Vol. 1 No.2 Apri11991 $4.00
rims, less pr
Ailing Australia • Peter Sheehan's failed Camelot • Need, greed and the market • WA Inc's bright golden lure PHILOMENA CORNU & STAFF
A DIVISION OF INTAlR TRAVEL INTERNATIONAL PTY LTD -b ..-----,j _. ) 1. 7 'r I.J.- '?)6 ~ L ~ /;;::-- (THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA) Just how is the Church faring in China today? Dr Paul Rule, head of the department of religious studies at La Trobe University, will lead our 2nd 'RICCI' TOUR OF CHINA (ex Melbourne)
visiting Shanghi, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Beijing. 18DAYS This tour is not for the 'China tourist', but for the person with a genuine interest in seeing at first hand $3860 how the Church is coping in China today. per person (share twin, Departing 8 September 1991 inc. all meals) 4 QUEENS AVENUE, HAWTHORN, VICTORIA 3122, AUSTRALIA Tel: (03) 819 6889, 819 6890 Fax: (03) 819 6891 INCORPORATED IN VICTORIA: LIC. NO. 31248
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COMMENT The way to Easter 4
FEATURES Ailing Australia :the fallout from WA Inc, Victoria's collapse and the free-marl Refugees: too many, and nowhere to go Mark Raper Sanctuary too far away 17 Peter Pierce The once and future bookie 21 Morag Fraser Cross-referencing Leunig 24 REPORT How the Vatican sanl< an admiral William Scobie Papal manoeuvres 39 FORUM Adrian Lyons Crossing over- a stl.ldent and and three teachers tall< about the 28 Kate Lindsey transition from Year 12 POETRY Vincent Buckley Last Poems 37, 41 QUIXOTE Tilting at credit cards Ray Cassin The road to ruin is now debt-free 16 CAPITAL LETTER Is the Defence Force worth its keep! Jack Waterford Swords into peaceshares 23 BOOKS AND ARTS Samuel Beckett revisited M.J. Crennan Beckett after Bair 34 Morag Fraser Interview with Deirdre Bair 35 Of theology, Rushdie, divas and the Bard Eric Hodgens Paul the pragmatist 38 Ann Jungman Telling stories 40 Bruce Williams The ABC of opera 42 Gerard Windsor For whom the Bell? 44 ULTERIOR MOTIFS 46 SUBSCRIPTIONS MANUSCRIPTS AND REPRINTS To begin a subscription or notify an address altera The editors welcome letters and unsolicited manuscripts, tion, please write to EUREKA STREET Magazine, including poetry. Manuscripts will be returned only if accom PO Box 553, Richmond, Victoria 3 121 , or telephone panied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Requests for (03) 427 7311. If changing address, enclose a label permission to reprint material from the magazine should be from your postal wrapper. Subscribers should allow addressed in writing to: The editor, EUREKA STREET four weeks for changes to take effect. Magazine, PO Box 553, Richmond, Victoria 3121. C OMMENT Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Adrian Lyons SJ Associate Editor Morag Fraser Production Editor The way to Easter Ray Cassin Design Consultant John van Loon Contributing Editors Perth: Janette Gray RSM Adelaide: Frances Browne IB VM TH' Rcs ume>lON ffAST, 4 EUREKA STREET • A PRIL 1991 phes in banking and financial institutions whose effects legitimately begin to look nurture expectations again will be felt into the new century. Even that emblem of while the national mood is sombre and our luck seems Australia the plucky gambler-the bookmaker-appears to have run out? A decade ago, professionals who worked destined for the museum ('The once and future bookie', to rehabilitate teenagers in trouble liked to speak of their p.2l). Ailing Australia seems to have lost even its finan methods as 'tough love'. Ours is a time for tough hope. cial vaudevilleans. Sunny optimism will not serve. What is needed is alert For all that's said against the 1980s as a decade of ness for chinks of light at the prison window. greed and irresponsible ambition, those years still have The stories of the survivors among us, refugees and their instructive lessons. It was a decade in which sec others, are not yet well enough known in the wider tions of the community-most notably unions and Australian community. We have in our communities employer groups through the prices and incomes many whose spirits have been tested to the limit and accord-recognised that emerged the greater. By Australians need to work no means all interpret cohesively if they are to their experience in work at alL It was a dec Christian terms. Many ade in which the rheto express their hopes by ric, if not the fact, of beginning again with disciplined hard work Australian-born chil was the key to productive dren. effort. And it was a dec Much of the time, ade in which persistent Australian-born adults voices emphasised our sell themselves short in solidarity with those be the realm of the spirit. yond our shores, espe The understated, no cially those in acu te need fuss, laconic approach ('Sanctuary too far away', to tragedy-born of in p.17). articulateness about If the Christian births and deaths-has account is to be believed, its attractions. Ours is Good Fridays past and a culture with its feet on present are never the end the ground. Australians of the story. Once the do not readily fall for period of grieving is al pretence or enthusi lowed for, the power of asms. the Resurrection can be But our traditional gin to work again its stoic resistance to time miracle of hope. and despair (while ad Nietzsche's quip mirable) has never rep that Christians should resented the fullness of look more redeemed is Christianity. What is rightly quoted against all needed more than ever believers who are moral is courage to shoulder istic, judgmental or joy the impact of suffer less. In the Iron Curtain ing-our own and oth era, one force that kept ers'-and to exchange many Eastern Europeans life stories across sane and alive was their 'C hristians should look more redeemed.' ethnic, regional and humour-their dark (Sculpture from Reims Cathedral, c. 1250) religious boundaries. hued jibes poked at bu- Solidarity is a word reaucrats and rulers. Spirited humour it was, drawing awaiting a characteristically Australian translation its vitality from the contradictions that absolute power into our language and into public life. That is the way leads to. One suspects that it also sprang from an un towards the Easter experienece. ('Paul the pragmatist', derlying Christian awareness of One who died but was p.38) There is no time like Easter for committing our never defeated. Polish hymns are as solemn as they nation to compassion for all, and to listening to each come, but strength in the singing and persistence in the other's histories as we have never listened before. jokes spoke of spirits unsubdued. We cannot make Easter happen. But we do know And what of Australia and its multicultural tapes the right places and dispositions in which to wait. And try? Can we expect here our own embodiments of the if we do, we may find ourselves sharing new joy with spirit of Easter-hopes that rise out of grief? Can we the most unlikely people. • VOLUME 1 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 5 THE NATION: 1 MARK SKULLEY All that glisters The kind of relationship between government and business that became known as WA Inc was not a creation of the '8 0s. It repeated an old Australian pattern. INTH' ""'' 1980s,' fmme<"' 5'lesm'n eme 6 EUREKA STREET • ArRIL 1991 those that actually produced something and were not Curtin Foundation, which had ten of W A's business hocked to the eyeballs, are still afloat. The smallness of high-fliers as vice-patrons, including Alan Bond and WA's economy, and its peculiarities, provided a special Laurie Connell. Like John Cain, Burke made business window on the machinations of big business and gov the business of government. He set up the Western ernment in the 1980s. (Similar scenes were enacted Australian Development Corporation to 'pick winners'. across Australia at the time.) Life rolled along in WA as long as the economy Cycles of money-fever run through Western Aus stayed buoyant. Living was generally pleasant, unless tralian history. Prominent among them were the gold you happened to be an Aborigine. Burke's Liberal oppo rushes of the 1890s, Australia's first commercial oil nents were mostly dills, and people should just give new strikes, the North-West's massive iron ore mines, the fangled ideas like the development corporation a fair Poseidon nickel boom, diamonds at Argyle in 1980s, chance. This sunny air of complacency was helped along gold bouncing back and forth many times. The size of by WA's lack of freedom of information laws-which the state, its resource wealth and a population of only the present premier, Dr Carmen Lawrence, has prom- 1.5 million have meant that all of its governments ised to introduce. have lived cheek-by-jowl with business. Under Burke, and then Peter Dowding, Liberal strongman Sir Charles Court many things were deemed 'commercially was such a firm interventionist that confidential' even though it was tax- Lang Hancock, the iron-ore mag payer who was paying. One nate, reckoned he was the state secret was the rumoured greatest socialist of all. Mean mega-salary paid to John while, over in Queensland, the Horgan, a Perth businessman, long-time National Party pre as head of the development mier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen corporation. Taxpayers could was famous for caressing find out how much was paid business in the Far North dur to a Supreme Court judge, but ing the 1970s and 1980s. not what was paid to Horgan. The resurgence of the Consider, too, the media, ALP around Australia in 1982- which were dominated (and 83 saw the election of John still are) by Perth's morning Cain in Victoria. Cain and newspaper, The West Aus Treasurer Rob Jolly believed tralian. The paper dominates that state-owned bodies such public life in ways that would as their Victorian Economic be inconceivable in Sydney or Development Corporation Melbourne, but which fit the could 'pick winners'. But the pattern in Australia's small corporation ended up losing er states. 'The West' is some some $130 million. And the what old-fashioned in tone, State Bank of Victoria's mer parochial, slow to see the chant arm, Tricontinental, wood for the trees and prone went on a $4 billion lending to be leaned on by local heav spree that saw losses of about ies in times of crisis. The $2.7 billion, and the State Bank problem was compounded sold to the Commonwealth. when Alan Bond bought con Further crashes have cut trol of Bell Group, owners of our politicians' faith in the the paper. The WA govern business community. But it ment's insurance office also was not always thus. Remem owned part of Bell Group. ber a beaming prime minister Hawke Burke played on jour photographed side-by-side with Kerry nalists' lilting for socialising with their Packer and Alan Bond? Or Paul Keating praising own kind and being flattered, or at least being the benefits of financial deregulation? treated with civility (a technique not yet mastered by In WA, Brian Burke won office in March 1983. Burke some Liberal politicians). The doubters were few, and was a former journalist who knew how to work the press, they found that researching stories could be tough, giv a good talker who could charm when he wished, one en Perth's narrow channels of information. Projects such possessed of great political instincts. He was also suspi as the Burswood casino (under the direction of another cious and impatient, tending to revert to Tammany-hall Perth entrepreneur, Dallas Dempster) were speedily style tactics when cornered. Like Labor around Australia, completed. Alan Bond was unofficially beatified after Burke set out to win over business. He courted Perth's winning the Americas' Cup (remember Bob Hawke 'four-on-the floor' entrepreneurs. He set up the John singing his praises and wearing that jacket?). VOLUME l NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 7 During the good times, the wild men of Perth busi shovel in the ground.' The collapse of the petrochem ness attracted attention from interstate because of their ical project precipitated a massive falling out between background and Westyle. Bond was a former signwriter Bond and the W A government. They are now fighting and Connell the son of a bus driver. Bond struck a com through the courts for compensation from one another. memorative gold medal for guests at his daughter's A new twist on WA Inc surfaced during the trial wedding, while Connell hired a train for 150 last year of Robert Smith, a private investigator found of his closest friends and took them to a guilty of phone-tapping in Perth while Burke was WA country race meeting. Largesse was shared premier. Wilson Tuckey, the voluble Liberal MP, has People around. It has since emerged that Connell's claimed in Federal Parliament that Burke is the 'BB' Paragon Resources NL had donated $250,000 mentioned in Smith's work diaries, and has called for only want of its shareholders' funds to the Australian Burke to be sacked from his diplomatic post. During his Labor Party in July 1987. Paragon, a gold trial, Smith denied that Burke was the 'BB' mentioned money to miner, was then 60 per cent-owned by Con- in the diaries, but they do refer to visits to the Premier's be good nell's private company, Oakhill. The truth office, to meeting Burke's brother Terry (also a Labor about donations by business to all sides of MP at the time) and to the Premier's former driver. when it is politics will probably never be known, be What has sparked most conjecture is a file and oth cause W A's laws on disclosing donations to er material marked 'GOVT', which was seized by feder bad. When political parties are hopelessly inadequate, al police when they raided Smith's office more than two like those in the rest of Australia. years ago. The federal police pressed on with the matter it is good, Then the music stopped and Rothwells within their jurisdiction, namely the phone tapping, and crashed. It was propped up for a year by the then handed the file over to the WA police. One matter they go 'rescue', after a frantic passing-the-hat round leaked from the file concerns a Liberal politician alleg Australia and overseas one weekend in 1987. edly telling Terry Burke how a local councillor was for it. The government provided a $150 million bribed to vote for a controversial seaside hotel, Obser guarantee, and later shovelled hundreds of vation City, which was built by Bond Corp. The WA millions into related ventures. But Rothwells Opposition asked the state ombudsman, Eric Freeman, sank anyway. A report to Parliament by the old corpor to investigate what the local police had been doing for ate watchdog, the National Companies and Securities two years. Freeman did so, and recommended that a Commission, found that a huge number of loans made royal commission be held into W A Inc. by Roth wells were to interests associated with Connell. Dr Lawrence took a short while to consider the Indeed, a condition of the 'rescue' was that Connell recommendation, then called a wide-ranging royal himself should contribute $70 million. The commis commission to consider government-business dealings sion later concluded that 'Connell's $70 million personal going back a decade. Previously she had resisted calls commitment to the Rothwells rescue, on which for a commission, but the recommendation from the the other parties to the rescue relied, was more than ombudsman's report opened the floodgates of public covered by fresh loans to Connell's companies opinion. The inquiry in to W A Inc was to begin in March. from Rothwells'. Brian Burke has said he will give evidence, and the commission has appealed for help from the public. P.OBABL Y THE LAST CHANCE tO save Rothwells was a Nobody knows where the trail will lead, but where did desperate deal allowing Connell to buy $350 million it start? Probably in greed for money and power, and in worth of Rothwells' non-performing loans, most of some problems that bedevilled all of Australia in the which were to Connell himself. Connell and Dempster 1980s: limited public access to governn1ent decisions, were then partners in a petrochemical project at dissembling politicians, grasping businessmen, soppy Kwinana, south of Perth. The government gave them a journalists, a concentrated media and a public too com mandate, but the project was still largely in the plan placent until the very end. ning stages when it was bought jointly by the govern Indeed the public was right in there during the dec ment and Bond Corporation for $400 million. Although ade of greed, albeit on a smaller scale than the big players. Connell and Dempster had been 50/50 partners in the Investors in Rothwells and in the Farrow building soci project, Connell was paid $350 million (which he used eties were there because they received one or two per to buy the $350 million in loans from Rothwells) while centage points' interest above that offered by the major Dempster received $50 million. banks. These people have since cried out for govern Alas, the project is still just a great idea. The liquid ment protection in their hour of need. Were they going ator of the project's business vehicle told The Sydney to share the extra interest on their money? To paraphrase Morning Herald that he would throw a party if he could John Kenneth Galbraith, people only want money to be get $40 million for the remains. He said: 'It is hard to good when it is bad. When it is good, they go for it. • comprehend that they [the government and Bond] paid $400 million for a project that was still on the drawing Mark Skulley was a finance journalist in Perth during boards. It is very difficult to come to grips with how the Burke government's term of office. He is now writes they spent all that money when no one had even put a for Th e Sydney Morning Herald. 8 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 THE N ATION: 2 RICHARD CURTAIN In search of ties that bind Australia's manufacturing industry is often portrayed as facing a simple choice between 'free trade' and 'protection'. But seeing things that way is part of the problem. A u STRAUA 's POOR " CORD in manufacturing Moms however, reply that no manufacturing economy oper from a failure to increase exports: we have the world's ates on the 'level playing field' model. Australian in only industrial economy in which the ratio of exports dustry, they say, would be disadvantaged if government to production has not increased during the past 30 years. support was removed unilaterally. In fact, the proportion of merchandise exports to total The car industry typifies the problems in Austral output is a third lower than it is in comparable econo ian manufacturing. Although 350,000 cars are built here mies [see the Hughes report on Australia's export per each year, few are exported. Indeed, more were export formance, 1990]. ed 15 years ago. Since then, Japanese car producers have Our failures are illuminated by the economic suc rendered Australian-made cars much less competitive. cesses of Germany and Japan, which rest on a subtle Japan exports 48 per cent of the cars it builds, and the balance between competition and cooperation among figures are even more impressive for France (55 per cent), firms. Such tension is the essence of a dynamic econo Germany (57 per cent) and Canada (82 per cent). Aus my. Fundamentally, Australia lacks a culture that fos tralia exports only two per cent of its car production. ters collaborative arrangements in industry. We do not Tariffs mean that an average car costs $4000 more here have common values that would encourage greater col than it would without tariffs. And each job in the in lective responsibility by employers, towards each other dustry receives from the consumer an equivalent subsi and towards their employees. It is not a matter of lifting dy of $25,000. individual moral standards, or of a retum to 'business A focus on short-term profitability is common in ethics'; these things would have little effect by them Australia (and in many other Western countries), lead selves. A broader strategy is needed, one that encourag ing to under-investment in goods and practices vital to es closer cooperation within and between enterprises. an industrial economy. Governments can coax, or even The debate is not about whether governments coerce, by passing new laws. But their effect will be should intervene, but about how and when to disman limited unless business adopts the spirit of the regula tle tariffs and other forms of protection, and about what, tory framework. Government protection merely en if anything, should replace them. Some want to give courages a defensive inward orientation among il.. market forces wider scope, and urge governments to managers, and undermines opportunities for cooperation minimise intervention. They describe their strategy as between firms. 