MEDICARE UNDER THE KNIFE FAREWELL TO THE ACCORD MILES DAVIS

■ CORRUPTION SINEAD O’CONNOR GREENING TRADE

No. 134 • November 1991 • $4

■M niiiiiiiiniiniii 3 0009 02945 0629 FOR RICHER FOR POORER The Medicare Debate YOU READ IT FIRST...

(tfe %bnej] ilorn mg l§ern lit THE YELTSIN REVOLUTION^ Communism is dead Boris grabs Gorbachev kicks away the levers the remaining props

Sydney Morning Herald, 26.8.91

Jk THE AUSTRALIAN DEATH OF 41 “ •■••• ■tbiw m « ■ rr*T*- _ COMMUNISM CiORBArlHfV OU1T5 f'AftTY TEl I ' CfNTftAI fOM M(TTFJ TO DttBAN DEATH OF COMMUNISM

ALR, February 1990 Australian, 26.8.91 If you want to find out what forward-looking people on the Left are thinking, before it enters the newspapers, ALR is your only choice. To subscribe to ALR:

TO SUBSCRIB E you'll need to send us your name and address. RATES: for one year (11 issues): £35 individuals, $32 concession (students, pensioners, unemployed), $45 institutions. For two years: $62 individuals, $54 concession, $75 institutions. Supporting subscriptions (to help fund our growth): $60 one^ear, $100 two years. PAYMENT: Please enclose payment by cheque, money order. Bankcard or Mastercard. With credit card orders, please indude holder’s name, card no. and expiry date. Post to ALR Subs, Freepost 28, PO Box A247, Sydney South, NSW 2000 (no stamp needed il posted in Australia). Overseas rates on request.

Newsmaking controversy. Agenda-setting debates. And a darned good read. CONTENTS

MARGINS: Polar Logic 2 PROFILE: Miles Davis 3 JUDY HORACEK: is at home with the tomatoes 46 CHINA SHOP; The ABC of bad taste 47 CORRECT LINE COOKING: How to survive the Boring Party 48 BRIEFINGS THE BARBARIAN SYNDROME: Nick Greiner loses the script 4 SWEDEN SOUR: Final farewells for the Swedish model 6 NATIONAL OBSESSION: Romania's turbulent tribes 8 PAPUA TIGER: Rowan Callick with some rare good news from PNG 10 FEATURES CARRY ON DOCTOR; Brian Howe's Medicare copayment highlights the real problems of health funding. Deidre Wicks and Roy Green look at the options, and Julie Power talks to Medicare architect John Deeble. 12 GOVERNING CORRUPTION: Gary Wickham and Gavin Kendall argue that our ideals of public probity may be a mite ambitious. 20 A CHANGE OF HEART: A decade on, the Accord is being reassessed. Clare Curran spoke to the authors of a new; highly critical, book. 24 TRADING UP: Lyuba Zarsky looks at the green agenda for international trade, while Jock Collins takes on the green critics of immigration. 30 THE CHINA SYNDROME: China's apparatchiks are doing very nicely out of the market, reports Annette Chan. 36 ALREVIEW POWER TO THE PEOPLE: A museum is bom 39 BIMA UP: Murri radio prospers from the black deaths Royal Commission 40 FROM HAIR TO MATERNITY: Sinead O'Connor and Sandy Shaw: two peas in a pod? 42 UNCHECKED MATES: Australia's most successful fraternity club 44 SHORT REVIEWS: Napoleon meets Goethe 45 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW: 134 NOVEMBER 1991 EDITORIAL COLLECTIVES - SYDNEY: Brian Aarons, Eric Aarore, Hilda Andrews, Rds Bragg, David Burchdl, dare Curran, Kitty Eggeridng, Gloria Carton, Jane Inglis, Sue McCreadte, Peter McNieoe, Mike Tlcher, Gory Tteuien. MELBOURNE: L ise Connor, Jim Crosthwaite, Michael Dutton, David Ettershank, Kale Kennedy, Paddy McCony, Sob McQueen, Pavla Miller, Ken Norilng, Olga Silver, Jarma Thompson. BRISBANE: Nicola Doumany, Jane Evans, Howard Gullle, Mike Kennedy, Colin Mercer, Mjchad Meadows, Jeffery Mlnsor. Paul Norton, Marg O'Donnell. Giselle Thomas. EDITOR; David Burchell. BUSINESS MANAGER: Mike Tlcher. REVIEWS: Roa Bragg. ACCOUNTS: Hilda Andrews (Sydney); Olga 5flver (Melbourne). DISTRIBUTION: Intemews, 1 Seddon Street, Banks town, NSW 2200 DESIGN: Ros Bragg. COVER GRAPHIC Roe Bragg. TYPESETTING: Gloria Gallon. PRINTER: Spotpress, 105-107 Victoria Road, Mamckville 2204. PUBLISHED BY: Red Pen Publications, 1st Floor, 6a Nelson St, Annandale 2038. All material CALR1991, Permission mual be sought to reprint articles or reproduce graphics. CORRESPONDENCE: ALR, PO Box A247, Sydney South 2000. PHONE: (02) 5651855; (02) 550 3831. PAX: (02) 550 4460. ALR welcomes contributions and letter*. Contributions must be typed, double-spaced on one side of the paper only. They will be returned if accompanied by a stamped, self-addiessed envelope. Sony, all care but no responsibility taken for unsolicited manuscripts. A style guide Is available on request Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the editorial collective. 2 COLUMNS

Over the next few months and year, of postmodernism. And few would one suspects, as Communism fades presum ably still use the from view, the parameters of political 'revolutionary'/'social democrat' debate will be reshaped closer to the polarity as ideal end points for the eastern European model - where the graph line of left-of-centre politics. major dividing line at present is be­ Yet still, curiously, we nearly all still tween those who want a more rapid, talk as if these were, in fact, the most and those who (for various reasons) meaningful definitions in want a Blower transition to the democratic politics. We still habitual­ market. Even this, though, will not ly describe the Right of the political dearly replicate the Western ideal of spectrum as 'conservatism' - even a 'spectrum', with calibrated 'Left' though, as Paul Keating is fond of and 'Right' arms, because the forces pointing out, the Left nowadays on either side will remain disparate spends more time defending the MARGINS and fluid. On the 'slower transition' status quo than does the Right. And side— at present the losers— will be it seems clear that the Cold War found both social democrats and divisions in the Australian labour Polar Politics nationalist reactionaries, old-style movement are going to long oudive Communists acting in defence of the the withering of the international When Mikhail Gorbachev claims to old order and new-style trade blocs around which they were or­ be a socialist in the mould of Willy unionists acting in defenoe of living ganised. Brandt and the Swedish SAP (ALR standards. 133, October), we really know Com­ This lends a strange sense of munism is dead. Not that we ought One response from the western Left schizophrenia to much contem­ to take Gorbachev's miraculous to these seismic political shifts is to porary debate on the left side of conversion on the road from the argue that it all doesn't really matter politics. At one level it is freely ad­ Crimea too seriously In itself; after to 'us', anyway; 'we' gave up on mitted that the self-definition of left thirty years or more as a member of Soviet-style socialism years ago: and and labour politics is 'in crisis', and the CFSU, his sudden (re)discovery it's all just a matter of the collapse of that the collapse of the old Soviet of Western social democracy 'stalinism', rather than socialism, model is not without consequence seemed a little forced. anyway. However, there is some­ for our own vision of the good thing a little hollow about this sort of society. In the very next breath, But Gorbachev's statement does at disclaimer. After all, regardless of though, conversation usually least accurately reflect one important subsequent disclaimers, the tradition proceeds as if this crisis had been reality. Like many former socialists in of 1917 has had a seminal influence resolved, and resolved decisively in the formerly Eastern European satel­ on the character of the Western politi­ favour of the old verities. lites, he realises the game is up, not cal lexicon over the last three just for Communism, but also for the quarters of a century. Indeed, the foreseeable future for socialism more Perhaps it is this schizophrenia very conception of 'the political which explains the mood of defen­ broadly, in the old Soviet bloc. spectrum' in Western politics is itself siveness and 'return to Henceforth, it seems, the parameters the product of the two epoch-making of political debate there will be fundamentals' which seems current­ events of modem European history: ly to be abroad in leftish politics. staked out between a number of com­ the French Revolution (which coined After a decade of pragmatism and peting political currents, the the vocabulary of 'Left' and 'Right') 'rightness' or 'leftness' of which in compromise, it's asserted, now is the and the Soviet Revolution (which time for the Left to return to its tradi­ Western terms is not always immedi­ created the divisions within the left- tional role as conscience of the labour ately apparent. At present these of-centre spectrum which we take for movement and guardian of maxi- would appear to be: Westem-style granted today, and more particularly mali st rectitude. On the face of it, one so dal democracy, a form of West the conception of calibrations of m ight have thought the times European Christian democracy, a 'leftness' defined by proximity to, or demanded something radically dif­ peculiarly rigid interpretation of distance from, the revolutionary ab­ ferent a comprehensive rethinking Anglophone neo-liberalism, and old- solute). style Russian atavistic nationalism, of the 'boundaries' of politics and of i the instincts and assumptions under­ At the moment in the ex-Soviet Most people on the Western Left lying them, for instance. But what if Union the main political and would probably now concede that it is precisely the fear of the loss of ideological struggle is between a the identification of 'Left' and 'Right' identity' which this process might loose coalition of the first three with 'progress' and 'reaction' respec­ create which causes otherwise well- against an unholy alliance of the tively (the tradition founded in 1789), intentioned people to fall back on the fourth — old-style primordial Rus­ no longer makes much sense — eternal truths? sian nationalism— and the remnants regardless of whether or not one sub­ of hardline Soviet Communism. scribes to any of the various gospels DAVID BURCHELL is A UR'S editor.

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 COLUMNS 3

the way he discovered and made Chambers and Philly Joe Jones—be­ famous musicians like John Coltrane, came the aristocracy of post-bebop Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith jazz. Jarrett, Philly Joe Jones and John Mc­ Laughlin. He had come back to regular perform­ ing after years of heroin addiction and Davis did not help matters by giving pimping. He quit his habit, cold a series of outlandish interviews in turkey, because it had become too ex­ the last years of his life. And his pensive. Often he would play with his scatological and acerbic verbal skills back to the audience and, after finish­ make his 1989 autobiography, Miles ing his own solo, would leave the (transcribed from tapes of Davis free- stage. In hospital after minor throat asso dating), a kind of lexicon for bad­ surgery he was told to keep quiet, but ass musicians. It is hard to reconcile couldn't resist yelling at the staff, and the author of Miles with the for the rest of his life he could only melancholy soloist on records tike speak in a throaty whisper. His style PROFILE Porgy and Bess (1958), Sketches of Spain could be aloof. At the end of a rehears­ and Kind of Blue (both 1959). Davis al he told the drummer of his second was not so naturaDy gifted a trumpet great quintet, Tony Williams, to play Miles Davis player as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gil­ more of "that Rat Patrol shit"— Some time in the late 1940s, Charlie lespie, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown which, the group discovered, meant Parker and Miles Davis, the two or even James Morrison, all of whom that he was after a more martial drum most influential jazz musicians of sound. Williams' consequent playing the last 50 years, were travelling of sticks-on-snare gave the group a together in a taxi on New York's whole new sound. 52nd Street. The great alto* saxophonist Parker had just shot up In the late 1960s, Davis' admiration on heroin and a white woman was for Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone led giving Parker a blow job while he him to jazz-rock and the astonishing consumed fried chicken and i V sound scapes of albums like Bitches swigged whiskey. Parker saw Davis Brew. But in the 1970s, Davis entered looking askance and asked, "Is this a period of artistic decline, linked bothering you. Miles?" The teenage with cocaine abuse. When he died in trumpeter replied. "Yes, it's bother­ October this year, he had not made a ing me.” th f! \1 f i l really satisfying record for perhaps 20 years. At least, he was never so im­ It's impossible to imagine the same could (or can) improvise solos of pressed by his own past masterpieces story being told about Don Burrows carefree magnificence. But Davis that he didn't explore new music In a and James Morrison. These contem­ transcended his technical limitations 1986 interview, he recalled: porary Australian jazzmen seem to by playing with a uniquely poignant belong to a different moral universe. tone. If a Dizzy Gillespie solo could In his autobiography. Miles Davis sound like magnesium sketches on "All this shit about me being summed up, 'TJird (Parker) was a the night sky, Davis' playing better in the old days...music greedy motherfucker, like most reminded one more of fiercely glow­ being better. That's reaction­ geniuses are." ing embers. ary thinking from pitiful motherfuckers who weren't There is no shortage of stories about This is not to say that his work was even there...In the old Davis' own misuse of women and always sad. He could express anger, days...jazz was made by this breed of musician...creative drugs. The world might be a better elation or spirituality, but whatever guys but weird, idiosyncratic place if geniuses were less anti-social. he had to say, his playing had a wry, cats...I'd book a session,..Hell, Certainly, when people discuss Miles slightly mournful tone. It was not ac­ half the cats wouldn't be Davis nowadays they talk more about cidental that he produced his finest there!...Running around these his charmless behaviour than about work with his legendary first quintet, fucking dives looking for the his hearthreakingly lovely, introspec­ where his mordancy contrasted with drummer...say, 'cos he's tive ballads. Or the way his ideas tore the exuberance of John Coltrane's probably off somewhere scor­ apart and rearranged the mainstream saxophone playing. When he formed ing dope!...Meanwhile the sax of jazz, time after time, from bebop to the quintet in 1955, Davis was its only player, he's pawned his God­ cool-school, to hard-bop, to die use of musician of established reputation. damn horn! That's the old complex modernist orchestral charts, Now it is regarded as the finest small days, far as I can recall." to modal jazz, to the use of electronic group; in jazz history, and the players MICHAEL CONATY is a devotee of instruments, to jazz-rodc fusion. Or in it—Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul bad-ass j azz musicians.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 4 BRIEFINGS The Barbarian Syndrome

His blueprint for Australian conservatism in the 1990s And his early conceptualisation of in tatters, NSW Premier Nick Greiner is starting over. government as a body corporate Immediately after his election in 1988 he set up the focused on budget-balancing as an end in itself seemed to eschew all Curran Commission of Audit which delivered a political considerations. blueprint for small government in NSW based on its But even private companies have ar­ assessment of the state's public debt problem. ticles of association (which equate to a constitution) specifying benefits to be delivered to shareholders. And while Three years and another election later, without obtaining their consensus in the pursuit of profit is generally his Treasury consultants are at it again. the process. enough to satisfy shareholders in the In recent weeks they have started Labor leader Bob Carr has deployed private sector, government is driven what amounts to an audi t of The Audit the same sentiments against the by a different logic. Voters are used to - an inquiry into the progress and government's tendency to old- getting social dividends. And CarT has problems of financial reform under fashioned Tory authoritarianism, and managed to convince the state's most the Greiner government. against the strong community percep­ marginal electorates that Gretnerism It appears to reinforce Mr Greiner's tion of Greiner's political arrogance. failed to deliver. « claim that "nothing has changed." His Carr first tapped the electoral power The Government's preoccupation precarious new position at the head of of those sentiments in marginal elec­ with micro-economic reform was a a minority government, kept in power torates at the May election by sterile agenda in the realm of popular capitalising on voter anxiety about only with die uneasy co-operation of politics. Good housekeeping in ac­ a gaggle of independents and dissi­ service cuts and higher taxes lifting counting terms is a good thing but dent conservatives, will not divert his the ALP from the bottom of the sooner or later Mr Greiner should program of public sector rationalisa­ popularity polls to within three seats have expected voters to ask him to tion and debt reduction, he says. of taking government. explain what kind of government he Butin political terms everything is dif­ The Coalition's micro-economic was building. ferent According to the Premier his reform program for government was Any government needs some concep­ policies are correct but framed in terms of competitive ef­ tion of a definite function for the ficiency, profit motives, and plans to misunderstood. The Treasury exercise public sector and how it might fitinto may well be the start of a new cam­ run public enterprises like private a political vision (be it liberal or con­ paign to regain control of his political companies. Months before the election servative) in order to invigorate agenda—a control which has been Carr invoked memories of the cor­ people and encourage them to vote for wrenched form him by the ALP Op­ porate self-indulgence of the 80s to it. The former head of the NSW position in the months following the taint Premier Greiner's credibility Premiers' Department, Mr Gerry May 25 poll. with charges of wasteful spending on Gleeson, warned last November that boosted salaries for bureaucrats and If he is looking for reasons why he lost Greiner-style administrations were it in the first place he might look first consultants. That he succeeded was ironically putting economic reform at due to the fact that the government's to Labor's propaganda strategy, risk. He argued that economists and agenda was largely unintelligible to which has exploited the emergence of politicians had failed to obtain com* what could be called the 'barbarian the general community and had been munity understanding and support syndrome' in Australian politics. drafted without consultation with in­ for microeconomic reform. And he terest groups. Last century the Russian anti-tsarist voiced concern that the policy pen­ dissident Alexander Herzen con­ Nick Greiner's first term had whipped dulum had swung too far towards demned revolutionaries who up a lot of hostility in diverse parts of "economic rationalism" and "effiaenl sacrificed their people in the building the electorate. He didn't appreciate management" to the detriment of die of an imagined better future as "life how hard it would be to deal with this political needs of the government and denying barbarians". Herzen argued hostility, because his attention the social needs of the community. remained focused on the eventual that a true democracy should satisfy It's a tough balance to strike, because achievement of deficit-busting gains community demands for better living the initial impact of any which he believed would follow the standards here and now—not microeconomic reform, however wlJ- implementation of his grand strategy. postpone them to some glorious post­ intentioned, will be to produce job revolutionary future. The 'barbarian Right from the start one of Greiner's cuts and service rationalisation. State syndrome', in other words, is shor­ main problems was that he didn't governments stand in the front line of thand for the elitism of any ad­ want to be a politician. He came to interest group mobilisation, and ministration which sets out to give government with the message: "trust reforming administrations have to people "what's good for them" me—I'm a good financial manager". emphasise the communication of their

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 BRIEFINGS 5

result was a hung parliament — and the government's domination of the agenda has been crumbling ever since. Now the budget has gone bad (with an underlying defidt of more than $1 billion) he faces an uphill battle against an Opposition which has ac­ quired a new stature in contrast to Mr Greiner's yawning credibility gap. All of which indicates a need for governments to envisage a positive role for the public sector—and to act on it. Yet Mr Greiner's efforts to depolitidse the functions of govern­ ment have caused deepening tensions inside his administration. On one hand there is his preference for the job of rationalisation and the introduction of market-based solutions (like cor­ poratisation and privatisation) to management problems associated with public trading enterprises. But there is a marked reluctance on his part to acknowledge the need to sell the desirability of that approach. The sense of betrayal, of useless sacrifice, has grown in the wider com­ munity. The Greiner government seems to have "lost the script" in the same way the dominant voices in the economics profession have "lost the script" in the last few months. Doubts about the good sense of free market polides and the preoccupation with managerialism now run deep in the community. But so too do the ob­ jective economic problems which spawned those policy experiments in the first place. Popular socio­ Nick Greiner: A premier under teige. economic debate is still couched in the out-of-date slogans of Keynesianism and Monetarism from the 1970s. The genda to the wider public in those tion proceeds from the NSW State failure of economics to live up to its circumstances. Bank and the Government Insurance own promises has created a hunger The Greiner government's confusion Office to finance budget outlays, and for politicians with a broader sense of about its own agenda is clearly il­ to suspend his stated aim of halting purpose—and greater sensitivity to lustrated by the alienation of groups borrowings for public works. community opinion. and interests across the political As the last election drew doser he Nick Greiner has always equated spectrum. Even soul mates like the dumped both the rhetoric and the ra­ Institute of Public Affairs have attack­ politics with populism, and he is tionale of fiscal crisis to focus instead determined not to undermine reform ed Greiner for failing to cut harder into on the "sound management" of NSW government spending. The IPA con­ with opportunistic vote-buying. But Inc in contrast to the public sector dis­ the test of the best politicians in the cluded he had made "little progress" asters in Victoria and WA. The politi­ in reducing the role of government, 1990s will be their ability to put for­ cal pundits agreed he had a case ward constructive polides, without and had compromised conversative which would merit a comfortable politics in the process. capitulating to soft political options. win. But swinging voters in the seats Should he find himself in government Indeed, there has been a lot of com­ Mr Greiner had to win were not con­ soon. Bob Carr will find himself in the promise in the face of a deeper than vinced. School dosures and cutbacks same boat. expected revenue collapse over the in the delivery of community services last 12 months. Most recently Mr did not equate with their under­ PRUDENCE ANDERSON is a political Greiner has dedded to use privatisa­ standing of "good management". The journalist on the Financial Review.

