the to because of the inevitability and musical how been living in their sprawling mansion Author is out of the picture. But it's difficult ity of De Lillo's narrative. It would be hard somewhere, not New York, by the sea. to convey the level of urgency that De Lillo to think of another novel in decades where elicits from the sustained encounter between the impulse towards strenuous innovation his Mimic Man and his Body Artist. It has is matched so effortlessly and so bewitch a panting, breakneck imaginative reality ingly with such a wave of narrative suave which is a step away from being harebrained, ness; its enchantments inhere in the precise but which works-triumphantly. pa cc of its telling. At the very point when the reader fears Undaworld is a masterpiece, the shape De Lillo will fall into some pit of preten and music of which nobody could have sion, virtuosic display or semi-private predicted, which is also a book that became artiness, the narrative reconfigures into a a bestseller because it's a kind of epic of new shape with sudden, urbane insertions American, and hence of contemporary, life. and with the reassurance of a great world Now, after a gap of three years, we have new just round the next turn in the twisted fiction by De Lillo and it could not staircase. The Body Artist is a very fine '""J""1 be more differcn t. story, eerie in its fascination with the unearthly and the damaged, but in no way .l.HE BooY ARTIST is a novella of a m ere constricted by any literalism. It is full of 120 pages. It is low on epic thrust. It has a metaphorical suggestiveness but in the end tiny cast of characters, only three who it is a poignant, not a pessimistic portrait of matter, only one with whom we are inward, a woman who looks into an abyss and sees and it is written in a style which is 'thin' by her own face lor is it the abyss's?) smiling De Lillo's standards-sometimes indeed to The guts of The Body ATtist is the back at her. It is, as writing, a magnificent the point of looking like the Raymond woman's encounter with this apparitional improvisation on piano by a great composer Carver-style realism-gritty and particu figure who appears to be suffering from who is also a great musician. It is not lariscd- he is sometimes pitted against. aphasic dementia but who has the uncanny Underworld, nor was it meant to be, but it The Body Artist is a novella that a whole ability of speaking in the voices not only of displays the same genius. In for m and in host of De Lillo readers are going to set the dead husband but of the woman herself. formal experimentation it is an uncom themselves to hate. It is also a glowing and There are moments indeed when the reader promising exercise by a great technical beautiful work of art, vibrant, disturbing wonders if the strange man (whom she master. If there's a classic story that shadows and concentrated to the point of obsessive nicknames Mr Tuttle) is not simply the The Body Artist it's probably Melville's ness-yet it also has a terrific vivacity and eman ation of the woman's own grief 'Bartleby the Scrivener', that story of how variety. De Lillo has several moves, some stricken mania. In fact this strange deus ex the pathos of an irresistible other times tonal and sometimes in terms of the machina is a kind of walking symbol (o f T transforms the sense of self. plot, which are surprising and wonderful. what we are not meant to know) which It's the story of a woman (the body artist allows the woman to fixate on the night J oHN BANVI LLE is one of those writers who of the title) whom we initially meet simply mares of being and of time- the 'frightful, gives the Irish claim to a collective great as the female voice in a pas de deux of sheer, no-man fathomed' descent that comes ness its lustre and continuance. He is a breakfast chatter. He says this, she says from the sinister knife-edge suggestion of novelist who can make the sentence sing that. It is realistic and wry and nudged with some of the m ost insinuating prose De Lillo and be is also a master of the articulation of poignancy, but written almost to the gri d of has ever written. plot so that his novels, which are shadowed dirty realist minimalism, except for the At one level of literal and dramatic action with every variety of moral complexity and faintly weird intimations of how much she Th e Body Artist is preoccupied with the psychological slithering, are nevertheless can live inside the narratives of a news kind of mute extremities of deprived engrossingly dramatic and eventful. paper and of how he cottons on to the physical and cognitive existence that served His last novel, The Untouchable, in unheard melody of some noise coming from Samuel Beckett as m etaphors and m ore which he dramatised something like the the house. than metaphors in his Trilogy, particularly dark byways of the spying career of the Then, suddenly, he is dead, by his own The Unnam eable. Mr Tuttle doesn't Queen's art historian Anthony Blunt (while hand. And the narrative, previously blurred understand the continuum of time and eq uipping him with a background derived 34 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 from that of the poet Louis Macniece) had disturbed daughter, now grown up, due to manner which is its medium. This is a the shimmer, dapple and sheer readability visit soon. In the meantime he is distracted novel about love: the love of daughters real of a thriller. It also retained the miraculous by the apparition of a family retainer and surrogate, the love of the wife as the gravity and reality of real life as we some effectively squatting in the house he owns. rock-hard companion, the love that is based times get it in the work of Banville's enemy There is also his wife, all silvered coolness on the bonds of common life when the Graham Greene (who made a derisory and shrewish heat, who arrives like a vanity of every other striving has withered. appearance in it). The Eclipse is about as nemesis to give him the rounds of the Or that at least is the hope, expressed with opposite to The Untouchable as two works kitchen. great bareness and eloquence. Eclipse is a of fiction by a fine novelist at the height of And then-stabbingly- like the Aristo grand book which enunciates the practical his powers can be. It is a fiction without any telian realisation of the thing this nearly impossibility of ceasing to care. It is Ban elaborately animated hook, without lyrical, anti-novel has seemed to intimate, ville's critique of the stoical charade which anything but the ghostly simulacrum of the dreadful does strike: with all its claws, his histrionic narrator attempts to sustain thrusting incident or cutting action. What hooded, by nightfall, at the cliff's edge. as an accommodating desolation. It issues it does share with its predecessor, however, Eclipse is one of those novels in which not into something starker and the fiction which is an all but absolute mastery of a narrative much happens and then it does. A book contains this makes a fairer fist of staring voice. Banville is a past master at the art of which seems to be all the spinning of the into the heart of the fire that comes out of ventriloquising narrative, of the narration tapestry of a state of mind, though in the the sun than we can easily believe possible of an action as if it were the merest out end the Great Battle is fought or endured in the contemporary novel. Simply as an growth of the voice speaking, a Joycean and we are all left darkling. act of writing, John Banville's Eclipse gradation of sy Hable and signature whereby None of which should make Banville's contains sentences, every so often, which character becomes voice, and voice the quite prodigious performance look self are as wiry and as tightrope-walking as any medium through which action is known, or regarding, or aimless, or arty. Long before we in Joyce (who would not have been ashamed obscured, or made multiple. So this, like have m uch of a clue about what's going on, of them). The Untouchable, is a novel which works Banville convinces us of the authenticity of Eclipse is disturbing, with ghosts that a bit like a Browning soliloquy and where his method. It involves, as if by some trick trip through the mind like a suggestion of voice is character and character is the only of the eye or stealth of magic, the main derangement, but it issues into a simplicity destiny worth naming. Or so it seems. tenance of an almost funereally melancholy as absolute and as pure as the art of-well, Eclipse begins in what looks like the tone which is nevertheless comically Sophocles. This almost mousey, almost moodiest prolongation of self-portraiture, vivacious. Through the actor-father's doodling book is the work of a high and almost plotlessly, but