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YARRA THEOLOGICAL UNION Rei a)_( MELBOURNE wit~n~od COURSE OFFERINGS INCLUDE Minister • History of Catholic social movements to Yourself • Justice and social teaching • Interreligious dialogue in the secular world SAT Sabbatical • Social transformation and economics Program • Can war be just? • Theologies of liberation Time to ... Self-contained, free and • Human embodiment and bioethics nexibl e modules arc specifically • Biblical foundations/ecology ·Rest designed to assist indi viduals ·Be Nurtured to integrate theology. spirituality • Major issues in moral theology ·Be Free human development and ·Play ministry wi th their Enrolments close February 21 2006 ·Pray li ved experience. YTU does not offer correspondence cou rses. Four-month and ·Share New Id eas Courses are eligible for Commonwealth Nine- month programs Government loans through FEE-HELP. For further information, contact SAT • School of Appli ed Theology The Registrar, Yarra Theological Uni o n, Graduate Theological Union 2400 Ridge Road • Berkeley CA 94709 PO Box 79, Box Hill VIC 3128. 1-800-831 -0555 . 5 10-652-1651 Phone: (03) 9890 3771 ; Fax: (03 ) 9890 1160 email [email protected] Em ai l admin @ ytu.edu.au website www.satgtu.org Web http:/www.ytu.edu.au <)> Os;: ' > ~[) El.JREKA STREE Iz> 0 ~ ~ m >o z-n c -o )>C COMMENT "'"' 4 Robert Hefn er Who's watching? ~ ~ t8 2;; Al-n c> > :;:; LETTERS "'-<-"' o i 5 David Dyer, Margaret Smith, Bill om""' '"" Ranken, Bill Versteegh, Joan Pearson 34 Spreading seeds of culture ""> eureka street fju: 'ri:k& stri:t/ and Philip Mendes Michele M. Giercl 'Watchman, what of the night?' The watchman says: 'Morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire; Come back again.' - Isaiah 21: 11 A THRST GLANce, Clm Locke's cove< illust
4 EU REKA STR EET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 Serious issues Leadership lacking
My initial disappointment that fewer Our Government is showing little gen Ietters - ~ copies of Eureka Street are to be published uine moral leadership on this issue each year has been mitigated by the first ('Beneath the trapdoor'/'The face of fortnightly editorial update! Andrew moral judgment', Editorial Comment, Ethnic stereotyping Hamilton's timely and thought-provok posted 30 November 2005). But what can ing approach to the current relationships one expect when Howard et al are pre I was disappointed to read David Glanz's between Australians and their govern pared to allow David Hicks to languish account of his recent visit to Israel (Eureka ment ('Laying down the law', Editorial in intolerable conditions in Guantanamo Street, September-October 2005). Despite Comment, eurekastreet.com.au, posted Bay, where none of the usual legal pro Glanz's reputation as a committed anti 16 November 2005) raises serious issues, tections seem to apply to our 'allies' in Zionist, one might have at least hoped for not least of which is the widening gap the way they deal with their prisoners, some serious engagement with the reality of between New Testament values and val in this case one who is a citizen of our Israel and its social and political structures. ues promoted by the Howard Government. country? I find that situation even more Much of Glanz's account is blatant ethnic Positive human relationships are, puzzling, frustrating and hypocritical stereotyping. We are told that the Israelis more than anything else, founded on than the Nguyen case, if not as tragic, as he meets are unfriendly, rough, tough, rude trust. Sadly and too frequently in the last [Hicks] is not yet on death row. and aggressive. They all carry guns, and are decade the electorate has been fed a diet Bill Versteegh inherently militaristic. In contrast, Glanz of misinformation. Even sadder is the fact Woodforde, SA depicts the Arabs he sights either as vague that the community at large has accepted and incompetent (the Egyptian border such dishonesty as part of life, whether it Response to our fortnightly editorial guards), or alternatively as mere passive be the distinction m ade between promises update at www.eurekastreet.com.au victims of Israel. As for political analysis, and core promises, the blatant untruth has been overwhelmingly positive. If Glanz offers little more than a parroting of that children had been thrown overboard, you are a ubscriber and have not yet the Palestinian national narrative he first or the failure to take far-reaching IR provided us with your email address, heard at university 30 years ago. All changes to the electorate in the months please send it to eureka@iespub.;esuit. Israelis are powerful oppressors, and all preceding the 2004 election. org and we will email each new edito Pa lestinians are powerless and oppressed This most recent deceit has been rial update to you. Philip Mendes compounded by giving too little time -Acting ed Kew, VIC for parliamentary scrutiny and debate of a policy which has the potential to seriously lower the living standards of On terror tactics Truly frightening the most vulnerable members of our community. I do not often find myself agreeing The new anti-terror laws are truly fright David Dyer with Jack Waterford. However, I ening, especially as the past record of this Ballarat, VIC thought that much of his piece, Government has consistently disregarded 'Terror Tactics' (Capital Letter, the needs and rights of the most vulnera September- October 2005) was spot on. ble in our society-for example, the callous Guiding principles Cases like Rau, Solon and all the others treatment and demonisation of asylum denied their liberty without recourse to a seekers and the denial of work rights even Thank you, Andrew Hamilton ('Laying court seem to me to have a clear message. if the asylum seeker has skills needed by clown the law'), for becoming an informed Parliament and its individual members our community. The new industrial laws web voice challenging the attitude dis should be very careful about the powers also show a lack of understanding or empa played by the Government in recent leg they give to officials, especially when thy with young and/or unskilled or timid islation, and for clearly outlining the individuals have little or no right to workers who clearly are unable to negoti guiding principles that are presently judicial review of official decisions. ate successfully with their employer. Hail missing from the proposed legislation. By This is not necessarily to argue to the Police State, farewell to Australia of providing a forum that offers Australians against the Government's border the Fair Go! the opportunity for comment, involve protection policy. It is a suggestion that if Joan Pearson ment and debate, you are encouraging the Parliament must make laws that enable Ivanhoe, VIC building of the sense of solidarity, com detention, then it should do so only if munity and co-operation that respects it also provides checks and balances [ureJ..a Street welcomes letter' fro m our readers. human dignity and that the Government that are available to the individuals Sho rt letters are morl' likel) to be pu bl i~ h ed , is failing to recognise as essential for concerned. Jnd all lett ers ma) lw edited. L e tt e r ~ must he signed, and should include <1 cont all phone human flourishing. number and th e w riter's name and address. Margaret Smith Bill Ranken Send to: eurcb q••jpspub.jpsu it.org.au or via email Kew, VIC PO Box ~~l, Rilhmonci VIC l l ~ I
JA UARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EU REKA STR EET 5 and won a Group One at Dubai last yea r, won m agn ificently by more than a length. the months' broke down and had to be destroyed. One of the largest-ever Cup Day crowds The Cox Plate was a showdown fo r saw, simply, the greatest win in the race traffic Freedman's mare Makybe Diva, which for three-quarters of a century, since 1930, had never won at Moonee Valley and faced and Phar Lap. The owner retired Makybe a field of imponderables. How good were Diva at once and Freedman prom ised that the three-year-olds? The foreign horses? he meant it: 'She may be a D iva but she's In the end, not good enough. Glen Boss not Nellie Melba.' sent the mare home for a bold win after - Peter Pierce the fi eld had fanned eight wide on the Magnificent mare turn. But would she run in the Melbourne Cupl She had appeared spent at the end of DR CAM RUN FOR MA" YBE DIVA the Cox Plate. Ten clays later she would Political lessons have to carry a record weight for a m are of 58kg in the Cup and attempt to do what LEARN ING FROM I OR[ICN STUDENTS A,THE SYDNEY SPRING Carnival no horse had ever clone-win three times. ca me to an end, with Desert War winning In between was D erby Day. Last year's its second Epsom in a row and Railings winner, the Western Australian horse ta king the Metropolitan [ra ces that date Plastered, had been a mystery this spring. A UN,VER SHY SUBfE CT • bout con back to the 1860s), the Melbourne Carni Was it injuredl Would the owners' part temporary politics in Australia for inter val began . Back fro m Hong Kong, David nership be dissolved and the horse go to national students-many of them in the H ayes led in the two-year-old I Got Chills Freedman to be trained? In the end, back country for only a semester- is an educa which landed a huge plunge and won by west went the enigm atic Plastered, to be tion indeed. For me, the tutor. I always tell six lengths. It would win aga in three set for the Perth Cup. On Derby Day, Cup them (partly in the hope of getting them weeks later, and then go amiss, perhaps contenders such as Confectioner and Mr talking from the beginning) that I learn never to start aga in. The Turnbull Stakes Celebrity were making their last bids to at least as much about Australia through went to the champion m are Makybe Diva, get into the Cup fi eld via the Saab Quality their eyes as they do. I have always lived warming up fo r the Cox Plate to come at (formerly known as the Hotham H andi here, I tell them, asid e from some brief Moonee Valley. cap). As it was, Cummi ngs's horse Stras sojourns in Western Europe. Perhaps I But first the action swung to Caulfield bourg had its first win for 34 months. It have an overly benign attitude to Austra l for the Guineas. It has been a vexed race, would run and so would the third horse, ia's perceived egalitarianism, relatively won by ordinary horses-Proctll Harum Mr Celebrity, fo r Gai Waterhouse. trouble-free multicultura lism, and long at 250/1, last year Econsul at 40/ 1- Meanwhile I celebrated five winners in standing democracy. Perhaps, I tell them, but by outstanding ones as well: Vain, a row, including Serenade Rose at 14/1 in I need to have this pro blem atised by an Redoubte's Choice, Lonrho. As rain began the Wakeful (not the Wakefield, as the tro outsider's eyes. to fa ll heavily, the Bart Cummings-trained phy-giver thought), Benicia for Freedman For the most part polite and respect God's Own was k nocked sideways twice, at 10/ 1 in the Derby and Glamour Puss at ful, the last thing this melange of Asian, but ca me on to win decisively from Par 9/ 1 in the dash down the Straight Six. This America n and Northern Europea n atroopers. Amazed he should have been, used to be called the Craven 'A' after racing twenty-som ethings would wish to do is but Cummings only ventured 'very good'. folks' fag of choice. In 1970 Vain won by cause a problem, much less problematise. That laconicisrn did not reprove the gib l 2 lengths. By cl ay's end most good judges However, they do it by default. bering spokesman fo r Carlton at the pres still thought that Makybe Diva would not In a subject that spans a lot of recent entation who extolled its 'big beer' ad. run on the following Tuesday. We were issues, Pa uline H anson is of course one Ea rlier on in the program some of wrong. Although connections worried hurdle. Curiously, 2004's batch of inter the international horses were out in the about how hard the track might be, as did nationals (proportionally, pretty m uch 120th running of the Caulfield Stakes, the Irish mob with Vinnie Roe, and 31 the same groupings) brought Hanson up but it was done brilliantly by a rela degrees Celsius was promised, the mare as a phenomenon. They'd heard of her and tive newcomer, El Segundo, with D arren was paid up to start. When they jumped, were worried about her influence on Aus Gauci up. It could only manage sixth in Boss worked her across to near the rail. tralians' attitude to race (a n Asian stu the next week's Caulfield Cup, but watch Mr Celebrity led and compounded. Eye dent was adamant that she had made a for this horse in the autumn. The Cup Popper loom ed and then vanished in the proclamation on television early i n 2004 went to Railings from the unlucky Japa ruck. The New Zealander Xcellent (first that she had become a lesbian, a claim I nese runner Eye Popper whose jockey cov Cup runner to start with X) came on, but took merely to indicate the degree of her ered an extra fu rlong. Traditionally the so did the mare, sprinting fas ter than any celebrity in the Asia-Paci fic). best pointer to the Melbourne Cup, this stayer has, carried into the race as the Last year I adjusted the cou rse to race sent tho e two to near the top of the leaders fl agged and spread. Although he pre-empt their queries. None of the new market. A ga ll ant third-place getter, the rode superbly, Boss still made his run a group even claimed to have heard of her. Lee Freedman-trained Mummify, which touch earlier than he wanted. On a Jeune Irritated (I see her as a bl ip we had to have, won the Caulfield Cup three years ago swooped at long odds, but Makybe Diva and a m anifestation of perceived disen-
b EU REK A STR EET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 franchisement among the lower-educated summa and/or regionals, rather than as an impor tant indicator of Australian attitudes on l theologiae race), I was stuck with Hanson over my shoulder for the rest of the semester. Students later wrote in essays about the • 'Hanson government' or about her intro duction of racist idea to Australia; as I Servant of silence feared, they quickly came to ascribe her too much importance. Or did they? In one class, they passionately argued with me that her clear electoral appeal in the late '90s-not to mention the way Howard has adopted a number of her ideas T H EOLOGY D ANCES AWKWARDLY W
JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 7 Australian cities for imitating the US ; still another claimed that Australian communities are 'close-knit' and that archimedes this is the reason Schapellc Corby is a ca use celebre in Australia in a way that would never happen in the US. Aboriginal Australians are regarded Vying for vaccine with fascination, though different stu dents react very differently to discussion of their culture or their disadvantaged state. One south-east Asian student spent W.AT WITH TSUNAM 8 EUREKA STRE ET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 capital letter = "--==:>!or= Trust me T OHN1 HowARO HAS A N>W mcH to tht publit on ncady Even in trying to reach individual concerns, the campaign } everything, but particularly on national security and indus may be too macro. The Government is, for example, patiently trial relations: Trust me. Trust my judgment to keep the nation trying to explain that it is unlikely most people will be dis safe, and to juggle the delicate balances between protecting the advantaged or worse off: after all, skilled labour is at a pre public at large and safeguarding human rights. Trust my man mium, replacing people costs money and training time, and agement of the economy and knowledge of the labour market to fewer people arc entering the workforce. The law of supply and be sure that dismantling old industrial protections will make demand, in short, is on the side of the average workers who, if most people better off and more secure. they are smart, might well be able to parlay the need for their Howard is not a person who has ever much called on trust skills into pay and conditions that more exactly reflect what before. Even at the last election, when he used the word, the they want to do. Nor should ordinary Australians fear that context was not his reputation for telling the truth, or standing they will lose their public holidays, or treasured (in some cases by his word, but a record of steady economic management and hard-won) special conditions such as maternity leave; these, growth. Now, however, a man whose actions have done a lot to the Government insists, are safe. Likewise many employers undermine trust and confidence in politicians has a lot staked may well take on more employees when rid of the uncertain on whether people accept that he knows what he is doing. ties and unfairnesses of unfair dismissal legislation. Ten years ago, one of the most successful strategies used The Government has been generally courteous and by the then leader of the opposition against an arrogant and reassuring about the fact that the sky will not in fact fall out of touch prime minister was that he was governing for the in. And about its hope and firm belief that most Austral elites, not 'for all of us'. It worked because it had a good meas ians will be better off, just as they have been generally bet ure of truth in it. Paul Keating was a big-picture man who put ter off as a result of other Howard Government economic great talent and energy into persuading members of what John policies, including industrial relations reforms, since 1996. Howard would call the political class that his policies were The truth is, however, that all this expensive propaganda and right and appropriate. But he grew steadily more impatient research does not seem well focused on individual anxieties with the different, but equally important, job of justifying the and insecurities. And why not? In major part, it's because John policies to ordinary Australians, many of whom felt increas Howard is selling a big picture and a belief (some would say, ingly alienated from grand and consuming visions. unfairly, an ideology) that outcomes are generally better the Now, ten years on, Howard has a problem with striking more markets are deregulated. He is not addressing insecu parallels to Keating's. How ironic that it involves a centrepiece rity-though he has been, over his own career, willing enough of Howard's political life, the issue which he has most consist to exploit it when it suits. He is not painting a picture for ordi ently talked about for 30 years, and in which he had seemed nary working Australians of how their new workplace will be about to triumph. Howard and the Government have, by and in the new paradise he is creating. large, sold the much-despised intellectual elites on the macro The lack of penetration is probably compounded by the economic merits of their industrial relations policy. Even Government's lack of frankness about the fact that there will many of those who are instinctively hostile to anything that be losers, and people with little bargaining power, many of Howard, or his Government, proposes, would acknowledge whom will belong to just the classes for whom people such as now the general necessity for freeing up labour markets. Catholic, Anglican and Salvation Army leaders arc expressing But the Government's, and John Howard's, problem is not concerns. And that their numbers may well be considerably the macro-economic debate, but the micro-economic one: the increased by the Government's simultaneous moves to force impact of his proposed changes at individual workplaces, and many people off welfare into work-any work-on the premise the personal insecurities of hundreds of thousands of Austral that they will be morally, and in some cases financially, better ians about their bargaining power at their place of employ off than by receiving the dole, sickness or maternity benefit. ment, or how they might be treated if economic circumstances The problem is not going to be resolved by spending even change, or whether they will be placed under additional pres more taxpayers' dollars, but by better understanding the mood sure to work longer hours, for proportionately less money. The of the broader community, and operating from within it, rather Howard campaign, expensively and improperly financed by the than by the supreme and smug self-confidence about what was general taxpayer, is not well addressing individual fears and best for everyone which some say-John Howard particularly insecurities; in some respects, indeed, it may be aggravating said-characterised the Keating Government. • them. The arrogance of the misappropriation of public money may be aggravating things too. Jack Waterford is editor-in-chief of The Canberra Times. )A UARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EU REKA STRE ET 9 by the wa Tchaikovsky 1n• Hanoi 0 N '9 AuGUST '945, ' few d•ys afte< the Japanese sut~ well ensconced when my wife, with a punctilio equal to that of render in World War II, cadres of the Viet Minh entered Hanoi our diplomatic hosts, suggested that we should push our luck and used the steps of the still magnificent but temporarily no further and make a quiet and dignified retreat. scruffy Opera House to proclaim the success of the August So up we went into the exotic confines of the topmost bal Revolution and the foundation of an independent democratic cony, where the view was vertiginous but the orchestra still republic. Thousands of peasants bearing machetes and bam loud. The concert was enjoyable, if uneven, but it's easy to boo swords were joined by equal numbers of urban dwellers, criticise the musicians of the VNSO as they strove to meet the many of whom had heard of the Viet Minh for the first time energetic Western expectations of Wolfgang Hoyer. Tchaiko only days before, to acclaim the victorious revolutionaries. A vsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture struck me as the moment smaller-scale version of Charles Garnier's Paris Opera, Nha of truth. To Western ears, through the filter of overwhelming Hat Lon, as the Opera House is known locally, was, with its Shakespearean assumptions and remembered scenes, come the Napoleonic panache and grandeur, just the place for large ges sounds of romance, love, passion and cruel tragedy. The England tures and significant announcements. of Shakespeare, the Italy of the Montagues and the Capulets, Walking past this splendid and now thoroughly refur the Europe of Tchaikovsky's illustrious contemporaries-Bizet, bished building 60 years and a couple of months later, my wife Verdi, Offenbach, Massenet-appropriatc his Romeo and Juliet and I saw a poster advertising a 'Gala Concert' to be held on Overture so neatly and thoroughly, so expectcdly, that any other the following evening to mark 30 years of diplomatic relations interpretation seems outlandish. But Tchaikovsky comes to between Vietnam and Germany. The guest conductor was Wolf Vietnam not across the dulcifying cities of Europe but through gang Hoyer with the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra Nizhniy Novgorod, the Kirgiz Steppe, Tashkent, the Tibetan Pla and on the program were Beethoven, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. teau. In the VNSO's rendition, beneath those wonderful roman Before you could say 'Ho Chi Minh masterminded the long tic melodies, you could catch the edge of anxiety, treachery and est, most devastating and most successful war against Western ambition that was Tchaikovsky's St Petersburg clement, and the colonialism', we were negotiating the purchase of two of the bleak, unforgiving landscapes that were his Russia. This barbar last few tickets left. A snap at 80,000 dong each, even if our ian undercurrent to some of the world's most famous romantic scats were so high up that we might suffer from nosebleeds music suited the Vietnamese musicians, whose recent forebears and oxygen deprivation. But at least we were in. Going to a had thrown out the greatest Western invader of the age, just as, performance, the guidebooks assured us, was the only way to I suspect, it suited Tchaikovsky, who was not thinking much see the grand interior because the Opera House was otherwise about Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet when he composed this permanently locked. first masterpiece of his career. I bet the oddly perturbing result We scrubbed up a bit and, after a stroll through the humid, wasn't quite what Wolfgang Hoyer had in mind either. amiably frenetic, motorbike-clogged streets of the French quar Our unexpected attendance at the pre-concert reception ter, arrived rather early-despite objections from my wife who was a curious, marvellous interlude, and it happened because favours the last-minute-dash approach to appointments. As we the Vietnamese, from the formally attired concertgoers to fam entered the foyer, we were handed a program each and then a ilies squatting on the pavement eating lunch alongside their young woman began ushering us up the stairs 'to the reception'. market stalls, are a courteous, naturally friendly people. Being Bewildered but obedient, we found ourselves in a vast, ornate with them day to day-acknowledging their smiles and genu chamber among a colourful, polyglot, voluble crowd, where we ine helpfulness, politely fending off their charming but unde were plied with champagne and beautiful local food. An exqui viating, persistent efforts to sell us everything from expensive sitely dressed Vietnamese woman materialised at our side and silk to old paperbacks-made it difficult to imagine that these introduced us to Christian-Ludwig Weber-Lortsch, the Ger people were once our 'enemies', that our government had made man ambassador to Vietnam who, on finding that we were not a strident case, with its powerful ally, for invading them-at Germans, drew upon the smooth, diplomatic sangfroid that a cost of more than one million Vietnamese civilian deaths had no doubt ensured advancement to this present important and that our protests at the time were labelled treachery. posting, concealed his perplexity at our presence, and chat What are the chances that our grandchildren will return from ted with us at some length. The Chilean ambassador did the their travels in the 2020s with stories about the wonderful same when, working the room in Spani h, German, English friendliness of the Iraqis? • and Vietnamese, he came into our orbit, as did several other politely puzzled notables whose names we scarcely caught. Brian Matthews travelled to Hanoi on frequent flyer points. In Thoroughly enjoying the champagne and the finger food, I was Vietnam, he was, regrettably, not a guest of Vietnam Airlines. 