ALR; NOVEMBER 1991 6 BRIEFINGS Sweden Sour

In September, the Swedish Social Democratic Sweden this was a political disaster. Workers Party (SAP) secured its worst election result Meanwhile, LO protested loudly since 1928. Since the introduction of universal against he abandonment of progres­ suffrage in the early 1920s, SAP has decisively lost sive ambitions. only three elections: in 1928,1976, and 1991. The party The way Feldt sought to cope with the governed for 44 years from 1932 until 1976. Then, after aftermath—of imported inflation, glaring strong profits, and six years in the unfamiliar role of opposition, it acrimonious wage negotiations—in returned to government in 1982 and survived the 1985 large part explains why the party lost and 1988 elections the recent elections, even though there is still no credible alternative govern­ ment. Feldt now believes that voters In 1976, when the social democrats Democrats' outcry over unemploy­ have finally seen through SAP's long­ lost national elections there was ment, the centre-right parties standing daim to be able to produce widespread discussion of the passing nationalised more bankrupt private both welfare reforms and economic of an epoch. There is no such discus­ firms in six years than the Social growth, both full employment and sion today. Fifteen years ago the Democrats had in forty-four. By the low inflation, like a magician leaders of SAP were thought to have early 1980s, trade and budget defidts produces rabbits from* a hat. He Anally run out of ideological steam, to had ballooned dramatically, and SAP espouses wholesale abandonment of have become grey and bloodless tech­ secured a triumpnant victory in 1982 this outdated belief in political magic nocrats. Having engineered the con­ on a familiar call for a return to com­ and urges sodal democrats to face up struction of a welfare state with petent government. to economic reality. Thus he likes to contrast fuzzy-minded welfare-refor- comprehensive, non-means tested Within weeks of the election, before rights of social citizenship, it seemed mist 'political magic' with hard-nosed the full government had even been 'economic rationalism'. they had no dear idea of where to go sworn in, the SAP Treasurer, Kjell- next. Olof Fetdt, announced a massive 16% After the massive devaluation, the LO The SAP leaders may have run out of devaluation of the Krona. This came leaders succeeded in persuading the steam but the leaders of the soda! only ten months after a conventional­ leaders of member unions to ex erase democratic Confederation of Trade ly cautious devaluation of 10% by the restraint and accept real wage cuts (or Unions, LO, had not. They had a con­ previous Liberal government. their members, for the sake of pumng troversial idea of where to go next: industry back on its feet and securing The 1982 devaluation in many ways economic dtizenship. Not long before private sector employment. The marks the dramatic end of a mildly the elections, and to Olof Palme's hor­ government had been elected on a interventionist social liberalism ror, LO launched a campaign to intro­ promise to introduce wage-eamer in­ within SAP. The devaluation was vestment funds. Once made into law duce economic democracy in the form 'competitive' because the Treasury of wage-eamer governed investment it was thought that they would put the value of the Swedish Krona at funds financed by a substantial levy neutralise the disruptive effect on a level dearly below that dictated by on corporate profits. These funds wage negotiations of an expected the actual strength of the economy. boom in corporate profits. Thus the might have taken over the ownership Thus it flaunted the nostrums of inter­ of most of the largest corporations promise of die funds stymied rank- national economic liberalism. Sub­ within 20 years. and-file rebellion against wage sequently, however, the SAP leaders restraint and ensured the early suc­ Between 1976 and 1982, the centre- have followed international trends in cess of the devaluation. right parties—Conservatives, domestic economic policy away from Liberals, and Centrists—were unable Keynesianism towards economic Yet the funds have been a major disap­ to agree on very much among them­ liberalism. They have liberalised con­ pointment for the LO. They are far too selves, and certainly not on anything trol over currency import and export; small to have had any significant ef­ that was unpopular. Consequently, eliminated industry assistance and fect in redistributing the profits boom j several governments formed by the large budget deRdt inherited from of the 1980s. Nor have they ever been various constellations of parties the previous government; and fol­ a factor in wage negotiations. Union ended up following the welfare refor­ lowed what was quaintly described as discontent simmered throughout the mist path long pursued by the Sodal an 'Australian model' in taxation period from 1982-1988, breaking out Democrats. reform. in 1987-88 in the form of several large white-collar strikes which bypassed! The public sector continued to expand Like Keating, Feldt in 1989 sought to the now somewhat undermined while the number of child care centres eliminate innumerable possibilities authority of LO. and women in the workforce in­ for cheating by taxing wages and cor­ creased greatly. Fearful of the Sodal porate income at the same rate. But in In 1988, SAP narrowly won the elec-

A U t; NOVEMBER 1991 BRIEFINGS 7

tions on the strength of promises to extend parental leave from nine months to eighteen months, to extend £ t holidays from five to six weeks, and to build enough child care centres that * f t all parents who wanted child care could have it by 1991. Feldt was un­ willing to make these promises, which were demanded by the election cam­ paign strategists. Subsequently, he 1 forced the party to break them, under die pressure of economic 'reality'. By 1989, the LO leadership had more or less given upon exercising effective behind-the-scenes influence on the vernment. According to StigMalm, KIdt's latest proposals to dampen V>y , v demand by increasing the consump­ tion tax were "the wrong medicine for the wrong people...our members are not the ones who need cooling down". J 9 When Feldt resigned in February 1990, he cited Malm's attack as a key element in his most bitter defeat during his time as Treasurer. In October 1990 the new Treasurer, Allan Larsson, announced a mini­ budget package of measures to stop the worrying outflow of currency. At around 10%, inflation had long been higher than in Sweden's primary ex­ port markets in Germany, the USA ) M and UK In an effort to avoid raising interest rates drastically, the Treasurer F I announced that Sweden intended to apply for membership in the European,Community, This an­ * nouncement of intention, combined with a minor increase in interest rates, had the desired effect on money Eru/ of the Swedish model: populist conservatives Ian Wachtmeister and Bert Karlson dealers' expectations. The outflow of celebrate victory. currency ceased. Malm spoke dis­ paragingly of Larsson's seemingly fragile commitment to full employ­ socialism, rather than between Feldt's 1980s, it will be most interesting to ment and his all the more determined dichotomy of political 'magic* and follow how thinking social democrats commitment to see Sweden join the economic 'reality'. SAP leaders have interpret the labour movement's EC Yet neither the LO economists' long since forgotten the socialist recent stormy past. reasoned argument nor Malm's out­ statecraft used by earlier leaders in the On the other hand, the social burst had any substantial effect on the 1930s and 40s to establish full employ­ democrats may well return before Treasury. In July 1991, the SAP ment. Today, maintaining full they have had time to rethink very government formally applied to join employment must involve a socialist much. There is very little chance of die EC, thus greatly circumscribing statecraft of considerable subtlety and any one constellation of the five other possibilities for future public inter­ perseverance, rather than any rties surviving for very long. The vention in capital and currency mysterious political magic, however dget is due in February and this will markets. competently performed. be a crudal test of how little the cur­ Yet broken promises only partly ex­ As governments in the next three rent Conservative prime minister can plain the party's recent defeat. It lost years attempt to emulate the SAP achieve and yet remain in office. A primarily because of the internal leaders, a period of opposition might cabinet crisis will quite likely bring ideological tension between SAP and provide them with time to restock. about early elections and deviation LO over economic policy. This tension Given the clarity of LG's challenge in from the fixed elections due in Sep­ was between a social liberalism all too the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the tember 1994. dose to economic liberalism and a acrimony of the public confrontation ANDREW VANDENBERG teaches In remarkably explicit democratic between LO and Treasury in the late politics at Macquarie University.

ALR; NOVEMBER 199] 8 BRIEFINGS National Obsession

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is The rise of Vatra is simply one dying and the new cannot be bom; in this manifestation of Romania's, turbulent interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms political consciousness. Opinion polls appear." attest to a dangerously desociaiised people, ripe for a populist ideology Antonio Gramsci. that preys on the anxieties of change. The ruling Front for National Salva­ tion (FNS) received its May 1990 From his prison cell in 1930, Gramsci Hungarian irredentism. Violence landslide victory as a guarantor of sensed the ominous political vacuum climaxed a month later in Urgu Mures stability and continuity. Over half the that loomed over Europe between the when Vatra-inspired bands attacked population still supports President wars. Today in Eastern Europe, the peaceful Hungarian marches, leaving Ion Hiescu's decision to send coal legacy of the postwar dictatorships at least eight people dead. miners into Bucharest last summer likewise haunt the societies' complex The Vatra's program itself is shrouded against demonstrators. "The severity transitions to democracy. in emotional appeals to Romanian of the dictatorship has left Romania Without exception, the peoples of the patriotism and historical glory. Vatra wholly without moral direction," says former Eastern bloc toppled com­ Romaneasca underlines that Romania journalist Rudi Herbert from the Ger- munism with an eye toward the new is a homogeneous national state, a man-language daily NdUer Weg. He Europe. Yet, the jarring political and principle which Hungarian ethnic points out that the cities consist largely economic crises in every country has rights implicitly jeopardise. The claim of an urbanised peasantry with no prompted a worrisome reach into the that "Romanians must be masters in stable middle class. 'The thin intel­ past for answers. Perhaps the most their own home" comes straight from ligentsia that exists has been dramatic example is Romania, where the pages of Ceausescu propaganda. thoroughly discredited in the press," says this member of the German the resurgence of ultra-nationalist "Romania is not a multinational state ideologies—moulded by 45 years of minority. but a national unitary state in which communist rule—further undermines different percentages of minorities So commonplace are populist senti­ the country's unsteady transition into live," said Vatra president Radu Ceon- ments that they now form an un­ the European mainstream. tea. "And no minority is permitted spoken consensus. Even the Under the late President Nicolae favours just because i ts ancestors were democratic opposition and leading in­ Ceausescu, nationalism was ruthless­ oppressors for centuries." The Vatra tellectuals have chimed in. Nasty ly suppressed as well as manipulated. leadership of wartime fascists, former polemics against Jewish influence, the The regime's monopoly over national communist apparatchiks and disem- 'gypsy threat' and the minorities in the mechanisms enabled it to bolster its powered members of Ceausescu's neighbouring (heavily Romanian popular legitimacy, as well as to frag­ secret police has found a new rationale populated) Soviet Republic of Mol­ ment opposition along ethnic lines. for strong-arm rule. "Our popularity davia surface regularly in the press, The further the dictatorship's power- stems from the Romanian The works of Romania's wartime fas­ base eroded, the more it relied on the Transylvanians' feelings of uncertain­ cist thinkers are for sale in Bucharest instruments of chauvinism, ty after the revolution," says vice­ bookshops and are now the rage in xenophobia and violence. In the 1989 president Ion Coja. 'The Hungarian philosophy departments. revolution's wake, the same psychol­ minority had put the Romanians' lives ogy quickly filled the gap that the dic­ in danger. This was a result of the lack Perhaps no issue enjoys such broad tatorship had left. The two of authority on behalf of the govern­ approval as the rehabilitation of million-strong Hungarian minority’s ment, police and army." Romania's wartime military dictator, call for full collective rights triggered Marshal Ion Antonescu. An Axis-al­ In the aftermath of the Urgu Mires an emotional chain-reaction of fear lied power until 1944, Romania has a pogrom, the Vatra and its parliamen­ brutal wartime legacy which was and demagoguery. Under a changed tary arm, the Party for National Union banner, nationalists resurrected ver­ treated gingerly during the Ceausescu of Romania (PNUR), emerged as the era. Today, virtually the entire political batim the slogans that had worked so dominant Romanian political force in well for Ceausescu in the past. spectrum hails Antonescu as a nation­ Transylvania. One independent al hero. On June 1, the 51 st anniversary In February 1990, the extremist ultra­ spring 1991 poll showed that 56% of of Antonescu's execution, the nationalist movement Vatra people nationwide harbour a positive Romanian parliament observed a Romaneasca (Cradle of Romania) was opinion of the organisation which minute of silence for its nation's mis­ formed in Transylvania, where the claims a membership of four million. judged son. vast majority of ethnic Hungarians According to the survey, 8% of the live. The ranks of the 'Romanian cul­ electorate today would vote for the In the press, article after article praises tural organisation' swelled overnight PNUR, up from their 25% showing in the Marshal, branding the Romanian as it fanned Romanian doubts about the May 1990 election. holocaust a communist-propagated

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 BRIEFINGS 9

lie. "After 44 years, history has at last nationalist circles have pushed ever Romanian than everyone else," says allowed the Romanians to shed a tear harder for a positive reappraisal of the one Hungarian human rights activist. and light a candle for Ion Antonescu," Ceausescu years. As Romania's "Even the government's own wrote the leading democratic opposi­ economy slides rapidly towards col­ newspaper is full of anti-Semitic refer­ tion daily Romania Libra. In the FNS lapse, those segments of the popula­ ences." Rabbi Rosen has stated that if daily Azi, one author contends: "From tion hardest hit have begun to look the anti-Semitism was not stopped it every part of Europe, with the excep­ back on the security of the dictator­ would become necessary to airlift tion of Romania and Bulgaria, Jews ship with nostalgia. At Ceausescu's Romania's remaining 18,000 Jews to were sent to the gas chambers. unmarked grave on the outskirts of Israel. Romanians never suffered from anti­ Bucharest, supporters daily place The PNUR and the Front have col­ Semitism and never gave into fascist candles and flowers at the tyrant's laborated with increasing regularity pressure." resting place. and goodwill, leading many ob­ Western historians differ over The ultra-nationalists now openly servers to fear a formal electoral al­ Antonescu's commitment to fascist demand Ceausescu's posthumous liance next year. "I'm not at all ideology. The Marshal himself put an rehabilitation, as well as the acquittal optimistic about the next five to ten end to his ruling partnership with the of all those found guilty of the years," says Gabriel Andreescu,oneof openly fascist Iron Guard. Yet, during revolution's suppression. "History Romania's foremost democratic intel­ Antonescu's 1938-1944 reign, 400,000 will evaluate Ceausescu very dif­ lectuals. "There's a real chance that Jews and tens of thousands of gypsies ferently than many do today," says these people will come to power." lost their lives. In Eichmann in Coja. "I think that we are much too Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt described harsh in our judgment of him." In a The question within nationalist circles Goebbels' shock at the "radical pace" recent ode to the late dictator, Tudor is whether they will need the Front at of Romanian deportations before the wrote: "All Romanians are waiting for all by the time of the next elections, 1941 Final Solution plans had even you to come back/To rid the country due in a year's time. At the moment, been approved in Nazi Germany. of thieves...To make the gypsies neither the Front, a nationalist coali­ tion, nor the democratic opposition Alongside the Vatra, a number of work/And discipline the Hun­ garians." could win an electoral majority in likeminded groups and publications their own right. But Romania Mare have emerged. Romania's largest Romania Mare declares that the recently formed a party and the weekly newspaper with a circulation meagre handful of Securitate officers popularity of the PNUR has tripled of 600,000, Romania Mare (Greater and nomenklatura sentenced to mild over the past year. The former Romania), champions xenophobia at prison terms are the "victims of the hardline Romanian Communist Party hysterica] pitch. Its editors, Comeliu new democracy". The accused did all has also resurrected itself, playing on Vadim Tudor and Eugen Barbu, were they could to prevent bloodshed, in­ the same anxieties to justify a return to among Ceausescu's top hagiog- sist the extremists. Rather, the 1989 the byegone order. raphers, both with extensive ties to the Timisoara massacre was the work of Securitate. Hungarian and Soviet agents. "These A ruling nationalist-FNS coalition * In one typical article, Tudor calls Hun­ real provocateurs of the December could well usher in a tragic period of garian pastor Laszlo Tokes a riots must be arrested", according to autocratic military-backed nationalist notorious rapist and homosexual, as Romania Mare. "Those who were rule in Romania. Although such a well as an agent provocateur of the framed-up should be let free to protect development would dangerously Hungarian secret service. Romania's Romania from national dishonour." destabilise the entire region, the West has done little to encourage chief rabbi Moses Rosen is branded an The most troubling political develop­ Romania's democratisation. As in outspoken Romanian hater. A recent ment of late is the nationalists' ever editorial lauded Antonescu's deporta­ Yugoslavia, the US has simply with­ closer ties to the ruling Front. The held financial aid to punish Eastern tion of the gypsies in order to "protect Vatra and Romania Mare have dis­ Europe's last bastions of communism. the lives and property of Romanian tanced themselves from the atizens". democratic opposition's critical tone, At the forefront of the ultra-national and now obediently toe the Front's The West must realise that generous chorus stands Iosif Constantin line. Since the Tirgu Mures events, the financial assistance, concrete Dragan, an emigre who amassed a for­ Front has taken aboard many of the democratic proposals and full in­ tune in Italy while maintaining dose right's nationalist positions. clusion in the European integration relations with Ceausescu. The war­ Once the ultra-right's favourite target. process would serve Eastern Europe's time sympathiser of the fascist League Prime Minister Petre Roman, the trouble spots far better than punitive of Archangel Michael publishes at grandson of a rabbi with a Spanish exclusion. Until such alternatives find least three major weeklies and is mother, has led the Front's anti-Jew, their way onto the agenda, Eastern suspected of financing Romania Mare. anti-Hungarian campaign. While Europe threatens to drift ever further The Ceausescus' honoured guest says President Ion Iliescu represents die in­ away from the ideals of a united that he "worshipped Ceausescu for terests of the old apparatus and Europe. his national dimension". Securitate, Roman is considered the Since his return last year, Dragan and nationalists' man in power. "Roman is PAUL HOCKENOS is a Budapest-based his allies in neo-communist and out to prove that he's a better freelance journalist.

