Vol. 3 No. 7 September 1993 $5.00

The Year of Living Expectantly What Aboriginal leaders are saying Why we say the things we do Margaret Simons Rowan Gallick Republican visions States of the nation The state of liberty Terry Monagle Philip Pettit

Melbourne Writers' Festival: Peter Craven reviews the work of Vikram Seth An intervieV#, not a point of vieV#.

Paul Murphy presents a balanced interview. His questions show background knowledge, not personal opinion. So you can make up your own mind. For reliable current affa irs six nights a week, watch Paul Murphy. Paul Murphy. Dateline. Monday - Saturday 7pm.

IT'S fi HUGE A USTRALIAN C HURCH D lARY CHfiLLEHGE 1994

There is a big challeng e ahead or us - a challenge Beautifully bound which has pretty well de reo ted us ror zoo years_ and illustrated, the For my port. I om absolutely committed to this. diary begins with It s o huge challenge. and hugely signili"cont in the the First Sunday in de termination orAustral ia s ruture. Advent 1993, and The Prime Minister. serves for both the T he Hon P J Keating. I??Z liturgical and cal­ endar years till the The Australian Council of Churches agrees end of 1994. With Christian, Jewish that t his chall e nge must be faced. and Muslim feasts I"DIGE"OUS PEOPLES and commemorations, public and school holidays for all tates, double- page spread for each week, year O"E WORLD KIT 1991 planner, lectionary details and much more. Thi s education and action kit is now availabl e fr om your state ecumenical Terrific value al 519.00 council o r ring the Australian Council of (Normal retail price: $22.95) Churches on (0 2) 299 22 15 Available at this price exclusively from Jesuit Pub­ lications, PO Box 553 Richmond VIC 3121. Include $3.50 per book for postage and handling. Volume 3 Number 7 EUAI:-KA srm::-er September 1993 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology

C oNTENTS

4 32 COMMENT SPORTING LIFE Ross Fitzgerald finds a feast 6 of football in Bali. LETTERS 33 9 TEASING OUT THE TEXTS CAPITAL LETTER Robin Gerster reports on the public face of Australian literary studies. 10 THE REPUBLIC 34 Terry Monagle discusses the strains BOOKS of federalism; Philip Pettit traces the Michael McGirr scythes through a crop of roots of the republican understanding criticism from MUP; Morag Fraser profiles of liberty (plS). Margaret Simons, author of the prize­ winning novel The Ruthless Garden (p36); 13 Owen Richardson reflects on the life and ARCHIMEDES work of Philip Larkin (p39); David Glanz For some, the future still rates and Leon Gettler take a look at two books a smile: girl from Cherbourg 14 on Jewish radicals in Australia (pp41-42); Mission Station, Murgon, QLD. COUNTERPOINT Mark Skulley speculates on the fate of Other Aborigines are not so sure. junk-bond king Michael Milken (p43). -'The Year of Living Expectantly', 18 ppl8-25. THE YEAR OF LIVING EXPECTANTLY 45 Aboriginal leaders talk to Margaret Simons THEATRE about the Year of Indigenous People; Jack Donna Sue Robson meets the cast of Bran Cover: Arthur Panbegan, Aurukun leader, Waterford talks about the terms of debate Nu Dae; Geoffrey Milne reviews John performing a 'Bora' (initiation) bird dance ritual at Laura, Cape York Peninsula. (p20); and Rowan Callick talks about the Sumner's contribution to Australian thea­ Photo by Emmanuel Sa ntos. motives and motifs of debate (p22). tre (p46).

Photos pp3, 5, 18, 22-23 and 45 also by Emmanuel Santos; 26 47 Graphics pplO, 12, andl 5 by ESSAY FLASH IN THE PAN Tim Metherall; Peter Craven explores the writing of Reviews of the films Jura ssic Park, This Is Graphs pp10-11 by Paul Fyfe S); Vikram Seth. My Life, Children of Nature, Peter's Friends, Cartoon p16 by Dean Moore; Photo p3 7 by Bill Thomas. Reservoir Dogs, Passion Fish and Wittgen­ 30 stein. QUIXOTE Eureka Street magazine 50 Jesuit Publications 31 VOICEBOX PO Box 553 STRAINING TO SEE THE LIGHT Richmond VIC 3 121 Tel (03) 427 73 11 David Glanz reports on power failures and 51 Fax (03) 428 4450 political failures in the Philippines. SPECIFIC LEVITY EUREKA SJREEr C OMMENT agazine of public affairs, the arts and theology A NDREW H M1IL TON Publisher AND E DMUND CAMPION f Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Production editor Ra y Cassin Design consultant The Year of John van Loon Production assistants John Doyle SJ, Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes, Indigenous Peoples Siobhan Ja ckson, Chris Jenkins SJ. Contributing editors Adelaide: Frances Browne IB VM Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Darwin: Margaret Palmer Perth: Dean Moore Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, S oMmMcs wu Mt STAmm when you he" the penny dmp. Gerard Windsor. I was attending an Aboriginal Mass at the beginning of the European correspondent: Damien Simonis national liturgical music conference in Melbourne. U correspondent: Thomas H. Stahel SJ The Mass was celebrated on a pontoon by the World Editorial board Trade Centre, and to look across the Yarra was to be Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), played into gentle ironies of time and place. Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, The backdrop was the Spencer Street Bridge: a Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, no-nonsense affair built for horses and trams. Just be­ Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, yond it, in shocking pink, was a full frontal advertise­ Kevin McDonald, Joan Nowotny IBVM, m ent for strippers, over which crawled the fly overs Lyn NoSS

4 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 But the ironies were now sharp-edged. For in Mex­ can no longer read Australian history along denomina­ ico I had come to the Guatemalan Indians as a friendly tional line . The very first paper gave a Sydney visitor. Here I had inherited, and would hand on, a evangelical perspective on 19th century dispensation by which this land by the Yarra had been convents. The Reformation is over. taken from the natives, and been made fit for strippers, boozers and cars. These ironies are hard to bear. But N OTHING HAS SPEEDED this process so much as the perhap the Mass did enable them to be endured, and protestantising of Catholicism. When Rome shows saved the need to articulate them. For at the Mass the herself willing to learn from Geneva and Canterbury, sound of clapping by the complicit was the sound of then we are in a new age. Con ider the evidence of recent nails being hammered: the hands into which they were decades: the Bible at the centre of Catholic theology, hammered were those of the Aboriginal and of those liturgy and spirituality; Catholic liturgy in a language from any race who would follow Jesus. And the Mass 'understanded of the people'; a morality of striving for recalled a death and a sure hope for a land without ironies justice and mercy rather than a morality of guilt; the in which all would be native. • freeing of lay intelligence and the slow erosion of cleri­ cal control system ; a laity who set their own spiritual Andrew Hamilton SJ teache in the United Faculty of agenda, as in the prayer group movement; and ecclesial Theology, Parkville, VIC. pluralism, which shows that the church is now humble enough to learn from multicultural society. In each of these one can detect a position taken by historic Protestantism. These were the spiritual gains of the Refonnation, now taken on board by Catholics. It would be silly to suggest that this process has been fully realised yet. The old denominational subcul­ tures survive tenaciously, as confer­ ence guests at Macquarie University's Robert Menzies College learnt. There, Catholics and interstate Anglicans were able to experience the distinc­ tive culture of Sydney Anglicanism, fro m the no-booze rule to the bare meeting-hall architecture of the col­ lege chapel. It is one of the strengths of Christianity that it has energised a variety of such subcultures. Neverthe­ less, what is happening remains clear: the Reformation divide has been bridged and differences are being elided. Not that we are entering an era of passionless, homogenised Christi­ anity, free of tensions. If the Catholic­ Protestant distinction are disappearing, they are being replaced by a new line of demarcation between funda­ mentalists and pluralists. This fault line runs through Crossing the all the denominations, identifying and grouping Chris­ tians of disparate churches. It, rather than one's denom­ ination, determines where one stands on church authority, women's ministry, the ources of spirituali­ Clive Yanl

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 5 L ETTERS

conference heard convincing evidence from Melbourne's Eureka tree / welcomes letters ing that they were not aware of the Dr Muriel Porter of the energy and solidarity currently from its readers. Short letters arc changes made by Vatican II. They de­ seen in the Anglican church after years of tussling about more likely to be puhl is hed, and all rided the resolution. wom en's ordination. Rooted in hi s t ~ry , Christianity has letters may he edited. Letters must Maurie printed the three attitudes always found the strengths to go beyond history. Yet be signed, and should include a con­ to peace in a lea fl et: 'What the Pope there are m any Christians who seem weighed down by tact phone number and the writer's Said'; 'What a Member of the Com­ all that history, to the point of inertia. History does not name and address. munist Party Sa id'; and 'What the free them, it immobilises them . The 200 years of Aus­ DLP Members Said'. tralian experience, or the 2000 years of world Christi­ So fo r many diffe rent reasons I greatly welcome Eurelw Street as pa rt anity, are so heavy with precedent and wisdom that for of my everyday life. som e they m ake the future seem frightening. Ruth Crow T hese people, however, share the continent w ith North Carl ton, VIC another religious tradition, one that is 40,000 years old. In all that time, as Pope John Paul II said in Alice Springs, the Spirit of God was with the Aborigines. Compared Documentary with 40,000 years of Aboriginal religion, the 200/2000 years of Christian history seem like the first sentence sources or page of a long book. Happily, the Studying Austral­ ian Christianity conference spent much time on Abo­ From Mary Helen Woods riginal m atters; for here, as elsewhere, the Aboriginal The genesis of the document 'Why perspective has good things to teach us. The worst stonn Can 't Catholic Women Be Priests? ' is invigorating, said Pascal, w hen you know your ship was an infom1al chat after a lecture will reach the harbour. • Opportunities given at the Thom as More Centre some time last year. The hundreds of Edmund Campion was co-convenor of the Studying lost young Catholics attending Thomas Australian Christianity conferen ce at Macquari e More fu nctions had often complained University. From Ruth Crow that, after many years in Catholic In the retirement village where I live schools, their knowledge of Catholic (Princes Hill Village) there seems to teachings was scant. We decided that be a very high proportion of elderly another part of our activities would be BLACKFRIARS Rom an Catholi c women of Irish to put together a series of documents, ancestry (I have a theory of why this is directed at Year 12 students but useful so). I am very, very impressed by their also for adults. great sense of community and Thomas More is a relatively new wonderful practical political nous. organisation, working in conjunction Also their ready sense of humour ... with the National Civic Council and the sense of the ridiculous. the Australian Fam ily Association. Dominican Once I heard Veronica Brady spea k When Bishop George Pell indicat­ of the 'absurdity of our society' in a ed that he would be happy to help us Retreat & Conference Centre talk on SBS on the history of the English write on the topic 'Why Can't Catho­ PHILLIP AVENUE, WATSON, ACT language. The Irish use of English was lic Wom en Be Priests?' we were de­ tem1 ed 'the language of the oppressed'. lighted. We knew that our document Th e Retreat & Conference Centre is part of Black­ Why I am saying this is because I would be enhanced by the official friars Dominican Priory, situated in pleasant sur­ feel so saddened to think that fro m teaching authority attaching to a round ings in North Canberra. The spacious building about 1940 to about the end of the bishop. As well, Bishop Pell has an includes a peaceful enclosed garden with plenty of 1960s the left in Victoria was denied illustrious academic record, culmi­ walking space. The Mount Ainslie-Majura Resrve is this influence (the sense of the absurd, nating in a doctor of philosophy de­ within walking distance of the Priory. the use of the language of the oppressed) gree from Oxford University. The top­ because of the DLP's condemnation ic for his thesis was 'Exercise of Au­ It provides single-room accommodation for 60 peo­ of communism, etc. thority in Early Christianity 170- ple (or 90 people with shared accommodation), with This bigotry was brought home to 270AD'. After a grea t deal of careful hot/cold water and central heating in each room, and a few people in the Federated Clerks discussion between Bishop Pell, Anna a large conference room holding up to 100 people, Union in 1968 or thereabouts. At that Krohn (a bachelor of divinity) and as well as several small group work. Individual and time the clerks union was controlled myself (no theological qualifications, organised group retreats are available. by theDLP. My husband, Maurie( who but a lively interest in all things Cath­ All enquiries are welcome and should be had been an organiser of the clerks olic) we finally produced a document. directed to : union before DLP control) moved a Bishop Pell submitted it for the resolution for peace using the words advice of a number of theologian The Co-ordinator, of Pope John XXIII. The DLP members friends, some of whom he considered PO Box 900, Dickson, ACT 2602 did not recognise these words, show- to be more 'liberal' than himself. He

6 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 then discussed securing an imprima­ thinkers within the Catholic Church. Paul II. They state that Christ 'or­ tur for the document with Archbishop Those who defend the Church's doc­ dained' no one- a proposition con­ Frank Little. Last, but not least, we trinal and moral teachings have as demned by a general council. They 'road-tested' the document on Year 12 much right (let alone responsibility ) thus deny the authority both of the students and their teachers in several to spell out the Church's teaching as Pope and of a general council. It is Catholic schools. Responding to some those who dissent from it have to obvious that they accept no authority criticism from the students, we express their own.To the suggestion other than their own. rewrote it until finally we had a docu­ that Jesus did not ordain anyone, male After all, are we really to accept ment with which everyone was happy. or female, Bishop Pell writes: 'Obvi­ that the Holy Spirit has permitted the We ordered 5000 copies; 2000 we ously, if priesthood is a human con­ Catholic Church to teach, and act on, sent to parish priests and Catholic stmct, which did not go back to Christ fa lsehood for 2000 years? If tme, it is a school principals in most areas of and the apostles, Christian communi­ good argument for leaving the church, Australia and N ew Zealand, with an ties would have considerable freedom not for rem aining in it. order form for more copies. The de­ in the exerci e and development of Mary Helen Woods mand was overwhelming: 25,000 cop­ this role. North Melbourne, VIC. ies have left the centre, and we have 'However, ministerial priesthood reordered another 15,000. Clearly, we was exercised in the had found an area of vital interest to early church from Catholics. the beginning and That we had also touched a sensi­ there is a scriptural tive nerve among some other Catho­ basis for ordination lics was demonstrated quite graphi­ to the priesthood in cally by Pamela Foulkes' article in the New Testa­ Eureka Street (August 1993). Ms m ent. Faithful Foulkes' criticisms adopted much the Catholics and sam e tone (and in some cases even the Orthodox h ave same language) as other complaints. always held this.' First cab off the rank had been A Soon after our New Vision for Woman Inc. in its document cam e journal 'Communications'. This was out, Pope John Paul, close! y fo llowed by Sister Elaine Wain­ addressing the wri ght, lecturer in Scripture at Ban yo American bishops, Seminary, writing in Brisbane's Cath­ made it perfectly olic Leader. WATAC (Women and clear that the issue the Australian Catholic Church) pro­ of women priests duced a six-page analysis of our docu­ was not an open ment which was sent to the Austral­ one. 'Respect for women's rights is Pamela Foull

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 7 treats behind the wall of authority, saves Riemer the inconvenience of refusing to deal with any of the argu­ Canonically actually engaging with those develop­ ments raised against her position. ments in detail or gaining som e un­ Bi shop Pell 's assertion that 'there speaking, again derstanding of Australian debates. is a scriptural basis for ordination to Hughes cari catures a pl ethora of the priesthood in the New Test

8 EUREKA STREET • S[I'TEMI\ER 1993 Sticlz with the One and the Many

I HAVE A CONFES~ON ro MAKE. 1/ I could womite the recognised that the shift to a republic cannot be achieved Australian constitution, I am not sure that I would want simply by crossing out the words 'queen' and 'governor­ to abolish the states or even strip them of much power. general' in the constitution and substituting the word I am far from sure that doing so would make Austral­ 'president'. The so-called minimalist position was put ians better off. This is notwithstanding the fact that I by those who did not want to burden their case with am a centrist who has taken pleasure at seeing one nation other issues of contention. As minimalism unravels, develop at the expense of state sovereignties, and the however, there comes the cry for a fundamental consti­ fact that I think a lot of things might be better organised tutional rewrite, including the abolition of the states. at a national rather than a state level. Even if a rationale could be invented for doing o, Britain is a unitary state with parliamentary sove­ there would be snags. State chauvinism is actually reignty: there are few limits to what a determined exec­ increasing, not decreasing. Does any New South Welsh­ utive with a parliamentary majority can do to interfere person imagine that a Queenslander could forget the with the lives of individuals. British judges are indepen­ state-of-origin match, or cease to be tantalised by the dent, but since there is no written constitution they have Sheffield Shield? Could any Northern Territorian no power to strike out laws enacted by Parliament. The suppress a natural detestation of Victorians? If Western Australian system has two restraints on executive gov­ Australians and Tasmanians did not have outsiders to ernment not present in Britain. Power is divided between hate and blame for all their mismanagements, would the Commonwealth and the states, and the judiciary not their very societies collapse? can strike out laws that constitutions do not authorise. Second is the imminent likelihood of the collapse The United States has a third layer of protection in of another base of state revenue. One of the long-running its Bill of Rights, which withholds some powers from problems of current federation is what the economists any level of government. It is curious that many Aus­ call vertical fiscal imbalance: the Cmmnonwealth raises tralians who yearn for a bill of rights also seek to abol­ far more money than it needs and the states far less than ish another protection against arbitrary government. they need, and the states must go to the Commonwealth If one were drawing up state boundaries today, one with a begging bowl. In every $10 of state revenue, $4 might draw them differently. And it is true that several comes from the Commonwealth; and, the states levels of government can produce inefficiency and a complain, it increasingly comes with strings duplication of services. Many state politicians, and not attached. a few of premiers, are a rum lot. In many spheres in which the states exercise primary responsibility-envi­ 0 NE REVENUE BASE the states have, however, has been ronmental protection, law and order, health, education with business franchise fees: disguised sales taxes over and welfare, for example-they have often failed in their things such as cigarettes, alcohol, petrol and, in the ACT responsibilities and the Commonwealth has had to fill at least, pornography. Such taxes now raise more than the gap. But would a single entity do any better? $6 billion a year-more than 10 per cent of total reve­ Would a national administration be more respon­ nue for most states. The legality of these taxes has al­ sive to community feeling? Would those given the extra ways been in doubt-the constitution explicitly forbids powers and discretions behave with more or less respect the imposition of state excise duties. In 1960 the High for individual and group rights and sensitivities? In a Court let through a contrived way around the ban and unitary state in which the overwhelming proportion of the states have gone to town with it ever since. But the people live in the south-east, would it pay politicians to signs are that the latest in a long line of challenges will be attentive to the needs of people who live in the north succeed: no member of the present High Court bench or the west? believes in the legal basis for such taxes. Getting rid of the states has been an article of faith The states will be in a pretty situation if they lose; among those on the left in Australian politics. But the it's off to the Commonwealth to beg for more money. parrot cries belong to an age where the existence of the The Conunonwealth could agree to collect the money states, and of the senate, was seen as a reactionary con­ for them, but in return for what? Only a referendum, of spiracy to frustrate goverrunent intervention in the econ­ the sort former Chief Justice Harry Gibbs now advo­ omy. Even those who still believe in the power of cates, could give the states the power-and that would government to achieve social change, however, recog­ probably also involve a quid pro quo deal with the Com­ nise that a more significant need today is the protection monwealth. of the individual from the all-encompassing state. It may If Paul Keating really wants to get rid of the states, seem a paradox that this is more likely to be gained from or at least to reduce them to complete financial subser­ more rather than fewer goverrunents, but there it is. vience, this could be his big opportunity. • This melancholy avowal of the need for federalism is prompted by two concerns. First, it now seems to be Jack Waterford is deputy editor of The Canberra Times.

VoLUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 9 THE N ATION

TERRY M ONACLE

States of mind Abolishing the states may be psychologically, and therefore politically, impossible. But Australia is moving towards a unified system of national government, whether or not it remains formally a federation.

