Vol. 6 No. 2 March 1996 $5.00 The Word is out ... In conjunction with the Sydney Morning Herald and the I MUSfUM Of CONHMPORARYART I Eureka Street is sponsoring The Word on Sunday, a new season of literary feasts. Join us to hear Australian and international writers read and discuss their work.

Malcolm Bradbury 01 .30 am) & Vikram Chandra C2 .30 pm) 10 March Hugh Mackay 01.30 am) 17 March Yasmine Goonaratne C11 .30 am) 24 M arch David Foster 01.30 am) 31 March Tegan Bennett 01 .30 am) 14 April I MUSfUM Of CONTfMPOAAAY ART I Circular Quay • Australia Admission $8 .00, free for members. For further enquiries phone (02) 252 4033

John Wren 1871-1953

Australian publisher, Aurora Bool{S, is seeking information, stories, anecdotes, photo­ graphs, and any relevant literary material to contribute to a full-length biography of John Wren. The publishers welcome all written, documentary, or oral material on all Wren's activities-business, sporting, charitable and political. Please contact: John Wren Project, Aurora Books, PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121, or phone (06) 259 1152 Volume 6 Number 2 EURI:-KA STRI:-Er March 1996 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology

32 COMING CLEAN CoNTENTS Paul Collins reflects on sexual scandals and the Catholic Church. 4 COMMENT 36 BRISBANAL 8 Hugh Lunn flicks through some horne­ LETTERS grown images. 13 38 CAPITAL LETTER BOOKS Peter Steele surveys the poetry and prose 14 of Anthony Hecht and Seamus Heaney; BUMPER YIELDS Margaret Simons writes on the second Margaret Simons reports on the state and round of Demidenko-Darville books, by prospects of the country. Andrew Riemer and Natalie Jane Prior (p43 ); Andrew Hamilton looks at Elaine 17 Pagels' The Origin of Satan (p46); Jack WHAT WE WANT FROM Waterford reviews Marian Wilkinson's GOVERNMENT The Fixer: The untold story of Graham Seven Australians have their say. Richardson (p48); Michael McGirr pon­ ders Peter Goldsworthy's Wish (p51 ); Jim 19 Davidson mythologises Eliza Fraser with ARCHIMEDES Kay Schaffer (p52). Up country: 20 41 Eric Sharkey and his WHAT WE EXPECT FROM POETRY son Chris celebrate GOVERNMENT The Western Canoe by Peter Porter. Chris McGillion and Ray Cassin review 'the best crop Professor John Warhurst's Politicians and 54 Citizens: Roles and Responsibilities . NOTES ON THE BLUES in 10 years'. Jon Greenaway scores some new books 22 on the blues. SPORTING LIFE Peter Pierce goes punting in the country. 57 SPLIT STAGE 23 Mary Lord reviews Peter Fitzpatrick's Th e Lives of Louis and Hilda Esson. Cover: Farmer, Eric Sharkey, IN MEMORIAM harvesting with his son, Chris. Peter Steele pays tribute to Joseph Photograph by Bill Thomas Brodsky. 59 FLASH IN THE PAN Photographs pp7, 14-16 by Bill Thomas. 24 Reviews of the films Leaving Las Vegas, Graphics pp22, 26, 29-3 1, 32, 35, 43, BY-PASSING THE PEOPLE To Die For , Persuasion, Sen se etJ 45 by Siobhan Jackson. Moira Rayner tracks the Victorian Sensibility, Get Shorty, Th e Flower of My Cartoons pp8, 10 by Dean Moore. Premier's proposal to abolish Secret, Dead Man Walking and Mighty by-elections. Aphrodite.

Eurek a Street magazine 26 62 Jesuit Publications INTO THE RING WATCHING BRIEF PO Box 553 Patricia Brennan and Janet C. Scarfe look Richmond VIC 3 121 back at the struggle for women's 63 Tel (03)9427 73 11 Fax (03)9428 4450 ordination in the Anglican Church. SPECIFIC LEVITY

V OLUM E 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 3 CoMMENT

MORAG FRASER A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Up country Consulting editor Michael McGirr SJ Assistant editor Jon Greenaway N o ON< WHO HAS oRMCN OUT m n rr cmes dming the Production assistants: past summer could have missed the upswing in the country. Paul Fyfe S), Juliette Hughes, The crops are spectacular, and for once they are the right Chris Jenkins SJ, crops at the right time, and in a period of rising commodity Paul Ormonde, Terri Anne Mackenzie, prices-enough to put a grin on the face of the most hanra­ Siobhan Jackson, Dan Disney han-ish Australian farmer. This is news of national importance, but it has been Contributing editors displaced by months of electoral obsession. If you were lucky Adelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJ you might have found some coverage of the state of the Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Perth: Dean Moore country buried on a left-hand page up the back of the news Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, sections of the dailies, or parked in a specialist television or Gerard Windsor radio program broadcast at an unmentionable hour. European correspondent: Damien Simonis Because good land management and agriculture are so vital to Australia's prosperity and its own vision of itself as Editorial board an environmentally sound economy, Eureka Street went Peter L'Estrange SJ (chair), bush this month to gather some of the details of the quality Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, of the incoming crops and an analysis of the land-care prob­ Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales, lems that linger even in a good season. Margaret Simons lives Marie Joyce, Kevin McDonald, in country NSW and writes with first-hand experience. You Jane Kelly IBVM, will find her on pl2. Bill Thomas took the photographs. Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ If anything has become clear during these recent months Business manager: Sylvana Scannapiego of political ambit claims, it is that Australians, from both Advertising representative: Ken Head country and city, are sick of fa vades in politics and terminally Patrons disillusioned with regimes of power that are not balanced Eureka Street gratefully acknowledges the by integrity and a sense of responsibility. When interview­ support of Colin and Angela Carter; the ing people of different ages with diverse experiences for our trustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon; feature on what Australians want from Government (pl7), Denis Cullity AO; W.P. & M.W. Gurry; the emergent theme was a wish, rapidly consolidating into Geoff Hill and Janine Perrett; a demand, for honesty and straight play in politics. the Roche family. Shifty or defensive politics is as soul-destroying as Eureka Street magazine, ISSN 1036- 1758, devious or defensive cricket. Where are the David Boons of Australia Post Print Post approved the front benches' Have we seen the last of the politicians pp349181/003 14 who will risk it and mix it with a skilled heckler? How is published ten times a year many more Graham Richardsons can the Australian political by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, system tolerate' This March issue of Eureka Street tackles 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 12 1 these questions in commentary, in reviews (Jack Waterford T el: 03 9427 73 11 Fa x: 03 9428 4450. looks at Richo and what he represents and misrepresents, Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by p49) and in debate (Chris McGillion and Ray Cassin give Michael Kelly, 300 Vi ctoria Street, Richmond. contrary readings of the latest publication, by John Warhurst, Printed by Doran Printing, from the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, Politi­ 46 Industrial Drive, Braes ide VIC 3 195. cians and Citizens: Roles and Responsibilities). © Jesuit Publications 1995. Australia is changing, so stay with us as we track the Unsolicited m anuscripts, including poetry and shifts. And welcome to our sixth year of publication. fiction, will be returned only if accompanied by a PS: On March 10 we begin a new venture, co-sponsoring, stamped, self-a ddressed envelope. Requests for with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Museum of permission to reprint material fr om the magazine Contemporary Art, a season of readings by Australian and should be addressed in writing to: The editor, Eureka Street magazine, international writers. Details p2. See you at the Museum, PO Box 553, Ri chmond VIC 3 121. Circular Quay at ll.30am on Sunday morning. • -Morag Fraser

4 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 C o MMEN T : 2

FRANK O'SHEA

and sirens and the screams of frightened citizens. And in American help has been rebuffed in the m ost violent way. the background, the sounds of people talking-all at the Many people blame John Major for the breakdown that same time and all saying the same thing. In the tinkling led to the bombs. But although his plodding caution was quiet that followed the rem oval of bloodied and wounded m addening at times, he deserves praise for his political Londoners you might hear the words: 'We told you so.' courage and astute balancing of political opposites. He David Trimble and the Unionists emphasised how succeeded in bringing the Unionists, if not to the table, at often they had warned that the IRA could not be trusted. least to the door of the building. It is difficult to move a John Major and the British government pointed out how group for whom the status quo is victory, for whom peace right they were to question the permanence of the cease­ without political progress gives the best of all worlds. fi re, how wise to dem and that Semtex be handed in . Major's relationship with Albert Reynolds was one of N ationalists told how they had repeatedly cautioned that the key factors in unblocking many bottlenecks in the lead­ slowing the peace process would weaken Gerry Adams' up to the ceasefire. The untimely departure from office of hold over the IRA and give the upper hand to the hard men. the pragmatic and hands-on Reynolds, in the fallout from The voice of Tim Pat Coogan may not have been heard the Fr Brendan Smyth affair, may yet be regarded as one of above the din. He is a mere writer, a long-time chronicler the great what-ifs of modern Irish history. of the killings and bombings and frustrating peace attempts. And where does it all leave Gerry Adams? Either he Writing in The Troubles, published late last year, he said: knew of the bombs beforehand and lied to the Americans­ ' ... the consensus in Repu blican circles ... is that if the an unthinkable scenario, surely-or he was bypassed and ceasefire does break down, the war would be resumed not ignored by the leadership of the IRA. In either case, it is in Ireland, but in Britain.' difficult to imagine that he can be taken seriously by his When bombs go off, money runs faster than people. own side or by the Unionists in any further negotiations. The IRA's most spectacular success was the April 1993 After years of physical danger, gruelling work and political bombing of Bishopgate in the heart of London's financial acumen he is left with nothing except the physical danger­ district. There is a body of opinion within the IRA, and greater now than it has ever been. possibly within Sinn Fein, that holds that this was what There is another sound to be heard in the background brought the British government to the table in the first after Canary Wharf and the London bombings- the quiet place. Keep bombing, their logic goes, and the Brits will despair of well-meaning people, watching years of hard eventually pull out of Ireland. work shatter: Major, Reynolds, Adams, Dick Spring, John The explosion has set back the peace process, perhaps Bruton, Jean Kennedy Smith, John Hume, the unsung irrevocably. It has given the British government and the heroes like Fr Alec Reid and the dozens of civil servants Unionists good rea on to renew their call for from all sides who have genuinely sought the impossible. decommissioning before any meaningful talks. It has taken If they can continue from here, they deserve our blessing • the IRA back to their comfortable ground of political immortality. The Mitchell Report is irrelevant; the Down- Frank O'Shea teaches at Marist College, Canberra.

COMMENT: 3 ANDREW VINCENT T,R,C ~~=~~~~ , ~~~~~s~: h '~~~u[:::,~k~~~~ e =~~:yws •go Ban k are really all things to all people. To Western Arafat seem ed to personify th e unacceptable face of governments and m edia they are an important sign that terrorism, and his checkered headscarf or keffiyeh became the peace process is still on track (if a little behind sched- a symbol of protest and dissent around the world. Like ule) and all is going well am ong the Palestinians in their Anwar Sadat before him, Arafat has now received that most steady march toward dem ocracy and possibly even state- prized symbol of Western acceptablity, the N obel Peace hood, somewhere in the distant future. Prize, so the transformation is almost complete. The elections have also helped to reinvent erstwhile The six hundred or so international observers of the guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat, who, with a respectable 8 election testified to its general fairness and decorum, and per cent of the vote, is becoming a more acceptable states- without a doubt, the Palestinian election was considerably m an day by da y-the kind of m an you could invite to a freer than others in the Arab World. After all, Arafat state visit without any qualms at all. This transformation received only 88 per cent of the vote, not 99.98 per cent.

V oLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 5 There were some discordant notes however, and 'street' on the issue were strong enough to prevent the international observers criticised the bullying governments from openly dealing with Israel no tactics of Arafat loyalists and of the Israelis them­ matter how much they would have liked to. (King selves, especially in Jerusalem. This latter took the Hussein of Jordan has reputedly had years of secret form of a heavy military presence at the polling talks.) Anwar Sadat may have earned the Nobel Peace booths, and rumours that Palestinians who voted Prize for his Camp David Agreements with Israel, but would lose their right of residence in the Holy City. he also paid for getting too far ahead of 'street' opinion As a result, the turn-out in Jerusalem was considerably in his homeland. lower than in the rest of the territories, possibly The Oslo Accords, the 'peace process' in general, through fear. Israelis are reluctant to accord any and more particularly the involvement of Yasser legitimacy at all to Palestinian claims to East Jerusa­ Arafat and the PLO in the recent elections have re­ lem-an issue still to be raised in the ongoing moved this stumbling block and m ade it possible for negotiations. the governments of the Arab states to make their own To the Israelis, still reeling from the assassination separate peace treaties with IsraeL For this, Arafat is of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last November, the being criticised by some segments of his own popula­ elections were a vindication of the 'peace process' tion. Major factions, such as the Islamicists of Hamas initiated by the slain leader and an important mile­ and the rej ectionists of PFLP have boycotted the stone in that process. process, while leading Palestinian intellectuals such Israelis can probably be divided into three broad as Edward Said have heaped scorn on the whole exer­ groups on the issue of the Palestinians. By far the cise, as he did in his recent book, Peace and its Dis­ smallest is that minority of leftists and peaceniks who contents. fervently hope that the elections will lead to This criticism of the 'peace process'-and it is Palestinian statehood, righting an historic wrong that very important criticism-should not be underesti­ has festered for half a century, and the two states, mated, for in the end it may carry the day. The Jewish and Arab, will live happily side by side. criticism can be summed up in two ways. To begin The second group of Israelis, much larger than with, it is claimed that Arafat has abandoned those the first and including all kinds of militants, settlers Palestinians not fortunate enough to be living in the and crazies as well as more respectable elements from Occupied Territories, such as those in Lebanon, Syria, the Israeli right wing, are reluctant to return to the Jordan and the diaspora. Palestinians even an inch of what they see as Eretz These are Palestinians who founded the Israel. Some of them are so paralysed by the very real resistance organisations back in the 1960s, and it was fear that Palestinian statehood may be the end result they who formed the PLO's main constituency. It was of the process that they will lash out, fight and indeed these Palestinians who, using terrorism and violence, kill even other Israelis to prevent this. Mordechai fought to put the question of Palestine on the inter­ Amir, the killer of Prime Minister Rabin, falls squarely national agenda, and succeeded. They have been into this category, but there are m any others. denied a vote in the recent elections, and from all By far the largest of the three groups consists of accounts they will never be allowed to return to the the Israeli Government and those Israelis who will 'Palestine' Yasser Arafat and the Israelis are creating try, for pragmatic reasons, to prevent Palestinian state­ in the Occupied Territories. They could become a hood from coming. These people (a nd I feel Prime Min­ persistent irritant. ister Rabin would be in this camp were he still alive) More importantly, Arafat is accused of acquiesc­ see the elections and the Palestinian National ing in a system of apartheid, even as South Africa, Authority (PNA) as a viable if less than perfect which gave the world the term, becomes a multi-racial solution to the intolerable burden of Israeli military state. According to its enemies, Arafat's PNA is a occupations of the territories. A solution, moreover, quisling-type collaborationist regime, doing no more which has opened the way to Israel's making peace than the security bidding of Israel and having no real with her Arab neighbours. There is already a new prospects for statehood. According to this view all that treaty with Jordan, and talks proceeding with Syria can be expected from Arafat and the PNA is the -very important indeed for the new Israeli creation of a kind of Palestinian Bantustan, never a Prime Minister's re-election prospects. Palestinian mini-state. These are harsh words indeed. But it must be said FoRTHE AR ABS TATES, both front-line states such as that the jury is still out. Perhaps Arafat really will be Jordan and Syria, as well as those states more distant the 'Father of His Nation'. Whatever happens let us such as the emirates of the Gulf or the countries of not fall into the triumphalism of the Western media North Africa, the Palestinian elections have removed over events in the Middle East; let us be a little the one major obstacle which has always stood in the cynical, and let us try to read between the lines. • way to their making peace with IsraeL For years the issue of Palestine was a 'motherhood' issue in the Arab Andrew Vincent is the Director of the Middle East world, and popular opinion, or the fee lings of the Arab Studies Centre at Macquarie University.

6 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 COMMENT: 4

ANDREW HAM1L TON The game is not the same 'I,m.cosom«s o' c"cnT CCA>M th" the game that the umpi

V oLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 7 Letters

time that I would like to set the record Lurcidl 'll reel welcome~ letters straight. A difficult peace from its reader~. Short letters arc Sally McGushin more likely to he published, and Queenstown, TAS From Jo seph Symonds all letter'> ma\ he edited. Letter~ I returned to Australia six months ago mu-,t he signed, and should after living 15 years in Israel. As a include a contact phone number The moon and I fourth generation Australian of Jewish and the\\ nter's n,1me and address. descent, I believe I have a modicum of From D.L. Swingler original Au ssie fairmindedness in Your writer, Ray Cassin should always viewing the question of 'Tomorrow's partake of the proven combination of Israel' (Eureka Street, December 1995). tea and madeleine cakes before ever The article addressed the future only again trusting to his m emory. The as­ at the end and then in a way appealing tronauts landed on the moon on 21 to liberal slogans of peace and July, 1969. symmetrical compromise. Unfortu­ D. L. Swingler nately the situation for Israel is any­ Park Orchards, VIC thing but symmetrical. Unlike the situation for its Arab neighbours, both internal and external, Ray Cassin replies the future of their country-for Perhaps WA was already running on Israelis, is intimately bound to both US Pacific time in preparation for the peace and survival. And the context in peace on the horizon. subsequent makeover of Perth and Fre­ which peace is being negotiated is, in The despicable assassination of man tie as rest-and-recreation resorts John Levi's words, one in which Israel Rabin represented the extremist tip of for the sailors and marines of the Sev­ faces an enemy that 'hated and loathed an iceberg of discontent within the enth Fleet. But it is reassuring to know their very presence in the Promised populace. The concern for survival as that accurate geophysical m easure­ Land and still continually call for a a nation and as individuals is difficult ments were taken in Queenstown, "holy war".' to understand from a detached, secure, Tasmania, where the hillsides scarred The picture depicted by the press, liberal viewpoint. by mining are curiously reminiscent of Israeli lea dership as representing a A strong Israel with geographical­ of a desolate lunar landscape. No won­ nation united in its support for the ly defensible borders is seen by many der the locals were so absorbed by 'peace process', except for a few Israelis as the precursor to true peace. what Neil Armstrong et al were doing. militant extremists, is inaccurate. If this situation is obtained and hope Ray Cassin Israelis, almost to a person, wan t of military annihilation renounced by Moonee Ponds, VIC its neighbours, then peace 1HIS IS \H€ L.ASI itM~ 1 L6\ Ml\r-.JA&6M~NI will inevitably flow as a con­ 5£NP -ME ON A~ oU-rwARD &>UI'..!P covRS6/ sequence of comm ercial, Women on the ) tourist and scientific interac­ tion on a face-to-face basis. line Joseph Symonds Bondi, NSW From f. G. Santamaria In his article 'The Line on Women' (Eureka Street, December 1995) Father Very wide W.J. Uren, SJ, asked the q uestion 'What will be the likely effect of this awake latest pronouncement from the Vati­ can?'. The 'pronouncement' was the From Sally McGushin answer given on th e 18 November It was actually on 2 1 July 1995 by the Congregation for the 1969 that those hundreds of Doctrine of the Faith to a question small boys would have clus­ relating to the status of the teaching tered around the half-dozen in the apostolic letter 0Tdinatio Sac­ or so television sets at Ray erdotalis that the church does not have Cassin's Marist College, the authority to confer priestly ordi­ Perth, to watch the first nation on women. Moon landings (Eureka Father Uren does not answer the peace. Religious Jews pray for peace Street, D ecember 1995 ). question he asks. Rather, he recounts three times a day, but as demonstra­ History records the events as two anecdotes, one of which be de­ tions across the nation over the last occurring on 20 July 1969 because that scribes as 'pessimistic', the other as couple of years have shown, many was the date in America when the 'optimistic'. The 'optimistic' anecdote I raelis, perhaps even an absolute event occurred. related to the comment made by Mr majority, believe that current I was similarly crowded around a Chris Sidoti during the 1993 ABC Government policy constitutes unilat­ school television set. It is because I television program on the encyclical eral land concessions without genuine recall what it was I was doing at the Veritas Splendour in w hich Father

8 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 lies to abide by the moral teaching of responsibilities in the Church. But the Church was a reason for excom ­ that has nothing to do with excommu­ munication. During the program, Pro­ nication. fessor Peter Singer-of all people-had J-G Santamaria suggested that, given the publication Hawthorn, VIC of the encyclical Veritas Sple1Jdour, the Australian bishops would have to withdraw their 1974 statement about Fr W.J. Uren replies This month, contraception and som e Catholics I commend M.r J.G. Santamaria, QC, courtesy of Penguin Books, would be forced out of the Church. for his diligent researches into the the writer of each letter we Bishop Pell answered Singer's sugges­ archival foo tage of the Veritas Splen­ publish will receive tion as fo llows: dour discussion, in which I participat­ two of the ' .... the '74' statement of the Bish­ ed with Bishop Pel!. I do hope that he Penguin '60s Classics ops said quite a number of different had access to the full 90-minute tape and balancing things. One thing it did rather than the edited version pro­ say was that, if a person did not fol­ duced by the ABC. low the teaching of the Church on con­ There are, however, two aspects of Uren and Bishop George Pell partici­ traception, there was no obligation for his subsequent commentary that I find pated. Father Uren's account of what them to be excommunicated, to be som ewhat chilling. The first is his Mr Sidoti said is an abbreviation. driven from the Church and because oblique recognition of the significa nce What, in fact, Mr Sidoti said was: of the comparative importance of the of the recent pronouncement of the 'The Pope is right in saying in the issue, I'm sure that, today, everybody Sacred Congregation concerning the encyclical that there is a crisis in the would stand with that. But it also 'infallible' status of the Apostolic Let­ Church. He identifies it as a crisis of made quite clear in that statement that ter on the (non) Ordination of Women dissent, that is, people don't agree with people should conform their con­ for the contraception debate. If Ordi­ what I think. The real crisis, though, sciences to the official teaching which natio Sacerdotalis is infallible, why is the crisis of assent. And that is that had been given by the Pope. If they not Humanae Vitae? Even though the the vast majority of Catholics in Aus­ decided to differ, one of the conse­ offi cial spokesperson of Paul VI, Mon­ tralia have withdrawn their assent to quences that no-one was going to try signor Ferdinand Lambruschini, im ­ being led by this Pope and most of to apply was excommunication or to mediately after the promulga tion of these bishops. Now it is all very well remove them from the Church .' Humanae Vitae, said that the encyc­ for Bishop Pell to draw his line in the Given the Catholic understanding lical was not necessarily irreformable, sand but the fact is th at the vast of excommunication-and this may m any theologians of a right-wing per­ majority of us don't care about his line not have been Mr Sidoti's-it would suasion have argued that it is, and pre­ in the sand. We are not going to be have been astonishing had Bish op Pell cisely on the grounds invoked by the excommunicated, and we are not go­ used a public discussion, either ex­ Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine ing to leave. It is our church. And what pressly or by implication, to threaten of the Faith for Ordinatio Sacerdotal­ this encyclical wrongly identifi es as a it. It would be unfair to suggest that is. The prophetic insight of Professor crisis of dissent is a crisis because we he did. Singer-'of all people'-was not nec­ no longer have confidence that those Bishop Pell did point to the injus­ essarily misguided on this point at who proclaim leadership are capable tice inflicted upon Catholic children least. of exercising it.' in their being denied access to the The second chilling aspect is Mr. Father Uren 's evident approval Church 's teachings. It may be that Santamaria's discussion of excommu­ ('the most illuminating and encourag­ those responsible for this injustice nication. He notes that Bishop Pell ing comment in the whole discussion') should not continue to hold teaching stated that: ' ... .if a person did not fol­ of Mr Sidoti's ancient and much dis­ low the teaching of the Church on con­ credited theme is difficult to fathom. traception, there was no obligation for Moreover, he says that Mr Sidoti's in­ them to be excommunicated'. There tervention was elicited by remarks Counselling is no obliga tion to be excommunicat­ m ade by Bishop Pell about '"drawing ed, to be sure, but is this not now a a line in the sand"- presum ably defin ­ If you or som eon e you much less remote possibility? Bishop ing boundaries for church member­ know could benefit from Pel! said of the 1974 statement that: ship'. professional counselling, ' .... one of the consequences that no­ In fact, it was not. The expression one was going to try to apply was ex­ 'drawing a line in the sand' was not please phon e M artin communication or to rem ove them used by Bishop Pell. It formed part of Prescott, BSW, MSW, from the Church', but can he or Mr a question asked by Andrew Olle. MAASW, clinical m ember Santamaria be now so secure in this Bishop Pel! may have assented to the of the Association of belief? proposition contained in the question, Whoever would have thought even but the question had nothing to do Catholic Psychotherapists. in October, 1993, that within thirty with church membership. Individuals, couples and months it would be officially forbidden Much more important, however, is families catered fo r: for Cath olics even to debate the what Bishop Pell did say about Church possibility of the ordination of women, m embership. He did not say anything Bentleigh (03) 9557 2595 and that an Apostolic Nuncio would to suggest that the inability of Catha- en force this s tricture a t an

