Quadrant articles from April 2007

Quadrant archives from April 2007

A politicised public service?(Editorial)
April 1, 2007... THERE HAS BEEN a good deal of comment in recent years about the politicisation of the public service, especially at its upper levels. This applies in varying forms to both the Commonwealth and state public services. There is no doubt some truth...

The history summit.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: In his Latham lecture (January-February 2007) Keith Windschuttle gave a very poor account of the deliberations of the History Summit. The Summit decided to stipulate for study a dozen or so open-ended questions. Windschuttle cited...

Teaching history.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: It is with some surprise that I discovered that I had been caught up in the history wars by being named (and shamed!) in the January-February issue by Keith Windschuttle. Mr Windschuttle identifies me as having publicly endorsed a history...

The virtue of openness.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: I am little surprised at Roger Sandall's display of moral panic (January-February 2007) and more particularly when he asks rhetorically if the "mad mufti", Sheik Taj al-din al Hilaly, was right about all the "exposed meat" running around...

Planes and chains.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: Sheik Hilaly is not, as some believe, a figure of fun prone to crazy outbursts. His barbs are pointed, and part of a concerted campaign of destabilisation. His claim that Muslims have more right to Australia than others (the...

Critique or hatchet job?(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: What's the difference between a fair-minded, no-holds-barred critique and a hatchet job? One of them seeks to understand its subject on its own terms, and then to expose it to unrelenting rational scrutiny; the other looks for any means,...

What happens in schools.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... SIR: While Patrick Morgan identifies some deficiencies in education, he does not produce an accurate account of what actually happens in schools ("Education Made Easy", January-February 2007). Nor can the incessant criticisms of the Australian...

Abolition of the slave trade: the Australian connection.(History)
April 1, 2007... ACCORDING TO BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair, the two hundredth anniversary of his country's abolition of the slave trade on March 25, 2007, offers the chance to say how profoundly shameful slavery was. Equally, however, it provides the...

Forgotten deaths in la France profonde.(History)
April 1, 2007... FOR ANYONE WITH HALF an eye to see, Paris is not only the "City of Light", but just as surely a city of death, with much of this death inflicted by the French on their own. At the time of the Revolution so much blood soaked into the ground from...

Fame.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... FAME We were at dinner in Soho and the couple at the next table rose to go. The woman paused to say to me: I just wanted you to know I have got all your cook books and I swear by them! I managed ...

Letter from God to the editor: P.P. McGuinness v The Almighty.(Religion)
April 1, 2007... Dear Paddy, I see that you have been criticising Me again (Quadrant, March, and the Australian, 24-25 February). The holy scriptures say I am not mocked, but I am sending you this rejoinder for publication (I hope) in your splendid...

The misguided war on waistlines.(Science)
April 1, 2007... "What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?" "My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters." "The waters? What waters? We're in the desert." "I was misinformed." --from Casablanca (1942) IN THIS AGE OF BOUNDLESS and easily...

Justice Wilcox's bombshell.(Law)(Excerpt)
April 1, 2007... MURRAY WILCOX'S last decision as a Federal Court judge came as "a bombshell right in the centre of Perth"--in the words of Noel Pearson, who was probably as surprised as everyone else. Given the pattern of previous native title determinations,...

The Nineteenth Hole.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... THE NINETEENTH HOLE across the timber bridge you've stopped in your tracks beside the iron gate to weigh the unstoppable sky the cunning pace of clouds crossing the ranges from south to north your hand...

The fantasists folly of land rights.(Australia)
April 1, 2007... ON JANUARY 15 LAST, ALP President Warren Mundine, the scourge of the Latte Left, went on the offensive on the Land Rights issue. He wants the ALP's national conference in April to embrace laws that would give Aborigines the right to buy and...

The Woman I Met.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... THE WOMAN I MET I've got to tell you about this woman I met on the train to Inverness. It was going from Euston at eight in the evening And leaving behind me--but here I digress Because I must mention the storm that...

