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THE Backlash? Balderdash! m CATECHISM ....w =E CoNTENTS 30 A DRUG ON THE MARKET 4 Jon Greenaway questions drug research; COMMENT Michael McGirr visits the dispensary. 6 33 LETTERS OBITUARY Michael McKernan remembers Lt-Col 8 Ralph Hanner. PUTTING HEAT ON THE CES David de Carvalho looks at competition. 34 THE GOOD LIFE This month's cover 9 Steven Tudor interviews Raimond Gaita. shows Pentridge Prison, CAPITAL LETTER Melbourne, its grim 42 10 BOOKS exterior long a symbol of FIGURING THE FUTURE Margaret Coffey reviews Penelope Leach Victorian penal attitudes. Frank Stilwell talks to Jon Greenaway on child care; Michael Smith considers The privatisation of about the Budget and White Paper. Peter Singer's How are we to live~ (p.43); prisons may put a coat of Peter Pierce marvels at Australian Under paint on the bluestone 12 world Slang and Cadet Language (p46); MAKING CRIME PAY Paul Ormonde looks at Race Mathews' and money in the State Peter Norden questions the privatising of history of the Australian Fabians (p47); coffers; but are private Australian prisons. Andrew Hamilton briefly commends Ca owners appropriate agents tholicism (pSO). of punishment and 15 rehabilitation? A QUESTION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS 48 Moira Rayner argues a case. POETRY See Making Crime Pay, Andrew Bullen discusses the poetry of by Peter Norden, P12. 16 Martin Johnston. INSIDE KOREA Cover photograph by Trevor Hay reports from Korea. 51 Bill Thomas. OPERA 20 Jim Davidson has been to see Orphee et THE SCIENCE OUTLOOK Eurydice and Idomeneo. Adrienne Clarke, head of the CSIRO, talks to Margaret Simons. 52 THEATRE 23 Geoffrey Milne goes to Circus Oz. Photographs pp4, 12- 13, 20-22, ARCHIMEDES 3 1, 46 by Bill Thomas. Photograph p5 by Mark Strizic. 54 Cartoons ppl0-11, 57 by Dean Moore. 24 FLASH IN THE PAN Photograph p33 by Andrew Stark. SPORTING LIFE Reviews of the films Sirens; Four Wed Photographs pp34, 38-39 by Andrew Hamilton is back on his bike. dings and a Funeral; Widows Peak; No Emmanuel Santos. Photograph 52 by Panch Hawkes. Worries; The Lover; Th e Baby of Macon; 26 plus Ray Cassin reporting from Cannes. Eureka Street magazine LAITY IN THE AISLES Jesuit Publications Muriel Porter asks whether Anglicanism 58 PO Box 553 is becoming too centralised. ON SPEC Richmond VIC 3 121 Tell03)427 731 1 Fax 103)428 4450 29 59 QUIXOTE SPECIFIC LEVITY EUAI:-KA STAI:-B CoMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology Facing up Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser CoMMCRC>AC NeWS bm,dcast Production editor A in late May included as its third 'top Ray Cassin story' for Su nday evening an item Consulting editor about celebrities gathering at a ham Michael McGirr SJ burger chain restaurant to raise mon Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway ey for a worthy cause. The broadcast Production assistants: J. Ben Boonen CFC, was sponsored by the same chain res John Doyle SJ, Juli ette Hughes, taurant. Such advertising-as-news has Siobhan Jackson, Chris Jenkins SJ. become so common that it escapes re Contributing editors mark more often than not. So do the Adelaide: Frances Browne IBVM increasing number of imported, syndi Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ cated feature articles that fill up the Darwin: Margaret Palmer space Australian dailies used to devote Perth: Dean Moore Sydney: Edmund Campion Andrew Riemer to commentary from informed local Gerard Wind,sor. ' journalists and specialists in particu European correspondent: Damien Simonis lar fields. What results is confusion US correspondent: Thomas H. Stahel SJ about the nature and role of news-re porting, second rate and often Editorial board irrelevant journalism and the homo Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, genisation of information. Independent publications can Madeline Duckett RSM Trevor Hales Kevin McDonald, Joan Nowotny mv~, fight back. EurelAustralia Post Print Post approved Moira Rayner has extensive expe pp349 I 8 1/00314 :-----, rience of the law, human rights and is published ten tin1es a year equal opportunity legislation, deriving by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, from her own practice and from work 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 121. in government. She writes for us on Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. social, legal and ethical issues. Printed by Doran Printing, Jack Waterford is living proof that 4 Commercial Road, Highett VIC 3 190. a journalist can live in Canberra with © Jesuit Publications 1993 out merging with the mob. He com Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and bines a broad news grasp with an fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by a unrivalled depth of knowledge of the stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for public service and Aboriginal affairs.• permission to reprint material from the magazine Photographs of Paul Chadwick, Kerryn should be addressed in writing to: The editor, Goldsworthy and Moira Rayner by Bill Etnel 4 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 C oMMENT 'Every mile is two in winter' • •• The headline quotation is one of the I N TH< RUSH m """ V OLUME 4 N UMilER 5 • EUREKA STREET 5 L ETTERS Jun•l, c/ 'ilrct:t welcome~ lcttns principalitatem necesse est omnem Fraternal trom its t"C 6 EUREKA STREET • J UNE-JULY 1994 other church of apostolic foundation. witness to the apostolic tradition ', that by this phrase the Catechism does not As ).F. McCue observed, in word s it provided other churche with an intend a reference to the Authority of quoted by Abramowski, 'Rome is in 'autonomously-operating standard' dif Rome over other churches he should troduced as an exemplar: it is impor ferent from or superior to their control follow up the Catechism 's footnote tant not because it possesses anything of the truth of doctrine through the reference to the first Vatica n Council, that other churches do not possess, but succession-list of any other church of which had quoted our Ircnacan pas because it possesses in a cl ear and apostoli c foundati on. Ircnaeus is not sage in support of the view that ' who decisive way what any true church 'making a claim for the uniquely au ever succeeds to the chair of Pater must possess: public transmission of thoritative role of the church of Rom e obtains, by the institution of Christ teaching through the bishops back to among all the other churches', and he himself, the primacy of Peter over the the apostles ... In theory, any of the did not intend 'to establi sh a special whole church'. Surely Fr Dowel ha s not apostolic churches could serve as a authority for one particular church, forgotten the exceedingly dim view doctrinal standard . Rome, because it is the Roman'. He was simply doing what taken by the same Council of anyone so i m pressi vel y apostolic and beca usc he said he would do-taking a short so temcrarious as to assert that 'bless of its cosmopolitan character and its cut. ed Peter the apostle was not appointed extensive dealings with others, is a It is ironic that we could have been by Christ the lord as prince of all the most convenient standard' (Theologi spared so much tedium if only Irenae apostles and visible head of the whole cal Studies 25 ( 1964) 177 f). us had not chosen to abbreviate his church militant; or that it was a prim Both Irenacus and his opponents argument in order to spare us just a acy of honour only and not one of true sought to establish the amhenticity of little. It is even more ironic that Irc and proper ju risdi ction that he directly their teachings by claiming that these naeus, who rebuked a Roman bishop and immediately received from our had been handed on in succession from for bullying the apostolic churches of lord Jesus Christ himself', or that 'the the apostles. They could not both be Asia in regard to the date of Easter, Roman pontiff is not the successor of right. To settle the issue, Irena eus pro should continue to be misrepresented blessed Peter in his primacy'? posed that any doctrine handed on by as a witness to Roman primacy, and Dennis Minns OP the apostles to their successors would should, yet again, be roped in to th e Clayton, VI C surely still be taught in the churches 'long process of development in self founded by the apo tlcs. As the succes understanding whereby the Church has Out cold sion lists of several churches show gradually articulated her faith in the them to have been fo unded by the universa l primacy and jurisdi ction and From David Holdcroft apostles, all we need to do is to identify the infallible teaching authority exer It is with some disquiet that I those churches and ask whether what cised by the Bishop of Rome'. For the note the imminent closure in Mel is taught in them is in agreement with bourne of the Saint Vincent de Paul the hereti cs or with Irenacus. But, 'be Society's Ozanam House Crisis Acco cause it would be extremely tedious in modati on for men, pending an 18- a book such as this to spell out the month redevelopment. My disquiet succession lists of all the churches' stem s fro m the fact that this event, Ircnacus contents himself with the coming as it does on the heels of the succession list of one church only, the closure of Gordon Hou se (in favour of church of Rome, for if it is true that the several smaller works-a crisis facili authentic apostolic faith will be found ty for men is planned to open in Au in any church of apostolic fo undation, gust ), and at the beginning of winter, then surely it will be found in this whole point of Ircnacus' argun'lent is a time when the usc of such places ris church, established not by one but by that apostoli c tradition does not and es, has so far evaded any coverage in two apostles. There is then no need to cannot develop. If it could, the gnos the print media. set out the succession lists of other tics would have been home and hosed; Many of the services provided by apostolic churches, because if they are any difference between their teaching Ozanam House will remain open dur apostolic what they teach must be in and that of the churches could be put ing the time of redevelopment. How agreem ent with what is taught in down to development. As W. Wiga n ever 1 question the adequacy of Rome. The necessity is not one of Harvey put it so m emorably, Irenaeus transferring medi cal and accomoda moral obligation, but of logic. 'There made no reserve 'in favour of any the tion facilities to the Salva tion Army's are in fact, other apostolic churches, ory of development. If ever we find any Gill Memori al Hostel, an aged facility and by reason of thi they cannot have trace of this dangerous delusion in itself earmarked for rel ocation. In m y any other kind of relationship with the Christian antiquity, it is uniformly experience, not everybody who stays apostolic church of Rome than agree the plea of heresy'. at Ozanam House would be suited to ment with it' (Abramowski). 'Potenti Fr Dowel suggests that I have im The Gill Hostel, and vice versa. orem principalitatem' does not refer posed upon the Catechism a claim for Is there a place in the public are to 'pre-eminent leadership' but to 'more the a utho rity of Rom e over other na for debate over some of the ques exccllc n t origin '-hika nOteran churches which the Catechism docs tions invo lved in the redevelopment archen-(i.e. two apostles, famous for not m ake. However when quoting of Ozanam House and, more generally, their martyrdom, rather than one). 'what is actually found there', Fr Dowel our co mmunity's responsi hili ty to, In no sense whatever can these coyly omits the end of the sentence: and the nature of its care towards, the word s be taken to mea n that the Ro 'the C hurch of Rome "which presides homeless? David Hold croft man church 'is the first and decisive in charity"'. If Fr Dowel supposes that Abbotsford, VI C V OLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 7 COMMENT D AVID DE CARVALHO Putting heat on the CES L EWHIT EPAPER PLAN TO MAKE use of their clients who are placed in of community and private agencies unsubsidised jobs) and a proportion to help the CES find jobs for the of their payment could be dependent unemployed is a very good idea- in on the agency achieving target out theory. Recent statistics revealed con1es.' that only 17 per cent of all job vacan Obviously an agency would be cies are filled by the Common wealth failing if it placed no-one in work, Employment Service. Most jobs are but if the targets are set too unreas found through n ewspapers or nably high, there will be pressure on through the informal links of fami agencies to deal only with those ly, friends, the parish, the sports club unemployed people w ho are most and neighbours. attractive to employees, that is, the Comn1Unity-based agencies, be recently retrenched, with experience. ing smaller, more user-friendly, less The longer-term unemployed and the bureaucratic, and closer to these in younger unemployed person could formal networks than the CES, may well be pushed to the back of the well provid e better and more direct queue, though new financial incen links between employers and job tives to employers to employ them seekers. Many community-based will hopefully counteract this bias. agencies already provide training and Community-based agencies who labour-market programs like take up this task must be able to SkillShare and Job Clubs, and would negotiate reasonable and fl exible be keen to participate in the final contracts with Mr Crean's depart step of actually finding work for the ment, so that they can give the nec people they have trained. essary time and individual attention This is where the partial privati to the most disadvantaged job sation of government functions can seekers. • succeed, because it is offering genu ine choice to unemployed people David de Carvalho is a Social Policy about whom they can approach for Officer with the Good Shepherd assistance in finding work. It is also Youth and Family Service. a neat instance of the principle of subsidiarity put into practice: the state allowing communities to carry Abbotsford Cycles out those functions which they do best and which properly belong to Please send two free copies of We can look after your bicycle, from them. a new tube to a full service and Eurelza Street to: In Victoria, this kind of program repaint. is already under way. The Kennett We can help you to make cycling Name ...... government has funded 39 commu more comfortable, convenient and nity-based agencies to the tune of reliable. Address ...... $10m this year to h elp match the We sell Australian-made Pro-tour unemployed with local employers bicycles, Velocity aluminium rims, and the bodies which provide train Atom and Headway helmets, and ing. It seem s the Federal Labor Gov Netti clothing...... Postcode ...... ernm ent is following the Victorian 299 johnston Street example. Abbotsford, VIC 3067 There is, however, one potential My name is ...... Telephone 41 7 4022 danger that could adversely affect this initiative: it involves the way in Address ...... which the private agencies are fund ed. The White Paper states that: 'con ...... Postcode ...... tracts with agencies could specify the outcomes they are expected to Tel...... achieve (in terms of the proportion 8 EUREKA STREET • JUNE- JULY 1994 Initiating Carmen I ,G'AHAM R' HAWWN H"Abo VoLUME 4 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 9 THE N ATION Figuring the future The Budget and White Paper on unemployment show that there is a will to shift direction. Jon Greenaw ay asked Frank Stilwell about the way the Govemment has gone about policy change. R ALPH WILLIS TRUMPETED THE FACT that we are one Is the orthodox line of deficit reduction still contml- of the lowest-taxed countries in the OECD: does this ling government thinl 10 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 dustry in ways that are both job-creating and consist statements followed by a more modest exercise in fi ent with ecological goals. nancial arrangement. That would be much more sen sible than past budgetary policy, which has It seems the Government has decided that regional subordinated those broader aspects of economic and pro;ects have to be developed on the ground. What social planning to the process of national income-ac do you think of that! counting. Regional self-help is cheap and therein lies its obvi ous appeal to the Government. What we're seeing is How exactly could a more co-ordinated economic and a commitment to regional policy without any signif social policy be extended! icant financial support. We need to place much more emphasis on ecological sustainability and social justice, as well as economic Have they forgotten the Kelty report ! efficiency. The Government, the Opposition, and The Kelty report, I thought, would be a more potent indeed all political influence. In the debate about regional policy there is organisations an interesting dualism. On the one hand, there is would claim to be IHIS \S OL\I~A.,Eolf.>l strong stress on the need for regional policy to have a seeking a balance I DOI't'T lAKe. f!>R\6E:.S- bottom-up character-to be sensitive to the needs of between those M'< ~gce V OLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 11 THE N ATION T,"TeoouCT,ON m '"'"Tm-oe"ATm ee'5oNs according to established laws, to sentence through the to Australia is a major shift in public policy, raising courts, and to punish through the withdrawal of lib crucial questions about the role of the state and the erty are invested in the crown through the democrat nature of the social contract. These questions are not, ic assent of the citizens. The administration of however, being tackled in public debate. criminal justice-and in particular, the imposition of In Australia, private prisons first appeared in punishment involving the loss of liberty-is widely Queensland, which opened the Borallan Correctional regarded as the exclusive prerogative of the crown, Centre in January 1990 and the Arthur Corrie Remand and as a core function of government. and Reception Centre in June 1992. A privately How, then, can a government hand over this au operated prison opened in Junee, New South Wales, thority to foreign-owned companies whose central in March last year, and the Victorian government has objective is to return profits to their shareholders in announced that it intends to replace Pentridge Prison the United States? Does the divesting of authority for and Fairlea Women's Prison with three privately the administration of prisons undermine the liberal operated institutions by the end of 1996. South democratic system of government? Australia and Western Australia are also considering In a democracy, the citizens give authority to the the introduction of privately-operated prisons. crown as part of an agreed social contract. They rec The private-prison industry began in the United ognise the crown's authority, through its official rep States, but fewer than one per cent of that country's resentatives, in the formulation, implementation and prisons are privately operated. The two American upholding of laws. The private-prison movement, owned companies which are introducing private pris however, challenges us to consider whether core func ons to Australia, however, already control nine per tions of the state, such as the punishment and incar cent of Australian prisons, and if the Victorian ceration of citizens, can be divested to private proposal goes ahead this will leap to more than 20 per authorities. The American Bar Association expressed cent. the same concerns in a resolution it adopted when Four issues are central to a debate on private pris the push for private prisons was gaining momentum ons: the responsibility of the state as the dispenser of in the United States in 1986: 'the American Bar Asso punitive sanctions; the nature of the social contract; ciation urges that jurisdictions that are considering the record of the private companies which are ten the privatisation of prisons and jails not proceed to so dering for prison contracts; and the public accounta contract until the complex constitutional, bility and independent monitoring of successful statutory, and contractual issues are devel- renderers. Such questions should take priority over oped and resolved.' the question of economic savings-a consideration ABOVE: Melbourne's that, unfortunately, tends to determine much of the sUPI'ORTERS OF PRIVATE PR ISONS in Australia have ar Pentridge, a 150 year- formulation of social policy in Australia today. gued that in establishing prisons run by private firms old maximum the state has not divested its authority to impose pun secmity prison with Government responsibility ishment, but only delegated its responsibility for the a per capita annual and the themy of social contract delivery of the punishment. They suggest that con operating cost of The introduction of privately-operated prisons is re tracting out any government service does not deny $53,443. defining the obligations of the state to its citizens. the government's responsibility or authority to pro The authority to legislate through Parliament, to judge vide such a public service, but only removes the gov- Photo: Bill Thomas 12 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 crnment's monopoly over the im for i nves tmen ts in the Victorian private-prison mediate delivery of that service. market. This argument appears reason ACM, which operates in partnership with Thiess able when applied to such such serv Contractors and ADT Security, is largely owned by ices as the provision of transport, its Florida-based American affiliate, the Wackenhut water, gas and electricity, education Corporation . Wackcnhut, established in 1954, has and health services. When applied more than 45,000 employees, annual revenues of more to uch core functions of the state than $500 million and assets of more than $150 mil as depriving citizens of their liber lion. The corporation spcciali es in providing indus ty, however, there arc more complex trial security and other protective services for factors to be considered. government, business and industry. Although its Private companies running Juncc prison has not yet attracted significant criti ,_ . prisons rely on the organised use of cism, the same cannot be said of its Arthur Corrie ,.. force to control the movement and Remand Centre in Brisbane. In the past two years behaviour of prisoners. Not only do ~- .. -:~~, there have been six suicides in the remand centre, < ;t, they exercise control over the move and four major disturbances during which staff have ment of prisoners, acting on behalf had to usc tear gas to regain control. of the state, but they are constantly CCA's parent company, the Corrections Corpo called upon to make administrative ration of America, concentrates solely on