Vol. 8 No. 8 October 1998 $5.95

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Peter Cochrane on Henry Reynolds' history

iJoting matters- Francis Sullivan and Jack Waterford

Dewi Anggraeni and Dan Madigan on Indonesia ana Islam

'Ihe flttle ©esert Case- Libby Robin on Australia's Iively his tory of en vi ron mental pol iti c:s

John Heaps, Ivan Deveson, Gabrielle Lord, Edmund Campion, John Funder & Philip Kennedy on the pontificate of John cfaul H- cifter twenty years PUBLIC GOOD A CONFERENCE IN HONOUR OF PATRICK TROY Humanities Research Centre Australian National University December 11-12, 1998

This conference will explore questions of justice, citizenship, gender and inequality which inform Patrick Troy's contribu6ons to urban and social research. It will discuss the continuing salience of justice in public understandings of social change and social conflict. It will examine issues of access and distribution, regulation and compliance, and the proper place of the public and private sectors in contemporary Australian cities. It will explore the balance between commonality and difference in revising and reviving citizenship. Above all, it will consider the place of public intellectuals, advocacy and public service in the future of Australian universities. Speakers: Graeme Davison, Ruth Fincher, Kurt l veson, Margaret Levi, Stuart Macintyre, Peter Read, Jill Roe, Tim Rowse, Susan Smith, Frank Stilwell, Hugh Stretton, Sophie Watson. Enquiries and registration: Leena Messina, Programs Officer Human:ities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Phone (02) 6249 4357, Fax (02) 6248 0054 Email: [email protected]

Aquinas Academy:: ...:.:·.:. SUMMER SCHOOC- Art Monthly 1999 "iUS TR .-1 /,/_-/ presents

IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE

Tim Bonyhady suggests the National Gallery of Australia be turned upside down

Christine ~icholls on the art of Kathleen PetYarrc

Bernard Smith on Patrick McCaughey's malapropos

Patrick Hutchings on the sublime of the sparse vehicle

Peter Timms on the sculpture of :\:eil Taylor; working towards the Australian Contemporary Art Fair January 18th - 21st, 1999 10am- 4pm Mon- Wed l$.1pm Thurs

Brother Emelian Hall, Sl Joseph's College, Out now HUNTERS HILL

.\-/ ..i0, ji·11111 good '""'f.:s/iops 1111d lll'll'SIIg<'IIIS. Secretaoy - (02) 9247 4651 Or plul//1' ()] (,]-/IJ .i'l% ji11· _)'IIIII' sul'.'

Henry Reynold~ concludes

Fate of a Free People t,t it h a quote from fohn Locke whose advice to ch'>pos-;e-,sed peuples was 24 GETTING ACROSS THE MESSAGE to usc the law and, d ther CONTENTS Vincent Matthews on myths of media bias. failed, to try and try again lill jm·lice i.~ eventually 4 25 SUMMA THEOLOGIAE done, even i{ittake.s COMMENT generatioiH. The With Morag Fraser and Francis Sullivan. 28 cunning in Rej nolds THE LITTLE DESERT CASE 1s wdicalmtent backed Libby Robin uncovers Australia's 7 surprising history of eco-politics. by the leverage CAPITAL LETTER of the Enlightenment. 32 8 PetLT Cochrane on HUNTING NOT TRAVELLING LEADING WITH FEELING Peter Cochrane takes on Henry Reynolds' the work ot h1ston,m Graham Little on what we lack. Henry Rq nolds, p ~4. history. 9 41 LETTERS BOOKS: RE-JIGGING AUSTRALIA Frank Brennan, Margaret Simons, Australia 10 David Glanz and Spencer Zifcak review THE BEAM IN OUR EYE books on the reshaping of key Australian Dan Madigan on Western institutions, written by Brian Galligan, This proiect has been assisted by the Commonwea lth Government preconceptions of Islam. John Uhr, Julianne Schultz, David Peetz, through the Australia Co uncil, its Patrick Troy, Martin Painter and arts funding advisory body. 12 Ian Marsh . Cover design by Siobhan Jackson JOHN PAUL II AND ME Photograph of Pope John Paul II by Six Australians reflect on 20 years of 46 Andrew Stark; photograph of Henry Reynolds by Leon Mead, courtesy John Paul II's pontificate. KINKY LEAR Allen &. Unwin; reproduction Peter Craven is not amused by of Ben ja min Dutterau's 'The Barrie Kosky's production of King Lear Conciliation', 1840. 14 THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC for the Bell Shakespeare Company. Cartoon p5 by Dea n Moore. Photographs pp6, 12 by Andrew Stark. With Gerard Windsor, David Glanz, Photograph pl4 by Greg Scullin. Andrew Dodd, Richard Leonard, 48 Photographs pl6 by Penny Tweedi e. Dan Madigan, Frank O'Shea and FLASH IN THE PAN Photographs/graphics pp28-3 l , James Griffin. Reviews of the films Pudita Durangoi courtesy Melbourne University Press. Graphics pp1 5, 18-24, 41 - 45 by Live Fleshi In the Winter Darki Radiancei Siobhan Jackson. 19 Les Miserables and The Truman Show. Correction fo r September 1998: ARCHIMEDES p12 graphic was by Peter Fra ser. 50 Eurel

V OLuME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 3 CoMMENT

M ORAC FRASER A mngozine of public affairs, the orls and theology Publisher Daniel Madigan SJ When will we Editor Morag Fraser Assistant editor Kate Manton Consulting editor W mo :he election period for education~~== to register h:~~~~ on the Richter scale of Michael McGirr SJ political calculation? Tax we got. CST w e got. Footy and Graphic designer gold medals we go t, plus Pat Rafter's grace, and President Siobhan Jackson Clinton's dereliction. Production and business manager But what about consideration of Australia's future as a Sylvana Scannapiego country positioned, by its remarkable tradition of independ­ Editorial and production assistants ent research and scholarship, to be an intellectual power­ Juliette Hughes, Paul Fyfe SJ, Geraldine house at home and in the region at a time when the need for Battersby, Chris Jenkins SJ, Scott Howard redevelopment is so great? Not a priority, said the polls. And Contributing editors we, like sheep ... Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ, Perth: Dean Moore But not all of us, fortunately. There were voices from Sydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor the outer cheering for something more than self-interest. In Queensland: Peter Pierce mid-September a group of qualified citizens told John Howard United Kingdom correspondent and Kim Beazley that Australia's present education policy Denis Minns OP was inadequate, inequitable and misdirected. Professor Peter Kannel, long an authority in Australian education, sounded South East Asia correspondent the alarm on schooling. Jon Greenaway Higher education got a run in the aftermath of Labor's Jesuit Editorial Board education policy launch when Kim Beazley vowed, if elected, Peter L'Estrange SJ, Andrew Bullen SJ, to become the Education Prime Minister. Given the record Andrew Hamilton SJ of both parties over two decades of shrinking investment and Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ constant 'reform' in education, his work would be cut out Marketing manager: Rosanne Turner for him. Labor was the party which, under Paul Keating, Advertising representative: Ken Head refused for the first time to fund the salary increases of Subscription manager: Wendy Marlowe university staff, causing an ongoing 10-12 per cent financial Administration and distribution shortfall that Australian tertiary institutions, with their Kate Matherson, Lisa Crow, Kristen Harrison, restricted revenue base, are in no position to make up. There Nomeneta Schwaiger is no guarantee that the refusal will be reversed. Patrons Meanwhile, the Coalition's Education Minister, Eurelw Street gratefully acknowledges the Dr Kemp, insists that the government is fostering quality in support of C. and A. Carter; the higher education by adding choice and decentralising the trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; system. He repeats these claims in the taxpayer-funded 'News W.P. & M.W. Gurry on Higher Education', despite evidence from universities that Eureka Street magazine, ISSN I 036-]758, Government in fact centralises wh ere it chooses. It carefully Australi a Post Print Post approved pp349181/003 14, controls, for example, the ratio of graduate to undergraduate is published ten times a year places (turning away undergraduates is not electorally by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, popular); controls the distribution of post-graduate awards 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 121 Tel: 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 (in response to regional rather than academic considerations) e- mail: e [email protected] u and proposes a universal graduate exit test. http:/ jwww .openplanet.com.aufeureka So only a determined optimist could be encouraged about Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by the future of education in Australia. Fortunately there are Daniel Madigan, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. people able to register protest and at the same time imagine, Printed by Doran Printing, 46 Industria l Drive, Braeside VIC 3 195. with force, a way forward. © jesuit Publications 1998 Professor Peter Doherty and Sir Gustav Nossal gave Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and public lectures in late August and September. Both are fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by effervescent talkers, full of unsubornable passion for their a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for subject and qualified hope for the future. They are also permission to reprint material from the magazine should be addressed in writing to: scathing about the prevailing climate-we live in a time when The editor, Emel

4 EUREKA STREET • O c TOBER 1998 leaders at a time when the country bemoans the lack best to make Mr Howard and Mr Beazley conform of a leadership of integrity. They could have been and compete according to the image they think voters speaking from anoth er planet, so marked was the want, and say only what would sell. But Doherty says contrast between their words and the cramped exactly what he believes, frequently, and although his rhetoric of our political debate. 1996 Nobel Prize for Physiology or M edicine might Sir Gustav gave the Daniel Mannix lecture, on not guarantee him the sustained esteem of his col­ the life and work of Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, his leagues ('You are only as good as your next experi­ celebrated predecessor as head of The Walter and Eliza m ent!') it has given him warrant to speak for Australia. H all Ins titute. One of his observations was He argues spiritedly for national acknowledgment refreshingly shocking: he remarked that the 1960 of an Australian trait: the resourceful inventiveness Nobel Prize winner's diffident and single- minded that has produced such notable research here, against approach to his research had preserved him from two the geographical odds. He also argues for appropriate of the major pitfalls of academic and scientific life: public funding of the kind of pure research that has competition and conformity. underpinned so much of Australia's disproportionate Professor Doherty gave the Larry Adler address, success. And the onetime vet from Queensland roundly subsequently broadcast on the ABC's Science Show. repudiates the language of envy that has infected our The lecture and its repeat bookended Channel Nine's national commitment to higher education. 'Great D ebate' between the Prime Minister and the So we have the models. What is needed now is Leader of the Opposition. Trust a wayward scientist the national will to implement them. to provide the control. Media minder had done their -Morag Fraser

.1\R€. YOU Wt:LL, t PUT su~~,!IC. IT To HIM­ D\DN I AND ALL 1-\E SA ID WAS. ' RENDE:R_ ONTo CAE.5AR THE 1l11N6S THA,. GA1~R 's~/

COMMENT: 2

F RANCIS SULLIVAN Not getting through EucSURveYS CONS

V oLUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 5 population behind. But Australia's economy is too unnecessary rebates to the well-off. Seventy per cent dependent on global effects for government to turn of people w ith health insurance earn more than back the clock. $70,000 a year. If these people are not required to use Through their respective tax packages, both major their insurance when going to hospital, the public parties promised to eradicate the work disincentives system is still at risk of being overburdened. for welfare beneficiaries, reduce poverty and relieve The Opposition's alternative is to plough an extra the tax burden for below-average-income house­ $2 billion into public hospitals. This will buy som e holds. Whereas the Government's attempt is too short-term relief, but the waiting lists will continue heavily skewed in favour of individuals earning more to grow. Uncertainty about the availability of public than $5 0,000 a year, the Opposition's targeted tax cuts hospital beds has compelled over 700,000 low-income seem limp without any concerted broaden- people to remain privately insured. The Labor policy ing of the tax base. fails to recogn ise that essential private hospital services are used as part of the social safety net. sOME HAVE ARGUED that a fairer approach would As with unemployment, the m ajor parties must combine the Opposition's tax cuts with the Govern­ compromise. The Government cannot direct a ment's taxation of som e goods and services. Either way, greater certainty of funding for the safety net is essential. The Government admits th

6 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1998 Moving right along

L •ucnoN AFm, pe,hap,, might be It's a pity in a way, because if ever there were a time for a review one that matters. One that genuinely of what Australians want and expect of government, it ought to be Jaclz W'a terford mobilises some community opinion and now, even with such embarrassing lead debaters. In an election involves fundamental choices about where campaign of extraordinary tedium, one of the lowest points was the Australians are going and what they want to be. incapacity of the two leaders to articulate any sort of vision of If this happens, however, it is more than likely to be a Australia a decade hence-or at least a vision that was not primarily consequence of something the politicians have not controlled so economic in its terms coupled with a few cliches about fairness. But far: the transition to a republic. Voters who have decided this time a debate which talked about the community fabric and the nation's around that nothing very important is being resolved are well­ physical and social infrastructure, and which sought to establish entitled to their cynicism. They are certainly well-entitled to have both some old and new concepts of citizenship, of public interest concluded that there was little that was fundamental about tax and common good, and which defined just what it is government reform, of either party's prescription, or about anything either of can and should reasonably deliver would be well worth having. them have characterised as plans. The old phrases are no longer adequate-whether because of The differing policies on wider issues, such as health, or communications, the realities of a modern trading state, or even of employment, or unemployment, or education or immigration, a modern economy. The old models of public and private sectors are were at best cunningly devised, from the centre line, to inform not adequate either: it is possible to deliver some goods and services voters about which goal posts they were facing, while reas uring more efficiently from the private sector. There is more accident and those looking in the opposite direction that they had no developed history than rhyme or reason about which of our utilities are intentions of moving far from the halfway line. The credibility regarded as essentially of the public sector. problem of both parties has prevented their doing much more. We may need new models of work and duty, even in the private John Howard's at times pathetic refrain that he has a plan-and sector, to cope with a public sector which is increasingly less Kim Beazley's attempt to use the same word himself-reflects the process-oriented. Old regulation models need rationalisation, and fact that the research of both parties tells them that voters want some of the tools of the modernists-about market testing, politicians and parties with developed visions of the political competition and choice-are worth playing with. But at the same proces . Alas, however, the same research tells them that the voters time, voters are more than customers, co-operation is in many have almost entirely lost faith in any capacity of the current crop areas a more effective way of achieving outcomes than of politicians to deliver, so that anything grandiose will be competition, and notions of community are more significant than immediately discounted. Nor is the disillusion something confined ideas of rugged individualists making their way alone in to the fringes represented by the One Nation movement. Popular a hostile world. participation in politics has never been so low since federation, and uncertainty and insecurity about the future never so high . The I TIS ONLY WHEN THERE HAS been such a debate that other issues are brew, however, does not so much inspire the raspberry represented going to be resolved. Issues such as how government intervenes in by voting for a Pauline Hanson, as an apathy and fatalism. local communities to promote outcomes such as employment One positive consequ ence of the Hanson effect is that it might growth or health; about how far pure economics and market forces put a brake on stage two of a Liberal Party agenda with which Labor can dictate the size and structure of communities and how much itself had flirted. the march of that progress can and should be slowed or reversed by The cuts imposed by the first Howard budget followed conscious use of community resources. And then about what recommendations from the National Commission of Audit, but its resources government needs, and thus what our taxation rates report, coming from deep within the soul of the economic rationalist might be. As it is, too much of the debate is being won by the core­ movement, had a higher agenda-at that point only postponed. The functionalists by default. commission had called for a radical debate on the role of government. In part this is because many of the players scarcely talk to each This was to be focused not only on producing smaller government, other, or scarcely use the same language when they do: whether confined to core functions. It wanted the question of what those they are politicians imbued with the modem 'realities' when they core functions are to be completely open-and questions about how are addressing voters, or Aborigines talking to government, or the such goods and services which fell within the net might be provided, welfare sector talking to business or Treasury. Pauline Hanson to be open to all of the modern marketing mechanisms. We seem may, finally, be a moral victor by waking some politicians, journalists to have decided that even jails can be provided from the private and other self-confident spruikers for the new age to the fact that sector, so why not most of the functions of Treasury or Defence? presiding over a reduced and more unequal flow of government The minister who embarked on this with the greatest zeal was goods and services is not necessarily popular. Even if her demented John Fahey, who has never received the credit he deserves for election performance produces its just deserts, it is unlikely that creating the economic conditions in which a Pauline Hanson can the electorate will forget. In the meantime, however, many of the flourish. Second cab off the rank was Dr David Kemp, whose major horses are bolting. piece of architecture-privatised jobs agencies-has been the most With the rival slates up at this election, it is hard to be significant and complete policy and administrative failure of the optimistic. Which is why something strictly symbolic-such as Howard Government. a republic, a centenary or a millennium-could be a circuit The wave of intervention which followed the Queensland breaker. • election suggests that stage two of the Commission of Audit agenda is not high on the priority list. Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times .

VoLUME 8 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 7 OPINION: 1 ------~~:===~~==~------­ GRAHAM L ITTLE MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS Leading with Defending the Little Desert The Ri se of Ecological feeling Con sciousness in Australia by LIBBY ROBIN T H C G"ATCH J" de< Au""Ji' (Com e again? Ban One Nation?) But in our In 1968 the Victorian Minister of whas ever seen?" Bill Woodfull, of course, unsettled times only new rallying calls are Land s announced a rural settlement taking Jardine round to the rooms after he'd going to work. sc heme for t he Little Desert in complained som e Aussie had insulted him, May be rallying isn't the word, though Victoria's far north-west. Th e and inquiring of the players: 'Now which there's plainly a hunger for it. The point is conservation campaign that ensued one of you bastards called this bastard a filling the em otional vacuum, breaking the was one of unprecedented bastard?' cycle of insecurity vehemence and so phistication, Or, coming right up to date, Jeff Kennett, There's nothing more signifi cant about marking the beginning of a new Mr Formula I, big on 'm en 's business', One Nation 's leader than her unshakeable consciousness of nature. military-style command and m edia certainty-a certainty towards which, we Paperback, $24.95 management? A man who knows about the must say, ignorance makes a considerable army tells m e Kennett is a natural NCO, a contribution. When things fall apart the bit of a tearaway. One da y he'll be halfway best are apt to lack conviction, as Yeats I h· l ~· n d tn !! up the hill and look round and there'll be said. But it's important what we have l h t· L•ltl l' !), ... .. ,. , nobody behind him' (In wartim.e they might convictions about-it still surprises me shoot him.) when politicians and busin ess fo lk call it John Howard is the last Prime Minister 'vision' turning a park into a race track. who'll be older than I am. (Keating was the I suppose I must concede that a tax package first who was younger.) Only by a few can be reformist. But what words will we months, but in a way it's a comfort to have use for giving a country its confidence back, him there, though he seems a bit less relaxed its belief in itself and, not incidentally, in and comfortable than he thought he'd be. its ideals and the direction it's heading? Not that any politician has it easy. Marjorie 'Em otion al leadership' sounds a bit Sex and Suffering (Mo) Mowlam, of Northern Ireland fame, touchy-feely. Woodfull wouldn ' t have Women's Health and a Women's warns that we're down to the em otionally known what it m eant. But we live in Hospital: Th e Royal Women's starved leading the emotionally distressed: unsettled times when even how to handle Hospi tal, Melbourne, 1856-1996 'Can the MPs who love the sound of their our private emotion s, n ot to say our by JANET McCALMAN own voice, who cannot be kept off television prescription erections, ge ts discussed and radio and who act in such a pompous everyday in the papers. Howard and Beazley The often shocking sto ry of women's are faced with the expectation s of a des peration to gai n co ntrol over way really be insecure? Well, in m y their lives an d their health, and of experience they most certainly can .' gen era tion that thinks itself m ore medicine's struggle to comprehend I don't know that w e are ready in 'em otionally literate' (a nother Blairish and manage the mysteries of nature. Australia for this kind of levity about phrase) than their parents. This hi story of Australi a's oldest leadership. It sounds suspiciously like It's all too easy to counsel perfection speciali st women's hospital is 'women's business', and indeed Mowlam from the stands: be empathetic but hard­ therefore also a history of women in was contributing to The Politics of headed, consultative and decisive, attend the age of modern medicine. Attachment, an am algam of psychology, to m en's business and women 's business, ethics and politics published in Britain in both. Maybe leaders don 't need such large Hardback, $39.95 1996. The book is dedicated to understand­ vocabularies; our own man says 'arrogance' ing 'the fears and emotions' involved in is just another word for 'leadership' and it's coping with social change and it's a good how he, and we, have got where we are. But introduction to the Blair revolution. Its it's not all dumbing down. It's rumoured theme is not unfamiliar- how governments that Cheryl Kernot is reading a book by the can respond to widespread insecurity. Australian consultant, Alistair Mant, whose In settled times leaders can go with the father, Gilbert, covered the Bodyline tour flow. What's natural for them is natural for for the Sydney Papers. The book's called us. Pauline Hanson and John Howard are In telligent Leadership. both inclined to look back to the past. Even Kennett, a man of fu ture if ever there were Gra ham Little is a Melbourne academic one, dipped into the past to come up with a and writer. His book on the em otions in word of advice: treat Hansonism the way public will be published next summer by Tel 0~ 9347 3455 Sir Robert Menzies treated Communism. ABC Books.

