Vol. 2 No 5 June 1992 $4.00 Playing Trains

Switching points: Margaret Simons on railway reform Creation, new physics, no new answers J.J.C. Smart takes on Paul Davies Mark Coleridge juggles with Genesis Eamonn in error Margaret Coffey on the case of Bishop Casey People's Pari<, Tianjin, December 1991 Photo by Emmanuel Santos

Elders in Tianjin amuse themselves with pet birds. Each day they take the birds out into the park, release them for exercise and entice them back with food. Before the Cultural Revolu­ tion the pastime was regarded as 'bourgeois', and it was banned for a time under Mao Zedong. Now, as politics and ways of life change, owning pet birds has become popular again.

June 1992 marks the third anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre. Volume 2 Number 5 June 1992 A magazine of public affaiis, the arts and theology

CoNTENTS

4 27 COMMENT QUIXOTE Peter Steele sizes up the season; Frank Stilwell considers Fightbacl

P ETER STEELE A magazine o( public affairs, the arts and theology

Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fn1ser Production editor Ray Cassin Design co nsultant John van Loon Production assistants Paul Fyfc SJ, Chri s Jenkins SJ Co ntributing editors 'A sad tale's best Adelaide: Frances Browne IBVM Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Darwin: Margaret Palmer for winter' Perth: Dean Moore Syd ney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor European correspondent: Damicn Simonis US co rresponden t: Mi chael Harter SJ Editorial board Peter L'Estr

4 EUREKA STREET • j UNE 1992 like manikins. At a dinner him the kind of welcome not given in Michnik's honour, com monly fo und in such a passage fr om one of his places. Perhapsit recognised writings was read out in in this man the fo llowing of which he said that he and his aspirations that we can all friends had resolved to be­ identify in ourselves, be the have 'as if we were living in cultural seasons of the world a free country'. It is a haunt­ what they will. ing sentence, and not only 'A sad tale's best for because he has paid dearly for winter! I have one of sprites fo llowing its logic. and goblins', ays a charac­ It is haunting because it ter in The Winter's Tale, can be applied universally. beginning a story which is Ordinary Poles-and Hun­ interrupted and not finished. garians, and Czechs, and 'Sprites and goblins', alien Russians-have lived for spirits often mischievous decades in a political winter, and som etim es dem onic, which has brought distress at can haunt our winters, indi­ best and death at worst. Try­ vidual or shared. Ursula K. ing to live there as if one Le Guin's The Left Hand of were in a free country must Darl

V o LUME 2 N u M BER 5 • EUREKA STREET 5 L ETTERS

Eureka Street welcomes letters Peter Norden replies: Having just been 'Tackle' was from its readers. Short letters are 'released' from Pentridge myself, I can more likely to be published, and all recognise the zeal with which retired really a sidestep letters may be edited. Letters must police offi cer Eric Horne pursues me. be signed, and should include a con­ I ask him to consider these questions: tact phone number and the writer's • Should not police give a higher prior­ name and address. ity to the protecti on of human li fe From Robert Castiglione than to the protection of private John Neil OP's appeal to external propen yl authority(' A tackle from Notre Dame', • How m any hardened criminals have Letters, May 1992) in response to Dean stated their intention to commit mas­ Moore's article on the University of sacres in Victoria? Notre Dame Australia (April 1992) • If the Royal Australian and New confirms the worst fears raised by Zealand College of Psychiatrists insists Moore's article. A reply that simply that its members cannot predict dan­ refers to papal pronouncements pre­ gers of this sort, does Eri c Hom e believe cludes reasoned debate and is clearly that he can? intended to silence critics. During the 15 years I have spent Moore's article raised a number of working with juve nile offenders, the important issues, including the fin an­ only life-threatening behaviour I have cial and educa tional wisdom of estab­ observed in them resulted from the lishing a new university in a state that brutality that they themselves experi­ arguably alread y has too many; the enced in correctional institutions. priori ties of the new university; and tained by the new university. If stu­ the sources of its fu nding. (Are parish­ dents at Notre Dame Australia raise es to bea r the burden, despite ea rlier unco mfortable questions, will they promises that this would not be the simply be met by someone waving an easel) Neil addressed none of these encyclical? A mention issues. His pa ternalistic 'advice', Robert Castiglione Mount Hawthorn, W A. is not enough 11'5 DE.?I&NE..D lO MklCI-\ ''A I/ VA NC.t: AU5f!ZA.L lA fA\Q ''- A Nt\lloNAL.. FLA& . NO ONE CAN IZ.t.f'l\£.fii\6C.I< / Don't tie From Val Noone I apologise: in his Lynched: the Life of Sir Phillip Lynch, Ma stermind of police hands Am bush that ended Gough's Run, and contrary to what I wrote in m y review (Ja n/Feb 1992), Bri an Buckl ey did From Eric Horne m ention Lynch's mother ('L ynched Peter Norden's tunnel vision on the and overlooked', May 1992). And yes, se ri ous threat to innocent victims of it should have been Treasurer where I ju venile violence (April1992) is to be had deputy leader. depl ored. But contrary to Buckley's claim, Having spent 3 7 years of my life Doroth y Lynch is not 'described on trying to pro tect life and property as a pp42-43 . He mentions her where he police offi cer, my experience tells me writes of her father, grandfather and that in the short term drastic meas­ husband, and he later mentions a ures are needed to pro tect the lives of Lynch fa mily trust in her name. He the innocent. Hardened criminals who does not tell us what she was like, state their intention to commit mas­ what she did- the occupations of the sacres must be restrained. Police pur­ men are given--or what influence she suits of life- threatening drivers must, had on Phillip. In my judgment, in in most cases, be continued. To aban ­ what claims to be a story of Lynch's don either of these courses may only life such treatment of his m other is MOOQ. IO pro tect the lives of criminals at the careless, male-chauvinist and in ­ which largely consisted of refe rences cost of the lives of the innocent. adequate. to papal and curial documents, is no By all means be critical, Peter, but How much Bu ckley disagreed with substitute for the reasoned response it would be more productive to address Ly nch and whether his arguments that the article deserved. your mind to practical remedies to about Lynch's real estate transactions Man y Catholi cs will wonder life- threatening juvenile brutality. are reliable- these questions can be whether Neil's letter is indica tive of Eric Horne left to others with more knowledge, the intellectual standards to be main- Clayton, Vi c. but I want to question a co uple of

6 EUREKA STREET • JUNE 1992 C OMMENT

F RANK STILWELL Buckley's comments on Lynch and the Vietnam War. If Lynch was 'never happy' about the war and 'deeply worried' by the US Dabblers in doublespealz conduct of it, as Buckley claims, why For us, equity means giving everyone the right to pursue their own did Lynch not say so publicly at the goals i11life without being penalised and brought back to the time? And if the war was not central lowest common denommator if they succeed. {Fightback! p24) to Lynch's early career, then why did Buckley name chapter three of the YES,IT ISALWAYs coootodefineyour In defining equity in terms of a book, 'Vietnam nearly claims another tern1s. The Liberal Party is to be com- partial and naive view of individual victim'? plimented for setting out this defini- freedom, Fightback! does a grave in- And digressing from his reply to tion of equity in its Fightback! docu- justice to the concept and to our lan- my review, Buckley goes on to repeat ment. No do ubt, equity is a difficult guage. Equity becomes the freedom of that hoary old claim of the Vietnam concept. It is most commonly under- the individual to make a fast buck. War propagandists, namely that it was stood as something to do with social But are such philosophical quib- an invasion of the South from the justice, or fairness in society. Indeed, bles missing the mark? Is there a more North, with an appeal to some un­ Fightback/elsewherereferstotheneed practical agenda here? Look again at specified documentary evidence. As for 'fairness between all section of the latter part of the opening quota- Pete Seeger said: 'When will they ever the community'. But, look again at tion from Fightback!. The rhetoric learn ?' the Fightback! definition of equity and about levelling-down is familiar Everyone can now read United note the bending of the language. In enough. But suddenly a penny drops, a States government sources, and Aus­ defining equity as 'giving everyone connection becomes evident. Aha, tralian military histories, which ay, the right to pursue their own goals in income tax cuts' in the words of General Peter Gration, life', Fightback! effectively defines it Of course, themainpracticalappeal chief of the Australian defence staff, in terms of individual freedom. There- of Fightback! is in those promised in- that 'Some of our own official per­ in lie three related problems. come-tax cuts, financed partly by the ceptions of the war as an invasion First, this definition conflates two introduction of the goods and services from the north did not fit this local equally important attributes of tax and partly by cuts in government situation where there was a locally society-freedom and equity. The expenditure.'Without being penalised supported revolutionary war in an achievementofonemayinvolvesome and brought back to the lowest com- advanced stage, albeit with support trade-off in tern1s ofthe other. A society mon denominator' translates in prac- and direction from the north'.lfoumal based on Social Darwinism-survival tice into the proposal for less progres- of theAustralian War Memorial, April o£ the fittest and rugged individuali m si vi ty in the income tax scale. So in the 1988, p45) -will commonly be one of glaring hands of the Liberals, the definition of Buckley concluded his letter by inequalities of outcome. Conversely, equity supports a case for cutting in- criticising Eurelw Street for 'a ten­ social justice may require constraints come tax rates for the rich! dency to moralise.' In debates over on individual freedoms. However, the story doesn't quite public policy, defenders of the status Second, Fightbacl

VOLUME 2 NUMB ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 7 THE N ATION

MARGARET SIMONS Running off the rails State rivalries have bedevilled Australia's transport system since before federation. The One Nation statement signals an intention to end these rivalries and get the country moving, but what is the reality! This month Eureka Street begins a series on microeconomic reform.

EmvDAY A TRA< N CEAVES BROADMEAoow s, in Dum­ Rail transport is at least eight times safer than suburban Melbourne, and begins the trip to Sydney. It travelling by car, and can be up to ten times more fuel­ pulls up to 70 fully-laden wagons much more safely, efficient, yet almost everywhere it is losing customers and with a fuel efficiency at least three times better, to road transport. On the Sydney-Melbourne route, rail's than if the same amount of freight were being carried reputation for slowness and unreliability is so bad that by road transport. The train is operated by one person. many customers prefer to send non-bulk freight by road, With such potential for efficiency, the train should even when rail would be cheaper. The dirty carriages, be a symbol of everything that a government committed tepid tea and stale sandwiches served up to passengers, to restructuring the economy would like to achieve. Yet plus the ridiculous length of travel time-up to 15 hours Australia's railways are treated as though they are jinxed. from Melbourne to Sydney-act as further disincentives. More than any other country, Australia has suffered According to Professor Colin Taylor, of the Uni­ economically and culturally from the lack of a national versity of Queensland's department of planning, muddle­ rail system. headed connections have not helped. The train from Rail transport has become one of the saddest and Brisbane to Sydney used to miss the connection to oft-quoted examples of all that is wrong with the way Canberra by zero minutes-one train would pull out as the colonies were stitched into a nation. Everyone knows the other arrived, meaning connecting passengers had the bad joke about the different gauges between states: to wait 24 hours before continuing their journey. seven authorities competed rather than cooperated. In On the last available figures, 63 per cent of passen­ some ways, things have not improved much. There are gers carried between cities go by car, compared to 15 now five authorities, and last year a sixth was created­ per cent by air, 13 per cent by bus, and only three per the National Rail Corporation, which is meant to be cent by rail. Of interurban freight, 41 per cent goes by the answer to at least some of the problems. sea, 24 per cent by road, and 35 per cent by rail. Most of Many of those influencing the debate on the econ­ rail's share, however, is accounted for by wheat, coal omy believe there is little future for trains other than as and the like. Only six per cent is 'ordinary', i.e. carriers of bulk freight such as wheat and coal. The non-bulk, freight. Here road transport domi­ Australian Railways Union was recently asked by a nates, even when rail is cheaper. journalist to nominate one official involved in rail who was 'pro-train'. The union could not think of a single R AIL's FINANCIAL LOSSES are enorn1ous, although their person. Even train enthusiasts do not deny that rail has true extent depends on how you do the counting. Gov­ been so awful for so long that it is difficult to convince ernments have used railways as instruments of public anyone that a turnaround is possible. The federal gov­ policy, tolerating losses in order to provide services that ernment's commitment to microeconomic reform has are considered socially necessary. Some state rail sys­ forced a re-examination of rail, but critics believe that tems count the subsidies provided by governments to doctrinaire economic rationalism and counsels of despair run these services as revenue, hiding the total cost to are locking the country into another century of missed the public purse. According to the Commonwealth opportunities. Grants Commission, in 1986-7 public transport deficits

8 EUREKA STREET • JUNE 1992 Rail transport has become one of the saddest and oft-quoted examples of all that is wrong with the way the colonies were stitched into a nation. Everyone knows the bad jolze about the different gauges between states: seven authorities competed rather than cooperated. Things have not improved much. There are now five authorities, and last year a sixth was created.

represented nearly 10 per cent of general public-sector planning. For example, the standard-gauge 'spine' outlays in Victoria, and six per cent in New South Wales. envisaged by One Nation will cut across the vital freight The creation of the National Rail Corporation, a branch lines from Victoria's wheat country. These commercial body that has the state rail authorities as branch lines are not standard gauge, so the new line could its shareholders, was hailed by Barney Cooney, a Vic­ make them useless. torian ALP senator, as 'a ringing endorsement of rail There is no mention of this problem in One Nation, transport'. But critics such as Dr Don Williams-the but sources admit that in the back rooms of rail chairman of Australian National, the only rail authority bureaucracies a lot of midnight oil is being burned in to have turned deficits into profits-think the tone is the search for a solution. And of course, the fastest route hollow. Williams described the creation of the corpo­ from Sydney to Perth is not via Melbourne. At present, ration as 'the worst option ... analogous to reinventing plans involve 'reviewing' the more direct route via the break of the gauge.' Parkes and Broken Hill. If this turns out to be a case of The corporation will nm a national freight network, 'reviewing' meaning closing, the implications leasing rolling stock and tracks but leaving the specifics for Perth will be enormous. of reform to the states. Many passenger services and branch lines will also be left to the states, or 'reviewed', L E DOMINANT ATTITUDE is that the future of rail is which means they will probably be closed. The opera­ primarily in the transport of freight, with passengers tional details are still being worked out, but bold pro­ coming a poor second. Since the proposal for a Very Fast jections of a $1 billion boost to the economy and Train between Melbourne and Sydney was abandoned, hundreds of millions of dollars in savings have been there has been no talk of providing trains that would made. attract tourists or business travellers. This is contrary To add to the flurry of activity, in Februmy the to thinking overseas, where fast passenger trains are in federal government released its One Nation statement, the forefront of new transport technology and govern­ which commits it to spending $500 million on the ment investment. interstate railway network. The gauge between Mel­ Colin Taylor, a self-confessed rail enthusiast, bourne and Adelaide will be standardised and the believes much of the research that has gone into deci­ Melbourne-Sydney line upgraded, creating a 'spine' sion making on rail has been superficial, emphasising coastal route from Brisbane to Perth, with Melbourne cost-cutting rather than ways of attracting passengers as the hub. The $500 million comes on top of the and freight away from road and air transport. 'The result National Rail Corporation's $100 million-a-year budget. of this narrow thinking is a counsel of desperation and The money represents a massive upgrading of the sys­ despair,' Taylor says.'Many of the assumptions behind tem, but it is still minuscule compared to the $2 billion the consultants' reports are going totally unquestioned. spent each year on maintaining roads. Of course there is a desperate need for more efficiency, The money can only be welcomed, and even the but it's a mistake to equate efficiency with hacking Opposition has not found much to criticise in the plans. something to pieces. It's all very well to have one main Yet there are problems that suggest less than careful line, a trunk line around the coast, but if you cut off all

