38 REVIEWS Settling Old Scores

The Cameron Diaries by Clyde government and economic manage­ Cameron claims that his aim in con­ Cameron. Allen and Unwin, 1990. ment did not help - nor did Gough stantly undermining Whitlam's Whitlam's insistence on standards far Hardback, rrp $49.95. Reviewed by leadership - sometimes openly, often more rigorous than those adopted by not - was based on a genuine convic­ Mungo MacCallum. any national government before or tion that Whitlam had become an ir­ since - but, after all, it was not the revocable liability for the party. The difficulty with Clyde government which perverted the Political rehabilitation was impossible Cameron's diaries is deciding composition of the Senate, or which and therefore amputation was the how much of them to believe. blocked Supply, or dismissed itself. only option. He glosses over the fact that, at the start of 1976, no one else - This is not because Cameron in­ not his favoured candidate Lionel dulges in fantasies or memory Bowen, not Bill Hayden, not even Bob lapses, as might have been the Hawke if a seat could have been found case had Sir William McMahon for him - wanted to take over the ever found a publisher for his leadership. There was simply no alter­ memoirs; it is because a large native to Whitlam. part of Cameron's reminiscence Cameron, however, refused to accept consists of gloating accounts of the inevitable, and spent the next two how he was able to deceive and years working against Whitlam. In mislead his colleagues. It is the this way his "genuine conviction" be- old logical paradox of the man a self-fulfillingf-fulfillircame prophecy. Clear­ ly, if it was obvious to any outsider who comes up to you and says: tnat Whitlam's own party was con­ "I am a liar." In this instance, is spiring against him, the general public he just for once telling the would never accept him as leader. It is truth? impossible to quantify just how much this constant destabilising operation But let's be charitable - a concession affected the 1977 election result, but Cameron himself seldom makes. Let's Cameron is totally disingenuous in assume that the man once described not even considering it as a factor. by W C Wentworth, a politician with whom he had a love-hate relationship, It is also very difficult to accept that as "a predatory owl" is being strictly Cameron acted as he did for altruistic, honest in recounting his actions and rather than vindictive, motives. There feelings in 1976 and 1977. If this is the are simply too many giveaways in his case, the Labor Party was in an even own words. worse mess than it appeared at the time. All the other characters who appear in his diaries are fairly consistently Not only had it to face the trauma When the parliamentary party left the referred to either by given names (for following the devastation of the 1975 caucus room on November 11 singing friends and allies) or by surnames (for dismissaland the subsequent election; "Solidarity Forever", most of us as­ rivals and enemies). With Whitlam, it had to contend with an extraordi­ sumed that the party's leaders and there is a constant ambivalence: nary amount of internal conspiring, particularly the ones in a position to "Gough" on one page and "Whitlam" backstabbing and recrimination nold their seats would, indeed, be on the next. Cameron also describes which at times went very close to out­ solid. The damage inflicted from out­ Whitlam and his supporters as "the right treachery. And, again, if we are side was bad enough; to add to it from enemy", despite the fact that, whether to believe him, the Hon. Clyde Robert the inside would be sheer political he liked it or not, they remained the Cameron, MHR, was the unques­ masochism. majority of the caucus and the over­ tioned ringleader. whelming majority of the Labor rank and file for the whole period of which It is quite extraordinary that Cameron But Cameron saw it differently. Like he writes. should regard this as a matter for self- his Calvinist Scottish forebears, he congratulation, as he does for nearly welcomed the prospect of a great But most revealing is Cameron's ob­ 900 closely written pages. To most cleansing fire to sweep through the session with his removal from the normal supporters of the Labor move­ party - provided, of course, he was the Labour and Immigration portfolio in ment, the events of 1975 were a one who decided whom it should con­ 1975. He keeps returning to it like a catastrophe forced upon it by external sume. Head of the list was Edward dog to an old bone, worrying away at enemies. Labor's own inexperience in Gough Whitlam. it long after it is obvious that there is

ALR ; SEPTEMBER 1990 REVIEWS 39

no more meat to be extracted. He in­ sists on referring to it as a "sacking" (it wasn't; Jim Cairns and Rex Connor were sacked, Cameron was moved as part of a fairly extensive reshuffle) and professes a total inability to under­ stand why it happened. Indeed, he seems to have asked almost everyone he met for a theory, and comes up with some truly bizarre ones.

