Vol. 6 No. 1 January-February 1996 $5.00
Sutntner Harvests The selling of privatisation Jon Greenaway The selling out of the forests Juliette Hughes Reading in season Poetry by Ouyang Yu and Philip Harvey Fiction by·Christine Gillespie Down by the sea with Jim Davidsdon Singapore sling with Peter Pierce Plus reviews of Tom Keneally and Tim Flannery
Volume 6 Number 1 January-February 1996 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology
CONTENTS 4 38 COMMENT FORTRESS SINGAPORE Peter Pierce is not beguiled by 'the best 7 run primary school on earth'. CAPITAL LETTER 40 8 POETRY PULP POLITICS The Male Prostitute's Soliloquy and Juliette Hughes looks at the politics A Man of Future Sp eaks A bout Love of forest policy and the greening of (p4l), by Ouyang Yu. Victorian Labor leader, John Brumby. Greater Interests, by Philip Harvey (p49 ). 15 42 ARCHIMEDES BOOKS David Braddon-Mitchell reviews Tim 16 Flannery's award-winning The Future LOOKING RIGHT IN BURMA Eaters; Bill Thornas looks at the The signs deceive, says Alan Nichols. photography of Olive Cotton (p44); 'What I saw in East Gerard Windsor sizes up Tom Keneally's Gippslands is a 18 memoir, Homebush Boy (p46); Jeremy THE RIGHTS PRICE Clarke investigates Nick Jose's Chinese disaster in tenns of Australia doesn't match deeds to rhetoric Whispers (p4 7); Gillian Appleton looks argues Moira Rayner. at twenty years of feminism on the ABC forest practice.· in The Coming Out Show {p50); Michael 20 McKernan hands out medals to The - John Brumby, Victorian AT YOUR SERVICE Ox ford Companion to Australian Mili Labor Opposition Leader. Jon Greenaway on privatisation-the tary History (p52). See Pulp politics, pp8-15. pros, cons and protagonists. 51 23 IN MEMORIAM Cover: Summer pro menade on the SPARKY John Cotter remembers poet Gwen Es planade, St Kilda. Dan Disney ventures into viruses. Harwood. Postcards pp 1, 34-37 courtesy Ji m Davidson. 25 54 Photographs pp2, 3, 8- 11 , 42-43 by GENERATION X-CLUDED FIGURES ON STAGE Bill Thomas. Richard Curtain goes offshore for some Geoffrey Milne reviews arts funding. Photograph of Bill Thomas on p2 by solutions to youth unemployment. Jenny Herbft. Photographs p2 &5 by Emmanuel 56 Santos. 28 FLASH IN THE PAN Photograph p2 by Andrew Stark. TRIVIAL MATTERS Reviews of the films Golden Eye, Toy Photographs pp1 6- 17 by Greg Scullin. The great Eurel V oLUME 6 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 3 COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts P ETER STEELE and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Consulting editor Star and Michael McGirr SJ Assistant editor Jon Greenaway Production assistants: labyrinth Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes, Chris Jenkins SJ, Paul Ormonde, Tim Stoney, Siobhan Jackson, Dan Disney Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ C OME SUMMeR'" AumAUA, we ,u .ttond to" lmt Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ one star-that partly-bridled hydrogen bomb we call Sun. Perth: Dean Moore Nothing on Earth, good or ill, would be possible without it, Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, and it is not surprising that it should, in many religions, be Gerard Windsor adored. No surprise either that a string of rulers, when more European correspondent: Damien Simonis than usually top-lofty, should invoke this interesting star. Louis XIV, Roi Soleil, did so: come to that, so did the six Editorial board inch Emperor of Lilliput, 'whose Head', by convention, Peter L'Estrangc SJ (chair), 'strikes against the Sun.' If life is, as one Australian comedian Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, puts it, 'something to do', Sun is something to see. Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales, Marie Joyce, Kevin McDonald, And what about the rest of them, immensely more size able than Sun, but hiding their light for the most part under Jane Kelly IBVM, P et~r Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ the bushel of space? You may know as little as I do about them, but it is likely that they irradiate part of your Business manager: Sylvana Scannapiego consciousness. Hopkins' 'look at all the fire-folk sitting in Advertising representative: Ken Head the air' might leave the more measured of us cold: but what Patrons Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the of Chesterton's dictum that 'One may understand the cos support of Colin and Angela Carter; the mos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; star', or of Flaubert's claim that 'Human language is like a Denis Cullity AO; W.P. & M.W. Gurry; cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance Geoff Hill and Janine Perrett; to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to the Roche family. pity'' Having the stars around the place 'influences' us: dead or alive, they pour themselves into our minds. Emelw Street magazine, rssN l 036- 1758, In the last few years there has been a notable array of Australia Post Print Post approved books on the history and functions of astrology: as usual, pp34918l/00314 the least condescending are the most intelligent. Some of is published ten times a year the most brilliant people the world has known were, in a by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, sense, starstruck, and it would take an implausible cocki 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121 ness to say of this no more than, 'we have changed all that'. Tel: 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450. Responsibility fo r editorial content is accepted by I suppose that part of the imaginative vitality of the star of Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. Bethlehem, or of the Star of David, or even of communism's Prit1ted by Doran Printing, red star, lies in our latent conviction that we are drawn and 46 Industrial Drive, Braeside VlC 3 195. swayed by focused forces-that the 'tall ship' which each of © Jesuit Publications 1995. us is in some degree has 'a star to steer her by'. Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and When stellar issues arise, I like to think of two things. fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by a The first is that the International Geophysical Year, 1957- stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for 58, disclosed that possibly a hundred thousand tons of star permission to reprint material from the magazine dust is collected daily by our little planet- the one Howard should be addressed in writing to: Nemerov's imaginary astronaut sees from the moon as a The editor, Eureka Street magazine, 'small blue agate in the big black bag'. The second is the PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3 121. racket known as 'Star-Scam', wh ich was funded by those 4 EUREKA STREET • J ANUA RY-FEBRUARY 1996 nai:vely supposing that, for a significant sum of mon incorporated into the design of Chri tian churches, ey, some new star or other would be named after them . conceding thereby our boxed- about fortunes even The daily garnering of cosmic dust is a vivid while an over-arching Providence was being alluded What of instance of inevitabilities, of givens-of 'the way to. In the literature which labyrinths have prompted things are' made palpable. This can engross the least into being, the stress has been similarly variousi now Chesterton's scientific of people: much of art, much of social trans the reader 'loses' himself or herself pleasurably in the dictum that action, is given to the iterative and the reiterative: winding ways, and now the motif of entrapment or oft en, we are solaced by seeing, and by saying, that circumscription seems all-powerful. Not surprising 'One may things are so. Irish has no word for either 'yes' or 'no', ly, a Chaucer or a Dante will have money on success but even the most hibernian of personalities can warm in exploration, whereas an Umberto Eco or a Jorge understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star', or of Flaubert's claim that 'Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are to the factual, uttered for its own sweet or sour sake. Luis Borges is much less sanguine. Borges, in 'Laby longing to move the And 'Star-Scam '? Wise after the event if not rinth', writes 'Forget the onslaught/ of the bull that before, we may shrug at the bilked investors, who is a man and whose/ strange and plural form haunts stars to pity'~ quickly look as odd as those caught up, in an earlier the tangle/ of unending interwoven stone./ He does century, in tulipomania. And yet there is something not exist. In the black dust/ hope not even for the Having the stars generous, something resolute even, in wanting to put savage beast.' N o bones, so to speak, about that. the stamp of selfhood out there in the labyrinth of On the other hand, there are plenty of people who around the place the heavens. Part of us hates inanity, the evacuated rem ain undaunted even though their sense is that 'influences' us: self, the evacuated worldi courted by nihilism as many m oral action , especially m oral public action, is of us are, we want, however clumsily, to decline the labyrinthine. 'We shall see who em erges from the dead or alive, they gambit. 'Foo Was Here' is not much, but it labyrinth', Daniel Berrigan wrote once, 'the minotaur is better-so much better- than nothing. or the man,' and the trope could apply in countless pour themselves circum tances m ore private than Berrigan's. Perhaps E RHAPS SOME sucH INTUIT I VE PERSUAS ION has contrib just what is required fo r some of us to attain any sig into our minds. uted to the making, over thousands of years, of maz nificant m oral stature is indeed exposure to laby es and labyrinths. They have been fa shioned out of rinth- not intricacies to be toyed with, but mazes to an extraordinary array of materials, living or inerti be confronted and endured. The mazes m ay take the you can see them done in wood or turf, silver or form of our own or others' temperaments, of the social m osaici you can inspect them with the eye of a circumstances into which we are gridded, or of what hovering connoisseur, or be levelled with a rat as you artists and others would call, unfashionably, the life The sun worshippers prowl some resistant design. Egypt, Crete, Etruscan of the spirit. above are Russsian Italy, Afghanistan, Ireland, America, India, At all events, from the many whose narratives Jews, after Aliya Germany- not to m ention Bullsbrook, Western might bring us heart, I keep going back to Dante. Put (homecoming), Australia-the mazers have been at their work. to infernal, purgatorial, or celestial labyrinths, he spending Shabbat What all of them off er is at least the insinuation em erges at the end of each with his eye on stars. • holidays on the beach of order in the midst of disarray. D epending on the aL Ashod, Israel. bent of their m akers, the disarray m ay have the last Peter Steele has a Personal Chair at the University of Photograph by word, or the order. Over hundreds of years, mazes were Melbourne. Emmanuel Santos. V oLUME 6 N uMBER l • EUREKA STREET 5 Versus MEQNJIN Th e sc ribes w i II put as ide pen and & paper- or mouse and keyboard if you like-and pick up bat and ball for a showdown at high noon on Sunday, February 4 1996 at Walker Street Oval, Parkville, Melbourne. Come have a laugh at our expense! ate Program Santa Clara University Two 1996 Summer Sessions June 24-July 12 (Morninesl Discernment & Christian Decision Making - Patrick Howell , S.J . Sacraments of Initiation - John Mc Kenna, C.M. Survey of Sacred Music- Dr. Fred Moleck Pastoral Communication & Contemporary Issues -John Massi, S.J. July 15- Aueust 2 (Morninesl The Church - Jeanette Rodriguez, Ph.D. The Prophets - Marilyn Schaub, Ph .D. Johannine Spirituality - Joseph Grassi, S.S.L. The Family: Social Realities & Spiritual Concerns - Gloria Durka, Ph .D. June 24- Aueust 2 (Evenings) Mystery of Jesus Christ - Rev. Gerard Sloyan Growing into the Full Stature of Christ: Process of Transformation - Pamela Bj orklund, Ph.D. Private instruction in organ, voice and composition Study for a degree or your own enrichment Contact: Rita Claire Dorner, O.P., Dept. of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, U.S.A. 408/554-4831 * FAX 408/554-2387 The Prime Minister's double vision O N, TH>Nc WH,cH PAuc K V OLUME 6 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 7 THE N ATION JuLIETTE H uGHES Pulp politics 'After all, you have been in power for 13 years and you made great play today, Prime Minister, on woodchips. The reality is that your government is the champion wood chip exporter in Australia's history. No government has exported more woodchips than the Hawke and Keating governments.' -John Howard, Federal Opposition Leader. Extract from Hansard, December 1995. E,MAN' WHO T HOUGHT T H" "'w the colom of ber last year,environmental lobbyists were hoping for the main political parties, it was astonishing when an outcome that would at last protect the tall euca John Howard excoriated the Federal Government for lypt forests that are prized by both the native forest failing to protect old-growth forest, and failing to industry and the rest of the community. restructure the timber industry. But they are prized for different reasons, and the When the Keating government's long-awaited forest industry, although it made a few disgruntled forest policy statement was finally released in Decem- noises, was very satisfied with the document, which failed to protect most of the high-conservation -value 'The ALP traditionally has had a problem forests. In effect its regulations provide a series of loop holes that make the avowed intention of limiting with seeing the full significance of the native forest woodchipping m eaningless. The Deferred Forest Areas that have been grant forests issue. To them it's just another ed (far fewer than were recommended by the conser vationists), arc precisely that: only temporarily industrial problem, where their normal deferred from logging, not preserved. According to Professor Peter Singer, who holds the number on e constituents, the unions, have a dispute position on the Greens' Senate ticket in Victoria, 'The Government is just deferring the u npopular decisions with the rest of the con1munity. until after the next election. It's not been agreed to permanently reserve remaining old-growth and high- They don't understand that the nature of conservation-value forest-and that's really what we need.' their problem is fundamentally L E RIFT BETWEEN THE ENV IRONMENTAL LOBBY and the different: 80 per cent of the community Keating government has widened since the release of the statem ent. There is also the added irony of a oppose woodchipping. diverse lobby, which had been seen as an extension They have been treating it like an industrial of the ALP, now almost unanimous in its assessment that federal Labor needs to go into opposition to 'find issue and have been trying to deal with it in its soul again '. According to Singer, 'Keating has destroyed the accord with the Greens and never had ways that don 't work now.' any interest in preserving it'. The fact that the Prime Minister's own department had overseen the whole -Alec Marr, Wilderness Society 1995 process, since the embarrassm ent of David 8 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FE BRU ARY 1996 What happens in the next five years is going to be crucial for the future of Australia's tall eucalypt forests. The heavily subsidised native forest industry is on the way out, but is determined to get all it possibly can of what is left. The only real beneficiaries of this will be the shareholders of AMCOR, Boral and North Broken Hill, in the main. Beddall's decision to increase woodchip quotas in 80 areas proposed for deferment in Victoria, only two 1994, only serves to underline the fact that there was were granted. 2.3 million hectares were declared to little hope of review, and that the rebuff administered be deferred in Victoria, but since there are only 1.2 to the environmental lobby was intentional. million hectares available for logging in that state, In a time when relations have never been colder many of the deferment areas are meaningless as far as between the Keating government and the environmen protection of tall old forest is concerned. tallobby, the number of bureaucrats and departments The stated aim of the Deferred Forest Areas was involved in forest negotiations has never been greater. to preserve 15 per cent of the forest types that were In the run-up to the release of the statement, a forests here at European settlement. Yet only 15 per cent of task force was set up under Roger Beale, from the box ironbark forests, for example,remain; they are still Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Week being intensively logged and none of them has been ly m eetings were held that involved the Department deferred. Rainforest and wilderness will be logged in of Environment, Sport and Territories (DEST), the De Tasmania, where Dr Bob Brown was jailed in Decem partment of Primary Industry and Energy (DO PIE), the ber for protesting against the loggi11.g road being carved Australian Heritage Commissions (AHC) the Austral through the Tarkine Wilderness. We are still ian Nature Conservation Agency (ANCA), the Depart exporting woodchips in record amounts. ment of Science, Indus tty and Technology (DIST) and the Prime Minister's Department. Over 50 bureau G JVEN ALL THIS, Federal Environment Minister crats were deployed full-time on the taskforce-a Senator Faulkner's assertion that the conservation lob hugely expensive undertaking. The set-up was so com by is 'insatiable' and 'extremist' has caused even more plex that it was difficult for any interest group to have disaffection in environmental groups. any influence; the only culture that prevailed was that To many Labor voters, it is a puzzle why, after of the status quo, which favoured export woodchip such successful co-operation in the early 80s, the ping interests. relationship between Labor and the conservation The credibility of this weighty process has been movement has deteriorated so far. compromised by the fact that the six million hectares Alec Marr, of the Wilderness Society says/The that have been deferred from logging still include over ALP traditionally has had a problem with seeing the 100,000 hectares of buttongrass in Tasmania, most full significance of the forests issue . To them it's just of the radiata pine plantations in that state and NSW, another industrial problem, where their normal con 100,000 hectares of (unloggable) Banksia scrubland, stituents, the unions, have a dispute with the rest of any forests too steep to log, most of the areas the community. They don't understand that the Australia-wide that were clearfelled in the last 30 nature of their problem is fundamentally different: years, and the moonscape of Queenstown's hills, tree 80 per cent of the community oppose woodchipping. less for most of this century. And yet, of more than (continued pll) V O LUM E 6 NUMHER 1 • EUREKA STREET 9 Do-wn to earth matters ANow c.owT H >OHH mnM and drag the trunks they want with species, such as bluegum or shining is so finely tuned that the Galileo tractors to a log landing, to be stacked gum. Foresters have stopped putting probe is a crude toy by comparison. for the logging trucks to take them clown 1080 to kill the animals who Each living thing in it supports the to the saw mills, or more likely, the try to come back to feed on the new whole by the effect of its feeding, chipper. This dragging of logs up growth. Now they dust the seedlings breathing or reproduction. It takes roots, crushes or buries many tree with iron filings. The wallabies hate many centuries to reach such a state ferns and other plants. The animals the taste, so they must fight for ter of dynamic balance. Old tree hol who were dependent on this area for ritory somewhere else, or starve. lows provide home to owls, parrots, their home and food go away and die: Often this regeneration is not as gliders, possums, bats. These in turn the rest of the forest cannot support successful as the foresters would like, process seeds through their diges extra passengers. The area is then so the area is then 'scalped': that is, tive tracts, making them able to ger burned to clear up the discarded bulldozed, ploughed, fertilised and m ina tc. 0 lei forest creates hand-planted. Victoria a micro-climate, collect spent more than $7 mil ingancl filtering water that lion doing this in 1994. we collect and drink. It What will grow there is a stores vast quantities of de facto plantation, but carbon. will be classified as forest In an old, tall eucalypt or plantation according to forest, if you hurry, you requirements when it is might still see trees 80 time to export woodchips metres high. Thorpedalc, from there again, a in Victoria, boasted the planned time frame