10 EU REKA STRE ET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 essay: 1 Meaghan Paul Who is my neighbour? 0 N 8 juNE 2005 I expe JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EURE KA STR EET 1 I <;OCiCt\.1 Alison Aprhys The silent summer In an atmosphere of fear, governments 1n Australia c1nd around the world are passing laws that could force the press to keep quiet on some issues ~ free media is essential to a democratic society. sion. Any person or organisation could be charged with sedition without, as It ensures we know what is happening in our world existing law requires, having urged force or violence. and enables us to report, review and criticise.' 'Sedition is an obsolete law that should be dropped,' argued Mr Warren. 'History teaches us that when sedition laws are used, they are used to silence writers, jour nalists and creators. They are tools of cen C HR,noeH 12 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 published these alarming stories are now media outlet in the land or around the preventive detention order [given the campaigning for free speech.' world that will not take notice . . . [It] information that in some instances this Mr Warren said that September 11 in would truly put us in the [same category will be unwarranted], to see if they will Washington and New York, October 12 in as] North Korea.' or won't make the decision to publish.' Bali, the war in Iraq and the war on terror The vagueness of the anti-terror leg The Walkley Award-winning journalist, had 'demonstrated both the importance of islation means that predicting what will who will take up a role with Four Cor free media and provided political cover for happen is impossible. ners this year, says she has discussed its curtailment'- He wrote, on 3 Decem Mr Ackland said that it would be hard with colleagues the extent to which 'one ber, in his blog on the MEAA website: to know the final shape of the new law can make the decision on one's own. 'While we're still waiting for the details until it was passed: 'Clearly sedition is an You have to weigh the value of putting of the amendments to the Anti-Terror Bill issue for the media, but the Bill proposed is this information in the public domain, agreed by the Liberal and National Parties, so vague, wide and discretionary, the fear as you could be making a decision that we know enough to be disappointed at the is that it will cause the media to chill off a might imperil other people. Not just result. And we know that, even though a story and back away. The net effect will be for yourself and the media organisa majority of both houses of parliament are to persuade them not to take the risk.' tion for whom you work, but potentially opposed to sedition laws, we're going to Liz Jackson, former presenter of the sources from whom you obtained get stronger sedition laws which threaten ABC TV's Media Watch, said: 'It will that information-' freedom of expression. Many of us wel be very interesting when a journalist Visiting journalists from Asia also comed the strong position taken by the is confronted for the first time with a made impassioned pleas for their Austral Senate committee on sedition laws. ian colleagues to keep fighting the good We were disappointed that the com fight and resist these draconian meas mittee ignored our concerns about the ures. Among them were Siddharth Var excessive secrecy around detention adarajan, deputy editor of the Hindi in orders and the power to coerce jour India, Steven Gan, founder and pub nalists to reveal confidential sources.' lisher of malaysiakini.com, a leading Mark Day, a journalist who writes news website in Malaysia, Sunanda for The Australian's media pages and Deshapriya, senior journalist and co who spoke at the conference, reported founder/spokesperson of Sri Lanka's in his column on 1 December that Free Media Movement, and Michael 'almost 300 submissions were received Yu, former president of the Association by the Senate legal and constitutional of Taiwan Journalists. They all spoke committee ... they were universal in eloquently and passionately about free their view that the strengthening of media issues. sedition laws as proposed by Mr Rud In the end, the conference feel dock was unnecessary and a threat to ing was summed up by Greek jour free speech'. nalist Nikos Megrelis, a member of Mr Day's column goes on to report the executive committee for the IFJ: that documentary film-maker Rob 'Unfortunately, day per day, conserva ert Connelly presented evidence to tive governments all over the world put the Senate Committee that sedition forward new restrictions for the press laws had been abandoned in coun and the democratic institutions.' He tries such as Canada, Ireland, Kenya, said that both the Bush administration New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, and terrorists sought to restrict press Britain and the US, and that in pass freedoms. 'Both of them want us to live ing sedition laws, Australia joined in an atmosphere of fear; fear of what China, Cuba, Hong Kong, Malaysia, might happen to us by a suicide bomb North Korea, Singapore, Syria and attack or by a word that may sound Zimbabwe. suspicious for encouraging terrorism.' 'The first prosecution of a journal ist under this law will bring the house Alison Aprhys is a freelance journal down on the government-let them ist and a member of the MEAA. She use it on journalists and we will see helped to organise the Free Media in a the true nature of their promised and Democratic Society conference. legislation,' said Mr Day. More information: 'Woe betide the Government [if it http://www. a llia nce.org. au/ freemedi starts] using these laws against jour aconference nalists, because there will not be a http:// www.ifj-asia .org jANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EU REK A STR EET 13 Hugh Dillon Beyond the Troubles Harcllinerc., remain at daggers drawn, but thc1r relevc1nce is fading as Ireland embraces globalisation INJu t' 2005 TH< '" dccl"cd th>t its 'armed struggle' was over. It was a pragmatic move, given that it had suffered a widespread loss of public support at home and from the American diaspora cvcn from its political arm, Sinn Fein. O utrage over a series of violent acts a few months carl icr probably scaled its decision. First, the IRA wa exposed as responsible for the .£26.5 million robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast in late 2004, one of the biggest robberies in British history. In January 2005 drunken IRA members murdered Robert McCartney, a known Sinn Fein supporter, in a Belfast pub. It also became public that the IRA and other paramilitary groups were behind most of the organised crime Gerry Ada ms in Belfast on the day th e IR A ordered an end to it s armed campaign aga in st British rul e in Northern Ireland. in orthern Ireland. Photo: Paul McErlane/ EPA/AAP Worst was the demoralising realisation by Northern Irish nationalist that all the doubt, a work in progress, you know what manifesto for a mass movement of Si nn bombs and killings had achieved virtually they mea n. Ju stice has always been a side Fein across the island, its 'primary political nothing that could not be won politically. issue in the Troubles. The armed struggle objectives [being] an end to partition, an This eroded Sinn Fein's legitimacy among may be over, but no reconciliation process end to the union, the construction of a its own core con tituency and forced it, in is in sight; the two major parties of the new national democracy, a new republic turn, to divest itself of the IRA, which had North remain as ideologically rigid and on the island of Ireland and reconciliation become a dead weight on its ambitions. fortified in their self-belief as ever. between Orange and Green'. So where do things stand in the This would not, perhaps, be so depressing Sinn Fein attracts just 25 per cent of the North? On the face of it, the signs arc if the ideologies were rational or at least vote in Northern Ircla nd and hold s five of not greatly encouraging. An armistice harmless. The Democratic Unionist Party the 166 seats in the Irish Dail, so achieving has been declared but no peace treaty has has virtually no policies except opposition any of these objectives is unlikely. Adams, settl ed the hostilities and embers of the to Sinn Fein and the moderate Ulster however, is too clever and pragmatic old conflict still flicker occasionally. In Unionist Party. Ian Paisley's rodomontadcs to hold such a 'vision' seriously. Derry September, the loyalist 'marching season' are echoes of Edward Carson and the anti journalist and activist Ea monn McCann turned nasty with police battling rioters Home Rulers of 1914. He has a website, but has observed of him that: for nearly a week. Ashley Graham, whose its message is a century old . fat her was murdered by the IRA in 1990, Sinn Fein, seemingly, is no more Contrary to the conventional account told a BBC interviewer at the rally on 29 sophisticated. The 'policies' page of its of him leading a people ha If addicted to August: 'We feel the IRA have gotten away website ca rries the smiling face of Bairbrc violence toward peace, lhel has merely with it. They can get on with their lives de Br1m, who confides that Sinn Fein's contrived a realignment of republican but not a day goes by without us having policies are based on the thinking of James ideology so as to bring it more closely to remember. People in our situation arc Connolly, a powerful thinker who was into kilter with the people in whose angry and feel something should be done.' executed after the Easter Uprising in 1916. name it was purporting to act, offering 'Love Ulster' marchers strode down the Then what of Sinn Fein in the Ireland no challenge to rhci r consciousness. The highway wearing their Orange sashes and of the 21st century? Its president, Gerry reason the Adams leadersh ip has been carrying banners announcing 'No Justice Adams, has recently published The New able to retain the support of the republican for Protestants'- Although the slogan is, no Ireland-A Vision for the Future, a base wh ile ditching core republican ideas t 4 EU RI:KA STRE ET )A UARY rEBR UARY 200f> is, on this analysis, that the base was Ian Paisley-against the peace process, management. Then hang in there, because never republican in the first place; that which they perceive as favouring the there will be bumps in the road and they were only fighting for their streets. Catholic nationalists. Professor Stephen you, too, can become one of the richest Howe, of Bristol University, author of countries in Europe.' Societies with open So what is Adams really up to? The Ireland and Empire, sees the September economies are also open to ideas. Good Friday Agreement of 1998 gave Sinn riots as a manifestation of distress on Second, whether or not Sinn Fein Fein very little more than was on offer by the part of the previously ascendant will acknowledge it, this extraordinary the British government in 1973. Hardline Protestant workers. In a comment piece transformation in Ireland's economy Republicans-and Unionists- ask what it in the Guardian newspaper he wrote: has been accompanied by a conscious was all for: why did so many have to die? abandonment of its traditional notions of Bernadette Sands, sister of hunger-striker The riots are pa rt of what happens when nationalism . It is a paradox that republicans Bobby Sands, says: 'My brother didn't die the decay of one modern culture-the prefer not to discuss that Ireland is now rich for cross-border bodies.' Like Michael Northern Irish variant of urban, working because it is no longer the self-contained Collins before him, perhaps, Adams, class Britishness-clashes with the rise of Catholic Gaelic nation created in 1921 but unsentimentally and pragmatically, has a globalised popular culture .. . Working an integral part of a massive European and achieved the achievable but is not about class loyalist communities are in a probably world economy. The influence of the Celtic to tell the diehards their struggle was in irreversible retreat. Paramilitary warlords Tiger on the North must be irresistible. vain. It appears he has decided the best and drug barons fight over the ruins. Finally, revisionist historians, notably outcomes for his community in terms Deindustrialisation, demographic decline, Roy Foster, professor of Irish history at of policing, employment, education the tendency of the more enterprising Oxford University, have since the 1970s and other services can only be achieved or successful to move out, low ra tes of argued for the recognition of different politically. The so-called 'vision for the educational achievement and very high ones kinds of Irishness and the legitimacy of future', and its companion piece, the of family breakdown, domestic violence, all of them, including the British Irish of Sinn Fein Discussion Paper on National drug and alcohol abuse-all these are the North. Among the educated middle Unity, is manifestly intended only for features that the poorer Protestant districts classes they found a receptive audience. the diehards, to nudge them away from of Belfast, Portadown or Ballymoney share In 1988, concluding his book Modern the 'armed struggle' without losing them with those of Liverpool and Glasgow. Ireland 1600-1972, Foster argued: from the Sinn Fein fold. There are, however, reasons for If the claims of cultural maturity and a new Until the McCartney murder forced cautious optimism. The Republic of European identity advanced by the 1970s his hand, Adams has always been able Ireland, on a per capita basis, is now can be substantiated, it may be by the hope to lever Sinn Fein's position by implying the richest country in Europe. It has of a more relaxed and inclusive definition that unless it gets what it wants, the IRA outstripped Britain, Germany and France. of Irishness, and a less constricted [read will go its own way. Paradoxically, Sinn Ireland has embraced globalisation and 'republican'] view of Irish history. Fein m ay be in a better position now than post-industrialism. It is somewhat ironic when it was a m ere front for the IRA. now to see Dublin, once viewed with The Northern Irish cannot be Sinn Fein has had very little credibility contempt by the Ascendancy grandees quarantined from these tectonic shifts but in the South. The antagonism it draws of Belfast, buzzing with new cars and what of the immediate future? For all the from every other political party in the metrosexuals, while Belfast has progressed huffing and puffing, partition is not the whole island is palpable. Although Adams little economically from its once proud, core problem dividing the Northern people, himself is respected by m any in the but now distant, industrialised past. it is their different notions of Irishness. Republic, Sinn Fein is regarded by m ost as corrupt, devious and, of course, in its IRA m anifestation, violent. Adams's 'vision' The move to legitimate politics is but a small advance ... is a confession of the futility of the 'arm ed struggle' and a bid for legitimacy. Freed the two communities are now far more polarised than ever from the burden of the IRA connection, Sinn Fein now has a chance to become a legitimate political party but can only The distinguished New York Times There m ay be a subtle answer to this. Irish retain its constituency by presenting itself journalist Thomas Friedman visited author Colm T6ibin, writing in 1993 about as the heir of the republic tradition. Ireland in 2005 and was impressed by what the question of Irishness, observed: The move to legitimate politics is but he saw. The phenomenal growth of the Irish a small advance, however, because, sadly, economy, he said, was not merely lucky; it I know that ambiguity is what is needed in the legacy of the Troubles is that the two had a recipe: 'Make high school and college Ireland now. No one wants territory, merely communities are now far more polarised education free; make your corporate taxes a formula of words ambiguous enough to than ever. Too many have died. The low, simple and transparent; actively seek make them feel at home ... We are learning conflict went on for too long for an easy out global companies; open your economy to talk in whispers. It will take time. • peace to em erge. Moreover, there appears to competition; speak English; keep your to be a powerful backlash am ong working fiscal house in order; and build a consensus Hugh Dillon is a Sydney m agistrate with class Protestants-the main supporters of around the whole package w ith labour and ancestral roots in Ulster. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 15 the worlcl:2 Ron Browning Burma's hidden diaspora Hope emerges for the Karen people forced to flee Burma for refugee camps just over the border in Thailand N ORTH-WEST OF BAN GKOK near (Internally Displaced Persons) either nothing permanent was allowed, such as the Thai-Burma border lies the seemingly escaped into the jungle or were herded laying a concrete floor, yet quietly over quiet town of Mae Sot. Below the surface, into relocation camps. the past few years some microeconomics Mae Sot pulsates with the presence of The story is one that has to be heard. have emerged: vertical horticulture illegal immigrants from Burma, gem My own frequent visits to the Thai- (growing pumpkins on thatched roofs), traders from India and NCO workers. For Burma border focus largely on supporting small weaving industries, a row of shops, the past 20 years, indigenous Karen people Anglican communities in and outside and some (unofficial) forms of youth fleeing into Thailand from Burma have the camps. It's not enough to read education and training. used Mae Sot as a congregation point and occasionally in the press that Aung San While the camps will continue largely have established refugee camps nearby. Suu Kyi remain under house arrest. So as they are, a couple of significant changes Many in the camps remember entering much more needs to be said, especially are being proposed. The T hai government Thailand in the late 1980s after fleeing the about the plight of the ethnic people. The is recognising the long-term plight of the Burmese military. Some of the children work of the artist Maung Maung Tinn refugees and is considering providing born in the camp to those new arrivals are illustrates much about the situation. He opportunities for further youth education. now in their late teens. lives at Dr Cynthia's Clinic just outside Information technology could become an Formanyyearslifeseemedtostandstill Mae Sot, where Karen victims of land everyday part of camp life. in the camps. One day drifted listlessly mines, the war-wounded, pregnant Another change is to do with and hopelessly into the next. People in women and those suffering HIV/AIDS resettlement. In the past 12 months the camps got no support from the United and malaria come for treatment. several Western countries have turned Nations unless they were registered His paintings of IDPs are now being their attention to the refugee warehouses. persons (eligible for resettlement in the sold in the United States and Europe, The first faltering steps to peace West), but at least there was the security the proceeds assisting the work of the between Burma's ruling junta and the of food, shelter, some schooling and some clinic. One is of a small family group democratic groups ground to a halt late hospital facilities, making their plight a huddled together on the bamboo floor of a in 2004, when the military leadership little less desperate than that of the other temporary shelter in Karen State. The deposed the Prime Minister, Khin half million displaced Karen people living dominantcoloursofbrightyellow,greenand N yunt, a nd imprisoned him along with illegally inside Thailand. purple are incongruous given the desperate many government officials. One major International commentators coined scene: a young mother lies exhausted on response of the West has been to step the term 'warehousing' to describe their the floor, probably after having searched up resettlement efforts, and hundreds of situation. It might be jarring, but it is for berries or any other food she can scour Karen families have been moved to other nevertheless an accurate description of from the jungle; the grandmother comforts countries. Australia's intake of Burmese the conditions of incarceration that many a baby in her arms and a young boy sits citizens had virtually stopped for years, Karen face, as do refugees elsewhere in gazing into the distance, looking lost and but last year the intake of Karen people the world. longing to find hope. was 200, with probably more this year. Now the refugees' situation is Refugee communities arc by definition The US is taking many more. changing. Western countries are raising temporary, and structured around The decision to apply for resettlement hopes of resettlement so that families emergency and relief needs. Rice, fish in another country is a difficult matter can start new lives. Several temporary paste, oil and bamboo are supplied each for the community-minded Karen. One aid organisations have set up in Mae month by the Thailand Burma Border family recently came to Melbourne after Sot hoping to case the human problems Consortium. A hospital serves each camp many years of hoping and waiting for a brought on by Burma's civil war. During and there are schools to year-10 level as visa. Standing inside their new western this period the Karen have fought to well as camp section committees that suburbs home, they wept for friends they keep their land, Karen State, ravaged by report to the Thai authorities. Productive had to leave behind in the camp. the government's Burmanisation policy activity that requires equipment or the The concept of worldwide diaspora, that aimed to eradicate the communal usc of land has always been forbidden; unimaginable in the past, is now familiar life of the country's ethnic nationalities boredom and frustration are pervasive. to Karen leaders. The eight million Karen (40 per cent of the population). Villages More than 120,000 people have been of Burma's population of 40 million had were desecrated, and thousands of IDPs crowded into these camps. Until recently their own state in Burma until1997 when 16 EU REKA STREET JANUA RY- FEBR UARY 2006 the creative life Jennifer- Compton the Karen army headquarters fell and the tables turned in what is considered the world's longest civil war. As well as refugee Karen people resettling in other countries, there is the build-up Figments of my of an internal diaspora, the IDPs who remain inside Burma. Small cross-bord er program s are sprouting up in an urgent imagination effort to help them . Now leaders of Karen communities throughout the world are pondering these realities with feelings of disempowerment and determination. So much has changed in the 20 years since thousands fl ed their EOMA VER Y JA UARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EU REKA STR EET 17 indigenous 1ssues: 1 Graham Ring Sniffing at tragedy Aboriginal communities across central Australia, struggling with the scourge of petrol sniffing, have been told it's their problem-fix it H 18 EUREKA STREET JA UARY- FEBRUARY 2006 tive in locations where sniffable fuel cannot report sa id . 