V oLUME 2 N u MBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 9 the branches then the trunk will die.' The emphasis on fr eight and the 'review' of branch Many of the figures cited in the road-versus-rail lines was a theme repeated by Booz Allen, an American debate arc dubious. Most state rail authorities run at firm of consultants retained first by the N ew South enormous deficits, yet rail enthusiasts cl aim that road Wales government and then by the National Rail Cor­ transport is also effectively subsidised. They say that if poration. At the insistence of the Australian Railways estimates refle cted the true costs of road maintenance Union, another finn, Jacana Consulting, was also and road accidents, rail would look far more competi­ hired to review the corporation's investment tive. On the other hand, critics of rail from the Institute program. of Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank, point to the underestimating of deficits by state rail authorities.The JA CAN A RECOMMENDED SPENDING an extra $1.5 billion over authorities' estimates oft en exclude capital charges on 10 years to bring about a transfer of intercity freight from borrowings and count government subsidies as revenue. road to rail. (About $6 billion in federal funds has been spent on roads in the past 10 years.) Jacana proposes less emphasis on the 'spine' railway, upgrading and better use of the line through Parkes and Broken Hill, and the building of new lines inland. As Andrew Wilkinson, an A European would be astonished that experts advising on info rmation officer for the Australian Railways Union, the reform of the railways in our continent should make no says, it would be 'more of a network'. The proposal also, mention of the technology and coordination devoted to the of course, offers more security fo r rail employees, who would uffer huge job losses under the Booz Allen pro­ Channel Tunnel. The tunnel illustrates how the largest cap­ posal. itals in Western Europe were able to persuade their railway Jacana estimates that its plan would lead to reve­ bureaucracies to coordinate railway systems based on con­ nue increases, with a return on the capital investment temporary technology. It exposes the failure of governments aft er nine years. And there would be savings because of in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney to persuade their lower road-maintenance costs and fewer road accidents. An increase in rail use would also be environmentally bureaucracies to modernise technology and coordinate desirable. 'The current National Rail Corporation pro­ management in Australia's largest transport corridor. The gram is based on quick-fix solutions,' says Wilkinson. railway between Sydney and Melbourne encapsulates all that 'It's a patch-up job.' went off-track with Australian railways in the 1980s. In no Asked about the Jacana proposal, the rail corpora ­ tion's chief, Ted Butcher, says: 'Jacana have come up other country, I confidently assert, would cities with such with some interesting ideas, but they were employed at populations, interests in common and distance apart be linked the suggestion of the unions. Our consultants (Booz by so poor a track. In Europe freight on such a line would Allen) said the best financial return on the freight line throughout the 1980s have been carrying container wagons would be if it went through Melbourne, even though hauled by electric locomotives. It is some 100 kilometres that is not the shortest route. Ja cana have a diffe rent perspective, but it would mean spending a lot m ore too long, and the sharp bends, steep grades and numerous money, and we simply aren't going to get that unles tunnels were installed last century. The only recent con­ we show that rail can work.' struction is that recommended by my government between Is the National Rail Corporation the best body to East Hills and Glenfield. -Gough Whitlam, 24/4/91. demonstra te that? Many of the details of how it will (excetpt fmm his submission to the Industty Commission) operate-what it will own and what it will lease-are not yet cl ear.

R A IL's M OST CONSPICuous su ccEss STO RY has been Last year the Industry Commission released a report Australian National, the authority crea ted when the on rail transport that is regarded as a key influence on Whitlam government offered to take over the fa iling the direction taken by the National Rail Corporation. state rail systems in the early 1970s. Only Tasmania The report attacked governments for misallocating and South Australia accepted the offer, and their rail­ resources to unprofitable services, and recommended ways were amalgamated with the old Commonwealth an emphasis on bulk freight and the closure of many railways to create Australian National. At a time when branch lines and passenger services. all state rail authorities were racking up frightening Colin Taylor is strongly critical of the report, which, deficits, Australian National drew up a 10-year plan that am ong other things, cites but docs not question the has resulted in its freight servi ces running at a profit. estimates of rail deficits put together by conservative The authority receives federal supplements to operate organisa tions such as the Nati onal Fanner Federation. some lo s-making pa enger services, such a the Indian­ 'If that report was presented to me as a thesis,' Taylor Pacific and the Chan, but other loss- making se rvices says, 'I would mark it 'fai l', and tell the student to go have been eliminated and staff have been cut by 43 per back and do more research.' cent.

10 EUREKA STREET • j uNE 1992 L AST YEAR THE CHAIRMAN of Australian National, Don as Williams points out, therein lies the weakness of the Williams, criticised the rail corporation's plan in a corporation, since the states have a poor record on rail background paper submitted to the Economic Planning reform. and Advisory Council. Williams cited Australian The head of the National Rail Corporation, Ted National as the best model for reform of the railways, Butcher, admits that more could be done. 'Rail has no concluding that integration of all rail authorities into a credibility,' he says.'What we have got to do is use this federal system would yield benefits of $3 billion to the new injection of money to show what rail can do. Then economy. In contrast, the 'partial integration' of freight more might be possible.' But the impression remains services proposed by the rail corporation would yield that Australia is approaching the future of rail with at only $1.5 billion. The corporation's plan, however, is least as much reluctance as enthusiasm. • the one favoured by the states. They fear federal take­ over, and working with the .corporation would leave Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist. She writes them in substantial control of the railways. However, regularly for Eureka Street.

The Rattler with apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins

I caught this morning morning' menace, king- dom of transport's tyrant, rattling rust-red rat trap in his riding Of the flat metallic underneath him rigid rail, and subdividing Commuters in carriages. How a shuddering stop as we halted at Erskineville station made me cling To the railing! Then off, off forth with a spring, As a P-plate learner leaps and then stops and then leaps again; willie I am deciding Whether to risk it right into town, or go hiding In Redfern-the deceive of, the bastardy of the thing!

Brute ugliness, dirt and old age-oh God, now the overhead cables here Buclde! AND the sparks that break from thee then, a billion Times more frightening, more dangerous than bussing down the Hume by Pioneer.

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes transport policy vaudevillian, As fiscal conjurers make trains-ah, disappear And buses, too, to save the odd half million.

Dermot Dorgan (The last of Sydney's 'red rattler' trains was taken out of commission at the end of 1991)

VoLUME 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET COMMENT

MARGARET CoFFEY 'The leaving of Galway'

I ""' A M 'MO" of Bi,hop E•monn c"'Y '"nding in have lived and worked outside the country-an Irish­ the middle of a crowded restaurant in Melbourne in language culture keeping life up in Connemara and, right 1970, singing in a good tenor: through the diocese, unemployment and emigration. Oh God be with you Kerry What went on with Mrs Murphy in the early '70s Where in childhood I made m erry, is not that interesting, except insofar as it was a sign of You could hear the fiddler tuning up naivety and vanity. What does interest me are the im­ And resining his bow ... ages I have of Eamonn Casey as Bishop of Galway. Re­ I have a photo from the same day of Bishop Casey member when Ronald Reagan paid a flying visit to with a half a dozen or so Kerry priests working in Mel­ Ballyporeen in 1984? Well, Bishop Casey declined to bourne. Most of them are dead now but they were welcome him, out of solidarity with the peoples of familiar faces in my Kerry parents' house and one of Central America. That was a shining moment in all the them gave us the photo as a memento. It was that sort sludge of American-style 'roots' sentimentality. of occasion. I have another image of him from Galway, as the Ireland had never done very much for bishop who exerted his authority to prevent tubal its emigrants, and the Irish church's con­ ligation being carried out in Galway hospitals run by In the end Bishop tribution was a desultmy effort at saving religious orders. (In other words, in Galway hospitals.) their faith when they got to the foreign For my friends in Galway it proved a point: an Irish Casey is just shore of their choice. Despite this the Irish bishop's spots don't change. It wasn't so much the people-most of them, anyway-have a content of the edict as its style. It struck me then that one kind of great attachment to their place of origin, all the social activism had been very much '50s-style, and Kerry people have a peculiarly strong the sort where the priest does things for the people. The old-fashioned sense of themselves. Even if 'there was engaging personality disguises the real relationship, and nothing there' the place holds on to them. the theological and pastoral imagination doesn't extend male/cleric, and So Bishop Casey was a fillip. At the to the quite different complexities of Ireland in the '80s end of the night his pockets were filled with and '90s. I hope it's that bits of paper canying greetings to mothers I have a final image of Bishop Casey, presiding at a and fathers and brothers and sisters back crowded Sunday Mass in a Jesuit church in Galway. A recognition that home whom he would ring on his return. number of children were being confirmed. It was one of And he did. It was an exciting way to come those liturgically dead occasions you come across so shakes the church across a priest, never mind a bishop, who often in Irish churches. You got the fe eling that abso­ identified so vividly with what moved lutely nothing was being got out of the symbolism of in Ireland. emigrant people-who understood the 'ruin all those children standing there except the comfort­ of the spirit' (his words) that came about if able assumption that they would all grow up to be good you ignore it. Catholics. He had started out writing letters to I suppose that Bishop Casey thought he was going young people who left his parish in Ireland to go to work to something, rather than simply fleeing when he went in Englandi then during his holidays he would visit them. to America in May. The tension of the past 20 years or He became chaplain to the 10,000 Irish who lived in so must have been wearing. But, as my father said to Slough, an industrial town near London, and that's how me, 'Ireland is full of women whose husbands have ske­ he came to be known more widely- because he didn't daddled. Adding one more shows very poor form. ' So in stick to expectations. He ended up in 1968 as chairman the end Bishop Casey is just one kind of old-fashioned of Shelter, the British national campaign for the home­ male/cleric, and I hope it's that recognition that shakes less. Then he was made Bishop of Kerryi at 42 he was the church in Ireland. Ireland's youngest bishop. As a young man, Bishop Casey had a talent for I remember he was liked a lot in Kerry. You'd often linking himself profoundly with the people. Sonia hear people telling tales of his joviality and of the speed Wagner, in her booklet Understanding Ministry, quotes at which he drove to his house at Inch and the cathedral a Jesuit rector addressing a group of young men facing in Killarney. My father said to m e that it was just as ordination: what he asked was not 'Are you strong and well he wasn't made Archbishop of Dublin, but in Irish talented enought to be a priest?' but 'Are you weak terms Galway is important enough. enough? ' Maybe that question should be asked again­ The city is lively, with lots of young people who long after ordination. • are well-educated by Australian standards. There's a university, a touch of cosmopolitanism-many people Margaret Coffey is a producer for ABC Radio National.

12 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 C APITAL1- L ETTER •• .,1 ,_. · ··· ' ' '" •.. ~ ·, '•,' ·.. •.;."" ·, ; ' :: ' ·. ·.. ~ '' I ~ ·:, : ... That flap about the flag . ~ . : ~JACK W ATERFOIU1

I sPAVe KEATING ON A W

V oLUME 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE N ATION: 2

PAUL R ooAN Trading places When a university touts for business, educational ideals are at risk.

A m''-'T"" on"T'-'" mucA mN in Aust"H' In this, they tend to mirror common perceptions about since 1986 has been the influx of full-fee-paying over­ the federal education bureaucracy. These people are not seas students. In June 1990 it was estimated that there exclusively to be found in administration. Their values were 65,000 overseas students in Australia, of whom arc shared by certain academics in some of the newer 44,000 paid full course fees. Public universities earned 'disciplines' such as business or computing who, come more than $150 million from this source of revenue in the anticipated free market for university labour, expect 1990, providing a welcome supplement to the tightly to command huge salaries. controlled funds from the Department of Education, In this environment, administrators who cling to Employment and Training. more traditional values and who choose to work in ter­ Given Australia's economic position, it is not sur­ tiary education partly because it is not like business, are prising that an opportunity to reduce the trade deficit increasingly marginalised, like their academic col­ was grasped and exploited, but this state of affairs is a leagues. In many universities, a necessary condition for far cry from education as foreign aid. The countries from administrative promotion is to make clear one's adher­ which Australian universities are seeking students do ence to anti-collegial models of 'management' and to not read like a Who's Who of Democracy. Most are mock the notion that staff should have any say in sexist, authoritarian and racist, most have indecent decisions that affect them. disparities between rich and poor, and there is no pros­ The quest for the over eas student dollar is con­ pect that our provision of education will change any of sistent with pattems now fully established in the tertiary this. Courses in moral philosophy and democratic sector. Universities vie with each other at trade fairs in theory-let alone women's studies-are not much in Asia and beyond to attract the children of these coun­ demand among full-fee paying overseas students. tries' moneyed elites. Some university graduation cer­ Some authorities have winced at the crass tone of emonies, ranging from the modest to the extravagant, certain promotional literature, which has read more like are now held overseas. One university took an entourage a company's boast of record profits than the documen­ of twenty to a popular holiday destination. The team tation of an institution of higher learning. In the search included a senior administrator to carry the ceremonial for more presentable motives, or at least respectable spin­ mace in the academic procession. In a concession to offs, a version of the economic trickle-down theory has sexist culture, wives are sometimes taken as 'hostesses'; been advanced. In other words, visiting students from what Australia's two female vice-chancellors make of authoritarian regimes will absorb some of the values of this practice is unclear. Needless to say, such entour­ liberal democracy while here and take them back to their ages do not stay at the Asian equivalent of the YMCA, home countries where, from their leadership positions, nor are they stacked down the back of economy class in they will influence others. Such a theory is plausible the aircraft. Rumour has it that one university even paid under certain circumstances, especially if there is a the hotel bills for parents attending its Asian compulsory humanities component in all courses, but graduation ceremony. the infrequency with which it is articulated shows what a minimal role it plays in official thinking. SUCH EXTRAVAGANCE IS DEFENDED on economic/public The phenomenon of full-fee-paying overseas stu­ relations grounds. The money comes from the overseas dents has been assisted by the corporatisation of tertiary students, not from federal funds, and in the quest to be institutions, and universities have witnessed the tri­ regarded as the best no PR expense is to be spared. Many umph of business principle , practices and jargon. Stu­ large universities include aPR person among the ranks dents are no longer students but customers, clients, of its fatter fat cats. One wonders what fraction of a stake-holders-anything but students. And note the typical overseas fee-about $12,000 per year for an Lm­ hideous 'offshore' for overseas' All tyrants know the dergraduate-goes on this excess. value of language in exercising control and this 'busi­ One university, defending an Asian escapade, saw ness-speak' has been useful in reorienting tertiary edu­ it as complementing the Australian government's efforts cation. Universities have seen an influx of corporate to rebuild links with Malaysia (damaged by that nasty types into the ranks: accountants and others with nanow beast, free speech in Australia). As if the efforts of Evans educational backgrounds who care little for academic and Hawke were not enough! Given the historic role of values and view universities as just another enterprise. universities as defenders of free speech and dissent, one