L ADH.A

arrangements but are enmeshed in our cultural, social The debate and sporting lives: almost every organisation through Yet there has also been a reversal of the usual roles in which we express ourselves is patterned to match our Australian politics. Those on the right who want tore-

10 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 tain the states now use a democratic rhetoric, arguing which must adjudicate any dispute between the states that governm ent should be close to the people, and that and the Commonwealth over the interpretation of the central government would becom e too powerful if its constitution. The size of the Commonwealth's purse authority were not checked by the need to negotiate gives it a capacity to make the states conform to its will with the states. in specific areas. And it can bypass the states by direct­ Abolitionists cite the cost of maintaining three tiers, ly funding local governm ents and service providers. contend that complexity impedes efficien­ cy, and believe that the states are involved Other federations: Comparisons of imbalance between tiers of government in mischievous sabotage of national -Ratios of own source revenues to own source outlays (1986) objectives-especially in macroeconom­ 1.50 ic strategy. . Central Dstate 0 Local >- The debate pays too little attention ~ 1.25 to an unacknowledged fourth tier of gov­ ;:i 0 ernment. Overtly Australia has three tiers 8 1.00 of governm ent but, ironically, to make the Q) ;::l three work efficiently we have invented 5 0.75 :> a fourth. Ministerial councils, bringing ...Q) together federal and state health minis­ 0 0.50 ters or education ministers, for example, .g operate as an extra-constitutional tier. ~ 0.25 These councils make executive de­ cisions and are easily manipulated by gov­ 0.00 ernment officialsi but they are invisible Australia to the Australian people. The councils Source: table 1.2 irom the Report of Wqrking Party on Tdx Powers (1991) Canberra: have grown as an extra-constitutional de­ Commonwealth, State and Territory Treasmies. vice because of our reluctance to reform the pattern of governance. But this pragmatic solution The Commonwealth is able to use the external af­ in fact compounds our problems. fairs power granted to it by the constitution to legislate in areas once regarded as preserves of the states. And Strength of the states the fact that Australia is part of a global economy cre­ The battle between the states and the Commonwealth ates an expectation that the Commonwealth's leader­ has developed an unusual ferocity. What are the rela­ ship will prevail in most areas of national life. The tive political strengths of the tiers? The constitution Commonwealth has already won the agreement of the leaves to the states all functions not specifically allo­ states to the development of a 'national fiscal outlook', cated to the Commonwealthi and traditionally, of which in practice m eans that all governm ents will take course, the states make alliances with each other. part in one national budget process. But there is a belief that they are more powerful I believe that the abolition of the states is political­ than ever. They are now called'Australian ' govenunents, ly impossible, but that nonetheless we are moving rap­ and deal with the Commonwealth and the territories idly towards an effectively unified system of national through the 'Council of Australian Governments'- The government. The em erging model is that of head office name change effectively signifies that all the and branch officei but until the battle is fully resolved govenm1ents are entitled to be involved in decision-mak­ we can expect a tumultuous period in relations between ing on issues affecting the national political cmrununity. the tiers of government. There is an implicit claim that the legitimacy of state govenun ents does not come from a sovereignty conferred Debate immature by acts of the British Parliament, but by their service to The abolitionists have not provided working details of the Australian people. a two-tier system . It is assumed that local authorities Perhaps the calls for the abolition of the state tier could easily be expanded to forn1 a network of regional of government are getting louder because the states are govenm1ents, but what would we gain? If we had 12 or getting stronger. Although their new position accepts 20 regions instead of eight states and territories, wouldn't Commonwealth leadership, they also insist on being Canberra be even m ore powerful? The states are big consulted on all issues. There is a tacit acceptance that enough and coherent enough to offer a counterweight, the division of functions specified in the constitution but the regions might not be. And could it not be ar­ can be ignored. gued that those natural historical communities, the states, are already regional governments? Commonwealth advantage Regional governm ents of the kind advocated by ab­ The Commonwealth, however, retains significant ad­ olitionists could be even more parochial than the present vantages in its power struggle with the states. The Com­ state govermn ents, and easily dominated by one em­ monwealth makes appointments to the High Court, ployer or one industry. The Wollongong region might

V LUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 11 be run in the interests of BHP, and the North Queens­ survival enables the Commonwealth to dictate what land region could become a political battleground policies the states must pursue. between the sugar industry and the tourism industry. The states' financial position declined sharply If we had 20 regions, wouldn't we still have prob­ during the 1980s and continues to decline in the '90s. lems with artificial boundaries and the unequal distri­ Keating, believing that the states were slow to restruc­ bution of population and resources? Wouldn't there still ture, attempted to starve them into consuming their be constant bickering among the regional governments, own body fat. But the recession caused the states' inde­ and constant carping at Canberra? The problems are the pendent sources of income to dry up and forced them to same, though the players might be more cantankerous. borrow money at high interest rates. At the same time, the demand for their services increased markedly as the The problems recession hit more and more companies and more and There are, however, grave problems in our system of more people. government, which sabotage our economic efficiency. Several states, notably Victoria, South Australia and Reform is imperative. Western Australia, suddenly acquired massive extra In December last year the union for which I work, debts because of the failure of loosely supervised pub­ the State Public Services Federation, was contacted by lic-sector banks. These banks had become involved in an officer of the Department of Employment, Educa­ private-sector entrepreneurial activities that were scut­ tion and Training. His mission was to win our co-oper­ tled partly because the Commonwealth pursued a ation in the hiring into our industry of unemployed severely contractionary monetary policy. The states are people, with the help of subsidies from his department's heavily dependent on contractionary taxes such as pay labour-market programs. There were two con­ roll tax or stamp duty, which makes it difficult for them ditions: the new jobs must not replace any to raise the funds necessary to pay for public services­ The constitution existing jobs, and there must be a clause in especially during a recession. This poverty trap gives the award to govern the arrangement. To fund rise to such inequitable taxes as Kerm ett's poll tax and attempted to this and similar labour-market programs, the to increased charges for gas, electricity and water. Commonwealth was prepared to run a large separate the deficit. To us, this seemed absurd in circum­ Thrice is better functions of stances where the Kennett govermnent in Vic­ The third major problem in the present system is that toria was borrowing money to lay off 30,000 everything is done in triplicate. The constitution at­ federal and state workers, where awards were being abolished, tempted to separate the functions of federal and state and where reactionary new taxes, such as the governments, but the division it laid down has in prac­ governments, but poll tax, were being imposed. tice been discarded. Many areas of public policy are Here was the national government pump­ influenced by each tier of government: health, educa­ the division it laid priming the economy to relieve unemploy­ tion, roads, Aboriginal issues, water supply, public trans­ ment while the 'regional' government sought port, taxation, borrowings, industry development, down has in to undermine the same strategy. And both unemployment, conservation, power generation. And strategies were imposing extra public debt on the costs of doing business in Australia are compound­ practice been taxpayers. The two tiers of government were ed by the rules and regulations applied by each tier. The acting as though they were existing in differ­ same piece of money, for a single program, will often discarded ... The ent economies-yet when those 30,000 re­ pass through each tier of government. This means that trenched in Victoria eventually find its passage will be examined by three auditors-general same piece of themselves on the dole or on a pension, the and three agency auditors, that the state will employ burden will merely have been transferred from officials to monitor the use of the money by local money, for a single the state to the Commonwealth; from our right authorities, that the Conm1onwealth will employ offi­ to our left pocket. Australia should have only cials to monitor the state officials, and that they will all program, will often one economy, and one national budget. write submissions and reports to each other. pass through The states' poverty trap Prospects for abolition The second major problem with the present These problems explain the motivation of the abolition­ each tier of system is the progressive impoverishment of ists. But is abolition politically possible? Abolitionists government. the states. Existing methods of tax collection would need to convince a majority of people and a leave the states poor and the Commonwealth majority of states. What role will state politicians take comparatively rich, but the states continue to in a referendum that seeks to abolish them? One can be responsible for huge areas of community imagine them dusting off television footage of the last spending. emotional state-of-origin win for their 'no' campaign. The figures below establish that the states carry far Would Tasmanians, for example, vote to abolish heavier responsibilities for government activity than Tasmania and replace it by four regions, each with the their sources of income allow them to sustain. The same status as Sydney, Melbourne or the ACT? That states' dependence on the Commonwealth for financial can only be a rhetorical question. There might perhaps

12 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMJJER 1993 be four regions in South Australia, and the people in those regions might start to wonder whether they had At last, Fermat's the muscle to match it with Sydney, Melbourne or the ACT. And that perspective could persuade South Australians to vote 'no'. I believe that Tasmania, Western Australia and E RRE o~~;w :.~:~~~~cru p>

V OLU ME 3 NuMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 13 A chance to state your case

L SENATE ffi WQU>>UNG WTO the 'rights and obliga­ The right of access to the m edia by m embers of the tions of the media', and now is the time for those who public. have been smouldering to erupt. Take this chance to This notion is reminiscent of proposals by American chide or support, or to hint, demand or grizzle. legal scholars about 20 years ago for statutory 'access In a tepid report presented in March last year, the rights'. The argument went: the constitution guaran­ House of Representatives select committee into the print tees freedom of speech, but that can't be a freedom only media (the Lee inquiry) effectively accepted that high for those who own the media. Ownership has become levels of concentration of ownership are with us for the heavily concentrated, limiting access, so it would be long term. So much for the will of the legislature to consistent with the constitution if the Congress were tackle questions about the stJ1.zcture of Australia's media. to enact laws compelling the media to grant access to But what of that far more sensitive area, the content of competing viewpoints. otu newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV broad­ In Australia, the Cooney inquiry might ask wheth­ casts? The questions that arise here affect the great prin­ er Parliament should legislate to confer a right of reply ciple of freedom of the press. on a named individual who is the subject of media The media might have been expected to show con­ comment. Have you been criticised in print and then siderable interest in the announcement last June that struggled to get your defence published on the letters the Senate standing committee on legal and constitu­ page? What do you think of a statutory right of access? tional affairs, chaired by Victorian Labor Senator Barney Cooney, had decided to inquire into several 'content' Courts and tribunals and the media. issues. But, although the announcement itself was A puzzling term, particularly because the same Senate reported, there has been little published interest from committee is already inquiring into 'whether recent editorial writers and colwnnists. publicity surrounding judicial comment in sexual of­ Ordinarily, if an industry of comparable size and fence cases is a proper reflection of a failure to under­ influence were to be the subject of a Senate inquiry there stand gender issues by the judiciary. It invites discussion would be a rash of articles probing the reasons for the of the 'cameras in the courtroom' issue, the tension decision. So why the uncharacteristic quiet? Those who between 'open justice' and 'trial by media' and contempt have power in the media ought to hope that the public law generally. will seize the chance to analyse the performance of the media-especially since submissions made to a parlia­ Journalistic ethics and disciplinary processes for mentary committee attract absolute privilege against journalists. actions for defamation. The inquiry is a marvellous The Australian Journalists' Association section of the opportunity for market research among an audience that, Media Alliance has begw1 a review of its code of ethics surveys consistently show, has a low regard for the cred­ and of procedures for enforcing the code. The Press ibility of journalists. Eureka Street wishes to help ensure Council, despite criticism from both Kerry Packer (a pro­ that as many people as possible make submissions to prietor member) and the Lee inquiry, has so far resisted the Cooney inquiry. The terms of reference require the pressure for reform. All complainants to the council or committee to refer to: the AJA judiciary committees, whether satisfied or disappointed, should tell Senator Cooney of their expe- The right to privacy and the right to know. riences. Tension between these two values is common in jour­ The issue of self-regulation may be the core of this nalism (see Eureka Street, April and May 1993). But it inquiry. If the media cannot demonstrate that they are arises also in the context of defamation and freedom of accountable as well as powerful, the senators will be information. Is it time for a tort of invasion of privacy? tempted to recommend a statutory scheme, such as those that already exist for lawyers and doctors. The need for journalists to protect the identity of their Certainly, reforms such as better protection for sources sources of information. are unlikely unless journalists themselves develop More tension between journalists and the law (Eureka better, and more open, procedures for self-regulation. Street, June-July). The Western Australian Law Reform Commission has recommended statutory reform to Any other matters relevant to the question of journal­ ensure that judges exercising their discretion to excuse istic ethics and standards and the quality of reporting. a witness from answering a question should consider A catch-all clause, so speak now or forever hold your 'the public interest in the preservation of confidences peace. • between persons in the relative positions of the confi­ dant and the witness'. According to the commission, Paul Chadwick is Victorian co-ordinator of the when making their decision judges should take account Communications Law Centre. 'of the ethical, moral or religious dictates of those pro­ fessions or vocations which unequivocally demand non­ • Submissions can be sent to: The secretary, Senate disclosure'. Do you trust journalists sufficiently to grant standing committee on legal and constitutional affairs, them such a partial privilege? Tell Senator Cooney. Parliament House, Canberra, ACT 2600

14 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 THE NATION

PHILIP PETTIT

The ideal of the republic The call for an Australian republic not only provides an occasion for discussing constitutional change, it provides an occasion to ask what it means to be a citizen.

L,CCASS>CM RoMANS ruce Eightly and nwly un•n• that the republic not only requires a rule of law, it also imously acknowledged as the first republicans: as the requires an order of checks and balances. Where there is first people to think out the principles of republicanism a rule of law, there is no one who stands above the law. and as the first people to organise their polity about those Where there is an order of checks and balances, the principles. If we are to understand what the notion of authorities who hold power under the law are institu­ the republic involves then we must make a connection tionally constrained so that they cannot easily abuse with that Roman tradition, and in particular with the their position. They hold office for short periods, they work of the greatest theorist of the tradition: Cicero. are subject to public selection, scrutiny and accounta­ The Roman republican tradition is not isolated from bility, they are forced to share power with parties who us in time; it is not something alien and antiquarian, may be of a different mind, and they are liable to like the priestly practices of ancient Babylon. For when impeaclunent for any failures of duty. Involved also in the founder and theorists and critics of the first mod­ this second theme is em states sought out principles for the right ordering of the familiar, repub- .------~--­ their polities, they drew in good part on that tradition. lican emphasis on Roman republicanism was as important as Roman law the need for demo­ in the formation of the political culture that began to cratic debate: a fonn emerge in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and of deliberative de­ which culminated in the American and French revolu­ bate in which differ­ tions. So at least I shall assume, following an influen­ ences of interest are tial group of historians. thrashed out by So what are the themes that characterise republi­ those who represent canism? Three apparently distinct themes stand out. them, as the collec­ The most salient, at least since the French Revolution, tive decision-mak­ is the anti-monarchical motif: the idea that a republic is ing body seeks to a state without hereditary rulers, in particular a state detemune what is in without royalty. But this idea is perhaps nothing more the common good. than an expression of the deeper idea that republics are The third and meant to be governed by laws, as it used to be put, and last theme that not by individuals: that they require the rule of law, in stands out in the which there is no room for the caprice of the autocrat. It weave of republican would have been natural for republicans at many periods, ideas is that not only and in particular for republicans in 18th century France, does the republic to think that monarchy must go, since they would have require a rule of law, and an order of checks and balanc­ seen monarchy as inconsistent with the rule of law. es, it also needs a regime of virtue. Republics need citi­ The notion of the rule of law goes back explicitly zens who can be relied on to take a part in public life, to to Roman somces, though many legal commentators stand for public office, and to do their very best in exe­ speak as if it were a byproduct of English common law. cution of any official duties that are allotted to them. A second theme that is associated with republicanism They need people who are free from the lethargy that also has explicit Roman antecedents. This is the idea disables the masses, and the ambition that diverts the

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 15 few. They need people who can stand against the tide of ferent complexion when we think of freedom as corruption which is always ready to wash over the af­ the sort of social and political and legal status fairs of state. Such civic virtue involves reliable benefi­ which provides a due security against inter­ cence on people's part- their beneficence must not be ference. just a fact predictable in current circumstances-but it docs not require a pure, uncoerced love of the good. The IFPEOPLE ARE TO BE FREE in this richer sense, then they general, republican supposition is that virtue will only must not be at the mercy of an autocrat who stands be maintained by an arrangement in which checks and above the law; they must have the fortune to live under balances make virtue the best policy and in which the a rule of law which gives them each the best that can be attitudes of the populace make it necessary for the offered by way of protection. If people are to be free in enjoyment of regard or honour. this sense, then again they must not be at the mercy of Why a rule of law? Why an order of checks and any individuals or groups which can abuse a position balances? Why a regime of virtue? What attained tmder the law to serve their own particular ends; unifies the republican web of ideas? My sug­ they must enjoy the fntits of an arrangement where those Perhaps the most gestion is: a distinctive, republican notion in power are subject to an order of check and balance. of liberty or freedom . The Roman republi­ And, finally, if people are to be free in this republican important bequest of cans contrasted the liber, or free person, sense, then it is clear that they must be able to rely on with the servus, or slave. To be free meant fair treatment at the hands of their fellow citizens, republicanism is this not having to have to live at the mercy of especially when those citizens occupy official roles; they another, even another who might be well must be able to benefit from the security associated with notion of personal disposed towards you: it was to be at the a regime of virtue: a regime of reliable beneficence. other end of the spectrum from slavery. Republicanism is rightly praised for the legacy of freedom as Thus the servus sine domino, the slave thinking which it has given us on the proper shape of without a master, did not count as free. The law, on the most effective checks and balances to impose citizenship in a free slave without a master might succeed in on public officials, and on the role of civic virtue in sus­ enjoying a high degree of non-interference taining political life. But perhaps the most important or well-ordered from others, whether through good luck or bequest of republicanism is this distinctively social society. One good native cunning. But freedom required more notion of personal freedom, this notion of personal free- than a fortuitous absence of interference; it PEOPLE Of AUSiQAL.\A - OOVOU WANi TO eE. required being secured, and manifestly se­ ~ TO {ft.()~ I~ IU.AI.. FR£E.POM, ~1'41> term for such a EX6RC.I~ iW£. VIR1UE.~ 0~ 'fiE. C.l TIZEN OF cured, against interference. It required be­ /4 ~f.P\J6UC.- OR DO 'iOIJ \".~AMi 't'O CoNiiNIJE i O SUFF&P. ~~ 161'(0"'\11'4'{ Of: /11. '~VI \. €. social concept of ing incorporated within a protective law and Su61E(.1' IN ~.... ONARC.~ V ? empowered, equally with the best, against ~:;- ) any interference that others might attempt. freedom might be Wl-40 G>E1'S Such freedom was clearly not enjoyed by I"\OIZ.E. 1-\0l.. \ ~'{S ? 'franchise'­ the slave without a master but only by the __... I full civis, or citizen. Civitas, as the franchise in the old commentators tell us, was cotern1inous with libertas in this republican sense in which the way of thinking. · ~ franchise of a W CAN SEE WHY republicans emphasise a rule of law, an order of checks and bal­ community involves ance, and a regime of virtue, once we real­ ,,,~ . ~ !;JJ ise that their main concern is the promotion 1'\o ~ a much richer array of freedom in this social sense. The usual, dom as citizenship in a free or well-ordered society. One liberal way of thinking about freedom-es­ good term for such a social concept of freedom might be of powers than the sentially Hobbesian in origin - is as the ab­ 'franchise'-franchise in the old sense in which the sence of interference, without any need for franchise of a community involves a much richer array right to vote. security in this absence. If we think of free­ of powers than the right to vote. Another, which John dom in this way, then any connections with Braithwaite and I have used elsewhere, is 'dominion': the republican themes will look artificial dominion in the sense of the power of an individual to and contingent. Any rule of law, and any order of check control a certain sphere of his or her life, without having and balance, will be themselves an invasion of liberty, to fear or defer to others. as 19th century liberals recognised, even if those inva­ The republican ideal of promoting franchise offers sions do more good than harm. And any regime of vir­ a nice perspective on what our polity and society should tue-any regime of reliable beneficence as distinct from be doing for its members. First, it is an ideal that ought beneficence predictable in the circumstances-will be to attract people on the same, neutralist basis that makes surplus to the needs of liberty. But things take on a dif- the liberal notion of liberty attractive to so many. After

16 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 all, franchise or dominion is something that everyone in a pluralist society is going to need, no matter what FROM ALL their conception of the way they want to carry on in CORNERS their lives. And, besides, it is something that should be SIX MIGRANT deeply attractive to almost any psychology, represent­ STORIES ing an ideal of personal independence in which fear and Anne Henderson deference are minimised. The stories of Rita, But, second, the republican ideal fits better than Lily, Judy, Lilah, the liberal alternative with standard intuitions about Nhung and Phi-all po sibilities of fruitful state intervention in social life. of whom came to Left-liberals honour those intuitions by postulating that Australia as single some other value besides their notion of liberty is crucial women. $17.95 pb to the goals of the state: say, the relief of poverty, or the promotion of equality. Republicans have no need to invoke further values, for the ideal of promoting DREAM ROAD franchise or dominion alrea dy requires an intuitively A JOURNEY OF plausible range of state activity: it offers the prospect of DISCOVERY Dream RoM a more or less left-wing agenda, legitimated on grounds Percy Trezise to which even those on the right must feel This beautifully illustrated book is the some allegiance. first definitive work on the Quinkin art body­ N OT ONLY wouLD the republican ideal support the one of the largest and protection of the populace, the regulation of officials, most spectacular and the mobilisation of the citizenry, as in the received groups of Aboriginal tradition. It would direct us also towards the possibility rock paintings in the P ERCY T REZISil of empowering those whose franchise we want to pro· world. $34.95 hb mote: empowering them, for example, in areas of social security, medical provision, legal aid, access to infor­ ALLEN & UNWIN mation, educational opportunity and gender and eth­ nic equality. If people are not empowered in such areas, then it is going to be nigh impossible for them to be secure in the enjoym ent of non-interference, by the measure of security that will prevail among more priv­ MANNING CLARK'S ileged m embers of the community. They will be vulnerable to exploitation, manipulation, and coercion HISTORY in a way that is inconsistent with the ideal of a society that maximises the franchise or dominion of its citizens. OF The crucial contrast between the liberal and the AUSTRALIA republican ideals of liberty emerges in the different atti­ tudes they engender towards a life in which some peo­ ple are vulnerable to others, because of their lack of Abridged by power, but happen to enjoy non-interference and even Michael Cathcart decent treatment at the hands of those others. The liberal mu t think that such people enjoy perfect liberty, since they are not actually interfered with. The republican This extraordinary abridgement re-orchestrates cannot agree, since he will see them as suffering a rele­ Manning Clark's six-volume classic to create an vant insecurity in their non-interference: they will be exciting narrative history that retains the insecure, so far as the more powerful could interfere in their lives with relative impunity, even if they choose passion and magnificence of the original. A not to do so. The republican sees issues of freedom as superb, seamless achievement which will inevitably tied up with issues of power, where the inspire and challenge Australians for decades. devotee of freedom in the liberal sense tries to isolate these questions from one another. • RRP $39.95 Hardcover 588 pp Now available at all bookshops Philip Pettit is professor of social and political theory at Published by the Australian National University. He is the author of The Common Mind (OUP 1993), and co-author with Melbourne University Press John Braithwaite of Not Ju st Deserts: A Republican with the assistance of the Graphic Arts Theory of Criminalfustice (OUP 1991 ). Merchants' Associa tion of Australia

