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33011_QBooks_Ads_V5.indd 1 27/09/2016 10:23 AM september 2020 No. 569 Volume Lxiv, Number 9

letters 2 Daniel Hegedus, Nicholas T. Parsons, Jan Cooper, Giles Auty, Robert Westcott, Peter Andrew editor’s column 4 Strategic Thinking Keith Windschuttle asperities 6 John O’Sullivan astringencies 8 Anthony Daniels the philistine 10 Salvatore Babones fifth column 12 The Royal Navy’s Triumph over Slavery Jeremy Black universities 16 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery Peter Murphy the pandemic 24 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life David Martin Jones 34 Why the Left Loves the Lockdown Patrick Morgan china 36 The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand Rowan Callick 41 The China Question and the National Interest Ted O’Brien racial politics 46 The Black Lives That Don’t Matter Harry Cummins 50 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall Michael Warby religion 56 The Anglican Church: From Orthodoxy to Anarchy Barry Spurr education 60 Too Male or Too White: Selecting Texts for Schools Mark Lopez health 64 The Short March Through the Family Court John Whitehall law 70 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police Douglas Drummond aborigines 77 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination Lyn Wesley 84 Fabrication and Deception Michael Connor books 89 The Insider by Christopher Pyne Scott Prasser 91 The Debasement of Human Rights by Aaron Rhodes Peter Kurti television 94 Cook’s Quadrant Joe Dolce literature 102 The Poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon Michael Wilding story 105 Long Live the Weeds Andrea Ockerby sweetness & light 111 Tim Blair Poetry 14: Jack Paper Finn Brooke; 15: The Church and the Dhow Sean Wayman; On the Blade of a Day Carolyn Evans Campbell; 23: You get one at every meeting John Carey; 33: The Cellist; His Coriander; Quarantine Libby Sommer; 40: Anguish; Alchemy Ken Simpson; 45: Conversion Richard Stanton; 49: St Corona Joe Dolce; 55: Mine Robbie Coburn; 65: In The Zocalo Carolyn Evans Campbell; 63: The Greyhound & The Angel Finn Brooke; 69: Angela Caroline Smith Glen; 87: Guilt Ken Simpson; 88: Death of a Sperm Whale; Her Beauty; Wild Horses Colin Ian Jeffery; 101: The Lemon Tree; Stream; On Symmetry David Hush; What Are Illusions?; At the Old House Jason Morgan; 110: TB or Not TB? Derek Fenton L e t t e r s But even if Jourova has no solid legal ground to start an infringement against the #Hungarian government, why Editor Ms Jourova’s Words is she so apolitical that she Keith Windschuttle admits that. [email protected] Sir: In his recent piece “The Editor, International Central European Kulturkampf”, It does not appear that his John O’Sullivan Nicholas T. Parsons falsely claims views have been very seriously Liter ary Editor that in my “revealing outburst” I misrepresented. Barry Spurr asked European Commissioner The more substantive point [email protected] Vera Jourova, “Why didn’t she just I was trying to make is that the keep her mouth shut?” I never used Hegeduses of the world always Deputy Editor & Fiction Editor George Thomas these words, which are claimed claim to be strict adherents of the [email protected] to be quotations from me by Mr rule of law and this claim is the Parsons. main burden of their (in my view) Editor, Quadr ant Online I am sure your magazine is com- partisan and sometimes unscrupu- Roger Franklin mitted to high ethical and journal- lous campaign against Hungary. [email protected] istic standards and thus it does not The key sentence for any of your Contributing Editors publish forged, fraudulent quota- readers who may be interested is, Theatre: Michael Connor tions. Therefore I would like to “Why is she so apolitical that she Television and Film: Joe Dolce kindly ask you to publish an errata admits that?” They are for the rule Columnists to the piece that explains that the of law—so long as the decisions go Anthony Daniels quotations used by Mr Parsons are their way. Hungary has consist- Tim Blair incorrect and he falsely claims that ently maintained that the campaign Salvatore Babones I ever made the above statement. against it is chiefly political. Mr I am very much looking forward Hegedus’s stated view would seem Subscriptions to your answer. to confirm that. Phone: (03) 8317 8147 Daniel Hegedüs Nicholas T. Parsons Fax: (03) 9320 9065 Fellow, The German Marshall via email Post: Quadrant Magazine, Fund of the United States Locked Bag 1235, via email North Melbourne VIC 3051 Aboriginal Society Email: quadrantmagazine@ data.com.au Sir: I am sorry that Mr Hegedus Sir: I empathise with Joanna should feel I have misrepresented Hackett’s concern (July-August Publisher his views. However, on April 19 he 2020) that Bruce Pascoe’s Young Quadrant (ISSN 0033-5002) is tweeted the following: Dark Emu will be used uncritically published ten times a year by in schools. Quadrant Magazine Limited, Why couldn’t she bring As one who has read anthro- Suite 2/5 Rosebery Place, #Art2TEU in game? Or why pological and historical accounts Balmain NSW 2041, Australia couldn’t she simply remain of traditional Aboriginal society, ACN 133 708 424 silent? I can find nowhere in I concur with her objection to her mission letter that her task Pascoe’s statement that Aboriginal Production is to legitimize autocratizing people constructed “a system of Design Consultant: Reno Design governments. Is she the same pan-continental government that Art Director: Graham Rendoth @VeraJourova who once generated peace and prosperity”. I successfully pushed #EPPO find it too trite to argue the case Printer: Ligare Pty Ltd through all EU institutions? about “peace and prosperity”, both 138–152 Bonds Road, Riverwood NSW 2210 Western concepts foreign to tra- On the same date: ditional Aboriginal society. The Cover: Colours of Australia claim of a “pan-continental gov- “Heidelberg” We could long discuss whether ernment” is, however, perhaps www.quadrant.org.au the #EnablingAct violates Art harmfully misleading. It was the 2 TEU or Art 19 TEU for small-group nature of Aboriginal example, I am sure it does. society, regulated by extendable

2 Quadrant September 2020 Letters kinship rules, and without formal ple of intelligence a bit difficult to utopia. Scruton’s search for a con- political and hierarchical organi- grasp. Perhaps the relative lack of servative answer is what Bendle sation, which kept the society so interest shown by the political Right writes about here. The Death of “nimble” and made something like here explains even more than I God argument will not serve; rela- a “treaty” inconceivable. realise. In England I was appointed tivism nor nominalism either. And More importantly, I feel sad to bodies dealing with the national Richard Wagner’s “Redemption of that Pascoe seems to feel the need curriculum and environmental and the Soul through Art” as another to argue that Aboriginal society artistic issues, very possibly at the possibility has also failed. was really like the coloniser’s agri- direct behest of Margaret Thatcher. Finding a way back to God cultural society, as though this Imagine the benefit of something is not necessarily doomed to fail, makes it more to be respected. This similar happening here. thinks Scruton. Constructing a seems to me to continue the colo- I have always maintained viable alternative is what his life’s nial view that Aboriginal people that all right-wing causes require work was about. So what should we were lacking in the “higher” arts “an ethical umbrella”. I therefore look for? He had explored Matthew and were therefore inferior. Surely also salute the sanity of Michael Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach”, as the essence of the success of tra- Cashman’s letter in the same issue one possible way forward; however, ditional Aboriginal society was of Quadrant. Responsibility starts for Scruton, Lebenswelten is the that as hunters and gatherers, they with the individual conscience. answer. developed the skills and knowl- Unless the political Right makes a In his latest essay Dr Bendle edge which resulted in the mainte- major intelligent input into educa- gives the reader a glimpse of Roger nance of the natural productivity of tion and the arts at all levels here I Scruton’s thinking. I commend it Australia for 60,000 years (or what- can’t see much future hope for us. I to anyone who may have missed ever the latest figure is). grew up and served in the military it. It might also lead us to some of On the matter of agriculture, during the Cold War—a vital expe- the fifty or so books of Scruton’s I browsed Pascoe’s original Dark rience Australians largely missed. (which one feels sure Bendle has Emu book to see if I could find any read) and an understanding of his Giles Auty reference to men tending or dealing Lebenswelten. Echo Point, NSW with native plants. I could not, but Robert Westcott I stand to be corrected. Nor could via email I find any reference to men carry- Scruton’s Lebenswelten ing digging sticks and coolamons (for gathering), or women carrying Sir: Mervyn Bendle’s reply to Paul Clark and the Webbs spears and woomeras (for hunt- Monk’s wish to base conservatism ing the larger animals). To seek on “some form of philosophical Sir: What an utter pleasure to to present Aboriginal society as atheism” (July-August 2020) is read Professor Ross Fitzgerald’s agricultural, if that is what Pascoe enlightening and gives those who excellent piece on Manning Clark, does, is to characterise it as “wom- are open to the supernatural expe- Sidney and Beatrice Webb and the en’s work” to a degree. Now that, rience a sense of hope. Fabians in your July-August issue. indeed, would get up the nose of Bendle previously raised this Readers may be interested to the men. question earlier this year in his know that Beatrice and Sidney obituary for Sir Roger Scruton Webb’s long working relationship Jan Cooper (March 2020). Scruton’s philoso- included a trip together, in 1898, to Terrigal, NSW phy is built around the concept of give lectures in Australia. Their visit Lebenswelten, lifeworld, a sense of indicated the interest in Fabianism The Passive Right wonder. A conservative all his life, in Australia at the time. Scruton felt alone in a world of From my perspective, it beg- Sir: For me the vital necessity of “arrogant scientism” and “fallacious gars belief that, before his wrote Quadrant as a feature of Australian denial”. his wartime letter of condolence life could hardly have been exem- Seeking alternatives to the tran- to Sidney Webb, Manning Clark plified better than by Michael scendent has failed again and again wasn’t aware of the Webbs’ massive Connor’s deeply moving “The Great according to Scruton, as those book, first published in 1935, that Escape” in the July-August edition. who deny God attempt to find a lauded the Russian Revolution and Not having grown up in replacement in mankind. Humans the policies of Joseph Stalin. Australia I have always found the are subject to error. Something else Peter Andrew semi-automatic espousal of socialist is needed—not the denial of the Lake Illawarra, NSW and other left-wing causes by peo- transcendent, not reaching out for

Quadrant September 2020 3 strategic thinking

Keith Windschuttle

n this edition of Quadrant we publish an impor- promoting human rights and democracy elsewhere tant article by Ted O’Brien, the LNP member disappears. Other definitions of national identity for Fairfax in the House of Representatives. It generate different national interests and policy pri- Iis important because, from an uncommon position orities. In short, conflicts over what America should that deserves to be better known, it raises issues do abroad, Huntington argues, are rooted in con- about foreign policy, strategic thinking and the flicts over who Americans think they are at home. challenges Australia now faces in the world. O’Brien So how does he define the identity of the United argues that the starting point to addressing the stra- States today? He argues its origins as an Anglo- tegic problems of the emergence of China as a major Protestant settler society have profoundly and and potentially belligerent power is to first ensure lastingly shaped American culture, institutions, we have a very clear understanding of ourselves. “A historical development and identity. America is not nation’s foreign policy,” he states, “should be an out- an immigrant society or a multicultural society, he ward expression of its values: a reflection of its peo- says, nor is it a melting pot or a salad of ethnicities ple, who they are and what they believe in.” in which the flavours of many nations merge. To This is a position that was argued with much describe America as a “nation of immigrants”, he insight by the late, great American political ana- insists, is to stretch a partial truth into a misleading lyst Samuel Huntington. Although he became best falsehood and to ignore the central fact of America’s known in the 1990s for his prophetic thesis about beginning as a society of settlers. the “clash of civilisations” in the post-Cold War era, America’s core culture, Huntington argues, Huntington wrote an even more important book in remains primarily the culture of the seventeenth- and 2004 about American national identity, Who Are We? eighteenth-century settlers who founded American which I have argued before in this space deserves to society. The central elements of that culture include be better known in Australia, and should inform any the Christian religion, Protestant values, mor- debate on national strategic thinking. What makes als and work ethic, the English language, British the latter book more important is not so much its traditions of law, justice and the limits of govern- main conclusion, which I think needs some modi- ment power, and a legacy of European art, litera- fication, but the firm grasp Huntington has on the ture, philosophy and music. Out of this culture, the slippery concepts of national culture and national settlers developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth identity. centuries the American Creed with its principles National interests, he argues, derive from national of liberty, equality, individualism, representative identity. We have to know who we are before we can government and private property. Subsequent gen- know what our interests are. Hence, if Americans erations of immigrants were assimilated into the define their identity as primarily a collection of cul- culture of the founding settlers and contributed to tural and ethnic entities, their national interest is in and modified it. But they did not change it fun- the promotion of those goals and entities, and their damentally. This was partly because they did not nation should have a multicultural foreign policy. But have the numbers. Between 1820 and 2000, at any if American identity is defined by a set of universal one time the foreign-born averaged only slightly principles of liberty and democracy, then the promo- over 10 per cent of the American population. Each tion of those principles in other countries should be new immigrant wave was a minority group facing the primary goal. On the other hand, if the United an already Americanised majority. But the primary States is primarily defined by its European cultural reason was that immigrants did not want America heritage as a Western nation, then it should direct to change. Until the late twentieth century, it was its attention to strengthening its ties with Western Anglo-Protestant culture, and the political liberties Europe. If, however, the United States is “excep- and economic opportunities it produced, that con- tional”, as Huntington says it is, the rationale for stituted their main attraction.

4 Quadrant September 2020 strategic thinking

His identification of a core culture of this kind a whole book, but for now let me offer a small selec- would, you might think, predispose Huntington to tion of published works that support Huntington’s look favourably on a special relationship between founder-effect model of the pre-eminence of an America and Britain and perhaps even on the original Anglo-Protestant cultural identity, not only notion of a wider Anglosphere. But that is not the in the United States but throughout the English- case. Instead, he wants Americans to re-focus their speaking world. national identity and national purposes in their cul- One of the most impressive is by Australia’s ture and religion. He wants to reinstate American Claudio Veliz, The New World of the Gothic Fox (1994). nationalism and the notion of American exception- This is a comparative historical study of North and alism. A national approach, he says, would recog- South America, which offers an explanation of why nise and accept what distinguishes the United States the former is politically stable and prosperous, and from other societies. America cannot become the why the latter (in fact, almost the whole of Latin world and still be America. America is different, and America), has long been the opposite in both cat- that difference is defined in large part by its Anglo- egories. David Landes’s The Wealth and Poverty of Protestant culture and its religiosity. The alternative Nations (1998) showed that English Protestant values to multiculturalism and other pressures, such as of individualism, political and economic freedom, a the looming demographic dominance of Hispanics strong civil society and the cultivation of science and in the United States, is an American nationalism learning were what made the difference between devoted to the preservation and enhancement of economic poverty and prosperity and between polit- those qualities that have defined the country since ical liberty and despotism. its founding. The doyen of authors on this topic is actually Huntington especially emphasises the reli- Winston Churchill, who published his four-volume gious basis of American culture, a fact which, he series, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, observes, often surprises people from other nomi- in the 1950s, taking his story up to 1901. Churchill nally Christian countries: has an excellent successor in Andrew Roberts, who in 2006 wrote The History of the English-Speaking Americans are overwhelmingly Christian, which Peoples since 1900, an exhilarating read that contin- distinguishes them from most non-Western ues the argument. peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see Eventually, Roberts says, just as historians now the world in terms of good and evil to a much see no fundamental discontinuity between the greater extent than others do. The leaders of republican and imperial eras of the Roman Empire, other societies often find this religiosity not only they will not see a great distinction between the extraordinary but also exasperating for the deep British Empire-led and the American republican-led moralism it engenders in the consideration of periods of English-speaking dominance of the world political, economic, and social issues. between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. World hegemony, however, has many costs. Like The deep moralism of evangelical Anglo- the Romans, the English-speaking peoples would be Protestantism, he argues, still underpins almost envied and hated by others. They would sometimes every aspect of politics, from national identity and find, Roberts argues, that the greatest danger to their foreign policy, to the American work ethic and continued imperium came not from their declared social welfare policy. He cites favourably the obser- enemies without, but from vociferous critics within. vation by the historian Martin Marty, that America One of the constants of their common culture’s was from the beginning an “evangelical empire”. freedom of expression has been its propensity to harbour a degree of internal censure that among ow, I do not want to disagree with Huntington’s many other peoples would probably prove fatal. characterisation of American culture and iden- It is no secret that the most virulent criticisms Ntity. However, the phenomenon is not as exclu- of America and Americans come from Americans sively American as he thinks. In fact, rather than themselves, a phenomenon echoed widely today American exceptionalism, it is not hard to show he in Australia. Self-hatred, often through moralistic is describing the culture that underpins Britain itself guilt over their supposed materialism and obsession and most of the societies formed by the English- with money, Roberts demonstrates, is an abiding speaking peoples around the world in the past two defect. The logic of this position is that, whatever or three centuries, in particular the settler socie- ambitions China might now have about its place in ties of North America and the Pacific, including of the world, the greatest threat to the civilisation built course Australia. by the English-speaking peoples is not abroad but To make this case convincingly, I’d need to write at home.

Quadrant September 2020 5 a s p e r i t i e s

John O’Sullivan

little late in the day, the British are begin- the blend of monetarism and deregulation advo- ning to ask the question: What kind of grand cated by the new Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher. strategy will the UK adopt and what kind of Mrs Thatcher was convinced that all political ques- alliancesA will it make when the country leaves the tions should be subordinated to the priority of get- European Union next year? ting the British economy right. When she won the Andrew Roberts, the distinguished historian and 1979 election, she embarked upon the policies known biographer of (most recently) Churchill, stepped for- as “monetarism” which were initially unpopular with ward in the Wall Street Journal last month to propose the voters and divisive within her own party. that Britain should build its future around an alliance Two events moved in the Prime Minister’s with Canada, Australia and New Zealand rooted in favour. The first one was her victory in the Falklands free trade, liberal migration rules, and security co- War which made her a respected national leader, operation under the acronym of CANZUK. produced a burst of old-fashioned British patriot- For most people it’s a new idea. So it’s interesting ism that pushed Europeanism into the wings of that it strikes a chord in all the CANZUK coun- British politics, and finally persuaded the Prime tries, where polls have surprisingly shown majorities Minister herself that Britain had more (and more favouring more or less mutually open immigration. loyal) friends in the Commonwealth than in conti- It has advocates in the politics of all three countries. nental Europe. The second event was that, by 1983, Naturally I’m fascinated by these developments, it was clear that her economic policies were starting not only because I’m a long-standing advocate of the to succeed. Indeed, Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s related concept of the Anglosphere but in particular America were increasingly seen as models of a new because in 2015 I delivered the Kenneth Minogue and deregulated capitalism that was creating a new Memorial Lecture at Claudio Veliz’s Melbourne sort of information economy and changing world Conversazione in which I embarked on a counter- economic history. There were other models of it too, factual history of Britain after the defeat of the but none of them were in continental Europe. 1975 referendum that was supposed to seal British As the 1980s and the 1990s wore on, the argu- EU membership. In that counter-factual history ments for a British commitment to Europe were Andrew, an old friend, was the Regius Professor of evaporating. The country’s economic problems were History at Oxford and the author of the standard being solved internally; its European competi- history, Britain and the Rise of the Anglosphere. Here’s tors were performing less well and demonstrating an extract from that book: less innovation; and Britain’s international reputa- tion was high and rising. Her prudent policies led o everyone’s surprise, the referendum was lost by in time to Mrs Thatcher’s fourth and final electoral 58 to 42 per cent—a margin too large to ignore victory in 1991, after which she left Downing Street orT override. Harold Wilson, ever the opportunist, to head the IMF. Europeanism was by then a dead reshuffled his Cabinet to reflect it. Wilson had never cause in British politics. A firm friendship had been been keen on the EEC. But he had no answer to established between Mrs Thatcher and President the situation created by the referendum. His succes- Reagan and the Cold War had been won. Reagan’s sor, James Callaghan, was equally agnostic. Besides, attachment to Thatcher compelled the US State both prime ministers had more urgent challenges to Department to abandon its policy of pushing Britain manage, from the installation of Soviet missiles in into a European union. Eastern Europe to the collapse of an incomes policy The 1975 referendum had already ensured then considered essential. that Britain’s trade was never redirected from the As the 1970s wore on, political debate shifted Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and other non- to how to deal with Britain’s persistent economic European markets to the EEC. Britain also retained problems more directly—either by a more left-wing the power to negotiate independent trade agreements socialism under Michael Foot or Tony Benn or by with others. One result was that Australian trade

6 Quadrant September 2020 asperitieschronicle with the UK remained high. The same is true of UK by the 1975 referendum. It completely evaporated trade and investment relations with New Zealand, by the turn of the century as an Anglosphere iden- Canada and such New Commonwealth countries tity (commonly called an “Oceanic” one) came into as India and Singapore. Encouraged by the success vogue among the well-travelled young. Thus, when of these traditional links, Britain expanded its non- a Labor backbencher proposed in the mid-nineties European trade in general and was better placed than that Australia should re-orient itself towards an any other European country to benefit from the rise Asian future and identity, he was slapped down by of Asia when it occurred under globalisation. At the Paul Keating who, partly quoting A.E. Housman, same time rising UK trade with Canada meant that said, “A moment’s thought would have helped my when Prime Minister Mulroney sought to reduce honourable friend not to confuse nationality with Canadian protectionism in the 1990s, he did so by soil or culture with proximity. But thought is a pain- reviving Harold Wilson’s idea of a North Atlantic ful process and a moment is a long time.” Free Trade Area between the UK, the US and This rise of the Anglosphere is a far cry from Canada. This took time to negotiate but it has since the defeatist decisions of the Macmillan and Heath become the model for other intra-Anglosphere trade governments to hand over responsibility for solv- agreements such as that negotiated by John Howard ing Britain’s problems to a wilderness of committees between Australia, the US and the UK. Increased in Brussels. Recent polls in Britain show levels of trade between English-speaking countries, together support for joining the European Union in the low with the rising competitiveness of their economies teens. following economic reform meant that by the turn of the century the Anglosphere was pulling away from hus ends my quotation from Professor Roberts’s the sclerotic economies of Europe. important but, alas, non-existent history. So A third factor was communications. In the pre- Tlet me impose a reality check on myself. You will historic age of information, the 1970s, the Economist have noticed that nothing in my alternative his- had asked: Who do the British telephone on tory happened to return Britain to the European Christmas Day? They discovered that almost all Community or to block the rise of the Anglosphere the calls, then expensive, went to Australia, New or to obstruct the direction of my argument in any Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the US and other significant way. In reality even the best-laid plans go post-imperial countries, and almost none to main- wrong. Counter-factual history is like a battle plan: land Europe. The internet took this cultural fact and it works perfectly until the battle begins. Whatever multiplied its importance many times over. In per- might have happened after a British rejection of sonal, trade, diplomatic and countless other ways, EEC membership, it certainly would not have geography suddenly took second place to culture. It played out with the comforting confirmation of all was easier for people to deal with others thousands my prejudices as outlined above. of miles away who spoke the same language and had That said, the larger and long-term trends that I the same understandings of rules than with those identify as keeping Britain out of Europe and mak- nearby who were separated by language, legal cul- ing the country an important member of a grow- ture, political loyalty, and so on. ing Anglosphere (I believe) all reflect actual reality: The Anglosphere countries began to harmonise the success of Thatcherism in reviving Britain and their regulations and standards for both products the British economy; the rise of globalisation as and services. That further encouraged trade between a factor both in encouraging world trade and in them and formed a non-tariff barrier to outsiders. rewarding Britain’s global trading outlook; the com- It also helped migration to accelerate more rapidly parative performance of Anglosphere economies between English-speaking countries than between versus Rhineland capitalism; the growing impor- the Anglosphere and other countries. Law today tance of the Commonwealth as a trading bloc owing is limping along behind these migration flows to the economic rise of such members as India; and to restore a modest and partial version of the free the impact of the internet in strengthening cultural mutual immigration, especially for young people, links across large distances (conquering the tyr- that characterised the old British Empire. anny of distance, as Professor Blainey might say). All this is made more possible by, but also inten- All these are events in the real world, and they serve sifies, a growing sense of Anglosphere identity. This to explain why the Anglosphere has become a topic has finally healed the sense of betrayal felt by many of interest, study and political enthusiasm even in Australians because of the deceptive tactics of the our very different world in which the British have Macmillan and Heath governments over their break- just escaped from the EU and are wondering “What ing of the former trade relationships. That sense of next?” So my answer: Try CANZUK. We know it betrayal had been mollified but not wholly dispelled works in theory.

Quadrant September 2020 7 astringencies

Anthon y Daniels

am an accumulator rather than a collector, and pulled down or permitted to remain. In the end, my library grows according to a bad Malthusian they will probably obey their basic principle: when principle: I buy books geometrically and read in doubt, destroy. themI arithmetically, with the most obvious con- But to return to Ivor Brown. Brown (1891–1975) sequences for shelf-space. Furthermore, at my age was a well-known literary critic and journalist who I should be shedding possessions rather than still wrote seventy-five books of very different kinds accumulating them: but I have this strange reluc- and—a man of independent views, and a conscien- tance to get rid even of books that I shall never look tious objector during the Great War—he was for six at again and were no good in the first place. years editor of the venerable liberal Sunday news- However, I never buy a book without intend- paper, the Observer. Unlike many of his modern ing to read it, and intention is, if not nine-tenths equivalents, however, he was in favour of the main- of accomplishment, at least some portion of it. And tenance of civilisation and high culture, not because recently, while dithering or leafing through old of its snob value but because he thought it was high books that I bought years ago and still have not rather than low. In his view it was free for anyone to read, I came across a volume of essays by the literary enter, which is not the same as saying that it must critic Ivor Brown, titled I Commit to the Flames. It be entered by people in exact proportion as their was published in 1934, and I was first attracted to it characteristics appear in the general population. by its opening sentence: “Arson is one of the oldest No one would claim for I Commit to the Flames forms of aesthetic criticism and is still a favourite (Brown’s flames, I should add, were meant in an exercise …” entirely metaphoric sense) that it is a great work, At the time he wrote, of course, book-burning seminal as some critics might put it—nowadays, was in full flame in Germany. perhaps, ovular. But, published eighty-six years I suspect that Ivor Brown’s title is a reference to ago, it is particularly interesting at the present con- the famous passage in Hume’s Enquiry, in which juncture. I am not sure whether it is reassuring or the great ironist suggested a book-burning far more depressing that our problems recur, not in precisely radical and far-reaching than that of the Nazis: the same form of course, and our reactions to them are similar though not identical. It is also worth When we run over libraries … what havoc must noticing what has changed. we make? If we take in our hand any volume; Let me just quote a couple of passages that might of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; be written with very slight alterations today: let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain My object is to relate all the follies of the any experimental reasoning concerning matter day to their common origin. The committers of fact or existence? No. Commit it then to the of folly, the authors of the rubbish which I flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry commit to my symbolical flames, have not, and illusion. in all probability, the wit to understand any general principles of puerility. It needs reason This passage creates a dilemma for the contem- to understand that the source of the trouble porary iconoclast and statue-demolisher: uncertain is a general flight from reason and from the as to the ethics of book-burning (unlike Virginia legacy of civilised opinion in which past reason Woolf, say, who in Three Guineas advocated, with- has been embodied. The world increasingly out Humean irony, the burning down of whole substitutes fisticuffs for argument, flags and libraries), they must remain in two minds as to symbols for facts and realities, belief in the whether Hume’s statue in Edinburgh should be omnipotence of the sub-conscious for faith in

8 Quadrant September 2020 astringencieschronicle

self-determination of the will by reason guided a white man is flogged by a white man in an … it teaches its children that impulse is divine. English gaol, they scream against barbarism; Consequently it has no standards. no doubt rightly, but let that pass. If a white chief had ordered the flogging of a “poor black”, Brown asked a question nearly a century ago they would have yelled themselves hoarse with now that has surely occurred to many of us: indignation at the use of the lash. But when a white man is flogged by blacks, they entirely Why should all acquired knowledge, all human forget that flogging is a horrible and degrading experience, all civilisation be cast aside? It needs exercise and cry up the chief as though he were sifting, that is acknowledged; but why scrap it? a new species of enlightened reformer. During The passion for such root-and-branch abolition all the outcry about the treatment of Tshekedi invades the arts as well as the schools. by England [he was overthrown as chief, though he remained very pro-British], there Later, he provides the sketch of an explanation was no admission that the chief had employed a for the radical iconoclasm that he sees in his own barbarous form of punishment. time: The language that Brown employs with regard It is a commonplace that the person most easy to blacks certainly shocks the modern person. He to deceive is the recipient of a higher education uses such expressions as nigger heaven and coon show that has failed to be high enough. The schooling in a way that would make his book impossible to system of Europe and America had just reached publish today. Strangely enough, however, he is not the stage at which it was creating the pseudo- actually a racist in the sense that he believes the intellectual in very considerable numbers. black man to be inherently inferior or incapable of cultural achievement. He has things just as hard to This seems more than ever applicable now: the say about the modernist poets whom he accuses of contemporary pullers-down of statues are educated barbarism (I do not enter, as Brown would have put enough to formulate simplistic generalisations, but it, into the correctness of his judgment): not educated enough to appreciate the complexities and ironies of existence. … we have so abased ourselves, we must revere as great poetry the hiccoughs and grunts of hat is perhaps more surprising in Brown’s dyspeptic young men who have been peering book is that the sensibility behind the Black into Bloomsbury basements and have seen some LivesW Matter movement is to be found in it. Brown underclothes drying by the fire. makes reference to what he thinks is a dishonest overvaluation of blacks, both a reaction against past In other words, he judges people by their culture injustices done to them and a manifestation of a and not by their race, even when he uses terms that desire to escape from the constraints of an over- strike us now as insensitive and insulting. No one refined and developed civilisation. nowadays would advocate the use of the language In 1933, the Tswana chief, who was very pro- that he used, that even at the time could hardly British (the British were his protection against the have pleased his black readers, if any, and could inroads of South Africa) had a white man, Phineas hardly have been expected to raise the esteem in McIntosh, flogged in Bechuanaland because he had which black people were held by his other readers. assaulted a boy. Brown describes the reaction to the Nevertheless, he was not a racist in the sense that flogging: he would despise someone simply because he was black. Whatever is dark is fair. Could anything have But the new Savonarolas of anti-racism would been more typical of the contemporary mind not agree. That Ivor Brown was for six years edi- than the fuss made over an African chief who tor of the Observer, now owned by the Guardian, is had ordered the flogging of “a poor white”. I surely reason enough to burn down those newspa- do not enter into the politics of the business pers’ offices. … what is interesting is the attitude of the chief’s English champions. These were exactly Among Anthony Daniels’s recent books is Embargo and the people who are continually denouncing Other Stories (Mirabeau Press, 2020), published under flogging as a revolting form of punishment. If his pen-name, Theodore Dalrymple.

Quadrant September 2020 9 the philistine

Salvatore Babones

aturn ascends. Modern astrologers con- them past the critical phase and one-third on the tend that Saturn governs the maturation cusp. And what a transit it has been. Given their of young people (formerly: “children”) into domination of social media, Millennials’ coming- fullS adulthood, a process that now takes approxi- of-age anxieties have become everyone’s anxieties. mately 29.5 years. Saturn is a lethargic old codger And no one is more anxious than their parents. (it’s still acceptable to insult the elderly), with the No one grows up alone, but Millennials are in longest astrological cycle of any visible planetary particularly good company. The entire Western body. Of course, it has always taken 29.5 years world experienced a baby boom after the Second for Saturn to make the full circuit through all the World War, giving rise to its largest generation signs of the zodiac, but only recently has adoles- ever: the Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964). The cence been extended to just shy of thirty. Back in Boomers didn’t have a Great Depression or a world Saturn’s day, “thirtysomething” was another word war to distract them from procreating, but they did for “grandparent”. have the pill, which led to a five-year increase in Whereas the return of Saturn with his crooked the median age at first birth. The long-term effects scythe might once have been feared as a harbinger of the depression, the war and the pill interacted of impending doom, it is now supposed to pres- to produce a birth dearth in the years 1965 to 1980, age nothing worse than a kind of early-life identity spawning a generation defined by its very obscurity: crisis. It means that the time for youthful dithering Generation X. (ahem: experimentation) is over. It’s time to choose. The Millennials are, literally and metaphori- Straight or gay? Labor or Greens? City or suburbs? cally, the children of the Baby Boomers. Of course, Children or happiness? not every parent of a Millennial is a Boomer and The planet Saturn isn’t just important to astrol- not every Boomer has Millennial children, but ogy; by some accounts, it is astrology. When Dante most of them do. Perhaps more importantly, most identified the seven liberal arts with the seven vis- of the teachers of Millennials were Boomers, both ible planets, he paired astrology with Saturn (the because of their relative ages and because the seventh heaven) because “above all the other plan- Boomers themselves formed a very large generation ets, it is the highest” just as astrology is the high- of teachers. And when Millennials started attend- est of the sciences. He cited no less than Aristotle ing universities at the turn of the millennium, the and Ptolemy as authorities. That said, portentous senior professors, heads of department, and admin- though it might be, the return of Saturn to the istrators were overwhelmingly Baby Boomers. same relative position it occupied in the heavens OK, Boomer, this really isn’t all about you, but when a person was born isn’t a particularly personal when you see American cities in flames, widespread star sign. After all, everyone born in fiscal year 1991 condemnation of “the patriarchy”, the decolonisa- is experiencing the return of Saturn in calendar tion of the curriculum, calls for the end of capi- year 2020. talism, the police (any police) labelled as fascist, Unless you agree with Augustine that even iden- conservative speakers kicked off campus, the rise tical twins are born under different stars, since (as of environmental catastrophism, racialisation mas- was already understood in antiquity, before it was querading as racial justice, and direct action mas- forgotten) the motions of the heavens are almost querading as democracy, does that ring a bell? inconceivably fast, entire birth cohorts share pretty It should. We have the Swiss Huguenot royal- much the same horoscopes. Thus the Millennial ist Jacques Mallet du Pan to thank for the apho- generation (born 1981 to 1996) is now completing rism, “Like to Saturn, the Revolution devours its its collective transit of Saturn, with two-thirds of Children.” These days, it is more like the children

10 Quadrant September 2020 thechronicle philistine devouring Saturn. The occasional Millennial has government, mind you, but true people’s democ- been caught out by cancel culture, but it’s their racy. As in the People’s Republics of Bangladesh Boomer parents who have really felt the scythe. and China, the People’s Democratic Republics When Harvard’s sixty-five-year-old celebrity of Algeria and Laos, and (not to be outdone) the psychologist Steven Pinker was targeted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In 1904, cancel culture, the 629 signatories to the indict- Lenin himself declared that every true revolution- ment were mostly graduate students and junior aca- ary must be a Jacobin. In 1917, he modelled the Red demics, exactly the sorts of people he educated in Terror of the Russian Revolution on the Reign of the first place. Pinker went on to sign the Harper’s Terror of the Jacobin Montagnards. The Jacobins’ “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, penned by one great mistake, according to Lenin, was to leave the early-Millennial Thomas Chatterton Williams. too many potential opponents alive. In that letter, the Old and Young Turks combined The latter-day Leninists at the self-proclaimed to condemn an emerging “intolerance of opposing “socialist quarterly” Jacobin have published a help- views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, ful “Guide to the French Revolution” that describes and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues the Reign of Terror as merely a “period of tactical in a blinding moral certainty”. Since, you know, violence”, which must be why it failed to translate we must all join together to resist “the revolutionary fervor of 1789 “Donald Trump, who represents a into a durable and sustainable revo- real threat to democracy”. f there’s going to lutionary society”. Lenin was right: The 153 would-be liberals of the I not enough killing. Jacobin was Harper’s letter recognise that the be a revolution, founded in 2011 by the Millennial result of the cancel culture “has Jacobin’s New York New Yorker Bhaskar Sunkara, and been to steadily narrow the bound- now claims a paid circulation of aries of what can be said without intellectuals want 60,000. (Just why you should have the threat of reprisal”. That’s why to lead it. All in the to pay for a socialist magazine is they “uphold the value of robust and name of the people, unclear, but the publishers do at even caustic counter-speech from least have the gallows humour to all quarters”—except, it is implied, of course. Like a promise free postage after they from “right-wing demagogues” and true democracy. seize state power.) If there’s going the “radical right”. The problem for to be a revolution, Jacobin’s New the Harper’s 153 is that there is very York intellectuals want to lead it. little of the radical Right left to “resist”. The Left All in the name of the people, of course. Like a like to identify every Right with Fascism, but it’s true democracy. hard to be an effective Antifa when there are so few Sunkara and his fellow Millennials learned “Fas” around to oppose. Resistance really is futile. their Jacobinism at some of America’s most expen- sive private universities. Their professors, many of ascism is a necessary bugbear for leftist intellec- them veterans of the Revolution of 1968, would tuals, because the original “Right” of the French have taught them that “a revolution is not a bed of FRevolution has just about disappeared. These days roses”; that “people with power understand exactly even David Flint doesn’t espouse the divine right one thing: violence”; that “you cannot make a revo- of kings. (For the divine rights of queans, there’s lution in white gloves”; that “political power grows always the ABC.) But the original “Left” is still out of the barrel of a gun”. Secure in tenure, home- with us, or wants to be. The Left takes its direc- ownership and retirement savings, they cannot have tion from the French National Assembly of 1789, imagined that their otherwise highly sophisticated where the revolutionary Jacobins sat in a bloc on students would have taken them so ... literally. the president’s left, with the royalists on his right. Baby Boomer leftists might be dismayed, but Impatient with the pace of revolution by legisla- they shouldn’t be surprised. They were warned: by tion, these original leftists gave up on France’s first Lenin, by Marx, even by the reactionary du Pan. experiment with parliamentary democracy after Writing at the outset of the Terror in 1793, du just ten weeks. Pan said of the Jacobins that “whosoever quitted Yet self-identification as being “of the Left” the Club, for the purpose of disputing its author- remains intellectually fashionable even today, and ity ... ended by returning within its orbit, or being latter-day leftists continue to convince the young crushed by it”. Members of the Harper’s 153, take that the Left stands for democracy. Not the ersatz note. The Millennial Jacobins smell blood in the electoral democracy of bourgeois representative water, and it might just be yours.

Quadrant September 2020 11 t h e r o ya l navy’s triumph over s l av e r y

Jeremy Black

he name HMS Pickle, a schooner with only the narrative from campaigners and activists keen to five cannon, may not call forth patriots today, denigrate Britain’s history and to destroy our sense but it was a stirring sight on the night of June of identity in and through it. T5-6, 1829, when after a deadly exchange of cannon Stopping first the slave trade and then slavery in fire at close range, it captured the slaver Voladora off British colonies was but a prelude to vigorous action Cuba, with slaves bound for American plantations. against them elsewhere. In 1807, when Britain was The Voladora was larger and had a crew twice the in a difficult war with France, two warships were size, but the Pickle under J.B.B. MacHardy closed, still sent to African waters in order to begin the and after an action of eighty minutes the Voladora, its campaign against the slave trade. mainmast shot away, sails repeatedly holed, and rig- Action increased after the Napoleonic wars ging trailing over the stern, surrendered. The British ended in 1815 with victory at Waterloo. The next had lost four men, their opponents at least fourteen. year, Admiral Lord Exmouth and a fleet of twenty- Two hundred and twenty-three African men and one British warships, with the support of a Dutch ninety-seven African women who had been bought frigate squadron, demanded the end of holding in Africa were freed. Thirty-two slaves had already Christians as slaves in Algiers. When no answer died on the voyage. The British crew imprisoned the was returned, Exmouth opened fire and 40,000 slavers in their own chains. The victory was cele- roundshot and shells destroyed the Algerian ships brated in Britain, with memorable paintings depict- and much of the city. More than a thousand slaves, ing the plucky triumph of the smaller crew. mostly from Spain and Italy, were freed; and the The Pickle was not alone. Five days after its vic- message was driven home by the appearance there tory, the navy’s smallest warship, the schooner HMS of British squadrons in 1819 and 1824, and off Tunis Monkey, under Lieutenant Joseph Sherer, captured in 1824. The overwhelming firepower of the Royal the far larger Spanish brig Midas after an action Navy’s thirty-two-pounders at almost point-blank of thirty-five minutes even though the Monkey range destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet in had only one twelve-pounder cannon and a crew Navarino Bay, helping Greece win independence of twenty-six, while the Midas had four eighteen- from the Ottoman Turks, who thus lost their ability pounders and four twelve-pounders, and a crew of to acquire Greeks as slaves. over fifty. Midas had bought 562 slaves from Africa, The most important active British anti-slavery but only 369 were still alive when it was captured. naval force, however, in the first half of the nine- Earlier in 1829, the Monkey had already captured an teenth century, was that based in West Africa which American slaver and a Spanish one, the latter, again freed slaves and took them to Freetown in Sierra more heavily-gunned, carrying 206 slaves. Leone, a British colony founded for free black people. Why does this dramatic long-forgotten aspect They could not be returned to their homes, as they of our history matter so much? Because, despite all would only be captured anew by fellow Africans and the criticism seemingly endlessly repeated today, we sold as slaves. Indeed, in 1862, Viscount Palmerston, British actually have many, many reasons to be proud the Prime Minister, observed: of our history and of what ends we used our power to purpose. Notably so in our leading role in ending Half the evil has been done by the time the first the international slave trade and then slavery slaves are captured in the American waters. around the world. For over a century, Britain stood The razzia [devastating raid] has been made in at the forefront of the push to end both, using much Africa, the village has been burnt, the old people effort, losing many lives, spending much money, and infants have been murdered, the young and exerting much diplomatic pressure to achieve and the middle aged have been torn from their these goals. Yet, you would not know it today from homes and sent to sea.

12 Quadrant September 2020 the royal navy’s triumph over slavery

In 1834, another outgunned British ship, the due to British naval action. The slave trade to Brazil, HMS brigantine Buzzard, under Lieutenant the largest market in the southern hemisphere, was Anthony William Milward, took on the well-armed ended by the Royal Navy, for the Brazilian navy did and larger Spanish brig Formidable off West Africa very little against the trade. after a chase of seven hours. In a “smart action” of In 1851, harbour facilities at Lagos, a major slav- forty-five minutes, the Buzzard had several injured ing port, were destroyed in a British attack. John, and, as Milward reported, the “fore and maintop- Lord Russell, the Prime Minister then, was to note: mast stays were cut, running rigging and sails much “I hate slavery and the slave trade beyond measure,” damaged, flying jib-boom shot away, and bumpkin while in 1862 Viscount Palmerston, then the Prime carried away in boarding”, but six of the slaver’s crew Minister, stated his desire to put the slave trade were killed. Seven hundred slaves were freed. In the down. late 1830s, British naval action, such as that by the The Royal Navy was to lose 17,000 seamen to Buzzard, helped greatly to reduce the flow of slaves disease, mostly yellow fever, a horrific killer, battle from the Bight of Biafra. or accident in this lengthy commitment off West At the same time, warships based in Cape Town, Africa. When fools today violate the trust between a British possession from 1806, also played an the generations and criticise war memorials for cele- important role, as anti-slavery patrols were extended brating the defence of empire, it is worth remember- south of the Equator in 1839, ena- ing that that was one of the many bling Britain to enforce the out- causes for which Britons died. lawing of the slave trade to Brazil. The navy gave the muscle to British The Royal Navy was n the last decades of the nine- diplomacy, which sought to negoti- still in action against teenth century, the British then ate and then enforce restrictions on the slave trade in the Iincreasingly focused on the Indian the slave trade. In 1839, the Act for Ocean, trying to stop the long- the Suppression of the Slave Trade Red Sea in the 1920s. standing Arab trade in African authorised British warships to seize Repeatedly, it was slaves. Philip Colomb, who rose to slave ships registered in Portugal be a vice-admiral and a writer on sea and sailing under the Portuguese the Navy that served power, having served as a midship- flag, a unilateral measure in part to bring freedom to man on the Reynard in operations intended to hit the use of the flag slaves and to end against pirates in Chinese waters as a cover by Brazilian slave traders. from 1848 to 1851, commanded The Royal Navy vigorously imple- the slave trade. HMS Dryad from 1868 to 1870, mented the Act. attacking slavers around Oman and In addition, the Royal Navy was Zanzibar. Readers in Britain could in action in the Caribbean, where the French, Dutch thrill to his account as well as those of George and Spanish colonies retained slavery. In 1840, the Sullivan in Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters (1873). nineteen-year-old Midshipman Cooper Key, later After the Sultan of Zanzibar was pressured into an admiral, wrote to his mother from the frigate outlawing the slave trade in 1873, HMS London Cleopatra off Cuba after chasing a slave ship: was sent there to enforce the ban and served as a central depot for the thirteen smaller boats that How glorious! Seeing one’s name in the papers were able to act in shallow local waters. In 1881, for something of that sort! Should not you like one, the Wave, pursued a slaver dhow captained it, dearest mama? I was sharpening my sword in by Hindi bin Hattam only for the captain of the the most butcher-like manner all the chase. It London, Charles Brownrigg, the commander of was delightful to see how eager our men were to the boarding party, to be killed alongside some of get up with her. his men. A force under Lieutenant Lloyd William Mathews, a naval officer seconded to command the The 1845 Slave Trade Act authorised the navy Zanzibar army, then caught up with and crushed to treat suspected slave ships as pirates, leading to the slaver force. The acquisition of Zanzibar itself the capture of nearly 400 ships in five years. By the as a colony in 1890 led to the end of the trade at end of the 1840s, there were thirty-five anti-slav- this once major centre, and in 1909 slavery was ing patrol ships off West Africa. In 1850, moreover, abolished there. British warships entered Brazilian ports to seize Further north, on the coast of Somalia and in the and destroy suspected slavers, much to the anger of Red Sea, the navy was at work. The young Bertram Brazil which, nevertheless, agreed to ban the import Ramsay, later the naval commander at D-Day, went of slaves, which anyway had become too expensive ashore cutlass in hand as a young naval officer to

Quadrant September 2020 13 the royal navy’s triumph over slavery attack a slaver base in Somalia. devoted their service to a hard task. They did it The Royal Navy was still in action against the with determination and skill, and the role of the slave trade in the Red Sea in the 1920s. Repeatedly, Royal Navy was central to ending the slave trade. it was the Navy that served to bring freedom to Powers that were willing to sign up for agreements slaves and to end the slave trade. they had no intention of enforcing were obliged by And yet this costly commitment is criticised. Britain to act, but, even more, the lawlessness of It is argued that the navy could and should have the oceans was brought under control and the slave sent more and better ships, which ignores the need trade forced into the backwater of history. That was for warships to guard against the risk of war with a great achievement of imperial Britain, and Britain America, France or Russia. It is pointed out that today remains a key state in the suppression of this some naval officers disliked the mission, their rea- vile trade in human misery. sons including a belief that freeing the slaves often exposed them to difficult circumstances, Lieutenant Jeremy Black, former professor of history at the Gilbert Elliott of the Sampson being horrified by the University of Exeter, is a senior fellow at the Center for conditions of freed Africans awaiting movement: the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy “thousands of poor wretches huddled together Research Institute in Philadelphia. Among his books where no sea breeze can blow on them”. are The Slave Trade (2006), The Atlantic Slave Trade The key element was that in difficult waters, in World History (2015) and Imperial Legacies: The and in the face of terrible disease, officers and men British Empire Around the World (2019).

