Quadrant articles from March 2002

Quadrant archives from March 2002

Is there justice in performance standards?(Editorial)
March 1, 2002... THE NOTION that the performance of institutions like courts, universities, schools, the arts or the professions can be quantitatively assessed and compared arouses instinctive resistance from those either directly involved or sufficiently...

Why the towers collapsed. (Letters).
March 1, 2002... SIR: Richard Bell's letter "Why the Towers Collapsed" (January-February 2002) draws ill-conceived conclusions from the facts surrounding the use of asbestos in buildings and the reasons why the World Trade Center buildings collapsed. To better...

Australian English. (Letters).
March 1, 2002... SIR: You'd have to be a bit of a dill to take seriously Alex Buzo's claim (January-February 2002) that there is a universal denial, not only of regional variation in Australian English, but also of the existence of New Zealand English. Most...

What do we want? (Letters).
March 1, 2002... SIR: Peter Arnold's assertion (Letters, January-February 2002) that "race, skin colour, ethnicity and religion are widely discussed" is pure sophistry. He forgets the various government instrumentalities which exist to deter and to punish "wide...

Mount on Murdani. (Letters).
March 1, 2002... SIR: Frank Mount is plainly in earnest (Letters, December 2001) in wanting to defend the reputation of Benny Murdani, but he's got himself into a twist as regards his argument with me. I simply argued, in my essay of November 2000, that there...

Identity cards. (Letters).
March 1, 2002... SIR: You say various things about identity cards in your November 2001 editorial. Not all of them are borne out by experience, not even by the examples you give. For instance, there is indeed a valid argument from expense against them. What...

Quality in an age of measurement. (Law).(performance indicators in courts and universities)
March 1, 2002... THE BALANCE between quantitative and qualitative assessment of the performance of governmental functions affects many areas of public activity. Should museums be judged by attendances? Should university researchers be judged by numbers of...

The failure of the family. (Society).(Archbishop George Pell)
March 1, 2002... THE FAMILY in Australia once enjoyed a privileged place at law and in social and economic policy. Nothing epitomised this more than the 1907 landmark judgment of Henry Bournes Higgins, president of the newly established Commonwealth Court of...

The Wild Turkeys.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2002... THE WILD TURKEYS outside my kitchen window, Gambier His eyes, from the unchanging gray, end-of-winter trees suddenly light up, light suddenly upon something particular. What is it he sees that is not tree, not gray? The...

The Stolen Donna Maria.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2002... THE STOLEN DONNA MARIA Returned from the bread shop you found the door ajar. Getting out of the car you let the parcels drop and rushed inside to find that the house had been robbed. At first you raged and...

South of the invisible line. (First Person).
March 1, 2002... THE PASSENGERS and the crew of the SS Continental, which began its journey in Genoa in the European spring of 1949, were celebrating King Neptune at the crossing of the Equator. To an introspective fourteen-year-old, shy and fearful of the...

Flood.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... FLOOD Last night rain begged, badgered to enter my room, share my sheets. I heard it ramming itself into the hole in the guttering, felt it sink the garden, drown pale hundreds of spread sycamore hands and I knew...

The Romans in Britain.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN They came because of the straight roads. These gave them easy access to the Tory heartlands. Thatched roundhouses were soon replaced with red-roofed blocks. Everyone liked their leather sandals ...

Paris Revealed.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... PARIS REVEALED All those balconies displaying their ornate black railings and I think of row upon row of lacy knickers. I'm on my way to Debauve et Gallais, the oldest chocolatier in the city, wishing my wishes in...

Out of this World.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... OUT OF THIS WORLD My bright shining one, Having longed for you like a rocket I'm spending millions of pounds on you. I'm harnessing the most modern technology for you. I'm pointing straight up at the sky for you. ...

Seeking the knowledge edge; Australia and the revolution in military affairs. (Defence).
March 1, 2002... Prediction is fine, providing you steer clear of the future --Mark Twain IN THE DECADE since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Australian defence planners have confronted the painful reality that, while strategic environments...

Choosing Yellow.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... CHOOSING YELLOW Because I've insisted on yellow you write saying porsche yellow's your favourite, define it as the buttercup of Hohenzollern blended with Hapsburg's rich egg yolk, want to know which shade I prefer ...

Talk is cheap, but defence is not. (Defense).
March 1, 2002... EVERY SO OFTEN, Quadrant publishes an article on national defence. In July-August 2000, for example, Paul Dibb and Bill Hayden wrote on current strategic challenges, their articles bracketed with a Vietnam retrospective by Ian Adie. More...

Fire. (Devine).(bush fires around Sydney, Australia)
March 1, 2002... THE SOLE PURPOSE of civilisation is to defend us from nature. This sound advice is from Sigmund Freud. I think we ignore it at some peril. However, Sydney, the acme of Australia's contribution to the maintenance and advance of civilisation,...

The need for economic policy reform. (Rational Economics).
March 1, 2002... AUSTRALIA IS CURRENTLY "defying the world recession". This is a result of past economic reform--much of this initiated by the Hawke-Keating Labor governments. But our chronically weak dollar is a clear sign that the global investment community...

