EUREKASTRE
A Canopy of Stars Some reflections for the journey
by Christopher Gleeson SJ
Over more than 20 years as Headmaster, Chris Gleeson gave innumerable homilies, reflections and addresses, all of them illustrated by engaging stories and quotations. Now he has made a selection of the best, and linked them with his own reflections on teaching and parenting. A wonderful collection. Thanks to David Lovell Publishing Eureka Street has ten copies of A Canopy of Stars to give away. Just put your name Just like us, the marginalised people in the overseas and address on the back of an envelope and send to: Eureka communities we help need dignity, self-sufficiency and the Street December Book Offer, PO Box 553, Richmond VIC ability to build a better life for themselves, their families 3121. See page 37 for winners of the October Book Offer. and future generations. Together we can help those in poverty realise a better future
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Please return to: i I · --~ -~--~~~~~~~~~--~~~~~ -~~~~ - ~~-~-~~~- ~-~~--~~~~ ------~~~~ -! <)> $23:: c> EUREKA STREE I ~s: ~t::! wZzm cO 3::-n ~2 ; 4 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 comment Andrew Hamilton The diversions of war IT" A minm pmdox of wa< tho< in film dipe, the that we can win a quick victory. We will believe politicians and generals who confer about present that we shall need neither to see the humanity wars seem larger than life, whereas in the footage of of the people we treat as enemies nor to attend to past wars they look shrivelled-diminished by the relationships that need to be healed. destruction they have abetted. In the longer view, The metaphor of war also discourages self-reflec wars and their makers have little to commend them. tion. In a war, leaders become generals, strategists Yet war continues to insinuate itself into and battle commanders. The test of greatness is conversation about other human activities, and par their decisiveness and readiness to accept casualties. ticularly those undertaken to overcome difficulties When their cause becomes a war, it is invested with facing human living. We hear of the international war goodness and righteousness. Their critics become against terrorism, of national wars against crime and contemptible because they give comfort to the enemy. drugs, of tribal war for the world cup, of church wars Most attractively, warriors do not need to deal with against liberalism, and of personal wars against cancer the causes of evils or their own interests that are at and ageing. Introduced into these contexts, the meta stake in them. The disadvantages come later: when phor of war and battle is almost always unhelpful. It the ineffectiveness and destructiveness of betrays reality and it encourages self-delusion. the campaign become evident. When we imagine war, we see defined enemies who are separate from ourselves; we see overwhelming ERDEALING WITH EVILS, better and more complex forcebroughtagainstthoseenemies;weseeapopulation metaphors than war are available. When facing illness united around a common cause; we see a conflict and ageing, for example, we can speak, as Francis with simple causes ending in a victory that will in of Assisi might have done, of cohabitation with augurate a better peace. Brother Cancer and Sister Age. For dealing with If we envisage our conduct in the face of ter social evils, complementary metaphors of including, rorism, drugs, football, permissiveness and cancer restraining, conversing, nurturing and healing, as a war, we are seduced into an oversimplified catch better the complexity of the causes, remedies view of reality. The people associated with these and effects. things are not separate from us, but are aspects of But the military metaphor comes decked in our own body, church, society or world. So when pretence and pomp that must first be pricked if better we bring overwhelming force against them, whether images are to be sought. The visit of President Bush through will-power, proscription, long prison terms to Canberra was a model exercise in decking. The or military strikes, we inevitably hurt ourselves. war against terrorism came solemnified by imported When we imagine a society united against terror security guards and the exclusion of Australian ism, crime or liberalism, too, we forget that the citizens from Parliament House, of Mr Crean from causes of these phenomena lie within our own the barbie and of Aussie reporters from question time. world, and that we need to understand their com But then the cameras spirited in by the American plexity in order to address them. Unquestion press sent around the world Senator Brown's ing loyalty is of little help. By encouraging us to demolitionjob on solemnity. The Metaphor of War think simplistically in terms of virtue and. vice, us had suddenly been deflated. • and them, ally and enemy, power and impotence, the metaphor of war misleads us into thinking Andrew Hamilton SJ DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 5 snap shot He was famous for not going anywhere. far-flung planets and data on magnetic Although he was Bishop of Rome when fields, ultraviolet light, cosmic rays and Constantine embraced Christianity, he plasma waves, Voyager 1 is now headed declined to take part in notable Coun for some long-distance R and R. cils at Arles and at Nicaea. He said he Voyager 1 has sufficient power and was too old. But Roman stories later fuel to last until 2020, and looks set to placed him at the head of the Councils escape our solar system. NASA predicts he had missed, and had Constantine that in about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will put him over all the other patriarchs, drift within 1.6light years (14.95 trillion as well as over bishops and secular rul kilometres) of AC+79 3888, a star in the ers in the West. This useful legend was constellation of Camelopardalis, lending punctured by the fearless investigative new meaning to the phrase 'saw the reporting of the Renaissance scholar light on and thought I'd drop in'. NASA Aeneas Sylveas Piccolomini, later him also advises that Voyager 2 will pass 4.3 self to become pope. He changed his light years (40 trillion kilometres) from name to Pius, after Virgil's hero, Pius Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, in Aeneas. He also changed his opinions, around 296,000 years' time. Arise Sir John and in one of his Bulls urged his readers Voyager 1 is also carrying images to ' Reject Aeneas, listen to Pius'. and recordings of life on Earth should it Readers of the splendid British Catholic Th e knights of the Equestrian Order encounter alien life in its travels. After weekly, The Tablet, will be delighted of Saint Sylvester I, as every Catholic all, one wouldn't want to arrive at the to hear that its editor, John Wilkins, schoolboy knows, were first put on neighbours empty- handed. was recently made a papal knight. The their saddles by the 19th century Pope Tablet is notable for distinguishing Gregory XVI. Gregory ruled the Papal between fact and advertorial, and for States with severity, and used to call in allowing its writers and correspondents the Austrian army to sort out dissent to say what they believe, provided they there. Papal knighthoods presumably write clearly and charitably. More helped secure loyalty and finance for his precisely, John was made a knight of the campaigns. But Gregory may also have Equestian Order of Pope Saint Sylvester had a sentim ental attachment to the old I. Since, like any magazine that order of things, represented by horses, believes that the truth will set us free, riders and knights. He hated those new The Tablet h as often been accused of fangled railway lines and banned them disloyalty, the citation that praised the from the Papal States. In a nice pun, editor for showing loyalty in difficult he referred to them, not as chemins times is particularly pleasing. de fer, but as ch emins d'enfer-Hell's roadways. Rocket fuel It may have escaped some that 2003 is the 125th anniversary of the Essay Prize offered by the South Australian Band of Hope and the Total Temperance League. According to Charles Gent in his gen ial new book, Mixed Dozen: The story of Australian winemaking since 1788 (D uffy & Snellgrove), the prize was won by Rev. H enry Burgess for his essay, So long, farewell 'The Fruit of the Vine'. Burgess argued that wine rotted all the bodily organs, Voyager is our real-life Starship fi lled the prisons and ca used insanity. Enterprise. As it has now passed 90 He believed that Australian wine was Reward irony astronomical units (AU ) from the Sun, or particularly noxious. Gent remarks in 13.5 billion kilometres, it earns its place exculpation, however, that Burgess did Examined carefully, all awards are as the 'most distant human-m ade obj ect not repeat the assertion of some advo exercises in irony. Papal knighthoods are in the universe'. Having successfully cates of abstinence, that those who no exception. Pope Sylvester I, for exam completed its mission of buzzing Jupiter drank alcohol were liable spontaneously ple, never felt any n eed of horsem en. and Saturn, beaming back images of to combust. 6 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 capital letter Driving the tide INAMER DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 7 at a local hotel. The claimants and their Waiting time supporters from neighbouring mobs sit all day in the courtyard outside the room LETTER FROM BROOME where the hearing is taking place, listen ing to the broadcast of proceedings on large speakers. They sit in small groups, A LONG EVERY STREET in Old Broome, m en with men, women with women. The Unnecessary pinky-green mangoes dangle on long stems, men wear jeans, boots, cowboy hats, and clustered in sixes and sevens. This morn the women bright dresses. On a black necessities ing I woke to the sound of my neighbours board next to the table set up with an urn shaking the lower branches of their enor and cold water, a child has written 'we INVENTI ONS THAT CURE SOCIAL IL LS mous tree, and the soft plop of half-ripe will win for our country'. mangoes on the dust. They tell me that Inside the hotel room, white anthro in a few weeks I will be sick of the sight pologists give competing evidence about INVENTIONS THAT revolutionise society of them, and of the rich smell of rotting the kinship structures and social organi seem to sneak up on us and before we even fruit lining the nature strips. The fruit is sation of the people sitting outside. White learn to pronounce the absurdly pneumonic so prolific and its stench so strong that lawyers scribble pages of notes, and refer names these curiosities are christened with, holes have to be dug in backyards to dis to documents in the dozens of lever arch they have become a requirement rather than pose of it. folders lined up behind them. The white an option. Microwaves, word processors, I have the first fiv e of the season lined judge listens intently for the most part, internet and email, mobile phones and home up on a high shelf in my kitchen. I check showing occasional irritation at the slow espresso machines. Hard to think of life on them often as if they are eggs wait pace of the questioning but seemingly before them, eh1 ing to hatch. They fit in my hand like unaffected by the length of the days and Last month the office I was working smooth river rocks, and I stand at the the complexity of the evidence. At the at in central London lost its internet for window with one in each hand, inhaling back of the room, separated by partitions, a week thanks to a piece of grand bureau the smell that grows sweeter and stronger black men and women sit and watch. cratic negligence on the part of British every day. At the end of every day, the claimants Telecom . Hastening our trip into the Dark The ocean is warm. now, and every time and their supporters wait around till eve Ages, the UK was hit by a postal strike- the I swim I wonder whether it will be my last ryone else has left. They wait to be told by sort of malevolent coincidence this country before the stingers arrive to scare us out of the white lawyers whether they are going specialises in, such as cold weather and bad the water till June. It seems impossibly far to win their case, or lose it. Every day, the television. Yet we didn't all curl up into balls away, and impossibly cruel-to be swelter lawyers tell them that it's been a good da y, beneath our desks and wail but managed to ing in this town on the edge of the Great or that it's been a hard day, but that tomor get done what needed to be done. This has led Sandy Desert, right next to all this beauti row should be better. They have been hear me to the notion that teclmology has been ful blue water. Some of the locals assure me ing this for years now, ever since they marching in the wrong direction and needs that they swim right through the wet sea lodged their claim. And they will continue to take an abrupt left turn so that inventions son, but they are the same people who tell to wait for years before all the evidence has that really make a difference get invented. me stories of a friend who talked in tongues been heard, and compared, and analysed, A start would be a device that detects on morphine for days in the local hospital and made to fit the requirem ents of the bores at parties. It could fit discreetly after being stung by an irikanji. These are process, or not, as the case m ay be. inside the ear and bark out warnings like jellyfish so small that they can't be spot I have a cartoon on my fridge. It is by 'paisley shirt hogging the fondue-self ted, and so toxic they can kill. It makes Michael Leunig, and it came out in The obsessed currency trader- collects odd the idea of relaxing in the ocean somewhat A ge the morning after the Yorta Yorta deci shaped house bricks as a hobby', saving you oxymoronic. Besides, I tell myself, the sion. A white, wigged judge leans down from unnecessary conversations. Another water's so warm it's barely refreshing any from his bench which sits high amongst would be a m achine that compressed and way. the city skyscrapers. He tells the Aborigi expanded time, so you could stretch it out The local swimming pool heats up, nal man standing under a tree 'you have like the horizon when you are sitting on a too, till it's a soupy mix of chlorine and forfeited your claim to your land by being surfboard with the sun on your back and urine and sun cream. In Melbourne, thrown off it and our hands have been the swell full and constant, and shorten where I come from, swimming pools are washed clean by the tide of history.' I see it it to the blink of an eye during meetings heated, even in summer. But here I am every time I go to check whether my man on how to cut stationery costs. Even bet excited by the news that one of the resort goes have ripened. And I think of it every ter would be a new car that doesn't ding at pools is refrigerated. Next weekend, if I time I walk into that courtyard, and see you when you leave the door open, forget to can face the heat, I will don my resort that mob sitting there patiently waiting to turn the lights off, or prevent you taking a w ear (sarong, loose cotton shirt, straw be told whether the forced removal of their sideways look at a pretty girl walking. hat, sunglasses) and go in search of cool, parents and grandparents has wiped out The only problem is how to get a logo stinger-free water. their claim to their country. on all of these. The heat has hit in the same week -Jon Greenaway that a native title hearing recommences - Kristie Dunn 8 EUR EKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 summa "" l1 -J Heavy traffic ~ theologiae ~ li REVIEWING TRAFFICKING LAWS ~ W ILE AUSTRALIAN immigration policy has lurched from bad to worse, recent changes by the federal government indicate New (old) ways there may be light at the end of the tunnel. 1 The big change in the immigration MORE thing' ch•nge, the mme they "'Y the "me', i' ' cynic•! arena is the October announcement of new 'I, aphorism, done best with a French shrug. Much more interesting is its policies in relation to people who are converse, 'The more things are the same, the more they have changed'. trafficked across our borders for sexual ex A recent Melbourne exhibition of Catholic life, part of a program ploitation. This is a welcome development. encouraging religious vocations, for example, revisited an identical event held The creation of a new class of visa for in 1955. Much was the same: the visibility of dog collars and the variety of trafficked women could signal that the gov cloaks and dress dating from the beginning of clerical congregations, the stalls ernment is easing up on its strict approach. As recently as June, members of the manned by priests and religious, the multitude of devotions and artefacts federal government were downplaying commended, and the flocks of schoolchildren grazing at the events. the seriousness of Australia's traffick But what seemed the same was in fact very different. Fifty years ago, in ing problem, inferring that even if a few the exhibition a proud church celebrated its growth and strength. The crowds women were trafficked to Australia for reflected a well-organised church in which religious practice was high. Dress sex slavery, these women ought to have and stalls commending congregations, devotions and distinctive forms of known that they would be working as Catholic activities expressed a cohesive church whose patterns of life were prostitutes and deserved little sympathy. apparently unchanging and given. The only hint of future divisions lay in the In a backflip of Olympian proportions, entrails exposed by the nascent split in the Labor party. This was a church on the federal government has recently com the rise. mitted serious resources to what it now In 2003, the religious groups that sponsored the stalls were for the most part recognises as a problem. It is widely much diminish ed from 1955, and represented often sharply divergent versions acknowledged, both within and outside of faithful Catholic life. Indeed, one of the great merits of the exhibition was government, that Australia has a prob that it brought divergent groups together. The garb, as well as the evangelical lem involving the exploitation of (mainly) energy and devotions commended in the workshops, no longer expressed an south-east Asian women as brothel-slaves. inherited tradition, but individual choice. They were not about a given identity, The federal government's $20 million but about the counter-cultural construction of a n ew identity. dollar anti -trafficking package is good news. The insight that samen ess marks the deepest difference migh t also Not only is the figure substantial, but it is illuminate the spirit of the many young people who took part enthusiastically matched by proposed policy reforms which in the workshops. They are evangelical in the sense that they respond to a call will put the victims of trafficking first and to be Catholic and want to fi nd ways to live out their commitment proudly, give Australia a chance of reducing this publicly and radically. This is a profoundly counter-cultural choice that finds violent form of organised crime. little support in society. Their need to shape a distinctively Catholic way of Three factors are critical to the success life helps explain the popularity of Marian and Eucharistic devotions, the pride of the government's proposals. First, train taken in John Paul II and his adamantine integrity, the popularity of World ing for those who interact with trafficked Youth days where a minority come together as friends and for a moment find victims will be important, to ensure that themselves part of a mass movem ent. The exhibition and workshops were also responses to trafficking victims are humane important in this respect. and informed. The high level of political momentum generated by this issue needs to It would be a mistake to describe this adoption of older practices as be balanced with appropriate sensitivity to conservative. The devotions may be the same as those of 50 years ago, but the the victims involved. movem ent is radically different. It is about n ew beginnings. The challenge is Second, relevant state and federal laws to nurture these