HAWKSTONE HALL RedPmptorist International Pastoral Centre Creating opportunities for spiritua[ renewa[ Hawkstone Hall is an international pastoral centre that has served the unive rsal Church as a place of spiritual renewal for the past 25 years. The house is set in extensive parkland in Shropshire, England. It is a peace-fi ll ed p lace. Staffed by the Reclemptorists of the London Province, together with religious and lay people, it fulfils St Alphonsus' wish that Redemptorist houses would be places of spiritual renewal for religio us, priests and lay people.

East er Voices from H awkstone OATES FOR 2001 / 2002 "Hawkstone Hall is a pearl c:fgreat price which I was fortunate to discover. It is a place of peace 23April 19 July200 1 (full ) where I experienced personal enrichment and renewal. W e prayed togethe r, laughed, and I 0 September 6 Decem ber 200 I ( 12 weeks) developed ne\\· fri end ships. It is a joy to he here ." 22 April 18 Ju ly 2002 ( 12 weeks) 7 Jan uary 2 1 March 2002 ( I 0 weeks) (Sr Marie Egan rsj, Pastoral Ass istant, So uth Australia) 9 September 5 December 2002 ( 12 weeks) "Hawkstone o ffered me a perfect blend: a welcoming house in a beautiful counrry setting; a Fur further information about variety of wonderful lectures; workshops; time to re lax, read and p ray. The opportunity to be Th e Th ree Mon t h Re n ewal Courses part o f an inte rnational community of women and men with tremendous experi ence o f the Haw kstonc Hall , Marchaml cy mi ssion was a highli ght. I've enj oyed three months of we lcome refreshme nt and renewal." Shrewsbury, SY4 SLG, UK (Br Brian Davis rjx f-l igh School Principal, US!I) Tel: ++44 1630 685242 Fax: ++44 1630 685565 visit this peacejif[ea pface toaay: www. liaw~tone -fia[f.com e-mail: hawkhall@ ao l. com

(/) EUREKA STREE I UNSW u CRUSADE OR PRESS (D CONSPIRACY? Catholics and the Anti-Communist n Struggle in Australia CJ-· ..:L by Bruce Duncan - The split in the Australian Labor Party in the mid 1950s 0 was the culmination of an enormou s struggle for the soul of the party, waged by fair means and by foul. Locked in bitter co 0 ideological dispute were a small but energetic group of co Communists and their sympathisers ranged against the 0 equally passionate anti-Communist forces led by B.A. Santamaria. 0 - Drawing on previously unreleased documents, this is the 7\ first comprehensive account of events leading up to the ·- split. It has an extraordinary cast of characters, fr om u Archbishop Daniel Mannix to H .V. Evatt. Q) Thanks to UNSW Press, Eureka Street has I 0 copies of Crusade or Conspiracy! to give away, each worth $49.95. Ju st put yo ur name 0... and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: Eureka Street April Book Offer, PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC, 3 121 . Cf) (See page 8 for winners of the January-February 2001 Book Offer.) <> O:s: ' > cCl El.JREKA STREE I :s: > : ~ ~ z zrn cO :s: -n co " rnC Ale::> w C:: >n v > ;=-nAJ -, N~ O AJ Oy> -< I COMMENT > "'-< 4 Michael McKernan Homegrown V> > advantage z 0 -< I rn 0 r LETTERS 0 () 8 Bridget Griffen-Poley, fohn Carmody -< and Ian Manning juliette Hughes' profile and Meg Gurry's article have been assisted by the THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC Commonwea lth 10 Michael McGirr Blue ribbon seat Government through th e Austra lia Council, its arts 1 0 Rosemary West Democrats two-step funding and advisory body. 12 Kathryn O'Connor Market benefits 13 Tim Stoney Caught in slips Publisher Andrew Hamilton 51 14 Anna Reynolds Carbon cop-out Editor M orag Fraser Assis tan t editor Kate Mant on Graphic designer Siobhan jackson General manage r M ark Dowell COLUMNS Marketing Kirsty G rant COVER STORY Advertising representative Ken H ead 7 Capital Letter Subscription manager W endy M arlowe Jack Waterford Panic stations and 22 The Green battler Editorial produ ction and administration 1 Juliette Hughes profiles Australian ass istants juliette HL1 ghes, Paul Fyfe 51, policy-free zones Greens Senator Bob Brown. Geraldine Ballersby, Ben Hider, 11 Summa Th eologiae Mrs Irene Hunter Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg Andrew Hamilton Intimations of O ' Kelly 51, Perth : D ean M oore, Sydney: immortality Edmund Campion & Gerard W indsor, REVIEW ESSAY Q ueensland : Peter Pi erce 21 Archimedes United Kingdom D eni s Minns OP Tim Thwaites More mouse than 36 Cautionary ta les South East Asia jon Greenaway Mickey John Button writes about the Jes uit Editorial Board Peter L'Es trange 51, ideological politics of B.A. Santamaria Andrew Bullen 51, Andrew H amilton SJ 46 W atching Brief and Frank Hardy. Peter Steele 51, Bill U ren 51 Juliette Hughes Not really Patrons Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the support of C. and A. Ca rt er; the tru stees of the es tat e of Miss M . Condon; W .P. & M .W . Gurry BOOKS FEATURES Eureka Street magazine, 155N I 036-1758, 40 Bi g Tom Australia Post Print Post approved 16 Spea king term s fam es Griffin reviews Thomas Pll349 181 /00314, is published ten times a A story by Alex Miller. year by Eureka Stree t M agazine Pl y Ltd , Keneally's The Great Shame: A Story 300 Victoria Stree t Ri chmond VIC 3121 1 7 The hea rt of th e matter of the Irish in the Old World and the PO Box S53, Ri chmond VIC 3 1 21 Meg Gurry investigates the sh am e of Tel : 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 94 28 44 50 New. email : eureka@jes pub.jes uit.org.au sickness. http://www.eurekastree t.corn .a u/ 20 Sti cks and stones Res ponsibility for editorial content is accepted by Andrew Hamilton 51, Jun e Fa ctor questions the proposed ART 300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond Victorian racial vilification laws. 41 The writing on th e wa ll Printed by Doran Printing 46 Industrial Drive, Braes ide VIC 3195. 2 7 Border! i ne cases Andrew Bullen reviews the Colin © Jesuit Publica tions 2001 Tricia Fitzgerald reports on the refugee McCahan exhibition at the National U nsolic ited manu scripts w ill be returned situation in West Papua. Gallery of Victoria. only if accompanied by a stamped, se lf-a ddressed envelope. Reques ts for 28 Kalimantan chaos permi ss ion to reprint materi al fro m th e magazi ne should be addressed in w riting fohn McCarthy traces the causes of the to the editor. current crisis in Kalimantan. FLASH IN THE PAN 44 Reviews of the films Proof of Life; This month: 30 Broome's other pea rl s Cover des ign by Siobhan jackson Aboriginal, Catholic and complex Traffic; Quills; Rosetta and In the Cover pho tograph of Bob Brown and -Susan Varga discovers Broome. Mood for Love. photographs pp22- 26 courtesy Australian Bu sh Heritage Fund 33 Hong Kong kings G raphics pp10, 13, 15, 16,20 Jon Greenaway reports on challenges by Siobhan jackson SPEC IFI C LEVITY Graphics pp 17 and 19 by Ell en Nangle to democracy and the rule of law in Ph otographs pp33-35 by Jon Greenaway Hong Kong. 47 Joan Nowotny Cryptic crossword COMMENT

M I C H AEL McKERNAN Home-ground advantage The opening of the National Museum of Australia presents us with an opportunity to commemorate those who have suffered in conflicts on our native so il. 1 1979 MELBOURNE historian Professor Geoffrey incorporating into the one exhibition 'Aboriginals, Blainey was commissioned to undertake a study of Eureka, the commandos of the Boer war, New Guinea the Australian War Memorial's displays to assist in a 1942-44 and Vietnam'. better presentation of Australian military history. Blainey's creative vision of the past might have Blainey's trademark then, as now, has been to produced a remarkable Australian War Memorial see connections that most of us miss. He has, one of exhibition on guerrilla warfare. Certainly the Boers and the Vietcong enjoyed a 'home-ground advantage' as Geoffrey Blainey was quick to recognise. To place Aboriginal- European warfare within that context was challenging and far-sighted, anticipating the ground­ breaking research of Henry Reynolds. Not surprisingly, the War Memorial's governing body-of which, ironically, Geoffrey Blainey is now a member- declined to take up his suggestion and the report was quietly buried. No-one branded the idea 'black-armband history' because Geoffrey Blainey had not then given the expression currency. He would launch that notion in 1993 an d find it embraced enthusiastically by John Howard. If Blainey's suggestion h ad been adopted in 1979, how difficult might it have been for current revisionists to deny the fighting on the frontier? For museums, certainly as treasured a museum as the Australian War Memorial, tend to bring a certain imprimatur to their displays that is perhaps stronger even than the certainty we seek to find in books. Even journalists such as the Melbourne Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt would find it hard to deny 'th e stolen generations' if they were to study the documents con­ tained in the Nat­ ional Archives of Australia's extra­ ordinary travelling exhibition, 'Bet­ ween Two Worlds'. I remember stand­ his publishers claimed, 'the eye of a poet who takes ing speechless before in the detail, the subtlety and the sentiment'. Blainey a police officer's advised the War Memorial that 'within the next account of the for- decade' there would need to be a display on cible, tearful removal of children at Wave Hill in Aboriginal-European warfare. That was a given, he the Northern Territory in 1950. Parents were terrified believed. How to go about it I It might be best, Blainey by the noise of the plane, he reported, and in future, continued, to give 'special attention to home-ground h e recommended, children should be removed by advantage and how to exploit difficult terrain' by truck.

4 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 Perhaps the idea that the Australian War Museum recommended that children not be admitted Memorial should incorporate the war on our own soil without adult supervision. It was a stark and chilling within its displays was adventurous in 1979. It may display. There is a similar feel to the permanent also have been outside the terms of the War exhibition on European- Aboriginal warfare in Memorial's governing Act, but when that Act was Canberra. Thrown on to the carpet from spotlights changed in 1980 there could be no doubt of the wider above, without any comment, are some Australian coverage that parliament had sanctioned. Previously place-names: Slaughterhouse Creek, Battle Mountain, limited to the wars of the 20th century, the new Act Poison Water Creek. These place-names should say gave much wider powers to the displays. The War as much to us as Lone Pine, the Kokoda Track and Memorial embraced the colonial wars, Sudan and South Sandakan. Perhaps in time they will. Excellent museums Africa, but still steadfastly ignored the wars at home. provoke us to want to know more and the National Geoffrey Blainey had correctly picked public Museum is telling us that we cannot pretend interest in the issue and, on cue, 'within the decade', any more that these things did not happen. members of the public began to ask where were the Australian War Memorial displays on Aboriginal­ YTI CAME AWAY unsatisfied still. The Australian European conflict. 'There was no war on Australian War Memorial exists to commemorate Australian war soil', the die-hards at first asserted-as if to use the dead. It does so in a way that its founders had wanted same word for frontier engagements and mechanised to be unique. Not just a museum, not just a slaughter on the Western Front was somehow to memorial-they wanted their institution to tell a belittle the memory of the Diggers. But, as Geoffrey story of 'the greatness and the smallness'. But they Blainey had perceived, guerrilla warfare and conven­ wanted that story in a place that in every corner, at tional warfare might be vastly different in the telling, every turn, reminds us to pay tribute to those who yet warfare each was, nevertheless. gave their lives for their country and its cause. Blainey's interest in museums had possibly been Study and understand what happened at Lone stimulated by his appointment in 1975, courtesy of Pine or Kokoda, I used to say to school visitors, and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, to the Committee then go to the Roll of Honour to be reminded that real of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (the people, maybe just a couple of years older than you, Piggott inquiry) which was to be a milestone for Aus­ lost their lives in that or this battle. Look at their names, tralian museums. High on the list of recommendations run your fingers over the bronze tablets, to understand from the Piggott inquiry was the idea for a National that they had the same hopes and aspirations for life Museum of Australia. Embraced by Fraser, funded by that you have, the same joys and fears. Feel their Hawke, marginalised by Keating, embraced again by reality. Then you will begin to comprehend the cost Opposite page, leh: Howard, the Musewn finally opened its doors in Canberra of war to Australia and Australians. 'Th e Coming of th e on 11 March 2001, 20 years and more in the making. If we are to incorporate into our national story Li ght' by Kathryn The idea of a National Museum of Australia had an account of the war on the Australian frontier in Norris, pastel on paper, 1996. Source : National proved a godsend to staff at the Australian War the 19th and 20th centuries, we need to know not Museum of Australi a. Memorial who had been given the responsibility of just the details of that story, we need also to under­ Christianity w as replying to the increasing numbers of letters from stand its human content, its people and its implica­ brought to th e Torres those arguing for some recognition of the war at home. tions for us. What the National Museum of Australia Strait Islands by th e 'Fully recognising the importance of the issues you has done is a start. But commemoration means more. London Missionary raise', those replies parroted, 'nevertheless such 'Here is their spirit', Charles Bean had written of the Society in 1871. Som e matters are now properly the responsibility of the Australian War Memorial which he had helped to Islanders see this as a National Museum of Australia.' found, 'in the heart of the land they loved'. Others, form of ass imilation, others embrace it and On a preview tour of the Museum, as an old War like Will Dyson, interpreted Bean's words to mean celebrate th e event. Memorial hand, I was keen to see if our expectations that our Australian War Memorial would, in some for the Museum were justified. It is a pity, I think, sense, be a spiritual resting place for those buried so Opposite page, right: that the majority of Museum visitors will explore the far away. 'Calling Them Home' was Dyson's inter­ 'Damelapel' by Gullawun (Daniel Museum backwards, as it were. They would expect pretation of Bean. Roque Lee), syntheti c to find the Gallery of First Australians before they That sentiment remains central to the purpose polymer on turtle shell, tudy Australia after the coming of the Europeans, of the Australian War Memorial. 'Calling Them 1999. Source : National but the Museum puts European Australia first. This Home' seems even more appropriate to the Aboriginal Muse um of Australia. is an architect's solution that conflicts with my wars now that reconciliation is so high on the national Th e Larraki a people of historian's interest in clear narrative and meaningful agenda. The National Museum of Australia has done Darwin lodged th e chronology and context. a fine job in telling the story of that conflict; there Kenbi land claim in Even so, the Gallery of First Australians does not remains a place, however, for its commemoration. • 1979 . This painted green sea turtl e shell dodge the hard, uncomfortable issues. Its treatment of shows the last hea ring frontier warfare is uncompromising and revelatory. Michael McKernan is the author of the commissioned for this claim in 1995. At the entrance to a small and temporary display on history of the Australian War Memorial, Here is Their Th e judges' dec ision is Belsen at the Imperial War Museum in London, the Spirit (University of Queensland Press, 1991 ). stil l pending.

VOLUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 5 Global Justice Does globalization make you sick? Do injustice and inequality light the fire in your belly? Do you have an eye for the future of the planet? Do you know how to get your message across? We have a vacancy for the position of Australasian Co-Editor with PR and administrative responsibilities. You'll have at least two years' relevant experience of editing and writing and the ability to write with clarity and flair. In return we'll provide you with a living wage (AUD$36, 166 for a four-day week). This post is based Australia West Papua Association (Melbourne) Inc. is a small, effective in our Adelaide office. Some overseas and interstate organisation promoting community travel will be required. This 4-day-per-week position development projects in West Papua and will consist of 2.5 days editorial work and 1.5 days PR diplomatic missions to international forums and administration. such as the United Nations. Further details and application form are avai lab le on ly The organisation is under the patronage of Bishop Hilton Deakin. from our web site. CVs are not accepted. Click onto www.newint.org and follow the links from What's New? 'Love Thy Neighbour-Lookabout West Papua' Closing date for completed application s: 6th April2001 . is a one-month publ ic appeal to Australians Applications are particularl y welcome from women and people from ethnic for financial help. What about depositing the minorities, who are curren tly under-represented in t he Cooperati ve. pt·ice of an Easter egg in the Commonwealth New Internationalist Publications "' ltd A.BN. 1100s m 12, Bank Account No. 06 320 I I 00 486 14: -· or sending a cheque to: n_l) www.newint.org 3/ I 14 Wellington Street St Kilda VIC 3182

COME & HELP CEL EB RATE 11 THE GOLDEN JUBILEE OF THE 50t ANNUAL MAYTIME FAIR A USTRA LIAN JESUIT MISSION /N INO/A HELD AT XAVIER COLLEGE, KEW, MELBOURNE, SATURDAY 5 MAY 2001

In February 1951, a group of pioneering Australian Jesuits left Australia, missioned to Hazaribag in India. Of the more than 50 Australian and New Zealand Jesuits who followed that f irst group only 23 remain in India now. We are blessed also with 150 Indian Jesuits.

We would like to thank visitors to the Maytime Fair over the last 50 years, who have ...

Fr Gaudentius Kongari SJ, Helped to establish and maintain ... Father Tony Herbert SJ, Provincial Superior 42 Mission Stations, 430 Mass centres, 4 hospitals, 204 schools, 7 Grihini schools, 36 years in India 35 dispensaries, 5 leprosy centres and many Welfare centres . Helped to support ... 450 Priests, Nuns and Brothers who staff t he schools; 90 Priests and Seminarians; 469 parish staff, 1424 school and hostel personnel. Helped to educate ... 59,000 school students, catechists, teachers and health workers, farmers and village development personnel Helped to ... improve water resources and food production, maintain bicycles, motor bikes, jeeps and Father Barry O'Loughlin SJ , Father Peter Doherty SJ , 37 years in India ambulances and provide legal aid for exploited people. 44 years in India Amusements, food & drink, music, market goods, raffles & wheels, from 10am to 6pm. Panic stations

Jack Waterford and pol icy-free zones

Esm Y ONC ""' gdm ceape< m Kim Beazley him«lf could National Museum. The Museum is a triumph of popular culture, prevent Kim Beazley occupying the Lodge by the end of the but of just the sort of popular Labor culture that Howard has year. So embattled and discredited is the government that it is not only always loathed but the destruction of which has always difficult to imagine anything redeeming it. been at the top of his agenda. It has been with the portrayal But has Beazley yet given voters any reason to vote for him z of history that Howard has been most concerned. As Does the virtual inevitability of a Labor victory mean that Labor things stand, the place for him in the museum-his will present itself to the electorate even shorter on policies and place in history-will probably be as a rubbery figure. promises, or the intention to honour them, than it was when the result seemed less certain? N ow, EVEN WITHOUT economic uncertainty, government is Those contemplating Howard's demise might note that the getting harder. The younger and more ambitious ministers have indications of a crushing defeat have been there for some time. already given the next election away and are polishing their About a year ago I commented that the polls were consistently curricula vitae for the election of 2006. No-one in politics for showing that the Coalition would be lucky to win more than the long term would be challenging Howard for the glory of 30 or 40 seats-that is, that Labor was looking at a majority of leading the Coalition into its most ignominious defeat. The art up to 50. For more than a year, trend polls have suggested that will be in preventing his taking them over the cliff with him, a the margin between Labor and the Coalition was anything fate that Peter Reith, Michael Wooldridge and John Anderson between six and ten per cent, suggesting Labor's biggest land­ will find it almost impossible to avoid. The smarter political slide ever. And that was before the consternation induced by staffers are getting ready to depart. Most of the significant successive electoral disasters in Western Australia and Queens­ lobbies have given up on the Coalition's chances and are making land, and-more damning-the sheer panic manifested by John a beeline for the Opposition's doors. When all discipline and Howard in its wake. John Howard had lost the confidence of central direction disappears, it is jolly hard winning single­ the electorate by the beginning of the year; his abrupt reversals handedly against the odds. Not impossible perhaps-as Paul of policy and principle since, however, have raised questions of Keating would say of his performance in 1993-but then he his very fitness to govern. had John Hewson and the GST on his side. Which is not necessarily to say that any of his climb-downs, Kim Beazley does not want to be John Hewson, and may rollbacks or rollovers was intrinsically bad policy. The charge well accurately judge that he should stay as small a target as from within the ranks of his own constituencies-that he simply possible, making the government the issue and relying on the had not been listening, indeed that he had been jeering at those fact that, finally, it has been found out. Why not rely on bland warning of great peril, and making a virtue of his obstinacy­ phrases about how important education and health are, along were true enough. His GST settled down among consumers with some soothing phrases for the suburbs and the better than expected, but the rage in small business, and claims disillusioned z of genuine anomalies, were very badly handled, both by Howard The short-term advantages are obvious enough, but those and his Treasurer, Peter Costello. Similarly, housing industry who actually want a Labor victory because they want different lobbies were warning of a drastic slowdown in their sector six outcomes should bear in mind that much of Labor's vagueness months ago, but were insulted and ignored. on policy represents not strategic reticence but actual vague­ The petrol climb-down was even more galling and ness and uncertainty about what to do. Those, for example, humiliating. Petrol prices, even the GST-induced component who want more investment in our universities and education of an extra $1 a tank, were hardly Howard's fault, but he was generally should realise that the last thing that Labor wants on a hiding to nothing from the time of Labor's opportunism in right now is an auction on education. Labor wants the suggesting the forgoing of a routine excise increase. Howard's educational lobbyists, all of whom it assumes are already safely revenge, of cutting out automatic excise increases altogether, in its pocket, to shut up. It thinks it has pitched itself on the will hurt Kim Beazley more than himself. Most people now right side of the mean and ideological David Kemp and that it think that there is nothing John Howard would not do, no policy deserves to be taken on trust. he would not adopt and no taxpayer's dollar he would not spend, Anyone who thinks that, on what has actually been offered in his desperation to get the Coalition re-elected. so far, deserves a Labor government. • For a sentimentalist such as myself, the most touching moment of Howard's Gethsemane was at the opening of the Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times.

VOLUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 7 LETTERS

Eurelw Street welcom es letters from its His other error is both more serious and readers. Short lette rs arc m ore li kely to more puzzling. In referring to the establish­ Points at issue be published, and all letters m ay be edited. ment of Commonwealth Scholarships, he Le tters must be signed, and should incl ude gave the Menzies government credit for From Bridget Griffen- Faley, University of a contact phone number and the writer's them and, further, asserted that 'Previously, Sydney name and address. If submitting by em ail, in all of New South Wales there had been While I am reluctant to respond to reviews, a contact phon e number is essen t i;J! . only 400 free bursary places'. It is true that I must take issue with two of Matthew Address: e ureka@ jespub. jcsuit.org.au the name 'Commonwealth Scholarship' Ricketson's points in his review of my book originated with the Menzies government Sir Franl< Pa ck er: The Young Master (Eurel

8 EUREKA STREET APRIL 2001 test and its extension to many social security unemployed, while in regions of recipients currently exempt !though not to high unemployment it has "It is not only a question of reforming the welfare age pensioners), accompanied by some becom e customary to transfer system, it is also about reforming what we under­ relaxation of means tests and above all by older workers considered to have stand by work ... I once floated an idea ... that if we increased services aimed at ch ivvying little chance of obtaining a job all took a one percent salary cut we could create clients into work or oth er approved on to disability support pay­ two new jobs. It had very limited support." activities. ments, and so out of the Comparee\ with the H enderson report of workforce. In recent work for Canon Ray Cleary, new CEO of welf"are body the 19 70s and the Cass social security review the Australian Local Govern­ Anglicare in the 1980s, both of which produced ment Association, National Eco­ reams of detailed research, the McClure nomics recalculated regional "The power of Christ's death and resurrection ... committee kept to the conceptual level, unemployment rates by adding had no paral lel in the writings of Qumran. Read and was rewarded with instant rhetorical back workers for the dole and the Community Rule and then the Sermon on the success. In 'mutual obligation' they lit upon transferees to disability support. Mount and be left in no doubt why people were a concept which Labor politicians could This made very little difference astonished at Jesus' teaching ' fo r he taught them as not repudiate, and which at the same time in Sydney: t h e re-estimated one having authority and not as their sc ribes'." allowed Liberal politicians to reconcile unemployment rate was still themselves to increased spending on w elfare around three per cent, but in Bishop John Wi lson on th e Dead Sea Scrolls services. The achievem ent on th e Liberal high unemployment regions like side can be seen by comparing McClure north west Tasmania, the north with the Report of the National coast of N ew South Wales, the The Melbourne Anglican Commission of Audit, prepared for the 'iron triangle' of South Australia 1998 winner of the Gutenberg Award for Excellence Howard government by a group of financial and Gippsland in Victoria, the in Religious Communication luminaries and widely regarded as its rate rose to 20 per cent or so. economic policy manifesto. These lumi­ What this m eans is that, in Mention this ad for a free sample copy of TMA naries made it clear that their prime concern the last years of the 20th cen­ Phone: (03) 9653 4221 was t o reduce expenditure, and they tury, full employ m ent was or email: [email protected] n.com.au advocated a blunt approach to limiting achieved in Sydney at the same ---- Tlz e eligibility and cutting rates. time as much of the rest of the If a work test is the price of bipartisan country was depressed. It is commitment to humane social security highly likely that, had McClure's policies, it is a price worth paying, on one welfare system been operating condition: work tests only work under in 2000, it would have worked AUSTRALIAN conditions of full or near-full employment. admirably in Sydney, but in It is at this point that the McClure commit­ other regions his social workers BOOK REVIEW tee's lack of attention to detailed research would have been overwhelmed lets them down. They were aware that by the lack of jobs. As Australia labour markets differ across the country, slides into recession and the APRIL 200 I but not sufficiently aware of the scale of glories of Sydney 2000 becom e a difference, and the extent to which the m emory, the point is yet again social security system has dampened being made that work tests Robert Manne on Paul Kelly s appreciation of the difference. According to presume job vacancies. More new history of Australia the Bureau of Statistics, in June 2000 generally, it is far easier to regional unemployment rates ranged from design social security systems The Talented Mr Conrad : around three per cent in Sydney east of for full employment in all An Essay on Peter Conrad Olympic Park to 11 per cent or so in the regions than for a country with by Ian Britain regions of highest unemploymen t. How­ a patchwork of structural ever, these rates are affected by social secu­ unemploymen t. Hugh Stretton on rity practice. Young people now work for Ian Manning Electing the Ambassador the dole and are no longer counted as Clifton Hill, VIC Two American perspectives on the Australian poetry scene Eureka Street Mondays at Newman College 'Is Au stralian Sport Playing the Game?' Jeanette Hoorn on Erotic Ambiguities A panel discussion with Ma rt in Flanagan (Th e Age), Amanda Sm ith (ABC RN 's 'Th e Sports Factor') and Tim Stoney (Network Ten). Sasha Soldatow reviews two new Fo ll owed by open d iscussion . books on Broome

All welcome. Enquiries: Kirs ty Grant (03) 9427 73 11 New Subscribers $60.50 for ten 1ssues (1nc GST) & a free book 30 April 2001, 5.30pm for 6pm Ph (03) 9429 6700 or ema1l: abr@ v1cnet.net.au 887 Swanston Street, Parkvi ll e, Me lbourne ARBN A0037102Z ABN 21 176 539 338

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 9 0 Tlhe Mon~/h § Traffic

Goulburn and Yass in the NSW southern crossed his leader, Mr Howard, over the highlands, had its lOOth annual show, a cancellation of the fast train project from Blue ribbon milestone that seemed to attract as much Canberra to Sydney and over fuel prices. local comment as the centenary of federa­ John Fahey, a far more prominent politi­ tion. It's the kind of show where yo u look at cian, wants his seat. The Goulburn Post seat the prize-winning geraniums or tomatoes has been giving more than sympathetic I NTHE GuNNING showgrounds, two or three or zucchini and decide that you could do as coverage to the One Nation candidate. Yet hundred metres from where I live, there's a well yourself and will enter next year. But, monument to a local boy, Denis Joseph of course, you won't. You won't do the Murray. Murray was a casualty of the Boer meticulous planning that gets a garden War. 'After rendering highly appreciated through the savage local summer. You won 't services in both field hospital work and attend faithfully to frail seedlings. The prizes several engagements with the enemy, he are for stubbornness, as much as anything. succumbed to enteric fever at Krugersdorp, For sticking it out. SthAfrica, on 10.01.01.' Murray was3 1; his The champion cake-maker turned out country was ten clays old. to be the local doctor. She had presented a When I discovered this m onument, butter chocolate cake. Onlookers were I thought for a time that the elate of Murray's relieved that, whatever advice she gave on death would appeal to any self-respecting the two da ys a week she is in the surgery at numerologist. The thought nearly blinded the local community health centre, the me to the coincidence that I happened to be heart foundation was yet to make its pres­ standing in front of the monument on the ence felt in her kitchen. Meanwhile, all the lOOth anniversary of Murray's death. entrants in the Miss Tiny Tot competition I wanted to do something. I walked back to were awarded equal first place. Prizes were the local post office where a rosemary bush on display. They included perpetual trophies has been planted in m emory of the fallen. that went back years. They also included The plant has thrived to the extent of taking such modest spoils as a three-pack of film over the adj oining fence, so I thought it donated by a Goulburn Pharmacy to be Schultz is not about to li e down. His car has could easily spare a branch in m emory of awarded to the best photographer of the signs stuck to its front doors which leave no Denis Murray. district. doubt as to his identity. The car spent the Besides, I'd taken a sprig or two from On the other side of the oval, the horsing whole Saturday of the Gunning show parked this bush on previous occasions to garnish fraternity had been camping out overnight. in the shade beside the monument to Denis a leg of lamb. The local economy is largely Their accommodation was pretty m ake­ Murray. He must have go t there early to dependent on sheep so I gambled that inter­ shift. Yet young people managed to step have secured the plum parking spot. It's fering with a sacred monument might be into beaten-up trailers, far older than they one sign that you know your patch. You tolerated for such purposes. are themselves, and e1nerge some time later know where to park. A week or two later, I was at the immaculately groomed for the dressage. -Michael McGirr showgrounds as part of a CFA training There is a race m em ory that enables the course. We spent quite some time circling achievement of such feats. It takes genera­ the centre wicket of the oval, pretending it tions to learn how to look elegant at a Democrats was on fire and dousing it with both water country showground. and foa m . We attended so conscientiously Phil, one of Gunning's senior citizens, two-step to this task that several of us began to said that this is her 50th show. 'This one is wonder if the local cricket team were due to the best ever.' About 2,600 people came W EN SENATOR Meg Lees claims her take the field and their bowlers had required over the course of the weekend. The CFA leadership is under challenge because of her the assistance of a bit of moisture. During was there, recruiting volunteers. It organised age or appearance, sh e is using feminism as one of our breaks, I pointed out Murray's a demonstration of aerial bombing, a smokescreen. Being female and over 50 monument to a fellow trainee. 'Bloody long doubtless in order to put enough water on certainly can harm one's employment way fro m home,' he said simply. the field to bring up the grass for the football prospects, but it is equally true, as her It wasn't long after this that prepara­ pre-season. chal lenger, Senator Natasha Stott Dcspoja tions for the Gunning show got into full Also present was Alby Schultz, the local says, that being young can hamper a gear. This year, Gunning, halfway between fe deral member of parliament. Schultz has candidate for a job like this.

10 EUREKA STR EET • AI)RIL 2001 For party members considering their options in the current leadership ballot, there are weightier moral and political 1 a e concerns. The decline in the Australian Democrats' WA and Queensland State votes has put the writing on the wall for Meg Lees. But while this is rightly interpreted as a payout for her part in delivering the GST to a reluctant Australian populace, there was more to it. When the Democrats leader­ ship switched to a policy of 'not ruling out' Intimations of immortality a GST a fortnight before the 3 October 1998 election, there is evidence that they betrayed the party processes and membership. They D ONALD BRADMAN WA , as they say, an icon. Not to mention a legend, a argued that the party's June ballot on tax myth and a cult figure. His theological status may be less assured than these policy justified their about-turn. But they were less than frank with their epithets suggest, but he has helped me understand what Easter is about. members and voters. The ballot closed in Theological teachers run to well-worn examination questions. Students of August, but results were not communi­ the Resurrection are often asked if Easter is the happy ending to a sad story. cated until the party's November journal, Like most cunningly devised questions, it leads you into difficulty whether you and then only by listing successful and answer yes or no. The truth, both of human life and so of God's workings, is unsuccessful proposals by numbers. To flesh more complex than this simple m etaphor suggests. out the result, members would have had to The trouble with happy endings is that they cancel out what has gone before. juxtapose the November results with the In happy endings, everybody lives happily ever after. Before, all was trouble, June ballot form.. Most probably did not grief, sin and absence. Now, all is joy, serenity, grace and radiant presence. bother. Before, doubt about God and Jesus Christi now, conclusive proof both of Jesus A former Victorian Democrats assistant Christ's divinity and so of God's existence. Before death, and now life. Before state secretary, Stephen Hart, argued that unrelieved sin, and now dominant grace. the policy shift was so late in the campaign that many Democrats voters would not This large rhetoric collides with our experience of life on both counts. have noticed. A week before the election, Endings rarely bring unrelieved happiness, while the saddest of stories, seen in he wrote to the editors of Australia's daily retrospect, are rarely without meaning for our journey. In the grimmest of loss, papers to draw readers' attention to the a stubborn hope rises, and where hope is totally lost, even the most extravagant Democrats' newly articulated support for a deliverance does not resurrect it. The deepest experiences of faith and grace are GSTsubject to the exemption of food. This, often edged with hesitations and ironies. Presence and absence flow into each he said, would leave low-income earners to other. pay a GST on all other necessities including At this point of tension between rhetoric and life, Don Bradman contributed clothing, electricity, gas and water. to my understanding of Easter. As a child, I went to his testimonial game, my Only the Financial Review and the last and only chance to see him play. The crowd was restive while the openers Warrnambool Standard published his letter, went about their task. A wicket fell, and out strode the great man, wearing, as prompting an attempt by the party hierarchy I remember it, his South Australian cap. A standing ovation, as h e touched his to expel him. This attempt foundered on the party's constitutional provision which cap a little nervously. He began batting, and the doubts began. Then word spread asserts a member's right to speak freely on that this was not Bradman, but Ron Hammence, a fine but not legendary South policies. Since then he has left the Demo­ Australian player. He batted for long enough for me to be taken home before crats for the Greens. the great man appeared. Hart claimed on ABC radio that the general Now, in straightforward factual terms, I did not see Bradman, and the day questions put to members did not mandate was a loss. But in the context of the day and the reception mistakenly given support for the GST. While a narrow major­ Hammence, I did see Bradman. There was an intimation of his presence, even if ity agreed with the proposal to tax services it was played out through his absence. as well as goods, they had voted against any This experience resonates with the tone of the Gospel stories of Jesus' flat tax on services, opting instead for dif­ resurrection, in which the same dialogue between presence and absence is ferential rates. They were not asked about enacted. The disciples are awoken to a presence, but one that is elusive enough a flat tax on goods or, for that matter, about to require the imagination to fill out. It resists capture-Jesus is often not a GST. He predicted that the Democrats recognised. He appears and disappears at will, and arouses fear as well as joy. would not have the 'ticker' to stand up to John Howard in tax package negotiations, a All this is more like the happiness of a journey than of an ending. It is a prediction he now considers fu lfilled. new beginning-indeed, like the applause that comes after a century scored in What made the government's tax a tight game. • package, even as amended, fundamentally inequitable was not simply that it taxed Andrew Hamilton SJ is Ewel

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 11 goods and services, but that it moved away This is known as the 'fourth hurdle' for from a system of progressive taxes on drug companies. The first, second and third income and goods, which set higher rates Marlzet hurdles relate to the quality, efficacy and for people on higher incomes and on luxury safety of a drug, and in Australia these arc goods. These have been partially or wholly benefits dealt with by the Therapeutic Goods replaced with a flat-rate tax on goods and Administration. By the time a drug makes services which takes proportionally m ore I N AN INTERV IEW with Liz Jackson on ABC it to the PBAC, all that remains is to ask the of the disposable incomes of people on low TV's Four Corners, Dr Mi chael Wooldridge questions 'should taxpayers pay for it?' and incom es. defended his new Pharmaceutical Benefits 'how much should they pay?'. In their 1998 ball ot, m embers voted 'to Advisory Committee (PBAC), saying that This system atic assessment of the increase the proportion of direct (in come 'the chosen m embers [had] a range of 'fourth hurdle' does not occur in many and/or wealth) tax relative to indirect experience'. The 'chosen m embers' include countries. Most of those who do assess it (expenditure) tax'. Yet the CST package a pharmacist, a GP, a professor of rural have lea rnt from the Australian model. In was clearly going to increase the proportion health, pharmacologists, a professor of the US the free market prevails and the cost of indirect taxes. medicine and (the source of most contro­ of drugs appears to have no ceiling. It is not But Senator Lees persuaded supporters versy) Mr Pat Clear, a previous senior unusual for US citizens to travel to Canada that the package would, once am ended, be executive for Glaxo Wcllcomc and Bayer. or Mexico to get medications at an afford­ a socially just source of extra funds to meet In the same breath Dr Wooldridge said it able price. In the UK the pharmaceutical community needs, despite Treasurer Peter would be 'terrible to h ave all academics­ companies are able to set their own prices Costello's assuran ces throughout what they only have one way of looking at things'. and then the government blacklists those had passed for a 'tax debate' that the The previous advisory committee had that cost the National Health Service too government's package would be revenue in fact largely been 'all academics'. It was much. The system Australia uses has ncu tral. headed by Professor David Henry, from the enabled this country to keep its drug costs So five out of the seven Democrat Department of Clinical Pharmacology at down to around 12 per cent of the health senators followed the siren son g of Newcastle University and did, it seemed, budget (low on a world scale), leaving more 'relevance' in 1999 and voted for the CST, have only 'one way of looking at things'. available funds for other essential aspects and Senator Lees is now headed for the That 'way' was via the science ofpharmaco­ of health such as hospitals, community political rocks, if not in this m onth's ballot cconomics. Pharmacoeconomics compares h ealth centres, health promotion and then at the federal election. The polls clinical outcomes of a new treatment with medical staff. (including 79 per cent of a Network Nine the costs associated with its use. It then tests But our system docs have its short­ Sunday program viewer poll) and prominent the result against a drug already on the mar­ comings. Democrats (including party fo under Don ket and used for the same indication. Drug Measuring outcomes in terms of li ves Chipp) are pushing her to go sooner. companies need to show either 'equiva­ saved m akes it difficult to assess drugs that If Senator Natasha Stott Despoja is lence' or 'superiority' with the older drug, have a 'lifestyle' benefit rather than sur­ elected leader, she would be wise to reopen with the outcome relating to 'patients'lives vival benefit. Lifestyle benefits are much party nominations in the next month or so saved'. The committee then assesses the harder to quantify. Viagra, as an example, in the hope of attracting some new blood, validity and accuracy of the data and (if the was rejected by the PBAC. The drug com­ untainted by the CST. data passes the tests) recommends a price pany, convinced of its benefit to the - Rosemary West that we as taxpayers would be willing to pay. Australian public, is taking the case to the

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12 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 High Court. Perhaps lifestyle benefits need of the previous members, Professor Aubrey players and supporters. There have always to be factored into the equation. The system Pitt, described this as akin to 'the plaintiff been bad umpiring decisions-it's part of may need some refining. But this does not in a court case being a m ember of the jury'. the gam e-but players, influenced by the take away from the value of an independent How will this affect the committee's ability TV replays that expose mistakes, are evidence-based assessm ent of price. And to make decisions about the cost of drugs? becoming less tolerant of them. until now it has kept the powerful lobbying And what pressures may be exerted by the You only have to look at the two Test machine of the pharmaceutical industry pharmaceutical industry as part of a 'work­ series played in March, in India and Sri well out of the loop. ing relationship'? The answers lie in the Lanka, to see how Test cricket is played Under the old system, to have a drug future. I wonder what it wi 11 cost us to find today. The emphasis is on verbal and accepted on to the PBS, a cornpany had to them out. -Kathryn O'Connor physical aggression. provide high-level data to the committee A case in point was Australian opening and then wait 12 weeks for the verdict. N o batsman Michael Slater's outburst during contact was allowed between drug com­ Caught t he recent First Test again st India in pany and committee during this time. The Mumbai. He erupted spectacularly when a company waited with no idea whether to in slips catch h e beli eved h e'd taken cleanly was order the cha mpagne or contact their disallowed. Unsure whether Slater had lawyers to start a litigation process (often ERTHE PAST few years the International taken the catch cleanly, umpire the next step). Dr Henry believes that this Cricket Committee has been in damage Vcnkatragavan referred the m atter to the arm 's-length approach is essential because control over gambling and corruption. third umpire. The third umpire decided the of the conflict of interest between the two parties: 'Th e committee is trying to get the best price for Australia. The industry is trying to get the highest price for itself. ' With no joy from lobbying the PBAC, the pharmaceutical industry has reverted to directly lobbying the government over the past few years-to get the system changed. In June 1998 an industry working group was set up comprising six CEOs of drug companies, Dr Wooldridge and the Minister fo r Industry, Senator Nick Minchin. The last meeting of this group was in November last year. At that meet­ ing, the group raised concerns about the 'hostil e attitude (of the committee) to industry'. In December 2000, legislation was passed to the effect that no PBAC m ember could serve for longer than eight years. This m eant that, come the end of Its desire to rid the gam e of gambling is TV footage was inconclusive, therefore the 2000, Dr Henry and other senior m embers laudable, but public confidence in Test benefit of the doubt went, as it should, to of the committee would be out of office cricket in particular has been damaged, not the batsman . (Henry had been there for 10 years). When only by gambling, but by an innovation Slater greeted the decision with an the appointment of Pat Clear was m eant to improve the game-the introduc­ unrestrained tirade against the batsman announced, most of the rem aining com­ tion of the third umpire. and umpire which even Captain Steve mittee resigned. The intention of this unseen adjudicator Waugh described as 'out of order'. As it's It seemed that the government no longer analysing close or disputed decisions using been reported, Slater was upset that the valued the independence created so delib­ TV replays was to reduce the effect that umpire and batsman didn't accept his word erately by the committee in their efforts to umpiring has on the game. Ironically, it that he had taken the catch. The umpire remain objective and evidence-based. On was m eant to strengthen umpires' authority didn't have the confidence to 'call it as he Four Corn ers, Dr Wooldridge described the by lessening the number of decisions, and saw it', the batsman wasn't prepared to old committee as 'overly antagonistic'. He therefore the number of possible mistakes, walk and the TV replay couldn't prove hopes the new committee will be more able they make. But the obsessive use of TV replays conclusively that Slater took the catch to 'work together'. But work together with appears to have so tmdermined the confidence cleanly. A situation which once might have whom? With the pharmaceutical industry? and authority of T est umpires that they're been solved by sportsmanship becam e The new m embers have a great deal of making m ore, rather than fewer, mistakes. intractable in the hands of the silent arbiter. expertise in m any areas. Unfortunately for And player behaviour, no doubt owing in In Sri Lanka, the match referee of the Australian public, for the m ost part this part to fru stration at the number of bad the second England-Sri Lanka T est, experience is not in the complex type of decisions, has deteriorated markedly. Hanument Singh, described the players' pharmacoeconomics that Dr Henry The increased use of technology, for all behaviour as 'betraying the true principles pioneered. And in one case it is direct the assistance it has given umpires, has of the game'. The incidents in this ga m e pharmaceutical industry experience. One upped expectations of umpires-from both stemmed from players reacting to a series

V OLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 1 3 of allegedly appalling umpiring decisions. The t echnology is as much about C u ltu ral theorist s argu e that the providing entertainment as it is about medium- in this case television- produces improving the ga m e by having better and Carbon the response. T hus, because umpires rely fairer decisions. Technology feeds on itself. more and more on TV replays, their ability A whiz-bang innovation one season quickly cop-out to call close appeals actually diminishes. becomes stale-think how boring stump Several times this summer I've seen cam appears now- so TV networks must A rTER T HE FAILURE of the United N ations umpires at one-day and T est level hesitate keep coming up with innovations to main­ Climate ChangeS ummi t held in theN ether­ before calling fo r the third umpire to judge tain viewer interest and ratings. lands last year, PrimeMinisterJohnHoward a run out, stumping or catch . In each case it To compound m atters, there are also argued that Australia's push for carbon sinks was clear the umpire thought the batsman inconsistencies in its use. In the England­ is crucial for m eeting our Kyoto target and was ou t but decided better safe than sorry, Sri Lanka T est match, referee Singh claimed is in our national interest. or, better not to back yourself just in case that the umpires 'cannot refer a possible The government's claim is question­ you're wrong. bump ball to the third umpire'; yet this able. A different approach is needed before It also appears that umpires are strug­ appeared to happen with Shane Warne's the nations of the world reconvene talks in gling to control the players' behaviour. dismissal by off-spinner Harbhajan Singh mid 2001. Michael Slater was not punished for his in the second Test at Kolkata. There was no The climate treaty, known as the Kyoto outburst until he spoke about it on radio doubt the catch had been taken at short leg, Protocol, is three years old and not yet the n ext day. Australian cricket ers but Warnes tood his ground. The decision­ finalised. Its targets for reducing pollution unapologetically use sledging as a weapon on whether the ball had bounced-was made are n ot ambitious. Nonetheless, many against opponents. They play tough cricket, by the third umpire. people believe that m eeting them is a crucial an attitude echoed by the Sri Lankan and Technology won't go away, in fact it first step in shifting to a future free of English coaches who reportedly claimed will increase. Umpires will come under disruptive climate change. Test cricket was 'a tough gam e with no more and m ore scrutiny and pressure to And certainly, few people would have quarter asked or given '. get it right; T est cricket will continue to be imagined that planting trees would become Penalties have so far been tame. Mainly ruthlessly competitive. The gam e's admin­ so controversial in the context of an environ­ monetary, they seem insignificant given istrators must acknowledge the effect that m ental treaty. the ever-increasing salaries and sponsor­ technology is having on the game and Carbon sinks are plantations of trees ship dollars for winning. In the ultra­ protect umpires, spectators, players and which can absorb carbon dioxide, and are comm ercial, ultra-competitive world of the gam e by having clear rules and enforc­ therefore m eant to absorb this greenhouse international cricket, confron tation and ing tough penalties against players who gas after it has been emitted from power controversy (even if they're gen erated out breach them. Otherwise these ugly scenes stations, cars or factories. There are con­ of the tools designed to minimise them), will only become more frequent. cerns that this strategy does not prevent make good TV, and good TV m akes money. -Tim Stoney greenhouse gas pollution from being emitted

