Quadrant articles from January 2006

Quadrant archives from January 2006

Nimbies, yobs and lebs.(multiculturalism)
January 1, 2006... RECENT EVENTS at Sydney's southern beaches, from Maroubra to Cronulla, led to the usual feature of public debate in Australia these days--crude political point scoring which has nothing to do with the serious issues at stake. Inevitably, some...

The point about Iraq.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: George W. Bush's ill-informed and ill-advised adventure in Iraq may still turn out to be a success in the eyes of our great-grandchildren. But that is not the reason that Tom Switzer and Neil Clark's "A Most Un-Conservative War" (December...

The ABC's comedy half-hour.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: What an extraordinary piece of political theatre, seeing the performances of Australia's two tallest has-beens being interviewed by Kerry O'Brien on the ABC's 7.30 Report about the Dismissal! Obsequious O'Brien as Uriah Heep, as...

The false Petronius.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: In the October 2005 issue Alan Barcan states that I had quoted the false Petronius in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, but that no date was available. Alas, I was not the true source of the Petronius quotation whose date was quite...

Mobile Maoists.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: In Keith Windschuttle's article "Mao and the Australian Maoists" (October 2005) he refers to "Monash University Maoists, Barry York and Fergus Robertson". I don't know if those two were ever students at Monash but I know they were both at...

Oakeshott on education.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: Alan Barcan's letter (December 2005) makes some points about the educational ideas of Michael Oakeshott that are laughably inaccurate. According to Barcan, who cites a passage from "The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind",...

Avoidable complexity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... SIR: Joel Butler (December 2005) stigmatises as "one of the most amusing criticisms" of the federal workplace restructuring legislation that of Professor Andrew Stewart, who made the observation that employers would require more legal advice to...

Australia's Chinese future.(Foreign Affairs)
January 1, 2006... TWO YEARS AGO, the day after George W. Bush had addressed Australia's parliament (rather uninterestingly), our MPs were regaled by a very different type of speech--from Hu Jintao, the then recently confirmed President, and more importantly...

Bright Lights on Earth.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... BRIGHT LIGHTS ON EARTH Luminous electric grist brushed over the night world: White Korea, Dark Korea, tofu detailing all Japan, Bangkok on a diamond saddle, snowed-in Java and Bali circled by shadow isles, ...

The real British disease.(ethical aspects)
January 1, 2006... THERE IS NOTHING in the law of unintended consequences that dictates such consequences must be unpleasant ones (though that's the way to bet, as Damon Runyon remarked of Ecclesiastes 9:11). An unintended and beneficial consequence of the London...

Ready Steady ...(Poem)
January 1, 2006... READY STEADY... I keep my mad wife in the attic And my boyfriends stacked up in the fridge, While the heirs of my age come to rattle my cage With interminable rubbers of bridge. Though they swear their devotion is...

A Ballade of Healthy Living.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... A BALLADE OF HEALTHY LIVING Alcohol sharpens the brain, said some scientific survey I'm as wispy and pale as a ghost, From continuous nights on the beer. As I lurch down the stairs to the post, And my senses refuse...

Houston ... we have a problem.(political aspects)
January 1, 2006... WHEN ASTRONAUT Jack Swigert uttered the words, "Houston... we have a problem," he could not have comprehended either the gravity of the situation on board his spacecraft, nor the way in which those words, later immortalised by Tom Hanks in the...

Hunting the Unicorn.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... HUNTING THE UNICORN A unicorn, milk-white, amid the furze, Harried by discombobulating curs. --George Crabbe You hunt the unicorn with horns and hounds, The way you hunt the hart or hunt the fox, Along the pines that...

Is It Today?(Poem)
January 1, 2006... IS IT TODAY? Is it today perhaps that Happiness Will come, that Happiness, withheld so long, Will come to scale the wall and right the wrong, To stop, stoop, smile and, with a royal kiss, Gather your soul into another...

The Labor Party and Christianity: a reflection on The Latham Diaries.(christian ethics)
January 1, 2006... FOR MUCH of the past century, leaders of the federal Parliamentary Labor Party have tried to avoid disclosing publicly either a dislike for Christianity or a distrust of the church. For several, this would have been impossible in any event....

In the Boardroom.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... IN THE BOARDROOM for Tony Garnett "Certificates of Appreciation" line one side of the grey room. At the other end, paintings bought at an exhibition, done by children with Down's Syndrome Hard to...

Poem without Punctuation.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... POEM WITHOUT PUNCTUATION In my dream we were young seventeen at a guess Seventeen more or less in the dream that I dreamed In the dream that I dreamed that I dreamed It was you in the dress that you wore in my dream ...

The employer's unknowable transgression.(surveys)
January 1, 2006... STRESS-RELATED COSTS to business are growing across the Western industrialised world. A recent Harvard Business Review article noted: The cost to employers is appalling: Corporate health insurance premiums in the United States shot...

A Thousand Miles from Any Ocean.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... A THOUSAND MILES FROM ANY OCEAN We lie awake to the sound of waves: a subliminal tape, The Joy of Loving. We don't know the text submerged in the rasp of sea against beach. You may hear an occasional word, says...