'Following the meeting, the Springs'. This would be an extraordinar be obtained. Tragically, Opal is available petrol sniffers went "out bush", lit a big ily ineffectual response, tantamount to only in some selected communities. Snif fire and burnt all their cans and supplies of fencing three sides of a cattle yard . The fable fuel can be readily obtained in Alice food. This gave the community members roll-out of Opal must be comprehensive to Springs and finds its way to remote 'Com a sense of power, and showed that they did achieve significant, durable results. gas' communities, where a soft-drink bot not accept petrol sniffing.' In a telling conclusion to his inquest, tle full of petrol might sell for $50. The evaluation team spoke to night Coroner Cavanagh said: 'It is simplistic in CAYLUS has identified an area patrols-where community members dis the extreme to suggest that the answer to bounded roughly by Coober Pedy, Mt play the courage required to take petrol off the problems of petrol sniffing is for the Isa, Tennant Creek and Laverton (350km the sniffers. 'We talk to them, tell them addicts and their communities to help north-east of Kalgoorlie) as having Aus it will kill them. They might stop then.' themselves. That is to say, the horrors of tralia's largest cluster of petrol sniffers. The team also documented the wide present day Mutitjulu (a nd other remote Coroner Greg Cavanagh and CAYLUS spread practice of taking kids 'out bush' communities) are not sensibly addressed have both called for the roll-out of Opal and teaching them to hunt, fish and live by peddling the myth that such disadvan fuel right across the central desert. This off the land using traps and snares. There taged citizens might simply help them action will remove the immediate danger is ample evidence, often overlooked, that selves and solve the problem. They and and give communities time to consider indigenous communities care deeply their fa milies are not able to do so by the issues confronting them. (This was about the devastation of petrol-sniffing themselves.' implied rather than stated.) and are taking action to eradicate it. Are you listening, Minister? Experts agree that sniffing may never Recently, Tony Abbott was reported • be completely eliminated, and that a per as saying the Government was consider Graham Ring is a Melbourne-based writer centage of sniffers will move on to other ing whether 'a limited supply of the (Opal) who specialises in issues of indigenous solvents, cannabis or alcohol-depend petrol could be m ade available in Alice justice. ing on cost and availability. Yet oppo nents of the roll-out intimate perversely that because it will not cure all the ills of affected communities, broader distribu tion should be delayed. There is dispute about the additional cost of a comprehensive roll-out. Whether it is $5 million or $25 million, the cost would be a tiny fraction of the $13 bil lion the Federal Government collected in fuel excise last year. Sadly, it will also pale in comparison to the costs of car ing for the wheel-chair bound sufferers of acquired brain injury, the living legacy of the scourge. The Select Committee on Substance Abuse found that the cost of full-time institutional care for a person mentally debilitated through sniffing was $160,000 a year in an urban centre, more than twice that if the care is provided in remote com munities. Simple arithmetic underscores the economic value of a roll-out. Many Australians are uncomfortable with the knowledge that a significant number of Aboriginal people are living in Third World squalor, and so are relieved when someone in authority points the finger at communities and says: 'It's all their fault.' This might sa lve middle-class consciences, but it isn't true. The Comgas evaluation team visited one community where both sniffers and non-sniffers supported the decision to intro duce Opal fuel. 'Everyone was informed of the decision at a community meeting,' the JANUARY- FEB RUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 19 Kirsty Sangstet" Remembering Etty .. .Most people here are much worse off woman of 28 who, on the advice of her Sh'ma mea ns saying a prayer over a dying than they need to be because they write Jungian therapist, began to write a journal. person ... I can sec a father, ready to dcpa rt, off longing for friends and family as so The journal covers the years 1941-1943 blessing his wife and child and bei ng many losses in their lives, when they until she volunteers to work as part of blessed himself in turn by an old rabbi should count the fact that their heart is the Jewish Council in the Dutch camp of with a snow-white beard and the profile of able to long so hard and to love so much Westerbork. This camp served as a kind of a fiery prophet ... amongst their greatest blessings. holding station for people who were being -Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) sent to Poland and concentration camps Etty asks us to allow the long queues of such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald. From the dead into our lives. Many people feel Westcrbork she wrote long letters to her unable to read, sec or hear anything about friends and family back in Amsterdam. the concentration camps. It is morbid, These letters have been collected, gruesome, too depressing. This particular S HE mscm" THE nME of tho together with her diaries, and published. truth is one that should not be spoken. yellow stars, this strange time in Holland Eventually, she too was sent to Auschwitz There is indeed a quality that is when stars have only just begun to be and died there in 1943. unspeakable. As the writer and literary sewn onto the clothes of the Jews. She and Etty starts out writing about the things critic George Steiner wrote after the war, her friends are defiant and yet despairing. that matter to her in daily life-her work 'The world of Auschwitz lies outside They huddle together ncar the warm stove as a Russian tutor, her relationships with speech as it lies outside reason.' Others with their cigarettes and their precious, men, her friendships, her love of Rilke's claimed that no poetry could be written rationed coffee and sew on their stars. poetry, her secret wish to be a writer, and no paintings painted after the events But then, she writes, something changes to do something that mattered, to leave of World War II. The things that occurred in her, shifts inside her, as she leaves to some kind of legacy. Then, over time, in the camps are seen as beyond language go home and sees a young man wheeling world events begin to encroach on her and sight-incommunicable. Survivors crazily round and round the fountain in life and she is forced to grapple with the themselves have no illusions as to the the square. He has this huge yellow star enormity of these events. Gradually more unspeakable essence of the things they sewn-bang!-in the middle of his chest. and more laws and strictures are placed on have seen. There are no gods here. Etty A yellow star circling the water fountain . the Jews in Holland and it becomes clear provides us with an extraordinary insight She speaks of the loneliness of the that death is waiting for them somewhere into this place. She speaks of having to young. It is the middle of the war and in Poland. Through this period, the whole 'hold God's hand' and lead Him through many of their teachers at the university tenor of the diaries and letters changes. In the labour camp. We arc left with an have been sent in front of the firing her desire to become the 'thinking heart image of this woman supporting a tiny, squad. She feels like the young have now of the barracks', she records her struggle crumpled, defeated god through the aisles to guide themselves (rudderless) through to be fully present to those around her of bunk beds. It was a place outside of this terror. and to her own suffering. Her writing creation. In its full terror, even God stood She has the sudden impulse to rush becomes a dialogue with her beloved uncomprehending. up to the professor as he comes out of the God as she herself is transformed into a Yet still they urge us to remember. lecture theatre into the cold blue night. mystic. Like any mystic, she writes of the The work of remembrance is a hard and She puts one of her arms around him, and burnt beauty of the world that exists in constant labour. To paraphrase Etty's under avenues of plane trees all emptied spite of all the trespasses (large and small) favourite poet: how much suffering there of leaves they walk through the freezing that we commit on a daily basis. is to get through. How many terrible air to the skating rink. She writes: Etty is a teacher: she schools us in the stories. Work through them like you work language of grace. Spirit presses through through a chore. An active, constant and . . . he seemed a broken man and good the pages. Once known through her public process of 'not forgetting'. A cold through and through and he was journals, we cannot forget her. Yet she journey through snow too deep. It is easier suddenly as defenceless as a chi lei, asks us to remember also the anonymous to pretend that we know all that already almost gentle, and I felt an irresistible dead as they wait to be loaded into the and to get on with our lives. need to put my arm around him and lead freight cars: But what is the quality of the him like a child ... The next day she re1nembrance? How we ren1en1ber, the finds out that he has shot himself. I see a dying old man being carried away, ways we remember, the meanings we Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish reciting the Sh'ma to himself. Saying make or take or make up from the stories 20 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 of the Shoah. Memory, public memory, camps' ... And your sorrow must become be that man. His changeling life diverted may sometimes be as dangerous as an integral part of yourself, part of your into a sister channel. forgetting. As can be seen in our own body and your soul ... Do not relieve your In turn, and once developed, such increased fascination with Gallipoli, feelings through hatred, do not seek to be a moral imagination and compassion memory and remembrance can be twisted avenged ... Give your sorrow all the space helps us as individuals. Suffering always into a macabre celebration of suffering and and shelter in yourself that is its due, for comes knocking-whether in the form nationalism. The act of remembrance can if everyone bears his grief honestly and of physical illness, the death of a brother, also easily become an excuse for further courageously, the sorrow that now fills lover, parent, the burning down of a violence. The memory of suffering at the the world will abate. house, the loss of a job. But if we can know hands of another is placed in the annals that our wills are not at the centre of the of collective history and drawn out in a Vitally, this recognition of self in the universe, then we can begin also to guide ceaseless 'dreamtime of vengeance'. other ensures also that the personal and some compassion towards ourselves; to In his book Lost Icons Rowan Williams the political become reunited. In reading know that we are not always to blame. We reflects in depth on this question of the work of writers such as Primo Levi, cannot always pull our socks up, change memory, particularly as it relates to the Anne Frank, Aharon Appelfeld and our lives, get out of a rut, self-visualise Holocaust, and asks: ' ... will it do, finally, Charlotte Delbo, we see how quickly or think positive and thus dispel pain to treat the Shoah as beyond thinking?' He an individual's life can be swept away. with a sleight of hand. We need a new, old looks to the work of his friend, the Jewish By-laws passed in parliament that once sort of knowing to counterbalance these philosopher Gillian Rose, who argues seemed fairly innocuous can all mount messages. As Etty writes to us: that there is a real danger in placing the up into one terrifying force. In reading memory of the Holocaust outside current stories from the Holocaust, we may Suffering is not beneath human dignity. I political thought and beyond language. begin to understand how tangled our mean: it is possible to suffer with dignity This leads, Rose argues, to an 'exaltation lives are in the political processes that and without. I mean: most of us in the West of the martyr community to a place go on around us-above our heads-but don't understand the art of suffering and outside political thought'. Williams and which somehow we consistently fail experience a thousand fears instead ... And Rose would argue that this exaltation to connect with our emotional, moral, I wonder if there is much of a difference of the Holocaust dead and its surviving ethical and spiritual selves. This lack between being consumed here by a thousand community lets us as individuals off the of connection ensures our continued fears or in Poland by a thousa nd lice and hook, so to speak. If the Shoah is beyond inaction and silence. by hunger? We have to accept death as part politics, beyond language or thinking In an age when, as Rowan Williams of life, even the most horrible of deaths ... even, then it has nothing to do with us. We writes, 'we choose the distinctive hell when I say, I have come to terms with life, can feel bad about it, guilty, even identify of placing our own wills at the centre I don't mean I have lost hope. What I feel is with its victims in what Etty would call of things', these stories teach us about not hopelessness, far from it. I have lived a self-gratifying 'greedy compassion', but in the end it has nothing to do with us and our lives as lived. As Williams writes, To read stories from the Holocaust shows us just how quickly this 'leaves us with the unhappy gulf ... between the self as moral agent and the our lives can be changed and destroyed by political processes. self as political or civic subject'. These stories may be the crucible for the development of a Instead, Rose suggests that memory and remembrance should be concerned genuine moral imagination ... with drawing us as individuals into a directly personal relationship with the dead. That is, we could begin to recognise contingency and suffering. Our lives this life a thousand times over already, and ourselves in the other. We could connect are not self-made. We are not always in I have died a thousand deaths. Am I blase their experiences to our lives in a way control. Sometimes things happen. then? No. It is a question of living life from that opens up the possibility for a kind As the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova minute to minute and taking suffering into of exchange, a dialogue, a listening, a wrote in Leningrad in 1944: ' ... this cruel the bargain. conversation. We could grieve their loss. age has deflected me, like a river from its Etty suggests something similar when course./Strayed from familiar shores/my Let us remember Etty and mourn she writes: changeling life has flowed/into a sister her loss. • channel. .. ' To read the stories from the And finally: ought we not, from time Holocaust shows us just how quickly Kirsty Sangster is a Melbourne poet whose to time, open ourselves up to cosmic our lives can be changed and destroyed first collection, Midden Places, will be sadness? One day I shall surely be able to by political processes. These stories published this year by Black Pepper Press. say ... 'Yes, life is beautiful, and I value it may be the crucible for the development This essay was one of two she submitted anew, even though I know that the sons of a genuine moral imagination: an to win equal second and highly com of mothers, and you are one such mother, imagination that sees the detained man mended in the inaugural Margaret Dooley are being murdered in concentration and can imagine what it may feel like to Young Writers' Award. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 21 Peter Hamilton Searching for Borrisnoe It's a long way to Tipperary from New York, via Victoria, and once there it's not so easy to trace your grandmother's footsteps L AST SeeHMBER I STooo in B p•ckcd I had been taken to Hannah's grave and bored with ancestor study. They wanted Brooklyn courtroom, held up my right when I was about Grace's age, but had to have fun. We drove under a canopy of hand, and solemnly swore to renounce my never since felt any curiosity about her. river gums along one of Victoria's most 'allegiance to any fo reign potentate'. I was told she had died of a fever passed bea utiful stretches of road to the village After 20 years as an Australian by an infected midwife from home to of Molesworth. We checked into the pub, expatriate in New York, I was a brand home as she delivered babies throughout and the girls happily trampolined on their new American citizen. Mild depression Central Victoria. twin beds. followed. I anxiously wondered, 'What is My fa ther James was three when he lost It was Melbourne Cup eve, and the bar it that I have so shamefully renounced?' his mother, and he was the eldest of three was packed . I asked the publican about I decided it was time to do a little on boys. Charles came next. The baby, Ja ck, Cremona. She called out to one of her the-spot research, so booked a flight from never celebrated his birthday, because it patrons, Rick, who said the property was New York to Melbourne with my nine was so linked to the day his mother died. currently owned by a Melbourne syndicate, year-old daughter Grace. Allie, her cousin, As we picked scraps of masking tape and was managed by Les Ridd, the owner joined us on a drive up through the Great off the gravestone, I wondered if my of the neighbouring property. Rick Dividing Range and then down into the father's remoteness could be traced back fumbled under the bar and produced Ridd's Goulburn Valley. We were searching to the tragic story revealed in Hannah's phone nurnber. I called and left a message for marks left behind by the ancestral inscription. I remember standing next to explaining that I was interested Hamiltons who had taken up selections in him in church when I was little and reciting in taking a peck at Cremona. the area. the 'Hail Holy Queen '. I felt his chest At the cemetery outside the pretty expand at the verse 'To Thee do we cry, C HARLES HAMILTON 'lost' Cremona town of Alexandra, a cracked, bitumen poor banished children of Eve'. Even then, during the Depression. It was a shameful path separates the relatively substantial I guessed that the crying and banishment episode in our family history, and was bur Protestants from the scrappy Catholics. that seemed so familiar to him were related ied behind a vague and typical family story We quickly found my grandmother's to his motherless childhood. of victimhood. Experiencing hard times, gravestone, which dominates the Catholic But of the woman who lay behind this Charles had taken on a Kyneton solicitor section . The large pedestal is crowned by sadness? All I cared to know was that she as a partner. According to this story, the an imposing column that seems to have had died tragically, and that her shocking solicitor was a feral type, and the Hamil strayed across from the Protestant side. death seemed to have left an emptiness tons were soon evicted from their home. The grave is well preserved except for that rippled across the generations. My oldest brother Joh n never stopped some rust on the ornamental iron fe nce. We sat on the gravestone-Charles wanting to restore Cremona to the Ham We went back into town and bought Hamilton's Taj Mahal-and began to ilton name. crayons, butcher's paper and masking tape. create Hannah's story. Lcs Ride! called back, and when I Despite a breeze that tore at the paper, I was surprised to read that she was explained my connection to Cremona, he Allie and Grace worked up a bright, red Irish, born in Tipperary in about 1876. We invited us over. He is a gracious, welcoming rubbing of the finely chiseled inscription: imagined a damp, overcrowded farmhouse, m an in his sixties, and full of energy. a final, shocking goodbye to her parents, He says that farming today is a constant In Memory of followed by a cold trek west to Limerick, struggle to find new sources of income. As Hannah Hamilton or perhaps south to Cork, maybe with a well as raising cattle, Ridd produces first (nee Costigan,) brother or sister. Then came the harsh class olive oil and a superb tapenadc. He is Wife of ocean voyage to Port Philip or New South active in marketing regional fi ne foods. Charles Hamilton Wales. A respectable marriage followed: Les explained that he is not the (Cremona, Molesworth.) Charles Hamilton had inherited a property manager of Cremona but a local Born at Borrisnoe. that was important enough to be given the agricultural contractor who carries out Co Tipperary, Ireland. aspirational Italian name Cremona. The fodder conservation and va rious activities Died at Molesworth work on the farm was hard. Two baby boys on the property. 29'h Aug" 1905, aged 29 years came. And then expecting a third. The girls happily jumped into the tray R.I.P. Grace and Allie were suddenly hungry of the truck with Les's dog, and we drove 22 EU REKA STREeT )ANUARY- FEI3RUARY 2006 up to the iron gate at Cremona Park. Les met Charles, who was on lifted the latch, and I imagined that we holiday with his mother. were the first Hamiltons to pass through Two Saturdays later that gate in 70 years. I woke up in Dublin's As we bumped along the track and Westbury Hotel, down into the property, he praised the exhausted from speaking mix of grasses found in each pasture. He at a television industry described Cremona Park as probably 'the conference. I was due to best property in Victoria' because it so fly back to New York the perfectly combines a favourable aspect, next morning. I decided good soil, and the most productive ratio to lie in my luxurious of naturally drained river flats to gently bee\ linens and watch the sloping hillside. Ireland vs South Africa It is located north of the Great Dividing rugby international. Range, providing a balanced rainfall and Suddenly, destiny year-round sunlight. It avoids both the kicked me out of bed. I harsh droughts that persist even a few would go find Borrisnoe. miles to the north and west, and the cold It was a once-in-a-lifetime fogs that envelop the rugged valleys a short opportunity to bookend distance to the south. my grandmother's life in We bounced past the dilapidated less than two weeks. Hamilton farmhouse. I wanted to stop and There was a basic peek inside, but I couldn't interrupt Les, problem. Borrisnoe didn't who was expounding about the value at seem to exist. No one in auction of the Cremona-fed cattle. I strained Dublin hac\ heard of it. I to picture my pregnant grandmother and checked the car rental map her two baby boys on the verandah, but as well as several detailed could barely see the abandoned home tourist maps of Tipperary, through the overgrown garden. but there was no Borrisnoe. The next day we drove back to I drove out from Dublin Melbourne, where my sister Anna listed to north Tipperary, and the few meagre facts that she had picked in the old market town of up about our grandmother. Hannah had Roscrea I asked directions left Tipperary with a brother and found from a policeman, a hotel work as a chambermaid in a guesthouse in receptionist, a museum Grace Hamilton and Alex Cleary, with Peter Hamilton the Blue Mountains. It was there that she attendant, and many others. at Cremona Park. