Vol. 9 No. 2 March 1999 $5.95

Andrevv Dodd in the Antarctic Michael McGirr on Lenten Banking Hugh Dillon on Law and Order ()ntl u 1r 011 tt1c 1 c11t1 1

Paul Collins 011 tl1e Eartlz Charter Plus Exorcism, Rugby League, Gerry Adams, and the curious case of the Rationalist Society .:. SENSA.,..'ONAL NOVEL FERGUS HUME'S TEXT PUBLISHI NG • ' _, - J .- - . ' Special Book Offer M Y S T E R Y 0 F A THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB by Fergus Hume and introduced by Simon Caterson A N Fergus Hume's sensational novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is Australia's original blockbuster and international best-selling crime novel. First published in 1886, the novel was an overnight sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies around the world and translated into eleven languages. This edition reproduces for the first time the text of the original Melbourne edition. The Sunday Times called it 'One of the 100 best crime novels of all time'. Shane Maloney says it's 'Fiendishly cunning!'.

Thanks to Text Publishing, we have 10 copies of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab to give away, each worth $22.95. Just put your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: Eurel

1. Frederick Douglass, (1818-1895), an African-American slave who caped and became an activist in the civil rights movement, supporting women's rights as well. 2. Russia. 3. Over 600. 4. St Thomas More. 5. Cosimo de' Medici, Giuliano, and Cosima's son, Giovanni. 6. Cologne Cathedral. 7. Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar. 8. Michael Boddy & Bob Ellis; Alex Buzo; John Romeril; Jack Hibberd. 9. Seventeen years (including one year for starting a bushfire in a bungled attempt to destroy company records). Robin Greenburg. 10. A theremin. 11. (a) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (b) Th e Godfather by Mario Puzo (c) The Orchard by Dmsilla Modjeska. 12. Jean Etienne Lenoir, in 1860. 13. In your kidney. 14. Rita Hayworth. 15. Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Gmmpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy. 16. Marie Curie and her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie both won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. (Both also died of radiation-caused leukaemia.) 17. Epona, or Rhiannon who was a manifestation of Epona and Macha; Hathor; Ganesh. 18. POP: Points Of Presence­ the range of telephone numbers that a provider can use; ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network-a digital link provided by telecommunications companies to subscribers; URL: Uniform Resource Locator- the way that internet resources are addressed. 19. Cambridge don Andrew Wiles, in 1996. 20. They are the 21 non-Latin churches that give allegiance to Rome. Any of: Coptic; Ethiopian; Syrian; Maronite; Syro-Malankara; Armenian; Chaldean; Malabar; Belomssian; Bulgarian; Greek; Hungarian; Italo-Albanian; Melkite; Romanian; Ruthenian; Slovak; Ukrainian; Krizevci; Albanian; Russian. 21. (a)1902 (b)1920 (c)1928 (Although women's suffrage was granted just afterWWI in Britain, they had to be over 30 to vote until 1928, when universal adult suffrage was finally granted.) (d)1944. (Tiens! Un peu tard, n'est-ce pas?) (e) All those clocks didn't tell the Swiss what time it was until1971 . (f)1893 (So what if they say 'fush 'n' chups' and have no public broadcasting left?). 22. Milton's 'Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity'. 23. Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. 24. D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo. 25. Enid Blyton's The Famous Five. 26. 'USS Enterprise'. 27. Shakespeare, The Pa ssionate Pilgrim. 28. Muriel Spark's The Comforters. 29. 1979. 30. Ursula le Guin. It first appeared in PNLA Quarterly 38, later in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction 1979. 31. Morris West; Julian Morris: Moon in My Pocket, 1945, age 29; Michael East: McReary Moves In, 1958, age 42 (reissued under West's name and his title, The Concubine, 1973). 32. Vulcan. 33. An interest in men's ears (see Juliu s Caesar, Act III, Scene II) . 34. StJohn Lateran. 35. Bony. 36. All had their 100th anniversaries in 1998.37. Hyderabad; the India/Pakistan border. 38. The monk Volmar. 39. Maureen (Reebie); Sigmund (Jackie); Toriano (Tito); Jermaine; La Toya; Marlon; Steven Randall (Randy) and Janet. 40. Captain W.E. Johns (author of the Biggles books) overrode an RAF doctor's decision to reject Lawrence/Ross on medical grounds. He brought in a civilian doctor who passed the would-be recmit, enabling him to enlist. Thank you to all the enterprising sleuths wh o sent in entries for the January-February Summer Quiz. Congratulations to winner Maree Reid of Birchgrove, NSW, who will receive a copy of The Macquarie World Atlas, worth $99.95. Volume 9 Number 2 March 1999

A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology

CoNTENTS

23 4 SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE COMMENT Will tourism transform the Antarctic? With Morag Fraser, Michael McGirr asks Andrew Dodd (who went there). and Hugh Dillon. 27 7 WHAT'S IN A NAME? CAPITAL LETTER John Uhr argues for openness and public participation in nominating the president 8 of an Australian republic. LETTERS 30 12 RATIONALIST RUCTIONS THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC Margaret Simons investigates a split in With Frank O'Shea, Paul Collins, the ranks of one of Australia's grand old Rosey Golds, Richard Johnson and institutions, the Rationalist Society. Christine Nicholls. 35 13 INTEGRITY: THE LONG WALK ARCHIMEDES Antony Campbell asks whether you can factor fear into the unconditional 14 love of God. BUSH LAWYER 38 17 SCULPTURE ON SITE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE Peter Harris on the sculpture of Inge King and Ron Robertson-Swann. 18 FREEDOM FROM INFORMATION 40 Moira Rayner on FOI, nurses and LET'S EAT CHINESE convicted murderers. Ouyang Yu on being Chinese- Australian, or should that be Australian-Chinese? 19 POETRY 42 Cover design by Siobhan 'Love' and 'The Secret Imbalance', THEATRE Jackson. Cover photograph by Zoltan Kovacs; 'The Storks of Leon', Geoffrey Milne on the best of Australian by Darren Jew-iceberg off Coronation Island, South by John Kinsella (p33). summer shows. Orkneys. Graphics pp5, 16, 18, 21, 27-33 20 44 by Siobhan Jackson. Cartoons pp9- 10 by Peter Fraser. LETTERS HOME FLASH IN THE PAN Photogra phs pp23-26 by Andrew Hamilton on the Reviews of the films Shakespeare in Love; Darren Jew. recent communication from the Ronin; Men With Guns; Psycho Photograph p38 courtesy Australian Catholic bishops and and Little Voice. Peter Harris. the Vatican. Eureka Street magazine 46 Je suit Publications 21 WATCHING BRIEF PO Box 553 DOWN TO EARTH Richmond VIC 3 12 1 Tel (03) 9427 73 11 Paul Collins on som e theological 47 Fax (03) 9428 4450 implications of the Earth Charter. SPECIFIC LEVITY

V O LUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 3 COMMENT

EUAI:-KA SJAEET M ORAG F RASER A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology Publisher Daniel Madigan SJ Editor Morag Fraser Preambles Assistant editor Kate Manton Consulting editor w'" "'NO c>rnNc AWM fwm the «public this yeO< Michael McGirr SJ L ., and no getting away from the preamble. And neither should Graphic designer there be. Eureka Street will be following the debate and Siobhan Jackson making its own contribution throughout 1999. Production and business manager We begin, this month, with John U hr, who makes some Sylvana Scannapiego very practical suggestions about an open and participatory Editorial and production assistants n ominating process for the head of s tate (see p2 7). Frank Juliette Hughes, Paul Fyfe SJ, Geraldine Brennan will follow him next m onth. Battersby, Chris Jenkins SJ, Scott Howard Meanwhile, here is Fr Brennan's suggested wording for a preamble to the Constitution: Contributing editors Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ, Perth: Dean Moore We, the people of Australia, are the cu stodians of the Sydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor Australian continent and nearby islands. We are the inheritors Queensland: Peter Pierce of the Comm onwealth of Australia which was constituted United Kingdom correspondent on 1 January 1901 after the people of the colonies, humbly Denis Minns OP relying on the blessing of Almighty God, agreed to unite in South East Asia correspondent one indissoluble federal commonwealth under the Crown of Jon Greenaway the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. We affirm our respect for the land and environment of Australia. We Jesuit Editorial Board ackn owledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peter L'Estrange SJ, Andrew Bullen SJ, peoples, being the prior a nd continuing occupiers and Andrew Hamilton SJ custodians of the land, have continuing rights as indigenous Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ peoples. We ackn owledge that Australia is occupied and Marketing m anager: Rosanne Turner entrusted to us all, being people who are drawn from diverse Advertising representative: Ken Hea d cultures and who are equal before the law and united by our Subscription m anager: Wendy Marlowe affirmation of the rule of law. Asserting our sovereignty, we Administration and distribution commit ourselves to the Constitution. - Frank Brennan Kate Matherson, Lisa Crow, Mrs Irene Hunter Anyon e who h as stood in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and read the writing on the wall there has some Patrons sense of how words count, how words m ove nations. Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the This, th en, is our time. • support of C. and A. Carter; the -Morag Fraser trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; W.P. & M.W. Gurry Winners Eu reka Street magazine, IS SN 1036- 1758, Australia Post Print Post approved pp349181 /00314, Con gratula tion s t o all the h ardy m asochis ts w h o is published ten times a year completed Eureka Street's Summer Quiz. T he winner, by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, and recipient of the Macquarie World Atlas, is Maree 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121 Reid of Birchgrove, NSW. Tel: 03 942 7 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450 email: [email protected] We also con gratulate Mr & Mrs J.A. Hoadley of http:/ fwww .openp1 anet.com.au/eureka/ H awthorn , Victoria, w inners of the subscription Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by competition prize, the Encyclopre dia Britannica CD 98. Daniel Madigan, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. We look forward to their using it on next year's even worse Printed by Doran Printing, Summer Quiz. 46 Industrial Drive, Braeside VIC 3195. © Jesuit Publications 1999 And w arm congratulations as well to Eureka Street's Unsolicited manu cripts, inclu ling poetry and theatre review er, G eoffrey Milne, who was recently fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by awarded La Mama Theatre's Apricot T ree Award for a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests for distinguish ed services to Australian Theatre. Geoff was permission to reprint material from the magazine quick to explain that the 'Apricot' refers to the tree w hich should be addressed in writing to: The editor, Eureka Street magazine, originally stood in the courtyard of La Mama. N ot to be PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3 121 confused with a lem on.

4 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 C OMMENT: 2

MICHAEL M c GIRR Money not Lent here

T amAusTRAUA's most populom oveh , The Ho'p on the othe< end. Thne wos nothing he could do. in the South and Poor Man's Orange, have recently I pleaded with him to ring our branch. He relented. celebrated their 50th birthdays. In the late '40s, Ruth Eventually, I could hear him talking to a fa miliar Park wrote about the inner suburbs of Sydney with voice. Our local teller laughed when she understood m ore sentimentality, and a m ore hard-w orking the predicament I had got m yself into. The voice vocabulary, than could pass fo r social realism these between us obviously found this reaction hard to days. Her books are not m ere time capsules, but they compute. Laughter was n ot on his list of m enu do refl ect on a wide range of social institutions of the options. But our local teller was able to fix things up. period: m edicine, the law, public tran sport, She told the go -between to m ake sure I brought her manufac turing, housing, redevelopment, aged care and back a bottle of duty-free. This m essage was not so on. Famously, she has a lot to say about the Catholic forwarded. Not so long ago, the branch put a money Church. Remarkably, she does not make a single m achine in the outside wall and decided to charge reference to banking. There are wealthy extra for coming inside too oft en to talk people in her Surry Hills, but Delie Stock, to our long-standing associates. the brothel madam, and Lick Jimmy, the '.. tt_. ~. In the last 12 m onths or so, our Chinese grocer, always deal in cash . "?!"·- bank, one of the four big ones, has closed It is tempting to contemplate life ~ tw o bran ch es within a couple of without banks. The banks seem to be contemplating kilom etres of our office. This is in spite of the it them selves. I recently m et a retired rural bank burgeoning population of the area. The other banks manager. He's in his mid '50s and unsure of what to have also closed branches. Their intentions have been do with himself. H e cam e alive when he spoke about spelt out in the avalanche of m ail they have landed occasions on which he'd been able to arrange all kinds on us. They want us to do our banking by using the of assistance for the bank's custom ers. But every phone to punch numbers directly into their computer. branch he managed has now closed. The bank deals In a way, the future they have in mind is of a piece with its customers by mail. Or phone. with the kind of housing development taking place Stories of this kind often drift into the city from around us. At m ost new inner-city addresses, the front the bush, blown along by the occasional gusts of door is answered anonym ously. By video or phone. concern that the suburbs do still feel for regional Meanwhile, bank fees and charges pile up. Types of Australia. But I work in an area of Melbourne which, accounts are misleadingly called 'banking products'. in its day, was much like Ruth Park's Surry Hills. At They aren't products at all. But not even the banks the m om ent, there are two enormous off ice and expect us to believe they should be called services. It residential developments within a stone's throw of m akes you wonder what you could possibly lose these the eponym ous Eureka Street. Both are on former days by keeping your money in your mattress. Only industrial sites: Jacques and Vickers Ruwolt. In addition, your chiropractor might obj ect. the current surge in m edium-density housing in the In the last year of this century, there is much area m eans that airless six-packs of townhouses are talk in Christian circles about the idea of a jubilee. sprouting all over the place where there used to be The heart of the biblical notion of a jubilee is one of single houses. The result will be an increased popula- restorative justice: the correction of the balance of tion in the area. Because of the nature of the housing, power within a community by restoring land to its this population will have a high disposable incom e. original occupants, equity to those in debt, trust to We have dealt for years with the bank on the the estranged and comfort to the deprived. The idea nearest corner. Our accounts were opened in pounds, of retributive justice has worn such deep grooves in shillings and pence. As businesses go, we've never had our legal system that the more communal sense of much in them . But our personal relationships with restorative justice is seldom taken seriously. the staff at the bank have been wonderful. They will But each year, Christians celebrate a season based ask after workers who have long since left Jesuit Pub- on the idea of restorative justice. It's called Lent. The lications. One teller, at least, has almost as much race word com es fro m an Old English word mean ing memory of Jesuit Publications as som e of us have here. 'lengthen', a reminder that the season coincides with Last year, I fo und myself in Sydney International the lengthening days of Spring in the northern hemi- Airport on my way overseas when I was told that my sphere. The word also implies broadening, creating Visa card had expired. I wasn't carrying cash . I rang space, letting tensions run slack. The season begins the bank's hotline and pressed countless buttons for on Ash Wednesday with the reminder 'unto dust you countless options before a weary human voice came shall return'. 'Dust' always gets emphasised because

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 5 it sounds dramatic. But the important word is 'return'. Ruth Park wrote of a poor community but not an For Catholics, Lent has been associated with the Sacrament impoverished one. She may have been gilding the lily, but she of Reconciliation or Confession. This sacrament is not secret wrote as if she believed that forgiveness were possible. And she Catholics' business. It is a sacrament whose development owes understood, as we are in danger of forgetting, that every real a grea t deal to the idea of putting things right with the broader celebration of reconciliation is communal. • community. This is where the idea of penance comes from. Penance is not interest paid on a loan from God. It is reinvesting Michael McGirr SJ is the consulting editor of Eureka Street and yourself in the Christian community. the author of Unhinged Saints.

C OMMENT: 3

HUGH DILLON Crime ratings A lateral take on law and order. A N ELECTION APPROACHES IN NSW. Despite the Nonetheless, there have been real increases in crime caused demonstrated incapacity of governments to reduce crime rates by real social problems. Entrenched high unemployment rates significantly by using more and more draconian methods, the have exacerbated pressures on young, ill-educated boys and m en law-a nd-order drum keeps beating. And it is ignored by political who are overwhelmingly responsible for street crime. While parties at their peril. courts have become more punitive (co ntrary to common public The tabloid press, talkback radio and commercial television perception) and jail populations have increased dramatically in news have tremendous influence over the electorate's the past decade, street crime rates are not responding directly perceptions of crime, and they propagate what criminologists to mere threats of increased penalties. Social and economic Russell Hogg and David Brown have labelled, ironically, 'law problems, as well as criminal behaviour, must be targeted as and order common sense' (in their recent book, Rethinking Law part of a crime-prevention strategy. eJJ Order, Pluto, Sydney, 1998). Drug and drug-related offences constitute a large proportion Populist 'criminology' is being written by journalists, sub- of crime, particularly property crime, and provide a signal editors and television producers, and comes in 30-second sound example of how current strategies are fa iling to address crime. bites or hours of shallow talkback. The slogans of 'law and order Despite the vast amount of law enforcement money spent on comm on sense', according to Hogg and Brown, are: crime rates drug investigations and prosecutions, police commissioners and are soaring; things are worse than ever; New York and LA are Directors of Public Prosecutions throughout Australia concede the shape of things to come; the criminal justice system is soft that the 'war on drugs' strategy has been unsuccessful. Given on crime; more police with greater powers are needed; penalties the size and value of the drug trade in this country, alternative must be increased; and victims should be able to get revenge strategies need to be considered and trialled. Legalisation would through the courts. They are repeated ad nauseam and without probably lead to increased usage, but associated health and crime analysis. problem s would decrease significantly. The only successful Politicians know this, and shape their policy approach is likely to be an educated, non-partisan approach announcements accordingly. No-one wants to lose the vote of taken after careful, open consideration of all the issues. a tabloid-reading, talkback-listening, Channel 9 viewer. But With the express intention of reducing recidivism, a politicians, despite all appearances to the contrary, also know rational, non-partisan approach to crime would emphasise the that crime problems are far m ore complex and intractable than need for the courts and corrections system s to favour the kings of talkback would have us believe. If more draconian rehabilitation over denunciation, deterrence and retribution, penalties, increased police numbers or 'zero tolerance' were the except in relation to the most serious crimes. A rehabilitative simple solutions to the crime problem, we would have solved approach could involve victims, as is the case with some crimes it many years ago. The electorate knows this. committed by children, and emphasise cheaper community Certain categories of crime, but not all, have been on the alternatives to imprisonment. increase since World War II, and particularly since the 1970s Whatever the decisions, they must be adequately debated. and '80s. Reports of street violence, dom estic violence, child If war is too important to be left to the generals, crime is too abuse and drug crime have significantly increased in that time. important to be left to tabloid journalists and talkback kings. On the other hand, homicide rates have remained relatively Politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and police should join forces stable, m atching the increase in population. Fear of crime, to educate the public and the m edia about the true dimensions, however, has far outstripped the real increase in crime. root causes, prevention, investigation and punishment of crime. And any increase in reported crime cannot simply be Such an approach would assuage unnecessary anxiety, engender interpreted as an increase in the commission of crimes. It is confidence in our institutions and engage the community in only quite recently, for example, that domestic violence, child the shared work of preventing crime and integrating young abuse, sexual violence and other 'shameful' crimes have been people into a civil society. • widely recognised as serious and reportable, whereas these crimes were largely unreported a generation ago. Hugh Dillon is a lawyer and social commentator.