it becomes, bit by bit, narrative there is the warmth of the charm mighty master of literary art. It is black and a story full of pity and terror. It's the story that he has cast off like a cloak. It is there as wonderful, full of the pity and wonder of of an Irish actor, in late middle age, 'famous' the characteristic locution of a voice that the human face and the endless capacity of but not a household word, who has given up would rather not be talking but cannot stop the human heart to break and break and the stage and who returns to the dark, itself. The logic is like the black formal break again. I should add that it is in no way nearly theatrical confines of the grand family dress of Hamlet, soliloq uising and saturnine a depressing book. It is cleansing, beautiful home with a head full of spectres. There are but residually comic within the tableau of and, without doubt, the outstanding novel the visitations that come to him like a a grief that is held like cut glass. of the past year. a whisper of nameless catastrophe and there What it issues in to is terrible beyond are the specific hopes and memories and belief though its expression is tempered by Peter Craven is the editor of The Australian fears of horror that cling to his image of his the purgatorial haze of calm, the serenity of Quarterly Essay. Study your ACUll'eb Masters in Theology or \US'I'KAIIAN CATII()l.lC U NIVI'RSITY Religious Education online • Master of Arts (Theological Studies) • Master of Religious Education • Master of Educational Leadership The Au stra lian Catholic Un iversity offers Masters co urses th at specialise in Theology and Reli gious Education on the Internet thro ugh acuweb.com.au with 24 hrs x 7 days a week support. The tuition fees are $750 (Austra lian dollars) per un it or subject. Australi an students living in Australia can study at th e discounted cost of AUD$635 per unit or subject. Other cou rses also availab le in Education, Nursing and Management 'The university is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and is funded by the Australian Government Powered by next ~ed VOLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 35 BOOKS :5 PAU L TANKARD Reading into it Into the Looking-Glass Wood, Alberto Mangu cl , Bloomsbury, London, 2000. 1\11:--: 0 7.J.?"i 4'193 o, IUU' $20.6'1 rather quiet and confused love-life . essays of a professional writer is sure Borges comes across as someone for to be an agreeable blend of practical whom rea l-life experi ence was a bit brea d- and-butter writing, and his of a mystery, and who kept it al abiding in tcllcctual preoccupations. ways at arm's length . He was sh y, a Alberto Mangucl is best known to a librarian, lived with hi s mother into general readership for his timely her old age, and wrote fantasies that A History of Reading (1 996), which seem to be parables. For Manguel, was a bestseller and took him around and obviously for many oth ers, the world on the arts-media circuit. Borges' stories arc both profound This new book, which has the cover ~~~r and elusi vc. subtitle Essays on Words and the Still, reading other sorts of books World, is an overflow from the earlier might suggest that not everything work. ~~~ profound is either elusive or un The History of Reading wa s one fathomable. I've recently been read of those books that probably a few ing the essays of Sa m ucl Johnson, in hundred people around the planet which matters of great and every I were planning to write at the time. It da y importance arc expressed with represents what have been called immense clarity and humour. Read sunset values-things that we only ing for m ystery is fin e, but we can reflect on w hen we sense they're about to a purely literary life. Books teach us some also read for mea ning. Mangucl has con disappear. In his History, Manguel ga thered things, not everything. In particular, read stant resort to an ancient but increasingly a fabulous range of stories about the sites ing makes us reflect, in ways that few other common strategy in his defence of read and ex periences of reading, but didn' t reflect occupations do. As Manguel observes, 'The ing-insisting that th e things of which the much on the issues. He reflects more in this poor mythology of our time seems afraid to world is composed arc otherwise meaning book of occasional pieces, most of the go beneath the surface. We distrust profun less. But surely one ca n affirm th e occasions having been prompted by the dity, we make fun of dilatory reflection.' importance of words and literary art without fame of the earlier book and the need to Reading takes us beneath surfaces. thi s assertion. respond to the sorts of anxieties about H e contrasts this with the o n e Throughout the book, but especiall y in reading expressed in books like Sven dimensional character of pornography, in a the final essay, 'St Augustine's Computer', Birkcrts' The Gutenberg Elegies, which review of Bret Easton Ellis' American he considers the fu turc of books. Just Mangucl dismissed summarily in 1996. Psycho. Although I agree with the assess because any number of media technologies Reading extends the bounds of one's m ent of the book as pornographic, I do not (radio, film, televi sion) have been w rongly life, but as fewer people find their way into quite agree that it is pornographi c because suspected of spelling the end of books the space of reading, autobiography has it is unliterary. On the basis of Mangucl's doesn't m ean that one day som ething else proven one of the best ways of explaining description, you might describe it as tmsuc won't actually do so. And it's not so much what reading does. In a number of these cessfully literary. Docs most pornography the technology of ' the book' that we ought essays, Manguel tells us of his own growth have the ironi c, philosophical , chi c and to be worried about, as the so cia I practice of as a reader. As a young man growing up in learned pretensions of this boold I doubt it. reading, or (to be even more exact) pa rticular Buenos Aires, he met people who talked And I certainly don't sec why a work cannot kinds of reading. I don 't think we need be in about books and politics. He met people be both a work of art and pornographi c. any doubt about the future of browsing who knew writers, and then he m et the Easton Ellis, and other artists like photo the reading equivalent of internet- or writers. He had the good fortune as a yo ung grapher Robert Mapplethorpe, utilise thi s channcl-'surfing.' But the hour-by-hour man to become a friend of Jorge Lui s Borges, very possibility and the anxiety consecutive immersion in a text, especially a maker of a great number of the most it ge nerates. poetry or non-fiction, seems to me to be powerful modern and postmodcrn myths. becoming a difficult and unattractive Thereafter, books and talk about books N ow TAKE A writer who could hardly activity for many peopl e who might in the beca me a vital ingredient in his life. But we be m ore different. M angu el's extended pa st have been eff ective readers. I certainl y do not get the impression that Mangucl's is reflection on Borges is <111 account of Borges' agree with Manguel that certain genres of 36 EUREKA STR EET M AY 2001 boo k are more threatened by new media Reading, books and particular writers of m eaning. Most of u have not yet risen than others. But I worry too that immersion are one of the main them es of the book; the to this stage of enlightenment, and will in new m edia will also disincline us or other is sex. (Mangu el has edited antholo continue, I h ope for som e time yet, to render us unable to read those others. gies of erotic and homoerotic fi ction .) The s t rive for m eaning a nd rela t ion ship In the enthusiasm to ensure that avid trope that links the two themes is an analogy thro ugh e ros, reading, ca t al oguing, reading is not rega rded by powerful forces between sex and reading, on the basis of politics, worship, and myriad other (be they parents, go vernments, advertisers, their both being pleasurable. It is an analogy human activiti es. or information technologists) as a waste of calculated to make reading seem appealing tim e, we have promoted, quite properly, to people who have never got the hang of it, 1 TWO ESSAYS ON mu cums and libraries, the notion of 'active readers'. Modern or to make readers feel as if they are doing Mangucl frequently rejects as totalising or theorists see reading as a creative act, the som ething groovy and subversive. But patriarchal the impulse to give labels to assertion being that a text does not exist really, w ho needs it? The cartoon character collections. In assembling their own col without readers, and is in som e rea l w ay Daria's non-intellectual sister Quinn once