Quadrant articles from October 2001

Quadrant archives from October 2001

Compassion, illegal immigration and hypocrisy. (Editorial).(Editorial)
October 1, 2001... HYPOCRISY and sentimentality have been the most significant aspects of the present debate about the treatment of unauthorised arrivals claiming to be refugees, especially those arriving by boat, and they have blossomed since the case of the...

Harold Stewart. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: It is unfortunate that Michael Cook, in his review of Michael Ackland's Damaged Men (June 2001), should express his dissatisfaction with the portrayal of James McAuley in this book by launching an attack on Harold Stewart. While I can...

Aboriginal education. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: Early this year I submitted an article to the Australian Journal of Education on Aboriginal education. In September I received a letter from the editor, Professor Simon Marginson, rejecting the article. The evaluation of one of the two...

New Zealand's destination. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: While Bob Catley (July-August 2001) is correct to say that New Zealand used to have one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, his statement that "this started to change in the 1970s" is a little misleading. As late as 1950, New...

Santamaria and spectrum. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: I thank Michael O'Connor for his courteous explanation (Letters, September 2001) of how he sees the history of the early link between the Australia Defence Association and the National Civic Council and his being executive head of the...

Poul Anderson. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: Hal Colebatch's piece on Poul Anderson (June 2001) is excellent as far as it goes, but it doesn't do Anderson full justice. Colebatch is sound on Anderson's narrative power, versatility, sense of humour, romantic spirit and devotion to...

Thirty years in their teens. (Letters).
October 1, 2001... SIR: I hope that Clive James, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Peter Carey, Richard Neville, Tom Keneally, Robert Manne, Robert Hughes, Anne Summers, David Williamson, Peter Porter, Barry Oakley, Hillary McPhee, Robyn Nevin and every other...

Does Australia have a strategic direction? The benefits of strategic discontinuity. (Defence).
October 1, 2001... The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms. --Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison (1946) IN THE APRIL ISSUE of...

Why there should be no aboriginal treaty. (Argument).
October 1, 2001... IN MAY THIS YEAR, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission published a booklet that spelled out just what is involved in its demand for a treaty. Entitled Treaty: Lets Get it Right, the booklet is targeted predominantly at white...

The gymnast Valeria Vatkina. (Three Portraits).(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Legs counterposed like six o'clock, her stretch is bowstave, sky foot to ground foot. A point shoe tips each. She leans out around herself then, and gazes intently past her hand at what she blazes: a switchback trail...

The aboriginal cricketer: mid-19th century. (Three Portraits).(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Good-looking young man in your Crimean shirt with your willow shield up, as if to face spears, you're inside their men's Law, one church they do obey; they'll remember you were here. Keep fending off their...

National dress--madame de Tarczynska. (Three Portraits).(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Ceremonial and truly ethnic clothes may almost escape fashion. For centuries on end the hemlines of national costume could allow women feet. Before the Party or tourism "national" meant local and peasant ...

Being no good. (Philosophy & Ideas).(criticism of Professor Simon Blackburn, his works attitudes and beliefs)
October 1, 2001... THE BRITISH PHILOSOPHER G.E.M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe, who died in Cambridge on 5th January this year, had friends and acquaintances in many universities both in her homeland and abroad. She also had some enemies, of whom Professor Simon...

Credo.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... As a candle-flame believes in the speed of light I believe in you. As the shoelace of glass believes in the full grown eel I believe in you. As Perth in Australia believes in Perth in Scotland, As an old hand's...

Fiat lux.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Let there be braziers, holophotal lenses, Polished golden flags, champagne and candles, Let rays shine through the rose window of Chartres, Let there be cowslips, myriad splats of rain, Trilobites, new parliaments,...

Singer's plea for selflessness.(Peter Singer)
October 1, 2001... SINCE THE FIRST editions of Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics were published in the 1970s, Peter Singer has emerged as one of the most influential and formidable ethical philosophers in the world. He has had an important, if controversial,...

Alan Olding. (Tribute).(Obituary)
October 1, 2001... ALAN OLDING, who died in Katoomba Hospital on 21st August, was above all a philosopher; a critical and creative thinker, insatiable in his quest for nderstanding. He pursued that quest with amazing steadiness, through many vicissitudes. It is...

Choppy waters. (Rational Economics).(Australian economy)
October 1, 2001... EMINENT ECONOMIST, former head of Treasury and politician, John Stone, is optimistic about Australia's economic prospects ("Sailing Ahead", SavingsFactory Review, August 2001). I too have moments of optimism, although I note that we are sailing...

Yogi-boy.(bullies)(Poem)
October 1, 2001... YOGI-BOY Time makes the faces disappear like the flecks on water where light hit. Their lives go up into the air Yet we breathe it. This schoolboy cricketer marks his crease, then squints upfield to...

Will treasury expose itself again? (Politics).
October 1, 2001... TREASURY SECRETARY Ken Henry is mulling over a very delicate problem: whether to implement a tentative plan--devised, but not acted on, by his predecessor Ted Evans--to publish as a matter of course the department's advice to the Treasurer. A...

Goodbye John, goodbye Betty. (Argus).(personal names)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN names are under threat and will soon be a thing of the past unless something is done to rescue them, according to the newly formed Forename Defence League. "Where are all the Matthews, Marks, Lukes and Johns, the...