beginnings, precariously grounded in a mixture of devotions need to be reformed to better address the and practices. The grounding is precarious because devotions, practices and conditions that give rise to the trafficking pilgrimages depend on the support of a religious culture-a culture not given of women. Trafficking occurs in an envi in Australia-or on a deep personal faith. The nurturing of personal faith calls ronment of supply and demand. On the for an older and deeper tradition of listening to the ways in which God draws demand side, state governments need to the heart, of imagining and striving to build the just world that God wants, of examine whether the decriminalisation following th e compassionate way of Jesus. This is the sam eness that can make and regulation of prostitution is working a difference. • for women in the sex industry. On the supply side, foreign aid programs need Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne. DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 9 to address the increasing feminisation of poverty and the status of women, and develop feasible and lasting solutions for women archimedes whose vulnerabilities push them across bor ders into situations of sexual exploitation. Third, a cooperative approach between agencies and governments is required to address the trafficking of women for sexual Spotting a niche exploitation. Each agency has an impor tant role to play. DlMIA needs to give trafficked women the right visas so that women fearing re-trafficking or repris als in home countries are not deported, C HARC 10 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 A race for stayers Y u KNOW HOW you DECEMBE R 2003 EUREKA STREET 11 foreign correspondence Oiling the wheels A 12 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 later by US officials pronouncing it the most expensive vote pockets, to say nothing of the country's devastating civil war Yemen would ever cast. A package of aid worth $US70 million which was funded with oil and diamond revenues. For its part, was promptly cancelled. Equatorial Guinea's oil income has won it independence from aid Amid all the high-powered delegations and discussions of donors who once raised serious questions about the absence of geopolitical strategy, there were few formal opportunities for human rights protections in this autocratic one-party state. the African people to voice their opinion, although there was It is therefore not surprising that local activists in Chad declared little doubt that most opposed the conflict. It was also clear 10 October-the day of the ceremonial opening of a pipeline to that little of what was being offered would be of lasting ben carry oil from Chad's Doba Basin to terminals off the efit to the people of Africa. That these people were irrelevant Cameroon coast-to be a day of mourning. to the concerns of the superpowers was most glaringly obvious in Angola. American officials told the government of President SUPPORTERS OF THE Chadian project point to the 225,000 Jose Eduardo dos Santos that, in return for Angolan support, barrels of oil which will flow through the pipeline every day, the US would turn a blind eye to delays in moving generating annual revenues of $US80 million in what is the towards democracy. world's fifth poorest country. World Bank figures suggest that, as a direct result of oil production, per capita income in Chad could L ROUGH IT ALL, THERE was widespread dismay across the rise from $US250 per year to $US550 by 2005. The World Bank, continent that the impoverished sub-Saharan state of Niger which has invested more than $US200 million in the project, accused without foundation of selling uranium to Iraq-was used has sought to head off the usual disappearance of oil revenues as a pawn, and then discarded without compensation, in Ameri by ensuring that all income is paid into a London bank account ca's pursuit of evidence that Iraq had been building a nuclear whose outlays are strictly supervised by a committee of Chadian capability. and international watchdogs. The World Bank also ensured that In the end, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq with the Chadian government pass a law whereby 80 per cent of oil out UN sanction and African nations returned to the margins revenues must be spent on education, health, protection of the of world politics, again deprived of a significant voice. The con environment, improving access to clean water, rural development tinent licked its wounds. Its people's lives were not in the least and infrastructure. improved. And Africa was left with yet another memory of an For all that, three years ago the Chadian government admitted encounter with great powers who clearly believe that African that $US5 million of its initial signature payment of $US25 million independence is up for sale. was diverted to buy weapons for its war against northern rebels. In July, Africa again took centre stage during George W. Bush's Perhaps more ominously than he intended, President Idriss Deby tour of the continent. Africa's media were largely unimpressed. announced at the pipeline's opening that 'the coming oil income Kenya's Sunday Standard made the following assessment: 'Bush's should not divert from our usual economic activities'. just-concluded visit to Africa, during which he spent more Among other African nations with known oil reserves, the time in Air Force One than among the people of Africa, was of tiny island state of Sao Tome and Principe has already experi little consequence here.' In equally withering tones, the Sunday enced a coup since bidding was opened for its offshore drilling Nation in Uganda (a country visited by President Bush) decided rights earlier this year. that 'if there were any opportunities for Mr Bush to make a differ Colonised and plundered of people and natural resources by ence in Africa, no one can accuse him of taking them'. European powers, ruled over in many cases by corrupt, klepto And yet, Bush's visit does have the potential to effect a radical cratic and violent governments, Africa is already a continent shift in Africa's fortunes. An underlying agenda of the president's with a deeply felt consciousness of the perils arising from natural five-nation tour was the fact that, in the aftermath of September riches and fragile independence. 11 and the war in Iraq, the United States is seeking alternative It is the people of nations such as these-Guinea, Cameroon, sources of oil which are not subject to the instability of countries Angola, Chad and Sao Tome and Principe-who will soon begin such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Already the US receives more than to feel the consequences of the US-led war in Iraq. In the process, 20 per cent of its oil imports from Africa and the US government they will be well placed to assess whether oil is a blessing, or the and private sector are keen to increase Africa's share. On this curse that it has proved for the Iraqi people. They will also dis assessment, Africa could become one of the world's largest oil cover whether America's unprecedented focus on Africa is just producing regions. one more example of African soil being plundered under the guise What worries Africans most about a boom in oil income is that of African enrichment. royalties from African oil have a habit of ending up in the pockets From Niamey to Dakar, from Khartoum to Yaounde, I have of local elites who then fight each other for the spoils, while the heard pleas from ordinary Africans-directed at the interna remainder is spirited away across the sea by Western companies. tional community and at their own governments-that the Three of Africa's largest oil producers-Nigeria, Angola and African people finally be allowed to chart their own destiny. Equatorial Guinea-provide ample reasons for taking these But Africans have reason to be sceptical. Far from the world's fears seriously. In the past decade, the number of people liv gaze, caught between the disappointments of their continent's ing in poverty in Nigeria has doubled and, in 2003, Nigeria was past and visions of war over oil as their future, few believe ranked second-to-last in Transparency International's authorita that Africa's financial independence will finally bring power tive Corruption Perceptions Index. According to the US-based to its people. • NGO, Catholic Relief Services, Angola earns $US4 billion a year from its oil industry, but $US1 billion disappears into unknown Anthony Ham is Eureka Street's roving correspondent. DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 13 W ERe THO EuROSTAR "'"'out of tht Channt! tunnel into against France, intent on reversing a narrow recent loss in Marseille. Kent, at Ashford, there is a vast parking lot of trains, named for The pub was as full in all senses as Australian pubs once used to English and French writers and composers. While I was musing on be: 'as full as a state school', or 'as two race trains', in the unforget the prospects of an engine called Debussy, a woman nearby was table, nostalgic similes for drunkenness of Barry Humphries. It was coolly dictating a series of numbers to her husband. This was the standing room only, and most of those standing were beefy English first of a wash of indications that I was in England. Here were trains men in the white jerseys of the national team. The bar was thick potters. Behind me, a man with a trans-European voice was talking with male flesh . We negotiated our way out the back, and found to his mobile phone. 'Where can I get any rabbits? No rabbits! a table. Sharing it with four men heading for the Twickenham You don't know where ... ?' It wasn't clear whether the rabbits were Stadium (' the home of rugby', etc.), I was reminded even more intended as pets, circus props, or for the table, but somehow he had strongly of the glory days of Australian boozing. Here was a six the numbers of at least four suppliers. All of them let him down. o'clock swill at four. In a final preparation for watching the game, We passed oast houses and hop fields. The countryside was as the quartet skulled a round of pints of Guinness. parched as an Australian summer paddock. (In England it was a That evening, I was surrounded by young Australians who summer of records: the first time that the temperature exceeded were on extended working holidays in Britain. This latest of 100"F; Sussex's first county championship after 164 years as a many waves of adventurers probably meets a less sardonic cricket cl ub; Labor's first by-election loss in 15 years.) I was musing reception than any before it. Their passage has been smoothed about Dickens, who was born in Kent, in the naval port of Chatham, by Australian wine (mainstay of English liquor shops) and by when the train went by the Staplehurst Station. Here, in June 1865, Australian television programmes. Their professional, especially Dickens was returning to England with his mistress, Ellen Ternan, medical skills, are sought after and well rewarded. English coun when the train was derailed at a bridge. Several people were killed. terparts seem to be in such jobs as IT consultant to the police Many were injured. Dickens gave as much assistance as he could, or fencing master or pudgy-handed, spotty, 20-year-old compu but was nervously debilitated by the accident. Five years later, he ter geek profiled as he dreamt of his first billion pounds (new died on its anniversary. economy or false economy?). On this balmy night, a barbecue No back way into a city by train is ever attractive, but the squal was ventured, so that the backyard became redolent of Australia. ors of Brixton have intensified in the four years since last I had this Improbably, when one looked up (and because we were far enough view. From there, via Waterloo, to Twickenham was a leap across out of central London), there was a sky full of stars. We could a class divide, into a busy and prosperous village by the Thames. have been in either continent. Is that the reassurance, or the mild Behind the block of flats where I was to stay was a large garden. disappointment, of the present Australian experience of Squirrels ran about in it. Apples ripened and fe ll. The planes from living in England? Heathrow passed close overhead every minute. Once a fox disdain fully strolled across the lawn. In the street, chestnuts cannonaded L IRTY YEARS AGO, WHEN I first came to Britain, I walked off the roofs of parked cars, although the drought had left them over lots of London. Missed lots too: the distinctiveness of its too small to make good conkers. We were at home long enough to neighbourhoods, the city's 'multitudinous littleness' (as H .G. see High Chaparral beat the desperately unlucky Falbrav (w hich Wells finely put it) is an abiding delight, as one happens on should have won on protest) in the Irish Champion Stakes at Leop places so near to where one knows, but till then unconnected. ards town. Instead of the Cox Plate, Falbrav has been set for the I fashioned a walk from The Monument, which commemorates Breeders' Cup in the United States. the Great Fire of London in 1666, along the river, past the Tower To meet friends, we went to a nearby pub, the Hobgoblin. This and St Katharine's Dock, through Limehouse and then down the Saturday afternoon, England was playing a Rugby Union Test length of the Isle of Dogs to the foot tunnel beneath the Tham es 14 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 that transports the traveller into the elegant and utterly differ bury to see Arsenal play (a 1-0 win, by penalty). As we left ent surroundings of Greenwich, with palace, observatory, muse the ground, a 72-point headline in the Evening Standard pro ums. (Those seeking an alternative journey are directed to lain claimed 'It's War'. And it was-the Yom Kippur War, which I Sinclair's marvellous novel, Downriver.) had missed by a day. That made my first train trip to Oxford For me, on the nothern side of the river, there had been the appear to be even more of a journey into the past. On cue, a romantic East London of small Hawksmoor churches, of flock vision of spires seen so often before at second hand loomed mills and spice warehouses that closed in on either side of the up, calmingly familiar. These days, one goes up and down to street, of narrow alleys leading to stairs that went down to the London much more cheaply and conveniently by bus. In the Thames. Each morning and evening Christopher Wren was 1970s the train was cheaper, but hardly easy. During the three rowed across from the south bank and back to supervise the day week imposed by Edward Heath no trains ran on Sunday. building of St Paul's from such embarkation places as these. Fu Every late train back from London had an intolerable stop Manchu went to ground in the East End. Sherlock Holmes knew and change at Didcot, where the cooling towers of its nuclear the terrain as, of course, did Jack the Ripper. Once I lobbed in a reactor still smoke. the pubs which are oases in a wasteland of mews and hideous apartment blocks pub in Shadwell to watch a race or two only to find, as I left, that Once, on a rainy Sunday, I caught a bus from Victoria to Oxford. its address was Cable Street, where Mosley's blackshirts dem It was so long ago that I was reading, with shock and admiration, onstrated against local Jews in the 1930s. Opening the door of Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Somewhere another pub, on a day when freezing sleet blew horizontally, I in the dark we stopped to take on a husband, wife, teenage son and was severely admonished by a stripper who had not wanted me a very large dog. Next stop a young woman boarded, only to be to come in from the cold and bring it along. informed that the bus was full. She could wait an hour for the next Much is changed now, but not the pubs which are oases in a one. Her utterly reasonable remonstrance: 'what about the dog?' wasteland of mews and hideous apartment blocks that line both frayed into the night. The vile youth (middle-class voice, but what sides of the river. Bulbous, glassy, often in brown brick with blue was his family doing on a bus?) whinnied: 'didn't that woman know trim, they must surely and rightly affront the Prince of Wales. On that we paid half fare for Rupert?' this journey the first pub by the river is the Town of Ramsgate. This time, I went by car, through the western outskirts of The building's date is given as 1545. Wapping Old Stairs runs London, bypassing Reading, detouring through Abingdon, miss alongside it. On this Sunday morning, as we paused for a first ing Oxford altogether on a puzzle of ring roads. But there was half-pint, a routine of regulars was performing cockney. There a signpost to the village of Middleton Stoney, where long ago I was talk of a 'right Jack the lad', of 157 per cent rum, of chanc had taught Shakespeare to senior secondary students. The Jersey ers and charlatans. In Britain, class is often a droll impersonation Arms, tarted up these days, had been an exacting trudge down the of the attributes of the class to which the performers are road. We went on to Steeple Aston. It is near the former US F111 supposed to belong. base of Upper Heyford. The infrastructure, which enabled many Americans never to stray even so far as Oxford (20 kilometres W HAD LUNC H IN a riverside terrace at the back of the Pros distant), remains. Friends of mine stayed at Steeple Aston in the pect of Whitby, where the bodies of traitors used to hang until mid-1970s. It is a hilly village of narrow streets, with an ancient three tides had washed over them. Further on was the Grapes, church and the largest sycamore tree in England. Across the road another intimate and narrow space that Dickens filled with life from my friends' place lived Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. Once and intrigue in his novel, Our Mutual Friend. But by now the I delivered a book to her, while on the morning of my Oxford treats were over. No longer can one easily stroll the length of the viva I watched with trepidation as Bayley, one of my examiners, Isle of Dogs. It is built out with apartments and offices. Canary gambolled on the roof of his barn. Walk towers above them. There is a driverless light rail service Steeple Aston boasts two pubs: a White Lion and a Red Lion. to Greenwich, which meanders through a maze of nondescript, The latter was my local. I had missed by less than a year the up-in-the-air stations. departure of the long-term publican and his wife, but the new With some initial relief we took a boat up the river, but owner welcomed us with Hook Norton ale and a beef and beer this trip gave a starker view of the blighted array of apart pie. This is a rich village, and some of the retired bourgeoisie use ment blocks, dourly facing each other from either bank. This the pub. At lunchtime, we saw another English class charade. reach of the Thames has been made drabber than in its days of A gentleman ordered a pint and drank it while he smoked a romantic dilapidation when-if no other purpose was served cigar. Then he ordered a cheeseburger, pedantically insisting on black-and-white television cop shows found congenial sites what should and should not be in it. Now for the wine: Gevrey here. As the river winds around, one new building seemed to Chambertin would do with the burger, after banter over pop up on each side by turns-a new, emerald green insurance prices. We were far from the East End, but had only come tower. Wilfully, as Thatcher's acrid spirit lingers, London is to a different theatre. In the words of Humphries's Barry being built out. McKenzie: 'I'll never get to the bottom of the Poms.' • There was one more reminiscent journey to take-to Oxford. In the first week of October 1973, I had arrived from Peter Pierce is Professor of Australian Literature at James Cook Melbourne via Hong Kong and Israel and been taken to High- University, Cairns. DECEM BE R 2003 EUR EKA STRE ET 15 I 11 (' n ,111 on Kate Pollard .