ALR. NOVEMBER 1991 10 BRIEFINGS Papua Tiger

How rare to record some nappy events in Papua New Department. Eri became founding Guinea. But the recent forced resignations of the president of Diro's political party, the Governor-General, Sir Serei Eri, and the deputy People's Action Party, named by Diro prime minister, Ted Diro, are certainly cause to crack after his own hero, Lee Kuan Yew. open a few juicy betel nuts. Diro fought from childhood in a remote mountainous area east of Port In the case of Sir Serei, though, the Eri, the first Papua New Guinean to Moresby to gain an education. He has celebration must be tinged with regret. become head of a government depart­ known personal tragedy; two As Vincent Eri, he was the author of ment, commuted daily from his daughters have died recently. Yet he PNG's first novel, The Crocodile, pub­ modest home in the suburb of Hohola somehow believed he could do no lished 20 years ago by Penguin books, rather than moving into Government wrong, that he was fated to reach the and translated into French and Rus­ House, with its beautifully main­ top, and that his devoted supporters sian. This was set during the Pacific tained tropical gardens, upon becom­ would win him a place in the history books as the first PM from Papua. War, mainly in his home Gulf ing Governor-General. province—then as now a neglected, But he was hypnotised by his younger Australia ruled New Guinea, the substantially swampy area, and a Papuan hero, Diro, who had been northern part of what is now PNG's prime recruiting ground for disaf­ armv commander when Eri was per­ territory, under first a League of Na­ fected rascal gangs in neighbouring manent secretary of the Defence tions mandate, then a United Nations Port Moresby, trust. Papua was a colony, and as such subject to no external supervision. Thus New Guinea inevitably ap­ peared to receive the greater attention and development opportunities. Dame Josephine Abaijah, the country's first woman MP (there have only been three; a significant factor in the growth of corruption and the growing chasm between politicians and the electorate) led a pre-inde­ pendence charge for a special status, if not independence, for Papua. But this stuttered to a halt, with Abaijah'sown lack of direction and the failure of the region to throw up widely accepted leaders - until Diro. Under Diro the region's MPs became united as never before, and after the 1987 election his PAP became the nation's second biggest party (after Pangu). He was appointed Forests minister by Paias Wingti when the lat­ ter displaced Michael Somare as PM in 1985. The logging of PNG's rain­ forests soon shifted into top gear, with the regulatory restraints being dis­ carded by the new minister. Soon the Times of PNG began to uncover a trail of timber corruption involving politicians, including Diro, foreign companies (chiefly from Malaysia and Singapore) and the former Malaysian foreign minster Tan Sri Ghazali. Eventually Wingti was forced by the weight of evidence to establish a judi­ cial inquiry - with the eventual out­ come surfacing only in Septembers

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 BRIEFINGS 11

when Diro was found guilty of 81 In part, this may be attributed to the sometimes seen as uniquely 'Western' counts of corruption, and barred from continuing high regard in which the cannot be written off as irrelevant in all public office for three years. PNG legal system is held - and espe­ analysing popular perceptions in Early in the proceedings Diro had cially the Chief Justice, Sir Buri Kidu developing societies. Diro, like his In­ been able to bring hundred s of Papuan (also a Papuan). Indeed, it was Kidu donesian contacts Ghazali and supporters to cheer him on at his who provided the backbone that kept General Benny Murdani, may like to various court hearings Port Moresby PM Rabbie Namaliu pushing the right see themselves as exempt from Is in any case in the heartland of constitutional buttons in the right popular accountability. But such sen­ Papua. But the most significant part of order. Eri, who had been high commis­ timents do not reflect a supposedly [ the whole affair came at the end - akin sioner in Canberra at the time of 'traditional' culture so much as a Gough Whitlam's dismissal, ap­ political culture introduced with the to the dog which, as Sherlock Holmes nation state. Given a system which painstakingly pointed out to Watson, peared not to realise that PNG's con­ stitution gave him no such reserve enables them to assess their leaders did not bark in the night. When Diro powers. and hold them accountable, Papua suffered his crucial defeat, the streets And just as the Papuans didn't bark, New Guineans at any rate appear of the capital were quiet When he ready - indeed eager - to see the system answered calls on talkback radio, they nor did the army. There was no hint of a coup from the force Diro had com­ work independently, whatever the were mostly negative. Papua was not outcome. in flames, despite the efforts of friend manding for its first eight years. and mentor Eri to sustain the crisis and One of the lessons of all this from the ROWAN CALLICK writes for Time his career. Australian perspective is that values Australia. List New! From CARE (Campaign Against Radal Ex­ ploitation) a national network of anti- Pathfinder radst groups, on Aboriginal issues, anti-apartheid and other forms of racism. Publishes VIVA (quarterly) $20 from: WACARE P.O. Box 159 Mt Lawley How Far We Slaves Have Come con­ 6050 W.A. (09) 328 9396. In South tains the speeches of Nelson Man­ Australia^ contact: SAC ARE (08) 232 0597 dela and Fidel Castro at July 26 rally PO Box 51 Kensington 5068; Victoria P.O. Box 261 Port Melbourne 3207. in Cuba this year. Castro explains BLAST Magazine why Cuban internationalist mission in Looking for a literary magazine that con­ Angola was decisive for future of tains satire, fiction, poetry and social Cuban revolution. Mandela focuses comment - from new and established writers - at a price you can afford? on role of Cuba in Africa over three Blast Magazine - $15 for 4 issues/year decades and outlines goals of battles Blast - PO Box 3514, Manuka, ACT, 2603. to overthrow apartheid. 83pp, $10.95. UNDERDOG MAGAZINE Booklaunch of How Far We Slaves Have Come, Oz culture, poetry, short stories, visual featuring editor Mary-Alice Waters, who was on reporting arts, cartoons, review and puzzles. trip in Cuba for July 26. Contributions welcome. 7 pm, Sat Nov 16. P.O. Box 810 Cowandilla 5033 66 Albion St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010 Subscriptions $25 a year. For further information, phone (02) 281 3297. List is an opportunity for organisations to advertise events, meetings, publications and contacts. First list­ PATHFINDER Bookshop, 19 Terry St, Surry Hills (off ing free. Ring Suze Lavers on (02)565-1855 or fax Foveaux St), PO Box 79, Railway Square, NSW 2000. (02)550- 4460. Phone (02) 281 3297.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 12 FEATURES

Carry on DOCTOR

Brian Howe's copayment scheme justifiably raised the hackles of Medicare's supporters. But the problems it tries to confront are real enough. Deirdre Wicks and Roy Green argue that defending the health status quo isn't enough. And they detect a hidden theme in Howe's reforms which could direct the scrutiny about overservicing back onto the major culprit—the medical profession. And Julie Power interviews Medicare architect John Deeble.

s it turns out, Health Minister Brian basic principle of Medicare against an unprecedented and Howe may unwittingly have done the unexpected attack from the very government which intro­ duced it. While this reaction was justified, we will argue A health care reform debate in Australia here that defence of the status quo in itself, in the absence a favour with his decision to bulldoze of fundamental reforms to the health care system, will a $2.50 Medicare fee copayment through Labor's prove to be self-defeating in the longer term. Ironically, the federal Caucus. seeds of such reforms may be found, as we shall see, in the Budget package itself. These reforms, if developed in the This is not to say that the idea of copayment has any merit right direction, would allow the government to replace Virtually every health and consumer organisation in die Medicare fee for service arrangements altogether with a country has shown why it doesn't. However, what the system which promotes not only fairer access and achiev­ proposal will now do is sharpen the debate about the kind able cost control but also better health outcomes. of health system Australia needs with the prospect of an ageing population and steadily rising health costs. It is simply no solution to the problems identified by Howe to call for an increase in the Medicare levy, though this would at least be preferable to a flat charge which dis­ Of course, the immediate reaction to Howe's August criminates against low income families and the chronically Budget Paper, Health Care in Australia, was to defend the

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 13

70-, Aged 20 or less

60- 20 to 59

IAV 3 01 is

4> (A

Benefits as of total Commonwealth X * 4S' o*“ e 00 &

GP Specialist Pathology 3 6 -]------1------1------1------1------1 1484-65 1985-86 1986-87 1987-88 1988-89 1989-90 consultns consultns

sick. Nor is it feasible to design a more 'equitable' system In this context, the slogan 'Defend the NHS' fell flat not of copayments, which penalises fee-charging doctors as because it went too far for public opinion, but because it opposed to bulk-billing doctors—or, more accurately, did not go far enough. While chronic underfunding of the which penalises their patients. In attempting to do so last heath service by successive governments was seen as a key month, the Caucus committee established to 'second factor in queues for surgery and hospital beds, it did not guess' the Budget changes was on a hiding to nothing. explain or justify the inadequate nature of health care provision. Rather, this reflected the class character of The danger of this limited approach is illustrated by the British society, the power of the medical profession and the response in Britain to the Thatcher government's attacks associated dominance of a medical 'cure-focused' perspec­ on the National Health Service (NHS) in the early 1980s. tive over more 'holistic', health-focused models. Thatcher was able to capitalise on widespread disenchant­ ment with the faceless,bureaucratic nature of the NHS, and its failure to cater for women and groups with special Unfortunately, the analysis of these deeper forces shaping needs. For example, as one British commentator on the Left the health care system in Britain was conducted 'on the pointed out at the time, "The NHS has failed to meet hop' by the opposition Labour Party, health unions and women's needs in relation to contraception, abortion, preg­ user groups, under pressure from a deliberate government nancy and childbirth" (C Thunhurst, it Makes You Side: The strategy to wind back the NHS in favour of private hospi­ Politics of the NHS, 1982). tals and private health insurance. Ultimately, the slogan was changed to 'Defend and extend the NHS’, but the

ALR. NOVEMBER 1991 14 FEATURES initiative once lost was not easily regained. Even the latest placency, for spending as a proportion of Budget outlays Labour Party policy document, A Fresh Start for Health, is has blown out by 46% over the last six years. open to the criticism that it "smacks of half measures", for its key proposal to finance hospitals according to their The main cause of the increase is hospital grants to the workload will simply "reinforce the power of the hospital states, but spending on medical services has also grown by doctors and undermine the ability of health authorities to over 30%. Nor is it difficult to identify the fastest growing shift resources into other fields of health care" (Economist, expenditure items. The National Health Strategy Back' 28 September, 1991). ground Paper No. 2 (February 1991), Medical Services through Medicare, reveals that, while benefits for GP con­ We shall return later to this analysis, which applies equally sultations remain the 'big ticket' items, the use per person to the Australian health system. The dear lesson to be of diagnostic services such as pathology grew at twice the drawn from the British experience is that in defending rate of medical services generally. Medicare, perhaps the most outstanding achievement of the Hawke Labor government, we cannot afford to ignore The demographic picture is even more revealing. While its defects. And it is the manifestation of those defects in people aged up to 59 increased their use of pathology rising costs which has provoked Howe into action. services by around 25% over the last six years, those aged 60 and above increased their use of these services by no Indeed, in the current debate, while the forward estimates less than 60%. A similar picture emerges for other specialist are inevitable contentious, the economic background to and diagnostic services, and this highlights a further Howe's Budget statement is not in dispute. It is a widely dimension of the health funding crisis. As the baby acclaimed feature of the success of Medicare that health boomers' get older, unless health priorities change drasti­ spending as a proportion of Australia's GDP has remained cally, the growing demand for expensive, high-tech ser­ relatively stable at around 8%, and is far from excessive by vices will stretch the system to breaking point, comparison with other OECD countries. However, this apparent success should not be allowed to breed com- Obviously, something has to be done to control spiralling health costs, but what? As Medical Services Through Medicare points out, Australia has a unique problem in that its health care system is "open ended in two major aspects—utilisation and doctor fee charging". Most countries have closed off one or other of these openings However, whereas costs have been relatively successfully controlled in the British NHS by supply side management, join the tenant’s the US approach of managing demand through various insurance options has been a widely acknowledged failure association in both economic and human terms. Indeed, the recent illness and death of a prominent US Republican turned the public spotlight onto the fact that his own staff members could barely afford their gigantic medical premiums. It was reported that this "underscores! a trend that is pushing health care rapidly to the top of the domestic political agenda and creating a consensus for change. The middle class, not merely the poor, are finding I themselves disadvantaged by the current system". And,of course, "Few rules of politics are so consistent that when the middle class is hurting, change is inevitable" (Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 1991). The planet we live on deserves our respect. We are responsible to future generations for its well being. In Australia, growing service utilisation is directly corre­ Pie Wilderness Society is dedicated to just that. Join lated with the increasing number of doctors. Indeed] now and receive 18 months ol membership for the price Howe's Budget Paper concludes that "the current and I of one year. increasing supply of GPs is the single biggest factor affect-1 Name:______ing Commonwealth Medicare benefits outlays". In this Address:______context the market cannot operate to restrain fees; unit . prices are insensitive to 'oversupply' because the floor ______Postcode______price is determined by the Medicare benefit level. This has □ I have enclosed a cheque/money order for S28 00. convinced Howe to accede to the AMA's self-serving □ I would like more information on The Wilderness policy of reducing the doctor intake, especially those from }j Society. overseas. THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY 53 Liverpool Street. Sydney 2000. Yet this policy, far from restraining fees, will almost cer­ tainly give doctors the opportunity to increase them, as

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 15

Howe himself now seems to have conceded. Medical Ser­ "the first tentative step to making health care more price vices Through Medicare finds an inverse relationship be­ sensitive". tween the growth in particular medical specialities and increases in over-schedule billing, or 'fee drift', over the last The fact is that the health care system throughout the six years. For example, obstetricians, whose numbers have world, as Howe's Budget Paper itself recognises, "has not measurably increased as a proportion of the popula­ characteristics that stop a pure market working". Medical tion, have been able to increase average over-schedule Services Through Medicare puts it more bluntly: "Price is not billing by 16%, while’GPs, whose numbers have grown by a mechanism which equilibrates supply and demand, only almost 16%, have not been able to increase over-schedule a variable which, with service volumes, can be ordered so billing at all. as to achieve the driving force behind the whole system, namely the doctors' target incomes". The basic problem, If Howe's supply side policy acts not so much to reduce which the government has yet to confront, lies in the health costs as shift them to patients, then it will be rein­ traditional prerogatives and power of the medical profes­ forced in this respect by the attempt to operate on the sion. demand side through the introduction of 'consumer' copayments. This is a policy which is regurgitated each This is by no means a new problem in Australia. As long year in the lead-up to the Budget by officials in the Depart­ ago as 1868, Florence Nightingale wrote to the then NSW ment of Finance, who know nothing about health Colonial Secretary Sir Henry Parkes warning him that, economics and, comfortably domiciled in a Canberra gar­ "Your Medical Officers, Resident and other, have more den suburb, care even less about the soda! impact of their power than almost anywhere else". What is extraordi­ mindless number-crunching. nary is that even today, thanks to a constitutional anomaly created by a previous Labor government, this vested inter­ Having been put back in their box on countless occasions est is permitted both to set the health care agenda in by former Health Minister Neal Blewett, who understood Australia, and to make the community pay for it. the implications of copayments for Medicare, the Finance Department officials could not believe their luck when the Buried deep in the Budget paper are Howe's proposed 'social reformer' Howe was prepared to bite the bullet in Tuture reforms to the funding of general practice'. These return for his half-baked 'better dties' program. No doubt, reforms are a start to tackling the problem of professional they slept soundly on the assumption that they could power, and to delivering substantial and realistic savings dispose of this program later. By contrast, Howe's dis­ across the health portfolio. So deeply buried are they, believing offidals must have been up all night shredding however, that they have been largely ignored by the their rritidsms of copayments and preparing to defend media—though not by the AMA which has already begun them in the face of all the evidence they were now told to to organise a national campaign of opposition. They do so, forget of course, in the certain knowledge that the government's own constituency, and potential source of support for radi­ cal reforms, has been alienated by the proposal for copay­ And the evidence is overwhelming. The National Health Strategy Background Paper No. 5 (June 1991), The Effects of ments. Consumer Co-Payments in Medical Care, shows that the fall in copayments since 1976 accounts for no more than 10% The Budget Paper proposes three main reforms. First, prac­ of the increase in service use over this period. Equally, the tice grants would provide "some remuneration to those paper concludes, it would require an increase in co-pay­ general practices which choose to reduce their reliance on ments to 50% of medical bills to reduce service use by 7.6%. fee for service". This could be interpreted as the beginning The proposed $2.50 copayment for GP visits would thus of a move away from fee for service, with all its attendant have a negligible effect on service use, and could not, even problems of over-servidng and fee drift, towards some taken together with a cut in doctor numbers, produce the kind of salaried arrangement. Already, as part of the estimated net saving by 1994/95 of $605 million. Caucus compromise, Howe has agreed to allocate $12 million to practice grants in 1991/92, which is surprising given the absence of any developed policy criteria for these Nor let it be forgotten that this saving, should it be any thing grants. more than a chimera in the imaginings of the Finance Department number-crunchers, would not constitute a reduction in health costs, but merely in those costs borne Second, practice budgets would be allocated to general by the Budget. In reality, the costs would be transferred to practices to "cover the costs of diagnostic services and the patient, unless dissuaded from visiting the doctor. It pharmaceuticals". This reform, which surfaced in NHS would effectively signal the end of bulk-billing, as pressure Issues Paper No. 1 (July 1991), The Australian Health Jigsaw: grows to insure the 'gap', and open the door to the Integration of Health Care Delivery, as a proposal for budget- American model of health care. Patients would be paying holders to purchase "packages of care". Although equally the price of 'problems' outside their control - problems, vague at this stage it might, together with practice grants, moreover, which have nothing to do with market forces. introduce a measure of finandal accountability to the real Also paying would be those doctors who choose to bulk- consumer of medical services—the GP. bill, as opposed to those who do not. This is well under­ stood by the Opposition Leader Dr John Hewson, who Third, accreditation of general practices would, according welcomed the government's decision on co-payments as to the Budget Paper, provide a framework for addressing

ALR .■ NOVEMBER 1991 16 FEATURES

"quality of care issues". In particular, it is suggested that Nevertheless, there are three fundamental inadequacies in links with academic departments of general practice in Howe's approach to structural change. The first relates to medical schools could result in improved continuing die method by which he hopes to introduce his reforms, education and quality assurance programs. There are good namely by "discussions with the medical profession". The grounds for questioning the suitability of the current level experience of health care reform in Australia suggests that, and type of undergraduate medical education and despite the sympathetic views of a minority of GPs, the postgraduate hospital-based training for primary health AMA, like the Soviet old guard, simply will not co-operate care work in general practice. For example. Medical Services with any changes which appear to threaten their profes Through Medicare found that, while GP consultations ac­ sional power. It seems that, while all reforming health count for 70% of services to young people under 20, they ministers must learn for themselves this basic truth, few represent only about half the services to people over 60, have been blinded to it as comprehensively as Brian Howe. who are more likely to be referred on for further tests or specialist consultations. It mav be said, by way of justification for Howe's tactics, that the position of the medical profession is made unas­ Consequently, an important aim of reform in this area is to sailable by the 'dvil conscription' dause in the Constitu­ 'upskili' GPs so that they are better able to deal with health tion, which invites non-compliance with poliries ranging and medical problems without further referral. Again, it from bulk-billing to filling in forms for notifiable diseases will not be an easy task, for it means reversing the whole Yet any government which is serious about controlling process of specialisation which has been a feature of the health costs, let alone introdudng reform, will sooner or 20th century medical profession. later have to challenge this clause in the High Court, whose approach to such issues has itself undergone considerable change in recent years. (Witness, for example, the Court's Before focussing on the inadequacies of these proposals, at interpretation of the Constitution in relation to the environ­ least as they are presently formulated in the Budget Paper, ment, and even managerial prerogative.) ' it is worth speculating on where ultimately they might lead. The service model which could emerge from the reforms is The origin of the dause was a referendum called by the a publicly funded, multidisciplinary practice, separating Chifley government in 1946 to seek powers to make laws funder and provider, where the GP is, in the words of the and regulations with respect to sodal welfare matters. After Budget Paper, "the co-ordinator of a network of care". winning the referendum in the teeth of a vociferous cam­ When the budget for diagnostic services and pharmaceuti­ paign by the doctors against 'socialised mediane', then cals also indudes, under the supervision of area health Attorney General H V Evatt, in a gesture as inexplicable as management, a component for hospital in-patient services, it was short-sighted, accepted an Opposition amendment the model begins to look very much like a Health Main­ to the new powers ruling out 'dvil conscription'. The effect tenance Organisation (HMO). If, indeed, this is what Howe of this amendment, at least until now, has been to ensure has in mind, he is on Che right track. that no major health reform could be introduced without the co-operation of the medical profession. Essentially, HMOs comprise a group of health and medical practitioners with a set budget and a population of enrolled The question for the present government is whether the members. They provide directly, or arrange provision of, a ground for a High Court challenge is better prepared by wide range of health and medical services, including hospi­ keeping the reform agenda under wraps, in the futile hope tal services. Because the budget is fixed, there is a built-in that the AMA may not notice it, or by opening it up for incentive to keep HMO members healthy and out of hospi­ public education and debate. Although inevitably there is tal. As a recent Economist survey of health care pointed out, a risk that Howe might lose the High Court battle in the HMOs "amputate the incentives to overtreat, overspend short term, the democratic process will at least give him a and overhospitalise. They put a premium on prevention chance of winning the war, either through a further referen­ and primary care, both neglected in traditional health care dum or possibly just the threat of a referendum. systems". They thus "add to the advantages of Britain's GP system a closer link between primary and secondary care That the mere thought of this approach makes the govern­ and a smaller incentive to refer patients to specialists". ment nervous ("Whatever you do, don't mention the Con­ stitution") indicates how remote it has become from its pro-reform constituency. If the Labor leadership can redis­ Even where hospitalisation is required, US studies show cover and renew its confidence in the constituency respon-1 that the number of short-stay hospital bed-days per head sible for its political agenda, that confidence will be repaid of the HMO population is about half that of the population by a popular campaign with far greats- impad than a generally (H Luft, Health Maintenance Organisations: Dimen­ tete-a-tete with Dr Bruce Shepherd. If it does not, a fun­ sions of Performance, 1981). The portfolio savings implica­ damental issue distinguishing Labor from the Opposition tions for Australia should be obvious, especially since the will have been thrown away. public sector model which would presumably be favoured by Howe avoids the drawbacks of private sector HMOs in The second, closely related, inadequacy in Howe's ap­ the US—not to mention the disastrous 'self-governing proach concerns the dominant status allotted to the medial trusts' recently introduced by Britain's Conservative profession within the reform package itself. Of course, government as part of their 'internal market1 reforms to the doctors play an important part in the delivery of medical NHS. services, but so do nurses, physiotherapists, dietician*, I

