l!fl.U WITH (100 EUREKA STREET &UNIYA ~inister to Yourself present !VIid-life Sabbatical in the Th e jesu it Lenten Seminars 2002 San francisco Bay Area AUSTRALIA'S REFUGEE POLICY -FACTS, NEEDS AND LIMITS Integrate theology, spirituality, ministry speakers Deepen your journey with God Frank Brennan SJ and Mark Raper SJ With responses from an ex pert panel in Nurture personal development each state. loca tions Melbourne: W ednesday 13 March SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY c;:)!~ APPLI~D Xav ier Co llege, Kew, 7.30pm ..,t2;;;;;;;;;;;;;~- U~:;..- Graduate Theological Union Sydney: Thursday 14 M arch 2400 Ridge Road St Aloysius, M il so ns Point, 6.30pm Berkeley, CA 94 709 Perth: Monday 1 8 March (athol ic Education Centre, Four Month s, Fa ll/S pring or Nine Month s Leedervi ll e, 7.3 0pm Audit, Credit or M.A. Adelaide: W ednesday 20 March Room/Boa rd ava ilable on site • Partial Scho larships St Ignatius, Norwood, 7.30pm 510-652-1651 • 800-831-0555 Brisbane: Friday 22 M arch Holy Spirit Church, Auchenflower, 7 .30pm [email protected] • www.satgtu.org Serving lait y, clergy and religious since 7960 All welcome. Enquiries Kirsty Grant (03) 9427 73 11
booU.I offer I Ageing Well Ageing Surprising guideposts to a happier life from the landmark Harvard study of adult development Well By George Va illant 'To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the m ost difficult urpn s in~ g uid epost~ to .1 happier life chapters in the great art of living', wrote Henri Amiel in 1874. from the landma rk H arv.Jrd stud y This historic publishing event is the first book ever to evaluate ageing scientifically. of ad ult developmen t In an unprecedented series of studies, Harvard Medical School has fo llowed 824 subj ects-men and women, some rich, some poor- from their teens to old age. Harvard's George Vaillant now uses these studies-the most complete ever done anywhere in the world-and the subjects' individual histories to illustrate what is involved in reaching a happy, healthy old age. Ageing Well is a classic account of how we live, bu t also of how we can live better. Thanks to Scribe Publications, Emel O:s;: co' > ElJREKA STREE I3::)> :~ "-'Zzm cO 3::"' c:J"' mC ;<:lc:J "' c:: :s;:n )>> 2~"'"' "'"'a_,aY' "' I m )>_, V>"' )> z 0 CO M MENT _, I m 4 Amin Saikal Risky signals 0 5 Andrew Hamilton Wrong policy 0 [) 6 Francis Sullivan Debating the rebate -<
LETTERS COVER STORY 8 Gavan Breen, Keith Carlon, 22 Religion, September 11 and the war Ren ata Zecchin aga inst terrori sm Rowan Ireland ties them all together.
THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC 10 Juliette Hughes Only insure BOO KS 11 Michael Hogan In a word 34 The short I ist 13 Anthony Ham Street life Publisher Andrew Ham ilton 51 Reviews of Dominican Spirituality, Editor Morag Fraser 14 Juliette Hughes Margaret Rose Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Lord of the Ass istant editor Kate Manton 14 Kym Holthouse Seeing white Graphic des igner Siobhan Jackson Rings (CD ), The Picador Book of General manager M ark Dowell African Stories and An Intelligent Marketing Kirsty Grant Person's Guide to Catholicism. Advertising representative Ken Head COLUMNS Subscription manager Wendy Marlowe 35 The o ne that got away w ith it Editorial, producti on and admin istrati on 7 Capital Letter Peter Mares reviews Suharto: ass istants Juli ette Hughes, Paul Fyfe 51, Jack Waterford Boats, leaks, loyalties, A Political Biography by R.E. Elson. Geraldine Battersby, Ben Hider, Susa nnah lies Buckley, Kate Hird, Mrs Irene Hunter 37 The ca ndid pen Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg 12 Archi medes O' Kelly 51, Perth: Dean Moore, Sydney: Philip Harvey reads Gwen Harwood's Edmund Campion & Gerard Windsor, Tim Thwaites Mobile groans Selected Letters. Queensland: Peter Pi erce 15 Summa Theologiae United Kingdom Denis Minns OP 38 Talk about us j esuit Editorial Board Peter L' Estrange 51, Andrew Hamilton About m arriage Andrew Hamilton's take on the Andrew Bullen 5), Andrew Ham ilton 51 21 By the W ay Deakin, Barton and Boyer lectures. Peter Steele 5), Bi ll Uren 51 Patrons Eureka Street gra tefu lly Brian Matthews Suddenly last summer 40 Lyri c rea list acknowledges th e support of 46 W atching Brief Peter Craven reviews Bernhard C. and A. Ca rter; th e tru stees of th e es ta te of Miss M. Condon; W.l'. & M .W. Gurry Juliette Hughes Philosophical drift Schlink's Fligh ts of Love. Eureka Street magazine, 155N 1036-1758, 41 A ll in order Australia Po t Print Pos t approved Paul Tankard analyses Louis N owra's pp349181 /003 14, is published ten times a year by Eureka St reet Magazine Pty Ltd, FEATURES Abaza: A Modern Encyclopedia. 300 Victoria Street Ri chm ond VIC 3121 16 Po licy at the end of the line PO Box 553, Ri chmond VIC 3 121 Tel: 03 9427 73 '11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 Moira Rayner on the chroming email: eureka®jespul).jesui t. org.au controversy. THEATRE http:// www .eurekastree t. com. au/ Res ponsibility for ed itori al content is 18 Recovery 42 Fine w ea riness of the fl es h accepted by Andrew Hamilton 5), Meg Gurry tracks the fraught Peter Craven reviews Sweet Bird 300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond transition from serious illness of Youth. Printed by Doran Printing 46 Industrial Drive, Braeside VIC 3 195. to well-being. © j es uit Publica tions 2002 29 Blood matters Unsolicit.ed manuscripts w ill be returned FLASH IN THE PAN only if accompani ed by a stamped, Matthew Klugman reports on the se lf-addressed envelope. Reques ts for history and the politics of donating 44 Reviews of the films Intimacy; permi ss ion to reprint material from th e blood. The Shipping News; Iris; Mulholland magazine should be addressed in writing to the editor. Drive; Hearts in Atlantis and Lumumba. This month: Cover des ign by Siobhan Jackson. PO ETRY Graphics pp10, 16-17, 18- 20,22-23,25, 28 Chris Wallace-Crabbe Old Friend, 29, 30, 39, 40 by Siobhan Ja ckson. SPEC IFIC LEV ITY Cartoon p11 by Dean Moore. At Sixes and Sevens, A Language Ph otograph p42 by Jeff Busby. of the Eye. 4 7 Joan Nowotny Cryptic crossword COMMENT: 1 AM I N SA I KAL Risky signals
E "mNT Geo,cc W. BusH's b"nding of!
4 EUREKA STREET • M ARC H 2002 Another is to send it into such desperation as to make not been able to get its weapons inspectors back into it engage in unwanted acts of aggression against South Iraq. Presently, there is also little support for the Korea or Japan. In either case, the US might find itself removal of the Iraqi regime in the region, given the in a more difficult position than it may have Arabs' anger over Washington's support of Israel's calculated. suppression of the Palestinians and Iran's apprehen With regard to Iraq, it would be in the long-term sion about US intentions. interest of the Iraqi people and the region if Saddam President Bush's State of the Union address may Hussein's regime were replaced with a democratic have been designed t o m aintain his dom estic one. But the problem is the lack of a viable alternative. popularity and to send a powerful signal to America's There is no credible opposition from either within foes abroad. But his targeting of Iraq, Iran and North Iraq or outside the country from the ranks of Iraqi Korea as t errorist enemies of the US will do little to exiles. The London-based opposition group rem ains generate a stable world order. • as divided as ever. Repeated American threats against the regime have so far only helped Saddam Hussein Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science and to strengthen his rule and rem ain defiant. One of the director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at casualties of this development is the UN, which has the Australian N ational University.
C OMMENT : 2 ANDREW H AM I LTON Wrong pol icy
L "'" 2002 h.s 'o fa> been the Yw of Child VOLUME 1 2 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 5 COMMENT:3 FRANCIS SULLIVAN Debating the rebate N osooNU< HAD Medib•nk Pdv•te cdkd fn<" the government anticipated from its $2 billion annual 13 per cent premium hike, than the prime minister rebate investmen t. Little wonder it has remained damned the claim as 'a bit rich'. silent over the proposed merger between AXA and The media and politicians flamed the outrage, but MBF. The merger is a rational and necessary response few industry observers were surprised. The govern to a competitive market. ment's 30 per cent insurance rebate is popular, but it It is also a course upon which hospitals them will need to be redirected if the expenditure is to be selves have already embarked. Private hospitals have justified in the future. either merged or formed into networks when Medibank's predicament is symptomatic of what confronted by reduced revenue and poor investment ails the health insurance industry generally. Even with returns. T hey have responded to loss of market share the government's 30 per cent subsidy, m ost funds with takeovers. As a consequence, share prices have struggle to manage the volume of members' claims. improved and bottom lines are healthier. This Members contributed an extra 30 per cent in revenue turnaround occurred without government subsidies; last year. But their claims rose by 24 per cent. T his the hospitals simply had to adjust. represents only a slight improvement on the situation Now is the time for the funds to follow suit and becom e efficien t. Th e essence of health care is service, not a commercial But the governm ent can't rely solely on market forces. The essence of health care is service, not a tra nsaction dri ven by return on in vestment. Markets can fail, comm ercial transaction driven by return on invest so governments must plan to ensure essential care is available. ment. Markets can fail, so governmen ts must plan to ensure essential care is available. Public subsidies prior to the introduction of the 30 per cent rebate. need to be directed at improving access to services, Before the rebate was introduced, som e funds were not become a m echanism to bolster investor returns. nearly insolvent-close to every dollar of contribution At the m om ent, investor-owned hospitals actively being returned to members in benefits. The prospect seek to capture the lucrative segment of the patien t for their fi nancial viability was bleak, with reserves market, which usually lies in surgical procedures. below statutory levels and younger, healthier people Here, return on investment is more predictable and not joining. Given the existence of free public hospital there is less com mercial risk associated with patien t access, the price of insurance and the plethora of extra care. However, the elderly and chronically ill often specialists' fees, private health care was poor value need private health care fo r extended m edical care. In for m oney. this area, patient care is m ore com plicated, less The rebate has not stopped an escalation in predictable and often too costly for the funds to health-care costs. Neither has it increased ftmd m ember reimburse fully. The risk is that some essential ship. In public or private hospitals costs are driven by m edical services, like oncology and psychiatry, will the volume of work, the age of patients and the becom e too expensive to rem ain in the private sector. sophistication of technology. In private health care, This would be counter-productive. The aim of costs are rising by at least five per cent a year. Financial the rebate was to shift people from public to private relief is needed to counter this inflation directly. hospitals, not vice versa. Unless the governmen t People are using private hospitals in greater redirects the rebate to be paid when people receive a volume. Last year an extra 600,000 treatments were service rather than when they buy insurance, these perfo rmed. This does not include the influx of new essential services will not remain in the private sector. fund m embers who are only now eligible to claim The insurance lobby m ay squeal, bu t the facts benefits. So the growth in hospital use will continue. are that to date the rebate has not delivered the desired The government chose to subsidise the insurance results. Moreover, if left untouched it will benefit the industry rather than allow it to rejuvenate through big- business health companies rather than place a consolidation. Timely m ergers and takeovers could safety net under those services that provide certainty have reduced administrative overheads, improved and security for the frail and sick. • managem ent efficiency and instilled a more acu te customer focus. N ow, the relatively marginal Francis Sullivan is chief executive officer of Catholic improvemen t in fund viability is hardly the return Health Australia. 6 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2 002 Boats, leaks, loyalties, I ies INFEe,UAev 1983, john How.,d, T'"""'" in the F"'" the ministers. Even John Howard, rather more relaxed about government, was given a document he did not want to see. John the essential professionalism and loyalty of public servants than Stone, Secretary of the Treasury, told him that the 1982 Budget som e of his colleagues, does not actually trust them very much. had completely blown out. The deficit at the end of June would This story did not leak, or at least not from Howard's war be about four times the forecast of six months before. The start-up office. N either out nor up. Nonetheless, the idea that a key deficit for the year ahead was approximately $10 billion-about piece of the governm ent's rhetoric was fo unded on a lie cam e the size of the 'black hole' John Howard was to pretend to dis out all right. The captain of the HMAS Adelaide chatted over a cover on his coming into the prime ministership 13 years later. radio telephone to a journalist. H e was reprimanded. Some It was a week before an election that Howard had privately sailors boasted about their exploits, then discovered these were given away. There was already speculation about a blow-out in being misrepresented back in Canberra and voiced concerns. the deficit. Howard and Fraser decided to sit on the document, Five different ways of telling the Minister for D efence that he which could only damage them. They agreed on a script for was, at the least, misinformed, were tried, but the obfuscation without actually telling a lie. Neither had any minister made it clear that he was not listening. confidence that John Stone would protect them if they lied. John Howard has had a lot of problem s with unpleasant A T A TIME WHEN HIS public servants were keeping mum about news since then. But he has learnt some techniques of not a blatant hijacking of the defence forces, it might seem especially exposing himself to the risks of 1983 . Micro-manage, by all curious that Howard and his ministers would be planning fresh m eans. Even be a control freak. But keep at least one step away laws to punish leaks-even ones having nothing to do with from the action, and train one's staff not to mention things it national security-and to punish journalists who publish them. would be better not to know. Ostensibly, it is a m ere tidy-up of old legislation, always on the The release of documents showing that politicians were books, with no fresh elements added. In fact, enactm ent of the lying about children being thrown overboard from the Tampa proposals will make the law much m ore draconian. is never going to prove that Howard knew the facts. He had set The existing law was passed 40 years ago, when almost himself up not to know. There was no accident, no failure of any conversation between a journalist and a public servant was the system , and no culpable negligence on the part of a public a prima facie breach of the Crimes Act. Since then, freedom of servant wittingly or unwittingly failing to pass m essages up information and other administrative reforms have given public the line. The system worked the way it was supposed to work. servants a positive duty to give out information, except in John H oward was running his war from within the certain specified cases. The High Court has made it clear that Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. His war office con information cannot be protected simply because disclosure tained, usually, only one defence officer and, usually, not even would promote public debate or embarrass government. a defence bureaucrat. More often than not, the defence represen But changes to the legislation, even under the guise of tidying tative was not even as well-informed as the PM&C officer who up, would now be read by the courts as involving a conscious was chairing the show. There was no doubt about the pecking decision to keep public interest defences out. And in the right order. The PM&C officer did not hesitate to ring line officers case-say a leak giving chapter and verse about the way politi to get information or give orders. She was not a politico, but cal, as opposed to policy, considerations are now consuming she was, like most (then) PM&C officers, intuitive about politics much decision-making-one could be sure that the government and able to give the elected government of the day what it would be at the courts to throw the book at the offender. wanted-with not too much in the way of written records, There's a problem with this, though . As ever, most of the briefing notes going to the prime minister or other potentially leaking is being done by ministers, particularly senior ministers, embarrassing materials either. Most of the reporting was oral or by their own personal staff-often as part of a strategy of and very little was directly to Howard. media managem ent. The issue, then, is not how or whether Howard 'stole' the Heaven help us if a leak inquiry actually identified a leaker election. It's more abou t a developing pattern of using the public and it proved not to be a disloyal public servant but a disloyal administration as a very personal toy, as though it were held minister. Still, one could be sure that John Howard's finger on freehold, rather than on leasehold. prints would not be on any documents. • To do that, of course, one has to trust the public servants who are in the loop, something that is hard for quite a few of Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times. V OLUME 12 N UMBER 2 • EU REKA STREET 7 LETTERS Eureka Strt•t>t welcoml'' stage of life, just as are 'embryo' and 'fo etus' Defining terms lctlcrs from our readers. and 'child' and so on. (The boundaries of Short letters arc more likl•ly some of these categories may not be to be published, and ,111 There are some words that seem to have letters may be edited. Letter; clear-cut, of course.) one meaning when used in connection with must be signed, Jnd should Professor Coady says that most contem abortion and another in all other contexts. include a contc1ct phone porary scientists in the relevant areas are One is 'viable'. Another is 'potential'. number and the writer's unimpressed with the placing of 'ensoul Tony Coady's review e say, 'Catholic name and address. Sl•nd to: ment' at the beginning of foetal life. Well, [email protected] ot Identity and the Abortion Debate' (Eureka PO Box 'i53, Richmond VIC 3121 maybe so, but they can't deny that a human Street, January-February 2002L illustrates being is there at the beginning of foetal life. the use of the latter. He refers to its use by The genetic and physical facts arc clear; the anti-abortionists, although I had always not say 'that boy (being the Prince of Wales) foetus is genetically different from and so thought of it as a tool of the pro-abortion is a potential king', because h e is a future not a part of the m other, it is obviously a ists, as he uses it. He acknowledges its king. It is a matter of destiny, not of being, and it couldn't be other than human. negativity-a potential person is not a potential, and can be prevented only by Maybe for a while there is doubt over person-but he does not say what this some sort of disaster. A boy is not a whether it is one being, or two or more, potential person is. To say that 'X is a potential man, he is a future man. A but it would be bizarre to suggest that potential A' does not just imply that 'X is (human ) foetus, if not already a person, is because it might be two people and not one not now an A' but also implies that 'X is a future person, not a potential person. it's OK to kill it. now a B', where B, being a something that 'Potential' is appropriate only when the I believe that an unborn human being could develop into an A, must be something possible future state referred to is just one is a member of the same species as I am, in the same semantic field. of many alternatives. and so entitled to be treated by me in the T hus, for example, if I say, 'that young As a Catholic, I suppose I acquired my sam e way as is any other member of my man is a potential prime minister', you attitude to abortion as part of m y learning species (i n sofar as this is practicable). could reasonably ask me, 'what is he now'' of the implications of the Ten Command I believe that m y obligations to other and expect an answer like 'he's a brilliant m ents. However, I try to justify m y view members of my species take precedence student' or 'he's a lawyer' or 'he's a union without using religion. I also avoid the use over my obliga tions to members of other organiser' or even 'he's the current Junior of the term 'person', except as a short way species, and, to borrow Professor Coady's Mayor of Birdsville'. It would not be appro of saying 'human being'. I believe that if words, 'if this is "speciesism", then so be priate (except perhaps in extraordinary the category 'person' does not apply to all it'. I deny the right of any other member or circumstances) to answer 'he's an Anglican' human beings then it is an arbitrary m embers of m y species to decide that some or ' he's a pole-vaulter' or even 'he's a category, indeterminate in practice, and so other member or m embers don't have the Liberal'. is trivial as far as the assignment of sam e rights. One aspect of the misuse of the word fundamental rights is concerned. It you euthan asc someone you are 'potential' is the fact that it is u sed when I will avoid the term 'baby' too; it is a depriving a person of probably well under 'future' is the appropriate term. You would term for human beings during a certain one per cent of his or her life (and that Men of hospitality Living and proclain1.ing God's hospitable love As lived o ut by StJo hn of advocacy and reconciliation Will you dare to accept God's Cod over five centuries ago, for those m:~rginalised by our invitation to a life dedicated our vocation is to give of society. to hospitality? ourselves completely and Our core of hospitality If so please comact: freely; to be a brotherly compels and urges us to Br. John Clegg O H. presence; a symbol of hope deepen o ur relationship with Vocations Director. PO Box BN I 055, for the world; proclaiming God, o urselves and those Burwood North NSW 213-+ Cod's h ospitable love to w ith whom we share our Australia. all. li ves, commun tty and Telephone (02) ')747 16')') We are call ed to a ministry. Facsimjle (02) 'J7H 3262 charism of h ospitality and W e are the: 'Brothers of Emai l [email protected] love that promotes heali ng, StJohn of God.' Website: www.stjohn.conuu 8 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 presumably unwanted). If you killed me you would be depriving me of, maybe, a quarter of my life. If you killed one of my Letter from Pakistan children you would be depriving him of well over half of his life. If you abort a foetus you deprive it of virtually 100 per cent of its life. And so I think of abortion as In February, Renata Zecchin, who has lived for years in Pakistan, travelled incomparably more evil than euthanasia through Afghanistan and Pakistan with colleagues, Peter Balleis and Andrea (voluntary or not) and, by this reasoning Lari, to investigate the best place to set up a branch of the Jesuit Refugee at least (disregarding extenuating or Service. This is part of Renata's email to friends in Australia. aggravating circumstances), the worst kind of murder-the kind that causes its On Sunday I returned from a tour of Kabul in Afghanistan and Quetta in the victim to lose more than any other kind. Baluchistan province of Pakistan. Peter and Andrea had come to do a (OK, I'm using the concept 'potential' here, humanitarian assessment of the needs of Afghan refugees. It's been a busy, but I'm not misusing it.) interesting two weeks-an opportunity to understand a little more about the Dr Elaine Thompson, speaking in one situation of the Afghan people. of the Barton Lectures in 2001, observed To get into Kabul we had to take a UN flight from Islamabad- less than an that at the time of federation and for a hour's travel. Kabul is surrounded by mountains and the weather there is cold, substantial part of the 20th century, those minus seven degrees at night. The city itself is a ramshackle place after many people who were the most democratic, years of war. We visited the part that was destroyed in the fighting between most radical, most progressive in other the different mujahedin groups in 1994. These days