Vol. 1 No. 9 November 1991 $4.00 Queensland's flying high Thinking about justice for the next century­ what shape will we be in? See p.29. Volume 1 Number 9 !ET November 199 1 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology

CoNTENTS

4 23 COMMENT QUIXOTE 6 24 LETTERS THE PEOPLE NOBODY WANTS Damien Simonis reports on the Harkis, 7 France's unwanted legacy of the Algerian THE WITHERING OF THE HEATH war of independence. Peter Pierce takes the long view at Caulfield racecourse . 27 OBITUARY 8 Avery Dulles SJ pays tribute to French WORLD REPORT theologian Henri de Lubac SJ . Damien Simonis (p .S) and Liz Jackson (p.9) talk to Czechs and Russians about life after 28 the revolution. WHEN IS A RUIN REALLY A RUIN1 Mark Coleridge takes issue with Gerard 10 Windsor. DEMOCRACY ON THE BOIL Queensland may have something to teach 29 the southern states, concludes Margaret PAST IMPERFECT, Simons. FUTURE INDEFINITE Social justice for the next century. 15 ARCHIMEDES 36 BOOKS AND ARTS 16 Jack Waterford reviews Fred Hollow's CAPITAL LETTER autobiography; M.J. Crennan on Allister Sparks' and Rian Malan's views of South Cover design by John va n Loon; 17 Africa (p.39); Bmce Williams looks at the cartoons pp.6 and 45 THE EMPERORS WITHOUT CLOTHES work of Chamber Made Opera (p.42) . by Dean Moore; China's people are not fooled by their photOgraphs pp.5, 31, 33 and 35 by Andrew Stark. leaders, argues Paul Rule. 38 SPIRIT 19 Poem by Patrick O'Donoghue. Eureka Street magazine CUTTING ROOM Jesuit Publications 44 PO Box 553 20 Richmond VTC 3 12 1 FLASH IN THE PAN Tel (03) 427 73 11 THE STONES ARE LAUGHING Reviews of the films The Field, Ba ck ­ Fa x (03) 428 4450 Israeli peace activist Amos Oz tells Michael draft, Life is Sweet and Thelma and McGirr that the desert is the great equaliser. Louise. EUREKA StREEt COMMENT Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Production Editor Political hope Ray Cassin Design Consultant John van Loon Production Assistant Paul Fyfe SJ A T THE WRITERS' FESTIVAL in September, a yow1g man in the front row stood up at the end of one session and, Contributing Editors waving his arms with some passion, challenged the speaker: Perth: Janette Gray RSM 'You argue impressively, but somehow you leave m e with no Adelaide: Frances Browne IBVM hope.' The panel had been discussing the issue 'Who's Left? ', : Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor from their various political perspectives. The young man was Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ questioning the last speaker, Robert Manne, editor of Quadrant, Darwin: Margaret Palmer who had indeed argued in1pressively, whether or not you agreed with his analysis of the necessary courses of social and politi­ European correspondent: Damien Simonis cal action in a postcommunist world. His questioner was US correspondent: Michael Harter SJ insistent: 'I understand what you are saying but what hope do you leave me with?' Manne remarked that it was not his Editorial Board business to bring him hope. 'I'm here to make you think/ he Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), declared. Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, The young man came back at him with his demand Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, strengthened. Yes he understood that it was crucial to think Trevor Hales, David Hawke FSC, clearly about political issues, but to sustain the effort he needed Christine Martin, Kevin McDonald, also to have hope. He needed to believe that the hard work of Joan Nowotny IBVM , Lyn Nossal, thinking and making judgements and choices would somehow Ruth Pendavingh, be worth the effort. Manne wouldn't play the prophet for him. Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ Instea d, he made a virtue of restraint: he wasn't there to preach. Business Manager: Louise Metres But I don't think the young man was a follower, a disciple Acco unts Manager: Bernadette Bacash looking for a demagogue. He was poised on the line that sepa­ rates commitment from apathy and cynicism. And he wanted Patrons to be given some sense that the difficult task of shaping a just Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the society was not going to be a futile enterprise. support of C. L. Adami; the trustees of the estate After all the afternoon's talk of political theory-some of of Miss M. Condon; D.M. Cullity; it convincing, some of it banal and self-regarding, as is the way F.G. Gargan; W.P. Gurry;). F. O'Brien; at writers' gatherings-what lingered in the stuffy, packed au­ A.F. Molyneux; V.J. Peters; ditorium was not a sense of the vitality of political discourse Anon.; the Roch e famil y; Anon .; but the vehemence of his need: 'Give me hope.' and Sir Donald and Lady Trescowthick. We art> not in dire physical straits in . Even in a recession no one need fear cold or famine. In Moscow and in Eurel Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121. Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by of integrity in Australian public life. And he wanted some spur Michael Kell y, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. to action: not to get him up on the barricades, but to persuade Printed by Doran Printing, him that politics in Australia isn't a rigged game, or, if it is, 4 Commercial Road, Highett, VIC 3 190. then that there is at least some possibility of cleaning it up, of © Jesuit Publica tions 1991 owning it and making it work for the benefit of all. Political scepticism is strong in Australia and always has The ed itor welcomes letters and unsolicited manu­ been. Its negative face is cynicism, its positive face a hardy scripts, including poetry and fiction. Manuscripts wil l disinclination to be conned or whipped into the kinds of en­ be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self­ thusiasm that slide over into totalitarian allegiance. But addressed envelope. Requests for permission to reprint sometimes, in our suspicious caution, we sell ourselves short. material fro m the magaz in e should be addressed in We treat our politics as a gam e. Even the Fairfax press has called writing to: The editor, Eureka Street magazin e, it a game-'the greatest game of all'-in an advertisment fea­ PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC 3121. turing one of its senior political writers. That is more a com-

4 EUREKA STREET • NOVEMBER 199 1 menton the dangerously insular nature of the Canberra of passive apprehension where they were 'as water in press gallery than a summary of our national attitude, the cupped hands' of the powers that be. but the two do sometimes ride in tandem. So, some­ Emerald cool we may be times, it is salutary to listen to a different voice. As water in cupped hands Buried on page 9 or 10 of most of the national dai­ But oh that we might be lies came the news that Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi had As splinters of glass won the Nobel Peace Prize. Aung San Suu Kyi is the In cupped hands. legitimately elected leader of 'The quintessential revo- Burma. She remains in politi­ Photo: Andrew Stark lution is that of the spirit, born cal detention. Her political of an intellectual conviction of language comes from a rhetori­ a need to change in those cally more formal and ornate mental attitudes and values culture. But perhaps the young that shape the course of a na­ man at the Writers' Festival tion's development. A revolu­ could translate. What follows is tion that aims merely at from one of her essays, written changing official policies and in honour of her father, Aung institutions with a view to an San, the architect of modern improvement in material con­ Burma, who was assassinated ditions has little chance of in 1947 when she was genuine success. Without a /fl two years old. revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the in­ r UBLIC DISSATISFACTION with iquities of the old order would economic hardship has been continue to be operative. seen as the chief cause of the 'Saints, it has been said, are movement for democracy in the sinners who go on trying. Burma, sparked off by the stu­ So free men are the oppressed dent demonstrations of 1988. It who go on trying and who, in is true that years of incoherent the process, make themselves policies, inept official m eas­ fit to bear the responsibilities ures, burgeoning inflation and and to uphold the disciplines falling real incomes had turned which will maintain a free so­ the country into an economic ciety. A people who will build shambles. a nation in which strong, dem­ 'But it was more than the ocratic institutions are firmly difficulties of eking out a bare­ established as a guarantee ly acceptable standard of living against state-induced power that had eroded the patience of must first liberate their minds a traditionally good-natured, from apathy and fear. quiescent people-it was also 'Nehru, who considered the humiliation of a way of life the instillation of courage into disfigured by corruption and the people of India as one of fear. The students were pro­ Mahatma Gandhi's greatest testing not just against the achievements, was a political death of their comrades but modernist, but as he assessed against the denial of their right the needs for a 20th century to life by a totalitarian regime movement for independence, which deprived the present of he found himself looking back meaningfulness and held out no to the philosophy of ancient hope for the future. India: "The greatest gift for an 'Some of the students' keenest supporters were individual or a nation ... was fearlessness, not merely businessmen who had developed the skills and the con­ bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind." tacts necessary not only to survive but to prosper within 'Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more pre­ the system. But their affluence offered them no genuine cious is the courage acquired through endeavour, grace sense of security or fulfilment, and they could not but that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let see that if they and their fellow citizens were to achieve fear dictate one's action, courage that could be described a worthwile existence, an accountable administration as "grace under pressure"' • was at least a necessary if not a sufficient condition. The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state -Morag Fraser

V OLUME l NUMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 5 L ETTERS

Australian 'aid' I urel a \tree/ v.l'lcomL·~ ll'tter~ year the Australi an ambassador to the from 1ts l'l'.lder'>. Short lcttl'r'> .lrl' Philippines expressed support fo r the misfires mote l1kLh to hl' puhl!-.hcJ, and all use of the Citizens' Armed Forces lcttll''- 111.1) he cdlto.:d L~ttl'rs llHI'-t Geographical Units (C AFGUs) which hl' -.1gnl'd,

6 EUREKA STREET • N OVEMBER 199 1 SPORTING LIFE

PETER PIERCE how many women graduate or study theology each year but there are many many more than men. Most of the The withering of The Heath women are married with children, sometimes they also have a job, sometimes they have other educa­ A TTHE TURNSTILES, a grizzled des­ merang Bar for an ale. The urgency tional backgrounds. perate made a case for taking his shil­ eases for a time, and the excitement of Equally, I don't know how many lelagh into the course. Inside, he the walk to the stand, past the con­ do pastoral majors or minors. I majored quickly became inconspicuous among struction site, via the tote or book­ in systematic theology and minored the rich, currying to their temporary makers, is allowed to build. in scripture. The classes were ful l of members' quarters, and the lumpen­ The first race was won by a Sydney women, with one or two men in each. bourgeoisie, sporting bar-room tans jockey, MickDittman, on a neat, quick I didn't choose liberation theology or and Desert Storm tee-shirts. This was filly called Catchfire. But this did not feminist theology. It seem ed to me Caulfield, October 12, and for the presage the usual depressing recent that in ord er to understand the church 111 th running of the Caulfield Guin­ pattern of interstate riders' domination I lcwe I hould come to terms with its eas and the Toorak Handicap, it was of the Caulfield Carnival. Although hard core. Other women did too, an unseasonably glorious day. Jim Cassidy won the 'time honoured' though I couldn't come at canon law. For more than a decade Caulfield, Toorak Handicap-for every race a I began my letter as I did because most beautiful of Melbourne tracks, cliche and a sponsor's name-on that was the way I did my academic has been a disaster for those who mar­ Comrade, and Brian York the Guineas study, totally integrated with my daily ket it, whether as employees of the on Chortle, that most elegant and life. So, I think, did my fellow stu­ VATC, or radio stations. Since the accomplished of Melbourne jockeys, dents. Study time cut oui'Of a busy life demise ofBert Bryant, race-callers have Darren Gauci, rode a treble. He steered was too precious not to be made max­ ceased to be outraged spokesmen for the massively framed Umatilla, which imum use of, so subjects that could hapless punters and have become carried 60kg and thrashed its field. In. not be integrated with our personali­ mouthpieces for 'the industry'. From the day's prettiest ride he threaded ties and relationships were exchanged them you'll hear little about the with­ through on the longshot Cushion, a for subjects that gave greater mean­ ering of The Heath, or how Caulfield filly of much promise. ing, depth, hope, insight and challenge. h as suffered regularly from dire Before Gauci topped off his work, I find going to Mass difficult at present, weather during its Spring Camival, the Guineas had done its routine worst not because it's a long time since I've from the decline in status of the once for Caulfield. The wi1mer, Chortle, heard a homily which is interesting, peerless Caulfield Cup, from the bi­ brought no outstanding form to the intelligent and spiritually enlivening, zarre outcomes of so many recent re­ race and as it faltered near the line, but because I have to give whispered newals of the course's classic race, the offered no promise of better deeds. answers that Rahner and Lonergan Caulfield Guineas, and from a grand­ The literary tip, Naturalism, could would be proud of to questions from a stand rebuilding program that is still a not nm it down. Again the Guineas three-year-old about why the bread is year away from completion. looked a jinx race, in which the best special. But on October 12 the track was performed three-year-olds either fail It is unfair of Windsor to bemoan fast, Glorious Day-trained by Rick to front or to fl atter. And again the state of the church. I find it abso­ Hore-Lacy-ran a decent fourth in the Caulfield proved to be the track at lutely miraculous that the Holy Spirit Guineas, the amenities in the new which Hayes-trained horses perform has caused a pressure-cooker full of Rupert Clarke stand were excellent worst. The stable could not manage a sound theology to fill the homes and and its rear aspect an art-deco triumph. place-getter. The momentum which hearts of our children. As a child, I Tucked away below is the estimable Colin Hayes gave to his son is palpa­ would rather have had my Rahner Racing Museum, better visited on bly slackening. integrated into mum's personality in quieter days. For those keyed to fast­ After the Guineas there was still a her response to pussy cats covered in lane reminiscence, there were shields greatweight-for-agerace, the Caulfield playdough, than given as an examin­ that listed the Caulfield Cup winners, Stakes, to come. Saturnine trainer Bart able text by a teacher I disliked, or in together with the names of monarchs, Cummings had warned that Shaftes­ a stuffy church by a priest I couldn't governors-general, prime ministers, bury A venue was 'bucking his brand see-especially if the boy under the wars involving Australians and 'sun­ off' and Gauci rode him to prove it, by pew in front was dressed as Batman. dry events and achievements'. One breaking two minutes and comfort­ I wonder what the outcome of this could learn that in 1920, when the ably defeating the champions Super situation will be. In order for the Western Australian Eurythmic [sic] Impose and Sydeston. The crowd rose horrific problems of human suffering won the Cup, a pot cost fivepence. At along the length of the straight as in the world to be dealt with, we need, Caulfield it's now $1.85, and there is Shaftesbury Avenue beat off its chal­ individually, to 'turn back', as a world the choice of Laurent-Perrier. lengers with authority. Here was rac­ population. That surely is the direction Much abides at Caulfield from ing; this was the race, the horse, the of the effect of sound theology in hearts bygone racedays. This is the most jockey of the Spring. • of the women in pews. amiable track at which to stroll round Christina Rye Laming the stables and the saddling paddock, Peter Pierce lectures in Australian Ashburton, Vic. and drift back and forth to the Boo- studies at .

V OLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 7 W ORLD R EPO RT 1

DAMIEN SIMONIS

1 I T" TWO nm S

8 EUREKA STREET • NOVEMBER 1991 WORLD R EPORT 2

Lrz JACKSON Who should 'scape whipping? One effect of the failed Soviet coup has been a sharp increase in the population density on the moral high ground. But preaching is only easy from a distance, as Liz Jackson discovered when she prepared a program in Moscow for Radio National's Background Briefing. WHAT' s BEEN INTERESTING about the reaction to the But do you retain your party m em bership! program has been the response to a particular part- an No, not now. But again I did it too late. My husband left interview with a former highly-placed bureaucrat, the Communist Party two years ago. I haven't followed Natalia Yakovleva, who was editor in chief of the North him because I knew that if I followed him I'd have to American department at the Novosti Press Agency. quit my job, the same day. And that is why I retained Like everyone else at Novosti, Natalia was sacked my Party membership card. within days of the coup. What I suppose has surprised me is the extent of sympathy she has evoked, even So when did you resign! though she herself admits to cowardice and claims that During the coup. she does not respect herself .The deputy mayor of Mos­ cow, Sergei Stankievitch had said after the coup: 'This has sorted out for us who is with us, who is against us.' But it is not quite as simple as that. I guess listeners to N ovoSTI PR ESS AGENCY EMPLOY S, or used to employ, the program felt like m e, when I spoke with Natalia: upwards of three thousand people. It puts out those would I have done anything different? booklets and journals like Soviet Life, or Mikhail Gor­ bachev's Address to the 42nd Congress, that you see in Jackson: What's changed in Novosti Press agency since places like the Soviet embassy, the ones that put the the coup! best gloss on life in the Soviet Union. They did, of cour e, Yakovleva: Well we have had enormous changes-! change with glasnost, became more critical, but the coup think drastic changes. Our agency was nationalised. Our caught them out. president was sacked by Mr Yeltsin, first by his decreei Novosti sat on the fence and the workers are paying and then Mr Gorbachev issued a decree concerning the the price. I spoke to their new boss, Andrei Vinnigra­ decision of Mr Yeltsin. Now we have a new president. dov, who will decide who gets re-employed. He is very young-35. Vinnigradov: It is a paradoxical situati on. I don't want What sort of personnel changes have happened! I m ean to talk about anybody in particular. I know many good have people lost their iobs already! people am ong the agency's journalists who feel free here We are all sacked. Ah, you know, I welcome all this, in the building and outsidei but there are others who and all the changes. I was a dissident in my heart, though feel free only when they leave the building. Here, for not in my life. And this was one of my weaknesses I some reason, they feel obliged to obey some absurd in­ would say. Because I saw, for quite a long time, that we struction in which they themselves do not believe. You are going not in the right direction, but I hadn't enough can't play two roles. You ca n't be a bureaucrat here and courage to say this openly. And, you know, I was in the a free person on the street. That is precisely what we privileged class. I had all these privileges before because will need to overcome. I am in a high position for quite a timebeing. And now I have lost all the privileges and m y life Jackson: I know that you don't want to name any has becom e much more difficult, I would say. I m ean in nam es, and I wouldn't asl< you to, but are you saying the material sense. But I would prefer not to eat sausage, of those people who were able to live in that paradox, not to have a lot of nice things, but to have the freedom able, on the one hand, to go down to the barricades, of expressioni and at least some future fo r my children. but, on the other hand, in their official work, to put out So many years we've had this terrible life here, material that did not condemn the coup,-are you without any opportunity to say what we think. And this saying that those are people for whom there is no place double life really is terrible for people who conducted here, now! it. And I have to tell you that I conducted a double life . Alas, yes. My friends would tell you that I am frank and sincere, but on the surface I was a very true Communist. That is Liz Jackson is an ABC producer and presenter. Bacl<­ the tragedy, my tragedy too. That is why I started weep­ ground Briefing is broadcast on Radio National at 9. l0am ing. I don't respect myself. on Sundays and on Tuesdays at 7.45pm. •

V oLUME 1 N u MBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 9 Still Mr 70 Per Cent in the polls: Queensland Premier Wayn e Goss. Democracy on the boil In 1986 Margaret Simons went to Brisbane as correspondent for . Sh e covered the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption, and during the concluding months of the inquiry was a consultant to the commissioner, Mr Tony Fitzgerald QC. Sh e returned to Queensland for Eureka Street, to report on the new shape of the state's politics.