lections, essayists oft en feel the need to a different text to each of its readers. observed, 'the only thing m ore boring than impose a the m e o n th eir disp a ra t e (I h ope no-one still sees this as a startling reading is watching som eone else read'. m aterials. It is odd , given his comments, insight.) The pleasure of reading must remain a closed that Manguel should also do so-making These assertions have their uses, but book to non -readers. However artfully it over-u se of the Alice in Wonderland fi gures they are partial truths. We ought not to might be elaborated, the reading/sex analogy and parables. forget that it is also true that, in a traditional doesn't m ake much sense. Eating porridge His essays are all made of the sam e context, reading is a ra ther passive activity, is also pleasura ble, but it's not like either materials: quotes fro m the sa me texts, the that the writer imparts and the reader reading or sex. sam e rh e torical st rategies, the sa m e receives. Manguel tells us that 'a book The essay called 'The Gates of Pleasure' imposed doubts and ambigu ities. The sa me becomes a different book every time we (written to introduce an anthology of 'erotic old tired postmodern orthodoxies. H e read it' (plOL and rounds out the book with short fi ction') could have been written as a doesn't argue any of these things; they are the sam e thought: 'every text is, in a very parodic illustration of the moralistic cliche just there. All identities arc 'constructed'; essential sense, "interactive", changing that the legitimisation of any unconven all reading is 'subversive'; there is no m ean according to a particula r reader a t a tional sexuality is the 'thin end of the ing, only interpretation; traditional religion particular hour and in a particular place.' wedge'. Mangucl makes a very strong case. banned eros; desire is the only knowable, t Well, yes. But it also remains the sa me People ca n, apparently, have erotic fee lings unlimited, irresistible good. 'We know', he book, in the 'very essential' and perhaps about (and relationships with) just about writes, 'that the world has no m eaningful more verifiable sense that the sam e marks anything: bears, vegetables, children, mon beginning or understandable end, no dis are on the pages, w henever, wherever and keys; and what's wrong with that, he asks, cernible purpose, no method in its madness.' by whomever it i opened. And this is, poker-faced. It seems odd to m e that he Well, now. This B.S. (Big Statement) is not I think, just as true and profound an obser would not reali e how perverse this would argu ed, m erely asserted as a by-the-way in va tion about the nature of reading. sound to most people. an essay on order in museums. The silly As Sven Birkerts argues, the authority 'The erotic act is a solitary act,' Manguel thing is that the human impulse to order of the writer is part of the point (and the asserts (like reading, is the suggestion). Well, and catalogu e could as easily be (as Manguel pleasure) of reading. I have been reading some erotic acts are solitary, but to sec eros takes it) a response to cosmic disorder, as a Alberto Manguel to find out what he thinks. as in essence solitary seem s to m e to indicate refl ection of cosmic order. These mantras This does not m ean (as the passive model self-obsession, and of a very narrow kind. don't sh ock me anym ore, they m erely might be cari ca tured) that I read in order to Yet Mangucl, in setting up the body as its annoy. And never before have they looked have my otherwise empty mind fill ed up own or the sole authority, does not suppose so frankly self-serving. with second-hand thoughts. I read in order his viewpoint controversial. I cannot feel I think that Mangu el has been stretched to understand. Reading makes me think, he is in good fa ith. The body's desires arc beyond his skills by the 'history of read and want to talk (a nd write). But the peck undifferentiated, its pleasures indiscrimi ing' idea. It's required him continually to into the mind and processes of som eone nate, he suggests. It's as if he fears that the have big things to say. When h e gets away else, pcrcei ving their otherness, must come exercise of any sort of discrimination from the m editative thematic pieces, and first. Wasn 't it the celebrity model, Elle threa tens to open the fl oodgates of prejudice, writes about favourite writers-Borgcs, Macpherson, who said that she didn't read censorship, repression, persecution. Chesterton, Cynthia Ozick, Vargas Llosa, books because she didn't want to read any There is pre- judice, certainly, but there Richard Outram- he gives in sigh tful and thing she hadn't written ? (The increasing is also 'judicc'-judgm ent; and to exercise stimulating readings. number of undergraduates s tudyin g judgm ent and (fair and intelligent) discrimi I hope that there's no need to say that Crea tive Writing at the expense of Litera nation is, I suggest, a more uniquely defin i nLo the Looking-Glass Wood is a good ture presumably agree.) I sec the growing ing human trait than the indiscriminate read. Despite reading for m eaning, I don 't disinclination towards this sort of inquisi search for bodily pleasure. insist that all writers agree with me. tive reading, and the attempt to remake But Manguel is not all that interested in Manguel illustrates a number of states of reading solely on the active-reader model, humanity. He doubts the existence of other mind worth coming to grip with. But! don't as instances of a dangerous kind of solip people, and our ability to have mea ningful find him persuasive. • sism . Or perhaps reading only suits people relationships with them; he is doubtful who are sure of their identity, and these about the ability of language to convey Paul Tankard teaches English at Monash cl ays, few of us are. anything apart fr om pleasurable illusion s University. VOLUME 11 UMBER 4 • EU REKA STR EET 37 AUSTRALIAN On one level, Rea lity TV offers the contemporary preacher relevant illustrations for a sermon on the BOOK REVIEW temptation of Jesus in the desert, or a stu dy of the seven deadly sins.. . the rea l material, however, lies deeper. .. The primal hook is the common fear of MAY 2001 being disca rd ed. Today people are all too fearful th at they wi II be nex t: dumped by a f riend or lover Hilary McPhee s Other Peoples Words to be replaced by someone more suited or more Extract and review exc iting: " You are the weakest link. Goodbye! " Dorothy Porter s Monkeys Revd Steven Webster on Reality TV Mask the film An essay by David McCooey T he idea that Jesus somehow 'bought off' an angry unforgiving Father is a gross distortion of New Morag Fraser on Robert Manne s Testament Teaching. In Denial The Revd Dr Charles Sherlock on the Aton ement Recent Australian Poetry An essay by Paul Kane The Melbourne Anglican Don Anderson reviews John A. Scott s 1998 winner of th e Gutenberg Award for Excellence The Architect in Rel igious Communication Mention this ad for a free sample copy of TMA Martin Duwell reviews Robert Adamso n's Phone: (03) 9653 4221 new book of poems or email: tma @melbourne.anglican.com.au New Subscribers $60.50 for ten 1ssues (me GST) & a free book -- Tl• < ------Ph (03) 9429 6700 or e-ma1l : [email protected] ARBN A0037102Z ABN 21 176 539 338 Men of hospitality L iv ing and proclairning God's h ospitable love As li ved o ut by StJo hn o f advocacy and reconcili ati o n Will you dare to accept God's God over fiv e centuries ago, for those margi nalised by our invitation to a life dedicated o ur vocati o n is to give o f society. to hospitality? o urselves comple tely and Our core o f hospitality If so please contact: fr eely; to b e a bro th e rl y compels and urges us to Br. John Clegg O H . presence; a sy mbol of ho pe deepen our relati onship w ith Vocations Director. PO Box UN I 055. fo r the world ; proclaiming God , o urselves a nd w ith Burwood North. NSW 21.3-t God 's h ospitable love to those w hom we share our Australia. a II . lives, community and Telephone (02) ')7-t7 16')') W e are call ed to a ministry. F,Ksimilc (02) 97-t-t 3:2(,2 chari sm o f hospitality and W e are the: ' Brothers of Emai l provin ci,1l(fl!,s tjohn.com.au love that promotes healin g, StJohn of G od.' Websi te: www.stjohn .com.,lll BOOKS:6 KATE HIRD Bred in the bone The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan, Harp crColl ins, 2001 . I~BN 0 0022 S4R6 7, RRP $39.9'i L ,WHO HA't "'d Amy T'n'' fi<'t mother's precise and beautiful Chinese novel, The fay Lucl< Club, will be familiar calligraphy. with her exploration of the guilt-ridden Th e Bonesetter's Daughter spans three relationship between mothers and daugh generations, moving between China, Hong ters; in particular, Chinese-born