Kabul is occupied by North areas were also the most racist, the most ern Alliance and international forces. Andrea spoke with some Italian soldiers supportive of the White Australia policy. on the street. Perhaps in another century a speaker will Kabul is very poor but people are trying to get on with their lives in this look back to our days and observe that those uncertain and unstable time. There are many beggars in the streets. The security who are the most democratic, most radical, situation is reasonable but there is still lawlessness- thefts and murders. most progressive in other areas are the most Outside of Kabul it is still unsafe to travel, especially for foreigners. opposed to the rights of the unborn. We m et up with three Little Sisters of Jesus and celebrated Eucharist with Gavan Breen them. They have been in Kabul for the past 40 years. They told stories of Alice Springs, NT hardship in the city and the fear that is still prevalent. On top of the current situation the long drought has made life very difficult for the people who are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Seen and believed I visited one group of urban refugees who were being given relief aid blankets and eating utensils. Their life and that of the many in the camps Chris Geraghty's personal account of his along the Pakistani border is pretty tough and uncertain. Right now they do years in the seminary at Springwood was not want to go back into Afghanistan because of the insecurity and general described in Snapshot (Eureka Street, instability, and because of the drought. December 2001) as 'chill and arctic', par From here I have been following events with the detainees in Woomera. ticularly as contrasted with the sunnier Where is the politics of compassion? It is very clear to me from my knowledge memories of Gerard Windsor, Michael and experience of the situation here that life inside Afghanistan is far from McGirr and Peter Brock. Surprise was also stable and secure. The Australian government and the media are not present expressed at 'the rawness of the pain still ing the true picture in Afghanistan if they say that it is safe for people to carried by Judge Geraghty'. And forth return. coming memoirs of his time at Manly were Take care, also expected to be arctic. Rena to These are the reactions of someone who has apparently had a reasonably enlight ened formation, who has had no experience humankind could behave so abominably to revealing (some of) the harm done by some of the sort of life led by the (young) boys so many of its own people. of its psychopathic functionaries. And his and men who went through Springwood Regarding Springwood, the implication story is not ultimately negative. As one of under the regime of Monsignor Charles of the comment in Snapshot is that Chris the few humane characters in Geraghty's Dunne. They are like the reactions of Geraghty was either over-sensitive, or was Springwood much later unforgettably said, humane and intelligent but ultimately exaggerating. He was neither. The amazing in a homily on the post-resurrection appear uncomprehending observers of the Soviet thing is that he is so sane-with his Chris ance of Jesus to Thomas: 'Blessed are they system under Stalin, who could not imagine tian commitment intact. The same cannot who have seen ... and still believe.' that a system which proclaimed its be said of many of his contemporaries. Keith Carlon commitment to improving the lot of Chris has done the church a service by Belgium VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 9 THE TRAFFIC events and organisations that rely on Australia is now the world's second most Only insure volunteers face such massive increases in litigious country. This is repeated in the liability premiums that they may as well be November2001 online edition of Australa employing people for money. sian Special Events A ssociation N ews, A massive culture change is upon us, where Ken Killen, of AON Risk Manage Ah. love, let us be tru e seemingly precipitated by the extraordinary ment, is reported as saying: 'There has been To one another' for the world. which seem s events of 2001. But even the most cursory an escalation in litigation taking place in To lie before us like a land of dreams. analysis will show that the changes have Australia and particularly in NSW. NSW So various. so beautiful. so new. been gathering momentum for a very long now ranks second behind California as the Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. time. As Enron goes into meltdown, Wall most litigious state in the world. Israel is Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help fm pain; Street is preparing for long downturns as the third most litigious state.' And we are here as on a darl 10 EUREKA STREET M ARC H 2002 the litigious culture that has taken over in new coat of paint FAI was then acquired by concept, nor is it something that is a problem this country. a teetering HIH, and the auditors oversee only for Labor. And in some respects the ing the adoption did not notice the cracks in word itself is misleading. The Australian editorial on 4 February FAI's maquillage. Berkshire Hathaway was The old reality described by the new named a 'culture of blame' and deplored the FAI's second port of call, since Swiss Re word 'aspirational' is that people who sec rise in small liability claims: 'Just as many would only consider the deal if it were run themselves as upwardly mobile, who own Australians are more prepared to get out of past the pesky regulator. But Mr Buffet will or are buying their own homes, and who are their financial problems by declaring them be putting up premiums soon. He has always struggling with difficult economic condi selves bankrupt, so more people are eager to warned about the dangers of pricing them tions, do not have an automatic allegiance seek financial redress against others for down. Some will survive the shake-out. to any political party. If anything, they have their misfortunes.' The editorial went on to In the meantime gold went up by $9 an tended towards conservative politics, except criticise 'the legal profession and the courts' ounce. -Juliette Hughes when the conservatives themselves lose for doing business 'with those wanting to touch. Certainly, the Labor Party has had to put the blame on to others'. It praised confront this reality from its very begin Ass is tan t Treasurer Sen a tor Helen Coonan, In a word ning in the 1890s. Here's what a Sydney for having 'given the cold shoulder to the Morning Herald correspondent had to say idea of a national rehabilitation and ASP I RATIONAL/DESPCRAT IONAL before the 1894 NSW election, when the compensation sch em e as floated by Small new electorate of Annandale was hived off Business Minister Joe Hockey'. Citing New L E DEFEAT OF Kim Beazley's Labor Party from Glebe, which had elected a Labor Zealand's experience with such a scheme, in last November's federal election has member in 1891: it warned of 'bureaucratic, financial and produced the customary crowing by the Still, the local men, who ought to know, do managerial dangers'. Dangers such as these victors and soul-searching by the losers. In not consider that the labour vote will be are already quite familiar to the private this instance, one of the main explanations very strong in this new district. Most of the industry, as a glance at the HIH Royal offered for the bad performance of Labor, working men who live here, they point out, Commission website shows. especially in the outerregions of the Sydney have bought their own allotments of land, The insurance industry has been for m etropolitan area and the NSW central and with the aid of the building societies years the beneficiary of high interest rates coast, has been that Labor has lost touch have built their own little co ttages. And and low scrutiny, in a climate where 'user with 'aspira tional' voters in what were once every student of political economy knows pays' has become the mantra. The 'trickle regarded as working-class districts. As with what this means. The worker, by tllis simple down effect' of privatisation, low taxation most shorthand explanations, there is some process, becomes converted into a capital- and small government never happened: thing there, but this new term is not a new ist, a man who has, rather than instead, a siphon effect sucked a man who has not. trillions from public infrastruc tures and social capital all over t.JO fRANK SHAY I~& WXJ R. HAIR Of f Moreover, the Herald jour the world. In such an environ 15 COOL. - '$HAVIN6 '(OUR H€At> Off nalist was quite right. For m ent, the public liability IS SI()PI D! many years after that, inner claims explosion is a creature city Annandale, with a high of fear and insecurity: the less proportion of home ownership, a person can rely on wider chose conservative MPs and society for support, the more local councils, while neigh that person will need to grab bouring Glebe, with a popula and hold for self. tion overwhelmingly renting And Warren Buffet, the and lodging, moved inexora world's most successful inves bly towards becoming a rock tor, isn ' t complaining. His solid Labor area. canny steering of his company Labor s tra t egis t s h ave Berkshire Hathaway's asset always known that they can base m eans that it can with not rely upon support from the s tand the US$3 billion it middle and outer suburbs of expects to lose in the rubble of Sydney and Melbourne. They the World Trade Center. have also known that they According to the HIH Royal cannot win elections without Commission, it was Berkshire them . The sam e has been true Hathaway's rein surance com of the Liberal Party. So fickle pany that had for a substantial have been som e of these dis fee in 1998 enabled a compli tricts that even the old Country cated and unconventional 30 Party (remember them?) June deal with Rodney Adler's thought they had a chance of ailing FAI that massaged an snapping up such electorates A$20 million loss into an A$8 .6 by changing their name to million pre-tax profit. With this National Party. In Queensland, VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EU REKA STREET 11 in fa ct, they had considerable success in places like the Gold Coast. For the Labor Party, Whitlam, Hawke, and even Keating were more successful than their Liberal opponents in making the appropriate electoral appeal. archimedes Perhaps the term popular in the 1970s and 1980s-'hip-pocket nervc'-was closer to th e outer-suburban reality than 'aspirational'. That term was often misused Mobile groans to suggest that voters could be bought with a bag full of promised tax cuts or other goodies such as first-home grants. Voters like to believe that they will be better off I T's CERTAINLY A CONTENDER for the most annoying noise in the world-the with one party rather than another, but insistent ring of a mobile phone during a dramatic silence at the theatre or a they tend to be much more attentive to vital point at the tennis. There's the woman pushing the supermarket trolley gen eral econ omic conditions than to who feels obliged to ring her partner before making a momentous decision on inducements that they know are not neces the peas. Or the passenger in the bus loudly providing unwanted insight into sarily core promises. It is a truism in elec toral commentary that it is very difficult to modern relationships. unseat any government when the economy The m obile phone has barged intrusively into our lives. Like automobiles is going well. Yet there is more to John and computers, the technology is shaping society around it-sometimes in Howard's use of the word ' aspirational' than unpredictable ways. Research in the Melbourne University Department of Infor economic security or hope of financial gain. mation Systems shows that mobile phones are a 'lifestyle organiser' for m any The new factor that has joined the 'hip 16- to 22-year-olds. They don't make plans for Friday nights, they simply stay pocket nerve', but is n ot obviousl y in touch by phone, and gather at the coolest venue. No mobile phone, no friends. 'aspirational', is the Pauline Hanson agenda We've read about the Englishman lost in Western Australia who phoned of racial intolerance, law and order, and his father at the local pub in Britain. And the man on one of the hijacked planes rejection of market-drivenpolicies. No party on September 11 who organised resistance after learning the fate of the others has yet been able to displace One Nation from his wife. completely in this appeal. John Howard's And recent research suggests that the distraction of even hands-free mobile Liberals successfully latched on to the first two items, but clung firmly to the principles phones in cars leads to reaction times on a par with drivers over the alcohol of a market economy. In NSW, Bob Carr's limit. Mobile ph one use makes accidents about four times more likely. Labor government has sought favour by This pervasive technology even affects global politics. Some argue that giving a central place to tough law-and m obile phones prolonged the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. order rhetoric, while back-peddling on the The element tantalum is used to manufacture capacitors in handsets and the market economy and flirting with the world's largest reserves of tantalite ore are in the Republic in an area controlled politics of race. The National Party, at both by rebels. So, the argument runs, the proceeds from tantalite mining h elped the state and Commonwealth levels, finds itself rebels continue the war. in the crossfire between its constituents Many developing nations hope to leapfrog wire and cable communications, and the realities of a coalition agreement moving instead directly to wireless systems. The infrastructure is nowhere near with the market-driven Liberals. as expensive or time-consuming as stringing wires across the landscape. In Latin Certainly, the Hanson phenomenon has America, it's predicted there will be as many wireless connections as landlines changed Australian politics by bringing these issues to the forefront of political by 2006, and the wireless network will provide the internet for more than half debate. Yet 'aspirational' is hardly the the population by 2010. appropriate word to describe the voters being The huge impact of mobile phones can only increase. Were we prepared for seduced. The appeal is not so much to all this' Did we plan it? How are we adjusting' Are we going to suffer? upwardly mobile folk who hope to become The British government h as announced studies worth more than comfortably middle class. Rather, it A$12 million into the health risks of the technology. By contrast, the Austral resonates with the fundamental insecurities ian governm ent has pulled A$1 70 million from the m oney available through of many people in the mortgage belt who the Australian Research Council for the social sciences and humanities. Since are fearful of unemployment for themselves answers to the problems of adjustment are likely to be found in these areas, this or their children, and see foreign newcomers withdrawal of funding seems perverse. threa tening their jobs. In this sense, The m obile phone has enormous potential for social change and social dis Howard's success was accomplished by location, but government money is currently being spent generating new, marketable scratching the emotional scabs of 'desperational' voters. Perhaps Labor's task technologies instead of investigating or integrating the current ones. • is to rediscover what genuinely 'aspirational' Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer who does not yet own a mobile phone. voters want. -Michael Hogan 12 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2 002 Everywhere I come across people wait to a sentry box. The box is inhabited by a Street life ing, always waiting, as if for the world to young soldier, a mere boy. He has a m ad end. It is as though their dream, the city, dening obsession with minutiae. Every OUAGADOUGOU, has been a mistake, a reckless roll of the detail, every single letter, is scrutinised, BURK INA FASO di ce that stole their only thing of value whether for a sign of misdemeanour or the connection to land, soil, a community. Now very meaning of existence-who can tell? ITIS ALWAYS A discovery to me in West and they resemble Frantz Fanon's Wretched of In the absence of a thriving economy, Central Africa that I am not alone in feeling the Earth-people with no right to dream . formalities attain their own m eaning; foreign. Most of the people I m eet in Niamey, The city can be a cul-de-sac in which bureaucracy is the dynamic that defeats in Douala, or here in Ouagadougou, have people die quietly, without protest. Many boredom and meaninglessness. An old man migra ted in search of opportunity. cannot return to the land of their ancestors in Cameroon once told m e that in many The question 'Where do you com e from?' to find comfort growing old surrounded by African schools, children are taught and defines who you are. In Africa it is invari the spirit world that h as sustained their tested entirely through rote learning, as if ably the starting point of conversation, a people for generations. The burden of they are being trained as actors to memo predcterminant of what relationships we expectation is now too powerful to renounce. rise a script. In this land wh ere the average m ay have, what position we occupy in the They have all heard the stories of success: annual income is US$240, memorising the Street stall in local ma rket, Avenue Kwame Nkrumah, Ouagadougou. Photograph by Anthony Ham . hierarchy. I am Yak from Bobo-Dioulasso the musician who now lives in Paris, the script, following procedures which have and I am of the Mossi people; m y mother young man with a government job, proud to become an end in them selves, m ay mean was born in Mali but my people cam e from wear a tie. T o return home without such a promotion or_:_m ore likely-a day's food the River Niger to the east. I am Alphonse tale is a tacit admission of failure. for a family. The worker must do his tasks of the Lobi people and I am from Gaoua But in Africa there is, always, another assiduously lest they appear too easy. Were where the land is green. story. For the m an or woman who must that to happen, he may just find himself out The street life of African cities is char survive, m eaning resides in the m om ent, in of a job, surplus to requirements. As borders acterised by this understanding of one's the specific usefulness of an encounter or a come down across the world and efficiency roots and the know ledge that one has been transaction or an object. becomes the new mantra for m easuring severed from them . There is a permanent I begin to learn this again- it's the out achievement, Africa stands firm, insisting disjunction between ancient tribes and the sider's repea ted rite of passage-in the on its paperwork, depending upon its new nation states that now confine them, stiflingly hot airport arrivals shed with its procedures as though they are essential in shallow soil. single rotating fan. A queue fo rms, leading pillars of m eaning. VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STR EET 13 When I first walk through the streets of when a life could be successfully sectioned, that their 'tough stance' made Australia Ouagadougou, the corrugated iron stalls without denial, into manageable compart look strong and assertive, the view from that line every sandy roa dside barely ments. She was philosophical about the Indonesia was of a nervous nation, increas register. Later, when I look closely, I see tabloids' persistent intrusions into and ingly unsure of itself and its n eighbours. that from each hang spark plugs and soccer distortions of her life, her supposed fo nd In 1996 author, academic and sinologist, balls, music cassettes and strips of fa bric, ness for a drink and her love life being Pierre Ryckmans, in hi s ABC Boyer Lec medicines and bananas. To people who live deplored by that ba stion of sobriety and tures, dealt with the issue of otherness and determinedly day by day, these signify an chastity, the Fleet Street press. Her nephew, multiculturalism . He stated: opportunity to be again on the move, a Prince Charles, called her a 'vital, free spirit' For a society to thrive, its system of values chance to make a child happy, a reason for who 'sang like an angel', and who was loved should be able to attract a constant inflow celebration, some clothing to com e, the by her children and her family. With her of outsiders and should be powerful enough promise of health or an affordabl e way to death passe a shared experience: someone to ma ke these newcomers desirous of adopt stave off hunger. we all knew, or thought we knew som e ing these values and determined to pre In such a world, survival is itself a vic thing about, is now part of our past. se rv e them. A civilisation is strong in tory. A day's income is a wonderful thing. -Juliette Hughes proportion to its capacity to tolerate what Two days' income is ca use for an impromptu is foreign to itself. Once it loses its bold party to which all are welcome. A seat in confidence in the natural resilience of its the shade is a gift, a conversation an occa Seeing white own values, once it fee ls the defensive sion. The chance to voice an opinion makes need to surround itself with walls in order one feel important. A song or a beat to I DONES IA PERCEIVES AUSTRAL IA to keep the outside world at ba y, its very dance to makes the world a wider place. ex istence becomes prob lematic. T hese triumphs, small daily reminders I HA VE SPENT FOUR of the past seven years of life's fragile immediacy, can draw for th a overseas and am currently living and work Assuming for the moment that we agree fl ashing smile or an eruption of laughter to ing in Jakarta. Until the past few m onths, with Ryckmans, how strong is our society match the vibrant colours worn by the I never felt the slightest shame in telling now? The Australian system of va lues resilient and resourceful worn en of the place. people I'm Australian. The word 'Austral attracts, and has always attra cted, outsiders, T hus Ouaga, this overgrown, low-slung ian' was for m e synonymous with fairness, but our resilience, our confidence that village-city of the uprooted, surviving compassion and gen erosity. I recogni sed outsiders will adopt our values, seems against the odds, smiling, getting about its the shameful mistakes of our past, but shaken. The overwhelming perception in business whether the rest of the world cares believed we were slowly, however imper Asia is that the Tampa refugees were or not. It is at once the end of the road and fectly, moving towards a more humane, rejected because of who they were and where the centre of its own universe. just society. I believed we were becoming they came from. - Anthony Ham sufficiently confident in ourselves to be JusufWanandi of the Centre for Strategic generous with others. and International Studies in Jakarta, a long N o longer. time friend of Australia, drew attention and Margaret Rose I now find myself in Jakarta at a time criticism when he wrote in the Jalwrta Post when, to many Indonesians, Australia seems ( 15 November 2001) that Howard's IN MEMORIAM to be withdrawing into an old vision of re-election refl ected the immaturity and itself. It seems increasingly unaware, or fear of a large number of Australians. 'This P.INC ESS MARGARET was the queen of unconcerned, at the alarm this is causing brings some serious disillusionment for princesses. People older than 40 will remem among its neighbours. The turning away of someone like myself, who thought that ber an exquisite head that was made for the Tampa refu gees was seen here as mean Australia could inject some civilised values tiaras, a small, graceful fi gure totally at spirited, irresponsible, manipulative and and democratic ideals to the region', Mr home in the tiny-waisted satin crinolines petty. By the time the refugees arrived in Wanandi wrote. He concluded by question of the 1950s. The boxy shifts of the '60s Nauru it had become farcical. ing whether Australia really belonged to were less kind to her, but she always had People could not understand why Aus East Asia at present and added that he the perfect carriage of a dancer. Ballet was a tralia was so reluctant to offer refuge to hoped his fri ends in Australia would under passion of hers. One of the most moving people fleeing tyrannical regimes that Aus stand this disillusionment and regret. images of her was to see her embracing tralia had condemned and, more recently, Australians who have not lived in Asia Margot Fonteyn, not long before the prima gone to war against. The defence- that the may be shocked to realise how much our ballerina assoluta died. The two were not asylum seekers were not legitimate refu gees 'whites only' history still affects people's unalike: petite, erect, daintily aquiline and and were therefore 'queue jumpers'-was ideas about Australia. Despite our annual dark-haired. considered to be as leaky as the vessel on intake of thousands of refugees and other At 71, she died young for a female Wind which they arrived. Their refu gee status immigrants, many from Asia, the image sor, her last few years dogged by poor health. could not be decided before their cases had lingers of a white-peopled country, insular The ABC's headline on the internet ran been h eard. The fact that they were willing by nature and uncomfortable with differ 'Queen 's Sister Led Life Marred by Heart to risk their lives and their children's lives ence. The fact that our cities arc h ome to break, Scandal, Illness'. Interviewed 20 years to escape their homeland in unseaworthy people from 160 countries, of many races ago, she said quite frankly that there had vessels made it all the more likely that they and religions, does not register with people been problems in her 'sentimental life'. had legitimate cause to seek refuge. The who have never been to Australia, and whose That telling phrase harks back to a time irony is that while politicians here believed images of Australians co me from the white, 14 EUREKA STREET • M ARC H 2002 male, predominantly Christian leaders who represent us overseas. Some of my students, future Indonesian 1 a e diplomats and possibly ambassadors, hope to go to Australia this year on AusAID scholarships to begin postgraduate study at Australian universities. They are extremely grateful for the opportunity provided, but have admitted several times to being anxious about how they will be received, About marriage not just as Muslims (not all are Muslim), but as Indonesians, as Asians. Several have friends in Australia who have received racist taunts and abuse. 