rang world's tallest tree, a 375 ing from 50 to 80 years, a foot mountain ash, until it time that will see the was cut clown by loggers young trees grow to uni in1884. You will sec tree form size and straight ferns of staggering antiq ness. This is good for tim uity (up to a thousand ber yields but will also years old ), survivors of ensure that the complex many a wildfire. Tree ferns balance of creatures and are an important key to water production will forcs t regeneration after never exist again in that fire: their crowns sprout area. What is gone would green within a few take many human life- months, sheltering seeds below material. This releases a good deal of times to re-emerge. them, diffusing rain so that it does stored carbon into the atmosphere. And in the m eantime, the not wash away the bared soil. About The rest of the carbon is released Powerful Owl, the Tiger Quoll, Sooty 90 per cent of tree ferns survive wild when the paper, often made in Japan Owl and Leadbeater's Possurn will fire. Fewer than 20 per cent com from the wood chips, rots or is burnt, have had yet more of their habitat monly survive clearfelling. thousands of miles from its erased and be pushed just that much When an area is logged for the ,.,..., origin. further towards extinction. Gradu first time, the loggers come in via ally, what old-growth tall eucalypt the new road, built with state gov .1 HEN THE AREA IS RESEEDED. There there is left will exist in vulnerable ernment money. The road can cross are probably a few new species there pockets, or in narrow strips like a streams, muddying the water, often by then anyway: blackberry, bone mesh surrounding the clcarfclled wiping out native fish and their seed, cinnamon fungus. But there is coupes, whose total area will now be breeding grounds. The erosion from no attempt to replace the range of greater than the old forest. It will all the road washes down into the what is gone: foresters want coupes be counted as 'forest', but will m ost streams, silting them further. Then of even age, because their definition ly consist of de facto plantation trees, the loggers cut clown almost every of sustainable forestry means sus because people have found it diffi tree in the area with chainsaws. They tainable timber yield. Thus they are cult to see the trees for the wood. leave a very few standing as token able to describe the vanished old In East Gippsland, right now, 'habitat trees', but these do not sur growth as having been 'over-mature', trucks thunder down the hills on vive well; they often fall over when because of the number of hollow their way to Midway chip mill, the rain erodes the soil round their trees, home to animals, but unsuita carrying trees so huge that they only roots. ble for timber. The new growth will can fit one to a load. • The loggers remove the branches be a single, commercially desirable -Juliette Hughes 10 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 (from p9) They have been treating it like an industrial issue and have been trying to deal with it in ways that don't work now.' A motion has been made towards restructure of the industry with a Forest Industry Structural Adjust Knotty ment Package (FISAP) of $107 million. But $60 mil lion of this is to be spent in NSW, where overcutting in the past had forced a restructure on Bob Carr any questions way. Dr Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Canberra-based Australia Institute, commented: 'Of the $107 million, $60 million (55per cent) has been promised to NSW, even though there is no indi cation in the documentation that NSW will be affect B R VoLUME 6 NuMBER l • EUREKA STREET 11 INTERVIEW The colt from old regret Victorian Opposition leader John Brumby talks to Juliette Hughes Juum' Hue"'" What do you think has happened to environmental issues as far as governments, state was put in my letterbox at home. It showed all the and federal are concerned! things you can do now with softwood timber. It had everything, from retaining walls to pergolas to fences John Bru mby: The recession, which hit most savage to decking to parquetry, everything you ca n do now ly, I guess in the early '90s, took some of the focus with softwood [plantation] timber. And as Judy Clark's away from environmental issues. And whether the Plantation Report has shown, there is a huge softwood pendulum has swung back as much as it might, is a stockpile. And with the benefit of hindsight, that most incisive analytical tool, we can see what should have been done. East Gippsland has been an eye-opener to Hindsight is always 20-20. me. We've all relied to some extent in the past Indeed. If a decade ago governments had done what I have been arguing for passionately this year, in terms on reports and departmental briefings of euca lypt plantations and so on, we wouldn't be hav ing this debate today. We'd have our major forests; to tell us about the industry and how it's they'd be protected, and our wood industry would be sustained by a plantation system . sustainable and how logging practices But we failed to take the tough decisions back in '83. In fairness I think it was because we were new to comply with codes of practice and so on. government and we didn't have all the facts. I think during the mid and late eighties other environment But what I saw in East Gippsland issues perhaps overtook the agenda. And we did progress in Victoria: the strategy that was released in is a disaster in terms of forest practice. '86 did protect large parts of East Gippsland that were previously not protected. So we did make progress but in hindsight governments, then as now, should have debateable point. But at the end of the day it will be a moved much more aggressively to plantations. judgment for all governments, about how they see the world, about how they see the m eshing of environ Th e whole State-Federal thing has a big question m ent and economic issues. marl<, doesn't it, since the In ta-Governmental Agree What I've tried to show is that we can protect ment on Environment. It seems to bind the Common our native forest and still have a viable plantation wealth in fact into administering slate policy. What based timber industry. A CSR forest product [brochure] would you like to see happening on a Victorian level, 12 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEilRUARY 1996 the bit of forest we saw, I think 15 per cent of the trees that came out of the coupe went to a sawmill: the rest was all chip or firewood or lay on the floor. Given that native forest logging is basically assisted by the State forest agencies in each state, how would you envisage a [Victorian] Labor govern m ent looking at the fores t policies of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNRH: Since the release of the Commonwealth forest policy statem ent I still have major concerns about the policy and opera tions of the DCNR, and how that de partment is going to meet its survey and reporting responsibilities. There's got to be a sea-change in at titudes and culture in the DCNR. Many of the good people, I think, have left the DCNR, no doubt about that. And with out universally criticising everybody who remains behind, the reality is that the majority of the people who are left behind there have a certain view of the a federal level and then on an Australia-wide level! world, a certain culture. And they are aided and abet The reason the Commonwealth (a nd when I say the ted by a state government whose approach to forestry Commonwealth I m ean the Federal Labor Govern operations is 'open slather, let her rip'. It' a philo ment) go t involved in forest policy is because the prac sophical position for the Kennett governm ent: 'the tices of som e of the states were simply so appalling. market's always right', only the fittest· survive. That's So while obviously many in the environment move a poisonous culture. ment may be disappointed at the outcomes from this current process, I think that people should also respect the fact that the government did get involved in this When you go to East Gippsland you see area. And I see the role of the national forest policy as the 20-hectare coupes. Three blol{es can a safety net, if you like, below which forest standards and forest protection shouldn't fall. clear that out in two or three weeks. It is then open to States, and it would be open under my government in the future, to make much Three blokes, three weeks' work, straight stronger decisions in relation to protection of the environment, given that the states still have on a truck to Midway mill to be chipped. constitutional responsibility over land use. There are no real jobs in that. HAT THE ST ATES MUST 00 and what I would want W 1 to do, is to go somewhat further than the Common wealth is going, in fact considerably further, to shape the forest policy of the future. Do you thinl V OLUME 6 N UMilER 1 • EUREKA STREET 13 In my own case, having been a federal member Yes, well, plantations grow the resource much more for years, having worked in Canberra and on aspects efficiently and closer to where it's utilised than native of the National Forest Policy Statement, I have to say forest wilL And if you priced the trees which I saw in I never once got out and looked at forestry operations, East Gippsland, which had been knocked over main never visited East Gippsland. ly for chip, properly taking into account their real I've been talking to Caucus people recently and value to the Victorian community, then the only rea to my federal colleagues, to federal cabinet ministers son you would ever take one of them would be to who are involved in this. I said, 'I've got to implore turn it into a piece of Nicholas Dattner furniture. So you've got access being granted at way below the real price of the resource. And that's just to The only people in the world with resource stick with the economics apart from any of the other considerations. So we're giving huge sub security are the overseas countries sidies to knock down trees which in some cas es have taken many years to grow. About a fifth that are getting our export chip. of the tree will go on the back of a truck and may be sawmilled-the rest of it is either It's anathe1na to everything the Labor movement chipped or just lies there. So what's driving it has always stood for: they're not skilled jobs, [native forest logging] is subsidies and the wrong pricing system. With all the softwood they're not value-adding, we're not that's on the market from plantations now, the fact that there are any operations surviving in generating investment in Australia. native forest at all is a reflection of wrong pric ing mechanisms and a failure to cost external It's the quarry mentality. ities properlyi to reflect all the community values that apply to those forests. you to actually go and have a look and see what real How would you deal with the problems in the rural ly happens, because what is occurring there and what communities that would be affected by any restru c you see on the briefing notes are not compatible, ture of the industry! they're not consistent.' And people in the industry If you go down to those areas the sawmillers know side, a lot of the hardliners in this debate, they poke a that already things are pretty bad, most of them are lot of fun at Graham Richardson, as being, you know, putting people off anyway, because they can't sell their cynical and vote-grasping and all that, but sawmill product. The biggest cause of job losses in Richardson's conversion on forest issues was genuine. rural areas is the Kennett government. In the East He was a politician who actually got out and Gippsland area alone you've lost nearly a thousand had a look. jobs, far more than are employed directly in relation I've been tall 14 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1996 Wh en you go to East Gipp land you see the 20-hectare coupes. Three blokes can clear that out in two or three weeks. Three blokes, three weeks' work, straight on a A RCffiMW~" RE~~~~~rn ~R=~ f bloke. It ~kes • bit to get truck to Midway mill to be chipped. There under his skin. The greatest rush of blood he's ever experienced was that day he are no real jobs in that. The only people in rushed down the street screaming, 'Eureka!' But last month he came close to the world with resource security are the repeating the performance-in annoyance rather than delight. overseas countries that are getting our It was the Federal Government's Innovation Statement which stirred him up, export chip. It's anathema to everything the but not because of its content. What rankled was the way it was handled, by the Labor m ovem ent has always stood for: Government and the media alike. It was yet another demonstration that this nation they're not skilled jobs, they're not value- still has a bit of growing up to do. adding, we're not gen erating For a country so utterly dependent on science and technology-telecommu investment in Australia. It's the nications and transport to beat the vast distances, mining and farming machinery quarry mentality. to earn export dollars, biology to protect a fragile environment- it is amazing how incapable we seem of coming to terms with them. HANCE ISN 1 T EASY but So m etimes As the Prime Minister unburdened himself of the statement, I am told that C 1 you've got to do these things. I recall that Melbourne's World Congress Centre was thick with reporters-politics and finance in the mid-eighties, the dairy industry was journalists, that is. Very few media organisations thought to send science writers. go ing through a crisis, similar in many ways After all, the Prime Minister was speaking, wasn't he? to what's happening in forestry. Dairy farm And so the analysis went-in The Age, one-third of page one, all of page six, ers were being paid just to milk more and an editorial and about a quarter of a finance page. The actual science content made more. There were butter mountains all over up le s than one-fifth of that. the world. And they were all going broke, No one pointed out that Government had actually endorsed its Co-operative husbands and wives working harder and Research Centres Program by extending it. (The program has been one of the harder, absurd hours, getting m ore and more Government's science policy success stories.) Archimedes saw and heard no output and going nowhere. m ention of the fact that there was no backing for the astronomy community's bid What became known as the Kerin Dairy to become involved in the European Southern Observatory in Chile, which will be Plan changed it. I remember when John the next big step in optical tele copes. And what about the policy statements on Kerin first proposed that, because I was then the future of the CSIRO-they must have been lost in the fine print! the Federal Member for Bendigo. I had quite In fact, Michelle Grattan dismissed the whole exercise by saying there was a few dairy farmers in my electorate. I re 'not much for the average punter', and that most of the statement was concerned member that you couldn't take him any with 'boutique measures for boutique audiences' and-the real killer for any media where for fear of his personal safety. story-'many initiatives seem worthy'. There was one public meeting he was Given that the future of this nation-its future exports, its future employ invited to at Echuca, which was outside my m ent, its future environment, its future society-is almost totally dependent upon electorate, but [there were] quite a lot of how it manages to handle science and technology, I would have thought 'the aver dairy farmers in that irrigation country. The age punter' ought to be vitally interested in Government policy in the area. And if Victorian Police Special Operations Group he or she is not, then there is something clearly lacking in our society. (SOG) came to my office at Bendigo first and To be fair to Ms Grattan, in one sense she was right. Politically, the statement we were going to travel up in a car. The SOG won't win many votes at the forthcoming election. But the day that the worth of rang us there and aid they had intelligence Government policy is judged solely on whether it is an immediate vote winner sources and that they had prohibited Kerin on its ability to furnish short-term gains to 'the average punter'-is the day Gov from attending that meeting. They said ernment ceases to make any pretence at long-term vision, and the day that there were people in the crowd with guns; democracy dies in this country. Welcome to the tyranny of the average punter, they wouldn't be able to guarantee his safe whoever he or she may be. ty, they wouldn't be able to protect him. So It was a fellow political commentator-ABC Radio National's Pru Coward that's how bad things were. who heard the real bum note in the Innovation Statem ent. Unlike past Keating Yet he pushed through that plan, and if policy extravaganzas, this one had no binding statement of vision to go with it. It you look at the dairy industry today, it's was a grab-bag of policies with no common theme, no overarching explanation of been totally refocused: it's much more sus what it was trying to achieve and why, and no pithy Keating encapsulation of tainable, it's export-oriented, it adds value what his Government was about. to its product, and it's a success story. But Maybe one of these days Australia will actually realise that the countries at change had to occur. We need to make it the top of the world pecking order share an appreciation-not uncritical-of science utterly unambiguous when we're setting and innovation. They recognise that science is just as much a part of their society policy that the way of the future for the as footy, and treat it accordingly. By contrast, in the Land of Oz, science is treated timber industry is through greater use of like some demented goose that occasionally lays a golden egg. It is kept in quaran plantations. That is where we expect the tine, well away from real life, and has money poked at it every now and again. • indu try to invest. • -Juliette Hughes Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 15 THE REGION ALAN NICHO LS Looking right in Burma B U,MA's mMoc"·nc """' • Aung S•n Suu Kyi, The 'running sore' from SLORC's point of view has been out of house arrest now for seven m onths. m ay be the 93,000 refugees remaining in Thailand. She has withdrawn her National League for Democ They remind the world of the persecution which sent racy from the constitution convention process. She them over the border and the oppression and poverty speaks to thousands every Sunday outside her gate. which keep them there. So SLORC definitely want But don't hold your breath for dramatic changes. them to go home, and in the process gain the extra The ruling junta, the State Law and Order Restora benefit of silencing the democracy movement, as lead tion Council (SLORC), is receiving sufficient inter ing dissidents decide whether to go home and 'knuckle national approval for the small steps of liberalisation under', or stay in exile. they have already taken and therefore m ay not go any The repatriation of these refugees in Thailand has further. become a priority and will start next April with the Australia's Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, is an 'easiest' to m ove-the Mon. increasingly lone figure within ASEAN when h e The 10,000 refugees of Mon ethnic nationality presses the human rights case against Bunna/Myan in refugee camps are a segment of the approximately mar, and Australia's mild discouragement of trade has four million Mon people who live normally in the little impact on Burma's economy. So the ruling Irrawaddy delta area. They arc descendants of an military seem likely to continue a policy of keeping a ancient Man-Khmer empire which stretched across tight lid on their 42 million people, signing 'peace' Thailand to Cambodia. terms with all the ethnic minorities, and oppressing During the period of British rule of Burma, the any public dissent. colonials undermined the last of the great Mon kings, After 33 years of centralised military rule, Burma remains one of the least developed countries in the world. Street vendor in Rangoon selling slingshots often used against the military. Ph otograph: Greg Scullin. 