Quadrant articles from March 2006

Quadrant archives from March 2006

What is wrong with the ARC.(research funding)(Australian Research Council)
March 1, 2006... THE FUNDING of university research by government will always be controversial. As well as the problems with judging the quality and likely performance of applicants, there is a wider issue concerning the relative worth by some criteria or other...

The role of governor.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: In your December issue there is a review by Peter Coleman of Sir David Smith's book Head of State. I emphasise that I have not read the book, but I presume that Mr Coleman has, and that his references to it are accurate. On those...

Michael Thwaites.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR." In his obituary (January-February 2006) of Michael Thwaites, the Australian poet and ASIO officer, Hal Colebatch laments his lack of recognition in the Australian press. Certainly his poetry did not receive the recognition it deserved in...

Falsifying history.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR." In his attack on Bain Attwood (January-February 2006) Gregory Haines says that at the 2004 conference of the Australian Historical Association I gave a "provocative, honest paper on how the Left has falsified history". This is a good...

Why the Incas fell.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: In his wonderfully evocative article "Imagining Machu Picchu" (January-February 2006), Nicholas Hasluck reiterates the widely held view that the Inca empire fell so suddenly to Pizarro and his few men, because their rule had been weakened...

The clinicidal physician.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: Roger Sandall's article on "Dr Death" Patel (December 2005) provides an interesting review of his career. Patel, who now faces indictment on criminal charges, has been cited with causing a number of patient deaths, the final figure of...

Michael Oakeshott.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: I assure David Clark (Letters, January-February 2006) that I had no intention of challenging the conservative credentials of Michael Oakeshott and accept that he valued both information and judgment in education. My reaction to the...

The status of treaties.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: In the article "International Law and Australian Sovereignty" (July-August 2005) Justice Callinan quoted the following remarks of Mason CJ and Deane J in Minister of State for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh (1995): But the fact...

Conservative wars.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: The rather slight contribution by Tom Switzer and Neil Clark (December 2005) contains some extraordinary comments on the Balkan conflicts of 1991 to 1995 which should not go unchallenged. They write that "The Conservatives' refusal to...

Sir Arthur Bryant.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: Baron Alder in his review (January-February 2006) of Hurrah for the Blackshirts! by Martin Pugh repeats a claim by Pugh that the high-profile figures of the pre-war appeasement period included the pro-Nazi historian Sir Arthur Bryant. ...

C.P. Snow.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... SIR: Peter Ryan (September 2005) asks, "Does anybody read C.P. Snow today?" Well, yes. He dismisses Snow's novels as "mere souffles". This seems harsh. Snow's novel The Masters explores the politics and power plays in a Cambridge college....

The madness and malady of managerialism.(Universities)
March 1, 2006... VERY RECENTLY several admirable and insightful publications have appeared in scholarly and intellectual forums dealing with the follies and evils in Australian universities brought about by their corporatisation over the past fifteen or so...

Is truth history?(case studies on Aboriginal Australians)
March 1, 2006... "TRUTHS ALL OVER the place", was the incisive title of Gregory Haines review of Bain Attwood's Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History (Quadrant, January-February). "Curiously, for a book that claims to be telling the truth about Aboriginal...

An Understudy for Desire.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... AN UNDERSTUDY FOR DESIRE Our lazulite planet's not so young, dozes through its quakes, the self, likewise absorbs the small seismic shifts age makes. Theme-change in dreams comes stertorous upon the...

Memory.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... MEMORY When I was seventeen my dad and I drank chess each evening and played scotch & dry till, leering at the board with weary eye one night, a supine bishop he could see: "He's lying," said my dad, and looked at me...

Why Australia is not a racist country.(race discrimination)
March 1, 2006... ACCORDING TO Monash University historian Marilyn Lake, the yearning for a White Australia has never died. In the midst of the violence between Lebanese and Australian youths on Sydney beaches last December, she claimed the Bulletin's old 1908...