Jack Paper

Jack Paper lived to be one hundred and three, and as were his wishes, his funeral was a private affair held in the little church overlooking the clean blue waters of the gulf after which he was interred at sea just off the coast of Prince Edward Island, where he’d spent all his respectable adult years. The boat-crew that ferried him on that final voyage, were salt weathered, taciturn and hardened by life, but if you’d been at the bar later that night and sitting at the right table, you would have heard them talk in low, slow tones about a huge green tail sighted in the water moments before they trimmed sail and turned back to land. And if by chance you’d been down on the shoreline later still that same night, enjoying the starlight and the waves, you might have heard, far off in the distance, a strange sound roll out across the deep, a single, fierce, sad, defiant roar that hung in the air and filled the darkness with a wild sense of wonder and lingering loss. Finn Brooke

14 Quadrant September 2020 The Church and the Dhow Inhambane, Mozambique

Attempting an old town treasure hunt, going on foot, in the late afternoon, I come upon a Portuguese church with the powdery look of a daylight moon. Such is the gust of its old-world beauty it seems to blow in from the nearby bay, bringing a sense of blustery wonder, On the Blade of a Day the sequel to which is creeping dismay. For, inside, graffiti covers the walls. Man stares at his reflection The darkest scribblings are still extant. in his morning coffee Inverted pentagrams brandish their horns balances on the edge amidst a thicket of devilish cant. of a sugarless death And where there once were rows of pews, hides behind a shy day and where the prelate’s lectern stood, the wine mark of his birth mere vacancy speaks of the long civil war the spilled wine in which faith meant less than firewood. of his life Still, I climb to the top of the belfry fears demons swinging by iron ladders speckled with rust, on the trapeze shifting my gaze from the gap-boarded platforms in his brain, sizzling to take in the inner walls’ heavenward thrust. on the high wires And when I reach the uppermost level How is it then, he gathers I sit on the sill and imbibe the view: the tatters of his life the old town’s roofs, coloured earthen-red, about him everyday, contrast with the bay water’s greenish-blue. steps out into the morning In looking out there, I spot a dhow postures and puffs which deftly unfurls its old-fashioned charm; with pebbles in his shoes moreover, its graceful motion suggests feathers in his mouth a pelican’s imperturbable calm. knowing he must I take it up as a hopeful emblem, build a pyramid, cut down though as the dhow tacks toward the sea, a casaba, bandage a friend I remember the pewless nave below clear the land and its charcoal-scribbled obscurity. launch a rocket into space send a child to school Sean Wayman sing the only song he knows knowing he must not die today.

Carolyn Evans Campbell

Quadrant September 2020 15 Peter Murphy

Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home pay for a good but the actual payment is delayed From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find for a long time. Many Australian students fall into The Arabian desert of the human mind, the third category. Australia has a loans scheme Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come … for delayed payment of university fees. The scheme —A.D. Hope, “Australia” ensures ready access to Australian universities irrespective of means. The consequence of delayed he cost to students of a social science degree payment though is that the price of a degree has in Australia will double from 2021. At least substantially less effect on degree choice than it will if the Senate crossbench approves might be first thought. So it is difficult to predict theT measure. The mooted change in the federal whether fewer enrollees will opt for social science government’s pricing schedule has been greeted degrees in the future. with predictable foot-stamping. Critics almost In Australia in the 1950s a social science degree uniformly suppose that the universities are a kind was a status good and a scarce good because few of Socratic paradise which is under threat. In real- persons went to university. In retrospect people ity this paradise is more like a Benthamite night- tend to think that this was because individuals had mare. Far from causing the sky to fall, the price to pay up-front for their degrees. That explanation change in fact opens up some possibilities for the is misleading. Sixty per cent of students in the future of the social sciences in Australia. 1950s were supported by university scholarships. Price signals are designed to alter consumer Moreover, the real price of a degree was much behaviour. From 2021, the price paid per year by new lower than today. Consider the cost of a degree students enrolling in a social science degree will measured as a percentage of average earnings. In rise from $6804 to $14,500. The government subsidy 1955 a four-year arts degree cost individual students will fall from $11,015 to $1100. The total value to $22,090 in 2019 dollars. The same four-year degree universities of a social science degree will drop from today, given the government’s 2021 price schedule, $17,819 to $15,600 a year. All of these figures are in will cost a student $58,000—2.6 times the 1955 cost. 2021 dollars. As a point of comparison, economics That 2.6 multiple is almost entirely explained by and law degrees already cost students $11,355 per the ballooning of university administration and annum. These will rise marginally to $14,500 with infrastructure costs over time. It has virtually an accompanying reduction of $1137 in government nothing to do with the (strictly-defined) teaching subsidy. Commentators assume that enrolments and research component of universities. in the social sciences will shrink in step with the University education in the 1950s was scarce price increase. Normally if the price of a good is but cheap. Today it is abundant but expensive. Its increased the number of persons purchasing the scarcity in the 1950s was generated by the fact that good will decline. That is true of most goods. But high scores were required to enter a university. The university places are not most goods. percentage of intellectually gifted and motivated The correlation of higher price and lower persons in any given population is limited and consumption tends not to apply to three kinds of cannot be expanded. The abundance of university goods. The first exception is status goods—where education today is not a function of lower real the higher price is the good because the higher prices but of lower entry scores. price is a symbol of higher status. The second From the 1960s onwards, governments, beginning exception is scarce goods—where the demand for with the Menzies government, intervened in the the good habitually exceeds the supply of the good. university sector to subsidise prices. The effect of The third exception is where a person commits to this invariably was to increase prices, not reduce

16 Quadrant September 2020 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery them. The aim and outcome of these subsidies or should be. I remember well teaching Aristotle were to feed a massive rise in administration and to first-year undergraduate students forty years infrastructure expenditures in order to expand the ago. Aristotle methodically compared regimes post-industrial economy that replaced Australia’s and constitutions. He thought that there were shrinking manufacturing industries. better and worse ones. But his judgment was not When they work well, markets do two unhinged from the reality that he patiently set out. things simultaneously. They reduce prices, and And no regime or constitution was perfect. they increase the quality of products. The mass Objectivity extends to politics. Universities today university did the opposite: it increased prices and are heavily biased to the political Left—especially reduced quality. Prices rose as universities added (but by no means exclusively) in the humanities taxpayer-funded post-industrial administrative and social sciences. It is no accident though that, and infrastructure leviathans to satisfy the view of all the social sciences, economics and political of governments that these institutions were key science are least skewed to the political Left. This is economic drivers. As universities grew in size, the because, in these very old disciplines that have been aptitude and motivation of students and academic built up over centuries, judgments—whether of the staff inevitably declined. The milieu Left, Right or Centre—are more for serious thought and work was inclined to follow reality rather than watered down, and a vacuum was attempting to lead it. This doesn’t created that was quickly filled by Intellectual quality preclude intellectual moralising romantic “studies”. deteriorated as the and political neuroticism but it classical disciplines does tone them down. Underlying this is the classic precept that social What is a university? were marginalised realities, many of them large-scale he university began as a voca- or colonised by in nature and effect, shape human tional institution. It was con- behaviour much more than the will Tceived nine hundred years ago to romantic evangelising. of governments or social groups train lawyers, doctors and priests. Empirical inquiry or any single individual can. The Vocational education is proce- classic mind prefers observation dural in spirit. It teaches students became chained to to engagement and distance to techniques, protocols and rules social advocacy. participation. for carrying out professional or The converse is true of the quasi-professional operations. It is romantic mind. It emerged at methodical, meticulous and schematic by nature. the end of the eighteenth century. Unlike the It has intellectual content but its body of knowl- classical mind, the romantic mind is engaged, edge is “circumscribed” (as Michael Oakeshott put redemptive, passionate, loquacious, brittle, it). Its knowledge is reducible to handbooks and obscurantist and negative. In its eyes, society manual-style textbooks. is bad, nature is endangered, and change is the That universities developed as a crucible for the supreme value. As it evolved, the romantic mind classical mind as well as the vocational mind may endorsed numerous political movements on the have been an accident. Immanuel Kant implied Left and Right, including socialism, progressivism, as much when he described philosophy—the populism, fascism, communism, nationalism, wellspring of the classical mind—as the “lower safetyism, environmentalism, and numerous ever- faculty” in the university compared with the mutating varieties of identity politics. Dating “higher” professional faculties. From philosophy from the “socialists of the chair” in nineteenth- eventually descended the cohort of classic social century German universities and social liberals science disciplines including economics, political in Australian universities and the adult education science, classical sociology and psychology. By the movement at the turn of the twentieth century, the 1950s these disciplines had acquired their mature romantic mind has long been a major force in higher form. The classical mind tended to be sceptical, education. After the 1970s university romanticism intellectual, wry, pithy, unemotional, hardy, was routinised with the massive proliferation of positive and objective. “studies” programs. These institutionalised, on To be objective means to inquire into things a large scale, courses whose curricula awfulised that exist objectively—outside of one’s own self. society and catastrophised nature. The classic mind instinctively looks to things that The most important of the classic social science are external rather than to romantic representations disciplines are political science and economics. of how we think the world ought to be, must be The first of these has a 2000-year history; the

Quadrant September 2020 17 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery second has 300 years of history. These are not only blobby melange of them all. Vocational courses old but also demanding courses of instruction take on romantic ideologies and barely digested and inquiry. Numerous kinds of “studies” now bits and pieces of classic frameworks. The classical compete with them. On the margins of political mind flirts with romantic angst. The romantics science emerged development studies and legal generate endless Baroque pseudo-theories in the studies. International relations was squeezed by vain hope of reaching the pinnacle of the classic international studies, peace studies and conflict mind. The large managerial class in the universities studies. Vocational journalism became colonised looks on all of this with a mixture of indulgence by media studies. Evangelising business courses and cynicism. In its eyes the world is composed of (like marketing) grew to overshadow vocational child-like academics who have to be coddled and majors like accounting and the classical discipline government ministers who have to be courted and of economics. Identity (class, status, race, ethnicity, feted. gender, sexuality) courses almost entirely swamped Australian governments and universities at least classical sociology. agree on one thing. The question of “What is a Intellectual quality deteriorated as the classical university?” must be ignored as far as possible. It is disciplines were marginalised or colonised by much better to fight about the price of degrees. Yet romantic evangelising. Empirical inquiry became the gnawing question of what a university is will chained to social advocacy. Narrative fantasies not go away just because managers or government negated intellectual objectivity. This is not to say ministers happen not to like it. If anything, the that the classic disciplines were without their own way degrees are priced makes that question ever problems. Some used increasingly sophisticated more salient. mathematical techniques to pursue ever-more The price of a social science degree, like all shallow inquiries, which often produced interesting degrees, is politically engineered. For its projected data and insights at the cost of screening out the 2021 schedule, the government decided to price larger economic and social picture. The effort to courses in line with national labour market priorities produce a synoptic view of entire economies, for and the cost of delivering courses. The latter example, is now largely left to undergraduate method is a slick version of Marx’s labour theory of macro-economic textbooks. value updated for the big Keynesian public sector. Unsurprisingly then, over the fifty years since The value (or price) of a good is determined by 1970 the amount of serious research produced by the the cost of its input. This is a form of bureaucratic social sciences has declined sharply and measurably pricing. Market prices work differently. A market compared with the period between 1900 and 1970. price reflects what consumers think the value of This is not to say that no serious work is produced, the good is and what they are prepared to pay for but its incidence has declined markedly compared it. As there are millions of consumers, this is both with the 1920s or the 1950s. This shift mirrors the an individual and a social judgment. chances of a university student getting a serious The Commonwealth government administers social sciences education. It is still possible. But as the price of university degrees by bands. The social time progresses it is less and less likely. sciences band is instructive. The current price paid by students is $6684 rising (if the Senate approves) to $14,500 per annum. That price includes courses The multiversity with a huge variety of average salary outcomes he mass university that emerged after 1970 ranging from those of a youth worker ($46,000), developed as a multiversity. The multiversity journalist ($53,000) or social worker ($65,000) to a Tindiscriminately incorporated vocational, classical policy analyst ($78,000) or an economist ($77,000). and romantic education. This evolved as an unstable In other words, government officials arbitrarily and incoherent mess. That incoherence is reflected set prices that have no relationship to the lifetime today in political views of higher education. Take economic worth of the courses. the case of Australia’s Liberal Party. It pioneered The same arbitrariness is evident in the case of mass higher education in the 1960s. By 2020 it commentators who try to compare a “society and was split three ways between the Morrison–Tehan culture” degree with a “science and mathematics” preference for vocational education, the Turnbull– degree. Such labels disguise a multiple of earning Bishop advocacy of social-liberal evangelism and realities (high, moderate and low) and include the Howard–Abbott desire for classical education. numerous kinds of degrees. What makes a political The multiversity has no way of reconciling, science degree something of fairly high worth is not resolving or deciding between these competing only that the degree-holder has a likely prospect of views except to allow its courses to become a earning a relatively high lifetime income but that

18 Quadrant September 2020 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery society has decided this person’s skills are valuable, students may prove to be more motivated and able rare and useful, and thus worth paying a higher than the current cohort of enrollees. Possibly fewer than average rate. The same judgment is made students will graduate from hyperventilating “stud- about doctors and dentists. ies” or those vocational social sciences that lead to The rationale of government education planners market-saturated lower-tier careers. That said, it (the political price setters) for the price schedule is not easy to predict the outcome of changes to changes is that universities are producing too bureaucratic pricing. many social science graduates and not enough In any event, none of this will fix the galaxy of nurses and mathematicians compared to labour problems tearing away at the soul of Australian uni- market demand in the foreseeable (ten-year) versities. Revising a price schedule will not reverse future. The government’s labour market analysis the blurring of the distinction between vocational, is almost identical to what I observed in 2017 in classical and romantic education. It will not change Auto-Industrialism. There is increasing demand in the bloated costs of higher education. It will not Australia (also globally) for vocational professionals eliminate the prevalence of “studies” programs. in the health industry and for mathematically Beginning with Menzies in the 1960s, govern- or statistically-based computational occupations ments created the monster of the mass university. ranging from logistics and architecture to computer Like Dr Frankenstein, they now cannot undo what network, materials and telecommunication they created. Governments induced universities to engineering to finance industry become vehicles to prop up regional managers. The local Australian economies and inner-city service twist on this is the short-term rise he variation of sectors and keep persons off unem- in demand for teacher training due T ployment rolls. Serious higher edu- to the demographic rise caused by price expands the cation has become incidental to all Peter Costello’s 2002 baby bonus practical possibility of this. tax break. The federal government is fid- of creating a small dling with its central-planning private university in A microversity degree price schedule to get the Australia dedicated he federal government’s plan universities to produce more grad- to double the price of a social uates of a specific kind over the to the classical Tscience degree is a prosaic tech- next decade and get more stu- social sciences. nocratic measure. Nevertheless, dents to enrol in these courses. it could have a beneficial effect This ambition has coincided with well beyond what the govern- the COVID-19 recession. To avoid unemployment ment intends. For the variation of price expands during recessions, people park themselves in uni- the practical possibility of creating a small private versity courses. What the government is signalling university in Australia dedicated to the classical through administered pricing is: park yourself in social sciences. If it was done well, such an institu- certain vocational courses but not others (not in tion could help abate three problems: the bloated accounting or law for example). The government cost structure of universities; the need to separate (reasonably) expects domestic student numbers will vocational, classical and romantic education; and grow in Australia in the next two or three years the related need to decouple the more sober “dis- due to the recession. At the same time that reces- ciplines” from the awfulising “studies” programs. sion means tight budget constraints. By artfully The idea is not to replicate the mass univer- reconfiguring the 2021 degree price schedule, the sity—quite the reverse—but rather to create a government expects to increase university places “microversity”. That is, a small boutique selective without additional spending on its part. institution for motivated and high-performing stu- The projected price hike for social science dents that controls costs and is dedicated to serious degrees is a deliberate attempt to achieve a bet- teaching and research. Such an institution would ter equilibrium between university output of not be simply “another” university. Every university graduates and labour market needs. Whether the created in Australia since 1950 has been a pale imi- administrative setting of prices can achieve what tation of those that have come before. We do not an actual market can achieve though is doubtful. need an even paler imitation of what already exists. Nevertheless we can expect fewer students to enrol Doubling the price of social science degrees in social science subjects in Australian universities opens up the possibility of a new type of univer- in the next decade if the mooted price schedule is sity because it forces potential enrollees to ask the implemented. An optimistic reading is that these question: Is this degree worth it? That is a good

Quadrant September 2020 19 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery

Table 1. Mass University, Annual Cost.

Total Annual Cost $800m % of total costs Income: Government (federal and state) subsidies, fees, charges, investment income, research income, consultancy income Average cost per equivalent full-time student: $27,000

Academic salaries and related expenses $264m 33% Non-academic salaries and related expenses $243m 30% Buildings and equipment $132m 17% Buildings $31m Building occupancy $51m Repairs and maintenance $16m Infrastructure, plant, equipment $22m Office and vehicles $12m Communications $38m 5% Computing $9m Library $9m Telecommunications $20m Other $123m 15% Amortisation $15m Borrowing costs and financial management charges $6m Research support and participant payments $27m Advertising $12m Scholarships $30m Staff training $5m Travel $13m Miscellaneous $15m

Total annual cost $800m 100%

question. For what exactly is the worth of a social ers. It is worth it for a talented and motivated person science degree? What is the worth of a degree that who is capable of doing demanding subjects that costs a student $6804 compared to a degree that have some combination of abstract, mathematical, costs a student $14,500? What do graduates get for empirical, quantitative, pattern-analytical, concep- their money? The simple answer to this question is tual, morphological, synoptic, structural and theo- “it depends” on where the degree leads in life. In retical components with a deep anchor in objective fact we know a lot about that. reality. This is not for most students, or for most One of the things we know is that a social sci- academic staff. Yet it does suit a small minority of ence degree is not a single thing. Where such a prospective university enrollees. So why not create degree leads in life and how much a person sub- an institution—a microversity—tailored to them? sequently earns depend on whether the degree Those students today are largely at sea in the mass holder has majored in a “discipline” or has majored university, awkwardly positioned in an institution in one of the “studies” programs or in a vocational that pays lip-service to serious study and inquiry but program. Those who major in economics or politi- in practice tends to shun it or is ambivalent about cal science do very well because these are arduous it—or else overwrites it with social evangelism. courses of study rooted in obdurate realities. And What would a social sciences microversity look because these courses are demanding, few people like? To answer that question I am going to sketch succeed in them, and consequently they graduate a model of one. In its pilot form it would be based with scarce abilities. Society rewards scarcity with in either Melbourne or Sydney. It would have an high salaries and interesting jobs. enrolment of 500 students and an academic staff of This means that a $14,500 social sciences degree thirty, a staff-to-student ratio of 1:16, the standard is worth it in certain circumstances and not in oth- American ratio rather than Australia’s 1:24 plus. It

20 Quadrant September 2020 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery

Table 2. Microversity, Annual Cost.

500 students, 30 academic staff, 6 non-academic staff; 24-subject degree, 3 majors, 60 subjects offered 16 full-time student teaching load equivalent and 2 subjects taught per staff member per annum

Fee income per annum $7,250,000 500 students @ $14,500 fees per student Optional income: Commonwealth supported places (subsidy) $550,000 500 students @ $1,100 per student Other potential sources of income: philanthropic endowment, research funding, consultancy income

Salaries and related $5,646,000 % of fee income Includes: Academic salaries $5,100,000 70% 30 academics: 6 Professors, 12 Senior Lecturers, 12 Lecturers Median salary and related: $170,000 ($130,000 plus 30% salary-related costs) Non-academic salaries $546,000 8% 6 non-academic staff Median salary and related, Higher Education Worker: $91,000 ($70,000 plus 30% salary-related costs) Buildings and equipment $310,000 4% 575 sq m office space @ $400 per sq m (second-tier commercial office space) Office space $144,000 36 staff x 10 sq metre offices Tutorial room space $56,000 500 students, 10 students per class, 200 tutorials a week, 7 tutorial rooms, 20 sq m per room Common space $30,000 50 person, 75 sq m Utilities, amenities, cleaning $60,000 $100 per sq m Facility maintenance $17,000 $30 per sq m Communications $90,000 1% Includes: Internet (business, unlimited, 500 users) $10,000 $700 per month for 500 users Library $35,000 All-digital library materials, $70 per student per annum Computing (development) $45,000 Software development and continuous upgrade costs Other $500,000 7% Contingency set aside $700,000 10%

Total annual cost $7,246,000 100%

would offer an undergraduate degree with three ners much as in a legal firm. It would have a legal majors—in social science (theory plus quantitative), charter committing it to serious classical social sci- public policy and economics. It would control costs ence objectives. by limiting administration and curtailing infra- Is such an institution viable? The answer to this structure spending. It would be a selective insti- question is outlined in two fiscal tables. One is the tution, dedicated to students who have performed budget of a conventional mass university (Table 1). well in a combination of state exams, school assess- This budget is modelled on an existing university but ments and an interview. Academic staff would be it doesn’t matter which one—the pattern of expend- hired on the basis of a renewable ten-year tenure iture is broadly the same across the sector. Table 2 is subject to simple research and teaching perform- the hypothetical budget of the microversity. ance requirements. The microversity would be a The microversity differs from the mass multi- self-managing collegiate body composed of part- versity in a number of key ways:

Quadrant September 2020 21 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery

1. Salaries and related expenses are costed tutorials. similarly. However, the multiversity allocates The microversity model in Table 2 assumes a staggering nearly 50 per cent of salary costs to physical tutorials but also, crucially, small class administration. The microversity curtails this. It sizes (ten per tutorial) and academic staff with allocates most of its spending to academic salaries, plenty of time outside formal classes to talk with a reflection of its purely academic focus. The mass students. Academics in this model carry a third less multiversity was a product of the post-industrial student load than is now conventional in Australia era. It was seen, first, as a “job creator”—which and teach no more than two subjects a year. This meant white-collar and pink-collar administra- represents markedly higher-quality teaching for tion. Second, it was a way of boosting various students and staff alike than any Australian univer- micro-economies including the inner-city property sity currently offers. Another kind of microversity market, suburban nodal micro-economies and the might stick with the conventional twenty-four-plus economies of major regional towns. Along with gov- full-time student load per academic. If so, degree ernment subsidies this post-industrial social engi- costs would revert to 1950s levels. What the entire neering led to a massive explosion government subsidy pays for is in the costs of the multiversities. post-industrial administration and 2. The second big driver of infrastructure. bloated costs in multiversities is The multiversity their provision of services through is spiralling down. Barriers and apertures campuses. In the twentieth cen- It staggers from tury campuses evolved into small aturally, there are barriers cities that promised enrollees all one fiscal crisis to to creating a microversity. the services of cities—from sports another and from NThe first barrier is regulatory. The facilities to carparks to landscaped Australian universities regulator is gardens to eating venues to medi- one restructure to TEQSA, the Tertiary Education cal practices to residences to thea- the next. It has no Quality and Standards Agency. tres to high status buildings. Cities vision beyond getting It has six criteria for registering a are normally financed by com- new university. Three of them— mercial rents and municipal rates. more funding. academic governance, teaching Universities turned to student and research—are unobjectionable fees and government subsidies to and what you’d expect. Two of finance their city-building fantasies. The microver- them are pure post-industrial social engineering. sity eliminates any pretension to being a city within One says the university must “provide an extensive a city, and limits its urban horizons to renting good range of support services”. The tacit assumption is commercial office space in the metropolitan inner- that a vast number of non-academic staff will pro- ring suburbs that are serviced by excellent public vide that support. The microversity would replace transport, commercial parking, high-quality inex- this with automation and support provided by aca- pensive eating, gymnasiums, sports clubs, iconic demics whose time would be freed up to do so. The places, cultural institutions and entertainment. second asks for a record of “engagement with local, 3. The multiversities have been very reluctant to regional and professional communities”. The tacit digitally automate their enterprise. They are one of assumption is that universities are pivots of post- the last hold-outs for needlessly labour-intensive industrial micro-economies—something that was administration. Most university administration is long ago discredited in the research literature and very routine in nature. Any routine human activity something that has as much credence as the idea of can be auto-industrialised, as fintech is showing recuperating a local economy by building a sports banks. The multiversities resist this because their stadium. Finally, TEQSA expects “government self-image is that of a post-industrial “job crea- support” (state ministerial approval) for a new uni- tor”. Likewise academics have been very resistant versity. This explicit political hurdle reinforces the to online lectures. There is no good pedagogic rea- other hurdles that are designed to entrench univer- son for this. It is simply technophobia. The annual sities as post-industrial economy drivers. cost of needlessly filling lecture theatres is large. The second barrier to the creation of a new The microversity eliminates this. All lectures are institution is the set-up cost. Higher educa- online. At the same time there is good reason to tion is expensive. Establishment costs are large. have intense interaction between professors and Development costs for a microversity would be students. There are a variety of ways of achieving something in the order of $25 million, covering this, which include both traditional and online planning, recruitment, building fit-out, equipment

22 Quadrant September 2020 Putting the Mass University Out of its Misery purchase, and staff costs before the project became powerless or uncomprehending. They decide (here) economically self-sustaining through fee income. a price change to encourage a particular voca- Achieving a highly proficient automated admin- tional course, (there) the elevation of a romantic istrative system would require another $25 million national research priority, and (everywhere) toss in in software development. Though, if (as advisable) the occasional lament for the dumbing down of the this was done in conjunction with a major tech classic mind. Sometimes the same retail politician company, that up-front cost could be recouped by will offer all three views simultaneously. future licensing of the software to other microver- All the while the multiversity is flounder- sities. Finally, there is the need to kick-start an ing like a beached whale. Governments can’t and endowment for the university, another $25 million. won’t put it out of its misery. The mass university While all of that might sound quite a bit, Australia schtick remains attractive to voters, though that is has forty billionaires. It is well within their capac- gradually decreasing. The one useful thing that a ity to finance. government could do is to rewrite the regulations A microversity for the classic social sciences to facilitate the establishment of micro and meso- is just one example of many imaginable different scale universities. If a minister for higher education microversities. In addition, it does not take much wishes to be remembered, all that is necessary is to to conceive of various possible mid-scale “mes- nullify three brief sections of the TEQSA regula- oversities” such as specialist medical-health uni- tions. Leave the rest to private initiative. versities. The multiversity is spiralling down. It staggers from one fiscal crisis to another and from Peter Murphy is the author of The Political Economy one restructure to the next. It has no vision beyond of Prosperity and Universities and Innovation getting more funding. It has become little more Economies. His latest book, to be published in October, than a giant lobby. is COVID-19: Proportionality, Public Policy and At the same time the multiversity is unreform- Social Distancing. A footnoted version of this article able. Governments sit on the sidelines, largely appears at Quadrant Online.

You get one at every meeting …

A foghorn of the forum a saviour of the quorum a standing-orders-suspender an agenda-bender a pointer-of-order a white-boarder a sorry-I’m-later an inter-school debater an outgoing chairman a projector-repairman a carping complainer a total abstainer an offence-taker a coffee-maker a keeper-of-the-flamer a let’s-change-the-namer a floating voter a pass-the-silly-noter an on-a-curve-learner a move-we-adjourner a resolution-drafter a possum in the rafters a hoverer by the door a cockroach on the floor a minutes-keeper a grim reaper a sound of crows squabbling on a blasted heath a clock ticking like the slow grinding of teeth.

John Carey

Quadrant September 2020 23 David Martin Jones

Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life

ne of the many curious features of the dec- lion and 100 million people. Journalists recall these laration of the coronavirus pandemic in pandemics and their traumatic psychological effect March 2020 was the belief that the out- upon popular consciousness to show the disrup- Obreak was unprecedented. The mainstream Western tion and death they caused to societies with limited media not only assumed its global impact unique, knowledge of micro-organisms, their transmission they also anticipated its consequences in a rheto- or control. ric that mixed the mawkish with the morbid and Treating these epidemics as discrete infectious the apocalyptic. In an atmosphere of media hyste- events nevertheless leads to some broad and per- ria, governments reinforced the sense of impending haps questionable inferences. The Black Death, the doom, embracing an epidemiological prediction of most frequently cited pandemic event, was respon- death rates of 1 per cent of the West’s population sible for the death of between a third and a half of unless they locked down the economy, quarantined the European population between 1348 and 1350. It households and suspended all non-essential activity. affected, like all the epidemics we are discussing, A rationalist preoccupation with a very short the poor and labouring classes disproportionately. view of the past and a much longer view of the The high death rate amongst the rural peasantry future, informs this perverse neglect of past pan- and urban poor led to the decline of the manorial demic events and the manner in which Western system and a fall in agricultural rents, particularly governments and society have historically responded in England and France. Labour shortages, despite to them. Ironically, this nescience is one of the few measures like the Statue of Labourers (1352) to things that is unprecedented about the current cri- restrict their movement, eventually led to a gen- sis. How, we might wonder, have societies reacted eral increase in wages. To infer that a similar effect to pandemics in the past, and are there psycho- might be generated from the current pandemic, logical, social, political and economic responses in however, given its relatively low case fatality rate the past that repeat themselves in the present—or, (CFR) is highly debatable. Similarly, to the extent alternatively, might past practice offer insight into the media analyses the impact of the Spanish flu our current predicament? pandemic, it is to show that although the lockdown as well as the death rate, especially in the US, was initially severe, the economy and the labour market Disease in history recovered rapidly as the 1920s roared. o the extent that the media takes account of One of the more impressive studies by econo- past pandemics it is to invoke a vicarious sense mists from the Bank of San Francisco and the Tof horror. Newspapers and periodicals have recalled University of California that attempted to assess the inter alia the epidemic described by Thucydides comparative effects of pandemics over time found in his History of the Peloponnesian Wars that did that between 1348 and 2009 pandemics with a death so much to undermine the Athenian war effort in rate in excess of 100,000 had a depressing effect on the early years of its campaign against Sparta, the real rates of return on interest and a “somewhat Black Death (1348 to 1350), the London plague elevated” effect on wages. Moreover, the pandem- of 1665, vividly described by Daniel Defoe in his ics’ depressing effect on investment took decades to Journal of the Plague Year (1720) and, more recently, work through the economy. Are there similar com- the Spanish influenza outbreak (1918 to 1920), the parative social, political and psychological impacts little understood pandemic that at the end of the that can be adduced from pandemic events over the First World War may have killed between 40 mil- longer run?

24 Quadrant September 2020 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life

The historiography of disease America,” Ladurie writes, “perished between 1348– 1600, in the flames of a microbial holocaust, causing istorians of medicine and disease have con- loss of life on a scale serious in Europe, devastating ducted broad and, in Roy Porter’s case, finely in mainland America, and total, or near total, in detailedH studies of diseases and their scientific, the Caribbean”. Moreover, Ladurie concludes, “the social and political effects over time. As Porter spread of cholera in the nineteenth century is proof observed in his encyclopaedic study of the history of that the era of microbial unification is not yet over”. medicine, The Greatest Benefit of Mankind, “illness is Not only has the macro historical impact of not just biological but social. Concepts of the body infectious diseases been neglected in the post-his- and its sickness draw upon powerful dichotomies: torical aftermath of the Cold War, so too have the nature and culture; the sacred and the profane.” recurring themes that distinctive infectious diseases Sick bodies possess “eloquent messages for society”. from leprosy in the Old Testament, to plague in the Indeed, conceptions of the body shaped that fourteenth to the seventeenth century and cholera most enduring of political metaphors, the body and tuberculosis in the nineteenth, have evoked in politic, found in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, the social imagination and the political responses and John of Salisbury’s Policraticon. The nine- to them. teenth-century “father of modern pathology” and The most predictable and enduring reaction to leader of the German Progressive Party after 1872, pandemic disease, from Moses to Albert Camus’s Rudolf Virchow, pathologised this metaphor when Father Paneloux in The Plague, is to consider it he wrote, “medicine is a social sci- either a religious judgment on a ence and politics nothing more than wicked people or a test that the social science on a grand scale”. he most predictable righteous must suffer and endure. From this perspective, A.H. T According to Habakkuk, the Lord McNeill in Plagues and Peoples (1975) and enduring reaction travels with “pestilence” before him. considered human history evincing to pandemic disease, In the Book of Exodus, the Lord “a precarious equilibrium between tells Moses that He will pass over the micro parasitism of disease from Moses to Albert the congregation of Israel but smite organisms and the macro parasit- Camus’s Father their Egyptian hosts with plague. ism of large bodied predators, chief Paneloux, is to consider Psalm 91 reveals that “the Lord is of which have been other human my refuge and my fortress”, trusting beings”. In his best-selling Guns, it either a religious in him will “deliver thee from the Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond judgment on a wicked snare of the fowler, and from the presents human development as a noisome pestilence”. Consequently, Darwinian struggle shaped by con- people or a test that “thou shalt not be afraid for the quest, epidemics and genocide, in the righteous must terror by night; nor for the arrow which the transmission of germs suffer and endure. that flieth by day, nor for the pes- by conquering armies, notably the tilence that walketh at night, nor Conquistadores, during the unequal for the destruction that wasteth at Columbian exchange between South America and noonday”. Finding his Bible open at this psalm, the Europe, played a determining and little-understood narrator of Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year role in the rise and fall of civilisations. Eurasian decides to remain in London and keep a record of germs killed far more native people than European the great plague that devastated the city in the sum- guns and steel. mer of 1665, leaving grass growing in the locked- Less sensationally, the French Annales school down streets around Bishopsgate and killing a fifth historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, in his quanti- of the population. tative examination of mortality statistics in Europe, The conventional response to epidemic disease demonstrated how infectious diseases, notably the was a heightened preoccupation with sin and sal- great plague pandemics of Justinian (541 AD, which vation. Defoe observed this in London in 1665, swept Merovingian Europe and the Middle East), Boccaccio and Machiavelli in the plagues of Florence the Black Death (from 1330 when it first emerged in in 1348 and 1527, and Camus in his fictional Oran in China to 1350), the impact of smallpox visited upon 1947. Not only did sinners flock to church and more the Inca and Aztec empires of South America by the especially to shrines dedicated to the plague saints Spanish after 1492, as well as successive cholera out- Sebastian and Roch, but also to join new fanatical breaks in the nineteenth century, have unified the movements like the Brotherhood of the Cross, the globe through disease. “A large part of the human flagellant sect that appeared in Germany in the sum- populations of the world, especially in Europe and mer of 1348. The sect engaged in ritual flagellation

Quadrant September 2020 25 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life in marketplaces across Northern Europe and called ling and roaring extravagances as is usual for such upon the people to abandon their sinful lives and people”: follow the Cross. The movement’s chiliastic attach- ment to the more apocalyptic passages in the Book They sat generally in a room next the street; of Revelation that foresaw Christ coming down to and, as they always kept late hours, so when rule for a thousand years over the saved made them the dead-cart came across the street end to go an object of political concern. The Papacy declared into Houndsditch, which was in view of the the sect heretical in 1349. Religious enthusiasm tavern windows, they would frequently open the also encouraged scapegoating, particularly of Jews windows, as soon as they heard the bell, and widely accused of poisoning the population. Attacks look out at them; and, as they might often hear on Jewish communities were, somewhat unsurpris- sad lamentations of people in the streets, or at ingly, most common in Germany. their windows, as the carts went along, they The rapid and shocking mortality rate of infec- would make their impudent mocks and jeers at tious disease also encouraged a preoccupation with them, especially if they heard the poor people Death, the pale rider of the Book of Revelation. An call upon God to have mercy upon them. iconography of Death dominated the later Middle Ages, celebrated in murals depicting the Triumph of Boccaccio concluded that “the sore affliction Death and Death’s Dance. The iconography endured and misery” of epidemic disease undermined “the and was vividly recalled in Ingmar Bergman’s Cold reverend authority of the laws both human and War masterpiece The Seventh Seal (1956). divine”. Those who survived the Black Death gave Fatalism could also engender psychological crisis themselves up to a “more shameful and disordered denying God and turning to anarchic self-indul- life”. Boccaccio, like Machiavelli, Defoe and Camus gence. Boccaccio found some Florentines believed after him, tried to extract lessons from the popular “that to carouse and make merry and go about response to plague for posterity. In this they fol- singing and frolicking and satisfy the appetite in lowed the example initially set by Thucydides, who every­thing possible and laugh and scoff at whatever first attempted to inform future generations of what befell was [one] very certain remedy for such an ill”. to expect when an epidemic overwhelms a city state Describing the plague that devastated the city two like Athens (430 BC). hundred years later, Machiavelli observed: Thucydides described in fine detail “what sort of thing it was”, specifying its symptoms and analys- Florence, at the present, resembles a city that ing the process by which it spread. He observed, as has been sacked by the infidels and afterwards did Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Defoe, “the despair abandoned. Some of the inhabitants … into which people fell, when they realised that they have retired to country villas to escape the had caught the plague, for they would immediately deadly plague; some are dead and others are adopt an attitude of utter hopelessness”. The catas- approaching death; so that the while present trophe “was so overwhelming that men not knowing circumstances offend us, the future threatens us; what would happen next to them, became indif- so as one struggles with death, one fears for one’s ferent to every rule of religion or of law”. Funeral life … The neat and beautiful streets, which ceremonies whether in ancient Athens or medieval used to be bursting with rich and noble citizens, Florence and early modern London “became disor- are now stinking, ugly and swarming with the ganised”. Whilst the Athenians resorted to throw- poor … The shops are locked, the businesses ing bodies onto funeral pyres, the magistrates of closed, the courts and the lawyers dragged medieval Florence and seventeenth-century London away, prostrating the laws. Now one hears of consigned the dead to plague pits like the one Defoe this theft, now of that murder: the piazzas and describes in Aldgate. markets, where the citizens used to be in the habit of gathering frequently, are now made into communal graves, and vile dens of thieves. Reason, medicine and epidemics t was Thucydides who “with greater precision One hundred and fifty years on from Machiavelli, than the medical profession would achieve for Daniel Defoe found that whilst “the better sort first Inearly two millennia thereafter”, identified for the took alarm hurrying themselves” out of London, first time “two processes of profound importance: as “if all the city was running away” to self-isolate person-to-person transmission and specific acquired on their country estates, some who remained, like immunity”. His realistic precision not only informed “the dreadful set of fellows” who frequented the Pye his politics and statecraft, it also reflected a distinc- Tavern in Houndsditch, behaved “with all the revel- tively Greek approach to knowledge of the healthy

26 Quadrant September 2020 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life physical, as well as social, body, its humours and its carried along trade routes to European port cit- balance. Hippocrates (460–377), a contemporary of ies like Venice, Genoa, London, Amsterdam and Thucydides, developed in his collection of cases a Marseilles. It was the wealthy trading city-states of patient-centred healing system founded upon natu- Renaissance Italy that first developed public health ral philosophy and reason independent of magic or commissions comprised of nobles and officials to supernatural speculation. The Corpus Hippocraticum address “the culture of poverty, dirt, promiscu- included seven books devoted to epidemics (epi ity” and over-population in which plague thrived, demos). Hippocrates not only coined this term for or what Ladurie described as that fatal medieval those diseases that fall upon a people or circu- “menage a trois” between the black rat (Rattus rat- late within a country, and that invariably, like the tus), the flea Pulex( irritans) and man. Athenian pestilence or later bubonic plagues arrive Venice and Florence established boards of health from outside, he also described the environmental as early as 1348. By the early fifteenth century, Milan and temperamental factors that determined their had developed a permanent magistracy monitoring outcome. and regulating civic health. These developments fol- Subsequently, Galen, the most prolific Roman lowed the growing recognition that disease came clinician, “perfected” Hippocrates, rendering the from the outside and along trade routes. The first corpus more logical, scholastic and anatomical. isolation of shipping occurred in the Venetian He contributed a new emphasis on the pulse and Adriatic colony of Ragusa in 1377, and the quaran- blood-letting to restore the bodily humours to equi- tine of suspect maritime commerce developed from librium. This corpus was adapted to the Muslim there. In 1374 Milan and Mantua also introduced world from the eighth century through the contri- controls on overland commerce, the beginning of butions of Averroes, al Razi (Rhazes) and Avicenna, more rigid border regulation and cordons sanitaires which also developed the use of drugs (a word of in the following centuries. In 1374, in Milan again, Arabic coinage). This Galenic worldview, amplified the contacts of those infected, as well as the sick by astrology, astronomy and Thomist scholasticism, themselves, were isolated, and between 1450 and informed the medieval and early modern plague 1470 many of the city-states of northern Italy set up doctor’s diagnostic approach to bubonic plague as isolation hospitals, lazzaretti, in further attempts to well as other endemic diseases like yaws and lep- prevent contagion. By the seventeenth century, an rosy. One of the pilgrims accompanying Chaucer administrative program was in place in most large to Canterbury a few decades after the black death cities which could be adapted for use against an epi- included a: demic threat. Defoe comments favourably on the Lord Mayor’s efficiently organised lockdown of the Doctour of Phisyk, City of London and isolation of the sick in July 1665. In al this world ne was ther noon him lyk The city quickly appointed examiners for every par- To speke of phisik and of surgerye; ish and appointed two watchmen to each “infected For he was grounded in astronomy … house”. He knew the cause of everich maladye, The administrative attack on contagion devel- Were it of hoot or cold, or moiste or drye, oped, then, from the late fifteenth century in And where engendred, and of what humour, Western Europe. It owed much to the association He was a verrey parfit practisour. of plague with poverty and it may also have owed something to the observation of subsequent epidem- “Parfit practisours”, however, were not much ics, like typhus and smallpox and, in the nineteenth use in controlling the spread of infectious diseases century, tuberculosis and cholera. As Paul Slack like the plague. Marginally more effective perhaps observed, the public-health model of government were the religious orders that had founded hos- “came late, and as the result of a learning process”. pices and hospitals for the poor, the sick and the needy. Crusading orders like the Knights of St John established foundations catering for pilgrims The state of disease and early modern en route to Jerusalem in the twelfth century. By the statecraft late thirteenth century Paris had its Hotel de Dieu t was during this learning process that medicine and London its St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s and science broke decisively with the Galenic hospitals. Iand scholastic tradition, applying the new empiri- During the plague era, which lasted in Europe cal science and the resoluto-compositive method until 1720, hospitals could be turned into lazaret- promoted by Bacon, Galileo and Gassendi to the tos or pest houses, catering for those suffering from understanding of the body. However, it was raison what came to be recognised as contagious diseases d’état and the new political science associated with

Quadrant September 2020 27 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life

Machiavelli, Bodin and Hobbes, rather than new became state functionaries. Frederick created a medical knowledge, that drove administrative cam- medical police to administer everyday life and states paigns against epidemic diseases, as well as other across Europe sought to control the movement of forms of internal and external threat. people seen as disease carriers. The last European Sovereign states, with pretensions to absolute plague outbreak occurred in Marseilles in 1720. A power, emerged from the disintegrating cocoon of cordon sanitaire along the Habsburg border with the Christendom in the era of religious enthusiasm and Ottoman empire halted its spread later in the cen- confessional strife that beset much of Europe from tury. By contrast, Muslim passive acceptance of the 1517 to 1648. By the mid-seventeenth century, plague, “great annihilation” caused by endemic plague has- typhus, syphilis and smallpox were endemic, the pop- tened Ottoman decline. ulation in decline and trade in disarray. Historians The new European rationalism achieved a major have for several decades debated whether a little ice medical breakthrough in the eighteenth century, age devastated the economy causing a global crisis, first with inoculation and then Edward Jenner’s new or whether Europe suffered from a distinctive “gen- vaccination against smallpox. Napoleon vaccinated eral crisis”. Whatever else, the century witnessed his grande armée, although it was still devastated by European warfare on a continental scale, famine, typhus during its retreat from Moscow. poverty and, of course, epidemic disease. Bubonic Enlightenment, war and revolution encouraged plague followed in the train of Wallenstein’s impe- a new scientific medicine undertaken by state- rial troops. War disrupted trade, appointed physicians. Napoleonic and displaced people carried infec- France led the way. The church lost tion. Peter Wilson’s comprehensive ife, wrote Bichat, its oversight of hospitals and public overview of the human and material L hospitals like the Hotel de Dieu and costs of the Thirty Years War con- was merely “the sum of Salpêtrière now served the nation. cluded that “disease was the main all functions by which A new cadre of professional physi- killer”. The first major plague epi- cians like Xavier Bichat and René demic occurred in Bavaria in 1622- death is prevented”. Laennec pioneered the clinic, the 23. Three others followed between The patient was medical gaze and a new attention to 1625 and 1650. Typhus and typhoid a thing, subjected disease-centred medicine. Laennec fevers also appeared. Bubonic invented the stethoscope and devel- plague, however, was “responsible to the clinician’s oped a radical diagnostic insight for most of the mortality”. Wilson objective gaze. into internal diseases like tubercu- writes, “The frequency and scale losis, the “white plague”. The new of outbreaks after 1618 suggests pathology considered death and a pandemic where the infection ebbed but never disease the essence of medical inquiry. Life, wrote completely disappeared.” By 1650, the population of Bichat, was merely “the sum of all functions by Munich had fallen from 22,000 in 1618 to 14,000. which death is prevented”. The patient was a thing, Jan Vries, evaluating the European economic subjected to the clinician’s objective gaze. Clinical collapse of the seventeenth century, argues that observation of disease and death preoccupied the rather than “a crisis provoked by endogenous proc- Paris school. It influenced medical teaching across esses, unique to the technologies, institutions, and Europe. reproductive practices of particular societies, the As Roy Porter explains, “the pathological gaze seventeenth-century demographic crisis appears to penetrating the diseased body” and the new micro- have had a proximate cause that was exogenous— scopy practised later in the century in the labora- infectious-disease vectors possessing a history of tories run by Pasteur, Virchow and Robert Koch their own, and before which societies stood pow- applied rigorous scientific method to the whole erless”. The process, he maintains, decentred and medical enterprise. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, recentred the European and world economies. It set in the 1830s, the ambitious Paris-trained doctor led to the decline of the Mediterranean world and Tertius Lydgate arrives in town advocating Bichat’s the rise of the maritime Atlantic trading states, the approach to diagnosis to sceptical locals. Elsewhere Dutch Republic and England as well as absolute in the UK new teaching hospitals like University monarchies dominating continental Europe, from College and King’s College trained a generation France to Tsarist Russia. of practitioners in scientific medicine. The Royal Significantly, enlightened despots like Frederick Colleges licensed them. Journals like the Lancet of Prussia and the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (1823) kept them informed. Eventually, the British promoted rational administration to improve the Medical Association (1855) and General Medical hygiene and health of their people. Physicians Council (1858) standardised professional practice.