the devel decisions that amount to the imposition of punish opment and management of prisons. Founded in 1983, ment. Each day, private-prison administrators in the company now operates more than 20 correction Queensland and New South Wales make decisions al facilities in the US, most of them minimum and about placing inmates in separate confinement, about medium-security institutions. Its hca !quar- visits from family members, about access to prison ters arc in Tennessee. In Australia, CCA has industry and prison programs, and about communi been accused of attempting to stifle public cation with the outside community through telephone debate about the private prison movement In Australia, contact. by thrca tening legal action against people These administrators can lay charges against a who criticise its operations. the Corrections prisoner for breaches of prison discipline, hear such The company's legal representatives, charges and impose punishment through the exercise Lyons of Brisbane, suggest that such criti Corporation of of disciplinary powers. Private-prison officers exercise cism defames their client by harming its discretionary powers that may affect the classifica corporate reputation. A writ alleging defa America (CCA) tion of inmates to other prisons, the allocation of re mation has been issued against a Queensland missions for good behaviour, assessment of the Parole academic, Paul Moyle, and a letter threaten has been accused Board, and the eventual release da tc of the prisoner. ing such action has been sent to a Melbourne of attempting Purists may be able to distinguish between the allo lawyer, Amanda George. The letter asked cation of punishment by state officials and the deliv George to cease such criticism and to make to stifle public ery of that punishment by prison officials, but the a public retraction of comments she had al day-to-day operation of a prison tends to cloud this ready made. debate about distinction. So after only four years of private-pris The concept of privatisation is not new, for there on operations in Australia- a period during the private prison is a long history of involvement of church and non which it might have been expected that the profit organisations in the rehabilitation of criminal firms involved would want to allay fears movement offenders. The issues raised by private involvement there arc signs of trouble that should alert arc more crucial, however, when the organisations the community. by threatening seeking to take over the operation of correctional in stitutions operate on a 'for profit' basis. Do private prisons offer an economic advan- legal action tage! The nature and performance Proponents of private prisons have some- against people who of 'for profit' organisations times u sed misleading cost comparisons There are two main players in the private-prisons with government-run institutions. In March, Criticise its market in Australia: Australasian Correctional Man the chairman of the Victorian government's agement (ACM), and the Corrections Corporation of corrections committee, Ross Smith, was re- operations. Australia (CCA). ACM operates the Arthur Corrie ported as saying that the cost of keeping a Remand Centre in Brisbane and the 600-bed medium prisoner for a year at Pentridge was 'about security prison in Junee. CCA, forming a consortium $80,000' (Herald Sun, 21 /3/94). He compared this with with Wormald Security and Holland Constructions, the $47,000 cost of keeping a prisoner at Queensland's runs the medium-security Borallan Centre, for 244 Borallan Centre, and suggested that 'the main differ inmates, in Brisbane. Both companies arc competing ence is that Borallan is run by private enterprise'. VOLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 13 Pentridge is a maximum-security prison that is Setting of standards almost 150 years old. The Victorian Office of Correc and accountability to the community tions' figures indicate that its per capita annual oper The privatisation of prisons does have its attractions: ating cost is $53,443. Borallan is a m edium security it offers the possibility of prison reform through the prison built in the past few years. building of new prisons, and an effective way of com It is these factors, rather than management by bating the resistance of prison officers' unions to such private or public enterprise, which make the crucial reforms. Queensland's two privately-operated correc difference in operating costs, and loose arguments that tional facilities were developed in the face of resist ignore such factors raise serious questions about the ance to change by public service unions, but the Victorian government's deliberations on the future government there failed to take full advantage of the of corrections. reform possibilities. At this early stage it is almost impossible to make The bargaining power of the state is at its high cost comparisons between privately-operated prisons est during the crucial period of contractual and government-run institutions in Australia, yet the negotiation, when demands can be made in terms of Victorian corrections committee intends to privatise standards required for day-to-day prison operations. 40 per cent of prison beds within two years. It is to be hoped that the Victorian government will Real comparisons need to be conducted over time take full advantage of such reform possibilities, if it and between similar institutions. Estimates of the cost proceeds with plans for privately-operated of private prisons must also take into account the prisons. hidden costs to government of corporate services, and the monitoring of private-prison contracts. Even in V ICTORIA's PLANS ENVISAGE THE REPLACEMENT of Pen the US it seems that there is no reliable evidence to tridge with two large private prisons, one maximum suggest that private-prison operations are more cost security and one medium-security, and a further effective than comparable facilities run by govern maximum-security women's prison to replace Fair m ent agencies. lea. Nowhere in the world have we seen such replace The major commentators suggest that the only m ent of maximum-security facilities by the private way of cutting the cost of prison operations is by us sector. The Victorian government is certainly jump ing fewer resources, or paying less for the resources ing in at the deep end, and many would say that it used. Where costs savings have been noted in the US, should learn to swim first. Few Victorians would like it is because private-prison contractors have paid low to see Pentridge remain, except perhaps as a muse er wages or have provided fewer benefits to their em um, and it is clear that the old prison culture which ployees than have government agencies. And Pentridge represents must be destroyed if the prison America's prison context is dramatically different system is to protect the community effectively. from Australia's-it has a prison population of 1.2 But could this not be achieved through a change million, with almost one in 200 citizens in management style and training of staff? A predis being held in custody. position towards the privatisation of state instrumen talities appears to be shaping public social policy W ITHOUT ANY DROP I N CRIME RATES, the number of around Australia, as well as a desire to cut costs; but Americans in prison has doubled since 1980 and tre one wonders whether the important philosophical ai1d bled since 1970. ethical questions have been properly considered.' Paul Johnson, former chairperson of the American Bar Should the crown delegate its power to deprive Association's Young Lawyers Division, declared his citizens of their liberty to private firms whose major opposition to private prisons because it was inappro interest lies in sending profits back to the US? Al priate to operate prisons for profit: the profit motive though important questions are still being asked about provides no incentive to reduce overcrowding, and no the public accountability of state prison authorities, incentive to deal with the broader problems of crim what confidence can the community have that run inal justice, including possible alternatives to impris ning prisons for profit will make them any more ac onment. Johnson summed it this way: 'The private countable? In Queensland and New South Wales, the sector is more interested in doing well than in doing requirement of commercial confidentiality has meant good.' that the contracts between the state and the private In the US, prison privatisation was an attempt to operators are not publicly available. Standards arc cut costs and to avoid the consequences of Supreme poorly defined, and the monitoring of the contracts Court supervision orders of state prison systems. It leaves a lot to be desired. has failed, as the President's Commission on Privati Many people want more reform of the Austral sation recently acknowledged. ian prison system, but they fear that privately-oper The private-prison market in the US is shrink ated prisons are not the answer. • ing, so it is not surprising that private-prison opera tors have turned their attention towards the Peter Norden SJ is the convenor of the Victorian Crim Australian and New Zealand markets. inal Justice Coalition. 14 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 A question of children's rights N om VOLUME 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 15 THE WORLD Inside Korea With world attention focusing again on Korea, it is clear how little is understood about this troubled 'hermit lzingdom'. Trevor HAY investigates the country behind the mask 0 N Gocm FRIDAY 1994, 111 the Insa-dong district the Uruguay Round, corruption and gangsterism in of Seoul, I met Brother Jean-Paul from the ccumeni- the headquarters of the Chogye Buddhist monks, the cal monastic order of Taize. We had some cold tea- parlous state of English-language teaching in high cinnamon, ginger, plums, pine nuts and persimmon- schools and the standovcr tactics of Korean taxi driv- and talked about the bitter Korean experience of con- ers. As for the general mood of the populace, I was quest and subjugation-the spirit of han, 'national aware of anti-American feeling (service personnel are bitterness which remains unresolved', as I saw it de- given constant radio and television updates on where scribed in The Korea Times. The lwyagvm ( 12- demonstrators are gathering, in much the same way stringed Korean zither) produced a sound as elegant as traffic and weather reports are given here) and I and self-effacing as the low, black-timbered tables and witnessed one alarmingly militaristic student dcm- benches of the teahouse. I discovered later, during a onstration, directed against both the South Korean concert of ancient Korean court music in Pusan that government for its failure to protect farmers and Kim there arc 'male' and 'female' versions of this i~stru- Il-sung for his nuclear antics. I found myself right in ment. the middle of this, as disciplined ranks of students Korea is very obviously a Confucian, patriarchal advanced inexorably along a very narrow shopping society, but it is the feminine, exorcistic and even street, their right arms jerking back and forth in tightly untouchable clements- like the mvdang, the shaman drilled short-arm jolts. I was simply trying to buy a healers- that seem most native. The masque dance bottle of mineral water, but I found myself propping drama, lampooning clergy and gentry, and culminat- up a young man who had suddenly reeled out of the It seems that ing in the burning of masks, seems like a folk protest, ranks, his face and shirt shockingly bloodied. I have a manifestation of the need to shed centuries of a for- no idea who hit him, but there were police assembled nations eign political and social order. But whatever happens along the roadside, carrying batons. No one seemed frequently fail to the masks after the dance, the elrama itself is Con- to take much notice of the casualty. fucian-ancl although you will find the face of Koksi The meeting with Jean-Paul was the first time in to appreciate the modest, virtuous wife, Pune the concubine, and several clays I had managed to escape the bewildering Sonbi the scholar on sale as souvenirs of indigenous cultural anonymity of the city of Seoul, with its con- the obvious culture- they are also reminders that Korea has been glomeration of Japanese-designed rotaries of streets overwhelmed by a foreign culture. and suburbs. It is not easy to find what is truly Korc- humanity Writing in 1952 in a book called Verdict in Ko- an in this city. rea, an American named Robert T. Oliver described The Japanese, who occupied Korea from 1910 about each Korea as the 'thumb of Asia'. He said 'the thumb is a until their defeat in World pictorial image for Korea if only because of its size, War II, had no compunc- other, because shape and the angle at which it projects from the great tion about destroying Ko- fist of continental Asia ... the thumb is the fulcrum rean cultural monuments, they really of the hand. If the thumb is injured, the whole hand since they did not regard loses its power. A paralysed or amputated thumb them as 'cultural' at all- want to write means a practically helpless hand. The thmnb is far Chinese and Japanese- from lovely and never the inspiration for poetic rhap- style palace architecture Gulliver's sody, but by the test of practicality, it is essential.' and religious monuments The political alignment of this thumb, and that part were mere imitations of Travels. of the fist still surprisingly called 'Manchuria' in South the real thing and native Korea, has been a dangerous preoccupation of the culture was the stuff of world's great powers throughout this century. painted savages. The current interest of China, Japan, Russia, the Now, Koreans arc United States and the UN in the Korean peninsula wrestling with a terrible problem- what to do with TradiLional mask~ was very evident in the newspapers during my trip in an enduring, ironic piece of foreign provocation squat- courtesy March and April. Although, to put it in perspective, ting incongruously in the foreground of one of its few Trevor Hay the South Korean media seemed just as interested in distinctive, historical landmarks. The National Mu- 16 EUREKA STREET • JUNE- JULY 1994 seum of Korea, formerly the Government-General of the Chinese themselves styled 'thought reform'). But the tragic the Japanese, a neoclassical Capitol erected in 1926, As a result, POWs became crucial combatants in is situated right across the north-south axis of the the propaganda war, instruments for the transmission errors and Kyongbok Royal Palace, blocking the flow of spiritu of enduring images of China in the West and of the zniscalculations of al power from Korean emperors to the people and sub West in China. POWs also fulfilled the role of the old stituting Japanese political 'castaways', sojourners in an alien territory, survivors the UN forces in authority. And after the with fantastic tales of a bizarre land, of foreign bar Japanese had left, the barity and strangeness-including cannibalism. And Korea were not th~ building became the head because of 170,000 prisoners (including approximate quarters of the joint US ly 20,000 Chinese) held in a valley on the northern fault of US USSR Commission on tip of the island of Koje-do, in the strait between Ko Korea, 1946-47. Then rea and Japan, 20 miles by sea from Pusan, armistice intelligence ... The there was the Korean War. talks stalled at Panmunjom for two years, and sol I told Jean-Paul about diers and civilians on both sides continued to die, long fault lay rather the middle-aged woman I after the battles had reached a stalemate, and there had seen begging in the was no major military obstacle to the armistice. with MacArthur's street outside the Nam I visited Kojc-do, much to the amazement of col dacmun Market. Her face leagues at Pusan National University, who could not Far East was patched red, like a rip fathom why I would ever want to go to such a place, ening strawberry, and her hands were like a melted and were unable even to tell me how to get there. C01nmand plastic comb, with a few crooked digits thrusting up There are a few fragments of the camp in the Sam at right angles from scared, waxy knuckles. I won sung shipyard town of Gohyun on the north side of in Tokyo, dered if these were napalm burns. Napalm is so much the island, which can be reached by ferry from Pusan a symbol of the Vietnam War that people forget mil in about one-and-a-half hours. Halfway up a hillside where they lions of gallons of it were dropped in Korea . Perhaps between Gohyun and the fishing port of Jangsungpo this woman was one of the multitude of refugees who on the cast coast is a barren, deserted compound and subscribed had been caught up in the terror of occupation andre a few guard towers, still bearing camouflage. In the to the view that occupation in the latter half of 1950, when whole ar town itself, directly behind the ferry terminal, are the mies surged back and forth across the north, between remains of the walls of a camp-provisions depot. These consistent sighting the smouldering ruins of Seoul and the Yalu River, are now just mysterious, alien piles standing bleakly exceeding unseen tactical boundaries, over-reaching in the middle of a children's playground. I had read so of Chinese troops and stranding themselves by turns. As a result pris much about this camp, in recent Chinese accounts, oners were taken on both sides, and the nature of the and in the yellowing pages of R.F.Price's collection of in North Korea dia Korean War changed dramatically, from a struggle to the London Daily Worker, demonstrate which ideology produced the best sol- notably the articles by not mean any diers into a struggle to demonstrate which Wilfred Burchett and Alan ideology produced the best prisoners. Winnington written in great Chinese 1953, about the atrocities, T HOU SANDS OF NoRTH KoREAN, UN and Chinese the tattooings, the at coznn1itment to troops became captives of their respective enemies, tempts by prisoners to but, perhaps for the first time in the history of war burn or hack off the in the war. As one fare, the POW camp became the crucial battle zone, criminating anti-Commu the place where the moral credibility of each side nist slogans with which officer put it, 'you would be tested in the international arena. The Chi they had allegedly been nese, for example, claimed that those prisoners who branded by Nationalist would expect to had said they never wanted to go back home had been Chinese and American coerced, tattooed with anti-communist slogans by the agents. find a few Nationalists and so on, to discourage them from opt Ultimately, 14,000 Chinese POWs opted to go to ing for repatriation. On the other hand, the UN Taiwan and 6000 were repatriated to China. There Mexicans in claimed that these prisoners mutilated themselves are a handful of English-language accounts of perse Texas '. because they wanted to make it plain they hated and cution of those who returned to China, based on re feared communism. The UN also claimed that pris cent interviews, and these days there are numerous oners who had given evidence of UN use of bacterio Chinese language publications dealing with the in logical weapons, such as canisters of infected spiders justice meted out to returning prisoners and their fam and fleas, had been 'brainwashed' (ironically one of ilies, particularly during the xenophobic phase of the the most powerful words in the lexicon of anti-com Cultural Revolution. But if there is a truly forgotten munist propaganda, a term first used in 1951 by the side to 'the forgotten war' this is it. American journalist Edward Hunter, to describe a Despite their immense significance, the POW more general ideological/educational process which camps have not remained an enduring image of Ko- VoLUME 4 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 17 K OREAN T IME LINE rea or the Korean War. Little wonder, I suppose. They were hardly glamorous. My own first 'image' of Ko 4,000-800 B.C. Neolithic migrations into Korean peninsula rea consisted of wonderful jet planes- Shooting Stars, from central and NE Asia. Meteors, Sabres and MiG-l Ss . I remember once, when 57 B.C.- A.D. 918 Silla Dynasty (incorporating Silla and Uni I was about seven, standing near the water tank in fied Silla kingdoms). our backyard in Port Adelaide, with my brothers. A Silla Kingdom:- First century B. C.-Late seventh century A.D. squadron of Australian Meteors flew over, doing a • comparative political and cultural independence, but m victory roll. My brothers were much older and w1ser creasingly influenced by Chinese culture; Buddhism state than I and they told me these planes had just come religion by late sixth century; under threat from Japanese back from a place called Korea, and their pilots were invasion. 