W ,N I e»T QUHN,CAND in July 1989, m•ny marginals, there is little room for self-righteousness people were debating whether Queensland was differ­ about democratic principle. Venal public policy, fa vo urs ent from the rest of the country, or whether its less for mates, legislation made on the run and persecution desirable characteristics were subtropical symptoms of of critics? Look at the federal govemment's handling of a common Australian disease. media policy, or the airline dispute. And look at West­ Queenslanders, especially National Party politi­ ern Australia. Parliament abused and largely irrelevant? cians, inclined to the latter view. The then Premier, Where is it not? Bribes to public figures? Defamation Mike Ahern, cl aimed that the only difference between laws do not perm.it public speculation. Supine media, his government and those 'down south' was that the aroused only by shallow sensa tion ? Those outside the National Party had set up a proper inquiry and was journalistic profession are better qualified to judge than tackling corruption. But Ahern was a drowning man, l am . clutching at a straw. It did him no good: he went under Perhaps Queensland was the butt of so m any and the government followed soon after. southern jokes precisely because it was an exaggerated In these debates, I tended to argue that Queensland refl ection of the country's vices. Laughter is easier than was not all that different. Queensland does have an self-examination. The Westminster system is a delica te exceptionally bmtal European history, hav ing been a plant at the best of times, and can easily be used as a convict colony for the convict colony. But that is only screen for undemocratic practices. Transplanted into one chapter of a larger story common to us all. these foreign soils, it has developed an interesting an­ The gerrymander? Many states have had them, and, tipodean pathology which is hardly surprising, consid­ given the way governments of all complexions play the ering the circumstances in which it grew.

10 EUREKA STREET • NovEMBE.R 199 1 Some things have not

------changed in Queensland. Returning to Queensland more than two years after on the community. The rec­ There are all sorts of tensions the release of the Fitzgerald report, however, I find that ommendations in this report things have changed. This time I was stmck not so much are aimed at allowing penna­ between the independent by the similarities, but by the ways in which Queensland nent institutions and systems is becoming different. to work properly.' coznmissions and the One of the doughtiest subversives in Queensland The Fitzgerald approach is the conservationist, Dr Aila Keto, who fought the was widely criticised, most government. Only son1e of National Party government for many years. Describing notably by the investigative two years of Labor mle, she says: 'Initially there was an journalists Bob Bottom and them are healthy tensions. enormous change. Under the previous government there Brian Toohey, each of whom was this enormous feeling of oppression. You would be was disappointed that Fitz­ But public attitudes have told your phones were tapped, or you would be followed gerald had not made more of his and you would feel paranoid. All that has gone. The opportunity to make findings altered. Queenslanders burea ucracy is more open to consultation, and against individuals-which there is no feeling of oppression.' could then be quoted, under express horror and privilege, by journalists. The indignation at practices B uT KETO AND OTHER members of community groups report was compared unfa­ say that along with the increased openness has come an vourably with that of inquiries that, in the south, extraordinary sensitivity to criticism. Keto says: 'They such as the Costigan royal defintely need to develop a more mature attitude to commission, which had named are greeted with consultation, and what it entails.' N evertheless, names, sometimes publicly and although opinion polls show that some issues, such as sometimes in secret volumes a cynical shrug of homosexual law reform, have cost Labor dearly, the that were lea ked. Premier is still Mr 70 Per Cent; the Goss gloss shows Instead, in a section titled the shoulder. little sign of tarnishing. 'Guilt and Innocence', Fitzger­ Journali ts say the Goss government's news­ ald declined to cast stones, say- management teclmiques are as bad as those of its pred­ ing: 'Where misconduct is institutionalised, guilt and ecessor, and that ministers are less accessible. Being innocence are not a matter of black and white. There abused in parliamentary cafeterias by ministers and their are infinite shades of grey. Some people have been merely press secretaries has become a commonplace hazard for incompetent, or the victims of inertia ... the shadows reporters who are out of favour. Ironically, one of the fall differently depending on one's point of view.' The media management techniques Fitzgerald Photo co urt ~>y of The 1\ gc. criticised in his report- politicians leaking ~ a report to selected journalists before its official relea e, in return for subtle fa­ vours-happened to Fitzgerald himself when he submitted his later report into logging on Fraser Island. The Fitzgerald report has become the touchstone of political reform up north. Whole parliamentary debates are conduct­ ed in terms of which party is closest to what is referred to, without irony, as the 'Fitz­ gerald spirit'. Perhaps this reverence is itself anti-democratic and unhealthy, but so far it has been the driving fo rce behind liberal reform . Almost before he had set pen to paper, Fitzgerald had been assured by all parties that his report's recommendations would be implemented. Yet Fitzgerald decided not to make prescriptive recommendations. In a chapter of the report titled 'Progressive Social Change', he said: 'The [Fitzgerald] commission is an appointed body, not an elected one. It is an adjunct to the demo­ cratic process, not a replacement for it. It is not infallible or omniscient ... the com­ mission has no mandate to impose opinions Goodbye to all that: Sir fob Biell

V oLUME 1 N uMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 11 main object of the report, Fitzgerald said, was 'to bring C)C, with a budget of $17 million and a staff of about about improved structures and sy tcms. The past mis­ 250, including seconded police, has an even more diffi­ deeds of individuals arc of less concern, except as a ba­ cult job than its sister bodies. As well as being responsi­ sis for !earning for the future.' ble for continuing investigations into misconduct, it Fitzgerald recommended the setting up of two receives complaints from the public, is responsible for independent commissions, the Criminal Justice Com­ witness protection and for the tribunal that adjudicates mission [C)Cj and the Electoral and Administrative on allegations against police. It also reviews the laws on Review Commission [EARCL each of which would be prostitution, drugs and gambling. answerable to an all-party parliamentary committee. A Any criticism of the CJC should be tempered with large part of the analysis of how Queensland is emerging a recognition of the enormous difficulties of each of these from it s crisis consists of an analysis of how tasks- together with the realisation that such criticism these bodies arc going about their work. plays into the hands of the corrupt. Yet today some of the CJCs sternest detractors are former Fitzgerald L E CRIMI NA L juSTI CE CoMMISSIO N was always going commission staff members. They claim that the chair­ to attract the most antagonism, since it is responsible, man of the C)C, Sir Max Bingham, failed to capitalise among many other things, for continuing the Fitzgerald on the momentum built up by the Fitzgerald inquiry. inquiry's investigations into corruption. By appointing former coll eagues from the National In fact, it has come under insidious attack. The CJC Crime Authority to top positions, they say, Bingham is unpopular with the government- partly because of imported a new culture and new methods. There was a the natural antagonism of governments to powcrfuC low tolerance for the Queensland way of doing things, independent bodies, partly because the C)C has made however successful. some errors, but also because it is about to release a 'It was almost as though they thought we hadn't report on the abuse of parliamentary expense accounts, done badly for Queenslanders, but now they were going including those of some Labor members. to show us how it was done/ one former Fitzgerald staff The CJC released a report saying that the number member said. These people believe many opportunities of police assaults on civilians was increasing. The report were lost, and that momentum is only now being re­ received front-page treatment in the Friday newspapers. gained. Predictably, for those used to police manipulation of the On the plus side, the CJC has an active investigation media, the following Sunday a story appeared in the local record, much of it in cooperation with other police forces. press, saying that the chairman of the C)C, Sir Max Bingham claims the commission has tracked down Bingham, had 'got off' receiving a fine for 'about 20 or 30 big crooks'. And Bingham claims to have driving on a Tasmanian licence. The in­ learnt from his experience at the NCA. For example, he EARC brought in a cident to which the storie referred was believes other states could adopt the Queensland legis­ systen1 of one vote one six months old. Bingham was within his lation that makes the paxliamentary committee to which legal rights, and had not received prefer- the C)C answers subject tO the same legal obligations value for local ential treatment. Nevertheless, the story of confidentiality as the CJC itself-meaning MPs can was remorselessly beaten up, and was go to jail if information is leaked. Both Bingham and the government. By doing damaging. C)C staff believe the story was head of the C)C parliamentary committee, Mr Peter pushed not only by police but by senior Beattie, agree that this provision has meant the com­ so, it rocked the government ministers. If the staff are mittee is kept fully informed about C)C activities. right, it is to the Goss government's There arc moves to hive off parts of the CJC's foundations of the level lasting shame. functions. Bingham favors placing the Misconduct Tri­ Thank heavens for the ABC, which bunal under the aegis of the new Public Service Man­ of governn1ent most on the 7.30 Report ran a critical analysis agement Committee. Others argue for even more radical of the way the story had been handled. changes: for the law-reform function to be returned to Queenslanders identify After that program went to air, the ABC the Law Reform Commission, for example. There arc was not in vi ted to a news conference held risks in such approaches. Smaller bodies are more easily as their own, and put by the Police Minister the next clay. attacked. Although the Law Reform Commission, which Finally, after Bingham called his own has been worthy but incffccmat is itself due for a reform an end to networks of news conference to rebut the attacks, process conducted by the EARC, the history of such which he said were 'calculated and de­ commissions is that they have difficulty getting their power and 1nateship liberate' attempts tO undermine the CJC's recommendations implemented. As well, part of Fitz­ credibility, the government belatedly gerald's aim in setting up such a large body was to allow throughout the state. issued a statement supporting him. the reform process to be integrated and planned. Frag­ All of this is not to say that the C)C mentation puts these aims at risk. is without fault. How could it be? The comparable bod­ There is almost"too much public confidence in the ies federally and in NSW- the National Crime Author­ CJC. One poll bowed that 77 per cent of the population ity and the Independent ommission against had heard of the CJC , and that when its purpose was Corruption-have both had their problems. And the explained, 82 per cent supported its aims and its con-

12 EUREKA STREET • NovE MI\ CR 1991 Other states could learn from Queensland legislation: Criminal Ju stice Commission chairman Sir Max Bingham tinued independence. And, unlike its bodgic predeces­ Queensland, this was far outshadowed by the review of sors, the Police Complaints Tribunal and the police in­ local govemmcnt electoral boundaries, some of which ternal investigations bureau, the CJ has been swamped made the parliamentary gerrymander look good. In with complaints-2900 since its inception. Given that Kingaroy, for example, some electors had a vote worth the CJC must investigate every complaint, this is very 2 7 times that of citizens in neighbouring wards. much a mixed blessing. EARC received a staggering 3140 submissions on Nevertheless, the importance of this huge vote of local government bou ndaries, compared to only 268 on public confidence cannot be underestimated, since in the state government guidelines. The figures arc a so­ the long term it is public opinion that will ensure the bering reminder of the extent to which Queensland, survival or otherwise of the CJC, just as public opinion unlike every other state, is a collection of regions. That ensured the survival of the Fitzgerald inquiry is one of the few fundamental differences between it in more hectic days. and other states. EARC brought in a system of one vote one value for local govcmment. By doing so, it rocked Ju sT DOWN THE ROAD from Queensland's Parliament the foundations of the level of government most House, in a modern glass skyscraper, is the quietest yet Quccnslandcrs identify as their own, and put an end to most dramatic evidence that Queensland is changing. networks of power and matcship throughout the state. It is the reading room maintained by the Electoral and EARC reviews begin with the re lease of issue papers Administrative Review Commission. EARC is much to promote debate. There follow several periods during smaller than the CJC. It has a budget of only $3.9 mil­ which the public can make submissions, all of which lion and a staff of just 35. Yet its job is perhaps more are published. Once EARC releases its report, the par­ fundamental. Its responsibilities concem the checks and liamentary committee can hold further public hearings balances on power that lie at the heart of the state's and take further submissions, before making its own abused democracy. recommendations to parliament. All these issue papers, In the reading room, any member of the public can, submissions and reports arc sent to every public library without identifying themselves or giving any explana­ and court house in Queensland. tion, and using state-of-the-art computer technology, The chairman of EARC, former Australian govern­ access virtually all the documents held by the commis­ ment solicitor Tom Sherman, claims that EARC's sion- including those embarrassing to it. The reading processes mean that Queensland has developed public room is a radical institution, symbolising the extraor­ participation in policy making to a greater extent than dinarily open and public means by which EARC con­ anywhere else in the country. He is probably right. ducts its reviews. I am not aware of any statutory body The Government's openness to this approach is yet in Australia that has anything to compare with it. to be tested. A batch of EARC reports awaits the new EARC got off to a fiery start with its review of the session of Parliament. Some of the proposals will test state electoral system [see panel on next page]. Inside Continued page 15

V OLUME 1 N UM BER 9 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE VOTERS

MARGARET SIMONS Setting the bounds

W E THE FITZGERALD REPORT was released on 3 July and equal suffrage'. Burdekin urged Goss not to imple­ 1989, the main surpri se was a recommendation that ment the EARC scheme. His letter was passed on to Queensland's notorious gerrymander be reviewed. It was Sherman, who responded by saying that Burdekin's a sensation, not least because the recommendation conclusions 'are wrong, have no authority to support meant that Fitzgerald had stretched his terms of refer­ them, are not firmly based in any proper inquiry, and ence to the limit. involve an impermissible intrusion into Queensland In the hoopla that fo llowed, many overlooked the affairs. ' fact that Fitzgerald had not specified that the zonal ys­ Under the machinery set up by Fitzgerald, EARC's tem be done away with, nor had he recommended a report went to an all-party parliamentary committee for system of one vote-one value. Many simply assumed review. It was anathema to the majority of Labor that these things would follow from the independent members, who had suffered under decades of gerry­ review, which was to be conducted by the new Electoral mander. The committee slammed EARC's research and and Administrative Review Commission. But things did presuppositions, pointing out that although remoteness not turn out like that. Instead of coming down in favor may disadvantage electors, so did poverty, language of one vote-one value, EARC recommended a system of difficulties and the like. weighting for Queensland's most remote electorates. Yet the parliamentary committee recommended Why did Queensland have to be different? Why did the adoption of EARC's recommendations. The rea­ it not merely adopt the methods already established soning behind this move is almost as interesting as the federally and in the other states? The chairman of EARC, recommendations themselves. Three weeks after the a former solicitor, Tom Sher­ release of his report, Tony Fitzgerald had made his last man, claims that the review was the first in Australia direct intervention in the public affairs of Queensland. to examine the fundamental principles underlying suf­ The then Premier, Mike Ahern, had announced the frage. As such, it may have implications for other sys­ holding of a referendum to extend the term of hi gov­ tems in Australia-the more so since there is no question ernment so the electoral review could take place before that, however controversial its reconunendations, EARC the election. Perhaps by accident-though probably conducted a thorough, fair, and open review. not- the suggestion that the referendum wa Fitzger­ Since Australia has no bill of rights, and no consti­ ald's idea crept irlto public debate. tutional guarantees of equal suffrage, the commission It was an impression Fitzgerald felt bound to cor­ had to look overseas for basic p1inciples. The EARC gave rect. On 21 July, he called the three party leaders to his weight to Canadian experience, because it was a ma­ chambers. They came out with a joint media release, ture Westminster system operating in a jurisdiction with stating that the referendum had not been his idea. More large remote areas. Canadian court decisions suggested importantly, the three men publicly pledged that re­ that deviations from one vote-one value could be justi­ gardless of the referendum result, EARC's recommen­ fied if they contributed to better government. dations on the electoral system would be implemented. EARC concluded that although equal suffrage was The parliamentary committee concluded that po­ an important civil and political right, remoteness dis­ litically, if not legally, the leaders had delega ted to EARC advantaged citizens in terms of their effective access to the law making powers of Parliament. In an agonised elected representatives. So under the EARC system now chapter entitled 'What Is To Be Done', and quoting in place, one vote-one value applies, with a variation of sources as diverse as Locke and Garran on the sover­ 10 per cent allowed in the population size of most eignty of Parliament, the committee report concluded electorates. But electorates bigger than 100,000 square that it was 'honour bound' to accept the recommenda­ kilometres can include 'notional'- i.e. non-existent­ tions. voters, who may number up to a figure equal to two per Queenslanders may wonder whether Fitzgerald cent of the area of the electorate in square kilometres. would have agreed, given his report's emphasis on The formula will have little practical effect, probably restoring the proper role of Parliament, and limiting the applying to only five of the 89 Legislative Assembly seats powers of non-elected people and bodies. Such restora­ and perhaps creating one more seat. tion was, after all, one of the reasons he had EARC's The principle has been enormously controversial. recommendations subject to review by a parliamentary In correspondence with the Queensland government, committee. He clearly anticipated that there would be the federal Human Rights Commissioner, Brian Bur­ times when the two disagreed. dekin, claimed that EARC's recommendation was in­ The chairman of the parliamentary committee, consistent with Australia's obligations under the Matt Foley, still disagrees with what EARC did. 'But,' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, he says, 'the difference between this and the gerryman- which specified that elections should be by 'universal der is the difference between good and evil.' •