A LR: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 17 midwives and a whole spectrum of health workers, most the provision of specialised testing in reference of whom now receive their basic education in university at laboratories". degree level. It is arguable that the establishment of a publidy-owned Yet the medical profession enjoys a monopoly over health testing service—and indeed pharmaceutical industry— decisions and practice which is looking increasingly out of possibly in collaboration with the CSIRO, would not only place in a society which values, on the one hand, dioice for reduce costs but would also permit doser surveillance of the consumers of health care and, on the other, oppor­ overservidng. Indeed, it is apparent from reforms already tunities for all health professionals to make full use of their introduced by the government that the identification of skills. If the government is working towards a model of doctors involved in overservidng, followed by counselling Commonwealth-funded HMOs, why should the co-or­ and education, has a dramatic effect on their behaviour. dinating professional be a doctor? Why not a nurse prac­ While the public sector may recently have fallen out of titioner? And why should the "network of care" referred fashion, its superiority over the market in important areas to in Howe's Budge Paper not include complementary of our national life cannot be dismissed. therapies, such as chiropractic, naturopathy and acupunc­ ture? In condusion, we have identified the enormous potential of the government's proposed structural reforms to health Here, the substance of health reform has been subor­ care in Australia, but we have also pointed to serious dinated to the prospect of 'successful' negotiations with the inadequades in the strategy for their implementation. If AMA and the College of GPs, for, as every health worker the government is to win back the trust of health activists knows, the dominance of the medical profession is the and the electorate, it must begin to address these inade- basic source of the continued dominance of the medical model, with its primary emphasis on treatment and cure. That is why it is crucial for a government committed to sodal justice, access and equity in health care to ensure that HMOs are explicitly funded and accredited according to The medical profession’s their adherence to the 'New Public Health' principles es­ tablished by the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promo­ health monopoly looks tion. increasingly out of place The Charter identified five heath promotion action areas; building healthy public policy, creating supportive en­ vironments, developing personal skills, strengthening community action and reorienting health services. No one quacies openly, and develop the potential within its would expect the Department of Finance to understand reforms as past of a wider process of public discussion and these principles, but they should be second nature to a debate. health minister in a Labor government. The focus of the prindples on long term health outcomes, if matched by the Brian Howe is still relatively new to the Health portfolio, provision of appropriate services, would be a priceless and has found himself on a steep learning curve. Like all legacy for future generations. avowed sodal reformers, he would like to secure his place in history, but has begun to realise that health care reform is a less straightforward area than most Unfortunately, in The third inadequacy in Howe's reform package is its timid his first attempt, he has been too clever by half. He wanted approach to restructuring pathology and diagnostic ser­ to win the support of the doctors by intnxludng copay­ vices, which relies on the existing private infrastructure to ments, while playing down future reforms to the health restrain exploding costs. There is, of course, well docu­ care system. Instead, ne has united not only the doctors but mented evidence on the scope for abuse at the point of also his potential base of support for reform against his intersection with the users of these services, mainly the whole Budget package. GPs. Even the Australian Association of Pathologists has been forced to admit that. "Unethical pathologists bribed GPs so that they could perform thousands of dollars of Instead of being remembered by history as a champion of unnecessary tests on their patients" (Sydney Morning sodal reform, Howe is no w in danger of being remembered Herald, 30 August 1991). as the ambitious cabinet minister who was able to secure influence and respectability for the Left in a Labor govern­ ment, but only at a terrible price—the destruction of Again, Howe's attempt to reduce the incentive for overser- Medicare, and the best prospect of health care reform in a viting potentially disadvantages patients by restructuring generation. benefi ts and, in a bizarre move akin to removing $100 notes from drculation to discourage consumption, halves the DEIRDRE WICKS teaches in the sociology of health at the number of collection centres. The package completely ig­ University of Newcastle, and is the f onner director of Health nores the proposal in NHS Background Paper No. 6 (July Advancement, ACT. 1991), Directions for Pathology, to reorganise pathology ser­ ROY GREEN teaches in economics at the University of vices in Australia by expanding public provision "par­ Newcastle and Is a former adviser to the British labour Party ticularly where the public sector has an advantage, sum as and the Australian government

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 18 FEATURES

Health Wars

John Deeble is health services fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian Na­ tional University. Until 1989, he was a first assistant secretary in the Department of Community Services and Health. He is often described as one of the two architects of Radiology Operations 0 Medicare. He was interviewed for ALR by Julie Power.

You have described the budget changes to Medicare as Going to the detail of the budget, has a copayment ever Ill-advised, unjustified and ultimately destructive. Do been shown to decrease demand? you still believe this? Yes. Copayments do in every case decrease demand. They Yes, I do, because I don't like watching the creation of a don't decrease demand as much as people expect, because two-dass system in Medicare, with one set of conditions what is a reduction in outlays for government is also a for pensioners and one set for other people. I don't like reduction in income for providers. And even though the Medicare being converted into a quasi-welfare system be­ providers may see less patients, they may increase the cause it could lead to something like the pharmaceutical servicing of the patients they do see, to make up for the loss benefits scheme, with Medicare benefits restricted to old of others. people and high users, and nothing for the general popula­ tion. The Canadian and US experience has shown that there is some redistribution of services, because the new services So you think there's something in the 'thin end of the go to those not deterred by price (mainly better off people), wedge' argument? whereas the cuts affect mainly poorer people who are deterred by price. Well, I think what happened with pharmaceuticals was a good example. 1 I always thought that was a signal that the same could happen to Medicare. Is there an arrogance in Brian Howe's comments that as the new charge is only a few coins, it won't make much difference? Can you explain what you mean when you say that this is the first step in making Medicare into a welfare sys­ tem? He can't have it both ways. If it doesn't make much dif­ ference, it's just a revenue item. If it does, there is the Medicare has been involved in managing a big industry, possibility that it will make a disproportionate difference not just looking after the old and needy. It is necessary to to the less well off. If you look at it as just a revenue item, do that, because if you are going to control costs, you need then there's no argument that a flat rate charge is less to control and influence all expenditure, and not just spend­ equitable than an income-based levy contribution. ing by the few people you are particularly responsible for. If you go chasing me prices and technology in the private Are you surprised that the government didn't increase sector, you'll end up like the United States: high expendi­ the Medicare levy? ture and a lot of people left out of the welfare net.

b that what we are looking at now for the future of No, not given the objectives of the Department of Finance. I Medicare? Its overriding objective was to cut government spending. I Raising the levy doesn't cut government spending, it may increase it. To be fair, not yet. We are still a long way away from that. But the conceptual justification has been provided for doing it Is there really a need to cut demand?

A LR: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 19

Our usage growth since 1975 has been almost exactly In No, I don't think it's in a state of crisis at all. Spending has line with that of Canada. That doesn't mean to say that both increased as a proportion of all government spending only countries haven't got some element of unnecessary servic­ because other budget items have been cut. I see the social ing, there is some in all systems. The Australian system had contract which the government has with the community kept costs under control because Australia had been over Medicare as being a contract to run an insurance gradually cutting medical fees in real terms, to make up for system on the community's behalf. Only the government growing usage. So while use was rising, costs weren't can do this effectively, because only the government has Obviously you can’t go on doing that forever, and an the power both to tax equitably and to bargain with the alternative had to be sought, but user fees was only one providers of services, which indude the states and hospi­ option. tals.

So where was the growth and how would you have Which parts of the package do you endorse? tickled that? I don't know if it is proven that we have too many doctors. Initially, the introduction of Medicare, bringing in 16% of That's a value judgement It is true that the number of the population not covered before, pushed up use by 2% to doctors is increasing faster than the population, and we 3% beyond the previous growth rate. It slowed down after have to look seriously at migration and the output of that to the same rate as in the previous ten years. In the last medical schools. two years, the growth in GP consultations has slowed down very considerably. The big growth currently is in diagnostic services (pathology and radiology) and opera­ I don't dispute what the government is doing i n the restruc­ tions. turing. It will probably succeed because there is a suffident number of doctors to whom it will be attractive. I would have argued, of course, that it could have succeeded I would have been more cautious about tackling the GP without the copayment. side, because I think a plateau may have been reached. But I would have worked harder on finding incentives and controls in procedural medicine. Does the fee for service system you set up encourage doctors to overaervice? Should rising demand be accepted as part and parcel of having an increasingly sophisticated and wealthy Fee for service pays doctors for doing identifiable things. population? Whether that is overservidng in anything other than a financial sense is debatable. There may be no difference in the service the patient gets from two consultations rather Australia has been remarkable in controlling health expen­ than one, so measuring overservidng is pretty vague. diture to about 8% of GNP for 15 years, almost the only country which has done that. People are more indined to spend anj[ greater wealth on health services than on other Brian Howe says he hopes the copayment will encourage things, but there is more to it than that. Growth is technol­ people to use the phone more, stop them from going to ogy driven too. For example, 20 years ago, relatively few see doctors for more peripheral things. 75 year-olds could face hip replacements with confidence - not because the operation was much different, but because It will do that. A minor change like this will have little effect anaesthetics and die control of risk factors, like heart con­ on base demand, and to that extent one shouldn't get too ditions, were not really as good as they are now. Now exdted about it. I am less concerned about what this $2.50 replacement is a real prospect for many people, and it is not payment for bulk bill services will do now than what it unreasonable for those older people to expect that they means in legitimising a move away from national in­ should have those services which, for technical reasons, surance altogether. The charge for non-bulk billed service were not possible before. will be around $7.00, so patients will simply be looking for bulk billing doctors more. The difference will increase next Do you see the dominance of the Treasury dry line ac­ year. counting for the copayment getting up? However, the other side of the coin is that it's hard to deny Yes, I do. It's a reward for persistence on their part, because people the right to insure against a charge of this size if they they have been putting the same arguments forward since want to. And while this government might be able to the beginning of Medicare. The form varies from year to prevent it, the next government might be quite happy to year, but the import is the same. They always favour patient concede it Once there's a private and a public system charges. I think pharmaceuticals was the big breakthrough. running side by side, there is a big temptation for the When the government cut it down to a fairly nominal government to pull out and return to the private system scheme for anyone but pensioners and high users, that was altogether. a major victoiy for the econocrats. JULIE POWER Is a Canberra press gallery correspondent for Would you agree that Medicare is in a state of crisis? the Financial Review.

A IR ; NOVEMBER 1991 20 fEATURES

GOVERNING Corruption

Government corruption is a cancer on the body politic, eating away at governments across the continent. Or is it? Gary Wickham and Gavin Kendall suggest our instincts about corruption, like those about'good health', are often misplaced.

orruption is with us. The WA Inc Royal the cancer quickly whenever it appears, the consequences Commission and its media coverage will be dire. We know enough to know we're not alone in the fight against this disease. Italy, Japan and the US from C parallel Queensland's Fitzgerald In­ among the democratic countries, and just about all the quiry which itself had echoes of the falling communist countries, are acknowledged to be fight­ inquiry into the Askin government of New South ing it as well. We wish them well (sort of) though no one it Wales. And so on. In other words, the WA Com­ too surprised when a government, a system, or even an entire nation has to be buried because of the disease and the mission and the stories surrounding it are part of surrounding area fumigated in its wake. a tradition of government in Australia, hardly a noble tradition, but a tradition nonetheless: our We also know enough to know that corruption is hardly a governments, it seems, are constantly under new problem. The Roman emperor Augustus, for example, threat from corruption. identified the corruption of the empire as the major target of his new governmental program, although he can hardly The inquiries and the stories would have us believe corrup­ be said to have succeeded. Ultimately, so our mythology tion is a cancer. Unless we, the vote’s, act as a surgeon, has it, the Roman Empire was destroyed by decadence and urging healthy living on our governments and cutting out corruption. Our fear is that we are going the same way.

ALA: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 21

What we don't seem to know is that there are other ways Let's take a few steps back. The health metaphor which we of looking at corruption. One of these other ways, we're apply to our nation is, of course, derived from what is arguing here, is actually more useful if one is concerned, ultimately a medical source focusing on the body of an as we are, with good government. In fact, we suggest individual. The body is seen to be in its normal state when corruption is better thought of as a necessary, though in perfect health, while illness and disease are the things necessarily limited, aspect of modem government, includ­ that remove 'health', disrupt this 'normal' condition, and ing modem Australian government. To begin, we need to threaten the body. think about health. If s in the context of trying to assess the health of the nation and of its system of government that By analogy, our nation has a normal condition when things we understand corruption is inimical to health; the idea of are going perfectly well, and this normal condition is dis­ corruption as a 'cancer' is entirely appropriate to this rupted by such problems as corruption (although, of currently dominant way of thinking. course, there are others, such as riots, civil disobedience.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 22 FEATURES

crime, and so on). Too many of these problems, and the this, one would expect communist systems of govern­ nation, like the body, can be destroyed. The job of the ment to suffer disease just like any other system—and voter, as surgeon, is to ward off the incursions of these Marx's idealism in believing communism would prove malign influences, and ensure the normality and equi­ different from the systems that preceded it has been librium of the patient-nation. blown apart by recent events in Eastern Europe, as we hinted earlier. However, this notion of health, although deeply em­ bedded in our common sense understandings, is only one By contrast. Max Weber's vision of a bureaucratic form of of a range of possible ways of understanding health. It's government was much more like the kind of metaphorical an understanding which arises at a specific historical understanding of health we are arguing for here. Weber moment; it is not an understanding which is good for all realised that a bureaucracy would be beset by problems time. such as corruption, and would cause a certain amount of stifling of the body, but he writes as though this were somehow a necessary oil in the machinery of govern­ ment—necessary but still in need of careful regulation.

We are calling for a new realism in coming to grips with Good government is a the ills of the nation. We believe that it is important to stop messy and complex seeing the signs of decadence and decay all around, and to get on with the job of regulating the inevitable hic­ business. coughs in government No doubt our form of government will die, in time: but our over-reactions to its problems only make it more difficult to see how to act to improve the situation. Another understanding of the health of our nation may help us better understand the function and the dangerousness of corruption and similar'evils'. This very We realise that we have not said anything about what old way of understanding health, which is being revived makes one form of government better than the other; in some versions of homeopathy, organises itself around perhaps we could be accused of suggesting that since all a conception of the body as necessarily overtaken by ills. forms of government are equally prone to disease like The movement of the body througn various stages of corruption, then we have no way of deciding which is being ill and being well, and eventually dying, are all part better. However, we would resist such a paralysis of of what constitutes liealth'—thus even death can be thought We reiterate that the purpose of this exploration thought of as 11631111/. This is very different from regard­ is to engender a certain sense of perspective about our ing a state of total wellbeing as the 'default* position. current problems, and a certain sense of modesty about the times we live in—they are almost certainly no more debauched or depraved than any other. It should be fairly dear how taking up this metaphor could transform our understanding of the ills of the na­ tion. We are by no means advocating that such ills should We need to understand that the piece of the life-cycle of not be the object of the voter-surgeon's interventions, but government we are experiencing is just one of many such we are suggesting that anyone who expects to see a nation pieces. In addition, we would maintain that it is possible reach a peak of 'normality' is being naive. In addition, to make further ethical decisions about what forms of perhaps it is appropriate that some nations and empires government are best (an analysis begun by one of us in be allowed to die, as part of their cycle of health. ALR 129). Moral panics about diseases (like corruption) can only cloud our judgment and obstruct our ability to make such decisions. Some readers might well be saying: but isn't this exactly Marx's point? Didn't Marx formulate a notion of capitalism as necessarily beset by evils and ills, by the So the WA Inc Royal Commission is more an indication tension between the relations and forces of production, of the way government works. Sure, it's an indication that and by the alienation of the workers from the means of it never works evenly or smoothly, but this is hardly production? Indeed so, but only in the context of setting grounds for panic. up capitalism as deeply pathological. Alienation was merely a symptom of a deeper malaise. When capitalism In this sense, our conclusion is that corruption inquiries gets replaced by communism, so he said, all the cancers should be seen as useful aids to a sort of popular political will disappear or wither away. sociology. Given sensible reporting, they should help to make voters aware that good government is a messy and Our outlook is different If one understands the health of complex business. If voters want government that's dear the nation and its system of government in the way we and simple, they'll simply get bad government have outlined above, then it is no longer necessary to regard capitalism as pathological. Its ills are an inevitable GARY WICKHAM teaches in sociology at Murdoch part of its life course. Capitalism requires an under­ University. GAVIN KENDALL teaches in psychology at standing doctor, not an executioner. Following on from Lancaster University in England.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 23

Inside the BLF A union self-destructs

In one of the most controversial books yet published on an Australian union, Inside the BLF provides an insider's view of the Builders' Labourers Federation as it faced a Royal Commission and repeated attempts at deregistration. A leading official of the BLF during the 1980s, Brian Boyd kept a diary of significant events. Inside the BLF shows how the union was "held hostage" by BLF Secretary Norm Gallagher and used as a personal weapon in his battle to avoid corruption charges. This book provides unprecedented insight into the BLFs relations with State and Federal governments, building companies, and other unions. It describes how a once powerful trade union was isolated and destroyed. Boyd's conclusion is that the 1986 deregistration of the BLF was both avoidable and unnecessary. Brian Boyd is now an elected officer of the Victorian Trades Hall Council.

m UNION 336pp, chronology, appendices ISBN paper 1 875284 44 3 self- REP $19.95 ' BRIAN BOYD Published by Ocean Press, GPO Box 3279, Melbourne, Victoria 3001 Phone (052)633100 Fax (052)631862

For: Libraries - academics - students - & people who |ust want to knew... Australian Left Review has complied an index of its contents beginning with Issue No.85 (Spring, 1983). As of fop irrh) February, 1990, ALR became a monthly magazine, producing 11 issues per 1foe wilderness S-ciet/ Stops year. The index cross-indexes articles ■ % £ G *ee«eg-^ip|S r by various topics, and also includes brief descriptions of each, it's on idea! resource for libraries and researchers. Copies of the ALR Index are available 4 2 5 ls\ *4-4- f a ft . at a cost of $55 each (price includes diwc*-. Mlntdii, the index in a binder, postage and a regular update). Updates will be sent Mg'19- AnKtoW out annually, at the end of each year (December). /I -7 W Writ® to: ALR Index, Freepost 28, Box 'S' 0 x ^ 0 ^ - A247. Sydney South 2000. for more AfWWd ■ details. jp raue. WfwflS AHuid .