28 Quadrant September 2020 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life

There were 15,000 doctors in 1859 and six times that towns and cities of a society in the throes of rapid number a century later. urbanisation, it took advantage of overcrowded housing, poor hygiene and insanitary water supplies with a vigour that suggested these conditions might Choleraphobia and the public health almost have been designed for it. state Cholera might also have been designed to achieve otwithstanding the expansion and standardisa- maximum political as well as medical impact. There tion of medical science and practice in the nine- could be few more violent affronts to Victorian Nteenth century, the new profession had negligible amour propre than the grossly physical symptoms impact, smallpox apart, on infectious diseases like of a cholera attack. At a time when European high tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid and, from the 1830s, culture from the Pre-Raphaelites to Thomas Mann cholera. The industrial revolution first in England celebrated “the beautiful death”, with diseases like and then across Western Europe and the United tuberculosis accorded a transforming influence on States not only generated wealth and a rapid growth their victims, whether the poet Keats or Mimi in in population, it also spawned industrial slums. A La Boheme, here was an affliction that killed rap- population explosion brought with it, as Thomas idly and with symptoms that could only be seen as Malthus wrote in his Essay on Population (1796), the degrading. renewed threat of famine, pestilence and war. The The disease spread in a series of pandemics. more populous future, the parson prognosticated, Between 1826 and 1837 cholera swept across Europe promised successive subsistence and health crises. and North Africa and over the Atlantic to the eastern By the 1850s most of the UK population lived seaboard of North America. It returned in a series of in towns. Social novelists like Gaskell and Dickens waves of declining intensity in 1841–59, 1863–75 and described their filth, poverty and squalor. The dan- 1881–96. When it arrived on the European conti- gerous and perishing classes that inhabited them nent, most regimes dusted off their files on bubonic became an object of concern not only for science but plague and put traditional policing measures into also for the developing administrative state, both as operation: military cordons sanitaires, quarantine, a political threat, and also as a source of infectious fumigation, disinfection, isolation. disease. Dickens’s description in Bleak House of the The resources at the state’s disposal were now slum hard by Chancery Lane captures the amor- more powerful than they had been a century before, phous character of the fear: and their impact on the population far greater. Moreover, decades of war, the impact of the French Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in Revolution and the rise of radical democratic politi- a ruinous place known to the like of him by cal movements had all left a mark on popular con- the name of Tom-All-Alone’s … There is not a sciousness. During the first cholera pandemic, drop of Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates Prussian and Russian peasants attacked cordons sani- infection and contagion somewhere … There taires, murdering those trying to set them up. is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a cubic inch Military cordons and the restriction of move- of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not ment not only prevented people from escaping the one obscenity or degradation about him, not an scene of the epidemic, they also interfered with ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of their livelihood: interrupting the flow of goods and his committing, but shall work its retribution produce to and from local markets. Above all they through every order of society up to the proudest cut off or drastically reduced the supply of food and of the proud and the highest of the high. essential goods to urban populations. In Konigsberg in East Prussia in July 1831, disturbances broke out Dickens accepted the prevailing scientific think- after food prices rose dramatically following the ing of the time that infectious disease spread through imposition of a military cordon sanitaire. environmental factors. Miasmas and pestilential Cholera crystallised the bitter scientific gases emanating from the industrial slums bred the controversy about the origins of infectious disease. “putrid fevers” typhoid, measles and mumps. Fevers Radical anti-contagionists like Edwin Chadwick colonised the new conurbations but also brought and James Kay Shuttleworth maintained that local new and disturbing invaders like cholera. Previously environments were decisive in an epidemic outbreak, endemic to the Indian sub-continent, cholera went not the presence of a causative agent which could be global on the wings of British trade in the nine- transmitted from one place to another. An English teenth century. It moved rapidly along the railways, reform-minded, free-trading radicalism facilitated which were the main arteries of the rapidly expand- the anti-contagionist perspective. It shared an ing commerce. As it arrived in the mushrooming affinity with “advanced”, physiological accounts of

Quadrant September 2020 29 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life disease processes. It also provided a means by which least sanitary districts. In London in 1849 and 1853- liberals could reject reactionary quarantine measures 54, cholera mortality rates in the poor districts of and other military or quasi-military interventions by Bermondsey and Rotherhithe were between six and European autocrats. Anti-contagionism in Britain twelve times as high as they were in wealthier areas assumed the characteristics of a social movement. such as Kensington and Westminster. By the time cholera arrived in Europe, anti- It could be remedied primarily by public health quarantinists condemned quarantine as useless, a policy and civil engineering. The new poor law nuisance to trade and obnoxious to growth. combined with public health and education in Kay In its first phase cholera defined administrative Shuttleworth’s recommendations for improvement extremes. On the one hand, Russia, Austria and in his book The Moral and Physical Condition of the Prussia imposed strict quarantine practices (sealing Working Classes (1832). The social cost of illness con- borders, isolating travellers, sequestering the sick verted Chadwick to “the sanitary idea” and the crea- and seeking to break chains of transmission in the tion of a central public health authority directing manner traditionally employed against the plague); local boards of health in the provision of drains, on the other, the new sanitationist approach adopted drinking water and sanitary regulation. Chadwick’s in Britain and France. report on the sanitary condition of the labouring Cholera, a “revolutionary infection”, next swept population of Great Britain in 1842 led to the first across Europe in the revolutionary year of 1848. The British public health act in 1848. In other words, the French political scientist Andre new sanitary ideas, associated with Siegfried argued that epidemics and anti-contagionism, produced an ideologies spread in the same way. s early as effective program for government Faced with cholera riots and the A action. threat of revolution, most European 1831, the Prussian In Germany two decades later, states abandoned military cordons, authorities conceded Virchow, following English util- quarantine and other policing ity, argued that epidemics were measures. Fear of popular distur- that military cordons symptoms of a general malaise. The bances, rather than disease, played caused economic answer was “political medicine”, a major role in this change of heart. the improvement of social condi- As early as 1831, the Prussian difficulty. The fear tions. Only democracy, the leading authorities conceded that military of what cholera German pathologist argued, could cordons caused economic difficulty. might do to trade prevent epidemics. The fear of what cholera might do Interestingly, utilitarian public to trade increasingly affected state increasingly affected health advocates rejected the find- policy. In relaxing lockdowns, state policy. ings of early epidemiologists and European authorities also gave way statisticians like John Snow and to pressure from merchants, traders William Farr. In 1854, Snow had and manufacturers, who in turn were not slow to traced an outbreak of cholera in Soho to a water raise the spectre of “the labouring classes” deprived pump in Broad Street. He argued in evidence given of a living and driven to desperation. Where mer- to House of Commons select committee that chol- cantile interests were paramount, the state withdrew era was a water-borne contagion, not a local envi- almost entirely from the fight against cholera. ronmental miasma. Parliament rejected his advice. Nineteenth-century radical social reformers In an 1858 report to the General Board of Health, recognised that the state required effective public the architect of the UK’s public health system, Sir health measures, but not the crude recourse to quar- John Simon, dismissed Snow’s “peculiar doctrine as antine and cordons, stopping trade. Disease defined to the contagiousness of cholera … Dr Snow’s illus- the modern liberal approach to public health and trations are very far from proving his doctrine: but sanitation. Utilitarians like Edwin Chadwick and they are valuable evidence of the danger of drinking Southwood Smith, who drove government think- faecal water.” ing on urban policy during the 1840s, assumed that Thus the new sanitary infrastructure that sickness bred poverty. Drains, cesspools, refuse and improved the living and working conditions of slaughter-houses arose independently of the intem- London and the industrial towns was a triumph of perate habits of the poor. They were public matters civil engineering, not epidemiological modelling. By that could be targeted for political action. From the 1870s the UK had developed a comprehensive the sanitationist perspective, epidemic disease was regulatory infrastructure overseeing public health the product of dirt and decomposing matter. It and infectious disease. Ironically, the utility- was concentrated in towns and especially in their influenced governments of Peel and later Gladstone

30 Quadrant September 2020 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life got the right public health outcome for the economy twentieth century witnessed its ambiguous realisa- for the wrong scientific reasons. tion. The bacteriological revolution pioneered in the Sanitationist views also prevailed in the first laboratories of Pasteur and Koch that isolated the attempts to organise an international response to anthrax, rabies, smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis and, the cholera pandemics. Cholera was an interna- in 1894, the plague bacilli announced a new era of tional problem in an era of global trade. The dis- scientific progress and the potential for medical con- ease travelled at speed along the new networks of trol of infectious disease. It endowed medical science communication without respecting borders. Yet, with a new authority, access to government fund- what Western governments found particularly irk- ing and bequests from charities like the Rockefeller some were quarantines and cordons and their “often Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Prestigious disastrous hindrances to international commerce”. research institutes like the Pasteur Institute in It was this concern that prompted European gov- France, the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, the ernments to meet to discuss “to what extent these Imperial College of Science and Technology in the onerous restrictions could be lifted without undue UK and Johns Hopkins University in the United risk to the health of their populations”. If cholera States developed and refined scientific laboratory and its prevention were international concerns, they practice. By the early twentieth century scientists required an international solution. The first inter- had also isolated the polio and mumps viruses, national sanitation conference convened in Paris in although the virus, which the Nobel Prize-winner 1851. Fourteen international conferences were held Peter Medawar described as “a strip of nucleic acid before 1938 and they formed the background to the surrounded by bad news”, remained something of a formation of the World Health Organisation and its mystery. remit to assess infectious disease and declare pan- Meanwhile, the pharmacological revolution demic threats. that Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin It was only at the seventh conference in 1885 that announced and the subsequent mass manufacture a scientific consensus emerged. In 1884, Robert Koch of antibiotics by drug companies after 1945 seemed had identified and isolated the distinctive cholera to presage the end of infection. By the 1950s, medi- comma bacillus. Withdrawal of the state from the cine’s triumph over infectious disease was increas- medical policing of epidemics that characterised ingly taken for granted. The Conquest series of UK the half-century after the arrival of cholera on the medical texts included such titles as The Conquest European continent ended with the rise of bacte- of Tuberculosis, The Conquest of Disease and even The riology and the discovery, by Koch in Berlin and Conquest of the Unknown. In the century from Koch Louis Pasteur in France, of the micro-organisms to mass-produced antibiotics one of the ancient that spread infectious disease. Under Koch’s influ- dreams of medicine had come true. Reliable knowl- ence, European governments, drawing on previous edge of what caused epidemics facilitated their administrative practice but now acting under medi- prevention and cure. In the general euphoria some cal instruction, instituted massive preventive cam- hard truths about the evolution of micro-organisms, paigns of quarantine, disinfection and the isolation viruses and their human hosts were too easily for- of victims. Resistance to the new interventionism, gotten. In retrospect, the period between Pasteur like that offered in Hamburg before the cholera epi- and Fleming may one day be nostalgically recalled demic of 1892, was swept aside. The creation of pro- as an anomalous exception to medicine’s Sisyphean fessional police forces in the aftermath of the 1848 labour. revolutions, the general process of centralisation After 1945 WHO programs of disease eradi- that had taken place over the nineteenth century, cation reinforced the authority of science and the the growth of rapid communications in the form of medicalisation of life. Modern democracies assumed railway networks, and the general increase in the the health and welfare of the people integral to the resources available to the European state, meant post-war social contract, an incontrovertible good that such measures were infinitely more effective in that appealed to all the electorate. After 1945, the the 1890s than they had been sixty years earlier. National Health Service provided universal health care for all UK citizens. Developing and developed states embraced various forms of health care insur- Modernity, the microbe and the ance. Medical health became central to the new medicalisation of life therapeutic bureaucracies that managed the popula- n 1880, the Liberal MP and scientist Lyon tion in depth and detail. Playfair predicted that society would in time By the 1980s, however, a medical establishment I“become a well-behaved patient and public health had evolved into an unwieldy Leviathan compara- a great field open to growing medical men”. The ble to the civil service. Medical power lies in the

Quadrant September 2020 31 Pandemania: Or, a Brief History of the Medicalisation of Life hands of Nobel Prize-winning researchers, presi- care home and medicine is more open to criticism. dents of prestigious medical schools and the boards National health has become a hollow achievement. of multi-billion-dollar hospital conglomerates and Medical confidence, moreover, has been increas- pharmaceutical companies. In many states, health ingly shaken by the unexpected. Influenza pan- became the largest single employer, incompletely demics like the one that swept the world with incorporated in the public domain. The politics unsurpassed virulence between 1918 and 1920 have of medicine became a governmental priority. As a proved difficult to anticipate or contain in an era result of what Sir William Osler in 1900 termed its of globalisation. Since the 1980s infectious diseases “singular beneficence”, health care laid claim to a from Aids to Ebola, SARS and now COVID-19 privileged autonomy. Yet its anxious protection of its have shaken faith in scientific omniscience, yet they status concealed its dependence as an institution on are what a Darwinian and Malthusian struggle for the market and the state for its funding. survival would anticipate. With the birth of the clinic, scientific medicine Medicine has conquered many ailments and pro- first reduced the sick person to a patient, a patho- vided relief from suffering for many but its mandate, logical body beset with disease. This disappearing as the current medical and government response to act of the autonomous self continued over the next the coronavirus demonstrates, has become confused. two centuries, reducing the patient in the process to Is its prime duty and that of the medical surveil- an element in equations dominated by economics, lance state to keep people alive whatever the cir- diagnostic technology, systems analysis, epidemio- cumstances and cost? In Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan logical modelling and most recently the elusive R Swift satirised the folly of pursuing immortality, factor. depicting the misery of the demented Struldbrugs Medical expertise intervened in all branches of of Luggnagg who never die but age remorselessly. life. A growing preoccupation with chronic disease Modern medical science governments and the Big meant doctors increasingly exercised a new ability Tech companies that treat death as the last disease to prolong life. The good death, the ars moriendi as are addicted to the power of life. They might benefit a stage in the life process, yielded to the new medi- from reading Swift. cal priesthood. The health professional could render Paradoxically, the healthier society becomes the the infertile fertile, prevent pregnancy, abort life more treatment it craves. The patient/consumer and revive the dead. regards it as both a right and a duty. The root of the problem is structural. It is endemic to a system in which an ever-expanding health establishment is Conclusion driven to medicalise normal events like menopause he medicalisation of life in the last hundred or death, or a low-mortality pandemic, converting years is one of the most remarkable features of risk into disease. Boris Johnson captured the folly Tour post-historical world. Until the twentieth cen- of our iatrogenic polity when he informed a locked- tury the role of clinical medicine in the improve- down people that the government’s decision to end ment of health was minute. Whether populations the ruinous quarantine “will be driven not by mere grew or shrank had little to do with medicine, hope or by economic necessity. We are going to be despite its best efforts. That changed utterly after driven by the science, the data and public health.” 1945, and in not very well understood ways. But if The medical model of the state has reached a new medicine expanded almost beyond the bounds of contagionist apotheosis that nineteenth-century imagination, the euphoria of the age of penicillin liberal sanitationists would deplore for its economic and the pill has turned since the end of the Cold illiteracy, social damage and political danger. War to dependence and anxious insecurity. A correspondent of Adam Smith after the The medicalisation of life has transformed soci- British defeat at the battle of Saratoga wrote, “If ety and rendered it iatrogenic. Despite being health- we go on at this rate, the nation must be ruined.” ier and living longer, there is, as Roy Porter wrote in Smith answered, “Be assured, my young friend, that 1997, “a pervasive sense that our well-being is imper- there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” Smith, how- illed by ‘threats’ all around, from the air we breathe ever, would not be reassured by the recent conduct to the food in the shops”. In a media addicted to of either the British or Australian governments and scare-mongering, today’s headlines are more likely their obeisance to a dangerous valetudinarianism. to be about a new cholera epidemic or an unknown virus emerging from a Chinese wet market. The age David Martin Jones is a Visiting Professor in War of infectious disease gave way to the era of chronic Studies at King’s College London. A footnoted version disorder. Longer life means inactive frailty in a of this article appears at Quadrant Online.

32 Quadrant September 2020 The Cellist

I was grudgingly ancient. Not older, wiser and ancient. But easily recognisable as ancient. Skin was the culprit—the human body’s largest organ. I had his mobile number and he had mine, the cellist from the seniors’ dating site. I examined its configuration. Was there a pattern I needed to decode? I hated initiating, but he needed reassurance. It might take him forever to ring. Composing a text, my palms sweated. My heart thumped. Was he okay with texting? I hated my impatience. I hated my unexpected fragility. I sent the text. Yesterday’s meet-up was fun. I’d like to go for a ride on your motorbike sometime, although the helmet will squash my hair. Then I worried I’d gone too far. My legs wrapped around him on a bike? I sounded like a whore. A desperado. A woman too long without a man. His reply was immediate. Had he been holding the phone in his hand? We can start with a short ride around the block. I’ve got a large helmet. Everyone gets hat hair. I don’t want you to go on his motorbike, my daughter warned. I’ll go for a ride on his bike, my granddaughter offered. What sort of boat’s he got? A tinnie or a sail boat? asked my grandson. I googled: “what to expect when riding pillion”. Hang on. Brace for braking and acceleration by holding on to the rider’s waist. Bikes must lean to corner. Relax. Tyres provide plenty of grip. We had dinner, exchanged silly jokes, leaned towards each other, went back to my place—and had incredible sex. The sensitivity of a stringed instrumentalist was really something else. If I knew how, I would have burst into song.

His Coriander

Flourishing above the planter box, it’s ready for harvesting. I snip the curling tendrils with their skinny stalks, hearing the clean snap of stem from dense green foliage. At the end of a rain-filled night, the earth smells heady. He took his suitcase, his cello, and his sheet music. He left the fragrant coriander seeds, said, Tending a relationship is like keeping a plant alive. So I’ll take this herb inside to the kitchen and chop it. I’ll disperse it piece by piece with my hands, Quarantine the longed-for exotic spice of citrus and curry. I’ll be forever grateful for escape, But there still are the other things— from my infatuation water’s rhythmic tumble with coriander. over rocks, the gentle hush of wind through leaves— we celebrate in solitude.

Libby Sommer

Quadrant September 2020 33 Patrick Morgan

Why the Left Loves the Lockdown

he Covid emergency has created two sides: in custody, colonialism and statue-toppling, refugee the progressive Left want lockdown to con- grievances and other issues were dragged into the tinue, borders to remain closed, Jobkeeper mix to lambaste our society. High feelings, some Tand Jobseeker to be continued, and the economy legitimate, were ramped up to create an intoxicating to remain weak, as continual growth is thought a atmosphere where considered rules and judgments Ponzi scheme. The Right proposes an opposite set of don’t apply, a takeover move to advance an under- policies. Having insisted on a prolonged lockdown, lying agenda. Brendan O’Neill’s sober analysis in the Left then took advantage of the resulting social the Weekend Australian (June 13-14) revealed how vacuum to promote its own wide-ranging agendas, inane but also dangerous this kind of behaviour is. while insisting that society as a whole undertake O’Neill understood: a self-denying ordinance on activity. By endorsing the protest marches, which endangered the success This no longer has anything to do with Floyd. of the lockdown, the Left was hypocritically break- Rather, we are witnessing nothing less than a ing its own promises. The Left was most in favour power grab by the politically correct machine; of the lockdown and most in favour of the protest- an attempt by the new intolerant elites to export ers breaking its rules. their eccentric ideologies into every street and Covid transmission is now predominantly by per- square and corner of the public sphere. It really son-to-person contact, not from overseas returnees. does echo the Cultural Revolution. The virus appears in the fourteen-day period after infection. Melbourne had a big spike in the four- Recurring outbursts of frenzied public protest teen days after the big march in June, with hot spots have become a feature of Western societies since in the inner-north councils of Darebin, Brimbank the 1960s, when we were first exhorted to “let it all and Moreland, which happen to be the heartland hang out”, a slogan which gave us inner permission of the radical protesters. Investigative journalists to externalise feelings immediately we felt them. who usually love drilling down into statistics sud- This revealed a deficient, thin-skinned emotional denly went quiet on why the spike happened, and intelligence. We cast aside a natural tendency to the authorities have adopted the attitude, “nothing scrutinise our reactions (Freud’s “instinctual renun- to see here”, and then blamed the defenceless immi- ciation”) before flaunting them publicly, and making grant community. We have to work out our own them a burden on others. This was assisted by fear explanations, as the Victorian government won’t of being seen as “repressed”, or as a “young fogey” or provide any. “nerdy” in later iterations. What began as personal The lockdown caused disruptions on many responses has now morphed into widespread public fronts. With society in deep freeze, it should have passions which periodically sweep through whole been a time for maximum restraint and for post- strata of society, a rollercoaster ride we can’t get off. poning divisive public behaviour. But the George In the Covid lockdown emergency, those in the Floyd murder triggered a cascading series of protests public sector such as academics, public servants around the world. Escalation and protest marches and senior ABC staffers who do not have to worry are now the default settings when anything goes about job security, favoured keeping the economy wrong, an automatic response which permits unre- in deep freeze for longer. Compare them with those lated issues to be caught up in a global torrent. It’s working in the private sector who have sustained déjà vu, it’s back to the 1960s, the urgent need for large job losses, but who have no organised media an explosive issue is the constant. Aboriginal deaths voice. This is an inequitable situation: the well-off

34 Quadrant September 2020 Why the Left Loves the Lockdown are arguing for policies which disadvantage the less first Left Victorian ALP leader, and with support secure—not a pretty sight. What happened to their from the CFMEU hardly a moderate voice. Beyond much-touted sympathy for the disadvantaged? Victoria he is the flag bearer of a loose, extra-parlia- A different embryonic split has developed mentary coalition of protesters, activists, media and between the federal and state spheres, with large academic sympathisers, radical unionists, greens powerful states like Victoria and New South Wales and so on. It is a counter-government movement; prepared to second-guess federal cabinet agree- it acts not as an opposition, but ignores accepted ments. Covid now exists almost totally in the inner centres of authority and instead sets up its own and middle rings of Melbourne and Sydney. As authority system (all power to the soviets) which if a result, state governments are the sphere where accepted will accrue power to itself. Andrews acts many crucial decisions are being made, on internal in the new federal cabinet to sideline some of its borders, health issues, control of public spaces and agreements and to question its desired unanimity. other matters. State governments have high debt; He issues curt, ten-second sound grabs in a brush- much recent employment growth has unfortunately off tone, to deflect queries rather than to defend his been in public, not private sector jobs. A shift of manoeuvres at length. focus to underperforming state bodies is a danger- In addition, as Victoria loosens its links with the ous development for a balanced national economy. federal system, it has established formal links with the Chinese government by signing the Belt and e are in new territory, with outcomes on Road agreement, and informal links through pro- many fronts unclear. Polling and predic- Chinese activists, some of whom are the ALP’s and tionsW should therefore be treated warily, but they Andrews’s own staffers. The Victorian government have been constantly foregrounded. One poll found seems on occasions as sympathetic to Beijing as it that women had been more disadvantaged than is to Canberra. At a time when China is exerting men during the emergency, another that two thirds maximum external pressure, these internal con- of Australians suffer from unconscious racist bias. nections raise worrying questions about Australia’s At the outset the Fairfax papers predicted up to sovereignty. 150,000 Australian deaths in a front-page story; as In an emergency caused by China the culprit I write three months later it is just over 100. Many has not, as one would normally expect, acted to predict that on the other side we are facing years of mitigate the worldwide problem it has caused. On deficits and depression, but how would they know? the contrary China has gone on the offensive, tak- What we notice about the predictions and polling ing advantage of the vulnerable position of frozen is that their conclusions are pessimistic, and unsur- Western societies to exploit our new weakness. prisingly come up with results that the pollsters/ China has adopted a stand-off tone, as it now repri- prophets/commentators agree with. The predictions mands us in the way it does its recalcitrant provinces are becoming self-confirming: if lockdown contin- like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and the Xinjiang ues past its use-by date, which is what the pessi- Uighurs. It now treats us as though we are already mists want, the economy will tank, and their dire part of its far-flung co-prosperity sphere, which we “predictions” will come to pass. should recognise, and whose orders we should obey. This is also the wrong time for an implosion The Chinese ambassador in Canberra acts as a local leading to a changing of the guard in one of the satrap conveying Chinese Communist Party orders two major parties. The ALP has historically been to us his subjects, and insisting on obedience and run by the majority Right, the only electable group- humility in his realm. This is the meaning of the ing. In the Victorian and federal branches of the Chinese Trade Minister refusing to answer Simon party the Left is finally completing its long-term Birmingham’s phone calls—China is in the busi- takeover of the party by purging the Right. Julia ness of issuing warnings and demands, but not of Gillard was its first left-wing federal leader, as the treating others as separate sovereign entities it will Left had the numbers in the parliamentary party. freely negotiate with as equals. But the public was not quite ready to elect a radical Totalitarian regimes attempt to alter reality by federal government outfit; Gillard ran a minority imposing an ideological straitjacket on it. Of course show with the help of two outsiders. The branches at the moment this is an ambitious try-on, which are now strongly Green Left, and for the first time can’t be enforced in reality, as China has few friends the parliamentary party and the federal executive because of its recent gross behaviour, but its present are both in the hands of the Left, with Albanese gambit is more likely to become reality the more it replacing Shorten as leader. is not resisted with resolute action. In the Victorian branch something more radi- cal has been happening. Daniel Andrews is the Patrick Morgan is a frequent contributor to Quadrant.

Quadrant September 2020 35 Rowan Callick

The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand

ast year an agent for Chinese printing com- progress has persisted, unhindered in its thrust by panies—which have the most advanced and the occasional burst of Western rhetoric or tempo- cheapest production facilities in the world— rarily inconvenient trade gestures. Lhanded Australian publishing houses a list of words The Soviet Union posed nothing like the chal- and topics that could not appear in any books that lenge China does today. The Chinese Communist were to be printed in China. The overwhelming Party (CCP) spent much time and energy in review- majority of these books are for markets—including ing what went wrong for its former “big brother” Australia—outside China itself, which has become Russian party, and concluded essentially that it the default printer globally. failed because it conceded ground, it liberalised, it Naturally, the names of Chinese dissidents, such lost control of history, including by permitting criti- as Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died cism of its great dictator Joseph Stalin. excruciatingly while incarcerated in China in 2017, Xi Jinping, the Chinese party’s general secretary are high on this list. But it also includes those of since November 2012, has instead doubled down on the country’s paramount leader Xi Jinping and his core communist values. On July 23 next year, he will muse and propagandist Wang Huning, predecessors lead the celebration of the centenary of the party— Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and references to whose period in untrammelled power, seventy years, Tiananmen 1989, the Hong Kong protests, or the has already surpassed that of the Russian party. Xinjiang conflict, as well as to the island groups in A year after Xi came to power, the CCP pub- the South China Sea. This is one of numerous fas- lished, as Document Number Nine, its Communique cinating and worrying anecdotes in Clive Hamilton on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere. and Mareike Ohlberg’s new book Hidden Hand. This forbade the spread of any of seven Western The challenges that are aligned globally against values branded as especially dangerous: promot- freedom, democracy and the rule of law—pub- ing constitutional democracy including the rule of lic values which thirty years ago appeared, as the law; universal values; the concept of civil society; Soviet Union disintegrated, to have “won”—are liberal economics; free media; history that is not today legion. But the People’s Republic of China guided by Mao Zedong Thought; and questioning (PRC) has emerged in the last few years as by far the truly socialist nature of “socialism with Chinese the most significant, due to its immense economic characteristics”. and military capacity, its unparalleled and uncon- Western values, including the seven astutely sum- strained surveillance and control technologies, its marised by CCP thinkers, are meanwhile widely in purposefulness—and its great institutional success. retreat, especially in the West’s own educational and This was underlined on July 1 by the publication of cultural institutions. the extraordinarily comprehensive and far-reaching The CCP has had considerable success in expung- “security” legislation effectively bringing Hong ing these seven deadly sins in China. And China’s Kong fully within the PRC’s direct control— “rejuvenation” under Xi has pushed the party’s own marking another great step forward by Xi, whose values out into the wider world, including through his hallmark Belt and Road initiative. Globalisation is taking CCP principles, weaponised through Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese China’s economic heft, into multilateral organisa- Communist Party is Reshaping the World tions led by the UN and into countries everywhere, by Clive Hamilton & Mareike Ohlberg considerably more successfully than it has taken lib- Hardie Grant, 2020, 425 pages, $32.99 eral values into China itself.

36 Quadrant September 2020 The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand

But few have been paying attention. Australians, and elsewhere. His theories, Slattery noted in the for instance, are massively more interested in and Weekend Australian (June 27-28), “blazed a trail knowledgeable about the minutiae of the politics, through the humanities”. celebrities, arts and history of the US and European David Martin Jones, an associate professor at the countries, especially Britain, than they are about the University of Queensland and Visiting Professor in PRC, which is not at all “inscrutable” but is simply War Studies at King’s College London, has written “inscruted” except by a remarkably small cohort. a new book, History’s Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism Those who have travelled to China have almost all and the Revenge of Politics (Hurst), which forensi- done so in highly curated, limited tours. Fewer still cally examines the way in which the very hour of have had the curiosity to visit the contrasting, cul- Western triumph against the Soviet system also saw turally and politically vibrant, beautiful island of its enemies from within begin to assail the salient Taiwan. features that had assured its systemic success. He elucidates the threat posed to liberal demo- hina’s leaders including Xi say in detail what cratic values a decade later by the political religion they believe in, and what they plan to do. But of Salafist jihadism—whose “purifying violence fewC outsiders take note, strangely believing that a intimating utopia”, as he puts it, was last seen in the CCP leader is indulging in empty rhetoric, maybe West in the millenarian rampages of the sixteenth in order to play cunning political games. and seventeenth centuries. Clive Hamilton has leapt to international promi- Martin Jones writes of a “new world order” that nence for being among the fore of those who have seeks emancipation and redemption by overthrow- been paying attention. He is also ing the Western capitalist imper- the Australian who did most to ele- ium. For a brief period, it was a vate concern about climate change. eijing’s reshaping Western-based concept of elitist As a “progressive”, he has not been B cosmopolitanism that took a lead- universally admired by the typical of the world has been ing role in this task. Today, how- Quadrant reader, insofar as such an so successful and met ever—and probably for decades to animal exists. But Hamilton has come—the prime driver of this new demonstrated those rare qualities so little resistance in order aiming to supplant liberal for a public intellectual in today’s part because liberal democracy is no longer so much politically and culturally polar- democratic values the recrudescence of critical the- ised world—genuine curiosity and ory, Martin Jones concludes, as the a sense of morality—as well as a have been hollowed return of old-style power-rivalry and capacity to leap over such tribalised out first from within. geopolitics, in the shape of China’s barriers. red-blooded “rejuvenation” and in a His instinct about the depth of side-play, the nationalist surge of its the threat posed by the newly directed and energised authoritarian mini-me assistant. The latter, Russia, thrust of the PRC under Xi has proven extraordi- has an economy, however, that is only narrowly narily influential, not only in Australia but also now larger today than Australia’s, so it will have to rely in Europe, North America and Asia in the wake of increasingly on trying to manoeuvre Beijing to the Hidden Hand. Hamilton does not let the grass grow fore on its behalf. under his feet. It’s only just over a couple of years since Hardie Grant rescued his book Silent Invasion: amilton, who latched on to the centrality of the China’s Influence in Australia after Allen & Unwin PRC’s threat before many better-credentialled withdrew it from publication due to concerns that expertsH in the areas of international relations, strate- vexatious litigation might have tied up everyone gic studies or sinology, gained his doctorate, which involved for years. Today, Hamilton is surfing a was focused on South Korea’s path to industrialisa- wave of global concern about this huge issue, which tion, from the influential development studies cen- in some measure he has helped arouse. tre at Sussex University. He then worked alongside Beijing’s reshaping of the world has been so suc- the formidable liberal economist Helen Hughes for cessful and met so little resistance in part because several years at the Australian National University liberal democratic values have been hollowed out before joining the Bureau of Industry Economics, first from within. The journalist Luke Slattery then the Resource Assessment Commission as has written persuasively about how, for instance, research head, and on to Jakarta for several years French academic Jacques Derrida “was devoted to with the US Agency for International Development. the dismantling of Western philosophy” and retains He set up the Australia Institute in Canberra considerable influence in academe in Australia in 1994, to undertake “advocacy scholarship” in a

Quadrant September 2020 37 The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand progressive direction—challenging, as he told me are permitted—represents a far greater threat to in an interview for the Australian, “a number of very Australia’s interests than a nation whose values influential right-wing think-tanks”. Besides climate and political structure are similar to our own … change, he also tackled consumerism—writing with [and] as long as the PRC remains as it is, claims Richard Denniss a big-selling book, Affluenza—and that Australia should treat it the same as other the sexualisation of children in advertising. countries create a false ­equivalence. In 2009 he stood for the Greens at the by-elec- tion for Peter Costello’s former eastern Melbourne Hamilton told me that after starting to research seat of Higgins, coming second of ten candidates the PRC’s influence efforts, he sensed strongly with 21,600 votes to Liberal Kelly O’Dwyer, when that some of the people he would usually gravitate Labor did not field a candidate. Then he returned to towards at a party—fellow political progressives— university life when Charles Sturt University invited began wondering: “What has happened to Clive? him to be vice-chancellor’s chair and professor of Is he shifting to the Right? Why is he doing this?” public ethics, “blessing me”, he says, “with great During a public hearing of the parliamentary joint freedom” to pursue compelling causes. committee inquiry, he was asked why someone who A dozen years ago, China suddenly started to had been a Greens candidate would pursue such compel his focus. Hamilton was outside Parliament an issue, strongly denouncing communists. His House in Canberra for a rally to support Tibet fol- response: lowing a grim outbreak of violence there. The rally was aimed to coincide with the arrival of the torch Let’s remember, the left ought to be the fiercest relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Many defender of free speech and human rights. If Chinese students—including some brought by bus it’s going to be an apologist for an extremely from interstate—were also demonstrating, cheering authoritarian regime that suppresses such rights on both the torch relay and Beijing. He told me: ruthlessly, then what does it stand for? “I was deeply shocked by the aggressive nature of the Chinese demonstrators against the Tibetans and Some on the Australian Left, he said, retain any ­Anglos like myself who had gone to support “a romantic attachment” to Mao Zedong, others them.” to China’s recent modernising achievements. And The resulting concerns began to swim around in “economic self-interest means human rights haven’t his mind until they were pulled together and made had the backing of business and economic forces urgent by the downfall of then fast-rising Labor they may once have had”. senator Sam Dastyari, caused by his acting as a He has received strong support from a number spruiker for Beijing. Hamilton told me: of Chinese Australians who he can’t name: “I am offended by that. They are Australian citizens … We have to unite on this, including, importantly, but they are in fear that a foreign government will those Chinese Australians who don’t want punish them for speaking out” in Australia, by pre- the Chinese Communist Party to extend its venting them from seeing relatives back in China, or tentacles in this part of the world. We who by actions that impact those relatives directly, “con- believe in democracy are all in the same boat, trary to every theory of justice and fair play”. and we’re all threatened by the same great wave. And within Australia, he says, he faces “xeno- phobia phobia—a terror of being seen as anti-China, He and his researcher on Silent Invasion, Alex a powerful silencing device constantly wheeled out” Joske—a young expert on Chinese governance, now by organisations that receive forms of funding from with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who China. “It’s an attack weapon used against people has gone on to become much in demand globally with good intentions.” by governments and organisations anxious about His new book has in co-writer Mareike Ohlberg CCP infiltration—presented a forty-nine-page sub- a China expert who worked for four years for the mission to the joint parliamentary committee on Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin before Chinese influence, which led to pioneering legisla- recently shifting to the German Marshall Fund. tion. They wrote in it: This is appropriate, for Hamilton has broadened his scope to the PRC’s influence globally, especially in A one-party state that accepts and propagates Europe, North America and the UN, where Chinese anti-democratic values and practices—where officials hold the top jobs at four of the fifteen spe- little diversity of opinion is permitted, where cialised agencies. And Meng Hongwei, a former the judiciary serves the ruling party, and where vice-minister at the Public Security Ministry, was neither a free press nor a vibrant civil society president of Interpol until being brought back to

38 Quadrant September 2020 The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand

China in 2018. This year he was jailed for thirteen ical party” backed by enormous resources. years on corruption charges. The book opens with a review of what the party and its leader want and some of the means through amilton starts his new book by laying down which they are achieving their goals: “Too many why he has become so seized by this issue. For Westerners routinely speak of China as if the Party aH long time, he points out, people in the West have does not exist, but focusing on the Party is indis- believed history is on the side of freedom. However, pensable for an understanding of the political entity “universal human rights, democratic practice and we are dealing with.” The situation, they point out, the rule of law have powerful enemies, and China “is unlike the Cold War, in which loyal citizens under the Chinese Communist Party is arguably the were ‘turned’ and began to work consciously for the most formidable”. other side. It’s far more effective if those arguing the He has his critics, by no means all of them in CCP’s case believe in their hearts that they remain the PRC. He is attacked for lacking “balance”— loyal but have come to the view that China’s posi- for failing to recognise the many mutual benefits tion is in the best interests of their own country.” of engaging with China’s until-recently vibrant The book then swiftly moves on to naming economy, for fuelling racism— names, as it lists some of the myr- although he stresses that his focus iad connections between party- is the party-state, not the Chinese n Australia, state institutions and Western people who continue to suffer the I actors of influence. Britain’s case most from its exigencies. He is also Hamilton says, he is especially interesting. The writ- attacked for failing to acknowledge faces “xenophobia ers describe former senior Blair that the party brought “hundreds of Cabinet member Peter Mandelson, millions out of poverty”—although phobia—a terror of the honorary president of the Great it was the party that suppressed being seen as anti- Britain-China Centre, as “one of development and economic oppor- China, a powerful the more loyal friends of the CCP’s tunity under Mao, and it has been International Liaison Department”. the Chinese people who have since silencing device They detail the work of the 48 then seized that opportunity for constantly wheeled Group Club, originally established themselves. in 1954 by forty-eight British busi- Hamilton’s focus is clear. He is a out” by organisations nessmen to build trade relations terrier-like public intellectual with that receive forms of with the PRC. Mandelson is part of a theme to pursue and debate as funding from China. this too, as are Michael Heseltine, broadly as possible, right now. He’s John Prescott, Jack Straw, Alex not bothered about posterity, or the Salmond, five former British ambas- need to balance the CCP’s good and bad points. sadors to Beijing, masters of Oxbridge colleges, a He and Ohlberg also have to contend with retired general, and leading champions of business. “whataboutism”, especially from some on the Left: It is chaired by Stephen Perry, son of the found- ing chairman Jack. He gains the rare privilege of an China may be doing some unpleasant things, audience when in Beijing with Xi himself—who has goes this argument, but what about the US? The publicly lauded the 48 Group Club. The club serves, tactic is more effective with Donald Trump in the writers say, “as a meeting place and network- the White House, but whatever criticisms one ing hub for friends of China, through which Beijing might have of the US and its foreign policy, grooms Britain’s elites”. Stephen Perry’s commen- both historically and today—and we are strong tary on the website is “a robotic repetition of CCP critics—they do not in any way diminish or propaganda … He says Xi Jinping is responsible for excuse the extreme violation of human rights freeing our minds,” and has called on the world to and suppression of liberties by the CCP embrace fully the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). regime. And for all its faults the US, like other Jack Perry and his two closest comrades in estab- democracies, continues to have an effective lishing the 48 Group Club were, it has been revealed opposition … more recently, secret members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and then shifted to the —as well as elections, independent courts and a Maoist element when that split from the Soviet thriving civil society. “China under the CCP has core in 1963. Now Stephen’s son, named Jack for none of these.” This is not a “clash of civilisations”, his grandfather, leads the Young Icebreakers, estab- they rightly point out. “We face not some Confucian lished “for promising young British businesspeople ‘other’, but an authoritarian regime, a Leninist polit- with an interest in China”. Young Jack studied law

Quadrant September 2020 39 The Long Reach of Beijing’s Heavy Hand at University College, but told China Daily disarm- And so on—through a who’s who of Western ingly: “I read about Marxism, Leninism and Mao elites more broadly. They name two German chan- Zedong thoughts more than law books.” cellors, Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schroder, Members of the 48 Group Club were prominent as merely a couple of the myriad “useful idiots”— participants at a study session held last year by the Lenin’s term—enlisted for the Party’s seemingly Chinese embassy in London on Xi Jinping Thought unstoppable advancement that has reached as far on Diplomacy. One of the speakers was Martin as Rockhampton, whose mayor in 2018 instructed a Jacques, the former editor of Marxism Today maga- public artwork by schoolchildren to be painted over zine, whose 2009 book When China Rules the World because some of the youngsters had included tiny was a best-seller. In an interview last year with state flags of Taiwan, where their mother comes from. broadcaster CGTN, Hamilton and Ohlberg report, The mayor incorrectly pontificated that such art Jacques “attacked the protesters in Hong Kong as defied Australia’s “one China policy”, which in fact militants whose actions should not be tolerated by acknowledges the PRC’s claim to Taiwan, it does the authorities”. The Lord Mayor of the City of not endorse it. London, Peter Estlin, hosted last year a banquet to Hamilton and Ohlberg paraphrase the veteran celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the PRC, and American journalist China expert John Pomfret as praised the BRI’s “win-win culture”. Conservative observing that “rather than ‘us’ changing China— peer and sometime minister Lord Michael Bates the dream of those urging greater economic inte- and his wife Li Xuelin were last December, during gration—China is increasingly changing us, and a visit to Beijing, presented by a deputy minister of Western businesses are Beijing’s decisive weapon”— the CCP’s Propaganda Department with an award though universities, arts bodies, the UN and the “for spreading the Brilliance of China”. Jim O’Neill, tech world are all scrambling to ensure they also the former chief economist at Goldman Sachs now play their parts in this ascendancy. chairing the Chatham House think-tank, has urged This book, like its predecessor, will be viewed the UK to create “more win-win situations between by critics as over-combative, as “one-sided”, as plain Britain and China”, and for the Britain to become inconvenient. But its core thesis can only be avoided “a great trusted partner of China”. The writers con- altogether at very great cost. clude ominously: Rowan Callick, a China correspondent for the In our judgment, so entrenched are the CCP’s Australian Financial Review and twice for influence networks among British elites that the Australian, is the author of three books on Britain has passed the point of no return, and contemporary China (including Party Time: Who any attempt to extricate itself from Beijing’s orbit Runs China and How) and is an Industry Fellow of would probably fail. Griffith University’s Asia Institute.

Anguish

Inside the darkness of the mind angry thoughts assemble Alchemy and fearful memories hide. Fleeting happiness leaves behind memories that never fade.

Ken Simpson

40 Quadrant September 2020 Ted O’Brien

The China Question and the National Interest

he most important reason to address the eral democracies, how we express them is unique. A China question is not to gain a better under- quintessential “Australian way” has emerged which, standing of the People’s Republic of China like our values, is a reflection of our history. Our T(PRC) but rather to ensure we have a clear under- nation’s convict roots, for example, seared character standing of ourselves. traits deep into our national psyche. These include A nation’s foreign policy should be an outward a lack of vanity and a healthy suspicion of authority. expression of its values: a reflection of its people, Our forebears, their mettle forged with a deter- who they are and what they believe in. Settled mination to leave behind the bleak rigidity of Britain, as a colony of Great Britain, European Australia became straight talkers. To this day, notwithstand- inherited a history that was British and its his- ing the choking effects of political correctness, we tory, in turn, was a European one, evolving from tend to say what we think. Our language is typically the ancient Greeks and Romans, from Medieval plain and forthright, albeit friendly and respectful. Europe to the Renaissance, from the Reformation Instead of adopting hereditary privilege or a to the Enlightenment. Australia is a product of the land-owning aristocracy, Australia developed a West and when our nation’s story is placed in that strong middle class which sought equality of oppor- context, it helps explain the nation we have become. tunity. To this day, ours remains a proudly egalitar- Australia was born at a critical juncture of ian society. Western civilisation. When Captain Arthur Phillip Australians have never ruled an empire, let and the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay in 1788, alone run the world: we are mostly a humble and it was five years after the American Revolution and understated people, albeit fiercely competitive and one year before the French Revolution, two culmi- industrious. nating events of the Enlightenment. We are a pragmatic lot, and we are not ones for Unlike England and the rest of Europe, Australia pomp and ceremony. We appreciate good humour, didn’t carry the baggage of an “old world”. As his- relish taking the mickey out of others, and embrace torians such as John Gascoigne and David Kemp self-deprecation. And while we don’t pick fights have recognised, the Enlightenment, with its ideals unnecessarily, we don’t shirk when we find ourselves of reason, science and progress, did not cut against in one. long-standing orthodoxies in Australia as it did When it comes to our place in the world and our elsewhere. Rather, in Australia, Enlightenment and relationships with major powers like the PRC, there Christianity learned to co-exist. Both supported is nothing more important than staying true to who the notion of individual human dignity and moral- we are and what we believe in. We must always stick ity and the potential for self-improvement through to our values. discipline and endeavour. Australia was effectively a blank canvas upon he international political economy is in the which the ideals of Enlightenment and Christianity midst of a period of heightened uncertainty. were laid, and these ideals are still reflected in the TThe most important bilateral relationship—between liberal values that unite Australia today. We believe the US and the PRC—is under great strain, and in life, freedom, self-reliance and a fair go. We how it evolves will have an enormous impact on the believe in the right to property, equality of opportu- rest of the world. nity, the importance of the individual and the family, We may see the US and PRC find a new way and the need to balance rights with responsibilities. of doing business; a competitive coexistence that While these values are shared with other lib- rebalances supply chains to exclude co-operation in

Quadrant September 2020 41 The China Question and the National Interest strategically important areas while still maintain- should act on three critical fronts to advance and ing free trade and a multipolar, rules-based interna- defend our interests. First, we should build our tional order. Or, we may see greater confrontation strength as a nation. Second, we should exert our between the US and PRC, a decoupling of their influence internationally. Third, we should assert economies and the creation of a bipolar world with our interests by playing a greater leadership role in two spheres of influence akin to a new Cold War. our immediate region. Or, a “hot war” may erupt. While the cost of armed conflict is unfathomable, the economics of war do e cannot turn our backs on four decades of not always deter its outbreak. economic liberalisation as we move into a No matter what the future holds for the US– COVID-19W recovery phase. Protectionism makes PRC relationship, the notion that Australia must you poorer, not richer, and if we’re to respond to choose between the US and the PRC is offensive. future economic and strategic challenges from a It implies a weakness in our national character that position of strength, economic prosperity is a pre- does not exist; as if we’re in the game of selling requisite. I therefore reject the popular suggestion ourselves holus-bolus to whoever is most powerful. that we should proactively decouple our economy That’s not who we are as a people and it’s not how from the PRC’s. we make decisions as a nation. We will have to deal with trade and investment Australia should neither passively bide its time challenges as best we can, even when we believe and wait to see which way the wind blows, nor be the PRC is unfairly targeting our trade-exposed foolishly fatalistic. We should continue to soberly sectors. But trying to manipulate all supply chains assess all plausible future scenarios for the inter- across the Australian economy to sever them from national political economy, and prepare ourselves the PRC’s would be to cut off our nose to spite our accordingly. face. So long as we’re not compromising our values or hen the federal government took a principled key strategic interests, Australia should unasham- stand on the need for a review into the cause edly continue its economic relationship with the andW effect of COVID-19, it drew all sorts of criti- PRC because it’s vitally important for our economic cism. Some claimed we didn’t show sufficient dip- recovery from COVID-19. It’s in our interest to get lomatic finesse or we failed to first garner broader the most out of the PRC, just as it is in their interest international support, while others accused us of to get the most out of us. doing the bidding of the US or over-reaching by While an economic decoupling from the PRC taking the lead. would be counterproductive, economic diversifica- These criticisms overlooked something more tion is paramount, for two reasons. First, our trade fundamental. Our foreign policy should be an out- is overly concentrated in too few sectors, and it is ward expression of our liberal values and identity; overly reliant on the PRC. Our lack of diversifica- an expression of who we are and what we believe in. tion heightens the risks of dire impacts at times of Not only is an independent review into COVID- crisis, and it also jeopardises the resilience required 19 in our interest and the interest of all humanity, to bounce back. Second, there are areas of strate- but having spoken plainly and forthrightly with- gic importance in which we require greater sover- out hyperbole and then having stood firm without eign capability including critical infrastructure, the emotion or beating of the chest, we reflected the technology, communications and defence sectors, Australian way. and critical supplies, including personal protective It was the same when it came to Hong Kong. equipment. Australia extended the hand of solidarity to Hong Australia should embrace economic reforms Kongers facing the chill of the PRC’s extraordinary including tax, industrial relations and deregula- national security laws. Giving a chance to freedom- tion. As foreign direct investment falls globally, we loving, skilled and educated Hong Kong people should leverage our strengths to position ourselves accords clearly with our interests, and is consistent as a safe haven while finding new ways to encourage with who we are and what we believe in. super funds to unlock capital to fund infrastruc- The Australian government’s approach to the ture. We should build a more robust industrial pol- PRC has been right. icy, especially in food and agriculture, energy and I want to see bilateral relations improve. advanced manufacturing. But we should avoid any However, the temperature is too high for any major mad rush to onshore activities unless they are of renewal of the relationship at present. The day for strategic importance or areas in which Australia can renewing the relationship will come but it cannot genuinely compete internationally. be forced prematurely. In the meantime, Australia We should double down on our free trade

