EURI:-KA srREEr and Harper Collins Special Book Offer Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia by David Tacey Tacey tells the story of travelling, as a child, in a 1962 EJ Holden along unmade desert tracks beside Lake Eyre. His family was emigrating from the northern suburbs of Melbourne to Alice Springs. For Tacey, this was the beginning of a spiritual awaken ing. Edge of the Sacred speaks of everyone's need for this kind of awakening: 'A world view based on the human element alone lands us squarely in the prison of the rational ego, where soul and spirit are banned, repressed and ignored. '
Thanks to Harper Collins, Eureka Street has eight copies of Edge of the Sa cred to give away, each worth $19.95. Justputyourname and address on the back of an envelope and mark it 'Eureka Street May Giveaway'.
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For more information contact the Information Officer Hofbauer Centre, 93 Alma Road, East St Kilda, Phone (03) 429 7861 Volume 5 Number 4 euRI:-KA srm:-er May 1995 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology
CONTENTS 4 COMMENT story in sexual harassment policy by theAustralian Defence Force (p33). 8 Michael McGirr looks at Graham LETTERS Little's Letter to my daughter (p35). Paul Collins reviews Peter 9 Hebblethwaite's The N ext Pope (p36). CAPITAL LETTER James Griffin reviews Nicholas O'Neill's and Robin Handley's Retreat 10 from Injustice: Human Rights in Aus BACK TO THE RANKS tralian Law (p3 7). Max Teichmann con David Glanz and Jon Greenaway sults a clutch of new books and articles investigate the state of the unions. on 'the great game of geopolitics' (p38 ). Frank Stilwell gives marks to Brian 14 Toohey for his Tumbling Dice: the Sto ARCHIMEDES ry of Modern Economic Policy (p41). 14 42 POSTSCRIPT; HELLO TO BERLIN MUSIC Juliette Hughes on green realpolitik. Are the doors still open Juliette Hughes waxes lyrical over Tekno. Mark Skulley rolls along to the for the Australian 15 Stones (p53). Union Movement? RIGHT ABOUT FACE David Glanz and Ray Cassin interviews Michael Novak. 44 Jon Greenaway THEATRE 18 Geoffrey Milne goes multicultural. look at the options, SHUTTING THE GATE plO. Gerard Palk examines the prisons and 46 political expediency. ES FILM SPECIAL Owen Richardson reads the letters of 21 the greatest of them all-French direc ONE STEP SHORT OF GLORY tor Jean Renoir. Jerry Martinson inter Bill Hannan goes walkabout. views Lang Hsuing, star of Eat Drink 24 Man Woman (p48). Cover photograph: A YEN FOR CRICKET 51 Herbert Cole (Nugget) Coombs, TitTl Stoney interviews Minoru Mito, Jap courtesy of FLASH IN THE PAN The Canberra Times, see p26. anese cricketer with his sights set on a Reviews of the new-release films Little Photographs pp3, J0-1 1 new cricket century. Wom en; 101 Dalmatians; High er by Bill Thomas. Learning; fu st Cause; Bullets Over Photograph pS by Andrew Stark. 26 Broadway, Immortal Beloved; Rob Photographs pplS, 17, 24,31 THE CAROLINE CHISHOLM SERIES by Tim Stoney. Roy; Strawberry And Chocolate and G raphic p38 by jon Greenaway Jack Waterford talks to the man Mick the SBS 'Movie Legends' offering, State Graphic pSI by Peter Fraser. Dodson has dubbed 'the whitefellas' most of Siege. senior elder', H.C. ('Nugget') Coombs. Eureka Street magazine 54 jesuit Publications 31 WATCHING BRIEF PO Box 553 Richmond VIC 3 12 1 BOOKS Tel (03)427 73 11 Moira Rayner reviews Helen Garner's 55 Fax (03) 428 4450 Th e First Stone, and examines a success SPECIFIC LEVITY
V o LUME 5 N uMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 3
• I:URI:-KA STReeT COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts W.J. UREN and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Production editor Ra y Cassin Consulting editor Michael McGirr SJ
Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway Production assistants: J. Ben Boonen CFC, To life nnelise Balsamo, Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes, Siobhan Jackson, Chris Jenkins Sf, Tim Stoney, Catriona Jackson.
Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Perth: Dean Moore Sydney : Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, Gerard Windsor. European correspondent: Damien Simonis I H AVt JUST RHURNW fwm Rome ""d the Gene'" I Con.,e US correspondent: Thomas H. Stahel SJ gation of the Jesuit order, its 34th in a 455-year history. There were 223 delega tes from more than 120 countries, and they Editorial board represented 22,869 Jesuits engaged in various forms of Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), ministry around the world: in schools, universities, parishes, Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, chaplaincies; in research in the sciences and the humanities; Madeline Duckett RSM, Trevor Hales, in theological refl ection; in social welfare and social justice Marie Joy ce, Kevin McDonald, centres; in publication houses, and in spirituality and retreat Jane Kelly IBVM, Ruth Pendavingh, centres. Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ Among the issues brought constantly to the attention Bu siness manager: Sylvana Scannapiego of the delegates, there were inevitably those associated with Advertising representative: Tim Stoney what has come to be known as 'the prom otion of life'. The growing incidence of homicide, suicide, euthanasia, abortion, Patrons AIDS and capital punishment; the tragedy of 45,000,000 Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the refugees; the plight, especially, of Africa; the hypocrisy of support of C.L. Adami; the trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; A.J . Costello; the international arms trade; the terror of land mines; embryo D.M. Cullity; R.J. and H.M. Gehrig; experimentation and the ethical ambiguity of various other W.P. & M.W. Gurry; forms of genetic engineering; the severely limited access to the Roche family. h ealth care not only in Third World countries but also among the poor and marginalised even in the First and Second Eureka Street m agazi ne, ISSN I 036- l 758, Worlds; the growing resort to war and violence; the specifi Australia Post Print Post approved cally feminine face of poverty, of domestic violence, and of pp349181/003 14 refugee movements: all these seem ed to the delega tes to is published ten times a year constitute a veritable 'culture of death'. by Eureka Street Magazine Pry Ltd, The only appropriate way it seem ed suitable to respond 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, VictOria 3 12 1. was to use a phrase consecrated by a recent visitor to our Responsibility for editori al content is accepted by shores, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago-in terms of Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Stl·cet, Ri chmond. Printed by Doran Printing, 'a consistent ethic of life'. This involves seeing these issues 46 Industrial Drive, Braesidc VIC 3 195. not just in isolation from one another, but as interconnected IEl Jesuit Publications 1993 and as part of a deeper political, economic, social, moral and Unsolicited m anuscripts, inc! uding poetry and spiritual malaise born of fear, insecurity, greed, an excessive fiction, wil l be returned only if 4 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 and euthanasia, like the Jesuit agenda it was also con 'culture of life', but also to eliminate those structure cerned to situate these in the wider perspective of 'a of discrimination and disadvantage that lead to hom consistent ethic of life'. icide, abortion and euthanasia. In particular, the Pope The Pope did this in two ways. First, the encycli rejects emphatically the neoliberal presumptions, cal was not concerned exclusively with homicide, born, he maintains, of ethical subjectivism and rela abortion and euthanasia, even though these were cer tivism, that governments should make no moral tainly the focus of the Pope's attention. But he saw options, but that they should merely respond to the them against the wider background of a 'culture of moral nurketplace. Although freedom is recognised death'. Capital punishment, the traffic in arms, the by the Pope to be a sine qua non in moral decision traffic in body organs, the traffic in drugs, discrimina making, freedom mu t not be divorced from truth, tion against women, the nor should it be seen to be in marginalised, the handi conflict with life: capped and the elderly, the There is no true free resort to war and violence, dom where life is not destructive experimentation- welcomed and loved; on human embryos, the and there is no full degradation of the environ ness of Iifc except in ment, the economic and freedom (96). social competitiveness that results in a minimal quality This triad-life, freedom, of life for so many of the truth- has been a constant earth's inhabitants-all these theme in Pope John Paul's re received much more than a cent encyclicals, and under cursory mention. standably it strikes a chord in Secondly, while (not un a society where not only the expectedly) the Pope did not right to life but also the qual resile from pronouncing in ity of life of many marginal very definitive terms that ised members and groups homicide, euthanasia and seem recently to have been abortion were gravely immor so extensively devalued. al, he did not see these exclu Critics, of course, will point sively in terms of the out that in a pluralist society theoretical categories of there are many claims to 'objective moral absol-utes' 'truth' in morality, and that articulated in his encyclical the overtly theist and Chris letter of August 1993, Verita tian presuppositions out of tis Splendor. Although Evan which the Pope works are gelium Vitae is no doubt certainly not universally meant to be a specific appli shared. They will also wonder cation of the principles enunciated in this earlier in whether, in linking freedom in an instrumental way struction, it also draws heavily both upon Christian to truth, the Pope is really taking full account of the tradition and upon other specific church declarations, most radical text of Vatican II, the Declaration on particularly those on abortion and euthanasia. Perhaps Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, where the because the Pope is drawing upon this wider tradi civil rights of even the misguided conscience are Photograph le[L: tion, there seem to be a more understanding and explicitly acknowledged. Andrew Slarl< pastoral dimension to this encyclical than was evi However this m ay be-and it would seem to be dent in the more theoretical, and inevitably true that in some instances at least the Pope is more tendentiou s, argumentation of working out of a pre-Vatican II problematic-the clear Veritatis Splendor. and uncluttered message of this most recent encyclical should not for that reason be prematurely L ERE IS A RECOGNITION, for instance, of the particular discounted. We do need 'a consistent ethic of life', so pressures on the single pregnant woman and on the that freedom, the right to, and the quality of, life marginalised elderly. Although paying a handsome become realities for all members of our community, tribute to those individuals and voluntary agencies and especially for those who have become victims of who in so many ways contribute to the support of the 'the marketplace'-whether it be political, economic handicapped, the marginalised, the elderly, the dying, or even moral. • single mothers, adoptees, drug addicts and those suffering from AIDS, the Pope also calls upon civil W.J. U ren SJ is Australian Provincial Superior of the governments not only to develop in their own right a Society of Jesus. V oLUME 5 N uMilER 4 • EUREKA STREET 5 CoMMENT: 2 PAUL COLLINS Gently into that good night A eouT TWeNTY""" Wl I '"'ked to" m"n w; th approach to the issue of the right to die with dignity, advanced cancer who was undergoing chemotherapy it has also never espoused the fanaticism of the treatment. He was just over :JO and he was suffering extremists who wish to maintain life at any cost; it considerably and visibly from the consequences of the stands as a humane contradiction to their ideological medication. He asked to speak to me as a priest, not posturing. In contrast, I have heard some older, seri as a counsellor. His question was simple: was he ous, practising Catholics say that they believe that bound by Catholic teaching to continue the treat doctors can in good faith help patients to die, espe ment? He had already talked to his wife and grown cially in extreme circumstances. up children. He wanted to stop the chemotherapy and So while I admire the courage of the doctors who to face the consequences. He was clear in his mind: have spoken out in Victoria about the issue of he wanted to die. 'As long as it is OK with the church,' euthanasia, I have to disagree with them. And this is he said. Not God-just the church. He had already not just because of the Catholic teaching. I understand faced God. that their motivation is profoundly humane and I I tried to explain in straight-forward English what respect their honesty. But I feel a deep disquiet about I had learned some eight or ten years before from the asking governments to legislate on this and other is Belgian Jesuit, Edouard «~ nicot, whose Latin moral sues concerning life and relationships. I am not sure theology text I had studied in the seminary. No-one, I if this is the type of issue that is clarified by told this brave man, was obliged to take extraordi strident, public debate. nary means to prolong life. It seemed to us both that, given the circumstances, the chemothcraphy he was L EREASON WHY I OPPOSE the legislative path is that undergoing with its dreadful side-effects was an the law is a blunt instrument which works through 'extraordinary means'. He made his own decision. He an advcrsarial system that seems to me to lack the stopped the treatment that afternoon and died in pain subtlety required to deal with complex moral issues. but at peace the next day. The last thing we need in Australia is political and Excluding the area of sexuality and reproduction, juridical clod-hoppers making decisions that proper I never cease to be surprised at how tolerant and sen ly belong to the individual conscience before God and sible the Catholic moral tradition really is. An to a person's family, friends and doctors. As Pope Pius example: talking about this very issue of 'extraordi XII said: circumstances, cultures and individuals arc nary means' to prolong life, Pope Pius XII says sim all different and it is these differences that must be ply: ' Normally one is held to usc only ordinary respected. Given that the Catholic moral tradition is means- according to circumstance of places, times clear (no extraordinary means arc required to main and culture-means that do not involve any grave tain life) I do not want some impersonal judge mak burden for oneself or another.' (The Pope Speak<>, 4/4 ing a decision as to whether I live or die. I will make [1958] p395f). This humane and realistic comment that decision myself, thank you I Or, if I am incapable, came a man who was himself to die some six months I will hand it over to someone I know and trust. after making it. In fact, in Australia we are becoming increasingly The Catholic moral tradition has always valued reliant on legislation to solve problems that properly life, but it has not been afraid of death. At its best it belong to the responsibility of each individual. What has respected the circumstances of the person, his or I admire most in the Victorian doctors and their her family, the doctor, the treatment and its cost, and patients is their willingness to make a decision about has placed al l of this within the context of the public their lives and their deaths. But I think it is a mistake good. The tradition knows that there arc no absolute to try to project that responsibility outward onto an answers as we face the process of dying. There is external legal structure that could well destroy the always room for moral nuance, conscience and per individual and communal responsibility that is sonal moral decision. And it also understands that embedded in an admittedly untidy and difficult situ the dying person is not always given the clear, moral ation. choice provided for the dying man in my story. Often To face death is a frightening reality for us all. these decisions fall back on ons and daugh tcrs or However, to assume personal responsibility for par other family. ticipation in the process of our own dying might well Of course, intcrvcni ng direct! y to help patients be the act of faith that leads us to face God with a die is another ball-game altogether. The Catholic tra little more equilibrium. • dition has never accepted it but, given its sensible Paul Collins MSC is a priest, writer and broadcaster. 6 EUREKA STREET •MAY 1995 COMMENT: 3 MICHAEL K ELLY What's the matter with Vinnies? E,om A"" Tm Society of St Vincent de r,u! orders, voluntary organisations and any association (S VDP ), the country's biggest voluntary charity, with driven by values, the SVDP needs a return to the spirit m embership variously numbered at between 30,000 of its fo under if it is to grow in a new age. and 40,000, has been in turmoil. Fears about the SV DP's survival are well found Throughout that time, rank-a nd-file members ed. Its m embership is aged and it increasingly have been perplexed. In more recent weeks, m ore resembles a welfare bureaucracy that gets its life fro m extensive coverage of the issues in the m edia has government money and policy priorities. Management revealed the extent of the problems to a wider public and leadership skills are in short supply. Its state-based in the Catholic Church and general community. administrative structure siphons power and resources What are the issues? It depends on whom yo u away from the local level and blocks action at a talk to. For example, John O'Brien, Victorian state national level. It stubbornly refuses to examine, at president, criticises the development of public advo any depth, issues of theological and spiritual renewal. cacy on behalf of the poor as part of the Society's serv Its prospects, in consequence, are gloom y. ice; the shaping of the Society as a national Alnwst half the SVDP membership is in NSW. organisation; the alleged unaccounta ' T he m oves for secession began in Vic bility of national offi ce holders and toria, and three other states fo llowed employed st aff, and fi na ncia l that lead. Almost a year before the mismanagement. His complaints have secession m ove began, attacks on Brian brought him to prominence as leader M urnane and his reform program were of the four states that seceded fro m the appearing in B.A. Sa ntamaria's ' journal national council in mid-1994. of religiou s opinion ', A D 2000. For others, the problem is a Although it is an exaggeration to say straightforward one: the SVDP needs Sa ntamaria and the N ational Civic reform-extensive, radical and very soon. Brian Mur Council have dri ven the secession, NCC influence nane, national president until last October, and focus has been active at crucial points. Its presence in the of most of the complaints of the seceding states, came m embership of the executive of the Victorian state to office in 199 1 with a reform agenda already council has been decisive in that council's actions over declared. the national issues and its dealings with other incli Murnane sees the obj ect of reform to be a renewal viduals or groups attacked in AD 2000. Moreover, of the SVDP that concentra t ed on the spiritual through AD 2000, Santamaria's lam entations over the formation of m embers and the return of power to the contemporary ch urch and reformers like Murnane m embership. He wanted a clarification of the SVDP's h ave had extensive im pact on th e aged Victoria role as a charity (people serving other people and not Vincent ian m embership. Many Victorian Catholics a vast welfare organisation like those spawned by Vincentia ns am ong t hem - w ho took sides w it h other agen cies and churches). H e wanted public Sa ntam aria in the 1940s and 50s remain with him in advocacy to be an integral part of serving the poor. the 1990s. And he saw the need fo r the Society to become a post What of the future? T here are developmen ts still Va tican II lay m ovem ent, appealing especially to to come. As information about reasons fo r secession young people. spreads and the issues get wider public attention, the The antiquity problem is a real one for the position fo r the secessionists grows more uncom fo rt Society. In Queensland and Victoria, the average age able. M ore church leaders-bishops and heads of of the m embership is in the high 60s. In N SW, where welfare orga nisations among them-arc expressing in 1992 there were 2,500 people under 25 in youth their dismay not only about the quality of thought conferences, there has been a constant complaint of that drove the secession, but also about the behaviour young people for the past decade that whenever they and tactics of the secessionists. suggest anything or take an initiative they are either But Robert Fitzgerald's point remains: without squashed or so buried in red tape that they give up. radica l reform, the SVDP will go the way of all organ Robert Fitzgerald, the NSW state president until isa tions that deny the need to change and adapt to la te 1994, i convinced that Murnane's reform pro new challenges. Dea th is a real prospect, and given gram is essential if the SVDP is to survive. He sees the age of the m embership, it may come swiftly. • the organ isation going through the pains felt by any group try ing to adapt to changing times. Like religious Michael Kelly SJ is the publisher of Eurelw Street. V OLUM E 5 N UMB ER 4 • EUREKA STREET 7 Letters Eureka S treet welcomes letters of a church that has forgotten its foun Conning the State from its readers. Short letters arc dational truths, I think it is important more likely to be publish<.:d, and to remember that God is not dead. I From Paul Spencer all letters may be edited. Letter~ believe that the people I have described Moira Rayner's article (Eme/({l Street must be signed, and should include above make a difference to our world, March '95) explores the position of the a contact phone number <111d the in the living out of their own lives. The Governor, implying that the 'reserve writer' s name and address. good news about this is that we can powers' might provide some protec all do t h c sa me. tion for the citizenry against a rogue Our human race needs peacemak government. However, what is para ers <111d in reality they arc right at our mount is that the source of authority front door, and inside our hearts if we of any constitution is in its va lidation but look. by its consti tucnts. Peter Mulholland The Victorian State Constitution Ashfield, NSW has never been validated by the peo ple of Victoria. It allows the Victorian legislature to make laws in whatsoever cases it pleases, and docs not even con fine the legislature (as in the other States) to the peace, welfare atlCI good These ar<.: not just theoretical mat government of its citizens. It has suf ters destined for the too-hard basket; fered ad hoc amendments without they arc as real as the cracks in hous referral to the constituency. Whose in <.:s around Albert Park, indicative of the terests docs it servd There arc not cracks in the great principle that gov even any provisions for referendums, ernments