Quadrant articles from December 2001

Quadrant archives from December 2001

After the election: the future of Australian political discourse.(Editorial)
December 1, 2001... THE GRAVEST DANGER for both the major parties after the election result is that they will neglect to set about the reconstruction of policies and internal structures which is desperately needed if the loss of faith in both of them by a growing...

The dying ambassador. (Letters).
December 1, 2001... SIR: Hal Colebatch's claim (May and September 2001) that my husband, Val Noone, and I and our family "were given an exclusive farewell by Hanoi ambassador Hoang Bao Son in 1984" is false. His allegations are despicable distortions. The...

Academic cowards. (Letters).
December 1, 2001... SIR: For years I have read Quadrant, and--for the past several years--been a subscriber. As a former academic (historian) of La Trobe University, I found that I was described (sub rosa) as La Trobe's only resident Liberal. (I don't believe I...

Moerdani and Balibo. (Letters).
December 1, 2001... SIR: Paul Monk's letter (May 2001) provides absolutely no new evidence to support the totally unsubstantiated claim that former general Benny Moerdani ordered the murder of five Australian-based foreign correspondents other than to say that it...

The burden of the Greens. (Letters).
December 1, 2001... SIR: I am not a Democrat supporter but I commiserate with the plight of their party. When parties move from minor party status to players they actually have to be responsible, and with that comes possible costs--unpopularity and losing! I have...

Scimitar society. (Letters).
December 1, 2001... SIR: I am writing to add my voice to yours in respect of the editorial "Compassion, Illegal Immigration and Hypocrisy" (October 2001). But I would also like to say that I take umbrage with the terms elite and intellectual that recur so...

On the human right to misery, mass incarceration and early death: the Charles Perkins memorial oration. (Australia).(Noel Pearson address)(Transcript)
December 1, 2001... CHARLES PERKINS was for me, and for generations of Aboriginal people across this country, a since-childhood inspiration. I was in the middle of primary school at Hope Vale Lutheran Mission (as it then was known) in the mid-1970s when I was...

September 11 and the end of ideology. (Culture).(intellectuals comment on War on Terrorism)
December 1, 2001... THE VIETNAM WAR was known as the first television war. The current war against terrorism deserves to be recognised as the first internet war. here is so much material available on the internet--news, information, comment, opinion--that you...

Autumn.(Poem)
December 1, 2001... AUTUMN Waltzes on the radio birds singing. One breast heavier than the other. The sad young smell of autumn. The mutabilis rose droops on the dressing-table. The celestial blue forgetmenot...

Camel.(Poem)
December 1, 2001... Camel Once I lay down on a camel track. It was growing dark and there seemed no other place smooth and clear where the swag could lie. I made a sign of sticks to warn a camel sleeper ahead...

Nihilism in the Middle East: from Colonel Lawrence to Mohammed Atta.(T.E. Lawrence)(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2001... T.E. LAWRENCE'S account of the way his Arab cutthroats would beat the Turks makes eerie reading today. He asked himself how a handful of fierce zealots, whose main activities had been pilfering and brigandage, could possibly bring the Ottoman...

Barbed Wire.(Poem)
December 1, 2001... BARBED WIRE New strung, it sparks a live wire when sun hits right, and can be thumbed like guitar string, its tune pure country twang, but given enough time rain rusts metal, fence posts wobble like loose teeth,...

In a Dry Country.(Poem)
December 1, 2001... IN A DRY COUNTRY No water for miles, Doe Creek dry two months, no pond or lake, nothing but flame, smoke, and heat, kept at bay by men blackfaced as miners after a shift, including one who will see ...

Summer Morning.(Poem)
December 1, 2001... SUMMER MORNING The black kitten, ignoring her toys, presses to the window-still round eyes so filled with the wonder of the garden beyond. What has this brainless predator retained that we have so often lost:...

Beyond the workers' entitlements mess. (Economics).(Coalition government's General Employment Entitlements Redundancy Scheme, Australia)
December 1, 2001... WORKERS ENTITLEMENTS remain a mess. A fundamental problem with both the Coalition government's General Employment Entitlements Redundancy Scheme (GEERS) and the former Labor Opposition's proposed remedy for the problem is that they aim to treat...

Sestina on a Former Vietnamese Boat Person at a Swan River Launching Ramp. (Economics).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... SESTINA ON A FORMER VIETNAMESE BOAT PERSON AT A SWAN RIVER LAUNCHING RAMP Knee-deep in water by the side of the boat in ragged shorts and cap he stands in the sun with the wide river in front of him, under a sky speckled...