'creating a level playing field' and ridicule the alterna In Australia, a sense of collective responsibility and tive-helping industry to develop particular products cooperation among £inns is essential if manufacturing as 'picking winners'. Supporters of the alternative, is to 'get its act together'. Government, unions and V OLUME 1 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET employers need to agree on a strategy for each industry tonnes may be needed, despite the likelihood that the sector. Cooperation is vital in training, research and price of the electronic equipment will remain constant development, measures to increase job security, and in or fall. Semi-processing of raw materials, such as baux developing secure networks for the supply of raw mater ite into alumina and iron ore into steel, offers consider ials. If restructuring is left to market forces, Australian able potential for adding value. But such activity depends manufacturing will probably not survive. Reduction of on a strong manufacturing base to supply and maintain tariffs alone is a passive policy, and export subsidies do the processing equipment. not promote better practices or cooperation within ex Manufacturing offers Australia a chance to partici port industries. pate in the world's leading economies. Provided costs In many industrialised countries, the long-term and quality are improved, car exports for niche markets trend in manufacturing is towards fewer employees. By offer good long-term prospects. But this requires us to contrast, growth is taking place in service industries tap into the research of global car manufacturers. Aus finance and business services, health, education and tralia's car industry should become the main car pro community services, transport and communications, ducer in the region-and access to the Australian car wholesaling and retailing, and the hospitality trade. market should be conditional on our having access to But this shrinking employment base obscures the the supply networks being established in importance of manufacturing. Many jobs that used to South-East Asia. exist in manufacturing firms still continue, but now as specialist services in accounting, drafting and engineer I NDIVIDUAL FIRMS often under-invest in training, and the ing. (Repairs to a fork-lift truck may be handled either result is an economy suffering from a continual skills shortage and a workforce ill-prepared for technological change. Research and development is essential to manu facturing for export. Again, the market fails here. Indi Research iiber alles vidual firms have little incentive to invest because investment returns are slow and uncertain. Tax con cessions can improve rates of return, but the benefits GERMANY EXEMPLIFIES the collaboration needed to produce world stay with individual firms. The benefits of research must class manufacturing. The state of Baden-Wurttemberg (popula spread widely and quickly if the economy as a whole is to gain. Public institutions and cooperation among firms tion nine million) has Germany's highest concentration of are needed to diffuse research results. research capacity: 20,000 scientists in nine universities, 23 Lack of job security is hampering Australia's polytechnics and 27 research institutes. There are 80 technol chances long-term. Market economists have tradition ogy transfer centres employing 200 scientists. The centres ally believed that employee mobility is a good thing; firms believed it gave them greater flexibility. For ex focus on development projects for small and m edium-sized ample, in 1989 the Australian car industry lost 35 per firms, and are largely self-financed. They promote cooperation cent of its employees. This was a far higher proportion between companies to help spread the costs of developing new than in Japan, Europe or North America, where the turnover was less than 10 per cent. It made good sense, products. There are no equivalent facilities in Australia. once, for car companies to use labour turnover as a buff er against cyclical fluctuations. ln an economic down turn, companies had simply to stop recruiting to reduce by an employee or a subcontractor.) Further, a signifi their workforce. This was cost-effective when employ cant proportion of service sector jobs depend on manu ees were interchangeable and few skills were needed on facturing. And the service sector cannot generate an assembly line. But this is no longer the case. Today, sufficient exports to underwrite the high cost of manu quality is as important as price in selling cars, and factured imports. Tourism is a big foreign exchange teamwork is needed in the new Japanese-style 'lean' earner, but this mainly offsets the huge outflow of dol production systems. Cutting the workforce runs directly lars caused by Australians travelling overseas. Export of against fostering employee commitment to quality and educational and health services to Asia is not likely to teamwork-both essential in 'best practice' manufac be a big export earner. And in any case, service industries turing. need a strong underlying economy. Producer- supplier relations provide yet another Primary commodities-wool, wheat and miner example of how market forces discourage long-term als-will continue to be major exports. But their long strategies. Dominant firms pressure suppliers to cut term prospects are uncertain. The demand for raw costs, often without regard to the suppliers' survival. materials is falling as substitutes are found, and their Economists often assume that enterprises respond to value is falling compared with manufacturing products. market signals and automatically adopt the most For example, it takes 300 tonnes of coking coal to pay efficient production techniques. This is the claim of Ross for an imported word-processor and other equipment Garnaut in his report, Australia and the North-Ea t for one manager and a secretary. In a few years, 400 Asian Ascendancy. According to Garnaut, 'interna- 10 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 If restructuring is left to market forces, Australian manufacturing will probably not survive. Reduction of tariffs alone is a pass1ve policy tionally-oriented enterprises selling into unprotected Exchange rate uncertainties are a particular prob markets at home and abroad invariably are more effec lem for Australia. Our high dependence on fluctuating tive in keeping abreast of relevant developments in commodity prices makes the value of the dollar diffi technology, management and consumer tastes. They cult to predict. This difficulty is compounded when the learn more quickly which new developments have im investment time-scale is five years or more, as it is for plications for their competitiveness, and they respond manufacturing. A low national savings rate accentuates more quickly to new information' (Gamaut, p. 207) the problem. High interest rates have to be maintained [emphasis added]. to attract foreign money, which in tum makes up for There is much evidence to show that this is not so. the lack of domestic investment capital. National sav Australian enterprises too often respond to short-term ings are at a low level, partly because of Australians' market considerations to the detriment of their long massive investment in expensive house extensions, and term survival. The market is preoccupied with fast re their habit of going upmarket. turns on investment, while high interest rates discourage Still more damaging to manufacturing prospects is the long-term investment that manufacturing requires. the arms-length relationship between financiers and the (New tax rules allowing a shorter period for depreciation companies in which they invest. A study on industrial of capital equipment could modify this situation. ) productivity by the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology [MIT] shows that this is also a fea ture of the American economy. The study details quite different arrangements in Germany and Japan, where banks have Safe transplant, no rejection close ties through direct equity participa- tion in manufacturing and through long IN THE PAST 10 YEARS, through sheer attention to detail, the term loans at low interest. Banks are Japanese have captured more than 30 per cent of the US new- represented on company boards, thus ac cepting responsibility for the long-term car market. In the US, Japanese-run assembly plants ('trans- fortunes of their investments. plants') using American labour and equipment, make cars According to the MIT study, US share more efficiently than General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, markets are organised very differently. Superannuation and insurance companies and the product is more highly prized by consumers. While seek to maximise the value of their port total US car output declined by 16.8 per cent, production by folios by a rapid turnover of stockholdings. 'transplants' jumped by 17.8 per cent. In 1989, a Japanese car, Their fund managers have neither long term loyalty to the companies in which the Honda Accord, was the best-selling car in the US. they invest, nor representation on their boards. Meanwhile, profit-related bonuses V OLUME 1 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 11 geared to annual performance encourage management members that change is needed. In Australia there has to focus on short-term profits. Hostile takeovers and been union support and involvement in restructuring, leveraged buy-outs contribute to this focus. notably in the steel; car-making and heavy engineering The MIT study is critical of a preoccupation with industrie~, and in text.iles, clothing and footwear. And reducing costs at the expense of longer-term strategies. the unions have been at the forefront of award restruc German and Japanese markets operate within an insti turing. Traditionally, unions have supported high pro tutional framework that supports manufacturing in tection in an effort to save jobs and to see that their dustry. In Australia, government policy, share markets members share in any windfall gains from higher com and the banks send out confused signals, creating un modity prices. Their strategy for the future strategy must certainty about whether manufacturing is worth sup include a vision for each industry in which they port. Investors looking for a quick, low-risk return are have members, even if substantial job losses reluctant to put money into manufacturing. are involved. The free-trade argument was first articulated almost two centuries ago, with the promise of improving every E coNOMIC NATIONALISM remains an important motiv one's economic welfare. Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' ation when sacrifice is needed: when savings must be of the market is still widely proposed as the most effic made through wage restraint and when budget surpluses ient way of allocating scarce resources. Certainly bene have to be cut. But the inward-looking economic na fits have derived from intemational trade. Between 1945 tionalism of the past needs to be turned outward. Most and 1970 the world experienced the most dramatic and people, for example, accept that they have to pay taxes broadly shared economic growth in its history. Even beyond levels at which they will benefit personally. They allowing for inflation, real income tripled and world pay because they know that their taxes are spent on trade quadrupled. measures that will ultimately benefit all who share in But this success was not the result of free-market the national economy. Such economic nationalism policies. It was generated by the new international eco could muster support for a restoration of moral perspec nomic order created aft er World War II by the Bretton tives in the market place and for the change to more Woods agreement, which fixed exchange fates to minim productive industries. It should command wide political ise currency fluctuations. The system included the Inter support and ensure that the sacrifice involved does not national Monetary Fund to ensure liquidity, and the fall on the already disadvantaged minority of low-wage World Bank to direct development fiuance to areas of earners. need. Finally, the General Agreement on Tariffs and In the long term, a collective response by employ Trade helped to maintain a clear set of rules to encour ers, unions and government is the most effective means age the growth of an open trading system. of helping industry to improve its performance. The At present, economic nationalism is still a brake common good, whether in the national economy or the on the free movement of goods between countries. The world economy, can only be advanced through common barrier to Australian agricultural exports caused by action by the main organised interests in society. • subsidised production in the European Community is one example, but Japan maintains subtle barriers in the form of regulations and closely-knit business networks Richard Curtain is an associate professor in the National that restrict foreign entry to its domestic markets. An Key Centre in Industrial Relations, Monash University. economist writing in the Australian Financial Review has referred to the 'iron law' of comparative advantage. This 'law' advised trading partners (originally England and Portugal in the 19th century) to exchange those References commodities in which one is rich and the other needy. Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge, by Any social scientist who regards a generalisation about Michael Dertouzos, Richard Lester and Robert Solow, and human behaviour as an iron law is peddling ideology. the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity. Harper The 'law' fails to notice that overcoming inherent dis Perennial: New York, 1990. advantages is the essence of human activity- as Japan The Machine that Changed the World, by James Wom showed in overcoming a poor natural-resource base and eck, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos. Maxwell Macmillan: developing a multifaceted manufacturing industry. New York, 1990. Free-trade strategy also fails by producing little in The Global Challenge: Australian Manufacturing in the centive for significant political forces to participate. This 1990s: Report to the Australian Manufacturing Council applies particularly to the labour movement, which is of the study by Pappas, Carter, Evans and Koop. Telesis: Melbourne, 1990. left with little or no role beyond protecting its mem Industrial Policy After 1992: An Anglo-German Per bers from the worst excesses of cost-cutting. The un spective, edited by Keith Cowling and Horst Tomann. ions have a proven capacity to resist change, but any Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial attempt to reduce their role thus excludes a large part of Society: London, 1990. society from an active and positive involvement in The Amuican Prospect, by Robert Reich. Times Books: change. Unions can play a key role in convincing their New York, 1990 . EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 PROFILE MARGARET SIMONS Hard times for local heroes Free mark.eteers like to cite the policies followed by the Cain government in Victoria as an example of why 'picking winners' doesn't work. .. The architect of those policies, Peter Sheehan, argues that the problem lay in the application, not the vision. P TIR SH" HAN HUGS """" " .s he t.lks. A big, blue· tralian society should be more equal, and we should eyed man, he clasps his arms protectively around his work on our strengths to remain wealthy and competi frame and chooses his words with care. He is a hurt tive. 'I think Christianity is important. I wouldn't want man, and he has not been talking much. There has been, to emphasise Catholicism as such, but there are deep he says, 'a lot of hostility around; it has been a very seated religious and humanistic traditions that are not difficult time'. necessarily at odds. The main problem is that we don't Since ceasing to be Victoria's most powerful public think or talk much about our fundamental beliefs.' servant, this philosopher-turned-economist has avoid Few people stamped their ideas so forcefully on a ed interviews. Now, seated among the greys and mauves government now extensively derided as did Peter Shee and the pots of tangled willow in the Carlton offices of han. As the head of the Cain government's remodelled the Strategic Research Foundation, he talks about the Treasury, the Department of Management and Budget, shadow that fell between the Cain Government's eco he was the architect of a strategy now in disarray. It was nomic vision and the political reality. Managing the his strategy that led to the burgeoning of the now defunct public sector, he says, is the most difficult job in Aus Victorian Economic Development Corporation, and his tralia: 'It is a very constraint-ridden environment. You was the mind behind the major economic and technical are managing right in the heart of a very complex demo statement that charted the Cain government's course cratic process. Most of the public have no perception of of radical reform. the pressures or time commitments.' Sheehan resigned 12 months ago, after the depar Sheehan says that in other countries, such as Japan, ture of Treasurer Rob Jolly and the scrapping of the De bureaucrats are the most valued members of society. partment of Management and Budget, which Sheehan He believes their low repute in Australia is part of a had made the government's engine-room. Commenta broader problem--our failure to achieve consensus about tors saw Sheehan's and Jolly's fall as equivalent to a the sort of society we want, and how we want to achieve change of government. Their replacements have aban it. This lack, he says, lies at the heart of the country's cloned pump priming and visionary government, and economic problems-and at the heart of the crumbling brought Victoria into line with non-interven of the Cain government's economic strategy. tionist economic orthodoxies. 'That is the fundamental issue: in the post-war period we haven't developed a clear set of views about w 1-ilLE HE WAS IN FASI-ilON, Sheehan's brilliance was where we want the economy to go and how to get there,' acknowledged by all and envied by many. In the inter he says. 'One of Victoria's problems in the '80s was a necine atmosphere of the bureaucracy, the road to pro lack of consensus about directions, and about whether motion in some departments reputedly lay in picking the government was attempting was sort of thing that holes in the stream of economic and strategy documents governments ought to do. There were clearly differenc that came steadily down from Management and Budg es between the state and Federal Government about et. Many did not know that Sheehan was an entirely that.' self-trained economist-his academic qualifications are Where is society to find such a vision? Throughout in philosophy. He used to be admired for this diversity. a rigorous and varied intellectual career, Sheehan's own Now his lack of formal economic training is advanced answer has remained fundamentally unchanged. Aus- by some to explain his mistakes. V OLUME l N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 13 Before spectacular failures and collapses gave the Opposition easy ammunition, the worst that the Opposition's treasury spokes man, Alan Stockdale, would say of Peter Shee han was that he was 'a very competent man who has pursued the wrong economic policies'. Even now, it is acknowledged that his pe riod of management brought an enormous improvement in the economic management of the public sector. Victoria adopted an econom ic strategy that pinpointed its strengths. Departments, and instrumentalities such as the State Electricity Commission, ceased to be fiefdoms and were made to budget for real rates of return, set proper management objectives and report on their progress. In the early days of the government, Sheehan was involved in finding equity partners for the government in the Port land aluminium smelter. It was the era of the manager as king. The Cain Government had created a Treasury that didn't just say 'no'. Now, in the wake of the political disasters that overtook his vision, Sheehan admits to some mistakes. The Cain Government, he says, tried to do too much and did not manage indi Sheehan: 'I am not bent, not bitter, just older and wiser'. vidual reforms well enough. Nevertheless, he believes that the fundamental problems that he tried to address have not gone away. The Australian On his resignation, Sheehan publicly admitted that economy still needs to develop internationally compet the government's attempts to provide venture capital itive industries. to small businesses through the development corpora 'All the data shows that the big productivity gains tion had been a failure. But he also claimed that the in the 1980s were made in the public sector, not the failure did not go to the heart of the economic strategy. private sector', Sheeh2.n says. 