women Kong and America. The grandmother, and their American-born daughters. Precious Auntie, was the daughter of a In her new novel, The Bonesetter's famous Chinese bonesetter, and contrary Daughter, Tan has her central character, to what is customary for women, she lea rned Ruth Young, anticipating the needs of her the art of hea ling from him- using 'dragon partner, stepchildren, clients and mother bones'. When archaeologists discover that to such an extent that she is left with no the bones are in fact human, the remains of sen e of self, of what she wants or how to 'Peking Man', their power to heal is deep say it. Every year she retreats into a week of ened, not diminished. The discoveries made ' not speaking'-which on ly make her about the origins of the' dragon bones' mirror voicelessness more apparent. the layers of history and m emory that Forty-six-year-old Ruth is an editor and LuLing and Ruth mine in their efforts to 'ghost-writer' of self-help books, a task for reconcile the pa st. The story is a process of which she seems to have been destined. As discovery and laying to rest. a child, she acted as an interpreter of the It is also a story about writing, as a English-speaking world for her mother, means of recording, and translating, events. LuLing. LuLing al o called on Ruth to act as LuLing's family in China are renowned a 'medium', providing her with a chopstick makers of ink, 'dark, beautiful and smooth and a tray of sand in which to transcribe the flowing'. When we write, our words infuse ghostly messages of LuLing's own mother, events with our own meaning. Precious Precious Auntie. These experiences Auntie advises LuLing that, when writing, inducted Ruth into a lifetime of anticipating one should 'think about your intentions .. . others' needs. what is in your heart, what you want to put The language barrier separating the in others.' Words that cannot be spoken speculate about why authors write what mother, whose first language is Mandarin, can, and must, be passed on through they do, it's hard not to wonder what Tan is and the daughter, who spea ks English, is writing- m e t of the significant communi trying to tell herself. only the most obvious manife tation of cations between characters in The Bone The recent death of Tan's mother, who their inability, or unwillingn ess, to under setter's Daughter are imparted this way. At suffered from dementia, permeates the novel. stand one another. the end Ruth begins to understand that the The novel's detail- an old lady wandering Ruth's adult relationship with her role of writer and translator are interchange around the street in her nightie, believing elderly mother is a claustrophobic mixture able, that one must become a 'fr ee-fl owing she has won ten million dollars from a of frustration, love and duty. LuLing never vessel', the m edium through which junk-mail coupon, and keeping decaying lets her off: 'Too busy for mother ... N ever the story itself acquires meaning. vegetables in a cupboard for six month - too busy go see movie, go away, go see has the rawness of personal experience. fri end.' LuLing has her own history of guilt: B UT MEANI NG and m ediums aside, In The Bonesetter's Daugh ter, Amy T an she believes she is cursed, haunted by her mothers do dreadful things to their daugh has used familiar themes to delve into darker own mother for a great wrong she did her. ters in this novel. We are witness to terrible realms than she has previously explored. When the elderly LuLing's increasingly secrets, kept too long, until it is too late. The novel's end is happy, and while that is erratic behaviour is diagnosed as Alzheim Anxiety about the past looms over the structurally satisfying, drawing together the er's, it acts as a catalyst for Ruth: she delves present, guilt and sorrow are cyclic and feed novel's various strands, it also has some into her mother's history and unearths pages off one another. But then Tan makes a leap: thing of the quality of a fairytale, told to h er mother had given her years earlier LuLing's Alzheimer's allows her to recreate comfort a frightened child. • 'Just some old things about my family', the past, and change events so that it is not Ruth then finds a translator to decipher her too late. And although it's problematic to Kate Hird is a freelance writer. V OLUME 11 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 39 OPERA j O H N CARMODY Light on its feet The Flight of Lc~ Darcy, mustc bv Ralfaelc Marcellino, libretto by Robert Jctrman, production by Mu~tc Tht.:;ltrc '>ydncy. development by promoting a sense of ' ' "'"'' ;, 'mo"l status in early 20th-century Australia. 'He actEivity.'"' The ' ~cmcTUAC arts and sc ience have that in national identity; sport was shaped itself by neither smoked nor drank and spent most comm on: they are concerned to understand the developm ent of the nation.' It appears of his income on his family; he attended the world in which we live-physica l, in our literature and our art: but in our Mass m ost mornings, one of his closest biological, spiritual-and our relationship opera? That is onl y on e dimension which friends being the loca l priest.' These pieties with it and with one another. That is why makes Marcellino's new piece so intriguing. arc profo und! y refl ected in the opera and artists and scientists alike are so passionate The A ustralian Dictionary of Biography arc touchingly counterpointed aga inst the about what they do. People of a cooler characteri ses Darcy (1 895-191 7) as a 'boxer cold and operational puritan Australian Anglo-Saxon temperament- people who, and fo lk h ero' who epitomised Iri sh power structure. perhaps, can simultaneously believe in lan Catholicism and its repressed minority Like most of our operatic repertoire, Les guage, truth and logic-may see such a Darcy has to survive on limited resources; philosophy as intemperate or implausible. its fo ur singers have to be chameleons, its This dichotomy pervades Australian soci three instrumentalists hardly less so. ety: it has done so from our European begin Perhaps too many ideas have been com ning. The schism is the essence of Manning pressed into its 80-odd minutes, but the Clark's grca t history; a part of it is the singers' body microphones minimised 'sectarian strand', to use Michael Hogan's comprehension problems for the audience phrase. in both its recent Music Theatre Sydn ey Ironically, those Australian puritans premiere season and the perfor mances at who rarely see the arts as the quiddity of the the 10 Days on the Island Festival in Hobart human soul-and who rarely, therefore, (under the musical direction of Warwick perceive their moral dimension-are the Stcngards) . Th at was important ones who most often preach about 'morals', because Jarman has produced an especially moral weakness or decline. It is allusive libretto with an abundance our national example of the biblical parable of imagery. Whiteness is the per of motes and beams in our eyes. vasive motif: references abound All of this may seem a paradoxical way to Darcy's alabaster skin, the to think about a new opera, especially one whi tencss of papcrbarks and about a boxer, but The Flight of Les Darcy forests of white soldiers' (a short new work by librettist Robert crosses. The white stars Jarman and composer Raffa el e (especially the Southern Marcellino) is, at its heart, concerned Cross) arc important, as with precisely those aspects of arc the white fea thers Austra 1i a. It is one of those which complacent rarities, an opera of ideas and wowscrs sent to 'cow perceptions. But an opera ards and slackers'; an about a boxerl Or, indeed, image of the white pages about any sportsm an ? Why of unwritten biographies not, in Australia, renowned is striking, too. One of the more for sporting heroes than characters (securely sung intellectual pursuits? In The by tenor Tyrone Landau) Making of Australia's SparL is Lcs' Guardian Angel, ing Traditions, Michael dressed cnt i rely in McKernan wrote, 'Sport not white, w ith large white only shaped national feathers as wings. 