14 EUREKA STREET • ] UNE 1992 might expect vice-chancellors to be on the other side of Watch it, win1p! the fence. However, that would not be good for busi­ ness. As the net extends beyond Asia and to the Middle G EORCE BusH, AT THEL AST US presidential election, East, the question of the treatment of women becomes went to some lengths to argue that he wa not, as his critical. A u11iversity that sent promotional material to detractors suggested, a wimp. Flying combat planes from a trade fair in Saudi Arabia was told it was unsuitable and to aircraft carriers on stormy seas during World War because the photographs depicted male and female II certainly seems unwimpy, as, even more so, seem students together, and women with uncovered fl esh. his apparent dedication to his family during various There are two problems here. First, the university is trawnas. being told to depict itself in line with grotesquely sexist The president-to-be could have mustered a better values. Second, if it oblige it is surely misleading the defence, however: as any scientifically literate person 'customer' to imply that Australian campuses are other knows, it is yet to be proved that such things as wimp than what they are-places where men and women can actually exist. And if wimps have not been proven to be seen together, as can, weather permitting, bare fl esh, exist, how could George be a wimp? He might as well male and fe male. be a unicorn. Surely, at a point like this, the appropriate response A wimp, of course, is a Weakly Interacting Mas­ may not be tame compliance. At what point do Aus­ sive Particle. Physicists have been searching for them tralian universities say 'We're not doing business with for some time. The problem, you see, is that there is not this regime,' or 'We're not compromising on these fun­ enough matter in the stars of our galaxy to explain the damental values'? In this market, that point seems a gravitational forces that hold it together as it keeps long way off, if it exists at all. But perhap it is not sur­ turning in a vast circle around its centre. Our galaxy prising in an envirmm1ent where someone can seriously ought to weigh ten times more than it appears to. suggest that Colonel Rabuka should be awarded an So where is the extra weight hidden? One sugge - honorary degree by an Australian university. tion is that there are vast numbers of wimps floating It is essential that some of the issues raised by the around. The reason why we have not noticed these phenomenon of full-fee paying overseas students should particles must be that they do not interact noticeably be discussed, both within universities and in the wider with other matter. They are virtually 'invisible'. community. Arguments based on crude cultural rela­ The hunt for wimps is now on in earnest. The best tivism can be anticipated-that we should not judge way to discover a wimp is to have some very sensitive these countries by our own liberal standards, that we detector located in a place where it will not be disturbed should tolerate their intolerant traditions and practices, by any other vagrant radiation. In the north of England, and that the only perspectives we should take are just outside Whitby, a detector has been set up 11 ,000 commercial ones. This may be an appropriate response metres below the surface of the earth, in a salt and pot­ for business, but in this framework it is difficult to en­ ash mine. The idea is that any other particles or radia­ visage the university in its traditional role as defender tion passing through the earth will have been absorbed of dissent. at this depth. The only sorts of things that could pass In some cases, an honest defence would be more through such depths of rock and clay would have to be embarrassing. It is likely that some univer ities depend very wimpi h indeed. So the scientists sit and wait by on revenue from overseas student fees for a good pro­ their detectors, allowing for all other forms of local portion of their ordinary services, and budget accord­ radiation, and hoping for the flash of scintillation that ingly. The impact of a sudden loss of these fees would indicates some other visitor to the depths of the earth. be devastating for more than one university. This, of They are still waiting. course, is reason for more criticism and inquiry, not less. Whitby is already famous for other scientific dis­ There are signs that some Asian governments, coveries. It was Captain Cook's hometown. Cook is mindful of the foreign exchange consequences of stu­ celebrated, of course, for having taken an expedition to dents travelling to Australia, are likely to seek a change Tahiti to ob erve the transit of Venus. Under the dis­ in arrangements. Some Australian universities already guise of this scientific expedition, however, he also teach courses at South-East Asian venues and this trend carried out secret instructions from the Admiralty to seems likely to become more common. On balance, this find out more about the unknown Great South Land, seems to be a preferable model for the provision of edu ­ and we are testimony to his achievement. cational ervices, providing some vague prospect of these Which raises a question about the discovery of countries eventually using the facilities and educating wimps: what else is at stake here? A wimp-gun is not their own. In the meantime, imperialism is far from dead going to be of use to anybody-the bullets would pass in this part of the world. • straight through their intended targets-and wimps can't be traded, kept in boxes, or used as jewellery. The wimp Paul Rodan is an administrator at Monash University hunt looks like pure, w1adulterated science-a wonder and president of the Australian Colleges and Univers­ ~~ . . ities Staff Association. -John Honner SJ

V OLUME 2. N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 15 R EPORT

PAUL O RMONDE Moving on E..., "'"' AIT" thdound.,ion of bi shops of Australia agreed to provide Mannix-and no doubt most of the the Movement, notal! passion is spent. £10,000 a yea r. You won't find any other bi shops- were at the war. It was The organisation still has its tme reference to that in back copies of The also a matter of common observation believers, old, and, perhaps surpris­ Catholic Weeldy or The Advocate. that Australian bishops, although ingly, young, along with still angry How, one must ask, was one young comfortable with canon law and school antagonists. But the fact that last man- in 1945 Santamaria was only building pro jects, were not too inter­ month onl y about 60 people attended 30-able to lead the hierarchy of Aus­ ested in, or even aware of, the theolo­ a conference on 'Fifty Years of the tralia into a political adventure that gy of church-state relations. Santamaria Movement' suggests that was in complete collision with church The conference quickly began to most contemporary Catholics can only tradition on direct intervention in operate at two levels-the same levels wonder at the acts of faith made by so party politic , and on what should be that had marked di visions in the many of their forebears in the political the proper relationship between church throughout the Movement and theological infallibility of B.A. church and state? The potential for controversy. On the one hand, the Santamaria (the Bishop in Short primacy of 'fi ghting the Comms' Pants, a some used to call him). in the labour movement, and on The situation came into fasci­ the other, the principle that in a natingfocusatthecon.ference, held plural society the church should at the State Library of New South .,. have no role in party politics­ Wales on the very day that the US especially a secret, manipulative fl eet was in town-nuclear weap­ one. Santamaria was invited but ons and all, we assume-to mark declined because he was planning the 50th anniversary of the Battle to be overseas. His views, howev­ of the Coral Sea. er, were well represented. Santamaria, 50 years ago, had Peter Coleman, former Liber­ just begun the work of organi si ng al politician and former editor of the Movement, initially through Th e Bulletin and Quadrant, gave the fath erly cooperation of Arch­ an erudite presentation on the link bishop Mannix but by 1945 with iJ.-. between the Movement and some the formal authority of the entire of James McAuley's finest poetry. Catholic hierarchy, who assumed The epic poem Captain Quiros control of the orga nisa tion 'in pol- was, in McAuley's words, 'the icy and finance'. The Movement's ' work I was born to do'. It was, activities were secured by oaths of Coleman said, inspired by the secrecy amongits3000 members- Movement. a security largely unbreached from Ann D aniel, speaking on its foundation inl941-42 until the 'Women and the Movement', Labor leader, H.V. Eva tt, unmasked reall y told us of the invisibility of it in 1954. women in the Movement, mak­ The conference was a good­ ing observations that even in un­ humoured mix of both sides of an ions where women were domi­ issue that can still raise the tem­ Photo: The Age nant during the war- clerks, shop perature-Catholic Worker types assistants, teachers- the Move­ such as Jim Griffin, Colin Thornton­ sectarian backlash in a society where ment's permeation of these bodies was Smith and myself, peace activists such 'Micks' were still locked in bitter controlled by men. Daniel was mar­ as Roger Pryke and Val Noone and, on rivalry with freemasons,'Proddies' and ri ed to a Movement organiser, had 10 the other side, the former NSW Liber­ other , was seen as a risk children, and in time became disillu­ al leader Peter Coleman, Movement worth taking. sioned with the Movement. She went activists Frank Rooney and John Cot­ on to become associate professor of ter, and the lapsed Movement adher­ JIM GRIFFIN, A IIISTORIAN of the Man­ sociology at the University of New ent, Gerard Henderson. nix era, suggested in an aside to me a South Wales. If anyone ever doubted the active theory on the secret of Santamaria's Her comments on the low posi­ role of the Catholi c bishops in the influ ence. Griffin had heard it from tions of women on the Movement work of the Movement, Edmund Kevin Kelly, a former Australian am­ totem pole brought the da y's first Campion's keynote addres put doubt bas ador to Argentina. Kelly believed drama-a gutsy contribution fr m a to rest. He had the figures. Daniel that mos t of the Catholics who might young university student, Pme Gor­ Mannix provided £3000 seeding mon­ have provided a counterweight to don, who declared herself to be a ey in the early 1940 and in 1945 the Santamaria in his dealings with National Civic Council member and

16 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 reported that there were now three friends-for example, N 1, N2 and N3, FORDHAM women on the NCC's executive indicating non-Catholic friend, non­ UNIVERSITY council. Prue reminded one of a new Catholic but not committed, and New York Joan of Arc, but on m eeting her over hostile non-Catholic. Cotter enjoyed coffee it became clear that she hadn't the battle, and was always grateful matches your interests: been experiencing visions of saving that Santamaria had rescued him from ADUlT, FAMilY, COMMUNITY Australia. Her contribution assured the boredom of the Com­ REliGIOUS EDUCATION? those who were not absolutely sure ~ monwealth Public Service. Your mentors: Dr Gloria Durka that the NCC still existed that indeed Dr john Elias it did, and that 50 years on NCC .1. HE FINAL ADDRESS was given by - for parish, school & home women could be other than makers of Edmund Campion, who teaches his­ YOUTH MINISTRY? scones and carriers of tea. tory at the Catholic Institute of Syd­ YOUNG ADUlTHOOD? Gerard Henderson, a former back­ ney, which organised the conference Your mentor: Dr john Nelson room trategist for Santamaria and together with the State Library Asso­ - growth in faith, moral forma ti on, author of Mr Santamaria and the ciation of New South Wales and Syd­ spiritu al development. Bishops, titled his contribution 'B.A. ney University's department of gov­ REliGION AND SOCIETY? Santamaria, Santamariaism and the ernment and public administration. PEACE AND JUSTICE? Cult of Personality'. In half an hour Campion's speech was a masterly Your mentors: Dr john Elias Henderson made many dramatic balance of scholarship, analysis and Dr Richard Cassidy points but none like his first: San­ sympathy, along with a firmness of - analys is of social issues, tamaria had an agenda for his organi­ judgment about the Movement. It was socia l ministry and education sation that went far beyond defeating particularly insightful on why the communism. church i.n Victoria and New South PARISH/PASTORAl MINISTRY? Henderson quoted a letter from Wales took such passionately oppos­ CHURCH lEADERSHIP? Santamaria to Mannix in 1952, in ing views once the Movement had Your mentors: Dr German which Santamaria spoke of introduc­ become a matter of public scandal. Martinez OSB ing into state and federal parliaments New South Wales already had Dr Gloria Durka 'large numbers of members who experience of splits, and had a long - for OREs, Parish Admins & Assocs. should be able to implement a Chris­ tradition of close relationship between SPIRITUAliTY: THEOL & HIST.? tian social program'. This, said San­ the Catholic Church and the Labor SPIRITUAl DIRECTION? tamaria, 'is the first time that such a Party. The politics of NSW Catholi cs Your mentors: Dr janet Ruffing RSM work has become possible in Austral­ and their bishop reflected the prag­ Dr Frederica Halliga n ia and, as far as I can see, in the Anglo­ matism that goes with the responsi­ Margaret Burke MA Saxon world since the advent of Prot­ bility of government. Victorian Cath­ - throu gh to Supervised Practicum. estantism.' Labor might not have been olics, on the other hand, had known PASTORAl COUNSElliNG? in the wilderness for 23 years if that only a brief period of Labor rule, hence HOSPITAl C.P.E.? letter had fallen offthe back they clung to the 1uxury of being more PASTORAl CARE OF THE AGING? of an ecclesiastical truck. 'pure' and visionary. Compromise did Your mentors: Dr John Shea OSA not come easily to them. Dr Mary Ann jordan H ENDERSON'S DES RJPTION of the By 1955 Australia had a split Labor Dr Mary Byrne Santamaria 'cult' in the church and Party and a split Catholic Church, and - through to Supervised Practicum. the Movement was the ignition point the beginnings of a political climate in THEOlOGICAl RENEWAl? at which the two levels on which the which Catholics could more easily SABBATICAl? CREDIT FREE? conference was operating became dissociate themselves from their Labor Your mentors: Fr Vincent Novak SJ starkly clear. Frank Rooney, a Move­ past and move towards conservative Dr Richard Cass id y ment man from N ewcastle, gave a politics through the staging post of the - bibl., liturg., systemati c; compelling picture of the thousands Democratic Labor Party. As Edmund personal refreshment in community of Movement men who did the hard Campion summarised the situation: and often risky work of organising the 'The Movement tried to sacralise Year-round, summers on ly (4). battle against Communist power in Australian politics. It ended by polit­ MA, MS (Ed), APD (post MA). the unions- the doorknocking, the icising religion.' • Begins 1992-93 : pamphleteering, the exposure of cor­ Aug. 31, jan . 19, june 24. rupt Communist tactics. No church­ Paul Ormonde is the author of The AWARDS: full/partial schol arships, state theology here. There was an en­ Movement, (Nelson, Melbourne, 1972.) anni versa ry awards. emy to be beaten, and Rooney and the FOR APPLICATIONS boys in the ironworkers union did it. 'Santamaria's Movement: 50 Years On'. Selected papers from this con­ AND INF ORMATION: John Cotter, a former full-time VINCENT M. NOVAK SJ Movement man, gave a warm, whim­ ference are ava il able from our book­ shop for $12.95. They are the first GRAD. SCH OF REL. & REL. ED. sical description of undercover Move­ FORDHAM UN IV ERS ITY m ent tactics- the split letters invit­ edition of Eureka Street Papers, a new occasional pub li cation of this maga­ tel: (2 12) 579 2537 ing the faithful to secret meetings, the BRONX, NEW YORK 10458-5163 complex classification of enemies and zine. To order, see form on p43.