arc not above the rule of law. as there arc in other St 8 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1995 Rights and the High Court L BReNNAN HtcH CouRt has the shmtest illbuilt versus big bureaucratic government. Increasingly, one clock of any court since Federation. Sir Gerard Brennan should back the little guy. will be chief justice for three years and one month. The Judges handing down judgments are sometimes some personality which that court will have will, of course, be what less than satisfactory in pretending that they have rather more a function of the inclinations of the new jun come to their conclusions by strictly legalistic reasoning. ior judge, Bill Gummow, than of Brennan, long a leading This infuriates politicians. A more fundamental problem figure on the Gibbs and Mason Courts. All the signs are, is that the court has not itself sorted out its reasoning however, that the term of this court will be memorable. processes and sometimes looks very results-oriented. It Judges tend to get categorised as to whether they are dips selectively into international law to find standards. essentially Labor in orientation or Tories. These are in It reasons, inconsistently, from analogy, either from over creasingly irrelevant issues. The big issues-so far as the seas laws or from the way other parts of the law work. division of powers between the Commonwealth and the The frequent appeals by some of the judges, including Sir states are concerned-have been largely resolved. Far more Gerard himself, to words about 'community standards' significant are issues which do not divide the court into and 'community expectations' invite questions about how 'left' and 'right'. These include issues about the limits of they are tested. This is the more so when a judge such as power of government over the individual and questions Sir Gerard will talk of its being necessary 'to guard against of the extent to which members of the court are prepared the tyranny which majority opinion may impose on a to substitute their own views about the most appropriate weak and voiceless minority.' policy for others-an issue of adventurousness. As the sharpest analyst of the court's shifting values The most interesting movement of the High Court and thinking processes, Professor Paul Finn of the Aus in recent times is the development of a new law about tralian National University [some of whose examples I the rights and responsibilities of the individual in both have borrowed here] points out some of the fictions being private and public law. This is likely to continue under used are getting somewhat strained, sometimes to lead Brennan. Borrowing from equity and notions of fiduciary to judicial innovation, sometimes to justify restraint. duty, fair dealing, honest conduct and extending old neg Gerard Brennan is at the forefront of this revolution, ligence concepts, the court has been developing new rules if he is sometimes a little more restrained than some of about what citizens have a duty to do for and a right to his more exuberant colleagues, such as Bill expect from each other. The law is noticeably more Deane or Mary Gaudron. results-oriented. This development is usually ignored by the politi W ERE WILL BILL GuMMOW FIT IN? He is not quite the cians and, too often, the press. The courts can argue, with mouse that some of the coverage has suggested. He is an some justice, that first, they have tended to fills gaps equity man first and foremost with no great doubts about neglected or ignored by the legislatures and second, that bringing its concepts in the common law. Like not a few if parliaments disapproved of what they were doing, it is judges argued to be high Tories (such as, say, Sir Daryl always open to them to overrule by new laws. This rarely Dawson and Sir Keith Aickin) one can expect that his happens. In a somewhat different way, the court is also micrometer will be out when there are questions of how developing a new jurisprudence on the relationship far government can go. One can expect him, however, to between the citizen and the state, one which is steeped be a little more timid on questions of how far the court in new notions of sovereignty flowing from below rather should go to fill a gap-least of all when it involves direct than from above. It will confidently stop government second-guessing of govenunent. He may in fact bring some when it believes clear limits have been transgressed. of the experiments back a trifle-which is what a Judicial review laws have created a new administra government without a law reform agenda and frankly sick tive regime in which individuals have rights and reason of judicial adventurism earnestly hopes. able expectations, not least to fair and due process. Privacy Don't expect him to be too predictable. His last case rights are increasingly established. A host of anti-discrim as an advocate was in explaining to the High Court why I inationlaws are added to this. In another set of laws, from should not get special leave to appeal in a legal profes Trade Practices Acts to Family Law Acts, the most legis sional privilege case. He had a measured argument, but lative guidance the judges are getting are almost mean he lost. A month or two later I was surprised but pleased ingless phrases such as 'the best interests of the child' or that in one of his first judgments he ruled very strongly 'unconscionable conduct'. In the words of Bill Gummow in favour of propositions-good little guy versus the in one such case, such phrases 'invent new heads of pub government ones-he had argued earlier were heresies. lic policy'. Unfortunately, several weeks after that, three High Court The deepest radicalism of some of the members of judges, including Sir Gerard Brennan (Bill Deane and Daryl the court is not shown so much in the streetlight cases Dawson dissenting) ruled that they were heresies. • such as Mabo and the free speech decisions but in far more routine cases and often unreported cases of the little guy Jack Waterford is the editor of The Canberra Times. VOLUME 5 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 9 THE N ATION DAVID GLANZ & ] ON GREENAWAY Baclz to the ran zs 0 N' DC JOHN H m'''NN,'S CAST ACTS bofo 10 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 Australia's traditional manufacturing industries have shrunk or disappeared in the past 10 years, and union membership has eroded along with them. Now the unions are chasing members among casual workers in service industries, and are training a new kind of workplace organiser to do it. How do things stand? The 'headline' statistics quoted above are certainly grim. Of the seven per cent decline, five per cent occurred in just the last two years . . There has been a fall on virtually every front-among fulltime and part-time workers, among men and women, in both the private and public sectors. Perhaps the category of greatest concern for unionists is the young. Even if the fall in membership among those aged 15 to 19 is discounted because of fewer apprenticeship opportunities, the figures for those aged 20 to 24 are of little comfort. In 1988, more than 36 per cent were union membersi today it is fewer than 27 per cent. But the retreat is not yet anything approaching a rout. Organisation is still generally intact, with more than two-and-a-quarter-million unionists, represented L ,YOUNG WOMAN PAUSW HALCWAY thmugh Hlling at workplace level by 50,000 delegates and shop in the union membership form. 'I hate unions. When I stewards. There is no general shift away from unionism was at school it seemed there were rail strikes every as such. The biggest single factor behind falling numbers week. Life was always disrupted. But the conditions here is the decline of those sectors of the economy with the are so bad you hope the union can do something about highest level of organisation, such as manufacturing, it.' Then she continued writing out her details, utilities and public administration. Those who remain becoming the first, and so far only, member of the after every round of redundancies are just as likely to Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) at this be unionised as before. More than half of all electricity, particular Timezone games arcade in the eastern gas, water, communications, education, transport, and suburbs of Melbourne. government administration workers continue to be As an indicator of the future for Australian trade union members. unionism, she might for many people appear an unlikely The Achilles heel is the burgeoning service sector. choice. A 21-year-old university engineering student, The union movement has failed, to date, to implant working casual shifts at a 'family entertainment centre' itself firmly among the growing ranks of entertainment, and paying her first union dues by Visa-it seems a long hospitality and shop workers. This is not, as some might way from the stereotype of the average unionist. think, a new, let alone insurmountable, problem. But for Bill Kelty at the ACTU, and the other Changing economies continually throw up new cate heavies in the union movement leadership, she gories of worker, while making others marginal. As represents both a challenge and a ray of hope as they Diane Fieldes, who lectures in industrial relations at survey the statistics that indicate what is probably the the University of NSW, notes: 'In Marx's time the larg sharpest decline in union membership since the 1930s est single group of employees in Britain was domestic from 42 per cent of the workforce in August 1988 to 35 servants. When the first Australian census was taken per cent in August 1994. For if it is the case that reports in 1911, labourers and miners made up a quarter of the of the death rattle of the movement are much workforce. Yet by the 1991 census only one worker in exaggerated, it is also true that if unions fail to transplant eight was engaged in these occupations, while the traditions of organisation and solidarity into those proportion of clerical workers had more than quadru sectors of the economy that are expanding, their pled.' The challenge, then, is to organise new sectors of influence will be weakened. the workforce to compensate for the decline of the old. VOLUME 5 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 11 That is the task the ACTU has set itself, aiming those representing poorly organised, atomised and to create an extra 20,000 job delegates and to recruit 'non-traditional' sectors such as Timezone workers, 200,000 extra members by July 1997. The frontline in delivering real increases in wages and conditions. troops in this exercise are the 100 or so young people Alice doesn't tell the Timezone worker about employed as recruiting officers under the banner of services. Later she confides: 'I think they're an added the ACTU's scheme, Organising Works. Which brings bonus. People join because of wages and conditions.' us back to Timezone and the entertainment industry. Neither does she talk about enterprise bargaining. Spending an afternoon out on the road with Instead she puts the emphasis on getting enough MEAA official Alice Blake, who recently graduated people to join so the union can gauge members' needs from Organising Works 'trainee' to full-fledged and submit a claim. 'My job is to get people to talk to industrial organiser, shows that it's one thing to set us. They're interested and want better conditions, but recruitment targets, it's another to carry them out. they're too scared to pursue it. I'm trying to get them This is the tough end of the business. Trying to get a to stand up for themselves.' foothold in places that specialise in casual labour, that The duty manager is obviously tempted, but employ tiny handfuls of generally younger staff, and doesn't join this time. The one recruit for the day that have no union traditions-this is where there's comes from the final visit at another store a few no alternative to old-fashioned hard slog and firm suburbs further on. A single recruit doesn't sound like argument. much-199,999 to go-but it represents a better than First stop is a Mount Waverley cinema. The duty average result, and another brick in the union wall. manager smiles, but he's blunt. 'We're a family . Whether she stays at Timezone long enough to allow business. We don't employ union members.' Gently the union to build to a critical mass remains to be reminded that such a policy is illegal, he puts it more seen. politely, that it just turns out that no one working The ACTU wants to see a further 300 Organis there is a unionist. Alice leaves a few union leaflets, ing Works recruiters out in the field within the next but they're clearly destined for the bin. At least, she two years. They will undoubtably find success. Not says, he was aware of the relevant award. Some everyone works in video arcades, and there are entire employers don't know that much. workforces ripe for the plucking. But if the union Into a Timezone. The duty manager, a full-time movement is to avoid putting one member on the worker, is clearly pleased to be approached. Yes, she front, while losing two or more off the back, it will does know that there's a new award. Management had have to do more than woo the young and bribe the sent out a glossy circular that was careful to say that would-be jet passenger. It will also need to go beyond staff could join the union, while listing the reasons relying on the ingrained loyalty of the disgruntled, why they had no need to. Then a straightforward but established and longterm, sectors of its question-what's in it for the workers there? What membership. It will need to prove to the wary that it can the union deliver for them? is prepared to lead a fight for the things that concern The answer coming from the union leadership them. relies heavily on offering services. Bill Kelty has put Take the example of Victoria. In the early days great store on discount schemes and cut-price home of the Trades Hall-led campaign against the new loans. The ACTU is talking about sinking up to $8 government of Jeff Kennett, 150 people a day joined million into a cheap airfare scheme for union mem the state public sector union (SPSF). A rising move bers. Whether or not that particular flight of fancy ment, tens of thousands on the streets, a sense that ever gets off the ground remains to be seen, but even cutbacks could be halted, gave a sense of purpose to a whole flying circus of union planes is many who had previously been agnostic about union unlikely to dent that 200,000 target. membership. Today the SPSF is suffering the effects of a substantial drop in membership. Job losses and Q U ITE SIMPLY, THE BULK OF PEOPLE do not join unions the State government's refusal to collect union dues; for services. A recent study from the University of are partly to blame; a sense that the union is too weak Adelaide, 'Raising our Voices', reveals that more than to be a buffer accounts for the rest. half of all new members joined for 'the protection of Union leaders need to get back to the most basic rights', with a further quarter joining to improve wages of basics, like wage rises that come without the sting and conditions. Only 20 per cent cited union services of losing hard-won conditions, and defence of jobs. as the factor that recruited them-with the figure As a tram driver in Brunswick, Melbourne, put it: 'You dropping to 13 per cent among the young. Asked what sometimes think, what's the point? It looks like we're should be the unions' top priorities, 69 per cent nom losing things. If people could see that the union was im1ted working conditions, 63 per cent said health and actually achieving things, they could see a point.' • safety, and services took the wooden spoon. Why does the union leadership continue to push the services barrow despite such figures? The answer David Glanz is a freelance journalist and a regular lies in the difficulty facing many unions, not least contributor to Eureka Street. 12 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1995 From plO are separate groups; in her industry, the two are inex 'Also, there's been a change in the composition tricably lin ked. 'If there are casuals, you can bet their of the workforce from fu ll-time to part-time and casual bottom dollar that most of them are going to be jobs, where unions traditionally haven't had a hold. women . A lot of the time I'll go into a factory and I'll And th e new area t hat has grown is the service say "Is everyone in the union?" and the industry, and again the unions haven't traditionally tradesmen will say " Oh yeah, this is a been in there. Our membership has declined in union shop", but then I'll ask the women The environment percentage t erms because all these areas have and they'll say, "Oh no, I'm just a casu grown and we just haven't kept up with the al". There's a real lack of esteem and a m ovem ent can ~ change.' failure to recognise that they have a right get people to be organised.' .1. HE INITIAL SUCCESS OF ORGAN ISING WORKS lends SOme Perkins and Walton argue that ulti excited about the weight to Walton's claim that the program can turn mately there can be only one solution to union membership around. Of the intake of 58 membership decline. Cheap airline tickets Antarctic, trainees in March last year, only three dropped out and Visa cards aside, unions must be more and the 54 who have been placed with unions across involved in the workplace. And both thousands of the country have since recruited over 10,000 m em suggest that the industrial consensus the bers. Walton hopes that over 100 people will graduate Labor government has fostered since miles away, and from the program this year, to gain work as 1983.has led to this reduced presence. recruitment officers with the 20 'super' union that 'The accord was good in many ways,' says make them feel are sponsoring the scheme. And its chances won't be Walton. 'In terms of the social wage, child hurt by the ACTU declaration that Organising Works care and Medicare, in rebuilding social that it in1pacts is a priority area for support in 1995. infrastructure for this country, it was a The interest the union movement has in the fantastic success. on their life, yet Organising Works strategy was apparent at the launch 'But even its strongest supporters of the Evatt Foundation's study Unions 2001, A Blue now recognise that the accord had an we can't get print for Trade Union Activism, in Sydney at the end effect that they hadn't predicted-a lack of February. The ga thered faithful were addressed by of things happening at the shop-floor level. people excited Tom McDonald, one of the book's authors and a And that's what educates workers, that's former member of the ACTU executive, Bill Kelty, what gives them an understanding of the about things that and Amanda Perkins, a recruitment officer with the importance of acting as a collective rath Printing and Kindred Industries Union, and a 29-year er than as individuals.' happen at worl< old graduate of Organising Works. Afterward, Perkins H e points out that union officials every single day. fielded as many questions as her more illustrious com sometimes fail to realise how much edu panions, from people wanting to know how unions cating needs to be done. Printing a nd Kindred could attract a new generation of workers. 'You get the impression that the Industries Union 'Unions can learn a lot from the environmental world isn't too bad out there, that work recruitment co-ordinator movement', argued Perkins, 'because the environmen places and bosses are all right. And you Amanda Perkins. tal movement has been able to capture the imagina get that impression because you deal in tion of young people and we haven't. They give people unionised work sites all the time, and of course in things to do, like dem os, rock concerts and chaining unionised work sites the boss doesn't try things on as themselves to trees. The environment movem ent can much-there are grievance m echanisms and workers get people excited about the Antarctic, thousands of know their rights. But what's horrifying is when you miles away, and make them feel that it impacts on get into the non-union areas. Sure there's a few their life, yet we can't get people excited about things sophisticated shows, but there's a hell of a lot of that happen at work every single day. ' bloody shocking situations.' Perkins agrees with Chris Walton's assessment The present challenge for unions is not only to of why m embership has declined, but talks about a confront but to embrace change. The industrial land tyranny of ignorance that has frustrated her efforts to scape has had new industries, work practices and recruit workers in the newer industries. 'It's still social groups added to the map, but while the union obviously easier to have success in a workplace where movement has come reluctantly to accept this change, people see themselves as working-class,' she says. 'I'm up until now it has not explored ways to participate still trying to find ways to appeal to Sydney's North in it. This, Chris Walton argues, is what Organising Shore advertising agencies and design houses. When Works is about. I go and talk to people there, they know or care so 'Unions have to get out of the comfort zones and little abou t unions that they don't even know they're get into the virgin territories where workers need not supposed to like me.' unions. T hey need to organise.' • Perkins also cautions union officials against talk ing about recruiting 'women' and 'casuals' as if these Jon Greenaway is a Emel V OLUME 5 N UM ilER 4 • EUREKA STREET 13 Forecasting sea-changes INm THe 'ouncAC BROUHAHA of the glob• I w"ming conle< This can have a vast impact. In 1971, according to Dr ence in Berlin last month, reports of a concurrent scientific Pablo Lagos, the scientific director of the Geophysical meeting of just as much significance for world climate were Institute in Lima, the anchovy catch was about 12 million almost lost. But what can you expect? After all, this was a tonnes; in 1972, a strong El Ni1'lo year, there was no catch. meeting of scientists, the news was almost uniformly good, it But now, by watching temperature changes and the behav was held in Melbourne and Australia performed well. How iour of the trade winds in the central equatorial Pacific, boring can you get? Yet the meeting was of enough interest to Lagos and his international colleagues can predict El Ni1'lo attract more than 400 researchers from 27 countries. They came events with certainty about three months in advance. And to discuss 10 years of work under the World Meteorological that is enough time for the fishing industry to switch strat Organisation's Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere (TOGA) egy-to send the small anchovy boats south and prepare a program which wound up at the end of last year. In short, they fleet of larger, faster boats to fish for the tropical species came to talk about El Nino-when the air pressures at sea level that El Ni1'lo brings. across the Pacific change pattern and Eastern Australia In Australia too, things are moving. Five years of experiences drought. drought in Queensland have resulted in a flurry of research In the 10 years of the TOGA program, a great deal has by that state's Department of Primary Industries to produce been achieved at all levels, from the purely theoretical and computer packages to help farmers make decisions about conceptual right through to providing concrete predictions now how they should stock and manage their properties. The used by Queensland cattle farmers and the Peruvian fishing first product is Australian Rainman, a computer database industry. 