Humility: the despised virtue?
April 1, 2007... IF REALITY TELEVISION is any indication of broad cultural trends and emerging fashions in personal behaviour, Australian society is clearly abandoning the noble virtues of faith, hope, love, liberality, chastity, temperance, prudence, fortitude...

Three Haiku.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... THREE HAIKU rocks breaking each wave--nothing we own in the ocean midway thru the park--stone lions half wet in the fountain spray no more questions--some heat in my coffee cup

Anzac Day as a fashion barometer.
April 1, 2007... DURING A WEEKEND in rural Hampshire in winter I found myself reflecting, not for the first time, on the meaning of Anzac Day. No other day in our national calendar holds in thrall a people who otherwise scoff at other countries that elevate...

It.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... IT (following a poem by Peter Kocan) We used to talk about It quite a lot: Men often do, gathered round a bar, It's always been a fascinating topic, That's provided entertainment from afar. We wondered what It...

The faults and foibles of a paedophile.(John Marsden)
April 1, 2007... THERE IS SOMETHING profoundly disturbing about High Court Judge Michael Kirby referring to the late Sydney lawyer John Marsden's paedophilia as "faults and foibles". This disturbance is further compounded by the fact that our legal system...

Three Haiku.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... THREE HAIKU yesterday's newspaper--the pages picked up in no order strong autumn rain--a get well card hard to write places in the dark--a star with no more light than the rest

Farewell and hello to the ABC.(Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
April 1, 2007... ABOUT THE SAME TIME I decided to award myself a year's leave from watching ABC television, Wolfgang Kasper, the distinguished economist, decided to give up watching SBS forever. There was no collusion between us. We learned of each other's...

How different would labor be?(Australian Labour Party)
April 1, 2007... ACCORDING TO KEVIN RUDD in his "Howard's Brutopia" article in the November 2006 issue of the Monthly, Labor will replace the Howard government's emphasis upon "unrestrained market capitalism" (neoliberalism) with social democratic policies that...

Two Haiku.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... Two HAIKU Children playing-bubbles not strong enough to catch long shadows from the trees-faded lines mark the space for my car

Twenty-one reasons to vote against John Howard.(John Winston Howard)
April 1, 2007... SOME OF YOU may think this title suggests there are only twenty-one reasons to vote against John Howard, and that this lets him off the hook. However, these are only a sample of the richness provided by our political commentators. 1. Lack...

Bunbury Motel.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... BUNBURY MOTEL How pleasant to wake and see from the morning window the white deployment of cricketers on a green field above the sea!

Train to Kalgoorlie.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... TRAIN TO KALGOORLIE I There is a moment's change one always misses: when the last farmland fences stop and the raw gold-bugged wilderness is standing right up against the window. II The strange...

7 October--Me and HH.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... 7 OCTOBER--ME AND HH (This won second prize in an internet poetry competition on famous people with whom one shared birthdays. By way of contrast, the author of the winning poem shared a birthday with Emily Dickinson.) My natal...

Old Woman in a Window.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... OLD WOMAN IN A WINDOW I only saw her at the open window once in a house that no-one ever really sees, just a glimpse of white --a nightgown, I created-but the idea of her has left me softly stained. As summer...

Jacques Barzun's century.(Literature)
April 1, 2007... THE REPUTATION of Jacques Barzun (who was born on November 30, 1907) achieved a remarkable boost when his massive and scholarly book From Dawn to Decadence appeared in 2000 and quickly became a surprising best-seller. This was not entirely a...

Hollywood on the Hawkesbury.(Hawkesbury Valley)(The Secret River)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... HOW FAR SHOULD an historical novel stick to the ascertainable truth? The short answer is that I don't know, nor does anybody else. However, I find it irritating and disappointing when a novel departs from a record I am familiar with. ...

Pretending to Swim.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... PRETENDING TO SWIM At six, my parents offered the ocean. I had already known its shorthand in creeks where my toes curled around a deep-throat clutter of pebbles. But I shrank from this immense blue pool...