'aces'. They said shooting down a MiG-15 was 'the United Silla Kingdom: A.D. 668-918 (closely contempora hardest thing in the world', a great revelation to me neous with Tang Dynasty in China). because until that moment I would have • The first united Korean kingdom. sworn it was standing on your hands. • Period of political independence but strong cultural in fluence from China. JT HAPPENED, JEAN- PAUL had been thinking about • Development of a complex Chinese-style bureaucracy. A castaways and islands and prisoners too, but in con • Buddhism and Confucianism spreading, Buddhist art flour nection with a much older story. The Royal Asiatic ishes. Society is about to publish his new translation (from Koryo Dynasty (9 18-1392) 17th century Dutch into English) of Hendrik Hamel's • 993-1018 Khitan (Liao) Tartar invasions; rise of Jurchen journal, a description of life and manners in the 'King (Jin) Tartars from Manchuria through eleventh century. dom of Korea', as experienced by sailors of a Dutch • 1231 Mongol invasions-a century of strong Mongolm- merchant ship wrecked on the island of Quelpaert fluence. (Cheju-do) and imprisoned on the island and penin • B OO s-Japanese pirates raid coast. sula for thirteen years from 1653 to 1666. • Neo-Confucian influence spreads. There is an existing 1704 translation by an Eng Choson Dynasty (13 92-1910) lishman named John Churchill, but Jean-Paul believes • Heyday of Confucianism in Korea (e.g. examination sys this is the work of a man who really wanted to write tem, status of women, centralised bureaucracy). Gulliver's Travels, to portray an alien and bizarre • 1418-50 During reign of King Sejong, Korea assumes its realm of the imagination. He gave m e som e interest modern provincial structure and borders. ing examples of the way Churchill's own historical • 1592-98 Japanese invade Korea, destruction of Korean cul and cultural pedigree had interfered with faithful tural treasures. translation, but perhaps the most intriguing was his • 1627-1636 Manchu invasions, beginning of a century of treatment of Hamel's observation that 'Koreans have Chinese Qing Dynasty influence. the heart of a woman'. • 1653 'Sperwer' ('Sparrow Hawk') wrecked on island of Apparently Churchill took this to mean that Quelpaert (Cheju-do). Hendrik Hamel writes the first ac Koreans were effeminate, but what Hamel really had count of Korea for Westerners. From this period to late in mind was that they had known the agony of inva nineteenth century Korea closes its doors to foreigners, sion and violation and were inclined to hang them becomes a 'hermit kingdom'. selves in the forest, to sacrifice themselves rather than • Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century contact with suffer the attentions of their Manchu overlords. The Christianity; persecutions of Christians. vulnerability of Korea to the curse of foreigners, its • 1905 Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan, after Japan struggle to produce intermittent cultural flowerings wards off Chinese and Russian interest in Korea. under constant threat of invasion of Tartars, Mon • Japanese Occupation 1910-1945 ruthless suppression of gols, Manchus (to whom they still bear a striking re Korean culture. semblance), Ainu pirates and the US Eighth Army, Post WWII has lent itself to the legend of 'the Hermit Kingdom'. • 1945-1 948 U.S. and U.S.S.R. military governments admin- I spent two days at the Yongsan US Military Base, ister Korea. near the mildly lurid tourist district of Itaewon, by • August 1948 Republic of Korea proclaimed. courtesy of Harvey Reynolds, the chief librarian at • June 1950-August 1953 Korean War. Yongsan Library. The library's Koreana Collection is • June 1950 Seoul captured by Korean People's Army. probably Asia's largest collection of English-language • September 1950 recaptured by U.N./U.S. reference materials on Korea, intended for the use of • January 1951 recaptured by Korean People's Army and the US armed forces in Korea. I also visited the office Chinese People's Volunteers. of Tom Ryan, the command historian, and was given • March 1951 recaptured by U.N ./U.S. access to formerly classified documents prepared by • July 10 1951 truce talks commence. Operations Research Office of The Johns Hopkins • July 27, 1953 armistice signed Panmunjom. University, operating under contract with the Depart ment of the Army. These were prepared between Feb- 18 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 ruary 1951 and February 1953- the period during in U.S. military history. There is far more to this 'her The vulnerability which the armistice talks stalled at Panmunjom, over mit kingdom' business than staying at home, destroy the question of repatriation of POW s-and they con ing your ocean-going fleet, or locking up castaways. of Korea sist of reports derived from interrogation of POWs, Even mercantile, adventurist 'blue-ocean' cultures, as to the curse such as 'Beliefs of Enemy Soldiers About the Korean some modern Chinese intellectuals and dissidents War', 'Psychological Warfare and Other Factors Af have romantically characterised the West, will remain of foreigners, fecting the Surrender of North Korean and Chinese hermit kingdoms so long as they continue to ignore Forces', and 'Chinese Communist and North Korean the ordinariness of other human beings in its struggle to Methods of Motivating Riflemen for Combat'. These favour of strange and fabulous tales. are, for the most part, important but unspectacular produce observations which do not seem to reveal anything 1 SEOUL I A LSO M ET Ji-Moon Suh of Korea University about China that would not have been perfectly ob and Beverley Nelson of Yonsei University, both pro intermittent vious, even then. fessors of English and translators of modern Korean For example, 'According to the majority of North literature from Korean to English. In an English lan cultural Korean POWs, their government was fighting for the guage review of Korean literature published late last unification of Korea. In contrast, most Chinese pris year, Ji-Moon describes an 'ultrafeminist' novel, I flowerings oners had no opinion as to how the war had started, Desire What is Forbidden to Me, by Yang Guy Ja. The and a majority believed their govern book was a literary 'bombshell' in Korea under constant ment to be fi ghting a defensive war to last year, selling half a million copies in a prevent the US Army from invading population of 40 million, and is about a threat of invasion China' (my emphasis). young telephone counsellor who is sick to Another unsurprising observation, death of listening to tales of violence and of Tartars, couched in terms of the 'psychology' of abuse meted out by husbands. Chinese soldiers is this: 'Of all weap She is sick of it because the wives do Mongols, ons studied, that of napalm (and white nothing about it but 'wait for their hus phosphorus) was particularly outstand bands to be magically transformed', while Manchus ing in terms of evoking fear reactions. they dream of some sensitive, caring lov Ainu pirates This outcome, considered in the light er. So, she kidnaps the most dreamed-about of assumed kill-potential of napalm is male heart-throb actor of the day and sets and the very striking'. Yes, and in the atrocious about trying to show that in real life he is battles around the Chosin Reservoir in just a bastard like all the rest. It is hardly a US Eighth Anny, that freakishly cold December of 1950 even the Amer 'politically correct' novel, since the captive turns out icans had 'outstanding fear reactions' since the tanks to be pretty much what his adoring fans imagined him has lent itself of napalm dropped from the air sometimes landed on to be, but the author has nevertheless been labelled them, and only those men who rolled frantically in an 'arch-feminist'. to the legend the snow managed to survive. Others begged their In Pusan, I was reminded of the discussions I'd comrades to shoot them. It seems that nations fre had about the status of Korean women, with Ji-Moon of 'the Hermit quently fail to appreciate the obvious hu- and Beverley and a number of students in the Inter manity about each other, because they really national Division of Yonsei University. I was passing Kingdom'. want to write Gulliver's Travels. a dilapidated old shop with shelves full of big, dusty jars containing a variety of snakes preserved in alco B uT THE TRAGIC ERRORS AND miscalculations of the hol. I thought it might be, as in China, a cure for rheu UN forces in Korea were not the fault of US intelli matism, but a young woman graduate student told gence, which systematically stressed the possibility me Korean men regarded this liquor as 'very helpful of huge numbers of Chinese crossing into North Ko to their sexual power'. rea. The fault lay rather with MacArthur's Far East Her look of mild scorn, sadness and resignation Command in Tokyo, where they subscribed to the would have made a perfect mask to add to the ones in vi~w that consistent sighting of Chinese troops in the National Museum, which have been listed as North Korea did not mean any great Chinese com national treasures. And if I had to find a name for this mitment to the war. As one officer put it, 'you would mask, it might well be 'han'. Perhaps all hermits, and expect to find a few Mexicans in Texas'. even hermit kingdoms, have 'the heart of a woman'. • It would have been so much better if UN Command had simply used a little imagination, and understood that China felt directly threatened from the time the Trevor Hay visited South Korea in March and April, US Seventh Fleet took up position in the Taiwan as a participant in a University of Melbourne academic Straits. In the light of this simple fact, the brilliant staff study project, funded by the Australia Korea military achievement of the Inchon landing and the Foundation. He is working with Fang Xiangshu on a subsequent rapid push to the Chinese border may be novel that draws on China's involvement in the Ko seen as the beginning of one of the greatest disasters rean War. VOLUME 4 NUMI\ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 19 PROFILE MARGARET SIMONS The science outlool< A umAUA cwmm MOUT Two "" cwT of the world's new knowledge: an interesting and tidy figure which can be arrived at, according to the head of the CSIRO, Professor Adrienne Clarke, by surveying publications in journals and the other forums where scientists m ake their work public. And, when the two per cent is broken down into dif ferent fields of research, the result Nurturing science tells us something about the sort of nation we are. Our generation requires 'a shift of know ledge is not uniform: we are strong in the biological scienc from the ideology es, accounting for about four per cent of new knowledge in this field, of the level but relatively weak in physics, where our figure is about one per playing-field cent. 'We have had to be good at bi to the realism ology,' Clarke says. 'Our roots are in the agricultural community, and that there never is, our country has an enormously di verse biota [the total animal and in any field of plant life in a region], with a lot of it specific to Australia. We have a endeavour, very old and frail soil structure, and an even playing-field. amazing problems of drought and flood. We have had to grapple with The whole idea is to our environment and come to grips with our own unique problems, make the playing-field and so naturally we have developed a fairly high level of expertise in uneven and tilt it in those areas.' better practice. It is a problem that Clarke, one of the Yet even in the areas where country's m ost powerful scientists, is dedicated to your own direction'. Australia is strong, that two per overcoming. She is a top researcher, but during the cent figure-more than respectable past 20 years has also demonstrated an unusual abil for a developed country of its size-does not tell the ity to bridge the worlds of politics, business and re whole story. By world standards, Australia is drag search . ging its feet by when it comes to converting the de Clarke is the director of the Plant Cell Biology velopment of new knowledge into technology and Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, and 20 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JULY 1994 Australia has few sits on numerous goven1- such as research.' m ent committees as well Since deciding not to m ake a indigenous as on the board of Alcoa funeral pyre of her career, Clarke companies with an of Australia and the prin has m ade the fron t page of the in cipal board of the AMP ternational journal Nature for her in-house technical Society. Her work fo r research group's discovery and iso governments crosses lation of the gen es that allow capability ... state and political bound plants to discriminate between aries: sh e is part of a their own pollen and that of close 'We tend to have group which advises the relatives and other species. Under Prime Minister on re standing, and perhaps being able to multinationals sources for science and n eutralise or m anipulat e this technology, and also a m echanism, has big implications who buy their m ember of the 'Business for breeding new types of plants, Round Table' of advisers introducing wild species into do research set up by Victoria's Lib mestic crops, and helping with dis eral Prem ier, Jeff Ken ease protection and the production wherever it is best nett. of hybrid seed. Born in Melbourne But Clarke has also ruffled po and cheapest,' in 1938, Clarke was edu litical feathers. Since she became cated at the University of head of the Commonwealth Scien Clarke says, Melbourne. She married tific and Industrial Research Or midway through her PhD ganisation in 199 1, she has harped 'or else local in 1963, and began to on a continuing them e: Australia have children . When she has the brain power and the re companies with was pregn ant for the search capabilities, but we arc not a very low level of third time she saw h er good at developing the linkages be prospects of a research tween research and private enter scientific expertise.' career recede, and sh e prise that would see Australian gathered all her research ideas developed and turned into papers and lit a m atch. profits at hom e. Luckily, as the fla mes Australia has few indigenous companies with an caught she had a change in-house technical capability-people who have the of heart, and retrieved ear of m anagement and can talk the scientific lan them . Afterwards, sh e guage. 'We tend to have m ultinationals who buy their relied h eavily on paid research wherever it is best and cheapest,' Clarke says, child care to allow her to 'or else local com panies with a very low lev continue her career. el of scientific expertise.' 'Generally the struc tures of our society arc INA SPEECH AT THE U NIVERS ITY of Melbourne three not such that they sup years ago, she took a swipe at the prevailing political port women coming back ideology by speaking out against rigid adherence to after child birth and economic rationalism when it came to fostering local rearing, ' she says. 'It's expertise. All around us, she told her audience, the society's problem- not emerging economics of South-East Asia were fostering specific to science.' technology and science, while Australia fell behind. In her own unit a Clarke said that nurturing science required 'a flexible grant has allowed shift from the ideology of the level playing-field to h er to encourage a the realism that there never is, in any field of endeav LEFT: Adrienne Clarl V OLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 21 'Often the smartest make it attractive for companies to come. We must the sciences, where modern equipment, data bases and people are attracted bring in people with technical expertise and create a up-to-date libraries are essential for teaching and the bacl< into research critical mass of people talking the same language. most basic research. because the generation of new Once you have done that, you get those skills diffus Have the changes in tertiary education introduced l 22 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JU LY 1994 industries have a long tradition of dependence on sci ence and technology, and where science is part of the national psyche. And there are the emerging econo mies of South-East Asia, which give science and tech J,TWH eN m ~~R~~~~~T ~ O::A?,mocked the nology the highest priority. end of the recession with a no-pain, all-gain Budget, an even longer 'They sec that the world is driven by science and running saga-the Sydney-Melbourne battle for supremacy technology,and this is where they can get the advances seems to be resolving itself. And science is playing a role. in their standard of living. This is where the value Sydney has become the finance capital of Australia, but it is added component of goods and service lie. They have time for those who live round the Harbour to stop rattling the invested very highly and made deliberate moves to rust bucket and commiserating with Melburnians over the dea th attract technology-based firms to their of manufacturing. In return, those who dwell south of the border shores so that they can learn the technology. should no longer feel the need to retaliate with carping comments about the crass nature of Sydney culture. A USTRALIA D ESN'T FIT EITHER PATTERN: OUr history For even while the recession was mortifying Melbourne, some is one of colonialism, and dependence on agriculture brave souls and institutions went against the prevailing mood. and mining. Our people, says Clarke, are barely liter They were associated with research and development (R&D). The ate in science, yet in the future our livelihood, many most prominent was the CSIRO. In January last year, it relocated of our legal concepts and our politics will all be deter its Canberra headquarters not to Sydney, but to Melbourne, which mined by technology. If democracy is to work, Aus has always been hom e to more CSIRO scientists than anywhere tralians will need to have the language in which to else. What tipped the decision in Melbourne's favour was that debate these questions, and science and technology the CSIRO wanted to get closer to business. Sydney is the hub of including basic knowledge of chemistry and maths finance, but the manufacturing base-albeit in high technology should become part of the core education in schools. rather than assembly lines-is in Melbourne. The CSIRO came Ironically, Clarke did not have the advantage of to meet that part of business that makes decisions about what a science-based curriculum. She went to a girl's gram research will be undertaken and what technology used. mar school where the emphasis was on literature, And the CSIRO is not alone. In a paper on the location of French conversation and motherhood. A school trip Australia's R&D activity published last year, Monash geographer to the Great Barrier Reef, and a view of sea creatures Kevin O'Connor pulled together Bureau of Statistics figures to through a glass-bottomed boat convinced her she show that in 1990-91, Victoria accounted for half of all govern wanted to be a scientist, but she virtually had to teach ment expenditure on R&D and 40 per cent of all business ex herself chemistry until she got to university. 'It would penditure. The equivalent figures for N ew South Wales were 3 1 not be very easy for someone to do that now. Things per cent and3 7 per cent. All other states showed less than 10 per are different and the pace of change is so strong that cent. In the area of medical research alone, Melbourne in 1991 the students need to have some proper grounding.' received close to 43 per cent of funding administered by the Na Because the Australian education system has tra tional Health and Medical Research Council compared with Syd ditionally encouraged the brightest to go into medi ney's 25 per cent. Melbourne's world-renowned Parkville strip of cine and law, many top scientists come from a medical m edical research institutes pulls in the only program grant of the background. 'Often the smartest people are attracted US National Institutes of Health that is spent outside America. back into research because the generation of new None of this is meant as a denigration of Sydney, which has knowledge and the creativity involved in generating its own excellent research facilities and universities and attracts new knowledge is really one of the biggest buzzes you more Australian Research Council money (34 per cent in 1991 can get, ' Clarke says. 'As a result we have an excel compared to 2.4 per cent for Melbourne). But Melbourne's tradi lent record in medical research, but we are only now tional research base continues to grow and attract associated in turning it into something that will strengthen the terests. The great bulk of m edia, magazine and book-publishing emerging pharmaceutical industry.' trade has consolidated in Sydney, but three commercial popular Australia is worse than surrounding countries at science magazines are projected for Melbourne. All have serious converting knowledge into practice. 'Often we have pretensions as international magazines. Two have foreign back bits of knowledge that don't fit into an existing busi ing. And while Sydney is home to almost all Australia's copy ness. No one is going to pick that up. Fortunately, right lawyers, Melbourne has a reputation as a world centre in Australia is a nice place to live and not many people the law of patents, trademarks and intellectual property. actually want to move away. I don't think, overall, The reason for all this activity is Melbourne's traditional con we are losing brain power. People take big salary cuts junction of R&D with manufacturing. Factories and chimneys to come back here. What saves us from a brain drain may be in decline, but research and high technology are very much is our beaches, our climate and our wonderful, rela alive, and Melbourne is at the forefront of both. So let's build on tively unspoilt environment, but in the future we are that base, and forget about the negative sniping about which is going to need more than that.' Australia's premier city. New York City, like Sydney, dominates finance in the USA, but few regard bookish Boston as an inferior Ma rgaret Simons is a regular contributor to Eureka city, least of all those who live there. • Street. Tim Thwaites is a freelance science journalist. VOLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 23 SPORTING LIFE ANDREW H AM1L TON Snow job E m, JOURNC' '""' mu '"TOR stmy RS well RS to can be improvised. Early on, there was no problem: if a place. Journeys becom e memorable when you find the bike was gathering speed, I just allowed it to run that you have been deceived about the story which off into the banks of snow by the side of the road. The you enter. So Odysseus, the master of journeys, was bike jarred as it landed on the left pedal, but it was led to believe that he was a fringe character in the brought effectively to a halt. Further cl own the moun story of a brief war, only to find that the gods had tain I simply used my sandshoe against the front tyre. conned him and that he was scripted for the lead role It was all rough but effective, and go t us uneventfully in an odyssey. to the outskirts of Healesville. My least forgettable jour Then my left-pedal snapped off, ney took place on a Saturday perhaps weakened by my earlier many years ago . Stan and I had creative styles of braking. decided to go by bike to Mount Not realising what story we Donnabuang. We had thought had entered, we continued to put that, like Tobit's journey, this our trust in horses and ingenui would be a pastoral journey ty. We door-knocked around through valleys and hills, that Healesville asking if the house the way there would be safe and holders had a spare left-pedal or the return untroubled. Instead, an old bike from which we could we found ourselves tra ppcd cannibalise it, and eventually within the narrative of Job . m et a generous donor. We had taken the college It was at that point, we later bikes - pretty simple affairs concurred, that we erred. But in with one speed and no mud- . what our error consisted, on that guards. Mine was more sophis · we could not agree. I came later ticated 111 that it had ' to reali ze that it was in not rec- handbrakes. The trip out was ognising and playing submissive uneventful, with only one por ly our part in the story in which tent that the valley of the shad we had been placed. Stan, who, ow of death m ay have lain as this history will relate, ulti- ahead. At the Burke Road lights m y brakes proved mately failed in his time of testing, continued to main totally ineffective: a swerve on to the footpath and tain that we were mistaken in taking with us only into a hedge, however, met this crisis adequately. The the left-pedal and in leaving behind the chain drive problem