'This is the most successful research program there of rainfall records for nearly 4000 locations in Australia has ever been in the earth sciences,' says Dr Mark Cane, of the together with the software to analyse it. Austwlian Rain Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. He means man was much admired at the conference as a useful tool it, because in the same breath he admits that what he has just for coping with climate variability. said is not the ort of statement one expects from a scientist. In fact, there was a general feeling that Australia was According to Dr Cane, one of the program's great achieve the appropriate place for this conference. During the 10 ments was to get meteorologists and oceanographers working years of the program, the impact of El Ni1'lo through together for the first time. In the past, meteorologists were droughts and bushfires has become apparent to all Aus mainly concerned with day-to-day weather, he said. They tralians-so much so that Dr Cane says this is the only considered that the atmosphere moved far too quickly to be country where he can comfortably discuss his work with a affected by the warming and cooling of the ocean. But TOGA taxi driver. • has helped shift the focus of meteorologists from questions of Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. weather to longer-term questions of climate. For instance, Cane says, the real impact of global warming may not be in increased temperatures, but in increasing the chances of El Nino events. At a practical level, the program has established for the first time that we can predict aspects of climate. 'It is now widely accepted that an El Nino event can be forecast with useful skill at lead times out to a year.' And that information Post script: can be used to help farmers and fishermen. The prime example comes from Peru, the country that gave us the name for El Ni1'lo (because in Peru El Ni1'lo's effects become most apparent at Christmas, the time of the Christ t Tm M:::~~~H :~OD~<~d~b~~~nd Sen"O< child, El Nil1o) . In normal years, the waters off the coast of Faulkner's failed attempt to influence the outcomes of the Peru are cold and productive. A cold upwelling current brings Berlin Framework Conference on CUmate Change, many nutrients from the ocean floor to the surface. These nutrients Labor voters are worried. The results in both the Canberra support large numbers of plankton that in turn feed anchovies by-election and the NSW State election were, as has so and sardines. Based on abundant supply of anchovies, Peru's often been the case, strongly influenced by environmental fishing industry has become one of the country's most profita campaigning. When Labor's policy makers forget this, they ble, and a significant earner of export dollars. But during an El forget that their successes were aided, often crucially, by Nii'lo event, warm waters sweep down from the tropics to the the perception that Labor would be the more responsible north. The anchovies, which arc very sensitive to tempera party on environmental issues. nne, leave their usual haunts in the top 50 metres of ocean, If this perception changes, then so could the dive down to colder waters below 150 metres, and gradually electorate's willingness to risk a change of government. • work their way south. In the upper waters their place is taken by larger, faster tropical fishes, like tuna. Ju liette Hughes is a Eurel 14 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1995 I NTERVIEW R AY CASSIN Right about face K '" BA>m, wH o AT TH' T'M' a l ong list of was secretary of the Victorian academic credits Premier's department, informed us notwithstanding that we were about to hear one of the is the think tank world's greates t philosophers. rather than the Perhaps Baxter was distracted by university. freedom, the promotion of stable Convert to capitalism: thoughts of the offer- since At the American Enterprise fami ly arrangements and values, free Michael Novak accepted- to help Bob Carr do to Institute in Washington, D C, he competitive markets and limited in Melbourne. NSW what he had hitherto been holds a chair in religion and public government as the true guides for helping Jeff Kennett do to Victoria, policy, and from this lofty pulpit he our future.' And Rupert Murdoch, Photo: Tim Stoney for in the next breath he described preaches the gospel of dem ocratic who lectured under the CIS regis last the eminent speaker as a Jesuit. capitalism. In the '60s, from a varie yea r, praised his hosts this way: the As Michael Novak, winner of the ty of other pulpits, he used to preach CIS, he said, was 'one of the remark 1994 Templeton Prize for Progress the gospel of democratic socialism, able universe of similar think tanks in Religion, ascended to the rostrum, but he has had a conversion. Michael around the world ... [each] following he did not blush at either the exag N ovak is a man who has changed his its own independent course ... all are gerated philosophical acclaim or the mind. inspired with the principles of clas taint of Jesuitry, though the latter That change of mind was the sical liberalism that are fundamen tag probably cau sed him som e reason a nother think t a nk, the tal to our civilisation.' discomfort. Not only is he not a Centre for Indepe ndent Studies, The joker in this pack is 'liberal Jesuit (nor, pace a report in The brought him to Australia. Like other ism'. The word 'liberal' may not yet Australian, a priest at all) but he has institutio ns that feel a n eed to be, like 'socialist', a bearer of almost grown accustomed to regarding include the word 'independent' in as many meanings as there are people Jesuits as antagonists. their title, the centre proclaims it who u se the term to describe them N ovak is a philosopher, though self to be free of party affiliation. No selves. But, even with Murdoch's not in the sense that Alasdair Mac doubt it is, but that is not the sam e qualifying adjective 'classical', lib intyre or John Rawls are philoso thing as being free of politics. eralism remains an elastic concept. phers. He is what is quaintly termed In the CIS Annual Review for In the modern world, notions of a public intellectual: som eone who 1994, the organisation's executive individual freedom have taken root is as much concerned with the advo director, Greg Lindsay, gave his most strongly in societies character cacy of causes as with scholarly cohorts this axe to grind: 'The CIS ised by a plurality of values, but inquiry, and whose natural milieu- must continue to endorse individual pluralism does not always sit easily V OLUME 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 15 with the liberalism found on the no alternat ive to some form of What about a country like the neo-conservative agenda: the kind market economy. Further, although Philippines, which has enormous that wa n ts both 'stable family m arkets and democracy arc not nec disparities of wea lth-a much great arrangements and values' and 'free essarily found in combination, the er gap between rich and poor than competitive markets and kind of market economy known as that which is familiar to Australians limited government'. capitalism works best in societies or Americans. Arc poor Filipinos where the rule of law is guaranteed blessed in being able to so affli ct the M JCHAEL NOVAK BELIEVES that by a democratic polity. (Capitalism's consciences of their richer neigh the component bits of this sort of driving engine, the corporation, bours? Capitalism has not fail ed the liberalism do cohere, and his reas depends on general acceptance of Philippines, Novak replies, for it has surance on this point was what the validity of contracts, 16 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 he reckons Weber got the significant then that's a road that leads directly must argu e, with all the evidence dates wrong). Like the Pope, howev to totalitarianism ... it means that that you can bring to bear, to persuade er, he believes that the moral fibre of intellect has no purchase on reality, people that the case you make is the the West needs a stiffening of re and that m eans that then there is true case ... this m eans that the solve through renewed contact with only the totalitarian will. And this is Catholic Church and all those who Catholic tradition. Novak argues exactly the argument that Musso- agree with us-and in America we that tolerance for a diversity of moral lini and Hitler made at the beginning have a majority on our side-that and religious beliefs does not Ph oto: Tim Stoney there is som ething morally entail relativism- the thesis that wrong with abortion must make ultimately one cannot advance arguments for that and try to reasons for deciding between one persuade those who now don't set of beliefs and another. He agree with us that they're wrong, adds that any society where this and we're making good progress thesis is generally accepted is at that.' headed for breakdown. Here is what Michael Novak His claim about tolerance and calls good progress: 'Abortion is relativism is certainly true as a more free in the United States matter of logic (since tolerance than anywhere on Earth- we itself becom es a non-relative have the least restrictive laws, value) and his claim about·social although the laws we have were order may be true as a matter of not commanded by legislatures, fact. Several questions asked by it was a tyrannical decision.' the CIS audience in Melbourne [Novak is referring to the US registered similar fears about the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v social fabric, though I doubt Wade, 1973, that privacy rights whether those questioners who guaranteed by the US constitu did not share Novak's own moral tion preclude a ban on abortion.] and religious beliefs have since 'We have the strongest Right become converts. And there's the to-Life movem ent in the whole rub. Novak's vision of democrat world, and we're persuading ic capitalism leaves entangled a knot A great deal of space was people, even people who want to of problems that confront any kind have the law open to abortion, not to of liberalism, including both the neo spent on the idea of the have them [i. e abortions]. The femi con servative variety that h e nists are fond of saying that although champion s and the l eft-l eaning gap in income, and that, the law allows abortion everywhere, variety that he despises. I think, is a misplaced in only 16 per cent of American coun There is a pseudo-problem, the ties can you actually get an abortion. one about the relation between moral problem ... The There are vast stretch es of America tolerance and relativism; there is a where, although it's legal, people philosophical problem, about the problem is not the gap, won't perform them.' status of relativism itself; and there The various ways in which people is a political problem, arising from but that people who have who want abortions in America have the fact that, although human resources should bring been 'persuaded' not to have them, societies require a minimal moral from harassing pregnant women to consensus, a liberal society cannot them to the use of the shooting their doctors, have been coerce this consensus. Answering well publicised. I do not suggest that the philosophical problem, if it can poor. But then it's a Michael N ovak would defend the be answered, does not resolve the blessing that there's a gap actions of extremist Right to Lifers. political problem. But the question is this: how many Consider, for example, Novak's because it's a blessing of those who endorse his vision of a response when I asked him about free society would share his views that intractable moral and political that some people have on this issue? And if he and they issu e, abortion. The Cath olic the means to do this. cannot agree, how is it possible to Church's strong opposition to reconcile freedom of choice (not just -Novak on Common Weallh abortion is well-known, but in most on abortion) with the CIS 's 'promo for Common Good. West ern societies the Cath olic tion of stable family arrangements stance is now a minority view. How of the 20th century, that there is no and values'? does h e balance advocacy of that moral truth, there is only opinion. I think, Michael, that we are still view with living in a pluralist 'I wouldn't want to see people at square one. • democracy? take that road again. When you say 'If you understand that pluralist that liberty must be based on truth, Ray Cassin is a Eurel V oLUME 5 N uMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 17 THE NATlON GER ARD PALK Shutting the gate State law and order campaigns fail to ocknowledge that horsher sentencing does not reduce crime. Austmlian prisons me more lil 18 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 home, a family and a future to look forward to. Rather than reinforcing social and personal bonds, which pro vide belonging and identity, prison contributes to the process of social disintegration, one of the underlying causes of crime. The simple evidence is that 61 per cent of people in prison in Queens land have been there before, so at least for those people, prison has failed to provide rehabilitation. The fact that some individuals manage to negoti ate the prison system, and come out less dysfunctional, a little wiser, and more 'whole' than when they went in, is probably more a testament to the essential goodness of those people, rather than the effectiveness of prison as a rehabilitating influence. If prison does not rehabilitate people it is hoped that it will at least deter people from breaking the law. Deterrence is based on the observa tion that most people respond to in centives and disincentives most of the time. On a specific or personal level, it is hoped that the imposition of a punishment will deter the offender from breaking the law again. On a general or social level, it is hoped that the threat of punishment will deter the rest of the community from of fending. But experience in Australia and overseas indicates that the threat of longer prison sentences does not is maintained predominantly through the use or threat effectively deter individuals from offending or re-of of force. Although the community hopes that prison fending. In 1989 New South Wales introduced 'truth ers will make positive choices about their lives, they in sentencing' with the passing of the Sentencing Act are placed in an extremely hostile environment and of 1989. This act effectively increased the most of their freedom to make choices is removed length of sentences. Photograph left: from them. Young people in search of identity and 'Veiling Silence', by role models are introduced into a criminal culture: C 0 SEQUE TL Y PRISON NUMBERS increased from 4124 Hilarie Mais, in wood feelings of distrust, suspicion and contempt towards in 1988 to 6441 in November 1993. Although public and oil paint, was the authority are fostered. And prison life is not condu perception suggested an increase in crime, the Bureau recent winner of the cive to developing habits of industry. Prisoners with of Crime Statistics and Research figures indicate no Blahe Prize. drug or alcohol-related problems are placed in an en significant rise in the crime rate. To cater for the in Th e Touring Blal< e vironment where drugs are readily available. Through crease in prison numbers the Government had to build Exhibition can be seen threats of violence and intimidation,'clean' prisoners five new prisons at a cost of hundreds of millions of at the Waverley City are coerced into illegal behaviour to facilitate the dollars. Gallery, Melbourne, movement of drugs and contraband within the pris In the United States, 'get-tough' policies used to untill4 Ma y. on. Vulnerable inmates face the risk of sexual assault 'fight crime' over the past 25 years have led to an It will be at StPeter's and rape. increase in prison numbers from 200,000 in the early Cathedral, North Further, the separation and isolation that prison 1970's to 500,000 in 1987 and one million in January Adelaide from involves often leads to the disintegration of family 1995. It is envisaged that prison numbers will rise to 26 May to 6 July, relationships. On release, the social alienation that 2.26 million within the next decade. The United and Wollongong City prisoners experience makes it difficult for them to States has the highest incarceration rate of any free Gallery from 14fuly to find accommodation and employment, let alone a nation. This policy has, however, manifestly failed 27 August. V oLUME 5 N uMIIER 4 • EUREKA STREET 19 to reduce the crime rate and make the community response to controlling crime. safer. Given the other effects of imprisonment-social On a specific or personal level, there is some fragmentation, the fostering of criminal and anti evidence which indicates that the imposition of pun social behaviour, institutional dependency-then ishment, promptly and consistently, might lessen the longer prison sentencing is only likely to lead to an risk of re-offending. inaease in crime rates in the long term. Using as their experimental group a large cohort Further, incapacitation does not prevent crime of men in Denmark, two researchers in the correc from occurring: violent assaults, drug use, extortion, tional field" P.A. Brennan and S.A. Mednick, did a and property crimes are all part of the prison sub-cul major study on the specific deterrence effect of pun nue. Imprisonment does not stop crime. ishment, and arrived at a number of important con Rehabilitation, deterrence and incapacitation arc clusions. all strategies aimed at reducing the incidence of crime. The study showed that if offenders did not re Retribution, on the other hand, is the only sentenc ceive some form of sanction after arrest they were ing motivation that pursues punishment for its own more likely to rc-offcnd. sake. It was also found that people who were sent to It is based on the concept of 'just deserts': that prison for the first or second arrest would be more the pain inflicted on an offender through the process likely tore-offend, and, contrary to what they expect of punishment should balance the pain that the of ed, their study indicated that the severity of the sanc fender caused the victim and the community. tion was not significant in affecting the level of While the use of imprisonment for rehabilitation, rc-offending. This finding directly challenges the move deterrence or incapacitation is motivated by the log to increase prison sentences. Their study concluded ical and rational desire to reduce crime, retribution is that, instead of increasing the severity of penalties, very much an emotional response to crime. Crime the available penalties should be restruc causes anger, in the victim and in the community. tured to permit the greater usc of very mild Retribution is meant to assuage this, and both the ""C sanctions. media and politicians exploit the public anger which crime generates. However, allowing this anger to in r URTHER,THE STUDY HIGHLIGHTED the importance of fluence public policy and sentencing legislation has consistency in the application of sanctions. (One of serious drawbacks, one of the most important being the most common concerns heard by those working that public anger is not necessarily related to these with people in the justice system i the perceived lack riousness of the crime. of consistency.) This is clearly reflected in Queensland's new draft Learning theory recognises that while inappro Criminal Code. The 20-year maximum prison sen priate behaviour should be punished, positive behav tence for burglary of a dwelling house seems to reflect iour should be reinforced. However, the prison system more the public anger about the high incidence of too frequently fails to reinforce or reward positive house break-in , and the Government's frustration behaviour. and powerlessness to control that specific crime, Often people in prison who are genuinely at rather than the actual seriousness of this non-violent tempting to improve themselves experience little offence. And retribution, in reality, does not encouragement-arbitrary sanctions and rules pun rr alleviate the anger. ish prisoners across the board. The experience, the research, and the theory all indicate that longer pris .1. HE UNITED STATES EX PERlE cE indicates that retrib on sentences arc not effective in reducing the crime utive responses to crime only generate louder calls rate through deterrence. for even tougher penalties and longer prison sentenc So if prison fails to rehabilitate or deter people, es. Anger begets anger in the communi ty, and pun then it is hoped that it will at least prevent them from ishment motivated by retribution often fosters anger committing furtheT crimes. Prison, in other words, and resentment in the offender. Rather than dissipat should protect the community through the isolation ing the anger which often underlies crime, retribu and incapacitation of offenders. tion escalates it. In the short term, longer prison sentences can Governments have a responsibility to develop reduce the incidence of crime in the community, by policies which effectively tackle crime and justice keeping potential offenders behind bars-an obvious issues. But the introduction of longer sentences is a justification for those in the community who propose politically expedient approach, which in the long term tougher sentences. will only lea d to further social breakdown, and But the long -term effectiveness of this approach consequently an increase in the level of crime in the is doubtful: almost every person in prison will be re community. • leased, most within a few years. And unless the prison experience can reduce the likelihood of re-offending, Gerard Palk i a community education worker with then the use of longer sentences is only a short-term the Catholic Prison Ministry in Brisbane. 20 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1995 T RAVELS BILL H ANNAN The progressive• pilgrim Bill Hannan hit an ancient wad to find himself 'one step short of glory'. S T H cc V OLUME 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 21 the whole enterprise its legitimacy and they are gen and coffee m ade from the supplies provided in the erously catered for, as the tradition dictates, with ref refuge kitchen. Santo Domingo was one of several uges, medical services, prayers, drinking fountains, saints canonised for their contributions to engineer and, if you happen to die in the effort, monuments. ing, hospitality and podiatry along the camino. We The first third of the camino, through the regions were still benefiting from his holy works. We talked, of Navarre and La Rioja to Burgos, was nearly as we inevitably, about Basque resistance to invaders, and had imagined it. Sunny days. Lovely red and rose then about why young people like him and old peo wines. A wealth of monuments. Roman roads. Medi ple like us go on pilgrimage. eval bridges. A living tradition of hospitality encap At Santiago, said Daniel, when you step through sulated in a couplet spray-painted on the side of a Master Mateo's Portico de la Gloria you become a new house in Najera. Per egrina, en Najera na- person. The camino is a m etaphor for life, an odyssey jerino. Pilgrim, in Najera you are one of us. sufficient to itself, an ancient version of route 66 or the retirement trip around Australia. You have to keep 1T WAS AUTUMN, SA ID to be the best season for the walking the camino till you reach the end, no matter camino, the others being too hot, too crowded, too what it's like. It's a way of living life to the full. Tour cold or too wet. But the best is not good. Even as the ists in the bus can look out at the metaphor and have sun shone, a gale blew straight into our faces. Cyclists it interpreted for them; the pilgrim makes the meta hung on the air like seagulls and were phor real, is part of what is toured as often forced to the ground. We swore ~.