1 JANUARY, A ROUTINE. papal speech to chancery officials made headlines. The Just aPR problem? I think not. Perhaps speech was said to have discouraged Catholic lawyers from involvement in Australia's multiculturalism does not come divorce proceedings. While Vaticanologists read the tea leaves to see if there across because not enough of us really see it was a storm in the cup, most observers saw nothing new in the speech. Its as a strength of our society. What is it we are media appeal lay in public schadenfreude at seeing lawyers warned off a lucrative seeking to protect when our collective ex area of practice, and public surmise that the lawyers would yet again wriggle perience is overwhelmingly an immigrant one that has demonstrably been one of the out of their predicament. country's great strengths? How long will it The most intriguing point about the speech was not that Pope John Paul take before we acknowledge our geographic spoke about lawyers and marriage, but that he spoke to church lawyers about position in the world, our comparative marriage. For on any reading of the New Testament, Jesus' emphasis on radical wealth and our capacity to increase, rather fidelity seems to have undercut Jewish marriage law, and to have discomforted than reduce, our assistance to less fortunate the lawyers who were interested in a workable jurisprudence. peoples? Critically, why do we lack faith in The role of the church in marriage was initially to bless marriages celebrated our society's ability to make newcomers according to local customs, while preaching Jesus' emphasis on fidelity. In the embrace what is best about the place? West, the church became involved in law when it became the principal source In looking for examples of racial and of social stability in a fractured world. Because marriages involved the transfer religious intolerance we could talk about of property, the legality and stability of marriages had consequences for royal attacks on mosques and Muslim school dynasties. So bishops were asked to judge the validity of unwanted marriages. buses in Australia, and then we could point to threats against foreigners in Indonesia. Later, church law required marriages to be celebrated in church before witnesses, But all come from a tiny section of each for clandestine marriages had become an effective form of asset-stripping. The community. The vast majority in both coun church now defended the permanence of marriage as a good for society, not tries consider such actions unacceptable. only as a sign of God's unfailing love for humanity. Of far more concern to Australians should When you must make decisions about marriages, you are obliged to be be our growing indifference to other peo consistent and principled. Welcome to the world of courts, lawyers and bodies ple's suffering, crumbling confidence in our of precedent, in which definitions must be clear and minimal. Marriage was society's ability to unite different people seen primarily as a contract, and its conditions were codified. The jurisdiction and a childlike fear of the outside world. of church courts over marriage has been broad. Generally, church courts do not Clearly, a percentage of Australians afe dissolve marriages, but annu l them by declaring that no genuine marriage took content with our current direction. The place. Common grounds are the lack of freedom or maturity in agreeing to marry. question for the rest of us is, how much Bu t m arriages h ave also been dissolved: th ose unconsum mated, and those effort are we prepared to make to ensure between non-Ch ristians, one of whom later becomes Christian. that a dissenting voice is heard? Silence, I believe, is no longer an option. The challen ge for churches in dealing with marriage is both to proclaim -Kym Holthouse the radical faithfulness which shocked Jesu s' contem poraries, and to care for the increasing number of people who are separated and rem arried. This month's contributors: Juliette Hughes The development of marriage tribunals has been central in the Catholic is a freelance writer; Michael Hogan is response. But it has costs. In an age of transient relationships, pastoral concern Associate Professor and Honorary Research for people inevitably leads to more requests for annulment, and a jurisprudence Associate, in the School of Economics and that recognises m ore grounds for annulmen t. The papal warnings against com Political Science, University of Sydney; promise w ith a 'divorce m entality' need to be set w ithin this context. Anthony Ham is a Eureka Street corre On the other han d, the Christian understanding of faithfulness in m arriage sponden t; Kym Holthouse is a former Can as a richly symbolic gift also becom es eroded wh en m arriage is seen predomi berra journalist currently on assignment in n antly in legal terms. Within the church, as in society at large, to speak first to Jakarta as an Australian Volunteer English Language T eacher with the Indonesian lawyers about m arriage m ay bring associated costs. • Department of Foreign Affairs. Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United Faculty of Theology, M elbourne. VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 15 THE LAW MO I RA RAY ER Policy at the end of the line Recent controversy over chroming and the care of children raises questions about how and why welfare policy is made. I Nc. TC ) ANUAeY, ' H ual d Sun jomml reaction. Moreover, Campbell 's office m akes yo ung people uncontrollable, ist read the Victorian Parliamentary had received at least one letter complain dangerous or violent. Drugs and Crime Prevention Commit ing about 'monitored' chroming. Her staff The facts are these. 'Chroming' is just tee's discussion paper on the inhalation had referred it to the Health Minister. one kind of inhalant substance abuse: of volatile substances. The Committee The Opposition scented its first min spraying paint into a plastic bag and had been working for seven m onths on isterial blood. The Premier threatened to inhaling the fumes. Officially, 'sniffing' the problem caused by people who inhale cease Berry Street's departmental funding 'volatile substances': mostly kids sniffing if the policy wasn't dumped at once. As glue, petrol, butane or paint but with a a consequence, two children had to be nod, too, to dentists and midwives evicted. That very day they got high, got partying with nitrous oxide, and club into a car and were hurt in a serious traffic goers with 'poppers'. The committee was accident, exactly as Berry Street predicted. to report on how well existing strategies Quickly, the truth em erged. Virtually were working, and to make 'best practice' all Victorian agencies 'supervise' chroming, recommendations to reduce the incidence as a last resort, to minimise harm and as of inhalation and prevent first-time use. part of their duty of care to severely The result was a shock-horror m edia damaged children. All relevant ministers storm about Berry Street Victoria, a knew something about this, and so, it is Melbourne end-of-the- line residential obvious, must their political predecessors service for very damaged children, 'con have known. doning chroming'. Berry Street had a The policy panic had another imme prevalence overall is relatively low-3.9 policy that permitted workers to monitor diate effect. Children who had previously per cent of children aged 14 or over, the safety of severely alienated children 'chromed' on the premises now did it on according t o the 1998 Australian by letting them sniff paint fumes on the the street. One neighbour ran up and N ational Drug Strategy Household premises. down outside a children's home (s he Survey. However, 18-19 per cent of all Premier Steve Bracks reacted author hadn't known it was one) after seeing a students aged 12- 16, surveyed in 1996, itatively: stop it. Apparently, he didn't youngs ter on the street with his head in said they had used inhalants in the consult the parliamentary committee a plastic bag. 'Do something!' sh e previous year, and 26 per cent had tried first. Berry Street pointed out that its shouted. 'For God's sake, som eone do it at least once (Australian School policy was part of a harm-minimisation something!' Students Alcohol and Drugs (ASSAD) strategy known to the government. But what? Survey). There is anecdotal evidence of a Christine Campbell, the Community Ev ery politician's media adviser recent rise in u sage (for exa mple: Services Minister at the time, demanded seems to agree that it would be good to Victorian drug treatment agencies to know w h y her department hadn't make sniffing illegal. The experts and worked with 61 clients in 1999, 134 in informed her. It had. children's workers don't. Ironically, the 2001; ambulances have treated hundreds Berry Street had received a departmen parliamentary committee's discussion of solvent abuse cases in Melbourne alone tal 'best practice' award in May 2001, in paper highlighted the media's propensity between 1998-2001 ). a program launched by Campbell. Berry to exaggerate, misrepresent and inaccu Most sniffers are probably aged 10- 16, Street Director Sandie de Wolf had rately report solvent abuse. with use peaking between 12 and 14 (Year discussed the 'monitoring chroming' part Most people believe that experimental 7 kids are nine times more likely than of its policy on Virginia Trioli's 774 ABC solvent abuse causes immediate, severe Year 12 students to report having used Melbourne Drive radio program. There brain damage; that the first use creates in the last month). Usage drops off with had been no public or governmental immediate, serious addiction; and that it age, perhaps when they get access to 16 EU REKA STREET • M ARC H 2002 alcohol or cannabis, or just mature. (S ee sexually and otherwise exploited. sub tances. Some areas, such as Western the Victorian 1999 School Students and Ch roming is not addictive, public Australia and Victoria's City of Wyndham, Drug Use Survey and the ASSAD Survey. ) perception notwiths tanding. N or are have tried a collaborative approach, Usage tends to be in groups and in Australian researchers convinced by engaging with distributors and traders to public. Poor kids are m ore likely to use, 'controversial' claims that solvent abuse limit the sale of abusable products to as are adults from troubled backgrounds, per se causes immediate and serious or children vol un taril y. However, these but there is no evidence that Victorian irreversible brain or neurological damage. programs suffer from lack of consistency Aboriginal kids misuse inhalants more Som e solvents do m ore harm to tissue and suspicions that they just 'm ove the than others (data about petrol sniffing in and organs because of components, such problem along'. other parts of Australia are irrelevant). as lead in petrol. Scheduling and labelling dangerous Most children who sniff experiment fo r Why do children 'chrom e' ? Most are products is also not likely to be enough : a short time, then stop completely. just experimenting. Chronic users tend some children would be delighted to read, Kids in care are much m ore likely to to have the usual problems of unhappy if they could read (chronic users are likely use. Victoria has about 3500 children in children : rotten family environments, to be illiterate), that they are confront care, about 400 of whom have substance low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts and ing death (for example, inhaling butan e) . abuse problem s in general (not chroming educational failure. Ch roming m ay be 'to Asking m anufacturers to change the in particular) . About seven of Berry rebel', to dull em otional pain, or just to produ cts so a high is unobtainable is Street's looked-after children chrom e: relieve boredom . There is no necessary probably also quite useless, as the kids almost all chronic ch rom ers are state link between chroming and offending or m ove on to another. T here will always wards, out of education, without family antisocial behaviour. For som e children, be another. ties and very damaged. The Department chroming is part of a repertoire of drug The answer seem s to be preven tion of Human Services funds services for usage and an angry, detached, risk-taking which m eans helping to create resilient children- and taking our duty of care seriously. Berry Street and other end-of the-line agen cies aim to contain the problem by reducing supply, demand and harm . They provide clear messages about disapproval and risk. They remove oppor tunity. And, at the end of the line, if they cannot stop children 'chrom ing', they reduce the dangers by seeing that they use less hazardous substances, in less dangerous places, and in 'safer' ways (for example, not spra ying directly into the face, or smoking cigarettes at the sam e tim e). such children . These are end-of- the-line way of life. For such children, harm People who work with these ch ildren services, with only crim inal options if minimisation i essen tial: they m ay say th ey do n ot need prohibition or th ey fail. T h ere are virtually n o survive to change, through relation- moralising. The workers need a thera therapeutic secure facilities for unsen ships with reliable, caring adults. peutic capacity to hold and help self tenced boys and girls: just eight secure harming kids beyond Victoria's eigh t beds in Victoria, for just 21 days. Tho e s0 WH AT SHOULD WE DO? Most volatile secure beds for 21 days. There is no need beds are not appropriate for chronic substances inhaled are 'legal'. We already for new crimes, police crackdowns or chrom ers; nor are standard drug or detox have laws dealing with in toxication adult-oriented drug, detox and psychiat facilities. related offences, child welfare, labelling ric services. Every child needs a different 'Chroming' and other inhalant prod and restricting the sale of dangerous sub answer, but each answer requires the ucts are cheap and readily available and stances. Misusing them is a child welfare, time for intensive work to build relation interchangeable. The high lasts from five not crim inal, concern. Virtually all those ships and save lives long enough for the to 45 minutes. Inhalan t substances are who work with these sad kids don't want children to work through som e of their toxic and may cau se 'sudden sniffing a new 'inhaling offence'. Many chroming issu es. Sandie de Wolf says that the death' through cardiac arrh ythmia or children already use illegal substances critical part is keeping the connections 'freezing' of the throat or larynx. People such as cannabis, so adding another won't open. 'The best way is to keep them close also die from accidents when they're high change much . Criminalising chroming to us, not push them away.' and acting irrationally. Yet Victoria had would ensure children wouldn't seek The first human right of a child is to just 44 inhalant-related deaths between m edical help and would burden them life. Media advisers should not be writing 1991 and 2000: 17 were suicides; 13 were with a criminal record. this policy, nor should political parties 'toxicity' deaths mostly from butane, not Legally restricting supplies and be using it to discredit 'the other side'. • paint; the rest were m ostly accidents. distribution, as in the UK, has resulted Intoxicated kids are also likely to be in children simply sniffing other Moira Rayner is a barrister and journalist. VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STR EET 17 H EALTH:l , "",---.:~---- - __.. -.. . _· ,..._, ' Recovery In the April 2001 edition of Eureka Street, Meg Gurry w rote about her experience of ser ious iII ness following open-hea rt surge ry. Th e reaction to the article was overwhelming. During the course of the yea r, she received many ca lls, letters and emails from people-some of whom she knew, others complete strangers-for w hom her thoughts had clearl y resonated. Thi s is her response. A "' "'"M' '"'""cc, "Steph•nk Dowdck depressed, then certainly suffering from an uncharac describes so well, 'must be hauled in, like a flailing teristic and persistent melancholy. In An Unquiet fish at the end of a long line, so that it can be stowed Mind, a superb book on her own experiences of away and eventually integrated' (Forgiveness and depression, American professor of psychiatry Kay Other Acts of Love ). What I've come to see in the Redfield Jamison explains how 'we all build internal past year is that to integrate the experience of serious sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the illness is a challenge, one which many people strug often overwhelming forces within our minds'. We gle to achieve. It is also a process for which many build these walls 'stone by stone over a lifetime'. What patients would like their doctors to take more respon I felt was that my internal sea walls, the ones around sibility-yet a recurring theme throughout my my inner emotional core, had been breached. The correspondence was dissatisfaction with the system m etaphorical and the literal began to blur. It was as if that patients encounter. Is there an irreconcilable gap, the heart surgeon, to reach m y mitral valve, had pulled I wondered, between what patients seek, and what down the 'stones' around my heart, but had forgotten their doctors ca n deliver? to put them back. I felt undefended and exposed. For m e, the process of recovery so far has taken I couldn't separate myself from pain-my own, other well over a year. I have been constantly puzzled: if people's, the world' s-and I had inadequate resources, I was 'better' and 'cured', then why wasn't I feeling it seem ed, to face each new day with equanimity. stronger I After all, the heart surgery had been a success, In his novel, Starting Out in the Evening, Amer and the incapacitating post-operative infection had ican author Brian Morton ponders the meaning of long gone. Yet my recovery was slow, new problems heart surgery. It takes so long to recover from, he sug kept emerging, and I had lost my emotional balance. gests, because it is such a violating assault on the body Five months after the surgery, when I was and the spirit. Following the experience of the heart supposedly 'well' again, I recognised that I was, if not lung bypass machine, he writes, the body 'believes it 18 EUR EKA STREET • MARCH 2002 has died', and is 'in mourning for itself'. Is there some become-and ultimately self-defeating. N evertheless, thing about heart surgery, I wondered, that is intrin finding the emotional strength to resist its appeal sically profound and spiritually unsettling, regardless becam e yet another dimension in the difficult of outcome? Is it more than a human being can deal challenge of returning to good health. with alone, to know that her chest has been sawn open, and her heart-with all of its emotional signif I NOW BELIEVE-a year-and-a-half down the track icance-has literally been stopped from beatingi that that the impact of major surgery and illness is taken it has been cut and stitched by strangers? far too lightly. Many patients, I'm sure, have unreal All these disquieting thoughts troubled m y istic expectations of recovery time, thinking in terms waking hours for months. Whether there is a physio of weeks, instead of months or even years. One of the logical basis to post-heart-surgery problem s, or problem s, I believe, is that while acutely ill patients whether the anxiety operates on another level require acute care, and in our medical altogether, is a fascinating area for research. Whatever system usually get it, once the crisis the explanation, it's now clear to me that the issues is over, there is an expectation that needed to be brought out in the open . But, at the time, recovery will automatically follow. It my thoughts seemed indulgently introspective, and doesn't happen this way. As m any of I kept them well buried. the people who contacted m e identi The intensity of that m ood did pass but it was fied, the crux is the difference disturbing while it lasted, and very preoccupying. between cure and healing. I assume I was not very good company during this We are more than the sum total time. I was then struck down with a number of of our bones, tissu es, organs and physical problems. I first had to return to surgery blood. Repairing them is only part of to have my unhealthy gall bladder removed- a the journey. The mind, the psyche, con equence, I believe, of my not eating properly for the soul, the spirit-call it what you six months. However, the most unsettling problem will-also has to be returned to som e was that I suffered-in fact still do- from chronic sort of equilibrium. Rediscovering light-headedness. My doctor called it disequilibrium, that balance is what recovery and a good word I thought. I felt often as if I was about to healing, as distinct from cure, are all fainti I couldn't walk 100 m etres, or eat at a table, about. But should we expect people without losing my balance. I suffered from tinnitus to do this on their own? Put another (ringing in the ears) and frequent migraines. I was way, it seems that too many constantly tired. Why, I wondered, could I just not patients-who are either recovering 'get over it'? from m ajor illness, or dealing with If I'm honest, I will also acknowledge that being chronic h ealth concerns- are having ill brings some advantages, which can be another to reinvent the ways that others dis stumbling block to recovery. Perhaps, at some level, covered long ago. But it is not until being moderately ill is even addictive. In the early one arrives at that 'other' place, the months following my surgery and infection, I worried place Susan Sontag insightfully that I was staying unwell- developing gall-bladder identified as 'the kingdom of the sick' disease, high blood pressure-to sustain a way of being (Illness as Metaphor), that there is a to which I had become used, and, yes, in part was need to learn how to negotiate its enjoying. Being ill provided a ready justification for pathways. How best, then, to impart m oodiness, dependence and inertia-for not doing this knowledge to those who find those things I didn't want to do. It also created a space themselves at the gates? for more honest, direct engagement with those around Doctors and nurses are, I believe, m e, in ways that were, frankly, very satisfying. by their training and experience Australian physician Tony Moore has an inter uniquely well placed to do this. As esting insight on this point. In a provocative reflec profound as serious illness may be, it tion on illness and its aftermath, he argues that the is n ot an unfathomably complex psychological 'selfishness of sickness is a matter of survival'. His process. Dealing with it does not call for a new branch m emoir, Cry of the Damaged Man, is a moving of health care. Nor, normally, does it call for the account of his recovery from injuries in an appalling involvem ent of psychiatrists or psychotherapists, car accident. Physical improvement, he writes, can although, if not confronted, it may well do so in the often be a 'mirage', because it does not always mirror future. What patients-and that includes recovering what's happening on the inside. In fact, he says, patients, the chronically and acutely ill- want from accident victims can quite consciously 'hold back their medical staff is actually quite straightforward: signs of physical improvement so they match the shorter they seek communication, empathy and kindness. strides of emotional repair'. I knew my self-absorption First, they want communication that conveys was unhealthy-a sign of just how dislocated I had information about their illness, their treatment and V O LUME 12 NUMBER 2 EUREKA STREET 19 their recovery prospects, in language they can under lectures on how many things might kill you post stand, and at a level of detail that is appropriate to operatively is not good communication. It's better use their needs at that time. Second, they want an of time that is needed, not more of it. empathetic awareness of the disempowering dimen The baby boomers have turned 50. As they age sions of illness, and a sense that the staff around them and face more illness- their own and that of their understand their fear and alienation. Third-and this, elderly parents- they will deal with their health issues I believe, is the most important point, even if it does as they have dealt with the other major milestones of sound a little mawkish- they want kindness. 