8 EUREKA ST REET • O CTOBER 1998 L ETTERS

Eureka Street welcomes letters from Its facts of this matter. My attempts to contact Responsibility readers. Short letters are more likdv to he Ms Heij were unsuccessful. published, .md all letters lll~l) he edrteJ. Nobody is objecting to CSIRO importing in place LL:tters must hL: sit,'lled, and shmdt.! include or introducing farm ers land race varieties From F. Grunlwus from other countries into Australia. However, a contact phm1l: mnnher and thL: \Hiter's I refer to Responsibility in Time in the CSIRO St Lucia is claiming 'intellectual name and addrL:-..s. If suhmittinh bv cm.11l , Opinion segm ent (Eureka Street, July/August ownership' via the Plant Variet y Ri ghts 1998). Ms Laster's depiction of the courts and a contact phone number IS csscnt1.1l. scheme. Examination of these PER Grants parliament as bodies which willingly bear the Address. l:UICka•rqcspub JL su1U rg.au shows that there is neither breeding (inven­ burden of responsibility for the decisions of tion) nor proof of breeding, as required under previous incumbents whil e actively seeking the PER Act. This is indeed 'gene tic to redress the errors of the past reminds us squatting'. T hese PBR'd varieties come largely that optimism is alive in the academy. from poorer Third World countries. A more incisive view of the operation of I do not seek to exclude CSIRO from these institutions would suggest that their I enhancing and improving the world's plant decisions simply reflect the interests and ~ materials. I merely say that the improvem ent agendas of those who hold power at a particular must constitute real breeding and be an time. On this reading, Mabo, rather than 'invention', as required under Australian law. demonstrating the capacity of the High Court Also CSIRO i obliged to prove this breeding to correct the ' mis takes' of its ' revered in equitable trials which include the original predecessors', is the maverick decision of a germplasm . The 'Indus' millet claimed by courageous Bench responding to widespread CSIRO was not trialled against the source pressures for a re-adjustment of indigenous I would like to point out that Mr Hankin hasn't germplasm from Pakistan. It was compared rights. A decision the calibre of which we are got his facts right and is misrepresenting the with varieties from Siberia and Japan. unlikely to see agai n if the current trend in issue. Finally it is very important to judicial appointments persists. Despite regular and frank contact with acknowledge that CSIRO and som e other Ms Laster's appeal to pious abstractions him during which we supplied him with the orga nisations have done this 'mistrialling' such as the 'timeless majesty of the law' and facts of the matter, he seems persistent in largely as a result of advice from the PER 'shared implicit belief in the benefits of an building this matter up into something which Office itself. Which raises the key question, unbroken cha in of democratic succession' it isn't. CSIRO acts at all times within the 'What has gone wrong with the PER Office obscures the true workings of the courts and law, and can hardly be described as a that this situation has arisen?' parliament and encourages acquiescence in 'biopirate'. His sweeping statements are loaded injustices perpetrated and prolonged by them. with emotionalism and ignore the wider Position Vacant John Howard's eschewal of Sorry Day is not context within which plant breeders rights The Way community is currently so much a refusal to participate in a grand takes place. looking for a person to work in the tradition of institutional responsibility as a The principal problem with Mr Hankin's position of Co-ordinator. recrea nt m outhing of the urgings of his position of opposition to the patenting of The Co-o rdinator will be working in constituency. Contra Ms Las ter's cl aim that DNA and the use of PER, is that it seeks to conjunction with volunteers to he must apologise in order to preserve confi­ exclude much of the world's plant materials provide a ho me dence in our institutions, Mr Howard 's refusal from enhancem ents and improvements, thus for alcoholi c men and to do so, in the wake of a seemingly endless denying the grower countries improved hospitality for visito rs fro m th e streets betrayal of promises, m ay render it the most revenue and a better environment. Perhaps honest stand of his Prime Ministerial career. Mr Hankin's contribution to a debate on this of Fitzroy. F. Grunhaus matter would be better served if he were to The position requires a Renown Park, SA indulge less in questionable specula tion 3-day a week commitment. concerning the business of others and focused Enquiries to Garth at The W ay , more on matters of fact and an understand­ tel. 03 94 17 4898 Discontent sown ing of the science involved in plant breeding. Elizabeth G. Heij From Dr Elizabeth G. Heii, Chief of Division, St Lucia, QLD Tropical Agriculture, CSIRO Bill Hankin (President, Heritage Seed Cura­ Counselling and In response to Bill Hankin's article, 'Seeds of tors Australia) replies Psychotherapy di scontent' (Eureka Street, July/August 1998), I have sought information fr om CSIRO St Lu c ia and I have • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • been assisted by Depression Anxiety • Congratulations! • Grant McDuling. • • The information Rei a tionship difficulties • The winner of Eureka Street's • kindly provided by Anger and sadness : 'Win a Discman' competition is : Grant over a Lack of life satisfaction • Mr Lu Colombo of Abbotsford, • number of phone • • calls and em ails Victoria. Mr Colombo (on the right) • Ca ll Mark Stokes • . was very helpful. It • is pictured with Eureka Street's • clarified the sima- Ph.C., Dip.P.P. • publisher, Dan M a digan . • tion. However it Te l. 03 9873 11 05 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • did not change the

V o LUME 8 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 9 R ELIGION The beam 1n• our eye

The bomlnng of US cmhmsie'> has TL'(}( 1iFtllcd mtt.'mtllwtwl anxieue-, oluwt Islom . Dan Madigan 'I que,twm the '>tcreutvpn.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART,' people say, asserting Rwandan militias defined as 'Catholic' rather than as their credentials to dismiss a particular work, 'but I Hutu or Tutsi? The FBI looked for a Muslim bomber know what I like.' One of the hazards of telling people after the Oklahoma City blast, but eventually fo und you study Islam is that they almost invariably take the out it was a member of the hyper-patriotic militia opportunity to tell you they 'don't know much about movement in the American heartland. The parties in it, but ... ' They feel there is more than enough vivid Sri Lanka's vicious and intractable civil war rarely and disturbing evidence from the press and TV for carry their religious labels of Hindu (Tamil) and them to be quite justified in looking down from the Buddhist (Sinhalese). And the discredited televange­ moral heights on the 'ignorant', 'bigoted', 'violent', lists, the murderous dictators, the disgraced cardinals, 'fundamentalist' Muslims, who bomb embassies, who the mafiosi-do they have no religion? oppress women, who believe that war can be holy, Coming as they did on the heels of one another, who impose barbaric penalties, who refuse to enter the bombings in Omagh, Nairobi and Dares-Salaam the modern world with the rest of us and think criti­ should have served as a painful reminder that Muslims cally about their sacred texts. Having go t all that off do not have a monopoly on terrorism . However, the their chests, they sit back and wait for a defence of differing reactions t o them by the U S are quite the indefensible-as though my fi eld of study makes instructive. World public opinion can usually be relied me somehow complicit in the whole nasty business. upon to applaud violent retaliation against Muslims, This view of the world may be so frightening that yet the very idea of some official retaliatory m easures it keeps you out of planes and renders whole swathes being taken in Ireland would, rightly, never arise. The of the planet perilou sly off-limits, but it has the community of nations will sit on its hands for months advantage of being fundamentally simple. You know and plead its inability to take action agai nst genocide where you stand: there is the enlightened, m odern, in Bosnia because of concerns about national pluralist West faced with the benighted, backward, sovereignty and international law, yet a punitive, fa natical 'Muslim world'. In the last decade people scattershot adventure against Osama bin Laden or a have begun to talk quite casually about Islam being pharmaceutical plant garners expressions of support the n ew foe now that the Soviet Union h as from Westminster to Canberra. (In fairness to the disintegra ted. We prefer our geopolitics simple: United States, perhaps it should be pointed out that ourselves the good guys in the white hats; our enemies they also thumbed their noses at the International once coloured red, now green. Court of Ju stice when convicted of breaching There are two straightforward observations international law by mining 'Christian' regularly excluded from this analysis of the world. Nicaragua's harbours.) The first is that not all the terrorists, bombers, bigo ts and fundamentalists on our TVs are Muslims. W ALSO REG ULARLY IGNORE evidence that the causes However, we rarely define those others by their of so many conflicts are not, in fact, religious even religion . We do not call the genocidal Bosnian Serbs when they carry a religious label. Though we speak Photo: Interior of the 'Orthodox', but that is what they are. And their sense of 'Catholics' and 'Protestants' in Northern Ireland, Grand Mosque in of religious identity plays no little role in their we recognise, in the back of our minds at least, that Doha, Qatar: murderous ideology. We do not dwell on the fact that the conflict has little to do with Reformation The World's Religions, it was 'Christian ' militiam en who slaughtered disagreements over justification or papal authority. We 2nd edn, Ninian Smart, Cambridge hundreds of Palestinians in the refugee camps of know it has to do with the politics of colonial occupation University Press, 1998 Lebanon. How often do we hear the murderous and the economics of prejudice. But do we recognise

10 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1998 The more the Muslims sense themselves confined and condemned willy-nilly to a hom ogeneous class of enemy aliens, the more likely they are to take on that identity and to respond with the enmity the West expects of them. Many Muslim organisations around the world work hard to resist this, but theirs is an uphill battle.

T E PEOPLE WHO 'don't know much about Islam, but .. . 'are quite right in their description and assessment of the behaviour of some Muslim . Their error lies in mistaking it for Muslim behaviour, or the behaviour of all Muslims, and in presuming Tins ima,~ining of that non-Muslims are somehow entitled to claim moral superiority. It's part of their a monolitlnc l•Jam religion, we are told. It is true that mn.s the Fery real the Qur'an and the Traditions do condone violence in som e cases, but have we risk of becoming a that attacks on Christians in Indonesia have their forgotten how the Hebrew Bible invokes the self-fulfilling roots in economics and ethnicity? Or that accusations will of God to justify the dispossession and of blasphemy in Pakistan are usually a strategy for slaughter of the peoples who tood in the prophecy. The grabbing land or removing political competitors? way of Israelite ambitions? Even though we more the Muslims This reductionist approach to the world filters may dress them up in Gregorian chant, the out the substantial evidence that the 'Muslim world' psalms can chill the blood with the strength sense themselves is not a bloc but is as divided as the 'Western world'­ of their curses and the violence of their confined and each nation, class or party pursuing its own strategic hatred. Have we forgotten so easily the interest. Although there were Muslims and Christians shameful episode of the Crusades, or the condemned on both ides of the Gulf War (for example, Tariq Aziz, bloody internecine history of 'Christian' willv-mllv to a now deputy Prime Mini ter of Iraq, is a Chaldean Europe in the last 500 years? Catholic), it is very often falsely remembered By the same token, it is just as galling homogeneous cla'is nowadays as a war of Islam against the West. It should to hear Muslims adopt that high moral tone of enemy aliens, probably be interpreted as a civil war among the Arabs about ' the West' or 'Christians'. (For over oil, which then embroiled so much of the world 'Christian' in most cases read 'American'.) the more hkely because of our over-dependence on that comm odity. It is just not sufficient to claim that the they are to take on Saddam Hussein's religious posturing was precisely terrorist s or the bigots are not 'real that and had as little to do with the cause of hostilities Muslims', that the dictators or the bombers that idemity and as did George Bush's rhetoric about principle. are not 'real Christians', that the paedo­ to respond with We forget the savagery of the ten-year Iran- Iraq philes and misogynists are not 'real priests'. war that claimed so many young lives, and in which The sad fact is that they are-all too real. the enmity the arne Saddam was the coddled client of the US, The ideal Christian or Jew or Buddhist or the West built up and armed to the teeth in order to defeat Kho­ Muslim does not exist. There are only real meini, the West's enemy of the moment. We forget that, ones. Some of us are generous and open, expect., of them. with only a handful of exceptions, the victims of others are intolerant and malicious; som e Muslim savagery in Algeria are themselves Muslims. turn to violence out of arrogance or frustration, Even the Arabs, who form only a small percentage of while o thers work patiently and forcefully for the world's Muslims, are not united on any substantial justice; w e all of us search our scriptures and policy precisely because their interests and their traditions to buttress our finest instincts, but also commitment to principles vary so substantially. unfortunately to sanction the m eanest. That now toothless enemy, the Soviet Union, was At present we seem to be engaged in a dialogue the reason for the US policy of flooding Afghanistan of the deaf- yelling at one another, calling from peak with arms, of funding and training the local warlords to lofty peak of the high moral ground we have who have now been responsible for the years of vicious staked out for ourselves. N o real encounter will civil strife that followed the Russian withdrawal. take place until we are humble and realistic enough Historical m emories are short and it seems always to to meet on the m oral low ground we all so richly com e as a surprise to the US when a Saddam Hussein deserve to occupy. • or an Osama bin Laden is as violent and ruthless as they once wanted him to be. Dan Madigan SJ teaches Islamic Studies in the United This imagining of a monolithic Islam runs the Faculty of Theology, Melbourne, and is Eurel

VOLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 11 THE CHURCH John Paul II and me On 16 October, Pope John Paul II celebrates 20 years as Bishop ot Rorne. We asked (,;lX Australians to reflect on his i1npact on their world.

E rE JoHN PAUL II and I are both aged the acceptance of co-responsibility and for 'Papa' as he continues to visit the people Catholic men. We are both bishops. It was subsidiarity. Unity in and through diversity of the world, to speak to many, in their during his pontificate that I was ordained is a Christian ideal. native tongue-he 'globalised' the church bishop (1981 ). We both are concerned abou t Roman centralisation and the power of before business fully recognised the global the condition of the Wo rld and the Church . the Roman Curia contin ue to grow, to the economy. He is a true internationalist, at a We both want to contribute to making frustration of many bishops and the people time when m ore Australians need to be things better. they serve. 'in tern a tionalised '. I honour and respect Pope John Paul II. Along the way I have developed a need He is a courageous, committed man of faith. for, and a ben efit from role models. At a I think that the Church has suffered from time when so many leaders tend to let us over-centralisation, caution and fear. From down, Pope Jo hn Paul II is a beacon of the hundreds of messages (not one negative) integrity. Without integrity, man, of course, I have received after publishing A Love that has nothing! On this, 'John Paul and m e' are Dares to Question (see Andrew Hamilton's in agreemen t. 'Heaps of Documents', Eureka Street, - The Rt Hon Cr Ivan Deveson AO is Lord September 1998) it is obvious that people Mayor of Melbourne. need respect, empowerment, trust and love. - John Heaps is retired Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney.

RAI SED by my h ard-working, prejudiced grandmother, in the working­ class suburb of Coburg, in Victoria. As a small boy I was taught som e of her prejudice and was led to believe that the Catholics who walked past our home on their way to mass at St Fidelis were differ­ ent-not to be trusted. To her credit my Arriving at Randwick. Sydney, during his grandmother sent me off to Sunday School 1995 Australian visit. Photo by Andrew Stari<. at the Salvation Anny, and I continue to It is in how to make things better that work with and respect that organisation. we two loyal, orthodox Catholics differ. Our For the first 20 years of my 39-year brief m eetings say something about this. marriage I built an admiration for my wife's I have had the privilege of meeting Pope devotion and faith in her Catholic religion, John Paul II on five occasions. Like others and so it was, just three years into Pope John I felt honoured to be greeted personally by Paul's papacy, that I converted. Recently I was the Pope. For all of these meetings and for honoured with a papal knighthood in the 17 years as bishop, no personal relationship Order of the Holy Sepulchre. has been established, no serious conversa­ In his 20 years as the leader of the Church, tion entered into and no views have been I have grown to deeply admire Pope Paul's With the Archbishop of Canterbury, exchanged. When the Australian bishops strength, his stamina, his intellect and his l~ob e rt Runcie, May 1982. met the Pope in the crypt of St. Mary's charisma. Those 20 years have paralleled a Cathedral, he spoke to us. We listened. period of leadership for m e, in business, I HAVE TWO MEMORIES concerning this pope. Pope John Paul II seems to be attempt­ government and in the community, where The first was of him roaring ' Silen ce'' to the ing to hold Church unity by decree and law I have lea rned how hard it is to 'put your women of South America. I'm not sure and by uniformity in practice. I believe that head up' on difficult issues- how hard it is what made me feel most ashamed- his the unity Jesus calls us to can be achieved to maintain effectiveness- how ea y it can pedagogic outburst, or the sight of a crowd only by honest, open relationships, the be to capitulate to popular opinion. of human beings looking to another human exchange of beliefs and ideas in trust and by I share my wife's love and admiration being for the answers.

12 EUREKA STREET • OcTO BER 1998 In David Jones' bookstore some time there is no evidence that it changed any­ appointments over the past decade appears ago, I noticed his latest publication on the on e's behaviour, any m ore than the anti­ similarly fear-driven, and diff icult to shelves beside one of Sogyal Rinpoche's (a Nazi encyclical changed a single Germ an's construe as confid ence in a divi nely guided, Buddhist teacher) books. I spent som e time behaviour in 1937. self-renewing Church. looking through both of them . Again, I felt Religious professionals aside, we go to The Pope's health is poor, and he appears embarrassed fo r the pope. Becau se his papal m asses, not for the wordy discourses, often in pain: I hope that his remaining ch apter on Buddhism (judgm ent and which say what one could expect a pope to years are fr ee of pain, and that he fi nds condemnation of one of the world's most say. We go there because we are Catholics consolation in certitude- pale shadow of important spiritual paths and the 'dangers' sharing a story with him, which is the story the serenity that com es with acknowledg­ of its doctrines from an assumed 'superior' of how Jesus Christ cam e into our lives. ing doubt. What we need fo r his successor is position ) contained inexcusable errors of Who the man in white is and what he says a single eight-year term, much more likely fa ct. Whoever briefed him on Buddhism­ to provide leadership in the crucial context or is it allhis own work?- seem edincapable than retiremen t at dea th after years of of getting even the basic elem ents right, the infi rmity. Dum spiro spero- and I'm not muddled confusion of the Buddhist notion holding my breath. of 'non-resistance' with 'fatalism ', the com ­ - John Funder AO is Director of the Baker Ins- plete fa ilure to apprehend either the nature titute and Chairman of Vic Health. of Io r the practise of) compassion- the basis of this path, not to mention the logical EOR THE ENTIR Epo ntifica te of John Pa ul II, difficulty of one belief system being found I have been invo lved in tertiary education. 'false' by another such, m ade his writings I was a studen t during its first half. Through­ appear naively partisan to m e. Sogyal out the second I have taught theology and Rinpoche's book, in contrast, honoured and philosophy. T h e in itial decade w as respected all spiritual paths and the writer enj oyable, the last ten years a real struggle. had especially created a Christ-centred Why? The answer lies in N ew York m editation fo r readers so that Christians Kissing the ground at the airport in during its summer of 1988. There and then Vilnius, Lithuania, 1993. might feel embraced. I realised that John Paul was systematically As I looked through the two books is unimportant- relative to his main function using his considerable skills, and even I found myself wondering if the area of as an icon of the Catholic experience. greater power, to force his particular theol­ compassion is perhaps this man 's 'blind - Edmund Campion teaches at the Catholic ogy on a universal church. That theology, spot'? He certainly treats hi frail and failing 'l j{ T Institute of Sydney, Strathfield. according to my training, is deeply fl awed body in a very unloving way with his becau se it ch a mpion s a dogm atising, constant travelling and workload. V VHAT MAKES 'The Emperor's N ew clericalist, m ale- led and m on archical The heart is the highest court and as a Clothes' work as a fable is the piping voice organisation of Christians. It directly occludes person matures, all matters must eventually of the little boy: the same m essage in adult the egalitarian solidarity of Jesus' gospel. be brought before it. Unless-as is so often tones risks sounding carping and hyper­ In short, this Pope's primary success is the case with us humans-the heart has critical. That said, I had high and, in retro­ simultaneously his greatest fa iling. More been replaced with attachment to dogma. spect, probably unrealistic hopes for Pope adroitly than any bishop of Rome since the - Gabrielle Lord 's latest novel is Sharp John Paul II. As a vigorous and charismatic 13th century, he has m ade his own theology End, published by Sceptre. m an he had the chance to steer the Church legally paramount in the church and has back to Vatican II, after a period of reaction presided over the suppression of creative N INE MONTHS AFTER Billy Graham cam e culminatinginHumanae vitae. Twenty years theology among Catholics, and set their to Au tralia for the first time, the statistics on, the problem s an outsider has with an church back intellectually at least 100 years. for illegitimate births went down. So did entrenched bureaucracy are clearer- think Even so, the net eff ect of his reign has the statistics for drunken behaviour and of Jimmy Carter in Washington. What is also been positive for me, liberating indeed­ general crime. The Pope's visits have not clear is that communist Poland was not an and I am not being facetious. The stances he had the sam e impact. N ot that the Pope ideal leadership milieu , given the obsession has taken have freed m e fr om unthinking drew smaller crowds than Billy; quite the with authority and intolerance of differ­ devotion to a papal cult. His refusal to reverse, in fact. But, as anyone knows who ence that characterised both 'left' and 'right'. discu ss the ordination of women h as has been to one, a Graham crusade has a Where he has been outstanding is in his prompted my exploration of that issue different thrust from a papal mass. The commitment to travel, to visit people all academically. His support for right-wing point of the crusade is moral conversion, over the world, on their turf. On the other religious institutes and political groups has while the pope's mass is about affirming hand, the intransigence that the Pope and moved m e to the left. His punishment of our attachment to Catholic Christianity. It Curia have shown on key human rights theologians has helped m e to enquire and is about identity rather than morality. issues-women priests, m arried clergy, speak more forthrightly. The most challenging thing any pope contraception, homosexuality- is obviously Above all, he has led m e to a very has said to Australians was John Paul's fear-driven; tempering sympathy for those traditional insight: not even a strong and address at Alice Springs in 1986. Back then­ prisoner to such fears are the effects of celebrated papacy is ever coterminous with how long ago it seems-he lined up on the such ins titutional ultramontanism on a multifaceted Catholicism . side of Aboriginal land rights. It was a clear, participation and collegiality. The extra­ - Philip Kennedy OP lectures in theology at passionate, unequivocal commitment. Yet ordinary spate of like-minded episcopal Oxford University.

VOLU ME 8 NU MBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 13 ~ The Month's Tra«ic t 'JJj

school where my grandfather had been a for we have rights drawn from the soil and sky; pupil. I wanted archival evidence of him, the use, the pace, th e patient years of labour, Maps of the heart but the Brother who came to attend to m e, the rain against the lips, the changing light, Brother McFarland, said that wasn't his the heavy clay-s ucked stride, have altered us; INFEBRUARY 1973, in Brisbane, my grand­ area. He asked me why I was in Ireland. we would be strangers in the Capitol; father drew m e a map of the centre of I was doing a thesis on Irish literature, I said. this is our country also, no-where else; Omagh, County Tyrone. Market Street, He began to talk about the Troubles and and we shall not be outcast on the world. KevlinStreet, Georges Street, Church Street. Tyrone and its writers. He went out, to his He numbered houses, named residents. My room, and returned with a green-covered -Gerard Windsor grandfather grew up in 15 Church Street. booklet, Th e Planter and the Gael. It read, His father was the vet in Omagh-a Catholic 'a programme of poems by John Hewitt and Parrotting pollies with an English name, married to a Catholic John Montague, presented by the Arts with a Scottish nam e. Council in N ovember 1970 in a number of My great-grandfather cam e to Australia towns in N orthern Ireland. Each poet B YTHE TIME you read this, you may well in 1916 because his only living child had explores his experience of Ulster, the back­ h ave been inundated with politician s migrated. But he stayed only a fo rtnight. He ground in which he grew up and the tradition wanting to: a) kiss your baby, b) give you tax was appalled at the way livestock was traded which has shaped his work. John Montague cuts for having a baby, or c) denounce you here-a horse trotting around a ring, m en at defines the culture of the Gael, John Hewitt for bringing up a baby on your own. In a distance calling out bids. In Tyrone, owner that of the Planter. The two bodies of work reality, the election campaign started and purchaser and vet and animal stood complement each other.' 'Take it,' said m onths ago. But in some quarters the together. They touched, they passed Brother McFarland to m e, 'I want you to argument has not so much been a case of who remarks, they shook hands over a deal take it. It's yours.' you should vote for, but more a case of how. concluded. My great-grandfather went back I've been crying fo r my grandfather's At a time when politicians are making to Omagh. I went there, and I took the map, town. For the two tiny children six weeks used car sales men look like pillars of the and I walked up the narrows of Market short of a name. For all the others who, for community, it's not surprising that the Street, and everything was as my grand­ once, at long last, in all the m edia reports voting system itself is coming in for some father had drawn it. But his own home had I've seen, are realising Wolfe Tone's dream scrutiny. But what is perhaps unexpected is been demolished. It was a weed-strewn car and are being referred to by ' the common that changes are being volunteered by park. name of Iris hmen in place of the politicians themselves-although not for He had given me one other point of denominations of Protestant, Catholic and the purest of reasons. contact. A little along Church Street was Dissenter'. In the Royal Arms H otel, the Sacred Heart 'chapel'. My grandfather Omagh, in November 1970, barely a year referred to it as the' cathedral'. There should into the Troubles, John Montague read his be a photo there, he said, in the sacristy, of 'Old Mythologies': the opening of the Cathedral in 1898. 'I'm And now, at la st, all proud deeds don e, in it. I was an altar boy.' Mouths dust-stopped, dark they embrace The photo, and my grandfather, were Suitably disposed, as urns, underground. there. The sacristan, Joe Given, took the Cattle munching soft spring grass picture from the wall and we pored over it. -Epicures of shamrock and the four-leaved 'I've the negative som ewhere,' he said, 'I'll clover- make you a copy. N o, no,' he held up his Hea r a whimper of ancient weapons, hands, 'no payment. I ju st want one thing. As a whole dormitory of heroes turn over, The new Tasmanian parliament, elected Would you show this to your grandfather Regretting their butchers' days. at the end of August, has shrunk, with just and ask him to name anyone he can This valley cradles their archaic madness 25 members in the lower house, an over­ remember? They're all dead now, the rest.' As once, on an impossible epic morning, night reduction of ten . Labor and Liberal My grandfather claimed he was able to It upheld their sa va ge stride: combined to shift the goalposts and keep name everyone, from Cardinal Logue to the To bagpiped battle marching, out those pesky G reens. The mutual Dominican who preached. But the visiting Wolfh ounds, lean as models, assumption was, better to lose an election dignitaries were recognisable. It was the At their urge nt heels. than find yourself in unstable coalition names of th e boys of Omagh, my grand­ with a minor party. father's companions, that Joe Given most John Hewitt read 'The Colony': More than a few Coalition heavies, wanted to know. There were ten of them, ... hoping by patient words I may convince having suffered under a frisky and unco­ all sitting in the fro nt on the low step, their my peo ple and this people we are changed operative Senate these past30 months, were feet in the stone-strewn roadway. My grand­ from the raw levies which usurped the land, distinctly envious, with mutterings in som e father listed them all for him, the dead and if not to kin, to co-inhabitants, quarters that a bit of tinkering with the the missing citizens of Omagh. as goat and ox may graze in the sa me fi eld federal upper house wouldn't go amiss. The I walked down to the Christian Brothers and each gain so mething from proximity; federal joint standing committee that

