Quadrant articles from July 2005

Quadrant archives from July 2005

Pharisaical compassion and the Lesser Evil.(Detention and immigrant law)(Editorial)
July 1, 2005... THE PITY of the political debate about mandatory detention, the detention centres themselves, and the treatment of detainees, is that it is a political debate--it is dominated by hatred of the Howard government, hysterical point scoring, and...

Native Title's disasters.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: John McDonnell has taken umbrage (June 2005) at Jenness Warin's and my paper "A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities" (Centre for Independent Studies) for arguing that Native Title legislation has...

Suppression of evidence.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: Congratulations on your editorial "Government, Publishing and the Information Revolution" (June 2005). The miracle of modern information technology has indeed arrived, accompanied by the possibility of suppressing information. In...

The pull of the gospels.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: I thank David H. Lewis ("Escaping the Gravitational Pull of the Gospels", May 2005) for being the cause of my scurrying to my New Testament (with some doubts hitherto not felt for some considerable time; as I am, I hope, a practising...

The Whitlam shambles.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: Conrad Mathias (Letters, June 2005) chides me for not filling out his understanding of the events of November 11, 1975. My article (March 2005) was based on a public lunchtime lecture at Old Parliament House, and my speaking time was...

Are the Thirty-Nine Articles Christian?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: Michael Jensen (Letters, June 2005) is right in saying that "Jensenism" is close to the Anglicanism of the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1562. The question was whether those Articles (for example, XIII: "Works done before the grace of Christ,...

Teachers and professional behaviour.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... SIR: In the April issue Kevin Donnelly discusses the promotion of political correctness and left-wing bias by our academics through the teachers and so to school students in the curriculum of our schools. As a fifteen-year-old attending a...

International law and Australian sovereignty.(Latham Lecture)(Transcript)
July 1, 2005... IT IS A SPECIAL HONOUR to be invited to give the Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture. Sir John Latham's contribution to this country has, I think, been underestimated. Not always fairly, his judicial prowess has sometimes been unfavourably...

The Gang of Four revisited.(Asia)(China's Cultural Revolution leaders)(Diary entry)
July 1, 2005... THE DEATH in Shanghai on April 17, 2005, of Zhang Chunqiao has left only one survivor of the infamous Gang of Four, the clique principally responsible for the excesses of China's Cultural Revolution. This prompted me to turn up a diary I kept...

Naughty, Naughty.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY Let's hear it now for the Malignant Dwarf, The Hopping Vampire in the shuttered rooms, The Hag of Quoyne, the Weird of Dusseldorf, The Bird-faced Monk that haunts the old family tombs. Lets hear it for...

Terrorism and national security.(Defence)
July 1, 2005... THE RECENT SURGE of enthusiasm for the ninetieth anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the European phase of the Second World War has surprised many commentators, upset not a few, and puzzled others...

Ella.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... ELLA When I do not think of you I stroll along a track to find a fresco long-abandoned by a fireplace, five arched windows of an empty house that is not safe to enter When I do not think of you I sit...

Germaine Greer.(Disagreeable Portraits)(Biography)
July 1, 2005... THE LATE AUBERON WAUGH used to say that Australia was a nice place to visit because all its ghastlies had emigrated to London. He gave John Pilger and Germaine Greer as examples of this truth. It is valid as far as it goes, but, unfortunately,...

Palinode.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... PALINODE I used to like the Rolling Stones. I think I liked the way they used to shake and shout. I used to like to dope but now I drink To cope without the dope I do without. I used to like to hate the middlebrow;...

Waiting for Balaam: the new anti-Semitism in Australia?(Society)
July 1, 2005... IN THE BIBLICAL STORY of Balak and Balaam, divine intervention reverses a prospective curse on the Jewish people into words of praise and admiration. Countless Jewish generations have longed for the same blessing. Pathological hatred of Jews,...

Birthplace.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... BIRTHPLACE Right in that house over there an atom of sharp spilled my sanctum and I was extruded, brain cuff, in my terror, in my soap. My heart wrung its two already working hands together but all the...

A Star Rises.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... A STAR RISES Ah, pumpkin, I remember you when you were nothing but a loud blooming snaky climber on the kitchen scrap heap down the back. But look at you now-- sitting pretty in your green...

Beyond information.(Education)(J.J. Spigelman, Chief Justice of New South Wales)(Transcript)
July 1, 2005... FOR THOSE OF US who make a living from words, today is a quite momentous anniversary. It was on this day precisely 250 years ago, April 15, 1755, that there was published in London the first edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. Perhaps only...