14 EUREKA STREET • N ovEMH ER 199 1 From page 13 the complexion of the Goss govermnent in an area where it has made no promises. T he recommendations include a Peaceful Assembly Act, which would make Queens­ land the first state in Australia to specifically provide a Integrity and calculus righ t of peaceful assembly. EARC also recommended the setting up of a speakers' corner in central Brisbane. The days of the right-to-march demonstrations seem W MEAS URE AREAS in term s of squares. But how are far away. In a report on the judicial review of adminis­ we to measure areas that have curved sides ? Archimedes trative decisions, EARC recommended that the scope devoted much thought to this. Inside a parabola, for ex­ of statutory judicial review be wider, simpler and cheaper ample, he drew a series of rectangles, getting sm aller than elsewhere in Australia, and that public servants be and smaller, with a series of similarly smaller triangles required by law to give written reasons for their decisions on top of each smaller rectangle. The area under the when an aggrieved person asks them to do so. parabola could thus be approximated as the sum of all Freedom-of-information legislation has also been these little areas. In the same way, Archim edes meas­ recommended, and here again EARC has departed from ured the value of n by inscribing a polygon with many normal Australian practice by abandoning the appeal sides inside and outside a circle. He never said that a process through tribunals and courts and appointing an circle was a polygon with an infinite number of sides, Information Commissioner, similar to the New Zea­ but he headed in that direction. He certainly formulat­ land and Canadian systems. This will make Fol cheap­ ed a mathematics with tendencies to infinite smallness. er to use, but there are concerns about whether the The Greeks usually avoided infinity in their math­ commissioner, appointed by Cabinet on address by Par­ ematics. Infinity is a rather imprecise notion, and pre­ liament, will be sufficiently independent. cision was what the Greeks were after. But Archimedes There is also a proposal for a 'parliamentary coun­ did invent what he called the 'method of exhaustion' sel', an independent statutory officer who, as well as and mathematical formulae that look remarkably like drafting bills, would have wide powers to scrutinise modern geometric series. In his efforts to 'square the them for adherence to basic legislative principles, such spiral' he took his method to the most exhausting of all as whether there are sufficient guidelines fo r the exercise limits, infinity. In doing so, he anticipated, if not dis­ of bureaucratic discretions, whether the government is covered, the modern method known as calculus. pushing through by regulation m easures that should be The discovery of the calculus is a vexed issue in dealt with in legislation, and whether laws show respect the history of mathematics. There is much evidence that for the traditions of Aborigines and Torres Isaac Newton came upon the formulation of infinite Strait Islanders. mathematical series and the calculus in 1665-66. He did not publish his discovery widely, however, and S OMETHI NGS HAvE OT CHANG ED in Queensland. There Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, perhaps assisted by are all sorts of tensions between the independent com­ correspondence from Newton to Oldenburg, printed his missions and the government. Only some of them are version of the calculus in the Acta Eruditorum in 1684. healthy tensions. But public attitudes have altered. A number of articles were then published claiming that Queenslanders express horror and indignation at prac­ Newton had in fact discovered the calculus prior to tices that, in the south, are greeted with a cynical shrug Leibniz. These articles were written by Newton himself, of the shoulder. Sherman says: 'I think Queenslanders though published under the nam es of his friends! are a very proud people, and the Fitzgerald inquiry and Leibniz appealed to the Royal Society to settle the what it revealed shamed them . Now there is a very puerile argument. This was an unfortunate tactic, for strong feeling that the body politic should be fixed up. ' Newton was the president of the society at the time. It may be that, as Queensland struggles out of its Appointing his partisans to a committee of inquiry, darkest hour, it is blazing a path for the rest of us. • N ewton wrote their report him self and had the society publish it, accusing Leibniz of stealing his own ideas. Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist who lives in He went further, even writing an anonymous review of South Australia. She writes regularly for Eurek a Street. this report in the soci ety's journal. He deleted all refer­ ences to Leibniz's method from later editions of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and is said to have rejoiced, after Leibniz's death, in 'breaking Su6scri6e ana get 20 pe r cent Leibniz's heart'. off tfre news-stana A great mathematician, Mr Newton, but not always a very nice man. A pity he didn't give some credit to price. Archimedes. Why is it so difficult fo r us to imagine that the greats of the past could possibly be our equal, or worthy of our respect and reverence? • See form inside 6acl(cover -John Honner SJ

V oLUM E l N u MB ER 9 • EUREKA STREET 15 It's only dry under the u1nbrella

C auw Tiffi Lm

16 EUREKA STREET • NovEMBE R 199 1 Photo: Michael Coyne THE REGION The two great 20th century Chinese revolutions, of 1911 and 1945- 9, were both in essence military struggles won by the stronger military leader. Th e next Chinese revolution, however, might m ark the end of that tradition. Tha t bloodless revolution might be very close indeed. The emperors without clothes

C WNA WATCHeRS coo< ""c' w•TH '""to tht old tion results in Hong Kong, while superficially indica­ days of sparse information and clear ideological stanc­ tive of confidence, may be read in the opposite sense. es. Our task has become more, not less, exacting in Are they such bad Marxists as to believe that the funda­ recent years, and one suspects that this feeling is shared mental economic and social changes they have wrought by the old men in Beijing. They must make decisions for more than a decade will not generate ideological and about their vast and diverse country while divested of political change? theoretical certainties, a stable world and reliable local Reports from all areas and all levels in China suggest support. that outside Beijing the writ of the central government Trevor Hay (E urel

V oLUM E 1 N u M BER 9 • EUREKA STREET 17 preference list of China's top middle-school graduates. cess of China should be attributed to cultural factors­ Another case of ill-judged and counter-productive an entrepreneurial tradition, peasant shrewdness, the actions has been the tougher religious policy. The Bureau exigencies of survival-or to a more enlightenecllea cler­ of Religious Affairs is thought to have become too sym ­ ship, or to the sheer size of the internal market, is de­ pathetic to its charges, and a harder line emanating from batable; but there is no doubt that the fundamentals are the United Front department has taken its place. The sound. Long- term problems remain to be solved: popu­ reaction to the appointment of Gong Pinmei, the prel­ lation growth out of control-despite the savagery of ate Rome recognises as Bishop of Shanghai as a cardi­ the one-child policy-environmental devastation, and nal- or rather to the Vatican's announcement that it China's relations with Japan. Most Chinese, however, had occurred in secret some time ago-seems to have seem to regard their prosperity as having been achieved been to impose petty restrictions on outside visitors. despite, rather than because of, the Chinese Commu­ These will not slow the growing regularisa tion of bish­ nist Party. With Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore as ops not appointed by Rome, nor the rapprochement of ever-present, if idealised, models of Chinese prosperity, 'patriotic' ancl 'traclitional' Catholics, a distinction that combined with a more open society, pressure in any case means little in practice in many areas. Those for change will continue. most likely to be adversely affected are hardliners with­ in the Patriotic Association. L E MA IN QUESTION REMAININ G is one of timing. Will As for Australian relations with China, the criticism there be another Tiananmen, either an ethnic one as clirectecl towards Senator Chris Schact's parliamentary Trevor Hay suggests, or an urban workers' movement human rights delegation again illustrates the Chinese much more like Marx's vision than was the actual Chi­ government's isolation from reality. Despite some mis­ nese communist revolution? (Recent waves of strikes guided early criticism of the personnel of the delega­ have been little noted in the Western press.) Or will the tion, there was never any possibility that such a students try again, having done their preparatory work well-informed and experienced group would have been with the army, as in 1911 1 party to a whitewash. The apparently startled and ex- The key to the succession to the old men lies with cessive reaction to its measured the Peopl e's Liberation Army. Despite recent specula­ criticisms would indicate either tion, the 84-year-old President, Yang Shangkun, seems Reports fron1 all areas and a blunder on the part of the Chi­ unlikely to follow Deng Xiaoping, and if he did he would nese government or a very subtle be an interim leader in the fullest sense of the term. But all levels in China suggest ga me being played by some in­ would the PLA accept one of the middle generation, and ternal critics. Chinese are used to on what terms? It is here that there is an analogy with that outside Beijing the a mirror reading of their own the Soviet Union, where the army's reluctance to sup­ press: the best way to communi­ port the August coup was decisive, just as the dea l done writ of the central cate unpalatable ideas is often to with the PLA in June 1989 was decisive in what engineer their detailed refutation. amounted to a coup in China. But would the PLA go government is By its own measure of suc­ the same way in 1992 or 1993? cess-the pace of economic re­ It should not surprise us to conclude that the fate increasingly ignored ... construction and growth- the of modernisation, democracy and prosperity in China Chinese gerontocracy's post might in the end depend on the army. Apart from its An historian is reminded Tiananmen policies have hardly size, China is in other respects a Third World country, been on target. Growth in gross an Afro-Asian nation. The two great 20th century Chi­ of the classic symptoms of national product has slowed, the nese revolutions, of 19 11 and 1945-9, were both in deficits of the state enterprises essence military struggles won by the stronger military dynastic decay: revolt, increased (doubling in the first lea der. The next Chinese revolution, however, might half of 1990 over the previous mark the end of that tradition, with the army retrea ting dissent, contempt for the year ), unemploym ent has in­ to a supporting professional role. That bloodless revolu­ old regime and loss of creased, and taxation revenue has tion might be very close indeed. • been half what had been estimat- faith in its mandate, eel. There are signs of an im­ Paul Rule is a China specialist who lectures in religious provement in 199 1 but many studies at La Trobe University. He is the author of Mao corruption at the centre. Chinese are questioning the pol- Zedong (UQP, 1984.) icies themselves . Like the Soviet Union, China has suffered from the deficiencies of an untenable dual system: a private sector subject to the vagaries of a volatile world econo­ Trevor Hay (see 'China, Red and Ethnic', in the my, and a state sector run as competitive fiefcloms by October issue of Eurelw* Str eet) has won the 199 1 unaccountable political elites. Braille Book of the Year Award for Tartar City It would be misleading to compare the Chinese and Woman: Scenes from the life of Wang Hsin-ping, the Soviet economies. Whether the comparative sue- former citizen of China. (MUP)

18 EUREKA STREET • N ovEMBER 199 1 Keep it clean many leadership roles in the church. Yet what the sisters decided, he sa id, 1n 1747 an upward-striving 15 year­ would affect large numbers of low­ old in Virginia named George Wash­ paid wom en w orkers. - NaUonal ington laboriously copied out maxims Catholic Report er, June 7, 199 1. from a new translation of the French Jesuits' Rules of Civility and Decent Virtue in fiction Parallel lives Behaviour (1595 ). Some of the more decorous tips transcribed included the Jane Austen is in a crucial way- along For those interested in ge tting to the following: 'Put not off yo ur Clothes in with Cobbett and the Ja cobins- thc bottom of the Jesuit murder in El the presence of others, nor go out of last grea t representative of the classi­ Salvador on 16 November 1989, the yo ur Chamber half Drest.' 'Bedew no cal tradition of the vi rtues. It has proved recent momentous history of the USSR man's face with Spittle by approach­ easy for later ge nerations not to under­ offers, not a distraction, but new pos­ ing too near him when you Speak'. stand her importance as a moralist sibilities. No one can now credibly One particular maxim joined preci­ beca use she is after all a novelist. And claim that US support for the right­ sion to deli cacy: 'Kill no Vermin as to them she has often appea red as not wing military in El Salvador is neces­ Fleas, li ce, ti cks, etc in the Sight of merely 'onl y' a writer of fiction, but a sary to block a Soviet takeover in Others; if you See any filth or thick writer of fiction concerned with a ve ry Central America. Pumping up the Spittle put yourfoot Dexterously upon restricted social world. What they have Salvadoran armed forces with mili­ it; if it be upon the loths of yo ur not observed and what the juxtaposi­ tary aid makes it clearer than ever that Companions Put if off privately, and if tion of her insights with Cobbett and we are merely supporting one part of it be upon yo ur own Cloths return the Jacobins ought to teach us to ob­ the Salvadoran population against Thanks to him who puts it off.'­ serve is that both in her own time and another. When the 'crack' Black Berets America, Se ptember 7, 1991. afterward the I ife of the vi rtues is who murdered Latvians and Lithua­ necessaril y afforded a very restrictive nians finally went scuttling home from cultural and social space. In most of the Baltics, the world cheered. One 100-year wait the public and most of the private difference between those Black Berets world the classical and medieval vir­ and El Salvador's 'crack' Atlacatl Bat­ US Catholic hospitals have been tues arc replaced by the meagre sub­ tali on, whose troops murdered the accused by labour organisers of trying stitutes whi ch modern morality af­ Jesuits, is that the Atlacatl Battalion to discourage employees fro m joining fords . Of course, when I say that Jane was trained by US Marines. These are unions. The Queen of the Valley Hos­ Austen is in a crucial way the last 'our' Black Beret .- America, Sep­ pital in Napa, Califo rnia, faces charg­ representative of the classical tradi­ tember 14, 1991. es before the US National Labor Rela­ tion, I do not mean to deny that she tions Board of 'interfering with, re­ hasany dcscendants. Kipling, in a short straining and coercing' employees story now seldom read, with a good during a union mcmbershipcLri ve. The deal of insight made one of his char­ .. . Ameri ca does not appear by any board has also ordered St John's Has­ acters say that she was the mother­ means as particularly fresh or un­ pi tal in Springfield, Illinois, to post he might better have said the gra nd ­ touched. She appears with all the notices pledging not to 'i nterroga tc' or mother- of Henry James.- Alasdai r weakness and weariness of modern 'threaten' pro- union employees. And Macintyre, After VirlLi e ch.lo. England, or any other Western power. in Buffalo, New York, nurses at Mercy In her politics she has bro ken up ex­ Hospital voted to set up a local branch actl y as England has broken up, into a of the Communica ti ons Workers of A fiendish game bewildering opportunism and insin ­ America- but only after the adminis­ It is rumoured that cricket bega n in cerity. In this matter of war and the tration had suggested that pro-unjon the Benedictine mona steri es of 13th national attitude towards war, her re­ nurses should work somewhere else, century England, as a religious exer­ semblance to England is even more because unions 'promote hostility'. cise. The church, in this allego ri cal manifest and melancholy. It may be To counter union-busting, church ga me, was represented by two bats­ said with rough accuracy that there and union officials have turned to men (vi car and curate), while the forc­ are thxee stages in the life of a strong congrega tions of religious sisters, who es of evil were represented by Lucifer people. First it is a small power, and control 95 per cent of America 's Cath­ (the bowler) and his lOdisciplcs, whose fights small powers. Then it is a great olic hospitals. Monsignor George names I have forgotten. The aim of the power, and fights great powers. Then Hjggins, a church spokesman on labour Dev il was to bowl a ball (the human it i a great power, and fight small issues, made the appeal in several soul) down through the ga tes of hell powers, but pretends that they are peeches marking the lOOth anniver­ (the wickets). The aim of the church great powers, in order to rekindle the sary of Rerum Novarum, the encycli­ wa to hit the soul away fro m the ashe of its ancient emotion and van­ cal of Pope Leo XIll that endorsed ga tes of hell, but not in such a way that ity. After that, the next step is to Ia bour unions. In an interview, Higgins it was caught on the rebound by one of become a small power itself.-G.K. said the question of religious women the devils fi elding for Lucifer.- Gil es Chesterton, 'The Fallacy of the Young and union busting was a sensitive one Pickford, St Mark 's Review, Autumn Nation', in Heretics, published 1905. because women had been deprived of 1991.

V O LUM E 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 19 I NTERVIEW

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Whatever 'side' they take, outsiders tend to see the Arab-Isra eli conflict in terms of stark contrasts. But fro m the inside it looks very different, as Michael McGirr fo und when he spoke to the Israeli novelist and peace activist, Amos Oz.

McGirr: I' ve heard you say that Isra elis are passionate a passionate matter. People read books sometimes in about literature. Why is thaU order to pick an issue with a fictitious character in the Oz: There is a tradition in Israel which is very different novel. from the English-language tradition. There is an expec­ tation among Jews that writers do not write fiction, but You don 't claim divine inspiwtion yet it's part of your that they have some gospel, that they be the heirs of the life that every morning you walk out into the desert prophets. In fact, there is actually no Hebrew word for not far from where you live. You 've described the desert 'fiction' and it's not a word I like. In our bookshops you as the cradle of monotheism. will find ections marked 'narrative prose'. Not that the Yes. If you compare the desert to northerly landscapes contemporary writers can always deliver a gospel, but where paganism thrives-perhaps to this very clay-you the expectation is there. I think some Slavonic countries can understand why. These shady, misty varied land­ share the same tradition; in Russia, for example, where scapes that change with light and wea ther and season poets read their poetry in huge auditoriums. Possibl y in and climate; and where there is fo rest and mountain Latin America as well. The expectation is that writers and bush and hill and river. Those beget the faith in a not just tell a story but show the way. The cultural ex­ variety of deities: clemons, goblins, you name it. Where­ pectation is there in the genes of the Jewish people, all as the desert is always the same. Summer and winter, the way back to the Bibl e, I believe. spring and autumn it's the same desert. There is this monotoneity: magnificent, magnaminous monotonei­ Is this an expectation that puts pressure on you per­ ty. Which makes you unmistakeably aware of the fact sonally! that there is one unmistakeable presence all over the It does, because most of the time I cannot deliver. I don't place. Now what you ca ll this presence is, of course, a hear any voices from high above and all I can do, in a matter of your conviction or your belief. But it's one political essay, is to use my common sense and my log­ presence. ic, and hopefull y my integrity. Not any divine inspira­ tion. But the strain there is enormous because those who No doubt you know that the desert looms large in the arc disappointed with what you have to say or to suggest Australian imagination. But the white Australian turn very furious at you. Israelis read books for rage, not imagination is also stereotypically secular, almost for enjoyment, you know. Reading books is not an en­ defining itself against the emptiness of the desert. te:tainment business in Israel. It's not, as it is in the There is a bit of that in the attitude of the Israeli early English-language tradition, a subtle entertainment. It's pioneers at the beginning of Zionism : when they want-