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14 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 in the first place nor lea d to the introduction this century and that it is likely to disrupt the books' in a desperate attempt to cover of new energy and transport teclu1ologies. lives, industries and ecosystems. up its inaction, Australia could be leading Scientists are now questioning whether Over the next few decades, Australians with a target to reduce greenhouse gases in trees are a secure store of carbon, given that are likely to notice that we have become this country rather than increase 1990 levels carbon dioxide from the chimneys lasts in much drier overall, that river system s will by eight per cent. the atmosphere for over 100 years, while have less water in them, and that when it The bad news is that by continuing to the trees that are m ea nt to absorb it may does rain it will rain in extreme downpours, claim that we need even m ore fl exibility in well not live for 100 years. crea ting fl oods, erosions and landslides. meeting our Kyoto promise, Australia Just before the 2000 UN Summit began, Days will be hotter, northern Australia sounds increasingly like an advocate for a the British Meteorological Office published more vulnerable to the spread of malaria, limited number of large, polluting corpora­ research in the journal Nature, suggesting the Great Barrier Reef bleached, and co a tal tions, not a country committed to its own that climate change could be hastened by a communities more vulnerable to salt water broad national interest. vicious cycle of system feedback. Carbon intrusion and storm surges. The sinks strategy has not worked and sinks may become generators of carbon But we simply do not need additional will not work to deal with climate change. dioxide midway through this century, lead­ tree plantations to m eet our Ky oto target. Let's talk about a new approach. ing to even higher temperatures by 2100. The word 'target' sounds like a constraint, -Anna Reynolds but the reality is that our target (a nd the - clauses that apply to Australia) allow energy This month's contributors: Michael McGirr and transport emissions to increase by 25 is the author of Things You Get for Free and per cent, and yet still come under the Th e Good Life; Rosemary West is a free­ number we agreed to three years ago. lance journalist in Melbourne and was a Late in the night at the 1997 Kyoto m ember of the Community Coalition m eeting, the other participating nations Against the CST in 1998; Kathryn O'Connor agreed to the 'Australia clause'. The Aus­ is a freelance writer; Tim Stoney is a tralia clause allowed a decrease in land journalist and broadcaster; Anna Reynolds clearing since 1990 to be included in our attended the UN Climate Change talks in accounts. The Hague and co-ordinates the Climate Australia has been required by the Action N etwork Australia (www.climate United Nations Secretariat to submit figures australia.org). on expected increases in en ergy and trans­ port greenhouse emissions, and on what it expects land-clearing rates to be in 2010, reduce , reuse, recycle, The findings sugge t that land sources the year by which Australia is required to will switch from being net carbon absorbers m eet its target. invest ethically to net emitters by 2050, as soils warm and The figures show that from 1990 to forests decay under the influence of rising 2010, emissions from land clearing are temperatures. As a result, atmospheric con­ predicted to decrease from 120 to 42 million centrations of carbon dioxide could be higher tonnes (Mt)o f carbon di oxide. While clearing than previously predicted, leading to m ore ra tes still remain far too high, emissions in severe climate impacts. 1998 had fallen to 64Mt. The expected These concerns are combined with further decrease is explained by the fact scepticism about how adequately we can that we are running out of land to clear. measure and verify carbon-sink projects Over the same period, from 1990 to (and the carbon credit schem es associated 20 I 0, greenhouse emissions from the with them) that supposedly store the emis­ industrial, energy, and transport sectors are sions of polluters who may be in another predicted to increase by 25 per cent, from part of the world. Who will track these 423 to 529Mt. projects and the u se of the credits that they When these tonnages are put together in Why bother recyclingif your savings pollute? Why generate for the 100-plus years? Australia's greenhouse account, they sh ow conserve energy if your investm entswas te it? A major concern is that the tree-planting that Australia can come under its Kyoto You needn 't comprom ise your pri nciples to earn a fad will simply delay the introduction of target-of an eight percent increasc- w hile solutions to decarbonise the economy, still increasing pollution from chimneys competitive return. invest your savings with Australia's solutions like the reform of domestic energy and exh aust pipes. spec ialist fund manager. and transport systems to make them less The good news is that, with serious carbon intensive and more energy efficient. government action to reduce industrial Save with Australian Ethical Investment If the Prime Minister were to agree with pollution in line with the Kyoto promise, the advice of the CSIRO, then he might also and action to stop the damaging practice of phone 1800 021 227 now for ap rospectus argue that it is in our national interest to landclearing, Australia could have one of orv isit ourwe bsiteWVNI .austethica l.com .au

avoid climate change, ra ther than avoid the the strongest targets in the world. App l1 tatrlllll foc IIIV5111il1t tanlllllyllemallelllll~focm tlllllalll.'il ln1~ wnent ~IJIP'IIUI solutions. Australia's top scientists have By concentrating on reducing industrial Idate

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 15 STORY ALEX MILLER

Speaking terms

-I H«ST NOT•n T~CM when I'm gomg b•ck moss the crewmen stand talking beyond the passenger barrier island to where the ferry is waiting. We are the only in front of her. They don't look at her. As I come down ones going towards the ferry. Everyone else- a the stairs from the upper deck the woman turns and considerable crowd- is moving away from the ferry looks at me. She doesn't acknowledge m e in any way, dock and fanning out over the island. And that's what but her eyes stay on m e all the way clown. When takes my attention with them, the fact that they are I reach the deck on a level with her she stands up and the only ones going in the same direction as me on faces the exit ramp, her back to m e, watching the three this fine summer morning on the island. They walk a m en getting things ready for the disembarkation . She distance apart from each other and they don't look at is wearing a cerise headband made of some kind of each other and they don't speak to each other. The silky material. It is tied like a turban or bandeau and distance between them varies, stretching out at its makes her black hair stick up like an untidy rooster furthest to around 15 or 20 metres and coming back comb. Her yellow jacket is old and frayed and made at its closest to around four or five metres. That's as of some light cottony material. There is a pale stain close as they get. He's the one causing the variation. in the shape of a heart low down on the back. Under She's staying on the crown of the road, going straight the yellow jacket she is wearing a cerise dress in a down towards the ferry dock, keeping a steady pace. matching silky m aterial to the h eadband. The dress He strays a bit, out onto the grass verge then veering is coming unhemmecl. Her flat shoes are heeled over back onto the tar, looking about at whatever takes to the outside. They have the same dull greasy look his interest. She doesn 't look about. It's early and the as the 1nan's. sun is still low. It glints on his spectacles when he The man comes clown the stairs from the upper looks around. She stays out front. deck and waits behind me. The woman doesn't look On the ferry w e are the only passengers. As we around for him. We make a queue, the three of us, pull away from the dock h e's leaning on the aft rail the woman in front at the barrier, then me, looking back at the island. His khaki rucksack on the then the man. deck beside him. Like a little tan dog waiting with him. Hungry. His denim jacket is dirty and frayed at 0 N THE QUAY I hold back and let them go ahead of the cuffs. His jeans are stained, maybe with paint or m e. He is looking about again, as if he could be a some kind of chemical substance that doesn 't clean tourist and has never been to the Toronto harbourfront off. He leans on the rail looking back at the island before and is interested to get his bearings and see and crosses one foot over the other. His shoes are black what goes on here. She is walking straight ahead, the and heavy and they're dull and greasy looking. Street heavy plastic bag hanging from h er h and. They're shoes that he's using as work boots. He leans there closer now. Two or three metres apart. And keeping looking back at the island, watching the in-line skaters on a level with each other. They're not exactly and the families setting up picnic spots and claiming sauntering, they're not aimless, they know where positions at the public barbecues, the children they're going, but they're not hurrying either. They've throwing balls and the older people opening up stripy got time. Or maybe they're dog tired. canvas chairs. It's a warm Sunday in June and as the I cross Queen's Quay West behind them and stand ferry moves across the open water towards downtown watching them go on up Bay towards Union Station, Toronto there's a cool breeze on deck. Even when the seeing them go in under the elevated freeway, going detail is lost in the distance the man still stands there, into the neutral area between where the tourists are leaning against the rail, one foot crossed over the down at the harbourfront and where the commuters other, gazing back at the pleasure island. H e stays are in the business district. They're close now. Less there till the ferry clocks. than a m etre separating them , and I see him lean in When we came on board the woman went into towards her. She doesn't look at him but she must be the cabin and I haven't seen her. When the ferry clocks speaking to him the way he leans in towards her, I go down to the front and she's sitting in the shade stepping close beside h er, his shoulder almost touch­ by the ga tes to the exit ramp, which is as far forward ing hers, to catch what she's saying to him. • as a passenger is permitted to go. Between her fe et the plastic shopping bag. Heavy and full of stuff. Three Alex Miller won the 1993 Miles Franklin Award.

16 EUREKA STREET • APR IL 2001 The heart of the matter There must be ways to take the fear and humiliation out of bei ng seriously ill, argues Meg Gurry.

L AST YEAR I UNDERWENT open-heart surgery. It was meant to be straightforward. Mitral valve repair, they told me, was this particular surgeon's 'favourite' operation: less invasive than it once was, 97 per cent success rate after ten years, weeks rather than months to recover. The operation went well; the valve was repaired successfully. But post-operatively, things were anything but simple. One complication after another set in. What was most significant for me, however, was not just how quickly I deteriorated medically, but how fast was the descent into an emotional and alienating 'other' state of being. I crossed an invisible but nevertheless real boundary to become part of the undifferentiated 'sick' of our society. It was not a pleasant place. I did, however, learn a few things along the way. The experience gave me insight into the psychologically transforming nature of illness, and just how emotionally complex the whole process can be. In her book, Tiger's Eye, Melbourne historian Inga Clendinnen discusses her experi­ ences as a liver-transplant patient. One of her most interesting revelations, I felt, was her observation that the gap between the sick and the well in our society is at least as great as the other big gaps of race, gender and class. It certainly felt that way for me. One day I was a university lecturer, co-ordinating and teaching undergraduate courses and programs; the next I was in intensive care, weak and dependent on others for my daily needs, indeed for my very survival. I was also depressed by my new vulnerability and confused about what it all meant. Now, having crossed back to rejoin the 'healthy' side of the divide, I'm left wondering how unbridgeable is that gap, and how best we can reduce it to make the experience of illness more manageable. This is not, strictly speaking, a medical problem. Rather it is a question of medical culture, and therefore it is one in which the medical profession must be centrally implicated. My problems began when a pre-operative procedure went wrong. It was no-one's fault. I developed a rare complication following a coronary angiogram and found myself back in hospital for a week, receiving ameliorative treatment. Naively I thought that after this the rest would be plain sailing. I was wrong. From the moment I regained consciousness in intensive care I was over­ whelmed by pain and nausea. Morphine made me sick, and every anti-nausea drug only made it worse. This debilitating reaction went on for weeks and, I am sure, affected my body's ability to resist the number of complications which then beset me. One of the intensive care doctors told me, rather disturbingly I thought, that no one knows exactly what causes post-operative nausea or, for some patients, how to fix it. I had my first glimpse of the distance we have yet to travel.

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 1 7 The night Other, more medically challenging, complications It seems to me that the medical process has not were to follow. Atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat) yet accommodated and worked out adequate respons­ before my and pericarditis (inflammation of the lining of the es to patients' fear. I can see that this is a difficult heart) had set in by day five. I was in such pain that area. Doctors and nurses, facing potential litigation if maJor surgery, I could only sleep or rest sitting up, propped forward, they are wrong, cannot be expected to reassure their and then only with sleeping tablets. On day eight patients if they themselves are not sure of the out­ the anaes­ I went home. Within 24 hours I was again rigid with come. There is a serious problem, however, with the pain in my chest and in my right lower back. I had a extent to which the threat of litigation is shaping thetist visited nasty hard red lump developing on my chest along patient- doctor relationships, and adding to patients' the incision line. I still could not sit or lie, only pace fears. The night before my major surgery, the anaes­ me and I isted the house. Painkillers provided brief and only partial thetist visited me and listed all the disasters that could relief. eventuate in the next few days, including a one per all the I was soon back in hospital, once again in inten­ cent chance of dying and a two per cent chance of sive care, with a right lung half full of fluid. The sur­ stroke. Given that the earlier complication arising disasters geon returned- late on a Sunday night-to drain all from the angiogram had been a one-in-a-thousand one-and-a-half litres of it. The experience was hide­ chance, plus the fact that both my parents had died of that could ously painful and frightening. I had, I thought, reached strokes, those odds seemed disturbingly short. eventuate in a new low point. My husband certainly thought so; It must be possible to find a better form of words, he told me later he thought I would die that night. a way to reassure patients that their situation-and the next few I went home again the next day but continued to their fear-is quite normal. But, particularly once the get sicker. A CAT scan revealed an infection sitting problems started, this was not my experience. I was days, right behind the sternum; blood tests showed not reassured. Indeed, the most common response alarmingly high readings for infection. Within hours from the medical staff was surprise: 'Aren't you including a I had returned for the fourth time to hospital, this unlucky', was a frequent observation. They often time back to the cardiac floor and connected to an added that they hadn't 'seen anything like this for one per cent often painful four-hourly intravenous antibiotic drip. years'. While it was comforting to know that my case My surgeon by now was on his way to a cardiology was not a daily occurrence, feeling like a freak, a chance of conference in Washington so I was introduced to a statistical anomaly, made the future-which I so new surgeon who dismayed me with the news that if desperately needed to imagine-seem precarious and dying and a the infection hadn't shown signs of clearing up ren1otc. shortly, I was facing more surgery. I wondered how It was during my regular trips from my hospital two per cent my already weakened and undernourished body would bed clown to radiology that I realised the extent to ever cope with another surgical assault. Medical which I had shed my former identity and become part chance of probabilities aside, I was quietly convinced I would of another reality. There were no individual differ­ die if I faced another operation. ences here. In our dressing-gowns, with hospital stroke. It took two weeks for that infection to be beaten. blankets over our knees, we were lined up in wheel­ I finally came home a full four weeks after the initial chairs, our various bottles and drips on display and operation. The pain cased. Gradually I regained free­ medical records on our laps. We each silently and dom of movement in my chest and arms. The nausea obediently waited our turn, the casual social chatter lessened and I could eat, although only a little, and among the young medical staff around us only serving for a long time with no enthusiasm. Still weak and to underline the irreducible distance between us and anaemic, I remained on huge doses of oral them. It was here I felt most defenceless, vulnerable antibiotics for another six weeks. and-for reasons I don't fully understand- humiliated. The humiliation was somehow tied up with a ITWAS DURING this slow recovery time that I began sense of failure, a terrible fear that I had let down those thinking about sickness and h ealth in ways that I had closest to me. As I lay ill and miserable in hospital­ never done before. very unsuccessfully combating my sickness, in fact What had I learnt? My first epiphany related to at one stage getting sicker by the day-it distressed the debilitating impact of fear in seriously ill me that I was pu tting my family through such misery. patients. Once the chest infection had set in- poised Friends made many suggestions: try m edit

18 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 my feelings of impotence. I was reminded of a friend else but this comfort food for weeks. What I see when who had died from cancer and wh o, towards the end I look back at this otherwise incidental event is a busy of his life, becam e increasingly frustrated with all the health professional who has not lost sight of what books he was being given, books on the success stories matters, and what works, in the art of healing. of those who had fought the good fi ght and survived. Another example: one of the worst nights of the He also, I remembered, talked of a sense of failure. whole experience was the night my lung was drained. I still have not been able to resolve this question: It was done while I was fully conscious. I rem ember who should I have talked to about my fears, my at one particularly painful moment my doctor and feelings of failure? I could not talk to my husband or the intensive care nurse simultaneously and separately children because I did not want to increase their reached out to hold my hand. It was a small, sponta­ anxieties. Their daily visits could be difficult neous, human gesture on their part, but at the time it enough-for them and me-as they anxiously (and made a big difference. It gave m e a sense that they unsuccessfully) searched my face for signs of recovery. were there not just as technical experts, but to bear Perhaps I should have broached it with my doctor, witness to my distress as well. I didn't expect them particularly as I know he would have been open to to alleviate the pain, but their willingness to acknowl­ such a discussion. I liked and trusted him. But I think edge it undoubtedly helped me to cope. It's a moment I was worried about becoming a 'difficult' patient. In I rem ember with enormous appreciation.

fact I felt difficult enough-and he was busy enough, On a more abstract level, I learnt how we dealing with m y ever-compounding physical abnormali e illness in our society, how frightening problem s-without asking him to take me on that is for those who becom e sick, and, in turn, how emotionally as well. The hospital does provide a little space there is in the system (or in our lives) for pastoral care service. Maybe I should have turned to an acknowledgment of this fear. Yet, since m y that, but sharing m y inner world with operation, in a number of deeply satisfying conver­ strangers seemed far too confronting. sations with many friends and relatives, I have been struck by just how many people are affected by serious 'IERE AR E, I believe, some answers. As I grew illness, either their own or that of a close family stronger, I was able to see more clearly that it is member or friend. Illness in fact is not abnormal at possible to identify factors which help to bridge that all. So why do we act as if it is? It seems to me gap between the well and the sick, between coping I had a privileged ride. I was a private patient in a and not coping with serious illness. But these answers large and exceptionally good Catholic hospital. I had that the won't be found in the cutting-edge technology of faith in all my doctors. The intensive care and cardiac modern m edicine. For me, it was the small acts of nurses, overworked as they were, were concerned, medical kindness and empathy of the medical staff-their attentive and competent. I had a devoted family, and process acknowledgment, in essence, of my pain, fear and friends who never left me. But even with all this anxiety-which made the big difference. support, I still found my experience alienating and has not yet I realised this in the middle of one sleepless and frightening, at times intolerably so. How terrible it unhappy night, when a wonderful Irish nurse appeared must be for those with less support, for those with a accommodated through the curtain with a drink of hot Milo, insist­ less benign prognosis. All the more reason, then, for ing that it was my empty stomach that was making the medical process to accommodate better the and worked out m e feel so lousy. It wasn't pills I needed, she said, but usually unspoken need of patients for reassurance and a good nourishing drink. I had not had a hot chocolate empathy- for more hot Milos and outstretched hands. adequate drink for years-in fact I don't even like milk much­ How can we best teach our young doctors and but it worked. The combination of the nutritional nurses that the spontaneous, empathetic response responses to benefi ts of hot milk in an undernourished body, is still an essential part of the process of caring for together with the reassuring kindness of her offer, the sick? • patients' fear. helped calm m y anxieties and fears and began to address my problem with nausea. I drank and ate little Meg Gurry teaches politics at LaTrobe University.