40 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 Another important character is the hec 'manager' E.T. O'Sullivan.) Speech is also discovers the tragedy-was curiously toring Recruiting Officer (t he affirmative employed in one late scene for a highly uninvolving for m e. The issue is, as I have baritone Phillip Joughin) who could be Billy poetic purpose-the only time that we hear implied, that we are no longer connected to Hughes as h e declaims such vacuous from Les himself. that past culture-at least city aesthetes rhetoric as, 'Revenge the wounded; replen Taking their cue from the story that are not. Mills' instrumental music is ish the dead' and 'The war cannot be won Darcy had dancing lessons to enhance his imaginative, notably in the way he integrates on points; it must be a knockout blow' boxing, Marcellino and Jarman have the noisy destruction of the woman's slab and- most chillingly-' Must England give imaginatively made this character a silent hut into the musical texture, but he seems all h er m en? Must our Mother fight alone?' dancer (Michael O'Donoghue): there is a lot to lack the capacity to devise vocal lines In fact, the opera interweaves three con of elegant and stylised pugilism, therefore, which build and develop his drama. flicting and abrading maternal images which is dramatically engaging. The eff ect Ford's opera, a rather tepid mix of 'Mother' England (perfidious or supportive, is, paradoxically, heightened in the late Schubertian pastiche with scraps of other according to your perspective or prejudice), scene in America when, speaking at last, he 'atmosphere' material and old Freudian odds Les' loyally suffering mother, and the Virgin reads a few of his postcards to friends- we and ends, seem ed to have scant substance; Mary-to give an extra hardness to the suddenly have a glimpse of a poetic Darcy, given the state of Gerald English's voice as kernel concerns of the piece. The two another aspect no doubt of the persecuted I heard it, that was probably just as well women (here soprano Jane Parkin and m ezzo Australian Celtic dream er who (authenti serious technical demands would have been Marit Sehl) have to double as boxers, Les' cally, I understand) wrote, 'N o doubt about problematical. For such writing and per mother, his fi ancee, spivs, a tent-show boss: these N ew York sky-scrapers. A couple of formance, solipsistic is perhaps the word. their versatility was a characteristic of the times a year they have to let them clown. Of course, all art must involve themes and whole venture (and this is, itself, an The moon gets caught in them.' processes which are important to the -.. admirable aspect of the give-it- In the very next (and last) scene, The creators but it must go significantly beyond a-go Australian persona). Epilogue, the Angel gives Les another, post that limit and reach an audience-to humous voice: 'From the edge of the grave, provoke thought, to thrill, to stimulate M ARCELLINo's score is con stantly Les says to m e, "I burn; I blaze. I am sleep emotions. That was the lacuna with Mills inventive, with a witty and effective choice less nights; I am dancer; I am fighter in and Ford 's work, the aspect where of musical participants. Darcy, apparently, dream s".' From that point the voices fall Marcellino succeeded. played the violin, and one of his opponents sil ent; here is n o grand dramatic n or The essential difference, then, is that is said to have been a cellist, so including instrumental peroration- the temptation I would be happy to experience The Flight tho e two instruments was mandatory (they to mimic what the Australian Dictionary of Les Darcy for a second time. I would be even had a little encounter on the boxing of Biography called 'immense funeral pro the better for it and would understand my ring stage!). So was a percussion array, not cessions in San Francisco and Sydney' is own culture more deeply as a result. • only because modern music is unimaginable resisted. There is simply a florid drum without percussion, but also to echo the cadenza, an artistic riposte to the brutish John Carmody is concert and opera critic bells of the boxing ring and the thwack of recruiter's drumbea ts we had heard earlier. for the Sydney Sun-Herald and is in the .. military drums. The composer uses an Those drumbeats have echoed clown the Faculty of Medicine, University of NSW . abundance of ostinati (which propel and Australian gen erations, but not every drum intensify the action ), florid episodes for has persistent resonance for our tribe. The March 2001 Book Offer Winners violin (a match for the hyperbole of the era, artistic success of Les Darcy (in my estima The Good Life I assume) and much material that sounds tion, at least) raises the question of what are ). Ba ll hausen, Narromine, NSW; ). Briggs, like Celtic dance music. The vocal writing enduringly apt them es for our operatic com Blackheath, NSW; M . Campion, Maitland, operates on several levels- for characteri posers. One answer might be that anything NSW; ). Carr, Elders lie, NSW; ).W . D are, sation, plot development and philosophical is relevant, so long as it is well handled. Horsham, VIC; D .). Gerreyn, Eastwood, NSW; underpinning. There are softly chanted I wonder, though, whether by now we have C. Keegel, Mu lgrave, VIC; S. McGushin , episodes from the Rosary, for instance, and outgrown-or lost contact with- 19th Queenstown, TAS; M.l. Moorhead, Ken sington, NSW; C. Murphy, Box Hill, V IC; background ensemble singing of material century bush plots, such as those that T. Potts, Terriga l, NSW; F. Rogan, East worked from hymns, notably 'Adora te Dorothy Porter and Jonathan Mills devised Doncas ter, V IC; Y.M. Shaddock, Burnie, devote' in an affecting scene where Les' for their short opera, The Ghost Wife, and TAS ; B. Slack S), North Sydney, NSW; mother has a beautiful solo beginning, 'Wear whether the recherche last clays in London B. Thompso n, Darwin, NT m e like a bruise upon your heart.' of Sigmund Freud are of any importance to At m oments when he wants the effect us? Certainly not, I would argue, as Margaret The Front of the Family M. Anderson, Sil verwater, NSW; M. Ashby, to be particularly blunt, Marcellino con Morgan and Andrew Ford treated them in Ri chmond, VIC; C. Be ll , jam ison Centre, ACT; trasts this pleomorphic melody with plain Night and Dreams. Melbourne and Adelaide K. Branderburg, South Fremantle, WA; speech, especially when the Boxing Pro Festival audiences saw both of those works M. Davies, Balwyn, VIC; B. Haneman, Double moter baldly declares that Les-because of (respectively) in 2000 and will have come to Bay, NSW; L. Kay, Sandy Bay, TAS; ). Liddle, hi lack of patriotism-would never again their own conclusions; Sydney saw them Coll inswood, SA ; ). M cKinley, Chisholm, fight in Sydney, or callously announces his only at this year's Festival. ACT; C. Murphy, Box Hill, VIC; U. O ' Brien, death in Memphis. (The Boxing Promoter's Porter's libretto-of a badly-trea ted, Narrabeen, NSW; M.L. O'Connor, Canter character seems to be an amalgam of H.D. lonely wife who is ravished and murdered bury, VIC; H . Peac h, Mosman, NSW; C.M. Mcintosh and 'Snowy' Baker, the 'Mr Bigs' by a passing swagman, and the transfor Roya l, Mt Eliza, VIC; E.M . Smart, Wheelers of Sydn ey boxing, and Darcy's shonky m ation of h er brutish husband when he Hill, V IC V OLUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EU REKA ST RE ET 4 1 10 o, , ON '"' I'"ND [30 M'"h every show was packed out. Tasrnanians Collie's script is over-written at times, to 8 April) was the island state of Tasmania's (and a good few tourists, as well) have but the songs (b lues to C& Wand reggae) are first international arts festival and on the embraced this festival in a very big way strong and there's no false happy ending. strength of my limited experience of it, indeed. Nadine McDonald's production fea tures a over the space of just three days, I hope it is What its imaginative programming, terrific set (complete with Straddie ferry) not its last. style and selection of material also reveal is and excellent performances, especially from It's a very different kind of festival from the extraordinarily diverse taste of its the versatile Roxanne McDonald (as Grand its older and more established mainland artistic director, Robyn Archer. Anyone mother and juvenile sister), Kirk Page (as cousins in severa 1 ways. It is not restricted who saw the National Festivals of Aus TJ) and Laurence Clifford (as Uncle Muddy to its capital city: events took place in more tralian Thea tre that Archer curated in and a cousin). Rochelle Watson has a than 16 towns and villages all over Tasmania Canberra in the mid-1990s knew what to marvellous voice and captures much of the as well as in Hobart and Launceston, some expect-oddly matched pieces fruitfully poignancy of the hapless mother. being site-specific, others touring. It takes juxtaposed. What we got here was what we Also in Launceston was TheatreTalipot, the whole notion of isolation and island expected- but more. from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, culture as one of its major them es. Perform Therese Collie's Coin' to the Island with a bea utiful piece of physical theatre, ing arts events from Icela nd, Japan, (premiered by Kooemba Jd arra Indigenous The Water Carriers. Four men of different Madagascar, various Pacific Islands, Singa Performing Arts in Brisbane in 1999) is a shapes, sizes and ethnicity enact a tale of pore and the Shetlands were staged along play with songs rather than a 'musical'. At drought in the once fertile Monkey Valley, side works by Tasmanians and some from its centre is a young rat bag Murri boy called using some spoken word (in English), live the mainland. And fi nally, where most of TJ who has left his family hom e on music and song, but mostl y highly charged the mainland festivals throw m ost of their Minjerribah (aka Stradbroke Island; there's movement. The Water Carriers is as simple energy and resources into large-scale, con the island connection!) and got into trouble as thea tre ge ts in form, but the series of spicuously expensive blockbusters, this first of various kinds on the mainland. How narratives-of a r iver dammed for Ten Days is notable for its small-scale and ever, he is lured back home as much for his progress, a wedding that can't proceed distinctly 'low-tech' pieces. 