- much as fac;:ades and altarpieces are. at the wind, blamed our packs for our !' Once upon a time, pilgrims used to go 1:_.1ri· troubles and stopped making detours on from Santiago to the end of early to what were certain to be rare and ~~~ ~ - ~¥~:- Europe's known earth, Finisterre, and beautiful works. throw their clothes and their goods We were badly prepared for walk- r,~ into the great sea where the fish ing 20km a day, day after day. We ,.. swarm. They brought back a scallop thought the whole journey would be shell as a sign of their new life. about SOOkm. The first road sign we Revelation along the road and saw to Santiago said it was more than transfiguration at the end, no less. It 800. At our pace, this was a difference could not have come at a better time of a couple of weeks. I was so fat Lorna for one who was ageing, pushed out said I shuffled rather than walked. The of his profession and tempted by idle huge pack on Lorna's slight figure ness and drink. We both needed voic made her look like a Walt Disney es to tell us more than to maximise tortoise tottering down the road. My our superannuation. feet were blistered and Lorna was The middle section of the limping on a bulbous ankle. Parts of '' camino, across the high plateau of the track, steep, rocky and muddy, Castille and the mountains of Leon were a Calvary. Other parts followed would be gruelling in any weather. the highway where motorists in sun The heavens opened all right but only glasses ran you down and semi-trailer to precipitate water. We had rain night slipstreams swept you off your feet. and day whipped along by headwinds, My notes written at Najera on and in the mountains sleet and snow. October 3, said the camino was 'the As we crossed the passes into Gali sort of thing you wouldn't do if you cia, we were walking in a blizzard, knew it would be like this.' It took a young Spaniard hunched in waterproofs that condensed body heat like to show us that in spite of everything you would do a distillery. I felt that my hydraulic system was evolv it. ing in the direction of the plants, taking in moisture We came across Daniel in the draughty refuge at through the feet and emitting it from the pores. Old Najera. He was lying on one of the bunks having a fit blisters ballooned palely inside my sodden boots. of the shakes. With the shakes, your legs twitch un By now, however, we were learning about endur controllably in a kind of reverse cramp. Lorna asked ance: the sight of a bus no longer tempted us. We were if she could get him a cup of tea, Daniel said he'd be developing, or recapturing, a different idea of the pace OK. He had started out too fast, devouring the 120 of things. We were learning again that you get some km from his home town Pamplona to Najera at a rate where if you keep at it. How had we forgotten thatl of abut 40km a day. Now he was buggered, so he would We were working out that parts of our bodies would follow our wise example, as he called it, and have a get tougher but other parts would go on in permanent few days' rest at 20km a day. pain. Stoicism became a virtue. We were learning to At the next stop, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, live with little: what you could carry, the absolute we had a long talk with Daniel over plates of macaroni essentials. We preferred the refuges to hotels. For the 22 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 moment we were poor in spirit; but we were begin buttons and scallop shells and carried staffs. A hand ning to accept hospitality as our due, thinking we were ful of pilgrims w andered round the edges of the adding to the spiritual capital of this world. congregation, too late for a seat. The hospitality of the camino is remarkable. The It was inescapably moving to enter the crowded people you pass always say at least 'G'day' and often church after walking so long towards it. The shadow stop to make sure you know where the road, the refuge of awe in the eyes of the congregation as you passed or the cheapest restaurant is. Priests are solicitous made you think you were a key part of w hat only of your comfo rt. It does not occur to children to they had com e to see and celebrate. jeer at you. Older people seem to be honoured by the passing of a 'poor' pilgrim. Some even bless them A PROCESS ION LED IN BY THE BISHOP, descendant of selves. The chain of refuges offering accommodation powerful churchmen for centuries. The pilgrims of bunks, showers, kitchen and a box fo r a few dollars' the day were welcomed, en bloc except for priests and donation if you can aff ord it-services the entire large groups. The preacher dwelt on the m etaphor of camino. the cam ino. The church is a pilgrim church . Life is a Besides being extraordinarily cheap compared journey to salvation . Blessed are the humble. Reward with what you would have to spend as a tourist, the ed are the seekers. Etc. By the time he had done, the camino confers som ething tourists can only crave: only journey that m attered was the one to the com respect. People treat you as someone who has a job to munion rail to receive not bread but flesh and blood. do. In their eyes you are not a tourist. You become, as The idea of the road that had kept us going was look they said in N ajera, an honorary local. Before long you ing as poor and redundant as our backpacks. The only begin to think you mustn't let these wonderful peo thing that upstaged the clergy was the botafumeiro, ple down. If for som e reason they can ' t do the a gigantic thurible swung from a rope from one side pilgrimage themselves, you'd better do it for them . of the transept to the other, brea thing fl am es and The final stretch, through Galicia, is norm ally clouds of incense. as green and damp as Ireland, but though the wind I said the priests were missing the point. Why was chilly as it was, as Picaud predicts, a paradise. not have a fe w pilgrim s on the altar, for example? The sun shone. The sky was clear (of signs too, unfo r Lorna thought the priests understood the point only tunately). The grass was bright green. The water mur too well. mured underfoo t. Subsidised cows smiled on us She was right. In the m anaged, m etaphorical through the hedges. The cam ino was off the road and world of pilgrim churches and journeys to salva tion, peaceful. At several points it went on stepping stones pilgrims exist in peoples' imagination as m edieval fig up the middle of the rivers. We had plenty of time ures of the sort Buii.uel m ocks in the Milky Way . In now. We detoured to look a m onuments and thought that world the true destination of the jo urney is not about how much we'd missed earlier on the road. The just Master Mateo's Portico de la Gloria. It is a desti hospitality intensified. Radio Santiago played in the nation beyond the horizon, out of the present grasp, bars; our destination was no longer legendary. indeed not available in this present life at all. Run We had been walking fo r thirty-six days when ning pilgrimages for tourists is no different from play we reached Santiago. There had been no revelations, ing to spectators in the theatre, cinema or stadium. though we badly needed one to show us how to keep Because the physical acts have not been performed, up all the things we had learnt about endurance. Such nor the spiritual experien ce lived through, the knowledge fades like New Year's resolutions. Nor was emotional level of the show has to be pumped up and there any transfiguration as I went through the Portico rewards plucked from the fantastic. de la Gloria in the Cathedral. My feet were still sore, Those who have made the physical journey are and I had lost less than a kilo of fat for every 100 kil n ot so easily en gaged by the m etaphorical on e. om etres walked. Lorna's ankle still twinges. Worst of Appearances have ceased to matter. Very few pilgrims all, we were robbed. N ot of our goods, but of the on the road carried staffs, or scallop shells, much less metaphor that had kept us going since we cloaks, sandals and broad-brimmed hats. N or did they m et Daniel. pray and sing piously along the roa d, not even when the sun shone. Such pilgrims will not accept an end w HEN YOU ARR IVE I SA NTIAGO you present your conjured out of words and images. They want more credentials to the diocese, declare your motives and road. They want to endure. Salvation is not marked receive a certificate in Latin. This 'Compostela' once on their m aps. Not even foot comfort is guaranteed. gave its bearer trading rights on the camino. Today it A purist's pilgrimage would stop one step short entitles you to a mention in the daily midday pilgrims' of the Portico de la Gloria leaving the m etaphor Mass and if supplem ented by confession and commun managers to perform in front of Master Mateo's up ion within a certain time, a plenary indulgence. turned Romanesque sm ile. • By the tim e we fronted for the pilgrim's mass the pews were full of parish groups being warmed up by an MC. They sang boldly. They wore souvenir scarves, Bill Hannan is a Melbourne writet. V O LUME 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 23 A yen for criclzet Japan 's first century IMAGINE A HOT SUMMER'S DAY in 2020. You sit down coaching techniques and ground preparation from maker, Minoru Mito, in in front of the TV-or the next generation's equiva staff at the Victorian Cricket Association (VCA). the Long Room of the lent- open a cold can of beer, and start to browse According to Mito, 'in Japan nobody knows MCG, gazing out on the through a selection of some 6000 channels, eventual cricket, nobody plays cricket, but cricket is a world hallowed turf. ly coming across a cricket match. wide sport. My friend was interested in cricket be 'Hello and good morning, this is Shane Warne in cause he saw it in the movie Chariots of Fire. He Photograph: Tim Stoney the commentary box. Welcome to today's play in the wanted to start playing cricket, so I joined too for my Third Test match between the traditional rivals of curiosity.' the Asia-Pacific Region, Japan and Australia. The So much did Mito love the ga me, he has thrown series is tied at one all and it's a beautiful day here at all his energy behind the development of cricket in the Tokyo Stadium with a good crowd building up ... ' Japan, and today heads the cricket staff atM. T. Works, Impossible? Perhaps-but not as far-fetched as a cricket prom otion company and publisher of you might think. The nation best known for incredi Straight Bat, Japan's first cricket magazine. bly small everything is rapidly embracing the gam e Mito believes the biggest short term problems many consider only marginally more exciting than facing the development of cricket in Japan, or any watching grass grow. country wanting to take it up, arc a lack of Cricket first ca me to Japan through the universi /B ba sic skills and expert coaching. ties, in the late '80s-the first Japanese cricket club was founded at Keio University in 1987-with team s ECAUSE WE HAVE NO COAC HES, players have tO made up largely of expatriates. Six years later there watch cricket videos and copy from them. Bowling are 20 Japanese teams-10 of them women's teams form and batting form are quite different from a sport and 20 team s of foreigners competing on a regular like baseball. In baseball you field and throw, but basis. bowling is very different. In baseball we use the bat At the forefront of developing cricket in Japan is horizontally, but cricket is straight through. It took Minoru Mito, credited as Japan's first century rnaker, m e over a year to even start to learn the technique. who recently visited Australia to learn the lates t in Almost all Japanese players start cricket when they 24 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 are eighteen years old. I think it's too late because uniquely suited to the Japanese psyche. children can learn these skills m ore easily. 'Most Japanese are smaller than people in west 'For example we mostly have m edium pace bowl ern countries and size doesn 't matter so much in ers, because spin bowling requires a lot of skill and cricket. The Japanese like tactical gam es, for exam many players are still developing the basic skills.' ple chess, or sumo wrestling-which is a 15-day tour In the long term, Mito believes cricket must nament. So five days for cricket is very short to us attract a younger audience to ensure its success. For but tactics are important.' this reason he spent considerable time while in Aus Ironically it's the people already playing cricket tralia, learning the basics of Kanga Cricket-a cricket in Japan who present the biggest obstacle to its de coaching programme designed in Australia for use in velopment and have resisted attempts to increase the primary schools-which aims to teach young children profile of the competition within Japan. basic cricket skills in an enj oyable way. 'People who are interested in cricket are people 'In Japan it will be difficult to introduce coach who prefer to do unusual things. This is a problem ing into schools becau se the school programme is for developing cricket in Japan. These kinds of people already fixed in their sports, so we will have to intro don't want to spread cricket, because they say 'only duce it as an after school activity to improve skills me, only I play cricket'.' and get more young people interested in playing.' M cAllion believes it will take som e time before Mark M cAllion, developm ent officer with the Japanese cricket will be competitive, but the signs VCA, who worked closely with Mito during his stay, are positive. believes Australia has a wealth of expertise to offer 'We've been playing cricket for 150 years and new cricket nations, like Japan, and junior develop they've been playing it for six, so it will take a while m ent projects such as Kanga Cricl< et are the key. but it n eeds people like Mito to start at the bottom. 'The Japanese migh t also use the programme for That's the key. If you can get big numbers of kids adults, to teach them the basic skills, as well as get under the age of 10 involved, before their skill levels ting the kids involved. The programme is based on have developed, then there's no reason why in a few learning skills by breaking them down to the basics. years' time they couldn't be m ixing with the best. ' • We teach bowling while standing still-and batting with kids hitting the ball off a cone. We're taking an Tim Stoney is a Eurel V OLUME 5 N UMIIER 4 • EUREKA STREET 25 THE CAROLINE CHISHOLM SERIES: 7 JA K W ATERFORD The man who signed the notes N UGC:ET CooMBS HAS BEEN THE GREATEST LrVJNG A usTRALJAN for so long that he has almost vanished into the scenery, his nagging and very modern messages almost taken for granted. If he had died before this writer-grandfather was born, his position in the history books would already have been secure. He is the last of a generation of public servants of enormous intellectual breadth who had seemed, even then, to have dabbled in everything. He had been a schoolteacher in rural Western Australia, horrifying school inspectors in the mid-1930s by teaching The Wa ste land to his students. He had studied at the London School of Economics, where he was caught up in the ferment and excitement created by the publication, in 1936, of Keynes' General Th eory of Employment, Interest and Money-'for m e the most seminal intellectual event of our time'. For Coombs, Keynes' achievement clearly lay not in the work's explanations of economic activity-indeed, he was later to sec their limitations, and expand upon them- but in its recogni tion that social, political and other 'non-economic' objectives could be inserted into the process es of allocating resources and setting priorities. Human communities, Coombs came to understand, could consciously shape the context in which the lives of their members were led. By early in the war, he was a young permanent head and Director of Rationing: the man who cut off the nation's shirt-tails to save cloth. But he was also developing theoric of how the hus banding of resources could, when the emergency was over, create a fairer Australia freed from the threat of the Depression and able to rebuild itself. In mid-war he came to head the Department of Post-War Reconstruction- that engine room of ideas designed to m ake an Australia after the war something to live for and to fig ht for. 26 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 That agency created ideas of planning and regionalism , injecting social and environmental agendas into government economic policy. It was responsible, among other things, for the Snowy Mountains Scheme and the development of the Australian National University, but it also organ ised re-training schemes after the war, various soldier settlem ent programs and the beginnings of a Commonwealth housing policy. The confident men who worked for Coombs were them selves to dominate public administration for three decades. He went on to head the Commonwealth Bank (which was then also the Reserve Bank) and played a role of international importance in the financial settlem ents after the war that laid the basis for international trade and the General Agreem ent on Tariffs and Trade. As a person very closely identified with Ben Chifley, he had been expected to be sacked on the election of Menzies in 1949. As Menzies wrote to him many years later, 'you, as a man suspected of unorthodox ideas, were under a cloud of suspicion by some of my colleagues. The cloud soon disappeared as it became increasingly clear to even the most prejudiced that we had as Governor of the bank a man of the most conspicuous ability and the most shining integrity.' Nugget has his own affections for Menzies, the third of seven Prime Ministers he was to work closely with-though his clear affection is for Chifley. M ENZIES, HE SA ID, LI STENED TO BUREAU CRATIC ADV ICE. 'He always knew what it was, anyway ... he asked the right questions. He was a very good bureaucrat. In fact I think he was a very good minister, by and large ... except when his ambitions and prejudice got in the way. Though he did not have any ambitions to do anything, he just wanted to be Prime Minister and to have months in England watching the cricket and so on . When he became Prime Minister in 1949 and I was with the Commonwealth Bank and I was working to (Treasurer) Artie Fadden, Menzies called me in and he said "Nugget, you know, I am bored with this economic stuff, and I am perfectly happy to leave it to Artie, but I know there are times when I need to know. You tell me that this is one of them and I will listen to you". 'So I went to Artie and I said, "The Prime Minister has asked me to see him when the situa tion is such that I think he should be fully inform ed, and I think this is not an unreasonable thing. Is it all right with you?" ' "Oh," he said. "I think that will be marvellous. The bastard won't listen to me!" 'I liked Artie. He was one of the few politicians I have ever known who really went out on the hustings in support of omething he knew his supporters would not approve of. It was in that period when we had that sudden rise in wool prices, and prices went up like crazy and we said "For Christ's sake, get people to put it in the bank, will you. We will have a balancing scheme so that we get less now but get the rest later." 'Everyone was against such a scheme. They all wanted it now. But we talked to Artie about it and he finally said "Look, it's the only thing we can do which makes any kind of sense." So he said "I'll go out from country town to country town preaching the need for this balancing sys tem- we'll take it from you now but you'll ge t it when you need it" and they said "Oh yair". But he was a good man, he really was, basically a good man. He had a basic sort of common sense.' At the Reserve Bank Coombs helped create an elite with intellectual vigour, as sensitive to social and intellectual change, to policy and political constraints as it was dedicated to under standing and to explaining the workings of the economy. His breadth of outlook, as opposed to the narrowness of the present day, was shown in his pushing on Menzies a Commonwealth role in universities-the achievement for which Menzies m ost wanted to be remembered-and a de facto housing policy from his promotion of the banking system . He saw early the need for train ing bankers in Papua New Guinea, and was one of the first to help develop trading contacts with China. At 'retirement' 30 years ago, these achievem ents were behind him, but in the next few years he was to play a major role in Commonwealth funding for the arts, and the further expan ion of the universities. And from 1967 he became involved in Aboriginal affairs, first as a member of a three-man council to advise Holt on taking up the mandate given by the referendum, then to fight a holy war against the assimilationist policie and practices then in vogue, seeking instead a policy of integration. H EwA s TO BE A ADVI SE R TO WHITLAM and later to chair a Royal Commission into Australian Government Administration-still the most important document on the burea ucracy, and the document to which government will one day return when it wants to reintegrate some of its financial and managerial reforms with some old-fashioned notions of public trust and public VoLUME 5 N uMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 27 service. If Aboriginal affairs is the subject to which he constantly returns, Coombs at 89 is still very interested in the big picture, in despair at the narrowness of the modern economist and the lack of idealism in public life, bitter at the damage done to the university system by John Dawkins, and bem oaning the treason of a new, uncaring intelligentsia. The battles of ideas, he says, are being won by an uncaring corporate society withou t a sense of community obliga tion . 'By intelligentsia,' he told a recent seminar on ethics, 'I mean not those people who have inherited power because of nobility, but those who by good fortune have had access to time to think or to read or to argue; those who have had the benefit of what we used to call small-l liberal education; those who have inherited the sam e kinds of obligations as the lords of the manor inherited-the sense that we, too, have an obligation personally to care for others. 