VOLUME 1 1 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 19 THE NATION:l JUNE FACTOR Sticlzs and stones

T, ""'" edition nf Cindmllo Robert Manne and Peter Costello (then DTessed in Yella, compiled by Ian Turner On a Fitzroy wall Deputy Leader of the Federal Opposition). and published in 1969, included, among Newspaper editorials almost always a rich array of children's taunts and som eone has painted: opposed the legislation. The Austwlian insults, the following two chants: 'Stop Kooris bashing ( 1 November 1994 ), under the h eading 'Problems in Race Law Proposal', quoted Catholic dogs A sians'. How would one of the leading QCs associated with Jump li ke frogs the Royal Commission into Aboriginal In and out the water. the writer of this plea Deaths in Custody, Elliot Johnson: 'con­ Protestant ca ts fare under the ciliation and education are likely to be Sit on mats more effective than the making of mar­ l egi slati on~ Eating maggots out of rats. proposed tyrs, particularly when it is words not Is she or he ra cist for acts which are an issue'. The Age the next By the time I began to collect play­ day declared it was 'an unnecessary law' ground lore in the 1970s, these boister­ saying that Kooris largely because 'the Government has pro­ ous sectarian put-downs had died out bash Asians, or anti­ vided no proof th at the proposed bill is among the young, and no new variants necessary when laws against racial could be found to include in Cindemlla's racist for defending violence and damage to property already second edition in 1978. It seems as if Asians against exist.' The editorial writer concluded: change in the adult culture, the decline in fear and loathing between Christian brut ali ty~ What .. . ours is a society where the scores of denominations, gradually influenced the happens the next ethnic communities live for the most part folklore of children. Adult racial preju­ in harmony. That being so, why muddy the dice, however, has declined less markedly. time a cleric declares waters with a bil l for which there is no Consequently there is no shortage of demonstrated, let alone urgent, need and racial insults in the playground. that only his faith which, however carefully it is phrased, may Will the proposed Victorian Racial provides true transgress the right of free speech? Our fear and Religious Tolerance legislation do is that this bill will create more some good I Will it, as the Premier, Steve s a lvation ~ problems than it solves. Bracks, declares in his opening to the 'Discussion Paper and a Model Bill', M ucH THE SAME arguments circulate 'reinforce the right of all Victorians to live now on the justice, and the efficacy, of now, together with some added concerns, without fear of vilification in their public laws which attem pt to prevent racist since the Victorian government's pro­ and private lives'? Does vilification speech, writing and behaviour. posed legislation goes further than any legislation work as its exponents desire? Response to the 1994 federal govern­ other in Australia- it includes religious And is the cost to other rights justified? men t proposal for racial vilification leg­ as well as racial vilification as a basis for Argument about the pros and cons of islation is typical. It became a subject of pen alty, declares that ' th e person's racial vilification legislation is not new. intense public interest. Organ isations motive in engaging in any conduct is In Australia in 1983 the Human Rights passed resolutions for or against; there irrelevant', encompasses vilification in Commission was proposing amendments were letters and articles in the press and private as well as public places, and to the Racial Discrimination Act which much radio talkback; conferences an d creates criminal vilification offences. would have made racial insult and abuse, specialist publications all contributed to The government has very properly and words spoken or published that an often passionate debate. Prominent called for public response to its Model might result in hatred, intolerance or individuals who supported the legislation Bill-what it calls a 'consultation pro­ violence, unlawful. In the 1990s both included civil liberties luminaries Ron gram'-and promises that the Bill 'will state and federal governments endeav­ Cas tan QC and Alan Goldberg QC, while be revised fo llowing the consultation'. As oured, sometimes successfully, to intro­ other prominent civil libertarians such someone who long ago joined Milton's duce variants of such legislation. The as Ron Merkel QC and Robert Richter party, I offer the government his 1644 community was as divided then as it is QC were opposed, as were John Button, declaration against 'a cloistered virtue

20 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 unexercised and unbreathed that never sallies out and seeks her adversary', and his manifesto: 'Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely accord­ ing to conscience, above all liberties.' Put m ore prosaically, the salve to hur t feelings provided by anti-vilification legislation is always temporary-symbolic ra ther than effective-for there is no evidence that any legislation again t speech and writ ing prevents or even More mou se than M ickey diminishes racial hatred and abu e (con­ sider the rise of racist parties in Europe and our own hom e-grown Hanson ver­ A RCHIMEDES HAS BEEN TRULY bemused by the reaction to the unveiling of the sion ). Existing legislation already outlaws human genom e. There was a feeling of genuine disappoin tm en t when humans threats, violen ce and incitem ent t o were fo und only to have abou t 30,000 instead of the predicted 100,000 genes; a violence; and the injury to freedom of chagrin that we share about 60 per cent of our genes with fruit flies and 90 per speech and debate that is an inevitable cen t with mice, and near-outrage that we can claim only about one per cent of consequence of such legislation (a nd in a our genes as unique. country lacking a bill of rights or other Since w hen, in this world of miniaturi ation, did sophistication have any­ constitutional protection of free speech ) thing to do with size? And are we really that m uch more complex than a mouse? weakens our capacity as a community to In fac t, what m akes us different from other anim als is the relative size of our know what others think and say, and brain, and the extent of our consciousness and free will. therefore effectively to oppose racial and Vi ewed from that perspective, the fact that we don't have three tim es as religious bigotry. m any genes as a m ouse is grounds for great rejoicing. You see, gene provide the And then there are the practical prob­ plans for making the proteins which govern every biochemical reaction in our lem s. On a Fitzroy wall som eone has bodies-from the reactions which release the energy we use, to those which painted: 'Stop Kooris ba hing Asians'. create the pigm ents that colour our eyes. The original gene estimates were based How would the writer of this plea fare on the am ount of genetic m aterial we harboured, and the fac t that there seemed under the proposed legislation ? Is she or to be a far greater variety of biochemical reactions, hence proteins, needed to he racist for saying that Kooris bash produce a human than a m ouse. Asians, or anti-racist for defending Asians The latter m ay well be true, but it doesn't necessarily fo llow that you need against brutality? What happens the next m ore genes to produce a grea ter range of protein-controlled reactions. It can time a cleric declares that only his fa ith also be done with sm arter, interactive genes and proteins. provides true salvation? And who will Mapping the genom e is only part of the story. What we are only just begin­ judge the multitude of children who com­ ning to find out is how widely those genes interact with each other and their ically or maliciously include racial and environment. religiou s slurs am on g their diverse To develop into a human being, a single cell has to undergo a process repertoire of rhym es, taunts and insults? whereby it replicates itself into millions of cells of hundreds of different varieties. Are they protected under the exemption Along the way billions of complex molecules are produced and react in just the for ' the performance ... of an artistic right ways at just the right place . And it all happens unassisted, like the instal­ work' if it can be argued that these lation of a software package on a computer, set in train by inform ation contained expressions are part of children's oral in the genes. literature? So the human embryo is a self-a embly system , where genes are controlled Better to avoid these minefi elds. by other genes and told when to switch off and switch on; where one gene can Inst ead, the government should ade­ produce proteins which assemble differently in different environments, be they quately fund that part of its proposal the liver or the brain; and where the en vironment can interact directly with the which accords with th e recommen ­ genetic material to alter its function . dations of numerous advisory commit­ This is a world in which the genetic blueprint is not deterministic, where tees and commonsense: an imaginative, the environment has a say, where twins can never be truly identical, where the inclusive community education cam­ whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and where 30,000 interactive, fl exible, paign against racism and bi go try. That multi-tasking genes may be able to do the job of 100,000 inflexible, single- task might make a difference. After all, it wa gene. something similar which helped banish It is also a world, it would seem, where the genetic blueprint allows a greater Catholic dogs and Protestant cats from role for nurturing, free will, learning, culture and religion . Far from being street and playground. • disappointed by our 'humble' genome, Archimedes is intrigued, excited and liberated. • Jun e Factor is a Senior Fellow at the Aus­ tralian Centre, University of Melbourne. Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer.

V OLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUR EKA STREET 2 1 S'NATO" Bo• Bmwn "lks quickly, national parliament. The relationship times like these, Brown's efforts can be understandably (and understandably in between the Green s and the various the talk of Parliam ent House, while the both senses of the word). First, because environmental groups that support them rest of Australia remains oblivious. to siphon an unwelcome message into at election time is som ething that 'Last year, when the Regional Forest unwilling ears he must work fast. And parties with bigger campaign budgets Agreement Bill came in here to give unders tandably in the oth er sense might still envy. forest companies power to disinvest the because over the years h e has been Yet in recent years Brown, who was minister for the environment's powers refining a complex discourse to make his The Australian's Australian of the Year over the forest ... I debated every clause. words stick in the mind. in 1982, and who was the 1990 recipient It was the 14th or 15th longest debate in Lone Australian Greens Senator in of the United N ation s Environment Senate history, and it didn't rate a line in Canberra since 1996, Brown is more than Programme's Goldman Environment the press. Because Labor and Liberal sup­ vocal: avalanches of evidence, fact, con­ Prize, has fa ded from the front pages and ported [the Bill], the mood was: "Here's text, roll out as he speaks. He is unafraid the screens of mainstream Australia. His a greenie on the benches, delaying things, of com plexity, but has learned the art of indefatigable pursuit of the major parties filibustering, carrying on ." The press gal­ the soundbite, som ething to which most in the Senate on matters of the environ­ lery, particularly the doyens of the press en vironmental campaigners are tone­ ment, social justice and public account­ gallery, have made a high artform of deaf. With a huge network of formal and ability has until recently been largely putting acres of n ewsprint towards informal workers behind him, based in ignored by a press ga llery whose greatest discussing smaller and smaller differences such groups as the Wilderness Society, interest is in the fine shadings of between the big parties, who are both he spearheads the Greens push in the Coalition/ ALP policy differences. At economic rationalist parties-'

22 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 Shadow Minister for the Environ­ ment, Senator Nick Bolkus, is unworried by the charge that Labor is just another economic rationalist party. 'The bottom Extract from the Senate Hansard, 22 March 1999 line is, we're not the Greens. And Bob Senator BROWN (Tasman ia) (1 0.18 p.m.) ... The second matter I refer to tonight deals will tell us where we go wrong, but he with polit ical donations by woodchippers to the coaliti on and to the ALP. A review also knows he's got more hope with us made by a researcher of th e donations made to the o lder parties has found that, in the than with any other party.' But Brown can document the change 1994-95 fin ancial year, two of Australia's largest woodchipping compani es, Amcor in attitude that came over the Labor Party and Boral, gave money to the ALP and the coaliti on on the very same day that the then in the early '90s. Change came from the fede ral resources minister, David Beddall, renewed and extend ed the export woodchip top end first: 'Things became progressively Ii cences for the same compan ies. It was also th e same day that another giant woodchipper, more difficult after the late '80s-the Wesfarmers Bunnings, gave their largest political donation of that financial year. halcyon Green years. Even Maggie Thatcher People who were here then, or indeed anybody watchin g from outsid e, wi ll said sh e was green! But after 1990, with remember that 21 December 1994 was a dark day for those people concerned about the decision to stop the Coronation mine Australia's forest environm ent. It became known as 'Bedda ll 's blunder', and I w ill explain in Kakadu, when Bob Hawke h eld out against Cabinet, promoting the rights of that in a moment. The expectation around the country was that the fede ral govern­ the Indigenous people, the environment ment-the Keating government- would save some of our precious wild forest. Despite was taken off the agenda. Graham Rich­ thi s overwhelming expectation, the minister-Beddall-handling thi s matter gave vast ardson told m e in 1990 what was going new tracts of pub I icl y owned old-growth native forest to Amcor, Bora I and Wesfarmers to happen. And when Paul Keating came Bunnings to be woodchipped and end up ultimate ly as paper bags and oth er paper into office in '93, he told his staff Christ­ produce on the scrap heaps of the Northe rn He mi sphere. mas party that the environment was Mr Bedda ll 's largesse was so breathtaking, and the backlash aga in st the govern­ going on the backburner. Ros Kelly as the minister of the day saw to that. ment from the populous [sic] at large so destabilising, that three weeks later, on 13 'What we're seeing now is a con­ Janu ary 1995, the Sydney Morning Hera ld's editori al reported it as 'Bedda ll 's blunder' tinuation of that through to Robert Hill and noted that Prime Minister Keating had promised to phase out all export woodchip­ being a very effective burier of the ping by the year 2000. Th at is only nine months away but we are not getting that phase­ environment. His job has been ... to apply out. We are in fact facing a total removal of all export woodchip ceil ings under the bandaids and greenwash.' ('Greenwash': Regional Forest Agreement legislation about to be voted on in this chamber. I seek noun, call., creating an atmosphere of leave to table a graph which cl early demonstrates this extraordina ry coin cid ence of the spurious concern for the environment dates of donations in re lation to woodchip li cence renewals. It is a four-page docu­ while continuing to pursue anti-environ­ mental policies.) ment. In Victoria in February 2001, The Leave granted. Claire Miller reported the leak of Age's Senator BROWN- I thank the S nate. I ask, for those who wi ll read thi s graph, what an industry paper. It predicted the loss of fa ir-minded person in th e wider populous [sic] could be expected to believe that those many logging jobs because the native forests have been logged unsustainably, massive donations by Boral, Am cor and Wesfarmers Bunnings-Austra li a's rich and raising the question of what possible eco­ destructive woodchip compani es-happened purely coin cidenta ll y on th e same day nomic benefit there could be for a com­ th at their woodchip licences were renewed ? Do the big parties-the ALP and the munity to deplete a resource and be left coalition- really expect the average voter to believe that thi s is pure coin cidence? If so, with nothing. Brown sees that as part of please give an explanation. Th e point of th is is to seek some explanation , in th e absence 'greenwash'. of which the c ircumstances really reek of corruption. This reall y has the stench of the ' Jobs, jobs, jobs. Tal k jobs all the sort of shoddy deal th at says, 'You donate some money to our party coffers, and we wi ll time-the representative unions have becom e very close to the corporate sector extend and defend your licences to export the wi ld fo rests as woodch ips.' Th ese on that. I've challenged the CFMEU time companies got what th ey wanted on th e very day-21 December 1994-that th ey and time again: "When did you ever step donated $242,500 to th e ALP and th e coaliti on. The ALP and the coalition should make off the footpath to prevent a job being amends to th e people of Austra li a by now voting down th e Regional Forest Agreement shed by a woodchip company?" Since legislation and protecting what remain s of th e nation's heritage. woodchipping was introduced in 1969, I sum up there: on th e very day-in a sea of public controversy, with th e nati on 20,000 jobs have been shed out of the industry. And the protests have been watching-on which the export woodchip li cences were renewed for these three giant against environmentalists who have corporations in Au stra li a, massive donations went to th e two principal po li tical parties, nevercost oneof thosejobs.' and not least the government which was making that decision. Remember, it was sup­ However, even amid the press hype ported by th e opposition. that zoom-magnified One Nation's Whi le this is some five years back, an explanati on is owed here.

V OLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 23 contribution to Labor's successes in there was much soul-searching among in and save the Democrats from similar Western Australia and Queensland, the rank-and-file Democrats, and this was oblivion in the next federal election. On pivotal role of environmental campaign­ the final spur to Natasha Stott Despoja's radio, Stott Despoja responded: 'Demo­ ing in those wins is now being widely rec­ leadership challenge. Is Brown concerned crats are not a single-issue party' and ognised. Labor is learning, again, that if that under a Stott Despoja leadership the referred to their raft of policies. But, she it wants Greens preferences, it has to Democrats would poach Greens votersz emphasised, 'The last thing I want to do deliver on policy- the price of support in 'Well look, I don't mind! My view is is to split progressive politics'; she said the Ryan by-election was a commitment that we need a much stronger green ethic that she would be interested in 'working to end the agriculturallandclearing that in parliament and that if the Democrats co-operatively with the Greens'. In the has put Australia in the same ecological can help inject that into the parliamen­ interview with Eureka Street, Brown sinbin as Brazil. We are, says Brown, tary system then good on 'em. The dismissed any suggestion that the Aus­ 'alone amongst wealthy nations [in] the important thing is that we get green tralian Greens are a single-issue party: ' ... six worst destroyers of native vegetation issues, both social and environmental, on the Greens are a party of the Left. Our around the globe.' He added in his press the agenda. I wasn't a fly on the wall social policies are as important to us as release that 'the Howard Government within the Democrats-hardly!-when our environmental policies.' denied the Democrats this outcome these matters were being discussed. But He reminisced about the warmer during the CST deal two years ago.' in the week that the CST went through, relationship that existed between the two The Democrats had a very strong I can remember [the Bill] had a $3 billion parties under Powell's leader hip: 'We environmental platform in the late '80s per annum subsidy to the burning of went very close to forming a coalition and early '90s. However, as the political fossil fuels by the logging, mining and with Janet Powell in 1990. We had dis­ clout of environmentalism waned during corporate companies, just with the diesel cussions about it in Launceston with the the '90s in Canberra, there was a discern­ fuel rebate.' At the same time, says five Greens ... in Tasmanian Parliament ible change in the Democrats' parliamen­ Brown, a mere $200 million per annum but ... Cheryl Kernot reversed that. tary performance on environmental over five years-and that drawn from Cheryl was very anti-Greens, and saw us issues. Under Cheryl Kernot and Meg part-selling Tclstra- goes to environ­ as a threat, not an ally, and that senti­ Lees, the agenda became more friendly mental needs. ment has gone right through the Demo­ for the two major parties, and when On 9 March, Jon Faine interviewed crats. My view is that we know where Senator Lees enabled the Howard Govern­ Stott Despoja, on ABC Radio 774 in we're going; the Democrats are much ment to introduce the CST, there was Melbourne, and asked her what the more a party of the Centre Right ... They want to be in there as brokers with this government.' Whether the Western Australian public voted in five Greens because of the According to Brown, there are plenty of closet greenies in the upsurge in concern about the state's old­ growth forests or whether they voted out major parties. 'Time and time again I see th em having to go and the Democrats along with Richard Court in a reaction to the CST (and perhaps as 11 vote on the other side. They'll saYt 1 wish I could sit with part of a punishing mood against sitting

11 members), does not worry Brown over­ you on this. ' much: 'I sit next to Natasha Stott Despoja in the parliament, and I would be able, wide disaffection, and claims that she essential difference was between her I'm sure, to work very well with her, if had let the Bill go through without party and the Greens. This question came she were to assume the leadership.' exacting enough concessions on the day after The Age had published an Circumstances currently favour the a range of issues. extraordinary appeal from Janet Powell, Greens. With a hugely disproportionate former leader of the Democrats in the skewing in favour of young people voting A LAN GRAY, editor of EaTth Garden early '90s. In it, Powell, who has since for them they are, Brown says, in exact magazine, says of Bob Brown that, dur­ campaigned for Brown, invited Stott contrast to One Nation whose voters are ing his ten-year (1983- 1993) stint in the Despoja to join the Australian Greens, largely over 50, with very few under 25. Tasmanian House of Assembly, he saved dangling the prospect of future Greens If the Greens can keep their voters 1.4 million hectares of Tasmanian wil­ leadership as bait. Don Chipp weighed in motivated and loyal, they have longevity derness from woodchippers, simply the following Sunday with his own front­ built in. Globally, there is a quiet but because he is a forceful and doughty page plea to Meg Lees, variations on the growing resurgence in respect for cross-trader. 'Democrats don't cross­ 'for God's sake, go!' theme. But he sedu­ environmental issues. The Intergovern­ trade,' says Gray. He is of the opinion that lously avoided any mention of the mental Panel on Climate Change 'they've shamefully wasted their balance Greens. Being beaten by them five-nil in released its report on global warming in of power in the Senate for many years.' Western Australia was perhaps a reason February, with results that could only When the Democrats were soundly for hoping the whole Greens problem dismay the nay-sayers. In Britain, the beaten by the Greens in the WA election, would go away if Natasha would just step Ministry of Defence recently brought out

24 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 its 30-year strategy plan. There alongside wouldn't have got later on. It was the chipping record. And Sheryl Garbutt, the weapons wishlists were predictions right decision to make.' Victorian Minister for the Environment, of water wars and huge population dis­ But image is always a problem, not who had excellent relations with the placements as global warming renders just the perceived tension between being environment movement when she was some countries barely viable. Brown is an activist (a tag that Brown, with his six in Opposition, is now execrated by certain that under current ways of man­ arrests over the years, can certainly environmental groups for permitting aging the environment, Australians will claim) and being a suited politician highly contentious logging in water be among the two-thirds of the world's dealing with the big end of town. The catchments near drought-affected areas. population that will be living in 'water­ mums and dads, the middle-ground Brown says, 'We are not going to be stressed' conditions by 2025. He points voters who are so desperately sought by taken for granted by Labor. While the to the expected increase of 30 per cent in the population and the predicted 30 per cent drop in water supplies as salinity, catchment-logging and climate change take their toll.

'How can we respond to the catas­ /Since woodchipping was introduced in 7969 1 201 000 jobs have trophe/ We can have the good common sense to change what we're doing to avoid been shed out of the industry. And the protests have been against the catastrophe. But if it is catastrophic, 1 the Greens are going to be called upon to environmentalists who have never cost one of those jobs. help in that too-late scenario, the world -Bob Brown that deals with lost opportunities. Yes, we are not facing a global environmental catastrophe, we're in it. But that said, all parties, can be put off by the fact that impulse is strong for the Greens to get I am one of those who believe we have they see mostly dreadlocked ferals on the rid of the Howard government, it's not the collective good sense to turn television news whenever there's an one that says we should hand govern­ it around-' environmental issue being aired. Brown ment to the alternate economic ration­ is unworried by this and is benevolent alist government, which is the Labor L E GLOBAL GREENS 2001 conference towards the ferals with their dreadlocks. Party. Suddenly the Labor Party is will draw Greens politicians from more He adds that he is used to the distortion starting to put the environment on its than 60 countries to Canberra's Old Par­ of the Greens' image by the popular press. agenda ... but we are very clearly aware liament House in April, where they will 'Yeah, when I'm feeling a bit frazzled that the Labor Party has a corporate discuss how to position themselves by that I go and read about the suffra­ agenda way above the environmental politically. There are over 300 Greens gettes. And you see they were wanton agenda ... However, if we direct prefer­ elected to state and federal governments women, they should have been home at ences, the number of preferences that go throughout Europei France and Finland the sink, they were going to destroy the to Labor increases from about 65 to 85 both have Greens in coalition with economy, they broke all the tenets of St per cent. That's enough to change eight government, with the minister for the Paul in the Bible, they copped it from the to ten seats. In close elections that's environment in both countries a Greens pulpit ... and worse still, they copped it enough for Labor to win or lose office. member. from other women. And yet they brought So we have to take that very, very This territory is familiar to Brown, about a change in the thinking of society seriously.' who went into the world's first-ever which has benefited us all and will never NSW Premier Bob Carr's proposed 25- Green Accord, with the ALP in Tas­ go back.' year environment tax to protect that mania. Would he work in coalition with He recently wrote to James Packer, state's water is part of the new Labor a major party again? Would he accept a inviting him to walk in the Tasmanian environmental consciousness, but Brown ministry this time? forest with him. 'I think it's very impor­ praises it mildly as only 'halfway there'. 'Yes. But they wouldn't want me. In tant for us to keep open avenues of com­ He would like to see strong eco-taxes of 1989 we went into the Green Accord in munication with the new generation of the 'polluter pays' type. He cites Helmut Tasmania. We decided we wouldn't go for movers and shakers as well as the dread­ Kohl's initiatives in 1983 when 17 Greens ministries because we had three new lockers at the other end of the spectrum.' were elected to the Bundestag. 'Chancel­ young parliamentarians ... we wanted to But political temperatures have been lor Kohl brought in the world's strongest drive that government as hard as possible, rising in Canberra all this strange and environmental laws for recycling and for particularly in the first six months, to get turbulent year, and Brown will continue pollution control,' says Brown. 'Business out of it what we could. And we got FOI the gritty business of thrashing out went ape, threw up its hands and said "we and we got voting changes for the young preference deals, even in the knowledge won't be able to compete with other and we protected 25 schools from closure. that politicians desperate for a deal might countries ... this is terror legislation". So we got a whole raft of social and make promises that turn out to be 'non­ However, Germany is now streets ahead environmental benefits and a doubling of core'. John Howard, when he was in in environmental science technology, it's the World H eritage area, which we Opposition, criticised Keating's wood- got 500,000 jobs as a result of that legis-

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 25 lation, it's exporting technology worth enough change from within to meet guts on some of the environmental and billions of dollars per annum to the rest current crises. Helen Caldicott's historic social issues, it'll do well too, instead of of the world.' exhortation to the anti-nuclear rallies in getting the frighteners ... that the mar­ Brown argues passionately that we are the 1980s to join the ALP and change it ket and then the press will act against ideally placed to take advantage of the from within is, he feels, unrealistic. them and therefore they'll lose. [But] you huge population centres to our north, 'It will be changed from without. Not need at least the voices in the big end of which should not be taking their cue from within. But it's still very important town if you're going to win government from the 'dinosaur industries' like coal, that there are people within who have the in an election.' mining and logging. T hey need, he says, new ideas.' He says that the Labor Party The Australian Greens, says Brown, environmentally smart industries where is stifled by its own establishment. 'The don't need those voices from the big end the jobs and the prosperity are going to m en in the Labor Party and the way they of town, because 'we're not yet in the come from. predominate over the debate-their business of getting government. We're in Nick Bolkus agrees. 'I don't take the whole aim in life is to get back into office, the business of getting a much bigger environment lightly-I've been involved and they'll do what it takes ... I'm more representation in the parliament. But that in it for 30 years,' h e says. 'Matters and more aware of it, because at the said, we are going for government down environmental arc dominant in Aus­ moment the Greens are getting the good the line. And I've read a lot of history. tralia. You can't talk about Australia's press, if you like, from the Labor Party­ I know what's going to happen to the economic future, and you can't talk about they n eed our preferences. One very Greens. If anything they're going to come the new economy without talking clean senior figure in the Labor area said to m e under huge pressure. They'll be fraction­ industry and clean technology. For m e it's some months ago, " Bob, we need the ated. But my job is to help set som e of a core issue.' Greens' preferences." I said right back to the groundwork that'll make them strong According to Brown, there are plenty hin1, "And we need our forests."' and enduring and public-minded and of closet greenies in the major parties. He praises W A Labor Premier Geoff particularly keeping in mind that we as a 'Time and time again I see them having to Gallop's undertaking to protect that party have to do what's right by coming go and vote on the other side. They'll say, state's old-growth forest as 'a gutsy thing generations. If we get that right now, we'll "I wish I could sit with you on this."' He to do'. He argues also that Gallop has get the decisions then right as well.' • is, however, very sceptical about whether shown pragmatism as well as courage. 'It the stmctures of major parties will allow has shown the Labor Party that if it has Juliette Hughes is a fr eelance writer.