42 Quadrant September 2020 The China Question and the National Interest agenda by encouraging businesses to take full seek. The complexity and cost of doing so cannot be advantage of our recent agreements with nations overstated. It would require an international bargain such as Indonesia, and expand existing Free Trade as ambitious as Bretton Woods in 1944. Although Agreements (FTAs) including the TPP, RCEP and Australia cannot single-handedly orchestrate a PACER Plus, and fast-track FTAs with the EU recasting of the world’s major institutions, we can and UK. We should also progress deals with India build a coalition to pursue the objective by engag- and smaller markets in the Indo-Pacific. Finally, we ing other democracies and nations that are similarly should pursue an FTA with Taiwan, which has a reliant on a rules-based order for their peace and mature economy that complements our own. economic prosperity. Australia has FTAs or is negotiating FTAs What’s more, we should appeal to the US to take with each of our Top Ten export markets except the lead in championing such a cause. Regardless Taiwan, our tenth-largest. Australia is a champion of signs of a US retreat from global institutions, we of free trade and is a respected and ambitious trad- should use our relationship to encourage them to ing partner. It should therefore come as no surprise take the lead. The US also has an interest in a sta- if we were to begin negotiations with Taiwan. ble international political economy, including in the The PRC will of course be sen- Indo-Pacific. This task of appealing sitive about Australia pursuing an to the US to lead may become more FTA with Taiwan. We should speak iberal values achievable after this year’s presi- openly with the PRC and assure L dential election, regardless of who them that doing so is motivated by must continue wins. neither geopolitical ambition nor a to underpin the It is also important to persuade challenge to our bilateral relation- Australians that reform rather ship. Rather, like our many other international system than abandonment of international FTAs, an Australia–Taiwan FTA because of their institutions will deliver the bigger would reflect our interest in pro- dividend. It is not hard to imagine viding greater access for Australian record of facilitating the consequences of a dismantled businesses in the Taiwan market. economic growth international order. What would and international our options be? Watch the liberal he world’s major international institutions that have helped deliver institutions including the peace while lifting us growth, prosperity and peace TUnited Nations, the World Trade people from poverty wither away, and hope that what- Organisation, the International ever fills the vacuum might benefit Monetary Fund and the World and promoting us? No thanks. Bank were created to support an human rights. The elephant in the room is international order based on liberal the PRC. President Xi Jinping has values: freedom, sovereign equality, declared a goal to “foster a new type the balance of rights and obligations. These are our of international relations” as part of an “evolution values and we have an interest in defending and pro- of the global governance system”. It would not be moting them. in the PRC’s interest to destroy the international However, international institutions are sick; system because they too have been a winner from it. they are suffering a crisis of legitimacy with weak But the PRC wants to remould the system so it bet- governance, poor leadership and an over-reach of ter aligns with the norms it practises as an authori- bureaucracy. The performance of the upper echelons tarian state. That is, less transparency, more scope to of the World Health Organisation, a UN agency, at leverage bilateral power imbalances and less reliance the early stages of COVID-19 is just the latest case on existing international law. in point. Any major reform agenda would have to account Institutional reform need not be the stuff of for a far more powerful PRC, and to think other- fantasy. As we’ve seen recently, fifteen members wise would be naive. Nevertheless, two prerequisites of the WTO, including Australia and the PRC, should be considered. have backed a new global dispute umpire in lieu First, liberal values must continue to underpin of the dysfunctional WTO Appellate Body. Some the international system because of their record impasses can be overcome. However, there is a dan- of facilitating economic growth and international ger in relying on incremental reform because more peace while lifting people from poverty and pro- powerful states can better corral support to win the moting universal human rights. We cannot afford day. to have the liberal rules-based international order It is transformational reform that we should replaced by a “balance of power” where nations use

Quadrant September 2020 43 The China Question and the National Interest their economic and military might to achieve their ancestry. We must be uncompromising in our refusal desired outcomes. to accept such interference in Australia’s affairs and Second, while respecting the PRC’s ascendancy people, especially from a PRC that purports to prize as a major power, its influence should not be left non-interference in foreign states’ affairs so highly. unfettered or unchecked. The rights it accrues as Australian nationals living and working overseas, a rising power should be commensurate with the and the many ethnic diasporas living and working responsibilities it bears. in Australia are often an under-utilised asset for There is something the PRC could do to demon- assisting Australia to build ties, trade and invest. strate its goodwill in this regard: it could let go of We should audit the untapped human capacity of its “developing nation” status. This is not something these groups and engage them as valued members that can be taken from the PRC; they themselves of Team Australia. would have to forfeit it. Beyond our own shores, Team Australia should The PRC’s status as a “developing nation” deliv- assume a more expansive role in Australasia which ers it substantial benefits including, for example, includes New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. preferential treatment in international trade despite Building on our Pacific Step-Up policy, we could being the world’s second-largest economy, and lim- deepen people-to-people relations by expanding the ited obligations on reducing greenhouse gas emis- labour mobility program, exploring new opportuni- sions despite being the world’s largest emitter. Its ties in education and training, and leveraging south- status as a “developing nation” also delivers the east Queensland’s bid to host the 2032 Olympic and PRC important strategic benefits such as being the Paralympic Games to unleash a bold sports diplo- de facto leader of the developing world, a position it macy program across the region. uses to advance its own interests. We should also explore a more structured, pos- sibly even a multilateral, defence relationship with ustralia should continue to assert its interests by Pacific Island nations to ensure that foreign powers playing a larger leadership role in our immedi- whose interests do not align with ours struggle to ateA region. But the starting point is here at home. gain a strategic foothold in the region. The impera- We should adopt a Team Australia approach to tive to avoid encirclement is well understood by the important areas of foreign policy, including strate- PRC and I believe we should speak very plainly gic engagement with the PRC. Take the Belt and about our interests in this regard. Road Initiative (BRI), for example, a geopolitical If Australia were to continue to expand its wings tool of the PRC for prioritising overseas lending, and take a bigger leadership role in our immedi- trade and investment. It is ludicrous that despite the ate region, this would incentivise the US to engage Australian government’s strategic and wise decision more in our region, not less. It would demonstrate to decline to sign on to the BRI, Australian states our preparedness to share the burden. President and territories have nevertheless felt free to strike Trump’s positive response to the government’s deals with the PRC. recent commitment of $270 billion for our defence We need to stand united as a nation, not just a capabilities was recognition of our preparedness to collection of polities to be picked off one by one. We invest in building our own capacity over the next need a co-ordinated approach, with an Australian decade. consensus on how to deal with the PRC. Beyond Australasia, we should deepen relations A Team Australia approach would require con- with Indonesia and other South-East Asian nations. tinuing intelligence briefings for Premiers and Chief We could, for example, put scholarship programs Ministers. It would also require a level of biparti- like the Australia Awards on steroids, and nurture sanship, which is why continuing to share intelli- deeper military-to-military ties. gence with the leadership of the Federal Opposition Improvement in bilateral relationships should is important. be complemented by the strengthening of other We also need more regular engagement with the alliances and forums. Deepening ties and finding PRC at the political level, beyond ministerial meet- opportunities for collective action with fellow mem- ings. My parliamentary colleagues and I should bers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—the learn more about the PRC and engage more regu- US, Japan and India—together with South Korea, larly with our Chinese counterparts. Vietnam and other countries will also become Let’s not forget that Australia’s Chinese com- increasingly important. munities are an invaluable part of Team Australia. Meanwhile, the Five Eyes alliance remains I reject any attempt on the PRC’s part to expand crucial. Consisting of the US, Britain, Canada, the notion of sovereignty beyond territoriality and Australia and New Zealand, no other pre-existing nationality to include claims based on ethnicity or network treats liberal values as sacrosanct as the Five

44 Quadrant September 2020 The China Question and the National Interest

Eyes. Recent engagement of the Five Eyes partners is right for a major renewal of the Australia–PRC on co-ordinating an economic response to COVID- relationship, but that time is not now. Until then, 19 has expanded discussions beyond national secu- we must ensure the winds of uncertainty do not rity and intelligence. Politics and economics are blow us in the wrong direction. Instead, we must intertwined, and it therefore makes sense that the take control of our own destiny by continuing to Five Eyes address both. defend and promote liberal values as the foundation of the international political economy. We should want Australia to have an improved and enduring build our strength as a nation, exert our influence relationship with the PRC, one based on mutual internationally and assert our interests by working Irespect. In seeking such a relationship, we should even more closely with our partners in the region. always be our usual pragmatic selves—open, con- sistent, direct and respectful. Ted O’Brien is the MHR for the Queensland seat of There will come a time when the temperature Fairfax in the Commonwealth Parliament.

Conversion

At what point does one cease to be Christian When Sunday service attendance abates is Easter, is Christmas, Your great great great grandfather not enough to remain recognised converted When within the boundaries somewhere along the line of the Christian calendar from England to Wesley not a thought has been had for Jesus Perhaps because John and Charles When children fail demanded more to have their children baptised a weekly class meeting no less additional to Sunday service When prayer silent and secluded I know because ebbs his son prescient When God says so. more than a hundred years ago submitted to the newly-created So hard today Mitchell custodians to sustain momentum his father’s quarterly Wesleyan tickets as vectors from without with a letter actively pursue a stratagem elegantly composed and penned of destruction beseeching, imploring Not so much in earlier days their recognition less sense of courage required And I to be and be have touched them seen to be read them Christian retained as they are continuing his Christianity.

Richard Stanton

Quadrant September 2020 45 Harry Cummins

The Black Lives That Don’t Matter

was born in Australia’s most beautiful city— Resurrection of the Abolitionist Movement, not Sydney, Townsville—but, like many an anti-slavery NGO, Brahim Ould Bilal Australians, I have lived for long periods in Ramdane, one of his deputies, and Djilby Sow, the UK. Between 1989 and 2004 I worked for the president of an association for civic and cultural I rights. Arraigned before a tribunal in Rosso in British Council in London, latterly as its senior press officer. the south of the country, they had been arrested As well as pieces from my colleagues about what in November 2014 ... while they were leading a the British Council was doing, dozens of press ground campaign to denounce the practice of releases would descend on me daily from other slavery ... “Biram” is a big name in the struggle international bodies, along with updates on world against slavery in Mauritania, himself from a events issued by wire services such as Reuters and family of Haratines—the caste of slaves and the Agence France Presse. descendants of slaves. I was therefore in a position to identify which among this multitude of stories the media went on Bozonnet reported that Biram had recently been to run with, and which they thought unworthy of a candidate in Mauritania’s presidential election. public attention. The criteria that broadcasters and One might have expected him to do well, given that newspapers used to sort what was newsworthy from he came from the country’s African majority, from what was not always eluded me. It seemed that they whom almost all its slaves are drawn. Meanwhile, regularly ignored or failed properly to foreground the sitting President, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, what was self-evidently startling or essential. They “in power since a coup d’etat in 2008”, according also appeared to highlight reports that were less to Bozonnet, represented the lighter-skinned Arab shocking but also less important examples of the minority that preyed on and enslaved the Africans, items they hid or downplayed. Long after I left the which could hardly have endeared him to the elec- British Council, I would amuse myself by checking torate. To nobody’s great surprise, however, it was the internet or the newspapers I bought for the sort discovered that Biram had come second, with 9 per of “suppressed” stories that might more aptly have cent of the vote. Borzonnet continued: graced the front page. On January 17, 2015, I stumbled on an article Above all symbolic, his candidacy had put hidden deep in the weekend edition of Le Monde centre stage the problem of slavery and more that I found so extraordinary that I cut it out. It was generally that of the supremacy of the Moors, titled, “En Mauritanie, prison ferme pour trois mili- the Arab-Berber minority that holds political tants anti-esclavagisme” (“In Mauritania, imprison- and economic power over the Haratines and ment for three anti-slavery activists”). Revealing the other black ethnic groups. A sensitive and that “Mauritanian justice” had just sentenced the potentially explosive theme in Mauritania, activists to two years in jail for making “racist where a young 28 year old, Mohamed Cheikh propaganda”, Charlotte Bozonnet, the author of the Ould Mkhaitir, was condemned to death at piece, said the punishment was: the end of December 2014 for having criticised certain precepts enunciated by the Prophet a conviction that highlights the taboo subject of Muhammad, which are at the root, according to slavery, a practice officially outlawed since 1981, him, of an “iniquitous social system”. but still extremely widespread in Mauritanian society. The three accused are Biram Ould The reference is to some of the founder of Islam’s Abeid, Director of the Initiative for the reflections about black people in the Hadith, the

46 Quadrant September 2020 The Black Lives That Don’t Matter

Muslim “gospels”. In Hadith 161, Book 87 in the situation in the country should be vastly more Volume 9 of the collection of Bukhari, for example, pressing to anti-racists and the black diaspora than Muhammad compares black women to the plague the death of Floyd, a single, relatively privileged and says that, if we dream of one, it means an epi- American? Had slavery in Mauritania perhaps been demic is about to strike. In Hadith 256 of Book 89 brought to an end since my perusal of Le Monde in of the same volume, Muslims are enjoined to obey 2015? anyone of rank, “even if he is a black slave with a I looked up the 2020 report on the country head like a raisin”. Partly as a result of these “pre- compiled by Human Rights Watch. Nothing, alas, cepts”, the Arabic word Abd (“slave”) denotes an seems to have changed. Mauritania is still ruled African or a black person to this day in the world by an apartheid regime controlled by the “Moors”, of Islam. and, as before: Another frenzy was ignited, according to Bozonnet, when, before his conviction for “racist Mauritanian authorities restrict freedom of propaganda”—that is, censuring Arab slavers— speech and assembly especially to muzzle Biram objected to some of the legal interpreta- criticism of Mauritania’s record on slavery and tions arising from the Koran, the Hadith and the discrimination based on caste or ethnicity. The Sira, the sacred biographies of Muhammad. Islam’s death penalty is mandatory for “blasphemous founder is not only alleged in these works to have speech” and acts deemed “sacrilegious” ... While endorsed the seizing, selling and holding of slaves; the government has criminalised slavery, human he is described, with warm approval, as a slave rights and anti-slavery groups denounce its owner and slave trader himself. Bozonnet goes on: persistence.

Biram Ould Abeid has been arrested and Human Rights Watch also tells us: “Child mar- convicted for his activism several times ... In riage, female genital mutilation and other forms 2012, for having burned some of the books of of gender-based violence endure.” One wonders interpretation of the Koran in order to denounce whether they “endure” for the same reason as black the religious justifications often provided for the slavery, to whit, the warm support of Islam and its practice of slavery. An act liable to the death founder, transgression of whose “precepts” attracts penalty in an Islamic Republic ruled by the an immediate sentence of death? Sharia. Only the massive mobilisation of his supporters led at that point to his release. news report by Silja Fröhlich on Deutsche Welle, first transmitted on August 22, 2019, Re-reading this passage recently, I was reminded andA now online, reveals that the Arab-Berber prac- of the 2004 campaign by Sadiq Khan, then an MP, tice of enslaving and selling black Africans is by now Mayor of London, to make the rulings of back- no means confined to Mauritania or other states in room sharia courts enforceable in British law. This the Sahel like Niger, where slavery has always been demand was conceded by Gordon Brown’s Labour endemic. In her piece, “East Africa’s Forgotten government in 2008 via an amendment to the 1996 Slave Trade”, Ms Fröhlich tells us: Arbitration Act. Biram’s allegation that the Koran was at the root of modern slavery, meanwhile, cast Over several centuries countless East Africans an intriguing light on the demands, first by Khan were sold as slaves by Muslim Arabs to the on June 9, 2020, and then a day later by another Middle East and other places via the Sahara leading British Muslim, the Business Minister, Desert and Indian Ocean. Experts say it is time Nadim Zahawi, that all monuments to slave traders for this to be discussed more openly. in the UK be cast down forthwith. Except, perhaps, the many that are vast and ugly mosques. The report notes that, after the Arabs’ invasion I pondered, too, the daring stand taken by and gradual conquest of North Africa between 639 Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir, which put into and 698 AD, religion was used to justify the mass context the less than heroic acts of Western icono- seizure and transport of slaves from sub-Saharan clasm that the death of George Floyd had just given Africa to the newly Islamised cities of Egypt, Syria, rise to. Given “the massive mobilisation of his sup- Arabia, Iraq and the Maghreb. According to Ms porters” against racism and the legacy of slavery, I Fröhlich, this trade arose: wondered why the patronising Western mobs were so indifferent to the black slavery that still flour- seven centuries before Europeans explored ishes in Mauritania, a monstrosity that surely cries the continent and ten centuries before West to Heaven? Why the grotesque silence, given that Africans were sold across the Atlantic to

Quadrant September 2020 47 The Black Lives That Don’t Matter

America. Back then, Arab Muslims in North mitted by that tendentious oracle. As for the ABC, and East Africa sold captured Africans to the it would probably have emulated “Mauritanian Middle East ... Scientific research concludes justice” and arraigned Deutsche Welle for “racist that about three out of four slaves died before propaganda”. they reached the market where they were to be sold. The causes were hunger, illness or hen there is the problem of Tidiane N’Diaye’s exhaustion after long journeys. Le Génocide Voilé itself. The book has been well receivedT in the French-speaking world, especially Fröhlich then interviews Tidiane N’Diaye, a in francophone Africa, where the Islamic slave Senegalese anthropologist whose 2008 book Le trade is most problematic. It has been translated Génocide Voilé (“The Veiled Genocide”) is one of into German and nominated for the Prix Renaudot the few studies by a black author of Islamic slav- in France. Curiously, there has been no English ing in Africa and its demographic effect on the translation of this explosive and topical exposé. No black population. It was a “genocide”, according British, American or Australian publisher has pur- to N’Diaye, because the male slaves were almost chased the book, despite the industry’s obsession always castrated. As well as decimating them, given with slavery, colonialism and race. the primitive surgery involved, the (in his view) Mr N’Diaye himself is convinced that “woke” “racist” Muslim world prevented by this means the black and white Westerners are uniting with emergence of the sort of large black diaspora that Muslim actors to keep “the veiled genocide” on characterises the Americas. It also meant, however, the road. They would rather see “structural racism” that it would require a perpetual supply of new abolished in the West than slavery in Africa. “It’s African slaves, which, he insists, it continues to as if a virtual pact had been concluded between receive. Fröhlich’s interview goes on: the victims’ descendants and their tormentors,” he complains, furious that the African slaves of today N’Diaye estimates that 17 million East obtain almost no support from the West’s anti-rac- Africans were sold into slavery [as against the ist journalists, politicians and celebrities, or from 12 million West Africans sent by European America’s black leadership, who prefer to luxuri- slavers in ships to North and South America ate in polemics about the Atlantic trade that was and the Caribbean]: “Most people still have brought to an end 160 years ago. He is appalled at the so-called Transatlantic [slave] trade by how indifferent they are to the liberation of today’s Europeans into the New World in mind. But African captives, on whom all the horrors of the in reality the Arab-Muslim slavery was much antebellum South continue to descend. “Black greater,” N’Diaye said. “Eight million Africans lives” seem to matter infinitely less to “Black Lives were brought from East Africa via the Trans- Matter” than dead white explorers and the metal Saharan route to Morocco or Egypt. A further statues of Confederate generals. nine million were deported to regions on the Arab money is also to blame, according to Red Sea or the Indian Ocean” ... According to N’Diaye. The degenerate Gulf dictatorships fund author N’Diaye ... slavery still exists ... “they “Islamic studies” courses and centres in many say they have abolished slavery, but in reality Australian, American and British universities, most the situation in North Africa [the Arab-Berber famously those of Oxford and Cambridge. These hub for Sub-Saharan slaves] has not changed institutions are not only tainted by the black (and much. Young people are enslaved against their other) slavery that these states tolerate within their will, forced to work and sexually exploited borders, but by the blatant exaltation of Islamic ... Most of the African authors have not yet racism in the courses and centres funded. The way published a book on the Arab-Muslim slave global history is taught in these facilities is cer- trade out of religious solidarity. There are 500 tainly singular: Islamic acts of slaving, genocide million Muslims in Africa, and it is better to and imperialism (for instance in Africa, India and blame the West.” Spain) are praised or extenuated, while the same phenomena are the object of angry censure if per- African intellectuals, of course, are not the petrated by “infidel” powers like Britain. It is super- only ones who would rather focus on the Western fluous to add that no activist enraged by the statue past of African slavery than its Muslim present. of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel has ever marched against Deutsche Welle is Germany’s version of the BBC these infinitely more obvious altars to slavery, big- World Service, but its artless exposure of how Islam otry and colonisation. ensures that black slavery “endures” all over the For the greatest obstacle to finally ending continent would certainly never have been trans- African slavery is not Muslim self-assertion but

48 Quadrant September 2020 The Black Lives That Don’t Matter

Western self-reproach. Yeats famously said: “Out is high? The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset once of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of observed: “Barbarism is the absence of standards to the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” In the which an appeal can be made.” Opponents of rac- same way, out of the West’s quarrel with itself it ism and slavery very soon realise that there are no used to create Christian repentance, but, out of the “standards to which an appeal can be made” in the wish to look good by not quarrelling with others, it Islamic world. now creates self-reproach, a repudiation of its own While there is neither money nor kudos in try- civilisation. ing to end the Muslim slave trade, however, the Self-reproach is the worst form of Western nar- likes of Black Lives Matter know that one can par- cissism, fatal alike to the West and the parasites asitise the milch cow that is the “evil” (in fact good it mobilises. These ingenious hustlers end up with because self-critical) West ad infinitum for far less no higher goal than to live as parasites always. Is grievous infractions. Why should they bother to this not the tragic ambition of too many indigenous stray beyond the West when they know they have Australians, for example? What slavery is worse already hit the motherlode? than that, a slavery that is chosen? Perhaps the slav- As a press officer, I saw how the media would ery that has not been chosen, the fate of the Muslim highlight only those events that seemed to confirm chattels in the Africa of today. an existing orthodoxy, while ignoring or downplay- The pressure to end racism, slavery and imperi- ing facts that were portentous but troubling. I should alism must clearly be brought to bear most heavily have learned from this “génocide voilé” that, in a in those places where the public most supports such world ruled by those who do nothing but proclaim practices, not where the local population’s ethnicity their virtue, evil will always have the last word. makes it most vulnerable to lucrative hustling. Islam teaches that racism, slavery and imperial- Harry Cummins is the author of Magnetic Island: ism are noble as long as they are inflicted on infidels. A Novel, published last year by Connor Court. He Can anyone be surprised then, that in the Muslim contributed the article “Our Epidemic of Self-Reproach world support for racism, slavery and imperialism and its Costs” to the June issue.

St Corona

Latin for Crown. Patron saint of plagues. Testified for a Roman soldier, named Victor, a Christian, whipped by the Christian-hating judge, Sebastian, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, eyes gouged out, yet refused to deny Christ. Corona, sixteen, wife of a soldier, knelt and prayed for Victor. Imprisoned, tortured, drawn and quartered, in 177 AD, Syria. Pre-congregation saint, her feast day, May 14th. St Corona’s bones were exhumed, in 1943, and found to be both male and female.

Joe Dolce

Quadrant September 2020 49 Michael Warby

And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall

Note on terminology: I despise race talk and refuse police indifference and police brutality, the sheer to use skin tone terminology, except if historical con- failure to effectively police so many urban African- text requires it. I therefore use “Euro-American” American communities must undermine respect in and “African-American” in the equivalent senses as those communities for the police that so often con- “Asian-American”. spicuously fail to serve and protect them. Nevertheless, given the very low scale of the n the United States, in any given year, less than killing of unarmed African-Americans by police 4 per cent of those people killed by police will (and remembering that unarmed does not always be unarmed African-American men killed by a mean not dangerous or threatening), it is perverse Euro-AmericanI policeman. The number is gener- to construct narratives of performative outrage over ally in the lower double digits in a country of 330 less than 4 per cent of police killings and 0.5 per million and an African-American population of cent of the violent deaths of African-American about 42 million. They will be less than 0.5 per cent men. I say performative outrage as it is apparent of the 7000 to 8000 African-American men to die that US police can killed unarmed civilians who violently in the same year. are not African-American, and African-Americans The United States has a problem with police vio- can kill each other, in any numbers and in utterly lence. US police kill far too many people and at a egregious incidents that, even if caught on camera, rate much higher than police in any other developed elicit nothing like the same ostentatious response— democracy. Moreover, the rate at which US police or media coverage. Such killings do not fit into the kill civilians varies dramatically by jurisdiction and packaged narratives offered for us to consume so region. A Euro-American in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is that we can all gain a drive-by sense of moral wor- more likely to be shot by police than an African- thiness. Pixelated piety for a social media age. American in New York. In far too many US juris- African-American frustration, even anger, is dictions, despite a general pattern of improvement, understandable. The highly selective performative there is something seriously wrong with the train- outrage of others is something else. ing, procedures and accountability of police regard- The killing of George Floyd was near-univer- ing their use of violence. sally condemned, resulted in the sacking of the That the United States has such a high rate of cops involved and the charging of the cop who did gun ownership makes the job of police that much the killing. That all seemed to matter very little. more fraught. Police in the US are more likely to Yes, the immediacy and ubiquity of social media be shot than police in other developed democracies. obliterate context, but that just makes the packaged Nevertheless, it is clear that too many US police are narratives even more powerful. They create the under-trained for what they face. context that video clips and events are slotted into. Urban African-American communities have an What is more, these protests, riots and attacks appalling problem with violence. Young African- on police will have a completely predictable result. American men kill each other at rates far in excess Over the next few years, we can expect thousands of that of any other group in the US, or in the rest of extra violent deaths of young African-Americans. of the developed democracies. This is, however, Those who have been conducting their public acts specifically an urban community problem, as there of performative outrage will be unlikely to notice are no differences in the rate of death by homicide or care. between African-American and Euro-American How do I surmise this? Because we have been males in rural US. Even more than past legacies of here before. After the 2014 Ferguson riots, deaths

50 Quadrant September 2020 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall by homicide of African-American males surged ability and willingness to engage in violence. It is upwards, after years of decline. sometimes called “street culture” in the sociological literature. This leads to high rates of homicide, as Table: African-American male homicide deaths. young males kill pre-emptively, or in retaliation, so as to defend their “rep”. The habits and responses of Rate (per 100,000) bravado culture also help create more fraught inter- 2012 7129 34.5 actions with police. Social changes that encourage 2013 6937 33.1 bravado culture will lead to more homicide, changes 2014 6823 32.1 that undermine it will lead to less. 2015 8021 37.3 While the evidence tells us that African- 2016 8650 39.8 American homicide death rates in urban areas have 2017 8776 42.3 been much higher than Euro-American homicide 2018 8254 n.a. death rates since the nineteenth century, the ratio between them has fluctuated over time. (All rates Sources: Health, United States, NCHS, tables cited are per 100,000 people.) 19, 29; CDC, Leading Cause of Death Reports. In Philadelphia, the African-American homi- cide death rate was 2.7 times the Euro-American This was either ignored, downplayed or explained rate in the nineteenth century (7.5 to 2.8). In the away by those so ostentatiously concerned by the years 1948 to 1952, it was 13.7 times the rate (24.6 tiny intersection between killings of unarmed to 1.8). In the early 1970s, it was 22.9 times the rate African-American men by Euro-American police (64.2 to 2.8). A study of national figures found that and African-American deaths by violence. These the ratio shifted from 5.8 times higher in 1919 (30.5 thousands of extra violent deaths did not fit the to 5.3) to 8.3 times higher in 1927 (43.8 to 5.3). packaged narratives primed for piety display. It is Obviously, some fluctuating factor or factors precisely because those extra deaths have been so are at play here, which affect homicide death rates absent from the packaged moral narratives that the among African-Americans far more than any rel- cry “defund the police” has any traction at all. It evant factors affect homicide death rates among is performative sloganeering built on not noticing Euro-Americans, which are much more stable. The thousands of extra killings. pattern continues to the present. One might think that thousands of extra deaths Indeed, the recent surge in homicide death rates might be worth some reflection and soul-search- in various US urban centres is almost entirely a ing. One would be wrong. The market for packaged matter of the African-American, and specifically morality, and performative moral display, is not to the African-American male homicide death rate, be derailed by a mere matter of thousands of incon- reversing the previous decades-long decline in their venient homicides. rate of death by homicide. A narratively convenient killing caught on cam- We can rule out genes (they don’t change fast era is a moral outrage. Thousands of the wrong kill- enough) or racism (it has been a relatively stable ings are just a statistic. factor in long-term decline) in explaining the post-2014 surge in homicide deaths. A factor that persistently affects patterns of homicide is severe The patterns of urban homicide status inequality: notably income inequality when n order to understand why African-American combined with a lack of other means (other than homicides surged after the 2014 Ferguson riots, aggression and violence) for men to gain status. Iwe need to step back and look at the long-term Given that crime rates have been generally patterns of homicide in urban African-American falling in developed democracies, while income communities. inequality has been generally rising, any direct link In an essay published in April 2019 in the online between homicide and income inequality becomes magazine Areo, I argued that the serial and long- even more problematic—especially as status term failure of jurisdictions in the US, dating back indicators for African-Americans have shown to Reconstruction in the 1860s, to provide adequate dramatic improvements. policing services for African-American communi- Factors that can be identified as affecting ties, especially urban communities, has permitted variability in homicide rates are (1) urbanisation, (2) a bravado culture to become entrenched in those suburbanisation, (3) youth bulge, (4) illegal drugs, communities. A bravado culture is an honour cul- (5) fatherlessness. ture without elite endorsement—that is, a culture Urbanisation breaks up previously existing of defending one’s social space by signalling one’s social connections and encourages youth to

Quadrant September 2020 51 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall congregate (young males being by far the most • Specificity. Violence is “sticky”, i.e. clusters likely perpetrators and victims of homicide). together, so focusing on the people, places, and Suburbanisation pulls middle-class families out of behaviors most at risk for violence is critical. the inner city. A Boston study found that violence • Proactivity. Violence should be prevented and aggression among male adolescents was higher before it occurs whenever possible, either in African-American communities with low through deterrence or prevention. Active income inequality (where middle-class residents engagement with high-risk populations is were largely absent) and lower in communities critical. Reacting after the fact is necessary but with higher income inequality (where middle-class not sufficient. residents were far more common). The effect of • Legitimacy. Interventions that create a positive middle-class residents indicates the complicated feedback loop between formal (e.g. police) and nature of the interaction between status hierarchies informal social control (e.g. communities) are and income inequality—the lack of such residents more likely to sustainably succeed. makes bravado culture “rep” a dominant status • Capacity. Even the best interventions fail if path, while their presence demonstrates other paths they are not implemented effectively or lack to status. sufficient resources. A youth bulge maximises the proportion of the • Theory. A well-defined, well-understood theory population that are in the most homicide-prone of change is critical for both implementation and group. A surge in illegal drug use provides an income evaluation. base for gangs as well as illegal assets to fight over. • Partnership. Interventions do not exist in a Fatherlessness weakens young male attachment to vacuum. Actively engaging and partnering with social norms, encourages involvement in gangs and critical stakeholders is essential. is strongly associated with criminal activity. All these factors also promote bravado culture, Key considerations for success or failure were: as they encourage recruitment of young males, including to the street gangs that feed off and In many respects, what doesn’t work in reducing exemplify bravado culture. All these factors also violence is simply the opposite of what does. undermine alternative norms to those of bravado Ineffective interventions are generally overbroad culture. and reactive in their focus, lacking in legitimacy, So, if there is increasing urbanisation, increas- improperly implemented, lacking a sound theory ing potential income from gang activity, increasing of change, and working in isolation or even in fatherlessness, suburban flight and a youth bulge conflict with other organizations. all at once, then a dramatic surge in homicide rates ... can be expected. And that describes the urban To summarize, these interventions deter violent United States in the 1960s and 1970s in a nut- behavior by reaching out directly to offending shell. Especially if bravado culture already has a individuals and groups, explicitly stating that significant foothold due to a long-standing failure violence will no longer be tolerated, and then of police to achieve homicide clearance rates. The backing that message with credible threats of wider the ambit of action available to its practition- enforcement and credible promises of assistance. ers, the more bravado culture is able to recruit new … members into its patterns, the stronger it will be Focused deterrence distinguishes itself from and the more disruptive and destructive to its local other strategies with a laser-like focus on (a) community. the specific groups most likely to offend, (b) the specific behavior it seeks to change, and (c) the specific message delivered to the groups about What to do the behavior. Often relating to gun violence, the o, if we want to turn back bravado culture, message is simple: stop shooting and we will homicide clearance rates in African-American help you, keep shooting and we will put you in urbanS communities have to improve. In some prison. jurisdictions, they have to improve dramatically. How might we do that? According to a February What does all this take? Effective policing. It 2016 survey of the literature, including experience was the lack of effective policing that allowed bra- with various policy initiatives, published by USAID, vado culture to become entrenched in the first place. there appear to be six “elements of effectiveness” that Thus, if police, for whatever reason, pull back successful violence reduction interventions generally from an African-American urban community, what share. In the words of the survey: (predictably) happens? Homicides surge.

52 Quadrant September 2020 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall

Police pulled back in Chicago, Baltimore and nor transported convicts was the process of exile elsewhere after the 2014 Ferguson riots and the remotely as complete. ensuing wave of police-critical activism. There was, Parenting patterns (who looked after children) for example, a major fall in homicide clearance and practices (what they did when they looked after rates in Chicago. Hence the surge in homicides due children) were the only elements of prior culture to thousands of extra killings by and of African- likely to have made it through the social churn of American men in urban African-American com- enslavement and transportation. A partial excep- munities as bravado culture moved into the vacuum tion is that African religious elements did survive left by police withdrawal. in tropical areas. This was because the death rate of It is utterly predictable that we are going to go slaves was so high in tropical areas that Christianity through the same pattern again. Bravado culture will found it harder to supplant rival religious ideas and be reinvigorated and killings will thereby increase. sentiments—too large and constant a stream of new There is already a suggestive surge in homicides in arrivals, too few survivors. New York, where Euro-American police offers are But these are specific historical experiences that in a minority and where there had been a dramatic the descendants of American slaves do not share decline in police-involved shootings, including fatal with recent African immigrants (a notably success- shootings, since the 1970s. ful group). While Afro-Caribbean migrants also come from a legacy of slavery, they also come from a much stronger legacy of self-government after the The toxic nature of race talk abolition of slavery, which occurred over a genera- ven beyond the demand for packaged narratives tion or more earlier than in the US. of moral outrage, the fundamental problem is Race talk, where it is not just a clumsy way of usingE the prism of race. Race talk strips people of speaking about ethno-cultural groups or super- their culture and civilisational heritage. It reduces groups (sadly traditional in the US), is analytically people to their skin tone, and presumptive reactions impoverishing. The only thing race talk is good for to their skin tone (which might be, instead or in is racial stigmatisation and racial hierarchisation, part, reactions to social cues). because it reduces people to their skin tone, on Race talk buries relevant factors; for example, whose unresisting simplicity any common features poor people are more likely to interact with police or behaviours can be ascribed. and African-Americans are about 2.5 times more If race talk is your go-to categorisation, there likely to be poor than Euro-Americans. There are, are only two choices when dealing with some group however, more poor Hispanics, and considerably disparity, such as much higher homicide rates: the more poor Euro-Americans, than poor African- up-hierarchy choice or the down-hierarchy choice. Americans. It is fairly clear that poor Euro- In the case of African-Americans, the down- Americans also have a problem with police violence hierarchy choice says it is because they are black that is buried under the rubric of race. The dual and there is something wrong with being black. problem of respect for law and order, and of law Which is demonstrably false, as there is no dif- and order one can respect, is poisoned by race talk, ference between Euro-American and African- not improved by it. American male homicide rates in rural areas. (Nor Fatherlessness correlates with criminal activity are the dramatic shifts in homicide rates over time far more than poverty (though the two are clearly supportive of any such claim.) connected) or race. The connection of poverty, The up-hierarchy choice says it is because it is fatherlessness and the dynamics of locality captures how people react badly to them being black. Or the heart of the problems of violent crime. The “structures” do, whatever that means: structural rac- prism of race blocks understanding. ism and similar terms seem to be the go-to terms when one does not have any evidence of actual rac- Legacies ism. Once again, either claim is demonstrably false. ue to slavery, the process of exile was far more all-encompassing for slaves and their descend- The blinding prism of race Dants than for any other group in the United States. f one abandons race talk, because it is so analyti- For they were the only group whose process of cally impoverishing, and instead analyses matters arrival extinguished kin and all other social ties and Iin terms of social dynamics, then racial stigmati- identities. The slaves and their descendants were sation gets its due place in creating the original the only group that had to invent their identity and circumstances and having aggravating effects over culture in the US. For neither indentured servants time but analysis, as we have seen, can then fit the

Quadrant September 2020 53 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall evidence. Even better, such analysis provides a way The rest of this tabaqat, which showed no forward. Race talk just traps people inside their interest in science, resembles animals more skin tone, inside their melanin count, forever. than human beings. Those among them who Of course, if performative outrage and piety dis- live in the extreme north, between the last of play are the point, the dead-end nature of race talk the seven regions and the end of the populated is an advantage. It provides endless opportunities world to the north, suffered from being too far for performative outrage by ignoring changes (for from the sun; their air is cold and their skies good and ill) while seeking to freeze patterns of are cloudy. As a result, their temperament is discourse and analysis. cool and their behaviour is rude. Consequently, Melanin count is not a moral category. Nor, their bodies become enormous, their colour unless one is talking about Vitamin D deficien- turned white, and their hair drooped down. cies, perhaps in the context of heightened risk of They have lost keenness of understanding and respiratory infection in cold climes, an analytical sharpness of perception. They were overcome one. Even African-American is too broad a term, as by ignorance, and laziness, and infested by the patterns of Caribbean-Americans, and of recent fatigue and stupidity. Such are the Slavonians, immigrants from Africa, are both very different Bulgarians and neighbouring peoples. from those of descendants of American slaves. The prism of race obscures that complexity, to It is amazing how stupid and lazy slave groups the point that the children of African immigrants, are so often reported to be. It is almost as if slavery in no sense a disadvantaged group, nevertheless discourages hard and diligent work. qualify, due to their “race”, for affirmative action This is classic denigration of a slave group based on a legacy of slavery and discrimination they because your universalist morality (they are children do not share. The prism of race also greatly elevates of Allah who should be converted to Islam) contra- disparities construed racially over other disparities dicts the convenience of continuing to enslave them between people of different ethnic origins that may en masse. When mass slavery later became part of well be comparable in scale but are rendered nar- their societies, Christian and Enlightenment writ- ratively invisible. ers responded to the same imperative in the same Structural or systemic impediments operating in ways. Except, of course, they were enslaving people (and against) various localities, sometimes obvious, of African origin, not Europeans as well. sometimes more subtle, are a feature of the contem- Racism did not cause slavery. Slavery, in the porary US, sometimes worsened by measures seek- context of universalising morality, generated justi- ing to overcome such impediments. For instance, ficatory racism. Race talk, especially elite race talk, busing disrupted the connection between schools is a discourse of domination. and their communities, while welfare and tax Sa’id also denigrates sub-Saharan Africans for arrangements have sometimes penalised marriage. the same reason of justifying mass slavery. He then An enormous deployment of funds and regula- has a problem, for South Asians have advanced tory effort across decades, often deployed in a very mathematics and science but dark skins. He wants race-conscious way, has failed to eliminate intense to make it clear that they are a different group: local patterns of disadvantage, albeit amidst a more general pattern of improvement—though including The Indians, as known to all nations for many the notably successful recent African immigrants in centuries, are the metal [essence] of wisdom, the general rubric of “African-American” or “black” the source of fairness and objectivity. They tends to exaggerate the degree of improvement for are people of sublime pensiveness, universal descendants of American slaves. apologues, and useful and rare inventions. In But race talk, except when it is a clumsy way of spite of the fact that their colour is in the first discussing ethno-cultural groups, is generally not stage of blackness, which puts them in the about understanding, it is far more often about set- same category as blacks, Allah in His glory, ting up moral hierarchies—including that particu- did not give them the low characteristics, the larly noxious form, racialised moral hierarchies. poor manners, the inferior principles associated The first civilisation to deploy colour-based race with this group and ranked them above a large talk in systematic discourses of denigration was number of white and brown peoples. Islam. Islamic writers, especially in Andalusia and the Maghreb, engaged in “explanatory” denigra- It is possible that equality is unstable, that we tion of entire groups based on skin colour. Here, are such a status-concerned and group-identifying for example, is Sa’id al-Andalusi in his 1068 work species that we cannot help ourselves, we have Tabaqāt al-’Umam (Categories of Nations): to create moral hierarchies. If that is so, then we

54 Quadrant September 2020 And Now We Wait for the Bodies to Fall should at least attempt to create pro-social moral (Microaggressions, anyone? Implicit bias, perhaps?) hierarchies rather than anti-social ones. Indeed, Nevertheless, in whatever form, race talk, seeking bravado culture is toxic to a significant degree pre- to trap people within their skin tone, is toxic to cisely because it creates anti-social hierarchies. the health of the American polity. Especially as it The Democratic Party in particular has a long turns out that the race talk of anti-racism is every association with race talk. Originally, it was anti- bit an elite discourse of domination as were previ- black race talk, assuring “white” Americans that ous versions of race talk. they will keep the “blacks” in their place. That Demonising people due to their skin colour, has since morphed into anti-“bad”-white race talk, or for being in the police, or both, cannot gener- assuring minority Americans that Democrats will ate pro-social moral hierarchies. After all, racial protect them against the nasty “white” people out stigmatisation (the only thing race talk is actually to get them. Strangely, much of the worst areas of effective at, apart from misdirecting understand- disadvantage are in urban jurisdictions that have ing), and not enough useful policing, as a direct been Democrat-dominated for decades. result of racial stigmatisation, helped entrench vio- Politically, race talk has obvious utility as a lence in African-American urban communities in divide-and-dominate power strategy. And the the first place. politics of identity, especially racialised identity, Progressive opinion has become addicted to race full of sound and symbolism, permits consider- talk, and its performative politics of sound and able economising on policy effort, as mathemati- symbolism, with its ability to generate performa- cian and economist Eric Weinstein has pointed tive outrage and piety displays. The diversity-inclu- out. You do not have to fix any social problems. sion-equity faith system insists that we all share Indeed, it does not matter if you make them worse. its addiction, seeking to punish any heretics who You just have to engage in the performative poli- demur. So, now, we just wait for the bodies to fall. tics of outrage over them. The elimination of griev- ance is, after all, hardly helpful to identity politics. Michael “Lorenzo” Warby is writing a book on Hence the need to continually generate grievances. marriage, to be published by Connor Court.

Mine

And the dawn still comes without you. The day’s airless dark that surrounds me from every side where the paddocks become an endless voyage into nowhere. I walk on, again, the only voice my own murmuring for my knees to break at the earth’s mouth. I am afraid. I drive alone across the freeway, beyond the cars and the thousands of lives carried towards nowhere I am here and you could be anywhere.

Robbie Coburn

Quadrant September 2020 55 Barry Spurr

The Anglican Church: From Orthodoxy to Anarchy

llan Blanch’s well-written and widely- thing shall be well”, were caught either seriously researched biography of Sir Marcus napping, or blithely trusting that the iconoclasts Loane, the first Australian-born Anglican would not do their worst—or, in the process of ArchbishopA of Sydney and Primate of Australia, is doing it, might have second thoughts, as the dire important for reasons in addition to the most obvious results became glaringly apparent. This serious purpose for which From Strength to Strength (2015) miscalculation has taken us to the point, today, was produced: to describe in detail and celebrate where it is unimaginable that what has been lost can the archbishop’s life and influence in the Diocese ever be recovered. It is much easier to destroy an of Sydney and, to a lesser degree, in the national institution, through cancelling its history, traditions Church. While these aspects are of interest, partic- and heritage, than to create one. ularly to those of us who knew the archbishop, and What Mr Blanch’s study demonstrates is how a others inquiring into the twentieth-century history bishop deeply learned in and committed to one of of the Anglican Church in Sydney and Australia the several schools of Christian faith and practice (for whom the book would be required reading), or which, combined, have formed the character of wanting to understand conservative Evangelicalism Anglicanism over the centuries, was unable to prevent more generally, the biography has an even larger the ever-increasing assault, during his archiepiscopal importance. reign and since, on generally recognisable Anglican It exposes a particular example of a phenomenon theology, forms of worship and spirituality within that has been nothing less than a scourge in the dominant Evangelical tradition of his diocese. Western civilisation for the last fifty years, and Sydney is the most famous and formidable from which no institution, religious or secular, has representative in the global Anglican Communion been immune: the concentrated attack on those of the Reformed character of a Church that was, institutions’ history, heritage and traditions. This is from its beginning, both Catholic and Reformed. an assault all the more insidious for being conducted Even Church leaders from within the Evangelical from within the institutions. tradition, such as Archbishop of Canterbury, The seeds of this destruction were sown in the Geoffrey Fisher (warmly welcomed to St Andrew’s counter-cultural movements of the later 1960s. Cathedral in Sydney in 1950), can write, insistently, But the concentrated and corrupting white-anting of the Church of England, that projects which ensued, in their multifarious and nefarious forms, have, typically, taken a generation or We have no doctrine of our own—we only two for their agents’ work to have pervasive impact. possess the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic What remains of the institutions has typically Church enshrined in the Catholic creeds, been turned into a contradiction of what they were and those creeds we hold without addition or established to be and of their essential character. diminution. We stand firm on that rock. The universities provide the clearest example of this dismantling process, recently given detailed analysis The long-established practice in Canterbury of in relation to the local scene in Campus Meltdown: alternating between High Church and Low Church The Deepening Crisis in Australian Universities, edited archbishops, in this most prominent of Anglican by William Coleman. roles, speaks tellingly of the comprehensiveness of Conservatives, by nature not given to activism the Church. So Fisher, the Low Churchman, was and too inclined to abide complacently in the followed by Michael Ramsey, from the Catholic wing. teaching that “all shall be well, and all manner of In our day, the Anglo-Catholic Rowan Williams

56 Quadrant September 2020 The Anglican Church: From Orthodoxy to Anarchy has been succeeded by the Evangelical Justin to church they knew what service pattern they would Welby. Yet when we consider the churchmanship find there”. The “gatherings” or “meetings” that of Welby—who wears a mitre and Eucharistic have taken the place of Prayer Book worship of any vestments (banned in Sydney, while clergy wearing kind in many parishes in the Sydney Diocese today no robes at all are perfectly acceptable); who last year show the extent to which this cherished principle led the annual National Pilgrimage to the shrine of common prayer has been deliberately repudiated. of Our Lady of Walsingham and spoke afterwards Indeed, it has become a badge of honour to of “the Mass” in which he had participated there, proclaim the rejection of the entire Anglican and of how “Mary leads us to Jesus”; who has the tradition. So, an inner-west suburban parish which Roman Catholic priest, Father Nicolas Buttet, as describes itself, on its website, “as a Bible-believing his spiritual director and, for his prayer life, favours church”, is quick to point out not only that “we’re Catholic models from the Benedictine and Ignatian not your typical church”, but “we’re certainly not traditions—it is a tad difficult to discern any common your typical Anglican church”. The description of ground between that contemporary expression what their Sunday gatherings are like, including of Anglican Evangelicalism and questions and comments segments, Sydney’s version of it. bears no relationship whatever to Nonetheless, Marcus Loane t has become a any recognisable Anglican order of showed that it was possible I service. Any confirmed Anglican, to combine an unswerving badge of honour reasonably seeking, on a Sunday, a commitment to the principles of to proclaim the service of Holy Communion, would conservative Protestantism with a look in vain on this website and on profound faithfulness to the history rejection of the entire the parish’s roadside noticeboard and tradition of Anglicanism, in all Anglican tradition. A (and on those of many others in the its forms. Of his friend, Archbishop suburban parish which diocese) for any indication of the Sir Philip Strong of Brisbane, Loane administration of that sacrament: wrote: “He was an Anglo-Catholic describes itself on its “The Lord’s own service in the at the altar; he was an Evangelical website “as a Bible- Lord’s own house” as the little in the pulpit … Both Evangelicals prayer book I was given on my and Anglo-Catholics saw in him believing church”, confirmation described it. the qualities of true saintliness.” is quick to point The anarchic situation which out, “we’re certainly Loane dreaded has become the t the heart of Loane’s church- norm: what he called “radical indi- manship was the Book of not your typical vidualism and ecclesiastical lawless- CommonA Prayer (the “better he Anglican church”. ness”, where “every parish did what knew it, the more he loved it”, was right in its own eyes”, are the Blanch writes), where, in such serv- inevitable result of the disposal of ices as Matins and Evensong, we see the genius of the ordered liturgy of common prayer. Even the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer drawing on the daily Lord’s Prayer can be regarded with suspicion as offices of the medieval Catholic Church (of Prime, being in a set liturgical form. For the archbishop, Matins, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and this situation revealed “an attitude that is un-Angli- Compline) to produce forms of daily worship in the can”, leading to “worship confusion” and a squan- vernacular—in the most numinous and memorable dering of “our great inheritance”. liturgical language in English that has ever been Amongst those losses, in the dismal spirit of composed—for the laity, as well as the clergy. the broader revolutionary “cancel culture” of today, Loane recognised wisely that if the Prayer is the now widespread custom of Sydney diocesan Book were abandoned, “really significant losses parishes to erase the names of the saints to which would follow”. Yet, Blanch notes Marcia Cameron’s they were dedicated. So, in my neighbourhood, observation that “despite the Evangelicals’ insistence St Aidan’s in Annandale has become “Village that the Book of Common Prayer should be part Church”; St Andrew’s in Summer Hill is now of the Fundamental Declarations” of their faith, “Summer Hill Church”; St Michael’s in Surry “Sydney Evangelicals have led the way in abandoning Hills is “Vine Church”, and so on. Like deletions the use of the Prayer Book, or any prayer book in from the Soviet Encyclopaedia of persons who their worship”. have become non-persons, the well-known saints Further, there was Loane’s contention that, of the Christian Bible and the Anglican liturgical because of the Prayer Book’s familiarity throughout calendar have been eliminated in a program that, the worldwide Communion, “when Anglicans went obviously, is designed to eradicate the previously

Quadrant September 2020 57 The Anglican Church: From Orthodoxy to Anarchy recognisable association of such parishes with their widely read, too, in English literature and devoted Anglican foundation and history. to Anglican hymnody. Sir Marcus (although not musical in the same way) once said to me, of the he familiar irony of anarchic rebellion against modern choruses that his clergy were becoming so allegedly oppressive orthodoxy is that, usually fond of, that they were “trash” and that his favourite Tvery swiftly, it takes upon itself a rigidity of con- hymn was “Jerusalem the golden”, translated by formity and its own set of predictable convictions John Mason Neale (one of the formidable figures that are at least as enforced and authoritarian as the of the Oxford Movement) from the twelfth-century former despised and rejected regimen. Nowhere, text of the monk, Bernard of Cluny. These Sydney again, is this more clearly seen than in today’s uni- Evangelicals were men of the Word and of words. versities, where the ancient and fiercely-defended One is reminded of the old adage: “No one reads his tradition of freedom of thought and expression, of Bible well, who reads only his Bible.” dissent and vigorous debate, has been overturned by a mandated insistence on “correct” views on such wo specific explanations of the anarchical situ- as race, gender and class which, should anyone so ation which Archbishop Loane correctly fore- much as query, will lead to their “no-platforming” Tsaw and abhorred in his diocese (although he may and Orwellian vaporisation. not have imagined the extent to which it is appar- So, as one goes from parish website to parish ent today) can be offered, in addition to the gener- website in Sydney today, one is struck by the ally fertile ground for revolution against established conformity of these non-conforming communities institutions that has been the marked feature of to a check-list of standard attributes: with the Western civilisation over the last half-century senior pastor, married with children, pictured in The first can be sourced from Moore College, open-necked shirt, trained at Moore College, and where all Sydney ordinands are trained (another with leisure interests that are peculiarly notable element in the narrowness of outlook of the not so much for what they include (usually physical Anglicanism of the diocese), and, in particular, from activity of some kind), but what appears to be all the long and very influential Principalship, from but universally excluded: any interest in reading or 1959 to 1985, of Dr Broughton Knox. The Trollopean literature, in classical music or playing an instrument, element of Principal Knox and Archbishop in art, architecture, history—indeed, any of the Loane being brothers-in-law did not assuage the humane pursuits that, for most educated people, Archbishop’s well-founded apprehensions about the make life worth living. The absence of literary opposition to his idea of the Church that would be interests is particularly striking in a supposedly advanced by Knox to his trainee ministers: “I am Anglican context. You would look in vain for any afraid that he will try to push his policies in ways minister who enjoys poetry, yet a distinctive feature which will be very much to my discomfort,” Loane of the priests and laity of the Anglican Communion, noted, and so it has turned out in the disappearance through the centuries, has been their distinguished of Prayer Book Anglicanism from Sydney. and formidable contribution to our literary culture, The second reason must be sourced from from Shakespeare, to Donne and Herbert, through Archbishop Loane himself. He, with his deep to T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden and R.S. learning about and immersion in the Book of Thomas, in the twentieth century, and, in our own Common Prayer, was able to reconcile that day and country, the brilliant Tim Winton: orthodox ecclesiastical heritage with his particularly pronounced Protestant theology. But for him Most of [Winton’s] best friends are refugees to imagine that many others would be similarly from evangelical fundamentalism. He also capable of—or even interested in—achieving such a admits a fondness for liturgical worship deft reconciliation was surely, always, a pious hope with bells and smells. “The sacrament of The and, now, in a culture of studied repudiation of Eucharist has become the central, the still point, orthodoxy, it is all but unimaginable. if you will; I receive it on my knees and cross No one would suggest that any of the congregations, myself.” determinedly jettisoning their Anglican history and heritage and, specifically, the fundamental The rich literary aspect of Anglican culture was principle of common prayer, are not sincere about conspicuously present in the minds of church leaders and committed to their mission. Yet, at the end in Sydney’s recent past. Marcus Loane was a lover of reading Allan Blanch’s excellent biography, one of poetry—he wrote his MA thesis, indeed, on “The cannot help asking: At what point, in the devolution Poetical Works of Thomas Gray”—and, amongst his of a parish’s and, indeed, a diocese’s identity, is the successors, Donald Robinson was a skilled musician, position reached where it has so removed itself from

58 Quadrant September 2020 The Anglican Church: From Orthodoxy to Anarchy what can generally be understood as the essential and Goulburn and has written extensively about “marks” of the denominational organisation it Anglicanism and its expression in liturgy, in The theoretically belongs to, that claims—however Word in the Desert (1995); its literary influence, minimal—to still be representative of it can no in Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T.S. Eliot and longer, in all reasonableness, be sustained? Christianity (2010), and on the spiritual life, in See the Virgin Blest (2007), an account of English Barry Spurr, Literary Editor of Quadrant, poetry, through the centuries, devoted to the Virgin grew up in the Anglican Diocese of Canberra Mary.