6 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 Of might and men

A "" m mu; fm wh.t "em' like It is not necessarily the case that a goods and services tax, or a Jack Waterford a spate of deaths among politicians and new industrial relations framework, or a medical benefits system public servants inspires some mordant is simply too mundane to inspire anyone. It may well prove in time, thoughts: what might be said in the eulogies of some of the modern for example, that Whitlam or Dunstan's greatest achievements practitioners? may have been more in extending sewerage to the masses than in There was Jim McClelland, bon vivant and biting wit, whose providing physical or social capital to Aborigines. Where they went movement into the ranks in the last days of the Whitlam beyond the current crop was in their capacity to articulate their Government became the symbol of the fact that it had, too late, mundane goals within a framework-one capable of providing discovered the law of supply and demand. Whose work on the some inspiration as well as sense. And they did it against greater Maralinga Royal Commission was portrayed as larrikinism competition too-in an environment in which politicians vied against the British, but which was as much focused on the with the churches, the courts, and the established institutions for nationalism of Australian politicians and officials. And whose the role of providing moral guidance and public goals. As Hugh confessions, hidden until his death, showed that he too had had a Mackay has described it, our politicians have to become storytellers, deep conviction of Lionel Murphy's guilt, but had also wondered, able to tell us stories that link the past with the present, if uncomfortably, how much it mattered in an overall assessment and proceed to tell us what we should be doing in the future. of the man. There was Jim Cope, the Speaker deposed by Whitlam in one of I N THlS REGARD, Lindsay Tanner is the latest to move into the ALP those streaks of unfairness, cruelty and misjudgment we have come policy vacuum-following the steps of Mark Latham, if with more to forget. A decent man of the old Labor school, bitter, tribal but than a backward look at Paul Keating. Tanner's story is about how with a disarming sense of humour that few politicians have had technology has changed all of our old structures, and about how since Fred Daly or Jim Killen. And Maurie Byers, the advocate economic rationalism and globalisation are consequences, rather whose arguments made Australia a single economy, who pu t the than the drivers, of the society we are developing. By his account, flesh, if in Malcolm Fraser's time, on Whitlam's constitutional governments can at best negotiate or 'facilitate' change; they can no visions, and whose conversational style of persuasion gave us the longer drive it, and certainly not with the instruments of old. They, Koowarta case, the Tasmanian dams case, Mabo and Wik. And and we, must adapt to a new society less driven by the production Andy Menzies, loyal, wise and discreet Crown Solicitor who knew of goods and more by the production of services. more than most where the bodies were buried. He may well be right in his general descriptions. But the society And Don Dunstan, who (even before Whitlam was making his which he describes imagines for itself a level of base infrastructure impact on the federal scene) transformed Labor in South Australia which must be provided somehow, if not by government then at from being a mere instrument of the organised working class to a least by something more than the operation of the market. And the party of ideas and ideals, with a language of 'reciprocal obligation'­ premium the new society puts on education, health and dealing between a prosperous society and those who were left out-that with social dislocation, requires collective action to ensure an transformed Australian politics. equality of opportunity, if not of outcome. But outcomes also We are a generation past Dunstan and past Whitlam, but have matter. Parties and leaders who cannot describe the outcomes scarcely found a politician since with any of the power to inspire wanted, and who cannot infuse the mission they describe with ideals, make people change their lives or articulate a vision about appeals to ideas and ideals, can never win the popular consent where the nation ought to be going. Dunstan's impact was not which is also critical to the success of community action, and merely on the Labor Party. He and Whitlam established an agenda ultimately, of communities. that operated as powerfully on the other side of politics as on their No doubt it will be the fate of Tanner to be seen first as an own. Few conservative politicians today would speak in the language embarrassment rather than a spur to action. And the Coalition can of politics pre-Dunstan. And, even though the modern trend is to use his candid descriptions of Labor's organisational inadequacies attack the size of the public sector and doubt the power of collective for some immediate advantage. But there might be another lesson action, the base points of who is in and who is out were from the past. Dunstan and Whitlam created open debate within set on a 1970s agenda. the party, realising that the images of disunity from bruising public brawls were not nearly as damaging as failing to face the STANDARD S IN POLITICs-how politicians and public administrators contradictions. That tradition in Labor has now turned into a behave-are again in the news, with all of the evidence indicating public relations charade, with the real debates and decisions, such massive disillusion with the way politicians behave. There may be as they are, being resolved behind doors by the factions. little evidence of an actual increase in the extent of rorting, and For the Coalition, of course, there is scarcely any debate, public abuse of power, but the root of the disillusion does not depend or private, about our story of the future, even if some ministers, primarily on evidence that some are tripping. It lies more in the fact particularly Peter Costello, are effective in describing some limited that they are tripping even as they appear to be going nowhere in visions. In even the medium term, its incapacity to write a road particular. The foibles seem less the human, or the humanising, map is a greater risk to it than the chance of a breakdown on the foibles of people on a great mission. Increasingly, they look more roads it has so far found. • like the excesses of those not even trying to achieve goals capable of inspiring the head or the heart. Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times.

V OLUME 9 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 7 L E1TERS

Eurelw Street welcomes letters from its senior positions at Ra ndo m House, Pan readers. Short letters are more likely to Macmillan and AB C publishing. A Sydney Virtual Labor be published, and all letters may be edited. graduate is Literary Edi tor of the Sydney Letters must be signed, and should include Morning Herald, another was for some years From Paul Rodan a contact phone nun1.ber and the writer's a transforming editor of 24 Hours. Luke I was intrigued to read (Eureka Street, Letters, Davies and Delia Falconer are younger Sydney name and address. If submitting by email, January- February 1999) Jam es Griffin's graduates whose poetry and fiction have referen ce to ' the real Labor Party' . I had a contact phone number is essential. received wide acclaim. thought this creature to be extinct, foll owing Address: [email protected] I am sorry to have go ne on at such length, a too-close embrace of economic rationalism. but it seem s the o nly way to rebut However, if James Griffin has made a recent Mr Wiltsh ire's ludicrous and insulting sighting, perhaps he could advise us of the assertion. T hat said, I must apologise to those location. many of my colleagues, past and present, Paul Rodan whom I have not found space to mention. East Malvern , VIC I guess it is expecting too much to trust that Mr Wi ltshire will see fit to do the sam e. Don Anderson Fighting words Sydney, NSW fohn Wiltshire replies: From Don Anderson, Department of English, My article raised serious academic and The University of Sydney cultural issues. My point about Sydney There I was, enjoying John Wiltshire's version of Michael Wilding, whose publications in the English was a specific one. However, I refuse of 'What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? ' in areas of scholarship and fiction were described to trade insults with Mr Anderson. his review of Andrew Riemer's Sandstone by Debra Ad elaide, in a review of Wilding's Gothic (Eurel

8 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 DHS proposals without the operational Words change th eir m eaning, yet carnage on agencies and therefore their 'competition' in practice still refl ects far more clients. of its etymology than popular conceptions of Philip Flanagan it as 'market red in tooth and claw' or 'survival Alphington, VIC of the meanest'. Of course competition ca n have its seamy side-hence the need for strong Competition = trade practices law as part of the National Competition Policy (NCP) package. But co-operation competition's multifarious activities are far From Roger G. Mauldon, former Commis­ more about co-operation and developing good sioner, Industry Commission relationsh ips than abo ut ' dog-eat -dog'. This month, th e writer of each letter we John Hanner's article, 'Contesting Welfare' N etworking, strategic alliancing, putting publish will receive a copy of Unhinged (Eureka Street, December 1998), decries the consortia together and sub-contracting to or Saints, an unsanctimonious look at 'm arket models' now being applied to fro m a prime contractor all build relationship sanctity by Stan Tony, a Eureka Street community welfare services. Those advocat­ which are part and parcel of communi ty­ regular by any other nam e. ing the application of competition policies are albeit at times a complex one. seen as having a 'world view' which can be There is no reason why competitive contributed by those defunct agen cies via described as 'atomist, individua li stic, tendering should not create many m ore their capital a sets, fundraising and business analytic, materialist, controlled'. By contrast, fruitful collaborations between community enterprises will be lost to the sector. the 'world view' of the community welfare welfare organisa tions than 'friction among Later tender rounds should be easy for the sector can be described as 'orga nic, holistic, once co-operative organisations'. The Industry Department, as there will be few service spiritual, vulnerabl e'. Competitive tendering Commission 's 1995 report on Charitable providers remaining to compe te. This is for communi t y welfare services funding Organisations in Australia presented som e hardly an outcome that would m eet national i"\----.. simple models of ways in which competition policy requirements. large and small community welfare The D epartment of Human Services organisations could collaborate to indubita bly h as a number of less-tha n­ tender for the delivery of effi cient prominent agenda items that it hopes to and effective services. accomplish. These are outside of the near­ The role of NCP in these regards motherhood statements such as close links is to ensure that governments don't between similar program s ('continuum') and erect 'Chinese walls' which exclude linkages to other community programs, particular groups from participating which the whole field would agree would in these sorts of relationships. T his benefit their clients. The hidden agenda items is th e c urrent m eaning of include minimising departmental involve­ \ (cYiiJ 'contestability' within the N CP ~ framework. Competitive tendering ment with statutory clients (e.g. wards of the state), reducing the number of contracts it has is one way of ensuring that any to adminis ter and reallocating resources potential supplier can have a go at geographically to areas of higher need. These being involved. What is at issue problems could be addressed in other ways seem s no t to be competitive but would require a m ore consultative tendering per se, but rathe r the approach. nature of the partnership between Unlike John Ha nner, I feel that most the community welfare sector (as service agencies would probably agree with a suppliers) and governments (as change process t ha t ultimately lead to funders) in providing services, and contestability, but would like to see criteria is said to 'create friction among once the design of tendering regi mes which follow for outcomes produced so that performance co-operative organisations'. Competition is from this. comparisons can be m ade between agencies. seen to be antithetical to collaboration. There is much in 'Contesting Welfare' The tender processes must be simple and not Hanner's paper concludes on the note that which needs to be taken with great serious­ consume agency resources to the detriment 'competition cannot create community'. ness in the design of competitive tendering of client services. The tender outcom es would My purpose in responding to 'Contesting within th e community welfare sector-in usually result in som e redistribution of work­ Welfare' is not to belittle the problems which particular: pres urcs for 'price-competitive' load among agencies rather than a winner­ competitive tendering can cause providers of tenders which can erode quality of service takes-all situation, with the ensuing disruption community welfare services or to short-circuit rather than 'fi xed-price' tenders which ca n to an extremely vulnerable client group . the issues which need to be resolved. Rather, lead to better quality; the continuity of Where do we go from here I it is to provide a rich er world view of services w here there is a potential change in John Hanner's 'market place' paradigm in competition and contestability than Hanner service provider; and wa ys of avoiding Victoria has begun to change and this should is prepared to concede. My Bl oom sbury wasteful costs in tendering (a nd indeed the be refl ected in the YAFS redevelopment. Dictionary of Word Origins tells me that the funding of overheads from which tendering All concerned sho uld participate word 'compete' comes fr om a compound Latin costs have to be met ). As Hanner writes, many vigorously in the debate with DHS, the verb com- (together) petere (seek or strive). At of these issues have not been fully resolved Minister and local politicians to devise an first competere meant 'come together, agree, be or tested in the community welfare sector. alternative m odel, to be developed fit or suitable', and hence our word 'competent'. However, the issues themselves have been increm entally. This n ew model s hould In later Latin it developed the sense of 'strive well rehea rsed in the various reports which incorporate all the desirable obj ectives of the together', and hence our word 'compete'. Hanner cites.

V oLUME 9 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 9 In our complex society no single frame­ previous! y co-operatively run services in to all contract details are hidden behind a work for selecting and funding community managerialist models of steerers and rowers. 'commercial-in-confidence' pretence. welfare organisations as service providers can Promised rate cuts, often vigorously rejected • Staff have little redress once the agreement claim the moral high-ground as to which is in public m eetings in favour of retention of is in force. The freedom normally given to atomist or organic, materialist or spiritual, services, failed to materialise and even turned professional staff no longer exists. secure or vulnerable. To the extent that into rate rises. • Users have no access to the management of 'contestability' is relevant to these issues, it Not many of the CCT contracted services a service run by a 'provider' except via the is through widening the field from which went to private contract; contracting-in rather 'client representative'. collaboration and relationship building can than contracting-out is the rule. Not As Hanner points out, all transactions take place. Perhaps even the etymology of surprising, given that the expertise to run become commercial ones. Clients, even in 'contestability' might help. My Bloomsbury these services is not likely to be available to welfare situations, are 'customers', but with tells me it comes from con- (together) testori private companies, with the exception of none of a customer's rights. Every cost-cutting (bear witness). Not a bad ideal for working things like garbage disposal and road exercise, particularly if made possib le by new re lationships between governm ents and the maintenance, which many municipalities had technology, is described as a 'customer community welfare sector' contracted out years ago. It was clear that much advantage'. The natural distrust between Roger Mauld on of the 'service' rhetoric was not and could not 'shopkeeper' and 'customer' is introduced into Garran, ACT be pursued except in the glossy PR put out at transactions where no money changes hands. the ratepayer's-sorry, 'customer's '-expense. Social contact between staff and users, an Competition Unlike Maggie Thatcher, who had essential component of human services, is invented CCT but specifically exempted discouraged or made impossible. T here is no ideology human services, Victorian councils observed reason why CCT contracting-out of the state From Gerry Harant no such niceties. As a spokesperson for our or federal welfare sector should not fo llow this John Hanner's excellent article ('Contesting local Library Friends, I had numerous pattern. Welfare', Eurel

10 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1999 Melbourne-my home town. I refuse to pay political life, and in trying to reduce the high the $1 locker charge at the SL V and make a risk of a tragic new civil war and the renewed Rites to bear arms point of carrying my notebook in a plastic bag ostracism of Cambodia from the world, I may which can be stuffed in m y pocket prior to have off ended som e people who quite From Len Baglow entry. l've also found army surplus trousers­ genuinely have different experiences and In response to Andrew Hamilton's article with the big pockets on the thighs- quite ad­ perspectives on Cambodia than I formed as a 'Colts or Canons' (Eureka Street, November equate to carry the paperback I'm reading on diplomat in Phnom Penh from 1994 to 1997. 1998), I would like to make a couple of points. the tram and my sandwiches etc. until I go For example, at the Joint Parliamentary Earlier in the year, I was out practising outside for lunch . No-one has yet asked me if Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on with my theological six shooter. Unfortu­ I was carrying a banana or was just happy to Cambodia on 26 August, I fo und myself nately, I spooked an ecclesiastical grizzly bear. see the staff at the security desk. I do my publicly opposing judgments about Cambodian As a result, the grizzly bear decided to have a shopping after leaving the library. politics and Hun Sen offered by eminent go at me with its own theological weapon. Edward Duyker persons with experience of Cambodia. I was N ow, grizzly bears have a confused notion of Sylvania-Southgate, NSW not comfortable doing this, but it needed to theology. They think the basic theological be done. building block is order or dogma. As a result, With respect to recent correspondence they build rather stodgy theological weapons Diplomacy abou t Cambodia in Emel

V OLUME 9 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 11 falling over themselves to explain why they It might have made a difference to the Gerry Adams and the are not going to meet him. course of events in N orthern Ireland in the cold shoulder Here is the one person who, more than '70s and '80s. It would certainly have anybody else, is central to peace in Northern removed the figure of most significance in W EN GERRY ADAMS visited America in Ireland, who has taken and continues to the last ten years; it is hard to believe that the heady days after the proclamation of take enormous political and personal risks nationalists could have come up with the 1994 IRA ceasefire, he was lionised by to achieve it. Yet the Australian Prime another person with the drive, charisma the media there. They had found that rarest Minister does not think it worth his while and courage of Gerry Adams. of political treasures, someone who was to listen to what Adams has to say; neither That Mr Howard cannot find time to unpopular overseas but was no threat to does the Premier of any of the States he is meet him says a great deal about our current them, an agitator who actually liked Uncle scheduled to visit, apart from Jeff Kennett Prime Minister, little of it good. Sam. 'A white dude, with radical chic and in Victoria. (Admittedly, Peter Beattie will -Frank O'S hea anger directed elsewhere,' was how he was be out of the country.) And even Kennett described by no less than Edna O'Brien, said he 'thought about it for some time' XV ·· ~ who had been sent by The Irish Times to before deciding to m eet him. Alexander ·, --J cover his visit and whose unlikely presence Downer was non-committal, saying only among the media was an indication of the that a request from Adams to meet would significance of the occasion. be looked upon favourably. O'Brien had coined one of those So much for hospitality. When I think of memorable phrases which sticks in the some of the shysters and nonentities who mind, capturing the handsome rakishness have ready access to our political leaders, of an impeccably dressed 46-year-old with when I look at the backgrounds of some of son-of-Buddy-Holly glasses and no grey in the international figures who have been his beard. Five years on, the glasses are less feted in Canberra, I find it hard to excuse conspicuous and there are telltale fl ecks of this act of gross discourtesy, a feeling I share silver in the beard, but the charm is still with many other Irish people. there, while the dapper youthfulness has Perhaps Australian politicians think been upgraded to a statesmanlike gravitas. they know it all about Northern Ireland. Gerry Adams is the most significant I certainly don 't and I would like to hear figure in Irish nationalism in the last Gerry Adams give his analysis of the current 50 years. This is not to demote people like situation, just as I would welcome the Sean Lemass, John Hume or Dick Spring to opportunity to hear David Trim ble explain lesser rank. They came from mainstream his position. But even though I am a resident political backgrounds, whereas h e has risen of the capital city of Australia, I will not through the ranks of paramilitary activists have the opportunity. to arrive at a philosophy which agitates for I could of course go to Sydney to attend a united country through constitutional the gala dinner in his honour. But that means. No other politician or political party raises another dilemma: even if I could in Ireland any longer seriously aims for a afford to join the 1000 or so people willing united Ireland. to pay $190 for a meal and a bit of music, I do not place too great significance on I would find myself questioning such an whether he may once have been an IRA expenditure and wondering at the use to volunteer; half the leadership of emerging which surplus funds might be put by the Going to the devil countries would be disqualified if their Republican support group, Australian Aid former lives were examined in the way that for Ireland. Adams' has been. As to the inquisition to The 1996 refusal by Australian 'IEFIRS T I HEARD about the new Catholic which he used to be so predictably subjected auth orities to allow Adams to enter rite of exorcism was at 6.40am on Australia in the wake of some IRA atrocity, his Australia was not his first rejection by this Day. The ABC called for a comment on a standard reply hid irrefutable logic within a country. In his autobiography, he tells how, newspaper article, which claimed that the classic piece of Adams-speak: 'No-one in when he was a boy, his family had completed Vatican was 'making over' the image of the positions of power or authority can hide all the necessary paperwork for assisted devil. It was obviously a slow news day. behind a smokescreen of selective condem­ passage to Australia, only to be refused I said 'Give m e ten minutes to wake up'; it's nation or denunciation and expect to have because his father had spent some time in difficult to focus on demonology before any positive effect on any conflict situation.' prison for IRA activities. you've had a shower. It is interesting to note the reaction of One can only speculate how things Biblical theology treats demonology and Australian politicians to the Adams visit. might have been different had Australia Satan soberly. There are very few references At the time of writing, they appear to be accepted the Adams clan on that occasion. to the devil in the Hebrew Scriptures and, if

12 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 demonic posse sion is excluded, the New Testament is reasonabl y circumspect compared with both the demonology of intertestamental Judaism and the Greek beliefin 'daimones', that is, beings that inhabit A wise investment the interface between the gods and us. I TWAS AGOOD SILLY SEASON STORY-SO much SO that about three weeks after The Australian Certainly, devils appear in the gospels, ran it, the sam e story bobbed up in The Age. usually in the context of hea ling, when Achievement in science and technology ranked level with sport as the two mo t potent Jesus, with the authority inherent in his sources of national pride, according to a rigorous survey of nearly 31,000 people conducted personality, casts th em o ut. The across 24 countries. In fact, sport and science were the only factor picked consistently in presumption is that there is a connection all countries, though economic perform ance and the arts also figured in some. between sickness and mental illness and The report had what all editors look for in the silly sea on. It wa quirky, counter-intuitive, possession. On occasion, Satan assumes a but light enough not to frighten away summer readers. It provided an odd new fact to stick personification, as in the confrontation with in the trivia album, or to talk about for five minutes over a refreshing ale. But there was more. Jesus in the desert. The influence of the Besides Australia, the countries surveyed included Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, cultural con t ext of in tertes tam ental Holland, Ireland, Russia, Bulgaria, Japan, the Philippines, the US and Canada. And the Judaism on the N ew Testament is clear. people who were most proud of their scientists were Americans- no surprise there-and, The demonology of patristic theologians lo and behold, Australians. borrows from Jewish apocryphal literature, 'The study confirmed the national obsession with sport, but the finding about science and their medieval followers indulge in a was completely unexpected,' says Dr Jonathan Kelley of the Research School of Social welter of speculation about angels and Sciences at ANU, a co-author of the report which wa published in the Australian Social devils. The medievals also created the Monitor, a journal of Melbourne University's Institute for Applied Economic and Social demonic iconography that we h ave Research . 'Scientific achievement really makes people feel good about their country.' inherited. In contrast, the official church is The results of the survey should be put on a banner by the Australian Research Council far more circumspect: there is no reference and hung from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, says Kelley, because they show politicians that to the devil in any important church creed financial investment in scientific research could have significant political benefits. And it and there are very few references in the also might surprise businessm en to learn that spending money on science, in addition to documents of general councils. being a good economic investment, is 'damn good PR'. So what are we to make of the Vatican The million of Australians who attended sports extravaganzas over summer were left document on exorcism ? It is significant that in no doubt that government and business have discovered the PR value of port. Why not it was issued by the Congrega tion for Divine science? Particularly since, unlike sport, science is not a game-it's our future. Wor hip. This is because it is part of the Also released over summer was an assessment of Biotechnology in Australia, by revision of the 1614 Roman Ritual which Dr Peter French of the science lobby group, the Federation of Australian Scientific and was asked for by Vatican II. The rite of exor­ Technological Societies (FASTS). French argues that biotechnology is about to revolutionise cism was the last of the rituals to be revised. the global economy. While Australia has a good track record in biotechnology research, he Cardinal Medina Estevez, Prefect of the says, it has a poor history of capitalising on its discoveries. One of the main reasons is lack Congrega tion, said that there would be 'very of financial commitment, both public and private. few cases' in which the ritual of exorcism Biotechnology is particularly dependent on basic research, the report argues. Other would need to be used, and it could only be countries recognise this. In the past year, the US, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Canada, carried out with the permission of the local China, Spain and others have all announced significant public investment in biotechnology. bishop and with the consent of the person In the US, that great bastion of private enterprise, the federal budget allocation to suffering possession . The n ew ritual biotechnology is more than $4 billion a year to support an industry projected to have annual acknowledges that much that in the past sales of about $50 billion by next year. Yet the Australian Government appears to think that was called 'possession' was actually if there's any money to be made, the marketplace will create an industry unaided. psychological illness. 'It is clear that many of Australia's competitors are po itioning their biological Naturally, the m edia picked up on issues industries to take advantage of the biotechnology revolution,' the report says. 'There is not like dem onology and exorcism . As a whole the same level of activity in Australia currently. This should be cause for serious concern series of m ovies in the style of The Exorcist and sub equent remedial action by government.' show, the issues continue to fascinate The report calls for government support of up to $500 million a year for basic research. apparently sophisticated post-moderns. But That's serious m oney-about as much as we spend on CSIRO and university research I must admit that I squirm when issues like combined at present. French also suggests changing the tax regime for research. Since the this get a public airing. It is not that I don't Federal Government reduced the industry R&D tax concession from 150 per cent to 125 recognise the reality of evil in the world and per cent, private investment has declined markedly. And Australia's capital gains tax is of sinfulness in myself, but I have the feeling seen throughout the world as a major impediment to foreign inve tment. that it is really a culturally insensitive way The report nominates the superannuation funds- now standing at more than $350 of speaking in the context of contemporary billion- as a source of private investment capital. Australia. All of this should give the Howard Government substantial food for thought. And what Sure, the church has to deal with the comfort to know that investment in science, apart from creating jobs and profits, can swell issue of demonology in other cultures, like national pride as well. Sounds like a useful ingredient in any recipe for re-election. • Africa or Papua N ew Guinea. In PNG, Andre (continued p14 .. . ) Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer.

