Quadrant articles from July 2002

Quadrant archives from July 2002

Intergenerational equity and population policy. (Editorial).(Editorial)
July 1, 2002... PARADOXICALLY, forty-year projections of our population and its age structure are being received with a great deal more public scepticism than are far more dubious projections about the degree of global warming within a similar period, and much...

The bureaucratic university. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: Professor Cristaudo's complaints (May 2002) concerning the inanities of administrators in universities are surprising only because they are so late. Similar moans about the status of all intellectually reputable subjects taught in...

Helping China. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: I enjoyed the suggestion in Paul Monk's article (May 2002) that we should all help China to grow up and accept that Taiwan is an independent nation. I understand, however, that far from being funded by $2 million from Beijing, the...

Poetry and the national psyche. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: A journalist in the Age told us last October that "The place for poetry in the national psyche is negligible", and now my colleague, Geoff Page, has written an article for Canberra's Muse magazine on whether Poetry In Australia has a...

Regional variation. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: Alex Buzo (letters, May 2002) is right to insist on a careful separation of the issues of social and regional variation in English. But dialectologists do separate these issues. And Buzo is again mistaken in describing mainstream...

Lord of the rings. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: Like Paul Tankard (May 2002), I first read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a schoolboy and have re-read it quite a few times since. The most recent occasion was when, a few years ago, I read it to two of my young nephews. I think his...

Anticommunist. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: What on earth is Stephen Holt talking about when he describes me (May 2002) as being an anticommunist "before Gough"? I was an anticommunist until the communists stopped being communists. What he may mean is that in 1967 I decided to...

Declining population. (Letters).
July 1, 2002... SIR: These are strange times for population debate. Nowhere is self-hatred for Australia's inherited European culture more evident. The Greens want much less than zero population growth, yet also oppose effective border protection policies. ...

Towards an Australian way of warfare. (Defence).
July 1, 2002... SINCE THE 1960s there has been considerable interest in the idea that Australia possesses a distinct way of warfare. Debate on the subject has ranged from studies of the Anzac-Digger legend to more recent, high-level institutional analysis of...

Instructions for the recently deceased. (Defence).(Humor)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE RECENTLY DECEASED 1. Lie perfectly still. Do not attempt to breathe. On no account try to call for help. 2. Soon you will feel very stiff. Do not be alarmed. Don't panic. Whatever you do don't...

Kissing Tuesday. (Defence).(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2002... KISSING TUESDAY Never kiss on Tuesdays, Tuesdays are unkind. Plans contrived on Tuesdays Unravel and unwind. So never kiss on Tuesdays. You'll rue it if you do. Tuesdays shouldn't happen To someone nice...

Is Australia's identity changing? (Australia).(social assimilation and multiculturalism)
July 1, 2002... THE EFFECTS of "globalisation" have everywhere become a staple of debate about politics, economics and even national identity. The transmission of ideas, images and money has become easier and quicker than ever before; and ease of travel and...

My life as Phillip Adams: a memoir. (Media).(Australian national radio personalities)
July 1, 2002... IN THE CURRENT DEBATE around the question of ABC bias, the public has been introduced, once again, to that lovable character of myth and folktale, the "tight-wing Phillip Adams". Responding to those who criticised him for daring to raise the...

Seaside Sanatorium. (Media).(Poem)
July 1, 2002... SEASIDE SANATORIUM Frantic, dogs search for the thread by which to unravel a slackening tide. They never find it. The ocean's a bore with its circular breathing. Light, also boring, moves up a gear and a thrush...

Heinz Wolfgang Arndt 1915-2002 from Weimar to Quadrant. (Tribute).(Obituary)
July 1, 2002... ONE OF THE BOOKS that Heinz Wolfgang Arndt, a former editor of Quadrant, was planning when he died in May was a memoir of his German boyhood and youth. He had made lots of notes. It would have begun with his Weimar schooldays in Breslau (now...

What's In A Name?(Poem)
July 1, 2002... WHAT'S IN A NAME? Today the wagtail finally forgot that it was once a sigl-di-gwt. It didn't give a tinker's toss, kept right on rooting in river moss (no longer mwswgl), relieved, perhaps that humans would...