ALR '. NOVEMBER 199 J 24 FEATURES

A change of H E AF.T

The Accord was the linchpin of union strategy in the 80s. Now its record is under severe scrutiny, and many of its ertstwhile union supporters have had second thoughts. C la re Curran spoke to the authors of an upcoming book which charts this change of heart.

he 80s began with a brave new experi­ Hampson (Science, Wollongong University) argue that the last eight years of accord between labour and a Labor governm ent ment for the labour movement have provided few real benefits for working people and have ^ manifested in an Accord which, it was inadvertently allowed the conditions to emerge for a new aw \hoped, would provide ordinary people more sophisticated conservative agenda, one that much o f the Left with more ability to intervene in determining the hasn't grasped or is powerless to avert. conditions that governed their lives. ALR's Clare Curran interviewed four of the authors, PeW Ewer, Chris Lloyd, Steve Rix and John Rainford, about * But according to the authors of a forthcoming book, Surviving book and their controversial claims. the Accord: From Restraint to Renewal, something has gone horribly wrong with the experiment—something that has as much to do with those who set it up as the forces acting against Why did you write this book? Why did you get together it. Four of the authors, Meg Smith, Peter Ewer Chris Lloyd and as a group? ]ohn Rainford, were until recently research officers for the Metal and Engineering Workers Union (MEWU). They and co-authors Peter: It came about as the result of our collective Steve Rix (Public Sector Research Centre, UNSW), and Ian about the trajectory of the union movement, a mood

A LR ; NOVEMBER 1991 A IK : NOVEMBER 1991 26 FEATURES really became chronic for us around the time of the intro­ a hearing for those views within the movement_and duction of Accord Mark VI at the beginning of last year. At led to the ALR article. The reaction to that showed h that time it became obvious that large parts of the union little thought was being put into strategic issues abo^ movement were determined to bastardise restructuring in workplace change, particularly on the Left. The state ^ I the interests of a fairly amorphous and unclear vision of Accord Mark VI and the fiasco that surrounded it has ii productivity bargaining at the enterprise. intensified our interest in finding some sort of alternative ^

What do you mean "bastardise restructuring"? It sounds as though there's not much discussion of theB issues in the union Left. Are you six the only pconi* Peter: Accord Mark VI was made up of a number of talking about these things? e contradictory elements. Particularly contradictory was the way it anticipated the system would be topped up by Peter: No, I think there's a great degree of disillusionment flexibility components to be negotiated at the industry or and concern among the Left, but the inability of those enterprise level. In the recession it seemed perfectly ob­ views to come forward shows a decline of the Left in vious that this sort of flexibility would amount to tradeoffs, organisational and ideological terms. The collapse of the speedups, and a general emphasis on short term produc­ Communist Party of Australia (CPA) has removed one tivity improvements that would not give scope for the major venue through which alternative views on the Left training based restructuring that we've been pursuing in could be put forward. And there's a general ideology the metal industry award. The real question was whether crisis that we're all confronted with. The rise of neo-con­ the union movement continued to pursue a national agen­ servatism, the collapse of the command economies, the da of restructuring or whether it allowed it to be dissolved seeming triumph of economic liberalism, each has implica­ into enterprise bargaining. tions not just for conservatism but for the labour move­ ment. I think a lot of people on the Left are concerned And you would argue it took the latter course? privately—though perhaps not in the terms that we're putting it in—about the failure of productivity bargaining, Peter: That was the framework within which Accord Mark enterprise bargaining and the Accord Mark VI. There VI was negotiated. At the end of 1989 Keating was telling would be widespread concern on the Left that that strategy corporate interests around the world that the next wages has failed and that the Left has contributed to it as indeed system would allow for uneven wage increases across the Left has contributed to the failure of the Accord. industries and enterprises, which he called flexibility in the interests of productivity bargaining. And the program­ How has the Left contributed to the failure of the Accord? matic form of that push was the Accord Mark VI flexibility component which had a very uncertain relationship to the Peter: Only the Left in the union movement could disable national agenda with skills based restructuring. the incomes policy component of the Accord, which rested for its pratical implementation on Left endorsement or And the union movment just went along with this acquiescence. The Right certainly has never been able to process? smash a wages system and has hardly ever sought to do so. The Left in our view is directly responsible for the Peter. It would appear that those parts of the union move­ course of the Accord and for the fate of the movement ment leading the skills based restructuring never really under the Accord. understood what restructuring involved. They believed it could be turned off and on like a tap as the needs arose. The reasons why the Left failed really touch on a strategic Before Accord Mark VI there were three outstanding miscalulation which took place in the early 80s. The Left restructuring matters of real strategic importance. The first had for many years pursued its political objective in ihe was the recognition of training boards in the award system union movement by wages struggle. Those ovcraward as providers of skills standards; the second was the campaigns in the late 70s were showing signs of flagging. development of those standards; the third would have They benefitted militant pockets of the union movement, been the provision of adequate paid training leave in the but segmented the working class in many s e n s e s , because award to make the skills approach realistic and available the overaward campaign didn't mobilise people in a way to people. Those three things were outstanding before that it's often claimed. And it's said that the ovcraward Accord Mark VI and they're still outstanding 18 months campaign relied on pockets of usually maintenance later. workers in the metal industry to break through and com­ parative wage justice to take care of the rest. But that s Was it intentional that they were moved off the agenda? hardly a mobilising strategy. With that experience and also after the profound recession in 1982/83, the Left turned Peter: I don't know if it was intentional, but certainly there the Accord and attempted to shift the point of mil-tancy was a push from Keating at the end of 1989 for an uneven from wages to industry policy. The Left realised that in access to wage increases at an enterprise level which really comes policy on its own would fail and it w0.u cut across the national approach that had been taken. This degenerate into wage restraint. Social interventions in is essentially what Chris Lloyd was saying in ALR in July economic performance were going to be needed ifanY 1990, and this book arose out of our despair of not being thing progressive was going to be made of the Accord, able to have those views taken seriously. Chris couldn't get that's where the industry development campaign can*

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 27 flie problem is that if s very difficult for union members to ing to a head for some time. The principles of union prac­ Influence industry policy. It's essentially a project of union tice in this country have relied on what Francis Castles has ufficals and union bureaucrats on delegations to Canberra, called "wage earner security"; that is, you attempt to flie possibilities for mass activism and struggle are pretty protect essentially male craft tradespeople in employment limited. We're not arguing against industry policy, but through restrictive means mainly directed at other tfe're saying that like wages militancy in isolation, in­ workers. It's that policy tradition that's in crisis and the dustry policy in isolation is a one dimensional strategy Accord is a symptom of that. dial's very difficult to mobilise organised labour around. Chris: The Accord was always a double edged sword in ffcere seems to be very little debate in the last few years that it was an expression of a range of historical tendencies ibout alternatives to current trends. Does this mean that within the labour movement. The early Accord did offer a people do accept and are reasonably happy with what's range points of intervention, but subsequent versions of going on, and if so, are you just a radical breakaway? the Accord solidly built out those interventions, increas­ ingly narrowing the focus purely to issues related to wages, peter: My personal view is that there is a wider constituen­ when at the beginning there was always the possibility of cy of concern, if you want to put it in those terms. getting inside the process and giving the labour movement more power. But that didn't happen.

So it wasn't the contract which was flawed, but the im­ plementation of it?

Chris: The possibilities of the Accord were there, but as it developed it narrowed its focus rather than opening it up. As a result, no-one was able to exploit such things as award restructuring to the fullest extent. It's very easy to forget the atmosphere of 1982/83, when the Accord was first conceived. We'd come through seven years of conser­ vatism under Fraser. Once Labor was elected, the labour movement made a number of assumptions about taking How does it manifest itself? control of the economic levers of power. The assumption was that suddenly we were going to be able to dictate industry policies—and that misled us into a whole series Peter: That's precisely the difficulty. There are no forums of programmatic errors. It was quite clearly naive to think where that can take place. I don't think we're isolated heretics or malcontents. I think there's wider concern, but we were going to be allowed to do those things in the first there is also a very pervasive orthodoxy inside the union place. It was also absolutely absurdly naive of us to think that our members would grasp these new levers of movement which is stultifying debate. The way in which the Accord is been elevated to an article of faith is power—levers which were in any case more of a chimera symptomatic of that. than a reality.

John: The last ACTU Congress was an example of that. You're saying that you were naive, and that you thought Where was there any debate other than on the issue of you had a lot more power than you actually did. When anion rationalisation? And even then most of the 40 odd did it become apparent to you that there was something speakers were protecting their own position. fundamentally wrong?

■Peter: I think that the inertia on the Left is reflected in the Chris: In the week leading up to the Federal election in way that the Right, which has never been graced with a March 1990 negotiations of the federal metal industry huge number of strategic thinkers, is now putting forward award were at a point where we had to either accept ?ui:e sophisticated political views which aren't finding tradeoff dauses in our award or we had to argue further :®y response from the Left. The views of Michael Costa for paid training leave. We were in arguably the most •tod Mark Duffy (ALR 129, June) are a case in point; powerful industrial position we'd been in for many years, whatever you think about it, theirs is a very sophisticated one week before a Federal election and one week before a Piece of political analysis. Who would have thought that national metalworkers strike. But the classic age-old Jtthe end of an effective wage freeze, thanks to the union labourist tendency took over; the threat of Labor losing the Movement's own miscalulations over Accord Mark VI, the election, the need to keep Labor in power. And so we ‘^ief public critics of that cut in living standards have been backed down on our core tenet that skill formation is the -foe Right, not the Left? responsibility of the employer. foe you saying that the Accord was essentially flawed Who is "we"? The metalworkers? should never have happened? Chris: It isn't reasonable to lay blame at the feet of the ?*|er: We're saying that the Accord is a symptom of metalworkers. The pressure on the negotiators involved in four's deeper policy crisis, a crisis which has been com­ that particular negotiation were enormous, aided and

ALR. 1991 28 FEATURES abetted by the ACTU in its intimate relationship with ele­ plant. Yet organised labour, and its mouthpieces in t>()v ments of the ALR I think it's useful to say now that quite a ment and industry, generally argues that your job's at cb?1" few of us then began to realise that the enterprise bargain­ if you question the validity of the process that's polluK ing agenda had cemented itself far more in to the condous- your own community environment. n8 ness of the leadership, both on the Right and Left of the trade union movement, than we'd expected, and that John: There's an urgency about what we are sayine enterprise bargaining was really the shadowy form behind we're not able to throw off this undemocratic cloak w all sorts of restructuring. We were looking down the throat worn since 1983 and empower members at the workpla^ of what seemed to be the dismantling of the current then the relevance of unionism at the workplace m ' centralised wage fixing system. surely be questioned much more than it is now. We a> believe that unless some sort of program like this is takm So what's your alternative? up there is a very dim future for unionism.

Chris: I think we're starting from a more grassroots ap­ Chris:This crisis of credibility for unions is accentuated bv proach towards how the labour movement organises, and the process by which the most hardline employers and identifying where power in the labour movement lies. It their ideologues argue that unions are effectively no longer certainly didn't lie in sitting on the government committees relevant because they don't know anything about what that supposedly manoeuvered economic policy. It means people are doing inside their workplace; it's an enterprise, going back to the workplace and beginning to become based culture, and the people who know your enterprise relevant again to our membership. best are of course none other than your boss.

Peter What we call the crisis of organised labour at the Peter The great subtlety of this current direction by some moment has its roots in the way we have tried to organise employers and the conservatives is that they are leaving workers in the past. We've tried to do that essentially behind outright opposition to wage struggle; their opposi­ through division, through locking up parcels of skill, by tion to unionism has moved to a more sophisticared at­ locking up discrete areas of the labour process, cementing tempt to snap the linkages between workers and trade those through craft demarcation and then allowing com­ unions. And it's actually the trade union movement that's parative wage justice to trickle through the working dass. opening up space for enterprise bargaining through its That organising practice has reached a terminal crisis for a own strategies. whole series of reasons— some technologically induced, some politically induced—but at any rate, the days of craft There is another, more flexible, perspective which some unionism are at an end. The question is whether we go back employers adopt, which has proved quite beguiling to to the workplace, resolve that political tradition in favour progressive people who now form what you would now of unity, or whether we allow capital to redefine and reor­ call the workplace change industry. Within the project of ganise labour on the basis of corporate structures. That is enterprise bargaining, management is prepared to devolve what enterprise bargaining is doing, and it would appear autonomy, devolve responsibility, prepared to embrace at the moment that the union movement is more comfort­ group work. But it's only prepared to do so where the able with division and simply wanting to recast that devolution, the responsibility, the autonomy can be inter­ division away from craft and occupations to corporate nalised and controlled by the corporation. And that's how structures rather than pursing a more solidaristic approach the workplace change industry and the advocates of in­ to a whole series of issues—wages, skills and the way work dustrial democracy get so tangled up with enterprise bar­ is organised. gaining.

How do you propose the movement should go about this? So you think this workplace change culture has gone off Have you come up with some kind of blueprint or series the rails? of steps that need to happen? Chris: It's gone off the rails because people are contusing Chris: We make no pretence to be putting up a program­ industrial democracy and partiripative workplaces with matic blueprint for the Left It is not our job—and neither enterprise bargaining. The focal point for this enterprise should it be our job to dictate to the public sector, to the bargaining culture is the primary processing of com­ environment movement or to any other sodal movement, modities in the low value-added sector but large plant area how they should act. What we're trying to do is find ways of the economy— an area where it is quite easy to m0U of making those connections with collective action. So we an enterprise-based culture because you don't have take as an organising point the nature of work itself and draw on public sector skills systems. It's a vastly dirficj1 where the labour movement can harness the organisation, thing for the majority of Australia's workers who wor:k or the skills, the relationships that go on in the labour process medium to small size companies which do not have and connect that to other collective action. luxury of establishing these consultative edifices.

This suggests, for instance, moving beyond a simple health Is what you're arguing realistic? and safety condousness to a broader environmental con- sdousness in the workplace—not just health and safety Steve: The critique is accurate. For myself I want to see problems, but the community of health and safety for that politics back on the agenda. I'm personally fed up vvi

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 1 FEATURES 29 I A jtjour movement being involved in debates in the context receive their nationally accredited skill qualifications from j having accepted the key elements of the conservative a union training centre. This may initially cost substantial instruction of society and getting into the problem of capital, but after that capital's in place, it would probably jpg round and round in an ever diminishing drcle trying pay for itself in a new open market for training. | defeat the conservatives on their own terms. For 10 years we've had CPI increases always below what feter there is a point at which political prindples and we expected, which has meant that a union organiser's Ajlitical ideas have to be reactivated and debated. And if relationship to his or her members has been to go in there jjl that happens is there's some debate around these issues, and try to find out what they had to trade for that next [think that most of us would rest fairly content increase, rather than directly negotiating about wages. We have now realised that this view of tradeoffs was a back­ Have you thought about the outcome of the launch of this ward looking one, one designed to lead us into a trap. It took? took our attention away from going into the hours in which labour operates, the way in which labour's organised around people's needs, be it child care, or schooling or *|eter Other than an end to paid employment? There's a recreation. Even though we knew that the growth in !gsy realistic purpose to at least part of the book—and that employment was in part time and casual employment, we fcthat we are trying to establish an ideological and political effectively said that those people weren't relevant to trade nontext for the sort of skills-based restructuring and unions. In fact we didn't want them. What we should have workplace change that we'd like to see. The political and said is that these people have a legitimate demand for that ideological base on the Left for skills-based restructuring sort of work, and we should have asked how we could tas never been adequately put, and in our view never been organise to link that to issues like better use of recreational jdequately debated. activity, how we could organise working time so that people don't have to spend every every Saturday in the Chris: One of the reasons that I was personally interested shopping centre, and every Sunday on the beach with sthat too often I've had thrown in my face by my comrades everybody else. tn the Left the argument that I was merely supporting a (Structuring process that was anti-union, and which came ,tom craft unionists who were interested in preserving the Peter And asking how to deliver those benefits in a way Irivileges of male-dominated minorities. To me, it was that's really egalitarian. For example, there's a big push on hcreasingly alarming that the Left in the trade union for the 12 hour shift, particularly in maintenance areas of Inovement was seeing restructuring as the sole preserve of the manufacturing industry. You might ask: if that's ap­ fhebosses and not the preserve of the Left of the trade union proved of by members on the job then why shouldn't they movement. There is no understanding that skills-based work 12 hour shifts and get the benefits outside the job in structuring, if used in the right way, is a lever with which increased leisure time? But making that dedsion will rein­ to get more control and more influence. force the gender bias of the workforce, and going to 12 hour shifts effectively locks out women from a whole series of So the union movement is in real jeopardy? trades. How many women with family responsibilities can entertain movement into a trade when the men already there voted to go on a 12 hour shift? .Chris: This is without a doubt the largest crisis of Itgitimacy the trade union movement has faced. We have matched the trade union movement in Britain and the Chris: We've effectively vacated this field to the Right. United States being gradually whittled away. We have They are dictating the terms on which change will happen; nanaged to survive that process better than most. We now they are thinking through the demographic changes in -«me to a point where unions have created a legitimacy sodety. The conventional view that we will always have a ®isis with their own members. nuclear family-based sodety is a myth. But we didn't recognise that back in the period when we called those sorts feu I don't think there's any doubt about this crisis of of things tradeoffs; consequently we rejected any attempt ^gitimacy. I think that's accepted right across the board. to tamper with them. But the Right didn't. The Right sat Jhe previous ACTU Congress spent a lot of time on that down and thought quite condously that there would be its solution was 20 or so super unions. But the interest- massive sodal changes and it began to gear towards them. flg thing to observe about that is that those propositions As a result, we are left without any clothes at all, and no tout union rationalisation have not been put to the mem- agenda to put up about working hours and conditions. 7*0 themselves. Rather it's been driven by agreement at top and through legislation. The book does not attempt to provide a blueprint for how to rectify that situation, but but rather to examine the basic ^*is: The Australian trade union movement is one of the issues: the nature of work itself, why people work part- ®fcest asset-rich groups in Australia, and yet these assets time, why capital has to be used more effidently, and not ** never disposed towards setting up training systems, for just for profit, but also for environmental purposes. Apart stance—because that's not seen as a union's job. Yet if from the question of school hours, the only winners from ^ything might extoll the value of modern-day trade the five-day working week, eight hours a day, 9 am to 5pm, F'ionism to an individual worker it's that they might are organised sport and religion. m

A LU : NOVEMBER 1991 30 FEATURES

TRADING

u p

Think globally, act globally. The green movement's greatest challenge is the turbulent world of international trade. Lyuba Zarsky explains why it's not good enough to argue for an isolationist green protectionism.

n the past decade, the environment has was spearheaded by northern and western European risen to the top of the global diplomatic countries such as Austria and Sweden. European countnes with strong domestic commitments to ecologically sus­ agenda. International meetings on the tainable development want a more level 'environmental greenhouse effect, biodiversity and the playing field' in global trade. They fear that lower environ­ preservation of rainforests have proliferated as mental standards in the countries with whom they trade □ will allow those countries to undercut costs in the interna­ governments, scientists and activists try to find tional arena, undermining their own ecological goals and global solutions to global problems. Now the international competitiveness. environment has made it into the big league of international trade diplomacy. With almost 100 Pressures for GATT to embrace environmental concews member nations, the General Agreement on are coming from both international and national direc­ Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is the primary vehicle tions, yet the situation is fraught with contradiction an governing world trade. In October, GATT's mem­ conflict. At the national level, diverse health and envu* mental policies have triggered trade conflicts. The Um ber nations agreed to convene a working group States and the EC, for example, recently had a row o\e on Trade and Environment. growth hormone residues in US beef exports to ^ur0?g Claiming higher sensitivities to chemical residues, A Trade and Environment Working Group was first estab­ Europeans forbade the beef imports. The Americans co lished in 1971, but it was stymied by conflicts among tended the hormones were safe and argued that the res GATT's contracting parties and was never convened. The tions aimed to protect not consumers but Europ recent push to get the environment onto the trade agenda farmers.