V oLUME 6 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 9 international conference of Catholic The dogma of papal infallibility definition. After the declaration of the Women in Canberra at the weekend relies on a distinction between state­ dogma, however, this type of defini­ (cf. Age February 10, 1996). Granted ments about faith (or morals) and tion has become unusable. For if one the present constituency of the Sacred statements about other matters; and, were still to use it, the dogma of papal Congregation for the Doctrine of the within the category of statements on infallibility would in effect be saying that the pope is (in certain circum­ stances) infallible when he talks about the things he normally talks about, which wouldn't be a very illuminating statement. Besides, proceeding in this way could reintroduce into the list of tenet s precisely those papal pro­ nouncements, whether concerning matters of fact or scientific theories, that are considered to have been erro­ neous. For this and other reasons th e dogma of papal infallibility has become, perhaps not entirely inten­ tionally, a kind of watershed on the history of the Catholic Church. Yet many commentators, both conserva­ tives and liberals among them and apparently including officials, seem to express themselves at times as if the Faith and the much more frequent faith and morals, a further distinction Vatican I formulations did not exist. recourse of the Vatican to invoking the is made between statements that may Partly as a result, I suppose, not a lot highest levels of authority in its (have) be( en) emphatically endorsed, so of progress has been made in elucidat­ pronouncements, I wish I could be as to speak, by the pope and those who ing the term 'faith or morals'. benign as Mr Santamaria in rejecting may not (have) be(en ) so endorsed. Tony Winkelman the possibility of the threat of ecclesi­ These distinctions are clearly Kew, VIC astical penalties. drawn in order to W.J. Uren SJ restrict the exercise Hawthorn, VIC of papal infallibility (or else the pope Questionable might for most EcuMENICAL practical purposes be reduced to silence), From Tony Winkelman though until the SERVICE Father W.J . Uren's report of a commu­ term 'faith or morals' nique issued by the Sacred Congrega­ and the circumstanc­ tion for the Doctrine of the Faith es of what I have (Eureka Street, December 1995) has paraphrased as 'em ­ St Paul's Cathedral some surprising aspects, one of which phatic endorsement' 3.00 pm Sunday 77 March1 7996 I should like to discuss below. are defined, the In the communique, according to extent of such a re­ the report, a question is posed and an striction cannot be enior citizens of all fa iths, and answer is given . T he question is exactly known nor their fam i I ies, are invited to a whether a particular doctrine 'must be will it be possible to S believed in a definitive way so as to m ake particular special service to celebrate Senior be considered as belonging to the de­ application s. As Citizens Week. Th e Anglican posit of faith'. The answer is that the regards the defini­ doctrine has been 'proposed infallibly'. tion of 'faith or mor­ Archbishop of Melbourne, the Most This is surprising language, to me as als' one might say in Reverend Dr Keith Rayner wi ll preach. much as to Father Uren. But whereas general that, prior to Father Uren appears to be dismayed by the promulgation of Singing will commence at 2.30pm, led the answer, I am rather worried about papal infallibility, by the popular Maroondah Singers. the question. The question, it seems the expression could to me, jumps the gun, at least in so far have been defined as Light refreshments will be served after as it invites a decision as to the doc­ 'the sort of thing the the service. trine's infallibility. For before such an pope normally talks about', and it appears invitation could be issued, one would Enquiries to Anglica n Homes for th e Elderly: (03) expect to have an affirmative answer that the communi­ to the definition of papal infallibility que's question pre- 98 78 0988 at the first Vatican Council. supposes some such

10 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 AWORLD WITHOUT HEALTHCARE Did you know that one person in every five in the world is living in poverty? Think about that. Try to imagine how you would react if one in five of your family and friends was starving, homeless, sick or illiterate. What would you do? In Third World countries, many people lack the simple basics of healthcare that we take for granted. With poor nutrition, minimal hygiene and no reliable supply of safe water, there's little hope of avoiding deadly disease. Project Compassion is bringing hope to people in countries around the world, with programs that provide shelter, food, water, education, health and hygiene. programs at the causes of poverty, Project Compassion gives people the start they need to get back on their feet and become self-sufficient. Project Compassion has made enormous progress in poor communities around the world. With your help this Lent, we can make a difference in the fight against poverty. Imagine what you and Project Compassion can do. Project Compassion - giving hope

~------­ Australian Catholic Relief, \A) GPO Box 9830 in your state capital city I

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D UR>NG AN ECECT

VOLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE N ATION Bumper yields

While oll eyes hczFe been focused on elections, the r,win lws been growinr, inlo the best lwrvest Auslwliu has seen in years. But will{/ goocllwrFesl be succeeded h' impwvecll{111d nwnagcment and agricullunzl policy~ Margaret Simons reports.

YOU 1D THINK IT WOULD BE A SIMPLE BUSINESS: wait There are, of course, still regions of Australia in until the soil is wet with autumn rain. Plant a seed. drought, but nevertheless this year's crop has been a Wait for more rain. Watch it grow. Sell the crop. bumper-16.6 million tonnes on the latest estimates, But in Australia it's a long time since it has compared to a ten-year average of 14.9 million tonnes. worked that way. In fact, this year is the first time for For the last ten years, when the crop has been good, a decade that the economics of wheat farming have the price has been bad, and vice versa. Take 1990-91, made sense for the majority of farmers. Travellers over for example. The crop yield was above average, but the Christmas holidays would have been able to see world prices were the lowest they have ever been­ the signs, if they knew what to look for: butter-yel­ averaging only $US128 a tonne. In 1991-92, the price low fields, combine-harvesters working well into the was right at an average of $US164 a tonne, but the night. Very different from the summer before, when crop was hit by the first in the series of El Niii.o the crops looked like moth-eaten blankets-bare holes droughts that have been plaguing us ever since. the paddocks, wheat that barely reached your knee. Most galling of all, the season before last, the Hardly worth harvesting. export price was pushed to a record average of $187.50-just at the time when the biggest wheat pro­ ducing areas of Australia were hit by the worst drought in living memory, and the crop was all but written off. This year, though, the butter- yellow of the wheat fields in early summer signalled a true good year. Quantity is not the only factor bringing a smile to farmers' faces. Even more significant than the size of the crop is the fact that for the first time in a long while, the price on the export market is right. This year's crop is expected to add around four billion dol­ lars to the gross national product, and with about 70 per cent of the crop to be exported, it will make a major impact on the balance of payments. The weather and the strength of the crop can make all of a politician's promises and management skills look like chaff. Bob Hawke reaped the benefits of a break in a drought when he came to power. Who­ ever wins the March election will be able to ride the benefits of the bumper crop well into their first term. Not all farmers are out of trouble. New South Wales, the nation's largest wheat-producer, actually

14 EUREKA STREET • MARC H 1996 This year's crop is expected to add around four billion dollars to the gross national product, and with about seventy per cent of the crop to be exported, it will make a major impact on the balance of payments.

had a slightly below-average crop because northern This is a neat reversal on the Australian situa­ farmerswere still in drought. Meanwhile, their col­ tion, where the majority of the population is urban­ leagues further south were reaping the best harvest ised, almost everyone votes, and it is the farmers who in years. As well, in areas of central N ew South Wales, tend to be neglected and ignored. OECD figures show there was a higher-than-average proportion of high­ that in 1992, Australian farmers got only about 11 protein wheat- the stuff that is best for bread. The per cent of their income from government assistance, lift in protein levels is caused by a relatively harsh compared to 44 per cent in the USA and 46 per cent year, and the resulting grain attracts a premium price. in the European Economic Community. Queensland was also well below average with many According to figures presented at the Australian farmers there still in drought. Many will now not Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics Out­ recover from years of poor incomes. But Victoria, look conference last month, the future looks bright South Australia and Western Australia all had well for grain exports for the decade ahead. Australia grows above average yields, in spite of late rain damage to about three per cent of the world's wheat, but captures some of the West Australian crop. about twelve per cent of global market share through Not only was the crop the best since 1985, but shrewd marketing. Export subsidy cutting prices on the world market were at record levels. The can only help Australian marketers. USA crop was hit by wet weather, and the Canadian crop was set back by a heatwave. Overall, the world H owEVER, THERE ARE BIG CHANGES looming in the wheat crop yield was one of the poorest since 1988, way Australian wheat is marketed. The Wheat Board, and below anticipated world consumption. World which for decades has been the only seller of Austral­ stocks of grain are at their smallest level in 20 years, ian wheat, was in 1987 deregulated to allow farmers and in real terms are at their lowest ebb since the to sell to whomever they wished on the domestic mar­ Peter Bufton (l eft) has world foo d crisis panic of the mid 1960s. ket. On the ground, this means that farmers taking farmed for 40 years and As well, after years of Australian wheat prices truck loads of wheat to the silos can make a load-by­ says in terms of price and being undercut in key markets by subsidised Ameri­ load decision as to whether to take the Wheat Board yield the crop i the best can and European grain, both the European Commis­ price, or the price offered by one of the flour multi­ in ten years. sion and the USA have reduced or delayed their nationals. The Wheat Board, however, has retained subsidies for wheat exports. This has an enormous its m onopoly over exports. Historically, this has been Eric Sharkey (above, with impact on the income of individual farmers, and the justified on the grounds that it gives the Australian his son Chris} says that nation. The American wheat subsidy program-the grower more muscle in the world market place. this year's yield will subject of heated but largely ineffectual protests at This reasoning has now come under scrutiny as finally give him the diplomatic level- is a form of vote-buying. It provides part of the government's anti-monopoly moves fol­ chance to consolidate. American farmers, who almost all vote, with finan­ lowing the Hilmer inquiry. Government monopolies cial assistance. Meanwhile the urban poor who often now have to justify themselves on the grounds of Photographs by don't register to vote, are ignored. national interest, or face the chop. Already, most Bill Thomas.

V OLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 15 agricultural marketing boards have been deregulated. legume crops, are common, but it all costs money. Peter Bufton, above, The Wheat Board remains the most protected in the The effects of the US price subsidising have meant knee deep in sheep. country. The Wheat Board itself has proposed priva­ that many wheat farmers have been forced into sowing Bu fton ca lls this year's paddocks more often, and more intensely, than crop and prices ·a rare tisation, but with a continuation of the monopoly, combination'. but common sense suggests that political support may prudence would suggest. be lacking. Why should parliament guarantee power But growers are adaptable, and the variety of crops Photogra ph by Bill over such a huge market, worth up to four billion being sown on Australian soil has increased. A 1994 Thomas. dollars a year, to a private company controlled by farm survey showed a marked decrease in land sown farmers? The Federal Opposition has said they will to wheat, and an increase in other crops such as canola, exempt the Wheat Board from competition review, lupins and soy beans. This year however, high wheat but the Minister for Primary Industry, Bob Collins, prices combined with the fact that wool prices have has been urging an investigation into whether the fallen are likely to cause more pasture to be advantages gained in overseas negotiations by having sown to wheat. a single seller can be gained in other ways. Apart from the political and economic machina­ u U NTIL EARLY THJS CENTUR Y, n1any n1arginal areas tions, there are other worrying trends underlying the were opened up in a spirit of optimism, and have been wheat industry. struggling ever since. The early settlers believed 'rain Australia, the most urban of nations, still rides follows the plough'-they thought that rainfall was on the back of its agricultural and mining industries, likely to increase over ploughed land. Good years but the ride is getting increasingly rocky. For the last encouraged them to clear country that in most years four decades, Australia has had one of the lowest rates is marginal. These days, even in the good years, of increase in wheat yields in the world. The main farmers cannot afford such simple optimism. • reason is soil degradation. These days, most farmers are only too aware of the problem. Soil protection Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist and frequent measures, such as rotating wheat paddocks with contributor to Eurelw Street.

16 EU REKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 THE NATION What we want from government

Australians are fed up with political fixers and fixes, as reactions to the federal election campaign made clear. But what do we want inst e ad ~ Eureka Street ask ed seven Australians what they would like to see from government between now and the centenary of Federation.

itself into a corner. (Although the people in genuine and diabolical trou­ softening of the Liberals' trade and ble. Politicians and society in gener­ industry policy does sh ow that man­ al have an obligation to improve the ufacturers are getting fed up with standards under which these young tariff reductions.) The people who people live. own our factories and industries are Politicians need to offer uncon­ finally making themselves heard in ditional assistance to help stop the Liberal Party circles. The Liberals downward spiral for disadvantaged are not talking Hewsonian negligi­ young people. This involves not just ble tariffs, they're talking pragm a­ m oves towards decreasing youth Lincoln Wright is tism . They will keep the industry unemployment, but completing the the finance editor of policies put in place by the ALP. big picture. For example: increasing the Canberra Tim es. But really I don't think w e can accessible, supported long-term expect much from either Party. housing options; better choices for -Lincoln Wright young people who struggle with the I THINK GOVERN MENTSs hould accept m ainstream schooling system, and that they have a central role in creat­ funding youth -oriented recreation for ing prosperity. To deny that, for the Ellie Robinson is a youth recreation's sake. sake of an economic theory, is to worker in the city of These initiatives need to be sup­ cheat the citizens. The government Darebin, Victoria. ported with patience and understand­ owes the community a system of ing, not just for young people but economic m anagem ent that willgive also for workers with young people. everyone a reasonable shot at a good This patien ce and understanding job, and a decent social wage. com es from realising that the m ost But at the sam e time I think the difficult cases often produce the least fo rces that militate against a govern­ number of m easurable outcomes­ ment's doing what it should are glo­ som ething which is incompatible bal, and extrem ely powerful. with most funding guidelines. Even Japan, the world's greatest -Ellie Robinson economy, is under pressure to change the role of government in its system . So what can Australia-a very small I FIND IT DIFFICULT to pay atten­ Fr Greg O'Kelly SJ is Head­ country without any of Japan's dy­ tion to politics, even though I know master of Saint Ignatius' namic industries or clout- do? I should. College, Athelstane, Ideally, I'd like to see the govern­ My lack of interest stem s fr om South Australia. m ent change its direction, from one the current regression by our senior which says we are all so ineffi cient, politicians to childish nam e-calling, to one with a social approach . I want bickering and nonsense. I don 't W AT DO I HOPE that the Federal to see the government saying this is believe them either, and I don' t Government might achieve during our country, let's look after it, let's believe that anyone in fe deral politics the next Parliam ent? not sacrifice ourselves for the sake of is really prepared to tackle the hard Reduce the ga p. The Federal Gov­ the finance sector. But all this may issues. Instead they seem m ore in­ ernment might enact provisions to be unrealistic, given our economic terested in quick-fixes and vote­ reduce the impact of the growing gap policy directions at the moment, winners. between rich and poor in Australia. with APEC, with the obsession about Exceptions to this rule are issues Those in poorer economic groups do wiping ou t the budget deficit, and which are deemed 'flavour of the not have sufficient access to aff ord­ with very strict monetary policy, month', such as youth homeless­ able good health care and justice. which, in m any ways, i not very ness in the past and youth unem ­ Lawyers' growing fees and shabby different from N ew Zealand's. ployment today. hospitals in poorer areas disadvan­ Once you set those economic This is not good enough for the tage growing sectors in our society. policy courses the government paints growing number of Australian young The strengthening of family life. So

VoLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 17 many ills are attributable to breakdown of and see how each state is suffering. I am aware that, in an age when historical stable commitment in family life. A family I also believe that we sh ould have a alliances in trade and international politics in Australia with several children should be national policy for education so that you are no longer sacrosanct, Australia's posi­ able to maintain a good lifestyle even when don't have a the kind of segregation that tion in the world economy will have a greater only one parent is working. A family nur­ comes where certain states are behind in this bearing on my future than anything else. The tures the genuine human values of love and and certain states are ahead in that. We capacity to market this country to our neigh­ commitment. become a whole nation instead of a segment­ bours, in spite of cultural difference, is a vital Successful pluralism. We have passed the ed nation. Even when you are overseas you skill. To do so with dignity and solid resolve point of no return with multiculturalism, get this kind of questioning: 'Where do you is a major challenge for Government Asian but the prime culture continues to integrate come from?' I say from Australia. 'But which markets take no prisoners. Asian and European people more easily than bit?' Well, I come from Australia and I think And societal change doesn't happen fast Aboriginal. There is a need to express the people should be looking more towards that enough unless reaction motivates debate. A Australian identity to peoples who have nev­ than insisting that 'I come from Queensland, lot of that which is great in Australian soci­ er shared the stories of the British, Scottish Victoria, Western Australia.' And who's bet­ ety is a reaction to the mistakes observed in and Irish forebears, the Bush, Ned Kelly, ter1 It doesn't matter who's better. older Western societies. The advantage of Anzac, Kokoda and the Depression. The Re­ I think federal politician should work white Australia's youth is that we aren't public must be declared, in a style and man­ more closely with state governments. As it is dragging insurmountable legacies. We have ner that enthuses all sectors of Australia, as we are over-governed. We are governed once some significant historical debts, most par­ a phenomenon of natural development rather by the state and then by the federal govern­ ticularly to the Aboriginal people. But these than a rejection of something very dear. ment. That lea ds to over-taxing, If they all problems are definable, and if the Govern­ A true Federalism. There should be a move worked in conjunction you would have one ment is brave enough to keep placing them away from the centralisation of Australia payout for hospitals, for example, not the in the public arena there is hope that they into a Sydney-Melbourne axis, exacerbated federal government giving this amount and will be cured. by the High Court as it increases the power this state getting more than that state. There If the Government does not strive to of the Federal Government which sees its just doesn't seem to be an overall view. I'd instigate change, there will be no testing of own principal bases in two megalopoleis. like to see one if we want to celebrate our the status quo, no reaction, and less debate. We need to rediscover the role of the Senate federation. With a dynamic government striving to as the House of the States. In the hotel industry at present there are change, people would be regularly forced to The Act of Reconciliation. The term of the too many industrial levels. There should be rethink their situations and the debate that Parliament takes us almost to 2000, and the just one award, not different state and federal ensues will allow few er opportunities for the drive to effect a rapport between the original awards. People are doing the same job. We development of the society and the country Australians and the later settlers should be should simplify industrial relations. to slip past unnoticed. resumed so that some real resolution migh t About politicians: I understand that you -John Coyle occur before the Centenary of Federation. probably can't be a politician and tell the Honest politics. The Federal Government truth. But I think they should care about it a should adopt a code of ethics for parliamen­ bit more. We did elect them. tarians, so that cynicism concerning the -Glenys Pascoe honesty and truthfulness of politicians will abate. John Coyle is an export -Fr Greg O'Kelly SJ AM marketer of scientific equipment in Castle Hill, NSW.

L IS NEXT TERM of Federal Parliament will not particularly affect me personally. I don't Peter Ingham is an Auxiliary have dependants, so more of my income is bishop in the Archdiocese of disposable. And neither major party is pro­ Sydney. moting a policy of personal taxation that sets the Government's effect on me apart from I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE our Federal Govern­ the other. From my employer's point of view, m ent give unqualified support for families Glenys Pascoe is the owner and we are no longer small business so most of and not overly interfere in family life. What licensee of the All Nations Hotel the fiscal incentives being touted in the run­ I want is a government that will respect the in Richmond, Victoria. up to the election are not significant. individuality and human dignity that grow I have a problem with voting for minor from a strong family tradition. parties. I believe they should be supported by Our indigenous people, and so many of 0 NE THING I'D LIKE TO CHANGE would be preferences, but they are a control m echa­ our multicultural community, teach us how the sort of withdrawal from the average per­ nism rather than a dynamic influence. And I fundamental and basic the family and ex­ son that occurs with the Government being suppose that Government dynamism is the tended family historically are. I really be­ in Canberra. I feel that local government and most important factor that will influence lieve thefamily, as a sound community real­ state governments know more about what is my vote. We have no time for conservatism. ity, needs all the support it can get. The happening. I think that instead of living in Traditions that are meant to survive will family has always been our most readily their ivory towers they could come down survive. available welfare safety net.

18 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 I would like more insistence on the already accredited marriage preparation courses being more widely used by those preparing for marriage. Prevention is always ,!::.~:o~:~~~~,.~~~~g ~:~~:~aftcr it is cooked.c """But if the temperature of the spread is not brought down from about 85°c better than cure. The contribution that fam­ ilies make to the welfare and prosperity of to less than 25°C as soon as possible, it tends to spoil. our nation is reason enough for the family to So, after filling glass jars with cooked cheese spread, Kraft Foods sends them have an important priority in government through a tunnel where they are cooled by a series of water sprays. The tempera­ planning and expenditure. ture of each spray must be carefully controlled, because if it differs too greatly -Peter Ingham from the temperature of the cheese spread, the glass in the jars will crack. If the product is not cooled in the right way, it can thicken and brown, and won't taste Fran Barber is an arts graduate the way it should. Spread can also boil in the jar, leaving unsightly bubbles which and Bachelor of Divinity student at whiten as fat migrates into them. the United Faculty of Theology in These are not trivial problems. More than 60 per cent of the cheese spread Parkville, Victoria. Kraft produces is shipped overseas, much of it to Saudi Arabia. The market is worth well over $30 million a year. So, having just built a new factory for producing cheese spread at Strathmerton in northern Victoria, Kraft wanted to know more about how the cheese spread cooled under the water sprays. Who did they call? A bunch of mathematicians. Last month the Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group, 200 applied mathematicians from Australia and beyond, met at Melbourne University. They worked not only on cooling cheese spreads, but on the most efficient way to cook cereal grains, how best to deliver and store reels of paper from the mill, how to blend talc, how to wind optical fibre cable, how to breed trees and how to prevent bubbles from forming in wine labels. They came up with some very creative solutions. For example, having modelled the heat flows in cooling cheese spreads, they came to the conclusion that the cheese in the centre of the jar sometimes boils because the cheese on the W EN LOOKING AT F EDERAL GOVERNMENT from an historical perspective it's tempting outside cools too quickly and creates a vacuum. The solution seems somewhat to think that nothing happens that hasn't perverse-use slightly warmer sprays at the beginning of cooling process to prevent happened before, and so it's a pointless exer­ the outer cheese from cooling so quickly. cise to consider this time period as different As well as discussing the problems of manufacturing industry, the from any other. However I think the next mathematicians found time to talk about the concerns of their own trade. In few years are quite important for Australia particular, they discussed a recent report prepared for the Australian Research and will present issues which will be worth Council (ARC) entitled Mathematical Sciences: Adding to Australia. The report thinking about. One area of crucial paints a sanguine picture of the state of mathematics in Australia: our research­ importance is the whole ecological ers are responsible for more than two per cent of the world's publications in math­ question-how we look after our resources ematics, in a country with less than half of one per cent of the world's population. and how our behaviour affects other coun­ And Australian papers in mathematics are lO per cent more likely to be cited tries in our region. than the world average. At times none of the major parties seem It is also clear, says the report, that the mathematical sciences are critical to willing to look at the interdependence that Australia's economy and are used in every industry sector. A management strategy exists between countries: economically and, emerging from a mathematical assessment of the risk of bushfires will save the more importantly, ecologically. The fact that Electricity Trust of South Australia up to $250 million. much of our foreign aid is tied to the servicing But it is this widespread applicability of maths that generates one of the major of debt repayments is a somewhat cynical grumbles that mathematicians have about their lot: there is no specialist research response to these regional issues. I'd like to centre in mathematics. Despite angling for a Co-operative Research Centre for see the government move towards a much Industrial Applications of the Mathematical Sciences, mathematicians feel hard more co-operative international model where aid is tied less to the boundaries of nation pressed to attract the necessary commercial backing. 'You need a muscular states than it is to need. However the industrial supporter with deep pockets,' says Dr Noel Barton of the CSIRO, editor predominant climate of privatising public of the report. utilities does not lend hope to this model of At base, the issue of a research centre for mathematics comes back to image. community building. Perhaps the churches As Noel Barton says, 'If I say I'm a mathematician, I can still stop conversation at have a role to play in influencing public a party.' Unfortunately this image problem is translating into fewer enrolments policy to bring about this aim, for neither in mathematics at universities. That is serious. As one delega te from South major party seems too concerned with this Australia pointed out, 'We're not within a bull's roar of training enough facet of government. mathematicians to satisfy the future needs of the information technology Whether this can be achieved in the short revolution.' • term remains to be seen. -Fran Barber Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer.

VoLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 19 FORUM

CHRIS M c GILLION & R AY C ASSIN What we expect from government

I "c'"m "AD the l>te< t offenng devoted to justifying why the church give momentum and direction to from the Australian Catholic Social chose to speak out on m oral and the latter. But the connection is Justice Council (ACSJC), Politicians social issu es as is spent on outlining breaking down. These cl ays politics and Citizens: Roles and Responsi­ the paper's main recomm endation. is the art of managing dem ands from bilities by Professor John Warhurst. This pre-emptive strike did not dis­ the bottom (the electorate) in a way I had assumed the bish ops were courage criticism of the ACSJC for that leaves the top (politicians and m aking an unusual (for them ) but its efforts. It simply suggested a line bureaucrats) free to get on with the valuable contribution to the current of attack to less imaginative critics. 'real' job of decision-making. One debate about our disillusionment But the m ost obvious problem thing that might reverse this trend is with politics. I was wrong. The only with the paper is its lack of substance. greater transparency in governm ent. contribution it m akes is to the study Politicians and Citizens argu es that Why, then, not some concrete sug­ of poorly executed social justice to res tore confidence in our political gestions about m ore liberal freedom initiatives. system , politician s must uphold of inform ation laws or whistle- Consider the 'launch'. Th e ACS­ professional standards. It proposes blower protection legislation ? JC showed some media savvy in to codify these to commit politi­ Then there's the media. The sch eduling the release of Politicians cians to m aintaining personal integ­ m odern m edia aff ord politicians th e and Citizens for January. This is a rity, listening m ore to th e voice of opportunity for mass exposure but time of the year when journalists the people, making modest promises, ironically, at the cost of the kind of and their editors are grateful for avoiding personal abuse and acting close, personal, kissing-babies type anything that passes fo r news and with courage and decisiveness. This of contact that was once their stock- will usually give even the most is such an anodyne list of desirable in-trade. Sa turation coverage also esoteric, if also 'weighty' subjects a qualities that it's hard to moun t a tends to overwhelm and complicate good run. But a kind of peep-show case for or against it. Why bother? the consumers at whom it is aimed. mentality seems to have overtaken What politician would deny that he The ACSJC could have encouraged a those involved with the paper. So or she lives up to those standards more responsible media treatment much of it was exposed beforehan d now I How would such a code affect of politics by affirming- that is, nam­ (in the ACSJC newsletter Ju stice th e institutional processes th at ing- the better journalists and media Trends and in an explanatory article encourage politicians to outlets. It might have been suggest­ by Warhurst in The Australian) that behave the way they do? ed putting the not inconsiderable most media commentators had media resources of the church into passed judgment on what the ACS­ M UCH COULD HAVE BEEN SAJD to the service of a new style (open JC had to say before they even had illuminate the causes of today's access, more informative) of politi­ completed copy of the paper on their political disenchantment-and to cal coverage. desks. add the moral weight of the ACSJC In the event, these kinds of ideas Politicians and Citizens was duly to remedies worth considering and were not even canvassed, ACSJC was launched on January 23 and rose debating. Take, for instance, party left licking its wounds, and Politi­ without a trace. What makes this all pre-selection practices. More often cians and Citizens was left to ga ther the more telling is the fact that than not these work to the detri- dust in church offices and on the 'integrity' in political life was one of ment of local branch democracy, of back shelves of parliamentary librar­ the main themes of the paper and new and imaginative political can­ ies. The whole enterprise broke the one of the main campaign slogans of didates, even of truly representative first rule of social justice advocacy: the subsequent Federal election cam­ ones. Is the gross under-representa­ if you've got nothing of consequence paign. The one was never raised in tion of women in both the major to say, don't open your mouth. • connection with the other. parties not a serious cause of disillu­ The style of the paper didn't help. sionment? Is it not also a worthy Chris McGillion edits the opinion Politician s and Citizens prefers gen­ subject for social justice comment? page of the Sydney Morning Herald. eralisations to specifics and cliches Or take the growing gap between to incisive comment. It is defensive 'politics' and 'administra tion'-two Politicians and Citizens: Roles and in approach and was not addressed sides of the process of governing. Responsibilities, by John Warhurst, to any particular audience-which Ideally the form er involves fashion­ is no. 2 7 in the Catholic Social Justice means it could be ignored by all of ing a collective will from a plethora Series. ISBN 1 86420 056 1 RRP $4.95. th em. As much of th e paper is of disconnected interests in order to Available from Catholic bookstores.

20 EUREKA STREET • MARC H 1996 WenTony Fitzgerald released that such questions will form the ship, not at political philosophers. the report of his commission of in­ context of political debate, and pur­ But Politicians and Citizens shares quiry into corruption in the Queens­ sues a more fundam ental problem : at least one assumption with the land police, he was criticised in gung­ what sort of people do we have to be communitarian critique of liberal­ ho sections of the m edia for not in order to reflect and act effectively ism: that the division between the having named enough names. Much on questions of this kind when they public spheres is at best a fluid one, of Fitzgerald's report was an analysis do arise1 for the sam e individuals are actors in of the culture of corruption that per­ The reason why some people will each. As readers of Marian meated public life in Queensland, be irritated by this sort of approach Wilkinson's biography of Graham with proposals for educating police is that there is a straightforward but, Richardson can attest, the and other public officials in ways they fear, nebulous answer to the lineaments of our private selves can that might eventually change the question I have just asked-we have be traced in both the style and the culture. This, insisted Fitzgerald's to be good people. And notoriously, substance of our public lives. earnest journalistic critics, was a in pluralist societies like Australia, At the heart of Politicians and worthy waste of time. What really there is no general agreement about Citizens is what Warhurst and the mattered was catching the bad guys what the good life might be. Liberal ACSJC publicists call a code of con­ and punishing them. democracy rests on the assumption duct for politicians. The term is an I suspect that John Warhurst's that visions of the good life are inex­ unfo rtunate one, evoking as it does Politicians and Citizens: Roles and tricably bound up with the private some Decalogue-like list of shalts Responsibilities may meet with sim- projects of individuals, as does liberal and shalt nots. Warhurst's 'code' is n1any young people, like Jason, arc alienated fron1 politics and fron1 the community. Some have little interest in enrolling to vote. A major task in the years leading up to the centenary of federation ought to be a restoration of con1munity belief in politics, especially among the young. The initiative for such a project needs to con1e fron1 both politicians and citizens, each holding respect for the other. Politicians have the honour and privilege of representing the people. Citizens have the honour and

ilar criticisms, at least among such politics-both the left-lean- more an examination-not a mere journalists as are in the habit of read­ ing and the right-leaning. list-of civic virtues, the qualities of ing discussion papers issued by the character necessary for effective lead­ Australian Catholic Social Justice BUT AS LIBERALISM'S communitari­ ership in a democracy. Is this, like Council. But if so, Warhurst should an critics- again, some on the left the proverbial commendation of feel heartened, for incomprehension and some on the right of the tradi­ motherhood, a catalogue of qualities of this kind neatly underscores the tional political spectrum-point out, that politicians can pay lip service to malaise that his paper seeks to diag­ it is difficult to characterise the kind and then act as they please? Those nose. of 'security and opportunity' that who may be inclined to dismiss The objectors I am imagining individuals are supposed to need Warhurst's code in this way should might complain that Politicians and without referring, at least implicitly, cast their mind back to Bert Citizens is insufficiently specific; to a shared vision of the good life. Newton' s interview with Paul that it contains too few recommen­ The individual of liberal theory, so Keating during the federal election dations about things that politicians communitarian jargon has it, is the campaign. Newton asked Keating and citizens might actually do, and product of a 'thin' account of human whether conspicuous personal far too much speculation about their agency; which amounts to saying wealth was a particular problem for self-image and how they acquired it. that this liberal individual is a blood­ a Labor leader (for all leaders of a Well, yes. This is not a discussion less abstraction, lacking many of the democracy, argues Warhurst). It was paper about the merits of, say, incor­ beliefs, motives and desires that one of the few times I have seen Paul porating a bill of rights in the consti­ make human agents recognisably Keating squirm. • tution, or the means by which polit­ human. ical parties might restore to their Warhurst wisely avoids being rank-and-file a sense of genuine drawn into the liberal communi tar­ Ray Cassin is a freelance writer and participation in the democratic ian debate. The ACSJC discussion a regular contributor to Eureka process. Warhurst takes for granted papers are aimed at a general reader- Street.

VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 21 SPORTING LIFE

PETER PIERCE A day at the races ATTHE KYNHON RAm, on the Hm •ftemoon chutneys-only meat was missing. It was at last dis­ of a summer that had seemed indefinitely postponed, covered under a tablecloth carpeted with flies. The it was a day for Young Thoroughbreds. Some were ham and roast beef were ceaselessly replenished. If horses. The rest crammed under a marquee and spread there was never a large queue for the tote, the food over the lawn opposite the furlong post, drawn by one and drink were hammered throughout the afternoon. of the more attractive promotions by which Mel­ All this to the accompaniment of strolling players who bourne racing clubs are trying, urgently, to revive at one point made a fine, presumably postmodern rural attendances. Marketing co-ordinator for the Kyneton joke by strumming 'Duelling Banjos', the theme song and District Racing Club, Sharni Officer, had secured of Deliverance. us the last couple of tickets. For $30 each, we were Leaving the marquee for the mounting yard, trav­ members for the day; had our own enclosure, elling past the Lucky Beam Bar, we saw Rhonda Rees bookmaker and tote; cold bring back her first winner, meats, salad, beer, wine and Trellini; one-time city jockey champagne (it nearly goes Danny Kavanagh trotting without saying-Carlton, around exposing the 'Kav' white, Great Western). sewn onto the rear of his Finding the track wasn't breech es; and the bearded meant to be easy. A sign to Arthur Robertson legged the south of the by-now-by­ aboard King's Feast for the passed town notified us of an Blazer Menswear Handicap of exit in one kilometre. After 1887m. It was the eleven­ ten (a country mile?) we re­ year-old gelding's 127th start. entered Kyneton from the He came to Kyneton after north, asked directions twice, running twelfth of sixteen at and eventually found one of 100/ 1 at Warrnambool last the prettiest courses in Victoria. Set in a bend of the time out. 'Others better', the Truth form guide tersely Campaspe River, Kyneton has a long stand of century­ advised. No matter. Following the unexplained old oaks and elms. They have raced here since 1866, scratching of the favorite Bickers Court, winner of after 'gentlemen desirous of forming a racing club' the Burrumbee and Gunbower Cups at his last two met at the Junction Hotel in town. Once an alterna­ outings, King's Feast came from the rear to win hard­ tive attraction, the go-carts have gone, but the meet­ held. The tote odds were better than 100/ 1. 'Youse ings of the Woodend Racing Club have been held at thought he couldn't win', the jockey exclaimed. He Kyneton for more than a decade, since the Woodend was right, but country racing is still much more fun course went as part of the rationalisation of country and less of a mug's game than pulling the handle of a racing. machine. Lunch was not yet on when we arrived, so we Back at the marquee, 200 young Thoroughbreds sampled the public facilities: a tourist booth were showing signs of distress. We stayed for the promoting the region; first-rate sausages and hamburg­ seventh race-a sprint for fillies and mares. I fancied ers for a dollar and no extra charge for sauce (take Russet Glory and asked for the 5/1 each way from the note, Flemington); old-fashioned civility from gate­ genial bookmaker, Cam McCutcheon. 'Well you 're keepers who welcomed us to the course; a spacious in front at the moment', he observed, letting me on saddling paddock filling with horses that will seldom even though the field had gone half way. Unfortunate­ see a city track again in earnest. John Hawkes had ly for the bookie, Russet Glory held that position. sent half a dozen horses up, and scored in the fourth On Kyneton Cup day (which is held on the when Talk Turkey, a proven city loser, fell in. There Wednesday after the Melbourne Cup and was once were winners for the stable at Rosehill and Sandown the racing holiday in the district) more than the town's too, where Darren Gauci brought both The Golden population of 4900 turn up. This Saturday the crowd Greek and Stalk with beautifully-timed runs from last was light, but they had been treated to excellent on the turn. hospitality, racing to delight the sardonic of heart, a In the first at Kyneton, the well-named Grobbe­ etting to please any eye, and the taste of a slowly laar (by Average Game) took a dive, but Baroda Star­ vanishing Australia, authentic in detail, not confected brought across from Kilmore by former jockey Len as another theme park. • Hope-won so well that a metropolitan outing beck­ ons. There were bread rolls in plenty, and fine Peter Pierce is Eureka Street's turf correspondent.

22 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 In Memoriam: Joseph Brodsky

Given the advent of trouble, you thought of snow­ so much barred and calloused water, so much friable, glazed vitality. Hatred, indulged untested, blocked veins with blood transformed to pomegranate blisters, and Thule reigned, thumb to heart.

Still, you are off, as the master said of another, at the dead of winter. Its frosted cobbles puncture darkness, the gape of its chilled yawn declines to welcome so outre a figure- exile, comedian, chider, estranger, maker. You outface ice as it brims in space.

Life, as you learned amidst croquettes or pig-swill, goes on crying itself up, and Death, everyone's faithful lover, emerges from night's crystalline void, with nothing in mind but nothing, a lifted fist melting to a talon, the years dripping away.

If, in some fluent limestone tract contrived for Wystan's sake you meet at last the brilliant riff-raff of your dreams-Dante, all scowl transformed to song, Marina nosing eternity's forest like a wolf, the other Joseph, a throttled goldfinch-

Sing for the rest of us, not in a chevronned parade of angels at canticle, but in your old perturbed, provocative fashion. 'Everything has its limits, including sorrow', you said; but stand up there, as once down here, to say you give us tongues, in God's name.

Peter Steele Nobel prize winning Russian poet and writer Joseph Brodsky died in January. He had been living in the US since his exile from the Soviet Union in 1972.

V OLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 23 By-passing the people

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24 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 Australians are plagued with elections in which ballot over desirable numbers of fire-fighters. they are obliged to participate: Commonwealth, State Voting on local issues keeps political agendas and local government. N onetheless we still seem to wider than parties' institutionalised agendas; m axim­ value the vote. In the 1986/87 National Social Science ises citizens' feeling that they are involved; lessens Survey, 48 per cent said that they disagreed that 'the apathy and alienation, and is a positive incentive for average citizen has considerable influence on politics', parliamentary representatives to rem ember they only 54 per cent did not believe that they had a great deal have a job if they can persuade people to vote for them. of influence on government decisions, and almost the By-elections-whether or not they make or break gov­ same number said that whatever interest politicians ernments-provide a chan ce to express political had in their opinions at election time, they rapidly sentiment, and keep the people's representatives sen­ lost touch once they were in offi ce. In the 1993 Aus­ sitive to the feeling of their electorate. They enable tralian Electoral Survey 72 per cent of the people sur­ minority parties and independents to test local feel­ veyed believed that public officials generally 'didn't ing on parochial issues. They may give independents care much about what people like us think'. parliam entary seats (extrem ely irritating to the party Yet an earlier Electoral Survey, in 1987, which machines) or, as in the Mundingburra by-election in asked respondents how they felt when they went to a Queensland, the power to decide who governs at all. polling booth to vote, found that only 6 per cent felt Jeff Kennett might very well proceed to change annoyed or that it was a waste of time, another 2.5 per both the franchise and the Victorian Constitution . All cent said that they voted out of a sense of duty (not that is required is a m ajority vote in both Houses of necessarily an obj ectionable one), and just 6 per cent the Parliament, both of w hich the Coalition only wanted to avoid a fine. N early half (48 per cent) completely dominates. Whatever academ ics, politi­ said they got ' a feeling of satisfaction from it'. Perhaps, ca l com mentators, columnists, his own party, the given the cynicism about politics, this is the sweet Opposition or interest groups might have to say about savour of revenge from the slighted. N onetheless, ten dem ocracy, and responsible government, a powerful years ago 77 per cent of actual and future voters (from Premier who is not genuinely at risk of losing that age 14 up) told the Electoral Commission that they power m ay achieve his desire through a Parliam ent thou ght that the vot e was the m ost which does not function as a fo rum for debate. important right a person has. All that rem ains is challenge through the courts. A statutory Constitution, such as Victoria's, is only w.;y DO WE VALUE THE VOTE? Elections are hardly an Act of Parliament, and can be changed by another a satisfactory way of m aking governments genuinely one. There is no statem ent of civil and political rights accountable. Once a government has clamped down and freedoms on which to rely. In theory, Mr Kennett on information, or shut down schools, or committed could sponsor the passage of laws which deprive blue­ future generations to vast expenditure on public eyed people, transsexuals or people who did not own infrastructure, or (in Victoria's case) sacked judges and property fro m the franchise; could abolish the State's altered the balance of power in the Constitution, Suprem e Court entirely, or establish local government reversal might be impossible. Local issues m ay be as a department of administrative services (which he drowned in general election them es. This is far less seem s to perceive it to be anyway: in early February so in by-elections, where a leaking hospital roof or he was reported to have told one of the few remain­ absence of cops on the beat becomes a politician's ing dem ocratically elected Councils which had not deepest concern. In a general election, if a particular decided to accept a large government 'loan ' that it government has an authoritarian or bullying style­ would be dismissed if it did not vote to accept the the Bj elke-Peterson m odel, for example-the m oney, and its conditions.) Only convention and the electorate m ay have become apathetic. In a by-elec­ possibility of an interventionist High Court-which tion, the voters have Daddy's attention, fo r a little. has already implied dem ocratic principles into our In som e societies there has been experimentation Federal Constitutional structure-stands between with more direct forms of participation than voting such will, and its expression. in general elections. In some US states and parts of How much do we value our vote? In his inaugu­ Europe there is provision for a lawmaking initiative, ral address Lincoln said that the country and its which lets people draft a law and, if they get enough institutions belong to its people, and that when they signatures for it, require it either to be put to the voters tired of its government they could exercise their directly, or indirectly, by being submitted to the constitutional right to amend it, or their revolution­ legislature. Citizen -initiat ed referenda are not ary right to dism ember or overthrow it. Years before, favoured in Australia (a Democrat proposal was de­ he remarked that no human being is good enough to feated on Party lines in 19 77, in the Commonwealth govern another without that other's consent. Mr Parliament) though some local government bodies Kennett and other managerialist politicians would do have tinkered with the idea. N ew Z ealand had a well to rem ember their origins, and be humbled. • fa rcical experience of a citizens' initiative in 1995 when they were asked to vote for an incomprehensible Moira Rayner is a lawyer and freelance journalist.

VOLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 25 THE. CHURCH

Into the ring

You don't become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibitlity , combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your job well and ends [with your] being branded as an enemy of society. -Vaclav Havel

I HA ve

26 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 to change the law that followed in the train of Church Anglican Church for 12 years. laws excluding 'women, children and imbeciles' from Public advocacy by women had the same effect being candidates for ordination. I remember looking as touching the hip-pocket nerve of the rich. Male across at the man who was the main Synod repre­ theologians moved to debate the problem of clerical­ sentative in our congrega tion and saying to myself ism while continuing to be priests themselves. 'One day I will be where you are and I will have to be Lawyers mouthed legal complexities about property better than you.' I remember shuddering at the and constitutions. Wom en whinnied at the micro­ thought of what he would think if he could read my phones of the synod about their support of male lead­ predatory thoughts. Seven years later I was to stand ership, and disowned as unseemly the antics of the in his very place in the Sydney Synod to present the dissidents. And in the diocesan committees that con­ committee report on women's ordination that he as trolled key decisions, a purge began of those not pre­ chairman of the committee should have presented. pared to toe the conservative line. It was not In our own limited way, the Movement for the uncommon for candidates for roles completely Ordination of Women (MOW) was to experience in unrelated to women's ministry to be rung up before those seven intervening years of lobbying, debating, synod elections and asked their views on the priest­ protesting, studying and praying, what Vaclav Havel ing of women. Openness, tolerance, and a respect for had learned as a dissident in occupied Czechoslova­ basic human rights quietly slipped out the kia. Poet, playwright and eventually President, he backdoor. found what he called 'a new model of behaviour' that is critical in any reform. A SA MISSIONARY DOCTOR IN AfRICA, I had witnessed the disabling effect of the domination by one class of When arguing with a centre of power, do not get side­ another in the hierarchy of missionaries over nation­ tracked into vague ideological debates about who is als. I had concluded that a vital part of the egalitarian right and who is wrong; fight for specific, concrete project of 'handing over to the nationals' was hand­ things, and be prepared to stick to your guns to the ing over the right to make the same mistakes as mis­ end. sionaries had made. Why talk of waiting for a renewed It's hard to take the initial stance and with it the ministry for women while still ordaining men to an wall of flak concentrated on such strategic borders. unrenewed ministry? It says more about the view of On the opening night of the 1983 Sydney Synod, we nailed our theses 'that a great wrong was being done in the Church' to the door of our own St Andrew's Dr Patricia Brennan was the founding President Cathedral in Sydney. We declared our intention to debate publicly the theological basis of women's equal of the Movement for the Ordination of Women calling, and to challenge the all-male priesthood. Every in the Anglican Church, launched in 1984 argument that could be mustered was brought to bear on the concrete proposal that the Anglican church in the Sydney Diocese. At the end of 1989, should ordain those of its women who were trained and fitted for ministry. she handed over the leadership of the national The first objection raised was that it was better to educate the local congregation first about women movement to Dr Janet Scarfe who saw it through and equality, and thus prepare the ground. The second was that it was wrong for women to agitate for the its difficult final days before the ordination right to be priests themselves- they should wait for others to do it, or for God to do it. Some said it was of women in 1992, stepping down herself in 1995. wrong to seek the exalted position of a priest. Shouldn't a Christian be a servant? Others agreed that women than the ideals of ministry. change was called for, but said that forming a visible No change to established tradition comes about movement within the Church was a hostile act that without great struggles by individuals. There was would divide the Church, and moreover we should substance to some of the objections, especially those wait for the Catholic Church to do it first. Still others about the nature of the ministry and the whole prob­ said that ordination of men was wrong anyway. lem of the priesthood sequestering power and privi­ We became increasingly convinced that to reverse lege. But I reached a point where I had no doubt that the legal exclusion of women from the priesthood was behind the order and the piety of holy orders lay the not only right in principle but necessary for us as same hierarchy of m en over women and children that Christians. Moreover, it was possible in the Anglican whispered obscenities and dealt ugly blows in the back Church because of its national autonomy and consti­ streets. As a doctor, I have seen the bodies broken tution. Real women candidates for the real priesthood, and used in subordination. I could no longer buy my renewed or unrenewed, was a legal possibility. There ticket to see the men run the show. For me the case had already been women priests in other parts of the the case was building towards the conclusion that it

VOLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 27 was a moral necessity for women to tackle the priest­ Father John W. O'Malley SJ in Sydney in September I reached a hood. 1994. He compared the motto of Harvard University, It was necessary because it was deemed right and which is 'Veritas', with the m otto of Jesuit schools: point where I was possible. The theological and legal impediments 'Veritatem facientes in caritate'- doing the truth in were no longer considered valid by an increasing love. had no doubt number of Anglicans. In 1974 the Doctrine Commis­ Those who find themselves in long-term relation­ that behind sion of the General Synod agreed by an overwhelm­ ships of dissidence have to keep reminding themselves ing majority that there were no theological objections that although they are cast out of the existing struc­ the order and to the ordination of women. Limitations were being tures and placed in a position of conflict with them, placed on women not by nature any longer, but by they remain intimately connected by their very the piety of carefully manufactured constraint and legal control. dissidence. It is a safer location than to stay silently The second reason was what I call the 'Oliver enmeshed in a system where you have to deny your holy orders Principle', that is, the core moral value of participat­ best religious impulses. ing in the decisions that control your destiny. 'More', Last month an MOW leader in the Armidale dio­ la y the same said Oliver, holding his soup bowl high, and the plan­ cese, a feminist and sociologist, took her own life in a et shifted slightly on its axis. Education, health, and state of profound depression. Her funeral service was hierarchy of politics cannot flourish until all receive. Greed lines taken- she would probably have concurred in this­ up to ask for more on the same queue as poverty. Thus by the bishop who had consistently opposed her men over it has been with ecclesiastical power. twelve-year campaign to see women as priests. In his The creation of an all-male priesthood has sermon, the bishop listed three things about her: that women and required the active exclusion of women from theo­ she continued in regular public worship, that she logical education for centuries. Where they were not expressed her convictions without destroying relation­ children that totally excluded, as in some religious orders or in ships, and that she showed great concern for the down­ places of privilege, they were still under male con­ trodden. One couldn't help but wonder at what price whispered trol. Theological formulation surrounding the female she had held them all together. body reflected the ignorance of men about women's While it remains impossible for a woman to obscenities experiences. The fact that the Church didn't manage preach and teach authoritatively, or preside at the and dealt ugly to suppress completely the religious imagination of eucharist, for whatever reason, the church continues women does not excuse the tyranny of to valorise the male and denigrate the active female, blows in the thwarting growth in a healthy organism. maintaining the ancient belief that women are more fallen. There is nothing from which the male is back streets. 0 RDI N ATION WAS N ECESSARY because every form of excluded because he is male. We can forget the equal­ exclusion is connected to every other form of but-different argument. Motherhood is a female As a doctor, I exclusion. The exclusion of women from decision­ biological function, not a state of grace that the chu­ making and theological formulation comes from the rch dreamt up as the female equivalent to the priest­ have seen the same stable as the violation of women's bodies that hood. Indeed in the Catholic church, the traditional continues to this hour in domestic violence and sexual requirement for celibacy for both priests and nuns bodies broken assault. They are both based on doctrines that render freed women from motherhood- but such freedom women the objects of male control, and contribute to never led to the priesthood. and used in cripplingly low self-esteem. Such low self-esteem en­ Once the priesthood is possible for women, at countered in the ranks of Anglican women guaran­ least one factor that has fuelled the notion of wom­ subordination. teed they would never enter a struggle for autonomy, en's nature as inferior is resolved. What remains then let alone conceive of themselves as achieving it. is real choice to be or not to be ordained; a choice not I could no It was necessary because prior to the existence about the nature of women but about the meaning of of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, the ordination itself. longer buy my woman question was the domain of a limited elite And for me, behind all the debates, law courts who were chosen predominantly from white male and clerical collars is the certain hope that our spirit­ ticket to see clerical ranks. Even those men who were sympathet­ ual dreams are more than power struggles. That how­ ic to change were forced to wheel and deal in the pri­ ever long it takes the church to set the places, the the men run vacy of doctrine commissions, or through the eucharist increasingly will be a 'feast as mends in the show. obfuscating legal process of synods. The Movement length'. flushed the debate out of the back room. Come my light, my feast, my strength, Such a light The debate raged around what was 'true'; some­ as shows a feast, Such a feast as mends in length, Such where along the line, the way people actually treated a strength as makes his guest. each other was overlooked. By the time women were -George Herbert 1593-1633 • being ordained in dioceses other than Sydney, the debate in Sydney had calcified into a moratorium and Patricia Brennan is a physician and currently a Procter an obsession with 'truth' that kept women out. I was Fellow at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge reminded of this when reading an address given by Massachussets.