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STRE ET 23 Dan and Kathl ee n Greed at th eir home near Borrisnoe. Ph oto: Bri an Donnelly boys fled from the Dublin, I edged my car into a lane to make pub when I knocked a U-turn. Two tractors loaded with hay on the window. The slowly squeezed past. I caught up with farmhouse was dark, them as they turned into a yard next to a but as I drove by, a plain grey farmhouse. I noticed a farmer rusty Ford Escort standing in the yard, pulled over and pulled .into the approached him. He was a grey-haired, farmyard. I followed fit-looking man in his sixties-not at all the driver, an elderly unlike Les Ridd back in Molesworth. His farmer, and, .in the name was Dan Greed and I told him I was approaching darkness, looking for Borrisnoe. described my search 'And Peter, why are you looking for for Borr.isnoe. Borrisnoe?' 'Well, Peter,' he 'Because my grandmother Hannah was said, becoming deeply born there, and she died in Australia-' They guessed that Borrisnoe was once philosophical. 'Isn't life a wonderful thing. 'Peter, what was her name?' 'town land', but that it was probably long Here you are, coming all the way from 'It was Hannah Hamilton.' forgotten. They had heard of several other Brooklyn and Melbourne, and looking for 'No, Peter. What name was she Borrises, but definitely not Borrisnoe. your grandmother's footsteps in Borrisnoe. born under?' It was mid-afternoon already, and And after I send you on your way, we'll 'That was Hannah Costigan.' the winter light was already beginning never meet again!' He paused, and then held out to fade. I came across a tiny library in He sent me down a meandering lane his hand. Roscrea's historic Damer House, and after bordered by stone fences, but I couldn't 'Peter, she was my grandmother's leafing though a dozen reference books, follow his directions. I distracted myself by sister. And yo u're me cousin!' I nearly gave up. But then a volume on guessing that the conquering English had I was stunned and elated. I had done Irish megaliths caught my eye. I half pushed the native Celts off the Golden Vale the right thing for my grandmother. heartedly flicked though the index. Bingo! and up into these scrappy hills. I caught Relatives were phoned, and we all stared There was Borrisnoe. A hand-drawn map myself in a 'Balkan moment', embracing at one another in the Creeds' kitchen, marked a stone ring fort located near the a 400-year-old national grievance. In my puzzling over the complete lack of family headwaters of a river. I laid the crude map tiredness, it was if 'we' had been savagely resemblance. next to my road map, and guessed that the wronged yesterday. But what a twist of the After a while, Dan's wife Kathleen left river was probably the nearby Saur. Imperial order that Hannah Costigan, one the kitchen and fetched a studio photo. It I had an idea. The butcher would know of the least of Her Majesty's subj ects, had was a portrait of one of Hannah's sisters every little village because that's where briefly found a distant home on the best who had emigrated to Texas, where she he would buy his meat. I was wrong. The property in Victoria's own Golden Vale 1 entered a teaching order of nuns. From Ro crea butcher seemed to order from a At that moment, lost in a maze of beneath her habit, a modern face gazed Dublin wholesaler, but a lady waiting stone-fenced lanes, I was confronted by the with superb confidence into the camera in the queue suggested that someone in dismal thought that Hannah's promising lens, looking for all the world 1ik e our the nearby colonial town of Tcmplemore future at Cremona was made possible own Grace in dozens of photos. might be able to give directions. only because the native population had Borrisnoe and the site of the demolished With the light fading, I sped clown into been driven out of Central Victoria's river Costigan farrnhouse were a short distance the Golden Vale of Tipperary, Ireland's valleys. They had been routed by the two away in the darkness. We decided to richest agricultural land. But Templemore hit punch of imported diseases and white postpone my visit until next time. It was turned up a lot more head shaking. As I men armed with guns and poison. That very late and long past time to drive off sadly drove out of town, I noticed a butcher disaster for Australia's natives hadn't to Dublin. loading a m eat tray into an Audi station occurred half a millennium ago, but in the Dan wished me well, and asked me wagon. He was my last hope. I turned the decades immediately before the Hamilton to promise to write next time I came to car around and approached him. He said family and their Irish cousins took up their Tipperary so that he and his wife Kathleen that he knew of Borrisnoe, that it was selections. would have a proper dinner ready for me. somewhere past a nearby road junction As darkness set in, I snapped myself called Kilkea, and that I should ask there. back to my present situation-tired and Peter Hamilton is a New York-based Kilkea was a pub, a church and a farm. vaguely lost near the headwaters of the consultant who specialises in the The church was locked, and two teenage Saur. Resigned to finding my way back to international television industry. 24 EU REKA STR EET jANUARY- FEB RUARY 2006 poet n Kerry Leves At Parramatta A jacaranda reaches out delicate octopus tentacles towards a quarter moon as thin as a Thursday evening sales-smile. blossoms hang in mauve-blue clouds. There is a row of shops an advertiser's voice a church- its blond stones cut by prisoners long ago. Angels grieve in window niches. On the plaza Tinted glass holds martyrdoms someone's screaming: the stations of the cross 'You fucking ... fucking ... ' for every day. agonised, full-throttle. Down the square, Falun Dafa people More soberly an older voice legs folded lotus-style yells, 'Hey mate'; is ignored. withdraw behind shut eyelids; Teenage boys manhandle silk banners, melodies on tape two belligerents speak for their silenced co-religionists in China; who thrash out of grip, eyeball; howl while a bearded man in jeans 'Fucking hit me ... Go on!' bears Christians' God loud witness till briefly caged from the lip of a six-tiered amphitheatre deserted by mates' anns (enforced restraint but for a sushi chef on smoke-break is honourable & a girl with Barbie-fluent hair almost) arguing with some delinquent bloke inside her mobile. they bounce on sneakered feet to punch-up provocations, hassle on the lope A Chinese boy greets his girl with silence, above a stony turf. one concentrated kiss. Their mates' hands interlock again Young-man sedans by the railway bridge around their hunched-for-brawling shoulders; hit bass- no fight occurs. rave & hip-hop, looping north past the jail where inmate boys might hear Kerry Leves having survived another day in the yard; locked down with currawongs' last roosting-calls. jANUARY- FE BR UARY 2006 EU RE KA STR EET 25 culture Michael McGirr Before it goes to the tip The National Museum of Australia in Canberra is both garage and op shop forth(' nation w eN THe NAnONAL Muecum had only 60 or 70 per cent of the space in now an adult. Not a trace of the hospital of Australia finally opened its doors on the museum. There soon followed a ter remained. But the view was still the same. Canberra's Acton Peninsula in 2001, local ritorial battle which became a focal point For one moment, she had felt she was a radio invited callers to phone in with their for some of the contested issues of indig new mother again. The years in between impressions of the new building. Canberra enous history. The most passionate call fell away like skin. radio has a shortage of shock jocks. Nor ers had important things to say about the This is how the museum works. It does it have many shrill jills. You can lis high price of souvenirs and sausage rolls. provides long vistas. People go there to ten all day without hearing much venom One particular visitor, however, see old stuff. But if the place has done its in the cliches. Visitors are sometimes dis reported that she had had an eerie feeling job, they come away with a fresh look at appointed, and go home early to places when she was inside the new museum. themselves. where they have more chance of hearing She couldn't put her finger on the cause. This is certainly true of the National callers say what everybody else is saying as The woman said she was looking out the Museum's new exhibition, Captivating though they'd just thought of it. They for window from one of the galleries and and Curious, which has been mounted get that Canberra has Parliament for this. had an uncanny sense of deja vu. It was to mark 25 years since the passage of the Callers about the museum were mixed a brand new place but she knew she had National Museum Act by the Fraser Gov in their reactions. One man said he had been here before. ernment in 1980. This was the moment at gone home without seeing anything The reason dawned on her later. The which, at long last, both sides of politics because he couldn't find the door to get museum is built on the site of the old agreed on establishing a place to house its in. He wondered if this was part of the Canberra Hospital. The woman realised homeless collection. architects' plan to protect the collection. she'd been looking at the same view over That collection has a longer history. In Others were miffed that the European the lake that she had spent hours contem some ways, it owes less to a collective sense history of Australia, representing one per plating from bed as she recovered from of national history than to the unusual cent of the human story of the continent, the birth of her first child. The child was passions of individuals. Foremost among 26 EURE KA STRE ET )A UARY- FEBR UARY 2006 Below: o. 1 Holden prototype. Right: anchor from Matthew Flinders' lnvesligator, both photographed by Dragi Markivich. All photos used by permission of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. these was Melbourne orthopaedic sur threw anything out. Her niece then had thing to keep body and soul together. So geon Colin MacKenzie. According to the good sense to preserve what Florence he acquired a horse-drawn wagon and set Guy Hansen, the curator of Captivat had neglected to get rid of. The result is himself up as the 'Saw Doctor', travelling ing and Curious, MacKenzie was a a remarkable gathering of rural domestic from town to town, sharpening knives wealthy man with access to the corri paraphernalia whose provenance is well and tools as he went. dors of power. He was concerned about established. The material draws the Over the next 34 years, his wagon the the danger of extinction faced by spe visitor into the lifestyle of women on a Road Urchin developed a life of its own. cies of Australian fauna which he saw 19th-century sheep station. Wright married Dorothy; they had a daugh as valuable not only in their own right Guy Hansen began working for the ter, Evelyn. The wagon was their home and but also for their medical role as mod museum in 1991 in a warehouse in the workplace. It acquired all sorts of ornamen els for comparative anatomy. In the ungainly Canberra suburb of Mitchell. tation. Eventually, an old truck replaced years after World War I, MacKenzie At that stage, he was not even sure there the horse; the truck was also embroidered. began collecting specimens. These would be a building that could broker the Following Wright's death, the Road Urchin became the basis of the Austral growing collection to the public. In design was bought by a second-hand dealer in ian Institute of Anatomy, one of a ing Captivating and Curious, he wanted to Wangaratta. It sat in a shed until it was number of streams that were even give visitors an idea of how the collection acquired by the museum in 2002. The tually to flow into the holdings spends most of its time. The first thing they key thing is that it was undisturbed in its of the National Museum. come across are steel bays piled with bri retirement. The Road Urchin is comprised By the 1970s, any colage identified only by simple museum of hundreds of details: a smoker's pipe, pots number of individuals, gov tags. Captivating and Curious is arranged and pans, postcards and signs, garbage bins ernment departments and in such a way as to provide a sense of the and tools. All of these draw the imagina other bodies were known history of museums themselves: it moves tion into a strange life on the road, one that to have held on to all sorts of from using old-fashioned glass cases was both fanciful and pragmatic. The Road intriguing objects that had an important through to interactive displays. Urchin tells a bottomless story. It can't be cameo in the national story. In 1975, Peter The Smithsonian Institution in the exhausted by any simple explanation. It Pigott chaired an inquiry which reported United States, now comprising a number takes the onlooker to a dozen unfamiliar that 'deterioration of valuable collections of museums, has been described as the places from which he or she can look back in Au tralian museums, great and small, attic of the nation. Hansen describes the upon themselves. has reached the proportion of a crisis'. National Museum in Canberra as Aus The culture we inhabit is changing Captivating and Curious is a delight tralia's garage. He could just as well have from one based on memory, a human ful celebration of the moment at which said it's our op shop. The exhibition works art, to one based on retention. If you take this situation began to turn around. It by serendipity and surprise. There i no $20 out of an ATM, that factoid will be puts on display hundreds of items for knowing what you'll find next, but each retained in a computer for all eternity. But which the permanent display seldom has item brings a kind of recognition. There the smell of the flowers you bought with space. Of the 200,000 items belonging to is an anchor from Flinders' Investigator, the $20 can only be remembered. Telstra the museum, only four per cent are regu the proclamation left by Mawson in Ant may retain an account of every phone larly on show. The museum always has a arctica in 1931 and duelling pistols said number you ever dialled, but a tender duty curator available to field calls from to have been used by Thomas Mitchell in conversation had over the phone can't be members of the public who have just 1851, although, in fact, only one retained, only remembered. Retention cre found something in their garage or of them was used by Mitch ates data. Memory leads to storytelling. shed. Every day of the year, some- ell. The other was used Captivating and Curious is a reminder body rings up about dusty objects by a gentleman called that certain things need to be retained. that the museum just might Donaldson who had But in this case, retention creates mem want to see. criticised Mitchell in ory. These items come with labels. But 'Often people ring as they public. they also ask for stories. are about to take something Being a garage, Is there anything Guy Hansen thinks is to the tip,' says Hansen. 'It's there is a fair empha missing from the museum? Is there a call important we get it before it has sis on vehicles. There he would like one day to receive about a gone to the tip. It needs to come is the prototype of the particular object that the collection lacks? with its story intact. We need to first Holden, and a landau 'We would love to have one of know whose it was and how it was part which arrived in Australia in Robert Menzies' double-breasted suits,' of the life people lived.' the 1820s, possibly the oldest vehicle in he says. 'But I believe they all went to An example of this is a recently the country. op shops.' • acquired collection from the Springfield But the item that steals the show in property near Goulburn, NSW. Springfield Captivating and Curious is the 'Road Michael McGirr is a former publisher of was settled by W. P. Faithful! in 1827. His Urchin'. Eurelw Street. His most recent book is maiden daughter Florence lived on the In 1935, at the age of 30, Harold Wright Bypass: The Story of a Road. Captivat property for 98 years, dying in 1949. Not arrived in Melbourne from England. Work ing and Curious is on at the National only did Florence live long, but she never was scarce and Wright needed to do some- Museum of Australia until Aprill7. )A UARY-FEBR UARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 27 ()( I (' \ Freya Mathews The art of discovering values It is far better for children to learn to lerance than it is for them to have it imposed upon them A co TRAmcnoN ucs " tht underpins tolerance and so democracy. education sits uncomfortably with heart of liberalism, one that generations As is happening elsewhere in the West, our Australian commitment to liberal of theorists have struggled with: should there are moves in Australia to introduce democracy, because liberalism is premised a liberal society, with its definitive 'values education' in schools. The wider on tolerance for a diversity of values commitment to the value of tolerance, aim is to counter a perceived lack of moral across society. However, because 'values tolerate the intolerant? Fear of the moorings among the young; the more education' is advocating, by and large, intolerant, of those who resort to violence urgent and focused aim is to discourage the values of liberalism itself-revolving in their resistance to others' ideas, is the kind of extrcmi t-sometimes around a moral axis of tolerance and respect one of the main motives behind the new fundamentalist-values that can lead to for social and cultural diversity-perhaps regime of 'values education' in Western antisocial or even terrorist tendencies. In its apparent contradiction with liberalism societies. But can these societies impose Australia, the values being championed by can be avoided. Whether values education their ethos of tolera nee on citizens who federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson is the way to allay fundamentalist would reject it, without at the same time have been set out on a poster and distributed tendencies is another matter. contradicting that very ethic? I think to schools. This poster advertises 'nine An attitude can be described as not. But the contradiction can be avoided values for Australian schooling': care fundamentalist if it is underpinned by if children-and adults-are taught the and compassion; doing your best; fair go; values or beliefs taken in a literal way and art of discovering values for themselves. freedom; honesty and trustworthiness; held inflexibly. Fundamentalists have not The process of doing so, of listening to integrity; respect; responsibility; and thought through their values or beliefs, or and accepting or rejecting other people's understanding, tolerance and inclusion. subjected them to any kind of evidential ideas, instils the respect for others that On the face of it, the idea of values or rational test. They are, in other words, beliefs or values accepted uncritically from some text (scripture, for example), person (parent/teacher/leader) or institution (church/school/state). So it is not the content of specific value beliefs but the way we arrive at them, via conditioning or indoctrination, example, that makes them fundamentalist. This means that there can be fundamentalism about liberalism or democracy just as there can be about Christianity, Islam, human rights or environmentalism. So teaching the values of tolerance and respect for diversity from a state sanctioned poster, revamped school motto or other text means teaching democracy or liberalism in a basically fundamentalist fashion. Moreover, such values teaching is likely to encourage precisely the passive submissiveness to authority that leads to people becoming susceptible to extremist positions; surely not an effective antidote to fund a mental ism. How then are our children to acquire the shared values that arc the necessary basis for social life if the kind of elf- 2B EU REKA STREET )ANUARY ~ FEBRUt\RY 2006 defeating processes of indoctrination the contrary, considered disagreement is A child being proposed under the rubric of values evidence that one has listened carefully education are ruled out? to what the other person has to say and whose idea is I suggest that rather than teaching taken it seriously enough to engage with discarded by the group children codes of conduct, we teach it. Each child explores the others' ideas in them how to discover appropriate the knowledge that their own ideas will need not discard it values for themselves. Through inquiry be explored in turn: everyone is expected herself children-and adults-develop skills of to open their ideas out to others in this reflexiveness: the capacity to reflect upon way. Some ideas will be enlarged or their own experience of life and to seek elaborated or adjusted by the group. Some the best possible answers to questions that might be discarded. arise from it. Such practices already exist A child whose idea is discarded by in our education system. Under the name the group need not discard it herself; she value judgments? Children who become of philosophy for children, or philosophy might have to give it more thought. She such independent thinkers will be well in schools, collective inquiry encourages can do so secure in the knowledge that equipped to respond appropriately to children to discuss, in small groups, to her group she is not identified with future situations that could not be issues of the playground, issues of the day, any particular idea or view, but is rather, anticipated by any present code of or even issues arising from the human again, seen as an author of ideas: the conduct. condition. A facilitator (teacher) helps community of inquiry is simply a safe Individuals who have not been these communities of inquiry explore space for her and her cla smates to try out offered such practices, but have been these issues at their own level, just as they different possibilities and develop their asked to swallow a state-sanctioned see them. This gives children a chance to own reflexive capacities. nine-point code, will have no way of try out new and received ideas and see This practice of collective inquiry truly divining or inhabiting the values how they stand up under the scrutiny helps children discover they do have prescribed by that code, and will likely of their peers. Children are sur something of their own to say about end up as 'fundamentalist' apologists for prisingly good at this activity. issues in their community. Children who a democracy they have no way of putting discover this will also feel that one day to the test. E VEN MORE IMPORTANT than this first they will be capable of making worthwhile Indeed, a publicly enforced code of hand exploration of ideas are the protocols contributions to debate in society. It will respect and tolerance for difference poses that define the community of inquiry. give them the confidence, as adults, to a real danger that people would cease to Children are asked to listen attentively take responsibility for society. be accountable for their beliefs and values; and patiently to their classmates; they So children who have been through they could adopt any set of beliefs and discover that it is through this listening, the developmental process fostered by the values, however absurd or fanciful, and and the unexpected differences in community of inquiry, or similar practices, demand these be given as much respect perspective it reveals, that their own will have no need of Brendan Nelson's (uncritical acknowledgment) as those perspectives take shape and evolve. To 'values education'. The experience of having with sound foundations. Mutual critique discover this is in effect to discover, and their peers listen attentively to them on across belief systems would be ruled out. take possession of, their own thought issues that matter will have validated their Such a regime of extreme relativism process and hence their own authority. perspective. The experience of listening could clearly impoverish our knowledge This sets them well on the way to winning attentively to their peers will have revealed systems to the point of knowledge a sense of their own autonomy or power of to them that others have perspectives as breakdown-and hence economic and self-determination. alive and complex and deeply felt as their social breakdown. Moreover, the massive Discovering their own authority in own; it will have taught them both respect failure of engagement across discourses relation to ideas tends to free children for others and appreciation for the diversity it would entail would tend to fragment from literal-minded attachment to specific of others. society into its discrete belief and value ideologies or sets of value-beliefs; they Discovering the way their own thought constituencies. So the consequences of a start to discover the essential fluidity and is stimulated into unexpected and creative regime of enforced uncritical acceptance open-endedness of all ideas. Then they life through dialogue with others will of different belief systems, in the name will understand that they do not have have enabled them to take charge of their of values that betray their own meaning to accept everything their classmates own thought process, thereby becoming by being imposed in a dogmatic and in the community of inquiry say. They self-determining individuals, with all the authoritarian fashion, might be at least as will realise it is possible, for themselves sense of self-worth that follows from this. dire for society as those of a regime that and their classmates, to try out ideas in a Won't such children have every chance of tolerates no diversity at all. • tentative and exploratory fashion, and that growing into tolerant individuals with a disagreement with someone's view in no robust respect for themselves and others, Freya Mathews is associate professor in way implies rejection of that person. On and able to make responsible philosophy at LaTrobe University. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 29 journl'\ :.2 Luke Fraser L ONDON « A omw em. The energy of the Thames's tidal flow between the Temple and the Tower is metaphor: the same energy is on display every day in the thousands who turn up for work, freshly disgorged from rail stations and tubes, to pursue the main chance. Proud ambition drives London: in few other pl aces would so many young men-boys commuting from their outer-suburban bedsits to earn a pittance flogging mobile phones ~ 6' or computers-wear such stentorian ~ ' JWt;"Von:rI pinstripes and luminous shirts and strut, peacock-like, through the town, their I gait out of kilter with their wealth and influence. Perhaps there arc more dynamic economies in the world; perhaps there are more creative and hard-working people and places, but give London its due: it is the home of brass. There is a confidence in the commerce of the city that has rarely been diminished since the great m ercantile days of centuries past. Like the similarly Protestant and pragmatic The Pepysian paradox Samuel Pepys\ diariPs ( hronit ling London life in the 17th centurv now on the internet remain dS tresh dncl engaging as ('V('r lO EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 Dutch, it would seem English traders took a Londoner in excelsis. And for those who Such diaries are common enough; few the religious contention over usury-the make the choice to leaf through his many people obtain a balance between potential scourge of money-lending-and ran with volumed diaries, he has more qualities and achievement. Not everybody can be the opportunities it presented, while than this again, as a man moving across born a Wallace Stevens-bestriding art and Catholic France and Spain looked on in and through the lines of a fascinating commerce, simultaneously the successful pious hesitation. The results still refract society. That he could move from the businessman and one of the great poets of along the Thames. mundane and bawdy to the thoughtful and his age. Diaries are oftentimes attractive Such qualities can be glimpsed by intellectual and back again, every day, is a because they reveal that imbalance any visitor today, or they can be read in testament first to the man, but also to his between life imagined and lived. They dramatic renderings by English writers; time and his city. show us people whose potentialities and perhaps most conspicuously in Dickens, Diaries can be a clearing house for ambitions are beyond the sum of their although there are modern equivalents. But thoughts and ambitions untried in real life; mundane parts. They keep us reading and it is rarer to find the demiurges of London's a solace to those feeling put upon by the thinking and, perhaps, they make us a city life documenting their own days. world. The intimacy of the diary lends itself little less dissatisfied with ourselves. Perhaps this is one part of the explanation to self-assessment; it is a place to sound the Samuel Pepys did not keep such a diary. for the evergreen popularity of Samuel depths of the writer. Once jotted out, these From his mid-twenties, when he began to Pepys's diaries. Evidently, the patron saint journals become a spyhole to the man: record his daily affairs and thoughts, he of London is Erconwald, the city's seventh was he dogged with self-doubt? Did he feel worked to make every post a winner and century Saxon bishop. It might cause a stir himself short-changed? Was he someone delighted in writing about his efforts. in the Holy See, but an argument could be else entirely? This is the fodder for many Every win, loss and near miss is recorded in made for appointing Samuel Pepys to this diary lovers. Readers of published diaries a diary that doubles as a ledger. There are position. For beyond all others, he renders can truffle-hunt for that which astounds, doubts, too, but they are mostly concerned for us the practicality, ambition, vanity, or makes no sense when confronted with with what providence might bestow, gaiety, wit, sure-footedness and strength of the outer diarist and their outwardly life. or how another might act in matters of JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 31 importance for Pepys himself. There are his house in Seething Lane, his place of He seems to be very well acquainted with few truly dark nights of the soul in the birth and baptism, his parish church and the King's mind, and with all the several diaries of Samuel Pepys. Reading him is his workplace in the Navy Office. In this factions at Court, and spoke all with so to see the blossoming of a figure whose same delta, large office blocks now jostle much frankness, that I do take him to work ethic, ambition, guile and intellect for every ounce of real estate on erstwhile be my Lord's good friend, and one able kept the public figure and the private man bomb sites-some of the old laneways lie to do him great service, being a cunning in a blessed equilibrium throughout his crushed anonymously beneath them, but fellow, and one (by his own confession to life; a thruster backing himself with hard many more survive as rear lanes to large me) that can put on two several faces, and work, a sharp eye, quick feet and a fear of city office blocks: dog tracks weaving look at his enemies with as much love as the gutter. Pepys kept his great diary for around corporate giants. his friends. But, good God! What an age is a little under a decade; yet he lived longer Notwithstanding the changes, it this, and what a world this is! That a man still, and ascended the heights of his trade, remains fairly easy to follow Pepys's cannot live without playing the knave as perhaps the most senior civil servant wanderings from any given diary and dissimulation. in the country. The brevity of the diaries entry: he was meticulous in recording might be our loss, but if we are to take his perambulations. Perhaps the only And as might be expected of a man away any positive, it must be this: that in significant barrier to the modern detective who stepped over destitution on his way his diaries we read a youthful man in full is the diarist's countless river crossings, to daily business each day, Pepys was a sail towards his ambitions, unfreighted by made almost daily in small, rowed ferries true Micawber. The diaries groan under middle age, illness and ennui. They were as the naval bureaucrat went to inspect the weight of entries bemoaning costs, or golden years for Pepys, and the writing progress in the shipyards, or to drink, hold rejoicing in windfalls: does them full justice. court and chase skirts across the river. My mind is now in a wonderful condition of The diaries are strikingly immediate The Thames nowadays is a much quieter quiet and content, more than ever in all my and fresh. Pepys's language is not archaic: place than that; the ferries only run life, since my minding the business of my perhaps his prose is a little more formal longitudinally between tourist hotspots office, which I have done most constantly; than we might expect today, but it sits on such as Hampton Court and the Tower, and I find it to be the very effect of my late the pages with the smell of fresh paint. but Pepys records for us in daily detail the oaths against wine and plays, which, if God This achievement is the more remarkable bustling life of this deep and strongly tidal please, I will keep constant in, for now my when compared to the diary of Pepys's river, which was- all at once-London's business is a delight to me, and brings me near contemporary, John Evelyn. For all underground system, motorway, city wall, great credit, and my purse cncreases to. its importance and intelligence, Evelyn's internet cable and sewer. prose has a leaden feel, a sense of the voice The intimacy of his world was helped And he was a boast, when it suited his thrown from a great distance; it is not there by the size of his London. At the time purpose: in Pepys. The other great link between it held perhaps less than half a million Home by water, and to the office all Pepys and the modern reader is the donkey people-a little more intimate than the 7.5 afternoon, which is a great content to me, stubborn geography of the city itself, which million of today. Consequently, the great to talk with persons of quality and to be brings an immediate familiarity to his networks of royalty, commerce, politics, in command, and I give it out among them jottings. The lie of the land has changed science and the arts were small, familiar that the estate left me is 2001. a year in little since his time. London's shambling and intertwined out of necessity. On this land, besides moneys, because I would put alleyways and yards refused to yield to the cosier scale, a man who could work hard, esteem on myself. rebuilding plans laid after the great fire as well as read, write, talk and bargain of 1666; this intransigence was largely, it with the best would command good odds But, as ever, one of the great risks to would seem, on the grounds that since the on going up in the world. Pepys grabbed maintaining your fortune was the threat of many guilds and businesses already knew every opportunity with both hands and rivals at work, men who might steal your where to find each other, changing things his diaries are a testament to the motilic thunder. In this context, Pepys emerges would just compound the disruption that energy and ambition of the man; in his as one of the great haters, recording the fire had already caused. little house in Seething Lane, Pepys his blackest thoughts on those who Perhaps the biggest changes from must have lost much sleep turning over might stand in his way; witness Pepys's the road map that Pepys walked come in his wary mind the people who might comments about Sir William Penn, for a courtesy of the London blitz. The space either threaten or increase his wealth and time his senior at the Navy Office and a between St Paul's, St Bride's on Fleet Street station. And he knew that success took political rival to Pepys's own patron, the and the Tower of London triangulates guile; he met it in the form of the royalist Earl of Sandwich: the centre of Pepys's life: it contained naval captain Robert Holmes: ...w e to supper again to Sir W. Pen. Whatever the matter is, he do much fawn upon me, and I perceive would not fall out with me, and mighty officious to my wife, but I shall never be deceived again by him, but do hate him and his traitorous tricks with all my heart. 32 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 Much of his general fame as diarist lies in his role as chronicler of great events, a man near the very apex of English society. As a youth he saw first-hand the behead ing of a king and later witnessed the ascent of Cromwell's parliament, the sub sequent restoration of the monarchy and the great civic afflictions of the plague and I did, in Drury-Lane, see two or three houses Men knew that fortune was fickle; they fire of London, among other things. That marked with a red cross upon the doors and saw the results of failure and misfortune he saw and documented these thing - 'Lord have mercy upon us' writ there, which all about them; all the more reason to and did so with such clarity and wit-is was a sad sight to me, being the first of that enjoy good luck and work diligently, lest to be cherished by the historian kind that to my remembrance I ever saw. one allow oneself to be dragged anywhere and the dilettante alike. near the gutter. Pepys was such a man. It One cannot help but wonder if the scrawl has been said that there was a hard knot But Pepys was perhaps not driven by any on the door was that of the battener, seeking somewhere in Pepys's heart. But if there great altruism in chronicling such events; some absolution for his grim task. Yet Pepys was, it surely was a common ailment in every entry in the diary has the writer him remains in London for months after this, Restoration London. self as its alpha and omega. Just as in mod sending his family off to the country, but he The several volumes of Pepys's great ern London, Pepys, a man making his way, himself working assiduously at his career diary are a fascinating journey. In very struggled daily to stay on top of the fickle with the Navy Office well into the worst recent times, they have been serialised wheel of fortune. It was eminently better months of the plague. The parish records on the internet (www.pepysdiary.com). to be the cheetah than the gazelle. But in of the time tell us that it was killing more This laudable development allows all all of this, we find him not entirely wiz than 7000 people a week in the summer of sorts of people to enjoy the unfolding ened by his jousts with the city: there is 1665. In the end, it may have claimed over drama of his life by logging on to read ever room in his diaries for the thoughtful a quarter of all Londoners. Pepys saw it each new day's entry. Readers can also aside. Pepys made music with his friends happen and lost friends and colleagues to post questions and answers about the on the lute. He had professional singing les the pestilence. That he stayed and wrote etymology of curious words and phrases, sons for some time, in the mornings before about it in such a thoughtful way is to his or help dust nearly 350 years of obscurity he went to work. He mixed with great men credit. The diarist's humanity, mixed no off distant names and places. It is a of science. He took a leading role in the doubt with considerable fear, makes itself fascinating project, and it helps to bring fledgling Royal Academy. felt through this period: Pepys a new relevance. The diaries show us just what a With luck, this endeavour-along This disease making us more cruel to one melting pot of great grace and thought this with illuminating and engaging recent another than if we were dogs. apparently hard, dirty trading town was in scholarship such as Claire Tomalin's the 17th century. Yet amidst the highbrow, In these passages Pepys rises above Pepys: The Un equalled Self-will Pepys's diary is also written with an being a scribbling civil servant. In the convert more people to this patron saint Augustinian honesty: he pursues women same way, he documents the great fire of London, whose concerns and schemes throughout the years of the diary; he of London, from its beginnings to raging for self-advancement are far more warm records the intimate details of successful inferno: London engulfed in flames must and engaging than the cold stratagems of and not-so-successful bouts in a sort of have made for an apocalyptic sight. Yet Machiavelli, whose unwavering quest for Esperanto, made of remembered Latin, within a few hours of the fires reaching liquidity is more human and haphazard French and other odds and sods, to provide their peak, the diarist takes a boat upriver than Mr Micawber's, and whose life an extra encryption lest prying eyes read to Westminster to buy a flashy new coat was filled with more living than seems the diary. He records his feasts on oysters, his others had become sooty from the fire a fair allotment for any single man. mutton and venison pas ties ... and then and, after all, there were standards to be Pepys washuma n. Happily, he probably tells us how much he vomited that night. maintained. It is quite an image to conjure won't ever be picked up by management Pepys was to write with eloquence with: the disabled city fretting in black theorists as touchstone for some thin about the effects of the bubonic plague on smoke under a red sky, while amidst the business tome because they would find London, a city that, in the steamy summer chaos, a boat heads up the Thames ferrying his diaries too complex, too exhausting, of 1665, became ever more quiet as people a man occupied with what sort of braid too boring and far too extraordinary. died and the living fled . He documents the should adorn his new suit. Pepys lived. He lives still. • death tolls for us as he hears of them. These This is the heart of the Pepysian entries are sobering; they place today's paradox and it might tell us a little about Luke Fraser works in Canberra as a public fascination with terror bombings the city itself: London in 1666 was a management consultant. He spent several thoroughly in the shade for the sheer premier trading capital. It worked hard for years as a director in the Department of ruthlessness of suffering. In June 1665, what it scrounged from the muddy Thames Defence and worked briefly for the last as the plague took hold, he encounters it and the ships that plied it; its inhabitants, Howard government ministry as chief of directly, as the infected begin to be boarded whatever their wealth or status, lived in staff to the then minister for employment up alive in their own houses: or at least close by to squalor and sorrow. services and defence personnel. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 33 indigcnou-, is Determined to preserve old stories and encourage young voices, tribal elders in Western Austra lia took a bold publishing step objectives and imperatives, but we also compete in the com mercial publishing arena.' But those social and cul tural objectives are non negotiable. They include the preservation and dissemina tion of indigenous stories, culture and history, the pro motion of indigenous culture in the wider community, and t he contribution to literacy initiatives in indigenous com munities. From the outset, the pub lisher knows that books such as Moola Bulla- a detailed account of a government-run station near Halls Creek are never going to sell well, but they are of such cultural importance they must be published. Added to this, it Stud ents frorn Wulungarra School at th e launch of Hylton is not unusual that some of Laurel 's Th e Cowboy Frog. Photo courtesy Magabala Books the authors and artists pub- lished by Magabala come from M AGABALA Boo" h" 'n imp 34 EU REK A STR EET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 Finch now laughs at this understate ment. 'That niece turned out to be a fan tastic artist, and her work was used to illustrate the story.' As I am leaving the publishing office, to the staff at the publishing house, never relationship has formed with the Tropical I ask what Magabala means, and am mind deal with journalists. 'So we had to North Queensland TAFE Indigenous Arts told: 'Magabala is the Yawuru [Broome do press requests by fax, or in writing.' and Culture Centre. Writers and artists Aboriginal language] word for "bush Many of Laurel's community travelled from the centre have contributed to seven banana", a fruit found in northern to Broome to celebrate the launch of his Magabala books, including Nana 's Land, Australia. Both the skin and the yellowish book. Celebrations aside, however, the pub Kuiyktz Mabaigal and the soon-to-be brown seeds inside the magabala can lication of The Cowboy Frog has inspired released Creatures of the Rainforest. be eaten. The seeds taste like garden peas. many other indigenous children to write Yet it is the images, not just the text The magabala can be cooked in hot ashes and send in their stories. particularly in children's books-that cap and when it is ready to eat it pops out of the Magabala rarely commissions work, tivate readers. The Mark of the Wagar], fire of its own accord. But the real magic of and receives such a volume of stories it deemed 'notable' by the Children's Book the magabala is in its seed dispersal, which cannot hope to publish them all. Yet all Council of Australia, has beautiful illus is by the beautiful silken parasols (like the manuscripts are reviewed, and those trations. And A Home for Bilby, a picture dandelions) attached to the seeds which that are returned to their authors have book, won a WA Premier's Book Award. carry them off into the wind. This is where usually had some editing done and sug Magabala usually selects the artist to the name of Magabala Books comes from, gestions added; the editors regard helping illustrate a particular text, but sometimes because we like to think of our books as writers' development in this way as an the process is more organic. Finch says spreading the seeds of culture.' • integral part of their work. The Mark of the Wagar] had unexpected Magabala has published books from delays when three artists, in turn, had Michele M. Gierck is a freelance writer. all over Australia, including major to withdraw from the project. Then the Her book Seven Hundred Days in El cities, towns, remote communities and author piped up: 'I have a niece who does Salvador will be published later this year the Torres Strait Islands. An interesting a bit of painting.' by Coretext. JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 35 the world:3 jon Greenaway Tensions mount in Sri Lanka A few mo nths' peace in the wake of the tsunami was shattered by an assassin's bul let E nN MTER THRH m C ADES of civil foreign minister in a government formed ers feared might never eventuate. The war in Sri Lanka, Lakshman Kadirgmar's by President Chandrika Kumaratunga. assassination of Lakshman Kadirgmar death last August was different. In what He arrived two hours after our group put paid to such optimism. was supposed to have been a period of had been herded into the state room, pre To date the LTTE has not claimed ceasefire between the government and ceded by stony-faced and heavily armed responsibility for Kadirgmar's death . The the Tamil separatists, he was felled by a soldiers. He was eloquent and engaging, killing had all the hallmarks of a Tiger sniper's bullet as he was climbing out of prepared to admit the faults and mistakes operation, and it could well have been his backyard swimming pool in the diplo of past Sri Lankan governments with can motivated by dissatisfaction with the cur matic district of Colombo. did comments that set his staff fidgeting rent peace process, but it m ay well have Kadirgmar, a Tamil, had spent years uneasily in their seats. been the work of an LTTE splinter group. pushing for a peaceful end to the vicious His theme was that peace could be In 2004 there was a schism within fighting, which had brought the assassi negotiated, but only if the rest of the world LTTE, with a rebel group taking control nation of one president and of another in recognised the terrorism of the LTTE and of the east of the island, around Batticaloa waiting, the frightening spectre of chil moved to prevent funds being remitted to and Trincomalee. The group was led by V. dren suicide bombers, and of Buddhist them from the expatriate Tamil commu Muralitharan, who goes under the nom de priests calling for a return to military nities in Australia, North America, Brit guerre Colonel Karuna and is a shadowy campaigns. Viewed against the long and ain and elsewhere. figure even more opaque than the ruthless bloody history of the conflict, Kadirg Kadirgmar was typical of his country Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tiger mar's death should have come as no men in the way he extended warm hos movement. A group impatient with the great surprise. pitality to foreigners, be they Sinhalese, peace process and wanting to seize power Eight months earlier, the tsunami that Tamil or Muslim. On a visit I made to within Tamil ranks would no doubt prefer ravaged Sri La nka's coast seemed to have LTTE-controlled territory at Easter 2002, a return to hostilities; they have no interest swept away the ethnic and political ten just weeks after the peace process had in lasting peace or democratic elections. sions that had divided the island. There begun, I was welcomed by the political The Norwegian government, the were stories of Sinhalese fishermen sav and military cadres in the Tigers' self United Nations' peace broker, has been ing their Tamil neighbours, of aid being declared capital Killonochi. working hard to prevent the country from rushed through previously guarded con I spent four days in a plush, air-condi slipping back into civil war. However, a trol lines, and of Tamil Tigers, the Lib tioned guest house with freshly painted top-level peace delegation returned hom e eration Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), walls that stood out against that feature recently without having secured agree putting down their weapons to help any less, war-ravaged landscape. My hosts m ents for face-to-face talks between the one in distress in their territory. The tsu could not have been more charming and government and the LTTE. nami had overwhelmed the ingrained accommodating. The state of em ergency imposed after distrust among Sri Lanka's different com But when I broached the subject of Kadirgmar's dea th remains in place, and munities and, for a time at least, made the civil war, their demeanour changed. an escalation of hostilities looks likely them seem trivial by comparison. Smiles disappeared, brows furrowed and after attacks by the Tigers in Trincoma I was among a group of journalists that courtliness gave way to comments about lee and the victory of Mahinda Rajapakse met Lakshman Kadirgmar in 2000, as the their political rivals that were shocking in the presidential elections in Novem Tamil Tiger leaders were making the first in their studied ferocity. It becam e obvi ber, t hrough the support of Sinhalese overtures towards a negotiated peace. The ous that the long-running civil war had hardliners. If the peace process, part of m eeting was in the Foreign Affairs Minis turned most of the population into war Kadirgmar's legacy, is not dead, then it try in downtown Colombo, a Victorian-era mongers or paranoiacs. desperately needs the kiss of life. • building reminiscent of an English public All that seemed to change after the school. The building was enclosed by a six tsunami struck. Ordinary Sri Lankans Jon Greenaway is managing director of m etrc-h igh reinforced iron fence, installed learned to treat one another with care and the Brussels office of Diligence Inc, a after the Tamil Tigers set off a bus bomb compassion and m any asked whether this business intelligence and risk manage that damaged it in 1998. Kadirgmar was might be a permanent change, that the ment firm. He is a former deputy editor of then nearing the end of his first term as return to hostilities that so many observ- Eureka Street. 