______Ibe lloyage out __ Migrants to Australia reunite to recall a living history ONm' 'OTH mRTHDAY, And'oa dcc•de,, oauied mmc th•n 200,000 po"- He bmught no lugg•gc, ju" youthful (Andy) Andrighetto left his homeland of war European emigrants to our shores- optimism, hope and 'a lot of dreams'. His Italy. He travelled on the ship Oceania, changing the lives of many, and helping to abiding memories of the voyage are of the alone and in search of a better life. Andy build a multicultural Australia. food. As a boy he had a rapacious appetite came from a large family: his parents, four In encouraging former emigrants and and shipboard life offered a boundless boys and three girls. His family owned their families to share memories and supply of 'biscuits, butter and jam'. little land and their one cow could not provide for the family of nine. As Andy recalls, 'there wasn't enough to feed all of us'. Prospects of employment in post war Italy were poor and Andy decided to emigrate from war-ravaged Europe. There was, he recollects, a choice of three destinations-America, South Africa and Australia. Leaving his family, Andy sailed to Australia in February 1952. Andy was one of the guests at a reunion day on 5 October 2003, organised by the Immigration Museum in Melbourne. The reunion focused on migrants who travelled on one of four ships: Neptunia, Oceania, Australia and Fairsea. These vessels, operating over two Above: The Fairsea brought 125,000 people to Australia. Giuseppina Cucinelli (left) and Ginetta Bianchin (right) at the reunion. Photos: Pru Taylor. rekindle shipboard acquaintances, the Food played a less significant role in reunion days celebrate the spirit of a life the memories of Alms Kerekes, only a changing journey. Maria Tence, Manager young boy when his family fled Hungary of Public Programs, reflects on the role of after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The the reunions: 'Through these gatherings, Kerekes family carried 'one little suitcase, we are able to collect personal stories, and and the clothes on our back'. Akos was fill in important gaps in our knowledge of a passenger on the motor vessel Fairsea, Australia's immigration history- which, which, according to Keith Stodden, a guest after all, is the history of many thousands speaker at the reunion day, revolutionised of individuals.' ship travel. It had the unusual distinction At the reunion day, I had the opportu of being the first migrant ship to be air con nity to speak with passengers like Andy, ditioned. After its postwar conversion to postwar emigrants on board the four passenger traffic, Fairsea made 80 voyages vessels. Their narratives are filled with to Australia, bringing 125,000 immigrants hope and anecdotes, personal yet repre to new lives in Victoria, New South Wales, sentative. Western Australia and South Australia. Andy Andrighetto left for Australia Akos remembers the journey as a 'mixed with the tantalising promise of jobs that bag'. He recalls vividly the monotony paid 'four times the wage in Italy', only of the voyage, the daily regimen and knowing of Australia as 'a big country'. claustrophobia of shipboard life: 'day on 16 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 'this strange man' as washing machine was impossible to lift her father. when his father had finished. Ginetta Bianchin Ian and his brother confess to making made the journey mischief on the voyage. They were as a child of ten responsible for their younger brother with her mother, in the evening, and would exhaust him brother and sister; by running up and down the decks all like Giuseppina, to day. If he went to bed early, they could reunite the family. attend the pictures played after dinner on Her fan"lily left the board. They admit this tomfoolery rarely province of Treviso, worked. 50 kilometres north As a child, the deaths of five children of Venice, for a bet on the voyage made a deep impression on ter life. 'Conditions Ian. Still now, many years past, he remem where I was brought bers watching a burial at sea, and shudders up were pretty woe at the recollection. To many families, the day, very often it was just the same all day.' ful. ' On reflection, she notes, 'we have voyage brought more pain than the experi Landing in South Africa was m emorable: had a great life in Australia.' ence of leaving home. having never been out of Hungary, the Her family brought to Australia the In the minds of all these Australians, black faces, hustle and bustle and smells 'few meagre possessions' they could carry. the pain, boredom, discomfort and even of Cape Town were both strange and Freighting costs were exorbitant and, like the food are overshadowed by the life electrifying. most, they could not afford to bring more. offered in a new land. They brought with The Neptunia, Oceania and Australia, Clothing, household paraphernalia, a few them imagination and expectation, hope a trio of 13,000 tonne ships, were com photographs, were packed in two trunks; and inspiration. Above all, the dream of a missioned by the European passenger a small space, Ginetta recalls, for four better life. • line, Lloyd Triestino, to carry the large people. She remembers the journey to number of displaced people emigrating to Australia as a 'new and wonderful experi Ka te Pollard is a postgraduate student at Australia after World War II. ence', especially 'all the food on board'. It the University of Melbourne. Giuseppina Cucinelli, born in 1916, was Aladdin's Cave to a hun- was a passenger on the Neptunia, gry migrant child. arriving in Port Melbourne on 16 August It is in Ginetta's story that New scholarship 1957. When I asked Giuseppina why she I am reminded of the power of had chosen to emigrate, she answered the family. Ginetta was not for the new world laconically, 'four children- not enough to once homesick for Italy, and Learn eat.' What does one take to a new land? believes she has her mother's to teach and serve the Giuseppina packed linen that she had 'immediate' love of Australia Church of the future- in a community that values pas embroidered, towels, a cutlery set, break to thank for this. She remem sionate debate, original fast cups and a big spaghetti pot-with bers the day they arrived research , and vital ministries. homemade spaghetti inside. at Station Pier. Her mother Our rigorous programs Giuseppina was miserable and lonely looked around at Port Mel will prepare you to be an agent of change, in word on the voyage; she travelled alone with bourne and said 'I am going and deed. four small children. Her first impression to love it here'. It is with this Master of Arts (GTU of Australia was of 'a very strange land'. passion and conviction that Common MA) Li centiate in Sacred This strange land became home, however, Ginetta, the next generation, Theology as Giuseppina was reunited with also speaks of Australia. Doctor of Sacred her husband. Luggage rather than food Theology colours the memories of Ian G IUSEPPINA AND HER family were Shield and his brother, passen JESUIT SCHOOL fee-paying passengers. Her husband gersoftheFairsea, 1958. Ianwas OF THEOLOGY emigrated to Australia a few years ear nine years old, and remembers at Berkeley lier and sent money home for the fare. the issue of luggage being a member of the Giuseppina's daughter accompanied her solved by a washing machine. Graduate Theological Union mother to the reunion day and spoke A passenger was given a choice 1735 LeRoy Avenue of m eeting her father for the first time. of 'weight' or 'size' when ship Berkeley, CA 94709 He had left for Australia before she was ping their belongings. Ian's (BOO) 824-01 22 (51 0) 549-5000 born and she remembers not knowing father chose size and dis Fax (51 0) 841-8536 her father, and being frightened of him, mantled a washing machine, E-mail: [email protected] when they m et at Station Pier. It was a repacking the family's belong www.jstb.edu long time before she was able to accept ings inside. Ian recalls that the DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 17 <;()( i t'l \ Moira Rayner Protecting the vulnerable Children need help to protect themselves, argues Moira Rayner. 1 1994 THE FEDERAL government amended in October 2003. The evidence tells us some unpalat the Crimes Act so Australia could prosecute 'sex able truths, said this former London police officer/ tourists' when they came home from pleasure trips to social worker/ teacher who is now the underappreci developing nations where they had happily rented or ated grande dame of child protection based in South raped the children of the poor. This law has not been Australia. According to her work with imprisoned pae much used: just 16 formal investigations and 12 convic dophiles, we are neither preventing paedophiles from tions. A government spokesman reported in The Age operating, nor 'proofing' on 15 September said this was OK because the law was children against them. meant to encourage prosecutions in the country where 'Protective' programs the offences occurred. That, of course, is bulldust. devised in the J970s We cannot We prosecute Australian paedophiles because we have not worked- ! am have more skills and resources. Australian police have summarising Professor 'teach' supposedly better specialist skills at interviewing Briggs-because their protection to child victims. Poor people in Thailand or Cambodia creators made several or East Timor tend not to trust people in uniform, or fundamental mistakes, children unless what children say. Australian courts, prosecutors and in 'teaching' what chil lawyers are allegedly better at 'hearing' child witnesses. dren needed to know we teach them Yet after 20 years of special laws, witness and without checking problem courtroom processes and education and media rev what they could under elations about serial, systemic sex abuse by adults stand. The programs solving skills with authority over children, the rate of successful were either too vague prosecutions is actually dropping. (because adults don't The best way to protect children from sexual like 'sex' or the human exploitation is to prevent it. Since you can't pick a body mentioned) or too scary (Rape! Sodomy! Pain'). paedophile-their success depends on being 'nice' to It was also wrongly assumed that adult rape and child children (and their folks)-then raising and encourag sexual assault victims have the same kinds of expe ing children not to be victims is the only other choice. rience. They don't. Rape involves violence and fear, If children can solve problems, if they have but child sexual abuse may be cultivated over time access to people they trust, and if they have out of natural sexual curiosity, patient 'grooming', the confidence to tell secrets because they meeting children's needs for affection/approval/love The best way have experienced being taken seriously, and attachment, creating dependence and to protect they can use that little bit of power they exploiting adult authority. children have: to say no, and tell someone. Nineteen years ago I learned about a W KNOW THIS, just as we know that it is not true from sexual simple new program designed to give children that girls are the only victims and men are the only these skills. The Protective Behaviours pro abusers. The evidence shows that one in four or five exploitation is gram is based on a couple of solid principles: male (self-reported) victims becomes an abuser. Most to prevent it letting children know they have a right to feel first sexual experiences are assumed to be 'good'. Of safe, and that nothing is so awful that they 198 male victims and imprisoned sex offenders in can't tell someone about it. It teaches basic Australian jails interviewed by Briggs, 78.5 per cent skills: how to recognise the physical signs of of males who had been victims thought the abuse fear and danger, and how to act on them, through their was 'normal' and 43 per cent liked receiving oral sex personal networks of safe adults to go to. and genital stimulation. When abuse became painful Professor Freda Briggs has been saying for a very long and violent, they found they were trapped by threats, time that this is not enough and reiterated this view at secrecy and the instilled belief that they were 'gay'- the National Protective Behaviours conference in WA To be effective, Protective Behaviours depends on 18 EUREKA STREET DE EMBER 2003 children identifying and reporting unsafe feelings. A 19-year-old textbook on evidence, from Very young children don' t understand what 'safe' or which n1.ost lawyers learned, said this: unsafe means. Their concepts of safety are acquired . . . children sometimes behave in a way evil Unless from authoritative adults. Briggs' investigations beyond their years. They may consent to sex have shown that South Australian paedophiles now ual offences against themselves and then deny children use the program to their own advantage, assuring consent. They may completely invent sexual victims that they are safe, twisting both protective know from offences. and sex education concepts to advance their plans. Some children know that the adult world regards experience We cannot ' teach' protective behaviours to children such matters in a serious and peculiar way, and unless we teach them problem-solving skills, not just that adults will they enjoy investigating this mystery or reveng obedience. We cannot expect children to identify sex ing themselves by making false accusations. listen to them offences if w e do not tell them , simply and clearly, what constitutes reportable behaviour. Children If even in enlightened Australia the law and take them need parents who understand that 'protection' means considered that children can 'consent' to acts seriously, they skills and self-confidence; parents who don't insist that are serious crimes, yet not speak and be that 'family' secrets are sacred; who don't teach that believed, what chance do the children of our will stay silent being 'good' means doing what adults tell you; and struggling neighbours have? who, when kids try out assertiveness and say 'no' at Nothing less than a major rethink of the the wrong time (i .e. bedtime) don't hit them. time, care and respect we give to all of our chil- Children know that adults can't handle their dren will bring forth something better. Unless children 'dirty' talk or 'rude' behaviour. Children know that's know from experience that adults will listen to them naughty, that 'naughty' means it's their fault, that and take them seriously, they will stay silent. We need they will be punished, not loved, and feel guilty. competent children able to protect themselves from We need to do something nationally, consisten tly, this blight on their lives today, and our future. • about 'protective behaviours' education for parents. We need to do som e basic education about child Moira Rayner is a barrister and Senior Fellow at the development too, and particularly with lawyers. Law Sch ool, University of WA. WESTON jESUIT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AN INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL (EN TE R For inform at ion plea se contact: Office of Admissions • Weston Je suit School ofTheology 3 Phillips Place· Cambrid ge, Massachusetts 02138-3495 USA· Telephone (617) 492-1960 ·Fax (617) 492-5833 Admiss io [email protected]• WWW.wjst.edu • FINANCIAL AID IS AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STRE ET 19 Michele M. Gierck Next generation I TMUST se mmcuu to [i,e in the shadow of a chacismatic so much speculation. "How did it go1" they asked. "I'll let predecessor. I've often wondered how South African president you know," I told them. ' Thabo Mbeki felt taking over office from Nelson Mandela. Back 'HIV/AIDS is a disease, not a punishment,' he says. 'And the home, Archbishop Peter Hollingworth struggled in the shadow challenge is to break the stigma attached to it.' of Sir William Deane, a man who brought dignity and respect to Aninternationaladvocateon theissueofHIV /AIDS, Ndungane a position many Australians would prefer no longer existed. knows it is to the corridors of power that he must take his mes Yet Njongonkulu Ndungane, Anglican Archbishop of Cape sage. Yet he is also aware that he has been entrusted with the Town, who succeeded Desmond Tutu, seems to have managed voices and hopes of Africa's most vulnerable. well. Ndungane is a man who radiates an energy and commit Invited to Australia recently by Anglicord, the archbishop ment that endears him to his own people while earning the launched their annual appeal. archbishop a place on the international stage; a man who often Gentle of voice, expressive with his hands, deliberate in word says, 'We have not inherited this world from our parents, but choice, Ndungane's speech to launch the appeal begins. Two min have borrowed it from our children'. utes later he has the audience laughing, and within ten minutes Recently, Archbishop Ndungane has addressed the US he has the momentum of a steam train, taking those gathered on Congress and the World Economic Forum, but he is equally a ride, to a destination only he is aware of. at home out in the South African townships embracing HIV/ Words such as human community, interdependence, vulner AIDS sufferers. ability and September ll crop up. And while the archbishop says So determined was Ndungane to get South African men statistics can dazzle us, there is one he mentions. 'Twice as many to undertake tests for HIV, he went to a public clinic in one people die daily due to HIV I AIDS as died in the attacks on Sep of the townships to be tested. He smiles as he tells the story. tember ll in the USA.' It's a sobering thought. 'That created a lot of gossip and media attention. When I 'Many who contract HIV I AIDS are innocent victims, not only walked out of the clinic, I had to fa ce TV cameras. There was children, but women who have been faithful to their husbands. 20 EU RE KA STR EET DECEMBER 2003 Yet so many of the mothers carry the pain and guilt of their sure democracies like South Africa succeed. children contracting the disease.' At this point the conversation turns to the topic of leadership. While in Australia, Archbishop Ndtmgane also spoke at an NGO I comment on the number of leaders in South Africa who came forum on HIV/AIDS, and to Melbourne's top end of town. The through the school of Robben Island, the prison where N dungane corporate lunch, organised by a prominent law fum, was attended spent three years. T he archbishop jokes that he built Nelson by 45 selected guests. With this latter engagement in mind, I asked Mandela's cell. Ndungane about motivation for change. Why should Australians be 'One of the greatest miracles ofourtimehas been that transition involved or even care about issues such as HIV/AIDS, debt relief and from apartheid to democracy, and having the right person at the other issues affecting southern Africa? right time in the person of Nelson Mandela, who is a person of 'First of all I believe that all human beings, generally speaking, forgiveness par excellence, to lead us in the direction of reconcili would like to live with peace and security. But a starting point ation. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learnt from that.' for why Australians should be involved goes back to World War Ndungane adds if he had his way, no-one would be given pub II. The thinking was that we didn't want any more world wars lic office or hold a senior position in church, business or politics and there was a joint effort to form an institution, the United without an experience of another culture in another part of the Nations, to arbitrate between nations in the case of a dispute. world. 'When you have met with the people and been immersed Related to this was the establishment of the Universal Declara in the conditions, you begin to appreciate how people are living, tion of Human Rights. Here was the human community driven and have a real dialogue.' by solidarity among human beings and a desire to live in peace.' One final question. Will South Africa survive after Mandela? His second point relates to recent events. 