Vol. 8 No. 1 January-February 1998 $5.95
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~-~ education & =HarperCollinsReligious An imprint of HarperCollinsPubli5her.s-
Special Book Offer FROM A ROMAN WINDOW
BY ROSEMARY GOLDIE
Rosemary Goldie has had a remarkable life by any account. For over forty years she has been an insider in the Vatican and was one of two women 'auditors' at Vatican II. In 1967 she became the first woman ever to hold an official post of authority in the Rom an Curia-Under Secretary of the Council on the Laity. From a Roman Window, her autobiography, is a fly-on-the-wall account of some of the most significant developments in the church. It is an affectionate and insightful book.
Thanks to HarperCollinsReligious, Eureka Street has ten copies of From a Roman Window to give away, each worth $25.95. Just put your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to 'Eurel SUMMER PROGRAMS IN BIBLICAL STUDIES, LITURGY AND THEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME JUNE 22- JULY 31, 1998 You c.m wo rk tnwa rd an ~ I . A 111 Bt hle. Litu rg} or Theology. or snnpl y takl' courses for cnnchm r nl Co ur~es, are arranged " 11h111 two thn.'l'-wrck moduks Uun c 22 to j ul) 10 and july 13 to july 31 ). lo u may choose to attend en her or hm h of these. In addi tion, eac h summ er we will offer an lntcnsin Course for s1Udcn1s who wish to rcnect on a sin gle Ca th olic th eologian. or a single his tori cal ev ent. which has signiri ca ntl y shaped the con temp orary Ca th oli c tradi tion. Cat holi c sc hool teac hers and DR E's wdl he e~ p e ciall y Int erested 111 the :,ummcr M.A. 111 Biblical Studl l'S . Teacher:, fll r th1 s n Hl n lH ra tio n '' dl be dr ~l\\ n fro m No tre Dame. national and nH cr nat ionallac ulu cs. Rcq u1rrd and r lrcll\T co ur '-ll''-1 will he oll cred regularl} c;o that th e c;a m l' p rog r cs~ 111 <1}' be mad e a" in th e Llt urgll'a l an d Th eo log tca l Studies programs BIBLI CAL FACULTY AND COUR SES IN CLUD E: THEO LOGY FACULTY AND COUR SES IN CLUDE : Jerome Murphy-O'Connor ...... Pauline Theolog y··· J. Matthew Ashley ...... Modern History · ·· Hugh R. Page ...... Prophets··· Michael Signer ...... Judaism··· ~~~~ ~~o~~~~~rt . ::: : sociology ~ns:~~~~~::: Gregory Sterl ing ...... Synopti cs and Acts··· Regina Coli ...... Feminist Th eology··· Charles Curran ...... Catholic Social Ethics · LITURGY FACU LTY AND COUR SES IN CLUDE : Keith Egan ...... History of Spiritua lity·· · Richard Gaillardetz ...... Th emes and Texts in the Catholic Tradition· · ~~~~:;~~~~:c~l i ·:::::: ::::::::: : : : :: ::::: : : :: . ~ lt~ rg icl~;~:~~;::: Richard McBrien ...... Ecclesiology' · · Edward Foley ...... Liturgical. Hi story::: Gerald O'Collins ...... The Doctrine of God · ·' Staff ...... L1turg1 ca l Law Thomas F. O'Meara ...... Grace··· Michael Joncas ...... Mu sic for th e Rit es··· Kenan Osborne ...... Sac ramental Th eo logy · ·· John A. Melloh ...... Ritu al Studies • • • Kern Trembath ...... Fund ame ntals of Sys tem atic Th eology · ' • Ruth Meyers ...... Liturgi cal Year' · • Paul Wadell ...... Interpersonal Ethi cs· • • Nathan Mitchell ...... Liturgy and Ministry·· • Karen Westerfield Tucker ...... Funeral Liturgies·· Edward Yarnold ...... Christian Initiation·· · THE 1998 I T ENSIVE COURSE: J ohn C. Cavadini Augu s tine**** Mo nday through Friday, J ul y I 3-H Tuition: $208 per credit hour plus a one-lime general fee of $35 Fo r rurthrr Information on a ll graduate program:-. (.':t UI11111 Cr , academi c )car, M.Di v. or Ph .D.) writ e: DIRECTOR OF G RAD UATE ST UDIES Dcparuncnt of Theology, Room 15 Um ve rs it y nl Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN -1 6556 Telepho ne: M.A. (2 19) 63 1-42 5-1 ; Ph .D. (219) 63 1-5732 htt p://www.nd .edu:80-t heo/ Volume 8 Number 1 January-February 1998 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology The British novelist Frank Parkin wrote CONTENTS a book called 32 The Mind and Body 4 THE ACTOR'S ISLAND COMMENT Steve Game goes on tour in Tasmania Shop over a decade and learns more than his lines. ago. It described the 9 CAPITAL LETTER 38 amalgamation of a COOMBS' COUNTRY university's philosophy 10 Christine Williams on Nugget Coombs' LETTERS department, which environmental vision. was facing fiscal stress, 14 41 with the local brothel. THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC BOOKS With Terry King, Humphrey McQueen, Andrew Hamilton reviews Alan Gill's The mind-body Dewi Anggraeni, Jon Greenaway. Orphans of the Empire and Kay Goode's problem thereby Jumping to Heaven; Race Mathews surveys 18 four recent titles on the credit union found an institutional THE THEOLOGICAL CHALLENGE movement (p42); Gillian Fulcher takes a resolution of sorts in OFWIK second look at Peter Carey's The Unusual Frank Fletcher looks at pastoral issues. Life of Tristan Smith (p44). a grotesquely pecuniary environment. In a 19 47 deregulated system SUMMA THEOLOGIAE IN BRIEF-WORDS AND MUSIC Margaret Simons on Delia Falconer's everything is possible. 20 novel The Service of Clouds; -See Frank Stilwell on 'Hire FLYING DUCK LOGIC Juliette Hughes reviews four new Education' on p22. Peter Mares follows the twists instrumental CDs from the Move label. of the Asian financial crisis. Back cover, left to right: Keith Govias, B.Com./Arts La Trohe; 48 Scott Holbrow, Business 22 THEATRE La Trohe; Ben Jones, B.Sc. HIRE EDUCATION Geoffrey Milne goes where Melbourne; Ambre Pit, Frank Stilwell on the brave new world the theatre gets rough. Assoc.Dip.Bus.Ed. RMIT. of university funding. Photograph by Bill Thomas. Cover design by Siobhan Jackson. 50 25 FLASH IN THE PAN Graphics pp6, 7, 8, 18, 20-2 1, ARCHIMEDES Reviews of the films Titanic, Spiceworld: 26-27, 39, 41, 43, 45 by the movie, Seven Years in Tibet, Siobhan Jackson. Cartoon p1 5 by Dea n Moore. 26 Her Majesty Mrs Brown, The Rainmaker Photographs pp22, 23, 24, 37 by THE MOST ANNOYING and The Ice Storm. Juliette Hughes Bill Thomas. SUMMER QUIZ YET flashes back to The Tin Drum (p52). Cartoon p51 by Peter Fraser. Eureka Street magazine 28 54 Jesuit Publications OPENING PANGUNA'S BOX WATCHING BRIEF PO Box 553 There's a touch of plus 9a change about the Richmond VIC 3 121 Tel (03)9427 7311 recently released Cabinet documents on 55 Fax (03)9428 4450 PNG, argues James Griffin. SPECIFIC LEVITY V OLUME 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 3 EURI:-KA SJRI:-Er COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts MICHAEL M c G IRR and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ First day of play Editor Morag Fraser Assistant editor T ,. WA' A 'MAce cwwo in fm tho opening d•y of tho Kate Manton Australia v N ew Zealand test match in Perth last November, but the organisers seem ed to have been expecting smaller. An Consulting editor excursion of about one hundred primary school children so Michael McGirr SJ swelled the numbers in the outer that the nearest food outlet ran Production Manager out of hot pies before lunch. Meanwhile, their teacher inadvert Sylvana Scannapiego ently entertained the crowd by trying to take a class roll. The spectators nearby answered the call and began indicating their Graphic designer: Siobhan Jackson presence or absence with increasingly obscene reasons one way Sub editor: Juliette Hughes or the other. The children enjoyed this hugely, so much so that Production assistants: Paul Fyfe SJ, I doubt if the same excursion will be going ahead this year. It's Chris Jenkins SJ, Kristen Harrison, a pity. If the point of the exercise was to expose youngsters to an Scott Howard aspect of Australian culture, then the object was surely achieved. Events on the field were of less interest to the children, but, fo r Contributing editors the record, the Australian team played like the AIF in Egypt, Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly Sf which was famous for catching everything. N ew Zealand bats Perth: Dean Moore m en left the arena in such rapid succession that one wondered Sydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor if there were going to be any work for the Australians actually to stop in the industrial dispute which loomed in the background South East Asian correspondent of the gam e. Evening came, the first day. Jon Greenaway The series against South Africa hasn't needed school excur sions to get a crowd through the ga te. Boxing Day is named after Jesuit Editorial Board the basic human instinct to pack a lunch and get out of the house Peter L'Estrange SJ Andrew Bullen SJ, after spending a day with rellies. In parts of the northern Andrew Hamilton Sf hemisphere, it is the traditional day for the start of the hunting Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ season. In Melbourne, 73,000 spectators turned up for the cricket, Business manager: Sylvana Scannapiego more than had been through the turnstiles for the entire New Marketing manager: Rosanne Turner Zealand series. The da y started sedately, doubtless out of respect Advertising representative: Ken Head for the hangover being nursed by m any in the outer, but at least it did start, more than can be said of the last South African visit Patrons to the MCG. On boxing day in 1993, constant rain put the lie to Eurelw Street gratefully acknowledges the the rumour that water can achieve anything for a headache. support of Colin and Angela Carter; the By tea the Australians had ground to a score of 92, but slow trustees of the estate of Miss M . Condon; progress allowed the crowd to mull over important matters. A W.P. & M.W. Gurry. gentleman behind us stated his belief that the captain of the Australian XI should be ex officio the president of the new Eureka Street magazine, ISSN 1036- 1758, Australia Post Print Post approved republic. His companion thought that would be OK if somebody pp34918l/003 14 like Mark Taylor was captain 'but what if you got a Bill Lawry? ' is publi shed ten times a year Somebody else said that they had been at the Australia versus by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, Iran World Cup fi xture at the same ground a month earlier and 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121 had noticed uneven bounce in the centre wicket. Tel: 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 'But that was a soccer ball'. e-mail: [email protected] .a u 'It doesn 't matter. Bounce is bounce.' Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by One of our group reported seeing Merv Hughes in the bar and Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. was indignant that Merv was asked to pay for his beer. We asked, Printed by Doran Printing, since he felt so strongly, if he had offered to pay for Merv's beer 46 Industrial Drive, Braeside VIC 3 195. himself. He hadn't. Another nearby spectator began reminiscing © Jesui t Publicati ons 1998. about Fred Astaire's visit as a gu est commentator to the Mel Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry and bourne Test Match in 1961. Unfortunately, Astaire didn 't bat. fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by He'd have lent new elegance to the phrase 'dancing down the a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for wicket'. Meanwhile, Mark Waugh's grim performance prompted permission to reprint material from the magazine a disgruntled fan to say that Waugh had been drinking before he should be addressed in writing to: cam e in and that Taylor should have dropped him down the The editor, Eurel 4 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 gentleman behind us, tired of discussing the republic, said that if to be rewound and announced that h e wanted to sing with less Waugh scored a century before stumps it would replace the Mitcham reverberation 'out of respect for the South Australian team .' The by-election as the highlight of his year. Evening cam e and stumps scoreboard knew he was wrong. When the South Africans started to were drawn, the first day. bat, their score was initially attributed to Tasm ania. The drinks South Africa held out for a draw in Melbourne and the circus cart broke down. Add to this an announcem ent that the Randwick m oved on. Sydney is currently making sure it experiences every Racecourse carpark was going to close at 4pm, a time that was later kind of organisational disaster before the Olympics. This is the revised to 6pm, still half an hour before the close of play. only conceivable explanation fo r the farce at the start of the test at In Sydney, we had, however, fo und the perfect va ntage point. the SCG where you pay $10 to park and $2.5 to get into the outer. Times were when TV went out of its way to m ake watching sports In Melbourne you pay $4 to park and $2.0 to get in. We queu ed for coverage as close as possible to the real thing. Now, sports promoters 35 minutes in Sydney to part with our m oney, prompting us to go out of their way to make being at the ground as much as possible wonder why a crowd more than twice the size sh ould queue fo r a like watching TV. The scoreboard puts up advertisem ents at fr action of the tim e to get into the MCG. Possibly patrons were m onotonous intervals and replays parts of the ga m e. T his is why it hurriedly taking out mortgages at the window to cover the cost of pays to sit directly under the scoreboard. Whenever an appeal is admission. At all events, it hardly m attered because play was turned down, the entire crowd on the hill stands, turns around and delayed for half an hour owing to the fact that a groundsman had faces you so they can see w hat happened. Whenever a wicket fa lls, decided to water one of the wickets neighbouring the test wicket they turn around, face you and cheer wildly. You can close your before the start of play and had m anaged to wet the test surface. Add eyes for a mom ent and feel like a god. • to this the fa ct that the gentleman singing the national anthem stopped in the middle of his karaoke performance, ordered the tape Michael McGirr SJ is consulting editor of Eureka Street. C oMMENT: 2 ANDREW H AMJLTON From those who have not • • • ONDK'M"' 21 b " yw, the Nobd P V OLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 5 COMMENT: 3 FRANK BRENNAN A free-spealzing church -goer's guide to Wilz in '98 W RRCN ENTSCH " A RORVST mToOAusT fwm nmth This was all rather gratuitous, especially coming from the Queensland. H e also chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee key participant in the debate who had so muddied the waters on Native Title. When he called for a boycott of churches in with the map on television falsely claiming 79 per cent of the light of comments by church leaders about John Howard's Australia could be subject to an Aboriginal veto. ten-point Wik plan, the debate entered a new phase. John Howard then went overseas and left Tim Fischer in Perhaps naively, I contacted the office of Senator Nick charge. The Anglican Archbishops of Perth and Adelaide had Minchin, Special Minister of State, the morning after. I pointed been taken to task by an Anglican vicar from Charleville, out that the two Catholic bishops who had responded that Queensland. The Acting Prime Minister thought it worthwhile morning-Saunders from Broome and Foley from Cairns-were giving Parliament the vicar's assessment: 'There are three words not fro m dioceses full of leafy suburbs but rather with pastoral that could describe the comments made by the Archbishops. leases as far as the eye could see. Church leaders would not be The first word is ignorant; the second word is uncaring; and the backing away. And churchgoer Senator Brian Harradine would third word is hypocritical. ' For Fischer, the vicar was 'the church be pivotal to the Senate debate commencing a week later. The leader I support in relation to Wik and Mabo.' John Howard's code rninister's office thanked me for the discussion and assured me was being liberally interpreted in his absence. Mr Entsch's remarks had 'nothing to do with the government'. It was important for the government It was as if we were re-running the government's to put paid to the churches because the response to Pauline Hanson. Remember how her maiden decision had been taken not to speech of September 1996 had been followed by the Prime compromise one iota on the 300-page bill Minister's free speech credo to the Queensland Liberal Party proposed to Parliament. The government and a month of silence because this is a free country and would have to take on not only those 'I'm not going to say what I believe through the prism of critics who rejected the ten point plan out responding to what som ebody else has said.' of hand, but also those, like Brian But that afternoon, the Prime Minister stepped up to Harradine, who were prepared to allow the the dispatch box, not with a hose to douse the Entsch bushfire government to govern, provided the but with a fan: 'May I say of my colleague the m ember for proposed legislation had a decent moral Leichhardt that I understand his sense of frustration-and bottom line. The government knew it the sense of frustration of many people in rural Australia would be difficult to reject reasoned, about the way in which this debate is being conducted. I do not constructive suggestions which enjoyed support a call for a boycott of church attendance, but I can community backing-including from understand the sense of frustration he feels.' church leaders- unless there were a concerted campaign against This was preceded by the Prime Minister's recitation of all critics, including the churches. For a touch of spice, there the written code for 'church figures' who wish to avail would also be one last suggestion that the backyards were under themselves of the right of free speech: 'The right to speak freely threat, salvageable only by an unamended ten point plan. on a broad range of issues carries with it the obligation to speak The crunch issue was whether or not native title holders in an informed, obj ective and constructive fa shion .. . whose lands were subject to pastoral lea e should retain the Importantly, there is also an obligation on church figures who statutory right to negotiate with mining companies. Aboriginal do enter the debate not to allow the impression to be created negotiators were adamant that this issue was non-negotiable, a that they speak on behalf of all adherents to their particular right to negotiate being much less than a veto. They had support church or denomination.' from many quarters including the churches. Rather than 6 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F E.BRUARY 1998 acknowledging this right, the Prime Minister took to describing clause would be to permit a claim over land if the lease were to it as simply 'a special arrangement entered into by the former expire within the next six years, while barring a claim government'. over land where the lease is to run out in another seven The finesse of the government's response was demonstrated years without any prospect of renewal. in the Dorothy Dixer asked of Tim Fischer on 3 December 1997 by Mr Kevin Andrews, noted Catholic IFA RIGHT TO NEGOTIATE with a mining company is to be enjoyed Liberal member from Victoria, where by native title holders whose country is vacant crown land, there are no pastoral leases. Andrews that right should not be taken away from native title holders was the advocate who had done so who suffer the disadvantage of having their land subject to a much to galvanise and present the pastoral lease without their consent. The Prime Minister has Aboriginal perspective in the euthanasia only ever provided two arguments for taking away this statutory debate, complete with a message stick right. One is meaningless and the other unprincipled. Both are from remote communities hand wrong. H e says, 'Of the many ironies that are thrown up by delivered to the Parliament. this debate, none is stronger than the consequences of the Labor He asked, 'Will the government's Party's insistence that the right to negotiate in the existing proposed amendments to the right to N ative Title Act be left unaltered by the amendment bill, n egotiate under the Native Title because that has two consequences. The first consequence it Amendment Bill create greater has is to prevent effect being given to the spirit of the Wik certainty for the mining industry, jobs decision, because if you leave a right to negotiate there you and rural communities?' Mr Fischer: cannot possibly give effect to the spirit of the Wik decision. 'I thank the Member for Menzies for his The second consequence is that you are conferring a right on very relevant question. The short native title claimants that you are not conferring on pastoralists. answer is yes, they will.' So apparently in relation to a mining claim it is perfectly all right After the question, Mr Fischer went back to have a friendly for a right to negotiate to be available to native title claimants but chat to the promising backbencher, returned to the front bench, it is not all right for it to be available to pastoralists. There is no later giving m e a courteous wave up in the gallery. Message equity, there is no fairness and there is no justice in that outcome.' received. The main amendment was to permit State govern The spirit of the Wik decision is not that pastoralists ments to remove completely the right to negotiate with mining necessarily have more or the same rights as native title holders companies if native title land was subject to a pastoral when it comes to dealing with miners. The spirit of the decision lease. All good Catholics had come to the aid of the party! is that native title holders retain their rights provided there is no conflict with the rights of the pastoralists. Any conflict of BY THE END OF THE SENATE DEBATE, the Prime Minister said rights between native title holders and pastoralists is resolved Frank Brennan does not speak for all Catholics and disclosed in favour of the pastoralists. Nothing in the Wik decision relates that he (Mr Howard) had covenants with the miners and to mining rights. pastoralists. Covenants are to be kept. Aborigines were the only As for the second consequence, the Commonwealth party without a covenant. Rational, constructive dialogue about Parliament has an obligation to set an appropriate bottom line proposed amendments was impossible because the covenants for relationships between native title holders and miners. It is a were in place. On 6 December 1997, John Howard identified matter for the States to determine the relationship between miners four key sets of am endments which were 'in the eyes of the and pastoral lessees holding state titles. The right to negotiate government, completely unacceptable'. He said the government encourages Aborigines and miners to would vote against them because they had 'substantially altered talk together and to work together from the thrust and the intent of the legislation'. the beginning. The four objectionable sets of amendments were identified The Commonwealth Parliament as the threshold test, the six-year sunset clause, the statutory has no power to make laws for the negotiation process for mining and development projects, and rights exercisable by pastoral lessees the proposal to subject the Native Title Act to the provisions under State titles. The veto, negotia of the Racial Discrimination Act. tion and compensation rights of But in debate, the government was sympathetic to Senator farmers affected by mining is a State Harradine's amendment to the threshold test, allowing matter. For example, some farmers in Aborigines locked out of pastoral leases still to lodge a claim. Western Australia whose lands are Senator Minchin told the Senate on 1 December 1997: 'We have cultivated and enclosed have a veto had a good look at Senator Harradine's amendment and we over mining development. At the would be prepared to accept that amendment. In the light of other end of the scale are those the comments that have been made around the chamber, we pastoralists who have only a right to compensation for think that is a not inappropriate amendment.' disturbance to the land. The Commonwealth Parliament has A sunset clause is now completely arbitrary and the power and the responsibility to set a bottom line for unprincipled. Native title claimants can lodge a claim over their relationships between native title holders and miners. traditional lands which they occupy once any freehold estate The right to negotiate with mining companies was not even or lease has expired and not been renewed. The eff ect of a sunset m entioned by the Prime Minister in his address to the nation. V oLUME 8 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 7 A right to negotiate with mining companies should be retained it to an honourable conclusion and it has been completely by all native title claimants w ho can satisfy a reasonable frustrated in those attempts by the behaviour of the Labor Party threshold test. and by the behaviour of the Democrats and by the behaviour of In the dying stages of the Senate debate, the Labor Party Senator Harradine.' insisted that the legislation be read and construed subject to Back in July 1997, such a compromise was publicly praised the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act. When in by the Prime Minister's trusted friend and ABC Chairman, government in 1993, Labor could not bring itself to agree to Donald McDonald, who said such a proposal would be welcomed such amendments proposed by the Democrats and Greens by all fair-minded people as it would 'benefit all parties directly because such complex legislation, which is designed to give all involved and help lead to an outcome of fairness and certainty parties certainty about their property rights, longed for by the Australian people'. would not accord certainty until the courts had This compromise would come at consider determined the effect of the Racial Discrimina For a touch of spice, able cost to the Aboriginal groups and the tion Act on each and every clause. Senator Brian Opposition parties in the Senate. It would result Harracline was right on the last day of debate there would also from minimal rewriting of the Howard bill before the lunch at which he changed his mind be one last simply so as to draw a just, workable and certain when he said, 'There will be endless litigation bottom line. Mr Gareth Evans, Deputy Leader about it. Why did we not put it in the 1993 suggestion that the of the Opposition, indicated the ALP's willing legislation? For the very reason that we ought backyards were ness to compromise, given the bottom line drawn not be putting it in here. The Labor government by the Harracline amendments, when he warned at that time knew that it was a nonsense to put a under threat, against the choice of 'setting the country on a similar provision in the Native Title Act. If the salvageable only by divisive and confrontational path, of setting loose Labor Party faced up to the real world now, they those forces of fear and prejudice on one side, of would realise that it would be, and is, not an an unamended hurt and humiliation on the other side, that arc appropriate thing to do if you want to have the ten point plan. an absolutely inevitable part of any election legislation work for the benefit of indigenous which makes native title, for which read "race", people-native title holders-and in fairness to a central theme'. He told the House of Repre the rights of other persons.' Despite the populist appeal of this sentatives: 'We should have accepted, we should now accept, amendment, the Opposition parties should back clown in the the Senate's amendments and move on.' interests of certainty, justice and workability for all There are now two groups in the country anxious for a stakeholders. double dissolution on Wik. First, there are those opposed to native title rights being exercised on pastoral leases. They want 0 N 6 DECEMBER 1997, the Prime Minister told Parliament the election so that the Howard government can implement of his commitment to find 'an honourable, decent and worthy its plan without the full range of Senate amendments. compromise'. He said, 'In a compromi c, you do not surrender Especially, they want to do away with the right to nego tiate to one interest, you try to strike a fair balance.' In relation to with mining companies except on 'vacant crown land' subject the four issues of concern raised by the Prime Minister, such a to native title claim. In the past they have criticised the High compromise could only be effected by the Senate's dropping its Court for delay when the court took only six months to reach a insistence that the Native Title Act be read and construed decision. They have told Parliament, 'This legislation needs subject to the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act. The passing because time is not on our side-' But after a year of government should agree to a threshold test which unlocks the consultation and debate, these same people now urge the bush gates on those pastoral leases where the gates have been locked to wait another year-for the good of the miners. And this from in the past. The government should also agree to drop the six a government that understands 'the sense of frustration of many year sunset clause which will simply result in excessive claims people in rural Australia'. Second, there are the strong advocates being lodged in six years' time and which would preclude bona of native title who believe that a double dissolution will give the fide claims to areas no longer subject to lease or freehold after Labor Party a real chance of election with a commitment to a full six years. Most importantly, the government should agree to blooded implementation of the Wik decision. For them the more Commonwealth legislation maintaining the right to negotiate with draconian the Howard bill, the better in the long run. mining companies for all native title holders. There are many Australians, not stakeholders and some of With this compromise, pastoralists and shire councils could them churchgoers, who are left wondering why a Senate be assured, by March 1998, the certainty they have been seeking compromise would not be good for all of us in March 1998. with a new threshold test and the guarantee that they can engage When a legislative package praised by Donald McDonald can in the same diversification on their leases post-Wik as they could be damned by John Howard within six m onths, one is left pre-Wik. Without this compromise, the shire councils and wondering whose interests are being served in the debate. pastoralists will be put on hold for an additional year with Perhaps everyone, including John Howard, should reconsider minimal possible gain . If the government simply wants to put the Senate compromise, whatever they think of his selective all other stakeholders on hold for the benefit of miners unwilling free speech code, and whether or not they go back to church. • to negotiate with native title holders on pastoral leases, the Prime Minister will be unable to sustain his claim that 'The Frank Brennan SJ is Director of Uniya, the Jesuit Social Research Australian people will know that the government wants to bring Centre, Sydney. 