M U : NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 31

In what will likely be a precedent-setting case, Mexico and ing global resources are increasingly hedged with trade the US are currently involved in a dispute over US legisla­ provisions. GATT was originally set up in the 1940s as an tion to impose dolphin-kill limits on caught tuna. A 1988 anti-tariff watchdog, and these trade provisions are often amendment to the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, at odds with GATT's own charter The resulting potential driven by American environmentalists, set dolphin kill for confusion and conflict undermines the role of GATT as limits on both domestic and imported tuna. Importers a comprehensive trade organisation. The threat of trade were threatened with embargoes if they could not achieve sanctions has been used both to get nations to endorse an average dolphin-kill no more than 1.25 times that of the emerging agreements and to enforce existing agreements. US fleet With a large but technologically less sophisticated The Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances, for tuna industry, Mexican exporters faced a virtual ban on example, calls for trade sanctions against non-signatories. imports. Mexico filed a complaint with GATT, claiming Such sanctions are contrary to the spirit and the letter of that the legislation constituted a disguised trade barrier GATT. aimed at protecting the US tuna industry from foreign competition. A GATT dispute resolution panel is currently Besides the essentially negative tool of trade sanctions, evaluating submissions. international environmental diplomacy increasingly aims to use trade in a positive way to promote ecologically On the international side, GATT faces the conundrum that sound development. The chief mechanism is the design international environmental agreements aimed at protect­ and implementation of a range of product standards and

ALR; NOVEM BER 1991 32 FEATURES

especially process standards. Product standards put restric­ The national or regional use of process standards poses the tions on end-products—for instance, requiring that they additional problem for GATT of extra-territoriality. Under not contain ozone-depleting CFCs. They have been around what conditions can a nation's regulatory arm extend for a long time as a tool of domestic policy by governments. beyond its own land, sea and air boundaries? In the US- However, aiming them at protecting the environment, Mexico tuna dispute, the US attempted in effect to regulate rather than consumer health and safety, and setting or use of international waters. If the Muntingh proposal is 'harmonising' them internationally are relatively new and adopted, the EC, which has no rainforests, would in effect controversial concepts. Process standards, on the other be regulating foreign production. Besides the problem of hand, put restrictions on how products are produced, such extra-territoriality, the EC restrictions could be seen as as requiring that they not be manufactured by technologies violating two of GATT's fundamental principles; non-dis­ which contain CFCs. In short, environmentally benign crimination among trading partners; and transparency of prod uct and process standards aim to squeeze out environ­ trade barriers. mental vandals by market forces. GATT's TVade and Environment Working Group will have The tool of process standards arose out of international to consider how to respond to both these national and agreements to conserve species or primary resources. The international pressures. The key problem is how GATT can Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, respond to ecological imperatives while still maintaining for example, restricts trade in plants and animals in danger its commitments to liberal, multilateral trade rules. At min­ of extinction to those harvested under sustainable manage­ imum, the working group must consider how to make ment plans. The Wellington Convention on Drift Net Fish­ international trade and environmental agreements consis­ ing prohibits the use of drift nets in commercial fishing. The tent. Some voices at GATT will no doubt argue that tile way International Tropical Timber Organisation aims to restrict to consistency is to roll back environmental agreements for trade in rain forest timers to those produced under certified the sake of freer trade. However, it is unlikely tjiat they will sustainable management plans by the year 2000. Proposals win the day; the environmental diplomatic momentum is have been floated for international resource agreements to too strong. It is more likely thatGATT will create exceptions set process standards for sustainable agriculture and the to its provisions in cases where international agreements harvesting of genetic resources. have been reached in other forums.

At best, the working group could consider how GATT Environmental process standards present an entirely new could join the environmental bandwagon and set broad approach to regulating markets. They are probably the guidelines actively to promote ecologically sustainable single most innovative and important mechanism to con­ development. International rules governing the protection serve the environment while encouraging economic of intellectual property, for example, have a potentially development. Without requirements for sustainable important significant impact on the transfer of environmen­ forestry management—and the higher prices such require­ tally clean technology, especially to developing countries. ments bring—the world's rainforests will be logged out The Uruguay Round of trade talks is presently considering within thirty years. ways to tighten up intellectual property protection, but without considering how it could affect the environment

Yet, except for products made by prison labour, process At the national level, GATT must consider how to establish standards are generally not allowed by GATT and are seen broad guidelines for national approaches to environmental as a non-tariff trade barrier. GATT does contain provisions policies which affect international trade. One item on the which allow exceptions to free trade which are 'necessary Working Party agenda, for example, is the effect on trade of to protect human, animal or plant life or health' and which new packaging and labelling requirements aimed at relate 'to die conservation of [domestic] exhaustible natural protecting the environment Some countries, especially in resources'. However, there is very little definition of such what used to be described as the Third World, worry that conditions, and there is no provision for placing explicitly such a requirement and others like it represent disguised environmental conditions on trade. non-tariff trade barriers. To reduce that likelihood, GATT will need to develop criteria for justified environmental regulation which affects trade— which could include Besides international agreements, process standards are transparency, environmental purpose and effectiveness in creeping into national and regional environmental policies. achieving environmental purpose. The US dolphin-kill legislation sets a process standard for harvesting tuna. The European Parliament has passed a The overarching issue is whether GATT itself should regulation known as the Muntingh Proposal which, if develop global environmental conditions on trade or adopted by the European Commission and Council of Min­ whether it should enlarge the scope for nations to regulate isters would introduce comprehensive controls over im­ their own trade. The former approach could require, for ports of tropical wood and wood products. Quotas would example, that process standards apply only to specified be set for each exporting country based on individualised products agreed to by GATT members or in other interna* j forest management and conservation plans. Australian en­ tional forums. The latter approach would allow nations to vironmental groups are considering ways to use process set their own process standards and spell out conditions standards to promote sustainable forestry management in under which they could do so. Likewise, a global approach Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. would seek to harmonise international environmental

ALR; NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 33

product standards, while the latter would spedfy condi­ Development and the key issues surrounding trade and tions for differing national standards. environment

The best environmental standards would probably come Incorporating the concerns of developing countries is im­ from a combination of the two approaches. A global ap­ portant on three counts. First are ethical imperatives to proach points towards mechanisms such as global mini­ improve the welfare of nearly 80% of the world's people. mum environment standards. Just as they agree not to use Average income in the South is about 6% of that in the slave or prison labour, nations would agree not to use North. Second, with a rapidly expanding population, tactics which would degrade the environment However, developing countries will have an increasing impact on ecological and social conditions differ across nations, re­ global and local environments. Helping them to chart quiring different national standards. A global floor, rather ecologically sound economic development paths will titan ceiling, on standards, combined with specified condi­ benefit everyone. Third, international co-operation is the tions for higher national standards, would provide the best key to solving nearly all the world's developmental integration of trade and environment objectives. problems. Polarisation on the environment issue at GATT will undermine prospects for co-operation on other economic and environmental issues. Some environmentalists, however, worried about GATT's pro-free trade bias, are pushing for amendments which seek to extend the sphere of national policy rather than Two leading concerns for the South are access to the develop a global framework. Heralding a regime of 'green markets of developed countries and technology transfer. protectionism', they want nations to be able to unilaterally The working groups will have to consider ways to promote exclude environmentally degrading imports or to slap 'en­ ecologically sustainable North-South trade. One idea is to vironment tariffs' on them, as well as develop process create North-South 'environmental trade preferences'. standards. Support for such policies often grows out of Preferential access could be given to particular products general hostility to trade in groups which favour local from developing countries produced under strong en­ self-reliance. vironmental guidelines; or to a developing country as a whole which adopted sweeping, multisectoral commit­ ments to sustainable development. For example, a country The nexus between environment and trade is a new issue which undertook land reform, promoted sustainable and many green groups are still coming to terms with it. In agriculture and agro-forestry, and implemented sus­ the US there is a chasm between environmental groups tainable forestry management could get preferential access who support environmental regulation of the proposed for its agriculture or forest-based products or be allowed to US-Mexico Free Trade Agreement and those who oppose protect infant food or timber processing industries. the agreement altogether. Greenpeace surprised many American conservation groups when it opposed the US dolphin-kill legislation and embraced a global approach. Technology transfer can be accomplished through a variety The solution lay instead, it ai^ued, in the establishment of of means, induding aid programs and the generation of an international! regime "in which all the governments, the new sources of revenue. International forestry agreements, fish processing and distribution industry, the purse seine for example, could pay developing countries for the en­ fleets, and non-govemmental environmental and con­ vironmental service of conserving standing rainforests. On sumer organisations work co-operatively to regulate the the other hand, the South should be able to gain revenue fishery and the international endrdement of dolphins". from the development of its crop and rainforest genetic resources. Currently, international seed companies and developed countries reap enormous benefits from develop­ The effectiveness of GATT's working group will depend to ing country plant varieties. Royalties and other payments- a large extent on whether it incorporates the concerns of to developing countries are a pittance. developing countries. Like most international forums, GATT is split by a North-South divide. Powerful developed countries have exduded key commodities of developing The trade environment agenda at GATT and elsewhere is countries such as agricultural products and textiles from still at an early stage. The active, informed, and articulate free trade rules. Moreover, developed countries often main­ partidpation of development and environment groups tain polides of 'tariff escalation' which put increasingly could make a significant difference in its evolution. Besides higher tariffs on products with more fabrication. The effect providing a strong 'voice of consdence', non-governmen­ is to encourage the South's export of raw materials and tal groups can call on sdentific expertise. Unburdened by retard its industrialisation efforts. the requirements of the narrow political goals which beset governments, they can be creative and bold. Consdence, sdence, creativity, courage and democracy are all needed Some developing countries, including India and ASEAN, in large amounts to point international trade towards initially opposed the formation of the working group. They ecologically sustainable paths. worry that environmental regulation of trad e is a new form of economic protectionism aimed primarily at maintaining the North's lead over newly industrialising countries. They LYUBA ZARSKY is an economic consultant She is the agreed to support the group only after the GATT secretariat author of Trade-Environment Linkages and Sustainable had consented to produce 'factual papers' on the evolving Development (1991), a report for the federal Department of process of the UN Conference on Environment and the Environment

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 34 FEATURES

Tuming off THE TAP

Another sore point for the green movement is immigration. Jock Collins argues that the environmental case for shutting the gates is weak at best — shabby at worst.

new immigration debate is snowball­ than 40% of written responses raised concerns over multi- ing in Australia today. If the critics of culturalism and immigration. immigration are to be believed, stop­ A Hewson's move to break the bipartisan immigration con­ ping or dramatically reducing immigra­ sensus comes at a time when immigration is under attack tion would immediately solve Australia's current from both economic rationalists and environmentalists. account deficit problem, help end the recession, Today's immigration debate is really the same old argu­ overcome the problems of international competi­ ments dressed up in newer, greener, clothes. It is no coin­ cidence that the 1984 Blainey debate emerged after the tiveness and herald the end to Australia's en­ depths of the 1982-83 recession. As Hewson's predecessor vironmental problems. John Howard showed in the bicentennial year, if politically desperate, play the prejudice card. Australia's immigration program has always been con­ troversial. Debates about the impact of immigration on Just as the findings of the Club of Rome in the late 1960s led lifestyles, the economy, our defence and on the social to calls to red uce Australian immigra tion on environmental cohesion of Australian society have surfaced many times grounds, so the names of international environmental since Arthur Calwell introduced the postwar immigration gurus David Suzuki and Paul Ehrlich are invoked in the program in 1947. Public opinion has almost always been 1990s green demands to stop immigration. Groups such as opposed to immigration. Occasionally, this opposition has Writers for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, erupted into major public debates. In 1984, the Blainey Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, debate preoccupied newspaper headlines for more than a leading Australian Democrats such as newly elected leader year, while in 1988 John Howard fell very publidy on his Senator John Coulter and environmentalists such as Milo sword of anti-Asian, anti-multicultural policy. Dunphy lead this attack. They favour maintaining refugee intakes and support limited family reunion, but are op­ posed to other immigration. In 1991, as economic recession deepens, immigration is once again under attack. In September, John Hewson an­ nounced that the Opposition would call for big cuts in At the heart of the green critique of immigration is the immigration in the next federal election campaign. This argument that population growth is the key environmental follows the Australia Speaks survey of community attitudes problem. The leading advocate of this position is US commissioned by the Coalition, which found that more academic Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb(1968)

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 35

In 1990 Ehrlich, with Anne Ehrlich, reasserted the case that anti-immigration to an anti-immigrant argument, despite population control is critical to avert environmental dis­ the best intentions. aster on a world scale. In the western Sydney suburb of Campbell town, for ex­ If population is the principal environmental problem, im­ ample—according to the EEO Commission's National In­ migration to countries like Australia is the major contribut­ quiry into Racist Violence—47% of adult immigrants ing element to the problem, the Ehrlichs argue, particularly interviewed had experienced racist abuse, as had 36% of when immigrants come from the Third World: 'To the students. Moreover, 9% of adults and 14% of students had degree that immigrants adopt the lifestyles of their adopted experienced racist violence. The newly-arrived suffered country, they will begin consuming more resources per most from racism. person and do disproportionate environmental damage". Recent history in Australia and overseas suggests that Following this logic, the solution to Australia's manifest racism increases during recession times because many environmental problem is clear and simple: turn off the people blame immigration for their unemployment or immigration tap, and we can have an environmental economic hardship. Much of the Western world is in, or paradise of 18 million people—or 10 million, according to emerging from, economic recession. Some of these recent statements in Australia by Paul Ehrlich—living in a countries have large immigration programs, while in Zero Population Growth Nirvana. The argument appears others immigration is almost non-existent Any simple cor­ to be that the best way for Australia to help the interna donal relation between levels of immigration and economic reces­ environmental problem is to cut ourselves off from it, albeit sion cannot stand scrutiny. Even in Australia, the state after some conscience salving increase in foreign aid to help (NSW) with the highest immigration intake is the state with poor peoples in the Third World. This gives a new selfish one of the lowest unemployment rates. twist to the slogan: think globally, act locally. Recent events in Germany and France sound a warning for Australia as the resurgence of racist violence against Turks The green critique of immigration has three major and North Africans emerges as a response to economic problems. Hist, the link between Australian immigration difficulties. In eastern Germany, where foreigners are only intakes and population growth is not a simple one; Again, 2% of the population, the Guardian Weekly (29 September) it serves to direct attention away from the real causes of the reports the "daily witnessing [of] brute attacks on foreign­ environmental problem. Finally, the danger emerges that ers, and an ugly rebirth of overt radsm". Last month, scapegoating immigration as the main environmental former French president Valery Giscand d' Estaing called for problem may escalate anti-immigrant violence and act as a an end to the immigrant "invasion" and for a change in catalyst to renewed racism and prejudice. laws to make it harder for immigrants to gain French citizenship. To put population at the centre of any model of environ­ mental damage distracts attention from the socio-economic The contradictions of the 'green* anti-immigration position framework in which past and present environmental are reflected in the views of the new Democrat leader John damage has arisen. Environmental destruction is not some­ Coulter. To strengthen the anti-immigration argument. thing imported or exotic, but rather results from forces Coulter has taken on board die position of the Common­ Intrinsic to society itself. One key problem is that the wealth Parliamentary Library researcher Stephen Joske marketplace puts prices only on what are called direct that immigration costs Australia $8 billion per year on the economic costs and benefits. The indirect costs and benefits current account deficit. The argument is that immigration of a corporation's activities—that is, the impact on the adds to the population growth of our major cities such as environment and on other people—are overlooKed. "Exter­ Sydney and Melbourne. As these cities push against their nalities" or "spillover effects" such as pollution and con­ outer extremities, massive government investment is re­ gestion exist because of market failure. It then becomes quired to pay for urban infrastructure for the new suburbs. profitable, and therefore rational, for corporations to con­ tinue their destructive practices. In addition, the govern­ There are a number of problems with this analysis. First, ment tacitly condones such activities by imposing puny the economic benefits of such public investment—jobs, penalties for corporations caught polluting. Clearly, reform social infrastructure—are not considered. Second, most in the area of the marketplace and government legislation new immigrants live not in the new suburbs in outer Syd­ are critical to rectifying past, and minimising future, en­ ney and Melbourne but in the older working class suburbs vironmental damage. which have traditionally been under-provided with com­ munity assets. Moreover, any long-term solution to the The other problem with the emphasis on an anti-immigra­ environment requires much larger public expenditure on tion solution to the environmental problem is that it gives public transport and on environmental resources. Should legitimacy—from a more enlightened sector of politics—to the Green movement put their support behind an analysis anti-immigration and anti-immigrant viewpoints. The that rejects the economic and environmental case for public jrocess of scapegoating immigration for a complex prob- infrastructure investment? Eem like environmental deterioration as with other problems: recession, unemployment, lack of education JOCK COLLINS teaches in economics at the University of places, crime, makes it hani to prevent a slip from an Technology, Sydney.

A LR: NOVEMBER 1991 36 FEATURES

THE CHINA syndrome

Beijing likes to portray itself as the last bastion of Communism, Annette Chan isn't convinced. She finds the Communist elite adapting remarkably effortlessly to the brave new world of China's market experiment.

n the socialist and post-socialist the think-tanks of the now-ousted Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang, the champion of economic reforms. economies alike, profound social ten­ In their reform program there is little mention of the human sions threaten to stymie the economic costs to be incurred. Concern about unemployment and reform processes that have been set in widening inequality are dismissed out of hand as a throw­ motion. In the Eastern European countries which back to die "eating from a big pot" syndrome of maoism. have already adopted a democratic political sys­ It was under this new program of economic development tem, it is now all too clear that even after the through greater reliance on market forces, spurred on by overthrow of the communist parties, it is not easy the official slogan of "allow a few people to get rich first”, to transform the economy into a capitalist one. that China reformed its economic system in the 1980s. The initial successes of the economic reforms invoked the envy of the East Europeans and the Soviet Union. China's Some of the former East European dissidents—the likes of private capitalist sector was then the most sizeable of all Vaclav Havel—have articulated concern regarding the the socialist states. plight of ordinary people during the difficult transition to the new economic order. But such concerns have been near-absent in China. Here 1 am not thinking of Deng However, over the last decade, this hybrid planned/free Xiaoping and the political hardliners, but rather the in­ market economy has become a mechanism by which the creasingly influential intellectual elite and, in particular, Chinese nomenklatura has been able to enrich itself. Offi­ the branch of tile political elite that has been most fervently cials could take advantage of a government-sponsored in favour of economic and political reforms. A large num­ double-track pricing system, using their power and con­ ber of well-known intellectuals have, in the past, served in nections to resell, privately and at a high market price, the

ALR. NOVEMBER 1991 FEATURES 37

centrally-allocated goods they had bought at a low state- has aroused a heated debate in the press as to whether it controlled price. Or else the party secretaries and directors constitutes 'capitalism' and whether a new class of of enterprises could step forward as candidates to lease out 'capitalists without capital' is in the making. their own enterprise, guaranteeing that a fixed amount of revenue would be turned over to the state as rent each year. But the most lucrative exercise of all is to get into the They could then lay off workers and reduce wages, cutting import-export trade, a line of business which is largely the salary budget in the name of efficiency, meanwhile monopolised by the dose kin of national leaders. Much of granting themselves high salaries and bonuses. So lucra­ this economic activity involves establishing 'trading tive has this leasing-management' practice become that it companies' in the various provinces of China, or in the

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 38 FEATURES special economic zones like Zhenzhen, or in Hong Kong. bureaucracy to implement the reforms, the reform leader­ The rakeoffs are massive. In many respects these export- ship refrained from cracking down on the corruption and import middlemen, whose only assets are high family con­ the shady 'grey areas' of nomenklatura self-enrichment If nections, can be called 'socialist compradors', the there was to oe a new monied elite, after all, why should it equivalents of the pre-1949 businessmen who were labelled not be this group as against, arbitrarily, some other? as hated "enemies of the people" when the communist government first took power. By comparison, the urban workers deemed themselves to be the losers in the new order, as the protests of 1989 amply In short, while the political structure and the command showed. While the workers had accepted in principle that economy are still under the control of a one-party system, economic reforms of some sort were needed, they were not the Chinese economic reforms have within ten years ef­ ready to accept growing lay-offs of blue-collar employees fected the rise of a new monied class—a class largely bom in the name of industrial efficiency. Worse still, workers within the households of die party nomenklatura. The were being told to tighten their own belts at the very same remainder of this new monied class, to be sure, are time that they could see the nomenklatura fattening them­ entrepreneurs who have risen by their own efforts, all the selves. The nostalgia expressed by some workers during while paying off the nomenklatura for the privilege. These the Tiananmen protests for the maoist era—an era of near­ two groups of different origins within the new monied elite equal poverty for all and of low-productivi ty job security— are beginning to intermingle, and are intermarrying. That reflects the fact that many have not seen the reforms as is to say, while monopolising political power, and not even benefiting themselves sufficiently to offset the loss in their aiming for a complete dismantling of the command social standing and security of employment. economy, the Chinese nomenklatura is well down the path of transforming itself into partof a new dominant economic If die 1989 mass protest movement was an inchoate initia­ class. tive to block the formation of a new political-economic class, one that they could see had been taking toot under Whichever direction China heads in over the next couple the tutelage of the monolithic party-state, the apprehen­ of decades, be it as a one-party state operating a hybrid sions of the democratic mo vement have not abated over the command-market economy, or a multiparty system with a past two years. The private sector of the economy is again free-market economy, the nomenklatura and its progeny expanding rapidly. In terms of who is able to rise, the and in-laws look likely to end up controlling a lion's share playing field is still not level, and thus the resentments of the wealth. remain.

