Quadrant articles from November 2005

Quadrant archives from November 2005

Industrial relations reform and Sunday observance.(Editorial)
November 1, 2005... THE DEBATE over industrial relations reform has had many peculiar features, but in essence it is the old, old argument in Australia between conservatism and change. The conservatives are, not unusually, to be found on the side of those who are...

Our crowned republic.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... SIR: "Do other readers... agree... that the transition to a republic is worthy of serious attention now?" asks John Powers (Letters, September 2005). This particular reader emphatically disagrees. Indeed, it is difficult to see any valid...

Blamey, the ABC and the big D.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... SIR: Neil McDonald's piece in the October issue of Quadrant about the New Guinea campaign is inflammatory. Historically, generals who encourage journalists get a better press than those who abominate them. Funny about that. So, Neil...

H5N1.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... SIR: In my article "The Pandemic Threat" in the October issue there is a small point that I should amend: H5N1 travels as a virus, that is, even smaller than the "droplets of breath" I refer to on page 8. The significance of this is that,...

Australian universities: Moscow on the Molonglo.(Universities)
November 1, 2005... THE SOVIET SYSTEM crashed in 1985, thanks Principally to Mr Gorbachev. I shall call it the "Moscow system". It became clear--at least to those to whom it had not been clear before-that the Soviet central planning system had been a failure....

Under the Sign of Necessity: for Nabaneeta dev Sen.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... In the comfortable room, our bellies full We had been talking ideas, of language, And you had read a poem The one about your young men hardened By killing in the name Not of their mother, but Justice; And I had...

More Ruins.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... In the Deer Park there is much Single-pointed concentration On money. The kids Small flies with sticky hands Can't leave you alone. I saw two deer in the middle distance. I might have begged from them. But...

Ragged.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... The lining of the flower-basket hanging from the rafter is a little ragged where the finches have been tugging.

Going Down.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... As on a treadmill, a woman on the steps of the escalator--beckoning a small boy who fears to join her going down.

Aboriginality and the hope of art: explaining Australia in Arkansas.(AUSTRALIA)
November 1, 2005... I EXPECT YOU all noticed at the time, and I'm hoping you still vaguely recall, the Sydney 2000 Olympics at which Australia, briefly, assumed centre-stage. If, like most in the developed world, you watched the opening and closing ceremonies on...

Gentrifical Force.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... GENTRIFICAL FORCE Gentrifical force, gentrifical force: that's an ex-convict on his own horse with a new white wife and the black one gone with his first children to a far station. Then race and real estate took a...

Kevin John Dillon, bibliophile and collector.(Obituary)(Obituary)
November 1, 2005... BY THE TIME Kevin Dillon died he had filled six garages and one apartment, floor to ceiling, with a vast collection of Australiana, much of it memorabilia relating to the history of the Sydney Push, as well as much of world literature and his...

Rainy Day Paper Boy.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... RAINY DAY PAPER BOY through the rain I can hear the boys in the shed thwick of their rubber bands around paper tossed thonk into cardboard boxes soon they'll come get me up for my run so cold I'll leave pyjamas on ...

The long demise of the White Australia Policy.(History)
November 1, 2005... THE CENTRAL ARGUMENT of Keith Windschuttle's The White Australia Policy (Macleay Press, 2004) is that over the last thirty-five years a misleading consensus has emerged about the origins of the White Australia policy. In numerous books and...

Opus Dei: not a sorrowful mystery.
November 1, 2005... MYSTERIOUS and secretive have been the Australian media's qualifiers of choice for Opus Dei since the Catholic lay order's hand was purportedly detected manipulating a leadership change in the New South Wales Liberal Party in September. In...

Reply to the Haka.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... REPLY TO THE HAKA Welcome, enemy, to holy ground. Our ball will carry you underground. Cyn hir, fe fydd eich cnawd yn goch, Llosgwn ein llwybr trwyddoch. [Soon, your flesh will be red as we burn our path...

Mausoleum at Charlottenburg.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG This gorgeous palace, once serving to display the power and wealth of the Hohenzollerns, has become a theme park so popular with tourists that the guide book warns about weekends. ...

Latham and the Labor shambles.(Politics)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... WHEN THE LATHAM DIARIES first appeared, such was the tide of abuse and denial from Labor and their many friends in the media, that it led not unsympathetic observers to express fears that Latham's most important messages could be lost among the...

End of Day.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... END OF DAY We pass the cows on their way to the milking shed and the farmer's easing hands. Frogs are gladly chorusing like little gibbons in the dark reeds by the soak. We cross the fallow paddock ...

Sydney history and religion: a memoir.(Religion)
November 1, 2005... THE FOUNDING of the Journal of Religious History in 1959 was a Sydney event. The originating editors were three still youngish men from the History Department of the University of Sydney: Bruce Mansfield, Edwin Judge and Ken Cable (to be joined...

The Call.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... THE CALL Let's go down to the beach, they say, in every coastal town. Cars cruise toward magnetic sand, where short skirts walk invisible dogs and horns honk pheromones into dusk. A subliminal summer undertow ...