'It is their lives: by talking, reflecting and writing about the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this them. And they will demand better communication world tolerable', wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. If this from their doctors-this is particularly true of baby is true even in the world of the well, in the world of boomer women, who have for decades been in the the sick the words have even greater resonance. vanguard of changing our culture to one where health Is all this too much to ask? I believe not. All concerns and changing bodies are openly discussed. patients are different, and each illness is different, but They will not be prepared to suffer in silence and ask there are, I think, 'words that work' for most patients, no questions, as their more accepting parents did. a style of language that could be taught to health The medical profession will need to adapt to this professionals as a communication tool, a means of changing culture. To what extent they do so will depend connecting with their patients in more meaningful, on a number of variables. These may range from the empathetic ways than currently occurs. Some three boundaries of professional responsibility recognised months after my illness, I met, socially, a post-trauma by the individual practitioner to the priorities embed psychologist. I told her that I was having difficulty ded in medical culture. Busy doctors with punishing coming to terms with what had happened to m e and workloads may justifiably be unhappy with the was, I felt, unhealthily dislocated by the shock of it suggestion that their duty of care extends beyond the all. Her response was immediate: 'Are you surprised scientific or the physiological. But I know from my with this'' Another wise friend counselled me on the own experience that doctors and nurses have a key, need for patience. Such simple responses, yet they non-scientific, role to play in the healing process. An helped clarify something fundamental: my journey of empathetic, communicative doctor or nurse-and healing was predictable and would take time. It was I luckily enjoyed both-can achieve recovery break extraordinary what a difference those attentive and throughs when even the technology seems to be failing. straightforward words made. But such empathy and communication is not I don't believe that sensitive communication universal; nor was it my only experience. It seems need take up any more time than our economically that many patients feel there is an unresolved tension stretched system can currently accommodate. As between cure and healing-in other words, between I discovered after my heart surgery, empathy can be science and empathy-in the culture of our medical transmitted just as effectively non-verbally as system. Surely these complementary dimensions of verbally, through human touch or eye contact. health can co-exist in ways that suit both patients Comfort, encouragement and information can be and practitioners? Without demanding that every imparted in a few minutes; long and emotionally doctor becomes another Patch Adams, we do need to demanding sessions are not necessary, even if they work out how to do it better. • were affordable. Judging how much information a patient needs is part of doctors' and nurses' jobs-long Meg Gurry is a freelance writer. 20 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 2002 Suddenly last summer I CAN'T SAY l'n ACTUACCY planned to watch the gymna VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA ST RE ET 2 1 EARCY ' " OcTOm, the New Ymk neutral among them.' In other words, the accounts suggest. And they have a point. Times reported a well-travelled T exas US, with its allies, is fighting evil, with Consider the oil story, which can businessman complaining about contin God on 'our' side. easily subsume the others. Start with the uing laxity at airports. 'They got Islamics A small minority of commentators US, whose oil imports, mainly from the out at the airport security check-ins, has begged to differ with both Texans. In Middle East, cost US$250 billion annu talking to each other in Arabic. T ell me letters to the editor and articles in upper ally when federal subsidies and health the sense of that?' band US newspapers, one line of com and environmental costs are added to the The sense he made of September 11 mentary reduces the religious factor to money paid for the oil itself. That's the and the new war was that the former was mere rhetoric used to legitimate acts of dollar value of an addiction that leads the an attack by religious Islamic terrorists, war waged for non-religious ends, and to US to consume 25 per cent of the world's of a kind easily identifiable because they mobilise popular support for acts of war. annual oil production, though it has only spoke Arabic. And the war on terrori m Another line downgrades the importance four per cent of present effective reserves. was a religious war, at least in the sense of religion in accounts of the origins of In the name of ensuring regular supply that the enemy was Islamic- a real cause conflict and the m otivations of protago at affordable prices, it underwrites for dismay in the United States, given nists, without quite discounting it. In corrupt Arab autocracies, including both that the number of American Muslims, some accounts, September 11 and its the largest producers, like Saudi Arabia, estimated at as high as six million, now aftermath become another chapter in the and the non-producers with a key role in outnumbers American Jews. international politics of oil, in which the Middle Eastern politics, like Egypt. The George W. Bush disagrees with his central theme is the realpolitik involved economic policies, and indeed the econ fellow Texan som e of the time, and pre in maintaining the flow of Middle Eastern omies, of those autocracies are different, cisely on the latter point. The enemy is oil needed to sa tisfy America's 'oil glut but they have this in common: they not Islam, he argued in his well-received tony'. In others, the religious dynamics produce increasingly large numbers of address to Congress, but a secular distor of the conflict are displaced in a grand disaffected, often highly qualified young tion of it by terrorists who 'by abandon narrative of economic, and to a lesser males who have nowhere to go in their ing every value except the will to power extent, cultural globalisation and its home economies, and no institutional ... follow in the path of fascism, Nazism discontents. means of struggling fo r change. They and totalitarianism'. Take out old and new conflicts bet become enforced cosmopolitans: m any On the other hand, the war on terror ween and within the Abrahamic religions, abroad as students or migrant workers; ism has a religious character on our side, take away the particular religious moti others at home, learning to think of their the president seem s to be saying. 'Our vations of the youn g m en and ageing local plight in global terms. war on terrorism has nothing to do with mullahs who wage jihad or crusade, and At this point religion comes into the difference in faith', but 'freedom and fear, one can still expect suicide bombers and story, but as a secondary factor that is justice and cruelty, have always been at the barbarities of high-tech retaliation not necessary to the denouem ent. Our war. And we know that God is not that's what the reduce- religion-to-size enforced cosmopolitans discover fo r 22 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 them selves, or have pointed out to them, World War II, whatever might be their September 11 and the war, the religious the full costs levied by McWorld. They residual, particular Islamic motivations. factor demands more attention than it must abandon their old-world Islamic The gist of this sort of story is quite gets in the purely secular stories. values and identity without any guaran secular. At beginning and end, secular This is so if only because fo r m illions tee of a secure place in the new world; processes and motivations, with perhaps of Muslims (though certainly not fo r all) they must endure permanent second a bit of religious combustible material the war of attack, and now of resistance, class citizenship, curiously akin to their thrown in, provide the explanations for against the US is a holy war, and Osam a status at hom e under regimes armed and inexplicable horror in N ew York and bin Laden and the suicide murderers are defended by the US. Then, prepared by Washington. And a similar secular story saints of Islam . Further, on the Islamic despair and an ger in the face of the is told about the en suing war on terror side, present events are constru ed as symbols of the West that is engulfing ism, initiated by and directed from the incidents in a long, at tim es warlike, them, and perhaps some self-hatred fo r US-a story about the forging of alliances, struggle within Islam and about the very compromises already made, they discov the choice of strategies, and the course fate of Islam in the modern world. When er m eaning and a satisfying channel for of the war itself. That story leaves no bin Laden presents himself on videotapes form erly diffuse anger in an alternative room for President Bush's 'fi ghting evil as a holy m an-successfully it seems cosm opolitanism - that of the trans with God on our side'. Rather, it locates he is tapping into a m inority Islamic national Islamic brotherhoods, including September 11 as an escalation of a war in tradition with a wide fo llowing and a latterly the al Qaeda network, and their which transnational terrorism and the deep history. There was, for exam ple, jihads. The minority w ho becom e international US -dominated anarch y Sayyid Qutb and his battle against General militants fight variously fo r Palestinian of the global m arket feed off one N asser; and Qutb was wont to compare statehood, the purification of deviant another. his s truggle with Ibn Taymuyya's compromised Islamic governments struggles against the Mongol barbarians defined as un-Islamic, or, with eyes fixed B uT T HE EXC LU SIVELY secular stories centuries before. In that purported tradi on its central symbol and guarantee in about September 11 and the war occlude tion, bin Laden is identifiable as a holy the US, .against the oppressive and corro too much- the religious roots of jihad rebel fulfilling his Islam ic duty by fight sive West. But as they engulf themselves and crusade, religion in the stories of the ing against rulers (especially those of in these struggles, they becom e ciphers terrorists them selves, religion in the Egypt and Saudi Arabia) who have aban of the cruel logics of war, and realpolitik, interpretations of September 11 and doned true Islam . These rulers, m aking to the extent that the religious, Islamic reactions to it, on all sides. The exclu their peace with the West, albeit in middle of the story becomes irrelevant sively secular story leaves us puzzling different ways and degrees, have opened to the final outcome. As guerrillas or about the driving passions so evident not the ga tes to the extinguishment of Islam human bombs they becom e indistin only in the suicide murderers but also in by Western culture, which in its plural guishable from the Black Tigers of Sri those fighting the ensuing war and those idolatries, m oral licentiou sn ess and Lanka or the Japan ese kamikazes of supporting it. If we want to understand secular governance, is the equiva lent of VOLUME 12 N UMB ER 2 • EUREKA STREET 23 jahiliyya, th e barbarism that existed Septe mber 11 , but are gen erally parading as Islam for political ends. Some before Islam and which always threatens addressed non-violently. In the US, when Muslim leaders, particularly in the US, to overcom e it. Sheik Hanya Yussuf, a high-profile white have argued along these lines, rather as Leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (a convert to Islam, calls on American Catholic apologists have argued, with splinter of which becam e the backbone Muslims in the wake of September 11 to increasin g implau sibility, that anti of al Qaeda) and th e Islamic Brother develop 'a new language that doesn't Semitism was not linked to the central hoods, and many of the mullahs in the compromise the core truths, but at the m yths and defining symbols of European mosques and madrasas of Pakistan and sam e time doesn't incite more madness', Catholicism . Arguably, violent, funda Saudi Arabia, propagate and act in the he is challenging Muslims who speak the mentalist, political Islam has been name of this tradition. They have been old language. When Dr Agha Saeed, chair constructed in a space opened up by the able to preach a persuasive m essage to man of the American Muslim Alliance, Qur' anic revelation th at Islam pre those who are poor and/or institutionally declares that September 11 just m akes supposes. And its home there, right in marginalised. The m essage is: Sa tan is more urgent the quest 'to understand our the conflicted heart of Islam, helps doing this to you, and he is able to prevail selves in America as Muslims', he is aware explain the m otivating and mobilising here because our rulers are delivering us, that there are som e m osques that wan t power that political Islam has had for the culturally and economically (Egypt) or by to remain insulated from any engagemen t last three decades in the Islamic world. military alliance (Saudi Arabia, especially with the American way of life. These too September 11 , viewed from within during the Gulf War), to the rulers of are sm all in dicators of a war within that world, appears as an event in a long Satan's Kingdom, America. Though far Islam - albeit war fough t by other religious war within Islam-a defining from poor, both the Egyptian Moham ed m eans-about m odernity and citizenship m om ent, in that it takes the war in to the Atta (probably the only one of the suicide in religiously pluralistic societies. heartland of the Great Sa tan. On the murderers to know exactly what was In som e instances the trope of war simple criterion that the character of an planned for September 11) and his may becom e sadly more apt as the wider event or a whole war is in great part Arabian men tor, Osam a bin Laden, were conflict unfo lds. Abdul Haqq Bakr, the indicated by its m eaning to its protago formed in this variant of Islam and have chairm an of the Brixton mosque and nists, then indeed on the Islamic side this become its latest heroes. Islamic centre in London (on ce fre is a religious war. If there is any doubt, it Their predecessor heroes over the last quented by Abdel Rahim, who attempted should be dispelled by a viewing of the 20 years of political Islam have fo ught, to blow up a plane with explosives hidden recently released videotape of Osama bin and often died, in a series of attempts to in his shoes), tells a story of escalating Laden chatting with friends in Afghani dispose of Islamic rulers deem ed to have tension between Islamic centres preach stan. There is one m oment in that record turned infidel. Most fam ou s was the ing and recruiting fo r political Islam and of banality that should alert us to the success of the Shi'ite version of political m ore m oderate mosques like his own . irreducibly religiou s dimension of Islam in the overthrow of the Shah of Iran 'They think we're not living in the real September 11 fo r bin Laden himself, for in 1979. The Saudi ruling family was world, because the real world as fa r as those who think of him as a warrior saint, challenged by the 19 79 seizure of Mecca's they're concerned is terrorism in the and even for those who define their Grand Mosque by militants espousing nam e of Islam,' Mr Bakr told a reporter. Muslim identity in opposition to the the sam e Wahabi version of Sunni Islam 'They hate us with a vengeance. If you fundam ent alist political Islam he so that the royal family underwrites in hear tom orrow that som eone threw a dram atically represents. m osqu es and m adrasas around the fi rebomb into the Brixton mosque, non It is only one m om ent in that ram world. Islamic m ilitants helped in the Muslims should be the last people you bling home video. Boasting about his part assassination of President Anwar Sadat should su spect. ' (New York Times, in m ass murder, bin Laden could be just of Egypt in 1981. In 1993 Egyptian Islamic 2 7 December 2001 ) For many Muslims in as President Bush depicted him, another Jihad members attempted to assassinate Britain, Germany and France, this is the secular to tali tarian, ruthless in the first the Interior minister (using a suicide real war that surrounds September 11, the pursuit of power fo r power's sake. Preen bomber) and then the prim e minister war which gives that day its meaning in ing at the report of the 'very positive' (with a car bomb). And in 1995 a truck their lives. reactions to September 11 in the m osques bom b was crashed into the Egyptian Note that even as we put the religious of Saudi Arabia, he is, like any leader who embassy in Pakistan . factor back into the an alysis of the has ordered slaughter, anxious to be told These acts of war have all been prose Islamic 'side' of the conflict, we do not that the faithful m asses think he has done cu ted in countries in which Islam is in find som e sort of pure spiritual Islam, the right th ing. The defining section some sense the established religion but operating in a hermetically sealed, time com es after bin Laden 's wandering in which the conflicts at the heart of less religious sphere. Islam figures in the dom es tic chatter turns to talk about Islam cannot be addressed, let alon e Sept ember 11 story, as all religiou s dream s and visions and how they show resolved openly throu gh non -violen t traditions figure in history, conflicted that Allah is on side. Suddenly, boasting, conflict. Elsewhere (including in India, internally and infl ected by local culture anxious giggles and reports of the every which lays claim to the world's second and political-econom ic circumstance. day are left aside as idle talk is trans largest M uslim population, and in th e That is not to concede, however, that the muted in religious ritual. Murder, and the US) the conflicts are eviden t, and have variant of radical, violent political Islam suffering of war on both sides, are reduced been sharpened in th e aftermath of is a mutan t form, a political distortion to irrelevance before the march of Islam. 24 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 Osama bin Laden, and all who are with least in the US. Despite retractions by internet exchanges (www.sojo.net has him, become sanctified in history. 'I was Falwell and Robertson, the 'dominion been an important and extraordinarily ordered to fight the people until they say theology' that they, and millions of crowded site ). there is no God but Allah and his prophet signed-up followers of the 'Robertsonised Nobody knows what the numbers are. Muhammed,' bin Laden intones. At that Right', subscribe to provides ready inter But there is no doubting that millions of moment, he writes himself and his pretations and justifications for the war. Americans frame September 11 and the war into holy writ. On the domestic scene, that theology, war in religious terms-that is, as a war grounded in Genesis 1: 2 7, calls for power aga inst Islamic fundamentalists. They I T IS A LITTLE harder to argue for the in Washington to pass from the ungodly have had their religious beliefs and religious character of the West's war on to those who have the right and the identities activated and placed on the line terrorism. The Italian prime minister, obliga tion to power because they are since September 11 , and have chosen to Silvio Berlusconi, was soundly repudiated God's people. The latter should 'take express and cope with their tribulation by Western religious and political leaders dominion' over all the major institutions in religious rituals. They have been when, sounding like a Christian version and run them until Christ comes again. stirred to review, for themselves and for of an Islamic fundamentalist mullah, he Pat Robertson, in his book Th e New others, the ambiguities involved in urged Europe to 'reconstitute itself on the World Order: It Will Change the Wa y being citizens of a particular religious basis of its Christian roots' as it went into You Live, declares: 'There never will be persuasion in a religio usly plural, war. Returning to those roots, according peace until God's house and God's people secular republic. are given their These various ways in which the war rightful place of is perceived and experienced point to one If we want to understand September 11 and leadership at the central religious issue for Americans in the war, the religious factor demands more top of the world.' the war: what is the right relationship Thus it has been between the private life of citizens in attention than it gets in the purely secular stories. easy to pass from everyday life, their religious beliefs and Washington to the practices, and their government? to Berlusconi, involved trus t in the whole world and add political Islamists Andrew Sullivan, in a much-quoted supremacy of Christian values which had and sympathisers to the line-up of those article (New York Times Magazine, brought prosperity and respect for human who are presently on top and should be 10 October 2001 ), argued that the war is rights, and an acknowledgm ent that the removed. The list is long, and specific: a religious war against fundamentalist Wes t was bound by its essential Christi 'drunkards, communists, atheists, N ew Islam, that it is a war for religious free anity to 'occidentalise and conquer'. Age worshippers of Sa tan, secular dom and in defence of the American Retractions of the kind that Berlus humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy Constitution's separation of politics and coni was forced to make were also fo rced moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, religion: 'We are fighting for the univer on Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, well adulterers and homosexuals.' sal principles of our Constitution-and known leaders of the American religious Robertson has just retired as leader of the possibility of free religious faith it right, when they went public with a the Christian Coalition, but he retires as guarantees. We are fighting for religion rather different Christian take on the the most influential kingmaker in the against one of the deepest strains in challenge of September 11. On Pat Republican Party over the last 20 years, religion there is' (that is, the strain of the Robertson's TV show, The 700 Club, two and perhaps the most important religious demand for the absolute certainty of truth days after September 11 , Falwell declared: shaper of the American political agenda and the dem and that all worthy citizens ever. It would be a mistake to conclude must believe and practise that truth). I rea ll y be lieve that the pagans, and the that the m eaning most Americans give That deepest strain was exemplified in abortionists, and the feminists, and the to September 11 could be read out of the Taliban government which, in the gays and the lesbians ... the ACLU [the 'dominion theology'; but it would also be name of a Sunni version of absolute American Civil Liberties Union], People a mistake to ignore evidence that the war Qur'anic truth, required and policed for the American Way-all of them who is invested with a wide range of religious uniform belief and practice. It is further have tried to secularise America- ! point m eanings in the US . To those who locate exemplified in al Qaeda, which would the finger in their face and say, 'You helped acts of war in N ew York, Washington and abolish religious fr eedom and substitute this happen.' Afghanistan in the longer war for the do theocracy for secular democracy around And Pat Robertson concurred, enthusias minion of the righteous, add those who the world. tically. The subsequent retractions and see signs therein of impending Apoca We can agree with Sullivan, but go qualifications, demanded not only by lypse (happy booksellers count them in further. Where he sees that religious fr ee political leaders of secular, pluralistic the hundreds of thousands). To those who dom and its guarantees are at issue states but by prominent religious leaders have been thronging churches, syna between Americans on one side and al as well, might suggest