In The Zocalo Oaxaca, Mexico

When God made the wild things, surely he was singing, opening his great throat to free the fluttering skylarks, the scream of hurricanes and angry whores, the timpany of kettle drums, stomping feet and hallelujahs, the names of his children’s children Vida in the young girl sitting and all their shouts and serenades. by the bandstand in Sunday silence, eyes lowered, Hail Marys still clinging Little frog man, strolling minstrel to her lips like beads of honey, with a lolling tongue, one bare foot who dares not look into the face and one blue sock, and eyes that look of the boy next to her, dares not inward at uncluttered walls, feel the galloping ponies thundering thwangs a three-string guitar, tilts in his chest, dares not eat back his head, Vida! he sings, the caramels he has placed in her lap. Vida! Vida! Vida! Vida! It’s all around and inside, vida— in the foamy coffee, swirling skirts and His only song, his only word. lemon sashes alive on the cathedral steps, So little changes in this old city— striped candy suckers large as moons, Vida everywhere, vida the off-key band leading brassy soldiers in the sticky cheeks of children trumpeting pigeons into the air, with sweet mango smiles flirting mariachi singers flashing midnight smiles, centavos out of pockets, stirring up sobs in blue-haired tourists. in the grandmothers with skeins Vida! Vida! Vida! Vida! of white wool braids, curried soft, Vida! He sang, and all the little hearts armloads of parrot-colored shawls, of wild things pumped and sprang to life. secrets woven in their wrinkles, secrets from kitchen saints that Vida! he sings, chocolate mole blesses chicken. while the balloon man floats by grasping a blossom of balloons, his toes just skimming the cobblestones.

Carolyn Evans Campbell

Quadrant September 2020 59 Mark Lopez

Too Male or Too White: Selecting Texts for Schools

t seems it was not enough for the Victorian fanciful fictional text about the mistreatment of a Curriculum and Assessment Authority, and its hypothetical subclass of clones created to provide text selection advisory panel, for almost all of body parts for transplant surgeries is absurd and of Ithe texts on the prescribed list for Year 12 English little or no educational value. But there were quotas to be by left-wing authors, or to reflect left-wing to fill. Consequently, the number of “established perspectives, or to promote left-wing values, or to works” or classics on the official text list fell from make left-wing arguments in favour of left-wing a precarious eight out of thirty-six texts to an even positions on issues drawn from left-wing agendas; more precarious seven out of thirty-six. There were they decided it was time for text selection to be by quotas to fill and “dead white males” had to be politically correct quotas. sacrificed. In regard to the domination of the curriculum In the March 2019 issue of the VCAA Bulletin, the by the politically correct Left, we have reached the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority next stage in the political-correctness revolution. proudly announced: “As we approach International The culprit behind this development is the steady Women’s Day on Friday 8 March, for the first rise in popularity of postmodern theoretical time the number of works written by women on perspectives in the education bureaucracy. And the VCE English and English as an Additional it seems that no one was there behind the scenes Language (EAL) and VCE Literature text lists to shout: Have you forgotten something? We are exceeds the number of works written by men.” This supposed to be teaching English! is a statement more suited to a political activist than To be selected for the text list, it is now no to an educator. Although this admission was made longer good enough to be left-wing; if an author is to their own in-crowd, at least they have finally male or white he may not make the cut. Yes, they come clean. There was a political agenda behind are choosing texts for study, or rejecting them, their text sections after all. They were using the according to the gender or colour of the author or text list to wage their own war against patriarchy. the gender or colour of the main protagonists in the And notice the casual reference to International story. Yes, it has come to that. Women’s Day, taking it for granted that we should In 2018, Year 12 students could be asked to all accept that this or any other politicised day critically compare Anna Funder’s Stasiland to should have anything to do with the content of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. But in 2019, the English course. Year 12 students could be asked to compare Anna With these education elites only able to rotate on Funder’s Stasiland to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let or off the list about 25 per cent of the texts each year, Me Go. Anna Funder’s text stayed on. She’s female. it is clear that they have been pursuing this agenda But George Orwell was dropped. He’s male and for a while and the text list for 2018 was already white. Kazuo Ishiguro was added. He is of Japanese stacked to a stage just short of when they could ancestry but raised in Britain. (He can therefore be make their triumphant political announcement. classified as “Asian”.) There were still a few of those pesky male authors Comparing Anna Funder’s examination of to kick off the list. But with that finally achieved, it life in totalitarian communist East Germany was time to celebrate. And let’s not forget that some to George Orwell’s philosophical critique of of those pesky white authors had to go as well. Stalinist totalitarianism (presented in the form of a novel) made great sense. It was a worthy ow did it get to this? First, the rise and rise of educational exercise. Comparing Funder’s work of the politically correct Left has, since the 1960s, literary journalism and social history to Ishiguro’s goneH through successive stages, becoming more

60 Quadrant September 2020 Too Male or Too White: Selecting Texts for Schools audacious in its demands as its successes mounted is drawn on as a rationalisation by the politically and as its control of key socialising institutions con- correct Left to bring in the kinds of reforms they solidated. In addition, it has simultaneously been always wanted to bring in anyway. If they consulted informed and transformed by the rise of postmod- these racially and ethnically diverse families they ernism, which helped to radicalise its demands. It might discover that they have different opinions on is largely due to the influence of postmodernism the manner in which they would like to see their that the politically correct Left has, on many fronts, children educated. become obsessed with pursuing its reform agendas The survey highlighted the preponderance of by applying quotas (determined on the basis of race, novels and other traditional forms of literature on ethnicity, class, gender and sexual preference) and the curriculum. Taking its cue from postmodernism the politicised academics and bureaucrats in the and its tendency to consider all text types “to be education system are part of this trend. equally worthy” regardless of whether they are Let’s examine a crucial document in regard to of high culture or popular culture, the document this shift towards text selection by quotas. It is a advocated the inclusion of “video games” as texts survey of VCE English text lists over a ten-year to be studied in English classrooms. And from a period from 2010 to 2019: A Report on Trends in background of postmodernism and constructivist Senior English Text-Lists. It was conducted by two educational theory the document argued that these academics at the University of Melbourne who video games are relevant to young people’s lives. had direct experience in English (I hope these video games were text selection for the Year 12 designed by women, otherwise: curriculum, Alexander Bacalja he often repeated Oops! There goes our gender and Lauren Bliss. It articulates the T balance.) Of course, the inclusion thinking behind the push to have expressions “education of video games as texts would more female authors than male has lost its way” or mean that other texts would have authors on the English text list. It to be pushed off the list. This is a document that provides insights “political correctness advocacy reveals a postmodern into the thinking behind the next gone too far” mindset evident among education phase in the political correctness seem pathetically elites, a mindset that has moved revolution. It is a document dramatically away from prioritising dripping with postmodernism. inadequate to describe educating young people about the The well-known and often the anti-educational history of literature and its major repeated expressions “education works. has lost its way” or “political thinking behind correctness gone too far” seem this document. ou can graduate from high pathetically inadequate to describe school in Australia and not the anti-educational thinking Yknow nearly as much as you could behind this document. It is evidence of the elites or should. As a private tutor, too often I find myself in the education system waging war on their own in discussions with concerned parents about their culture (while unsuspecting taxpayers are paying son’s computer-game addiction. When I first meet for it). these parents, they plead with me to do what I can With the research having been funded by the to guide and inspire their son to read quality litera- Victorian Association for the Teaching of English ture. Many of these parents are Asian. I’m sure that (VATE) and the University of Melbourne, the these parents, and others, will be very impressed if document stated in its preface that it is “advocating the study of “video games” is added to the English for greater diversity” in text section. And, as we curriculum. well know, “diversity” means diversity in terms of The survey also found that most of the texts were race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexual preference, set in Britain, North America, Australia and New not diversity of ideas. And this inevitably means Zealand. This is hardly surprising, since the subject rejecting white males because that is the only way is English and these are mostly English-speaking that this “diversity” can be achieved. And because regions that have produced English literature. But so many authors in the history of literature are to the postmodern, post-colonial, politically correct white males, this means rejecting a great deal of mindset, this constitutes a problem. Those are places our literary heritage (including some of the finest where white people are found. Apparently, there contributions) on the basis of race and gender. were not enough texts set in Asia, Africa and South Again, in this document, that old trick of using America. They even provided a bar-chart to show the racial and ethnic diversity of the population it. To the postmodern, post-colonial, politically

Quadrant September 2020 61 Too Male or Too White: Selecting Texts for Schools correct mindset, this graph reveals something that up wrecking everything. has to be addressed. This tendency to never be satisfied is also evident Text selection is therefore not to be about in the way the document complained about the choosing historically significant, quality literature content of the texts set in Australia, even though regardless of race or ethnicity; it’s about choosing the Australian texts have been almost universally texts on the basis of race and ethnicity. As the politically correct and left-wing since long before document argued, the “majority of Australians the period covered in this survey. Amusingly, they born abroad are from Asia, and not Europe”. even summarised the variety of “themes” of the Again, Asians (who are never consulted on these texts set in Australia in postmodern, politically matters) are used by the postmodern, post-colonial, correct terms as: “Race”, “Religion” (which is a politically correct elites to rationalise bringing subset of ethnicity), “Class” and “Gender”. But about the changes that these postmodern, post- this was not good enough. Apparently, the texts colonial, politically correct elites want for education were too male, too white and there were not nearly in Australia. enough texts created by “indigenous” authors or In regard to the gender of authors, the document featuring indigenous themes and issues. made its feminist political objectives clear: “a The conclusion of the document was predictable. deep engagement with literature and the arts in a Although the document claimed that there were classroom environment can have positive effects on some “positive trends”, such as achieving gender gender bias and carries with it the potential to alter “equality” in terms of male and female authorship sexist views of authors and creators”. This is social and in the balance of genders among the main engineering, not education. Education is about characters, it sternly noted that “the privileging of providing knowledge and developing skills, but the texts from the British Isles was alarming”. Again, focus here is on changing views that the politically comments like this make you wonder whether these correct do not like. The document also lamented postmodern educators have completely forgotten that there were no “transgender” authors on the that they are supposed to teaching English. lists. This part of the document also expressed the displeasure that it is mostly “male authors and et’s apply their postmodern, politically correct creators who form the ‘canon’ of Western literature thinking to other subjects to see how absurd this and the arts”. Hence, according to the principles thinkingL has become. Suppose you were to study one articulated in this document, male authors, like of the most widely spoken languages in the world, George Orwell, had to go. And if this document is Mandarin Chinese, and there was a literature com- as influential as its insider authors hope it to be, you ponent to the subject. Despite this being a major can expect other male authors from the canon to international language (as English is), you would follow him. A graph in the document showed that expect to mostly be studying Chinese authors who by 2019 the number of female authors outnumbered set their stories in China. You would not demand the number of male authors. So, this problem had that Chinese education authorities balance the gen- been, in their opinion, fixed. But to stay fixed, ders and races of the authors or the global settings selection decisions on the basis of the gender of the of the texts to include more white people. Instead, authors will have to continue. you would expect them to deliver the best course in The document also complained that too many Mandarin Chinese that they could provide. of the main characters in the texts are male, and I am interested in psychology. Many of the best it included a graph to show this. But they were authors on the subject are Jewish people. Should I pleased to point out that by 2019 this imbalance read the texts that I believe will be the most inform- had also been fixed. There was now an equality of ative, or subject my choices to quotas, to try to bal- male and female main characters among the thirty- ance my text choices with more Muslim authors? six texts on the list. I’m sure you are all delighted Would this be a fruitful way to approach the subject? to hear that. However, the document went on My interests in psychology and literature led me to complain at length that there was an “over- to research the genre of romantic fiction. It is one representation of heterosexual characters”. And of the most successful genres in publishing, con- this proves a point about the dangers in appeasing stituting at least a third of all fiction sold. Almost postmodernists. No matter what you do to please all the authors of romantic fiction are women who them, they are never satisfied. The more you do write for women. If you read about the art of writing to appease them, the more they find to complain romantic fiction, as I have done, you inevitably find about. They are condemned with the affliction of yourself reading from the experts—who are women. permanent outrage. They are people to be pitied Should my reading have followed quotas so that half rather than followed. If you follow them, you end of the authors I consulted were male?

62 Quadrant September 2020 Too Male or Too White: Selecting Texts for Schools

I am also interested in military history and the- dal text was set in China but featured indigenous ory. Consequently, I have read Sun Tzu’s The Art of themes and had a gender balance between the male War. I did not choose this text because the author is and female lead characters, some of whom were gay. Asian. I chose the text because the author is a philo- Texts should be chosen for educational reasons, sophical genius and I would be enriched by reading because of their literary merit, historical significance, him. Great literature is there for us all to appreciate, and their cultural and aesthetic value. Choosing regardless of the race or gender of the authors. texts by politically correct quotas is wrong. It is representative of an education establishment that s we enter the era of postmodern, politically has forgotten its proper role. Choosing texts by correct text selection by quota, it may soon quotas should be stopped. beA less likely that high schools will be introducing young people to great literature like Homer’s Iliad or Dr Mark Lopez teaches English in Melbourne. This Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Instead, the ultimate edited extract is from the forthcoming book School Sucks: text set for study would be one that was written by A Report on the State of Education in the Politically a transsexual, Aboriginal lesbian whose multimo- Correct Era, to be published by Connor Court.

The Greyhound & The Angel

In the interests of keeping up with the times and remaining relevant the greyhound and the angel had both decided that it was time for a change, so they closed their doors and engaged the old black horse since he was so conveniently located just opposite on St Clement’s Street and had recently completed post-graduate degrees in marketing, communication, sales, the digital economy and unconscious bias. After sixteen weeks, a scoping study and ten project progress meetings in his establishment for which neither the greyhound nor the angel received any sort of client discount whatsoever, the old black horse delivered a presentation recommending continuity in order to preserve the historical thread within the greater fabric of the community, suggesting only a subtle, considered brand refresh to show no fear of change. The Angel & Greyhound opened its doors the following Monday just in time for the new term, which worked out quite well as the Old Black Horse opposite had closed for an indeterminate period, its proprietor having apparently come into funds and thought to be busy applying them to travel, revelry, and high times, the likes of which a more honest horse isn’t likely ever to see.

Finn Brooke

Quadrant September 2020 63 John Whitehall

The Short March Through the Family Court

n pursuit of Marxist revolution, Antonio ing” the transgender experience, and the dark web Gramsci declared the primacy of winning the recruiting and directing, the “great chains of infor- battle of ideas: of altering the “common sense” mation and indoctrination” for sexual revolution ofI society and its institutions. The German com- are being secured, under the blessing of “enlight- munist Rudi Dutschke declared the necessity for ened” clergy. a “long march through the institutions”, alluding The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation to the 4000-mile trek Chinese communists under- Agency may also become an instrument for hege- took to secure refuge in Yan’an in preparation for monic change: a new Code of Conduct may deem it ultimate victory. The American Marxist Herbert unprofessional for a doctor to “broadcast” opinions Marcuse assured Dutschke that his was the “only contrary to those of the regulating authorities, thus effective way”, deploring the situation in 1971 in undermining “community trust”. As many regula- which “the radical Left has no equal access to the tory authorities have swung towards compliance great chains of information and indoctrination”. with the ideology of gender fluidity, de-registration One institution in Australia whose “common for such dissent is implied. sense” has been dramatically altered in recent years This article will review the surrender of the is the Family Court. Over the “common sense” that Family Court of Australia to the ideology of gen- boys and girls are binary entities in accordance with der fluidity by reference to several cases. It will, their XY and XX chromosomes, has triumphed the however, end on a note of optimism. As a number revolutionary ideology of gender fluidity in which of communists ultimately deplored “The God that the mind supersedes biology, gender is how you Failed” and returned to common sense, it appears feel, and hormones and surgery should be employed just possible that the Family Court has begun to to rearrange the body to please the mind. discern the delusion of the doctrines of gender flu- No long march has preceded the supremacy idity, and the dangers of its drugs. of gender fluidity in the institution of the Family Court. It took only thirteen years for the court to ertain things need to be emphasised. Childhood abrogate its protective role for children confused gender confusion was rare but is increasing over gender identity in favour of the sexual Left. Cdramatically. The great majority of those affected will Along the way it vacillated, then capitulated to orientate, through puberty, to an identity congruent uncritical facilitation of its practices, then sought with their chromosomes. Counselling for individual to abandon the field. and family predispositions, with psychiatric care Of course, Gramsci was not fixated on one insti- of co-morbid mental disorder, has been shown to tution. To the contrary, he desired to supplant the help that process. Such psychotherapy, however, is “bourgeois hegemony” of ideas with the revolution- now decried, may be banned and even criminalised ary ones of Marx throughout society—from politi- as “conversion therapy” by political proponents cal parties and legislation, to schools, the media of gender fluidity. “Conversion therapy” is an and churches. And, with Labor governments in Orwellian term meaning converting a child back to Queensland, Victoria and the ACT seeking to the sexual identity decreed by its chromosomes. The institutionalise the ideology of gender fluidity by term brings to mind the imposition of hormones, banning alternatives to transgendering confused castration and lobotomy upon homosexuals to children, with children being taught the possibil- produce heterosexual attraction. Ironically, in ity of alternative gender identity in Orwellian “safe the attempt to convert the bodies of children to schools” programs, with mainstream media “puff- those desired by their minds, the Family Court

64 Quadrant September 2020 The Short March Through the Family Court has approved the administration of those same Mathew (2018) may pave the way for genital surgery. hormones, despite their likelihood to induce Finally, there is no evidence that gender dys- chemical castration and cerebral dysfunction. The phoria per se leads to suicide, but co-morbid mental Family Court has already approved mastectomies, disorders such as depression, anxiety and autism and may be facilitating, not simply surgical are known for such proclivity. Gender-confused castration, but the entire re-engineering of genital children need compassionate care, part of which tracts. may involve prevention of transgendering, with its Hormonal therapy has two components, with twenty-to-thirty-times greater rate of suicide than the first usually leading to the second. Twenty years in the ordinary adult population. ago a drug was developed that would interrupt the cascade of hormones that began in the brain and hough Marion’s case in the High Court in 1992 continued to the gonads, resulting in puberty and antedated by a decade the beginning of the the maintenance of sexual characteristics. The drug surgeT of gender dysphoria, its considerations remain blocked the production of one of the hormones near basic to Family Court decisions regarding that con- the beginning of that cascade, becoming known as dition. Marion was a fourteen-year-old mentally the “puberty blocker”, whose administration com- retarded girl whose parents sought authority for prised Stage 1 of the “Dutch Protocol” (developed sterilisation to relieve stresses of menstruation and in a clinic in Holland) for transgendering. Though unwanted pregnancy. The court refused authorisa- it is asserted throughout Family Court delibera- tion, arguing the intervention was non-therapeutic, tions that blockers are “safe and entirely reversible”, irreversible, invasive and associated with a signifi- international research proves otherwise. cant risk of the wrong decision being made whose The blocked hormone has roles other than in consequences were grave. the vertical cascade to the gonads. It has horizon- “Non-therapeutic” treatment was defined as tal connections throughout the brain, including the “inappropriate or disproportionate having regard amygdala, in the limbic system which co-ordinates to cosmetic deformity, pathological condition or emotions, cognition, memory and reward into a psychological disorder for which the treatment is kind of inner identity. The blocked hormone also administered, and of treatment which is adminis- connects with a primary centre of sexualisation tered chiefly for other purposes”. Whether gender in the mid-brain (as well, of course, as invoking dysphoria is a disorder deserving “therapeutic inter- secondary sexualisation by the sex hormones from vention”, and whether the affected young person is the gonads). Administration of “blockers” neuters capable of giving informed consent, are two issues a child in an immature state of sexual and psycho- of Marion’s case that continue to rankle. logical development, interferes with limbic func- Regarding consent, precedent was found in the tion of identity, and blocks the normal processes ruling of the UK House of Lords in 1985, when a of sexualisation. On blockers, the limbic systems Mrs Victoria Gillick had contested, unsuccessfully, of sheep have revealed structural and functional that children under sixteen were not competent to change associated with reduced function in mazes, consent for contraception. The Lords declared such increased emotional lability, and a preference for consent was possible if the adolescent possessed the familiar over the novel. “sufficient understanding and intelligence to … Blockers are used, their advocates say, to provide fully understand what is proposed”. The Australian more time for consideration of sexual identity. But High Court concurred: its authorisation would not the blocking of Nature’s methods of establishing be needed for interventions involving “malfunction that identity renders that claim biologically implau- or disease”, given “for the traditional medical pur- sible. By increasing emotional lability, blockers may pose of preserving life”, and with the consent of a complicate mental disorders, of which gender con- “Gillick-competent” child. Though easily defined, fusion is one symptom. By maintaining a desire for assessment and relevance of Gillick competence the familiar, the novelty of puberty is more likely to have remained flexible and, one way or another, be eschewed, promoting passage to Stage 2 therapy, have not stood in the way of transgendering. the administration of cross-sex hormones. Though From this uncertain background, the march of many side-effects of Stage 2 hormones have been gender fluidity began in 2004 with thirteen-year-old admitted in Family Court proceedings, proponents Alex, born female but identifying as male, seeking have refrained from discussing effects on the grow- authorisation for suppression of menstruation. ing brain. The case was complicated by uncertainty of Stage 3 therapy has been defined as the irrevers- Gillick competence, and such family disruption ible changes inflicted by surgery, but Family Court that Alex had been taken into care. Alex suffered has approved mastectomies on adolescents, and re from depression and “perceptual disturbances” in

Quadrant September 2020 65 The Short March Through the Family Court which he “could hear his own voice or the voice confirmed by research to be pursued sometime in of his [dead] father” and felt that “somebody can the future. Furthermore, the judge declared, “so far read my mind and the thoughts in my mind”. as Stage 2 is concerned I am satisfied that it would Nevertheless, it was decided he would benefit from be possible to reverse that treatment”. The judge’s hormonal suppression of menses prior to initiation optimism was unfettered by stories, now emerging of “irreversible” cross-sex hormone therapy when from de-transitioners, of the impossibility of undo- aged sixteen. The judge did “wonder” if gender ing damage. dysphoria was a “disease or malfunction” or a Re Jamie (2011) was the beginning of the saga variant of normal sexuality. of a ten-year-old natal boy, identifying as female, In 2009, the Family Court authorised bilateral that continued into the Full Court. Though Jamie mastectomies for Alex, contrary to international was declared Gillick-competent to receive puberty guidelines against irreversible surgery on children blockers (at an age lower than then recommended), under eighteen. The court argued that should he the court was informed “it was difficult to ensure” change his mind “the disadvantages would be Jamie understood “the full and extensive ramifica- minimal as Alex could have reconstructive breast tions of such decisions, especially in the long term”. surgery and use means other than breastfeeding to Nevertheless, the Family Court declared that block- feed a baby”, thus reducing the role of breasts to ers were “safe and entirely reversible” and there was cosmetic appendages. no need for their authorisation by the court. Re Brodie (2008) concerned a thirteen-year-old The court decided, however, that the nature of natal female adamant she was a boy. Brodie existed Stage 2 therapy needed its continued authorisation. in a “tremendous state of turmoil If Gillick-competent, the child and anger” at betrayal by an aban- would be authorised to consent. doning father, but therapists argued he judge appeared If not, the court would determine puberty blockers would reduce “hos- T the child’s “best interests”. Four tility and anxiety”, assuring their satisfied that an years later, Jamie was suffering as effects were “completely reversible”. absence of brain a “pre-pubescent girl … [who] does The judge congratulated Brodie for not resemble her female peers, par- having therapists who “continue to damage in the present ticularly in terms of development keep up with research”. would be confirmed of the breasts”. The court author- The “Dutch Protocol” was intro- by research to be ised oestrogen therapy, again when duced in re Bernadette (2010). Based younger than recommended. on the ideology that gender identity pursued sometime Re Sam and Terry (2013) con- was determined by the mind, not in the future. cerned a natal boy identifying as a the “genitalia or other aspects of girl, and a girl as a boy. Both were … physical appearance or presen- sixteen, and both were deemed tation”, distress from incongruence between mind Gillick-incompetent. Sam was essentially house- and body could be addressed by three stages of bound with mental disorder. Terry had Asperger’s therapy which sought to align the body with the syndrome. A psychiatrist opined that gender dys- mind. phoria does not require psychiatric treatment: The judge, however, was not convinced trans- “what it requires is gender transition which is a sexualism was a “normally occurring factor of medical and surgical process”. Stage 2 therapies human development”, concluding “it was in the were approved, in their “best interests”. best interests of every child” for the Family Court The court reaffirmed its need to be the “deci- to retain authorising power. Then, for the first and sion maker” regarding advanced therapy for gender almost last time in Family Court history, concerns dysphoria, citing re Jane and the need to prevent of “potential damage to the brain” by puberty block- the removal of a “girl’s clitoris for religious or ers were raised. The judge, nevertheless, declared he quasi-cultural reasons, and of the sterilisation of a was “satisfied” Stage 1 therapy was reversible despite perfectly healthy girl for misguided, albeit sincere “the British view … that brain development contin- reasons”. The court appeared convinced that sur- ues throughout adolescence” and that blockage may gical interventions on the reproductive systems of incur “potential damage”. The judge was persuaded gender-confused adolescents, including castration, by Dutch professors who commented on “the need would be “guided”, and not derived from cultural for a study on the brains of adolescent transsexuals influences. to endeavour to detect functional effect and diffi- In re Cameron (2015), the judge evinced pleas- culties”. Thus, the judge appeared satisfied that an ure that gender identity incongruent with chromo- absence of brain damage in the present would be somes was “not now generally considered a mental

66 Quadrant September 2020 The Short March Through the Family Court illness” and though the natal girl “did not have full development” creates its own “psychological stress” understanding”, authorised Stage 2 therapy. and, therefore, Stage 2 should start at a lower age than the sixteen years recommended internationally, when y 2016, certitude of the positive effects of hor- the “diagnosis is clear cut”. The Australian Standards monal therapy had become utopian. In re Celeste, of Care and Treatment Guidelines for Transgender Bconcerning a natal male transitioning to female, it and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents, prom- was declared that Stage 2 therapy “would main- ulgated in 2018 by the Royal Children’s Hospital, tain … self-esteem, retain … congruence of self as Melbourne, would concur. a young woman and facilitate her normative psy- In re Darryl (2016) an expert witness boldly chological, social and sexual development”. Judicial declared that the natal female child who was prone credulity in such prophecies was not challenged by to depression and self-harming did not possess “the the prior history of Asperger’s syndrome, attention competency to consent to irreversible treatment” deficit/hyperactivity syndrome, and language disor- and “given the grave consequences, I am not per- der which had reduced Celeste’s capacity for educa- suaded that most minors would be in the position to tion, nor the admission, in the court, that she “does fully understand the implications of irreversible hor- not understand everything that is said to her”. mone treatment over the entire lifespan”. The judge In re Gabrielle, the court found oestrogens to be disagreed, declaring “there can be no doubt” about necessary for another natal male to “continue living Darryl’s competence, adding he did “not accept happily”. Their denial “would result in a loss of rec- the words ‘understand fully’ require a child to have ognition and validity of her sense of self … depres- achieved the maximum understanding which later sion and anxiety [will] increase and [she] will be at years may give them when their brain and personal- greater risk of self harm and death from suicide”. ity are fully developed”. Paradoxically, it was asserted that should Gabrielle That year, 2016, ended with a call, in re Lucas, change her mind and wish to re-align identity with for the abolition of the authorising role of the court chromosomes at some future stage, despite all her for Stage 2 therapy. Regarding a seventeen-year- previous mental co-morbidities (and the irretriev- old natal girl seeking authority for testosterone, the able consequences of transgendering therapy), “she judge declared “an urgent need for statutory inter- has the thoughtfulness and creativity to be able to vention … to undo the consequences of re Jamie”, manage … de-transition comfortably”. thus leaving the administration of both Stage 1 and Hyperbole of outcome combined with silence on Stage 2 to the medical proponents of gender fluidity. side-effects is unusual in medical practice. Given In February 2017, the first of Kelvin’s cases author- the political introduction of this article, the word ised administration of testosterone to a sixteen-year- propaganda is evoked, as are the words of Lenin, old natal female, while referring consideration of Gramsci’s mentor: “Telling the truth is a bourgeois the necessity for that role to the Full Court. Kelvin prejudice. Deception, on the other hand, is often had come from a broken home and, living with his justified by the goal.” father, was estranged from his mother. When nine, In 2016, approval for mastectomies continued. Re he had “discovered the concept of transgender in Lincoln concerned a natal female who had been on a book and immediately identified with it”. Social blockers for two years and cross-sex hormones for transgendering had begun by thirteen years, but six months. A medical doctor supported the mas- was complicated by “anxiety and depression” that tectomies. While acknowledging that Lincoln was interrupted schooling. A psychiatrist prophesied “not very knowledgeable about … side-effects and that testosterone would “further align [his] physical complications”, the doctor assured the court that gender characteristics with his inner gender iden- this “did not strike me as being out of keeping with tity”, promoting “a healthy and integrated identity, his stage of development”. The judge concluded that positive self-concept” which would evolve into a Lincoln was competent to consent, but equivocated: “healthy and well-adjusted adult”. There had, how- “if I am wrong … I accept the submission of all ever, already been “noticeable” improvements dur- parties that the proposed treatment is in the best ing twelve months of psychotherapy: “despite brief interests of Lincoln”. moments of dysphoria [his] underlying attitude and Re Lincoln paved the way for surgical transgen- confidence has improved”, but these were attributed dering of children. The court could not understand to transgendering rather than any general matura- how a child could consent to Stage 2 hormonal ther- tion, and testosterone was encouraged. apy but not Stage 3 surgical therapy, because both In November 2017, in the next stage of Kelvin, were “irreversible”. It also paved the way for earlier the Full Court surrendered its gate-keeping role for administration of cross-sex hormones: one therapist Stage 2 therapy. It revisited Marion’s case but was declared that “lagging behind their peers in pubertal assured gender dysphoria was, indeed, a disorder for

Quadrant September 2020 67 The Short March Through the Family Court which Stage 2 therapy was appropriately and pro- under the age of eighteen is contrary to international portionately “therapeutic”. The Full Court claimed guidelines, rulings by the Family Court have been it was “readily apparent the judicial understanding characterised by flexibility. of Gender Dysphoria and its treatment have fallen In May 2020, in re Imogen, all that remained for behind the advances in medical science”. One such completion of the march of the sexual Left appeared proffered advance was “the experience of the gender to be resolution of difficulties caused by a dissenting service of the Royal Children’s Hospital … that 96% parent. Imogen was an allegedly (but questionably) of patients continue … to identify as transgender Gillick-competent sixteen-year-old natal male who into late adolescence and so one sees some evidence sought authorisation for cross-sex hormone therapy there about persistence of gender dysphoria”. with support from doctors and father, in opposition The court’s acceptance of this experiment as to the mother who had appealed and received the “science” was unchallenged. No one emphasised the right for a second opinion. A third group, supported need for therapeutic controls, independent evalua- by “a number of women’s organisations in Australia” tion, blinded administration, biological plausibility, sought permission to raise concerns about “the cur- and absence of contrary effects in animal models. rent orthodox medical treatment of children”, “the None of the five intervening parties impact of aggressive transactiv- mentioned psychological obstacles ism on organisations established to to leaving “The Protocol”, includ- he question is how protect human rights”, the “many ing the pressures of authority and T developments that raise questions custom, and loss of celebrity. Sheep the sexual Left has about the merits of gender affirm- studies would provide biologi- been able to dominate ing in all cases”, the capacity of a cal understanding of resistance to minor to consent to transgendering change. The Full Court declared the court to the procedures, and the need to “revisit that “in no case has contradic- virtual exclusion of the notion of the ‘mature minor’ as tory evidence been forthcoming promulgated 35 years ago” in the … to challenge the desirability of all contrary opinion, Gillick case. The group questioned the relevant treatment”, apparently apparently leading the decision of the Full Court without wondering how such con- judges to conclude regarding Kelvin, declaring it “was tradiction might appear without a stated case and not a defended invitation. that no such contrary case and therefore the court should In March 2018, in re Mathew, opinion existed not be guided entirely by that case the revolutionary ideology of gender which was based on limited and fluidity appeared to have neared the or was worthy of largely untested medical evidence”. end of its march. Having abrogated consideration. The judge did not approve of this its role with hormones, the Family external intervention but did make Court would now do so for geni- an extraordinary statement. In his tal surgeries, as suggested in re Leo. Mathew was a summary, he declared, “questions in this case ... may sixteen-year-old natal female seeking and receiving be whether a court order is necessary for Imogen authorisation for bilateral mastectomies. The judge, to have gender affirming therapy. This potentially however, went further, declaring: could involve a reconsideration of whether or not Stage 2 treatment (and possibly Stage 1 treatment) is where the subject child has been diagnosed non-therapeutic”. as suffering from Gender Dysphoria, where Using the analogy of Mao’s march, the statement treating practitioners have agreed that the raises the possibility that diagnosis and manage- subject child is Gillick competent, where ment of childhood gender dysphoria may be forced it is agreed that the proposed treatment is to return to Jianxi, whence it began. It suddenly therapeutic and where there is no controversy, raises the concept that “common sense” may have no application to the Family Court is necessary begun to reject the hegemony of Gramsci and the before Stage 3 treatment for Gender Dysphoria sexual Left in the Family Court. Perhaps external can proceed. questioning of the Dutch Protocol publicity has infiltrated the court. Perhaps the growing phenom- Leaving no room for misinterpretation, the enon of de-transitioning has been noticed. Perhaps court defined Stage 3 treatment to include, but not Arthur Koestlers have arisen to condemn “the god be limited to, chest reconstructive surgery, phallo- of gender fluidity that has failed”. Who knows? But plasty, hysterectomy, salpingectomy, creation of a the outcome of the next stage of Imogen is awaited neo-vagina and vaginoplasty. Though such surgery with bated breath.

68 Quadrant September 2020 The Short March Through the Family Court

he question is how the sexual Left has been able Proponents for transgendering dismissed the to dominate the court to the virtual exclusion arguments: they were not contained in a “peer Tof all contrary opinion, apparently leading judges to reviewed” journal, represented mere “personal opin- conclude that no such contrary opinion existed or ion”, gave unwarranted prominence to animal stud- was worthy of consideration. My experience exem- ies, and wrongly ascribed as “side-effect” the impact plifies the problem. of cross-sex hormones on the human brain which is One of my Quadrant articles, “The Family Court “an expected part of the physical, psychological and Must Protect Gender-Dysphoric Children”, was emotional changes”. Rapid shrinkage of the adult received into evidence in re Rae, concerning oes- male brain on oestrogen, revealed by Pol et al, was trogen therapy for a seventeen-year-old natal male, a “not surprising” documentation of “subtle brain deemed Gillick-incompetent, with Asperger’s syn- changes”. drome. Declaring that “it is important for the Court Another of my Quadrant articles, “Childhood to be as well informed as possible about the potential Gender Dysphoria and the Law” was brought, a consequences”, the judge distributed the Quadrant week later, before the Full Court in re Kelvin, but article, which comprised international research on its contents were not acknowledged. Interestingly, natural recovery under “watchful waiting”, co-mor- my name was misspelt differently in both courts, bid mental disorder, lack of specific association with precluding electronic reference. suicide, biological implausibility, prominence of side effects and lack of evidence for benefit, concluding Dr John Whitehall is a professor of paediatrics at a “instead of rescinding their protective role, courts Sydney university. He has written several articles for should call for the regulation of unproven, invasive Quadrant on childhood gender dysphoria. A referenced irreversible therapy on unwitting children”. version of this article appears at Quadrant Online.

Angela

I saw my mother broken with a stroke, sitting by the window in her chair. My mind slipped: my heart felt it would die: my breathing froze upon the sunlit air. Sitting by the window in her chair my mother’s girlish body looked the same. In pretty clothes and rings, her hair brushed neat: I waited at the door and spoke her name. My mind slipped: my heart felt it would die: too soft my voice; so still she looked away. I walked towards her with my words of love. Each step compressed the memories of this day. My breathing froze upon the sunlit air. It fell in beads of ice across the floor. I watched her bedroom eyes turn to my own, but her smile had left her face for evermore. I saw my mother broken with a stroke. In the silence of the room Fate travelled me. Never have I known such raw despair, nor fought so hard to hold my sanity.