VOLUME 2 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 17 THE NATIO :3

FRANK BRENNAN

Calling in Columbus' debts As the SOOth anniversary of Columbus' voyage approaches, Australian Aborigines and other indigenous peoples are asserting a new kind of self-determination.

A S

18 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 Young people, alive to the music of Yothu Yindi and patible with the purpose and principles of the United emerging as the first school graduates to have under­ Nations Charter. taken Aboriginal studies in their curriculum, are 83 per Even if the day were approaching when Aborigines cent in favour of a treaty. Naturally the percentages in as a group were no longer poor, disadvantaged and dis­ rural areas are less. Even those in favour have little sense possessed, Australians would still need to consider the of what the process or content of any treaty would be. If issue of indigenous rights. Five hundred years after constitutional recognition of indigenous rights is to be Columbus, these are still uncharted waters for the on the agenda, majority approval will be essential. Abo­ international community. One of the prime purposes riginal rights will have to piggyback on more mainstream of the UN is to promote and issues such as the republic and a bill of rights. No Abo­ encourage respect for human The irony of white riginal measure will get up unless it has the support of rights and fundamental the main political parties. Dodson and his followers are freedoms without distinction Australians moralising right when they say there is no option but to support as to race. There is a well­ the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation if constitu­ developed jurisprudence of about East Timor and tional entrenchment of rights is to be even theoretically discrinlination legislation that under consideration, let alone actually placed pern1its temporary measures of ~~ Indonesia while regarding on the political agenda. benign discrimination, even on the basis of race, because such INTHE PAST DECADE Aborigines have been travelling to measures help racially identi­ Geneva for meetings of the Working Group on Indige­ fiable deprived groups to par­ self-determination as nous Populations, which is drafting a declaration of ticipate more equitably in the rights of indigenous peoples. Many indigenous groups general society of which they romantic rhetoric has not have been investigating the concept of self-determina­ are a part. It is hardly likely tion within the legal framework of the nation states built that the UN would encourage been lost on some on their dispossession without consent or compensa­ or permit the recognition of tion. Both the International Covenant on Economic, permanent measures of benign Aboriginal leaders. Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Cov­ discrimination in favour of in­ enant on Civil and Political Rights proclaim: 'All peoples digenous groups as part of its charter for promoting hu­ have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that man rights without distinction as to race. right they freely determine their political status and At last year's session of the Working Group on freely pursue their economic, social and cultural Indigenous Peoples, the Brazilian observer delegation development.' expressed the view that some articles of the draft Dec­ In international law, self-determination has come laration of Indigenous Rights would 'hardly be accepted to have a technical meaning in the decolonisation by most governments if their present language is main­ process. When a colonial power is withdrawing from a tained: for instance, those provisions which tend to at­ territory, the people of the territory are to be assured a tribute to indigenous people the right to free choice in determining their political future. Indig­ self-determination similar to that enjoyed by sovereign enous peoples are now attempting to argue by analogy states under international law.' If pressed, the that they too are 'peoples' in the sense recognised by Australian government delegation would add international law, and so have the right to determine the same reservation. their future, whether as part of the nation state in which they live or as a separate state or entity enjoying inter­ 0 N 12 OcTOBER, Columbus Day, the world will mark national recognition. This argument has had little appeal the SOOth anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the to governments, which are prepared to concede only Americas. Indigenous peoples will remind us that greater autonomy within the nation. Columbus discovered nothing that had not already been There is now a domestic meaning of self-determi­ discovered, inhabited, and reflected upon for centuries nation that, while not claiming sovereignty, connotes by entire societies that were to suffer from colonisa­ more than self-management. It incorporates the notion tion. But on Columbus Day this year the UN Secretary that indigenous organisations and representatives should General will formally open the International Year for be able to shape policy for their people and not simply the World's Indigenous Peoples, with the theme 'Indig­ manage government programs, run cooperative enter­ enous Peoples-A New Partnership'. The General prises and administer local government functions for Assembly's resolution establishing the forthcoming in­ communities which happen to be indigenous. This ternational year makes no mention of self-determina­ political term has no guaranteed legal content. Contin­ tion. The Australian government, however, in ued attempts by Aboriginal leaders to extend it to self­ welcoming the UN initiative has said, 'It will be an determination as recognised in international law sense opportunity to reflect further on what the right to self­ take no account of the UN's position that any attempt determination means for indigenous peoples.' aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national Robert Tickner has taken his lead from the Royal unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incom- Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and

V o LUM E 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 19 enunciated self-determination as a key concept of gov­ ernm ent policy. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has suggested that with changes in the interna­ tional system, 'the concept of self-determination must 1h S ALVADO~~~O~~~E:h_,~~~uts te be considered broadly, as peoples seek to assert their the caravan has not halted. The initial euphoria at the identities, to preserve their languages, cultures and tra­ signing of peace accords between the government and ditions and to achieve greater autonomy, free from un­ guerillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation due interference by central governments. The chall enge Front (FLMN) has given way to a recognition that the to governments is to respond effectively to the growing accords will not be implemented without a struggle. demands of indigenous peoples in this area-' To understand why, it is necessary to rem ember Self-determination, subject to the constitution and the circumstances in which they were signed. The laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, ought now be agreement came after great international pressure on a seen as a non-controversial statement of the legitimate government that had begun peace talks reluctantly. and recognisable aspirations of Aborigines seeking President Christiani was persuaded to take a personal maximum community independence while remaining part in the negotiations, and to attend the signing, only part of the nation state. This month the Keating gov­ when pushed by the United States government. Many ernm ent is to make a second response to the royal members of his party opposed negotiations with the commission, announcing measures for Aboriginal em ­ FLMN and remain resolutely opposed to what they see ployment, training and enterprises that will have some as the betrayal of El Salvador. prospect of fostering Aboriginal economic self-suffi­ The sam e international pressure that led to the ciency-a precondition for real self-determination. accords also meant that they were drafted and signed in In the decade ahead, those Aborigines who oppose has te. As a result, the three broad areas in which they a treaty ai med at entrenching domestic self-determina­ can be grouped were not worked out in equal detail. tion for Aboriginal and Islander communities will be The area to which m ost detailed attention was given joined, for self-interested reasons, by miners and pasto­ was naturally the disengagem ent of the two armies. A ralists. Those Aborigines seeking incremental gains at timetable was drawn up to ensure that the armies sepa­ home will add local self-determination to land rights, rated peacefully, and the early stages of this disengage­ community government, and Aboriginal participation ment have been completed satisfactorily. in the administration of government service programs, thus maximising their hopes of doing their own thing within the Australian nation. They will face many obstacles. They will not get there alone. But they have som e strong allies, including the recently formed T,v, ITNAMESE "rue,~?~ ~~w:~~Oll Consti tu tiona! Centenary Foundation, down and 3 70,000 Cambodians are going home, but the ~ chaired by Sir Ninian Stephen. need fo r emergency relief in the region has not abated. Attention has shifted to refugees spilling over the bor­ .1. HE FORTHCOMING DECISION of the High Court in the ders of Burma (Myanmar), where for 40 years the Karens Mabo case, which provides the court with its first op­ and other ethnic minorities have been at war with suc­ portunity to consider the terra nullius doctrine, may cessive governments in Rangoon. Since 1984 refugees open the ga tes for a new understanding of land rights fro m these groups have sought refuge in Thailand, and and self-management proposals. They might be seen not there are now 65,000 Karens, Mons, Karenni, Shans and as welfare measures but as the recognition of property Kachins living in Thai camps. Burma's 'minorities' are and personal rights under the rule of law. The clay may not sm all- the Karen claim to number lO million, dawn when Aborigines will be able to say, with dignity although no census has taken since 1945. The Rohing­ and without feeling they have sold out their heritage, yas in Arakan State number five million. 'There's not just us'. A new wave of exiles has appeared since Decem­ That would be the start of justice. It would even berl99 1, when Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposi­ warrant a new flag, marking the end of 'special treat­ tion to the military regime in Rangoon, was awarded ment'. Wh en Bob Hawke and Gerry Hand promised the Nobel Peace Prize. The State Law and Order Res­ Aborigines a treaty in 1988, Wenton Rubuntja, an elder toration Council-'SLORC', as the military rulers style from central Australia and now a member of the Coun­ themselves-has tried to crush all dissent, forcing Bur­ cil for Reconciliation, said: 'We have to work out a way mans, Tovoyans and Rohingyas to seek refuge in Thai­ of sharing this co untry, but there has to be an under­ land, Bangladesh and India. standing of and respect of our culture, our law. Hope­ Since May 1990, when SLORC refused to recognise fully that's what this treaty will mean-' • national elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a majority, universities have Frank Brennan SJ is director of Uniya, the Jesuit insti­ been closed, dissidents and their fa milies harrassed, and tute for social research and action, and advi ser on mail fro m overseas opened. Aung San Suu Kyi is under Aboriginal affairs to the Australian Catholic bishops. house arrest in Rangoon.

20 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 REPORTS p forward, but more steps back The accords also spelled out the process by which national reconstruction until the land issue is resolved. El Salvador would be demilitarised: disbanding of the A large shoe manufacturer has also closed down all its FLMN and the government's special forces, and forma­ factories on the pretext of union violence. The aim ap­ tion of a new police force. This process has only just pears to be to provoke the unions and peasant groups begun, and the important decisions that will deprive into actions that can be interpreted as breaking the ac­ ELSALVADOR the officers in the armed forces of their political power cords. have yet to be taken. In the worst instance of this provocation, a union Finally, the accords only touched on national re­ organiser was found killed in a manner reminiscent of construction, including the attitude to be taken to the the death-squad killings of the 1980s. This has been the atrocities of the war, aid for new economic ventures and most sinister threat to the peace, because political kill­ rights to land occupied during the war. So far, the groups ings in which the murderers can act with impunity ef­ opposed to the accords have concentrated on the land fectively prevent popular political organisation. issue. They want to disallow claims to land occupied So there are threats to peace in El Salvador, but there during the war by the peasants, while insisting on the remain grounds for hope. The popular desire for peace right to remove peasants who have been working it. This is great, and groups that deprive people of peace will be is done in the name of the 'right' to private property. seen as traitors. Furthermore, outside observers have In one case, a court order was obtained to clear been invited to monitor the progress towards peace, and peasants from land they had been working, and a Jesuit national reconstruction depends upon overseas loans. priest working in the area was arrested and deported For the peace to last, of course, reconstruction will when intervening. The clearance and destruction of the have to address the inequitable distribution of wealth peasants' houses was of dubious legality, and certainly that led to war. -Andrew Hamilton SJ • contrary to the intent of the accords. The campaign to prevent the occupation of private Andrew Hamilton teaches at the United Fa culty of property has been led by a group representing business Theology, Parkville, Vic. He is taking sabbatical leave interests, who have also refused to join discussion of at the University of Central America, San Salvador. Burmese can't be wrong The regime has cited doctrines of racial and reli­ The Karen, Rohingyas and other ethnic groups have gious purity to justify expelling the Rohingyas, who are changed their goals since SLORC refused to honor the Muslim, from the state of Arakan. 'Myanmar is a Bud­ 1990 election. Fonnerly they sought independence, but dhist country,' declared a SLORC spokesman, who did this demand has been set aside and they have united not add that the Rohingyas have lived in Arakan for 400 with the National League for Democracy to form the years. By the end of April this year more than 240,000 Democratic Alliance of Burma. The alliance's inunediate Rohingyas had fled into Bangladesh. The United Nations goal is to persuade foreign governments to cease recog­ High Commissioner for Refugees has declared their nising SLORC as the legitimate government of Bunna, plight a matter for priority attention, and the US gov­ hoping that once the regime is isolated it will collapse. BURMA ernment has pledged $3 million in aid to help Bangladesh Recent events have put SLORC opponents into a cope with the inrush of refugees. In late April I saw the spin. Within one short week in late April, General Saw Rohingya refugee camps near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Maung was replaced as SLORC chairn1an by Than Shwe; Despite an agreement between the Bangladesh and Aung San Suu Kyi got visiting rights; a ceasefire was Burmese governments, a refugee leader in Declma Palong declared with the Karen in the Thai border and 38 po­ Camp no. 2 claimed to represent the 20,000 in his camp litical prisoners were freed . But analysts in Bangkok do when he said the refugees would not return until Aung not assume this means SLORC is breaking up. It may San Suu Kyi was in power. just be bending to the wind of international opinion. The Muslim members of the Association of South­ What happens if the alliance does unseat SLORC East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Malaysia and Indonesia, at the United Nations is unclear, as the various pro­ have expres ed concern at their brothers and sisters in democracy groups would then be in competition. Aung religion being driven from their homeland, suffering rape San Suu Kyi's party won the 1990 election on a limited and torture along the way. ASEAN's doctrine of 'con­ franchise, for few members of the minorities had a vote. structive engagement' with Bunna has cracked wide It is abundantly clear, however, that democracy is what open, and suddenly it has become all right to talk about the 40 million people of Burma, whether Bunnans or religious persecution. The publicity that the Rohingyas members of the minorities, want. -Alan Nichols • have received will also benefit the Karens, who are Alan Nichols, an Anglican priest from Melbourne, mostly Christians. works with the Jesuit Refu gee Service in Bangkok.

V OLUME 2 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 21

RELIGION

JEAN VERNETTE

Looking for signs and wonders

E RTY YEARS AGO Andre Malraux declared that 'the chief problem of the end of the century will be the religious one,' adding that he did not 'exclude the possibility of a spiritual phenomenon on a global scale.' And now, indeed, we are faced with a movement that began in English-speaking countries but which has spread like wildfire throughout the West: the New Age. Its essential idea is that humanity is entering an age of spiritual awareness, of harmony and light, that will be marked by profound psychic changes. According to New Age theorists, the year 2000 will signal the passage from the astrological Age of Pisces to that of Aquarius. In particular it will witness the second coming of Christ, whose 'energies' are said to be already at work in the swarm of spiritual experiments and new religious movements. The New Age is a millenarianism: it rests on the expec­ tation of a thousand years of happiness mentioned in the Book of Revelation. It articu­ lates the ancient myth that is ever in the human heart, that of the Golden Age. How old, then, is the New Age? It has ancestors and distant precursors, but most of its ideas and practices were born in the 1960s, at a farm in California called Esalen. Psychotherapists, artists and scientists came to Esalen to create a 'movem ent for developing human potential', and this community still flourishes. It's founder, Michael Murphy, explains: 'Nobody encourages the profound development of the individual any more. Formerly that was the role of the religions but today Esalen wants to create the modern equivalent of Renaissance man by blending without prejudice Chinese techniques of the fifth century and the achievements of cybernetics.' Murphy and his colleagues want to widen the perceptions of people in the West, to release their bodies and psyches, and to explore the whole range of philosophies, especially those from the East. We turn to another place: Findhorn, an arid, windswept valley in northern Scotland where in 1962 Peter and Eileen Caddy set up camp and planted a vegetable garden. The vegetables they harvested from this land where previously nothing had grown were enormous, a fact they attributed to their dialogue with 'the spirits of the plants'. A community grew up around the vegetable garden, and it has helped shape the New Age conviction that humanity is both part of the universe and a microcosm of the whole.

