Quadrant articles from June 2002

Quadrant archives from June 2002

Maternity leave, equal pay, and unexpected consequences. (Editorial).(Editorial)
June 1, 2002... PAID MATERNITY LEAVE is a necessary part of any sensible population policy, as well as being a matter of justice for women in paid employment. One might think that this proposition is so obvious that most people would support it, even with...

Life at Woomera. (Letters).
June 1, 2002... SIR: I would like to comment on a letter in your April issue from a Mr Patrick Gethin, in regard to detention centres. My partner and I both work at Woomera as detention officers and have done so for quite some time. It is obvious that Mr...

Studying Reggie Vee. (Letters).
June 1, 2002... SIR: I have just seen the article on regional differences within Australian English by Alex Buzo (January-February 2002), which makes some surprising and inaccurate claims about work on this topic in Australian universities. While indeed...

Mach, Lenin and Sellers. (Letters).
June 1, 2002... SIR: During an informative article on Karl Popper (May 2002), Rafe Champion made one strange error that ought to be corrected. Champion, following Malachi Hacohen, whose book he was reviewing, claimed that Ernst Mach had an influence on Lenin....

Truth and infoganda. (Letters).
June 1, 2002... SIR: Neil McDonald's "Fact and Faction" (May 2002) served to undermine the major reasons for my subscribing to Quadrant, namely, a different take on the mainstream left conventional journalism; a reasonably objective analysis; a reasonably...

The extinction of the Australian pygmies. (History).
June 1, 2002... FROM THE 1940S until the 1960s, it was fairly widely known that there were pygmies in Australia. They lived in North Queensland and had come in from the wild of the tropical rainforests to live on missions in the region. This was a fact...

Eleven Poems.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... ELEVEN POEMS That wasn't horses: that was rain yawning to life in the night on metal rooves. Lying back so smugly phallic, the ampersand in the deckchair of itself. Spirituality? she snorted. And...

The Hanging Gardens.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... THE HANGING GARDENS High on the Gloucester road just before it wriggles its hips level with eagles down the gorge into the coastal hills there were five beige pea-chickens sloping under the farm fence in a...

On the road from Yarralumla. (Politics).
June 1, 2002... As for further appointments after retirement I take a narrow view that for an Australian the governor-generalship is the apex. There is no office higher than it and one should not go below it. An apex is the wrong shape to be a stepping stone....

Media overboard. (Media).
June 1, 2002... THE NT NEWS was never like this. When Liberal Party federal president and former Northern Territory Chief Minister Shane Stone surveyed the national media's response to the re-election last November of the Howard government, that might well...

A hole in the national heart.
June 1, 2002... EARLIER THIS YEAR I completed what was, in former times, the shortest term of penal transportation from Britain to Australia. One morning a quick glance at my diary told me my seven years were up. Since I came to Australia freely I cannot...

The Third Face in the Photograph.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... THE THIRD FACE IN THE PHOTOGRAPH Posed by the photographer from The Sydney Morning Herald for an article to appear in "Summer Agenda", I stand behind my seated mother in the front garden of the house ...

A certain maritime incident and political-military relations. (Defence).
June 1, 2002... AT THE HEART of the inquiry by the Senate select committee into "a certain maritime incident' is not the factual question whether or not one or more children were thrown or dropped overboard from Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel-04 (SIEV-4) on...

Magnolia.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... MAGNOLIA thinks it's some rich tree and holier than holy, but to its cost down comes Jack Frost rusting its flowers. Now no prayers from the Book of Hours can wish away melancholia for this...

A rosy sort of apple. (Devine).
June 1, 2002... MRS CHEN, who does some housework for us, roared with laughter when she learned that, at seventy, after fifty years of living here as a foreigner (New Zealand division), I was about to become a naturalised Australian. It was hard to tell, for...

The Professor at His Desk.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... THE PROFESSOR AT HIS DESK I've been reading in the London Review of Books a review of Martin Rees's Before the Beginning and Lee Smolin's The Life of the Cosmos. Full of dark matter, it is heavy going. Dark matter...

Looking into the forbidden image. (Art).
June 1, 2002... CONTEMPORARY museums give off an odour of the death of art. Even the contemporary section of the Vatican Museum induces the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong since Raphael and Michelangelo. The more avant garde museums become, the...

Like Birds in the Cage.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... LIKE BIRDS IN THE CAGE I tell him what I think of him. He's asleep on the floor in a pool of his own vomit. It's the same shade of yellow that you get in those packets of Dutch curry and rice soup and the thought...

Oxford Tavern: Total Exposure.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... OXFORD TAVERN: TOTAL EXPOSURE It was a large pub, ugly and taciturn; it was in a boring and gloomy suburb like any suburban pub, until the metallic music (from the century just finished) exploded, and in the blink...

Treating Mill's disease. (Philosophy & Ideas).(how John Stuart Mill's personal crisis and disenchantment led him to an appreciation of poetry)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... IN THE FAMOUS fifth chapter of his Autobiography John Stuart Mill recalls his nervous breakdown in the winter of 1826 when he was about twenty-one. At its heart was a disenchantment with the philosophy of life that had given meaning and...

Healy Pass.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... HEALY PASS So we did drive over the Healy Pass as Helen Carvill, back in Sydney, said we should-- over the Caha Mountains pock-marked with corries and grey, skull-shaped glacial boulders, green slopes of yellow gorse...