20 EUREKA STREET • N ovEMilER 199 1 of lie, seeks if not truth, then at least a glimpse of it.

Another striking feature of the bool< is the presence, in the life of all sorts of people, of political people, of art. You draw attention to paintings on the walls of the In ­ telligence Office and a sick woman reading poetry. What is the role of art in these lives ! If I had tO answer this in one word, I'd say it's a comfort. A comforting impact in an immensely tormented soci­ ety with a very traumatic past and a very painful present and a very uncertain future. Art is a great comfort for many Israelis. Different forms of art. Not all of it great art. Jewish creativity is ultimately the outcome of in­ credible suffering and of a tormented mind. Jews arc forever asking themselves, 'What's wrong with us ?' It's a terrible fact because, having been persecuted and dis­ criminated against for thousands of years, after a while one stops asking what's wrong with my oppressor and starts asking himself or herself 'What's wrong with me? ' It's a terrible state of mind. It happens to every victim. Hence the persistent soul-searching. ed, so to speak, to conquer the desert, to civilise the You've become identified with a piece of political ad­ desert. This is pretty much the equivalent of your vice which is to 'mal< e peace, not love'. Could you ex­ national ethos. It is changing now. Many people prefer plain this! to keep at least parts of the desert intact as a source of In the Christian tradition and vocabulary, love and inspiration. Let some of the desert be preserved as no­ compassion and forgiveness and brotherhood arc syn­ man's-land where you can roam and lose yourself and onymous. Not in the Jewish tradition. The opposite of knock things back into proportion. You know, you war is not love, the opposite of war is peace. The wander in the desert in the early morning for half an Christian concept of universal love differs a great dea l hour or an hour, and you go back home for your coffee from the Jewish concept, which regards love as a very and turn on the radio and hear this or that politician private and intimate feeling which could only be be­ saying 'forever' or 'for the rest of eternity'. You know stowed upon those to whom you relate intimately. the stones out there are laughing. Family and friends. Universal love is by definition, to me as a Jew, bound to be vety thin, very abstract, ve1y In To Know A Woman, you have spol< en about the impersonal. Whereas love prevails in the Christian mind search for truth of the principal character, Yael, and and tradition, in the Jewish tradition the key notion is have described his life's option as m eta political and, in justice, not love. I think in Jewish scripture you will the some breath, theological. Could you shed a little find the word 'justice' in various forms as often as you light on what you m ean! will find 'love' in Christian scriptures. This is one of This man expects forever an illumination, an epiphany. the theological differences between our two religions. He retires in middle age from a career as a master spy On the other hand, there is the intense, family-like and uses his professional, intellectual equipment not in intimacy within parts of Judaism. The sense that eve­ pursuit of happiness but in pursuit of knowledge. He ryone is everybody else's family. And of course, the has great care for detail, a sharp eye for detail. He uses family business of inflicting guilt on one another. We this in order to discern a pattern in everything, hoping Jews have, indeed, invented guilt. The Christians have that something will reveal itself to him. I would call spread it all over the world but the Jews invented it. this theological rather than social or political. In almost When I say guilt, I do not necessarily imply the guilt of a comical way, he looks at the wall paper in some God­ sin, nor any kind of original sin. I think some of us Jews forsaken hotel somewhere and hopes a pattern, a some­ are champions at suffering the agonies of guilt without thing, will emerge. first enjoying the delights of sin. Whatever this something is is not for me to say. The book does not end with a theological conclusion. In your estimation, the supreme value, greater than It's not a Jewish or a Christian or a Muslim book. But it political ju stice or national interest is life itself. This is terminates with some sort of a deep expectation for the only value for which you have said you personally something to reveal itself. A pattern or reason behind would go bacl

V oLUME 1 N u MBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 21 times. On the battlefields and elsewhere. I hate death I find it difficult to think of a role for Christianity as a immensely and the thought of people inilicting dea th whole. But there is a particular responsibility for Chris­ on other people is a thought I just cannot take. I value tian Europe. I think C hristian Europe is the past and cherish life, even unhappy life, even miserable life. oppressor of both Jews and Arabs, in two different ways. But not at all costs. If anybody tried to turn me into a The Arabs have been victimised by European colonial­ slave, I'd fight. But I cherish life because the only alter­ ism and exploitation. The Jews have been persecuted native to life is death. As simple as that. Death I hate. and partly destroyed by Christian Europe. Now it would Life m eans compromise. There is something in me still have been an ideal world if two victims of the same raging about the fact that I've been compromising and oppressor had developed a gut solidarity. This is how it I'm advocating a compromise. I have become political­ always happens in the plays of Bertolt Brecht. But in ly an uncompromising advocate of compromise. real life the worst animosities are sometimes those be­ The conflict between Arab and Israeli is not a wild­ tween the victims of the same oppressor, looking at each west film with good guys and bad guys, not in the least. other and seeing an image of their past tormentor in the If anything it is a tragedy, a clash between justice and other victim. It's like the relationship between two justice. Between one very strong cause and another very children oppressed by the same horrendous parent. strong ca use. Now, tragedies can be resolved in one of Christian Europe has the same specific responsi­ two ways. There is a Shakespearean resolution to trag­ bility to help create the necessary provisions for a Mid­ edy in which the stage is covered with dead bodies and East peace. For instance, to initiate a Marshall Plan in justice hovers high above. There is also a Chekhov res­ order to resettle both Palestinian refugees and Jewish olution. At the end of a Chekhov tragedy everybody is refugees pouring into Israel from countries where life bitter and disillusioned and shattered, but alive. And I isn't bearable for them. Now, if Australia wished to want a Chekhov resolution for any conflict. contribute to such a Marshall Plan that would be really This goes against the nucleus of my education and something for both Jews and Arabs. • perhaps against my own genes. There is this perpetual Jewish aching for the absolute-absolute justice, etc. Michael McGirr SJ is a student at Jesuit Theological Many of m y characters believe in something I do not. College, Parkvill e, Vi ctoria. He is a regular contributor Absolutes. Absolute love or whatever. They believe in to Eurelw Street. perfect peace. They believe in everlasting happiness, which I think is a kitschy notion. They believe passion­ ately and, I hope, convincingly in religious or political ideas which I resent wholeheartedly as a person. So there is a certain civil war going on within myself and it's Invitation this that provides the need to tell stories with a certain distance and perspective and detachment. Jesuit Publications Speaking of that detachment, one thing I picl

22 EUREKA STREET • Nov EMB ER 199 1 Thy neighbour's watch

L DOOR"" R>NGS e•die< than I usu•lly wish to in a few cheap shots about Neighbourhood Watchers hear it on a Saturday morning. Perched on my doorstep being busybodies whose chief delight lies in knowing is an immaculately attired, carefully coiffured woman their neighbours' business. My visitor pouts and departs. of indeterminate age, who announces that she is my Having just inveighed against people spying on their Neighbourhood Watch representative. 'Oh,' I reply, neighbours, I proceed to the kitchen window to see how forbearing to add 'that's nice'. This is less out of a reluc­ she will be received by my neighbours. They all are tance to say something silly-politeness frequently leads happy to become Watchers, and green-and-white stick­ me to say silly things-than because it is difficult to say ers go up on doors all round the block of flats. My door anything at this hour of the m orning. I blink as my vis­ is conspicuously bare. I see my visitor standing on the itor stares disdainfully at my dishevelled state. Unnec­ doorstep of Mrs Chodorowski, who is a kind of concierge essarily she inquires: 'I'm sorry, did I get you out of bed?' for the block. They glance back towards my flat disap­ I explain that I like to get up when the sun is warm, provingly, and I know that the Watchers will probably about one or two in the afternoon. It is a simple state­ spend much of their time watching me. Mrs Chodor­ ment of fact but she seems to think I have made some owski is 65-ish, six-foot-five-ish, and an exponent of the sort of feeble joke, and titters appreciatively. Politeness martial arts. She would terrify most prowlers even makes people do that, too. Then she wrinkles her nose without the Neighbourhood Watch. She intimidates me as the fr esh morning air loses the battle against the nox­ eve1ytime she asks about the weeds in my garden and I ious odours emanating from my airless fl at. have to say 'They're doing very well, thank you.' This is fortunate, because at last she explains the Oppressed by the fac t that I have become suspect purpose of her visit. Waving an adhesive label with by declaring my intention not to be suspicious, and not 'Neighbourhood Watch' printed on it, she asks if I will relishing an encounter with Mrs Chodorowski, I decide take it. I agree to do this, as it seems to be the quickest it is a good time to take a walk. So I wander down to the way of removing her from my doorstep. I do not tell her shops, doing my best not to loiter or look suspicious. that I have no intention of affixing this label to my door, The sun is shining, the cops I pass on the street do not to the wall around the overgrown garden planted by the arrest me, and I am accosted only by the Salvation Army previous tenant, or to any other part of my abode. officer who rattles a tin in the local pubs on Friday nights. Politeness still rules. Then she explains that receipt of a He is still on duty the morning after, a fine testimony shiny new Neighbourhood Watch sticker is normally to the virtues of sobriety. I fumble in my pocket for loose considered an occasion for the recipient to make a change and drop it into his tin. He beams an assurance donation. See where all this civility has got you, I tell that Jesus loves me. Still trying to sort out the morning's myself as I stumble back into the flat, groping for my experiences, I mumble 'The weeds are doing very well, wallet. My eyes are still t1y ing to focus and I ca1mot thank you' and keep walking. find it. Instead I scoop up some pseudo-gold coins and Paranoia abates. I sit in the milk bar by the super­ clink them into her outstretched hand, noticing that market, spread the morning paper in front of me and she is peering over my shoulder into the darker recesses spill coffee over it. After a while I enter the supennar­ of the flat. Perhaps she also works for the health ket and narrowly escape having my picture taken as department, and is trying to locate the source of the shopper of the week. I return home an d see Mrs Chod­ noxious odours. Either that, or you just can't keep a good orowski weeding her garden. I do not return her stare. Neighbourhood Watcher from watching whatever there The rest of the day passes without incident until I switch is to watch. on the television for the evening news bulletin . There I decide that there are times when one should just is an item about a state convention of Neighbourhood should say a firm 'N o, thank you ' when offered Watchers. On the screen is a vast auditorium, fi lled with unwanted wall stickers, and that I must do something Mrs Chodorowskis. Several are interviewed and they to regain my self-respect. So I hand the shiny new sticker say they are just doing the best they can for their back along with the pseudo-gold coins, saying that she neighbours. A police superintendent looks on benignly. can keep the money as a pledge of my good faith, but Paranoia returns. I switch off the television and take that I do not want to be a Neighbourhood Watcher. She a book from the shelf. It is Crime and Punishment. I looks hurt and asks why. I explain that if I see any of my decide this is a bad choice and return it to the shelf. I neighbours being burgled or assaulted I will do what I flick through Don Quixote, wondering whether my can to prevent these acts, and then call out the con­ di stinguished ancestor ever became a target for the stabulary. This I would do anyway, and I do not need to Neighbourhood Watch. attend meetings of the professionally suspicious to learn But the Don is silent. Dark night. Nothing. • the elem ents of neighbourliness. I have now woken up and am at my indignantly rhetorical worst, so I throw Ray Cassin is production editor of Eurelw Street.

V o LUME 1 N uMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 23 THE VI

DAM! EN

A cMOm Alged''' f) ( bloody war for independence, France is still ~r-) , < struggling to digest one of its more painful .~ .I < r') ~ colonial legacies-the Algerians who sid­ 7 ed with France during the war. They fought I against their own countrymen in the FLN I ------(National Liberation Front) and came to be known, as have their children and grand­ children since, as 'Harkis'. Many of their 0~~ parents and grandparents 'did 1914- 18 and \ L-1---: \- 1939-45' in the French armed forces. I' Concentrated mainly in satellite social \ j ~~------== housing districts in cities across France and claiming unemployment levels of up to 90 -- l~ per cent among their young, the second and \ third generations are bitter and frustrated J Be ~1 1 by the rejection they say French society has / reserved for them. Vague official statistics put their number of between 300,000 and 450,000, although spokesmen for the Harki J 'v? 1I ---J community say the true figure is closer to 'Self-portrait by Matisse'-the artist at worl< in a i a million. fascinated by North Africa, but most still pre1 In the hot Mediterranean town of Narbonne, with 45,000 inhabitants and lying about Salah Bouaziz, a 42-year-old welder, simmers with 100km north of the Spanish frontier, the frustration a quiet fury. 'We don't even have the advantage of con­ spilled into violence in June, when young Harkis clashed sulates, like migrants do, because we are "French".' But with riot police in the 'City of Olive Trees', a housing not, it seems, French enough. Bouaziz repeats stories estate well outside the town centre. Weeks later, a young confirmed by the experiences of other Harkis: job appli­ Harki was found strangled in the same area. Few Harkis cations rejected for years on end-'as soon as you tell believe the interim coroner's report, which suggests that them your name, they say "we'll write to you" '­ the cause of dea th was suicide. A campaign of protests ensuing family problems, drug abuse and delinquency and road blocks, and demonstrations in Paris, has helped among the young, poor school records and the apparent increase the tension. Although one 'French Muslim', a impossibility of finding housing beyond the 'ghettos'- name by which the Harkis also sometimes go, claimed The Harkis who chose to come to France, mostly in the daily Le Monde that the Harki unrest could 'be­ illiterate Algerian peasants, were lodged in camps and come France's intifada', so far there have been few in­ housing blocks isolated from the towns, and adminis­ cidents. It has, however, begun attracting attention to tered by their erstwhile employers, the army, suppos­ what they feel is the culpable neglect of their plight. edly as an interim measure. Some are still there. In many The young Harkis of Narbmme, who see themselves cases, the land between them and the towns has since as a catalyst for their growing nation-wide movement, been filled with cheap housing, into which many of the are bursting with demands. French citizens in law, they Harki families have spread, unable to move anywhere wants their 'full rights in fact'-employment opportu­ else. A common justification suggested by other French nities, special aid to improve their poor education record, citizens for the mistrust in which many hold the and an end to what they say is a deliberate Harkis- not to mention North African migrants- is that policy to bmy them in urban ghettos. 'they all stick together'. The Harkis reply that they would like nothing better than to disperse, in the hope H ARKIS, THEY EMPHASISE, are French citizens of Arab that this would help end discrimination against them. origin. They arc not bems, North African migrants-nor The term harlw, Arabic for movement or action, arc they pieds noirs- European colonists who returned was first used to describe units of Algerian auxiliaries to France after Algerian independence in 1962. A local in the latter half of the 1950s. Other Algerians joined journalist who has covered the 'Harki problem', Serge paramilitary police units and some enlisted in the French Boulbcs, says that, in law, the Harkis did not even choose regular army. The Evian peace accords of 18 March 1962 to become French; in a sense they already were, since made no provision for the fate of pro-French Algerians, before 1962 Algeria was a departem ent of metropolitan and there is evidence that the French authorities moved France. French employers and landlords apparently don't to resist an influx of what are now generally known as make such distinctions. As a Harki cartoonist put it: Harkis and their families across the Mediterranean. 'We're treated worse than the Arabs.' Bouaziz was 13 at the time and says he witnessed mas-

24 EUREKA STREET • N OVEMBER 1991 ,'ORLD

cated in the previous three years were double or more. On July 17 the Minister for Social Affairs and Integration, Jean-Louis Bianco, announced ---...... __,_ 25 measures to help the Harkis, including cre­ ation of ' 100 to 200 jobs' through agreements j 1 with local government; more scholarships and better access to education; improvements in .J housing for those still 'in transit' and incen­ tives to move elsewhere; and debt aid for fam­ ilies who bought homes in the cheap housing

.I I belts that grew up around the old 'camps' . Bianco said that 'this community has almost been forgotten ... the French must know that the Harkis are French like the rest ... ' The sa me 1obody minister observed two weeks later that the problem was thus effectively wrapped up, for the measures 'should be sufficient for the inte­ gration of those who really want it'. After all, ;-- -- only about 10,000 Harkis were in any real dif­ 'Jorth African market. The French have always been ficulties. fer to go there rather than have it come to them. Salah Bouaziz, like most Harki spokes- men, judged the measures well short of what is sacres of Harkis by the newly independent Algerian needed. Worse, they erved only to 'fool public opin­ authorities. An estimated 150,000 died in the two years ion', making it appear all that is necessary was being after Evian. Bouaziz cites a letter from an Algerian done. 'People hear this and say it's those Arabs asking teacher who, in spite of what he has read of the Harkis' for more money again ... ' He is especially suspicious of troubles in France, would like to join them: 'My father any plans to establish follow-up did not have the chance to save himself. He was mur­ groups and monitors. 'Whenever they dered on 3 1 August 1962 ... Here, we still live in appoint a monitor or social worker, In the same way the fear ... ' Enclosed was a copy of his father's do you think they ever employ a recruitment record. Harki?' The press reacted cautiously, Americans have but tended to view the pronounce­ EOR YEARS, H ARKJS IN FRANCE, isolated and afraid of a ments a yet another exercise in their problems with forced return to Algeria, kept quiet. Says Bouaziz, 'eve­ plugging holes before the dam bursts. rything was Oui, man capitaine'. Their children and Said Serge Boulbes: 'At best, it is in­ Vietnam, grandchildren are not o amenable. They are convinced sufficient.' that their virtual separation from wider French society In 1986 France's General France, 30 years on, is motivated partly by a desire to keep the dark side of Administration Inspectorate investi­ their history mute. To Algiers, they were traitors and ga ted the National Office for Social, has not succeeded in now do not exist. For Paris, in a hurry to extricate itself Educational and Cultural Action from the vice of colonial war, they were a complication (ONASEC), an agency which, among resolving the best ignored. Some members of the army, disturbed by other things, was supposed to aid the their government's capacity to simply drop the Harkis Harki community. The inspectorate's problem s of the into the too-hard basket, helped them cross to France in report accused ONASEC of seeking Algerian war. spite of directives aimed at stemming such 'repatria­ permanent clients, and said its main tion'. Le Monde recently quoted a secret note dated 25 purpose appeared to be 'the mainte- May 1962 stipulating that 'auxiliaries arriving in the nance of a particularly advantageous material situation metropolis outside [the limits of] the general repatria­ for its own employees'. ONASEC has now been wound tion plan will be sent back to Algeria ... ' up, but the inquiry revealed that three billion francs 'The nation has a debt [to those] who so coura­ destined for the Harkis ended up elsewhere. geously served France,' declared Edith Cresson, the A committee formed by the previous prime minis­ prime minister, in the wake of the violent incidents of ter, Michel Rocard, had already presented a 30-point plan June. Soon afterwards 100 million fra ncs ($22 million) for resolving the issue, but the government chose to originally destined for projects for the Harl<.i community, ignore most of its recommendations and adopted Bian­ but cut in post-Gulf war budget tightening, was restored. co's m easures instead. The Rocard committee had Few Harkis got carried away, though, a the sums allo- stressed giving due recognition for the services of

V O LUME 1 N UM BER 9 • EUREKA STREET 25 Algerian combatants, and measures to prevent discrim­ tives have been given to understand that their presence ination against their children. The last attempt to deal is not required. Although even some younger Harkis with the question came with similar proposals in August are attracted, Bouaziz says they are knowingly hoping 1989, after violent incidents in the Harki community. to turn FN support to their advantage. Serge Boulbes As early as 1975, Harkis were protesting against believes the opposite, fearing the Front is manipulating their living conditions and exclusion from the wider the Harkis for its own ends. Police in fact suspect that community. A statue at a crossroads in the midst of the an extreme right agitator was behind the shooting of a Narbonne housing estate is covered with graffiti: 'Thirty policeman during one of this summer's years of contempt.' Their malaise seems an almost clashes with Harkis. contradictory combination of tired frustration and a desperate determination to achieve change. At a regional B ouLBES FEELS ONE of the Harkis' greatest difficulties meeting in late August, young Harkis mapped out plans is the vagueness of their demands, particularly at a local to elect national leaders and to hammer out an alter­ level, where individual grievances vary widely. Moreo­ native list of demands to that of the Rocard-inspired ver, special aid, schools, debt relief and the rest of the commission. 'measures' suggested or demanded do little more, in his The uniqueness of the Harkis' situation is not short view, than accentuate what makes the Harkis different; of unexpected twists. As racism increases and migration, it confirms their dependence and isolation. For him, the especially that of the beurs, becomes a target of grow­ problem goes deeper than job programs. 'In the same ing intolerance, the Harkis have discovered a surprise way the Americans have their problems with Vietnam, supporter- Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front (FN). France, 30 years on, has not succeeded in resolving the Salah Bouaziz admits that the extreme right FN's problems of the Algerian war.' backing has been greeted positively by some Harkis. The biggest task is to ensure the full story of the That a party is simply talking about them, he says, is Harkis finds its due place, passing into 'the collective enough to convince older Harkis to throw in their lot consciousness' much as has the Resistance. He sees the with the Front. The ge neral sentiment is far from national lay education system as 'the m elting pot' favourable- at some marches in Paris, FN representa- through which this process can take place. After 30 years the Harkis remain caught between two flags, accepted neither by Algeria nor by France. For Boulbes, once real recognition-'the most difficult objective because the least palpable'- is achieved, when the Harkis have fi ­ nally 'come home', their other problems will be no greater than those affecting the rest of the French popu­ Licensed real estate agents lation. ' At the moment, many (Harkis] miss out. I don't & auctioneers & property managers say all, but more than in there t of the French nation.' Salah Bouaziz says that if the government really had the political will to act, it could solve the problem 'in one fell swoop'. He would like to see some pressure We may not be the biggest exerted on employers to take on Harkis. He also wants the appointment of an ombudsman to monitor cases of but we aim to be the best discrimination. Not for himself and his generation, for whom he feels it is probably too late, but for his young children. 'I am afraid for them, if this continues ... We are the American Indians of France.' He and other par­ ents of the second generation are pushing their children hard to do well at school, to equip themselves with every Connell Bongiorno advantage they can. He speaks calmly, but cannot hide his bitterness. Bouaziz admits there is a contradiction between the Harkis' profound desire to integrate, to be fully accepted, and a competing instinct that recoils from the price they would have to pay. Becoming fully absorbed 247 Glenferrie Road within the French community would mean a total eras­ Armadale VIC 3143 ing of their background, and of the memory of what their fathers and grandfathers did- those proud men who still Office; (03) 509 3400 wear the medals won in combat. 'We are the shame of Fax (03): 500 0814 France.' •

Damien Simonis is Eurelw Street's European corre­ spondent.