The other side of the battle.(Film)(Letters from Iwo Jima)(Movie review)
April 1, 2007... A GENERAL FLIES IN to take command of an isolated garrison. In spite of opposition from by-the-book officers on his staff he alters the strategy, telling his men, "No one is to die until they kill ten enemy soldiers." Scenes like this can be...

Bregmaceros Albyi.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... BREGMACEROS ALBYI A mere strip, it could easily be missed or mistaken for a willow leaf but if I run a finger down the line in the middle I can feel the spine's indentation. And look, it's hatched with bones fine ...

Goulash.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... GOULASH A crucial ingredient is the right frame of mind so abandon all ideas of getting on. Stop pedalling, dismount, go indoors and give yourself masses of time. Then begin by heating a pool of oil in a frying pan ...

Night watch.(Story)(Short story)
April 1, 2007... I hardly hesitated when Matron, champagne glass in hand, called me into her flat and asked me if I would work as Night Sister five nights a week. "I'll need you to do your normal weekend days as well of course. I mean, I simply could not...

Forgiveness.(Story)(Poem)
April 1, 2007... FORGIVENESS O mother, mother, where were you In childhood, then through all the years That constitute a life in which I've hungered for your withheld self So deeply and intensely that I've feared I'm turning...

Sky High Ice.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... Sky High Ice My friends Say I have a light touch on A tall ladder. Those winters kicking Up frozen water in sheer streambeds in high country. This is the same art, no? I made The...

You Were Broken.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... You Were Broken The amazed, massing shade for the glacial valley, made by a single araucaria that smashed its way by micrometers of birth-push under five centuries of dusks of carbon dioxide and rainfall, ...

Letters in a lost cause?(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Your Most Obedient Servant: B.A. Santamaria Selected Letters 1938-1996, edited by Patrick Morgan; Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria, 2007, $49.95. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! For so did...

Chickens in Charge.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense, by Shelley Gare: Park Street Press/Media 21 Publishing, 2006, $29.95. SHELLEY GARE is affectionately remembered by Australian intellectuals as the founding editor (1996-98) of...

On not apologising too slavishly.(The Slave Trade)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... The Slave Trade, by Jeremy Black; The Social Affairs Unit, 2007, 10 [pounds sterling]. IN THIS THE TWO HUNDREDTH anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, we British may find ourselves at a loss to know whether to stress how noble...

The man who could see it coming.(Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution, by Hugh Brogan; Profile, 2006, 30 [pounds sterling]. THIS NEW BIOGRAPHY of Alexis de Tocqueville is not a great book. The question is: Why not? It is clearly the fruit of...

To the Tenacity of Toddlers.(Poem)
April 1, 2007... TO THE TENACITY OF TODDLERS With total absorption he bumps down the stairs on his padded bottom eyes round with wonder as he escapes through the gaping front door across the footpath to the kerb Staggering...

A wolf in the snow.(Chewing Gum in Holy Water: Mario Valentini's Childhood in the Abruzzo Mountains)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Chewing Gum in Holy Water: Mario Valentini's Childhood in the Abruzzo Mountains, by Cheryl Hardacre; Allen & Unwin, 2006, $26.95. ABRUZZO IS THE RUGGED mountainous province in central Italy, due east of Rome, which runs across the high...

Star gazers.(80 Great Poems from Chaucer to Now)(Studying Poetry)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... 80 Great Poems from Chaucer to Now, by Geoff Page; UNSW Press, 2006, $34.95. Studying Poetry, by Barry Spurr; Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, $50. JORGE LUIS BORGES once described how whenever he dipped into books of aesthetics" or...

Windows on eternity.(Icons + Art)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Icons + Art, by Michael Galovic; Honeysett Press, 2006, $80. THIS BEAUTIFUL BOOK introduces the extraordinary work of Serbian-Australian artist Michael Galovic, one of this country's foremost painters of icons in the Orthodox tradition,...

As memory serves me.(Ryan)
April 1, 2007... ACCORDING TO A RECENT article, scientists have discovered that the long-term memory span of a goldfish is eight seconds. There was no mention of the creature's short-term memory, nor of any possible utility which this profound research may...