Siting the House.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... SITTING THE HOUSE On the south slope, facing sun and moon, ridge of a mountain where the Appalachian trail still runs, the house would have to dig claws in to stay. The map showed a fault (how deep? how insecure?), and...

It's time for a national risk strategy.(risk management)
January 1, 2006... RISK IS ONE of today's hottest topics. Shareholders, for instance, have organised round company crises and forced a more strategic approach to their causes. The result was enterprise risk management, which is a mating of identity politics and...

Imagining Machu Picchu.(identity)
January 1, 2006... HERE, IN LIMA, seated in the back seat of a mini-bus, we are listening to Maria: a plump, outspoken Peruvian, who is spruiking to us over her shoulder. They are mostly criminals," she says, flapping her script at the traffic surrounding us....

Dostoevsky's grandson.
January 1, 2006... AT THE END of his life Arthur Koestler (1905-83) compiled an anthology of works from his almost fifty writing years to provide a comprehensive picture of the diverse periods of his life. The reason for the volume was, as he put it, that after...

The future of the walk.
January 1, 2006... I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the...

Up the Moore River.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... UP THE MOORE RIVER An almost secret cleft in the aching scrub-land, below the smooth swell of pale sand-dune. Behind the wide blue of the yacht-dotted delta, behind the wind-swept river-bar, the tall range of...

On being old.(Devine)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2006... WHEN I RETIRED as a day labourer at the age of seventy it was my intention to use opportunities that opened up in boutique journalism for regular reports on what it is like to be old. This is an aspect of the human experience rather thinly...

Medusa.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... MEDUSA "That one's a weed," she said. "Please dig it out." It looked more like a tree, rising to the height of the eaves. With spade and secateurs and garden saw, I set to work, while the sun's burning light ignited...

Summer in the Country.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY Summer in the country was brushing away flies from your face and wiping sweat from your eyes-- watching grasses and grains shimmer in paddocks or sheep and cattle grazing beyond a...

Michael Thwaites: (1915-2005).(passages)(Obituary)
January 1, 2006... MICHAEL THWAITES, poet, naval officer and public servant, who died on November 1, 2005, aged ninety, was described, a little clumsily but accurately, by an pseudonymous weblog poster lamenting his lack of recognition in the local press as one...

Those who went across the seas.(emigrants)
January 1, 2006... THE EMIGRANTS to Australia "have generally consisted of the pick of the labouring classes, male and female, of the United Kingdom, and in this respect they compare favourably with the unselected and heterogeneous masses who have gone to America...

A fourth man?(writers)
January 1, 2006... THROUGHOUT THE NOVELS of Graham Greene, a distinguishing trait of his characters is their ambiguity. Not only is the reader uncertain what to make of these cunningly-drawn fictional persons; the characters themselves tread an internal moral...

Milking Traces.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... MILKING TRACES The paths between pasture, barn were no straight lines but slow curves around a hill that centered thirty acres. To a child those narrow levels seemed like belts worn on the hill's bulged waist; ...

Radiation, terrorism and the media.(Science)
January 1, 2006... SOME THIRTY YEARS ago I had an urgent request through my university to give scientific advice to an internationally acknowledged television drama producer. He had recently arrived in Sydney on leave from the BBC where he had achieved great...

Serenity and sublimity.(Film)(Movie review)
January 1, 2006... IT IS ALWAYS REFRESHING when audiences insist on seeing what they want instead of the fare stations or networks believe they ought to watch. This is how the free market is supposed to work and so often doesn't. It happened to Gene Roddenberry,...

Fireplace.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... FIREPLACE Rolled-up newspaper balls, like discarded drafts of letters which overflow the wastebasket, are placed on the bricks, and then you weave a version of that basket, at first out of twigs ...

Dreams cobbled to history.(Luis Bunuel)(Critical essay)
January 1, 2006... A RICH CHUCKLE, from either heaven or the other place, seems the apt accompaniment to the news in late 2004 of confusion about the whereabouts of Luis Bunuel's ashes. It is the chuckle I heard when he gave a press conference in Venice in 1967...

Tsunami.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... TSUNAMI The video cameras--duty-free Christmas gifts--capture the spectacle as the waves roll with simple persistence through rows of palmtrees and over the hotel balconies; a delivery van lifts and collides with a...

The best Australian film you've never seen.(Wake in Fright)(Critical essay)
January 1, 2006... WAKE IN FRIGHT (also known as Outback) is arguably Australia s greatest feature film, but for the best part of thirty years it has been next to impossible to see. Kenneth Cook's novel is still in print, but the film adaptation has long been out...

Pentecost.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... PENTECOST Shingles flapped and scattered off the roof like frightened chickens, rain didn't fall but slanted, bruised stained glass to a purple too dark for scripture, just hymns sung from memory, sung soft ...

First Memory.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... FIRST MEMORY Dragonflies dip, rise. Their backs catch light, purple like church glass. Gray barn planks balance on stilts, walk toward the pond's deep end. A green smell simmers shallows, where tadpoles flow like...