28 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 THE CHURCH

JANET S CARFE Necessary, but not sufficient E""

V OLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 29 We have been included, I thought. We have been with the authority and authenticity of our own expe­ Archbishop acknowledged as part of the countless host. We are at riences. We are rarely cited, whether it be as authori­ last visible. When the opening procession finally ties, illustrations or exemplars. We are more likely to George of passed by, I was quite ready to go home, rejoicing. be spoken for by men or passed over for comment It was a trifle premature. than to be allowed room to speak for ourselves. Adelaide In 1986 I was intent on respectability. I clearly The ministries of both ordained women and lay preached on remember wishing the MOW Freedom Riders had put women are concentrated in personal pastoral situa­ their bus through a car wash. By November 1992, tions, the domestic or private realm. The public world 'Change and when the General Synod of which I was a member of consultation and policy-making, teaching in the finally agreed on a formula that allowed dioceses to forum of ordinations, consecrations, synods and decay all ordain women as priests, I could find only shame in theological colleges continues to belong almost en­ the processes. With everything in me, I yearned for a tirely to men. around I see', statement from the Synod president, Archbishop Keith Rayner, apologising on behalf of the Anglican and reverted Church for the shameful way in which the Church had gone about this matter, apologising to women to exclusive called to priesthood, to all women in the Church and to all women in the community at large. But publicly language in at least he held up the process as a model of decision-making for society at large. the liturgy .. . M O RE OFTEN T HAN NOT THE ORDINATIONS I attend­ In Bendigo eel in December 1992 (six in five cities in three weeks) suggested that even strong supporters of women's or­ Bishop Wright dination saw the changes to the priesthood as cos­ metic. Archbishop George of Adelaide preached on expressed his 'Change and decay all around I see', and reverted to exclusive language in the liturgy, while at the cele­ concern that brations senior clergymen delightedly welcomed the flower petals women with genuflections. In Bendigo Bishop Wright expressed his concern that flower petals would stain would stain the sanctuary carpet. In the Canberra-Goulburn ordination, the women disappeared into a rugby serum And it should not be forgotten that women are the sanctuary of male priests, words were said and they emerged as not always visible. When the new Bishop of Bendigo priests. In Melbourne, where there were three ordi­ was consecrated recently in St Paul's Cathedral, Mel­ carpet. nation ceremonies because of the numbers of women bourne, there was only one woman among the thirty­ and where the applause was long and loud, many four bishops, lawyers, clergy and officials in the formal clergymen expressed to me their delight that the task photograph. was now complete. Women in the episcopate is on the agenda in the It had barely begun. national Anglican Church and in the Diocese of The ordination of women as deacons in 1986 and Melbourne. That debate will reveal a great deal about priests in 1992 was a watershed in the life of the the extent and perceived nature of women's authority. Anglican Church. It has been an absolutely necessary Ordination is certainly not sufficient to give step for its integrity, and for its credibility in the com­ women access to the positions and salaries clergymen munity. But the ordination of women as deacons, expect. The injustice and inequity of ordained wom­ priests and bishops is by no means sufficient for the en's working conditions demonstrate that very clear­ transformation of the church so that women are fully ly. The majority of ordained women are and equal participants in every aspect of its life, and non-s tipendiary-unpaid-though they may receive so that it speaks and acts honestly and justly in the some car and telephone expenses. This economic community at large on matters affecting women­ exploitation is in spite of theological qualifications violence, sexual abuse, poverty, for example. and extensive professional experiences readily trans­ MOW has never seen the ordination of women ferable to parish and other ministries. as an end in itself, but as a crucial element in a reform A few say their unpaid status suits their finan­ agenda that encompassed inclusive language, femi­ cial circumstance, but others wish it were otherwise, nist theology, the participation of women in the and some desperately so. Many ordained women tell churches' decision-making processes and theological of the financial generosity of their husbands. Some debates. have jobs outside the church in addition to their parish But while increasingly visible, women remain responsibilities on Sundays, Saturdays and week largely inaudible. We are rarely heard to be speaking nights; they also have equal or primary care for their

30 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 families. In the Brisbane Diocese of Archbishop Peter challenges, particularly to the via media rationales Hollingworth, in 1995 ordained women calculated of Anglican support for the ordination of women. Has that 80 per cent of their number are non-stipendiary the Anglican Church simply allowed women into the compared with 20 per cent of their male colleagues. existing priesthood as a matter of equality? Or is the In Sydney, women have far greater difficulty than men Anglican Church committed to a renewal of priest­ in even securing interviews for parish positions. In hood, prepared not just to tolerate but seriously en­ Adelaide, raising the possibility of payment, even in courage unfamiliar images of priesthood and diverse jest, can incur anger, indignation or scorn. forms of preparation for it? The economic inequities between women and In her visit to Australia last June, feminist theo­ men will likely become even more firmly entrenched. logian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza was asked many Fewer and fewer Anglican parishes can support two times if she supported the ordination of women in paid clergy, a rector (commonly male) and assistant the Catholic Church. She replied with another ques­ (commonly female). Econo­ tion: Is the ordination of women good for women, im­ mising by dispensing with plying strongly that the answer was 'no'. For me the the assistant may further dis­ answer is 'yes'. It is very good for some ordained wom­ advantage women. Moreo­ en, whose ministries, confidence, talents, health, and ver, a strong tradition of capacity to empower others have blossomed. It is even voluntary ministry by better for the church, whose professional ministry is ordained women is already being infused with women's perspectives, life experi­ established on the strong ences, expertise, and awareness of previously undis­ tradition of voluntary minis­ cussed topics. try by lay women. It may There is no doubt that the Anglican Church's already be strong enough to experiences of the ordination of women are very sig­ prompt church leaders to nificant to the Catholic Church at all levels- bishops, preselect financially feminist groups, and people who encounter ordained independent women candi­ women at ecumenical services, funerals and weddings. dates for ordination. Similarly Catholic feminist liturgies and writings, for Does an independent example by Miriam Therese Winter, may play a small financial status give ordained but significant part in freeing Anglican liturgy and women the opportunity to be theology from their over-powering male bias. more prophetic about the It is ten years since a small number of women In 1986 I was church and its role in the were first ordained in the Anglican Church of Aus­ community? This argument is the darling of bishops tralia. Some 300 have been ordained or licensed in intent on endeavouring to justify non-stipendiary ministry for the past decade, half of them priests and the other others. In practice, non-stipendiary women are less half deacons by either choice or circumstance. The respectability. likely to be prophetic as they hope against hope to be individuality of their calls is striking. Relatively few found a paid position before they retire. were aware of the debate about the ordination of wom­ I clearly 'Watch out,' said a non-church-going colleague en in the wider church, fewer still openly participat­ in January 1992 amid the court case against women's ed in it. Most took a highly personal, particular path remember ordination. 'You want to be careful that these wom­ to ordination. They met a few like-minded women en don't end up with just a title and a sash.' The beauty on the way, but almost all their guides, cartographers, wishing the queens of the church- that was precisely and experts were men. MOW what we did not intend. They are the first women in a profession which had previously excluded them. They are without Freedom L EORD INATION OF WOMEN in the Anglican Church doubt pioneers. But pioneers domesticate the land, has been an essential step in encouraging Catholic clearing existing natural growth, building fences, and Riders had feminists to work for the renewal of priestly minis­ planting familiar food crops. try in the Catholic Church. Friendships and mutual The Anglican Church needs prophets­ put their bus support have been very strong between prophetic dissidents-as well as pioneers. It must listen to the women in the two traditions. However for some Cath­ prophetic voices that insist that the ordination of through a olic feminists, the Anglican experience has not been women, while necessary, is by no means sufficient in a sufficiently radical challenge to the prevailing male itself to eliminate the sexism and clericalism that car wash. theologies of priesthood or to the male and hierarchi­ sa turate its every corner. • cal structures of the Church. They point to ordained Anglican women in black clerical dress with high Jane t Scarfe is an historian. She was National collars, authoritarian attitudes, and close identifica­ President of the Movem ent for the Ordination of tion with clergymen as proof that women have been Women from 1989 to 1995. She is currently writing a co- opted and compromised through ordination. Their group biography of women ordained in the Anglican acutely sensitive anti-clerical antennae present many Church of Australia.

VoLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 31 THE CHURCH: 2

PAUL COLLINS Coming clean

T,cmcv ""' "'" '" TH' "'ws" lot !"ely, with fined exclusively in terms of sexuality and, like eve­ official apologies from church leaders for the crimes ryone else, I would not want to be judged by my worst committed by priests and religious. Then there was behaviour. In those circumstances who of us would ' the 1995 English film Priest. While the movie stirred 'scape whipping'? some controversy in the US among conservative But I do feel that Sipe's exclusive focus on sexu­ Catholics, here it seems to have escaped a great deal ality ends up distorting an even more complex issue. of criticism. While it was hardly complimentary to Nowhere does he mention the massive process of either the hierarchy or the clergy, it at least placed its change and adjustment that priests have had to face priestly protagonists in unromantic and real situations over the last thirty years. In fact, the priests of the and showed them engaged in aspects of genuine min­ last three decades have had to face more complex sit­ istry. It was hardly Bing Crosby and Going My Way. uations, both institutionally and ministerially, than Actually, Priest helped me clarify why the books probably any other generation of clergy before them. of A.W. Richard Sipe (A Secret World. Sexuality and Not the least of the issues that they have had to con­ the Search for Celibacy, New York: Brunner/Mazel, front is voluntary disempowerment as they hand over 1990 and Sex, Priests and Power. Anatomy of a Crisis, more of their former role to the laity. London: Cassell, 1995) had really annoyed me. Sipe None of this historical context is to be found in shows in both books that Sipe. His focus is on the secret world of clerical sexu­ there is a widespread disre­ ality. He is not the only one to write about this. Re­ gard of obligatory celibacy cently, there has been a spate of books, some serious, throughout the contemporary some merely 'kiss and tell' narratives, about relation­ church. He claims that, at ships between priests and women. most, only about 40 per cent Having said this, there is nonetheless a sense in of clergy in the US are living which Sipe is right. There is a connection between celibate lives. The same is secret sexuality and power, even though most priests , probably true of Australia. It do not experience themselves as powerful. In fact, is the secrecy that Sipe em­ many of them feel powerless and frustrated, caught phasises particularly: 'Expo­ as they often are between the expectations of the laity sure has begun to reveal how and the immobility of the established church. secrecy and power operate However, it is clear that some priests have seri­ across the board within the ously abused their position of influence and trust. It celibate/sexual system' (Sex, is becoming almost commonplace now to open the Priests and Power). Because newspaper to read of another priest found guilty in of the intimate nexus be­ the courts of criminal sexual misbehaviour. What is tween secrecy and power, happening in Australia can be seen across the world. Sipe argues that once secrecy The accusations reach to the top of the hierarchy and is broken clerical power will include an Austrian cardinal and an Irish bishop, but be challenged. it is largely in common law countries, such as the Priest helped me sort out my ambivalence about US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia, where culprits Sipe's work. Much that he says is true, especially the are being brought to book. connection between celibacy, clericalism and power, The widespread nature of this scandal indicates and the way in which this is all maintained by secrecy that its causes are pervasive and deeply embedded in and compromise. Perhaps my ambivalence is because the institutional church. Its repercussions affect not I am a priest and cannot face the hard truth about just bishops and religious superiors, but the whole myself and the clerical system. But my life is not de- Catholic community. The blame for this cannot be

32 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 shifted to the media, or to anyone outside the church. only the first. Last year the Prime Minister of Ireland It is a problem embedded at the core of its institu­ was forced to resign over the attempted coverup of tional and clerical structure. the extradition to Northern Ireland of Brendan Many priests justifiably feel that they are the 'fall Smythe, a priest found guilty of abusing children. At guys' who have to bear the understandable but often present, public discussion in the Irish media is dom­ undifferentiated anger of laity, not only over sexual inated by clerical scandals. issues, but also over the way in which renewal of the As a result, Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns church has stalled. As the most accessible Catholic and at least four other bishops have modestly sug­ authority figures, priests feel that their good names, gested that obligatory celibacy is an issue that needs personal relationships and ministries are unfairly on to be openly discussed for the good of the church. For the line. their pains these bishops were quickly assured that Certainly, many of the present bishops and this issue was 'beyond discussion'. Comiskey was church leaders are not responsible for what went on summoned to Rome and carpeted, and also publicly in the past and a number of them have tried very hard chastised by the Irish Primate, Cardinal Cabal Daly. to respond honestly and adequately to a situation that The bishops probably would have got into less trou­ has not been experienced before in the church. But ble if they had openly questioned the existence of God! most of them seem paralysed and the public scandal Bishop Comiskey has had the courage to stick is greeted with silence, no doubt on good legal advice. by his guns. In Australia, also, a couple of the bishops There is clearly a real conflict for church leadership have spoken honestly about the problem. Bishop Brian between this legal advice and the obligation of pasto­ Heenan of Rockhampton, for instance, has said that ral honesty. These two demands clearly need to be priests 'would really want the option of celibacy to weighed up carefully. be offered, because they have seen some of their very But genuine pastoral leadership demands that best brother priests ... go off into m arriage. Most eventually the truth will have to be told. Any experi­ would say we want these priests to come back' (The enced journalist will always tell you 'Tell the truth, Tablet, 15 July 1995). Bishop Patrick Power, Auxiliary and then you'll never get caught'. It reminds us of of Canberra-Goulburn, was courageous enough to Jesus words 'the truth will make you free'. discuss celibacy on Sixty Minutes. The danger is that the church's leadership is At times I feel sorry for the bishops, caught as actually divorced from a realistic comprehension of they are between the apocalyptic agenda of the pope, the perception the wider community has of the and their responsibility to the victims of abuse, the church, and specifically of the clergy, that comes as a local church and the community. But som e of them result of these scandals. Most people outside the lose my sympathy when, looking behind their backs church are genuinely shocked. In the media the repu­ to Rome, they publicly 'discipline' a theologian, or tation of the Catholic Church is being subsumed to som eone who says som ething not in accordance with the problem of sexual abuse. Clerical abuse of chil­ the prevailing Roman line. The church has cosseted dren is not just a post-Vatican II phenomenon. It the child molesters for years, but when a creative obviously reaches back for centuries. People are person tries to relate belief to culture, which is the asking: what has been going on among priests all these task of theology, the paraphernalia of ecclesiastical years? This is compounded by the wide­ discipline fa lls upon them. spread non-observance of celibacy. But all of this is a symptom of something deeper. The crisis of obligatory celibacy and clericalism points INMY VIEW THE TIME HAS COME for us to stop kidding beyond itself, for both are key elements in the insti­ ourselves about the so-called 'witness value' of cleri­ tutional structure of the church. It indicates that at cal celibacy and the priestly life-style. At best, it is the heart of the hierarchical and clerical lifestyle there perceived by the wider community as a witness to is a pervasive malaise which is slowly becoming more nothing; at worst, it is seen as a symptom of sexual obvious. The issue is not one of individual priests, dysfunction. Married clergy and the ordination of but of an increasingly dysfunctional institution which women might not be the solution to every problem, serves neither the needs of those within it, nor the but an honest and public appraisal of these issues needs of the ministry. would at least m ove the discussion on from the Abusive priests are actually a symptom of the present impasse. disease at the centre of clericalism. One is reminded The real problem lies not so much with the local of Hamlet where the imagery of disease and rotten­ bishops and church leaders, who are struggling to deal ness points beyond itself to the secret corruption at with these issues. The real problem is the attitude of the core of the state. To understand how this is a Rom e. For example: in Ireland over the past few symptom of som ething deeper in the hierarchical months the Alice in Wonderland attitude to celibacy structure, we need to examine clericalism in the light on the part of the Vatican has been publicly mani­ of recent research into dysfunctional and addictive fested. Ireland has been shocked by a series of clerical fa milies. This can help us understand what is hap­ scandals of which the Bishop Eamon Casey case was pening to the church.

VoLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 33 The present-day clerical structure of the Catho­ II church, but that his views have distinct overtones lic church can be compared to a problematic a11d dys­ of nineteenth century traditionalism and the extreme functional family. In this comparison the addictive ultramontanism of writers like Jo seph de Maistre. father sets up a pattern of control and abuse. In order What is the connection between the papal agen­ to survive, the rest of the family collude in this and da, the increasing clysfunctionality of institutional try to appease and placate him by turning inward to Catholicism and problema tic families? Firstly, it is protect the family's reputation. T he dominant abuser clear that the Pope is willing to force his personal determines everything that the family will do and agenda on the church, to make it normative for all think; loyalty to him becomes the test of family mem­ loyal Catholics. Any dissenters, especially those who bership. In this process everyone becomes co-depend­ are perceived as having an important role in the ent in the addiction and thus the system continues. church, are expelled and, at times, destroyed. An ex­ The only way to break this pattern is for someone ample of this is the scandalous treatment of the French in the family to have the courage to recognise what is Dominican, Jacques Pohier, but there are many happening, name the reality and break out. This can better-known theologians, such as Charles Curran, give courage to others to follow the same path. But it who have been driven out of the Catholic system, or can release terrible anger, all types of accusations, forced to teach in secular and Protestant universities. expulsion from the family and attempts at Bishops are not exempt from this vindictiveness, as revenge-not an easy path to take. Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle and, more recently, the French Bishop Jacques Gaillot have L ERE IS, OF COURSE, no exact comparison between discovered. clericalism and the dysfunctional family, but there This threat of expulsion and punishment goe are suggestive parallels and connections. In order to right through the system. Local hierarchies and upe­ tease these out I want to begin with something riors of religious orders are expected to toe the line apparently unconnected-the ecclesiastical priorities and 'deal' with critics and dissenters. They might that have emerged during the Wojtyla papacy. resist for some time, but they normally give in 'for Pope John Paul II is the most powerful pope in the greater good' of the family. What is really encour­ church history, largely because of modern communi­ aged is external conformity. It does not matter what cations and his demonstrated personal ability to you think personally, or say in private. As long as you project his power and priorities throughout the never confront problems publicly. church. Over the last few years, as Edward Schille­ But there is a highly critical underground. Any­ beeckx pointed out recently, the Pope has increasingly one who knows priests knows what they say to each identified his personal theological agenda with the other about the Pope, their superiors and the system established teaching of the church. in which they work. Most of them feel powerless to In this context it is significant that he has con- change anything. But no matter what they say in istently highlighted the importance of the sexual and private, they are rarely willing to speak out when giv­ reproductive issues linked to Humanae vitae and con­ en the opportunity. The malaise has pervaded the traception. He clearly sees Humanae vitae as infalli­ whole clerical system. And because it is pervasive, it ble. But in the process of emphasising this he has is hardly ever noticed. seemingly distorted the traditional theological prior­ Abusive families reflect this type of a dysfunc­ ity given by the church to questions about God, the tional system. Abuse of children is not about sexual­ eli vinity and humanity of Christ, the role of the Holy ity, but about power. It is the way used by an Spirit and the living of a faith commitment. inadequate person to assert power over a physically Also, his apparent conflation of the ordinary and weaker person. The behaviour of the priest abusers the infallible magisterium, clearly distinguished at points straight to the abusiveness inherent in the sys­ Vatican Council I (1869-1870), is very worrying. He tem. Richard Sipe argues that control of sexuality has has made issues like loyalty to Humanae vitae and historically been used by the church as a form of power support of obligatory celibacy litmus tests of genuine over people, especially women. Catholicism. This is a call to close ranks and 'pro­ This is not to say that most priest are motivat­ tect' clericalism. Women are totally excluded from ed by a lust for power. In fact, the contrary is true. the process. Even the most healthy priests feel powerless in the The Pope's patronage of the so-called 'new reli­ face of the hierarchical institution that employs them. gious movem ents' (Opus Dei, Focolare and the They feel they cannot change the system and are N eo-Catechu min ate), his seeming! y apocalyptic forced to make constant compromises to remain with­ vision of the coming millennium and his patronage in it and to continue the ministry to which they have of the Fatima apparitions indicate an apparent lack of given their lives. A considerable number feel trapped connection with the mainstream of the Catholic in the only lifestyle that they know. Some think them­ tradition of theology and ministry. The Brazilian theo­ selves unqualified for anything else. logian, Jose Comblin, has perceptively pointed out Is there a way out? Yes, there is, but it is going to that John Paul is not trying to restore the pre-Vatican take a lot of courage on the part of the laypeopl e,

34 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 priests and bishops who make the first moves. To step tradition and a free media. No wonder Pope Gregory outside and to leave an abusive situation and to name XVI in the encyclical Mirari vas (1832) attacked 'that it requires a clarity of mind, a stubborn determina­ deleterious liberty, which can never be execrated and tion as well as considerable tolerance, charity and detested sufficiently, of printing and publishing writ­ understanding. Many priests who have left the cleri­ ings of every kind'. cal ministry and married have already done this. They Fortunately, we live in a different kind of society now exert pressure from the perspective of the wider where a free media is a protective shield against the church. arbitrary use of power, both political and ecclesiasti­ But this confrontation is also going to have to be cal, and is a potent instrument in flushing out evil carried out from within the institution. The Chicago and illegal activities. priest, John Lynch, is quoted by Tim Unsworth in his Already many laypeople, priests and bishops have The Last Priests of America giving an example of what freed themselves from chronic dependence on narcis­ I mean: sistic clericalism. At the level of the ordinary church the people upon whom the real renewal will be built In 1990 some African, Asian and Canadian bishops have already formed a new attitude to their faith. The at the Synod [in Romel on the priesthood asked the answer is not to leave Vatican to do away with mandatory celibacy for the the church, but to hang sake of the church. They went hat in hand, respect­ on in order to move it in fully, and were told in advance that the topic could a direction that is genu­ not be discussed. My scenario is that they will soon inely and characteristi­ go back and they'll leave their hats at home. They'll cally Christian. still be refused, of course. But they'll come back and But we should not ask again. Then a year will come, soon, when they fool ourselves that this won't come back at all. They'll simply change the will be easy. I agree with rules for the sake of the church ... They will decide to the diagnosis of the be loyal to Jesus even though it means losing their future outlined by heads. Morris West in his 1994 My comment would be that they probably won't Veech Lecture of (Eure­ 'lose their heads'. lw Street, August 1994). They will find that the hierarchical church is He says that 'under the really a paper tiger. I find this all rather ironic because present pontificate .. . I knew a French missionary bishop in the Pacific who the schism of indiffer­ talked openly in the mid-l970s about ordaining the ence will spread'. married catechists upon whom the church in his coun­ On the one hand try was built and depended. He proposed ordaining rigorist groups will emerge that are 'louder and more them just before he retired! Sadly, out of respect to emphatic in their professions of allegiance to the an­ his successor, nothing came of it. cient ways of the church by which it seems that many The challenge that faces us today is the redis­ understand only what happened after the Council of covery of the real nature of priestly and ministerial Trent'. On the other hand we will see the growth of leadership in the Catholic church. In the process of charismatic prayer groups. doing this we will have to jettison destructive and But the deep hurt and division within the church dysfunctional clericalism and re-discover the reality will remain within the post-Vatican n generation, who that celibacy is a charism, a gift, given to a few . Its will sec the fading of the hopes they had invested in connection with ordination must be the updating and renewal of the church. They will decisively broken. continue their tillage ... but some of the heart will have gone from them ... Meantime by the mere fact of ALSO NEED TO REMEMBER that this present papacy W shortage of vocations the faithful will be distanced will not last for ever. Particular papal agendas tend to still further from the ministry of the word and of the be buried with the popes who invented them. At the sacrament. same time we forget that such a large and traditional institution as the Catholic church i not changed in a West's picture is not optimistic, but it is realis­ decade, or even in a lifetime. But when the decisive tic. However, it must always be contextualised by the move away from the old model come , it will proba­ hope that is at the core of our faith. And this hope bly come suddenly and swiftly. But that will only will only be realised if Catholics are loyal to the truth happen if those of us upon whom the responsibility that will eventually set us free. • for the change rests are faithful to the process of hand­ ing on the tradition that we have received. Paul Collins MSC is a priest, writer and broadcaster Information is a key clement in the process. The and the author of God's Earth. Religion as if Matter great advantage that we have today is a democratic Really Mattered (1995).

V oLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 35 EXCURSION

HUGH LUNN Brisbanal

W N I RCTV'"'" TO ""'"'"' '" I 971 mm seveN YUM' wRmNG omsw, nothing much h•d changed. Stagnant cows stood in the paddocks next to the aerodrome; concrete air-raid shelters and horse troughs marked 'the shops'. The neo-classical City Hall stood out against a green trop­ ical horizon, a pure blue sky, and anything Red was yet an enemy. This was before clothes came with words on them. Before community organisations devel­ oped a desperate need for a logo, a sponsor, a slogan ... and a government building. A time when Australia was, like the past, someplace else. We still believed China was run by a group of po- litical refugees inhabiting an island. That we ourselves were residing far from Eu and east of Britain in 'The Far East'. In 1971, Australia hadn't even absorbed what the rest of the world had known for three years: that the Vietnam War was long and lost, and long lost. In this time before native gardens, Qantas hadn't yet recognised the State of its birth: so the only way home from overseas was by overflying Queensland for Sydney or Melbourne. Like going to London via Iceland.