8 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 What, us worry? T ERE'S AN AMAZING SERENITY about welfare safety net anyway. Not simple, moreover, where feeling the unfolding financial, economic, the pinch means a lot more than postponing the purchase of a political and almost certainly social crisis facing our Asian video-cassette recorder, and where it can mean starving to death. nations. Our ministers keep assuring us that it will not affect Or roaming around in mobs looking for scapegoats for the col us a bit. Well, a bit, maybe- a fraction of a percentage point off lapse of the social order. the growth- but not very much. Well, quite a bit, perhaps, but But recognition of the fragility of the social fabric is not Australia is not fundamentally affected, partly because John grounds for continuing to support authoritarian rulers whose Howard and Peter Costello took the m edicine 18 months ago. families dabble in corruption. We might all want more demo Our fundamentals are sound, after all. So sound, in fact, that cratic governments, and welcome some of the pressures which we can play good neighbour and kick in to some of the transfer real power back to the people. Which way, however, international rescue packages. We can even stand in the queue does the sovereignty pass when a country is in effective receiv of western leaders hectoring Asian leaders and begging them to ership? And can one be sure that the domestic forces that the cop their punishment. And, of course, if they do, it will all be market will unleash will be counterbalanced in the new power over very quickly and we can get back to trading peacefully vacuums? And, if things do go horribly bad, is Australia, which with each other. itself boasts it's a part of Asia, in quite the same position to But is it that simple? A major factor behind the West's tut-tut and walk away as some of the IMF daleks? rushing in to assist Korea, in particular, came from the realisa I'm not saying that Australia should not have been a good tion that the crisis had the potential to bring on a major global neighbour when Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, then Korea recession. Whatever happens, international demand for our and others fell victim to a crisis of international confidence. commodities and our soft exports-tourism, say, or education But if we truly had an independent foreign policy, and were are bound to fall sharply over the next few years. This in an investing in the long term, we might have done better for economy which has been making a great public virtue about ourselves than to have been a shrill echo of, say, Bill Clinton. the proportion of our production that is turned over to The United States knows where its interests lie, and Australia's international trade. And, in any event, if the movem ents in the are not necessarily the same. The resentment that persuades Australian dollar are any guide, world confidence in our some of those countries to focus on Australia, as a cat they economy is not that profound either. can kick, should n ot be underestimated. It fits neatly, after all, in But there's a lot more to it than that. There's nothing with the perception that Australia has not really shed particularly magical about the International Monetary Fund. its colonial past. It's an organ of the West, particularly the United States, just like any other. And its prescription for an economy in trouble Y T, IN THE MEANTIME, the political and bureaucratic may have some potential ultimately to rescue a country from backrooms are drawing up a budget for an election-probably financial crisis, but its agenda is far wider than that. You can for the end of the year. If the blithe self-confidence is correct see it even from the crude fiscals. First of all, one must get and Australia is not too shaken by the Asian earthquakes-there's one's government in order, and one's budget in balance. Stop some money in the till, and some scope for new tax proposals. all of that wasteful expenditure on health, education and And while this is going on, others will be debating the shape welfare. Force down demand. More widely, get the settings right. of a republic for a new millennium. For many, of course, merely Stop all the regulation- let the market run free. Create regimes becoming a republic has powerful emotional and sentimental of transparency and accountability. Stop the corruption. Put force, marking a formal severing of ties with Britain and a the priority on reduction of debt, even if that involves selling reaffirmation of our nationhood. There are businessmen, too, off your assets or dragging money out of social programs. After who see in a republic an opportunity to 're-package' Australia all, you cannot afford them . And, if a couple of million people abroad-to help us shed some of our reputation as an outpost are thrown on to the breadlines, one cannot be too sentimental of Empire-bumptious, arrogant, and blissfully unaware of other about it-they cannot, as things stand, sustain their present nations, cultures and ways of doing things. A useful lot, perhaps, way of life anyway. When things are back in balance, the settings because they, like many young Australian people, are desperate are there for true prosperity, even for them. to see resolved issues such as Aboriginal reconciliation, which Now one can do these things, up to a point at least, with a stand in the way not only of some international respect but a financial basket case such as a Victoria and get away with it. mature and forward-looking sense of ourselves. Even in that state's darkest hours, there was a social security Alas, re-packaging requires more than a new name and safety net and money coming in from Canberra, quite apart slogan. It comes from actions too. And if, as is quite possible, from the fact that political mutiny in Australia is a fairly the problems of Asia come to dominate most of the domestic civilised thing. It's not as simple in an Indonesia, where the political year-making many of our own difficulties seem trivial glue holding things together is not so strong, where-even and engulfing many of the plans of our own politicians-it may among those who are not so corrupt-ways of doing business be our own fault for building on the wrong fundamentals. • or running governments are very different from those found in New York or Sydney, and where there was never much of a Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times. V OLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 9 LETTERS Eureka Street welcomes letters from its readers. Short letters arc Bedevilled (1) more likely to be published, and Bedevilled (2) all letters may be edited. Letters From Heather Elliott, International must be signed, and should From Sr Patricia Pak Pay usM, National Campaign to Ban Landmines (Victo Coordinator, International Campaign include a contact phone number rian Network) to Ban Landmines (Australian Network) Martin West's article, 'Small devils' and the writer's name and address. Martin West's item 'Small devils' (Eureka Street, N ovember 1997), If submitting by e-mail, a contact (' The Month's Traffic', Eureka Street, rightly highlights the difficulties of phone number is essential. November 1997) was disappointing to en suring a universal ban on anti Address: [email protected] this reader because many of th e personnel landmines, and the ironies writer's judgments-e.g. on the work of this DIY (do it yourself) and DYI (do of Ms Joc\y Williams, the International yourself in) 'weapon of the poor'. How Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) ever, he is incorrect in asserting that the and the Australian N etwork of t he Australian anti-landmine movement Campaign-seem to be based o n was destroyed by th e government's inaccurate or incomplete knowledge. (April 1996) announcement of a mora For the record, and for other read torium on operati onal landmine use. ers, may I make the following points: Such a policy shift was indeed the • The Australian campaign has not focus of the Australian Campaign to 'fold ed'. Its first concern was to build Ban Landmines up to that point, but a strong network of citizen support for rather than having 'quietly died', the a total ban on anti-personnel landmines, movement has continued to lobb y for for mine clearance and assistance to this new policy to be given teeth and victims. It lobbied the government of perma nence. In 1997, this m ostly Australia will confirm, inter alia, its the cla y, and continued to lobby until m eant urging the government to intention to 'work strenu ously the present government resolved its support the historic Ottawa treaty. In towards the promotion of its univer internal difficulties, and decided to sign May, a National Day of Action salisation' (from the treaty Preamble). the Convention on the Prohibition of fea turing ' minefi e lds' in most The treaty's specific terms must take Landmines in Ottawa. The Campaign Australian CBDs-yielded over 14, 000 effect by various subsequent deadlines. is still active. petition signatures, a motion in the Rather than resting on our laurels, the The i ue of landmines is mainly Senate (passed) and media coverage. In Australian Campaign will be urging the a humanitarian issue warranting a July, the Australian Campaign hosted government to ratify and implem ent common policy across parties. Labels a large regional ga thering of govern the treaty as soon as possible, and then such as 'left ' and 'righ t-wing' are not m ent and N GO delega tes- including to fulfil its stated intentions-includ helpful in addressing the complexities representatives of the Burmese military ing that of influencing mine producers of the issue. government- which focused on the or users, and increasing support for • The Australian campaign is sti II Ottawa treaty's importance. In October, min e clearance and mine survivors. working with government to increase we delivered to the Prime Minister's Contrary to West's assertion, in all our Australia's already commendable office the petition signatures and lobbying we have consistently encouraged contribution to mine clearance and anoth er 15,000 person al m essages the government in the latter direction, and assistance to victims. It is also urging fro m Australians urging signature of in fact worked to have this aspect incluc\ec\ early ra tifica tion of the Convention. the Ottawa treaty. in the Ottawa treaty itself. • ICBL and the Australian Network I am sorry if West has relied on Heather Elliott are working with those countries still media coverage as an indicator of the Melbourne, VIC resistant to a total ban, inc! uc\ing strength of the Australian Mya nmar/Burma, China, Campaign. The Melbourne Russia, India, Pakis tan Day of Action was (neces- CARL MERTEN SCULPTURE and the United States. sarily) overshadowed by the • Burma sent repre Reconciliation Convention AND SILVERWARE STUDIO sen ta ti ves to the Asia/ held on the sam e day; PUBLIC, PRIVATE AND CORPORATE Pacific Coll oquium on despite fr equent m edia Lane\ mines, hosted by the SCULPTURE COMMISSIONS releases from June 1997 Aus tralia campaign in MEDALLIONS, BAS-RELIEF, FIGURATIVE onwards, coverage nationally Sydney, July 1997. We AND CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE has been patchy, with more have also hac\ informal IN BRONZE, SILVER, STONE AND STEEL interest shown in overseas talks with leaders of so SCULPTURE AND SILVERSMITHING COURSES events, such as Princess called 'rebel' fa ctions, to Diana's work and the Ottawa BE CREATIVE, WITH CARL MERTEN promote a ban. process, than in local events. • The Nobel Prize to Australia signed the 'CHINOOK' Torryburn Road Uralla NSW 2358 M s Jody Williams, the Ottawa treaty, which will Ph: 02 6775 5593 In tern a tiona! Coorclina tor enter into force six months email: [email protected] of the Campaign, is viewed after its ratificati on by 40 website: http: / / www.com.au / neiss/modoz/hbnl by all as a recognition of countries; by ratifying, the significance of the 10 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 I WANT TO INVEST WITH CONFIDENCE The second reason for sadness was the way that Sendy fe lt constrained to AUSTRALIAN reject the entire Russian experience in order to dump, at last, his mis taken hero worship of Stalin and a ll his ethical works. Agribusiness or It means that he has to ign ore or reafforestation. TRUSTS This month, marginalise the very real initial gains Mining or recycling . Investors the writer of each letter we of the revolution, like land to the Exploitation or can choose peasants, control of industry to the publish will receive a pack of sustainability. Through the AE Trusts you workers, the end of World War I on postcards featuring Greenhouse gases the Russian front, full legal rights fo r con invest your savings cartoon s and graphics, or solar energy. and superannuation in by Eureka Street regulars, women such as legalisation of abortion and divorce, legalisation of homosex Armaments or over 70 different D ean Moore, Siobhan Jackson uality, the end of the lega l concept of community enterprises, each expertly and Tim Metherall. bastardry, and the right of oppressed enterprise. selected for its unique nationalities to self-determination. combination of earnings, Campaign and a tool for promoting the He has jumped from one position, environmental work of the Campaign in making the that Stalin represented the triumphant sustoinability ond social ban global. Civil societies mus t continua tion of October 19 17, to continue to work constructively with another, that the original revolution responsibility, and earn a governments. was doom ed to turn into bloodthirsty competitive financial ICBL- and its 65 na tiona! dictatorship. Yet I would argu e that return. For full details ca mpaigns-is engaged, and would both are flawed. make a free coli to welcome the engagement of others. The key lea ders of October 1917, 1800 021 227 Patricia Pak Poy ll SM Lenin and Trotsky, were emphatic that Adelaide, SA the revolution could survive only if it lnres/ mel/ls in/be Australian Etbical Trusts CCIII onlr be made tbrongb the wrrenl prospectu s spread to the industrialised West and registered ll 'ilb tbe Australian Sewrilies gai ned access to advanced technologies Co mmission and ami/able from : Ragging the Reds and other wealth. Australian Ethical Investment Ltd Fourteen foreign armies invaded l'nil 66. Ca nberra Busin ess Centre From David Glanz Russia to back up the Whites. Their Bradfield St. Doll'n er ACT .!60.! In the light of Sophie Masson's letter aim was never to establish parliamen in the December issue, I read once tary democracy but to smash the new again John Sendy's review essay on the workers' state and hand the factories MONARCHISTS, Russian Revolution, published the back to the bosses and the land to the ROYALISTS AND m onth before. Unlike Masson, I did landlords. Meanwhile, lack of experi not find it courageous but enormously ence saw new Communist Parties let REPUBLICANS sad, for two reasons. slip revolutionary opportunities, above The first was that in the process of all in Germany in 1918-19 and 1923 . By Geoffrey White distancing himself from the events of Russia survived the civil war but 1917, Sendy reduced to one paragraph remained isolated and economically the achievem ents of Communists in devastated. It was into this unwanted, An Australia n Head of State IYEsl Australia. Yet for at least 40 years, unplanned a nd awful vacuum that m embers of the CPA played an often Stalin's burea ucracy expanded. Sendy A Republic INOI m agnificent role in the fight against mentions Stalin's crimes against the reaction . population at large and his purges of A contradiction? Not at all To expand on Sendy's brief list, it the cream of the Bolsheviks but was Communists who organised the ignores an obvious conclusion- that 'interesting and original' 1930s unemployed w ho h ad been Stalinism represented not the triumph dragooned into work for the dole, who of 1917 but its nem esis. Ri chard E. M cGarvie AC organised against racism directed at Sendy may feel that he wasted Italian migrants in the Queensland much of his political life. There Avai lab le by mail ca ne fi elds, and who were central to re m ain today n ew socialist s who Visa, M as terca rd, Bankcard, spreading solidarity with the Wave admire the best of the CPA's work chequ e or money ord er. Hill Aboriginal stockmen whose 1966 w hile refu sing to s ubscribe to the $A 19.95 (p&p paid) strike laid the basis for land ri ghts. suspension of critical judgment that Austra li a, NZ, PNG, Pac ific Is As those who have seen the film made Stalin-worship possible. $US 19.95 (p&p pa id) elsewh re Mabo, Life of an Island Man, will Some of us understand that when know, it was Communist-led wharfi es Stalin devoured the revolution 's Box 627E GPO in Townsville who encouraged Eddie children, it was isolation and western Mabo's political educa ti on, thus con hostility, not innate reactionary urges, Melbourne VIC 3001 tributing along the way to this decade's that sharpened his terrible appetite. Fax (03 ) 5426-135 0 seismic shifts in offi cial thinking on David Glanz Email [email protected] land ownership on tllis continent. Brunswick, VIC V OLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 11 is also a group of sovereign states and their deliver a contemporary model of representa clcpcnclencies linked by common objectives tive governmen t that includes the duties, Citizen's Gain and formally associated by compact. powers, election and title of the head of state. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 is Head Expressed also and expanded in a Bill of Rights From H./. Grant of the Commonwealth of which it is assumed and Responsibilities should be the historic Some argue that the t itl e 'Commonwealth Australia wou ld remain a member whether status a nd entitlements of our indigenous of Australia ' s hould persist regardless of or not it became a republic. England's active population within a culturall y diverse society. whether this country maintains or changes experience as a commonwealth occurred in the The Constitutional Convention (Electoral) its current constitution. The proposal has period 1649-1660. The then Parliament A c t 1997 required that delegates to the merit and ought to be fully canvassed at the abo li shed the House of Lords and the monarchy Convention be citizens of Australia. Such an Constitut ional Convention in February and established the commonwealth with Oliver important requirement is a sign that cannot be 1998 . Cromwell as chairman (Lord Protector) of the disregarded. Since 1948 when legislation was Plato and others incl uding St Augustine council of state. enacted to create Australian citizenship, and Sir Thomas More consider a Common It must be said that Crom well in his s uccessive governments have stressed and we From Garth Rawlins Interdisc!Rlin~l)i{4pJ;[ic ulum: Some yea rs ago I visited a C 12 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 and Human Rights was properly given full were territorial occupiers like all creatures rein (E ureka Street, N ovember). I humbly that live off the naturally occurring produce Talking Points as k indulgen ce for an unsophis tica ted of the land, which makes the defence of terri comment on h er academic view of theology tory essential due to the limited capacity of and the law. it to carry a population. Most of the fauna is W ORTH TAKIN G A LOOK at is Brian H ow e's Perhaps she felt the Gospels and divinely territorial in that very sense. Just because no Housing for the Twen ty-first Century: inspired Church authority did not com e value is added by the occupier, length of Building on Barnett, Ecu m enical H ousing within her purview . But she was certainly occupation makes no difference and the title Inc. and Copelen Child and Family Services selective in h er comment tha t 'At the of any occupier is no better than that of any (ISBN 085821 139 4 ). C lear eviden ce that international level religious traditions are of his predecessors or successors. None of there is life after politics. used in a complex way to preserve the power them have equity in the land and therefore O s wald Barne tt was a pio n eering of m en. The appeal to the sanctity of religion m ay be chased away, but cannot be dispos is considerabl y reduced if it is the case that it sessed of what they didn't own in the first researcher into poverty in the earlier part of is being used to bolster the distribution of place. In contrast with the Murray Islanders, this century. Such research h as enabled power and privilege'. And are the scriptures who were established h orticulturalists and governments in the m ore Keyn esian past to really being used to justify exclusion of had improved their land by working it and make substantial investments in public wom en from the priesthood I erecting improvements and in whose favour housing. But the poor are always with u s, It's not ethereal to recall that the number the Mabo judgm ent h ad been delivered, and at least partly because they still have to of wom en saints far outnumbers those of the mainland Aborigines did not fulfil the criteria pay so much to keep a roof over their heads. m ale gender, although all belong to the sam e of ownership which was imputed to them by There is much to give one pause h ere, communion, a nd one thinks of the the then government by m anipu lating the particularly the cogen cy with which the trem endous cha nges wrought through out judgem ent of the High Court. connection is drawn between affordable history by those who took on the tremendous If rights to freeh old ownership can be h ou sing and the eradication of poverty. men: the likes of St Joa n of Arc, St Catherine acquired by mere presence, no m atter how It seem s a truis m , but s urprise, of Siena, Sts Teresa and Therese, St Birgitta unproductive, why are seventeen and a half surprise-reliable studies quoted here show (whose long trek from Sweden to Rom e to million N on -Aboriginal Australian s also tha t when government policy provides warn the Pope of the coming of the Reforma present in the land and on the whole much affordable decent h ou sing, people can rise tion went unheeded with such dire conse more productively so than the Aborigines, in the world, and often n eed n o further quences fo r m ankind) .. . to say nothing of the denied it? Is that not racist1 There is also the assistance. Queen of Heaven herself, whose interventions semantic confusion, which, rightly allows all are still being heard in our m odern world nearly eighteen million Australians, including The story for those at the m ercy of almost daily with scant attention. Aborigines, to call Australia their country, but m arket forces is n ot so happy: low-incom e Let's not lose sight of prayer and right good only Aborigines may convert their presence private renters and buyers must struggle to fe minine example in these matters that Hilary into fr eehold. It may also be true, that a graz keep afl oat as what little they earn pours Charlesworth and others raise. By all m eans ing property might only support one fa mily away into the pock ets of private landlords go on lecturing us, but the academic view isn't (and presumably their employees, if any) and and banks. The poor always pay m ore, by the whole picture. it might support 50-500 Aborigines, but it proportion of earnings, for hou sing, wh ether Garth Rawlins produces m eat and fibre fo r export and makes it be for rent, or stamp duty, which is Fulham, SA a va luable contribution to the nation 's proportionately high er for lower priced economy, which would not happen if a whole houses. Not impressed gro up of Aborigines would subsist on it. H owe, as former D eputy Prime Minis Aboriginal enterprises don't have a very good ter and Minister for H ealth, H ou sing and record on the whole. Community Services under Labor, w as From Michael Polya Your other correspondent in the sam e always on e of the m ore human e politician s Michael Morgan's letter (Eureka Street Decem issue, Anthony Brown, doesn't seem to realise in Canberra, and n ow as an academic can be ber 1997) calls fo r some comment. how cursory Cook's contact was with the unfe ttered in his commentary. This will be I have not heard Sir John Gorton's speech, Aborigines and does not seem to appreciate an essential addition to secondary school only reports of it in the media. He might not the difficulty, nay impossibility, of making have expressed very clearly his reasons for not agreem ents with very numerous small and libraries and an important resource for considering Aborigines landowners and the primitive tribes. The British always tried to senior students or indeed anyon e interested fac t that they did/ do not grow crops is rule their colonies throu gh the existing hier in social justice. • insufficient argument per se, however I agree archy, but in the case of Australia this was, with him on the following grounds. Owner clearly, not feasible. Hence terra nullius. In ship of land implies an equity in the land, the judgm ent of the British authorities, the To advertise in Eureka Street, which can be acquired only by either purchase Aborigines did not con stitute a nation, or contact (not necessaril y the current owner) or by power the British Empire cou ld enter into investment of labour, or money, or both in trea ties with, which does not denote an Ken Head effecting improvements and thus enhancing uninhabited land, as some ignorami like to at PO Box 553, Ri chmond, the value of the property. The two m ethods pretend. M. Baudin must have been very naive VIC, 3121 are usually combined. Pastoral lessees and or stupid to even imagine, that the advanced miners have done just that and Aborigines British settlers might adapt their ways to have done n either. Contrary to Morgan 's become like the Aborigines, who evidently Te l: en 'l427 7ll l assertion , Aborigines w ere nomads, who did not impress them very favourably. Fax: Ol 'J 42il 44SO roamed the land in search of food, regardless Michael Polya Mobile te l: 04 1 V OLUM E 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE .' . • iJI1 MONTH'S ' ' ' " ...~ ' 1 TRAFFIC ;~ at his first show, Bellman 'was easily the Grammar seems to instil in its products'. On whom the bell n1.ost likely- looking of the whole lot. He For me, a re-reading of the newspaper walked in on the tips of his toes, stern erect, accounts of the events leading to the resig tells looking every inch of hii11. a hound', and the nations of Dunstan and Nordlinger brought Bellman and Pescott: a sort of Judge awarded him the prize for best male to mind the description of Bellman's first literary biography puppy. 'kill'. He 'growled over the portion he had (or, My Life as a Dog) Here I was som ehow reminded of the wrenched from the jaws of a third-season portrayal of Roger Pescott by the Victorian hound, Ranter. This hare tasted .. . warm tend to a ttribute e normo us Press, particularly in the early da ys of his and bitter, and Bellman's eyes glowed and influence to the printed word, seeking to political career. In February 1985, as Liberal his hackles lifted as he tore at it savagely.' find the explanation for this person's great candidate for Bennettswood, he was char Unfortunately, none of Pescott's ness-or that person's fatal flaw- in the acterised by the Age as 'Western District talents and achievements brought him books that they have read. I found Bellman charming, Gee long Grammar-educated and las ting success. His various spells as the Story of a Beagle in the $1 bin outside a wealthy', and in October 198 7, after this deputy leader, minis te r, a nd sh adow second-hand bookshop in Camberwell. n ewcom er came remarkably close to minister, were overshadowed by longer And although it was the book's title that toppling Jeff Kenne tt as Liberal leader, periods of back-bench exile. attracted the attention of this beagle owner, the sam e newspaper reported that his Here again there seemed to be some it was the inscription on the fl yleaf-in a ' main qualifications for the leadership, if parallels, for our beagle hero experienced child's hand, Roger Pescott, and an address you believe those promoting him m ost his share of adversity. He was lost on the in Ba llarat-that prompted its purchase. strongly, were his "breeding", his good moors, caught in a snare, and stolen by a A little research soon confirmed that looks and his family'. gypsy, but survived them all. He was the address given was indeed that of the Even when, as shadow tourism minister exposed to temptations that could-and childhood home of Roger Pescott MLA, and arguably the most effective m ember of did- lead som e young dogs astray. Several one-time Deputy Leader of the Victorian the Liberal Opposition, Pescott forced the of his contemporaries de ve loped an Parliamentary Liberal Party and, until very resignation of Victorian Tourism Commis unfortunate appetite for sheep: Bellman recently, the Member for Mitcham. And sion chairman Don Dunstan, and then that was of stronger stuff and never deviated this finding led to a rather obvious line of of his successor Bob Nordlinger, the Press from the role to which he'd been born and further inquiry. Had the young Roger found seemed reluctant to acknowledge that he bred, hunting hares whenever he was given a role model within the pages of this book, should be taken seriously as a politician. the opportunity to do so. or the values that underpinned his political His pursuit of Labor's appointees was Bellman knew exil e too, being given career? Did Bellman contain the key to dismissed as 'scalp-hunting', undertaken away by the owner of the pack into which Roger Pescott's character/ merely to advance his standing as a contender he was born. This was not as a result of any It was th e sort of book little Australian for the Liberal leadership. And when Pescott inadequacy on his part, but rather beca usc boys like Roger and m e were given as birth challenged this interpretation of his actions, he excelled at his vocation, constantly day and Christmas presents in the fifties: the Age reported him doing so 'in that finding and felling the hare well ahead of good British stuff promoting grit and languidly self-assured manner that Geclong the rest of the pack. And 'it was a strict rule determination and 'play of the Master's that no matter how good at ing the game', with just a hunting a hound might be, he absolutely little blood and guts refused to keep one that was faster than his tossed in. But the 'hero' mates in the fi eld'. is a clog-a beagle named At this point, the grand theory I'd been Bellman- and the story developing fell apart. The pack-owner's follows his life from his kennel staff disapproved of his decision and earliest clays through to recognised (God bless the comm on sense of the beginning of what the working class!) that there was another promises to be his golden option. 'I'd sooner be losin' any 'ound in the period, top dog in a pack kennel but 'im,' the old kennel master grum of hounds. bles. 