The more obvious explanation - that Cameron was identified with the old guard of big spenders, and had there­ fore himself become an electoral liability in a high profile economic portfolio - just does not seem to have occurred to him. Cameron's work in the early days of the government and his use of the Commonwealth public service as a crucible to test such things as maternity leave, anti-discrimina­ tion and equal rights, were of enor­ mous social benefit; they will rightly be seen as his great political monu­ ment.

But they did not come cheap. By 1975 the public was no longer in a lavish mood. Just how far Cameron was from realising this can be seen in his condemnation of Hayden's 1975 budget, which he described as a Liberal document, a betrayal of Labor principles and a sell-out to conserva­ Clyde Cameron as a "fresh-faced parliamentary tenderfoot' tive economics.

The irony of this summation can best Apart from the ground-breaking in­ For many of those 23 years, and not be appreciated from the fact that he dustrial legislation he introduced, only during the DLP split, Labor's spent most of the next two years run­ there is another, more physical, monu­ members became progressively more ning Hayden to take over from Whit- ment to Cameron's time in govern­ introspective; their main preoccupa­ lam, whom even Cameron admits ment: the Clyde Cameron Trade tion was internal. Cameron was very from time to time, in a rather sheepish Union Training College at Albury- much part of this process and, while fashion, was a major Labor figure. Wodonga, a regional centre which al­ he was able to break the habit of a When Hayden eventually became most, but not quite, worked in the lifetime for at least part of his brief leader after the 1977 debacle, pioneering days of the Whitlam period as a minister, it was all too easy Cameron backed him without much government. to revert when things returned to enthusiasm until Hawke entered par­ what most Australians (and most liament, when he immediately politicians, including Labor switched his allegiance. In the last few From his days in the Australian Workers Union, Cameron had seen politicians) considered normal. years he has spent some time writing the imperative need to produce union increasingly critical and abrasive let­ officials with the skills to take the ters to Hawke. The Cameron Diaries are a valuable ad­ employers and their lawyers on at dition to the political library, but they their own game; hence the project. At least there is some consistency need to be placed in context the writ­ here; the last Labor leader with whom ings of an unusual man, about un­ he felt any real affinity (according to It is a strange piece of modernist ar­ usual events, in unusual times. his own account) was Ben Chifley, and chitecture, mil of winding corridors Cameron's place in history as a social that was back in the days when that pop out in unexpected places or reformer is more solid, and more Cameron was a fresh-faced par­ finish as dead ends; a little, an unkind deserved, than that of an embittered liamentary tenderfoot. Curiously, he critic might say, like Cameron's diarist. still writes about Chifley almost as politics. But this would hardly be fair. though they were contemporaries. It Twenty-three continuous years in op­ MUNGO MACCALLUM was is hard not to conclude that he would position for a keen young reformist traipsing the parliamentary corridors much rather have had his time in the with a zealous sense of social justice limelight in the 1940s than in the had to be frustrating to the point of as a journalist at the same time, and 1970s. paranoia. after, Clyde Cameron.