VOLUME 3 NUMilER 7 • EUREKA STREET 17 THE N ATION: 3

M ARGARET SIMONS Theye

L MT DeceM'" thePcime Mini,. ter, Paul Kea ting, launched the Inter­ national Year of Indigenous People with one of the most powerful speech­ es ever made by a national leader on the need for reconciliation with native people. Keating's speech was the first by an Australian government represent­ ative in which the injustices of the past 200 years were explicitly acknow1 - edged. 'We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases, the alco­ hol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their m others ... ' and so on through the now famous cadences. Keating said it was unthinkable that, in this year, we should fa il the test of offering black Australians dig­ nity, hope and opportunity. 'This is a fundamental test of our social goals, and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and to the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy, that we are what we should be-truly the land of the fair go and the better chance.' Ten months later, the Internation­ al Year of Indigenous People is almost over. There have been conferences, art shows and grants. But it is not these events which have shaped the year. Although the hysteria over the Mabo decision means that black issues have a higher profile than ever before, Abo­ riginal leaders have mixed feelings about what has actually been achieved. Keating's speech to launch the year was splashed all over the local media, and also received international cover­ age. Messages of congratulation were received from all over the world. But even though the rhetoric sounds bet­ ter than it has ever done before, there is still a gap between it and reality. Other, less publicised speeches are likely to make the international Mr Fogarty, of Cherbourg Mission Station, father of Aboriginal activist Lionel community m ore cautious in its Fogarty. When photographer Emmanuel Santos admired the freshly painted congratulations. weathboard faca des of houses at Cherbourg, he was told 'we are not even allowed Mick Dodson, a highly regarded to choose the kind of colour we could paint our own house with. ' leader among Aborigines who was for­ merly director of the Northern Land

18 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 ar of living expectantly

Council, was this year made a social mising, and looking for the best deal ty wants to go. There is a very strong justice commissioner with the Human they can get from Australian politi­ undercurrent of Aboriginal opinion Rights Commission, with special cians, or should they pursue recogni­ that we want to mn our own lives, but responsibilities to look at the rights of tion in international fomms as an so far there is no clear view of how the indigenous Australians. independent, sovereign people? community wants to achieve that.' In July, he went to Geneva to ad­ dress the United Nations working Below, four Aboriginal leaders give Ian Delaney, ATSlC commissioner group on indigenous populations. He their views about what, if anything, and head of the International Year of spoke about the Northem Territory's has been achieved in the Internation­ Indigenous People committee: recently passed legislation to legiti­ al Year of Indigenous People, and what 'The single greatest thing in terms of mise mineral leases on Gudanji land remains to be achieved. raising awareness was the Prime Min­ at McArthur River. According to Dod­ ister's Redfern speech launching the son, this legislation infringed article Michael Mansell, head of the A borig­ year. It was an excellent speech. For two of the international covenant on inal provisional government: the leader of any country to speak that civil and political rights, in which the 'Nothing special has been achieved strongly on an issue of this sort is signatories undertake to treat citizens this year. There was a conference for significant. equally, without regard to race. Aboriginal youth, that was about it. 'Apart from that, a great deal has Dodson said the Territory's legis­ The main event this year has been been achieved. One of the best things lation effectively eliminated the Gu­ Mabo, and the public hate campaign was the conference of youth in Dar­ danji people's right to hold any form of that has it triggered off. win in July. enduring title. It made their ability to 'If white Australians were against 'In the future the priority still has own land less than that of non-Aborig­ Aboriginal people, then that campaign to be to raise awareness. Prejudice inal Australians. 'The impact of the has hardened their attitudes. Whether against Aboriginal people is largely a grant by the Northern Territory Act there has been a change in the overall matter of ignorance. We need to get falls uniquely on Aboriginal native numbers of anti-Aboriginal Austral­ the two peoples mixing more togeth­ title holders, 'he said. Dodson lament­ ians is hard to say. er, and white Australians need to be­ ed the fact that his powers as a Human 'What should have been achieved come more aware of our culture and Rights Commissioner did not extend this year, and what needs to be done, our plight.' to reviewing state legislation for is a thorough discussion about the breaches of Australia's international political relationship between Abo­ Marcia Langton, research officer for obligations, and he appealed to the rigines and Australia. Until that hap­ the Cape York Land Council: federal government to exercise 'its pens, and people are exposed to and 'Awareness has been raised because of clear constitutional power' to make discuss the issues concerned, we will Mabo, but also because of that, atti­ this a possibility. continue to be involved in one ad hoc tudes to Aboriginal people have plum­ InaclimateofhysteriaaboutMabo, campaign after another. meted, and the tendency to racism in Australia, far from righting past wrongs 'As I see it there are three options. Australia has been whipped up. At the in the Year of Indigenous Peoples, is Firstly, Aboriginal people can be en­ moment I think Australians have been still passing legislation that discrimi­ tirely part of Australia, and continue polarised and there doesn't seem to be nates on the grounds of race. to campaign, as they have done for 200 much of a good basis for reconcilia­ Meanwhile, Aborigines them­ years now, as a minority group with tion or any negotiated settlement. selves are divided over fundamental special interests. 'In spite of that gloomy outlook, questions: does the future lie in recon­ 'Secondly, they could be part of you would have to say that we are in a ciliation with white Australia, or is Australia, but with more independ­ better position now than we were be­ that selling out? There are tensions ence, and a right to self-government. fore 1992, because our rights have between government-funded organi­ They would have complete power to been asserted by the High Court. I sations like the Aboriginal and Torres look after their own affairs, similar to think Keating has been doing his best, Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) the powers of a local government, but but the opposition to his views is and those who believe Aborigines not have any foreign relations powers. enormous. He has all the states against should retain a voice independent of 'The third option is for a separate him. They won't even sit down and government, and between the tradi­ Aboriginal government to run on all talk about it. tional Aboriginal landholders who of the Crown land areas, and raise its 'The problem is they want to deny may benefit from Mabo and those own resources and be entirely inde­ Aboriginal people any rights to the who live in cities and have little to pendent of Australia. I don't know sub-surface of the land. The risk is gain. Should Aborigines be compro- which way the Aboriginal communi- that the lowest common denomina-

VoLUME 3 NuMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 19 T HE N ATION: 4

JACK W ATERFORD tor will rule, and many Aboriginal people will end up with fewer rights than they have now. 'The way ahead is hard to see. The Tallzing terms simple fact is there can't be any recon­ ciliation process until the Mabo issue I would lil

20 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 ple who disagree with that. Some say the debate should be motivated only cultures either as a competition for that it is for Aborigines themselves to by a sincere desire to advance Aborig­ supremacy in which there can only be decidewhattheproblemsareand what inal interests. Even by my good man­ one witmer, yet the kinds of argument should be done. Yet the public is in­ ners test, there is nothing wrong with that I'm referring to sometimes are AuABMstsalLm Bmines~ M o- nth.l ~ volved because public money andre­ anyone joining in to defend their own presented this way. Take the phrase sources are involved, and all citizens interests. It does not follow from that, 'Stone Age', for example. It is true that have an interest in ensuring that they however, that their contribution must pre-contact Aborigines did have a BLACK are well used. focus on demeaning or belittling Abo­ Stone Age culture, but people who Other people resist the idea of an rigines. wince when they hear the phrase do so open debate because they fear it would It has been argued that the Mabo not because it refers to a level of mate­ POWER stir up a deeply ingrained racism in issue is the perfect opportunity for rial culture or social organisation, but Australia. There is a very elitist no­ redressing all the wrongs that have because they take it to imply that tion at the root of such fears: those been done to Aborigines. I do not those who come from such a culture who hold them do not trust the good believe that Mabo has any great capac­ have some diminished cranial capac­ sense of the population at large, or do ity to upset settled legal relations be­ ity. I do not accuse the four men I have Mabo points the not believe that we live in a society tween citizens, or to create uncertain­ mentioned of holding that view, but I bone at business where arguments are won on their ties about the ownership of private think such an implication actually merits. property. Clearly, the High Court re­ was contained in the words which It is not as if Australia lacks a jected the idea that the overwhelming Henry Bosch used in referring to Abo­ How some Australians tradition of vigorous debate that could majority of Aboriginal Australians had riginal people. insist on seeing the incorporate a discussion of Aboriginal any continuing claim, based on law, I think that any attempt to demean debate: Australian affairs. But some things fall outside to land. Aboriginal spirituality is doomed to Business Monthly's cover the limits, and the two gravest sins are Paul Keating showed no interest be counter-produ ctive, not least for August 1993. fairly clear. The first involves ascrib­ in Aboriginal affairs until he became because it will be seen as an attack on ing inferior status to groups of people Prime Minister. He now wants, how­ one of the few assets that Aborigines on the basis of some secondary char­ ever, to make a personal mark on have. When Aborigines spiritual val­ acteristic such as race. Racism is out, Australian history-to be seen as ues are posited to conflict with ome­ and I think most people agree about statesmanlike, to harness some com ­ thing like mining development, the this, even if they cannot quite agree on mon ideals that fit in with his under­ automatic support that the Aborigi­ what is or is not racist. standing of our nationhood. But the nal claim will get in ome quarters The second sin arises in connec­ nature of Australian politics is not does not necessarily flow from nature tion with one's attitude to cultures such that change occurs once a Prime worship, or some kind of cultural rel­ other than one's own. Holding an op­ Minister becomes morally convinced ativism . It sometimes comes from a timistic view of each person's poten­ that it is necessary. Change has to be condition of our own society-a feel­ tial does not mean that one has to sold, which means there has to be a ing of yearning and spiritual empti­ accept as worthy or reasonable every­ debate-but Keating has resented any ness that, for one reason or another, thing that they may think or believe. suggestion of a debate, and attacked our society fails to satisfy. And it certainly does not mean that anyone who has put their head up. I think that all Australian citizens one has to accept that things can only The Tim Fischers, Marshall Perrons, have a right to aspire to enjoy the be judgedfrom within their own lights. Richard Courts and Hugh Morgans­ goods and services, material and spir­ Ideas are fair gam e, but there is a even the Henry Boschs--of the world itual, that this society is capable of difference between attacking the idea can look after themselves, but Keat­ producing. And the state has a role to and attacking the sense of self-worth ing has also attacked ordinary ci tizcns play in ensuring that those who are of the person who, however foolishly, who have expressed concern or alarm. disadvantaged can compete on fair believes in the idea. The moral obliga­ I mention Tim Fischer, Marshall terms. But the state cannot liberate tion to respect other people often sim ­ Perron, Richard Court and Hugh Mor­ Aborigines. They can only do that for ply comes down to good ma1mers. gan because I also believe that many of themselves. A lot of well-meaning Wehaveallhadourfun with polit­ their contributions have been unhelp­ sympathy has in fact helped many ical correctness, but it would be silly ful to a real debate on directions in Aborigines to think of themselves sim­ to be too intolerant about it. It was Aboriginal affairs. First, because they ply as passive victims of oppression. It once enough to destroy enemies by often posit an Aunt Sally to attack­ is right for the media to point out the calling them witches, and we have the idea that mostAboriginesarepush­ systematic disadvantages suffered by lived through times when it was al­ ing for separatism or sovereignty, or Aborigines, but it is frankly racist to most enough to destroy them by call­ that granting Aboriginal demands will deny that Aborigines are themselves ing them Bolsheviks. That the com­ undermine our own civilisation. Al­ actors in their own history. • monplace ignorances or stupidities of lied with this seems to be an assump­ a generation ago are no longer regard­ tion that the moral claim which Abo­ Jack Waterford is deputy editor of The ed as acceptable is not a bad thing. rigines make is based upon history, Canberra Times and Eurel

V oLUME 3 NuMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 21 E SSAY

Row AN CAL LI C K

Notes of difference

We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet ... We were tra velling in the night of first ages .. -Joseph Conrad, H EART OF DARKNESS

Primitives are our untamed selves ... are mystics ... are fme. The primitive does what we ask it to do. -Marianna Torgovnick, GoNE PR.LMITrvE

O N THE TMCE, STA"NG AT ME AS I TYeE, is a wooden demonstrate how tribal people have marvellous ecolog­ statue from the Upper Sepik, of a man with a cormo­ ical manners (though one wonders, in unmannerly rant's head standing plaintively on a carved rock. He is m oments, just where the moa went). mirrored in a luminous Chagall print on the wall above, A world apart from the relentless Suzuki, at the in which animals and people are linked in lively dance. quietist end of academe-so quiet he even resiles from Hints, in a suburban home, of things beyond. The search recommending his own books to his students-is the for the Other is a compulsion felt powerfully by many distinguished art historian, sinologist and novelist Pierre people. They m ay go on to seek new worlds- imagina­ Ryckmans (aka Simon LeysL professor at Sydney tively, as in science fiction; physically, through travel University, who first visited China as an 18-year-old (perhaps with a touch of the Indiana Joneses); through Belgian student. His wife, Hanfang, is from Taiwan. His changing their way of life; or through meditation. 'Other' is Chinese, not tribal; but he speaks as eloquently Or they may flirt with a new design paradigm to of his journey as of its goal. set off-nicely, as Barry Humphries would say-the Year He says, 'An encounter with China is the ultimate of Indigenous People. In August, the Home supplement questioning of all you, as a European, know. China is to Th e Age featured 'Tribal Instincts', the 'best trend of the other, the one who helps you realise who you are.' 1993', described by a 'leading style futurologist' as 'urban Psychologists, Ryckmans notes, observe how young primitive', complete with designer hurricane lamps, children do not know how to use the first-person pro­ unbleached cottons and rough weaves. 'The ecological noun. Instead they use the words 'he' or 'she', or their movem ent has increased the influence of indigenous names, when talking about themselves. Only after culture/ declares the futurologist. And so it has, of addressing the 'you' does the child notice the 'I'. course. David Suzuki, that Savonarola among environ­ Chinese culture-alive, independent, elaborate and m entalists, has co-written Th e Wisdom of the Elders to complete-is 'the other pole of human experience',

22 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 Ryckmans says. A keen sailor, he cites a story by G.K. the alternate space of the primitive-that last, desper­ An Arnhem Land Chesterton: a yachtsman, lost at sea, who is washed up ate, remaining, endangered model for alternative social didgeridoo player on his native shore but, believing he is in a foreign coun­ organisations ... In the person of the primitives, we air performing the bird try, finds everything new, strange, marvellous. 'You fears and hopes for ourselves-caught on a rollercoaster dance at the Laura reach the point you started from, and see it complete of change that we like to believe can be stopped, safely, Festival, Cape York. with other eyes.' at will ... ' The weel

V O LUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 23 its fashions in sympathies as well as in clothes and or been driven out. In our region, there have been count­ music. In the 18th century, it became fashionable in less m ovem ents of peoples, with the Polynesian Europe to look on the Pacific islands as a paradise (a migrations to Hawaii and New Zealand (now called by word with which the region has been cursed ever since, some Maoris 'the land of the wrong white crowd') per­ as if it were wholly inhabited by mythical beings or tour­ haps the most dramatic. The Tongans created vassal, ists), free of the constraints of 'society'. slave states on islands far from the centre of their mili­ A century ago, only the fittest were presumed to tary empire. Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, proud Fijian and survive, and the indigenous people of settler nations in Prime Minister for 20 years, is also a cousin of the Australasia and North America seemed doomed to ex­ Tongan royal family. A former prime minister of PNG, tinction. Salvation was available only through assimi­ Rabbie Namaliu, is a member of the Tolai tribe which lation. In the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma stands invaded the area around Rabaul not much more than James Earle Fraser's six-metre high statue, The End of 100 years ago, driving the then inhabitants, the the Trail. Crea ted in 1915, it portrays a native Ameri­ Bainings, up into the hills. Who there is can on horseback, with rider and horse equally drained 'indigenous'? of hope and energy, if not of dignity. The end of this trail, the viewer might be led to feel, was also the end of I AM AN INDIGENOUS ENGLISHMAN, a migrant to Austral­ an era, that of the 'noble savage'. ia. As far as I am aware, my ancestors have lived in Eng­ At the other end of the world, Trollope wrote of land for many hundreds of years. Yet in those Robin the Maori after a visit to New Zealand: 'There is scope Hood legends recently reborn in film, great play was for poetry in their past history. There is room for made about the difference between the Anglo-Saxons philanthropy as to their present condition. But in regard (indigenous goodies) and the Normans (invaders, so bad­ to their future-there is hardly a place for hope.' The dies). At what point did the Norman element of English Australian HandbooK. of 1888 states that in 'settled culture cease to be oppressive and invasive? I confess to parts' Aborigines are now 'few and inoffensive and are finding it hard to work up much excitement on the issue. fast passing away.' There is an element of racism, of guilt-ridden rac­ In fact, at least in numerical terms, they have not ism, in the Western perspective on indigenism common­ only survived but fl ourished. And there are some today, ly encountered in academe and the m edia. This in both indigenous and Western communities, who perspective is formed by a dominant culture in which would invert the old white racist hierarchy of cultures, discrimination, in any sense, is viewed as wrong. The exalting tribal values and thereby creating a new indigenous person in such a construct is almost inevi­ notional hierarchy of land and of blood- themes tably a victim. In Vancouver recently, at the spectacu­ A tribal culture of the right now adopted by the postmodern lar Museum of Anthropology, I came across a 'cultural vestiges of the left. amnesty' box, a sin bin, in which visitors expiate their and spirituality Almost as we cherish notions of childhood racial guilt by depositing items such as red plastic mod­ innocence, we yearn with Rousseau for the in­ el warriors, fluorescent cowboy and Indian key-rings, cannot extend tegrity of the noble savage. And, informed dim­ and Edmonton Eskimos football team bumper stickers. ly by the covers of books by Malinowski and Oddly, though, it was only after contact with the beyond the Mead, we are excited by the apparent sexual West had diminished warfare between tribes, and had openness of folk societies (though a Papua New provided the technology that increased both leisure time tribe. In most Guinean friend from the Trobriand Islands once and the intricacy of carvings that could now be fash­ described the genesis of Malinowski's The Sex­ ioned- that many indigenous cultures reached their such societies, ual Life of Savages this way: quickly aware that highest achievements. This was certainly the case for the anthropologist was especially eager to de­ the Maori, and the native people of north-west Ameri­ the word for scribe exual behaviour, as good hosts they ca. And today, new technologies are capable of hugely obliged him with the sort of stories he liked). enhancing tribal lives. Who would see a water pump as 'people' is that Hearts leaped as we read recently of a 'lost an unaesthetic intrusion in the lives of those countless tribe' in Papua New Guinea. Could these peo­ Papua N ew Guinean women who continue to rise at for the tribe. ple somehow be kept pure, free of materialist four, walk a couple of kilometres to a creek, carry water Outsiders are Western taint, the letter-writers to newspapers in a bowl on their heads, light a fire and cook break­ asked rhetorically (and perhaps unconsciously fast- all before daylight? not human asked of themselves) . The truth- that these But if new technology has improved lives, what of people were mere victims of the national dis­ new values, religions? Has Christianity, for instance, beings in the grace of the erosion of services in rural areas, not inevitably arrived in European clothes? If so, what forced to return reluctantly to a raw, nomadic can be done about it? Change the clothes? Change the same manner. life-was of considerably less interest to the new gospel? The message of the Christian gospel for this Year Western sensibility. of Indigenous People, is the message for those who have Cultures have never been static, or 'pure'. Few suffered all kinds of loss due to the greed of others: theirs native peoples are homogeneous. Most have constantly is the kingdom of God. But this does not mean their intem1arried with neighbours, invaded rivals' territory, cultures are per se divine. In the midl970s I attended a