'Yes,' his assistant responds, 'but he Bellman had a grea t [the Master] woulcl 'ave to get rid of the 'ole deal going for him right pack and get a new lot as could keep level from the start. He was with 'im. ' And of course, as this is just a courageous, intelligent, child's story book where-in the fifties at well-bred and well-built. least- truth and ju stice and grit and Even as a pup he 'could determination must triumph in the end, always hold his own at that is what finally happens. the [feeding] trough', and -Terry King 14 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRU A RY 1998 contributed to its increase. Unless they there is not, ordinarily, any such equal also had laboured, Griffith considered their freedom of contract between the employer Left behind role 'passive'. All they did was to allow and the employed. ' To the extent that 'a their ' property to be worked upon for m easure of freedom of contract exists it has wages'. Instead of asking why the suppliers been obtained by combination on the part A CTIVE ON THE MONARCHIST SIDE in the of labour should get a larger share of the of labourers. This very combination is an postal ballot for the convention to review new wealth, Griffith believed that the ques effort of strength put forth against the other the Australian constitution is the Samuel tion had to be recast as 'why should they party to the bargain, who, but for the com Griffith Society, formed in 1992. Griffith [the workers] not have all the profits? ' bination, (and om etim es in spite of it), had been the first Chief Justice of the N ext, G riffith asked w ho would take would be stronger.' High Court from 1903 almost until a year the new wealth that labour produced. He Without unions, Griffith concluded, before his death in 1920. Earlier, he had observed that while the labourers get their freedom of contract must be a new system of bee n Chief Justice and Pre mie r of wages as one of the costs of production, all slavery. These views about individual Queensland, though not at the same time. the profits went to the processor of capital contracts and enterprise bargaining will not As well, h e had been a delega te to the whose role had been passive. please Peter Reith, as well as being too militant conventions that produced the Common for Kemot's N ew Labor. Still less will his wealth Constitution, much of which h e views endear Griffith to the anti-arbitration drafted in 1893. H.D. Nicholls Society, despite the overlap in Under Griffith, the High Court initiated membership. a narrow interpretation of Commonwealth Som e of Griffith's notions and his powers. States Rights were paramount, vocabulary were those of Karl Marx, whose except in wartime when his Court argued Hf'\fl'l ... WKto;r'S HIS Capital he had just read, one of the few Bee<{ L.AN&UI\G€ SA'f that the Federal Government should be fo '(ou? nineteenth-century Australians to have able to do almost whatever it liked. In that done so. Their views coincided in part em ergency, Griffith became a centralist. beca u se M a rx had extended certain That flip in Griffith's judicial outlook principles of classical political economy serviced the needs of the British Empire, about the contribution of capitalists to the and so will not embarrass the tories who creation of wealth. have taken his name as a talisman of At the sam e time, proponents of the Con stitutional rectitude. Of potential rights of capitalists had developed the embarrassm ent to admirers such as John defence that profits rewarded the owners of Stone, however, are the arguments that wealth for their ' abstinence'. In other words, Griffith published in favour of 'The Distri by investing in an expansion of wealth, the bution of Wealth' in 1888-89. Those who wealth-holders had denied themselves the still value social equality will be diverted pleasures of living it up in the present. In by his laying into those he called the return for this self-denial, they deserved to 'worshippers of the great god Mammon'. Employers who assisted with hand or be rewarded with all the profits. Griffith began his analysis from ' the brain to the increase in wealth deserved But did that logic extend to their heir fact that there is something radically wrong wages for those efforts. But, Griffith noted, who had made no such sacrifice? One with the present system , under which under the existing system of 'free competi proponent of the 'abstinence' thesis, the capital is constantly accumulatingingreater tion', the owners would also take the profits American Nassau Senior, thought not. masses than ever in single hands'. He towards the creation of which they had Hence, no right of inheritance followed dissociated himself from economists for contributed so little. from the then conventional justification whom ' the "Wealth of Nations" consi ted Such mal-distribution must intensify, he for capitalists taking all the profits. in the accumulation of what is called added, unle workers formed trade unions to G riffith noneth eless confined his Wealth, and not in the well-being of the improve their wages. Only through such com reforms to 'the distribution of wealth to be individuals who compose the nations'. binations could employees achieve the strength hereafter produced'. Even by 1888, he was Furthern1ore, reluctance by the possessors to bargain against the power of the employer. too seasoned a politician to believe that he of productive property to discuss redistribu Griffith's support for unionism began would get any hearing for confiscating tion led Griffith towonderwhethercapitalists from the premise that ' a man's labour is not previous accumulations, no matter how had 'an unea y sense that the m eans by som ething outside of himself, but is part of much 'natural justice' might require it. which they have acquired their present himself'. Hence, he reasoned, the sale of By the earl y 1890s, Griffith had slipped po sessions will, somehow, not bear scrutiny'. labour can be civilised only 'if the seller and away from all his radica l ins ights. Might that possibility have relevance to the the purchaser are dealing on perfectly equal However, when capitalism seem ed in opponents of Mabo and Wik? terms'. But 'if they are not equally free, this danger of being overthrown in 1919, he Griffith asked 'how is new or additional bargain, like any other obtained from under again reached for unorthodox solutions to wealth produced?' His answer was 'by the influence, is open to be impeached in the ward off proletarian resentments. application of labour to already existing forum of morals and of natural justice'. Should the spectre of Griffith as a red wealth'. He pursued 'the evil, or error' of In reply to hisownquestionaboutwhether ragger cause the eponym ous Society to the present system by questioning what the 'such a freedom of contract actually exists', expunge his name from its masthead, to possessors of exis ting wealth had Griffith recognised that 'it is notorious that whom might its executive turn for VoLUME 8 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 15 inspiration? Charity com pels me to a caveat. While Ba sic Agrarian Law 1960 rein GSD then obtained a virtual permit or a The year after Griffiths' retirement, the forces these traditional rights, disputes 'permit in principle' from the Governor of High Court brought down the judgment concerning ownership and management of Bali, and began the land reclamation work. that denied his doctrines about States Rights lands do occur in Indonesia . There is the The developer did not deem it necessary to and opened the way for the continuing drift question of whether a community can still obtain an official permit fr om the local towards central power in our Federation, so be regarded as a cohesive traditional government or complete an environmental loathed by Richard Court. community, and whether the land in impact study before commencing work. That case had been brought by the question is still actively used or cultivated. The local people, outraged by the way Amalgamated Engineering Union and was And chapter 1, section 3 of Basic Agrarian they had been ignored in the process, joined won for the union by a twenty-five-year-o ld Law specifies that e nforcement and forces with their religious leaders in voicing Melbourne barrister. His name was Robert implementation of traditional rights should their protests. They threa tened to wage a Gordon Menzies. not contravene the interests of the nation puputan, a war where the warriors fight to -Humphrey McQueen and state. H e re, unless a traditional the death. It was no empty threa t: Bali has community has good lawyers, it is very indeed recorded several formidabl e For example likely to lose out to the argument that the puputans against the Dutch colonisers, enforcement of its rights will have a nega tive in Badung, Klungkung, Tabanan, jagaraga impact upon 'national development'. and Margarana. W ILE AuSTRALIA IS STILL GRAPPLING with Better still than competent lawyers is Under the leadership of the head of the concept of native title, in Indonesia the the opportunity- as well as the ability-to Kesiman Temple, Anak Agung Ngurah concept is not new. Traditional rights to use political muscle, if recent events in Kusuma Wardana, who also happens to be a land, air and water, known as Hak Ulayat, Denpasar, Bali can be h eld up as a parameter. member of the Regional Legislative Assembly or the rights of traditional communities, According to Balinese Hindu cosmology, of Denpasar, the protesters demanded that include areas such as graveyards and spirit all estuaries are sacred places where the reclamation work be stopped, and the refuges, forests, ponds and uncleared lands religious ceremonies should be held . One Padanggalak beach be restored. adj acent to the village, co mmons and open such place is the beach of Padangga lak. For In this case, the locals had one trump fields used for recreation and social inter over a century Padangga lak, seven kilo card . The governor, Ida Bagus Oka, was in a course. As with traditional law developed metres off Denpasar, has been u sed by vulnerable position: he belongs to Kesiman to accommodate common practices of its Kesi man traditional villagers for m elasti, village. This means that all his rites of community, law regarding traditional rights part of nyepi, a series of major Hindu passage have to be conducted by the on land is reasonably fl exible. For example, ceremonies in Bali. Kesiman religious community and presided when an individual clears and cultivates an In September las t year, however, by Kesiman priests. Moreover, nine yea rs unused field, the community relinquishes Padanggalak nearly fol lowed the fate of ago when Ida Ba gus Oka had just taken up thcland to him. And when he later leaves the other beaches like Mertasari or Uluwatu, his governorship, he actuall y exhorted field, the community reclaims possession. where the opportunity to hold religious Balinese not to sell their lands to investors. One fundamental aspect makes the rites has been significantly reduced. He was quoted as saying that land was the traditional rights in Indonesia different from The continuous roars of mechanical mainstay of Balinese culture, and without Australia's native title rights. Indonesian shovels and loaders shifting rocks startled it the culture would disintegrate, thus la w is based on the Dutch colonial code of the villagers of Kesiman. They later gradually wiping out tourism as well. The law which, right from the start, recognised discovered that a developer, P. T. Graha protesters naturally reminded him of his the plurality of the Indonesian (then Dutch Samzr Dinamika (GSD) was working on earlier stance. East Indies) society. The legal division of reclamation of the beach, for the purpose of The religious community of Kesiman the population into three groups-the building a tourist h otel there. reportedly exerted the m ost powerful Europeans, the Foreign Orientals and the The 17, 075 hectare beach originally pressure on the governor. Unless he reversed Natives-has allowed the different societies belonged to the state, and was available to his 'permit in principle' to GSD, he would to co-exist. local for religious ceremonies, fishing and be excommunicated. In Bali, excommuni This fact makes a sharp contrast with general enjoyment. After the local govern cation from one's religious community the concept of terra nullius adopted by the ment claimed it as its asset, it bega n, in carries an extremely painful penalty. No British vis-a-vis Australia when they first May 1991 , to issue right of development one will bless the family, no priests will came to claim this land in 1788. In Indonesia, and management to the Civil Servants carry out the ceremonies for the children's traditional rights were well recognised, first Cooperative and Bali Regional Companies. rites of passage, such as initiation into adult in the Dutch colonial Agrarian Act 1870. When the Civil Servants Cooperative m eas hood and marriage. And worst of all, no one Then aft er independence, these rights were ured its 8.9 hectare allotment in March will organise the excommunicated person's reinforced in Basic Agrarian Law 1960. 199 7, it discovered th at erosion had funeral. He will never make it to heaven. Agrarian Act 1870 specifies that a governor swallowed most of its land, leaving it a His after-life will be worse than hell: he'll gen eral has n o power to lease lands mere 2.9 hectares. The Cooperative then be eternally in limbo. belonging to traditional communities, or entered into a joint-venture with GSD, By the end of Octo ber, Kesiman take over lands that have been cultivated or where the developer was to reclaim the villagers had their prayers answered. are being used by traditional communities. land before commencing building. For the Governor Ida Bagus Oka revoked his per It is obvious here that the Dutch Colonial rights of developing and managing the mit to GSD, and demanded that the beach authorities recognised tradi tiona! owner project, GSD paid Rp350 million (then be restored to a state suitable for religious ship of lands before their arrival. AUD$195,000) to the Cooperative. ceremonies. 16 EUREKA STREET • jANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 That was the story of Kesiman clambered up a pole in one of the corners to up to take on the local talent. Champions of traditional village, where luck, it appears, unfurl the Thai flag. To do so he had to MuayThai from France, New Zealand, Spain played a major role in the enforcement of balance himself precarious! y over the can vas and Australia had been invited to give the traditional rights. Unfortunately for some some 15 fe et below. He managed to clip it to exhibition a festival atmosphere, and it was villagers elsewhere, luck has often been the wire connecting the soup-bowl lights apparent from the buzz in the crowd when elusive. Where traditional rights clash with illuminating the ring without incident. The thefirst of them entered the ring that this was modern society's demands, these rights have falls were to com e later. what they had been waiting for. time and time aga in been regarded as When the combatants for the first match A Frenchman with the sobriquet 'Yam conflicting with national interests. were announced, the crowd came to life. ani' took on Anwar the Cinderella boy from While traditional law specifying The two small but wiry m en warmed up by the streets of Bangkok (he is probably the traditional rights is well established in stretching and bouncing as if to som e son of a millionaire logging contractor but Indonesia, interpreting and enforcing that unheard music. They followed each other it sounds more like Rocky this way). Anwar law is no easy task, especially in this era of around to the four corners where they gave away a lot in bulk to his opponent but necessary geographical mobility for most stopped and paid homage with a bow. Then with skill and speed he managed to match traditional communities. it was over and the bell had been rung. it with the bigger Frenchman. For four - Dewi Anggraeni Prancing towards rounds they put on a highly each other like a acrobatic display that had the No Thais to couple of dancing crowd boiling. Anwar had ob Spanish stallions, viously surprised himself with Queensb erry they sized one an how well he was doing be other up for a cause he saluted the crowd at mom ent before the end of the fourth with one F RIDAY IGHT AT THE FIGHTS is a little unleashing a flurry round one remaining. When different in Bangkok. First, there is no of punches and the ref whispered 'No son, that Festival Hall or Sydney Stadium but kicks that sent their was the bell lap', into his ear Lumphini, or in this case Rajeumnern, as the sweat flying into he seem ed a bit deflated. Sure venue. Second, hawkers are selling the punters the crowd. enough Yamani powered over dried squid and strange-coloured drinks in What wa more the top of him to win the fifth plastic bags instead of meat pies and cornettos. extraordinary than round and the bout. But I was not about to complain, not when the ferocity of these After another fight we left, surrounded by 10,000 Thais lost in biffo pint-sized pugilists as the consensus was if we frenzy under the stars at the Grand Palace. was the reaction stayed any longer we would Muay Thai it's called, and it does for the they received. The be unable to get up. The sweet cience what Australian Rules does crowd had grown to entertainment was good, but for football-regulations are seeming! y fill every available four hours on my haunches dispensed with and just about anything space; there were next to a wizened old bastard goes. You can punch, kick, wrestle, elbow, even bodies hanging from the scaffolding in in a bad safari suit who kept trying to hea d butt, even steal your opponent's wallet the speaker stand. Each spectator marked an dislocate my knee with every good blow if he's not looking. Of cour e there are rules eff ective punch or kick with a low-pitched had taken its toll. As we left, the crowd gave but most of the time the referee looks like groan. This no doubt helped the judges score, m e, the only whitey in the group, a bit of a a cosmetic addition, dancing around the who would have needed only to put a mark on cheer. One guy latched onto m e and kept ring trying to avoid getting smacked. The their page each time they heard the booming yelling ' thank-you, thank-you, thank-you' only time he is called upon is to prise the 'ooh!' from behind them. as we pushed past. I didn't know why at the fighters apart when they are bound-up in But the punters were not only there to time but I think I found out later. a clinch (clinch is too weak a word for it, watch, they were there to punt as well. A Berm, our Thai friend, who used to be a it is more like a Russian bear-hugging serious amount of money was passing boxer himself, stayed around until12:30 to contest after an obscene quantity of vodka between hands before and after each fi ght. watch the rest of the bouts. He told us that has been consumed). The m edian weekly wage in Bangkok is all the farang (foreigners) had won except We arrived an hour and a half before the around $A40, yet this amount and more the Aussie. Maybe that bloke knew the fix first bout in what was an exhibition card in was going on the back of one combatant or was in or that only an Australian would do honour of the King's birthday. Somewhere another. And this crowd was not part of the the polite thing and lose. on one of the stages in the open area that Mercedes-driving set that don't know how -Jon Greenaway was playing host to this annual festival, the poor they are yet. These were the security new Prime Minister, Chuan Leekpai, was guards, laundrywomen and street sweepers This month's contributors: Terry King is a intoning earnestly to the crowd. The who know only too well how little they've beagle-fancier and an education officer with language might have passed us by but the got because they've already had their paltry a major white collar trade union. Humphrey tone was familiar. Those gathered around wages cut. Between fights, a nasty incident McQueen's most recent book is Suspect the ring squatted on the rocky ground with erupted when a girl started screaming at a History: Manning Clarl< and the future of heads bowed, enduring easily what our stony-faced young man for her money back. Australia's past. Dewi Anggraeni is a free foreign backs could not. As the Prime After three fights involving Thai boxers lance writer. Jon Greenaway is Eureka Minister was finishing, an attendant exclusively, some foreign guests stepped Street's South East Asian correspondent. VOLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 17 THE CHURCH FRANK FLETCHER Wik's challenge to theology the face of the world-wide disasters of the encouraged their recovery of their spiritual C>ADC" "'"" •ho m'in Streamc Churches""'"'AN have spoken out against 1930s and 1940s shook theologians into culture. the proposed Wik legislation and in support seeking a more adequate method. The criticism of liberation theology is of the Aboriginal Native Title rights to In Catholic circles the new approaches that it is sometimes weak on dispassionate coexistence. A number of church people at gave vitality to Pope John's Vatican II: this investigation of the socio-economic the grassroots support their stand. These Council in turn gave new energies for the situation and on scholarly study of the supporters have woken up to the history of continuing revitalisation of theology. Christian Scriptures and tradition. But with the violent dispossession of the Aborigines. This theology has been opening itself the mass of the people in Latin American But there is also anger and disappoint increasingly to the social and cultural countries and the Third World living in ment among many church people in the realities of the historical situation, notably oppressive conditions and under unjust affected rural areas. Their families have, in liberation theology, which begins from social systems, a frontier theology such as perhaps long ago, invested their liberation theology was needed. lives and finances in their pasto In places like Europe, North ral leases and now believe them America and Australia the selves (rightly or wrongly) to be situation of the mass of the grievously threatened. These folk population is different and complain that the Church has theology there seeks to retain changed: 'We did not hear this its more scholarly and empirical tune before'. self. But liberation theology has In the middle, in both city had an impact on the Australian and country, are the uncertain church, requiring it to consider majority, their feelings mixed. the condition of the Aboriginal Many clergy too are caught in people in the light of justice. this uncertainty. They see the That partly explains why opposing groups firing at and past one an examination of the social and economic country folk arefinding that Church leaders another from positions growing daily more situation. It asks: Who is suffering? Who is speak out as they did once not. In those entrenched. being discriminated against? Who is former days, the attitude to the Aborigines Country people have a point when they benefiting? How do the powerful keep the was more one of charity for their needs rather say that the Church has changed in powerless under their control? than justice for their rights-a big shift. becoming concerned to support Aborigines Liberation theology seeks to awaken Should there not be a theology that is as a matter of justice. Twenty-five years the mass of the people who are poor, to read fairer to all parties in conflict? ago-or even less-many country people the scriptures in the light of their oppression. The situation in Australia is morally would not have heard this church support In the scriptures they meet a God who hears complex: on the one hand, Aborigines have for Aborigines. How do we explain it? It is, the cries of the poor, a Jesus who cares most been oppressed over generations in the in part, a development of theology. for the marginalised and the despised. manner perceived by a Iibera tion theology. To this, rural folk could reply: 'Well, Christ's words ring out in judgment: 'I was in There is little doubt historically about the should not theology be more fair to us? ' The prison and you did not visit me. I was violence practised by the colonists, the sum question is important, because for naked and you did not clothe me.' mary 'justice' and massacres, the shifting of Christians, theology does and should come Liberation theology spread to places like people from their homelands, the dumping into the Wik case. the Philippines, South Africa and to of them in other areas. Later came the How then has the Church's concern for Aboriginal Australia. The great Aboriginal 'protectors' of Aborigines' movements, the the cause of the Aborigines been influenced pastor, the Reverend Charles Harris, centred pathetic education systems and the by theology? his vision on Jesus as the Liberator for introjection of racial inferiority. Theology is still seen by many people as Aboriginal people. a dry, esoteric system focused on other Pope John Paul II, while critical of some MANY RURAL PEOPLE do not see worldly realities, and in the scholastic mode aspects of this theology, has taken up its themselves (rightly or wrongly) as having inherited from the Middle Ages it was often key themes, and in his visits around the had a hand in this injustice. If there was a very abstract. Since World War II however, world has reached out to the poor. His 1986 blindness and a covering-up of the treatment theology has increasingly shucked off the address to the Aborigines at Alice Springs of Aborigines, they feel that city people, abstractness of the systematic. Its failure in supported their call for land rights and too, connived at this. 18 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 -:;:1A ~ eol How can theology mediate in this situation of opposing views? Theology does not presume to solve the details but it would seek to offer an authentic horizon of conversion, whereby those with opposing LL YONS WM A eATiffi~~~~~~~:~~~:ev which pwvides the mw views might co me first to a dialogue and material for this column. He was an enthusiast for libraries, once accused of harbouring then, one hopes, to a reconciliation. a secret ambition to catalogue every word that had ever been spoken on earth. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, living under Whatever of that, Jim was certainly convinced that all things, even the most the Third Reich, saw anti-semitism among unlikely, are interrelated. So are theologians, although for the most part they the German people being fa nned and confine their attention to more likely things. And so to this month's column. exploited by the Nazis, he spoke up: Jesus An article on modernity and the construction of Roman Catholicism caught was a Jew and loved his own people. This my eye in the Italian journal, Cristianesimo nella storia (June 1997). In it Joseph simple pointer illuminated a whole horizon Komonchak, one of the best historians of the Second Vatican Council, surveys for Christians. It not only helped subvert the relationships between church and council. He dismisses the views that the the Nazis' campaign but it made many Council was a necessary and total revolution, that it was a betrayal and that it Christians aware of their own anti semitism, and it underlined the Churches' was a good idea subsequently perverted. He argues that the shape of the Church long complicity in this. It provided the spur that preceded the Council was moulded by the nineteenth century. for Christians to be converted from their The ch urch was set in resolute opposition to modernity, an opposition which bias or their fear. was expressed in its devotional life, in its centralisation around a pope whose Again, Pope John Paul's declaration in personality and role were both held in high honour, and in a rigorous control over Canada 1984: 'Jesus in his members is a writing and opinion within the church. Native Indian'. This statement points the The church was resolutely opposed to the nineteenth century emphasis on way-Native Indian and Euro-Canadian individual liberty and the emancipation of societies from tradition and church Christians could embrace one another in tutelage. But the ways in which it responded to this new world were very similar brotherhood and sisterhood. It recognised to the response of the contemporary sovereign states. the equality of Native Indians in their The Vatican Council affected the church more radically than those who human and spiritual dignity, thus cutting participated in it could have imagined, because its three main emphases across colonialist redneck ideology. undermined the pillars of the peculiarly nineteenth century church. Reform of The Pope could have said in Australia the liturgy and church practice eroded the assumption that patterns of church had 'Jesus is an Aborigine'. The same opportu a timeless authority. The opening to the modern world undermined the unyielding nity would be constituted here: a brother opposition to modernity. Encouragement of local churches to express their life in hood and sisterhood under God, regardless of ways appropriate to their culture called into question centralisation of power and race, power, history; a willingness to 'pass uniformity of practice central to the nineteenth century settlement. over' to the side of the other with sympathy The last twenty years have shown that, despite all the best efforts, genies cannot and then to come back to reconsider one's be put back into bottles. But once let out, they are not easy to befriend, either. own positions. This discussion of the church may seem a long way away from Paul We might find it in ourselves to discuss Molnar's article on God's self-communication in Christ in the Scottish Journal in peace the issues that fo llow from this of Theology (August, 1997). In it he compares the ideas of the Protestant Thomas fellowship upon the earth. A Christian Torrance and the Catholic Karl Rahner. The point at issue is how we know understanding of stewardship of the land God. Torrance emphasises God's freedom to speak to us or not, and so our puts property ownership into a perspective. total dependence on God's word. Since God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ, we It resists the capitalist extreme that is intent can only find God in the world when we know Jesus Christ. Rahner, on the other upon exploiting the land merely to gain wealth without concern for ecology or social hand, argues that all speakers, including God, depend on a hearer prepared to hear cohesion. what they have to say. When God addresses us in Christ, we have already been Such a dialogue between people who formed by long experience of the world, in which we have unknowingly been have respect for one another's dignity would engaged in a dialogue with God. We recognise in Jesus Christ the God whom we surely consider that there be equitable have already known implicitly. The differences between Rahner and Torrance access to the land. illuminate the contemporary debate about the church. The Catholic counterparts Is all this unreal? It depends upon of Torrance emphasise the authority of God's Word, its unique embodiment in conversion to the reality of human Jesus Christ, and its authoritative interpretation by the hierarchy. Where a society brotherhood and sisterhood under God. is not Catholic, they are likely to see it as hostile to faith. And in this conversion lies the chance of Those who emphasise the importance of experience in faith will see faith as true dialogue. • a simultaneous dialogue with the world and with Christ. In interpreting the faith, we are all teachers and listeners. God is always waiting to be m et in the world. Dr Frank Fletcher MS c,lectures in theology The differences about church, then, may be deeply rooted in differences about at St Paul's N a tion al Seminary, God. If all things are ultimately interrelated, some relationships will inevitably Kensington and is pries t assisting the be conflictual. • Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Sydney Archdiocese. Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches in the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne. THE REG ION Flying Duel< Logic Peter Mares scrutinises the Asian currency crisis and the IMP's remedy. WHEN THE TOP FLOORS of Indonesia's Central Bank Building speed of capital movem ents leading to 'grea t speculative burst into fl ames in early December, it was a fitting and tragic excesses' as billions of dollars surge around the world. metaphor for Asia's economic woes. Around the region, central Hale now asks whether financial markets have becom e 'too banks had been forced to look on helplessly as their national efficient', permitting money 'to move so quickly on such a large currencies went up, or rather down, in smoke. scale that they do create the risk of instability'. The brand new twenty-five storey tower-one of a pair 'If we are going to have a global financial market in which overlooking Jakarta's central business district- was surely meant em erging markets can obtain access to tens of billions of dollars as a symbol of Indonesia 's growing economic maturity and of capital, then th ere will have to be s imultaneous ly a confidence, another gleaming monument to 'the Asian miracle'. development of far better systems of regulation and supervision.' Instead, high-rise office buildings have become the most tangible If Malaysia 's Dr Mahathir had not muddied his message evidence of economic failure and unwise investment decisions. with anti-semitic demagoguery, then perhaps hi s own Just as the Jakarta Central Bank blaze is thought to have warnings about the dange rs of unbridled specu- spread from an electrical short circuit, so Asia's regional melt- lation may have found more resonance in down was sparked by a localised event, the bursting of Bangkok's business circles. Mahathir's calls for grea ter property market bubble. international financial regulation were echoed Even a novice observer could read the by the very man he most liked to attack. In an warning signs. Over the past two years, I passed article published by the Australian Financial through Bangkok several times. Hurtling along Review, billionaire financier George Soros gave his the expressway between the airport to own critique of market rationality: 'The private sector is the city, I marvelled at the numbe~=- _ ill-suited to allocate international credit. It provides either too of new high -rise buildings under ~--;:.. /;.;;. little or too much ... Its goals are to maximise profit and construction and at the audacity of minimise risk. This makes it move in a herd-like fashion in theirarchitects.Butasllost both directions.' count of the BMWs and Meres whizzing Unfortunately, the spectacular bursting of capital bubbles past in the traffic, my thoughts turned did not only exist as electrical impulses fla shing on banks of inevitably to the flashy, short-lived success of computer screens in the trading rooms of financial houses. When Australia's own high-fl ying entrepreneurs of the late creditors rushed 'herd-like' to withdraw their money, work on 1980s. Pride before the fall. the high-rise buildings ground to a halt. In and around Jakarta Despite repeated warnings about the fundamental problems an estimated two-and-a-half million workers had lost their jobs besetting particular Asian economies, few could have predicted by the beginning of January, many from construction sites. how quickly and how widely the contagion would spread. Wave Those laid off will no longer have spare rupiah to buy a bowl of after wave of Southeast Asian currency devaluations rippled soup from street-traders after work and so the defl ationary around the world. Stockmarkets as far away as Hungary and effects of the crisis will spiral down, reducing demand through- Brazil tumbled as nervous investors pulled their money out of out the economy. so-called 'emerging markets' to seek the relative safety of the IMF rescue packages designed to stabilise the fin ancial established economies. system will only worsen these social consequences. The fiscal One of the seers of contemporary capitalism describes it rectitude imposed on Asian governments will cut public as 'the defining event of the post Cold War economic era'. David spending, keep wages down and further slow growth. Hale, global chief economist for the Zurich Kemper Investment This will crea te some new opportunities for capital. Hea lth Group, and a favourite 'dial-a-quote' target of business reporters, Care Australia, an arm of the Mayne Nickless group, is looking says the crisis raises 'provocative and profound questions about at expanding its investment in private hospitals in Indonesia the whole character of the [global] financial system at the end and other Asian countries, confident that affluent sections of of the twentieth century'. the middle class can still afford to finance their own health He points out that highly efficient computer systems and care. The collapse in asset values and currencies will make it falling communications costs have dramatically increased the cheaper to buy up existing hospitals while the economic crisis 20 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 has 'restricted the capacity of Asian governments to fund public 'The US right now is the only buyer in the world,' says hospital development' (Australian Financial Review, January 5, 1998). Prestowitz. 'We are the market of last resort. Without the US This does not augur well for the displaced building worker market right now the system would collapse.' or the soup vendor who has lost all her customers. The flip How many sports-shoes and T-shirts can North Americans side of HCA's business opportunity is a growing gap between wear? How many cars can they drive? How many TVs and VCRs rich and poor with explosive social consequences that can can they watch? According to John Welch, chairman of General still only be guessed at. Electric Company, 'there is excess global capacity in almost It is worth rem embering what gave rise to the post-war era every industry'. of Keynesian economic policies. As historian Eric Hobsbawm The current crisis will make Asia's hyper-exporters even reminds us in Age of Extremes, interventionist economic more competitive. High unemploym ent will help keep wages policies w ere seen as a vital safeguard against political down and labour docile, while depreciated currencies make their extremism. Fascism had just been defeated; manufactured exports cheaper. A communism still threatened. Each was seen fresh flood of cheap imports will as a by-product of economic collapse and there IMP rescue packages designed bring further 'hollowing out' of was a widespread conviction that the Great traditional manufacturing in the Depression of the thirties must never be to stabilise the financial system USA (and of course Australia), as repeated: 'In short, for a variety of reasons the will only worsen these social local industries either close down or politicians, officials and even many of the relocate offshore. It will bring a businessm en of the post-war West were consequences. The fiscal return to ballooning US trade convinced that a return to laissez-faire and rectitude imposed on Asian deficits as Asian nations sell to the the unreconstructed free market were out of USA but import little in return. the question. Certain policy objectives-full governments will cut public Rem ember the tool-kit rhetoric of employment, the contaimnent of communism, spending, keep wages down and the late 1980s? Washington's trade the modernisation of lagging or declining or negotiators used to talk of prying open ruined economies-had absolute priority and further slow growth. the Japanese market with a crowbar justified the strongest govem.ment presence'. and politicians liked to smash the odd Analysts are still debating whether Asia's economic afflictions Japanese-made radio with a sledgehammer. We can expect more will deteriorate into global depression, but so far the recommended of the same, except this time Japanese imports won't be the only remedies are remarkable only for their lack of imagination. target. In the US, flying duck logic is headed for a political brick The cure for Asia is to trade its way out of trouble through wall. more export-led industrialisation. An orthodox Hong Kong econ A successful surge in exports from Indonesia, Thailand, omist once described the Asian miracle to me using the analogy Malaysia and South Korea will also put pressure on China to of flying ducks. Japan is the lead duck, winging its way from devalue its currency so as not to lose its share of sales. One old fashioned heavy industry to a m ore high-tech future. South analysis sees the roots of current problems in the 30 per cent Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong follow in the first row of the devaluation of China's currency in 1994, a move that undercut formation, and fanning out behind them come Singapore, rival exporters. So if China devalues again, that will renew pres Malaysia and Thailand. Having passed through an era of low-wage sure on other Asian currencies and the whole downward spiral manufacturing, these countries are establishing themselves as will take another turn. producers of computers, electronic goods and automobiles or Underlying Asia's economic problems is a crisis of over as centres for financial trade and services. The final row of ducks production-or under-consumption . Hobsbawm says that is m ade up of striving economies like Indonesia, China, The capitalism's Golden Age (from 1945 to 1972) was based on Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, where toiling workers busily 'enormously increased dem and' and high levels of government produce cheap textiles and footwear for the intervention in the econom y: 'At the same time the political international market. commitment of governments to fu ll employment and-to a l esser extent- t o the lessening of economic inequality, 'IE IMAGERY OF FLYING DUC KS IS APPEALING, suggesting a i.e. a commitment to welfare and social security, for the first relentless movement towards a place in the sun. But if each time provided a mass consumer market for luxury goods which new member of the flock is trying to sell the same products to could now becom e accepted as necessities.' the sam e buyers, then the system has a built-in fault. As fo rmer In other words, according to Hobsbawm, 'the Golden Age US trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz told ABC Radio: 'When dem ocratised the market'. everybody is pursuing the same kind of export-led growth there's This is not to suggest that post-war Keynesian theory offers just not enough markets to absorb all the capacity.' a simple solution to our current woes. But if a way could be In the post-war era, the ducks all headed for the USA where found to ' democratise the market' for Jakarta's displaced consumers obligingly charged up their credit cards and bought. building workers and customer-less soup sellers, then perhaps Little has changed. Concerted attempts to convince Japan that the system could be stabilised more quickly, and remain stable it should help soak up Asian exports by releasing pent-up for longer, not just economically, but politically as well. • demand (that is, encouraging people to spend more) have so far failed. The Japanese are reluctant to abandon so quickly the Peter Mares is a broadcaster with Radio Australia and former high savings habits that have served them so well in the past. ABC correspondent in Hanoi. V OLUME 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 21 The West Committee's interim report on universities is in tune with the economic mood of the Government, but how adequate is it as a blueprint for the future of tertiary education in Australia? T ERE IS A PERMANENT POLITICAL TENSION between conserva- neo-liberal agenda. 'There is a need for further freeing up of the tism and liberalism . Over the years and in different places the higher education sector, with less reliance on centralised labels have varied-Tory and Whig, wet and dry, moderate and administrative planning', the report claims, so 'deregulation radical right. In recent years the traditional conservatives have strategies must prepare the existing institutions for a more com- been on the defensive. The ascendancy of neo-liberalism, with peti ti ve environment'. The rhetoric is familiar. It echoe previous its audacious advocacy of the market mechanism as the panacea moves to deregulate financial institutions, eliminate tariff for ocial problems, has been the dominant political force for barriers and promote competition in Australian industries. change. Now it is higher education's turn for the treatment. Essentially the West Committee report embodies three The irony is that this neo-liberal push is coming from a a sumptions: committee chaired by a former schoolmaster generally thought • universities cannot go on as they are: their funding to be of conservative inclination. arrangements have to fundamentally change; The West Committee was set up by the Howard govern- • tertiary education is in the process of becoming available m ent in January 1997 to: to all, rather than restricted to those dem onstrating high • undertake a broad ranging review of the state of Austral- academic standards; and ia 's higher education sector; • educational funding should become student-centred • develop a comprehensive policy framework to ensure the rather than institution-centred. sector m eets the needs of students, industry and society in It is a chain of reasoning which leads towards the advocacy general; and of a system whereby each student has a 'learning account' for • identify options for the financing of higher education her/ his entitlement to public financial support for higher teaching andre earch. education. This is a voucher system by another name. The The final report is due in March 1998 but the 'di cussion financial viability of educational institutions would become paper' issued by the Committee in N ovember 1997 gives a clear yet more dependant, like any other businesses, on their capacity indication of its thinking on these i sues. to attract custom ers. They could be expected to compete m ore Elements of traditional values are evident. The Committee vigorously in terms of the prices of their courses and in terms chair's personal preface speaks eloquently of the need fo r an of product differentiation . educational environment 'that will produce women and men The assumption that some fundamental change to existing who are fu lly, lovingly and confidently human'. The higher funding arrangements is needed contains an element of educational system 'has served the nation well', it is stated, circularity. The very fir t line of the West report states that but ... 'change is unavoidable and urgent'. So on with the 'the policy framework that has regulated the development of 22 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1998 The very first line Australia's higher education system over the past decade is West report makes much of the of the West report under stress'. Indeed it is, but the main source of stress is the need to make the University-T AFE cuts in government funding to the universities. Projected connection 'seamless', but what this states that (the government funding of tertiary education will taper off to a level m eans in practice has been a moot policy framework in 2000-1 which is 18 per cent lower than it was in 1996-7. point ever since the Carmichael Student-staff ratios have risen from an average of 11.2 to 1 in Report initiated discussion on how to that has 1981 to an average of 18.2 to 1 in 1995. Therein lies the principal gear the education system more regulated the source of stress-the continuous pressure of' doing more with less'. directly to the economic needs of 'the Of course, it may be argued that funding cuts are a necessary clever country'. development of response to the seemingly permanent fiscal crisis of the A hierarchy of educational Australian state-that education must bear its share of the institutions will continue to exist, Australia's higher burden of fiscal restraint in order that the national government and indeed may become more education system can 'balance the books'. Setting aside the question of whether sharply differentiated in practice as tertiary education is bearing more than its proportionate share there is growing specialisation. One over the past of the cuts (it is), this is in any case questionable economics. It reading of the situation is that the decade is ignores the important role which education plays in generating West proposals would take tertiary national income in the longer term through fostering skills and education back to the pre-Dawkins under stress'. innovation. The 'balanced budget fetishism' of the bookkeepers era, with an even sharper distinc Indeed it is, but triumphs over a more creative view of the role of economic and tion between the elite institutions social policy. and the rest. In this respect, at least, the main source of The crisis to which the West Conmlittee is responding is thus a the neo-liberal prescriptions and a partly manufactured crisis. This is not to deny that other changes more traditional conservative view stress is the cuts are affecting tertiary education, including changes in information of education converge. in government technology and growing competition in the international market The student-centred funding place, but the perceived need for change in institu process would certainly accentuate funding to tional funding originates from Canberra. that process of differentiation. the universities. There is much to be said about the ITIS AT THIS POINT that the demand for University places enters pros and cons of funding students rather than institutions. the story. Certainly, existing funding arrangements would Certainly, there are evident attractions in giving students greater become subject to more stress as the proportion of people getting choice in how they allocate their funding entitlements, tertiary education continues to rise. As the West report reminds especially if that enhances their personal commitment to that us, only 32,000 students were enrolled at Australian universities which they have chosen. However, the general assumption that in 1949: now it is almost 660,000. In certain respects the trend students can be regarded as consumers-and that the towards the universalisation of tertiary education is welcome. educational sector is an industry-has more far reaching If tertiary education is effective in 'civilising society' (to quote implications. It is likely to result in the sector taking on more from one of the consultants' studies appended to the West and more the general characteristics of consumer capitalism. report), the more the merrier. Incidentally, that same consultancy report notes, with refreshing frankness, that another role for tertiary education is 'reducing youth labour supply' (Appendix 11, page 39). This means keeping the unemployment statistics from looking too outrageous. To the extent that investment in education is ultimately wealth-creating then the broadening of access has an admirable economic logic. Universal entitlement has obvious appeal from an equity perspective too, to the extent that it overcomes the traditional socio economic bias of entry to University education. However, the story must necessarily be more complicated than this in practice. What is the appropriate form of tertiary education when it becomes a universal entitlement? The range of student abilities will presumably become yet wider. Year 12 students David Marshall, Heather Benbow and Rebecca Adler (left to right, behind) with tutors The capacity to undertake University vis a Johanna Steegstra and Brendan Gladman (left to right, in front}. Above left: Ja ckie Waring (Forestry}. vis T AFE courses becomes a key issue. The Photographs by Bill Thomas. VoLUME 8 NuMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 23 N ew 'products' will come on the market m ean doubling student-staff ratios increases the pressure on staff time, and som etimes disappear just as quickly. (augm ented perhaps by greater use of severs the necessary connection between Cut-price suppliers will seek different information technology) or doubling staff teaching and research and leads to m arket nich es fro m those providing teaching loads. There is a strong hint that increased contracting-out of courses. established brands. Problem s of quality the latter is in the offing: 'staff should be The West Committee report is quite control and consumer protection will fr ee to specialise in teaching' (p.38) is the slim in size and substance. It is a mere 46 a bound. Inst ant sales appeal w ill be euphemism . pages, appearing in a volume whose emphas ised (co urses in tourism and It is not difficult to anticipate that massive overall bulk is the result of the ' hospitality services' will s urely this heralds a general chan ge in the consultants' reports. One of those, mnning proliferate) at the expense of courses nature of a University lecturer's job. The to more than 100 pages, is by a multi involving a more rigorous engagem ent majority of staff would be employed as national investment bank, Global Alliance with philosophical and scientific issues. full-time teachers and would only be able Limited, and is replete with corporate An ins trumental view of education to undertake significant research if they managerial jargon. The corporate authors dom inates over a humanist perspective. buy themselves (wholly or partly) out of state that 'our approach is unasham edly Glitz replaces guts. teaching when they get external funding commercial', just in case the following The industrial relations aspects of fo r research projects. The incentive for references t o cons umer sovereignty, the proposed funding changes also academ ic inquiry and career progression private for profit higher education, new warrant attention. Deregulation can be would still favour research, so a growing business strategies and future scenario expected t o accentuat e th e inherent share of the teaching in practice would generation don't make t hat tendencies in a capitalis t market be done by casuals a nd part-timers obvious enough. econom y towards persis tent capital operating in a secondary academic labour labour conflicts. As universities compete m arket . Thus, despite all the West A NOTHER ECONOMI C consultant'S for t he student dollar there will be Committee's rhetoric about the need to contribution to the report begins by stronger pressu res t o increase the put more emphasis on good quality declaring that it is ' not an academic intensity of em ployees' work and to t eaching, h ere is a m odel which exercise aimed at designing an optim al reduce wage paym en ts, mirroring system from first principles but is the general tendencies so apparent instead an attempt to come to in t he 'globalisi ng' capitalist terms with what might be propi economy today. The remnants of the tious policy developments given collegial character of university life obvious politically defined bound would be swept aside by these market aries' (appendix 13, page 1). In other relationships. It is not an attractive words, the West com mittee's prospect. T he West report sets political conclusions are taken as processes in motion which would lead already given . According to t he in that direction but it is irresponsible sam e consultant, it 'would do a in remaining silent on these industrial disservice to the West Review by relations and workplace issues. not according appropriate and The lack of any detailed consid realistic weight to those continuing eration of the fi nancial implica tions fo rces m oving higher education of th e proposals is also quite towards further differentiation and striking. One back-of-the-envelope away fr om broadly- based rules of calculation in the report, presented operation and funding'. One m ay 'for the purpose of illustration ', infer that the committee thought suggests that it would be possible to similarly about the need to respond provide 'access to post secondary within the perceived parameters of education for nearly four and a half Vanstone, Kemp and Howard. With years of full time study if the average the sole exception of the opposition value of a tuition grant were $5800 to up-front fees, its recommenda per full time equivalent year of tions are thoroughly in tune with study' (p .30) . Yet, one of the consult the political predispositions of ants' reports appended to the study those paying the piper to play the notes that, 'in 1997 the single block tune. Ironically though, it seems grant to ins ti tu tions to fund that the committee m ay have teaching and related research eventually got it wrong, given amounted to around $1200 per Minister Kemp's subsequent student' (appendix 13, page 24). Is statement opposing educational the West Committee expecting vouchers. That leaves the situation open for further manceuvring. that the cost of providing courses Simone Clarke (Arts/Modern Languages). would be h alved ? That would Photograph by Bill Thomas. Indeed, without some significant 24 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 shift of position, it is hard to see how the different currents of conservative and nco liberal policy preferences can be synthesised. The main alternative-apparently unthinkable to the political right-is to No fire without smolze fund the universities to do their job properly and to fo ster the professionalism S uMMER IN THE A NTIPODES is the time of Good News, a tradition Archimedes wishes and staff commitment on which the to uphold. But after Australia's recent asinine antics at the Kyoto Greenhouse conference, quality of the process depends. That it might seem strange that this tale of merit is about energy, and even more curious that emphasis on the restoration of the role it is about coal, which has gained a heinous, though unjustified, reputation as a nasty of the public sector needs to be linked to polluter. tax reform, and to a reconsideration of In the last Budget, the Federal Government closed its agency for cha!melling money into broad sectoral expenditure share (military energy research (the Energy Research and Development Corporation). So it might come as spending is over $ 10 billion and rising, a surprise to learn that Australia has over a quarter of a billion dollars pledged towards energy whereas tertiary education is approximately research, much coming from Australian industry. In terms of gross domestic product, this is an enonnous amount, even when compared with the US, Europe and Japan. $4 billion and falling). Ultimately it is a In the past five years, six Australian research institutions have been established question of collective social priorities. solely to investigate energy-related matters. Three of these are cooperative research Higher education u sed to be 'a prize centres (CRCs), one for new technologies for power generation from low-rank (brown) to be won' by demonstrated capacity for coal, one for black coal utilisation and one for renewable energy. What's more, their academic excellence in secondary school existence is justifiable, not only for the public good, but from an economic standpoint. studies. According to the West Com Even if renewable energy technologies were developed and deployed at the fastest mittee projections, it is on the way to practical rate, most experts suggest they could account for no more than about one fifth being 'a universal right' as t ertiary of our energy needs well into the next century. Like it or not, we are going to be dependent education comes to be available to a on fossil fuels-and specifically coal-for many years to come. higher proportion of people moving on Victoria and South Australia are sitting on brown coal reserves of about 60,000 from secondary schools-but a right of million tonnes, enough to keep us going for 1000 years at the present consumption rate. access to precisely what remains unclear. More importantly, substantial deposits of low-rank coal exist in many of the most Simultaneou sly, the West Committee populous developing countries, such as China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey (as argues, in effect, that high er education well as in the United States and Germany). For these developing nations, coal reserves should be 'a product to be purchased'. So represent the only logical way of powering expanding economies and raising the rights must be bought. Of course, markets standard of living-unless they choose to go nuclear. do have a valuable role in the economy Using present technology, burning this coal represents a greenhouse emission and society: they provide opportunities nightmare. But there is a way to alleviate the situation-bum the coal cleaner. And that for consumers to express their preferences is exactly what Australia's coal researchers are working hard to achieve. The CRC for between hamburgers and ice-cream, for N ew Technologies for Power Generation for Low-Rank Coal, for instance, is developing example. But education is not like and testing a series of advanced technologies with the potential for reducing greenhouse hamburgers and ice-cream. We make it emissions from brown coal by more than 30 per cent. At the same time, they will increase more like them at our peril. H ow the energy output efficiency from brown coal from about 29 per cent to about 44 per cent. establishing a free market in education 'Such technologies will provide substantial business opportunities for Australia in would 'produce women and men who are Asia,' says the CRC's executive director, Dr David Brockway. He also points out that fully, lovingly and confidently human ' Victorian brown coal, for instance, contains much lower levels of pollutants-such as also remains anyone's gu ess. sulphur (responsible for acid rain), nitrogen (a component of smog), heavy metals and The British n ovelist Frank Parkin trace elements-than black coal. Australia also produces some of the world's most efficient and practical solar cells, wrote a book called The Mind and Body and has expertise in deploying them. Pacific Solar Ltd in Sydney is a world leader in Shop over a decade ago. It described the photovoltaic cell technology. And a Victorian company, Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd, is amalgamation of a university's philosophy developing a remarkably efficient fuel cell using a ceramic based on zircon. Both these department, which was facing fiscal stress, technologies have the potential to reduce greenhouse emissions significantly, as well with the local brothel. The mind-body as providing nice little earners for the Australian economy. problem thereby fo und an institutional The 'victory' at Kyoto about which the Australian Government is crowing seems to resolution of sorts in a grotesquely be akin to cheating in exams. In the end, exam cheats cheat only themselves, because pecuniary environment. In a deregulated they have not acquired knowledge they may need later in life. In the end, the system everything is possible. concessions won by Australia at Kyoto will put our industry under no pressure to N ot for the first time it seems that become as energy-efficient as its foreign competitors. The government has increased the the fantastic fiction of yesteryear may be likelihood that Australian industry will stay so wedded to the wasteful use of fossil fuels, b ecoming today's reality-unless w e that it will go the way of the dinosaurs when competition really gets tough. mobilise to make it otherwise. • Given the opportunitie our re earchers are providing for us to ell energy efficient technology to the rest of the world, it all seems so short-sighted. • Frank Stilwell is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney. Tim Thwaites is a freelance scientific writer. V OLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 25 THE MOST ANNOYIN 1. In 1956, where were the Olympic equestrian events held ? 2. What is the name of the sharp boundary between the earth's crust and its mantle? 3. Who was executed on 10 Thermidor 1794? 4. For which dancer did Diaghilev choreograph Debussy's Prelude a1 ' apr es midi d'un faune? 5. What was the title of Pierre de Fredi, and for what is he famous? 6. Name the author of these lines: Nay; torture not the torturer-let him lie: What need of racks to teach a worm to writhe! 7. Who is the President of Switzerland? 8. What is the unit of currency in Lithuania? 9. What two rivers create the largest delta in the world? 10. Name: a) the director of the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research; b) the outgoing chairman of Rio Tinto, the new company form ed by the recent m erger of RTZ and CRA; c) the director of the Australia Institute. 11. Which modern composer taught courses in experimental music and mushroom identification (separately!) in N ew York in the late '50s? 12. What was built by Noah's descendants on the plain of Shinar? 13. Which king of Italy was responsible for the dismissal of Mussolini in 1943? 