STORIES· POEMS· ARTICLES· REVIEWS BEYOND EVIL AND GOOD - JUSTICE IN AUSTRALIA SUMMER 1992 NUMBER 4 $5.00 a novel by Philip Salam PLAYBACK r~ ~ BACK Jack Biner, folklorist and gifted listener, imagines Windrup is just another country town and its people. But soon he is entrusted with the vivid and often moving world of these people's memories. His need to remain an impartial collector is shaken. He finds he must live through much more than his own dilemmas as he meets Mrs Bukowski, the moody landlady; Laura, the painter; her cagey husband; and the enigmatic Fisher . , ... poet Philip Salom's first novel (has) an intensity and strong contemporary motion which will 'honey the nerves' of its readers . ' Australian Bookseller & Publisher FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE PRESS WESTERLY a quarterly review ISSN 0043-342x EDITORS: Bruce Bennett, Delys Bird, Peter Cowan, Dennis Haskell EDITORIAL ADVISORS: Margot Luke (prose), Brenda Walker (reviews) EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS: Diana Brydon (University of Guelph), John Hay (Deakin University), Dorothy Hewett (Sydney), Brian Matthews (Flinders University), Vincent 0' Sullivan (Victoria University, Wellington), Peter Porter (London), Anna Ruthelford (University of Aarhus), Edwin Thumhoo (National University of Singapore), Alhert Wertheim (University of Indiana) ADMINISTRATOR: Caroline Horobin Westerly is published quarterly at the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature in the English Department, University of Western Australia with assistance from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, the Federal government's arts funding and advisory body, and the State Government of WA through the Department for the Arts. The opinions expressed in Westerly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Westerly, Department of English, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009 (telephone (09) 380 2101). Unsolicited manuscripts not accom­ panied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned. All manuscripts must show the name and address of the sender and should be typed (double-spaced) on one side of the paper only. Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts, the editors can take no final responsibility for their return; contributors are consequently urged to retain copies of all work submitted. Minimum rates for contributors - poems $30,00; reviews $50.00; stories/ articles $80.00. Recommended sale price: $5.00 per copy (WA) Subscriptions: $24.00 per annum (posted); $42.00 for 2 years (posted). Special student subscription rate: $18.00 per annum (posted). Single copies mailed: $6.00. Subscriptions should be made payable to Westerly and sent to The Secretary, CSAL, Department of English, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009. Work published in Westerly is cited in: Abstracts of English Studies, Australian Literary Studies Annual Bibliography, Australian National Bibliography, Journal of Commonwealth Literature Annual Bibliography, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Current Contents! Arts & Humanities, The Genuine Article, Modern Language Association of America Bibliography, The Year's Work in English Studies, and is indexed in APlAS: Australian Public Affairs Information Service (produced by the National Library of Australia) and AUSTLIT, the Australian Literary On-Line Database. Three Westerly Indexes 1956-77, 1978-83 and 1984-88, are available at $5.00 each from the above address. Department for theArts -A Gove.-nment of Weslern Australia WESTERLY. No.4. SUMMER, 1992 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PREMIER'S BOOI( AWARDS 1992 Premier's Prize Mudrooroo, The Garden of Gethsemane: Poems from the Lost Decade (Hyland House) Fiction Philip Salom, Playback (Fremantle Arts Centre Press) Poetry Mudrooroo, The Garden of Gethsemane Historical & Critical Studies Bruce Bennett, Spirit in Exile: Peter Porter and his Poetry (Oxford University Press) Special Award James Ricketson, Day of the Dog (unpublished filmscript) Children's Books Errol Broome, Dear Mr Sprouts (Allen and Unwin) WESTERLY, No.4, SUMMER, 1992 CONTENTS WESTERLY VOLUME 37, No.4, SUMMER 1992 Special Issue: Beyond Evil and Good - Justice in Australia. STORIES My Friend, George Kate O'Neill 25 The Man in the Pict\Jre Hal Colebatch 33 Moving Boundaries Lynette Keenan 71 The Company She Keeps Ugo Rotellini 73 The Fence Maria Gabor 84 POEMS Helen Budge 18 Phyllis Jager 70 D. M. Lumsden 32 Stephen Magee 80 Kathy Hunt 46 Geoffrey Hutchings 82 Julie Hunt 67 Bruce Roberts 86 Andy Kissane 68 ARTICLES Royal Commissions: Meaning and Significance of notions of Justice in Contempoary Australia Evan Whitton 5 House of Mirrors: Satire and the Law Nicholas Hasluck 13 Making it Legal: Business, Law and the Local Hero Graeme Turner 19 Closing the Can of Worms: Enactments of Justice in 'Bleak House', 'The Mystery of a Hansom Cab' and 'The Tax Inspector' Robert Dixon 37 Legal Fictions and Nicholas Hasluck's The Bellarmine Jug' Kieran Dolin 47 Truth, Justice and