I N 1967-68, THE COUNTERCULTURE movement was born in the United States. It was characterised by the struggle for the rights of minorities, feminism, demonstrations for peace in Vietnam, and the use of hallucinogenic drugs. The hippies sang of peace, love and universal harmony, and formed communities to participate in the creation of hu­ manity's future. Sects grew up like weeds on this fertile ground, and many of them are still to be found in the New Age movement. Finally, in 1976 the journalist Marilyn Ferguson published an article based on her research on the brain, entitled 'The movement that has no name', which put forward a new and strange system of thought involving many disciplines-medicine, philosophy, spirituality, science, art and education. Ferguson's movement with no name is what has since come to be called the New Age, or the Age of Aquarius. Other ingredients entered into play as well: schools of psychotherapy that deal with personal relationships, and which are associated with such names as Wilhelm

VOLUME 2 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 23 Reich, Kurt Lewin, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow; studies reconciling the views New Age pra ctices have of quantum physics and those of oriental philosophy, in particular The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra; the success in France of Th e Morning of the Magicians by Louis entered wider business circles Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, and of the journal Planet, which espouses many New Age themes, from occultism to mysticism, and from flying saucers to parapsychology. It as well. There are went so far as to include the ideas of the fa mous Jesuit palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin whom the New Age claims as one of its intellectual masters. Wasn't he already multinational companies talking about 'planetary consciousness'? When the golden Age of Aquarius arrives, it will supposedly herald the death of that admit to using seminars the Age of Pisces and of Christianity, periods characterised by division and violence, on Zen, shamanism and hate and war. It will be inaugurated by the second coming of the cosmic Christ, which will coincide with the coming of a new kind of world religion. For no spiritual system, voodoo techniques to train according to the 'children of Aquarius', will be able to impose itself on humanity through a single language. In the background of this spiritual hospitality, which offers their executives in 'pushing to synthesise all religions and to take up where they leave off, there is a bitter denial of any transcendent revelation; and this denial is aimed chiefly at Christi- beyond the limits', and "'{ X T anity.

astrology and numerology V VH AT IS THE CONTENT of this new religion of Aquarius? The formula of the gnos­ tics of the first Christian centuries was, 'I take hold of my good where I find it.' The are commonly used to select children of Aquarius say, 'From the moment that this works for you, it doesn't matter what you believe.' And just as the first gnostics adapted Greek or Persian mythologies, the right applicant for a job. so the New Age appropriated to itself many currents. This is a contemporary version of gnosticism, where you construct your own belief by accumulating knowledge­ supposed to be a secret-that is culled from every quarter. And so, in the New Age, one draws as much from Buddhism-especially Tibetan Buddhism-as from Hindu­ ism, Sufism or the biblical tradition. It is a matter of uniting that which was diverse; a cumulative, but reductionist, syncretism. The New Age is also a collection of practices that are seemingly at odds. It borrows freely from different techniques of meditation to reach a 'new cosmic consciousness' by illumination. Often, simple techniques of developing consciousness are confused with mysticism . There is an impressive array of schools of psychotherapy that take this direction-sophrology, rebirth, self-directed training- but there are also creative activities such as sculpture, pottery, music and psychodrama, autohypnosis, and voodoo. A person transformed by such experiences would supposedly reach illumination by discovering that they are a simple spark of the divine. For the New Age, the divine is not in fact a person, but the most highly developed expression of the cosmos. And a human being is not someone entering into a relationship with others, but a simple wave on the cosmic ocean, a part of the Great Whole. In this way the New Age presents itself as a vast movement of spiritual seeking. But, unlike the established religions that impose a codified relation with the divine, New Age religions want to establish an immediate contact with divinity that dwells in each person. On this view, God is no longer transcendent, and the human person discovers that he or she is God. The New Age represents one of the most typical expressions of the new way of being religious, and of paganism. Its implicit creed, common to many movements which lay claim to it, has many similarities with that of esotericism and of occultism . The new human being no longer has need of revelation. The slogan 'it's true if you believe it' recalls the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, so that they might 'become like gods'. Such a person has no further need of grace; it is sufficient to activate the powers, as yet underexercised, of one's consciousness. As an autonomous being, the person no longer has need of salvation, since salvation is brought about by the self, thanks to the rebirths that automaticall y give assurance of purification. The human being will have no further need of redemption by the cross of Christ, for deliverance from evil is in one's own hands. Health of the body will be recovered by the new therapies, health of the spirit by the practices of developing consciousness, health of the soul by interior illumination. Jesus becomes only one of numerous manifestations of a cosmic Christ that came down upon him at his baptism in the

24 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 Jordan, but which left before his death on the cross. One is clearly, and radically, outside Christianity. The slogan 'it's true if you In North America the New Age has become a profitable business, offering a banal psychobabble that preys on vulnerable people who are seeking some signficance in believe it' recalls the life. In the manner of what Marilyn Ferguson calls a 'sweet conspiracy', the penetration of New Age beliefs and practices in society has taken many forms. Radio and televi­ temptation of Adam and Eve sion broadcasts that peddle holistic medicines, meditation methods and astrology are increasingly numerous. And a new musical fashion has become the rage: New Age in the Garden of Eden to eat music is 'aquatic and positive, synthetic and fluid', a music of the cosmos, of ethereal the fruit of the tree of vibrations and of the subconscious level of thought, built on murmured messages of planetary brotherhood. knowledge, so that they might Through the influence of Murphy's Esalen community, New Age practices have entered wider business circles as well. There are multinational companies that admit 'become like gods'. Such a to using seminars on Zen, shamanism and voodoo techniques to train their executives in 'pushing beyond the limits', and astrology and numerology are commonly used to person has no further need of select the right applicant for a job. With the New Age, the irrational has come striding in through the front door. Nearly one European in four believes in reincarnation, one grace; it is sufficient to in two regularly consults a horoscope, and one in three believes that the predictions of clairvoyants and fortune tellers are true. activate the powers, as yet The New Age is less a structured movement than a network of criss-crossing threads, in which good grain is often mixed with bramble. If the New Age attracts, it underexercised, of one's is because it promises health, happiness and meaning to life, and, going beyond indi­ vidual unhappiness, because it wants to respond to the sickness of society in general. COnSCIOUSness. The climate of hope and fear typical of our age has given birth to an expectation of the end of this world and to the desire for another one. This movement represents a utopia that is sufficiently vague to allow anyone to project his or her religious aspirations within it. This is where the New Age represents an important challenge for Christianity. Not because of some of its techniques, which have their own value: meditation, gen­ tle therapies, dynamic psychology. But one of the explicit goals of its originators­ even if it is not always recognised by its followers-is to propose a world supra-religion of the Age of Aquarius, that will take the place of Christianity. Indeed, without always knowing it, many Christians exercise a double membership. The Bible is used abundantly in the New Age, but it is interpreted from a gnostic point of view. IT1s IMPORTANT FOR CHRISTIA NS to take seriously the questions raised by the New Age, lest they be too quickly dismissed. As Paul VI said, the Holy Spirit sometimes speaks to us through unbelief, it also speaks to us through the new spirit of reli­ gion. It is a matter of responding, from the heart of Christianity, to the expectations revealed by the return to the religious: the need for a unified vision of life; the desire for togetherness and human warmth; the search for the origin of all things. Many children of Aquarius want to experience God directly, in a kind of wild quest that drives them towards cosy groups where there is singing, dancing, and where you feel good together. Many people today are in fact looking for a religion of the emotions rather than one of ideas. Therefore, without confusing the spiritual with the irrational, there is a need to discover in Christianity the sense of the body in prayer, of festivity in the liturgy, of 'enfleshed' symbols that speak to the heart and the senses: water and light, fire and incense, gestures and images. The new awareness of religion can become an opportunity for evangelism, for to evangelise is to tell the Christian story in clear speech, amid the throng of street entertainers hawking their wares in the great circus of contemporary religion. But to be heard, we need to move out to be with people in the areas in which they ask their questions. Even if their customs, their vocabulary and their practices disconcert us intensely, what is at stake merits the effort. •

Jean Vernette writes for the French Jesuit journals Christus and Cahiers pour croire aujourd'hui. This article, which first appeared in the December 1991 edition of Cahiers, was translated by Christopher Willcock SJ.

V OLUM E 2 N u MBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 25 INTERVIEW

MICHAEL McGIRR The future is in your hands

~m-ANN Smo

26 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 Of politics and the $50 note

M oomN BAN«NG NOT oNcv Hms to P"" the This morning there are soldiers in Brunswick Street, time-the queues are too long and the tellers too few­ too. Unlike the soldiers in Los Angeles, they wear dress it also helps to tell the time. If the automatic telling uniforms instead of riot gear. They are preparing for a machine will only dispense $50 notes, it must be Sunday parade in which the lOth or the 11th Prince of Wales morning. Most people who get cash from a telling something or other will receive the freedom of the City machine want it in $20 notes, so by Sunday the week­ of Fitzroy. A few Fitzroy residents lounge against lamp end's shopping and revelry have exhausted the supply posts, muttering that by extending this welcome to the of this useful bit of currency. And most places that are regiment Fitzroy council has failed some test of politi­ open on a Sunday morning do not appreciate customers cal correctness. But considerably more civilians, '60s who tender $50 notes. hippies and the 1990s kind, seem to be there just for the Perhaps it is a covert way of encouraging people to show. A newspaper photographer is taking a picture of save, I wonder as I take my place in the Sunday-morning a girl wearing cheesecloth and beads. She has wrapped ATM queue. If so it is futile. Despite the fact that you herself round a soldier, and raises a fingertip have to wait twice as long in the queue, because every­ to stroke the ostrich-feather cockade in his body first goes through the routine of asking the machine beret. for twenties rather than fifties, no one actually gives up in dismay. I PAUSE IN FRONT of a cafe. The waiter scrawling the How many times have you heard someone say 'You names of various dishes on a blackboard menu looks as know, this machine's absolutely right. I should leave if he eats $50 notes. The pub across the road is just the money in the bank, where it can benefit me and the opening. It smells worse than the cafe but in most other economy. I can go without $20 to buy my milk/orange respects seems more inviting. Inside a young woman is juice/newspaper/multifruit muffins from the local deli. playing pool by herself and two men lean against the I'll go home and skip breakfast today.' Never, right? bar. The older of the two looks as though he spent all of People just mouth a few expletives, take a fifty instead yesterday there and will do the same again today. The of a twenty and steel themselves to argue with the guy other idly wipes a glass, his gaze turned away from the in the deli who doesn't want to change the fifty. window and its view of the parade. A tattoo on his arm The queue is getting smaller, and now there are declares him to be a Vietnam veteran. The bannaid raises only two people in front of me. At the head of the queue an eyebrow at my $50 note but the man wiping the glass is a woman who spins things out by trying a whole set says 'Don't worry, mate, I'll change it at the cafe. ' of linked credit cards and A TM cards. She appears to He grabs the note and disappears across the street. believe that even if the machine has run out of twenties Then the barmaid tells me not to worry, because she it will print some more, out of respect for a person who 'knows his name'. 'You mean he doesn't work here?' owns so much magnetised plastic. 'No, he hangs around and picks up glasses. But he's a The machine has no respect and chews up two of customer.' The old man contributes, 'If it'd been me, her cards. She gets into the passenger seat of a Porsche mate, I'd still be running.' parked by the kerb and explains this outcome to her I am wondering if I will see my $50 again when the male companion behind the wheel. The whole queue, vet returns and hands me two twenties and a ten. He full of bleary-eyed Sunday-morning class hatred, cranes aru1ounces, to no one in particular, that 'the blacks sure to hear their conversation; the gist of which is that all is ripped up Los Angeles, eh?'. The barmaid asks why and not lost because he too has a full set of magnetised plastic he explains about the police beating of Rodney King. and knows of several other likely ATMs. 'They hit the poor bastard 86 times.' It is actually 56 I try to imagine what it is like to spend one's Sun­ but I decide not to correct him. A discussion ensues day morning driving round in a Porsche, being insulted about Aborigines, with the bannaid arguing that they by machines that won't give you a $20 note. I am heart­ get as hard a time from Australian police as black ened by this image. Americans get in LA. The vet does not like this move I am so heartened that I decide to forgo offering $50 to home ground. He is angered by her comparison, and in exchange for a six-pack of multifruit muffins, and to by my suggestion that prior ownership of the country search for more satisfying refreshment instead. I wander gives Aborigines a legitimate grievance. 'They weren't along Brunswick Street, noting the newspaper poster: here first,' he roars, 'the kangaroos were!' L.A. RIOTS-BUSH SENDS IN TROOPS. I decide that There is silence, broken only by a click as the lone people who own Porsches in Los Angeles probably·aren't pool player sinl

VoLUME 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 27 THE NATION: 3 Ross McMuLLIN

Shifting alliances

The victory of left-wing independent Phil Cleary in the Wills byelection has dwwn attention to the number of fmmer ALP members who are pinning their hopes on new social movements. Here two ex­ members of Labor's Left explain their reasons for leaving.

No more compromise: Peter and Joyce Milton. 'IMNOT ee'5oNAcc' ote.cs,m, but I "m politic•lly of his party, in Britain and Australia, but had not con­ depressed', admitted Labor's former MHR for LaTrobe, sidered standing for parliament w1til the Left in LaTrobe, Peter Milton, as he explained a personally momentous where he was a resident and local branch member, were decision he and his wife Joyce had recently taken. looking to run a candidate of their own in the preselec­ Peter Milton was being sincere about his feelings, tion prior to the federal election due in 1980. but doesn't look depressed in the slightest. He is 63 but After agreeing to stand, Milton won the preselection looks years younger. He talks fluently, with a slight ahead of four other candidates, including Tony Lamb, Londoner's accent derived from his birth and upbring­ who had held the seat from 1972 to 1975, and ABC ing in that city. As he reminisced in his Boronia home broadcaster Terry Lane; at the ensuing election Milton about his decade in Parliament in the 1980s he exuded defeated the Liberal incumbent (who had unseated Lamb friendliness and vitality, bustling purposefully from in 1975). room to room to answer the phone, put the kettle on or Throughout his parliamentary career Milton grab a book to check something. remained a staunch left-winger, implacably opposed to When I arrived one Friday morning to discuss his uranium mining, privatisation and the Hawke govern­ political career he was answering an SOS from a neigh­ ment's implementation of economic policies like bour with car trouble; dressed in short -sleeved check deregulation and the 'level playing field'. In his August shirt, trim shorts and sockless trackshoes, Milton was 1984 report to the ALP branches in LaTrobe-at least cheerfully grappling with the problem, although the every quarter Milton not only distributed a printed report neighbour's inadequate tools had made the task much to local ALP members, but also made available another harder than it should have been. separate one to the electorate as a whole-he admitted The grave step arising from Peter Milton's politi­ his chagrin that during the first 17 months of the Hawke cal depression was his decision to sever his links with government there had been, from his viewpoint, more the Victorian Left, his political base throughout his defeats than successes in terms of the decades of activism in Australia. The significance of this government adhering to the party platform. resignation is illuminated by an outline of his political career. WHEN T HE DECISION to sell uranium to France was Having survived the Blitz, Milton joined the Brit­ announced in the 1986 budget speech, Milton and two ish Labour Party at the age of 16 and was a local branch backbench colleagues sparked a minor controversy by secretary when he emigrated to Melbourne with Joyce dramatically walking out of Parliament in protest. Again and their three children in 1961. He became an assist­ Milton pointed to the breach of ALP policy involved ant registrar at Melbourne University, where he also which was, according to him, openly conceded by the completed a part-time arts degree. As a committed Prime Minister in a private meeting with the rebellious socialist he had always gravitated towards the left wing trio.