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 13 BUSH BusH L AWYER

S EAMUS O'SHAUGHNESSY Dupeyrat has written extensively about it, and James Griffin's fascinating article on Mother Marie-Therese Noblet ( 1889-1930) Home sweet in the Australian Dictionary of Biography records a whole life lived out in the context of ecstasy and apparent possession. What relevance is this to us? At least it home? reminds us of the reality of evil in our culture and in ourselves. In classical INNSW, nearly 40,000 Apprehended domestic violence. The police, courts and theology, evil is an absence of good. It lacks Violence Orders ('AVOs') were issued by welfare agencies now devote considerable intelligibility; it is a surd. That is not to say magistrates last year. An A V 0 is also known amounts of time and effort to the protection that evil is not real, but to emphasise that it colloquially as a 'restraining order'. They of victims. This intervention has reportedly is a distortion of good, to say it is essentially are mainly used to protect women from had a significant impact on the behaviour parasitic. domestic violence ('domestic AVOsl but of many men. The reason is easy to see: it is I identify evil in our society w ith are also issued to protect others who have a very humiliating to have the police apply to acquisitive individualism , with the 'greed genuine and reasonable fear of intimidation, the court for an AVO against you becau se is good' syndrome. The common good is harassm ent, assault or stalking ('personal your wife or partner alleges you were violent constantly sacrificed to the demands of the AVOs'). towards her. And she is no longer alone­ bottom line and profit for the shareholders. Although AVOs are issued under a part she has stood up to you. We also see evil in the way forests, rivers, of the Crimes Act, they do not in themselves So far so good. What are the problems land, seas and other species are sacrificed to carry any criminal conviction. A person with the system? Two stand out. voracious con sumption, much of it can consent to an order being made without First, the system is systematically artificially created. We have lost our sense admitting to having done anything to abused by certain people, often in relation of our real place in both the human and frighten or hurt the complainant. It is not a to a Family Law dispute. I once ticked off a n atural communities. The acquisitive guilty plea. Breaches of AVOs are, however, solicitor who was patently trying to get an capitalist demons within u s have created a serious offences, carrying jail terms. AVO to eject a husband from his own house disjunction between the self and the world. One of the triumphs of feminists is to because he and his wife were arguing over We no longer participate in the world but have exposed domestic violence as a the property and other Family Law issues. have becom e parasites upon it. pervasive social problem and forced In another case, one parent vexatiously That's why, when the ABC asked m e governments to take action. Nonetheless, sought an urgent AVO to prevent the other how I thought of the devil, I replied 'as an the tide of applicants for AVOs which fl ows exercising custody rights in relation to their economic rationalist in a business suit!' daily into the courts shows no sign of ebbing, daughter. Magistrates must constantly keep -Paul Collins despite the efforts of police and other agents a weather eye out for those sorts of things. in the community. If anything, exponential Second, while resources (arguably Will good taste growth in the numbers of complaints can insufficient) are rightly being targeted for be expected on current trends. victims' protection, th ere is little or nothing wreck the game? This is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't being done on the prevention or rem ediation LATE LAST YEAR, the Sydney Football think anyone suggests that, because the side until a person is found guilty of a Stadium hosted its last ever Australian numbers of complaints are going up rapidly, criminal offence. Under an AVO, the court Rugby Leagu e Grand Final. After the ARL the number of domestic assaults is climbing has power only to restrict the behaviour of ver us Super League fia sco, it was a strangely steeply. Rather, we are getting to see more the respondent. I cannot, for example, deflating feeling to be sitting in the stadium and m ore of the iceberg. require him (or her) to undertake anger­ witnessing a rather predictable gam e Most complainants seeking AVOs, as management counselling or family therapy. between the out-of-towners, Brisbane, and far as I can see, come from battler territory. I am not an adherent of the 'Men's the local team, Canterbury. To complica te Crime statistics bear this out. While the Movement', but these inarticulate, angry, matters further, Canterbury, who would wealthy and well-educated do som etimes dependent, powerless men are not human normally have been considered the local make an appearance in court, a typical garbage. Even if they were, it would be underdogs, and thus aroused the traditional respondent (the person complained about) pragmatic to 'recycle' them rather than crowd support, had a compromised past. to an AVO complaint seem s to m e to be a abandon them to create further problems. They had joined Super League. So, for those man between 25 and 40 who is either But where are the resources to be found? who felt passionately about the issue, the unemployed or in a low-paid job, who is And call me old-fashioned, but what is grand final had degenerated into a m atch inarticulate, angry, suffers from low self being done to socialise boys at an early age between two different categories of traitor. esteem, and is overly dependent on the that violence towards women is a no-no? In many ways this grand final was no woman and sometimes on alcohol. In short, I don't underestimate the good that different from any of the others I had been a man who feels powerless except against courts can do, but education is the key. We to over the last ten years. There was the the woman in his life. He is not a SNAG. must teach boys how to be peaceful m en usual, cheerfully vulgar entertainment­ Over the past few years, th e NSW and good citizens. • Jimmy Barnes and his son, the ARL Government (and I dare say governments combined cheerleaders, the children elsewhere) have responded quite well to the Seamus O'Shaughnessy is a country gyrating in spandex and polyester, the parade alarming emergence of the sorry truth about magistrate. of the Legends of Leagu e-but the

14 EUREKA STREET • MARcH 1999 atmosphere was gloomy. As if somehow minimum intelligibility. If you looked of 70 would get one into most courses at the corporatism had swooped upon the game around the arena while the commercials University of Canberra, but for a degree like a gigantic eagle, clutching the players' were being played, you could see thousands course in Sports Coaching one needs a score jumpers with its claws and dragging them of people clutching their ears like the of 76.35, and for one in Sports Media off to distant, high-summed destinies. tormented individual in Edvard Munch's (covering sporting events as a print, radio or So I sat in the stadium trying to feel a 'The Scream'. TV journalist) one needs 82.65. I have no goodbye. And the first thing I thought about In almost every respect the Melbourne doubt those sports-related courses are good was the SFS's unique heritage of crummy football grand finals are more professional courses for their purpose, but I doubt that entertainment. than the Sydney ones. The entertainment they are more intellectually difficult than I remembered the year when the Optus is more respectable. The execution is more those in Human Biology, Earth and Land people had flown in a giant television set by reliable. Sydney grand finals are artistic Science, or most of the other offerings of helicopter. The structure of the installation failures. There's no doubt about that. But the University of Canberra which one can wasn't strong enough to survive the wind som ehow a tiny voice inside m e says that to enter with a score of 70, or more difficult and the sides of the television collapsed. It fail in the genre of the football grand final is than a degree in Philosophy at ANU which was m eant to symbolise the birth of a new a more sophisticated act than to succeed. It requires a score of 73. Perhaps a free seat at communications system in Australia. It is their very professionalism which makes the Olympics is more fun than Wittgenstein. ended up seeming like a low-budget, Melbourne grand finals so gormless. To try at Universities set entry scores for courses domestic re-enactment of the Fall of Saigon. all at this sort of thing is to try too hard. at a level which, from past experience, they Then there was the time when a series One of the traditions of Sydney grand expect will provide them with about the of artificial trees constructed like giant finals which ha always intrigued m e is the number of students they can take in each plastic asparaguses was erected in the centre way that objects must fall out of the sky or course. Scores can go up or down from year of the stadium as a backdrop for one of John be shot up into the sky or, eventually, be to year without the university making any Williamson's performances. The sight of suspended in the sky. There are two reasons changes to the course. The scores are simply these plastic tubes being inflated was for this, I figure. First, football (and perhaps an indicator of demand for the particular enough to widen the eyes of those least all sport) is about the human longing to fly. course. That is why M edicine a t the inclined to tasteless humour. But the worst Playing sport lets us pretend for a while University of NSW requires a score of 99 .6, aspect of all was the way the giant that we have wings. and scores for entry to Law everywhere are asparaguses were unceremoniously But it's also about the implications much higher than for most other subjects. deflated. They kind of wheezed down, inch arising from a perverse defiance of Newton's That is what makes the comparisons of by inch, in a fitful descent, as John Fifth Law. Things that go up don' t demand so intriguing, as indicated by the Williamson scurried away from the portable necessarily come down. Things get stuck. scores. stage. There is always the plastic asparagus that The degree in Nursing at the University There was also the time when performers won't deflate, the net of balloons that won't of Canberra is more in demand (entry score from the musical 42nd Street carried their release, or the sky diver that lands outside 76.25) than any nursing degree in NSW; 3-feet-wide model gold coins on to the the stadium. This seems to m e to be saying congratula tions-but why? The entry middle of the stadium together with a som ething like: 'everyone sets out to soar qualifications for a Bachelor of Arts (70) or complicated, temporary staging system in life but things get in the way'. Science (70.55) course at UC are the same or which took about ten minutes to erect. The grammar of rugby league is about higher than for those courses at UNSW or After som e dithering and general confusion, makingyourwayup the field while fighting for the BA at the University of Sydney (a ll they finally discovered that the wrong tape off seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 70), despite the fact that those two had been brought along. The performers That's why it's so incredibly moving and universities are in a much bigger city and had no music to dance to. The whole exciting when a player does finally manage have long-establish ed reputations at a level production had to be canned, the stage to escape a tackle and break free from his which UC is still working to attain. Indeed, taking a further ten minutes to dismantle. opponents. In the end, the culture of rugby if Daddy and Mummy are prepared to pay It was like a performance by the conceptual leagu e celebrates the poetry of disappoint­ full cost fees, you can get into Arts or artist Vitto Acconci. ment. It respects a winner, but sanctifies Science at UNSW or Sydney with scores Once the audience them selves were even the runner-up. The weak entertainment, down to 65, which would not get you into invited to become part of the entertainment. the punishing sound system, the multitude any course at UC, ANU, Charles Sturt or I rem ember bringing a rather introverted of stuff-ups, I wouldn't have it any other W ollongong. friend along to the grand final the year they way. The Albury /Wodonga campus of Charles filmed the famous Tina Turner 'Simply the -Rosey Golds Sturt University is the smallest of CSU's Best' campaign. The audience were told to three campuses, and-in the competitive wave their hands about madly and sing What's the m ode so favoured by economic along with wild enthusiasm at the ra tionalis ts-in that small city faces appropriate moments. It was potentially competition from a campus of Latrobe excruciating, but as usual the cheerfully S oM' 1:~~~~lm~~~o~: Lm,out University in Wodonga. Yet the degree in irreverent crowd managed to transform the of the recent publication by the Canberra Physiotherapy at CSU requires a score of indignity into a joke on the staged excite­ Times of the entry scores for various courses 99.85-higher than for Medicine at UNSW! m ent of the commercial itself. The sound in universities in the ACT and NSW. One might try to discover why, in these system at the stadium was brutal. The Entry scores are not an indication of the allegedly post-Christian times, it requires a acoustics ensured maximum volume with intellectual difficulty of the courses. A score score of 81.5 to do a degree in Theology at

V oLUME 9 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 15 Australian Catholic University, whereas Government introduced it in 1973, as part powerful m etaphor e ncapsulating the the materialistic Commerce degree at ANU of the reforms for self-determination (w hich alienation of the sch ool from the requires only 73. And what is it between incidentally, also seems to have been community. A close Warlpiri friend of mine, the Catholics and the Protestants, that the scrapped recently, on the quiet). Peggy Rockman Napurrurla, a woman still degree in Theology offered by Charles Sturt, Bilingual education programs were in her 30s, recalls, 'In those "Welfare Days", in co-operation with St Mark's in Canberra, originally introduced partly because the the settlement supervisors would hit us if requires a modest 69.3? My experience of English-only programs in Aboriginal schools we spoke Warlpiri. They would say, "Stop my own friends suggests that Protestants failed dismally to come up with the talking in that Chinese language."' are more inclined to theological discussion educational goods-only a tiny, elite So committed was the community to than Catholics, but the figures suggest the minority ever learned to read and write the program that, in 1982, ten Warlpiri opposite. under the old English -only regime. Many adults worked full-time fo r the entire year, Want to study Acupuncture/ 77.2 at contemporary advocates of 'English-only' with no remuneration, to create Warlpiri University of Technology, Sydney. Chiro­ education seem to have forgotten this. books for Warlpiri children to read in the practic? 85 .1 5 at Macquarie. Psychology For almost a decade (1982-1991), I lived classrooms. In 1989, the school topped all everywhere needs a high score, usually well and worked with Warlpiri people at go vernment Aboriginal schools in the over 80. You can study Nuclear Medical Lajamanu, a settlem ent roughly equidistant Territory in the Education Department's Technology at Charles Sturt with 69.3, but from Ali ce Springs and Darwin, located in externally administered m oderated testing you need 86.1 5 to study Ancient History at the Tanami D esert of the N orth ern programs in English . In tern a I t es ts Macquarie. conducted in the school also showed a steady There are hours of fun to be had studying improvement in academic achievement the entry scores for university courses. over the years. The Department refused to Maybe some university will offer a degree accept the validity of this testing program, in itl -Richard Johnson a nd con sis te n tl y denied access for independent researchers to compare the If we only had performance of students in bilingual programs with those in non -bilingual schools. This, in conjunction with the INEARLY ;£~: £ ~~;,~~ a top-down Department's under-s taffing and under­ decision, the Northern Territory Govern­ resourcing of bilingual education programs m ent decided that it would di band its since their inception, explains the current unique bilingual education programs, in paucity and inconclusiveness of research which local Aboriginal languages and.,___ _ evide nce about Aboriginal bilingual English are used in primary school classrooms. ~------education programs in Australia. It decided to replace them with instruction Nonetheless, it is true that, even in the exclusively in the English language. bilingual schools, academic results are well At present, in Northern T erritory bel ow those of their non-Indigenous schools there are 21 bilingual education counterparts. This is the result of a complex program s in which 17 different Indigenous mosaic of interacting factors- not least of languages are being taught alongside which are Indigenous poverty and poor ins truction in English . While the Territory. Together we worked in the school health. Bilingual education is not a universal government initiative to provide improved to establish a successful bilingual education panacea. English -as-a-Second-Language (ESL) program using the local vernacular, From my experience I would say that instruction in remote Aboriginal schools is Warlpiri, and English. The Lajama nu the major argument for the continuation of to be applauded, it is difficult to interpret community, under the leadership of two the bilingual programs isn't academic, at the decision, which is endorsed by Federal visionary leaders, the late Maurice Luther least not now . Aboriginal-controlled Education Minister David Ke mp, as Jupurrurla and the late Paddy Patrick bilingual programs give Aboriginal parents anything but a direct attack on the relatively Jangala, had lobbied thegovernmentfor ten and extended families a real place in their fe w remaining 'strong' Aboriginal years before the school was afforded official children's education. Indigenous-controlled languages. It will also mea n the demobili­ recognition as a bilingual school. The older bilingual education programs put Aboriginal sa tion of many dedicated bilingu al people feared that younger Warlpiri were in teachers into Aboriginal classrooms as 'real' education workers in re mote rural danger of losing their culture and language. teachers, assist the Aboriginalisation of communities, the majority of whom are Most older Warlpiri recollect English being sch ools (acting as circuit-breakers to Aboriginal. In turn this will translate into imposed upon them by pure force. As late as continuing welfare dependence), improve even higher rates of unemployment among the mid-1970s, if Warlpiri adults and relations between community members and rural Australians. children spoke Warlpiri within the hearing schools, increase school attendance, and For Indigenous and non-Indigenous of the settlement supervisor, or within the legi timate and strengthen the minority Australians who have worked for many confines of the schoolyard, they would be language (raising the self-esteem of both years to establish and maintain the bilingual hit or otherwise punished. During those adults and children ). program s, the decision hasn't come as a 'Native Welfare' days, a barbed-wire fence Teaching children initially in their own surprise. Bilingual education has been under was erected around Lajamanu school to language allows them to move from the almost constant attack since the Whitlam keep the kids in and the adults out- a known to the unknown, to acquire general

16 EUREKA STREET • MARc H 1999 • learning skills which they can then employ 1 a e in learning a second language. ESL and bilingual education are mutually supportive-a quality ESL program is an essential part of any successful bilingual program . As Mandawuy Yunupingu (lead singer of Yothu Yindi and former principal 'I,'fflD'D '"' CAT:~c~: o~~:~NZ~:,~t~tsO<~~~:ta< of' colltotionof of Yirrkala Bilingual School) puts it, 'If you doctrinal texts publish ed in their original Greek or Latin. A generation of Catholic have control over both languages, you have theological students will be familiar with it in its English translation and rearrangem ent double power.' by Jozef N euner and Jean Dupuis, who taught theology together in India. The decision to scrap the bilingual N euner began his teaching in the internment camp, where he and many German Jesuit programs represents a return to the White students were placed by the British colonial authorities during World War II . Dupuis' Australia Days. It pre-dates even the Austral­ theological teaching has recently concluded, at least temporarily, after his writing was ian Government's 19 50s Frankenstein-type investigated by the Congregation for the Defence of the Faith. Most recently, both men dream of assimilation for Indigenou s have been exercised by the challenge to speak properly of the Christian Gospel in Asian, Australians and migrants. As early as 1835, non-Christian cultures. Recent journal articles unite them in discu ssion of this theme. the Governor of South Australia made a Vidyajoti, a theological magazine emanating from Delhi, dedicated a recent edition speech to the Kaurna Aboriginal people of (August 1998) to Jo zef N euner on his 90th birthday. The most stimulating article is by the Adelaide Plains in which he exhorted Michael Amaladoss, who discusses, realistically, the difficulties of inter-faith dialogue, 'the natives' to drop their languages in favour remarking that there has been more theory of dialogue than practice. Committed believers of English: 'Blackman, we wish to make are likely to be half-hearted in their commitment to dialogue, and vulnerable to the charms you happy. But you cannot be happy unless of fundamentalism, particularly if they believe that their religious world is being eroded by you imitate white man. Build huts, wear secularism. Moreover, if a society finds its identity in a dominant religious tradition, its clothes, and be useful ... have God ... love adherents commonly resist discussion with groups perceived to be alien both to religious white men .. . and learn to speak ENGLISH.' and national traditions. Amaladoss, however, believes that dialogue becom es possible The last fluent speaker of Kaurna, where believer of different traditions see themselve as possessing a common culture. Ivaritji, died in 1929, and the majority of Dupuis him elf writes on religious dialogu e in Nouvelle Revue Theologique (December Australia's 250 Indigenou s languages have 1998). His article is helpful because it relates the Catholic interest in dialogue to changing already been extinguished. We have lost understandings of religious pluralism . While the encouragement of dialogue between more than three quarters of these languages, religions had its roots in the Vatican Council, even there it was seen as a preliminary step which is not only a loss for all Australians in the process of winning the dialogue partners to Christian faith. Since the Council, but also for the world's linguistic heritage. however, both church documents and theologian s have given m ore value to non-Christian These languages need to be regarded as religions in their own right. Dupuis summarises this new appraisal, claiming that the living national treasures. Unless there is presence and action of the Holy Spirit within non-Christian religions is now generally immediate, s trong and meaningful recognised. Furthermore, while Christ, the Kingdom of God and the Church are held to be intervention, history will repeat itself. It is intimately related, the building of the Kingdom is not confined to those who acknowledge clear from the outrage being expressed in Christ within the Church. We may expect to find, and not merely to bring God in the dialogue. parts of remote Aboriginal Australia (some Dupuis insists that the adventure of dialogue does not consist in leaving one's faith communities are threatening to pull all behind, but in exploring personally and openly the religious experience and beliefs of the children out of school when the 1999 partner in dialogu e. Dupuis so underpins hi article with quotations from the present Pope school year begins) tha t the T erritory that it is easy to see why, in a letter to The Tablet, his colleague, Gerald O'Collins, Government's decision isn't 'making them remarked that to criticise Dupuis is to criticise the Pope. happy' in the least. The bilingual programs Another kind of dialogue is the subject of an intriguing article in Semeia (no. 78). must be maintained and given a fair go with Nanjini Rebera discusses the distinctive way in which the story of Martha and Mary is adequate funding and decent resources- if heard by group of Indian women. Indian readers notice first that the story takes place in the Australian Government can fund Martha's house. She is a property owner, and so an independent woman, to whom Mary, bilingual education programs in the Pacific, as younger sister, has obligations within the house. When the Indian audience hears that it can do so at hom e. (A shorter version of Mary sits at Jesus' feet, they instantly recognise the position of the disciple distinctive in this article appeared in The Australian.) most Asian cultures. Mary, therefore, is not passive or contemplative, but is being trained -Christine Nicholls to represent Jesus. When Jesus responds to Martha's complaint by praising Mary's choice, he denies that the only role for a woman is that sanctioned by her culture. He asserts that This month's contributors: Frank O'Shea there is a better way, embodied in Mary's thoroughly active commitment as a disciple. teaches maths at Marist College, Canberra; This interpretation shows the value of dialogue between cultures for throwing fresh Paul Collins MSC is a priest, author and light on the Gospel. Western interpretation of this passage has for too long been paralysed broadcaster; Rosey Golds is a freelance by Augustine's initially liberating contrast between Martha the active person and Mary the writer; Richard Johnson retired as professor passive contemplative. Most readers feel ill at ease with the dismissal of Martha in this of Classics and is now a visiting fellow at interpretation, but cannot free them selves from it. If we think in stereotypes, it may seem the Aus tralian National University; strange that Indian Christians have reassured Western Christians about the value of being Christine Nicholls is a Senior Lecturer in active. But, then, dialogue is all about correcting stereotypes. • Aus tralian Studies at the Flinders University of South Australia. Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne.