0 N ARRIVAL I SYD NEY, tO my surprise newspa­ pers still called Vietnam 'the Winnable War'. But that was my second surprise. The first was when two Cus­ toms men in shorts and long white socks looked m e up and down: 'Any porno?' 'Well you really picked me, didn't you?' I said, 'Not Any extm alcohol! Not Any gold! Not Any plants! Or Any pork sausages!' I knew that lots of things were banned in Australia: like roulette wheels, and that roulette wheel of life, homosexuality. Plus fortune-telling. And hundreds of books like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita and Kama Sutra and Naked Lunch. You could easily tell the books banned at home: they were all the ones you could buy in Paris. The book I was carrying was The Human Species by an Oxford University professor of biol­ ogy. I bought it after reading The Naked Ape. The Customs men took my book and, after a careful search, found a photo of a nude woman. I quickly read out the professor's scientific explanation for the photo on the opposite page. 'Say, that's pretty heavy stuff,' said a Customs man who handed it back.

36 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 It was going to get worse in Queensland. The Force was still with us. Queensland Police had not changed their title to Police Service. They were till rigorously enforcing laws against crim i­ nals who defam ed Princes, let African wom en dancers perform topless, read tea leaves, collected Pla yboy magazine. It was, in short, the sort of place back then wh ere you didn't really oughta step out of line. Unless you were a uni student. In 1971 not everyone went to university, so there was just one: the University of Queensland. And only the well-off or the brilliant went fulltim e. I had pent five years trying to finish a degree at night in the early 1960's when male students wore shoes, trousers, and a white shirt and tie. But when I returned just seven years later, U of Q students wore thongs or sandals, had long hair, and dressed like hippies. While we had learned our lecture notes off by heart in order to pass, they dared to m arch through the streets against the dem ocratically-elected minority-ruled oxym oronic state government. These thoughts wafted like cigarette smoke through my mind in January as I paid $5 to park at Brisbane's latest concrete air raid shelter: the South Bank Cultural Centre. Strange that the Museum and the Art Gallery should be built on the debris and the clan m emories of the Crem orne Theatre and the Blue Moor Roller Skating Rink- both vividly important in my 1950s' ~ childhood .

.1. HAT'S WHAT I WAS SUPPOS ED T O BE HERE FOR. To rem ember Brisbane. To see the Queensland Art Gallery's exhibition titled: A Time Rem embered: Art in Brisbane 1950 to 1975. Inside the magnificent watery Gallery interior, a sign listed, of course, the sponsors: a Queens­ land bank, a Canadian-owned Australian TV network, and a radio station that throughout the period in question was Brisbane-owned. By the Labor Party. But alas, local no longer. The Exhibition brochure was annoying. The usual m yth about the 'political conservatism ' of Brisbane com pared with other Australian cities. Brisbane vo tes have always counted less, but, in fact, the city has a long history of voting ALP. And the brochures's reference to the circle of artists in Brisbane being 'more insular': much m ore likely that they were m arginalised and ignored. Sydney is so parochial. Is it true that the guards at the tick gates at Tweed Heads confiscated paintings from Queens­ land cars as well as fruit? I didn't really get a sen e of Brisbane rem em ­ bered fro m the paintings on display. John Rigby's Queens Street 1959 could have been Hong Kong 1964. Andrew Sibley's City of Brisbane 1961 to m e could h ave been fro m the Mediterranean : despite the dom ed copper roof of the City Hall. His At the Show was very evocative of the Ekka, but only if you knew what 'the Show' was. Gordon Shep­ herdson's few brushstrokes brilliantly capturing a nude wom an ( 1972) could, of course, have com e fr om else­ where. Portraits by Betty Churcher and Sam Fullbrook, and colourful abstracts by Roy Churcher, could have been from anywhere. For me, what m ade them especially Brisbane was that, during this time rem embered, I once had aft ernoon tea with the Churchers at their hom e in Indooroopilly. Plus dinner one night with Sam Full brook sans bow tie at Auchenflower. Fullbrook's Norman Behan 1966 was so outstanding I went to another part of the Gallery to see his connection with Matthew Flinders: his positive purple portrait of Ernestine Hill. Maybe this is what gives art its sense of place: the comforting knowledge that great art is not just done someplace else. But can be, and is, done by the bloody people down the road. •

Hugh Lunn's most recent book is Th e Over the Top with Jim Album .

V OLUME 6 N UMB ER 2 • EUREKA STREET 37 R EVIEW ESSAY

PETER STEELE Leaning towards the lyrical

The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Seamus Heaney, Faber & Fa ber, Great Britain, 1995. ISBN 0 571 17562 7 RRP $35 .00 On the Laws of the Poetic Art, Anthony Hecht, Princeton University Press, USA & Great Britain, 1995. ISBN 0 691 04363 9 RRP $59.95

I T .sA COMMONecAC' THAT wmN eom wdte at large Yet only for twenty minutes or so today, about their art they are likely to be writing autobiog­ On a summer afternoon, raphy. Through their minds, as they speculate and Does the splendid lancet reach to them, or sink formulate, swim memories of making-of a phrase, To these dim bottoms, making its chancy way, of a verbal cadence, of the honed and polished final As thro ugh the barrier reef of some lagoon thing. Anthony Hecht and Seamus Heaney, poets of In sea-green darkness, by a wavering chink, uncommon reflectiveness and intelligence, take this for granted, and both turn the more-or-less inevitable Down, neatly probing like an accurate paw to highly distinctive advantage. For all that Hecht's Or a notched and beveled key, On the Laws of the Poetic Art and Heaney's The Through the huge cave-roof of giant oak and pine. Redress of Poetry join the company of earlier celebra­ And the heart goes numb in a tide of fea r and awe tions of poetry, the air of each is that of som eone who For those we cherish, their hopes, their frailty, brings to the venture the fr eshened sensibility and Their shadowy fa te's unfathomable design. pungency of intellect which one is accustomed to find in their poetry. A natural avenue into these books, then, is via And then, Heaney's 'The Pitchfork': a poem by each. First, Hecht's 'A Cast of Light' (at a Father's Day picnic): Of all implem ents, the pitchfork was the one A maple bough of web-foot, golden greens, That ca me near to an imagined perfection: Found by an angled shaft When he tightened hi raised hand and aimed with it, Of late sunlight, disposed wi thin that shed It fe lt like a javelin, accurate and light. Radia nce, with brilliant, hoisted baldachins, Pup tents and canopies by some undcrdraft So whether he played the warrior or the athlete Flung up to scattered perches overhead, Or worked in earn est in the chaff and sweat, He loved its grain of tapering, dark-flecked ash These da ubs of sourball lime, at floating rest, Grown satiny from its own natural polish. Present to the loose wattage Of heaven their limclit flukes, an artifice Riveted steel, turned timber, burnish, grain, Of archipclagian Islands of the Blessed, Smoothness, straightness, roundness, length and sheen. And in all innocence pursue their cottage Sweat-cured, sharpened, balanced, tested, fi ttcd. Industry of photosynthesis. The springiness, the clip and dart of it.

38 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 And then when he thought of probes that reached the Given such instances of vividness, of vitality­ farthest, and it is, throughout, a charged poem-it is natural He would see the shaft of a pitchfork sailing past to notice how frequently expectations are raised, Evenly, imperturbably through space, expectations of insight, of vindication in its various Its prongs starlit and ab olutely soundless- forms, of fit. Hecht is a master of this raising of the imaginative and conative ante: for all his decorum, But has learned at last to follow that simple lead he is a fueller of desire. But what often, as here, turns Past its own aim, out to an other side all dramatic is the inhibition, or at least the menacing, Where perfection-or nearness to it-is imagined of desire. It is as if, in his imagination, The Song of Not in the aiming but the opening hand. Songs is the ante-room to The Book of fob-and this, not because of any sourness of spirit, but because the Reading Hecht's poem, I find that a span of pitch of mortals towards immortality must inevitably considerations comes to mind, each of them prompted be, if not confuted, at least chastened. The 'tide of by other work, early and late, of this remarkable fear and awe/ For those we cherish' exhibits all that fashioner and appraiser of experience. The first of is best in our spirit, and must in this poem as in life these is what might be called a taste for supple itself be held to up to the last, a 'shadowy fate's formality. A Hecht poem never lolls, but nor does it unfathomable design.' merely put in time at a routine. A long time ago, I am in distinguished company in supposing that military officialdom told me that morale was Hecht is the best of living American poets. Whatever 'internalised discipline'; in Hecht's case, we see the of such ratings, it would be hard for anyone to deny obverse of this-that disciplined structure can be the Hecht's uncommon authority in the fierce testing of expression of imaginative morale. The elaborate expectations in his poetry. If he is a verbal alchemist, stanzas he has been making for a poetic lifetime brace, one's eye, when reading him, is above all on the fiery rather than constrict, the experience they attest. Part crucible of event. No poet is less disposed simply to of the evidence for this is a frequent brio in rhyming­ disport himself, or herself, than Hecht. Magus he may ' green' twinned with 'baldachin', 'paw' with 'awe'- be, but if so it is as a magus of the terrible. which is the natural show of imaginative It would not be hard to establish a convivium elan. between Hecht's poetry and Heaney's, but let me, instead, point to some representative features of 'The L EN THERE Is THE PACKED CHARACTER of Hecht's Pitchfork'. It is worth noting that it comes from a writing. His poems, for all their tautness and thrust, volume called Seeing Things, a title whose signifi­ are abrim with sounds, notions, sights, objects, per­ cance pivots between the physical and the intellectual, spectives. Some of this is adornment, and all the bet­ ter for that, but what much of it attests is a density of being-something tightly-knit and compacted, through which intelligence tries to make its way, test­ ing its own authority the while. Itemising may, in poetry as elsewhere, amount to nothing more than that, but it may also, as habitually it does in Hecht's work, be a way of identifying the pressure-points of comprehension. To linger, for instance, on 'perches', or on 'daubs', or on 'chinks' is to have this come home. A third, crucial element in this poem is the omnipresence of light, or at least of our hunger for it. There are, literally, dozens of Hecht's poems in which the hankering for, or the rejoicing at, illumination has an intensity which one might associate either with Plato or with the writer of the first few verses of Genesis. Here, light and life are virtually interchangeable notions, so that the gift or the withholding of the one is eloquent about the fortunes of the other. To speak of this address to light as though it were no more than a convention would be to mis the degree to which Hecht has made light's astounding beneficence his own. When, for instance, he invokes 'the splendid lan­ cet', any motions he is going through are enjoined immediately by a force by which he is seized as orig­ inally as Benjamin Franklin was by the lightning.

VOLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 39 the sensory and sense. This has always been Heaney's poetry and, at least implicitly, of the prose. Just how primary country: in or out of bogland, in or out of the perfect probing is to be had 'Not in the aiming ancient occasions or modern encounters, he has been but the opening hand' is perhaps the question that at the intersection of flesh and spirit. Objects hefted engages Heaney most of all. in his poems become the weightier for the handling, These sketchy outlines of poems and poets may but the lighter for the comprehension. It is entirely help the understanding of things most at issue in their in character that, within the first couple of lines of prose books. They are both highly skilled expounders, 'The Pitchfork', that tool should have the stockiness Heaney in such works as Preoccupations and The of an 'implement' and be able to point to 'an imagined Government of the Tongue, and Hecht in Obbligati perfection'. It is a kind of yardstick between and in his large book on Auden's poetry, The Hidden the gripped and the comprehended. Law. What they now offer are their modellings of poetry in its own right, and in relation either to other C LOSEL Y CONNECTED WITH T HI S is the SOrt of thing arts or to life at large. Hecht's is the more overtly forwarded all through the third stanza-an interplay systematic: it is the text of his Mellon Lectures in between nature's givens and human intervention. The the Fine Arts, six pieces each of which tautens steel neither made nor riveted itself, the timber had attention between different poles-'Poetry and to be turned: and even though nature and artifice meet Painting', 'Paradise and Wilderness', 'Public and where the wood is 'sweat-cured', the very existence Private art', and so on. Heaney's book offers ten of of the pitchfork is something tensional, recognised the fifteen lectures which he gave while Professor of in 'The springiness, the clip and dart of it.' In every­ Poetry at Oxford, and it, on a mere glance at the list thing he writes, whether in verse or in prose, Heaney of contents, also promises challenges: ' ... Extending has an eye to this tension, this blend. It is there when the Alphabet', 'Orpheus in Ireland', 'A Torchlight he speaks of speaking itself, or of speech's record: the Procession of One'- things, surely, will be astir here. human organism, voicing itself, is also voicing an in­ And so they are, in both cases. I have referred to tent, an intervention upon the natural and the social such features of Hecht's poetry as its subtle formality, world. And it is there when (for instance) he writes of its packed character, its stake in light's presence, its 'A Basket of Chestnuts' or of 'Wheels Within Wheels', raising and testing of expectations. But none of that where attention's rhythm moves between the world's would have led one to expect his first general epigraph givens and the mind's gifts. to the book, a quotation from Our Mutual Friend, in Beyond scrutiny and analysis, there is relish. 'The which Mr Wegg says, 'when a person comes to grind Pitchfork' might, for a number of reasons, remind the off poetry night after night, it is but right he should reader of that important influence on Heaney's work, expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.' Hopkins, and not least Hopkins the savourer and cel­ This is more than whimsy; it is a token of the esprit ebrant. For the Irish poet, such policies and practices which informs Hecht's formidably-titled book. That are at the heart of his venture: the poetry, like many spiritedness can show itself as edge-as when, for ex­ of the things it encompasses, is prized for its own ample, praising a poem called 'The Rebirth of Venus', sweet sake. When he writes, 'So whether he played by Mary Jo Salter, Hecht says, 'There is so much to the warrior or the athlete/ Or worked in earnest in admire about this poem that it only adds to the joy to the chaff and sweat, ' the play and the work have equal think how much Plato would have hated it', or as significance. This is in fact a major theme of the po­ when, in the chapter called 'Art and Morality', he etry as of the prose- the interplay between what Yeats observes that: called 'life's own self-delight' and what he called 'the spiritual intellect's great work.' Heaney's The Redress Hazlitt wrote of the comedies of Sir Richard Steele of Poetry resumes the question more frequently than (remembered in our time only as the author of polite any other, and in doing so pursues an enquiry which essays) that they 'were the first that were written ex­ has engaged him for the whole of his writing life. pressly with a view not to imitate the manners but to A last introductory point to be made about reform the morals of the age.' The consequence of this Heaney's work is touched by that word 'probes.' He laudable missionary zeal is that nobody reads Steele's is greatly given to the business of taking soundings, comedi e , and any modern director who proposed to reaching into the untested, trying to get reverberations stage one would be suspected of lunacy. from another side. The context may be domestic, as in poems about water-divining or kite-flying: or But Hecht has never had Mephistopheles for political, as in handlings of Unionist or Republican, sponsor, and the 'Spirit that denies' could no more Ireland and England: or psychological, or meta­ have prompted this prose than he could have dealt physical; but the demeanour is ordinarily one of high­ out the poems. The 'imaginative morale' mentioned keyed attentiveness, in hopes that something will earlier has its best expression in poetry, but it is there break through to him, or he to it. In fact, the question to be seen, too, in Hecht's expounded insistence on of what 'probes that reached the farthest' might be, drama and dialectic. When he says, after and how be attained, or recovered, is a staple of the Schopenhauer, on the second page of his first chap-

40 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 ter, that 'The arts almost invariably express The Western Canoe or embody conflicting impulses, not simply in their m eanings but in their very natures', We are all in it together, paddling downstream he is establishing a leitmotif for his book, but as in that clip from Sanders of the River, one which aspires to a subtler intellectual coh erence rather than m erely rejecting a but with no-one around to shout 'Come on Balliol!' coarser one. When, in his chapter on 'Poetry and Music', he quotes Robert Frost as saying Undoubtedly, here's history in the Steiner sense, of ' the figure a poem makes' that 'It has so late into creativity that commentary denouement', he catches up in Frost's three gets the prizes, the sexy must of lecturing. words his own strong sense that pluriform ex­ perience need not issue in chaos-and is, in And Bloom's great gun booms heartily fact, forbidden this by any poet who knows the business. making up for all those snubs, and if he seems Long-time beneficiaries of Hecht's poetry a kosher butcher, at least he's not the Th eory Fairy. will recognise in this book m any longstanding enthusiasms-not only for the grander human In truth, this is a well-equipped canoe, accomplishments and momentous institu­ brother to the Gulf War one, and in attrition tions, but also for passing flourish, for the weakens Gibbon, the crew is laser-limning history. mind's flash and the heart's. It is entirely characteristic that 'A Cast of Light' should Films are shown on board: Sophocles' National Service, be located 'at a Father's Day picnic', with its combination of the festive, the poignant, and Pico and Vico at the Deux Magots, the transitory; all of us are consigned to live Alkan the Alien-but what's so terribly difficult in time as our element, but it takes a Hecht to make it his m etier. Again and again I have is starting up afresh. How did they do it, Emily been struck by the ways in w hich, in his and friends, out there in the sticks, knowing that a gang poetry, he alternates between plucking of snobs and clerics had turned the signposts round. something from time's fire and re-inserting something in that fire for further tempering. Bliss in that dawn! And if our dawns are chemical It happens in ' A Cast of Light'-the title itself says so-but it also happens in the prose of som e things never change: a Suburban Sports Reporter this book. He says, for exam ple, that: enjoys the engine capacity of a Dickens.

The intimacy of the linkage between archi­ As the canoe beats the rapids to enter the vast tecture, number or proportion, and music was waters of the Eco Pool, drums are calling expressed in the Greek myth in which Am­ for a TV war Ieplete with ice and orphans. phion, by his skill in playing the harp, was able to summon the stones of the walls of Thebes to assume their proper places, Dangers of shoals and drifting debris, reading habits of electronic shoppers-and for the academically-inclined which accounts for the title of an early book dropping buoys off in The Swamp of Likenesses. of poetry, A Summoning of Stones, but also weds stability and m obility, founding and It mminds us of Maurice Bowra cruising the Aegean­ dance. Daphnis and Chloe Country for the educated- And it may be this above all that many and what are our lives but a narrative of metaphor? readers will take from On the Laws of the Poetic Art-not the learning, so thoroughly appropriated, not the tempered passion, not Approaching us, a war canoe half Lady Murasaki, the unillusioned relish, but the example of half state-of-the-art modem, and in a dream winged intelligence, often stricken, still fly­ the 'Waratah' still on her maiden voyage. ing. The last words of Hecht's last chapter, quoted from Yeats, refer to 'The beating down Hot in headphones, brushing off the monkeys, of the wise/ And great Art beaten down.' To Mr. Kurtz hears what the King of Brobdingnag be prepared to address that recurring devel­ told Gulliver. He'll reappear upriver. opment has always been the pons asinorum of the poet: Hecht makes it across, and on a grander beast than any ass. Peter Porter continued p42

V o LUME 6 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 41 As for things 'astir' in Heaney's book, consider a notion that enough is enough, but always wants to claim of George Santayana's: 'There are books in extend the alphabet of emotional and technical which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by expression. some reader's hand in the margin, are more interest­ ing than the text. The world is one of these books.' Some readers of Heaney's book, having relished Part of Heaney must want to take issue with this, the vividness of detail or felicity of notion in his poems, part that probes and embraces, the auditor of distant may be happy to pass on such matters, and may look signals and vector of intimate communings. But for exemplification, small being beautiful. They will another part, surnamed Orpheus, must make conces­ not be disappointed in The Redress of Poetry, where sions: Heaney the intervener, the recipient of sum­ a phrase or a phoneme can be brought to deliver the monings, the triggered. Early in The Redress of Poetry, goods . At the same time, and as befits the describer he plays the 'professor' in the strongest of senses, and of 'a javelin, accurate and light', Heaney closes in on writes: that least pretentious of poets, John Clare, saying:

I want to profess the surprise of poetry as well as its I am reminded of a remark made once by an Irish reliability; I want to celebrate its given, unforeseeable diplomat with regard to the wording of a certain thereness, the way it enters our field of vision and document. 'This/ he said, 'is a minor point of major animates our physical and intelligent being in much importance.' In a similar way, the successful outcome the same way as those bird-shapes stencilled on the of an y work of art depends u pon the seeming transparent surfaces of glass walls or windows must effortlessness and surefingeredness with which such suddenly enter the vision and change the direction of minor points are both established and despatched. the real birds' fli ght. In a flash the shapes register and transmit their unmistakable presence, so the birds The traditional way of talking about a minor veer off instinctively. An image of the living creatures point of major importance is to say that it is cardinal­ has induced a totally salubrious swerve in the crea­ that the hulking door swings on the sm all, precisely­ tures themselves. fixed hinge. There is a real sense in which the whole of Heaney's thought and art, like that of his looming, Now this really is dramatic: forms of alertness outgrown anticipator Yeats, works in virtue of just are seized, wielded, found consequentiaC prized, such hinges. It is the combination of precision of assayed: it is as if the physical pitchfork of Heaney's placement and liberty of swing that makes both for poem has become an instrument of the imagination, insight and elation in the gratified reader. 'sharpened, balanced, tested, fitted', to catch things Heaney has been at the game too long, and in too from the spill of experiences flung towards it. Or, to dismaying a social and political milieu, to suppose skew the metaphor in a way familiar to Heaney, the that there is any magic to be had in its practice, or to device that culls multiplicity becomes the device that issue from its display. In the last pages of his book, inscribes it: fork, spear, sword, coulter, dated 23 November 1993, and therefore with much becomes pen. violence in mind across the Irish Sea, he says both, 'There is nothing extraordinary about the challenge I N MY OPINION, which I would not want to father upon to be in two minds', and (of the series of lectures) : Heaney, it is just this practice of poetry which makes it seem to some demonic-this insistence upon I wanted to affirm that within our individual selves dispersal and concentration, both, at once, again and we can reconcile two orders of knowledge which we again. I think that poetry is the drastic art, whose might call the practical and the poetic; to affirm also insignia lie sometimes in metaphor and sometimes that each form of knowledge redresses the other and in other devices or measures, but whose m etier is the that the frontier between them is there for the cross­ unappeasable. Considerable poetry both signals and ing. precipitates considerable psychic shifts, and any Plato who desires an unperturbed commonwealth would be It seems to me significant that two poets, origi­ wise to preclude it. This is the order of attention which nating in different circumstances, and blooded imag­ Heaney, like Hecht, brings to bear upon it: this is the inatively in different wars, should so tenaciously be 'shock of the new' which they look for in poetry of intent on coming to terms with what Hecht calls 'the distinction, whatever its birth-certificate may say. contrariety of impulses'-significant, but not surpris­ Heaney, citing Keats's notion that poetry surprises ing. The dismaying, inescapable truth is that artists by a fine excess, says that Keats: of distinction inscribe themselves in our personal being, in which, this side of the grave, there is no peace did not m ean just a sensuous overabundance of to be had. • description. What he also had in mind was a general gift for outstripping the reader's expectation, an Peter Steele has a Personal Chair at the University of inventiveness that cannot settle for the conventional Melbourne.