28 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 someone with the drive and determination to take on the forces of conservatism as wholeheartedly as the leading character in the outstanding British television series, A Very British Coup. As well as being personally compatible, the Mil­ tons were, in Peter's words, 'a political partnership'. They complem ented each other's talents and interests neat­ ly. Joyce acknowledged that Peter's work experience and tertiary education equipped him with greater ability to analyse policy issues, and that he was more suited to the 'front-person', public speaker role. With keener insight than Peter when reading people's motives and assessing the political implications, she felt more com­ fortable in an organisational capacity, where she was an influential figure behind the scenes. Peter can be amusing when recalling aspects of the operation of their political partnership. When the relentless grind of functions became unpalatable and he expressed reluctance about attending a particular one, his 'commissar' (Joyce) would sometimes reply 'Well Peter, of course no one can force you to go, but all I can say is that it would be politically very foolish not to turn up.' Whenever Joyce took that line, he says with a smile, he knew he had no choice, and off he would go. Photo: Bill Thomas It would be misleading to suggest that Milton felt T HE MIL TONS WERE AN EFFECTIVE political partnership continually frustrated during his stint in Parliament. partly because they have respected each other's identi­ He is proud of a number of the Hawke government's ty, and it was characteristic that they withdrew from achievements and his own chairmanship of the influ­ the Left in separate, differently-worded letters. Where ential standing committee on the environment-for do they go politically now? They're not sure. Both seven years he retained this position and his contribu­ attended a meeting late last year of the the Rainbow tion was widely commended. Alliance; Peter's proposal that the alliance should But there were many times during those seven years include in its platform economic policies opposed to after 1983 when he encountered rank-and-file ALP deregulation and the level playing field was accepted at activists who were disaffected and disillusioned with that meeting. He believes they could improve the or­ the government. Although sympathetic to their ganisational name, which in his opinion gives the concerns he urged them to stay in the party counter-productive impression of a group of people who and to fight for what they believed in. don't have their feet on the ground. Peter and Joyce are far from certain that this new entity will be a congenial H EFEELS DIFFERENTLY NOW, however, believing that political home for them. too much has been compromised and conceded. Even within sections of the Left, let alone among Although unable to bring himself to resign his mem­ the wide spectrum of ALP stalwarts generally, there is bership of the party, he feels unable to associate himself of course strong disagreement with the Mil tons' response any longer with the Left. While in parliament he often to Labor's performance during the 1980s. The ALP has had spirited discussion with Brian Howe about the always been an umbrella party comprised of individuals appropriate role of the Left in caucus and government; with widely varying views about the desirable pace and under Howe's influence, Milton asserts, the Left has priorities of change. Another characteristic it has become too conciliatory, too accommodating. frequently demonstrated is its capacity for regeneration Joyce Milton shares her husband's views. Also a and renewal. committed activist for decades, she marched alongside If Labor's current difficulties lead to a phase of in­ him in the anti-nuclear protests in England during the ternal reassessment later in the 1990s, that process may 1950s, has served on the Victorian ALP's administra­ not be truly effective without the participation of ac­ tive committee, and was in fact the first Milton invited tivists with the idealism and commitment of Peter and to become the LaTrobe Left's preselection candidate in Joyce Milton. • 1979. It was only after she declined that her husband was asked to stand. Ross McMullin is the author of The Light on the Hill: Like Peter, she is friendly and hospitable, recognises The Australian Labor Party 1891-1991 (Oxford, the capacity of senior figures in the party, but longs for Melbourne, 1991)

V o LUME 2 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 29 R EVIEW EssAY

J.J.C. SMART Wonder does not an answer

From Alberti's 'Ten Bool< s on Architecture'. Florence, 1485. m alz e

Since the time of Galileo, physics and theology have gone their separate ways. In recent cosmology they appear to be converging again, but the marriage is not quite harmonious.

The Mind of God, Paul Davies, Simon and Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0 oll 7!0()9 9. RRI' $34.95

E,,D "'"" AN 'M'N"'""'"O" and cosmologist who has also written many books on these subjects for the general public. The present book has much excellent popularisation of cos­ mology and related subjects, though I haveminorquibblesabout a few things to do with logic, such as the account of Godel's theorem and of Turing's proof of the unsolvability of the halting problem, which could have been a bit better done even at the popular level. However, in this review I shall concentrate on Davies' excursions into theology, and the physics as it espe­ cially affects this. I warn the reader that though I am writing for a Catho­ lic journal I am not writing from any theistic point of view. I would urge, nevertheless, that theologians should be strongly encouraged to take an interest in modern cosmology, as a few of them indeed do. I have a feeling, however, that the comfort that tradi­ tional believers will take from this book may sometimes be in inverse proportion to their understanding of it. Sometimes it has been thought that the cosmic 'big bang' implies a prior cause, a creator God. In reply some philosophers have urged that there need be no first moment in the universe, since time might extend

30 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 finitely into the past and yet be like held that the physical universe itself Leslie's God is not what I could con­ the positive fractions, of which there is a necessary being in the sense of not sider to be a personal one, though I is no first one. As Davies explains, the requiring anything outside itself? This think that he would reply that the cosmological hypothesis worked out sense of 'necessary' is clearly not strong theologian's notion of a 'person' is by Hartle and Hawking is a bit differ­ enough for the theist's purpose. I often a very analogical one indeed. ent. According to their investigation suspect that Aquinas was not clear Leslie traces his theory to antecedents of the tiny compressed space-time with about the matter and that a suitable as far back as Plotinus and even Plato. which the universe began (less than sense of 'necessary' is impossible to Brandon Carter's answer to the ten to the power of minus thirty three find, though I shall come back shortly problem of fine tuning is that there are centimetres radius) there is no point to an interesting suggestion which infinitely many universes (perhaps we that is uniquely 'first', and more im­ was put forward by the philosopher of should call them 'subuniverses', if portantly it makes no more sense to cosmology John Leslie. 'universe' is used to ask what happened before such a point Philosophers and scientists have refer to everything). than it does to ask what on the surface wondered at the fact that there are Most of these uni­ Davies confesses to of the earth is north of the north pole. beautiful and elegant systems of laws verses will be cha­ (It was space-time and not just its of nature. Why is the universe not otic, and in an infin­ mystical feelings, and so contents that has expanded to its totally chaotic? Paul Davies expounds itesimal proportion present vast size.) modern physics and cosmology in a of them will there perhaps should anyone who Hawking has suggested that this very readable manner so as to bring be by chance the re­ may do away with the need for out this sense of wonder. Certainly lations between contemplates the wonders believing ina creator God. (lam slightly this invites a theistic answer, though constants of nature puzzled as to what Hawking might I think that the answer is open to the that allow galaxies of physics and cosmology. have meant by the phrase 'The Mind 'Who made God?' type of objection. If or stars or planets to of God' in the conclusion of his Brief God made the laws of nature, then form, let alone liv­ Awe and wonder are History of Time, and which Davies presumably there must be as much ing beings. We are appropriate, and these uses for the title of his book.) No complexity in him as in the system of of course in one of theologian ought to be worried about laws itself, and so Ockham's razor these, since we are emotions are the basis at there being no time before the universe suggests resting content with the here to tell the tale. began. StThomas, at his best, thought physical universe. Nevertheless this A similar answer is least of pantheism. of God as being outside time altogether, theistic answer has come to seem more due to Andrei Linde, and of creation as a non-temporal compelling, at least psychologically, who has a theory Pantheism seems to me to sustaining of the whole space-time since recent investigations of the ex­ that the universe universe. Davies sees this point very traordinary 'fine tuning' of apparently inflates after the big differ from atheism only in well: the real puzzles are better put as unrelated constants occurring in these bang with all sorts 'Why does the universe exist at all?' laws. Without such fine tuning a uni­ of random symme­ one's attitude to the and 'Why is the universe as it is? ' verse such as ours, with galaxies, try breakings so that Davies is more concerned with the stars, planets and life could the universe divides universe. Not for nothing latter one. rr not have existed. into infinitely many As a preliminary objection to a subuniverses, of was Spinoza described by theistic answer here, let me repeat the .1. HESE RELATIONSHIPS ARE mind­ which what we re­ intelligent child's question 'Who made boggling indeed and are very well dis­ gard as our huge some as a God intoxicated God?' The Thomistic answer is that cussed by John Leslie in his book universe is only one God is a necessary being, and so his Universes (Routledge, 1989). Leslie is infinitesimal part. man and by others as a existence needs no explanation. Un­ sympathetic to non-theistic answers Davies regards fortunately the Thomist notion of a (such as the ' many universes' Carter's idea as hideous atheist. necessary being has come to seem hypothesis of Brandon Carter) but he going against Ock- quite unclear to present day analytic himself opts for a theism according to ham's razor, the principle that in our philosophers. We understand what it which goodness tends to come into theories entities should not be multi­ is for a proposition such as 'either it is existence. Davies gives this answer plied beyond necessity. In the end I am raining or it is not raining' to be logi­ rather short shrift on pplll-2, and I inclined to think so too, though this is cally necessary, but no existential too have difficulties with it, even less clear in the case of Linde's theory. proposition can be necessary in this though I find it interesting. One diffi­ We must remember that multiplica­ sense. (And if it were it would be culty is due to the fact that I regard tion of entities does not go against empty of factual information.) ethical principles as expressions of Ockham's razor if it simplifies total On the other hand, it is hard to see our desires or attitudes, not statements theory and provides explanation. In what other sense of 'necessary' will of fact about the world. Leslie also has my opinion the most congenial non­ fill the bilL Thus we might define a problems about the existence of pain theistic explanation of the fine tuning necessary being as one which needed and other evils, which leads him into would come from a final unified theo­ nothing outside itself fori ts existence. what I consider to be metaphysical ry of the sort that Stephen Hawking God would certainly be a necessary implausibilities, but of course he is envisages for the future, in which the being in this sense, but what argument not alone among theists in having laws of nature are related to one an­ would there be against an atheist who trouble with the problem of eviL other in a simple manner, and the fine

V oLUME 2 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 31 tuning is made unsur­ ed-attempt to 'whistleit'. He is well­ ing or horrible? On this compatibilist prising. A perhaps read in certain areas of philosophy and view we indeed need an approxima­ misleading analogy is theology, though I think (perhaps I'm tion to determinism on the macro­ as follows. The Euler prejudiced!) not always the right ones. scopic level for free will to be possible. number (e), the square I suspect that Davies thinks that free The classic article about this is R.E. root of minus one (i) will depends on randomness or un­ Hobart's 'Free- will as involving deter­ and the ratio of a Eucli­ predictability !see pllS and pp192-3). mina tion, and inconceivable dean circle to its I am not sure that tllis would mean without it', published in diameter lrr) may seem that free will is also incompatible with Mind in 1934. at first sight to be unre­ determinism. Model theory in modem lated, and it may be a logic enables us to define determin­ A TONE POINT Davies flirtS with matter for wonder that ism differently from Laplace's famous process philosophy, derivingfromA.N. e to the power of the definition in terms of predictability Wllitehead. I have many objections to product of i and rr is by an infinite calculator who knows this, one of which is that Wllitehead equal to minus one. the present positions and motions of wanted to import biological ideas into When we see the proof every particle in the universe. A sys­ physics, when in fact it should be the of this it seems obvious tem can be deterministic but unpre­ other way round, as is shown by the and unmysterious, even though still dictable. successes of biochemistry and molec­ beautiful. In any case, there is a well-known ular biology. Another is that it in­ Davies confesses to mystical feel­ thesis of compatibilism, which is volves notions related to that of a flow ings, and so perhaps should anyone accepted by many contemporary phi- of time, whereas I hold that such who contemplates the ·wonders of notions are absurd and that a tenseless physics and cosmology. Awe and language without notions of an objec­ wonder are appropriate, and these tive past, present and future is appro­ emotions are the basis at least of pan­ priate for cosmology. theism. Pantheism seems to me to have a feeling Theologically, I find the process differ from atheism only in one's J philosopher's temporal and finite God attitude to the universe. Not for that the comfort less believable than Aquinas' nothing was Spinoza described by transcendent, eternal and non-tempo­ some as a God-intoxicated man and that traditional ral one. The process philosopher's by others as a hideous atheist. concept of God seems too much just Even more mind-boggling is the believers will that of one more wonderful thing question not just of why the universe within the universe, and yet some­ is as it is, but of why there is anything take from this book thing for which we have no evidence. at all. Unfortunately, though I feel Such a concept of God is not big enough that it is a profound question it does may sometimes to do the required intellectual job. The seem to be without any possible an­ question remains as to whether there swer. Perhaps we should be content be in inverse is any intelligible concept that could with an impossibility proof, as in do so. • mathematics. For example, a lot of proportion to their people have wanted to find a method J.J.C. Smart is Emeritus Professor at of constmcting a square of the same understanding of it. the Australian National University. area as a given circle, using mler and compass alone. Mathematicians have stopped trying since the proof that rr is I EUREKA STRI:-Er I non -algebraic Itranscendental) showed that no such method can losophers, that even if determinism %inking of suGscriGing? 'Do n possibly exist. were tme we could still have free will. so n.ow anaget 20 per cent This thesis is often taught to first-year off the news-stan.tf r ERHAPS THE MYSTICAL FEELING iS just students. According to this view, free one of intellectual fmstration, though will is a matter of being determined by I do not like to think so. Perhaps there one's beliefs and desires. (Not always: really is a 'mystery at the end of the a kleptomaniac may be held to be not universe' (see Davies' final chapter). free, or at least not responsible, because On the other hand we may recall F.P. his desires cannot be modified by Ramsey's remark lin a different con­ argument or by threats of punishment.) nection ) that 'What we can't say we After all, would not indetermin­ can't say, and we can't whistle it either' acy or randomness dinlinish one's in his Foundations of Mathematics freedom, so that one might do what IKegan Paul, 1931) p238. one didn't want to do, as if !say) a At any rate, Davies has made a quantum mechanical trigger in one's See form insitfe Gael( cover valiant-even if inevitably frustrat- brain led us to do something disgust-