The future of reconciliation: the Charles Perkins memorial oration.(analysis of Aboriginal Australians)
March 1, 2006... CHARLES PERKINS and I performed our first significant act of public service, and came to public prominence, at the same time and in collaboration with each other--he as President and I as Secretary of Student Action for Aborigines and, as two...

A Middle-Aged Singer Looks Back at His Life.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... A MIDDLE-AGED SINGER LOOKS BACK AT HIS LIFE for Kris & Lisa Kristofferson I took my voice to places where no man Should take his voice and hope that it would sing. All I wanted when I began Was to strike up my guitar and...

A conservative case for multiculturalism.(racial violence)
March 1, 2006... ON SUNDAY December 11, there was a riot at Cronulla followed, that evening, by a rampage through the streets of Maroubra. On television, there were ugly scenes of mobs chanting and of vandalised cars. In the newspapers, there were disturbing...

Tobias Smollett and the unknown unknowns.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... THE OTHER DAY I read a review of a biography of Tobias Smollett. I have not read any Smollett and I was curious to find out more about him (and perhaps pick up some hints on what is his best work). It was a good review, learned and full of...

The Glass Sponge.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... THE GLASS SPONGE Pheronema Carpenteri Your body housed inside a nest of glass, its lucid needles woven in radiant networks like a dozen webs of spiders sewn into a dome and coated with a layer of liquid quartz ...

Io.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Because he is near you constantly explode, revealing the hidden liquid at your center, a sort of fear as he hangs there, his great density anchoring storms, the globe of his mass clouded orange in your...

The hardest-working country?(demographic aspects)
March 1, 2006... IT HAS BEEN SAID that a conversation with a righteous person will leave you with a positive feeling, having heard your qualities being emphasised, whereas a conversation with a self-righteous person will leave you feeling negative, having heard...

Seeking racist Australia.(racial discrimination)
March 1, 2006... IS "PISS OFF, WOG" a racist declaration or a targeted insult? Only a wuss would think of answering "both". It was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as the form of dismissal used by a young--dare I say it?--Australian woman, a particular...

Day Shapes.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... DAY SHAPES "Washington State, with its wealth of natural resources, its hard- working and creative people, and its strategic trading position, is enjoying a vibrant economy. We are gathered together today to remember those who have...

Under Weigh.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... UNDER WEIGH The horizon lifts and falls, a frenzy of gulls, fulmars and albatross yaw into the wake of gurry, Sorbitol, fish stench and fuel oil. Steel teeth and winch drums, rattle of hydraulic trains-- a...

Democracy, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam.(islamic philosophy)
March 1, 2006... THE MYRIAD FACES that Islam presents to the non-Islamic world reflect the vastly differing racial, cultural, linguistic and social origins of Muslims, and the fact that Islam is itself in a state of unprecedented flux and reappraisal. This...

Dreaming of Martin Luther King.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... DREAMING OF MARTIN LUTHER KING MLK Day Class Project, 3B, Devotion School Brookline MA, 2005 (for Henry) The children are dreaming their various dreams. Most of them dream of disarmament: The rifle rusting, abandoned in the...

Three Poems for Edna.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... THREE POEMS FOR EDNA 1. Edna Faye is a pub where the dark red wood glistens behind the bar, where the pints are pulled slowly and are never too cold, where the salmon or chicken arrives with three...

Fun with Earthworms and Crab Grass.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... FUN WITH EARTHWORMS AND CRAB GRASS I sat down and sighed. Earthworms sighed with me, a great pervasion of air. I stood up and stretched. Labouring crab grass lengthened. We were all having fun. I lay...

In defence of the elderly.(prime minister)
March 1, 2006... I think people should continue in the workforce for as long as they want to," and as long as they're making a contribution, age is irrelevant.--John Howard, August 2004 LAST JUNE, the Sydney Morning Herald's political editor, Peter...

Michael Wharton (1913-2006).(Obituary )(Obituary)
March 1, 2006... MICHAEL WHARTON, better ,known as the London Daily Telegraph s and Sunday Telegraph's Peter Simple, died on January 23, 2006, a little short of his ninety-third birthday, and three days after his last column was published. He had written his...