that neither gogues and mosques seeking comfort and Qaeda and the Taliban on the other, we September 11 nor the war on terrorism assurance, add those who debate the can see them newly at issue since have much in the way of religious religious ethics of the war, its religious September 11 in America itself. Over the m eaning in the West. But there is con character and its implications for last four months we have seen a sort of siderable evidence to the contrary, at religious pluralism on campuses and in liberal American orthodoxy about 26 EUR EKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 religion, the private citizen and govern conversations becomes space for the its meaning'-but not only to Islamic ment, invoked against not only Taliban exercise of pluralistic democracy. In combatants on one side, and American theocracy but also its milder version in those spaces, pilgrim believers becom e political society as a whole on the other, American dominion theology. (These 'pilgrim citizens ... connected critics .. . as Sullivan argues. Rather, within liberals were already m obilised before persons committed to the fundamental America, the religious dimension of the September 11 , taking issue with the Bush ideals of democracy, yet able to see the conflict is central to those Americans adm inistration's push to hand over the shortcomings of any particular demo already contesting what it is to be at once administration of federally funded social cratic regim e' (Ronald F. Thiemann, a person of particular religious faith in a services to religious agencies.) In the 'Public Religion: Bane or Blessing for religiously plural society, and an engaged classical American liberal tradition, Democracy', in N ancy L. Rosenblum citizen of a secular democracy. For those religious freedom can be guaranteed in (ed.), Obligations of Citizenship and Americans espousing public religion, or the modern world only when there is Demands of Faith: Religious Accommo a variant of theocracy, or a religiously strict separation of church and state, dation in Pluralist Democracies, p85). inflected version of classical liberalism, when the state itself is secular and does Public religion is not to be confused the meaning of the war is found by not intervene in the religious sphere, and with what is called American civil locating it in American conflicts of long when religious belief and practice are as religion. Indeed, in the present conflict, standing. privatised as possible, with minimal pilgrim citizens have found themselves So, on the American as on the Islamic incursions into the public realm. at odds with fervent civil religionists who 'side', the war invokes internal religious In the name of the latter provision, invest American institutions, including conflicts, adding depth and some valida some liberals have criticised leaders of the presidency and the armed forces, with tion to the claim that this is a religious various m ains tream churches (for an aura of sacred light. For civil religion war. But establishing that religious mean example, Boston's Cardinal, Bernard Law) ists, support for president and country ings are given to the war and constituent for making public statem ents expressing com es before public debate in conflicts, provides no basis for the claim positions on the war. The attacks on the time of war. that September 11 and the Afghanistan leaders have been not so much against campaign are acts in what is only a the positions taken as against ecclesias IFTHERE IS ANY good news for watchers religiou s war. Indeed the detail and tical trespass into the realm of public of American democracy since September dynamics of the religious conflicts noted policy. But the major antagonists of the 11 , it lies in the profuse evidence, here can only be understood on the basis classical liberals have been fundamental displayed in the quality m edia, that many of an ackn owledgment that religious ists of Christian, Jewish or Muslim Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders belief and practice and conflict are always provenance. To them, classical liberals have been preaching and practising this incarnate, enmeshed in political, social, impute manipulation of state agencies or, public religion- in some instances well economic and psychological aspects of conversely, denial of the legitimacy of before the terrible day (for example, in human reality. elected governments, in the pursuit of the Industrial Areas Foundation net There is a messy dialectics in which confessional ends. work). (See www.tresser.com /IAF.htm, the big players in the political economy September 11 has contributed to the and Mark R. Warren, Dry Bones Rattling: of oil m ake plausible the messages of very public re-emergence of yet another Community Building to Revitalize religious hate taught in m osques and conte ted position about religious free American Democracy, Princeton Univer madrasas in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, dom and its guarantees in the US . Ranged sity Press, 2001. ) The practice of public France and Germany. Religious motiva again t both fundamentalist and classical religion in the US continues a long tions on all sides are submerged in real liberal positions is the point of view that tradition in which grassroots religious politik and the cruel logic of war, but at religious fr eedom , and American demo associations and federations h elp t o the same time the energies and grand cracy itself, is best nurtured and guaran revitalise American democracy-a tradi strategies for politics and warfare appear teed when Americans of very different tion forever at odds with its contrary, the to grow out of considerations of sacred religious persuasions engage in public generation in local religious com history and sacred place. Just as weaponry debate, not only about their religious munities of profoundly antidemocratic and rival modes of organisation and com differences, but about public policy and organisations like the Ku Klux Klan. munication appear to be decisive factors its moral dimensions. This is the position The point for now, though, is not to in a secular war, so the religious charac for public religion. Its proponents see it establish connections between public ter of the war, within and between the working at two m om ents, which m ay be religion and American democracy. It is 'sides', becomes more salient, and terms separated only for heuristic purposes. In rather to note two things. First, that of comparative advantage fluctuate. the first, religiously committed citizens, contested views and practices relating to Until we decipher such riddles in open empowered by the confidence of their the triad of religion, citizenship and the and public discussion, in Islam and in the faiths but esch ewing the closure of state are core concerns for m any Ameri West, there can be no peace. • absolute certainty, seek understanding cans. And second, that these core throu gh their lifetimes in public concerns have been activated by Rowan Ireland was on overseas research conversations with the religiou s and September 11 and the war. In this way, leave at Harvard on September 11. He has non-religious other. In the second, the to quote Andrew Sullivan, 'the religious just returned to the sociology and anthro public space opened up by religious dimension of this conflict is central to pology program at LaTrobe University. VOLUME 12 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 27 POETRY At Sixes and Sevens C HRI S WALLA C E-C RABB E What lies under the lid of that much-dented saucepan on top of the stovez Old risotto gone beige, meanwhile Old Friend restless quinces rock in a bowl i.m. Graham Little and those belated bananas go soft, Virgilian, Dantesque, back on the quintessential table down through this languorous heat with crumbs and one lonely spoon. the first platoon of yellow leaves are drifting from laggard English elms Where on earth into the very street did the primal stories go where we last walked. and who ate the past? You were the wonderful talker, Neither chilli powder, salt famous for your measured rhythms nor the bright yellow quinces and curiously gentle diagonals will tell us at all: (inaudible from the table's wrong end) on this agreeable planet, food but your starry voice has fallen must own another language altogether into the long quiet. without clauses Autumn's hot doorstep but now we have a visitor tripped you up, even though at table, and party tables all over thinky Melbourne bringing a sturdy bag of lemons. are going to miss from now on the stayer, the sociable analyst: our deeply original voice. A Language of the Eye Interested in everything, We gaze and wonder what colours mean, imbued with both Belfast and Hampstead, apricot, amber, cool aquamarine. you once met Denis Compton. You lived above any cliche, Pleasing, they will not point a moral: could see our leaders as human vermilion, violet, royalblue, coral. and lucidly tell us why. From these you fashion whatever you can, Tolerance and indignation, bronze, turquoise, tangerine, tan. you knew, could stroll together: Sunrise may tell us roughly what's to come, 'The water in the glass is muddy, primrose, saffron, rust and plum, but is not mud,' you agreed, at home in the loving world blushing like the soft cheek of a girl of all who will miss you now. in rose madder, crimson, honey, pearl. And I might offer, in tune with love, cornflower, lavender, jade and mauve; then evening tucks our hopes away, amethyst, burnt sienna .. . grey. I can't resolve what our perceptions m ean: olive, cinnabar, ginger, green. 28 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 H EAL T H :2 MATT H EW KLUGMAN Blood matters We have always responded pow erfully to blood, w hether in a literal or sy mbolic se nse-think of blood brothers, menstru al blood and 'blue' blood. Thi s response runs deep, even w hen the extracti on and transfe r of bl ood has become a routine part of modern bio-medica l practi ce. Li ttle wonder then, that blood donation in th e era of HIV/AIDS should be so complicated. ON, OCTH' MANY P' "dox" of b VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA ST REET 29 long-standing culture of generosity within Australia's blood, their viability was at risk. 'AIDS in the blood blood banks, nor does it provide clear directions for supply' became front-page news. Public confidence decision-making in time of crisis. in the safety of the Australian blood supply was Since their beginnings in the 1920s and 1930s, shattered, donor numbers fell and som e infected the Australian blood banks have structured them recipients initiated litigation. selves around the giving- the gift-of blood. They In order to survive, Australia's blood banks, called it 'sharing life's best gi ft' (a statement that together with the Commonwealth government, m ight trouble som e theologians). The blood banks turned to pharmaceutical models of risk management. were dependent on the generosity of local volunteers, The manufacture of blood products became nationally and grew into strongly autonomous insti regulated under the Therapeutic Goods Administra tutions resembling professional charities, tion Act (which governs the manufacture and frequently marked by the character of their licensing of pharmaceutical products). All possible directors (as Mark Cortiula shows in his risks were identified and quantified, and appropriate comprehensive history of the NSW Blood management strategies were developed. Bank, Banking on Blood: A History of the With unsafe donations threatening their New South Wales Transfusion Service). existence, the blood banks remodelled them selves. When Richard Titmuss argued that the From being professional charity organisations they voluntary gift of blood made blood banking became something more akin to pharmaceutical special, part of a 'moral economy' that companies, and the gift of blood, now seen by some encouraged people to be generous to as a high-risk product, was regulated as if it were a strangers in need (see The Gift Relation commodity. ship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, Where did this crisis leave the long-standing 1970), he was articulating what Australian culture of generosity that had built up aro und blood banks had always believed- that Australia's voluntary blood donors? The answer can voluntary donations lent blood banking an be fo und in the response of Aus tralia's blood additional moral dimension. His book was banks and governments to the threat of celebrated by policy-makers and the public hepatitis C. alike. (See box opposite fDT more on Titmuss.) L E DISCOVERY OF HEPATITIS c-a blood-borne virus For Australia's blood banks this moral that can lead to serious liver disease-and the develop dimension was reflected in their expres m ent of screening t ests at the end of the 1980s sions of gratitude to donors, in their presented Australia's blood banks with the chance to provision of free transfusions of blood to test their new risk-management practices and see those in need, and in their obsession with whether they could avert the loss of confidence in the health and safety of recipients and the blood supply and the kind of litigation associated donors. The gift of blood was thus the foun with HIV/AIDS. dation stone for Australia's blood banks. It Because of HIV/AIDS, the health of transfusion took the advent of HIV /AIDS in the early recipients had become linked to the institutional and 1980s to reveal, publicly, the vulnerability functional viability of the Australian blood banks. In of this structure. the business-oriented language of risk management, Like all new disease threats, HIV /AIDS the health of recipients could be seen as a 'key initially caused uncertainty. It was unclear what it performance indicator' of blood banks. If recipients was, what measures should be taken to limit its spread became infected, public confidence in the blood supply through the blood supply, or what m easures were might fall and recipients might initiate litigation. needed to care for potentially infected donors and Blood banks and governments were therefore keen to recipients. The traditional, autonomous responses of develop a testing strategy that minimised the risks of Australian blood banks to such uncertainty- that is, hepatitis C infection to recipients as much as was largely independent policy development by auto practicable. They therefore 'deferred' all donors with nomous organisations-failed, in the eyes of many, indeterminate res ults (that is, results that were neither to safeguard the blood supply effectively against HIV / clearly positive nor negative), even when it became AIDS. Different blood banks responded at different clear subsequently that many individuals with times and in differing ways. On a national level it indeterminate results were unlikely to be infected was unclear who had final responsibility for policy with hepatitis C. development and implem entation, and how such This policy development was much more policies were to be developed. uniform than policy had been for HIV/AIDS. A joint Despite the fact that Australian blood banks had m eeting of blood-bank officials and federal and state/ been among the first in the world to initiate terri tory government representatives took clear HIV-screening for all donations and to request that responsibility for securing the safety of the Australian those at risk of contracting HIV /AIDS defer donating blood supply against the threat of hepatitis C. Policy 30 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 2002 was developed in line w ith risk-m an agem en t later, virologists and epidem iologists, were able to ph ilosoph y and its attendant cau tion an d risk develop further knowledge of hepatitis C and the new aversion. As a result of such national agreem ent, in test-expertise that laid a fo undation for the develop early 1990 Australia becam e just the second country ment of a Victorian and national hepatitis C strategy. to screen all blood donations for hepatitis C. Confu Australian blood banks were also concerned sion still rem ained, however, over who was to develop abou t the health of infected recipients. They felt a policy regarding the care of potentially infected donors moral obligation to try to locate transfusion recipi and recipien ts, and h ow this policy sh ould be ents known to have received blood potentially infected developed. with hepatitis C. Experience of similar programs with No extra government resources were available fo r HIV /AIDS suggested that a so-called 'lookback' the managem ent of these donors. But blood banks program for h epati tis C would be expensive and were concerned-and enterprising. The Victorian inefficient (tracing blood transfusions involved work Blood Bank form ed a link with hepatitis experts at St ing through m ountains of paperwork; also, a large Vincent's Hospital and other local m edical institu proportion of recipients were likely to have died fro m tions. Potentially infected donors were assessed and unrelated causes before they were located ). There were cared for by a range of local experts in gastroenterology, not the resources to fund such large-scale program s epidemiology and virology. Through this process the and a National Health and Medical Research Council Victorian Blood Bank was able to ensure that 'deferred' sub-committee decided that the costs would outweigh donors could be confident in the interpretation of their the ben efits. It was not until 1994 that the federal test results and would receive expert care and treat govermnent, under intense media scrutiny, reversed m ent if need be. In addition, gastroenterologists and, this decision, and announced that ext ending Known as the 'high priest of the welfare state', Richard M. Titmuss was born in 1907 into a family of farmers. An imaginative autodidact, he finished his formal education at 14 and becam e a qualified bookkeeper. But he was able to educate himself further through public libraries- an experience that led him to believe that public institutions could help people overcome the disadvantages of birth and circumstances and fostered a passion for making such opportunities available to all. Animated by the social and political interests of his wife, Kathleen Caston Miller, Titmuss began writing. In 1938 he published his first book, Poverty and Population . He soon began focusing on health care and was commissioned to write the official World War II history of the Ministry of H ealth (published as Problem s of Social Policy, 1950). Titmuss' genius was to link the ethical impulse with safety, m aking the Ri chard Titmuss (standing, compelling argument that gen erou s practices led to h eal th ier societies. His ri ght) with fell ow firewatchers comparisons of the health-care establishments of America and Britain solidified at St Paul 's Ca thedral, London, during th e wa r. his views (Com mitment to Welfar e, 1968), making him an ardent supporter of the 'welfare state' and leading him towards the Fabian wing of the Labour Party. His interest in blood banking arose in the 1960s, when m embers of London's Institute for Economic Affairs campaigned fo r the introduction of donor paym ents and competition between blood services. For Titmuss, blood banking was the greatest exemplar of his thesis-that an institution based on the generosity of gifts of blood was safer than blood banks that relied on paying individuals to donate their blood. He initially responded in a 1966 Fabian Lecture where he used blood banking as a case study to dem onstrate that m edical care should not be fo r sale. In turn, in 1968, two m embers of the Institute, Michael Cooper and Anthony Culyer, published a book prom oting the commercialisation of blood banking. Titmuss' rejoinder, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, struck a public nerve in America. There, exposes of illicit commercial blood collection practices had led m any to question their country's blood system. As a result, Titmuss was co-opted on to a Presidential Review where he helped the Nixon administration develop a new set of guidelines for American blood banking. H e died in 1973. V OLUME 12 N UM BE R 2 • EUREKA STREET 31 hepatitis C lookback was an ethical necessity even though the cost implications were considerable. 0\RECT MARKETING In the face of the threat hepatitis C presented to the security of Australian blood supply, the Austral THE COST EFFECTIVE SOLUTION ian blood banks had still fo llowed their 'moral duty' TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS! to ensure that potentially infected donors and recipients were provided with the best possible care. WE CAN HELP ANY BUSINESS In other words, they continued to pass on the gener ACHIEVE INCREASED PROFITS osity of voluntary donors to recipients and back again to donors in need. Here then is an alternative to Kim Beazley's WE ARE A FULL SERVICE MAILHOUSE OFFERING TAILORED MARKETING CAMPAIGNS TO BUSINESSES OF ANY SIZE - WE assertion that security should precede generosity. CAN PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS IN A WIDE VARIETY OF WAYS Blood banks, grounded in the day-to-day gifts of WITH MINIMUM COST ... volunteers, m aintained their culture of generosity AND MAXIMUM EFFECT I while working to maintain the security of the blood supply. This culture of generosity was threatened by the Nailind"' reluctance of Australia's governments to provide resources for the managem ent of potentially infected Adl/antage donors or for lookback programs that aim ed to locate Direct Mail §pecia/i§t transfusion recipients infected with hepatitis C. In the aftermath of HIV/AIDS there was a national com PROUD SUPPORTERS OF EUREKA STREET mitment to implementing risk-management policies AND DISTRIBUTORS OF MADONNA, to ensure the safety and security of the blood supply, EUREKA STREET AND NEWS FROM INDIA but there has been no such national commitment to developing policies that are philosophically and CONTACT OUR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE ethically informed by the generosity of BREE HUMPHRIS ON (03) 9872 6622 voluntary blood donors. E RTHER WORK NEEDS to be done to provide a clear articulation of the future development of blood policy. The decision-making stru ctures of the Australian blood-banking sector have been clarified since the early 1990s- the Australian Red Cross has formed a National Blood Service, while the federal government strengthened the national co-ordination of blood policy by establishing a blood policy body under the CHATTER AWAY! auspices of the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Committee. Uncertainty remains, however, over who March Highlights has the final responsibility for blood policy develop m ent in the face of a crisis, or what rationale will Land of the Long Black Cloud guide the development of su ch policy. Jim Davidson The Review of the Australian Blood Banking and Plasma Product Sector was ideally placed to provide John Monfries on Suha11o a clear vision for blood policy development. Estab lished in 1999, it had two years to com e up with a n ew framework tha t could su ccessfully carry Roger Magnusson's Australian blood banking into the new century. The Euthanasia Underground Review's 2001 report provides some excellent recom mendations on the need to improve the clinical use Mark Peel on the Holocaust of blood, but it fails to say who should be responsible for responding to a policy crisis. In addition, its vague Jill Ker Conway's New Memoir rationale for policy development neglects the part that reliance on voluntary donors may play in any such Subscribers save 15% on cover price development. The Review's central recommendation is the Subscribe now! $63.50 for ten issues (incl. GST) establishment of an independent National Blood .Ph: (03) 9429 6700 or E-mail: abr(U;vicnet.net.au Authority to develop advice on blood matters. The Also available at select bookstores and newsagents concept of a national authority seems to promise 32 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 2002 clarity, but the status of the proposed Authority's Australia's enviable record of providing safe, high advice is unclear. The Review report states that: quality blood transfu sion services: 'Australian volunteer donors have played an important part in National blood policy should continue to be developed this achievement; continuing support of donors in the by the Commonwealth in collaboration with States future is essential.' Some 30 years earlier, Richard and Territori es. In developing national policies, Aus Titmuss twinned the safety and quality of the blood tralian Health Ministers should draw on advice from supply with the sense of m oral responsibility am ong the N ational Blood Authority and from existing health voluntary blood donors. The Review had the oppor system structures and arrangem ents. tunity to develop a new fram ework that brought H ere it would seem that the Australian health together the necessary reforms of the past two decades ministers, rather than the Blood Authority, would be with the moral legacy of the voluntary donations that responsible for the final blood policy decisions. But continue to sustain and