32 EUREKA STREET • JUNE 1992 R EVIEW EssAy : 2

M ARK COLERIDGE Two into one will go

T ,,. m A "wTH• Nc' •bout the symbol of chaos, defeats the m onster the return of the Risen biblical accounts of creation that might and so brings to birth the order of Christ t o judge the not please a scientist like Paul Davies. crea tion. But in the Bible there is no world. Paul describes One ofthem is that the Book of Genesis sea monster in sight, and no battle. A the intervening process begins with not one but two versions word is spoken: 'God said, "Let there as a gestation (Romans of how it all happened. It would surely be light", and there was light'. It is the 8:22), imagining 'glori­ have been neater and less confusing to word that creates worlds. In that sense, ous freedom of the chil- settle for one of the two accounts, but the universe is undergirded more by dren of God' (Romans the Bible opts for both. In the argot of language than by the mathematics 8:21). biblical study, Genesis 1 gives us the that so impress Paul Davies. But this is not so Priestly account and Genesi 2 gives The two versions also agree that much the goal fo r which creation was us the Yahwistic account. the divine act of creation is a process. destined from the start as a restoration This is all the stranger, given the They recount the process differently, of creation as it was before the Fall. A Hebrew Bible's genius for melding dif­ but in both stori es we see a God who vision of this kind implies a crucial ferent texts with hardly a trace of a works step by step. They also agree element of which the physical scienc­ seam. But in the account of creation that in the process of creation, the es can take no account- the element there is no attempt to do this. The appearance and role of the human of sin, understood by the Bible as that Bible chooses juxtaposition, and the being are exceptional. In the Priestly radical power which disfigures the question is why? One part of an answer story (Genesis 1), the creation of the creation, which reverses the process is that it makes clear from the start human being comes last, as the climax of God's work and brings chaos fro m that there are, at least, two valid, indeed of the process. The Yahwistic story order. complementary, ways of looking at (Genesis 2) is still more radically hu­ A second point of perplexity is the the same vast phenomenon. There is manist: the man is created first and Bible's notion of God's freedom . Paul no one 'right' account of the creation the woman last, so that the entire Davies objects to the notion of a God that offers guidance in assessing the process of creating the universe is who at times chooses to infringe the rela tion ship between physical embraced by the process of creating magnificent laws that undergird the and metaphysical readings the human being. universe. These laws, he claims, have of the event. The Bible rules out a sense of the about them an absolute quality to human being as ju st one of many ele­ which even God is subject. EOR ALL THEIR DIFFERENCES, however, ments of the physical universe. The The Bible does not agree. It makes the two versions converge at key Yahwistic story has the human being it plain that only God and his freedom points. First, they discount the possi­ as collaborator, even co-creator with are absolute and demonstrates thi bility that there was no beginning, the God who brings the creatures to repeatedly as God either infringes or that the physical universe has always the man so that he may name them . transcends the laws of creation. He is existed. For the Bible, there was a By virtue of the act of naming-the quite literally a law unto himself, an d beginning, and the agent of the begin­ capacity for language-the man shares this is never clearer than in the grea t­ ning was the one who is designated the divine work of bringing order from est moments of his intervention­ mysterious! yin Genesis 1:1 as Elohim . chaos. This could not be more differ- most spectacularly, of course, in the The biblical God is bounced on to the ent from other creation stories of the Exodus and Resurrecti on stage immediately but namelessly; and time, such as the En uma Elish, in stories. throughout the Bible he will refuse to which the human being is created to name himself. This, it seems, is a God be slave of the gods. I S TH EL ANGUA .Eof the Bible the lan- who names himself by what he does; However emphatic the Bible is guage of the physical sciences1 Cer­ and what he does is bring the order of that there was a God-driven begin­ tainly not. Are the two languages con­ creation from the chaos evoked in ning, it says nothing of why God chose tradictory? Certai nly not. They are no Genesis 1 :2, the chaos of the void, the to create. Paul Davies and others may more contradictory than the two darkness, the waters. discern in the universe a miracle of mythic interpretations of data that He may be a God of action, but he design that suggests a purpose, but the Bible juxtaposes in the beginning. is also a God who speaks. In fa ct, it is what that purpose may be the Bible We all grapple with data; we are all his word that does the acting. This is does not say. It tells us what God has purveyor of m yth. • one point where the Bible parts com­ d ne and how, but says nothing of pany with the other creation stories of why. Under the influence of late Jew­ Mark Coleridge teach es biblical its time. In them, the creator-god en­ ish apocalyptic, the New Testament studies at Catholic Theological Col­ ters into battle with the sea monster, looks to an end, which it describes as lege, Clayton, Victoria.

VOLUME 2 N UMB ER 5 • EUREKA STREET 33 MusiNGS

AILEEN KELLY & PETER STEELE

A ,, umATu"' ~N~~~O ~~~,;:,, ~ £m~,~~~ o~~ t~~~~:n ') m•k« hlm«lf littl o, theology students I keep finding my- ground it 'stands', holding position falls to earth and in that action reveals self discussing Gerard Manley Hop- with small ripples of the wingtips. All just how 'lovely' and 'dangerous' he is. kins' poem The Windhover, because this is in the first eight lines of the We could only glimpse this while he it features in two books by theologians. poem. Characteristically, a kestrel remained in heaven. Paradoxically, he Both Sallie McFague, in Speaking in then folds its wings and drops like a shows 'fire' when he seems least glo- Parables, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, stone onto its target, resuming flap- rious: if the power of God is to shine in The Glory of the Lord (vol. 3), un- ping only as it takes the prey, with through the earthly he must plod the derstand very well how poetry works: split-second timing, to avoid a crash. earth like a ploughman. To reveal the they respond to it as experience, not as This is what the septet of the poem glory of God Christ must fall and be coded information to be solved into refers to: the bird crumples ('buckle') broken open, like apparently dead definitional language. and falls from heaven to earth. Not embers revealing inner fire- that is Unfortunately, neither of them recognising this fall, von Balthasar the true crucifixion imagery in this understands this particular poem. The seeks cmcifixion imagery in a soaring poem. problem is not that they are not 'crit- bird's extended wings, imagining it Regrettably, theologians are no ics', for many critics have missed the showering down the 'embers' of the more likely than literature people to point here too, and not necessarily for last line. Nor does McFague recognise obtain a research grant for a good pair lack of theology. The problem is that it. She seeks crucifixion imagery in of field glasses. But they might care to they are not birdwatchers. 'buckle'-the bird destroyed in some join the critics at the football to lay The habits of kestrels are so no- way connected with 'I caught'. solid foundation for reading Bruce ticeable that Hopkins would never Smely, however, it is not primari- Dawe. • havewonderedifeveryoneknewthem. ly crucifixion Hopkins sees in the The kestrel soars, like other hawks, kestrel, but incarnation: the heavenly Aileen Kelly is a Melbourne poet and on breezes and thermals; when it sees king's oldest son ('dauphin') and be- teacher. Timing 'Unfortunately, yesterday was the last day' - heard on radio

Damned if I know whether to feellil

Peter Steele

34 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 OBITUARY

L "T MoNT" " PA~ ~~ ~~er"~'~ ~~'i'~~~ ~'l !o:w~ S~ ' ~n::: '"d '"

V OLUME 2 N UMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 35 BooKs

R AY C ASS IN

We'll never see his like again

I T" cu,uou' uow few no"H'" hm The Death of Napoleon, Simon Leys, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 1992. chosen to writeaboutNapoleon. There ISBN 1 863 73 260 8 RRP $1\.95 is Tolstoy, of course, and Stenclhal. But the Bonaparte of War and Peace 'real' emperor. They feared him for his are asked to assume that the exiled and The Charterhouse of Parma ruthlessness while they scorned him Napoleon has secretly left St Helena, amounts to little more than Hegel's because he was a parvenu. He was the his place being taken by a former world -historical fi gure, a sort of man who did not fit in. sergeant who has acted as his double mechanism for unleashing the forces Simon Leys reportedl y claims that in the past. The defeated emperor, that enmesh the other characters of The Death of Napoleon has 'nothing disgu ised as a ca bin hand on a sealing those books. to do with history, politics or even ship, will return to France, there to Sundry ki ngs, qu eens, emperors with Napoleon himself'. Certainly, reclaim the empire and la gloire. But and larger- than-life fo lk have fas cinat- the book'shero has nothingto do with glo ry, at least in the fo rm our received image of the emperor­ in which he expects it, nev- vainglorious after Austerlitz, stern and er comes. terrible aft er Borodino. But Leys' ATIE MPTS TO &::>oS-r IV\ORALE.. ON Napoleon is still most of all the H ISTROUBLES BEGIN On board ship, 1HE. R'E.1RE. A.T t=Rotv\ rv\O?C.OW '" m an who does not fit in, and wh ere the sailors, noticing his resem ­ his di stance fr om the real blance to the emperor, nickname him N apoleo n consists in the fact 'Napoleon'. This amuses everyone l'low , WI-I£N W~ (:,€-\ 1"0 ''Mt..RRlL'<'; You that he gradually becomes any except the boatswain, a confirmed Bo­ GD{S COM€- IN WI\H ''RoW, ROW, R OW man-or woman- who does napartist who thinks it an insult to his '

36 EUREKA STREET • )UNE 1992 BooKs: 2

entranced by the sight, and Nigger­ MICHAEL McGIRR Nicholas confirmed in his belief that that this is no ordinary seaman. This passage comes early in The Death of Napoleon but it is pivotal for thewhole In the book. In witnessing the kind of glory .# that human beings cannot make, ~ Napoleon has been given an intima­ 1niddle of '•• tion of mortality; the rest of the tale is li about how he comes to recognise it, n and who he becomes in the process. a darlz wood I In telling that tale, Leys shifts from The Last Magician, ~ !I lyrical to flatly ironic mode as he Janette Turner Hospital, UQP, 1992. I catalogues Napoleon-Eugene's mis­ ISBN 0 7022 2405 7 RRP $29.95. adventures and growing sense of dis­ •I placement. The ship lands at Antwerp • instead of Bordeaux, and he misses a planned rendezvous with Bonapartist J ANeTTe Tu"" Ho"'m'' new f plotters. novel is set among the prostitutes and To get to Paris from Antwerp he street kids of Kings Cross. So it is must pass near the scene of his defeat disconcerting to find her, as I did, at at Waterloo, so he takes a guided tour the high table of Melbourne Universi­ of the battlefield with a party of Eng­ ty's Ormond College, taking her place lish tourists. Various local inns boast as a visiting writer. 'The Last Magician of having 'the room where the emper­ was a painful book to write,' she says. or slept the night before the battle', 'There came a point at which I was none of which is recognisable to afraid to go on with it.' Janette Turner Hospital. Napoleon. He ends up arguing with a The Last Magician is about pur­ Cat becomes the most powerful pres­ photo: The Age. supposed veteran of the grande armee suit. It imagines an alternative world ence in the book. Pursuing her, other about the disposition of troops on the called the Quarry that starts in the rift characters descend into the Quarry's day of the battle. Already, 'his' history valley of the Redfern railway station, outermost circle from a bar called The is being taken away from burrows into the sandstone and fills Shaky Landing. As with much of him. the tunnels under Sydney. Nobody Turner Hospital's writing, The Last knows how big this world of feral Magician is profoundly evocative of I N PARIS HE TAKES UP With the widow people has become. Train passengers images from Dante, and her narrative of a Bonapartist officer. She is a not sometimes catch a glint from human is as thick-piled and teasing as a Bot­ very successful fruit seller and the eyes in the darkness underground, but ticelli painting. aging loyalists who surround her are a otherwise an invisible society lies Elusive figures seem to cling to timorous lot. When Napoleon reor­ 'nestled in the cracks of the official Turner Hospital. An earlier book, The ganises the fruit business on military world like a hand inside a glove'. The Tiger in the Tiger Pit, follows a lines, making lots of money by a sur­ Quarry is a source of countless woman in flight from her family. prise assault on the markets before rumours; word has it that something Another, Borderline, tells the story of other sellers can get into position, the similar is sprouting under Toorak and a Salvadoran refugee who remains just gratitude of the old Bonapartists is St Kilda. People live in fear that some beyond the grasp of those trying to underwhelming. The only one among taint of it may pass 'as invisibly as a locate her. them who recognises Napoleon coun­ virus into the world of order.' 'In my experience with the Sanc­ sels him to remain a succesful seller of This image has shades of New tuary Movement,' says Turner watermelons: la gloire is for 'history'. York's subway dwellers, but for me it Hospital,' the greatest hardship of the And history soon evades the brought to mind the urban myths that relatives of those Latin An1ericans emperor for ever, when he learns that were part and parcel of growing up in who have been "disappeared" is the the impersonator on St Helena has Sydney: we always believed that fresh gradual, maddening grief that can't died. Since the world knows Napole­ water still flowed in the Tank Stream ever graduate into open grief. They on to be dead, only a madman could under Bridge Street, and that men lived live in a perpetual twilight, bracing claim to be Napoleon. In one of the in disused underground railways, like themselves because their loved ones book's funniest scenes, he visits an the one that went under North Syd­ might be dead, but they could also asylum where all the inmates wear ney to the northern beaches. bump into them again unexpectedly.' approximations of his famous bicorn Catherine Reilly, the Cat, is a fig­ Turner Hospital's stories echo her hat and grey field coat. Is his claim ure from the Quarry. When her back­ own experience. Her life has been one now any better than theirs? • ward brother, Willy, is killed, the Cat of constantly moving on, a fact that becomes the scapegoat, disappearing occasioned the title of her first book of Ray Cassin is production editor of into the barred world of reform school stories, Dislocations. She spent the Eureka Street. and then into the Quarry. The absent first seven years of her life beside the