did not recur, for those cla ys what few traffic and axle. lights there were between Kew and the township of Anyway, after we had gone happily som e miles Lilyclale were all on the flat. along the starlit Yarra Glen road, disaster struck and By the time we headed out of Hcalesvillc up the it became evident that we had indeed entered the land Mt. Donnabuang road, it was quite hot, and on the of Hus. For my right pedal-arm cracked and becam e climb we became thirsty. Fortunately, there were detached from the axle, so that the bike could no long small stream s running down the gutters, feel presum er be pedalled. At the same time, the salts in the ably by the snow melting on the mountaintop. Pollu m ountain water I had drunk earlier took their effect, tion seem ed no problemi we drank plentifully. and in one of m y frequent diversions from When we reached the top of Mt. Donnabuang, the road I lost my belt. the late winter sun was still slanting on to the snow, but it was beginning to get cold. Stan barracked forSt N EC ESSITY, OF COURSE, is the m other of invention, Kilda who were playing in the semi final, so we wait and as anyone knows who has ridden under the stars ed by a car radio until the gam e was finished. If it and steered by the white posts on an unlighted coun thundered out of the clear sky as we so blatantly dal try road, the mind is never more focused or creative lied with strange go ds on the high places, we did not than on such occasions, nor the capacity to overlook hear it. We left the mountain top just before clark. mere physical frailty ever more highly developed. So When yo u are coming clown a m ountain at dusk, we scoured the edges of the road until we found a bra kes arc useful, but where they are not given they rope which supplied for belt and towrope. We took it 24 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 CHURCHES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE A Conference on "The Church's Political Role in in turns to tow one another on the flat and up the Modern Australian Society" sligh t rises, while we walked the steeper hills, and simply enjoyed the long down-hill run through the Topics to be discussed include: Religion and the Political System Christmas Hills to Watsons Creek. We climbed to Religion and the World Economic System Kangaroo Ground and headed safely around Reilly's Churches and the Shape of the Political Order corner- the sh arp and th en badly cambered turn Churches and their impact on Social Welfare Policies awards Research, named after an earlier cyclist who The Rural Poor had allegedly missed the turn and had flown over the fence into a dam. We were still in good spirits, confi Speakers include Archbishop Peter Carnley, dent of catching the last train at Eltham. Professor Graham Maddox, Senator Christabel Then came the final disaster. The front tyre, Chamarette, Ms Marise Sacco, Mr Robert Fitzgerald, Dr rubbed raw by my sandshoe on the mountain descent, Bruce Duncan, Dr John Moses, Professor John blew out noisily, spectacularly and decisively. There Moloney and Dr Trevor Hogan. was nothing to do but walk. So we plodded the four or five miles to Eltham, arrived m uch too late to catch Venue: Earle Page College, University of New England the train, and continued to walk the ten miles or so back to Kew. Duration: Evening of Friday 23rd September through By 3.30am our muscles were in spasm, our hearts to Afternoon of Sunday 25th September. low; we were thinking in lamentations, and had fall en prey to depression. Stan, I am ashamed to say, was For Further Information and Registration Forms: already abjuring his cycling faith, cursing the true, Mr Philip Raymont two-wheeled, motorless way, and beginning to whore Earle Page College after four wheels, upholstered seats, engines, and all University of New England the m eretricious charms of more modern gods. ARMIDALE NSW 2351 Next day, Job had to meet his comforters. Half Tel: 067-732283 awake at the office of the bursar, a man much Fax: 067-733321 practised in Jobcomforting, I was given no space for lament or complaint. 'What time did you get in last night?' 'Early.' ( Meaning, relatively early in the morn YOU ARE NEEDED! ing.) 'I didn't ask whether it was early or late. What We are looking for people with skil ls and work time did you get in 1' experience who would spend time living and 'Can I have a belt please?' working in partnership with people in develop And the comforter, perhaps awestruck by this ing countries suc h as Papua New Guinea, non-sequitm, which could only have come from one O ceania and Africa. who had been drawn for a space into another and more mysterious world, yielded graciously to Job: You need 'A belt! Certainly! Here is a belt.' • a Ch ristian concern for people So I did not have to endure my comforting. And • to be prepared to accept a challenge and work in a tea m from that day forward the bursar became, not a com • to be at least 21 yea rs of age and in good hea lth forter, but a chronicler of the event, narrating to all who would listen, You are able to commit yourself to a term of 2 or 3 yea rs 'On September 4, 1962, Zig and Zag went bike W e have placed more th an 1500 volunteers in developing riding and got back at all hours of the night. And next countries over 30 yea rs morning at nine o'clock, all that Zig could say was, "Can I have a belt? ".' We offer That day Stan turned from the true way, sacri • a challenge to you as a volunteer fic ed to the automobile, secured a libellus to prove • th e fulfi llment of working for th e church and for people as his new allegiance, and never touched a bike again. you share your faith and skills As for myself, having been tested and found faithful, • a sense of belonging as a PALMS volunteer I was eventually rewarded with a new bike which had • a preparation before placement and support while on the effective brakes, thick tyres, two pedals, and-uncov field and after returning from th e field enanted blessing-three gears. • Interested? Contact PALMS co-ordinator PO Box 54 Andrew Hamilton SJ has been a one-eyed Cyclops Croydon Park NSW 21 3 3 supporter ever since he saw them beat Ithaca Hellas Te l. (02) 642 0558 in the World Cup quarter-final. V OLUME 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 25 RELIGION MURIEL PORTER Laity in the aisles T,A>o "'"""' m CANmwu", G'mgc C"cy, h" munion'. What he has not said is that, by calling the announced plans for the biggest conference of Angli conference, he has comp1ctc1 y disregarded strong can bishops ever held. In 1998, 800 bishops will con views voiced only last year by representative laity and verge on the campus of the University of Kent, near clergy called to a meeting of the Anglican Consulta Canterbury, for the 13th Lambeth Conference. For the tive Council. first time, all assistant and suffragan bishops, as well When the council met in Cape Town in January as the diocesan bishops who normally attend, will be 1993, many members spoke against a large-scale Lam invited to this oncc-a-clccadc episcopal jamboree. beth Conference, or indeed any kind of episcopal con The conference will be nearly double the size of ference, on the grounds that it was not properly its predecessor in 1988, and will cost almost twice as representative, and that it conveyed the image of a much. The budget has been set at one and a half mil hierarchical church out of kilter with modern socic- lion pounds sterling, though that is only the begin ty. Some called instead for an alternative event, such ning. Incidental expenses, such as travel costs, and as an Anglican congress, that would offer greater rep bursaries for the many Third-World bishops whose resentation of Anglican views across the spectrum. own dioceses cannot afford to fund their participa tion, will make the next Lambeth Conference a cost ly exercise for diocesan budgets around the world. The Lambeth plans arc the most strik ing evidence to elate of the major, if subtle, power shift that has occurred in the world While the wide Anglican communion during the past two decades. While the churches of the churches of the communion have been preoccupied with the question of women's ordination during communion have that time, clergy and laity have been inex orably losing ground as power has concen been preoccupied trated in the hands of the bishops. In particular, a fledgling attempt at real inter with the question national power-sharing between bishops, clergy and laity- the Anglican Consulta- of women's tive Council, created in the early 1970s has been silently but terminally eroded. ordination ... The cost of the 1998 Lambeth Confer- clergy and laity cnce is just one of many concerns for those who oppose what will inevitably be a tri- have been umphalist display of episcopacy. For though there will be women bishops present this inexorably losing time- just five of them so far- the confer ence will obviously be overwhelmingly ground as power male. On those grounds alone, it is scarce ly representative of a church where wom- has concentrated en often constitute as many as 60 per cent of worshippers. And, being restricted to in the hands of the bishops, it offers no representation to the clergy or laity, and so is a denial of the con- bishops. ccpt of synodical government that has be- come central to the ccclcsiology of modern Anglicanism. Archbishop Carey justifies calling this three week-long conference of bishops as a response to the 'strong desire on the part of the bishops to rncct to gether for mutual support'. The conference, he bas said, will 'seck God's will for the future of the com- 26 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JULY 1994 The Archbishop But although they will be disappointed that their communion and most importantly, it would of Canterbury, views have been ignored, few will be surprised. comprise bishops, clergy and laity in roughly For the Anglican Consultative Council, a brave equal numbers. Its term s of reference were un as Prinwte attempt at genuine international representation when avoidably woolly, but they indica ted an ac it first met in 1971, was a great idea that has never tive role for the council in advising the of All England, been allowed to fulfil its potential. And the bishops communion on a wide range of issues, from themselves have been directly responsible for its intcrnal 1nattcrs, to world mission, to ecum en is formally ema culation. ical activity. The idea for the council grew ou t of the lay min The Anglican Consultative Council's no more istry movement of the 1960s. While the Second Vati first m ajor reference in fact was the big one. can Council was discussing what it called 'the At its first meeting in Limuru, Kenya, in 1971, than a 'first apostolatc of the laity', the Anglican communion was it was faced with the question of the ordina also seriously investiga ting the role of the laity. Ex tion of women. The 1968 Lambeth Confer among equals', plorations begun at the1 958 Lambeth Conference ence, anticipating moves on the issue before were followed up by the Anglican Congress held in it next met in 1978, directed that any church though in Toronto in 1963. This vast, representative, and highl y intending to ordain women in the meantime, influential m eeting was only the third such congress should first ask the advice of the new coun practice his held this century and sadl y, none has been held since. cil. Bishop Gilbert Baker of Hong Kong was influence is 'Ministry' was identified as one of the major top quick off the mark, and cnt his proposal to ics for the next Lambeth Conference, in 1968, and a ordain women priests to the Limuru meeting. nnmense. series of essays on lay ministry was commis Hong Kong had in fact already ordained sioned as part of the preparatory process. One the first Anglican woman priest, Li Tim Oi, outcom e of the conference was the formation back in 1944. That ordi nation, however, had been of the Anglican Consultative Council, designed carried out secretly in Japanese-occupied China, and to be a representative international body com- was later roundly condemned by everyone from the 1 posed of bishops, clergy and lay people, to act Archbishop of Canterbury clown. Undaunted, Hong as a kind of standing committee for the Angli Kong now sought to proceed publicly. By a narrow can communion between the 10-yearly meet majority, the council decided that it was acceptable ings of Lambeth. for any bishop to ordain women as long as he did so It was a brave, exciting, radical move. Un with the approval of his synod or province (national til then, an appointed group of bishops known church). Furthermore, the council woulcl'use its good as the Lambeth Con ultative Body had carried offices to encourage all provinces of the Anglican com out that function. In retrospect, however, it is munion to continue in communion with these dio surprising that it took so long for a more rcprc ceses'. sentati ve body to emerge, for the Anglican It was all Bishop Baker needed. By November Church had first created elected synods of cler that year he had ordained two women priests. By gy and lay people 100 years earlier. They were the time the next Lambeth Conference was held in actually invented outside Britain by far-sight 1978, there were many m ore women priests- in the ed bishops who believed that they needed to United States, Canada and N ew Z ealand. The share at least some power with the laity if they council' initiative had been a watershed. But it is were to depend on them for essential finan cial entirely possible that by that very act it sowed the support. In the colonies, they lacked any other ceds of its own demise. Though on the instructions major source of continuing finance. of Lambeth, a representative body had nevertheless The Anglican Consultative Council could exercised leadership o n the m ost contentiou s not of course be a synod. The Anglican com issue to come before the church this 'Is there an answer!' munion is what its nam e suggests, a network century. asks Muriel Porter. of autonomous Anglican churches which nev 'On/11 i( the bi,/wps nmscioush and ertheless retain close and valued links. The D URING THE '70S THAT FIRST COUNCIL displayed its corpom l r.: II· com 111 i l Archbishop of Canterbury, as Primate of All real independence by openly questioning the future of Lambeth. Should there be another Lambeth, now them.scll·es to fJOwcr England, is formally no more than a 'first among slwnng.' equals', though in practice his influence is im that there was a represcn ta ti ve world body to discuss Archhislwpl~uncic Anglican matters, and if so, what kind would it be? mense. The calling of the first Lambeth Con (seat ed) at the Lam/Jeth Some members-like their successors in 1993-called ference, in 1867 at Lambeth Palace, the London Conference 11l 1988. headquarters of the Archbishops of Canterbury, for a meeting not restricted to bishops. The challenge Mam· obsener.s saw began the rise of the Canterbury star interna was so real that the then Archbishop of Canterbury, l he con/ercncc a.s a tionally. Today, especially in Third-World Michael Ramsey, vehemently rejected the notion that !J ig!J Jig!J l o( a llllCiC \ countries, its aura is positively papal. Lambeth was obsolete. 'The present Anglican Con CJllSCO[){I/e. The newly-created council was designed sultative Council ... is no substitute, and was never to be the international forum for this Anglican designed to be a substitu tc, for the Lambeth Confer- Photo: fane Hrmvn V OLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 27 ence,' he declared in 1973. It is clear that a major pow Anglican Communion and some of the primates. And er-play between Canterbury and the new council was because the council is in the end only able to advise, already under way. there is not much that even strong-willed elected lay With such an opponent ranged against them, the people and clergy can do in the face of a determined, proponents of a different style of world Anglicanism permanent, primatial, church leadership. Perhaps it had no chance of success. Like their successors in is time the charade was ended, and the council dis 1993, they lost. Lambeth would go ahead in 1978 on banded. the bishops-only model. But in even raising the is When the bishops gather from around the world sue, the council had proved itself to be a dangerous for the Lambeth Conference in 1998, the 40 or so non agent of change. It is not surprising that the body that episcopal members of the council will be invited and would quickly take over the Anglican Consultative allowed to speak, but they will have no vote- a to Council's role as the Anglican communion standing ken participation, at best. So bishops alone will effec committee, was formed the year after the 1978 Lam tively 'seck God's will' for the rest of the church. It is beth Conference. A meeting of all the Anglican pri a measure of the changed climate that the Archbish mates (presiding bishops of the national churches) was op of Canterbury docs not realise how inappropriate called in 1979, and has been held every two or three it is to suggest that the future of the communion can years ever since. The meeting is supposedly informal, be discerned by the bishops in isolation. It cuts across for mutual fellowship and inspiration, and nothing the modern theological consensus of the importance more-rather like Lambeth. But cynical observers of the laity in the total mission of the church, as well would now claim that the primates have 'hijacked' as the Anglican Church's own practice of synodical the Anglican Consultative Council. Decision-making government. The new climate is almost papal in style. for the communion is now effectively in their hands. Even at the local level, in Australia, a similar Although the council re concentration of power in the hands of the bishops mains the sole legally consti can be discerned. The laity and clergy are increasingly tuted and registered body in the losing influence in the face of a rapidly-growing Anglican communion, and in episcopate. The pro] ifera tion of assistant bishops, a p that capacity is the only con pointed by diocesan bishops with little or no duit for all financing within the consultation, has resulted in an embarrassing excess communion, its ability to lead of bishops in some places. If for some reason they need the communion in any sense, to move on from their assistant role, they prove as it did so pre-eminently in the difficult to place, and so often end up taking 1970s, has been whittled away the leadership positions once held by priests during the past decade or so. or lay people. The real decisions are now made either at the primates' B ISHOPS NOW HEAD U P ANGLI CAN MI SS ION and welfare meeting, or through informal bodies and other church-related organisations around conversations between some or the country. And because outside bodies become used all of these 32 national church to dealing with episcopal leadership at that level, the leaders. Contentious issu cs possibility of anyone other than a bishop being ap now go to the primates, not the pointed later becomes increasingly remote. Through council, for advice, leaving the their annual meeting and in informal contacts, Aus council with an increasingly tralia's bishops arc increasingly becoming a power frustrating struggle to find a ful, united body exercising disproportionate influence m eaningful role for itself. over a supposedly synodical church. Cynics have So members of the council dubbed them 'the bishops' club'. discover, often by roundabout Is there an answer? Only if the bishops conscious means, that council decisions ly and corporately commit themselves to power have somehow mysteriously sharing, so that they might enlist the clergy and laity A l'AN-!\ NULlCAN 0\'EHSI!:il!T. been changed. Recommended in the joint seeking of God's will for the Anglican budget projections, meeting communion. But they have already tried that once timetables, even meeting ven- before, and look what happened' The Anglican Con ues for the council itself and the sultative Council nearly got out of hand. It was a nice The (irsl Lamhelh bodies that it funds, such as Lambeth and the pri idea, but... • Conference os mates, agreed at the last council meeting in Cape Punch uiclured il. Town, had all been changed even before the council's Muriel Porter is a Melbourne journalist and histori own standing committee came together in England an. She was the Australian lay rcprcsentati ve to the earlier this year. Anglican Consultative Council at its last meeting in By whom? The Archbishop of Canterbury, it Cape Town in 1993 and was elected to the council's seems, in consultation with the secretariat of the standing committee, which met recently in England. 28 EUREKA STREET • JU NE-JULY 1994 People who live in glass houses We force down nine or ten rounds of toasted sandwich /IT's '0UNC M• G "cc!' A STOO''" •ncient bO V oLUME 4 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 29 HEALTH JoN GREENAWAY & MICHAEL M G IRR A drug on the market A ,w.,s '""'""'"""of • good conspi 30 EUREKA STREET • Tu N E- TULY 1994 One advantage of this system of scrutiny is that tion even though it has received support from the ethic committees are compri cd not only of the med T.G.A. Since ethics committees answer only to them ical fr aternity but also of lawyers, philosophers, cler selves they have the paten tial to operate in the best ics and the lay community. As Kom esaroff says, 'It's spirit of a review body. In the absence of peak bodies not just a bunch of doctors saying OK to their mates'. of ethical review (The Australian Health Ethics Com A committee can also decide, if it feels it necessary, mittee has no teeth) individual hospital ethics com - to deem a clinical trial inappropriate fo r their institu- mittees also ensure that the system has checks and Ph oto: Bill Thomas Pre-Prozac c OME NEXT FEB RU ARY , Duncan Reilly will have been standing in the sam e pharmacy for sixty years. In 1935, he began his apprenticeship in the shop in Gertrude St, Fitzroy, which now carries his nam e. The in ner suburbs of Melbourne were dif ferent then. 'Just over the road there,' he say , looking across into what has since be com e a high-rise housing estate 'that used to be the worst slum in Mel bourne. There were h ouses there without rurming water. They had to depend on water coming through the gully trap. People used to go up to the Fi tzroy foo tball ground where they could get in for 3d. That was literal ly the only amusem ent they could af fo rd .' You get the impression that the shortfa ll must have been m ade up by en own cough elixir and then paints to his pre-packaged.' Does this m ake the phar tertaining characters. Mr Reilly has seen current stock on the shelf. Only the bot m acist little more than som eone in the them all. He's been a local magistrate and tle has changed. Mental illness, on the middle? 