'One of the distressing things to me about what has happened towards the end of my life is ... the fact that decisions are made without the kind of study which it is the function of the intelligentsia to provide, that deci sions are made without allowing that kind of debate in an in de- / pendent context. ITDJSTRESSES ME T O SEE how far the corporate society, in addition to tak ing over the economic culture of the management of resources, seems to have taken over the intelligentsia. '. .. Regrettably, the intelligentsia is becoming increasingly the instru ment of the corporate society.' A decade after he first became in volved in Aboriginal affairs, Coombs became increasingly involved not only in policy, but on-the-ground activity, particularly in northern and western Australia. These days, finding the Canberra winter too grim , he spends half his year there, writing, listening, looking, advising, learning and spreading ideas. His focus is on helping communities, such as the Pitjantjatj ara people in South Australia, communities at the Top End and in the Kimberley, maintain their traditions while developing economic self-suffi ciency. He has played a major role in the outstation m ovement, in helping Aboriginal communities acq uire cattle stations, and in developing models of education. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is his bastard child- real in that it adopted a broad structure he sketched of giving Aborigines more control over policies and practices, bas tard in that its genesis neither followed the processes he thought imperative (of extensive community consultation and discus Two elder slal esm en: sion) and that its structures became more complicated and less responsive to Aboriginal opinion on the left, than he had recommended. He told a former minister, Gerry Hand, that his consultation had Bill Wentworth, been ' ... a unilateral paternalistic process. Judgm ent and power of decision continue with the the first Minister for initiating party. Whatever changes are achieved by it, it carries no implication of agreement or A bmiginal A ffairs, in the commitment by Aborigines'. Menzies Government, In recent times, he has become extremely focused on regional solutions and on regional with H. C. Coombs. agreements, focused at pushing decision-making further down the line, and in developing and refining ideas that work. Photograph comtesy of What does he think of Paul Keating' The Canberra Times. 'Keating is a great puzzle to me because in some ways I believe he's the only bloody hope we've go t. 28 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 'He has courage and he has a vision, but I wish he would still this awful vulgar blackguard ing. Mind you, I can't blam e him with some of them, but it is so demeaning. I just do not know where the balance in him lies. 'Who else is there, really? It is just inconceivable to m e that anyone would want to put the Leader of the Opposition in there again. 'The really rem arkable thing was Keating's winning the last election. It went right against history. It may have been one of the things which has distorted his judgm ent. But one thing it did, I think, was to show that it was possible for a leader to m ake a contribution, to have a role in history rather then to wait for history to hit him. 'On Aboriginal affairs, I think he is the best chance we have got, but I don't think he really understands it. I don't think it is really in his blood in any way. He sees him self as having this role in history, and it's a good one, but I don't think he has any sense of how you achieve it, and I don't think he has ever really talked to an Abo rigine in Aboriginal territory or in an Aboriginal con text. He's never spo ken to m e except in social chit chat. On the other hand, the prospect if he loses ... 'I read the first drafts of the land fund legislation and frankly I thought it was awful, because it completely ignored all of the Aboriginal aspects of land ownership and treated it sim ply as if it were another form of free hold where they could m ortgage it and treat it as an asset ... Whenever anything like this has happened, with indigenous peoples around the world, they have usually received money or they have received land on conditions where they could sell it, give it away and the result has always been that they finish within a few years with nothing ... 'What I want to do with such time as I have left is to look at what Aborigines are doing where they are in som e position to m ake choices. 'There's really som e very exciting stuff. One of the next articles I want to write is about Ith e] Coronation Hill people, where John Ah Kit is really the m aster mind on the economic and fi nan cial fro nt and he is reaching agreem ents with mining companies which gives them a share in the ownership, a share in the current incom es and a right to determine what percentage of the work force are Aborigines, employed in real jobs in the m ine and training provided for them and all those sort of things. And also they have established a whole series of cultural tourist exercises under Aboriginal control, which they are making their money from ... 'In fa ct it's so successful that I am a bit worried how far it might, not so much corrupt, but lea d other Aborigines to believe that that is the only way. That intelligent or competent Aborig ines should m anage their affa irs in that way-which will give them m oney and give them con trol-and that that may be enough, but also at the sa me time destroy their interest in their traditional ways of thin king, their traditional mutual support systems. 'Which way should things go? To me those questions are of the essence of the issues I want to devote m y mind to over the next few years. I want to look at Coronation Hill people because I think it is very interesting; they were the ones who protected Coronation Hill against everybody but they are the ones who are now taking the lead in reaching agreem ents not to touch Corona tion Hill but to do these other things. 'N ow the sam e thing, in a different way, is happening in the Kimberleys, where they have Aboriginal organisations which cam e into existence when they could ge t nothing fr om the state V O LUME 5 N UMI\ER 4 • EUREKA STREET 29 government and next to nothing from the Commonwealth and they had to set up their own organisations-Kimberley Land Council, Warranari and resource agencies and others which they set up and which in the early stages they financed by gifts from churches and trade unions ... but they go t organisations of some kind into existence to run things themselves. 'You see they have a structure there so that if the Commonwealth is prepared to deal with them and say 'Look, you are undertaking work which we have been contemplating [being doneJ by the bureaucracy, we will pay you accordingly, we will reach an agreement that you run this particular service' ... now that's a real possibility. 'There are things in east Arnhem Land, on the cultural side, particularly in education where they are way ahead. They leave Dawkins for dead.' C OOMBS C ITES THE PITJANTJAT)ARA PEOPLE, who have developed regionalised Structures for deal ing with their problems at a grassroots level. 'That federal structure which they have in opera tion is som ething we have very little u nder standing of but it works. 'In Alice Springs, the town camp organisation, Tangatjira, is a beautiful model and I believe it works- it creaks now and again, and conflicts som etimes emerge between the councils, but the conflicts were always there. But they have found a way of reconciling them, or, if not resolving them , of enabling them to come out and deal with them and reach decisions without sacrificing their autonomy. Now I think that's marvellous stuff. They are issues, they are real and practical and the resolution of them is more important to m e than what goes into Commonwealth legisla tion. ' Can ATSIC deal locally and fl exibly with these issues? ' I don't think it can because it is too isolated from [these! sorts of structures. I think it would be relatively easy, theoretically at an y rate, to convert the ATSIC regional councils into bodies which were under the control of the Aboriginal organisations in that area. They could nominate the people to sit on these councils and almost overnight you could get a situation where the key part of the ATSIC structure was under Aboriginal control. Loi s O'Donoghue and her organisation is all very interesting, but it is not really relevant to the critical decisions they are making. 'There is no real hostility from her to the idea that Aboriginal organisations should have greater control, and if that happens, it matters less what happens to the commission.' From Nugget's work in Aboriginal affairs come consistent theme - of trusting people them selves; listening as well as hearing and of taking their aspirations into account; of insisting that real change can come only from the people them selves-change that will not occur unless tbe resources becom e theirs and that they have a stake in the transformation of them into Aboriginal capital; a strong belief that Aboriginal culture and tradition, particularly in the m ore traditional communities, is a strong and underutilised resource. Implicit in all of this is the need for Aborigines to improve their bargaining power, politically, economically and socially. I T IS HERE THAT THE HUMAN AND THE SOCIAL VISION (rather than the accountant's or the narrow economist's) shines m ost strongly, if from a banker and economist. The basis of building up bargaining power is control over land and in developing economic self-sufficiency. But these are not mere matters for a balance sheet. An Aboriginal cattle station is not, for example, to be judged solely on its ca pacity to earn a profit. Once it might have scratched a subsistence living for a white family and a handful of Aborigines. Now it might house many families. Aboriginal tenure can now provide the basis for assistance with housing, health care, education and other services, access to food, and a base for activities such as art and handicrafts. Just as importantly, it gives access 'to sacred sites and the group security and cohesion which being on one's own land and living among one's own kinsfolk provides. No simple viability test based on potential to earn profit would incorporate such considerations.' At 89, Coombs is visibly frail and just a little conscious of his mortality. But he is not slow ing clown. His faith in the human spirit, his optimism and his unflagging nagging at the fundamentals make so me people think him a m ere romantic. But at the core of a man Mick Dodson, Aboriginal Social Ju stice Commissioner called the 'whitcfellas' most senior elder' is someone who is ever practical, talking about real people doing real things down at the ground in rea l communities. We need a few more public servants like him. • Jack Waterford is editor of The Canberra Times . 30 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 R EVJ EW E SSAY Where the boys are Helen Gamer's study of allegations of sexual assa ult made against a Ma ster of Ormond College, Melbourne, has become a publishing sensation and a document for our times . Moira Rayner reviews Garner's bool<, and loolzs at another institution where a culture of sexual harassm ent is beginning to change. The First Stone, Some Ques tions about Sex and Power, Helen Garner, Picador, Sydney, 1995. ISB 0 330 35583 X RRP $14.95 SEX SELLS EVE RYTH ING from brea k- of dealing with the allegations. This not ) appreciate and respect the 'The peTsonality of fas t cereal to books. Helen Garner's was a warm, spontaneous and almost difference between private support Ormond, the culture in runaway best -seller a bout the endearing gesture. The letter was and public position-taking. He didn't. which 'the case' was Ormond College case, The First also judgm ental, and written in He copied the letter, and distributed galvanised into a kind of Stone, will make her rich er than her ignorance of the facts and of the law. it far and wide. monstrous life , is the real novels, though it is their critical This would not have mattered, had Wha t happen ed after is n ow subiect of the book. ' success that gives it cachet. Had she the Master dealt with it in the notorious. Her l e tter divided not been a fam ou s novelist and middle-class, Melbourne way- with fe minists. Wom en took position s Ph otograph: Tim Stoney feminist, h er letter of support to the dignity and constraint. In hindsight about 'Garner' as well as Ormond. Master of Ormond College would it seems obvious that a man in his When she came to write her book, nothave dividedwom en- Ihave had place would use anything in his many, including old fri ends, refused more high words with other wom en defence, especially a letter fro m a to speak to her about it, or even to over the letter, and her book, than famous fe minist to a man who talk to her. Doors and phones were about the case itself- nor caused believed he was the victim slammed. She was shunned. hurt, not least to Garner herself. of a feminist conspiracy. The First Stone is h er very per In 1992 Helen Garner read in the sonal working-out of a considered paper that the Master of Melbourne's EV EN THOUGH he had been accused public position about women, pow Ormond College had been charged of tra nsgressing the boundaries er and responsibility. It is a work by w ith indecently assaulting two between the generations- young a fe minist in her fifties who fo und yo ung wom en residents. She shot off women and older men in authority herself out of step with feminism one of her characteristic su pport over th e m - Garn e r mus t h ave in- or some fe minists of- the '90s. letters, challenging the 'appalling assumed that he would (or perhaps It is a hurt book about painful events. destmctive, priggish and pitiless' way didn't even consider that h e might Its tone is oft en anguished, some- V OLUM E 5 N UMB ER 4 • EUREKA STREET 31 times angry, or injured; the voice of found that the complaints had been emancipation and responsibility; one whose cause is just but who has made in good faith. about why women argue with other been condemned because of its pres The women went to the police, women and men about these things. entation, whose compassion has who prosecuted. After two defended Garner's book is about power and been misrepresented as cruelty. She hearings at which each gave evidence equity; how our justice, social and is humble: she pedals away from in open court, and an appeal and political systems failed to achieve it, meetings with powerful men. She is rehearing, the Master was acquitted. and who is responsible. For, after all honest: she tends to present andre He subsequently resigned after the the pain, the Master who was exon present her arguments with subtle council's later vote of confidence in erated by the criminal courts is un variation, re-statement and qualifi him failed, on undisclosed grounds. employed, the women whose evi cation. And she speaks from experi- The women and the council then dence was believed but did not per ence: her personal history and settled complaints that were lodged suade have been demonised as cow experiences are presented to with the Commissioner for Equal ardly, 'anonymous' victim-poseuses, validate her judgment. Opportunity, on undisclosed terms. and the Ormond College Council is After all the pain, Her conclusions: that a These included the publication of an still stuck in a nightmare. They in ' prissiness, cowardice and acknowledgem ent by the council troduced new sexual harassment pol the Master who brutality' had destroyed lives; that the complaints could have been icies and procedures-even volun that older women with their better handled. tary sexual harassment classes fo r was exonerated by '60s libertarian version of On those bare facts it must be new students-but as ABC's Four feminism have a more evident that the students are neither Comers (27 March 1995) revealed, the criminal courts generous attitude and a great 'anonymous', as so m any commen the initiatives did not prevent a new er wisdom than the young, tators have alleged, nor cowardly. claim of sexual harassment (not is unemployed, the passionate and judgmental There has been suffering all round. against the Master this time), nor a campus feminists of the Why did 'it' happen ? Helen Gar former resident's claim that there women whose 1990s; that women have ner actually doesn't dwell on what continued to be an anti-women 'potential power' which they happened on the night of the Smoko culture, two years after the events. evidence was do not use; that by character (the facts have becom e ' unknowa Most Melburnians have an opin ising the full range of sexual ble'), but instead asks why the wom ion about the Ormond College case, believed but did harassm e nt as 'viol e nce en went to the police about it. From if only about the relative notoriety against women' they carica the statern ent of facts it seems to me of the accused and anonymity of the not persuade have ture and trivia lise real obvious that they went because their women. The perception that they violence between women and truth had bee n denied by those in were somehow culpable in this been demonised men; and (aggrievedly) that power over them. Would concilia anonymity should be dropped: the she, who insists on drawing tion have worked, when the validity reason they have not been named i as cowardly, such distinctions, has also of their experi ence had been publicly that Victoria's criminal procedures been victimised. It isn't, of denied? The choices, surely, were to prohibit publishing the identities of 'anonymous' course, as simple as that. do nothing, or do as they did. Curi sexual assault complainants. They The Ormond case was not ously, the focus in Garner's book is did not ask for that. victim-poseuses, about 'sexual harassment' also not on the truth of the facts Helen Garner anonymises every but about how closed alleged but the validity of one in her book (I am 'Sonia 0 ' of the and the Ormond comm unities deal with wom en 's experien ce of fierce eyebrows) except herself, some complaints of explicitly sex being sexu al prey. form er masters and 'Ormond', whose College Council is ual, unwanted behaviour character inhabits every page, whose between students and a per- I T WOULD BE SATISFY ! C to know presence accentuates every silence. still stuck in a son in authority over them. 'what happened', but this review, Ormond inspires loyalty, affection Two young women students like The First Stone, has no answers, and commitment in those it took to nightmare. raised their complaints, verb and some 'no go' zones. Garner's its heart, a deep anger and resent ally through an intermedi arise from lack of information; mine ment in those it did not. The person ary, with the Master's deputy from an excess of it. I was the Victo ality of Ormond, the cui ture in which the next day. Later, through an rian Commissioner for Equal Op 'the case' was ga lvanisecl into a kind emissary, their unsigned statem ents portunity who final! y brought at least of monstrous life, is the real subject were brought to the chairman of the the legal proceedings, though not of the book, not the metaphor of college council. Later again, they the ongoing bitterness, to an end, 'sexual harassment'. were taken to the council, which and I am committed to keep confi Sexual harassment has been a involved the university's counsel dential what I might know or believe. gro und of complaint under discrim ling service. Their complaints had This review is about the broad ination laws for more than 10 years. been documented by a subcommit relationship issues touched on in It has co me to represent the signifi tee of the council. After receiving The First Stone: of inter-generational cance to all women of sexually the subcommittee's report the coun feminism; between sexual charged bullying experienced by even cil passed and published a motion of harassment and sexual a sault laws, one woman. It is a new legal concept, confidence in the Master. It also of victimhood, persecution, ConLinued p34 32 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 Naval manreuvres L ms BRYSoN " A FAMOUS FEM VoLUME 5 NuMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 33 progresses to personal and sometimes physical or intim their concern was not with what their subordinates idating behaviour by more and more people. Character believe about feminism, equal opportunity, sex or mul istically, whether women complain about it or ignore it, ticulturalism . They take a much more realistic approach : the offensive behaviour goes on, and gets worse as on they want their people to be in no doubt about what they lookers join in. may and may not do. What is needed to prevent this, according to Bryson, I asked Bryson what she thought were the m ost is what the navy is doing, even if it took a Senate inquiry effective ways of changing overwhelmingly masculinist to trigger it. It did its research, setting benchmarks of cultures where sexual hara sment was likely to be, or complaints and objectionable behaviours. It set up train had become a problem . ing schedules and prepared, as for a major outbreak of She nominated two necessary strategies: one, to ac hostilities. Unusually, and Bryson thinks this was a key knowledge that one of the major obstacles to successful factor in their success, the top brass did more than pay lip changes in behaviour is the fear of many men that they service. They put their personal dignity on the line. Does might, before they knew any better, have harassed others it take the threat of a court case? Perhaps. Research and be punished for it. 