'The greatest event 'You know,' he says, pausing to consider his words carefully, of our days that has made the world come to a standstill is 'People used to say, will there be church after Tutu?' He looks September 11 .. . What it shows us is our vulnerability as a human directly at m e, and a broad smile breaks out across his face. community and our mutual interdependence. Eventually he adds: 'Others will come to the fore. The spirit 'So for those of us with eyes to see, what that said is that we will live on.' need to work together for the common good in this world, to If the example of the Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu seek to eliminate conditions that make such deadly fanaticism Ndungane, is anything to go by, it seems the special South terrorism-survive. We need to enable people to have access African spirit- which draws so much vitality from the example to all that is essential for human welfare: food, shelter, water, of Nelson Mandela-willlive on. • health care, education, etc. That would eliminate the conditions in which deadly fanaticism breeds.' Michele M. Gierck is a writer, educator and public speaker. The archbishop stresses that access for all to the basics of life Njongonkulu Ndungane's recent book A World With A Human is possible. Fa ce: A Voice From Africa is published by David Philip, 2003. Third, he says the global village is a world without walls, one in which the rich and powerful, not just the poor, are vulnerable. 'Therefore it is in our enlightened self-interest that we provide the conditions that bring about security. This means investing in human capital- the advancement of human beings. 'Whether Australians like it or not, or whether they Relax are a faith loving community or not, this is God's world. With-God And God has created this world, providing enough - alld - resources for our needs, not for our greed.' Minlster to Yourself N DUNGANE SAYS EVEN the World Economic Forum will focus on values in its next session, on how to order our lives today in a responsible way that reflects our role as God's stewards. And the archbishop expects to be there for those discussions. He also believes creating sustainable development, SAT Sabbatical Program peace and security is not work that should be left to oth • Rest Self-con tai ned, free and Ocx ibl e modules are ers. Government, civil society and business all have their Time • Be Nurtured specificall y designed to assist indi vidua ls role to play. 'We can't leave politics to the politicians or to integrat e theology, spiriluality, human to ... • Be Free theology to the theologians.' developm ent and ministry with their • Play li,·ed e.xperience. According to Ndungane, the latest research indicates • Pray Four-month and 1\'ine- month programs that if nothing is done to combat HIV/AIDS in South • Share New Id eas Africa, the economy will collapse within three genera SAT • School of Applied Theology Graduate T heological Union tions, having devastating effects on surrounding econo 2400 Rid~e Road • Berkeley A 94709 mies and communities, in turn affecting the intern ational 1-800.831-0555 . 5 10-652-1651 community. So once again he refers to 'our enlight email [email protected] ened self-interest' . This time the interest is making websi te www.satgtu.org DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 21 tfw arh Matthew Klugman Soul food Richard Tognetti chartc; a new course for the ACO INOtha People'< Wotd< Hil"Y MePhtt ptedeww,, Rieh.,d Togneui left highly eommi"ioning new pieee' hom v•dou' describes the long continuing struggle to critical of his homeland. 'I believed Aus- Australian composers, and pioneering establish a publishing culture that nurtures tralia was a cultural desert, that there a series of daring collaborations with and promotes Australian writers. McPhee was no audience here, that not much was performers from outside classical music. For knew Australian writers brought unique happening, that the real possibilities were Tognetti, this has been no 'vacuous vision voices, grounded in the otherness of a elsewhere,' he tells me. N evertheless, to turn Australia upside down'; rather, it strange small society at the end of the Tognetti was surprised at the end of his has been a highly disciplined search. world. The struggle was to convince studies to discover 'a sleeping affinity with Observing the portraits of Melbourne publishers, both here and overseas, that painter Gabrielle Martin, Kevin Hart wrote: these voices were valuable and that the I am reminded of an old saying amongst reading public would take to them if only poets: 'Good poets write two poems. Great given the chance. Since 1989, Richard poets write one poem. ' It is true. My favour Tognetti, the Artistic Director and Leader ite artists do one thing but endlessly contest of the Australian Chamber Orchestra what they do. That probing of subject is not (ACO), has been engaged in a similar undertaken to astonish the world by their struggle to cultivate the possibilities of breadth of vision. It is not done in order Australian orchestral music. to call representation into question. It is It is not a path Tognetti expected to pursued because they are called by some take. These days the ACO is celebrated thing that evades being represented in their around the world for combining excellence work. There is always more to say about the curtain's shadow on a breakfast table, for example. It is always possible to say it more simply. It is always possible to open oneself to a mystery that can be conducted only through the simplest words. The ACO pursue the inner vitality, the life, of the pieces they play. Musical Renegades-a recent documentary on the ACO-shows how the orchestra takes each piece apart, bar by bar, almost note by note, Australia'. His girlfriend (now to see what it reveals, what it hides, what wife) was here and he decided to the composer wittingly and unwittingly give Australia a go, accepting the captured. There is something here of the job of leading and directing the Gnostic search for the lost sparks of divin Australian Chamber Orchestra. ity that have been scattered through the Coming home, Tognetti world, finding the strangeness and beauty found what he hadn't been of what others passed over. taught before-a tradition of Tognetti is alive to the sacred aspects Australian art with a spirit of their task. 'Concert halls are the mod of endeavour, a boldness and ern day church,' he tells me, 'and concerts freedom that is quite differ invite us into the indulgence of believing in ent from a lot of European art. a universal spirit, call it God or humanity, with a fresh voice. Yet the idea that he (Think, for instance, of Sidney Nolan, a wonderful indulgence that relies on dis would find such success with an Australian Helen Garner, Percy Grainger and Peter cipline, understanding and mutual respect.' group must have seemed far-fetched to Sculthorpe, and you get a sense of this.) Still, as Kevin Hart notes, artists can never Tognetti when he left Sydney in the mid- Emboldened, he set out to have some completely grasp what they seek. What 1980s to study at the Berne Conservatory 'serious fun', approaching each piece they can do is keep searching further and in Switzerland. anew, rearranging string quartet and further. It is here that the ACO's particular Like many of his contemporaries and symphony pieces for chamber orchestra, form of collaboration is important. 22 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 The Australian Chamber Orchestra pop stars and artists, next year the ACO has been described as an ensemble of solo will collaborate with Australian writers, Daring collaborations ists. Each player is encouraged to find their commissioning Dorothy Porter, Michael voice, each plays with their own charisma Leunig, Helen Garner, David Malouf, com and flair. And yet they are also part of a poser Georges Lentz and others to create a S INCE 2000, the Australian Cham. greater whole. The bringing together of piece based on Christ's last words. To make ber Orchestra has been challenging difference is a challenging brief, but the their music as accessible as possible they the botmdaries of chamber music with rewards are great-shared discovery and have increased the range of their youth a series of collaborations with signifi the chance to learn more both about them tickets (which are less than half the adult cant artists from outside the realms of selves as performers and about the music price) from under 26 to under 30, and plan orchestral music. The pioneering col they play. to travel through country Australia. laboration in 2000 featured the draw 'We're incredibly hard on each other,' The ACO are still on the journey ings and text of Michael Leunig with states Helena Rathbone, the ACO's Richard Tognetti started with them in the voice of Peter Garret performing, principal second violinist, in Musical 1989. That was a time when 'everyone am ong others, Sergei Prokofiev's Pete1· Renegades. 'Collaborations are an affir believed that nothing was possible, that and the Wolf, Camille Saint-Saen's mation of what you're doing,' expands there were no audiences'. Tognetti has Carnival of the Animals, and Gavin Tognetti, 'but they are also a terrific way experienced otherwise. 'People are the Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me of hearing honest appraisal . . . a critic same everywhere, there is more differ Yet. (The ACO later released a live writes from the outside and often is way ence between individuals than between recording of Carnival of the Animals off the mark in their praise and condem groups. There is a universal human with Letmig's text and images.) nation. When you play music with others condition, everyone laughs and erie In 2001 the orche tra worked with they say very hone t things about roughly the same things, and Neil Finn, Michael Leunig, a number about the connection.' artists distil and exaggerate these emo of Australian composers and Lynn tions. The difficulty, the challenge, lies William's national children's choir, I TIS THIS HONEST APPRAISAL, this hardness in getting the audience to understand Gondwana Voice , to develop an Aus on each other, that allows the orchestra what you are speaking. We have been tralian opera, Parables, Lullabies and to keep moving deeper into the life of successful in developing a wonderful Secrets. The year 2002 saw a produc music. 'A child learns to talk, constantly audience everywhere, although we could tion of Igor Stravinsky's A Soldier' grappling with speech patterns and get do with some more people coming in Tale with The Bell Shakespeare Com ting appropriate criticism and support Melbourne.' Yet despite being embraced pany, while in 2003 the ACO com and it is possible to continue this into by audiences here and overseas, Tognetti missioned Australian composers, adulthood. It's a pleasure to work with and the ACO are somewhat isolated in including Peter Sculthorpe, to arrange people in artistic life, it builds your being Australia. 'We're not encouraging Aus the songs of The Whitlams lead singer and there is the challenge of being a sin tralian conductors, there are no musical Tim Freedman for chamber orchestra. gle cell in a larger organism.' The creative directors at the performing establish In 2004 the orchestra will collabo impulse needs to be worked out 'when ments, apart from me at the ACO. rate with Australian composers and you are in a room and feeling lonely', con It's a shame that should be writers to create a piece informed by tinues Tognetti, but the sharing of differ investigated. Why is this so?' Christ's seven last words. ences can help bring the results to life. The play of differences within the L E RECENT EVENTS at Opera Australia ACO is echoed by their repertoire-in provide an example of the difficulties of establishment. Even now he is rarely asked their reinterpretations, their Australian establishing a new voice in Australia. Last to perform here. Nevertheless, he has commissions and most famously in their year they 'just threw out a terrific musical been luckier than Simone Young, luckier work with people from outside classical director [Simone Young], who is a woman'. too, perhaps, than Hilary McPhee whose music. These are not, Tognetti empha Though it was undoubtedly a complex publishing company eventually ran sises, 'gratuitous' acts. Rather, in working situation, 'the historical details pale into aground. Tognetti has learnt that his with the Bell Shakespeare Company, or insignificance in light of the fact that initial criticisms of Australia were not with Tim Freedman, Michael Leunig, they lost this person, in light of the bigger entirely true, but a distressing paradox Peter Garrett and Neil Finn, the ACO is philosophical issues.' More specifically 'it remains. While Australia has afforded bringing together strange things to see would seem there was something in the Tognetti the chance to find a voice that what they might teach us. attitude to an Australian, to a woman, is bold and free, he feels that 'if I resigned Next year the ACO will give around 120 an Australian woman ... you can imag from my job at the ACO I might be concerts, travelling all over Australia and ine an overseas director coming here and forced to go overseas, as I would not be the rest of the world. They will play music being seen as authoritarian and stick invited to do anything else here'. The from Australia, Europe and South America ing to his guns, whereas she was seen as work to create a culture and infrastruc - JOlillng an accordionist, a violinist, temperamental and out of control.' ture that truly nurtures and promotes a pianist and a soprano to play classics, Tognetti feels that if he hadn't made Australian artists is not yet complete. • forgotten jewels and world premieres. something for himself he would never Having collaborated with Australian actors, have been asked to perform by the Matthew Klugman is a Melbourne writer. D EC EMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 23 pro I i lc• Kerrie O 'Brien Respecting Australian rules rounds the game that was no longer in our public life. And the egalitarian nature of it, all those sort of things.' The Game In Time of War deals with culture and politics, religion and self discovery, nationality and humanity- like much of Flanagan's work, it is heartfelt and raw. While dealing with complex and con fronting issues, his writing remains simple and accessible. This is no coincidence- he works hard at the process. He puts it down to his expe rience as a journalist, wanting his writing to speak to the broadest possible audience. He also credits other influences: 'I was persuaded of that by [cartoonist Michael] Leunig, who said "the simpler you can make your work the more people you'll take with you".' 'I am in the business of trying to deposit ideas in m ainstream Australian culture. It's like posting letters-you've got to get the ideas through a slit and I regard my art in part as making the complex simple, so it's absolutely about accessibility. People have A UHRAUAN wruT>R MMtin FIMMgan properly understood will always tell you got no idea the labour that goes into being is like a modern day shanachie. In Irish about the values of the society at the time,' simple. I try and be really hard-headed tradition, every village, no matter how Flanagan says. about m y writing, like I interrogate it, small, had a storyteller, known as a His latest book, The Game in Time [asking] "What are you saying? If you say shanachie, who told stories about their of War, was inspired by the events of this, do you m ean that?" I just go back and people and the society they lived in. The September 11 and the subsequent attacks through it again and again.' shanachies effectively helped preserve Irish on Afghanistan and Iraq. In short, it is the Actor/writer John Clarke also made an culture and a sense of history; they instilled story of three m en going to the foo tball, impact, saying 'The trick to perform ing is a sense of justice in their children. and the events in the world around them not to perform'. According to Flanagan: 'I Flanagan's writing is like the story- tell during that time. translated that to mean the trick to writing ing of the shanachies on several levels. In the book, he examines society using is not to write elaborately, showoffedly, He too addresses issues of fairness and the m edium of sport-from World War I unduly, expansively or indeed for effect. history, and tells the untold stories of the to the present day. Flanagan found solace Simply say what it is you have to say, trust ordinary person. Through that process, in the football at a time when the world the words that appear before you. And they he looks at many of the major issues seem ed to be going mad. 'So all of a sudden are your truest words. It's simply about hav confronting Australian society today. this bloody war's coming and the only thing ing the guts and the courage and maybe the Both in his daily journalism, writing for which provides m e with any sort of degree patience to wait for the words to appear and The Age newspaper, and his books (there of relief is going to watch this game. I'm as to learn how to be in the right places for are eight to date), Flanagan is a beautiful aware as anyone that that's almost absurd them to appear and then having the cour writer. He writes about Australian culture, but equally it was the reality.' age to just write them down when they do. Australian people and the games they play. So what is it about Australian Rules That's the process.' The relationship between black and white that provides that relief? 'There is som e Writing was a secret passion for Flanagan Australia has long been a focus of his work. thing about the Australianness of it ... from an early age, but he completed a law He has been called Australia's best sports going and watching a gam e of footy-which degree, painted houses and travelled the writer but his work deals with much m ore some people would say is violent, but to world before getting a cadetship at the than sport. Of course, sport embraces much m e isn't 'cos it's sort of codified Greek con Launceston Exam iner. The interest in law more than just a gam e. 'Any popular game duct- and just the earthy candour that sur- is not surprising. There is a strong social 24 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 conscience in Flanagan's writing, a desire a huge impact on him. He was introduced to way to go towards achieving peace. 'As a to tell the stories that deserve to be told. Aboriginal people and culture. nation, there is both a growing conform Studying law in his early 20s left an indel 'The first people who understood my ity and a dangerous blindness affecting our ible imprint on him. 'Law was good for me dilemma, my inner restlessness, were national intelligence,' Flanagan says. 'Over because it taught me a certain intellectual Aboriginal people. The last people on earth the past seven years or however long it is discipline,' he says. 'It taught me that when who I expected to understand me under since Howard was elected, certain argu the rules are defined you won't get away stood me. That's the great defining irony of ments have triumphed that are spiritually with bullshit. When the rules aren't defined, my life,' he says. mean and intellectually deceitful.' you will. When the rules are defined, good 'By exploring this country and the peo Australia's involvement in the most minds will catch you out. ple and its history I have a far larger sense recent Gulf War filled Flanagan with a deep 'It also led me to think much more of what it means to be Australian. I'm not foreboding for this country: 'I suppose what seriously about the notion of witness and the ashamed to say I love this country and a large offended me most was when I realised it notion of evidence. Good report- part of the love I have for it, this comes from didn't matter what Australians thought or age is about the act of witness.' my relationship with Aboriginal people. felt, they were in it whether they liked it or 'I just hope and pray that Australians, not. They were in it because of one man's c OMMITMENT TO THESE themes is par black and white, [can] see, respect and hon ego and understanding of the world.' ticularly important to Flanagan; they recur our what is great in Aboriginal culture and Even so, he has hope for the future. 'I throughout his writing, both in The Age and in the spirit of Aboriginal people, as dem have to be open to reality. I deny nothing. in his books. 'When I got into journalism, onstrated by Uncle Banjo Clark, by Patrick I've looked at the horror of my own nation's one of the things I found was that you can Dodson, by Archie Roach, by Joy Murphy history in the eye I believe and, ultimately, I speak for other people,' he says. Wandin, by Atmtie Beryl Carmichael, by haven't been defeated by it. 