16 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1996 Aung San Suu Kyi, in recent addresses to the Sunday crowds outside her home in University Avenue, Rangoon, has been calling for 'dialogue' between SLORC and the ethnic nationalities. and the Mon became just one more ethnic group, along target for the first repatriation. The Karen and Karen with Karen, Kachin, Shan and Chin. About half of ni will be next. Under pressure, the Mon refugee lead Burma's 42 million people today belong to these 'hill ers have this year signed a cease-fire with SLORC. It tribes'. could hardly be called a 'peace', with army presence The years since the 1962 military takeover of everywhere, restrictions on movem ent, and a ban on power within Burma have been very hard on the Mon. public meetings. Their language was forbidden, their leaders disempow What conditions for repatriation should the ered, their young men taken for forced labour or con international community demand? First, repatriation scripted into the army. The 10,000 who sought refuge should be voluntary, as under the United Nations in Thailand from 1982 had a particularly difficult Convention on Refugees. Second, returnees should time. Against the odds, they started a high school in have free access to their own villages and lands. Third, the jungle, using the Mon language, and reintroduced they should not suffer reprisals such as unreasonable traditional dance, story and culture. taxes, or forced labour. All the time, they were overshadowed by the How will these be monitored? At the very least, politically more astute Karen refu gees to their north, SLORC should agree to the United Nations High who had better international contacts and a guerrilla Commissioner for Refugees having a presence in the army which had trained during World War Mon territory. This has happened with the return of II on the side of the Allies. the Rohingyas from Bangladesh during the last 12 months on the western border. It would be even better I C AN REMEMBER VtSITJNG a Mon refugee camp, many if international NGOs are permitted to start providing hours by four-wheel-drive out of Three Pagodas Pass, h ealth, agriculture and community development. where the Burma Railway once went over the moun After 33 years of military centralised rule, Burma tain. Their food had run out; there were no school remains one of the least developed countrie in the books; the teachers were untrained. There was an air world. of desperation all round. Nevertheless, Nai Tin Aung, This kind of development would have the effect chairman of the Mon Relief Committee, met us with of recognising that the ethnic nationalities within courtesy, exercised the hospitality of his very hum Burma/Myanmar have rights. Perhaps these rights will ble hom e, and expressed deep gra titude that we had later be enshrined in a formal Constitution and in remembered them at all. Such was their sense of representation in Parliament (see Emeka Street, isolation. September, 1995, p12). The Burma Border Consortium of international Aung San Suu Kyi, in recent addresses to the Non-Government Organisations (NGOs)-including Sunday crowds outside her home in University Jesuit Refugee Service and Christ Church Anglican A venue, Rangoon, has been calling for 'dialogue' Church, Bangkok-made sure of their basic food and between SLORC and the ethnic nationalities. Perhaps health care while they could. But in 1993, the Thai the dialogue and the human rights action could go Aung San Stm Kyi authorities forced them over the border. They were side by side. • addressing a crowd in going to be in the way of a comm ercial gas pipeline, August 1988, ju st prior to and no one wanted sabotage. being placed under house Observers on the Thai-Burma border and in Alan Nichols is an Anglican priest working with arrest by SLORC. Rangoon currently feel that these people will be the World Vision Australia. Photograph: Greg Scullin VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 17 The rights price W . N TH' COMMONW,ACTH concern immigration officers mak nations: he proved that the Race announced in late November that it ing deportation orders) and a very Discrimination A ct 1975 was not had dropped the legislative priority few had that special status of 'incor enforceable, along with all the rest. of its so-called 'anti-Teoh' bill in the poration'- of a kind- into Austral This had a profound effect on all House of Representatives there was ian domestic law by inclusion in the Commonwealth human rights laws. a frisson of relief among human rights Schedule to the Human Rights and Even if its hearings commissioners advocates. The bill, which is meant Equal Opportunity Commission preside over 'h earings' and make to remove any expectation that Aus A ct. orders, they are not enforceable tralian administrators will consider But the decision provoked a sig unless the complainant sues, human rights unless they have been nificant retreat from human rights separately, in the Federal Court and preserved by an Act of Parliament, principles by the Keating adminis proves it all again. probably won't pass before the next tration. It is part of a worrying trend. Mostly, it won't matter, because Federal election. The Damoclean We do not have a bill of rights, most complaints are sorted out sword remains, however, suspended. because our Constitutional fathers through investigation and The High Court's Teoh decision, believed that 'the common law conciliation: this year, though, the in Aprill994, that immigration offi tradition' would be enough. Some Human Rights and Equal cials had to consider the welfare of human rights, such as the right of Opportunity Commission (HREOC) Ah Hin Teoh's Australian children equality before the law ,------, before deciding to deport him, and to be free from because Australia had ratified the discrimination, h ave NUMBER OF COMPLAINTS UN Convention on the Rights of the been enacted in domes- LODGED Child, had a major impact. Legally, tic laws based on inter- under Commonwealth it gave international human rights national human rights instruments as much eff ect as agreements, such as the Anti-Discrimination Legislation published, considered statements of UN Convention on the government policy: according to ear Elimination of all Forms Ground 93/ 94 94/ 95 lier cases these citizens are entitled of Discrimination to expect that they will guide ad Against Women (enact Race 458 712 ministrative discretions and they ed in the Common should be warned if they won't. wealth's Sex Discrimi Sex 1304 1580 Politically, it gave right-wing scare nation Act 1984 which Disability 302 1229 mongers such as P.P. McGuinness also prohibits discrimi (writing in the Australian on 28th nation against men). May 1994) another conspiracy theo Many other human ry: rights haven't been enacted but the simply can't handle the enormous ... much of our law is being made Human Rights and Equal Opportu blow-out in complaints within its far away from our parliaments by nity Commission is required to resources. people who have never been elected watch over their observance and The human rights watchdog, and the policy reasons for which are handle complaints about their HREOC, has in fact very few powers, largely kept secret, or debated any breach; they differ from sex, race and many have been restricted by where but in parliament. and disability discrimination in that legal challenges and complex In fact the Teoh case did not oblige there is no enforceable remedy if jurisdictional or procedural government decision -makers to they are broken. determinations by the courts, mostly implement a UN Convention, just But in the last year, those few at the behest of the better-resourced warn the citizen if they intended not Australian laws which do give a corporate respondent. If HREOC to. rem edy for unlawful discrimination, can't investigate complaints Administratively, bureaucrats suffered another legal wound. In 1995 promptly, sooner or later public were shocked: it would make their Mr Brandy, an Aboriginal ATSIC confidence in human rights protec job immensely more difficult, they employee who had discriminated tions will collapse. Why should it said. More than 900 international against a non-indigenous ATSIC not, when governments exempt instruments had been adopted over officer, proved in the High Court themselves from their own laws? the years' Actually, only a handful that the Human Rights and Equal When HREOC found that it was dis would ever apply to particular deci Opportunity Commission was con criminatory to exclude all HIV sion-makers (shipping and food stitutionally barred from acting as a affected people from any employ standards, for example, would rarely 'court' and making binding determi- ment in the Australian Defence 18 EUREKA STREET • J ANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 Forces, the Minister took steps to the Common Law system. eously, condemn other countries avoid the inconvenient eff ects of the The extraordinary respon se, a whose governments deny human Disability Discrimination Act 1992 year later, from the Attorney-General rights-Nigeria, Bosnia, Somalia, Sri by regulations. and Minister for Foreign Affairs La nka- for th eir ' uncivilised ' The Commonwealth Govern manifested itself twice. First, in May behaviour if it is unwilling to m ent's attitude to human rights 1995, was their ' publis h ed, recognise present-da y statements of depends on the circums ta nces. considered' Ministerial statem ent of rights, duties and standards of con Gareth Evans was so outraged by the government policy that there was no duct in its own administration . The hanging of Nigerian N obel Peace Prize nominee, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November The Commonwealth Government's attitude to human rights depends on that he supported Nigeria's suspension from the Com the circumstances. Gareth Evans was so outraged by the hanging of m onwealth, though equally Nigerian Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Ken Saro- Wiwa, in November that o bvio u s human rights abuses associated with the he supported Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth, though Indon esian takeover and pacifica tion of East Timor equally obvious human rights abuses associated with the Indonesian are ' different'. Within takeover and pacification of East Timor are 'different'. Australi a, the Common wealth's pow er to m ake laws to implem ent international ' legitimate expecta tion ' tha t by failure of those countries' social obliga tions has in general not been entering into international human institutions is the eventual conse used- except for regula tory purposes rights obligations the Government quence of the failure of ideas, the related to trade (eg shipping, food intended to be bound by it. Second, a abandonment of common under standards) and aspects of discrimi few weeks later, ca me the Adminis standings abou t essential values, the nation (disability, race, sex, preg trative Decisions (Effect of Interna failure to accommodate diversity and nancy and 'fam ily responsibilities'). tional Instruments} Bil11995, with dissent. Agreem ents are not enough, In the one outstanding exception which I began this piece. but they do give non-confo rmists th e Comm onwealth's 'sexu al This bill, if enacted, would have the status of outlaws: two days after privacy' legislation goes half-way to a dram atic effect, not only on the the hangings of Saro-Wiwa and his protecting gay men from prosecu scope of courts' judicial review of fe llow act ivis t s, Nigeria was tion under the Tasm anian Criminal bureau cratic and ministerial discre suspended from the Commonwealth Code. Bu t when Western Austra lia tions, but possibly, unintentionally, by CHOGM . ignored the UN Convention on the on other laws. For example, the In Statem ents of principle in laws Rights of the Child in 1992, and dustrial Relations Reform Act in and procedures give powerless people passed draconian juvenile sentencing 1994 requires the IRC to act to elim a place they can stand; to those on laws aimed at Aboriginal boys, the inate 'discrimination', whi ch is not the m argin th e fo rmal recognition of Commonwealth chose to do noth defined except by reference to Inter their human rights is symbolic of all ing. The result, reported by the Abo national Labour Organisation Con the denied aspects of their humanity. riginal and T orres Strait Islander vention 111 , which prohibits dis What governments value, they Social Justice Commissioner Mick crimination in employment and oc will pay for. The Commonwealth Dodson, is obvious. Across Austral cupation. T he bill would probably Government's fa ilure to institution ia, an Aboriginal child is 18.6 times prevent the IRC from applying those alise human righ ts thinking and more likely to be in custody than a definitions at all, which was an argu principles in the administration of n on-indigen ou s kid. In Western m ent put to the IRC by the State of its own policies and program s is a Au tralia the likelihood is 32 times Victoria during the refu sa l to make a politically greater. national wage case in 1995 . animating, sociall y coh esive act. The Teoh decision, and the anti Human rights should never be doled dote legislation, was important, and REA L REA SON for the Minis- out by the powerful as a kindness or a natural result of the Common Law ters' reaction s was tha t to act award, w hich is the option the system . For some years courts have according to the Teoh principles had Ministers leave to Australians if they been able to use international trea ties huge resource implications: that, in revive the 'anti-T eoh ' bill, as a to 'fill in the gaps' in Commonwealth other words, the Commonwealth H oward government pro ba bly laws or, w h e re s tanda rds or does not consider human rights when would. discretions are to be applied, guide making decisions. Charters of rights act as a kind of their exercise. Many, including Why do we enter into these con prism , a way of looking beyond our m yself, predicted that the High tracts with the international com precious selves and concerns to the Court's decision would progress to a munity of nations if we have no fra gile autonomy of others. formal requirem ent of the rules of intention of obliging ourselves to 'natural justice' or procedural fair implement them ? Moira Rayn er is a lawyer and ness, a well-established principle of Australians cannot, self-ri ght- fr eelance journalist. V O LUME 6 N UMil ER 1 • EUREKA STREET 19 THE N ATION: 2 At your service Privatisalion is the buzz word of the 1990s, but polarisation has been the way of the debate. Jon Greenaway reports on the view from both sides. D U,NG"" He>m TOU' of the last decade than it is by placing it study of problem s experienced in Australia, Lady Thatcher made par side- by-side with the British experi the UK: ticular point of congratulating the ence. The brea k-up of the old SECV 'We've lea rnt from what they got Victorian Government on its policy into separate distribution and gener right .. . but we've also learnt from of privatisation. In a speech deliv ation companies and the current sa le what they got wrong. In particular, ered at a lunch at process occurred under the failures in the UK have been Melbourne's Regent different eire ums tanc twofold: Hotel, Lady T hatch cs. However, the phi 'They didn't introduce enough er declared to the losophy, the vision, and competition into generation so we've assembled-am ong the mood share a com insisted on individual power stations them Jeffrey Ken m o n source. ' Eve ry bidding against each other in our nett- that the prin man is a capitalist' Lad y pool arrangem ents ... so they won 't ciples of 'Thatcher Thatcher declared to be able to manipulate the amount of ism' would revive her receptive audience. electricity they supply in order to Victoria as it had The UK example is push the price up. Britain. 'May I say, evoked because there 'And secondly, the British go v Premier', she are no local equivalents ernment went ahead and privatised decla red, ' I of what the Kennett ad without restructuring the industry. think we've ministration is doing in We have restructured before priva ti Whereas the bo th go t it Victoria- and few in sation and a large measure of the right.' other developed coun effi ciency ga in has already been contracting- ou t of It is a tries. Whereas the con achieved. ' infrastructure compa rison tracting-out of infra The Victorian Government has that has oft en structure services has also moved to entrench this restruc services has many been m ade, many precedents, the turing to the benefit of competition but not, until now, by the complete transfer of significant por by putting in place cross-ownership precedents, the grand arc hi teet herself. The tions of public utilities is not so complete transfer T ories' sell-off of English pow common. H ow this genuinely radi er and water utilities is h eld cal program fares will no doubt be of significant up by the opponents of priva keenly observed by other state gov tisation as the folly to be avoid ernments. As the Economic Plan portions of public ed. Prices and disconnection s ning Advisory Commission's Private utilities is not so have risen, they argu e, serv- Infrastructure Task Force noted in a ice has been compromised, report to the Federal Government in common. How this and significant government September of last yea r, 'experiences assets have been swallowed in Victoria ... will provide guidance genuinely radical by the market. This abroga on this matter'. Even the experts program fares will tion of the state's role in the don't know. provision of essential services But Alan Stockdale, is convinced no doubt be k eenly is a policy which has produced, of the benefits privatisation will at best, dubious results. bring to the state. On the day after observed by other While it presents an im the last of the five distribution com m ediately accessible compar panies had been sold- taking the state governments. ison, the program of privati gross sale price up to $8.8 billion rules designed to prevent the emer sa tion designed by Victoria's Stockdale was talking of how effec gence of a m onopoly. Treasurer, Alan Stockdale, is under tive the reforms will be. And despite 'A purchaser and related purchas stood better in the context of the the comparisons made by both his er can own 100 per cent of one com series of structural reforms under opponents and Lady Thatcher, they pany, can only own 20 per cent of a taken by the Commonwealth during owe much, he suggested, to close second company, and they ca n only 20 EUREKA STREET • J ANUARY-F EB RUARY 1996 own 5 per cent of a third or any because of commercial confidential tion of church and welfare groups subsequent company,' Stockdale ity agreem ents-Quiggi n argues that opposed to the privatisation of Vic says. the taxpayer should have received tori a's utilities. Hubbard is not so 'There are som e exceptions for $17.5 billion. He puts the discrepan much concerned with the fiscal as passive investors ... but we didn't go cy down to the transfer of risk to the pects of the sale of the electricity to all this trouble to set up a compet purchaser and the profit demand, industry as he is with the loss itive market only to see it monopo plus the fact that the companies will of control: lised through cross-ownership.' not be exempt from company tax 'The electricity industry is According to Stockdale, the re sin ce they are n o longer state a system which provides a pub fo rm of the old SECV, launched some instrumentalities. But mainly he li c service and this role has no 'One of Victoria's three weeks after the coalition won place in the market. government in October of 1992, will 'These things are publicly competitive prevent excessive returns to share owned for a reason. Gas and strengths was an holders, boards, and executives-as Fuel was originally a collec has been the case in Britain- plus tion of private operators before ability to the taxpayer will benefit from a larger it was made public in the 1950s, debt reduction brought about by a and the SECV was form ed in transform muck much better price. the '20s by Monash. This is into some of the At the time Eureka Street went because they provide essential to press, the first of the generation services to the community. cheapest electricity companies, the Yallourn coal mine 'The Kennett government and power station, was being offered has no mandate for these re in the world. for sa le against a backdrop of forms,' Hubbard argues, 'They industrial dispute. were annou nced three weeks We are The short and medium -term after the last election. This is now selling that benefit of the.sa le is the reduction in ~ · ~ /~ why the Public First Campaign the interest paid on the budget defi is demanding a referendum on expertise to ci t. Stockdale labels debt as Victo . «<_~~~~lJ) ,, privatisation.' ria's biggest risk: attributes the difference to the poli t As well as being concerned foreigners who are 'When we reduce debt, we're do ical ends which are erved by the for the public well-being of con only interested in ing two things: we cut our interest means of privatisation: delivering sumers of electricity, Hubbard commitment in the here and now, the market to the faithful: believes the environmental Australia as a and we reduce our exposure to high ' ... I agree with JtheJ conclusion impact of electricity produc er interest rates. So for the security that the grossly inflated discounts of tion will increase. Market op market.' of