14 EUREKA STREET • OCTO BER 1998 reviews electoral matters after every then deputy prime minister, told a m eeting side was green and lush. This region of Bahr election is expected to look at suggestions in Melbourne last year: ' MMP will El Ghazal is only seven degrees north of the that may include reducing the number inevitably produce coalitions and coalition equator, and palm trees and tall grass thrive of senators or zoning them- both ways of governments because of the extreme in the sticky humidity. But the palm fruits keeping out minor parties. unlikelihood of any party winning an had all gone: there was simply nothing to But if that kind of nobbling is off the election outrigh t. That is the essence of eat. This is Sudan in the hunger gap- the realistic short-term political agenda, the why people chose MMP in New Zealand. frustrating period when next season's crops Canberra establishment has managed to They wanted m ore co-operation-more are slowly growing, tended by people squeeze in one piece of revenge against the sharing of power.' desperately weak from starvation. mavericks who insist on upsetting the Has this sharing of power delivered any Normally, the Dinka and the Nuer and smooth running of the two- party-preferred improvem ents? Not a chance. In August the other tribes of the White Nile make do. system . Federal pollies have snuck through theN ew Zealand coalition government had They have ingenious ways of surviving. But the Electoral and Referendum Amendment a near-death experience, Peters was sacked this year they have hit a crisis- the effect of Act 1998. Its most noteworthy provisions as deputy PM and his New Zealand First two years of drought and 15 years of civil are a response to just one man- Albert party splintered- all this taking place while war. Langer, former (very former) student radical, the economy was sprinting to beat its Six months ago, the World Food Program now on a solo mission to give the political Australian competitor for the honour of believed 350,000 people were at risk of mainstream a severe case of the irrits. going into recession first. starvation. Now the figure is 2.6 million. Langer was jailed on 14 February 1996 New Zealanders should have noted the UNICEF estimates that in the south over for contempt of the Victorian Supreme warning signals at the time. Just as they Court after defying an injunction restraining were dumping Westminster-style winner­ him from encouraging 1, 2, 3, 3, 3 voting. takes-all autocracy, Italian voters were He served three weeks, rewarded with contemplating introducing first-past-the­ renewed national notoriety. If the taste of post voting to rid them selves of kaleido­ porridge still haunts him he can at least scopic multi-party governments. take comfort from the fact that the Ticks, crosses, numbers both optional Australian Electoral Commission now calls and singular, transferable and preferential­ this form of optional preferential voting it doesn't seem to make a great deal of 'Langer-style voting'. difference. Whoever wins and in whatever Up until recently, it was legal to vote in combination, the relentless maw of that fashion (thanks to an obscure clause in economic necessity is likely to swallow all the electoral law designed to save people politicians' promises, whether core or non­ who misnumbered their ballots from core or just made up because you've got wasting their initial preferences) but illegal such a beautiful baby. to advocate doing so during election periods. -David Glanz This year's amendments have turned the situation on its head. There are no longer If it weren't for penalties for advocating Langer-s tyle votes. Albert can spruik his voting m ethod the war ... anywhere and anytime with impunity. But 50 per cent of children are malnourished. Sudan is more than just a strategic target in the actual casting of such a vote is now the undeclared war between the US and Most at risk are the displaced who have fl ed deem ed informal. The hammer has swung Islam, as Andrew Dodd discovered on a the fighting between the Sudan People's and the nut can regard itself as well and I recent visit. Liberation Army (SPLA) and the troops loyal truly cracked. to the government in Khartoum. These So much for pollies trying to narrow the w. ARE NOT HERE tO kill your children,' internal refugees (known as returnees) flee field. Across the Tasman the voters took said the aid worker, as the translator to area where food is already short, putting the initiative in 1993 to broaden it, voting repeated in the Dinka language. One of the increased pressure on dwindling resources. to scrap first-past-the-post voting and women in the feeding centre had hea rd the 'To understand this famine,' I was told, replace it with the Mixed-Member feeding formula could hurt her child. The 'you 've go t to get a handle on the war'-and Proportional system or MMP. The intro­ Oxfam health worker wanted to allay any that's not an easy thing to do. Is it a war duction of this hybrid system-with som e fears. 'As long as you boil the water first, about independence for the south or a fight MPs b eing el ect ed for geogra phical everyone will be okay.' fo r resources such as oil and uranium? Is it constituencies and others for parties that The supplem entary feeding centre at a religious battle between the Muslims of reach a 5 per cent threshold- refl ected a Agangrial in south Sudan is a magn et for the north and the Christians and Animists spasm of popular anger. Politicians had the starving. Each Monday, crowds of of the south? The conflict has claimed 1. 2 devastated the New Zealand welfare state emaciated and lethargic people queue for million lives and traumatised the entire and politicians should be brought to food. The numbers have been growing and country. account. the ca es becoming more serious. Before Wherever yo u go, there's someone with Has it worked? Yes, in the sen e that it witnessing this I had doubted this famine direct experience and a story to tell. When undermined the absolute authority of a was real. The patchy wet season had not we left the feeding centre we came across a majority government. As Winston Peters, long arrived and the surrounding country- spindly and refined old man walking hom e

VOLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EU REKA STREET 15 along the path. Joseph Ater was wearing a walked for two months to reach Rumbek. last four years-all the energy in trying to pink nightie which he'd found in a second­ Along the way a son and daughter died of address the problems, to help people settle, hand shop in Nairobi. It was fetching, even hunger. The family were camping in the help people cultivate, help people become with the drooping chest and the h em line field behind the old hospital. Initially they self-sufficient, so far have been in vain. I say which had been let down three or four stayed with relatives but had to leave when so far because I believe and I hope that this times. A strange sight as he chatted about the food ran out. Next to their hut they'd time we shall all have another approach.' his various campaigns­ But don't hold your breath. For years leading men to their dca ths peace talks have yielded no consensus. The in one of Africa's bloodiest grouping of neighbouring states, known as wars. Joseph was unper­ the Inter-Governm ental Authority on turbed. 'In Rome you do as Development (IGAD), has convened the Romans,' he said. That repeatedly to thrash out the Sudan question. may be true but you' d In September 1994, the talks broke down reckon anyone with ten when Khartoum refused to accept the terms: wives would have seen ; a secular state and self-determination for enough of nighties. the south. Joseph had been a rebel Khartoum was reluctant to return to the soldier in the bush during table, accusin g three of the IGAD the first phase of Sudan's members-Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia­ civil war-the period after of backing the SPLA. It took three years for Sudan gained independence the talks to resume. When they did, in from the British in 1956. Nairobi last year, the declaration of When peace came in 1972 principles was finally agreed, but when he was 'absorbed' as an officer into the planted okra, ground nuts and sorghum, President Bashir returned to Khartoum he government army. But when the then presi­ but the seeds were late and the crop looked announced that the agreement was non­ dent Gaafar a! Nimciri clcclarccl sharia law too small for all those mouths. binding. On hearing this, the SPLA's leader, in 1983, the war between the north and 'Look at us, you can see with your own John Garang, backed away as well. At the south erupted again. Joseph was stranclecl, eyes we are hungry,' said Yar, one of the time, the Africa News Service reported, fighting his former rebel compatriots. I wives. 'We are now eating leaves-' Most of 'The same old story is being repeated; one of found it strange that it took Joseph 12 years the returnee families are surviving on wild the two sides always seems to find a point to clcfect- ancl then only after retiring and foods, like the small akour plant which of disagreement.' moving with some of his family to the grows in the grass around the town. The Last month, another IGAD meeting in south. 'Yes, but I was under observation, leaves are gritty and bitter and look like Addis Ababa wound up in disarray. Steps people were watching me.' nettles. towards a referendum for self-determination The next clay we were back on the roads, Meanwhile in Lokichokkio, in the south were halted dodging the pot holes, marvelling at the just inside the Kenyan border, because the parties lack of infrastructure. Apart from two the planes keep up the relent­ couldn't agree what bridges, there was a solitary telegraph pole, less flights into Sudan. The constitutes the south. In which by itself wasn't much usc. We came shanty town of Lokichokkio May another meeting upon an SPLA unit fixing their truck on the has sprung up around the com­ foundered on the issue of roadside. With his pork-pie hat and low­ pound of Operation Lifeline sharia law, declaring, slung pistol, Daniel Dcng was their Sudan-the umbrella for the 'On the question of state cool-looking commander. He told us how UN relief effort. At the end of and religion, the sub­ he led the operation to liberate Rumbek the airstrip, charter and cargo committee regrets that town in May last year. 'Surprise is the basic planes bank up next to massive the parties have been element of war,' he said. 'All in all it only Cl30s laden with food and sup­ unable to reach a took 20 minutes to forcefully evict them.' plies destined for the south. common ground ... ' The story goes that the government soldiers The World Food Programme Even the c urrent thought the advancing troops were a convoy (WFP) has dropped over 30,000 announcement of a cease­ of aid workers. The result was a massacre. tonnes of food on the south fire doesn't offer much 'You can see the remains at the airstrip,' since January. This includes i hope. When the SPLA said Commander Deng. 'You could get some cereals, oil, pulses and salt. r declared it would stop skulls.' But they can't keep up with fighting for three months Rumbek is now home to many demand. About 12,000 tonnes is now so relief supplies could reach the province thousands of returnees, fleeing from fighting needed every month. After bringing in of Bahr El Ghazal, the government in another regional centre called Wau, about new planes, the WFP still only has capacity responded with a cease-fire of its own. How­ 150 kilometres to the north-west. They are for half that. ever, an SPLA official, Bagan Amum, made now living in makeshift huts on the Claude Jibidar heads the WFP operation clear that this was not a turning point for outskirts of town. in Sudan. For five years he has been trying peace: 'This is a humanitarian truce limited The Panyonyonfamily (see photo above) to deliver food to a war zone. 'Of course it is to areas afflicted by the famine and has had left Wau in the middle of the night and frustrating. It has been frustrating for the nothing to do with issues of war and peace.'

16 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1998 Past experience suggests that the armies now judging whether Byrne is a heretic. Ordination to Men Alone). By this time use cease-fires as a strategic device, buying Reports of this inquisition started with a Woman at the Altar had already been time to regroup and reposition war-weary curious notice on the Catholic News Service typeset and had gone to press. Byrne, how­ troops. (CNS). It was reported that Bishop John F. ever, asked Mowbrays to halt the print mn Could in tern a tiona! pressure be applied? Kinney of Collegeville, Minnesota, received and publish the Apostolic Letter at the end Even before the Clinton administration a letter of inquiry from the CDF in March of the book. Mowbrays acceded to Byrne's bombed Khartoum, that was doubtful. about a book, Woman at the Altar, request and in the process incurred Standing on the airstrip at Lokichokkio distributed in the USA by The Liturgical significant financial liabilities. The Pope's watching another load of food fly out, I asked Press which has its headquarters in his teaching, therefore, featured as the 'last a United States aid monitor whether the US diocese. The CNS reported, 'Bishop Kinney word' in this debate. was stepping up its diplomacy. She shmgged, acquired a copy of the book, read it, and The CDF approached the Provincial 'There's a limit to how much leverage the shared the letter [from the CDF) with Superior of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin US can have-the south will listen but the Benedictine Father Michael Naughton, Mary in the UK about Woman at the Altar north is backed by Iraq.' To make her point Liturgical Press director. Bishop Kinney in 1995. In July of that year Byrne was she explained how the US had imposed said the Vatican congregation requested instmcted by her Provincial to cease speak­ economic sanctions on Sudan in November that the book "not be disseminated further".' ingorwritingabout the ordination of women, last year. The result? 'Millions of dollars What the CNS did not say is that the an order she has obediently followed. flowed into the north from the Arab world. author of the book is Lavinia Byrne IBVM, Clearly, this is not enough for the CDF Our intelligence people suggested we that the CDF has launched an investigation and so an anonymous council of theologians shouldn't try that again,' she said. into her orthodoxy and that it ordered is now deciding whether Byrne is a heretic The United States funds 45 per cent of remaining copies of the book to be destroyed. because of what she wrote before the Pope the WFP's relief effort in the south [and one issued his definitive teaching. The CDF is per cent of the food drops in the north). In so concerned about the book that they have the last ten years they have poured $1 billion judged that the best way to deal with the into Sudan. 'A billion dollars could do so ideas it contained is to try and destroy much in development terms if it wasn't for them. Mowbrays is a secular press and so this conflict,' the aid monitor said. the CDF has no claim on who or what it This is also an issue for Australia. Sudan publishes. The Benedictines, however, own has been one of the largest recipients of the Liturgical Press, and so the CDF has humanitarian relief over the last ten years. issued its instmctions to its director through Already this year the government's aid the local Bishop. agency, AusAID, has allocated $3 million Early in 1993, the editorial director of On 'Thought for the Day' on 1 August, for humanitarian assistance and $2 million the British publishing house, Mowbrays, Lavinia Byrne told her listeners how for food aid. approached Byrne, who was then the traumatic part of this experience has been: Claude Jibidar of the WFP [photo, below Associate Secretary for the Community of 1300 copies of a book I wrote in 1993 have left) says the real challenge is for the world Women and Men in the Church for the ju t been destroyed by its North American to decide what it wants to do-spend the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. publishers. If I say that this book was about money to feed people or start war king harder She was asked to write a book about the the ordination of women which is presently to find a solution to the problem. 'If every­ ordination of women. This question was a a no-no topic of discussion in the Catholic body agrees that just food assistance is matter of public and open debate in the UK church then you will understand why the enough, then I suppose the relief effort will at the time, as the Church of England had monks who own this publishing house did last forever. It is up to all of us, including just voted to proceed with ordination. She what they did. the Sudanese, to sit down and find a solution submitted the manuscript on 31 October Now you can go to a rape therapist or a to this problem.' 1993. 'Woman at theAltarwasa book of that grief counsellor, but there aren't too many -Andrew Dodd moment. There is no way in which I or any book-burning counsellors around. My spirits other theologian could write it nowadays.' got lower and lower. My faith plummeted Burning Byrne had already edited three and I had all the classic symptoms of collections of women's writings: The trauma. What saved me eventually was not a book Hidden Tradition [on women's spirituality); the kindness of friends and well-wishers, nor WAS LEAVING London, Lavinia The Hidden Journey [on missionary women the support of members of my community­ Byrne came to my farewell party. Most of and their contribution to evangelisation); essential though those were-what my English friends who met her that night The Hidden Voice [on the politicisation of eventually pulled me back from the brink lavished admiration and praise on h er. women, particularly their work as educators was a grimly funny detail in the newspaper Lavinia Byrne is one of the most popular and to secure the vote). She received an report of this story. The monks allegedly broadcasters on the BBC's World Service honorary doctorate from the University of made an ceo-friendly decision. They didn't and Radio 4. She is regularly heard on three Birmingham (her hometown) in recognition pulp the book or wantonly bum it in some of the BBC's highest rating programmes, of the importance of her research, writing refuse dump. No, they put it into the 'Thought for the Day', 'Prayer for the Day' and broadcasting in the area of women, monastery incinerator so that they were lit and 'The Daily Service'. religion and spirituality. and fuelled by it. When I read that I laughed The Sacred Congregation for the In May 1994, the Pope issued Ordinatio aloud and some of the shame and pain began Doctrine of the Faith [CDF), however, is Sacerdotalis [On Reserving Priestly to evaporate. I discovered that faith on its

VOLUME 8 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 17 own is a poor thing. Tend it with a little habit of tweaking religious authorities and progressive causes, was the darling of the humour, and hope and charity get up and challenging gurus-his insistence that the liberal set, Mary Mark 2 is less easy to running again too. God of the gospels will always elude our pigeonhole. She supported Joyce scholar -Richard Leonard SJ images and categories, and escape from the David Norris in his successful campaign to structures we build to domesticate the have legislation on homosexual conduct Mellow out divine. All the evidence of recent months declared unconstitutional. She is a long­ suggests that, even more than 'an exagger­ time advocate of women priests and of a ated apophaticism ', it is the issue of greater role for the laity in church affairs. I N LATE AucusT the Vatican's Congregation authority that preoccupies the fin-de-siecle The Irish hierarchy nervously describe her for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned Roman mind. as a 'friendly critic'. the writings of the late Anthony de Mello, On the other hand, she has written and an Indian Jesuit spiritual writer who died spoken on the conservative and pro-life suddenly in 1987, aged only 56. Over the side of issues such as contraception, abortion years of his ministry, and through his and in-vitro fertilisation, and made a strong popular books, he has helped perhaps case for denominational education. In 1984, hundreds of thousands of people to find a she acted as advisor to the Catholic bishops taste for prayer and the confidence to explore during their presentation to the New Ireland the life of the spirit. Forum. When questions on morality were De Mello made no claim to being a put by a member of the forum, the answers systematic theologian. He was a teacher. were given, not by one of their Lordships, He sought deliberately to provoke and to but by McAleese. Ironically, the questioner challenge, to h elp people break free of was Mary Robinson and she expressed constrained and constricting views of God In giving only grudging acknowledgment herself less than satisfi ed with the answers and humanity. In a long explanatory note to de Mello's important contributions, in she received. accompanying this Vatican 'warning', his setting him up as a systematic theologian The future President's uneasy relation­ collections of stories, p arables a nd only then to knock him down, in only ship with the media continued during an aphorisms are mined for damning evidence. raising their voice more than a decade aft er election campaign which brought out the Each phrase is given the m ost negative his death, the Congregation risks under­ worst in the political party backers and possible interpretation and they are cobbled mining the very respect for authority that harassed reporters trying to fi nd angles together to create a system of thought found they are trying to shore up. which would spice up the blandness. to be 'not compatible with the Christian - Dan Madigan SJ The problem was that th e candidates faith'. Yet it would be surprising to find a were too nice. Adi Roche was an anti-nuclear fully rounded summa of the Christian faith secular saint and far too nice; Mary Banotti in a book called One Minute Nonsense. Eire's other Mary was politically experienced and a niece of You don't buy The Pray a of the Frog if you Michael Collins but also too nice; Dana are looking for the Catechism. I RISH JOURNALI STS have a problem with was a singer of uplifting songs and much too He is accused of 'an exaggera ted President Mary McAleese. It may be because nice; and Mary McAleese was intimidatingly apopha ticism' - that is, of over -emphasising they are less comfortable with her elegance clever and too nice. Although Derek Nally the longstanding Christian belief that it is and composure than with the tragedy, crime was also nice, he was at least a man and beyond the capabilities of human langu age and political scandal of which their country would make a great President, they said. He fully to express the reality of the divine. A has no sad shortage at the moment. So they trailed behind all the others with a mere good dose of apophaticism might be just the use terms like 'queenly condescension' and 5 per cent of the vote. thing these days when believers of many a 'suffocating smugness'. Earlier this year Add to all the above the fact that as a stripe feel so confident that they can som e­ they criticised her motives- though not Northerner, Mary McAleese was not even how sum God up in their scriptures and the action itself- when she took entitled to vote in the election (th e same creeds. communion at a Church of Ireland service applied to Dana). Carefully planted leaks He is accused of treating Jesus as merely in Dublin. They speculated on what Ulster suggested that she had a soft spot for Sinn one teacher among many. But Christianity nationalist baggage she may have been Fein, an opinion reinforced when, in a break has never claimed that it is Jesus' teaching trailing wh en she absented herself from from his normally impeccable political that makes him uniquely significant-St some horse-Protestant shindig at the Royal nous, Gerry Adams declared that he would Paul seems to have known little or nothing Dublin Society. And when she dressed in a vote for her if he had a vote. of what Jesus taught. For Christians, Jesus' trouser-suit for a State occasion, they almost Citizens of the Irish Republic have a significance lies in who he is and therefore choked on their adjectives; would Paddy poor record when it comes to understand­ in what he is believed to have accomplished Hillery, the last male President, have dared ing the soul of northern nationalism. They by his dying and rising. It is no heresy to to turn up to such an occasion in a sporraned are uncomfortable with its stridency, the recognise truth found beyond the confines kilt, one of them asked, with the kind of permanent chip lodged on those green of the Church, and one of de Mello's great logic that would appeal to a 12-year-old. shoulders, the sense of a community which services has been to open Christian eyes to In a way, it is not surprising that some has to fight for whatever it gets. the wisdom of other traditions. journalists are less than pleasant to In the early days of the Troubles, when One cannot help but sense that what McAleese. Whereas her predecessor, Mary McAleese was still a student, her family precipitated this condemnation is de Mello's Robinson, with her impeccable record in (continued on page 20 ... )

18 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1998 Just when you thought it was safe • • •

A umc KNowcwc< wtainly "" be encased in a coat which is resistant to the gastroenteritis in the community. Wesin1ply a dangerous thing. Just ask Sydney Water. environment, including chlorinated water. do not know how well the human immune Having recognised that the protozoan It is typically removed fr om drinking water system copes with these protozoan parasites. parasites Crypto poridium and Giardia using very fine filters. They are everywhere. We come into daily were potentially a problem in its water Once infected, the body's best defence contact with them. Drinking water is not supply, Sydney Water, through its subsidiary against these organism s is a healthy even the m ost common source of infection. Australian Water Technologies, supported immune system . While both can make life Extensive research into the link between an innovative research program at unpleasant for five to ten days-with vomit­ parasites in the drinking water and prevalence Macquarie University to develop a world­ ing, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, and a low of gastroenteritis is only now in progress- in class detection system for the parasites. fever-neither is normally life-threatening. Melbourne and Adelaide. As Eurel

V OLUME 8 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 19 .. continued from page 18) imperative to placard his full identification the people are united in an aspiration for were petrol-bombed out of their home in with other Bougainvilleans. Hence he would independence. Long-term observers can North Belfast. She was the oldest of nine tell Bougainvilleans that they had 'an readily believe this, especially of the children and she carried more than the absolute right to self-determination'. generally more advanced Buka islanders in usual responsibility for her younger siblings; Moreover, he was passionately opposed to the north (roughly a quarter of the popula­ one of these, who is profoundly deaf, was the intrusive Conzinc Rio Tinto mine at tion). Even for them, however, the issue is left for dead after a beating by a Protestant Panguna and saw even its capitalist not one of legitimising the Papua N ew gang. At about the same time, the family of philanthropies as corrupting. This led, Guinea state as much as extrem e wariness Bobby Sands and his sister Bernadette were during his 198 7 election campaign, to of being dominated by Bougainville 'main­ similarly hunted out of a mixed neighbour­ his inflammatory charges of gross land', especially by the central Nasioi to hood. They reacted in one way to this exploitation which have been seen by some which the rebel triumvirate of On a, Kauona treatment; for the young Mary the response commentators as the match that lit Frances and former premier Kabui belong. Bukas was to concentrate all the more fiercely on Ona's rebellion. and others know that the revival of their her studies, finish with a first in law at After the rebellion erupted, Momis once-prosperous province, now trashed by Queens and assert her and her community's condemned its leaders for lacking a mandate anarchic revolt, cannot be accomplished rights with dignity, courage and ultimately with leaders like Ona. They know they are great success. better off with Port Mores by. -Frank O'Shea That is, of course, unless Port Moresby does something offensive-not by any Bougainville means off the cards-to unite the conflict­ ing factions again (for example, demanding bargains that Bougainville join the present provincial N o-ONE wouLD APPEAR to have more regime). The immediate problem is how to authority to speak for Bougainvilleans than organise the Bougainville Reconciliation John Momis, who has been the MP for the to act on behalf of Bougainvilleans and for Government which is supposed to be elected whole of the province for all six terms since 'hijacking' the secessionist issue. Since then in some way by the end of the year. 1972. Admittedly, the elections of 1992 and he has participated in the various peace A committee currently looking at this is 1997, held without full participation in initiatives but has not always convinced unlikely to find a suitably democratic circumstances of civil war, have hardly his critics that he is not playing a double process, especially with the rebels still accorded him the same support as the game for his own aggrandisement. under anns and still committing random previous four. However, in those four, when His latest staternent-at a leaders' violence. he was a Catholic priest, he won absolute congress in Buin, South Bougainville, on Nothing constructive came out of the majorities while the party he founded and 22 August-should help. Independence, he Buin meeting, but no alternative vision led, Melanesian Alliance, domina ted the polls. said, was 'an unrealistic goal' and those emanates from a Port Moresby beset with It should not be surprising that his stance calling for it were ignoring Papua New its own turmoil. To the national politicians, on independence for Bougain ville has Guinea sovereignty under international law now that they are realistically accepting seemed ambivalent-to his harshest critics and 'misleading the people'. The same has that the Panguna mine cannot be restarted, even devious. He was, after all, the delegate to be said for foreigners who, for whatever Bougainville is more remote than ever. who, during Bougainville's first secession­ motives, romantically advocate secession Unfortunately, in spite of his majorities, ist movement in 1975, petitioned the United as a basic right and a salve for Bougainville's Momis has long lost a lot of his credibility. Nations-a month before Papua New problems. 'Papua New Guinea is a sovereign Many leaders are unlikely to take his advice Guinea's declaration of independence-for nation,' said Momis, 'and the UN has no to 'talk about what is achievable', and the a separate sovereignty. power to direct [it] ... to grant independence.' non-signifying flag of self-determination In this he was misunderstood. Ideologi­ A m eeting of 'some leaders' (excluding will continue to flap at the continuing talks. cally he believed that Papua New Guinea Kabui and present premier, Sinato) is a The one consolation is that so far the rebels could achieve cohesion only through more apt description for the grandly named have no confidence that they can gain by dec en tralisa tion, and that anything less congress of 21 'pan-Bougainville chiefs' plus restarting a civil war. for his province would be unacceptable. two women (one the wife of 'General' Kauona). -James Griffin The Somare government's failure to On 22 August the congress reaffirmed last accommodate demands for provincial year's peace and ceasefire declarations, wel­ This month 's con tri bu tors: Gerard governm ent led to Bougainville's Unilateral comed Port Moresby's recission of the army Windsor's most recent book was Heaven Declaration of Independence (UDI) on callout order for the province, but expressed Where the Bachelors Sit; David Glanz is a 1 September 1975 and the subsequent concern that the peace process had slowed freelance journalist; Andrew Dodd works impasse was resolved only by the grant of down, and sought a process which asserted for Community Aid Abroad (Oxfam in semi-autonomy forall19provincesinAugust 'the right of people to self-determination'. Australia ); Richard Leonard SJis the Director 1976. Mom is became Minister for Provincial Unfortunately, a so-called 'chief' inBougain­ of the sesquicentenary celebrations of the Affairs and architect of the system . ville can m ean any male whose leadership Jesuits in Australia; Dan Madigan SJ is However, the Momis rhetoric did not is, however temporarily, acknowledged by Eureka Street's publisher; Frank O'Shea always m atch his political moderation, any (even small) community. teaches maths at Marist College, Canberra; perhaps because both that and his own Momis denies that the signatories James Griffin is Emeritus Professor at the mixed-race status made him feel it represented ' the entire population' and that University of Papua New Guinea.