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 17 Freedom from information

L .. ""'AGO, A Gipp; bnd mAn w a; a man who may have been-and on his 'working documents' and Cabinet papers; charged with a particularly horrible murder. instructions was- unjustly convicted. The new enterprises have been exempted from Three young people he did not know were doctor had nothing to add- though the Act its operation, and increasingly, since found dead aft er an executio n -s t yle also exempts the release of information go vernment business is regularly dealt with shooting. It was a terrifying, inexplicable where personal safety is an issue. Tribunal through corporate structures or partner­ crim e. Member Noreen Megay, a former prosecutor ships with industry, reliance is placed on The three had decided to share a house herself, said she saw no reason why she 'commercial-in-confidence' exclusions. The in Melbourne, where they had recently should not grant t he application, and costs have, in some cases, trebled. The m oved from rural Victoria. They had accordingly, she did so. usefulness of FOI to opposition parliamen­ adv ertised for a housemate, an advertise­ tarians and community groups has been ment the murderer apparently answered. much reduced by the delays occasioned by N o motive was established. refusals or simple failure to comply with The Gippsland man's arrest had been statutory timetables within government precipitated by an event in the Botanical agencies- the political 'm om ent' quickly Gardens in which he bailed up a yo ung passes. Kennett has himself publicly couple in their car and instructed them to expressed frustration with the Victorian lie down in a pose mirroring the style of the Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCA T ), triple murder. H e maintained his absolute which deals with applications for review. innocence, and proffered an alibi: at the Most recently, it incurred his wrath by time, he and his de facto wife testified, h e Curiously, the hospital did not appeal. releasing, on 'public interest' grounds, som e had been visiting h er in a Frankston It released the information, as ordered. It controversial gove rnment business hospital. did not tell the nurses first. They found out documents. It has compounded its perceived The jury didn't believe him, or her, and in mid-January, then all hell broke loose. sins through 'delays' in dea ling with he was convicted and sentenced to life The nurses were outraged, and afraid. This community-initiated appeals against imprisonment. He maintained his is understandable, if illogical (the man was, contentious planning approva ls. Developers innocence and instructed his lawyers to after all, safely incarcerated). don't like having their grand plans fru strated. seek further evidence to support an appeal. FOI is an irritant to governments. VCAT has not been helpful to government. That evidence, he believed, would be found Victorian Premier Jeffrey Kennett has long So it was not surprising that Kennett if his lawyers could talk to the nurses on been irked by the release of information should respond, after a call from a frightened duty in the ward on the day in question. under FOI. Typically, such requests, nurse to 3AW where he was doi ng his regular The firm asked the Frankston Hospital whether they be for information about the talkback spot, that he would see for their names. They refused to give managem ent of the Crown Casino, the costs to it that the Act was amended. the informatio n out, citing privacy of the Grand Prix and the new CityLink considerations. He made an FOI request. It project, or the use of ministerial credit 0 N 14 JA NUARY, his Attorney-General, was denied. He appealed, as was his right, to cards, are denied by government. The way Jan Wade, announced that she would be the Victorian Civil and Administrative they have responded to FOI has had the 'seeking legal advice and looking at the FOI Tribunal. The hospital sought legal advice effect of putting the onus on the requesters, Act in relation to the issues raised, because from leading law firm, Dunhill Madden to demonstrate that the documents denied the VCAT decision has serious implications Butler, who advised them to resist the do not fall into a pa rticular exemption, or for nume rous people, r ight across application. This they did, after a fashion. that a public interest test for release is government, involved in decision-making Late in 1998, the hospital sent along a applicable. In opposition, Kennett used FOI where those decisions are subject to FOI senior m edical practitioner, not a lawyer, to great effect and trumpeted its virtues. applications.' who formally relied on the exemption for Since his election in 1992, access to FOI has This is not such a case. As the Attorney­ 'personal information' and opposed its been increasingly impeded. General noted in her press release, the issue release. The applicant's lawyer made a case The exemptions have been broadened, was clouded by the inexplicable decision by for the names, in the interests of justice to particularly by extending the definition of the hospital not to seek legal representation

18 EUREKA STREET • MARcH 1999 at the hearing, and not to appeal. The exemptions available-but not claimed­ went beyond 'privacy' considerations, and the public interest in preserving the security and safety of the nurses could have been argued-but wasn't. The Supreme Court could have reviewed that decision, but Love wasn't asked to. The hospital, in other words, mucked up. 'Do I look old?' she softly quizzed, But the case, and the Victorian Govern­ And in earnest examination allowed mentresponse to it, show just how contested is the ground of administrative law. Only her reflection in the mirror As the Aust ralian Law Reform To search for an answer, to goad, Commission and Administrative Review Council noted in their 1996 review of the To force a reply, an elementary error, Federal Freedom of Information Act, access To say simply 'yes', simply 'no', to information is an accepted part of our (Both requiring careful exegesis democratic system. It is a bulwark against government oppression , and possible Which, though practised, is slow). maladministration or even corruption. Fears by public servants, as individuals, that they To convince I have naturally learnt will be targeted for retribution can be To look at reflections and to see, addressed in other ways than by dropping 'You're beautiful' I whisper to her, an iron curtain of confidentiality. The man's case is, in principle, a just Knowing eventually she dies, like me. one. His being convicted of murder is not Zoltan Kovacs the relevant issue h ere. If an individual h as been wrongly convicted and the truth- or otherwise-lies within the knowledge of a public servant, it should be m ade available for a court to review. There are many ways to protect individuals from m addened citizen s: removing access to information, lest an individual ci vii servant feel at risk, is not the best, or even The Secret Imbalance appropriate option. We can assume that the Victorian (Poem against intolerance.) Government will seek to use this event, and the public sympathy it generated, to I fear m y right hand's obedience and wit, make further inroads upon FOI, thus Its ability to write, to take up my instruction, achieving what Ju stice Michael Kirby described as a 'deadly sin': undermining the Revealing what my left hand can not do. essential access to independent decision­ The left entirely a Spartan balance, makers who can stand up to government A curl, a fist, a palm, thumb-and-finger paper-weight, and require that sensitive information be Not a manipulator of the considered provided. But a stationary presence, the bored, The convicted m an has promised that The well educated but idle, the nurses will not be threatened or harmed by him. He has said-and isn't it reasonable, The familiar, the unacknowledged, on cooler refl ection?-that he only wants Uncoordinated, the accepter of slow fate, his lawyer to be able to find out whether any of them remember if he was there, that The hand that holds the fork. day, visiting his wife-the alibi that the jury did not believe. Zoltan Kovacs Faith in justice, and open accountable government, is the foundation of community, and the best rem edy for citizen outlawry. •

Moira Rayner is a lawyer and freelance journalist.

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2, • EUREKA STREET 19 THEOLOGY: THE CHURCH Letters home Andrew Hamilton discusses the recent Statement of Conclusions that came out of the meeting between Australian bishops and the Roman Curia. This is the first of a short series of articles on the Statement.

INDece M""' ' gwup of Aw"li'o people. While an appeal to the 'experience It would be a mistake to dismiss the Bishops and Curial officials published a of the people' is nebulous because no people letter unreflectively. For the analysis and joint letter on the state of the Australian is homogeneous, the consequences of remedy proposed in the letter arc interesting church. It occasioned immediate comment, ignoring it are often disastrous. If Clinton's and deserve reflection. But, like President much of it negative. analysis were based on inadequate Clinton's address, it invites the question I read the letter just before visiting the consultation, the solution w h ich he w hether the large rhetoric of analysis and Immigration Detention Centre, where proposed would also be flawed. solution corresponds to the experience of I found a group of asylum seekers intent This leads us to the letter on the Australian Catholics. around the TV set. They were Iraqis who Australian church. It represents the Certainly, evidence can be found to show had fled from Saddam Hussein's govern­ reflections of som e Commissions of the that the social and intellectual influences ment, and who had just beard that Iraq was Australian church, assisted by officials of named in the letter are significant. But to being bombed. I listened with them to their Roman counterparts. It offers a partial my mind the letter misses a more seminal President Clinton explaining eloquently and viewpoint. Its diagnosis of the Australian crisis in contemporary Australian Catholic reasonably on geopolitical and moral church is in balance negative- it mentions life. This is the temptation to discourage­ grounds why it was in everyone's best good points in the initial survey, but, m ent, provoked by strains in Australian interests, including those of ordinary Iraqis, especially in the body of the text, focuses society. Discouragem ent arises when we to bomb Iraq. on the deficiencies which the Australian perceive that all is not well within our Clinton's analysis was interesting. But church shares with other churches infected society, but feel powerless in the face of the I was struck by the contrast between his by modernity. Its rhetoric is large- the forces which demoralise us. In Australian large rhetoric and the simple response of weaknesses of the Australian churches are society, the evil consequences of the asylum seekers who had suffered under described in the theological categories of un employment, substance abuse, family Saddam. They feared for their wives, their faith, anthropology, pneumatology, breakdown, and gross ineq ualities of wealth children and the future of their country. Christo logy and ecclesiology. They are also are evident. But governments are unable to The analysis missed the human reality. attributed to large cultural movements: address these problems, and even exacerbate The asylum seekers believed, too, that feminism, individualism, secularism, anti­ them. Government itself becomes Clinton's analysis was also unconnected to authoritarianism and liberalism. increasingly impersonal, treats critics as its the reality oflraq. Because he did not under­ In the view of the letter, the effect of enemies, and identifies communication stand Iraq, the only result of bombing would these tendencies of modernity is to blur with public relations. There is a breakdown be to strengthen Saddam's position, weaken proper boundaries-the boundaries between of trust, and boundaries are hardened the forces which opposed him, and make it good and evil, between ordained and non­ between citizens and non-citizens, the more difficult to influence the shape of Iraq ordained, Rome and local churches, men virtuous and the jailworthy. after he went. The only sure fruits of the and women, religious and lay associates, In the face of the difficulties of society bombing would be further malnourishment prescribed and maverick form s of and the dysfunctional hierarchies of govern­ of children and suffering of the weakest. celebration, processes appropriate to the m ent, discouragement leads us to withdraw The conflict between the large rhetoric church and to civil society. This blurring of from the public world and from of Clinton's analysis and the human rheto­ boundaries is said to weaken a proper communities into a private world. ric employed by the asylum seekers invites discipline and respect for teaching authority, Intellectually, this withdrawal can be us to ask which analysis and consequent especially that of the Roman church. expressed in post-modernist stra tegies, and course of action were authoritative. Clinton The rem edy, flowing naturally from the spiritually by preoccupation with personal had consulted the 'experts'-those with analysis, is to insist on proper hierarchies growth. These, however, are symptoms of geostra tegic perspective, technical military in doctrine, in moral behaviour, in relations malaise and not its causes. knowledge and political articulacy. But the between priest and people and men and It would be surprising if the church Iraqi asylum seekers had another kind of women, in the practice of the sacraments. were protected from discouragement. Many expertise-that of those who had Iraq as The keynote of the document is fidelity to Catholics often express the same alienation their country, had lived under terror and the magisterium. The bishop is to ensure from hierarchies and boundaries in the waited in the shadow of the bombs. that due order is observed and to remedy all church as in other organisations. Their If in this case the refugees' reflection abuses. This, however, is to be done 'not by alienation is increased by large rhetoric and seem ed the more cogent, it was because blunt use of authority, but through dialogue by actions and processes that appear they represented the experience of the and persuasion'. authoritarian. They readily suspect that

20 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1999 these display mistrust. While judgments boundaries and hierarchies will, in the fine status of women in the church, they have may be unfair, failure to recognise the face phrase of the letter, 'm ake the face of God been warmly welcomed. In the face of and the love of Christ in the church of their visible to the people of toda y'. discouragem ent, gestures of inclusion and experience leads people easily to withdraw For discouragem ent, the best remedy is trust are precious. from it. encouragem ent. Gestures of encourage­ The refl ections out of which J have put If this reading of Australian Catholic m ent, like that of Jesus in the story of the questions to the Bi shops' letter are those of experience is correct, the analysis and sinful woman at Simon's house, do not onl y one person . They n eed to be remedies presented in the document fail to destroy difference, but cross boundaries and complem ented by other viewpoints. But address the process of discouragement. They relati vise hierarchies in asserting a common the example of Iraq indicates how it is may confirm fears that the church resembles humanity. At a personal level, the pastoral important that the an alysis take into the broader society in being helpless before practice of the Australian church, at its account the experience of the people. • the discontents of modernity, and that its best, has been rich in su ch gestures. When leaders resort to the same gestures of they have been embodied in the public life Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United mistrust. It is hard to see how insistence on of the church, as in the enquiry into the Faculty of Theology, Melbourne.

THEOLOGY: T HE E NVIRONMENT Down to earth How does theology intersect with environmental concerns! Paul Collins found some answers at February's Earth Charter meeting in Canberra.

O CA"ONAC", you become involved fai th-tradition is partly responsible for a in something you think might really have constellation of unspoken assumptions some impact on the world. Over the last about myopic anthropocentrism, and months I have been working with a local exploitative attitudes toward the natural committee to develop an 'Earth Charter' world are often based on duali tic and along similar lines to the UN Charter on partially understood Jud eo-Christian values. Human Rights. Similar processes are under Critical of the traditional Western way in other countries. The charter is m eant approach, a number of philosophers have to be 'a statement of fundamental ethical Brundtland held that 'only growth can argued that we need to develop a new ethical principles and practical guideline that are eliminate poverty and create the capacity attitude. Roderick Nash's The Rights of widely shared by all people'. Notaneasy task! to solve environmental problem s. But Nature (Sydney, 1990) outlin es the One of the great disappointments of the growth Ca nnot be based on the over­ development of this movem ent in N orth environmental movem ent was the Earth exploitation of developing countries.' The America, and Australian thinkers like John Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Charter was seen as a way of consolidating Passmore have spoken of Western attitudes problem was that governm ents, including and extending 'relevant legal principles to which 'are infected with [an] arrogance ... the US Bush administration and the Keating guide state behaviour in the transition to which has continued into the post-Christian Government simply did not take either the su stainable developm ent'. world' (Man's Responsibility for Nature, Summit or the environment seriously. The After Rio, the idea for an Earth Charter London, 1974, pS). Interestingly, he also Earth Charter process is an attempt to was picked up in 1995 by NGOs and the makes the observation that elements of recover from Rio. Dutch Government. By March 1997, an this new ethic are 'already inherent, if only The idea of a Charter goes back to the initial draft had been circulated, with the as a minor theme, in Western thought'. Stockholm environment conference of eventual aim to gain endorsement of the However, I think that the pragmatic 1972, but it gained new currency in 1987. Charter by the United Nations. The February utilitarianism which still underpins much At that time the World Commission on meeting in Canberra was the first move by of this discussion is insufficient as a Environment and Development (called the the Australian committee to initiate a year­ foundation. Brundtland Commission after Gro Harlem long consultation process here. Western culture is probably the oddest Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Personally, I am interested in the role culture ever. Most other peoples have seen Norway) argued that sustainable develop­ theology might play in this process. For the world as som eh ow sacred. For m ent was possible without compromising charters are about ethics and ethics are indigenous people, the landscape and the the integrity of the natural world as about beliefs. Judea-Christianity often gets beings within it are endowed with m eaning developing countries struggled to support blamed for destructive Western attitudes and personhood, and specific places have a their ever-increasing populations. toward the environment. Certainly, our sacred or numinous quality. However, while

V oLUME 9 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 21 St Francis of Assisi Parish Paddington acknowledgi ng this, I am not suggesting in his Studies in the Psychology of the that this is the way that we should go . Our Mystics (London, 192 7) as a form of Parish Pastoral culture is different and we need to recover contemplation that 'is neither a sense­ and develop, as Passmore suggests, the best perception nor an imaginate projection nor Associate elements of our own tradition. discursive knowledge, but ... an intellectual The Par-ish of St Francis of Assisi in Sydney So I am proposing that we move the intuition, one of those intuitions whose seeks to employ a lay person or religious discussion onto a different plane. I prefer to exact type w e do not in our ordinary for the newly cr-eated position of Pastoral talk about the symbolic, iconographic, experience possess' (p1 21). Associate to work in collaborative ministry sacram ental significance of the natural This experience is further explained by with the Parish Priest, other parish staff, Par­ 1i ish Pastoral Council and parish community. world and of all the ving parts of it. Aidan Kavanagh, who describes theCa tholic The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says n o tion of sacraments as ' unsettling The Pastoral Assocrate will be involved with the development, or-ganisation and oversight that we have the capacity to intuit the encounters betweenlivingpresences, divine of a wide range of activities: pastoral care, unique, sacram ental individuality of every and human, in the h ere and now' (On liturgy, sacramental preparation and single being; everything in nature radiates Liturgical Theology, N ew York, 1984, p82). adult faith formation. A key mle wrll be meaning to the sympathetic observer. He Those in direct contact with nature and the enhancement of par-ish works by calls this intuition 'inscape'. wilderness, m any of them post-C hristian, encouraging and facilitating wide Hopkins also invented another word: often report experiences like this. participation of parishioners. The Froncrscan Vision for Ponsh M111rsLry will be the basis of 'instress'. This is the intuition of the In modern technological society it is all pastor-al activrty. connective, creative en ergy which binds difficult to integrate these experiences, Essential requirements: r-elevant tertrary groups of beings together. This can be because the dominant m ental horizon of qualifications in theology, education or applied to the life-significance and symbolic our so-called 'rational' culture ignores any pastoral care; an abi lity to work within a value of the communities of living things notion of the iconographic significance of diverse community; good communication that go to make up a rainforest, lake, reef, or nature. We see the world as a neutral, secular skills; driver-'s licence. Applications including bioregion. This is the way ecologists speak reality that is valued solely in term s of its resume and references to: about nature, and theology has economic potential or commercial The Parish Administrator-, St Francis Parish ""{ i{ much to learn from them. realisation. Literally, we cannot see the PO Box 39, Paddington, NSW, 202 1. T trees fo r the woodchips. Enquiries: Fr Lucas or par-ish secretary (02) 9331 4043 v vH AT D O I MEAN when I talk about the So what are the consequences of this for Closing Date: 19.03.1999 symbolic value or the sacramental the Earth Charter? significance of nature? I am saying that the First, it lays a foundation for a Charter natural world and specific parts of it have a that is acceptable to a broad cross-section of I WANT TO INVEST WITH CONFIDENCE life value that far transcends economic, people from m ost cultures and regions: most social or even human needs. For within mainstream Christians, indigenous people, AUSTRALIAN nature, and especially in beautiful and wild those from the great religious traditions parts of it which have not been manipulated and those broadly interested in spirituality. eThical and modified by us, there is a deeper, Second, it moves the discussion beyond Agribusiness or numinous quality to be found, a vector the old shibboleths to a more contemporary reafforestation. TRUSTS toward the transcendent. The sum total of cultural context. Talk about the 'sacred' Mining or recycling. Investors the natural parts do not explain the mystery makes sense to many today. Exploitation or can choose and sense of timelessness inherent in the Third, if nature is a symbol of whole which surrounds us. transcendence, it is clear what our first sustainability. Through the AE Trusts you For the perceptive person, there is a note principle must be: the preservation of the Greenhouse gases can invest your savings of simultaneous presence and transcendence integrity of the natural world is our prime or solar energy. and supe rannuation in that draws us both inward and outward at task, no matter what the cost. Armaments or over 70 different the same time; inward to the profound Fourth, this approach helps us recover a community enterprises, each expertly existential emptiness that exists in our perspective and context for ourselves. Our enterprise. se lected for its unique core, but which we rarely confront. lives belong within the biological matrix of co mbination of earnings, Outward, to a transcending presence that the natural world. We have no m eaning or environmental both cradles and confronts us. purpose separate from it. It is our only sus tainability and social After his encounter with God in a dream home and ought to be treated as such . responsibility, and earn a at Bethel, Jacob says (in the Latin Vulga te Finally, the Judea-Christian tradition competitive financial translation): 'Terribilis est locus iste' ('How has always h eld that nature in all its return. For full details awesome is this place', Genesis 28 : 17). The complexity and beauty is God's creation make a free call to word 'terribilis' here conveys the sense of and it mirrors God's splendour. To destroy 1800 021 227 being in a place that we do not control, in a it, for whatever purpose, is to destroy our lm •es/ln ents in the Aust ralian Ethical Trusts ca n state of acute vulnerability and radical most precious image of God. o n~r be made tbrougb tbe currenl prospectus openness. It is the experience of a transcendent In fact, I think it could be argued that it registered n•itb tbe Australian Securities presence that is non -personal and undiffer­ is our primary sacrament. • Co mmission and ami/able fro m. Australian Ethicai Investment Ltd entiated, but is also real and transforming. (' nil 06, Canberra Business Centre It is parallel to the experience of the Paul Collins MS C is the author of God's 13radfield St. IJOII'IIer ACT .!60!. mystics. It is described by Jos eph Marechal Earth.