enrich the Australian blood the Health Ministers Committee is advisory only, and supply. The merger is not yet complete. in the face of alternative policy proposals, it is unclear Blood evokes powerful and com plica ted on whose advice the health ministers would base their responses, including the desire to keep the blood decisions. Plainly, an overarching body such as the supply as safe as possible. This is clearly a vital issue. proposed National Blood Authority should work with However, the history of Australian blood banks, and existing advisory bodies when their interests inter their reliance on voluntary donors, shows the impor sect. However, further clarification is needed of who tance of a policy fram ework that extends beyond is responsible for the final decision, how opposing security concerns and risk minimisation to m eet the policy recommendations would be assessed, and how generosity of donors who give their blood to strangers policy development would be translated into action in need. The challenge fo r blood banking and public by Australia's blood banks. (For example, would blood policy in general, is to create a vision that holds the banks have to wait for the Authority to ratify the two together, ensuring support for both; a vision that, recommendations of existing advisory bodies, or like blood bankin g, is grounded in daily acts of would they have to wait for the health ministers, and kindness to strangers. • what would they do in the face of opposing policy recommendations?) Matthew Klugman is a freelance writer currently A continued reliance on voluntary donors was working on the history of the Australian Red Cross one of the terms of reference when the Review was Blood Transfusion Service-Victoria. established in 1999 . Yet the Review's report does not explore how this reliance might inform the develop ment of future blood policy. Instead, it suggests, rather vaguely, that advice on blood matters be developed in the 'context of national public health and risk m anagem ent applicable to Australia's circumstances'. Join us on There is no doubt that the national regulation of the Australian blood supply and the concurrent develop m ent of risk -m anagem ent strategies has been successful in making it one of the safest blood supplies aroadless in the world. However, it is worrying that there is little place in the Review's recommendations for the reciprocal generosity of blood policy that has travelled. characterised Australian blood banks. To commit to a system of reliance on voluntary donors without also committing to obligations that follow from this reliance is to trivialise the role voluntary donors play in blood banking. Moreover, much creative and innovative policy has been devel oped by blood banks as they attempt to meet their moral obligations. As already noted, the link between www.jesuit.org.au the Victorian Blood Bank and local hepatitis C experts led to the development of knowledge and policy that extended far beyond the realms of blood matters, and Contact: Br Jan C ribb SJ formed the basis of Australia-wide hepatitis C-test PO Box 136 interpretative strategies. Pymblc NSW 2073 Sir Ninian Stephen, in submitting the Review of Tel 02 9488 4525 the Australian Blood Banking and Plasma Product Sector report to the fed eral government, noted V OLU ME 12 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 33 [ H EsHoRrLIS] Dominican Spirituality, Erik Borgman, Con distinguished Prospera in his tim e) a Gandalf or to think that Ian tinuum, 2001 . ISBN 0 826 45684 7, RRP $32.95 Holm makes an ideal Frodo, rustic but strong at the sam e time. As any Jesuit would, I h esitat ed before With John le M esurier as old Bilbo Baggins and Robert Stephens as pronouncing judgm ent o n a book abo ut Aragorn, this is a dream dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings and Dominican spirituality, particularly as my somehow the fact that it is all done though words and auditory DOMIN I C A N appreciative conclusions would have shocked suggestion makes this 13-hour version of the whole of SPIRIT U ALIT Y The Lord of many of our respective forebears who felt obliged the Rings m ore enchanting than any visual translation is ever to be at odds. In this account of Dominican likely to be. Because of the film, The Fellowship of the Ring (wh ich spirituality, I found a lively and attractive runs for four hours and 35 rninutes) is available separately. This is description of the core of Ignatian spirituality: a version of The Lord of the Rings which will please every hobbit '· r ' .. r.. ~~.~,~~~~.tit· the encounter of God in all of hun1an experi ence, in sight but is also dramatic and thrilling enough to captivate all with the central conviction being that God is to be found in the comers. -Peter Craven human heart. T he quality of the writing, by a Dutch member of the Dominican third order, also reassures any who might need reassur The Picador Book of African Stories, Stephen ance that not all went wrong with the post-conciliar Dutch church. Gray (ed.L Picador, 2001. ISBN 0 330 36989 X, The convergence of spiritualities perhaps reflects the fact that RRP $21 Borgman is a layman. Lay interpreters necessarily seek translations These subtle stories were delibera tely chosen to of spiritual insights that fit everyday livi ng; they describe the give a varied perspective on Africa. From all skeletal structure of a spirituality while paying less attention to the over the continent, women and m en describe liP'i~Bn~l'n'V'I', refinements of the tradition. Borgman's aphorism is pertinent to all the bizarre relationship of the individual to spiritualities with legs: Dominican spirituality is about 'a life in history. Some pieces were written in English; search of order, not an Order in search of life'. m an y others were translated from French, -Andrew Hamilton SJ Portuguese, Arabic and Afrikaans. In his intro duction, Stephen Gray shows a great web of Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington/Nugi ,..r overlapping identities and associations. For instance, African writing Garimara, UQP, first published 1996, film in Arabi c is understood in terms of both African literature as a edition 2001. ISBN 0 702 23281 5, RRP $ 18.95 whole and the international Arabic literary canon. This book, now a successful fi lm, is almost It's a lively coll ection, coherent and sophisticated, sometimes unbearable to read, and yet is still compulsive. disconcertingly alien- the stories are written on their own terms. Doris Pilkington (whose Indigenous name is There are Malawis in Z imbabwe, Indians in Tanzania, Moroccans Nugi Garimara) is a writer of many skills, and in France. There arc m om ents of hilarity, sarcasm, anger and joy, here uses them to tel l the extraordinary story of pettiness and sensuality. And intense suffering, mitigated only by her mother, Molly. But first Pilkington/ the possibility of transcendence, 'because none of us ever learned Garimara propels you through the history of her our lesson, or loved enough to learn fro m our pain, or took the great family, going back to the bewilderm ent and scream of history seriously enough'. dispossession of her tribe when white settlers came and fenced off Many migrants and refugees com e from countries we know their food sources and their sacred sites, then punished them for nothing about, which would be reason enough to read this book. 'stealing' stock and 'trespassing' on land they had lived on for But it's also a great pleasure, suffused as it is with talent and hope 40,000 years. This is history written by survivors, if not winners. and 'a faint irony of fl owers'. -Susannah Buckley When the inevitable half-European children were born, the various authorities sought to detach them from their families. Pilkington's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Catholicism, account of the grief felt at this is almost clinically dispassionate, Alban McCoy, Continuum, 2001. ISBN 0 826 and all the more effective for that. Rabbit-Proof Fence tells how 45609 X, RRP $39.95 Molly guided her two sisters back home after they were stolen, Alban McCoy is chaplain at Cambridge Univer 1600 kilometres along the rabbit-proof fence. Such heroism , uch sity, and this book came out of lunchtime talks tenacity, deserves its record, but the ultimate outcomes were not to students there. The first section, on ques an unmixed triumph, unless it be for the fact that som e of these tions people ask, is in the form of traditional children knew freedom for a while. -Juliette Hughes apologetics. In its written form, it m oves so quickly that it demands of its readers not only T he Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, BBC intelligence but a good backgro und in radiocollection,l981 (re-release2001). 4cds, ------apologetics. McCoy does not shirk the hard also available on cassette. RRP $195 (CDs), issues; neither does he give an inch, with his concessions to $165 (cassettes) contemporary sensibility minimal. He would provoke spirited At a time when all of N ew Zealand (and conversation. In the later sections on the commandments and the significant fractions of the rest of the world) seven deadly sins, McCoy loosens up and is able to enter the is consumed with Lord of the Rings fever it's imaginative world of today's students. H e led m e to w onder why it worth noting that the BBC has recently is o much easier to write gracefully and graciously about the re-released their radio version as a spoken-word recording on CD challenges of Christian life than about the coherence of C hristian and cassettes. Dating fro m 1981 , it's one of the most powerfully faith . McCoy reads widely and writes well, and even if I would imagined things the Beeb ever did. You don' t have to be a Middle not hire him as a guide, I would enjoy his company for a da y's Earth fanatic to gasp at the grandeur of Michael Hordern (a travel. -A.H 34 EURE KA STREET • M ARC H 2002 BOOKS: 1 PETER MARES The one that got away with it Suharto: A Political Bi ograph y, R.E. Elson, Cambridge University Press, 200 l. ISBN 0 521 77326 1, RRP $59 .95 SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS it looked as agricultureastheprimesourceofeconomic if Suharto might be about to breathe his output. Suharto was greatly assisted by the last. The 80-year-old was struggling with long years of the oil boom, which gave him pneumonia and his hold on life was so the cash to buy loyalty and disguised the tenuous that the children kept vigil at the impact of corruption on the economy. hospital. Even the recently recaptured In the end, corruption played a significant Tommy(HutomoMandalaPutra, Suharto's role in bringing Suharto down, but for three youngest son) was briefly escorted from his decades it was fundamental to the pow- prison cell to the patriarch's bedside to pay er structure of the N ew Order regim e. his respects. In the event, with the best m edical care that money can buy, Suharto 1N THIS DETAILED and chronological bio- pulled through and was able to return home. graphy, R.E. Elson (professor in the School The episode confirmed that the former ofAsianandinternationalStudiesatGriffith dictator would never be brought to account University) reveals the early roots of for his crimes. After such a public exhibi- Suharto's extraordinary capacity to mix tion of frailty, it is unimaginable that the business and politics to advance his own old man will be made to stand in the dock position and that of those around him. He and confront his past. documents a young Suharto's use of mili- This represents a great setback in the tary vehicles to set up a transport business struggle to build a more democratic In done- for soldiers demobilised at the end of the sia. It is not that revenge is important- revolution against the Dutch. Suharto's though watching Suharto s uffer the commercial alliance with the now-jailed discomfort of a prison cell would no doubt Sino-Indonesian timber tycoon, Mohamad be a source of great satisfaction to his many 'Bob' Hasan also began in the 1950s, partly victims. Rather, it means an opportunity as a way of feeding the troops under his lost to discredit permanently the regime command. In direct contravention of gov- and its mechanics of power. The humiliat- ernment regulations prohibiting barter, ing spectacle of a public trial could have Suharto appropriated sugar from factories finally shredded the cloak of authority with in Central Java and swapped it for rice from which Suharto surrounded himself in office Thailand and Singapore. Such off-budget and helped to build momentum for a more financing of the armed forces became a decisive push against the remnants of his characteristic feature of the New Order. N ew Order regime. The danger now is that Elson quotes one telling instance: in the the brutal reality of Suharto's enforced 1980s, the estimated amount of m oney stability will be disguised by the patina of diverted to the armed forces from the state age, making it appear ever more attractive oil company, Pertamina, and other enter- when compared with the ugly inadequacies prises was equivalent to more than one of contemporary civilian rule. third of the official defence budget, funding The remarkable economic growth the purchase of weapons and equipment. achieved under Suharto will also add a rosy Military enterprise began as an under- glow to the Suharto legacy. When he standable, and perhaps necessary, form of manoeuvred Sukarno out of office in 1967, 'foraging', to feed a rag- tag revolutionary the country was an economic shambles, army, but it soon became entrenched as a unable to produce enough food for its people key source of funding. With commanding or attract productive investment. Under officers lining their pockets along the way, Suharto's leadership Indonesia became self- there was no interest in calling a halt to sufficient in rice and industry overtook such activities. These practices continue to V OLUME 12 NUMBER 2 EUREKA STREET 35 fuel social unrest and violence in Indonesia affair, manoeuvring to dispose of rival today. In Aceh and Ambon, soldiers make military commanders, wea ken Sukarno and extra money by selling weapons to the forces outflank the Indonesian communist party they are supposed to be fighting, or by all in one go. Elson argues convincingly that setting up 'security' checkpoints along such a daring plan does not accord with major roads, where the primary purpose is Suharto's innate and well-docum ented to extract a toll payment from all who pass ca ution. There was far too great a potential by. Just as the military cashed in on the for things to go awry for Suharto to have coffee, marble and sandalwood businesses drea mt up such an enterprise or even lent in Ea st Timor, so too do they have a com his name to it. m ercial interest in logging and mining in Alongside corruption and an enormous other parts of the archipelago today. capacity for calculated brutality, caution According to Elson, Suharto was con was a hallmark of Suharto's career. But in cerned about corruption, but only in so far stressing Suharto's ca ution, Elson presents as it could damage his regime: us with an unresolved contradiction. If Su harto was so cautious then why did he He had nothing to say ... about those who allow his children to wreak such economic were already wea lth y seeking to en large havoc? If his attitude to corruption was themselves at the public expense or through truly utilitarian- allowing only those private kickbacks and commissions activities that did not damage his regime provided that they co ntinued to perform then why such a blind spot for the rampant their duties well and did not embarrass the rent-seeking of Tommy and his sibl ings? government-and his silence can only be Elson offers a few explanations. Perhaps it taken to mean th at he saw no moral problem was fatherly indulgence born of the fact in social leaders disposing of public goods that Suharto had little to do with his own for their own benefit if the ge nerality of natural parents. Perhaps it was his attempt their activities led to the grea ter good of to create a dynasty, knowing that the poli ti the whole community, that is, th e process cal fortunes of his children would depend of development. (pl96) more on money than military muscle. In Suharto's ability to manipulate and guide the end, the answers do not sa tisfy and this such processes helps in no small way to in part reflects Elson 's ca ution toward his explain his rise to power. As Elson points subject. This is, as the subtitle proclaims, a out, there was nothing predetermined about 'political' biography. Elson meticulously New Directions Sabbatical Suharto's dominant role in Indonesian documents Suharto's public career-and the New spirit for a new world history: 'The powerful lens of hindsight detail of military commands and the welter Renew tends to focus on Suharto as a man of power of names can be a little overwhelming- but and destiny, moving irresistibly towards he eschews any attempt to psychologise you r spir it in a flexible program, a global the apex of power. The real story is both him. Elson draws almost exclusively on commun ity, and the scenic San Francisco Bay area. Whether you more complex and more fascinating.' (pl20) written sourc s, and is at times perhaps a wa nt to take a break or take on new Without the extraordinary events of 30 little too inclined to accept some of Suharto's experiences, you wi ll enjoy a wide September 1965, when six army generals self-serving comments at face value. range of spiritual, recreatio nal , and were murdered in an apparent coup attempt, As a journalist I longed fo r Elson to academic resources. Suharto 'might have served out his da ys in interview those who had been close to efficiently executed but mundane obscurity' Suharto. No doubt many cronies and allies N ew Directions (pll9). The events of 30 September propell ed would still refuse to speak candidly, but a sabbatical for one or two semesters Suharto into a position of unprecedented others, dropped along the way as their use authority, although Elson argues that his fulness waned, would now feel free to speak initial position was far from secure. He out. They could perhaps provide som e JESUIT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY outlines how Suharto moved ten tatively additional insight into Suharto's capacity at Berkeley and cautiously to explore the new political for violence, his attitude to his children and a member of the terrain before asserting himself at the very the extent of his personal avarice, elem ents Graduate Theological Union centre of power. It was almost a year before that are absent from Elson's account. This Suharto finally decided that Sukarno had to would have req uired Elson to abandon some 1735 LeRoy Avenue be replaced as president, and even then, of his own caution, to depart from the Berkele~ CA 94709 according to Elson, he did not automati clinical approach to biography and engage (800) 824-0122 cally assume that he would take the post in a degree of speculation about the man (51 0) 549-5000 himself. and his motives. • Fax(510)841-8536 The fact that Suharto was not among E-mail: [email protected] the generals killed on the night of 30 Sep Peter Mares presents Asia Pacific at Sp m www.jstb.edu tember has fu elled conspiracy theories that each weeknight on Radio Australia and portray him as the mastermind of the whole Radio National. 36 EU REKA STREET M ARCH 2002 BOOKS:2 PH I L I P HARVEY The candid pen A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood 1943- 1995, Gregory Kratzmann (e d.), University of Queensland Press, 2001. ISBN 0 702 23257 2, RRP $40 l Gw•N HARwooo's first letter to her strawberries that I thought it would go future editor Greg Kratzmann, she pleads, down like the walls of Jericho. [We] ordered 'As for m y life, there's little to tell.' This a dessert called "Knickerbocker glory", a faux-naif, som e would even say housewifely, real old-fashioned icecream, butterscotch denial is followed with, 'I've never climbed fudge, chocolate sauce, nuts, wafers and higher than 1270 metres or been out of alps of whipped cream.' And that's a brief Australia or divorced or psychoanalysed or report. Harwood's greedy observations of [been] pursued by a bear.' (28 February 1991) meals and spreads fill entire pages. Like Suggestive and flirtatious, Harwood's con wise her observation of society, where she trasting qualification is a game her readers is a cunning cross between Jane Austen and recognise instantly. It is the talent of a poet Edna Everage. with the skill to excite her reader into want Those in search of a nascent feminist ing to know more. In this brick of a book we before her time will find instead a woman get to know much more than we bargained recording the trials and joys of motherhood, for. If 'there's little to tell', Harwood finds a a poet up against an accepted hierarchy of hundred-and-one ways of spinning it magi gentlemen poets, a secretary very much at cally into full-scale display. the mercy of her employer's daily moods. Harwood's is a tale of two cities, Bris Just occasionally she will write to a female bane and Hobart. Brisbane is childhood and correspondent: 'I dream of a world in which youth, the paradisalgarden, the blessed city there is no insoluble choice for women; not Jerusalem, made still more glorious by her in our lifetime, I fear, but it will come if as it becomes further distant in time and enough of u s refuse ... the male interpreta space. Hobart is adulthood, a much more Gwen Foster (Harwood), Brisbane, 1939 tion.' (2 February 1961) At the same time, vexed proposition, at times surprising, more dynamic involvement in the world. 'The she seems openly resistant to activism when often a place of stoical endurance, even span of time grows shorter', she writes to the movement takes root in the 1970s. horror. 'I would like to get out of Tasmania Riddell(! May 1967), 'but that means nothing A neglected area in Harwood criticism is for ever; I loathe the place in spite of its in terms of the inner life where depth alone h er religion and here we are given an beauty' (10 Aprill970) she spits, not for the counts.' expanded sense of the reasons for her sub first time, but though she threatens to go Letters were another extension of Gwen scription to High Church Anglicanism. and live in such exotic places as Rome or Harwood's ability to amuse. Those pub Clearly she goes to church 'for the music Melbourne, she stayed in the pendant isle lished here are preoccupied with domestic there', acting as organist in different places, all her married life. The mythic use of these life, social life and literary life. Little more. but her theological interests are hinted at two places is familiar from the poetry, and Politics barely registers on the Richter Scale. and her need for an ordered liturgy is vital. the letters only confirm the view that Gwen Issues of the day, if m entioned at all, seem She is quite familiar with Jesus and talks Harwood was not using the contrast purely incidental to the writer's glee in making about him in every manner from the childish for artistic ends. her friends laugh. Her program will always ness of her 'Jonquil Jesus' in folding yellow Coleridge's 'friendship is a sheltering tree' include space for a divertimento. She learnt robes, through to the deeply reverential, is quoted as a motif for the collection, stead early too the skill of keeping consolations then to the blase and ribald, a characteristic fast friendship being from first till last the brief and practical as possible. of churchgoers that non-churchgoers find prime motive for her correspondence. N ews Fifty years m ove at their gradual, irre perplexing, if they are aware of it at all. Her is never just newsy, but opportunity for sistible pace. Home life and family take favourite festival is Corpus Christi. Jesus entertainment or reflection. Her lifelong precedence at all times. Everything is inter gets more time than Wittgenstein but is not correspondence with Thomas 'Tony' Riddell rupted by the need to get the kids to school listed in the index. At the same time as being in particular takes up half the book, an or the dinner on the table. Descriptions of a regular and dedicated worshipper, though, outpouring of candour, concision and sheer boating, gardening, jam-making ('enough Harwood confesses seeing no point in organ joy with life that amply supports her asser for the Chinese army') break through every ised religion, making her perhaps more tion that 'our friendship will always "flow where. As well as a true portrait of home typical of many Australian churchgoers than on into the living"'. The extended presenta life, the letters are a mini-history of 20th is generally acknowledged. Alternatives are tion of the letters to special correspondents century Australian gastronomy. 