'On the contrary, all these m edic mayor. other hand, has seen a proliferation of pos nes can be quite bewildering to people. 'I rem ember when the police used to sible drug therapies. 'We used to use a sed N obody in a supermarket is going to take com e through the shop wanting to use the ative such as phenobarbitone for m ental tim e to explain how a drug works. That's toilet out the back. They only wanted to disorders. It was really the sam e thing we what I'm here for.' nab the SP bookies in the lane. So I always gave people to help them sleep. Just a sed Duncan Reilly doesn't know where told them they could go and use the toilet ative. N ow we h ave m ood-ch anging to start recounting the highlights of his in the pub.' drugs.' He di appears again for a m om ent career. 'Just take one fellow who used to Reilly has seen vast changes in phar and comes back with a blister pack of the com e here,' he says, telling the story of macy itself. When he started, they sold celebrated Prozac. 'Like this,' h e says. an ugly character on the streets of Fitzroy. sticking- plaster instead of bandaids and 'One tablet a day. In a way it's frighten He always carried a weapon and people there was no such thing as shampoo. ing. But fo r a victim of depression, it might were terrifi ed 0f him. 'But he never gave 'Som e people would get soft oap and al be a godsend.' m e any trouble,' says Reilly. 'He'd com e cohol made up on prescription but m ost Reilly doesn ' t get unduly excited in here and after a tim e he'd start blub fo lk just used barsoap. N ow look at it.' about a fad drug such as Prozac. 'Medi bering. He'd call me 'father'. Then it'd turn Like every pharmacy, Reilly's would be a cine is like clothing,' he says. 'It com es in out that all he'd want would be a piece of different place without its dazzling range eras. This is the Prozac era. Some time ago soap. I never minded. N ot at all. This is of haircare products. we had the v itan.t ~ n - th e r a py era. The main one of my bugbears. That even today when There've been changes in the ap thing is that the client understands what we've go t plenty, that poverty should still proach to nearly every condition, except it is and what it does.' Reilly says the fun be with us. I m ean, what's a cake of soap the common cold for which the treatment damental change in pharmacy is from a between friends?' • is still basically the sam e as in 1935. Reil 'wet dispensary' to a 'dry dispensary'. 'We Michael McGirr SJ is a consulting editor ly brings out a fifty-year old bottle of his hardly m ake anything now. It all comes at Eureka Street. V OLUME 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 31 balances. There is also some safety in their contain because of the confrontations this entails. Moreover, ment within individual institutions: if a poor deci administrators do not wish to damage the institution's sion is made by a committee its repercussions are not reputation. If it is more than obvious that the research felt beyond the walls of the particular institution. The er has acted poorly then he or she is quietly pushed benefit of having trials conducted in various, local out. Accountability is only brought forward when mis ised environments, is that data produced by question demeanours become public knowledge. able research methods can be balanced by results How can the processes of clinical research be presented to A.D.E.C. from other institutions con made more accountable' If peak bodies and unified ducting similar trials. systems of review arc introduced, damage may be done But where the strengths lie so too do the weak to the fragile environment of independent research. nesses. The isolation and independence of ethics com On the other hand, if nothing more is clone to address mittees means that the system of review can be dishonesty and fraud, then what occurred at the Roy corrupted by an individual of stature to suit his or her al Hobart Hospital can continue elsewhere without purpose. appropriate sanction. John Jefferis is a senior administrator with the The Hollywood-sensational view of the pharma American pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, a ceutical and medical industries combining in whole multinational with a $7 billion a year turnover. He sale subterfuge is a fanciful one. This is not to say, regards the relationship between a drug company and however, that we should not be concerned about the a research institution as a contract. relationship. The benefit gained by a drug company 'You approach the clinical trial and your interac from research conducted into one of its drugs is meas tion with the investigator or the investiga ting unit ured in purely commercial terms. For the hospital, on a business basis. Where these things always go drug research is not just a source of revenue; it also wrong is when someone does it on the old-boy net provides opportunities to train people in clinical skills, work.' Jefferis believes that pharmaceutical compa to discover new methods of treatment, and dissemi nies should m onitor data and check for any nate information. As the proportion of funding sup aberrations. plied by drug companies grows, medical Through this process it can become apparent to research moulds itself around the priorities the companies themselves if there is evidence of un of the pharmaceutical industry. ethical and fraudulent behaviour on the part of clini cians. 'We've had situations where researchers have W HILC THE NATJ ONA L HE ALTH and Medical Re turned in results and they haven't even seen the pa search Council will spend $121.6 million on medical tients.' research in 1994, the pharmaceutical industry is likely In the conduct of the trial at the Royal Hobart to spend more than a third of this amount on clinical Hospital, Dr Senator saw only a handful of patients. trials and institutional research. Most of the work was done by the department staff. Since 1987 the total spent on research and devel To avoid this, argues Jefferis, strict protocol must be opment by the pharmaceutical industry has grown adhered to in the handling of a trial. If a suspicion of from $6.7 million to $70 million annually. The Aus wrong-doing exists, resolution can be problematic tralian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association es because censure usually begins and ends with peer timates that if current trends continue, the industry review. Jefferis notes that ethics committees can be will be outlaying in excess of $900 million on research influenced by reputations, the 'how can you in this country by the end of the decade. review God?' mentality. This rapid growth has come about because of government initiatives over the last six years, which DRBRI AN MARTIN, FROM THE SCIENCE and Technol have included tax concessions and a streamlining of ogy Studies Department, Univcrstiy of Wollongong, the drug-evaluation process. The success in attract believes that the power structure of science is such ing drug-research programs will undoubtedly have re that bringing poor research and fraud to account is percussions for medical research in this country. extremely difficult. Hospitals will increasingly develop the facilities for Writing in the scientific journal Prometheus, he drug research and clinical trials will be more com points to practices which vary from shoddy science n1on. to outright fraud. The former can include anything John Jefferis estimates that in the United States from obscuring poor results to being wrongfully cred drug companies spend more on research than docs the ited with authorship. The latter is often in the form federa l government's grant body, the National Insti of extensive plagiarism and the publication of false tute of Health. cla ta. He explains that the extent to which institutions The minor cheating is usually tolerated while in America rely on drug company funds is indicated the more fraudulent behaviour is noticed but frequent by the canvassing Pfizer is subjected to by institu ly unreported. As Martin says, those who arc aware tions offering their research facilities for a drug trial. of such behaviour arc reluctant to make allegations cont. p33> 32 EUREKA STREET • JUNE- JUL Y 1994 OBITUARY MicHAEL M c KERNA I TOW ONC m ou' Voluntuy not ask them to what he would not Guides the other day that Ralph Han do himself. ner had died and immediately regret An incident of command shows ted my lack of tact. The guide gave the quality of the man. He had a me such a look of genuine loss and problem company in his battalion pain that it was as if she had lost a but rather than deal it, as Hanner friend. And yet I think that, like me, said, the 'final lethal act of con the guide had not known Ralph Han tempt' by withdrawing it, he placed ncr personally. Such was his stature the company in the most dangerous in Australian military history, such sector, 'the post of honour'- It was a was his reputation as a leader of men, courageous tactic, rewarded when that his achievement deserves cele the men involved fought doggedly to bration. cast off any slur of cowardice. It was Strangely, few of those who have also typical of Hanner's approach to caught the Australian people's imag his soldiers. ination as military heroes have been One of the truly great Austral fighting soldiers. We properly pay ian images from the Second World tribute to Simpson and to 'Weary' War is that of Hanner leading his Dunlop as we celebrate their care for men on parade after the most bloody the wounded and their bravery in conditions of the and important fighting on the Kokoda track. Only 180 greatest difficulty. At times we seem to want to ig men had survived to parade and as Hanner stood be nore the wars that engaged them. fore them he saw 'pallid and emaciated men with Ralph Hanner was a fighting soldier. Enlisting in sunken eyes and shrunken frames'. He also saw, as the militia before the Second World War, he was ap he recorded, 'no hangdog look, only the proud bear pointed Captain with the 11th Battalion in 1939 and ing of tired veterans who had looked death and disas saw service in the North Africa campaign at Bardia, ter in the face, and had not failcd'- Tobruk and Derna. Gavin Long, the official historian, Later the Battalion fought at Buna and Gona, of described Hanner in these early days as 'an exception ten described as the most savage fighting in which ally cool and resolute leader'. Hanner was caught up Australian soldiers have ever been involved. Again in the debacle in Greece and for his work in helping the 39th served gallantly and Hanner led with dis to organise the retreat was awarded the Military Cross. tinction. When he was wounded in the leg a sergeant It was in Papua New Guinea, however, that Han sought to rescue him, but Hanner ordered him to leave ncr made his reputation. Ordered to take control of off instead to warn the nearest company that the en the 39th Battalion in July 1942, Hanner confronted a emy was close at hand. He would only allow stretch group of young soldiers, many of them not yet 20 years er bearers forward when he was certain that they of age, who had been called together in late 1941 and would not become a target for Japanese fire. Evacuated given training by a nucleus of First World War offic to Australia, Ralph Hanner's fighting days were over. ers. As a militia battalion the 39th was looked down This then, is an account of a fine Australian sol on by AIF Battalions, and action would test the men dier and military commander. Like so many other and the quality of their leadership. brave Australians, his work done, Hanner resumed Sent into battle in late June 1942, the 39th was his civilian life and, for the military historian, slips the first militia to confront the Japanese on the Koko from sight. The military aspect may have seemed for da tracki Hanner's men performed magnificently, him no more than an interlude in a long life of work, holding the Japanese advance until reinforcements ar of family, of community, faith and patriotic endeav rived. The fighting was appalling, the risk of defeat our. But R As the amount of investm ent in pharmaceutical 2 per cent of GDP by the year 2000 must extend to research in Australia moves into line with other medical research-one-off grants aside-if an imbal O.E.C.D. countries, we ought to be concerned wheth ance in favour of drug trials is to be avoided. er the system of ethics committees and peer review Perhaps not only issues of accountability should is adeq uate. Furthermore, will other forms of m edi be considered but also what kind of research culture cal research be compromised? The government's we should be nurturing. • pledge to raise research and development spending to Jon Greenaway is a staff reporter for Eurel VOLUME 4 NUMI\ ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 33 Raimond Gaita has taken three year's leave from King's College, University of London to become foundation Professor of Philosophy at Th e Australian Catholic University's Institute of Advanced Research. In 1991 he published Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, which Alasdair Macintyre described as 'an outstanding contribution to mmal philosophy which puts the res t of us to the question by its account of what it is to have a serious sense of good and evil and of how moral philosophy ought to proceed '. Included in the wide-ranging discussions in the book are some very sharp, even barbed, criticisms of 'applied' ethics. Gaita is critical of philosophers who seel as a distinctive moral category, and goodness of the T""" Y<> 34 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JULY 1994 Does this absolutism m ean, for example, that it is However, there are two things that I should make Life is, at the always wrong to kill a human being, or to let them clear. First, not all my objections to applied philoso di e ~ phy are of this practical kind, and m ost of them do moment I do not believe that it entails the more common con not depend on the particular conception of absolute ception that there are actions which are forbidden value that I attempt to articulate and defend. Second richer than whatever the consequences. And one m ay argue for ly, these obj ections apply to a considerable extent to cxccptionless moral principles without having any moral philosophy itself. I had not seen this so clearly many 1noral sense of good and evil as I am speaking of it. If one when I wrote the book. My opinion of applied philos does not have it, then one ca n say little that is seri ophy is, in large part, an expression of my opinion of philosophers ous about the idea that life is sacred. moral philosophy m ore generally- of its subject mat ter, of the kind of understanding it seeks and what is would seen1 In your book you clearly go beyond the traditional necessary to achieve it. To oversimplify, it depends to believe it academic concerns of analytical moral philosophy. on a conception in whose light the disciplines that And yet you equally clearly distance yourself from mark moral understanding appear, at critical points, to be, 'applied ethics'. What was your intention here~ to be closer to those fo und in literature and in liter Reviewers have been agreed that Good and Evil speaks ary criticism than those found in science or in meta but it 1nay not (as Brenda Almond put it) to 'real people and their physics. deeply serious m oral concerns'. It was my hope that always be so. it would, and that it would reveal, in its practice as I'd lil V OLUME 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 35 It is naive to believe that a barren moral philosophy cept of academic freedom that partly defines it. It is possible would be redeemed, deepened or enriched by going to be an 'applied'. One can, of course, imagine circumstances But you believe this objectivity and rigour are insuf in which moral philosophy might have been humbled ficient for wisdom and so ought not be exported to academic and deepened by contact with what people call'real public discussions of moral and political issues! life'. But given what I said earlier about the nature of It is natural to think that it would be good if the rig knight academic practice, the decline of the universities and our that characterises this kind of thinking were more the pretensions of moral philosophers to an expertise prevalent in public discussions. It is natural to think while being they can have only if they distort their subject mat that its fruits in moral philosophy should be shared ter, it is not surprising that those circumstances are with a wider community. And if one believes that shallow, not ours. this kind of thinking and the appropriate enabling Life is at the moment richer than many moral virtues of character and imagination are, together, foolish and philosophers would seem to believe it to be, but it adequate to moral philosophy, then, given other rea may not always be so. Philosophers may eventually sonable assumptions, one will believe that they jus wicked. None help to make it as thin as the concepts with which tify applied philosophy. . . they describe it. Life and a thin theory of it will then The difficulties I mentioned earlier will then ap 0 f t h ese f al 1lngs meet at a dismal point of equilibrium. pear to be manageable. Certainly they will not seem of a kind that would prevent applied philosophers from is an obstacle A crucial element to your criticism of applied phi doing more good than harm. From this perspective, it losophy in Good and Evil is that having som ething will appear that professional philosophers with cre to deserved serious or worthwhile to say on ethical and political dentials from good universities are particularly well issues requires moral wisdom, or some sort of moral qualified to think clearly about moral matters. They distinction authority, but that this must be clearly distinguished have elaborated, clarified and tested arguments whose from academic mastery of a subject. If philosophers potency was sometimes diminished by muddle, rhet as a 1noral are not necessarily 'lovers of wisdom' after all, if their oric, German academic prose or other maladies. How, philosopher. academic training has nothing to do with the devel then, could it be a bad thing to sprea d the analytical opment of wisdom in your sense, then what exactly method and its results beyond the academy? Indeed, does ma tery or expertise in philosophy, specifica lly it looks to be irresponsible not to do so. moral philosophy, amount to! Some may wish it were so. But it is not. If one Analytical philosophy has a characteristic way of reflects on the actual critical terms with which we thinking. To a large degree it can be taught and is assess good and bad thinking about many matters of what examiners look for. It is rigorous and it aims to value, then it becom es apparent that they are m ore be free of jargon and to find expression in clear and numerous than I had suggested earlier. For example, simple prose. The critical concepts that matter to it we criticise some thoughts for their tendency to pa are: true, false, and those that mark the forms of valid thos, or because they are banal, or sentimental, and and invalid inference. These are not the only qualities so on. of mind which are valued, but others, such as, for example, imagination, are valued as means to the So, as with Hamlet, the hub of your c.riticism is that generation of thoughts whose cognitive there are more critical concepts in heaven and earth content can be characterised independent- than are dreamt of in analytical philosophy-the kind lyof them . of criticism Iris Murdoch made when she complained that 'we have suffered a general loss of concepts, the A ALYTICAL PHILOSO PHER ARE JU STIFIABLY PROUD of loss of a moral and political vocabulary'. their intellectual rigour and of the fact that they can Philosophers in the analytical tradition have not giv teach it to their students. It saved philosophy from en their serious attention to this broader range of crit the decline into obscurantism which now disfigures ical concepts. For reasons that go deep in the subject, many of the subjects in the humanities. they are assumed to name states that diminish or The critical and epistemic concepts that mark enhance our capacity to formulate propositions whose this form of thinking give content to one form of ob primary dimensions of assessment are truth and false jectivity and to its associated form of impersonality. hood, and whose cognitive bearings upon one anoth It enables one rightly to award first-class honours to er are described in logic textbooks. The prototypes someone even when their work reveals them to be guiding this assumption are states like drunkenness, shallow, foolish, gullible and wicked. That fact is which may cause cognitive failures whose character important to our understanding of the nature of aca may be specified independently of drunkenness or any demic disciplines, of what it is to master a subject or other similar state. discipline, and of the kind of objectivity required for Suppo e, however, that the e concept m ark the assessm ent and treatment (promotions, etc. ) of modes of assessment which are primary, and that, those with whom one radically disagrees. It is essen indeed, concepts of truth and falsehood as they apply tial to the ideal of a liberal university and to the con- to many matters of value are at least interdependent 36 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JULY 1994 with them. Sometimes this will show itself directly, There are doctors and parents who are faced with as when we criticise a thought for being, for example, decisions about whether or n ot to take severely banal or sentimental. At other times it will show it handicapped and suffering new-born babies off life self indirectly when we realise that the work of imag support systems. Given that these things are happen ination, or the effort to be objective and to 'see things ing, is it not appropriate that the actions here be as they are', take different forms in moral philosophy governed by some sort of community consensus on than they do in some other areas of philosophy or in what should be done! What is the place of moral science. philosophy in the development of that The point here is that certain virtues and vices consensus! of character which may at first appear to stand in I DO NOT SEE WHY WE MUST STRIVE FOR A CONSENSUS. The purely causal or instrumental relation to cognitive divisions in our culture are deep. If we press for con states, are, in fact, essential to the characterisation of sensus, then it is likely that we will characterise those the critical and epistemic concepts necessary to both divisions in ways which distort and trivialise them. m oral thinking and to moral philosophy. The pressure to consensus, which comes from the Those concepts are especially important in the perceived need to seek legal resolutions of certain discussion of the examples