24 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 conference, nm by a British Anglican organisation, about ple' is that for the tribe. Outsiders are not human be­ the cultural revolution in China. Such was Mao's ings in the same manner at all. Strangers can never share achievement in persuading the Chinese to live by sheer in a dreaming that is linked intimately with the land, altmism, we were told, that the gospel was now super­ the 'second skin'. Tribal religions, common­ fluous. ly animistic, assume a mechanistic, mostly Those who believe it There are some who would take a sirnilar sancti­ hostile universe in which guilt or shame can monious attitude towards indigenous cultures today. prove fatal. Death, sickness or special suc­ is possible to Something of this awe of indigenous people's spiritual­ cess must be attributed to ritual manipula­ ity, perversely common among those who are otherwise tions. Only recently, a man was burned to reconstruct an profound sceptics, emerged during the Coronation Hill death in Fiji because angry villagers accused debate. Bob Hawke famously told a Catholic girls' school him of sorcery. Arcadian age of in Sydney, immediately after announcing that mining The significant elements that indige­ was to be banned because of the Jawoyn people's belief nous people have to teach, are not in 'world indigenous life are that the site was inhabited by the spirit Bula, that such music' or fabrics, or attitudes to the environ­ beliefs were equivalent to Christian belief in the Trinity. ment, but in such unfashionable areas as their deluded or A World Council of Churches congress that I sense of the reality of the spiritual world; their attended in Canberra a couple of years ago focused heav­ respect for their elders, which grows with age mischievous. The ily on indigenous beliefs. Its opening liturgy began: 'With rather than diminishes; and their self-sacri­ region's indigenous grateful hearts we gather as the churches in this meet­ fice on behalf of their extended fa milies. ing place of an ancient people. God was with them before Georg Lukacs described the condition of people deserve a we came'. This echoed the theme of a painting I saw in the modern Western mind as 'transcenden­ a Solomon Islands church-Christ standing on the shore tal homelessness'-in which Westerners bigger role, but in a with the islanders, welcoming the first missionaries as yearn for tribal 'homes' and harmony. Rob­ they landed. ert Edgerton, professor of psychology and an­ future that lies in But despite the exotic attraction for Westerners, thropology at the University of California Los which perhaps reached its zenith in the SBS TV series Angeles, spoils this party of complementari­ competing and Millennium, tribal life has never been a Shangri-La. ty, however. In his implacably unfashionable Cannibalism and infanticide were widespread in the new book, Sick Societies: Challenging the communicating more South Pacific region. The wives of Fijian chiefs once Myth of Primitive Harmony, he cudgels the wore around their necks the cords with which they cultural relativists, who contend that cultures effectively in a wider would be strangled once their husbands died. George can only be evaluated on their own terms, An1bo, an Anglican bishop in Papua New Guinea whose and for whom a person from a different cul­ world, not in life has spanned the conversion of his tribe from ture must remain for ever Other, exotic and­ animism, says: 'The worst enemy of my people is fear.' as distinct from Ryckmans' China, or even retreating from it. And Christianity, he says, helped keep fear at bay: fear my own Papua New Guinea-unapproach­ of sorcery, of enemy attack, of early death by disease. able. The Maori hunted the moa to extinction. Many Edgerton writes, 'We know that dmg use, gang vio­ species of marsupial suffered similar fates in Australia. lence, child abuse, poor prenatal health care, rage and People have been limited, in their impact on the envi­ hopelessness are not good for the impoverished and ronment, chiefly by the teclmology available to them. embattled people of our inner cities. Why should cul­ In the past, near mortal blows have been stmck to tural relativism prevent us from evaluating the feuding, indigenous peoples, by measles, by intermarriage, by wife battering, inadequate diets and inefficient medical military assaults and by a new materialism. Yet the knowledge of many folk societies? ' greatest challenges have been wrought by ideas, by an Such enervating if honest considerations appear awareness of a world wider than the hern1etic native remote from the exotic worlds of Indiana Jones and of universe, rendering redundant the mechanics designer tribalism-and of Comad, who filled his Kurtz, of sorcery. a hollow man, with his version of the primitive as the bmtish, yet potentially the sacred. But the tramlines of L osE WHO BELIEVE it is possible to reconstmct an 'safe' intellectual debate in Australia have largely Arcadian age of indigenous life are deluded or mischie­ prevented the clear-eyed exploration, even-perhaps vous. The region's indigenous people deserve a bigger especially-in this Year of Indigenous People, of either role, but in a future that lies in competing and commu­ the inflated and distorted expectations that many West­ nicating more effectively in a wider world, not in erners have of folk societies, or the often harsh realities retreating from it. Stephen Hawke, intriguingly echoing of tribal lives today. Tribal people and westerners remain his father, has written: 'I believe that not only the spir­ yoked in a pact of mystification and exploitation. • itual heart of Australia, but to a large extent the cultural strength of the country, lies in the Aboriginal people.' Rowan Callick, a journalist with The Australian Yet a tribal culture and spirituality cannot extend be­ Financial Review, worked in Papua New Guinea from yond the tribe. In most such societies, the word for 'peo- 1976-87

V OLUME 3 N UMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 25 R EVIEW E SSAY

A writer of many Vikram Seth is visiting Australia for the Melbourne International Writers' Festival. Peter Craven examines his work in its various modes and moods.

I DON'T KNOW any other writer like A. Suitable Boy is not simply another cause he wishes to seem arty (hegenu- Vikram Seth, abundant though the superior piece of storytelling that is inely does not) but because he wants compari sons have been in recent difficult to put down; it is a conscious to make them work for him as they months. He achieved fame of a kind attempt towrite a crowded large-scale did for the old timers. He wants to tell from writing a novel in verse, and has novel in the manner of the 19th-cen- a story in verse that rhym es, that now complicated and transfigured his tury giants, with a rattling and multi- thumps along as surely as Dryden's or success by pulling off something like tier plot, in a way that is virtually dead Byron's did, because he needs a form the sam e trick- though on an infi- except in airport fiction. as open and shut as the sonnet in nitely larger scale-in prose. In each Perhaps the Russian precedents tetrameterinordertotell astorywhich case there is a hovering enigma about have something to do with it. Th e would otherwise melt into soppiness. the qualityofthe workinquestionbut Golden Gate is an elaborate hom- He needs the seri al style, the 'and no doubt about the skill of the per- mage to Charles Johnston's transla- then what?' form of the Tolstoyan forma nee and the charm of the result. tion of Push kin's Eugene Onegin, saga because it's a necessary modelfor Vikram Seth is a writer steeped in much praised by John Bayley and avail- a huge suitcase of a story which would literary tradition who tries his hand at able as a Pengu in classic. A Suitable otherwise tend either to be hackwork revivifying the kind of popular sue- Boy has reminded everybody of Tol- of the cinema-of-the-mind variety or cess once associated with particular stay's War and Peace not simply be- to issue into a series of Narayan-like literary forms. And for some time no cau se Seth's constantly changing novelistic vignettes, realistic and wry, one has believed that these forms could narrative rhythms are ideal in a spot of but without any sense of panorama. In accommodate the sort of narrative aerial turbulence, as Tolstoy's were other words, Vikram Seth uses liter- propulsion that makes for bestsellers for the chuffing and jolting of steam ary precedent without an echo cham- which are also works of art. trains, but because the interrelation of ber. He's not remotely interested in The verse novel is the most obvi- domestic comedy with semi-docu- appearing literary; the only self-con- ous case in point although there are menta1y historical writing irresisti- sciousness he possesses is of the other recent examples, such as Alan bly recalls the Russian novelist. When schoolboy kind. He in fact uses liter- Wearne's long poem The Nightmar- Seth brings N ehru onto the stage of ary precedent 'naively', as if it were k ets, which is almost exactly contem- the novel the precedent of Tolstoy's possible to pretend that the Chinese porary with Seth's The Golden Gate, Napoleon cannot have been too far Wall of Dead Masterpieces, of prece- although started earlier, and Derek fro m his mind. Nor when he begins dents declared verboten by the march Walcott's Omeros. There is a sense, with a massive party of operatic vig- of literary hist01y , mea nt though that of the three writers only our and complexity. (I should add that We nothing at all. Seth was capable of investing the form Seth admitted the Push kin model, with the readability which makes it whereas he seems to think of Tolstoy ORLD SPIRITS MAY NOT BE so eas- sentially nov 1-like; w hereas the a just one more in tructive example.) ily m ocked: he who tries to write a other works inherit the title by virtue Vikram Seth is a writer who fid- song like Schubert will look like a of being unclassifiable and long. And dles with old literary forms not be- composer of the late 20th century

26 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 When I was writing The Golden Gate the satisfactions I got were the technical satisfactions of watching it all click: the top spins and then it comes to an end. And there is a kind of rightness you get with that. With prose you don't get those sorts of satisfactions. It's the movement of much larger masses of material, sentences and paragraphs of irregular length. And then character and plot. And different levels of shifting structure. You are never faced with the fact that it really could only have been this way. Of course it's not true of verse either ... With verse you might say it's more difficult because you have to work more slowly, you have to balance rhythm and metre, masculine endings and feminine endings ... with prose you don't have those problems. But the argument there is that you don 't get the pleasures of subjectivity. So there's the constraint parts versus the independent source of inspiration. - Vikram Seth voicing his time's misconstruction of young professionals in California. The scrupulous for. A representative Schubert. But that fact, even if it is plot is like som ething by Woody Allen passage looks like this: borne out in Seth's case, may be more if seriousness and a warm softening of confounding for Seth's interpreters the brain had fallen on him when he Soothed by such counterfactual rea­ than it is for him. A bit of Pushkin was 30, rather than much later. The son here, a bit ofTolstoythere-whocares Golden Gate weaves a complex spell, Phil's thoughts turn from his homely if it works in the sam e way as it did for not easily explained either by the sto­ face them, so long as it works? Through ry line or poetic technique; it some­ To the crisp features of the season: the smokescreen of a couple of liter­ times sounds like a work that de­ Th e straw-gold hill, this oak-strewn ary classics of the very highest reputa­ serves to be set to music by Andrew place, tion-each of them known tminti­ Lloyd Webber. Yet Seth seems to have With here the flutter of a dusty mately in translation- he has suc­ known precisely what he was doing. Sparrow, and there the encroaching ceeded in liberating old-fashioned The work itself has a clarity of design rusty impulses in himself. By ignoring so­ niftier than any of its elements in Lichen upon the rock where Paul phisticated literary fashion he has hit isolation might suggest. At one point Sits singing to himself, and all on the perennial! y fashionable form of the coy narrator of The Golden Gate­ Th e hillsides burred with skeletal this­ two 'open' classics. More pertinently who is certainly not to be identified tles he has found a way, at once serio­ with Kim Tarvesh, the author's acro­ And thorn bush, and the clear cool air comic and straightforward, of disci­ n ym who shares his academic Presaging winter rain, and there plining his own tendency to write history-suggests that anyone who A m ockingbird with chack s and whis­ trash. has persisted so far with him must tles In 1986, when a critic in Th e New have 'an iron ear'. Liquidly aviating through York Times Book Review wrote dis­ This is a long poem written with A sky of Californian blue. paragingly of The Golden Gate, Susan the utmost deliberation, as well as Sontag broke the practice of a lifetime delight, in a verse form-and with a It's a good deal more skilful than it and wrote a letter to the editor, saying nimble meretriciousness that is like­ looks. Part of Seth's trick with his why he was wrong. (And within a ly to prove soothing to the average clunking rhymes is to make the whole month or two she was advising the literate person who no longer reads exercise as seem much like a parlour Indian versifier on what he should much poetry, and boggling to anyone game as possible. In part this is Push­ read-The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Now who does. Vikram Seth, the poet, not kin's strategy modernised to the point there's fiction for you.) only writes as though Ezra Pound had of parody. The verse scheme as a kind It's hard to imagine a less probable never lived; he writes as though Ogden of machine for containing and deflat­ assignment for a young Indian, late of Nash and Dorothy Parker had enjoyed ing any potential pomposity that might Oxford, who has been writing a Ph.D. the eminence and influence of T.S. lurk in thelyricalimpulsewhichfeeds on economics at Stanford: a verse nov­ Eliot and as though he had a licence to it. The creative interplay of such cross el in tetrameters about a group of cut corners they would have been too purposes gives The Golden Gate its

V o LUME 3 NuMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 27 delicious comedy (often through de­ modern, especially non-British, read­ minute that aspects of its storyline are liberate corniness), as well as unex­ ers, was strong in isolating its beau­ already elated: AIDS is mentioned but pected depths of feeling that might so ties. Its overall effect was actually never considered, the Cold War looks easily be troughs of sentiment. It is very like The Golden Gate. It was like being there forever, nuclear war is almost as though a quite sophisticat­ written in a metre which it was im­ at the back of everybody's mind. What ed literary rhetoric-realist and ur­ possible to take seriously-and which preserves yesterday's topicality (why bane, easily sliding from allusion to in part, though only in part, did not not in amber?) is the ageless stuffed originality of observation and back want to be taken seriously-and yet it owl of the verse. (The 'no' language again-were deliberately playing had lines within the grid of its perpet­ derived from Johnston's Pushkin games with itself in order to insinuate ual gall oping smile that seemed to which gives a form like a steel trap to that its bland late century traditional­ belong to a different universe. all the Californian yapping.) ism was actually a secret collaborator I suspect that Vikram Seth wanted In contrast, A Suitable Boy, with Joycean parody and to sneak up on something as intimate requires the India of the early '50s, the Perecian constraint. and yet as foreign as the Californian tumultuous drama of the transition Sex Comedy by exploiting a set of from feuclallanclholclings to a modern SETH'S REPRESENTATION OF an anti­ conventions-as available to a cos­ tate, and in it Seth wants a novelistic nuclearpriest shows the method at its mopolitan Indian as anyone- which displacement of the world of his own clearest because his speech at a rally is would be so traditionally 'British' they immediate family. For that recipe­ necessarily rhetorical. The way in would frighten the life out of any local the dual history of his creation (v ia a which it is squeezed into the concerti­ idiom that tried to get in their way. He province like the one in which he na form of Seth's sonnet is almost like has said that the Indians speak as good grew up) and of himself (via the kind of a prose summary in reverse. The ba­ English as anyone in the world, albeit family that brought him into being) thos of the verse is like the crib of a with an Edwardian twist, and it is there must be the fullest recreated linguistic action which is happening precisely that Edwardian jokiness and sense of time past and what be needs nearby but offstage, in a language we self-deflation that gives The Golden to protect that and make it credible is can just imagine though we cannot Gate its power. It is a long work full of precisely the Tolstoya n sense of pop­ hear: the sudden shifts of tone that charac­ ular style with its high Victorian effi ­ terise the poetic, yet you would un­ ciency and lack of fuss. Quo warranto? By what authority, derstand a latter-day Arnold who said He needs a style that will draw no 1 ask you in the wound of Christ, that it had been written by 'a master of attention to itself, which will seem to Does strength confer superiority our prose'. have no features but which will, at the Over God's earth! What has enticed A Suitable Boy is an attempt to same time, have an implici t Victorian Mere things lil

28 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 between Hindu and Muslim and in abundance is a depth of inner life and Entertaining the parliamentary confrontations an intellectual architecture. Certain which have a dramatic dash and pow­ kinds of things cannot happen in A Australia er implicit through all the tightrope Suitable Boy. Lata, for instance, could rhyming of The Golden Gate-though not run off with Maan, midstream, as The in that case serio-comically. There is Natasha runs off with Kuragin. And also a power of summary which is a it's also true that Seth, in his shrewd Performing Arts direct appropriation of the Victorians way, has achieved his contemporary as and is more like Tolstoy than anybody status by being a rather more old­ else. fashioned novelist than Tolstoy. (Not Cultural History 'Whenever he thought of his moth­ the least extraordinary thing about er, tears came to Rasheed's eyes. She War and Peace is that it is not only the had loved him and his brother almost best middlebrow novel of all time it to excess, and she had been adored in also includes those disquisitions on Tfffi return. His brother had delighted in history that are as bewildering PERFORMING ARTS the pomegranate tree and he in the structurally and as forbidding as .. ClJL'fURAL HISTORY lemon. Now as he looked around the anything in Proust or Tho- courtyard, freshened and washed by mas Mann.) the rain, he seemed to see everywhere the tangible marks of her love. 1T 1 S NOT HARD TO SEE why Vikram The death of her elder son had Seth with his astute agnosticism about certainly hastened her own. And be­ literature should have decided not to fore dying she had made Rasheed, go down that path. It scarcely matters heartbroken as he was by his brother's and it ensures that A Suitable Boy is, death and her own impending one, in its totality, an even more readable promise her som ething that he had book than War and Peace. It repre­ wanted desperately to refuse but did sents, as The Golden Gate did, but on not have the heart or will to do: a an immeasurably bigger scale, the tri­ Now in paperback promise that was no doubt good in umph of one creative mind over the Entertaining Australia is the itself, but that had tied his life down orthodoxies that dictate how a writer first comprehensive work of even before he had begun to taste should write. its kind to be attempted in freedom.' We have no pigeon holes for this country ahd likely long This is not to reduce Seth's novel Vikram Seth. If he is part of an interna­ to the bare bones of technique when tional movement, it is not visible yet. to remain the standard the sustaining impulse behind A Suit­ The only analogies to his work seem source book for studies on able Boy seems to be an attempt to the nearly postmodern fogeydom of the significance of the circumvent the constraints of techni­ people like Peter Ackroyd but there is performing arts in cal diminution- in particular the dom­ a difference of scale as well as achieve­ Australia's cultural history. inant orthodoxy that no serious writer ment in Seth's case and he is not can take on the world as a set of remotely interested in literary atti­ Incorporating a wealth of dynamic actions in a closely observed tudes or literary politics. primary research, this book society. In any institutional terms he is not provides a unique overview Magical realism, with its inherit­ interested in literature at all-infi­ of all forms of performance; ance of Borgesian abracadabra and its nitely less so than his critics. The one from opera, concert music, politically engage licence, was one thing in his behaviour, the one thing classical tragedy and ballet attempt to circumvent that limita­ apart from the work itself, that looks tion, but Vikram Seth is at the fur­ serious is the constant decision to to circus, pantomime, thest possible remove from Gabriel change his choice of weapons: poems, vaudeville, melodrama, bush Garcia Marquez or, more particularly, travel, a verse novel, a real novel; bands, dance halls, radio, Salman Rushdie. Where Midnight's now- we're told-a play. That sug­ film and television. Children is a dream of Indian history gests an uncannily moody artist, with RRP $39.95 from before Independence until Mrs an intense pride in his powers, who Gandhi's state of emergency, with a won't be pinned down. 360 pp Illustrated huge admixture of childhood pangs But then I seem to hear him say in and smells, of leftest fabulism and thatself-mockingvoiceofhis Ah, but Published by Currency Press cartoonery, A Suitable Boy is a classi­ perhaps I'm just a dilettante who al­ The performing arts publisher PO Box 452 Paddington 2021 cally straightforward racketing yarn ways gets bored! • Tel: (02) 332 1300 that really will appeal to all those Fax: (02) 332 3848 lovers of Gone With the Wind and Peter Craven is a Melbourne critic. Available from leading War and Peace. His The Arts Rack et will be published ~ bookshops What it lacks that Tolstoy has in in 1994 by Pan Macmillan.

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 29 Saturday-morning constitutionals

A HERD o' RmoK-aAD "ET p•d' dully p.,t, le•v• refugee who sailed into Melbourne at the end of the ing a cloud of powdered gravel suspended in the air be­ 1940s, m1d he saw our wharfies and he said that he hind it. As the cloud drifts across the street and some of knew at once that be had found freedom because it it begins to settle on the newspaper I am reading, I mar­ was plain from their demeanour that nothing would vel at the lengths to which people will go to appear de­ get them to goose step. Twenty years later, of course, sirable. Jogging is bad enough, it involves a degree of be knew that nothing would get them to do a lot of masochism. But power walking, the activity of the Ree­ other things. Clever sting in the tail of that one. I hope bok-clad herd, requires one to look absurd as well, in the Prime Minister pays his speechwriter well for artic­ the perhaps vain hope of looking less absurd later on. A ulating 'the faith of the Labor Party in the past 12 solitary jogger on the track appears to share this view of months'. Did someone leave a container of Reeboks power walking. Instead of overtaking the herd on one lying on the docks for too long? side, he ploughs through the middle of the ungairlly Smug, and infuriatingly patronising? Switch on the beasts, scattering them right and left. The yuppie equiv­ gibberish meters for this lot: I imagine it [the republic] alent, I suppose, of kicking sand in someone's face at as aleatory, impressionistic, figurative, eclectic, bebop. the beach. I'm only just game enough to say it: it might be the I am in another herd, of Saturday-morning news­ first postmodern republic, and I mean that in the nic­ paper readers, contentedly chewing the things that such est possible way. I mean a republic that exalts the na­ herds chew in street cafes. It is a fine clear day, the cof­ tionless than the way of life. Whose principal value is fee smells good and tastes not bad either, so why do I tolerance rather than conformity, difference rather than feel so annoyed? Why do I feel such disdain for the pow­ uniformity. Whose outlook is unambiguously Austral­ er walkers? For after all, how they choose to look is their ian, and yet is more worldly and international than business, not mine. republics like the United States or France or Germany I have begun to read an article of the sort that tiD­ or Ireland. With humanist and even some romantic tra­ locks one's prejudices, and which is all the more galling ditions, but not schmalz, false sentiment and fascism. because it is written in aid of a cause that one shares. It The 'nation' or the 'way of life'? There is more than is the text of a speech by a renowned speechmaker and a contingent relationship between the two, one would speechwriter. He is in fact the Prime Minister's speech­ have thought. But perhaps this is just a verbal quibble writer, and his subject is the forthcoming republic. Fine, on my part, and the speechwriter simply means that let us have such speeches, and may the republic come the basis of the national identity should not be a racial sooner rather than later. But does the republic need one. Fair enough. But 'tolerance' and 'difference'? It has friends like this man? The speech am1oys me because it been the experience of most modern states, republican runs together things that are not the same; because it or otherwise, that the greater the emphasis on 'differ­ jumps between misty-eyed appeals to our noble instincts ence', the more difficult 'tolerance' becomes. The first and bleary-eyed appeals to our desire to be comfortable; two republics cited by the speechwriter have been (in and because orators are never so smug, so infuriatingly very different ways) more successful than most societies patronising, as when they tell their audience, 'You're in reconciling tolerance and difference. But the history all right, y'know?' of the United States, or of modern France, has hardly Running together things that are not the same? been conflict-free. How about this: It [the republic] is of immense psycho­ We, however, will presumably be free from such logical importance: as it helped restore the faith of the troubles because we are not afflicted by 'schmalz' and Labor Party in the last 12 months, I tbinl< it will revive 'false sentiment'. We're not? Behold once more the words our faith in Australia and ourselves. Hmm ... so the of the master: ... you find yourself in an RSL club in sort of faith we have, or ought to have, 'in Australia and Adelaide or a hall in Whyalla, or a picnic in Perth, or a ourselves' is analogous to 'the faith of the Labor Party tent by the ethanol factory nem Nowra. Or a pie shop. in the last 12 months'. Pretty flimsy sort of faith, then. And you fly from one to the other, and you happen to I voted for the Labor Party (and would again), but can­ look up from your stir-fried chilli new-fashioned pork not imagine circumstances in which I would want to served with a West Australian chardonnay by the men identify the ties that bind me to a political party with and women of the RAAF, and out the window the sun the ties that bind me to 'Australia and ourselves'. I sup­ is setting on Uluru-and all you can say is What a pose that Prime Ministers' speechwriters are paid to bloody great rock!' suggest that the two loyalties are the same. But they are No schmalz there, mate, oh no. Not a helluva lot not the same. of 'difference', either. Just a speechwriter's vision of a Rwming together appeals to noble instincts with great bland land, fit for power walkers to live in. • appeals to our desire to be comfortable? Try this one: Somewhere along the way I was told the story of the Ray Cassin is production editor of Eureka Street.