the state budget, the security of the Thatcher period are a thing of erators, he argues, will natu -Kenneth Davidson service delivery, and the level of tax the past, but would caution that some rally want the public to con ation Victorians have to pay their degree of politically motivated dis sume more rather than less. At state government, reducing debt is a counting is likely to be a continuing the same time he feels that the very important priority.' feature of public floats.' privatisation process has tak- However, some regard the $8.8 Discussing the sale of the distri en its toll on the industry, which has billion figure as far below what could bution companies in particular, lost economies of scale with the be called a fair price when the loss of Professor Quiggin says it is difficult break-up of the SECV and under the earnings these facilities provide to get a true picture of what the mined the talents and resources of the government is fully financial implications of the sale are its workforce: considered. because all we have at the moment 'Over the last four to five years is the Treasurer's word: 23,000 jobs have been whittled down O HN QUJ GG IN, PR OFESSOR of 'We know what they've been sold to less than 7,000. The brain drain Economics1 at the ANU and James for and we can easily work out the and the loss of morale is apparent Cook University writing in the Aus saving on the debt, but as I under and the community in the LaTrobe tralian Economic Review earlier this stand it there are no up-to date figures Valley has been devastated.' year, argued that in many of the public on what the C V OLUME 6 N UMBER l • EUREKA STREET 21 panies sold off, we've had the so ers, the five distribution companies electricity which is delivered to you called generating businesses being have captive markets. From the mid will be the cost of usage of the wires. hawked around the world and we dle of 1996 until December 2000 'So the component of the bill still don't have the accounts for 94/ choice will be phased in so that by which is subject to competition is 95. Why? the turn of the century every ac tiny ... because the competitor is not 'Well it's a very simple answer. count, be it held by an aluminium going to set up a competitive system Those accounts, I believe, would smelter or a bed-sit flat, will be of wires. show very clearly the value of these subj ect to competition. The govern 'The idea of competition, except assets to the people of Victoria. That ment will regulate prices until the for a few really big consumers of in fact those assets were generating end of the year 2000, after which the electricity, is just a farce. And in any a very s ubstantial stream of Office of the Regulator-Genera l will case what those big consumers want earnings ... and that was what was detern>ine what benchmark pricing above all else is certainty of supply.' being given up. standard the distribution companies Davidson also predicts the sale 'After all, that information should cannot exceed. The theory goes that represents a lost opportunity to belong to the owners of the business five companies competing for the promote jobs and future growth of who built it up out of the retained Victorian market by delivering Victoria's economy: earnings from their electricity bills electricity from a pool serviced by 'Even that old, inefficient sys before these assets were sold in their several generators will result in bet tem [before corporatisation and natne.' ter service and cheaper electricity privatisationj was producing elec Like Quiggin, Hubbard questions for the customer, which will in turn tricity at a cost which was less than whether these assets are being dra provide a boost to the any other producer in the world for matically undersold, given that he economy. certain types of customers. And over believes the electricity industry all one of the lowest cost electrici could well be generating more than D A VIDSON BELIEVES THE IDEA of ties in the world, produced out of the $1 billion of earnings before in competition is a 'fig-leaf' used by the brown coal which is basically dirt terest and tax that Alan Stockdale government to conceal the damage with 40 per cent water. estimates. Furthermore he wonders being done to Victoria's economy: 'One of Victoria's competitive whether the public has the full pic 'Irrespective of who you choose strengths was an ability to trans The streetview ture on what effect the gradual intro as your electricity company, it is form muck into some of the cheapest of privatisation. duction of competition will have. still going to go clown the same set of electricity in the world. Photognzph: Currently, with the exception of wires to get to you and probably 70 'We are now selling that exper Tim Stoney a handful of extremely large custom- to 80 per cent of the cost of the tise to foreigners who are onl y 22 EUREKA STREET • JAN U A RY-FEBRUARY 1996 interested in Australia as a market. 'That is the other tragedy with what's happening to the old SECV. It could have formed the basis for the export of infrastructure services to our region, but now other people will be doing that, we won't. And this is going to be repea ted in areas Inside the Gates like water and so on down the track.' The Regulator-General of Victo C OMPUTER vmu sEs souND NASTY, but what do they actually entail? Perhaps a ria, Robin Davey disputes that the mouse with an exotic strain of influenza, or maybe a malfunctioning main benefits of competition will be min frame? Talk of computer viruses has eased its way into common langu age, but imal. His position was es tablished though widely recognised as a form of cyber-malady, viruses and their effects by the Victorian Government to en are still not fully understood. sure fair and competitive trading in Dr Fred Cohen, who has pioneered a study of these viruses, offers this the electricity, gas and water indus simple definition: a computer virus is 'a program that can "infect" other pro tries and as the government with grams by modifying them to include a possible evolved copy of itself.' A varie draws from active participation in ty of viruses lurks on contaminated disks, on public bulletin boards, or on a infras tructure his office becomes computer's hard-drive. Take one example: worms replicate themselves ad more significant. After the year 2000, infinitum, overwriting existing files until there is no m em ory left on a compu the Regulator-General will be the ter. Trojan horses are another example; these apparently normal programs sole arbiter of the price and service corrupt or erase files when they are opened. Viruses, or rogue programs, can of electricity under the auspices of also contain time bombs and logic bombs. The Michelangelo virus, named by the Electricity Industry Act of 1993. two Melbourne academics in the 1980s, is harboured until March 6 each year The office is in the process of es tab the date of Buonarroti's birthday. The Jerusalem virus activates every Friday lishing customer con tracts which will preserve a basic standard fo r 13th. Logic bombs wait for specific words to be typed before they are triggered. infrastructure services: Viruses are contagious. When you connect with another computer, for ex 'What we've done is set a bench ample via e-mail, you're connecting to every computer that computer has ever mark contract and a benchmark char connected to. Sharing disks involves a similar risk-this is how the contagion ter and the companies arc free to spreads. A few viruses are benign (for example, maintenance viruses may auto innovate above that, they can't go matically update old information) and some are oddly appealing. The Drop virus below it. I can't tell you what that causes letters to fall from the end of words and into a heap at the bottom of the will be [the contract for electricity screen, if a document is left open. At its worst it is like a cantankerous screen will be released early this year[ but saver. The majority of viruses, however, are designed with malicious intent. some companies are quite positively The damage a virus can cause ranges from file corruption to rendering a com going to give a higher level of service puter inoperable. than is required by the benchmark It is difficult to say who is responsible for creating viruses. William Gib contract. son's landmark novel, Nemomancer (1984), romanticises the symbiosis between The basic customer contract can hardware and humanity in the hacker community, and is partly responsible for be continued after the year 2000 so establishing a techno counter-culture. But computer-usage is so widespread they'll have that safety net.' that it crosses social groupings. So it is fair to say that computer viruses can be The office will be responsible for composed by anyone. The psychology of the virus engineer is difficult to spec regulating and standardising the cost ify, because the problem is so generalised. of the transmission so that the com Psychology aside, viruses are perceived by many as an electronic form of panics which own them can't exploit vandalism. Anti-virus software and virus-scanners have become a growth in their monopoly to drive up prices. dustry over the last few years. Computer companies are constantly updating These safeguards, along with the anti- virus software to ward off new strains. One industry-leading program is presence of multiple providers, will preserve service standards, even for renewed monthly, and December's issue contains 250 updated 'definitions' to the most remote rural customer who cope with new viruses. Another award-winning program (now exported from up until now has benefited from Australia) is designed to scan for between eight and nine thousand viruses. cross- ubsidisation: Obviously, virus engineers hold the advantage; anti-virus groups are left with 'The distribution companies have the task of controlling viruses, through constantly evolving software. got to provide open access to their Computers are now perceived to be an important vehicle in the processes networks like Telecom provides of government, business, education, and even peace. There is an element of the Optus with access to its network utopian ideal contained in the concept of an electronic global village. But this and Optus provides Telecom with is the purists' vision. The reality is somewhat different. Computer viruses be access to its network .... So people long to the much-publicised shady districts of the cyber-milieu, to the gung ho can say, "We don't like Powcrcor, rebel/hacker/computer user-without-a-cause. • we think we ca n get cheaper elec- (cont. p24) Dan Disney is a freelance writer. VOLUME 6 NUMBER l • EUREKA STREET 23 tricity buying from Eastern." Eastern providing a service to people there is pri vatised. The gas industry is subject has access to deliver its electricity som e altruistic component to what to litiga tion at the moment and a across Powercor's wires.' you're doing, the refore this is Commonwealth tax regime makes According to Davey this will a utomatica lly less efficient t han if it less attractive to the private sec allow for common-interest groups you' re battling it out in the market tor. The Treasurer also doubts that to secure discounts through collec place.' water will be privatised in the next tive barga ining, as has happened in The Private Infrastructure Task ten years, because of complex telecommunications. And the forced Force Report m entioned above con negotiations with the Common efficiencies of a competitive market cluded that there are no hard and fa st wealth and other state governments. will, he says, allow a drop in the rules regarding the benefits of in But he points to a national trend price of energy for some customers volving the private sector and that it towards the privatisation of utilities: as dictated by government: must be judged on a 'case by case' 'The very strong pressure from 'The large customer on a heavily assessrncnt. the Comm onwealth for the develop subsidised tariff may find that prices The same report questioned the ment of an interstate market will will go up because the subsidy has use of Build Own Operate and tend in the direction of the Victorian been removed. But the benefit is that Transfer (BOOT) schemes for road reforms,' Stockdale argues, 'And of the smaller customer is not subsi building- such as that offered to course the ComnJ. onwea lth put a dising the larger customer. carrot there as well as a stick in the 'So smaller businesses-restau sense that ... if states m eet the re rants, ga rages a nd so forth- arc form agenda that the Common getting a 22 per cent reduction by r wealth and the states have agreed to the end of the year 2000, domestic I o they get part of the benefit of nation customers are getting a 9 al economic growth paid back in per cent reduction.' ' additiona !grants fr om the Common wealth. Something a bit under a $1 R OBI N D AVEY IS CON FIDENT that billion dollars is due to the states if these benefits will not be sacrificed they m eet the reform agenda.' after the go vernment ceases to regu The re is little doubt that la te pricing after 2000, despite the Canberra has created fa vourable con argument of Davidson that there is ditions fo r Victoria 's privatisation little room for cost saving through prograrn-statc debt and philosoph competition. He argues that the price ical leanings asid e. In the last decade of transmission is not as large as the Commonwealth has taken great D 24 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY -FEBR UA RY 1996 THE NATION: 3 RICI-l ARD CURTAIN Generation X-cluded l ,oN•cmv, RumT M uRDOCH HAS A'"'"'- In dww President Roosevelt's N ew Deal Administration ing attention to Australia's high level of youth in the United States first adopted the narrow, activi unemploym ent late last year, he touched on one of ty-based m easure of unemploym ent in the mid- 1930s. our m ost critical social problem s. He did not propose Roosevelt's advisers were concerned to limit th e a rem edy, except to blam e government. number of job seekers to make it easier to have Con As a m ajor em ployer, he and his employment gress vote funds for job creation . policies must be part of the solu tion. Experience has The activity-based definition of unemployment, shown that society cannot rely on governmen t. now used internationally since 1954, overstates the The challenge of creating a meaningful fu ture for num ber in work. Everyone working an hour or more teenagers moving fro m education to work is a criti a week is included even if they are also actively cal test for Australian society. The fate of 200,000 seeking work. T he numbers classified as unemployed teenagers a year depends on our response. The limita are understated because seeking work is narrowly tions of government are evident from the rise in the defined. Looking at newspaper adverts, for example, number of people stuck in a cycle of bad jobs and is not classified as active job searching. So women umemployment, despite governm ent initiatives. who judge that the CES has few white-collar jobs and The initiative must come from employers. They rely on newspaper ads would not be recorded as un must learn from societies such as Germany and Japan employed. Som e 70 per cent of discouraged job seek which have far more successful transition policies ers are women. than Australia. A better place to start is to look at the number of The number of teenagers looking for full-time full-time jobs taken up by teenagers compared with work in November 1995 reached almost 96,000. This adults. Data, from the early 1990s to now, show a represen ts 29 per cent of the 15 to 19-year- old age group who are working or actively seeking work. The unemployment rate for Figure 1 persons aged 20 looking for fu ll-time work Monthly Gain or loss of full-time jobs compared to the same for the same period was 8.1 per cent. month in the previous year, teenagers and adults, It is the highest rate of teenage unem 250 December 1992 to July 1995 ployment in 18 months despite the record highest monthly growth in jobs ( 112,000). 200 Teenagers looking for full-time work g accounted for 12.3 per cent of the E 150 unemployed. ~ The Government's reaction to Rupert .3 ---Aged 20+ Murdoch's criticism was defensive. It 0 100 ---Aged 15-19 claimed that the statistics presented a worse ·~ picture than the reality because of the nar- (!) 50 Q) row definition of those included in the meas- z ure. Full-time students, for example, are not counted as employed or unemployed. What is the true picture? This requires asking some basic questions about what is -50 happening to school leavers. Australia's Dec 92 Mar 93 Jun 93 Sep 93 Dec 93 Mar 94 Jun 94 Sep 94 Dec 94 Mar 95 Jun 95 record can best be gauged by comparing its Source- ABS Tho Labovr Force, Austra/1<1 Cat No 6203 0 performance with other industrialised coun- tries. Can we learn from the success of Germany and net gain in full-time jobs for adults. However, teen Japan in helping their young people make a smooth agers have consistently failed to benefit from the job transition to work? growth (see Figure 1, above). The unemployment rate is a poor measure of Another measure of what is happening to young what is happening to school leavers. The measure schoolleavers (15-19 years) is the number who are in itself understates the number of jobless and fails to neither full-time education nor full-time work. The say anything about the type or length of jobs held. percentage has more than doubled since 1990. Richard VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 25 Sweet, of the independent Dusseldorp Skills Forum, Both economies are not only successful in keep has highlighted the limited opportunities facing young ing their total unemployment levels low (3.2 per cent people. He has shown that between May 1985 and in Japan in May 1995 and 6.5 per cent in Germany in May 1995 the chances of a teenager being outside full December 1993). The differential impact on young time education and a full-time job have risen from 1 people, so evident in the Anglo-American economies in 4 to 1 in 2. as well as France and Italy, is not present. In November 1995 the percentage of schoolleav In Japa n, for example, despite a major recession, ers aged 15 to 19 years without full time work and only 160,000 graduates in May 1995 could not find not in fu ll-time tertiary education stood at 36 per cent. work. This is in a workforce that is eight times larg This represents 206,400 young people who have no er than Australia's workforce. Germany has up to 70 clear or long-term post-school option . Of these, per cent of its post-compulsory school-age teenagers 75,300 are in part-time jobs, 76,100 arc looking for in apprenticeships and the remainder in tertiary full-time work and 51,900 are not looking for work education. (see figure 2). A large number of young people are The di ffic ulty with Australia's approach is that trapped in a cycle of casual, part-time work, looking it is neither fish, flesh nor fowl. Both work and school for work or have given up the effort to find a job. based approaches exist side by side with little involve It is this increase over the last decade of school ment of the community and employers in either. lcavcrs with limited prospects that is most alarming. Heavy emphasis has been placed in Australia on It strongly suggests that our mechanisms for helping the work-based option in the form of the apprentice young people to move easily from school to work are ship and traineeship systems. It is an inherently not successful. Major attempts by government over limited mechanism because it has to be linked to a many years to improve the situation have borne mixed job. The continuing poor record of job growth for results. The above figures suggest that these efforts young people means that work-based training such still fa ll far short of Germany and Japan. as apprenticeships is available only to a minority of school leavcrs. Many young people also sec apprenticeships and Figure 2 traineeships as only providing access to dead-end jobs. In many cases, the level of on-the-job training is either What Young People are Doing. non-existent or of low quality. In the absence of (ages 15 to 19, November 1995) trained workplace supervisors and mentors, work- based training provides a weak foundation At School + Not at School for further skills upgrading. 