42 EUREKA STREET • M AR CH 1996 BooKs

M ARGARET SIMONS Regarding Helen

The Demidenko Debate, Andrew Riemer, Allen and Unwin, NSW, 1995. ISBN 1 86448 109 9 RRP $14.95 The Demidenko Diary, Natalie Ja ne Pnor, Reed Books, Austraha,1995. ISBN 1 86330 538 6 RRP $12.95

0 N m "'" m th' N'w «>'On why th' d'b"' ' hould bo P"t of the pmbl,m, !think, li" South Wales library during the Syd- contained within the limits, or at in a failure to distinguish between ney Writers' Festival, I told Andrew least grounded in, literary discourse. those who abhor the book, but would Riemer that I had been given the I see it as a reason why the debate defend the right to publish it, and task of writing about his book. He should also be moral and political. the very few who have called for it to was encouraging. 'If you think it an Riemer argues that to insist on a be suppressed and censored. evil and pernicious book, you say primarily literary, text-focused At a deeper level, Riemer seems so,' he said. 'We have to get to the debate 'is not to take refuge behind to be suggesting that only certain stage where we can criticise each irresponsible aestheticism ... but to kinds of discourse- literary, and other's work without it being ensure that any condemnation will moderate-deserve to be recognised personal.' be conducted along rigorously argued as an exercise of one's rights in a Recounting this conversation to lines, rather than being allowed to liberal society. If you are too vehe- a mutual acquaintance later in the fl ow out of distress and out- m ent, too strong in your opinions, day, I was told: 'He would have meant rage.' too political, too determined to con- it, too. Don't doubt that he would does not vince others, then you are not exer- have m eant what he said.' cising freedom of speech but rather And I don't doubt it, because Rie- you are an agent of totalitarian- mer's book is largely a plea for a ism . You have broken the civilised and moderate debate, free 'rules'. from personal vilification. It was hard But surely it is also break- not to like the m oral presence (a ing the 'rules' to suggest that phrase to which I shall return) ofthis those who vigorously disagree book. Riemer is rigorous and genu- with you are, by this act, totali- ine. He is courageous in tackling tarian ? It seems odd that those issues many would be tempted to who are m ost supportive of Helen shirk. He is never shrill. Darville's right to publish her dis- N evertheless, I di sagreed turbing book are at the same time with many of his premises, and so intolerant of those who wish to there were times when his book publish criticism (w hether or not it irritated m e intensely. is well-founded) of the book, its One ofthe reasons the con- author, and its supporters. troversy over The Hand that Riemer seems to want to both Signed the Paper deserves our privilege and minimise the im por- continuing attention is precisely be- tance of literature. He asserts that cause it is not only a literary scan- tha t The Hand is 'only a novel', and 'a dal. politics (in mere novel' or 'no more than a book, The Hand is a political novel-a broadsenseofthatword) a work of fiction', implying that it rare thing in Australia, where the can also be rigorously, if pas- therefore should not have aroused domesticandintimateare morecom - sionately, argued. He characterises much controversy. mon subjects. As well, the events the political debate as 'ideological', It would be too crude a caricature which have surrounded its publica- and as 'dogma'. tosay thatRiem erbelieves thatonly tion and promotion- Helen Dar- Riemer is sometimes squeamish one sort of debate should be had-a ville's public statements, her pre- and sometimes utterly horrified by literary debate-that being a debate tences and herlies-are political and this wider debate. Like Leonie that doesn't really matter in the wid- moral events as well as literary ones. Kramer, he describes much of the er world. Riemer states that the Demi- comment from the book's critics as A better and more complex pic- denko controversy 'raises questions totalitarian in nature, and an attack ture em erges from a middle chapter, about the moral and cultural health on freedom of speech. where Riemer compares the views of our society', and I agree. Where we I find this argument, which seems of Aristotle, who saw 'poetry' as be- differ is that he seesthisasapressing to be gaining ground, offensive. ing on a higher plane than ordinary

V OLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 43 life, with those of Plato, who be­ political debate, and that this con­ handled anecdotes from historical lieved the arts were suspect, and troversy is the fi rst time in decades sources, which were acknowledged. should exist, if at all, only to serve that political commentators, jour­ Other instances were trivial and society. nalists and litterateurs have engaged quite possibly accidental. Given that Riem er comes down on the side with each other at all, or paid each Helen Darville does have a record of of Aristotle. Literature i a superior other much attention. plagiarism, it is possible that further ye t a delica te beast. Personally, I see these as good evidence will emerge, but on the Speaking about the more vehe­ things, which is not to say that all material to hand it is quite proper, as m ent participants in the debate (G uy the resulting debate has been sensi­ Riemer states, that the allegations Rundle, Alan Dershowitz, Gerard ble, fair or free of tedious self-right­ concerning The Hand were Henderson and Louise eousness. Of co urse heat as well as dismissed. Adler), Riemer says 'Lit­ light has been generated. Such is the Riem er also bravely and convinc­ erary culture is defence- nature of strong disagreements about ingly ex amines and criticises the As Riemer says, less against such rigidity. things that matter. claim that the Holocaust should be The literary sensibility is Is literature in the modern world given a special place in the annals of tolerance for attuned to ambiguities really destined to remain in a sort of horror and suffering. At every stage, and paradoxes, to those privileged ghetto of higher feelings, he resists the temptation to over­ views we abhor aspects of the human ex­ where the only discourse is between simplify. perience where certain­ people of similar! y attuned Focusing on the text, Riemer and is a touchstone. ties and convictions fail. ' sensibilities? If so, then a novel is the novel's critics disagree funda­ Riemer has trouble un­ 'm ere' indeed, and I imagine large m entally in their reading. Where However, the derstanding why those numbers of people will give up Robert Manne and others have fo und who were not personally rea ding them . Perhaps they a 'lack of moral land cape'-a cold publishing of touched by the Holocaust already have. and almost porn ographic retelling of contrary views should have been so dis­ h orror with no authorial voice to tressed by the book. He A NYONE WITH A COMMITMENT tO a condemn-Riemer interprets the suggests various motives, liberal, free- thinking society can only book in the light of secular, sceptica l and strong including (a nd this is ten- agree with Riemer when he absolves 20th century literature, in which the tatively advanced) the in­ the artist of the need to 'serve socie­ God-like authorial voice is hardly criticism does not volvement and influence ty' in the narrow sense, or to prom­ ever employed, and irony is the only of Melbourne's allegedly ulga te only those views acceptable weapon left to the author to indicate in itself constitute more sectarian and con­ to the dominant group in society. moral stance. servative Jewish commu- As Ri em er says, tolerance for Within these bounds, he finds intolerance. nity. views we abhor is a touchstone. that Darville did indeed indicate He also believes that However, the publishing of contrary attitude through the overlapping It is simply part the critics of The Hand views and strong criticism does not voices of her characters. He also have unfairly made this in itself constitute intolerance. It is points to the occasional and sudden of the push '1nere novel' bear the en­ simply part of the push and pull of insertion of an omniscient authorial tire weight of their dis­ free speech. voice. and pull of like for the spirit of the Riemer states (co rrectly) that I differ from Riemer here. The times: postmodernism, Robert Manne, H enderson, 'slippage' in narrati ve voice seemed free speech. moral relativism, and the Dershowitz and so on did not base to me chiefl y an indication of a writer lack of respect for tradi- their criticisms primarily on aes­ not in control of her material. When tion and wisdom. Riemer shares the thetic judgments, but on ideological it did indicate authorial attitude, I suspicion of these trends, but in the ones: 'That they were encouraged to found the implications disturbing. voices of more vehement commen­ do so may have been the re ult of The book starts off being narrated tators he sees no way forward . Only their lack of familiarity with literary b y Fiona Kovalenko, who is a futile desire to turn back the clock. discourse, being lawyers, historians researching her family history. Yet Riemer sees the Demidenko and media commentators whose in­ once the tale moves to Eastern debate as almost en tirely negative. terests do not usually engage with Europe, we hear voices and gain 'The atm osphere of suspicion and literary or cultural matters.' knowledge that Fiona could not pos­ mistrust [the debate] has created has I fo und this passage patronising. sibly have access to. done much to pollute cultural life: Stewing over it kept me awake for Judit, the doctor who refuses to the fug will take a long time to clear. two hours. But just as I thought Rie­ treat Ukrainians on the grounds that Hostility between the literary world m er had terminally irritated me, I she is not a vet, is the most obvious and political analysts, commenta­ was taken aback by his courage and example of an unsourced 'voice'. She tors a nd journalists is more independence of thought. His dis­ is also the only Jewish character who pronounced than at any time in the cussion of the plagiarism allegations has a voice, and she is an example of last thirty or forty years.' he says. is the first sensible analysis I have the linking of Jews with the cruellest One might also remark that it is seen. face of Communism. the first time for many years that the Several instances of so-called The insertion of Judit's voice, literary world has been involved in a plagiarism were in fact clumsily together with other examples of

44 EUREKA STREET • MARC H 1996 'slippage', undercuts claims that the MartinAmis's Time's Arrow, which that it probably is), it is fair to con­ text is about anti-Semitism, rather is also a product of the literary times clude from the interviews on the than being anti-Semitic in itself. in that irony and a perverse point of public record that Helen Demidenko Riemer believes that the novel view are the only signals to authori­ was prejudiced against, and paranoid probably is anti-Semitic, 'but in a al attitude. about, Jews. Whether these things limited and on the whole tolerable Darville is, of course, younger are also true of Helen Darville is a sense'. By 'tolerable' I understand and less skilful than Amis, so the more complicated question. him to mean that since the book comparison is unfair, but neverthe­ It remains of legitimate concern does not incite violence or race less there is a fundamental differ­ to the moral and political debate hatred, it falls within the spectrum ence in the sensibilities of the two that while we know a great deal of opinion and expression that ought writers. Neither book 'moralises' in about a person called Demidenko, to be tolerated by a liberal society. the narrow sense, but they have vast­ we know very little about It may be because I am a journal­ ly different moral presences. Helen Darville. ist (therefore by definition not used The moral presence of a book is, to the rules of literary debate), but in surely, a legitimate topic for both FOR THAT REASON, I am less willing thinking about 'The Hand' I am not literary and political criticism. than some commentators to con­ entirely able to separate the text Inspite of all my arguments with demnNatalie Jane Prior's The Demi­ from what I know of the author it, Riem er's book is a complex and denko Diary out of hand. The book whom I met at the Varuna Writers' valuable addition, not only to the sheds som e light on Darville and her Centre when she was Helen Demi­ debate over Demidenko, but also to motivations. If Prior can be trusted, denko, before the controversy over a wider discussion about the spirit of the book shows a woman with a her alleged anti -Semi tism broke out. our times. It is the first genuine compulsive need to lie. It lends When I told her h ow deeply the attempt to focus the furore and put it weight to the theory that she was cold telling of horror in her book had in context, and should be read for self-deluded, rather than calculat­ disturbed m e, she said she had to that reason and many others. ing. restrain what she described as a 'jour­ One doubts whether it is ever Unfortunately, the Diary raises nalistic' impulse (she knew that I possible to as many questions as it answers. 'I was a journalist). She said she had to the author did not research this book. I lived it.' resist the impulse to sensationalise, from the Prior says, and one can only to 'make the readers throw up in agree. their cornflakes'. Prior has breached In a separate conversation, she implicit understandings of talked about the youths of Loga n confi den tiali ty. The on! y pos­ City, who, she claimed, walked sible moral justification would around wearing T-shirts with the be if the book served some slogan 'Shit Happens'. This, she overwhelming public interest. implied, was the correct 'real life' Unfortunately, the Diary fails this way of regarding horror. Other test, and can thus perhaps be attitudes were 'middle class'. regarded as a lost opportunity. 'Shit happens' is the As well, the rushed editing has modern equivalent of the led to a bevy of grammatical and Hobbes quote that appeared spelling mistakes, leading one to the in the frontispiece of her book suspicion that whatever the author ... 'the life of man, solitary, poore, intended, this book was rushed onto nasty, brutish and short.' So I am the market for less than public­ more inclined to Manne's view­ spirited motives. that the novel lacks moral landscape, It may well be that there is a or denies the existence of a moral place for some quality journalism landscape-than to Riemer's claim at present the ------...... aimed at finding out more about that Darville, albeit inexpertly, re­ main way used to bring a book to our Helen Darville. Probably, such a veals a moral bias towards condemn­ attention is to promote the author. project would reveal m ore about the ing the actions of her murderous In the case of The Hand that society in which she lives than it characters. Signed the Paper, the motivation, would about the author. Therein Perhaps, in this debate, a distinc­ character and public statements of would lie its value. tion should be drawn between a 'mor­ Darville-Demidenko, particularly The Demidenko Diary fails the alising' novel, which is tedious and her claims regarding her fictitious test, appropriate to journalism didactic, and a novel's moral family's persecution by Jews, are a though not to fiction, of public presence. proper topic for debate, even if som e usefulness. • I see no problem with an attempt literary critics wish to maintain that to tell about evil from the evildoer's the author is irrelevant to the text. Marga ret Simons is a freelance writer perspective, but the comparison with Whether or not the text itself is and a regular contributor to Eurelw The Hand that springs to my mind is anti-Semitic (and Riemer and I agree Street

VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 45 BooKs: 2

ANDREW HAMJLTON Satan's seed

T ,OO>NG' m "'~" inevitobly munity in the same matrix, depicting makes more interesting reading than both pagans and heretics as the agents those of gods. For the office of The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels, of Satan. But within Christian tradi­ destroying order encourages fa r m ore Random House, New York, 1995. tion, the dem onic inspiration of creativity than does that of m erely ISBN 0 679 40140 7 RRP $39.95 enemies is cumulative, so that even maintaining it. Any book which after they cease to threaten the com­ claims to explain the origin of Satan Later, Satan was seen simply as munity, Jews, Romans and heretics therefore promises much, not least the adversary, and was identified retain their roles in the apocalyptic in the number of copies sold. with the external powers that threat­ drama of God's struggle with evil. Elaine Pagels, a sch olar of ened the security of Israel. Some Pagels concludes that Christian Gnosticism in the early church, has t exts, however, identified the texts and communities have tended written an admirably clear book demonic fatefully with fa ctions to treat their opponents as demonic about the figure of Satan. While the within the people-with what Pagels and as beyond redemption because book does not quite deliver the finely calls the intimate enemy. This they associate them with malign promise of its title, that it will define process appears to have been resisted opponents in a larger history. While the origin of Satan, it does treat in an within the writing which forms the she recognises within Christian texts interesting way the way in which Old Testam ent canon, but later Jew­ countervailing strands, such as the Satan and the demonic function in a ish movem ents like that of the Ess­ command to love one's enemies and range of Jewish and early Christian enes regularly characterise rival Jew­ to pray for their conversion, she texts. ish factions in dem onic terms. believes that the tendency to see Pagels' interest in Satan refl ects Pagels argues that the Christian enemies as satanic carries more more than intellectual curiosity. It Gospels, in particular, identify Satan weight, and so can be used to is sustained by a moral sense which and the dem onic with the enemies legitimise warfare or is revolted by the murderous conse­ of the community. This was not a extermination. quences of treating social groups as necessary step, for early variants of demonic. She is concerned that the Jesus movem ent, such as the PAGELS IS SURELY RIGHT tO be Christian tradition has encouraged wisdom tradition reflected in the concerned about the encouragement this process, particularly in the Gospel of Thomas, focus on the that persecutors have fo und in Chris­ development of anti-Semitism. individual human heart. tian texts which associate their vic­ The focus of her book is therefore But when the allegiance to the tims with the devil. Her claim that th e social function of dem onic community and its fate are seen as of any group w hich is seen as imagery. She argues that Satan and central importance to God's demonically inspired is vulnerable the dem onic come to assume a purposes, competing factions are to persecution is also undeniable. prominent place in religi ou s readily identified with God's ene­ To put the point clearly, if Mat­ language at times when social groups mies. thew and John had the opportunity com e into intense political or Mark's Gospel, for example, to revise their Gospels today in fu ll religious conflict. Where devils are refl ected the struggle that fo llowed knowledge of the use which has been claimed to inspire particular groups, the fall of Jerusalem, when m any m ade of them, they would be morally the conflict of which they are part is followers of Jesus were found among obliged to amend their texts to written into heaven and becomes the Jewish groups struggling for the protect Jews from the physical, and part of a cosmic conflict between the conscience and the correct interpre­ Christians fr om the moral, effects of forces of good and evil. Persecution tation of Judaism . Mark identified an unintended misreading of them. and war to the death are the logical the Pharisees, the contemporary This claim, however, could be consequences of such untrammelled enemies of the Christian community interpreted minimally in the sense conflict.Pagels traces this process with Satan, so associating the that all authors whose texts become through significant Jewish and Chris­ struggle of his own group with the influential are hostage to their read­ tian texts. Early Jewish texts present cosmic struggle of God against evil. ers . Pagels, however, implies more Satan as one of the God's ministers, The later canonical Gospels than this, arguing that the authors of who nevertheless places obstacles displa y a successively more hostile C hristian texts bea r a heavier in the way of human beings. Such attitude to the Jews, whose associa­ responsibility, because they chose obstacles, of course, can be beneficial tion with demonic forces is also to associate rival groups with the if they protect the good; other presented more dramatically. More­ demonic. They could have done hindrances, like Job's sickness, are over, Christian texts place later otherwise, as indeed, did other early more ambivalent. conflicts within the Christian com - Christian groups who identified

46 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 Christian faith with personal enligh t­ outside the Gospels themselves. ity of an earlier form of Christianity enment, and not with the survival They are an abstraction, with the which is a demon-free zone. While and flourishing of a Christian sect. result that an analysis of Christian the later Gospel writers might have This identification, resulting from belief before the writing of the texts, been guilty of directing the demonic their turbulent society, led the Evan­ and especially one that separates against the Jews, they did not intro­ gelists to see their enemies as God's from Jesus the belief in an imminent duce it into their texts. It is Chris­ enemies and as diabolically led. time of judgement on Israel, is highly tian faith which is guilty, and not This claim assumes a tendentious. Th e Gospel of Thomas, simply individual texts. controverted view of Christian moreover, is more naturally read as I believe, however, that the mat­ origins which is h eld widely, an attempt to turn the sayings of the ter is more nuanced than this. For although not exclusively, by North canonical Gospels in a Gnostic when seen from a broader perspec­ American scholars. The view direction than as representing faith- tive than that adopted by Pagels, the generally seeks the origins of beliefs fully an independent tradi- Gospels set the demonic in a more in social conditions, and represents tion that precedes them. complex context. For they attribute the Christianity of the early church to demonic forces not only the work as imposed upon the variety which 1N PARENTHESIS-tO name my OWn of hostile groups but also sickness is found in the books of the New prejudice-! am not persuaded by and physical handicap. That this be­ Testament. These texts themselves this account because it is too com­ lief that all manifestations of evil, compose a relatively narrow slice of fortable. If you were asked what view physical as well as social, can be the broader range of belief found in of Christianity would be congenial identified with the demonic is the the sources and contemporary to departments in religion in the consequence of seeing at the heart of documents, like the Gospel of North American Academy, could our experience a struggle between Thomas. you think of a hypothesis more good and evil. Because so much is Many scholars, indeed, identify satisfactory than that of an itinerant under the dominion of the forces of Jesus as an itinerant teacher of and counter-cultural preacher whose evil, the attribution to particular wisdom, and attribute to the Gospel power lay in powerful and witty rhet­ groups of demonic inspiration is less writers the belief in the imminent oric, who was critical of the politi­ significant than it would be if they coming of the kingdom as the deci­ cal, religious and academic estab­ were more narrowly targeted. sive stage in the battle between good lishments of his day, who directed The Gospels, moreover, do not

and evil. Mark is said to have writ­ himself to the individual conscience, place their emphasis precisely on ten after the first Jewish war and to and did not believe in an imminent the struggle between good and evil, have represented in his Gospel the judgment? And of a fluid m ovem ent but rather on God's decisive victory 'Instead of envisioning the beleaguered position of his own com ­ whose original freedom in belief and over evil. Christians therefore, live power of evil as an alien munity amon g bo th Jew s and organisation was gradually made in a world where the victory has force that threatens and Rom ans. sclerotic by an imposed uniformity already been won, and are freed from inva des hum an beings I am not persuaded by this view of practice and doctrine? A worthy desperation in their own struggle from outside, the au thor of Christian beginnings because its founder, no doubt, but would people against evil. They can be confident of [the Gospel of} Philip foundations are so hypothetical. It is give their lives to or for him? that they have already won. So they urges each person to notoriously difficult, for example, to For these reasons, positive or are-logically, at least- entitled to recognise the evil within, date and locate Mark's Gospel, and negative, the view that eschatologi­ take a relatively relaxed view even and consciously eradicate even if his Gospel was written after cal elements of the Gospel, with of groups who are agents of evil it.' the Jewish war, it is impossible to their demonic aspects, come from powers. -Elaine Pagels say how this war affected his com­ Jesus himself, even though they were Finally, while the Gospels m ay munity and how he perceived its sharpened by the Evangelists, still present an increasing hostility to Evil incarnate: detail effects. m erits respect. the Jew s, they also contain an from The Betrayal Furthermore, the sources on To say this, however, is to write increasing emphasis on loving and by Giotto, in the which Mark and the Evangelists are the demonic into the heart of Chris­ forgiving of enemies. The Jesus of Arena Chapel, Padua. said to have relied cannot be found tian origins and to deny the possibil- Luke's Gospel, for example, forgives

V OLUME 6 N U MBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 47 the Jews from the cross, while John pretation of Christian texts? sis because they regarded them as identifies the following of Jesus with From this perspective, xenopho­ Semitic and so as higher on the evo­ love. In the light of these emphases bia and factional bitterness appear lutionary scale. If therefore the roots those who appeal to warrant from characteristic of all societies, and of horror in our age lie in movements the Gospels to justify persecution are supported by a panoply of meta­ which unmasked Christian tasks last are guilty of a wilful misreading of phors, of which demonic inspiration century, these roots are likely to the texts as a whole. Furthermore, is only one. Nor are these metaphors remain undisturbed by similar un­ while the rhetoric of many later texts necessarily influenced by Christian masking in our century. is vituperative, others depict Chris­ texts. The Chinese, for example, have Certainly, I ca nnot conceive that tians and Jews in courteous, if tense referred independently to foreign imprisoned asylum seekers in Aus­ debate, despite the depth of the is­ devils, while other societies appeal tralia will gain much from analyses sues which are felt to be at stake. to purity codes (foreigners smell!), to of this kind. The roots of their mis­ These qualifications do not make metaphors of health (foreigners are treatment do not lie in Christian the hostility to Jews any less deplor­ cancers in the body politic), or more texts, but in the myths of national able or ameliorate its later conse­ recently to ecological m etaphors (for­ sovereignty, national security and quences, but they show that it is eigners threaten the biosphere), or m anagerialism. The unmasking of neither as central, critical nor un­ even by moral metaphors (unwanted Christian texts will do no more than mitigated a phenomenon as Pagels' strangers are queue- jumpers). provide a convenient scapegoat narrow focus may seem to imply. Moreover, even when we might which assigns discredit of distant Coincidentally, while rea ding reasonably suspect a European in­ persecution, while distracting atten­ The Origin of Satan, I was also stud­ fluence in contemporary horrors, this tion from evils closer to hand. ying the treatment of asylum seek­ influence often owes more to cur­ On the other hand, if Christian ers, and was led to wonder what in rents of thought which vehemently texts were to becom e a source of fact is achieved for the victims of rejected Christian texts than to those conventional wisdom about such discrimination by unmasking which cultivated them. Pol Pot's matters as the assertion of human Christian t exts which have practice of government, for example, dignity and the costly command of supported discrimination. When we was surely influenced by his reading love, it may be that a few prisoners survey the whole panorama of con­ of the French Revolution. One of the would be set free. • temporary massacre, torture, impris­ remote factors in the massacre in onment and persecution which is Rwanda, too, may have been the Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches at the directed against disfavoured groups, Social Darwinism of the early colo­ United Faculty of Theology in how significant is the wrong inter- nists. They reputedly preferred Tut- Melbourne.