'That became one of the really meaning many Aboriginal people I've met .. . their 'My view is that there will always be ful things to me. Early on I met Ernie Dingo largeness of spirit, their compassion, just war. I'm not an idealist in the sense that I and he said to me "White artists always see so many qualities about them I admire ... don't think you can create an ideal world. themselves as being outside of the group but I hope that Australians will not confuse It seems to me that ideals are permanently black artists see themselves as speaking on this largeness with the sort of behaviour born and almost immediately they begin to behalf of the group". we have seen from certain ATSIC be corrupted. I take my faith from the fact 'So I've always taken incredibly seriously leaders recently ... ' that they keep being reborn and that's the the role of being the medium for other peo process. What I do know from my reading ple's stories. And that's a lot of what I've A SKED ABOUT WHAT might assist the of history, [is that] situations, no matter done as a journalist, is just try to convey process of peace and reconciliation for Aus how bad they are, could always be a helluva other people's stories I thought the public tralian people, Flanagan doesn't profess to lot worse. And the energy that keeps them should know. And try to get them to the having the answers. The bottom line, as he from becoming so comes from us.' public. That's a very intimate thing to do, sees it, is to act. Just after the start of the second Gulf there are huge amounts of trust and you've 'I'm sorry to keep bringing this back to War, Flanagan went to watch AFL team got to have this sensitivity and reception to the personal but I can only do what I do. I Hawthorn. Afterwards, he wandered into what other people are on about.' write a book, which is quite absurd. Which a bookshop and found a pamphlet featuring That intimacy and honesty is reflected is ultimately the story of three men going to the writings of Martin Luther King. What in Flanagan's writing about himself. Read the football, one of whom is a Muslim, one King espoused resonated for Martin Flana ing In Sunshine or In Shadow, you feel you of whom is a Jew and one who comes from gan: 'His essays were what persuaded me have travelled with him on his quest to a Christian background. It's absurd. That's that peace, like love, has to be made. That's establish a sense of self. His wife, Polly, said what I did. That's why the war cry in that what we have to do. ' • to him when she first read the book 'It's all book is John Kennedy's famous half-time in there'. As a reader, you certainly get that address: Just do something. Just do . Martin Flanagan is currently working on a impression- he lays himself bare. 'I don't have the vision that will rem stage adaptation of his book The Call, to be Growing up in Tasmania, with an Irish edy the world but I do know that there's an performed by the Pla y box Theatre in 2004. convict background, Flanagan felt a strong energy that we can give one another that desire to connect with his ancestry, which will give us all a better show of doing things Kerrie O'Brien is a freelance writer and editor. led hin1 overseas in his early 20s. 'I think we're proud of.' Photo by Bill Thomas. I'm actually a traditional man, it's just that The themes of peace and the need for I was brought up in a place where my tradi respect for all people emerge again and again For rent, Melbourne: three nights to tion was absent and then I had to go looking in Flanagan's writing. But it's not preachy three months. or holier than thou: his stories simply tell for my tradition,' he says. Modern one-bedroom furnished it how it is. Writing about good things and He travelled to Ireland on a kind of apartment in St Kilda. pilgrimage to seek out his forebears and to good people can suggest that the writer is Sunny courtyard, close to everything, establish a connection, and found he still felt somehow beyond question or doubt; Flana quiet street, car park. like a tourist. After his return to Australia, gan is concerned that people might make Tel 03 9525 5324 or 02 4236 0551 Flanagan started exploring this country and such assumptions. email: [email protected] travelled to northern Australia, which made In Australia in 2003, there's still a long DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 25 Watermark M Y >AMtLY h"' ,h,ck on the edge of Gtw Oy"" B•y, Tasmania has the memory of a great journalist, Henry on the east coast of Tasmania. One of the island's Aboriginal Melville, author of A History of Van Diemen's Land 1824-35. tribes was known to the first whites as the Oyster Bay tribe. This was written from a condemned cell in a Hobart jail. These may well have been the people who m et the Protector of Melville's particular subject was the governorship of George Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land, George Augustus Robinson, Arthur, described by Robert Hughes as the closest thing to in 1830. They told Robinson their people had come to the a totalitarian state that ever existed in the British Empire. island by foot and that the sea had closed behind them. They But his history is a general one and deals with the Aborigi had carried that item of knowledge, correctly as it turned out, nal issue and although his sensibility is not one we would for 12,000 years. By the end of the 19th century, however, the equate with our own, he writes in a factual way and with official version, the scientific version, was that the Tasmanian an eye to principles of justice. He describes as a 'farce' and blacks were Polynesian in origin, having come to the island by a 'legal outrage' trials in which Aboriginal men with only a sea. This intellectual orthodoxy owed its origins to a specula few words of English and no defence counsel are convicted for tive guess by Thomas Huxley based in part on the observation capital offences. Arguing from precedents in international that the first Tasmanians had curly hair. Recently, I received law and scholars like Grotius, he even questions the legal an inquiry asking how many Aboriginal people were in ity of the laws being applied. He notes that blacks are hung Tasmania at the time of white arrival. The honest answer is for violence against whites but no white was even brought I don't know. The best I can do is guess or quote the guesses before a court for violence against blacks. He disagrees with of other people. To grow up in Tasmania, as I did, is to learn Governor Arthur but thankfully records Arthur's proposal there is much about the past that you don't know and prob to issue tribal leaders with passports to enable them to keep ably never will. In the end, you have to learn to live with the using their migratory paths. One marvels at the breadth of absence of the sort of certainty demanded of those who engage Mel ville's grasp of every legal, rural, commercial, political in intellectual jousting. and military issue which passed before his pen, and the con Tasmania has been in the news of late with the so-called sistency of his judgments across the various areas. I think it is Windschuttle debate. I've had only the one argument over fair to describe Henry Melville as a witness to his times, and Windschuttle, the subject being whether I was obliged to read a pretty impressive one. So why is it I never hear anyone say, him. My fri end inferred that Windschuttle had become a sort if it's early Tasmania you want to know about, you're obliged of intellectual roadblock barring me from pursuing a path I to read Henry Melville? And if he were alive today, would he had been treading all my adult life, upon which I had writ be heard? Would he be seen as possessing the 'neutrality' our ten scores of articles, several books and now a play. All this government now demands of journalists? Would we hear him work has proceeded from the premise that the truth of what on our ABCZ happened in this country lies between the races, not on one My brother Richard recently had a telling experience with the side or the other, particularly not in one side's official records ABC. He was contacted as one of a number of Australian writers and newspapers. Imagine the response if the Japanese govern and asked to read a passage from a favourite novel together with ment were to produce a pamphlet on the treatment of Allied some comments about it. He chose James Joyce's Ulysses and prisoners-of-war during World War II based solely on Japanese for his conunent spoke of John Howard as the great fictionalist Army records and Japanese newspapers of the day. Windschut of our time, citing some of his statements during the children tle, and other champions of the so-called empirical method, overboard affair. The segment was recorded and agreed upon, might at this point interrupt and say but there are also Allied then was broadcast with all reference to Howard missing. When records concerning those personnel and what they endured. But Richard's agent contacted the ABC, he was offered, by way of what if there weren't? Does that mean an open and shut verdict compensation, a place on a radio panel discussing disillusion can be delivered in their absence? ment in contemporary Australia. There is an exquisite irony Windschuttle is no mere individual poking around in events here. There is also what I would call a trade in beliefs. The which occurred, after all, 170 years ago. He is a figure of our times citizen hands in his or her belief that their views m atter and in the way that the Tampa, the World Trade Centre and Pauline that they have some sort of right to be heard. In return, they Hanson are. One tabloid newspaper columnist in Melbourne are allowed to sit at the table of those publicly expressing their grandly conceded in a recent column that Windschuttle may despair over their inability to alter or influence the world in have been wrong in some of his 'minor claims'. The columnist which they now find themselves. • went on to say: 'He (Windschuttle) went too far, for instance, in denying Tasmanian Aborigines felt any ownership of the land.' Martin Flanagan is a journalist and writer. This is an edited Did the Tasmanian Aborigines consider their attitude to land to version of an address given at the Watermark Writers' Muster at be a minor matter? I very much doubt it. Kendall in northern NSW. 26 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 verse Stormy Weather 28 December 1999 It'll all blow over ... but in the meantime Kerry Murphy's body has washed up on the beach at Apollo Bay, that home of shipwrecks. Matching Tall, proud, handsome and strong, An exile in New York, instinctively proud Kerry a dozen years ago of a culture higher than that of China Town, was protective of my somewhat timorous daughter. delicate, small, fine-drawn, retiring, she is never one of a crowd. Lost by parents too anonymous to reproach, she took to the streets: sleeping rough, drugs, on the game A poor North Country boy with a good degree as things fell out; locked up for madness- from Manchester, his crucial vocational move paranoia took her out of reach ... was down: he has given up his whole career to curing She came back: she seemed no longer on the rocks, intractable diseases of the South. she seemed fine. But anything can go wrong He's living in Nairobi in a hovel. as almost all of us know most of the time. There's no affinity that anyone might see between these two, only unlimited friction But- death by water? between their different kinds of worth. that comes out of the blue. What binds them, though, is an undying love. Poor Kerry, rest in peace, another victim Given that truth is always stranger than fiction, of no indictable crime. it's up to you, dear reader, to write the novel. - Evan Jones - Evan Jones DECEMBER 2003 EU REKA STR EET 27 First impressions Ln ing lhstor~ I II tr\ 1\lld ',1111 ~ In ton 1 7 1 [odclr r l.!d,m~ ()( ~ I h l) ~l 1 ',] ' 1 U\' H >LLARY Roo HAM CuNTON reform project that year. She writes, is h er own woman and a smart 'I underestimated the resistance I and successful lawyer, a former would meet as a First Lady with a young Republican who becam e policy mission'. That's putting it America's First (Democrat) Lady mildly. not when her husband became its Even strong, self-confident president, but when she lost her women have a relatively tenuous role as his appointed but inde hold on power. Hillary Rodham, pendently powerful policy-maker. feminist and partner in a prestig JFK's appointment of his brother ious law firm, felt obliged to add Robert as attorney-general could be 'Clinton' to her name well after borne, but not a later Democrat's her marriage. Her husband was sharing real power with his wife. Governor of Arkansas at the time, Most First Ladies are assumed and the Arkansas electors drew to have at least some influence unsatisfactory conclusions from from their supposed intimate her keeping her 'maiden' (and pro relationships with powerful fessional) nam e. How much did she men, and exercise it in their own identify with her husband, then? ways-fashion icon (Jacqueline 'I'm not some little woman like Kennedy), drugs campaigner Tammy Wynette, standing by her (Nancy 'Just Say No' Reagan) or man', she told a TV in terviewer, grandmother to the nation (Mrs doing exactly that when Gennifer Bush, no-nonsense wife to George Flowers revealed a long affair the First). Eleanor Roosevelt exer with Hillary's husband. Following cised her real power after FOR public reaction to that interview she succumbed humiliatingly, in the learned not to make jokes arms of his mistress, and she was mless they were scripted. appointed to chair the commit tee then drafting the declaration A N INTELLIGENT, educated and on human rights in the United policy-driven woman, as Hillary Nations. But when first- term Roclh am Clinton has clearly always President Clinton appointed his been, would expect a 'real job' when wife to do the serious job, in his own jokingly offered as ' two for the price of her partner attained the highest office in administration, of reforming health one'. The joke was sour. the land. Wom en like her observed the policy, neither the power brokers in By the end of 1994, Hillary Clinton real power of the forces against women Congress, nor the public, nor the self was still her husband's policy confi in positions of political determinism. As appointed guardians of public policy dante and a power in Washington, but the president's wife, sh e had broken a (the columnists, pundits, reporters and had been sidelined from direct power great taboo in being politically active talk-show hosts) were willing to make when what she called her 'missteps' or not behind the scenes, but in paid office. the best- or any-use of what Clinton misjudgm ents sank her health care H er armies of enemies sprang from the 28 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 furrows. Some attacked her husband last term ended, and her husband was Arnold Schwarzenegger was resoundingly through her. Others avenged themselves not impeached, Hillary Rodham Clinton elected to be the Republican Governor of on the emancipation of women, making decided to run for the Senate. California. Hillary's greatest challenge is the president's wife, as sh e says, a 'light The art of compromise she demon the people's desire to identify with their ning rod for political and ideological bat strated obviously arose from h er solid, leaders- and they do not think they are tles .. . and a magnet for feelings ... about Republican upbringing and the sense of intelligent. And yet they love Hillary women's choices and roles'. The cost agency, values and confidence taught Rodham Clinton, because she represents was enormous: not only the failure of by h er resilient mother (abandoned and something else that they can identify with: her h ealth reform plans, but the rallying abused in h er own childhood) and one the dignity of 'failure' and the strength in of the right behind the odious of those generous, judgm ental, strong, bearing betrayal. N ewt Gingrich, a focus for opposition to supportive and loving fathers who so This is an imperfect but significant 'the Clinton agenda'; a hostile Congress commonly figure in the lives of book because it may say som ething and a spooked Democratic party. remarkable women. important about what makes people Hillary Clinton was to be hounded love some political women. Joan Kirner, on TV, on talkback radio and by news H ILLARY RoDHAM was a young firs t woman premier of Victoria, is loved paper columnists; by congressmen, Republican who changed sides in the by many because of, not in spite of, her senators and that rem arkably interested 1960s, in part through feminism but also failure to return Labor to power in 1992, 'special investigator', Kenneth Starr, because of the stupidity of the establish after a series of catastrophes under the throughout her White House years. She m ent of the time. She became an advo Cain premiership since 1982. Living endured intense speculation about her cate for children's rights and a m ember History is written by a woman favoured role in their financial affairs, her under of the Watergate investigation team, by 44 per cent of the national electorate standing of Bill's other kind of affairs, a a partner in a law firm who ran civil to be the next Dem ocrat president. I Grand Jury investigation into their joint liberties litigation for the poor. She mar wouldn't write her off • finances, her father's death (j ust when ried a handsome young Rhodes scholar the health package reached a crucial who shared her political values, and who Moira Rayner is Senior Fellow at the Law stage in its passage through Congress) had as an unhappy a childhood as her School, University of WA, a barrister and and the death of her husband's m other. mother's. Hillary put her career second writing the authorised biography of Joan But m ost of all, she endured the loss of to his. Kirner for Hodder Headline. great friends, one to suicide but others It is a careful book-as because she walked away from their you would expect fro m a once shared, purer aims. Power has a woman with an ongoing different quality once achieved. political career. She does Trinity College It is, however, not this woman's frus not dwell on the loss of old THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE trations but the president's predilection friends from her community for sex with much more ordinary women advocacy years-friends who than his wife that will drive most people did not make the transition to read Living History. They will find with her into political power, Theology at Trinity this its least satisfying aspect. The which requires unthinkable • Exp lore your faith within the context of name Monica Lewinsky is not even compromises. When the great a dynamic lea rning community in the index. There is no mention of children's advocate Marian • Enj oy studying theology via the large the details of the affair, except for her Edelman, a close friend and and well -resourced Uni ted Faculty of husband's late confession. There is no colleague, disparaged her Th eo logy real clarity about 'whether she knew', choices and departed it must • Ga in a theological qualification before that day, though plenty of hints have cut deeply, but she does awarded by the Melbourne Co ll ege of that the man had demons, and not say so. Nor does she wal- Divinity that warnings were sent. low in her humiliation over • Experience the flex ibility of choosing to the president's dalliances with stu dy either face-to-face or online E RHAPS, BECAUSE SHE is undoubtedly the young intern. • Access Melbourne's uniquely ri ch base a feminist, Hillary Clinton could not She allows only superficial of theo logica l resources attack her hu band's nemesis, another insights into the machinations woman. Perhaps, too, she is aware of of international politics and For course, subject and enrolment details contact: the possibility of losing whatever she into what it is like to work Trinity College Th eological School, values in their ongoing relationship under the most dim man to Royal Parade, Parkville 3052 if she goes into too much detail. The become president in the his- Tel: 03 9348 77 2 7 