'The irony is that at the Today, while he concedes that there was mismanage end of the 1980s, there is an emphasis on privatisation. ment, he claims the real problem was not with the ide As a broad generalisation, I think we have major prob as but with the politics: 'The venture capital business is lems with the management of the private sector in inherently risky. If for every ten projects you have one Australia.' or two successes, three or four failures and a couple of Sheehan still believes the public sector can and so-sos, you are doing OK. That is what business would ought to play a major role in building on Australia's expect. But politically it is hopeless. In our political strengths to create internationally competitive indus culture, that is not sustainable.' tries. But how is this to be made politically possible, Sheehan agrees that the Cain Government was too when the consensus among economists is that govern optimistic about what was politically possible. It was ments are bad managers. Sheehan says: 'Those issues not fully aware of the difficulties and tried too much go to the heart of the way we think about ourselves and too quickly. And that contributed to mismanagement. our views about how economies work or don't work'. 'I don't think there is any doubt that there was mis In the absence of vision or consensus about society, management in the VEDC.' While declining to com 'people are casting about for reasonably fundamental ment on individuals, Sheehan says that part of the ideas, and the emphasis on privatisation is one way in problem is that we do not hire, reward and motivate the which Anglo-Saxon societies particularly have tried to best people to manage public affairs. 'We learned that it find a response. A society that doesn't have some long was harder than we thought, so we would have been term sense of what it wants to achieve will just float better doing a smaller number of things and putting more from short-term issue to short-term issue.' management resources and more supervision into them.' Sheehan's ideas are in retreat. One angry Labor Responding to criticism that he was too much of a supporter, asked about Sheehan, said: 'That man is the visionary and not enough of an administrator, he says: ultimate proof that to govern and reform, you need more 'In things I have a direct responsibility for, my style has than just some good ideas. The trouble with him and always been to go into the details. In some things we his team was that they believed their own rhetoric. They exercised detailed control. In the last seven or eight years thought that because the arguments were right, they Victoria has seen tighter control of public expenditure couldn't go wrong. And there's more to politics.' than anywhere-' 14 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 'I don't think mismanagement goes to the heart of On his return, he took a philosophy post at the the issue. Even with the best possible management, in Australian National University, but found increasingly the aftermath of the stock market crash and with rising that his debating fellows were economists. Articles he interest rates and general collapse, there would have been wrote attracted the interest of Professor Ronald Hend substantial losses. So the fundamental problem with erson, who in the early 1970s recruited him to the governments providing venture capital would still have Melbourne University's Institute for Applied Econom arisen-that failure is not politically acceptable or sus ic and Social Research. Sheehan says: 'Under Henderson tainable.' it was the most exciting policy-related place in the The problem of attempting too much too quickly country, involved in all the important reforms: Med has bedevilled Labor governments from Whitlam's on ibank, the securities commission, the prices and incomes wards. Sheehan says: 'In what I like to call our adversarial accord. It changed direction about the time Henderson society, it is always easy to overestimate what can be left, and I left about then too.' done and to underestimate the difficulties. That is true By then, Sheehan was regularly advising the ACTU not just of Labor governments but of all people who in and the Victorian ALP, then in Opposition. In 1981, he one way or another want to change things.' wrote a report for the Public Bodies Review Committee, In spite of a career spent questioning orthodoxies, and when Labor came to power in the following year, it the fundamentals of Sheehan's personal views have not harnessed the Sheehan vision to a reformist machine. changed. His intellectually varied and adventurous life In spite of eight years at the heart of the bureau has been about building on the 'incredibly rich work cracy, Sheehan has remained in essence an academic. ing-class Irish Catholic tradition', rather than departing In spite of the hurt and disappointment at being thrust from it. An intellectual cosmopolitan, twenty-five years out of the heart of power, he speaks with enthusiasm of ago he was better known for analyses of Aquinas and his excitement at finding out what his academic col speculations on the nature of reality than for crunching leagues have been doing 'while I was away'.He now di numbers. 'I have always been interested in intellectual vides his time between Melbourne University matters and policy matters, and always had a tendency and other activities such as the Strategic Re to look at a problem as a whole without caring much search Foundation. The foundation is explor The big which category it fell into-philosophical, educational, ing projects in which government can work whatever.' He is torn about the Federal Government's with business to exploit Australia's research productivity present emphasis on vocationalism in universities. strengths. Its successes include setting up Though as an economist he is intensely aware of the projects in biomolecular research and com gains in the need for a skilled workforce, he still believes puting. the best education is a general one. The foundation sounds similar to a devel 1980s were opment corporation-type venture, but Sheehan E TER SHEEHAN WAS BOR and brought up in the Mel insists that they are quite different. 'I am not made in the bourne suburb of Windsor, then a working-class district. necessarily pursuing any particular ideas I held His father, a commercial traveller, died when he was in the past; but yes, I am still engaged in trying public sector, five; he was raised by his schoolteacher mother with to help Victoria address the deep-seated prob the help of a large extended family. After an education lems. I think we share these in different ways not the private from the Christian Brothers at St Kilda, Peter became with many other democratic countries. The the first of the family to go to university. fundamental problem is to find ways in a sector He says: 'It was new and exciting, but I didn't have democratic society to address the important any very clear sense of what I wanted to do there.' In long-term issues, and to do so on a sustained basis, while fact he completed a science degree with a large mathe learning from the problems and the failures. matics component, and became involved in the New 'The pressures in the system, which are extraordi man Society and the Athenian Society. The Newman nary, are all on the short-term: today's problems, today's Society, then a major feature of campus life, was where crisis.' The media are partly to blame for this, according the best and brightest Catholic students met, talked and to Sheehan, because of their focus on the immediate formulated a sense of faith within the university envi and tendency to swing with political fashions. This is ronment. There Sheehan met 'an extraordinarily clever all part of 'an incredibly destructive process. We have all and exciting bunch of people', including poet and teacher been so caught up in that process-polling the week Vincent Buckley. Influenced by the two societies, and before an election campaign to find out what the issues with a growing interest in the nature of science, his at are so that we can address them-and doing that each tention turned to philosophy. He did a masters degree week of the campaign. All parties do this, so the whole in that discipline, meanwhile supporting himself by tu process is devoted to what we can achieve next week.' toring in maths. In 1965 Sheehan went to Oxford, and Are these problems inevitable? Sheehan smiles. 'I don't in long walks and talks in the old town, conceived the see anything bad as inevitable. I am not bent, not bitter, idea of marrying his philosophical training with an in just older and wiser.' • terest in political and social affairs. He began to study economics. Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist. V OLUME 1 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 15 The road to ruin is now debt-free L RE WAS A TIME when choosing one's path in and checked against a distinctly un-Quixotic meas life meant deciding between diligence, and the ure known as a credit limit. The upright walk proudly amassing of riches and public esteem on the one in the shadow of the credit limit, spending without hand, and spendthrift indulgence and the amassing exceeding it but forever bound to their credit pro of debts and public contempt on the other. (All right, vider. I cannot say exactly when this time was, but quibb I write out of pique, of course. Not because I ling about dates has no part in the writing of Quix have been refused finance for some Quixotic project, otic history.) The odds were not stacked against the such as a crusade against the Moors. It is not even second option as much as they might seem to have that a supercilious headwaiter has rejected my cred been. If you chose to be a wastrel, there was the it card-none could, for I don't have one. No, the compensation of being the subject of much poetry event that raised my ire was more commonplace than and folk song, whether celebratory or cautionary. Not either of these, yet its very banality emphasised the much of a compensation, perhaps. After all, who eats threat facing wastrels everywhere. I have been re poetry? But at least the wastrel was offered a kind of fused the right to hire a videocassette. immortality denied to those whose highest ambi Yes, a video. For just as my spiritual progenitor, tion in life was to be comfortable. the great Don himself, spent his leisure reading Further, if the wastrel had the wit for it he could escapist romances, so I too am sometimes in need of ensure this immortality by writing a ballad or two a fiction to blunt reality. And in search of the same I himself. (I regret the gender-specific language, but in had joined a great throng of modems in the local video those days literary vagabondage seems to have been store. chiefly a male occupation.) Thus we have the distin I had not come unprepared. There were multi guished example of my Quixotic cousin, the vaga ple proofs of identity: certificates of birth, vaccina bond poet Fran<;ois Villon. And there emerged a tion, baptism, first communion, confirmation and whole genre of wastrel writing, the picaresque. No graduation. There was a passport, a student card and one coined a term for writing that extolled the lives a union card. There was a letter from Benazir Bhut of prosperous merchants and bankers, for there to, rejecting my offer of marriage. And to certify that wasn't much to speak of. There still isn't, except for I, too, understood the importance of living in debt, television series about Texan oil millionaires, who there were importunate letters from my landlord, usually have to be depicted as closet wastrels to ap Telecom and the Tax Office. Finally, in deference to pear interesting anyway. Who ever heard of a poem the rule of the credit limit, there was a bank state or novel described as 'mercatoresque'? ment indicating that I could satisfy all these demands But consider how devious and decadent mod and still scrape up enough cash to hire a video. ems have upset the balance that once existed be This mound of paperwork will no doubt impress tween wastrel fame and comfortable obscurity. In future biographers, but it had no effect on the churl the Quixotic past, the comfortable were recognised in charge of the video store. He pushed them aside by their solvency: they paid their way, keeping and demanded a piece of plastic instead. I even had smugly out of debt. Wastrels, by contrast, were to rescue the manuscript bearing the Blessed Bena constantly evading creditors. Today, to be comfort zir's signature from his unhallowed floor. An attempt able one needs to be in debt, or in a kind of debt. This to reason and cajole proved useless. In vain did I point is the age of the credit rating, when it is difficult out that he was denying me, a fully-documented even to establish one's identity except by proferring human being, the right to borrow a chivalric romance a plastic card that proclaims willingness to live in or two, while happily handing over lurid exposes of debt. juvenile chain-saw massacres to persons bearing only By a baffling inversion of values, such willing a piece of plastic. ness has become a proof of respectability. To offer The great Don, of course, would have challenged cash in exchange for goods or services is to invite an the miscreant to settle the matter on the field of upraised eyebrow, for only someone who wishes to honour. But there is no honour in plastic cards or vanish without trace-traditionally the prerogative credit limits. I shall continue to seek it elsewhere. • of the wastrel-would use cash. An honest person, it is assumed, will have all transactions recorded, Ray Cassin is production editor of Eureka Street 16 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 C OVER STORY M ARK R APER Sanctuary too far away Refugees from war and persecution may seem to be always with us. But we give up too easily if we assume a solution will be always beyond our grasp. E OM MY TIN Y V OLUM E 1 N UMBE R 2 • EUREKA STREET 17 As the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel rem arked, A refugee, then, is someone in search of food, safe the refugee becomes a judge-of our values, our society. ty, identity and belonging. He, she, or they run to: It may be simply that 'the apple does not have the same • Escape civil war or internecine strife taste here as it did in Thailand or in Hungary'. Wiesel • Escape foreign invasion, political or religious adds: 'The person who has lived for a time stripped of persecution, national disintegration or nationality, profession, identity, perhaps of wife or economic restructuring children, and savings-this person looks differently at • Seek greater opportunities the world. Coming to settle in a new society, refugees • Lead a life free of persecution have the right to ask "What are you do • Join a foreign-based liberation movement ing with the knowledge that we brought • Escape fighting caused by territorial disputes. you?".' The May 1990 San Remo Round Table, sponsored A few years ago, the film Sanctuary by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and Asylum was commissioned by the World Coun the International Organisation for Migration, agreed cil of Churches. It examines a refugee about the inadequacy of the present definition of 'refu implies family's experiences at particular mo gee'- The conference itself spoke of 'movements re ments on their journey. As the scene sulting from generalised violence, internal armed more changes, for instance from Central conflicts or other severely adverse social, economic and America to Africa, the family changes political conditions'. than from a Central American family to an African family. (Here I add experiences What responses are likely to be effective! a safe of my own, particularly with Burmese, Research is vital. Identifying the 'root causes' of refugee Cambodian and Vietnamese people.) flows is a task that should accompany intelligent direct haven aid to refugees. And close contact with the people af Scene One: Why people become refugees fected is essential if research is to be useful. Some form In the opening scene, a Central Ameri of typology of factors that produce refugees might warn can father speaks about his one desire-to live in his those with eyes to see. Then all responses that are both own home and community. Yet he and his family are ethical and feasible should be vigorously explored. forced to flee. Monitoring can provide early warning of situations To understand why people become refugees, one likely to lead to mass displacement of people. Monitor should first ask, 'What explanation do they themselves ing requires well-honed skills and is best done hand in give?'. For example, many Afghan refugees calls them hand with operational agencies. During 1988, agencies selves mohajir, a title the Prophet gave himself during based in Bangkok were in regular communication with his own flight. They interpret their experience reli one another about developments in Burma. They stood giously, as an attack on body and spirit by an atheistic ready either for a new openness within Burma (imply ideology and war machine. One begins to understand, ing a need for development assistance after the years of too, how the Afghan conflict was 'Islamicised'. neglect), or for a crisis leading to a flow of refugees and the need for emergency aid. Accurate information can help protect people. Making known the troubles of refugees requires research skills, accurate information and reliable channels of dissemination. It also demands courage. I recall one Thai academic researching the abuses suffered by Vietnam ese boat people at the hands of Thai pirates. He worked in fear of his life. Scene Two: Immediate needs and beyond The film scene shifts to Africa and to the refugee's im mediate need of health care, sustenance and shelter. When these necessities are provided, new needs emerge: for asylum, and for skills to cope with being herded to gether in mass confinement. One Jesuit Refugee Service [JRS] worker describes refugees as 'kneeling people', people cut down in size. All that they once possessed to identify themselves and claim social status is taken away. They are now former housewives, former farmers, former doctors, former soldiers. Accepting help is difficult. Everything reminds them of their dependent status. To consider refugees is Vi etnamese boys, Tuen Mun Camp, Hong Kong. to consider the individual and his or her family. (So of- 18 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 199 1 ten we are dealing with detached children, and women morale and inactivity. Worse still, one senior UNHCR alone or with children.). We must also be alert to the official described the Thai-Cambodian border arrange needs of whole societies uprooted. And aware, too, that ments as 'the political use of human suffering'. in 90 per cent of cases, especially in Africa, the burden Moral and strategic questions remain for those who of hosting refugees is carried by the poorest countries. still have faith in the UN's role as a provider of moral leadership. The UN appears to be suffering a crisis of The following practical responses are needed: morale. In the case of Cambodia, several member states • Agencies involved in emergency work require people (notably the United States and China), have used the with specialist training. Voluntary agencies currently conflict for their own ends. The country and its people rely on young graduates from the West who go home suffer, not least the refugees. after two years, or even after six months. There is little JRS personnel have reflected seriously on our in or no transfer of experience, no adequate knowledge of volvement with the Khmer people. The discussion goes other languages and cultures. Training in management like this: Agencies came to do good, but now see their techniques is also urgently required. And ways of de livering assistance quickly and effectively should be studied further. • Methods that different countries use in handling asylum-seekers require research. There is now availa ble 15 