BooKs: 3

JACK W ATERFORD Whatever it talzes

/T "o uc Hour G " HAM R 'CH.,osoN's TWBNTY THRBE ""' Graham Richardson had always operated, both personally and professionally. ' - Marian Wilkinson

A NYONE WITH AN ULTIMATELY almost certainly knew more of what forgiving, even slightly amused view, they did than has ever com e out. of the internal machinations and cor­ The Fixer: the untold story of Graham Marian Wilkinson has crafted a ruptions of political parties, particu­ Richardson, Marian Wilkinson, William devastating indictment of Graham larly the Australian Labor Party, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1996. Richardson, for 23 years one of the would be well advised to read Th e ISBN 0 85561 685 7 RRP $35.00 major fixers in Australian politics. If Fixer. It tells you that some of the she cannot quite fix him with the m achine m en play it hard, som e of hardest deeds done behind the scenes, them very hard indeed. Some play it in the country, or they will use the she can show him and his faction as so hard in their pursuit of power that services of m en who will do it in the beneficiaries of the deeds, him as they will use violence, fraud and their interest. Graham Richardson a close traveller of the doers, and as break the spirit of alm ost every law worked alongside such people and having the most elastic notions of

48 EUREKA STREET • M AR CH 1996 what is right and wrong when it of their will was always clear the great mottoes- not least that 'no comes to questions of power and enough-indeed he revelled in the act of betrayal could ever be forgiven influence. It also shows him shame­ unease and fear that this created and or forgotten.' less. it was always at the base of his power. It involved, as many have com­ The shamelessness is such that In Labor politics, the real politics mented, the politics of the tribe. It one can imagine the subject actually is at the base. Graham Richardson is was also entirely devoid of any ideal­ enjoying the book. Whatever best known for his machinations at ism-Graham Richardson, a child of nastiness it may say or suggest about the top levels of federal politics, not the 1960s was entirely unmoved or it, the book reinforces the view that least his role in deposing two federal unaffected by any of the currents of he was a man of power and an un­ leaders of the party. In the NSW political ideas it threw up-and, so seen hand holding everything togeth­ Party to which he came as an organ­ far as Richardson was concerned, it er. Graham Richardson has aways iser and of which he ended as state was entirely cynical. There were only relished the image of toughness­ secretary, the real action was at the two occasions in Richardson's career I willing to play politics past the trade union level. Control of trade in which he was ever seen in associ-

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conventional decencies- about him: unions meant votes in the councils ation with any ideals and with both it has helped make others fear him, of the parties, and majority control of them he went out of his way to be and, even now, when he is formally m eant that when the party had pow­ openly pragmatic. He ernbraced the out of politics, it brings him busi­ er at local, state and federal levels it environment, with some zeal and ness. was able to pull the levers, particu­ later a passion that surprised himself, It never seem ed to do Graham larly in rewarding friends and in pun­ but only because he saw it as part of Richardson great harm that there ishing enemies. a strategy of winning votes which was a very dark side to the Labor Richardson was a tribalist of a were being lost, not least from people Party to which he had close connec­ somewhat different order from some who had become disillusioned with tions, from whose activities he al­ other Labor politicians of his gener­ the realpolitick of people like him­ ways had the greatest difficulty in ation, such as Laurie Brereton and self. And he embraced improvement convincingly distancing himself, and Paul Keating. His father was an active in Aboriginal health, promising that Graham Richardson which would stop at nothing to hold trade union secretary, m ost of whose he could do it when hundreds had interviews Prime or to achieve power. Anyone who waking days were involved in fai led. Within a m onth or so, he had Minister Bob Hawl< e on dealt in power as crudely as Graham byzantine power struggles against to cut and run because the old ghosts Sydney radio 2KY, in Richardson knew that m enaces were both the left and forces of the looked as if they had finally caught September 1991 , three as much a part of the armoury as National Civic Council. His house­ up with him, and he abandoned the months befor e charm. Just how much he controlled hold was a headquarters of such interest without a second thought. Richardson bacl< ed those dark forces, or whether they struggles and shifting alliances, and The NSW right was always a Paul Keating's successful controlled him, was always a matter his son grew up watching the arm breeding ground of ruthlessness and bid for the leadership. of the deepest speculation. But that put on others, learning when and cynicism- som etimes the more so the forces exi ted, and that Richard­ how much you could trust others, since they were pragmatic and son was associated with the exercise and leaning from experience some of organised primarily in reaction to

V oLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 49 together than in describing anything hitherto unknown- but Richard­ son's power and Labor's ca pacity to use the power it had even to co mpro­ mise the law m ea nt that he always narrowly escaped. The pettiest- and the most prev­ alent- form of the moral corruption involved turned on what providing open or secret party or fac tion funds delivered. Ri chardson was adamant that what he did was not corrupt. One could not bu y favo urs. Getting favo urs ultimately turned o n persuasion, not donations. But be made no bones about m oney buying access. Those who had shown them­ set ves as fr iends could get access and a chance to put their view to anyone in the party. And the friends of the party undoubtedly prospered in their affairs. The willingness to help was not the left (for m ost of the 1970s the and compromi ed by what they had confined to busine s donors. Rich­ only engine room of ideas in the done, which after all, had generally ardson was willing to use his minis­ party). Brereton and Keating or Bob been in his interests as well as their terial notepaper and his time to Carr could be as crude as Richardson own. He had, in any event, an attrac­ arrange introductions for friends and in the expression of a lack of faith in tion for and fascination with crimi­ relatives, even at times to appear to ideas or ideals, but they always gave nal rough trade, and was incapable of negotiate on their behalf. It was the som e impression of actually want­ taking advice about being compro­ continual whiff of scandal about such ing to put power to som e sort of end. mised. Sometimes, perhaps, tribal interventions which eventually Richardson was m ore effective in loyalties meant he could not betray made him quit. delivering power but m ostly seemed them. Sometimes, perhaps, they But does this reinfo rce the image to have little idea of what one then actually had compromised at least a of Richardson as the ultimate fi xer? did with it, apart from favours for freedom of action: he was in their Not necessarily. Richardson played the mates who had made it financial or moral debt and they almost no role in the battles for ideas: all possible. knew too m uch. even when he wa marshalling num­ Over more than a decade, some bers for those, such as Keating, who H IS FO US WAS ON numbers and of the r ela tion ships began to became interested in ideas, he rarely on raising money. In Wilkinson's unravel- Marian Wilkinson' skill adopted them. His ca pacity to get account the struggle for control of is more in putting the threads back numbers and party funds, and som e unions and party branches involved any amount of branch-stacking, use of fa lse, and in som e case forged ballot papers, and in m any cases cash NSW LABOR obtained fr om businesses who want­ ed pa rticular outcom es. Such mon­ ...---• . ools Hosp ey never fi gured in any published accounts but was available to fund union election campaigns. The oth- Early day (above) : er side was as accomplished in the Graham Richardson, dirty tricks, and the fights on the Annita Keating, Paul fl oor became extremely nasty with Keating and fohn Duck er. the bashing of the Left's own Rich- (NSW Labor Party ardson-like manipulator of the tim e, archives) Peter Baldwin, no m ore than a good Last days (righ t}: example of what was happening. Richardson with There were lots of murky figures wife Cheryl and in this dirty business, and one of daugh ter Kat e at his Ri chardson's problems was that, in final NSW Labor forming alliances with them, he often confe rence. (News Ltd} becam e enmeshed in their affairs

50 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 gut campaigning instinct , may have get it over the line in an election, ble in 'the dance of sign' than speech: helped Labor win the odd election, was what you lived for. ' What does it 'even now I can say things with my but the stench of just such power profit ... ?' hands that I could never squeeze plays was for most of the period Whether, by the end of his career, into words'. He learnt English from something which was also stripping the end was worth it for others is television, translating movies for his votes from the party. The fascina­ another question. The party, thanks parents with his hands. As he begins tion of journalists with power plays­ to brokers of his ilk, had lost much of the story, he is tempted to draw and Richardson's willingness not its capacity to inspire people, though, shapes on the top corner of every only to be a source but to have his perversely, that had the effect of page and let the reader flick them to role dramatised-sometimes made increasing the power of machine men create a 'jerky animation.' But, 'Sign him seem far more important than such as himself. By now, of course, is lifeless the m om ent it hits the he really was. Richardson is using his reputation page ... it's no longer even Sign. Sign He is quoted as saying 'The Labor for other ends, and has not seemed moves and breathes, whispers, Party was my life. You've got to too discomfited by Labor's current shouts, pirouettes, jives.' understand that. It was the whole of problems. • J.J's adult life is banal. His it. There was no time for any marriage has failed and he negotiates extension of your existence beyond Jack Waterford is the editor of the the relationship with his daughter, its boundaries and so to further it, to Canberra Times. Rosie, with difficulty. His personal life is marked by awkwardness: he is a large man, lives at home with his parents and teaches Auslan (one of BOOKS: 4 the versions of Sign) at an adult MicHAEL M cGIRR education ins ti tu te. Nevertheless, he strikes up a raport with two of his students, Stella and Clive, who have ostensibly joined the class to learn how to Strange tallz communicate with their daughter Eliza. As a guest at Stella and Clive's place he comes to learn that Eliza is, Wish, Peter Goldsworthy, Angus and Robertson, in fact, a gorilla. When she was in Sydney, 1995. ISBN 0207 189100 RRP $17.95 utero, she had the adrenal glands, which apparently limit the growth of the brain, removed. Now they E,. Gow,woH~ wmo; with poker face that it implicitly dares have adopted her and intend bring­ disturbing calm. One of his recent the reader to fault one of the more ing her up as a human. Once she s tories, 'Jesus wants me for a bizarre endings in recent Australian learns Sign, she becomes capable of sunbeam', tells of an orderly family. fiction. Those familiar with Golds­ a full range of interactions with There is a mum and a dad, a boy and worthy's Honk if you are Jesus will people. She and J.J fall in love. a girl. They live conscientiously, recognise the kind of brinkmanship Goldsworthy's characterisation reading good books to each other and he plays with plausibility. In that works along clean lines. Nicknam es turning their backs on any violence book, Dr Mara Fox becomes involved are often used and tend to reduce that may confront them on televi­ in a project of biological archaeology characters to a single dimension. The sion. Sadly, the girl is diagnosed with that makes Jurassic Park look flabby. gorilla knows her chubby boyfriend leukaemia. Her slow demise is mov­ She is head-hunted by Queensland's as 'Sweet-tooth', J.J's boss at school ing. Then, suddenly, the story gains Schultz Bible College and works to­ is called 'Miss-the-Point'. Clive is what cricketers call an extra yard of wards the re-creation firstly of the exclusively cerebral. Nevertheless, pace. The dad decides to kill himself Tasmanian Tiger and ultimately of the book is vibrant because it is along with the girl so that wherever Jesus. Whilst the story takes current driven by a raft of dilemmas about she is going she will not have to medical research and tips it ever-so­ human identity. Most novels work travel alone. The progre sion to this slightly over the edge of science fan­ by creating recognition and associa­ point is so logical, the prose o tasy, it is also a real-life sa tire of the tion between the reader and a world effortless, that it is difficult to count kind of fundamentalism which which is, increasingly, not even a back and find the precise point at woodenly believes that living stone's throw of the imagination which moral chaos got in under the creatures are exchangeable parts that from where you happen to be sitting brick veneer: did the confusion start can be moved from one historical with the book. This is an exceptional with a suicide pact seen on TV or context to another. novel because, ironically, it works with stories of sacrifice heard at Wish, in the same vein, is as by novelty. It is, in the strict sense, church ? much about language as it is about an essay. T hat is, it's a try on. • Goldsworthy's new book, Wish, the frontiers of biological science. J.J similarly works towards an unto­ the story- teller, is the child of deaf Michael McGirr SJ is consulting ward finding. It does so with such a parents. He grew up more comforta- editor of Eureka Street.

VoLUME 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 51 BooKs: 5

JlM D AVIDSON Eliza Fraser's mutating myth

In the Wa ke of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories, Kay Schaffer, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995. ISBN 0 521 495 77 6, RRP $35.00

E,CH'c' '""" '" own nation. She epitomised the soft more, the old metropolitan stand­ myths, finds meaning in new fig- under-belly of imperialism. Schaffer point had to be inverted. The person tues. In our lifetimes we have seen points out how universalist the terms able and happy to do that was the the invention of the Pi cnic at Hang­ of opprobrium visited on the painter Sidney Nolan, who heard the ing Rock, first in a novel and then as Aborigines were, a point driven home story from the locals when he went a film, those schoolgirls almost be­ by noting that once the story leapt to Fraser Island in 1947. Having al­ coming virgins sacrificed to the spir­ across the Atlantic, the illustrations ready demonstrated in the Ned Kelly it of the land. We are now witnessing for the New York version of the series a gift for essentialism and a the first stages in the apotheosis of story were remarkably similar to capacity to produce new ikonic Lindy Chamberlain- now that an those for an American captivity nar­ forms, Nolan soon began on the first opera is being written about her­ rative. In a Eurocentric world, Indians of four series of Mrs Fraser paintings. just as surely as the mythologisation and Aborigines were virtually Nolan had read all he could find of Ned Kelly started in the instant interchangeable. on Mrs Fraser, and so had come across plays put on immediately after his By mid-century, however, Eliza Russell's 1888 account of the story capture. And what mythic ingredi­ Fraser had been virtually forgotten. (erroneous, as is now generally ents the Cl-iamberlain story has­ The female figures of most use to the icon of the Rock enveloped by Empire now were people like MICII AEL ,\LEXA?\ DER t indigenous mysteries, the ambiguous Grace Darling and Grace Bussell, dingo (an apology for a Grecian mon­ who in England and Australia re­ MRS FRASE~ ster), and then the central figure of spectively put out to sea to rescue 0NTH6: the maligned mother. Indeed the people from foundering ships. That sense of persecution added to her was much more practical- and own deep loss might eventually instructive- and so the two Grac­ FATAL make Lindy an archetypal represen­ es, mere slips of girls, became a it tation of the burdens of mother­ were matrons of imperial mainte­ hood- her sense of endurance itself nance. being very Australian. So Eliza Fraser went into lim­ Endurance is also the key to bo and stayed there, first because another Australian myth, the sub­ she had been overtaken, and then ject of Kay Schaffer's excellent study, because once the imperial drive In the Wal

52 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 variant of the story answered Nolan's an and black man. The Eliza Fraser years, Eliza Fraser seems best able to needs: the introduction of a male story-duly transposed to the eight­ provide it. figure seemed to complete it, while eenth century-is made to carry the Kay Schaffer has done us a serv­ the elements of bargain and betrayal whole burden of South African race ice by giving a detailed account of added mythic force. Moreover, he relations. Brink's is a fine novel, could identify with Bracefell- a N ed the pastoral elements provided Kelly of the north- and transfer to by the seemingly empty African Mrs Fraser som e of the hostility he interior balancing anguished ex­ now felt towards another Protestant changes akin to those in Fugard' s lady trading on her class, Sunday duologues. Each comes to see Reed, whom he felt had betrayed his the complexities in their rela­ love. Bracefell was thus important tionship, given the tainted val­ as providing the leverage to make ues of the Cape they have come Mrs Fraser's an Australian story, from. Here the betrayal com es rather than an imperial onei but it across as particularl y brutal, for was a w hite Aus tralia n s tory. eff ectively it is the long arm of Aboriginal elem ents were marginal­ the apartheid state, reaching ised, and rem ained so in Nolan's back as well as reaching out. Fraser paintings until the very end of Endurance here takes on quite h is life. another meaning. They rem ain so in what is the There is now an indigenous m ost fa mou s literary treatment of reading of the Eliza Fraser story. the tale, Patrick White's A Fringe of Fiona Foley is an acclaimed artist the wholes tory, fro m examining Mrs Leave . White's interest in Mrs Fra­ who com es from the Badtjala people Fraser's background in the Orkneys ser was sparked by N olan, and at one of Fraser Island, and fo r her Eliza is and Sri Lanka (both of which she stage he had hoped that an Eliza simply the precursor of the disaster visited) to a thorough analysis of all Fraser opera (sets by N olan, libretto of white invasion. So the bonneted the variations of the tale-includ­ by White, music by Sculthorpe) head of Mrs Fraser appears in many ing, for example, Tim Burstall's ock­ would open the Sydney Opera House. of h er paintings-disembodied, erish film . She has deconstructcd But it was in a n ovel that Eliza Fraser guillotined even, som etimes upside elements of the story as it has been was to be transformed by White into down and placed in a corner, like a handed down, and has done so prof­ Ellen Gluyas, and downgraded from discarded quecn 's h ead . There is itably- pointing out, for example, a redoubtable gentlewoman to some­ oft en a wry caption i and a the scant evidence for the old chest­ one of low born country origins. The juxtaposition with rat traps-perhaps nut that Eliza installed herself in a novel explores the unpeeling of Ellen, alluding to the verminifer- Hyde Park booth and charged people as she m odulates from one station to ous spread of the invaders. to have a look at her. Schaffer has the other and even beyond. In the also usefully taken on board the na­ process it becomes a metaphor for EO R THE REST F US, though, Eliza ture of pre- contact Aboriginal socie­ embracing the new environment now carries most m eaning as the ty, thereby demonstrating that a great (which offers up the Bracefell figure, embodiment of a reconciliation deal of Mrs Fraser's hardships had to Jack Chance). In A Fringe of Leaves myth. After all, we can't go back to do with the harsh conditions all the Eliza figure comes to see the Britain, despite Germaine Greer's experienced, rather than being cru­ arbitrariness of all social conven­ recent urgingsi rather, we have to elties deliberately inflicted on h er. tions, and to fu lly know and accept make sense- human e intelligent One effect of this is that we might the darker side of her own nature. sense- of our collective life on this now begin to see more overtly fem­ But she does not really integrate with continent. inist readings of the tale: hitherto, the Aborigines. In the novel they Recent developments of the Eliza with stories still airborne of the cru­ remain unindividuated, unnamed, Fraser myth (as in Allan Marett's elty of Eliza's treatment, one form of capable only of a chattering commu­ Noh drama, for example) are impor­ progressivism ran the risk of being The various nality. tant for three reasons. First, they ranged against another, the Aborigi­ representations How very different is the novel involve an acceptance of the land, nal struggle. Still, there are m oments of Eliza Fra ser, by the Afrikaans writer Andre Brink, together with a greater ease in it. As where Schaffer seem s to cross her­ by Fiona Foley and a which also appeared in 1976 in its a corollary of that they have com e to self at every wayside shrine of polit­ less crupulous English version. An In stant in the encourage, secondly, an acceptance ical correctness, and engages in that cover designer, Wind (like the Canadian Michael by whites of the Aboriginal people exasperating tool of the literary critic, are an additional Ondaatje's long poem) was directly (a nd hopefully the reverse). This in the word-surf for resonance and pleasure in inspired by the Nolan treatment of turn entails not repatriation for us, meaning. Nonetheless this remains Schaffer's book. the story, thanks to a Thames & but reparation for them. Australia is an illuminating book. • Hudson m onograph. Here the bar­ in need of a reconciliation myth as gain struck assumes primal impor­ much as South Africa, and thanks to Jim Davidson is Associate Professor tance, for lady and convict in the the various shifts in interpretation in Humanities at Victoria University African context becom e white wom- that have occurred over the past fifty of T echnology.

VoLUM E 6 N uMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 53 Music

JoN GREENAWAY Notes on the blues

The History of the Blues: the roots, the music, the people from Charley Patton to Robert Cray, Francis Davis, London, Seeker and Warburg, 1995. ISBN 0 436 20185 2 RRP$45.00 The Picador Book of Blues and Jazz, James Campbell (ed), London, Picador, 1995. ISBN 0 330 32755 0 RRP $39.95

AsA 17-m'­ thing happens, thereby compressing our lives into a old with pretensions to being a moment. To that end blues is something of an anthem. bit of a lad, I used to venture with my The familiar circularity of the chords and rhythms schoolmates to an unfashionable pub in what and the raw emotion of the music are universal con­ was then the increasingly fashionable Sydney suburb stants, while the players add something to the mix­ of Balmain. The attraction was twofold-the tight and ture, joining it with the mood prevailing in the crowd. sweetly crafted rhythm and blues of the Foreday For an enthusiast, like myself, a good blues band can Riders and the opportunity it presented for a bit of be a point of self-definition. adolescent bravado on Monday morning: As many histories and biographies have noted, the blues (music possessing a 12-bar three-chord tonic 'What you do on the weekend?' structure) is much more than a musical genre. It 'Saw the 'Riders on Friday.' sprang from the cultural weave of African-American 'Don't they play at the Cat and Fiddle? sharecroppers in the south which matured in the 'Yep.' urban ghettos of the north. Of course musicologists 'Isn't that the Bandidos' pub?' would argue, quite rightly, that all forms of music 'Yep.' have a cultural base. Few however were as closely linked to a people as blues is to black American I never positively identified that crest, made in­ history, and why the poet and novelist Maya Ange­ famous by the mid-80s gunfight with the Comanch­ lou titled her story of growing up on the wrong side eros, much as I strained to make out the various names of the tracks in a southern town I Know Why The that adorned the backs of the biker jackets that passed Caged Bird Sings. Francis Davis in The History Of The Blues is conscious of how the music was brought Muddy Walen ... '>tmg the ant hemic The blues had a baby ~md about by circumstance and is at his best when they called it rock 'n' roll. Lihe all children il grew up and did he tells tales of the legendary figures of the blues that fit into this overall picture. Quite thing<> thol mode the parents <>crnlch their he{/(l'> in di<>lJe/ief often the early blues artists, or 'songsters', were only afforded the opportunity to play music because they could avoid hard work. Blind by in the gloom. Once I thought I glimpsed it through Lemon Jefferson, as his name suggests, could hardly the crowd, but it belonged to a fellow opening the see past his nose and so had licence to move around door to let in two aging hippies. Since simple courte­ the south and play for black workers when they were sies had to be beyond outlaws I paid it no regard. cashed up after a harvest. Charley Patton-who, Davis What we were thirsting for, in our naivety, was suggests, would have become a much larger figure in experience: the chance to be somewhere when some- the blues if the technology used to record him had

54 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 not been so poor-had a relatively wealthy step-father to compete with the noise in the bars and juke joints. who ran a lumber hauling business. Davis records in­ Electrification spawned performers such as Little Ri­ terviews with other blues men of the time who were chard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis. The blues was also sometimes spiteful in their remembrances but always exposed to the influences of gospel and soul (the re­ referred to Patton as an influence. Son House, whose cordings of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry from slide guitar has all the yearning the blues can offer, spoke in the 60s about that 'son of a bitch' who was always bragging about how None has emerged from the pre-war era as large m Robert Johnson. many women he had bedded, strutting around on stage playing his guitar behind his Legend has it that after being laughed offstage as a young man. he head, and breaking time when he felt like it. learnt to play the blues by striking a Faustian bargnin at the Patton could well have been the first of that species now rendered all but extinct by the infamous crossroads. Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones expansion of rap and hip hop: the guitar hero. None has emerged from the pre-war era believed Johnson to be so talented a guitarist as to be bmely human .. . as large as Robert Johnson. Legend has it that after being laughed offstage as a young man, he learnt to play the blues by striking a Faustian bar­ the late '60s and early '70s bring them into effect beau­ gain at the infamous crossroads. Keith Richards from tifully). Muddy Waters, regarded as the unofficial King the Rolling Stones believed Johnson to be so talented of the blues in the '50s and '60s-and one of the very a guitarist as to be barely human, and Davis meas­ bridges the music passed over, having learnt guitar ures his stature by describing him as 'the great delta from Son House back in the delta before he caught transcendentalist'. A reissue of his Texas recordings the train to Chicago-sang the anthemic 'The in 1990, 52 years after his death, sold over 400,000 blues had a baby and they called it rock Blues greats: copies in six months. Davis credits the resilience of 'n' roll'. Like all children it grew Bessie Smith and his appeal to the mystery of his life, which is folklore up and did things that fohn Lee Hook er. in itself, and the power of his lyrics. The dark refer­ made the parents ences and vocal tension have a pathos which could scratch only be evoked by a Southern black living in the first half of this century. Davis does suggest, however, that his words may have had a more practical purpose:

Maybe the notion that a performer was evi l incarnate titillated juke joint revellers as much as it does the audiences for rap and heavy metal today. Or maybe the belief that a man was one of Sa tan's minions amounted to an insurance policy against some of the rough customers ... many of whom regarded musi­ cians as pampered dandies out to steal their women. Davis delights in making the .. " point that Johnson was not the found­ - - -· er of the blues and that he, like everyone else, played songs based • on others' work. For Johnson, Charley Patton and the ever pop­ ular Big Bill Broonzy were the main sources. But he could easily have made a case --.... for Johnson being the spirit of the blues.

T HE BOOK HAS ITS PROBLEMS DEALING with how the blues changed after World War II. Blacks moving to northern towns in search of work brought the music with them and musicians had to amplify their guitars

V OLUM E 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 55 their heads in disbelief. But in this case the child led himself by saying t hat 'blues' is an overarching to the rediscovery of mum and dad. The blues revival cultural term often used to describe both strains, but of the '60s brought whites to the music as listeners ask any muso and they'd set you straigh t quick smart). and performers, m ass appeal, and in turn a lack of The fe w pieces which do squeeze their way into the clarity about its cultural underpinnings. volume appear to have been rushed in at the last Just how to define what the blues represented minute to fill up space. James Campbell seem s to have after whites got in on the act has troubled more writers used a more careful hand to pick the jazz- related writ­ than Davis, but m ost have made a better fist of it. His ings but, hey, jazz always did get better press than its problem seems to be that he has not been able t o over­ unsophisticated cousin from the backwoods. come the myopia of the enthusiast (in his case direct­ An attraction of this volume is the great number ed towards five or six black performers) to regard white of contributions from artists themselves. Billie Holi­ players as anything but fraudulent copies. This re­ day describes life working the tables for coins before sponse usually indicates that the writer is 'in denial'. success came her way. Dizzy Gillespie tells a good Not willing to admit that the blues is the musical one about how his trumpet was bent at a riotous par­ equivalent of Latin, Davis claims the recent success ty when a friend fell on it. Instead of cracking a fit he of black guitarist Robert Cray proves the music can discovered he liked the sound. In a way it is the same be revived again. Palpably frustrated at the lack of story of others who used harmonicas the wrong way, popularity of the blues amongs t black America, Dav­ jugs, washboards, and now turntables to make music. is blames it on the pollution of the music by 'gloomy Anything near at hand had possibilities as an white gu ys'. Those who get closer to the mark con­ instrument, which is fitting, considering improvisa­ cede that with a few notable exceptions, the blues tion is at the heart of both blues and jazz. Included has ceased to be living fo lk music. In its place is a also are offerings from Eastern European musicians self-sufficient musical genre, played by exponents who who describe jazz as a sort of mute protest against more often than not are fai thful to its origins, which the social disciplines of Communism and Nazism. can still make its impact on an audience when per­ There is not a great deal of commentary but then fo rmed well, no matter who is up there on the stage. not much more is needed than that offered by Ra lph The Story of the Blue is m ainly about men, since Ellison in which he takes to task LeRoi Jones, author they came to dominate the music, however there is of Blues People. Ellison's The In visible Man is a classic mention of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, popular work which delves deeply into the African-American singers of the '20s, particularly as the latter's 'Crazy psyche and his critique praised Jones for pitching the Blues' was the first recording of what was called 'race book towards explaining the relationship between music' by the record companies (a listen to Bessie blacks and mainstream American culture through Smith's 'Down-Hearted Blues' followed by Janis music. However, Ellison sensed that he had been Joplin's 'Trouble In Mind' gives an indication of the overly empirical and had ignored some important ob­ lasting impact these women had). They were around servations for the sake of classification and definition: at a time when blues and jazz were evolving from vaudeville, m edicine and minstrel shows, and the It is unfo rtunate that Jones thought it necessary to distinction was less certain. Ownership of Smith and ignore the aesthetic nature of the blues in order to Rainey is competed for by blues and jazz make his ideological point, for he might have come historians alike. much closer had he consid ered the blues not as poli­ tics but as art. This would have still required th e di s­ SMJTH AND R AINEY ARE WELL REPRESENTED in The Pic­ ciplines of anthropology and sociology ... ' ador Book of Blues and Jazz. This eclectic volume, put together by Edinburgh jazz critic James Camp­ He continues: bell, both confuses and delights. As a reflection on the nature of black music it is difficult to follow. A 'For the blues are not primarily concerned with civil typical example of som e of the strange juxtapositions rights or obvious political protest; they are an art form that pop up in the book is an extract from Michael and thus a transcendence of those conditions created Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter on the dea th within the N egro community by the denial of social of one of the early jazzm en Buddy Bolden, which rubs justice.' shoulders with a piece on the origins of the word 'jazz'. Light conjecture on etymology doesn't complement Perhaps as younger generations of black Ameri­ the heady prose of Ondaatje. It delights, though, by cans have turned away from them as form s of expres­ having such a broad resource. Expect to be titillated sion in favour of music with more obvious political by it,but confused about its intentions. protest, preserving blues and jazz as art forms does One could be churlish and suggest that the pres­ them the justice they deserve. Music is aU things to ence of blues in the title is a token gesture-or a all people-so let the band play on. • shrewd bit of marketing on the part of Picador-as Jazz dominates the volume (Campbell might defend Jon Greenaway is the assistant editor of Eureka Street.