687,100 580,000 = 1,267,100 A NOTHER LIMITATION of work-based arrangements in Australia is that they tend to operate in a low-trust environment. Many employers of apprentices and Full-time trainees arc small. Compliance with the provisions Study + Work + Other of the system is enforced through state regulation with little or no involvement by employer associations and 155,900 217,700 206,400 = 580,000 unions at the regional or local level. Germany, in contrast, operates its apprenticeship system in a high-trust environment. The legislation Unemployed + Part-time Work + Other is backed by the close involvement of the local cham bers of commerce and industry. The unions in Ger 79,100 75,300 52,000 = 206,400 many accept lower incomes for apprentices because of their confidence in the high-quality skills outcome. Source: ABS Labour Force, November 1995. Table 7, original data. Most Australian schools stand at arm's length from the workplace. This is reflected in their heavy reliance on an academic curriculum. However, more schools are starting to offer an integrated general and Two basic approaches exist for managing the vocational education with linkages into TAFE courses school-to-work transition. One is work-based and the and other vocational options. Some schools have suc other is school-based. The Germans use the ceeded in establishing closer links with enterprises. apprenticeship system to gi vc trainees the skills A recent survey has shown that 9 per cent of all sec sought by industry and commerce. In contrast, the ondary school students spend some time in the work Japanese approach is to encourage most (95 per cent) place with 3 per cent of students in a workplace for teenagers to complete senior high school and for en twenty days or more in a year. The number of school terprises to recruit employees through close ties with programs offering a proper work placement has individual high schools. jumped from 120 in 1993 to 600 in 1995. 26 EUREKA STREET • ] ANUA RY-FEBRU A I( Y 1996 The most successful model of linking schools to proof is in the rise in the number of young people workplaces is the TRAC program . TRAC stands for stuck in a cycle of bad jobs and unemployment Training for Retail and Commerce, the sector in which between school and work despite recent government it originally operated. What is different about TRAC initiatives. is that it has been initiated and m aintained entirely Employer-driven initiatives are the little- tried by local community eff orts. It started in a shopping alternative to government initiatives. The lessons of m all in the Hunter Valley in 1989 with assistance the Germ an and Japanese successes are their strong from an independent fo undation , the reliance on local associations or informal networks Dusseldorp Skills Forum. to generate close employer involvem ent. li SP..'(S , A SH01<,T I ~AL~II\IC:r T HE PROGRAM HAS NOW SPREAD to 1,300 work- MI\N wrn-1 &t.P..S'$cS, fl... CONS1,.,~T(..'( 1K~tW \\! places in activities as diverse as office skills, f'AIN"E.D E.XfR.~SSION oN 1-4\S IZt>.L.PI-\ Wll-1...\S IS hospitality, retail, au tom otive repair and sports fAC6, A~D ~X~E.Rl~NU:. AS GotN& 10 GO 6AC.P fitness and leisure. \He NA\tOt-.tPIL 1t~A SV R£.1Z AI4D CAAU..lWbo Foi<. TRAC works the opposite way to govern- W\l-~ 06~~~~~Y,/f1':0N\ IK~ u:A~RSI-l lPf m ent program s. Instea d of a subsidy, employers ) pay for their student placem ents. T his funding ( covers the costs of a coordinator who works close ly with up to ten employers. Each employer is expected to provide systematic training through an in-house mentor who assesses students as part of a subject for their Higher School Certificate. Flow-on ben efits to students have included improved performance at school. TRAC works well because it is employer driven and has coordinators who are focused on the needs of the workplace. The coordinated approach of TRAC contrasts with the piecemeal efforts of many short-term work experience programs run by overworked teachers. The Government in its Working Nation Statement has funded the Australian Student Traineeship Foundation to replicate the success ful formula for up to 5000 students in 1995-96. Close links between schools and enterprises are a feature of the Japanese approach. Employers in The high-trust societies of Germany and Japan Japan play a strong proactive role in managing the are impossible to replicate in toto. Closer links transition from school-to-work. Japanese school-to between school and work can, however, be developed. work linkages are regulated by the public employment Collective mechanisms started and run by employ security office (a national employment agency). They ers along the lines of the TRAC program point to the are based on long-term, semi-formal contacts between future. Schools can play their part by carefully but schools and enterprises. Employers allocate jobs to comprehensively integrating vocational content into each high school and the school staff nominate and the curriculum. rank students for these jobs. This system is based on Apprenticeship arrangements need to lift the a ranking of high schools based on a student's per quality of on-the-job training to give young people the formance in the admissions test. basis for further skills upgrading. More local collec The Japanese approach to school-to-work tive arrangements are also needed for small employ transition is to formalise the networks used informally ers to help them provide high quality skills outcomes by many schoolleavers in Australia. Young people's for trainees. competition for jobs occurs primarily inside high Fostering close linkages between local employ schools with academic achievement as a crucial ers and individual schools through extended work determinant of how jobs are allocated. The result is a placements organised through independent co-ordi smooth transition that is stable and highly predicta nators is needed to help greater numbers of young ble. Employers and teachers hold each in high regard people tnove more easily into good jobs. • because of the mutual benefits gained. The quality of the options available to school Richard Curtain is an independent industrial leavers is a test of Australian society. The fate of consultant. He was awarded a professional fellow some 200,000 teenagers each year depends on it. The ship by the Japan Foundation in 1992 to study Japa limitations of the role of government are evident. The nese skill formation practices. VOLUME 6 NUMBER l • EUREKA STREET 27 he Eurel 1. Which is the only country to win a go ld medal for rugby at an Olympic Games? 2. Which ground-breaking American novel begins with the words: 'Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlem en were sitting alone over their wine'? 3. Which existentialist philosopher wrote Being and Time (1927)7 4. Approximately how many monographs have dealt with the subject of the French Revolution? 5. Who said 'There are no atheists in foxholes'? 6. Where and when were the Jehovah 's Witnesses founded? 7. Which Liberal Party federal parliamentarian was a m ember of the Australian test cricket team in 1963? 8. 'Schistocera gregaria' may leap like war horses, but what are they really? 9. What do the cock, the peacock and the butterfly all signify? 10. In a dearth of taxis, to whom would it be appropriate to pray? 11. Who has been the world's longest reigning chess champion 1 12. Who was the first Vice-President of the United States? 13. Sydney's Nimrod and Melbourne's Pram factory were both seminal theatres. In what year were they established? 14. There are plenty of Australian expressions for a poor state of affairs. N ame some. 15. Who was the first woman to fly from England to Australia? 16. How did the Queensland Government make history on September 5, 1977? 17. Whose was the first Roman Catholic episcopal ordination in Australia? 18. The first issue of The Bulletin appeared on January 3 1, 1880 and had eight pages. What was in the centre spread? 19. Everyone knows that the Lumiere brothers were responsible for the first commercial motion picture screening in 1895. But what were they doing on the first Tuesday in November the fo llowing year? 20. In Australian rhyming slang, what does LKS stand for ? 21. Which London tabloid has featured such front page scream ers as 'Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster' and 'Up Yours Delors'. 22. What is said to be the first law of veterinary science? 23. Which story by Henry Lawson ends with the words 'the sickly day light breaks over the bush'? 24. Which theologian claimed that God willed us to have 'everything through Mary'? 25. In the Australian slang of World War I, what did flybog refer to1 26. Which Australian Prime Minister said: 'Let m e say this, that I expect into the future that the discussion about these matters will be conducted within the party, and I believe the attitude that was exhibited in the Caucus today was one of acceptance of that position that we have, from myself speal CHRISTINE GILLESPIE eac T,Gmc SAT AT A emu TABCC" THe CORNCR BYT> 30 EUREKA STREET • J ANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 room folding serviettes. A couple of the Farrell kids trooped in giggling. One of them gave her a red jelly baby out of his little white bag of mixed lollies. She wished the kid wouldn't stare at her chest. He fi shed out two buddies, little chocolates that swirled up into a pointy peak, held them against his chest like miniature breasts and yelled, 'Buddies, buddies, Patsy's got buddies.' She hunched her shoulders and buttoned up her cardigan as the Farrell kids laughed and ran out. The girl kept folding the bishops' hats. Her mother banged the dinner gong in the hall and put her head in the door of the lounge. 'Give me a hand with the soups, will you love?' 'Nell, Nell! ' The cook's voice was shrill. She must be in one of her moods. Perhaps her bad legs were playing up again and they were short-staffed. The publican's wife, Mrs Farrell, was in Ballarat visiting her mother. Patsy slipped out through the dining room before the linesmen thudded in. 'The Monsignor's here with a couple of priests from Melbourne,' said her mother, flustered. Mr Farrell rushed past with whiskies and Patsy hoped that the Monsignor would leave two shillings under the soup plate again. Patsy helped with the washing-up that night then followed her mother up the back stairs. Their poky little room looked onto the kitchen light-well and absorbed the greasy smells of corned beef and cabbage, braised sausages, fricasseed rabbit that Miss Steele produced for the dining room and the counter lunches. The girl watched her exhausted mother slip into her old rayon nightie, with a hole under the arm, but slinky. The white material clung to her hips and her round but tocks looked like fruit, an apple, no, a peach. Patsy lay waiting for her mother to go to sleep, feeling thin and gangling in the cold bed, the torch in her hand. She was glad that the Monsignor had left a shilling under the soup plate. It was all the cash she had left after • buying the ingredients for the cake and the icing. Mrs Farrell gave her ten bob a week t1" fo r helping wait on the tables or washing-up after dinner. tJIJ v When her mother's breathing was regular and deep, Patsy crept slowly around n the landing and down the dark back stairs, the boards dusty under her bare feet. She moved carefully around the metal buckets and mops next to the gully trap and opened the wire door of the kitchen, trying not to squeak the hinge. She switched on the fl uorescent light and looked at the box above the top cupboard. A beaming chef, in pale blue, with freckles on his nose and wearing a tall hat, looked down fro m the side of the box. It was packed with Miss Steele's proper piping bags and nozzles, spatulas and palette knives, paint brushes and modelling tools. She opened her own tin and lifted out the cake that she had baked a week ago and covered only last night with marzipan icing to give a smooth even base for decorating. Ten o'clock. There was the whole night ahead of her and still two days until her mother's birthday. She looked up at Miss Steele's box. But she couldn't use Miss Steele's things. Her father had always said, a good tradesman never lends his tools. She remembered a lot of things he said and she missed him. Now he was working on the railways in Queens land and she didn't know when he would come back or when they would all be together again in Melbourne. A tear dripped down her nose. She stared out the window at the shadows across the doorway of the men's toilet. A stifling whiff of phenol drifted out. The concrete yard reminded her of the cellar. Sometimes, she was allowed to climb down the steep steps below the bar and look for coins that fell through the grating from the street. Vic told her that a man had hanged himself there a hundred years ago. His ghost was probably behind the cellar wall. Patsy shuddered, squeezed her thighs together and turned back to the table. SHE UNPAC KED H ER TOOLS: cones of folded grease-proof paper for piping bags, her geometry compass for mapping out fine patterns on the icing, an old ruler, paint brushes from her art class. She filled jam jars with water for washing the brush es, took some marzipan icing out of the bag and dripped food dye onto it. Her mum, the PMG linesmen, the Farrells and Miss Steele were all in their beds. She kneaded the food dye into the icing. A toilet flushed upstairs and she held her breath. She wasn't doing any thing wrong but didn't want to be found decorating a cake in the middle of the night, especially V OLUME 6 N UMBER l • EUREKA STREET 31 by Miss Steele in one of her moods. The icing was now a pale apricot colour. Even Mrs Farrell kept out of Miss Steele's way when she swayed around the kitchen on her bandy legs, stockings knotted just above the knees, muttering, barking orders and sloshing brown gravy on to the white plates for counter lunches. Mr Farrell would laugh . 'Temperamental,' he'd say to Patsy, 'just as well she knocks up a good Irish stew. ' Patsy traced deli cate lines on the white surface of the cake with her school compass. She m oulded pieces of fruit, her fingers sliding over the glittering balls of icing. She picked one up, made a gash along its side, smoothed the edges and massaged the split with her index finger. I,, GOT A CA" m• MUM, ,.;d Pa"y" they "is: thci< bw glasses to toast Nell fm he< binhday Miss Steele had a shandy in one hand and a tea towel in the other. The girl lifted up the beer box in the m iddle of the table . Her m other gasped, Mr Farrell whistled and Miss Steele said nothing as they all stared. The cake was a white velvety box with finely piped scallops of sugary lace all around filled with a cluster of yellow clings tone peaches, a slight blush of pink icing on each pi ece of fruit. Luscious peaches. You could have broken them in half with a twist of the wrist along the smooth crease and seen the thin layer of red flesh around the rough stone-if they had been real. Miss Steele flicked her tea towel, killed a fly on the wire door and thrust a big tray of macaroni cheese in the oven. Peaches-at least eight of them, with a leaf and a tiny twig attached to the one in front . Patsy watched her m other's face. 'Sweetheart,' said Nell. She clapped her hands like a girl, reading what was on the top of the cake. On the white icing, painted in golds, browns, russets, it said, 'peachy, peachy, peachy', they curling into the next p of peachy. 'Well, I'll be ... ' sa id Vic padding around the table in his blue suede shoes for a squiz from the other side. 'Are you going to cut the cake, or what?' asked Miss Steele, slapping a large knife on the table. 'No,' said N ell sharply, 'of course not.' Miss Steele turned on her heels and threw a handful of potatoes in the big black pot. A splash of water hissed on top of the stove. Mr Farrell downed his beer and scratched his head. 'I knew you were good at art, Patsy, ' he said, 'but this is terrific. We'll put it in the dining roo m on the sideboard.' The next da y was Saturday. The clerical party was ba ck in for lunch before the picnic races. The Monsignor walked over to the cake and ran his eye sm oothly over the peaches. 'Rather volup tuous,' he said and stared at the girl as she put the little glass dish of butter on his table. He was a man of the world. She didn't know what voluptuous meant, but blushed anyway and tucked a strand of long, honey-coloured hair behind her ear. 'Thi s cake should be in the Eas ter Show, Jack. It's a winner,' said the Monsignor to Mr Farrell and sat clown to lunch as N ell swept in with the soups. .. Patsy stood and looked in the glass case at the Mechanics Institute. Miss Steele's cake, a ba sket of roses, was on the top level of the display stand with the first prize blue sa tin rosette attached. A little lower to the left was Mrs Armstrong's wedding cake with the second prize rib bon. On the other side was the lacy box of velvety peaches with the third prize card inscribed with her name in black copperplate writing. It reminded Patsy of three athletes accepting their medals at the Olympic Gam es down in Melbourne a few months ago. She wished that her cake was at the top. 'You go tta be in it to win it,' Mr Farrell had said last week as they backed out of the pub yard in the FJ and m otored off with the cake to the showgrounds office. Patsy watched people edging past looking at.. h er cake before they m oved on to the preserves . 'They're getting savage out there,' said Vic, jerking his head towards the kitchen and whistling through his teeth, 'and it's all about you.' Patsy crept over the brown, polished lino fl oor and peeped into the dingy kitchen. Miss Steele was stomping around, stirring the fricasseed rabbit that boiled wildly on the tovc. Nell, her lips clamped tightly, darted around the kitchen with furious 32 EUREKA STREET • JA UARY-F EBRUARY 1996 precision. Patsy set the tables and waited until Nell bustled in and slammed the butter box down on the table. 'You should have won the first prize,' she said, spooning butter curls onto dishes. 'They,' she waved the spoon towards the kitchen, 'told the judges yesterday that you were too young, being only thirteen, so they took the prize off you. Vic heard about it from som e old dear in the ladies' lounge today. I never thought they could stoop so low. I'm going to see a lady on the Show committee tonight. I know her by sight. From seven o'clock Mass.' When the dining room closed at eight o'clock, Nell put on her coat, straightened the seam s of her stockings and m arched out, Miss Steele broke a plate and Patsy went up stairs early. She couldn't concentrate on her library book with Miss Steele slamming cupboard doors downstairs. All this fuss. If Miss Steele's cake was lowered down to second place, she would be in a mood for weeks. Patsy rem embered the Monsignor, slid out of bed and fo und the little dictionary in her school bag. V ... vo ... vol ... Her finger slid down the page. Voluptuous: designed fo r stimulating or gratifying the senses. Patsy didn't like the sound of this at all. What had she done? It was only a cake, a birthday present for her mother. She turned out the light and stretched, trying to find a comfortable position. She was tired and had two dull pains, an ache just inside each hip bone. Her mother came in and slipped her coat and shoes off . Patsy burst into tears and N ell gave her a hug. 'We have to do the right thing,' she said. 'There is nothing in the Show rules about age. You can 't be too young to win first prize. I'm going to talk to the committee in the morning.' Patsy had never seen her mother so determined. LENEXT AFTERNOON, the girl lugged her school bag past the door of the public bar and the brewery truck parked in the side street. She still felt tired and the ache in her groin was worse. Sh e went in the residential entrance. The fire crackled and voices squawked in the ladies' lounge . Patsy peeped around the doorway to see if they were about to leave. 'Com e in dear,' said a thin lady with a voice like a cocky. Another woman in a hat stood at the hatch ordering drinks. 'A shandy, Vic, and a beer. Would you like a raspberry lem onade, love?' Patsy stretched her mouth into a smile, shook her head and edged backwards. ' A very beautiful cake you made, dear. Wasn't it Mavis? ' said the thin wom an. 'Com e in dear, come in. Peaches. Most uncommon. And now they've given you the fi rst prize. They've taken it away fro m poor Miss Steele. Cake decorating is her life and she's not used to com ing second, unless it's to her sister.' The wom an's laugh rattled " around the green shiny walls. 'Yo ur mother and you so new in town too.' Patsy backed out the door. 'Funny girl,' said one of the voices, 'she'll be quite pretty when she fi lls out a bit more. Here's your shandy, love. I popped into the kitchen a while back and Miss Steele said .. . ' Patsy stood in the hallway near the lounge and her body felt limp. ' ... and that waitress, N ell, is getting a divorce-and a Catholic too. A no-hoper husband they say ... ' Patsy began to sob. The linesm en were crashing down the stairs for a few beers. She looked around, panting. The hatch to the cellar was open and Mr Farrell was serving around the other side of the bar. She slipped down into the darkness away fr om them all, put her cheek against the rough brick wall and cried. There was a thud further along. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and peered around the corner. Vic was rolling barrels off the ramp from the street above. He stood in the shaft of light from the grating. 'Well, look who's here. Hi peachy,' he said, walking towards her. • Christine Gillespie is a Melbourne writer. V OLUME 6 N UMB ER 1 • EUREKA STREET 33 TOURISM JiM DAVIDSON The gallop towards the sea P am "'CAN TO co TO THE BEACH in dmves only in A social life sprang up around these activities. relatively recent times. In the eighteenth century, the On the beach there was no sunbathing; just walking Mediterranean coast was usually avoided during the and conversation, horseriding, and, for a time, organ course of the Grand Tour to Italy. Instead of warm ised races. But in the resorts that first grew up in Brit water, people were conscious of hot sand , a ain-such as Weym outh, Scarborough and Brighton pestilential coastline, lurking immorality and a Sun elaborate social patterns were soon articulated. that might painfully weather you to the hue of the Brighton affords the clearest example. In the mid working classc . eighteenth century th e fi shing village of A conscious interest in the seaside has quite an Brightelmstone had been declining when fa shionable unexpected provenance, since it originated in society began to resort there, attracted by its sea breez therapeutic courses of trea tment engaged in by the es and relative shelter from northerly winds. Once upper classe . With the shift in sensibility that the Prince Regent decided to grace it with a Royal occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, the sea bega n Pavilion, the place fun ctioned almost as a second to attract people because of its untamed nature- capital. By 1833 it was remarked that the line of splendid buildings banked up along the seafront had no equivalent outside St Petersburg. Its social rituals, taken over from spa towns, reflected its social impor tance: a master of ceremonies made introductions, arranged for the names of new arrivals to be published, and settled matters of precedence. Once the railway bridged the fifty miles from London, as it did in 1841, this exclusive order was doom ed. In the first six m onths of 1844, Brighton trains carried 360,000 people-seven or eight times the town's population. By 1890 day trippers were so numerous that for a short time they were actively di scouraged. Foremost among the attractions luring them were an aquarium (the first ) and the West Pier, which extended for 111 5 feet. The band playing there each morning and evening was soon augmented by a thea tre, and a concert hall, to entertain the prome nading crowds. By the 1890s an even more extrava ga nt second pier, with cafe , a ballroom and shops, complemented the first. Brighton therefore was the resort uppermost in Australian minds right down to the First World War. There are Brightons in every state except Western increasingly seen a a corrective to the perceived evils Australia. Sydney could be sa id to have two: in addi of urban civilisation. But the cures quickly beca me tion to Brighton-le-Sands there is Manly, which until more specific. Doctors beli eved that immersion in the turn of the century sometimes promoted itself as water had a tightening or loosening effect upon the 'the Brighton of Australia'. The link remains in the tissues, according to the temperature. 'To bathe in North Steyne and South Steyne, which circumscribe the sea is to have not only a cold bathe', declared one, Manly Beach; promenaders in the English Brighton 'but a m edicinal cold bathe.' Others added massages would walk 'along the Steyne'. with freshly collected seaweed. For those wh o went Promenading, with its opportunity for agreeable into the water-swimming was usually not included exercise combined with social displa y, had often taken in the cures- there were bathing machines, as well place in England, usually aft er church, when people appointed as a bathroom. could show them selves off in their Sunday best. In 34 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 Brighton, and about the sam e time in N ice- where in old m ansions, provided accomm odation for the one of the main streets is still called Promenade des great majority of those choosing to stay in St Kilda. An glais-the cu stom migra t ed to the seaside . By 193 1 there were 3 19 of them . Nineteenth century Australians were only too happy However, in their eternal quest for the unspoilt, to fo llow suit. If malaria was- quite literally- bad air, tourists had already advanced fu rther down the Bay: then that available at the seashore was decidedly fres h to Sandringham (where my grandparen ts wen t for and bracing: ozone-bearing breezes contained oxygen their honeymoon in the 1890s), or to Mentone (as in a particularly pure form. Ozone became a buzz word recorded in the Conder painting) . In addition, there for the late Victorians, m uch as aerobics have become today; the paddle steamer 'Ozone' regularly took Melburnians across the Bay to the Ozone Hotel at Queenscliff. The vogue for piers w as, quite literally, an extension of the promenade, eff ectively rerouted to becom e a highway to ozone. The piers were a seem ing triumph against nature, carried on the back of the vastly improved Victorian m et allurgy; from the beginning they were much m ore dem ocrati c, offering amusem ent, social mixing and possibilities for adventure. It is no accident that risque postcard lm mour was invariably located at the seaside. Australia, being a pion eering country-and exultingly democratic-went in fo r functional jetties rather than piers. The only gra ce note on a jetty at Cottesloe was its widening halfway along t o encompass a bandstand. At Manly there had been plans to build a grandiose Palace Pier in the m anner of Brighton (as the nam e indicated ), but these came to nought. One that was built, however, was the were clusters of campers along the Bay, so that 'for Ocean Pier at Coogee, complete with neo-oriental pep ten miles it may be described as one enormous camp Edwardian Manly: per pot towers that paid homage to the Royal Pavil ing ground'. A particularly favoured spot was Carrum. formal clothes, ion . Constructed in 1928, amid optimistic statements All of these resorts would be snuffed out, one by one, umbrella against the about its supplying a m uch-needed facility in by the remorseless advance of suburbia. Sun, and a line-up 'SYDNEY, THE CITY OF PLEASURE', the pier was St Kilda remained the exception because of the along the shore of soon declared unsafe by the local council, range and quality of the entertainments offered. In people staring at those and in 1934 it was demolished. 1913 the Palais de Danse opened on the Esplanade, in foolhardy enough the building soon to becom e Palais Pictures; it was to enter the water. ST KIL DA PIER, WlTH ITS FEDERATION-STYLE pavilion, is then relocated next door. That new building boasted still there to remind us that this Melbourne suburb the fi nest dance floor in Melbourne, as well as the doubled for a long time as a premier resort. Initially it most popular musicians; the orchestra which played had som ething of the charact er of a 'patrician at the picture theatre also helped to pull in the crowds village'-Toorak before Toorak- but once the cable drifting about outside. In 1914 these would am ount tram s came, as they did in 1888, St Kilda was over to 40- 70,000 on a warm Saturday night. whelmed in much the sam e way as Brighton had been. Luna Park, opened in 19 12, claimed to be the The working classes of the northern suburbs flocked newest, greatest, and best amusem ent park in the to the place. Sideshows and amusements sprang up world a t that time. Its m oderni ty extended to along the fores hore, som etimes leading to complaints providing the very fi rs t successful photos-while-you about noise fr om the toffs in their m ansions on the wait. Modelled on Coney Island, the venture was a Esplanade. But the tide was too strong: of all the success, whereas Sydney's Wonderland City, tucked English seaside resorts, it was Blackpool which was aw ay in a gully south of Bondi, h ad fo undered; growing fastest at this time. The nexus of ordinary fo lk Sydneysiders were therefore particularly careful to going to the shore for extensive entertainments, secure a prominent Harbourside site w hen they established there, quickly reproduced itself here opened a Luna Park in 1935. Success was immediate even to the fad fo r Pierrots, troupes whose am ateurism for Melbourne's Luna Park: John Monash (as chair accorded well with Australian style. man of directors of the Luna Park Company) reported Hotels such as the Esplanade (built to face the in 1913 that over 439,000 people visited the place in pier) and the George (whose suites included pianos) its first four-month season . catered fo r the well-to- do. There were always at least But it was the sea that was the m ajor drawcard . a dozen others, but guest houses, increasingly located In 188 1 St Kilda boasted no less than five bathing VOLUME 6 N UM BER 1 • EUREKA STREET 35 establishments, and it was possible to buy rail tickets constantly referred to even as late as the fifties-there which not only included admission to Hegarty's Rail fore involved St Kilda in a contest between counter way Baths (as they were eagerly styled) but to most of vailing images m ore sharply than anywhere else. the others; extras such as towel and costume hire In New South Wales, the position of Manly was could also be paid for in this way. Advertising hype relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, th e large h ad quite early put the baths in people's seminary, St Patrick's, scarcely den ted the place's ambience as a resort; indeed, since there was no rail or tram link, the only way m ost people could reach Manly from Sydney was by fe rry. So when in 1902 the crusading editor of a loca l paper, Wi lliam Gocher, becam e bent on pu blicising his personal defiance of the prohibiti on on daytime bathing there, resistance was slight. T he fo llowing year the council rescinded the relevant by-law, contenting itself with the regulation of costumes and conduct. With a surf beach that could now be readily en joyed, Manly leapt ahead. Five years after daytime bathing had been legalised, Manly's population had increased by 50 per cent, while house rents and rates had doubled. Property values rose even more spectacularly. Given this extraordinary change in Manly's fortunes, it needs to be explained why swimming in Australia took so long to emerge. Initially the attitude of government was unequivocal: an 1833 ordinance in New South Wales was confirmed and extended in 1838, forbidding all bathing between 6 am and 8 pm, consciousness. In 1865 hundreds of posters posed a not only in built-up areas, bu t also in waters adjacent cryptic question: 'Where Is Sam?' The answer turned to bridges and roads. But there was simply not a great Amusem ent strips out to be at Hegarty's Baths, where he was deal of interest, as those who attempted to found a sprang vp at the seaside 'l i{ T the new proprietor. gentlemen's bathing club in Hobart in 1847 soon because the crowds were found. Standards of propriety were still British, and it large, mixed and idle. v vHEN I N THE 1840s A RI C H LANDOW ER built was only when people began to take to the wilder, Often they began Strathbarton near Hamilton, in Tasmania, the facade unEnglish surf beaches that these were increasingly with relativley simple of this Georgian house looked in the direction of a perceived as irrelevant and restrictive- although often entertainmen ts, such as romantic glen. It also faced south; it was not till eighty not by local residents. In the words of St Kilda's his this one at Bondi, c1900. years later that subsequent owners effectively turned torian, the move to the beaches entailed 'a social the house round by building a double storeyed veranda revolt ... a bathing revolution by the new generation-' on the north side, to catch the Sun. This was no Three separate issues soon emerged, the hours isolated fancy; sunbaking had become popular in and location of bathing being the first. Apart from the Germany since the turn of the century, and in 1923 a fact that initially costumes were scarce, and there number of Riviera hotels- hitherto always frequented were no changing facilities, the new craze for bathing by those seeking to escape the northern European did contain an anarchic element in its rude democracy. winter- decided to remain open during the summer. 'Plain primitive manhood and womanhood', said the This was for the first time. The Lone Hand, 'are the only tests the surfbather St Kilda, then, got caught up in this massive shift applies to distinguish one from another'. So while towards the Sun and the sea. Attempts to keep it Tom Roberts was painting The Sunny South, with its decorous extended, as late as 1931, to having a Battle idealised male nude bathing, a policeman appeared of the Flowers, just like Nice. Earlier, there had been on the Manly beach at seven each morning to ensure extensive land reclamation, with gardens and embank that no bathing of any kind took place. And while the ments put in place, complete with palms, just like battle was won there after Gocher's plunge, it still Cannes. But there were still many residents who, if continued to be fought at St Kilda and elsewhere. Sun they had an image of any other place at all, would day bathing occasioned a demonstration at St Kilda have thought of respectable Bournemouth. Moreover, in 1922, but the council was reluctant to legalise it that site of pleasure, the pier, doubled as Melbourne's even though it was prepared to leave the ruling ceremonial entrance: while the city was the national unenforced. capital royalty and governors would land here, then At a time when there was a clear line drawn be sweep along Fitzroy Street and St Kilda Road and so tween the public sphere and private behaviour-very to Government House. The issues suddenly presented much the case until the 1950s- the beaches were a by the upsurge of bathing-as swimming was natural target for wowsers, since they invited display 36 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 and provocation in what were, after all, public places. Much of this story represents white Australia's Early concerns that bathers should proceed in 'a direct belated adaptation to a new environment. Captain line' to and from the sea were elaborated by South Cook had approvingly noted Aboriginal body surfers, Melbourne Council in 1932, when it forbade anyone and it was an islander, Tommy Tanna, who first in a swimming costume to 'sit, lie, loiter or run along showed white youths how to 'shoot' the waves at the beach.' Fresh regulations would often be made, Manly in the 1880s. Although Hawaiian-s tyle surf and even where they were not, old ones dating from boards had reached Australia early, it took the visit before the First World War remained in force even of the champion swimmer Duke Kahanamoku in 191 5 though generally accepted behaviour had rendered to show people how to use them properly. Sixties them obsolete. journalis ts who likened the ways of surfies to a St Kilda Council, for example, remained Polynesian lifestyle wrote truer than they knew. committed to the idea of segregated bathing for m en But there was a cost from the very beginning. By and women (the second major issue) well into the 1902, seventeen deaths from drowning had occurred twenties. The English resort of Bexley had permitted at Manly alone. Early attempts at rescue were basic, mingling since 1901; shortly afterwards in Sydney it extending to a lifebuoy and rope hanging on a pole was accepted as an inevitable consequence of open put up on three of Sydney's beaches. The first to have sea bathing. Elsewhere though there were baths which a lifeboat was Manly, operated by a local fishing put up a white flag when women swam, and a red fla g family. The government was approached for funding, for m en; even when 'mixed' bathing was introduced, and when the request was turned down, it was decided a huge rope divided the sexes, a policeman being called to raise money by holding a surf bathing and lifesav if there were any infringem ent. Despite the rising ing display. This was the very first, in 1903; by 1908 popularity of open-sea bathing, the St Kilda Council the prototype of later lifesaving carnivals had been was still intent on building new sea-baths-stables for the horses after they had bolted. On opening in 193 1, the baths housed a gymnasium, and dancing and bridge parties; but returns were poor, once the council disallowed mixed bathing in the ladies' section. In fa ct many women felt safer swimming in restricted areas, and, mobilised by the conservative Australian Women's National Leagu e, two successful campaigns were run in St Kilda in the 1930s to maintain them. The issue which remained alive longest was swimming apparel. Even before the extension of hours, this was seen as a more serious matter: Manly fined people £2 for swimming illegally, but £ 10 for costume irregularities. The threat of impropriety was a real concern. Initially women's costumes might involve as much as ten metres of m aterial while m en were required to wear neck-to-knee outfits. 'Suicide suits', a St Kilda lifesaving squad dubbed them, for they certainly got in the way of serious swimming. On the whole, though, regulations were s imply ignored as fashions becam e bolder: attempts to im h GJ. d, while the 1913 carnival drew 30,000 people. pose standards sometimes produced laughable results. The Royal Lifesaving Society had been present Concerned about the way costumes tended to feature in Australia since 1894, but its m ethods had been Beyond the half the male anatomy, councillors insisted that m en wear imported from England, and were more applicable to dozen Australian briefs over their costumes-and later, since that did still waters and closed spaces. The surf required towns named not always result in a becoming modesty- that trunks different techniques; and so at Bondi, arising from a directly after the should have a 'modesty skirt'. committee designed to defend the local vicar- who primal English resort, At St Kilda, it was only a sudden unavailability had broken the swimming laws- there grew a Bondi there were in of neck-to-knee costumes which led to the council Surf Bathers Lifesaving Club. It is a toss-up as to addition a number of hotels drawing on abandoning them in 1938. Even at Manly there were whether this one or a rival at Bronte was the first such tl1e m emory of attempts to put the clock back, but after World War organisation in the world. Whichever, there were Brighton's glamour. II the battle shifted to women. Bondi had only just enough of them in Sydney in 1907 to form an associ made the 'modern costume' legal in 1951, when short ation. Australia's em erging beach culture had found ly afterwards inspectors were escorting the first biki its focus . • ni-clad woman off the beach. She was lent a jacket to Jim Davidson is writing a history of tourism in preserve her modesty. Australia with Peter Spearritt. V O LUME 6 N UMilER 1 • EUREKA STREET 37 T RAVEL PETER P IERCE Fortress Singapore 38 EUREKA STREET • JAN UARY-FEBRUARY 1996 they weigh the prawn-shells, or rice on the chop pects that m an y of them harbour scepticism about sticks? And who had paid in the fi rst place? the rhetoric of their government, but overt expres 'Surprising Singapore' is the them e of the coun sion of it is as hard to find as a brothel in this virtu try's latest advertising campaign 'down under'. Would ous city-state. In Chinatown one stall daringly sold be Australian tourists are advised to think no longer 'Fine Day' T-shirts, whose design listed the penalties of a bland, sanitised, safe, warm place (although what for the m any infractions that fl esh is heir to, even in was wrong with that?) but instead of a vibrant night Singapore. Such cheek is rare, and students wait un club land with Bugis Street restored (without trans til they've reached decadent Australia before mock sexuals), Raffl es newly resplendent and Chinatown ing the attraction of eugenics for the authorities in saved in parts fro m demolition fo r m ore high-rise. At Singapore who dreamed up what was in eff ect a dat the same tim e Singapore actively sought Australian, ing agency fo r its brightest graduates, its lack of a fr ee Japanese and other cashed-up revellers of the region press, or the treatment of hom osexuals. for the Great Sale. Th is was meant to begin in m id On our last m orning, I fell into conversation with July, just as we left, but by good fo rtune, m any stores an intelligent, disaffected man. T h is m igh t have disloyally jumped the gun. The paper ran over-hearty earned m e a quicker trip home. He was homosexual, 'shop till you