20 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1998 THE R EG ION

D EWI A NGGRAENI

Indonesia: Islam rising

I "'M'c 'c"o"'' Nmcholi'h M•djid, With them all tidily contained, and the the all-powerful authorities. And since recently predicted that Indonesia's second Armed Forces and the civil servants boxed change, if it were to occur, would not com e wave of Islamisation would occur by 2010. into the ruling party, Golkar, it was then from Golkar, it would have to carry the Madjid was speaking at a conference on easy for Suharto to identify those who posed Muslim label. Islam in South East Asia, run by the potential danger to him and the status quo, While the N ew Order government had University of M elbourne and D ea kin because they were mostly to be found in the succeeded in improving the country's University . Participants who know third political party (his government economy, the uneven distribu­ N urcholish and his works were not surprised only allowed three political parties) tion of wealth had also caused a by the prediction: Nurcholish has written the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). widening gap between the rich widely on Islam in Indonesia, especially the PDI was indeed the most inclusive and the poor. In a country where em ergence of radical Islam . political party, housing m any of the communism has been declared How close to the truth, however, is his hard-nosed nationalists (w ho still enem y of the state, therefore theory? believed in Sukarno's ideals about banned, any individuals and or­ At the same conference, Riaz Hassan, nationalism ), the Christians, intellec­ ganisations who have dared ques­ Flinders University Professor of Sociology, tuals and social democrats-basically tion the government's social reinforced N u rcholish' s prediction. those whose values clash ed with justice policy (or lack of it) have A survey he conducted indicates that the the ideologies of the oth er two had communist labels forced on m ost trusted key institutions in Indonesia parties. However, PDI, which was not them. Unless of course, they are those rep resenting Islam, followed explicitly Mus lim or under the were Muslims. closely by those representing intellectual­ umbrella of Golkar and did not belong to Thus Muslim militancy was born. In ism, education and knowledge. the Armed Forces, was vulnerable to the the lower strata of the society, people have In a country where Islam is the religion government's accusations of subversion or been using their Muslim identity when of som e 85 per cent of the population, the communist leaning. Under the N ew Order demanding social justice from the govern­ trust in the religious leaders regime, being subversive or 'infiltrated ment. After the fa ll of Suharto, the different seems understandable. But while by communists' was tantamount to political groups emerging onto the political they have the respect of the trying to topple the government-a scene cann ot ignore the potential power of masses, they have not always treasonable offence. PDI ran the risk the Muslim masses in initiating change. wielded power in the political of such an accusation in 1996. One of the keys to change, it appears, is realm. When the elected chairman of the in the hands of the two largest Muslim During Suharto's N ew Order party, Megawati Sukarnoputri, became bodies, the N ahdatul Ulama (NU), a grass­ government especially, the too successful in rallying support for roots organisation with som e 30 million former president was able to PDI, the government began to see her m embers, and the Muhammadiyah, an contain the force of Muslim as a threa t. At the party's national organisation of business practitioners, influence and keep it at arm 's congress, a rival congress was teachers and professionals, with a slightly length. Suharto successfully engineered in another city, where a smaller m embership. Among the country's placed th e Armed Forces as a government-s anctioned chairman, Muslim population, NU has always been countermeasure against the Muslims, thus Soeryadi, was elected. Naturally Megawati's known as traditionalist and creating an impression that, without the supporters were outraged, and insisted that Muhammadiyah modernist. Armed Forces, the non-Muslim public she was still their rightful leader. On 27 would be vulnerable to the spread of July that year, the Soeryadi-led PDI camp N OT LONG AFTER Independence, in the Islamic fundamentalism. In the m eantime, demanded that the headquarters in Jakarta early '50s, Indonesian Muslims enjoyed a Suharto also cultivated relationships with be relinquished to them, but the Megawati­ limited period of economic revival, which Muslim groups, conveying the message to led supporters refused to leave the building. benefited m embers of the Muhammadiyah . the Armed Forces that he could rally the A full-scale physical confrontation occurred They continued a tradition of founding Muslim forces against them if they fa iled to where a number of M egawati supporters ed uca tiona! ins titutions where their toe his line. w ere arrested and later charged with children exp erienced W estern-s t y l e Suharto was even able to force all subversion. learning. By the late 1960s, when the New different Muslim groups into one political So, being neither Muslim nor a Golkar Order government had just taken power, party, the United Development Party (PPP) . supporter could m ean being vulnerable to young Muslims from Muhammadiyah had

V O LUME 8 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 21 graduated in various disciplines, forming a to ethnic Chinese businesses. By choosing its organisation-into a social one. NU powerful Muslim middle class. And they the ethnic Chinese to be their money maintained its power ba se for some time in soon used their combined assets skilfully. spinners, they were able to retain political rural areas, where it managed the With their Western education they power as well as accumulate wealth. They pesantrens, the rural boarding schools. Un­ entered the fields of business, government knew the ethnic Chinese had no political derstandably, NU had extensiv e social in­ services and academia. Realising that Islam power of their own, hence would remain fluence among the rural population. was the only significant alternative power dependent on them for personal security. However, the NU leadership gradually real­ to the ruling party, this new generation also Ethnic Chinese had li vee! in Indonesia for ised that, if they wanted to ga in political took advantage of their Muslim identity to generations and indeed were Indonesian citi­ power in the New Order government, they enter politics. Not all of them positioned zens, but were always regarded as needed to compete with the other forces themselves in the alternative power: a non-indigenous by the majority of the already in place. They began to send their fair number joined the ruling party, population. Their prominence in business children to universities too. One of the uni­ thereby becoming the Muslim influence in only bred resentment all round. versities founded by NU, the Nusantara the government circle. And since they So collectively they became the govemment's University in Bandung, is now one of the were already established in the civil convenient hostage, as they were made to mainstream learning institutions. service and experienced in policy-making, feel 'indebted' to the government's protec­ What is noteworthy in the pesantren­ their influence in the policy of the tion. Here the Muslim business people also style learning is its emphasis on philosophy government's Islamic university, JAIN, was used their 'Muslimness' to compete with of individual development as well as on also strongly felt. the ethnic Chinese. The did not have equiva­ group-leaming. Pesantren teachers have long Yet despite the presence of Muslims lent prominence in the field, but they had a believed that their pupils are individuals with throughout Indonesian society, Islam­ psychological power base among the popu­ individual as well as collective potential. being the religion of the majority of the lation. Since very few NU members were population-is still identified as representing The emergence of Muslim influence did involved in large businesses, those who went the country's peasants and the not elude Suharto. To make sure it did not to universities became intellectuals, and rr lower middle class. develop beyond his control he encouraged rarely found themselves in the position of the founding of a Muslim think-tank, competing with anyone in business. Two .l. rr EN Ew ORDER government practised a the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals such thinkers are theorgmlisation'sown chair­ curious combination of capitalism and Association (ICMI). He appointed his most man,Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known authoritarianism, where they gained trusted protege, Dr B.J. Habibie (now as Gus Dur, and Nurcholish Madjid, the economic dominance by renting their power President Habibie) as head of ICMI. The origin a tor of Paramadina, a social organisation government-sponsored think-tank did which has also founded a university. attract noted intellectuals, partly because Nurcholish is an independen t thinker, people wanted to be close to power, and but of NU origins. His works reflect a great HEA~T OF LIFE partly, it seems, because many liked to be deal of NU basic philosophy. Paramadina SPtRtlliAL LEADERS identified as 'intellectuals'. attracts very fine thinkers and extremely ICMI was closely watched, however, committed workers for social justice and and the members were not free to express the empowerment of women. They are One )'Gir pan-time programme fo r la y opinions that deviated from the official line. good Muslims but respect the teachings of people. religious and cil'rgy \\"ho find When the chairman of Muhammadiyah, other religions and, necessarily, other tilL'mseh·es in positions of leadership and Amien Rais, criticised the government's ethnic groups. NU, which has always spiritu~tl formation in rile Church ... parish business dealings with some multinational been known as an organisatio n for priests. pastoral associates. ch:1plains in mining companies, he was pressured to traditionalist Muslims, nowadays has a schools. colleges. e tc .. commun ity resign his chairmanship of the Board of comprehensive education struc ture. facilitators one morning ~ ~ \\"eek Experts of JCMI, and 'encouraged' to shift Paramadina University, while not officially I 0 places. to the innocuous Board of Counsellors, as a an NU institution, bears a great

22 EUREKA STREET • OcTO BER 1998 alleged that som e NU m embers were among them, because they will have to involved. Gus Dur promptly made a public com pete with a significant group who have apology fo r his supporters' involvem ent, a power base in society as well as economic Licentiate and and at the same time exhorted his supporters an d political leverage. Th ose wh o are not to subject themselves to incitem ent to involved in medium and large businesses Doctorate in violence, emphasising that su ch acts were will face competition with Muhamm adiyah contradictory to the writings in the Qur'an members, and the small businesses in the Sacred Theology and the teachings of Muhammad. rural areas will have NU m embers as their Bo th Muhammadiyah and NU are competitors. m oving toward 21st-century Indonesia, each But this trend does n ot n ecessarily in its own fashion: NU m ostly bypasses the m ean that Indon esia is on the way to roads to large and medium businesses, while Islamic fundam entalism . The m odernist Muhammadiyah is putting down its Muhammadiyah m embers are acutely roots in them . aware that they will have serious problem s taking part in the global economy with I SLAMISATION IS NOW an irreversible trend Islamic fundam entalism pulling at their in Indonesia. In 15 years' time the country coat tails. Foreign investors are su spiciou s will be saturated with Muslim influence, if of fundamentalism in an y religion, let not Islamic thought. alone one they do n o t understand well. In the political arena, this influence is In the NU camp, the growing number of already very visible. While over 50 political Islamic intellectuals and sch olars like parties have appeared since the fall of Nurch olish Madjid and Abdurachman faculty, Suharto, only a handful appear to have the Wahid, who are very vocal in their liberal .,,~inr tlbrary resources, durability necessary to survive the current and pluralist beliefs, t empers the poten tial a ith-filled community. crisis. In fact, at a seminar h eld by the danger of fundam entalism . University of Indon esia in Jakarta last Most NU scholars, in their writings and I e estonjesuit STL and STD. August, political observers from Australia, public speaking, prom ote the creation of a the USA and Indonesia agreed that five big tolerant Islam ic society, and decry the for­ An excellent choice. parties would em erge. Three of these have mation of an Islamic state. While Indone­ explicit Muslim labels. The PKB, predicted sians are inherently respectful of religious t o gain 2.0 per cent of the vot es, was leaders, as indicated in Riaz H assan's re­ Biblical Studies Historical and founded by NU. The PAN h as as its search, they also hold intellectuals in very Ri chard J. Clifford , Sj Systematic Theology l eader Amien Rais, the ch airman of high esteem . Institutions like Param adina, Daniel J. Harrington, Sj Khaled Anatoli os Muhammadiyah (who, since PAN's official therefore, are likely to h ave a great deal of john 5. !

V oLUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 23 OPINION: 2

VINCENT MATTHEWS Getting across the message

E""" ''"UT •he med<"" peml

24 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1998 •

No government Minister, State or 1 a e Federal, would ever be denied access to the ABC's news or current affairs programs to express views similar to those of McGuinness. So where is this conformism and stultify­ ing mediocrity which dominates the WAT ON

VoLUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 25 Reshaping Aus

Reviving the Fourth Estate Published by Cambridge Un ivers iry Press Democracy, Accountability and the Media in association with the Research School of Social Sciences, Australi an National JULI ANNE SCHULTZ Universiry. Series editors: Geoffrey Brennan and This lively and accessible book analy­ Francis G. Castles. ses the role of journalism and the scope of its democratic purpose. This program of publications arises from the School's initia­ Julianne Schultz looks at the impact of tive in sponsoring a fundamental rethinking of Australia's key concentrated media ownership and institutions before the centenary of Federation in 2001. commercial pressures. She argues that Published in this program will be the work of scholars from the democratic ro le of the news media the Australian National Universiry and elsewhere who are researching and writing on the instirutions of the nation. The has been decimated, but must be revived. scope of the program includes the institutions of public gov­ September 1998 ernance, in tergovern men tal relations, Aboriginal Australia, 0 52 1 62042 2 Hb $90.00 gender, population, the environment, the economy, business, 0 521 62970 5 Pb $29.95 the labour market, the welfare state, the ciry, education, the media, criminal justice and the Constitution. Gender and Institutions Welfare, Work and Citizenship A Federal Republic EDITED BY MOIRA G ATEN S Australia's Constitutional System of Government University of Sydney BRI AN G ALLIGAN University of Melbourne AND ALISON M ACKINNON University of South Australia A provocative analysis of the Australian constitution, writ­ ten from the unique perspective of a political scientist. It This feminist perspective on msntu­ calls for a positive reassessment of the constitution, argu­ tional design shows how gendered regu­ ing that Australi a is already a federal republic rather than a latory norms intersect with, shape, and co nstitutional monarchy. This book will challenge republi­ provide the underpinning for all institu­ cans and monarchists alike. tional settings. T he interdisciplinary team 1995 0 521 37354 9 Hb $95.00 0 521 37746 3 Pb $31.95 of prominent writers discusses a range of topics from the welfare state to the work­ Australian Cities place, to citizenship. Issues, Strategies and Policies for Urban Australia in the 1990s September 1998 EDITED BY PATR ICK TROY Australian National University 0 521 63190 4 Hb $90.00 0 521 63576 4 Pb $29.95 Australian Cities describes the options and limitations of Australian urban planning practice. Chapters include: local government and the urban growth debate; sus taining subur­ Unions in a Contrary World bia; planning in a multicultural environment; national poli­ The Future of the Australian Trade cy in the 1990s; and financing urban services. Union Movement 1995 0 521 48197 X Hb $95.00 0 521 48437 5 Pb $3 1.95 DAVID PEETZ Griffith University

This book explains the dramatic fall in Beyond the Two Party System trade union participation in Australia Political Representation, Economic Competitiveness and over the past thirty years. It considers Australian Politics both macro and micro levels, looking at ~iEE!!!!i!~ IAN MARSH University of New South Wales the economy and the labour market, peo- This challenging book suggests that the two party system is ple's ideological dispositions towards inadequate to meet the increasing demands placed on west­ unionism, the role of the state, and unions' ern governments. It outlines the ways in which politics, and political and industrial strategies. the concept of citizenship, might change to meet these new October 1998 demands and achieve genuine participatory democracy. 0 521 63055 X Hb $90.00 1995 0 521 46223 1 Hb $95 .00 0 521 46779 9 Pb $36.95 0 521 63950 6 Pb $29.95 ralian Institutions

Collaborative Federalism Governing Australia Economic Reform in Australia in the 1990s Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government MARTIN PAINTER University of Sydney EDITED BY MITCHE LL DEAN Macquarie University AND BARRY HINDESS Australian National University This original and provocative study of fed­ eralism identifies a new pattern of inter­ Inspired by Foucault's discussion of governmemality, this governmental relations in Australia. The book makes a major contribution to our understanding of author argues that our federal system is government. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book com­ bei ng fundamentally reshaped as state bines theoretical discuss ion with empirical focus. While a and Commonwealth governments wide range of topics are discussed, the contributors explore cooperate more closely than ever before a range of shared concerns. Contributors include John on joint policy-making schemes. Ballard, David Burchell, Gary Campbell, Gary Dowsett, June 1998 Ian Hunter, David McCallum, Denise Meredyrh, J P 0 521 59071 X Hb $49.95 Minson, Pat O'Malley, Alison Smith, Laurajane Smith and Anna Yeatman. April1998 Citizenship and Indigenous 0 521 58357 8 Hb $90.00 0 52 1 58671 2 Pb $34.95 Australians Changing Conceptions and Possibilities Deliberative Democracy in EDITED BY N ICOLAS PETERSON Australian National University Australia AND WILL SANDERS Australian National University The Changing Place of Parliament This book examines the history of indige­ JOHN UHR Australian National University nous Australians' citizenship status and This book evaluates the role, structure and performance of asks, is it possible for indigenous the Australian parliament, and presents a compelling case Australians to be members of a common for reform. Combining political theory with first-hand society on equal terms with others? knowledge of the Australian parliament, Uhr examines Leading commentators from a range of ways in which deliberative democracy might be made more disciplines examine the past, present and effective and meaningful in Australia. future of indigenous rights. Feb ruary 1998 Contributors include Bain Attwood, 0 521 62458 4 Hb $90.00 0 521 62465 7 Pb $32 .95 Geoffrey Gray, Andrew Markus, Richard Mulgan, Garth Nerrheim, Environmental Politics and Peter Read, Henry Reynolds, Tim Institutional Change Rowse, David Trigger and Marilyn Wood. May 1998 ELIM PAPADAKIS University of New England 052162195X Hb $90.00 Elim Papadakis asks whether Australian political institu­ 0 521 62736 2 Pb $29.95 tions have been, and could become more, responsive to Living Feminism environmental concerns. The book includes detailed analy­ sis of the major parties' environmental policies, and also The Impact of the Women 's Movement on Three Generations of Australian Women tackles broader theoretical iss ues around the relationship (HILLA BULBEC K University of Adelaide between government and social change. 1996 In this rich, evocative and challenging 0 521 55407 1 Hb $90.00 0 521 55631 7 Pb $29.95 book, Bulbeck examines the impact of feminism on ordinary Australian women. contact ' ... [it] contains a plethora of fascinating stories .. . involving, well-written and CAMBRIDGE worthwhile' Agora UNIVERSITY PRESS 1997 0 521 46042 5 Hb $90.00 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Vic, 3166 0 521 46596 6 Pb $29.95 Ph: (03) 9568 0322 Fax: (03) 9563 151 7 Email : [email protected] .au C ON""'"'ON CH,NCW '" meening that became a feature of national parks radicalism of 'popular' movements at the in the post-war years. In natural history during the 1970s and 1980s. expense of the 'establishment' contribution societies before 1945, there had been In the 1990s, while biodiversity is a made by ea rlier conservation bureaucrats concern about the loss of individual species catchword, the complexity of 'wilderness' and scientists. and the loss of recreational nature. By the is also being explored. In the interpretation The defence of the Little Desert, how­ 1960s the concern for the loss of 'habitat' centre at Nitmiluk Gorge in the Northern ever, involved alliances that cut across this captured both earlier concerns. In the 1970s Territory- one of the national parks neat dichotomy. I was not a participant in this developed into a fear that all of 'nature co-managed by Aboriginal and settler that dispute, but I have interviewed many as we know it'-or, if you like, 'human Australians-the visitor is welcomed to of its key figures . The opposition to the habitat'-was about to disappea r. Jawoyn land and reminded that 'Nitmiluk scheme was multifaceted, so my task has Field n aturalists generally had an is not a wilderness. It is a human artefact, been to balance the views from the intimate knowledge of the nature proximate constructed through the ceremonies, Wimmera and the city, the economic and to their homes or favourite camping spots. kinship ties, fires and hunting of countless conservation arguments, and the voices of It was their ownership of and intimacy generations of our people.' National parks community activists and people working with nature that was threatened, rather are about biodiversity, but not only about within the bureaucracies that regarded than nature itself. Nature was still passive, biodiversity. Ecologically minded environ­ themselves as 'protectors of the public a resource for human refreshment. Urban m ental managers are having to come interest'. The dispute came to a head in environmentalists, however, began to to terms with the fact that 'biodiversity 1969- just as new ecological ideas were 'in display a concern for a nature they had is a whitefella word' . Environmental the air'-but before the political structures never seen, for a wilderness that needed to preservation cannot be isolated from its of what became the green movem ent were ' be there', unused, to make sense, cultural construction. established. The Little Desert campaign, paradoxically, of their urban lives. This Many of the histories of conservation therefore, offers a window on the at times 'wild' nature-untamed, untouched- was and environmental movements, in Aus­ painful transition from 'conserva­ part of a new view of nature as active tralia and internationally, have been written ""T"1 tion' to 'environmentalism'. subject, not m erely passive resource. This by activists and focus on the post-'green' was also the nature of the 'ecologically period since the 1970s. These studies often 1. HE LITTLE D ESE RT Settlement Scheme pure' (human-free) scientific reference areas emphasise the autonomy, originality and was among the last of a long line of proposals