which are necessary to pressing moral dilemmas and disagreem ents, favours moral philosophy. No moral philosophy can be bet just those concepts which dominate the barren part ter than the examples which explicitly or implicitly of moral philosophy, and which lead to serious mis set its problems, sustain it and to which it must be characterisations of the nature of our dilemmas and answerable. And no example can be better than its disagreem ents. Applied philosophy has fl ourished description. More often than not, those descriptions partly because it draws on the barren part of m oral reveal failures which can only adequately be charac philosophy, and partly because the pressure to for terised by m eans of the critical concepts I m entioned mulate public policy protected it from the kind of earlier. reflective, m editative attention which might have revealed its inadequacies. Mystery does not recom Analytical May not applied philosophy, then, try to develop the mend itself to committees. kind of rich conceptual resources-and the attend To be sure, things are different when there is no philosophers are ant wisdom-that you mfer to! pressure to form that consensus because it already I do not believe that it can, as a discipline. I think exists to a considerable extent. If it exists against a justifiably proud that the kind of thinking whose character derives from cultural and intellectual background respectful of such concepts cannot be taught in the same way as mystery, with a deep sense that there are more things of their can the kind of thinking which is the boast of analyti in heaven and earth than we are likely to make sense cal philosophy. of in any moral theory, then many of the points I have intellectual Certainly those concepts are seldom invoked in made will lapse or need recasting. Such could be the the assessment of academic achievem ent. That is why case in, for example, a bioethics centre attached to a rigour and it is possible to be an academic knight while being religious institution. However, if the members of such shallow, foolish and wicked. None of these failings is centres were to take them selves as answerable to the of the fact an obstacle to deserved distinction as a moral philos debate outside their institution, or feel that they opher. If they were, then our examining procedures should formulate what they say to m aximise its en that they can would lack the kind of impersonality that is funda gagem ent with applied philosophy in the secular mental to our understanding of obj ectivity and fair mainstream, then the points I m ade will becom e rel teach it to ness and, thereby, to the ideal of the liberal university. evant again. Nonetheless, there must be disciplined, discur their students. sive reflection on what we call morality; reflection Is there a concession to cultural relativism in your It saved that is shaped by, and answerable to, the philosophi reference to cultural divisions! cal tradition. No. I take it to be uncontroversial that respect for philosophy from Therefore, there should be som ething like moral our fellow citizens requires that we seriously try to philosophy in all universities. But its status as a dis understand what they believe, which in turn requires the decline into cipline will be suspect and unstable, in a way that is that we do not force alien forms of expression upon true of English, and for similar reasons. them. We do that, unwittingly, when we press for a obscurantism If it goes one way, it will tend towards a thinness consensus that we will achieve only if we settle for a which invites parody by anyone who remembers that reductive view of w hat our problems are and, more which now there are more things in heaven and earth, etc. seriously, of what it is to have a moral problem. If it goes another way then, at critical points, it disfigures many will be vulnerable to obscurantism and high-minded If ethics committees on hospital boards and the like posturing. Thought whose logical character is deter ought not to strive for community consensus (and of the subjects in mined by certain moral virtues is particularly vulner perhaps they have sometimes done so more in an able to the corresponding vices. It is easier to avoid effort to pass the moral buck!), what ought they be the hmnanities. muddle than it is to avoid sentimentality. seeking to do! V oLUME 4 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 37 I do not see why we 1 m'll st rin· fm a consensu s. The dzn"ion' in our I do not want to say in any general way what they ought to be doing. But I would make two points. If culture are dL'ep. If we pres.., {or there is no such thing as moral expertise, no such thing as moral knowledge in the sense which would make con..,ensus, thcnzt 1s lzi Even if philosophers have no particular substantial m oral wisdom Lo imparL , do they, perhaps, have som e sl 38 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-JULY 1994 munity of thinkers who will seldom find it appropri ate to wear whatever professional hats they may have, but whose discussion will show, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, that they have such hats. But it will be their common engagement as amateurs that determines the standards whose light will reveal when their professional training shows for good and when it shows for ill in their discussions. And as with Soc rates, these standards will be, in ways that are inter defining, standards of intellectual rigour and standards of responsibility. One hopes that it will show for good. But if it does, then that will mean, won't it, that philosophers are demonstrating some wisdom in what they say-and that that wisdom is non-accidentally related to their being philosophers, insofar as wisdom develops (as you argue in your book) out of how one has lived one's lifei And their lives have been academic ones. You are quite right: the academic life is itself a kind of life. But an important distinction needs to be made which overlaps with the distinction between expertise and wisdom. It is the distinction between academic life conceived as a profession or a career and academic life conceived as a vocation. those analytical skills are not excluded by the larger range of concepts that I have emphasised. Those skills M sT PHILOSOPHERS CONCEIVE OF THEMSEL YES as pro will show in the application of those concepts. fessionals. The concept of a vocation is seldom even taken seriously these days. I think that the concept Are philosophers, then, qua philosophers, not even of an academic vocation centres on a serious sense of to go near moral issues of public concerni the love of truth, and, with that, on a sense of the Not if they pretend to be experts about morality and obligation to reveal what a life lived in service to such moral thinking. But just as there must be moral phi love might be. losophy despite the difficulties inherent in the sub But, of course, one wants to know whether talk ject, so there must be (and anyhow will be) of love of truth may be taken seriously, or whether philosophical discussions of public affairs. its place in our intellectual and spiritual history has merely been a rhetorical distraction from forms of Why 'must' there bei You do think that philosophers motivation whose substance is better expressed in the have something to contributei concepts which define academic professionalism. At I say there 'must' be because these problems have rec the crux, we can only know by reflection on what is ognisable philosophical dimensions which are not shown to us in examples which give force and au only discussed in the philosophical tradition but are thority to our ways of speaking of the love of truth. often a product of that tradition. But academic philosophers should acknowledge So academics' obligations, as academics, are restrict that the mastery which enables them to examine and ed to their role within the universityi They have no to teach may rightly be judged to express and rely upon public responsibilitiesi a form of intelligence that may be a handicap as much They do. They are obliged to protect the university, as it may be an asset. as a public institution, from the political and public They should consent to be judged by critical con pressures and temptations which would undermine cepts which are fundamental to their subject matter, it as a space in which a disinterested love of truth but which, as I have said, render the disciplinary char may be visible to each generation of students. That is acter of their subject problematical. the only responsibility which clearly devolves on They will then think of themselves as amateurs them as academics. in the non-derogatory sense which Peter Steele is fond Its acknowledgment and enactment is the most of marking- thinkers who are engaged, who really are important contribution academics can make to the in medias res, and whose understanding of their en wider intellectual culture. It may be in tension with gagement makes them realise that their subject mat the more 'worldly' political and communal responsi ter defies that kind of mastery which would justify a bilities which preoccupy most applied philosophers. claim to expertise. Ideally they will constitute a com- It is, I believe, no accident that applied philosophy V OLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 39 flourished when we began to lose the idea of an aca the kind of objectivity which is fundamental to the Over the past demic vocation and the concept of the university liberal university, and because nothing I have thus 15 years or so which went with it. far said rules out som e role for institutions such as the Monash Bioethics Centre. As for the events in we lost not only In your book yo'u argue that it is an essential part of Germany and Austria, if I am not wrong about the the concept of moral wisdom that a morally wise facts, they raised two distinct issues- that of academic our universities, person is someone whose life is marked by the pres freedom and that of freedom of speech in the political ence of evil-and that m eans that they will fear not realm. Arguments in favour of one are not necessari but the living only doing evil, but also thinl 40 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 In your book you are critical, in particular, of deserving of his distinction. My acknowledgment of Peter Singer's work in applied ethics. I don't imagine that gives the sense-or, rather, one sense, for there that you would want his books actually censored, are other, political senses-in which I believe that his but do you, then, positively welcome his work as con work is a 'legitimate' contribution to the debate. tributions to debate, even though you disagree strong However, as I have been at pains to emphasise, ly with them~ there are other dimensions of assessment. It is fool I am not especially critical of Singer. In fact I think ish to think that in a divided culture such as ours that he is a complex figure and is in many ways gen moral philosophy could be substantive without be uinely the kind of public intellectual that I have been ing volatile, divisive and sometimes offensive to some commending. Nonetheless, I am dismayed at the re people. It is irresponsible, in the way I implied earlier spect accorded to some of what he says-to some of when we spoke of Socrates, to be indignant at the the beliefs he expresses and the reasons he claim that one corrupts students if one succeeds in gives for them. getting them seriously to speculate about whom they might kill when, for example, the economic circum SINGER SINCERELY BELIEVES THAT WORK of the kind he stances get tough. has been doing will make the world a better place. He To insist, in such circumstances, that qua phi (and others) have succeeded in making it a world in losopher, one should be accountable only for the clar which philosophers have led the way in urging a re ity of one's thinking and things of that kind; to deny laxation of the conditions under which we find it per that one is, even as a philosopher, fully answerable as missible to kill people; in which, for example, most a human being to other human beings, is to be intox philosophy students seriously wonder whether it is icated by the rhetoric that has supported an edifying, permissible to kill young babies for much the same but distorted and certainly unSocratic, fantasy about reasons as it is permissible to have an abortion. This what it is seriously to care for the truth and dismays me and frightens me. to seek it courageously. There is Clearly this division between people like Singer and people like me is a very seriou one. But if you 0 F COURSE, MANY PEOPLE THINK they could never a telling joke believe that the world would be better if Singer were think something evil, or be evidence of cultural de more persuasive, and if you believe that it would be cline. University-educated people who are praised for about a person better because it would be more compassionate, more their visionary compassion are likely to believe it least i just, more rational, etc., then you must accept, as prop of all. It seems to m e that Singer's response-and the who had a er to the discussion of these things, the possibility response of many who sympathised with him-to the that a contrary judgment might seriously be advanced. events in Germany and Austria showed a failure to mind so open You must then accept the terms which are appropri understand this. ate to its expression. that his brain Once such claims as Singer's have been made, it Central to your position, then, is the distinction be is naive or uncomprehending of the kind of divisions tween different critical vocabularies appropriate to fell through. they cause, to think that the narrow range of critical different forums, a narrow one for academic debates, terms that mark analytical philosophy, and which and an expanded and richer one for public debates. Critical largely determine our sense of academic proprieties, Is there not a danger, though, especially in moral will be adequate to their discussion. philosophy, of the richer-and more divisive-vocab thinking, If one insists that discussion should be answera ulary seeping into and disrupting, even corrupting, genu1ne ble only to those terms, one will not, as some may the traditional academic proprieties that you have hope, impartially preserve the conditions for rational praised! critical open and open discussion; one will be favouring a particu What I have said might incline one to think that, for lar account of what there is to discuss and the meth the ake of preserving academic proprieties, it would nlindedness, ods and terms appropriate to it. be better to avoid this kind of discussion-better if moral philosophy did not touch on such divisive is is nothing So you welcome work such as Singer's so long as it is sues. I do not believe that can be done. understood that it may legitimately be appraised The task then-it will not be easy, but I believe that without using the substantial critical terms you have referred we must succeed in it-is to acknowledge the nature to. But given that you have appraised Singer's work of the division and the critical and moral vocabulary judgment. using such critical terms as 'arrogant' and 'aggres which defines it, while at the same time respecting sively without a sense of mystery', that might give the conventions and proprieties which underpin aca some the impression that you don't really welcome demic freedom. • it. I don't welcome it. However, it has dimensions which can be assessed by those narrower concepts which give analytical philosophy its distinctive character. There Steven Tudor is a student in Law and a post-graduate is no doubt, according to those concepts, that he is student in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne .. VOLUME 4 NUMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 41 B OOKS M ARGARET CoFFEY All in the family T,""" TH,NG TO " SAm Childmn First for anyone given about Penelope Leach's book is to nostalgia for 'the family' in its that it is not about daycare. She idealized nuclear, mum-at-home bas assuredly some things to say sense, and she calls the notion of about daycarc, but her subject is full-time exclusive motherhood much widerthan the appropriate a 'careless idea'. She has a great ness of organised child rninding deal to say, for example, about for the infant offspring of moth ideas of discipline associated with ers in the paid workforce. 'traditional' views of the family. With the fluency of passion, But of all the options available to the command of the very well working mothers, she is most crit researched and the humanism of ical of full-time professional clay a liberal who continues to believe care for children under the age of that human society can be per three, most especiall y infants. In fected, she addresses something fants need focused and intimate which ends up troubling most of attention, and if it is not available us at least some of the time from mother, it is most properly especially those of us who work given by the other parent or an and have them-and that is the extended family member or- in way we think about and care for the nearest approximation to children. these alternatives- by family day The book is not another Baby care. (That is, the generally loca l and Child, (Leach's influential governmen t-sponsorcd scheme manual of babycarc advice published Children First, Penelope Leach, where women mind babies and in 1977) although for some extended Mi chae l Joseph, 1994. ISBN 0 718 1 young children in their own homes. passages such as those on breast 38 13 9 IU\ 1' $29 .9:1 ; Living Decently: Often training and acti vi tics such as feeding it docs immerse the reader in material well-being in Australia, playgroups arc provided ). Leach ad the sort of dizzying difference you Peter Travers & Sue Ric hardson, mits that the research findings about associate with your first visit to the Oxford University Press, 1993 . ISHN the impact on children of full-time obstetrician's part of town. 0 19 SS.:\360 7 IUU' $24.9.'i day-care arc not conclusive, but she It is, rather, a critique of the way even most of those who are unem is arguing anyway from an under in which economic and social chang ployed- distorts relationships standing of the developmental char es in the post-industrial West have between children and the parents acteristics of children set against the strained parenthood, short-changed who must limit their availability to real circumstances of day-care. Day children and led societies to fail them, and act in their public lives as care, for example, puts under-threes emerging generations. It sort of serves if they were childless or genderless. in groups when they arc really not the matter of children as Small is One of the problems with wom ready to play with other children or Beautiful served the environment. en's greater access to employment respond to group discipline; it puts (That strikes me as not a bad com and education is that it has been infants with staff in a ratio of- at the parison: one of the points about the achieved in term s which often do very best-3 to l . In short, daycare book is the way it fixes on the singular not acknowledge adequately that has emerged as the large enterprise it human baby as a kind of ecological women give birth and breastfeed and is in response to the requirements of unit. As she says, a baby is a 'major provide primary care to infants. work and the economy and not pragmatic and narcissistic invest Neither, of course, do those terms the rcquirernents of the ment'.) acknowledge that the men to whom children. In that sense it is different from, they have applied for so long, are and more useful than, the material also parents. I T IS TRUE, OF COURSE, TH AT IN decry now around which focuses entirely That's how daycare enters the ing trends in the West, Penelope on the psycho-sexual aspects of rela picture. Penelope Leach is not against Leach is speaking across an awful lot tions between women and tnen and mothers working. She is not inter of variables. Her Australian critics children. In an interestingly gloomy ested in retrieving or reinvigorating have pointed out that in Britain and way, Penelope Leach has us all eco some atavistic notion of 'mother' or the United States day care is nowhere nomic obj ects, inexorably commod 'father', but rather in responding to nearly as well-organised and regu ified, our values improvised in a con all the advantages our historic mo lated as it is in Australia. But all text of constant contradictions. ment offers us with the idea of 'the those 'prominent working m others' The fact that 'we live to work'- parent'. There is no comfort in and 'female government ministers' 42 EUREKA STREET • )UNE-)ULY 1994 BooKs : 2 MICHAE L SMIT H and 'experts' (that's w hat Th e Aust ralian called them ) who responded angril y to Leach's book did us a dis service, even though they were speaking out of an acute awareness Baclz to basics of the effort it has taken to achieve good-quality daycarc: their defence How are we to live ? Ethics in an age of self-interest, of daycare obscured the larger themes Peter Singe r, The Tex t Publishing ompany, and the heer existential difficulties Melbourn e, 1993. I 86372 101 0 RRI' S24.9S which preoccupy Leach and a good many women and men w ho have or P.ETER SINGER's TASKin this book is our old state-and, pretty soon, we who want to have children. to confront the most pressing practi- end up feeling no happier than we It also obscured the deep pessi cal question we can ask ourselves: fe lt before. mism which forms the background how are we to live? According to Singer, this explains to Leach 's m anifesto. Much of The question is pressing for all why psychologists find that despite Children FirsL is taken up with con sorts of reasons, but for Singer it is big differences between the levels of cern fo r 'values', their communica pressing in the m ain because the wealth in various nations, the peo tion to children and the 'apprentice world at large fa ces m ajor problems ple of those nations do not enj oy ship' of children to the adult world that will be solved only if we in the corre pondingly different levels of they will take over. Her Australian West change the way in which we happiness. He therefore sees no rca critics did not say so but it is proba live, and do it fast. To this end he son to agree with commentators who bly true that they and other Au tra l document and explains the extent claim that there has been a decline ian parents feel far more confid ent to which social injustice on both a in our standard of living. For even if that they share values with the peo national and an international scale, there has been a decline in the mate ple they ask to mind their children. the various ma jor environmental rial comforts we enjoy, this will not T his is partly a consequence of the