Asylum seekers "Australia's own fault". (Argus).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... A senior United Nations official as said that Australia has "no one but itself to blame" if asylum seekers continue to try to land there. Mrs Molly Malone, former Irish president and now the UN's chief inquisitor for refugee placement,...

Letters: outrageous omission. (Argus).
December 1, 2001... SIR: I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms about the offensive letter "Thirty Years in Their Teens" in the October Quadrant. It is outrageous and insulting that the name of Australia's best-known and most prolifically creative...

Social News. (Argus).(Mullah Akbar al Loonibin)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... The President and Committee of the Australian Association of Friends of the Taliban held a wine and cheese party at their Cabramatta clubrooms yesterday evening in honour of Mullah Akbar al Loonibin, sometime Minister for Cultural Heritage in...

The vision splendid. (Argus).(Municipal Museum of Ghasthurst, Australia)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... THE NATIONAL MUSEUM of Australia (September 2001), may well be, as its director insists, "world class", but just how up to date is "world" in the rapidly changing field of museology? Where the NMA and the museums it compares itself with seek to...

Righteous indignation. (Argus).(Melbourne Festival)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... "Shocked ballet fans have forced refunds from the Melbourne Festival after being subjected to a barrage of explicit abuse during a modern dance production. "The stream of four-letter words stunned children and parents in the audience for...

Beat parochialism with the internet! (Media).
December 1, 2001... HOW THE MEDIA COPES in a crisis is a pretty good indicator of its effectiveness. The current world crisis has shown up the faults in the Australian media, and most especially in the supposedly "quality" media, in the most glaring way. This has...

The Siamang. (Media).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... THE SIAMANG On the day of the eclipse in Perth, where I had nothing else to do between appointments on my business trips, I decided to spend lunchtime at the Zoo. Ferries, yachts and motor boats upon the shining...

Shell at war. (History).(Shell Company of Australia)
December 1, 2001... THE PACIFIC WAR was largely about oil. Japan, under the control of a militarist clique that had steadily become more aggressive since the Depression, captured the oil- and rubber-producing lands of what are now Indonesia and Malaysia while the...

The Trout in the Springhouse. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... THE TROUT IN THE SPRINGHOUSE Caught by my uncle in the Watauga River, brought back in a bucket, because some believed its gills were like filters, that pureness poured into the springhouse's trough pool, ...

When Serpents Came: Whiteside Mountain: 1912. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... WHEN SERPENTS CAME Whiteside Mountain: 1912 The truth of what they had seen for most came only later, though the old believers knew it the worst sort of omen that November satinbacks flowed down the face of...

Growing up as a Welsh Alsatian. (History).(Tomi Ungerer)
December 1, 2001... TOMI UNGERER, the writer and illustrator, is a household name in the German-speaking world, at least in that portion of it which rears 1.2 children. His passport, however, is French. He was born into a famous family of clockmakers ill 1931, and...

Vena Karma. (History).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... VENA KARMA The city revives. From all points, extremities it draws the life-blood people who enter its veins daily: a matter of coursing. They bring in good air, lung-fresh from where trains pull many, many. ...

After My first Poetry/Music Evening for Some Years. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... AFTER MY FIRST POETRY/MUSIC EVENING FOR SOME YEARS My God! It was actually pleasant, the company actually good, and I left at the end of the evening in an actually cheerful mood. Pardon me if I sound amazed, ...

Garbutt Airbase. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... GARBUTT AIRBASE Arch Fraley took some photos in 1944 of Townsville Garbutt Airbase for the South Pacific War. They've got them up in Townsville now, captions in English and Nippon. There is no problem...

Love Letter. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... LOVE LETTER Each day a pearl dropped in wine. The light in the trees in the view from my window is for a moment quite wonderful. I know I shall survive you. Leaving London you put...

790 Providence Street. (History).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... 790 PROVIDENCE STREET It's better to fall asleep than wake up. When the grey comes through the torn blind. When light takes the quiet and eats it up. As Scattone hangs out his open sign. As someone's milk fills his...

Naming the right: from the New Right to Economic Rationalism to Neoliberalism. (Politics).
December 1, 2001... OVER THE LAST twenty or so years protected industries have been opened to competition, state-owned enterprises have been privatised, and, with less success, government spending constrained. These developments have occurred in a diverse range of...