God's premature obituaries.(Religion)(Death of God theology)
July 1, 2005... MANY THINGS appeared in the wake of the tsunami that devastated the northern Indian Ocean littoral on Boxing Day 2004. For some, the tragedy apparently proved that God either does not exist or should be shunned if he does. The phrase "God is...

The Visitors.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... THE VISITORS The saucers have been wrongly put away, the knives are backwards in their baize-lined drawers, I must not mind it since I cannot say, the tea-pot's ringed the after-dinner tray, the garden has been...

Pseudo-science and lost opportunities.(Science)(Nuclear energy)
July 1, 2005... There is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all...

Radiation and the no-risk society.(Low-dose radiation)
July 1, 2005... HOW CAN the radiation health effects of low doses of ionising radiation be quantified? Certainly more research is needed, emphasising the epidemiology of exposures to radiation at low doses and low dose rates, and on mechanisms whereby ionising...

Cut Your Cloth.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... CUT YOUR CLOTH Take up the scissors, the fingers of your right hand know where to find them, how to work them. Like that! And that! Cut the air in two. Crunch the blades with your expertise. Like a little song of emptiness,...

The Fluoroscope early 1950s.(POETRY)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... THE FLUOROSCOPE EARLY 1950S It was the polished wooden throne in the shoe shop that you mounted in your brand new school shoes with a curtain on a box, a tiny theatre for your foot so mummy and the shop lady could see the...

Wham! Crunch! Kapow! Take That, Russell Balding!(Devine)(Australian Broadcasting Commission bias)(interview tampering)
July 1, 2005... SURELY ERROL SIMPER, the Australian's debonair media critic, is mistaken in denying that bashing the ABC "has anything like the cachet it did, say, 20 years ago". I'd say it has never had more cachet--even that ABC bashing is positively chic...

Mr Downer's history war.(History)(Lecture about freedom)
July 1, 2005... ON MAY 15, Alexander Downer delivered a lecture at the University of New England on Australian foreign and military policy. The dust quickly settled on what was a quite controversial contribution to what should be a continuous dialogue. But the...

The Duke of Windsor and the Nazis.
July 1, 2005... PETER RYAN'S correction in Quadrant (January-February 2005) of two mistakes in his column "Housman, Baldwin and the King" (November 2004)--the date of Edward VIII's abdication (1936, not 1938) and Winston Churchill's decision (not Stanley...

The hogwash school of polemics.(Washout: On the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History)(book)(author's response to reviews)
July 1, 2005... THE FRONT COVER of the Australian Book Review of May 2005 announced the journal's verdict on my book, Washout: On the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History, in one bold word: "HOGWASH". Below this verdict was a quote from...

From the Lakes.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... FROM THE LAKES to my mother An hour beyond where you are tethered to your illness, your halter monitor taunting you with heights you'd love to climb, your granddaughters are free to roam, though one prefers the dark...

"The New Republic in the South": Kipling's Australia.(Literature)(Critical Essay)
July 1, 2005... RUDYARD KIPLING visited Australia only once, for a total of thirteen days: he arrived on November 12, 1891, from Bluff in New Zealand, and left on November 25 for Colombo. Yet the country's impact on him was profound and long lasting, as his...

Pencil from the Algonquin.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... PENCIL FROM THE ALGONQUIN That dull matt black I adore black with night fallen on it but not overcome, deepened without the shine. Each end the black lead, the black rubber tip like a black shirt emerging from...

Inflating a Dinosaur.(poetr)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... INFLATING A DINOSAUR Mouth over the blowhole. When T-Rex is fully inflated: some thirty breaths shared among those who are breathing-- my tiny-waisted small-framed daughter her partner's superman shoulders who...

The traffic of memory.(memory as a motif in Sebald's works)(Sebald, W.G.)(Critical Essay)
July 1, 2005... THE GERMAN-BORN writer W.G. Sebald, whose elegiac and partly unclassifiable prose made him a literary star of the 1990s, died in a car accident on December 14, 2001--just months after the publication of his novel Austerlitz. This was the story...

More short takes.(author's literary reminiscences)(Diary entry)
July 1, 2005... 4/8/83 Roland Robinson's Dream DELIVERED Roland Robinson to us at Queanbeyan yesterday afternoon, where Roland was due to stay overnight. Periodically renewing our pots of tea, we yarned, the western sun streaming through our dining...

Visitors.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... VISITORS Dead people visit us as we drop off to sleep. They penetrate our dreams as easily as music from the house next door or water soaking into cloth. It's nice to see them well or ill, freed up at...