26 EUREKA STREET • N OVEM BER l991 OBITUARY

er, was relieved to find that the only WITH Rahnn, Lone<­ Lgan, Murray""", von Balthasar, Chenu sentence in the encyclical referring and Congar, Henri de Lubac stood to the supernatural reproduced what among the giants of the great theo­ he himself had said in an article logical revival that culminated in published two years before. Vatican II (1962- 65). His dea th on Seeking to defl ect accusations 4 September this year leaves Yves aga inst the Society of Jesus in Congar OP, ill and in hospital, as the France, which was being accused of only surviving member of that bril­ promoting a supposedl y modernistic liant pleiade. 'new theology', the Jesuit general, Born in 1896, de Lubac entered John-Baptist Janssens, removed de the Society of Jesus in 1913 but was Lubac and several colleagues from called up for service in the French their teaching positions and required army in World War I, during which them to submit their writings to a he was severely wounded. After the special process of censorship. war he again studied for the Jesuit Because of the restrictions placed on priesthood, under excell ent masters, his research, in this period de Lubac and gained an enthusiasm for Tho­ turned towards the study of non­ mas Aquinas, interpreted along the Christian religions. He published lines suggested by Blonde!, Rous­ three books on Buddhism, which selot and Man~ cha l. Without any interested him as an example of re­ specialized training or doctoral ligion without God. degree he was assigned to teach the­ By his own admission, de Lubac ology in the Catholic faculty at Lyo ns, where he taught, was not a systematic thinker, yet his work possesses a with some interruptions, from 1929 to 1961. There, and remarkable inner coherence. As his fri end and disciple in his occasional courses at the neighbouring Jesuit the­ Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out, de Lubac's earl y ologa te in Fourviere, de Lubac began to forge new direc­ work, Catholicisme, is programmatic for his entire ca­ tions in theology and comparative religion. reer. The va rious chapters are like limbs that would lat­ De Lubac's first book, Catholicisme ( 1938), was er grow in different directions from the sa me trunk. The intended to emphasise the unitive power of Catholic title of this youthful work expresses an overarching in­ Christianity and its capacity to transcend all human tuition: to be Catholic, for de Lubac, meant to exclude divisions. Developing his interest in the fathers of the nothing, to be complete and comprehensive. He saw church, in 1940 he and his friend Jean Danielou SJ be­ God's creative and redemptive plan as including gan publication of Sources chretiennes, a remarkable / all humanity and, indeed, the entire cosmos. collection of patristic texts and translations that by now includes more than 300 volumes. During the Nazi L IBERAL' AND ' CONSE RVATIVE' are terms ill-suited to occupation of France, he became co-editor of a series of describe theologians such as de Lubac. If such terminol­ Cahiers du Temoignage chretien. In these papers and in ogy must be used, one would have to say that he em ­ his lectures, de Lubac strove to exhibit the incompati­ braced both alternatives. He was liberal because he bility between Christianity and the antisemitism that opposed any narrowing of the Catholic tradition, even the Nazis were seeking to disseminate among French at the hand of the disciples of StThomas. He sought to Catholics. On several occasions his fri ends had to spirit rehabilitate marginal thinkers, such as Origen, Pico della him away into hiding to prevent him from being cap­ Mirandola and Bl onde!, in whom he found kindred tured and executed by the Gestapo, as happened to his spirits. He reached out to the atheist Proudhon, and friend and colleague, Yves de Montcheuil SJ. sought to build bridges to Am ida Buddhism. De Lubac's most famous work, Sumaturel (1 946 ), The suffering of his long years of adversity, maintains that the debate between the Baianists and including two world wars and decades of grea t tension the scholastics in the 17th century rested on misinter­ in the church, are still bearing fruit. In the last few years, pretations of both Augustine and Aquinas. Each party as his earthly life drew to a close, his disciples and ad­ to the debate, he maintained, was operating with phil­ mirers became more numerous and influential. De osophical and juridical categories foreign to ancient Lubac's creative reappropriation of the ancient tradition theology. Contemporary neoscholastics, especially in has earned him a place of honour in a generation of the­ southern France and Rome, took offence at this charge ological giants. -Avery Dulles SJ • and interceded with the Holy See for a condemnation of de Lubac's views. When Pope Pius XII published the This obituary first appeared in America magazine. Avery encyclical Hum ani Generis in 1950, many believed that Dulles SJ is McGinley professor of religion and science it did condemn de Lubac's position. De Lubac, howev- at Fordham University, New York.

V OLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 27 DEBATE

MARK COLERIDGE When is a ruin really a ruin?

I HAPPEN TO BE one of Patnc k A further element of the transition is the move to a O'Farrell's hyphenated priests (priest­ style of theology attuned more directly to human expe­ biblical scholar) and I'm just ba ck in rience. The move is not without its ambiguities, but it the country aft er some fairly bruis­ came because the Catholic system of doctrine and mor­ ing intellectual work among the al s, for all its wonderful internal coherence, at times ruins of Rome. No sooner was I safely left people's lives untouched at points where they badly back in the shadows of St Patri ck's needed touching. Hence childhood memories of my than I struck Gerard Windsor, in m other complaining of sermons full of 'a ll that theolog­ chorus with O'Farrell, lam enting the ical stuff'. Postconciliar slogans pointed to the need to ruin of Catholic intellectual life in fuse theology and life, doctrine and li fe etc. Theology ~~== Australia (Eureka Stree t. , September was to become more evange lical; the gap between the­ 1991(. N ot quite the zestful and ology and preaching was to be bridged. If the T rinity enthusing note I had looked for on Sunday preaching is as poor as Windsor suggests, then my return. the task has barely begun. Mind you, I think it's a fin e Recent decades have also seen the demise of the thing that people like O'Farrell and Windsor raise such theologian as hero. The years before the Second Vatica n questions in the public fo rum, and in a way that is fr ee Council saw the work of heroic perfo rmers like Chenu, of the ideological ca nt that ca n beset di scussions of th is de Lubac, Conga r, Rahncr, vo n Balthasar. Now all except kind. And although I agree wholeheartedly that 'the Conga r arc dead, and no new heroes have risen in their matter needs m ore sustained and less impressionisti c place. What has happened is that more and more scholars discussion', I found many of Windsor's impressions in all sorts of pl aces arc doing less and less. What is true bracing and unexceptio nabl e. My quibble with him is of scholars is also true of scholarl y institutio ns. It is not not so much about the data he has ga thered, but about just the tra ditio na ll y stro ng centres of theological the interpretation of that data. learning that now dominate, but important work is being The key to Windsor's interpretation is the meta­ done in unlikely places and by people once thought of phor ca ptured in his title: 'The N ew Zealand Travell er as unlikely theologians: lay people, wom en. Sketches the Ruins of St Patri ck's'. A puzz ling note of One thing the demise of the theologian as hero lost glory sounds thro ugh the Windsor lament, as though means is a loss of visibility at the point of theological the mighty intellectual edifi ces of medieval Christen­ production. In other days excellence was more visi bl e dom, built by Australian Catholi cs in their own land as a few great individuals elaborated their grea t systems. (a nyone for gothic revival? ), had been allowed to fa ll into It is less visible these days when more arc doing less: ruin in recent decades. Whatever about Europe, that was team work is less striking to the eye than the spectacular never the scenario here: Christendom and its mighty solo. Perhaps theology needs to find new fo rms of visi­ intellectual edifices did not ge t much of a run Down bility. Under. That's why I was hard put to expl ain the sim ­ It is certain that a key clem ent of the tra nsition is mering nostalgia of the piece. the m ove of theology from a seminary context tO a T he question is, what arc we really looking at ' A university context. Monas h University, fo r example, has ruin, as Windsor suggests, or an unfinished building? A established a centre for the study of reli gion and theol­ ruin and an unfinished building ca n look much the sa me, ogy, and the Austra lian Catholic University is in the just as the pangs of birth and the pangs of dea th can feel throes of establishing its theologica l component. The much the same. It is important to know the difference. effect of these moves may not show itself immedia tely, We are clearly at a point of transition: the only but in the long term they will mean a sea change for the questi on is, what kind of transition I For one thing, we doing of theology in Australia. And it is such moves are moving fro m a theological curriculum geared to that leave me enthused by the unexpected theological seminary education to a broader curriculum geared more ferment I find here on m y return. to the study of theology for its own sake. Within this All of which suggests that what Windsor was process of fragm entation and rearrangem ent, old stars sketching, and what I have sketched fro m a different like philosophy have been downgraded- to our impov­ angle, is not so much the ruins of St Patrick's, as a erishment, I suspect- and new stars like history and building splendid in plan and prospect but as yet un­ th e behav ioural sciences are in the ascendant, to our finished. Windsor's lament has laid another chunk of grea t enrichment. This process of revising the theologi­ bluestone, to which I add my own modest gargoyle. • cal curriculum is ti ed to large questions of the nature and purpose of theological study, and it is by no m eans Mark Coleridge lectures in biblical studies at Catholi c com pletc. Theological College, Clayton, Vi ctoria.

28 EUREKA STREET • NovE MB ER 199 1 CHURCH AND STATE

Past imperfect, future indefinite How do we talk about justice for the next century? Pope fohn Paul's encyclical Centesimus Annus tries to address this ques tion, and has in turn prompted reflection on the tradition of Catholic social teaching from which it stem s. In the articles that follow, US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan looks at the relation between Catholic teaching and the changing shape of western society; Frank Fletcher MSC and Brad Taylor look at the implications of this teaching for the NSW Industrial Relations Bill; and Bruce Duncan CSsR reviews Michael Hogan's edition of the Australian bishops' social justice statements.

L oo<>NG M CK AT Po''' Lw XIII's Ruum Novorum, "becomes clca< how yw' d"­ tance Western society has moved in the period separating that encyclical from Centesimus Annus. At the close of the 19th century there was a seemingly unreconcilable conflict between the doctrines of laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand, and some mode of collectivism on the other. Economics was the only issue-war, for example, had evidently become obsolescent. In this atmosphere the church set forth what can be seen as a sensible middle ground where most industrial democracies would eventually settle. By middle ground I do not mean splitting the difference. Rather, Leo XIII, while asserting the rights of private prop-

V oLUM E 1 N uMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 29 erty, even so set fort h a radical doctrine of workers' rights tute's resident theologian' and of the encyclical itself. that extended to a 'just wage', and most especially, the 'Unfortunately, his years in Rome have not sharpened 'natural human right' to form private associations, in­ Karol Wojtyla's pen,' Cox wrote. 'He succeeds in being cluding trade unions. Many proposed measures, the pretentious, provincial and pedestrian at the same time. limitation of working hours, special treatment for 'He credits his predecessor Leo XIII with exerting children and women, Sunday rest and such, seem rou­ "far-reaching influence" on the birth of social security, tine at thi s remove. But they were hardly such at the pensions and health insurance. But don't the labor un­ time. Still , the important event was the extension of ions and citizens' movements that, like Al Smith, could the concept of rights to the marketplace. Labour, it was probably not even pronounce the word 'encyclical' decreed, was not a commodity. properly get a little credit tool Did Franklin Delano As John Paul II puts it, Rerum Nov arum pointed the Roosevelt read Rerum Novarum? ... Do we need som e­ way to reforms under which 'society and the state ... one who is carried around on a palanquin by Swiss both assume responsibility, especially for protecting the Guards to tell us this? The conservative theologians who worker fr om the nightmare of unemployment.' Re­ complain that liberals too often borrow their ideas from sponsibility, that is, for a general level of well-being that the secular realm must be wincing in embarrassment we have learned to call the welfare state. It is notable, about the derivative quality of this ho-hum document. then, that the present Pope goes on to a sharp exchange But let us be more generous. What is exhausted is not with this 'so-called welfare state': the Pope but the social encyclical genre itself, with its improbable claims to universal validity and its conse­ In recent years the ra nge of such intervention has quent temptation to resort to bland truisms. My hope is vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type that Centesimus Annus marks not only the lOOth of state, the so-called 'welfare state'. This has hap­ anniversary of papal social teaching but the pened in some countries in order to respond better end of that chapter in Christian history.' to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the hu­ P.OFE SS OR Cox HA S A POINT about the medium. man person. However, excesses and abuses, espe­ Encyclicals have the quality of an imperial decree. cially in recent years, have provoked very harsh Americans do not instantly take to such modes of ad­ criticisms of the welfare state, dubbed the 'social dress, although he should be careful about patronising assistance state'. Malfunctions and defects in the Al Smith. There is not the least evidence that Smith social assistance state are the result of an inade­ had difficulty pronouncing the word. We have it on the quate understanding of the tasks proper to the state. authority of a not-inconsiderable theologia n, Reinhold Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be Niebuhr, that when tllis subj ect arose during the 1928 respected: a community of a higher order should presidential ca mpaign, Smith simply asked: 'Will not interfere in the internal life of a community of someone tell me what the hell a papal encyclical is? ' a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions [Al Smith was Democratic governor of New York and ... By intervening directly and depriving society of the first Catholic to contest the US presidency- eel .] its responsibility, the social assistance state leads Format apart, there continues to be a real problem to a loss of human energies and an inordinate in­ of English translation. Thus the new encyclical observes: crease of public agencies, which are dominated 'Rerum Novarum criticises two social and economic more by burea ucratic ways of thinking than by systems: socialism and liberalism .' Three decades ago, concern for serving their clients, and which are in Beyond the Melting Pot, referring to Rerum Novarum accompanied by an enom1ous increase in spending. and the message of Catholic social teaching, I wrote: 'Catholic spokesmen have used the term "liberal" to Michael Novak, professor of religion and public policy refer to laissez-faire economics of the Manchester school, at the America n Enterprise Institute, responded with and have generously denounced same.' The result, we grea t enthusiasm in an article in the Washington Post. continued, had been total confusion among the Catho­ Pope John Paul, he wrote, had offered 'the papacy's lic laity, who had to assume that in denouncing 'liber­ strongest language ever about limitations on state pow­ alism' Rome was anathematising Roosevelt's New Deal. er ... no neo liberal or neoconservative ever made the And here again we have the same usage. Misusage. No case more profoundly and with so resounding wonder Harvey Cox got mad. a ring of truth.' That being said, Centesimus Annus could turn out to be as seminal a statement as its predecessor. Rerum How's THAT? The Pope a con servative in the Novarum concentrated on issues of the workplace, as Burkean mode? This suggestion did not escape the no­ did social policy in the Urlited States in the years that tice of Harvey Cox, of the Harvard Divinity School. fo llowed. Labour, declared the Clayton Antitrust Act of Indeed, it provoked him to something like anger, which 1914, is not a 'comm odity'. Workers, declared the Fair is not at all like him. Writing in Newsday shortly after, Labor Standards Act of 1938, must be paid a minimum Professor Cox was dismissive equally of the 'trium­ wage. Minorities, declared the Civi l Rights Act of 1964, phalist' commentary by 'the American Enterprise Insti- could not be discriminated against in employm ent.