30 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 THE REGION

DAVID GLANZ Straining to see the light

I WA' HAND>NG in the queue in machines simply become so much siltation, a product of illegal deforest­ McDonald's on Manila's Taft Avenue expensive scrap metal. In the mean­ ation. And on top of this, corruption when the lights went out. For 30, time, they cannot prevent enorn1ous has meant that parts are stolen and maybe 40, seconds the buzz of conver­ damage being done to the economy. In main terrance is skin1ped. TheNa tional sationstopped, the customers and staff the first quarter of this year, manufac­ Power Corporation admits that up to frozen like mannequins in the gloom. turing output, which contributes one 15 of its 40 generating units on Luzon, Then, somewhere in a back room, the quarter of GDP, fell by five per cent the island that includes Manila, have genera torch ugged to life and the lights, compared to the same quarter in 1992. been out of action at the same time. tills and machinery came back on. Some employers have been driven The cost of the energy crisis can­ Conversations restarted. Business to the wall. For workers, brownouts not just be measured in pesos or jobs. resumed. Just another brownout. add further misery to subsistence lives. It also constitutes part of the national No one is quite sure how many Mmmy Sarmiento, president of the humiliation that is keenly felt, espe­ people live in the sprawl of Metro Drug, Food and Allied Workers Feder­ cially by the urban intelligentsia. Manila; estimates range between six ation, spends much of his time deal­ Everyone in the Philippines knows and ten million. What is certain is that ingwith scheduling grievances, as em­ that after World War II the country every home, shop, factory or office is ployers try to match production times was number two in Asia; and every- without electricity for up to 10 hours to power availability, a day, every day. Power cuts­ leading to wildly vary­ 'brownouts' in local parlance-have ing work hours. The ceased to be an emergency, a sudden problems are worst in crisis. They have become part of the the labour-intensive culture. One of the Tagalog movies textile and garments playing in the central Manila cinema sector-tens of thou­ strip is simply called Gagay: Princess sands have been laid of the Brownout. off, swelling the offi­ Not everyone is affected equally. cial unemployment For the squatters in their cardboard rate past 18 per cent. shacks, huddling under bridges and A solution seems along railway tracks, the idea of an some years away, for electricity supply has always been as the brownouts are not remote as gold-plated taps that gush the result of a sudden hot water. And the rich in the gated collapse of the power 'villages' of Forbes Park and Dasmari­ industry, but of long­ nas have private generators. term decline. When Corazon Aquino one knows that now it is falling way It's not Jura ssic Park, For the bulk of the urban popu­ came to office in 1986 she mothballed behind its neighbours. it's Rizal Park in lation, however, brownouts mean the Bataan nuclear power station, a I was asked to dinner by an Manila. Playing on inconvenience, waste, extra cost­ Ferdinand Marcos-World Bank-Inter- academic who lives on the Diliman dinosaur sculptures even financial disaster. Every shop­ national Monetary Fund extravagan­ campus of the University of the Phil­ in daylight is one of keeper, every restaurant owner, who za built with 4000 defects at thefoot of ippines, on the outskirts of Metro the fe w brownout­ a volcano 70 kilometres from Manila. Manila. After we'd eaten, she invited hopes to stay in business has a gener­ proof children's ator chained to the footpath outside The station had never generated pow­ me to witness a neighbourhood meet­ activities. their front door. Some shops lack the er, but it did generate millions of ing. There, in the undercroft of a block funds to compete; their owners stand dollars in graft and a $US2.3 billion of flats, several dozen residents, most­ Photo: David Glanz disconsolately by the door, forlornly tab for the Philippines' national debt ly academics, sat in the lamplight (the hoping to entice customers into the The problem, according to Sarmiento, power was off, of course) and debated shadows. For big business, lamplight was that no one would take how to ensure four hours' supply of is not an option. The government has responsibility for filling the water to their homes daily. been forced to drop import duties on gap. If the Ramos government cannot generators, and in the first seven deliver the basics of life to academics months of this year imports to the 0 THER ELEMENTS OF THE CRISIS lay, on the premier campus of the coun­ Philippines jumped six per cent. The according to Maria Rodriguez, manag­ try's premier university, why should increase is almost entirely accounted ing editor of the Philippine News and garment workers, fisherfolk or peas­ for by generators. For a country as Features agency, in the lack of long­ ants have the slightest faith in it? • poor as the Philippines, this 'invest­ term research into geothermal or so­ David Glanz, a freelance journalist, is ment' represents a tremendous waste. lar power. Hydroelectric power gener­ researching a Ph.D thesis on Philip­ If the power crisis is ever solved, the ation has been ineffective because of pines politics.

VoLUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 31 SPORTING LIFE

Ross FITZGERALD

ou, "'"'" "'C' Chillagoe,W lSOkm," ""' inland from Cairns, Fair games and game fare with its huge granite rocks and the ruins of its historic smelters, is my white man's dreaming. For my practices he ritually attended, as well Balinese duck coupled with conversa­ Balinese-Hindu friend Made Sugiartha as every home-and-away game and tion about Aussie Rules is Made Sug­ in his home village of Ubud, where he the finals. Now his great dream is to iartha's culinary speciality. owns and runs Mira's restaurant, his bring Aussic Rules to Bali, which is To get to Mira's, just off the main special place is old Glenferrie Oval, quite a brilliant idea for Australian­ road in Ubud, one walks up terraces once truly the home ground of the Indonesian good relations. and steps that in the evening are lit by Hawthorn Football Club, in the days Made, a fine soccer player and a oil lamps. The restaurant, open on all when Aussie Rules was still based on practising Balinese-Hindu, ritualisti­ sides under a thatched pavilion, is tribes. cally tunes into Radio Australia at surrounded by fish ponds and there is Love brought Made to Melbourne. noon, Bali time, on every Saturday a spectacular view over the rice fields His heart was won by Joy, an Austral­ and Sunday during the footy season, to the soccer ground whereMadchopcs ian nurse visiting Bali, and, undaunt­ to absorb 3LO's Match of the Day. that next year an Aussie Rules coach­ Remembering ed by freezing weather and the lack of Being with Made in his restaurant ing clinic can be established. In this shared meat suitable work, he followed her to gives one a deep sense of being with idyllic setting one ca n also order fabu­ pies in the Melbourne in 1986. He stayed for six someone both in kilter with the cos­ lous grilled fish and the best chunky outer: Made freezing winters until after the 1992 mos and passionately committed to chips in Indonesia- but my advice is Sugiartha and finals, when he and Joy got married Au sie Rules. to go for the duck, which is usually Ross Fitzgerald and returned to Ubud. The only thing Joy told me that when she asked prepared for important celebrations that made his life in Melbourne worth­ Made why he never once complained, such as tooth filing and weddings. Photo: Lyndal while was obsessively following Haw­ despite Melbourne's bitter cold and Wrapped in palm leaves with stuff­ Moor. thorn, whose Tuesday and Thursday the jealous enmity of his Anglo- eltic ing and spices, the duck is placed in a workmates at Unilever's margarine big clay pot and covered with rice factory in Port Melbourne, where he husks, and cooked for eight hours. It is toiled as a machinist he repli ed: 'This served with numerous other dishes, is my consequence'. including a large bowl of green vegeta­ A deep believer in oval drea ms and bles called lawar and a delicious coco­ magic, Made understood with his heart nut mixture. All the juices from the and his head when I recounted how, at duck are then made into a rich soup. Victoria Park in April, I had watched The duck, vegetables, coconut and Peter Daicos, in what may have been soup are presented with a bowl of his last great moment, kick a goal white rice and sates, which arc made with his left foot through a paper-thin from local chicken minced into a paste. space. At the time, my 70-year-old, It is an unforgettabl e feast, and visit­ Magpie-following friend Ian Guthrie ing gourmets and Aussic Rules sup­ had said: 'It's enough to bring tears to porters are flocking to Made's to try it. a grown man's eyes.' As I told Made Made hopes that fellow Hawthorn the story, there were tears trickling supporter Senator Gareth Evans, and down his face. Australia's Sports Minister Ros Kelly, Made understood the interconnec­ will arrange for an Aussie Rules tions between football, religion, phi­ exhibition game to be played at Den­ losophy and food. In the past two pasar in 1994. If that magic moment decades, the tucker available in Bali occurs I want to be, if not coach, has changed considerably. Tourists translator or spiritual counsellor, then can eat just about anything from Ken­ food advisor. tucky Fried to sophisticated, Asiani­ For a failed attender of Weight fied haute cuisine in the five star Watchers and a deeply dispirited hotels. But the most common fare in Collingwood supporter, that's not a Bali is still familiar Indonesian dishes bad alternative. • such as nasi gorengand sate, and more tradi tiona! Balinese dishes are till Ro Fitzgerald, associate professor of not seen regularly on menus. history and po litics at G riffith One of the most spectacular of the University, is the editor of Th e Great­ latter is Balinese duck which requires est Game: Writings on Australian at least 24 hours notice. Traditional Football.

32 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 HIGHER EDUCATION Teasing out the texts Robin Gerster goes to the 1993 Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference.

L ITERATURE CONFERENCES always lative effect was that of a chorus of make me think of Rodney Wainright, complaint, the sense of an all-encom- the character in David Lodge's satire passing masculine conspiracy, and a Small World who agonises fruitlessly sort of intellectual plagiarism. Con- over a paper called 'The Future of tinual reference to Kristeva's 'abject' Criticism'. It is hardly surprising that had a somewhat dispiriting effect on the Englishman Lodge, in a novel of the delegates-towards the end, even stereotypes,shouldmaketheacadem- the paper-givers were mentioning it ic no-hoper an Australian-in Britain apologetically. The phallus reared its Australian literary scholars are often ugly head time and time again, pop- regarded as more boozy than brainy. pingupinallmanneroffeministargu- The annual conference of the ment and analysis, as in the proposi- Association for the Study of Austral- tion that the male enjoys a 'privileged ian Literature (ASAL) used to be phallic position in relation to notorious for its bibulous bonhomie. language'. Although that reputation was always The theoretical jargon was hard somewhat exaggerated, ASALdid tend going, it must be said. At the ASAL in to be dominated by male academics 'is the Other?' For a concept supposed Sydney in 1988, a delegate (not, I intent on celebrating (both in their to encompass the culturally colonised believe, an academic) indignantly que- papers and general demeanour) a fun- and marginalised, 'Otherness' per- ried the continual use of the rather damentally masculinist literary tradi- vades contemporary criticism. Above inoffensive term, 'trope'. She would tion. Their chauvinism was under- a replica of the Endeavour being con- not have been happy with the critical standable,aproductofthefightforthe structed down at Fremantle harbour, discourse of 1993, in which issues recognition of the national literature a banner enjoins people to 'Be Excel- became 'relativised' and history 'alle- in departments of English that lent to Each Other' (my italics)-this gorised', the self became 'self-reflex- interpreted their name in the narrow- was a message taken to heart at the ive' and indeed turned into the 'self- est sense. ASAL conference of 1993. reflexive self', a self engaged, perhaps, On the evidence of the fifteenth Like theologians,literary academ- in 'self-narrativisation' when not sub- ASAL conference held in early July in ics are obsessed with dualities. Of all jected to 'hierarchisation' or 'the mar- Perth, Australian literary nationalism the so-called 'binary oppositions' crit- ginalising and resemanticising of mas- of the pugnacious, cocky, male sort, is ically 'negotiated' during the confer- ter narratives'. If bemused by ' alterity' dead and unlamented. On a bus she!- ence, the most insistent was the male/ the listener could contemplate 'slip- ter near the beautiful University of female dichotomy-in particular, mas- page' or grapple with something called Western Australia where the confer- culine/feminine oppositions in the 'a repressed uncanny'. ence was held, someone had scrawled construction of the Australian cultur- The problem with the jargon is not 'Australia I Love U 4 Ever', an inscrip- allandscape and the casting of Wom- so much its aural hideousness, nor its tion, perhaps, from the heady days of an as Other in the 'master discourse' semantic obtuseness, but that it can the doomed America's Cup defence. which has shaped the national identi- mystify ideas of an often mind-bend- This,inaweekofrevisioning,reimag- ty. Gender issues permeated the ing banality. The pressure to parade ing and reinscribing, was the only sign conference: there were papers on im- theoretical sa voir faire was evident in of chauvinism I saw in Perth. perialism and gender, ethnicity and the several papers given by post-grad- The old nationalist orthodoxy has gender, language and gender, 'space' uates. While these were often sub- been thoroughly dismantled, only to and gender, war and gender, the liter- stantial and delivered with style and be replaced by another of a different ary canon and gender, film and spunk, they nonetheless tended to be kind. Or 'Others'. So many margins gender, even gender and joylessly doctrinaire in language and are enthusiastically embraced in A us- E gender. dispiritingly predictable in argument. tralian cultural studies these days that For the pessimists, here, perhaps, is the despised 'patriarchal centre' has MINIST THEORY DOMINATED, in par- thefuturefaceofAustralianacademe. all but disappeared off the cultural ticular Julia Kristeva's theories of fe- During the course of the confer- map, to be rediscovered, no doubt, at male prohibition and abjection. Tak- ence, it was sometimes hard to distin- somefutureconference.'Justhowoth- en individually, the papers in them- guish parody from the real thing. I say er,' the critic S.P. Mohanty has asked, selves were persuasive; but the cumu- this somewhat unwillingly, given that

VoLUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 33 the academy's contemporary engage­ according to Riem er) derived much of eel fashion to view the jargon of theo­ ment with the various theories that go their artistic impulse from canonical rists as a form of intellectual thuggery by the umbrella term 'postmoclern­ texts. when a more sensible view of its ex­ ism ' has provided new impetus to the The problem with Riem er's posi­ cessive use is to see it as a sign of old Australian pastime of academic tion, as I see it, is its intransigence. He defensiveness, a register of insecurity, bashing. worries at venerable works of 'literary the cry of someone who has won the Literary academics have long been value' being left to 'wither on the prize but doesn't know what to do despised in Australia as self-indulgent, vine'-in order to be saved from cours­ with it. effete inhabitants of the Ivory Tower. es called 'Postcolonial Fiction' stu­ These concerns aside, ASAL '93 Public abuse was once the special prov­ dents need to be led towards Paradise contained a breadth, diversity and ince of the talk-back radio host; re­ Lost . He may be right, but he mounts comforting conventionality of papers cently the antagonism has surfaced in no substantial argument why, except to placate the Jeremiah s. Am ong them, the press. Complaints about the direc­ that a 'free-for-a ll' would serve to con­ a discussion of the' canonical anxiety' tion of contemporary intellectual life firm the 'n arrow pre judices' of of Australian literary culture in the have been given weight by the pub­ students. 1930s and 1940s, before there was an lished anxieties of academics them ­ At least Riem er doesn't fall for the academic apparatus to judge literary selves, such as Andrew Ri emer in his trap of blaming the state of the world 'greatness'; papers on explorer narra­ article 'Canonically Speaking' (E ure­ on something called 'theory'. Som e tives; the semiotics of dom estic archi­ lo wer sophisticated analysis of the produc­ poet', Hewett as the voluptuous, age­ tion, consumption and reception of ing femme fatale - reveal what Aust­ •John MuqJhy on Keating's Labo( u)r·s texts, and the political or 'cultural' ralian culture values and devalues in • Kim Dovey on Sunogatf' Cities implications therein. But it does sug­ its literary wom en and the power of • VineP nt Bul'kiPy Awa rd Winnet· Lisa Gor·ton gest the outbreak of a new, pernicious image- making in determining the fe­ • Plus Mer· and Maho, sexuality statisties, Timor, tlw elitism- ironic, given the healthy im­ male reputation. This pa per, howev­ pulse to question entrenched notions er, drew the most pithy audience re­ CzPchs, Cambodia , tr·anssexual cinema, and mo n ·! of what constitutes 'art'. sponse of the conference: 'Harwood is Moreover, although the rhetoric thin; Hewett is fat !' Wi th this kind of SUBSCRIBE NOW! of postmocl ernism celebra tes differ­ characteristic scepticism, Australian ence, marginality and plurality, those literary studies should be able to nego­ $28 for 6 issues ($20 concession) who clare question theory are liable, as tiate its postnati onalist, postcanoni­ P.O. Box 18 North Carlton 3054 Ri emer says, to be m ade to appear cal, post-postmodern future. • or on sale at bookstores and 'retrograde and reactionary', to be de­ newsagents. rided as neanderthal rea lists or histor­ Robin Gerster is an academic and icists. They, in tum, tend in a wound- author.

34 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMilER 1993 BOOKS

MICHAEL M c GIRR Nulzes 'n tutes Nuclear Criticism, Ken Ruthven, MUP, 1993 ISBN 0 522 84491 X RRP $19.95. Cultural Materialism, Andrew Mil­ ner, MUP, 1993 ISBN 0 522 84493 6 RRP $19.95. Metafic­ tions: Reflexivity in Contemporary Texts, Wenche Om- mundsen, MUP, 1993 ISBN 0 522 84524 X RRP $19.95

OME WEEKS AGO, the Melbourne Butthereareparallelhistories run- Univsersi ty Drama Festival featured ning in Ruthven's book. The first is the communal building of a book the whole history of international re- sculpture. A local publisher donated lations in the past SO years or so, the 26, 000 books, otherwise destined for milestonesofwhichhaveaffectedbil- of the names, great and small, that are Hammering home the pulp mill. Passersby were invited lions. The second is a paper history churned out of the book at such a rate a point: the book to open a book face upwards on the whose milestones are such arcane that they threaten to stifle Milner's sculpture at university lawn and to hit a nail events as a lecture that Jacques Den- own concerns which, given breathing Melbourne University. through the front and back covers ida gave in 1966, which became 'the space, are probably quite vital. respectively. inaugural moment of poststructural- Wenche Ommundsen's Metafic­ Photo:Norman Wodetzki Eventually, rowuponrowofbooks ism', andanotherDerridagavein 1984, tions is far and away the most enter­ were fluttering their pages in the at 'the inauguration of a new nuclear taining excursion of the three. breeze. It was an impressive sight. I criticism'. Ruthven is desperate to 'Metafiction' is self-reflexive fiction, thought at the time that such a merry forge relations between these two his- the fiction about writing fiction. It is and chaotic gathering was a far cry tories, but he finds it difficult without the type of story that might be told of from the solemnity that must at one coming close to a type of humanism a student who read the first page of time have attended the burning of that he has marked as enemy territo- every book in the book sculpture and books in universities. I also thought ry. He might find the idea of under- thereby created an unlikely story of that the occasion could surely inspire graduates working together to build a his own. It is the narrative of a passer­ further books and articles and that sculpture as attractive as the camara- by, such as myself, who sifted through these, in tum, might fuel further sculp- derie ofthe Greenham Common wom- the pile of books until he found a tures. en. But I suspect that the swarm of biography of someone he didn't like, Each of these three short mono- sculptors who tried secretly to pocket then enjoyed hitting a nail through graphs from Melbourne University a book for themselves would also the portrait on the cover but was then Press is about the troubled art of read- tempt Ken Ruthven as an image of the haunted by that celebrity for the rest ing. They are about books and lan- readertryingtoscavengeafewmouth- of the day. But Ommundsen's real guage and where these fit into our fuls of meaning from the remainders concern is reality. She wants 'to chal­ troubled times. In their own way, they of a civilisation that has been meta- lenge the perceived incompatibility allow the reader a good deal of au ton- phorically nuked. between reflexivity and involvement omy. So let's take up their offer and Andrew Milner might be taken by with reality'. She does this by situat­ put each to the trouble of shedding a the material excesses of a culture ing reflexive reading within a much little light on the book sculpture. which produces books in such abun- broader context than that of a narrow Ken Ruthven might be inclined to dance that they can be used for build- band of literary theories. see the endless rows of anonymous ing sculptures. Or possibly by the sight The MUP series attempts more white pages as a textual rendition of a of readers lunging for books like pa- than making theoretical ideas acces­ war cemetery. For him, 'nuclear criti- trons of a winter sellout. He tries to sible to a wider audience. The writers cism', in a broad sense, 'concerns it- resolve a 'fundamental ambiguity' in want to put their ideas at the service of self with the inventions, applications our understanding of culture: wheth- ordinary people leading ordinary lives. and reception of nuclear science as erwe see culture as 'art' or 'idealist' on I just feel, as the Irishman said giving cultural events'. He looks beyond the the one hand or whether we see it as directions, that if I wanted to get there, recent proliferation of popular films 'social','utilitarian' or 'materialist' on I wouldn't start from here. That is, I and novels that detail the destruction the other. Drawing on Raymond Wil- wouldn't start from theory. The gos­ of the world, to the manner in which liams, the patron saint of CultUial sip in me still wants to know what the nuclear age has come to inhabit Materialism,hecomesupwithakind these three writers do with themselves our language and habits of thought. of compromise: culture is both a pro- after work, on the weekend, at the end He is most engaging when reporting ductive process in itself, and also any of the day, in the hour of death. • onironiessuchasthosewherebyatom- social use of the material means of ic weapons can be codenamed 'Trini- production. Thereismorethanawhiff Michael McGirr SJ is a regular con­ ty' or 'Little Boy'. of Marx in this, but Marx is only one tributor to Eureka Street.

