Quadrant articles from March 2005

Quadrant archives from March 2005

Whitlam, Latham and Beazley.(Australian Labor Party leadership since Gough Whitlam)(Editorial)
March 1, 2005... KARL MARX in his political pamphlet The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 852) quotes Hegel as having said that history repeats itself; Marx added, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Though often misquoted, it is a perceptive...

A different Australia.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: In "Towards an Enterprise Society" (January-February 2005) John McDonnell adroitly expounds a view of John Howard's fourth-term agenda covering education, health, human services, the economy, international relations and the public service....

Spies in red coats.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: Michael English's article "The Shady Status of the Spy" (January-February 2005) raises important issues. It might therefore be interesting to look back at earlier practices. During the Peninsular War 1809-13, the Duke of Wellington...

Jung and National Socialism.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: In the conclusion to his interesting article "The Psychopathology of Terrorism" (January-February 2005), Dr Galak includes a reference to Jung's "break-up" with Freud, and then suggests that such was the severity to which Jung was thereby...

The Jensens and Christianity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: James Franklin's article "Is Jensenism Compatible with Christianity?" (December 2004) has at least this in its favour: it misrepresents and selectively misreads its main targets, conservative evangelicals in general and Sydney's Anglican...

Music for the masses.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: B.J. Coman's piece on "doof doof music" (January-February 2005) is a very strange piece of elitist, anti-democratic prejudice. Years ago I did ethnomusicological research on a Melanesian tribe in Santo, in the former New Hebrides, and...

Free speech and pseudonymy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: While I share Jonathan Wilson's traditional--indeed, canonical--Christian objection to homosexual behaviour, I am sceptical about much of the case which he presents in "The Scepticism That Dare Not Speak its Name" (December 2004). On...

Democratic personalism.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: However salutary Dr Pell's criticisms of "secular democracy" may appear (December 2004), the grounding of his perceived alternative--"democratic personalism"--in Papal Encyclicals such as Fides et Ratio will do little to "corner the...

The inoffensive constitution.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: Assume for the sake of David Alexander's and John J. Howard's arguments (Letters, January-February 2005) that Major General Jeffery was correct in stating the Queen is Australia's head of state (there have been sufficient arguments put...

DLP archives.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: John Barich's statement (Letters, December 2004) that those in the Victorian ALP (AC) hold all the ALP records up to the split is no longer accurate. The records of the Victorian DLP, including those it inherited as the legal successor of...

Tomato sauce or marmalade?(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... SIR: It's good to read about Frank Devine's butcher and "the full taste of meat" (January-February 2005), and to learn that--even in this affluent age--sausages remain the favourite selection. I did not realise that the cereal component...

The truth about the dismissal.(History)(dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2005... PROBABLY NO EVENT in Australia's political history has received as much coverage in the media and in the history books as has the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, on November 11, 1975. And certainly no...

The dawn of globalisation.(Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire)(Book)(Spanish Colonialism in Latin America)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... "THE SPANIARDS, leaving the island of Cuba... have encountered cities in which the subjects live according to law, there is commerce and people go around dressed. They have books," wrote a chronicler of the infant Spanish colonies in what...

Why Did Philip Die.(Poem)
March 1, 2005... WHY DID PHILIP DIE We drove until the sun was close to setting. The car was loud with children and their toys. Even after five years of forgetting the slope still seemed familiar, with a noise from blackboard-scraping...

Microchipping people: the rise of the electrophorus.(Bioethics)
March 1, 2005... AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION (auto-ID) is the process of identifying a living or non-living thing without direct human intervention. Before auto-ID only manual identification techniques existed, such as tattoos and fingerprints, which did not allow...

The Left's descent into the abyss.(Society)
March 1, 2005... SOMETHING TRAGIC and horrifying has happened to the Left--something that was visible long before September 11, 2001, though the events of that dreadful day served only to confirm it. It strengthened with the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of...

Passing the Harp.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... PASSING THE HARP That dent in the bonnet of my wife's car-- I might press it back straight from underneath-- soft metal, simple task. No, she says, I think I'll keep it. Passing the Harp Hotel the other night--...

The bullies and the bullied.(Universities)(management of Australian universities)
March 1, 2005... IN HIS ARTICLE in Quadrant in May last year, "The Recuperating Universities", Bob Catley, recently returned to academic life in Australia after pursuing his career in New Zealand, painted a rosy picture of the state of Australian universities...

Moustached ring.(Music)(Der Ring des Nibelungen)(Opera Review)
March 1, 2005... THERE IS NO REASON why Adelaide should not become the Bayreuth of the southern hemisphere. The city is just the right size, not too large, not too small; the urban environment is one of the most attractive in the country, with beautifully...

Monastery.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... MONASTERY I have climbed the stairs of the tower again, balancing my hand against its stone hub. Call vertigo the fall of time. Doves in the scriptorium. How they start up, their wings plead unilluminated words...

Chloe.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... CHLOE Dreams hang limp at the windows of on-site caravans--this year's job lot of homeless squeezed into sardine cans. Whatever hopes were brewing only the dregs remain and an aimless swirl of kids ...

Night.(Non-elemental odes: domestic duties)(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Night The sea is on dog-watch cleaning the beach low tide in the house bare rocks of pots and pans in the sink clothes and towels heaped like cungevoi on sandy floors the beds snore caves of sleep an echo of...