L'Enfant's Avenues.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... L'ENFANT'S AVENUES Washington, DC, 1960 Driving at night, the first night with the windows open, under the whispered complaint of leaves-- where were we going? It didn't matter, along the avenues from one pool of...

In a Greek Taverna.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... IN A GREEK TAVERNA Food here is layered as civilizations. Phyllo leaves stacked and mortared with butter crisp and gold as leaves that fall now, but much thinner, more like leaves of the Bible, or some other text...

Will.(sibling relations)
January 1, 2006... Sometimes it's the looks, and the nods that come with them. Sometimes it's a six he hits: the ball floating through the air, over the olives, the acacia, and the creek at the bottom of our garden. His high, echoing crows of glee following it....

The wrong side of the road.
January 1, 2006... Bear in mind that this is the very first time I have ever been driven on what I think of as the wrong side of the road. I can't drive. But I have frequently been in cars that other people are driving. But always on the right side of the road....

Gypsy fire.
January 1, 2006... Metaphor will only get you so far. I was new to London. My bedsitter seemed good value. Certainly it was large. The provided heating was a gas fire in one wall. You fed it with coins. No heat came out. Sitting as close as you dared, the most...

Grass in the morning.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... GRASS IN THE MORNING That day at around eleven I looked through the window, away from the reports the forms the papers the tables books colleagues telephones, all that and coffee and saw two kids kissing in the ...

Baby crying.(Short story)
January 1, 2006... The summer I'm six is different. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I know I have to go to school soon. I stand by the window watching the sparrows playing on the lawn underneath the sprinkler. "Once you're at school, you'll find out,"...

Ranthampaur.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... RANTHAMPAUR My Uncle's house was full of tessellated wooden tables. He had some connection with India; Built the East Indian Railway in Empire days when tweed coats had buttoned flaps. Buddhas sat by the...

The squeamish murderer: Batavia's Graveyard.(The Wreck of the Batavia: And Prosper)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Wreck of the Batavia; and Prosper, by Simon Leys; Black Inc, 2005, $29.95. SIMON LEYS--sinologist and novelist--tells a story of finding a human skull in a plastic, three-litre Peter's ice-cream container. It was stored on a shelf...

Voices of women.(Out of the Silence)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Out of the Silence, by Wendy James; Random House Australia, 2005, $32.95. THIS NOVEL (which I read at draft stage as well as in its present completeness) is the first novel of a writer who has already won prizes for her short stories. It...

Getting specific.(Fontanelle)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Fontanelle, by Andrew Lansdown; Five Islands Press, 2005, $18.95. BACK IN the twentieth century, that distant historic era, when the once much-admired weekly the Bulletin still deigned to employ a poetry editor, a message descended from the...

Making the "Little Digger" dull.(Billy Hughes: Prime Minister and Controversial Founding Father of the Australian Labor Party)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Billy Hughes: Prime Minister and Controversial Founding Father of the Australian Labor Party, by Aneurin Hughes; John Wiley & Sons, 2005, $29.95. THE PAST FEW MONTHS have proved to be a busy time for the publication of biographies of...

Stony ground for fascism.(Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, by Martin Pugh; Jonathan Cape, 2005, about $50. BRITONS SINCE the end of the Second World War have comforted themselves with the received wisdom that fascism is...

Truths all over the place.(Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, by Bain Attwood; Allen & Unwin, 2005, $35. BAIN ATTWOOD obviously deemed this an urgent book. He set aside work in progress to attend to the Aboriginal history war. He entered upon this, as his...

Afterlives of Virginia Woolf.(Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf)(Woolf across Cultures)(The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf, edited by Sybil Oldfield; Edinburgh University Press, 2005, about $40. Woolf across Cultures, edited by Natalya Reinhold; Pace University Press, 2004, about $85. The Reception of...

Ace after ace after ace.(The Poems of Norman MacCaig)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Poems of Norman MacCaig, edited by Ewen McCaig; Polygon, 2005, about $90. In the evening the talking was hushed while Ishbel sang without trembling a sad sad song of exile from the island where she was born. The...

Inglorious republicans (I).(The Tyrannicide Brief)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson; Chatto & Windus, 2005, $55. WE ARE ENORMOUSLY indebted to the English for developing representative parliamentary government, their great gift to the world. This was a gradual process of...

Inglorious republicans (II).(The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold)(Book review)
January 1, 2006... GEOFFREY ROBERTSON'S latest book, The Tyrannicide Brief, is subtitled "The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles 1 to the Scaffold". But it is more, much more than this. It is a book about the wonders of the legal profession, the awfulness of the...

Mitchell Park, 2000.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... MITCHELL PARK, 2000 in hours this housing trust home reduced to a pile of red bricks bulldozed clinking/booming into skips carted off as fill to new subdivisions now a block vacant but for the odd limemortarscabbed ...

Capital punishment.(Ryan)
January 1, 2006... I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. THE AUTHOR of those words was no sadistic voyeur, but Samuel Pepys,...