marriage, I think, was so tough that it tory of the United States, and Email: [email protected] could withstand infidelities, but not to watch the rapid loss of the www.trinity.unimelb.edu.aul theolog/ disloyalty. Clearly it was the lies that civil rights and the liberties caused the real pain. So why did she fought for in the '60s and '70s. Shaping women and men in Christian mission and ministry stay? Maybe a deal was done. When the As I finished this review, DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STRE ET 29 Powerful lives Hugh Dillon on Simone Wei I and George Orwell s >MONE WHL AND G 30 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 I was conscious of an immense weight of the train passed, and I was almost near destroyed her fragile mental and physical guilt I had got to expiate ... I felt that I had enough to catch her eye. She had a round health. Orwell, also tubercular and got to escape not merely from imperialism pale face ... and it wore, for the second in probably depressed, finished writing but from every form of man's dominion which I saw it, the most desperate, hope Nineteen Eighty-FoUI on a bitterly deso over man ... At that time failure seemed less expression I have ever seen . . . For late Scottish island, destroying his health to me to be the only virtue. Every suspi what I saw in her face was not the ignorant and dying prematurely in 1950. She was cion of self-advancement . . . seemed to suffering of an animal. She knew well 34, he was 47. Both died young because me spiritually ugly, a species of bullying enough what was happening to her-under they had lived self-sacrificially to an .. . My mind turned immediately towards stood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny abnormal degree-a way of life recognisable the extreme cases, the social outcasts: it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, to Christians in theory, but much harder to tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes ... on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, copy and now perhaps not even intelligible to What I profoundly wanted, at that time, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe. large proportions of modern Westerners. was to find some way of getting out of the As a romantic young man in the '70s, respectable world altogether. Both Orwell and Weil were pessimists I spent some time with the Jesuits. I who feared a future in which Stalin's or had joined the order hoping that I might He might have been reading Weil's Hitler's vision of the world would ulti follow in the footsteps of, and emulate, Weil, mind. They each would have recognised mately triumph. Unlike Orwell, Weil Orwell, Daniel Berrigan and the great Aus the other's deep vein of compassion. For found God in such a world. Recuperat tralian priest, Ted Kennedy. I could not have Weil the factory was a 'penal institution' in ing from her factory travails in 1935, she been more self-deluded, but it took some which workers were forced to suffer physi wrote ' ... the conviction suddenly came time for me to realise intuitively what Susan cally and morally to the point that their to me that Christianity is pre-eminently Sontag said of Weil: suffering was replaced by apathy, which the religion of slaves, that slaves can Some lives are exemplary, others not; and she regarded as 'the worst form of degrada not help belonging to it, I among others.' of exemplary lives, there are those which tion'. She wrote: 'A working woman who Despite this, she refused baptism invite us to imitate them, and those which is on the assembly line, and with whom I until on her deathbed. we regard from a distance with a mix returned on the tram, told me after a few ture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It years ... one ceases to suffer, even though ORWELL, WEIL remained pas is roughly the difference between a hero one feels gradually stultified.' Orwell had sionately egalitarian but also a libertarian. and a saint ... No one who loves life would similarly dreadful epiphanies. As his train However, her political thought and writ wish to imitate her dedication to martyr pulled out of Wigan on the way back to ing, unlike his, became more and more dom, or would wish it for his children or London he noticed something which led infused with a religious vision. This pro for anyone else whom he loves. Yet so far to this justly famous passage: gression can be seen in her two great as we love seriousness, as well as life, we political works, Oppression m1d Lib are moved by it, nourished by it. As we moved slowly through the outskirts erty (which collects her '30s anti-Soviet of the town we passed row after row of essays) and The Need for Roots, written in Even if, like the Rich Young Man, we little grey slum houses ... At the back of London for the Free French, a manifesto for turn away sad, as most of us must, we are one of the houses a young woman was a Christian socialism (1943). The French nourished by such lives, in all their fearful kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up Intelligence chief said of her after her death seriousness, because they open up for us the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the later that year, 'Her kingdom was not of this redemptive possibilities without which inside and which I suppose was blocked. I world.' life seems degraded and hopeless. • had time to see everything about her- her Simone Weil died in London of sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms despair, anorexia and tuberculosis. She had Hugh Dillon is a Sydney magistrate. reddened by the cold. She looked up as lived ascetically to the point where she [email protected] DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 3 1 h )( l " Peter Mares Preparing for the fifth wave Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem, fr;mk Brennan. UnlVL'ISlt~ or (~UL'L'IlSLIIld PrL'SS, 20(B. l',l\~ () 7022 '\..J-16 S, RIU' $30 I N me 'NTRonucnoN TO th>' book, F 32 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 crossing a border that a refugee can seek protection. As Brerman applications under the Migration Act. ... By 2000-2001 there were tells us, this flaw in the system is not the result of some slip-up 1312 applications.') in drafting but the product of a deliberate choice of words. When My second complaint is that Brennan's argument does not seem the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up at the entirely resolved. On the one hand he seems to be suggesting that end of World War II, Australia was among those countries that Australia's policies are far more extreme than those of comparable resisted any recognition of a general right to be 'granted asylum'. nations dealing with far larger numbers of asylum seekers. The As Tasman Heyes, Secretary of the Department of Immigration, implication is that by looking elsewhere, we might see the error of wrote at the time-in language eerily prescient of recent public our ways. If Australia were to adjust its approach, he says, we could pronouncements by Prime Minister Howard-recognition of such 'join again those nations who wrestle daily with the dilemma'. On a right 'would be unacceptable to Australia as it would be tanta the other hand, Brennan's detailed comparisons with the US and mount to the abandonment of the right which every sovereign Europe suggest that commonalities in policy approach outweigh state possesses to determine the composition of its own popula the differences. All developed nations are treading a similar path, tion and who shall be admitted to its territories'. Instead of a gen aiming to deter asylum seekers and contain the refugee problem eral right to asylum, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the developing world. There is evidence of a race to the bottom only recognises the individual's right 'to seek and enjoy' asylum, a in refugee protection and at the moment, Australia happens to be formulation that puts no onus on the receiving state to admit the in the lead. While this tension in Brennan's argument remains individual across its frontier. We witness the consequences of this unresolved, it does prompt him to pose a searching question about flaw every day: nation states do all they can to keep asylum seekers Australia's approach: out and asylum seekers do all they can to evade border Our present policy can be posited only on one of two options. Either controls and get in. we want to be so tough that no other country will dare to imitate us and so we will maintain the advantage that asylum seekers will want B RENNAN DOES NOT OFFER simple or utopian solutions. He to try anywhere but here. Or we are happy to lead other countries acknowledges political realities and his specific proposals for to a new level of toughness, leaving bona fide asylum seekers more change in Australia could be seen as a minimum program that is V1.Jlnerable in the non-existent queues. both modest and achievable. When the fifth wave of boat arrivals begins to enter our territorial waters (as Brerman says it inevita Overall, Tampering with Asylum makes for compelling and bly will) he wants to see the navy escort those boats to Christmas disturbing reading. Familiar as many of us are with the human Island for processing. Initial detention should only be for the pur side effects of Australia's recent obsession with border protec pose of health and security checks on arrival and to screen out tion, individual case studies never fail to shock. For example, the manifestly unfounded claims. Asylum seekers story of a seven-year-old boy hit with a baton and should then be transferred to the mainland on a exposed to tear gas in Woomera detention centre. structured release progran1 while their cases are (Brennan had seen the bruises with his own eyes.) assessed. A degree of judicial oversight would Even more shocking is the dissimulation and be restored to the refugee determination process inaction of the federal bureaucracy in the face of to ensure that decision-making remains just and complaints. Allegations about a rape in Curtin lawful. Refugees would be entitled to family detention centre were never investigated because reunion and to travel overseas. Those still in need it was unclear whether it was the responsibility of protection after three years would be eligible of federal or state police. After a decade of detain for permanent residency in Australia. Finally, ing children in immigration detention in WA, the Brennan would like to see Australia legislate to Department of Immigration, Multicultural and recognise the protections enshrined in the Conven Indigenous Affairs has yet to finalise a protocol on tionAgainst Torture and the International Covenant child protection with state authorities. The result on Civil and Political Rights. This would offer some is that kids in detention fall through the bureau protection to refugees who do not fit the narrow cratic gaps with no agency to take primary respon definition of a refugee contained in the 1951 sibility for their welfare. Refugee Convention, but who nonetheless would The 'firebreak' that John Howard put in place be at risk in their homeland. (Currently the only fall back protection after the Tampa offers us an opportunity to think again about our mechanism is personal intervention by the immigration minister.) approach to asylum, freed from the panic and distraction associated I have only two minor complaints about Brennan's book. The with new boat arrivals. It is possible to design a set of policies that first is that it could have benefited from more rigorous editing to secures the border while honouring our international obligations streamline the argument and remove duplication. His 'thought and basic human rights. As Frank Brennan says: '[it] is no answer to experiment', compelling as it is, need not appear twice in almost say that we close the door on the asylum seeker at our doorstep in identical form (in both the introduction and the conclusion). To order more readily to assist the refugee in the faraway camp.' • take another example, on p159, Brennan cites statistics to dem onstrate the growing burden of refugee and asylum cases before Peter Mares is a journalist with ABC Radio National and an adjunct Australian courts. ('In 1993- 94 there were only 381 applications research fellow at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne to the courts; in 2001-2002 there were 1423.') On p161 the same University. He is the author of Borderline: Australia's response to point is repeated, using very similar statistics taken from slightly refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the Tampa (UNSW different years. ('Back in 1987-88 the court received a modest 84 Press, 2002). DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 33 the nation:2 Toby O'Connor What's a charity? The draft Charities Bill 2003 T 34 EUREKA STRE ET DECEMBER 2003 Linda or Anne, in blue and green Anne Green, a name that comes back from Washington Square, was a Stanford girl in nineteen fifty-nine one of a swatch. Now she'd be wearing black I suppose, some forty-four or five years later: if she's still alive- it's all so long ago: how could I ever know if she were the girl who came back, nameless and in a dream, som ewhere round five o'clock this morning. (Later. I called up her name; they seemed more or less to match; So there we were outside also her face and stature.) a four-floor brownstone on Washington Square, wondering which floor was the family flat. I hardly knew her at all, nothing at all of her nature: We only saw the second floor, just one of the graduate English crowd where we chatted, met Anne's parents, who never took the same courses as I had drinks or coffee, in something like that sequence, nor shared any special friends. before, pleasing and having pleased, we were released But when the summer vacation came and I (and my then wife) spoke into bohemian SoHo: the whole of New York spread out. of going to New York- wanderers abroad I never saw or heard of her again. in the American way she said 'Call in any time' . . . - Evan Jones DECEMBER 2003 EU RE KA STR EET 35 ~oc ivl v:2 Fatima Measham The forgotten people EYEN THE MO,., conmn >i'" "tim•" you talk about poor people,' she observes, Mark Peel, author of the book The Low of poverty in Australia is sobering. At the 'you can individualise it and point out est Rung: Voices of Australian Poverty, end of the 20th century, over one and a half shortcomings. You can distance yourself agrees. 'The problem with poverty in a rich million Australians were living in poverty from it. "Those people, there's some country,' he says, 'is that it will always be in the midst of increased economic pros thing wrong with them". That sort of contrasted with poverty somewhere else. perity. Yet research into attitudes towards approach.' While it would be ludicrous to claim that poverty suggests that while few Austral In this way, she says, distinctions in Australia there is poverty approach ians dispute its existence in the country, between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' ing the magnitude of, say, many African many fail to acknowledge it within their are cultivated. The problem of poverty societies, so what? The problem is that a community. becomes a problem of what to do with number of people, which may or may not In 1999, the Brotherhood of St Laurence the poor. be one million or two million, are living a conducted a study called Understanding Jope believes that government relies on kind of privation and lack of opportunity Poverty. Only 56 per cent of respondents such attitudes. 'If we appreciated poverty that is unjust.' considered poverty in Australia to be a as a real issue,' she says, 'then there would Peel suggests that this idea of relative significant problem. In fact, poverty was be budgetary implications, and govern scale leads to the conclusion that it's not placed last among eight prompted issues ment is very much about withdrawing and a problem, or that it's a different one from as the most important facing the country. leaving it to the market to sort out every elsewhere. He notes that the poor person In contrast, unemployment and the divide thing.' She adds that this economic model overseas is not considered responsible for between rich and poor were rated as major discriminates between those who have his or her own suffering, as opposed to the concerns. capital and those who do not, and that poor person in Australia. This apparent contradiction is an those with meagre resources find their 'In a rich society,' he explains, 'people example of what John Fox calls the 'silo' means being consistently diminished. want to believe that the poor have them perception of poverty, where relations It is not just about resources, either. selves to blame. There is a commitment between problems are not adequately rec According to Fox, expectations about per to the idea that class structure is a rough ognised. Fox is the co-ordinator of social sonal effort do not address the fact that estimation of your effort and value as a planning at Hume City Council in Vic poverty affects diverse groups of people. person. That people who are at the top toria. He says that in reality the volume 'This isn't about individual decisions,' he of the class structure are the best people, of job advertisements is not an adequate says. 'If it were, you wouldn't have partic and that those at the bottom are measure of opportunity, and tends to pro ular groups consistently being affected.' the worst people.' mote assumptions that the poor aren't It was with this thought in mind that taking advantage of vacancies. he helped design Hume City Council's EEL ATTRIBUTES sucH ATTITUDES to the 'It's not enough that the job is advertised,' inquiry focusing on these sections of the kinds of stories and language used when he points out, 'but that people have the community most at risk of falling into talking about poverty. The use of phrases chance to undertake education, have access poverty-women (particularly as single par such as 'welfare dependency' fosters the to transport, child care, things that make it ents), Indigenous people, young people and perception that such language is the only possible for them to take up the job.' the elderly. 'We want them to identify the basis for conversation. According to Peel, Fox asserts that there is a cultural obstacles that prevent them from living the it is a conversation that does not acknowl focus on individual responsibility, such life that they would choose,' says Fox. edge that, for the most part, inheritance that community fails to understand why He suggests that because policy is and luck are instrumental to where one some people are barred from employment. shaped by the extent to which issues are ends up on the economic spectrum. 'We look at things, if you like, from the raised in public discussions, some of these Despite the negative images, attitudes individual out, rather than from society obstacles may be underpinned by percep towards the poor are not entirely cynical. in. Part of that is saying that the indi tions of poverty in Australia. 'That comes 'I think we tend to overexaggerate the vidual is completely responsible, that the back to asking what poverty really is,' he extent to which people's hearts have individual can overcome any odds.' says. 'Most people tend to use the absolute hardened,' says Peel. 'Most people live Sally Jope, a social researcher on pov model. Most people expect to see a person in this ambivalence, not quite sure, not erty issues, believes that this emphasis literally homeless, in rags and starving. quite confronting, but not quite denying on individual behaviour feeds negative That's the image we have from the devel it either. But if you ask them whether the images of the poor as welfare cheats. 'If oping world.' increasing gap between the rich and the 36 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 poor is a problem, they say yes. They don't that they don't have lives and hopes just will enforce the message that people who want to live in an unequal society.' like the rest of us.' live in poverty have legitimate capabili He contends that this is the more dif However, he cautions against harangu ties and a wealth of experience from which ficult issue for many: what to do with a ing as a means of countering negative government can learn. system that evidently benefits some and attitudes towards the poor. 