drop' pieces. The emphasis was on what socially well-connected, and with a deep hatred for a gave Singapore an iden tity. No matter that this was regime to which his sexual preference was a 'phobia'. the fervid pursuit of material goods (no-one suspect The 'coming race' in Singapore, insofar as he discerned ed 'culture' in old, discredited Western senses), as long official intentions, was to be comprised of 'blue-eyed as Singapore was identifying itself, the latest govern boys': favoured, genetically superior Chinese succes m ent strategy was on its way to realisation . The sors of the British, who could exploit the advantages Straits Times allowed no sceptical opinion of the of a dual heritage. Highly literate, deeply insecure, Great Sale, but retailers evidently fo und revenues less m y confidant than t hey hoped. Retrenchments of staff were ru stands for much moured. The strong Singaporean dollar (o n a par with that the govern Australia's literally, if not otherwise) was exacting ment of his country its toll on the shop floor. Predictably, the Straits Times wishes to suppress berated shop-keepers for competing-'not pulling or deny. If he does together as a team'. That this latest, mild shock cam e not represent a so th rough Singapore's most saleable asset- what it has cial or political to sell- was a neat irony. force t h at m igh t Soon t h e National Day celebrations wou ld overthrow it, h e expunge an unpleasant episode. While we were in witnessed to the Singapore during July, thousands of uniformed stu covert fi ssuring of dents drilled in the streets and on the ovals in front of the relentlessly Parliam ent House. Girl guides, scouts, youths of the imposed fa cade of Boys' Brigades, army reservists clicked heels in uni unity in Singapore. son as the island which Lee Kuan Yew had seized from Oppressed h om his erstwhile communist allies, then from the wreck within, rather than age of union with Malaysia, celebrated 30 years on its threat en ed from own version of the capitalist road. Yet the reverbera without like H ong tions were hollow. As identity is manufactured in Sin Kong, Sin ga pore gapore, so spontaneity is confected. Often the results under its present are cheerless public spectacles, risible to jaded West dis pen sa tion- m ay ern eyes, as when 30,000 Singa poreans (a world record) struggle t o see a worked out together before aerobics instruc- 50th National Day. tors who led them down the fitness road. There m ay come a point where the in A D YET ON E IS NOT SPEAKIN G of a weak or credu ten sely defensive lous people, no matter the image in which the gov self-congratulation ernment would wish them t o be made. Local that the island's rul communities are forming and reforming in Singapore, ers prom ote will without much regard fo r the abstractions of 'identi cease to have even ty' or 'national unity'. We went to Yishun, at the cerem onial m ean northern extremity of the excellent Mass Transit Rail ing for those living way. It is already provided with pools and schools, and working there. shopping centres and m arkets, as are numerous other The govern high -rise settlem ents around the island, som e of m ent elite's sensi between 200,000 and 250,000 inhabitants. One sus- tivity to criticism V OLUME 6 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 39 was sharply illustrated when the Prime Minister, Goh campaigns. When these began in 1967, transforming Chok Tong, his predecessor Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore into a clean city was declared a national latter's son, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, priority 'second (sic) only to defence and economic sued the Jntemational Herald Tribune for suggesting development'. Now that Singapore is so clean, the fear that the Singapore judiciary was pliant to their wishes. is that it may not remain so. The government dreams As the price of continuing to do business, the paper not only of a rich nation-state, but of a society kept paid damages, though much less than first sought. in stasis, its equilibrium maintained by legal and so cial pressure. That this condition is not sustainable, m ay be the prime, secret torment of its rulers. The Male Prostitute's Other problem s are summarily despatched. N ext day the paper casually reported the hanging of a drug Soliloquy trafficker and two murderers at Changi. The latter had been involved in bloody secret society or gang i'm at work affrays. Yet they commanded less space than litter don't interrupt m e bugs. Stories of exemplary punishment are popular, but concern lesser offences, such as the graffiti art of the question now is not the American teenager who was caned for it. The back to be or not to be page of the Straits Times on lO July had an artful shot of lines of m en in shorts, reflected on a wet pavement. the question is The heading 'Ramrod spirit of a new dawn' hardly to be had or not to be prep.ared fo r the information that these were inmates but the newly acquired sense of sheer passivity of a drug rehabilitation centre, still less for the homiletic conclusion that the photograph 'refl ects is a thrilling experience in which their indomitable spirit as they hold their heads high you watch yourself being fried into meat balls to face a new dawn'. Was no stifled laugh ter heard across the breakfast tables of Singapore? Or is such a barbecued with sucl 40 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FE!lll.UARY 1996 low-s lung Raffles Hotel, the Chinaman Scholar been recognised long ago, part of Australia's history Gallery, with its shoes for bound feet, opium pipes, is Singapore. Its problems are serious, and, despite the photographs of ancestors and of taipans pictured with ostensibly crazy scale of the comparison, resemble the clocks that emphasise how here, as in the West, some of our own. In common are not only a national you-know-what is money. A junk ride in the waters around Singapore disclos es the vain naval fortifications against the Japanese, the kitsch of Kusu is A Man of Future Speaks about Love land- a turtle them e park- but also the miracle of the region: a city rising i m ean why do you have to bother out of the water. Across the crowded the japanese have practised surgically removing their appendix causeway to Johore Bahru in Malaysia (a second connection is scheduled for at an early age longer than any culture in the world completion late in 1997) one comes so do we upon two versions of the past: Singa pore in the early stages of its modern get rid of the instinct for love at one remove isa tion, and the survival of British by using high-tech instruments institutions and upper-class custom s. the human body is nothing In the Istana Besar, old palace of the sultans of Johore, a dynastic life of m o but an index to his mind toring, hunting and material acquisi an index that contains all kinds of cross-references tion is celebrated. Here are chairs of Baccarat crystal, a superb collection of as many times as you would like to cross Malay weapons, medals awarded to we now produce babies by the tube-loads sultans past from everywhere but Ru or put them away in euthanasia ritania, a hunting room with details of 35 tigers killed, antelope legs and ele l ove~ phant feet as umbrella stands and rub i have never heard of that word being said bish bins, a smoking et made from a nor seen it being used tiger's skull, besides an Ablution Room for the Royal Remains. Such they'd be laughing their heads off to hear m e say it happily vulgar ostentation has no place although i know in the au stere polity of Singapore, where the display of power is oblique, that they do use it if no less sure. as a kind of aphrodisiac Au tralia was intimately involved when they have sex with Singapore by trade and imperial politics long before the coming of the to make the whole thing feel nice People's Action Party. Episodes of K.S. Prichard's pot-boiler Moon of Desire were set here, and her title has been oh yes appropriated by one of the writers for there are some scholars the 'Futuristic Romance' series popu specialized in love lar at MRT book-stalls. Both literature of war-time heroics (Ronald McKie's as an ancient tradition The Heroes ) and of endurance (the that is going out of fashion near the end of the twentieth century POW m emoirs by Rohan Rivett, Rus sel Braddon and Ray Parkin) had Sin- ga pore as their site of trial. A visit to Ouyang Yu Changi, whose museum and chapel are more emotionally affecting because modest and do identity that seems perpetually in need of fabrication, mestic in scale, is a potent antidote to historical am but abiding uncertainties over one's place in a sup nesia. For Mike Langford, war photographer hero of posedly hostile region. The condescending compari Christopher Koch's novel Highways to a War, Singa sons which Singapore' leaders have m ade with pore is the first intoxicating sniff of the East, 'the place Australia may signal fears that the two countries share I've always been waiting for'. It is here that Bruce a doubtful future, as well as a chequered past. • Grant's Cherry Bloom and the title story of Ian Mof fitt's brilliant, dark collection of stories, The Electric Peter Pierce teaches Australian Studies at Monash Jungle, take place. In vital ways which ought to have Univcrstiy. V o LUME 6 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 41 BooKs D AVID B RADDON-MITCHELL This little piece of earth T he Future Eaters, Ttm Fl,mncry, RccJ, Australw, papctback llJ9S . IUU' $ 19.95 t<;HN 0 7.1 01 041\7 7 Y ou'LL LEAR o MUCH from of the Maori brought chickens this book that it might be hard to pin with them, I think most reader down the central themes. You'll learn would get the impression that it's how the lands of Australasia- Aus- a fairly uncontroversial view. A tralia, New Guinea, New Zealand little bit of research reveals that and New Caledonia were carved from in fact the orthodoxy is that the Gondwana, how the different geo- longer-th an -u sual voyages re- logical histori es have surprising con- quired for Polynesian settlement sequences for life today, how the of New Zealand make it likely initial ani val ofthe two-legged pred- that it was the exception to the a tor Homo sapiens changed the usual pattern of settlement with environments in these lands forev- chi ckens. I'm not sure that the er, from the mass extinctions of large orthodoxy is right: I doubt that herbivores to dramatic changes in the matter could ever be settled short band during the years of plenty. It's the kinds of flora that dominate. of discovery of old enough chicken after the years of plenty are over that The mixture is extraordinarily bones (a nd if only one generati on of fortifications start to em erge and ric h; just abou t every page is chi ckens survived we shouldn't ex- with a fairly predictable climate, crammed with ideas and facts about pect this even if Flannery is right), populations are u suall y at the upper the ecological history of Australasia but it's enough to recommend a lit- limit of the carrying capacity of the which range fr om excited explica- tle caution in how you take his Janel, with a resultant constant jock ti o n of established orthodoxy, claims. eying for control of scarce resources. through pa ssionate advocacy of Jess Out of all this rich and fa scinat- By the time of white settlement an cstablished views, to always inter- ing detail, though, a central theme extraordinarily militari stic society esting but sometimes fairly unfet- does crnerge even m ore important had cvol ved. tered speculation. than the way humans have shaped By contrast, in large parts of It's good that the book shou ld the environment of our lands: it's Australia the climate and the poor m anage to do all these things, but by h ow those environm e nts have land has produced a very different wa y of complaint it's not always shaped humans. It's a theme we must res ult. After the initial bounty is easy to tease them apart. Here's just lea rn well if we want to have any consumed a kind of balance gets a sm all example: in telling an ceo- influence on the sort of peoples we imposed. The El Nino Southern logical history of the Maori people, becom e. Oscillation (ENSO) is the weather Fla nnery tells us that the Polynesian I'll illustrate this theme with two pattern that is responsible for Aus settlers of N ew Zealand arrived prob- contrasting accounts of the impact trali a's unpredictabl e m osaic of ably with chickens in tow (which of the environment on droughts, fl oods and fires. Beca use it they would have called 'moa', a fair human culture. is so unpredictable, nothing much ly standard Polynesian word for ca n be done to guard against it (even, c hi cken ) but didn ' t bothe r to FIR ST LET' S FINIS H FLANNERY'S Story it would seem , by contemporary continue to domesticate them since about the moa: the mass extinction agriculturists who you might hope there were enormous chickens (ac caused by the first human settle would factor in drought m ore effec tually large flightless birds of the ment of N ew Zealand soon included tively into their long- term plans). genus Diomis, distant relatives of the moa and large number of other The result was that when the bad emus) to be had for the taking. edible species, and many of the pred times ca m e the population was Naturally the large birds were ators that might have depended on reduced, so that during the good called 'rnoa', and were hunted to them. The result is a major food times- which were most of the extinction over the next two hun crisis, with few and unsuitable crops, time-there was abundan ce. But dred years. It's a small worry, but and no domestic animals. although th e re was abu ndance although Flannery doesn't insist that Quite reasonably; it would have relative to the population, the it's at al l certain that the ancestors been a waste of time to till or hus- carrying capacity was low: it took a 42 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY- FEBRUAR Y 1996 Out of all this rich and fascinating detail, though, a central theme does emerge even more important than the way hmnans have shaped the environment of our lands: it's how those environments have shaped hmnans. It's a theme we must learn well if we want to have any influence on the sort of peoples we become. lot of land to support the genetically the lands is unlikely to m ake u s into perhaps, human psychology. We viable minimum po pula tion of the people we want to be. aren 't very good, as a species, at around five hundred. A consequence In a world economy, the influ responding to coolly-calculated long of that: during the good years the ence of ENSO is evened out by bor term threats that proceed slowly and m ost scarce resource is actually rowing during the bad years in a kind imperceptibly. This is hardly sur genes, so complex social connexions of ecological Keynesian cycle. So a prising. Our best guesses about the with populations at great future of increasing devastation of long- term future have, over the distances were encouraged. our resources in a culture gradually period of human evolution, been at transformed by working at the mar b est ra ndom a nd a t wors t T HERE IS A TONE OF envuonmen gin of our carrying capacity is a very preposterous. tal determinism to these accounts real possibility. But the economically Portents of doom have been dis tha t m ay worry som e. But sm oothed out ENSO won't cull our covered in every age; and there have enviro nmental determinism admits population, and nor would we want always been theories according to of degrees. Yo u can think that Flan it to. So we have to have a deliberate which great and terrible events were nery's accounts are substantially population policy that has general to occur. A culture or a psychology correct while admitting that if the acceptance, and an attitude of respect which led people to take such por initial cultural practices of the peo for and m anagem ent of our ecologi tents serious! y, and change their lives ples that cam e to these lands were cal resources that doesn't always in ways that reduced their harvests very different, so would have been maximise our short-term interests. relative to their neighbours, was a the effect that the lands had on them . What we need is a dram a tic culture or psychology tha t was What importance do these tales change to a whole range of cultural u sually on the way out. have for us? Refl ecting on the history practices in so far as they affect Som ething has changed in the of environmental impacts on culture population, agriculture, and the past hundred years or so. These guess is crucial fo r our cultural and mate managem ent of our resources. In es about the future have go t dramat rial future. I think that we can, with short, a dramatic response to a threat ically better. For perhaps the fi rst out too much golde n age w hich cool, calculating, ra tional time in history, our middle-to-long romanticism, take the impact of persons have determined using the term predictions about the state of EN SO and the low fertility of the best theories of the day-a dramatic the na ttnal world are good enough to lands to have exercised a benign response which may well be contra ry be worth acting on. And, sadly, the cultural influence, though it is not to our short or even medium-term actions are urgently required. Failure our place to judge whether the deaths material interests. to respond to them m ay be cata during the bad years were worth it. N ow it's my turn to engage in strophic. But there is little reason to And the cultural impact of persistent som e highly speculative gu esses suppose that our capacity to be scarcity with a population always on about the impact of the en viron motivated by these guesses has the edge of the carrying capacity of m ent on human culture or even, improved, for that im provement VOLUME 6 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 43 PHOTOGRAPHY BILL THOMAS could need a long history in which vating to me than prevention of those acting in line with best rational greater threats. Bimberi and other guesses about the middle- distant places in the Namadgi are sacred future was rewarded. We don't have sites to som e who now live in this In focus the time for a long history. region, even if they are not as central So what might be motivating? A to our way of life as they were to the glance at the past helps again. It' indigenous peoples who have been controversial, but it does seem as driven fr om these lands. And it is thou gh societies have at times that sense of the sacred, and the need organised themselves in ways which for the protection of the sacred, that haven't always promoted short-term provides the motivational power to prosperity becau se of religious or act on questions that we might ad spiritual convictions. Maybe those mit, in a more dispassionate mo are the m otivational tools ment, matter more. we need to access. Sentime nt gen e rated by the passion for particualar sacred places BIMBE R! PEAK iS the high est m otivates protection of the greater mountain in the ACT, one of the environment. People who have never northernmost high peaks of the been to the Daintree, for example, or Oli ve Cotton: Photographer, Australian Alps. In summer the peak the Tarkine, have acted to help its IntroJuction hy Hden Ennis and is an alpine herbfield scattered with protection. I doubt that in many cases Memoir by Sally Mcinern ey, the occasional m assively-gnarled it is because they think that va luable ational Library of Au strali a, Jounama snow gum, crouching biodiversity in its depths might 1995. J<;I\N 0 642 10649 :') tentatively as if unsure whether the contain biological resources, or that RIU' S29.9S land is above the treeline or not. It is it contributes to carbon scrubbing, at the hea rt of the fastness of the good reasons though these are. Rath O uvE CorroN: PH OTOGRAPHER is Bimberi Wilderness, defended on er, they value these pl aces because a delightful book. For those not fa va rious sides by other wildernesses they have learnt to love the land in a miliar with the work of this unusual which it overlooks: including local way, perhaps even imbuing a Australian woman, this volume Ko ciusko to the south, and the sense of place with an almost reli provides an info rmative and techni Brindabellas to the north. gious feeling. Then it is easy to gen cally fine introduction. Those who Insofar as you ca n be sure that eralise that love that on to the wider are familiar with Cotton's images anywhere in Australia is safe from natural world and its impact on our will welcome this addition to their over-exploitation, you can be sure cultures. libraries. that this place is adequatel y So the complaint that some have Helen Enni details Cotton's li fe protected. For som e reason it was that the environment movement is and the important role photography here that I was thinking about the a