ALR . SEPTEMBER 1990 40 REVIEWS Pacific Pandemonium

Blood on Their Banner: emergence of traditional enmities and The labelling of island leaders - such Nationalist Struggles in the aspirations due to the stretching of as Kanak Eloi Machoro as the Che ill-suited constitutions, post-inde­ Guevara or Robespierre of die Pacific, South Pacific, by David Robie, pendence, past their cohesive limits, Dr Timoci Bavadra as the "new mes- Pluto Press, 1989. Reviewed by as with the strengthening of siah" of rural western Fijians, or of Rowan Callick. colonialism - however deep the con­ Timorese Rosa Muki Bonaparte as her tinuing anguish within the few country's Rosa Luxemburg (all three That "the South Pacific is no remaining colonies, such as Tahiti. now dead) - presents the socially con­ longer pacific", as Pluto Press cerned Australian with an impression of the conscious participation by exclaims in its breathless blurb charismatic Pacific leaders in a global for Blood on Their Banner, a new political struggle with which they book by New Zealander David only peremptorily identified. Robie, is not merely the ul­ blood on timate truism; it was never in their banner Indeed, this in itself raises more un­ human history "pacific", save answered questions. Why was there Nationalist Struggles such little collaboration between inde­ for a brief repressed colonial in­ in the South Pacific pendence movements in the region, terlude - itself punctuated in the barring sporadic conferences that western islands by the devastat­ 10 chiefly focused on anti-nuclear ing Pacific War. themes? Why, 19 years after its first meeting , is it only the cause of New Conflict, fear, treachery and inter­ Caledonia which the South Pacific tribal colonisation were the currency Forum has taken up with any serious­ of these islands as far back as oral ness in terms of decolonisation? Part history can reconstruct it, and as a visit of the answer lies in the very lack of to any of the museums of the region seriousness with which the will testify. metropolitan powers, perhaps bar­ ring France, went about colonising Robie focuses on the stories of political 'their' islands in the first place. This development from about 1968-88 in - was then reflected in the desultory primarily - New Caledonia, and also David Robie manner in which colonies were large­ French Polynesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, and - ly managed and finally shed, if with though not technically in the South onerous conditions on the part of the Pacific - Belau, Irian Jaya and East USA. Timor. Further, Robie himself goes on to The roles of Australia and New claim that "nationalist aspirations Zealand, of the churches (especially Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielson, now define the politics of tne South through the Pacific Conference of brave voices in the wealthy Tahitian Pacific", whereas again a stronger Churches) and of the Forum - which wilderness, daim in their introduc­ case might be made for the major im­ have all voiced criticism during the tion that Robie has produced "a series petus to be coming from economic period Robie is writing about, and are of well-documented analyses and aspirations in the 1990s. This factor of not always inimical to popular move­ overviews in which he clearly shows the creation and distribution of ments - only receive cursory examina­ how the ultimate cause of the conflicts wealth, central in any social struggle, tion. and revolts in the Pacific is is only considered - and then in pass­ everywhere the same, and has to do ing - in his treatment of Fiji. with the maintenance and strengthen­ The social context, too, is largely miss­ ing of the colonial system". ing; how significant, numerically, are Robie concludes with perceptive the movements under discussion? Unfortunately, they are doubly questions with which the book might What social conditions drove them? wrong. First, the book's strength - in­ more aptly have begun, questions How did daily life differ between the deed, almost its entire content - is its such as: "Is the solution to colonial islands under investigation? recounting of the narratives of strug­ racism the substitution of indigenous gle within the scenarios Robie has chauvinist supremacy?" In the event, And what of the ironies that arrive selected, with a valuable index to the question remains rhetorical. For a with power - or with its frustration? boot. Its analyses and overviews are portion of Robie's own sympathies Barak Sope is quoted, from his time as few and thin. Second, and especially appear to be enlisted by a number of secretary general of Vanuatu's if the present tense is applied, the "ul­ leaders whose main principle is governing Vanuaaku Pati, as saying timate cause of conflicts" might be remarkably akin to "indigenous four years ago: "The trident sub­ viewed as much to do with the re­ chauvinism". marine may be a far cry from a black-