What is the head of state?(The Constitution)
November 1, 2005... IN THE SEPTEMBER 2004 Quadrant, replying to Sir David Smith s article "The Governor-General is Our Head of State", George Winterton concluded that debate on the question was "arid and ultimately irrelevant". It is not, though it may be...

The Amarna Stelae.(Poem)
November 1, 2005... THE AMARNA STELAE for Jane "I have come to this castle in the north" At Karnak, who was it unearthed in nineteen twenty-five those twenty-five colossi of Akhenaten? In the photograph they rise up out of the...

I skip, I plod.(Literature)(Critical Essay)
November 1, 2005... WILL I SKIP now? Or will I plod? Which is to say, will I choose to transform the sensory/verbal momentum in my head into a work of poetry or one of prose? At the instant my fingers alight on the keyboard, or my pen twitches in the...

Thinning.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... THINNING I never went. I only hid. I made myself into a shadow. You wore me like a dress. I was the cobwebs in your house. I saw the way the harbour parted shining beneath the wake of the...

Great gold streamers of light.
November 1, 2005... IT IS AUTUMN 1919. Katherine Mansfield is living at the Casetta Denholm, a villa in Ospedaletti on the Italian Riviera. In September, to avoid the English winter, she came from London. She has led an active life but now, at thirty-one, can walk...

The Catherine Wheel.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... THE CATHERINE WHEEL Wire glints in a fence post angled up through the cracked floor of a dam sucked dry. Half in, half out of season, soaking warmth, a snake, dull striped and flat, lies tightly...

A Peaceful Protest.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... A PEACEFUL PROTEST (14th February 2003, Melbourne, Australia) Somewhere between one and two hundred thousand, they reckoned. I was walking in the other direction looking for a tram. On the footpath is this haggard...

Hayden Carruth and the desire for more cows.
November 1, 2005... HAYDEN CARRUTH wrote of his friend, the poet, peace campaigner and Christian Denise Levertov, that she "keeps her mind on the reality of imaginative process. She rarely veers into mystical utterance for its own sake." Carruth considers himself...

Four faces of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.(Film)(Critical Essay)
November 1, 2005... TWENTIETH-CENTURY CINEMA was "haunted" by nineteenth-century gothic fiction. There have been cycles of movies about Dracula, Frankenstein, endless plots based on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, including adaptations of the novels themselves,...

Silence.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 1, 2005... Silence All weekend I've listened to a piano competition on the radio. The contestants each play the same piece until the small velvet hammers at the base of my neck are struck before the notes emerge. ...

300 degree days.(Story)(Short Story)
November 1, 2005... The house was full of blowflies when they got back. Dave left the suitcases on the porch and grabbed the insect spray from the kitchen while Linda shrank against the front door and gaped at the flies. "There must be hundreds of them," she said....

The morning after.(Story)(Short Story)
November 1, 2005... Mermaid's not happy today. I reckon I've served him four chardonnays since twelve-thirty. Lucky for him he's a regular. The place is full of people trying to get their lunch, having to squeeze past him to get to the till, but he doesn't even...

Journey to the end of the night: after the Thatcher interlude.(The Strange Death of Tory England)(Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain)(Paradoxes of Power." Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude)(Margaret Thatcher's Revolution, How It Happened and What It Meant)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... The Strange Death of Tory England, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft; Allen Lane, 2005, $49.95. Mind the Gap: The New Class Divide in Britain, by Ferdinand Mount; Short Books, 2005, $26.95. Paradoxes of Power." Reflections on the Thatcher...

The natural weight of words.(No Country for Old Men)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy; Picador, 2004, $30. WORDS, INDEPENDENT of any writer, have a weight and a power of their own. Blood. Water. Heart. Stone. Just their sound can conjure vague and awful significance. Cormac...

Casualties of war.(Russian Anzacs in Australian History)(Well Done, Those Men: Memoirs of a Vietnam Veteran)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... Russian Anzacs in Australian History, by Elena Govor; UNSW Press, 2005, $36.00. Well Done, Those Men: Memoirs of a Vietnam Veteran, by Barry Heard; Scribe Publications, 2005, $29.95. THESE BOORS have in common that their subjects...

A life in a city.(Istanbul: Memories of a City)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... Istanbul: Memories of a City, by Orhan Pamuk; Faber & Faber, 2005, $45. ISTANBUL: MEMORIES OF A CITY is a deceptively simple title for a complex book. The memories of a distinguished Turkish novelist with an international reputation, Orhan...

Glasgow's industrial Whitman.(Cathures: New Poems 1997-2001)(Love and a Life: 50 Poems)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... Cathures: New Poems 1997-2001, by Edwin Morgan; Carcanet, 2002, $27.95. Love and a Life: 50 Poems, by Edwin Morgan; Mariscat Press, 2003, about $30. UNROOTED IN TRADITION, maverick, effortlessly original, populist, effusive--these...

Temperance and prudence.(Ryan)(Column)
November 1, 2005... LAST WEEK I thought a lot about alcohol. That, in itself, made it no different from any other week, but I thought about it in a different way. Perhaps unconscious prompting came from three recent events of local history: New South Wales Supreme...