30 EUREKA STREET • N O VE M BER 199 1 These may seem routine matters today. They were erage, 37 per cent more likely to have been on welfare Photos: a ll taken anything but when the issues first arose. The disloca­ in the 1970s than their predecessors in the 1960s. If we in Sydney by tions associated with industrialisation were absolutely assume that this same increase will show up for the Andrew Stark baffling when they first appeared. What was unemploy­ whole of the 18 years (0-17), then we can project rates ment? Why did it happen? Who was responsible? An for children born as late as 1980. Thi gives us a white era of fierce doctrinal argument preceded the era in rate of 22 per cent, and a black rate of 83 per cent. which a consensus of sorts was reached. There is no This surely raises the issue of social justice, if, that sense in which unemployment is a problem of the past; is, it can be shown that such destitution in childhood but we know how to measure it, and within limits we is, in the main, a debilitating event. Not for each indi­ know what to do about it. It is not the problem vidual, but generally speaking for a class of individuals. of our age. Lawrence Mead of New York University believes this to be so. In The New Dependency Politics he writes: 'The B uT A NEW ISSUE HAS ARISEN: the growing number of inequalities that stem from the workplace are now triv­ children born to single parents and dependent during ial in comparison to those stemming from family struc­ childhood on 'the social assistance state'. In America in ture. What matters for success is not whether your 1965, I published data suggesting that we might be father was rich or poor but whether you had a moving into an era in which destitution in childhood, father at all.' relatively independent of economic forces, would be our principal social problem. I think it important that this N ow THIS wo uLD APPEAR to be a new social condi­ proposition arose during research on the 'earlier' prob­ tion. Thirty per cent of US children are paupers before lems of unemployment, wages, working hours, etc. In attaining their majority. Not a pretty word, but not a brief, the US Department of Labor had come upon indi­ pretty condition. That is what it means to be 'on wel­ cations that the connection between child wellare and fare ': no income of your own and virtually no posses­ the workplace was brea king up. Earlier, when unem­ sions. This rise in dependency has been paralleled by a ployment had dropped, new welfare cases dropped. But rise in extramarital births. For 1988 the overall ratio was no longer: dependency was seemingly an independent 26 per cent, which breaks down into 17.8 per cent for variable, possibly out of control. white births and 63.5 per cent from nonwhite. There We now know that of children born in the years are now health districts in New York City where more 1967-69, 22 per cent were dependent on wellare before than 80 percent of live births are extramarital. There reaching age 18. This breaks down to 16 per cent for has also been a rise in a social behaviour. By the 1980s it white children; 72 per cent for black children. The data was common to hear of 'children having children'. In tell us that children under the age of eight were, on av- the 1990s we begin to hear of children murdering chi!-

VOLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 31 dren, as firearms have moved into urban neighbourhoods observing an industrial society all around them, could and down the age scale. not conceive that society had changed to the extent that This year, in a preface to the final report of the institutions needed to change as well. Thorstein Veblen National Commission on Children, its chairman, Sen­ called it 'culture lag'. . ator John D. Rockefeller rv, wrote: 'Too many of today's If Veblen has a successor today, in stature as in style, children and adolescents will reach adulthood un­ it is James Coleman, of the University of Chicago, who healthy, illiterate, unemployable, lacking moral direc­ traces our present situation back to the emergence of tion and a vision of a secure future. This is a personal the corporation in medieval Europe and its gradual dis­ tragedy for the young people involved and a staggering placement of kinship structures. 'The central fact about loss for the nation as a whole. We must begin today to the modern corporation,' Colman writes, 'is that it is place children and their families at the top of the na­ not an outgrowth of the family, but constitutes an tional agenda .. . alternative institutional structure, independent of the 'Many young people believe they have little to lose family and little by little drawing power and strength by dropping out of school, having a baby as an unmar­ away from it.' He notes that only about 20 per cent of ried teenager, using and selling dangerous drugs, and 19th century American households were without chil­ committing crimes. When they lack a sense of hope and dren under 18; this proportion is now something like 65 the opportunity to get a good job, support a family and per cent. Thus, raising children is now carried out with become a part of mainstream adult society, teenagers the incomes of a minority of adults, and child welfare are frequently not motivated to avoid dangerous or self­ becomes a minority interest. destructive behaviours. These youth can see few com­ Before the transformation of society represented by pelling reasons to avoid or delay activities that provide the rise of the corporation 'the family was the central immediate gratification. Unfortunately, their actions institution of society on which all others were built, often make their expectations a self-fulfilling and children were part of that centre, an immediate prophecy.' economic asset and an investment for the future. Now that the transformation is largely complete, the family N oTE THE SHlFr IN TERMS. We are not talking about is a peripheral institution and children an economic unemploym ent here. We are talking of children who burden on that periphery.' come of age 'unemployable'. We are not talking of the When I wrote m y America article in 1965, I blameless victims of impersonal market forces. We are assumed that this new social condition would be ad­ talking of adolescents 'lacking moral direction'. We are dressed by public policy. That article began: 'The United not talking of the need for social security programs; we States is very possibly on the verge of adopting a national are talking of the youth who have no 'vision of a secure policy directed to the quality and stability of American future'- family life.' In this I was quite wrong. We did nothing of In February this year, some months before the the sort. The evidence was rejected as inconclusive or National Commission report appeared, the Senate worse. It is still rejected in the sense that orthodox Democratic caucus had approved a legislative program opinion rejects the notion that there is any- titled Strengthening America: The Democratic Agen­ thing qualitatively different about the present. da. A section on children included this passage: 'Chil­ dren now make up the largest proportion of poor persons ENTE R PoPE JoHN PAuL, asserting that what we have in the United States. There is no equivalent in our his­ been doing is precisely the problem. We have been cre­ tory to such a number or such a proportion. All this is ating the 'social assistance state', which has led to 'a new. This circumstance did not exist during the era of loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of the New Deal, a half century ago. It did not exist during public agencies.' Not to mention 'an enormous increase the era of the Great Society, a quarter century ago.' in spending.' Well, now. However, before the document was sent to the What we have here is a considerable role reversal. printer, a 'error' was spotted by the committee staff. The A century ago, addressing the social question of that text that read: 'This circumstance did not exist during time, the church called for more intervention by the the era of the New Deal, a half century ago. It did not state. Now it appears to be saying that state interven­ exist during the era of the Great Society, a quarter cen­ tion has to some extent created or at least worsened the tury ago,' was changed to read: "This circumstance was social problems of the present age. This is high irony. not as recognized during the era of the New Deal, a half The intriguing aspect of this, of course, is that the papal century ago, nor during the era of the Great Society, a pronouncement has American fingerprints all over it. It quarter century ago' (emphasis added). would be well for those involved to come forward, and As I had written that passage, I asked about the it would help if Rome let it be understood that to do so change. It became transparently clear that those re­ is not only acceptable but necessary. sponsible simply thought they were correcting a mis­ How sol Because the argument must proceed from take. This is becoming the liberal orthodoxy: that there evidence. There are natural law elements in the encyc­ is nothing new. It is not, come to think, so very differ­ lical. We are told to distinguish between the society and ent fro m the views of those in the 19th century who, on the state; fair enough. We are reminded again of subsid-

32 EUREKA STREET • NOVEMBER 1991 iarity, which again has doctrinal sources. (Not least the ecclesial sanction of Edmund Burke!) But this is a mat­ Industrial justice: ter for social science as well, and we have a right to hear the complete argument. Further, we need to learn from these American shattering the symbols Catholics whether they think something new is going on. This may just be a fixation of mine, but I cannot puzzle my way out of it. If there is a new social circum­ B EC AU SE O F T HE LIM IT S of state ju risdiction, the stance, then there is no contradiction between the two Greiner government's Industrial Relations Bill does not encyclicals. have wide practical import. But its symbolic impor­ The industrial econom y that Rerum Novarum tance- for all Australians, and not just the people of describes continues, but the enormous dislocations of NSW- is clea r. The bill ushers in a fundamental change the past have been overcome. The question is whether in the industrial relations system, and the union fear some general theory will come along that can tease out that it may inspire future federal legislation. The real the sources of welfare dependency and get this problem aim of such legislation, they believe, can only be to erode back down to an acceptable level, as Keynes did with the strength and achievements of the union movement, unemployment. • through reducing the number of workers protected by union m embership. The government, fo r its part, por­ trays union opposition to the bill as a self-interested fight to hold on to positions of power, and to wages and work Daniel Patrick Moynihan is Dem ocratic senator for New practices that hamper economic recovery. York and former US ambassador to the United Nations. Similar legislation in New Zealand has drastically This article first appeared in Am erica magazine, Sep­ diminished the role of unions and of the award wages tember 1991 . system in that country. When the legislation was intro-

Photo: Andrew Stark

V OLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 33 duced, the New Zealand Catholic bishops strongly con­ awards will relate to an industry, enterprise agreements demned it in the name of the church's social teaching. will relate to an individual employer or even an indi­ This year marks the centenary of that teaching as set vidual workplace, and will have precedence over any fo rth in Pope Leo )QII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, awards or former industrial agreements. Both awards which endorsed the right of workers to form unions. It and enterprise agreements are subject to a set of mini­ is appropriate, therefore, that pastors and theologians mum conditions. And once entered into, neither can be should contribute to the debate on the N SW bill. changed except by the mutual consent of both parties As Pope John Paul makes clear in his own encycli­ (sections lll-12 and section 125 ), or in lim- ca l Centesimus Annus, the church's social teaching ited circumstances (sections 201 -202) . prescribes no particular model for the economy, for such matters can only be judged 'within the framework of A BROADER CO NCEPTION of the public interest would different historical situations'. Thus, the tradition of allow an industrial relations body the power to oversee teaching that includes Rerum Novarum and Centes­ all industrial agreements, to ensure that they did not imus Annus has affirmed the worth of markets and lead to conditions that may be socially disruptive. For private property- while insisting that they must func­ example, enterprise agreements can result in people who tion in accord with the common good. Where they do do the sam e work, but are in different workplaces, not, the state has a duty to intervene in the interests of receiving different wages. If this happens because of justice. Si milarly, this teaching defends the right of incentive payments for higher productivity, or because workers to associate, but does not require compulsory of profit-sharing schemes, the wage differences need not unionism. It proclaims a right to work, but leaves open be unjust. But if such differences merely refl ect the rel­ the question of whether or not some work practices may ative bargaining power of workers in different work­ prevent opportunities fo r increased employm ent. The places, then the wage-fixing procedure offers no right to strike is endorsed when other means of obtaining mechanism to prevent exploitation of the weak. Com­ a just settlement in an industrial dispute have fa iled or mentators assume that this will be the effect of the are not available. Industrial Relations Bill . In Catholic social teaching, So the church does not claim to know how the in­ considerations of human solidarity and a concern for dustrial relations system in NSW ought to function. But the poor are vital elements of the public interest. Thus, it does claim that those who make decisions in con­ while industry has to become more efficient, the bill crete situations-and in a democracy this sometimes should be amended to strengthen the powers of the mean all of us- should do so by consideration of the commission and the court to prevent the weakest from common good, or as it is usually called in Australia, the the community carrying an undue burden. • public interest. It is from this point of view that the Greiner government's bill needs to be Frank Fletcher MSC and Brad Taylor work at the MSC scrutinised. Justice and Welfare Office, Erskineville, NSW.

u N DER THE PRO VISIONS OF T HE 13 1LL 1 the Industrial Commission and the Industrial Court would, in all but Rescuing the texts a few circumstances (sections 201 -2), have restricted powers to oversee and alter industrial agreements. Sec­ Ju stice Now! Social Justice Statements of the Austral­ ia n Catholic Bishops 1940- 1966, edited by Michael tion 345 states that 'in the exercise of its functions the Hogan. Department of Government and Public Ad­ commission must take into account the public inter­ ministration, University of Sydn ey, 1990. RR P $20.00 est'. But the bill refl ects a very limited concept of the public interest, seeing it as primarily a matter of eco­ nomic considerations, without social, environmental and cultural aspects (sections 3, 19, 24[ 2] and 345). 'IESOC IAL JU ST IC E STATEMENTS of the Australian Further, the limited role envisaged for the commission Catholic bishops have long needed to be collected and would be reduced even further if enterprise agreem ents made available to contemporary rea ders, as the original become the norm for many workplaces. pamphlets are now almost unprocurable. So Michael The bill provides for three types of industrial Hogan has performed a great service in editing them, agreements. Form er industrial agreem ents denotes all reviving a project which lapsed in the late 1970s for lack existing arrangements; they cannot be changed or end­ of funds. As well as the 1962 Statem ent on the Second eel except by mutual consent of the parties involved Vatican Council and the 1966 The Moral Code, in a (section 147) . Thus, if changes are desired the parties useful appendix Hogan has added the 1943 ecumenical have to go into the new system. Awards are to be made Twenty-Point Program , the 1951 ecumenical A Call to by the commission, whereas the third category, enter­ the People of Australia and the 1955 Catholic bishops' prise agreem ents, will simply be registered by the com­ Pastoral Letter on the Menace of Communism . The only mission. Our comment focuses on these. other document which would have been useful is Eris The commission will not consider enterprise O'Brien's alternative Sydney statement of 1940, The agreements in relation to the public interest. While Catholic's Duty in Australian Social Reform.

34 EUREKA STREET • N OVEM BER 199 1 Photo: Andrew Stark

Hogan offers a neat one-page intro­ duction to each of the statements, set­ ting the context, outlining the main ideas in them and giving an evaluation. In his general'Introduction', Hogan brings out well the centrality of B.A. Santamaria's thought within the church at the time. Santamaria is perhaps bes t known today for his role in the Catholic Social Stud­ ies Movement and the National Civic Council, but as Hogan rightly notes, that was only one aspect of Santamaria's activity. Hogan considers that the social Justice statements give a more enduring legacy to Santamar­ ia 's thought. sharp polemical style in debate, and elu cidating the log­ R EREADING THE STATEMENTS TODAY, I cannot help ic and force of his politics which generated a reaction feeling how distant from Australian social realities was even from within the Church and his former Catholic the ideology behind some of them, especially the early Action colleagues. How are we to explain the con£lict ones. It was a worldview which owed much to tradi­ in the Church between committed anti-communist tionalist Catholic social thought, particularly coming Catholic intellectuals of immense goodwill and sincer­ from the English distributists and the French literary ity/ When will the Sydney side of the dispute be ade­ revival at the turn of the century. Yet it was a powerful quately told? What were the basic intellectual issues critique of capitalist society, especially for its emphasis involved, especially fro m the point of view of on making every worker an owner of productive prop­ church-state theory and of Catholic Action I erty, and was solidly endorsed by the Catholic bishops of those days. SANTAMARIA IS WELL-K OWN for his OUtStanding mind, The statements also remind us of the many sides his breadth of reading, his prodigious workload and his to Santamaria's political and social thinking. Following genuine piety. Moreover, he is not unsclf-critical, as his the trauma of the Split in the Catholic Action move­ writings show. One can only speculate what his contri­ ments and the Labor Party in the 1950s, a careful and bution might have been had he not been propelled into objective appraisal of Santamaria's role and thinking has political activity so early, and especially if he had stud­ been hard to find. Too often his thinking has been triv­ ied economics seriously. ialised by opponents in polemical disputes. Hogan Given his life-long commitment to the church, it reminds us that Santamaria has been a major political is a personal tragedy for him that he feels so alienated thinker on the Australian scene for more than 50 years, from much of the Catholic community today. For the with significant influence on the shaping of the Aus­ church, too, it is a great loss that he is not widely re­ tralian Catholic community, and to a lesser ex tent on vered as 'the grand old warrior' of Catholic social thought Australian politics as a whole. The picture of Santamaria and activity. Indeed, one of the unhappy consequences as the anti-communist campaigner of Movement da ys of the Split was to create a hiatus in the tradition of must be set within the intellectual framework of the Catholic social thinking, so that many of the later gen­ proposals summarised in these Statements with their eration grew up knowing little of the social activism of radical vision of an alternative agrarian-based society. their parents. Hogan's collection of the Social Justice It is not irrelevant that Santamaria's first love was for Statements will help overcome that hiatus by making the National Catholic Rural Movement, of which he them available to other generations. remained secretary till 1960. Some good contributions to the history of this pe­ The future biographer of Santamaria faces a daunt­ riod have been made, particularly by Santamaria him­ ing task. Santamaria's intense political activity and self with Against the Tide and . Gerard writing covers a half-century, during which time his Henderson's Mr Santamaria and the Bishops also of­ thinking developed and changed greatly. He has been fered much new material from a critical perspective. the focus of some of Australia's most acute political And Robert Murray's The Split remains a standard work. conflict, and can still arouse quite passionate loyalty or But the definitive biography remains to be written. opposition. Many people can testify to his devotion to Perhaps Hogan's collection will be the stimulus for his family, his personal charm and his commitment to someone to take up the task. • his views about building a more just world, a commit­ ment which has undoubtedly cost him greatly. Taking him more seriously as a thinker would involve explor­ Bruce Duncan CSsR teaches at the Yarra Theological ing the origins of his thinking, explaining his sometimes Union, Box Hill, Victoria.