'I think it is very important to do evidence suggests that there's nothing like public and something about the past, about those fears, perhaps by costly litigation, public shaming, and the understanding declaring a m oratorium on old complaints, and setting that individuals will be personally, financially responsi up a very good internal mediation process.' ble if som ething goes wrong, to promote change. The other is using repentant sinners to communicate Perhaps it was too much to hope that lawyers (m y their new vision to the unenlightened. One man who had own profession ) might adopt the sam e level of commit reassessed his past behaviour was very successful in ment after the massive damages award against Baker and explaining the essential nature of sexual harassment, McKenzie, a USA law firm, for one of its partners' sexual which he did by relating his own involvem ent in a harassm ent of a staff member (and their own failure to bullying 'joke', played by a group of men, called 'get the deal with him) . parson'. It involved using foul language and blaspheming Perhaps, said Bryson, they simply lack the discipline in the presence of the chaplain to win bets on how long of the military. But perhaps it is also true that the ADF it would take to get h im to leave the room. was prepared, and more ready than most organisations, Lois Bryson says that the navy experienced the scan to devote resource to training. A Bryson points out, dal and distress associated with the inquiry as something when there isn't a war, the Defence Force is always in positive. It adapted its discipline, culture and resources 'training m ode '. Lawyers tend to think they know it to confront the problems brought upon it by inappropri already, whatever 'it' is. ate expectations arising from outdated traditions. In The Defence Force is pragmatic. Its commanders other words, the navy used the cause of the infection to aren't especially interested in changing attitudes, and defeat it. -Moira Rayner • From p32 personal or targe ted jokes, ga m es, £orting to be self-righ teous. Concili created a century after Ormond was suggestions, touching-the final ation is only possible if there can be establi bed as a re idential hall for cause of the majority of complaints a degree of privacy, some kind of University men. When O rmond and at the end of the spectrum, sex basis of gua rd ed trust and good will. opened its doors the only laws pre ual threa ts, assaults or blackmail. Within a hierarchical structure, it is scribingsexual behaviour were crim Oddly, very fe w complaints are made crucial that the resolution proce inal, or matrimonial, laws which at this end, though the conduct is dure and the values underlying have were interpreted and enforced by men easiest to identify: arguably, this is the support of those in authority. in a society which certainly trea ted because the victims either choose to Garner seem s, in her final analy women as lesser in status. Sexual use the criminal law, or are too dam sis, to conclude that those fe mi harassm ent in the 1990s is not a aged to do anything but retreat. The nists- and there are ten thousa nd crime which is punished by the state. whole continuum is 'sexual harass varieties of feminism- who call on Sexual harassment procedures are a ment', but it docs not require a stand the structures of masculine author new rem edy initiated by an individ ard response, or even a punitive one: ity somehow institutionali se out ualmakinga complaint, derived from the primary remedy, conciliation, moded perceptions of women's pow a law which acknowledges that lea ves all options open. erlessness. But on m y analysis and someone ca n be harmed because of I have found that those who are experience, trying to resolve discrim attitudes within groups towards accused of harassing are as angry and ination issues without the backing other groups. up et as the people who complain. of authority is worse than useless: Like a sackful of electric eels, Ea ch has been challenged in their yo u have to grab a bully's attention, 'sexual harassm ent' is hard to grasp ro les as m en, as women, as people of the more so if he does not because it is not, intrinsically, a worth. This anger goes very deep, rea lise he is a bully. precise definition. It is a test, or a which makes it hard to reach an standard used to assess conduct, in a understanding that there might have H A RASS ME T WI IIC H IS TOLERATED context, in a continuum ranging from been misunderst 34 EUREKA STREET •MAY 1995 confront those whose behaviour of that I know how direct action works. default, the justifications of the fends them are highly likely to be About 20 years ago, I cooled off a 'angry feminists' who stand between retaliated against, often by their persistent frotteur in a crowded her and her quarry. There is another peers, who perceive their objections nightclub bar by pouring a glass of valid reason why they might have going outside the group as disloyal cold water over him. I had to be chosen not to testify again. Many of ty. They are shunned, as Garner was whisked out by friends as the club Helen Garner's generation have shunned, because they have brought erupted into a riot after he tried to found them selves translated into the shame to the group. There is a lot of attack m e. Should we expect women material of her novels, som e flatter shame in the book. of our daughters' age to be wiser and ingly, some not. Helen Garner does not deal fully braver than we were at that age? But surely it is reasonable to with the complexity of these issues, Have they any more reason to believe choose, if you wish, not to be som e though they go to the heart of both that they will be believed, support one's 'material'? If people have any that primary que tion: why did the ed, vindicated than we did? human rights at all, one is the right women go to the policel and her Finally, Garner asks- as she had to privacy, to close the door on the complaint: why wouldn' t they not asked when she wrote her let face of the judgment of the world.• explain them selves to her? ter-what 'the women' would say, She does, however, cl ocumen t the about their decision to go to the masculinist culture of Ormond; its police. (Why, I wonder, doesn't she Moira Rayner was formerly Victorian student initiations and social mores; ask the police why they decided to Commissioner for Equal Opportuni its muscular environment; its con prosecute?) She is incredulous, hurt ty. She is now a part-time commis sciousness of a grand colonial past. and finally furious that they will not sioner of the Human Rights and She finds a college which has been tell her. She attributes to them, by Equal Opportunity Commission. co-educational for20 years but which still sees itself in a masculine, aca B OOKS: 1 demic, British collegiate tradition. What effect this might have had MICHAEL M c GmR on the relationships between women and men in the College before the fatal Smoko night, on the probabili ty of upsetting events, and how they might have been experienced, re membered, or responded to; and how it might have affected trust, is not Inside out resolved. Yet it seems to me a cru cial and underplayed factor in the elrama, not reflected in the judgment Garner makes, that the women 'dealt Letter to m y daughter, Graham Littl e, Text Publishing, with' the Master in a priggish, piti Melbourne, 1995. ISBN l 875847 07 3 IU\1' $24 95 less a ncl unforgiving way. Thi she apparently believed- on the evi dence of her letter-before she knew TO MY DAUGH TER iS a Biggles' books, the way people pro anything about the case. There is a deceptively sweet title. The daughter nounced words. T hese details work toL whom""' Gra ham Little addresses better than all the theory in the world telling remark, early in the third chapter, as she watches the young the story of his own childhood is to explain what it means to be relo women students mill about after the mentioned a few times throughout ca ted as a child from Belfast to Eng Master's acquittal, outside the court: the book, but she only emerges from land and then to Australia. But Little 'For the first time', she says, 'I felt the shadows in the la st paragraph. is not writing on behalf of a migrant sorry for the two students.' Looking back towards Australia from generation . He is writing solely on We women are hard on one an a long delayed return trip to North his own account. You don 't have to other, as if we had licence to criticise ern Ireland, Little is glad that the wait for the last sentence of the book the conduct of other women because daughter who spends so much time to notice the vulnerability whistling we are women o urselves. As a in the surf 'will still come for a walk through his words. defence lawyer I would make certain with her Belfast-born dad on those T he figure that dominates I had no women on a rape trial jury. nights when the streets are wet and Letter to m y daughter is, ironically, As a woman, however, I haven't for there's a cold wind cutting across Little's own father. In Ireland Frank gotten how it was, when I was 19 or Princes Park in what we once called Little was an insurance salesman 20. I was no more able then than I am sunny Australia.' and in London the proprietor of a now to respond to a 'grope' with a Little's prose is reserved and club, but, much like the characters heel to the instep or a knee in the unostentatious. His memories are in Dennis Potter's Pennies from balls, as Garner tentatively suggest hedged by all kinds of clutter: the Heaven or The Singing Detective, eel in her Four Corners interview. I names of schoolfriends, the tonnage you can make believe that he had would be even more reluctant now of ships, the details of films and been denied h is calling to V OL UME 5 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 35 B OOKS: 2 P AUL COLLINS show business. Frank Little was only comfortable in public. His family 'bored him precisely because we weren't strangers to present to.' He Vatican futures brought an Encyclopcedia Britannica salesman to the house. 'We ended up T he Next Pope: An Inquiry, Peter Hchhl cth wa Jt c, with a set of the Encyclopce dia, Fo unt, London 199S. J<. JIN 00627H3 10 JU\1' $14.9S. which we returned inside the due date for a refund, and the poor man HEllBL ETHW AJT E does not recent visit to Rome, one experi left with a hefty policy on his life predict who will be the next pope, enced Australian cleric also referred that be couldn't return.' In strife though he indicates his preferred can to Pope Wojtyla's pontificate as 'the torn Belfast, be ga ined the confi didate. N or does The Next Pope as pontificate of the Catholic sects' dence of a Catholic family by kneel sume the imminent demise of John Opus Dei, Communion and Libera ing with them through their rosary. Paul II. It simply argues from what tion, the Neo-Catech umenate. In charge of the club, he was a per was obvious to anyone who saw the Hebblethwaite argues that the former, 'as alert as the producer of Pope at close hand during his visit to lesson to be learned from the ponti f any stage show.' Australia in January: John Paul is icate is that the church now need a Frank Little's opportunism is showing the effects of long- term reconciling leader, someone from the in evidence when he accompanies overwork and constant travel, and middle ground, a genuinely interna the real Bud Abbott to a cricket ga me clearly his hea lth is not good. tional pope. It seems odd to say that and, to please the crowd, is required Although the Pope himself seems when John Paul has travelled so fa r to impersonate Lou Costello and sign determined to push on to the turn of and met so many. But he has alwa ys autographs. Abbott agrees to try his the millennium, if God and his health taken his own theocratic vision f hand in the centre and pleases the permit (Hebblethwaite excludes the the church with him. T here has been crowd by his ineptitude at the Eng possibility of resignation), all the little time for local voices lish game; Frank Little nearly gives signs are that the church in gen ""r and no tolerance of dissent. his ga me away by being too good at eral- and the Roman Curia, espe it. The boy is humiliated. Years later, cially- has begun thinking about the .1. N E N ExT P o PE, JJOW EV ER, remains Little's la st sighting of his father is next pontificate. Though of course, an optimistic book. Hebblethwaitc 'on a ship preparing to cross the no important ecclesiastic would ad emphasises that despi te the length Tasman to a kind of freedom he mit this publicly. So what does the of this pontifi cate and the fact that seem ed to long for.' Little never future hold for the papacy, and what most of the cardinals are, literally, wonders aloud why he should have will the next pope be like? the present Pope's creations, the been cast as no more than a bit part H ebblethwaite answers these moment he dies they becom e their in his father's idea of freedom. questions by lookingat th e conclaves own m en, fre e to bring to bea r their In Friendship: being ourselves of the past 200 years. He explains the own ideas and priorities. They w1ll with others, Graham Little remarks complex process by which the cardi not be m ere clones of Pope Wojtyla. that 'each day people essay them nal electors might reach a decision, So which of them are electable? set ves with others, as Montaigne did, and outlines Paul VI 's important Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a not only in a book but up the bush or reform of the electoral rules, includ Jesuit biblical scholar who is Arch at the beach. Every essay in being ing the exclusion of cardinals over bishop of Milan, is the favo urite of oneself is a significant basis for hope 80 years of age . the Italian (a nd, increasingly, the not only for the individual but for The figure of Pope John Paul II, English-speaking) press, and of those society.' Lettu to m y daughter is an born Karol Wojtyla, dominates the with a more open vision of the essay, an attempt to hold together book. Hebblethwaite points out how church. But powerful forces will be all the unruly experiences that fina l idi osyncratic the Wojtyla pontificate arrayed against him. Hebblethwaite ly create an adult and a father. In has been. In an overly-long chapter thinks that Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, attempting to be himself with read h e explains the Pope's oddl y the hardliner who heads the Congre ers, Graham Little has drawn from Eurocentric vision, ba sed on a no gation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the rag-and-bone-shop of his heart a tion of the spiritual unity of Europe is not electable, and neither is the rich and friendl y book. • fr om the Urals to the Atlantic. Dean of the College of Cardinals, Hebbleth waite highlights the Pope's Cardinal Bernardin Cantin. He de Michael McGirr SJ is the consulting 'Polishness', his deep sense of mis scribes Cardinal Antonio Sodano, editor of Eurelw Street. sion, his conviction that he is espe who visited Sydney with the Pope, cially protected by Our Lady of Fati as 'the most limited Secretary of m a, and his determination to im State in the 20th century': the con pose his own vision on the church. serva tive Sodano is a hatchet man Hebbleth waite could have added the with a foul temper. Among other Pope's enormous influence on the Europeans, Hebblethwaite describes media and, through m odern com Cardinal Godfried Da neels, the Arch munications, his ability to maintain bishop ofBrussels-Malines, as a 'good a highly centrali ed papacy. On a theologian ' who is ' refreshingly 36 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 blunt', though he lacks human Mahoney, of Los Angeles. warmth and has the reputation of If Hebblethwaite were to put his DJ (DINNY) O'HEARN being a 'loner'. Cardinal Jean-Marie m oney on anyone, should a conclave MEMORIAL FELLOWSHIP Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, be held in the next 12 months, it could be considered a candidate of would be Cardinal Achille Silves the charism atic movements, but his trini. A broadly cultured diplomat vision of ministry refl ects the spirit who was a friend of the late Federico Applications are invited for this fellowship, uality of 17th century France rather Fellini, Sil vestrini is a 'Paul VI man'. available to a writer yet to become established. than the needs of the contemporary H e has been a cardinal since 1988 The successful applicant wi II have the world. and is now Prefect of the Congrega Hebblethwaite thinks that a Lat tion for the Oriental Church es. opportunity to pursue their writing for a month in Am erican might be electable, but Silvestrini and Martini are the only at The Australian Centre, The University of excludes all the individuals he con Italian cardinals who have remained Melbourne, during second semester 1995. siders. The Brazilian cardinals who untainted by their country's corrup have supported liberation theology tion scandals and the political con Salary will be at th e rate of $29, 117.00 per and the ecclesial base communities, sequences for the fo rmer Christian annum pro rata. Paulo Avaristo Arn and Aloisio Dem ocrats. Lorscheider, are said to be 'bullied, The Next Pope is an interesting Applications, including a cun·ivulum vitae, an brow-beaten and too old'. work by a man who, at the time of indication of current projects and a sample of A possible candidate fro m the his dea th in December last year, prob right is Cardinal Lopez T rujillo, a ably knew the Vatican scen e better writing, should be sent to: reactionary from Colombia, but his than any journalist in the English Ms Rhyll Nance unscrupulous political behaviour spea king world. Inevitably, it is a woul d pro ba bly render him tract for the time. And time will tell The Australian Centre une lect a ble. The o nly N orth how accurate it is. • 131 Barry Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053 American m entioned as a possibili Paul Collins MSC is a broadcaster Tel (03) 344-7021 , Fax (03) 3477731 ty in The Next Pope is Cardinal Roger and writer. by Friday 26 May 1995. BooKs: 3 }AM ES GRIFFIN Righting things Retreat from Injustice: Human Rights in Australian Law, N1cholas O'Neil l and Robm Handley, The Federatwn Press, Le1ch hardt, NSW, 1995. ISBN 1 86287 121 3 RRP $55.00 A LAYMAN MAY LOOK at a law- praised commentary of 1966, Free- previously seemed to suffice and a yer especially when the title of his dom in A ustralia by Enid Campbell complete chapter n ow on immi· book is so socially cheery and the and Harry Whitmore. grants and refugees. opening sentence as declamatory as: As well as updating in a more O'N eill is currently Acting Pres- ' Human rights is an idea whose time systematic way developments in ident of the Guardianship Board of has finally come in Australia'. constitutional law and in the basic NSW and was fo rmerly an executive Readers will have to consult the freedom s of the individual and of member oft he Civil Liberties Co un- legal journals for an authoritatively association, assembly and speech, cil of N SW. He approves of judges detailed critique but the book's expandingareasoflaw(which, natu- taking up 'the challenge laid down scope, lucidity, atten tion to evi- ra lly enough, were only intimated in by Brennan J and other judges of the dence, indices of case and statutory the earlier work) are here explored at High Court to move continuously references and careful footnoting som e length. but effectively to bring the common should make it an invaluabl e text One chapter specifically deals law more into line with internation- not just for the students at whom I w ith the protection of human rights al human rights norm s and contem- assume it is primarily aimed but for issuing from the signing of interna- porary notions of justice and human commentators on politics and civil tiona! covenants. rights', and favours progress towards liberties. The index has 14 references to a Bill of Rights. • To test O 'N eill's manife to (h is wom en 's issues where earlier there the senior author, responsible for all was one only-on wom en's employ- but three of the 25 chapters) his book m ent. There are four chapters on James Griffin is a Canberra writer can be compared with that justly Aborigines and the law where one and historian. V oLUME 5 N uMliER 4 • EUREKA STREET 37 BooKs: 4 M AX TEICHMANN Intimations of mortality The Trap, by Jam~:' Cold~milh, MacMillan, I <.)()-l . I'>BN 0 ~ . t~ o-lll-l -l The Camp of the Saints, by )can Raspail, Social Contract Press, I ()94. I'>BN I XX l 7HO 07 4 T he great divisions among hu Last yea r Robert Kaplan wrote in mankind will be cultural, our West the ALlan lie Molllhly of the coming ern culture being but one among world anarchy, with countries many. We should be prepared to find collapsing under the tidal flow of it either rejected, or else ingested refugees escaping from environmen and excreted, by most of the non tal disaster. More and more ' nations' Western societies that we arc trying arc becoming basket cases, as popu to woo. Consumerism, and infonna lations explode and fragile environ tion superhighways, arc not going to ments arc destroyed. Former colo dissipate long-s tanding social, his nics with arbitrary frontiers arc going torical and religious traditions. The to be especially prone to wars that rise of nation 38 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 millions to the planet's wealthy re ful business career', James Gold though there were many casualties gions. Perhaps land frontiers can be smith went into politics 'to publi on the way. That is, nations should barred, but armadas of boat people? cise the pressing issues threatening abandon certain industries Kennedy draws on The Camp of the our society'. Last year h e co-founded and develop those where Saints, by the Frenchman Jean a new political m ovem ent, L'Autre they have the greatest com - Raspail, for many of his arguments. Europe, and was elected a French parative advantage. Inter Raspail tells a bitter, compelling member of the European Parliament. national trade would grow GATT represents story of how first France, then the His party campaigned against Maas as nations export their rest of Western Europe and finally tricht and GATT, and he now leads surpluses and import the 200 global Russia surrender before the incur the group in the European parlia products they no longer sion of millions of unarmed self ment. His book, a widely influential manufac ture; efficien cy multinationals, who proclaimed refugees from Airica and best-seller in Europe, eventually and productivity would Asia. 'Surrender', becau se these obtained an English translation and increase in line with econ have no time for European nations are guilt-ridden publisher. Strangely, it is not being omies of scale, and pros and seeking to buy peace, and time, generally distributed in Australia. perity would advan ce. national boundaries at any price. A bit like the first fall of Goldsmith gives three specific These ideas are obsolete in France. examples of how we have, (as h e puts today's world. or local allegiances, Raspail's book, a European best it), profoundly destroyed our social Within a few years, 4 seller in 1973, was ignored in Aus tability by using ill-conceived mod billion people have entered for unions or tralia. Long out of print, it has been ern economic tools. He targets global the world economy. They reissued with a new introduction . free trade, intensive agriculture, and include China, India, Viet n11n1mum wages. Kennedy doesn't fo llow the novel's nuclear energy- all pure products of nam, Bangladesh, Indone terminal direction and tragic denoue the Enlightenment, and as such sia and the former Soviet And the IMP has m ent, nor take issue with those venerated by m odern e mpire. M ost of these whom Raspail would call 'the bleed conventional wisdom. countries already have high been holding up a ing hearts' and Trojan horses of the unemploym ent rates but, small but vital loan West who make it all possible, i.e. T -IE WO RSHIP O F G ROWTH, and that as their agriculture moves the sharers in the liberal culture. bizarre construct, GNP, has led to from a subsistence m odel Nor is he a prisoner of the fierce counting and m easuring without to a mechanised western to Yeltsin because hatred and cultural phobias vis d vis understanding the implications. m odel, rural unemploy ' the others' that Raspail conveys Thus in France over the past twenty ment will soar and a flight he is not pushing through his narrator, the last patri year GNP has grown by 80 per to the cities will begin. As otic Frenchman standing. Instead cent- quite remarkable. But unem Goldsmith says, if China economic 'reform' Kennedy urges an enormous West ployment has risen from 420,000 to m oves to Western tech ern aid effort, a transfer of resources 5.1 million (official fi gures say 3.3 niques 200 million farm quickly enough. His to the troubled countries, so as to million, but the government's own workers will be made re persuade the locals to stay at hom e statistics show that various ca tego dundant. And as the vogue latest budget had a and repair their countries. This strat ries consisting of 1. 