VOLUME 3 N UMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 35 P ROFILE

M ORAG F RASER

Surfaces and interiors

Australia makes writers refashion their notions of paradise. Margaret Simons discovered as m uch when she went bush to write The Ruthless Garden, the novel that has just won her the inaugural Angus and Robertson Bookworld Prize.

0 N t "" ~TCHtN WACC thm i" 'Before we left England in 1968 I had a teacher who used to sa tellite photograph of the Murray tak e us for nature walks, whkh was a strange thing to do. We'd Riverland. As yo u walk down the Fed­ all put on our macs and track down to the local park. But what eration gloom of the hall it shimmers, was good about it was that she didn't just show us birds and like a Westem Desert painting-patch­ leaves; she showed us things like oil on a puddle-all the es of chrome and interlocking ochres, beautiful colours. I thought she was wonderful.' bisected by a mffle of liza rd blue. But in her bright kitchen you can see the try. In fact she revels in it. There is a Athena's bungling attempts to love science of it in glossy, high resolution. sharp, recording mind at work here, her dour man, Sam, and to repair the She will beckon you forward and trace but one that does more than just record. ruined, salina ted country around her. the line of improbable blue, inserting Simons dramatises, in her characters She fails in both. In the depiction of herself into it: 'There, at that bend­ and their life in the land, an awareness Athena 's failure Simons exercises the that's my cliff.' of the difficulty of understanding more skills of scientist and ironist. There is Something a kin to this happens in than the surface. She and her charac­ also a bone-sharp wit in the writing. Th e Ruthless Garden, written while ters are implicated in the life of the The setting for the novel is New Margaret Simons was living in a house land. They are in it even when they Era, an early utopian settlement. By high on the cliff in the South Austra­ don't understand it, even when they the time Athena arrives in the town, lian river town of Waikerie. The area abuse it. The systems that govern the hope has eroded with the name: 'now around Waikerie has a long and eccen­ organic life of land and people don't the locals pronounced it as though it tric history, much of which Simons just mn in parallel-in the metaphor­ was "Nearer", with onl y a faint slurred explores in the novel. She describes it ical language of the novel they are suggestion of the "w" in the middle.' a having been Aboriginalland-Nga­ overlaid. Simons is English, precise in utter­ wait country. Later on, Captain Th e Ruthless Garden opens with ance, with an ear for Australian speech, Charles Sturt came through, with its often m onstrous central character, for its way of blurring meaning, wear­ seven companions. She notes that Athena Masters, delighting in her own ing out distinctions. 'When she first 'When his exploring da ys were over, biological processes: 'At the age of lea rned about the name's origins, Ath­ Sturt became almost completely blind; twelve, Athena learned about the di ­ ena was surprised that it had been so a result, the doctors told him, of his gestive system . The teacher drew quickly corrupted, its meaning so to­ journeys in the interior'. blackboard diagrams of the body's or­ tally lost. Even some of the locals It became settler land, the site of ifices and the pipes that connected assumed the town's name was Abo­ early socialist experiments; then, them. The mouth was done in red riginal, yet it was only a few years through irrigation, a citm s grove­ chalk and fringed with blue salivary since the last of the original pioneers Eden in dry country. But with irriga­ glands, looking like little rain clouds who had named the place had died.' tion came salt. The water table, the ... Athena was fascinated. She drew But if the high ideals of the original vascular system of the underground, arteries and veins in red and blue, and settlers have dried out in the local air, shifted, and the salt rose. bile ducts in green. Afterwards, sitting Newera is still a lively place. The In the novel the explorer, Sturt, is lumpishly in the playground by the novel is harsh but it is also very funny, 'a man capable of wonder, though not ant hill, she placed her fingers on her with its tumble of characters, and of iro ny'. Simons is capable of both. neck and felt the teady wriggling village closeness. It i odd to read She is adept at rendering the sur­ animal of her pulse. She was thrilled.' about a crowd in the bush-we are set face, the skin condition of the coun- The wonder coexists with the adult so solid in our own stereotypes.

36 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMllER 1993 Simons lived and worked in Wai kerie. She wrote for the local news­ paper, did her share of municipal tasks, went to civic 'occasions', was careful about regional sensitivities, watched that she didn't offend local dignitar­ ies; she hung around while local boys bashed cars to smithereens, she went to yabbie races. If you have spent years as an inves­ tiga tive journalist, as Simons has, you don't waste material. The Ruthless Garden is fiction, make no mistake. And Athena Masters is not Margaret Simons. (It shouldn't be necessary to say that, but read the press reports that fo llowed the announcement of Simons' award.) 'I notice a lot of things,' she says. 'I used to walk into Waikerie to collect the mail. It was thinking time and I noticed things. There is a de cription of a fence post in the book. That was on the walk.' 'Thinking time': Simons often talks about the contemplative habits that fiction demands. 'I keep a journal and how much I write is a measure of how much contemplative time I've got in my life.' The word 'contemplation' juts out, suggestive of a tradition of reflection. Simons' grandfather was Jewish. 'But I was brought up with no real aware­ ness of it. I was only aware of having a Jewish sumame when I came to Mel­ bourne because there is no real Jewish community in Adelaide. So the stress on contemplative habits is almost cer­ tainly not a Jewish thing. Dad is a reader and writer and thinker-quite self-sufficient. I have the same ways. I see my father in me and his father in him.'

SIM ONS' PARENTS ARE clearly very Photo of Margaret Simons in1portant to her, and in her childhood frightening. Maybe because the mem ­ er and sister went walking through by Bill Thomas you can trace the addiction to fact, to ory includes her father standing beside orange orchards and bush. 'There the intricacy of things, that character­ her wearing a mac. 'But he couldn't weren't oak leaves or chestnuts or ises the language of her novel. She was possibly have been; that's just an conkers. There was red sand and bits an inquisitive child, encouraged to be English carry over.' Soon after he took of bark and wombat holes that were so. The Ruthless Garden is dedicated up gliding, and his daughter followed probably rabbit holes. I like to think to her family and it was with them him. She remains a keen glider. The they were wombat holes.' that she had her first sight of Austral­ sport and writing inter ect: 'I've seen The bark and sand reappear in The ian dry country. 'At the top of the more of Australia than most Austral­ Ruthless Garden. In one extended Adelaide Ranges, at a place called ians-right up to the Torres Strait passage about the tending of gardens Accommodation Hill, you can see a Islands. I've been to remote places in and the familiar tending of lovers (again huge plain stretching out all the wa y just about every state, retrieving glid­ the hmnan and natural landscapes plait to the Simpson Desert. I'd never be­ ers, pulling them out of paddocks.' together) the memories find form. It is fore seen anything so big that wasn't Sometimes the English 'nature walks' a splendid movement. Simons says it sea.' continued in Australia. While her is one of the sections of the novel that She found it fascinating rather than father went gliding, she and her moth- 'wrote itself'. The words 'just came

V OLUME 3 N UMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 37 wHITtfk21AQS PAQK SPIRITUALITY AND CONFERENCE CENTRE out of nowhere.' She doesn't know then it was my country.' ENNEAGRAM ONE Gordon Carter why, and won't be drawn. But the One of her present preoccupations 'You and Your Personality'. The Enneagram theory, con templa ti ve time, the time in which is to build links between the very yourself and your potential. A process of self-d iscovery and growth leading to self-acceptance and wholeness. words form, and coalesce, is impor­ short period of white-settlement DATES October 23 & 24 tant. history in Australia and the millennia COST $60.00 (Non-residential) Simons is avowedly untheoreti­ of Aboriginal history. Part of the im­ BYO!und1 cal. An English analytical tradition petus comes from a conviction about ADVENT Prepare a Dwelling gives the bone structure to h er the way in which her English heritage A time to prepare our hearts for the Christ event-Chrisbnas. language. She claims, perhaps a little and identity are grounded in place. Entering prayerfully into the spi rit of Advent-dwelling disingenuously, that 'I don't even 'My mother comes from Kent. You in silence, li ke Mary, we contemplate the Word. know what "postmodemism " means. could call her "a Kentish lass", with DATE: November 26-28 It seemed to have happened when I all the identifying reverberations of COST: $80.00 was at Waikerie. I've used the word that phrase. My father comes from (Residential only) "deconstruct" but "post1noden1ism"? Derbyshire, near the plague village.' SIX-DAY RETREATS I went away to write a novel and when The naming of place gives a part of DIRECTED RETREAT: Direction ead1 day of the retreat I came back people were talking about the history. These people came from DATE: july4-11. December12-18 the death of the author. I thought­ here. This is what they mea nt. These COST: $280 that was a badly timed move!' were their traditions. Non-Aboriginal Cnr Park and Heads Rds In The Ruthless Garden Aborigi­ Australians are shallow-rooted by DONV ALE Vic 3111 nal history and myth are crucial. The comparison. Simons is searching for Telephone (03) 874 4877 novel pivots on them. Simons makes ways to connect, to gain knowledge of Mel ways 48 K4 small claim to intimate knowledge theconmmnities that have lived here. but nonetheless she put in the ground­ 'It is us in this land,' she says. 'How are work at the Museum of South we to be?' Australia, reading diaries, archaeology In her own fiction one of the and anthropology. The novel is more answers to the question comes through subtle in consequence, in ways that m etaphor. 'Metaphor is what it is aU have to do with shifting perspectives about, for us, for Aborigines,' she says. rather than the simple insertion of In The Ruthless Garden the small information. They are Simons' own, victories, the occasional easings are not Aboriginal perspectives, but it is achieved by metaphorical sleight of hard to believe that she would have hand, as profound as it is tricky. Char­ arrived at them without the work. acters who stand askew on the red They shift the novel around as surely sand begin to learn that their rhythms + Building I Construction Supervisors, as the view from a glider alters the way and shapes and textures can find ech­ Civil Engineers (roads you come to know a river. oes in the land, be accommodated in and water), The research was part of a broad it, then take it into themselves. + Community Workers, undertaking-not just background for What Simons asserts most + Environmentalists, a novel in progress. 'I always intended powerfully is that there are prece­ + Land Surveyors, to do it because I wanted to see the dents, ifonlywecanlearn them: 'Ath­ + Medical Doctors, landscape as they saw it.' Did she ena grew older ... As an adult she came + Nurses I Midwives, succeed? 'I don't think so. It told me to the Riverland and the farmhouse on + Physiotherapists, how they lived butnothow the cliff, which (although she didn't + AIDS Counsellors, they saw things.' know it) overlooked the spot where + Project Administrators, not so long before the Ngawait had + Librarians, and AFTER COVERING the 1988 come silently at dusk in their canoes + Teachers - especially Goondiwindi race riots, as a journal­ of tree-skin, a little fire burning in the EFL and Moths/ Science. ist, that Simons made the decision to bow on a hearth of clay. They knew Applications for our AVA program are baing received now. Placements become an Australian citizen. Driv­ that pitted cliff. It turned golden in the are usually for two years and AV As receive pay based on local rates. If you have professional or trade qualifications and at least two years' ing back to Brisbane after a series of afternoon sun. A man dived down at relevant work experience In Australia . contact the Overseas Service harrowing interviews she says she that exact spot. There, the Ngawait Bureau In your state or send In the coupon below to: 'heard Howard on the radio saying knew, was the underwater hole where Overseas Service Bureau that he didn't want a treaty because he the fish lived. The man placed a springy PO Box 350, FllZROY VIC 3065 Phone (03) 279 1788 or didn't want Australia to become two net, made from bark and rushes, over ADELAIDE (08) 272 6999 BRISBANE (07) 891 1168 countries. It was a statement that no the hole and poked in with a spear. .ff SYDNEY (02) 550 3955 PERTH (09) 382 3503 HOBART and DARWIN (008) 33 1292 one who had seen what I had seen Out swam the fish into the net, as could have made. ' (Australia, she ar­ they knew it would.' • NAME: gues, already is two countries.) ADDRESS : ...... 'It was out of that that I decided to POSTCODE: become an Australian citizen. If this Morag Fraser is the editor of Eureka OCCUPATION: .. country's problems upset me so much Street. £SI

38 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 BooKs

OWEN RICHARDSON What survives of Larlzin Philip Larkin, A Writer's Life, Andrew Motion, Faber & Faber, London, 1993. ISBN 0 571 15174 4 RRP $39.95

B ,rr TO "'c'N wrrH TH< ro•-rnv. sive, diffident. It was an image of mar­ What comes later is not so appealing. ried life thatappalledLarkinand stayed When I came back to the poems in the with him all his life: in 1946 he wrote course of reading this life and the 'At 1.45 p.m. let m e remember that Selected Letters-never having ad­ the only married state I intimately mired Larkin much before-! was know(i.e. thatofmyparents)is bloody struck simply by how well-made they hell. Never must it be forgotten.' And, are, how necessary their crait. Here most famously: are the last lines of Friday Night in the Station Hotel: They fuck you up, your mum and dad . ... all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds But Sydney was also a great reader, Leaving full ashtrays in the holding rather advanced tastes for his Conference Room time: the house was full of books by Bennett and Wells and Lawrence. This In shoeless corridors, the lights women. (It is for this and not for the early familiarity with books perhaps bum. How rancour in the letters that whoever in part encouraged Larkin in his later Isolated, like a fort it is- judges these things will make up his view that 'the only qualification re­ The headed paper, made for writ­ or her mind.) quired for reading poetry [is] ... the ing home But also terrifying, all the m ore so understanding of the language it is (If hom e existed) letters of exile: for being so commonplace: the trans­ written in, and a feeling heart'. It is, Now formation of a flamboyant, 'unmis­ after all, easy to believe in the natural­ Night comes on. Waves fold be­ takable' dandy, an aesthete and wor­ ness of what comes most naturally to hind villages. shipper of Lawrence, to someone of you. Literature was his only very suc­ whom Motion remarks 'As his 50th cessful subject at school, and he had a But it was not for these things birthday approached, colleagues in the poem accepted by The Listener in his alone that Larkin was loved. Rather, a university could have been forgiven first term at StJohn's College, Oxford. gift for beginning with the most lapi­ for thinking he was lumbering to­ He did not much enjoy his time at dary ordinariness, wards his 60th: heavily jowled, bald, Oxford. Short-sightedness kept him cut off from the world by thick black­ out of the war, and the university was I work all day, and get half drunk at framed glasses and one-sometimes empty and dreary. Beneath his flam­ night two-hearing aids.' Deeply provincial, boyant manner of dress he was deeply as well: not merely Hull, the city in shy. Girls terrified him, and their ab­ leading us into finely wrought struc­ which Larkin spent most of his life sence unusually prolonged the usual tures of argument and observation: and became a kind of trademark for adolescent homosexual phase. what we all might say, if only we him, but Wellington, Leicester, Bel­ This is not speculation on my part could. fast. London was Lords, and the thea­ or on Motion's: the details-dreams, Andrew Motion has done an im­ tre and, later, ceremonial dinners and and a fragment of a short story-were pressive job in bringing us the creator awards. When at one stage Larkin recorded by Larkin himself. (While of these poems. Although his book thought to leave Hull he applied for a the outward facts are dreary enough, hasn't the flair, the narrative drive of, job at Reading University Library. the book remains compelling simply say, Marr's Patrick White, A Life, it Larkin was born in Coventry, because Larkin keenly recorded his remains a judicious and well-written where his father was City Treasurer. inner life; his diaries were destroyed account of Larkin's life. An awful life, His father was a difficult, rather strange but he left other autobiographical trac­ really. Not spectacularly so, like man: aloof, impatient, a Nazi sympa­ es, and of course, the letters.) Genet's or Christina Stead's, but in an thiser even during the war. Motion It was at Oxford that Larkin met entirely mundane, rather tacky way: tells us 'As late as 1939, Sydney had Kingsley Amis, his great friend and­ work, drinking, unhappy love affairs. Nazi regalia decorating his office in sort of-enemy. Their friendship was It is also not a career that Larkin City Hall, and when war was declared founded at first on a similar debunk­ himself comes out of particularly well, he was ordered by the Town Clerk to ing view of the world. Part of their especially in his relationships with remove it.' Larkin's mother was pas- revulsion from sentimentality includ-

V OLUME 3 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 39 eel a pretty coarse attitude to the rela­ ica Jones, a lecturer in English he met best years of her life, curiously repeat­ tions between the sexes. Which is while working in Leicester. They spent ing a warning made to Larkin's fian­ putting it mildly: the rest of their life together, but only cee by her disapproving parents. His 'Don't you think it's ABSOLUTE­ at the very end lived in the same letters to Monica at one of the first LY SHAMEFUL that men have to pay house, and then only on the pretext of crises after the arrival of Maeve are for women without BEING ABLE TO Monica's illness. They had a no-non­ not pleasant reading: lots of explain­ SHAG the women afterwards AS A sense, companionable relationship. ingancl hand-wringing, notmuch pros­ MATIER OF COURSE?' [When Larkin was first pointed out to pect of action. Larkin seems in some Unpleasant, of course, but in con­ Monica in the senior common room ways to have been a to-understand­ text also pathetic. With their complic­ at Leicester her first remark was, 'He all-is-to-forgive-all kind of person: a ity was also competitiveness. In some looks like a snorer.') They enjoyed rather novelistic view of the moral ways Kingsley was everything Larkin private games: one winter holiday they life, one might say. wanted to be: handsome, very suc­ spent changing every single sentence The letters quoted here are far cessful with women, with an ac­ in an Iris Murdoch novel to filthy worse in their way than the racism claimed and lucrative career as a nov­ double-entendres. But on Larkin's side and pornophilia that caused such a elist. In later life Larkin had only to there was an ambivalence that never fuss in the Selected Letters [and appar­ hear Amis' voice on the radio, talking lessened [he seemed not to mind very ently led to calls for Larkin's poetry to about jazz [his own speciality) to think much Kingsley Amis' spiteful, mis­ be taken off the school syllabus, with himself 'a corpse eaten out with envy, ogynistic portrait of Monica in Lucky that weak-minded Hegelianism that impotence, inefficiency, laziness, lech­ Tim) and that resulted finally in much gets poetry and ideology and their ery, envy, fear, baldness, bad circula­ suffering all round. psychosocial effects all mixed up to­ tion, bitterness, bittiness, envy, syco­ It is interesting to learn how deep­ gether. As if Proust's love of Wagner phancy, deceit, nostalgia, etc.' ly committed to his work as a librari­ turned him into a pan-Germanic anti­ The pattern of Larkin's life was an Larkin was. From the poetry, one Semite!) Motion here rather loses his established virtually as soon as he left half-assumed that it was just another patience with Larkin, calling him at Oxford in 1943. Knocked back by the job. But in fact Larkin was extraordi­ one point 'not so much a reformed civil service, he applied for and got a narily assiduous and active in his time character, as a more self-tormenting job at the library in the small Mid­ at Hull University. He set up a poetry liar'. He is also, more tendentiously, lands town of Wellington, go t engaged fellowship whose recipients included sharply disapproving of Larkin's pro­ to and broke off with a regular borrow­ Peter Porter and Douglas Dunn, helped Thatcher sentiments- though if you er from the library, Ruth Bowman. to set up a Dictionary of Labour Biog­ actually had to live surrounded by the After similar jobs at Belfast and Leices­ raphy, and almost immediately after horrors inflicted by that governm ent, ter University College libraries, he taking on the job set himself the task objectivity might be harder to call arrived in Hull in 1954, with two of overseeing an extensive new build­ upon. moderately successful novels and two ing program. A colleague, 'while The last 15 or so years of Larkin's books of verse under his belt. recognising that Larkin exploited his life were increasingly sombre. He was The poetry written up to this time own innocence of matters architec­ by now famous and acclaimed, a na­ shows only in flashes the qualities tural in order to get what he wanted, tional monument, involved more in later to be identified as Larkinesque. was "astonished" by the amount of awards and competitions, the public He had not entirely shaken off the expert knowledgehequick- face of literature. But as the '70s went influence of Yeats and Auden; and he ly acquired'. on, he became less and less interested had not let the influence of Hardy's in his work, drank more, and, most attachment to the everyday fully into H ULL ALSO BROUGHT HIM into con­ crushingly of all, found it harder and his language. But from the start his tact with Maeve Brennan, a junior harder to write. His last book, High poetry attracted attention. His third colleague at the library. For the next Windows, collected poems up to lO attempt at a novel, on the other hand, 20-odd years his relationship with her years old. His last great poem, Au bade failed dismally after three drafts. Lar­ waxed and waned alongside that with is a moving record of his fear of death. kin was, I think, in the end simply too Monica. Maeve was a Catholic, and He lived in an enormous, ugly house. self-absorbed to be a very good novel­ refused to sleep with him until late on Larkin finally broke off with Maeve as ist, and what remained of his gift for in the piece. But outside that- in part Monica's health deteriorated and she fiction was eventually wholly sub­ because of it-their relationship gave gave up her own house outside Leices­ sumed in the poetry. [Think how The Larkin the romantic thrill his affair ter to stay with him. They lived on Whitsun Weddings, and Dockery and with Monica could not. Possibly, and booze and tomato sandwiches. His Son arc rather like the short story of rather paradoxically-Motion doesn't death was piteous and slightly tacky, small incident or epiphany-one of raise this himself- her day-to-clay in the modern manner. He was 63, the his favourite authors when young was proximity in the library gave him also same age as the father whose charac­ Katherine Mansfield-and on those some of the regularity he so feared in ter he had increasingly come to share. tern1s alone put most prose examples actual marriage. of this manner to shame.) Larkin did pretty well out of these • Larkin's early fear of marriage re­ two women. Maeve remarked rather Owen Richardson is a co-editor of surfaced in his relationship with Mon- bitterly to Motion that Larkin had the Scripsi.