ALR: SEPTEMBER 1990 REVIEWS 41

binding vessel, but to us they are both "pandemonium") of New Australia, by dint of its very geog­ ships from the same fleet. That is why Hebrides/Vanuatu - during the 1970s raphy and economy, let alone its Vanuatu is opposing nuclear and 1980s, and as a reference work for military strategy, is inextricably in­ colonialism in the Pacific" Earlier this those more familiar with events, here volved. Yet how many leftwing year, however, the same ambitious conveniently chronicled between two Australians know as much about Fiji, politician - now in opposition, with covers. say, as they do about Nicaragua? his own party - was in Washington courting official support, pledging the Robie's book must be welcomed, for reopening of Vanuatu ports to nuclear all its shortcomings (chiefly, its failure David Robie, to his credit, has stuck to vessels; just as Bernard Narokobi, d vil to pull off the claimed trick of drawing his focus of the South Pacific, all but rights champion of Papua New disparate threads together, and its un uniquely among Australasian jour­ nalists. His sympathies may oc­ Guinea turned Justice Minister, last selective focus which overlooks major casionally go awry, his heroes chase July referred to an Amnesty Interna­ players, including PNG). For it aads tional report damning PNG's human weight - and conscientious, com­ money or worse, but his heart is in the rights abuses on Bougainville, as mitted weight - to a very thin list of right place. In Australia, in com­ parison, it is too often by default the "criminal, illegal and immoral". resources available to those both Pacific rhetoric is notoriously mis­ within and without the South Pacific self-consciously 'pragmatic' Right that monopolises commentary on the leading at times. who wish to comprehend something of this complex, fractured region of region. . But Blood on Their Banner is useful both extraordinary cultures and peoples, as a primer for those who have not with its poverty of isolation which is followed events in the French Pacific, both a defence and a handicap. It is a ROWAN CALLICK, for 11 years based in particular - including in the bizarre region of considerably more sig­ in Papua New Guinea, is a staff writer French-British condominium (or as nificance to Australians than, say, for Time Australia, and a columnist for Robie aptly quotes popular usage. Central America; one in which the Australian Financial Review. SPORT AND LEISURE Refractory Girl Trends in Australian Popular Culture A Feminist Journal edited by David Rowe and Geoff Lawrence Refractory Girl publishes material on all matters of concern to women. Recent issues have included articles on women in the bureaucracy, A unique book for the Australian market Discover for feminist theory, sexual harrassment, women yourself the truth behind Australia's sporting and leisure and prisons, protective legislation, women's culture. health centres. Plus reviews of academic and popular texts and From the introduction... fiction and poetry. The term ‘sport’, derived from the Middle-English word ‘sporten’, once meant ‘to divert’ — that is, to amuse. RG 33 - Industry Restructuring, National health There is still diversion in sport, but it is diversion of policy, Defactos. people’s minds from social issues and the diversion of RG 34 - from Western Australia their money into the hands of those who control the leisure industry. Similarly, the term ‘leisure' is derived from its Next Issues: Latin root ‘licere’, meaning ‘licence’ or freedom. Today, RG 35 - Women and Technology leisure increasingly means the illusory freedom of the RG 36 - Women and Violence market and the licence to print money. RG welcomes contributions: Please forward 0 7295 0349 6 $29.95 300pp March 1990 two typed copies with S.AE. to address below:

Subscriptions: Please order through you regular bookseller Individuals $20 for four issues. Institutions $30 or from for four issues. (Overseas mailing add $12). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Australia 30-52 Smidmore Street Marrickville NSW Back copies available $4. Tel (02) 517 8999 Fax (02) 517 2249 Prices art recommended only and subject to change without notice. Refractory Girl P.O. Box 696, Petersham, NSW 2049