2 1st as for the possibility of reconciliation without water to cook the rice, a lake that What all this demonstrates is the bare with his community. Some deft flashbacks could be a mirage that swallows up four bones ' magic of the theatre'-based on the take TJ to his happier ch ildhoocl days on brothers before a fifth has the sense to fusion of superb material, outstanding per 'Mother Island', but they also reveal some appease a presiding bird figure- is as formance and the imagination of the of the causes of his alienation, especiall y complex as any orthodox spoken-word audi ence. And wha t audiences' Practically from his mother. elrama could be. 42 EU REKA STREET • MAY 2001 Meanwhile, in Hobart, two Launceston cooking) and Fr Francis. Some nine charac To cap this, Arch er also brought to based dancing clowns, Jon a than Rees ters are thus galvanised into frenzied day Hobart Yew Tree Theatre's production, Osborne and David O'Neile, turned on a long activity, including the lively kinds of from Co. Mayo in the west of Ireland, of superb piece of what was billed as 'dance interaction that have- inNana's opinion John Breen's Alone It Stand. The play is a theatre comedy', ironically entitled Lovely been solongmissingfrom this 'useless' family. fictional reconstruction of the actual day Lovely Days, as alate show in the Backspace Apart from the specifics of the Fijian/ in 1978 when lowly, amateur, regional of the venerable Theatre Royal. The two N ew Zealand community in which it's set, rugby club Muns t er b eat the all po-faced, besuited performers enact an this sounds like typical dysfunctional family conquering NZ All Blacks 12- nil ... and escape from an Iron Curtain country by drama from practically anywhere. And so it everything else that happened in Limerick hot-air balloon, which deposits them in a is, except for the fact that it's a monodrama on that fateful day. Peter Stuyvesant-and-Coca An astonishingly versatile Cola dominated West. The cast of six (five men and one physical image of their mimed woman, breathtaking in drop from the heavens-accom ensemble) enact the entire story panied by a brilliantly off-key with nothing but their own and half-tempo recording of bodies, a couple of benches, a 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'-is few lighting changes and one as funny as anything I've seen costume change. In the first on an Australian stage in years. act, they're all dressed as the Once safely landed in the All Blacks; in the second, as 'lovely' West, they find life just Munster. Thus we see the as bemusing, alienating, regi whole mighty NZ team, the m ented and ludicrous as in the scrawny locals, two groups of East-as their appalling slide fans in the terraces (plus cut night attests. away scenes showing how they Given the pressure that go t or failed to get tickets to Archer's programming has the game), a funeral wake, a placed on the capacity of the dog, a m other giving birth to actor/performer to carry the twins while her rotten husband impact of dramatic narrative, is at the gam e and a group of it's not surprising that the kids who'd rather have a mighty absolute highlights of this per and m emorable bonfire than former-driven festival were two waste their time at a forgettable more plays with multiple char football game. There are at least acter transformations but with seven separate narratives in the minimal sets, costume-changes play. or any other technology bar This is for the most part clever lighting and side-splittingly funny stuff. some sound effects. And Breen does not ignore the issues of national pride (a nd 0 NE OF THESE WaS the very disenfranchisem ent) with youngNewZealandplaywright which this momentous event Toa Fraser's layered family in recent Irish history has been drama No 2, premiered by invested through the powerful Campania Segundo in Auck agency of community m emory. land in 1999. It's just that none of this is Its premise is that Nana laboured in a play that Maria- matriarch of one of the deserves to be seen all over many Fijian/NZ families living this country. in South Auckland- has an But that is true of all of the inkling of her imminent death, events Robyn Archer has at 4am one hot sleepless morn brought together in this ing, and wakes up the entire family and in which a brilliant 21-year-old (Madeleine remarkable festival. If my taxi-driver's neighbourhood to prepare a final family Sami) portrays the entire cast-male and verdict (that the event should become a banquet in her honour. She wants curries, a female, young and old- in a seamless perfor biennial fixture) is right, I'll be back for pig on a spit, kava, bottled wine-the lot, as mance that rightly drew standing ovations more. In the meantime, Melbourne can seen on Dolmio ads on TV, and the village from all who saw her. Her male characters, expect a treat from Archer's two Inter priest as well! And she wants only the especially, are shown with such accuracy national Festivals, beginning in 2002. • grandchildren in attendance. There are to and sharpness of observation that I could be no outsiders, aside from daughter hardly persuade myself there weren' t Geoffrey Milne teaches theatre and drama Charlene (who will bear the brunt of the ring-ins on the stage. at LaTrobe University. V O LUME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 43 story's twist is utterly illogical and cl ocsn' t stand up to scrutiny. But in a film as stylish as this, w ho cares? - Gordon Lewis Good dog I even theories, because everything's so durn Simplistic gifts simple, so explainable. My companion and Best in Show, clir. Christopher Guest. Every I began laying bets on who did what and year th e Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show what was likely to happen, and we were is the scene of h igh drama as m an and his The Gift, dir. Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi came mostly right because everything was as best friend pursue the Holy Grail of canine to fame directing Evil Dead, a gross-out w ell-flagged as the course at Augusta. Or excellence. Best in Show is a bitingly funny B-grade horror flick that is still popular perhaps, say, an aerial map of the coast of 'mockumentary' which takes us backstage among adolescent boys having pizza and China. - Juliette Hughes to witness the pain and the passion of big video marathons in the school hols. The time clog breeding. Gift was written by Billy Bob Thornton and The film has an enviable pedigree. Tom Epperson. The formula is Small Ace stuff Director Christopher Guest is also respon Southern Town whodunnit crossed with sible for This is Spinal Tap and Waiting for X-Files gruc, and Twin Peaks deja vu, Croupier, clir . Mike Hodges. Croupier was Guffman. As in those two classics, Guest resulting in the perennial American ghost made three years ago and has already gone has assembled a strong cast of com ic actors, story problem of h eavy literalism, an to TV in Europe. Despite this and despite supplied them with a basic script, and then absence of mystery. Sixth Sense and The minimal publicity, I had to battle for a seat let them improvise-but in an absolutely Blair Witch Project were the exceptions at the public sneak preview. deadpan m anner. Despite their best efforts, that prove the rule: neither of those films The reason is quality. Quality in the the doggy stars of Best in Show must have had the typical Hollywood genesis. direction, screen-writing and performance fe lt pretty disappointed with their perform Cate Blanchett is impressive as Annie (particularly Clive Owen as Jack Manfred). ances-the humans steal every scene. Wilson, a widow with three children, who Manfred is an aspiring writer who tries to The lonely Harlan Pepper, a would-be supports herself by doing psychic readings come to terms with writer's block by taking