14. N am e the author of the 2nd century Roman satire The Golden Ass. 15. In 1982, the Queensland Government discontinued the maintenance of a world-famous construction. What is it? 16. What was Baroness Falkender's job before being given a life peerage in 1974? 17. Who wrote Childe Harold's Pilgrimage! 18. What is an erythrocyte? 19. Which three movies have won the five main Oscar categories of Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay? 20. In which country does the world's largest Islamic minority live? 21. What do Duke Ellington and a famous American politician share? 22. What is the lightest weight category in the World Boxing Council's (WBC's) system? 23. How many Australians have taken out Wimbledon singles titles since the end of World War II? Names, in chronological order, please! 24. To which Roman Emperor did the author of Revelations refer when he used the number 666? 25. Name the three main rivers of the Riverina. 26. Among the famous Mitford sisters were a) a novelist; b) a duchess; c) a Nazi sympathiser; d) a left-wing journalist. Name them . 27. What is Myosotis sylvatica better known as? 28. What are the Four Freedoms as defined by Franklin D . Roosevelt in 1941? G SUMMER QUIZ YET 29. In 1920, a Vietnam ese kitchen worker at the London Ritz was deeply affected by the death, through hunger strike, of Sinn Fein m ember Terence MacSwiney. Who was he? 30. By what name was Greta Lovisa Gustafsson better known? 31. Who was the teacher of St Paul? 32. N am e the composer of the fo ur Sun Music pieces. 33. Where do we find these lines: Th e weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death. ? 34. Whose firs t novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946? 35. Nam e three fa m ous composers who taught at girls' schools. 36. Nam e the President of Singapore. 37. (i) Where are the Ashmore and Cartier Islands and (ii) to which country do they belong? 38. Which Australian periodical has the highest circulation per issue? 3 9. Upon which flamboyant Edwardian dandy was P.G . W odehouse' s character Psmith based? 40. What is the largest passenger vessel ever built? 41. What do the ancient Irish m other goddesses The Brigits OK. Stop your whingeing about how have in common with the legend of St Patrick? difficult this quiz is. Here is a wonderful 42. Give the Roman nam es for these Greek deities: (i ) Ares opportunity to broaden the mind with a (ii) Nike (iii) Persephone (iv) Hestia. spot of eclectic research while there's 43. Nam e the authors of the following series of books: (i) The nothing worth watching on the box. And Whiteoak saga; (ii) the Discworld series; (iii) the Earth's focus on the prize: we have two copies, Children quadrilogy; (iv) the 'Anne' books; (v ) the Poldark courtesy Oxford University Press, of the series; (vi) the Narnia series. splendid new Oxford Dictionary of 44. Which leading golf player walked into a plane's propeller Phrase, Saying and Quotation to be won and subsequently became a sports commentator? by the authors of the two most correct 45. Which annual boat race was cancelled last year because of entries. Send them in when you've found wet weather? as many answers as you can-some of you clever-clogs may even get them all, who knows? Post your (legible, please) answers to reach us by 28 February at Eureka Street Summer Quiz, PO Box 553 Richmond VIC 3121. The answers will be published in the March issue. Perverse A sur atuous Rubbish UIZ THE R EG ION: 2 Opening Panguna's Box Veteran PNG commentator Jam es Griffin has been reading the recently released Cabinet documents detailing Australia's involvement in Bougainville, and asks, when will we ever learn? WITH ADVANCING YEARS one of my mine can be reopened. If so, Foreign Minister Obviously this would have discouraged more gratifying N ew Year revels is in the Alexander Downer's recent statement that CRA from proceeding with the Panguna annual release, under the 30-year rule, of the Howard government and 'the mining development which, it had advised the Holt 1960s Cabinet papers fr om the Australian industry'- presumably Rio Tin to Ltd which Government, was not 'particularly signifi- Archives [AA). N ot that they necessarily has absorbedConzincRio Tinto ofAustralia cant' as the deposit was 'very low grade' tell u s what we did not know, but the [CRA) and its subsidiary Bougainville (0.48 per cent copper; 0.55 gram s/tonne insights they provide into the deliberations, Copper Ltd (BCL)-are willing to forgo gold), 'marginal' and 'possibly uneconomic'. deceits and even dupery of policy-making reopening the mine, con titutes a reversal Barnes was sceptical about this and thought can inspire a healthy scepticism about the of policy in the interests of peace. the company was 'attempting to drive a ca pacities of our rulers and- to be fa ir to According to The Age correspondent, hard bargain'. In fa ct, Treasury felt that the them- the constraints within which they the AA 'revelations ... are certain to aid the unprecedented concession s offered to CRA operate. For example, who can now fail to cause of the Bougainville separatists', in the form of a three-year tax holiday and be amazed that Menzies, Hasluck, Holt and presumably because they document the expenditure write-offs were too liberal, said Fraser [to name a few) really did believe that, obdurate disregard with which the mine Barnes, and would m ake it di fficult to resist when they sped glum co nscripts to death and was imposed on central Bougainville against similar pressures in Australia. The company despair in Vietnam, they were stopping the the express wishes of the villagers. In a knew how desperate Canberra was for PNG downward (the direction is sexually lumi- Cabinet submission of 13 January 1967 the to have som e major project and a degree of nous) thrust ofRed China towards Australia, then Minister for T erritories, Ch arles economic viability when independence although China and Vi etnam h ad been Barnes, reported that fi eld staff in the district would com e. mutually hostile for centuries? believed ' that it was possible that the land- It is ironic to read today an editorial in Among the yea r's topical disclosures owners would attempt to use physical The A ustralian (January 2, 1998) deploring are papers relating to the start-up of the violence to force the company to withdraw'. 'Holt's brushing aside of concerns about the full impact of the mine ... with the islanders effectively shut ou t of nego tiations CRA's field workers arrived in April1964 ... At this during the mine's development'. I cannot recall any major newspaper of the time stage prospectors needed no permission fr01n villagers suggesting that the mine should not go ahead, which was th e l andh olde rs' to intrude into their land, and not even occupation fees contention, although reportage was not were payable until June 1966, under the Mining n ecessarily unsympathetic to better terms of compensation fo r them . The A ustralian's Ordinance. Landholders were bewildered by the news leading and generally enlightened corres that, should they be living on top of a valuable deposit, pondent at the time, the late Peter Hastings, was not above describing village demands as it would, under the British rule of (eminent domain ', greedy cargoism and even suggesting that secessionism was a 'Popish Plot'. All agreed belong to the Government, not them. that the mineral wealth of Bougainvilleshould be exploited as soon as possible for the benefit of the Territory as a whole. Panguna Copper mine in Bougainville, C atholic missionaries, he said, w ere The obtuseness of Canberra and the which is generally regarded as the cause of encouraging them ' to oppose CRA develop Administration in Port Moresby lay in their its nine-year civil war. The rebels and their ment'. Indeed, Bishop Leo Lemay 'appears failure to consult the omens of Bougainville propagandists have made a m eal of this. to enjoy embarrassing the administration history. Bougainvilleans have a distinctive The Sydney-based Bougainville Freedom and ignoring laws ... ' Barnes said he had jet-black pigmentation which together with Mov em ent's manifesto charges that informed the Apostolic Delegate (then in their insularity and a sense of affinity with Australia has been engaged in this 'secret Sydney) that 'mission attitudes could lead the Solomons archipelago, rather than with genocidal war, using our taxes' so that the to a potentially explosive situation'. mainland PNG, engendered a defensive 28 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1998 self-image. This was entrench ed in pre-war assembly of more than 1000 to take the N aturally, the mission feared the days when they were often trusted in special mandate away from Australia which had disruption of village life which would follow roles su ch as police and 'boss-bois' on 'treated them like clogs and pigs' and give it the irrflux of high technology and som e plantation s because of their apparent to the USA 10,000 outside personneL Consumerism difference fro m others. CRA's prospectors were not the first to and inequalities would transform the local The Christian missions, predominantly enter the Panguna area. Prospecting had egalitarian culture and reduce respect for Catholic, came from the Solomons, had a begun in 1930 and continued with minor Christian values and mission authority. A monopoly of education until the 1960s and alluvial finds until the war but with no few leaders were taken to see 'develop emphasised difference rather than future profit fo r the locals. Archbishop Duhig of m ent' in places like Mt Isa, but the integration with the rest of the T erritory. Brisbane was an enthusiastic speculator consensu s remained that the copper should Their contribution to social welfare relieved there. As the renowned 'Sharkeye' Park stay in the ground until their grandchildren the Australian Administration of responsi said, 'There's a Iotta gold in Bougainville acquired the expertise to mine it them bilities, so that, while Bougainvilleans were but there's too much bloody Bougainville selves. Copper would not ro t. By the end of comparatively well-off, they also believed they were neglected by government. The war was particularly harrowing: at one stage there were som e 60,000 Japanese Bougainville's representative in Parliament pleaded in the province. Promises of post-war 1 for 40 per cent of the 1 / per cent royalties accruing development went unfulfilled. Bougainville 4 had been a sleepy hollow of 'primitive to the State to go to his province. Only after powerful affluence', the 'Cinderella province', or so it was perceived, until CRA entered in advocacy did he manage to get the House to override 1964. There was no tate school in the the Administration and grant five per cent ... to the province untill961 , and then it was m eant primarily to serve the children of Adminis landholders. It was a pittance but the Assistant tration personnel. When a director of Education was faced with complaints in Administrator wrung his hands: the late '50s, he pointed out how well the 'Where would all these demands end~ ' people had been served by the missions, only to be told: 'Toktok bilong God tasol' (They only talk about God). It seemed to people mixed up with it.' In fact it was not until 1964, I TAMBU (KEEP OUT) signs were that only their minerals induced the the early '60s that the ch emical processing everywhere. Police were brought in to Administration to serve their needs. of su ch low-grade porphyry deposits rem ove them. became feasible. Once the lodes w ere estima ted A LREADY IN THE SIXTIES, On Buka Island CRA's fi eld workers arrived in April eventually 900 million tonnes of ore in the north, both State and Church had 1964, just after the first elections on a Canberra determined to press on. After the been affronted by the Hahalis Welfare national roll seemed to confirm the Australian Federal elections on December Society, whose members refused to join the Bougainvilleans were destined by Canberra 1963, the intelligent and benign, if pater local government council system or pay to integration with the rest of PNG. At this nalistic, regime of Paul Hasluck ended, and taxes and scandalised particularly the clergy stage prospectors needed no permission the then Country Party insisted on being by creating a flagrantly sexual libertarian from villagers to intrude into their land, allocated the Territories portfolio. It covered cult. Their complaint was that adherence and n ot even occupation fees were payable the Northern T erritory and Nauru (phos to neither institution had brought economic until June 1966, under the Mining phates) as well as PNG. development. In 1962 a mini-battle was Ordinance. Landholders were bewildered The new minister, Charles Barnes, and fought on the beach at Buka; the State got by the news that, should they be living on his depa rtmental Secre ta r y, George its taxes, but Hahalis profited from a new top of a valuable deposit, it would, under Warwic k Smith, an econ omis t with trans-island road. This triumph was mooted the British rule of ' eminent domain', belong Country Party connections, had n o elsewhere in the province; cargoism was to the Government, not them. experience of PNG. (Their handling of the rife among the N asioi of C entral Bishop Lemay and American priests portfolio led to its being divided in 1968 Bougainville . The Catholic mission, were also taken aback, as this was contrary into Interior and Territories. The AA 1967 appalled by its rejection, paid much more to US practice and, in any case, this was a papers show that Barnes opposed even the attention to economic projects. Bishop mandate, not Australian sovereign terri tory. 1967 Aboriginal vote referendum.) Not that Lemay and his priests became more alert to In the words oflan Downs in Th e Australian their disregard of indigenous opinion was the need to support their parishioners in Trusteeship: Papua N ew Guinea 1945-75, unusuaL CRA judiciously recruited three any quest for social justice. In 1959 the they ' shared an uncommon concern (at that internationally reputable anthropologists Unit eel Nations Mission was asked in South time) for the preservation of Bougainville's to advise them on social issues, among Bougainville to detach Bougainville from natural environme nt' and 'expressed them the doyen of Pacific ethnographers, PNG and integrate it with the Solomon distrust of anything that reminded them of Professor Douglas Oliver of Harvard, whose Islands- as God and geography must have the gutted Appalachian valleys pouring their pre-war study of the Siwai in Southwest intended. In 1962, in the main town of slag into the green lands of Ohio' (p343). Bougainville is still regarded as masterly. Kieta, the UN Mission was asked by an The arrival of CRA was 'an evil event'. No critic of capitalism, Oliver in the CRA VoLUME 8 NuMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 29 Gazette ( 16/8/68) boosted shareholder con cent royalties accruing to the State to go to riot squad to intimidate them . This misfired fidence by portraying the Nasioi as primi his province. Only after powerful advocacy when international m edia focused on tive and superstitious people who 'will did he manage to get the House to override helmeted and visored police with batons probably get used to the Company's pres the Administration and grant five per cent grappling with bare-breasted women ence'. This was a standard attitude of m any (i.e. 0.0625 per cent of income) to the (custodians of the land in a matrilineal teachers in what were often called 'political landholders. It was a pittance but the society) over survey pegs. At last Prime science' departments, whether oriented to Assistant Administrator wrung his hands: Minister Gorton intervened and allowed Marxism, liberalism or corporatism. In the 'Where would all these demands end?' It CRA to deal directly with the landholders. process of social mobilisation and nation did nothing to assuage the lam entations in A better deal (market value?) resulted and building, self-conscious ethnicity would the villages that their land would be subsequ ent compensation negotiations fade, secessionism wane, they thought. So destroyed. In Guava, from which emerged proceeded without violence. Ultimately, what was a mere multi-national to think? the current rebel leader, Francis On a, however, the com pe n sation proved Its business was not only profit- it quite villagers stopped gardening before Easter inadequate, and the pattern had been well genuinely thought of itself in PNG 1967 to await the end of the world. set: confrontation alone brought redress of as a nation-builder. Bishop Lemay and his American priests grievances in Bougainville. This pattern articulated rather than, as Barnes liked to persisted during 1973-6 even with power BARNES, OF COURSE, was correct when he think, inspired village grievances. He pro increasingly in the hands of Papua N ew suspected CRA was playing hard to get in tested to Apostolic D elegate Enrici. (See Guineans. During this period the first 1967. Very soon afterwards the formidable Downs for some correspondence, pp350-3). secession attempt was made and was chairman of RTZ, Sir Val Duncan, was He told Barnes that Lemay claimed to have appeased only by the grant of substantial calling Bougainville 'the jewel in autonomy, until n egligence on the RTZ's crown'. Even so, by world part of Port Moresby, coupled with a standards at that time the mining lack of alertness by both the provincial agreement, granting 20 percent As the renowned 'Sharkeye' Park govemmentandtheminingcompany, equity to the State, was the best of led to the 1988 revolt by, initially, a its kind. BCL had to raise $US400 said, 'There's a latta gold in small group in the mining area. million capital and pre-sell the Bougainville but there's too It is much too facile to blame the copper-gold concentrate, marketing destruction of Bougainville on the exercises of the first magnitude. much bloody Bougainville mixed mining company. The basic decisions In 1966 Barnes decided on a to mine lay wi th Canberra. whistle stop to Kieta to talk sense up with it. ' Unfortunately Central Bougainville into the obstructionist landholders. was an ineligible locale for PNG's He expatiated on th e splendid first great industrial project. Recon- developm ent that would take place. When intervened at least four times to avoid blood ciling Bougainvilleans to it required a finesse a headman asked plaintively if there were shed and that his priests were exhorting unavailable in either the colonial or not even 'a silver shilling' for them in direct people to observe the law. Something of the independent governments. Foreign Minister payment, h e was told they would enjoy the ineptitude of Canberra can be seen in its Downer is to be commended for, however multiplier effects and, of course, compen employing 'the esoteric expertise of belatedly, assuring Bougainvilleans that sa tion for damage to lives and property. But psychologists ... to persuade the locals to Australia is not pursuing peace in order to minerals were for the good of all. Also, accept official policy'. Downs (p349) restart the mine. If this ever happens, when occupancy fees were approved in June quotes this gobbledegook: Bougainvilleans may well wonder whether that year, they were set minimally to safe antipathy to Rio Tinto Ltd based on the New Guinea humans, like the rest of us, guard the future state of PNG from having initial imposition of mining is justifiable in react to the carrot-cargo comes from the to pay exorbitant rates in order to carry out view not only of the company's expertise but skilled use of the mind and hands ... The public works. All this was rational, even its well-intentioned, if not always adroit, basis of ... [the) approach is that any suc noble, but Canberra failed to understand social policies. cessful propaganda theme promises some the clan-based mystical attachment to land, As for the charge of exploitation, some thing to the individual or, on the negative the intimidation and alienation from having 61. 5 per cent of cash revenues in 1972-88 side, offers a threat of what will happen if no voice in their own future and the ethno went to the PNG government, 4.3 to the he does not follow a prescribed course. nation al sentiment growing a m o ng provincial government and 1.4 in the form Bougainv illeans. Othe r Papua N ew In September 1968, educated Bougain of royalties (K3 million) and occupation Guineans, who wanted 'progress' in their villeans in Port Moresby compounded their and compensation fees (K24m). One-third own areas, were equally unsympathetic then province's grievances and demanded a went to non-government shareholders. to the paradox that greater development referendum on whether it should remain in If there is injustice here it lies with the necessitated greater compensation. It was PNG, join with the Solomons or secede PNG state's distribution to Bougainville, the people of the Panguna area who would independently. At the same time a final not with the mining company. That simply have to stare for ever at the four square decision was being taken on whether to continued Canberra's approach to the kilom e tre cra t er and the sludge of proceed with the mine. This required the island. • overburden that spread to the sea. acquisition of land for a town and port sites. Bougainville's representative in Parlia The terms were unacceptable to villagers. James Griffin is an historian and Professor ment pleaded for 40 per cent of the 11/4 per The heavy hand of Territories directed the Emeritus at the University of PNG. 30 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 Santa Clara University Study fora Master ofArts Degree in one offour areas or take courses for your own faith enrichment. The Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries offers • Day and evening classes year round with two summer sessions • A distinguished faculty • An international student body • Only 45 minutes to San Francisco and ocean beaches • Scholarships available to church ministers Contact: James W. Reites, Dept. of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0337, USA • 408/554-4831 • FAX 408/554-2387 • [email protected] http://www-relg-studies.scu.edu/gradhome.htm Greetings! Take the trip of a lifetime! Christi ne and Michae l Wood, from Hobart, sent us this card from Greece-a stoppi ng point after their time in Rome. They were the lucky w inners of the major prize in last year's Jesuit Publications Raffle. O nce aga in we would I ike to offer Eureka Street readers the opportunity to win a never-to-be-forgotten trip-or one of the other wonderfu l prizes. Enteri ng the Jesuit Publications Raffle is a way you can help us ensure our continuing financial viability, and also an opportunity for you or one of your friends to w in a great prize. First prize Your chance to see the world! $10,000 worth of air travel and accommodation for two people In addition to the major prize there w ill be: 2nd prize: Domestic air travel to the value of $800 See next month's Eureka Street 3rd prize: A colour television set for further details and 4th prize: Mobile telephone distribution of raffle books. 5th prize: Mobile telephone V oLUME 8 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 31 EXCURSION Steve Gome graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in November 1995. A year later, with som e film and TV work behind him, he auditioned for the Salamanca Theatre Company's 1997 touring season. Six weel Of all the coloni es, Tasmania had the highest proportion of drunkards, paupers, lunatics, orphaned or abandoned children, invalids and prisoners. The workforce was inefficient and unskilled. - Tasmanian Museum I DR>AMT CAST N>CHT THAT )eN AND R'c' AND l we« in R l"g' po,Rbk with wooden f!oo" Rnd 3 exits. We were about to perform and there was a big boy in Grade 6, larger than me, who sat in the front. Without speaking, we made eye contact, wondering what we would do if he 'went off' during the show. As we approach Launceston, the sun appears in patches, throwing the paddocks into relief. A few one-general-s tore-and-one-pub towns with picket fences and fu chsias drift by. Launceston is like Hobart- lots of through traffic in one-way streets, a central mall and impressive old buildings. I find a falafel at a Turkish kebab house, then hand over the driving to Rick. Passing through 32 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 Scottsdale we are struck by the very English names of the streets-Ada, Emma, Henry, Edith. An Asian teenager is bowling spinners with a tennis ball into a petrol station wall. We nearly clean up an old guy in a huge Chrysler as he makes a frantic getaway from the RSL. The sign above the garage says, 'If unattended, try hotel >>'. And sure enough, the arrows point across the main street to a m echanic having a beer at a table on the pub's veranda. As we drive into town, old ladies behind the picket fences stop watering their roses and fuchsias, and follow us with their eyes. The yapping of irate dogs crescendos as we dawdle into the school ground. The school is decked with primary children's prints of flowering gums, flanked by formal portraits of former principals. Corridors glisten with gold-leafed names. They are the nam es of the fallen, the state representatives, the house captains. Dutch names, Irish names, English names. Some family names recur throughout the panels and their eras. I see a dark girl with an Aboriginal fl ag on her windcheater skipping with a group of chattering high school girls and beyond them a young principal in blue shorts jostling in the goal square with the lads in the local team's colours. We displace a handful of young basketballers from the hall/gymnasium where we are to perform. Hearing we are actors, they taunt us with bad-ass accents fr om last night's video. And they ask us if we are touring the play in other countries and if we have been to Queensland. As the bus rolls down the gravelly path towards the township, I glance back at the mural painted on the senior student's buildings at the rear of the hall. It is a cityscape, with students at a university, streets of people shopping and drinking coffee and a prominent KFC. One of the cheeky Grade 5 boys tells Jen he can see her bra, and, as a parting shot, proclaims he has had twenty-one operations on his willy. Whether or not there is a grain of truth in his tale, he has picked his target well, and leaves amply rewarded by the shock and disbelief of Jen's reaction. N o, we're not related. N o, we don't all sleep together in the van. N o, Rick is not on Home and Away. L E LAND IS LAR .ELY FLAT, DUSTY AND DRY. A few dirty sheep find refuge from the belting sun under a group of tall gums. On both sides of the road there are hills, the Ben Lomond range to the east, the Great Western Tiers to the west. They are cla rk, green-black. Coming back into Hobart we know we are hom e when Mt. Wellington comes into sight. It is strange being in a city again, with people hanging out on the streets and cafes; hordes of schoolkids in various uniforms being absorbed into the suburbs. And we are not the three individuals who left Hobart together three days before. We have, in a light week, travelled over 800 km and performed to over 800 students (1 person per km?). We have spent almost all our waking hours together, on and off the stage, eaten together, shopped together. Constantly negotiating. We have worked hard physically and got up early. And we have travelled 3 hours from a foreign city and foreign beds to be back at Salamanca. We go to Knopwoods for a wind-down beer and Rick says to drop round to his place if we get bored tomorrow. 'Something might be going on. ' I go home to do my washing and eat my leftover avocado, bread rolls, zucchini, sprouts and carrot. The Crimean war in 1854 once again alerted the authorities to H obart's defencelessness. With its customary speed, the governm ent acted. It passed legislation under which the Hobart Volunteer Artillery Company was formed in 1859 1 - Historica l plaque, Battery Point In a small milk-bar and bakery, I buy a stuffed muttonbird for dinner and a peppermint slice as a handy snack. The slice is CWA strength. After lunch, we hea d straight for Bicheno, pop. 750. I go for a long walk up the granite boulders of Whalers' Lookout and along the foreshore from the Photo left: Mr Big, Oyster Farm outlet to the sandbar leading to the island near the Youth Hostel. The granite is a Terrapin Theatre white, pink and brown, and the mica glistens m errily in the watery afternoon sun. Some of the Company puppet, granite is a motley, evenly-distributed, blend of feldspar, mica and quartz. Some has huge veins of with young quartz running like snail trails or bursting like giants' innards across the shoulders of rocky Tasmanian fa ns. promontories and coves. Everywhere the sound of waves pounding on rock. Beneath my feet the Ph oto courtesy result of this timeless conversation is evident. Many crevasses are filled with pellet-sized stones Steve Game. and shell fra gm ents. But in some of these pockets lies the finest white sand imaginable. VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 33 Blue-eyed blond kids clutter the main entrance to the school with an air of slightly hostile indifference. All these nordic-looking children remind me of a Woman's Day double spread on the Curry-Kenny offspring. No, we don't really hurt each other in the play. N o, Jenny and Rick are not going out in real life. No, Jenny is not always a bully like her character is. Buried in an old cemetery adjacent to the caravan park in which we are staying, lies John Allen. Died aged 75. In the middle of last century. Apart from an 8-line poem proclaiming his return to God, the headstone reveals the Somerset-born Mr. Allen to have 'single-handedly fought a tribe of Aborigines' four days before his birthday, on the 15 December 1828, and to have been 'shipwrecked on ice near Cape Horn' in 1832. Bicheno is no doubt fu ll of descendants of John Allen and his ilk. /LANK-YOU VERY MUCH FOR WATCHING Salamanca Theatre Company's production of Dream Up. It was written by Barry Kay, a Tasmanian actor and writer, after reading the responses to a series of questionnaires which were sent out to six Tasmanian high schools last year. Students were asked who they shared their secrets with, where they thought they'd be in 30 years and if they could remember their dreams. We tarted rehearsing in January and worked on this show for four weeks, including the video sequences which were shot by video artist Matt Warren. And we rehearsed Skip, a primary show about bullying, over two weeks. After a week in Hobart doing previews, we've been travelling around the state performing ever since.' In reality is conformity as bad as it sounds? The old phrases about loss of artistic talent and boredom due to conformity don't hold water anymore. If everybody thought the same there would be no war, bias, anger etc. Individuality is a hugely over-rated quality. - Deloraine questionnaire The scenery on the way back is never quite as captivating as on the outward leg. The Prossel river and its surrounding forests race by uneventfully. Even Black Charlie's Opening provokes only the feeblest of double entendres and related merriment. An audacious echidna scuttles across the highway just out of Sorrel as we scoot across the causeways, over the Tasman bridge and home at last. We get a table at Knoppies and reflect upon our good fortune with the weather on our sortie through the Tasmanian Riviera. The sense of being an outsider, a ranger of the highways, returns. Today I am reminded of just how vulnerable Jen and I are as outsiders in this small community. Our novelty is a motivation 1997 Salamanca Theatre behind some of the hospitality and socialising here, but making friendships that arc unconnected Company touring ensemble with work is difficult. on the set of Dream Up. Saturday 12 April: stumble upon the Concerned Voters League rally against Gay Law reform. fennifet Pties t, Riel 34 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 The snow has already begun to retreat from Mt. Wellington as we head back to Glenorchy. After the ritual scroggan/banana/drink stop we set up at Cosgrove with plenty of time to spare. The entrance hall of this old primary school, which dates back to the 1860s, has a 1914-18 honour roll, a time capsule and some old district photos on its walls. The room in which we are to perform doubles as an art room-with paintings on a Christmas theme. There is a flying reindeer that looks like a starry wombat, an angel that looks like a butterfly and a Santa on a beach, in Y-fronts, holding a can of VB. Three teachers of the youngest children, all relative newcomers, provide us with more amusement than assistance. They talk over each other and laugh while attempting to direct us around the gymnasium. The eldest, with light brown ringlets and silver-framed glasses (slightly askew) has a gravelly voice, full of life. The shoulder pads in her mauve jacket are not balanced either and she stands favouring one hip as if she's packing a Smith and Wesson. She laughs easily, with a pronounced rasp and her eyes remain a gentle blue. The other teachers nominate her as the one who knows how to have a good time, one not averse to a good relaxing cigar. At the point in Skip where the audience are asked, 'If someone was being picked on at your school would you dob? ', these kids pour out tales of their own misfortune. One boy has been hit with a cricket stump, one kicked, others taunted repeatedly. They all volunteer their actual experience in response to our hypothetical. 