28 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBE R 1998 for the 'settlem ent' of Australia's semi-arid all. McDonald's idealism overrode the m ere 12 sheep farms and announced that lands . Agricultural and p astoral cautionary tales from earlier failed soldier­ the 945-hectare Little Desert National Park, development had been the backbone of settlement schemes. His confidence in the established in 1968, would be dramatically settler Australia, and the source of na tiona! new technologies was such that he believed expanded to 35,300 hectares. The new park mythology. 'How anybody in their senses this small-holding 'settlem ent scheme' included most of the eastern section of the could believe that the development of land would prosper and give families a living Little Desert, which was the part with the to carry more stock was wrong is beyond where others had not. very low rainfall, least suitable for settle­ my comprehension,' thundered the Distinguished economists and agricul­ m ent purposes. This decision was a purely Victorian Minister of Lands, Sir William tural scientists, including senior university political one; McDonald had not even McDonald, more than 20 years after he first academics and officials of the State Depart­ thought to consult the Director of the ventured the scheme to develop the Little ment of Agriculture, did not share McDonald's National Parks Authority about it. Desert, in north-western Victoria. optimism. Their views were publicised Conservationists were not appeased. The In 1963 the AMP Society, one of m any through the media, notably in a special eastern Little Desert was not 'biologically large financial groups to underwrite and series on the ABC 'Country Hour' in mid- representative' of the whole area, they profit from land subdivisions for new 1968. According to these experts, the Little argued. No settlem ent scheme should be settlem ents, put forward a proposal to D esert Settlement Scheme was not contemplated in any part of the area until subdivide the Little Desert for agricultural economically viable. The agricultural flora and fauna surveys had been under­ or pastoral development, but after lengthy climate was blea k, with poor wool and taken so that more would be known about consideration the company decided that wheat prices and problems of over­ what would be lost. National parks were the steadily declining wool and wheat prices production. Why should public m oney be not just 'worthless lands' available for made the schem e economically ri sky. It invested in something that could recreational purposes; they must have some tried to negotiate a government subsidy for never succeed? sort of ecological integrity. roads, but in absence of that, the schem e New attitudes to frontiers had developed was abandoned in March 1967. A :r THE POINT WHERE economic advisers in Australia, as they had overseas. Frontiers, Within months of the AMP's with­ were arguing that the time was not right for because of their increasing scarcity, required drawal, Sir William McDonald was the Little Desert Settlement Scheme, a new protection rather than conquest. There was appointed Victorian Minister of Lands. He vision for the Little D esert e m erged. a growing body of nature writing that had an energetic personal interest in the border country between South Australia ------and the Victorian Wimmera, as a farmer 'The Little Desert was a turning with properties on both sides of the . - Victorian/South Australian border, on e of point ... it caught Bolte-Bolte which abutted the Little Desert. He was t .... came to me for the 1970 policy a ware that government indecision had been .;>,. a factor in aborting the AMP plan for , speech and got me to write a development, and was keen to give the ·""'"" _,._, __ · .. ··· ··· ~ segment on conservation-never government a decisive 'new look' through his Lands portfolio. been in a policy speech before. In June 1967 McDonald addressed a •...... Liallla..t_ ...... public meeting in Kaniva on the issue of He knew it was time-Bolte was a great politician-he knew developing the n ea rby Little D esert. McDonald knew the area well-both the that things and attitudes had changed.' - Bill Borthwick place and its politics. The local people of Kaniva were initially enthusiastic, hoping that an influx of new settlers might make it Conservation activists advocated a major counterpointed (good) nature against the possible to m aintain the local high school national park to preserve habitat for the evils of civilisation, and the popularity of and other amenities that were threatened Little Desert's many species and simulta­ this view was increasing as the certainty with closure because of the area's declining neously provide the region with a tourist engendered by the technological revolution population. attraction. A fight about national parks was of the' Atomic Age' of the 1940s and 1950s Early in 1968 McDonald announced a the last thing that Sir William McDonald faded. At the end of the 1960s, after government-backed subdivision proposal, had expected. Like many others, he did not unprecedented boom times for consumer the Little Desert Settlement Scheme, an view the 'scrub' country of the Little Desert society, som e people were seeking a balance enthusiastic endorsement for decentralisa­ as scenic. H e shared the view of the to its excesses. tion and agricultural endeavour. Like his journalist who wrote: 'Who on earth would The Save Our Bushlands Action predecessors in the Lands Department, wan t to preserve this horrid piece of land?' Committee represented the united forces McDonald saw land as there to be devel­ By mid-1969, however, McDonald was of eight metropolitan conservation groups, oped, not 'wasted'. He also understood the forced to acknowledge that the national including the Field Naturalists' Club of political advantage of any scheme that could parks lobby was electorally significant, Victoria, the N atural Resources Conserva­ appeal simultaneously to the supporters of whatever his feelings about the beauty of tion League and the Victorian N ational patrician notions of the 'worthy yeomanry' the area. He scaled down his original plan Parks Association. Their case was informed and the egalitarian idea of opportunity for for 44 wheat farms in the Little Desert to a by an important document prepared by the

V OLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 29 locally based Wimm era Regional Commit­ was published in March 19 70, evidence and policy speech befor e. He knew it was time­ tee, which had identified key places for popular opinion against the schem e had Bolte was a great politician- he knew that nature reserves in the Little Desert. There mounted. In December 1969, a by-election things and attitudes had changed. I wrote were two m ajor public m eetin gs in in Dandenong returned a disastrous result the conservation issues ... I took [the sec­ Melbourne in August and October of 1969, for the government. The Legislative Council tion] to [Dick] Hamer [who succeeded Bolte each of which was attended by more than immediately voted to block funding to the as Premier of Victoria in 1972] because I got l 000 people. These meetings were supported scheme. Metropolitan Dandenong was a it down to seven pages and I kn ew it should by sympathetic press coverage of conserva­ long way from the Little Desert, as one be seven paragraphs and Dick blue-pencil­ tion issues and a barrage of letters to the cartoonist pointed out, but resentment led it for me. editors of The Age, the Sun and the Herald, about the scheme had built to a point where Melbourne's three big daily n ewspapers. it was now an issue of State-wide This departure from earlier policy did By late 1969, despite the strong line significance. The supply vote led to a not go unremarked. Borthwick recalled taken by McDonald and the Premier, Sir temporary halting of preparatory road­ wryly the reaction of journalists in an Ararat Henry Bolte, the Little Desert development building and other activities in the Little pub after the speech: 'We walked in on the schem e had few supporters and many Desert, and while this was in abeyance the press and they were saying "Who wrote opponents. Sir William McDonald was the protest gathered pace. Bolte's speech? He's saying things he doesn't butt of cartoonists' satire and was increas­ As more and more evidence emerged understand."' ingly caricatured by strident journalists as from the parliamentary inquiry, it seemed Bolte promised that land management an 'enemy of conservation'. The 'hero that the only people who would be able to decisions would be taken in a new way that developer' image that he had hoped to cut farm the n ew Little D esert blocks involved more public consultation and was nowhere appar ent. 'H ero developers' had fallen from grace. McDonald was left to construct an image of himself as a ' strong leader The Little Desert campaign took place in in the face of rag-bag opposition'. But, as the opposition's credibility Victoria in 1969, but it speaks to today's continued to grow, he was increas­ Victorians, who have witnessed another ingly seen as a bloody-minded minister unable to take advice. revolution in government. In 1997, the The combined Labor and Country Party opposition forces Land Conservation Council, the held a majority in the Legislative participatory mechanism that was Council, the Victorian Parliament's upper house, and seized the oppor­ critical to the resolution of the tunity to di scredit the government. A parliamentary inquiry into the Little Desert dispute, was dismantled. Little Desert Settlement Scheme was established in October 1969, chaired by the Hon. J.W . (Jack) Galbally, a 'economically' would be those who needed promised that at least 5 per cent of the State Labor MLC. The inquiry heard evidence to make a tax loss. This was not a question would be reserved for national parks, wild­ stretching over more than 250 pages of of depriving rural battlers of their dream life reserves and forest parks. This was an transcript. A significant number of the block- merely an opportunity for 'Collins acknowledgement of the 'conservation 'expert witnesses' were the same agricul­ Street farmers' (business and professional vote', but it was not as generous as it sounds. tural resource managers who had advised people from the big city) to reduce their tax At the time more than 30 per cent of the McDonald against the schem e when it was burden at the government's expense. State was unalienated public land. The first mooted. Much of the data presented Sir Henry Bolte was old-fashioned in speech was persuasive. The Liberal primary both at the inquiry and in the media was many ways, but he was politically astute vote slipped only slightly, and Bolte's officially or unofficially supplied by enough to sniff the winds of change. It government was re-elected. Only two seats bureaucrats frustrated because the govern­ seemed that it was the new conservation were lost, but one was Dundas, the 'safe' ment was not taking their well-considered vote that had decided the Dandenong seat held continuously by Sir William advice. The staff of the Department of by-election result against him. So h e McDonald for 15 years. Agriculture were particularly active in 'discovered' a m ore electorally appealing The loss of McDonald was no guarantee opposing the scheme, within the limits of type of conservation just in time for the that the Little Desert Settlement Scheme public service etiquette. Their political general election the following May. Bill would be abolished. Sir William's demise, masters were well aware of this. McDonald Borthwick, who became the next Minister however, had to be attributed at least in did not speak to the Minister for Agriculture of Lands, recalled it thus in 1990: part to the Little Desert controversy. for some time because of the 'leaks' from Although 20 years later h e would deny that his department. The Little Desert was a turning point ... it the scheme had been his downfall, he faced The parliamentary inquiry received ca ught Bolte-Bolte came to me for the an extraordinary number of independent generous media coverage on an almost daily 1970 policy speech and got me to write a opponents in that election, unlike any other, basis. Even before the report of the inquiry segment on conservation-never been in a and the vote in Dundas was much more

30 EUREKA STREET • O c TOBER 1998 strongly anti-Liberal than in the rest of the conservation groups. Bolte handed the Lands Access quality State. Thegovernmenthadlost the scheme's portfolio to Bill Borthwick after the 1970 most passionate proponent. The election election, and he immediately sought to theological results cooled the ardour of the other distance himself from the Little Desert m embers of Cabinet, and even Bolte's Settlement Scheme which he described education support for the scheme waned. (later) as 'a bad error of judgment on the part wherever you are The Little Desert dispute was not simply of my government'. Borthwick recon­ a case of conservation or preservation versus structed the dispute as 'a peg on which in Australia development. It was, rather, a rare moment conservationists could hang their hats'. The when economists and conservationists lessons of the dispute shaped the way he found themselves arguing the same case. reorganised land-management bureaucracy. Charles Sturt The public, which in the past had been Nature lovers, the emerging green move­ L,;n·v s ~ supportive of development and decentrali­ m ent and utilitarian conservationists alike in association w ith St Marl(s sa tion schemes, was sceptical about this claimed the Little Desert as 'their' victory. Natio nal Theological Ce ntre, one. Some felt that it was to cost the taxpayer These groups had very different visions of Canberra and St.J o hn's too much, while others re m embered land management- something that subse­ College, Morpeth, oilers :1 in eli vicluals who had suffered because of the quent governments were to discover- but comprehensive range of inadequacy of the land provided under at the time of the Little Desert dispute it was courses in theology hy ea rlier soldier settlement schemes. A new possible for one iconic victory to satisfy all. group was em erging that was concerned Borthwick's new Land Conservation distance educatio n, including: about the cost to the land itself. But the Council had to be credible to the concerned • Ba chelo r o f' Theology opposition was united in its general public. Unless real public • G raduate Diploma in concern about 'due process'. consultation could be seen to occur, the Pasto ral C:1 re and Counse lling potential for a Little Desert type of protest • G raduate Certifica te in LETTERS TO THE EDITOR in major metrO­ was ever present. The new m echanism was Church Leadership and politan n ewspapers almost universally ' above politics' . This a uthoritative, Ma nagemcnt opposed the Little Desert Settlement inde pe nde nt (a lthough gov ernment­ • Master o f Ministry Scheme, but as the year progressed the approved) body was charged with the emphasis shifted towards questions of responsibility for inquiring into all matters O n ca mpus courses progress political process rather than economic of public land management. Generally it is from BTh throug h ro research arguments or even conservation values. No only a potentially divisive issue that will ar PhD level. Courses ;tre single minister, they argued, should have drive a government to risk a public inquiry flexible and suit;tble for those the power to act in the face of popular and for the sake of legitimising its own policy. in o rdained ministry as \\'ell as expert opposition and create a land-use The Little Desert Settlem ent Scheme thus those wanting ro pursue pattern that would be passed down to future stands out as a very divisive i su e, for its studies as parr o f their church generations. Consultation and accounta­ practical result was not just an inquiry, but and community involvement. bility became of paramount importance. rather a permanent m echanism for inquiry. The CSU Sc hool o f Theology The Little Desert dispute could not be said A further 18 years were to pass before to be resolved until the matter of process the Little D esert National Park was provides an ecumenical. had been tackled. expanded to include the hard-won western inclusive approach to The whole system of public land encl. Yet during that time, the post-victory theological education. management had to be reviewed. There fervour gave conservationists faith that the Applications and inquiries: was a new awareness that leaving options new Land Conservation Council would 'do for future generations was more politically the right thing'. The resolution of the dispute Admissions Offi ce important than tidying up the frontier. The was not the extension of the national park, Charles Srurt University public demanded the right to be consulted but the mechanism for public consultation Locked Bag 676 about land-use decisions. Even before the on land management. The Little Desert \X!agga \X!agga NS\X! 2678 'green ' ethic that crystallised in the 1970s, campaign took place in Victoria in 1969, rhone 02 6933 2121; there was growing recognition that but it speaks to today's Victorians, who o r contact the Academic resources, especially land resources, were have witnessed another revolution in Administrator. School of not unlimited. The images of the finite, go vernment. In 1997, the Land Conserva­ Theology. phone 02 6273 1 '572 blue and singular Earth that were beamed tion Council, the participatory mechanism back from the Apollo 11 space mission of that was critical to the resolution of the July 1969 shaped public consciousness, both Little Desert dispute, was dismantled. • CHARLES STURT consciously and unconsciously. T y The successful result for the Little Libby Robin is an Australian Research U N V E R S Desert lent confidence to the whole move­ Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the m ent. On this wave of enthusiasm, the Humanities Research Centre, Australian Conservation Council of Victoria (now N a tiona! University. This is an edited extract Environment Victoria) was established to from h er new book, Defending the Little act as an umbrella organisation for all Desert (October 1998, MUP).

VOLUME 8 N UMilER 8 • EUREKA STREET 31 HUNTIN~ NOT TR~VELLtNq h he hero, demon, or Australian history's intellectual force to be reckoned with? Peter Cochrane etnbarks on a critical ,.,.., rcassessrnent of the history of Henry Reynolds.

~ HE MAJORITY DECISION OF THE HIGH CouRT in favour of land rights for Eddie Mabo's people m ade the work of Henry Reynolds a matter of national importance. The judgment was influenced by a new reading of Australian history, to which many scholars had contributed over the previous 20 years, but none more so than Reynolds. It raised his work from academic audience to national headlines. Few, if any, Australian historians have ever exercised such clout through their work. His third book, Th e Law of the Land (19 87), figures in the foo tnotes of the Mabo judgment. Important passages are virtual paraphrases. Sir William Deane (then on the High Court) sent him a note of thanks. This startling movement of new historical knowledge into the realm of law has made Reynolds a hero for some, a demon for others and an intellectual force to be reckoned with. Journalists are now writing about Reynolds as the 'preacher' who is our moral conscience, and the 'prophet' who may take over the mantle from Manning Clark. There is nothing prescient about Reynolds. He is a political strategist, not a preacher or a prophet. His work raises important questions about political efficacy and the use of history. He deploys John Locke, the Anzac legend and history itself to influence the present and shape the future. But is his impact on jurisprudence the measure of good history? And what of his more recent world The Mabo judgment signalled that one understanding of Australian history had been fatally undermined by another. The Law of the Land was a well-documented assault on the proposition that Aborigines had been dispossessed of their lands in law when the Crown first asserted sovereignty over Australia. Reynolds' careful research established that the doctrine of terra nullius was untenable. Before that it might have been deplored but it was accepted as legally correct. His work fed off and into a new sensitivity in Australian society about the entitlements of Aboriginal people. It discredited older readings or interpretations of Australian history upon which jurisprudence had Above: relied for nearly two centuries. photographs of Henry Reynolds It took a long time for Australian history to create a Henry Reynolds. The preconditions simply courtesy Allen eJ were not there until the 1960s. Colonial historians had sanctioned dispossession with reference to Unwin; natural laws and the 'march of civilisation'. At best, Aborigines figured as foils to explorers and 'The Conciliation' by settlers in a triumphalist adventure tale- as fierce trouble-makers or pathetic remnants. By the Beniamin Dutterau from the cover of the late 19th century when nation-building replaced settlement as the central civic theme, Aborigines Penguin edition of were a 'dying race', with social evolutionary law confirmed by their marginalisation and invisibility Fate of a Free People. for most Australians-they were mostly known by their absence. Change and progress were the

32 EUREKA STREET • OcTO BER 1998 c: stuff of history and since the blacks knew no change and made no progress-they were primordial and ' timeless'-they could at best be a colourful digression or a 'melancholy footnote'. So much earlier writing on the Aboriginal people comes down to the Europeans' primitive grasp of the concepts 'change' and 'progress'. The consequ ences for scholarship were momentous. Since Aborigines belonged to the past but not to history, they became the subject of anthropology. School primers told children, quite explicitly, that Aborigines were not part of history because they had none. It was the job of anthropologists to 'peer at them and to try to guess where they came from', wrote Walter Murdoch in The Making of Australia, a school text published in 1917. The distinction between history and anthropology was itself a creation of colonialism. The indigenous people were to anthropologists what artefacts were to archaeologists. They were like the platypus or kangaroo, 'creatures often crude and quaint, that elsewh ere have passed away, and given place to higher forms', wrote W. Baldwin Spencer in 1927. Historians mapped the course of the higher forms with occasional references to the lower.

TESHIFT AWAY FROM SCHOLARSI-DP based on racial prejudice was a slow process pushed along by individuals such as A.P. Elkin at Sydney University and, after the Second World War, by the prehistorian John Mulvaney at the Australian National University (ANU). Mulvaney was committed, among other causes, to explain how Aborigines were excluded from the discourse of history. The first academic appointment in Australian history was not made untill948. In 1953 Mulvaney was the first university-trained prehistorian to make Australia his subject. The new academically based history, a post-war phenomenon, was therefore not so very slow to get around to Aboriginal history. It had first to get over a fascination with convicts, the labour movem ent and the ALP, but by the 1960s there was change. In 1961, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies began to fund research. In 1963, the' Aborigines in Australia Project', headed by Charles Rowley, was established at ANU. The new research drew moral force from Aboriginal activism in Australia and the anti-colonial movement abroad. W.E.H. Stanner's Boyer Lectures, 'After The Dreaming' ( 1968), were a landmark. Stanner called the absence of Aboriginal people from Australian history 'the great Australian silence' and noted that the silencing continued. Henry Reynolds would learn this when he declared his intention to study Aboriginal history and the editor of Australia's premier history journal told him not to bother, ' there's nothing in it'. In 1969 John Mulvaney's Prehistory of Australia was published, followed in 1970 by Charles Rowley's mammoth trilogy Aboriginal Policy and Practice. Humphrey McQueen's A New Britannia appeared in 1971, identifying racism at the core of 19th-century Australian nationalism. At LaTrobe University in 1973, John Hirst taught the first course in Aboriginal- European relations. It included a lecture on what was to become known as the stolen generation. Reynolds' first book was almost a decade away. And it would be another 20 years or so before history's new trajectory would affect the law. In 1971, the Cove Land Rights case affirmed the old supremacist histories in their dominance. In the Cove Case, the Yolngu people had asserted their traditional rights in the land against the aluminium giant Nabalco. On the basis of the available knowledge, the presiding Justice Blackburn concluded that Aborigines might belong to the land, but the land did not belong to them. 'It was an amazing dismissal of Aboriginal tenure', wrote Reynolds. He later described this view as the 'distinctive and unenviable contribution of Australian jurisprudence to indigenous-European relations'. Blackburn's judgment broadly reflected the historical scholarship available at the time. Jurisprudence and history were in harmony with one another. There were additional obstacles to any breakdown in this particular alignment of history and law. The Yolngu provided evidence which included ' title deeds' in the form of ritual and sacred objects, and their own oral history or folklore, which they presented to the Court. The problem they faced was the great divide in rules and conventions of legitimacy between their own culture and the European culture in which they were ensnared. The law favours positivist historical narratives, not ritual objects which contravene the rules of evidence, or oral history which may come under 'h earsay'. The question of admissibility emphasised how much the Aboriginal cause would in future have to depend on a conventional narrative that the Court could accept. This is why Reynolds' approach was such an important breakthrough. It was not just his new facts­ though no-one is better at extracting them from the historical record than Reynolds-but the con­ formity of those facts with the conventions of evidence of Anglo-Saxon law. Reynolds is no stylist. That too worked in his favour. He makes a point, he lists his examples, much as a social science text would do. His work can read like a report. That suited the judges. As on e critic has noted, he narrates 'through aggregates and minimally described lists of incidents'.

V OLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 33 The method is thin description. His achievement in The Law of the Land is a relentless documentation-chapter and verse from the staple sources-of the recognition of indigenous rights by international jurists and British officials (local and London) in the 18th and 19th centuries. The mass of evidence he turned up can be separated into six categories, as fo llows: i) Evidence of European jurists of the 18th and 19th century indicating the acceptance of indigenous land rights based on prior possession. ii) Evidence of the recognition of indigenous rights in the instructions given to navigators at this time. iii ) Evidence of the recognition accorded to these rights by senior colonial officials in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. iv) Evidence of Colonial Office concern for the recognition of native title from 1836, when colonial indifference to native title in Aus tralia was becoming alarmingly clear. The despatches of James Stephen, Sir George Grey, Lord Glenelg and Earl Grey are notable in this respect. v) A reinterpretation of the meaning of land reserves set aside for indigenous people, indicating that these reserves were an acknowledgement of prior ownership, not a response to its negation. vi) The insistence by the Colonial Office that all pastoral leases 'contain a reservation preserving native title rights'. Reynolds' books typically draw to a close with a discussion of the moral issues involved. He provides ammunition at both the factual and the moral level. The Mabo judgment was swayed by both. History and law were realigned, 7 I~ tl 1 l hu 1 fhL' Lw. ot thL Lmd J9'i J h~.;un'' 111 the but so too was law and justice, reflect­ ing a climate of opinion in which terra r1 1[11 1 L.., 1 till J\.1, h > JUd '11h'' L In pc,rtanLJhh'>(L~L''> lire\ nll! 1/ nullius had become untenable. The p.111 •JJ,,d 2 )u \\ 1lhun1 /)cilnc tl1Ln 1111 tlu llH:,l Comt! 'ii'l1l h11n a judges recognised that the legal system could not turn away from new facts rwu ()/thcPJl '> 1hi'> "' zrtlmc..:, 11W\U11ert O/ r C\\ hhtmiu!ll.:.nov.lcdx( without creating disrespect for the law. mtu th IL' J!n, 1! lo\\ hd'> made N.t} nnld-.. rl hew tur \UlllL t1 duuon It could not be seen to be frozen in an age of racial discrimination. The credi­ tu1 ntl 'f, 11 d d' 111/l'llcdu i/J()IU tn 1'£ rukurh·l Hllh bility gap between the legal 'truth' and the new understanding of Australia's pa st had to be closed. Reynolds' analysis had appeal because it left the high moral ground to the law by consigning blame to white settlers and colonial governments who ignored or defied or misunderstood the law. An outstanding passage in the Brennan judgment clea rly expressed the shift in sensibility: A common law doctrine founded on unjust di scrimination in the enjoyment of civil and political rights demands reconsideration. It is contrary both to international standards and to the fu ndamental values of our common law to entrench a discriminatory rule which, because of the supposed position on the scale of social organisation of the indigenous inhabitants of a settled colony, denies them a ri ght to occupy their traditional lands. The new facts underwrote a new morality. The new morality gathered up the new fa cts. It was the moral atmosphere, more than any finality of evidence, which confirmed the supremacy of the new history.