Student activism in the Welfare University. (Universities).(Australian university students)
July 1, 2002... IN THE FIRST WEEK of 2002 the Sydney Morning Herald published a brief exchange on student politics. Under the heading "Bring Back the Fiery Radicals and Put Spark into Our Unis" John Schumann, writer and member of the folk-rock band Redgum,...

A Tattoo Too.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... A TATTOO TOO She says it's a sign from the sun that where she belongs love goes on. A sign in a language we don't speak from the ink that's in her daring streak. A lizard that runs up her arm to hide where the...

No Can Do.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... NO CAN DO You can empty the Nile with a shovel, You can climb to the moon up a rope, You can bat in the nude at the Oval, You can model Atlantis in soap, You can share a cigar with the devil, Then enjoy a blind...

Soft totalitarian behaviour. (Society).
July 1, 2002... WE WITNESS, almost every day, behaviour whereby the mechanisms of debate, tolerance and liberalism in our societies are used to subvert these very qualities. We tend to think in conventional terms such as right v left, authoritarian v...

Never say die.(current social views of death)
July 1, 2002... The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and wetly away. --Psalm 90:10 Death is nature's way of telling...

The dish. (First Person).(Short Story)
July 1, 2002... WHEN MY SISTER Eliza was sixteen, she joined the WRACs, or Women's Army. On the day she was sworn in, pledging allegiance to God, Queen and Country, the presiding officer, also a woman, was moved to tears and sobbed loudly. "It's so...

The Call.
July 1, 2002... THE CALL You sell your soul. Of course you do. But when You waste your substance like a millionaire, What else is yours to sell? Do you live on air? You live on money just like anyone, Your story's neither tragic nor...

Memories of Santa and Franta.(Australian political activist Bob Santamaria)
July 1, 2002... THE PUBLICATION of Bruce Duncan's Crusade or Conspiracy? Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia (UNSW Press, 2001) was an irresistible challenge to revisit arguments about Catholicism, communism and world order that I had with...

Keating's recalcitrant chooks. (Devine).(Recollections of a Bleeding Heart)
July 1, 2002... IN HIS MEMOIR of four years as Paul Keating's speechwriter, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, Don Watson convincingly portrays the former prime minister as a man who attracts affection. I had often suspected Keating of endearing qualities....

The Chinese enigma: sinophiles, sinophobes and others. (History).
July 1, 2002... A TALL and increasingly forlorn figure haunted the Staff Club of the University of Sydney for many years. He was known to be a man of the left. He had written a book called The Chinese Road to Socialism, and had taken a stroll down that road...

Jean-Marie Le Pen and the French paradox. (Foreign Affairs).(retrospective view of French politics)
July 1, 2002... LAST YEAR the great French film-maker Eric Rohmer released his latest film, L'Anglaise et le Duc (The Lady and the Duke in anglophone countries). Set in Revolutionary France, it is based on the diaries of a Scottish woman named Grace Elliott...

Field Visit.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... FIELD VISIT Each cow has a hairstyle and walks in high heels, carrying handbags--the reticulum in which she transports her chewing gum. They lick their nostrils with licquorish tongues. "You like that,...

The Weather Was ...(Poem)
July 1, 2002... THE WEATHER WAS... The weather was more metaphoric in 1926, extensive rains embracing the whole of New South Wales are eagerly predicted. Who can resist the slow embrace of rain? Brought, it...

First Flight.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... FIRST FLIGHT And under PERSONAL, a par on Stanley Melbourne Bruce, PM, he of the pinstripe, spats and collar, making the first prime minister's hop from one state to another: Essendon Aerodrome 8:40, ...

A Smell of Decency.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... A SMELL OF DECENCY Page 2 is Sport and Sportsmen boxing, soccer, turf and polo, cricket, rugby, Aussie rules, scratchings from the Caulfield Cup. The match was very interesting, it says, between Duntroon and...

Newlands Springs.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... NEWLANDS SPRINGS Mattresses and metal beds, the joys of Newlands Springs... and Morning Glory bedding lifts the soul to higher things. The wooden frame is gone for good. It never was enough. The Newlands...