36 EU REK A STREET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 the world:4 Dorothy H o t·sfield Another African tragedy For this peace prize winner, northern Uganda is the worst place on earth to be a child today '.. a A TTW,UGHT >N Uganda'' nonh, initiatives are more than a Two months ago, 'the night commuters', made up of lines small part of what needs to • ·;~ ~~ j • I Temajo's clandestine visit of thousands of children, begin the be done to try to save a lost .~'~"i\, to Acholiland left him trek along the dusty roads from their generation of children from ...... with the shocked certainty fa mily compounds. They are seeking the scourge of ethnic war in that the Museveni central the temporary safety of towns such as his homeland. A small, slight government was engaged Kitgum, Pader or the regional capital man, gentle and measured, in a comprehensive and Gulu, where they will huddle together he has used public forums Olara Otunnu methodical Final Solution for the night in makeshift shelters in Australia to make a heart-wrenching for the Acholi people. 'The government church missions, bus stations or decaying appeal for Western intervention to put a has burnt down villages and destroyed warehouses. The latecomers simply sleep stop to a conflict 'far worse than Darfur or crops and food storage silos. In the camps, on the streets, where they are vulnerable the Khmer Rouge's killing fields'. During people live 10- 12 to a room. Husband and to theft, beatings and sexual abuse from the last ten years, Uga nda's national wives must lie together in the same room other children and adults, including government has responded to the LRA as their children-this is not the Acholi Ugandan governm ent soldiers. rebels by uprooting and herding 95 per cent way. There is starvation, lack of water, no For Olara Otunnu, winner of the of the Acholi population of two million proper sanitation, disease. No one is safe 2005 Sydney Peace Prize, his birthplace into 'concentration camps'. In other words, from the soldiers or the terrorists-' In Koch, of Acholiland in northern Uganda is the an entire society has become trapped a camp of 60,000 people outside Gulu, he worst place on earth to be a child today. between the gruesome violence of the LRA saw little kids thin as sticks, pregnant 12- Those children who do not make it to the terrorists and the genocidal atrocities of a year-old girls and despairing adults, drunk township sanctuaries also face the real corrupt national government. on a toxic local brew called kasese. danger of being abducted by insurgents 'In the camps my people are living like Not surprisingly, Temajo also claims of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) into animals,' Otunnu said. 'An estimated that the majority of Acholi would rather the nightmare world of child soldiers and 1000 people die each week; over 40 take their chances in their home villages sex slaves. per cent of children under five years against the LRA. Despite their brutality, In two decades of war, the United have seriously stunted growth due to the rebel have been reduced to about Nations estimates that the LRA has malnutrition, and two generations of 4000 in number, scattered in small captured and enslaved more than 20,000 children have been denied education as a cells across the north and west of the children, some of them as young as five matter of government policy.' country. They are mostly poorly trained years old. Those small, unwilling recruits 'HIV/ AIDS has also become a deliberate children and young adult graduates of lucky enough to escape bear witness to the weapon of mass destruction,' he added. the LRA indoctrination- no match for horror of LRA indoctrination practices such 'Government soldiers who have tested a determined campaign by the Ugandan as being ordered to hack former classmates HIV-positive are especially deployed to national forces. 'Plainly, the Museveni to death with pangas, as punishment for the north to commit havoc on local girls government,' he said, 'docs not want being too tired to walk any further. and women.' either a military solution or a negotiated Olara Otunnu will use his $50,000 Acholi-born Australian microbiologist settlement with the insurgents.' Sydney Peace Prize to establish a new Dr Norbet Okcch Temajo shares Otunnu' In the face of theunfoldinghumanitarian international foundation to help such anguish at the systematic destruction tragedy in their birthplace, both Otunnu children of violence and social devastation. of culture, va lues and family structure, and Temajo ask: 'What will it take, and how As the former UN Under-Secretary-General and the future of the children in the long will it take, for leaders of the Western and Special Representative for Children camps. When I went to interview him democracies to acknowledge, denounce and and Armed Conflict, he will also continue in a dormitory suburb adjacent to the take action to end the genocide?' • to lobby for the fu ll implementation of Australian National University, he was a UN Security Council Resolution for waiting for me in the street. 'This situation Dorothy Horsfield is a Canberra writer the 'naming and shaming' of groups that has been ignored by the international and journalist who has lived and worked brutalise children. community,' he said, 'but I believe people in Africa. Her new novel, Venom, will be Otunnu has no illusions that these in Australia will listen and care.' published in March by Pandanus. JANUARY- FEB RUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 37 food Christine Salins Palatable pleasures An international food summit in Ade laide has resolved to fight the spread of 'techno-food' I T'' AHOALTH eARADO" juM whon peo being the issue of low-fat diets promoted and that 'managing' all behaviours is a key ple began turning to low-fat diets, there by nutritionists in the early 1990s. to successful living. began a corresponding increase in obes 'We pointed out that the world's two 'Most of our successful Oldways cam ity. The connection alarmed Dun Gifford, healthiest populations-Mediterraneans paigns are based on the behaviour theory founder of Oldways Preservation Trust in and Okinawans-eat high-fat diets, the principle of "management, not banish Boston: 'Fat provides sensations of satiety; former based on olive oil, the latter on ment". A great many well-intentioned without fat, the feelings of fullness do not fish.' Oldways drew on scientific research and well-funded nutrition and dietary pro kick in and so people just keep on eating.' to come up with the Mediterranean Diet grams have failed because they are either Gifford founded Oldways in 1988 to Pyramid, now widely embraced as the 'gold prohibitionist or directive. We know what campaign against fast food and to promote standard' of healthy eating. happened when we got scolded as children. healthy eating. He was the keynote speaker In the mid-1990s, Oldways challenged The programs that work well are permis at a food sumrnit in Adelaide in October, a a US government crackdown on alcohol, sive. We stress the "pleasure principle" and gathering that included some of the world's 'first, by pointing out that high-level sci the pleasures of the table. People don't eat leading television chefs and food writers. ence universally recognises the health nutrition, they eat food.' The meeting concluded with about benefits of moderate amounts of alcohol; This last point is one that Stephanie 100 participants signing the Declaration and second, by publicising the additional, Alexander has been making for years. She of Adelaide (see panel), a six-point com but then little known, positive health ben related a story about her experience at an munique urging changes across the food efits of polyphenols and other phyto-nutri- organic expo. 'Not one speaker spoke about supply chain, in government policy and in ents in wine'. flavour or taste, juiciness, aroma or conviv food education. Whether it has any legs is In 2002, Oldways began a campaign to iality. They spoke about health and every yet to be seen, but at the very least it rep encourage Americans to eat more whole thing else. The food served during the expo resents a determined effort to highlight grains, setting up a Whole Grains Coun was boring, bland and lacking in excite some of the important issues surround cil that now has more than 100 members, ment or sensory appeal. If pleasurable food ing the production, distribution and con from industry giants to artisan producers. education was introduced in our schools, sumption of food. Two years ago, it challenged what Gif we might see an appreciation of flavour.' Gifford wrote the declaration and was ford calls the 'low-carb tsunami'. 'We Food writer Cherry Ripe says that in backed by fellow panelists, including food adopted "Pasta Fights Back" as this cam the past 50 years, people have 'witnessed writer and chef Stephanie Alexander, food paign's theme, and focused on "the pasta the greatest palate change in history' with producer Maggie Beer, British television meal". After all, no one eats just pasta; eve a proliferation of bland, homogenised prod chef Antonio Carluccio and the Canadian ryone dresses it with tomatoes, olive oil, ucts. 'Pork doesn't taste like pig any more. author of Last Chance to Eat, Gina Mallet. meat, fish or vegetables, and often has a glass When did you have a chicken that tastes The summit was held in conjunction or two of wine with it. Nutritionists know like chicken? We're losing palate memory. with the Tasting Australia festival and that the olive oil, vegetables, meat or fish, My supermarket had white apricots; why is likely to become a regular event. Gif cheese, and wine slow down digestion, and not eat a cucumber?' ford says the prevailing wisdom when he describe this pasta meal as "perfectly bal Perhaps Australians can consider them founded the trust was that 'techno-foods anced". These are powerful reasons to eat selves lucky that we have not yet reached were our food future'. pasta meals, and the news that pasta meals the point they have in England, where a 'This techno-food locomotive was rum had impressive nutrition-science support big supermarket chain put a sticker on its bling powerfully down the tracks in the was a large relief to the eating public.' tomatoes declaring they were 'grown for late 1980s, and touted as the salvation of Oldways is now challenging campaigns flavour'. This amused Irish television chef our crowded planet and its billions of hun that demonise sugar. 'Sugars are the cur Paul Rankin: 'I said, "Wow, what were gry mouths. For compound reasons, this rent food demon ... following in the foot they grown for before?"' terrified me; techno-foods seemed danger steps of fats and carbs,' Gifford says. They The mood of those at the summit was ous. I decided to challenge it, and organ are a traditional food, a key element of not entirely pessimistic. British food writer ised Oldways as a non-profit organisation healthy eating and sornething that humans Jill Norman reminded the audience that to do so.' crave even as babies. 'in the 1960s, people predicted we'd all live Described by Newsweek magazine as 'a Oldways has called this new educa on pills' by now, but this had not eventu food-issues think tank', Oldways embarked tional program Managing Sweetness, its ated. 'We will not succumb to the idea that on several campaigns, one of the first theory being that eating is a behaviour, we can live on pills.' JB EU REK A STR EET JANUARY- FEBRU A RY 2006 British television chef Sophie Grigson ple?' Taking into account all the hidden says she veers between incredible opti social costs of communities producing the mism and negativism, but believes that food, not to mention the amount of water consumers have too much choice. 'I do used to prop up 'this wholly unsustainable wonder whether perhaps choice is the root industry', he says Australians are subsidis of all evil. You might find 20 brands of pre ing the export of food. packaged lettuce in your supermarket. It's 'Space is a commodity that we can now a deceptive choice because a lot of them market as an experience,' he says; perhaps are produced by a handful of companies. eco-holidays could be organised to remote This increase of choice takes the level of parts of Australia to improve tourism taste down and down and we lose what we earnings. 'It would make more sense than were getting in the first place. The other marginal farming. The tourism industry thing with so much choice is that people accounts for 4.5 per cent of GOP; the food are terrified by it.' industry accounts for 2 per cent. The biodi Ji:irg Imberger, a professor of environ versity of Australia is worth far more [than mental engineering at the University of producing more food].' Western Australia, says food has become Dun Gifford has devised a compass to an experience rather than a need: 'We've steer Oldways on its course. 'North' is sci changed what used to be a simple concept ence, combining cutting-edge nutrition of need [for food and water] and changed it science with the knowledge that our genes into a whole experience. are designed to thrive on traditional foods. 'All our needs are being packaged into 'East' is pleasure, 'south' is education and marketable entities. Even water is now a 'west' is earth, 'because without arable tradeable entity. It's generally accepted now land, without clean fresh water, without that pleasure is a need. We expect products healthy oceans, and without unfoul air, we to be value-priced so we can have more will have neither enough food nor drink, products and therefore more experience.' and ultimately be without life itself.' Adelaide food writer and historian Bar He says that through the prism of this bara Santich told the summit that Aus compass, 'we are far off our course today, tralians are spending 14 per cent of their and actually losing ground on our way to income on food-more than the Ameri a secure food future.' Some would argue cans, who spend nine per cent, but less that we have already lost our way, and he than the French and the Italians, who wouldn't necessarily argue the point. spend 16-18 per cent. Australians want 'But I think that if we begin to think their food cheap, she says, an attitude sup differently, and then act determinedly, we ported by governments who see food in can get the Good Ship Food Future back commercial terms. on course,' he says. 'We can dream about 'A classic example is seafood: the best sustainable agriculture, better distribution goes overseas to people who will pay for it, [of food], classes for schoolchildren and the shortfall here is made up of cheaper on nutrition and healthier eating. We inferior seafood brought in. Governments can dream about it, and if we make a tout our wonderful produce ... it's unfair declaration, we could make it happen.' • when we can never get to try it. [A desir able food culture] can only be created by Christine Satins is a Canberra freelance an awareness and appreciation of Austral writer. ian foods.' Professor Imberger points to a discon nection between what people eat and the society that produces it. '[With global warming] there'll be no ice caps, the sea level [will] rise, Australia will not have any beaches left, rainfall patterns are changing [but] few people connect these with their own life. Fewer even think of the more obscure correlations.' He believes agriculture needs to be restructured. 'In Australia, we produce food for 100 million people. Why do we feel the need to feed all these extra peo- jANUARY- FEBRUA RY 2006 EU REK A STR EET 39 Around the world and back again The Collapse of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World, john Ra l~ton S OHN RALSTON SAUL has produced as the centrality of citizenship and democ has actually staged something of a revival; Iover the last decade and a half racy- in order to demonstrate their contin that nationalism, in both negative and pos some of the most interesting, thought ued relevance, and to add yet another level itive forms, has returned; that borders arc provoking and accessible critiques of of depth to his previous analyses. real and are meaningful, whether they be our contemporary social and political For those who have not been follow used for good or for bad; and that we are not climate. In The Collapse of Globalism ing Saul's works, or who arc trying to all equal in the world, that there is in fact which examines the rise and fall of global decide the best point of entry into them, an increasing amount of inequality that economic ideology-he has added to this The Collapse of Globalism will not disap has been produced largely by the failure of impressive body of work. point. In it he examines the ideology of glo globalism to live up to its own hype. Saul's past work includes the now balism-which looks at the world through Saul draws on examples from many famous philosophical trilogy Voltaire's the prism of a certain theory of econom countries to support his case. He looks Bastards, The Doubter's Companion and ics-and shows that, as with all ideologies, at the arc of their development from The Unconscious Civilization, which and especially economic ones, they have being nation states or colonies in the looks broadly at the West over the last beginnings, middles and ends. Usually the 1970s, through to projecting the image of few hundred years, since the inception end creates a political vacuum that needs being global economics in the 1980s, and of modern democracy; his more focused to be filled by something, and this then into their more recent return or birth as study on his native Canada, Reflections of plants the seeds for the next big ideology. nation states, with a few 'globalist' hang- a Siamese Twin (which has as yet no com Globalism, for example, ovcrs. This includes parable study in Australia); and his timely grew out of the vacuum detailed discussions of re-evaluation of humanism, On Equilib left by the end of Key New Zealand, Malay rium. nesianism in the late THE sia, India and China, For those who have been following 1960s and early 1970s. COLLAPSE and the variations of Saul's work so far, this latest offering But this transfer from globalism, and now may on first reading seem to be covering one ideology to the next OF nationalism, in each. old ground. His theme of the collapse of is not inevitable. The Although Australia globalisation was floated in Australia in vacuum also provides AND THE REINVENTION is mentioned a few OF THE WORLD lectures presented in January and August an opportunity. times, no systematic of 1999 (both broadcast on the ABC) . It was The three main account of the story of then put forward in an article he wrote for parts of this book exam our own global experi Harper's Magazine in the United States ine the rise (from the ment is present in this 'The Collapse of Globalism: And the Rebirth early 1970s), the plateau book. But that's not a of Nationalism'-in March 2004, and (in the 1980s) and the problem. If anything, reprinted here in the Australian Financial beginning of the col reading the book from Review. This formed the groundwork for lapse of globalism (in an Australian perspec his latest book, developed around themes the mid-1990s). Then, tive adds an independ already examined in his previous works. in the final part, Saul JOHN RALSTON SAUL ent variable against On closer inspection, far from simply shows what is happen- which the argument repeating himself, Saul has provided a ing in the confusing transition period in the book presents can be better assessed. fresh and compelling perspective on the which we currently live. Some still hold Even a brief look at Australia over this debates surrounding globalisation. But true to the old economic faith, however. same period shows how remarkably Saul's most importantly, he has brought to the This argues that there are no more borders, analysis fits the pattern of our own recent foreground much that has been left out of that the nation state has been usurped, and history. these ongoing debates, and the reality that that we are all moving towards being equal Sara Dowse, in a recent essay in Mean has been masked by them. In doing so he on the global stage. For others it has become jin, gives a date to what could very well be has reworked his previous themes-such increasingly obvious that the nation state the start of globalism in Australia: April 40 EU REKA STREET IANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 1975, when Milton Friedman visited, Then 1996 saw the revival of ever, following the US, have been waged preaching what was then known as mone nationalism, rising out of the cracks that unilaterallyi that is, nationally, outside tarism. The effects were immediate, Dowse had started to show in globalism. This of any international or global system. says, with Treasurer Bill Hayden putting was