22 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1999 EXPEDJTION

A NDREW D ODD

Something rich and strange

/I "" u" A"''""'R,' "id Moy' " we entered the ice for the first time. We were crossing 60 degrees south, the legal boundary of the Antarctic, and right on cue Professor Molchanov was piercing the pack. We were standing on the bridge, high above the water, admiring the contrasting forms of ice. Incandescent blue lumps of glacier were bobbing about with remnants of tabular bergs. It was all glued together with loose, sticky brash. It looked like a junkyard for unwanted ice. Somehow it had merged to form an imposing barrier, stretched across the ocean for Glacier near Shingle Cove, Coronation Island, South Orl

V oLUME 9 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 23 but worry about others doing the samel decide to stay locked in your ca bin rather birders who'd souvenired petrel eggs. I left the bridge and went astern. I wanted than risk dislodging a snowflake ashore. The eggs would have perished anyway, to see the effect of our entry into this other­ But you don't. You go out. It's irresistible. but he dem anded they be thrown worldly place. There was a ripple across the You wander among elephant seals and overboard. ice like the last gasps of a Mexican wave. In albatrosses and rookeries. There were the ship's wake, the pack was closing in as times when we were rolling in the snow, I WAS TRAVELLIN G in the wake of Helen quickly as we' d prised it open. Two tossing snow balls a t each other, Garner, who'd ventured this way a year hundred metres behind us it was welded tobogganing down the slopes. The Antarctic earlier. Her article in the Good Week end shut. Perhaps this place is a little more might be a sanctuary for peace and science, (30 May 1998) was an account of a similar resilient and forgiving than many of us give but there are no rules which say you can't trip with Aurora Expedition . Initially it credit for. have fun. I found it hard to read, probably because I'd Sitting on the deck was expedition Greg has enormous faith in the power of been beaten to the story by a piece so l eader, Greg Mortimer- a veteran the place. He believes that if people carry forceful in its scope and impact. But I was mountaineer who seems to get a real buzz the responsibility themselves they will gain also riled that anyone could go to the from taking people south. As the co-founder more from the experience. And for the m ost Antarctic and be so seemingly ratty about of Aurora Expeditions, he's heard all the part this approach works, but occasionally the place. Fancy going to the Antarctic and arguments and self-doubts before. I asked rules are broken and individuals do things whingeing about the sm ell of penguins. whether he felt like a trespasser. 'No,' he they shouldn't. Surely the opportunity to see it up close said, 'there are much greater forces One night, we were heading down the would temper anyone? at work than our puny efforts.' South Georgian coast in a swirling blizzard. A CCORDI NG T O THE New York-based A flock of about International Association of Antarctic Tour 100 diving petrels Operators (IAATO), 10,373 tourists were descended on the scheduled to visit the Antarctic this season. Molchanov and started There were a total of 16 ships, making laying eggs in various between one and 16 trips each- a total of nooks and crannies. lOS separate voyages. The overwhelming When the word went majority travelled to the Antarctic around, several bird­ Peninsula. watch ers were seen IAA TO is in charge of self-regulation in scurrying through the the industry, but there are also plenty of bar, pulling on beanies rules imposed on tourist operators. They and gloves as they ven­ are subjected both to the regulations of the tured out to commune Antarctic Treaty System and to their with the birds. respective na tionallaws. Aurora Expeditions The next day there has to submit an Environmental Assess­ was a rumour that a ment to the Australian Antarctic Division, Swiss bird-watch er even though the Peninsula is well outside called Raymond had the territory claimed by Australia. taken a liking to one Before the first landing, the passengers of the petrels and had are given a briefing. The expedition found it a berth in a naturalist, Dr Nick Gales, gets everyone box in his ca bin. Ray­ together in the dining room and goes through mond was a retired the rules. Clean your boots when leaving librarian who had and boarding the ship. No smoking, eating a habit of readin g or littering ashore. Don't venture within everything from the 5 metres of wildlife, don't rem ove samples, index pages back­ don't disturb rocks or moss beds. Avoid wards. He was on a encircling animals, always leave animals lifelong mission to see access to the sea. Stay upwind if possible. a represen ta ti ve of Move slowly. every bird family on lee sculptures, near Cuverville Island. In other words, the effect of our single earth. And what was all that stuff about not visit may not appear to be great, but, The Danish birders were up in arms, taking a cam era? Helen had got huffy at the cumulatively, tourism could have a major lobbying Nick Gales to retrieve the briefing before she left Australia because impact. One person disturbing a penguin is stowaway petrel. Nick explained that the everyone was talking about all the photos merely annoying, but if this happens heat in the cabin was enough to kill the they'd be taking. So she decided to leave her repeatedly over the course of a season, then bird. Raymond claimed the petrel would be camera at home. This reaction became the it becomes serious. snatched by skuas if released immediately. leitmotif of the piece. She believed that With the spectre of the entire Antarctic They compromised and released it at dusk. people 'raised a camera between themselves Treaty System looming large, you could Then Nick had to track clown the other and everything they encounter-as if direct

24 EUREKA STREET • MARC H 1999 experien ce were unbearable and they had to through the landscape, rarely stopping to 'that's sick'. There were times when we shield themselves from it'. describe it, let alone with any hint of reached the silly point of passing off scenery I gu essed her 'heroic lenslessness' had emotional attachment. with m ock disdain. Offered another more to do with a writer's desire to concen­ And now we were travelling through wondrous view, I heard myself joking, 'Oh trateon thewordsandnot to mix the medium. the same terrain. We might even have seen yeah, I guess it's OK. It'll do I suppose.' The photos were, as she acknowledged, a the same icebergs, a year older, a little more We couldn't absorb it all. Cameras were tool to stop the slip of m em ory. She chose chi elled, a bit more chamfered. In the crucial. They provided the evidence that to record the experience in writing, but Gerlache Strait we were cruising around, something as beautiful as this could exist looked unfavourably on those who opted just five of us in a Zodiac dinghy, taking it after all. The pictures proved our m emories for pictures. Interestingly, her article was in. Forms so bulky and intricate, so delicate weren't embellishing. Nobody's notebook accompanied by professional photos anyway. and beautiful. The way they just sat there, is that good. Still, Garner's essay Photo or no photo, there was one iceberg came as close as anything I will never forget. We were in Charlotte I've read on the Antarctic Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. The water to describing the indescrib­ was perfectly still. The Assistant Expedition able. She was trying to Leader, Rosy Whelan, was steering the represent th e feeling Zodiac towards a solitary berg in the middle of seeing icebergs . She of the bay. 'Don't bother taking photos yet, ' conceded the frustration of she said, 'there's som ething really special round the corner.' We motored on to a sh elf, cut like a cove, in the iceberg. We were actually on top and inside it at the same time, on a lip of aqua­ marine, or is it turquoise, or is it gun m etal, blue. It wa almost the colom of a public swimming pool, but much brighter, m ore Wandering Albatross cleared for landing, radiant, more inviting. The water was spark­ Albatross Island. ling and, despite its being little more than barely balanced. The slightest encourage­ freezing, I had to fight an urge to dive in. m ent and 50 tons of ice could death-roll. What is that colour of glacial ice? On Describing the scenery was every bit as board, the question was becoming a hard as everyone warned. Our diaries were consuming pastime. None of us could nail filling fast with purple prose as we grappled it, but Rhonda from Adelaide called it with killer whales and fur seals and twilight 'menopausal'- She explained how a friend and cornices and fjords and volcanic calderas lived near a park where weddings were and windswept rookeries. I'd noticed how often held. She said the bride's and groom's often I was u sing the word extraordinary. mothers almost always wore this Others were wedded to amazing or awesome same blue. or magic. In desperation, some of us resorted to expletives to bring oomph back to 0 NE MORNING I was on the bridge when hackneyed phrases. In the face of another the radio burst into life. It was Stefan, the work of nature, 'absolutely bloody amazing' Expedition Leader of another ship, the was a slight improvement. Before long we Clipper Adventurer. Pleasant greetings were w ere doing without the s uperlatives exchanged between the leaders. altogether. Another nunatak of stupendous Stefan sounded Dutch . He explained proportions with preposterou s turrets that foul weather had delayed him in the peering through a luminou s range of Falklands and h e'd had to change his silhouettes just became, 'Oh fuck will you itinerary. H e started listing all the sites he look at that.' wanted to see in the next couple of days: Others were still valiantly trying to Paradise Bay, Cuverville Island, Errera think of the m etaph or which could put a C hannel, D eception Island, Lemaire handle on what we were experiencing. When Channel, Peterman Island. Greg was taking 'plumbing the word-well' and coming up we first saw the icebergs, one woman notes, checking the dates when the Clipper empty. She turned to a string of adjectives described them as friendly battleships would appear. When Stefan signed off, Greg's which somehow, together, went close to waiting to m eet u s. I thought they were quiet curse gave it all away. This friendly the truth. Words drawn from crafts such as arranged like abandoned cars in a farmer's chat had been a ritual carve-up of territory. m asonry and dressmaking. Bevelled. paddock. Different makes and models, So was this the IAATO rules in action I Pocked. Frilled. Dimpled. And so on. It was different eras, each had a story. They state that landing priority is given to clever and refreshing, particularly after Julie, a park ranger from Philip Island in the first vessel that makes its intentions reading a series of histories in which Victoria, had a catch-all phrase. In the face known. If so, the Clipper Adventurer had Edwardian explorers cavalier their way of the indescribable, she just muttered effectively told the Molchanov to butt out.

V o LUME 9 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 25 The n ext day, the pleasantries were But feelings about other ships go beyond emotion, I suggested that the best cure was thrown away when we were exploring the personal inconvenience. Greg fears that the to make the last experience so horrible that inle ts around magnificent Cuverville industry could be invaded by entrepreneurs we'd never want to come back. Island. I was sitting on a rock, taking in with big money. 'There aren't any at the What followed wasn't horrible, but it the scenery, listening to the waves lapping moment,' he said, 'it's just my reading of was certainly memorable. As we rounded against the icc. A gentoo penguin surfaced the market.' This is the fear that bubbles up the heads we were suddenly heaving in two metres away, and, totally unaffected by again and again-it is not our impact but three-metre waves. The island's sheer rock the presence of humans, gracefully preened others'. It is not one visit to a sensitive walls offered no sanctuary; the prospect of itself before the long walk up to the rookery. place but several. It is not this operation, being swamped or capsized was real enough. The sun was warm on my face and I was but the ones without our regard for the In one inflatable was Hans, a middle­ drifting asleep. I started hearing a rhythmic environment.

26 EUREKA STREET • M ARcH 1999 TH E R EPUBLIC What's in a name?

If we can't have direct election of an Australian president, then the next best thing might be full public participation in the nominating process, argues John Uhr. I N POLITics, process is as important as substance. distance between public and president. Further, So, as we prepare for the 1999 referendum on the I suspect that minimalist models of participation will republic, it is time to try to win the federal parliament maximise public opposition to the changes on offer. over to greater public input to the change process. The best of the nominating proposals is that identified The people will vote only after parliament has by Beazley: the model proposed by former Chief examined and passed the Government's as yet unseen Justice Sir Anthony Mason and colleagues, referendum proposal. Once the Government declares published in The Australian of 16 December Anti-republican its hand, parliament will establish a special committee 1998, which has since attracted widespread to work through the detail of the referendum proposal. media attention. If this sophisticated model, commentators will Parliamentary debate will inevitably cover many of with its carefully balanced committee of the never be satisfied the topics aired at the 1998 People's Convention in great and the good, cannot win over republican Canberra: the appointment, powers and dismissal sceptics, then I predict that parliament will with any form of provision for the new office of president. have to go back to the drawing board and try Clearly then, the emerging debate over the to save the democratic credentials of republican change. appropriate form of public participation in the the proposed office of president. proposed nomination proces (should the referendum rr More relevant is the win the day in November) is as important as the .lHE GovERNMENT will probably introduce discovery ... that debate over the powers or the appointment arrange- into parliament a referendum package which ments. But anxious republicans have begun to define includes two bills. The first will contain the set parliamentary a preferred path of public nomination even before the of questions about constitutional alteration to parliamentary debate has begun on the merits of the be put to the people in November. The second appointment not Government's unseen interpretation of the Conven- bill will establish a nominating procedure that tion's minimalist model. Of course, in looking to the can be put into action later, should the proposal only lacks public details of presidential nomination ahead of the actual for the so-called 'bipartisan parliamentary support but also powers of the president, there is a risk of putting the appointment model' be approved. Something cart before the horse. like the Mason model of the nomination public legitimacy. The source of this republican anxiety seems to process is likely to be included in that second be the fear of the growing popularity of various direct bill, organised around a committee comprising One lesson that election options. By the end of the Constitutional parliamentary representatives of all political I see is that Convention, republican opponents of popular election parties, together with invited community had convinced themselves that the secret of representatives across a broad spectrum of republicans have to referendum success rested with a nomination process national and state interests. that had credible community participation. Steve Under this model, the nominating loosen the Vizard's richly entertaining Two Week s in Lilliput committee would meet (not necessarily in traces this curious development from an insider's Canberra but with no commitment to meeting preoccupation with perspective on the republican wrangle, as his team the people by travelling around the nation) and safeguards against tries to save the indirect republic from direct invite written nominations according to democracy. Even Vizard was sceptical, but Kim prescribed procedures. To my mind, this popular election Beazley has put the best face on it with his Australia approach is far from voter-friendly. It confuses Day defence of a nominating process that 'harnesses public participation with public input, and and sharpen the some of the strengths of the popular election argument, reduces community part1c1pation to while avoiding the pitfalls of dual mandates'. minimalist proportions by requiring would-be focus on public My fear is that none of the nominating models participants to fax up rather than front up. legitimacy. that are beginning to circulate are very open or Genuine public participation means that those participative. Intended to disguise the distance who make decisions face the public and listen between the virtues of public nomination and the to their case. By contrast, public input means that vices of popular election, most of the minimalist the decision-makers receive public submissions, and models of public involvement simply highlight the for my money 'submissive' fails to capture the

V o LUME 9 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 27 republican ethic. Residents of Canberra, or whatever territory and their national parliament, which alone city gets to host the non-travelling nominators, might will have the power to confirm, and thereby authorise, be able to front up to hand over their prescribed a nominated candidate for the office of president. nomination form, but the rest of us will have to live It is important that the national parliament with this submissive model of what I call recognise the right of the Australian people to fax republica. participate eff ectively in any presidential selection process. Nothing would be m ore fitting than for the ITIS WORTH PONDER ING the lessons em erging from the national parliament to establish a process giving the fact that this carefully crafted model has been so people the right of popular initiative through a 'bottom roundly chided as just another beastly bureaucracy. up' process of popular nomination organised through Certainly, anti-republican commentators will never state and territory parliaments, rather than solely a be satisfied with any form of republican change. More 'top down' invitation to participate in a centralised relevant is the discovery, by commentators like Hugh nomination procedure. Mackay, that parliamentary appointment not only But first- back to the 1998 Convention. The final lacks public support but also public legitimacy. One Communique identified ' the objective of the lesson that I see is that republicans have to loosen nomination process' as 'to ensure that the Australian the preoccupation with safeguards against popular people are consulted as thoroughly as possible'. election and sharpen the focus on public I do not think that any one national committee It is important legitimacy. can hope to do justice to that requirement. N ote that Putting to one side the m erits of direct the Communique identified this process of popular that the national election, it is likely that the feasibility of the consultation as involving 'the whole community' and minimalist model will come down to public that it particularly targeted levels of representation parliament support for the nomination process, and that below that of the Commonwealth: state and territory support is not there yet. The Mason model parliaments as well as local governments. This recognise the right nicely illustrates one cause of the current state important recognition of the federal character of the of the Australian of republican anxiety: fixated as it is on various Australian political system suggests that the task of rules and regulations about the formalities of community consultation should be shared among the people to nomination, the model never pretends to say state and territory political communities in order to much about the substance of community enhance the possibilities of participation by the two participate consultation. This focus on form spells trouble other classes highlighted in the Communique. These for the republican cause. Advocates of popular are 'community organisations' and 'individual effectively in any election within the republican ca mp will have members of the public', both of which can expect to presidential little trouble in pinpointing this 'participative have greater ease of access to the nominating deficit', as it might be ca lled. And in the anti­ process through participation at state and selection process. republican camp, where many participants at territory level. the very least pretend to be in favour of democratic participation, we can expect opposition T ECoMMUNIQU Efloated a consultative mechanism to any n ominating procedure that m inimises based on parliamentary establishment of a committee community input. to consider possible nominations. My advice to The Communique from the 1998 Constitutional parliament (not that they have yet asked for any) is Convention did not advocate popular election in any that this Canberra-based committee be retained as the form, either for the nominating committee or for the link between the openly participative state and final determination of the nominated candidates. territory Consultative Committees (as one might call I share the wish of many Australians that some form them) established by the eight state and territory of popular election or ratification had been secured, parliaments, and the prime minister, who is either through direct election of the president or of responsible for selecting a nominee from the shortlist nominating committees. But, presuming that popular provided by the national Nominating Committee (as election in either form is off the immediate agenda, one might call it). I think it is all the more important that parliament The 1998 Communique envisaged the Canberra­ do everything it can to bolster popular participation based committee as performing two tasks: detailed in any nominating process. consideration of public nominations and reporting to My suggestion is that the weight of sole the prime minister 'a shortlist of candidates'. This responsibility be taken off the shoulders of the one sensibly leaves open the possibility that a committee Canberra-based committee proposed in the Mason established by the national parliament might serve model. Australia surrounds Canberra; it is the centre as a link between the formal parliamentary presentation of national government in a federal political system. of the nominee by prime minister and leader of the In the best spirit of Australian federalism, we should opposition (whose consent is required for the nomination work to transform the Canberra-based committee into made by the prime minister to parliament) and a a link between the people organised by state and federation of state and territory advisory bodies with

28 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 responsibility for state and territory rounds of might approach to sound out their availability for community consultation. nomination. The model I prefer would have the federal Then each of the state and territory Consultative parliament establish a committee with representation Committees would m eet in private session to consider across all recognised parliamentary parties and also a shortlist of eligible candidates from their respective including the sort of 'community m embership' state or territory, together with any report on any required by the Communique: a micro version of the relevant community interest in the general balance of gender, ethnicity, region, age largely question of desirable or preferred qualities for Nothing would be established in the 1998 Convention. The precise nominees (for example, 'anyone other than a numbers can be subject to further discussion, but a serving politician'; or 'no sporting champions'). more fitting than workable size of 15-20 might be feasible. That shortlist and related report would then be I see the Nominating Committee as having three forwarded to the chair of the Nom ina ting for the national tasks. First, to work through the nominations that Committee for consiclera tion by the are provided to them from the state and territory Nominating Committee in its deliberations. parliament to consultative committees. Second, to use its own The Nominating Committee should initiative and take note of any additional candidates endeavour to come to an agreed position on the establish a process deemed by the Nominating Committee as worthy of composition of the shortlist. A model of sorts giving the people close consideration. And third, to provide the prime is a jury, where the task is to come to a tmanimous m inister with a shortlist of five or so nominees, position. The shortlist of candidates should be the right of popular balanced according to the criteria of 'community made public shortly after it has been delivered diversity' identified in the Communique. All this is to the prime minister and leader of the initiative through a consistent with the Communique. All I am explicitly opposition. We can leave for later investigation adding is greater public participation. the details of how parliament might best 'bottom up' process Of course, it is entirely likely that the organise its debate and vote on the first nominee of popular Nominating Committee would, of its own initiative, for our inaugural president. Other parliamen­ come up with a shortlist that included many if not tary systems with presidents, like India and nomination all of the state and territory shortlistecl candidates. Germany, incorporate a federal dimension to But the Nominating Committee could never generate promote greater public participation. Australia Organised through the same degree of popular participation and public can devise its own version of a similar process. state and territory legitimacy as that generated by the combined strength The Communique explicitly recognised of the eight state and territory Consultative that the 'process for community consultation parliaments, Committees. The distinctive competence of the and evaluation of nominations is likely to national committee compared with the state and evolve with experience and is best dealt with rather than solely territory committees is its deliberative capacity to by ordinary l egislation or parliamentary advise the national government of a nationally resolution'. I hope that the Commonwealth a 'top down' credible shortlist of (preferably unrankecl) candidates. parliament will act on this useful advice and invitation to To protect its peak advisory responsibilities, the proceed by way of a provisional parliamentary operations of the Nominating Committee would not Resolution and not attempt to regulate and participate in be put on hold in the event of non-compliance by one restrict the flexibility of the national or more recalcitrant states or territories: after the due nominating process. a centralised date for forwarding of state or territory nominations, the Nominating Committee would proceed with its TH E END OF THE DAY, the fate of the nomination business, even in the absence of one or more sets of referendum might not turn on any of the various procedure. nominations. nominating procedures. M y sketch of one Much of the primary work of community possibility is designed to bring greater openness consultation should rest with the Consultative to the whole process. But public attitudes will and Committees established by the state and territory should also focus on the substance of presidential parliaments. In each case, the state or territory power, and I suspect that no amount of tinkering with governments should establish and fund a committee participative processes will hide from voters the clown­ representing all parliamentary parties, with the side of what The Australian on 8 January described additional membership of invited individuals from the as the real strength of the Convention model: 'that it relevant state or territory, representing a similar goes tolerably close to mimicking the existing system '. balance of social interests to that identified in the Steve Vizard knew at the time of the Convention Communique. These state and territory Consultative what Hugh Mackay is revealing now: the least Committees would hold extensive community important reform in the eyes of the Australian people consultations to take note of as wide as possible a is one that simply mimics 'the existing system'. • range of community views on the general qualities required by holders of the office of president, and on John Uhr is Reader in Public Policy at the ANU and specific persons who the Consultative Committee author of Deliberative Democra cy in Australia.