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26 EUREKA STREET • A PR IL 2001 THE REGION:1

Borderline cases Tricia Fitzgerald reports on the refugee situation in West Papua.

WTPMuAN

Grace. In M athias W enda's guerrilla ca mp, troops say grace before a meal of sago, sweet potato and chi cken. Some of th ese men are PNG citizens fi ghting for th eir sister country's freedom, but most have esca ped persecution from Indones ian offensives . Ph otograph by Ashley G ilbertson.

The group does not have official December's border-crossers have been armed elements on both sides, both the refugee status, and political develop­ treated differently. Indonesian and PNG authorities were m ents between PNG and Indonesia are The current group left Jayapura when trying to keep the area safe and you could also threatening their future. the Indonesian military began targeting hear gunfire during the day and the At meetings in February in Jayapura, West Papuans from the highland town of evening, so security was the biggest between PNG border liaison officials and Wamena who were at the time living in problem,' he said in Vanimo, in December. West Papua's vice-governor, Konstan the capital. The crack-down followed a D espite the violence and arrests Karma, PNG reportedly offered to clear massacre of 30 Indonesian settlers in under way in West Papua [following a refugee and rebel camps and to strengthen Wamena in October, after police shot l December 2000 commemoration of the security along the border. three independence supporters who were declaration of independence by West The flight of refugees into PNG has raising the separatist 'Morning Star' flag. Papuans), the UN's official position now always posed diplomatic problems for The refugees told freelance journalist is that the border-crossers don't qualify Jakarta, which has been keen to keep the Mark Worth, who was on the border at for UN protection as refugees, as they West Papuans' push for independence as the time, that they'd been subjected to came into PNG fearing violence, rather an internal affair. intimidation and violence and in some than fleeing from it.

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EU REKA STREET 27 'UNHCR has not conducted inter­ been happening continually since 1963 that many of the border-crossers would views of the la test border-crossers, when t he Indonesians took over the be at risk if they were forced back over because our mandate has not really been country,' says Bishop Hilton Deakin of the border. fully engaged. They have been saying the Catholic Aid Agency, Caritas. 'There 'Since December, the leaders of West they were seeking temporary protection are groups of people, individuals and Papua's Presidium Council have been as a cautionary measure because there families, who are targeted because they locked up without trial, independence had been some anticipated conflict are regarded as effective leaders in their figh ter Matheus Wenda has been following that December the 1st com­ community or they're more expressive of arrested in PNG, and many of those memoration of the declaration of inde­ points of view opposed to the Indonesian detained, particularly yo ung students, pendence, but that has not eventuated. government.' have been tortured and beat en,' Mr I guess the worst fears have not been 'They put those sorts of people in jail, Rumbiak said. realised,' the UNHCR's Pacific spokes­ or as the locals say, " they disappear T he UNHCR's Ms Hanson says that person, Ellen Hanson, said. them", or they torture them, or they put the UN has not yet been briefed on the 'We don't have a forma l terminology them in prison without due process.' outcome of meetings between Indonesia for their status and we are referring to 'People who live in the jungles of West and PNG on the closure of the refugee them very loosely as "border-crossers". Papua, in tribal situations, don't know camps, but has sent a protection officer They have not been through a formal ref­ what the refined ways of seeking refugee to Vanimo to investigate recent border ugee status determination process. It has status are; they just flee, so it's up to us agreements between Jakarta and Port been premature for that,' Ms Hanson said. to do something about it, not to expect Moresby. Church and relief agencies are oppos­ them to come into an office and sign a She says any Indonesian-PNG deals ing any forced repatriation of West form,' he says. on the refugees should not affect PNG Papuans from PNG and say that the UN Bishop Deakin has written to PNG assurances already given to the UN, that should have au tomatically assessed and Prime Minister, Sir Mekere Morau ta, the refugees would be allowed to stay determined the December border-crossers' calling on PN G to recognise and protect until they are able to return home in refugee status, ra ther than waiting for the December border-crossers as refugees. safety. • them to apply formally. Exiled West Papuan leader, Jacob 'The West Papuans are not fleeing Ru mbiak, said that over 300 West Tricia Fitzgerald is a reporter on Asia from something that's going to happen; Papuans were illegally detained during Pacific, broadcast on ABC Ra dio National they're fleeing from someth ing that's the December crack-down. He believes and Radio Australia.

THE REGION :2 JO H N F. M cCA RT H Y Chaos 1n• Kalimantan

D "

28 EUREKA STREET APR IL 2001 while in many respects the districts of Dayak Nga ju indigenous to the uplands Central Kalimantan have marked time. of Central Kalimantan revolted, demand­ For instance, the province has only one ing a separate province. At this time the sealed highway, and even today most of Islamic groups in neighbouring South Kali­ the region can only be reached by river, mantan were agitating for the creation of New and then only when water levels permit. an Islamic State. Fearful of being over­ The district government faces significant whelmed by the m ore aggressive and difficulties extending even basic services. business-minded coastal Muslims, the Directioru Most of the indigenous Dayaks still live Banjarese, or upriver Dayaks, demanded in isolated outlying villages where their own province. Now, 50 years later, Your Sabbatical education and health services are elemen­ they feel like strangers in their own land. tary and electricity, postal and telephone To addre s these problems, Indonesia, in Berkeley facilities practically non-existent. The since the fall of Suharto, has set about Dayak people like to compare their restructuring its government, decentral­ situation to that of a hungry ising decision-making and ensuring that chicken living in a rice granary. local communities obtain a fairer share of national revenue. These measures are SECOND FEATURE that Central design ed to overcome the threat of Kalimantan shares with other regions in national disintegration. Unfortunately, in the outer islands is in-migration. During m any districts across the outer islands, the Suharto period, the government spon­ the people tied into networks close to sored large numbers of migrants to move district governm ents belong to specific to the province. In addition, many others ethnic and religious groups. These moved in of their own accord. people-either migrants or indigenous­ By 2000, these migrants m ade up attempt to make the most of the oppor­ almost 50 per cent of the province's tunities open ed by the reform s. The population. Better attuned to the com­ struggles for positions within the local m ercial opportunities offered in the government t end to occur between • Renew with a fl exible, holistic mining and timber industries, these out­ groups with different ethnic and religious program. Attend for one se mester siders have profited from Central Kali­ identities. The consequence: ethnic and m antan's rich resources. The incomers, religious tension. or two. from Java, South Kalimantan or the island The final problem that Central Kali­ of Madura, are concentrated in the capital mantan shares with other parts of Indo­ • Re-vision with outstanding faculty where they have opened and now operate nesia is the absence of impartial in theology, spirituality & pastoral businesses. As poor indigenous villagers institutions that can address grievances, look on, or at best work as labourers in resolve disputes and offer justice. As dem­ studies. the forest, outsiders reap most of the onstrated in Maluku and elsewhere, once profits from logging and other businesses. a violent dispute arises, the security • Relax in the pleasant climate & This creates bitterness between the forces prove either unwilling or unable rich cultural environment outsiders profiting from the situation and to take actions necessary to dispel the of the San Francisco Bay area. the indigenous people who find them­ fighting. selves evicted and alienated from their Madurese violence against the Day­ own lands. aks has not been officially countered. ]ST B: Renewing the This cleavage also reflects a religious 'The Dayaks don't have a voice, there is difference between the largely Islamic no ombudsman h ere and there is no minister for the in-migrants and the Dayaks who are justice for them,' one long- term resident m ostly of Christian or the indigenous of Kalimantan noted. renewal of ministry. Kaharingan belief. For som e time Dayak The only way the Dayaks could obtain commentators have felt that this could justice, it seem s, was by taking matters lead to ethnic conflict. As the most into their own hands. Finally, in Feb­ New Directions aggressive and lea t accommodating ruary, another murder of a Dayak proved Jesuit School of Theology ... group of newcomers are the Madurese, a to be the m atch that set the province '~ \llf.fl/.r). people with a reputation for meting out ablaze. Dayak leaders declared war on the at1/l'iLc-R,,,_;,,.n,,,., Berkeley ']""'I' ~. . r;/·~-- retributive violence, Dayak resentments Madurese, and an orgy of blood-letting n,.,l,-k-, c.\ '>4 ;,''i '"" ;c. have focused on this group. and ethnic cleansing ensued. • 'i I''· 'i-tlJ 'i'' I h ·.,-r. .fi ·~. ':-· The situation of the Dayaks of Cen­ E-\\ ) l l'-~ 4 I.~))(, · lli rl'_','< · tral Kalimantan is, as Indonesian sociol­ John F. McCarthy is a researcher at the Elll.ul: "'IIlli" '' •n''( ,,, 1,_,.,1" ogist George Aditjondro h as not ed, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch Univer­ 1\WII .J'tl' .c'c lll especially ironic. During the 1950s, the sity, Western Australia.

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 29 T H E :2 SUSAN VARGA

Broome's other pearls In the north-west, Susan Varga found a cu lture that confo unds stereotypes.

M ," Du>An, foe •II he' life­ AboriginaJZ Afghan- whatz -faces that many hours with Chris Sa unders in his long devotion to the church, was an were the legacy of Broome's exotic dim but comfortable li vi ng room, a room incisive and fair observer of Kimberley pearling past and a century and more of that reminded m e disconcerti ngly of the life. In 1967, in her preface to The Rock intermarriage. only other ecclesiastical living room in and the Sand she said this: The next m orning, Sunday, we went which I'd ever taken tea- in Transyl­ for a walk. Turning a corner we saw a vania! !learn ed much from him, and from It seems clear to me .. . that the work of sea of cars. There must be a football a trip we took with him in his plane- all the missionaries, sometim es inspired, match on, we thought, but it turned out the Bishops of Broom e have flown their sometimes blind, was the only evidence to be the roll-up for the Catholic Church. own planes around their huge, sparsely the Aborigines had of an ything in the We went inside. My notes from then read: populated diocese-to Lomba dina and nature of consisten t altruism within an Beagle Bay. But mostly we learned just otherwise ruth less a nd self-seeking The church is packed. A yo ung Asian man from being in a town that was deeply economy. stands at the door; Aborigin es, serious, nea t imbued with its own, sometimes idiosyn­ Durack's summation of the Catholic and silent, sitting towards the back. An old cratic version of Catholic culture and Church's role in Broome and the Kim­ clog lyi ng quietly at the door while the tradition . berley still holds some truth. humans just wa lk around him. Inside, little Two things becam e apparent to us I suspect that there is nowhere else girls of all colours decked out in white fairly quickly: that Broome and surround­ in Australia where the church is so fin ery for their confirmation. A simple ing areas have not escaped the bigoted, central to the emotional and cultural life triptych behind the altar. The priest !the limited, destructive effects of Christian of a town as it is in Broome. In an era Bishop I think), a burl y, oli ve-skinned man evangelising since the 'settlement' of the where all the mainstream religions are with a shiny pate and a certain command Kimberley. Bu t also that the church was struggling to maintain some sort of abo ut him, refers to 'these diffic ult very often the bulwark against persecu­ spiritual mandate or even a foothold in times'-m ea ning Hanson times. He talks tion and massacre, the source of a half­ their communities, I wa intrigued to about unemployment- how it would be 33 way decent education, and that many of discover what a deeply, vitall y Catholic per cent or hi gher if it weren't for th e work­ its former 'charges' regard it with town Broome is. for- the- dol e schem e, which most enormous affection and loyalty. As one With my partner and fellow writer, Aboriginal people are on . I think I want to of Broome's m atriarchs, Phyllis Bin Anne Coombs, I had long thought of do a book on this place. I start Bakar, said, 'The white habits were our writing a book about a country town. We "l X T plann in g it in my head. mothers. They grew us up. ' beli eved that a look below the surface of There is a whole generation of impres­ a sm all rural town might well reveal V V HEN WE RE TURNED to Broome for a sive women aged from their 50s to their interesting things about Australia itself nine-month stay, I m et the Bishop of 70s, who form the backbone of mixed­ and where it might be h eading as it Broome, Christopher Saunders, a bluff, race and Aboriginal Broom e, and who approached the centenary of Federation. som etimes abrupt m an of considerable take every opportunity (often in defi ance For years the idea lay in abeyance; we intelligence. He had already spent half a of their more radical sons and daughters) never found quite the right town. Then lifetime in the Kimberley, often in the to defend the German Pallotines, and we went to Broome on a holiday. We combined role of priest and station man­ even more passionately, the St John of arrived on a Saturday. The main street ager. When he first arrived there were God Sisters, who they say gave them a wasn't much-an untidy jumble of one­ several Catholic missions dotted around decent start in life. Yet these women also and two-storey corrugated iron and that vast area-at Lombadina and Beagle have a wry perspective on just how weatherboard buildings that went past in Bay on the Dampier Peninsula, at Balgo, extraordinary was the invasion of their a fla sh. We did see an intriguing mix of Bidyadanga and Kalumburu. In most of own culture. Here's Pearl Hamaguchi, faces-Filipino-Chinesez Malay- Aborig­ these places the church still retains an Broome matriarch, part Aboriginal, part inaJZ Japanese-Indonesianz Chinese- educational and pastoral role. I spent Chinese, part Japanese and part Scottish,

30 EUREKA STREET APRIL 2001 describing her mother and aunt's first communities and given a kind of educa­ as business people and tourists flood the meeting with the Catholic world: tion- just enough to then farm them out town; some, not enough, of the Indige­ as domestic help to the wealthier families nous population have attained middle­ When they got to Beagle Bay- to sec these around town. So, for instance, Baamba class status, and other denominations, nuns in their great big white habits! They Albert's mother was for a time the including the fundamentalist and fringe thought they were birds. Their first intro­ domestic help to Dame Mary Durack and sects, have made eriou inroad into duction to Christianity was the o ld her husband Horrie Miller. Baamba the religious mix. But still the over­ benediction-this is after they've been Albert, who became a Canberra bureau­ whelming majority of black and mixed­ processed and washed and dressed and crat, then the star of Jimmy Chi's race kids go to the local Catholic school, deloused. They put them in what they musicals, will never bag the church; he St Mary's, while the government high ca lled bag dresses-just made out of cotton has too much respect for his deeply school is predominantly white. I know flour bags. So they're si tting in the sand religious m other to do that. one woman whose father was a Timorese there for their first benediction and the Muslim-turned-Ang­ priest turns around and lican and whose Abo­ he holds this shining, riginal mother was a monstrous thing up in ----- Jehovah's Witness. But the air. And one of the she sends her kids to St little boys, he shouts out Mary's, not because she in their language 'Hit the likes the Catholics­ dirt! This is a weapon she is cornful of them he's got. He's going to and resentful of their shoot us'' The nun and hold on the town-but priests didn't know what beca use all her kids' was happening-all friends go there and she these little kids throw­ doesn't want them to ing themselves down. feel left out. And this o ther busi­ Peter Yu of the Kim­ ness-the liturgy, where berley Land Council is the priest calls out and bitter about being sent every one responds 'Saint away for a Catholic Catherine ... pray for us, education in Perth. 'We Mother of God ... pray had to shine our boots for us'. And the kids Photographs from Broometime. till we could see our thought, 'Hey, I can black faces in them.' He relate to this, like a cor­ Aunty Bella remained her entire life tells of lonely weekends being farmed out roboree, the chanting.' o they started in the 'orphanage' and became the much­ to well-intentioned white families, of clapping their hands and saying, 'Pray for loved surrogate mother to generations of being separated from the other black kids us, pray for us.' small girls taken from their families. 'She in all-white classes. He talks of his many Pearl insists, nonetheless, that Beagle Bay never married, she never had a man,' classmates who did not survive the was a good place where her mother and Phyllis Bin Bakar said. 'She was a saint.' cultural split and have succumbed to her Aunty Bella were well cared for. During her last illness Aunty Bella alcoholism or suicide. Take the case of Aunty Bella, a revered was cared for by h er niece, Pearl Yet he's sending his daughter to a figure in Broome, who died a couple of Hamaguchi, at Pearl's home. It was there Catholic school in Perth. 'I don't really years ago, aged 96. Bella was the daugh­ that she had a vision of the Virgin in a know why.' ter of an Aboriginal mother and a white blue cloak coming through the bedroom Sarah Yu, his white wife, articulates man, a partner in the station at Ruby wall. Bishop Saunders duly relayed the som e of the contradictions of being a Downs. She was 'taken' from her people vision one Sunday. When Aunty Bella Catholic in this part of the world. and sent to the Pallotines at Beagle Bay. died, everyone in Catholic Broome went 'Church ceremonial has a unifying effect,' That's one side of the story. But the to her elaborately prepared and she says. 'Beagle Bay is a wild community station manager, a friend of her father's, loving funeral. but when there's a feast day they're all and a relatively enlightened man, sent her there, weaving their garlands, making it to Beagle Bay for her protection and B ROOME AND Catholicism are so beautiful. The church is full on those education. Bella eventually ended up in entwined that the combination is day . It's really something. They might the Catholic 'orphanage' in Broome. As intrinsic to the town's unique flavour. be bad Catholics, but they're Catholics.' with many things in Broome, this too is There used to be a saying, still sometime It seems to me that in Broome at least a nuanced and complicated tale. On the heard, that Broome was '90 per cent the church takes eriously the business one hand, the 'orphanage' was a lie; most coloured, Catholic and poor'. That is no of cultural give and take, as if trying to of the girls who went there were not longer the case. The racial balance is atone for the early clay s of wholesale orphans at all but were taken from their turning more and more towards the white cultural appropriation. The current term

VOLUME 1 1 UMBER 3 • EUR EKA STREET 31 is 'enculturation'. This is, of course, a morning by the police and thrown in jail. I was a little puzzled by all this, until loaded area. For Bishop Chris and his The local radio s tation appealed all I found out about the connection between priests, 'cnculturation' means adapting morning to the citizenry to donate the the old nuns and BRAMS. Many years the ideology and culture of the church to 'bail' money to ge t them out. The money ago, when Broome's indigenous people, Aboriginal culture and values in ways poured in: the Bishop was the first to be Baamba's mother chief among them, first that will make its teachings relevant and released, the real estate agent was the began to agitate for their own Medical appropriate. To others, and to at least one last. But the downside was that a number Service, John Jobst, the then Bishop of woman who was working for th e of old ladies from the community of Broome, asked his home order, the Catholic Education Office in Broome, Beagle Bay rang the bishop's office in Pallotine Brothers in Germany, to find what is really going on is a modern and alarm- had the Bishop been arrested the funds. They did, and it was only after cynical version of the same old appropri­ because he had been too outspoken about that initial German contribution that the ation- a surface 'indigenisation' which Pauline Hanson? Australian government was shamed into only serves to mask the weakening and And another story. We visited the new kicking in. That has never been forgot­ distortion of Aboriginality. convent near Cable Beach where all but ten by BRAMS. As an outsider, I ca n only say that it on e of the nuns were elderly retired Such are the intricate cross-connec­ is impressive to be in an overflowing women; the one active nun is the Vice­ tions in Broome between people, religion, church on Sundays and to listen to the Chancellor of the Broome Notre Dame culture, money and politics, that it is very bare-bones beauty of the Missa Kimber­ campus, Sister Pat Rhatigan. The old hard to 'take sides' for and against the ley, a simplified version of the Mass set ladies were a little reluctant to be inter­ church's role in this part of the world. to music, sung by a choir of every hue. viewed, but also shyly eager to justify There has been both good and bad. And a And to hear local musicians, in church their former roles as care-givers and edu­ lot of it has been good. and elsewhere, sing the deeply felt songs cators, citing the prominent citizens of If the Catholic church in this country of Jimmy Chi from his hit musicals, Bran Broome such as Baamba Albert w ho is to do more than just struggle to survive Nue Dae and Corrugation Road: 'Lay m e would vouch for them. Our interview in the 21st century, it might take on more in the arms of Jesus; Heal me 0 Ri sen broke up when someone from BRAMS, of the activism and passion it has shown Lord; I Believe, I Believe.' the Broome Aboriginal Medical Service, in less 'developed' countries, and certainly It was also impressive to hear the called to pick up the BRAMS birthday in the Broome diocese. It might well look Catholic Bishop of Broome consistently cake (the organisation was celebrating to Broome Catholicism for clues on how preach on the dangers of Hansonism and its 20th year) that one of the nuns had to hold on to hearts and minds- through take the issue of social justice for his iced for them . We all trooped off to the promotion of racial tolerance and Aboriginal flock very seriously indeed­ Sister Veronica's flat to see the cake. racial integration, a sincere search for to the chagrin of many conservatives Sister Veronica allowed herself to be social justice, and by looking for a genu­ around town who see him as ' too gently proud of the m agnificent icing ine synthesis between local culture and political'. job she'd don e, with accoutrements official religion. • Which reminds me of a very Broom e especially flown in from Perth. Around story. As a fundraising stunt for St each tier of the dazzling white cake Susan Varga is a writer and (with Anne Mary's, four prominent citizens, includ­ she'd wound a ribbon in the Aboriginal Coombs) the author of Broometime, ing the bishop, were 'arrested' one colours. published this year by Hodder.