'I had sea never suggested. like Riddell, Edwin Tanner, Ann Jennings food pie and salad and an alarmingly The letters are a cornucopia of mischie and others, with very rare elisions, broadens decorated pavlova pudding which supported vous, irresistible and erudite English, the appreciation of her devotion as well as her such a weight of whipped cream, bananas & timing impeccable. Her skill with a running VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STR EET 37 gag is equal to her skill with irregular feet. that seemed to have been written by a Rom anticism, especially in the madden Poetry came early and these letters confirm typewriter. Like m any poets, she envied ingly delightful letters to Norman Talbot, that writing verse was simply something the pu rity and immediacy of musical th at could be expanded to a volume. she knew she was good at. It was enlivening. expression and, unlike many poets, she had Glimpses too of her philosophic am our For this reason she bemoans 'the fate of great musical ability. Harwood did very Ludwig Wittgcnstein, source of her other many a poem', her own included, 'becoming little if any reviewing in her life (her com religion, 'the language-game'. A collection an obj ect of study, not of artistic enjoyment' ments about critics, editors and academics of the epistolary verse would be a treat. Or (14 January 1971). Hence her fascination are the bitchiest in the book; and her individual correspondences could be a with forms, how they work, how to make publisher is 'Anguish & Robbery'), so these solution. A collection of the letters between something original with them. Such pleas letters are our first real exposure to her Harwood and Buckley or Harwood and her ure in the making of poetry inevitably came critical thought. Sh e 'always enjoyed' what musical collaborator Larry Sitsky would be into trouble, though, when she decided to Bruce Beaver said, bu t fo und 'his style entertaining portraits of friendships and engage with the literary world. porridgy'. Buckley'sArcady eJ Other Places the focus of special conversations on vita Harwood catalogues rejection slips, is 'quite simply ... the best book of Austral brevis, ars longa that we only guess at with misplaced manuscripts, ignorant editors ian poetry in existence'. Francis Webb is the present selection . It must be said, envy all the details of a poet's life that don 't 'unmatched, but there's a kind of mad is the sin that besets a reader, thinking of change-grinding her teeth at the thank privacy that defeats me'. the editor with ready access to ten times less vocation of poet. 'It is to me a hateful A collected Harwood letters would swell m ore correspondence raging above the same talent. I cannot bury it. I would wther have to Boswellian proportions. At the sam e signature. • been happy', she confides to Vincent time, the craving for more will n ot aba te. Buckley (30 August 1961). Elsewhere she The them atic collection is one solution. Philip Harvey is a poet and librarian at the writes: 'It's assumed that poetry in Aus We see glimpses of her passion for German Join t Theological Library, Melbourne. tralia is a substance of no commercial value that can be produced anywhere in odd BOO KS:3 moments.' (9 May 1967) Meanwhile her A DREW HAMIL TON own creative life continues with energetic playfulness. The letters con tain many mar vellous poems dashed off on the spur of the moment. This acrostic sonnet to Tony Riddell (20 July 1960), for example, in res ponse to Meanjin editor Clem Christesen's Talk about us rejection of her highly structured work in favour of a poem of dwindling returns and The Alfred Deakin Lectures: Ideas for the Future of a Civil Society, ABC Books, 200 1. eminent laxness entitled 'Goods Train': ISBN 0 733 3 1053 2, RRP 29.95. The Barton Lectures. Unity and Diversity: A National ON A SECOND READ ING OF 'GOODS TRAIN' Conversation, Helen Irving (ed.), ABC Books, 2001 . ISBN 0 733 3 103 1 I, RRP $22.95. Boyer Lectures 2001. This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions, When I consider how I used to write Geoffrey Blaincy, ABC Books, 2001. ISBN 0 733 3 1035 4, RRP $19.9S Rhythmical verse, and keep my meaning wed Ever to form; and see the rubbish spread Carelessly through Meanjin: all the spite, T,CtNTCNAH o> Ao"u[un Fedm- rn a<,[ ' upniotity om the puctiw '"d Knavishness, nastiness, readiness to fight tion appears now to belong to another attitudes of earlier Australians. That mar my lovely na ture, make their bed generation. After Tampa and September The Barton lectures examine Australian Here. I resign poetic maidenh ead. 11 , its celebration seem s as remote as Adam lines of tension today. Although federation A-whoring I shall go, this very night. and Eve's Garden of Ed en holiday snaps fo rms the point of reference, historical after the Fall. refl ection is m ore muted than in Blainey's There'll be no peace for Editors who take It is not the fa ult of the writers that it is lectures, and is introduced mainly in order Things like 'Goods Train'. I'll prostitute my art. difficult to enter these admira ble collec- to illuminate the Australia of our own day. (Reserved exclusively fo r CBC tions of lectures on the past and future of The lectures deal with relationships- Are several'translations', each a fa ke.) Australia, for the talks were conceived and between city and country, between classes, I' ll tout myself all ro und, a lyric tart. m ostly given before September. Nor is it the between Indigenous and colonisers, between No one will know who is or isn't fault of the ABC, whose importance in A us- states and Commonwealth. By referring to G tralian national life lies not simply in broad - the origins of the myths that colour the way G did indeed have high poetic stand casting but in encouraging and recording we speak about these relationships, they ards, quoting approvingly James Merrill's intelligent conversation about Australia. test the m yths. 'stiff rhythm s, gorgeous rhym es'. Even this Geoffrey Blainey's Boyer lectures offer a The Alfred Deakin lectures offer the squib has echoes of John Donne. The letters historical perspective on contemporary A us- largest and m ost disparate treatment of reinforce wh at we already know about tralian concem s about ecology, development, Australia under many headings. Speakers Harwood's handful of prosodic tenets: the the rural experience and equality. Blainey is discuss Australia's place in Asia, the image poem must have form, must entertain at an engaging guide, and generally stresses the we have of Australia, immigration, race, som e level, must convince, must achieve continuity between the present and the past. globalisation, sport, the information net- creative tension. She had no time for poetry He argues repea tedly with those who claim work, science, water and urban design. T he 38 EU REKA STREET • M ARCH 2002 lecturers address future development in these For that reason, Blainey is opposed to 'black cies, moral considerations are forcibly various areas. Most are practical in orienta armband' history. excluded from public discussion. Because tion, with some notable theoretical accounts Blainey is worth reading for his sense of Said sees history from the perspective of to which I shall return later. The merit of the the importance of particular places and those whose humanity is abused, he accepts collection is its demonstration of the com times. I find lacking in his work, however, the intellectual's responsibility to describe plexity of Australian national life. a strong moral vision, a sense of human faithfully the processes and conflicts of Readers who seek from these lectures dignity that transcends place and time and interest that lead to people being crushed: illumination about the future of Australia leads to outrage at the abuse of human 'The intellectual's role is first to present will inevitably come with questions drawn dignity in any time or place. That vision alternative narratives and other perspec from more recent events. They will ask demands a concomitant sense of evil, not in tives on history than those provided by what kind of Australia our children will combatants on behalf of official memory inherit in the face both of a unilaterally and national identity, who tend to work in imposed world order and of a diminished terms of falsified unities, the manipulation public respect for human dignity inherent of demonised or distorted representations in recent Australian abuse of asylum of undesirable and/or excluded populations, seekers. These events provide the context and the propagation of heroic anthems sung for defining Australian society. in order to sweep all before them.' His From this perspective, I found the astringent general reflections illuminate sceptical and probing contributions to the more precisely than most local comment series to be of more interest than those that beings whose evil we can contemplate the condition of Australia after Woomera. were celebratory and treated of surfaces. confident of our own superiority, but in the In his treatment of globalisation, too, The crises of the second half of 2001 suggest sense that when human beings of any gen Amartya Sen, Indian-born and now at Cam that admirable Australian practices and eration pursue their own interests, they can bridge, finds a path between rejection of attitudes need more than evocation and act in a fashion whose evil is demonstrated globalisation and enthusiastic or weary serendipity for their sustaining. They demon by the suffering inflicted on others. For all acceptance of its necessity. He is sceptical, strate how even Australian qualities like the differences between places and times, insisting that we ask in whose benefit egalitarianism and mateship can be manipu the common claim that humanity makes particular forms of global arrangements are, lated to encourage acquiescence in their on us demands that we be open to judge and and how inequalities and asymmetries in erosion. to be judged in respect of what we do. power can be addressed. He asserts that if Read within this context, Blainey's Blainey is not alone in lacking a univer the market is a good, it is good for the lectures are genial and are helpful in pointing salmoral framework. The easy celebration market that as many people as possible can out the mixture of insight and obtuseness, of of difference is generally characteristic of function equally within it. The present moral courage and moral cowardice that the Australia represented in these collec inequalities and asymmetries prevent the prevail in any time, including our own. One tions. Some writers lament the absence of a proper flourishing of the market. In this of his most interesting early books dealt with larger moral narrative; others celebrate it; essay he establishes a proper place for 'the tyranny of distance'. The image allowed all regard it as inevitable. But its corollaries government regulation in the interests of Blainey to deploy in illuminating ways his are recognised: the loss of an egalitarian globalisa tion. extraordinarily strong sense of locality. He society, the absence of an agreed vision for Robert Manne's account of his own has always been sensitive to the impact that Australia, and frequent complaints about history, too, has a moral centre that owes place has on social life and relations, on the absence of leadership that favours much to his being the son of Jewish refugees. perceptions and judgments of the world. In national decency or generosity. It is understandable that in his scholarship showing how our lives are shaped by place The contributions that I found most he has taken a consistent interest in questions and distance, Blainey also emphasises the illuminating in the collections were often of justice and exclusion. He celebrates the importance of our place in time. He con by visiting scholars or by children of immi rich Australian tradition of hospitality to cludes that we should not quickly judge the grants. They own a strong ethical sense human beings in need, and trenchantly achievements and shortcomings of past which enables them to accept conflict about criticises the cultural and political move generations. While their response may have public values and at the same time to take ments that threaten that hospitality. been different from that of our time, we both strong positions. Finally, notable and a little disturbing is display the same mingled generosity and self Edward Said, born in Palestine and the absence of any discussion of religious interest. Both their achievements and their resident in the United States, describes faith or of the churches in these collections. weaknesses should be recorded faithfully. exactly the way that in modern democra- Notable, because the moral and spiritual Imprints Booksellers- Adelaide's leading independent bookshop committed to justice, equity, peace, reconciliation ... Imprints an active contributor to the culture. BOOKSELLERS 107 Hindley St, Adelaide ph. 8231 4454 fax 8410 1025 email [email protected] www.imprints.com.au VOLUME 12 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 39 values to which so many writers allude have values. In the absence of such conversation, away from them all. There's another story historically been given institutional form we are left with an unarticulated hope that of a man who's doing dangerous good works and commended by churches and motivated conventional Australian values will endure. in an unstable country beca use he's haunted by Christian faith. Even if the phenomenon When the techniques that led to Woomera by his betrayal of his son and there's a story is seen as disagreeable, it merits attention. are set loose against other groups of about a man who hunger to run away from Disturbing, because the values of many Australians, and legislative support for his wife and is confronted with the oppor Australians, including particularly those of human rights is further eroded in the name ttmity when a chance encounter in America immigrant Australians, are still shaped by of security against terrorism, that hope may dovetails-or doesn't-with a long-nurtured religious beliefs and practices. One may well prove naive. • dream or fantasy. believe that religious faith provides a fa lse There's also a story about a German basis for public values. But at least conver Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United graduate student with a girlfriend from a sation about this basis provokes discussion Faculty of Theology and is the publisher of New York Orthodox Jewish family which about the way in which we ground Australian Eureka Street. nibbles round the question of German guilt and the possibility of Jewish moral hysteria. BOOKS:4 This last belongs with the longer stories in this volume but is probably the least PETER C RAVEN successful of them because the central datum here (which is to do with circumci sion) just doesn't work. It reads weLl but the ending has a Lyric realist factitious conclusiveness that leaves us nowhere and point to the thinness of the Flights of Love, Bernhard Schlink, Weidcnfcld and Nicholson, 200 l. characterisation and its closeness to stereo ISil N 0 297 82903 3, RRP $29.95 type. This is one of Schlink's quizzical 'German' stories, refusing all monopolies on justice, but the very fact that it toys with B mNHAWS HUN 40 EUREKA STREET MARCH 2002 It may be that what we get in Flights of the medium. He takes it as his brief and adviser to the first two presidents of Abaza. Love are almost the scenarios for discarded when he catches fire with it we seem In the present of the book's narrative, when novels, of which the author grew too against the odds- to be in the presence of a the book is assembled at James Cook impatient to give the skeletons flesh. storyteller (alive to every kind of moral and University, Aba has fled the regim e of Certainly nothing in it is as 'written' as in psychological complexity) who can give General Dugi. The Reader, though there is plenty to keep fiction the kind of unambiguous narrative Aba has been Svengali to the tyrannical every kind of reader turning the pages and it authority it has in the Victorian novel or that and loony 'Eternal' President Nadi and his will leave some of them wondering, at least linked images have in a film by John Ford.• lazy and self-indulgent successor Sangana, sometimes, how such wisdom has been got who was devoted to jazz music and making out of such flat words. Peter Craven is the editor of Quarterly movies. Aba knows more than anyone else Bernhard Schlink is a modern drama tic Essay, the ongoing series of political essays about what really happened in Abaza, and master for whom fiction just happens to be published by Black Inc. he is living out his days in a luxury men only resort in Queensland. BOOKS:S Suspense is created despite what seem s PAUL TANKARD to be an arbitrary method of organisation. But it is a novel, to be read in sequence, and Nowra postpones the appearance of par ticular snippets of the history by carefully assigning the proper nouns of his subjects All in order to the latter letters of the alphabet. Increas ingly, as we reach (Max) Radley, (Rowan) Abaza: A Modern Encyclopedia, Young, Vampire Days, Vao and finally Zot, Louis Nowra, Picador, 2001. ISilN 0 330 36310 7, RRP $21 the connections with Australia becom e more apparent, and the more personal drama A T LEAST THREE contemporary trends What then makes it a novel? It's not a concerning the still-living characters comes converge in this new novel by Australian narrative, but it is a fiction and it has a to its conclusion. writer Louis Nowra: an interest in fictitious story. A great deal of detail is built up before But what is the intention? The resem countries, an interest in encyclopedias, and a story emerges-a history, with a number blance to satires like Gulliver's Travels novels which assume some other literary of main players, some of whom are also the and 1984makes one suspect a particularly form. five contributors to the encyclopedia. The specific, perhaps political, subtext. There To take the last of these first. We have history of Abaza is given therefore from a are amusing suggestions, but they don't recently had novels which are presented as, number of angles, all deeply engaged, add up to much. The geographical co or overlap with: a recipe book (John eschewing the traditional encyclopedia's ordinates given for Abaza are exactly those Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure, and sense of both anonym.ity and objectivity. of Cairns. The Abazian capital, Pazo, in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate); The collection of documents that con being 'laid out by an American planner and a philosophical treatise (Alain de Botton's stitute the encyclopedia, all written on his wife in a grid of boulevards and avenues On Love); a psychological case history scraps of paper in an Abazian prison by surrounded by ever increasing circles of (Ian McEwan' Enduring Love ); a lecture enemies of the present regime, have come streets', sounds like Canberra. The whole at a symposium (Margaret Atwood's into the hands of an Abazian exile working of the country shuts down daily for the A Handmaid's Tale); or more to the point, at the Cairns campus of the James Cook narcotic pitu, reminding one of the Yemeni Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Klwzars. University. It's no more unlikely than many addiction to qat, which visitors describe Readers, apparently, have become other stories presented as diaries, such as in similar terms. An Australian Foreign cynical about the conceits of fiction, the Wuthering Heights, or dreams. Minister who is briefly mentioned seems 'this is what happened' style of narration. Abaza is in a terminal state of political very familiar. The structure would allow 'Says who?' we have been taught to ask by corruption, and we meet all of the main intriguing details to be added endlessly, nihilistic literary theorists, suspicious of players. The whole population seems sex and Nowra has stopped not a moment too anything that resembles m eaning. And un crazed and drug-addled. Sexual deviance soon. like the first readers of, say, Robinson Cmsoe, and promiscuity are mentioned in just about Abaza is a dark and artful tale, inven we are used to the genre: we know that novels every entry, until they become tiresome. tive, suspenseful and funny, if in an icky are a pretence. How better to subvert this Other obsessive subjects are children sort of way. (It is in some ways a political suspicion than by pretending that your and deformity. There is Abaza's recently version of the increasingly worrying com pretence is something other than a novel? discovered prehistoric race, who were edy The League of Gentlemen on ABC TV.) Pavic's novel is not, in fact, organised midgets. The vicious and brutal rebel, Gen There are no heroes, no-one to admire or like a dictionary, but seems nonetheless to eral Dugi, leads an army of feral children, even identify with- just varying degrees of have been of some inspiration to Louis and in the last days before the overthrow of villainy. Nowra convinces us that some Nowra's Abaza. In both books we h ave a the capital of Abaza the city is infested by thing powerful is happening, that there is purported series of documents- in this case, ga ngs of Odis-child cripples and amputees. some key or revelation or resolution just short, topical and alphabetically organised The preoccupation with children and around the corner, but it never comes. • concerning a fictitious people- in this case, deformity is also evident in the central the recent history of a fictitious South character of the book, the aged and malicious Paul Tankard is a Melbourne writer and Pacific island nation, Abaza. dwarf, Aba. He has been the long-term literary scholar. VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 41 THEATRE PETER CRAVEN Fine weariness of the flesh Sweet Bird of Yo uth, Tenne see Will iams. The Melbourne Thea tre Company. Directed by Kate Cherry Wtth Guy Pearce, Wend y Hughes, john Stanton I :r HAS BEEN obv1ous for some time now that if our theatre companies are going to •IM'(iiiii"""l give the public what they want and so ensure their box office, they are going to have to give them the stars from Austral ian, and now international, cinem a. This is not necessarily a ticket to salvation but it's a good bet along the way because the people who arrange these m atters have never been particularly good at casting plays with the best actors available, regardless of whether fame or suitability was the criterion. When did you ever see Nicole Kidman on an Australian, as opposed to a British, stage? Or Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson for that matter? Judy Davis occasionally acts in live theatre here, and Geoffrey Rush made his pre-Oscar name doing so, but there is not much similarity between the vastly popular world of film (and the residual cultural nationalism that trails along with it as we barrack for 'our Cate' or whomever) and the vague world of the thea tre, which so often gets t hat fi rst-base thing-the casting- wrong from the start. One good reason for using film actors (apart from their range of experience) is that they are it was filmed so early and so well. It helps to patently, the work of a T ennessee William s not likely to act for relative peanuts in have the Branda Streetcar Named Desire who had himself experienced Hollywood. order to m ake fools of them selves in directed by Elia Kazan with Vivien Leigh as Chance Wayne, the gigolo with dreams of unsuitable roles and they are also likely to Blanche DuBois. And it also helps to have stardom and youth slipping through his be given the kind of cast that will comple that whole ga mut of screen performances hands, is a Hollywood wannabe just as ment them and allow them to look as if from Katharine Hepburn's in Suddenly Last Alexandra del Largo seem s, fo r most of the they are on a stage with their peers. Summer to those of Elizabeth Taylor and action, a Hollywood has-been. So I think it was a good idea to get Guy Burl Ives and Judith Anderson in Cat on a And, of course, there's more to this Pearce to play Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird Hot Tin Roof. At the height of American steam y storm of a play with its blood broth of Youth, with Wendy Hughes as the ageing cultural optimism, coinciding with the Cold and horrors of mutilation, spiritual and m ovie star Alexandra del Largo and John War, Williams provided a thea tre of scarify literal, than this m irroring and self Stanton as the swinish Boss Finley. ing psychological intensity which inverted reflexiveness might suggest. Sweet Bird of Tennessee Williams is the great Ameri the '50s myth of happy families and showed Youth is a pl ay about a young man longi ng can playwright of the postwar period who its scarred underbelly. It was American for the girl be has 'infected', who has been gets beneath our skin most of all. It's not theatre as adult as a body blow, a thea tre desecrated both by him and by her society. that his work is better than the O'N eill of which could look the best of Hollywood in The way in which the girl, Heavenly, is Long Day's Journey into Night or the Miller the eye without flinching- the Hollywood, done hovers, brilliantly and ambiguously, of Death of a Salesman or the Albee of say, of Billy Wilder and Hitchcock and Jolm round the spectres of abortion and unsexing Virginia Woolf, but there's more of it, it's Ford- but could also transfi gure it and it's part of the brilliance