V oLUME 9 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 29 INVESTIGATION Rationalist ructions One of Australia's venerable institutions has recently gone through the kind of internal upheaval more usually associated with party political factions. Margaret Simons reports on the goings-on in the Rationalist Society.

T E IDEALS of Rationalism dictate that towards them, it also showed contempt But the last 30 years have been largely a human beings should govern themselves towards the Rationalist Society'. story of decline, with many of the battles with the use of reason: that one should Feelings on the other side of the dispute that once put fire in the belly of Rational- argue one's point, and not rely on force to run just as hot. While Eurel

30 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 favour. He is still a senior columnist for other act1V1t1es, such as meeting and That is the intellectual fram ework. Now The Age, but it is probably fair to say that lectures, had been wound down, and that ba ck to money and power. his influence in the world of journalism Vick and Davidson acted as a 'two-person Because of its small membership and has declined since the heyday of the caucus' making all the decisions. comparative wealth, the Rationalists long paper. Lesley Vick responds that this is merely ago adopted a structure to protect the funds But as editor of Australian Rationalist, a cloak for a dispute that is really about the from being used by any hostile take-over his success was spectacular. He and Vick control of m oney. She and Davidson would group. The m oney is held by a separate persuaded the Rationalists to increase the have welcomed m ore help in running limited company, the Rationalist resources devoted to Rationalist events, she says. 'In any case, Association of Australia, whose members the journal, and it was particularly since we are talking about include directors and past directors of the turned into a periodical Rationalists here, why didn't they come Rationalist Society of Australia. The dealing with public forward with their concerns and argue their Society, m eanwhile, is the operational arm affairs, and distributed case if there wa a problem?' of the movement, and publishes the journal, through newsagents The new editor of the journal, Ian as well as holding social ga ther­ under a deal signed Robinson, replies: 'I suppose it is chicken ,....., ings, lectures and talks. with Gordon and and egg. You get two strong people making Gotch. Membership of all the decisions, and perhaps other people .lHE BEGINN INGS of the fa lling OUt that has the association, which don't feel able to combat that, or that their left the Society without its most prominent included a subscrip­ contribution is wanted.' members was a disagreement over the way tion to the journal, In any case, given the condition of the in which the million dollars or so of assets lifted to just under membership pre-journal, it is legitimate to were being invested. The Board of the RAA 1000, and journal sales wonder what would have become of the had delegated this task to David McKenzie, peaked at somewhere Rationalists without the Davidson journal. a former Labor MP from the Whitlam era, between two and three thousand, once more At a deeper level there are disagreem ents and a man de cribed as a stock market giving the Rationalists a small but influential about what Rationalism stands for in the 'enthusiast'. voice in national affairs. m odern world. Some of the older members Vick, who knew him through her work As editor, Davidson leaned heavily on tend to see Rationalism as being primarily on family planning iss ues, brought colleagues and friends. John Spooner, the an anti-religious movement. Mr Tom McKenzie into the organisation. In 1989-90 award-winning artist for The Age, provided Tatchell, in his '80s, and one of those who he took over as financial manager, and after cover art work. Old mate Bruce Petty supported the coup, told Eureka Street, 'We three or four years proposed a shift from a provided cartoons. Former Age journalists all have go t our own views on what it conservative to a speculative trading policy, like Geoffrey Barker, who wrote on means, but I think it's a euphemism for selling investment stock for trading 'Howard's Moral Ambiguity', contributed being atheistic, for being against religion stock. On the surface, this seem ed to be articles. But Davidson ca t hi net wide. In and superstition.' successful. Large trading profits were posted. recent issues, diplomat Richard Broinowski Other m embers take a broader view. But the character wrote about the links between trade and Brian Ellis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and stability of the human rights, and McKenzie Wark wrote at La Trobe University, and one of those society's portfolio on justice for Aboriginal people. The removed in the coup after more than had fundamentally magazine also provided a forum for less well­ 40 years in the movement, has published changed. known names drawn from the bureaucracy, articles calling Rationalists 'people of the In 1994, the value the ranks of the Rationalist enlightenment', and arguing that Rational­ of the share portfolio Society itself, and academia. ism is more than ever needed because of the h eld by the RAA anti -science attitude of younger generations, peaked at $1. 2 mil­ R ESPONSES FROM the older Rationalists the 'irrationalism ' of postmodernism and lion. N early half of it to this revival were not universally positive. deconstructionism and the appearance on was in bank shares. Some suspected that many of the new the world stage of powerful nations such as Most of it was con­ subscriber m embers had no real interest in Iraq, Iran and China, which had never been servatively invested. the idea ls of Rationalism to which they had through an enlightenment. By 1997, theRAAhad devoted their youth . Some told Eurelw Ellis has written, 'Rationalism ... is the far smaller holdings, Street that Davidson himself was not a 'real view that human beings are ... able to with the largest in an Rationalist'. di scover the truth, and decide what is right. obscure company called GE02 which has There were grumbles that the Australian We can free ourselves from prejudice, and never paid a dividend. Rationalist had become a general journal of we have no need of divine revelation, or Davidson and Vick were both on the public affairs, rather than one propaga ting royal decree . . . This is the sense of board when this change of policy was agreed Rationalism, and that Vick and David on rationalism in which the Rationalist Society to, but David on became increa ingly together were effectively taking over the of Australia is a rationalist society.' concerned that the apparently large trading society. Lesley Vick has also written on the direc­ profits being shown by McKenzie were N one of these grumbles was publicly tion of Rationalism, arguing for the society illusory, and achieved by selling down the aired, or at least not until after the coup. to promote independent thought, 'a way of value of the portfolio. 'You might say we The victors claim that the journal had come thinking which enhances our understanding should have go t on to it sooner,' he says. to dominate Rationalist activities, that and enhances human progress'. 'The fact is I am not a financial whizz, and

VOLUME 9 NuM BER 2 • EUREKA STREET 31 it took me two years to work out what was collectively or by any individual m ember,' inflation. 'If it ain't broke, why fix it ?' going on, and another two years to persuade they said. Lois Sweet told Eureka Street they asked. the rest of the Board it was a problem. ' that she didn't wish to add anything to the But Davidson responds that, although At a meeting in November 1997, comments made in the letter. the portfolio might have kept up with Davidson pushed for a change of policy Following Oldaker's work, Vick got inflation, it did not keep up with the stock back to conservative 'blue chip' investment. quotes on outsourcing the managem ent of market. Between June 1991 and 1997, the He narrowly won the vote-the first time the association. In a report submitted in value of the RAA portfolio increased by in a long while that a decision hadn't September 1998, she said tha t since 33 per cent, but over the sam e period the all b ee n un a nim o us. McKenzie need no longer be involved in ordinaries index of stock market movement McKenzie apparently active trading, and Sweet's administrative increased by 81 per cent. Davidson says went along with the work could be outsourced, the cost of that with a passive investment policy aimed n ew policy. administration could be cut to $13,000 a at maintaining the value of the portfolio in In the m eantime, year. A motion was passed accepting line with the all ordinaries index, the value without the 'profits' outsourcing in principle. Oldaker and Vick of the portfolio in June 1997 would have from the share trading, set about seeking more quotes. been $1 .7 million, instead of its actual value it was evident the But the outsourcing, and the resulting of $ 1.2 million. Effectively, h e says, soci e ty was living loss of honoraria, never went to a vote. At McKenzie's trading has cost the RAA money. beyond its m eans, the AGM of the RAA held in October, But McKenzie strongly defends his active with the m ain cost McKenzie organised a block of votes, trading policy and his performance. He says be ing the journal. including proxies from two absent, older Davidson is using figures selectively and Davidson, Vickandone board members, and Davidson, Ellis and 'with intellectual dishonesty' to back up of their supporters, Oldaker were dropped from the board. They his argument. 'Ken Davidson is a great long- term member of were taken by surprise. Davidson and Vick economic journalist and I agree with most the society and veteran of many causes, weren't at the meeting, having been detained of what he writes, but he knows nothing Kate Oldaker, began a close examination of in Canberra by a family health crisis. They about the stock market. H e has never put how money could be saved. had arranged to take part in the meeting his own money on the line.' McKenzie said Oldaker spent days going through by telephone hook-up, but McKenzie he sees nothing wrong with an organisation cheque butts in the office of the Society. challenged their right to do so soon after the like the RAA engaging She found that administration was costing meeting began, and they were disconnected. in speculative trading. nearly $30,000 a year mainly because, apart Ellis also wasn't present. H e claims he was 'It's been a success, from $17,000 in honoraria to McKenzie not sent a notice of the m eeting, although and Davidson's policy and Sweet, there were costs associated McKenzie insists that he was. was a disaster, you with maintaining the office in Lending force to McKenzie's argument can't really argu e with ry-' Sweet's house. that they had to go were the audited the fi gures,' he said. accounts, which showed the results of the 'What's a blue chip l.HE NEW PRESIDENT of the Society, Peter change in trading policy. The association company a n y how ? Dumble, and the new editor of the journal, had made a loss of $130,000 on the share You look at some of Ian Robinson, responded to questions put portfolio. McKenzie and his supporters the ones people regard by Eurel

32 EUREKA STREET • MARC H 1999 will continue, but agrees that some changes in distribution might be needed The Storks of Leon for cost reasons. The Society also plans to set up a website, and in the past Robinson has suggested that this could Extraneous sculptures in time complement or even replace the perched or lurking journal. high on the roof Robinson is presently a freelance writer and teacher of writing. His background is in of the Cathedral education. He worked for 20 years with the of Santa Maria Victorian Ministry of Education in dropping starkly white curriculum development, policy and against the deepening blues administration, with a particular focus on of stained glass windows mathematics, and that hold the weight of God has published exten­ sively in the field. He as indifferently also h as a long as the long thin involvement in the legs of storks performing arts, hold their including directing houyhnhnmic bodies. and performing at La Mama and The Pram Or like a motto Factory theatres, and of deliverance conducting work­ shops for writers at or pennanence the National Play­ occupying the turrets wrights' Conference. of the ancient city walls, In a paper on the the traffic thick future of the journal about the plazas, written late last year, Robinson suggested choking the calles. it be printed on cheaper paper, with a smaller typeface, not so many illustrations and changes to layout to save paper and there­ Down an alley fore money. Robinson also indicated a return of mud and excrement­ to covering 'traditional' Rationalist issues the paraphernalia 'such as creationism, religious fundamen­ of a half-lit tableau talism, new age beliefs etc.' as well as the sticking to the tread of our boots socio-economic issues favoured by like a bad memory- Davidson. 'It is not a matter of either one or the other but a matter of restoring a balance a stork lifts towards and giving due weight to all aspects of its towering nest, Rationalist thought,' he said. drawing us with it. Meanwhile, the battle isn't over. Most recently, Davidson's and Vick's supporters Near the Church are considering challenging the appoint­ of Santa Maria del Mercado ment of Dumble as President. This was storks gather done by the RSA committee, rather than by in the halflight. election among the m embers, which Vick believes to have been unconstitutional. They move their beaks So far, many ordinary members of the like heavy needles Society still don't know what has occurred through the rough fabric and why. It is likely that many of them are of conversation. journal subscribers first, and Rationalists Here we'll find second-if at all. It is hard to predict what none of the calm their attitude and their loyalties might be. Meanwhile, the management of money of those on the road from Avila­ left by generations of Victorian activists perched like stylites and the future of a leading journal of opinion, on row after row remain in dispute. • of decapitated trees. Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist. John Kinsella

V OLUME 9 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 33 AUSTRALIAN *86H1H BOOK REVIEW CLOSED OOOR~" CHILD SeXUAL A.BVS£ AHD rtif CHV~CH Februaryn\1arch: WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT? You can now purchase • Behind Closed Doors ", a A Rolling Column powerful new ministry resource designed to help Moya Costello on editing church leaders and congregations deal with child sexual abuse compassionately and effectively. Thi s Robin Gerster on Streetlife China authoritative and practical educational program includes insights from victims. It covers extent, impact and prevention and is ideal for group discussion and study. Peter Craven on Peter Robb's M Don't delay/ Return the coupon below to order _!~~~~~~~------~ Jeffrey Grey on Ken Inglis' Sacred Places Yes, I want "Behind Closed Doors" now I enclose my cheque/money order for: (make cheques payable ro ANGUCAR£ NSW) Peter Pierce on Keneally's D $55 (INCLUDING $5 postage) OR please charge that amount to my: The Great Shame D Bankcard D MasterCard D Visa L___L___L_--"-----_jl L 1_L t _j L---1 __L__l___L___jl LLJ J _j Dorothy Hewett on 5244/ES Dorothy Porter's What a Piece of Work Signature Expiry Date ...... /

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34 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1999 T HEOLOGY

Integrity: the long walk:

Antony Campbell continues his series on an unconditionally loving God. This month: Fear of God-God of love

III Th ere is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fea r has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfectwn in love. (I fohn 4:18) Our liturgical I DON'T LOVE T HOS E I FEAR . So wh ere does that leave m e with God? It is natural to be afraid of overwhelming force-an earthquake, a landslide, a tornado, a raging sea, som eone who is a lot bigger and stronger than I am . God's power is overwhelming. If I feel it is out of the question to refuse a dem and, it language often is natural to fear what m ay be asked. Most people feel that way about God. According to m any psychologists, intimacy is what almost everybody wants and what almost everybody fears just about as emphasises the badly. Understandably: intimacy needs vulnerability. Accepting a loving God inevitably leads to our intimacy with God. Three strikes against the love of God- all of them spelled f- e-a-r. A powerful God, 'God of power and a demanding God, and a loving God; all giving u s cause to fear God. Som e people do love and also fear. Such love and fear would, I believe, involve complex factors-past might'. Immense and present processes, rational and non-rational elem ents, adult and child aspects, the impact of doubt, etc. I do n ot know. It may be more realistic to say that fear holds us back from loving unreservedly. Fear power evokes fear. puts restraints on love. Trust m atters. How do we come to trust God? It can be a healthy A powerful God • God's power is overwhelming. N ot that we are tossed around by it as we might be by an earthquake, a fear that is tornado, or the raging sea. But we're confronted by it whenever we open our eyes or whenever we stop to think. properly awe and N o matter what we know about our universe, if we accept belief in a creator God, we are claiming God as a being of immense outreach and power. Our solar system , with its one star, is big enough- the sun, respect; or it can our m oon, and the planets. A galaxy is vastly bigger, even our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronom ers say there m ay be as m any as a thou sand million stars in the bigger galaxies. I can be wide-eyed with be a destructive wonder at the experience of thousands upon thousands of individuals all crowded into a single sports ground- but nothing like a million. The reality of som e ten million people below as I fl y over Los Angeles fear that is afraid is staggering; I have not fl own over China. Astronomers go further and claim there are m ore than a hundred thousand million galaxies out there, receding into the distance at incredible speeds. Believers of being in God hold that all this vast universe rests-m etaphorically- in the palm of God's hand. Belief in God is stretch ed, but belief in nothing may be stretching it even m ore. overwhelmed by Have too m any of us today lost the knack of wonder ? The ancients knew wonder well enough : When I look at your heavens, the work of your fi ngers, supenor power. the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that yo u are mindful of them I wonder what mortals that you care for them ? (Psalm 8:3-4) I can get around the wonder intellectually by letting God be God and settling for the limits of m y own 'power and might' human mind. I can't get away from the fear quite so easily-a very human fear, but mine. What do I do with it? I can ignore my fear. If I do, it doesn't go away and it does impact on my relationship with God. evokes for us in Very simply: I don't love those I fear. If fear is there, it is going to affect any love in my relationship with God. John said: 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear' (1 John 4:18)-but my love of God our prayer.

V O LUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 35 is far from perfect and my acceptance of God's love needs to do with losing myself to the other? What if my beloved some help. might want what I'm unwilling to give1 I don't see any way of banishing this elemental fear. The love of God is scary. To accept my love for God It is my natural reaction as creature in the presence of my is scary: to accept God's love, even more so. Creator. I have to look at it, face it, own it. I think I have • to put it in its place. That's where priorities are important. Fear of God Fear of God I don't want fear to have a high priority in my faith. Fear of God gets in the way of accepting God's love. • Perhaps not at a surface level, but certainly at that deep gets in the way A demanding God visceral level where it matters. Until I face my fear of Are we free to say no to God1 If we aren't, are we forced God, the reality of our human fear of God, I can't accept of accepting back into fear-a fear of the demand that cannot be God's unconditional love. It is all very well for me to refused? A relationship is humanly suspect if the freedom adopt a pious tone of voice and speak of 'reverential awe God's love. to say no isn't there. What happens in our relationship to before the majesty of infinite power'; what matters is its God? Is that so different? effect on my relationship with God. My fear may be eased Perhaps not at It is not fashionable among Christian believers to by belief in God's justice or God's love. But the fear is there. think of saying no to God; but it has to be thought about. Respect and reverential awe are there too. They are a surface level, The 'rich young man' said no to Jesus. Everybody I have close to fear; they are not the same as fear. They too can talked with believes that Jesus still loved him as he get in the way of our accepting God's deep, passionate, but certainly at walked away (cf. Mark l 0:21-22). Finding plausible and unconditional love for us. Humanly speaking, we are examples of our being free to say no to God goes against not used to associating deep and passionate love with that deep the grain; I think they are there. The question is not the profound respect and reverential awe. We revere and theological issue of whether God has a particular will for respect those we love, but that is different. Where God is visceral level us. The question arises for those who believe God has a concerned, our respect and reverence can get in the way preference in certain cases. of our accepting God's love. Fear gets in the way even more. Someone has a choice between two jobs, one secure God's love for us is a central element of Christian where it and solid with the certainty of a financial future and the faith and always has been . I believe that is true of Jewish other risky and uncertain with the challenging possibility faith too, but I don't know enough to make statements matters. of changing a bit of the world. One of these jobs may be about others' faith. Our faith can be like a pudding. fe lt to carry with it a strong call from God. The possibility Central elements get mixed into a pudding with a lot of Until I face has to be there of saying no-and of knowing ourselves other ingredients. It would be nice if faith were clear and loved by God as we walk away. Objectivity and moral straightforward; but it's not. God's love for us is a central my fear of God, wisdom are not the issue. Conscien ce is. The ingredient in the mixture that is our faith; respect and conscientious belief is that God wants one of the options. reverence and fear are among the ingredients too-along the reality of Such options may be found in the choices of career, of with many others. The taste of a pudding depends on all partner, of schooling for children, of medical procedures, the ingredients and the proportions they've been mixed our human fear and so on. in and the way they've been cooked. Where faith is concerned, we each make our own pudding. It is enough of God, I can't A loving God • to recognise that fear of God is one of the ingredients of Accepting the love of God is not impossible; it just isn't faith and is a force that can push belief in God's love for accept God's easy. Where God's overwhelming power is concerned, if us into the background. In my experi ence, fearing God I am certain of God's unconditional love for me, I am not remains a very human activity-and not always a healthy unconditional afraid. Those who love me unconditionally will not one. It can be healthy, but not always. For me, fear has to harm me-so no cause for fear. First, though, I have to m ove into the far background. love. accept that unconditional love. When I am Scripture and liturgy don't necessarily help much to unconditionally loved, I ought to be able to say no. Most banish fear. 'The fear of the LORD is the beginning of of us don't feel that way about God. Maybe I should, but know ledge' (Proverbs 1: 7). 1 'Fear of the LoRD' gets an first I have to accept God's unconditional love. Deep extensive press in the Older Testament. Even when down it is scary to accept love, to accept my being utterly contexts suggest a meaning closer to 'the love of God', loved-scary, and quite different from fear of another. the overtones of fear remain. Passages in the gospels can It sounds odd to call love scary. At first blush, it can intensify our fear. Remember Peter's 'Go away from me, seem to be ridiculous; on reflection, it can be seen to be Lord, for I am a sinful man' (Luke 5:8) or the centurion's right. I'm not sure why love is scary. Is it the fear of 'Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have having my shallowness revealed? Of being found you come under my roof' (Luke 7:6). Peter again: 'You uninteresting or boring? Of being vulnerable to rejection? will never wash my feet' (John 13:8). We might talk about Of being hurt1 Of dependence? Of loss? Has it something humility, but passages like these can confirm an unhealthy fear by injecting a false sense of unworthiness. Books reviewed in Eureka Street It is all very well for the gospel to say 'Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul'; that's may be ordered from THE jESUIT BooKsHoP PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC 3121 the stuff of martyrs. When it goes on: 'rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (Matthew Tel: 03 9427 7311, fax: 03 9428 4450 10:28) then it sounds as if it is positively encouraging fear

36 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 of God. It is even stronger in Luke's gospel: 'But I will for me, emotionally more than doctrinally. Jesus is the warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, human face of God. Jesus sweated, and smiled, and wept. has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear himl ' Jesus can take my hand in his, can take me in his embrace (Luke 12:5). Other quotations, of course, point in other (cf. Mark 9:36; 10:16- he took them in his arms). Jesus, directions; but such passages reinforce a fear of God that the Word made flesh, can bridge that fearful gap between is instinctive in human nature. Fear plays a larger role in creature and Creator. The incarnation helps me imagine faith than many of us might like to admit. the intimacy with God that was ours when we walked Our Roman Cath olic liturgical language often with God in the evening (Genesis 3:8) and that is open to emphasises the 'God of power and might'. Immense us because we are precious in God's sight, and honoured, power evokes fear. It can be a healthy fear that is properly and loved (Isaiah 43:4). This is the intimacy that awe and respect; or it can be a destructive fear that is God's unconditional love offers us. To accept it, I have to afraid of being overwhelmed by superior power. I wonder face my fears and entrust myself to God's love. It is what 'power and might' evokes for us in our prayer. not easy. • Since I've become aware of the havoc that fear plays with faith, I cringe often over emphasis on unrelieved Antony Campbell SJ is professor of Old Testament at the divine power in liturgical language. What if the liturgy Jesuit Theological College within the United Faculty of gave us more balance; for example,' almighty and everloving Theology, Melbourne. Next month: Unconditional love: God' in place of' almighty and everlasting God', or at the the vision. sanctus (Holy, holy, holy Lord), 'God of life and love' instead of 'God of power and might'. Wouldn't it be l. LoRD in small capitals here and elsewhere is used, following challenging and just as true? Fear of God is all very well the RSV and NRSV tradition, to represent YHWH, the Hebrew in its place. But fear of God can be powerful and out of personal name of Israel's God. As a rule, it is not pronounced by place and block our accepting God's love for us. Jews; it is not used in the Newer Testament, written in Greek. If I need to face my fear before I can accept God's love, It is important for Christians to avoid driving an unnecessary the incarnation of Jesus Christ becomes very important wedge between the Older and Newer Testaments.

ate Program Santa Clara University 1999 Summer Sessions J une 21-July 9 (Mornings or Afternoons) Arts, Spirituality, and Liturgy-John Buscemi Pauline Writings- Joseph Grassi, S.T.L. Mystery of Christ-FrederickJ. Parrella, Ph.D.