Caroline Smith Glen

Quadrant September 2020 69 Douglas Drummond

The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police

he Catholic Church and its bishops have been of June 14, 2002, just before his first trial in 1993 subjected to a lot of deserved criticism by the Ridsdale told his family of his crimes. One family Royal Commission, the media, abuse victims member asked: “How many, Gerald. Four, or five?” Tand others for their failures to deal with the sexual “Hundreds,” was his reply. abuse of children by many of their priests, particu- The commission at the start of its discussion of larly over the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s. Ridsdale in the Case Study 28 Final Report said, “By Victoria Police has largely escaped criticism, though at least December 1992, Victoria Police were investi- it made similar failures during this same period. At gating Ridsdale in relation to child sexual offences.” its first public session in August 2015, the commis- The “at least” here may have been a delphic refer- sion said that, as well as religious institutions, the ence by the commission to the police investigation police force was one of the types of institution it of Ridsdale sixteen years earlier. Victoria Police had would be investigating. detailed knowledge that Ridsdale was an offender In its Final Report in Case Study 28, the Royal against children as far back as early 1976. The com- Commission said: mission set out some of this evidence but passed over it without comment, critical or otherwise. All The scope and purpose of Part Two of that case it said in its Final Report in Case Study 28 about study involving the Ballarat Diocese was to Victoria Police’s knowledge of Ridsdale by early inquire into: 1976 was this: 1. the response of the Diocese and of other Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat to Mr Colin Mooney was a Victorian police allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy officer and in charge of Bendigo CIB. In 1976, or religious he obtained a statement from at least one boy 2. the response of Victoria Police to in Inglewood that Ridsdale had indecently allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy assaulted him. Mr Mooney provided the or religious which took place within the Catholic statement to Bishop Mulkearns. According to Diocese of Ballarat. Mr Mooney, Bishop Mulkearns said he would put Ridsdale in hospital for counselling. The commission made a full inquiry into the first item. But its inquiry into the second item was in a Another passage in this final report notes that number of respects surprisingly deficient. “Bishop Mulkearns met with Ridsdale and Mr Mooney, a police officer from Bendigo CIB, in sepa- rate meetings on the same day in mid-January 1976.” Father Gerald Ridsdale The passage concludes with findings about Bishop erald Ridsdale was probably the worst of the Mulkearns’s knowledge of Ridsdale’s wrong-doing. many paedophile priests in Victoria, if not The Final Report also noted: GAustralia. Much of his offending took place in parishes in the Ballarat Diocese. The commission After one or two sessions, Dr Evans, Ridsdale’s said Ridsdale was convicted in 1993 and later on counsellor, received a phone call from someone of sexual offences against a total of sixty-five chil- who identified himself as the policeman from dren aged as young as four years old which occurred Bendigo who was investigating the allegations from the 1960s to the 1980s. This was only part of of sexual abuse. This policeman told him they his criminal activities: according to the Age report would not be pressing charges against Ridsdale

70 Quadrant September 2020 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police

but that the police thought Ridsdale was guilty Sampson told Mooney that Ridsdale’s activities at and should have therapy. Inglewood “were pretty common knowledge all through the Catholic congregation, everyone you The Royal Commission did not think this behav- would speak to knew about it”. Unlike Detective iour by a police officer in 1976 worth either comment Denis Ryan at Mildura in the same period, Sergeant or further investigation. Nor so far as I am aware Sampson did not make any attempt to see if evi- did any in the media or anyone else. dence could be obtained in Inglewood that might To get a fuller picture of the extent of Victoria enable the prosecution of Ridsdale. The commission Police’s knowledge of Ridsdale’s sexual abuse of chil- showed no interest in why the sergeant acted in this dren as far back as 1976 it is necessary to go beyond way. the commission’s report, to Cardinal Pell’s cross- Former Chief Commissioner Mick Miller, in his examination by the commission’s senior counsel on evidence about the Monsignor Day cover-up (see March 1, 2016. From this we learn that Detective below) said: Mooney went to Bishop Mulkearns with informa- tion about Ridsdale’s criminal activities because he This entire episode was a shameful event in was told to do so by the Child Exploitation Squad the history of Victoria Police. It might well be of Victoria Police, which also told him to inform the remembered as a definite disincentive to others, bishop of the complaint about Ridsdale. The com- confronted by a similar set of circumstances, to mission did not say what information that Victorian emulate former Senior Detective Denis Ryan’s police squad had about him, though senior counsel peerless, principled performance of his sworn showed Pell the squad’s 1976 report. duty. The commission did not criticise Victoria Police for failing to stop Ridsdale’s abuse of children from The commission said of Miller’s comment, “We 1976 until 1992. It was, however, strongly critical of agree”. It showed no curiosity, however, in finding Bishop Mulkearns’s failure to do that. For example: out if Miller’s assessment was correct. Might the example of Ryan’s well-publicised career-ending On 16 January 1976, three days after Bishop misstep in 1972 in trying to charge an abusive priest Mulkearns had met with Ridsdale and the police explain why none of the Child Exploitation Squad, officer from Bendigo, Ridsdale was appointed Detective Mooney or Sergeant Sampson pursued parish priest of Bungaree … it was inexcusably another abusive priest, Ridsdale, four years later, wrong for Bishop Mulkearns to have done so though “the police thought Ridsdale was guilty”? [that is, to place Ridsdale in another parish The commission did not suggest that the restric- situation] … It showed complete disregard for tive evidentiary rules I mention below in the Day the safety and welfare of children in the Parish matter might be the explanation for the failure of of Bungaree. Victoria Police to stop Ridsdale in 1976. The com- ... ments by the numerous judges who sentenced It is appalling that Bishop Mulkearns, knowing Ridsdale between 1994 and 2020 record that he of Ridsdale’s history of offending, did not used the privacy of the confessional to sexually report to the police or adequately inform Father abuse a number of his child victims in the 1970s. Madden [Horsham parish priest] of the risks Given the perverted characteristics of his offending, posed by Ridsdale [when Mulkearns transferred evidentiary difficulties should not have prevented Ridsdale there in 1986] … Bishop Mulkearns his prosecution, at least on some charges well before was recklessly indifferent to the safety and 1993, if police had carried out a proper investigation. wellbeing of the children in and around The interest of Victoria Police in the criminally Horsham. active Ridsdale ended in early 1976 until late 1992 when it started another investigation into him that Detective Mooney showed a bit more inter- resulted in his prosecution and jailing in 1993. In est in Ridsdale than just doing what the Child 1976, the Child Exploitation Squad told Detective Exploitation Squad told him to do. From Pell’s Mooney to take the same action about Ridsdale cross-examination it emerges that, as well as check- that Cardinal Pell said a Catholic priest or lay per- ing on what he was told by Bishop Mulkearns about son who learned of another priest’s abuse of chil- Ridsdale being sent to Dr Evans for treatment for dren would take in that same period: tell the priest’s his paedophilia, Detective Mooney called Sampson, bishop. The Child Exploitation Squad, despite its the police sergeant at Inglewood, to ask what he name, apparently took no other action. So far as knew about Ridsdale’s activities when Ridsdale was can be gathered from the Royal Commission pro- parish priest there, from early 1975 to January 1976. ceedings, no Victorian police, including the Child

Quadrant September 2020 71 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police

Exploitation Squad or Detective Mooney, attempted “Having regard to the similarities of the various to follow up Ridsdale’s behaviour after his 1976 ther- accounts, there would appear to be little room for apy. Ridsdale was then in about the middle of his doubt that Day misconducted himself. With some criminal career of attacking hundreds of children. reluctance, therefore, I agree that no prosecutions It appears that Victoria Police was as uninterested should be launched.” The commission examined in 1976 as Bishop Mulkearns in whether Ridsdale the barriers to prosecuting child sexual offenders might continue to abuse children. Despite know- raised by these rules of evidence in Part VI of its ing of his crimes by early that year, Victoria Police, Criminal Justice Report and recommended legisla- like Bishop Mulkearns, took no action after that tive reforms. to follow up on Ridsdale’s behaviour between 1976 But even accepting that Victoria Police can rely and 1992. If any police had done that, they could on such evidentiary barriers to justify not prosecut- have discovered his continued abuse of children and ing Day in 1972, there is no doubt from the commis- many of Risdsale’s later victims might have been sion’s findings and its review of the evidence that saved the horrors they have had to endure. senior police repeatedly blocked the attempts by The commission’s interest in Ridsdale’s offend- Detective Ryan to investigate Day, finally forcing ing between 1976 and 1992 was confined to the Ryan out of Victoria Police. And as the commis- failings of Bishop Mulkearns and other Catholic sion found, some senior police wrote false reports, clergy: it did not extend to what looks like similar whether to protect Day or to cover up the failures failings by Victoria Police in those same years to put of Victoria Police in this episode or for some other a stop to Ridsdale. unidentified reason. The commission accepted the evidence of Mr Miller, “an impressive witness”, who was Chief Monsignor Day Commissioner of Victoria Police from 1977 to 1987. onsignor Day’s criminal activities at Mildura He said: in the 1960s and 1970s were well known to seniorM Victorian police, who repeatedly blocked Chief Commissioner Jackson [Miller’s former Detective Ryan’s attempts to investigate him immediate predecessor] was the architect of in respect of at least fourteen of Day’s child victims. Victoria Police’s response to Denis Ryan’s The commission looked in detail at the experi- investigations into Monsignor Day. It couldn’t ences of Ryan, who lost his police career as a result have operated in the manner it did without of his persistence in trying to prosecute the pae- his knowledge and consent … everyone down dophile Day. It did not break much new ground: a the chain of command—from Assistant lot of the same detail was exposed in Ryan’s book, Commissioner Crowley to the Swan Hill Unholy Trinity, published in 2009. This, however, superintendents and Inspector Irwin—appears provoked no reaction from any Victorian authori- to have fallen into line [in blocking Ryan’s ties until immediately after Ryan and Miller gave investigation] … The function of all of those evidence to the Royal Commission in late 2015. people was to counsel Denis Ryan and to assist Chief Commissioner Ashton then said Victoria him in the performance of his duty … Not one Police would apologise and pay compensation to of them did this. Ryan—forty years after senior officers had blocked his investigation into Monsignor Day and destroyed Miller described the conduct of many involved his career. Chief Commissioner Ashton was also in the Day matter “as misconduct by senior Victoria reported as saying that Ryan’s evidence and efforts Police officers, including dereliction of duty, con- to publicise “the scandal” over the years had helped spiracy to pervert the course of justice and inciting Victoria Police better understand its past failings. other members of the police force to join the con- In the 1970s, after public and parliamentary spiracy against Denis Ryan in order to conceal the questions about the Day investigation, the police crimes committed by Day”. finally got internal legal advice that a prosecution Ryan mentioned the existence in the 1950s of was likely to fail and should not be brought: it was pro-Catholic bias in some Victorian police officers thought that restrictive rules of evidence limited the who protected wayward priests. But sectarianism admission of evidence on Day’s trial which would be does not seem the explanation for the Day cover-up: confined to what he had done to one victim. So the Ryan named Catholic and Masonic superiors who jury would not hear of his abuse of other children. were involved, and Chief Commissioner Jackson, The deputy commissioner subsequently obtained the “architect of Victoria Police’s response to Denis advice from the Victorian Solicitor-General, who Ryan’s investigations into Monsignor Day”, was agreed. He ended his advice with this comment: unlikely to have been motivated by pro-Catholic

72 Quadrant September 2020 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police bias. Miller said he did the eulogy at his funeral … nothing in the documentation examined and “it was not a Catholic service”. by the Committee nor in any of the The commission’s examination of the Day mat- submissions or evidence it received suggests ter and its acceptance of Miller’s evidence revealed a that any significant problems were drawn to major failure at the highest levels of Victoria Police. the attention of Mr O’Callaghan QC [the Even if all the culpable senior police were dead by independent commissioner for dealing with 2017, as Miller suggested, the commission showed abuse complaints in the Melbourne Response] no interest in asking how such a major institutional or were even seen to exist by Victoria Police. failure could occur. This, despite the evidence of As far as the Committee is aware, Victoria Miller, who said: Police made no complaint about the absence of reports and made no request for a review of In my experience, the epitome of the Police the protocol for at least 12 years. It is clear that Commissioner’s administration is that he Victoria Police paid inadequate attention to doesn’t bring a Royal Commission down on the fundamental problems of the Melbourne his police force. Victoria has had more Royal Response arrangements until relatively recently Commissions than the rest of the police forces in April 2012 and that, when they did become in Australia put together. We average one the subject of public attention, Victoria Police every nine years. If I had to speculate as to representatives endeavoured quite unfairly to why Chief Commissioner Jackson reacted as distance the organisation from them. alleged in Unholy Trinity, it would be that he wanted to avoid another Royal Commission Ashton more recently attempted to use prob- into Victoria Police, that investigated his lems for Catholic clergy in an attempt, ultimately administration. unsuccessful, to deflect public scrutiny onto the Church and away from Victoria Police’s own wrong- Might such extensive failures by numerous senior doing. Victoria Police is currently involved in the Victoria Police to perform their sworn duties to keep Lawyer “X” Royal Commission into its handling the peace, detect offences and apprehend offenders of informants. Ashton and the two previous Chief have been due, in part, to a culture of protecting the Commissioners, Overland and Nixon, have become force and its senior command from public exposure involved in it. Premier Andrews was forced to set and criticism for serious dereliction of duty, even up this inquiry by the unanimous decision of all at the risk of further harm resulting to children, as seven judges of the High Court in which they said Miller implied? The commission did not attempt to in November 2018: “Victoria Police were guilty of find out. It contented itself with criticising some of reprehensible conduct in knowingly encouraging the dead senior police involved in protecting Day. [Lawyer “X”] to do as she did … As a result, the But if such a culture explains what happened in the prosecution of each Convicted Person was corrupted Day cover-up, that was a matter which should have in a manner which debased fundamental premises interested the commission given paragraph (d) of of the criminal justice system.” When the Lawyer the matters it was required to inquire into by the “X” story broke in the media, the assistant director Letters Patent that set it up. of the Victoria Police’s media section in his email of And such a culture may still flourish. In 2012 1 April 2014, Exhibit RC0890b in the Lawyer “X” Chief Commissioner Ashton of Victoria Police Royal Commission, advised Ashton not to comment attempted in the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry because “the Pell stuff is coming tomorrow and into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious will knock this way off the front page”. (Cardinal and other Non-Government Organisations to Pell was then due to give evidence to the Royal shift blame from Victoria Police onto the Catholic Commission into Institutional Child Abuse.) There Church for deficiencies in Cardinal Pell’s 1996 are media reports, supported by internal Victoria Melbourne Response to victims of priestly abuse. The Police emails, that Ashton accepted this advice (for Parliamentary Inquiry rejected Ashton’s criticism of example, ABC News, December 12, 2019: “Emails the Church. The inquiry said: “In establishing the reveal how Victoria Police tried to keep revelations Melbourne Response the Church consulted with about Lawyer X off the front page”). both Victoria Police and the Victorian Government, If the explanation for the reprehensible conduct both of whom welcomed it as an innovative measure of so many senior Victoria Police in covering up to provide victim support.” Ashton, however, com- Monsignor Day’s crimes in the 1970s was to protect plained that the Church had not thereafter referred Victoria Police command from exposure to public a single complaint about a priest to the police. The criticism even at the expense of the safety of chil- inquiry said of this: dren, that is little different from the motivation of

Quadrant September 2020 73 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police the Catholic hierarchy in protecting priests and the for major structural, practical and cultural reforms reputation of the Church at the expense of children in Victoria Police. He said that the VLRC report for so long, which attracted the Royal Commission’s found that “the police response to sexual assault was condemnation. undermined by a culture of disbelief [in complain- It is not as though cultural drivers of institutional ants], a deficit in the skills and knowledge of inves- behaviour were of no interest to the commission. tigators and a lack of transparency in the process”. In contrast to its lack of interest about a possible The commission did not comment on Bishop malign culture in the higher command of Victoria Mulkearns’s explanation of a lack of understanding Police that was damaging to abused children, the of the impacts of child sexual abuse. It accepted what commission investigated in detail in Volume 16 of Assistant Commissioner Fontana said to the same its Final Report, Section 13.11, the culture and doc- effect as explaining the poor responses of Victorian trines of the Catholic Church in its search for links police for so long. It concluded: “We accept that with child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions. It before 2004 members of the Victoria Police were discussed and made many recommendations for the not adequately trained to recognise, understand or Holy See itself to reconsider factors such as the cul- respond to child sexual abuse. We are satisfied that ture of clericalism in the Church; its organisational many responses to reports of child sexual abuse were structure and governance; canon law; celibacy; entirely unsatisfactory.” selection, screening and formation of priests; over- In his cross-examination in the hearing in Case sight, support and training of clergy and the role Study 28, Cardinal Pell offered explanations for played by the sacrament of reconciliation (confes- the Church’s lack of action against abusive priests sion and forgiveness). through most of the last half of the twentieth The commission’s Final Report in Case Study 28 century: was hardly the searching inquiry into the response of Victoria Police to allegations of child sexual abuse Q. The tendency also at that time was not to against clergy or religious, such as the evil Ridsdale report to civil authorities? and Day, which took place in the Catholic Diocese A. I think that is the case … but the general of Ballarat that the commission said it would make community attitudes were different, within the in that case study. police, within the government service, within the Catholic Church, were different from what they are now … A lack of understanding about the Q. Can you help us, Cardinal, with why you consequences for children think it is that the Catholic Church has operated n its Final Report on Case Study 28, the commis- in such a similar way across many different sion recorded Bishop Mulkearns’s apology for his countries in the world? Ihandling of allegations of sexual abuse of children A. Unfortunately, original sin is alive and against clergy in the diocese in which he said that, well; the tendency to evil is in the Catholic at the time, “I had no idea of the effects of the inci- Church too … but for good or for ill the church dents that took place.” follows the patterns of the societies in which it That sounds pathetic to contemporary ears— lives … until you read what Victoria Police Assistant Q. You’ve said that the general attitude of Commissioner Fontana said about the poor the church to disclosures of child sexual abuse responses by Victoria Police to child sexual abuse before that period of time you’ve described, that complaints from the 1960s to the early 2000s in is, the late 1980s, was generally to not believe the the hearing in Case Study 30 into abuse in three child; you accept that? Victorian residential institutions. Fontana said that, A. I … would now say that that is an historically, police had “very little understanding of overstatement, but it certainly was much, much the complexities of sexual offending, sexual offend- more difficult for the child to be believed then. ers and, in particular, victims and their experiences”. … I must say, in those days, if a priest denied He said that police “did not fully understand” how such activity, I was very strongly inclined to a victim of sexual abuse might present, why they accept the denial. might delay reporting to police or others, and why they may suffer “broken recollections”. All that too sounds rather lame to contemporary Fontana said that this position did not change ears. The commission did not comment on what much until 2004, when the Victorian Law Reform Pell said here. But in Part II of the commission’s Commission prepared its Sexual Offences: Law and Criminal Justice Report of August 2017, it echoed Procedure Final Report, which became the catalyst some of Pell’s opinions, without mentioning what he

74 Quadrant September 2020 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police had said, in its conclusions on responses by police, to charge the man who raped the absconding including Victoria Police, to child sexual abuse from child Norman Latham in the 1960s to the appall- the 1950s to the 2000s. In the Executive Summary ing responses to Katherine X, culminating in 2002 it said: when Katherine X said the Victorian policewoman from the police SOCIT unit (Sexual Offences and In general terms, many of the negative Child Abuse Investigation Team) told the social experiences [of survivors of sexual abuse as worker who had reported Katherine X’s latest com- children] of police responses that we have been plaint against her father—who had fathered four told about occurred in earlier periods of time children on her—that she was considering charg- through to the early 2000s. We know that the ing Katherine X herself. It was not until 2008 criminal justice system, including the police that a Victorian policeman responded properly to response, has improved considerably over another complaint by her. The father is now serving recent times in recognising the serious nature a twenty-two-year sentence. of child sexual abuse and the severity of its Victoria Police had to advertise to find the com- impact on victims. plainant in the cathedral abuse case against Cardinal Pell. But if Task Force SANO were minded to After referring to its Redress and Civil Litigation investigate any police, it will not have to advertise report as its source of information, the commission for complainants against Victorian police who did also said: not act properly on information about child sexual abuse offenders during the last half-century. When Police responses to children in these institutions Chief Commissioner Ashton gave evidence to the in the 1950s are likely to reflect broader social inquiry on October 19, 2012, he said: attitudes in favour of these institutions and those who ran them and against the children At Victoria Police we have conducted an living in them … It is clear to us that the analysis of material that we have available to police were no less affected by these attitudes us on child sexual abuse involving religious than other members of society, and that these organisations in Victoria. That work stems attitudes were likely to have affected police from material we have gathered since 1956 responses from before the 1950s through to at to the current day … In terms of general least the 1980s. In some cases, those attitudes offending by religious organisations, Victoria continued into later decades. Police were able to identify 2110 offences committed against 519 distinct victims between The commission in its Criminal Justice Report January 1956 and June 2012. Of those 519 recorded what survivors of abuse said of their expe- distinct victims, 370 were within the Catholic riences of reporting abuse to police in the 1950s: Church system. It is the first time we have “some accounts suggest that, while police did not undertaken that analysis … 88.6 per cent necessarily disbelieve the victims or survivors, they of offenders were aged between 20 and 40 did not take steps to investigate the allegations. and had predominantly committed offences Other accounts suggest that police responded with between the 1960s and the 1980s. Of the 66 disbelief and violence”. The commission said that distinct offenders, 50 per cent were identified many survivors of institutional child sexual abuse to be priests and 27 per cent were brothers. that was committed during the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s told it of similar experiences with the police. It is unlikely that Ashton’s analysis of all this In the 1990s, the commission said, some responses offending was based on information only discov- by police started to change. But even in this dec- ered outside its record system by Victoria Police ade, it said it heard examples of failures in police for the first time in 2012. That is not how Ashton’s responses. evidence reads. The 1976 Child Exploitation Squad The hearing in Case Study 30 into responses in report that told Detective Mooney to speak to three Victorian child detention institutions showed Bishop Mulkearns about Ridsdale must be part of how badly Victoria Police responded to children the material gathered over the years and analysed complaining of sexual abuse from the 1960s to by Victoria Police in 2012. the early 2000s. Assistant Commissioner Fontana Will Victoria Police ever be held to account for stated that, historically, there was “a lot of disbe- its history of poor responses to past child sexual lief” in Victoria Police about child sexual abuse. abuse and the damage to victims such responses Responses ranged from what he described as the facilitated? “surprising” and “disappointing” failure of police Premier Andrews effectively endorsed the

Quadrant September 2020 75 The Egregious Failures of Victoria Police decision by a credulous Victoria Police to prosecute to handle civil claims including “claims for dam- Pell. After the High Court acquitted Pell, Andrews ages which have arisen from or following the Royal told victims of abuse that he hears and believes them. Commission into Institutional Responses to Child It is unlikely that he will hold an inquiry into the Sexual Abuse and/or the Victorian State Inquiry failures by Victoria Police to stop any of the child into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and abuse by Catholic clergy in the past, at least perhaps Other Organisations”. A Sydney Morning Herald so long as Victoria Police maintains it sceptical report of May 8 said that the Catholic Church is attitude to allegations of criminal behaviour by facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of cleri- Victorian Labor politicians. Nor has the Victorian cal sex abuse, bolstered by the Royal Commission’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the Commission shown any interest in investigating “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat Victoria Police responses to complaints of historical diocese. At the end of April, there were 347 cases child sexual abuse. on the list. This civil litigation may provide a means Assistant Commissioner Fontana told the Royal to bring Victoria Police to account for its failures. Commission that Victoria Police Task Force SANO One such case may be JCB v Bishop Paul was set up to investigate historical cases that have Bird for the Diocese of Ballarat, in which a claim- come out of the Royal Commission and the earlier ant is suing the diocese for his rape, at the age of Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Catholic nine, by Ridsdale at the town of Mortlake in 1982. Church and a whole range of other historical mat- According to the Age of September 6, 2019, the ters that have been reported. He added: “There’s diocese admitted its liability to JCB on the ground been a very busy time for police investigating both that Bishop Mulkearns breached his duty of care historic and current offences.” to the victim because he knew about a complaint In his opening address at the first public hearing of Ridsdale sexually abusing a child at Inglewood in Case Study 28 in May 2015, the chairman of the in 1975. The knowledge of Ridsdale’s conduct by Royal Commission said it “has the power to refer the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Squad and matters that come to us to other relevant authori- Bendigo CIB chief Mooney in 1976 and their ties, including the police, for investigation”. In its failure to do anything effective to stop Ridsdale’s Final Report the commission said it had made 2575 subsequent offending seems as causally related to referrals nationally to authorities (including police). exposing JCB to the harm he suffered in 1982, as I do not know if any of these referrals to police were Mulkearns’s own conduct. of Victoria Police members. Nor am I aware of Task Some in the media may say that by claiming Force SANO investigating any serving or retired contribution from Victoria Police, the Catholic Victorian police who may have failed in their duty Church is once again thinking only of its wallet. to bring Catholic Church child abusers to justice. It will be a bit harder to make such an accusation The precision of the information referred to if the Church refuses to settle a claim for police by Ashton, all gathered from an examination of contribution on a confidential basis and insists on Victoria Police records covering fifty-six years, it going to open court. Then again, Victoria Police indicates that there is a lot of material available to may publicly admit liability to contribute to the Victoria Police that, if they choose to follow it up, damages payable to victims such as JCB. The Royal could well lead to the identification and prosecution Commission said in its Justice Report: of the police who failed to perform their sworn duty to apprehend offenders. And the age of any such We note media reports that the Australian and offending should not deter the police. They pros- New Zealand Police Commissioners Forum is ecuted Cardinal Pell, unsuccessfully, for offences considering whether Australian police agencies allegedly committed at the Ballarat swimming pool should make a formal apology to victims and nearly half a century ago, and Pell’s recent acquittal survivors of institutional child sexual abuse by the High Court produced a media report that who did not receive appropriate responses from Victoria Police are now investigating him over a police when they reported or attempted to new allegation of child sexual abuse dating back to report child sexual abuse. the 1970s. From 1981 to 1992, Douglas Drummond was Queensland’s Special Prosecutor following the Civil claims Fitzgerald Inquiry, and subsequently a judge on the Victorian Supreme Court media release of Federal Court of Australia, from which he retired in February 4, 2020, announced the establish- 2003. A referenced version of this article appears at Ament of a specialised Institutional Liability List Quadrant Online.

76 Quadrant September 2020 Ly n Wesley

The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination

e conduct our wildest experiments on the to jail are doing about as well as other Australian least able. Aborigines who remain stuck men. The other 20 per cent, those who have been in in the middle of nowhere—whether a jail, are in big trouble. The authors refer to this split place,W a culture, or a state of mind—have been sub- as an “incarceration gap”, a play on the Australian ject to the vilest experiment in the nation’s history. government’s “Closing the Gap” policy, but the gap Worse, not only do we subject the least able to this is apparent for one group only. Until the reasons are experiment, we tell them to persist with the worst understood, or admitted, as to why 80 per cent suc- of cultural practices, and then invite them to run ceed and 20 per cent fail, there will be no escape for a society with no economic base. What madness, the 20 per cent. what cruelty. It is clear that the grand experiment in Aboriginal self-determination is killing those Aborigines least The industry that maintains the Gap able to fend for themselves. Self-determination is a ach year the Prime Minister trots out the Closing bullish sentiment that demands money from gov- the Gap report to Parliament. This piece of the- ernment to be delivered to Aboriginal-controlled Eatre is designed to do one thing and one thing only: groups to do with as they please. Competence does keep the Aboriginal self-determination perform- not enter the equation, only identity. As a conse- ers in the public eye. These performers are, vari- quence, the choices that Aborigines have are dimin- ously, many of the seventeen members of Australian ished, stymied by their leaders. parliaments of Aboriginal descent, including the Fortunately, most Aborigines who are doing well Commonwealth Minister and Shadow Minister, are not part of the self-determination experiment; thousands employed by Aboriginal-controlled they have escaped, although as latter-day “identi- organisations including the National Congress of fiers” they are surely playing a part in prolonging it. Australia’s First Peoples, and numerous cheer lead- Every child born of one Aboriginal parent is classed ers in academia and the media. These are the voices as an Aborigine, no matter how tenuous the con- of the Aboriginal industry. And still they want nection is. In time, we may all be Aboriginal. By more: a formal “voice” to parliament, constitutional lending their name to the industry, identifiers create recognition, a treaty and “truth telling”. the appearance of a significant voice. They are use- Each of these voices is a means of extracting ful to the Aboriginal industry, which is hell-bent money from the public purse and placing it in the on building the political infrastructure of separate- hands of Aboriginal-controlled organisations. The ness. The truth is that apart from those few who retreat into “culture” recommended by the industry have profited handsomely from it, most Aborigines hands power to a “traditional” leader who uses it for who have succeeded have done so despite the political his or her purposes or family. Each of these organi- efforts of separateness. sations employs Aborigines who can speak, read and The evidence that there are two classes of write English (at various levels of proficiency). Do Aborigine is now abundant. There is a dominant these organisations and their employees best serve group who live about as well as other Australians the interests of Aborigines who are in need—those and make good use of all Australia has to offer, and who can barely speak, read and write English? To the there is a sub-group who are condemned to blighted Aboriginal industry some black lives don’t matter. lives. An illustration of this appears in a seminal There are more than enough voices support- study, published this year, which concluded that the ing Aboriginal self-determination. The trouble is, 80 per cent of Aboriginal men who have never gone whether victim voices or carer voices, each of them

Quadrant September 2020 77 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination feeds the others’ habit. For example, Warmun Three out of four Aboriginal prisoners had been Aboriginal community in Western Australia had imprisoned previously. These men and women are 400 visits from state government agencies in 2016. on a treadmill. It is not so for the other 80 per cent This level of intervention is replicated throughout of Aborigines. And yet, policy settings assume that remote and regional Australia. Take an Aboriginal- the two groups are the same. controlled health-care service in southern coastal Pan-Aboriginal solutions are self-serving, and New South Wales. This health service has numerous deadly. Any solution to the problems of the 20 per outlets in town, which indicates either a large clien- cent are likely to be found in the same conversation tele or an overabundance of funds. The white CEO as is being had for poor intergenerationally welfare- lectures anyone who cares to ask about her clientele dependent non-Aborigines, men especially, and not on the evils of colonialism and white privilege. Non- in the wild dreams of Aboriginal self-determination, Aboriginal doctors and nurses in the centre deliver recognition, voice and all the rest. medical services to Aboriginal women. What’s to An astounding backdrop to the rates at which apologise for? In central Victoria an Aboriginal Aboriginal men are jailed is the fact that income CEO of a corporation that delivers nothing much inequality is more pronounced for Aborigines than at all is explicit in his goal: to grab for the rest of Australia. Aboriginal every dollar that comes into his incomes are increasing faster community on a proportional basis he Royal than for the rest of the popula- so that he can control and distribute T tion. Aboriginal poverty in urban it to “his people”. It is hard to grasp Commission concluded areas has dropped substantially just how self-defeating are these that no death in and should reach parity in twenty exercises in self-determination. years. However, the poverty rates Most times when Aboriginal custody resulted from for Aboriginal people in remote organisations meet they conspire to foul play on the areas have increased, while incomes sell a lie: that Australia has failed part of authorities among the top 10 per cent of its original inhabitants. The truth, Aboriginal earners have increased if that is what Aboriginal leaders and that the rate of significantly. want, is that 70,000 Aborigines death for Aborigines In the foreground lies the fact have graduated from TAFE and that 50 per cent of Aborigines who 50,000 Aborigines from univer- was similar to that have ever been in jail had not com- sity. Australia has not failed them. of other prisoners. pleted Year 10 at school, which was However, there are Aborigines who substantially lower than the Year have graduated from a different 10 completion rate of Aborigines institution: jail. Aboriginal incarceration rates have who have never been in jail (73 per cent, and 88 increased 41 per cent between 2006 and 2016. As the per cent for all Australian males). Aborigines who Aboriginal industry has grown, so has the rate of have never been in jail were employed at about the incarceration. same rate as that of the general Australian male population, 56 per cent compared to 65 per cent, but only one-quarter of the ever-jailed group reported Real escapees don’t go to jail being employed. More than half of the ever-jailed mprisonment rates for Aborigines have been, and group were not in the labour force (retired, volun- remain, ten to fourteen times higher than for other tarily inactive, home duties, disabled, permanently IAustralians, at least since the Royal Commission unable to work). Another major gap was substance into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987 to 1991). abuse. Almost 30 per cent of ever-jailed Aborigines The Royal Commission concluded that no death reported problems compared to just 7 per cent of in custody resulted from foul play on the part of never-jailed Aborigines. authorities and that the rate of death for Aborigines Aborigines are more likely to live in rural and was similar to that of other prisoners. The big story is remote areas of the country than other Australians. that so many Aborigines commit crimes, and crimes While the ever-jailed group were more dispersed of violence at that. It is no story at all that they are across urban and remote regions, the never-jailed jailed for those crimes. Of the 43,000 prisoners in group were more concentrated in major urban areas. jail in 2019, almost 12,000 were Aborigines, almost Incidentally, while there is a thirteen-point gap in 30 per cent of the Australian prisoner population. educational achievement among Year 5 Aboriginal More pointedly, nine in ten Aboriginal prisoners and non-Aboriginal students in metropolitan were male. The Aboriginal imprisonment rate for Australia, there is a sixty-two-point gap in very males was almost nine times the rate for females. remote areas. Moreover, almost three-quarters of the

78 Quadrant September 2020 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination

Age Standardised Imprisonment Rate Australia, Indigenous Status 1988-2018. ever-jailed group live in Aboriginal-only households It is de rigueur to blame bad behaviour on pov- compared to 50 per cent of the never-jailed group. erty, and in the context of identity politics, on racial Mixed couples are more likely to live in major urban prejudice and cultural destruction. There comes a areas and be economically better-off. time to admit that many escape poverty and many Higher proportions of the ever-jailed group overcome racial prejudice and “loss of culture”. In reported high to very high levels of distress and a these cases, individuals adapt to their circumstances, lifetime mental health diagnosis (35 per cent). The indeed thrive because of the opportunities in their proportion of the never-jailed group with a mental new circumstances. Others do not grasp opportuni- illness (23 per cent) is in line with Australian male ties, and there are at least three reasons why. They general population estimates (18 per cent). Further, may not have sufficient capacity to cope with life; 17 per cent of the ever-jailed group reported being aspects of their culture may be so toxic as to hold removed from their natural family. Aborigines them back; and programs thrown at them to “help” experience violence at twice the rate of all oth- may cause harm. ers. However, one in five of the ever-jailed group reported experiencing physical violence during the past twelve months compared to one in ten in The blank slate the never-jailed group. The never-jailed rate is still ome people cannot cope with life because they markedly higher than the Australian general popu- have difficulty behaving. Their decision-making lation rate. mayS be “impaired”, or they have problems commu- Aborigines are more likely to go to jail than other nicating, or have poor memory, be inattentive, or Australians because they commit more crime. They socially immature. Individual capacity, not identity, are also less well-equipped to cope with life. But, may be part of the problem. If so, the implications and this is the special part, the causes cannot be for policy are profound. Ever so gingerly, the focus that they remain insufficiently recognised, heard, must shift to a new plane of inquiry, the capacity feted or subsidised. If that were so, the 80 per cent of individuals to adapt to their circumstances. All of Aborigines who succeed as well as anyone else Aborigines cannot be treated as a blank slate, as if would also fail. There is an Aboriginal underclass they all have the same abilities, when it is clear that at who live similarly blighted lives to the underclass least 20 per cent probably have little capacity to cope. that exists for other Australians. The reasons why It is true that Aborigines have had more to adapt to the Aboriginal underclass is larger than for the than others, although immigrants to Australia may remainder of society are the extra barriers thrown in also lay claim to this burden. Nevertheless, 80 per the path of Aborigines. cent of Aboriginal men and women have adapted,

Quadrant September 2020 79 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination and succeeded, despite the burdens they carry. forty is $2.3 billion, an average cost of $2.3 million Assessing individual frailty is difficult. per person. Left unstated is that each would be Sensitivities abound in the measurement of “cog- unlikely to make any contribution to society through nitive impairment” among all people, especially employment and taxation. Aboriginal expenditure Aborigines. Are the assessment tools employed amounts to $33 billion per year, which suggests that to detect cognitive impairment “culturally appro- a very large number of Aborigines are in receipt priate”, and have the assessors had “cross-cultural of programs and benefits that reward identity, not training”? Is cognitive impairment “perceived in a need. For those bold enough to suggest that more different way” culturally, is it “inseparable from past expenditure will reduce the 20 per cent and add to traumas inflicted upon Aboriginal people at large”? the successful 80 per cent, they need only compare These sensitivities have been recognised and were the crime and jail and recidivism rates across sev- taken into account in a recent study of adult “Koori” eral decades to conclude that there has been a losing male and female prisoners who were remanded or battle waged for the 20 per cent, precisely because so sentenced in Victorian prisons. Over 80 per cent much is expected of those so fragile. of the cohort were imprisoned for a violent offence and 16 per cent for a sexual offence (of a violent or non-violent nature). Approximately 70 per cent of Culture—family formation in crisis the sample had an IQ below the community aver- o label Aboriginal clans First Nations is a cruel age of 100. Twenty-two per cent were found to have hoax: many are barely families. Disastrous lev- impaired cognitive functioning, and almost 90 per Tels of family breakdown are evident in Aboriginal cent had been diagnosed with a mental disorder. society. Mood disorders and substance-abuse diagnoses were Stable family formation is a fundamental institu- the most commonly reported. Comorbidity (cogni- tion in successful lives. Its breakdown is both cause tive impairment and mental disorder) was high, with and consequence of strife. In 2018, ex-nuptiality almost nine out of ten cognitively-impaired partici- (that is, the unmarried state) among mothers in pants presenting with a lifetime mental disorder. total births in Australia was 35 per cent. Paternity The most common co-occurring mental disorders was not acknowledged in 4 per cent of ex-nuptial were mood disorders, substance abuse and anxiety. total births. By contrast, ex-nuptiality in births to Those in the cognitively-impaired group were more Aboriginal mothers (including tribal marriage) was than three times more likely to have a prior violent 87 per cent. Paternity was not acknowledged in 22 offence compared to those in the non-cognitively- per cent of ex-nuptial births to Aboriginal moth- impaired group. About 40 per cent of all prisoners ers. In the Northern Territory ex-nuptial births were have a higher incidence of mental health problems 96 per cent, paternity not acknowledged was 50 per than is reported in the general population. In this cent. respect, Aborigines are not exceptional. At the outset, Aboriginal culture was ill-suited Predictably, the researchers concluded that to modern family formation, the absence of which, “cognitively impaired Indigenous offenders require in non-traditional settings, is the source of consider- improved access to a multitude of services in custody able strife. However, once the traditional constraints and in the community to meet their complex needs on coupling were removed, women broke from con- and these services should feature cultural supports trol by elders. The story of the Bishop of Darwin, throughout”. The conclusion assumes the people Francis Xavier Gsell’s dramatic account of Martina, receiving support were somehow “connected to cul- is instructive: ture” (or wanted to be, or needed to be) in the first place, in order for those supports to make sense. The Gsell founded a mission on Bathurst Island, continual refrain of “culturally appropriate” support north of Darwin, in 1911 … Martina was alone will ensure that the cost of looking after this one of the young girls about the mission. A group will continue to grow. “hairy anonymous man” comes to fetch her, And yet, the number in need is modest. To his promised wife according to tribal custom. reinforce just how small is the remnant group, and Martina refuses to go but Gsell accepts that how grossly overblown is the industry built on their tribal law is final and nothing can be done; backs, a study of the most vulnerable children and “trying to stifle her sobs, she goes with that man their families in New South Wales has shown that to begin a life which, I know, has less joy than of the 1000 individuals who required the great- that of the lowest beasts of the forest”. est amount of money to administer to their needs, Five days later she is back, speared in the 78 per cent were Aboriginal. The total estimated leg but determined to stay at the mission. In future cost of these 1000 individuals to the age of the evening an angry mob of tribesmen arrive

80 Quadrant September 2020 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination

and demand her back. Not forgetting to call If Aborigines and their academic spokespersons on God’s help, Gsell welcomes them with flour want to sprout culture, they have to tell the whole and tobacco and suggests a good sleep before story. Family formation is blighted by Aboriginal talking in the morning. Overnight he lays out culture, along with other frailties suffered by too calico, tobacco, a mirror, pots of meat and tins of many other men. The lack of one of the building treacle. When the tribesmen have woken up and blocks of the good life, family formation, is a had a good look, he names the price: Martina significant impediment to Closing the Gap. is to stay. After an interminable council, they agree. Martina is brought up by the nuns and CDEP—fake jobs on the road to ruin contracts a free Christian marriage with a here have been many wrong turns in Aboriginal mission youth. Over the following decades, Gsell policy in the last fifty years under the regime of “bought” in similar fashion a hundred and fifty Tself-determination. Setting to one side land rights, promised girls, all of them, according to tribal the Community Development Employment Projects law, his wives. He became known as the “bishop (CDEP) program is perhaps the worst. CDEP with 150 wives”. commenced as a pilot scheme at Bamyili (a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory) Missionaries protected Aboriginal women from in 1977 and at its peak in 2002-03 delivered serv- violence. They were a stopgap, they did much good ices to 35,000 participants through 260 providers in and some bad, but the direction was certain: to hundreds of communities throughout Australia. The protect Aborigines on their journey to integration. CDEP was phased out in 2014-15, but “job seek- There was an enormous gulf between Aborigines ers” in remote areas are now supported through the and Europeans. It was impossible that Aborigines Community Development Program. could survive with their world intact. Half-caste The impetus for CDEP arose with a decision by children were especially vulnerable, often rejected the Commonwealth Arbitration and Conciliation by their parents and left to fend for themselves. Girls Commission in 1965 to include Aboriginal workers saw an opportunity to escape a life that “has less joy in the Cattle Station Industry (Northern Territory) than that of the lowest beasts of the forest”. Award 1951. The decision created widespread And in contemporary times? unemployment among Aborigines in remote areas of northern Australia. The solution was to grant You see the young girls walking around Alice Aboriginal people access to unemployment benefits. [Springs] all slicked up. They are clean, cleanly Unfortunately, when access was granted the absence dressed, hair tied tightly back. They walk with of realistic work prospects created a disincentive to confidence—cheekily you could say—and talk work. The observation from communities at the time loudly to attract attention. They generally look was that their people should not be paid “sit down to be around 12 to 14. This is their life. It appears money”. The period 1965 to 1977 was thus a wholly that the only thing they have going for them is under-appreciated period of transition in Aboriginal sexual attractiveness. These are the ones preyed life. The first tentative steps to integration, in so far upon by the paedophiles, black, white and as the Northern Territory employment market was whatever colour and they are easily bought. concerned, resulted in wholesale unemployment. Genuine affection is rare. Adults do not The “solution” to unemployment, which took at kiss traditionally. Hand holding is also a no no. least twelve years to implement, was the creation Husband and wife are called “truck and trailer” of “useful employment”. Worse, rather than being because they walk separately with man in front paid to individual beneficiaries, money was paid to and wife behind, with the dogs, attached to him community councils to “fund work”. The CDEP at a distance like a trailer. program was thus developed as an alternative to the A man shows he cares for his wife by payment of unemployment benefits to Aboriginal becoming angrily jealous now and then. Unless Australians in communities where there was little he, at least, threatens, if not inflicts jealous prospect of unsubsidised employment or economic violence on his wife he does not really care. development. The assumption, closely related to land The upshot of all this threatened violence and rights, was that Aboriginal people would not move infidelity is the constant lying, or hiding of the from their land in order to search for work. And so, truth, that goes on, the constant gossip and the horrible pretence was born that Aborigines could threat of public exposure that keeps everybody in live in the modern world on modern income support a state of stress and tension. Normal life in the and remain somehow Aboriginal. CDEP stopped communities and town camps. Aboriginal integration into the wider job market.

Quadrant September 2020 81 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination

Dispiritingly, there are echoes of this foolhardiness Westerman observes that Canadian suicide rates still today. The 80 per cent, those who have escaped compare to Aboriginal Australian rates, in that 90 this pretence, have thrived and graduated to a better per cent of suicides occur in 10 per cent of com- life. The remainder are more likely beaten, in jail, munities. New South Wales has relatively low rates or dead. of Aboriginal suicide, about fifteen per 100,000, which is comparable to the mainstream population. While this seems to be a mystery to some research- Suicide—the final escape ers, the answer may be straightforward. New South ome people do not get to graduate from univer- Wales Aboriginal communities are mainstream. The sity, TAFE, or even jail. They end their lives pre- more mainstream, the more people fit in. The less Smaturely, such is their despair. In the period 2008 “Aboriginal culture”, the less likely to be dragged to 2012, the suicide rate for Aborigines was almost down by a maladapted and nihilistic culture. twice the rate for other Australians. For fifteen-to- Georgatos’s explanation is typical of so many nineteen-year-olds, the rate was five times as high spokespersons. They lack insight into the lives of as the rate for other Australians. Debate as to how those they are meant to help, or are likely too afraid to address this tragedy provides another insight to buck the predominant mores—the game of cul- into the thinking of Aboriginal industry advocates. tural solidarity. Human frailty, ignorance, culture Gerry Georgatos, head of the federal government’s and land rights stand in the way of positive adjust- “Indigenous critical response team”, believes pov- ments to circumstances. Poverty alleviation, when it erty and lack of education are to blame. The prob- is no more than transfers of unearned money, edu- lem with the Georgatos view is that it is not clear cation when attendance is intermittent and without that the poor and uneducated elsewhere in Australia reinforcement from parents and family, and cultural suffer suicide rates greater than others. By contrast, solidarity, or learned ignorance, are the designs of Aboriginal psychologist Tracy Westerman has iden- a class of policy-makers who do more harm than tified feelings of hopelessness as the strongest pre- good. Above all, Aborigines in the 20 per cent, often dictor of suicide. According to Westerman, policies of low capability, are expected to act responsibly, that restrict human choices contribute to established locked onto “country”, and out of the economy. risk factors for suicide, which are hopelessness and helplessness. The strongest part of Westerman’s observation is that hopelessness as a cause holds for What is most needed? suicide in general. What causes hopelessness? t is time to ask basic questions. What and who One explanation is that Aboriginal communi- must change to save those in dire straits? And, ties are in such disarray that too many people regard Imost important, how do they change? Does the what is happening to them as normal. A recent Aboriginal industry keep covering up for people who reflection on “sorry business” illustrates the point: are, in effect, self-harming, or should self-harmers be shown a way to escape programs driven by an iden- Traditional ceremony is about meaningful tity agenda? In 2017 the State Coroner conducted an drama, body paint designs are complex and inquest into the suicide by hanging of thirteen chil- beautiful, there are new songs and dances to be dren and young persons in the Kimberley Region. learned. In sorry business there is no beauty, no Each death had similar circumstances, life events, complex designs, no songs, no dances, nothing developmental experiences and behaviours that new to learn. Socially enforced, ritual mourning appear to have contributed to making them vulner- occurs and, traditionally, is expressed with able to suicide. The proximate cause was a sense of quite severe self-harm including deep gashes hopelessness. And yet, too often the real causes are inflicted with butcher’s knives, women’s heads covered up by referring to wider political motives. bashed and scarred with sharp rocks and sticks. Did these children suicide because of invasion And, there is the determination to identify the and conquest? Hardly. There is clear evidence that in killer, because in traditional understanding all the early years of colonisation “Aboriginal people and premature adult death is “caused” by a human colonists made lives both alongside and entangled agent, and to seek revenge. With the dramatic with each other” where Aboriginal people were increase of (avoidable) premature death, however, “agents, rather than merely victims”. Was it because sorry business now takes up about a third of the in the nineteenth century missionaries attempted to time of many remote community adults. For convert Aborigines to Christianity? As the Gsell case many children and adolescents, it is the only shows, many Aborigines grabbed the opportunity to ceremony they ever attend, and they are doing escape. Was it because in the twentieth century 9 per that for about a third of their time. cent of Australia failed to support the referendum

82 Quadrant September 2020 The Cruel Deception of Aboriginal Self-Determination to have Aborigines counted in the census and have the incentives run the wrong way. Governments the Commonwealth begin to transfer unseemly pay people to sit on land, to not explore the world amounts of money to a small group of Aborigines? outside, to not meet a wider group, to not learn new That’s right: Australians overwhelmingly supported ways, in short to make it more difficult to navigate Aboriginal equality. Is it because in the twenty-first their way in the wider world. And there is only one century “elders” are not acknowledged every day by concrete recommendation that may just help to break public servants all around Australia? the cycle of insularity (dressed as culture): “that The string of recommendations from the inquest consideration be given to residential facilities being into the Kimberley suicides sums up many of the built for school-aged students in the Kimberley tensions and contradictions in Aboriginal policy. Region”. At least there is some recognition that the It drips with the language of self-determination— battle to save Aboriginal children in remote and empowerment, consultation, ownership—as have regional Australia requires strong measures to break most, if not all, previous inquiries in the field, old ways, poor behaviour and irresponsibility. While including Bringing Them Home, the inquiry the West Australian government supports the idea into the “stolen generations”. The of residential options for Kimberley trouble for such inquiries, and students, there are no doubt strong their recommendations, is that forces of resistance. the edifice of self-determination The edifice of There is not a word to suggest that has been bypassed by up to 80 per self-determination mothers must be provided protection cent of Aborigines and is a burden has been bypassed from Aboriginal men, or that some to the other 20 per cent. In the Aboriginal men are incapable forty-two recommendations of the by up to 80 per cent of supporting their partners, or West Australian coroner there is no of Aborigines and that they are even known. This mention of mothers, or fathers, or absence of responsibility is in stark “ex-nuptiality”, or “father unknown”, is a burden to the contrast to how domestic violence despite the fact that we know that other 20 per cent. is discussed in the rest of Australia. 92 per cent of births to Aboriginal Tragically, the one passing mothers in Western Australia reference to individual capacity in 2018 were ex-nuptial (including traditional is quickly snuffed out by a retreat to the self- marriages), and paternity was not acknowledged in determination script, with a recommendation that 21 per cent of births. The ideas of responsibility and the West Australian government “develop a state- family life simply do not rate a mention. wide Aboriginal cultural policy that recognises There is mention of the prevalence and harm of the importance of cultural continuity and cultural Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder and universal security to the wellbeing of Aboriginal people in screening for mothers, and that all secondary this State”. students should be subject to FASD education, and Unless young people are placed in boarding the appointment of local “Family Advocates”. Each schools, and young mothers are placed in hostels, worthy, but only in the very latter recommendations there will be no possible chance for the inhabitants is there a glimmer of recognition of the actual of remote Aboriginal Australia to live more than abilities of people who find themselves in these the short brutish lives to which the urban elite have awful circumstances: condemned them. The West Australian coroner did not recommend hostels for young mothers, but Whilst the stated aim of giving people the perhaps she should. Without significant intervention incentives to bring themselves out of poverty at the earliest time there is no hope for most children (through better health services, education and in many remote and some regional Aboriginal employment prospects) is very sound, some communities. There are now so many damaged consideration needs to be given to those people children, even strong measures will save only a few. who are presently beyond being able to take But better to save a few and stop more falling into advantage of those incentives. the identity and separation traps than perpetuate the myth of Closing the Gap. For most of those who This observation by the coroner is perhaps the claim Aboriginal heritage there is no gap. For the first time in decades, if ever, that such a statement remainder there is not only a gap, under the present has appeared into an inquiry about Aboriginal policy settings, the gap can never close. affairs. Governments need to give more than “some” consideration to those who are “beyond Lyn Wesley is an Australian researcher and writer. being able” to take advantage of incentives. Worse, References to this article appear at Quadrant Online.

Quadrant September 2020 83 Michael Connor

Fabrication and Deception A French View of Dark Emu

hristophe Darmangeat is a lecturer in evidence and found “a clue to the organisation of the Economics and Social Anthropology at slaughter by white people”. His fantasy was accepted, the Université de Paris (Diderot)—impec- and historical standards once again discarded. Long Ccable Left qualifications. In January he published ago during the History Wars, Lyndall Ryan stated a review article of over 6000 words on Bruce that “Historians are always making up figures”: Pascoe’s Dark Emu on his personal blog La Hutte des nothing has changed. A new book by Darmangeat, Classes. With an interest in Australian history and The Death Spear: War and Justice among Australian anthropology, he also maintains a university-based Aborigines, is to be published shortly. English-language site, Aboriginal Collective Conflicts In his Dark Emu review Darmangeat comments Database, where he collects and records violence unkindly on those of us who have written against between Aborigines after 1788. The site is a serious it and shames us as “frankly conservative” or even counter to the academic establishment’s illusions of “reactionaries with the worst intentions”. Apart from a peaceful Aboriginal world. In an essay, available these prayerful moments of ritual obeisance towards on the website, “Vanished Wars of Australia: The the Left he is much more sensible when simply deal- Archaeological Invisibility of Aboriginal Collective ing with Pascoe’s book. Knowing our country only Conflicts”, he supplies the reasons for conflict through the internet, he does not seem to realise among Aborigines suggested by his research: that if a local academic wrote what he has written in this essay he would be ostracised by colleagues and the two main proximate causes, by far, are rights probably have to face student demonstrators threat- over women and retaliation for real or supposed ening violence as they demand his dismissal. His aggressions—notably, conflicts over territories review essay, published when Pascoe was fighting and resources are almost absent. It is argued that bushfires, would have been a career-ending moment at least some of these conflicts could be qualified for a truthful voice on an Australian campus. as “wars”. Darmangeat sets out an informed summary of Dark Emu, beginning with Pascoe’s ill-informed This might be of interest to Australian academ- idea that Aborigines were intentionally classified ics and obviously suggests that a more informed as hunter-gatherers by the colonisers to justify their examination of the evidence of Aboriginal violence own seizure and settlement of the land. Pascoe against settlers is called for, rather than concentrat- sees this as an important argument in modern race ing on the violence it provoked against Aborigines politics in which the transformation of nomadic which is usually, and sometimes badly, represented hunter-gatherers into agriculturalists means they by massacre historians. thus owned the land and therefore the annexation One incident from Collective Conflicts is also and settlement of Australia by Britain was unlaw- listed on the Colonial Frontier Massacres website ful. Could one also use that argument to assert that maintained by University of Newcastle historian modern Aborigines who have been awarded vast Lyndall Ryan. Both sites use exactly the same doc- tracts of Australia under native title findings now umentary evidence and Ryan’s site, which gives a have no right to the land because they do not farm death toll of seventy, has turned the perpetrators it? Late in his analysis Darmangeat undermines from Aborigines into “Colonisers: Settlers”. This is Pascoe’s reasoning by simply pointing out, “as far a lie. The French site is correct and the Australian as we know, the existence of agriculture has not university has doctored the evidence supposedly stopped any colonisation in the world, on any con- because an opinionated local historian “reread” the tinent whatsoever”.

