Quadrant articles from November 2006

Quadrant archives from November 2006

The new media ownership game.
November 1, 2006... THERE HAS BEEN a predictable amount of fear-mongering about the supposed impact of the changes in media ownership rules. Fear of a reduction in the diversity of media outlets, of monopolisation of markets by major players, of loss of jobs for...

Stolen generation in Tasmania.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... SIR: As you will know, the Tasmanian government is determined to pay compensation exclusively to a small group of people having an Aborigine in their ancestry. The basis of the payment is that these people were unfairly removed from their...

Islam and power.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... SIR: I refer to recent Quadrant articles and an editorial on the subject of Islam. The most recent editorial spoke of "dhimmitude" and John Stone spoke of "taqiyya". Each article properly warns readers to beware of Islam's intended march...

The external affairs power.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... SIR: Guy Favell's response (April 2006) to my article (October 2005) on Justice Callinan and the Commonwealth's external affairs power is a farrago of absurdities. Mr Favell gets off to a bad start by saying that I relied on the dissenting...

The UN v the world.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... SIR: Rosemary Righter sent a birthday card to the United Nations on its sixtieth anniversary ("Overburdened and Inert", September 2006). Her undiplomatic despatch reexamines several critical themes first surveyed in a previous book, published...

Political correctness in academe.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... SIR: Your editorial in the current issue, cogent and thoughtful, as always, mentions the dangers associated with political correctness, which, as we know, is alive and flourishing especially in academia and the "quality" Press with no sign of...

Australia and the arc of instability.(The Pacific)
November 1, 2006... MORE THAN SEVEN years ago, as the United Nations was organising its hasty independence ballot in East Timor, it was clear to sceptics that the ballot would solve nothing and that an independent East Timor would face continuing low-level civil...

Carol's Eggs.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Carol's Eggs Each girl child contains her eggs. Carol keeps under her bed one dozen in a carton, safe from plundering friends and flatmates. Eggs make a meal, a girl is eggs. Poached or scrambled, eggs are...

Mendicancy or membership? The South Pacific and the world community.
November 1, 2006... EVEN THE REMOTEST LANDS are now touched by modernity and virtually everyone is now in contact with far-distant places thanks to modern transport and communications technology, as well as the great global mobility of people, capital,...

A tribute to Quadrant.(Tribute)(Speech)
November 1, 2006... I'M FINALLY SUCCUMBING to Peter Garrett's advice, and it's great to embrace an evening of culture and poetry and all of that, after overdosing on my philistine sporting pursuits over the weekend from one side of the country to the other. ...

Untitled.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... UNTITLED when I lost you my father-in-law planted a shrub. viburnum, he said. it'll flower this time every year. when I lost you my friend sent me a shawl. pashmina, she said. let it hug you...

Laura to Petrarch.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... LAURA TO PETRARCH You saw me once at church--or so you said, among the many things you said of me without my knowledge or consent. The "we" which you created in your poet's head began amid the Passion: Jesus bled ...

Mulch.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... MULCH It only takes a week for them to die: the leaves on our old fig tree in the yard. Life is mostly clinging; getting by but dying: it just doesn't seem that hard. The leaves on our old fig tree in the yard: ...

Fifty years in the front line.(History)(Quadrant)(Speech)
November 1, 2006... QUADRANT FIRST fetched breath, fifty years back, in the eastern fringe of what was then a bohemian or arts quarter of Sydney. It ran from the Con across to The Rocks, from Hunter Street down to the Quay. Norman Lindsay used to have a studio in...

The end of the Aboriginal stockman.
November 1, 2006... FIRST LET ME ACKNOWLEDGE that it is more than sixteen years since I have been involved with Aborigines. However, I have maintained my interest and I am a member of the Bennelong Society. Today I am not trying to solve any problems; I am giving...

The Hunted.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... THE HUNTED Slowly, quietly, we creep up the bank, Crouching down as we near the top, To stay out of sight. I have Dad's Holloway & Naughton, An English beauty of a gun, Double barrelled, side by side. ...

Searching for the year dot.(human evolution)
November 1, 2006... LONG, LONG AGO, before the Tampa incident, the Dismissal and even the First Fleet and Captain Cook, there was the Year Dot. After millennia of haze, that year has now been fairly confidently established as about 50,000 years ago. This was when...