the Australian Way' John Foster 55 The Annulled Gift and the Repression of Ethics Alex Segal 87 Black Words/White Stage: Jack Davis' 'No Sugar' Brian Dibble and Margaret Macintyre 93 REVIEWS Bernard Cohen, Tourism' Veronica Brady 99 John Kinsella (ed), 'The Bird Catcher's Song: a Salt Anthology of Contemporary Poetry Michael Sharkey 101 Lawrence Bourke, 'A Vivid Steady State: Les Murray and Australian Poetry' Dennis Haskell 104 Beth Yahp, 'The Crocodile Fury' Cathy Bennett 105 Bruce Bennett, 'Spirit in Exile: Peter Porter and His Poetry' Lawrence Bourke 107 CONTRIBUTORS 110 Cover design by Susan Eve Ellvey of Designpoint using an illustration from The Phantom Pirate by Syd Nicholls, comic book registered at the GPO, Sydney, for transmission through the post as a book, 1941. Printed by Lamb Printers Pty Ltd. WESTERLY, No.4, SUMMER, 1992 OBITUARY Neville Teede, a legend of Western Australian theatre, died in Perth on Monday, 9 November 1992. Born in Bunbury in 1924, he served in RAAF Bomber Command during the Second World War and was taken prisoner in 1945. On his return to Perth he joined the English Department of The University of Western Australia as a tutor, while still an honours student, and later as Lecturer. During this career in theatre, Neville Teede appeared in more than 160 professional pro­ ductions ranging from Restoration comedy to contem­ porary Australian plays. He appeared in Australian productions of plays by Dorothy Hewett, Jack Hibberd, Edgar Metcalfe and Douglas Stewart. His contribution to the enjoyment and understanding of theatre in Australia among students, actors and audiences has been enormous and his influence will endure. PATRICK WHITE LITERARY AWARD Peter Cowan, Western Australian short fiction writer and novelist, has been granted the Patrick White award for 1992. Previous winners include Christina Stead and Randolph Stow. 4 WESTERLY. No.4. SUMMER. 1992 EVAN WHITION Royal Commissions: Meaning and Significance for Notions of Justic~ in Contemporary Australia I can't understand why Australia has so many Royal Commissions; they are the perfect vehicle for concealing the truth. John Mortimer QC, 1983 Since its invention by Defoe in 1704, modem journalism has had two obligations: to interest and/or amuse the customers, and to serve the community by exposing wrongdoing; in particular, to defend democracy against those who subvert it by corruption. The second obligation was rendered difficult by practitioners' natural sloth, moral corruption, and lack of sophisticated techniques, and by libel laws invented by common law judges in the 18th century to protect rogues in high places, the trade of authority at that time being corrupt to the rafters. The oldest rule of journalism, and the most forgotten, is to tell the customers what is really going on. However, in the early 1960s Four Comers began to ask some really quite mild questions about prominent institutions. Much affront was taken at this breach of standard practice; where would it all end? A long-serving Prime Minister, Knight of the Thistle, and war criminal, Sir R. Menzies, prudently retired from politics in 1966 before the questions got too pointed. A watershed of sorts occurred in 1969, when a medical practitioner, Dr B.B. Wainer, who was a better on-the-road reporter than most then in the trade, and a disreputable organ, Melbourne Truth, also known as "The Whore of La Trobe Street", forced the first of a series of major commissions of inquiry on corruption in the trade of authority. At the inquiry, Wainer got a rough handling from counsel assisting, J. Winneke, and from the commissioner, W. Kaye QC (as he then was), but three corrupt detectives went to prison. An exceptional reporter, R.G. Bottom, forced more than a dozen similar inquiries in New South Wales during the 1970s and 1980s. Another exceptional reporter, Chris Masters, forced watershed inquiries in Sydney in 1983 and Brisbane in 1987. In the 1990s, earlier dubious practice by W A Inc made an inquiry inevitable. At some stage in that 20-year process, the Cameron Effect came into playas a result of the data disclosed at the various inquiries. The name derives from an English reporter, Jim Cameron. He asserts that the effect of journalism on public opinion is quite mysterious, given that any sensible editor knows that some of his customers never read the sports pages, and some never read anything but. He likens it to a physical experiment concerning nuclear fission. The mass is bombarded with particles (facts) until it becomes critical; one more particle and fission occurs. An effect of all those inquiries is that the mass may now be more or less permanently at the critical stage. This is terrifying for elements of the trade of authority; if Menzies were to be operating in the current climate, it seems doubtful that he would be able to get away with his various perversions of democracy. WESTERLY, No.4, SUMMER, 1992 5 Of the law, the Hon. Mr Justice (as he later became) James Staples rightly observed in 1973 that our courts need more justice and less law.