8 million people for privatisation and cost egy has been tried and seems prone have been omitted). In Britain, GNP cutting catches on, high provision for a to failure. But it buys time, and a rose by 97 per cent between 1961 urban unemployment rates better conscience for the donors and 1991, while those living in pov will follow. minimum wage for who seem to think they need one. erty went from 5.3 million to 11.4 As t o comparative But if it fails again, we face som e big million. The US turns up similar advantage, 47 Vietnamese all Russians-and decisions. figures. With everyone faking their or 47 Filipinos can be em Both the Kaplan and the Kennedy unemployment statistics, as we do ployed for the cost of one that will have to go. Raspail processes might be classi in Australia, 'growth' does not en tail person in a developed coun- fied as symptoms, albeit gigantic, a general increase in well-being or try, such as France. Tech- rather than causes. A greenie would social stability. nology can be transferred point out some of the causal and Global free trade, whose aim is to instantaneously anywhere in the predisposing factors-population create a world-wide m arket in prod world on microchip, capital can be explosions, destruction of the envi ucts, services, capital and labour, invest ed wherever the expected ronment, and the often baneful and whose present instrum ent is GATT, yields are highest. self-interested interventions of the complem ented by APEC and NAF Enterprises will arise in Vietnam rich countries am ong the poor. T A, will if implemented, 'impover or China, for example, that are very GATT's level playing fields, the ish and destabilise the industrial similar to those we have in Europe, black hole of Third World debt, and ised world, while at the am e tim e Australia and the United States. the endless supply of arms to poor cruelly ravaging the Third World'. Often they will m ake the sam e countries and elites who simply can't The concepts of speciali sation and product for the same markets, using cope, are bringing the Third World comparative advantage, which have identical t echnologies and with crisis to the boil. underpinned free-trade doctrine access to the sam e pool of interna After a 'phenom enally success- since Ricardo, worked up to a point, tional capital. VoLUME 5 NuMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 39 But the Vietnamese can employ and that will have to go. Life Talk: forty-seven people, the French only Goldsmith, who is an apocalyptic one. Yo u k now who will be the greenie, has some chilling chapters Be In It winner. on the kind of genetically engineered Goldsm ith estimates that in most food being produced by agro-busi You are invited to join developed countries the cost to an ness, and the u nforeseen and unfor Conversations on life and Faith average manufacturing company of seeable diseases that are starting to paying its workforce is an amount em erge as a result of our perversion Between 26 july and 20 Sept 1995 equal to between 20 and 25 per cent of nature. His chapter on the total Hot ham Parish Mission is sponsoring a series of of sales. If such a company retains undesirability of nuclear power, and conversations about ma in ta inin g integrity and human only its head office at hom e, while the faking of comparative en ergy va lues in the midst of the pressures of our rapidly chang moving production to a low-cost area, costs, convinced m e. ing world. it will save about 20 per cent of sales He would regard Kennedy and volume. Thus a company with sales Kaplan's analyses as directly rele Janet Powell, form er Senator, and Tony Kelly, CssR, wi ll of $500 million could increase pre vant, Huntington's as evading all be th e speakers at a Public Launch on Wednesday 26 tax profits by up to $100 million a the important problems. He thinks july at 7.30pm year. If it decides to stay at home, the allowing millions of migrants won't In a seri es of four fortni ghtl y conversations you will meet enterprise will be unable to compete help the four billion-soon to be and discuss in depth with people in an 'interest group' with low -cost imports and will come six or eight- but it will might havin g a parti cular focus, such as bioethi cs, ecology, perish. ily depress living standards in the ir education, law, or postmodernity. Each conversation Goldsmith concludes that it must host countries. The form er must be group will be provided with a ski ll ed facilitator and a surely be a mistake to adopt an eco allowed to tackle their own prob 'resident theologian' to encourage seri ous and deep nomic policy that makes you rich if lems, for we have lost all moral reflecti on. An educati onal opportunity for both chri sti ans you eliminate your national work authority to tell them how they and non-c hristi ans-be in it! fo rce and transfer production abroad, should run their societies. We should For more info rmatio n and a brochure contact: and which bankrupts you if you con stan fixing up our own, before it is Hotham Parish Mission tinue to employ your own people. too late. 2 Elm Street North Melbourne 3051 His recipe for Europe, and for Golds mith's book shou ld be Te l: 326 8245 an yone with any patri otism or made generally available here, as survival instinct, is to use tariff walls should the other contributions I have to account for the cheap labour com outlined. They are m ore important ponents o f foreign import . If than our debates over the republic, MINISTERING TO FAMILIES outsiders want to trade with you, let or even Bob and Blanche's Mills and 1 them establish plants in Europe and Boonery. • ... amid today s social realities and employ Europea ns at European pastoral-spirited needs wages.ln the past the US has rcq uired Max Teichmann is a Melbourn e Japan to do this. writer and reviewer. PARI SH PRO GRAMS It is the elites of the world who Other references: 'The C las h of CHU RCH-RELATED AGENCI ES benefit from free trade, says Gold Civilisation ', Samuel P. Huntington, SC HOOL SETTIN GS smith, not the people. Thus in Europe Foreign Affairs vol. 72, no. 3, 1993. 'If it is the 17 unelected commissioners Not Civi lisations, Wh at? Paradigms of COMMUNITY- BASED PRO GRAMS of the European Union who call the the post-Cold War World ', Samuel P. shots, backed by the German elites Huntington, Foreign Affairs va l. 72, PERSONALISED CURRICULUM AROUND who have globalist ambitions. The no . 5. 'The Coming Anarchy', Robert CONCENTRATION CORE outgoing head of the EU commis Kaplan, Atlantic Monthly, Fcbru 40 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 BOOKS: 5 FRANK STILWELL Economics as physics envy about Toohey's analysis is the 'OM e.TH V o LUM E 5 N uMJ\ER 4 • EUREKA STREET 41 M US IC Ju LI ETTE H uGH ES based price signal'. Whatever happened to the more ' interventionist' Keynesian econom ics? Toohey documents the effects of the monetarist assault and the Endorphin highs subsequent influence of 'new classi cal economics' in reasserting the ca se fo r laisscz-fa ire. Quite why such sim plistic notions should have been so waterlily fi gures spin slowly into a influential requires explanation. L "'"' LP " NOT '"'c' . Fmm Probabl y more attention needs to be a short distance it looks like a pond blur and a thumping bass beat pulses accorded to the big bad bogeym en of of waterlilies, but closer up, the out, with eerie interpolations over Marxist economics, for so long both greens and whites resolve into an tracked. To call it repetitive is like the main contender in explaining image of three white- robed men in ca lling the Bayeux Tapestry a long how capitalism works and in posing foetal curl revolving perpetually in pi ece of cloth. He shows me more, an altern ative. Economics has been stillness. N o label. 'Wh o made it1' I no longe r defensive: the baby- boomer required to serve as cold-war id eolo ask. 'Dunno/ says my instructor. I is hoo ked. Philip Glass, cat yo ur heart gy as we ll as a mea ns of understand ing the real world. In practice, the Australian eco nomi c policy mi x has also bee n shaped by the institutional context. The Treasury (' masters of fi scal dis cipline' ) is the key player in what Toohey ca lls the 'official fa mil y' of economic policy fo rmulation. It bears primary responsibility for the view that there arc ' intrinsic bene fits' in redu cing the size of the public sector. T he Reserve Ba nk ignoring t hat part of its charter which stress es the goal of full employment, has simultaneously emphasised control of inflati on (with 'six stro kes of the interest rate' cane). T he social di sas ter of widespread unemployment is hardly surprising in these circum stances. Toohey's analysis is iconoclastic rather than reformist. His concern is not to posit a clea rly identifiable alternative to the dominant ortho doxies. Rather, it is to debunk the mythology surrounding economics and economic policy, to reveal that the Emperor has no clothes. In the closing chapter there is an interest ing di scussion of what economics persist. 'You mean, you don't know o ut. This mus ic is no t s terile might learn from modern sci ence. the musicians who recorded this?' commercial pap, nor is it the charla This requires 'living in a non-linear 'That's right,' he says, 'it's a collec tanry of postmodern academi c ra g world' with recognition of 'the role tors' item. They don't need a label. pickers- it is a virile tradition in the of memory, learning, novelty and Anyone would recognise it. ' ' But not making, healthily subversive, with uncertainty in ways that brea k free if they've never heard of them,' I say. many branches and offshoots, spring of an old-s tyle determinism'. Quite 'Look,' he says patiently, 'it's not ing from the gra ss roots of current what would be the implications of like that. People who buy these urban experience. This is tekno. this for economic theory and eco things know the ones they' re look 'Only nerds spell it with a c- h,' he nomic policy remains a tantalising ing for. The companies that make says. question. • them are tiny, and none of them It is the first popular music form make vinyl in Australia any more. this century in which the European Frank Stilwell is Associate Professor Of 500 that get pressed in the UK, influence has been as strong as the of Economics at the University of perhaps five dribble over here.' American one. When a German band Sydney. He puts it on the turntable. The called Kraftwerk released the numb- 42 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 ingly banal Autobahn in the late sy, LSD. The police were alerted to '70s, it was played on a few radio this and began raiding 'house par Share your good sta tions and fad ed away. Bu t a seed ties'. Now there is an entire subcul had been sown. At the same time, ture of dance- house undercover cops Will. .. rap was making a beginning in the patrolling the scene, som etimes with poorer black streets of east-coast too much zeal. It was ever thus: The Jesuits are commi tt ed to a USA. Rap started as a spon taneous speakeasies were the target seventy Ch ri stian fa it h that seeks to bui ld street party around a ghetto blaster, years ago . The politics of pleasure, of a more just world. accompanied by extempore lyrics the experience of ecstatic gathering To continue their work both here and chanted in sprechsLimme mono goes back further, into earliest re overseas with : tone to a pulsing beat. Later it settled corded history. City fa thers have into so mething sm oother, more m e always fea red and l oa thed • Yo uth lodic, and hiphop was born. By the Dion ysiacs, Maenads, revellers. • Refu gees early '80s discos were resurrected in There will always be people who • Abori gines Chicago and Detroit, to play 'acid seek fusion, ecstasy, oceanic fulness. • Pri soners housc'- fu sions of rap and R&B. There will always be those too who • The Homeless Derrick May was the prime innova would seek to stop them from doing the Jesuit rely on the generous tor, mixing basic disco beats with o. And tekno's subversiveness has support of donors. weird over-tracks. Discotheques be been recognised- in Britain a law came dancehouses because the bea t has been passed banning the ga ther You can help sustain these efforts by was so infectious: people had to dance ing together of m ore than 12 people making a bequest in yourWill . to it. in an environment where there is Mea nwhile, over the Atlantic, in music playing at more than a certain Berlin, Doktor Motte, a dancehouse number of bea ts per minute. It can For further information contact: DJ, began to blend the hiphop bea t focus ugliness and viole nce: in · · ··~:t~··· Fr Daven Day S.J . with the electronic atmospherics of Rotterdam, heavy metal has been (.Ins··) 130 Power Stree t a Kraftwerk. The music becam e seri welded to the gentler dance forms to Hawthorn, VIC 3 122 ous, allusive and often hypnotic. ····.· ~ ...... create 'industrial' tekno that attracts ·············· Teleph one (03 )8 18 1336 'Som etimes the music dances you,' vast crowds of soccer hooligans who says my instructor. Doktor Motte is form a single self-mutilating entity known as the Mozart of tekno,and under the influence of various chem the comparison has som e m eaning, icals and the crashing noise. • if the sense of absolute fr eedom But the wider reality is of an Theology & Ministry within a tight fo rm can be ecstasy that owes as much to natural a~ for Tomorrow's n seen as the link. endorphins and the excitem ent of OF THEOlOGYI NSTIT UTE ~ Church & World the occasion as it does to artificial ·:r L RTI ES llECA . DJs were now no stimulants; an expression of a cul longer human stopgaps for introduc ture that is as underground and alive ing music on a radio station: since as anything that the '60s produced. • Sabbatical Study Program with Personalized the days of disco they had becom e Organisers of tekno parties must of Certificate - 4, 9 or 12 months performers in their own right, voic ten work on a hit-a nd-run basis, hir ing-over ironic commentary in per in g warehouses, deserted factories ·Masters programs in Pastoral Care, Adult fect time, cutting and pasting tracks and the like, passing the word around Christian Formation, Liturgical Ministry, on the hop, nodding to the beat that am ong devotees, keeping one step Preaching, Theology & Divinity only the best of them could keep ahea d of the authorities, who sel • Doctor of Ministry in Preaching going without a break as they segued dom take account of how little actu • Programs focused on integration of experie nce, and finessed tracks fr om vinyl and al harm is being cl one. There are theological foundations & pastora l skil l cassette in and out of the dance. many subspecies of tekno, apart from • Warm & hospitable ecumenical learning N ow they cam e into their own, cre 'industrial': trance or aciclhou se, with community of religious, ordai ned, and laity ating the music they played as an a bass m elody and trance-like 'head' elonga ted series of sound collages, sounds, and 'jungle'- a form of the • Located on park-like university campus in th e speeded up and interpolated with music much-beloved of aerobics centre of St. Louis with its wide variety of cultura l the constant driving bea t. DUHduh classes, those hallowed and approved amenities dada DUHduh, DUHduh dada DUH purveyors of the benign and legal • St. Louis--in the heart of the United States with duh, and infinite variations. T he endorphin 'high'. But som e of the easy, affordable access to other major cities. m ost easily recognisable motif in it hippies who crowded th e rock For Information write: was insistent keyboarded triplets festiva ls of the '60s are now busting Director of Admissions over a pounding bass 4/4. the dancehea ds of the '90s. Plus 9a Aquinas Institute of Theology Soon they boom ed, particularly change , plu c'estla m em e chose. • 3642 Lindell Blvd. in heavy industrial cities: Berlin, St. Louis, MO 63108 USA Man chester, Rotterdam , Lyons . Juliette H ughes is a Eureka Street Phone (314) 658-3869 Fax (314) 652-0935 Drugs were there, too-speed, ecsta- staff writer. VOLUM E 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 43 THEATRE GEOFFREY MILNE Made in Australia L , 44 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 !ish without a trace of accent. She Ling and Mehmet) meld stresses this as an advantage (obvi into characters in her ously enough: as a teacher, she has a storyi this technique is position of some 'power') although, frequently used in a play as Mchmet points out poignantly at whose fragmentary, non the end of the play, she has actually linear narrative is thus also lost something. given luminous clarity. But her reluctant pupils must also The music composed by learn to speak English 'in the present veteran MWT musician tense'i they must leave the baggage Irine Vela, who also plays of their pasts behind them . 'The war the feisty Greek wom is over', she insists. However, to the an, is another vital ele uncompromising Mira (in a striking ment in the play's suc performance by Nadja Kostich) this cess: m e lodies and is manifestly not true, as we are rhythms accord with the reminded in one of the powerful ethnicity of the featured fl ashbacks that are seamlessly woven character, but rarely re into the text and the performance. sort to s tereotype or Her worst nightmare is of fl eeing musical cliche. Mostar with her children across the In tackling problem s bombed bridge of that devastated of language, Home of a city. All of the characters have m em Stranger addresses with orie of the past that simply will not gritty realism one of the go awayi in these moments they tend key iss ues facing to revert to their first languages, add migrant people-the fact ing aural richness to the fabric of a that the language of the densely layered text. host country is the lan Home of a Stranger is directed by guage of power- and it Rena to Cuocolo, best-known for his does so with great poign sometimes highly enlightening (if ancy. But the play does • som etimes obscure) adaptations of not lack humour. Thus classical Greek drama for his own Mehmet's wry observation that, as up that the point behind the gags is compan y, the Institute for Research no one wanted to hear his voice (even blunted. HungLe into the Art of the Actor. This comes in Turkish ) throughout his 18 years There is actually a lot of pain, as in Wog-a-rama. as no surprisei Cuocolo is a migrant as a manual labourer, why is his well as humour, in most recent mul Photo: Branco Gaica himself and has been through the acquisition of perfect English sud ticultural Australian elrama, partic same mill, trying to learn English as denly so fascinating? Likewise, in ularly in those plays in which 'Aus a second language and developing a reply to the question 'How will you tralianised' second- and thircl-gencr split identity. The hour-length play buy what you need in the shops, V OLUME 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 45 FILM OWEN RICHARDSON FILM SPECIAL Books An amiable life erine Hessling, and in 1938 married E c'·"" '"'"'""''"" R oge< ScTru ton . .ha s a theory that movies Jean Renoir Letters, edited by again, for keeps, his script girl Dido aren't real art, and locates one of the Lorraine LoBianco and David Freire) and of some very fine friend effects of this in the supposed fact Thompson, Faber, London 1994. ships: with the screenwriter Dudley that people cannot stand to see even ISBN 0 5 71 ] 7298 9, RRI' $50.00 Nichols and his wife Esta, Clifford their fa vo uri tc films more than a few not especially lookin g forward to the Odets and his wife, Ingrid Bergman times. Well, m 46 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 A special day for the diary A single day's sympos ium in the Ell a Latham Th eatre at th e Roya l Children's Hospita l, M elbourne TEENAGE u.J SPIRITUALITY u Sponsored by Eureka Street z and The Centre for u.J Adolescent H ea lth ~ A dog' · life: 'IL 's been so nice worl V o LUM E 5 N u MBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 47 FILM JERRY M ARTINSON FILM SPECIAL Interview Magic Ian tern shows The films of Ang Lee, especially The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Wom an , have brought Taiwanese films LO the allenlion of cinenwgoers in A ustwlia and other We<>tern countries. Lang Hsuing, seen here in triple manifestation (photos courtesy o( the actor}, who acted in both films. spoke to Jerry Martinson about the differences between film<; made in Taiwan and in the People's nepublic o( China, and between 'art house' films and those made for mass enterlainmcnl. Performance can reveal the interior How did yoo Mbecome the' p"'"eTs'"on" you' aw now ! aspects of a variety of bmn 48 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 shoot. Live. No doubt it is powerful. But it producing small, meaningful films Their sole function is to enable is fragmented ... like a series of vi about life. So far, however, they have the director to accomplish his or her gnettes. It is not a unified whole. not come up with much. Hong Kong cherished artistic goal. Once again, it's a film about the lacks a sense of itself as a unified The French often criticise their Cultural Revolution, displaying the people with a real cultural heritage own film industry. They say the saddest, most painful and tragic and common goals. Government allocates a lot of money period of our history ... the worst and Tai wancse films tend to focus on for film directors to play around with, ugliest aspects of our predeces ors. human relationships. Our new wave to make their own personal state They are distorting our history. The of directors in the past ten year ments. Some directors take a script Chinese have 5,000 yea rs of wonder- have concentrated on films which that was meant to be entertaining ful , moving stories to tell. exemplify their ideals in life. and twist it into something they Why don't we share these? These films have won awards, consider art. I believe that if we have but that's all. If we really want to to twist som ething to make it look 0 NCE I ASKED A MAINLAND Chi develop our film industry we have to like art, it probably isn't art. If I am nese film director this question. He make commercially successful films the only one who considers my work answered, 'I am still angry about the which everyone will enj oy and want artistic, perhaps I need to take a Cultural Revolution, and I'm going to sec. second look! to keep making films about it.' I If the audience doesn't like our European countries like gues it affected him too deeply. films, they won't take the trouble to Germany, France, and Italy tend to Some Taiwanese filmmakers try go to the theatre. There are too many react against Hollywood. Still, Hol to imitate European art films. Take, alternatives. With 50 or 60 channels lywood films are the most popular in for instance, the recent award-win on cable TV, people can stay home the world. Three years ago, a British ing Vivel'amombyT'sa i Ming-liang. and often sec very good films. We Finance Minister said that if Europe The director had his own idea. He need more directors like Ang Lee. an films were to la t, they would wanted to make something like the have to learn from Hollywood. I per French film Les amanLs du PonLs In your opinion, are films lil VoLUME 5 N uMIIER 4 • EUREKA STREET 49 If you like to sec young peopl e find their pl ace at coll ege and strug living creatively, happy fa mily life, gle with their personal identities, and the triumph of true love, then cleverly interweaving a number of this is a film for yo u. prominent socia I themes of the '90s - Leonie Purcival into the story. Malik William s (O mar Ep ps) is To the dogs brilliant as the former h igh school track star trying desperately to com e 101 Oalnwlians (Hoyts). T he best to terms with his identity as a bl ack thing about 101 Dalmatians is the Ameri can. Kri sten onncr (Kri sty baddie. T en years ago I covered m y Swanson ) is a na'ivc w hite girl fro m Take three two-year-old son's eyes, (a mid hi s O range County, whose innocence is ve hement protests) as C ruclla Dcv violently snatched fro m her, and Lillie Women, dir. G illi 50 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1995 Just barely a smash hit. The result is not only an decline in the wake of the deafnes hilarious clash between the worlds that accelerated after h e turned Ju st Cau e, dir. Arne Glimcher of theatre and sly grog, but an exam thirty. From this paint Beethoven (Greater Union) In a backwoods in ination of what makes good 'art'. pulls away from society, a nd the deep south of the US, where The performances are the key to becom es increasing! y difficult, 'thing are done differently', an edu the movie. Allen's style of letting accusing family and servants of cated black man (B lair Underwood) the camera run, and his aversion to stealingmoney and manuscripts, and is sentenced to death for the brutal heavy editing and close-up shots, is dismissing lifelong friends on a rape and murder of a young white an egalitarian approach that allows girl. After eight years on death row all the performers to show their a ~ he persuades an East Coast academic wares. Dianne Wiest and Chazz lawyer (Sean Connery), who hasn 't Palminteri' Oscar nominations were 0 practised for twenty-five years, to well deserved-as was Wiest's win, investigate his case to prove hi s 'con but nearly any one of the others fession' was illegally and violently could have been chosen. 