Campaigning bureaucrats. (Politics).
December 1, 2001... TWO CURRENT CAMPAIGNS by the Commonwealth Treasury--one that is bound to reinforce existing prejudices against the federal government's senior economic policy agency and another that could alienate some of the department's traditional...

Avenues of Ash Trees. (Politics).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... AVENUES OF ASH TREES In England, there are a lot of houses in the country, Ant eggs from the broken cities, White faeces; Collectivisers--salt, or curry, Gulls colonising the sewerage brown of winter; Abroad,...

Screen studies and Lantana. (Film).
December 1, 2001... AT LAST WE KNOW what is with Australian films and film-makers. Its not the American films that swamp our movie houses, or the failure of some of our best films to attract anything like adequate distribution or publicity. No--it is because our...

The Beach. (Story).(Short Story)
December 1, 2001... It really is a most beautiful beach. On a sunny day the blue sea shines with a million yellow diamonds, forming itself into regimented rows that thump and run crashing and hissing up the clean white sand. I have lived a great deal of my life...

Suitcase. (Story).(Short Story)
December 1, 2001... It must have been something they did. Lucy, sprawled on the floor by the window, drawing, put down her pencil and carefully sat up. Mum's face was quite white but her eyes glittered and on each cheek there was a burning spot of colour. ...

Cockroach Koan. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... COCKROACH KOAN The not-unwelcome roach knows it's safe here: the Buddhist restaurant. Still a fast-moving target, though now somehow more Cocky, busying itself on greedy legs, getting too big to be taken...

At the Park. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... AT THE PARK As I read upon a park bench, a man trips and falls at my feet. His damaged briefcase springs open against the tree, its contents as disordered and indecently exposed to the world as the emotions,...

Breasts. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... BREASTS Late at night my breasts push on the dividing wall and whisper through cracks in the lace. When I let them out of their cage, they moan with pleasure, swing free and tumble down the steps of my ribs ...

The Most Beautiful Beach. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BEACH Down the wine boat went to the sea floor & the sea floor kept it. Halfway to Carthage the sea keeps a necropolis of wine urns & churns up the boat hulks. The sailors become salt & thank...

Nobby's Beach, Newcastle. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... NOBBY'S BEACH, NEWCASTLE A seagull wings into the wind, headstrong and going almost nowhere. Its shadow is cast, dipping and rising over foot-rippled sand that mimics the millions of troughs and crests ...

Knife Edge. (Stories).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... KNIFE EDGE Looking back into childhood the threat of sharpness snakes like new blood from an old wound The greengrocer, piratical with long curved knife slashes the pumpkin grey-green skin cackling ...

James Fenton of Forth: a Tasmanian Pioneer, 1820-1901. (Books: Tasmanian pioneer).(Poem)
December 1, 2001... James Fenton of Forth: A Tasmanian Pioneer, 1820-1901, compiled and edited by Paul Fenton; Educare (PO Box 266, Burwood, Vic, 3125), 2001, standard edition of 700 copies, $69; limited edition of 100 copies, bound in buckram, $99. IN THE...

Finding Herself in Fiction: Henry Handel Richardson 1896-1910. (Books: a precursor of modernism).(Poem)(Review)
December 1, 2001... Finding Herself in Fiction: Henry Handel Richardson 1896-1910, by Axel Clark; Australian Scholarly Publishing/Arcadia (PO Box 299, Kew, Vic 3101), 2001, $49.50. IN AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE circles The Getting of Wisdom and The Fortunes of...

Poetics. (Books: institutionally sanctioned).(Meanjin)
December 1, 2001... Meanjin, "Poetics"; Issue 2, 2001, $12.95. ACCORDING TO Meanjin's statement of purpose, "Meanjin is a forum for reflection, speculation, opinion. It has never been a showcase for the institutionally sanctioned, for narrow specialisation or...

Bin Laden--The Man Who Declared War on America. (Books: the death worshippers).
December 1, 2001... Bin Laden--The Man Who Declared War on America, by Yossef Bodansky; Prima Forum/Random House, 2001, $39.95. THIS BOOK, which was first published in 1999, was rush-reissued after September 11, but without new material--which in fact makes it...

Remembrance. (Ryan).
December 1, 2001... I DREW DEEP private satisfaction from John Howard's success in last month's federal election. Like the poet A.E. Housman, it was not that I set any great store by politics; but I knew the result would annoy the sort of person whom I do not...