Democracy and the thin veneer of civilisation.(Religion)
November 1, 2006... THE GROWING SUSPICION with which nineteenth-century thinkers came to regard religion led to it being treated as a form of ideology. But over the course of the twentieth century it became clear that sometimes it is more illuminating to treat...

Posthumous Poem.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... POSTHUMOUS POEM Gone, the insistent clamour of the world. All gone-the spin, the toil, the hurry, the worry. All I'm left with is silence-the best music of all. Not even the beat of my heart disturbs...

News of Indonesia.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... NEWS OF INDONESIA The light hits the slatted blind and comes into the room in stripes, bars of sunlight cross the daily paper on my desk. My Indonesian student casts an interrupted shadow over the headline ...

As Country was Slow.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... AS COUNTRY WAS SLOW for Peter Our new motorway is a cross-country fort and we reinforcements speed between earthworks water-sumps and counterscarps, breaking out on wide glimpses, flying the overpasses-- ...

Sandwich.(Poem)
November 1, 2006... SANDWICH a building with brightly dressed people at the windows

Oooh Oooh Ah Ah.(Poem)
November 1, 2006... OOOH OOOH AH AH kookaburras laughing on the outside

The plasticine managers.(Philosophy & Ideas)
November 1, 2006... IN A SMALL TOWN not far from where I live is a rather unusual monument. It is a water-metering device known as the Dethridge Wheel. For anyone who has travelled through the irrigation districts of south=eastern Australia, such wheels are a...

Boys' Stuff.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... BOYS' STUFF On sheets of A4 he draws a rocket, a transformer, a car with speedy strokes and speedy wheels. The rocket has a haze of flare that bums up the paper atmosphere. The rocket--Soviet parade-size ...

A Blue Satin Suit With A Peplum.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... A BLUE SATIN SUIT WITH A PEPLUM What a pilgrimage to find it. Harvey Nichols, Marks & Sparks, Dorothy Perkins in main streets and side streets small shops and emporiums in search of something for my petite...

The toxic lure of fleet street.(Devine)
November 1, 2006... IF I HAD MADE IT in Fleet Street, I would have missed out on a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, in my own chauffeured limousine, with Dorothy Kilgallen, a nubile columnist from the New York Journal American sitting in my lap. That's something...

At the Taj Mahal.(Poem)
November 1, 2006... AT THE TAJ MAHAL Krishna stopped the car. "See those gates? On the other side are rickshaws, you must take one to the Taj. Please return in an hour, before it gets too dark. I must not linger, sir, mum, this is a...

How the opposition makes a difference.(Politics)
November 1, 2006... HAVING STUDIED political science since 1995, culminating in my completion of a PhD during 2005, I remain mystified by a major generalisation made in Australia's political science literature that there are no longer significant policy...

Bread Line.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... BREAD LINE Sarajevo Symphony cellist Vedran Smajlovic plays Albinoni's Adagio for victims of the Serb siege of the city, September 1992 I Along a wall cut crumbling as a loaf, brick dust and mortar a...

Ultra-violet: Exodus 8: 16-19.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... ULTRA-VIOLET Exodus 8: 16-19 Our living room windows were filled with hearth orange or screen-saver green, the blue of our wide-screens. Now they're trapped with blacklight as the sun drags the night ...

A brief history of change.(Society)
November 1, 2006... IT'S A GOOD MENTAL EXERCISE, I think, to take yourself back to a particular decade, and see what you can remember of it. It's said of the 1960s that if you can remember them, you probably weren't there. But the 1970s were different--less...

Fatal Familial Insomnia.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... FATAL FAMILIAL INSOMNIA My family has a secret aside the usual agog whispers of black sheep and the black dog it is the secret of insomnia that leads to the grave no-one knows when it will fall neither...

Hop.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Hop The grasshopper beats the shutter... Aha, but look the pixels caught the blur of legs, the spurt of sand! Remarkable really--to miss the grasshopper but catch its hop!

Stealing Chairs.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... Stealing Chairs Stealing chairs from Lygon Street restaurants is an art. You learn it at college; to sidle up to the prize and stride away as if it was stuck to the small of your back. Dave had four tucked...

The future of water.(Environment)
November 1, 2006... READY ACCESS to both fresh water and energy will become an increasingly important consideration for communities and nations in a likely turbulent twenty-first century undergoing climate change. In Australia the potential availability of around...