'I think it's 'Even if all we do in this is say that not all. It would seem that part of the dis best not to yell,' he says. 'One of the most these people are able, these people have approval directed towards the poor can effective things we can say about poverty insights, we treat them with respect,' he be traced to the question of how much is to stress vulnerability, to get people to muses, 'that's saying that their identity responsibility poor people ought bear for think about how easily the best laid plans is much richer than the poverty they this inequality. can come unstuck, and say, it could hap experience.' • 'People will give five dollars to the pen to any of us.' Salvos,' says Peel, 'but they're not sure It is a process that should lead people to how tax money as a kind of collective realise that generosity is not unreasonable. Fatima Measham is a freelance writer. pool might be used to better assist people 'It's stopping thinking about what I'm get in poverty. They're worried about people ting out of it,' says Peel. 'What you get out defrauding it. They think that poor people of it is living in the kind of place where if need to be helped, but we can't you fall down, someone will come and pick Winners October book giveaway: trust them.' you up. That your taxes are an investment V.Ashman, Freemantle,WA; in a kind society that will treat you kindly M. Doher ty,Woorim, QLD; I T's PART OF WHAT he calls a 'story should the need arise. It's about ideal sys R. Fisher, Wangaratta,VIC; problem', a dearth not only of stories that tems, not about what we can't afford.' would induce compassion, but of invita For Fox, the challenge of re-imagining D. Kent. St Kilda,VIC; tions to imagine the lives of those who the poor means emphasising language. This P. & A. Kanubg,Willow Grove,VIC ; are impoverished. 'The truly evil work of is why his team regards the future as the S. Leslie, Camberweii,VIC; demonising the poor succeeds only as far as context for asking questions about poverty. W Lord, Normanville, SA; people can accept that they are different,' While he concedes there is a risk that the C. Melano, Pearce ,ACT; Peel says. 'We have to counter the argu Hume City Council enquiry might amount B. Roberts, Roseville, NSW; ment that they are damaged in some way, to little more than tokenism, he hopes that C.J .Watson, Heidelberg,VIC. DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 37 hooks: l David Ferr·is Information serfing Tnlormation feudali~m: \\ ho 0\\ ns the Kno\\ led.~L' Econonn? il tel l )J ,Jilll'> '' ·~h )11llll Hr,uth\\ 11te L nth-;un, 1[)() J '~'~" I ~..., ~~ ~ 91 7 ' HI • <., N l.J, W EN tion age, and with the PETER DRAHOS W1ffl JOHN BRAITHWAITE ties. When knowledge move from chemistry to biochemistry strengthening of copy becomes a private and genetics as the intellectual property right and intellectual good to be traded in perimeter. Today even DNA sequences property protection markets the demands can be patented. across the globe, infor- of many, paradoxi- Much of the book involves a detailed mation and knowledge cally, go unmet. account of the motivations and machi is no longer a pub Patent-based R&D nations of securing global agreement to lic good but patent is not responsive TRIPs. Initial US policy was to pursue able private property. to demand, but to bilateral agreements, in a carrot-and Peter Drahos and John ability to pay.' This stick approach involving the threat of Braithwaite argue that Information phenomenon explains trade sanctions under the 'Special 30 1' we have gone too far why billions are provision of the US Trade Act. US negotia in recognising and spent on the produc tors then presented TRIPs as a non-negoti protecting intellectual tion and marketing able part of the Uruguay round. As a quid FeudalismWHO OWNS THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY? property rights. The of drugs such as Via- pro quo they offered vague promises to nadir was the 2001 gra and Prozac for the liberalise agricultural trade, which were South African court West, while tropical never carried into effect. case that saw 39 phar- diseases are largely This book should not be mistaken as maceutical companies ignored. Indeed, anti- an anti-American polemic. Drahos and suing the South African government malarial drugs are predominantly devel Braithwaite recognise the US national in an attempt to prevent the parallel oped for Western tourists and military security aim of 'securing intellectual prop importation of cheap, generic, anti-retro personnel, not the nationals of disease erty protection, for the knowledge indus viral AIDS drugs. That case represented affected countries. tries that gave the US its technological the culmination of decades of increasing Information Feudalism is a fascinating superiority.' However, they argue that this intellectual property protection which has tour through intellectual property history, motivation has driven the US government created a world in which abstract property and analyses how business and the United too far into negotiating excessively strong rights are in direct conflict with human States government lobbied and bullied the intellectual property protection which rights and public health needs. world to adopt the intellectual property now serves only to create supra-normal Drahos and Braithwaite have called standards of the TRIPs agreement as part profits for multinational businesses, their book In formation Feudalism to of the Uruguay Round of GATT. reducing competition and allowing a new draw an analogy with the inequitable The historical journey includes a and legal method for the formation of 'car distribution of property rights in medi- comparison of today's CD and DVD tels' and monopolies. As a consequence, 38 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 international public goods are neglected: intellectual property, further deepening of its productivity.' This would be a disaster human rights (including access to m edi the N orth-South divide. for humankind, for as a perceptive scien cines) are held hostage to the commercial Perhaps the m ost alarming con tific genius once said, 'I can only see as far considerations of patent law; indigenous sequence identified by Drahos and as I do, by standing upon the shoulders of knowledge, often the source of com Braithwaite is the risk that the new those who have gone before me. ' • m ercially successful patents, i not 'info rmation feudalism ', by 'dismantling rewarded; while under TRIPs the South the publicness of knowledge, will eventu David Ferris is a final year Commerce/ will pay the N orth, in perpetuity, for ally rob the knowledge economy of much Law student at Melbourne University. hooks:4 Frank O'Shea Writing history Hope and History: Making peace in Ireland, Ccrr} Ad,11ns. Harth<.: Grant Books, 200i. ISH'-' l 740 66120 o, RIU' S4:1 l ms ' 996 A UTOBWCRAPHY Before the Redemp>mi" pciesc &om the a military solution . Adams Dawn, Gerry Adam s reveals that his parents local Clonard monastery, was GERRYADAJIS tries to identify with all completed the papers for assisted passage to acting as a peacemaker and sides. He admits that the Australia but were turned down when it was suggested at a particularly opinion, common among discovered that Gerry Senior had a prison tense point that they should nationalists, that union record for teenage republican activities. It is pray to the Holy Ghost. Fr ists are misinformed and intriguing to speculate on what might have Reid appears here again, older incorrigible is paternalis happened to the eldest of the ten children and a nervous breakdown tic and condescending. He in that family if they had been brought up later, but now a central fig- ~ distinguishes between the in Sydney or Melbourne. It is not fanciful to ure, a go-between trusted by ordinary loyalists and their imagine that, given his record in the caul- all sides and a loyal critic- t belligerent, Old-Testam ent dron of Northern Ireland politics, the young friend of Adams. Hope ...,. t History righteous leader . And even Gerry would have become involved in pub- It would be difficult to here, he m anages to fi nd lie affairs in this country and might have overestimate the significance good things to say. Ken progressed to the highest level. What is cer- of what Gerry Adams has achieved in Maginnis 'eventually chilled out with tain is that he would have had more oppor- Ulster. When one compares the story with us'; John Taylor 'never took him self too tunity to develop his considerable talents as similar ethno-religious feuds in other parts seriously anyway ... m ost of his jousting a writer and might now be one of Australia's of the world- the Balkans, the Middle East, was tongue- in-cheek.' Adams refuses to most successful authors. Sri Lanka, Kashmir, a dozen forgotten places criticise David Trimble although admits Hope and History is an account of the in Africa-the miracle of six years of fragile that they shook hands for the fi rst time long, gruelling journey towards the uneasy peace between long-lasting enemies becomes only in July this year. peace in modem Ulster. It is the writing a wonder. It is still not secure, of course. It is One expects politicians to be dense that strikes you first. This is the kind of like the alcoholic who can only take one day and obtuse; Adam s is not. One expects book that is hard to put down. One wants at a time and must realise that there is only people discrim inated against and har to learn how this setback is dealt with; one slip between calm and chaos. assed by officialdom to be bitter and whether that sequence of tit-for-tat kill- There are other heroes: Martin vengeful; Adam s is not. One expects ings will derail the process; how in the McGuinness, John Hume, Fr Reid, those in the spotlight, whether loved or aftermath of Enniskillen, Canary Wharf, George Mitchell, Albert Reynolds, even hated, to write self-serving accounts of Greysteel and a dozen other atrocities and som e of the non-political leaders on the their activities; Adam s does not. What in the face of condemnation from church, unionist side. But little happened that did he has written is an enthralling account state and m edia, people still don't give up. not involve Gerry Adams. He admits that of a process which still teeters between This is endurance raised to a cardinal vir- this is his version of events, 'my story, historic success and murderous failure. tue, described in prose that mixes tension, my truth, m y reality', and that there may It deserves to be read for its insights into humour, emotion and honesty. be other accounts, from a different angle, Northern Ireland and can also be read as a In Before the Dawn Adam s describes telling the story differently. fine piece of writing. • a time in the 1970s when there was Andasinanygoodstory, there are villains bloody strife between the Official and the too: the IRA, the Protestant paramilitaries, Frank O'Shea teaches at Marist College, Provisional IRA. Father Alex Reid, a the securocrats who could never see past Canberra. DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 39 hooks:) Grant Fraser Sensitive listening Learning Human: Selected poems of Les Murray, Lcs Murray. DuH~ and ~ncllgrovc , 2003. I'iHN 1 1{766.1 1 7 ~ 3, RR!' S22 'I., mec noN " d"cnbcd " pce'c'>t in 'The hea,ing Murray leaves nothing out a collection of those poems that Les impairment', a poem about but restraint. Of the 200 Murray considers his most success- the misunderstandings and poems here, many of which fully realised. The accumulated sense funny accidents of words, are of considerable girth, of the poems is of a grand rumination and in the wry delight of the reader encounters the in which not only the poet speaks, 'Letters to a winner', in vitality of discourse, elabo but also the voices of family, friends, which a lottery winner ration, mythic cattle, dead neighbours, yarning farmers and blokes pores over a stack of beg- voices given life and a bril at the pub are heard, finding their own ging letters before commit- liant, indefatigable nag eloquence. ting them to the fire. The who is keen to secure, and It is fitting that the cover photograph letters are by turn pathetic enliven in words, just about is of a delicate ear-a child's ear-it is and hilarious, enthusiastic everything. And there are Murray's aural sensitivity that evokes not accurate, full of craft moments of simple beauty: geography, history and myth: a dialect and hot deals. Streaming, a hippo surfaces of time and place. That voice is heard I'm wearing my birthday like the head of someone intimately in 'The last helloes', a poem suit/With the right man I could share this lifting, with still entranced eyes from a about his father's death in which pared infallible system. lake of stanza. Dreambabwe. • down language takes on a cadence of parting, the son watchful and silent Many of Murray's most telling poems Grant Fraser is a lawyer and poet. His until he utters the beautiful valedic are about those who are hurt or disen book Some conclusion in the heart is tion, 'I wish you God'- The voice is also franchised. Some might suggest that published by Black Willow Press. 40 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 pol'l rv Philip Harvey Moving images Freud's Back-Yard, Isabel Robin. Five Islands Press, 2002. ISBN 0 86418 75 1 3, RRP $16.95 Gatekeepers to The Way: Collected Poems, Penelope Alexander. Grey Thrush, 2002. 1 BN 0 958001 6 1 8, RRP $16.95 What the Body Remembers, Lorraine McGuiga n. Five Islands Press, 2003. I<;B 0 86418 748 3, RRP $16.95 S TAmcAsE wn suALLs "' ,n the natural world, as when ' the dotterel Three women with first collections pub runs in fleeting spurts' and a dog charg lished later in life present very different ing down the beach has 'the sun just in positions on their lives. Isabel Robin has front of his nose'. Blake disliked Words taken the measure of personal experience, worth en masse, but confessed delight laying it out with neither declamation in single images, lines of transience nor anger. Dilemmas of the adults in her that we call haiku. Sometimes private youth-spinster teachers, honourable sec experience should stay that way. But on retaries-grant new meaning to Robin's occasion Alexander's sm all notices get own life as she retells their stories. The to a common depth: past can be 'an old cicatrice long healed'. Shaking shrimp nets, While 'Retirement Road' amusingly spraying sun observes the present: in salty splashes, Stout wives and husbands, m orning young. blindingly white, bend to bowl intense as virgins Unconscious m orning, unknown noon; The poet also reports more grimly: never evening. Garrulous widow! Gone, too soon. ('Morning Young') She chatters to a mute shade An idealised nature is resigned to a in another room . Robin possesses the perceptiveness of Fanthorpe, the stoicism of Witting. Like them, she can say that 'we who all ferries to oblige with cliches', a say have passed through youth/should write ing that is equally true of the poet herself, poems/only to each other' (' Dream s and especially in her masterful conclusion Visions'), as though poetry is an adult con where she wonders about 'the last, myste versation, serious even when it is light. rious ferry ... at Styx Wharf' and hopes it And how else can that conversation be will be like the Manly ferry: 'An accolade held than through refl ection on youth and of pines, and Mother/with picnic lunch experience? and everybody's swimming togs .' Her steady control of forms is typi How we reached such a conclusion cal of a generation educated in this extra is a journey in itself, best taken by read layer of complexity. Poetry's age-long ing the book. With wit, Robin comes challenge of combining the emotional to terms with the romantic nexus, with the rational is met here with a calm, the golden moon of her teens becom e controlled voice. Like poems, 'Ferries are 'blotched' and old. If she danced beneath for short journeys,/here to there/on the the moon now, 'what would the drifting difference of water.' In her poem neighbours think?' 'Ferries', Robin recounts with deceptive ease different boat trips. We learn quickly T HE COLOU R AND swEEP of the seven that the Antiron ferry 'joins the road seasons of the South-East are prime to Delphi/which is a place the same as motiva tion for Pen elope Alexander. nowhere else.' We are told, 'don't expect Words imitate the small inflections of DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 41 little realism. Enthusiasm, especially not a collection of unrelieved angst though. for the glories of the bush, prompts What the Body She is brilliant with the objective correla Alexander everywhere, though on e is Remembers tive, so that in 'Digging In', an echidna som etimes left wondering if enthu Lorraine M.:Guigan ... digs deeper, nuzz les sand siasm is en ough. It must n ot only be like a creature sea rch ing blindl y for the tran smitted, it must be m ade to be nipple. felt. Overdependence on adjectives, so many clamouring, cluttering adjec But fear not hunge r drives this self tives, can slow the pace and blow the co ntained m eanin g. fortress even deeper into the dunes T he human world is virtually absent from this poet ry and one can interpret And the place where her mother nature as consolation. One poem is even tried to write a thesis later in life titled 'My Friend, Acacia Melanoxylon'. ('Dissertation' ) is A counterpoint is struck, though, in 'As This room a topic in itself a Wave Moves' : a rented space replete with tex t It's going on, all the time footnotes and bibliography. all year, and we are only here Philip Harvey is Technical Services for a few days. Librarian at the Joint Theological Library, Melbourne. The shock that here it is is someone who ' never as it always was, looked lovelier' and the waves coming in 'could have been /a so metimes spray wild film star: rouge, lippy, T/1 e with churned sand grit; mascara, high heels/ other days, slow rolls, • & silky dresses made thin pencils down-beach, on her Singer treadle-' ;, , •'!."''" -· , -t. ~ ·- ..;: .. ,~ ..... ~ w• ~....J m.I..U.