84 Quadrant September 2020 Fabrication and Deception

Noting that none of the elements drawn upon says that George Augustus Robinson was told by an by Pascoe in Dark Emu are really new, Darmangeat Aborigine that he was a farmer. He is also intrigued notes the heavy influence of Rupert Gerritsen’s by the unsourced Pascoe claim of the existence of work and, while stressing the contestability of the a “complex village site in ‘Australia’s dead heart’”. dead historian’s theorising, notes his “honesty and And in another incident he expresses yet more sur- rigour” which he finds lacking in the work of his prise when “one researcher” is the sole source given populariser: for a claim that rock art in Victoria shows the herd- ing and farming of kangaroos. Darmangeat, who Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Dark has probably Googled and seen the source of the Emu which, wielding hyperbole and superlatives latter claim, also mischievously notes the lack of more readily than nuance and conditionality, titles of “works defending this so original interpre- inextricably mixes perfectly proven elements, tation”. He probably thinks that a news article in others possible but more doubtful, others very the Shepparton News may not be quite the source improbable, and finally frank fabrications, firing Pascoe needs. on all cylinders by handling concepts and facts A possibility not raised by Darmangeat is that with a disarming casualness. the reason Dark Emu contains such a quantity of unsourced materials is that if the book was accu- Like commentators in Australia who have con- rately footnoted probably most sources would turn tested Pascoe’s history writing he notes the damage out to be material harvested from the internet. the author is inflicting on Aborigines by deriding Very probably, from his mishandling of the source, or ignoring their real wandering, hunter-gatherer Pascoe has not read the books by Charles Sturt forebears and their replacement by fantasy agricul- which he cites. In the first edition of Dark Emu turalists and town dwellers: “And one wonders who, the Sturt books in his bibliography are free internet from Bruce Pascoe or the settlers of texts. In the new edition the bib- the centuries past, stood out for his liography has been professionally most filthy prejudices [‘ses préjugés boriginal activists spring-cleaned and it is now made les plus crasses’] towards the hunter- A to look as though he used original gatherers.” What Darmangeat have rapidly rewritten first editions. What has probably notes from afar we observe more the long Aboriginal occurred is that, in dealing with intimately: how Pascoe’s fantasies Sturt, Pascoe used the text search have been taken up by Aboriginal history in this country feature to find the villages, crops activists, and even tour guides, who to conform to the and cakes he needed. This would have rapidly rewritten the long dreams of an elderly explain, as Peter O’Brien has noted, Aboriginal history in this country his lack of context for text he uses to conform to the dreams of an New Age fantasist and his confusions in telling the elderly New Age fantasist without without seeing the story of Sturt’s expeditions. seeing the poison in the gift he is giving them. poison in the gift armangeat notes that Pascoe Darmangeat notes that to “iden- he is giving them. prefers his own fantasies to the tify all the cases of slippage or mis- Drealities and fails to seriously dis- representation” by Pascoe a book cuss Aboriginal society: “his goal would be necessary (of course there is always Peter is to idealise not only the technical achievements O’Brien’s Bitter Harvest). By slippage he means the of Aborigines, but also their social relations”. One way Pascoe will take an element from a source and of the most popular illusions he propagandises is then transform it with a slippery exaggeration. dealt with severely by someone who certainly does Two headings within his text deal with two levels know something about Aboriginal clan violence. of deceit, and the topics they cover are very familiar The claim that Aborigines “did construct a system to local readers: “Small—and large—arrangements of pan-continental government that generated peace with the facts: Sources, eels, cakes and mills” and and prosperity” is dealt with as an assertion which “Small—and big—arrangements with the facts: “falls somewhere between exaggeration and out- Villages of 1000 inhabitants … and more!” right fabrication”. The necessary point is well made that again and Although Dark Emu gives the impression of again Pascoe introduces unsourced and unverifiable “erudition and seriousness”, the publishers employed information or perhaps misinformation. Amongst good designers, and Darmangeat is rightly doubtful. the unsourced material Darmangeat discusses is While further noting Pascoe’s reliance on Rupert what he calls a “surprising dialogue” when Pascoe Gerritsen he asks, as has every critic, why he didn’t

Quadrant September 2020 85 Fabrication and Deception consult primary sources. For Darmangeat the times Darmangeat deals with familiar topics, the mis- when the book’s “lack of rigour” becomes “frank uses of both Mitchell and Sturt, and the now famous dishonesty is when it shamelessly distorts the infor- cake offered to Sturt by Aborigines. With French mation to accommodate it with the sauce it intends perception he notes also that it was really more a to serve”. pancake (galette) than a cake, simply being a mix- In his handling of the Lake Condah fish traps, ture of flour and water. He also questions the trium- where Darmangeat also expresses reservations about phant claims Pascoe makes for Aboriginal ingenuity Pascoe’s reliance on secondary reports of the work of and the dating supporting these achievements. anthropologist Heather Builth, whose own writings The essay ends when Darmangeat gets to “a little are not even cited in Pascoe’s bibliography, he judges (actually a lot) of politics”: that “the text presents a partial, biased image, when it is not frankly fantasist”. Here Darmangeat iden- One last question, perhaps the most painful: tifies an error made by Pascoe and examines it as how can we explain that the progressive a telling indication of his use of strange secondary Australian camp, as far as I can judge from my sources and his mishandling of very simple informa- computer screen, has chosen almost unanimously tion. Superficially Pascoe is making a straightfor- to sing the praises of a work that mistreats the ward observation: facts so recklessly, promotes the supernatural as a moral guide and capitalist enterprise as a Escaped convict William Buckley visited Lake political perspective? And why are the main, if Condah before 1836. He was amazed at the not the only, voices that speak out against the quantities of fish captured by the [Aboriginal deception, those of reactionaries with the worst constructed] traps. He also reported seeing fish intentions? harvesting systems on smaller streams west of Port Phillip Bay. The last words are a hyperlink to the mass of Pascoe-questioning material on the Dark Emu Buckley never visited Lake Condah, and in Exposed website. The answer Darmangeat gives to his memoirs, The Life and Adventures of William his own questions is completely false: “many feel Buckley, does not comment on other “fish harvest- paralysed at the thought of criticising anything ing systems”. It is simply unbelievable that this that comes from the oppressed and, out of mis- small but important falsehood survived two edi- guided solidarity, give up fighting for reason and tions and has also gone into Young Dark Emu social emancipation”. That is appalling rubbish. In without being commented on by Victorian histo- Australia those who know Pascoe’s book is damag- rians and local Aborigines who support the book. ing stupidity are too frightened to criticise the cul- As many Victorians who have grown up with the tural establishment and the vile Twitter mob they story of Buckley would know, the Wild White Man cultivate. There is also the question of careerism. wandered around the Bellarine Peninsula and up to Melbourne, but he never walked to distant Lake s I imagine Darmangeat would agree, for any- Condah. Darmangeat, possibly the first critic to do one with basic academic training Dark Emu is so, notes that none of this is true and that incred- immediatelyA problematic—leafing the pages in a ibly Pascoe does not refer to Buckley’s own book bookshop, or opening his Kindle as Darmangeat but had simply taken and then changed his account has done, it is obvious there are problems with the from these words in an article in the Age in 2003: lack of footnotes, and something strange about the “The famous escaped convict William Buckley, who seemingly excellent bibliography which lacks the lived with Aborigines for many years mentioned basic primary sources one would expect to see. Again eels from western Victoria in his diaries …” obviously, it is a book that makes grand claims and The Australia Council, presenting Pascoe with deserves careful checking for accuracy. Yet it was an Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, immediately praised by leading academics who have described this shoddy book as “a monumental work helped it gain entry into our schools. of scholarship”. When criticisms of Dark Emu Professor Marcia Langton has been a vocal sup- were raised, journalist Rick Morton reported that porter of Pascoe as an historian and in his unsup- his journal, the Saturday Paper, spent two days in portable claims to be an Aboriginal. The reason may Canberra at the National Library “reviewing the have more to do with book royalties than princi- original documents and explorer accounts in ques- ples. Look in her book Welcome to Country and you tion. They are—at every instance—quoted verbatim find Pascoe lauded, as he is in the version of the and cited accordingly in an extensive bibliography at book she has prepared for the school market and the end of Pascoe’s book.” for which her publisher’s teaching notes state that

86 Quadrant September 2020 Fabrication and Deception

“The best way to uncover a new understanding of Terminology, Indigenous Australian Peoples”. The how Indigenous people actually lived in this coun- wretched thing is adapted from a 1996 publication try is to read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe.” Accept from the School of Teacher Education, University that Pascoe is utterly flawed and her own dismal of New South Wales. From the safety of Paris he book crashes. Consider Richard Broome, Emeritus mocks, but none of his Australian colleagues would Professor of History at La Trobe University: not dare laugh as he does or voice the criticisms he long after the first edition of Dark Emu was pub- makes, although they surely know how stupid they lished he wrote in Agora, the journal of the History are. In this brave present world even the word pre- Teachers Association of Victoria, of which he is the history is banned in favour of “since the beginning of inaugural patron, “I heartily recommend this book the Dreaming/s”. And with these idiocies in mind, to teachers of Aboriginal studies.” That is simply and the book he has just read, Darmangeat closes shameful—pushing this rubbish into our schools is his essay: an absolute denial of intelligence. For Quadrant Online Tony Thomas looked at with regard to these recommendations to the appalling teaching notes, commissioned by teachers as well as the dithyrambic [passionate] Magabala Books, Pascoe’s publisher, for using their reception made to Bruce Pascoe’s book, what book in high school geography classes. In similar emancipation [for Aborigines] can come out of publisher-commissioned teaching notes for primary such [speech] renunciations? In the meantime, school children using Young Dark Emu, teachers one thing is certain: it is not with a bad were instructed on an activity for the poor brain- conscience that we make good science. washed kids: “Students will then write about these same events [the incident when Sturt is welcomed In Quadrant Joanna Hackett has expressed hor- with water, ducks and cake by Aborigines] from the ror at the inclusion of Young Dark Emu in the short perspective of one of the Aboriginal villagers.” In list for a Children’s Book Council award and sug- the text itself Sturt calls the place a “camp”, not a gested that it would be “negligent and malfeasant” of village. And it truly is a pity Pascoe never quoted them not to carry out their own investigation before Sturt on the Aboriginal women who ground the making a decision and possibly giving Pascoe’s book flour, added the water and cooked these famous their much-respected endorsement. That Pascoe’s cakes, for they, Sturt noted, “were the same half- hoax books are going into schools exposes educa- starved unhappy looking creatures whose condi- tion departments, arts organisations who funded tion I have so often pitied elsewhere”. Shouldn’t the publication of the books and teaching notes, and imaginative students writing of living in this Pascoe the publisher responsible, to charges of negligence village be made aware that these would have been and malfeasance for not having subjected the books their own mothers and elder sisters? to proper investigation. There is a moral obligation Ending his voyage through the abyss, the French to teach kids truthfully—is it also a legal obligation? critic made a final detour to note the speech codes on Aboriginal matters that academia is enforcing Christophe Darmangeat’s essay “Dark Emu: Aboriginal on itself, and has been doing for over twenty years. Australia and the birth of agriculture (Bruce Pascoe)” The text he has chosen is a mind-deforming publi- appears online at https://cdarmangeat.blogspot. cation from Flinders University called “Appropriate com/2020/01/dark-emu-bruce-pascoe.html.

Guilt

An owl hoots in a dark sky where deceitful dreams multiply.

Ken Simpson

Quadrant September 2020 87 Death of a Sperm Whale

With her calf she dives Into the darkness a mile below the waves Where the great squid abides Ferocious Goliath monarch of oceans deep. Singing a lilting lullaby to her calf In darkness she swims in playful mood And for an hour remains down in the deep Swimming side by side with her son. Largest of the toothed whales The sperm whale comes to the surface Spouting water through her blowhole Smacking her great tail upon the waves. Her Beauty

Japanese harpooner takes aim Her beauty Deadly bolt plunges home Enhances passion Explosive charge detonates Makes heart quicken Mortally wounded she calls to her calf. Enshrines her forever soulmate. Hauled up dying by her tail Many years have passed Against the side of the whaling ship Her beauty fades In agony she dangles head in the sea But never sweetness of her soul Bleeding slowly to death. And I love and need her even more. Her calf calls out in anguish Following the ship for hours But there is no lilting answering lullaby Only blood in the water. Wild Horses

Racing across the prairie Stallion in the lead Chasing the wind Hooves sounding like thunder. Prey animals of flight Always fleeing from danger Seeking somewhere safe Hidden from predators. Resting in a valley Gathered protecting foals With stallion standing guard Mares relax in the midday heat.

Colin Ian Jeffery

88 Quadrant September 2020 BOOKS, ARTS & LIFE

Too Much the Quick Fix Scott Pr asser

The Insider thrills of the theatre, but you only see the shadows by Christopher Pyne of the figures and can too easily miss the puppeteers Hachette, 2020, 336 pages, $34.99 pulling the strings. So, Christopher Pyne’s new book, with its x-politicians write memoirs for many reasons. enticing subtitle, “the scoops, the scandals, and the Some want to see their name in print or to serious business within the Canberra bubble” and spillE the beans and wreak revenge on their enemies, its promise “to explain what really happens behind usually in their own party. Many political memoirs the scenes in Canberra” is welcome. After all, are boring diaries of minutiae. Some are justifica- Pyne spent twenty-five years in federal parliament, tions for past actions, to set the record straight or was junior minister in the Howard government, to rewrite history. Some are like political thrill- and then cabinet minister and leader of the house ers with much fiction. A few are genuinely amus- under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison across ing with insightful observations about politics and key portfolios of Education, Industry, Defence their fellow travellers. Very few are serious attempts Industry, and finally Defence. Pyne must be the to make sense of what they have been through, to ultimate “insider”. explain how government really works with its con- What do we get? Well, it is certainly not a straints, pressures and assessment of mistakes from vituperative, personal and vengeful account, unlike which lessons can be drawn. the book that his former boss, Malcolm Turnbull, Regardless of motives and quality, all served up recently. And the 300 pages cover his publications by former ministers, prime ministers, twenty-five years and key events at a cracking leaders and members should be welcomed. Studying pace compared to Kevin Rudd’s voluminous effort. politics from the outside with all the records only Indeed, when reading the book one can almost gives you a part of the story. It is akin to watching hear Pyne speaking aloud, complete with quips an Indonesian shadow theatre, which has all the and asides.

Quadrant September 2020 89 Books

On that most basic question of why politics, departure from politics is a personal decision” Pyne’s answer does not soar to the lofty appeal to does not wash. Party loyalty counts. Elsewhere principles, policies or ideals. Rather, more honestly, Pyne admonishes other Liberal deserters like Julia he says, “I went into politics to get my hands on the Banks. levers of power and use them to move the dial” by Pyne certainly inserted himself into the drama “influencing who would be leader and hence prime of the Liberal Party’s internecine warfare when minister”. This explains much of Pyne’s game Turnbull fell in 2018. He claims that he played throughout his career—to be on the winning side a pivotal part in getting the “moderates” behind in the Liberal Party. We are not told much about Morrison and out-manoeuvring Dutton. There is what “moving the dial” means. no reason to doubt this. However, there is too little Yet, if that was Pyne’s goal, he got off to a bad discussion about why he supported Morrison other start because in 1993 he had the temerity to tell than he thought Dutton was unsuitable. Others John Howard that he should move on and out. This have also questioned Pyne’s readiness to absolve was as inept as John Moore, Liberal Member for Morrison’s alleged two-timing of Turnbull. Ryan, saying publicly in 1989 after Howard had lost the leadership that he “should fade away”. Little n policy matters, Pyne discusses the homosex- wonder it took Pyne so long to climb the greasy pole ual marriage issue at length—it extends over of power. Is this indicative of the flawed judgment fifteenO pages. This tells us a lot about his interpreta- that marked his career? For instance, although tion of “liberalism”. Pyne paints the marriage issue Pyne admits Howard was a “great man” and leader, as the cause of Abbott’s demise, ignoring so many he had no compunction in wanting other factors such as the Prime Peter Costello to replace him Minister’s Office about which he sooner rather than later—Costello n office, Pyne was often frustrated, the factions of was the future, not the past, he I which he was a part, and of course says. But Howard stayed till the too often went for Turnbull’s white-anting which he end and Costello never took him the outrageous, disregards. Pyne confuses his small on or stuck it out after the 2007 “l” liberalism with being a member election defeat. the comical, the of the Liberal Party, which has a performance, rather wider, more complex philosophy nd look who Pyne repeatedly than the substance. and audience. Of course, the mar- later backed as leader— riage issue was not even part of the ATurnbull. Twice in the book Pyne He was right when Liberal Party’s platform. Pyne’s admits Turnbull was “not a natural he proclaimed opposition to the National Party campaigner” yet he backed him joining the party room discussion again and again—first as opposition himself “the fixer”. highlights both his insensitivity to leader, and later in rolling Abbott. coalition politics and the gravity of It seems odd, however, that for a person who saw an issue that was changing a cornerstone of our his mission in politics as wanting to influence “who society. would be leader and hence prime minister”, that Nor does Pyne discuss the factionalism— Pyne claims he was not part of the group that moderates, centrists and conservatives—which is plotted Abbott’s demise—but we have no reason to destroying the Liberal Party, or the “hollowing question his honesty on this. The ultimate insider, out” of modern political parties. He rightly berates it appears, was not on the inside. Labor for being a party “dominated by political Pyne, himself an energetic campaigner, skirts too professionals” but surely Christopher himself falls lightly over Turnbull’s appalling eight-week winter into that category. election campaign in 2016 under the unprecedented In revealing that Michael Photios is his “good “Turnbull Coalition” banner. The election left friend and moderate leader from New South Turnbull with a one-seat majority, weakened his Wales” (actually he is just a lobbyist and left-wing authority, and encouraged the Abbott supporters to faction puppeteer), Pyne highlights his capture by start gnawing at his prime ministership. He never factionalism. His idea of the main game is getting fully recovered. moderates up. Indeed, he spends too much time Pyne describes himself as a “team man on on internal Liberal Party policy issues and only good days and bad days” for the Liberal Party. occasionally are we reminded of the “real opponents This is commendable, but he lets Turnbull off the in the Labor Party”. This is further seen in his list hook for his deplorable behaviour after losing the of “great” supposed successful state Liberals that prime ministership. Pyne’s excuse that “everyone’s includes only “centrists” (Pyne’s code for moderates),

90 Quadrant September 2020 Books which reveals a narrow focus and questionable should do—that is what we need. Such a book judgment. Some only had one term (Tonkin), or would have been less exciting, but more lasting. less (Baillieu, Brown). A couple shot themselves in Howard did it with Lazarus Rising, but Pyne hasn’t the foot (Greiner, O’Farrell), and a few didn’t make with The Insider. it happen (Hamer). “Conservatives” deliver the big victories—at national level Fraser, Howard, Abbott Scott Prasser is Senior Fellow at the Centre for and Menzies and at state level Askin, Bolte, Court, Independent Studies. Between 2013 and 2019 he Playford, Nicklin and Bjelke-Petersen—but are all was Senior Adviser to three federal cabinet ministers ignored. including Christopher Pyne. Pyne glides over his time in education, failing to highlight how the Coalition came to office ill- prepared to deal with Gonski school funding, especially concerning the post-forward-estimates funding issue. There were achievements in schools, Peter Kurti but his attention was too focused on higher education reforms that failed. However, he is right Where Rights Have Gone Wrong that the school funding settlement achieved by his successor Simon Birmingham was unhinged by “a The Debasement of Human Rights: How few colleagues who wanted to stoke the embers Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom of discontent” over Catholic school support. Pyne by Aaron Rhodes wisely concludes that “reform in school education is Encounter Books, 2018, 296 pages, $48.25 much harder than it should be. One of the depress- ing aspects of being an education minister is the efore COVID-19 overwhelmed Australia’s sense that many stakeholders have no interest in stu- political life in early 2020, the Morrison gov- dent outcomes.” He gets it. We needed more serious ernment’sB Religious Discrimination Bill was mak- discussion about these sorts of issues. ing its unsteady way through the parliamentary process in Canberra. Successive versions of the bill he trouble with this book is that it has been were drafted as part of the government’s promise to written too much with an eye for the quick address issues of religious freedom that arose dur- Tsell, just as his policies were for the quick fix. It ing the national debate about same-sex marriage is amusing in places, occasionally interesting, and in 2018. sometimes clichéd. In office, Pyne too often went Despite assurances from political leaders at the for the outrageous, the comical, the performance, time—most notably, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill rather than the substance. He was right when he Shorten—that nothing was of more importance proclaimed himself “the fixer”. This brought laughs to them than religious liberty, efforts to legislate all round, but Pyne devalued himself. He played protections were continually frustrated. Opponents too much the court jester. He was better than that. fretted that expression of religious convictions Read his speech of November 24, 2014, where in about human sexuality amounted to “hate speech” ten minutes he shredded the Labor Opposition in that vilified gay people—especially the young—and a style that matched the best of Keating—focused, could drive them to commit suicide. Disagreement passionate and articulate. As he said: about the extent of protections necessary to uphold the right to religious freedom forced the govern- All Labor does is think every day, “How can we ment to send the bill back for review. play politics?” while the government is thinking Equating the right to religious freedom with “How to get more jobs … more growth in the a “licence to hate” distorts what is widely consid- economy … how we repair the damage done by ered to be the first human right to be understood Labor ...” as attaching naturally to the individual. As Aaron Rhodes remarks in this important book, religious This book could have been so much better, liberty is a priority for human rights protection: just as the talented Mr Pyne in office could have been so much greater, but we are all shaped by our it shields our capacity to form our basic personalities and predilections that drive or divert moral and intellectual orientations, us. A book about how policies are developed, the independent of government control; it is need for clear principles, the limits of time and the freedom to situate oneself in the moral resources, and a focus on what governments can universe [and] to discover and understand do, as distinct from what commentators say they moral distinctions.

Quadrant September 2020 91 Books

Clearly, the right to religious liberty cannot Protection of those principal rights entailed the be regarded as an absolute right and must always state refraining from disturbing the individual’s circumscribed by law: were that not the case, we choices, dignity or security. Before Locke, the would be expected to accept such faith-based prac- theological teachings of Jerusalem and the rational tices as female genital mutilation or child mar- philosophy of Athens helped form early ideas about riage. To argues, as Rhodes does, for the primacy the moral worth and inherent dignity of the indi- of the right to religious liberty is to make a claim vidual person. Rhodes gives a helpful account of the about its importance rather than about absolute development of these ideas in the modern era and entitlement. emphasises the important role that reason played in In The Debasement of Human Rights, Rhodes, recognising and implementing human rights. an international human rights activist and essay- ist, argues that today the concept of human rights, ontemporary discussions about human rights to say nothing of our understanding of them, is invariably appeal to the phrasing adopted in seldom informed by the principles that originally theC 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights gave meaning to rights. Universal, “natural” rights which, as Rhodes notes, is often regarded as an that attach to individuals, such as the right to free- inviolable sacred text. But in his insightful account dom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of of the history of the Declaration, Rhodes reveals association, precede the state and how it was with this document that are prior to civil law. But they have the mingling of natural human been debased by the incursion of conomic and social rights with economic and social newly created economic and social E rights began in earnest. rights, such as the “right to social rights are not human Drafted in the early post- security” and the “right to an ade- rights based on our war years, during what Rhodes quate standard of living”. describes as “a phase of ideologi- But economic and social rights common human cal rearmament” by the West and are not human rights based on our nature, says Rhodes; the Soviet bloc, the UDHR was common human nature attach- they are collective “a product of domestic and inter- ing to individuals, says Rhodes; national politics as much as ide- they are collective rights, granted rights, granted by alism about human rights”. The by states, requiring implementa- states, requiring result was a compromise to which tion by bureaucracies, and reflect- the Soviet bloc was able to assent: ing certain political principles and implementation by while rejecting the concept of nat- outcomes. Promulgated in the bureaucracies, and ural rights, inclusion of economic service of political goals, economic reflecting certain and social rights afforded the illu- and social rights have emptied uni- sion that the bloc was, nonetheless, versal, natural rights of all moral political principles committed to upholding human force. and outcomes. rights. As Rhodes observes: “The At the heart of this distinction expansive interpretation of human lies the difference betweenrestraint rights was a way to avoid violent exercised by the state and action undertaken by the conflict with the East, and to support long-term state, as Rhodes observes: “true human rights com- processes of gradual internal change within totali- pel governments not to infringe on individual free- tarian states.” dom; they do not require positive actions to change This commingling of rights was restated in two society”. Authentic human rights, in other words, other significant international instruments both “are not a matter of utilitarian calculation about ratified in 1966: the International Covenant on what will or will not work to achieve social and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR) and political goals”. Human rights do not establish a the International Covenant on Civil and Political particular vision of the good society; they simply Rights (ICCPR). Along with the UDHR, the secure the opportunity to be good, and to bear the ICESR and the ICCPR came to be regarded as the burden of moral accountability. International Bill of Human Rights. Interestingly, But if “natural” human rights are derived from Rhodes notes that the earlier European Convention natural law, how are they to be identified? John on Human Rights, which came into effect in 1953, Locke derived his conception of the main natural drew upon the natural rights listed in the UDHR rights—life, liberty and property—from the tra- but excluded economic and social rights, thereby dition of empirical philosophy, devising practical attracting criticism at the time for being an attack ideas from observations of the world around him. on communism.

92 Quadrant September 2020 Books

The approach to human rights adopted by the individual liberty. UDHR, in which natural rights were mixed in with Don’t expect human rights commissions to economic and social rights, continues to inform come to the rescue, Rhodes warns. They have contemporary thinking about rights. Attempts to become “Orwellian enforcers of political correct- separate them, or to demonstrate the hollowness of ness”, he says, citing the Australian Human Rights putative rights such as the “right to development”, Commission’s pursuit of Bill Leak under Section the “right to welfare”, or the “right to housing” are 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Rhodes resisted with appeals to the so-called doctrine of is also uneasy about attempts to quash expres- the “indivisibility of rights”. But Rhodes insists sion of anti-Semitic views such as those uttered this doctrine is a purely political idea intended by Holocaust deniers: “There is no doubt that to establish that it is unacceptable to think about Holocaust denial is a habit of antisemites, but no rights concerned with liberty apart from rights to, one should be denied the right to hold or express say, clean drinking water. The doctrine can justify any belief, and courts are not the place to establish state interference in the lives of citizens because it truth.” Naturally enough, Rhodes wants the same “supports the view that violations of human rights freedom to be extended to those who question sci- can balance or justify each other—that violations entific claims about climate change but who, like of freedom can be offset by the social programs”. former James Cook University Professor Peter Tyrannical governments thereby use the doctrine Ridd, face vilification and heavy penalties for dar- to mask violations of freedom while posing as ing to express their views. defenders of human rights. The Debasement of Human Rights is a courageous Claims about economic and social rights, which and fearless defence of liberty; it is also a warn- now include another category of newly created “sex- ing about threats to individual freedom posed by ual rights”, have become the means not of resisting a politicised contemporary international human state interference but of seeking entitlements from rights regime that has turned its back on the very the state which are then to be guaranteed by law. principles which informed the concept of human This widespread weaponisation of rights has ena- rights. “The disenchantment of human rights has bled various interest groups to secure those entitle- led to a disenchantment with human rights,” he ments and thereby accomplish a series of legal and declares. political objectives. Weaponisation has also fuelled Is there a future for human rights? Rhodes’s a culture of grievance. commitment to liberty is undiminished, but he warns us not to expect much from international hodes’s valuable analysis of the debasement of human rights institutions. He foresees any future human rights helps to explain why rights talk framework for protecting and advancing rights as hasR become increasingly bitter and fractured to the emerging from a loose coalition of states commit- point where it aims at the curtailment rather than ted to upholding freedom. But this will depend, in the advancement of freedom. Contemporary pre- turn, on a willingness to think again both about occupation with ending “hate speech” in the name the meaning of human rights and about the mean- of protecting the “vulnerable”—whether on the ing of the liberty those rights were intended to campuses of our universities or in the pulpits of defend. “In the debasement of human rights lies our churches—has inhibited the free expression of a challenge and an opportunity,” Rhodes says in ideas and the open expression of opinion. Limits conclusion. This timely and important book stands to free speech, placing a check on truly hateful as both a warning and an invitation. speech, are legitimate in liberal democratic soci- eties which are otherwise committed to protect- Peter Kurti is the Director of the Culture, Prosperity ing the right to freedom of expression. But rights & Civil Society program at the Centre for talk is used increasingly to expand categories of Independent Studies, and also Adjunct Associate the unacceptable, to stifle any attempt to challenge Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame those categories, and thereby to erect obstacles to Australia.

Quadrant September 2020 93 Joe Dolce

Cook’s Quadrant Captain James Cook and The Pacific

I saw my self this morning a little way from the ship The first episode of the series begins on the Big one of the Animals before spoke off, it was of a light Island of Hawaii, at the end of Cook’s third voy- Mouse colour … with a long tail which it carried like age, as he is attempting to take the Hawaiian king, a grey hound, in short I should have taken it for a wild Kalani’ōpu’u, hostage aboard his ship, in order to dog, but for its walking or runing in which it jump’d persuade the locals to return a small boat that was like a Hare or a deer. stolen. This act leads to his death on the beach at —James Cook, Journals, 1770 Kealakekua Bay. We flash back to Lincolnshire, ten years earlier, n the first episode of the 1986 Australian mini- where Cook receives his first sponsored expedi- series Captain James Cook, a twelve-inch astro- tion from the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl nomical quadrant, designed by John Bird, is of Sandwich, to explore the South Seas—Brazil, Istolen from the Endeavour by Tahitian islanders. Tahiti and New Zealand. He says farewell to his As the purpose of this first of James Cook’s three wife, Elizabeth (played by Carol Drinkwater), who major sea voyages is to observe and record, with he will not see again for three years. The esteemed the astronomer Charles Green, the 1769 transit of botanist Joseph Banks (John Gregg), also a wealthy Venus across the sun, part of a multinational scien- investor who has financed the trip, accompanies tific effort to map the size of the solar system, Cook Cook as a key member of the crew. Cook introduces (played by Keith Michell) remarks, “If we can’t find his sailors to sauerkraut, his innovative solution for that quadrant, we’ve come halfway across the world avoiding scurvy, the most common form of death for nothing. It means failure.” at sea. Cook states that he “intends to bring them The quadrant, crucial to his task, is the forerun- home again. Bruised, perhaps, but alive.” Sailors are ner of the sextant, and was used in the eighteenth flogged for not eating the sauerkraut, onions, lem- century to measure longitude, latitude, time of ons or fresh meat. day, the altitude of the sun and angles up to ninety After a hazardous journey of eight months, the degrees. Endeavour reaches Tahiti, without a single man It was on this initial voyage (1768 to 1771) that dying of sickness. The exhausted sailors believe they Cook came upon the east coast of Australia and have stumbled onto paradise when they are wel- recommended it as a future British colony. This comed enthusiastically by bare-breasted Tahitian year is the 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing in women. The men indulge freely with the islanders Australia, and I want to revisit this inspiring mini- but Cook refrains, even when propositioned by the series and contrast it with the Foxtel documentary chieftainess, Oberea. Cook shows Oberea a picture series, The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook. of his wife, “who is very jealous and who would be angry”. Oberea accepts this and transfers her affec- aptain James Cook runs six hours, in four epi- tion to Banks, who is also reluctant, but is persuaded sodes, and was a production jointly financed by by Cook that it would now be an insult to refuse. RevcomC France and the ABC, with a major portion As a result of sexual liaisons, some of the men of investment coming from 10BA tax money. Most contract venereal disease. As all of the sailors had Australian films during the 1970s had depended on been medically examined and cleared before leav- funding from the Australian Film Commission, ing England, it is determined that it was brought to but in 1981 a 150 per cent tax concession, Division the island, either by Samuel Wallis’s HMS Dolphin, 10BA of the Income Tax Assessment Act, made two years earlier, or by a French frigate, Boudeuse, Australian film production attractive to investors. in 1776, under Louis Antoine de Bougainville (who

94 Quadrant September 2020 Cook’s Quadrant attempted to claim Tahiti for France, naming it Monday 11th New Cythera). Before 10 oClock we had 20 and 21 fathom and The ship’s quadrant is stolen and Cook orders continued in the depth untill a few Minutes Oberea to be taken hostage until it is returned. before 11 when we had 17 and before the Man at the lead could heave another case the Ship n the second episode, the quadrant is found but, Struck and Stuck fast … [we] found that we had before the Endeavour can depart, two marines got upon the SE edge of a reef of Coral rocks desert,I escaping with their local girlfriends into the … upon which we went to work to lighten her mountains. Oberea is again held hostage until the as fast as possible which seem’d to be the only men are located, as Cook realises if he doesn’t set means we had left to get her off … [we] throw’d an example his men will be running off every time overboard our guns Iron and stone ballast Casks, they drop anchor in a favourable port. The desert- Hoops staves oyle Jars, decay’d stores … ers are returned and the ship makes sail but Cook chooses leniency, reducing the formal charges from Cook’s plan is to hold steady until the morning desertion, punishable by hanging, to deliberate high tide can lift the ship above the reef. The tide absence. comes but the ship doesn’t budge. Fearful that strong Cook opens his “Secret Instructions” from the winds could break the ship apart, Cook dispatches Crown, informing him that he is to proceed due longboat crews with tow ropes and they heave the south to prove the existence of the legendary Great ship free by brute force. Southern Continent, to survey it and to “report on the nature of the people and, with their consent, Tuesday 12th take possession of this land, in the name of the At 9 oClock the Ship righted and the leak gaind King”. After weeks at sea, exploring existing maps, upon the Pumps considerably. This was an Cook concludes that the Great South Land is a fic- alarming and I may say terrible Circumstance tion and orders a change of course, to chart lands and threatened immediate destruction to us as they actually know exist: New Zealand and Terra soon as the Ship was afloat. However I resolved Australis Incognita, “somewhere to the west of that”. to risk all and heave her off in case it was They arrive in New Zealand and are initially met practical and accordingly turnd as many hands with hostilities but, after an exchange of gifts, and to the Capstan & windlass as could be spared the help of Tupaia, a Tahitian navigator and trans- from the Pumps and about 20 past 10 oClock lator, who has joined the crew, communication with the Ship floated and we hove her off into deep the Maoris is established. Cook proceeds to survey water … this fortunate circumstance gave new and map the coast, circling both islands. He now has life to every one on board. It is much easier to to decide how to return home to England, whether conceive than to discribe the satisfaction felt east, via Cape Horn, or west, towards New Holland, by every body on this occasion … in justice to the name given to the mainland of Australia in 1644 the Ships Company I must say that no men by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. ever behaved better than they have done on this Cook continues westward and lands on the occasion, animated by the beheavour of every east coast of Australia, where the sailors encoun- gentleman on board, every man seem’d to have a ter Aborigines. Tupaia attempts, unsuccessfully, to just sence of the danger we were in and exerted speak with them. Banks shoots an emu and orders himself to the very utmost. it sketched, plucked and prepared for eating, as it reminds him of a giant turkey. He says, “We’ll have Going ashore, Cook examines the breaches it stuffed and served with a French sauce.” But he in the hull. Badly damaged and struggling to the later says it was “tough as anchor rope and smelt Dutch port of Batavia in the East Indies, the ship of old sea boats—even the greyhound declined is repaired, but the crew fall ill and seven die of it”. On shore, a wooden marker is nailed to a log, dysentery, including Tupaia. The Endeavour sets Banks proclaiming the cove’s name, Botany Bay. sail again, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and The British flag is hoisted and Cook addresses the arrives at the English port of Deal after three years crew and locals, “I take possession of this land in at sea. The success of the expedition is celebrated the name of His Majesty King George III.” The throughout England but it is tempered for Cook by Endeavour sets sail again. In the meantime Cook’s the discovery that his young daughter is dead. four-year-old daughter has died in England. Approaching the Great Barrier Reef, the n the third episode, disappointed that he hasn’t Endeavour runs aground on rocks. actually discovered any new lands, Cook is reas- From Cook’s Journals, June 1770: Isured by Banks that what they have found is of

Quadrant September 2020 95 Cook’s Quadrant great value: a huge collection of flora, precise new acute infection of the gallbladder, or ascaris (round- charts and increased knowledge of the South Seas. worm) infestation of the intestine, and is saved from Cook is publically criticised by a Royal Society fel- death by a broth prepared by Johann Forster—made low, Alexander Dalrymple, that he has returned from Forster’s pet dog! with a ruined ship and has failed to discover the On his return to England, Cook is once again Great Southern Continent, “something that we all feted for his exploration, the Earl of Sandwich know is there”. George III now recommends Cook declaring, “There has never been such a journey of attempt a new expedition commanding two ships, discovery before nor can there ever be again.” Cook the Resolution and the Adventure, each with its is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and settles in own astronomer, to try again to locate the mythical for comfortable retirement and to publish his jour- southern continent and claim it for England. nals. He has promised Elizabeth that he has taken Banks risks a good deal of his fortune to finance his last voyage. But England is now at war with this second voyage but is unhappy with Cook’s the American colonies and George III begs Cook choice of ships. He feels Cook’s favoured colliers to take ships to sea to fight the Americans. Cook are “unsuitable, unfitting, unwise—too small, too refuses and the King then suggests another two- slow, too limited in every possible way”. He pre- ship expedition to find the hypothetical Northwest fers a ship with space and a “modicum of comfort”. Passage, between the North Pacific and the North Cook argues that he needs strong ships with a shal- Atlantic, in order to create a shorter sea route for low draft to sail close to the shoreline, in order for trade between Britain and the Pacific. A purse of accurate surveying, and ships that can withstand the £20,000 (many millions in today’s money) is offered. force “of any wind known to man”. This requires col- Cook refuses at first, but longing to return to sea liers “built in the north—there are no others”. The life, and to provide more security for Elizabeth, who collier was a bulk cargo ship designed for naval use, is pregnant again, he says, “I worry for Elizabeth’s a coal-fired warship. The Endeavour had previously future. I’ve seen too many sailors’ widows end up in been a merchant collier, a type known as a Whitby the alms house.” Cook doesn’t trust the government Cat, with a deep hold. The flat-bottomed design to look after his wife in the event of his death and, made it well suited to sailing in shallow waters and despite her objections, and his promise never to sail ideal for exploring coastland and for repairs without again, he accepts command of the new expedition. requiring a dry dock. Cook argues that the reason England has lagged n the final episode, the third and fatal voyage behind the Dutch, the Spanish and the French in (1776 to 1780), Cook is again commanding the ocean exploration is inferior ships. Banks initially IResolution, with an accompanying ship, Discovery. agrees to a compromise, if the ships are altered to He chooses twenty-one-year-old William Bligh, improve accommodations, but when this proves recommended by Lord Sandwich, to be sailing impractical, he resigns from the expedition and master of the Resolution. During the first storm, is replaced as the naturalist by Johann Reinhold they discover shoddy workmanship is responsible Forster and his son Georg. The Resolution and the for serious leakage and are forced to dock in Cape Adventure set sail from Plymouth Sound, and reach Town to effect repairs. Too late in the season now to the Antarctic Circle, but become separated in fog. sail north, Cook spends the winter in Tahiti. Sheep, The Adventure, commanded by Tobias Furneaux, cattle and horses are presented to the islanders as arrives at their arranged meeting place, Queen gifts, but when the ship’s goat is stolen, Cook retali- Charlotte Sound, in New Zealand, surveying Van ates by instructing his men to destroy the villagers’ Diemen’s Land on the way, and Cook’s ship, the canoes and torch a village. The goat is returned but Resolution, arrives ten days later. Cook discovers some crew members believe the action too severe, as that scurvy has struck the Adventure, as Furneaux it has created ill-will with the locals. has failed to enforce Cook’s strict dietary regime. The ships proceed up the Alaskan coast in Both ships continue to explore the South Pacific, search of the Northwest Passage but, unsuccess- but are forced to stop in Tahiti for fresh food and ful, are forced to retreat south, and become the water, due to the scurvy on the Adventure. Cook first Europeans to find the Hawaiian Islands. They finds that his old friend, chieftainess Oberea, has land on the Big Island at Kealakekua Bay. The been deposed by her nephew, King Tū. The ships Hawaiians, at first, deify Cook as Lono, their god of set sail but again lose contact with each other. Cook agriculture, fertility, rainfall, music and peace, but leaves a message in New Zealand for Furneaux, when no bounty comes from this devotion, they ask that he plans to continue to explore the southern Cook and his ships to leave. Cook maps the island regions. Furneaux decides to return to England. On of Maui and proceeds north in another attempt to the Resolution, Cook falls dangerously ill with either find the Passage. However, additional defects in

96 Quadrant September 2020 Cook’s Quadrant timber and topmast construction require a return to slave trader, Ben Boyd. I wish they’d change Hawaii for further repair. the Sydney street named after him. He was a Bligh argues that returning to Kealakekua Bay monster. Cook was a sailor. The thought of his is too dangerous now that the villagers have become statue being destroyed is unbearable. disillusioned with Cook as their divinity, but Cook overrides him. The islanders they now encounter Boyd was a Scottish shipowner, banker and on the beach are armed and confrontational. Bligh politician who engaged in “blackbirding”—enslav- believes this is because their god has returned with ing South Sea Islanders. When the New South a damaged ship. Lilikalā Kame’ Eleihiwa, Professor Wales Legislative Council updated the Masters of Hawaiian Ancestral Knowledge at the University and Servants Act to ban importation of natives of of Hawaii remarked, “Lono was supposed to be any tribe “inhabiting any island or country in the able to control the winds—what kind of god gets Pacific”, and Boyd’s business ventures began to a broken mast?” The priests, who had encouraged sour, he sailed to the Solomon Islands, where he the people to give pigs and crops as offerings, are was taken prisoner and executed by the villagers of now being made to look like fools. Bligh believes Guadalcanal in retribution for the murder of twenty- the priests need to prove Cook mortal by harming five local people by his crew. Boydtown, Ben Boyd him. A longboat is stolen and Bligh advises Cook National Park, Boyd’s Tower, Boyd House and Ben that this is an act to provoke him. Cook ignores the Boyd Road in Neutral Bay are named after him. warning and goes ashore to take King Kalani’ōpu’u When asked if he was daunted about creating a hostage until the boat is returned, but this strategy, television series about Cook, Yeldham said: so effective in Tahiti, backfires here and the island- ers attack, killing Cook. To me at first it felt like going back to school, because of the way we’d been taught in Australia he author of Captain James Cook, Peter Yeldham, about “Captain Cook”. Then I started going to was born in New South Wales in 1927. He went some of the best libraries, and in their pages he Tto England in 1956, working as a playwright and began to come alive. Things we’d never been writing for British television in the 1960s. He said: taught. He’d come from a modest home, his first job had been serving behind a counter in a shop, We went back to London. A cheap flat, which until he tried to work his way into the navy. To was still possible in 1959. On a lucky day we met me he suddenly became a victim of the British Spike Milligan. My wife typed Goon Show class system, and having seen how this worked scripts for him, while I settled down to write at close quarters during the years we lived there, television plays in the hope I could sell one. this made him a far more interesting character. Through Spike I found an agent and wrote more I’d thought of him as “Captain” Cook, a naval plays. deity, but he was not even a lieutenant when the first voyage was planned. The affluent Joseph Moving back to Australia in 1976, he wrote fif- Banks wanted a competent sailor to navigate teen mini-series, including 1915, All the Rivers Run the ship, allowing Banks and his entourage of and The Far Country. He was nominated for an scientists to fill the main cabins. When they International Emmy for Captain James Cook and, returned from the first great voyage across the in 1991, received an Order of Australia Medal. His world, it was Banks who was lionised in the adaptation of Bryce Courtenay’s book Jessica won the streets of London and knighted by the King, show the 2005 Logie for Outstanding Mini-series or while Cook went home to his wife and children Telemovie. The Daily Telegraph called Yeldham “The in their modest East End cottage. So it was master of the Australian historical blockbuster”. the characters of James Cook and his wife who I talked with Yeldham briefly about Captain attracted me. James Cook. When I asked him if he could go back and change anything about the series now, he said n 2018, Foxtel presented a documentary series of “only the title—to The Wind and the Stars”. On the six forty-five-minute episodes, narrated by Sam issue of toppling statues and removing historical fig- INeill, called The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook. ures such as Cook from public arenas because they Produced by Essential Media and directed by Sally do not meet current moral standards, he replied: Aitken and Kriv Stenders, it was nominated for the 2019 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Factual or I’m against it, particularly the trend directed at Documentary Program. Cook. In a book of mine set in 1842, The In a structure resembling Michael Portillo’s train Currency Lads, a character was the odious adventure series, Neill carries with him a copy of

Quadrant September 2020 97 Cook’s Quadrant

Cook’s Journals. Even the background music is jaun- the King”, but then states: “there can be no question tily similar. of consent here because they weren’t asked”. Peter Neill told Karl Quinn of the Sydney Morning Yeldham agrees with Neill on this point. Herald, “I didn’t fully understand how much there Kame’ Eleihiwa tells Neill: are Cook fanatics who see him as close to Superman, and there are people who see him as demonic.” He [Cook] certainly helped the empire by mapping set out to see Cook’s adventure “from both sides the way to go … my personal view of Cook: he of the beach”, travelling to Tahiti, Australia, New was a tubercular, syphilitic racist … the lack of Zealand and Vanuatu. respect, that’s what I don’t like about Cook … Jack Latimore, of the Guardian, wrote: that he thought he could take [our King] off and hold him ransom and do what ever he wanted to it throws new light on eminent characters— him—for a boat? such as the naturalist Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his voyage—as well as There is no evidence anywhere that James Cook historical figures who played key roles in many was tubercular, syphilitic or a racist, in the ugly of the voyage’s feats but who have since had their sense we throw that word around today. And dress contributions largely downplayed. The show’s it up all you want, Cook was killed by a Hawaiian focus on the lesser-celebrated contributions of lynch mob. Neill says, “Cook’s luck over three voy- Polynesian polymath Tupaea to the expedition’s ages had led to hubris and that hubris led to death.” accomplishments in navigation and diplomacy— Cook was the most skilled seaman in England and triumphs generally attributed solely to the luck only played a minor part in his tremendous likes of Cook and Banks—is an example of achievements. the kind of welcome shifts in perspective Kame’ Eleihiwa boasts to Neill: that are becoming increasingly important to contemporary nations such as Australia in We Hawaiians still celebrate every 14 February reconciling the heavy burdens of their colonial as Hau’oli Lā Ho’omake iā Kapena Kuke, or past. Happy Death of Captain Cook day! Tradition demanded that his body be dismembered, and Sam Neill was born in Northern Ireland in 1947 the bones be put into a sennit casket. The Lono and moved to New Zealand when he was seven. priests took Cook’s hands and his buttocks, His own family and descendants have Maori and wrapped in ceremonial kapa cloth, to his ship. Polynesian ancestry. We Hawaiians killed Cook and rid the world of In this documentary, he interviews a few local a very bad man. Many Hawaiian families still academics and PhDs who supply such dodgy facts claim the honour today. that it made me think perhaps getting a doctorate today is like applying for a driver’s licence. A Tahitian I find it hypocritical that some of the traditional PhD tells him that Tahiti was a paradise to Cook’s practices of indigenous people, practices many now men when they arrived because “you had water consider utterly barbaric, are still so reasoned-out everywhere—they had been drinking sea water for and defended, while the equally traditional activi- months, stinking biscuits and they had scurvy and ties of old European nations, such as exploration they had lice … and when they arrived here and saw and settlement, are diminished and devalued. those people—they were clean”. Drinking sea water, When Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866, in a even for days, would be fatal, because the kidneys foolish remark he called Cook’s death “justifiable are unable to get rid of the salt. Cook’s ship was homicide”. Peter Yeldham thought this might have free of scurvy on that initial voyage and, as far as merely been one of Twain’s less successful attempts “clean” goes, his sailors were free of venereal disease to be funny. when they arrived, and only contracted it from the What is impressive and enlightening about sexually-open Tahitians who had picked it up from Neill’s Pacific documentary is the number of times Wallis’s voyage there. he is set straight by the people he is interviewing. A Neill occasionally rescues this blurring of facts descendant of a Maori man killed by Cook’s men with humour, quoting one of Cook’s own rules to on the beach perceptively tells Neill he understands his men: Do not ever trade for sex, saying, “Well, why this would have happened at that time and that was never going to fly.” He also reminds us of holds no rancour. He says, “It was part of empire Cook’s “Secret Instructions” from the Crown, to expansion, and life will be lost.” “report on the nature of the people and, with their On Vanuatu, Neill is excited by his fortune in consent, take possession of this land, in the name of meeting an unusual family—seven males, all named