L E DEMON ISERS CALL REY NOLDS a purveyor of 'black armband' history, a radical, even a revolutionary. In one booklet, sponsored by the Australian Mining and Exploration Council and entitled The Australian History of Henry Reynolds, Geoffrey Partington stole cynically from Orwell to categorise him as a 'transferred nationalist', m eaning someone who has sold out his own kind. He also described Reynolds as one whose nationalism is 'purely negative', and whose commitment to indigenous people is a mere substitute fad to fill the gap left by the failure of communism. The pure nastiness here is a rneasure of Reynolds' effectiveness. If his undoubted skills were serving Anglo-Saxondom at the big end of town, any exchange would be nose- tappingly hearty and hale. The discomfort goes deeper than cheap labels reveal and, to some extent, contradicts these labels. What distinguishes Reynolds' major achievem ent is his apparent respect for the common law, his grounding in an historical method shared by most of his critics, and his belief in history as a pursuit of truth, in his case a kind of morally charged positivism that you can find in many a line from his works: 'They seem unable to accept the objective facts of the past', he wrote of his critics in 1995. 'The Colonial Office officials who recognised Native Title were right. The settlers who didn't were wrong', he asserted in The Law of the Land.

34 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1998 c:

The respectability of Reynolds' work galls his critics. They know he has defeated them on their own ground, on the sacred terrain of the English law and from the core texts of their own z narrative. His hard labours within this framework make the 'black armband', 'transferred nationalist' labels seem more like a decoy than a serious assessment. As one commentator put it, he has written 'the kind of history that the law can take notice of'. And it has. In a postscript to the second edition of his major work, Reynolds posed the following question: 'can we seriously object to attempts to gain compensation in ways that are fully in harmony with our Anglo-Australian legal traditions?' He quotes John Locke's view that men entered into society in order to protect their property. The idea that men might actually lose their property on incorporation was 'too gross an absurdity for any man to own', wrote Locke. Yet that is what happened to Aborigines, writes Reynolds in Frontier (1987) .

YsTED INTERESTS ARE NOW IN A D IFFICULT POSITION: the stalwarts of property rights find themselves arguing for the extinguishment of indigenous title recognised in common law-if not in colonial practice-for centuriesi the champions of gradualism and defenders of British institutions are attacking its very core-the High Court. Geoffrey Blainey's academic writing on Aborigines is not in this tradition, but his journalism is. In the Bulletin he represents Mabo as if it were a murder case, in which the question was how did they die. He told his reader that the judges appear 'not to have completed their research of the facts of the Aborigines' dispossession'. Disease, he insists, was the main killer. The obfuscation is remarkable-Mabo was not about cause of death but about rights in land. It was not about influenza but entitlement embodied in common law. Its legacy is to make entitlement an ongoing question for judgment. Thus there is a new role for history in shaping the future. After Mabo, the future Reynolds helped to shape was Wile For a year he worked with a Cape York Land Council solicitor looking for evidence the Wik people needed. His findings were published in a law journal and in 1996 the Wik judgment affirmed that native title and pastoral leases could co-exist. The historian Bain Attwood has argued that this unsettling role for history is at the core of conservative unhappiness and panic. It helps explain the demonisation of Reynolds. According to Attwood in In The Age of Mabo (Allen and Unwin, 1996), 'Mabo forms part of a new historical narrative which portends for conservatives the end of (Australian) history as they conceive it, and, therefore, the end of their Australia.' The new history threatens some Australians with the loss of their 'customary narrative' and in that way questions their very identity. It not only puts Aborigines into the mainstream of history, it also subverts the tenets of the old narrative-the theory of peaceful settlement, the conception of British justice as just to all and the proposition that British colonisers were humanitarian in goals and practice. Peaceful and legitimate settlement was a 'treasured tale', a bedrock of 'meaning, order and composure'. The conventional past affirmed a settled present. Like the Gothic revival in Victorian England, it helped to stabilise identity. The implication of this argument is that at least some of those opposed to Mabo feel they have lost their map of the past and thus lost a part of themselves. The alarm is palpable. In that same Bulletin essay, Blainey argued that the black armband view 'has run wild, and is out of control'. He called the High Court a 'citadel of the new attitude', suggesting, perhaps, his own sense of marginalisation, of being locked out. Shades of the immigration debate. The walls of the citadel have been penetrated by a trojan horse called the 'new history'. Reynolds has continued to be out of control-his work on the past continues to meddle with the future. Aboriginal Sovereignty was published in 1996. The issues of law are complex here but essentially he was pursuing the question of 'sovereignty' or rights to self-government, following a m ethodology similar to that in Law of the Land. The sovereignty argument followed the analysis of dispossession propounded in the Mabo decision. From land rights onward to self-rule. The central question was, did Aborigines exercise a form of sovereignty? Were they governed by laws of their < own, before annexation? If so, could this have been recognised by international law in the 18th and early 19th centuries? Reynolds argued that the evidence suggested that the criteria required for sovereignty by international law at that time were met by Aboriginal societies. They were, to put it briefly, political communities. But if sovereignty was exercised by Aboriginal tribes, when was it lost? And how? And can it, should it, be restored? If Mabo had determined that land rights may have survived in parts of Australia, as it had in the Murray Islands, then is it likely that sovereignty had survived too? Traditional custom and law is surely still alive in Torres Strait, Cape York, Arnhem Land, the Kimberley, the Central desert and other places. Reynolds' logic was clear: were the High Court to recognise a right to self-government, as it recognised a right to native title, then a profound injustice would be overturned.

V oLUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 35 2 In addition to these core ventures into legal history, Reynolds' consistent achievement has been to take the old history's account of Aboriginal people's responses to colonisation- most of it patronising, sentimental and sad-and to represent them as active agents, resisting dispossession and making sensible, indeed political choices, from a fast-diminishing range of options. This concern has been morally driven but validated by the historical record. And it has been sustained across several shifts in the direction of his research. Reynolds' work began with what is called 'contact history' or race relations on the frontier. His paradigm for interaction between Aborigines and Europeans was dominated by conflict-white violence and black rcsi tancc. The conflict modelled straight from his own experience on moving to North Queensland where he felt the past at work in the present: It was not just the unaccustomed violence and hatred which often grew as lush as guinea grass but the small er more subtle things- expressions, phrases, jokes, glances; even silences, which prang up out of local historical experiences I knew little about. (Quoted in Age of Mabo, xvii) Previously, historians writing about white-Aboriginal relations had begun their study with official British records, then moved thematically from England to Australia. Their main concern was white experience. Reynolds, by contrast, began on the colonial frontier where contact took place and he was primarily concerned with black experience, how Aborigines perceived the colonisers, and how we might f()urnahst.o, arc now writing about Reynolds as the 'preacher' who understand their ideas, actions and responses to dispossession. Writing is our moral con,cience, and the 'prophet' who may take (J\'Cr the about Aboriginal- settler relations mantle from Manning Clark There i-; nothing prescient about was not a new field, but Reynolds approached the task in a new way. l~enw]d...,. He ic'i a political <,lrategist, not a preacher or a prophet. Settler motivation, government ITI'> tvork roisc'l important question-; about political effnacv and policy and European ideas were largely absent from his first and the u.o,e of history. He deplors fohn Locke. the Anzac legend and most imaginative book, The Other hl'ltory 1helf to influence the pre'wnt and '>hape the future. Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion But ir.; hi'> impact on ;un'ipnulence the measure of good hi,'> tory! of Australia (1981). And what of hh) more recent work! Its impact was immediate. Rey­ nolds made the 'other side' a legitimate topic for historians and the general public. He disproved the assumption that Aboriginal perceptions were completely lost; he put them within reach of the white imagination; he compelled us to sec that Aboriginal responses were other than passive and helpless. Hi book was a broadside against simplistic and demeaning views about the Aboriginal pas t. It launched a public career in which, for some, he has earned the title 'keeper of Australia's national conscience' (A.T. Yarwood).

C RITICISM OF THE 0THEI< SIDE OF THE FIWNTIEI< com es OUt of a field which the book helped tO create, but there have still been many critics. The limitations of Reynolds' model have been revealed by less well-known historians working on a smaller, regional scale, who have uncovered varying patterns of co-operation and accommodation between black and white and who are not convinced that violence predetermined the tenor of later relations in a general way. Patterns of interaction other than conflict are acknowledged in Reynolds' work but, if anything, the conflict thesis has only hardened with time, his later writing stressing the ubiquity and persistence of racial violence, and how this primary experience coloured all subsequent relations. Reynolds took his evidence from all over Australia and thus propounded a sort of 'general theory'. His early work was pioneering, but it was necessarily single-minded (some would say tunnel-visioned) in its pursuit of the violence thesis- the paradigm tight and neat-and its sensational implications meant it was ready-made for media attention. Subsequent study reveals, for example, that his paradigm best applies to the far north and the north-west and the far south (Tasmania), but will not do fo r Victoria and South Australia, nor for the Swan coastal plain around Perth, as Bob Reece has shown in the journal Aboriginal History. A more recent historiography does not deny the impact of European violence, but points to a spectrum of Aboriginal- European relations, to a range of widely differing 'encounters in place' (John Mulvaney) which collectively press towards a comprehensive picture. Mulvaney's approach differs sharply from Reynolds', emphasising uncommon but instructive cases of 'collaborative racial relations' where the 'mingling of cultures' was marked by peaceful co-existence and 'signs of respect from both [sides]'.

36 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1998 Yet tall poppies are easily caricatured. That Reynolds 'overdoes the violence theme' is now a throwaway line in Australian history circles. White violence and Aboriginal resistance is the core of The Other Side, but there is more to it. Some of the book is concerned with themes that are preliminary to violence-broadly, inter-cul tural relations-where Reynolds is dealing with Aboriginal perceptions of whites through their traditional belief systems, with attempts to conciliate whites, to draw them into clan systems of reciprocity and kinship, and with continuity and change in Aboriginal culture resulting from contact. A final, highly suggestive, chapter also covers variations in patterns of interaction beyond pastoralism- in whaling, mining, agriculture and forestry. The greater problem h ere is method: both resistance, and its preliminaries, are dealt with by ""r means of thinly described examples gathered indiscriminately from all over the country .

.1. HERE IS AN ASSUREDNESS ABOUT REYNOLDS' WORK which is disarming. H e concluded The Other Side of the Frontier with the claim that he had turned 'Australian history, not upside down, but inside out'. The implication of uniqueness runs through the book. There are barely any textual references to other historians working in the field, either locally or overseas. In Africa, the Americas, N ew Z ealand the Pacific Islands, this sort of contact history-looking at ' the other side'-had been common for 20 years. Reynolds made no m ention of it, though his later interest in the common law tradition has extended his points of reference. As for the local scene, you could read that text and assume he was totally alone. A quite complex field of historical research and contestation is reduced to Reynolds against the old school. As if to declare this, he does quote one other Australian historian- W.K. Hancock, circa 1930, who called Aborigines 'pathetically helpless' . Reynolds did not locate his work in relation to other historical scholarship. That may have broadened his readership but it also allowed him to oversimplify the situation. For example, the alleged break with past hi tory was by no m eans total. Reynolds was in fact borrowing from an older tradition of Australian history writing- from Russell Ward and other 'radical nationalist' historians, who celebrated the anti-authoritarianism, collectivism, egalitarianism, initiative and adaptability of the Australian character. Only in Reynolds' work these qualities belong to Aborigines rather than convicts, diggers and bushrangers. The labels had been switched. The settlers were transplanting a policy of possessive individualism, hierarchy and inequality. Aboriginal society was reciprocal and materially ega litarian, though there were important political and religious inequalities based on age and sex. (Penguin, 1982, pp69-70) In the Conclusion he took this further, casting Aborigines as Anzacs, fearless underdogs defending their way of life, and calling for them to be remembered in our national commemorations of war and loss. Fourteen years later he closed Fate of a Free People (1995), his history of the Aboriginal Wars in Tasmania, with virtually the same call, arguing that the reconciliation movement now made it even more imperative. The question not posed is whether Aboriginal responses to colonisation can be accurately characterised in terms of triumphalist settler and national typologies. While Reynolds was overturning European understandings of Aboriginal behaviour on the frontier, he was simultaneously tying Aboriginal identity into an avowedly European framework of national character. The proposition that Reynolds has mastered the art of writing the same book several times over is partly true. There seems no doubt that he is powerfully drawn to the dispossession/resistance or the 'oppositional' model of Aboriginal-European relations. It is his trademark. Fate of a Free People is merely a regional version of the 'oppositional' model propounded in his early works, though his account of resistance now shades into an analysis of accommodation which is more complex than before. Thematically the ingredients for The Law of the Land (1987) and This Whispering in Our Hearts (1998) can be found, somewhat abridged, in Frontier (1987). Not only quotations but entire themes get recycled in expanded form and somewhat altered perspective. Chapter 6 of Frontier is called 'Rights of the Soil'; chapter 3 of This Whispering is called 'A Reasonable Share in the Soil'; chapter 7 of Frontier is entitled 'This Whispering in Our Hearts'. The land rights question canvassed in Law of the Land- jurisprudence, local and London officialdom, the humanitarian perspective-is reworked for Tasmania in chapter 5 of Fate of a Free People. But shifts in Reynolds' work over time should be acknowledged. The violence/resistance paradigm did make way for a concern with land, proprietorship and the common law, which in turn has been joined by Reynolds' most recent focus on the humanitarian movement in This Whispering in Our Hearts. Each of these phases in his work has a moral subtext which surfaces powerfully in his conclusions: i) the activating and ennobling of Aboriginal people in Australian

V o LUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 37 history; ii) the deception and injustice of terra nullius; iii) the recognition of a decent, human legacy among white Australians. And yet the sameness in the latter part of his career is inescapable: This Whispering is very similar in method and spirit to Reynolds' first book-a story of depredations and massacres, this time balanced by expressions of concern from (largely ineffectual) humanitarians. Reynolds all but confesses this in his Conclusion: 'With the humanitarian crusade woven into national historiography, the story becomes richer, more complex, and, in many ways, more decent ... ' Note: 'the story'. It is his story, further refined, the balance now more satisfying. In a sense This Whispering has taken Reynolds back to where he started. Recycling takes a toll. This Whispering is Reynolds' latest and least impressive book. For the most part it is a string of short biographical profiles which moves the account abruptly from one colony or State to another, and which 7 he di'>l inction het \H:cn 111'>lm\ and anthropulog} \:\ m Ihel/ a leap-frogs whole decades (and whole ere at um of t'oloniah~m. The indigenou'> people were to issues) at a time. The result is potted­ n ess. Missing, for example, is the (111thropolmo~h \\hat artefacts were to mclweolo'{i'>l'>. They \Vcre lil\.e relationship between governments and the plat\ pm or kangamo, 'creatures often crude and quaint, that missionaries, the legislative history of 'protection', so full of the ambivalence el'-.CH here ha1'e JW'>'>ed awm, and gi\ en place to higher form.)'. \Nrotc of 'whisperin gs', and the tensions W. BaldH in Spencer in 1927. between secular and evangelical humanitarianism. Victoria, the colony where Aborigines got the most sustained political attention, is passed over, although it was Victorian government which set the pattern for Aboriginal administration all over Australia with the Protec­ tion and Management Act of 1869. The Act's purpose was to control but, importantly, to care as well, and it contained harsh penalties for employers, publicans and others who harmed Aborigines. If it was ineffectual, then it was no more so than the humanitarians Reynolds chose to study. It is not clear why This Whispering is overloaded with missionaries, leaving little room for other types of humanitarians with very different perspectives on Aboriginal culture. The concept 'humanitarian' is largely undifferentiated. Reynolds does discuss the scholar and settler Robert Menli Lyon (WA, 1830s), the remarkable man who defended (and studied) the ensnared warrior, Yagan, but later in the eastern colonies a significant category of secular critics emerged, men with frontier or contact experience who disagreed with the missionary system and its segregate and civilise policies. In Victoria, men such as A.M. Howitt, police magistrate of Gippsland, and James Dawson, a local guardian of Aborigines at Camperdown, were significant ethnographers with close ties to certain clans, and with views that were hostile to missionary practice and protective policies. Howitt was accepted as a tribal elder and helped organise a l

B uT THE PROBLEM IS MORE THAN NARROWNESS. Reynolds' account is strangely off balance. He chooses here to represent humanitarians as a London/Geneva-oriented grouping who see themselves in the anti-slavery tradition and who share an empire consciousness of the necessity for good works in the area of Aboriginal welfare. Reform-minded Australians, he argues, 'attempted to apply the strategies and theories of Imperial administration to Australia'. Some reform-minded Australians clearly did. But what of the Australian nationalists of the period who rejected the empire and sought liberal social reform? Reynolds writes as if there is nothing in Australian soil to nourish humanitarianism. He follows a correspondence trail-an empire interchange-and fills out the story around it with secondary sources. The account narrows inevitably into another case study­ this time of the grazier's daughter, Mary Bennett, who had spent much of her adult life in England and who took her allegations of slavery on pastoral stations to the British Commonwealth League. Reynolds completely misses the connections between nationalism and reform. In the late 19th century it was possible to sympathise with Aborigines, but also necessary to explain their world away to make way for progress. In the 1930s, with European culture falling apart, the Aborigine

38 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1998 c:all could figure in a new understanding of nationhood, liberated from old preconceptions. Literature 2 led the way. The Aboriginal world could be seen, at last, as a source of value, wonder, even national regeneration. This progression was evident in the work of K.S. Prichard, Xavier Herbert, Eleanor Dark and others. If a wider field of social protest was a precondition for Herbert's Capricornia (1938), it is also true that Prichard's Coonardoo (1928) is remarkable for prefiguring much of that protest. Literature is not merely the effect of politics. 'The energies of art invade, with a shaping intensity, the energies of life', wrote J.J. Healy in Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (1978), a book which should figure in the history of our whisperings. Missing from Reynolds' work is the 'effervescent dialogue' (as Healy put it) between literature and politics, and also the dialogue between nationalism and humanitarianism. Xavier Herbert was a central figure in the politicisation of Aboriginal issues in the 1930s. Prichard embodies the connections between communist anti-racism (which is not mentioned at all), literature and humanitarianism. Reynolds' humanitarians are a sort of reformist Round Table. Well-educated, well-travelled, sharing in an 'empire consciousness' of the need to improve imperial admin­ r"f"" istration of the Aborigines. 'The country was, after all, part of the Empire', he writes .

.1. HI S IMPE RLAL LEANING seems odd coming from Reynolds. There is, strangely, no room in his pantheon for the less-elevated push against social injustice. Left-wing activism gets half a page, the anti-racism of communists and trade unionists not a paragraph. Perhaps it is a blind spot with origins in The Law of the Land. In that work it is the Colonial Office men who are the heroes and London is the fount of compa sion. The progenitors of what he cleverly called the first land rights movem ent were, in other words, English gentlemen. At the Sir Robert Menzies Centre in London in 1996, Reynolds asked assembled historians: 'Will Australians of the late 20th century have less resp ct for Aboriginal rights than the aristocratic Englishmen who ran the Colonial Office 150 years ago?' The heroes of This Whispering follow on from the champions of The Law. Such an approach will not do. Its inadequacies are especially apparent when Reynolds comes to the sesquicentenary of NSW in 1938. He ponders whether Mary Bennett knew that the Day of Mourning protest was an exclusively Aboriginal affair, and what she might have done if she had been turned away. With nothing to say, he turns to counter-factual history. His only reference point into the sesqui is Mary Bennett. Had he followed the nationalist rather than the imperial current, Bennett might have been left aside-she had already figured in earlier chapters-and local connections noticed. The controversial literary nationalist P.R. Stephensen, a key figure in raising interes t in the plight of Aborigines, is a classic case. H e had encouraged the organisation of the Day of Mourning. He was instrumental in getting Abo Call going, a newspaper for The law favours pmitivist hi,..,torical narratives, not ritual the Aboriginal Progress Association. He was the publisher of Capricornia and objects which contravene the rules of evidence. or oral hi,..,tory he arranged for extracts to appear in which comes under 'hearsay· ... This i:, why Reynold..,' approach Abo Call. He signals the movement's links with Aboriginal people. Reynolds' was such an important breakthrough. It wa'l not just his new group, mostly, seem to float above the facts-though no-one is better at extracting them {rom the objects of their concern. With his embarrassing declarations in favour of historical record than Reynold<~-but the conformity of those Nazi Germany and fascist Japan, fact<> with the convention'> of evidence of Anglo-Saxon law Stephen en also embodies, as well as any of Reynolds' missionaries, the ambivalence and paradoxes within humanitarianism. Prichard is important because of the excitement her novel created beyond the literary world, but also because of her influence on Herbert, James Devaney, Mary Gilmore, William Hatfield, Eleanor Dark, Vance Palmer and Henrietta Drake-Brockman. Devaney mattered because it was his book (The Vanished Tribes, 1928) which inspired Rex Ingamells to launch the movem ent which became the Jindyworobaks. Stephensen was also an influence. And so the connections go, or should. These are all points in a matrix linking activists with artists, writers, trade unionists, publicists, raffle organisers and so on. They are a 'movement'. But not in This Whispering. The interplay of politics and art, nationalism and conscience, is lost beneath a welter of evidence about the anti-slavers in London and cognate organisations in I Australia. The select bibliography gives no indication of an interest beyond the short reach of the book. While it directs readers to primary sources, there is no mention of the academic scholarship ,- it comes after, notably Mulvaney's writings on the humanitarian tradition, which is a subtle exploration of paternalism, racism and the complexities of the humanitarian position.

VOLUME 8 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 39 Historians commonly cite Reynolds' indifference to theory while rarely saying how it affects his work. The very word 'theory' has cachet, reflecting an uneasy position within the discipline. Reynolds' style is the shortest distance between two points. He is more a hunter in the past than a cultured traveller. Criticism has to be qualified by the size of his 'bag', but not muted. He follows an idea tenaciously. He is unreferential. There are few digressions. The corners of a concept are not explored. Things don 't broaden out. The result in The Other Side was an overdetermined account of settler violence and resistance with little sense of patterns of contact in pastoral country, other than variations in intensity. Years later it is the same story with the humanitarians added on. Key concepts such as 'humanitarian' or 'movement' have not been carefully explored. For the 19th century that meant the absence of ideological differences and rivalries. In the 20th century the problem is more serious still. Poor conceptualisation complements cultural narrowness. It is not the absence of literature per se: it is the failure to see how the energies of literature, for example, feed into and off politics to a fuller field of relations within humanitarianism. The Other Side was an overstatement but a valuable corrective. This Whispering undercuts its own purpose.