River Song.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... RIVER SONG When the sky's all grey and the water's brown I spend every day on the Pont Marie and dream that I live on a flat-topped barge. River run clear, river run slow; take me downstream ...

Democracy: a revisionist view. (Politics).
March 1, 2002... DEMOCRACY never lasts long. It wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide." It is strange to note that this comment was made by John Adams, second President of the United States and a signatory...

The First Man to See a Rainbow.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... THE FIRST MAN TO SEE A RAINBOW --never told anyone. Afraid it was only his imagination, he kept the colors to himself, watched the huge, hued arch slowly come and go, alone like nothing else in the world. He...

A pragmatic approach to immigration. (Argument).
March 1, 2002... Simple Ideas can have unintended explosive impacts. Professor Wolfgang Kasper's article Immigration, Institutions, Harmony and Prosperity" (Quadrant, November 2001) is an apparently objective but incomplete analysis that aims to demonstrate...

Knowledge and innovation in Australian education. (Education).
March 1, 2002... School Innovation: Pathway to the Knowledge Society, edited by Professor Peter Cuttance of the Centre for Applied Educational Research in the University of Melbourne and published by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Training and Youth...

Rottnest Island Morning II.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... ROTTNEST ISLAND MORNING II The tethered dinghies nod in a row. There is fresh-baked bread nearby. Golden stone walls of cottages glow against pale blue of morning sea and sky. Gulls line the sea-wall, late wallabies...

Observing a Thong-Shod Pedestrian's Reaction to Catching His Toe in the Ring of a Discarded Condom.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... OBSERVING A THONG-SHOD PEDESTRIAN'S REACTION TO CATCHING HIS TOE IN THE RING OF A DISCARDED CONDOM A corybantic virtuoso in a quiet street, And lyricisms soaring like winged birds: Almost the hokey-cokey, this strange dance,...

The picture in the poem: David Campbell's poems on art. (Literature).(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2002... DAVID CAMPBELL was first and foremost a lyric poet. Over and over again, the poems he composed during the forty-three years of his working life as a writer bear witness to the way in which certain moments of experience can be etched so deeply...

Ridley Adores Hollywood.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... RIDLEY ADORES HOLLYWOOD The flashing Marlboro Lights, Camera, Actions. The gazolene ice cream and french fried police. The wall-to-wall sidewalks and stars waving stripes. The station wagon coffees and four-by-four...

Between Two Worlds.(Short Story)
March 1, 2002... Yippee! I'm out of here for a couple of days! Meeting tomorrow. I'll leave now and have dinner and wine with Annie. A hot bath in soft water. Not this stuff, so full of lime it leaves your hair standing on end. d some conversation. All we ever...

Four Haiku.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... FOUR HAIKU by the pool-- her lounge chair holds the large print novel the rain pouring down-- Telemann dead for years turned up louder almost tomorrow-- the side I usually sleep on in the...

Three Poems.(Poem)
March 1, 2002... THREE POEMS my hotel room-- a tiny bar of soap smaller dew hanging off the fence the paint chips off the danger sign lots of dark sky to drift away in-- the smoke from the fireworks

Inspecting Tim Pat's Head.(Short Story)
March 1, 2002... It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the clinic and Lance walked into the tearoom to find Wayne opening a bottle of red wine. It was one of their precious stock of Penfolds Bin 707. "Angela had a vomiter," he said. "Fantastic," said...

The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition and Civil Society.
March 1, 2002... by Edward Shils, edited by Steven Grosby; Liberty Fund, 2001, about $25. WILL THE GOOD old days ever come back? Part of the trouble is that everyone has his own idea of what, or when, the good old days were. A French diplomat of the...

Sounds from the Stables: the Story of Sydney's Conservatorium.
March 1, 2002... by Diane Collins; Allen & Unwin, 2001, $49.95. HERE IS A HISTORICAL and cultural pilgrimage which reads rather like a modern music-based parable derived from the Stations of the Cross, but with a happy though necessarily inconclusive...

No Great Mischief.
March 1, 2002... by Alistair MacLeod; Vintage, 2001, $21.95. THIS WONDERFUL new novel has little plot as such. It is a meditation on love and loyalty, history and kinship. It works like a Celtic design or a Gaelic song, forever circling on itself and...

New Selected Poems.(Selected Poems)
March 1, 2002... New Selected Poems, by Robert Gray; Duffy & Snellgrove, 2001, $22. Selected Poems, by Jamie Grant; Duffy & Snellgrove, 2001, $22. SINCE PUBLISHING Les Murray's Subhuman Redneck Poems five years ago, Duffy & Snellgrove have continued to...

Four Haiku. (Books).(Poem)
March 1, 2002... FOUR HAIKU the crowd leaving-- the final score taken down a slow curve in the path-- we haven't walked anywhere the dew hasn't been in the row of cars-- the dry spot her car left up...

The birds.
March 1, 2002... THE OTHER DAY, in a park bordering the very heart Melbourne's central business district, I watched one of the rubbish bins energetically being emptied, contents disgustingly scattered over the surrounding lawn. The perpetrator of this civic...