July 12 - July 30 (Mornings) Liturgical Catechesis-Rita Claire Domer, 0 .P. Eucharist and Culture-Mark Francis, C. S.V. Culture, Religious Expression & the Gospel-Virgilio Elizando, Ph.D. Spirituality and Ministry-JeanMarieHeisberger

June 21 -July 30 (Afternoons or Evenings) Art ofSpiritual Direction-Pamela Bjorklund, Ph.D. Keyboard Improvisation Skills for Liturgy-FredMoleck, Ph.D. Private instruction in organ, voice, and composition

June 22-July 29 -Liturgical Music Institute (Evenings) The Celebrating Church II -Fred Moleck, Ph.D.

Contact: James W. Reites, S.J., Dept. of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0337, USA 408/554-4831 FAX 408/554-2387 • [email protected] http://www.scu.edu/PastoralMinistries

V OLUME 9 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 37 EXHIBITION

PETER H ARRIS Sculpture on site

Ingc King & Ron Robcrtson-S wann. Sydney Festival 1999.

T,c Hmc • o• loge King •nd Ron Robertson-Swann as the featured artists in the visual arts component of this year's Sydney Festival was as unexpected as it was deserved. Both are accomplished sculptors who have produced distinguished work over three decades. Both have contributed significantly to the development of sculpture in Australia, not just as creative artists but as teachers and general advocates as well. They have earned their day in the Sydney sun. Or so their supporters would say. Among the avant garde, or what passes for it, they are perhaps seen as having nothing new or vital to add, their work as dated as the aesthetic informing it­ definitely passe. So, in a milieu usually controlled by voguish orthodoxy, it was remarkable that King and Robertson-Swann Mercury, 1998, by Ron Robertson-Swann, steel, painted. gained a look-in, and miraculous it was such a look-in. figurative and often clearly referential, the groups within grassed enclaves. However, Whose taste and judgment prevailed? viewer's attention is drawn to the occasionally, where the work or the location Who had the clout to sway the Sydney relationships within them or how they called for it, he placed a work on its own. Festival orga nisersz Was it Francesca occupy space, rather than what the King's Icarus, Jabaroo andAwal

38 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1999 of the largest works by King in this sculpture was to advance, if it was to feeling of resonant power, something akin exhibition, fabaroo and Awakening, were overcome the dead weight of monolithic to what the sun gives off. In her Rumba and the most striking of all the sculptures in the mass and volume, it had to splinter space, Dervish we delight in the way this work Gardens. open out into, and at the sam e time create, expresse the rhythm of the dances indica ted The cale of sculpture when it is located internal space. by its title. Whether it is Turn, Blue Nude, in a natural setting is crucial. Most of the One consequence of such Modernist Elvira Madigan or Pythagoras, we can find sculptures in this year's festival would logic was that sculpture came to be regarded in Robertson-Swann's work the kind of have been better suited to more defined or as a process rather than a product. The sensual elegance we see in the curves of an intimate spaces: a room, a foyer or a courtyard. sculptor gave himself up to the creative unfolding rose, the coil of a tendril, the arc That they did not look out of place in the process of making sculpture. The process of a wave or the straightness of furrows. Gardens was a tribute to Robert Sinclair's dictated to the sculptor what would be In Robertson-Swann's sculptures too we curatorial acumen. He delivered the best madei the sculptor was not to dictate, can find representation of human emotion. outdoors display of sculpture seen through any preconceived aim or idea, what Chez Charles Swann in part presents a in Sydney for a long time. the process would turn out. This playful, pained introspection, a pondered anguish, experimental, 'happenstance' approach is primarily conveyed within the head-like BOTH SCULPTORS are proponents of the for Modernists the truly creative way to topmost component-not just by the angle 'new sculpture' that developed essentially make sculpture. and thrust of the spanner and the bolt, but from Cubist collage and painting. Clearly, That King is not a Modernist in this also by the spanner's grip on the bolt. This the works on display identified King and sense can be seen from the strong element sculpture might present the body as a house Robertson-Swann as both modern, if not of design in her sculptures and the fact that in which we must live and suffer. both Modernist, sculptors, for they create they often have a subject. By and large, her Abstract art has the power to move, abstractly, though to different degrees, and works in Sculpture on Site are structurally delight and trouble us, som etimes more extend their work into space in a primarily simpler and more demonstrative than intensely than representational art. It is a linear way. No close observer of their Robertson-Swann's. So many of them look matter of seeing sculptures as objects in sculptures, however, would be likely to like cut-outs and, seen from a distance, like themselves, not merely as simulacra. It is a confuse a King with a Robertson-Swarm silhouettes. They can appear two­ matter of paying abstract art the right sort among the works of this exhibition, unless dimensional and insubstantial. Her of attention. it was Cantilever, probably the most sculpture is more the work of a carver and Certainly, Robertson-Swann and King's abstract of the King pieces on display. modeller than, as with Robertson-Swann, contribution to this year's Sydney Festival, King belongs to that strand of the new of a constructor. Her sculptures impress so astutely curated by Robert Sinclair, was sculpture which has not entirely forsaken more as product than process. Their as good and as sophisticated a public display the subject. This is why her work is not components are much more likely to be of sculpture as Sydney has seen. For always wholeheartedly abstract. The figure, fabricated to suit the work's subject or the Robertson-Swann in particular-hometown certain natural organic forms, the mythic artist's purpose. boy and very much a Sydneysider-the and the totemic, even the talismanic, persist Robertson-Swann, by contrast, makes occasion must have been a buzz. There was in her sculpture. She belongs in the line of as much, if not greater, use of found objects Paradisio, commissioned by the Sydney sculptural development running through as he does of parts he himself fabricates. Festival, standing like a triumphal arch Arp, Pan, Moore, Hepworth and Noguchi. This practice can actually work to diminish atop the long ascension of stairs leading to Robertson-Swann's allegiance in art is the abstraction in his sculptures, since the the Concert Hall foyeri there were some of to an abstraction, a formalism, that shuns found objects are more or less his best old sculptures, returning hom e to or strives to shun the subject. In works that ""r inescapably referential. bask with him in the Sydney summer. For are primarily vertical, such as Oracle, Melburnian Inge King, it might have been Standing Dancer and Mercury, he counter­ .l.HE SC ULPTURESof both Robertson-Swann no less pleasing to have so much of h er acts the suggestion of figurativeness by and King are a reminder of the complexity sculpture on display in the Emerald City. asymmetrical arrangement or the and imprecision of the term 'abstract' as It is a shame, but no surprise, that their introduction of components that disrupt used in art criticism. Even in those of their exhibition received little attention and little the conformation of the upright figure. If works in which a subject can be discerned, critical appraisal from the media. They abstraction is to be preserved, the tyrannical the work is not a literal representation of deserved a better response. Both are major force of the figure in vertical sculpture it-not that the notion of representation is sculptors-more accomplished than some must be resisted. King, however, welcomes simple and clear either. When we look at of the playwrights, singers and performers the fi gurative. In Rumba and Dervish, the sculptures on display, however, we can who were accorded greater attention for Icarus and Guardian Angel, her abstraction see that there are degrees of abstraction and their more diverting or accessible fare. meets her subject halfway. These works degrees of representation. All abstract art Still, KingandRobertson-Swann, against candidly retain the lines and conformation tends to be, if not representational, then at the odds, go t their place in the sun, and the of the human figure. They are, if this is least referential to some degree, for the public was given a chance to engage with possible, abstract representations. curves and straight lines and the shapes some of the best work of these fine Robertson-Swann belongs in a 'purer', they make in combination are part of the 1\ustralian sculptors. That was a shot in the more rigorous or Modernist strand of the nature of things. That is one reason why we arm for them, for sculpture, and for those new sculpture. Its proponen ts did not hold can find an emotional force and sensory who love it. • back from abstraction. They saw it as the pleasure in abstract sculpture. logical outcome of the Cubist initiatives. If King's Black Sun, for instance, creates a Peter Harris is a freelance critic.

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EU REKA STREET 39 REVIEW EssA v OuvANG Yu Let's eat Chinese c ""'"M"-th< ume JU t P" '-" and other types of menial workers, of which It is basically about successful Chinese in supposed to be a season of (o r reason for) only those who whole-heartedly serve and Australia, 'the survivors, the winners, the happy celebration and reunion- like the support their white masters are well ones whose families have made good in C hinese version of Spring Festival. represented. I don't know if this is true in Australia over several generations, or who Curiously, it is the season that unnerves reality, but the impression I get from reading have reached the head of some immigration me most, with its days of doing- nothingism the book is something similar: 'English ­ queue.' I had wanted to finish it within a and total non-reunion; our family members educated [Chinese] people like myself who couple of hours as I always do with such and relatives so far away in China. Our friends are mainstream Australian', as Moni Lai books. I found it hard to. Not because it is (if any), when they call to say 'Merry Christ­ Storz proudly says-people such as Bill not interesting: it is. Not because it is not mas', seem only people like us-willing O'Chee, Cla ra Law and Moni Lai Storz­ full of useful information: it is. (Actually, it exiles in Australia. A non- Christian myself, are well represented. is more helpful to me, in a way, than agencies I have spent many Christmases without a The importance of English can never be like Employment Solutions in my current tree and I have spent Spring Festival emphasised enough, as I com e to realise in freelance situation. ) I found it hard to finish likewise: no reunion dinner, no decoration, this country. Whatever you do, whatever because every once in a while questions no visits to friends' houses. I was surprised you say, has to be recorded in English. would crop up that preven ted me from to find that a friend of mine from Taiwan Otherwise, it is not 'worthy' of attention. proceeding. Admittedly, the book does has a similar experience: n o tree, no A few years ago when I wanted to justice to the s u e e sful Chine e­ celebration, eith er of Christmas or Spring organise a meeting with a Chinese writer in Australians who claim they are 'true-blue Festival, only this desire to go away Melbourne and made a query to a writers' Aussies' and 'mainstream Australians'. But somewhere and hide himself from it all. centre, I go t a question from them, saying, what about the other side of the story? The To find some post-Christmas comfort, 'Is his work available in English?' My losers, the ones who have not made good? I bumped in to a book about the Chinese in instinctive reaction to that is: 'Is that The ones who have lagged behind or even Australia by Diana Giese, called Astronauts, important?' I would n ever have asked the returned home? Should they all blame Lost Souls and Dragons. At the end of the sa me question in China to anyone who themselves for being failures because they book, as at the beginning, no comfort seem ed m ade such a proposal. Interpreters and are no good and spea k no good English? And forthcoming. translators could easily be arranged. Why then, how successful were these successes Whatever the reason may be, a booming sh ould we exclude other cultures by anyway1 I was keenly reminded of my visit industry h as arisen out of this n ew stipulating that the knowledge of English to Parliament House in Canberra and of my Australian attempt to 'reclaim' its Chinese should be the prerequisite? vain attempt to find a black or yellow past. In addition to Diana Giese's book, Whether we like it or not, the pressure face in its heroes' gallery of prime there are Eric Rolls' Sojourners and Citizens, on migrants fo r better English has m et with '"T"" ministers and parliamentarians. Lachlan Strahan's Australia' China, Jan equally strong resistance. A while ago, Ryan's Ancestors: Chinese in Colonial I watched a little item on the TV news to .l.o BE FRANK, I am a bit sick of being a Australia and SBS's presentation of a the effect that the Australian Government Chinese at the moment. If I want to be a documentary called The Embraced. The was going to introduce a new regulation by Chinese, why do I have to stay and overstay list goes on. And rightly so, of course: which no migrants who could not spea k here? But there's no-one stopping me from Chinese have been 'kept silent', as one of English would be allowed in to the country. becoming an Australian either, although the informants in A stronauts, Lost Souls That reminded m e of a Chinese acquaint­ I have my doubts about the likelihood that, and Dragons claimed. It is now time they ance I had a few years ago who consistently if I swear allegiance to Australia today, were given a 'voice', 'embraced', 'acknowl­ rejected the chance offered him to take I might forget my Chinese identity tomor­ edged', and written into his t ory as English examinations in order to have his row. If I acquire my Australian citizenship, interesting, 'neglected' histori cal material. application in the 816 ca tegory accepted. will I, 40 years from now, still refer to myself Surprising similarities there are in His reasoning was simple: I am in my as 'always Chinese' because I was once history, someone once said. As I found in mid-40s. I can never learn this foreign Chinese? Or can I possibly turn myself into my doctoral thesis dealing with the language however hard I may try. I have a 'true- blue Aussie' by then1 If not, what rep res en tati ves of the Chinese in Australian m anaged to live in this country for eight shall I call myself, Chinese- Australian or fiction, there is a 'white C hinaman' years without a good command of English. Australian-Chinese? Or neither? Or both ? phenom enon in Australian fiction in which Why do I have to master the language But what does it mean to be neither or both? Chinese who are highly educated-which to become a PR (s h ort for permanent Enter Pauline Hanson. Someone few normally means educated in England-and residency)? Australians did not have to Chinese like. And few migrants like, judging speak good En glish , tend to be well m aster an Aboriginal language before they by the anti-racist rallies over the past two represented and favo ured in fi ction over cam e to this country, did they? years in som e capital cities in Australia. th ose of the 'lower order' such as the market The book is big, and comprehensive­ But a talk with a Chinese friend of mine ga rd eners, street hawkers, laundry men, ! mean Astronauts, Lost Souls and Dragons. who went to one Melbourne rally was

40 EUREKA STREET • M ARC H 1999 immediately revealing. He said, 'I just don't Melbourne suburb as dead as a desert and a Chinese who can't speak a word of English understand why there were more guilao with few children to play with, either but nevertheless recounts his experience in (devils, meaning Australians) participating Chinese or Australian. Chinese. For writers who do not bow under in the rally than Chinese. If they (Chinese) I went to Hong Kong and China to these representa tion al yokes and are are really anti-racist, why didn't they com e conduct research on their representations persistent in telling their true storie in to the rallyl N either do I like the way in of Australia and Australians. Without going ways not confined to or defined by any which some Chinese commentators have into too much detail, I shall quote a typical forms of nationalism . attacked Pauline Hanson in the Chinese passage (of my own translation ) from a Meanw hile, my doctoral thesis sits at m edia, saying tha t sh e w as su ch an Hong Kong magazine, in which scathing the bottom of the bookshelf ga thering dust ign orant person becau se sh e h ad not much comments are made on Australian politics. and going begging fro m one publisher to schooling and worked in a fi sh­ It goes like this: 'Australian political arena another. That seem s to be the only fate of / n and-chips restaurant. is especially full of scandals and intriguing su ch work. It is praise and success that we stories, staging one play after another. The want to hear of and Diana Giese's book is L orLE SHOULD AT LEAST be allowed to audience laugh with understanding and such a wonderful book of praise and success. speak their own mind. Otherwise, where is applaud with appreciation .' And another But I need a restfrom all that. I have read our cherished freedom of speech? Can you similar comment goes: 'In the political arena news in the Australian-Chinese m edia of imagine anyone speaking against the of all the states in Australia, not a small multiple suicides by recent Chinese arrivals Chinese Communist Party in China like number of officials are extrem ely dirty, and who could not obtain their PR in Australia. Pauline Hanson does h ere against Asian these officials defend each other like in a I h ave h eard stories of brok en -down migrants? ' den of sn akes and rats, as black as a m arriages from recent reunions. I have heard The Hanson form of Australian nation ­ bottomless abyss.' stories of Chinese migran ts hospitalised for alism is based on the exclusion of the coloured people, particularly Asians. This is not much different from the new form As Australians used to define themselves against the that attempts to reclaim the Chinese past and make it part of 'u s'. In this attempt, invading and corrupting Chinese in the past, there is this new Chinese have becom e u seful historical material. They have erved a purpose by problem of the Chinese turned 'true-blue Aussies' and providing an interviewed voice. They exist for reclamation and diges tion , and, 'mainstream Australians' who define themselves against the ultimately, as 'informants'. Here, I am reminded of my problem s unliveable, 'corruption'-ridden Asia. with Australia that rem ain unresolved. Being a short man, I can hardly find anything Som etimes, it is easy to talk about politics m ental illness. I know people who claim that can m atch my size in any Australian in terms of nationalism and to ignore real they will never be able to learn English stores. My happiest moment cam e when human complexity. Nearly on every account well, just as some Australian s to whom I bought a woollen jumper in Shanghai I found myself putting a big question m ark I teach Chinese claim likewise. What do which, I felt, was designed just for m e. My against Giese's representations. I would say we do about these people? Go on ignoring Australian-design ed phone book does not no to the 'food is life' perception of Chinese them and pretend that they do not exist provide enough space under X, Y, Z, for m y fo od because I, personally, do not take it that because Chinese people are so su ccessful in Chinese fri ends, m ost of w h om have seriously. And after my retu rn to China turning them selves into 'true-blue Aussies' surnam es starting with X, Y, Z . I found m yself becoming increasingly and 'mainstream Australians'? As Australians used to define them selves critical of that carnivorous, voraciou s and On the eve of my decision to m ake a against the invading and corrupting Chinese wasteful aspect of Chinese culture. I would decision wh ether to becom e a ' true-blue in the past, there is this new problem of the say no to the 'families occupy a central Aussie' or not, the voice of a friend from Chinese turned ' true- blue Aussies' and place in Chinese culture' perception . It may Hong Kong cam e from afar, sardonically: ' m ain stream Aus tralian s' w h o define be true of some Australian-Chinese, but is 'D o you want to wait u n til an oth er them selves agains t the unli vea ble, certainly not true of a lot of the m ainland Tiananmen Massacre happens? ' I believe in 'corruption'-ridden Asia. Detailed accounts Chinese, m yself included; fa milies are his sincerity and the likelihood of such a of recent experience of the Chinese who breaking down everywhere in China-refer possibility. But equally do I believe in the return to China abound in local Chinese­ to the soaring statistics on the number of certainty that, as long as I live in this Australian newspapers. They are full of divorces each year and the increasing country, there will be plenty of Pauline horrors. Of sordidness. Of corruption . Of all number of young couples who do not wish Hansons or h er like. My question to myself sorts of uncomfortableness, sharpened by to have any children, for variou s reasons. is this: will my Australian passport be able the n ew-found 'happiness' in Australia-a I would say no to the perception of guanxi to work wonders in changing my facial phen om en on that coincides with the (ties or connection s) as a glamorous and all identity so that I don't have to be recognised accounts in Giese's book. My reaction is important Chinese relationship. In fact, in and rightly labelled? • mixed to my homeland where I went back contemporary Chinese terminology, guanxi last Christmas. I rem ember my son's tearful has quite negative connotations. Ouyang Yu is an author, poet and translator. reluctance to leave his cou sins in China, Increasingly, I find m yself growing Diana Giese's A stronauts, Lost Souls and and the bleak prospect of his return to a impatient, wishing for something else. For Dragons is published by Penguin.