H UNTING, NOT TRAVELLING, extends the cultural insensitivity of Reynolds' work. A classic case is that of Truganini: In Fate of a Free People, we find his account of the 'Friendly Mission' of George Augustus Robinson to conciliate the warring Aborigines of Van Diem cn's Land. Truganini's role as guide, translator and negotiator for Robinson had been described by ea rlier historians in the most dem eaning terms. The labels string together: treacherous, vain, self-serving, promiscuous, a 'white man's doxy'. Robert Hughes called her a 'bright, promiscuous girl ' and a 'sealer's moll, sterile from gonorrhea'. Reynolds, on the contrary, abstracts from her III\lrmun Jl11ll1cmh Lilt' l} the di ... who guided ' the conciliator' \JL' 1'. t})l' \]llJ[/L\{ (iJSt /IJU [h t\H'( 11 (HOJHW l'> (Robinson). Other accounts have suggested Robinson's mesmeric .., n > l illuJ tcr 1 1 tlu f>O'.t th11n 1 ( ulturcd ll 11 ·lla 0 and hypnotic powers in order (Jilt m" 111 1 lt 1 ttlJ{ll/OlJ /\0 Jh 1'> unrctLZu 'I£11 to explain his success. Reynolds' analysis shifts the mantle to TllLl (I] 'H dz..,It '>'>1 Jlh The curnc.r'> nf d umc. ·pt .til' 1101 Truganini and her fe male t'li.Jlc>'td 1h n: ~ thn t bruad J, oH companions. He analyses their key role as m ed iators and diplomats and argues that Truganini had a political agenda of her own-to negotiate a peace with freedom and dignity and to save her people from annihilation. 'I knew it was no use my people trying to kill all the white people now,' she said, 'there were so many of them always coming in big boats.' Possibly the most familiar piece of visual evidence for this event is on the front cover of the Penguin edition. It is Benjamin Dutterau's painting of 'The Conciliation'. Reynolds says nothing about this at all. It is ignored in the text as is Dutterau himself, his obsession with the 'conciliation' and what that might tell us about the impact of the 'Black Wars' or, notably, about intercultural contact between Hobart town and so-called 'domesticated blacks' such as Truganini. None of these possibilities drew Reynolds in. The painting itself is remarkable for it affirms the role of the women in the m ediations: G.A. Robinson stands passive. He is attended by women who actively point or lead the warriors to him. One woman seems to have stood aside having already done this. She watches attentively. Otherwise the warriors stand back. Document-bound history pays a penalty in the evidence it misses. But for Reynolds, the truth is in the documents, in the words of his protagonists, and it is finaL Dutterau might also have figured at the end of the book where Reynolds winds up on the theme of 'surrender'. He does so with a quote from John Locke, whose advice to dispossessed peoples was to use the law and, if they failed, to try and try again till justice is eventually done, even if it takes generations. The law will always come good-that is the message Reynolds leaves us with. The cunning in Reynolds is radical intent backed by the leverage of the Enlightenment.

Peter Cochrane is a freelance historian based in Sydney. Thanks to Rob Darby, Phillip Decry and Tim Bonyhady for comments on an earlier version of this article. Footnote references are a1'ailable on request: tel. 03 9427 7311, email: [email protected]

40 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1998 R Austr •

Yes, there is life after tax and elections. Th e Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences has been pondering the future in a research project devoted to reshaping Australian institutions. The findings are now published in a series of books by Cambridge University Press and reviewed in Eureka Street this month and next.

A Federal Republic: Amtralia's fi scal imbalance and horizontal equalisa tion Galligan argues that, whereas Americans Cnn~titutinnal Sptem nf Gnvunment, comprehensible. Though the Cambridge mark centenaries as times for celebration, Bn,m C.dhg.111 Press always publishes books which have we Australians use them as opportunities DeliberatiH' Dcmocr<~cy in Au'>tralia, an air of abiding permanence to them, this for reform and reshaping. He espouses the john Uhr can be deceptive-especially in the realm of now-settled list of reforms: an entrenched political science. Galligan wrote before the bill of rights, recognising the special rights L ESE TWO BOOKS are written by political Coalition came to power, so John Howard's of the indigenous people, a nd the scientists who describe our political promised GST with proceeds to the States republicanising of the head of state. His institutions and proffer som e suggestions gives an old-time ring to Galligan's obser­ conservative critics will be unsurprised, for reform . vations that the likelihood of redressing given Galligan's frank disclosure of his Brian Galligan surveys Australia's con ­ vertical fiscal imbalance had receded with personal position in the preface. Born in the stitutional system of government. His the­ Paul Keating's taking the whip hand of the heart of One Nation country, he went away sis, influential am ong those at the February prime ministership and affirming the Com­ to get an education: Constitutional Convention who favoured a m onwealth's m onopoly over income tax. minimalist republic, is that Australia Having previously written the most Growing up as a fourth generation already has 'a constitutional system that is definitive history of the High Court, Australian in rural Queensland, I never fundamentally federal and republican rather Galligan is one of the few political scientists considered the Queen and the royal fa mily than parliamentary and m onarchic'- In who writes with the sam e familiarity and as anything but British and foreign. Having constitutional term s, there is simply need authority on the third branch of government retired British military gentlemen as State for a little nam e-changing at the top. as he does on the other two-which are the governors which was still the practice then, Galligan is surely right when h e m ost tried and tested paths for his academic reinforced the impression of the vice-regal postulates that Australia's main problems colleagues. His chapter on the protection of office as an anomalous institution. Being a are not consti tu tiona! but social and political, rights carries the findings of the fascinating Catholic, I thought it improper that given the country's need to compete in a survey he and Christine Fletcher conducted. Australia's head of state should also have globalised economy while maintaining They fo und that the public is far more been the hea d of the Anglican church. This some commitment to justice for all. interested than the political elites in the seemed wrong in principle and ca used the He writes clearly and authoritatively constitutional protection of their rights. monarchy, instead of being a symbol of about federalism, the Senate, and inter­ The public has much more time for the national unity, to reinforce petty sectari­ governmental relations, making vertical judges than the politicians have had. anism and the pretences of a provincial

V OLUME 8 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 41 Protestant ascendancy. Moreover, being a Rep res en ta ti ves passed ten times more bills national government , taking due account democrat, I was opposed to any Australian in its ninth decade than in the first, it of the views of appropriate professional office of state being hereditary. having reduced the average sitting time per orga nisa tions. Iro ni cally, it was the yo uthful Queen's bill from twenty-five hours to two. Uhr Acknowledging that the Court is fully visit in 1954 that confirmed for me the opines, 'Although this might indicate a accountable for its expenditure of public alien character of the monarchy. remarkable feat of micro-economic reform funds, Uhr suggests, 'The next step in with increasing improvements in efficiency, accountability is to upgrade the quality of Like Galliga n, John Uhr was also one­ the real situation is probably that these parliamentary review of the performance of time head of the Federalism Research Centre trend fi gures indicate a steady decline in the High Court and to lift the scrutiny fro m at ANU. He shares Galligan's view that due standards of deliberation.' administrative inputs to policy impacts and ' m any of Australia's existing political In his treatment of the Native Title Bill, from fi nancial to political costs.' The Uhr institutions already possess many republican Uhr observes that Keating's consultation recommendation applied to cases such as qualities-in fact if not in name'. Unlike process before the drafting of the bill 'was Mabo and Wil<-especially in light of Galligan, he offers no personal testimony. an unusually open example of public policy Fischer's and Borbidge's abysm al political Being a long-time parliamentary committee making involving extensive community attacks on the court and Attorney-General secretary in the service of the Senate, he is consultations and many rounds of pre­ Daryl Williams' decision to proffer no thorough, restrained and writes with a deft legislative negotiation s with interested defence-would result in anything but an touch in his treatment of the changing place groups'. The bill then went through what enhanced practice of deliberative democracy. of Parliament in Australian democracy. was, until then, the longest Senate debate If deliberative democracy has been enhanced in an Australian republic by2001, Galligan and Uhr should be invited to the Brian Galligan is surely right when he postulates that cele brations. They h ave contributed Australia's main problems are not constitutional but social substantially to the project. and political, given the country's need to compete in a - Frank Brennan SJ

globalised economy while maintaining some commitment l{cvivin~ the fou ' .. to justice for all. -Frank Brennan '"r Jult •nne <.,d ·I• .1 ERTIARY COURSES in journalism are Having set out a theory of deliberative in history. Though h e gives a thorough extrem ely fashionable at the moment. Many dem ocracy, he then makes a detailed study description of the parliamentary process, have yet to decide whether they are courses of Parliament in theory and Parliament in Uhr could have contributed to his theory about journalism, or courses in how to be a practice. Here is a real insider to the and practice of deliberative democracy by journalist. Of course the two are not mutually complexity of the parliamentary process. analysing how the government's lack of exclusive, but the difference in emphasis is He has been able to step down from the Senate control gave indigenous groups the certainly important to the students and the House on the Hill and refl ect on the opportunity for grea ter participation in the industry. In the author notes to this book dem ocratic character of what goes on in legisla tive process (thereby enhancing Schultz is described as having 'unique those bac k rooms of parlia m entary deliberative democracy), while also giving experience as both a journalist and a journal­ committees that we hardly ever hear about. the minor parties a veto over key provisions ism academic'. This is pushing it a bit, and He produces some eff ective case studies. which then led to amendments which gratuitously insulting other fine journalists­ For example, in walking us through the were unworkable (t hereby undermining turned-academics, but it is true that the 'Means of Legislation' he compares the deliberative democracy). combination is unusual and this fact routine passage of the 1993 Telecommuni­ In his concluding chapter, Uhr combines impoverishes both journalism and academia. cations Amendment Bill and Paul Keating's 'theory and practice to highlight Australian When the academics who teach journal­ 1993 Native Title Bill. Incidentally, the five­ r eform priori ties-in the event that ism don 't themselves have solid industry year lead time to publication of the book does sufficient political will exists to try and experience, they have a personal stake in make the detail of the examples a little enhance the place of deliberation in teaching theory at the expense of practice. more demanding on the reader who does Australian parliamentary institutions'. He And when journalists don't respect the not immediately share Uhr's fascination has a 12-point plan which illustrates rather academics, they rob themselves of a for the disguised parliamentary processes. than catalogues a range of reforms in the potential source of constructive critique. Like much routine legislation, the Telecom­ three performance areas of representation, Last year I tutored in journalism at one munications Bill absorbed less than an hour law-m aking and accountability. While of the new concrete block universities. I was of the Parliament's time and was never seeking greater independence for ATSIC in an odd position. I am a journalist of subject to form al vote. All parliamentarians and the Auditor-General, he would like to almost 20 years' experience, but I don' t are deemed to have supported it. see the High Court subject to greater have a higher degree. This m eans I was Occasionally, at least to this reader's scrutiny by the Parliament. When launch­ almost as bemused by academia as academia relief, the disciplined and dispassionate ing the book, Sir Anthony Mason expressed was by me. I remember one week when my academic writing of the scrupulou sly som e concern at Recommendation 9: students had been lectured on som ething observant political scientist gives way to Parliament should establish specialist called 'public journalism '. The term Uhr's light touch and humour, which reveal mechanisms to provide itself with regular mystified me. N ot much journalism, m ore than the author's own quizzical view opportunities to examine the performance I thought, tookplace inprivate. What could of things. He observes that the House of of the High Court and its contribution to public journalism be?

42 EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1998 I went to the lecture and found out that her stride, and gives a fascinating and lively up two more members. Would you like to it is a theory, or an aspiration, for journalism review and analysis of the 'golden age' of go on commission ?' according to which the media would make Australian investigative journalism in the This cam eo s ums up why people more attempts to connect with and reflect '70s and '80s when people like Bob Bottom, continue to join unions. Recruitment tends the concerns of its public, rather than of a Marian Wilkinson and Chris Masters were to be in the public sector, when manage­ political elite. at the height of their powers. Governments, ment is piling on the stress factor, where In pite of the risk that 'public journalism' High Court judges and senior burea ucrats the union h olds m eetings and where might come to mean 'cosy journalism ', and fell as a result. delegates are active on the ground. in spite of the barely cloaked hostility of the Although others have written parts of Yet the overall trend in Australia is still lecturer to the mainstream media in which this story, I am not aware of any other running against unions, with the organised most of his students hoped to find jobs, comprehensive review. Schultz's analysis proportion of the workforce falling by 40 public journalism seemed like a worthy is excell ent and thought-provoking. This is per cent between 1976 and 1996. The aim in need of a more sensible name. exactly the kind of writing journalism Maritime Union might have fought off those But when I told journalism colleagues academics could and should do. Nobody in who would drag it to the knacker's yard, but about the theory, they snorted with derision. the mainstream of the industry is going to the general prognosis for unionism is still They had no doubt that they were already have enough perspective and objectivity to commonly perceived to be gloomy. serving the public. 'Academic wankery', provide such penetrating analysis of recent This book by David Peetz, senior lecturer was the tone of their remarks. professional history. in Industrial Relations at Griffith University Schultz canvasses these ideas, and at its The contrast in style and vigour with in Brisbane, challenges the assumption. He best her book is an example of the ways in the earlier material is so great that it is easy points out that Australian unions have come which academy and industry can usefully to imagine this as a struggle between back from tough er setbacks before, intersect. academic and journalist. rebounding from disaster in the 1930s to tot One of her main arguments is that Reviving the Fourth Estate only partially up record membership post-war. journalists in Australia are, while seeing fulfils the promise of its title. A great deal He cites two rather more immediate themselves as servants of public interest, at of space is spent in reviewing the history of factors that could work in unions' favour. the same time remote from the concerns the notion of the m edia as a fourth estate­ The first is the way that the introduction of and opinions of the public. independent of and a watchdog on govern­ 'modern managem ent' tools such as just­ At the heart of her book are the results m ent and the powerful. Very little time is in-time programs or quality circles creates of the survey of 247 Australian journalists spent on suggesting ways in which the employer-employee friction, opening up done as part of the international Media and Democracy project in 1992. The results, When the aca demics who teach journalism don 't them selves have solid reproduced in full as an appendix, are not industry experience, they have a personal stake in teaching theory at the very surprising to anyone who knows journalists. They confirm, broadly speaking, expense of practice. And when journalists don't respect the academics, they that most journalists aspire to independence rob themselves of a potential source of constructive critique. and a watchdog role within the democracy, --A{argaretShnons while realising that these ideals are compromised by the requirem ents of jaded and imperfect Australian m edia might the possibility of unionising currently non­ comtnerce. move closer to the ideal. The only solid union workplaces. Such managem ent Most telling is the finding that journal­ suggestion is that journalists need to m ove techniques were the most significant factor ists want to serve the public, yet are limited closer to the public. There are very few in union recruitment, according to one and uncertain in their attempts to divine ideas about how this might be done in survey cited by Peetz. public opinion and interests. Asked how practice, and how to balance the risk of The second is that many m ore workers they determined what was newsworthy, m ost cosiness with the need to be responsive. want to be union members than actually nominated other m edia reports and the Schultz would have written a better and are, especially in smaller workplaces where judgment of their colleagues as the most more useful volume, I think, with a bit management hostility to unionism is more important sources of guidance. Schultz com­ more of the brevity and incisiveness. Lightly overt and deep-seated. Overall, what Peetz m ents: 'This finding demonstrates how the edited theses rarely make good reading for calls the 'unwillingly excluded' outnumber insularity of journalism is reinforced. This the general public. the 'unwilling conscripts' (those who are then adds to the perception that journalists N evertheless, there is m ore than enough forced to join because of closed sh op are m embers of an elite whose primary valuable content here to make me wish arrangem ents) by at least two to one. reference point is other journalists.' that journalists would read it. They won't, Yet the cold facts point to decline, not The book originated as a doctoral thesis, of course. -Margaret Simons growth. Why? Peetz rehearses some of the and I suspect has scarcely been edited since more commonly recognised reasons- the submission. Although there is excellent U ninns In A Contrary \\ orld: The future economy-wide shift from public sector to content, a great deal of time is spent in Of The Australian Trade Union private, from permanent employment to establishing the terms of debate and ~ Movement, David l'cct::: casual, and from traditionally well-organ­ demonstrating intellectual worthiness, and .1. HE VI CTORIAN town hall union delegate ised industries to sunrise service sectors. all this is done in a rather verbose and leant across the table and thanked manage­ None of this is new. What is, is Peetz's tedious fashion. ment. 'Every time you send out a memo on identification of an 'institutional break', a By the second half, though, Schultz hits the enterprise bargaining agreem ent I sign watershed in union affairs. This break is

V O LUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 43 the assault in the 1990s by conservative Nation is still trying to trade on that sense planning fai ls, particularly if developers do state governments and now th e federal of betrayal among som e blue-collar workers not co-opera te with local co uncils. government on those elem ents of the today. arbitration system w h ich bolstered The Accord may have stopped a GST If taken to heart, Bonyhady's words co uld compulsory unionism. under Labor, but it did not stop deregulation, serve to undermine all the good intent and Not that it can all be sheeted home to privatisation and the erosion of awards. serious thought of the rest of this volume. governments. Unions haemorrhaged mem­ Peetz says union membership did not But that would be to take the book on far bers from 1991 onwards in those areas where decline particularly sharply in the 1980s. too uperficial a level. Here there are various closed shop arrangem ents had gone hand in But he himself has provided the evidence approaches and poin ts of view by 14 hand with inactivity. It was not so much that the pent-up frustration with do-nothing contributors on topics, from the interac­ that most workers obj ected to compulsory unions cou ld not be rel eased until tion of governmen ts to the behaviour of unionism, rather that they saw no reason to conservatives tate governm ents gave a legal households, that together shed fresh light stay in a union that did nothing for them opening in the 1990s. on the problem s of cities, what solutions when the opportunity to leave arose. This disagreem ent aside, the book is a are possible, and what we should be trying The four surveys on which Peetz has valuable resource. It is a reminder that to achieve. built his book all show the same pattern­ unions are not buil t through fla shy special A m ajor theme is the potency of the workers want to sec their union officials, deals for m embers or amalgamations. different levels of government, and the they want to be con sulted, and they hold Workers join unions to protect their strengths and wea knesses of a system in the union in higher esteem if there is a immediate interests and their dignity in which local government makes the on-the­ delegate in their workplace. The key factor the workplace. They stay in unions if they ground decisions, but is increas ingly is not necessaril y gai ning wage rises: a union see them respond to those desires. rendered irrelevant by intervention at state that takes up any question of concern builds If unions pay heed, there is no reason government level. loyalty and commitment. why they cannot be a vital part of the One of the most penetrating essays, by As Peetz puts it: 'Indeed, an effective Australian social landscape well into the Mark Peel, canvasses the impact of that delega te presence and active union role were foreseeable future. loose but very binding group of ideas almost guarantees against deunionisa tion, - David Glanz generally described as economic rational­ and were important in reducing the ism on our urban lives. He agrees that likelihood of union collapse.' \1"tr,•li.1n < itil'' l~slll''• Str,lll'~ll'' .mll policies and ideas originated in the '60s and The insight is va luable (a nd union u, t·,., ''lor lJrh.m Au,tr.llia 111 thl l'J')Os '70s probably now need reshaping, but asks officials should take careful note) . But Peetz '[L I I' I - I [!l 11 I that we redefine notions of 'efficiency' in begins to lose his way when he tries to put delivery of government services to include the decline of the past decade into the E NTERTA INING ISN'T a word one reaches measures of what is delivered, as well as the context of the Accord between the union for when considering weighty books like cost of delivering it. movement and the former Labor govern­ this one, pitched more for students of urban Peel's essay is characteristic of the best ment. He is an unabashed supporter of the planning and for policy-makers than for the of this book, where the language of urban Accord. It prevented th e introduction of general public. But there is entertainment planning we have all come to understand at such nasties as a GST and staved off the here, chiefly in Tim Bonyhady's essay on a superfi cial level- the need for medium kind of cataclysmic attack on union rights the Battle for Balmain-an account of how density development, the need for better suffered in the early 1990s by workers in planning decisions were made and contested access to services, the probl ems of the motor N ew Zealand. over key sites in the inner Sydney suburb. ear-is re-examined and fresh categories He points to a general acceptance of the Those who enjoyed the documentary and ways of thinking suggested. idea of co-operation between unions and Rats in the Ranl

44 EU REKA STREET • OcTO BER 1998 appreciation of the' direction, complexity legislation in which policy agreement is following federation that a fundamental and dynamics of contemporary federalism. embodied is presented frequen tly as a fait reconceptualisation of parliamentary and Ian Marsh's book is m ore theoretical accompli to federal an d state parliaments governmental practice is now required. and prescriptive. It paints a broad canvas, alike. The Australian polity now is more plural reviewing the challenges to contemporary The new collaboration is founded upon and diverse than it once was, interest groups Australian government posed by the convergence at both levels of government playing a much larger part in policy diversification of political interest groups on an economically rationalist agenda. And development. The place of the two major and the pressures of economic competitive­ yet the agenda itself may prove anti-federal parties has becom e much less certain as the ness. In response to this survey, Marsh as the States are faced with the prospect electorate demonstrates greater volatility proposes a model for a more plural that their traditional function- that is the and new parties take root. International Australian politics and a more strategic independent provision of public services­ competition requires both government and Australian economics. might be subjected increasingly to federally industry to alter their strategy, structure Th e argume nt in Collaborative agreed, market-related purchase and service­ and role. Federalism is that the traditionally delivery arrangements. In response to these challenges, Marsh adversarial nature of Commonwealth-State Collaborative Federalism, then , proposes new plans and new institutions. relations is changing. While on the surface provides a valuable antidote to the gloom Economic planning, he argues, must become it may appear that Prime Minister and which normally accompanies discussion of m ore vi si onary a nd s trategic. H ere, Premiers are locked in conflict, in particular Australian federalism. in the con text of Australia has much to learn from the tigers about how to cut the federal-fiscal pi e, in vertical fiscal imbalance, financial bickering of Asia (the book was published before the subterranean, intergovernmental councils and seemingly endless political posturing. current crisis). Parliament and parties and committees a new spirit of co-operation has been em erging, with many constructive results. The Victorian town hall union delegate leant The catalyst for the change was Bob across the table and thanked management. Hawke's 'New Federalism'. Hawke bemoaned 'Every time you send out a memo on the the lack of co-ordination between federal enterprise bargaining agreement I sign up two and state governments in critical policy more m embers. Would you like to go on areas and complained about the consequent 'balkanisation' of the Australian economy. commission?' - David Glanz He proposed a new partnership with the Premiers to ensure the enhancem ent of In tracing the economic and social benefits should also be reformed to engender more Australia's international competitiveness that have fl owed from the creation of new plural and inclusive policy formulation. and the elimination of unproductive intergovernmental institutions, it also The models proposed, however, are of governmental regulation and duplication. makes an important contribution to our an ideal type. Often, real politics is assumed In pursuit of this new partnership, Special understanding of micro-economic reform. away in favour of a better, kinder future. Premiers' Conferences and the Council of My problem with the work, in so far as The close study of political actors and their Australian Governments were established. I have one, is that it leans too far to the fallible institutions so characteristic of These provided the insti tu tiona! foundation descriptive, leaving any consideration of Martin Painter's work is here replaced by a for the collaborative arrangem ents that the theory and reform of Australia's federal m odel built on books and reports. would follow. system to 'the pragmatic, evolutionary The work contains many u seful N ew Ministerial Councils and inter­ processes of adaptation that have shaped suggestions, including, for example, a governmental committees set to work under most of the other transformations in stronger, more independent parliamentary this umbrella. They pursued a micro­ Australia's federal history'. Following such committee system . The values that under­ economic reform agenda in fi elds as diverse an exemplary study, I am sure that both lie it-for example a commitment to as road and rail transport, company and politicians and policy makers alike would political learning-are also attractive. In credit law, vocation al education and have benefited greatly from constructive the end, however, the model-building is so disability services, and national competition suggestions for change, and their absence is extensive and the assumptions so cumula­ policy. Through a detailed examination of a loss. tive, that one fears the entire edifice will these initiatives, Painter argues, collabora­ The difficulty with Beyond the Two topple in the first gust of any Machiavellian tion has achi eved very positive outcomes. Party System is of the opposite kind. In or market-driven wind. At the same time, however, he remains developing an abstracted model for a new -Spencer Zifcak alert to novel problems such arrangements Australian politics, Ian Marsh moves so far may generate. from political practice that his prescriptions, Contributors: Frank Brennan SJ is Director In so far as the present co-operation while interesting, lack force. of Uniya, the Jesuit Social Justice Centre. represents th e States' accession to the In this very ambitious book Marsh His latest books are Legislating Liberty Commonwealth's economic agenda, for surveys Australia's political and economic (UQP, 1998) and The Wik Debate (UNSW example, the very diversity for which development since the turn of the century. Press, 1998 ); Margaret Simons is a fr eelance federalism stands may progressively be He argu es that the ground of Australian journalist; David Glanz is a freelance undermined. The prolifera tion of m iniste­ politics and economics has shifted so journalist; Spencer Zifcak is Associate rial councils also poses substantial problems substantially from that which spawned our Professor of Law and Legal Studies at La for governmen tal accountability since the two-party system i n t he two decades Trobe University.