In the mass protests of 1989, the democratic movement Since 1989, the party leadership has been desperately demanded an end to "bureaucratic corruption'' and "offi­ trying to woo the workers back into the fold by appealing cial profiteering". These demands implied that if the party to their "proletarian consciousness". Despite the chronic had the will to reform itself and combat its members' problem of over-staffing in the workplace, great efforts "corruption", the health of Chinese politics and economy have been made to rehire dismissed or partially laid-off could be restored. After the Beijing massacre, in response workers. The new twist in enterprise reform, at least to the grievances that had been expressed in the streets, the rhetorically, now includes workers' rights to participate in top party leadership trumpeted a major anti-corruption management. Staff-and-workers' councils are to be campaign. This proved ineffectual. The underlying reason strengthened; and trade unions are to represent the is that the "corruption" is not a by-product but rather an workers' interests instead of serving openly as an arm of integral part of the economic reforms. "Bureaucratic cor­ the administration. There are signs that the trade unions ruption" and "official profiteering" are part and parcel of are, in fact, taking advantage of these new slogans to the gestation process of a new elite class. Though the par­ wrestle greater independence and power for themselves. ticipants in the 1989 mass protest movement did not always see things this way, their fulminations against "corruption" But without radical institutional reforms, the chances of could be seen in effect as a concerted outcry against the rise success in placating the workers and in raising their work of this new class. incentive remains poor. Workers' productivity in the state enterprises continues to decline. The clarion call to "save Some Western and Chinese observers have argued that this socialism" is raised in the name of "class interest", but it is was the source of the popular protests. Yet the economic too palpably devoid of content. Whereas Chinese reformers reforms of the 1980s had, if anything, been proceeding at a put a premium on economic development at the expense helter-skelter pace. More often than not, laws were promul­ of heavy sodal costs, the Chinese hardliners put a premium gated only after Communist Party reform edicts had al­ on protecting their power and maintaining stability by ready instituted substantial economic and social change. half-heartedly asserting that they wish to mitigate the so­ Policies were carried out without any adequate legal dal costs involved—all the while doing little to stop the provisions or institutional framework to prevent the rise of nomenklatura from transforming itself into a monied elite. blatant corruption. Instead, the economic restructuring was In this regard the top Chinese leadership has dearly made possible because the party nomenklatura found the learned no lesson from the 1989 upheavals. restructuring within its own interests; they did not resist it precisely because it enabled them to be the beneficiaries of ANITA CHAN is a research fellow in the Transformation of a less economically fair society. And the top party leader­ Communist Systems Project at the Australian National ship was dearly aware of this. In order to persuade the University.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 ALREV/EW 39 “Power to the People”

building. The word 'museum' turns up in John Power's will and I'm happy A socialist vision nourished by private contribu­ enough to use it to challenge the pas­ tions— it's Sydney's new Museum of Contem­ sivity with which the Anglo-Saxon porary Art. Jeremy Eccles investigates. world accepts the notion of a gallery. But I also want to challenge what a museum is expected to be." The Museum of Contemporary arguments for increases in public Art opens in Sydney in Novem­ funding as the conservationists have Dr John Power, apart from being a ber in the old Maritime Services done. For, though there are limits, we medical man, was a serious artist, one can't become infected by the rhetoric of the rare writers about Cubism, an Board building on Circular of Reaganomics, which tries to say expatriate, and extremely rich. One Quay. The MCA is a contem­ that the arts can be funded entirely by can almost feel sympathy for all that porary museum not just in the the private sector". So far, the commit­ wealth, inherited from his medical sense of what it will display, but ment of 'the people' has been reflected father, who used his scientific training also in how it is funded. by memberships coming in at a rate of to set up an insurance company that more than a thousand a week, and a eventually became theMLG Son John Originating with a bequest from the steady flow of $1000 donations. had to qualify as a doctor too, before will of the widow of the artist John being allowed to fulfil his real desire Power, the MCA covered the conver­ The realisation of a vaguely socialist of heading off to Europe to paint in sion costs of the MSB building with an ideal through hefty private contribu­ 1920. Even there, mixing and match­ interest-free loan from Sydney tions is just one of the contradictions ing with Picasso, Gris and Braque, he University (where the Power Founda­ that are associated with this transfor­ was different in lacking the garret tion is based), while the NSW govern­ mation of a public building. Another hunger of the others. He lived in Bour­ ment agreed to let it at a peppercorn is the inappropriateness of the build­ nemouth, for God's sake (dying in rent for 50 years. The third partner in ing itself—designed in the 1930s but equally genteel Jersey), and, not die Museum, says its quietly dapper not inhabited by bureaucracy until the having to paint to live, rarely sold his director, Leon Faroissien, is "the 1950s—to be either an office block or works—despite having shows all over people of Australia. They come into it an art museum. Architect Andrew Europe and in New York. As a result, because John Power was a bit of a Anderson has had a few problems his widow ended up with a thousand William Morris socialist who had no with red and green scagliola marble Powers along with two million children of his own—so left his money pillars and finishes that are hardly the pounds in cash at the end of her life in for our improvement". perfect accompaniment to contem­ 1962. Since then the curators ap­ porary art pointed by the University of Sydney But 'the people of Australia' are going have diligently spent the money to to have to pay for their improvement. The original offer of a handover came accumulate 3,000 works of contem­ For, apart from a tiny $50,000 a year for from former NSW Labor Premier porary art. But until now it's never the first three years, the MCA is un­ Neville Wran, but nothing had been had anywhere to display this collec­ funded by state or federal govern­ formalised when the Liberals took tion. Nor, for reasons that Paroissien ments, and will have to rely on over in 1988. So it took heroic restraint finds odd, has it ever bought any entrance charges, membership, spon­ on the part of Premier Nick Greiner to Australian works. sorship and other activities, such as accept his Arts Minister's recommen­ the shops, cafe and bar which will stay dation that $100 million in real estate open late at night in a major social and be forgone in exchange for the warm Since 1984, he has worked to remedy tourist area of Sydney. glow of a Museum of Contemporary that deficit. "We felt we had to shape Art! Subsequently, the government the collection so that Australian artists According to the MCA's own has made a policy of encouraging the of the middle generation were put up brochure, "it will be the most recycling of other historic buildings as there beside their overseas counter­ entrepreneurial arts institution in a solution to the arts' need for ap­ parts. And we simply had to add Australia". Asa former Director of the propriate accommodation. Aboriginal art—which we've done Australia Council's Visual Arts Board, with care, I think. One collection we one might have thought that Leon A further problem is the very use of the have is jointly owned with the Paroissien would find this all rather word 'museum'—suggesting history Maningrida Community In Arnhem distasteful. Far from it. "Even in the rather than contemporaneity. Parois­ Land, for instance. In the future, we'll 70s, 1 realised thatthere would have to sien revels in these contradictions. "I try to build an archive that gives an be a limit to govemmen t money for the want the art to dominate people's insight into the working methods and arts, and that we would have to em­ thinking, not the building. 1 want ideas of certain contemporary artists power ourselves to gain authority in amazing things to happen inside and so that future generations can study the community if we wanted to win irreverent things to burst out of the how we make art now".

AUT: NOVEMBER 1991 40 ALREVIEW

Although the Power Collection has for the future which will treat film as on tour around Australia and New given them the building to house and a serious art form. Zealand even before the home base display it, the real heart of the MCA's was open. activities will not necessarily involve Paroissien sees this process as "taking the collection at all. Parts of it will what used to be called the fine arts and Such innovation and flexibility pushing them outwards towards always be on display, such as Power's demands versatility in all aspects of own works and mildly historical popular culture". the museum's management. "We retrospectives of Op and Pop art. That refused to have a structure", says icon of modernism, Joseph Beuys, gets Caravan is another such push. In January, the Sydney harbourfront will Paroissien, "where administrators a show of his own as the museum raised money which they handed to opens. But if the MCA is to keep the be embellished by five radically new models of caravans—that ever- curators to spend. We all have to be excitement alive week after week, year artistic and financial managers here. after year, it's going to have to in­ diminishing aspect of the summer novate and import constantly. holiday road crawl. Here the MCA is toying with sociology—as well as 'It's actually been a miracle," he con­ The determination of the MCA to be revealing something about the process cludes, "that in two and a half years, genuinely popular is revealed by an of design, rather than simply hailing we've developed the building, the in­ opening exhibition called TV Times. 35 brilliance in design, as New York's stitutional infrastructure and the pro­ rs of Australian television may not Museum of Modem Art does. Less gram—all from scratch. It's certainly everybody's idea of art, but for parochial concerns in the near future helped having that rather serious self­ Paroissien it's a statement that the range from New Zealand's bicultural portrait of John Power looking over museum doesn't intend to be remote art to South America's post-colonial our shoulders all that time, driving us behind its marble portico—and that experience; from Eastern Europe after on . the moving image has to have a place communism to China after Tianan­ % as prominent as the still image in men. As part of this constantly chang­ modem art A cinematheque on the ing and challenging vista. Zones of JEREMY ECCLES is a Sydney art* Parisian model is another firm project Love Contemporary Art from Japan went writer.

BIM A Up

Aboriginal-controlled media, based The Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Cus­ on a recognition of their importance in tody may have sunk from view (ALR 132, Sep­ informing both Aboriginal and non­ tember). But it's the cause at least of one bright Aboriginal audiences. The Royal Commission saw indigenous media star—Murri radio. Michael Meadows reports. playing "a very important role" in presenting detailed information to Six months after the release of and the first in a capital city (the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities—about successes in the report of the Royal Commis­ first was Alice Springs' Central sion into Aboriginal Deaths in other communities, for example. This Australian Media Association is especially significant in the light of Custody, one of its recommen­ in the early 80s). a widespread, extremely negative per­ dations relating to Aboriginal ception of the behaviour of Australia's media may at last be reaching The decision had been much delayed. mainstream media on the part of in­ fruition—in Queensland, at One of four original applicants for the digenous people. The Royal Commis­ least The Australian Broadcast­ licence, a Christian broadcasting sion report, among other studies ing Tribunal (ABT) has given group called Family Radio had ap­ acknowledged that Aborigines are lar­ pealed against the tribunal's decision the go-ahead for a special inter­ gely presented in the media as last year that the licence be designated 'problems'. est public radio licence for a 'special purpose indigenous'. That ap­ Brisbane-based Aboriginal and peal was dismissed by the Federal Torres Strait Islander media Court early this year, after which the During the recent Tribunal hearing, chair of the BIMA Board, Charlie Wat­ group, the Brisbane Indigenous ABT formally awarded the licence to the Murri group. son, explained that Murri radio in Media Association (BIMA). It is south-east Queensland hoped to have only the second licence of its The Royal Commission urged "ade­ some influence in educating type to be offered in Australia quate funding support" for’ mainstream Australia in the under-

ALB: NOVEMBER 1991 ALREVIEW 41

standing of such ideas as Munis' as­ around Can$12 million a year. A fur­ licensed, years after installation. But sociation with land and other insights ther $10 million has been earmarked future funding support for training into indigenous society. Watson ac­ over four years for a dedicated nation­ and maintenance of this potentially cused much of the mainstream media al native television channel— innovative system is still unresolved of being concerned with sensationalis­ Television Northern Canada—to be despite pleas from many of the target ing issues like violence and alcohol launched next January. Compare that communities Moves from within abuse within thf Aboriginal com­ with an estimated $6 million available ATSIC to formulate an acceptable munity. Murri radio, he said, intended to indigenous broadcasters on this Aboriginal broadcasting policy with a to put forward positive aspects of side of the Pacific, about 40% of which politically secure base have been Aboriginal culture, believing that this is used to support the ailing Central frustrated by the very bureaucracy the would educate a "good portion" of the Australian Remote Commercial policy daims to circumvent mainstream audience. Television Service, Imparja. Compara­ tively little finds its way to community Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister BIMA plans a country music format radio broadcasters. Robert Tickner has urged nationwide using a large percentage of Aboriginal support from state premiers for im­ bands. Former Brisbane Labor Party- About 30 disparate Aboriginal broad­ plementation of the recommendations owned AM radio station 4KQ aban­ casting groups take to public radio of the Royal Commission. His much doned its country music format some around Australia to get their message publicised differences with years ago, leaving a convenient across—most relying almost entirely Queensland Premier Wayne Goss over marketplace niche. Although the new on volunteer labour. They put out inadequades in that state's Aboriginal station will be funded almost entirely about 130 hours of Aboriginal land rights legislation may over­ by the federal government, BIMA is programming each week. ATSIC and shadow the need for co-operation on hoping for sponsorship from relevant the Department of Transport and this vital issue. Perhaps if an local authorities as well as some public Communication (through the Public Aboriginal radio station had been on subscription support. BIMA, through Broadcasting Foundation) are provid­ theairfulltimel2months ago, it could the Murri Hour Collective, has been ing some funding support to around have made a positive contribution to broadcasting regularly since 1984 on 25 public broadcasting groups this educating south-east Queensland public radio station 4ZZZ-FM in Bris­ year, but the total available for me cur­ audiences in a manner which has so bane. The collective currently rent year is less than $300,000. far proved elusive for the mainstream produces around 16 hours of media and both federal and state Aboriginal radio each week, serving a A system of small public television sta­ Labor governments. diverse audience from Stradbroke Is­ tions in 80 remote Aboriginal com­ land, east of Brisbane, to inmates of munities (the Broadcasting tor Remote MICHAEL MEADOWS teaches in Brisbane'sBoggo Road jail- During the Aboriginal Communities Scheme— journalism at the University of lead-up to the bicentennial, BIMA net­ BRACS) is only now about to become Queensland. worked with a number of other east coast Aboriginal broadcasters, includ­ ing RadiO'Redfem in Sydney, to stress the significance of that day from an Aboriginal perspective. It made TROUBLED broadcast history as the first time Aboriginal broadcasters had net­ worked along the east coast, yet was ignored by die mainstream media. TIMES While the Royal Commission has recommended "adequate" support for ALB helped set the agenda with Its Influential set of articles Aboriginal media, just how the federal on Labor’s new age of anxiety. Now those articles, along with government will interpret this others commissioned especially, have been published as a remains to be seen. Both ATSIC and booklet by ALR In conjunction with the Fabian Society and the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) have Pluto Press. committed funds to supporting BIMA, subject to the licence offer being made. Labor’s Troubled Times discusses the problems of Labor’s But what is "adequate"? Perhaps the diminishing membership base, the role of factions, the most pressing problem in Aboriginal broadcasting is the absence of a declining culture of Laborlsm and Labor's Increasingly coherent and acceptable (to in­ perilous social base. It features contributions by Bob Hogg, digenous people) policy framework to Sue McCreadle, Bob McMullan, Robert Ray, Marian Simms, provide guidance for bureaucratic Lindsay Tanner and others. dedsion-making—including funding. ALR readers can purchase Labor's Troubled Times at the reduced rate of just Canada currently funds its native $4.50, post free (normal rrp is $6.95). Just send remittance to ALR, PO Box broadcasting sector to the tune of A247, Sydney South NSW 2000.

A U l; NOVEMBER 199} 42 ALREV/fW From Hair to Maternity

Sinead—Her Life and Music, by "The Star Spangled Banner" a hearing Andrew "Dice" Clay. Both admirable Jimmy Guterman, Penguin 1991. before a concert in New Jersey and stances, maybe, but that's it. This then refusing to appear on the same leaves one to wonder why the book The World At My Feet, by Sandie Saturday Night Live as 'comedian' was written now and not in 1997, and Shaw, Harper Collins 1991. Reviewed by David Nichols.

When you're thinking 'pop star' always think 'angle'. A pop personality has to appeal to both a male and a female demographic. Jon Bon Jovi, for instance, developed twice the market by taking men on board with his rough, rugged image while making sure he still had nicely washed hair for the ladies. Madonna, by the same token, establishes herself as a role model for girls while pandering utterly to blokes, guys, men and males.

That's the way it is and the way it always has been. But occasionally someone comes along who only seems a part of the music industry because they have been squished into it. They are not going to fit easily into that big, stylistically-standardised family tree: they have brought some­ thing entirely new with them.

"The tmth is that Sinead pulverised her hair for her own reasons, among them that she did not want to be another typical female rock star with big hair." So writes Jimmy Guterman in his 148-page study of die undoub­ tedly impressive Sinead O'Connor. Sinead's most famous feature must surely be her near-baldness which might just as easily be seen as a gim­ mick as an anti-gimmick. Her career—no matter how detailed Guterman's discography—can basi­ cally be summed up as two albums (neither of which, incidentally, Guter­ man seems to like very much) and a few singles.

She took America by storm with her second LP I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and then rubbed their noses in it by firstly refusing to allow

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 ALREVIEW 43

they wanted women to behave—like stupid puppets?" (Of course it was!) The World At My Feet is a far better book than Sinead, though of course It has a lot more terrain to cover. (Sandie's been performing, on and off, for 25 of her 41 years; Sinead for three of her 23.) Shaw has come through an impressive career that has seen her happily leap from million-seller to cult figure with her principles and brain totally intact. Her book isn't even ghosted.

Skipping back and forth between various points in her life (but starting and ending in the late 80s) Shaw spins a good anecdote, shares an intimate moment (though never too intimate) and makes sure we remember her cur­ rent togetherness is mainly to do with her Buddhist beliefs (it is the only non­ sexist religion, she claims).