years' experience of receiving Vietnamese asylwn seekers. A study of detention conditions in various camps might convince local officials that inhumane conditions simply create problems for all. L EFT: Womens's • Alternatives to camps should be promoted, e.g. con sleeping quarters, ferring temporary refugee status during a limited crisis. Tuen Mun. Identity cards, travel permits and work permits offer . BELow: Married m en, ways of retaining some control over an incoming refu held for seven years gee population. Tanzania and Pakistan permit refugees in Tuen Mun. opportunities for local employment, through which they contribute to the local economy. • Asylum in1plies more than a safe haven. A refugee needs more than charity. The receiving country needs international support. • A further reflection is occasioned by our contacts with the Karen and Kachin people. When groups of these ref ugees began arriving in Thailand from Burma, we went looking for them in the jungle to evaluate their needs. We found that their first action after erecting shelter for the night was to set up schools for their children. After 41 years of war, these ethnic minorities have adapted to being pushed around constantly. They see their surviv al as a people as depending on preserving their culture and language. And their plan is working. Scene Three: Living in a refugee camp Set in the Middle East (the latest scene of refugee flows), Sanctuary's next scene dramatises the effects of pro longed stays in camps. Millions have been in this situa tion for years. There is little to do beyond daily chores. Returning home remains a stubborn hope. In time a chance may come to begin life again in a third country. But even departures create problems by dividing fami lies, weakening social institutions and developing un efforts as, in effect, reinforcing injustices in the camp's realistic hopes. social structure; humanitarianism now appears inade Classically, the UNHCR proposes three durable quate, even counter-productive. solutions. Yet a fourth seems prevalent, namely con One option is simply to leave. A more striking tinuing residence in a refugee camp. There some UN option is to leave publicly, meanwhile protesting at the body provides basic food and assistance, but few other UN's failures. But this option contains the same moral resources. No agency has answers to the deep-seated flaw as that of which we complain, namely instrumen mental health problems created by boredom, loss of talising the refugees. VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 19 Refugee workers have indeed been helped by re only temporary asylum. Many Sri Lankan Tamils live searchers who came to study aspects of camp life. The suspended in this way. And legal instruments are lack best are those with several disciplines, who are also at ing to protect such people as the East Timorese in Indo tuned to the people's feelings and to the political reali nesia, and the internally displaced in El Salvador. ties. Heated discussion continues for and against the Mental health studies are essential, since the mandatory repatriation of screened-out boat people from number who have suffered trauma is high. Studies have Hong Kong and other first asylum countries, and about helped our workers understand more clearly why a camp the morality of using this process to deter others. Such is a destructive place for everyone concerned. Yet while discussions are not generally supported by enough reli camps do exist, we will seek to be able data or by rational argument. present and to serve the people. We know, too, that those who wait are Scene Five: New life, culture shock Often resourceful and can be creative. Moving to a Western country, the film focuses on reset In South-East Asia JRS empha tlement, a process fraught with risks-discrimination, asylum- sises education, offering four kinds of culture shock, racism, exploitation. Only five per cent activity: on-site teaching, distance of refugees have an opportunity for resettlem ent; in seekers cannot learning, scholarships and non-formal general, adequate research is being done on their needs. education. The UN concentrates on However, som e governments support research in their prove that they primary teaching. This includes own country, but not internationally. teacher-training, as well as manage have 'a fear of ment training that helps the people Scene Six: Sponsorship and sanctuary persecution'. to run their own affairs. An urgent question facing churches in North America The distance-learning program and elsewhere is whether to offer protection to undocu Yet the onus is involves 75 retired teachers in anoth mented persons. Both Jews and Christians have long er country, each having four or five traditions of providing sanctuary for those who reach on them students in a camp with whom they the door of church or synagogue. Sizeable communities correspond frequently, helping them are being led in conscience to offer refuge that requires to do so complete set curricula. Scholarships breaking a law they consider unjust. are possible if the people are 'citizens' Non-government organisations [NGOs] do not see of a government recognised by Thai the whole picture, but we are seeing m ore and more of land: they can be sent abroad for spe- it. Governments and international organisations are now cial courses, say in rural community development. They excluded from many of the fields they used to 'co-ordi return and offer significant leadership within the camp. nate'. International organisations cannot work at the 'Non-formal education' includes weaving, silk produc Thai-Burma border, nor can they enter Tigray or Erit tion and sculpture. rea. Private agencies carry the burden. In other coun tries, too, NGOs do the bulk of the work. They are more Scene Four: Who is, and who is not, a refugee? flexible, more lightly structured and less costly than The scene shifts to a frontier immigration office of a government-sponsored agencies. Western country, where the process in progress is 'sta But they do need support. Sometimes they lack tus determination' or 'screening procedure'. Sanctuary experience, infrastructure and sound judgement. For underlines the extreme difficulty of setting up fair ways these reasons especially, partnerships between research of deciding who are 'genuine' refugees. and teaching institutes on the one hand, and voluntary No one claims that the 1951 convention definition agencies on the other, are potentially most valuable. is adequate. Presently, seeking a change of definition is Studies of refugee phenomena reveal a shift of atti not tactically advisable. But those concerned must con tude during the last ten years. A decade ago we spoke of tinue to demonstrate that the Convention is inadequate crises, the assumption being that these were short-term. and itself creates injustices. We thought that massive injections of cash, spontane Determining refugee status remains the prerogative ous and dramatic interventions and emergency assist of sovereign states. Often asylum-seekers cannot prove ance would 'fix' the situation. Now we know the reality. that they have 'a fear of persecution'. Yet the onus is on And we need much better information than we presently them to do so. Meanwhile, there continue to be many possess about ways to relieve the distress of masses of life-threatening causes of statelessness, for example, civil people. conflict, foreign aggression, discriminatory agrarian The creation of refugees is no longer acceptable. In policy, ecological factors,home territory raqvaged by land fact, it never was. • mines, and sheer poverty. Legal mechanisms must be found, both international and national, to protect up rooted people. Mark Raper SJ is director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Generally, only refugees in the strict sense are con a voluntary organisation serving refugees and displaced sidered for resettlement. Others wait in limbo, granted persons in thirty countries . 20 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 APRIL \:400·HANOICAP HURDLE RACE t 15 -AMA TJ. UR !:-ITEEPLECHASE \:400·0NKAPARINCA C'UP Photo: Henry joll es INA SHill at the end of a lane off Murray Street, the Hobrut premier, foolish enough to agree to a televised question-and Bookmakers' Club had its handy, unsalubrious premises. answer session for his cabinet, saw one of his ministers asked Many a frustrated and curious childhood hour I spent out by a lanky Launceston poet if he had taken bribes to delay side, as my father wandered from stall to stall, mumbling to the introduction of the TAB. But the TAB duly came, numbers himself, meeting an old acquaintance, placing his small bets. of bookmakers went, and the minister ended up as state He might wager on four placed horses, or have five premier. All the same, if the bookies who fielded at the pic- shillings each way nic race meeting something, all up at St Mary's in something else. north-eastern Here you could The once and future booltie Tasmania this take doubles so NewYear'sDay exotic that they are an indication were said to be the envy of punters throughout the rest of the state of the art, then the decline of the Australian book of Australia: a horse in Melbourne into a dog at that maker is nothing to lament. Betting to ludicrous markets night's meeting at the TCA ground on the Domain. framed to 22D (130 is thought fair dealing), the few who turned Now, apparently, it's only in Darwin that you can do up to twiddle knobs, and who included the former Colling the same. Often my father was accommodated by 'Increase wood footballer John Greening, succeeded in the unlikely Your Roll, Bet With Noel' Coleman, hardly an Olympian task of rendering the totalisator, installed in a caravan, a more figure, and one who invariably wore hand-warmers. There attractive proposition with which to punt. were no Waterhouses or Terry Pages in Hobart. The Book Yet not so long ago, what a source of perverse pride for makers' Club looked and was mainly a small-time, though the Australian racegoer bookmakers were-all protestations busy, operation. Not exclusively a male preserve, it was still of ritual contempt for them aside. I remember the national dominated by men in hats and gabardine overcoats. istic disdain that I felt for the poky upstairs betting shops in The club has long since been levelled for a shopping England (an English friend of mine, shown an Australian TAB, mall. Tasmanian bookmaking was in decline even while it mistook it for a bank). Still more despicable were the timor stood. It was a state-wide scandal in the early 1970s when a ous English boolanakers. On bleak National Hunt courses V O LUM E 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 21 such as Newbury in winter, operating with blackboard and cent who routinely go broke. There is less and less attraction chalk, the English bookies' elbows would often convenient in betting with them, and the two per cent tun1over tax on ly erase the figures, and they wouldn't bet on some races at all their transactions (including their oW11 losses) necessarily all. What a contrast was this to the fearless bookies of Aus reduces bookmal 22 EUREKA STREET • A PRJL 1991 Swords into peaceshares Tmm ~o FOR lRAo. Som VoLUME 1 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 23 1 1ONCE DID THIS THING when I was a kid, playing football. I ran into an open goal with the ball in my hand. I could have scored-no way I could have missed. But instead I saw a moment, I saw an oppor tunity to provide my team-mates with a wonderful Crossr comical moment. So I just ran through the open goal, fumbled it all, because you see it was too easy- 1 felt enormously oppressed by the inevitability of what I had to do. Everyone's seen a goal before but not many have seen someone not kick a goal when they could have. And that to me was fresh act. There is a MORAG FRASER perversity inbuilt in me. Just when the thing is sitting in my hands, just when I have got the perfect punch lime for a joke, I'll throw it away and look for some thing beyond punchline.' 'It's a wonder they didn't kill you.' 'They nearly did.' Photo: Henry )oiles T DAY, M'cHm LcuMc's Aumwct is mme likely to mythologise him than kill him for failing to deliver, but it remains true that no one knows quite what to expect of him next. He is Australia's best known cartoonist, widely read, appreciated, loved and plagiarised, both here and abroad. Leunig drawings festoon kitchens and of fices the way biblical maxims, fly paper and embroi dery samplers once did. He is both comfort and goad-a man gifted and burdened with the impulse to tell the truth In conversation Leunig is intense, deeply focussed but also hesitant, pondering questions as if they were small creatures, prodding, turning them over, checking noses, counting toes. He says he used to be very inar ticulate. 'I had an appalling formal education and that made me feel inadequate and a bit humiliated.' He is still free of any rhetorical slick on him, but the inartic ulateness has gone, replaced by an explorer's vocabulary: 'I wonder. .. yes ... maybe ... perhaps ... do you understand what I mean?' And sometimes there are hints of for mality, prophetic rhythms that come out of a past which included church and a present which provokes him into speak out publicly. But there is more than that: Leunig also has the verbal assurance of a professional who has been painting and drawing for a lifetime. 'I am talking about a bit of work that touches,' he will say, 'I am not 24 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 Yes. Yes, indeed. I think I am trying to keep alive within myself the capacity to be able to contemplate the dark, to see it. I think we have become a squeamish society in many ways; we have idealised notions of eferencing everything. You know-that this is a happy thing and that is an unhappy thing, or that is a good thing and that is a bad. This squeamishness appals me, and it seems so limiting. You can't go into certain areas ... Like dea th ~ Like death. That's one, at the most extreme. Or one's own violence ... Yes. I believe we should be able to go into them. I want to. I have a compulsion. I always have had a fascination to look under the rock or to dissect a frog. To under- stand. There are many different moments in life, and they all seem to have a part. And to tum away from any of them seems to be foolish to me, or limiting. Does the notion of evil mean anything to you~ Well I've never really understood it entirely. But I am fascinated by it. I suspect that we are now living in a very evil world, a long way from our goodness as a society and probably as individuals. There is a definition of evil which says that it is the absence of love. Maybe it is as simple as that. But maybe the emptiness we create is also a kind of evil. We build cruel cities, we build cruel suburbs, we create cruel machines which turn roads into hurtling pieces of talking about the bits that don't work.' That air of prac tised certainty, and a readiness to discard the dross is what gives his voice its weight. Metaphysical specula tion, for Leunig, is grounded in what he knows. It is also driven by a relentless curiosity, the curiosity of childhood, with its great energy, its capacity for delight, its impishness and its vulnerability. Vulnerable because the curiosity entails opermess. If you look under stones as Leunig still does then you will sometim es find black spiders. There is an enormous amount of joy in what you draw. Oh I'm glad to hear that. But sometimes the joy ,or the delight seems to be a delight in incongruity, in things rasping against one another. Delight in that happening do you mean? Yes. In the existence of difference, incompatibiltity. . . ·.· And sometimes in the blackness. For example, in the Awful aspects of spring cartoon-new dog digging up the old dog-that for me has a quality of delight in abrasion, abrasive thought. It also suggests connec ;. ~.,.. .. .~ - ~~~};. tions between things, and a kind of inclusivness. ·- ~~..=.!! ~ , Even of awkward facts. Awful aspects of Spring. The new dog digs up the old dog. V OLUME 1 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 25 metal. We consume, we watch hours on end of ties, was asked what do you do when a child simply violence and banal nonsence. If this isn't a vision of will not respond. And she said,'Well, you be patient.' evil, some vision of hell, then I don't what is. And I thought gee that's a wise thing to say. Because And yet that is the material you use. So much of the interviewer was wanting the trick. And there is what you draw comes out of a friction with what you no trick. But of course you have got to charm people see around you. too. You've got to do that. Indeed, because it is my sorry lot to have to bounce off that.[ a weary, wry grin] I think in any world I found myself in I would respond. It enables me. But why The about-tum is characteristic. Leunig still has am I so drawn? Why am I so affected by these things? some of the residue of sixties' cool about him. 'Don't Where one person sees a wonderful highway another take me too seriously,' he'll say. So 'charm' is a subtle person sees the growth of madness. Why do F Some and complex factor in his operations. He is in fact deep people are quite happy about these things. ly and strenuously serious, but just when you think you A related question, about your drawings: anyone who have him pinned down (or he has you nailed into som follows them from week to week knows that some bre reflection) he'll flash with glee, pull out the rug and times they are very down, sometimes up. How do destabilise your complacencies. It happens in his car you drive your car between the two! toons. He sets you up or sets the world up and then tips I think again that has something to do with accepting everything over. It is, as he would have it, a creative all the parts of yourself. To leave anything out is, principle. again, to be squeamish. You have to have the full spectrum of expression, don't you, the full range, and keep balancing it. It's exhausting, running up and I think that is the great creative moment when things down between the two but you just have to hold the can be reborn. That's the process of making a leap. line a bit. Maintain the line-all that old stuff. Jung It's also a recipe for a hard life. What happens if the point of departure presents you with a quandary you can't resolve! ~ rW ~J~<. ve yf rG You are at the crossroads? Yes. Well I reckon you C..OMMA.rv'DMf"'n ti_ /Je have to be prepared to make the wrong decision and ro. j"re 'j'l.t t(,. rescue it. You could never paint unless you were . A~E, r(,_ Su!r~l~TtotJS prepared to mess up. Painting demonstrates this principle about life very well. You have got to be A fJp ~ HAN !JY HINT) -=---===--- prepared to make a mistake, lose it all, and in the act of losing it, in the chaos, you see the possibility of the new thing, the fresh thing within the ruins of your self. I know this works in painting. But it is a painful process. It involves utter disappointment and a feeling of worthlesssness. I know this to be true, not just in my work but in my life. And there is much sadness, not just the sadness of things that happen but a sadness woven into life, and a letting go all the time and a letting go. I think I have had a lot of that. It is interesting about the Christian thing, too-it is on about pain and suffering. And people find this unat tractive. But you have got to lay the groundwork in your life for the miracles of transformation. So how, when it is all on the floor in bits in front of you, which is a terrible moment... All your rules have collapsed, yes, and you are feeling worthless ... says that it is only about 40 per cent of the population That's right, you feel appalling. How do you get that is stable and that 40 per cent holds it together. through! Or is it out beyond you by then! Maybe I 60 per cent are basically morbid and a bit sick so am asking you about God. when the 40 drops to 35 per cent cataclysm develops Well I think that is the God. How I get through to the and you get the rise of nazism etc. I suppose it is like next stage, if and when I do, would be by being love-you just have to maintain it. And you have mindful of that process. Do not panic. Do not restore the traditions of critical thought, of democrat despair. Have faith. Just stay there. Or else-that's ic tradition and intellectual life. Yes, and patience. when you have got to call on your mad streak, you Another old thing. I heard a lovely story on radio. A divine crazy streak. woman from Scotland, an expert on reading difficul- The perverse bit! 26 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 Yes, the perverse bit. The joy in that, taking delight the war, doesn't it? when something goes wrong. There has got to be I suppose it does. But what are you saying! That disappointment but there also has to be a playful conflict, that war is inevitable because we haven't dimension, a child dimension. But I don't know how found ways of channelling men's potentially destruc you keep that alive and nourished. tive energy! People don't 'make' enough so they make war instead! I think those things are related. If you get a Whether he knows how to nourish it or not, the culture of men who are increasingly haunted playful, 'child' dimension is powerful in Leunig, and in by a notion of powerlessness because they his work. Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama with his direction simply don't come home tired at the end of finding duck are among its products, and they are irre the day-they come home tense-then this sistible symbols of what we miss in life, what we reach will create trouble. And if you feed that with out for, or back towards. But for a man who can conjure a fantasy of power, of a gun, of a sudden innocent worlds, Leunig is extremely preoccupied at the expression of power rather than the slow, moment with what it means to be grown up, what it ongoing, realistic integration with physicali means to be masculine, what masculinity itself means. ty which absorbs and harnesses all,-well He returns to it time and again as we talk. Men, he men explode into violence. Idle hands need believes, are 'pretty broken as a gender.' He himself is a expression. surprisingly tall man, dextrous (a word he uses repeat edly) and craftsmanlike, very different from the 'age less, genderless human character' of many of his War, painting, Christianity, suffering, drawings. When a banshee spring wind made our con drawing-all are lines in the pattern. Leunig versation impossible he jumped up and wedged an old likes pattern, ritual, restatement, seasonal jumper between the panes of glass. Deft, effective. Le rhythms, putting time aside in a common cul unig grew up, he says, in a typical post war, western ture, 'paying your respects by noticing that the suburbs schoolboy' culture, obsessed by the rational wheat harvest goes on in the north no matter world, the great need to.measure and weigh and prove. what the state of the economy,' as he puts it. Every young boy had science books and notions of go And if ritual and ceremony have their embar ing to the moon. rassing moments then all the better: 'Once you are embarrassed then you are on to a truth.' A profound critic of our cultural appetite for Wa s that in you, or the culture! Do you see it now as novelty and originality, he likes connections, a particularly masculine experience! A boy's experi 'old things'. As a child he wanted to know ence! Formative! whether he was connected to all forms of life Yes. But a lot of that dream, a lot of that illusion of or whether he was alone. Now,'the older you control has crumbled. You get a world now of ecolog get the more you realise things cross reference ical concerns, a sense of finite resources. This is a pretty well.' shocking thing to men. Science no longer seems to For a shy man he is now a very public fig- ______...;:;:;;;::;:;;;:;;;:;:;;;:~.....,.."""'i have the answers. Politics doesn't seem to. There is ure. I wondered if he found the responsibility ••••• no agreement on economic systems. There is bewil of speaking for people a burdensome thing. 'No. Pl\l!l--lllll!!!~jiiiijiiiiiiij derment. I think men have become confused, intoxi I am happy about that, although I have never cated by their own illusions. As a gender they are really got to the bottom of it. And all sorts of depressed. I guess I'm projecting-! mean who hasn't people-people I would respect and think I been depressed and confused?-but I think men could not sit down at the table and talk to particularly have. There is a process of humiliation know my work. There is a sense that I am going on, of oppression by an impossible system valid. I grew up thinking I wasn't valid you which exhausts men, robs them of their sense of know. But even as a child I did like the notion that you meaning and makes them insane. It is dehumanising spoke to all your fellows in some way, that there was a men. It is dehumanising all of us. And men become role. I wanted to be part of that, both as someone who pompous. They become arrogant instead of strong. responded and as someone who threw something into They have lost power but they cling to an illusion. the big pool. I like that. But maybe when you think you And they now revert to fantasy notions of their own have earned the right to say something that's just when masculinity-to be aggressive, to be warriors. I see you should give up. ' • the psychological component of this at the moment because I look am ong my fellows. They say this is a terrible thing you know but do it we must. And their • An exhibition of paintings by Michael Leunig opens eyes twinkle. This is disturbing to me. Men have at the National Gallery of Victoria on 1 April. these terrible fantasies and I think they come from when you are a little boy. I suppose this leads us to Morag Fraser is associate editor of Eureka Street V oLUME 1 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 27 ----~-·------ Crossing Over school to beyond A long-serving university medical officer used to claim there is more growing up to be done between 17 and 21 than between birth and 17. Kate Lindsey and Adrian Lyons explore the passage from school to beyond in interviews with a tertiary student, a parent, a teacher, a school counsellor and an American writer on education. 28 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 FORUM Jan Wilson, careers and guidance counsellor, un The Year 12 experience derstands the problem only too well. 'At the beginning 'You look back to when you started Year 12 and think, of the year I interview the Year 12s, and if 20 per cent "Was I really that young and silly?". Not that I'm old have any real sense of direction that is a high propor and mature now.' The speaker with the lively smile is tion. There are so many factors. If someone walks in Michelle McCarty, a second year arts student. Univer my office and says, "I want to do medicine", that per sity is an exciting change from the rural city where she son is making a very real statement. To speak like that, grew up. 'Getting to university was always a bit of a they have to be very sure of themselves; then they've dream of mine. I guess I thought of getting out there in got to get the marks.' Not surprisingly, few Year 12s the real world-and of living a completely different We.' have that much confidence. Why choose an arts degree? For Michelle, any ca As Michelle McCarty found, most adults ask, 'Have reer choice counts as a difficult and demanding task, you decided what you're going to do when you leave especially since it has to be done so young. 'You need to school?'. And the pressure to give them an answer is so experience life a bit before you make a decision. Time great. 'I know I never knew what I wanted to do. But if is an important factor.' She would encourage young you don't give them an answer they look at you as if to people to have a dream. 'It's good to have hopes even if say "Get some direction in your life".' Michelle finally they are not realised in the short term. Otherwise you're resorted to venturing that she left with nothing to strive for.' wanted to be a neurosurgeon! Looking back, Michelle recalls favourite memo Then what actually assists ries-old friends, uniforms, bells ringing between students at Year 12 level? Ian classes-all the things most of us associate with school. Cribb is convinced that what 'And the exams!', she gasps in mock horror. 'It seemed most of them need and appreci a bit surreal finally doing the English exam. There you ate is being listened to. 'As a were doing the big one-it was dream-like, in fact more teacher, I try to use the language like a nightmare. You lived for months under all that of the kids- use it and challenge pressure and finally it was over.' them in it.' Ian lived for a A parent sees the final school year in different di number of years in an open mensions. 'Year 12 should not be given too much em house where the main focus was phasis', says Sarah O'Shea, a quietly-spoken, elegant building friendships. He tries to woman who is mother of eight. In the lounge where we stay in touch with those he Michelle McCarty: speak, children wander in and out to say hello, deliver knows once they leave school, coffee and biscuits and ask advice. Sarah's pride in them but it is not easy. 'Even for 'I guess it's all part is obvious. She has thought long and often about the someone who has a pretty good transition from Year 12 to beyond. Six of hers have rapport with Year 12s, it's not of the experiment'. reached and negotiated that threshold. easy to relate to the post-school culture. It's quite different and I often feel inadequate in it. But the main thing seems to be just being there, The advisers being a friend. Going to 21st birthdays is important. It Ian Cribb, a secondary teacher who is also a Jesuit signals that you're ready to listen. Lets them feel you do brother, spoke to Eureka Street before leaving for an care and you do love them.' overseas study tour. Like Michelle, Ian believes that time Jan Wilson's counselling role also keeps her in touch is a necessary element for reaching the kind of self-pos with former students, and in very practical terms: 'I see session you need to make good life choices. 'It's impor some who are out of school three years. I have also seen tant to create space and silence for students, to allow two-thirds of last year's group already this year'. them to get in touch with their feelings and learn to Jan illustrates a follow-up contact. 'One girl's articulate them. That's the road to reflectiveness, mother rang when she was in third year university, very something that develops slowly. I try to allow time for worried about her. The mother said her daughter discovery. wouldn't see anyone but me. Now it wasn't actually 'When there are choices to make, especially in Year me she wanted to see (I checked my cards and found I 12, I try to get my students to think through the pros and hadn't seen her since Year 10), but for her the school cons. If they fail, or have a car crash, there's lots to think was one place she had felt secure. I think that is signif through and lots to learn. They need to appreciate that icant: students see this total place as somewhere they their decisions have consequences. I suggest they sit can come back to. The girl was someone whose family down and write about themselves. It's a good way to had all moved in one direction and it didn't suit her. make their own discoveries.' She was aware of it from first year out. By third year she Ian feels that too much is asked too early. 'What was very disturbed.' Now, following counselling, the greater pressure is there than choosing a career? It can young woman is 'back on track' and moving in a differ be demanding, even traumatic. Few Year 12s have any ent direction. idea what their chosen profession will be.' V OLUME l NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 29 FORUM and suffering, losing something very good in the hope Th e tasks of finding something far better. Adolescence, as Erik One of Jan Wilson's tasks is to address the new Year lO son sees it, is an invitation away from narcissistic self class each year and outline the developmental tasks absorption towards becoming the hero or heroine of a belonging to adolescence: unique and coherent storyline.' • separating from parents O'Malley elaborates: 'Our personality traits are both • establishing your own value system assets and liabilities. Adolescence allows us to find out • establishing your own sexuality (in the complete precisely which is which, and to tum personality into sense of the word) character. A person of character, one who understands • and making a vocational choice. and possesses the self, can use these traits, control them, Jan is acutely aware that most 17 year-olds are still make them productive. There is no need to fake per working through these areas. 'Yet you're taking them sonality with clothes or earrings or some cosmetic mask. out of school and forcing them to make a decision about The self he or she has is just fine, for the moment.' vocation-' Michelle has her own intriguing way of com Studies confirm one's commonsense guess that menting about leaving home. 'I suppose my cord isn't parents exert the greatest influence on career choice. really broken, rather it's stretched. I've moved from my Often, even with the best of intentions, they add to the parents' country home to the city. The farm is still my burden of choice. Jan Wilson cites the case of' a beautiful home and the university college is my home away from child' who, left to himself, would have chosen'a different home.' It was in many ways a difficult move, though path than those his parents could live with'. The social both she and her parents realised stigma of 'male-oriented' and 'female-oriented' careers it was necessary. still hangs in the air. It is still difficult for a young man Sarah O'Shea believes, as a to become a nurse or a girl an apprentice plumber. parent, that well before leaving Sarah concurs: 'Many pressures arise from social school young adults need to be expectations'. In her view, 'there should not be any treated as such. 'To prepare for the pressure from parents either to excel or to decide im future they need to learn respon mediately on a career path.' sibility for themselves and for Jan Wilson views such conflicts in terms of con others.' Jobs like baby-sitting, flicting dreams, those of parents versus those of the where they are responsible to an school-leaver. 'Some would say it's reality', she adds. other adult, not just to their par Jan is a great believer in trying to discover each person's ents, are important experiences. vocation (s he uses the word broadly and with much Sarah believes that if young peo significance). ple learn responsibility early the 'Some counsellors would say you should just look transition is less harrowing. at a student's academic results and work out for yourself William O'Malley, a Jesuit what course he or she should get into. But when the teacher of theology and English at pressure is on, the majority of students actually "move Fordham Preparatory School in up"-they perform better.' She is against underesti New York's Bronx, has written mating anyone's abilities. extensively on developmental is William O'Malley also speaks against parental sues. He likes to highlight the pressure. 'A major difficulty in dealing with the fragile distinction between personality young is leading them to understand and accept the polar and character-one he sees as tension between contentment and ambition, between a crucial for understanding the road genuine satisfaction with what one has done and a drive to maturity. 'Young people can to do something better next time. If there is one burden readily comprehend the difference too many that parents lay on their children's immature between "She's got a lot of per shoulders, it is "You can do better than that", when the sonality" and "She's got a lot of child has done the best he or she could now. What the character",' he says. 'Personality child needs is praise.' has to do with charm; character Jan Wilson confirms O'Malley's view, offering an has to do with courage, with ob example of the power of encouragement: A few years stacles overcome. Personality re ago a student came into her office and said, 'I'm going flects our reactions to the to do law'. Jan said, 'Fine, but you will need to get the opinions of others; character reflects values, ethics, nms on the board'. So he applied for law at two different conscience. Having a personality is inevitable; having universities. In January he returned with his girlfriend character takes work. ' and said, 'I made it!'. He added that Jan was the only O'Malley agrees with psychologist Eric Erikson that one who hadn't 'put him down'. His mother and father each of the natural crises-birth, weaning, play years, and even his tutor had discouraged his ambition. 'But school-is an invitation to reach out to a wider and richer you've just got to give Year l 2s that sense of hope. And radius of awareness. 'Each disequilibrium costs effort if that works for one person only, then it is all worth- 30 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 FORUM while', comments Jan. Sarah confirms the effect that sions. 'I was in the US three or four years ago, and men hope can have on self-confidence. 'Young adults need tioned that I had to be back in time to assist the Year confidence in their own abilities and in making deci 12s with their preferences. People looked at me in hor sions. Parental support, not pressure, is what's needed.' ror. "Do you mean those students have to make a deci The guidelines Sarah and her husband have negoti sion about their career at 17?" In America, youngsters ated with their older children embody trust and re go to college and do a basic science or arts degree, and sponsibility. 'We don't put curfews on our children, but then make a choice, at 21 or 22. So in the morning we discuss what time they arrived home they have three or four more years' and whether it was suitable. I have heard our children's maturity than ours. friends say that their parents won't let them stay out 'If the economic situation was late, and to compensate they have to lie. But you have different, we could encourage school to allow your children to develop their own sense of leavers to do some sort of service right and wrong.' national service or social service-for two years. That would be a sensible alternative.' Party time, or pressure~ In some respects admission to As a parent, Sarah has come to know the end-of-school higher education has become more problems well. 'The change of pace, the new atmosphere, flexible, in others it has not. Those often a whole new lifestyle, it can be a very confusing at university in the 1960s and 1970s period. But if the young person is responsible and aware, remember contemporaries who at he or she can cope.' She believes that most Year 12s in tempted two or even three courses fact have misconceptions about life after school. 'They before settling on a vocational choice. believe that life at university is all party and no pres This is not always possible now, and sure. They're too young to know. that concerns Jan. (She herself began William O'Malley: 'Having 'And of course young people are so easily influenced, medicine, found the course boring especially if they are lonely. In the early 1980s, many and changed to psychology). She re a personality is inevitable. got in too deep and found it difficult to climb out. And members one particular student who Having character takes work' there are always those who are quick to take advantage came to see her in third year arts, of a nail. Young people may see only a need to express saying, 'This isn't really me. I want their individuality by taking risks, but they can backfire.' to be a doctor'. The young woman From a student's point of view, the transition can went back to do Year 12 maths and be disconcerting, even terrifying, as Michelle found. science and gained A's. But the uni 'What is being independent? What's my role? Am I versities said, 'Sorry, you had your supposed to be one hundred per cent responsible? Even chance', because she already had a tually you realise you can only survive on three hours' degree. sleep for so many nights in a row. Alcohol and drugs are out in the open now and a lot of people go overboard. Its difficult to find a happy medium, to be responsible for The fragile ego yourself while not having someone around to say Assuming that a young adult over "Enough!". And there are other pitfalls: bank balances, comes parental, social and peer pres credit card lirni ts, getting your licence. A driver's licence sures, passes exams and finally is a sign of the leap to maturity you're expected to make.' chooses a suitable course and career, For Michelle, the move away from home provided how is he or she likely to cope with a special air of adventure. 