VOLUME 9 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 41 THEATRE

GEOFFREY MILNE Much ado about summer

L 1998 ~""'""ON '"w' ch,ngc McNally has utilised the series of master character of the governess. There is more from the serious political drama of 1997. classes given by Maria Callas at New Yark's action in the narrator's interminable Summer, however, still provided most of Juilliard School at the end of her career in introductions than in practically any of the its usual favourites-indoors and out. In 1971-72, juiced up with her lacerations of 12 scenes that ramble over just three fact, there have been a number of virtually the three young hopefuls who present locations. For all its perambulations (we institutionalised summer theatre offerings themselves for h er appraisal and advice, her move six times this year with our rugs and in recent years in various cities. Essgee scathing commentaries on just about Eskies), the show is static and thin. We Entertainment (Simon Gallaher's produc­ everybody in the opera world and two should have been left with our memories of tion company) has opened summer flashbacks to happier days at the height of the film intact. productions of Gilbert & Sullivan in the her fame at La Scala. The flashbacks are The principal summer institution in Victorian Arts Centre since 1994, continuing ostensibly triggered by the young singers' Australia is Shakespeare, and the major a tradition of summer musicals there since renditions of arias she had made famous, player in this boom is Glenn Elston, whose Pirates of Penzancein 1984. This year, Essgee but McNally also uses them to unravel populist open-air picnic productions have has ditched G & S in favour of Stephen autobiographical details of less happy times, been seen in practically every mainland Sondheim's 1962 musical A Funny Thing especially her relationships with husband capital's Botanic Gardens during the 1990s. Happened on the Way to the Forum (photo Giovanni Meneghini and lover Ari Onassis. Even before Elston, summer Shakespeare right) and further diversified its activity by I found this device a bit clunky and was a popular event, particularly in Sydney offering the Queensland Theatre Company/ repetitive, but it certainly increases the where a profit-share company called Sydney Theatre Company production of challenge for the actor playing Callas. And Shakespeare by the Sea has been presenting Terence McNally's drama Master Class. in Amanda Muggleton (who has played this two plays in repertory (typically a comedy In many ways, Forum is well suited to role since Robyn Nevin premiered it in and a tragedy) at the Band Rotunda at Essgee's talents and to its always broad, Brisbane in 1997) we got a truly wonderful Balmoral Beach every year since 1987; this irreverent comic style. While Burt Callas. Her performance is emotionally year's offerings were Merry Wives of Shevelove's and Larry Gelbart's book is in tense but also full of warmth, intelligence Windsor and The Merchant of Venice. pro ba bl y faithfully rendered in this and wit. To Gallaher's delight, the show Director David McSwan's approach to performance, it does feel as though Jon was extended-and in a city awash outdoor Shakespeare is simple and English (Pseudolus), Drew Forsythe (Senex) with summer frivolity. uncluttered, relying on the power of the and some of the others are making half of it stories in a stationary floodlit setting. up as they go along, as they did with their A NOTHER MELBOU RNE institution is Shakespeare has also been given annual merciless manglings of G & S. There are Performing Arts Projects, who have been summer (or dry season) open -air productions certainly enough star parts to go round for doing promenade productions in the gardens by the Darwin Theatre Company for years this excellent ensemble (Philia for soprano of stately mansion Rippon Lea every in a variety of settings, from the Old Town Helen Donaldson, Hysterium for Essgee summer since 1991. For the first few years, Hall ruins to the Botanic Gardens and a newcomer Jonathan Biggins-the funniest PAP concentrated on Lady Ottoline luxurious garden outside the Museum and man on the Australian stage at the Morrell's Oxford estate and the Bloomsbury Art Gallery. DTC's Shakespeares (ranging moment-and the pompous Miles set who spent their summers cavorting across all genres) are relatively orthodox, Gloriosus for Mark Dickinson) and they all there, in a play by Julia Britton called Loving stationary indoor-style productions staged have a fabulous time doing it. The material Friends. More recently, adaptations of Lady out of doors, but they gain extra resonance has dated since the un-PC '60s (songs like Chatterley's Lover, Seven Little Australians from their magical settings. 'Everybody Ought to Have a Maid' and and The Great Gatsby have been the The site of the National Carillon on 'Lovely' for the vacuous heroine), but plot, preferred option, with as many as 16 scenes Aspen Island in Canberra has also been characters and situation are as timeless as in six or seven different locations, moving home to a wide variety of different Shake­ the Roman farces of Plautus upon which the audience as many as ten times through speare plays each summer since the early this is based, or even the later Commedia the evening. 1990s. Different parts of regional Victoria dell'Arte. I enjoyed the show, although it This year's offering was an adaptation have also been used as sites for remarkable doesn't quite have the outrageous panache by Barry Lowe of Henry James' novella, The environmental productions; the Geelong­ of the G & S trilogy. The production played Turn of the Screw. It would be difficult to based Postcard Productions, for example, Her Majesty's in Adelaide in February and imagine a work less suited to open-airpicnic­ did a Macbeth in the You Yangs from 1992 goes to His Majesty's in Perth in March. style performance than this wordy to 1994, Bruce Widdop's Ballarat-based Master Class is from the other end of psychological thriller, practically all of Ozacthave done a King Lear in the Grampians the theatre spectrum. American playwright which happens inside the head of the central and a fine, perambulatory production of

42 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1999 Pericles on Battery Point at Port Fairy. all of the rock musical gimmickry works frocks are a scream. But this production Easily the most popular open-air plays (some of it is pretty heavy-handed and it insists, rightly, much more on the centrality have been A Midsummer Night's Dream slows things down somewhat) but there are of the Hero/Claudio plot and thus finds a and As You Like It, both well-suited to some unexpected delights, such as Hero's lot of the darker corners of the play. Seeing open -air presentation by virtue of their forest wedding march accompanied by the sonnet two such different productions in the space locations. But Macbeth has also often been 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' set of a couple of weeks, one wonders if you done with success and so has The Tempest; as a 6/8 Irish ballad! could contrive the perfect Much Ado by Much Ado A bout Nothing is another which But that's not all there is about Much combining the best elements and is gaining popularity. Ado. Venturing to Brisbane, I saw another ideas of both. Which brings us back to the Elston version thanks to Harvest Rain Theatre, a Hocking & Janes productions of 1998-99. company who operate in a remarkably well­ ENALLY, one for the kids. Back in A clone of the 199 7-98 M elbourne appointed thrust-stage (indoor) theatre at Melbourne, I caught up with the current production of The Taming of the Shrew has the Christian Life Centre in newly trendy version of Elston's evergreen Wind in the just had a long run in Perth's Botanic New Farm. Harvest Rain are a Christian Willows, directed this year by Marianne Gardens in King's Park and yet another group who tackle a wide range of drama, but Bragge. It was a delight to return to. It has Shrew clone is in residence at Sydney's this very competent pro-am production is been pared back a bit in recent years and

(with a fine cast including Nicholas Eadie, their first foray into Shakespeare. Directed only uses three locations, which mars the Helen Thomson, Arky Michael, Peter by Andrew Buchanan (one of Brisbane's impact of Toad's first car crash a bit, but Carroll and Genevieve Lemon). The new brightest young actors, who also plays otherwise maintains the focus better. production for Melbourne is Much Ado and Benedick), this Much Ado is a bit more Damien Jamieson's Toad is as good as any it fo llows its predecessors in its knock­ orthodox, although the war from which the of his predecessors' and so are Peter Docker's about style. In this version, Claudio and boys are returning (by helicopter') is in phlegmatic Badger and Patrick Moffatt's Benedick and Hero, Beatrice and friends are Vietnam and the setting cleverly evokes a many lightning-change parts. Anthea Davis members of rival rock bands, the former jungle location. The stage business features is also a lovely Mole. But the best thing just returned not from war but a triumphant a lot of hilariously awfull960s dancing and about the show is its unity of music, action world tour. Thus Leona to is the girls' band some nifty jungle evasion techniques (the and the awful gags for the grown-ups. It's a manager, Dogberry and Verges are roadies/ scene when the boys describe how much little jewel in the rich summer crown. • security guards, Don Pedro is the boys' Beatrice is in love with Benedick while he manager and Don John, the bastard brother, is supposedly hiding is a highlight of the Geoffrey Milne is head of theatre and drama is a growling Tom Waits soun d-alike. Not whole summer), while the girls' A-line at LaTrobe University.

V oLUME 9 N uMBER 2 • EU REKA STREET 43 range- wait for his of obtaining this case, whose contents Richard II.) Enter the (presumably not the latest design of figure­ stage-struck Viola De skating Nikes) are sough t by the IRA and Lesseps (Gwyne th the Russians, most of the 'ronins' get killed Paltrow), a rich m er­ and France's urban population is severely chant's daughter, reduced, establishing a tally of street-s tall pursued by the scatterings and car smashes to rival Bullitt. impoverished Earl of I cannot promise that you will find out Essex (Colin Firth, so what is in the case, but I can promise that much be tter as a by the end of Ronin, you wi ll not care. m elancholy comic In the first half, Ronin builds enormous villain than he was as credibility which it then progressively the inadve rtently dissipates. Frankenheimer 's s tated comic, m elancholy intention 'to build tension through charac­ Darcy in Pride and ter and silence rather than action' sizzles Prejudice). Viola dis­ the screen, then is inexplicably abandoned guises herself as a boy, in favour of silly repetitive action sequences. gets to play Romeo, H e credits Fren ch auteur Jean -Pierre m eets Will and learns Melville's Le Samourai as Ronin's m ain that the play is the influence, but sets up copyca t scenes to thing. Which all goes bring out the cinem a studies major in us all: to show what a great A u Bout De Souffle; The Third Man; even a playwright/ screen ­ bit of Rambo's self-surgery thrown in. writer can do when his homage to a greater A ronin, we are informed portentously playwright is not m erely referential. Or in an opening credit, is a masterless warrior. N on-Stoppard deferential. This is reinforced by another short lecture This is grand, profligate cinema, at home in the movie. To an audience so telegraphed, Shal

44 EUREKA STREET • MARcH 1999 and very good. His latest offering, Men with pathology (as played by Vince Vaughn, in performances of the likes of Marilyn Guns, is a strikingly beautiful combination the worst performance of the film) now Monroe, Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey. of political documentary and magical-realist seems more commonplace than shocking. The minute she starts to sing, her ghost story, set in an unnamed corner of For me, the most useful way to look at personality is transformed. She acquires all South America. this picture is as a piece of conceptual art, the brazen confidence of the performers she As with many of Sayles' films, we are organised around the play of repetition and mimics. She becom es as dominant and as guided through the tale by an innocent, a difference between original and copy that fake as her mother. character discovering things as we discover has intrigued much of contemporary art Ray happens to hear LV sing. She could them. Dr Fuentes (Frederico Luppi), an throughout the '90s. At this level, Van be the discovery of his career. But he needs affluent city doctor, decides to visit some Sant's Psycho is actually a pretty interesting to be able to coax her onstage. Thus begins students in the mountains. Unaware of any film. Unfortunately, as with much a classic seduction or temptation story. It danger, Fuentes drives blindly into the very conceptual art, it's probably more parallels a reasonably weak romantic or dark heart of his country's political, ethnic interesting to think about it than actually liberation story in which LV comes and religious conflicts. He discovers a to see it. gradually to trust the young man who fixes country at its own throat, and is horrified -Allan James Thomas her phone, Billy (Ewan McGregor). by the things he should have known. While Little Voice does have its weaknesses. it is tempting to consider Fuentes' naivety But it has the irresistible strength of making as unforgivable and cowardly, Men with The full score comedy in dire social circumstances. Which Guns makes you realise his sins of omission may be why a good number of English are so common it would be unwise to cast Little Voice, dir. Mark Herman. If you've comics head north. the first stone. ever met a Yorkshireman, or read the -Michael McGirr SJ -Siobhan Jackson Brontes, you'd be excused for wondering why some of the best FILM GIVEAWAY humour of recent times has come Eureka Street has 1 0 double passes to Men With Guns Retro repro from the north of England. It used to give away, courtesy of Pa lace Films. Passes are valid to be called the dour north. But for Melbourne only (excluding Fr iday and Saturday Psycho, dir. Gus VanSant (or is that Alfred films such as The Full Monty and evenings). just put your name and address on the back Hitchcock?). ' Hi tchcock- w hat's the Brassed Off have shown that of an envelope and send to: phrase? Hitchcock isn't feeling himself dour and funny can get along just Eureka Street March Fil m Giveaway, today ... ' That's the best synopsis I can fine. PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 312 1 think of for Gus Van Sant's reproduction Little Voice is from the same (you can't really call it a remake) of Alfred director as Brassed Off. It is the Hitchcock's 1960 proto-slasher classic, story of LV (Jane Horrocks), a Psycho. Same script, score, shots, dialogue­ timid young woman who seldom the only major difference between the two speaks. In fact, there isn't much is that Van Sant's is in colour, and has need for her to speak, as her moved from the '60s to the '90s. VanSant mother, Mari (Brenda Blethyn), justifies his project by the desire to make with whom LV shares a dingy Hitchcock's work accessible to a '90s tenement, seldom shuts up. LV sensibility. Unfortunately, it's precisely spends her life trying to avoid because of its shift into our present that attention. Mari spends her life Van Sant's Psycho jars, not only for those trying to attract it, especially the who have seen the original, but also, I suspect, attention of men, especially that for the new audience it's supposedly for. of one Ray Say (Michael Caine), a Part of Hitchcock's perverse genius lies theatrical entrepreneur. Both in his ability to create suspense out of his Blethyn's and Caine's perform­ characters' sense of internal guilt, both ances are gloriously overblown. moral and sexual. Unfortunately, between Their characters are selfish, self­ the '60s and the '90s many of the mores indulgent, callous, even cruel. Yet those guilts arise from have changed, so you are able to feel just a sneaking that, in setting it in the '90s, many of the sympathy for them. The moral sordid undercurrents that give the '60s complexity of the film hangs on Psycho its bite have simply disappeared. that glimmer of sympathy. Marion Crane's (Anne Heche, in the best LV spends much of her life in performance of the film) thwarted desire for her room. Her whole existence is a 'respectable' relationship, expressed a kind of sullen tribute to the during the illicit lunchtime assignation that memory of her father whose pic­ opens the film, simply doesn't make sense ture hangs over her bed and whose anymore-illicit lunchtime assignations are record collection she treasures. respectable relationships in the '90s. What's She has developed, in private, an worse, Norman Bates' psycho-sexual uncanny ability to replicate the

V OLUME 9 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 45 All the fun of the fair

L ., "' 'C'NE' o' '" wm, wm' how deserving, are natural opponents. Only Becky's treatment of dreadful combats, some grand and lofty Rawdy, and perhaps her final betrayal of his father (played horse-riding, some scenes of high life, outstandingly well by Nathaniel ParkerL are seen as really bad. and some of very middling indeed; some Natasha Little makes an excellent Becky-the s t eely love making for the sentimental, and determination behind all her clever schmoozing is there but is some light comic business: the whole never allowed to turn her into a monster. Davies does not go as far accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated as Thackeray in bringing out Becky's bad side. In particular, when with the Author's own candles. she catches her neglected eight-year-old son, Rawdy, peeping at her -'Before The Curtain', William Makepeace Thackeray's own singing to the odious Lord Steyne, the TV Becky merely scolds him foreword to Vanity Fair, London, 1848. and sends him away, and makes plans for boarding school. In the The first serial I ever watched on television was a BBC book she is much more vicious, boxing the child's ears and dramatisation of Thackeray's The Rose and The Ring, in the early humiliating him. I think that probably it would be impossible to 1950s. The screen was not black and white as we know it. It was keep sympathy these days for a character that so abused a child. In certainly monochrome, but somehow done with lavender wash, Victorian times boxing a young child's ears was far from outrageous. television's equivalent of the sepia photograph. Later television To keep up the pressure on his Victorian audience Thackeray sends screens were so much blacker and whiter and sharper. We are now him down to the kitchen weeping not so much from the pain in his denied a second look at most of these programs, since that series ears, but in his heart because his mother will not sing to him. was probably one of many long since destroyed in the catchpenny Some of Davies' scenes are inspired: I particularly applauded the vandalism that lost us the earliest Dr Who episodes, most of Pete way George Osborne's death in battle was conveyed. In the book it eiJ Dud and God knows what else. But I remember the flavour of it is brutal-the build-up of Amelia's hopes through the chapter is with a child's memory of pantomime fun. Later, of course, when undercut briefly and savagely: I read The Rose and the Ring, I chuckled at the sly humour and the The darkness came down on the field and city, and Amelia was jolliness of Thackeray's cynicism. Thackeray was obviously praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet somewhere not a thousand miles from the Dickens of A Christmas through his heart. Carol, but less cosy, in continual bantering dialogue with the reader. Vanity Fair has been attempted many times on film, notably The series shows George (Tom Ward) leading a small charge in with Myrna Loy in the '30s, and this current series adapted by a chaotic skirmish. The coup de grace is sudden: a large, lethal hole Andrew Davies is the BBC's third effort, showing on the ABC on appears in the back of the red coat, and we follow him down to the Sunday nights. There is a pretty fair attempt to convey something ground, seeing the last bubble of spit pushed out by the ground's of Thackeray's unique take on what I suppose today we call broader impact on a body that cannot ever draw air in again. culture, the Vanity Fair of general human messiness and striving: In visual terms it was as good a homage to the mood of a sort of genial and non-pompous second cousin of Johnson's 'The n the text as I have seen. Vanity of Human Wishes'. Becky Sharp is not the heroine of Vanity Fair, but she is the L oPLE WHO HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK will have a treat in store, and main character. Like Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, she is will enjoy the series, because it does a mostly well-judged and teamed with a lachrymose goody-two-shoes, and we find ourselves thoughtful job. It is quite fun to test the boundaries of each culture caring what happens to her. I am sure Daphne du Maurier had Becky by comparing the book with the Davies adaptation. In the end it in the back of her mind when she wrote Rebecca, another battle seems that we are still fascinated by wicked women; it is very between the heroine and the villainess (although the villainess is common to pit the Jezebels against some paragon-Odette/Odile; long dead). It is difficult in these libertarian days of the late 20th Scarlett O'Hara/Melanie Wilkes; Alexis/Krystal in Dynasty. And century to disapprove of Becky, Mary or Rebecca de Winter as Shakespeare got into the female duality thing long before these thoroughly as we were meant to do. I think Austen had to try hard with his put-upon shrew, Katharine, and her boring sister, Bianca. to make us dislike Mary Crawford before the end of Mansfield Pari<, In fact there have been female entities in various traditions cover­ because Fanny is so irredeemably colourless and meek. Thackeray ing the same territory since before Lilith/Eve. Novel and film have made no bones about Amelia Sedley's perpetual blubbering-she always been fascinated by the flawed and feisty female, and the may be the conventional Patmore angel but she is narrow and tradition has morphed through the various mores of the changing stubborn and not very bright. But his bluff paternalistic gallantry times. Issues of sexual 'honour', such as those that haunted Becky (something that can gall if one hasn't flirted harmlessly-Becky­ Sharp, have little relevance to the heroines of Friends, Xena, like-with nice unreconstructed old chauvinists) comes to her Melrose Pla ce or a squillion other contemporary dramas. But I don't rescue. She is, after all, only a lady, God bless her. Since he gives the think Davies needed to have Becky teaching her students at task of matchmaking to Becky at the end, which she performs with Pinkerton Academy to say' Baisez mon cui'. She may have been no some wit and even magnanimity, he must distance her from us lady, but she knew how to behave like one. • through her unconscionably bad mothering. Men's hearts are fair game, in Thackeray's tolerant eye, and other women, no matter Juliette Hughes is a freelance reviewer.

46 EUREKA STREET • MARcH 1999 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 71, March 1999

Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM ACROSS 1. Unknown among bookish types returning to the council m eeting. (5) 4. For everyone, for instance, to circle young Richard would be full of symbolic m eaning. (9) 9. The car displayed on the chart is like my personal signature. (9) 10. 'Adore it! ' I hear you say, 'that blue-green mixture in the woollens.' (5) 11. Rushes to take the familiar old violin back. (5) 12. In the first place, I can return with a friend. (9) 13. The expert soundly beats the one who never stops talking? (6) 15. Managed poor Gloria when she was no longer an apprentice. Rewarded her with a shrub from N ew Zealand. (8) 18. Incidental empty theory for such an emergency situation. (8) 19. Meat about right with a dash of salt, perhaps. (6) 21. Shout for an egg, desire it in a way that is somewhat jaundiced! (9) 23 . Strong pitcher needs not so many balls, possibly .. . (5) 25 . ... or no ball, what's more' (5) 26. Special pig liver 'e ate as a favour. (9) 27. Rough up the chap with the fancy title. (9) 28. Very strange game of cards! (5) DOWN 1. Remained, apparently, prim and proper. (5) Solution to Crossword no. 70, 2. N egative alternative to debt reminders? What a reputation! (9) January-February 1999 3. Artist was wise to go back to the origin of dadaism. (5) 4. All its perfumes could not sweeten Lady Macbeth's little hand (Act v, Sci). (6) 5. Italian learner initially had had difficulty with the English language but was soon speaking in a highfalutin way. (3-2-3) 6. Special lodging to house the precious metal. (4, 5) 7. Competitor has viral disease. (5) 8. Old sailing vessel unfortunately struck yacht from which a church like Oscar's and Lucinda's had been removed? (5 , 4) 13. Dr Jekyll's alter ego in the midst of cramp spasm has hallucination of pink elephant, perhaps. (9) 14. Some stay back at a Roman isthmus in search of a lover. (9) 16. Woman at the steering wheel after spell with the ball is likely to submerge. (9) 17. Peter first entered barred area but was exposed. (8) 20. To hear confessions can make one shiver. (6) 22. In part you can tell a Tintoretto by reading the language therein. (5) 23. Pilot changed fil er for the logging operation. What a relief out east ! (5) 24. Do the wind instruments sound so shrill? (5)

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