V OLUME 1 N UM BER 9 • EUREKA STREET 35 B OOKS

JACK W ATERFORD Fred

• /J ~ Ill focus"

Fred Hollows: an autobiography with Peter Corri s. john Kerr, Richmond, Victoria, 1991. I'>BN 0 9.'iHHH004 () 4 1\1\1' S29.9.'i

T "'"' '"" I Mn F, experts who came, weighed, meas­ be provided because the local commu­ about l.'i years ago, he g~1vc me the ured, estimated then left, having con­ nity had different ideas of priorities: starter in <1 1inc of many great quotes­ siderably di srupted the community one large community, for example, some of which he would I

36 EUREKA STREET • N ovEMBER 1991 started and 13 by the time it finished. yarner in the class of his great mate cal students he is training, feminist Fred was not a popular fi gure with Frank Hardy, the man who first twist­ film -makers, old comms and prison­ many state and federal health bureau­ ed his arm to look at Aboriginal health ers, mates of 100 causes. crats ortheir political masters. He was condi tions, and his ordinary delivery, After the grind of the trachoma very critical of what he saw: appalling u nabated for minsters of the Crown, program was over, Fred continued to living conditions, inadequate and nuns or society ladies, would be fu ll of harry politicians and push Aboriginal poorly organised m edical services scatological metaphor and simile: ca uses. He had a celebrated confro nta­ which not even very competent and 'This condition is as rare as rocking tion with one Minister for Aboriginal dedicated people in the fi eld could horse shit'; 'There we were, bouncing Affairs, whom he very publicly called bend to much use, and a failure to up and down like peas in a referee's a 'dissembler', and the then Prime consult and involve Aborigines in whistle'; that 'stands out like piss­ Minister, , had to service design and delivery. He was holes in the snow'. He is not a bad intervene to make peace. Increasingly 'political': what was a mere eye doctor chess player- ! taught him how to Fred fell out of sy mpathy with an doing ranging over the fi eld of Abo­ play like a gentleman and Fred later emerging Aboriginal bureaucracy ri ginal administration 1 H is use of described what he'd learned: 'None of which he sa w as failing to ge t to the Aboriginal liaison officers was 'em­ issues or to adapt to change. He is barrassing': someofthe people he hired st il l revered fo r his work, were activists in their communities At one stage, an MP on a parlia­ bu t treated with some ca u- and antipathetic to state administra­ m entary investigation of Abo­ ti on. tions. Joh Bjelke Petersen threw the riginal health was briefed by tea m out of Queensland during an health department officials to A LONG T II C WAY, he also became a electi on campaign, claiming that the cross-exam ine Fred about not little more civilised. He married Cabi, NTEHP was stirring up Aborigines sticking to his brief. The ques­ one of the true heroines of NTEHP against the National Party. tioning went like this: days, who even now would recogni se Our trachom a program teams MP: Professor Hollows, you are and put a name to thousands of Abo­ worked weeks on end without brea ks, an eye doctor, aren't you? rigines from all states of Australia. He travelling hundreds of miles, packing Fred: Yes. had fi ve children, the last two twins, delica te equipment and seei ng hun­ MP: N ow, I understand that who have bro ught out his gentleness dreds of people, packing up and mak­ there aren't many ocular com­ and his patience, and eradicated much ing camp then shifting on again. We plica tions of leprosy? of the personal 2brasiveness. He re ­ becam e a little like Hells Angels, Fred: There are som e, but they jected an Ord er of Austra lia, com­ incessantly quarrelling with each are far fro m the most signifi­ menting with some asperity that 'N ow other but utterly united cant problem s of leprosy. is not the time for people to be getting against the world. MP: Well what are you, an eye accolades fo r progress in Aborigina l doctor, going around talking health.' E\ED' s PERSONALI1)' dominated all. He all the time about the amount At the sam e time, however, he was often bullying, abusive and unfair ofleprosy you have seen among became involved in more internati on­ to us, but simultaneously inordinate­ Aborigines? al public health work, going to Nepal, ly generous. I have yet to meet another Fred: Well, I am a doctor, and I to Burma and most recently Eritrea, doctor so easy-going with patients, so recognise leprosy when I see it. providing servi ces directly but also able to communicate with an old And I think I can say that I have helping to train doctors, advising on woman or to settle a screaming one­ shaken hands with m ore lepers ways of establishing services, and year-old who did not care to have its in Australia than any other helping lobby to get resources. He has eyelids everted. Once the Ioupe - a doctor. also becom e a scourge of the interna­ small magnifier like a watchmaker's tional public health club, which all aid- was on, Fred's attention was 100 too often holds expensive conferences per cent on the patient. He was a this bullshit about " touch move" . We with fl ash fac ili ties only hundreds of marv ellous teacher, not least of fellow win by superi or strategy not by taking metres from direct evidence of the ophthalmologists- many his seni or­ advantage of temporary insanity'. He problem s they are supposedly ad­ who, in years of comfortable city prac­ smoked Erin more Flake through a pipe dressin g. tice had simply never seen the sort of that fitted snugly on to a worn -down Hi s autobi ography prov ides sa m ­ pathology we were encountering all couple of teeth. He was a fa natical ples of Hollows wirh the whip out: in the time. An urban ophthalmologist runner, even out in the desert, but his Egypt, at a pa latial reception organ­ can spend a year without seeing a wheezing and puff ing was enough to ised by the World Health Orga nisa­ blind person, and that one he or she is put one off it for life. tion's World Blindness Program, he unlikely to be able to do much for; on At home he was a careful and pa­ go t up and remarked 'Isn't it great som e occasions we saw as many as 20 tient carpenter, w ith a marvellous [that we get this opportuni ty to sec[ in a day, som e of whom could be made workshop, until the dust and hi s can­ the real pro blems of Egypt. We've just to see again by surgery, and many of cer made him stop. He makes a fi ne been to a village where most of the whom could at least have chronic damper, and enj oys the company of kids have trachoma and many of them pain ameliorated. the poets; hi s house is ever full of are certain to be blinded by it. T here's When not irascible, Fred was a Aborigines in transit, overseas medi - a total absence of even rudim entary

VOLUME 1 N UMllER 9 • EUREKA STREET 37 hygiene facilities there, and now here mology and public health, he was book. 'I don't beli eve in any higher we are in this beautiful place with its much c huffed- but told them power than the best expressions of the bathroo ms and all this clean food on pointedly that 'most of yo u are only human spirit, and those are to be found the tables. It's good to see the real pissin g in m y poe ke t in personal and social relationships. problems of Egypt so strikingly dem­ because I am dying'. Evaluating my own life in those terms, onstrated.' I've had some mixed results. I've hurt Fred is a Marxist, with a stro ng E\E D'S C ANC ER WAS DIAGNOSED nea rl y some people and disappointed others, passion for South American libera­ three years ago. It has give n him a but I hope that on balance I've given tion theology. He continually quotes renewed sense of urgency. As part of more than I've taken. I believe that my Paolo Friere: 'God is the force wi thin this process, Fred sat down and ya rned view of what a redeemed social condi­ us that stri ves for liberation'. Fred's with Peter Carris, who organised the tion is has been consistent- equity current grca t cause, Eritrea, has ya rn in chro nological order but left between people- and I've always tried aroused his passion and sense of Fred fairly unvarnished in the process. to work to that end'. romance beca use he is moved by the The book tells this, and 100 other Copyright proceeds of the book go way in which people have mobilised, stories: of falling into medici ne by to the Eritrean eye program . With despite war and persecution, to organ­ accident, of his pleasure with working Fred's usual flair for a phrase, he says ise their own health care. with his hands, of mountaineering, of that every copy sold will buy an intra­ T hi s year he has placed himself at bore-sinking in central Queensland ocular lens for an Eritrea n. It's well the disposal of aid age ncies seeki ng to during the 1950s, and getting arrested worth the read. While unlike! y to assist attract attention and support to the at Springbok demonstrations in the any proceedings for canonisa tion, it plight of Eritrea. The honours which early 1970s, of going to a Church of gives an authentic picture of a com ­ have been showered on him have been Christ seminary determined to be a plex, good man. • welcome to him because they have preacher in the 1940s, of his late father, been a ve hi cle to attract attention to Joe, a Christian socialist fro m the Eng­ Ja ck Waterford is deputy editor of the the ca use. On the embarrassment side, lish tradition, a railway worker and Canberra Times and a regular con­ when professional colleagues orga n­ chrysanthemum grower, a ge ntle and tributor to Eurel

Spirit

Think of your body as a hot, dry country. Feel your spirit lifting with the wind, and ecstatic, smell the coming rain. Then, look at the bright stars, shifting, trailing, and fall down annihilated .. . slain.

Patrick O'Donohue

38 EUREKA STREET • NovEMBER 1991 BooKs

M.J. CRENNAN

N eclzlaces and bitter almonds

T,nne m SeA=' roo•, Th' The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Allister Mind of South Africa, is instructive, Sparks. Mandarin Paperback, London,l99l. ISBN 0 7493 0598 3. My Traitor's Heart, for he is at all times concerned to trace Rian Malan. Vintage paperback, London,l99l. ISBN 0 09 974900 9 RRP $19.95 thought to its roots. In white South Africa's case, these roots are to be ... In strange way found in the mire of European history: To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; the militant end of Dutch Protestant­ ism, British colonial efficiency, and, To sleep or runne wrong, is. On a huge hill, eventually, Nazism- that sink of Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will European spiritual vices. All these played a part, with pathological syn­ Reach her about must, and about must goe; ergy, in the erection of that hideous And what the hill's suddenness resists, winne so. edifice which it is our historic good fortune to observe being dismantled. John Donne, Satyre III Sparks tells this story with absorb­ ing pace, illuminating juxtaposition 'Now, at 7pm, time for the rally to jammed with a stamping, cheering and judiciously chosen detail. The begin, there is a thunderous commo­ mob waving hundreds of the little incidents are chosen beautifully, as tion outside the hall. At the door I see swastika fla gs ... The frenzy peaks as little epiphanies of the antinomies of Pik Botha's private secretary, Awie the movement's leader, the appropri­ violence. Thus, when 1000 m embers Marais, looking paleand shaken. "My ately named Eugene Terre' Blanche, of the Afrikaanse Weerstandbeweg­ God, have you been in there?" he asks. mounts the stage. Hands shoot up in ing break up a rally to be addressed by "They're barbarians." stiff-arm salutes. He announces that Pik Botha, then Foreign Minister: 'And indeed they are. The hall is Botha has cancelled his meeting. A

VOLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 39 great roar. "Tonight," Terre' Blanche torical imagination of the Afrikaners, wishful thinking, supporters of the bellows above the noise, "was Blood a people whose relationship to the Nazis became difficult to find in South River here in Pieters burg. Tonight the past-or at least to their version of the Africa. Yet, as Sparks convincingly volk has won a great victory in the past- is like nothing el e in the civi­ documents, they were there. They fight to get back our fatherland." lised world so much as that of the were both simple barrackers on the 'Suddenly a police officer appears. Orangeman to his. sidelines and men who had formative He gives an order for the hall to be Sparks' account begins with the experiences in German universities cleared ... The crowd mocks and jeers observation that the Cape was settled during the 1930s. The contribution of ... Pandemonium. I manage to scram­ by a trading company, and not by the the Broederbond to proto-apartheid, ble out in the stampede. A window Dutch government. The Dutch East and the thinking of men like Kuyper shatters above me as a man hurls India Company did not set up a colony and his disciple Cronje, are carefully himself through the glass. He gets up, in South Africa, but a base to supply dissected. Cronje had pursued doctor­ blood pouring from his cut face. "The its Java-bound ships with vegetables al studies in Nazi Germany, and his bastards! " he yells. "They're supposed to combat scurvy. There was no in­ books disseminating what would be­ to do that to the kaffirs, not terest in financing the venture beyond come the ideology of apartheid were us."' (p.325) what was needed for this end. When produced by the publishing house of even this modest aim was not met, the the Dutch Reformed Church. Yer­ T.-IERE IS AS IMPLE PLEASURE in seeing settlers had to spread beyond the limits woerd himself, as Sparks points out in racism outflanked to the right, just as of the outpost, to places where the a mordant footnote, sued the Johan­ there is in seeing revolutionari es company had no interest in policing nesburg SLar for defa mation after it outflanked on the left. Nonetheless, or protecting them . From these be­ had accused him offalsifying the news this incident, illuminating as it is, has ginnings, says Sparks, cam e that pe­ in support of Nazi propaganda. The a large histori cal subtext- you need culiar Boer cast of mind: both anarchic court held that the accusation was to know what Blood River is, what and authoritarian. This embryo true, and Verwoerd lost the action. 'the fight to get back ourfatherland' is, trekker m entality was developed and Sparks' book is imbued with cau­ the significance of the location of the hardened through the experience of tious but strong optimism . It proceeds rally, and much else. It is the strength isolation, conquest and endurance in on highly liberal assumptions, not the of Sparks' book that he supplies, often the succeeding centuries. It was thus least of which is that there is a real in contiguous passages, the historical that the Afrikaners acquired the land connection between the provision of a information that provides this sub­ Terre' Blanche proposes to recover. historical explanation of an evil and text. But how did they lose it, and what its demise. Sparks does not imply that To understand is not, of course, to happened to the original Africans? On explaining som ething necessarily fo rgive. And understanding, in the these questions Sparks is particularly makes it go away, but expresses a hope sense of tracing the causes of present good, taking the reader through the that, once the crippling and anomalous discontents, is not the same paradoxical effects of a modernising pre sures are removed from it, the as being able to solve them. society, and the pressures of economic mind of South Africa will be cured of As we shall see, this is the change, onAfrikanerandAfricanalike. its dark fancies. He concludes on a question posed by Malan. The Afrikaners became poor whites note of uplift: There is no 'norn1al' Nonetheless, there is a qui­ in the cities, and the Africans became '[South Afric

40 EUREKA STREET • NO VEMBER 1991 sary for a strategy of amelioration. Indeed, they make us doubt the very possibility of ameliora- tion, as we recoil from the corrupted spirits of his South Africans. Many instances could The African, be cited, but perhaps the most striking is Malan's although subject detective jo b on the em ergence of a black to changes far mass-murderer, who used to creep into whites' bed­ more catastrophic rooms and despatch his sleeping victims with and precipitate hammer blows to the head. Yet he was always than those of the careful to loo k after any children in the house. declasse Malan attended his trial, where he was typecast as Afrikaner, a vengeful black. This explanation ap­ actually adjusted pealed to both liberal and conservative, for different more successfully. reasons. Malan, however, was stmck by incongmi­ ties in the murderer's s tate- ments and spent much time in unrav­ elling the man's background. This is an utterly enthralling journey of di s­ covery, fo rming the book's centre­ 'Africans became an industrial proletariat almost overnight.' piece, and I will not spoil it by reveal­ Prophecy 3, linoleum relief print by Billy Mandini, 1988 ing the outcome, except to say that the true explanation of the killer's one of those Malans- is his burden. could it be otherwise? The incidents actions turns out to be far removed He lived in exile for many years, but described are usually more ga rish and from the conventional assumptions. finally decided he had to go back to arresting than those in Sparks' book, In tracing it, Malan comes upon a South Africa to face the tmth about although the latter are bad enough. story of folklore, taboo and spiritual himself and his country. The tenor of Malan's narrative, in a dislocation that would take a Faulk­ The questions his narrative raises way, is more directl y moralising than ner or a Conrad to imagine. are not so much those of explanation, that of Sparks. This may sound para­ Malan's South Africa is in many as of essence. In other words, he says doxical, given that Malan is driven by ways scarier and more obdurate than that it is one thing to explain the his own demons and by a sense of Sparks'. Which of the accounts is the present, but an other thing entirely to despair, which is partly despair at the truer I They seem to me to be comple­ make it go away. There is no 'normal' unreality of the kind of liberal mentary visions. We can better un­ South Africa that will return once the thinking fo und in his own derstand the realities of Malan's nar­ pressure on the nerves is lifted. There circle. rative within the urbanely sketched is only a society that, in cru cial re­ perspectives of Sparks. Sparks seems spects, has been maddened by its ex­ H IS MORALISING SPRINGS from the to believe that reasonable men and periences. When applied to the fine intimacy and detail with which he women of goodwill ca n overcome the stmcture of that society,liberal expla­ describes incidents of violence and legacies of tyranny, can dismantle the nations rapidly lose their force and horror. The immediacy and stink of spiritual bitter almond fences still point. The distinction between liberal the events makes the reader ask: What standing. Who, contemplating East­ values-tolerance, consensus, gradu­ kind of people ca n do these things? ern Europe, can easily dismiss him ? alism, liberty, egalitarianism and the The intractably willed nature of the Malan, however, leaves us with the like-on the one hand, and the proce­ actions somehow deflects the more question: If history has made these dures of liberal explanation on the patrician historical ironies that form monsters, what will unmake them ? other, must carefully be made. one of the main strengths of Sparks' Who, looking at the Balkans, can eas­ Malan's book is sharply realised book. Thus, anarchic, even nihilist, ily dismiss him? • and consistently gripping. His meth­ though he is, Malan forces us to ask od is anecdotal and personal- how questions that go beyond those neces- M. J. Crennan is a Melbourne barrister.

VOLUME 1 N UMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 41 OPERA

BRUCE WILLIAMS Grace notes and gross notes It's not over until the fat lady sings, they say. An innovative young Australian opera company turns stereotypes on their head by having its heroine eat herself into a fat and then sticky death, singing all the while.

E,M'NY "'"'· tor and singe r, with those of us who care music by David Ches­ about opera have been worth. So far this pro­ hoping for a company duction has toured five that would bring us reg­ states, and is headed for ularly what the flagships the overseas fes tival only rarely do: contem­ circuit. Noonan plays porary music theatre. The Ghost of Opera, a Now, in Chamber Made diva schooled in the Opera, we have one, of mannerisms of the great impressive enterprise Callas. Recital would and skill. The compa­ m ak e an a ttractive ny's directorate, presid­ introduction to post­ ed over by Douglas Hor­ modernism . It has no ton, has managed in narrative, but evokes three lean years to stage many; by drawing at­ six major works, and to tention to the tricks of collaborate in a number the trade it questions of others. ise the best contemporary work in their purpose; it offers the performer, Horton is a younger director who theatre. rather than the performance; it is cool, has sought out and worked with His sets, whether entirely his or detached, ironic, with just enough comparable overseas groups (e.g. Zu­ those he commissions from skilled openings for empathy to keep it fro m rich Opera Factory) He established designers like Trina Parker, are always icing over. And, like most of what is himself in Melbourne with lively pro­ m emorable: Horton at work can be dubbed postmodern, it is essentially ductions of the standard repertory, represented by the opening scene of parasitic. What keeps the piece alive including what the company calls a Sweet Death (premiered at the Mel­ are the standard romantic arias inter­ bonsai Coronation of Poppea, before bourne International Festival ), a piece spersed through it, without which it moving on to contemporary works. in which the heroine eats herself into would be reduced to a mean-spirited, Around him he has ga thered an the grave. Trina Parker developed a uncomprehending attack. With them, impressive collection of musicians and Horton idea into a Russian-doll set of it works like those love poem s of theatre people. Those who think that fi ve refrigerators. Helen Noonan, Donne in which wit and sensuality opera begins and ends with what's on looking ultra-glamorous, swans on, combine to seduce the eager listener. CD should take a careful look at the unfurling behind her a SO-foot train. Recital is an anti-opera fo r potted biogs in the Chamber Made Standing next to a life-sized fridge, she opera-lovers. program s. They reveal a whole new mimes a conversa tion with her little generation who work across older daughter, who stands upstage by the C ONTEMPORARY MUSIC -THEATRE boundari es-between thea tre and biggest of the fridges, burbling and people som etimes want to believe that music, between the popular and gabbling upwards. The essentials of their work is entirely independent of whatever is its opposite. the mother-daughter relationship are the operatic tradition, has 'gone be­ Directing opera well demands an given at once, and, equally essential­ yond it'. But opera is a difficult matrix unusual combination of abilities: you ly, the piece establishes its sardonic from which to escape. At its centre is must be good at music, at spectacle attitude towards operatic glamour. the voice. People trained in the bel and at complex logistics. You must Attitudes towards opera are not canto tradition can do other things as also know what acting is, as distinct just the precondition, but oft en the well-growl, shout, bend notes like a from what it is that opera singers subject-matter of Chamber Made's blues singer, use an extended range, m ostly do. Horton knows. He directs work. Its best-known achievement so but always, as a reference fo r the per­ actors with the finesse, the inwardness far is Recital, a solo ve hicle for the fo rmance, there must remain that and the inve ntiveness that character- remarkable Noonan, devised by direc- pure, open stream of sound that fl ows