'People laugh when I say, the experience of rejection? In many Jan Wilson: 'If you don't "Ohh, it's a big transition from the country to the big courses demand grossly outweighs ask them to put that smoke. Attitudes and issues you have to confront are supply. Or the course turns out to be different ." But it's true, and I'm not quite sure any uncongenial. The result? A major dent impossible dream first, thing can prepare you for it.' Pausing, she adds, 'I guess in a young person's confidence. you've lost them' it's all part of the experiment'. William O'Malley insists on the By no means do all school-leavers go on to higher central role of self-esteem, which he education, though the proportion has risen recently. regards as a very proper kind of pride. 'In 29 years of Accepting a study place when it is offered can be a major dealing with young people, I have never encountered a decision. 'You're not really sure what you want to do', problem that wasn't reducible to a single cause: the ag says Michelle. 'You're just testing the water. Eventually ony of trying to prove the self despite the hated self. you become aware of your strengths and weaknesses. 'Most young people validate themselves from out But after a year I think I have established myself as in side: competition, peer acceptance, grades, appearance. dependent.' "I am what others think of me", not "I am what I think Jan Wilson, too, is concerned about the age at which of me", and surely not "I am what I am". Certainly we young Australians must make life-determining deci- form an idea of self by using others as mirrors. But until VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 31 FORUI\1 our young accept and esteem themselves as they are, • scapegoating, 'blaming everything I am on someone they will never treat that sell with the respect it de or something else'. (The opposite is 'taking responsibil serves.' Jan Wilson has her own angle on building confi ity for who I am, what I do, what I say'.) dence. She acknowledges O'Malley's ideals but affirms •minimalism, which in school shows up as listless lis that young people need to unearth their dreams. 'When tening, cramming at the end, and just getting by; and my students come in January to alter their preferences, • withdrawal, 'burying your head in the sand, deny-ing I always say to them: "Write down two impossible that there is a problem at all. Ostriche withdraw from dreams first. Then four oth- precisely the conflicts they ers around the mark you've need to conquer in order to gained (which they know by have character and develop then). And two preferences sell-esteem'. 20 or 30 points below their Offensive evasions include: mark. • masks: such as outrageous 'If you don't ask them to clothes and jewellery 'with put that impossible dream nobody home inside' first,' says Jan, 'you've lost • competition of the kind them. It's not an easy time, that attempts to wrench ap but over that period they be proval and esteem from the come more realistic. I believe outside to compensate for a that students have a right to lack of them on the inside, dream, to have some kind of and hope, through Year 12. Peo • perfectionism: 'Human be ple will argue against that, ings are not perfectable, only but I believe it gives them a endlessly improvable'. lift and encourages them to O'Malley sums up his move forward.' advice this way: 'If we men Quite simply, Jan tors, instead of becoming believes, Year 12s need to more vigilant proctors and understand the tasks ahead more eagle-eyed disciplinar and begin imagining them. ians, set our goals on finding 'Not just to let life come to ways to build young people's them, because it won't', she sell-esteem, we would have continues. 'I can picture one a happier, more peaceful of the Year 12s who didn't get school, family, city, world. into the course he wanted. The young are already piti There were special reasons. fully aware of their faults. If So I asked him to get a letter we made them aware of their confirming what had hap assets, they might just start pened.' Jan suggested he go making something of them. and see the person in charge To their joy and ours.' and 'sell' his case. The young Does a religious sense man didn't think he could. play a major role in most Jan explained that he Year l 2s' career choices? had already rehearsed all that 'Not explicitly', says Jan, was needed while conversing 'though sometimes you can with her. 'He went with the sense with particular stu letter and he got in.' Sarah dents that the spiritual side agrees that affirmation is vi is very much a part of them. tal in maintaining a young Ian Cribb: 'There is a real But they won't mention it. A adult's confidence. 'Some place for something like career like nursing has to be young people need more time a temporary religious vocation'. vocational in the full sense. than others. But they all need But in this era our students confidence to make tough de- don't use religious terms cisions, and that comes from parental and teacher sup spontaneously.' Ian Cribb believes that some experience port.' of ministry (explicitly religious or not) helps young peo It troubles William O'Malley that few young peo ple to focus where they are heading. 'Many seem to have ple get much help in understanding 'the sell they have a real need of something like a service group: to experi been stranded with'. So they resort to defensive and of ence helping at a soup kitchen or something like that. fensive games. He identifies the defensive evasions as: It's a great help and leads them to reflect more fruitfully 32 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 FORUM on life directions. In our school we try to make sure that the most part, to the post-school age-group: 'I don't be social awareness activities get a high profile, so that lieve they completely abandon their religion. God (in public praise goes to those as well as sport.' the church's sense) may be shelved for a time. But for 'What's amazing now', continues Ian, 'is the high the most part the Catholic Church doesn't seem to ca rate of involvement in school retreats. We get the Year ter for young people. Other churches, such as the Bap lls to give retreats to Year 7s and 8s. That way they're tists, are more attractive.' getting an early experience of service and ministry in a Which raises a concern for Ian: 'Our students are religious context. And after community awareness pro so vulnerable to fundamentalists. I think we need to be grams they come back and say, "That was fantastic!". I more 'up front' about our religion and our approach to think there's a real place for something like a tempo life. Perhaps under pressure from fundamentalism, our rary religious vocation: a year or two's experience of kids are now asking for more information about Chris community and service in the years after school.' tianity as Catholics understand it.' A few years back, leaving school often meant Ian notices that Year 12s find it hard to make a abandoning regular church attendance (assuming that connection between the gospels and the church. 'In the hadn't happened before). But for Michelle church turned film Jesus of Montreal what appealed to them were the out to be a strength in time of transition. 'Moving from values, the drama of acceptance and rejection, and the the country to the city, it was the same God we took critique of the church establishment.' Their images of with us. And it's a bit of a comfort to have that, the God contain contradictions. 'They say they don't be church and the sameness. When you leave school, reli lieve, and yet they find a sense of God in nature-in gion is up to you. This year I found people more willing trees, sunsets and the stars. But in talk about God they to talk about religion because it's part of life now, not resist human representations. What appeals about God just a subject at school.' is that, ultimately, I'm not alone. There's One much Ian, from his vantage point as teacher, also notices greater than me who loves me.' the change of climate, but describes it differently: 'I find The passage from school to the afterlife is bound to young adults less preoccupied than before with belong be dramatic-in social, emotional, intellectual, practi ing to the hierarchical church on a regular basis. They're cal and spiritual terms. Asked for a word of general ad not so guided by habit. But when there's a special occa vice, Jan Wilson says, 'Prepare! As with any transition, sion, say the death of one of their class mates, their un the more work you put in, the less traumatic it will be. derlying faith comes to the fore. There's nothing shallow Anticipate new situations, visualise yourself in them about their involvement in the Eucharist at times like and do it all positively.' • that.' Sarah is critical of her church's inattention, for -·~------ VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 33 R EVIEW EssAY A reading of the new edition of Deirdre Bair's biography of Samuel Beck ett, and a visit to Ireland, Beclzett after Bair prompted M.J. Crennan to look again at one of this century's m ost provoking writers. Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biogra ph y, Vintage paper back edition, 1990. ISBN 009 980070 5 RRP $16.95 S" '"'"umm cm •c; hove •1- ways expressed the gravest reserva- tions about the value of literary biog raphies-and read them avidly. It may be the attraction of the new: writers' lives are so unlike those of the academics who study them- but would novelists, by parity of reason ing, be equally enthralled by the life stories of rea ders in English, or asso ciate professors of philosophyz (Well-researched biographies are at least an improvement on the ex hypothesi reasoning of pure literary gossip: sophisticated undergraduates of my generation believed to a person that Camus' death in a car accident was plainly a kind of suicide [soap propriate]. His biography revealed that he was a back seat passenger at the relevant time). There are in fact good and long recognised reasons for caution in ap plying biographical data to the read ing of literature. Whether we say trust the tale and not the tell er, talk of the personal heresy or the inten tionalist fallacy, or deploy the ex travagant neologisms of contempo rary literary theory, a similar caveat is invoked. In the case of a dramatist, biogra phy may contain, as Bair's does, in- INTERVIEW MORAG FRASER valuable information about produc tion history, and the contribution of the author to theatrical traditions. In the case of a writer whose creations are both quotidian and utterly unfa 'Samuel Beckett did, it is true, permit a biography to be miliar, readers cannot help but be written, but only on the strict condition that he was not in relieved by learning that in some it.' (Malcolm Bradbury, Mensonge} sense the raw material of Beckett's They seek him here, they seek him there ... Samuel Beckett life may be detected there in the continues to be one of the most complex and intriguing work. However illusory, the sense of recognition settles the mind enough writers of the 20th century, and Bradbury is only one of to concentrate on the real unfamili many who have promoted the myth of his elusiveness. arities. Secondly, in the case of a Deirdre Bair herself gave some credence to that myth in the writer as enigmatic as Beckett, it is at first edition of her biography. But, as she volunteered in least interesting to begin with the conversation, Beckett was often more accessible and clues he offers from time to time, and, on the level of biography, we familial than his reputation and writings led us to believe. wonder how so bleak an imagination found a home in the world. Morag Fraser: When you were him you were a sort of disciple and As to clues offered, as one might writing the Beckett biography, as I would continue to write about him expect, what this writer offers are understand it, you met with Sam or to teach his work. The fact that anti-clues. Beckett frequently repeats uelBeckettinParis but hewasnot I had gone to Simone de Beauvoir the complaint that his plays mean forthcamimg. He would ! as you was like desertion! Heresy! Trai just what they say, and that what he put it, 'neither help nor hinqer you'. tor! He'd say 'Off to see her, are liked to call 'the professors' had Deirdre Bair: That's not true. All you?" So it put me in an awkward needlessly complicated them. This I the while that I was seeing him he position. find a perfectly illuminating remark. was terribly concerned about peo The first urge when facing the unfa ple like Ellmann and Kenner who That is very interesting, because miliar is to interpret it by reference to also wanted to write the book. He the biography does conveys a very the familiar, and critics did rather was such a gentle person, he didn't intimatesenseoftheman, andyet tend to do so by means of allegorical want to offend anybody, and he when you report him as saying ' I readings, which assumed that the knew that by cooperating with me won'thelpandlwon'thinderyou' plays simply hid meanings. Thus he would offend ot.q.er people. But one gets the sense that you were Godot is God, and the set of Endgame in fact every time I went to Paris working almost entirely from oth is the interior of a human skull. we met routinely and regularly, er sources. Beckett's advice is a variant of ahnost as regularly as I met with No, I was working from him as Keats': a love of allegorical readings Simone be Beauvoir. well as other sources. But there is may also be called an irritable reach an interesting thing about that ing after fact and reason. If we sus That is not the impression you give phrase which comes through in the pend our disbelief that characters in the biography. You don't tell us relationship that I had with him. called by these odd names can really that. You see we never had a dinner or a be in these odd situations, then the He asked me not to. I have a new drunkenevening We'dmeetinthe plays can do their work on us. If we introduction .which makes it a bit afternoon; and have coffee or drinks. prematurely 'interpret' them they clearer {1990 edition). In fact I did Sometimes we'd have a light meal, may pass us by. Once we assume and have a great deal of input and con but never a full scale evening to accept the spatial and social premis versation from him. Otherwise, gether. And at the time I thought ses of the play, we begin to wonder there was just so much that I 'Gosh, here are all these other peo how they could have spoken in any wouldn't have known. Md-this ple saying, "Well I was in Paris and other way. is the interesting point for me Sam and I got drunk," and I'm On the question of meaning, after I started writing the de Beau calling him Mr Beckett and I'm not Beckett gives a stern warning in the voir biography, it never failed that getting drunk.' Half of these sto late What Where, in which charac when I'd get off the Metro to go and ries, I realised, were lies. Beckett ters are sent off the stage one by one see her I'd run into him. (Beckett often wasn't in Paris when these in a serial interrogation. That the and de Beauvoir lived at opposite drunken evenings supposedly took report of a failure to confess is any ends of what is essentially the same place. And when I came to write thing but a lie is never admitted, street.) This never happened, when the book I was so grateful for that because the result of the confession I wa& writing about Beckett. But distance, grateful he was Mr. is predetermined. The will to impose once I started writing about her I Beckett and I was Mrs. Bair, because meaning is equated with political was always running into him. And it gave me the objectivity td say, 'I torture: they cordially detested eayh other. really need to write this,' rather {Continued page 37) You see, Beckett really :had the than 'Oh I don't want to put it in feeling that once you wrote about Sam might be unhappy.' V OLUME l N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 35 You have written very substantial many scholars have huge egos and I know have very strong family lives. biographies of two of the most in had trampled on a number of signif And I think that might have some fluential writers and complex hu icant toes Other people thought thing to do with the biographer's man beings alive in the twentieth that they should have been the ones ability to handle aspects of another century. What on earth made you to write this book. So it had a really person's life that are personal. do it? You don 't like the quiet lifei rocky beginning. But now it has Well, with the Beckett I cannot been out there for twelve years and That is interesting, because one of believe I did it. I was a journalistfor the reputation that has lasted, to the things which came out most ten years and really burnt out, so I my great delight and pleasure, is strongly for me in the Beckett bi decided to make a change. Through that it is an enormously important ography was that this man was writing about James Joyce I came source book. And of course it won inter-related. If the plays are you to Beckett and I was int1igued. the prize (National Book A ward in original point of access you get tbe Of course I knew a lot about Biography], which legitimised eve sense of an isolate, someone soli Ireland before I started, and I rything I had done. tary, stark, out there on his own. couldn't understand the exist Yes that's right, and he's not at all. ing Beckett criticism because it And it has had a significant effect The cousins are always there and did seem to me that everything on American literary biographyi he's always got to take care of the man wrote was strongly It has had an effect not only on somebody's kid. His life was just rooted in an Irish past, even Beckett scholarship, throughout the filled with people. though he lived in France. So, I world, but on biography generally. decided to write a critical dis Other people have looked to it as With de Beau voir and Beckett you sertation on Beckett. It was a the model of what biography could were working with people who sort of make-work thing that I be. Sometimes it really surprised came out of a very formative have since sealed and won't let me. Some of my heroes, in effect, Christian cultural tradition. For anybody read-it's that bad. have come to me and said, 'Can you de Beauvoir that heritage was in You see, I was straining to tell me how to write a biography.' many ways negative. How did it ward biography, and the univer Also, I think that many of the manifest in Becketti sity was saying no, you must things that we now believe should Well certainly in Beckett the Deirdre Bair remain within criticism. After I be included in lives of women I also Christian heritage left him with a got the PhD I decided I didn't care include in the life of this man. Men strong sense of personal morality what academic life would hold for come up to me and say, 'I wish I had which I think is almost Christ me but I had to do tllis biography. I paid more attention to the emotion like. And in his writing there are wrote Beckett a letter-an embar allife of my subject, and I certainly aspects of Christianity. Beckett rassing letter, now, frankly, filled will in the next book.' So, I think, if uses Milton using the bible for ex with great missionary zeal. He I have had any influence, it's that. ample. And there are the old replied very quickly.in neat hand hymns. So there is the literary writing, 'Dear Mrs. Bair, my life is In constructing a biography what heritage that he took from Chris dull and without interest. The constraints do you work underi tianity. But at the same time there professors know more about it than What are yotzr principles of selec was a personal code of ethics. There I do. It is best left unchampioned.' tion ! I take it there are things you . is a fundamental Christianity in And then across the page-it choose not to write about, things Beckett, I think, although he truly seemed to me it was either after you suppress, details about wbich did reject formal religion. reflection or in an oh-what-the you exercise judgment? I wouldn't say that Beckett was hell attitude-he scrawled, 'Any I don't really do that . I don't sup an atheist, certainly not. He was a biographical information I possess press. You know I like that ex healthy agnostic. I think he be is at your disposal. If you come to pression of Desmond MacCa lieved in a higher being; he just Paris I will see you.' So, of course, rthy's-the biographer is the artist wasn't sure what form that being I went. And from that the book under oath. When you undertake to wok, certainly no specific religious began. write a life I believe that you under form. He rejected what he consid take to give as full and accurate a ered the false pieties of his moth As I recall it had a stormy