Swimming lessons.(Non-elemental odes: domestic duties)(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... swimming lessons learn to breathe deep as the water not shallow tea-cup sips of dry-land air but deep as first-breath three strokes through yielding water then head turned sideways to emerge into...

Stirring up the constitution; Greg Craven's conversations with the constitution.(The Constitution)(Conversations with the Constitution: Not Just a Piece of Paper)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... "HE'S A VERY naughty man," a colleague remarked of Greg Craven, as I prepared leave for the book launch. "He's always coming out with new ideas, and controversial ones. Rather like Tony Abbott." With these words ringing in my ears I set off to...

My friend, Brian Medlin.(First Person)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... BRIAN MEDLIN, who died in his home at Horsham, Victoria, on October 27, 2004, was one of the most striking personalities that Australian philosophy has seen. He was a country boy born at Orroroo in South Australia, a town on the edge of the...

Live Sheep Trade.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... LIVE SHEEP TRADE A generalised, accepted assumption of stupidity rides in five storeys of steerage. Loading begins at birth, and ends with lesions and bruises wool conceals. A stick across the face means nothing ...

All Right.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... ALL RIGHT It was all right except for the last nine years I made pain all mine again and it was all right so long as you expected little and were adept at making a nutritious meal for two out of...

The last of his tribe: Maurice O'Sullivan and the Blasket Islanders.(Literature)(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... THERE IS ONE major shortcoming with publications like the Australian Book Review or the New York Review of Books--their reviews are very largely for new books or new editions, not for new readers. And yet, for every new generation, there lies...

Re-Reading Arthur Waley's Chinese Translations.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... RE-READING ARTHUR WALEY'S CHINESE TRANSLATIONS My years are honorable enough although I let l'Oreal keep white hair golden under wraps. I've planted bamboo but seldom hear wind sigh through the leaves. ...

The Limestome Madonna in the Grotte des Demoiselles.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... THE LIMESTONE MADONNA IN THE GROTTE DES DEMOISELLES A fall you don't seem to land from, your skull gripped by the forceps of rushing tunnels, through the Salle de la Main to the massif's heart, La Cathedrale des Abimes....

Final reading.(list of books to reread before death)(Bibliography)
March 1, 2005... EVER SINCE I learnt the English language at the age of twelve, with a Biggles book and a German-English dictionary in front of me some sixty-seven years ago, I have kept a list of every book I have read. And one lesson which arises from that...

Dancing.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... DANCING It kept me from sleep, just as I was drifting. I ignored it, then it happened again. A clattering loud on the corrugated iron roof of my neighbour's garage. Either a burglar inept in the night or something...

Rock, phantoms and divas.(DVD)(Film)(Concerto for Group and Orchestra)(Phantom of the Opera)(La Callas ... Toujours)(Video Recording Review)(Movie Review)
March 1, 2005... ONE NIGHT IN 1970 I was playing a record for some friends in my Bathurst fiat. It was rather late, and about five minutes into it a call came from my next-door neighbours. I made the appropriate apology about the music being too loud: "No, no,"...

Three Haiku.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... THREE HAIKU thick fortress walls--picnic coffee heated up with more icy rain--a new barbershop lights up the old bank building afraid to talk--rough water on the ocean the best color...

Cretan Epiphany.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... CRETAN EPIPHANY 1. The bier conveying Jesus dead Through ice-black, rigid streets dissolved The crowd's restraint. Its swaying timed To muffled drum beats and a chant As old as breathing in and out, It...

The hand that feeds.(Story)(Short Story)
March 1, 2005... The year my father died was the year I learnt the most from him. It was the year that he and I were closer than we had ever been. If it had been a year earlier it wouldn't have hurt so much. But then I wouldn't be where I am today. I guess...

The Lure of Fundamentalism with Murray Sayle in the Holy Land.(Griffith Review, Edition 7, Autumn 2005)(Islamic, Christian, Jewish, atheist)(Periodical Review)
March 1, 2005... The Lure of Fundamentalism; Griffith Review, Edition 7, Autumn 2005, edited by Julianne Schultz, $16.95. ONE SENTENCE jumps from the pages of this symposium on fundamentalism--Islamic, Christian, Jewish, atheist. One sentence--and one...

Washing away falsehoods.(Washout)(The White Australia Policy)(Sister Eileen: A Life with the Lid Off)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Washout, by John Dawson; Macleay Press, 2004, $34.95. The White Australia Policy, by Keith Windschuttle; Macleay Press, 2004, $34.95. Sister Eileen: A Life with the Lid Off, by Annette Roberts; Access Press (Bassendean, WA), 2002,...

This overcharged world.(footnotes of a hammock)(The Sleep of a Learning Man)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... footnotes of a hammock, by Joanne Burns; Five Islands Press, 2004, $18.95. The Sleep of a Learning Man, by Anthony Lawrence; Giramondo, 2003, $22. I CAME TO A KEEN appreciation of the poetry in Joanne Burns twelfth collection,...

Pastoral Care.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... PASTORAL CARE It's not just the way native animals, at dusk, dissolve the maplines between a picture window clawed with suburban light and shade and a glance into the marvellous their appearance provides, it's...

Latin lover.(dining at The Latin, an Italian restaurant in Melbourne)
March 1, 2005... PUNCH LANE is an undistinguished Melbourne pedestrian thoroughfare which connects Little Bourke Street to Lonsdale Street, up at the "top" or Chinatown end. Its short stretch is now, for the most part, lined with boring modern low-rise...