ALR: SEPTEMBER 1990 REVIEWS 43 \ Whistle Blower

ern Ireland. And although the after was moved out of Northern ' Who Framed Colin Wallace? by provocations and disinformation he Ireland. When he refused to accept Paul Foot, rati Books, $12.99.pb. manufactured were mainly aimed at this quietly and began to tell what he Reviewed by Denis Freney. the IRA, the 'Ultras' among the Protes­ knew through the 'proper channels' tants, such as the Rev Ian Paisley, also such as his MP, he was thrown out of Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame received\\tuaition, to the extent of at­ the army. tempting \o set up false bank accounts was not the first to tell of the to discredit them. Wallace finally moved to the town of plots that MI5 had hatched to Arundel to a PR job with the local remove British Labour Prime But it was after Harold Wilson met council but began to talk to some jour­ Minister Harold Wilson from IRA leaders in Dublin in 1972 while nalists about tne 'dirty tricks' in which office on suspicion that he was Opposition Leader, and when even he had participated in Belfast. In July the Heath government began to con­ a Soviet mole. 1980 he helped organise a Europe- wide TV-styie games competition in It was Colin Wallace, a former devoted Arundel and after that job finished, member of British military intel­ the husband of the woman co-worker ligence and specialist in 'black on the project was murdered. propaganda' in Northern Ireland, who got the Wilson coup story into the There is no space here to go into the British media while Wright and his complex details of the murder case set publishers were fighting tne Thatcher out in the book. Foot is convinced that ovemment for the right to circulate Wallace was framed by persons un­ pycatcher. The allegations against known, most likely by his former in­ Wilson were ridiculous, based on the telligence employers. ultra-right paranoia of British spooks, of whom Wright himself was one of He certainly provides proof of many the worst. inconsistencies in the evidence produced - and not produced - during Paul Foot, a well-known British inves­ the trial. Yet Wallace had a motive (he tigative journalist with the Daily Mir­ had designs on the murdered man's ror, and whose leftwing sympathies wife) ana his whereabouts at the time are never hidden, met Wallace in April of the murder remain doubtful. 1987, several months after the former Moreover, given his past mastery of army officer was released from prison deception and mayhem in Ireland, it having served some five years of a is certainly not exduded in my mind sentence for manslaughter. sider negotiating with them, that Wal­ that he was guilty. lace and his fellow thinkers saw a Rus­ Foot took up his case, completing this sian plot. When Wilson came to power And if the murder was committed by book in 1989. It can be divided rough­ in 1974, Operation 'Clockwork intelligence services, it must have been very much a last-minute ly into two sections: the first, an ac­ Orange' began to move to destabilise count of Wallace's activities with a the Labour government and any decision on their part although there special and secret British army disin- chance of a peaceful settlement in is strong circumstantial evidence that l rmation unit in Belfast, and the Northern Ireland. they sought to undermine Wallace's second, an account of the events that defence in every way possible. His led to his imprisonment Then Wallace stumbled upon a scan­ former employers were certainly not dal at a Belfast boys' home involving unhappy to see him punished for the The first part is undoubtedly the most the rape of inmates by the school's 'crime' of becoming a whistle-blower. revealing although the second has all head, William McGrath, who was also But the five years in prison did not the makings of a good murder a leading Protestant paramilitary ex­ stop him in that regara. mystery. Wallace's 'black tremist. Wallace was outraged but Readers will no doubt draw their own propaganda' and manipulation of a found that every attempt he made to conclusions. But the value of Foot's British media only too willing to bring McGrath to justice was believe what it was told is a signal frustrated, including by his own supe­ book doesn't rest on it proving that Wallace was framed or who framed lesson for any journalist - and anyone riors. McGrath was an informer for reading dailies or watching TV. the British and protected for that him. It lies elsewhere, in the testimony reason until the scandal finally broke it provides of the doings of intel­ Most of his activities were well within years later. ligence operators out of any control. the framework of what various governments wanted produced - a Even worse, Wallace found himself DENIS FRENEY writes for Tribune certain view of the 'troubles' in North­ subject to disinformation and soon newspaper.

ALB SfPTFMRFQ 1990 44 REVIEWS Big Spender

Rosalie Goes Shopping, directed by Percy Adlon. Opening at the Kino Cinema, Melbourne and the Dendy, Sydney in mid-September. Reviewed by John Slavin.