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32 EUREKA STREET • APR IL 2001 THE REGIO : 3

JON GREE AWAY Hong Kong kings

Hong Kong's economy prospers, but democracy and the rule of law in the Special Administrative Region are under strain.

H ONG KONG's leg;s!.tm councd organisation self-immolated in full view accordance with the Basic Law. When building sits in the middle of a small of television cameras. After the Tianan- Tung prefaces his remarks by saying he piece of public land. The towers sur­ men protest, a member of Hong Kong's wishes to comment on two matters, reg­ rounding it rise in glass-panelled tribute executive council, N ellie Fang, was ulations governing foreign investment to capital and enterprise. reported as having said that now would and Falun Gong, members and watchers One of the tallest, the Cheung Kong be a good time to consider invoking trea­ shift forward in their seats. Centre, was recently built by Li Ka Shing, son laws against the group, as set out by Two days before, the leader of the Hong Kong's wealthiest resident and one article 23 of the 'Basic Law'- the blue­ Democratic Party of Hong Kong, Martin of the ten wealthiest men in the world. print sketched for Hong Kong before Lee, argued that the response of the Li came to the territory from the main­ handover, incorporating legal principles executive to the activities of the Falun land in the late 1940s with nothing and that prevailed during British rule. The Gong movement would be the acid test began amassing his fortune by selling Legco observers are waiting to hear of the 'one country, two systems' arrange­ plastic flowers. whether Tung will announce the enact­ ment that supposedly allows Hong Kong Rising above the glass towers, perched ing of legislation on acts of sedition, in to operate with a degree of independence. on the hills above Central, are 'This is the first time that the impossibly narrow apartment central government has expressed blocks reaching 40 or 50 storeys unhappiness over the way the high. Real estate agents have been Hong Kong government has han­ known to advise their clients dled anything,' says the veteran against living in the mid-levels if legislator and lawyer. He is allud­ they are prone to bouts of vertigo. ing to the editorial urgings in the In the legislative council Chinese-language newspapers­ chamber on a Thursday in early well known to be mouthpieces of February, Hong Kong's Chief the politburo. 'In the past the Executive, Tung Chee Hwa, is Chief Executive would cave in to making a regular appearance Beijing, even without their before the Legco (as it is known). asking,' he declares. Though Tung's purpose in being And more: 'If Falun Gong has there is to convince the public­ committed no criminal act up and more importantly perhaps, until now and then you enact a the watching world-that there law under article 23 which would are checks and balances in the make the conduct that has Special Administrative Region hitherto been lawful, unlawful, (SAR, Hong Kong's bureaucratic then you are really stifling some title since 1997), his opening of the people's freedoms here.' address on the status of the Falun On this occasion in the Leg­ Gong sect is what the press and co, the issue is left hanging. Tung the diplomatic representatives in Chee Hwa argues that Falun the gallery have come to hear. Gong is exhibiting the character­ Falun Gong, outlawed by istics of a dangerous cult. And in Beijing, has made its presence felt an oblique reference to N ellie recently, particularly in Tianan­ Fang's reported comments, he men Square where individuals says that it has always been the reported to be members of the intention of the SAR government

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 33 to implem ent sedition laws and that in­ Both the political opposition and 'He got his "tycoonship" from his daddy; tention has not changed. It would not be Hong Kong's legal community have he had a reckless streak, got into trouble now, however. But he warns, three times, called for the executive to assure the and got bailed out by hi s friends- which 'we will be keeping a very close eye public that it will not automatically take is why this guy backs loyalty iiber alles. on the activities of Falun Gong.' decisions with which it disagrees to The problem is Ithat I neither in politics Beijing, or that it will at least put limits nor in government can this be the case.' A CCORDING TO CiltlCS of the Hong on when such action can be taken. According to de Colyer, Tung's first Kong executive and Beijing's overbearing According to Alan Leung, the CFA is act was a clear indication of what was to ways, 1999 was not a good year for legal damned if it does and damned if it doesn't come- he flouted civil service rules on or democratic precedent. The territory's on the request to receive an interpreta­ tendering to ensure his personal assist­ highest legal body, the Court of Final tion before final adjudication on the cases ant and driver were employed by the Appeal (CFA), made a ruling on a case presently before it. government. 'This was a small infraction concerning rights of abode for descend­ 'It puts the CFA in a very invidious but in the end a very telling infraction.' ants of Hong Kong Chinese. The SAR position. And we must defend the 'And this was 1997, not 1999.' go vernment, afraid that the ruling might independence of our judiciary fearlessly Prominent Hong Kong businessman, allow another 1.68 million currently because it is the cornerstone of the rule Henry Tang, agrees with Alan Leung and living on the mainland to obtain of law.' Michael de Colyer about the importance residency rights in Hong Kong, went to The 'rule of law' is a phrase used often of the rule of law to Hong Kong. But as a the National People's Congress Standing when the nature of Hong Kong is member of the Executive Council, the Committee (NPCSC) for a reinterpreta­ discussed. It is said to explain what body appointed by the central govern­ tion. (The right to live in Hong Kong is makes the city different from Shanghai ment to counsel and assist the Chief highly restricted, not least beca use and Beijing, why it has been such an eco­ Executive in the running of the SAR, he Beijing could not bear to see a flood of nomic powerhouse, and why so many has a different view of its state of health. migrants seeking to cash in on the Hong people came there from the mainland 'Hong Kong, like every society, is Kong dream. Per capita income in Hong when the territory was under the control changing all the time, but the best things Kong is roughly 15 times that on the of Britain. Hong Kong academic Michael about Hong Kong before the handover mainland.) de Colyer argues that the rule of law is have not changed and I would put rule of The SAR's move might well be argued the source of Hong Kong's competitive law first and foremost among these to be in contravention of the Basic Law. advantage. 'It's not a societal advantage, qualities. The CFA had given a 96-page ruling on it's not a relic, it is the whole core of 'I regard the presence of multi­ the matter. It was overturned by a two­ Hong Kong's ability to prosper. Under nationals in Hong Kong as the best test page NPCSC dictate denying citizenship people like Mao Tse-tung there was no of how our system is operating. Last year rights to mainland-born descendants of law in China; the mood he woke up in we experienced a 20 per cent rise in the Hong Kong Chinese. on any particular morning was the law. number of multinationals with their Asian headquarters here in Hong Kong. They could easily set up in Singapore or other capitals but instead they are com­ The 1rul~ , I I ing here.' Tang also points to the drop in emig­ the city, €fiffeifJ ration. In the decade prior to handover, roughly half a million people relocated s to America, Europe and Australia. Since has been 1997, the stampede has reversed: emigra­ tion levels are now at their lowest since There is now, according to the head Hong Kong was the only place that had the 1970s. of the Hong Kong Bar Association, Alan laws that required the government to act 'They are coming back in droves and Leung, a real possibility that cases cur­ in certain rational ways and to go through now we have much more inflow than rently before the Court of Final Appeal a process and where there were some outflow. They voted with their feet before could again be pushed upstairs to Beijing restraints on it.' handover and they are voting with their even before a decision is made. Michael de Colyer heads the Hong feet once again.' 'The government is really saying, Kong Transition project at Hong Kong But 1999 was also the year that a "Well look here, CFA, before you rule on Baptist University. He suggests that the pollster from Hong Kong University this particular case, please refer to the common law principles which inform alleged political interference from the NPCSC before final interpretation.'" much of the Basic Law are beyond Chief office of the Chief Executive, an allega­ Leung is concerned: 'On the face of it, it Executive Tung Chee Hwa, not only tion later given a measure of vindication seems okay, but with the 1999 case in because he is appointed by a politburo by an inquiry chaired by a retired High the background it is as if a sword of used to having the law bend to its will, Court judge. Damocles is being hung over the head of but because he also has no innate appre­ Robert Chung, h ead of the Popular the CFA-' ciation of Hong Kong's unique situation. Opinion Program at Hong Kong Univer-

34 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 sity, recalls two incidents, in January and a function room of a major hotel (he'd Britain to Hong Kong. The reason she again in November 1999, when his been addressing a breakfast meeting of gave for leaving office 18 months before thesis supervisor (who is also Pro-Vice the Australian/Hong Kong Chamber of the expiry of her term was that she Chancellor) came to his office to dis­ Commerce). 'They took the opportunity wished to spend more time with her cuss his work. of managem ent restructuring to push me family, an explanation that Martin Lee 'I was very disappointed ... because up upstairs.' argues was calculated not to be believed. until then I had faced a lot of political He was muzzled not by any directive 'She wanted the public to guess why she pressure from outside the university,' from Beijing, Lam argues, but because went.' (The worst-kept secret in Hong says Dr Chung who, because of the sen­ media owners in Hong Kong invariably Kong in 1999 was Tung's dissatisfaction sitivity of his case, has not spoken to the have business interests on the mainland with Chan's independent cast of mind media for eight months. 'Every now and which they are reluctant to jeopardise by and his desire to have her removed from then so-called "leftist" papers would having one of their papers or TV stations office there and then, a desire counter­ print letters to the editor supposedly criticise the central government. m anded by Beijing. Reports suggested volunteered, but we know they are important articles representing the view of the central government. Under people like Mao Tse-tung there was no law 'So when the Pro-Vice Chancellor came to me and said that the Chief in China, e mQod he woke up in on any Executive is not happy with your work because you are producing low ratings of his performance and that of the SAR -.r­ government, I felt that what I was doing was not understood by my colleagues. 'N ews owners across the board have that Beijing realised her importance to Never before had an academic colleague input on the news room and they are Hong Kong's external image.) come to m e and said you better be care­ reluctant to run anything antagonising.' Chan's replacement, former finance ful because what you are doing is not well But Henry Tang nonetheless rejects secretary Donald Tsang, is respected for understood by the authorities.' suggestions that the Hong Kong press has his quick and firm action in protecting After Chung went public with his been curtailed in its freedoms, either Hong Kong from the full impact of the allegation of interference, Hong Kong directly or indirectly, since the handover. Asian financial crisis. He is seen, how­ University appointed an investigation 'If an ything there has been self­ ever, as someone who will follow the panel, in July last year. It found that, censorship on the praise because I think Chief Executive more faithfully than his while there was a possibility his superiors we have done a good job which they don't predecessor. might have been motivated by a concern always give us the credit for.' Martin Lee is not alone in wondering that his popularity polls lacked academic Hong Kong's English-language tab­ whether it was the Falun Gong issue that rigour, it was more likely that Andrew loid, the Hong Kong Imail (formerly the pushed Anson Chan to resign. In January Lo, an assistant of the Chief Executive, Standard), is one of the papers that Tang Falun Gong, boasting a m ere 500 follow­ was responsible for the specific targeting points to as an example of a free press. ers in Hong Kong, organised an inter­ of Robert Chung's work. Lo had had con­ But a m ember of its editorial team (speak­ national meeting. Unable to find a hotel versations with Hong Kong University's ing on the condition of anonymity) willing to grant them facilities, they were former Vice-Chancellor. countered by arguing that the paper was given the use of City Hall by the SAR After the inquiry established that 'useful' for the SAR government. The government, at the express order-many Andrew Lo was an unreliable witness, paper has a small circulation and is not suggest-of Anson Chan. Their meeting there was a clamouring for his resignation as prestigious as the South China Morn­ went ahead. Beijing was not amused. and/or removal. Tung Chee Hwa not only ing Post, but 'They can point to us and Businessman H enry Tang is cautious refused to criticise or censure his assist­ say "well if you don't think we have press when commenting on the Falun Gong ant but also publicly supported him, an freedoms then how about these guys?"' issue. 'The Basic Law informs us that we act that Robert Chung described The [mail was last year acquired by have to do it at some stage but I for one as 'very Confucian'. a n ew owner, a tobacco king with would not like to see sedition laws business interests on the mainland. enacted as a knee-jerk response to an IF1999 was a bad year for democratic His potential impact on its style of issue of the day. It has to be considered principles in Hong Kong, the portents for reporting is now the subject of and done with maximum consultation, 2001 are worse. much speculation. and that needs time.' Willy Lam was China Editor for the Meanwhile, Tung Chee Hwa will be South China Morning Post and a popular INFEBRUARY Tung Chee Hwa's deputy, keeping a close eye on the Falun Gong columnist, well versed in what was hap­ Anson Chan, announced her resignation, and the rest of the world will be keeping pening over the border. At the beginning effective from April. As the head civil a close eye on Tung Chee Hwa. • of the year he was forced to resign. servant under Hong Kong's last Gover­ 'Management had been trying to ease nor, Chris Patten, Chan was seen as em­ Jon Greenaway is Eurel

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 35 REVIEW ESSAY

JO H N BUTTON Cautionary tales Sa ntamari a: The Politics of Fear, Paul Ormonde (cd.), Spectrum Puhli e

E N< HMD' w" mm.cd m St P>tnob Ropubli"n 'ymp"'h;",. Tho •djud;wot, Cathedral on 27 May 1940. His bride had a Mr B.A. Santam aria fr om Melbourne, pro- converted to Catholicism. The celebrant nouncccl the Franco side the winners. This was Father Arthur Fox. About six months experience and the intellectual infl ucncc of later, Hardy converted to Communism and Father Rovira undoubtedly had an effect on joined the Party. Hardy. As Pauline Armstrong points out, Father Fox went on to become Auxiliary 'In his later years, Hardy enjoyed the Bishop to Archbishop Mannix and then piquancy of blaming a Catholic priest for Bishop of Sale. In both positions he was a his recruitment to the CPA.' virulent critic of Communism and of Whatever the truth of Hardy's conver­ Catholics who remained members of the sion to Communism there is no doubt that Labor Party. Hardy went on to write Power the Spanish Civil War first brought B.A. Without Glory and other books of greater Santamaria to public prominence with his literary merit and lesser notoriety. Power participation in the famous and controver­ Without Glory was a 'double whammy' sial debate about the war at Melbourne designed to discredit the church hi erarchy University on 22 March 1937. and parochial capitalism in one hit. Both Santamaria and Hardy were to reach The writer Doris Lessing has often the height of their political influence in the lamented the impossibility of cxplaini ng to Frank Hardy speaki ng at the Centenary 1950s. This was the decade in which current generations what it was like to be a Cclcbrutions of St Bernard's School, Bacchus Sa ntam aria became the eminence grise of member of the Communist Party in the Marsh, 5- 6 May 1990. Austral ian politics. In later years he strongly 1940s and 1950s. One imagines that a The Spanish Civil War was the crucible supported Australia's participation in the fo llower of Bob Santamaria, a member of of the politica I commitments of Europeans. Vietnam War, involved himself in the 1970s 'The Movement' (or the National Civic It engaged the idealism and passions of a 'State Aid' debate and remained a prolific Council ) would have the same difficulty. It generation. Unlike those other grea t issues, commentator on public affairs. But his was such a diffcrcn t world; hard to explain there was no 'Empire' view on which Aus­ influence steadily declined. today, a time in w h ich p o ll-driven tralians could rely. British opinion was Hardy published Power Without Glory politicians jostle for position in a crowded divided. Even Winston Churchill changed in 1950. He en joyed the limelight for several middle ground. Those Cold War warriors of his mind about which side he supported. years. He continued his poli tical writings the mid 20th century might well ask them ­ It becam e easy, however, to identify the and was much in demand as a public speaker. selves, 'Is all passion spent?' Catholic C hurch with Franco's National­ Later in the 1960s he actively supported the To today's generation, preoccupied with ists and the Communist Party w ith the claims of the Gurindji people and was a totally different issues, the ideological Republican Governm ent. With the wisdom strong opponent of the Vietnam War. He battles which began in the 1930s and con­ of hindsight (inform ed, for example, by renounced Soviet Communism in 1968. Of ti nued into the 1960s m ay seem like a Orwell's Homage to Catalonia) much of Power Without Glory Pauline Armstrong storm in a teacup. But Australia was a the idealism seem s to have been misplaced. quotes Bob Santamaria as saying, 'It was teacup; ethnically homogenous, culturally But this m eant nothing to the protagonists in teresting I can tell you. It was like a grand remote, dcri va tive in i dcas, clutching at the time. On both sides the untarnished final football match.' sentimentally to old allegiances. Europe's truth took som e time to em erge. Santamaria and Hardy were both charis­ ideological battles seemed distant; but they In 193 7, under the a uspices of the m atic personalities. With Sa ntamaria this were to wash back to Australia as people Campion Society, the Spanish Civil War cam e fr om apparent strength of conviction, took sides on the grea t issues of the time. cam e (m etaphori cally speaking) to the then intellect, courage and his abili ty as a com­ T hese began with the rise of Hitler's Ger­ sleepy township of Ba cchus Marsh . Accord­ municator. With Hardy it was an Australian m any and included Nazism and Fascism, ing to Frank Hardy, who was then aged 20, larrikin charm, his passion about particular the Spa nish Civil War, and the Soviet reac­ he took part in a debate on the war, arguing cau ses, and again, enthusiasm which tion to Nazism , ultimately refl ected in the the Republican case with Father Rovira, a engaged an audience. heroic achievem ents of the Reel Army. curate at St Bernard's C hurch and a In the Protestant milieu in which I spent

36 EUREKA STREET • A PR IL 2001 my childhood and teenage years the fact led to justifiable suspicions of discrimina­ subsequent occasions) was m ys tifying, it that Frank Hardy, a Catholic, became a tion against Catholics in employment and was not totally incomprehensible. The idea Communist would have caused no sur­ membership of clubs and organisa tions. of bea ting one's (Communist ) enemies by prise. Rather, if it had at the time been Political ideology, sectarianism and the refusing to acknowledge them is an ancient newsworthy, it would have been advanced development of the politic of guilt by if rarely productive technique. as evidence of the fact that Catholicism and association (' McCarthyism ' as it was then It w as th e lea ked extracts fro m Communism were opposite sides of the called) produced a volatile mix. Sa ntamaria's 1953 speech to the Catholic sam e coin, a coin easily flipped. The key political event of the 1950s was Social Studies Movement (k nown at the The church and the ommunist Party the 1955 split in the Labor Party. If cooler time as 'The Movem ent of Ideas' speech ) were both, it used to be argued, dogmatic heads had prevailed, as they did in N ew which put the ca t among the young pigeons and authoritarian institutions, demanding South Wales, it need not have occurred. It who embraced the broad tenets of demo­ obedience and total commitment. The fact kept the Labor Party out of offi ce for 23 cratic socialism . In this peech Sa ntam aria that one promised eternal life for its faith­ years and damaged the image of the Catholic argued that 'We must destroy the Chifley ful adherents and the other an earthly Utopia Church. legend.' This was a bombshell. The ALP was only a m atter of degree. Perhaps the According to Robert Corcoran, who was in the wilderness; politically and intel­ Catholic Church had m ore going for it. But remains a diligent student of the peri od, lectually. 'The Light on the Hill', the Chifley how ea y to m ake the transition from one 'You had to be Labor and Catholic to under­ legend, was all we had going fo r us. Eva tt, to the other. stand the Movement and the split. I was erratic, opportunistic and apparently unin­ This sort of argument was supported by both.' Nonetheless both the Movement and terested in social issues, was hardly a role a multitude of half-truths, and some real the split had a profound impact on the model. Calwell, his deputy, seem ed con­ on es. The church was conformist and thinking of n on-Catholic m embers of fused and uninspired, and was already a uthoritaria n , the Communis t Party the ALP. enmesh ed in the dilemma of being a ubiquitous in the lives of its Catholic and a m ember of the members. If Hardy enjoyed the eli vided Labor Party. piquancy of blaming a Catholic I fi rst encountered the phe­ priest for his conversion to nomena of overt sectarianism Communism , so did many and guilt by association as a others. Look, people would say, university student, working at all those Communist leaders: part-tim e in the Victorian Pub­ H ealey, Thornton , O 'Shea, lic ervice in 1953. 'Micks' and Sharkey, all refu gees fr om the Masons muttered about each discipline of the Chris tian other with a hostility which Brothers. Junior seminaries like suggested that the world could the one later portrayed in Fred not contain them both. One Schepsi's film, The De vii's Play­ might have been in N orthern ground, were the churc h 's Ireland. As it happened I worked equivalent of the Gulag. in a room with fi ve others, one And, of course, there were of whom was Barry Jones, also renega des from both sides. Nuns Th e successful M elbourne University debating team, in Adelaide, 24 August 1935. working part-time. We were were leaping over walls long B.A. Sa ntamari a (sec retary, aged 20) is second from th e ri ght. From Cru sade or both m embers of the Labor before the Berlin one was built. Conspiracy? Catholics and the Anti-Communist Strugg le in Australia, Bruce Duncan, UNSW Press. (Courtesy Mrs Margaret Kel ly.) Party. Of the other four, three Koestler's The God That Failed were Catholi cs, who regarded was published in 1950. In the same year the When I joined the Carlton Branch of the Sa ntamaria as a knight in shining armour, report of a Royal Commission on Commu­ Labor Party in 1952 the Santamaria forces and one a lapsed Catholic who took it upon nism (prompted by the defection of a rela­ were in a controlling position in the Victo­ himself to adjudicate debates on the politi­ tively minor CPA official, ecil Sharpley) rian Branch of the ALP. At the monthly cal issu es of the day. was tabled in the Victorian Parliam ent. m eetings there were u sually about 25 mem­ The three Sa ntamaria fo llowers were The larger defections were to come years bers present. There were 400 m embers 'on clearly of the view that as ALP m embers, later as a slow flow-on from Khrushchev's the books' who could be called on when Barry and I were both victims of an addic­ exposure of Stalin's monstrosities and the necessary and who voted at pre-selections. tion which inevitably led to Communism. liberalisation which followed the econd At my second m eeting, innocently believing The 'debates' turned not on the m erit of Vatican council. that a Labor Party branch was a place in Communism or otherwise, but whether or If the ideological battles of the mid 20th which people fr eely debated ideas, I moved not prominent m embers of the Labor Party century were not enough, it is worth recall­ that the Labor Party should adopt a policy in Australia and indeed in Britain were in ing that Australian public life was further of recognising China as the British Labour fact Communists. The adjudicator would complicated by a pervasive sectarianism, government had clone. My short and hesi­ issue magisterial pronouncements such as: which had as its h eraldic fla g- bearers tant speech was received in stony silence, 'The fact that Evatt was President of the various Masonic orders on one side and and then derided as pro-Communist and United Nations does not in m y opinion the Knights of the Southern Cross on the naive. My motion was soundly defeated. justify the conclusion that he is a Commu­ other. But it went much deeper than that. Though thi seemingly blinkered hard nist.' This was engaging stuff, but sympto­ In a predominantly non-Catholic society it line (to be encountered on a number of matic of a much deeper malaise.

V OLUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 37 Robert Corcoran has observed that the Bishops, 1952). But it is worth quoting again: As a young man Santamaria was daily papers 'chose not to publish the full undoubtedly subjected to the influence of The Social Studies Movement (th e Move­ facts about Santamaria and the Movement the right-wing anti-Semitic conspiracy ment) should, within a period of fiv e or six at the time of the split'. Why would they? theories emanating from ' Action Fran c;: aise' years, be abl e to completely transform th e The Movem ent, and later the DLP, suited and adopted by some Australian commen­ leadership of the Labor Movement, and to conservative politicians and conservative tators close to him. But apart from a crass introduce into Federal and State spheres newspaper proprietors very well. And in and ill-informed item, appea ring in an ea rl y large numbers of members who ... should fact there was not much known at the time, edition of the Catholic Worker whe n be able to implement a Christian soci al except in the inner sanctums. So hysteria Santamaria was its editor (aged 21), there is programme .. . this is th e first time that prevail ed over rational analysis. Both the little evidence to associate Santamaria with such a work ha s becom e possible in Aus­ Movem ent and, for that matter, the Com­ anti-Semitism . He may well at that time tralia, and, as far as I can see, in th e Anglo­ munist Party, whose tacti cs Santamaria have nurtured anti-Semitic vi ews. But as an Sa xon world s ince th e advent of openly adopted, were secretive organisa­ addicted crusader this was not one of his Protes tantism. tions. And investiga tive journalism of ongoing issues. today's va ri ety was not yet in vogue. This is heady stuff, winding back the cl ock, Santamaria, born in 19 15, was, like all Over the years more and more informa­ recycling poor old Martin Luther. of us, a crea ture of his times. I can rem ember tion has been revealed. The Smltamaria The second letter, sent in 1967 to 'sup­ my fath er in the early years of World War II book, edited by Pa ul O rm onde, and Pauline portive Bishops', sought to siphon off a speaking with abhorrence of anti-Semitism Armstrong's account of the making of Power proportion of government funds to Catho­ and anti-Catholicism (o r more particularl y Without Glory arc part of the process of lic schools to the National Civic Council, anti-cleri cali sm), which he rega rded as revelati on. T hey provide detailed insights an appeal which was mind-boggling in its stupid and ignorant. Unfo rtunately both in to the tacti cs adopted by the move- implications for Catholic schools and the were rife in Australia in the 1930s and in to ment and the Communist Party. divisive 'State Aid' issue. the following decades. They had the covert Considering that the contributors to blessing of influential organisations like 1OPENED Santamaria: The Politics of Fear The Politics of Fear are a bunch of ' so-called The Melbourne Club. If Sa ntamaria, as a w ith som e trepidati on. Did I reall y want to Catholic intellectuals', this is a remarkably young man, harboured repugnant thoughts know more about all that ? In fa ct I found it well-written book. If it were otherwise, about Jew s, he was not alone. fascinating, not just because Santamaria how could som eone like m yself, not versed Santamaria's views on the position of was a fascinating man, but because of its in ecclesiastical ma ttcrs, have fo ll owed with women in society, Aborigi nal disadva ntage, rigo rous cri tique of hi s ideas, his methods such interest Xavier Connor's chapter on and the environment (as quoted in this -one m ight say hi s 'techniques'. church-state doctrine? Connor's disagree­ book) now seem quite primitive. They were. Each of the contributors to this book m ent with Santamaria's views on this But again it's fair to ask which other public was associated with The Catholic Worker, matter elates back at least un till 956. Connor intellectuals in Australia were, in the m id characteri sed by Bishop Fox as a journal for reveals the existence of another piece of 20th century, robustly standing u p for 'so-called Catholic intellectuals'. Their correspondence relating to an article written women's ri ghts, fo r Aborigi nes, for a better start ing point is a profound difference fr om by Santamaria (' Religious Apostolate and understanding of and care for the environ­ Santam aria's ideas about the values which Political Action') published in the Bom bay m ent. These were latter-day i sues. At the they fe lt should flow fro m adherence to the Examiner in 1955, in which he advanced time, ignorance and indifference were ubiq­ Catholi c fai th, a differe nce which they have arguments subsequently rejected by the uitous. The m o t serious charge which can held fo r nearly half a century. So there arc Vatican. Connor wrote to Sa nta maria urging fa irl y be laid against Santam aria is that, as no rca scssmcnts in the light of new infor­ him to repudiate his Bombay Examiner events unfo lded and awareness grew, he mation, no second thoughts, no apologies. thesis. The essence of Santamaria's repl y simply fa il ed to adjust hi s thinki ng on They have all been at it fo r a long time, was that he had changed his position, but questions beyond his immediate priorities. whi ch lends depth and credi bility to their that it would be bctternot to make any public What of 'The Politics of Fear'? Tt has argumen t. admission of this fact as such an admission been a questi on which has interested me No t surprisingly the ir v iews a re could be used against him politically. si nce 1966, when Arthur Calwell, who expressed with some vehem ence. T here is T his is, fo r reasons whi ch I h ave bel ievcd he was go ing to win the election of not much mincing of words. More surpri sing inclica tccl, a som ewhat passionate book . that yea r on the conscription issue, took is the breadth of detail , from a description Because of this I tried, as I read it, to unearth me aside at a ca mpa ign meeting in the Kcw of Sa n tamaria's university clays, to the opinions or judgments w hich seemed unfa ir T own Hall and told me, 'John, a lways infl ucnce of the strange political bedfe llows to Santamari a, without much success. The rem ember that fea r is the most potent he picked up along the way, his m ani­ authors are primarily concerned with weapon in poli tics.' It was a remark which pulative skills, his capacity to ignore an rebutting arguments and m ethods, particu­ made politics seem even more unattractive argument or fac t which didn' t suit hi larl y in relati on to the position of the church than it is. It stuck in my mind. At times particular vision, and the expansion of his and Communism . It's on issues peripheral I fea r it might be true. overweening am bition. to this m ain theme-such as anti-Semitism, The title Santamaria: The Politics of H is single-mindcdn ess and ambition the position of women in church and society, Fear stems, I imagine, fro m Santamaria's arc revealed in two letters, the first of multiculturali sm, Aboriginal disa dvantage genius as a 'threat expert'. Like Glendowcr which was pu bli sh ed som e tim e ago and the enviro nment- that Santamaria's in Henry IV, he had a unique abi lity to (E dmund Cam pion, Rocl

38 EUREKA STRE ET • APRIL 2001 From Communists in the unions, to Chinese experience of organisational work for the I only m et Santamaria twice. The first involvement in the Vietnam War, the domino Communist Party. Power Without Glory occasion was at a crowded fun ction in the theory, middle-class intellectuals and the was not, it seems, Hardy's idea. A number Rialto Building in honour of som e visiting 'US giant with feet of clay', he perceived the of Communist Party officials obviously international luminary. It was in the mid threats. His ability to persuade oth ers, like mulled it over, but the finger points strongly 1960s when the Vietnam War was ha tting politicians, bishops, newspaper proprietors, at the late T ed Hill as the catalyst. Hill up. Atone point, caught in conflicting eddies and ordinary citizens anxious to have ome­ wanted to 'put a dent into the activities of between drink waiter and six o'clock thing to be anxious about, declined with Catholic action'. He believed, erroneously, quaffers, we found ourselves standing face­ the years but at the height of his power his that John Wren was fin ancing the Move­ to-face. We nodded politely at each other. influence was profound. Like a hobgo blin m ent. Hill, described by his party colleague Then a drink waiter intervened and we in the rumpus room, he himself exuded an Cedric Ralph as a 'master of the offensive', push ed away in di ffe re nt direction s . ever-present threat, somewhat colourfully was always a hard ball-pl ayer. I enj oyed myself with the presumptuous described in an article which appeared in With this genesis the making of Power analogy that we were like Voltaire and God. the Sydney Sun on 25 September 1954: Without Glory became something of a col­ We saluted but we did not speak. But we lective work, with Hardy as the lead instru­ both understood who was who. In the tense melodrama of politics there m ent. Armstro ng's account of the research The second occasion was in 1996 when arc mys terious fi gures who stand virtuall y cl one voluntarily by various Communist I went with Jim McLelland and his wife Gil unnoticed in the wings, invisible to all but Party members, of the clandestine type­ fo r a sandwich lunch in Bob Santam aria's a few of the audience, as they cue, Sve ngali­ setting and printing of the book, and its office. It was a nostalgic occasion. The two like, the actors out on the stage. Such a distribution is fascinating reading. So is the veterans rivalled each other with modesty fig ure appears to be Bartholomew Augus­ account of the activities of the 'Defence a they discu eel who was the brightest tine Michae l Santamaria, of politics but Committee' established aft er Hardy was student when they sat together at St Kevin's not in them, a man dedi ca ted to an charged with criminal libel. all those years ago. Santamaria was a charm­ unrelenting crusade against communis m, When Power Without Glory wa pub­ ing host and seemingly as intellectually rep uted by his enemies (who include some lished I was at school supplem enting alert as ever. He gave us some amusing powerful men) to exercise a major influence 'approved reading' with a diet of B-grade thumbnail sketches of contemporary pub­ on the course of Australian politics, yet out crime novels, mostly written by a British lic fi gures, which might have been drawn of the public eye and seemingly a casual writer named Roland Daniel. The publica­ by Hogarth. We sat on opposite sides of a bys tander. When his name is mentioned, tion was exciting because in the surround­ long table. There was a framed photo of as it is frequently by politicians, it is usually ing atmosphere of intrigue it seemed that in Archbishop Pell on the wall behind him. in a guarded whisper behind a hand muffling Melbourne too there was violence, black­ I m et Hardy only once, after he had th e mouth, fo r they appea r to fear spea king m ail, briber y and corruption just like given an entertaining talk at the Assembly aloud of him, ju st as medieva l men London or N ew York. The book sold well, Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne. Pumped feared to speak aloud of bogies. blurring, as it did, fact and fiction, with up, like an ambassador or a politician at the much more fi ction than fa ct. declaration of the poll, he was enj oying the :Pu u NE A RMS TRONG 's Frank Hardy and Writing about the making of the book, attention, dispensing charm in small and the Making of Power Without Glory was Armstrong points up the unattractive side equal portions to his va ri ous admirers. originally written as a PhD thesis at Mel­ of Hardy, who in the excitem ent of public If Frank Hardy was 'anti-everything' his bourne University. It is a book which is at notoriety showed little gratitude to all those strongest and m ost positive commitment times repetitive and could have done with who helped him produce it. Gratitude, it was to Communism in one fo rm or another. more careful editing. Nonetheless it is me­ seems, was not one of Hardy's virtues. A Bob San tam aria's a biding commitment was ticulously researched and the author seems heavy gambler, he borrowed m oney and to his view of the Catholic Church and to to have interviewed or obtained information often failed to repay his debts. He was not protecting it from its real and imagined from all the usual suspects across the pa rticularly loyal to people who had en emies. In hindsight both were wrong or, political spectrum. Santamaria himself is befri ended him. His separation fr om his at best, half right. quoted on the blurb as saying that Hardy's wife was m es y, 'humiliating and cruel'. In The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea Power Without Glory would becom e a His partner in the early '70s, Eva Ja go, of Communism in th e 20th Century, 'social document for history researchers'. thought he knew nothing about wom en, Franyois Furet refers to the 'm ys tery' of The only obvious non-collaborator was was insensitive and egocentric, and highly ideological politics as being 'how it cam e to Frank Hardy himself, who seems to have susceptible to flattery. take root in people's minds. In a century deliberately frustrated the author's attempts There arc several suggestions in the di vided between the theological and the to interview him. book that Hard y was anti-Semitic. Some political, the greatest enigma is how this Armstrong fairly portrays the attractive people, who knew him well, think this is a in tell ectual mishmash could have evoked side of Hardy and is generous in her misj udgm ent of Hardy and that any anti­ such strong sentiments and nouri bed so references to his assistance to the G urindji Semitic remarks should be seen in the con­ m an y individual fa nta ie .' people and his opposition to the Vietnam text of Hardy's being 'anti-everything': the T hese two books only partly answer War, long aft er his commitment to Soviet establishment, the Irish, the British, the that question, but fo r the reader they are Communism had begun to wan e. Catholics, any group which engaged his enlightening ca utionary tales. • By the time he commenced the writing attention at any particular time. If this is of Power Without Glory Hardy had already true, he at least displayed the virtue of John Button was a senator and minister in had some success as a writer and som e consistency. the Hawke and Kea ting governments.

VOLUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EU REKA STREET 39 BOOKS

)AME S GRIFF I N of the shame of transportation' to Australia. Still, there is much that is informative. Bettany's Book crosses two centuries and two continents authentically. Two Sydney sisters with the unlikely names Big Tom Dimple and Primrose Bcttany, drive this novel. 'Prim' has gone to the Sudan a an Austfam worker after her supervisor-lover The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New, Thomas Kcnea ll y, at the University inserts plagiarisedmaterial Random House, I 99R . ISBN 0 09 18 7336 7, IUU ' $45. Bettany's Book, Tom Kcnca ll y, into her postgraduate thesis in order to Doubl eday, 2000. ISIIN I 8647 1000 4, RRI' $34 .95 terminate their affaire and save his marriage. 'Dimp' has an affaire with, and eventu­ ally marries, a rich boring Catholic incuri­ O N"" em" Nom Keneoll y h" W citing The Gma t Shame, he "Y' 'w" ously called D ' Arcy who agonises over his called himself plain 'Tom '. He has done akin to being locked in a cupboard with a need for a Vatican annulment of his first this, I think, only once before: on his knocka- tyrannosaurus rex'. A ferocious, slavering marriage in order to get them all to heaven. bout m emoir, Th e H omebush Boy (199 5 ). trial for him perhaps, but I prefer to think of But Dimp leaves him, taking his Arthur There must be a reason for such signal it as being in an unfenced landscape with Boyds with her to finan ce a film on her familiarity and it may not be unrelated to that huge, rambling herbivore, the bronto- Bettany ancestors. She has already had suc­ thc blockbuster scope of his two latest saurus. Apparently the original was three cess with a title, Enzo Kangaroo, so that it work . times the 300,000 or so words that remain, is not all that exotic when she goes off with My copy came with a two-page press including 100 pages of notes, bibliography her Calabrian script-writer named (bless release, evidently written by himself. No him!) Benedetto. problem with that: the puff is justifiably His capacity to digest Jonathan Bettany (d.l883) who, the self-satisfied. It specifics many of Tom's 40 epilogue tells us, caps hi s career as Minister published works and numerous prizes, and miscellaneous historical sources for Lands and Colonial Secretary in New concludes: ... and create a seemingly South Wales, is a pioneer grazicr and son of a convict with a passion for the Stoic Latin Tom marri ed Judith and raised two authentic product is unrivalled in poet, Horace, much quoted here. His sec­ daughters ... he was the founding chairman Australia. However, these two ond marriage is to another former convict, of the Australian Republican Movement. latest works are indulgently long. named Sarah Bernard who is formidable but When not writing, lecturing or attending not histrionic. H er letters and his journal peaking engagements, Tom enjoys and index. This boggier grazes firstly are the basis of the Bettany book. politician-watching, swimming, cryptic through the life of an Irish convict, Hugh Among Jonathan's achievements is the crosswords, telling anecdotes about hi s Larkin, a 'Ribbon man', ' from whom my rescue and cduca tion of a mixed-race brilliant daughters, skiing and watching wife and [brilliant] daughters arc descended'. Aboriginal boy whom he pregnantly names sporting events. Interleaved with this moderately interest­ Felix. Keneally has Felix construe Ovid at As Tom can take som e joshing- and ing but exiguously documented story are nine years of age and Greek a little later. In there is a point to it-I note that with the the travails of the Young Ireland rebels adolescence Felix kills his worthless white press release there is an outgoing photo of (O'Brien, O'Doherty, Meagher, Mitchel) father, leaving Bettany's stoical overseer to him under a sundowner hat with arms folded who were transported to Van Diemen's hang quite willingly for him. (It is done and specs clasped over a black jumper and Land from which the last two made dra­ expertly, 'without priapism', says the super­ open-neck shirt. A humorous, sharing matic escapes to the USA. visory doctor, no palpable detail eluding fe llow, he is almost smirking, triumphantly, Young Ireland is then made to blend Keneally.) such that I wondered whether Tom would into the Fenian Brotherhood, founded in Reducing stories like this amounts, of withdraw from the limelight if a poll showed N ew York in 1858. Keneally relates the course, to caricature, when in fact Tom that his rather ubiquitous images-som e of jailbreaks of seven of them from Western provides a wealth of vivid characterisation them a bit Blinky Bill-ish- were seen to be Australia with customary skill. A group and narrative mastery. Still, it justifies the a liabili ty to the cause. portrait of Irish rebels in the USA follows fee ling that his continuous invention is too Barely conceivable, of course. So let us with muc h biograph y unfamiliar to facile even when bolstered by insight into agree with the release and say, unequivo­ Australians. Meagher and Mitchel, for the problems of Third World countries call y, that Tom's has been a prodigious example, supported opposing sides on the and the ambiguities of foreign aid, as in achievement since he emerged from his Civil War, Meagher as a brigadier-general the Sudan sections. At such length, the clerica l chrysalis in his gothic first novel, for Lincoln. ingenuity stales and fosters respectful drift The Place at Whitton (1964). His capacity The problem is that the 'great shame' is rather than alert expectation. to digest miscellaneous historical sources not really explored until the last two para­ Well-meaning, overflowing, Tom is, I feel, (Gossip from the Forest, Schindler's Ark, graphs of the book and then it is somehow now free-wheeling and beginning to pat­ The Chant of Jimmy Black smith, Towards foretold: the unique decline of the Irish ronise us. Hence the moniker variation? • A smara) and create a seemingly authentic population in the 19th century; British mis­ product is unri va lied in Australia. However, government; the failures of the rebels; and James Griffin is an hi storian and emeritus these two latest works are indulgently long. possibly (Keneally is not sure) 'a redolence professor of history, University of PNG.

40 EUREKA STREET APRIL 2001 EX HI B IT I O ANDREW BUL LEN The writing on the wall

Colin McCahon: A Time for Messages, National Gallery of Victoria on Russc:ll , 2 Fcbruary- 13 May 200 I

ETY YEARS AGO the N ew Zealand painter from painting to painting. We can wonder From a distance and close up,' A letter to ColinMcCahon (1919- 1987) made hissole whetherMcCahon'sinfluencehasledNew H ebrews (Rain in N orthland)' has an visit to Melbourne. In the m ornings he Zealand artists to put words and landscape immense presence. From a distance we see spenthourswiththe painterMaryCockburn together m ore constantly than do Austral- its six long panels as a cloudscape, wi th Mercer, who had worked with Picasso and ian artists, and note that Rosalie Gascoigne occasional black blocks of land, the veils of Braque, looking at the collection of the is the pre-eminent fi gure in Australia for rain coming and going as they wash across National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) then exploring landscape and words. the long horizontal scroll of land, to m eet hou sed in the grand old building on McCahan 's interest in narrative and the final and obscuring squall coming in Swanston Street. 'I was taught to be a traditional ancestry links with the way the from the far right edge. painter,' he said of her influence on him, art of the Australian indigenous tradition As we are drawn closer, the text becomes 'and all the implications, the solitary con- traces significant markings in the land- visible. We soon fi nd ourselves reading in finement which makes a painter's life. scape to tell stories, as we see in the paint- the first panel, 'so that the visible came I remember her with great gratitude and ings here by Emily Kam Kngwarray and forth fr om the invisible'. Part of the experi- affection. She had a broken leg and no Kitty Kantilla Kutuwalumi. The exhibition ence McCahon draws us to in his paintings money.' (See Agnes Wood, Colin McCahan: trawls through differences and likenesses is to notice what the painting, often through The Man and the Teacher, David Lang, between contemporary painting traditions its text, is doing to us. He stresses that the Auckland 1997, pp24-25.) Her hospitable in Australia and N ew Zealand. experience is one that only a painting can example braced him for a life of great The points of reference, of course, are give. difficulty and distress. the M cCah on pieces, and the central The text here is taken from 'The Epistle His art was shining and immense. Now importance of the two in the Gallery's col- to the Hebrews' in the N ew English Bible six of McCahan's works, two in the Gallery's lection-'One' and 'A letter to Hebrews version, chapter 11. The ancient readers or own collection and the others from a private (Rain in Northland)'-is marked by their audience were Jewish Christians whom the coll ection in Melbourne, can be seen in the position in the central bay. original writer wishes to encourage in their sam e building in a hospitable faith by reminding them of tra n -Tas man exhibition their ancestors in faith and c urated by Ja son Smith. their own possession now of McCahan's works are accom- the promises these ancestors panied by those of one fellow could only hope for. The rheto- New Zealander (Shane Cotton), ric is driven by the repetition two expatriate New Zealanders of the phrase 'by faith' towards (Rosalie Gascoigne, Brent the final and climactic verse, Harris) and seven Australians, 'and yet they did not enter whose work has either been upon their promised inherit- influenced by McCahon or is ance, because, with us in mind, in telling confluence with it. God had made a better plan, For example, the watery that only in company with us blue currents and the tangled should they reach their perfec- skein of stringofJudy Watson's tion'. In McCah an's revised 'Driftnet' suggest how viewers version these words of canso- ca n respond to the placem ent lation are squeezed into three of the works around the bays lines way clown the bottom of on the m ezzanine balcony of the sixth panel, and blurred by the restored McCoy Hall. Our that incoming squall. T h e glance drifts to and fro, ca ught painted weather of the New for a moment or longer, and Zealand landscape reinterprets then moves on and back; con- the text. For McCahan, faith nections are loosely or tightly contends with rain. m ade, and we sense that much In ' A letter to Hebrews' the slips through. The placement nam es of faithful people from of the works itself goes to and Abel onwards remind us that frobothacrosstheTasmanand ide ntity h as t o do with