'I did this', ' this is what happened', never 'I would do this'. I have not anticipated such an open, raw response to this question I have now asked dozens of times. I continue the play saddened by the hurt in their eyes. They are surprisingly engaged, teeming with questions about the characters and performance. Then the personal anecdotes and fantasies start creeping in. 'I can juggle 16 balls,' says one bright faced boy with cropped blond hair. 'I can bounce 100 balls on my head,' says another. 'I can juggle socks,' says a girl on the far side of the room , who pouts when I suggest she team up with a classmate of hers who claims to juggle boots. As the kids begin to file out in lines of navy blue and yellows from sunflower to brie, I ensnare the legs of three of the most talkative boys in the skipping rope, then gently tug until they fall into a raucous heap. As I am talking to one of the teachers, a girl in Grade 1 rushes up, takes my hand and kisses it. The teacher and I look over, mid-conversation, as she smiles and pecks at my hand again. When I finish talking to the teacher and turn to address the red-bobbed, freckled little girl, she licks the webbing of my hand between the second and third fingers and retreats four steps, waiting for my response. She is very small, and her whole body is alert, ready to curl into a ball, shy away, laugh or scream , or run as fast as she can. But her eyes are wide open, curious and shining. I feel the slightest heat of a blush. For a moment I am her age watching The Wiz ard of Oz on a school excursion when the girl next to me leans over and plants a gentle kiss upon my cheek. K IN G IsLAND IS VERY FL AT, A MISSHAPEN TEARDROP. Small dams abound, cattle and a few sheep, with thin veins of paperbark trees and stunted gums acting as windbreaks in irregular patterns. The airport kiosk is cluttered with local produce, including vials of muttonbird oil- ideal for water proofing leather boots. The majority of King Islanders are descendants of soldier-settlers from New South Wales and Victoria. Melbourne and Geelong are easier to get to than any Tasmanian population centre, so there is an affinity with the mainland in the hearts of the 2000-odd inhabitants of the island. The locals drink VB from pots and not Boags from ten-ouncers. The Age and The Australian sell out quickly, the main interest in the Tasmanian papers being the TV guide. Dinner at the local (bistro section) is deep fried camembert followed by chicken breast stuffed with brie and crab meat covered in a tangy mango sauce. Then a truly sticky date pudding with King Island cream and caramel sauce. Collingwood have beaten Essendon. Over the heavy chords of the Choirboys, Meatloaf, Jimmy Barnes and AC/DC, boisterous taunting can be heard from the public bar. One of the local boys who seems never to remove his Collingwood jumper is celebrating tonight. The smells of the island are evocative-kelp, blood and bone, bovine breath, roadkill and the pollen of the beach-side scrub. The kelp, which is washed ashore in matted strands, is gathered and sold to a Scottish multinational for use as a stabilising agent in pills, shampoo and paint. It has an oily, stale smell which takes time to become accustomed to. On this windy pancake of an island, the aroma of kelp transports me to the sulphur deposits of Port Augusta and the stench of an old goose egg broken on a creekbed one summer. VOLUME 8 NUMBER l • EUREKA STREET 35 April 29: The big news tonight is not Port Arthur-related at all, despite the moving service which marked yesterday's anniversary. Rather it is the news that BHP will close the steelworks at Newcastle within two years, relocating value-added wire and rope production divisions from Gee long and Brisbane to fill the void. The local ABC news begins with the three-year deferment of the privatisation of Hobart Metro Buses, pending the outcome of a trial period. I awake four times during the night because my feet are dragged over the end of the bed by the weight of descending bedclothes. Thrashing m yself free I think of fish trawled in long nets. Arrive at West Ulverstone Primary in the early morning drizzle and are smartly escorted through to the large hall at the rear of the school. There are the usual gymnastic frames and crash-mats, basketball back-boards and a canteen counter concealed behind sliding panels. What is unusual are the black wall-length curtains to the rear of the hall, to which a panorama of Anzac-inspired artwork has been pinned. WAR, SIRENS, DEATH, ANZAC, PEACE, the posters proclaim. The Grade 6 boys play some vigorous footy with Rick and me, weaving, dummying and finessing with enthusiasm and skill. A wayward pass knocks but doesn't quite dislodge the ANZAC display. Left to our own devices after the assembly has begun, Rick and I continue playing until an errant torpedo of mine brings the whole thing down. We decide not to admit liability. No, we are not still going to school. No, we are not touring overseas. Yes, this is my job. Acting. And I also work at the MCG. L E LUNCH IN BuRNIE IS AN EXPERIENCE. Burnie is an ugly port-city, spewing grey smoke into its sky, piling mountains of exportable logs and woodchips on its piers, clinging to a strip of land wedged between Bass Strait and the low hills which run to meet it. Obese men and women cross the streets, grim determination on their faces, packages under their anns. Facial hair, especially tufty growths, is worn with pride. I sit having lunch in a coffee shop-bakery at the Coles/ Kmart complex. A very pregnant woman sits with a friend and her toddler, chewing the fat with a younger acquaintance who is blowing Alpine in all directions. Another enormous woman, possibly pregnant, wearing a loose Island Cooler windcheater and grey trakky daks m eanders by, pushing a pram. Teenagers on BMX bikes hang out by the overpriced CDs a few doors down. Comprehensively bored. I tend to cut myself off from people when something sad happens and not talk about it till I crack and then I just have to talk about it. I don't like to talk about my private life with my school friends; they arc two parts that don't mix. I hate having a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, it kind of cuts you off from other guys who are just friends. It's like I have a thick blanket around me and when it starts to part I pull it around myself tighter and tighter. - Delorainc questionnaire The metallic voice of the principal announcing the changes to the daily routine reverberates from strategically-positioned clusters of speakers. He proves to be a teacher, a man of the old school-gruff, not easily articulate with strangers and downright uncomfortable with touchy-feely actor types. Hard enough to make, let alone hold, eye contact. His stance is slightly closed. But he tells me that the student who was most eagerly assisting our bump out 'had been a real dick 'ead in Year 7, but he's developing into a real nice individual'. The girls go crazy for Rick; he signs about 15 wrists. And two Year 7 boys ask me if Jen is old enough to 'get on'. Someone puts a bin behind the bus and 70 people laugh as Rick backs into it. L AUNCESTON IS NOT A BEAUTIFUL TOWN. A concrete scab. Flat, functional bridges and a creepy uniformity about the residential clusters in the surrounding hills. There are many historic buildings boasting intricate brickwork and a squat imperial grandeur. As in Hobart, it is impossible to ignore the presence of government in the CBD-all the largest city blocks house Commonwealth Offices Medicare, the DSS and senators' chambers. Then there are Tasmanian statutory authorities and state politicians' quarters before you even reach the Town Hall. The police are also well-provided for, as are their counterpart in Telstra and Australia Post. Ravenswood High sits on a small hill surrounded by strategically planted shrubs. It is squarish and made from an inhospitable concrete blend that gives the completed structure the appearance 36 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 of an intelligence agency headquarters. It reminds me of schools in Melbourne's Western suburbs. Short, assy kids crammed into classroom s, som e of the Year 8 girls persistently coquettish to wards the younger male teachers. In the toilets where Rick and I get changed a couple of boys have recently been caught inhaling deodorant. The show is helped along by two sign language interpreters. Steve and Kelly have been given a copy of the script in advance, enabling them to translate. Som etimes they spell out a word in its entirety, often they sign words which broadly apply to the action of the scene: Why? What? N o way! Fa ntastic! Excellent! Signing a live performance at speed is draining-the interpreters have to tag in and out. No, we didn't know each other before we started the play. N o, unfortunately he's not. And his girlfriend is a teacher. Well, we have our moments. But we all still talk to each other, yes. A gaggle of Yea r 7 boys watch Jenny as she packs away the scaffolding. Like freshly- hatched chicks chirping with glee, only their heads are visible through the glass pane of the door. They blush and push one another when she smiles at them. 'Nice arse' they cry in unison, as they cluck and then disperse. 0 UR LAST PERFORMANC E, NUMBER 98, IS DIIEAM UP. Returning to Claremont to catch the half of the senior classes who missed out the fi rst time seems ill-starred: we are performing in the after noon of the last day of term. T wenty-five teachers and students are treated to a performance driven by a mighty thirst fo r Guinness. The debriefing at the office is m ercifully short. Deb is m eeting the union, Zoe's getting a haircut and Rachael has a grant applica tion to complete. Jen headed off to meet her friend from Melbourne, leaving Rick and m e to down a few beers at Knoppies. Back at his place we watch The Simpsons with Kate, Kirs tine and their scruffy terrier T ex. Rick is asleep when the pizza arrived. So I ea t his as well. Half an hour before I head out to the airport, I am dropping off some old Encore magazines at Cinema Afterclark. Admiring the sandstone warehouses on Salamanca place, the silos and the view across the harbour. An acquaintance fro m a housewarming party some weeks earlier greets m e as she locks her bike to a parking sign . The countdown to M elbourne has begun. I am embar rassed at not having maintained contact, but I make no apologies and our conversation is warm , if strained. As we embrace I sm ell paint in her hair. And it is time to go. • Photograph of Steve Game, left, by Bill Thomas. V OLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 37 THE N ATION: 2 CH RISTINE WILLI AMS Coombs' country Herbert Cole (Nugget) Coombs' legacy of economic and public policy planning is familiar to most Australians. What is less well-lmown is his contribution to environmental theory and practice. W NI MeT mM ON"" 88TH "'""o" he took ch.,ge ol the aftermath of the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by the interview, hardly pausing long enough for any question that the Governor-General in 1975 . might distract him fro m his train of thought. I was interes ted 'There was a kind of revolt again t having the Governor in his Chairman hip of the Australian Conservation Foundation General as patron and it was decided not to continue the position (ACF) in the mid 1970s, at a time when, according to him, the when his term ran out. The President was an active member of organisation was go ing t hrough 'quite a revolution in its the executive and presided over all the Council meetings so purpose, obj ectives and key personnel'. they had to do something about that.' The ACF Director, Geoff Mosley, invited Coombs to take over the Presidency but he refused Nugget (Herbert Cole) Coombs, who died in 1997 at 91, was one of the most because he was so busy. Finally Coombs relented, influential shapers of Australian society this century. and held the position for two years fro m 1977. Born in the mining town of Kalamunda in Western Australia in 1906, 'Most of all they wanted a good Chairman to Coombs w ent on to occupy the most senior, respected offices Australia had run the Council meetings, someone who would to offer. Coombs held the position of Governor of the Reserve Bank through fi nd common ground. I think they thought of me out most of the prosperous 1950s and 1960s and was an adviser to seven in that way. I had a record of fa irness.' Prime Ministers from Curtin to Whitlam. At different times, but also with But Coombs says that he attached a fir m some overlapping tenure, he held the Chairs of the Australia Council, the condition of independence to his acceptance of the Australian Council for Aboriginal Affairs, the Australian Conservation position. 'I had been approached to give evidence in Foundation and the Australian National University. relation to a land claim by the Walbiri people He wrote 11 books, ranging across Aboriginal issues, education and covering a wildlife sanctuary in the Tannamai economics. His last two, published in the 1990s, Aboriginal Autonomy desert, part of the Walbiri country. I'd done a lot of Issues and Strategies and The Return of Scarcity, dealt with the two areas of work on this already- ! knew the people and what strongest concern to him at the end of his life-economic policy in relation they were already doing about conserving th e land to the environment and the recognition of Aboriginal rights. and wildlife fr om their point of view.' By his late 80s Coombs alternated his place of residence between Darwin Coombs clearly defines his philosophy as being and Canberra, six months about, but kept a home in Sydney for holiday in accord with the Aborigines' feel for the land. relaxation. He also kept up his membership of the University Club and Schools 'It's a very touchy area because it's desert and Club in Phillip Street and took rare trips into the city for meetings with the attitude of most conservationists then was that visitors there. Aborigines were dangerous there, not simply that they would not cooperate but that they would be causing difficulties now that they had rifles, that Coombs saw it co ming out of the period of its origins as an they would kill the wildlife. The ACF was divided over this upper middle-class Establishment organisation, with the Chief issue too. Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick, holding the positions of President 'So when I got an invitation to give evidence to the Land and then Vice-President from 1965 to 1973, Prince Philip as Claim Board from the Chairman, Justice Toohey, I decided some President from 1971 to 1976, followed by Sir Mark Oliphant, of my experiences there were relevant and I went to the ACF and with the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr as its patron. To and said, 'Now I don't want to find when I get up there to give Coombs' m ind t h e ACF was clearly identified with the evidence that the ACF is speaking aga inst me'. It was really a conservative side of politics. Its membership was split along condition of my acceptance of the Presidency, even for one year. the lines of the divide which rent Australian intellectual life in My evidence was opposed by the N orthern T erritory 38 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 Conservation Commission, the Friends of the Earth and the with humility'-Coombs took a line of pragmatic humility. Wilderness Society on the grounds that Aborigines were too ignorant (The book is described as a record of his working life; published to know the problems and that they were hunter-gatherers.' by Macmillan, Melbourne 1981.) The consummate politician, you might say, but such a label 'Look, that's desert country,' Coombs said, paraphrasing belies the passion behind Coombs' political manceuvring. his evidence for my benefit. 'There aren't any public servants, 'I had worked among the Walbiri people and one thing stuck except those who go out and do this or that. You cannot in my mind: there was a hair-tailed wallaby, a species extinct administer rules except if you have the support of the Aboriginal or on the margin, and one family group had been going further communities, so it's either you negotiate with them or you south where the wallabies were still functioning, preparing a threaten to shoot them or put them in jail-which habitat for them up in the Tannamai desert, and carrying the won't work-or give it away.' creatures back there. Privately, not telling the authorities. That was their attitude. They knew more about this hair-tailed C OOMBS SAJD THAT G IVING THIS EVIDENCE was one of the first wallaby than any scientist or others whose business it was to know. times that environmental protection and Aborigines were very 'I also knew that they had been willing for years to enter closely linked in his mind and in his actions. into a kind of negotiated agreement with the Tannamai The divide among environmentalists-between those who Sanctuary management about these issues of conservation. trust Aborigines in the protection of the land and those who They wanted to cooperate and wanted a hand in the manage mistrust them-has widened since we spoke. From Cape York ment, not just to have to accept it. They were prepared to to Western Australia the arguments continue, gaining heat post negotiate.' Mabo and Wik. So Coombs was an intermediary, and despite his exemplary On the issues of land rights and environmental public service background, he had no brief for the public servants conservation, Coombs would not put one before the other, but involved. As if acting on the quotation by Lao Tsu cited in a saw them bound together. section titled 'The Bureaucrat' in Coombs' book, Trial 'I was trained as an economist, a public servant and a Balance-'If the sage would guide the people he must serve banker, but always I have seen economics as involved with VOLUME 8 NUMBER l • EUREKA STREET 39 conservation. Economics is defined as the although diamond mining in the their systems, their decision-making ... ' science of using scarce resources to the Kimberley was in its infancy, the whole In the case of Aboriginal lands, that best of human advantage. Well, I feel this of the top half of Western Australia was was clear, but what about national parks? is exactly what conservation is about; us covered in exploration licences.' 'Well, I haven't got much hope for ing resources to the best advantage, and Coombs says he continued with his that.' it's not the best advantage to wipe them theoretical work about the quality of Did he believe national parks only out, or see them disappear in the long work and how it was made a basis for existed while a society could afford them? term. That is if you really mean that the economic policy, collaborating with 'I think in the end Malthus will be next generation is as important as this one.' volunteer academics and Aboriginal proven right. We don't control population; Nugget Coombs' pride in it will control itself by the role of public service for famine, pestilence and the greater good was evident. war. I think that while we 'I've never felt that my are not convinced that various involvements were in 'I was trained as an economist, a public change is really neces conflict with one another. In servant and a banker, but always I have seen sary, we are not prepared fact I've felt that my previous to make changes. In public involvement in these economics as involved with conservation. some way it will solve kinds of issues was useful. Economics is defined as the science of using itself, we think, but we For example, when I gave don't worry about it. evidence to the Royal scarce resources to the best of human 'But I think there Commission on drilling for advantage. Well, I feel this is exactly what are signs that the oil on the Great Barrier Reef problem is immediate I was asked to speak from an conservation is about; using resources to the in what's happening to economic point of view. the environment, in its There's no real difference in best advantage, and it's not the best deterioration, in the my mind. What I would say advantage to wipe them out, or see them capacity of the Australian to you as an economist is the environment to sustain same as I would say to you as disappear in the long-term.' the population. At present an ecologist if I were an we only sustain the ecologist.' population by selling our Coombs could see that property to other people the short-term advantage of development groups, producing a report about five and using the proceeds to buy imports.' invariably outweighs the consideration of years later, titled Land of Promises. It is a bleak view perhaps, though not long-term effects on conservation. But it By this time Coombs' focus had without offering the possibility of shouldn't: moved to northern Australia and reprieve, but only through a revolutionary 'It's not rational. We're inclined to Aboriginal issues. He helped a little in change in our way of thinking. put our personal immediate needs ahead preparations for the Mabo case and Coombs believed that traditional of others' needs. Although some people thought that 'Aborigines have conceded Aboriginal society produced a relatively put the needs of their children, or their too much, but it depends on how it' stable population through the recognition families, ahead or at least even with their interpreted by the High Court'. of natural forces and 'lack of greed and own, generally speaking I think people H e was interested in the ways no conviction in growth. Aborigines are not wise enough to do this. I can't Aboriginal socialisation practices had don't believe in growth; they don't think see any way of measuring which justifies changed over the past twenty-five years it exists. They think it's only an illusion the judgement that the immediate and how Europeans' way of thinking that we have.' present is more important than the future.' influences them and their way of The Keynesian humanitarian Coombs explained that after the thinking influences Europeans. economist chuckled in agreement. • dismissal of the Whitlam government he The most testing question I had to resigned from all government positions put to Coombs concerned practical land Christine Williams is a freelance writer. he held and concentrated on research management. I was critical of environ Noted work at ANU's Centre for Resource and mental impact studies and the ease with In the November 1997 ed ition of Environmental Studies, the first which they can become merely cosmetic. Art in America (p94), academic institution in Australia devoted Coombs, I knew, believed in community artist Barbara Kruger's rendition of to the combination of resources and administration, so what was the perfect ars tonga, vita brevis: environmental studies. This inevitably led management combination for land him to consider differences between Euro conservation? 'I try and deal with the comp lex iti es of pean and Aboriginal land management. 'That's too hard a question to power and social life, but as far as the visua l 'I organised a study of the impact of answer. Bu t I believe you have to put the presentation goes, I try to avo id a high mining on Aboriginal communities, administration of Aboriginal affairs into degree of difficulty ' which I considered urgent because Aboriginal hands, using their structures, Nice to know . 40 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1998 BooKs ANDREW HAMILTON The world's collateral damage Orphans of the Empire. The shocking story of child migration to Australia, A. Gill, Millennium Boo ks, 1997, ISBN 1 86429 062 5, RRP $39.95. Jumping to Heaven. Stories about refugee children, Kent Town, K. Goode, Wakefield Press, 1997, ISBN 1 86254 427 l, RRP $ 16.95. THE suFFERING OF CHILDREN is always humiliating to know that many children refuses to tidy up loose ends. As a result, poignant. When it is avoidable, it is would have been welcomed with m ore each c h ap ter records contradictory shocking. Avoidable suffering deliberately humanity in state institutions than in judgments of the same events. A man who inflicted on children is outrageous. Stories Catholic ones. Gill is right to be outraged is described by some as a moral monster is of such suffering demand our response. and to assert that, however extensive and seen by others, who also lived under him, as In their different ways, G ill and Goode representative they may have been, the fa ir and inspiring. An orphanage which for explore the m odulations of children 's events described to him should not have one is the source oflater unhappiness, is for suffering and the m oral claims that it makes happened. The tribal alliances that allowed another the faun t of Ia ter courage and on us. The moral energy and opacity of them to remain unrem edied and the kind of enterprise. The book contains radically Gill's book, in particular, derive from his religiou formation that contributed to their different stories which cannot be ham1onised w restling with the nature oft he suffering of perpetuation are also indefensible. by dismissing as unreliable either the immigrant children, and from the favourable or the unfavourable. deeper, unspoken question- Why were the same con- Dostoevsky's question: what kind ditions experienced in s uch of a world and what kind of a God different ways? would allow children to suffer? Perhaps the key is whether Orphans of the Empire is an people saw their suffering as expansive work which describes avoidable or unavoidable. For and tries to evaluate the sending, many of the protagonists of the receiving, treatment and book, muchofthesuffering,even experienceofchildimmigrantsin the corporal punishme nt Australia. While Gill focuses on inflicted b y oth ers, was the situation of those who came unavoidable. It was therefore to Australia as children and were acceptabl e provided that confined in institutions, he also standards of moderation and illuminates the way in which all fairness were observed. Others orphans and neglected children saw their suffering as avoidable, were treated. He attends to the and therefore as brutal. They vari e ty of con texts that would not distinguish, as thefirst determined the ways in which group would, between the c hildren were trea t ed: the predictable discipline of the practices of schools and orphanages, the Gill's account becom es less transparent institution and the aberrant exception. Thus, place of such institutions in society, the where he seeks to sheet home responsibility. there were two radically different judgments practices offormation of those who worked He is properly inclined to take the side of about the moral world in which they lived. in church institutions, and the ten ion the victims and to assign responsibility for We may ask also, however, why the between c haritable work and the theiroppression. He is sympathetic tothose infliction of such great suffering, which institutional interests of the bodies which who wish to publicise old wrongs and to was physically avoidable, was thought for sponsored it. name those responsible, even when they so long and so persistently to be morally At the m ost important level the m oral are old and dead. I believe that he is also necessary. The answer is surely to be sought thrust of Gill's work is unambiguous. He right in this. The comm on good demands in the quality of the imagination. The rules indicts the unnecessary suffering that was that the story be told, even at the cost of of thumb by which adults ordered their deliberately inflicted on immigrant pain to the innocent. m oral universe did not enter the inner world children. For any Australian, the stories of The difficulty inherent in assigning of those for whom they took responsibility. bashings and of sexual abuse are simply a responsibility, however, emerges clearly in The nostrums said, It is right to take source of shame. For a Catholic, it is Gi ll 'sworkbecau se hewrites honestlyand Aboriginal children away from their V OLUME 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 41 families because native customs are At one level, this coldness, inevitable in traumatic memory. Each story represents a degenerate. Children of the poor soon get a large institution, should be alleviated by truggle, and each struggle comes to some over separation from their families. pare the fostering of children and their housing resolution. T hese children are lucky. One Lh e rod and spoil the child. The service of in small family group . But at a deeper has a teacher who has time for her at a the church makes one different. And so on. level, it points to the deeper question about critical time; another is good at basketball; The imagination, however, is shaped by children's suffering. For only a fraction of another meets a racist shopkeeper, but is formation. Gill's book raises pertinent and the sexual and physical abuse of children or brave enough to confront him and lucky disturbing questions about the coar cning of their affective starvation is inflicted in enough to find him honest. Most have effects both of Australian culture and of institutions. Most children suffer in the supportive and loving fathers or mothers. specifically rcl igious formation. If the home, and what th ey s u ffer, they These are well-balanced kids. They have experience of those caring for the young has commonly repeat when they have respon a future. been that they arc valued for their work sibility for children. How then can we But there are many other refugee kids rather than for their persons, and that they accept a world and of a God which tolerates whose fate is less tractable: the unaccom arc expendable in the service of the church, such suffering? panied minors who have learned to survi vc it is not remarkable that they will sec the This is a difficult question to face, and by manipulation, those who arc collective good of the institution and of the one of the ways of blunting it force is to psychologically maimed for life, those who church which administers it as transcending name small instances of unnecessary are always trapped between Australia and the personal sufferings of the individual suffering and to assign responsibility for their home; those who grow up without inmates. They will certainly not question them. To do so is necessary, but it may roots or feeling. Their suffering is poignant. the disciplinary patterns which encourage the unwarranted expectation that It should have been avoidable, but it was '"'r they inherited. the suffering of children must have a happy usually inflicted by inadvertence. They are ending, and that any variation of this story the world's collateral damage . .l HE MOST SOBERING CO NCLUSION of Gi ll 's is someone's avoidable fault. We place a Goode's stories and Gill's testimony book, however, lies in the repeated assertion template over the stories of children, and offer wise and noble evidence that it is by those whom he interviewed that the make them m eet our expectations. better to light a candle than to curse the cause of their deepest suffering was the This template can be seen in Goode's darkness. But much darkness always lies absence of love and affection. Institutions book of refugee stories. They are very beyond the candle's reach. • were cold places in which fortunate students moving and delineate sharply the suffering fo und affection in one of the staff-usually of refugee children: that of being caught Andrew Hamilton SJ has worked with someone marginal and even suspect to the between family and peers, between old and refugee communities overseas and in administration. new lands, the suffering of loneliness, of Australia. BooKs: 2 R ACE M ATHEWS Where credit is due People Before Profit: The Credit Union Move ment in Australia, Gary Lewis, Wakefield Press, 1996. ISBN 1 86254 391 7, RRP $A29.95 Father Jimmy: Li fe and Times of Jimmy Tompkins, Jim Lotz and Micha el R Welton, Breton Books, 1997. ISBN 1 89541 5 23 3, RRP $C24. 