Tomatoes.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... TOMATOES Tomatoes staked higher than my childhood years on either side of the backdoor steps-- below the kitchen window overlooking the vegetable garden and the third bedroom small as a cell. Details that...

In pursuit of excellence. (Universities).(Column)
June 1, 2002... AS I WRITE THIS, we are beginning yet another inquiry/report into higher education. Murray, Martin, Williams, Dawkins, Hoare, West, yawn, shudder. However, this time there is something a little different on the agenda of the minister, Brendan...

Country Bootmaker.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... COUNTRY BOOTMAKER In a country town's main street, At a small square window, He dons a cured-hide apron, Its pockets wide and shallow. The window opens to the north And prime spring light. Inside:...

Letters May Be Love Letters.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... LETTERS MAY BE LOVE LETTERS I often ask my postman Gerry if there are any love letters in the bunch he hands me through the gate--he always says, "Not today", so I holler at him that there's nothing here but bills and...

Roger Woodward Plays.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... ROGER WOODWARD PLAYS The lid of the Grand is a flaming red sunset-lit sail, a translucent wing, with a deep, reflecting body and teeth tugging air. His hands are flying puppets--Punch and Judy, ...

The commodification of kindness. (First Person).(Column)
June 1, 2002... A COUPLE of elegant envelopes arrived by post. One held an invitation to a charity luncheon under a marquee, the other an offer to attend a candlelight supper in aid of another charity. A good time would be had by all. How pleasant to meet...

In The Brecht Museum.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... IN THE BRECHT MUSEUM In the Brecht Museum in Berlin, I decide To take the man's bent Faulkner paperback. I'm carrying an olive Czech army bag, And no one notices when I stick it in. After that there's room for his...

Conversation with a Friend.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... CONVERSATION WITH A FRIEND Conversation opened wide, into a cut, Jovial responses stapled to the couch By your icky banter about Fishy vaginas, that smell like whitebait... Tacky chaffs hooning off your lips, ...

Dampening incendiary ardour: the roots of Marjorie Barnard's "dry spell". (Literature).
June 1, 2002... ALTHOUGH MARJORIE BARNARD may not yet be recognised as one of the most significant Australian writers of the 1930s, her short stories have always been admired, and one of them is remarkable for both stunning Frank Dalby Davison and baffling...

Wrestling with Angels.(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 1, 2002... WRESTLING WITH ANGELS The way he tapped wafers of cuttlefish with propitiatory fingers into the backyard aviary was the way he cleaned the stained glass windows; his focus falling far beyond the budgerigar...

Overdue justice. (Film).(We Were Soldiers)(Dark Blue World)(Blood Oath)
June 1, 2002... VETERAN CORRESPONDENT and combat cameraman Neil Davis used to warn his colleagues in Vietnam against going into action with the US forces: The enemy always know they're coming, they can even smell their aftershave. They have too...

The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars.(Short Story)
June 1, 2002... On the drive back home from her mother's funeral, Ruth Welborn thinks of jaguars. She has seen one once in the Atlanta Zoo and admired the creature's movements--like muscled water--as it paced back and forth, turning inches from the iron bars...

The Cure.(Short Story)
June 1, 2002... Despite having bags of money, rich people sometimes still have to put up with all kinds of trials and illnesses which, thank God, are completely unknown to the poor man. There are illnesses which lurk, not in the air, but in filled plates and...

The Wounds.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... THE WOUNDS The one who set the planets' tilt, who painted earth with oceans, who sowed the seas with vivid life, who beckoned life from sea to land, from land to air, whose breath wakes us each morning, calls us...

People to watch.(The Unsleeping Eye: A Brief History of Secret Police and their Victims)
June 1, 2002... The Unsleeping Eye: A Brief History of Secret Police and their Victims, by Robert J. Stove; Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002, $32. ROBERT J. STOVE, or R.J. Stove, as Quadrant readers may know him, is one of Australia's best and most intelligent...

Close thy Orwell, open thy Muggeridge.(Communism: A Brief History)
June 1, 2002... Communism: A Brief History, by Richard Pipes; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002, $39.95. HOW DO YOU REACH a sceptical generation convinced that the Cold War was simply another power struggle in which what was laughingly called "the free world"...

Comfort me with Buicks.(The CEO of the Sofa)
June 1, 2002... The CEO of the Sofa, by P.J. O'Rourke; Picador, 2001, $28. HAVING BEEN CALLED a "P.J. O'Rourke wannabe" more times than I can count, I couldn't resist asking the great man himself, "How does someone get to be P.J. O'Rourke?" when Tim Blair...

Finely drawn and quartered.(Quarters)
June 1, 2002... Quarters, by Edith Speeds; Esperance Press (Main Rd., Dover TAS 7117), 2001, $25. EDITH SPEERS' substantial second collection, of 178 pages, was written over more than sixteen years, judging by the publication dates of anthologies that...

Review of Author! Author! Tales of Australian Literary Life.(Poem)
June 1, 2002... EDITED BY CHRIS WALLACE-CRABBE (OXFORD) REVIEW OF AUTHOR! AUTHOR! TALES OF AUSTRALIAN LITERARY LIFE In a wonderful collection of portraits the poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe captures the essence of Australia --absorbing and...

A brief tomorrow. (Ryan).(Editorial)
June 1, 2002... THAT LEGION of "independent journals of opinion" which set bravely forth to war against "the establishment", against stuffiness, against constipated conformism--where are they now? Alas, they resemble nothing so much as rows of tombstones in...