~ 'lltt BENDIGO '111~ moving in line one after the other; Young Lorraine must in, swing to the beach. comprehend the neglect of her own father, the In St John's Gospel it says 'God so loved the abuse meted out by her world', not 'God so loved the Church'. R ESIGNED TO TRANSITION and the m other's lovers, and a in exorable patterns of th e universe, the life pushed to the limit. Njongonkulu Ndungane, poet relishes brief time. Such writing can be Lorraine McGuigan, on the other treacherous, because of Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town hand, knows she must face up to hard its taboo breaking, but encounter with others. She delineates even more so becau se of the transgressions experienced through the high risk of not suc growing up. H er brutal honesty in ceeding, of betraying the How can we call the Bible 'the Word of expressing anger, conflict and hurt is past by poor expression. balanced by the need to understand. McGuigan unwinds the God' and yet use it to reinforce terrible When McGuigan says 'I would practice clock; she succeeds at prej udices ... and to bring hurt, pain and the art of forgetting/but there are no linking trauma with ig norance to countless people? lessons, no guides' she lays out the residual m emories. Her cause fo r her poetry. The painful, the skills are controlled Retired Episcopal Bishop h aunting and the unavoidable force contrast and hearing h er into descriptive drama of her past; the heated language of and author John Spong somewh ere in the lines she slowly confrontation. assembles the guides that were not McGuigan is good there to help her at the time. It is a long at showing how poems exercise of retrieval. often start at the final The poet assembles a composite line. One about killing The Melbourne Anglican portrait of h er mother and their trau chickens ends, 'They Mention this ad for a free sample copy of TMA matic relationship, fraught with con feel nothing, sh e told Phone: (03) 9653 4221 fu sed loyalties, mistreatment and me,/wringing her hands or email: tma @melbourne.angli can.com.au misunderstandings. Louise, the m other, again and again.' This is 42 EU REKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 tf short Ii st Bamboo Palace, Christopher Kremmer. Harper The Lowest Rung: Voices of Australian Poverty, Collins, 2003. ISBN 0 7322 7756 6, RRP $29.9S Mark Peel. Cambridge University Press, 2003. An investigative journey through the Lao People's l SBN 0 52 1 83062 1, RRP $99 Democratic Republic, Christopher K.remmer In doing away with analyses of income and attempts to find out what happened to the Lao poverty lines, Mark Peel restores the story of royal family, deposed after the Vietnam war. poverty to the people who wake up to it every K.remmer spends three months travelling day. By listening to them relate their anger and through Laos, asking questions. The only despair, and even their hopes, he highlights the replies, however, are whispers-contradictory truth behind lived experiences and places his whispers. What he hears speaks not only of the trust in that truth. fragility of life, but of the fragility of a people and their culture. Through conversations with nearly 300 people living and work The author tells the story of the Lao royal puppets, locked away ing in Inala (Qld ), Mount Druitt (NSW) and Broadmeadows (Vic), and languishing. Yet for one performance, the puppeteer painstakingly Peel works away at the image of the poor person as welfare cheat. He unwraps each one, and ceremoniously brings them to life. K.remmer's looks closely at media reports and the inaccuracies that have created description is exquisite. Here he has found the metaphor for the royal the image, and further exposes a mistrustful welfare system that has family. We glimpse another world, another time-destroyed by the become preoccupied with the politics of 'deserving'. post-1975 Lao revolution. On the whole, the book seeks to demystify the poor by letting K.remmer-journalist and author of The Carpet Wars-has been in them speak for themselves. Sections of transcript are liberally many hot spots around the globe, yet he believes it's in ' cold spots' (places scattered throughout its pages. It m akes for compelling reading, no longer making news) that some of the best stories can be fmmd. because people are presented as they are; their words raw and In Bamboo Palace, K.remmer searches for the universal voice, 'one undiluted. It can be unnerving as well, when one considers that of thousands lost in the abyss of war and revolution: a voice of resilience this is not a work of fiction. ru1d survival and faith.' He finds it, in the testimony of Khamphan -Fatima Measham Thammakhanty, a salt trader's son- the last known survivor of the royal death camp. F L I': S H A N 1 Flesh and Glory: symbol, gender, and theology in It is Khamphan's testimony-worthy of a book in its own right c L 0 R y the Gospel of John, Dorothy Lee. Crossroad, 2002. which is gripping. The author's travelogue serves simply as a device ISB 0 8245 198 1 7, RRP $27.50 to hold the more powerful story. " ' "' c ...... , That prepotent document, the Fourth Gospel, is -Michele M. Gierck a challenge to the imagination and a conundrum to literal-mindedness. In the evolution of scrip The Suicidal Church: Can the Anglican Church tural history, its confidence in its own terms be Saved?, Caroline Miley. Pluto Press, 2002. of reference is a defining point for centuries of ISBN 1 86403 182 4, RRP $29.9S interpretation. As a refinement of the Gospel Kierkegaard railed against the passionless Christianity form it can be baffling as well as inspirational. John is packed with of his culture and in his last years launched an statements of finality ('I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life') that impassioned critique of the institutional church in simultaneously open up a poetics of existence. Dorothy Lee delves Denmark. As can often be the case, his passionate into this symbolic language, founding her search in the belief that arguments received a passionate response-Df denial. 'because the Fourth Gospel is clear that the being of God is beyond Caroline Miley, an academic art historian, has human categories and imagery, symbol becom es the most appro launched her own vehement attack on the church in The Suicidal priate language for revelation. It does not attempt to exhaust or Church. imprison the divine being.' Kierkegaard found that society and the church were too integrated Inside every big book of theology is a thin book of spirituality in his time. Miley has found that the Anglican church of modern struggling to get out. Lee restores an interpretative tradition that Australia instead is becoming peripheral to most people and losing reads the text 'symbolically, theologically, prayerfully, and com the trust of society. Her language protects her from any charge of pas munally'. She shows how John's literary technique pushes us into sionless Christianity: Miley writes as a person betrayed. She has sought identification with his characters and images, bringing us face-to an expression of Christ in d1e church and instead found an expression face with Jesus, the central subject. 'The struggle to move through of hw11an Christians. misunderstanding to understanding becom es the reader's own As the church is an organisation of hun1an beings this will always be faith story', and though Lee never personalises her writing, it is the case. As the church is an organisation called to be the demonstration this kind of reading that propels the book. of Christ it will always be challenged to be more than this. It can be read purely as an exposition of the symbols, such as the While you might disagree with Miley's proposed solutions to the living water, the vine and most confronting of all, Jesus' flesh, but challenges faced by the Anglican church, her summary of its prob Lee is interested in the reality enabled by the symbols. The Gospel lems is impossible to ignore. provokes reactions and Lee's words come out of communal discus Her passionate writing naturally evokes a passionate response, sion of those reactions, m eanwhile avoiding a specialist approach and hopefully also radical change. It would be wrong if her book led and its companion language as much as possible. Paul Ricoeur has instead to a passionate denial of the need for such a critique or for the dangerous saying 'The symbol gives rise to thought', a pivotal investiga ting radical solutions. clue to this creative book, and its creative challenge. -Daniel Marti -Philip Harvey DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 43 Anna Karenina in a motor, she violence swings from deadly earnest to maintains her fo rward motion by driving Monty Python absurd. For all that, there's in circles. Petrol is very cheap in Iran. a curious stillness to the film. This is partly -Lucille Hughes to do with the feeling that each line, each flash in the pan shot, each scene is a pose being struck. It's as if the 'action' of the film takes place Ode to film not on screen, but between the references, Hands on the wheel allusions and appropriations that swarm Kill Bill Vol. 1, dir. Quentin Tarantino. throughout the film. More than that, how Quentin Tarantino describes his latest ever, the film is oddly formalist: it's 'about' Ten, dir. Abbas Kiarostami. The celebrated film as a 'duck press' of the cinematic colour and framing and composition more Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has a and musical influences that he's absorbed than anything to do with story and action. long-standing preoccupation with the car over the past 35 years. Samurai serials, I've seen the film twice-I'm still not sure as existential metaphor. His latest film, spaghetti westerns, Shaw Brothers Hong if I actually enjoyed it-and I'm thinking Ten, could be taking place in many cities, Kong martial arts films of the '70s, blax about seeing it a third time. And that's a lot even yours. It is made up of ten conversa ploitation films, The Green Hornet and more than I can say for most of the films tions, filmed entirely with two dashboard Japanese anime all explicitly and self I've seen recently. mounted cameras inside a car, driven by consciously appear on the screen-not as -Allan Ja mes Thomas a woman over a period of what appears to references or allusions, but overtly and be a couple of weeks. She is smart, well directly. It's not as if Tarantino is paying off and attractive, and has a strangely homage to his masters. He wants to be Too cruel opaque personality. Three of the trips are them, all of them, all at once. with her son, who is about 12. The film Kill Bill is not only broken into two Intolerable Cruelty, dir. Joel Coen. This is pivots around their conversations. She has 'volumes' (the second film will appear some an attempt by the Coen Brothers to make an divorced his father some time ago and is time next year), it's broken into chapters as unashamedly mainstream Hall ywood flick, a now in a new marriage. well. Each gives Tarantino his chance to romantic comedy, and one is left wondering: She wants him to understand and play with a new toy-not just in genre Oh Brother, why did they bother I accept her version of events, and he is terms, but also in terms of the cast and The film opens promisingly. In a scene utterly determined not to. Their dialogues crew. For the 'samurai' sequences Tarantino reminiscent-in its unsettling humour-Df are gruelling to witness. He displays a cer shot in Japan. For the Chinese martial arts the abduction scene in the Coens' master tain amount of misogyny, but his amaz sequences (which apparently come to the piece Fargo, Donovan Donaly (Geoffrey ingly convincing performance transcends fore in Volume 2) he shot in China. He cast Rush) arrives home to discover his wife in simple analysis. She tells him that she the very actors who appeared in the films company with the pool cleaner. The Donalys was a 'stagnant pond' when married to that influenced him, sometimes as the don't have a pool. The situation turns his father and that she is now 'a flowing same character. For example, Sony Chiba's nasty-but it's nothing a handgtm, a spiky river'. It doesn't wash with her son, or character Hattori Hanzo from Shadow TV award and a Polaroid camera can't fix. with us. What is uncomfortable, and Ten Warriors. The anime sequence was produced Sadly, these are not the main protagonists is a supremely uncomfortable film, is that by Japanese company Production IG of -just pre-title sequence titbits. you are placed somehow at a remove from Ghost in the Shell fame. Miles Massey (George Clooney) is a empathy, without the sense of its reality While paying his respects, he also hot-shot marital lawyer, and author of the being diminished. The sovereignty she juxtaposes a samurai sword fight with impenetrable 'Massey Pre-nup'. The story exercises as the driver is the obvious yet flamenco, combines a spaghetti western score charts his infatuation with opponent dynamic metaphor for her life's trajectory from 1972 with animc, and has a Japanese turned-client Marylin Rexroth (Catherine in its shifts and uncertainties. She is in girl-band version of surf guitar. He includes Zeta-Jones), who is trying to engineer control of the car and yet she is always fragments of Bernard Herman, Nancy the perfect snare for a rich and stupid being told where to go and how to drive by Sinatra doing a Sony Bono song, Isaac Hays, husband. Their relationship is a pretty tame those she ferries around: her son, her sis rockabilly and German neo-lounge music. rollercoaster ride, with some excruciating ter, a jilted friend, a religious old woman This is one of the things I like most about throwaway lines along the way, and and a prostitute. The intimacy of the car's Tarantino. He loves to pick up the aban unfortunately the ride has well and truly interior becomes a sort of trap for her pas doned and unwanted pieces of popular petered out before the film does. sengers, who all seem to be dying to get culture-actors, music, styles, genres-and Successful Hollywood films of this out as soon as they can. places them, just so, in ways that make us genre rely on the audience identifying with She asks the prostitute the usual fall in love with them again. Just ask John and investing sympathy in the characters in questions, but doesn't like the answers. Travolta. a well practiced, conventional way. Our driver still sees her own maverick sta And, of course, the film is violent. The Where your sympathies lie in Coen films tus as capable of resolution on her terms. duck press metaphor, with its images of has been one of their most unconventional The kinds of compromise and defeat rep crushed bones, mangled flesh and dripping and rewarding mysteries. Sadly, Intolerable resented by her other female passengers blood, is all too appropriate in some ways. Cruelty is far too light and cheaply written to are certainly not what she is seeking. As with everything else in the film, the carry the weight of the Coen Brothers' style. 44 EUREKA STREET DECEMBER 2003 a road movie for a time in history and forced into shipping containers to that has forgotten something essen cross huge stretches of water. Jamal and tial about the human condition. Enayat are exploited by strangers, cared Jamal (Jamal Udin Torabi) and his for by strangers, and misunderstood by cousin Enayat (Enyatullah Jumaudin) most they come into contact with. Their are displaced Afghan men living in journey is absolutely brutalising. Pakistan. They are not in any imme Winterbottom employed non-actors diate fear for their lives-they are not and shot In This World with hand-held in an unusually precarious political digital cameras in available light. It has position (relatively speaking). Jamal the look and feel of a documentary, and and Enayat are what most people in in many ways feels closer to an histori The film reads like it was made in a comfortable circumstances would call cal document than to a narrative fiction. great hurry, with an undeveloped script and 'economic refugees'. They search less Compounding that feeling is the fact badly rehearsed actors. It's a sloppy piece for liberty than for a roof and a means that Jamal Udin Torabi, the actor, snuck of craft-something light for everyone to feed their families. And it is this very into the UK on the wrap of filming-but to do between other projects. Zeta-Jones fact that makes Winterbottom's film was not granted refugee status and must seems bored by the whole exercise, and so politically tough and revealing. He leave Britain before he turns 18 . The the cinematography of Roger Deakins explores with real acumen the differ characters are beautifully drawn, pre is in turns insipid and treacly, a surprise ences as well as the similarities between sumably by a combination of the writer, considering the stunning work he has done economic and political freedom. Tony Grisoni, Winterbottom and the with the Coens on recent outings. In This World follows the perilous actors themselves. They are not heroic Not intolerably cruel, just an intolerable attempt of Jamal and Enayat to get 'ille martyrs. They are real young men, full of disappointment. gally' from Peshawar to London. Travel petty angers, silly jokes, a desire for new -Tim Metherall ling across country through Pakistan, sneakers and a love for their families. Iran and Turkey (the old silk route), In This World will not reach a huge the film's protagonists are never in audience. It is too politically risky and for Human odyssey control of their journey. They are shot mally brave for that. But thank goodness at while crossing freezing mountain there are directors willing to travel the In This World, dir. Michael Winterbot passes, threatened at border crossings road so rarely seen by those of us already tom. In This World is an unusually in languages they don't speak, knocked living in the comfort so many seek. important film. Winterbottom has made about endlessly in the backs of trucks -Siobhan Jackson DECEMBER 2003 EUREKA STREET 45 watching brief Fast forward I SCREAMED, BRmcmc THC Edotives running, •nd setting the means that, although it feels like last Christmas was only dogs off howling in sympathy. about four months back, it also seems like a year since Reggie 'She's blown a circuit, man/ I heard my computer Bird walked out of the Big Brother house, and an absolute aeon wrangling nephew whisper. 'Maybe the complete hard drive.' since Kath eJ Kim finished. And another aeon since the golden 'Nah, she's just seen something she didn't like on the telly/ age of Buffy vanished, leaving a void that Angel, the spin-off, said my son, keeping his wits about him, wresting the remote can't ever fill. from my rigid fingers and, with a practised motion, switching But enough of my temporally challenged flimflammery: channels. 'Tea and Tim Tams should fix it.' suffice it to tell you that the only new word I learned this year Later I was able to report that I'd seen the scariest thing was bling and its variant bling-bling. It means flashy clothes on TV, something that summed up the whole damn Area and jewellery that recall Dolly Parton's quip that it costs a Sl-ing, X-filing, grassy-knolling, crop-circling shebang. Little whole latta cash to look this cheap. did Rupert's illuminati pals know that a clue for the masses I've found this out by watching MTV with my son, who had slipped under their Echelon monitors when a hardly has been educating me. Under his usually benign dictatorship I known and less-watched craft program on the Odyssey channel have come to embody that line of Pope's about first condemn let slip part of the Big Plot, the one where we all forget how to ing, then tolerating, then finally embracing, because I am now a read anything but self-help books and the phone bill. big fan of Queens of the Stone Age, Justin Timberlake, Christina The program was Treasure Mal 46 EU REKA STRE ET DECEMBER 2003 ! D evised by r p ~ . I Joan Nowotny IBVM _E_uzzle_S!_ Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 119, December 2003 ACROSS l. It can be dire to be in these narrow waters. (7) 5. Hires boy to sing falsetto first. (5,2) 9. Put forward by everyone, for example, as well as the chief journalist. (7) 10. The lake often has squally rain too. (7) 11. Pick up tragic king to the north. (5) 12. Possibly Ron'll cork the bottle, so we can start the music. (4'1,4) 13. Hose down the barrier to avoid political scandal. (9) 15. Analyse these attempts. (5) 16. Celt left agitatedly, seeking immunity from the virus. (1-4) 18. I set you apart as I seek data, anxious to speak confidentially. (4,5) 21. The incomparable one, with one lighter fewer. (9) 24. Old time performer of 12-across is lacking hesitation about the slippery youngs ter? (5) 25. 24-acrosses could be found in these show tanks. (7) 26. Using som e rotary motor may disturb in early morning. (7) 27. Provisional measure for the m eantime. (7) 28. Head off before the opening. (7) DOWN l. One of them is not enough for summer, they say. (7) 2. Depending on ratline, perhaps, for climbing aloft. (7) 3. Oriental learning complicated, for the most part. (2, 7) 4. Include mostly suds or soap to deal with perspiration. (5) 5. Stain on the tartan pattern? Do a random inspection. (4, 5) 6. Establish friendly relationship when you board the train, for instance. (3,2) 7. Long-faced at the grave? (7) 8. Familiar heads are fond of pasta! (7) 14. Shortened fete Martha unwillingly attended-where she obtained dairy produce, possibly. (2,3,4) 15. Where a university student's work is directed-somewhat! (2,1,6) 16. I'm in tap dance-to the beat of the drums! (7) 17. Authorise Sturt to take different directions in voyage of discovery. (7) 19. Bill is singing well by the sound of it. (7) 20. Oscar thinks it's important to be serious. (7) 22. He leases one for rest and recreation, perhaps. (5) 23. Manage to get someone accused, as prearranged. (3,2) Thi s subscripti on is: Your Contact Details: Gift to: (Please also fill in your own contact details, left) D New D Renewal D Gift [Mrs! M1Ss/Ms/Mr First Name First Name Length of subscripti on: Sumame D One year (1 0 iss ues for $70, $60 concession for [Street No. Street Name Street Name pensioners, students and unemployed. Inc. GST. ) D Two yea rs (2 0 iss ues for $125, $110 concession. Inc. 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