95 . The Antigonish Move ment: Moses Coady and Adult Education Today, Ann e Alexa nder, Thompson Edu ca tional Publishing Inc. ISBN 1 55 077 080 2, RRP $C24.95 . From Mondragon to America: Ex periments in Community Economic Development, Fr Greg MacLeod, University of Cape Breton Press, 1997. ISBN 0 920336 53 1, RRP $C24.95 . A usTRALIA 's CREDIT UNIONS have been to Catholic social doctrine as set out by in The Antigonish Movement resulted lucky to attract an historian of the calibre the great social doctrine e ncyclicals from theendemicpovertyoffishing,farming of Dr Gary Lewis. They are also lucky that De Rerum Novamm (1981) and Quad- and mining communities in Nova Scotia in the release of Dr Lewis' account of their ragessimo Anno (1931 ). That coincidence the early years of the century, and m ost of movement-People Before Profit: The has brought the m to a tte ntion all in the nineteen-twenties and nineteen- Credit Union Movement in Australia- simultaneously enables us if we so choose thirties. Thanks largely to the work of two has been followed in short order by two to initiate an overdue debate on what remarkable priests, Father 'Jimmy' studies of the Antigonish Movement in relevance the social teachings of the Tompkins and Father Moses Coady, the Nova Scotia and one of the Mondragon CatholicChurch mighthavetoAustralia's UniversityofStFrancisXavieratAntigonish Co-operative Corporation of Spain. The current worsening economic and social was persuaded to establish an Extension three movements have in common with dilemmas. It will b e a pity if the Program which used adult education and one another that they owe their inspiration opportunity is wasted. the establishment of credit unions and other 42 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 Rochdale-style cooperatives as a means of development of cooperatives tailored to the Year'. Of no less significance, MacLeod enabling impoverished communities to lift meet a wide variety of social needs. How describes the second Mondragon which is themselves by their bootstraps, initiate local ever, it was only in the middle nineteen now developing in Valencia, and accord and regional economic development for fifties that credit unionism finally took off ingly has laid to rest argum ents that themselves and so become in Coady's words within the Catholic parishes, largely as a Mondragon is so much a unique product of 'masters of their own destiny'. 'We start means of enabling households to access Basque history and culture as to be with the simple material things that are consumer loans at interest rates below those inapplicable in any other setting. MacLeod vital to human living, and move on up the of the hire purchase industry. As a largely also discusses from firsthand experience the scale to the more cultural and refining narrative history which required Lewis to application of development techniques activities that make life whole and complete in two years what would more derived from Mondragon in settings as widely complete', wrote Coady, 'Through credit appropriately have been a four-year project, separated from Spain as Canada and Mexico. unions, co-operative stores, lobster factories People Before Profit unhappily is unable to The failure of the Australian cooperative and sawmills, we are laying the foundation deal more than superficially with the ensu movement to take the Antigonish and for an appreciation of grand opera'. At its ing conflict between those elements within Mondragon routes aside, Lewis' book gives height, the Antigonish Movement was the credit union movement who wanted it rise to wider questions. Was it, for example, endorsed by successive popes and attracted to develop along Antigonish lines and those purely by accident that the emergence of worldwide attention. who insisted that it should 'stick to its the credit unions so closely coincided with Father Jimmy: The Life and Times of knitting' as a provider of affordable personal the 1954-1955 Split in the Labor Party? Jimmy Tompkins by Jim Lotz and Michael loans. What matters is that the questions Were the credit unions in some sense the R Welton goes some way towards taking have been raised and can now be revisited. creation of Catholics displaced from their the place of George Boyle's excellent earlier allegiance to the Labor Party by the Split biography of Tompkins, Father Tompkins but unable or unwilling to identify them of Nova Scotia, sadly now long out of print. selves with the DLP or the National Civic Anne Alexander writes about the Council? Is it possible to identify leaders of Antigonish Movement from the perspec the credit union movement who in other tive of a senior adult educator. The strength circumstance would have achieved high of her The Antigonish Movement: Moses office in the party or the trade union move Coady and Adult Education Today is the ment? Is there a likelihood that if the Split balance it achieves between th e adult had been avoided, a development more along education focus of the movement and its Antigonish and Mondragon lines might have involvement in establishing cooperatives. eventuated I Is there then a great irony in that Her emphasis-as the title suggests-is less That things might not have turned out the actions of the largely Catholic elements on Tompkins than on Coady, and she also as they did-that an incomparably more in the party, who so largely brought about the gives credit to the contribution of other far-reaching outcome might have been Split, at the same time destroyed for a members of the team, including in particu achieved-is made evident by Father Greg generation the hope of giving effect to the lar the women who so largely accounted for MacLeod of the Tompkins Institute at the social teachings to which, in so many many of its accomplishments. Alexander's University College of Cape Breton in Nova instance , earlier stages of their lives had objective scrutiny of the movement gives Scotia in his From Mondragon to America: been dedicated? And is it now possible for way in the final pages of her book to an Experiments in Community Economic the division between Catholic and social impassioned plea to adult educators in Development. MacLeod demonstrates democratic reformism which the Split so Canada for a return to the values of empow among a multiplicity of rich insights-how, needlessly created to be healed at last? • erment and emancipation which motivated in the case of Spain, from a standing start at Tompkins and Coady, and puts forward roughly the same point in the middle nine Race Mathews has been a Board Member some suggestions that apply with equal teen-fifties as the Australian credit union and Chairman of the Waverly Credit Union force to Australia. movement, the use of adult education and Co-operative Ltd, a Victorian government That there is ample precedent for the a credit union movement, the use of adult minister and federal MP. His email address adoption of ideas from Antigonish in education and a credit union to drive the is: [email protected] Australia is amply documented in People development of a wide range of manufac Before Profit. Lewis describes how a young turin g, retail, service and s upport Australian, Kevin Yates, visited Antigonish cooperative has given rise to an interna while undergoing training as a wireless air tional business group with annual sales in Books reviewed in gunner in 1942 and 1943. What he saw excess of $US6 billion. The Mondragon Eureka Street there in part inspired him to become a Co-operative Corporation-wholly owned Director and Education Officer of the Co by its 29,000 worker members-now may be ordered from operative Institute of New South Wales, includes Spain's largest chain of super )Esun PusucAnoNs BooKSHOP and a driving force behind the establishment markets, hyper- markets and shopping malls, of the state's first credit unions. Another largest manufacturer of machine tools and PO Box 553, Richmond, Australian visitor to Antigonish, Fr Ja ck tenth largest bank. It is the third largest VIC 3121 Gallagher, started the Antigonish supplier of automotive parts in the European Tel: 03 94277311 Movement in NSW in 195 1, with a view to Union and was designated by General fax: 03 94284450 applying that model of credit union-driven Motors in 1992 as 'European Corporation of VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 43 EssAY GILLIAN FULCHER Carey's Conundrum The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Peter Carey University of Queensland Press ISBN 0 7022 2750 l, RRP $16.95 T,'acme; o> c >Nom AND OAC' " ' largest pharmaceutical manufacturer. Vincent sa w him. His son ]so he thought now so well recognised that these subtexts Efica is an outpost of imperial Voorstand. at the time] . He saw the ghastly rib cage, in novels rarely escape their reviewers' The text and the frequent footnotes refer saw his shrunken twisted legs, bowed under notice. But narratives about disability are to the fo lklore, history, literature and him ... Vincent put hi s hand up to his open another matter. Peter Carey's The Unusual language of th ese countries. Carey used a mouth. Tristan's forehead mirrored his, Life of Tristan Smith, for example. Its central researcher, whom he acknowledges for wrinkling like a piece of cloth ... I did not fi gure is som eone of very short stature, of 'research into arcane m at ters'. come back on stage, but for Vincent the distressing appearance, unable to walk, of His use of language is masterl y. Puns aesthete, who felt he had invented me, it incomprehensible speech, with aspirations and metaphors abound. Is arcane a metaphor was a kind of hell. He was left alone with to act. Throughout the novel Carey uses for a crumbling civilization, and do the his thoughts and theories in the dark-a language which could off end people with hard consonants of Voorstand's language, two-hour production with no interval. disabilities. Neither Australian nor British as opposed to Efi ca's, imply brutality? All But Vincent is neither good nor bad, for reviewers of The Unusual Life, which was of this m akes for a most engaging if Tristan also describes how: published in 1994, appeared to ponder these uncomfortable tale. he sat in the dark believing he could never matters. It was not, said the London Review But a closer reading reveals Carey as love me if I was not perfect. He was such a of Bool 44 EUREKA STREET • JA NUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 In this dramatic moment between the Syracuse sociologist, Bob Bogdan's Freal< But the Feu Follet is no simple retreat, Tristan and Felicity, a postcard arrives from Show. nor is this alternative thea tre a solution to Bill Millefl eur, suggesting Feli city let The dominant image, however, is that life's complexities. It is, however, a place Tristan act a character, namely the Hairy of the carnival: with its licence to roam, its apart, where the lonely and/or different Man. Tristan sees the postcard as 'a ray promise of the spectacular and the amazing, find companion s hip a nd a sen se of from God on high ', as rescuing him from and its harbouring of the unusual, the belonging. This ga insays the view fr om the Special School; however, the footnotes ca rnival is a metaphor for freedom. The officialdom and the disability movement tell us that in the animistic culture of the third image, that of corporate culture, emerges that integration should happen in 'the Native People of Voorstand, the Hairy Man only clearly in Book 2. The juxtaposition of community', a view the playwright Alan is the 'bogey- man', and in Chris tian these three images provides the book's Bennett, for instance, parodies. theology, he is Satan, and that both these subtlety, perhaps its political raison d'etre, Tristan's life in Efica points to central meanings exist in Efican culture. So the which is broader than imperialism themes. When Wally and his lover, Roxanne, rescue also mea ns relegation as a feared and dislocated identity. take Tristan to the visiting Voorstand ou tsider. This is Carey not as pessimist, Sirkus, another child calls Tristan a mutant. but as ironic o bserver. Here too, Carey I N THE FEU FOLLET (literally, will-o'-the H umiliated, Tristan accepts the Mickey encapsulates a le ngthy debate on dis wisp) theatre, where Felicity dreams of Mouse face mask Roxanne offers him. This ability and its cultural contradiction s creating an Efican culture in opposition to mask is papier-mache, easil y destroyable, in a few senten ces. There are many suc h Voorstand's impe rialis t culture, the and quite unlike the full-body, high-tech instances. freedom s of the carnival are present. Here, suit, simulating Bruder Mouse, in which he Another shibboleth tumbles on page where the actors live in the thea tre building, later hides in Voorstand. The nearer Tristan 172 in Felicity's answer to Tristan's Tristan lives a freaky kind of life, spending get to Voorstand, the more troublesome assertion that he will learn to talk better so many hours hiding under the seats, storing his appearance. It is in Voorstand, in Sa a rlim, that audiences can understand him. 'Maybe bits of food, rea ding tomes on acting, and that the corporate image clearly emerges: a there are some things yo u won't be able to rehearsing his ambitions. He finds a sense world of appearan ces, procedures, do ... The problem with diction is physical, correctness and overarching performance. darling, you know that.' 'I'll ... learn,' he It is this world which reduces Tristan not insists. T here is a preva iling idea that just to wearing a mask but to hiding inside learning can banish any incapacity and this an animal's costume. idea, too, is part of Government educa The carnival and the corporate world: tional policies. The consistency of Carey's these are countervailing m e taphors s toning seemed astonis hing. T h ese freedom versus contrived order. As with his transgressions demanded closer exami parody of academic style in the footnotes, na tion, for Carey is far too intelligent a Carey uses farce to arrest the reader. In the writer, far too sen sitive to language and to case of corporate idiocies, there are three social trends, to warrant a judgment of especially important scenes. being mindlessly offensive. Had reviewers T o reach Voorstand, Tristan and raised these aspects? his companions must pass through A British reviewer reports Carey as a tunnel. They arrive at its en saying that his work begins with abstract trance, with a guide called Ah logic, and that, when blocked, he asks Zeez: tired, hungry, and whether an interesting story can be written needing somewhere to 'have about it. The Unusual Life is evocative, a shit'. T hey are met by an im aginative, ga rga ntua n, and fu ll of older woman 'not so easy movem ent: its central characters gambol, on the eyes herself' (Tristan's words), out they travel to the fabled city of Saarlim, and landishly dressed in a parody of corporate as circus artists they perform somersaults, of belonging and pride, and also hubris attire. Ignoring their distress, she proceeds both literally and in their imagination, But towards the audience whom, in the tradition to lecture the travellers, using 'a stack of what logic underlies this intriguing tale? of circus slang, he calls 'rubes', an arcane tattered index cards' and massacred English, The images are a clue. term meaning mugs . on the history of the tunnel dug by Burro There are three prevailing images in H ere, in the m a rgins, h e finds an Plasse (not for nothing is the digger's first The Unusual Life: the academy, the carnival enduring love, a fatherly love, though not name Spanish for donkey) and of his and the corporate world. The academ y is from Bill Millefl eur, who has left, nor from encounters with the Hairy Man. She ends parodied in the frequent footnotes- they Vincent, who cannot fully oblige either by giving them postcards of Burro Plasse underlie t h e t ext bo th literally and emotionally or practical! y, for he is a married and instructions on what to do with them: politically; they imply the academ y is the man and a public figure. It is Wally h arbinger not of truth , knowledge or Paccione-the humble production manager 'One, I'd like yo u to take the troubl e to evidence but of nonsense. Readers familiar of the Feu Foll et, whom Felicity, in a mail to me, the other is a souvenir. Ah with debates in the academy and the moment of anger, once called an emotional Zeez here will take yo u thro ugh the tunnel, disability movement will glimpse sociology cripple-who e love for Tristan endures. but yo u can't as k him to lick the stamps. So as an especial culprit, but it's also clear that Carey's contradictions are wonderfully I'm asking yo u. Wh en you ge t to where Carey draws on sociology: fo r instance, on seductive. you're going, send me the card . I like to V o LUME 8 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 45 know my customers got there safe and real incarnation of a cartoon character as an The voice and experi ence of Tristan, in all so und. I'm going to give yo u your cards and acceptable-and real-lover is hilarious, as its conflicting humanness, is always a flashlight each.' is the obsession with the correct name for a present, as are the words and actions of corporation. Here are corporate commit those who, in life's paradoxes, sometimes Finally, she utters one of the corporate m ents to hollow ideals and to procedures oppress and sometimes nurture him. world's Amens: 'Thank you for using Burro without substance, a preoccupation with Listening to the voice of oppressed people, Plasse's tunnel' (for there are other tunnels language codes which are a substitute for once a policy priority, is no simple remedy. in this competitive world). I laughed in that looking at life. And this latter crucial pub Carey's prefaces to Books 1 and 2 deride the deliciously uncontrolled way one does at lic issue is a clue to Carey's intent. politics of voice: the preface to Book 2 the ridiculous. But this is also a deeply There is a logic in these three images. begins with a verse which the footnotes serious scene: here are corporate obses The carnival opposes the academy and the describe as an 'Efican folk song circa 301 EC sions unmindful of human needs. corporate world. The academy and the (So urce: Doggerel and Jetsam: unheard The dinner party in Bill Millefleur's corporate world are no longer separate. Both voices in the Voorstand Imperium, high -security flat in Saarlim is equally in Australia and Britain, the academy Inchsmith Press, London)'. revealing. What matters here? Not the embraces corporate culture. In disability, The world of Efica and Voorstand is presence of the host, for he is mostly absent, as in other politics, academics in both coun complex and contradictory. So Felicity not the conversation, for people lie on the tries, sometimes unthinkingly, have helped dreams of revolutionary theatre but sleeps table. What matters are the protocols for their governments construct anew language with a corporate head, to whom she is accepting the invitation, for arriving, for and new procedures for the public face of bound by 'the shared belief that what you one's appearance, and the opportunity to disability. The result has been a set of said could matter, might change the course negotiate a contract. Dinner, that poten policies which draw on a corporate theory of history itself'. This too, is the view of tially most engaging concourse, has been of how li fe works (a fallacy). So where do their corporate counterparts in Voorstand, overtaken by a curious etiquette; it has the connections between these three images Foucault and the CEO? di ssolved into a series of political take us? In using disability to expose corporate manceuvres and appearances; it has the The Unusual Life reveals that corporate oppressions, and in mocking the language hollowness of a corporate boardroom. obsessions with correct words and proce a nd principles which e m a nate from The image of order is what prevails at dures are not the important things in life: government, the academy and people with this dinner party until Tristan disrupts it, love, honesty, and endurance are what disabilities, The Unusual Life becomes a but outside is disarray. There are beggars matter. The language in The Unusual Life book that offends what Frank Moorhouse and thieves on the streets of the fabled city, is as serious and intentionally provocative calls Official Culture. That officialdom and the air is fetid. Voorstand's humanitar as Orwell's in Animal Farm. Carey has bothers Carey was apparent in The Tax ian ideals about animals have become done a backflip. Where Orwell used the Inspector. Perhaps it is the perception, rather enshrined in caricatures in the Sirkus. The language of equality to expose its weak than ignorance, of these politics which Bruder Mouse suit in which Tristan hides is nesses and corruptibility, Carey flouts the underlies the silence on the most subtle of hollow, but its status in Saarlim is supra 1990s version of publicly acceptable lan the political meanings which inhabit The human. And in this world which craves guage, beliefs and prohibitions surrounding Unusual Life? And, as Moorhouse notes, order, conformity and security, violent disability in order to expose the errors of a literary prizes go to books believed to be death awaits the Sirkus performers. The world constructed in the corporate image. officially acceptable; these books then corporate endeavour is revealed as futile, The narrative reveals the logic and social dominate public discussion. hollow and dangerous. dangers of this enterprise: the Sirkus, where Whatever the reason for the silence The third scene occurs in Peggy Kram's performance is reified, is a metaphorical surrounding The Unusual Life, it is flat where she (a guest at the earlier dinner reflection of the dangers of corporate culture; inexcusable, for this is a tract in the party) and 'Bruder Mouse' have spent som e and the journey Tristan undertakes is Orwellian tradition, a passionate work days together in a curious kind of intimacy to an anarchic world, the endpoint where imagination soars and invites the given Tristan is encased in his suit. An of corporate logic. reader to rethink the world. official interlocutor arrives. Peggy, who has The Unusual Life is thus an uncompro never seen Tristan, despite their sexual B Y WRITING THE CENTRA L CHARACTER as mising view of western culture, in its current encounters, and whose imagination we can disabled, the broader world is starkly shown corporate form, and it implicates the only wonder at, tries to maintain that her as increasingly oppressive of those whom academy. Carey is on no-one's side. He lover really is Bruder Mouse. Tristan inter Tristan, as arch etype, represents. But as exposes the complexities of life. But he is rupts with the words 'foreign corporations'. archetype he also represents the increasing against simplistic solutions. The scenes in Baarder, the interlocutor, pounces: scrutiny we are all under (a theme in The Saar lim City evoke the nightmares of 1984. 'Entities,' ... says Baarder. 'We call them Tax In spector). This world exacerbates ea r Vaclav Havel suggests the writer's task entities in Voorstand'. He turned to Mrs lier oppressions of conformity, appearance, is to warn. In The Unusual Life of Tristan Kram. 'Are you paying attention to this, image, and performance. In this revelation, Smith, Carey has done just this. • Pegl Only an Oot!ander could ca ll an The Unusual Life is fundamentally non "entity" a corporation.' disabilist, but if read superficially, it can be In a climactic scene, the parody is almost dismissed as offensive. Its complex narra slapstick. 'Incorrect words' reveal the tive contains arguments which occur both Gillian Fulcher is a Melbourne critic and truth- her sin of having an Outsider for a in and outside the academy about how we freelance editor, and member of the Inde lover-but the notion of a mechanical, sur- should understand and portray disability. pendent Scholars Association of Australia. 46 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 FICTION earthiness-no sex. The narrator then The minor characters are best drawn . m oves on to a love affair with a gardener. The central ones, particularly the two m en, The Service of Clouds Unfortunately he is fatally ill with TB, so all sound like the sam e person, and they all Delia Falconer air wins over earth again. talk as though they take their lines from a Picador,1997 All this is impressive, and perhaps it is poetry anthology. The dialogu e, in fact, is a ISBN 0 330 3602 72 churlish to go on to pick faults. I must admit m ajor weakness in this book. RRP $16.95 to some frustration with a novel so full of I don't think the lovers ever crack a joke poetry, yet so bereft of ideas. This is very together. It is as though everyone is walking L is BOOK has already much writing of sensibility, as are so many around on tiptoe, heads literally in the clouds, had its m ajor reviews, first (and second and third) Australian novels their speech too high-flown for the every day. and they have been these days. I sometimes wonder whether I am It is in the sections where we hear her central glowing. Falconer has even been compared the only reader who longs for argum ent and characters speak that Falconer com es closest to Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. ideas and for more connectedness. to tumbling from poetry to poesy, and the Were it not for these previously published However, it is unfair to visit these whole delicious, self-conscious ethereal excellent opinions, I would probably be frustration s on Falcon er. Sh e must be structure teeters on the brink of the ridiculous. inclined to quell my doubts and write allowed her own style and aims. T o som e For the most part, though, Falconer pulls generously about what is undeniably a very extent, though, the book fails to entirely it off. The comparison to On daatje is impressive first novel. succeed on its own terms. unders tandable, if an overstatem en t. Its strengths have been well catalogued. Som e of the poetry works brilliantly. Ondaatj e understands the power of plain Set in the Blue Mountains of N ew South You keep coming across careful m etaphors speaking, and his writing is the m ore poetic Wales in the early 1900s, it is full of a sen se and striking images: 'Each waiter's face was for being taut and econom ical. But then, of poetry and place. This is a novel of air. as blank and gormless as a n ew laid egg' for reviewers do first novelists no favours by Repeatedly, w e have images of people example. m ak ing su ch overblown comparisons. tethered and floating free, of death in the But som etimes it doesn't work, it all Falconer's book is a considerable achieve midst of life, of clouds and vapours and becomes t oo self-con sci ou s, and the m ent. I h ope it does not expire under the photography and souls and spirits. m etaphors simply lack purchase and sense, burden of too m uch gushing. • The central love story, fittingly, is of a leaving one with the feeling that they are love that dies precisely because there is no there for the sake of h aving them . Margaret Simons is a novelist and journalist. ~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~B~F~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Brurr~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~Bruu~B~F~ 20th CENTURY PIANO TRIO T110 Melbourne MUSIC played Priere du Christ ascendant vers son jazz, even a toss at rock via Ligeti and Pere. With Trio Melbourne he is team ed Lennon/McCartney-there' s something for 20th Century Piano with two extraordinary young players, everyone here. I like her om nivorousness Trios Rach el Atkinson on cello a n d Isin and willingness to test the outer boundaries Trio Melbourne C:: akmak<;:ioglu on violin. The CD title of the instrument. Bizarre or baRock could be m ore im aginative-20th Century Linda Kent on the oth er hand is gentle Elizabeth Anderson Piano Trios no doubt says what's there, but t o h er in s trument: sh e coaxes while you have to hear it to realise how ravishing Anderson plies the whip. H er fl uid playing Telemann: Sonate Metodische the music is. And inn ova ti ve: the Julian Yu, of the T elem ann underpins Hans-Dieter Hans-Dieter Michatz, Linda Kent Ilhan Baran and Peter Sculthorpe pieces are Michatz' flute extravaganzas. Kent is one Unanimity premiered on this recording. The Scul thorpe of the m ost inspired accompanists I have Tony Gould, Bob Sedergreen piece, Night Song, in particular is glorious. ever h eard. Michatz' playing is vivid, Adapted from an early work 'The Stars uncompromising and masterly. Turn' for soprano and piano, it gives an Tony Gould and Bob Sedergreen are A USTRALlA IS BLESSED with m any brilliant musicians, many of whom rightly feel that opportunity for the violin to sing and soar, magpies for all styles-you hear teasing our good fortune is their ill luck: such a the piano and cello gravely fo llow ing the fl ashes of Gershw in, Grofe, De Falla, Ravel saturated m arket makes it hard to survive winding lyric, each note dancing in its proper and even Leon Russell, amongst the as a performer. Melbourne's Move recording place. Trio Melbourne are players who listen Carmichael, Berlin, Corea et al that are the label has done much over the years to ensure to each other and know each other's m oves, official frameworks of the pieces they do. that some of them stay hom e. These four and so the ensemble is seamless and capable They driv e the St ein way and the recordings are diverse in style, but linked of astonishing intensity, as much in the Bosendorfer through slalom s of high-energy by theirreliance on superb keyboard players: Sculthorpe pianissimos as in the Copland improvisation, and then give moments of two harpsichordists, Elizabeth Anderson and Shostakovich fi reworks. ironic calm when a few high notes drop into and Linda Kent, and three pianists, Roger There are plenty of fireworks in Bizarre echoing silences. Unanimity is an enjoy Heagney, T ony Gould and Bob Sedergreen . or baRock, Elizabeth Anderson's latest. able fusion of diversities-something for Roger Heagney's contribution to modern Anderson is a strong