98 Quadrant September 2020 Cook’s Quadrant

Captain Cook: Captain Cook Senior, three sons from, or exploited but … we were friends, and named Captain Cook and three grandsons also we were equals and the Maori set the terms. named Captain Cook: “[They were] so taken with Maori were conscious of what they were doing. Captain Cook they have studiously named every And even though now we have taken the more man and boy after him, and still do.” righteous view of the preyed upon, we were the In Australia, Neill plays a 1960s board game predators, too. called Captain Cook: Voyage of Discovery, with Ernie Dingo. Dingo tells him he has trouble understand- n the inaugural issue of Quadrant, in the summer ing how Captain Cook discovered Australia: “It of 1956, Alan Villiers wrote a detailed character wasn’t lost.” Neill laughs nervously but Dingo tells Ipiece on Cook: “James Cook, Seaman”—written him, “Sam, I love you and respect you but … he was from the point of view of a fellow seaman and com- one of yours.” mander. Villiers first went to sea at the age of fifteen Neill talks to Bruce Pascoe who argues that as an apprentice. An accident when he was nine- Cook was confused by Aborigines burning off “with teen forced him to find work as a journalist for the an agricultural purpose in mind”. Pascoe says Cook Mercury, in Hobart, where he developed his writing must have been aware of this as he was “taking war- skills. Recovering from his injuries, he worked as rigal spinach off the roofs of Aboriginal houses— a whaler with Carl Larsen on the Sir James Clark he wanted it to cure the scurvy of his sailors. So it Ross, the largest whaling ship in the world. He must have occurred to him surely that these people became a ship owner, purchasing full-rigged sail- are growing food.” Neill asked him why Cook never ing ships, and circumnavigated the world, teach- mentioned this in his journals, to which Pascoe ing sailing. In the Second World War he saw action replies, “Because he was there to possess.” Neill con- in Normandy, Sicily and Burma and was awarded cludes, “The botanist Joseph Banks must have been the Distinguished Service Cross. He captained the looking the other way.” Mayflower II across the Atlantic in 1957. Why does Pascoe assume the locals were grow- Villiers stresses the Cook’s remarkable achieve- ing the warrigal spinach? We’ve had fields of nettles, ments: “He virtually established the modern sci- one of the most nutritious and versatile bush foods ence of hydrography … he kept sickness in check in Australia, growing wild on our bush properties at sea over long voyages … in a way that had never for fifty years. None of us ever planted or cultivated been achieved before.” He reminds us that in Cook’s it. Coconut and banana trees self-propagate all over time, “drowning was accepted as the common end the South Pacific, and papaya is so prolific that of a seaman’s life … the amount of physical hardship Hawaiians use it for pig food. which was accepted then as a commonplace neces- My favourite interview is an exchange between sity in the seafaring life is now almost unbelievable.” Neill and Maori Emeritus Professor Ngahuia Te Cooks insistence on those “uncomfortable” col- Awekotuku, curator of ethnology at the Waikato lier ships gave him an advantage as a surveyor. Museum, lecturer in art history at Auckland Villiers says: University, professor of Maori studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and a lesbian activist. One other thing James Cook learned in She tells Neill that Joseph Banks “seduced” a local abundant measure from his nine years in the into trading a preserved head, to add to his collec- North Sea Trade [on colliers]. He learned not to tion, for a “pair of fine white drawers”. Neill tries to be afraid of the land. A mariner trained in deep rephrase Awekotuku’s words, to show empathy: “So sea ships might easily acquire a dread of working let me get this right. Banks sees fit to buy a head for ships near the land. It was the land which caused a used pair of underpants … Banks’s second-hand the loss of most sailing ships, not the accidents underpants.” of the sea. Being driven on a lee shore, getting But Awekotuku isn’t having any of this: on a sandbank, or rocks, or shoals—these were the ever present dangers of coastwise sailing Those underpants were white linen. No Maori … he was a seaman first, and a navigator and textile could equal white linen. And something surveyor afterwards. that no one else in the tribe on the island had ever seen worn … when Cook came, everyone I recommend tracking down Villiers’s article was fascinated by the weaponry, by the way during this 250th anniversary. of controlling death. People wanted that. We This first issue of Quadrant was edited by James tend to romanticise how Maoris were and McAuley, who wrote the commentary to introduce sometimes I get really annoyed by that because the new magazine and explain why the image of the so often we are portrayed as being either stolen quadrant was chosen:

Quadrant September 2020 99 Cook’s Quadrant

It is this quarter of the globe we are speculators and gun-runners who saw New particularly interested in … you may think of Zealand mainly as a place ripe for plundering. our magazine as an instrument for measuring The activities of these men helped sow the the altitude—of ideas—or perhaps of brows seeds for the disastrous Musket Wars, the … or taking the idea of squareness which land wars and the punitive confiscations that is lodged in the word, it is also a sign that followed. we stand squarely by certain principles and values … the principles and values referred to James Cook was aware of the inequities of the … are not arbitrarily chosen but the very life colonialism of his time. He said himself of the and impulse of our venture. They are: To be Tahitians, “They are a forgiving people. They cried Australian in our orientation, quite naturally, that we are leaving. Perhaps they should have cried because we are interested in this country, that we came.” its people, its problems, its cultural life, its In his essay, “Unkept Promises”, now online in liberties, and its safety. the National Library archives, McKenna wrote:

The marking of 250 years since Cook’s explora- At Kurnell in Sydney, every anniversary tion of Australia will no doubt be met with the of Cook’s landing since 2000 has been same kind of protest as is now common everywhere commemorated through a Meeting of in the world. A website, “Topple the Racists”, has Two Cultures ceremony, in which visiting identified over one hundred statues and street dignitaries, politicians, local Indigenous elders names in the UK—reminders of colonial times— and school and community groups come that protesters want removed, including those together to listen, remember and share their of Cook, Columbus, Churchill, Peel, Cromwell, understandings of Cook’s visit. Aboriginal, Robert the Bruce, Charles II, James II and Nelson. Australian and Sutherland Shire flags fly side The Australian historian Dr Mark McKenna by side. By moving away from the tired clichés has written: of discovery and nation-making, they have made Cook a more promising emissary. The [Cook] is at once the agent of destruction and celebrations in 2020 will continue the theme the agent of redemption. A man who becomes of the Meeting of Two Cultures. The Kurnell a story that remains open ended—a story that and Cooktown communities’ willingness to continually draws us back, although we know rethink the way they commemorate Cook’s the whole tale will always elude us. Cook can landing shows how acknowledging our history be lionised, misrepresented and reviled, but need not be a crude choice between shame he can never be banished from Australia’s and pride … as the ways of remembering historical consciousness. We stand forever on Cook’s landings have changed over time, he the beach with him. has become much more than the embodiment of modernity, invasion and dispossession; he is Graeme Lay, of the New Zealand Listener, said: also the promise of peace and reconciliation.

Let’s not make Cook a scapegoat for the Elizabeth Batts Cook lived another fifty- lapses that later accompanied the colonisation six years after her husband died. She received of New Zealand. His visits actually laid the an annual pension from the Admiralty of £200 foundation for a society based on a blend of (something like $65,000 in today’s money). As one Europe and Polynesia. It’s true that mistakes of Cook’s stated reasons for undertaking that final were made, and there were casualties on both fateful voyage was concern over his wife’s financial sides. As colonisers, the British were far from welfare in the event of his death, I think he can ideal, but they were infinitely preferable to the rest in peace. She died in 1835, at the age of ninety- Dutch, Spanish and French, who were often three, outliving their six children. brutal in their treatment of the indigenous peoples they colonised. The real culprits in Endeavour 250 (www.endeavour250.gov.au) is the our colonisation story were not Cook and his national program of activities marking 250 years since crews but the hordes of men who came in the Endeavour’s voyage along the east coast. Peter his wake: the whalers, sealers, traders, land Yeldham’s website is www.peteryeldham.com.

100 Quadrant September 2020 The Lemon Tree

A fledgling tree, Roots planted in Mother Earth. What are illusions? Basking in the shade, Resplendent in the light. Lies will take the keel, and set the path and new worlds into life will come. A harbinger of growth, Does the artist’s eye not see the truth, Of renewal and hope. woven in the song of mirrors, or the hushed fan indulge magician tricks, and the watching eye the screen become? Stream Life can assume a whispered rumour, as surely as King Oedipus himself undone, Rill o’ run, or perhaps truth will reign like the seasons, Droplets of water, but then like autumnal leaves will fall. Flowing peacefully. When space and time compress all things, I do not deny anything at all. Boughs of trees, Reflected with Miraculous clarity. At the old house A shoal of fish, On their way, At the edge of the track the old house rots, To somewhere. and flies drone in green grass, and on grey boards Late afternoon sun, where spilt beer has dried, and ash fluttered away Shining forth, to find through the tall pines one more grave. Benignly. Sometimes dust drops from the hole in the roof, and beneath the floor pale newspapers rot, while faded girlie spreads, brown, damp and crisp On Symmetry rustle and melt like snow in your palms. The girdle of the river rambles in mud; Looking in wonder, flowers, meadow and leaves breathe fragrance At the layered patterning, to the air softer than the summer rain, Ingrained on a leaf. where you tread gently so to hear the dead. The markings, You’ll find there amongst carved birds and light On a butterfly’s wings, hanging ageless from the cornice and walls Are quite different, a door, closed tight as an umbrella, Yet similarly symmetric. a door, more kind than time, left open. No two leaves are the same, Nor two butterflies the same. Jason Morgan Unity in diversity, Diversity in unity.

David Hush

Quadrant September 2020 101 Michael Wilding

The Poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon

n the 150 years since Adam Lindsay Gordon’s appeal. “This is genuine ... The writer has ridden his death in 1870 his reputation as a poet rose to ride as well as written it,” Marcus Clarke wrote in great heights, celebrated as the “National Poet his preface. Iof Australia” with his bust in Westminster Abbey Later commentators have agreed. Douglas in 1934, only to decline to neglect and comparative Stewart and Nancy Keesing wrote in the introduc- obscurity. His first published book, The Feud (1864), tion to The Pacific Book of Bush Ballads (1967): was a poem in the manner of the Scots border bal- lads. Popularised in the nineteenth century by Sir Gordon, particularly with “The Sick Stockrider”, Walter Scott, the ballads were a major inspiration to did undoubtedly give the greatest single impetus Gordon. His verse continued to appear anonymously to the ballads of the nineties; and probably and pseudonymously for the next five years when, as ... he established the style of the pounding Marcus Clarke recalled in his preface (1876) to the rhythm and the long line which is generally reissue of Gordon’s Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867), characteristic of the ballads after him. “he discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of ‘How We Beat the Favourite’”. W.H. Wilde concluded his study Adam Lindsay Although set in England, its account of a contem- Gordon (1972): porary steeplechase proved immediately popular in Australia. “Within a few days every sporting man He was the first of Australia’s literary in Melbourne knew it by heart,” Sir Frank Madden balladists—“The Sick Stockrider” was clearly confirmed in Edith Humphris and Douglas Sladen’s the one poem from which the ensuing hosts Adam Lindsay Gordon and his Friends in England and of bush ballads derived. His poem contained Australia (1912): “We were all horsemen then, and in it the beginning of the story of Australian looked upon steeplechasing as the acme of the sport.” bush life. The balladists who came after him, “How We Beat the Favourite” appeared in the crowding the Literary Pages of the 1880s and Australasian, June 12, 1869. Six months later, in 1890s, took up and amplified the story … The January 1870, “The Sick Stockrider” appeared in the lament of the dying stockman, however, will Colonial Monthly under Marcus Clarke’s editorship, always mark the moment when the literature of and was reprinted in the Australasian on January 15. this country began to move in a new and more It remains his best-known poem. Gordon wrote to characteristically Australian direction. John Riddoch on January 17: On February 19, 1870, the Australasian published Bye the bye did you like those verses of mine, Gordon’s “From the Wreck”, a vigorous horse-riding “The Stockrider”? It was written at Yallum narrative. Henry Kendall remarked on its “instantly [Riddoch’s station near Penola] where I think recalling Browning’s vivid ‘How They Brought the you saw the manuscript, in fact, I think it Good News to Ghent’ [sic] but rendered by reason was there. Now I remember this because they of its local colouring independent of the latter”. This made quite a stir here & were copied into The was followed on May 7 by “Wolf and Hound. Our Australasian & spoken of with praise—I don’t Sergeant’s Yarn” dealing with the hunting down of think much of them myself. a bushranger. The Australian bush ballad was firmly established. Kendall remarked in “Men of Letters in The Australian setting, the poignant theme and New South Wales and Victoria”, Freeman’s Journal, the note of authenticity gave the poem immense March 2, 1872:

102 Quadrant September 2020 The Poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon

they seem to have been suggested by the robust, poem to go with a basket of flowers which was to sporting lyrics of Whyte-Melville, Lawrence, be sent to her aunt, Mary Lord, for St Valentine’s and Kingsley. Still we are bound to say we Day. He wrote it on horseback while returning to believe that, in naked strength, in dash, and Melbourne: in all the requisites that go towards making a perfect song of the sort, Gordon’s productions Fresh flowers in a basket— are far and away beyond his models. An offering to you— Though you did not ask it, ordon wrote in the dominant nineteenth-cen- Unbidden I strew ... tury tradition with its themes from the Classics G(“Podas Okus”, “Pastor Cum”), the Bible (“Delilah”) The garlands I gather, and medievalism (“The Romance of Britomarte”, The rhymes I string fast, “The Rhyme of the Joyous Garde”). The archaisms Are hurriedly rather and poeticisms were all part of contemporary poetic Than heedlessly cast ... practice. Tennyson was a significant contemporary influence. Clarke cites others: “The classic student Songs empty, yet airy, will find much to repay him in the many Browning– I’ve striven to write, Landor poems which bear the poet’s name,” he For failure, dear Mary! wrote in his “Country Leisure” piece in the Brisbane Forgive me—Goodnight! Courier, September 4, 1875, and in the preface; “The influence of Browning and of Swinburne upon the n his elegy “The Late Mr A. L. Gordon: In writer’s taste is plain.” memoriam”, in the Australasian, on July 2, 1870, But at the same time Gordon had been provid- IKendall noted “the mournful meaning of the under- ing rhyming racing tips for Bell’s Sporting Life in song / Which runs through all he wrote.” The nine- Australia. The emphasis here is on the immediate— teenth-century crisis of religious faith permeates on contemporary, colloquial idiom, and on a fluent, Gordon’s verse and informs some of his most mem- informal manner, capturing the conversational and orable work with a haunting note, from “De Te” spontaneous. He writes in “Hippodramia”: and “Doubtful Dreams” to “A Song of Autumn”. “A Song of Autumn” was written when Gordon was DEAR BELL, – I enclose what you ask in a staying at Toorak with John Power, and Power’s letter five-year-old daughter Maud asked Gordon to pick A short rhyme at random, no more and no less, a bunch of flowers: And you may insert it for want of a better, Or leave it, it doesn’t matter much, I guess ... Where shall we go for our garlands glad At the falling of the year, My wandering thoughts no longer stray When the burnt-up banks are yellow and sad, I’ll fix my overcoat buttons; When the boughs are yellow and sere? Secure my old hat as best I may Where are the old ones that once we had, (And a shocking bad one it is, by the way) … And when are the new ones near? What shall we do for our garlands glad Gordon opened up the possibilities of contem- At the falling of the year? porary idiom for ensuing poets. And it is all done with an engaging self-deprecation, the upper-class You may gather again, my dear— diffidence of a Byronic bushman married to the new But I go where the last year’s lost leaves go world’s scorn of pretentiousness: At the falling of the year.

All loosely he’s striding, the amateur’s riding, Edward Elgar, Percy Grainger and Miriam Hyde All loosely, some reverie lock’d in all set “A Song of Autumn” to music, and Elgar set Of a “vision in smoke”, or a “wayfaring bloke”, another of Gordon’s poems, “The Swimmer”, as one His poetical rubbish concocting. of his “Sea Pictures”:

He could write with an effortless naturalness. “A I would that with sleepy, soft embraces Basket of Flowers” has a delicate, light note, captur- The sea would fold me—would find me rest ing a beautiful spontaneity of improvisation. Gordon In luminous shades of her secret places, had been staying with John Riddoch at Yallum and In depths where her marvels are manifest; Riddoch’s daughter, Lizzie, asked him to write a So the earth beneath her should not discover

Quadrant September 2020 103 The Poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon

My hidden couch—nor the heaven above her— volumes will be repaid for his labour. He will find As a strong love shielding a weary lover, in them something very like the beginnings of a I would have her shield me with shining breast. national school of Australian poetry.” Australian readers responded. Ronald G. Campbell records in Like “The Sick Stockrider”, it combines the The First Ninety Years: The Printing House of Massina, exhilaration of vigorous activity and participation “Gordon’s Poems was another best-seller, 20,000 in the world of natural forces with that pervasive volumes being disposed of between 1880 and the sense of mortality recurrent in his poetry. Kendall, end of the decade.” The poems were widely read in his review of Gordon’s Bush Ballads and Galloping and remembered and quoted. And not only by the Rhymes, preferred “his poems founded on the pas- “horsemen” and “every sporting man” of Sir Frank sion of love. The intensity of feeling contained in Madden’s recollections. In My Brilliant Career (1901) two or three of these, we venture to say, is as deeply Miles Franklin refers to him as one of “my sworn marked as that in Browning’s most passionate lyr- friends and companions”: “Gordon, with his sad, sad ics.” He singled out “No Name” and “Laudamus”. humanism and bitter disappointment, held out his The Australian bush and ocean, experienced and hand and took me with him.” And she quotes from carefully observed, are the context for the action of his “Ye Wearie Wayfarer, Fytte VI, Potter’s Clay” Gordon’s poetry rather than the subject itself: and “Wormwood and Nightshade” in chapter 7 and “Wormwood and Nightshade” again and “Podas ... through the tea-tree scrub we dash’d; Okus” in chapter 38. Humphris and Sladen list some And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they thirty “famous sayings of Gordon” that had passed rustled underneath! into popular currency, and his famous quatrain from And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crash’d! “Ye Wearie Wayfarer” remains in circulation today:

Kendall wrote: Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, he paints Nature with the firm and free hand Kindness in another’s trouble, of a master. Here we have no prolix work, no Courage in your own. after touches, no niggling over petty details, but vivid pictures, always tersely expressed, Leonie Kramer charted “The Literary Reput­ and sometimes conveyed by means of a single ation of Adam Lindsay Gordon”, in Australian epithet. Literary Studies (1,1963). Inevitably there was a reac- tion. John K. Ewers declared in Creative Writing in The “Dedication” to Bush Ballads and Galloping Australia (1945): “his poetry, although it impressed Rhymes offers some sustained evocation: his contemporaries, has little to say to the present generation”. Gordon was excluded from The Penguin In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles Book of Australian Verse (1958) and Les Murray’s ’Twixt shadow and shine New Oxford Book of Australian Verse (1986). Harry When each dew-laden air draught resembles Heseltine remarked somewhat grudgingly in the A long draught of wine ... 1972 Penguin Book of Australian Verse: “Whatever its shortcomings, ‘The Sick Stockrider’ must find its The wattle blossom is recurrent in his verse, and way into a representative anthology of Australian wattle was planted at his grave, recalling the con- verse, as much for its one-time prestige as for its cluding lines of “The Sick Stockrider”: prototypical failures.” In 2011 Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann included three examples of his Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle work in Australian Poetry since 1788, remarking: “His blossoms wave, reputation faded during the twentieth century. He With never stone or rail to fence my bed; is sometimes left out of anthologies and is now seri- Should the sturdy station children pull the bush ously underrated.” flowers on my grave, I may chance to hear them romping overhead. Michael Wilding’s books include the prize-winning Wild Bleak Bohemia: Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay n his “In memoriam” poem on Gordon, Kendall Gordon and Henry Kendall: A Documentary, the wrote that he “sang the first great songs these essay collection Wild About Books and the novels Ilands can claim / To be their own.” Clarke wrote In the Valley of the Weed, Little Demon and The in his preface: “The student of these unpretending Travel Writer.

104 Quadrant September 2020 S t ory

Long Live the Weeds Andrea Ockerby

he dog shelter was located in that odd netherworld at the edge of our cities where suburbia seems to end but the country has not quite begun. The carpark had more potholes than parking spaces, and it was with a rising sense of irritation that I finally managed to manoeuvre my black Mercedes coupe into a runt-sized spot between a concrete wall and an old Mazda. Squeezing myself out of the car I pointed the key to lock it, my heart sinking as I noted the rust and dents on its homely neighbour. TI had just turned towards the bleak architecture of the shelter complex when the chest pains began again. I’d been getting them for a few weeks now—the doctor seemed to think they were nothing to worry about—but this time they felt worse and I had to stop to catch my breath. Waiting for the discomfort to subside, I found myself leaning against the little beaten-up Mazda, my mind replaying last week’s medical consultation. “I can’t find anything wrong with you, Margot. All your tests came back negative.” My doctor—I always like to think of him as a lost Persian prince—is an Iranian refugee who fled the Ayatollah the year after the revolution. “But you’re ten kilograms overweight,” he said, running his eyes over me with a sigh of resignation (it’s not the first time we’d had this conversation), “and I think you might be depressed.” Now it was my turn to sigh—don’t they always fall back on this old chestnut when nothing else turns up in their test-tubes? “What’s that got to do with chest pains?” The hint of challenge in my voice as I said it echoed in my head now as I stood in the carpark, still unable to draw breath, confronted with a “possible causal link between mental depression and heart malfunction”. My eye was drawn to one of the neighbouring farm’s paddocks, a blaze of bright yellow over a lush green—completely overgrown with some variety of noxious weed. As I looked, the breath that had been so long coming finally arrived, the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come, and I inhaled with greedy abandon. Still leaning against the little car, I took a few moments to steady myself, taking in the view, making a solemn vow to cut down on the cultured butter I had fallen in love with on my last trip to Paris. I pushed away from the Mazda, dusting the snug backside of my “Slim Illusion” workout pants—my one concession to the doctor’s suggestion that I get some exercise. As I headed out of the carpark I took another long look at the paddock in all its gaudy glory. It’s one spot of brightness at any rate, I reflected, as I walked with a thousand misgivings towards the reception office. A weary-faced woman named Bev took me through to the pens. As the gate

Quadrant September 2020 105 Story

opened with a loud chink I felt the familiar tightening in my guts. It was the barking that got to you in these places. My third attempt to adopt a dog and you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but no, the sound of fifty or so dogs raised in dismal unison, I don’t think that’s something I could ever get used to. This would be the last time, I promised myself. If I couldn’t find a dog today I was going to a breeder for a puppy—a cute, cuddly golden cocker spaniel or Cavalier King Charles—what I’d wanted in the first place before my friend Lucy laid the big guilt trip on me. “A dog isn’t a fashion accessory, you know,” she had chided me one afternoon, about a month before, as we sat on my Italian-silk sofa, drinking coffee, leafing through my glossy dog book. I had just been admiring a platinum blonde mini-Samoyed, marvelling how its coat was almost the same colour as my plush-pile carpet. Looking up from the book in surprise I replied, “What’s up with you?” “Nothing,” she said, though she might as well have said everything, and I was a little taken aback, for up till then she’d seemed to share my passion for finding the perfect pooch. We’d been discussing my dog project for a while, ever since my divorce, when I’d declared it was probably a better move than trying another husband. And I’d always liked dogs—at least they weren’t forever wanting to go home with someone else. Lucy had laughed at this, saying that after what Tom had put me through, she could see my point. She had even gone out and bought me the dog book. Now, as she paused to take a deep draught from her latte, everything seemed to be qualified. “Only, well,” she continued, “I know you being you, Margs—you just want everything to look beautiful,” and she waved her hand around to indicate the décor of my apartment, which had taken me the better part of a year to create. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, but,” she seemed to be struggling for the right words, “did you ever consider adopting a dog, you know, from a shelter?” “You mean—a mongrel?” “Some of them are adorable,” Lucy insisted. “I’ve been having a look at a few on the websites. And they’re not all mutts, either—plenty of pure-breds find their way there, you know.” I stared into my cappuccino. “But wouldn’t a lot of them have, you know—problems?” “Not necessarily,” Lucy went on, seamlessly now. “They get surrendered for all sorts of reasons. And even if they do, all they usually need is a little training and TLC. And, well—it’d be like something out of Charles Dickens, wouldn’t it, taking one of the ones that nobody else wants?” She could be powerfully persuasive sometimes, but I remained unconvinced. It all sounded like descending into some murky underworld, just when everything was starting to work out so nicely for me. The work on my flat was finished at last, and my interior-decorating business was making progress, all those trips to London and Paris finally starting to pay off. I had spent the past two years hauling my life out of the mire of being married to a man who made everybody else’s party go, and I just couldn’t do interesting or challenging any more. But Lucy was relentless, conquering all my objections with just one question, “Do you know how many dogs get put down in Australia every year?” Then she frog-marched me over to the computer and began trawling through shelter websites, pointing out any likely candidates. So here I was, passing pen after pen of sad-looking mutts, the odd pure-bred or two—a giant German shepherd that lunged at the bars of his cage with a bloodcurdling snarl, a sweet-faced greyhound shivering in the cold, a sad Jack Russell that turned away from my extended hand and crept back into the little screened hermitage at the back of his pen. I tried not to look too closely; if I did I would be lost in the tragedy of this place and all the other places like it.

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Finally, we reached the one I had seen on the website, the last one in the row, right next to the overgrown paddock. “Here he is. How are you today, gorgeous? We all call him Gorgeous George here.” Bev’s tired face lit up, her eyes twinkling as she spoke baby-talk to this strange-looking dog. A rough-terrier head, too small for its long dingo body; nice colouring though, tricolour with a white chest and blaze, and white socks on his too-big feet, one of which he poked through the bars of his cage, like a king offering his hand to a loyal subject. Bev took the proffered paw and shook hands with him, laughing. I tried to conjure up some enthusiasm, but all I could think about was how long his legs were, legs that could easily do—what was it I’d read about kelpie-type dogs—fifty kilometres a day? I hadn’t noticed them in the photo on the website; the photographer must have shot him from above to make him look smaller. He was one of those dogs that usually carry the proviso that they’d do best on a property. And if they’d said that, I wouldn’t be here now—my yard was the size of a postage stamp. There was one thing they had got right in the photo, though, and that was his big smiley clown-face and almond-shaped brown eyes that sparkled with good-natured intelligence. All that happiness, I thought, and so little reason for it. There were tight blue bandages on his back feet where his dewclaws had been removed, and a swollen pouch of skin where his testicles used to be. He’d already spent a month in a shelter in Ballarat before being sent here, his last chance for adoption. “Would you like to take him out for a few minutes, see how you get on together?” Bev asked. This was the point I’d always baulked at before. Averting my eyes from the dog, I looked over at the paddock, at the sea of yellow flowers rippling in the breeze. As a girl I had always wanted to pick such flowers and take them home, but then Mum or Dad would say, “They’re not flowers, they’re weeds. Come on now—we don’t want them at home.” Usually I would ignore them and pick myself a hurried bunch while they walked on and I would have to run and catch up. At home I would put them in a glass of water (Mum would say they didn’t warrant a vase) and sit there looking at them with their delicate stems bruised from the trip home and feeling foolish that I had thought them beautiful. How could they be when nobody wanted them? A wave of numb resolve moved through me as I recalled myself to the present. What had I been thinking? Of course I couldn’t take the dog—I had no time to spare for long walks and driving him to leash-free parks, it would be cruel to take him, wouldn’t it? Someone else would take him, someone who could manage him properly, someone who could give him what he needed. But as I told Bev my decision, her face resumed the mask of weariness it had been wearing before. “Of course,” she said, “yes, I understand, a dog like this is a big commitment … so few people prepared to take them on … and if you don’t have the room, or the time … yes, yes, I know, biting off more than you can chew, no sense in that.” Bev walked back with me to reception. We made our way in a shroud of awkward silence. All the tension inside me had unwound now, and I thought I should have been feeling better, but there was nothing in its place except an emptiness as real as hunger. The sound of the gate clinking home behind us, the sound that should have heralded my blessed release, seemed to me more like a prison bell as it reverberated. We said our goodbyes without looking at each other, and I returned to the carpark. It was empty now, save for the Mercedes, and as I moved towards it I wondered why I had chosen black. Not just chosen black, but gone to such lengths to get a black one, for they weren’t very common at the time; I had to drive all the way from Mornington to a dealer in Essendon, as his was the only place in Melbourne that had one. Now I thought it looked just a touch—sinister was the word that lodged inside my

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head, though I did my best to get rid of it. I pointed the key to unlock it—something that had always made me feel a little like Merlin the Magician. But now, instead of power, a wave of weakness swept through me, turning my legs to rubber. Hoping no one was looking at me, I stamped my feet on the ground, trying to get some feeling back into my legs. When I was finally able to will my legs to carry me to the driver’s side door, I saw that the thing I had feared, that the ragtag Mazda had lashed out at my blue-blood beauty, had not occurred, and that lovely, long coupe door was just as gleamingly unblemished as before. But now this gave me no solace whatsoever. On the contrary, I almost wished for a scratch or two, maybe even a dent, like that little Mazda. Just as I reached for the door handle, I noticed some movement in the golden- weeded paddock. A utility truck had driven in with a tank mounted on the tray. A man in high-vis protective gear got out of the passenger door and hooked up a spraying apparatus to the tank, before fitting a mask over his face and beginning to squirt the poison in a steady, side-to-side sweep as the truck moved slowly through the paddock. As I watched him, something went cold and heavy in my chest, and I found myself dragged back to the day I thought I’d managed to bury forever, under all the layers of heritage paint and Morris-print wallpapers, the thick moss-green carpets that looked and felt like fine English lawn, behind the velvet drapes and Tiffany windows that glowed like gems in an Oscar Wilde fairy-tale. That was the day the olive-skinned Venus wearing only a towel answered the door of the town-house that Tom had disappeared into some thirty minutes before. This was after weeks of mysterious medical appointments when, frankly, he had never looked healthier. Suspicion had finally driven me to follow him one afternoon, about five minutes across town to one of the new estates, where I sat in the car for nearly half an hour trying to get up the courage to knock on the front door. From the look of horror on her face I think she must have known who I was straight away. It was one of those moments when time seems to stretch, freezing us both in some eternal farcical nightmare, as I stood there taking in this girl looking like a nymph who’d just stepped out of an Elysian pool. All I could think of was how my fifty-six-year-old body must look to Tom when I was similarly clad. I can’t recollect what either of us said, or how I got myself out of there. I only remember thinking, in the after-shock, that this is how you must feel if someone is killed in an accident. I couldn’t get over the feeling that Tom was dead. And now, as all this played over in my mind, and my eyes followed the man spraying the field, the chest pain suddenly hit again—harder than ever before, a silent, savage knife-thrust to my very core. I staggered against the car, gasping for air, clinging to the door handle as if my life depended on it. I managed to get the door open and collapse into the driver’s seat, where I sat with my head slumped over the steering wheel, my breath coming in short, tortured gasps, the pain in my chest increasing with each moment. I thought of my mobile phone, but the task of retrieving it from the depths of my handbag and doing anything with it was already quite beyond me. All I had left was my mind, but now I could feel even this beginning to dim, beaten down under the relentless onslaught of pain. My thoughts began to come in strange, ever-more illogical sequences as I slid down into the shadow-lands of unconsciousness, until all that was left was a mere pinprick of light. I fixed my mind’s eye on that tiny star, drilling into it every last shred of volition I could muster, willing it to grow bigger, but instead it began to flicker alarmingly, like an expiring candle. Then it was as if my heart was taken in a pair of giant pincers, and squeezed without mercy.

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Suddenly, the car door was wrenched open and I found myself looking up into Bev’s face, a face that had lost all its weariness now as she placed a strong hand on my shoulder and asked if I was all right, her dulled eyes now clear blue mirrors of concern. The pain was so bad I was unable to answer, only stare up at her dumbly, into the light- filled eyes that seemed, somehow, to be my only hope. And as I continued to stare up at her the strangest thing happened. The two eyes began to merge into one disc of blue-white light that became brighter and brighter as I continued to stare. Now I found myself looking down a long, bright tunnel stretching towards something in the distance, something that glowed with the most intense golden luminosity. I felt myself begin to move down the tunnel, but as I went my eyes were drawn downwards, and I was watching from above the scene unfolding around the Mercedes in the carpark below. I saw Bev standing with the door open, her hand on my shoulder as she talked to me, and a few other people milling around with their mobile phones. Then an ambulance arrived, red and blue lights flashing, siren wailing. Two paramedics leaped out, one older, short and barrel-bellied, the younger one tall and athletic- looking. I watched as they took me out of the car and put me on a stretcher, yet I felt no panic or alarm, only a sense of detachment—as if I was watching it happen to someone else on the news. For a brief moment I wondered if it was wise to continue down this weird corridor of blue-white light, but the desire to do so was so irresistible that common sense didn’t have a hope. My whole being longed to get to the end of that tunnel, to find out what it was that shone with that unearthly shade of gold—one I had never seen the like of in all my years of fabric-swatches, sample-books and paint-charts. And so I let myself be drawn down to the end, feeling like a phantom from an old ghost tale, for I glided through that strange space without any sense of a physical body, except for an unusual sensation in my chest. And there, spread out in front of me, as far as my eyes could see, was the golden paddock, but now the gold of the flowers and the green of the pasture had taken on something new, something more than I remembered, beautiful as it was. The colours now were so intense they seemed to bleed into the sky, and as I stood there drinking in this special splendour, I noticed two figures in the distance, running towards me through the paddock. As they came closer I could see they were a woman and a dog; closer still, and I recognised the dog from the shelter, and—but how in the world?— the woman looked like me. In astonishment I watched the woman gambolling about with the dog. She was laughing as she tried to run and he kept getting under her feet, and as I continued to watch I felt something strange happening to my face; as if my features were being twisted and turned without my control, and then I realised I was smiling. Aeons it had been, or so it seemed, since a genuine smile had suffused my face, so long, in fact, that I had almost forgotten what it was like. And then I realised the pain in my chest was gone, and in its place an unusual sensation, a steadily expanding warmth that filled my chest and began to radiate out into the rest of my body. Once more I found myself looking down at the scene unfolding in the carpark. The paramedics were working frantically over my body, the older one yelling, “She’s flat- lining, she’s flat-lining! Get the shock-pads!” I could see something like a convulsive shock moving through the crowd as the young one hooked up the equipment and handed the pads to the older one. Everyone stood by in a still silence as he applied the pads to my chest. As I watched my body jerk and convulse under the electrical surge, something began to pull at me from behind, like a giant magnet, sucking me backwards along

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the tunnel, away from my golden field. The woman and the dog were moving away from me now, slowly dissolving into the luminous backdrop, and as they went I felt a great sobbing cry tear through me, No! No! I don’t want to go—I want to stay here forever! But the whole scene was falling away, until once more it was merely a fabulous glow in the distance, at the far end of the blue-lit corridor. My eyelids flickered open and I was looking up into the perspiring faces of the two paramedics. The older one smiled down at me. “Gave us all a bit of a fright now, didn’t you?” he said, turning to check his monitor. “Not as much as I gave myself,” I said, with a wan smile. “How do you feel now?” “Okay, I think—there was this terrible pain—” “Well,” he replied, still staring at the monitor, “everything looks fine here, but we’ll have to get you to hospital and have you fully checked out.” In the background I could hear the young one shooing the crowd away, “Okay, okay everyone, show’s over.” “No, wait—please—” I said, trying to raise myself on one elbow. The older paramedic jerked his gaze away from the monitor, fixing me with a look of alarm. “Now look here, Lazarus, none of that please,” he said, easing me back down onto the stretcher. “But I’ve got to talk to Bev—she was here just now—” “Okay, okay,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “but just take it easy, will you?” He turned to the departing onlookers and called out, “Anyone here called Bev?” I heard a little hubbub break out in the background. I remember looking up into the sky, and how unbelievably blue it looked, with just one or two delicate puff-balls of cloud floating across. I heard steps crunching over the gravel, and Bev’s puzzled face appeared above me. And as I looked up into her kind blue eyes I knew it would be all right now, I didn’t know how, but it didn’t matter. Because all I wanted now was to run through endless fields of flowers rippling in the breeze, with Gorgeous George by my side.

Andrea Ockerby lives in Victoria.

TB or not TB?

I did it over sixty years ago, so don’t ask me about isolation. Under ten and in a far-off nation, with TB over sixty years ago smiling at Dad from a nursing station at about a hundred metres or so. I did it over sixty years ago, so don’t ask me about isolation. I was able to tough it out back then, so I’m sure I’ll be able to again!

Derek Fenton

110 Quadrant September 2020 sweetness & l i g h t

Tim Blair

undits predicting election outcomes, particu- any kind of mood there at this remove is impossible. larly in elections with voluntary voting, are As well, the standard of reporting in the US being typically barracking rather than predicting. what it is, no gauge of mood is available through PBob Ellis, the late Labor pervert, was a perfect media outlets. You’re either there and able to work example of a forecaster more into cheerleading things out, or you’re here and operating at an Ellis than clear judgment. He’d routinely tip left-wing level of awareness. victories across the board, from local state elections My first in-person election in 1996 was an to Brexit and in US presidential votes, then preen easy practice run for elections to follow. Very few if his candidate won. people expected Republican Bob Dole to defeat Bill Or he’d devise astonishingly complicated Clinton, and those expectations were supported by excuses following the far more frequent cases when all first-hand evidence. Nobody really seemed to his candidate failed. Of course, Ellis’s constant care about the result, which is generally a good sign errors were not limited to elections. He could get for whoever’s in office at the time. anything wrong, including the nature and identities Looking back, 1996 may have been the least of the terrorists who detonated bombs during the controversial and least contentious US election of 2013 Boston Marathon. the past twenty-four years. “It seems to me likely that this was not al-Qaeda That all changed in 2000, however, when or a lone madman (three bombs portend a conspiracy Republican George W. Bush took on Clinton’s of at least three people and from me therefore a deputy, Al Gore. I was at the Democrat convention ‘conspiracy theory’ and from the FBI too, since that year, surrounded by Gore’s media fans, who they are paid well to imagine such wickedness), but were completely convinced their man would prevail. more likely, much more likely, the National Rifle It’s always fun to be among people who see Association,” Ellis wrote. things differently from you, especially when it is As usual, Ellis had absolutely no idea and simply obviously forced. Folk cheered in the media section wished it to be so—as do many, from left and right, when Gore kissed then-wife Tipper on stage, as predicting the outcome of this year’s presidential though it wasn’t the least affectionate and natural contest between incumbent Donald Trump and his kiss in the history of relationships. Gore went at the Democrat rival Joe Biden. poor woman like a robot programmed to crudely Personally, I’d far prefer Trump to win, simply mimic human emotion, which is basically all he because I want to see how this experiment continues ever seems to be. to play out. Yet a Biden victory, too, might deliver “That was incredible,” a female reporter nearby potentially massive amusement benefits. Biden is said. “He just lost the election,” I answered, still, as this is written, trusted to answer occasional thinking of how that grotesque parody of passion questions and even speak on camera, but he’s would be perceived outside the venue. Actually, quickly becoming a day-by-day proposition. The Gore probably lost it during one of the debates, idea of him in the White House is very appealing, when for no reason at all he abruptly charged up as least for the anticipated comedy payload. to Bush and glared at him while the Republican In any case, accurate US election predictions spoke. from an Australian perspective are made wretchedly Bush dismissed him with a brief nod. Gore’s difficult due to coronavirus travel restrictions. This alpha male act immediately collapsed. Or maybe is the first US election year since 1992 I have not he lost it when both candidates were invited to been in the US for at least a part of the campaign, answer baseball questions for that year’s World and it is a surprisingly disorienting experience. Series magazine. Asked what he thought of domed The US is so sprawling and varied that detecting stadiums, Gore’s reply ran for eighty words and still

Quadrant September 2020 111 sweetness & light said nothing. Bush’s complete answer: “I like to go anyway.” to baseball games outdoors.” It may have meant little in the overall scheme of In 2004, having roamed around the US for things, but it was obviously very much appreciated. a time, I placed several bets with US journalists Such gestures go a long way when we’re dealing that Bush would beat challenger John Kerry. Their with the complications imposed upon all of us by confidence was based on Kerry’s background as a Chinese coronavirus warlords. Vietnam soldier and the Iraq war going so badly At my newspaper, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, for America. My confidence was based on not being staff have been extraordinarily accommodating. able to find anyone anywhere who liked the self- They’ve taken on extra work to cover for colleagues aggrandising Democrat. needing time for medical appointments and such, At the 2004 Democrat convention, Kerry walked and generally been as flexible and nimble as you’d out and began his speech. “I am John Kerry,” he expect from a free-market media outlet. said, “and I am reporting for duty.” Gamblers were Everyone does their bit. But imagine the paying out on those bets before he’d even finished selflessness of an organisation that spends millions that line. of dollars every year without demanding a single Barack Obama in 2008 had both main factors cent in return—simply to amuse and entertain all in his favour: visible enthusiasm and the polls. who happen by. Republican friends were dismayed by Obama’s Imagine a media outlet providing free content so win, but it had been foretold by bumper stickers ridiculous that it transcends satire. Such a journal and lawn signs. Another easy call for anyone with actually exists. It’s called the Guardian, and during functioning eyes. Not so 2016, when the polls said our coronavirus madness it is providing a daily one thing and the stickers and signs quite another. break from all serious COVID-19 concerns. I drove that year with friends from Texas to Los Just the other day, the Guardian ran a typically Angeles. Twenty dollars were on offer to the first of absurd and perfectly distracting piece by Leslie us who could spot a Hillary Clinton bumper sticker. Kern below the headline: “‘Upward-thrusting We never did actually see one, but Trump support buildings ejaculating into the sky’—do cities have was everywhere—except in the polls. This was my to be so sexist?” first US election where there had been such a split. “Toxic masculinity is built into the fabric of our Really, I should have placed more weight on urban spaces,” according to Kern: the enthusiasm element. Right up until the vote, I “Glass ceilings and phallic towers. Mean streets still thought Clinton would win. Sometimes even and dark alleys. Road names and statues of men. being there is not enough to guarantee an accurate From the physical to the metaphorical, the city is prediction. And this year we don’t even have filled with reminders of masculine power. And yet televised campaign rallies to use as a guide. we rarely talk of the urban landscape as an active So who’s going to win in 2020? Don’t ask me. participant in gender inequality.” Granted, the Guardian is a one-note joke; erhaps I’ve just been lucky. Or maybe my escape everything is always apocalyptic, from US election from Melbourne twenty-six years ago is paying results to urban sexism and from climate change offP more now than it ever has. to racism. But they play that end-of-the-world Either way, I’ve witnessed nothing but kindness note so damn well. And the joke improves with and generosity of spirit from fellow Australians every telling, because the world plainly isn’t ending since this whole Kung Flu caper kicked off way anytime soon. back when everybody was still more worried (with In fact, the Guardian has become more considerable justification) about bushfires. hilariously dire during recent decades as the overall In a supermarket carpark the other day, an older situation for humankind has relentlessly improved. lady was about to begin her long carpark walk back To read the Guardian, one would never know that to the shop entrance so she could return her trolley. Third World poverty is being eradicated and that It’s quite a hike from that area of the park, but a living standards and life expectancy worldwide saviour then appeared in the form of an unlikely- have soared. looking local youngster. That’s what makes the Guardian so compelling. He wore tattoos and had taken several steps It’s a daily insight into comical delusion. And, in towards appearing as the “before” model in a Australia, we have one man to thank for it. before-and-after dental replacement ad, yet he And that man is former Prime Minister Malcolm quickly sized up the situation and stepped forward Turnbull, who brought together the people who to take the trolley himself. established the Guardian’s Australian edition. “Not a problem,” the gent said. “I’m going there Thanks for the laughs, mate.

112 Quadrant September 2020 Q ad nt a dr ua $8.90 Australia I November 2016 renodesign.com.au r33011 renodesign.com.au renodesign.com.au r33011 renodesign.com.au

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KTheeith W indschuttleHidden Agenda Civilisation: Does It Have a Future?—A Symposium Daniel Johnson, David Pryce-Jones, James C. Bennett, Géza Jeszenszky Growing Up Muslim in Australia The breAk-up of AuSTrAliA 08 The breAk-up of AuSTrAliA Gabrielle Lord & “Asiya” THE REal agEnda BEHind aBoRiginal REcogniTionThe breAk-upTHE REal agEnda of BEHind AuSTrAliA aBoRiginal REcogniTion keiTh WindSchuTTle THE REalkeiTh agEnda WindSchuTTle BEHind aBoRiginal REcogniTion Guilty Unless Proven Innocent Jan Christie, Augusto Zimmermann The hidden AgendA of The AcAdemic ASSAulT keiTh WindSchuTTle AboriginAl SovereignTy on The conSTiTuTion The hidden AgendA of The AcAdemic ASSAulT ISSN 0033-5002 AboriginAl SovereignTy on The conSTiTuTion Enemies of Literature 770033 500006

The hidden AgendA of The AcAdemic ASSAulT 9 Australian voters are not being told the truth University-based lawyers are misleading the Barry Spurr, Patrick Morgan AboriginAl SovereignTyAustralian voters are not being told the truthon The conSTiTuTionUniversity-based lawyers are misleading the about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderAustralian voters are not being told the truth University-based lawyers are misleading the The Self-Portrait of Larissa Behrendt indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth.about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was Michael Connor activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth. a black state, equivalent to the existing states. At Federation in 1901, our Constitution made indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander a black state, equivalent to the existing states. At Federation in 1901, our Constitution made Its territory, comprising all land defined as native Australia the most democratic country in the world.activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth. On Keynes and Darwin Steven Kates a black state, equivalentIts territory, to the comprising existing states. all land definedAt as Federationnative in Australia1901, our Constitutionthe most democratic made country in the world. title, will soon amount to more than 60 per cent The great majority of Aboriginal people have always Its territory, comprisingtitle, will all soon land amountdefined to as more native than 60 perAustralia cent the mostThe democratic great majority country of Aboriginalin the world. people have always On Paul Robeson Tony Thomas of the whole Australian continent. had the same political rights as other Australians, title, will soon amountof the wholeto more Australian than 60 per continent. cent had the same political rights as other Australians, Constitutional recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the The great majority of Aboriginal people have always On Sully Neil McDonald of the whole AustralianConstitutional continent. recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are had the same political rights as other Australians, its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are quadrant.org.au On the veranda Philip Drew nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. Constitutional recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are 09 I  Tim Murphy, Edith Speers, Geoff Page, Clive James, nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications. Poetry for you, or AS A gifT $44.95 for you, or AS A gifT $44.95 Hal G.P. Colebatch, Elisabeth Wentworth, Roger G. McDonald

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