critical presentation as possible with the er's Church of Ireland, but the reception and some damning with knowledge at your disposal. It is a Christian underpinning remains faint praise: 'worthy endeavour, terrible responsibility. If I didn't very strong in the man's code of American work ethic' etc. have a large extended family and ethics. Right. I do work. I work five days support network I doubt I could be a Beckett really was a shining a week, but I hate it when people biographer. [Bair is married, has two example of integrity. He went think I am this workaholic. When children, an extended family, two against. He risked ostracism, he the book came out I thought it houses, three dogs, does needle risked all sorts of insult, and pain. would have a good scholarly life. I point, watches television soaps, But he was always true to himself. assumed everyone would be happy supports the New York Mets, sleeps He really was a sllining model. • because now we knew about Beck seven hours a night and never works ett. What I didn't realise was that on Sunday.] Most biographers I 36 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 (From page 35) Beckett, Joycean elements were a tions-forms and holds the crucial mark of the profoundest personal suspensions of the plays, so too does Time passes. reaches of his life) makes the succes rhythm- the overall pace of the plays, That is all. sive frames of Krapp's life all the the retardations and releases-per Make sense who may. more Olympian in effect. mit the depths of utterance, whether Beckett's suspicion of interpreta Lucky's speech or Krapp's spots of Thus abjured, must the critic tion refers principally to a suspicion time. The surface of the dialogue (Crrrritic! ) lapse into obedient si about the domestication of his plays sometimes seems like finely incised lence? I think not. Krapp's Last Tape, into a lexicon of great thoughts or marble, but in fact the sources of to take a clear example, positively eternal verities. It is a temptation incident, colour and cadence are un invites the play of intelligence on the especially enticing to the pedagogue. usually eclectic and the emotional part of the audience. It requires read To see what is wrong with such an turns of the action are correspond ing, but not a reading. The tape re approach we do not need to invoke ingly diverse and supple. corder that brings Krapp's earlier voice any index of proscribed critical ap Beckett was a grea t dramatist. to his older presence, and to ours, is a proaches, but to observe a simple One way of saying that is to say that great coup de theiitre, and would of truth about all the major plays: he possessed an exemplary moral itself establish Beckett as the genius properly attended to, and produced, courage which is shown in his will he was, but it should not blur the they can speak with utter directness ingness to look into the darkness and great difficulties of the play. Does it to their audience, and within their bring back a true report. Yet the hold in unweighted contrast different own terms make perfectly good sense. possession of such courage, however bundles of priorities, values and If you ask, irritably as Keats might exemplary, is no more than an ante rhetoric from different periods of say, what does it mean, then the cedent step to the creation of plays in Krapp's life, or is there an intelligible answers might not be helpful. If, on which the implications of such a vi whole? Krapp's insouciance with the the other hand, you enquire why it is sion come to life. past ('Perhaps my best years are gone. so engrossing, then more might be It is a truism that no biography When there was a chance of hap revealed. can account for the existence of gen piness. But I wouldn't want them Bair comments !see interview] ius, but if we put aside that arid back. Not with the fire in me now. that Beckett took both a sense of caution, some remarks may be made No, I wouldn't want them back.') ethics and a literary heritage from onthe lessons in Bair's biography. A ends the play, but is not the last thing Christianity. She refers to the Bible question asked at the beginning of Krapp says. It is not even his last and to Milton. Tlli raises an im these reflections was how so bleak an tape, since we have seen him dictat portant aspect of the plays, namely imagination as Beckett's found a ing more. their language. It is possible to track home in the world. It should surprise Commentators, Bair amongst down all sorts of motifs, quotations only the defiantly literal-minded that them, have noted that this is Beck and cadences, with their origins in Beckett was in many respects a highly ett's most personal play, replete with this or that source or style. But what moral and indeed kind man. More allusion to incidents in his life. It is I have in mind is even more basal, than that, he played a hero's role in unsurprising that it is also Beckett's and that is the fact that the plays, occupied France. These are not trivi most Joycean play in many respects. whatever their bleaknesses and blind al facts and should put us on our Sitting under the dying woman's passages of the spirit, are driven for guard against facile rejections of window could be from Dubliner , and ward as surely as are Shakespeare's Beckett's 'philosophy'. • the sexual trance of the river scene by means that must be called poetic. recalls Molly Bloom on Howth. The Just as pattern-the nervy M.J.Crennan is a Melbourne barris emotional freight of the play (and, for stichomythia, the winding repeti- ter. Winds drain, mosses chill the deepest fuels of the body. Nothing brings good or ill. I have reached Li Po's age and feel immortal. That would be worth it: friend without envy, love without bile, a life's work without guilt, a poetry without attitudes. Vincent Buckley From Last Poems, McPhee Gribble, Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Aprill991 VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 37 s Paul the pragmatist Brendan Byrne SJ, Inheriting the Earth: The Pauline basis of a spirituality for our time, St Paul Publications, 1990. ISBN 0 949080 85 3. RRP $8 .95. Tony Kelly CSSR, A New Imagining: Towards an Australian Spirituality, Collins Dove, 1990. ISBN 0 85924 828 3. RRP $14.95. w mmmm~NG We [ o.m new light on Paul's key terms such as ional. Moreover, there are many through our own mental and emo 'image', 'righteousness', ' justifica spiritualities. The sort my own gen tional grid. All that we read fro m the tion', 'sin' and 'faith'. eration was nurtured on was often past is judged by that set of presump His treatment of God's loving discouraging in the ' try harder' tions, and try as we might, we read faithfulness, and of faith as the be sense, and vague, irresponsibly sub our own biases and preoccupations liever's response, is wonderful- an missive and individualistic in the back into past writings. Anachro excellent corrective to the bargain 'find God within' sense. For a left nism is built into our knowing and ing with God that was so characteris lober like myself, such spirituality reinforced by our education. This is tic of catechesis in the past. can be a 'dreadful doom ' (to quote particularly so with doctrine, and that In the chapter on 'the plight of the Chesterton) . I like to think of Paul as large, amorphous lump of knowledge, world', Byrne allows that his own pragmatic above all else, and end up affectivity and preju dice that we call refl ection s go well beyond Paul's wondering whether he was really so 'spirituality'. thought. Yet Paul would be pleased, introspective. If I am right, the Twentieth -century archaeology I am certain, that his writings have Pauline sense of those 'spiritual' and literary investiga tion has un stimulated such a lively response terms needs teasing out. covered for us both the worlds in as indeed would any serious writer. Brendan Byrne has many devo which the ancient writers lived and Still, questions remain at each point tees whose faith he has fostered the presumptions they brought to about whether we are following on through his teaching and writings. their writing, all of which leads into from Paul, or reading back our own They will not be disappoint one of the m ost exciting aspects of present preoccupations into the text. ed with this n ew offering. learning this century-our unlearning The later chapters- on 'Christian of old presumptions and discovering obedience', 'Christianfreedom ', Hope T HE BEST THING about Tony Kelly's of the ways in which texts really for the world', and 'Life in the body' new book is that is has been written. make sense. read like a spiritual trea tise. Their It is a significant contribution to re Scripture scholars have been in ingredients include central Pauline fl ection on how the specifically Aus the front line of this kind of educa concepts such as Jesus' obedience, tralian story reveals the truth about tion. Brendan Byrne, fo r one, has that and the Spirit and life 'in Christ'. God, human beings and their rela talent, and here invites his readers to Byrne assumes that we know what tionship. Kelly's background for this make sense of Genesis 1- 3, and some Paul m eant by these terms. All have task is extraordinarily rich. He is of Paul's concepts. Reading this lat acquired heavy connotations from able to call on an extensive range of est book you sense his own fantastic the spiritualities of the past few cen poets and authors who have refl ected journey- towards getting inside the turies. on Australian life. That said, it is his mind of another. The reader feels 'Spirituality' can be a term with own contribution that is the worth of that Byrne's quest is successful be m otherhood and apple pie over the book. cause the new interpretations he of tones- on e you dare not criticise. Kelly is a skilled story-teller in fers make sense. The first three But the word itself poses difficulties his own right. His chapter, 'Imagin chapters, for instance, help to throw for a faith that is solidly incarnat- ing Our Past ', is m y fa vourite. 38 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 199 1 REPORT W ILLIAM ScoBIE Through stories, it enabled me to sense how close the Australian expe rience is to being ready to accept Jesus' vision of life and God. Ironical Papal manoeuveres ly, the God that Bert Facey rejects so emphatically (in A Fortunate Life) is not the God of Jesus either- as Tony Kelly points out in his lovely sum GuLF WAR spawned an back', and after the war he re mation chapter. Yet Facey's ability THE newed his call for a Palestinian to sense the wonder and excitement extraodinary alliance between the of life as 'fortunate', despite its terri Pope and Italy's Party of the during a meeting of Middle East ble difficulties, is so Jesus-like it Democratic Left (the renamed church leaders at the Vatican. knocks you over. communists), and brought about Liberal bishops, left-wing In fact, Facey's cynicism about the most serious rift between the Christian Democrats and Catho God and religion (which is typically Church and the ruling Christian lic lay groups took the Pope's 'Aussie') may be the best gift Austral Democrats since World War II . stance as a cue for agitation ia can offer to the task of redrafting And it all stemmed from the against the war. In Rome, Catho the Christian message. The convert Vatican's role in the sacking of lic schools closed for a day to al ed tend to see religion as addressing Italy's naval commander in the low 90,000 children to march on ultimate questions- the myth, the Gulf, Vice-Admiral Mario Burac parliament, chanting anti-war mysticism, the faith. But the Bert chia. slogans. The Pax Christi lobby Faceys see the structure, the law, the It is a curious story. At the group began a drive to unseat power-play, the coercion, the self outset of the war the admiral in Christian Democrat MPs who righteousness, the divisiveness, the vited five conservative journalists supported the war, and there was moralising, the churchy talk and the aboard the flagship of Italy's five regular contact between the ritual. These off-putting qualities vessel Gulf fleet, and among them Pope's office and that of the com are also part and parcel of religion. It was the correspondent of Famiglia munist leader, Achille Occhetto. is not faith that Facey and his like Cristiano [Christian Family], a Occhetto, who had been call lack, but the ability to recognise how Vatican-funded magazine with the ing for the withdrawal of Italian close to the real Jesus they are-and biggest circulation in Italy. They forces from the Gul( said: 'Our how much further along the track he stayed aboard five days. But only critics claim we are isolated in can take them. The hopeful insights to the Famiglia Christiana corre opposing the war. Not so! I align in these two chapters contrast with a readiness to accept a dark view of spondent did the relaxed, unsus myself with the highest spiritual Australia in Kelly's earlier chapters. pecting admiral reveal that he authority.' When Occhetto made The early philosophical/theolog thought war could have been his 'Italy out!' call, he had chosen ical reflections I found difficult- and avoided 'with a little more wis to do so in II Sabato, a weekly abstract. Yet even here the ingredi dom' and a continuation of eco published by Comunione e Liber ents are right, as is the starting point: nomic sanctions. When he denied azione, a Catholic ginger group the presumption that the seat of faith all, Famiglia Cristiano released active among left-wing Christian is the creative imagination. Perhaps the interview tape to Italian radio, Democrats. we have become too used to having and the government had no choice Predictably, the Pope's com our faith prompted by story and im but to order his resignation. The ments angered Italian Jews. ages. I for one am less at home now Vatican's peace drive had scored. Rome's Chief Rabbi, Elio Toaf( with universal concepts and with the Prime Minister Giulio Andre said the papal line was 'an invita rather platonic world in which they otti and the upper echelons of the tion to anti-semitism ... political live. It is hard to pin down 'culture', Christian Democrats were deeply ly unsustainable and morally 'thespiritual','themetaphysical','the disturbed. 'It is easy to cry peace', unjustified'. transcendent'. Yet how else do you said Andreotti, 'and also useless'. What is the Pope up to in all theologise, when that is called for ? But the Pope cried on, condemn this? Theories abound, but the Tony Kelly is convinced that ing the 'deplorable' bombing of consensus is that his new direc Australian Christians have some civilians in Iraq. After praying the tion results from the collapse of thing distinctive to add to the old Angelus with pilgrims in StPeter's the communist empire in Eastern things and new that a scribe trained Square, he berated 'the terrible Europe, which makes American for the kingdom draws out from his logic of war' and called for a peace support less essential. It opens the or her treasure. This book should prompt other Australian scribes to go conference to resolve Middle way for his strategy in Africa, Asia rummaging. • Eastern problems, including the and Latin America, where lie vast Palestinian question. In letters to fields for proselytism. • Eric Hodgens is parish priest of Holy President Bush and Saddam Hus Saviour Church,Vermont South, sein, he described the war as 'a Victoria. tragic adventure with no way - The Observer V oLUME 1 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 39 BooKs ANN JUNGMAN The experience of imprisonment has produced some of the great literature of fantasy and Telling stories social comment. Cervantes and fohn Bunyan turned their confinem ent to advantage, and so has Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Granta Books, London,l990. Salman Rushdie. ISBN 0 140 14223. RRP $24.99. I NT~,, "" ""T roo< "Nc' Tho cians (a corrupt and dishonest lot). Satanic Verses, Rushdie has written a The huge crowds that ga thered knew wonderfully incisive escapist fantasy that a politician's truth is a lie, 'But for his son, Zafar. Ostensibly it is a everyone had complete faith in Rashid, children's book, but Haroun and the because he always admitted that eve Sea of Stories, drawing heavily on the rything he told them was completely tradition of the Islamic classic of sto untrue and made up out of his own rytelling, The Thousand and One head'. Nights, is also political satire and a However, when Rashid opens his heartfelt statement of the absolute mouth at one particular political rally necessity for stories to be allowed to all that comes out is 'Ark, Ark, Ark'' flow freely from the storyteller. In danger of his life, Rashid, with Inevitably one starts to look for Haroun, is hidden in a luxury house any passages that might relate to boat ('Arabian Nights plus One') by Rushdie's unique and tragic situation. quite unexpectedly, their idyll evapo another political crook, Snooty But Certainly the story starts with a boy, rates and, like Rushdie, Rashid is too. (Echoes of a certain famous Paki Haroun, whose fat her Rashid (Rush suddenly plunged into a world of stani political dynasty?) Rashid finds die?) is a storyteller. Like Rushdie, horror. ' .. .luck has a way of running himself in the classical predicament: Rashid has his admirers and his de out without the slightest warning. if he fails to come up with a story for tractors. Enthusiasts call him 'The One minute you've got a lucky star Snooty Buttoo, he is fi nished. In de Ocean of Notions', while those less watching over you and the next in spair the Rashid/Rushdie storyteller impressed dismiss him as the 'Shah of stant it's done a bunk.' Rashid finds describes the real enem y to his son: Blah'. Haroun is endlessly fascinated that his wife has run off with the 'Khattam-Schud is the Arch-Enemy by his fa ther's capacity to dream up neighbour, Mr Sengupta, a joyless clerk of all Stories, even of Language itself. new stories: 'Where did all these sto who commits the great blasphemy of He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe ries come from ?', he puzzled. 'It asking, 'What is the use of stories that of Speech'. K11attam Schud rules over seemed that all Rashid had to do was aren't even true?' In agonies of self a bleak land of darkness and silence, to part his lips in a plump, red smile, doubt, Rashid loses his wonderful gift the land of Chup. Here 'wild devotees and out would pop som e brand-new of storytelling. What indeed is the use ... work themselves up into great saga, complete with sorcery, love-in of stories that aren't even true? Maybe frenzies and sew their lips toge ther . . terest, princesses, wicked uncles, fat Rushdie has asked himself the same . so they slowly die of hunger and aunts ... Iandi mustachioed gangsters question during his strange incarcera thirst'. A chilling depiction of the in yellow check pants.' tion. worst excesses of fundamentalism ? Haroun and Rashid live in the sad The rest of the book is a brilliant, Haroun decides that he must res city of Alifbay, which is fu ll of ma passionate, witty, entertaining, magi cue his father's storytelling powers chines and smoke and unl1appy peo cal affirmation of language and fiction from the attack of Prince of Silence by ple, and surrounded by a sea full of that decisively defeats the attempts of taking a trip in the Great Sea of Stories. glumfish . Any modem industrial city, all the Senguptas in the world to de He finds himself in the delightful city Rushdie seems to be implying. In all stroy freedom and magic and imagina of Gup with a magical set of new this gloom, Rashid and his stories and tion and laughter. friends. Guphasa silly king, an absurd Soraya, his singing wife, are a glimmer Despite his personal distress, prince and a ridiculous princess who of light. Rashid is committed to telling stories can't stop singing. However, the real As in any good story, life for Rashid at political gatherings. Here Rushdie rulers of the kingdom are the wise and Haroun goes on predictably until, takes an opportunity to mock politi- Walrus and the Egghea ds. In Gup, 40 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 everyone discusses everything and common purpose. All those argu his amazing ability to tell stories. feels free to criticise anyone. Haroun ments and debates, all that openness, Haroun prepares to live happily ever is irritated and wonders how anything had created powerful bonds of fellow after. ever gets done. However, as in all good ship between them. The Chupwalas, What can we get out of this book stories, he is in for a surprise. Cup in on the other hand, turned out to be a politically? A passionate defence of fact seems to be a social democracy, disunited rabble'. Rashid's conclu freedom of speech. As Butt the Hoo muddling along but ultimately win sion is that democracy and free speech poe asks: 'What is the point of giving ning through . In these scenes the will ultimately triumph over totali persons Freedom of Speech if you then author is giving a huge vote of confi tarianism and fanaticism. A peace is say they must not utilize the same. dence to the system that has defended quickly negotiated: 'The New Gov And is not the Power of Speech the him. ernment of the Land of Chup ...an greatest power of all? Then surely it To his horror, Haroun discovers nounced its desire for a long and last must be exercised to the full'. Is that Khattam-Schud plans to pollute ing peace with Cup, a peace in which Haroun and the Sea of Stories a chil the Sea of Stories. (Oil slicks in the Night and Day, Speech and Silence dren's book? Probably not, but it Gulf?) Rushing to thwart the evil would no longer be separated into would certainly be a magical book to plan, Haroun and his friends meet Zones'. Peace is restored by harmony read out loud to children, who would Mudra, one of Khat tam Schud' s warri and tolerance, an acceptance that both be enchanted by the fantasies and the ors, who can only make sounds and darkandlighthave beauty, both speech vitality of the language and the variety dance. Rashid turns up and recognises and silence have value. of the characters. Is it an allegory? the language of gesture. Not all ex Haroun and his oddly assorted Who knows. Certainly it is a book to pression has to be in words. gang, meanwhile, are busy preventing be read, because it is, in the words of To stop the poisoning of the Sea of the poisoning of the sea and of course, Snooty Buttoo the politician, 'Super Stories, the armies of Cup face the because this is a fairy story, they suc Marvelloso,Incredibable, wholly Fan Chupwala army of Khattam-Schud. ceed. Stories of every kind will con tastick!'