problems we fa ce, and the widespread correlate with a long- term drop in way in which daycarc is orga nised in m altreatment of non-human ani our levels of happiness. And nor, Australia but it is also surely a re mals, can all be seen to be caused and therefore, docs he see any reason to fl ection of the differences between sustained by the Western way of life fa vour economic growth; for ceo Australia and Britain and the United of consumption and acq uisition that nomic growth simply adds to the States. mo t of his audience enj oys, a way of world's environmental problems and What some of those diffe rences life that we continue through our problems of social justice while do m ight be, e m erges in Living own choice, a choice Singer wants ing nothing to increase our level of Decently, a study of material well us to reconsider and reverse. well-being. being in Australia which off ers an Getting us to do this is, of course, If we accept this much of Singer's account of m ore generall y-shared no easy task. It is especially diff icult argument then the stage is set for his 'satisfaction' than might be evident if most of us arc moti vatcd primarily m ore positive claim. If consumption in studies of British society. N either to increase our own welfare a nd that and acquisition will not increase our 'baby' nor 'child' appea rs in the in of our children . For on that hypoth level of well-being, then how should dex but it is nevertheless an interest esis, to the extent that we have con we live? Singer's answer ing book because it describes a way cern for people ge nerally, such con comes in two parts. of assessing our condition, whether cern will be relatively weak. A life of rich or poor, without relying just on consumption and acquisition may FI RST, HE ARGUES THAT WC are not infor mation about the income we have all sorts of bad eff ects on oth exclusively selfish by nature. We are earn, or don't earn. Measu ring pov ers, eff ects that we may regret, but capable of reasoning, thereby taking erty or inequality becomes a more what reason do we have to change a more impartial point of view, and complex matter, which is not to deny our life if it docs so well by those of finding ourselves motiva ted by the im portance of incom e. It's an who primarily concern us? what we di cover from that view enco uraging book, not least beca use Singer's response is to challenge point. Thus, w hen we refl ect, we sec it fi nds, in how we are, a reality the assumption that the Western way that everyone has needs and aspira which contradicts prevailing judg of life does do well by those w ho tions much like our own, needs and ments of doom and gloom . primarily concern us. He cites psy aspirations that, in som e cases, arc With all Penelope Leach's con chological evidence w hich purports fa r more urgent than our own. Singer structive and lively suggestions to to show that consumption and ac encourages us to undertake such re dea l with the problems- indeed, the quisition do not in fac t increase our flection, and to let ourselves be crisis- she discerns, the trust she welfare. The reason why is a quite moved by the impartial sentiments puts in 'commitment to social sci ge neral psychologica l phenom enon and sympathies such refl ection en ence and human relations' is notat called 'adaptation' or ' habituation'. genders. all enco uraging enough. Is that all After having consumed and acquired The second part of Singer's an thcrc is? • m aterial goods we adapt to our new swer ta kes the fo rm of a promise: Margaret Coffey is a produ cer and level of materi al well-being- that that a li fe devoted to solving the presenter fo r ABC Radio National. is, we lose the sen c of contrast with problem s of the world will bring VOLUME 4 N UMB ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 43 acquisition, and who have not taken the 'inward turn', arc not particul ar ly engaged in a life of service to the world at large either. For example, many of us find it personally reward ing to pl ay a particul ar sport, to rai se our family, to teach and do research in a particular subject, to listen to good music, to watch movies. These seem to be va luabl e activities, but their pursuit requires time and ma terial rcsou rces. We may therefore fi nd Singer's argu ment against mea ningless con sumption and acquisition uncon vincing as an argument against our way of life. If so, then even if we agree with him that the world at large is in bad shape, we will want an argument for changing our way of life that acknowledges the exten t to w hich we would be giving up some thing of value in changing our way of lasting fulfilm ent, in con others at little or no cost to our life, something Singer doesn't really trast to the ennui of a life of selves. We can donate blood; we can acknowledge. We might think that Singer is one consumption and acquisi change our wa y of life so as to de he therefore hasn't successfully re tion. Though his evidence crease the nega tive impact we have sponded to the parti cular dil emma of a large for this is largely anecdotal, on the environment; we ca n boycott that we face. How much of our time the stories he tells of the the products of companies that ca use and re ources arc we permitted to group of ways in which people's lives needl ess suffering to humans and to spend on the admittedly valuable have been changed for the non-human animals by, for exam activities that we find personally philosophers be ttcr by getting involved in ple, buying cosmetics from compa rewarding when th<.: world at large is community-spirited activi nies that refuse to exploit animals in in such bad shape, and so makes <1 who thinks ties certainly have a ring of their research and development; we claim on our time and resources as truth and familiarity. And ca n buy modest cars rather than lux wclll Singer is not especially con that there certainly, just as he argues, ury cars, so leaving us money to cerned with these questions of bal we do seem as a matter of donate to charities; and so on. And, ance and weighting. But these seem is no fact fact far m ore likely to find in Singer's view, once we change our to m e to be among the m ost funda fulfilment by engaging in lives in these ways we might well mental questions we face when we of-the-matter such tasks than we will by find that we are prepared to do even ask ourselves how we should live. taking the 'inward turn', a more. We might join an environ There is another reason why How as to how life of reflection on our own mental group and spend time and are we to live! might fail to empower personalities (as in psychoa energy attending meetings and pro us as well. Singe r devotes part of his we should live nalysis) or a life whose sole tests and perhaps even-as with book to discussing what the ques aim is self-validation (as in those wh o helped save the Franklin tion 'How should we li ve?' mea ns, our lives. the numerous self-help man River in Tasmania-going to gaol for and how answers to it are ultimately uals that purport to help us our cause. We might sell our house, to be justified. But ironically, what work out 'our own' priorities, ignor join a famine relief agency and travel he has to say is, I think, less than ing the claims made upon us by oth to India or Africa to work as a vo lun convincing, and potentially under ers). For by engaging in a life of serv teer. We might donate significant mining of the book' force for some ice to the world at large we will gain parts of our income, perhaps 50%, to of his audi ence. the sa tisfacti on that com es from charity. And so on. Singer is one of a large group of knowing that we have done what we But though the aim is to empow philosophers who thinks that there ca n to make the world a better place, er us, the eff ect is, I think, to leave us is no fact-of-the-matter as to how we a satisfaction which is nourished by wondering how much, if anything, should live our lives. When he tells the tangible differences we make to is enough in the way of service to the us that we should try to make the Photo of people's lives. world at large. In part Singer's book world a better place, he is not telling PeLer Singer In part, then, the aim of How are has this effect because he paints the us that to suppose otherwise is to be courL esy The TexL we to live? i to empower us. Singer alternative in so tark a fa hion. in error or mistaken in some way. Publishing wants us to recognize the extent to Many of u s who are not engaged in a The situation is simply that when Company which we ca n give great benefits to life of meaningless consumption and Singer thinks about the needs and 44 EUREKA STREET • JUNE-JULY 1994 This seems to 1ne to be a wrong aspirations of sentient beings gener for whatever reason she will n ot find views up for discussion are headed and ally, he finds himself caring for all it by fo llowing a particular recom all controversial and con such creatures, and when he acts on mendation- perhaps the recommen version is difficult? As I lamentable view of that concern, he finds the life he dation to m ake the world a better have already said, it seem s leads personally fulfilling. But there place-then that is a reason fo r her to m e that Singer's own the nature of is nothing rationally compulsory not to follow it. But in another sense view that we should devote about having such cares and con they ca nnot agree that this is an our lives to m aking the ethical debate. cerns upon refl ection . Rational peo arena in which disagreements about world a better place is con ple may differ. In this book, then, practical matters are rationally re troversial in just this way. It is wrong-headed Singer is simply recommending that solved. For, at bottom, their view is What we need, in such an we give his preferred way of life a try . that such di sagreem ents do n ot per event, is a way of testing because, as His bet is that we will find it reward mit a rational resolution. When it these different vie ws ing too. com es to practical m atters what we against each other in a ra Singer's own work I have two worries about this are each trying to do is to convert tional way. On the assump approach to ethics. The first is that people to the way of life that we tion that ethical questions indicates, there do those who follow Singer's advice are prefer and so recommend. At bot permit a rational resolu bound to see them selves as m aking a tom, then, the outcome of such a tion, public deliberation seem to be bet too. But by Singer's own lights, it fo rum is determined by power- the can itself play this role. It may just so happen that they, or power to cause others to have a pref can help us to decide an compelling reasons Singer, are idiosyncratic, and that erence fo r the way of life you prefer, swers to ethical questions. the bet therefore doesn't pay off. never mind about what they pre But the no-rational-resolu that can be given When his readers refl ect, they may fer- not by reason. tion-possible view pre end up having a different pattern of This seems to m e to be a wrong cludes us from thinking of for certain preferences fro m Singer's. It m ay just headed and lam entable view of the public debate in this way as so happen that the sort of life they nature of ethical debate. It is wrong a forum in which we can ethical clailns. find m ost fulfilling and rewarding headed because, as Singer's own work learn the truth about ethi contributes nothing very much to indicates, there do seem to be com cal matters by talking to If you can benefit the well-being of the world at large. pelling reasons that can be given for each other. Perhaps they find them selves want certain ethical claims. If you ca n Aga in, this is ironic, as someone greatly ing m ost to work for a local football benefit someone greatly by chang Singer has perhaps contrib club, or to raise a famil y, or to run a ing your way of life at little or no cost uted m ore to public debates by changing your family media empire, or to become a to yourself, then you simply should on practical m atters than reclusive hermit, or w hatever. And change yo ur way of life. To refuse almost any other person way of life if th ey do, then Singer mus t would be unreasonable. This claim alive. Indeed, the lasting admit that they can quite would, I think, find widespread agree value of How are we to live! at little or no cost rr rationally ignore his advice. ment. And if this is right, then hu will surely lie in the impact mility should surely counsel us to it has on such debates. It to yourself, then .1. 1-II S BRINGS ME tO the second suppose that even where widespread would, however, be a pity if problem I have with Singer's account agreement on ethical matters has those who read How are we you simply should of what we are up to in answering not been found as yet, agreem ent to live!, and who are left ethical questions, a problem that may yet be found through m ore in unconvinced by the answer change your seem s to m e to go much more to the the way of discussion and debate. it provides to its title ques heart of his pro ject. Can those who Singer in eff ect concedes this as well tion, took Singer at his word way of life. deny that there are right and wrong when he talks about the progress about the nature of ethical answers to ethical questions agree that has been made in the debates debate and so drew the con- that there is a forum in which issues over slavery, wom en 's rights, work clusion that their own fa voured an of practical importance get debated er's rights, and so on. This is why I swer is one that stands in no need of with a view to their rational resolu said that his own views about the rational reassessment and justifica tion ? In a way they can, but in nature of ethical debate are some tion. It would be much better if they another way they cannot. what ironic. fo llowed Singer's actions, rather than They can agree that there is a Moreover, this no-rational-reso his words, and saw them selves as public forum in which different peo lution-possible view of disagree holding an opinion that n eeds ple give their recommendations and m ents on practical m atters also constantly to be tested in the public try to convince others to follow their seem s to me to be lamentable, for arena to see whether it is an opinion reco mmendations as opposed to those who hold this view are unable worth keeping. For only so will they those of someone else. And they can to see the real value that lies in inch towards a answer to the ques even agree that reasons may be given public debate on practical m atters. tion, 'H ow are we to live?'. • as to why particular people should They can admit that public debate follow one recommendation as op on practical matters is valuable as a Michael Smith is a Reader in the posed to another. If someone wants, means of converting people to their Department of Philosophy, Monash say, a life of personal fulfilment, and own fav oured view. But what if the University. V OLUM E 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 45 BooKs: 3 PETER PIERCE specific slang always speaks poig nantly of lost connections. Who now thinks of the rough territory between King's Cross and the Docks as the Burma Road ? Or spea ks whimsica l Words from inside ly of male prostitutes as Coll ege Street solicitors? Ostensibly innoc uous words can ca rry the strongest charge: 'copper', wrote Hartley, is 'the m ost insulting term in usc'. nAND 'pkndidly exe A Lexicon of Cadet La nguage, According to him also, the sadly fad cTuted co"'"'ntributi ons to the study of Br uet: M oore, Austra li a n at io nal ing epithet 'pi c cater' was 'the most Au tralian language arc narrowly fo Di ctiona ry Centre, I<;B N popular term of <1 busc in common cused. For A Dictionary of Austral () 73 1;) 13 77 0 RIO' S22.SO use'. One no longer hears of 'bar ian Underworld Slang, Gary Simes A Dictionary o£ Australian U nder bered broads' (trimmed playing drew on two glossaries compiled in world Slang, C ary Simes, Oxfo rd cards), or the 'badger ga me' (t heft New South Wales prisons in mid U n i vcrsi ty Press, I<;BN 0 19 .SS3499 9 through sexual enticement) or of century: by the conscientious objec IUU' S.W.9.S prisoners being ' japanned' (co nvert tor, Ted Hartley, in 1944; and by is how each defines itself in relation ed by the gaol chaplain), but Simes 'Thirty-Five', a former chool-teach to its own m embers, and to the Aus and his sources arc to be thanked for cr doing life for murder, in 1950 and tralian society to which it uneasil y giving them this second life. 1955. Bruce Moore's A Lexicon of relates. Each is concerned with the Perhaps because of the reserve of Cadet Language concentrates on the language of what Coffman, in Asy Hartley and 'Thirty-Five', Under lingui stic habits of cadets at the lums, called a ' total institution': on world Slang is not rich in sexual Royal Military Coll ege, Duntroon, the one hand a prison, on the other, references. It has 'boy in the boa t', between 1983 and 1985 . He illus a military coll ege; each with the for clitoris, and 'buttered bun', mean trates not onl y terms which were kinds of socialisa tion that follow ing-since the seventeenth ccntu the loss of all that had gi vcn security ry-'to go second at intercourse'. By to those who enter them. contrast, Cadet Language is sodden On cursory inspection, the cover with terms for sexual conduct. In of Underworld Slang depicts a mili stead of the relatively genteel 'but- tary parade. In fact it is Nicholas tered bun', Moore's cadets Caire's photograph of a morning as prefer to 'go slops'. sembly at Pentridge in 1896. As Moore observes, in Cadet Language, H OW ABUSE BECOMES ROUT! E, en 'the clink' was the preferred cadet erva ted, self-impoverished, is one of term for the Royal Military College. the phenomena to which Moore's Prisoners and ca dets would alike work draws 46 EUREKA STREET • JuNE- JULY 1994 side the corps, especially 'accas', practices which his lexicon investi En glish institution and, as such, re 'greenies' and 'poofters' (the 'two per gates. fl ected English social idealism fr om cent', in the slang under-estimation While Simes had two glossaries religious, agnostic,and non-religious by corps members of their homosex to hand, Moore's gathering of evi sources. TheCa tholics were a min or ual strength). dence was more difficult and pro influence compared with Anglican, Moore is a droll and erudite guide tracted. Questionnaires were circu Methodists, Congrega tionalists and through this thicket of incorrect lated; supplementary interviews con other Protestant groups who-un speech. As an English academic he ducted. Both Sime and Moore docu like m a ny Ca tho lics-felt few may have transmitted the'acca germ' ment the yearning hatred of inmates in hi bi ti on s a bout associating w hich 'attacks the acca-immune in institutions for the things of value themselves with an avow- system of a hitherto normal and in a world elsewhere. Australian lex edly socialist organisation. healthily unacademic cadet and icographers, rea ders and writers frenzies him with the sudden urge to should be grateful for their labours, M ATHEWS TAKES FABI AN ISM fr om do som e academic work'. Moore was for the deft intelligence tha t they its English beginnings late in the at Duntroon in 1983 when a second have brought to material by turns 19th century to what he sees as its bastardisa tion scandal (less severe funny and horrifying, ultirnately antipodean fl owering in Gough Whit than that of 1969) hit the college. blea k. • lam 's m odernising of the Australian His essay-length entry judiciously Labor Party and leading it back to covers the rites of passage that Peter Pierce teaches in the Centre office in 1972. 'Among Australian bastardisation involved, in ways that for Australian Studies at Monash Fabians, I am Maximus,' Whitlam explain its relation to the linguistic University. once declared in self-parody. Curi ously, in a work of such precision, Mathews does not seem to think it BooKs: 4 necessary to raise the question 'Why is it ca lled Fabian?' PAUL ORMONDE The Fabian Society took its now seemingly pretentious name from the Roman general Fa bius Cuncta The Fabians tor whose creative tactics of avoid ing pitched battles enabled him to From Bernard Shaw to Gough Whitlam defea t superior forces. That's as the Australia's First Fabians-Middle Class Radicals, Labour Activists Encyclopaedia Britannica briefl y and the Early Labour Movement, Ra ce Mathews, Cambridge Univer- explains it. sit y Press, 1994 . ISBN 0 52 1 441 :\3 l RRP $29.95(pb), $R O.OO (hb) The author's own thoughts might have been interesting. Revolution ary Marxism was the stuff of pitched battles-Fabianism was the politics T,euwcmoN m Race M"h underlying m essage-that society of quiet permea tion. The British Fa ews' book on Australia's early Fabi needs its true believers-in this case bians, led by such intellectual lumi ans provides, for the first time, a the Fabians of Britain and Australia. naries as Sidney and Bea trice Webb scholarly analysis of an important They were (a nd no doubt remain) a and George Bernard Shaw, set out to thread of philosophical linkage be m otley human mix of practical permeate the Conservative and Lib tween the British and Australian la visionaries, arrogant intellectual eli eral Parties with socialist ideas. bor traditions. Links between the tists and domineering egotists, but Once a viable Labor Party two traditions are clearl y intrinsic united by the certainty that society em erged they focused their efforts given the strongly British cast of the is reformable providing reformers do there, and subsequ ently affiliated ALP's early m embership and of its not lose their faith. Despite all their with it. Shaw saw the Fabians as leaders-J.C. Watson, Andrew Fish fail ~ n gs, it would be a desolate world becoming 'the Jesuits of socialism' er, Billy Hughes-none of them Fa without them. They were unashamedly middle bians as such. But there has been The book has a significant side cl ass and exclusive-the left-glitter little specific focus on it other than effect-one probably unintended by ati of London. Trade unionists who through the lives of individuals. the author: it highlights many of the were attracted to the society were Mathews, with his lifelong com key non-Irish Catholic taproots of haughtily marginalised by Shaw with mitment to Fa bianism and his ca the Australian Labor Party. This is the comment that 'cultural segrega reer as a federal and state Labor pol important documentation, given the tion is essential, indiscrimina te frat itician, is probably the only person strong public focus, particularly in ernisa tion fata l. ' who could have written such a sub recent years, that Irish Catholic in The Fa bian ocialism which came stantial book. fluence in the Labor Party has re to the Australian colonies in the It is an important publication not ceived. The English Fabians h ad few 1890s found m ore egalitarian soil. only because of its illuminating fac Catholics am ong early m embers. Australia's first Fabian was an Eng tual substance but because of its Overwhelmingly, Fabianism was an lishman, William Archer, who joined VOLUME 4 NUMilER 5 • EUREKA STREET 47 the London Fabian Society from his A Fabian Society was form ed in minedl y shed hi s Fabian idea lism home in Vi ctoria. He did not start a Melbourne in 1895-but was clogged and joined the conserv ative side of movem ent here. The first effective by its close association with Harry politics. antipodean Fabian Society was Champion, a former Engli sh radical T he first Whitlam Ministry was founded in South Australia by a cru in tellectual, w ho soon after his ar rich in Fabians- Frank Crean, Jim sa ding young Anglica n priest, rival here made an ill-judged inter Cairns, Lance Barn ard, Lionel Mur C harles Marson, who arrived in Ad vention on the side of the employers phy, C lyde Cam eron and Tom Uren. elaide in 1889, already an active in the watershed Maritime Strike of Bill Hayden wrote and lectured for m ember of the London Society. 