the year that the Chechnyan-Russian The final section of Saul's book dis this into practice the following year, partly conflict escalatedi that religious-based cusses this return of the pre-eminence to cut government spending and to redress nationalist political parties flourished in of the nation state. It is here that Saul's Whitlam's overindulgences the previous Israel, India and Turkeyi that the Taliban analysis brings us back, with u rgency, year, but partly to prepare the ground for seized power in Afghanistan. Scotland to his previous work. The nation state is a future strategy that would put the econ created its own national parliament. the site of modern democracy. Democ omy at the heart of government, and make IRA bombings increased in Northern racy is built upon the legitimacy of an social policy subordinate to this. Ireland, as did terrorist bombings in Sri active citizenry. When the citizenry is This fits in with the group of events Lanka and the Sudan, all in the name of passive or being made passive by the pro that Saul argues began in the early 1970s nationalism. And in Australia, we had motion of inevitable forces outside their and laid the groundwork for globalism. Pauline Hanson and the elec control-first globalism, and now terror Friedman, of course, won the Nobel Prize toral victory of John Howard. ism-then democracy is weakened. The for Economics in 1976, which cemented nation state, then, becomes the site for his authority as an economic guru. Saul P..RHAPS Howard's prime ministership negative nationalism. sees his logic, however, as being 'unnec can also be elucidated partly in terms of According to Saul, we are in a period essarily decisive, pure Manicheism'. Later the context of this collapse of globalism. of transition. The future is open. The he shows how Margaret Thatcher jus It seems to contain the same inherent con direction we take is dependent upon how tified this decisiveness by arguing that tradiction that Keating's government had, we citizens reactivate our legitimacy, 'there is no alternative'. but now flipped the other way. On the one strengthen our democracies, and reclaim Of course, by the time Thatcherism hand, carried along by the momentum of our nation states. • was being played out in Britain, and a crumbling global economic structure, Reaganomics was taking hold in the there are the usual ideological articles of Matthew Lamb lives and writes United States, we had a succession of faith being played out: the sin of public in Brisbane. Hawke-Keating governments, backed by debt, so government budget a partisan Liberal opposition, which set surpluses are seen as desirable about restructuring our economy along (while private debt soars and such globalist lines. Except that here we public services falter)i the last called it economic rationalism. And by hurrah for privatisation and the the mid-to-late-1980s, globalisation was selling off of Telstrai and the in full swing. introduction of a restructured Perhaps Keating's fai lure as prime min industrial-relations package. ister to implement his raft of social poli On the other hand, in spite of cies can be partly explained by their being globalism, or perhaps because overshadowed by the momentum of his of its imminent collapse, there previous economic policies, as these were has been a sharp withdrawal going in two separate directions. His social back into our nation state: policies had a national focus-indigenous the closing of our borders and affairs, the republic, our geographic close cruel and unusual treatment ness to south-east Asia-while his eco of asylum seekersi elections This symbol represents the 5 70 men nomic policies were based on the implicit won on grounds of introduc- assumption that such things no longer ing a new tax (GST) or manag- and women of many nations who matter. Our attention was then redirected ing the economy on a national are the professors and students of CTU. to the even bigger picture, away from such level (can they really control nationalist causes. interest rates?h as well as vari- Joined together in Christ's love, they Saul marks 1995 as globalism's 'cusp ous overseas military actions, year'. It was a year of triumph, with the designed to protect 'our way of are preparing heart and mind to creation of the World Trade Organisation. life'. East Timor is an instruc- serve a suffering world. But it was also the beginning of its collapse. tive example: we went there Saul gives some examples: the tequila crisis to liberate them from Indo- in Mexico, which saw the complete failure nesia, to give them national of globalism to produce the promised new self-determination, and to CATHOLIC Latin Americai and James Wolfensohn, and secure their oil reserves for THEOLOGICAL later Maurice Strong, starting at the World our own national interests. In UNION Bank, beginning the decade-long battle a global paradise, both actions A graduate school of theology in Chicago with its bureaucracy to restructure it to would have been superfluous. www.ctu.edu meet the reality of the non-Western world. Other military actions, how- JANUARY- FEBRU ARY 2006 EUREKA STRE ET 41 books:2 D.L. Lewis No wannabes or posers Crackpots, Rebels and Ratbags, Robert Holden. ABC Books, 2005. J'>BN 7 333 1541 0, JUU' $29.9S T ORE" A STO.,, po,ibly •poccy• The chapters on Rosaleen Norton and advantage to her career as a dancer) and phal, of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh Arthur Stace are superb. Norton's sad Dulcie D eamer (who personified Deca and Flann O'Brien sitting in an Irish pub decline from truly feared Satanist (who dent Sydney in the 1920s but dissolved deploring the lack of real characters in Ire brought clown no less a figure than Sir into self-parody). I like to think, though, land. Notwithstanding the lovely irony Charles Mackerras) to unintentional cari that this book might lead to a website of that story, the prominent eccentric has cature is astutely handled. Holden man- of eccentrics, continually updated, fully declined in recent years, ages to take a fairly referenced and available to all, so that which makes Robert mysterious phantasm, David Scott Mitchell and Alf Conlon, P. Holden's collection of Arthur Stace, and put R. Stephensen and Lassiter, and so many Australian characters, some skin and bone on others might also get attention, as well Crackpots, Rebels and the mystique. as the marvellous procession of misfits, Ratbags, extremely use The book has few eccentrics, and characters that ful. Holden loves his flaws. Alfred Deakin's Holden does present. subject, and that love is spiritualism could reflected in the book's have been examined current slavish attachment to humorous style. further. A perusal of individualism has seen the decline of Part of the appeal of AI Gabay's The Mystic the eccentric. It is hard to shock cur eccentrics lies in their Life of Alfred Deal 42 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 h )()~.,. ' Sarah Kanowski City of tarnished glories Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk. Faber and Faber, 2005. I<;B 0 571 21832 o, RRP $45 T ,mw moM A RA< Y tmm win in its spirit-its hiiziin, or melancholy, a as distant from the centres of civilisa dow at dusk; a slim man, glamorous in concept which is the ruminative centre of tion and one which long deferred to the suit and sunglasses, disembarking from an Istanbul: Memories of a City. Introducing judgments of outsiders' eyes. With a few aeroplane branded with the Turkish flag; the term, Pamuk launches into one of the adjustments, Pamuk's dizzying descrip porters bowed low crossing the Golden descriptive tours de force that character tion of his reinvented republic is familiar Horn; a woman and two small boys before ise his memoir, listing in page after page to post-1788 arrivals to this continent: a mirror, the younger turning back to face its essential images: To discover that the place in which we her; washing strung before a cityscape of ... I am speaking of the old booksellers have grown up-the centre of our lives, domes and minarets; men clearing snow who lurch from one financial crisis to the the starting point for everything we have from a ferry roof, grey smoke filling the next and then wait shivering all day for ever done-did not in fact exist a hun air around them; more snow, on tram a customer to appear; of the barbers who dred years before our birth, is to feel like a tracks and across parked cars; a child complain that men don't shave as much ghost looking back on his life, to shudder camouflaged in the shadows of crumbling after an economic crisis; of the children in the face of time. waterside mansions. The black-and-white who play ball between the cars on cobble photographs that run through Orhan Pamuk's particular contribution to stone streets; of the covered women who Pamuk's meditation on his hometown this old conversation is his open alle stand at remote bus stops clutching plas of Istanbul echo the words surrounding giance to that 'twilit place' between tra tic shopping bags and speaking to no one them: beautiful but melancholic, labyrin ditional identities. To be both insider and as they wait for the bus that never arrives; thine and occasionally disorienting. The outsider is the birthright of Istanbullus, of the empty boathouses of the old Bos mosaic of personal history and public life he says, but also, his memoir makes clear, phorus villas; of the teahouses packed to evokes the work of G. W. Sebald, another of the writer. The coming to vocation the rafters with unemployed men; of the great modern novelist who used photo subtly underlines Istanbul, where narra patient pimps striding up and down the graphs to expose the past's double nature: tive is discovered as a way of transmut city's greatest square on summer evenings its strangeness and its intimacy. ing childhood isolation and adolescent in search of one last drunken tourist ... In its scope Pamuk's book also resem anguish into a second life. However, the bles the sprawling Istanbul Encyclopedia Pamuk teases out the ambiguities of artist's foothold betwixt the inner and he loved as a boy. But where the author of hiiziin throughout the book: it is negat outer worlds, his attention to shadow and that 12-volume tome struggled to make the ing but also affirming; it is felt in soli ambiguity, is not always a safe place, and city's disorder and variety conform to for tariness but is the affliction of an entire Pamuk himself has recently drawn the ire eign 'scientific' categories, Pamuk freely city; its source is loss but it is a badge of the keepers of official identity. delights in his subject's Protean nature of pride; it is unique to Istanbul A long-time critic of Turkey's human and the particular obsessions of his own but its roots are European. rights abuses (the memoir has many ref biography, giving chapters to street signs, erences to the rich multicultural city his grandmother, religion, famous fires, INTHE C URRENT DEBATE over Turkey's destroyed by last century's 'Turkification'), newspaper columnists, Flaubert, paint application to join the European Union, Pamuk was to appear in court last month ing, and fights with his older brother. Pamuk's reference to the reformist sultans on 'charges of denigrating 1\.ukish national There is a symmetry to these many of the late 18th and early 19th centuries identity' for publicly discussing the state's parts, however. The balancing point is a reminds us that 'Westernisation' is not murder of Armenians and Kurds. There is concern with the past. For Pamuk, Istan a new concept. Indeed, despite his stated a terrible irony in that charge being laid bul' present is but a wreck of its past, support of EU membership, it is the 'mod against a writer who has drawn such a ten 'an ageing and impoverished city buried ernising' revolution launched by Atatiirk der portrait of his city. Yet, as with Ireland's under the ashes of a ruined empire'. The that Pamuk sees as responsible for his banning of Ulysses, Istanbul will live as a dilapidated mansions, crumbling foun city's downfall, for 'the replacement of the masterpiece long after Pamuk's political tains, and demolished gardens of mod Ottoman Empire with the little, imitative detractors have shuffled into history. • ern Istanbul exist in painful contrast to Republic of Turkey'. Surprisingly, the con the Ottoman wonders recorded in artists' voluted love-hate relationship Turkey has Sarah Kanowski, a freelance writer prints and travellers' tales. The gloomy with Europe-its model and its foil-is and broadcaster, was the inaugural legacy of Istanbul's vanished glory is one that has resonances for Australia. We winner of the Margaret Dooley Young found not only in its streetscapes but also too inherit a culture that has seen itself Writers' Award. JANUARY- FEBR UARY 2006 EU REKA STR EET 43 Brian F. McCoy A year spent observing Balanda: My Year in Arnhcm Land, Mary Ellen Jordan. Allen&. Unwin, 2005. ISBN I 74114 280 (i , JUU' S2~.9'i T HE DHCRm>ONS m M"y Ellen young Aboriginal man. She has been in felt about such a portrayal and what Jordan's Balanda: My Year in Arnhem the community for only a few months. choice they had. Land will resonate for many of us who A couple of days later she hears that her I am not surprised that Jordan develops have lived in Aboriginal communities. father has died. It is not the assault that strong opinions after such a short period Jordan has managed to capture many of touches her vulnerability, but the memory of time. A suicide prompts a reflection on those early impressions and conversations of her father. Fears, deeply etched within the existence of boredom, hopelessness that people experience when first living her since she was a little girl, surface at and despair. She may be right about the in a remote community: the weather, the memory of his death. She leaves for a life that Aboriginal people experience. local store, accommodation, ever-present three-week break, and returns to give the However, I suspect there is more to life, dogs, and, of course, local people. Jordan community a second chance. and death, in Maningrida than that. It is has come as a balanda (a Macassan word Jordan finds that coming 'with good not that Jordan found the experience more for white person) to live in a remote intentions' is not enough. It's not just the difficult than she imagined it would be, Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land. isolation from family and the familiar but that she did not find local people who There is much for her to experience that she finds difficult, but a social and could take her beyond her world and into within a cornnmnity of people who communication divide. It is a divide that theirs. When bored, confused or frustrated, speak other languages before English. accentuates her feelings of difference and she turns not to others but to art. It was, What I particularly liked in the begin helplessness. It also accentuates her fears. she says, a year spent observing. ning of the book was Jordan's willingness Despite the efforts of Valerie to draw her The image of her final departure on to arrive with a 'patchwork of understand into the world of local kinship and be a a Sunday afternoon is most revealing. ings and confusions'. She manages to cap 'sister for her', her own relationship with She is the only person on the plane, as if ture well her intrigue Valerie or others does this is how her time has finally come to and interest, where so not appear to develop be. Her reflections on white paternalism many securities and or become deeply sus might be true, but there is a sense that predictabilities arc 'Purt'pliN•, mudrll lind brJt•r: 11 quiu~~ taining. Her own lin she has not come to know the people well. gripping. r•rry ft'r!MM f takr on Au:>t r,J/iu i removed and so much liupNt diltmma ' guistic skills, developed Whether this aloneness was sharpened can be 'different'. Her llelcn Garner at university, have not by the assault, closely followed by her sensitivity to a new helped and she finds lit father's death, is not considered. It would place is well articulated tle to bridge her into the be difficult to think otherwise. and evocative. As any Maningrida world. I continue to wonder why some peo veil of possible romance It is here that my ple spend shorter times in Aboriginal is lifted, one can get a disappointment with communities than others. In this book sense of what it might the book lies. Jordan I gained some insight into that. Per mean to live in a remote does not appear to have spectives change, as do relationships. community, joining a informed the local And fear will touch us all in personal minority of white staff people of her intention and distinctive ways. It is not enough to (although a dominant to write about them. come to an Aboriginal community with minority in many other Ostensibly, she came good intentions or even with university ways), in a time and to write a book on degrees. We each bring something of our place that do not sim weaving in Arnhem own history with us and, for many and ply or quickly accord with university and Land. Nor does she appear concerned various reasons, our spirits sometimes city living. As a challenging experience, that people might be sensitive to do not settle. The biggest mistake would it also raises self-scrutiny. She is not just appearing in books such as this, be to think that was simply because the a female balanda in an Aboriginal world; however well written. Changing names community was remote, in Arnhem she brings her own history with her. doesn't disguise identities-if you know Land, or even Aboriginal. • There is a significant shift, about Maningrida or the people and you live halfway through the book, when Jordan in the community. As the book intrudes Brian F. McCoy sr is a Fellow at the describes being assaulted. It is a Sunday into the personal lives of both balanda Centre for Health and Society, University morning, and she is confronted by a and Aboriginal, one wonders how they of Melbourne. 44 EU REKA STR EET JANUA RY- FEBR UARY 2006 books:S John Button Not quite quite Slow Man, J. M. Coetzee. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1 741 66068 8, RRP $45 Y ARS AGO '" eeeent JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 EUREKA STREET 45 m i rill ul ousn ess Brian Doyle The child as verb I w" SHUHUNC ALONG tho w"'ing finally I couldn't hear her laughing any given gifts beyond measure, beyond price, shore of the misnamed Pacific Ocean, more. But right about then I was weeping beyond understanding, and they mill humming to myself, pondering this and like a child at the intricate, astounding, and swirl by us all day and night, and we that and t'other, when I saw a crippled unimaginable, inexplicable, complex have but to see them clearly, for a second, kid hopping towards me. She was maybe thicket of love and pain and suffering and to believe wholly in the bounty and four years old and her feet were bent so joy, at the way that kid rocketed up her generosity and m ercy of I Am Who Am. sideways that her toes faced each other so daddy's arm quick as a cat, at the way he I am not stupid, at least not all the she scuttled rather than walked. I never crouched just so and opened his palm so time, and I saw how crippled that kid was, saw a kid crippled quite like that before. his baby girl could come flying up the holy and I can only imagine her life to date and I thought for a minute she was alone but branch of his arm, at the way her hands to come, and the tensions and travails of then I noticed the rest of her clan, a big knew where to wrap themselves around her family, and the battles she will fight guy and two other small girls, probably his grin, at the way the sisters were all and the tears she will shed, and I see and the dad and sisters, walking way ahead. pissy about the very same kid sister that if hear the roar of pain and suffering in the The crippled kid was cheerful as a anyone else ever grumbled about her they world, the floods and rapes and starvings bird and she zoomed along awfully fast would pound him silly. and bullets, and I am too old and too on those sideways feet. She was totally And this is all not even to mention honest not to admit how murderous and absorbed in the seawrack at the high-tide the glory of the sunlight that day, and the greedy we can be. line-shards of crab and acres of sand basso moan of mother sea, and the deft But I have also seen too many kids fleas and shreds of seaweed and ropes of diving of the little black sea-clucks in the who are verbs to not believe we swim in bullwhip kelp and fractions of jellyfish surf, and the seal popping up here and an ocean of holy. I have seen too many and here and there a deceased perch or there looking eerily like my grandfather, m en and women and children of such auklet or cormorant or gull, and once a and the eagle who flew over like a black grace and humour and mercy that I know serious-sized former fish that looked like tent heading north, and the extraordinary I have seen the Christ ten times a day. I it might have been a salmon. In the way fact that the Coherent Mercy granted think maybe you know that too and we of all people for a million years along all me my own kids, who were not just don't talk about it much because we shores she stared and poked and prodded crippled, and were at that exact moment are tired and scared and the light flits in and bent and pocketed and discarded, arguing shrilly about baseball and around so much darkness. But there pawing through the loot and litter of the at the other end of the beach. was a crippled kid on the beach and the merciless musing sea. Christ in her came pouring out her eyes She was so into checking out tide I FINALLY GOT A GRIP AND SET TO and I don't forget it. treasure that her dad and sisters got way SHUFFLING AGAIN, but that kid stays In my Father's house are many out ahead of her and after a while the dad with me. Something about her, the way mansions, said the Christos, confusingly, turned and whistled and the crippled kid she was a verb, the way she was happy even and then in his usual testy editorial way, If looked up and laughed and took off hopping with the dark cards she was dealt, the way it were not so, I would have told you, and faster than you could ever imagine a kid she loved openly and artlessly, the way then, in a phrase I lean on when things go that crippled could hop, and when she was even her sisters couldn't stay pissy but dark, I go to prepare a place for you. a few feet away from the dad he crouched had to smile when she shinnied up their But we are already in the doorway of a little and extended his arm behind him daddy's arm, seems utterly holy to me, the house, don't you think? • with his hand out to receive her foot, and a gift, a sign, a reminder, a letter from she shinnied up his arm as graceful and the Lord. Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland quick as anything you ever saw. In my Father's house are many Magazine at the University of Portland, She slid into what must have been mansions, said the thin confusing in Oregon. He is the author of six books, her usual seat on his neck and off they peripatetic rabbi long ago, a line I have among them the essay collection Leaping went, the sisters pissing and moaning always puzzled over, yet another of the (available in Australia through Garratt about having to wait for the crippled kid man's many Zen koans, but I think I Publishing) and a musing on hearts and the clad tickling the bottoms of the finally have a handle on that one. What called The Wet Engine (through Rainbow kid's feet, so that I heard the kid laughing he meant, did Yesuah ben Joseph of the Books in Australia). You can email him at fainter and fainter as they receded, until haunting life and message, is that we are [email protected] 46 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 thshortlist Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, Carrie Tiffany. Picador, 2005. Gerald Murnane. G iramondo, 2005. ISBN 0 330 42191 3, RRP $22 ISBN 1 920 88209 X, RR P $24.95 Australia, 1934. The Better Farming Some writers arguei some tell stories. Train snakes its way through the Gerald Murnane writes, he tells us, countryside, spreading industry 'by the stream system'. He suggests and science, promising agricultural connections between the most vivid riches. Jean- the dreamy idealist, images in his mind. He explores the endearingly referring to herself as a interplay between memory, image and 'baking technician'-meets Robert thought. So he traces a lifelong love of the 'soil-taster' who believes it possible horse racing to a midweek edition of to capture the war with an equation the Sporting Globe placed in his hands and together they become the poster by his father. From it he 'began to see image of the modernist couple. each race as a complex pattern unfolding', and 'each race only This Australia is oppressive and dusty in every way: an item in a much larger pattern'. drought, mouse plagues, sand drifts, crops that won't grow, Murnane's work is quietly beautiful. But without an utter phallo-centrism . But it's also very real, so tangible that argument to make or a story to tell, this collection of his the text feels invisiblei and the prose: stark, economic, without essays leaves the reader without a sense of the purpose behind pretension or curly decoration. Like a child yet to learn the his writing. Murnane writes that he looks forward to learning, euphemistic language of adults. in reading fiction, 'something that the author could have told Tiffany's novel is about many things: knowledge as me by no other m eans than the writing of the piece of fiction capitali an Australian landscape that refuses to be tamedi in front of me.' I wish that he had found the means to make latent sexuality and desire. I expected quirky and pleasant, an argument or tell a story in his writing, to convey to the not a darkness infusing every word, and definitely not the reader som ething more than an unfolding pattern of images. dystopic nature of it as a feminist text. This is Australian history as herstory, in the tradition of Jean Bedford's Sister -Joel Townsend Kate. Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living won't change your life, but it is definitely worth a read. THE WEATHER T he Weather Makers: The History and - Brooke Davis MAKERS Future Impact of Climate Change, T im Flannery. Tex t Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1 920 88584 6, RRI' $32.95 Does my head look big in this? THEHISTORY' U1UO!.PACT)CliMAT£CHANGE If The Future Eaters was Tim Randa Abdcl-Fa ttah. Pa n Macmi ll a n, Flannery's big book about Australia, my he ad 2005. ISBN 0 330 42185 9, RRI' $16.95 The Weather Makers is his big book Most people would agree that the TIM about the world, his 'manual on the VCE is hard enough by itself for most FLANNERY use of Earth's thermostat'. teenagers to deal with. Add to that a "" '~""""u\u..,r•I " '""'" "!"""''"'"''"""!.I'...Ul It is an essential primer for those major religious commitment, a first JARED D I AMOND who seek to understand the complex romance, a school bully, and the ways in which we humans, the 'weather trials and tribulations of being 16, makers', are shaping our weather and climate, and the impact that and you have the very entertaining our decisions, personal and political, will have on our future. novel Does my head look big in thisi The Weather Makers catalogues a frightening number Following in the footsteps of of climatic changes now taking place all over the world at Looking for Alibrandi, the novel an alarming rate: melting polar ice, rising temperatures in takes u s into the life of 16-year-old Amal, an Australian the atmosphere and the oceans, coral bleaching, extinction born Muslim girl who is struggling with her identity. The or threatened extinction of numerous species of plants and novel opens with Amal's decision to wear her hijab 'full animals, reduced rainfall and increased desertification, and time', and her apprehensions about how those around her the displacement of human communities and, in some cases, will react. She confronts her decision with humour, telling whole cultures. one classmate she is wearing the hijab as a part of a hair It's an ominous report, but Flannery remains hopeful regrowth program . that we can-and will- change the way we live. To that Randa Abdel-Fattah does a great job of combining A mal's end, he offers practical suggestions for reducing our energy faith with a storyline that young to mid-teenage readers will consumption and thereby reducing the production of dangerous like. The novel is relevant, as Amal and her friends deal with greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, which is the chief issues such as school, parents, racism , body image, religion, culprit in global warming. After the hotte t year on record in bullying and diversit y. Australia, do the cool thing and read this book. - Elizabeth Allen -Robert Hefner JANUARY-FEBR UARY 200& EU REKA STR EE T 47 friend and news anchor Don Hollenbeck books successful; a major part of their (Ray Wise) suicides after being savaged in magic was that they caused reluctant the Hearst press, Clooney balances Mur readers to pick them up and allow words row's taut on-screen eulogy with jazz diva to go through their heads, making mind flash 1n the pan Dianne Reeves's perfectly enunciated per movies that booklovers routinely enjoy. formance of How High the Moon. Indeed, one of the biggest problems of book The film is also acidly funny. Watch to-film transfer is the way that someone out for Murrow's reluctant interview else's images usurp the rich, many-layered with Liberace, in which he makes a dead experiences that link us with the author. pan inquiry about the pianist's marriage The vitality of such things is part of plans-and gets trumped. the bargain made between readers and The script itself is artfully cobbled authors, and it is usually crushed by film from the network archives by Clooney adaptations, even good ones. Teachers and Grant Heslov. 'Murrow was the best routinely find that the student's essay writer,' says Clooney, and gives actor they are marking is discussing a film of David Strathairn the lines to prove his the specified text rather than the book. point. Here, because it matters, is a more That said, the Potter films have stead than-three-second sound bite: 'We must ily improved since Christopher Colum not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We bus's plodding efforts with the first two. must remember always that accusation Prisoner of Azkaban was a more seamless, is not proof, and that conviction depends poetic version, while th is one, the fourth upon evidence and due process of law. We in the series, is full of good surprises even will not walk in fear, one of another. We as one mourns the loss of entire themes will not be driven by fear into an age of and characters. A 1950s moment that unreason if we dig deep in our history and It was necessary: Goblet of Fire is a our doctrine, and remember that we are good three and a half hours long even with resonates with our time not descended from fearful men. Not from out the complexities of the Barty Crouch men who feared to write, to speak, to asso backstory and its involvement with house Good Night, and Good Lucl<, dir. George ciate, and to defend causes that were for elves' inequality, or the rich references to Clooney. The PG rating for this fine film the moment unpopular' politics and society. Rita Skeeter, such a has added information: 'Mild themes.' Strathairn's splendid performance is prominent figure of corruption in the 'Good night and good luck' was broad evocative without being overwhelming. He book, is relegated to a couple of simple cast journalist Edward R. Murrow's brings back Murrow's powerful, particular scenes about how a naughty reporter dis famous sign-off line to his 1950s CBS tel voice, and the effect is to send his audience torts facts. The book is much more sophis evision news program See It Now. Mur back to the source, not just to marvel at a ticated in its expositions of how corrupt row used that platform to expose the virtuoso performance. governments benefit from such distor tactics of anti-communist zealot Senator Director Clooney (who works both sides tion and of how bureaucracies can becom e Joseph McCarthy. And to capture that piv of the set, also playing Murrow's producer infected with hard-right vigilantism. otal American moment, director George Fred Friendly) understands exactly the So GOP is aimed squarely at children, Clooney has spliced the CBS newsroom resonance of his film for today's America, though it earns its M rating with its over drama played out by his faultless ensem today's world. Murrow: 'We cannot defend all darker theme and the general air of ble cast with archival footage of the hear freedom abroad by deserting it at home.' But teen angst that pervades it. Visually it is ings of the House Un-American Activities Clooney is not Mike Moore, and his film is fantastic; the chiaroscuro evokes the mys Committee. McCarthy, larger than life, never polemic. Neither is it nostalgia for a teries in the plot, although it is one of the plays himself. So does President Dwight D. lost idealism. This is America, today, with many things about this film that might be Eisenhower, sounding to 21st-century ears its greatness and capacity for self-criticism difficult for very young Potter fans to cope like a liberal democrat. Some folk attend intact. Mild themes? with. The characters have deepened: Dan ing the test screenings said the guy playing -Morag Fraser iel Radcliffe as Harry is developing into a McCarthy was overacting. Too much 'real fine young actor, as is Emm a Watson as ity' TV? Hermione; N ewell's direction continues Clooney uses close-focus, lustrous Harry just gets better the freer style that characterised Alfonso black and white to capture the intensity of Cuaron's direction of POA. the CBS newsroom and corporation under Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, dir. And now we have to wait and see intense political and commercial pres Mike Newell. The transfer from page to whether the movie of C. S. Lewis's The sure. The film, all cigarette smoke and elo screen seems at first to be a sign of a nov Chronicles of Narnia has survived the quent silences, is economical, beautifully el's success-as though the book has now patronage of Christian fundamentalists shot, and done for a m ere $8 million. It is been finally 'brought to life'. as healthily as Harry Potter has survived also restrained in ways that underscore Joanne Rawling certainly doesn't need their ill-will. but don't inflate emotion. When Murrow's the Warner-produced films to make her - Juliette Hughes 48 EUREKA STREET JANUARY- FEBRUARY 2006 to take real courage and a deeper respect has pretty much become another genre The truth 1n the tale for folklore than they ever expected. form these days). Gilliam knows that cinema is a form of I assume this sensibility is largely a The Brothers Grimm, dir. Terry Gilliam. 21st-century carpetbagging, and revels in result of its director, Brazilian Fernando Gilliam couldn't make a commercial the fact. He conjures stories from fantasti Meirelles, whose last film, Cidade dos for a local chartered accountant without cal places and begs us to believe. Even when Homens, was a big hit on the arthouse cir including enchanted forests, village idiots, the parts of his fi lms are more magnificent cuit. Meirelles seems to have been a con outrageous contraptions, and a hot air bal than the whole, they always have a giddy sciously left-field choice by the producers, loon fashioned out of ladies' bloomers. And desire to talk to us about the truth we hide perhaps hoping to bring something just a for that I doff my cap to him. His direct in fairy tales-the dark, creaky madness little different (but not too different) to what ing brain (and I suspect all his other brains of phantasmagoria. Never losing his sense might otherwise have been just another besides) must be made from a series of glis of humour or his eye for good casting, Gil entry in a series of otherwise largely indis tening pulleys and levers all set about with liam would be hard pressed to make a dog tinguishable genre flicks. Meirelles frag magic dust. of a film. But if he did, be assured it would ments the plot into snapshots that are Gilliam loves the stories he tells, and be a three-legged one with a complicated more evocative of tone and emotion than it shows. And what's lovely about The mechanical perambulating structure that story, using variations in colour, texture Brothers Grimm is that his protagonists knitted socks as well as holding up the and shooting style to draw our attention love stories too. Needless to say, this is no poor mutt's rear end. not just to what happens but to the smell historical biopic; it's a fairy tale. Gilliam's, -Siobhan Jackson and feel of a place, to difference as we live and screenwriter Ehren Kruger's, take on it, to the shimmer of a moment as it hap the story of the brothers Grimm is one pens for itself. as fantastical as the tales they famously It remains a political thriller, and an wrote. Despite this, the film's story is not Something sinister effective one, but it's the one I can remem great, but the familiar and wondrous tales grows in this garden ber that left me moved and saddened, not it plays with along the way (Hansel and for its characters or stars, but for actual Gretel, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood people who suffer at the hands of the real and dozens more) are enough to quicken Th e Constant Gardener, dir. Fernando criminality the (fictional) characters try the breath. Meirelles. The gardener of the title is Justin to uncover, and for this world in which Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), an unambitious we live, in which those crimes really do Grimm (Heath Ledger) are snake oilers. career diplomat serving in a minor post in take place. Not a bad achievement for a Travelling from one German hamlet to the Kenya. His wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) is his genre flick. next, they convince superstitious, grubby diametric opposite: a fiery, passionate and -Allan James Thomas burghers that for a decent purse of gold, most undiplomatic political activist who they will rid their neighbourhood of any keeps her agitations (well, the details, any pesky witches or hungry trolls that may way) from her husband. When she is mur have taken up residence. Of course the said dered, his attempts to find out why, and trolls and witches are no more than collec by whom, lead him down the path of her tive fears and rumour, and can be excised investigations into the collusion between with a well-placed mirror and a bellows the Kenyan and British governments in full of smoke. But excised they are-the helping big pharma make a profit at the power of psychology being the brothers' expense of their African test subjects. closest working companion. Ho hum. Another political thriller. One But alas, just as the family business is of the slightly odd things about the popu finding its feet, the brothers are taken pris larity of genre films like Th e Constant oner by the occupying French. Under the Gardener (an adaptation of yet another direct guard of a ridiculous Italian torturer John le Carre book) is that the audience (Peter Stormare) and a particularly pomp has a pretty good idea of what will happen, ous French general (Jonathan Pryce, who and how, before they even buy the ticket. can't cultivate a taste for blood sausage The thrill, the uncovering, the revelation, or sauerkraut, and whose last words are is in many ways the least surprising part 'All I wanted was a little hors d'oeuvre ... of the process. In fact, predictability (even maybe a slice of quiche ... yes?'), the broth when unpredictability is part of what is ers' fortunes take a turn for the worse. In most predictable) seems to be a key part exchange for their freedom, the Grimms of the pleasure of the experience. What's must investigate the strange disappearance nice about The Constant Gardener is that of young girls from a seemingly cursed and it successfully fuses the conventions of the muddy little town. But this time Will and political thriller with something of an art Jake won't be able to blow off the 'enchant house sensibility, without losing its genre ment' with 'magic beans'; this one's going pleasures (keeping in mind that arthouse JANUA RY- FEBRUARY 2006 EU REKA STR EET 49 watching brief-llirel Trouble in the kitchen / w.AT'LL we HAY< fm dinne< tonight'' the change is far more radicaC because some of the subjects 'Pasta.' make Casa Hughes look positively pristine. Kim and Aggie, 'So three or four hours thenl' the two ladies, arc like interfering aunties of the very best 'Yeah. Maybe four and a half.' type. It's essentially quite kind-hearted, compared with the You have time to catch a movie and wash the dogs, ruthless elimination and objectification of people that you see because when this bloke says pasta he means freshly made in game-type reality shows. by him with ten free-range egg yolks, the special Italian flour Perhaps there should be more education in actually run that costs $15 a packet, and The River Cafe Cook Book propped ning a household. School home economics curricula tend to open for instructions. It's the only time men ever willingly focus pretty much exclusively on cooking. Do they also teach read instructions. Inspired by TV cooking programs, they buy stuff like how to keep your shower recess free of mould, or give cookbooks that were never meant to leave the top of a coffee units in defence against dust-mitesl Or is that just the prov table and actually read them. Then they make shopping lists ince of interfering aunties and garrulous grannies? that include squid ink and quinoa, and demand comparative I suppose the schools are so strapped right now that we assessments: should be grateful that any kids are able to read, let alone get 'How's this one compare with last week's? Out of ten?' expanded curricula in home eco. Once upon a time, in the '70s, 'Fa bulous, eleven/ you say, with your mouth full of high we educated everyone at taxpayers' expense because it was cholesterol gourmet goodies. It's just as well because you arc thought to be worth it: you know, the clever country. Duh. going to need the energy for the washing up. These thoughts passed through my m ind as I watched a We've been washing up by hand since the old Vulcan couple of the previews that the ABC sent me recently, Seven retired hurt. Once having had a dishwasher, you fall into sloth Periods with Mr Gormsby and Bromwell High. Along with the ful ways; you have got used to shoving used dishes out of sight very Dennis Potterish Blackpool, they will be occupying my in the dishwasher till it's full, so now you stack them artisti Wednesday nights if I'm not out or doing a mountain of wash cally around the sink. ing up. Seven Periods is from New Zealand: I was fascinated by And since having had a dishwasher meant that you tended the differences in inflection and gesture before I even took in to have more crockery on the go, you don't do the sensible thing the plot. A struggling school, bottom of the league table, takes and retire the second set of dishes. You have acquired enough on an eccentric, post-military man to teach one of its worst plates and cups for a boarding school and they all get used. You classes. Mr Gormsby is a hoot: grotty, politically incorrect and stack them ever higher and quarrel about whose turn it is to very funny. It is shot in video on a very low budget in a way do them. that reminds me of old episodes of Young Doctors. 'How does it get like this so damn quickly?' I snarl, chip Bromwell High covers similar ground, but in vastly dif ping more enamel off the French casserole that my beloved ferent form: it is a cartoon of a madly dysfunctional school bought me. in South London. It abounds in jokes about multiculturalism 'She's doing her washing-up rant/ says my son, who sud without being racist. You will enjoy it, as will your blase teen denly remembers a pressing engagement. ager. 'But it's always me who gets to clean up the results/ I And although I don't like the idea of kids watching telly whine. 'How come it takes four pans, the food processor and a in the morning, at least the new cartoon King Arthur's Disas bloody jaffle iron to make a cup of coffee?' ters is bright and funny: better than the usual fare, with Rik Then my husband says something reasonable, the swine, Mayall voicing Arthur, and the brilliant Matt Lucas as Merlin. and all hell breaks loose. It's essentially a contemporary drama with the Arthur story as When your men cook, a simple steak and two veg will an overlay. In the first episode, Princess Guinevere is a modern require you to scour a mountain of dirty dishes, sticky spatu parent's nightmare: she is having drumming lessons. She also las, purulent pots, putrid pans, disgusting double-boilers, filthy finagles a deal with Arthur: he will travel to a m agic singing fish kettles, rotten roasting tins and .. . hey, come back here, oak tree to get her a branch. It's loud and funny, good holiday I'm not finished. stuff. There's a fascinating British makeover program showing In the meantime, Happy Holidays, and don't forget to on Foxtel at the moment, but soon to come to Australia- How switch off the telly a lot. Clean is Yom House! Two middle-aged bossy ladies go to peo ple's houses and transform them. Not like Changing Rooms: Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer. 50 EUREKA STREET JA UARY- FEBRUARY 2006 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM puzzled Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 138, Jan-Feb 2006 ACROSS 1. A fresh beginning for old resolutions maybe. (3,5,3) 10. The queen, in short, would do little for Professor Higgins. (5) 11. By mistake, I lob it on a spot-what an overthrow! (9) 12. Give wrong information to the effect that the male leader is playing well. (9) 13. Is the cricketer at the crease crackers? (5) 14. Possibly yarn to a legal official. (6) 16. Trainee doctor, perhaps, a likeable leader, works on the inside. (8) 18. Almost a catastrophe-close to the girl! (4,4) 20. See pal, unfortunately, dead to the world. (6) 23. How is pygmy, in part, so delicate? (5) 24. Focus on the disturbance made nice Peter quake. (9) 26. Boat out to prove a leading tanker? Not the one in the canal. (9) 27. Beach I surf with 005? (5) 28. Group undertaking, seeking better conditions possibly. (5,6) DOWN Solution to Crossword no. 137, Nov-Dec 2005 2. Issues it in German town. (5) 3. One who longs for the freshness of 1-across perhaps? (7) 4. Is she a river champion? (6) 5. Could be raging about the wild weather. (8) 6. Can I manage to be so friendly? (7) 7. How locks are set so that the water is kept in motion. (9,4) 8. British Prime Minister wielded cane for a meagre income? (8) 9. Reference book, clean copy, aide misused. (13) 15. Rapt, sent into ecstasy, viewing part of the church! (8) 17. Incombustible building material as first-class large order. (8) 19. Month spoken about by municipal officer in his role as civic leader. (7) 21. A dessert she and Bert like to share. (7) 22. The prophet Amos, I'm unreliably informed, loved this plant. (6) 25. Will the effect of sun-baking fade before the dance? (5) ~ ------Thi s subscription is: Your Contact Details: Gift to: (Please also fill in your own contact details, left) 0 New 0 Renewal 0 Gift IMrs!Moss!Ms!Mr Forst Name II Mrs!Moss!Ms!Mr First Name I Length of subscription: ~Su=m=am=e======~~Su=rn=am=e======~ 0 One yea r (six iss ues for $60 inc. GST.) IStreet No. Street Name II Street No. Street Name ~======~ 0 Two years (12 issues for $11 0 inc. GST. ) IC1tyffown/Suburb State Postcode II Cltyffown/Suburb State Postcode overseas rates on applica tion: ~~~~~======~~====~ tel +6 73 9427 73 7 7 email: [email protected]. org.a u IL.>..C_ayt-im_eL) e_lep-ho_n_e _o_.N ------Fa-x/e_m_.,_~ ______Jil.).IC_ay-tnn_e_L_)e_le-ph-on-e-No_.------Fax/-em_"'_l______J Send to. 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Product disclosure statements are avai lable from our website or by phone and should be considered before deciding whether to acquire, or continue to hold, units in the trusts or interests in the fund. ® Registered trademark of Australian Ethical Investment Ltd. A dialogue between faith and reas on ...... M aster of Divinity, Master ofTheological Studies, Master of Theology, Licentiate in Sacred Theology, Doctorate in Sacred Theology WESTON JESUIT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AN INTERNATION AL CATHOLI C THEOLOG I CA L CENTER Cambridge, M assachusetts [email protected] www.wjst.edu !617 492.1960 I SSN 1036-1758 0 1 9 771036 175017