V oLUME 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 37 railway in Ringwood, a Melbourne suburb, before her fa mily went to live In the Moody and Sangster by another railway line in Brisbane, 1 leaving behind her friends and grand­ I HAD A POWERFUL EXPERIENCE All of a sudden, at the front of parents. 'I fe lt these peopl e were lost when we were in India on a sab- the church, the organist and youth but all the more powerfully present batical. I had spent my university choir came out for practice.They precisely because of their absence. I yearstryingtodistancemyselffrom began singing a hymn from the mea n, they remain with you all the what had begun to be the rather Moody and Sangster Hymn Book. ti me in your mind.' stifling intellectual and social hold Only evangelical Protestants used The pattern has been repeated of the Pentecostal Church. But I it. It was really schmaltzy: dread- many times. From theageof24, Turner married an ordained Methodist ful words, dreadful music, dread- Hospital has lived almost entirely minister and always still saw my- ful theology, dreadful everything. outside Australia, mainly in India, the self as Christian, until we left But it was an absolutely weird United States and Canada, where her Australia and went to Boston in moment. I couldn't put together husband, Cliff Hospital, is a professor the late '60s. the fact that here in this ancient of theology in Kingston, Ontario. 'So Hereforthefirsttime, however, church in the middle of a Hindu these books I write do hook into an I go t to know a lot of Jewish in tel- city where they had buried one of inner feeling of my own about the lectuals, many of whom were the theworld'sgreatestnomads, Vasco need to be perpetually finding missing children of survivors, but some da Gama, I was h earin g, in people.' hadhadhorrific experiences them - Malayalam, a hymn that I had Turner Hospital is preoccupied by selves during the War. I was also sungin mychildhoodin Brisbane. a missing God. She grew up in a fun­ reading, for the first time, postwar I was overwhelmed. You know, damentalist Protestant household Jewish novels by Andre Schwarz- I hate those hymns now. But my where the Bible was read aloud at Barte and Elie Wiesel. I felt over- eyes were streaming and Cliff and dinner each evening-'We began with whelmed. I went down and sang along with Genesis and worked through to Rev­ I went through a period of the group in English. I felt power- elation' -and the cadences of the King feelingreallyashamedto beChris- fully that inescapably I was James version can still be heard in her tian and wanted very much to dis- Christian. It's li ke deciding again prose. 'I have tried to brea k out of tance myself fro m that. I never, that you're an Australian, no these rhythms but I am steeped in never saw myself as an atheist but matter how long you've been away. them. ' The strong sense of pursuit in certainly, for a period, as agnostic. It wasn't a question of dogma so her recent writng is partly a quest to But then, curiously, I had an almost much as realising there wasn't replace the God construct­ Pauline reconversion when we anything I could do about it. ID eel by her childhood faith. were living in Southindiain 1977. In a way, it seem ed so em- We found a little church of St blematic of my nomadic life. That r ER H APS I KEEP DOING stories about Francis, built in the late 15th or I, of all people, who was taught the missing one in an attempt to fill early 16th century. Of course, this that Catholics were 180 degrees what Salman Rushdie talks about as was Francis Xavier's turf. Vasco da out of phase, would, on the other "the God hole" . But I !mow that, like Gama had been buried there. It had side of the world, in South Indi a, a bird which has been limed, part of been built by Portuguese Jesuits, in a church built by Jesuits, start m e is inescapably Christian.' (see then by Dutch Protestant traders singing a Pentecostal hymn and box) . Maybe this is because 'the God and by Anglicans during the Raj. kneeling on the kneelers of the hole' is so painful to live with. In one Now it is part of the Protestant church there and weeping. It was of Turner Hospital's short stories, a Church of South India. I was quite incredibly powerful. It felt like all character trying to explain death to awed by being in a church that had the symbol systems of my life her children remarks that 'after all, had this succession of worship- happened to congregate at that everyone has a closet theology, a res­ pers. So many waves of history had mom ent.' urrection trump. Let them have their passed through. -Janette Turner Hospital Grandfather's castles, whatever helps. ' There are many more voices echo­ ing around in The Last Magician than story and pursues the reader with rid­ we've ever been before. The redemp­ those familiar from the King James dles about her own reliability. At one tive quest in The Last Magician is not Bible. We are led into the story of The stage she says, 'I find that the past lies about finding but about letting go . Last Magician by Lucia Barclay, in wait, just ahead, around every cor­ This novel is not for the compla­ university graduate and old girl of one ncr. ' It is this inability to imagine a cent rea der. Riddles, insights and of Bri sbane's 'best' private schools. future rnade out of an ything but the ironies appear like beads of sweat on Her name resonates with both Lu cifer past that brings her to a sad bind. the brow of a book that works hard for and St Lucy, references that play off Turner Hospital does not herself ma kc its ideas. But the ideas are thrilling, one another as we fo llow her life of ascapegoat ofthe past.In a 199 1 essay and so is the story. • prostitution. she writes: 'homeland is where the As Lucy, a name she wears like a senses steer by instinct when the reins Michael McGirr SJ is a regular con­ costume, she hands out keys to the are let go.' It is not necessaril y a place tributor to Evrel

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LEADERS : Kev in Toomey OP, Co ll een O 'Ca ll aghan OP­ DATE: 26-28 junel992 [I[Ill Insurances Limited I Accommodation is available for seminars and retreats ACN 001 72 I 348 on request. To inquire, contact the Co-ordinator, 324 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004 PO Box 1, Dickson, ACT 2602, or phone (06) 248 8253 Telephone 696 3733 (Country Areas-Toll Free 008 011 028) V oLUME 2 N uMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 39 the wife of another expatriate writer tures of Solly (Marco Hofschneider), a in Interzone; and Roy Scheider is suit­ Jewish boy in Nazi Germany, as he ably oily as the mysterious Dr Ben­ passes for an Aryan in the army and way. The fi lm looks great, has evoca­ then in a Hitler Yo uth school. He is tive music by Howard Shore (who also almost unmasked several times, but scored Silence of the Lambs ) and the avoids disaster and eventually surren­ 195 0s wardrobe is a treat. (They just ders, in a German uniform, to Soviet don't make that colour brown any troops. T hey don't believe hi story more.) and hand him over to Jewish surv ivors So all the elem ents are good; of the dea th camps; he is about to be whether you think they add up to a shot when he is recognised and saved good film depends on whether you can by a long-lost brother. laugh at scenes such as that in which In spite of the 'tru e story' tag, and Lee meets his fi rst mugwump, sitting the undoubted role of happy coinci­ on a barstool smoking a ciga rette. He dence in any such survival, the film is is introduced to the ali en: 'I'd like you artistically fl awed by this deus ex to meet a fr iend of mine ... He machina outcome and by the pica­ specialises in sexual ambivalence. ' resque structure of the tale, which -Mark Skulley tends to soften the impact of the hid­ eous events framing the hero's strug­ Europa , Europa, dir. Agnieszka gle to survive. Nal< ed Lu nch, di r. David Cronen berg Holland (inde pendent cinemas). This Even so, the film captures bril­ (independent cinemas). This film fea­ film is good enough to bear compari­ liantly the mysterious cohabitation of tures insect-like ali ens known as son with Loui s Malle's superb treat- venomous racist attitudes with nor­ mugwumps, which were described by mal, generous human impulses. Those the New Yorl< Times as a 'rather who want to base morality on local soignee strain of monster'. As one Eureka Street community can learn of the power of ma y deduce fr om that comment, community and culture to promote Naked Lunch is not fo r your average Film Competition the darkest evil. The best scenes in the popcorn muncher. To salute the m emory of the great film are those in which the hero rides Cronen berg is a talented Canadian Marlene, we'd like you to tell us a tram through through the Jewish whose previous fi lms- The Fly, Dead which film she is talking about in ghetto of a Polish city. The windows Ringers, Scanners-have gleefull y this quote: 'At the time I thought are frosted to protect Aryan eyes, but skated between horror, fantasy and the film was awful and vulgar, and there are enough fissures to reveal the rea li sm. In Nal< ed Lunch he takes I was shocked by the whole thing. hell that human beings have made. William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel of Rem ember, I was a well-brought -Tony Coady that name as the starting point for a up German girl. ' We'll award two story about a Burroughs-like charac­ tickets, to the film of yo ur choice, Ben Hm, dir. William Wyler (inde­ ter, William Lee, who stumbles along to the first correct entry opened. pendent cinemas). 'Bigger than Ben as a pest exterminator in New York The winner of April's film com­ Hur' boasts the cliche, and this new until he and his wife, Joan, get hoo ked petition was Joh n Toohey, of 70mm print of Wyler's 1959 epic is in on bug powder. Bronte, NSW, who thought Ron­ fact bigger than the 35 mm version Lee is warned about enemy under­ ald Reagan was saying, 'Now you familiar to Australian audiences. And tell him, Barbara. George was a cover agents by a giant cockroach with what a relief to discover that a post­ a talking anus, and shoots his wife in good vice-president- he should Spielbergaudiencecan still respond to a 'William Tell act' that goes astray. run for the top job.' what Hollywood used to call 'specta­ (This echoes Burroughs' rea l-li fe cle'. The prologu e, with its schoo l­ shooting of his own wife in 195 1.) Lee pageant Magi watching a mechanical goes to ground in 'Interzone', a Tangier­ star track across a painted backdrop of like setting, where he gets hooked on the sky over Bethlehem, will raise an even stronger drug, 'black mea t' more smiles than it did in 1959. But fro m gia nt Brazilian centipedes, and the film's famous set pieces, such as grapples with his homosexuality. the chariot race and the sea battle, still Undernea th the weirdness is yet manage to thrill in 1992. another tale of writers struggling to ment of related themes in Au revoir And even to horrify. Those who write, expatriates pl aying up, confu­ Les En/ants. Both films are based on rail against the portrayal of violence in sion oversexual identity, and the world real events, but Malle's film has more film s such as Cape Fea r and Silence of squeezing into yo ur head whether yo u of the tang and menace of reality than the Lambs sometimes speak as though like it or not. It's all played deadpan. Europa, Europa, even though it has it is a new phenomenon. But Ben Hur Peter Weller, of Robocop fame, is fi ne none of the violence and brutality. gives u lim bs lopped off and faces as William Lee; Ju dy Davis is eq ually Europa, Europa fo llows the har­ burnt away in the sea battle, and a good in a dual role as Lee's wife and rowing and so metimes comic adven- flaying in the chariot race. Oh, and

40 EUREKA STREET • JuNE 1992 that crucifixion, too. Perhaps violent acts by 'normal' people in exotic loca­ tions are less shocking than violent acts by psychopaths in familiar loca­ tions. But we have seen blood and gore before. Ben Hur does differ from recent film fare in its treatment of the gospel story, which interweaves with the tale of the Jewish prince, Judah Ben Hur (Charlton Heston), and his hatred for the Roman tribune, Messala (Stephen Boyd). Jesus pops up all the time in Ben Hur but we never see his face, presumably in deference to Hollywood Meeting Venus, dir. Istvan Szabo which are by command socialism out Protestant piety, circa 1959. Yet (independent cinemas), is effectively of the Marx Brothers. But every time somehow this disappoints less than two films. The good half is a wise Arestrup/Szanto begins to engage your theologically more ambitious fi lms allegory of fin de siecle European interest his performance gets deflect­ such as The Last Temptation of Christ unity in comic chaos, using the old ed into the soft-centred romance with andfesusofMontreal. Wearenotasked trope of the theatrical family (in this the film's star soprano who can't sing to believe that when Willem Dafoe or case Opera Emopa), and a show that and is no dab hand at dubbing either. Lothaire Bluteau speaks, it is Jesus must go on. It has the historical densi­ Attic grimacing doth not a diva speaking. We just witness his effect ty and nous one expects from Szabo, make.'You have The Most Beautiful on people, and are left to fi ll in that whose earlier films included Mephisto Voice I have ever heard,' Szanto tells blank face ourselves. and Colonel Redl. Karin. Of Kiri Te Kanawa, whose off­ Miklos Rozsa's otherwise stirring The rest of Meeting Venus , how­ stage voice it is, you could believe it. score descends to the mawkish and ever, is miscast melodrama, unac­ But Glenn Close, onstage, sings by the maudlin in the Jesus scenes. But countably starring thin Glenn Close striding around like a Katherine Hep­ when was the last time you went to a as Wagnerian soprano, Karin Ander­ burn in full flight, transmitting her movie that had areal overture, and not son. Niels Arestrup, looking like a vocal efforts through the pockets of just music for the opening credits? Or middle-periodBrando but without the her flapping raincoat. How could a to a movie that runs for four hours, presence, is endearing enough as the fine director have got it so wrong? and needs an in termission1 Or saw hapless Hungarian conductor, Zoltan If you can ignore Close, the rest of the man with looks that kill, Frank Szanto, whose pure, artistic zeal is the film is marvellous. Cluttering Thring, doing his thing as Pontius being frustrated by the Parisian arts Szanto's efforts to rehearse Pilate? Treat yourself to Ben Huraga.in, bureaucracy, old-fashioned intrigue Tannhiiuser ('music by Richard Wag­ and savour the cinematic nostalgia. and the theatre's industrial relations, ner' boasts the credits) is a grand cast - Ray Cassin of maniacs, from Szabo's usual stable, with additions like the wonderful Bergman actor, Erland Josephson, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA playing a sage, worldly Spaniard. Add a paranoid East German tenor, a Felliniesque Venus and her fat-lipped lover, a feral second-rank soprano and Striving for a faith a Russian Jewish repetiteur who sings Stalin's favourite song, and you have that does justice the makings of what should have been a great movie. -Morag Fraser

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V oLUME 2 NuMBER 5 • EUREKA STREET 41 Eurelza Street Cryptic Crossword no. 3, June 1992.

Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM

ACROSS

1,6. GGSE. A moming recipe? (9,4) 9. Make jokes in this ludicrous situation (5,5) 10. They are past; so are we. (4) 12. The gambler should keep a log-book in order to improve his perform­ ance. (6,6) 15. Some people are upset, but Ellen and I are overflowing with enthusi- asm. (9) 17. How poetic! The sun-god over there is clad in silk-like garb. (5) 18. The brightest star, the first of a series, is now in a terminal phase. (5) 19. The pedestrian going by, out of the West, is like a sparrow perching on the housetop? (9) 20. A stiff-necked people, in an ill-humoured race, for this long trek. (5,7) 24. Is it common sense to the Greek mind? (4) 25 . Struggles even to begin a cheer for the aircraft carrier. (10) 26. Not odd; on the level. (4) 27. He follows her to find the saintly old king of Kent. (9)

DOWN l. South of us, it is disagreeable. (4) 2. What rubbish! A register to go to the Roman funeral? (4) Solution to Crossword no. 2, May 1992 3. There is some confusion about the French realms. Liaise with the revolutionaries so that you may proclaim them in song. (12) 4. Crumbed stale bread produces very little. (5) 5. Honours with an award of French boxes' But they are empty ' (9) 7. The broken ivory egg I gave to Hildebrand indicated his place in church history, (7,3) 8. Fancy footwork in the ballroom space tends to obfuscate. (4,6) 11. A deep ravine with an eastern direction-an alternative source of in­ spiration for this writer. (6,6) 13. Maybe the new-fangled crane rising over this bizarre scene is a sign of cultural revival. (1 0) 14. The market economy! To make more than the others, go all out for the Italian leader. (10) 16. The sleeper's profession, perhaps, under cover? (9) 21. Could be a cut above, but for some not charismatic enough. (5) 22. Use this to turn over the garden tools. (4) 23. It can rotate to make the ends go up. (4)

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