ventriloquist and believer in animal ESP, and some amateur psychology. Blanchett a fi ll -in job as a croupier and dealer at a less has his hopes riding on Hubert the blood has a good ear for the accent and a good face than luxurious London casino. hound. Gerry Fleck, a man with two left for noble angst. She tackles the leaden script Owen, who has built a loyal following feet (literally) and a wife, Cookie, w ho in a with professionalism , but her only really after performances in several British TV past life could have bonked for America, good bits (a nd they are really good) come series, gives a stellar performance as the desperately wants his Norwich terrier, quite early in the film when she is partnered honest croupier who has seen it all-the Winkie, to win. A yuppie couple, Meg and closely by Keanu Reeves, Giovanni Ribisi man who knows the odds on everything, Hamilton Swan, place their clog, Beatrice, and Hilary Swank. but not their emotional cost. in therapy to gain that extra poise for the big Reeves has a grea t time playing a baclclie. Croupier is a stylish, intelligent filrn . clay . Sheri Ann Cabot, a makeup 'arti ste' He has one of the classic screen presences, A screenplay by Paul Mayers berg (Th e Man and gold-digger trapped in a loveless like the old movie stars; som e sort of vi vic! Who Fell to Earth), direction by Mike marriage worth millions, pours her heart energy always emanates from him, and here Hodges (director of the 1971 gangster into 'Rhapsody in White', a part bouffant he uses it to become m enacing, nasty, classic Get Carter) and the superb per partpoodlegroom ed to perfection by handler seeming physically huge. Swank plays his formance by Clive Owen, guarantee an Christy Cummings. And finally Stefan battered wife with panache, sporting a very absorbing 91 minutes. Astreamlinedmovie Vanderhoof and Scott Donlan, a gay couple bright purple black eye at the start. But with bristling dialogue and, for once, a from Manhattan, pray that their adorable Ribisi, the least-known of the fo ur main voice-over which enhances rather than little Shih T zu, Miss Agnes, brings home actors, takes the acting honours. H e has a detracts. the winner's sash. range that encompasses quiet helpless We are told little or nothing about A clear-eyed study in American su ffering all the way through to murderous Manfred's background save that h e has had n euroticism , Best in Show is sh arply rage and back. He conveys the kind of som e experience as a croupier in South satirical but ra rely cruel. Gu est obviously courage displayed by those with nothing Africa and has an interfering father who loves these characters and their objects of left to lose, and if his end is too neat and far seems to have fallen on hard times. misplaced affection. As St Bernard once too literally conveyed, he has acquitted his Treating his job as a m eans to an end, said: 'Lo ve me, love m y dog'. task well: any problems are in the text. M anfred is someone hooked on watching -Brett Evans In the end you see, American ghosts are other peopl e lose everything while risking too, too solid flesh to scare you for long. The nothing of his own. Gift ends up with the feeling that being a Although Croupier is taut and su s Good dog II psychic is nothing mysterious, nothing like penseful, for total enjoyment it is necessary The Innocents (now there was a m ovie to to suspend disbelief at times, particularly Amores Perras (Love's a Bitch), dir. keep you awake afterwards'), nothing is left in the climactic sting towards the end. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. A mores Perras unexplained. Its world has no enigmas, not Based on the information we are given, the is a terrific film, the acting is powerful, the 44 EUREKA STREET • MAY 2001 direction is sure, the writing is layered and postmoclern armour has a chink- JM desires But despite these minor flaws, The the soundtrack is grea t. a 1967 Citroen DS ('Deesse' or 'Goddess') Goddess of 1967 had a robust, sad and What more is there to say? Plenty. The and via the internet finds a red one for sale beautiful heart. -Siobhan Jackson characters have real density, and there are in Australia. no good guys. Instead of offering the audience And so he flies in to close the deal, only personifications of human frailties- the to find that circumstances for purchase are Presidents and vices selfish character, the kind character and so not what you might describe as ideal. JM on-most characters demonstrate, and often meets BG (Rose Byrne), a young blind girl in The Contender, dir. Rod Lurie. Films about in graphic ways, monstrousness, kindness, possession of the car keys. Embarking on a American politics have had mixed success. vulnerability, cruelty, altruism and selfish test drive that soon looks like covering half Primaq Colours, The Seduction of foe ness. It is refreshing to see such time taken the country, JM and BG move through Tynan and The Candidate were all well over characterisation. landscapes (sec below) which trigger m ade and did good business in the US but The film opens with a car chase and m em ories and emotions that shape the not elsewhere. crash. The accident tics the three stories The Contender is a quality movie. The together, and it is to this accident that the story contemplates a unique situation: the film returns to orient the audience through US Vice President has died and the President the tapestry of time and plot. There are (J eff Bridges) chooses a liberal woman, three main s tories-Oc ta via, Valeria and Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen ), to be Chivo. Octavia, in an attempt to run away the first woman to hold the office. with his sister-in-law, finds a temporary Apparently a political Pollya nna, cash flow by taking his dog to the local Hanson has switched parties in the past, dogfi ghts and betting on him. Valeria is the m eaning there is no shortage of political most beautiful woman in Latin America opposition to thwart her appointment. until the car accident cripples her. And Her foremost opponent is senior Con Chivo is a hit-man, undone and in some gressman Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman ), ways saved by Octavia's dog Cofi. an old enemy of the President, who is also The dislocation of time and eliding the Chairman of the Congress Committee between stories bea rs some comparison inquiring in to Hanson's credentials. Shortly with Pulp Fiction. Despite the difficulties before that hearing, explicit photographs of weaving such disparate stories with purporting to be of Hanson participating in fractured time, Inarritu never loses his a university initiation orgy, find their way audience. into Runyon's hands. Amores Peuos also provides jaw Confronted with the photographs at the clenching suspense, generated from sim Committee hearing, Hanson refuses to mering violence. There is plenty of actual answer questions about their authentici ty, violence as well, a lot of which is directed at and as a result h er political ship heads for clogs . Dogs are the second link between the the rocks. stories. They sit tight as 'man's best friend', The performances of Bridges, Allen offering the characters everything from hope and Oldman lift this movie above the to despair. The dogs offered m e something remainder of the film. The narrative leaps ordinary. Allen was nominated for Best too. I had to confront being more moved by about through time, exploring damaged Actress at the Academy Awards and it was the plight of the dogs than I was by the pasts, misplaced love and fearful solutions. a worthy nomination. As Hanson, she is humans. I am going to see this film again. It The film's 'big' moments (incest, burn dignified, charming and controlled, but is as good as that. -Annelise Balsamo ing buildings, opera and rotten rats) were its ever watchful. It is a convincing but least satisfying. They were bulky and stiff sombre performance-only in the closing Goddesses like ball gowns on a Hill's Hoist. It was the minutes is sh e given lines with any hint rare and tiny moments that felt clearest in of humour. in machines The Goddes - when an orphaned child Bridges m akes the President a veritable gleefully pours a glass of orange cordial over bear of a man. Powerful and ruthless, he The Goddess of 1967, clir. Clara Law. The her head, the blind touch of BG learning to cloaks his m enace in good-natured banter. Goddess of 1967 opens with a beautiful dance against JM 's body and the wrinkly This is a man who crushes your fingers series of vignettes set in Tokyo. We watch old guy's chilling exclamation, ' and while he shakes your hand with a smile. JM (Rikiya Kurokawa), a Japanese man, I screwed 'em alli' Oldman, as the manipulative moralis living a life more like a surreal