42 EUREKA STREET • N OVEMBER 1991 unimpeded through Mozart and and understanding and opts finally for mythic. What made Recital such a Donizetti. If that isn't there, it's no calorific suicide. If we, the audience, balanced experience was the tension longer opera, and the escape has been read this as the sad case history of between a nostalgia for those tradi­ effected- butatwhatcost? (The phrase someone who never outgrew the posi­ tional experiences and the impulse 'rock opera' is oxymoronic.) While the tion of victim, we will assuredly be towards comic detachment from voice is there, as it is in every one of mocked for bringing such bourgeois them. Chamber Made's regular singers, the categories to bear. Indeed, the program This intelligent dalliance distin­ work remains affiliated to opera, sim­ tells us so. guished Recital. In Greek the antihe­ ply because that sound is by no means So many things lately remind me roic attitudes were cruder, and their natural, as voice teachers like to pre­ of the 1950s. We've heard this stuff outcome distinctly mean. Steven tend, but instead replete with cultural before, about the fascinating freedom Berkoff adapted his own play, which codings. What to do? of the individual to declare all reac­ transfers the story of Oedipus to the Both Greek, which the company tions to them irrelevant, to make up East End, and the improbably named staged earlier this year, and Sweet their own rules and call them ethics. Mark-Antony Turnage set it to a well­ Death are stiffly laced with operatic Nothing in the private world of the wrought atonal score. Here again the parody, and a very conscious deploy­ protagonist of Sweet Death convinces drama is solipsistic. The only realised ment by the composers of a range of me that she is any more than a woe­ character is Eddy (Oedipus); every­ means supplementary to bel canto fully familiar case, surrounded by body else exists only in relation to that serve as prophylactics against the stylish but, in the end, banal stereo­ him. The action is violent, the dialogue Voice Beautiful. types. What inflates our poor heroine scatological and the myth shorn of In Sweet Death, for example, dia­ beyond endurance is not so much the dignity, compassion or complexity. tonic recitative is used to express the cream she licks off her costume as Sophocles' Jocasta, when she Cruel Mother's phoniness. But not all the thesis with which she is realises what has happened, makes a the operatic techniques can be got rid stuffed. famous silent exit, to her death; this of, or the piece would have to be recast, one says 'Oh, shit''· No Creon, no the company renamed and a whole A LL THE WIT AND ELEGANCE of the chorus (except of ridicule), no chil­ range of vocal resource abandoned. So staging, and the redoubtable perform­ dren, just a fascinated dwelling on the we find, in both Sweet Death and ance by Annette Tesoriero as the girl, incest motif and, at the end, an ado­ Greek, at moments of expanded feel­ could not finally persuade me that lescent attempt to shock. Eddy breaks ing, the regular use of melismata (long Sweet Death was any more than a off his lament to announce that he's chains of notes on a single sound). small story, one which does not de­ not going to punish himself, he intends This, to a listener familiar with, say, mand music for the telling. If that to carry right on with mother, and at Britten, is an entirely standard opera tic seems harsh on Andree Greenwell's least they really love one another and resource. eminently theatrical score, I should they're not violent like the imperial­ A good thing, too. Who would temper the judgment by adding that ists. These are ethics that would not complain, at a Chamber Made pro­ signally few contemporary works convince a middle-school debating duction, that Helen Noonan can pluck achieve a necessary relationship be­ society: hapless sexism, and a sub­ her high notes out of the blue, or tween music and drama. Reichian hymn to male potency. No, lament the rich, dark, almost Italian Signally few works in the standard I did not care for this opera. timbre of Gary Rowley's baritone/ repertory, either. But it happens that What lingers in the mind from this Grant Evans, the tenor in both Greek in our period both arts, music and Chamber Made production are imag­ and Sweet Dea th, is a classic compri­ drama, are in that state of continuous es of nifty staging- duets on table­ mario who can turn on all the tradi­ crisis which we moderns and post­ tops, two power-dressing Sphinxes in tional neighing, cooing and rasping, as moderns have come to accept as nor­ barred light, the car driven on through well as sing sweetly. mal. There are patches of recent his­ the dockdoors-and the finely-disci­ This company, then, is still more tory in which the most distinguished plined work of the ensemble of sing­ than half in love (sorry, Keats) with work is impossible to imagine in ers. The doing, in fact, the operatic easeful breath. In its own terminology combination: Waiting/or Godot in the doing. it has 'reappropriated' the operatic high serial manner of Pierre Boulez? At the moment Chamber Made is voice. Behind this jargon, with its Peter Maxwell Davies' setting of a company with more skill and verve implication that sometime back there Jumpers! than we could have hoped for, and I bel canto was stolen from The People, Another energising conflict for look forward to seeing them make or we can hear the manic voice of French Chamber Made is that generated be­ discover those works which really utopian politics. These are what in­ tween attitudes presently favoured survive inspection under the vast form the libretto of Sweet Death, de­ towards what used to be called life and magnifier of music theatre. Whatever vised by Abe Pogos from a novel by those carried by the operatic tradition. reservations I may have entered about Claude Tardat. A little girl, stigma­ I don't mean just romantic afflatus, or the productions discussed here, I am tised as 'plain', by her haute-bour­ elitism. Opera, from Monteverdi to grateful to have had the chance to see geoise Betty-Friedan mother, neglect­ Britten, is an artform developed to them. • ed by her supposed father and sexually express grandeur, nobility, heroism, exploited by her actual one, decides to tragic suffering and the depths of Bruce Williams is senior lecturer in get very fat, rejects all offers of help feeling. Its natural province is the drama at LaTrobe University.

V o LUME 1 N uMBER 9 • EUREKA STREET 43 Emeka Street Film Competition If Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart look worried, it's not just because they haven't found the Maltese Falcon. It's because of the pressures of age. The Maltese Fal con had its 50th birthday last month, and a new 35mm print of the film has been released to celebrate the fact. Eureka Street salutes the m emory of those who made the film possible-Bogart, Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, director John Huston, and of course, Dashiell Hammett. But these are the familiar nam es. Tell us who played Sam Spade's partner, Archer, in the film, and if yours is the first correct entry opened we'll award two tickets to a film of your choice. Write to: Eureka Street film com­ petition, PO Box 553, Richmond, Victoria 3121.

The Field, dir. Jim Sheridan (inde­ In this case, it is literally as well as gossip. There is no counsel, no hint of pendent cinemas). Richard Harris is metaphorically the kind of pride that redemption in his words. As the Bird, reputed to have described his perform­ goes before a fall. And before we wit­ Hurt is a kind of malign mirror-image ance in The Field as 'my King Lear'. ness that fall, he takes us on a tour of of the Fool he played to Paul Schofield's The story may be a publicist's fi ction, all the other deadly sins as well. Lear. but if so let us not blam e the publicist In the Bull's village, ownership The Bull's conflict with the Atner­ fo r ge tting it right. Superficially this and inheritance have the kind of ob­ ican and the parish pries t (Sean fi lm, adapted fro m John B. Keane's sessive importance that is only possi­ McGinley) leads, Lear -like, to his own play of the same name, has all the ble where people possess little, and disintegration and the destruction of ingredients of melodra matic sludge: have bittermemoriesofwhat happens all that he loves. There is no faithful stage-Irish peasants, starkly beautiful to those who lose everything. The Gloucester to suffer for his master; Connemara coastline, and a plot con­ Bull and his wife (Fricker) have not but the villagerssuffer when the priest, cocted from the consequences of greed, spoken fo r 18 years; they have lost one accusing them of complicity in mur­ suicide an d murder, leavened with a son, and have a troubled relationship der, drives them from his church. The little sexandalot of religion. Sheridan's with another, because of the Bull's Bull's son Tadhg (Sean Bean ) is too direction and screenplay, however, obsession with the land. Like Lear, weak and too venal to be a Cordelia; make The Field considerably more the Bull is alternately goaded and but like her he leaves his fa ther and than the sum of these parts. Add in abetted by a 'fool'. But this fool is the then returns, out of love, to become fine performances by Harris, John Hurt Bird O'Donnell (Hurt), a feckless the final victim of the Bull's pride. It and Brenda Fricker, and the result is cadger of drinks and prattler of village all amounts to Lean ak en down a notch indeed the stuff of classical and or two, with no reconciliation or self­ Shakespearean tragedy. knowledge at the end. Sheridan weaves his tragedy out of In The Field Sheridan has given us the cliched images of Ireland found in a fi lm that is as deeply pessimistic as films such as John Ford's The Quiet his first feature, My Left Foot, was Man. In both films the setting is a optimistic. But My LeftFoot wasabout small village in the 1930s. Both con­ a man overcoming natural affliction; cern the arrival in the village of an The Field is about a man who makes Irish-American, with m oney to spend his own affliction. and his past to recover. And in both, - Ray Cassin American expectations mn foul of Irish sensibilities. Backdraft, dir. Ron Howard (all cine­ The Field strips the sentim entali­ ma chains). Backdraft has been con­ ty from this kind of story, however, descended to, but I come not to bury it telling it from the point of view of a but to praise it. It is suitable for lovers villager, the Bull McCabe (Harris) The winner of last month's film of Chicago, that most filmable of cit­ rather than of 'the American' (Tom competition is Deirdre O'Farrell, ies; for students of domestic tension, Berenger). The Bull is intent on buy­ of Longueville, NSW. Asked what between siblings and within marriage; ing a field he has rented for many the family in this still were dis­ for lovers of spectacle, especially if years, so that his son will have a secure cussing, she gave us this line: that involves more fire than you will living. The American is intent on 'The ape's hopeless. Let's give see in your whole life, unless you buying the fi eld to cover it in concrete, Quasim odo a ring. ' A consola­ yourself are a fireman or an attender of for easy access to a limestone quarry. tion prize goes to the Rev. Andrew wars; for connoisseurs of bravery, This sounds like the beginning of a Knight, of the Anglican parish of physical and other. It's not much good green parable-in both senses of the Borowa, NSW, who thought the if you are looking for sophistication of adj ective-but Sheridan is not inter­ topic of conversation was vine dialogue, but then who except the ested in preaching nationalism or grip and family power system s. shortsighted goes to the movies for ecology. (Note who has left over right and that? Instead he gives us a very moral right over left; it strongly indi­ Kurt Russell and William Baldwin tale about that deadliest of sins, pride. cates a leadership challenge.) play brothers working nowadays in

44 EUREKA STREET • NOVEMBER 199 1 the Chicago fire service, having trou­ ble with the past and the present, and as all such persons must, with whether they are to have a future. Robert De­ Niro, former contestant with what a congenital arsonist calls, creepily, 'the animal', namely fire, is now an inves­ tigator of arson, and eventually a prober of conspiracy. Donald Sutherland, Scott Glen, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rebecca De Mornay get on with a variety of supporting roles. Hans Zimmer's music is laudable when it is audible, but it is sometime" given a hard time by explosions, traffic roar, and similar afflictions of this fallen world. I went, resigned to mocking, and came away cheered. But then I love Chicago. -Peter Steele SJ Thelma and Louise, dir. Ridley Scott the film has some moments of cine­ Life is Sweet, dir. Mike Leigh (inde­ (Greater Union). With Thelma and matic realism at its best. But mostly it pendent cinemas). This delightful Louise Ridley Scott and cinematogra­ is in thrall to romantic notions of comedy, set in a working class suburb pher Adrian Biddle add another mini­ tragic incompatibility. of North London, revolves around food. chapter toAmerica's longrunningsaga -Morag Fraser It does so with all the concentration of of the search for innocence, lost or Noted, a video-shop poster for Mel Peter Greenaway's The Cook the otherwise. Thief, his Wife and her Lover, or Itami's 'Buddy' heroines from Arkansas, Gibson's latest release: 'Hamlet, in the tradition of Excalibur.' Tampopo, but with a humanity that Thelma and Louise, set out to go eludes those films. fishing, leaving behing them grinding Everything that its characters are routine and Thelma's farcical hus­ Catgotyourtongue? escaping from has to do with food, and band. They don't make it to the Tell us, and tell the world. so has what they are escaping to. Nicola mountains because Thelma is almost To advertise in (Jane Horrocks) is a bulimic who won't raped and Louise kills Thelma's at­ eat with her family, but who won't tacker in a furious reflex, thereby EUREKA STREET have sex with her lovers unless they turning them into fugitives. And so, eat thick brown chocolate-hazelnut like their literary and cin ematic Contact spread over her body. Her twin sister predecessors, they seek escape and has escaped eating disorders. Instead new life by lighting out for the territo­ she is a plumber, attending to the final ry, creating the usual mayhem along product of all that food . the way. Andy (Jim Broadbent) is a cook, The film 's trick- reversing the wounded by an encounter with a fork, usual male and female roles and who dreams of escape into a decrepit stereotypes- doesn't really turn it fast food caravan. Wendy (Alison into a feminist revelation, but the Steadman) regulates the pulse offamily performances of Susan Sarandon life with Sunday roasts and regular (Louise) and Geena Davis (Thelma) snacks. Aubrey (Timothy Spall), the are so good you could cheer the film obese foil to the anorexic Nicola, plans for that reason alone. And the 'territo­ to bring haute cuisine to the suburbs ry' itself, sometimes Edenic, mostly through his restaurant the Regret Rien. ruined, is enough to break your heart. Against all odds, one of his dishes Ridley Scott speeds his characters looks quite appetising. Then h e and audience across a scarred and des­ proudly announces that it is Prawn on ecrated America, but one with enough a Bed of Jam. fragments of splendour left to convey a sense of what has been wrecked and The big achievement here is a del­ Lisaf}?pse icate balance between astringency and lost, even without the vogue cross­ sentimentality; a balance achieved by refencing to past cinema classics. (The Tel (03) 427 7311, piling on lots of both. I've always liked shadow of John Ford is a long one.) Fax (03) 428 4450 Leigh's films, and this might be his Sometimes in Thelma and Louise Or call in at Jesuit Publications, best yet. human energy and ideal landscape 300 Victoria Street, - David Braddon-Mitchell don't seem to be on a collision course; Richmond, Victoria.

V o LUME 1 N u M BER 9 • EUREKA STREET 45 SEVENHILL CELLARS A special Spring picking for Eureka Street readers. The Jesuits of Sevenhill in South Australia's Clare Valley, have been gripping the grape since 1852. So enjoy the fruits of our labour!

Mixed orders must be in multiples of a dozen. All prices include 20 per cent sales tax.

The wines per bottle per dozen quantity cost

Clare Riesling 1991. A medium-dry white table $8.50 $90.00 wine. This variety, known in France as crouchen, was first brought to Australia by the early J esuits.

Tokay- Classic Dry White 1990. Made from 100% Tokay grapes, t his wine is st yled as a Chablis. It can be drunk now or cellared for up to $8.50 $90.00 four years. St. Aloysius (White Burgundy) 1991. A blend of 44 per cent Verdelho, 34 per cent Crouchen and 22 $12.00 $130.00 per cent Chenin Blanc. Has a full, dry palate. Marks 400th anniversary of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. Vintage Port 1984. This port is a winner of nine medals. It will li ve for years (a minimum of 15) so $12.00 $130.00 why not welcome the year 2000 with it?

Dry Red 1990. This blend of 50 per cent Shiraz, 25 per cent Touriga and 25 per cent Grenache is $10.00 $110.00 pleasant to drink now.

St Ignatius 1990. The second issue of a vibrant blend of Merlot, Cabernet Fra nc, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, created to mark the 500th $15.00 $165.00 anniversary of the birth of St Ignatius Loyola, a soft, round wine with a cellaring potential of six to eight years.

South A ustralian buyers add $4. 00 freight per carton, others $8.00 total cost

Name ...... Send this order form to Sevenhill Cellars, Address ...... PO Box 13, Sevenhill via Clare, Freight details ...... South Australia 5453. Bankcard, Mastercard or Visacard Number ...... Tel (088) 43 4222 Fax (088) 43 4382 Expiry date ······················································································································ ····································· EURI:-KA SJREE 1 bookshop Special Christm as Offerings Mark quantity

THE PRAYER TREE by Michael Leunig. More to amuse, excite, surprise and inspire in this second collection of Leunig's poetry of the inner life. An excellent Christmas gift. (PRA YERTRE E01) $9.95

LAZARUS by Brendan Byrne SJ. An outstanding Australian scholar makes this explanation of the story of the raising of Lazarus a starting point for considering issues that death raises for all believers; issues about Jesus, and about ourselves. (LAZARus002) $8.95

INIGO by Michael Hansen SJ. An illustrated children's book on the adventurous life of St Ignatius Loyola. The reader is invited to identify with Chris, a young boy of today. Chris has a hundred qestions and is shown that Ignatius's life is a map to God. (I NicoOOl) $17.95

JESUS AND THE COSMOS by Denis Edwards. This respected Adelaide author considers together the Christian tradition, the new cosmology provided by modem science and threats to a vulnerable Earth. (J ESuscosMO l ) $10.95

TOWARDS GOD by Michael Casey OCSO. Offers wisdom and guidance from the Western tradition of contemplation as followed by an Australian Ci tercian. An engaging blend of personal experience and research. (TO WARDCOD01) $16.95

NO SET AGENDA by Paul Collins. Featured in the 'Brides of Christ' debate. This challenges thinking about Australian Catholicism- church schools, the role of bishops, matters of conscience-and offers invigorating ideas to confront an uncertain future (NOSETACENoOl) $16.99

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: A BIOGRAPHY by Brian Martin. Makes extensive use of Newman's diaries and letters. (JO HNHEN RYN01) $16.95

WORD OF LIFE IN MEDIA AND GOSPEL by Paul Duffy SJ. A critical assessment of what the media do and how a Christian can relate its messages to the gospel. (woRDMEDIA01 ) $14.95

MORAL THEOLOGY, ESSAYS IN HONOR OF RICHARD MCCORMICK SJ edited by Charles Curran. The essays in this volume use McCormick's writings to evaluate the state of moral theology, particularly within the Catholic tradition. (M ORALTHEOL01 ) $35.95

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