1890. He was n ever forgiven the society. Other political notables H e pu t a moral earthquake by unionists. identified as Fabians by Mathews through staid Adelaide society with inc! ucl e Arthur Cal well, the two John denunciations such as this one on M AT HEWS DRAWS A PARALLEL be Cains, Bob Hawke, Don Dunstan, the trea tment of Aborigines: 'Their tween the destructive effect of C ham john Bannon, Neville Wran and Bob tribal orga nisati on broken up, their pion and Shaw's exclusivist views in Carr. ga me all ki li ed, their lands annexed, Britain, concluding that 'Fabian so Despite their tribulations, Fabi their sons made slaves of, and all by cieties h ave s ucceeded to the extent an Societies in Australia and Britain people who talk about the love of that they have been included by and have been think-tanks of incalcula C hrist and profess piety.' inclusive of the labor movement, ble va lue for the Labor Parties . It was a matter of hushed com and resis ted separation from that Through Mathews' book we sec more m ent that, within m onths of his ar n1 oven1ent. I clearly than before that, human flaws rival, he entertained an Aborigine to In the decades fr om 1890 to 1910, notwithstanding, the mark of the tea. Australia had four Fabian Societies Fabian is a passion for social justice Marson broke with British Fabi in each case the instigator a London pursued through a fai th in gradualist an tradition by actively courting expatriate. and civilised processes. • working-class recruit - and pro mot Distinguished early Australian ing a unity of middle-class intellec Fabians included Bernard O 'Dowd, Paul Ormonde is a Melbourne writ tuals with the labor m ovement, the N ettie and Vance Palmer, T om Price er. He was founder of the Pax peace Single Tax (Henry George) activists, (first Labor Premier of an Aus tralian movement in the 1960s and was a and other socialist elements. The colony: South Australia ), Frederick member of the editorial board of the Society declined soon aft er his re Eggleston, Walter Murdoch and John Ca tholic Worl P OETRY ANDREW BULLEN The codebrealzer's pilgrimage Martin John,ton: Selected Poem~ &. Prose, EdttcJ h) John Tranter Un1vc l ~~l~ ol ()uccn~l.1nd I' res~ <;t Luu.1, Quccn~l.md, 1903. 1'>1\~ 0 7022 2 'ill 'i 1:1u' S22.0:'> A s LONG AS WE KEEP JOurney- and lightness that revitalise whatev- prayer-fl agged ca irns, moon-priestess- ing, we are all Odysseus. This is er tradition he uses. In a special way es and pig-myth s truer of Martin Johnston than of h e draws su tenance from Greek his- on steppes beyond th e wr it of A mer- most, and not solely because John- tory and legend fr om the beginnings ica n Ex press. stan, from childhood on, passed so right th rough to modern times. much of his life in Greece. After his So h ere he is, a one-eyed and Here he is, juxtaposing ancient family returned to Australi 48 EUREKA STREET • Ju E-JULY 1994 move hi s work to the centre of con times when the voice in these po usually unclear. Indeed oft en enough temporary concerns, enough perhaps ems has something of the drifter. Australian poets fear that to name to nudge Robert Lowell aside. Surely There are certainly times when the its significance is to jeop- Berryman taught Johnston to loosen vo ice is that of a man driven to ardise the experience. his own voice and trust more in this search for verse that must be ap 1 than in the heavy pressure he ori gi peased or confro nted: as he puts it at 1F SOMETIII NC RE LI CIOUS1 happens, nall y put on the innumerable and the end of his 'In M emo it is best to remain as sil ent as pos i dense reference , a pressure which £ o r ble. One could argue, moreover, that sometimes m akes his ea rlier work to get it right, one should ge t there airless. N ow there is an ease of voice properl y, and that requires the ascet that makes his last book, Th e Type ici m of a pilgrim. writer Considered as a Bee-Trap, a T he asceticism of watching with fully mature work. full attention, which is a kind of We do not have enough, but waiting, is shown, for example, in his distinctive voice we do have, the eleventh part, 'Water-Garden and nowadays voice is virtually Snapshots': everything. Johnston's debt to Berryman is also acknowledged Or think of the moment in the sadly incomplete essay 'On most poignant in the Berryman's Elegies', which hap process of pily Tranter has salvaged for us. parting Like Berryman, Johnston's playfu l suggested by a water-drop's mastery with voices and with tradi almost less than momentary moment's defiance tion shows him a 'trickster'-Odys of gravity, the point seus sti ll , even when taking the Cy at which its top goes clops' part. d e a p o - convex, as it splits ets: 'where pours yclops for his part has the meas off from what is becoming the nex t out the dead come to the fea st'. ure of Odysseus, as he tells us in the dro p. first song: Odysseus too knew this. Less anxious but earnest none I knew He knows when to break line, theless, search is the w hole point of perfectl y well what 'Noman is hurt does Martin johnston; and how to 'T o the Innate Island '. Here, as the ing me' meant. move to and fr o between wry hu title proclaims, Johnston's outward mour and intense statement: Wearing the mask of yclops, journeying is all inward. Johnston gives us ten words full of A long work of twelve parts, it is T he boat is loaded pain and hidden revelation. Putting his most considerable and charac with a second-hand phrenological a telling distance between himself teristic poem. That a relaxed jour head, and pain was an early habit in his ney, even a touristy dawdle, can be a smuggled ikon of the La st judge poetry: the title poem of Th e Sea the unnoticed preliminary for an ment, Cucumber is an elegy for his father, occasion of great personal signifi an insufficient supply of hard-tack, although dedicated to Ray Crooke, cance, has notable exemplars in the a postcard of the Disc of Phaistos, go ld and 'Letter to Sylvia Plath' is never climactic canto of Byron's Childe on blue. theless 'i.m. C.C.' for his mother. Ha rold's Pilgrimage and A.D . Hope's ln the inner ga rden which we never It is striking how much of John 'A Letter from Rome'.These two are visit ston's work is in m em oriam . If this given their moment of disclosure at the boat seems to be coming in, rust distancing is the only approach one Lake Nemi, south of Rome and the red sail, can bear, indirection, like tacking, is locus classicus for Fraser's The Gold the cat a c loud behind the bay a way of getting there. Johnston's en Bough. branches. sustained practice of translating folk For his part Johnston, like and songs and the m odern poetry of unlike, tells us this loose sequence Maybe in the in ten e moment of Greece is another indirect way of 'rummages around various versions each line, a postcard carries as much homing in, as are the chance illumi- of- as it happens-Greece . It is significance as one could desire, or nations given by the art and searching, as hindsight reveals, for hope for. history he finds as a tourist. the Phaistos Disc; finds it; fails, how As to decipherm ent, the Phaist ever, to decipher it'. os Disc eludes decipherment from Australian poetry, at the very the scholars, Ventris [Michael Ven 0 F THE MANY WAYS OF JOUrney ABOVE: the Phaisto ing, Johnston's usual mode is that of least from C hristopher Brennan's tris, w ho cra cked Linear B] and all, let alone johnston. disc, discovered 1908 a wanderer, with all the advantages 'The Wanderer' onwards, is foo tsore and still undeciphered. It fits effortlessly into the reti that implies for range of reference with the search for m eaning. Even if, From the Mansell cence and unknowingness of Aus and voice, and for ease of m ovem ent, as Hope's poem terms it, 'The Inter Collection. for quicksilver eff ects. There may be vention' happens, its significance is tralian poetry: VOLUME 4 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 49 BooKs IN BRIEF the Disc dropped through the collaps Catholicism, revised edition, ing floor Richard P. McBncn, Collin~ into time, where we think we look at Dovt.:, 1994 I 'iBN l f\63 7131 '1R it (hb)lH63713144 (ph ) through glass in the museum- but U>I' $o 50 EUREKA STREET • JuNE-J ULY 1994 OPERA JIM D AVTDSON forming the whole. If the strings were somewhat overpowered by the vast space, then at least this had the Embracing opera effect of emphasising the tone col our contributed by the other instru Orphee et Eurvdice (G luck); Idomcneo (Mozart); Australian Opera. ments- further banishing any lin gering sense of the static. There were some outstanding performances. Rosamund Illing as E,' coNe "M' Gwc,'s Q,pheus version of 1774, but I have never Elettra was suitably fiery, singing was the earliest opera still regularly heard him sing better. The French strongly and boldly but also touch performed. Then, overtaken by the language and the declamatory style ingly when required; opposite her expansion of the baroque repertoire, seem to bring out the best in his was Kirsti Harms as Idamante, suffi it was neglected for a time and un voice. Occasionally there was strain ciently forceful and focused to make dervalued. Its tone wa too elevated, in the high notes, but everywhere this breeches role convincing. Miri its pace too static. else there was an almost blade-like am Gormley brought warmth and The current Australian Opera definition, plus some low note of colour to the role of Ilia, so effective production has been shaped by this surprising strength. Hobson's appeal ly that one soon forgot her last view, and is a determined attempt to to the Furies had a lilting surge to it minute inclu ion. Others sang ably, refute it. Instead of Orpheu being which was singularly effective. To although Anson Austin did not seem presented as the spirit of music wards the end of the evening he be comfortable in the name part. perhaps even with a suggestion of gan to tire, but fortunately was ade This production was in the Aus androgyny, as when Shirley Verrett quately matched by Amanda Thane's tralian Opera's 'Drottningholm' would perform the part, her long compelling Eurydice, hurt and dis style, brought from Sweden by the limb and brown skin serving to dif traught that her husband will not late Goran Jarvevelt and Carl Frie ferentiate her-there was David look her in the eye. (There were drich Oberle. Cosi Fan Tutte done Hobson, an idealised Everyman, some nice stage movements here, in this manner, with a cavernous handsome and sexy. Indeed this pro too, with Orpheus being metaphori space, soft colours, and superb cos duction (more than most) was about cally tugged back across the stage tumes, was given a real cut and a boy setting off on a difficult jour every time Eurydice questioned him.) polish, yielding many new insights. ney to claim his girl. Thane may have thrown away her But here a recycling of the set from Certainly it was not about a con great Elysian aria, taken too fast for La Clemenza di Tito did not have trast between the realm of the bless my taste, but hers was a memorable quite the same happy effect. While ed spirits and the underworld, for performance. The Amor, Miriam one nowadays fully expects a mon our age has abolished both Heaven Gormley, sang prettily, but not with ster to be deconstructed, done with and Hell. This production even man the tarty manipulativeness the mu lighting if not exactly with mirrors, aged to merge them: some of the sic of the great aria with oboe clearly it would have been pertinent tO have gyrations of the almost unstoppable invites. the sea more evident than as a rip dancing were apparent in both plac Gormley also sang, at short not pled lighting effect seen through a es. The underworld, in fact, had its ice, as Ilia in Idomeneo. The general vast rotunda. This set was all space teeth drawn: instead of a writhing view has always been that this is a and boardwalk, walls and cornices; chorus, loathsome and menacing, Gluck opera by Mozart (it was com Mozart as a many-pila's tered thing. half a dozen dancers provided con posed while the older man was still In one sense this tugs the work in tortions while the others were ranged ali ve). Fora longtime the work shared the direction opposite from the one lugubriously around the stage. The Gluck's neglect, being regarded as a in which Mozart himself was going. whole group joined in only at the barely stageable curiosity. But by Idomeneo, with its general lack of end of the scene, for the Dance of the the early seventies there wcresome ensembles, is for him a work of un Furies: in view of the large slitted given the curious shifts that occur usual linearity. But what is fascinat hinge of the set, this could have been from time to time-who were ing about the third act, . where· the called the Dance of the Cheese Grat prepared to describe it as music suddenly reaches new ~eights, ings. And, despite a suitably ineffable 'l X T Mozart's best opera. is that even when the composer fol eerie blue light for Elysium, a post lows the prevailing form most closely modern touch intruded with a carved v vHILE EACH OF THE FOUR produc -coa1plete with a Gluckian voice of 0 loves E on the central tree trunk. tions I have seen has been better Neptune- his individuality keeps Had that graffiti been on the wall of than its predecessor, I never expected bursting through. It is as though at the underworld scene, it would have any to surpass that of the Victorian the very moment of mastering the LEFT: David Hob on, come close to turning it into a nite State Opera in the late seventies. But convention of opera seria Mozart as Orphee, Saint spot. this, as might have been expected, is gives notice he will abandon them.• Sebastian-style. Still, the production was carried exactly what Christopher Hagwood Photo courtesy The by the superb performance of David gave us. In his hands the score pul Jim Davidson teaches Humanities Australian Opera, by Hobson as Orphee. It is a huge and sated, here lyrical and there insist at the Victoria University of Tech Kiren Chang. taxing high tenor role, this French ent, a strong sense of dynamics in- nology. VOLUME 4 NUMLl ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 51 THEATRE G EOFFREY MILNE Thrills and slzills baric techniques, elements of indig Circus Oz has it administrative enous culture, a greater than usua I and rehea rsa l ba c in an old military emphasis on music (in which almost drill hall in suburban Port Mel all Circus Oz members over the years bourne. [t has maintai ned a strong have been pretty well-equipped), plus ongoing relationship with the Nan a range of influences derived from jing Acrobatic Troupe in China, be the new comedy. The musica l influ ginning with a three-month joint ences arc principally from rock 'n' training project at Albury in 1984, roll, but rccen t shows have broad when Nanjing acrobats worked with ened out from that base, while the Circus Oz and the Flying Fruit Fly clowning blends pure circus slap Circus. Further training was acq uired stick and knockabout with Bruns in China in 1985 and in Australia in w ick Street (or Comedy Store) style) 1989.lntensivc training with French stand-up comedy, plus the kind of and Russian teachers has fo llowed sa tirical, socio-political material in more recent year . popularised on television by the likes One of the outcomes of Circus of Max Gillies and others. Oz's C hinese connection (in addi There h ave also been som e tion to the general cnrichmen t of its uniquely Australian elaborations on performances) was a unique collabo the traditionally physiC 52 EUREKA STREET • Ju E- JULY 1994 in most shows, everyone seems to in the previous years. Increasing skill Rang balancing on umpteen layers pl ay in the band at some stage and in the Chinese elements (especially of glasses and cups on trays on a the musicians perform in the air and the prodigiously difficult hoop div restaurant table are certainly en on the ground. The riggers are often ing) was combined with a splendid hanced by the cafe setting, for exam seen in the comedy sketches and the use of humour and comedy. The tra ple-much of it falls flat because the trapeze artists are involved in the peze act, for example, became not company's less-developed natural rigging; the tumblers act, as the com only a display of grace and skill but istic, TV-s tyle comicacting tech pany programme puts it, and the also a vehicle for som e inspired nique does not match their often actors tumble. clowning. Furthermore, the incorpor formidable circus skills. In the 1990 show, for example, there ation of the traditional acts and ap On the other hand, some of the were four different kit-drummers in paratuses into dramatic sketches was newer circus members are outstand the first half hour and the musical becoming increasingly assured. The ing in the air and in a variety of director (Julie Mcinnes) played trampoline apparatus became the site ground-based balancing acts (in par drums, saxophone and guitar before for a biting sketch about the Bicente ticular the redoubtabl e Lu Guang she got to h er m ain instrument, nary celebrations, while another Rong and the brilliant Anna Shelper, which happens to be the cello. At sketch involved the audience in a who is developing into a very wor one point, founding m ember and portrayal of the arrival of the First thy successor to Theresa Blake) as then artistic director Tim Coldwell Fleet in the form of an invasion. The well as in the well-established area played two trumpets simultaneous 1988 show was probably the one in of anarchic comedy. Here, I especial ly while, at another, two people si w hich the c irc us' s kills a nd ly liked Cheryl and Charlene (Li sa multaneously played one cello. The politics were most eff ec- Small and Nicci Wilkes) as a pair of only people who don't appear to per tively combined. cowgirls on a motorcycle, rounding form in the circus itself are the ad up a trio of feral supermarket trolleys ministrative staff. BY 1990, T H E IR U HAD changed disguised as prize bulls. This is rare Circus Oz has received moderate som ewhat, with an almost complete sport indeed, and it m akes great fun but mostly rising levels of funding emphasis on entertainment. There out of the animal-taming acts of t;ra fr om the Performing Arts Board of was virtually no sign of the political ditional circuses' There is also ter the Australia Council and the Victo edge of previous years, although the rific stuff done with fire and with a ria n Ministry fo r the Arts, now skill level and the entertainment staggering ra nge of cycles. known as Arts Victoria, together va lue of a very slick, professional Other recent innovations inclL\de with support from the City of M el production remained very high . Tim a trend towards increased s kills bourne and various corporate spon Coldwell was quoted as saying at the specialisa tion. The decision to fo sors, including Qan tas for some years time (in the Melbourne Herald) that cus, for example, on a core band of and now the paper m anufacturer, ' Th e re i s n o point pieaching three (w ho are really only musicians Sorbent. communism on this side of the world and who play some lovely music N evertheless, there have been anym ore; there is not even much composed by Irine Vela) is one which some fin ancially rocky years: losses point preaching it on the other side ...' I thought worked very well. (N eed- were reported on the Melbourne and The most recent show- seen al less to say it wouldn't be Adelaide productions in N ovember ready in Sydney earlier this year and Circus Oz if they didn't. and December in 1990 (wh en the then in Melbourne for the Comedy economic recession's effects were Festival, and destined for further M Y FINAL A D BEST MEMORY of increasingly being felt all over the touring as the year goes on-seem s this year's show is of another ·mar Australian entertainment industry) to have maintained the entertain vellous new act, in which the three and a Sydney season, scheduled for m ent-first policy. The new Artistic musicians are hoisted, still on their January 1991 , was cancelled. The Director (Sue Broadway) has engaged chairs, into a kind of fr ~e -fl o atin g ame year, however, saw the circus long- time circus-member Stephen mobile which soars rhapsodiqlly back in the air for its fourth visit to Burton as Guest Director to com over and around the central".space, the U .K. and back home for the Mel bine a very lively bracket of acts, while playing a bitter- sweet, Erik bourne International Festival. Re based on some of the circus' most Satie-like air of great poignancy. cent funding grants-including a confident apparatuses and comic and Perhaps the new-look Circus Oz just-announced 'Playing Australia' musical inventi vene s, into a kind should concentrate on _p ~ rforman ce allocation of $269,5 15 for a massive of situation-com edy structure. art work of this inspired kind in Australian tour next year- have The premise is of a seedy cafe future and ditch the less-successful guaranteed the organisation's sur (Cafe Oz) bedevilled by vagu ely in stituation comedy stuff. It would vival and buoyant spirits for the fore- competent staff, demanding gu ests certainly add another string to their eeable future. and a bizarre time-and-motion in already di stinc tive-and dis tin Circus Oz arguably reached its spector, in which all the acts and guished- bow. • artistic peak in its tenth anniversary apparatuses are given a kind of co show in 1988. That show revealed medic raison d'etre. While some of Geoffrey Milne is head of the Theatre considerable growth in the strength this works reasonably well- a won and Drama Department in the School and maturity of a number of the derfully funny plate-spinning act and of Arts and M edia, La Trobe younger performers who had joined a breath-takingly skilful Lu Guang University.