ad campaign While The Goddess of 196 7 is strikingly ing Congressman Runyon, gives a teasingly for high-tech electronic gizmos than your photographed by Dian Beebe (Praise, Holy equivocal performance. Presented as the regular mix of work, rest and play. JM's life Smoke, Floating Life), by the end of the 'bad guy', everything he does is arguably appears seamless but cold- m oving picture I was wearied by its highly strung ju tifiable if it truly stems from his concern between a wordlc love with a reptile colour manipulation s. Byrne and Kuro about the welfare of hi country. wrangler, noodles in polystyrene tubs, single kawa's performances worked beautifully The Contender is worth seeing if only line electronic communica tions and exotic together, ironically leaving the other for three of the best performances in a snakes curled in glass spheres. But his cool acting combinations looking a little flat. movie this year. -Gordon Lewis VOL UME 11 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 45 a&tching -)l '13nef Let them eat cable MYmoNc cNmcs M,, foe quice' 'm'll 46 EUREKA STR EET • M AY 2001 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 93, May 2001 Devised by Toan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS l. Must I reach two notes somehow, to satisfy her about the scales? (5, 7) 8. Sounds like cutting off a syllable, for instance, in describing as so delightful. (7) 9. According to revered sources, we should not put our trust in them, no matter their rank. (7) 11. Put an embargo on the fellow lest he desert. (7) 12. Meaning you'll hear that's not intellectual? (7) 13. Arab, perhaps, sounding croaky. (5) 14. Pledge amounted to about 2,101 total. (9) 16. How extremists may go back to their roots? (9) 19. Influences of southern manners. (5) 21. What you are doing-in secret? (7) 23. Roman law I study-may be useful for 21-across! (7) 24. Prevent drop? On the contrary- possibly be indiscreet with one's words. (3,4) 25 . This war produced many such apparent spectres. (7) 26. Ari's to commission, initially, returning sailor to be in charge. Hardly upper-class! (12) Solution to Crossword no. 92, April 2001 DOWN 1. A fete this month, but not in Park Lane! (7) 2. Put lid on the news, perhaps, to cover this up? (7) 3. Regulation I name, briefly, according to recognised law. (9) 4. Show cut short-to see the shows? (5) 5. Met my old mate, befuddled, at the place for wine. (7) 6. Run sect so as to form hard coating against public criticism, perhaps. (7) 7. Have you read the new translation of Homer? Capital stuff, but not to be taken as literal. (12) 10. Loss of identity? Or a benefit to others? (12) 15. Bloomer about transport of pilgrim fathers. (9) 17. Time for celebrity with heavenly body to enjoy the sun-how poetically expressed' (7) 18. Deliberately ignore the girl with the weapon. (7) 19. Navigation instrument still in use after Sothebys initially ditched it, perhaps. (7) 20. Medical case suffering with twitch; it's enough to make one an abstainer. (7) 22. In small room, love to play an instrument. (5) ------~ ------This suhscriprio n is: Your Contact Details: Gift to: (Please also jiff in your ou•n conl ac/ de/ails. lrji) D New D Renewal D Gift IMrsiMISs/Ms/Mr F"st Name I LISslMs/Mr F1rst Name Length of subscription: ~su=rn~am~e======~~Su~m~am=e~======D One year ( 10 issues fo r $63, $54 concession for pe nsio ners, studenrs and ~~St=re=et=N=o.======S=tre=e=tN=a=me======~~~~ St=~=et=N=o.======S=t•~=et=N=dm=e======~ unemployed. lnc. GST .) D Two years (20 issues fo r $11 5. $98 concession. Inc. GST .) 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AR, Locd hvine, the role as a Cabinet minister and a judge as United Kingdom's Lord Chancellor, per being in breach of the 'fair trial' provi sonally signed a letter inviting senior sions of the European Convention on British lawyers to attend a fundraising Human Rights (ECHR). In October 2000, political dinner and to make donations the ECHR became part of the UK's of no less than £200 to the Labour Party domestic law when the Human Rights election campaign. The storm that Act came into full effect. That Act allows erupted over this has implications for all the ordinary courts to declare whether or Westminster-style governments. not legislation and administrative actions The holder of the office of Lord High are in breach of ECHR provisions. But Chancellor, established 615AD, wears Lord Irvine appoints those judges and three constitutional wigs- which would the 1920s Lord Eldon refused to make administers those courts. Well might the make anyone look silly. As a Cabinet political opponents King's Counsel and Independent say, in relation to Lord minister, he is a member of the execu in the early 20th century the great Lord Irvine's fundraising activities, that: tive and in charge of a large government Halsbury appointed Tory supporters to At a time when judges, through judicial department. As Speaker of the House of the Bench. review and application of the Human Lords, he is a member of the legislature Lord Irvine also said that he was no Rights Act, offer one of the now pitifully too. He is also Britain's most senior judge: different from any other Cabinet minis few checks and balances against govern- he can, and sometimes controversially ter, which is a moot point. A minister m ent, it is no longer defensible that does, sit as a member of the House of who controls the judicial system is not the government appoints them. Lords' Appellate Committee, heads the just any Cabinet member. Faith in the British judiciary and is responsible for justice system depends upon a perception I N AusTRA LIA, Lord Irvine's potential or appointing all senior judges and Queen's of that person's absolute integrity. perceived conflicts of interest would be Counsels. He thus offends against the Irvine's predecessor, Lord MacKay, practically unchallengeable. Australia principle of the separation of powers and certainly possessed that quality in Pres has not incorporated its international is a major example of its feebleness in the byterian quantity. And the separation of human rights obligations into domestic British constitution. powers now matters much more, because law in any formal way. It would be As head of the judiciary, the Lord the executive has so much more power fascinating to enable Australian courts to Chancellor is supposed to be above over citizens' lives than it did a century declare whether or not, say, the Northern politics. Asking lawyers to donate to the ago. An independent judiciary is a Territory's mandatory sentencing laws faction to which his Cabinet head is singularly necessary check on both the complied with the International Cove attached made it seem as though profes legislature and executive. nant on Civil and Political Rights or the sional preferment might be politically There is a marvellous scene in Gilbert UN Convention on the Rights of the inclined. It penetrated the Chinese walls and Sullivan's Iolanthe, where the Lord Child. Similarly, one could ask whether between his three roles. It astounded the Chancellor has to consider whether or the Commonwealth's proposed changes lawyers: 'The integrity of the Lord Chan not he has a conflict of interest. He to its treatment of refugees comply with cellorship depends on an informal bargain remarks, as he puts the arguments to international norms. It would also be in which the incumbent imposes a rigor himself, 'I had personally been acquaint impossible for the Australian govern ous self-discipline that removes any ed with myself for some years ... I had ment to do what successive federal (such) risk of abuse', according to the watched my professional advancement governments have planned, and may yet Independent. with considerable interest ... I yielded to complete. But Lord Irvine defended himself. He no-one in admiration for my private and The Common Law already acknow quite rightly pointed out that many of his professional virtues'. He then finds in his ledges the importance of international predecessors had been politically active. own favour. Lord Irvine, in similar vein, obligations to domestic ideas of justice. Some have been so disgracefully: Francis found that he had done no wrong. In 1996, the High Court in Teoh found Bacon was removed from office in 1621 Lord Irvine is genuinely an honoura that Australia's international obligations for taking bribes, and Judge Jeffreys-of ble man. He chose not to sit as a judge in to protect the rights of children under the 'Bloody Assizes'-died in disgrace in the month following a warning by law the UN Convention on the Rights of the the Tower in 1689. Some flagrantly: in yers that they would challenge his dual Child are part of the Australian law of
Melbourne, 19 May 200 I