V o LUME 8 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 45 THEATRE

P ETER CRAVEN

S OMWN' SHOuco di5'busc Bmic The opening scene is Meyerholdian, remains an open one. Indeed she sings Kosky of the notion that he has anything with John Bell in Khan-like 'oriental' jus t about everything-snat ches of of value t o communica t e about the crown and Father Christmassy robes, red Carmen, the ' Ode to Joy'. Bu t this t ext-based classics of the theatre . with white fur. The daughters sit at the rollicking and irrelevant grotesquerie is However rem arkable h e may be as a fr ont of the stage, fa cing the audience, at least preferable to the horrific little­ director of opera, his production of King with their backs to the king. They are girl echt deutsch voice she otherwise uses. Lear for the Bell Shakespeare Company dressed more or less in the manner of The Sh e is the first Fool I have ever positively is a monument to the director's self­ Mikado's Three Lit tle M aids from longed to see fade away halfway through indulgence and incomprehension in the School. When Lear speaks a line or two, the play-som ething which she, alone of face of a play which communicates with indeed when anyon e does, there is an all her tribe, does not do. It's possible to the brutal clarity of a fact of nature. alienating bang on the drum. When Melita muster arguments about Lear's sexual This m ay sound like a harsh verdict Jurisic as Goneril begins to speak and to disgust but this interpretation seems to on a production by a director who, at the give her voice a stylised lilt, she sounds have m ore to do with the director's. It is s tar t of h is 30s, is one of the m os t as though she is on drugs-lots of them . callow, camp misogyny. dynamic talents on the thea tre scene. The T h e rest of the cast either speak in One of the other peculiar things about only way of convincing anyone without accented English or in varieties of Strine this production- which really could be actually forcing them to go to the that admit of no subtlety of phrasing. retitled King Lear: Th e Mu sical- is that thea tre-a m ore than Artaudian act of It ge ts worse. Louise Fox as the Fool the text is cut, not inefficiently, to what cruelty in this case-is to describe this is got up as a kind of blowzy cow-like might have been a 90 or 100-m inute production, knowing full well that one version of Shirley Temple. She sings 'My playing time had n ot the rest of th e can only give an im age nothing like the H eart Belongs to Daddy' with elan while time-a fair immensity of it- been fi lled horror of it. the play's question about filial devoti on with Kosky's interpolations. The effect,

46 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1998 more often than not, is sillier than belief accompaniment of squeals of terror and making such a bunny of himself. King would credit. Gloucester and Edgar pain. Goneril then stabs herself. Lear is, after all, one of the more adult trudge round a waiting room of purple The figure who has knelt, bound, at plays ever written . It is also a profoundly chairs while an actress faces the audience the front of the stage, dressed like an old heterosexual play; it presents the darkest yabbering from under the rictus of a grin peasant woman with her h ead in a bag of all matters between m en and women. while music plays. The effect is like a bad turns out to be Lear. H e does not carry in Without any hint of m olestation , it imitation of Pina Bausch. Lear's knights the body of Cordelia which instead lies presents the commonplace of a father are cavorting young men in tracksuit dead before him. N or does h e say (o r with an excessive and blind love for his pants outside of which huge Alsatian­ repeat) the word 'Howl' that traditionally daughter. It should be a source of gay style penises hang and are subsequently introduces the most extraordinary scene shame-it is certainly a reason to jerked with abandon. The business has in our drama. H e sobs a bit and then wonder-that a director of Kosky's nothing to do with the play and serves delivers the words while stroking talents should have no imaginative simply as an emblem of the compulsively the protuberant belly of his understanding of this and that he should director's conception. daughter. Curtain. take a play as savage as Lear, as full of This is all p erverse (some of it tears and rage and sex and cruelty, and D URING THE FIRST H ALF it seem ed to defensible, som e of it not), though it has reduce it to such camp fluff and folderol. me possible that Kosky wanted to present to be admitted that it is a coup de theatre His last scene is the exception that the action as if from inside Lear's head, and technically as good as anything in proves the rule. Here, with an edge of though the execution still remain ed this risible and awful production of King electricity, with a painterly grandeur and unpersuasive. After the interval, Lear gets. The Kosky who effects it is at som ething like real shock and gravity, is however, the artificiality overtook the least an imaginative sensationalist even the director of The Flying Dutchman or stage whether Lear was on it or not, so if it is a wonder that h e fails to cotton on Nabucco (not the trifler of Tartuffe and this way of looking at the action to Shakespeare's superior stagecraft. The Operated JewL but his energy is collapsed anyway. None of which is to The pity of all this is that John Bell working in order to outshine the starkest deny that the level of directorial energy shows signs that he might have been a and the m ost difficult scene in Western is more 'exciting' at a minimum level good Lear had he got any h elp from his drama. Lear without the Howl, with only than in most stage productions, though director. H e comes across as the only its mutation and muting, is Lear in this production it works at such a level human being on stage, as well as the only without balls or soul or heart. of coarseness and with such concomitant person who can act. Bell alone has the verbal and dramatic ineptitude that it technique which allows him to circum­ I T IS ENOUGH TO MAKE you think that the insults the intelligence. vent the body mike. H e plays down with great opera director is just a Muppet man Peter Corrigan's sets and costumes his voice, which allows some access of in the end, a puppet-master who has had h ave a gleaming elasticity. The silly intimacy, whereas the rest of the cast, the good fortune to h ave professional h eads in the Hovel scene have a Disn ey­ with their wondering terminal climaxes opera singers of the stature of Jonathan like charm which could have been turned and gen eral inability to h ear even the Summers and Elizabeth Connell who sombre: the stocks in which Lear and Co. ghost of an iambic pentameter, milk the were puppets who knew m ore about sit while they enact the fantasy of language without naturalising it, which human animation than he did. arraigning Goneril are a splendid idea as gives an effect of bush bombast but not Whatever high place we give to far as they go but it's hard to be fair to poetry, still less drama. Shakespeare, however much we acknowl­ the residual vividness of this little cartoon No-one should be in any doubt about edge Lear as a mountain, it's worth opera amid all the mincing and prancing. the reason for objecting to this produc­ realising the parallels between Shake­ The last sequence of Kosky's King tion. It is not any putative iconoclasm speare and opera. Both depend-the one Lear represents the high watermark of his exhibited. It does not matter that John literally, the other with the most attempt to piss it all against the wall. The Bell runs about in a dress; nor are dildoes powerful weight of metaphor-on having scene is like a quotation from the or blood of great importance. This is not, to get the 'mu sic' right if you 're going to more turbulent and darkly implicated by and large, a '90s version analogous to get the drama. Caravaggio paintings-the on es where Peter Brooks' '60s production with its Kosky needs actors with the experi­ torture and sex come together. Edmund loutish knights and Beckettian intentions. ence and vocal skills, the professionalism sits on the throne naked except for a pair No, this is King Lear in underwear by an and the power of human impersonation of white underpants which are soaked at emperor without clothes. This is an act that the Opera Australia insists he gets the crotch with blood. Blood drips from of dereliction by an undereducated from his singers. Insists, that is, by his lips too and from the m ouths of director of great talent. On the evidence casting for him. Goneril and Regan who attend, of this production, Kosky does not know It's the opposite of a pleasure t o competitively, upon him. Cordelia­ h ow to 'do' Shakespeare, he does not say so, but Kosky's blood-and-nappies pregnant in this production-is brought know to 'do' verse drama, he does not musical Lear is like a piano sonata played onto the stage and strangled excruciat­ know how to 'do' m en and women in a with on e hand on a hanky tonk. • ingly, with full sound effect from the state of heighten ed conflict. individual body mikes, by Goneril. Then Of course there are excitements, but Peter Craven is currently editing Best Regan too is dispatched to the sam e the real rabbit out of the box is Kosky Australian Essay , 1998.

VOLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 47 The mismatched ends symm etrically there in 1997-chaotic, foursome experience garish and full of life. In the early scenes som ething close to a Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal), the young therapy session as they protagonist, is born on a bus to a prostitute. travel the highways Twenty years later he falls for Elena, stretching between (Francesca Neri) a diplomat's daughter and Mexico and La s Vegas. drug addict. She has absent-mindedly This is not the sort of bonked him in a dance-club lavatory some therapy a Woody Allen days previously, and when he tries to follow character might have: up on it, fate's trap snaps. it's more the kind you Performances are excellent: Javier might have with Bardem as David, perhaps the ultimate Ripley's alien. victim of the concatenated events, is Perdita Durango is impressive. A plainclothes policeman, he based on a novel by is paralysed by a shot fired at Elena's Barr y G ifford- the apartment as he and his partner Sancho screenwriter of David answer a call for help. Pepe Sancho, as Lynch's Lost Highway, Sancho, is brilliantly understated as a and author of the book dangerous, very believable drunkard, whose upon which Lynch based stubbornness equals Victor's, and whose Wild at Heart. intense self-centredness you come to see as While Perdita Dur­ quite evil. All Almodovar's characters are ango is more violent driven in some way; in Victor's case literally thanits Lynchianequiv­ as well, and it takes brilliant directing to alents, it lacks Highway hold all these different reins while allowing and Heart's m enacing the wildness to exist. strangeness and deeply And all through the darkness and the weird nasties. Durango fatal ness runs Almodovar's trademark: that tends to err on the side gleaming vein of fierce gaiety. of the known, looking -Juliette Hughes at bizarre details in mundane ways, render­ ing them, at times, cute rather than satirical. Four's company De la Iglesia comes close to the creative Four's a crowd pungency h e needs to pull Durango into In the Winter Dark, dir. James Bogle. Every­ the category of 'wittingly' vile rather than one talks about actors being over-exposed. Perdita Durango, dir. Alex de la Iglesia. just 'plain' vile. But as yet he doesn't have But I saw Miranda Otto in this film soon Between foetuses smuggled for cosmetic quite the creative energy or expertise to after seeing her in John Ruane's Dead Letter testing, Mexican voodoo sacrifices, naked make a masterpiece of morally smelly Office and it is scarcely possible to believe Californian prom queens daubed in white cinema. it's the same actor: the airiness of one paint and feathers, and ultra-violent human -Siobhan Ja ckson performance has been exchanged for the slaughtering, it is difficult to choose what dark intensity of her character in In the is most offensive about this film. Option Winter Dark. paralysis has driven me to think that the Five's a party The film is based on a short novel by dangerous level of Coca-Cola consumption Tim Winton, published in 1988. It concerns may in fact take the prize. But happily, no Live Flesh (Came Tremula), dir. Pedro four individuals who live in a remote valley prize need be given-just an R rating. Perdita Almodovar. This is, unusually enough for known as The Sink. The location scouts did Durango is by no means flawless, but it is Almodovar, based on a story written by a great job for this fi lm: Winton's novel is cleverly imagined and at times starkly someone else, and that someone's being set in the jarrah country of WA, but the humorous. Ruth Rendell only adds to the unusualness choice of som ewhere in the Blue Mountains The film follows the exploits of Perdita of the combination. You imagine the novel creates the right sense of cold, damp and (Rosie Perez, above) and Romeo (Javier sitting uncomfortably in the fl amboyant claustrophobia for what is a brooding, Bardem), a couple drifting between grace scenery of his mind, like a sun-reddened disconcerting story. and violence-in Aztec rituals, love-mak­ British tourist demanding egg and chips in Landowners Maurice Stubbs (Ray ing, killing, and snakeskin footwear. Kid­ Marbella . But the plot has gone through the Barrett) and his wife Ida (Brenda Blethyn) napped into the heart of this dark mixture filter of Almodovar's erotically fatalistic, are troubled by a sudden spate of mysterious are two California innocents. Blonde and blackly comic Spanishness: Rendell is eating and violent attacks on their livestock. These virginal, the innocents' closest encounter paella with all the garlic and wobbly bits attacks, as well as Maurice's pathological with anything dark and Mexican-outside and dancing a flamen co. suspicion of external authorities, force them of a taco-is Herb Alpert and the Tijuana The film open s in Fran co's dark, closer to two neighbours, both of whom Brass. Naturally they drink Diet Coke. frightened, deserted Madrid of 1970 and live alone: Ja cobs (Richard Roxburgh) and

48 EUREKA STREET • OcTOBER 1998 Ronnie (Otto). Whatever is killing the opposing fo rces of good and evil to a animals is never identified. But it does contemporary audi ence without even the become clear that this external threat brings Binary opposites most gentle tilt at refl exivity is a touch to light all sorts of traumas which weigh hard to take. Les Miserables needed to be down each chara cter, oft en for years. Both Les Misewbles, dir. Bille August. Here is a either m ore sophistica ted or to indicate the novel and the film are interested in the fi lm that looks beautiful, boasts wonderful some elf-awareness. psychological implications of living under actors, and has love, action and war. LiaJn -Annelise Balsamo threat. They invest t h eir en ergies in N eeson ha the lead role ofT ean Val jea n, the exploring fear and communication m ore erstwhile criminal who learns the value of than in sorting out loose ends in the manner human kindness and goes on to becom e a The power of one of a conventional thriller. man, great and good. Geoffrey Rush plays Jam es Bogle has created a fine ensemble his nemesis, the rigid and em otionless The Truman Show, dir. Peter Weir. This is from four quite distinct actors. The film Javert, who pursues Valjean. Both actors do the perfect paranoid's m ovie: everyone is does change the ending of the novel quite the job. Then there are the sub-plots of plotting against Truman. His intimations dra matically. It is more hopeful. But still Fan tine (Uma Thurman ), the beautiful and of reality com e as the shaking of a universe, not ea y. destitute sole parent and Cosette (Claire like a true nervous brea kdown. -Michael McGirr SJ Danes), her illegitimate daughter. And, of The name is a fairly obvious irony in the course, something of a small social upheaval world of deliberate lies he inhabits, in a on the streets of Paris. society as enclosed as Kim Il Sung's. Every­ Three sisters I stand by my first line: this is a beauti­ thing in the small town of Seahaven is a lie. ful and well-acted film. But the concerns of Even the sky is fa ke. The sea is fa ke, the Radiance, dir. Rachel Perkins. Radiance Vic tor Hugo's book-kindness versus weather is fa ke and so are the people. The was the popular favourite at the Melbourne corruption, humanity versus the law, whole place is a Hollywood studio dome, so Film Festival. It's not hard to see why. It has experience against ignoran ce-are presented big that it can be seen, as can the Great Wall patches of startlingly good performance plus with such wide-eyed simplicity as to lose of China, from space. And Truman Burbank a beguiling far north Queensland location any possible impact. Valj ean, made evil by is the oblivious star of a 30-year long, and a can 't-lose plot (screenplay by Louis a corrupt system , is redeemed by a rogue 24-h our-a- day television show that has Nowra, adapted from his stage play). bishop and becom es goodness, kindness, fo ll owed his every movement from his birth, Three grown sisters, Cressy, Mae and conscience personified. Javert, m ade evil with 5000 hidden cameras in a purpose­ Nona, are thrown together for the funeral of by the same system, becomes increasingly built town where everyone el e is an actor. their m other. Back hom e on the verandah evil, e m otionless a nd rigid until, in Jim Caney is an interesting choice fo r of the ram shackle coastal weatherboard­ som ething of a parody, he becom es the this film, because brilliant as he is, somehow on-stilts where their mother died, they are character who appears and disappea rs in his style of acting distances one fro m his alternately loving and vile to one another. dark doorways, his great hooked nose thrust character. The obvious comparison would The cinematography, playing with the forward, sm elling out those he seeks. be Edward Scissorhands: the innocent slatted light of north Queensland dom estic Les Miserables has much in common protagonist for whom everyone has an architecture, parallels their shifts in mood: with Hollywood blockbuster action flicks: agenda. Johnny Depp, as Edward, had a dark, light, bright, occluded. the fl awed, but very good, outwitting the teenage idol appeal for which Can ey's The three women have different fathers, clever, but very evil. Of course, Les features are too blunt, too mobile. Yet and divergent m em ories of their venture­ Miser a bles is in period dress and the action Can ey, as he did in the severely underrated some mother. Only slowly do the sister is not quite so spectacular. But I think the Cable Guy, takes us deeper and into m ore reveal what they remember, treasure or other m ajor difference between Hollywood troublesom e places in the zeitgeist than resent. And under the house, in the discarded blockbusters and Les Miserables is that the any other film actor at the moment. Every tangle of their once-shared lives, are cowboy latter takes itself very, very seriously. This gesture of his is prism atic with reference­ hat and creatures and the secrets that haunt is a Universal Tale. But presenting the the sen se of distance becom es a vivid all of them . exploration. When Carrey is not on the Perkins elicits fine performances from screen the suspension of belief wavers, for her three actors, (Rachael Maza, Deborah SOCRATIC the plo t 's prob ability is som e times Mailman and Trisha Morton-Thomas). DIALOGUE precarious. Morton-Thomas, particularly convincing Weir's film is a straight-o ut fa ble, set as the lacerating, put-upon and damaged Make philosophy relevant to som etime in a future America wh ere middle sister, Mae, has one sequence that everyday life , without dogma o r presumably the law against depriving some­ will lift your scalp. academic pressures, in a day-long, one of his civil rights has been either ignored It's a sombre and funny film : Euripides structured, group conversation or fl outed. The deep personal betrayal by all m eets Thelma and Louise. Sometimes the his (fake) family and fr iends is the m ain facilitated by a philosopher with mix works and you get a glimpse of complex foc us: the fi lm, although sh owing his humanity; other times you feel only the 25 years of teaching experience. struggl e t o esca pe from h is virtual stra in of incompatibility in a film trying to For details, ring Stan van Hooft imprisonment and slavery, treads lightly do too much . But better ambition than (bh) 03 9244 3973, or over the social an I political implications. calculated cine- cynicism . (ah) 03 9889 23 99 But it's worth a loo k. -Morag Fraser - Juliette Hughes

V OLUME 8 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 49 Ally's a wally

first half of the appalling Moby Dick mini-series, all Monty I'I NCVOR m anothcr episode of Ally McBeal I won't be shedding tears. And Python and aar matey. I'd be damn scared if I were a client of On the credit side, the ABC screened In the Red during hers. I prefer my lawyers tough and September, and what a joy it was. Its dissection of the workings focused, not so goldurn cute and of the British establishment, the class system and political spin­ flappy. She won't win too many cases doctoring was melded with a really quite good whodunnit, along by making sweet big-eyed collagen with appeals to our well-founded prejudice against economists pouts at the judge. I must admit that and bank managers. Warren Clarke was totally satisfying as I've watched only one program. Some reviewers have watched George Cragge, a drunken BBC radio reporter who stumbles on five and they should get a medal or at least a dose of insulin. the solution to the serial murders. And for real belly laughs, try The program in question concerned the funeral of an old the bureaucratic eccentric, Hercules Fortescue (John Sessions) flame of McBeal's. What we got was the usual American leaden and the part he plays in the fall and rise of Cragge. Machiavellian effort at whimsy: McBeal is afraid of death, and of having the manoeuvrings by Stephen Fry as a conspiratorial Radio affair found out by the grieving widow of the said old flame, mandarin with eyes on the top position add to the fun. And who was also her professor at law school. If this plot outline there's a benign and deeply comic look at the work of a serene, had then been taken over by, for instance, the team that business-like Scottish dominatrix who deals in the produced In The Red (about which more later), then the pathetic predilections of powerful men. description 'comedy-drama' given the series in the TV guide might have been earned. R IK MAYALL AS DE'ATH the economist was utterly hateable­ As it is, the gorge rose at the sweet little deception played recalling his role as B'stard, the egregious Tory member. Alun on the widow. You see, she suspected her husband had had an Armstrong, as Chief Inspector Frank Jefferson, was perfect: affair, but it didn't matter As Long As He Loved Her More Than respectable working class, dealing with De' Ath the venomous The Mistress. But we, and Ally, and all her workmates (because snob, each encounter m emorable, especially the last one, where those collagen lips mean a big mouth in more ways than one) you know De'Ath's arrogant assumption (that he'll get out of know that the wife, being a plain, middle-aged old thing with­ jail pretty soon because of his impeccable connections) to be out a narcissistic bone in her body, wasn't entitled to that. Only all too wearily true. goldurn cute big-eyed pouters deserve lerve. As if that weren't Nothing is going to shift the balance of power in this New enough, there had to be an Awfully Embarrassing funeral speech Labour Cool Britannia. The message from power is always the as Ally cutely stumbles and fumbles through a self-centred pre­ same, just as the odd-shoed suspect lool

50 EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1998 Euu·k.a Street Cryptic Crossword no. 67, October 1998

Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS 1. Smells a rat 1 By arrangem ent, sets cups of poison ou t. (8) 5. T ravel abroad to gain honours at Cambridge. (6) 10. Ant included in system m etam orphosis. (5) 11. English en voy dressed in red was m oved to inferior position. (9) 12. Renting again is som ehow liberating. (9) 13. Th e advan ce guard will m ake a reconnaissan ce. (5) 14. A form er theatrical director, he u sed to hire tug components for stage props. (7) 16. T otally disconcerted at losing the throne, it seem s. (6) 19. D escriptive of som eone who can 't settle. (2,4) 21. Counterfeit about four. Pardon ? (7) 23 . Overturn down-start. What a turnover! (5) 25 . Discovered w eird tune h eard by ch ance. (9) 27. I am without fa ults, but can be tense. (9) 28. Brian is a young Scot . (5) 29. What's in a nam e? Fusty lederhosen were so called with reason. (6) 30. Br Lexis and I took some books from the collection of yours truly (2,6) DOWN 1. Guide to seniority for hard-up sailors? (8) 2. An ignoramus it's easy to nam e. (9) Solution to Crossword no. 66, September 1998 3 . Spare actor looking for a run. (5) 4. Social worker m aking a pile? T ertiary Entrance Ranking might help the listen er. (7) 6. On receiving the Order of the Garter, Sir Mishmash directed that records be kept by th e official responsible. (9) 7. Stroke I love to practise in the courtyard. (5) 8. Calm down, sober. (6 ) 9. Strong luminosity on the stairs. (6) 15. In the fl ow er show th e judges again give the stamp of approval to the Eden rose with the red tip. (9) 17. Examine rank to deliver a judgm ent that is more considered, with Regie involved. (9) 18. Peruse signs variously for different interpretations. (8) 20. Freshly attune your body to becom e trim and terrific! (6) 2 1. A burden upon the spirit. (4,3) 22. M easures a broken biscuit I left. (6) 24. N ot having any occupation? (5) 26. Priest lost time with pet, possibly. (5)

------~ ------s r • D one year (10 issues for $54 or D two years (20 issues for D New subscription $49 concession for pensioners, $99, or $89 concession) oR custom.er code if students and unemployed) Overseas rates on application. D Renewal nvnilab(e Name ...... Address ...... To subscribe, please return this form to: State ...... Postcode ...... Tel ...... Date ...... 'Eureka Street ' D Cheque/ money order payable to Jesuit Publications Reply Paid 553 PO Box 553 D Visa D Bankcard D Mastercard Expiry date ...... RICHMOND VIC 3 121 AUSTRALIA (no posta¥e stam p Card No: I I I I II I I I II I I I II I I I I required if posted in Australia) Name on credit card ...... Signature ...... OXFORD EUREKA SJAEEr UNIVERSITY Special Book Offer PRESS AUSTRALIAN LIVES An Oxford Anthology Edited by Joy Hooton This absorbing anthology illustrates the strength of autobiographical writing in Australia, from European settlement to today. Australian Lives features contributions from nearly 70 Australians, including Donald Horne, Hal Porter, A.B. Facey, Ruth Park, Jill Ker Conway, Robert Dessaix, John Foster, Bernard Smith, Gillian Bouras and Christos Tsiolkas. It is a rich, eclectic and highly readable body of writing, con1piled by Joy Hooton, an authority on Australian autobiography, and containing detailed biographical and historical introductions for each extract.

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