Ask the oracle. (Television).(Pick A Box quiz show)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... One of the all-time favourites of Australian TV is coming back to our screens as part of the ALP's "Knowledge Nation" initiative. It's the ratings-topping Pick A Box, the fantastic Channel 9 quiz show which, week by week throughout the 1960s,...

The road to power?(Labor capping petrol costs)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... OF THE TWO major political parties, Labor is supposedly the more environmentally-aware." So it comes as something of a surprise that Canberra's most prominent size XOS-wearer has committed Labor, if elected, to "capping" the price of petrol....

Cast no stones.(Bishop Owen Featherhead discourages criticism of human rights in China; Olympic Games in Beijing)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The welcome decision to hold the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is "an act of reconciliation of the kind we sorely need in this country", writes Bishop Owen Featherhead in his diocesan magazine The Ghasthurst Churchperson. "For too long...

End game.(consumerism)(Poem)
October 1, 2001... END GAME We work so hard we're like puritans in pursuit of consumer glut. Or is it that we're harridans shrieking outside gates that are shut? Or like beggars, swindlers, pimps? Pallid students or slick...

The dark.(poem)(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Something rustled in the dark, in my head, in my heart, that fixed in me a sense of hope. And something else, apart from all that grew and sometimes flew took my inner self aside and tried to make me ...

Glasgow-Edinburgh.(poem)(Poem)
October 1, 2001... GLASGOW-EDIBURGH Dawn frost crunched through Kelvinbridge As I set out with my packed lunch En route for Scotia's darling seat, Heading west towards Abbotsinch Down the snell, grey, salmoned Clyde Where once I...

On military courage. (History).
October 1, 2001... I will go with you and suffer whatever I must suffer. For I consider that you are my country and my friends and comrades; and with you, I think I shall be honoured wherever I may be, but without you, I think I am not able either to help a...

The Jokers.(rape)(Poem)
October 1, 2001... THE JOKERS Sworn to ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian campaign they called themselves The Jokers Commander Anto in charge Was she smiling as the fist smashed her mouth? Was she laughing when her legs...

Packing.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... PACKING Returning from the hospital he sat, numbed, for an hour in her favourite chair. His eyes were dry. Later, in the bedroom, he took down the large suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, began to...

A long time between murders. (First Person).(memories of village of Garnant in Wales and reflections on its developments over the past half century)
October 1, 2001... FOR THE LAST sixteen years I've lived in Washington, DC, a city in which a half-dozen murders in the course of a weekend are not uncommon. For the first sixteen years of my life I lived in a community that witnessed only one murder in more than...

Away with the campers.(counselling at a camp for young adults with mental disabilities)
October 1, 2001... SCOTT RETURNED from his very first camp on a Sunday, two days after the camp had finished, having spent the intervening time, as he put it, "winding down" in Ballarat. Jessica, who had introduced him to camp, came with him, and when she left,...

Prayer.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Give me dignity more than grace if a choice must be made. And multiplicity in every case where fragmentation's stayed. Let me find secluded places and the strength to atone, to loose the tighter traces and...

Pigheadedness.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... There's such a thing as common ground, I have to think that's so. Did it come and go, or was it that I was too hidebound and failed to see ravines that lay between us and an even better promised land? We...

Obits.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... One turns to the obituaries with a mixture of interest, respect and relief, and release. Relief that the very best others could do is done, that they can give up trying to impress under the sun. Meanwhile...

Therese Denny's a changing race. (Film).(making of 1960's documentary on Australian aborigines considered)
October 1, 2001... WHO IS THERESE DENNY? Well you might ask 2001; but in 1964 Denny was modestly famous in Australia and Great Britain. Her interviews with celebrities such as Danny Kaye and John Mills had been heard all over Australia on The Showman and Denny...

After the rain. (Story).(Short Story)
October 1, 2001... Just before six o'clock on Friday evening, Cybella and Gordon get out of Cybella's Honda. They walk down Bondi Road, passing the tattoo shop, the vegetarian restaurant and yet another new Thai restaurant. The road is unusually quiet and Cybella...

Spit. (Story).(Short Story)
October 1, 2001... It was cool, with a light spit of rain in the dark touching first his arms and then his face. Robert lifted his face to the blackness above. No stars, no breeze, the clouds heavy-feeling in the air, but unseen. He was walking away from...

John Maynard Keynes: Volume Three: Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946. (Economic Revolutionary).
October 1, 2001... John Maynard Keynes: Volume Three: Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946, by Robert Skidelsky; Macmillan, 2000, $60. ROBERT SKIDELSKY expresses nostalgia in the introduction to this third (and final) volume of is biography of John Maynard Keynes,...

The Pommy Town Years. (Love and Works).
October 1, 2001... The Pommy Town Years, by William Claridge, Edited by Helen Macallan; William Michael Press (University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW), 2000, $19.80. NOTHING COULD be more old-hat," wrote the conservative economist Edward Luttwak in a...

Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty. (Tom Paine for the Eminem Era).
October 1, 2001... Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty, by Karl Shaw; Virgin/Broadway Books, 2001, $16.95. THE TOTAL, insignificance in Continental Europeans eyes of Manning Clark, Henry Reynolds and James Griffin is predictable. More...

Can't we talk about it?(Enoch Powell)
October 1, 2001... NEARLY NINETY, "Bill" Deedes, simply carries on with his career as England's most interesting journalist. Along the way he has managed, just incidentally, a stint as an honourable as well as an Honourable MP and cabinet minister, and to win an...