The only disappointing parts are when Sandie's fears bring her down to earth with a bump—and yet 'disappointing' is the wrong word; if s refreshing to see someone so un­ why Guterman—a strange biog­ write and co-produce their music; tainted by rock lies and still un­ rapher indeed, who refuses to probe both make striking fashion state­ ashamedly 'of her time' despite her his subject's private life, childhood or ments; and both have been content enlightenment. "My pregnancy in­ motivation—was assigned to write it with an image of devil-may-care risk- stantly solved the problem of whether And despite Gutermart's attempts to taking, when in reality they have been or not I should...start recording escape such frippery, the hair is al­ dominated—for large periods of their again", she says at one stage. "The ways lurking in the background. The careers—by overbearing and saga­ energy and self-absorbed single-min­ book even prints as the first of 16 fairly cious managers. dedness required to launch a new uninteresting photographs an odd, One might better differentiate be­ career in the precarious music busi­ unexplained shot of a haired Sinead in ness is totally at odds with the hor­ a French maid's outfit. The hair even­ tween their respective attitudes by noting that, whereas Sinead wears a mones rushing around a pregnant tually starts to take on a life of its own, woman's body telling her to calm overtaking whatever was important badge between her breasts demand­ ing that the viewer "stop staring at my down and build a secure nest for her about Sinead O'Connor in the first fledgling." place. tits", Sandie, conciliatory, appears on the cover of her autobiography The "What really caused the bad feeling World At My Feet dressed in a cloak Sinead would have something to say between her and U2? What are her covered in peace signs. about that; she started recording her views on Northern Ireland? Why do debut album when she was seven her folk-tinged ballads top the charts Sinead has yet to write her own book months pregnant "Sung by a twenty- in these dance heavy times7" ponders (or even record twenty different year-old bald, unmarried, pregnant the back cover blurb. The three- songs), but it seems not unlikely that woman..." says Guterman of a track quarters of an hour it takes to read her confident face hides the kind of from this LP, "these lines are penetrat­ Sinead—Her Life and Music will not frightened interior Sandie admits to in ing and persuasive." reveal the answers to the first two, her "Personal Adventure". On the though it does show the third to be other hand, Sinead has never allowed Those lines are fatuous and insig­ nonsensical (after all, Sinead's biggest herself to be conned into recording a nificant. Ignore the Sinead tome, but hit was written by Prince, a man with song like "Puppet on a String" the way read the Sandie Shaw book—even almost every musical leaning except Sandie was, despite the fact she "hated though she doesn't say If she slept folk). it from the very first oompah to the with Jimi Hendrix or not. final bang on the big bass drum...I was Where Sinead is known for her naked instinctively repelled by its sexist DAVID NICHOLS plays drums in two head, Sandie Shaw is best remem­ drivel and cuckoo-clock tune..." She unsuccessful rock bands and is bered for her naked feet But the two credits herself with originating this currently working on his first Mills Sc have more in common than that. Both feminist revelation: "Was this how Boon noveL

ALR : NOVEMBER 1991 44 ALREVIEW Unchecked Mates

Mates—Five Champions of the reconstruct the past (though remem­ Labor Right, by Fia Cumming, ber those grainy black and white Allen and Unwin 1991. Reviewed photos of V I Lenin addressing the crowd in Petrograd in late 1917—one by Suzanne Jamieson. version with Leon Trotsky hovering near and another version where This book is a series of inter­ Trotsky has disappeared into the views with the key members of ether.) But the past is reconstructed Australia's most powerful nevertheless and recorders of oral his­ political society—the right tory tend to be aware of this. Not, wing of the New South Wales however, Fia Cumming. While on the Labor Party. subject of Italian terms we might also recall braggadaccio and its role in oral history. I was interested and amazed Fia Cumming's book is strikingly to learn from Cumming's book that seductive because it gives the reader the elevation of Neville Wran to the the impression that she or he is sitting leadership of the NSW Parliamentary together with the Mates (Paul Keating, Labor Party was entirely the work of Graham Richardson, Leo McLeay, the Mates. Jack Ferguson and Arthur Laurie Brereton and Bob Carr) at a Gietzelt seem to have disappeared rather lengthy, drunken dinner party. into the ether along with TYotsky, Over several hours the Mates reveal how they made it to the top and, while The title of the book summarises its accurately depicted as the intellectual one may be repelled by many of die main theme—the rise to power of a among the Mates, cringing in embar­ details, the story is compelling be­ small coterie of working class, rassment as die howlers come thick cause it comes directly from the Catholic (except for Bob Caiirr) men. and fast. Analysis of the Mates' horses' mouths. As history, the book Women hardly figure in thishistoryin musings is almost non-existent, and in may be embarrassing, but as gossip it a political sense. Mothers, wives and keeping with the tradition established is superb. sisters are presented as possessing sig­ by Keating's first biographer, Edna nificant political skills (for instance At the outset, something must be said Carew. Cumming appears not to have Brereton’s sister Deirdre Grusovin, of Cumming's method. The dust jack­ sought alternative views on the his­ Dorothy Isaksen MLC—whose name et describes her as a senior Canberra torical account presented by them. is misspelled throughout, Brereton's political journalist "specialising in wife Trish Kavanagh) but they never probing behind die daily headlines". That brings me to the main criticism of seem to be at the centre of things. They This book certainly doesn't provide her method. These three hundred odd are never players in the main game. any evidence of that—in fact her pages of magazine style verbal method appears to be to transcribe meanderings, put together by some­ directly from tape whatever the Mates one who is either an acolyte or who This is no doubt an accurate depiction tell her. As a result, the text is replete simply doesn't know the right ques­ of the state of affairs in the period with errors in transcription. For in­ tions to ask, have simply provided the under Cumming's scrutiny—and to stance: who is the Holden mentioned Mates with an opportunity to indulge be scrupulously fair, things were only ^ by Paul Keating in the same breath as in a massive exercise in pentimento. marginally better in the NSW Labor Billy Hughes (p. 15)? Surely he meant Readers may remember the borrow­ Left (known as the Combined Unions s W A Holman, onetime Labor Premier ing of this artistic term by Lillian and Branches Steering Committee for of NSW and central figure in the split Heilman in the collection of stories most of the period). Both factions in the party during World War One. which eventually gave rise to the suc­ operated like private clubs. Women I cessful Hollywood film Julia. The term were, in effect, associate rather than I Errors of fact rather than transcription denotes having second thoughts and full members. The picture painted by also abound. On p. 2 Cumming has going back over one's painting to Cumming of endless meetings, cease­ Bob Carr elected as a Shadow Minister paint over some unwanted details. We less marshalling of numbers (see espe­ in the NSW parliament in 1984; I all do it in our recollections of our own cially the descriptions of Keating's thought we had an ALP government pasts. We all replace "remembrance of virtually full-time efforts to win a seat in NSW in 1984. (Again, the names things past" with a pastiche created by in parliament) and endless strategy under the lower photograph opposite our own memories. discussions—all confined to the p. 89 are all wrong. Were any editors Mates—makes it clear that anyone employed by the publisher?) I can This does not necessarily imply bad with family responsibilities would only imagine Bob Carr, who is at least faith or a deliberate attempt to simply not be able to compete. AH of

ALB: NOVEMBER 1991 ALR EVIEW 45 these men (as likewise men on the finding seats in parliament The Youth all learned these lessons (and other Left) were able to devote themselves Council/Young Labor described by machine skills) well. so fully to their pursuit of power be­ Cumming and the Mates is the same cause someone kept up the hot din­ rather rough and brutal place I Perhaps this last point deserves ners and provided a steady stream of remember from later years. I imagine greater attention from a better writer dean shirts. I was not the only teenage girl who felt than Cumming. I wonder to what ex­ both horrified and bewildered by the tent the views and methods of many The other startling aspect of the rise experience. I suspect some of us joined young people who have passed and rise of the Mates is the critical role factions as much out of a desire for through NSW Young Labor in the past the Youth Council (NSW Young friendship as out of conviction. Much 30 years or so have been permanently Labor) played in their political train­ of the time the experience resembled skewed (or warped) by the things we ing. For both factions in NSW Labor it nothing so much as the Battle of the saw and did played the roles of meeting ground, Somme; life was much safer in one laboratory and nursery for those who, trench or the other than in the No SUZANNE JAMIESON teaches in along with the Mates, later came to Man's Land outside the factions. We industrial relations at Sydney prominence in the wider party, many University.

Hearts and Craft

The Passion by Jeanette Winter- war-dissipated, water-engulfed of sex to the troops. During The Zero son, Bloomsbury 1991. Reviewed by Venice. Winter' these two trek together across Virginia Ross. countries to "the city surrounded by The Emperor has a passion for chicken water with watery alleys that do for and eats one at most meals—it is streets", to continue their fates. Winterson's second novel Henri's task to prepare these. Henri seems an appropriate choice for idolises Napoleon, in the way that in­ This is a richly woven and ambitious reprinting in the Bloomsbury nocence adores greatness. The crea­ tive history in the first section of the work which is, at first, captivating and Classics series—a series which unusual. Winterson's style is spiritual features a compact, hand-sized book (The Emperor') is smooth and seductive—Winterson skilfully cap­ and romantic, fatalistic and cyclical format and an aesthetic, tures Henri's faith, his innocence, his (there are just four chapters), and it is stylised jacket design. The look pleasure at existing so close to the a poetic and well-wrought piece of of the book says 'precious', and Emperor, his bonding with his two craft. Perhaps it was this, for me, the reader's expectation is that particular army buddies—the whole which created the distance which the contents will be equally so. patriarchal culture of war, with all its prevented me from falling whole­ glorified privations. By contrast, Vil- heartedly for this novel. I could ap­ lanelle, in The Queen of Spades'—is preciate its craft, but at the end I And the story is somewhat jewel-like. painted as a worldly and independent remained somewhat untouched. On The perspective moves between the loner, who has experienced and lost The Rock' (the book's fourth section) two protagonists, Henri and Vil- great love (with a woman), and who the story founders, dissipating into a lanelle, and the story is woven, with looks pragmatically at the world, treatment of an ubiquitous and tradi­ vivid magic, around the crossing of seeking only survival. Henri is real, tional theme—one of spirituality, these two lives. It is languidly histori­ Villanelle ethereal. He is material, she denial, exile and escape into the other- cal—Winterson starts by creating con­ magic. world of madness. Winterson, per­ vincingly, and with wit ("No one over haps in an attempt to avoid five foot two ever waited on the It is only with the doomed winter in­ conventionality, disappointingly Emperor"), the nuances of the life of vasion of Russia, as the troops freeze shirks a satisfying resolution to their, Henri, a member of Napoleon's army around him that Henri realises and our, journey. dunng his period of supremacy in Bonaparte's megalomania. He Europe. Winterson then transforms deserts, and it is here, in the icy fields that voice into that of the daughter of outside Moscow, that he discovers Vil- VIRGINIA ROSS is a Sydney artist a fisherman, a woman who survives lanelle. Circumstances have led her to who is currently writing a detective by working as a casino croupier in the army as a vivandiere—a provider noveL

ALR; NOVEMBER 1991 46 ALREWfW Goethe’s Joust

Immortality by Milan Kundera, server/narrator Kundera speaks irreplaceable essence." A large section translated by Peter Kussi. Faber and about the creation of his characters. of the novel delves into the historical Faber, 1991. Reviewed by Jane Sut­ He introduces the character Rubens relationship between Johann by noting that, in Part Six "a complete­ Wolfgang von Goethe and Bettina, his ton. ly new character will enter the novel. admirer, who use their friendship as a And at the end of that part he will way of constructing their respective Immortality is a large novel disappear without a trace." Likewise, identities. Goethe tries to prevent Bet- dealing with large themes. Kundera summons up the creation of tina from playing a causal role in his Readers of Kundera's earlier the character Agnes, which occurs life "assiduously keeping her outside novels such as The Unbearable while he watches a woman at his his biography" while Bettina collects Lightness of Being will know health club; "...Her arm rose with be­ and publishes their correspondence, that what is so special about witching ease...The essence of her determined to make their friendship Kundera's writing is the way he charm, independent of time, revealed part of human history and myth. itself..-And then the word Agnes interrelates theories about the entered my mind." Immortality is engrossing in its inter­ way the world works with the pretation of the way that people's emotional fabric of his charac­ Immortality explores the way people lives slip in and out of each other's ters' lives, escaping the brittle construct their own identities and the stories, suggesting by its depiction of world of academic game play­ way in which they will be remem­ these characters that each individual's bered. Agnes observes that people life is a profound and seething piece ing of so much recent fiction make passionate statements about of writing inscribed on the human writing. their likes and dislikes: "Because only world of myth and representation. in this way can we regard ourselves In Immortality he explores notions of not merely as a variant of the human JANE SUTTON is a Sydney freelance fiction and authorship. As the ob­ prototype but as a being with its own writer.

Judy Horacek {fif Home wi/A Tofr^oes^

Don 7 bloody hry 4 deny if -jjouVe f*en q(- one of fkose 4efw0Ajfr

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 COLUMNS 47

sports which the BBC regards as its occasions that "there is no news own exclusive preserve: rugby tonight" (I kid you not). union, cricket and tennis. Thus the green blazer signifies a The voice of rugby for decades has modern-day craving for respect­ been Bill McLaren: cultured, Scottish ability and a reluctance to criticise, or and a pompous ass. McLaren would even to express a mildly controver­ never describe a thug of a prop for­ sial opinion. The outcome is all too ward as anything more pejorative often a grating, hearty enthusiasm, than a "stout citizen", as long as he combined with creaking attempts at was a doctor or lawyer in his other informality, as when Gordon Bray life. The besr cricket commentator on refers to "Campo" or "Poido". The British TV is, ironically, Richie same trait used to be painfully evi­ Benaud. But for years it was John dent in the ABCs National Soccer Arlott's West Country drawl which League coverage (RIP), with CHINA was the quintessential embodiment wooden frontman John Bell's tor­ of English summer days. (English tuous attempts to engage "Kozzie" SHOP summer days up until about 3.40 (former N5L star John Kosmina) in pm, that is—after which Arlott was relaxed banter. prone to indulge in his other great Artie Chokes passion, fine wines.) The third icon of BBC sports commentary is the an­ Nowhere is the inhibiting effect of The recent rugby union World Cup cient, crusty Dan Maskell, the only this attitude more clearly to be seen has once again exposed Australian man in Britain who can still say "Oh, than in the ABC's rugby league line­ sports lovers to the talents of an I say", without the slightest hint of up. The sight of poor oversized ABC commentary team. I was going self-parody. Maskell has been league icon Artie Beetson unfeeling­ to say 'idiosyncrasies', but that's bemoaning declining standards at ly stuffed into The Blazer is almost just the point—there aren't any. Wimbledon at least since Fred Perry enough to make you yearn for Chan­ The symbol of the ABC's won Britain's last mens' singles title nel 10.1 can't help feeling that if only mediocrity when it comes to sport in 1936. Artie were allowed to appear wear­ is their insistence that all their com- ing shorts and to bring a few stubbies mentatoiB and presenters appear into the studio with him, not only Three very different men, but all dressed in bright green blazers would he enjoy himself a lot more, with similar qualities: a love for the with bright red ties. It's not just that but his comments on the game game; an ability to communicate that such an outfit is an offence against would be much more incisive too. any normal standards of sartorial passion, however irritatingly; and a personality which over long years decency. The green blazer and red became inextricably bound up with tie are screaming at us from every The ABC present sport as if it were a the sport itself. Above all, all three fibre that what the ABC really loves wedding or a funeral: an important, in its sports presenters is not wit, possess a certain gravitas which sur­ solemn occasion, for which everyone passes ridicule. One of the few ABC insight or communication skills of gets dressed up like a dog7s dinner any kind, but uniformity. commentators of recent memory and generally has a miserable time. who could be said to possess the What sport is really about is some­ same quality, is cricket's Alan Mc- thing much more akin to emotions of I would hazard a guess that the roots Gilvray (perhaps significantly a of this sad quest, along with so much the reception or the wake. It's a radio rather than TV man). None of chance to unwind, to laugh and to of the ABC's culture] baggage, lie the above, it seems almost super­ with the BBC, and a disastrous cry, to have a few drinks, get a bit fluous to add, would be seen dead sentimental and to say what you misinterpretation of what it stood wearing a scarlet tie with a loud (and stands) for. While the BBC was really think about the bride's father green blazer—and certainly not if (or die pathetic inadequacy of the certainly founded with a conserva­ they were told to do so. tive ethos, it has almost always been Welsh pack). So come on Aunty. able to make room for eccentricity Loosen your collar a bit and stop and individuality, within certain The aspect of the BBC's character taking it all so seriously. And get rid of those blazers, for crying out loud. limits. Usually these limits have which die ABC seems determined to been defined by class—hence the perpetuate is its altogether less ad­ free rein given to Monty Python, for mirable stuffy superiority. This was example. In sport, this tolerance, exemplified by Lord Reith's insis­ MIKE TICHER was glued to the ABC for the d u ration of the rugby World Cup even encouragement, of upper mid­ tence that all radio announcers despite himself. dle-class idiosyncrasy has been par­ should wear evening dress, or the Dr Hartman has unfortunately had to ticularly prevalent in those major assertion by early newsreaders on suspend appointments.

A t f : NOVEMBER 1991 C OLUMNS 48

tioned night I did not have to resort prefer to stick to less philosophical to these desperate measures, but this questions such as "what does a trial was very much an exception. The balance actually do?" or "what did general rule is that whenever you are you say profit was again?" No doubt put on a table of people you don't some women would say this is know, at least 80% of them will be pandering to the male ego, but if accountants, and the other 20% will someone has a mind like a ledger, you be Rugby League supporters with an might as well make an entry on the unquenchable desire to discuss Mai credit side. I haven't actually tried it Meninga's physical attributes all with a female accountant to date. My night. next point may ensure that by the end of the evening you really can't 1. Develop your fantasies remember what profit means. First and foremost, you must dis­ CORRECT pense with the truth. You may have a 3. lYcat the food with caution very interesting job doing something The food at the Young Achievers incredibly worthwhile, but if you are Award was better than that served at LINE so fortunate, why reduce it to a few most large functions. Generally, func­ fatuous cliches? My advice is to fabri­ tion food has to be bland and safe to COOKING cate (a much nicer word than lying). avoid offending anyone, due to the Fabrication is not necessarily a bad limited or non-existent choice. (Does thing, so long as It doesn't affect this say something profound about Function Fantasies anyone's wellbeing. Make up a job, or the free market economy and/or pretend that you just won Tattslotto. monopol y capital? No, but it says a lot There are times in one's life—or in my Kidnapping attempts aside, the eve­ about bland chicken.) My usual life, anyway—when one sits, stands ning will pass much more enjoyable strategy is to eat virtually nothing or lies and wonders how on earth and as you plot your world trip, describe and drink more—which is dangerous by what peculiar paths one actually the new Harley you are picking up if you are pretending to be a physicist ended up at a particular place, or with tomorrow, or how your book on Once you begin to believe that you are a particular person. The other day I theoretical physics is going. Name- a physidst it's probably time to save found myself at the ACT Young droppers perform a primitive version a few neurones and stop drinking. Achievers Award, a function of this game, as I was saying to His designed to recognise "the achieve­ Holiness the other day. Remember, The recipe below will be no surprise ment of young Australians" and to you are unlikely to meet the people to some. Somehow it seems to be the help "each of us in society—young on the table again, and they'll feel antithesis of function food in that it Is and old—to periiaps see the greatness happy tomorrow as they tackle the fresh, tasty and casual. I hereby enter in ourselves and be inspired to dis­ trial balance, thinking about their it in the Alltime Great Recipe Hall of cover what is beyond 'doing our new friend the scientist Fame Awards, coming soon to a func­ best"'. I was very much hoping one tion centre near you. I will be going as particular person would win, but my 2. "Run that one past me again* an accountant who runs a brain main reaction was to wonder if I had I would never recommend full-scale surgery clinic and breeds Angora died and been reincarnated as a argument as a pleasurable activity, goats for export to Japan. Or maybe Young Liberal for my myriad sins. despite occasionally having found I'll just get drunk. Such was the general ambience of the myself in the midst of one. There are, evening, beyond the welcoming however, less aggressive conversa­ embrace of my friend's table. tional strategies which can make die Pesto hours fly past like minutes—al­ However, as regular readers of this though if used unwisely they can Boil water. (Can you run that one past column would have noticed, backfire and make them feel like me again?) While your pasta is cook­ philosophical and spiritual reflec­ decades. One of my favourites is to ing, take the leaves of a bunch of basil, tions «re not its mainstay. After all, not quite understand what the other two cloves of garlic, some parsley, oil cooking is a material practice, a bit person means all the time, or to artful­ and melted butter,' and a small hand­ like sewing. Accordingly, I will now ly miss the glaringly obvious. People, ful of pinenuts. Blend together until presenta series of practical guidelines and particularly men talking to not quite smooth, and mix in with by which one can make almost any women, love to explain things over pasta when cooked (al dente for formal evening a total buzz. These and over again, and you may as well preference). Can be kept in the fridge, can be employed at wedding func­ be in control of this process. Try but is better made fresh each time. tions, award nights, dinner parties taking up the position of a child who and so on. Because 1 was at a genuine­ stumps her parents by asking too ly interesting table at the aforemen­ many 'whys'—although normally I Penelope Cottier.

ALR: NOVEMBER 1991 The CORNSTALK BOOKSHOP Recycling good second-hand books GLEBE NEWTOWN

112 Glebe Point Rd 262 King St Sydney Sydney Ph: (02) 660 4889 Ph: (02) 550 3566

* Specialists in * Sydney’s best Australian History, selection of Politics and general second-hand Literature books * Monthly * Cash paid on the catalogues issued spot for your old books * Over 26000 different Australian * Open 7 days and 7 titles listed nights to 11pm

CRIME FICTION CATALOGUE OUT NOW ?no Moor 17 eliztbath sireeI intlbourn* 3000 let 03 61* 2B?S

aussEaita s latf|esi >ange ut Eijofcs fd • socialism • feminism • peace • marxism • sexism • environment • gay liberation • nuclear issues • ecology • art • work """"""I • revolution • semiotics I • education ‘ politics 1 • economics

,////////- m m

write or phone now to receive a copy ol the regular B00KNEWS listing new releases M M

wv/

y///