. • Sceptical Rashid is convinced the tinue to fill the Ocean and be available Guppees won't stand a chance and is to all storytellers for ever. Father and amazed to discover that all the discus son can now return home, where they Ann Jungman is an English children's sion and dispute that took place prior discover that Soraya has returned to writer. She is the author of the Vlad to the battle created 'a force with a Rashid, who immediately rediscovers the Drac series. I wrote a letter to Seamus but Seamus never replied. I t1rin1< it's possible Seamus is Irish. '0 he is! He is! They cried. I wrote a letter to Seamus and Seamus said not a word. It's better to write on a Saturday night and send it by way of a bird. I wrote a letter to Seamus and Seamus sent back a note; 'A chara, I'm sorry, 1 didn't get any of the letters you wrote.' I wrote a letter to Seamus, Seamus was having a drink. He said, 'Oh dear! We can't have him here! What will the neighbours think!' I sent a letter to Seamus And what did Seamus say! He said, 'In each season, for whatever reason, I'm going to be away' Vincent Buckley From Last Poems, M cPhee Gribble, Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Aprill991 V OLUME 1 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 41 OPERA BRUCE W ILLIAMS The ABC of opera '"oOM' c . Hou""" from apprentices, all in a row, through State Theatre, on a scale and with full,0 videos "" proliferat e. There is a middle-management (those whose sonorities quite foreign to their 18th new market for extravaganzas at ex names one can't remember) to the century conventions. The only work orbitant prices and in unlikely plac luminaries for whom the house rises. whose musical language is unequiv es: Aida at the Sydney Showgrounds, (Or, rather chillingly, does not.) The ocally of the 20th century is Britten's Carmen in the Tennis Centre in Mel parade of singing phenomena steps Death in Venice, and if past experi bourne, Dame Kiri te Kanawa bat hack, and here is the conductor, in ence is any guide, this (much-praised) tling high winds at Mitchelton win winter or summer all palpable sweat. Australian Opera production will do ery. The 1980s saw the release of two He (overwhelmingly, he) is at once lousy business. new series of opera guides, a rash of an image of Authority and of Work, So far as mainhouse productions books, and even the promise of a and he is the signal for a different are concerned, it's mostly the same major encyclopaedia. quality of applause. the whole world over. Francis Robin Yet the door to the opera house Here at last, another section of son of the Metropolitan Opera, New today still leads to the 19th century. the audience tells itself, is the Rep York, refers to the ABC of opera: Rituals first: the orchestra-pit with resentative of Music. Singers, how Aida, Bohem e and Carmen. (We 've its white-tailed baton-waver presid ever beloved, are givers of treacher just seen, or are about to see, all three ing over serried ranks, reassuringly ously extreme pleasure. Conductors, in Melbourne.) Meirion and Susie evokes the company dinner and the however, remind us that the risky, Harries, in their survey of the inter formal ball. This is, unquestionably, guilt-edged enterprise of opera is national scene, Opera Today [1986], Art-Degas has painted it- but it is underwritten by the respectable old list the two dozen works reckoned by also safe. The pit acts as a bulwark house of Bach and Beethoven. With managements to be sure-fire suc between audience and stage. By the appearance of the conductor, cesses at the box office: 21 of them looking only at the stage, one can properly dressed, the after-show re are from the 19th century. enjoy the illusion that the music plays ception has begun. But elsewhere there are dif itself. Thus, at the fully-charged mo If all this strikes the reader as ferences, of the kind that make a ments, when Butterfly sings 'One too semiotic altogether, consider in difference. In England and Genna Fine Day' or Tasca pleads with stead the repertoire. This year, Mel ny there is a far wider spread of Scarpia, the huge reinforcement of bourne opera-goers (with large purs works that are 'non-standard' rep the vocal line can become All Nature, es) could see a dozen works- 1 am ertory, not only earlier opera (Mon answering to the soprano's passion. counting here only the main pro teverdi, Handel, Cavalli, Gluck, Alternatively, a glance at the pit with ductions of the Victoria State Opera its scraping and puffing and pounding [VSO] and the Australian Opera [AO ]. Rameau) but the operas of our own not only yields the pleasure of Six are actual 19th century works by time (Henze, Berio, Philip Glass). A watching other people work, but re Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, plaintive spokesperson for the Aus minds us that this magic is under our G&S. Two by Puccini are apparent tralian Opera was heard to say re control, through our deputy, the con exceptions, but although Madama cently that he would love to do ductor. Butterfly and Turandot have 20th Berg's Lulu, but the patrons Or consider the sequence at the century dates they are in stylistic wouldn't wear it. Lulu was pre curtain-calls. First the chorus, opera's essence fin de siecle. We are to hear miered in 193 7. Meanwhile, the proletariat. Then the soloists, graded three works by Mozart, all in the English National Opera has man- 42 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 aged to present Ligeti's Le grand passu) are giving us a thin version of macabre, Penderecki's Devils of heritage, neglecting the achievements Loudun and Szymanowski's King of our own time and are doing virtu Roger. In the United States, outside ally nothing (in the main house) for the four main houses there is a vast the Australian composer. amount of operatic activity in part The oddity of the situation is time companies on campuses and at more fully seen by comparison with various festivals. There is scarcely the situation of the Australian play an opera, however obscure, that does wright. Twenty years ago an Aus not get done somewhere. During tralian play was still a controversial the 1984 Santa Fe Festival (report M. and unusual event. Today, about a third of the plays staged in Australia and S. Harries) a patron could have are by Australians. Whole major the seen Komgold's Violanta, Zemlin atre companies (the Playbox, for ex sky's Eine Florentinische Tragodie ample) specialise in local plays. and Henze's We Come to the River, I can hear the managements all receiving their US leaping into defensive postures. professional premieres. Come on, what about Voss? That got the full treatment. And what about A u sTRALIA STICKS TO the dullest all the children's operas commis possible route through the most fa sioned from local composers by the miliar countryside. Managements VSO, and the youth work done by the invariably defend themselves with AO and the one-off smaller scale the claim that the public will stand eve~ts like.... To all of this, I make for nothing else. And I think it should reply: it is worthy, it is well-meant, be remembered, as mitigation, that but it is marginal. It is funded miser operatic production on any real scale ably by comparison with what goes is largely the creation of the past 20 into the main seasons and, above all, years. Audiences are still coming to it is not the point. The point is that terms with the basics. Nor have so long as the companies continue to managements in the opera world an offer a steady diet of 19th century ything like as much freedom as they works, they will continue to exclude might like. The supply of first-rate not only the other 300 years of op or, for that matter, second-rate era's history but also the creativity of singers is limited, and they tend to our own moment. want to sing what they already know. When Stalin appointed his cul The government's determination to ture minister, Zhdanov, to develop force companies to rely more on pri the doctrine of socialist realism, he vate sponsorship inevitably leads to condemned the Russian artist for the the choice of works with tunes the next 50 years to inhabit the thought members of the board can whistle. world of the late 19th century. Much La Boheme So we could go on, but that insti the same could be said of our opera tutionallogic gets enough coverage. managements today. The fact remains that the Australian But managements could not do Opera (let's go for the aircraft carrier) this unless there were massive sup receives a very fat sum from the public port for their policies. Why is the purse, and its current policies seem opera audience so different from that at variance with the usual justifica for drama, or for painting- imagine if tions for subsidy. Let's look at a the galleries stopped at the Impres standard and influential defence of sionists? Are our minds still in the funding in Opera/Music Th eatre in 19th century. The cult of The Australia [1980], a report to the Phantom of the Opera suggests that Australia Council. Its authors invoke they may be. • three arguments: music makes us more truly human; the opera reper toire is part of the human heritage; Next month: the Phantom of the and finally, 'it is desirable for a coun Opera phenomenon. try to foster its national identity (and pride) through encouragement of lo cal composers and include their works in the repertoires of Australian com Bruce Williams is senior lecturer in panies.' The AO (and the VSO, pari drama at LaTrobe University. An exegesis of the program is and direction is evident elsewhere. idue of more or less refined Austral revealing. It reproduces the format, Except for himself and his wife, Anna ians? size and gloss of an Australian Opera Volska, Bell has eschevved (or possibly The identity problem recurs. As program. For $6 you get a list of the didn't attract) big name actors for the everybody knows, circus seating is in company, a double page spread of company. On the contrary he has cast raised tiers. This apparently was the 'thoughts of William Shakespeare', a a virtually unknown 23 year-old as aim of the Bell Company, but money forgettable (not to put too fine a point Hamlet and given employment to four shortages forced them into rows of on it) poem, 'Shakespeare' by Martin very recent graduates of NIDA and plastic chairs on the level. The stage Sorescu, 'a note' from John Bell, an other drama schools. All supportive is a black, raised, apronless platform, other from Adam Salzer of the Eliza selection is praiseworthy, but the with a painted circular centrepiece. bethan Theatre Trust, six short quotes glaring reality is that the standard of The whole is reminiscent of a trampo from Hamlet (Freud, Camus, Ger acting is embarrassingly uneven. A line, and when the audience's eyes are maine Greer, etc.) a sentence or two national touring company can't afford at actors' ankle level, and the Nimrod from six Australians who have played that. Hamlet is the worse affected. Shakespearean tradition (essentially Hamlet between 1963 and 1988, a Critical consensus is that The Mer an accelerated, athletic one) of rapid, synopsis, a cast list, and illustrated chant of Venice is a great success, and often run-on entrances and exits is in biographies of the company. For your so a general relief to the critical com full cry, a performance that lacks an money you also get a piece ofbarbed munity who desperately wanted to interpretative centre or strong leads is wire entanglement on the cover, a avoid saying that this company had going to look like a complicated aero photo of tanks advancing down a street scored two duds out of two. Bell and bics routine. (presumably Tian'anmen Square), an Susan Lyons (Shylock and Portia) both The Bell Company is minimal other of some riot police running riot, give commanding performan-ces, ist-the set is functional, props and and some ads for an airline, gin, hand subtly varied, sensitively spoken, costumes scant. The fun-and-games bags, hotels and Saabs. What you don't brimful of motivation and personal image has had its smile contracted get is any mention of The Merchant of ity. Whereas of John Polson's Hamlet, severely by heat, crude seating ar Venice, the company's itinerary or not only the rest, but what comes rangements, guy ropes and stanchions even its short-term plans. before the rest, should be silence. getting the best view and, above all, You pay another $6 for a program A newspaper feature on the whole the price of tickets. A heavy responsi for The Merchant, and you get a virtu enterprise told what might ambiva bility is cast on to the quality of the ally identical package. Sonnet 87 and lently be a winning tale or a horror acting, the coherence of the produc notes from the director, Carol story of how Bell asked Polson if he'd tion and Shakespeare's words. This Woodrow, replace specifically Hamlet seen or read Hamlet. No, he hadn't. Hamlet staggers under that weight. material, but otherwise you might Well then, he knew the story? No, he This Merchant bears up magnificent feel your $6 was less than gainfully didn't. Bell sent him home to read it. ly. Yet, oddly, extra performances of employed. (Disconcertingly, the Syd He bounced back a few days later Hamlet have now been scheduled for ney performances are being staged in announcing'Hamletisme'. If so, John Sydney (school's back, set text?), the Showground's Hall of Industries, Polson has a dreary monochromatic whereas the initial season of The the home of the sample bag, that noto personality with a tendency to swal Merchant is already advertising 'good rious package of nothing very much.) low his words and scamper about like seats available at the door'-always The sense from the program is that a pepped-up Estragon. The cult of an ominous sign. The contrary omen the company is aiming at something naivete and the tabula is the good will. close to the Shakespearean illiterate. rasa should have limits. Australia's British cultural herit Opera-goers who might be tempted by age is hardly the flavour of the decade. the corporate backing, the unusual T HERE SEEMS NO CENTRE to this The bias is towards the indigenous, venue? (Yet an Australian Opera pro Hamlet, no unified, coherent direc the multicultural and the regional. gram can be far more substantial-see tion. Gertrude, a lookalike for Rod Will Shakespeare escape this discrim the current long discussion of the his Stewart (admittedly on one of his ination? So far he seems to have been tory, status, worth, etc., of La Clem balmier days) has two sharply dis excepted. (Why exactly?) But the day enza di Tito.) John Bell's 'note' is dis tinct, all-consuming phases-the las must come when he's no longer de appointingly thin, banal even: 'We civious and the depressed. How could rigueur as a set text at either school or believe the plays are among the great anyone ever have called her 'my most university. He'll be on his own. Or a est plays ever written'. And Carol seeming virtuous queen'? Patrick philosophically secure, consistently Woodrow does not raise the standard Dickson (consistently one of the real good Bell company could be his ticket noticeably: 'The Merchant of Venice assets of the company) plays Polonius to continued life in Australia. • relates to today's society'. I would like with a Scottish (or is it a Geordie?) to believe that a youth or blue-collar accent. This is funny, but where does •The Bell Shakespeare Company audience is being sought-the star it fit into any overall interpretation? opens its Brisbane season on 4 April. studded circus tent makes this plausi The First Player is done with a Polish ble- but seat prices of $32.90 and accent, but this would appear to be the Gerard Windsor is a Sydney writer. $40.90 (with rubber cushions) rather actor's natural speaking voice. What His books include The Harlots Enter blow that hope out of the water. is the point of one Pole and one dod First, Memories of the Assassination The same lack of secure identity derer from North Britain among a res- Attempt and That Fierce Virgin . VOLUME 1 NUMB ER 2 • EUREKA STREET 45 Game's up, bishop! The 1901 Catholic Encyclopedia, in discussing Easter customs, notes that in France and Germany ball games were part of the customary amusement. 'The ball may represent the sun, which is believed to take three leaps in rising on Easter morning. Bishops, priests and monks, after the strict discipline of Lent, used to play ball during Easter week. The ball ga me was connected with a dance in which even bishops and abbots took part. Afterwards a banquet was given, during which a homily on the feast was read. All these customs disap peared for obvious rea sons.' Obvious reasons? Monument to misrule Former Philippines f ~ first lady Imelda Mar '!'! cos is immortalised by #ff!PII' a church mural in the coastal town of Agoo, 250 km north of Manila. The mural, in the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, depicts her among angels. The parish dates from 1578 but the 6000-seat basilica was rebuilt during the rule of former President ---w-f --t "" "' ~ ·- .., - . ....,.. Ferdinand Marcos, who raised monuments to himself and his wifeand named roads, bridges and parks after their !"' " _. families. Marcos was accused of embezzling US$100 million from government funds to buy art and real estate ~ in New York, but died before facing court. During the Marcos era, Cardinal Sebastian Baggio, then prefect of the r 1• t -t· · ~ - ,~. Sacred Congregation of Bishops in Rome, rededicated the ~ : (- ~ - ~ - ' Agoo shrine. Stained-glass religious artwork and glittering . . - . . -'iMiilla . gold-plated chandeliers decorate the church, and visitors -· · ~ pose in front of the basilica for souvenir photos. Puriimtds Well, they would, wouldn't they? ~ V11JEo -co. Spelling it out .. • t • +II. "! I .:: • I f Ct-F. ,-..., .._....,-I.' !-' !""".. ..r:c- .. ""' ~ .. • The Eureka Street computer used for composing text is """ . - ~ ... equipped with a spell-check. When it locates a spelling IMPORTED FOOD . not found in its dictionary, the computer suggests an alternative. It suggested replacing 'Hewson' with 'Hus ?fl . 347 0806-347 9940 sein', and 'Keating' with 'Cheating'. The software is being checked for bias. \ Vt .;J._G -. ~\...J ttJ as ~+ Ulterior Motifs welcomes pithy contributions from readers. Address to: The editor, Eureka Keep 'em guessing (Cmlton, Victoria) Street, PO Box 553, Richmond 3121. 46 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1991 SEVENHILL CELLARS A special introductory offer for Eureka Street readers. 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