56 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 THEATRE

M ARY L ORD Split stage

ent scholar at Melbourne University T TH'

V OLUME 6 NUMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 57 not surprising that they were un­ heroes and triumphant heroes. The day. When she visited him in Sydney done by their amateurism. lives of its two subjects sometimes they were 'only good pals, not lov­ After the collapse of the Pioneer run parallel and some­ ers'. Still he revelled in 'her com­ Players, Esson continued to work at "{ i{ T times at tangents. panionship, her sympathy, her intel­ playwriting though his literary ca­ ligence, her intuition, her joyous­ reer was in decline and the Essons' v vHEN L OUIS' SENSE OF FAILURE ness [and] her fascinating personali­ finances were such that Hilda, a grew as the theatre offered him no ty' and 'missed her dreadfully' when qualified doctor, at last took up her opportunities and he vacated the field she was gone. medical career. While the physically by moving north, he became a kind Devotion to her husband's well­ frail Louis was retreating into a myth of elder statesman of Australian let­ being and their shared ideals seems of heroic failure, Hilda was pioneer­ ters in Sydney. At his best, Louis to have been a guiding principle in ing in the field of immunology. She was a lively and witty conversation­ all Hilda's decisions. He was an in­ also formed a loving relationship alist with a capacity for inspiring adequate husband and father and with her superior, John Dale, a rela­ loyalty. His gift for attracting friends could be a neglectful friend, yet there tionship she managed with excep­ like Vance and Nettie Palmer in his was something in him which bound tional tact and discretion. She also younger days continued when he was his admirers to him in spite of all. became a power in Melbourne's older and frailer in Sydney. He made Louis always came first with her and politically and theatrically radical new and true friends among the gath­ after his death she continued to fight New Theatre. erings of the Fellowship of Austral­ to gain him the recognition she be­ This book is so well-written and ian Writers including Frank Dalby lieved was his due. so interesting that it is difficult to Davison, Xavier Herbert, Dymphna In the struggle for fairness and review without giving an abbreviated Cusack, the playwright Catherine balance in this double biography, version of the plot, because a well­ Duncan and Miles Franklin. Al­ Fitzpatrick may have tipped the plotted drama it is, complete with though his separation from Hilda scales in Hilda's favour, which is sub-plots, romantic love stories, was accepted in the conventional certainly preferable to the dismiss­ mysteries, ironic reversals, tragic sense, they wrote to each other every ive mentions she has collected hith­ erto. However, Louis' slow decline into depression and withdrawal made him seem, even to himself, pallid and ineffectual. Yet his was the no­ ble failure of a man who attempted Theology and Ministry in the Dominican 'fradition to found a genuinely Australian theatre before the country was ripe for it. That his unwavering determi­ There are Many Gifts ... nation to swim against the commer­ but one Spirit who orders them all for the building up of the faith community. If cial theatrical mainstream was the Spirit is calling you to ministry, or if you want to strengthen your ministry skills, premature and doomed to disappoint­ Aquinas Institute of Theology can help you find a program that will open new ment, does not reduce his signifi­ horizons. cance in our cultural history nor the value of the plays he left us. • Master of Arts in Theology Hilda, for so long in visible on the • Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies public record, is accorded the fame • Master of Divinity she would have easily acquired in a • Doctor of Ministry in Preaching less materialistic world than ours. • Certificate in Spiritual Direction The playwright Catherine Duncan • Sabbatical programs wrote of her that: • Summer Preaching Institute Hilda belongs to that rare compa­ Aquinas Institute qf Theology is located on the campus qfSaint Louis University. ny of cultivated beings without Our students have complete access to the wide range qf educational, recreational, whom artists ca nn ot exist and grow, and cultural opportunities qf the Saint Louis metropolitan area. and without whom no people can To learn more about the opportunities ava11ahle to you at Aquinas Institute qf boast of a national cu lture. Theology, contact Scott L. Hippert, Director qfAdmissions. Peter Fitzpatrick has unravelled all that can be discovered of the lives of the e two idealists and left specu­ lation about the blanks to his read­ ers. A very wise move. • s Mary Lord is a Melbourne writer whose biography of the novelist and playwright Hal Porter was pu blishcd 3642 UN DELL BOULEVARD • SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI 631 08, USA • PHONE 314-977 .J869 • FAX 314-977-7225 by Random House in 1993.

58 EUREKA STREET • M ARCH 1996 What makes this film so differ­ Many perfectly cast supporting ent is that it is not weighed down by actors, led by Matt Dillon as her the morals of conventionalism. We nice, hapless husband, give a strength don't know their history and they're to what might have been uncon­ not trying to change or seek redemp­ trolled farce. As it is, it is a witty, tion for their wicked ways; they just disciplined, black comedy. are, and the rest is left to the view­ -Peter Malone MSC er's imagination. - Jon Greenaway Framed Jane No kidding Persuasion, dir.Roger Michell (ind­ pendent cinemas). ' Nothing To Die For dir. Gus VanSant (General happens! It's so flat and televisual,' release).'Wicked' was the way Nicole moaned one ABC reviewer of this Kidman described director Gus Van glowing adaption of one of litera­ Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own ture's subtlest evocations of the cur­ Private Idaho) amidst the 'ums' of rents of human feeling. her Golden Globe Best Actress ac­ He has a point. Jane Austen wrote ceptance speech. 'Wicked' denotes rotten film scripts. Too many words, total evil; but it is also used in an and most of them double-edged. In affectionate sense to denote an iron­ Persuasion no disembowelling takes Last call ic seemingly bad which is really good. place. There isn't an icepick used for 'Wicked' is a good description of this anything other than its intended Leaving Las Vegas dir. Mike Figgis interesting and entertaining film. purpose, and the camera doesn't (independent cinemas). Life is rarely American media, especially tele­ luxuriate in exploding roses as seen through the bottom of a glass as vision, in an easy satiric target and Martin Scorsese did to give passion a elegantly as it is in Leaving Las Ve­ some of the jokes here are quite ob­ National Geographic sheen in his gas. It's the story of a drunk's ride to vious. But the clever surface humour TheAgeof Innocence. Noone shoots oblivion, accompanied by a hooded covers quite some depth. In fact, I a gun either, though you can hear but beautiful prostitute, through the would suggest that this is an allegor­ Casinos and bars of Las Vegas. ical critique of the American white, EUREKA STREET Alcoholics and street-girls tend to Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of life. FrLM CoMPETITION be over-represented in movies but Kidman's Suzanne Scott (both pret­ Humphrey Bogart (above) looks a what makes this film watchable is ty and lethal in pink) is the ingenu­ little worse for wear in this scene that someone has finally done it ous upper-middle-class girl whose from John Huston's 1953 classic right. version of the American dream is to Beat the Devil. If you can name Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage) is be on television. (What's the use of the film Bogart starred in which a failed script-writer in Hollywood doing anything worthwhile if it's has just been remade, you're a who throws his belongings in the not seen?) chance to win the Eureka Street front yard, including a photo of his As her pre-packaged ambitions movie prize of $30.00. long-departed wife and son, and burns and her success-ethic ruthlessness P.S. If you can also tell us who the lot. He jumps in his car with all take over, she will let nothing get in co-starred with him, you'd be in his money and heads to Las Vegas to her way. People who are obstacles with a better chance. drink himself away. On his arrival are seduced, discarded or murdered. The winner of the December he nearly runs a girl down in his The three unteachable teenagers she competition was Harry Coyle of drunken haze. After a chance reun­ befriends and uses discover the dif­ Castle Hill, NSW who correctly ion with Sera (Elizabeth Shue) dur­ ference between image and reality. picked Peter Finch as the only ing a more sober moment he asks her Nicole Kidman gives an assured Australian actor to win an acade­ to sleep with him for $500. Instead performance, intelligently caricatur­ my award with a posthumous gong they drink and talk. Sera comes to ing the all-American TV weather for his role in Newsfront. recognise in Ben's drunkenness the girls (no 'ums' in her many speeches same resignation and acceptance of here). Buck Henry's screenplay pre­ fate as in herself and tries to reach supposes knowledge of current US him as he gradually slides away. TV programming and uses the media The performances of Cage and (video and television) all through Shue are well measured and to the the film, especially as people in point. At times their charisma Suzanne's life are interviewed. Her obscures the seaminess of their char­ parents and her husbands discuss acters, but the script and direction the case in a talk show. Suzanne's manage to remind the viewer of own genuinely wicked interview is a where things are at. highlight.

VoLUME 6 NuMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 59 off-camera static from the Napoleon­ Carin Redgrave (as the incorrigibly conceal her want of Taste as her ic wars. Mostly, men and women venal Sir Walter Elliott) spectacular­ excess of Years (for indeed Elinor just live their lives, loving, loathing ly so, but none of them is a star was scarce twenty-one by the end of and despising one another. In place name. So there is the additional the book)! of 'action' you have to be satisfied pleasure of discovery. Sophie Thomp­ Let me not be all ungenerous, with intensity. son, as Anne's hypochondriacal sis­ however great the provocation; the It was quite enough for me: I've ter Mary, can make a prune of her young Lady, Miss Kate Winslet, was rarely been so richly satisfied in a mouth and a mess of her children's in every way admirable as Marianne. cinema. Michell and his screen play­ upbringing without becoming a com­ Indeed, the other Actors were exact­ wright, Nick Dear, understand the plete monster. Michell has caught ly in Looks as I had pictur'd, & when poignant urgency and the severity of the register of Austen's charity and they were allowed speech of my this late novel of Jane Austen's and her unsentimental severity exactly. creation, the experience was have given it rich and astute The lives of these women and delightful. cinematic expression. men are full of affection and familial But to excise utterly the parts of Persuasion is about second jostle but hemmed in by circum­ Anne Steele & Lady Middleton! To chances. Its heroine, Anne Elliot, stance and fraught with longing for a substitute for the dramatic Midnight allowed herself to be persuaded out better, freer kind of life. The longing Visit of Willoughby some fustian of her first chance for an equal and is focused in Anne, and in Amanda about Elinor's exhorting of her near­ passionate life with the man of her Root's fine performance you see it dying Sister to 'Please try, Mari­ choice, Captain Frederick Went­ articulated in the subtle play of anne'! To display Elinor in a violent worth (Cia ran Hinds manages to be expression, or in intense, enclosed Boo-hooing upon the receipt of the both wholesome and saturnine in conversations between characters. News that Edward was free' (In my This is a film about duty and book, I had her retire decently from constraint, but it is a human comedy the room before giving way to her not a tragedy. Its rewards when they Emotion.) come-and they do-are pungent I staid from Politeness; but were and unconstrained. I to name this Work anew, it should -Morag Fraser be Nonsense & Insensibility. Yrs Aff'ly, J. Dear Jane -Juliette Hughes

Sense and Sensibility dir. Ang Lee Gangs tar (Hoyts Cinemas) Dearest M., Get Shorty, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld HowVcxt & Astonish'd I am you (Village). The revival of John Tra­ may judge for yourself when I tell volta's career-like Sean Connery, you of the eagerly-awaited Film of he improves with age-will always - my book. Altho' Mr. Lee's impres­ be dated from his appearance in sions of Scenery & Dress are irre­ Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. the role). When the film opens you proachable, yet the reconstruction But Sonnenfeld's gangster film, I

60 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 m ore fun than any plod through post­ This is a splendid m ovie-funny, class. Tim Robbins balances this m odern pastiche with Tarantino, the warm, honest, and beautifully made. story delicately enough so that the Coens or the aging Robert Altman. There is a great richness in sm all rights and wrongs of capital punish­ All the buffery is mere flummery, observations-the clatter of the lace­ m ent do not obscure the variety of and never obscures the fact that this m akers' bobbins, a snippet of a human suffering that lie just beneath is an exercise in what the old Holly­ contemporary flam enco ballet that the surface. Helped by a fa bulous wood, in the heyday of the gangster has amazingly controlled Oedipal soundtrack, he sets the m ood for m ovie and the western, did best: overtones (worth seeing for that refl ection well. narrative entertainment. alone). I hope Hollywood doesn't rip -Jon Greenaway People who take film theory and this one off the way they did when other arcana seriously will do well they transm ogrified Matador into to ask themselves why this tale from Basic Instinct. Wood nymph the middlebrow Mr Leonard dazzles, -Juliette Hughes while the products of the Co en broth­ Mighty Aphrodite dir. Woody Allen ers' self-consciously erudite imagi­ (independent cinemas). Lenny Wein­ nation seems increasingly leaden. A hard row rib (Woody Allen) is a N ew York Meanwhile the rest of us can sit back sportswriter. His wife, Amanda and enjoy watching a clutch of Hol­ Dead Man W alking dir. Tim Rob­ (Helena Bonham Carter ), is an art lywood stars co-operate as their usu­ bins (independent cinemas). Films curator who wants to own her own al screen personae are sent up ro t­ about retribution and redemption gallery. ten . Danny de Vito's pompous midg­ are usually hard and fast action flicks Amanda wants children, but et is m em orable, and Gene Hack­ that reserve far more time for the doesn't want to take a year away man's idiotic, would-be tough guy is nerves than they do for the em o­ from her career, so, against Lenny's even better. tions. Dead Man W alking, Tim Rob­ wishes, she adopts a baby. Both - Ray Cassin bins' second eff ort as director after become devoted parents and their Bob Roberts, is an exception . The child, Max, turns out to be some­ priva te worlds of a group of people thing of a whiz-kid. Flamboyant grief trying to com e to terms with a vio­ As Amanda becom es more in­ lent crime are given such voice that volved in her career, Lenny develops The Flower of My Secret, dir. Pedro the politically charged context of an obsession for finding Max's birth Almodovar (independent cinem as) the story is but that-contextual. m other. He can't understand how This is an unusually low-key Almo­ Based on the true- to-life experi­ people who could produce such a dovar. All of his m otifs and preoccu­ ence of Sr Helen Prejean (Susan clever child would ever want to give pations are evident, but som e of the Sarandon ) it follows her through the him away. more outrageously camp elem ents changes as she is drawn from her His search lea ds him to Linda are only quoted, as it were. There is work in a black housing project in (Mira Sorvino), a talentless aspiring great attention to detail-sound is N ew Orleans into the world of a actor who works as a porn star and very important; the plot is as intri­ convicted criminal, condemned to hooker to support herself. Despite cate as in his former m ovies, but this die for the murder of two young her limitations Linda is unswerv­ time there is a masterly sureness of lovers. What begins as letter writing ingly optimistic. touch . develops into a series of visits, in Lenny fin ds himself drawn into The film opens with a counsel­ which Sr Helen gives support to an unusual friendship. He plays a ling session. A woman is being in­ Mathew Poncelet (Sean Penn) sim ­ m odern Henry Higgins, desperately form ed that her 16-year-old son is ply because she sees it as part of her trying to get Linda to give up her brain-dead, and the question of or­ mission to help the poor. As she seedy life so when Max grows up and gan donation is being broached, care­ becomes involved in Poncelet' s cause wants to look for his mother he won't fully. The wom an cannot accept this; to commute his death sentence, she be asham ed of her. her grief and limited command of is compelled to visit the victims' Every step of the way Lenny is m edical facts make her completely parents wh o are suffering for the loss accompanied by a Greek chorus, who dependent on the two doctors. But of their children. slip between serious quotes from and nothing is as it seems on the surface Sr Helen is torn between helping flip, Allenesque lines. in an Almodovar film, and this one a forgotten m an on death row and Mighty Aphrodite lacks the sharp has more depth than m ost. the innocent but equally neglected edge of Bullets over Broadway and Leocadia, a writer, (Marisa Pare­ parents. In a confronting scene with Husban ds and Wives, but Lenny is des) must learn to accept that her the m other and father of the dead far less self-obsessed than m any of marriage is dead, and must also deal girl the resulting tension is played Allen's previous leads. Perhaps as he with a crisis in her writing. It would out beautifully. ages he is becoming slightly less pes­ be giving too much away to say ex­ Saran don gives a driven perform­ simistic about the future. Fans of actly what the crisis is, but Almodo­ ance of a deeply spiritual woman, Allen's previous work will enjoy this var explores all the implica tions with who comforts people with very dif­ film and first timers won't be disap­ customary thoroughness, and a cer­ ferent pains. Her scenes with Sean pointed. tain gentleness. Penn have som e mom ents of real -Nick Grace

V O LUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 61 BRIEF Diminishing returns

w AH WAfCHfNG "" m"rS>ON Ninja Scroll was truly appalling in its Tarantino-like It's official: the average of 22 hours or goriness-after all, he's a Wayne Wang fan-and yet so admitted to by survey respondents had an extraordinary beauty .. . ) has shown a drop of ten minutes a week Four Corners' exploration of John Howard was since 1991. When you look at the lat­ better viewing. The similar program on Keating was est election coverage it's hardly surpris­ not so good, fewer insights, rather anodyne in its pre­ ing that people are finding something else to do. After dictability. But Liz Jackson got the bit between her all, it's just a prolonged competition, like Gladiators, teeth and went after Howard about his changes of Sale of the Century, or even more like the annual direction. It was really amusing to watch the inter­ dreariness of the Oscars, the Logies, the Golden Globe changes, which went along these lines: Awards and the Miss U.S .A. Pageant. Liz (intently, leaning forward a little): Why have Politicians are not so attractive, or athletic, or you changed on X? knowledgeable. Perhaps we're tired of the sight and Howard( leaning back, face set): I haven't changed sound of them auctioning off the last rags of their on X at all. souls. There has been little drama or heart in the cam­ Liz (reading from some research on her knee) : But paign-competition between the journalists has been you said in 1994 that X was terrible. just as fierce, just as public and almost more interest­ Howard: Er, I don't recall saying that at all. ing. John Howard insisted on Ray Martin and Chan­ And so on. nel Nine for the Great Debate, giving himself the The program was clever in subtle ways: shots of appearance of a certain obstinate cowardice-Kerry him campaigning for the Liberals around 1966 showed O'Brien would surely feed him to Keating, the Big Bad a nerdy young zealot, full of a kind of enthusiasm that Wolf. So the national carrier was deprived of the op­ is tempered now-not so much the ideologue as the portunity to host the meeting of our national con­ would-be demagogue. That he has had plenty of image­ tenders for power. makeover folk talking to him was shown in the rath­ The debate probably got better ratings that er pathetic way he described himself to Liz Jackson way-there are tellies out here in viewer land that in terms such as, 'I'm an honest type' etc. have had no neural pathways for Channel Two since The snippets with Peacock, and a Very Smooth Kerry bought the cricket. And it wasn't a joyride for adviser, showed why he has had to wait until now to Howard-Ray Martin acted tough: he had something get his run. The 'L.A. Law' men (in the Great Debate to prove if he ever wanted another Logie. In subse­ Howard accused Keating of being an 'L.A. W . Law' quent encounters with Howard his manner bordered character) exist in Howard's party too. And Malcolm on the truculent, without, however, causing any great Fraser's impassive endorsement lacked the discomfort to either side. Keating surfed his questions enthusiasm of the very old stagers who with a practised dodginess available only to instinc­ agreed with the 'Honest John' image. tive performers. Howard, on the other hand, looked dreadful for the first few minutes until the adrenalin H owARD HAD BEEN THE KIND OF YOUNG MAN that the subsided. His voice shook, and whenever the going old men of the party liked: a solid, conservative young was tough his mouth stretched into a grin of assumed fellow, not a dasher, a reliable young chap. The pro­ amusement, contradicted by the line of white around gram suggested, without ever having to come right the irises behind the glasses. Keating adopted the pu­ out and say it, that winning office might be less diffi­ gilist stance: jaw jutting, arms folded tightly. No-one cult for Howard than keeping it. was getting past him. Miss U.S.A. at least knows she's only got a year A pity then, that he failed to capitalise on an open in office. All she has to do is avoid pregnancy, too­ misere given by Howard's assertion that he was go­ obvious affairs with politicians and keep her weight ing to solve youth unemployment by removing the down and then she can relax. This year Miss Louisiana fetter of unfair dismissal laws from small business. won, in a gown that looked more like a mummy-band­ The obvious rejoinder (one that Kerry O'Brien surely age with holes, after saying in answer to the Big Ques­ wouldn't have missed even if Keating and Martin did) tion (Do you think Women's Liberation has gone far was that surely he couldn't mean that employers were enough?) posed by the judges to the three finalists, going to be able yet again to sack staff as they turned 'Oh yeahs! We hev arrabved'' Just shows what Not 18 in order to hire cheap juniors. The fat would have Being N egative can do for a gal. • been fairly in the fire then, and it would have been a better, bloodier show. (But I'm forced to watch SBS for really violent excitement. The Japanese manga Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer and reviewer.

62 EUREKA STREET • MARCH 1996 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 41, March 1996

Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM

ACROSS 1 First-rate clergym an wh o wins the party prize? (5 ,8) 10 N owadays fit and powerful enough to adjust to different conditions. (9) 11 Public relations fuss at the Museum! (5) 12 Set up a working party in the part of La Scala Borgia u sed. (5) 13 Perhaps it's a rebel who ultimately frees his countrym en. (9) 14 Because a job consumed all his time, h e became a non-believer. (8) 16 Sailor on a boulevard in a foreign land. (6) 19 The eastern heavens are bright, the picnic is prepared in cool storage. (6) 20 Southern voter is choosy, perhaps. (8) 22 After a broken rest, dines as usual though afflicted with fatigue. (9) 24 Left about the beginning of Easter and went fast. (5) 25 Possibly I'd air my grievances if my arm-bones were broken. (5) 26 On the left of the manuscript is the leather case. (9 ) 2 7 In this re-constituted h ou se, girls can go in for probing their inner selves. (4-9)

DOWN Solution to Crossword no. 40, January-February 1996 2 An accident could cause this-blood, rack and ruin everywhere. (9) 3 A second on the hill is enough for this vehicle. (5) 4 With a change of leader, the aristocracy achieve facility of m ovem ent. (8) 5 Has poor Ed been in trouble? He can get help if __ . (4,2) 6 The spoilt pears are such that they can be divided. (9) 7 Decree token action included therein to be lawful. (5) 8 By a new arrangem ent, I am nearly part of this democratic process. (13) 9 A large number on the team have a fixed allowance, it's thought. (13) 15 Trample on philosopher of liberty fo r prom oting such a m on otonous routine? (9) 17 Help Anton, who's confused, find the place marked here. (2,3,4) 18 He can tell m e a m ore certain way to m ake calculations about size an d shape. (8) 21 Folk who plop around with ease, apparently! (6) 23 Road I travelled in search of a transmitter. (5) 24 The A.I. generation of computers? Or a Beethoven symphony? (5)

Share your good Will ... The Jesuits are colllffii tted to a Christian faith that seeks to build a more just world. - To conti nue their work both here and overseas wi th: • Youth For further information contact: (iliiS--; • Refugees Fr Chri s Horvat S.J . ·...... c. ....·· • Aborigines 130 Power Street ···········•··- • Pri soners Hawthorn , VIC 3 122 • The Homeless Telephone (03) 98 18 1336 the Jesuits rely on the generous support of donors. You can help sustain these efforts by making a bequest in your Wi ll.

V OLUME 6 N UMBER 2 • EUREKA STREET 63 I:URI:-KA STR[-EJ & White Records Special CD Offer Deeper Water by Paul Kelly Paul Kelly is one of Australia's most prolific singer/song­ writers, and his lyrics-driven music has drawn wide acclaim over the last two decades. His most recent album, Deeper Water, extends this tradition with a raft of new songs which Kelly performs with the confidence of an elder statesman and the enthusiasm of the new boy on the block.

Thanks to White Records, we have six copies of Deeper Water to give away, each worth $30. Just put your narne and address on the back of an envelope and send it to Eurel

Santa Clara University Two 1996 Summer Sessions

June 24-July 12 CMorningsl ~l~j,ll!llll lllllllrllillllill~Discernment & Christian Decision Making - Patrick Howell, S.J. Sacraments of Initiation -John McKenna, C.M. Survey of Sacred Music - Dr. Fred Moleck Pastoral Communication & Contemporary Issues - John Mossi, S.J. July 15- August 2 (Mornings) The Church - Jeanette Rodriguez, Ph.D. The Prophets - Marilyn Schaub, Ph.D. Johannine Spirituality- Joseph Grassi, S.S.L. The Family: Social Realities & Spiritual Concerns -Gloria Durka, Ph.D. June 24- August 2 (Evenings) Mystery of Jesus Christ - Rev. Gerard Sloyan Growing into the Full Stature of Christ: Process of Transformation - Pamela Bjorklund, Ph.D. Private instruction in organ, voice and composition Study for a degree or your own enrichment Contact: Rita Claire Dorner, O.P., Dept. of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, U.S.A. 408/554-4831 * FAX 408/554-2387

I SS N 1036-1758

9 771036 175017