Dickens' Mr Micawber memorably summed up the un­ derlying economic structure of human happines: "Annual in­ come twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happi­ ness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." In German director Percy Adlon's latest film, his heroine Rosalie Greenspace manages to turn this supply-side realism on its head. "If you're $100,000 in debt, it's your problem; if you're a million in debt it's the bank's!" she explains at the con­ clusion of her passage into plas­ tic card credit and debit

Rosalie (Marianne Sagebrecht) describes herself as a peacetime Ger­ man war bride. She and her crop duster husband Ray (Brad Davis) live in a migrant community of wheat farmers in Arkansas, called Stuttgart. Germany is a remembered peasant economy light years away from the modem social pressures in which the Marianne Sagebrecht and Brad Davis in a scene from Rosalie Goes Shopping Greenspaces now survive. Each Wed­ nesday Rosalie collects Ray's pay che­ que with a brief kiss ana an expert before making love. The cash nexus is banks arrives in the post she shifts snatch at the money. at the basis of every relationship in the limited cash reserves, pays one credit film. card debt with another and adds thousands to the weekly pay cheque She provides for her large family in which she draws on a trusting com­ spectacular style. Her son, Schnucki, a "I'm running a family business here," trainee chef at nearby Little Rock, Rosalie declares bluntly when her pany boss's authority. proudly announces the delicacies he husband complains that she no longer has prepared as though the family wishes to video his air acrobatics. In­ If there is tension and stress in this dines at an exclusive restaurant. deed, she is the only member of the precipitous lifestyle Adlon has Daughter Barbara has a bad attack of family who appears to have grasped provided what becomes an increas­ the sulks until Rosalie provides the the pervasive effect of economic ingly cute and repetitive device. For credit to buy her an expensive com­ realities on human relations. The Rosalie, a practising Catholic, ducks puter. The personalised number quality of the family's lifestyle is paid into the local parish church each after­ >lates of Rosalie's combi read 'Charge for by an intense amount of financial noon to confess her monetary pec­ {t'. Even in bed the Greenspaces dis­ game playing on the mother's part. As cadilloes. Exploitation and its cuss mortgaging a relative's home each final notice from her various concomitant guilt is thus erased in REVIEWS 45 preparation for the next day's viewing - those channels which show­ the economic system which underlies housekeeping. case endless ads for the consumer their wellbeing. goods the family longs for. "That's Adlon's previous films have been what I'm going to be!" a son recently More seriously, the film makes no at­ entertaining exercises into what has returned from military service in Ger­ tempt to show us the realities of the been described elsewhere as 'magic many - another price to be paid for cash nexus as nasty, competitive, realism'. The magic in his two earlier ongoing affluence - shouts when the divisive, or alienating within the films, Sugarbaby and Baghdad Cafe, ads push an expensive motor bike. terms of human relationships. In­ has been provided by his polymor- Reification of an individual's identity stead, it settles for a Walt Disney kind phously perverse star, Marianne couldn't be more explicit. of unreality in which everyone lives Sagebrecht, who comes on like a happily ever after, and the horrendous The prcbJom is that once you've female impersonation of Oliver void in which such lives are lived is grasped Ihe family's obsession, Adlon Hardy. This film has clearly been papered over with Rosalie's unbeliev­ nas nowhere to go with it He heaps on crafted as a vehicle for her lightweight able genius for wallowing in filthy talents and it is her presence, attrac­ a number of potential crises - a burden­ lucre. tive as it is as the classic fat lady, which some mortgage, a plethora of unpaid destroys any sharp social insight the domestic bills, the arrival of Rosalie's film might have had. parents from Germany, Ray's ap­ proaching blindness - but nothing has The film, in fact, falls for the seductive­ The script's original idea is not only any impact on Rosalie's relentless surge ness of its own product and so it emu­ charming. In a broad satirical way it to corporate ownership, bank over­ lates the obsession it is parodying. drives right at the heart of America's drafts and million dollar debts. Greed is debt-ridden middle-class affluence. not only good; it is all consuming. None The comedy is at its most pungent of the crimes detracts for a moment JOHN SLAVIN - no relation to Roy - when the family sits around the from the folksy charm of the eccentric contributes on a regular basis to ABC television after dinner for its favourite family nor the ruthless exploitation of Radio National's Arts programs.

Judy Horacek

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ALR. SEPTEMBER 1990