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 41 ancestry, here an ancestry of faith, which ourselves to that presence, which is Moreover, the lines of the text work often had to endure the leaving of home­ sometimes enhanced by the painting having poetically: for example, the end of a line land or exile to seek a promised land. In a vertical, menhir-like shape, or looking leads us to stress the first word on the contrast, the placing of McCahan's 'The like a school blackboard. We have to face up following line. The text becomes alive-or, ca noe Mamari' just around the corner in to it. better, its liveliness is highlighted by the next bay of the exhibition juxtaposes His scripts too are forceful: 'you have to McCahan's placement of the words. The landscape and Maori ancestry to suggest read this'. They present us with the truth. thickening or thinning of his brushstroke, how identity is established by historical McCahon as God's sign writer. We are told the sudden shift in font and case, the rare continuity in the same landscape. If that is McCahon was 'entranced as a child watch­ occasions when he writes in white on black, so, then McCahan's putting in capitals these ing a signwriter near his home painting that single misspelling and the mistaken words from the epistle is all the more poign­ "Hairdresser and Tobacconist"' [Wood, p22). repeat of ' the' in the fourth panel-all this ant: 'They were not yet in posession [sic] of But here the words are worthy of the visual liveliness keeps us on our toes before the things promised. But had seen them far entrancement they can cast, and they can the painting. ahead and hailed them and confessed them­ be signs. A sign m ay appear in the h eavens How do we speak the score of McCahan's selves no more than strangers or passing or in the landscape. It comes as a confront­ version of Hebrews1 Our eyes move along travellers on the earth'. The biblical text ing gift: we sense our inadequacy before it; the text, we journey through the textual now engages with the pakeha experience, we undergo an annunciation. Whether the landscape, which eventually tells us in the speaks for it, and the painting revises the words are in the heavens or in the land­ third panel that is what we are doing: 'By original text yet again. scape, we are obliged to read the text. Our Faith [a black block] Abraham obeyed the

Another current of suggestion comes to eyes are led in a journey across a tract of call to go out to a land destined for himself 'A letter to Hebrews' from 'The canoe land or sky, as in ' A le tter to Hebrews', or andhisheirsand left home without knowing Mamari', for here the names of Maori we arc brought up short before the where he was to go'. ancestors alone carry the story of those sheer hillside of 'One'. The layout controls the little dance and identified by the story. For the many of us turns the pauses-there's a bi g one before for whom that is not the case, the experi­ ETTINGLY, AT AN EXIT of this exhibition, 'without'-into doubts and hesi tations. ence of seeing the white names on the black the panel 'Poetry isn't in my words' uses Further on, at the end of the third and ground can be like coming across a story the poet Peter Hooper's blunt poem to give beginning of the fourth panels, the repetition chalked on a blackboard for another group McCahan's last word, last judgment: 'if of the third panel's final line emphasises its of people. Whose secrets arc these? And you're appalled/ at the journey/ stick to importance to McCahan: 'Those who use should I read them 1 Dare I tread across the the/ guided tours/ They issue return tickets.' such language show plainly that they are boundaries into sacred space, and into some­ As Belshazzar found in the Book of Daniel, looking for a country of their own.' body else's sacred space? McCahan's use of the writing is on the exit wall. The grey sheets of rain that cover the Maori myth has proved a volatile issue in Either side of the Tasman our cultures repetition arc broken by two shafts of light, New Zealand. [McCahon replaced the are unused to prophets who use paint, and and in each the word 'God' appears in contentious text in the 'Urewcra Mural' in we arc quickly alienated by stridency. capitals: God is lit. Here too McCahan's 1975; the mural was stolen as a political act McCahan's work, however, avoids visual orchest ration of the silences is powerful: in 1997 but was subsequently recovered.) stridency by having a tough delicacy of its look at the immense silence at the conclu­ Maybe that sense of stumbling across own. The text of 'A letter to Hebrews' sion of the paragraph, as the grey rain and somebody else's myth is also part of the draws us to read it and so come closer-to shafts of light, like the black and white of experience for many with regard to' A letter make out a word perhaps-and further away text, are followed by a great black bar, to Hebrews'. to take it in. We do ali ttlc dance in front of which itself repeats the formidable hiatus If our experience of the paintings is any the painted text, edging sideways to and fro: after the title. How McCahon paints the guide, for McCahan the sacred stories, I'm reminded of the Wailing Wall in text is what it means for him. His way of whether Maori or Christian, arc so potent Jerusalem where the orthodox pray while putting it or painting it is to make some that they lunge into our ordinary space to dancing before the sheer honeyed stone of words, phrases, sentences and silences lift impose their sacred m essage upon us. God's presence/absence. McCahan leads out of their context and resonate. He shows Uncloubtcclly, characteristic of McCahan's us to do this strange dance before the ark of he is looking for a country of his own by art is the presence his paintings have: they the covenant that is both God's word in using such painted language. arc uncompromisingly there, confronting us Hebrews and the rainy landscape in In the small square of 'One' [sec p41) we with their otherness. We have to subject Northland. are confronted by a country in the tawny

42 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 classifieds

slopes, the 45-degree incline of the N ew Zealand hills, the echo of IF YOU'RE IRISH CHESTNUT COTTAGE B&B the dark lines drawn vertically by fir trees along a boundary. Bei ng Irish is mo re than just Modern cottage situated in trangui l McCahon is wonderful at conveying the texture of landscape: wearing green on St Patri ck's Da y. ga rden . Sho rt stroll to W attle Pa rk 'Beach walk: Series A' has a please-touch texture, the land is Learn more about Australi a's Irish T ram , providing easy access to weathered, its colours so finely tuned that it almost hides itself Heritage in T he Journal. Melbourne CBD. until we get close and look for som ething-anything-to look at. on-sectari an. Non-political. Te l: (03) 9808 6644 Emphatica ll y Australian. There is a dustiness in the texture of 'One' that establishes the word GOD, SANTA AND TH E and number in a fi eld of gold, or at least a slope of tawny gold. ' Intel li gent. W itty. Interesting. S 12 pos t free. Au stralian- Irish TOOTH FAIRY The tawny location transforms word and number, and so the Heritage Association. PO Box God between Creduli ty and space is alive with the energy of m etaphor. The word 'one', which 1853, SU BIACO WA 6904. Te l: Disbelie f. A semi nar examining ho w is both a number and a pronoun for the self, is split apart by 'I', Joe O'Sulliva n (08) 938 1 8306 . the gospel ma · he heard in a world which is both the number one and the capital 'I', so that now the 'I' Email : aiha@multi line.com.au whi ch ranks God with San ta and the is in the middle with 'on ' to one side and 'e' to the other. Where one Tooth Fairy. Q ueens Coll ege, is split by the self and number breaks up the word, we can barely Melbo urne, 19 May 200 I . $30 , SPIRITUALITY IN THE PUB some discounts. Sponsored by the understand the inten se play of language and sign . The great 'I' Vin e Hotel, 59 W ell ingto n Str eet, Doctrine and Liturgy Committee of dislocates us. If this dislocation is a prelude to revelation, the Coll ingwood , Melbourne, on the the Vi ctorian Uniting Church. place becom es the m ount of tran sfiguration, w here the central first W ednesday of every month. Contact Paul Stephens, (03) 5229 figure is fl anked by a lesser fi gure on either side that points to the Mea ls arc ava ilable from 6 .30pm 8866, stcphcns@pipeli nc .com .au centre. and presentations start at 8pm . W ed 4 Apr il : 'Achi eving and winni ng: what about the losers?' THE 2ND INTERNATIONAL - Fr Peter Norden and PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE & Lo renda Gra ey. THEOLOGY FESTIVAL Grafton , NS W , 16 June I July All welcome. ' Odyssey 200 I . A Continuing Jo urney into W onder and GOT THAT GAGGED Wholeness' . Spea kers include FEELING? Richard Ho ll oway ('godless Fo r fi ve years, Free Speech mo rality'); Lynne Hume , Dept of Vi ctoria has drawn attention to Religio n, UQ; Ma rtin Hend ry, attacks on free speech . \N e ha ve Astronomer I As trophysicist , helped those w ho have spoken out. Glasgow; Marks McAvity, Nucl ea r Of course, the figure 'I' is not dazzlingwhite, but black. McCahon, In 1999, we awarded the engineer I interfaith educato r , a master of black, as are other N ew Zealand artists like Ralph outspoken Victorian Audito r­ Canada. Further detail s, Hotere, does a dazzling black, edged by an emphasis of the tawny General, Ches Baragwanath , o ur tel: (02) 6642 2844, gold. first Voltaire Award . If you arc c1n ail : ca tt@ nor . co n1 . au . McCahan 's achievem ent is recognised in N ew Zealand, and interested in Free Speech Vi ctori a, Wchsitc: w w w .nor .con1.a u / reverberates beyond. What we m ay want to say of any formidable contact Terry Lane, PO Box 93, com munity I sci fest . painter has to be said with special force of McCahan. His work Forest Hill VIC 3 1 3 1 transfi gures its content and draws the viewer into the transforma­ COLLECTED WORKS Classificd s arc n ow a lso tioni it has m oral force (unless you becom e like a little child you T he Australi an Poetry Bookshop . published o n o ur w e bsite, Check out the new shop at the will not enter the kingdom of art/heaven ), it subverts the surface to a t http: // w ww. Base ment of 256 l: li nders Street , reveal the depth. e urc kastrcc t.com .au I Melbourne VIC 3000. Yo u' ll fin d Far too little of this achievem ent has drifted across the Tasman. pages/ classili cd s. htm I The Melbourne exhibition stirs the hope that our major galleries the biggest , broades t coll ecti on of poetry titl es on sa le anywhere will let Australian audiences see the vibrancy and difference in the between the Indian and Pacifi c EUREKA STREET CLASSIFI EDS art of the N ew Zealand powerhouse. • Oceans. Some secondhand and Got something to sell or lease? out-of-print ,·olumcs ava ilabl e. W ant to buy? Need staff? Want to Andrew Bullen J is Rector of Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Mail o rders welco me. offer professio nal se rv ices? Victoria. Tel: (0 3) 9654 8873, Eureka Street cl assifi eds ads for just The Auckland Art Gallery has major holdings of McCahan 's work. collcctedworks@ mailci ty .com $2 5 arc your answer. which is well represented on its website: www.akcity.govt.nz/ Mail your ad and chcgue by the around/places/artgallery/index.h tml OLD FI NE & RARE BOOKS 5th of the month for display in the bought and sold . foll owing month's edition . Page 41: One, 1965. Colin M cCa hon, 1919-1987, New Zea land. Synthetic Loue ll a Kerr & Lo rra in e Reed , 25 words for a single ad ($25) o r polymer paint and polyv in yl ace tate on composition boa rd , 60. 7 x 60.7cm. I 39 St Johns Rd 55 wo rds fo r a double ad ($50) . Purchased through Th e Art Foundati on of Vi ctori a w ith th e ass istance of Glebe NSW 2037. Mr Robert Raynor AM , Honorary Li fe Benefactor, 1999. Tel: (02) 957 1 5557 Send to: Eureka Street Classifi eds Page 42- 43: A letter to Hebrews (Rain in Northland), 1979 . Colin M cCa hon, Email: lnlbooks@anzaa b.com .a u Catalogues iss ued, or browse PO Box 553 19 19-1987, New Zea land. Synthetic polymer paint on paper (s ix panels). Richmond VIC 3 12 1 73.0 x 110 .2cm each shee t. Prese nted throu gh Th e Art Foundation of Vi ctoria thro ugh our entire stock on our by th e Rev. ian Brown, Fellow, 1984. w ebsite: W\\'W.anzaa b .com.au / - lnlbooks Next d eadline: 5 April for National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne M ay 200I editio n

V O LUME 11 N UMBER 3 • EU RE KA STR EET 43 Ju stice Rober Wa ke­ fi eld (Mi chael Dou glas) almost loses his daugh ter to addiction, while in com­ mand of America's battl e against drugs. The society hostess Helena (Catherine Zeta -Jones) wakes up one m orning to di scover her rich husband is up on a drug-s muggl ing ch arge, and quickly takes over the murderous family business when her young son is threa tened. Even the brave and honest Mexican cop, Javier (Bc nicio Del Toro), feels li ke a Ju das when he goes to the D rug Enfo rce­ m ent Agen cy with evi­ dence of the en trenched corruption which afflicts his nation. N o-on e in t h e film escapes unharm ed or unsullied by the bl oody­ and ul ti m a tely fut ile­ war. As Soderbergh wrote movie is based on actual events-William in his recently published di ary: 'That people Prochnau's account- doesn't make it any will abuse anything, given the opportunity, Surface cut easier to accept. is part of what m akes us human . T he The sporadic action scenes are exciting questi on of how much we should legislate Proof of Life, dir. Taylor Hackford. Engin eer and suggest that Proof of Life would have against potential abuses is the one I haven't Peter Bowman (David Morse) has been kid­ been much better as a full-blown action been able to answer for m yself.' To his napped by guerrillas in the revolutionary m ovie. But in having attempted to add credit, Sodcrbcrgh refrains fro m delivering La tin Am e rica n s ta te of T ecala a nd em otional depth, and failing, Hackfo rd has a pa t Hollywood-s tyle answer to this ques­ a ba ndon ed by hi s o il conglo m era te turned som e potentially grea t material into tion. But he shows us the moral and physica l employer; his fate lies in the hands of inter­ a rather poor movie. carnage that makes such a question worth national ran som bro ker, T erry Thorne -Ciaran McGuigan asking. It is a powerful achievement. (Ru ssell Crowe). -Brett Evans T hrea tened by time and circumstances, Bowm an 's m arriage to Alice (Meg Rya n ) is Creative drive at the point of disin tegration when he is Sad Sade ta ken captive. Enter Crowe, and an attempt Traffic, dir. Steven Sodcrbcrgh. There arc by Hackford at a modern-day, Casablanca­ films about drug aclcli cti on, film s about the Quills, dir. Philip Kaufman. Books and berks style menage a trois, played against the drug trade, and films about Third World arc the predominant them e in this ponder­ backdrop of intense hostage negotiations. politics. Traffic artfully combine all three ous piece of hysterical unplcasantry. Young Tony Gilroy's screenpl ay attempts to into one coherent, and disturbing, whole. Simone (Am elia Warner ), the convent-raised present the characters as deeply complex It m arri es a hand-held ca m era style orphan m arried by force to the fi lm's 'real' beings but fai ls to do more than scratch the (filmed by the director him self, working villain (Michael Cain e), has one of those surface-em pathy is in short supply, and as under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) with Sloan e Ran gcris h accen ts t hat can't it diminishes, so too docs any ten sion that brilliant, economical storytelling to create pronounce a full round vowel, so when sh e might have built up. Bowman is at the mercy that rare thing: a m essage film which avers that the nuns taught her to appreciate of violent and ruthl ess killers, yet it is hard skilfully lets its polemical points arise from 'berks' yo u can only agree, since she seems to care whether he is rescued or not. the el rama itself. There is very little obvious to appreciate deeply the writings of th e And it is impossibl e to believe that speechify ing in Traffic; it is almost all Marquis de Sadc (Geoffrey Rush) wi th all Crowe's character-a tough-talking, clinical action. their pomps and lack of irony or indeed any and cyni cal hostage negotiator, and one­ Soclerbcrgh's them e is corruption: insti ­ recognisable human emotion. We are asked time SAS commando-has all owed hi s tutional, societal, personal. Every character to beli eve that the reading of Justine turned guard to slip and has fa llen fo r a misty-eyed is tainted by the drug trade and th e 'war' her from a trembling lamb regularly wolfed and bedraggled Meg Ryan . The fact that the waged upon it. by her awful hubby to a sultry vamp who

44 EUREKA STREET • APR IL 2001 rogers and then elopes with the home ing her fishing lines, washing herself and so When Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) and renovator. on. Without fri ends, responsible for an Chow Mo-Wan (Tong Leung) first becom e Anyone who has read any of de Sacl e's alcoholic mother, and with unstable employ­ neighbours in a crowded Hong Kong apart­ in terminable catalogue aria will doubtless ment, this routine gives her som e kind of ment block, their relationship consists of conclude that she must have been an confirmation of her existence. The detail of little more than cool acknowledgment and accident waiting to happen. Caine has little her life is exquisitely depicted, but it is in the odd exchange of a kung-h1 novel. But it to do in the film but twirl imaginary m ous­ no way picturesque. This search for meaning, is not long before they realise that their taches and foreclose on the mortgage. for dignity, with so few resources, is raw. respective partners are having an affair. I ended up sympathising with him. Kate The film is shot with a hand-held cam era. This gives an unexpected and painful con­ Winslet (as Madeleine) is very beautiful and There is little dialogue. There is no musical text to their relationship. Anxious for the males who remember her in Titanic will score. The camera is relentless in its close­ m erest scrap of explanation, Su and Chow get a brief glimpse of her breasts again, as ups of Rosetta and the bleak clay-to- cla y explore the liaison of their husband and long as they're not put off by the fact that grind of h er life. It feels very intimate, too wife by re-enacting ways in which it could she's supposed to be dead at the time. It intimate. These aspects all work together­ have begun and what might have been doesn't seem to put off the romantic lead, the intimate camera work, the lack of discu ssed between them. This play-acting but the film iiber-sentimentalises it by soft ening touches like music, the mundane is both strange and devastating-exploring making her wake up and embrace him and details of her life-and had m e questioning the pain of infidelity but also the beauty then of course it all turns out to be a dream . and surprise of the little­ Geoffrey Rush was brilliant in Eliza beth known lover. and Shakespeare in Love: indeed he was the In the Mood for Love best thing about both those films. But as a is literally and figuratively heretic who was embarrassed by Shine's made up of a delicate appalling patronising of mad people, layering of patterns. Pat­ musicians and music lovers, I have to terns of crowded domestic disagree with most of my fellow critics and life, strikingly decorated say that Quills infantiliscs its audience ch eongsa ms, the repeti­ outrageously, clucking the hard issues of tive movements of prepar­ what it means to be a person who enj oys ing food, the familiar violence so much that it gets confused with activities of work, the the erotic impulse. The comic-book script high-key patterns of '60s makes Rush's de Sacle into a bit of a naughty interior design and the old eccentric who is opposed only by hypo­ rhythms and fears of illicit critical wowscrs. If you want to sec any­ love. So strong is the use thing like a proper political contextualising of visual patterns that we of de Sacle, go back to Peter Weiss' Marat/ are alerted to a change of Sade, which, as I remember, with all its m y role as a m ember of the audience. I felt clays by little more than a different design fa ults (actors do love to play lunatics), at a terrible voyeur, watching dwindling hope on Su's cheongsam or the need for another least knew the m ea ning of the worcl 'irony' as entertainment. While confro nting and trip to the noodle shop to buy the evening if only in a heavy-handed Brechtian sense. difficult, however, this questioning also meal. Next to Quills' sheer bloody awfulness it personalised the film for m e, made me And what a relief it is to be spoken to in looks like Shakespeare now. engage when it would have been more this exquisitely subtle and moody way. -Juliette Hughes comfortable to detach. Brash obviousness has its place on a Die Rosetta is played by Emilie Dequenne. Hard Christmas Eve with every character It is an incredible performance. She does carrying a present and shouting about the Rosetta's tone not indulge in any kind of sentimentality. holidays. It's not until you watch a film She blends vulnerability with steel will; that allows you the time to contemplate Rosetta, clir. Luc and Jean-Pierre Darclenne. and it is clone with su ch subtlety, closer to the shade of a woman's handbag that you This film is a powerful piece. It stays with a rhythm than a characterisation. realise how much you miss when you are you long aft er yo u have left your seat, long Don't expect resolution or epiphany told everything. after you arrive home. It is also a difficult here. You will not be uplifted, but you will Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are fi lm to watch, not just because what you be challenged. -Annelise Balsamo fa ultless as the couple. Cheung manages to see up there is uncomfortable material, but brush past a cloorframc with such erotic because down here isn't particularly safe or charge it m akes you shudder, and Leung is stable either. Moody clues similarly affecting as h e walks up and cl own Ro etta (left and above) is a young the steep steps leading to a favourite noodle woman, deep in a poverty trap, driven by In the Mood for Love, clir. Wong Kar-wai. shop. the desire for a 'normal' life. With no sup­ Wives carrying the same handbags, husbands No aspect of the film is disappointing: port, either financial or em otional, Rosetta wearing matching ties, and beaded slippers the photography, the design, the writing, finds her own way to survive. She follows a fo rgotten by bedsides all work as painfully the performances-all show wh at this strict routine, walking the same way home, simple markers of infidelity in Wong Kar­ profoundly collaborative art form can achieve, changing her shoes in the sam e place, check- wai's new picture, In the Mood for Love. given a chance. -Siobhan Jackson

V OLUME 11 NUMBER 3 • EUREKA STREET 45 Not really

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46 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 2001 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 92, April 2001 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS 1. Top officer goes to the bar with licence, briefl y, to address the people. (7,6) 9. Curtail disgrace at such hypocrisy. (4) 10. Ongoing struggle engaged in by batsm en ? (7,6) 11 . You're reported to be bringing the sheep right to the container. (4) 13. If you should, perchance, treat badly Emily's first attem pt, is she likely to have a punt at Ascot ? (1,4,6) 15. Out damned spot, I say! (3) 16. Just being a grocer outright isn't me, m aybe, or my philosophy of life! I 11) 18. Perhaps furs etc. pall unless complete colour ranges are available. (4,7) 20. Patron takes protege in this, perhaps? Quite a drag! (3) 22. Tack followed by sailing ship? Could be handy for the m anicurist. (4,7) 23. Cheery greeting in Rome-as food is heard arriving! (4) 26. Straight drive to one's destination, perhaps, with a backwards glance or a pull up the hill with a cut to the fence on the side? (13) 27. Money found in untidy den-you couldn't buy much with it in Rom e. (4) 28. Chose a familiar red fo r CEO- E. MacDermot, but left not right. (7,1,5) DOWN Solution to Crossword no. 91, March 2001 l. Teutonic, eastern branch, is closely connected. (7) 2. No French standard li e (som ewhat twisted) could ever be its equal. (9) 3 . Wet salt, for exam ple, common during northern m onsoons. (5,6) 4. If no 26-across is offered, this m ay well be the umpire's decision. (3,6,6) 5. Girl you, reportedly, then tied round cat ? A wild story that has not been verified!! (15) 6. I'll hear the passage without a m ention of Tasm ania, for instance. (4) 7. Som e would ache with sham e, if heard to do this noisily at table. (4) 8. Frost goes up to m eet the ruler. (4) 12. Finishes the scraps. (4) 14. Surprisingly, a rustic I lit upon had som ething to do with liturgical cerem ony. ( 11 ) 17. Position of year-twelve student would m ake it unlikely that he would be given 4-down when playing like that. (2,3,4) 19. Horrible sounding African fruit! (4) 21. How rear guard action, perhaps, produced a VC m edallist? (3,4) 23. You might be able to quit with this turkey? (4) 24. Old surface m easurem ent taken in old city of Israel. (4) 25. Part of door alignment test. (4)

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03 Nationa I Gallery of Victoria NATIONAL SPONSOR VICTORIAN SPONSOR SUPPORT SPONSOR S

Russell Street - between LaTrobe and Little Lonsdale Streets WstfleUf ·· RACV Tel : 9208 0203 Open lOam · last en try 4.10pm 9 771 Exhibition organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Israel Antiqu ities Authority