40 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 BooKs

DAVID GLANZ FORDHAM UNIVERSITY Hope without proiTiise NEW YORK matches your interests: An Unpromised Land: Australia's North-West-A New Homeland, Leon Gettl er, Fremantle Arts Centre Press ADULT, FAMilY, COMMUNITY (paperback) 1993. ISBN l 86368 033 0 RRP $16.95 REliGIOUS EDUCATION? Your mentors: Dr Gloria Durka, TODA Y IT wouLD BE CAL LED ethnic underdeveloped. For Australian gov- Dr john Eli as. cleansing, but in 188 1, when Russian ernments this posed a double prob- - for parish, school & home anti- ernites launched a wave of at- lem-a region with rich economic YOUTH MINISTRY? tack on 160 Jewish communities, the prospects was going unexploited, and YOUNG ADUlTHOOD? word was 'pogrom '. the resultant underpopulation fed Your mentor: Dr John Nelso n. How to react to the threa t of the White Australia paranoia that an emp- -growth in faith , mora l formation, pogromists became the central ques- ty north would open the country up to spiritual development tion for European Jewry. Many took invasion by the 'Asian hordes'. the practical way out and joined the Into this vacuum strode Dr Isaac REliGION AND SOCIETY? millions embarking for the United Steinberg, Russian revolutionary PEACE AND JUSTICE? States. Some, especially the more af- turned Territorialist leader. Gettler Your mentors: Dr John Elias, flu ent, became ever more adamant paints a portrait of a remarkable man, -analys is of socia l issues that they should assimilate into gen- a playwright, politician, philosopher socia l mini stry and educa ti on tile society. and jurist who by sheer force of per- PARISH / PASTORAl MINISTRY? Among the remainder, fierce de- sonality and willpower came surpris- CHURCH lEADERSHIP? bate raged. On the left, the Bolsheviks ingly close to turning Australian mi- Yo urs mentors: Dr German and Bundists maintained that there- gra tion policy in his favour. Steinberg Martinez OSB, Dr Gloria Durka. sponse to anti-Semitism was to stand arrived in WAin 1939 and, once con- - for ORE's, Pari sh Adm in s. & Assocs . and fight; that the struggle again t vinced that the Kimberleys did indeed SPIRITUAliTY: THEOL & HIST.? racism was linked with that against have the potential to sustain a Jewish SPIRITUAl DIRECTION? capitalism itself. The Bundists, with settlement, set out to win those with Your mentors: Dr janet Ruffing RSM, their policy of Jewish cultural auton- influence to his cause. Dr Frederi ca Halli ga n. omy, commanded majority support Within weeks, he had made allies Margaret Burke MA. among Polish Jews as late as 1939. of The West Australian newspaper, -through to Supervised Practi cum Their main opposition cam e from the trade union leaders, State politicians, Zionists, an initially small minority the Anglican leader, Archbishop Le PASTORAl COUNSEliNG? of Jewish activists who argued that Fanu, and more. The Labor paper, the HOSPITAl C.P.E. anti-Semitism could not be overcome. Westralian Worker, summed up an PASTORAl CARE ACING? The solution for Jews lay in leaving increasingly popular sentiment when Yours mentors: Dr john Shea OSA, Europe to establish a Jewish national it wrote: 'The presence of Dr Stein- Dr Mary Ann jordan, Dr Mary Byrne. state in Palestine. berg in Australia brings closer to us - th rough to Supervised Practicum. Between the two wings lay the the persecutions now being suffered THEOlOGICAl RENEWAl? Territorialists. Like the Zionists, they by the Jews in totalitarian countries SABBATICAl? CREDIT FREE? believed Jews had no option but to and his mission is one to which it is Your mentors: Fr Vincent Novak SJ , leave Europe. However, they rejected impossible to remain indifferent.' Dr Ri chard Cassidy. thenationalismimplicitinstate-build- There were, of course, opponents. - bibl; liturg., systematic; personal ing and, like the Bundists, looked to Some expressed practical concerns refreshment in community. cultural autonomy within an other- about the viability of such a project in Year-round summ ers only (4). MA, wise mixed society. suchanisolatedarea.Manymorewere MS (Ed), APD (post-MA). Begi n 1993 : Before their movement was ren- motivatedbyanti-Semiticnotionsthat jan 19, june 24, Aug. 30. dered redundant by the establishment 'aliens' would undermine hornogene- of Israel in 1948, they came tantalis- ous Anglo-Celtic culture. The out- AWARDS: Full/Partial Scholarships, ingly close to fulfilling their hopes in, break of World War II made little dif- Anniversary Awards, Mission of all places, the Kimberleys region of ference; indeed, anti-Jewish propaga n- Dioceses (7 6), Anniversary Awa rds for Western Australia. It is with this foot- dists now argued against immigration candidates from overseas. note of Jewish, and Australian, histo- on the grounds that the Nazis could FOR APP LI CATION S & I FORMA­ ry that Leon Gettler's book, An Un- infiltrate agents among the refugees. TION: VINCENT M. NOVAK SJ promised Land, is concerned. Gettler notes one bizarre report, ap- GRAD. SCH. OF REL. & REL. ED. Difficult to reach overland, remote propriately published in Truth, that FORDHAM UN IVERS ITY from the main population centres and Jews in a Carlton factory had gloated tel (7 18) 817 1000 markets, the Kimberleys by the 1930s over German victories. BRONX, NEW YORK, were still (in white terms) woefully But the nature of Australian rae- 10458-5163

VoLUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 41 Bioethics in a Liberal Society MAX CHARLESW ORTH A readable and original discussion of contemporary issues in bioethics. Max Charlesworth argues that as proach to prewar Jewish immigration, open the doors to non-Anglo-Celtic there can be no public consensus on a set of core even that figure 'would have been a refugees. Cambodian boat people, sit­ va lues there should be a plurality of ethical stances as substantial improvement'. ting in compounds not so very far well. On this basis he discusses issues such as the Gettler clearly regrets the project's from where Steinberg would have ending of human life, new reproductive technologies and the ethical distribution of limited health-care failure. Apportioning blame is more founded his settlement, may feel that resources, particularly hospital care. difficult. Suspicions raised by Stein­ Canberra has yet to learn the lesson. • 0 521 44952 9 176 pp. Paperback $19.95 berg's radical background, the role of key public servants, the hostility of David Glanz is a free lance journalist. The Other Australia Australian Zionists who resented the Experiences of Migration competition the plan represented­ • An Unpromised Land won the 1993 BRIAN MURPHY all played their part. But the single Lysbeth Cohen award for contribu­ biggest factor was probably the reluc­ tions by a Jewish writer to the Austral­ Australia has been diversified by the range of immi­ tance of Australian governments to ian way of life. grants who have come to its shores, a diversification that has been welcomed by some and vehemenrly opposed by others. This book describes the personal experience of many newcomers to Australia, who came as displaced persons, refugees, on business BooKs migration programs or independently. LEON GETTLER 0 521 44194 3 274 pp. Hardback $45 .00 ....: ·:.,,,. CAMBRIDGE ::: UNIVERSITY PRESS The melody lingers ro Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Vic 3166 The New Left, The Jews and The Vietnam War, 1965-1972, Philip Mendes, Lazare Press, 1993 . ISBN 0 646 13389 6 RRP $20.00 ism, based on the notion of Australia as a bastion of white civilisation on the edge of Asia, contained an ambi­ l u" TO T~N< mI M•y 1973"' commentator Robert Manne, who was guity that worked in Steinberg's night to remember. That was when I briefly with the left in the mid-60s. favour. For many, if people of Anglo­ played Solidarity Forever on the piano Whatever convictions they had, their Celtic stock could not be persuaded to at SKIF for Frank Crean. I was inspired, involvement was disproportionate to populate the north, a second-best prop­ attacking the union hymn with more the numbers on campus. At Monash osition was to consider Jews as 'hon­ gusto than finesse; Crean's presence University alone, about one in fiv e orary whites' and allow them to se­ was an act of communion, a celebra­ left-wing activists were said to be Jew­ cure the frontier on whites' behall. As tion of hope for the future. ish, and most of them were in the one letter in Th e West Australian put SKIF was the youth wing of the hardline Left. As one historian later it: 'Would it not be better to have had Jewish Bund, a democratic socialist commented: 'There were enough Jews a Palestine in Western Australia to organisation established in the 1890s in the Labour Club to give (League of help us defend the empty north against to represent Jewish workers in revolu­ Rights leader) Eric Butlernightmares.' invaders.' tionary Eastern Europe. A member of Mendes identifies this experience The challenge for Steinberg was to the Socialist International, the Bund as one of the first examples of large­ mobilise the friendly element of Aus­ had ties to the ALP. But it was also scale involvement in the political pro­ tralian conservatism against the hos­ fiercely anti-communist. So when we cess by an ethnic group during the pre­ tile. It was a challenge that failed. marched against the Vietnam War as multicultural era. Despite support from the WA state Jewish socialists, our elders accused In a case study of 28 former stu­ government and a considerable body us of naivete. TheNew Left, they said, dent radicals, he finds that the major­ of allies, he fell at the hurdle that was just the Old Left in drag. ity had come from left-wing immi­ mattered-approval by the federal Such are the complexities of Jew­ grant backgrounds. The key political government. In 1944, after much pre­ ish radicalism, a tradition which for issues that defined their involvement varication, Canberra gave its final near! y two centuries has provided the­ were in many cases inseparable from decision. Prime Minister Curtin wrote orists and activists such as Marx, Trot­ their Jewish culture. Melbourne that his government could not 'see its sky, Lassalle and Goldman. University Labour Club activist Doug way to depart from the long-estab­ Philip Mendes' book The New Left, Kirsner challenged the moral con­ lished policy in regard to alien settle­ The Jews and The Vietnam War 1965- science of Australians: 'How different ment in Australia'. 1972, examines these and similar is­ is our silence on Vietnam with the The project could never have been sues that confronted Jewish students complicity of many German people a solution to the horrors of the Holo­ in Melbourne's anti-Vietnam War during the Nazi regime? caust; at most, Steinberg hoped to movement during the late '60s and Another dissident, Elliot Gingold, take 75,000 refugees. But considering early '70s. They ranged from Maoists condemned the South African gov­ the federal government's miserly ap- like Albert Langer to the conservative ernment as 'only one step better than

42 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 B OOKS

M ARK SKULLEY the Nazis'. And Tom Wolkenberg, who has been active on Aboriginal issues, said: 'The Jewish heritage of oppression led me to identify closely with the Aborigines. It continues to Life on the junlz pile disgust me that not more Jews are Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael involved.' Milken, )esse Kornbluth, Bookman Press, Melbourne 1992, The Arab-Israeli conflict and left­ ISIIN 1 86395 004 4 wing hostility towards Israel created inevitable tensions. Most of the activ­ M ICHAEL MILK EN IS a Califor- Fairfax. The minnow could now swal- ists in Mendes' case study were either nian financier who wore a fairly obvi- low the whale, and Drexel Burnham Socialist Zionist ('Jews have to emi­ ous toupee and earned more than Lambert'sstandardletterto banks that grate to Israel to guarantee the surviv­ $US714 million in 1986, easily top- it was 'highly confident' of raising al of the Jewish people and that surviv­ ping Al Capone's record for gross money for another improbable take- al should be on as egalitarian a basis as income in a single year. Milken again over struck fear into America's board- possible') or supporters of a two-state made history in 1990 when he was rooms. solution ('I've always believed that fined $200 million, the biggest fine Highly Confident suggests the US the Israeli people have a right to exist imposed on an individual. His establishment-Wall Street, the leg- and a right to their country. So have employer, Drexel Burnham Lambert, isla tors and the regulators-were out the Palestinians.'). But a significant was fined $650 million. to get Milken and that is probably number of their peers were uninter­ In the beginning, Milken was a true. An insider trader who had been ested or even opposed.) ('It's impossi­ middle-class nerd from Los Angeles, a caught by chance dabbed in Ivan ble to be both a Zionist and left-wing,' mathematics wizard who was Boesky, who then dabbed in Milken said Albert Langer). obsessed by the bond market-the to get a better deal for himself, secret- The rise of anti-Zionism on the IOUsthatgovemmentsandfirmsissue ly taping his talks with the junk-bond left, and with it signs of anti-semitism, to raise money. US finance markets king. The US govemment filed a crim- saw the emergence of specifically Jew­ traditionally focused on bonds issued inalracketeeringandfraudsuitagainst ish radical groups such as the Radical by the 1000 biggest companies, but Milken in 1986, but he pleaded guilty Zionist Alliance and the magazine Milken twigged that the right choice three-and-a-half years later to civil 'Survival'. Mendes identifies these as of 'junk bonds' issued by medium-size charges on comparatively minor secu- 'early multicultural trends in the businesses outperfom1ed bonds with monoculturalleft'. better investment ratings. Junk bonds Jewish student radicalism seems also paid higher interest to investors to have been more pronounced in and a fatter com1nission to agents, Melbourne than in Sydney. Melbourne because they were perceived as a had more Jewish migrants from the higher-risk investment. THE UNff£0 NATIONS CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT radical environment of EastemEurope, The young Milken wrote an and Sydney got more Hungarians and unpublished article for The New York Did the Earth Summit Achieve Anything? Germans. Although Jews were in­ Times: 'Unlike other crusaders from What difference did Community Organisations make? How do we bring th e Earth Summit back to Earth? valved in Sydney's new left, their peers Berkeley, I have chosen Wall Street as came from less ideologically-charged my battle ground for improving socie­ ACFOA 's Latest Development Dossier provides answers in traditions than those who settled in ty. It is here that governments, insti­ Melbourne. tutions and industries are financed.' To The Summit and Beyond Student radicalism of any sort is This avowal of crusader status sits A Community Guide to the Earth Summit and its now dead. And the trend towards mid­ uneasily with Milken's 1986 take­ Outcomes dle-class status, the waning influence home pay of $550 million. of an immigrant left tradition, and the Junk bonds no doubt helped many anti-Zionist expressions by the left legitimate businesses, with limited have seen Australia's Jewish commu­ equity but plenty of cash flow and nity become more conservative. ambition, to expand. But they also During the past two decades, its politi­ funded 'arbitrageurs' likeivanBoesky, cal activity has focused largely on who bought into companies lined up issues affecting Jews and in particular, for takeover offers, or made nuisance To the Summit and Beyond analyses the outcomes from the Earth Israel. offers of his own and had to be paid to Summit and discusses the rule of community organisations in the I hope that Mendes' study will be go away. The bonds helped fund hos­ UNCED process. It also looks at those issues which "UNCED left the first step towards questioning this tile takeovers, such as the $US25 bil­ unsaid" and how proposals from the Earth Sw11111it call be implemented. reluctance to find common cause with lion bid for R.J.R. Nabisco in 1988, in Cost: $6.00 (including postage) broader society. • which old companies were saddled Available from with new debt. In Australia, junk bonds Australian Council for Overseas Aid Leon Gettler is a journalist and raised $A400 million towards War­ Private Bag 3, Deakin ACT 2600,06 285 1816 (ph) 06 285 1720 (fax ) reviewer. wick Fairfax's ill-fated bid for John

VOLUME 3 NUMB ER 7 • EUREKA STREET 43 rities offences that did not include major players at the front. It has lim­ called promoter, is not in doubt,', wrote insider trading. He was fined $200 ited footnotes and does not give cle­ Galbraith, 'but thecliscovery that high­ million and sentenced to 10 years' jail. tailccl sources at the back as in Bob risk bonds leveraged on limited assets I can accept the book's suggestion Woodward's recent investigative should have a higher interest rate hard­ that the media were often manipulat­ works. Kornbluth also makes big as­ ly stands on a par as an invention with ed by the prosecution. Some hacks sumptions, such as when he claims the electric light.' were clearly biased against Milken that Milk en exposes his bald pate dur­ The higher circles of US govern­ and his $200 mill ion fine and l 0 years' ing an interview in jail in a 'thought­ ment, business and law enforcement, jail is out of proportion with the judge's fu l, obviously premeditated gesture ... as portrayed by Kornbluth, show dis­ ruling that Milken caused only Milken's decision to remove the base­ turbing signs of egomania, sexism, $308,000 damage in the matters be­ ball cap strikes me as a way of an­ and anti-Semitism; mentally they fore the court. But, under pressure or nouncing that he has nothing to hide. seem to be in the Skull and Bones not, he pleaded guilty and read an After years of evasive conversation Club at Yale, or its equivalents else­ admission in open court. Many's the and unenlightening interviews, he where. There's also a blurred line be­ crim who has been convicted on true wants to be heard ... ' Maybe, but may­ tween fiction and reality: an accused charges and false evidence: rule be Milken just wanted to take his cap financier appears C1t a conference with number one is to not claim you've off-the jailers did take away his tou­ prosecutor's wearing a cap saying'Shit been set up because the judge and jury pee, after all. Kombluth also reckons Happens' and aT-shirt calling for the won't believe it and it'll count against that Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband release of Sherman McCoy, the hero you. is the 'best explication of the human of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vani­ Milkenis painted as a clean-living, climension of securities crime' he has ties. Milken's wife sees the movie loving husband and father who sin­ encountered; To me, this is like say­ Reversal of Fortune about Harvard cerely gave time and money to chari­ ing The Magic Pudding is a good five­ law professor Alan Dershowitz ty. He 'looks like an economics pro­ year plan for food production. Maybe clefencling Claus von Bulow, and Der­ fessor who will never be a panelist on he should have spoken to more ordi­ showitz is hired by Milken. Reagan a Sunday morning talk show. Every­ nary people trapped at the other end of Attorney-General Eel Meese suggests thing about him screams off-the-rack. the financial food chain. that Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from There's a second button on the cuff of Drexel Burnham Lambert col­ bad press because 'if you really look at his blue Oxford shirt, a sure sign that lapsed soon after it copped the $650 the facts, he didn't exploit Bob it was bought at a department store ... ' million fine, as did many other busi­ Cratchit'. In contrast, Boesky sits behind a con­ nesses and deals financed by junk The trial judge, Kimba Wood, is sole of 300 direct-clial buttons in an bonds. The bonds themselves have the only explicit link to Australia, office built for the Shah of Iran. 'Talk since recovered and the Milken fami­ being named after the obscure South about a Faustian scene ... what really ly is convinced that Michael was a Australian town rather than the white mesmerised visitors was what they misunderstood genius whose time will lion of cartoon fame. Judge Wood later saw as they faced Boesky. There come. Kornbluth reckons that ruled herself out as Attorney-General through the cast window and seeming Milken's responsibility is more cul­ in the Clinton administration after almost to frame his vulpine profile, tural than criminal: he let himself be revealing that she, too, had used ille­ were three giant numerals on the next turned into a cult by people who were gal aliens, as baby sitters. building-666 the Satanic number.' making money off his back. 'Milk en is The book has other interesting triv­ The author, Jesse Kornbluth, is a a tragic figure ... because it never wor­ ia, such as Milken meeting Mikhail contributing editor of Vanity Fairwho ried him that he might be breaking the Gorbachev and musing that Reagan got a break on other journalists by law. In his heyday, he threw off great and Bush would make very good lead­ being a neighbour of Milken's press ideas all day long. It was the ideas he ers of the Soviet Union, while Gorby mouthpiece. Kornbluth is more sym­ lived for. Goony as it sounds, the men­ might make a better-than-average pathetic than the authors of two pre­ tal excitement those ideas generat­ President of the United States. A11cl vious books on Milken (The Preda­ ed-and, of course, their ability to Kornbluth reports that Michael Jack­ tor's Ball and Den of Thieves), but bring him hundreds of milllions of son sat in on maths classes taught by writes in the style of the celebrity legitimately earned dollars- blinded Milk en. interviews in Vanity Fair under the him to such mundane considerations But Kornbluth's biggest mistake is editorship of Tina Brown, in which as bookkeeping and disclosure regula­ believing that it would have been more the subjects' view of their own impor­ tions and other, seemingly trivial se­ appropriate to fine Milken rather than tance is generally swallowed whole curities laws.' send him to jail. In the US, as in and regurgitated by the reader. You Kombluth seems amazed that John Australia, too many people think that read about a few warts, but the image Kenneth Galbraith dispatched Milk en someone who holds up a service sta­ is bigger than Ben Hur. Kornbluth in a single paragraph in a shortish tion is a 'real' criminal, but someone makes improbable claims, as when he book about 'financial euphoria' as an who rorts the stock market is not. • suggests that a prosecutor was more example of the financial schemers who ambitious than Madonna. appear, almost on cue, every 20 years. Mark Skulley is a former business The book is hard to follow because 'Milken's competence and superior reporter for the Sydney Morning it docs not give a simple list of the diligence as a salesman, sometimes Herald.