quasi-religion ought, I think, be no has played in it. T he first section of final sections of Flannery's book, in complaint. And the som etimes the narrative is liberally peppered which he wonders how our practices awkward passi on with which with quotes from Olive that brea the and culture needs to change to all ow Flannery imbues hi s writing about life into the times she was working us to 'think, understand and act to ecological matters is in fac t in and clearly locate her as an impor make our lives better'. one of its strengths. tant figure in the hi story of photog I tried thinking about some of raphy in this country. The second the pressing problem s that future Jl!OLOGICAL SC IENCES have a part is a very personal account of ea ting have given us; desertification fascinating story to tell about how Olive's life and work, by her daugh of Western NSW in ever-growing we came to be the people we are, and ter Sally Mcinerney amounts, the ncar-dea th of the great about the kind of people we may The photographs themselves ri vcr systems that fairly directly feed become unless we better respect the form the main body of the book. us, and the die-back that is killing land that feeds us. But just under Each of them is reproduced in rich our trees in alarming numbers. These standing that story alone will, by duoton e and accompa nied by problems are greater in every way it elf, lead few to act on that Cotton's own commentary, offering than any threats to the Bimberi, both knowledge. We must cultivate in a rare insight into her working because Bimberi faces rcla ti vely few ourselves a sense of the sacredness method - fa scinating for profcssio threats (unlike so m any of our other of our lands, and hope that t he anl or amatucr- and into Olive wildernesses) and because, viewed passions so generated will act in Cotton herself. • di passionately, to despoil the concert with knowledge. Flannery's Bimbcri would do less harm than, book, for all its frustrations, is a feast Bill Thomas is a freelance photogra say, the w idespread ruin of agricul for both reason and the passions. • pher. His work appears regularly in tural land due to unsustainable prac Eureka Street. tices. David Braddon-Mitchell teach es Photographs: Girl with a Mirror And yet, strangely, protecting philosophy of bi ol ogy at th e (1938), above, and Teacup Ballet Bimbcri is far m ore directly moti- Australian N 44 EUREKA STREET • JA NUA RY-FEI!RUARY 1996 BooKs: 3 G ERARD WINDSOR Green salad days T ,Ao mAUAN !950wunmcd souvenir. For the moment, however, a peculi ar species of prose. Lush, this American market is a blight on learned, larrikin, ea rthed, hyperbolic, the book. There are too many lumps amusing and unintimidated, its prac of dead verbiage which only ma ke titioners first began writing in that sense as potted Australian hi story supposedly boring decade but have and culture for a US readership. So, enjoyed a protracted heyday. I can't jammed into the text we ge t foot think of predecessors, nor of any note material on, for example, the comparabl e group of more recent Archibald Fountain, the Industrial developers. Bob Ellis, Germaine Groupers, slips (as in cricket ), ath Greer, Robert Hughes, Clive Jam es letics team (apparently unhea rd of arc looming personality writers in the USA). On page three I puzzled whose m ould seem s to have been over the words 'During the Second smashed by the mid-I960s. World War sentimental Yanks (some A preliminary scientific descrip of them, of course, Southerners) ... ' tion of the species would note that until! reali sed the distracting paren it's a N ew South Wales phenom e thesis was entirely for ... Yanks. I non; these four who, to me, exempli want to yel l, 'Look Tom, you're a fy the tradition most fo rcibly, arc all very good writer. Stop this defacing, graduates of Sydney University stop trying for two birds with the (though Greer of course was origi one stone. Hang the expense. Do nally a Victorian ). Secondly a strong two editions. Get a good editor. Slow relig ious background is present in down.' all cases except that of Jam es; that In Homebush Boy, an account of whole dra m atic, mys terious icono Homcbush Buy , A Memoir, Kencally's seventeenth year, his fi nal graphicall y- riddled world seems the Tom Kcnc,dlv, M111crva , one at school, the drama centres on appropriate mulch fo r this style. Melbourne, I'YLJ:'i . w hether he will or will not decide to T hirdly it seems to be nourished by l\1\'1 1 xc,.no so2 'i 1uu• s 1X .LJ:'i be a priest. This is material vulnera getting perman ently out of the ble to a m ocking, over-the- top trea t country. Fourthly, it is well-suited suited for the quick sound bi te as it ment. One coul d imagine it-has to sa tire, polem ic, essays, reviews, does for the lecture or the guest seen it-in the hands of an Ellis or a columns; pace Bob Ellis, it gets in speech. Hughes. In hi s ea rly pages Kenea ll y the way of scripts or fiction- the Yet Keneally h as neither the too doesn't quite avoid it; his enthu fl amboya nt swagger of the writer learning nor the cavali er ideological siastic, romantic youthful self (the doesn't let any other personalities sa ng -fr oid to be a Greer or a Hughes, fa ther to the man all right) gets the get a look in . nor the profession al funn y ma n fl ashing arrows pointing at him a bi t Tom Kencall y is of this era, and interest to be an Elli s or a James. On too often. His devotion to Gerard part I y of this colou r. In his mem oir, the other hand he has a capacity for Manley Hopkins, for example, be Homebush Boy, he pro mises us a empathy and dram a which have comes an exceedingly boring refra in. 'tale ... of the one reckl ess, sweet, m ade him primarily, and at his most O ther characters remain shadowy, di vi nely hectic and subtly hormonal successful , a writer of fi ction. but, without exception, on the si de yea r'. This is a personality where the Som e of the tensions of the might of the angels, especially the women. words brim and bubble over. Keneally havc- bcens are evident inHomebush Tom Keneally ca n't let a woman is the conjuror, grinning broadly amid Boy. Look at the title. Tom Kenea ll y, pass by without marking her wi th an the fi zz of his verbal eruptions, ra th publicist and performer, is doing unambiguous ti ck. 'Bernadette Cur er than the gifted craft sman, select n atty things with it. It's hardl y ran's parents raised their splendid ing and paring and placing. In fac t cynical to imagine there'll be a large daughters' or 'the bungalow where Kc neally is a gifted public perform format, illustrated cdi tion of the book the Curran wom en stored their er, an always worthwhile talent for fo r the year 2000. America's visitors beauty and cleverness.' As a woman the m edia. His individual linguistic to the Hom ebush Ba y Olympics fri end pointed out to me, whatever ge nius is voluble, fe brile, emphat should find their fav ourite Austral about Tom Kcneall y's own straining ic-and this makes him at least as ian writer's local memoir the perfect fe minist intentions, this brand of 46 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1996 refl ex, unspecific extravagance is been part of this circle all through So I walked home with Matt and actually a clerical mannerism-'M ay their schooldays. Mangan knowing I would go. How I speak to your good wife ... How's the decision chastened, calmed and your wonderful m other. ' Either Matt or Larkin the agnostic ye t exhilarated me. As the book advances, Keneally said, 'Which one of you will be focuses and reins in. The fi ction Mother Superior first1' and we saw This is perceptive and m oving m aker asserts himself. We get more Mr Curran hide his fa ce and turn his and utterly unpatronising. It gives dram atic set-pieces-and very good shoulder, which began to shudder. full value to a whole culture, with ones- such as his interview about A shamed silence fell over every out the distorting excess of either the priesthood with Cardinal Gilroy. one, and Mrs Curran went and laid sentime ntality or latte r-day He does not repudiate or even m ake a hand on his arm. scepticism . Ken eally is giving us much fun of his 16-year-old self. In that second I knew I was going genuine communion of saints stuff, There is no Whig version of even too. The sense of seeing the rituals Australian variety. Australian history here. For all Tom fr om the inside, the way GMH had, Homebush Boy might be Tom Keneally's later changes of life and overtook me again, but now did not Keneally's Portrait of the Youthful stre nuou s p olitical activ is m , fill me with terror. It was in part a Artist, but this adolescent is neither Homebush Boy is no dismissal of a matter of cra zily knowing that grief solitary, not alienated from family benighted and well-rid-of world. An could not be avoided, and this grief or teachers or faith or nation. Far old life is brought out and displayed by the Curran parents was from being an elect soul, h e is handled aff ectiontely. purposeful and noble. In the determinedly one of his people- not Curran's house at tea the richly only Tom but Mick as well. The I RONICALLY, IN SPITE OF its frequent coloured skeins of motivation-a prose of seigneurial fl ourish and self lush fruitiness, this book is a m emo yearning for GMH' s God, a desire to regarding performance rem ains a rial to ordinariness, extrem e ordi serve, a desire to instruct, a taste for siren for T om Keneally, but the nariness. drama, a preference for fl eshless dem ocrat and the dramatist in him love, an exaltation in the Latin rites. wrestles it ceaselessly. • Back with Matt to Shortland Ave I would never be bored by them, I nue, then dawdle home with Man knew. I would never listen surrepti Gerard Winds or's alternative ga n, calling at Frawley's on the way. tiou sly in the confession als, account ofthe 1960s, Heaven, Where Like a more accustomed adolescent between penitents, to the Saturday The Ba chelors Sit, will be published in that: delaying going home if you races. in 1996. could. On top of that, delicious hours of study lay ahead. In a life BooKs: 4 rich in experiences, I would la ter live as richly but never more so. JEREMY C LARKE This is the man who has covered Eritrea, and given Steven Spielberg an entree to serious respectability, and had his nam e read out from th e Whispering Jose card for the Booker Prize in the London Guildhall. Yet the h ero of H ome bush Ba y is suburban Au stralian life-neighbourhood and community-and of the 1950s what's IN1988 GouGH WH m AM, " movem ent of foreign students from m ore. Boys, girls, parents, teachers President of the Australia China one city to another. Thus it was that, supporting and dropping in and Council, was visiting the People's by the cold banks of Lake Tai near Republic of China Wuxi, inland from chatting and competing and watch Chinese Whispers: cultural essays, with fellow council Shanghai, I, along ing one another. At the end, when Nicholas Jose, Wakefield Press, m e mbers on a w ith five other the Curran family travels up to New Adelaide 1995 . 'human resou rces young Au s tral castle fo r the entry of the always ISBN 1 86254 336 4 RR P $16.95 wry, always level-headed daughter, development tour' . ians, was one such Bernadette, into the Dominicans, the T h e Australia C h i n a Council human resource being developed. Keneally family accompanies them planned to evaluate the eff ectiveness Our m eeting with the Great right to the convent parlou r. of their cultural exchanges and Helmsman was at once enjoyable For young T om (s till Mick at this governmen t-sponsored study pro and brief. At its conclusion, as he stage), the catalytic m om ent that gram s by talking with Australian and his entourage were whisked to sends him off to the seminary at exchange students 'on the ground.' on e side for sumptuou s l ocal Springwood com es at afternoon tea Nicholas Jose, cultural counsellor delicacies, we were led to a back at the Currans. There are other at the Australian Embassy in Beijing room fo r a quick bowl of noodles friends there, Rose Frawley who is at the time, had the task of coordi before the afternoon train back to also entering, and boys who have nating with the local authorities the Shanghai and further ' developm en t'. V o LU M E 6 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 47 Muttering idiomaticall y-colourful Australia has been described as a that t e rrible June of 1989 arc descriptions about burea ucrats and co untry which takes Sinology examined in the way Jose exa mines dawn journeys across a wintery seriously. With this collection of other issues in the book- with Chinese landscape, we found to our essays Jose joins that group of insight, with a delicacy that avoids delight and surprise that Nick had Sinologists who are able to blend simplicity, but above all with chosen to accompany us back to academic discipline and popular compassion. Jose describe Shanghai. Leaning back against the interest with flair and integrity. Tiananmen Sq uare as an cpiccntrc antimacassars and sipping our China These writings place Jose alongside for his collection of writings. The Rail ways tea, we talked Iongo£ things such China watchers as Geremic essay 'The Beat Goes On' is a Chinese and, with now friendlier Barm c and Linda Jaivin, long- time must-read for all who want to believe eyes, watched the countryside sweep observers of everything from Chinese the revisionist (trade-inspired?) line under the train . punk rock t o contempora ry that there was no massacre in In Chinese Whispers, a coll ec literature, and Mich ael Dutton, Beijing-' .. . like Thomas I have seen tion of writings from 1980 to 1995 writer on policing and punishment the bullet hole in a friend 's grouped together as 'cultural essays', in the People's Republic of China. leg ... ' Jo c continues to be a sympathetic Learned yet not musty, informa guide to things Chinese, alert to the tive but with an eye for the quirky, T HE LA ST ESS AY , 'leE CiTY', perhaps great march of hopes and dream s Jose's collection is a reflection of the describes best the gradu al under that is contemporary Chinese value of personal experience and s tandings and the desires for society. exchange over the m eagre gold dust intimacy that epitomise true cultura l Writing about things Chinese is siftings of academic research. exchange. Jose had travelled to a bit like writing about God- the The volume is short and sensi Harbin to m eet with a local artists' more definite one is, the more one is tive-less a series of snapshots of collective that included prin tmakcr, likely to be wrong. Clarity and insight author with stuffed panda at the Shen Shaomin, two of whose works arc perhaps only achi eved through Great Wall than a looking-through- have been acquired by the New South a-glass-darkl y a t Wales Art Gallery. issues like politics, A walk along the frozen Songhua Jose describes Tiananznen Square as an travel, history, art River almost ended in tragedy when and lite ra ture. 'the safe markers disappeared under epicentre for his collection of writings. The Although th e falling snow and the ice broke', catchall title throwing Jose's two companions into essay 'The Beat Goes On' is a must-read foi all 'cultural essays' the freezing water. Jose was 48 EUREKA STREET • JAN UARY-FE!lRUARY 1996 Greater Interests As he grows older his life has not slipped away. All he has to show Is so much and so various he has long given up keeping track of it all. As the days keep drawing in to a close he knows he is getting older, Yet he has not missed anything, there is nowhere he has gone disastrously wrong. Why should he be the one who does not feel lonely? Why has he no sense that Farewell speeches might be in order? He thinks, it would be lovely to say Behind him are only bright and happy memories and, strangely, this is the case. I Hold it there! The catastrophe proves there is no art to losing touch. Certainly it isn't sentiment he feels, more like a growing puzzlement Or breathtaking distance that is twenty years of his life filled with greater interests, But who are these men, he asks himself, who were they then? They walk almost float down the street in their Levis. Smoke cheap Bank that they stuff back into their checkshirt pockets. They carry red bass guitars and yellow Gibson twelve-strings in black cases. Past milk bars and chemists, across the empty car parks with empty Paper and empty boxes rolling across the cold top. What were those rivalries for? To grow into friendships that would soon meet other friendships, and there Recognition broke down the inhibitions. Moneyed and mollified suburbs, Beyond the smog, quiver as the transistors play a request favourite. Materialism, That was an easy target of the young men who lived in better times, Who knew nothing worse. They cross the Shell service station under a silvery sky, On their way to Gazza's place. If it wasn't Gazza's it was John's or Bill's, In the days of getting a car licence, of writing riffs around electric lover words. And who are these women? Sitting in their cords at bus stops, Twisting their curls and playing hard to get, an easy game to learn. They harbour boy interests but in their arms are scholarships to universities. Leather jackets and motorbikes are a catch-all, anything will be done To rip up Whitehorse Road into the hills for the day. Women won't miss out. They hold smiles they find hard to make. Some make records They find hard to live down, and it is always in the name, not of revolution, Not of religion, not of money, it is always for love. They smile and they while, They wait. Cigarettes down by the creek or up at the rail embankment. Who are they, before job prospects harrowed them, before drugs propelled them, Before the meaning of school became more than time wasting? How does he see them z Do they seem innocent now? Going home again to jumpy TV comedies And homework about differentials and the Westm.inster division of powers. Executive cars pull out of driveways. Other cities require their unique expertise. Somewhere a soul desperate disappointment leaves him wishing for his old circles, But it is too late now. He read about the catastrophe this morning, quite by chance, On page seven. And he himself has his own worries, two children who talk back And a wife who hates her job and the sight of all those dishes. Philip Harvey Greater Interests won the ABC Radio National 1995 poetry competition. V o LUME 6 NuMBER l • EUREKA STREET 49 B OOKS: 5 GILLIAN A PPLETON Birds of the air T ,ABC '' SATUWAY aftemooo gram '!reaches! the most people and feminist radio program, the Coming The Coming Out Show: Twenty !has] the greatest influence of any Out Show (now known as Women Years of Feminist ABC Radio, ideological outlet in the country'. Out Loud) turned 20 late last year. Li z Fell and Carolyn W c n zc l ( cd ~L Given the recent, largely m edia Most of us who were involved in AB C Books, Sydney 1995. generated, stand-off between older fighting for its establis hme nt 1\H () 733 0433 H RIU ' $J6.9.'i and younger feminists, one hopes probably feel a mild sense of surprise that the latter may find some value that it has lasted this long and, by sanct idea of 'broadcast quality'. in the book's accounts of how things and large, remained true to its origi Much more important but, sadly, used to be. Former co-ordinator nal objectives. ABC Books marked less influential on the wider ABC, Nicola Joseph writes: 'Having lis the birthday with this collection of has been its role as a microcosm of tened to the old programs and learned contributions from a dozen women issues of race and gender. Jill Ember about the early days, I wish I had who have been involved in the son and Penny O'Donnell present a known the history when I first start program at various stages from its sometimes painful account of a ed'. What would today's young wom inception to the present. difficult (and not yet fully resolved) en make of the proposals (radical at Liz Fell and Carolyn Wenzel dilemm.a for the program, when the time) put forward by ABC wom remind us that much of the program's Aboriginal women and women of en to mark International Women's life has often involved debilitating non-English-speaking background Year in 1975-such as one day with battles: with ABC management and fought for the exclusive right to cover female announcers and program pre Board, with conservative listeners stories about themselves, leading to senters, or a concert of m u ic by and groups such as 'Women Who cries of censorship and rifts with the women composers, or Boyer Lectures Want to Be Women'. The program mainly white middle-class women presented by a woman? What would has acted as town crier or referee in they make of the description, by ideological struggles of various kinds. sometime ABC chairman, John Nor LE-i'S Dr;:CLARE \qq6 Yet Coming Out survived to prove iHE. gard, of the program that 'the girls Yf-AR OF ~~ FE.€; INcJ