player of the harpsi the One N ation people to worry about music is huge and spans m any years of chord, an instrument often associated with perhaps. • playing, composing and teaching. H e gave delicacy and even a certain prissiness if not Geelong-and m e-our first unforgettable treated with the creative disrespect it Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer and taste of Messaien in the late '60s when he deserves. Ragtime, baroque, New Age, blues, reviewer. V oLUME 8 N uMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 47 A TTH<." UMMm HOuo" time of ye.t, The Temple, premiered in 1993, was a Out of a simple desire to tell the truth, Bea Australian thea tre audiences tend to pack ferocious portrait of the seemingly irresist blows the whistle, only to be ostracised and up all their cares and woes (and their critical ible ri se to power and influence of a ruthless terrorised by the entire town. It's a flawed faculties) and take refuge in the escapist entrepreneur with more than a passing and slightly overwrought play (not aided world of musical comedy. resemblance to certain notorious real-life by a poor production by Richard Wherrett) Thus Sydney audiences will continue to figures; while in The In corruptible, in 1995, but it h as some powerful m oments and flo ck to the My Fair Lady revival at the N owra turned his attention to a conservative certainly Thom son unde rs ta nds the Capitol and to the tenth anniversary revival Christian cane-farmer from the deep north malaises of contemporary Australian of Les Miserables at the Thea tre Roya l, who is thrust into the top political office society better than most of the playwrights w hile their Melbourne peers will delight in and kept there by systematic corruption. we're seeing at present. the tuneful vacuity of Crazy for You at the Not to be ou tdon e, the better-known Allison's Rub, by theveteranactorTerry State Theatre and lap up yet another revival political playwright, Stephen Sewell, has Norris for La Mama and the Melbourne of Phantom of the Opera at the Princes . also returned to political drama after several International Com edy Festival, was a more Those preferring their thea trical pleasures years in the comparative wilderness of whimsical comedy about small-sca le power alfresco can pack their picnic hampers fo r family drama.But we seem to have seen politics and the battle of ordinary people the annual G lenn Elston Shakespea re, more plays in 1997 about political and against ruthless developers, but its satirical which this year features Th e Taming of the corporate cowboys, great and small, than barb was just as truly aimed. Shrew in Melbourne and then Adelaide, about anything or anyone else. Yet another piece dealing with local plus A Midsummer Night's Dream and One of the most interesting of the bunch politics was Little City, written by Irine Romeo and Juliet in the Botanic Gardens of was Katherine Thomson 's Navigating, Vela and others for the Melbourne Workers' Sydney and Perth. commissioned by the Melbourne Thea tre Theatre and the community choir Canto But if yo u consider the 1997 repertoire Company. Navigating focuses on the towns Coro. This ambitious music th ea tre piece on the Au stralian stage, audien ces are people of Dunbar, a dying industrial coastal begins with the dea th of a young boy in a perhaps entitled to think they're clu e for town which stands to gain a new lease of street accident cau sed by the failure to light relief from an extraordinary barrage of life if it wins a contract with an American maintain conmmnity safety standards; tmable political elrama seen through the year. Play firm to build a privately operated prison. to get redress or compensation, the commmlity after play has directly tackled corruption Bea Samson, a middle-aged accountant with barricades itself into its local town hall in a and power politics in government at all the local council, stumbles upon evidence doomed and tragic attempt to create its own self levels. of a chain of corrupt dealings over the contained and just little city. There's nothing especially new in this. developm e nt be tween the council Treache ry and corruption in the Louis Nowra is one contemporary play especially Bea's sleazy boss Ian, who is corporate boardroom have also attracted wright who has waded into the political having an affair with her sister-and the attention . Tony McNam ara's The John arena with a vengeance in recent years. His town's leading businessman, Peter Greed. Wayne Principle (for the STC in 1996/97 48 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRU ARY 1998 and Play box last year) portrays what happens Emigre N ewcastle com pany Zeal T heatre has fri ends in high business places, a when a young hippy is obliged to run his ran into trouble when its new play, The pe n c h ant for maj or projects and a fa t h er's m ega-bu siness (following th e Essentials, (another indictment of the way predilection for 'neutralising' opponents. latter's botched suicide attempt) in order to essentia l services-the ambulance service Even Shakespeare was legged up onto benefit from the will. The routine betrayals in particular- have been run cl own in the hustings again last year. A Melbourne and back -sta bbin gs throu gh ou t the Victoria under a thinly-disguised Kennett group called Kissing Carrion staged Henry company and the family (not to mention its State Governmen t) was banned by the local VI Part 3 as a carefully-chosen m etaphor of endemic unethical business dealings) are council responsible for the administration contemporary power politics for the Fringe revealed in a very funny if cynical comedy, of the Gasworks Theatre in Port Melbourne. Festival in September; and the upsurge in but the final accord between the young The Victorian Trades Hall Council gave it popularity of M acbeth (at least three man and his sister is quite chilling. a run at the Trades Hall in Carlton, a venue separate productions of that play Australia Veteran alternative playwright John refurbished for theatre productions for the wide last year) reminds us of its powerful Romeril's Love Suicides-while obviously Melbourne International Comedy statements about corrupt government, not much less a 'political' el ram a than much of Festival in April. least in the ascension of Malcolm and his his ea rlier output- is also interesting in jobs-for-the-boys speech at the encl. this context. Essentially a contemporary C ONTROVERSY ALSO SU RR OUNDED the Most prominent of the 1997 Shakes pea res reworking of Chikam atsu Monzaem on's M elbourne University Student Union in this context, however, was yet another love suicide plays of the early 18th century, Theatre Department's attempt to stage Simon Phillips production of Julius C VoLUME 8 N uMBER l • EUREKA STREET 49 because it will lose much of to make a xylophone? So the teenaged Rose its impact when it goes to (Winslet) spends most of her time hatless, video: despite Titanic's being wearing strong makeup and sophisticated nominated fo r eight Oscars, colours, such as burgundy with black lace the support story is thin. that only a matron would have wom. That isn't to say the perform That's precise! y where Titanic founders ances aren't good, because (sorry!): the researchers have done their they are-Ka te Winslet work and come up with some wonderful couldn't act badly if she tried, visual pastiche, but the feel is gone, and Leonardo de Caprio is forgotten- the Z eitgeist just isn't there. highly suitable as the young A Night to Remember had fewer bells and artist-adventurer. But the whistles, but there were people acting in it real stories of the Titanic who really could remember. passenger are far 1nore -Juliette Hughes interesting than the fictions that are served up b y screenwriters, particularly Spice racket when those screenwriters are ston e- deaf to the speech Spiceworld: the movie, dir. Bob Spiers rhythms and s t yles of (Hoyts). Spiceworld: the m ovie may not, stnnd :u-d of Toi let Luxury :1 m! comfort :tt ' c:t. behaviour of 1912. admittedly, be pitched to the demographic VINOLIA OTTO T OILET SOAP The film will be popular from which Eureka Street draws its reader is perfect for· sensiti ve skins and ddicalc complt:xi ons. lt s rich. dcansing however, and deservedly so, ship, but there are lessons for everyone to bthcr soothes anti sohcns, and for rcgu\ ;u Toilcl usc lh crc is no SO so EUREKA ST REET • JANUARY-F EBRUARY 1998 material. And we see Ginger Spice (the one to the gavottes of deference that go on with long hair and thick lips) changing around her, yet credible as she lays the table wardrobes with the other Spice Girl (the Lese-majeste in a highland cottage and takes a loving ones with long hair and thick lips), so they dram with Brown and his kin. Perhaps too can dress up as each other. Her Majesty Mrs Brown, dir. John Madden credible. Deneb's Victoria, in love with a And we see many other things so banal, (independent cinemas). This is no grand servant who calls her 'woman', yanks her pain tless and self-serving that one is romance revealed. The 19th century stirrups as he will, and tells her no lie but tempted to question the remarks of one of censors, political and familial, have made the last one-that he wants her tore ume the girls that they wanted to 'mark a change sure of that by culling any suggestion of the her royal duties-is a little too twentieth in British movies of the past'. It just goes to indiscretions of pas ion (save conjugal ones) century, too post-Freudian-verbal in the how that you can fool some of the people from the account of the connection between context of a film that works mostly in the some of the time, but you can fool yourself Queen Victoria, and her Highland ghillie, rhythms of protocol-by indirection, around the clock. John Brown. (Good of a Scots commoner to gesture and the cobra flick of irony. -Michael McGirr SJ have such a proper common name.) And But it is Antony Sher who is the pivot of wisely, director and scriptwriter (Jeremy the film. His Disraeli is a masterly conjur Brock), have not indulged themselves by ing act-craft in every glance and tonal embroidering the stark historical record. modulation. Even the padding that points Dilly dalai They make absence, not excess, the dynamic his chin is apt. It is painful to watch him, of the film. the powerful outsider Jew, wildly out of Seven Years in Tibet, dir. Jean-Jacques Madden is good at puritan repression place on a drenched Scots mountain, go to Annaud (independent cinemas). This is a (remember his Ethan Frome) and in Mrs work on the loyalties and intelligence of disappointing 'man finding his soul' film Brown his understanding of the obdurate the powerful dispossessd Scot. They almost about a journey through the Himalayas to machinery of imperial British rule is both understand one another. But it is Disraeli, Lhasa, the home of the Dalai Lama. The delicate and informed. This is as much a or Disraeli's England, that wins. film promises an insight into a rarely film about psychological colonisation as it -Morag Fraser glimpsed culture; unfortunately the Tibetan angle is the latest piece of bandwagon morality from Hollywood. Brad Pitt is Heinrich Harrer, an egotistical Austrian who sets out to conquer Nanga Parbat mountain. His party fails in its attempt, and, via a POW camp, he makes his way to Tibet with Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thew lis). The film finally gains its focus -when they reach Tibet-in the relationship between Harrer and the young Dalai Lama, echoing the bond from The Last Emperor. Seven Years sets out to accomplish much more than it achieves, desperately trying to become an 'important motion picture of our times'. Harrer's transformation is supposed to be uplifting, but instead it is filled with cliches and throwaway symbolism. The Chinese- Tibetan conflict is shown with minimal passion: despite his 'transformation', Harrer cares only for himself as his adopted country loses its freedom. The characters never develop past their introductory outlines, notwithstanding a is about affection: all three central running time of over two hours. The many characters, Victoria (Judi Dench), her plot lines that the movie starts to follow servant Brown (Billy Connolly) and her add no depth to the characters, making Prime Minister Disreli (Antony Sher), are empathy difficult. constrained by power even as they exercise it. Great amounts of money have been spent The performances are glittering. in order to recreate Tibet in the foothills of Connolly is the biggest surprise-his Brown the Andes. The landscape is beautifully is a canny balance of pride and vulnerability, photographed, but a weak script and and his jagged physicality makes Holly unusually lacklustre performance by Pitt wood muscle look like a rubber cushion. fail to ignite interest in the story. Judi Deneb's Victoria is both intransigent ! -Thomas Mann and feminine, quite equal-even addicted- VOLUME 8 N UMBER 1 • EUREKA STREET 51 Die Blechtrommel-The Tin Drum, (1979). throws himself down the cellar steps and infancy is crucial to the power of the It is impossible to watch Volker from then on remains the size of a child. incongruity between his age and the Schlondorff's adaptation of Gunter Grass' David Bennent is frightening at times and actions in which he must engage. The two 1959 novel The Tin Drum without being this is one of them; he has piercing round dreary attempts to make movies out of disturbed by the power of the 11 -year-old eyes that stare angrily around him with Nabokov's Lolita failed partly because the David Bennent's performance as 0 kar growing comprehension but n ever nymphet was played- had to be played Matzerath, the child-man. All children have acceptance. One of the wonders of this film by a girl who was far older than the Lolita of the dremon of art's essential deep mimicry is the credibility of his change from new the book- clever, nasty, worrying book until adolescent self-con sciou sn ess born baby to twenty-year-old man, all in the that it is. suppressesit- lookatwhathappens to their same small body. Oskar finds that he can Perhaps it is unfair to compare The Tin paintings once they stop themselves looking shatter glass with his shriek of protest, and Drum with Lolita. There is a claustrophobic with the terrible eye of innocence at what is from then on he drums away the madness feel to Nabokov at his wor t: Lolita contains really there and start trying to ape what building around him as ordinary folk like some bravura prose without ever completely others see instead. Schlondorff could not his parents and neighbours are caught up in justifying itself-a problem fo r the film have made this film without Bennent's mindless enthusiasm for Nazism's pomps. maker, then, to steer the story away from very childhood as its keystone. Grass had People protest about his drumming at peril boredom (for with whom can you refused many approaches to film Die of their windows, spectacles and glass sympathise?) without giving the audience a Blechtrommel; all of the would-be adaptors bottles, as when he shrieks down the speci thorough dose of loathing rather than pity wished to portray 0 kar as a dwarf, not as a men jars at the doctor's surgery-reptiles, and terror. The nature of The Tin Drum child. Gra s (once Willy Brandt's organs and, horrifyingly, a fretus, tumbling makes the film-maker's task easier, though speechmaker) approved Schlondorff's ideas down onto broken glass on the floor in an 'easy' is an inappropriate term here. But the and was deeply involved in the making of extravagance of pink and yellow ruin. task is made possible by the generosity of the film. Grass' concerns: the whole picaresque and The film is set in what was Danzig Free hearty sweep of them, the epic versu the State and is now Gdansk, Grass' own anti-romance. But still very difficult. birthplace. It opens on a note of desperate It is not surprising, then, that the film of farce: Oskar Matzerath narrates the story of The Tin Drum would excite controversy. how in 1899 his grandmother Anna (Tina Only last year, it was banned as obscene in Engel) saves his ar onist grandfather from Oklahoma, after pressure by Oklahomans the police at their first meeting, by spread for Children and Families (OCAF ), a right ing her voluminous skirts over him as she wing Christian fundamentalist organisa roasts potatoes in a field. While the two tion. (One can only wonder how it took 18 Keystone-ish cops question her, she ea ts years to come to their attention, especially unHurriedly, lies to them confidently, and Igor Luther 's cinematography is since The Tin Drum won the Academy only gasps quietly as the fugitive takes full painterly: the lowering skies over the potato Award for Best Foreign Film in 19 79 .) It was advantage of his position. It sets a precedent: field, with colours ala Millet; figures around evident at the time of filming, however, throughout the film, Oskar is frequently a family card game suddenly taking on the that Schlondorff had gone to considerable seen enclosed: under tables, grandstands, dark warmth of a Rembrandt; the dead face trouble to protect Bennent and presumably skirts, down the cellar, in the cupboard of the benevolent Jewish toy seller lit like a himself from any possible accu ations of history seen from below gives a relentlessly Caravaggio apostle's; and the shock as what exploitation. Bennent's parents and legal human perspective. In fa ct he resents his one thought was a model town of toy houses representatives were at the set during the expulsion from the womb so much that he turns out to be the real skyline of Danzig as scenes that have caused the trouble. is quietened only when his mother, Anna's the sieg heils ring out like bells gone all Schlondorff said in an interview during daughter Agnes (Angela Winkler), says that wrong as Hitler motorcades the streets to the filming: 'David is a m edium. He has she will buy him a tin drum when he is three. the rapture of Grass' ordinary Germans, grasped the novel so well, we have read it The third birthday party is fateful: Agnes' who have had to deal ever since with the to him so often, he has so frequently affair with her cousin Jan is being carried shame of such welcome given to such evil. questioned it, that he becomes part of out openly in front of the family (Jan may Schlondorff' direction gives us a fi erce eye, every situation.' (Quoted from the well be Oskar's father). The party is full of through Bennent's hostile stare, on such Oklahoma Department of Libraries adult foolishness and Oskar's detachment chaotic folly. Arendt is right: the Nazi evil website.) reminds of the beginning of Portrait of the was horribly bound up with seeming bland Schlbndorff and Grass never lose sight Artist as a Young Man, as Stephen grows ness-the ordinariness of pomposities, of the real obscenity which, as always, is from baby tuckoo to the defenceless observer bureaucracies and small-mindedness. the appalling ability ordinary humans have of a grandiose and pointless family row over Oskar, born with preternatural ability to to dehumanise other humans, as when the Parnell. Oskar wanders around with his reflect and to judge, can only reject what he Matzeraths' gemiitlich Christmas dinner is new drum as the family gets drunker and sees. accompanied by a comfortable discussion sillier, and when the frightful overgrown Yet here is the conundrum: you can about the necessity for starving the boy scout Greff (Heinz Bennent, David fulfil a genuine and valuable artistic vision Russians. Yet somehow the film manages Bennent's father) measures him against the only by using the talents of a brilliant child to celebrate humaneness, and will make wall and prophesies that he will grow 'big who is portrayed in situations that might you laugh as well as wince. like me', he decides to give up growing. He be injurious to that child, but whose very -Juliette Hughes 52 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 designed to look as if they don't fit, then therapy with her husband; she is jealous of you actually relate to people differently. her daughter's youth. Her world is on the Care-ful Such awkward appearan ces are w ell verge of disintegration. Janie's world is matched to a story about uncertain social equally precariously balanced. She is unable The Rainmaker, dir. Francis Ford Coppola mores and moral collapse. to communicate any kind of moral values (general distribution). Good films can be Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) and his wife to her sons, Mikey and Sandy, and is at a born of bad books. Mario Puzo's The Elena (Joan Allen) are trying to get the loss when she finds Wendy fooling around Godfather was very profitable reading for family together for Thanksgiving, a task with one of them . Hard to know what to say Coppola back in the '70s. Unfortunately which involves getting their son Paul (Tobey to young people when you've accepted an the director's more recent holiday reading Maguire) back from college and getting their invitation to a 'key party', one in which you has proven rather less inspirational. fourteen-year-old daughter, Wendy (Christina leave your car keys in a bowl and go hom e The Rainmaker is the sixth John Ricci), to sit at the table with them. Outside, with whoever's keys you draw in a lucky Grisham novel to be filmed, and in all half the cold of the Connecticut winter offers dip at the end of the night. It's a scenario dozen I am yet to find a character with the the prospect of a cosy indoor gathering. But which trips into tragedy, played out against depth of even a toddler's pool. Like the Hood is having an affair with his neighbour, a stark and beautifullandscape, and becom es previous five flicks from the Grisham Janie Carver (Sigourney Weaver) and Elena a telling portrayal of human emptiness. collection, Rainmaker is set in and around is suspicious. Elena wants to go back into - Michael McGirr SJ the legal profession. Thi time it's Mem phis, a town with too many lawyers, and most of them crooked. Enter young honest The Ultimate Guide for both the Expert hero, law graduate Rudy Baylor (Matt and the Enthusiast Damon ) who,down among the ambulance chasers and first-class law sharks, makes up for his lack of experience by caring. Rudy cares for Dot Black (Mary Kay ~~~in Q(J}fsc~ Place), whose son Donny Ra y (Johnny Whitworth) is dying of leukemia; he cares AN INTERACTIVE GU ~ WAGNER'S RING CYCLE fo r Kelly (Claire Danes), who is beaten by Published by The Media Cafe Publishing her husband; he cares for Miss Birdie, his landlady. 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EXPIRY DATE ...... believe that if you sleep on a water bed the CREDIT CARD NUMBER size of a swimming pool, talk on a chunky SIGNATURE ...... plastic phone or wear clothes that are VOLUME 8 N UMBER l • EUREKA STREET 53 WATCHING BRIEF Reading the news w nn• me YOU might come journalism on commercial television. Peter Manning, of Channel away with after seeing the Four Seven, is particularly imaginative: he intimates that even without Corners serie The Uncertain Eye the conflict over Singer's investigation into Victorian Premier Jeff (ABC Mondays 8.30pm), it will be the Kennett's family share dealings, 'som e changes were going to be conviction that powerful men have m ade anyway'. considerable control of the most It all sits oddly with the fact that, since the avowed aim is powerful communication tool on ratings above all else, Today Tonight's coverage of the share affair earth, and would like that control to rated better than ever before-perhaps people only watch pabulum be total. The movie newsreel's evolution into television news and at prime time because that's all they're offered. In the case of Jana infotainment during a century of change for which broadcasting is Wendt's departure from the much-touted-as-quality Witness, there significantly responsible, is the burden of the series, and it makes is an air of truculence as the producer seems to be saying she didn't for thoughtful watching. know her place: her job was basically it seems to do the stories she The first episode showed the divergent views of the moving was told to do in the way she was told to do them. Again, very odd, cam era's two pioneers: Thomas Alva Edison and his cynical when you see Wendt's firm reiteration of the freedom and control relegation of it to profit-m aking sleaze; and the Lumiere brothers she says she was promised as an inducem ent to front Witness. with their attachment to the m edium's importance as an unbiased There is the after burn stink of boy-power having done it again. 1997 recorder of history. In the shortest of times the two approaches had was not a good year for Channel Seven's treatment of top women converged: moving pictures were providing information, but journalists. Or perhaps both Wendt and Singer are mistaken, and practicalities demanded that sea battles and volcanoes and such know very little about what is important in television journalism . like had to be faked in order to provide the kind of footage that Paul Barry, who followed Wendt into the presenter's spot on punters wanted. lt wa prophetic then, when Pancho Villa restaged Witness, has a hard job to prove that he is not simply one of the battle charges for the cameras, increasing his popular support, boys, with a m ore complaisant attitude to dictation over the making him probably the first electronic media politician. program's content. Or perhaps it's not seen as so shocking when a Almost a century later Gulf War reporters found the Pentagon man challenges another, powerful, man. Perhaps they feel safer firmly in control of war news-only the serendipity of CNN's letting him have his head more than Wendt. With all this, Seven's presence in Baghdad gave anything else away-the lessons of the management has a long way to go before it produces a program free hand given in Vietnam had been learnt, and the grudge had been approaching the gravitas of Nine's Sunday, placed as it is in held long. Now revenge was sweet: the armies of the fourth estate a slot that is safe from the pressure of advertisers' agendas. were to give the watching world propaganda for history, patriotism instead of impartiality. The ethics of the great war correspondents I T LEAVES YOU WITH THE WORRYING THOUGHT that perhaps Australia of the past were to be honoured only in their breach. isn't ready yet for a female Ed Murrow, doyen of early-fifties' But this is also the century of the unmanageable m essage; where American public affairs television. I don't actually think that today the essential fuel for what Fox Mulder of The X-Files calls 'the the commercial channels would allow any of their journalists to go military-industrial-entertainment complex' is the money spent by after a Joseph McCarthy, as Murrow did so superbly. Or perhaps the consumers it tries (with some success) to manipulate. Cameras they'd let Ray Martin. After all, our own Prime Minister felt warm of the world media organisations at history-making events such as and safe with Ray, who was, you remember, also entrusted with the the collapse of East Germany and, even for a brief time, at Tienanmen vital task of midwiving James Packer's debut on his fa ther's Square protected many activists from murder by the authorities. channel. Totalitarian regimes fear and hate free-flowing information: for In a world where 'courageous' has becom e fo r politicians and them the m edium should be not so much the massage as the rack journalists, a synonym for 'suicidally stupid', we still need our to straighten out dissent. commentators to be safeguarded from interference. The Uncertain With cable's 24-hour coverage, news ceased to be a bulletin Eye reveals that Bob Hawke pressured David Hill to have Geraldine delivered from the unquestioned m agisterium of the dark-suited Doogue removed from commentary on the Gulf War. announcer; it had become a constant flow of images presented The woman, after all, has an unfortunate habit of honesty, through the camera's eye to ours. That magisterium has largely which she has used in a coming edition of Compass (beginning passed to the current affairs programs, the prime-time commercial February 1, 10.15pm) to take a hard look at the power structures of ones with their mixture of outrage and pabulum, dictated by that other boys' club, the Australian Catholic Church. advertisers, the public broadcasters with their Serious-Sam image, Doogue takes an optimistic perspective however; after exploring watched by few, needed by all. the terrible distortions of authority that occurred over the last If you ever doubted the authenticity of Frontline's dissection of decade with the child abuse scandals, she points to parishes and what really happens behind the current affairs desk, The Uncertain informal meetings where power is shared, where priests really do Eye should reassure you, if reassure is the right word. The casualties serve their people. of commercial current affairs are many, with what seems an No doubt som e powerful people won't like her views, but my unusual proportion of good women going under. Jana Wendt and Jill bet is she'll outlast them in that uncertain public eye, the sam e way Singer have plenty to say on the subject of editorial control, and she's outlasted Mr Hawke. • their comm ents are laid against the spiel of the shin-sleeved ones, the executive producers who, to a man, deny the need for real Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer and critic. 54 EUREKA STREET • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 60, January-February 1998 ACROSS Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM 1. In speaking, discover a relation-by blood? (4) 3. T elepathy, possibly, an exercise facing east-the new me in light footwear! (10) 10. It goes back round the parson at the fountain. (5) 11. Anno domini 1998, as the Romans would write. (9) 12. Strangely similar linen Ma is saving up in 11 -across for a future time that will be rosy! Such is her belief! (14) 14. Not to be long-winded, I tell you plainly that the insect is on the cheese. (7) 15. Specialist, with precipitation, rushes to get on the carriage. (7) 17. Dr Dracula and friends? (7) 19. Crush me gently, darling! (7) 20. Pavement artist can't get going. Produces works and drawings between two streets, and back up another. (5, 3, 6) 23. A bit of the mountain range where we find the Christmas bird? (9) 24. Opera heroine on standard note. (5) 25. Eureka Street must have appeared about a dozen times this year at regular intervals. (5, 5) 26. Bad blood you'd have, we'd hear, after the start of fever. (4) Solution to Crossword no. 59, December 1997 DOWN 1. A healthy person is self-moving, they say, and has what it takes to get around. (10) 2. Perfect partner for one of Wilde's heroes? There could be a wide file on her! (5, 4) 4. Sounds like warm weather for reading a Digest! (7) 5. Artist returns with watered silk. Put it in the cupboard. (7) 6. Piecing together the scene of the crime, again study Football code acting without a motive. (14) 7. Flashy types go to safe retreats? (5) 8. Late Christmas cards? Time is up to send them. (4) 9. There's no show without Punch! Such a one could bring animation to the ALP, for instance. (4, 2, 3, 5) 13. The umbrella is beneath the rack. Get it! (10) 16. A 23-across can be found up there before 6th January. A fruitful resource! (1, 4, 4) 18. Anyhow, don't stay endlessly. Be prepared for action. (5, 2) 19. She unfortunately dated SS man during the war-very upsetting! (7) 21. Short trees could be clipped, to good effect. (5) Do you know someone who might enjoy Eureka Street? We'll be happy to send them two I talze it off issues on a trial basis. Simply fill in the form below (with their permission) and send it to: jesuit Publications, PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC, 3121. 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