At A Dinner Party In Melbourne.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... AT A DINNER PARTY IN MELBOURNE I ducked out the back, and lit up with joy, A Cuban escape from the couples inside: They're happy, they're smiling, they're chatting And touching, they're laughing and planning. The fifth...

The Cry Of A Crow In Camberwell.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... THE CRY OF A CROW IN CAMBERWELL Voice of heat-shimmer and dust, Of dry dams, of dead lambs, Of fences decaying with rust. Of eyes plucked from corpses, Of work cast adrift In an ocean of grit, dirt and scrub....

A large crow in the doomed saloon.(Music)(spell checking manuscripts)
November 1, 2006... MY ADMIRATION for the vanishing profession of humans who check written copy before it reaches official print is, within certain limits, unbounded. They are being made extinct by such unpredictable inventions as spellcheck, but they have been...

A Lance for hire: 400 years of Don Quixote.(Literature)
November 1, 2006... MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO called it "the Spanish Bible"; Don Quixote may not be holy writ, but like all great literature it describes us. Cervantes steps out of Spain when its golden age had waned so rapidly as to seem "no more than an illusion" and...

Sun Protection Factor.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... SUN PROTECTION FACTOR Seasons of terrible sunburn the red imprint, the silent branding an orange-haired boy can be brutalised by the dehydrating, headache-making summer throbbing pain that hums as insistently as the...

The Flying Inn reconsidered.
November 1, 2006... WHEN I WAS A CHILD going through my late father's library, my maternal grandfather pointed out an old copy of G.K. Chesterton's The Flying Inn, published in 1914, and said: "That's a good story!" I wish now that Grandfather had lived long...

Two kinds of artistry.(Film)
November 1, 2006... JEAN RENOIR (1894-1979) has a special place in the carts of film critics. He is the only great director--possibly the only director--to have dedicated a masterpiece to the memory of a film critic. To be sure the circumstances were unique. The...

Sven Nykvist 1922-2006.(In memoriam)
November 1, 2006... FEW, VERY FEW, movie cameramen achieve the celebrity of actors and directors, a fact that is perhaps a little surprising as so many still photographers have achieved world fame--Brassai, Steiglitz, Doisneau, Adams, Cazneaux, Capa,...

But Isn't.(Poem)
November 1, 2006... BUT ISN'T Six weeks: there's hair again, a man's stubble, Prison-tough, it's almost voguish, The style of those normally denied style. Stranded there her glasses are like something left On a park seat--silly out of use...

Her Father's eyes.
November 1, 2006... Truths emerge amongst those of us who are destined to live in old city hotels. One of these is that you rarely get to know why a man has arrived from nowhere one day with a couple of suitcases. Another is that you will sometimes catch a glimpse...

Cold War blues: with one eye on Baghdad.(The Cold War, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, Comrade Roberts: Recollections of a Trotskyite)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... The Cold War, by John Lewis Gaddis; Allen Lane, 2006, $32.95. The Mitrokhin Archive II, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin; Allen Lane, 2005, $59.95. Comrade Roberts: Recollections of a Trotskyite, by Kenneth Gee; Desert Pea...

Notes towards a new renaissance.(Martin Fitzgerald)(James Franklin)(Alan Barcan)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Postmodernism in Education, by Alan Barcan, Martin Fitzgerald, James Franklin and Barry Spurr; Warrane College Monograph No. 11, Warrane College, University of NSW, 2006. I FIRST CAME FACE TO FACE with postmodernism eight years ago when I...

From under love's table.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002, by Sharon Olds; Random House, 2004, $34.95. SHARON OLDS (born 1942) is an American poet who has received many honours in her own country; most recently, in 1998-2002 she was the incumbent of the New...

Thank God for eccentrics.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R.S. Thomas, by Byron Rogers; Aurum, 2006, $49.95. The Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr, by Byron Rogers; Aurum, 2004, $24.95. R.S. THOMAS, by the time he died in 2000, was probably the...

Roaring through life.
November 1, 2006... WE JOURNALISTS just have to face it: our place is well down upon the bottom rungs of the literary ladder. The dizzy higher levels belong to novelists, biographers, short-story writers, essayists, critics and makers of belles lettres--you know...

Discretion.(Poem)
November 1, 2006... DISCRETION In the morning, you said we'd have to forget it. I thought your repentance did you credit but our sin felt so good, I couldn't regret it. Some things we never get to say. When, later, you'd bring your...