I am a Painting.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... I AM A PAINTING My life these days is like a pale gray room straight out of Vilhelm Hammershoi the Danish painter (early 1900s) inspired by pale gray rooms, half-empty landscapes, milky northern skies. He also...

Colonial.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... COLONIAL A wheelchair and a zimmer frame, a stairlift like the scariest ride in the British Empire Experience and, upstairs, another wheelchair, a catheter, a bell perhaps. He did not put up with such...

Over Exposure.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... OVER EXPOSURE Liz had her colours done by House of Fashion--34 quid for the morning, 60 if you stayed all day. That was when she realized she could only wear clear black and white and red and emerald green and royal...

Against the Pebble.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... AGAINST THE PEBBLE It's just the old old thing, I think, of there's a pebble of prejudice in a mind. Against the thing that you are. When you meet someone with the pebble in their mind, and you are that pebble--then all you...

Coffee with Mr Klein.(Story)(Short Story)
July 1, 2005... Julia's gaze caressed the curves of the object of her desire. There wasn't a straight line to be seen, only a sensual, rolling curvature of glass and chrome and polished, waxed metal the colour of carmine lipstick. She recognised this feeling:...

Not the Heart of Darkness.(Story)(Short Story)
July 1, 2005... My mother came from a minor European country which once had a worldwide empire. Such colonies as remained to it in later centuries tended to be small and unprofitable, and of these none was more hopeless than the tiny island off the African...

The Pitch Lake.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... THE PITCH LAKE Moonlight runs a shammy over it, The Pitch Lake of Trinidad and Tobago. Its asphalt, purified, is Epure. Sir Walter Raleigh caulked with it In 1595, praising Its sun-resistant plugs in ships. ...

Privilege.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... PRIVILEGE A privilege to host A lean man down-and-out, Dining with some haste And downing a small stout.

The black jellybean.(Story)(Short Story)
July 1, 2005... I've always liked black jellybeans. In my first Housing Department dream home when I was nineteen I had a flash of genius as I swept the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor with my new straw broom. "They should make whole bags of black...

The Snake House.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... THE SNAKE HOUSE The roof-tiles are overlapped like the scales of a snake about to shed its skin. Under the keratin I can see diamonds of new colour. It's time to go up to your front door, Mother, and ring the...

Unearthly languages.(poetry)(Poem)
July 1, 2005... UNEARTHLY LANGUAGES I was fluent in the music of the spheres but it faded. So I salvaged one note and kept it under my tongue to fuel my first breath. After my birth, I broke that note into colours with...

Christopher Hitchens' apology: the travels of an old trot.(Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays, by Christopher Hitchens; Atlantic Books, 2005, $45. HE IS "the greatest polemicist of our age" and a "great British man of letters". That is how the British Saddamite George Galloway MP described...

The abnormality of war.(War: The Lethal Custom)(book )(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... War: The Lethal Custom, by Gwynne Dyer. Scribe Publications, 2005, $45. IN THE MID-1980S Gwynne Dyer produced a seven-part television series entitled War for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The accompanying book and the series...

The consequences of religious ideas.(Reformation. Europe's House Divided 1490-1700)(book)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Reformation." Europe's House Divided 1490-1700, by Diarmaid MacCulloch; Penguin Books, 2004, $26.95. To GENERATIONS untroubled by any historical consciousness except well-trumpeted firsts like moon landings and tumbling Iron Curtains, the...

A church of mere humans (I).(book)(The Chosen Ones. The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church)(Anglican Diocese of Sydney)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... The Chosen Ones. The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church, by Chris McGillion; Allen & Unwin, 2005, $29.95. CHRIS MCGILLION declares in his introduction that he is not an Anglican (though it doesn't take too many pages to discern in...

A church of mere humans (II).(The Chosen Ones)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... ASCERTAINING AN AUTHOR'S reasons for writing about a subject is crucial to assessing their approach and evaluating their conclusions. In many respects, Chris McGillion might appear an unlikely author of a book about the inner workings of the...

The ineffable mystery.(The Passion)(book)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... The Passion, by Geza Vermes; Penguin, 2005, $22.95. As THE LITERARY lustre of biblical text is largely unsuited to graphic representation, I resisted pressure to see Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. For me, the Lion of Judah's...

Not just any old skyscraper.(Ryan)(ICI House)
July 1, 2005... IT WAS THE BOAST of the Emperor Augustus that he found Rome a city of brick, and that he left it one of marble. There was much truth in his claim, even if it does betray all the off-colour overtones of an imperial usurper getting too big for...