44 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMilER 1993 THEATRE

acknowledgm ent of what 'WH<>N TH' ""'"' of a bra nd new day.' So the ~lf!S:S;A~~ she's up against. 'I've go t song goes in the musi- .oil ,...:,._ ...__ the double discrimi- ca l play by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles, ~._....., _ _ .,"""- uses coun­ try music, soul, rap, C h r i s ti a n hym ns, '60s psychedclia, and Aboriginal and Asian motifs to tell a story of racism and exil e. T he setting is Broome, which has always been an eth­ nic mel ting pot: Aborigines, Mela­ nesians, In donesians, Malays, Chi­ nese, Japanese and Euro pea ns were all drawn to the town's lucrative pearling industry. Wh en everybody is a mem­ ber of a minority gro up, it is some­ times easier to create an atmosphere sonal of freedom and tolerance. s t o r y n N u Dae, Jimmy Chi is a survivor of the and an up- :Jimmy Chi. mission system established in the beat score Jamieson. Kimberl eys a century ago. Like many Alice Haines Aborigines, he was ta ken from his audience succes­ and Hea th Burgeson. fa mily as a child and pl aced on a mis­ sively co nfused, sion station; later, having been ex­ distressed, appalled, pell ed from the mission for 'ni cking a and- finally- euphoric. couple of things', he was sent to Perth Alice Haines, who harder to ge t to be educated. Eventually, Chi fo und plays the part of Rosie, is what I want.' It himself homeless on the streets. originally from Tasmania. She pays to be a drea m­ His search for his Aboriginality is moved to Sydney to sing with the er: when the season the basis of Bran Nu Dae, which has Aboriginal band Mixed Relations, closes, Haines will start continued to enj oy critical and audi­ and came across Bran Nu Dae at the work on an album about ence acclaim since its premiere at the second Black Playwrights' black women. 1990 Festival of Perth. At first spon­ Conference in 1989. Trevor Jamieson, who plays sored by the W A Theatre Company, A LICE HOPES Bran Nu Dae will Willie, the character based on Jimmy the play has been taken on tour round inspire other Aborigines to get Chi, was grea tly encouraged by fa mily Australia by a separate company, Bran involved in the performing arts-'to and fri ends in Esperance. His aunt Nu Dae Productions. The tour is soon show them that there's a career out raised money among the community to move overseas-to Singapore in there that we can tap into, and a career to send him to Perth for the Bran Nu May next year, and later to the United that doesn't sacrifice our culture. Dae auditions, and Jamieson became States, Hong Kong and Japan. 'When I told my mum I wanted to be a local hero. 'Wow, mate,' his fri ends Chi, a graduate of Adelaide's Cen­ a singe r, she didn't know what to say. told him, 'you're better than Ernie tre for Aboriginal Studies in Music, It was like it was too far from reality­ Dingo.' wrote most of the music in Bran Nu a dream that could never come true'. Hea th Burgeson, from Derby, is Dae 10 years ago. It is a 'message' play, Haines' determination expresses Jamieson's understudy. Burgeson'sap­ about oppression and resistance, but not only her passion for music and a proach to Willie is a deeply personal the politics are conveyed thro ugh a pride in Aboriginal culture, but an one. He too was adopted into a white

V OLUME 3 N UMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 45 THEATRE

G EOFFREY MILNE family, and is still looking for his Aboriginal relatives. Burgeson sees Bran Nu Dae as important not just to set the record straight, but because it is a bridge between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. 'It's to edu­ cate white audiences and inspire minorities', he says. 'Aboriginal peo­ ple are pretty shy, so when they see us performing they feel stronger and start doing things' Recollections at john Stunner, Mel- bourne University 522 84494 4. RRP $29.95 Heath Burgeson has been building bridges for years. He used to go busk­ ing in Perth's Hay Street Mall, playing the didgeridoo, and was invited to teach the didgeridoo in primary schools. 'I'd play them a tune, and AsA THEATRE REVIEWER grappling trated with some marvellous black­ show them how it works. It's good to with the Melbourne Theatre Com­ and-white archival photographs, cast teach young kids about Abori ginal pany's 40th anniversary season at lists, repertoire lists and facs imiles of culture before they learn that Captain Russell Street Theatre and the Play­ old posters, tickets and box-office Cook came here to tame a bunch of house, I was hardly surprised when records ), Sumner painstakingly details savages.' this extraordinary memoir from that the gradual development of the So Bran Nu Dae, its writers and its company's founder, John Sumner, pioneering Union Thea tre Repertory cast are a success, as are other black crossed m y desk. Company and its successor, the MTC. performers like Yothu Yindi, Archie As a former employee of this mo t Along the way, he also tells of the Roach and Kev Carmody. But it's been disciplined of taskmasters, I also knew Australian Eliza be than Theatre Tms t, a hard slog. Why is white Australia of his exemplary sense of timing and the National Institute of Dramatic only now beginning to listen to black feel for occasion. Sumner always Art, the Victorian Arts Centre and a artists? Alice Haines believes it's be­ expected things to be done to his stand­ host of other orga nisations, play­ cause 'the industry has conned on to ards, on time and to the tightest of wrights, 'artists' (as he was wont to thefaet that there's money to be made. budgets. But he could also always be call actors when he wasn't calling Som e people want to understand relied upon to deliver the goods him­ them 'boy'), directors, designers and Aboriginal history, but it's basically self-and to have sniffed out the best administrators. m oney. That's a bit sad, but it's also time and place at which to deliver Sunmer reveals a lot about his good for us because we're getting a them. Thus it is with Recollections at great loves in the thea tre, especially chance to come through. ' • Play. lighting and other technical aspects of And thus it was that he arrived in the craft, and favoured playwrights Donna Sue Robson is a freelance jour­ Australia to take up a humble job as like G.B. Shaw; th e burgeoning Aus­ nalist. manager of Melbourne University's tralian drama that Sumner did so much Union Theatre in 1952, at a time when to nurture; hi s obsession with 'stand­ Abbotsford Cycles commercial productions of overseas ards' and 'professionalism', some of hits were the principal source of enter­ his pet hates (especially in his strug­ We can look after your bicycle, from tainment for the city's theatre-going gles with the m edia and bureaucracies a new tube to a full service and public. Reading this chronicle of the of all kinds); and many of his personal repaint. development of Australian profession­ joys and disappointments. On the We can help you to make cycling al theatre from the perspectiveof 1993, latter subject, though, much of the more comfortable, convenient and when commercial productions of over­ private man rem ains as private now as reliable. seas hits (by the Andrew Lloyd­ it was on the day he delayed the re­ We sell Australian-made Pro-tour Webbers and Cameron Mackin to shes) sumption of a rehearsal by a couple of bicycles, Velocity aluminium rims, once m ore dominate Melbourne's minutes because of a lunch -time Atom and Headway helmets, and thea trical landscape, one might be marriage ceremony. Netti clothing. tempted to observe that little has John Sumner's career was remark­ 299 johnston Street changed. able, and his Recollections are at times Abbotsford, VIC 3067 But Sumner's readable (though compelling reading. Next month, I Telephone 41 7 402 2 over-long) and informative (if largely shall return to the 40th anniversary anecdotal) account of those years season of the company over which he reminds us of how much really has presided for so long. • changed in Australian (and not just Melbourne) theatre in the four decades Geoffrey Milne is head of the division since his arrival. of drama at La Trobe University and a In 3 79 pages of dense text (i llus· drama critic for the AB C.

46 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 This is not although, to be fair to Crichton and sales counter at Macy's to a glamor­ a picture of Spielberg, Jurassic Park does attempt ous career as a stand-up comic. In the a warning of sorts about the perils of process Dottie teaches her two daugh­ scientific adventurism in genetic en­ ters a series of 'life lessons', among a dinosaur. gineering. them the fac t 'that you're only ever So will this stunning piece of two phone calls away from anyone in We thought entertainment win Spielberg that the world'. elusive Oscar? I doubt it, although The characters and comedy are of Tyrannosaurus Rex might get a best­ the residual Jewish-American sort, you might actor nomination, and the two child endlessly deprecating and hopeful at actors, Ariana Richards and Joseph the same time. Dan Aykroyd plays a like a break. Mazzella, are also great. small part, which I could only find A note of caution to parents: very funny when I refl ected on the amazing young children will probably be fright­ ubiquity of paper tissues in America. ened by a couple of scenes in the film. Perhaps cultural differences explain FLASH IN THE PAN - Brad Halse why I wasn't especially am used by the stand-up routines of Dottie's stage Not on your life career. Monster attraction I went to see This Is My Life with This Is My Life, dir. Nora Ephron the cries of children in my ears ('Will Jurassic Park, dir. Steven Spielberg (independent cinemas). Nora Ephron you be home late?'), and on the way (Greater Union). Spielberg, the direc­ wrote the screenplay for Silkwood, read a newspaper columnist's account tor or producer of six of the top 20 and this is her first attempt at direct- of her son's congenital untidiness (why movies of all time (judging by finan­ did I bother, and why did she bother cial criteria, of course) has never won writing it?), so I was already deep in an Oscar. Will this be his year, as Eureka Street the business of m others and children record crowds pack cinemas the world Fihn Competition by the time the opening credits were over to view his latest spectacular, rolling. The problem is that in life Jurassic Park? In the face of the great reptilian there is no resolution, just tragi-com­ And make no mistake, spectacu­ onslaught, Eureka Street wishes to edy, whereas in films one expects the lar it is. In what is really a cross stress one thing: th ey're all dead, tragi-comedy to be resolved in either between Jaws (with claws) and In di­ and we're not. So there. But, lest we or both aspects. This Is My Life has no ana Jones, the dinosaurs are the stars. seem churlish, this m onth we in­ resolution, and revolves round Sa m Neill and Laura Dem can do viteyoutosendusyourworstdino­ moments (the elder daughter's first little to impose their presence on the saur joke. The one we like best (i.e. sexual encounter) and individuals (a film, and neither can Richard Atten­ least) wins two tickets to the film cardboard cutout fa ther) that are, sim­ borough and the amusing Jeff Gold­ of your choice (and you're not al­ ply, comic cliches. blum. If it's axiomatic that actors lowed to use the jokes from the - Margaret Coffey should never work with animals or film). The winner of June-July's kids, dinosaurs are definitely out. competition was Melissa Eaton, of These creatures are rem arkable Glebe, NSW, Icemen cometh models, the result of two years' who thou ght re earch and development by a 60- that the tender Children of Nature, dir. Fridrik Thor strong team of designers, engineers, West ern dia­ Fridriksson (independent cinemas), is puppeteers and computer animators; loguewentlike a treat for the jaded-a reminder that they will terrify, or win the hearts of, this: it is still possible to experience most viewers. Tom: Ah guess delighted surprise in the cinema, and The story, in case you have lived you' re won­ that in film-making, as in any art, the in seclusion for the past couple of drin' what ah highest achievem ents are often also months, is based on Michael Crich­ got under rna the simplest. The film tells the story ton's best-selling novel about a hat. an old farmer from northern Iceland wealthy eccentric who succeeds in Patsy: It ain't (Gisli Halldorsson ), who decides to 're-creating' several species of extinct the hat ah'm spend his remaining years with his dinosaur by means of DNA extracted worried about. daughter and her family in Reykjavik. from a 130 million-year-old fossilised But his ways irritate them, and they m osquito. Predictably, however, find a place for him in a nursing home human greed enters the picture, things instead. go wrong, and the plot builds into a ing. Together with Delia Ephron, she Up to this point, Children of classic humans v. animals battle. has adapted a novel about a single N ature could be any film about being Minimal intellectual energy is mother, Dottie Ingels (Julie Kavner), old and unwanted, except that the needed to stay with all of this, who progresses from the cosmetics actors speak Icelandic and Halldors-

V oLUME 3 N uMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 47 son does a better job than most who is the same. But this is first and fo re­ earnest conversations while lying in have had such roles. But in the nurs­ most an English fi lm, part of the fitful even deeper pools of it, and advertise ing home the old ni.an meets his first revival of English cinema. their (orTarantino's) tough-guy status love (Sigridur Hagalin), and the pair Those whose memory of Kenneth by walking around smeared with it. decide to run away together, seeking Branagh is of Henry V striding round a But that's OK because the red stains their childhood village among the Shakespearean battlefield migh t get a look pretty good as they seep across country's remote western fjords. shock to see him dressed in suspend­ the front of the white shirts and black They steal a jeep and what follows ers and a tutu in the opening scene. ties that everyone wears, and it's all is a kind of old people's road movie, And Stephen Fry does what he does pumped out to the addictive beat of which sounds funny and sometimes best- plays the effete Englishman, early '70s rock'n'roll. is, but it is a gentle humour. In keep­ Peter, who brings the group together. 'I On the basis of this musical blood­ ing with the road-movie genre, the can think of no fluffier, shinier people letting, and some tedious film-school physical journey becomes a metaphor to see in the new year with,' he says. exercises (the narrative is composed for a psychological one, and as the old No one in The Big Chill could have got of flashbacks, including an imagined couple travel through a bewitchingly away with a line like that. flashback within a flashback), Taran­ beautiful Icelandic wilderness they This is good English comedy mixed tino has been hailed as a new Sc01·sese. are gradually taken back by the land with a sort of public-schoolboy senti­ Nonsense. Apart from a great sound that gave them birth. ment. People stare at the toes of their track and a key role for Harvey Keitel, What began as a piece of gritty boots as they deliver lines like 'You all there is little here that is reminiscent cinematic realism ends as a piece of m ean a frightful lot to me, of course.' of the master. pagan spiritual awareness, overlaid There are other stock English charac­ The violence in films such as Mean with some Christian ritual. In the ters- kindhearted Maggie (why is she Streets, Raging Bull and GoodFellas is hands of a lesser director, such a mix­ always called Maggie?) who dresses in an integral part of scenes that trace the ture would be a piece of New Age cardigans and sacklikc dresses, and development of character; it has a silliness. From Fridriksson, it is the kindly servant who, of course, moral context, something that is only sublime. turns out to be the most together per­ dimly present in Reservoir Dogs. -Ray Cassin son in the movie. Tarantino knows that not all his The acting is good enough to make thieves can be equally honourable: all this a very funny mix, and there are there is the good bad guy (Keitel), the Damn witty chaps some good lines as well. In a dig at mean-spirited bad guy (Steve Busce­ Hollywood, Branagh's character says mi) and the psychopath (Michael Peter's Friends, dir. Kenneth Branagh of his fading starlet wife: 'If we stay Madsen). But they are never much (Greater Union), begs comparison with together for five years, I get a free hair more than ciphers, remaining almost that other bitter-sweet movie about transplant and she gets a new set of as opaque to us as their fake names­ reunions, The Big Chill. The sound­ breasts.' Fry replies: 'So she'll have Mr White, Mr Pink, Mr Blue­ track is to the '80s what that of Th e four?' Branagh: 'Yes, but her agent gets proclaim that they are to each other. Big Chill was to the '60s, and the one.' Given their lack of substance, the theme-youthful promise and inti­ I suspect you have to be a bit of a film 's ludicrous final shootout, in macy turned to middle-aged doubts- Pom to enjoy thoroughly this movie. I which (almost) everyone kills (almost) am, and I thought it was spiffing good everyone else, so that they all collapse fun. together like deflated dummies, STRIKING A -Margaret Simons amounts to an ironic deflation of B ALANCE Tarantino's showy, insubstantial movie. C hristopher Beware of the dogs -Ray Cassin G leeson SJ Reservoir Dogs, dir. Quentin Taran­ Talking Points How do parents tino (independent cinemas), reworks a and teachers familiar vein of American hardboiled communicate crime fiction: honour among thieves The Sisters of the Good Samaritan strong values to and the heist gone wrong. It has had will gather in chapter in Sydney from young people something of a succes de scandale 26 September to 1 October, to ratify without compromising important because of its obsessive, relentlessly their vision for th e future and choose individual freedoms? Christopher detailed, portrayal of violence. Or, a congregationa l leader. Gleeson gives valuable insight and more precisely, because of its obses­ practical advice. sion with that byproduct of violence, Contact: Sr Margaret Keane Hodder & Stoughton, $14.95 blood. Mater Christi College The sticky crimson fluid well s up PO Box 84 Available from Jesuit Publications Be lgrave, VIC 3160 Bookshop, PO Box 553, Richmond, constantly in Reservoir Dogs. People cradle their dying friends in deep pools tel: (03) 754 6611 VIC 3121. Include $3.50 for post­ fax: (03) 752 5150 age and handling. of it, shoot other people and conduct

48 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 scenes that are not connected by a Shock of the real smooth narrative structure, and each Passion Fish, clir. John Sayles (inde­ is filmed against a black backdrop with pendent cinemas) could have been simple and stark lighting. This paral­ awful. As it happens, it's superb : an lels Wittgenstein's style of writing assured, detailed and convincing sto­ (which philosophers, or anyone else ry about a daytime soap tar who re­ for that matter, emulate at their peril): turns to her native Louisiana because discrete paragraphs, unconnected by a he has become a paraplegic after be­ smooth argumentative stmcture, that ing swiped by a New York cab. Mary worry over recurrent themes; the re­ McDonnell gives her best perform­ sult lends itself to as many interpreta­ ance to date as May Alice Culhane, a tions as there are readers. woman whose courage and desire to I'm not convinced that tlus suc­ li ve are in part restored by another ceeds. What underlies the filmis really needy refugee from the north, hern urse a simple narrative-itis a biographical Chantelle (Alire Woodard ). documentary with pretensions. We are The film works by a frequent, told about the life of Wittgenstein in a deliberate toying with near-cliche and fairly conventional way, with the Witt­ near-bathos. May Alice takes up a gensteinian stmcture as an overlay to dormant interest in photography; how the narrative of a life that might have easy it would have been to give her an been more effectively (though more exh ibition and a new career. But no, expensively) done conventionally. it's just a hobby, a medium-level de­ The style of direction may have tail. She is attracted to an old fl ame, worked well if the fi lm had been about who is now a local handyman; the Wittgenstein's thought in a m ore un­ fi lm explores the problem of sexuality compromising way, but that would in someone paralysed below the waist, have been a movie for a very small but there is no affair and no protesta­ market indeed. As it is, the film will tions of love, just a completely plausi­ leave many people puzzled at what the ble relationship. intellectual fuss was supposed to be Thesam ecareand understatement about. I suppose one might come out in forms the central relationship having an idea that Wittgenstein between Chantelle and May Alice. thought it was impossible to have a They have a friendship, of sorts, but private language, and that in some ultimately Chantelle is there because sense everything was private. But I'd she needs a job, and needs to escape be surprised if anyone could extract her life in Chicago. There is a mutual reasons for these views from the film. need, andsome wannth- the film bril­ Thereare variousscenes in which Witt­ liantly explores the blurred line genstein passionately pronounces on between need and affection. At one some theme, and Russell or Keynes as point, a visitor mistake Chantelle for spokespeople for tolerant orthodoxy a black fa mily retainer. By the end of mutter something along the lines of 'I the film, that is what she has become. ay old boy, that can't be right, can it?', Please send a free copy of Eureka Family retainers are, no doubt, a Bad but these scenes don't add up to even Street to: Thing-and Sayles (and Chantelle's an elementary guide to the arguments father) thinks so too. But fo r this fic­ that might be reconstructedfrom Witt­ Name ...... tional character, in this situation, it's genstein's writing. And if the film de­ a good place to be. Creating a reality so nies the view that everything is public Address ...... specific that this can be said without by leaving us very puzzled about what sending alarming general m essages is is going on inside Wittgenstein, that's a real cinematic achievement. not a good enough excuse. -David Braddon-Mitchell But there is a bit to enjoy-Michael ...... Postcode ...... Gough is delightful as Bertrand Rus­ sell, as is Tilda Swinton as Lady Mor­ Enigma variations rell. Karl Johnson's adult Wittgenstein My name is ...... is pretty good, too. I think the blam e Wittgenstein, clir. Derek Jarman (inde­ lieselsewhereifhecomesacrossalmost pendent cinemas). There is something as an upmarket Kahlil Gibran. Perhaps some of it, just a little, lies with Witt­ very austere about this film on the life ...... Postcode ...... of the Viennese philosopher Ludwig genstein himself. Wittgenstein. It is divided into short -David Braddon-Mitchell Tel......

VOLUME 3 N UMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 49 Passing the test of time

SM, N

50 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1993 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no.16, September 1993

Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM

ACROSS 1&6-down. Great ending to the contest. (5,5) 4 A fraction of the period in mid-course. (8) lO Sal 'n three posh characters mixing together? Not what you'd expect' (7) 11 Managing to form circle round Sister, perhaps. (7) 12 Being indecisive, silly Sally takes in two breaths with a gin cocktail. (6,9) 13 Originally many came gladly to watch their team here. (1,1 ,1) 14 Brief experience completely enjoyed with aesthetic discernment. (10) 17 More than one of the same' Such characters may be well-known at the football. (10) 21 A fly on the wall could contain this organisation. (1,1,1) 23 He' ll be remembered by posterity- has hip replacement done by team medico. (15) 25 I express hesitation after I get free of element. (7) 26 Somehow compete in pain and you'll attain your goal. (7) 27 Whoever wins 1,6 will be like Mohammed Ali. (8) 28 Made unfashionable appointment. (5) Solution to Crossword no.15, August 1993 DOWN 1 Don't upset me! Rogues are ghastly. (8) 2 To have a Greek character perform an aria is rather funny' (7) 3 He has two cards only in the suit jacket he is wearing. (9) 5 Agree about current land measure. (7) 6 See 1 across. 7 First sign shortly. (7) 9 Holds fast the hooks. (6) 15 United Nations Security Council faced possible death, but came through without harm. (9) 18 I m eet my date, perhaps, at night. On the contrary! (7) 19 Must his order change the land strip? (7) 20 He cometh with cold confections. (6) 21 There's nourishment in metal treated creatively. (7) 22 Bound into September' (6) 24 Went up to African dictator, the fool' (5)

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