Harry Crawford, A.I.F.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... HARRY CRAWFORD, A.I.F. And Harry Crawford, AIF, returned, is found at two o'clock on Monday afternoon inside his workman's tent on the road out to Weetangera lying in his bunk with his throat cut. No...

The Shame.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... THE SHAME Among the thousand, or maybe the million things I know, my all-time least favourite is this: how shitty it feels, when you admire somebody for their talent, or guts, or maybe just their nifty way of getting...

The flea on the sands. (Philosophy & Ideas).(Australian philosopher John Anderson)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... RAFE CHAMPION tells us (Quadrant, May 2002) that in 1945 Karl Popper was offered a position by John Anderson at Sydney University, but declined the offer, taking up a position in London. But if Popper had accepted the position, Champion...

They Call It Metromania.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... THEY CALL IT METROMANIA So I've got poems again-- itchy red blotches that prevent me from sleeping at night. A rash on the arse of literature. I'm looking for a white cream to soothe the painful rhymes away, ...

To Share Is To Bare.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... To SHARE IS TO BARE It was rare to see Jacques Prevert venture from his lair. If he was there for your sheer underwear, you answered his prayer. You swished the air with your black hair, then...

Letter to Denis Alexander. (Religion).(Rebuilding the Matrix )
July 1, 2002... THE LETTER that follows was written to my cousin's husband, Dr Denis Alexander, after I had read his marvellous book, Rebuilding the Matrix. Denis is a molecular immunologist by occupation and a Christian by faith, and Rebuilding the...

Letter to Alan Gould.(response to a review of Rebuilding the Matrix)
July 1, 2002... 25/5/02 Dear Alan, MANY THANKS for your stimulating letter concerning Rebuilding the Matrix (I'll label it RTM in this letter to save space). I am grateful for your kind words about the book and it was gratifying, although also...

Fergusson and the bycultural canon. (Literature).(Scottish poet Robert Fergusson)
July 1, 2002... WRITING THIS ESSAY places me in a position somewhat analogous to that of Robert Fergusson in his address, "To the Principal and Professors of the University of St Andrews". When he referred to them as "my winsome billy boys", he was, as poets...

Nervous Breakdowns.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS First time I died was a nasty surprise. What was expected of the newly dead? Negligees? Humility? Dread? Second time, I was catching on: I knew how to break and did it well: Starvation....

Funeral music. (Music).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... LISTENING TO MUSIC during a funeral service, religious or pagan, is arguably a lot more pleasing than heating yet another long-winded, amateurishly delivered eulogy for the dear departed. Music tells far fewer untruths than does the average...

Melodrama and truth. (Film).(Charlotte Gray)
July 1, 2002... THERE IS MUCH to admire in Gillian Armstrong's new historical thriller Charlotte Gray--impeccable period detail, sumptuous photography and design, and fine performances by Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup and Michael Gambon. So why does so much of...

The elastic-sided boots.(Short Story)
July 1, 2002... In moments of tenderness or lust Jill croons, "Davood, my little toy boy." He likes her cool touch on his cheek, smoothing the soft down. He shaves, but so far the desired bristles refuse to sprout. Jill helps Davood to the grilled fish...

Summer Morning.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... 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:...

More art than heart.(Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating PM)
July 1, 2002... Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating PM, by Don Watson; Knopf Australia (Random House), 2002, $45. DON WATSON thinks that Paul Keating is Australia's greatest prime minister. He said so in an address to the Press Club on 29th...

Is diplomacy necessary?(War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam)
July 1, 2002... War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam, by Michael Sexton (new edition); New Holland, 2002, $24.95. AUSTRALIA SPENDS a very large amount of money maintaining a substantial number of public servants from the Department...

Horror double-feature. (Ryan).(Anzac Day, Malcolm Fraser)
July 1, 2002... ONCE UPON A TIME, city cinemas enticed patrons with the delights of "double-feature" horror movies. (Maybe they still do?) These programs had their fans, though I suspect that quite a few of the seats were warmed by the bums of people getting...