0~ coerced by the mean local black cop Bullets Over Broadway is a witty ! { (Laurence Fishburne). com edy which even Allen's detrac Connery finds himself in a world tors might find enjoyable. They'd be he doesn't understand, one filled with relieved at his absence from the cast hatred and an imperfect legal sys and a less neurotic tone than some of tem. The film then twists and turns his previous efforts. Maybe there's a predictably, suggesting a range of coincidence here. suspects, from the cop to a Lecter - Jon Greenaway like loon. In the end, intellect and instinct must work together to over UpB eet ~g , come madness, the true killer. Unfortunately fu st Cause is the Immortal Beloved, dir. Bernard Rose, zo poor relative to much better films, (Greater Union). In 1801 Beethoven like Welles's extraordinary Touch of wrote to his publishers: 'Musical \\ Evil. The acting, editing and direc politics demands that the best con whim. He does not, however, stop tion is largely pedestrian, except for certos should be withheld from the writing great music. the superb performance of Laurence public for a time.' The maestro with But, ask the film's makers, how Fishburne. Sadly, he's under-utilised solid and cynical marketing savvy is does Beethoven keep 'creating' in inafilm thatwillquicklygoto video. not the man whose life is remem the face of such blackness? Without -Tim Mitchell bered in Immortal Beloved. giving away too much of the film's This Beethoven (Gary Oldman) neat resolution, I'd say that Rose Mafia muse is a man of film-star good looks, who tries to humanise Beethoven retro is capable of both extraordinarily spectively, and argues, unconvinc Bullets Over Broadway, dir. Woody destructive, and constructive pas ingly, that great music cannot be Allen (Village). At the start of the sion-a bit more like a force of na made without selfless love. film you suspect that you're in for a nne than a human being. - Catriona Jackson rework on the old theme of artistic The film 's tale begins after integrity corrupted by unwholesom e Beethoven's death, with his young commercialism. But the twist comes est brother Johann discovering that Highland fling when the commercialism, sinister he is not to be the maestro's sole though it appears, actually enhances beneficiary. Instead, all the money Rob Roy, dir. Michael Caton-Janes the art. and royalties have been left to a (Hoyts). Rob Roy represents a return Set in Greenwich village and woman described in Beethoven's will to his homeland for Scottish direc Broadway of the 1920s, in the world only as his 'imm ortal beloved'. The tor Michael Caton-Janes, best known of mobsters and showgirls, a medio rest of the film is taken up with the for his work on the British spy cre playwright is offered the chance search for the mysterious woman thriller Scandal. Promoted as 'a to direct the performance of his lat undertaken by Beethoven's protege, passionate romantic epic' it has all est work. It turns out that a Mafia Anton Schindler (Jcroen Krabbe). the usual clements of films that heavy has provided the money for Schindler's search leads us claim epic status: beautiful scenery, the show on the condition that his through the reminiscences of a full (the Scottish Highlands are wonder good-time girlfriend has a part in the ensemble of lovers, and thus a pic fully photographed by Karl Walter production. One of his hit-m en ture of Beethoven's life emerges: the Lindcnlau) a booming soundtrack, accompanies her to rehearsal as a early unfavourable comparison s with and attractive stars. Unfortunately body guard and, though he introduc Moza rt, the violent family, as well it ends up a bit like The Last of the es himself by threatening to punch as the man's development into great Mohicans in kilts- simply an ex the playwright's head in, he ends up composer and pianist. But central to cuse for Jessica Lange (Mary Mac rewriting the play and turning it into the film is Beethoven's personal Gregor) and Liam Neeson (Ro b Roy VmuME 5 N uM~ER 4 • EUREKA STREET 51 MacGregor) to gaze into each other's Somehow I couldn't help think eyes. ing about that as the thin plot un Neeson lacks charisma as Rob rolled. Would Diego get to put on a Roy, the good man wronged by the daring exhibition of quasi-religious corrupt Marquis of Montrose (John sculpture or would the censors pre Hurt ), and there is little on-screen vent it? (At the time this was set the chemistry between N eeson and Robert Mapplethorpe furore was Lange . The s upport cast, which go ing on in the land of the free.)Wou ld includes Eric Stolz (Alan MacDon David get laid? And by whom? That's ald) is ge nerally strong, with the high •bout it. /A - Juli•tt< Hugh'" light of the film a stand-out perform ance by Tim Roth as the thoroughly despicable Archibald Cunningham. At 135 minutes, Rob Roy is a long film, even by today's standards. rtl .d But despite the predi ctable story, it F ore1gn a1 keeps you involved enough for it to Stat e of Siege, dir. Costa-Gavras be an enjoyabl e watch. It will un (' Movie Legends', SBS TV, 12 May at doubtedly be a box office, if not a 9.30pm). This 1973 film is not quite critical, success. -Tim Stoney the movie legend that Costa-Gavras' most famous work, Z (1969), has become, but in some ways it is more interesting. The two films share an Cliche parfait actor, Yves Montand, and a theme Stwwberry And Chocolate, dir. the suppression of dissent by right Tomas Gutierrez Alea (independent wing governments-but the setting cinemas). This Cuban movie may has moved from a European country have won awards, and been nomi thati clea rl yGreecc underthecolo nated for an Oscar, but it's hard tO ncls to a Latin American country see why. T he story concerns itself that is clearly Urugua y at the time of with stereotypes and drea rily correct the T upamaros urban guerrilla move politics. Diego, the gay artlover, lives m ent, in the ea rly '70s. in a bower-bird heap of referents Montand plays an American aid toward a nostalgic past and even worker who is actually a CIA agent; pl ays Callas, (o pera's Judy Garland) hi s 'a id ' am ounts to instructing the to w in the affections of David, the police forces of rcgi mes considered stereotypical yo ung macho revolu favo urable to American interests in tionary. To complete the full range the finer points of torture and inter of cl iches add N ancy, a suicidal tart rogation, and Stale of Siege traces with a golden hea rt. the steps that lead to his kidnapping This is an annoying movie. There and execution by yo ung revolution may well be problems with living in aries. The indictment of US policy Cuba, but kicking a socialist repub in Latin America at the height of the lic when it's clown is a bit too easy Cold War is thorough and persua these da ys. And of course we all sive, but this film also revea ls the Please send two free copies of know that in the West, gays arc never growth in fascination with the U A discriminated against, people never itself that marked Costa-Gavra s' lat Eureka StreeL to: lose their jobs for politica l reasons er career. and art is never attacked by philis T hat fascination extended to Name ...... tine critics- o r so this movie seems American cinema as well as Ameri to think. But presumably Cuba is can politics, and fans of Citizen I 52 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1995 Musrc: 2 MARK SKULLEY Rocl< of ages I T''""N "'" THAT YOU AR>NOT "'II y spirit. (Admission to Pearl Jam was $35, wrinkles her nose and blows away the famous unless you are known by your compared with $94 or $66for the Stones.) smoke. The crowd sings along: 'I can't first name, like the members of the It's best to skip the Stones' only get no ... hey, hey, hey .. . that's what I famous rock 'n' roll band from Liverpool. press conference in Australia, where one say .. .' The Rolling Stones released their attendee took it upon himself, on behalf By now the shorter people are first British single in June 1963. Mick of all present, to thank the band for 32 decidely mutinous. The girl sits down, Jagger and Keith Richard, now both 51, years of great rock 'n' roll. The four as do her mum and dad. Others squeeze Charlie Watts, 58, and Ronnie Wood, Stones were cheerful and alert, albeit across to the aisles, getting a better view 48, are still at it. In 1974 Wood had with faces that could double for topo but having to stand their ground with replaced Mick Taylor, who had joined graphical maps of the Rift Valley. The security guards over the course of the after Brian Jones died in 1969, aged 27. scenes backstage at their shows may no evening. Ba ss player Bill Wyman, 59, has retired. longer resemble Fellini's Satyricon- as The Stones play some acoustic num En route to being famous, the Stones' one observer of their 1973 Melbourne bers, such as Sweet Virginia and Angie. youthful crush on black American mu concert saw it- but it's not Dad's Army, Three average newish songs follow, be sic was tern pered by playing hundreds of either. fore Miss You and H onky Tonk Wom an . live shows. They first toured Australia Their first Australian concert was Keith sings two ho-hum songs, instead in 1965, sharing the bill with Roy Orbi on a clear night before about 55,000 of his signature tune Happy, and some son and playing 16 shows in eight days people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. of the audience take a toilet break. (som etimes an afternoon show and two My friends and I were stiffed on our pre Sympathy for the Devil is greeted by in the evening.) They played 11 shows in booked tickets and ended up on the another gust of marijuana. The band New Zealand in eight days, before MCG's playing surface, about five kicks into Start Me Up, and the girl in returning for another four days and sev rows from the back, but it was front finally stands on her chair, resting en gigs in Australia, and one more played better than being outside the her arms on her mum and dad's shoul in a badminton stadium in Singapore. stadium. ders. A woman behind me reaches and This year, the Stones' bigger-than pushes the kid square in the middle of Ben-Bur visit to Au tralia began with BEFORE THECONCERT, everybody seems her back, yelling 'Siddown'. two chartered 747s, a road crew of 250 to be eating Drumstick icecreams. A Jagger adapts the lyrics of Brown and eight supporting musicians. They teenage girl seated directly in front of us Sugar to 'How come you dance so good, had a 1.5 million-watt sound system is reading a paperback called The Ghosts just like a young MAN should?' but the and a light show that could allegedly Who Went to School. She was with her song also features camera shots taken shine to the Sea of Tranquillity, plus family: mum, dad, a somewhat older from between the legs of the band's pyrotechnics and huge inflatables of brother and his mate. The family is statuesque, black backing- vocalist, Lisa everybody fr om Shiva to Elvis. This busily chewing through several packets Fischer. An encore of [u m ping Tack Flash Voodoo Lounge tour will play to 6. 1 of snakes and other assorted lollies. follows, plus fireworks. million people before ending in Europe Two skinny blokes in Mick Jagger Therein lay the rub for m e, a Stones in August, a year after it began. masks dance around the strip of grass fan . What was I watching, the band or The band arrived in Australia amid between the rows of plastic chairs and the video in m ega-stereo plus fi reworks? an outbreak of groove-mania am ong the grandstands. Finally, a countdown Sure, the band m embers m ade the occa public fi gures, especially politicians. of lights and everybody stands up. The sional run along the wings of the 90- Kim Beazley waxed lyrical on the AB C's Stones break into an oldie, Not Fade m etre stage, and the sound was pump Radio JJJ about Pearl Jam, and funky Away. I am about fi ve fee t 10 inches, ing, especially from replacem ent bass Tim Fischer rapped about Silverchair, a and can at least see the stage. Anyone player Dary 1 Jones and veteran sax player teenage rock band from N ewcastle, less than five feet six can see bugger all, Bobby Keys. NSW. except the top of the giant video screen. To get their message across, the band The Stones also arrived aft er an ex The Stones play Tumblin' Dice, All had to m ake bigger gestures, to be them ample of rock 'n' roll m ayhem, like Over Now and Live With Me, plus new selves only m ore so. One should not what used to happen at their concerts. stuff which stands up OK, like You Got attend stadium rock, and then complain T housands of kids jumped the fe nce to MeRockin' and Sparks Will Fly. Uncan about it being stadium rock. This concert see Pearl Jam at Melbourne's Myer Mu nily, a cloud of marijuana smoke wafts was good, fo r what it was. • sic Bowl and, to paraphrase another up immediately aft er the band launches Mark Skulley is a reporter with The Seattle band, Nirvana, it smelt like teen into Satisfaction. The girl in front Sydney Morning Herald. VOLUME 5 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 53 BRIEJ;,..., Crime pays, with interest ~ /CHEATS NEV>R eROSPm,' intoned constant reminder that it is men like these who made the infant-school teachers of our (real or men like Liddy possible. invented) memories. Like most bits of But for Liddy, there is no need to dissemble, even in RAY CASSIN homespun moralising, the line turned admission of guilt. Indeed, he rarely seems to think there out to be partly true and partly false, is any guilt to admit, because for this man all moral ques though true in ways that do not touch what is conven tions eventually become technical questions. Asked tionally regarded as prosperity. Cheats clearly become about how money donated to Nixon's campaign fund was rich, and often remain beyond the reach of the law, plot diverted to the Watergate burglars to buy their silence, ting new careers for themselves in places like Majorca. he begins with a potted history of how the FBI, the CIA But they take on the paranoid lives of fugitives, and may and other agencies usually look after employees who have even find themselves reduced to swapping insults with been apprehended in illegal covert operations: 'Well, nor the likes of Andrew Denton as he tries to hire a bounty mally bail would be provided, their families would be hunter to snatch them from places where proper Aussie looked after ... '. Thank you, Gordon. If Dean or Magrud policepersons may not go. There are many kinds of deg er had given such a speech, it would be an attempt to radation, but being afraid of Denton must be even more evade the point at issue, but one soon realises that Liddy humiliating than having to pretend to be a wheelchair is actually fascinated by details and procedures. Choose ridden invalid, complete with silly oxygen mask and a your goal, and he will find the means to get you there. hairstyle reminiscent of the dying Howard Hughes. Who better to hire when you're the government and you Christopher Skase is a home-grown cheat who has want someone to break the law on your behalf? Some prospered financially while transmogrifying into some one smart enough not to get caught, no doubt, but neither thing not always recognisably human. But what of H. Liddy nor his bosses ever seemed to be that smart, which Gordon Liddy, sometime FBI agent, co-architect of the presumably is why John Dean eventually decided to give Watergate break-in and now talkback radio host with an the game away, testifying against himself and the rest of estimated audience of eight million? Liddy dominates the president's men. the rogues' gallery of talking heads who can be seen in A curious feature of all this is that Liddy, at the the BBC's five-part Watergate series, screened in Aus bottom of the morass, turns out to be the cheat who most tralia on The Big Picture (ABC, Thursdays, 9.30pm). As resembles the man at the top, Richard Nixon. In one of 'intelligence chief' for the wonderfully named CREEP (the the hitherto unseen interviews with David Frost that Committee for Re-Election of the President), Liddy was Nixon recorded after his resignation (and whose inclu perhaps not the worst villain in the saga of the Water sion in The Big Picture series is a coup for the producers), ga te break-in and its cover-up. Those who gave the orders, Tricky Dick tells us about the decision to form a White either in CREEP (campaign director and ex-Attorney House 'special investigations unit' that, if necessary, General John Mitchell, and his deputy, Jeb Stuart would be prepared to break the law to obtain politically Magruder) or in the White House (chief of staff Bob Hal useful information. Because the president had decided deman, domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, special coun that such illegal activities might be necessary, Nixon sel John Dean, Richard Nixon himself), all merit a greater says, they would 'really' be legal after all. It is as portion of blame for the events themselves. But by the frank a justification of autocratic government Skase test it is Liddy who fascinates. His bosses, dead as anything ever enunciated by Louis XIV. (Nixon, Mitchell) or alive (the rest), appear never to have become less venal than we remember them to have been. A POSTSCRIPT. The kinds of villainy that the Water But Liddy! Here is the creature Viktor Frankenstein gate series documents are, for the most part, not time couldn't make, full of bombast and empty of pity; here is bound. Substitute some other historical context for that a sort of Nietzschean joke, someone who has shed the of America embroiled in the Vietnam War, and one could human condition to become not the Overman but an imagine the same things happening again. But one of the Underman; here is a cheat who is living proof that vice incidents in the story of the cover-up is unlikely to be is its own reward. repeated by future masters of deceit. The saddest figure And how the small screen loves him. The technique in the whole story is surely Martha Mitchell, wife of John: is simple and familiar, no great innovations required. Just when the conspirators feared that she would say too much cut from one contrite talking head to another, then use to the press, John Mitchell put out the word that she was the preposterously unrepentant Liddy to remind the view 'under a lot of stress'. In other words, reporters should er that these bland, middle-aged men in their hacking not take too seriously the things being said by a hysterical jackets and leather armchairs (or in Magruder's case, in won1an. his minister's robes and celebrant's chair) were responsi In 19 74 the media accepted that line and backed off. ble for enormous abuses of public trust. A Dean or a In 1995, I doubt that any budding John Mitchell would Magruder, ruling-class boys who have spent their whole even have the courage to utter it. • lives striving to be decorous in manner and mellifluous of speech, would almost be appealing were it not for the Ray Cassin is a Eureka Street staff writer. 54 EUREKA STREET • MAv 1995 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 33, May 1995 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS 1 Foolishly pursuing, I replace you joining in the revolt. (8) 5 That's m e personally, curiously flimsy when the 'ego' begins to replace the 'I'. (6) 10 Will the republic do without him, or, in organised revenge, roar long and loud ? (8,7) 11 Having been instructed initially, now I rise via a new ascent to complete blessedness. (7) 12 Inscribed the musical symbols to indicate agreement abou t the London gallery. (7) 13 Som ehow it names a word that enlivens. (8) 15 Pity me when I leave in distress to face the void. (5) 18 Finished model now open for viewing. (5) 20 Hard work to attempt to follow the river. (8) 23 Joker returns to the m onarch, goggling like a galoot. (7) 25 Rifle u sed in salute to Melbourne Cup winner. (7) 26 The practice of philanthropy? It's part of a fallible 4th century heresy. (15) 27 A kind of United Nations dart aimed at the cold treeless north. (6) 28 Some news of Italian river is on Ed's desk. It's badly polluted. (8) Solution to Crossword no. 32, April 1995 DOWN 1 It's imperative to drive over Northern Territory countryside. (6) 2 Run always to points round North Carolina. It shows respect. (9) 3 Cynical derision ? I am crass about using it. (7) 4 One soon to go up to a northern beach resort. (5) 6 Madly get zany in a party on the river. (7) 7 Feel remorse, cutting head off bird. (5) 8 Autumn mornings or afternoons-in Maine, perhaps. (4,4) 9 Was anguished when he said, 'Gone Crazy '' (8) 14 I som ewhat foolishly leg it at a cracking pace to folow the car hard upon! (8) 16 Division a step backwards? No, it doubles the rap! (9) 17 Pines over latest tip- unlikely to win' (4,4) 19 Not so substantial as a solvent! (7) 21 Sounds as if Knight, with satisfactory grade, will outdo his rivals, perhaps. (7) 22 I obj ect indeed to be so regarded. (6) 24 Will she go up now about mother? (5) 25 The dog I love is a fascinating obj ect. (5) EUR[-KA SJR[-EJ subscription form Please send me Eureka Street: for one year ($45 for 10 issues, or $40 cone. D for two years D for pensioners, students and unemployed.) ($80, or $75 cone.) N atne ...... Address ...... Postcode ...... Country ...... Tel...... Date ...... Enc. chq/ money ord er D Or debit: Bankcard D Visacard D Mastercard D Card no: 1'---'-_l_-'---'--'--'---'-____J._-'----'---'--'-_j_--'--'-_J Carel expiry date ...... Signature ...... 'You m ean you forgot to subscribe Lo Eureka Street! " Mailing List: I would like you to remove my name from the mailing D list when it is used for outside advertising purposes. 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