Ars Poetica.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... ARS POETICA The mountain man, John Colter, is working On his breathing. He's lodged under the stream That he reached with such effort, so many Blackfeet Behind him, around him, still he's managed somehow To reach this...

Towards Starlight.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... TOWARDS STARLIGHT Into dark mauve sky the harbour bridge diamante choker laid against her throat each arm outflung laden with jewelled skyscrapers the night, barely risen as if there'd never been any other ...

Sung poems: the incantatory voice.(Literature)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2006... BETWEEN THE HUMAN voice employed as a musical instrument and everyday speech, lies a continuum of infinite variations and modulations. Within that continuum chanting can be said to lie somewhere midpoint between speech and song, whereas...

Geometry.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... GEOMETRY I made myself a circle, then a square. I made a box too small for him to open and then a portal which, from anywhere, displayed the magnitude of my affection. Once full of pliant roundnesses and curves, ...

The two rights: Spielberg, Bernstein and the state of Israel.(movie critics)
March 1, 2006... A REPORTER or commentator has only to question some aspect of Israeli policy for one of its spokesmen or apologists to invoke the Holocaust. Somehow it is implied that criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians instantly turns the...

Wet Bitumen: Paris.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... WET BITUMEN Paris A classic shot by Atget or Man Ray--Old Woman with Umbrella, tenderly sideon, clutching her purse to her chest past the long pale wall down rue Charlot. Hunched under her portable roof held...

Belles, bottles and heartstrings.
March 1, 2006... I buried the wine Aunt Gabby gave me in a deep hole before leaving the shack. When I came back after three weeks it was gone. Just goes to show the bush has eyes, not always friendly ones. I knew what Moonflower would say, that I was thirty and...

Long-Distance.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... LONG-DISTANCE Melissa, I say this word while I carry the telephone from the kitchen to the hallway. From the bathroom to the bedroom. Melissa. I want to laugh blue flowers of sunshine. I cannot believe it is...

Widmerpool's Britain: without Widmerpool.(After the Victorians: 1901-1953)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... After the Victorians 1901-1953, by A.N. Wilson; Hutchinson, 2005, $75. If Oscar Wilde had lived to be eighty, the English would have made him Chief Scout.--Malcolm Muggeridge Dear old, bloody old England Of telegraph poles and tin,...

Portrait of Port William.(That Distant Land)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... That Distant Land, by Wendell Berry; Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004, $27.95. WHEN WENDELL BERRY began writing his stories and novels forty years ago, he seems to have had his fictional community of Port William and all its characters and their...

The art of making money.(Art + Australia: Debates, Dollars and Delusions)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Art + Australia: Debates, Dollars and Delusions, by Patricia Anderson; Pandora, 2004, $59.95. THERE IS MUCH with which to agree and to disagree in Patricia Anderson's Art + Australia. How could it be otherwise when the topic is money and...

White, British and racially pure.(Likely Lads and Lasses: Youth Migration to Australia, 1911-1983)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Likely Lads and Lasses: Youth Migration to Australia 1911-1983, by Alan Gill; BBM Ltd, 2005, $30. NOWADAYS WE SHRUG OFF the White Australia policy, at least with the benefit of hindsight, as a politically defensible foundation--in its...

Bonds of disloyalty.(Code Cicada)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Code Cicada, by Warren Reed; HarperCollins, 2004, $19.95. IT'S RARE to encounter politically sophisticated works of fiction with a thriller bent that are set in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. So it's a real pleasure to come across the new...

Snob-buster extraordinary.(Still Not Sorry)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Still Not Sorry, by Andrew Bolt; News Custom Publishing, 2006, $24.95. ANDREW BOLT is one of those isolated beings in the Australian media (and Australian letters)--a conservative. Or more accurately, a radical with principles. The most...

The animals and us.(Ryan)
March 1, 2006... OVER THE RECENT holidays I had a chance encounter with a tiny girl and her dog. Most days, rain or shine, I walk for two or three miles, driven not only by the dreaded imperative of Exercise, but to enjoy the enlargement of spirit that happens...