of T ennessee more ranging and vibrant, m ore Shakespear in the process. Williams' atmospherics that fa shi on and ea n, and it's m ore consistent across the familiarity don't diminish the power or the major works from The Glass Menagerie SWEET BIR o OF Y ouTH could scarcely be credibility of the m elodram a here. (1945) to The Night of the Iguana (1962). more appropriate as the vehicle for a boy And this is also a play about the m iasma It's also a thea tre that's in our blood, a fr om Geelong who's made a name for of Boss Finley's role in '50s Louisiana, where theatre whose idiom we'll never lose because himself in Hollywood. The play is, pretty a black man can be emasculated with covert 42 EU REKA STREET • M ARCH 2 002 approval. This Abelard-likefatehangs above contemporary actors Brad Pitt would be suited adjusted to Tennessee Williams' tragi the hero. to it because Chance has a 'natural' sexual comedy. This is a flesh-and-blood woman It's a hell of a big ask, Sweet Bird of confidence and charm, as well as a softness, who suffers the weariness of the flesh. At Youth, because it requires a star actress that sit alongside a boyish hopelessness. one point Hughes effects a stately alcoholic capable of evoking her own fading without Guy Pearce began uncertainly on open walk, taking the greatest possible pains to shadowing into campery and a male lead ing night and his early scenes with Hughes embody the smallest possible thing. With who can convey both sexual magnetism as del Largo had him exhibiting a kind of perhaps an inch more pathos this would be and the frailty that threads along with it pulled-back stiffness that was a step away as fine an Alexandra as one could imagine, like a destiny. Then there's the Boss, a from being wooden. It was not, however, though it's impressive that Hughes does figure of grotesquerie, cunning and ugli remotely hammy or limp, and this sort of not go over the top. ness, who never quite ceases to be humanly underacting-that may h ave been the John Stanton, in the Ed Begley role of and politically credible. consequence of the actor being 'wired' for the local politician and all-consuming The Melbourne Theatre Company pro the opening-is likely to loosen as the run reptile Finley, begins with too broad a duction by Kate Cherry is not flawless but continues. It certainly creates a kind of Southernness (the effect seems approximate it does Tennessee Williams proud and goes credible smouldering toughness for what and a bit caricatured) but the performance some way towards suggesting the theatre Pearce subsequently attempts to do with grows and we believe in the feeling for the we might have if we bothered to dream of it. the part. Bare-ch ested, hard-tannedand thin dead wife as well as the enshrouding mean Cherry has none of the faiblesse and as a rake, he tightens the frailty and the ness and brutality. This is a razor-sharp feyness that so often afflict Australian presence of Chance into his body. performance with a lot of inner strength directors. She turns the playhouse stage In the second hall it uncoils and Pearce and the great-and horrifying-political into a jutting triangle, in order to get a more is much more obviously impressive as the, speech (conveyed, like black-and-white TV, ro unded effect, and the director of Life After by turns, blustering and charming Chance, on video) is masterly in its rhetoric and its George gets a red-blooded ensemble perfor the Chance who sings and coos and suffers slashing will to power. mance from a cast which (even in the minor the desolation of watching himself sink The rest of the cast vary and swerve as to parts) is a lot less footling than usual. under the horizon of a dream he cannot intrinsic talent or suitability, but Cherry The leading roles of Chance Wayne and gainsay. This is not an ideal performance, ensures that the characterisations are never Alexandra del Largo were made famous, on but Guy Pearce is besotted enough and has conventional sketches. Broadway but more particularly on film, by a bleak, angular intensity that gives his This is a good production of Tennessee Paul N ewman and Geraldine Page (though Chance Wayne authenticity. Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and it deserves Liz Taylor also made a blowzy attempt at Wendy Hughes as Alexandra del Largo the audience it will command. It is both a the Princess a decade or so ago on tele is more obviously on top of the role from good move on the Melboume Theatre Com vision). Chance, the dreamer on the verge the start, with a precision brought to bear pany's part and a justification of that move. of losing everything, is probably not, ideally, on the poses and inadvertencies of the star It's not soaring or startling but it delivers, a Paul N ewman role; it falls somewhere on the skids. Hughes has the advantage of with all of its outlines delineated and enough dead in the middle, between a Bran do and a being beautiful while not looking young, of its depths plumbed, one of the significant Montgomery Clift part. It's not hard to and she manages to make her old Holly plays of the 20th century. • imagine that James Dean would have played wood broad into a complex monument to it like an angel because it has a febrile frailty and authentic feeling, braggadocio Peter Craven is the editor of Quarterly Hamlet-like quality and a femininity that and sharp, heartbreaking glimpses of recog Essay, the ongoing series of political essays Newman was a bit stolid for. Among nition. It's a very fine performance, exactly published by Black Inc. Study your ACUweb Masters in Theology or AU~UAN C,~; ruOIJC UNIVERSITY Religious Education online • Master of Arts (Theological Studies) www.acuweb.com.au • Master of Religious Education • Master of Educational Leadership The Australian Catholic University offers Masters courses that specialise in Theology and Religious Education on the Internet through www.acuweb.com.au with 24 hrs x 7 days a week support. The tuition fees are $750 (Australian dollars) per unit or subject. Australian students living in Australia can study at the discounted cost of AUD$635 per unit or subject. Other courses also available in Education, Nursing and Management •The university is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and is funded by the Australian Government Powe r ed n ex~d VOLUME 12 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 43 this cherished book to the screen against its will . Quoyle (a hopelessly miscast Kevin Spacey) is a broken man. Undermined by a domineering father and battered by dead end jobs, he travels back to the family home in Newfoundland with his Aunt Agnis (Judi Deneb) and young daughter, Bunny (Lauren Gainer), after the death of his duplicitous and uncaring girlfrien d, Petal (Cate Blanchett), sets his soul adrift. In the small fishing village of his forebears Quoyle discovers an ice-bound version of Sea Change's Pearl Bay. The place is populated by endearing eccentrics who eat seal-flipper pie and brood darkly on the ea's malign nature. And when he sur prises himself by finding a job on the local paper he starts to rebuild his life. It's an age old and moving story: a sick man picks up his bed and walks. But that's the problem. The Shipping News ischokingonin tere tingstories. What accounts for the sadness of Aunt Agnisl What evils did Quayle's family commit? Ev en the beautiful widower, Wavey Prowse played by Kerry Fox), where she lives and (Julianne Moore), whom Quoyle courts in a Working closely what she does. Inevitably she becomes more tentative way, has a secret to keep. If to Jay than an anonymous sexual partner. Hallstrom had made a TV mini-series he Intimacy, dir. Patrice Chereau. This film But the more Jay learns, the more the basic might have found the right rhythm to do won the award for Best Film at the Berlin physical relationship between them is eroded. these stories ju stice, but in a feature he Film Festival where Kerry Fox also ga ined Fox gives a m emorable performance as hasn't got the time to tell them properly. the award for Best Actress. So it is a sad the frustrated would-be actress, married to As a neophyte journalist, Quoyle is comment on our times that to attract atten a loud, apparently insensitive, but sup taught to think in headlines and find 'the tion, the pre-release publicity for a film as portive husband (Timothy Spall). Spall beating heart of the story'. Sadly, the beat raw and honest as Intimacy has had to (S ectets and Lies ) gives a powerful perform ing heart of The Shipping News eludes emphasise the realism of the sex scenes. ance, expressing bewilderment with cruel Hallstrom. Director Thrown Overboard by It is true that we occasionally see a flaccid accuracy. Mark Rylance plays Ja y with so Powerful N ovel. -Brett Evans penis, pubic hair and breasts, but we have little sympathy that he fails to give his come a long way since the naked wrestle in character any warmth. Women in Love in the '60s-haven't we? The sex and nudity are never glamorous, Flickering thought Based on short stories by Hanif Kureishi the surroundings are always grotty and the (My Beautiful Lou ndrette), the filmed story characters seem trapped in the mundane. It Iri , dir. Richard Eyre. Work, particularly has little background. At first all we know is a remarkably honest movie. work that involves words and thought, is is that a man and a woman meet once a -Gord on Lewis not a natural for film . You can shoot the week at the man's grotty unfurnished flat construction of a railway line. Ditto for for noisy sex, but where barely a word is cri minal exploits-work of a kind. Even spoken. Clearly the regular physical release Fishing for a line exploited labour has its graphic moments has become compulsive for both of them, a (see Charlie Chaplin's Modem Times). But means of achieving communication, but at The Shipping News, dir. Lasse Hallstrom. just try filming Bertrand Russell's ten-year first neither seeks commitment from the Though generally disappointing, The stint with Principia Mathematica. other, except punctuality. Shipping News manages to yield up one Richard Eyre does not olve the problem Although we are never told about the stunning sequence: a windswept line of of getting Iris Murdoch's life as a philo relationship's beginnings, the veil of black-clad m en and women dragging a sopher and novelist on to film . A floor mystery is lifted slightly when we find out two-storey wooden frame house across an littered with screwed-up paper doth not a more about Ja y (Mark Rylance, above). He icy wasteland. life of art m ake, any more than a snatch of is a musician-turned-barman who h as Unfortunately, the image might stand warm-hearted lecture about love and caring recentlywalkedouton his wife and children. as a metaphor for this adaptation of E. Annie for all creatures and even stones can convey Only after Jay feels compelled to know Proulx's celebrated bestseller. It looks like the passion that animates philosophers. more about his anonymous sexual partner the usually adept Scandinavian director But that said, what Eyre does do-with do we learn what her name is (Claire- Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) has had to pull great finesse-is render one late corner of 44 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 2002 Iris Murdoch's marriage to writer and Drive comes from Michael J. Ander on (the ordinary suffused with the Other, the dark academic John Bayley. He is aided by Jim dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks, who also monsters of the psyche that take tangible Broadbent's m ercurial performance as plays a sinister, full-sized, underworld boss form. He is as sentimental as Dickens, Bayley. Broadbent can run the full range of with a disturbingly sm all head in Lynch's more frightening than Poe, grottier than human emotions in a flicker of facial current film ). 'David's work isn't con Roth, and far more intelligent than Thomas expression. He might look like the dither sciously coherent/ he says, 'but its coher Harris. ing professor but his every move explodes ence on an unconsciou s level is Under the dead hand of Goldman and the tereotype. Judi Deneb, as the ailing inescapable-almost against your will.' The Hicks, who have removed all reference to Iris, too nuggety to be wholly consumed by unremitting sense of violence and threa t the aliens that are an essential part of the the Alzheimer's disease that takes away the film generates is at least partly a conse plot, the world of Hearts in Atlantis has her control, is a good match for him. The quence of this power to evade the viewer's been turned into a kind of Un-Happy Days, young Iris, played by Kate Winslet, to Hugh (and reviewer's) mastery, and to affect them a dismal sort of Wonder Years. Anachro Bonneville's young Bayley, is intriguing in ways they can't explain and can't control. nisms abound: the children are given snappy and attractive, but more given to swimming Lynch himself describes the film as N ew York Jewish one-liners; the mother naked in Oxford's reedy rivers than to 'abstract', but its abstraction is not so much wears a post-modern distressed bob that strenuous thought. A pity- Winslet and visual (though there are aspects of this in would have been considered very outre in Bonneville are good, but their script is thin. the film) as it is narrative. Like a modernist the 1950s. And Ted Brautigan (Anthony There is a touch too much homage in painter, Lynch fragments and disrupts the HopkinsL the mysteriou lodger, is being the film for m y taste. Iris Murdoch was a thing he represents (in his case, the narra chased not by aliens but by the FBI. The fl esh-and-blood strange woman, with jagged tiveL in order to bring out its essence, the disturbing resonan ce of his phrase 'low m en' edges, a powerful intellect and even more pure sensation of the thing, rather than its for his pursuers is dissipated in the banality formidable imagination . N o film could recognisable image. Mulholland Drive, in of the new setting. His powers are no more contain her-what Eyre makes is finally its focus on the idea of Los Angeles, of than clairvoyance: a thin Cold-War-psychic m ore an honourable fiction than a biopic Hollywood and of cinema itself, is in many research scenario is tacked over the void but I'd have liked even the shadow play to ways a refl ection on (and of) the nature of left by the excision of King's entire Dark have had more substance. -Morag Fraser the image, refl ection or double itself. The Tower universe. 'essence' that Lynch abstracts out of his Bobby is played by Anton Yelchin, an fragmented narrative is ultimately that of excellent young actor who will do better Abstract u ncracked film nair-the darkness, threat and violence with better stuff. There i a tired bravura lurking benea th the everyday, beneath the monologue scene for Hopkins, some lip Mulholland Drive, dir. David Lynch. I have surface of the image itself. In fact you could trembling from the boy, a lot of small-town yet to read a review of David Lynch's new say that Lynch has founded a new genre of scenery and no suspense, no edge, no King film, Mulholland Drive, that doesn't use filmmaking in his oeuvre-'abstract nair'. ishness at all. the word 'surreal'. The prevalence of thi However, the logical consequence of what -Juliette Hughes fl accid adjective suggests that it has be I've been saying is that anything I say about come the descriptor of choice for any movie this film is necessarily going to miss the whose story can't be summarised in fiv e point. So don't read this review. Go see the Congo murder sentences or less-as if the job of a reviewer film. -Allan Jam es Thomas were simply to condense the plot and work Lumumba, dir. Raoul Peck. In 196 1 Patrice out how m any thumbs up or down to give Lumumba was assassinated. He had, for it. This process of 'pinning a film down', Hicks' shticks two short months, been the first dem ocrati defining and categorising both its m eaning cally elected prime minister of the newly and what a viewer's response to it should Hearts in Atlantis, dir. Scott Hicks. This is independent Congo. The tory of Patrice be, has always seem ed to m e like an act of a film adapted by Scott Hicks from a screen Lumumba is devastating, frustrating and interpretative violence, forcing the enig play by William Goldman of a Stephen King important. matic, ephem eral and sensual experience of short story, 'Low Men in Yellow Coats'. Peck obviously knows hi stuff, having the cinema into an analytic straitjacket, Goldman was the scriptwriter of Th e made an award-winning documentary on pointing a gun at its head and saying 'make Princess Bride, a charming fairytale. Hicks Lumumba back in 1992. With Eriq sense- or else'. is the successful director of Shine, though Ebouaney's strong lead performance, Of course, it's a natural response to an that m ay be small recommendation for Lumumba should have been one out of the ambiguous or perplexing experience to try som e. The film plot runs thus: in the 1950s, box, but as in so many biopics, the art of to master it by 'making sense' out of it, a fatherless young boy, Bobby Garfield, is cinema lags a little behind the line-up of creating a coherent and consistent story to befriended by his cold, selfish m other's historical events. explain its mystery. One of the many mar new lodger, Ted Brautigan. Ted is a p ychic The film opens with a series of con vellous things about Mulholland Drive and on the run from the FBI, which wants to use fronting monochrome images of a brutal its sister film, Lost Highway, is that they his powers against the Russians. Bobby finds colonial past, intercut with a happy crowd both refuse our desire for interpretative out som e nice stuff about his dead father, of party-goers enjoying colourful hors mastery, taunting us with the unshakeable Ted is captured and Bobby goes on to be a d'oeuvres and sporting shady hats. This sense that it all adds up som ehow, but only successful photographer. simple contrast is appropriately shocking in ways that are impossible to articulate. At its best, King's work has a unique and, as we later discover, horribly ironic. The best description I've seen of Mulholland flavour, a sense of the sharply observed -Siobhan Jackson V OLUME 12 UM BER 2 • EUREKA STREET 45 Philosophical drift W ,RO WATCH>NC On Happiness dming Fehru•ry on the De Botton then mused on Schopenhauer's lack of success ABC. It was part of a series on six Western philosophers, in love, with a gentle, wondering sympathy that seemed presented by Cambridge don Alain de Botton. Soon we realised oblivious to the fact that he'd just revealed him as an arrogant that we were feeling a kind of uppityness, the feeling you get deserter of the mother of his child in his youth. As an ugly old when you know that you know more about something than narcissist, he seemed to think he had a chance with young, the learned person expounding. You see the flaw. You detect pretty girls. Nietzsche's case was even more obvious: the man the gap. You realise that book-learning isn't everything. You had a m oustache like a dead bear. What girl would want to start to get witty. You begin to expound, using phrases that smooch a bloke who looked as though he hadn't finished include 'common sense' and 'real life'. swallowing a yeti? Peering over all that shrubbery, he would My spouse calls it 'that naughty-haughty Hughes pride' continually assert variations on your basic footy coach's and I tell him that he never did Philosophy lB either. None of theme of no-gain-no-pain. Except that for Nietzsche my family ever did philosophy. Those who weren't warned off it seemed the pain was the gain. before they started (Mother Basil in Matric RE: 'Philosophy students Lose The Faith'') were terrified off by smug numerates D E BoTTON's STYLE rs altogether too much him and not (who claimed that you needed to know some maths). enough philosophy. He should watch David Attenborough, However, feeling that I might need to find out something w ho's long realised that though he's a perfectly nice chap, the weighty to throw into the family discourse, I watched de Botton punters don't want to be looking at him all the time. They want at first with, indeed, some humility. I learnt plenty listening to to see the animals, the scenery, the interesting folk from other the historical stuff, which was quite fun. But de Botton's cultures. They do not want the presenter bobbing his head in front commentary, when it veered into your actual philosophy and of the action, telling them what he thinks. All presenters should away from your 'this happened' stuff, gave other commenta realise that there is a golden ratio of Presenter Close-Up to Docu tors new shallows to conquer. There was more than a teents of mentary's Subject (1 :50). Wildlife doco makers often forget this, self-reference, considerably more than a soupc;:on of oh-what-a imagining that we've never seen a helicopter take off before, clever-boy-am-I. I should like to hear him say 'Proust'-he has and that we need to see the presenter in the passenger seat. written a very clever book on Proust. You see, if you are a dumb If your subject is philosophy your program runs a severe Anglo ignoramus you pronounce it 'Proost'. End of story. If risk of becoming a tame-life doco if the narrative isn't sharp you're a bit educated-like, you'll say a kind of franglais 'Pwoost', and deep. Or wide, for that matter. The de Botton series covers and you might even have read him. But if you're a real show-off anger, love, self-esteem and self-confidence, hardship and you do the full frog 'Pghhrrrhhoostt' that causes people to say happiness, without ever looking at poor people or the Third 'bless you!' or edge away. I'm betting de Botton is a born World. Its comfort zone is Britain's upper middle class: its prime Pghhrrrhhoostter, although if I'm wrong I do humbly apologise: image for an object of envy is a Cambridge undergraduate. Then blame my DNA. he shows us the photo of himself in the graduating class. From It was naff of him to try to score a date with the dumped Cambridge. girl on the Schopenhauer episode, 'Love'. On the other hand, So thank God for the new Absolutely Fabulous. Edina and she didn't seem too fussed about her tragedy. She showed the Patsy offer far more wisdom than de Botton. We need our satire Dear Joan letter from the escaped boyfriend with the air of to stay up-to-date and Ab Fab has done this, slicing through som eone showing you an annoyingly big phone bill. If truly every trend, refusing to be a historical piece. You see anger lovelorn, her demeanour gave Stoics something to aim for. She (Edina's constant rage), self-esteem (Patsy's Parralox!), hardship beamed in a 'yes, isn't it extraordinary!' way as de Botton tutted (poor Saffy) and yes, happiness (Edina's mum on the shopping over the harshness of such a letter. They agreed cordially that channel). But you laugh so much that you really take it in. it had been really, really tough to deal with. Ariadne, Medea, Humb~. • Maria Callas, Miss Havisham, even Bridget Jones, she wasn't. Nothing to kill or die for here, and no religion too. Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer. 46 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 2002 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 101, March 2002 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS 1. When podalic ablution takes place in the holy season- not on Monday! (6,8) 10. Appearance of a challenger right inside. (7) 11. Poor Ada, involved in Peru, somehow raised the French flag. (7) 12. No priest ever, initially, would come between the participants, say. (9) 13. Girl, for example, returns to mother. (5) 14. Lost som e of her balance when taking this sort of organic remedy. (6) 15. Study thick book, say, and make a summary. (8) 18. A cake for the emperor! (8) 20. Unfortunately, I lapse in my task of secret observation. (6) 23. Quotes a reference on seeing the views, reportedly. (5) 25. A hedonistic philosopher? (9) 26. To have pie-mix with a weighty book to read is pleasure in its essence. (7) 27. Some ail, perhaps, when they do this and miss their objective. (7) 28. Being successful in getting into the top class, possibly. (6,3,5) Solution to Crossword no. 100, January-February 2002 DOWN ,--,---,----,--- 2. It purifies and circulates the air, to a rear room, perhaps. (7) 3. Always succeed in life with Verna involved. (5,4) 4. Cowardly chicken! (6) 5. Spiny animal which likes to bag the best place beside the row of shrubs. (8) 6. Field of interest is a study of the royal domain. (5) 7. China largely destroyed in World War II. (7) 8. In our conversation, I express colloquially complete agreement and explain what's going on. (3'2,7,2) 9. Skin treatment for a disappearing elite. (9,5) 16. The one who pays when distressed S. Rubi's back in the red. (9) 17. It is quite consistent that firm should be present in the Northern Territory. (8) 19. Dad uses gimmick to celebrate his feast .. . (7) 21. ... in the country he cleared of creeping things, so we're told. (7) 22. Little William is som etimes called silly, or is it his sister? (6) 24. Exhibition displayed on the north side. 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