Quadrant articles from September 2008

Quadrant archives from September 2008

Suffering from AFMA.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), as mentioned in the article "Regulation and the Regulatory Burden" by Chris Berg (June 2008), would be a prime example of regulatory burden to the point of industry extinction. Its...

John Monash.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: Thank you for publishing the article "The Fox and the Hedgehog" by Simon Caterson (April 2008). I note that he quotes Lloyd George's description of Monash "as the only soldier of the First World War with the necessary qualities of...

AD, not CE.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: Bravo, Frank Pulsford. Bravo, Quadrant. Your explanation of the bogus dating game (Letters, June 2008) is spot on. Surprised at the use of these symbols by the National Library at an exhibition some years ago, I wrote objections in the...

Movie morality.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: Frank Devine shows a good display of optimism about today's society (May 2008). He finds much to criticise in films which deal with the battle between good and evil, but it's hard to know if he's picking on movie-makers or audiences....

Atheist howler.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: In response to Peter Arnold's letter (July-August 2008) in defence of atheism: Arnold cites "the grossest of congenital anomalies" occurring among children as evidence for atheism. This is a real howler. If there is no God and no...

Resisting the republican push.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2008... SIR: David Flint's article "The Head of State Debate Resolved" (July-August 2008) prompts me to offer a couple of suggestions. One is on a point of policy or tactics apparently adopted by Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (at least by its...

Satanic gas: the politics of carbon dioxide.(Environment)
September 1, 2008... CARBON IS THE SIXTH element in the periodic table. It is unique among the elements in the vast number and variety of compounds it can form. With hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements, it forms a very large number of compounds. There are...

Our new established religion.(Essay)
September 1, 2008... MANY REASONS have been put forward for John Howard's failure to win the 2007 election--negative reaction to Work-Choices, his refusal to abdicate in favour of Peter Costello, even a sense that he had just been in power too long--but there was...

Personals Ad.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... PERSONALS AD Luscious blonde Renaissance woman seeks Medici-style male human (Or alternatively, single man with time upon his hands) For the joys of conversation; food and drink; denunciation Of the follies of the age and...

Captain John: inside the Howard cabinet.(How Good Was Howard?)
September 1, 2008... JOHN HOWARD was a man under extreme pressure the first time I met him, back in 1987. For me, meeting the then Opposition leader was a momentous occasion. For Howard, it might easily have been a tedious distraction from resisting the "Joh for...

Knit.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... KNIT I am in love with you; I must create. I should knit something as useless as my love And as colourful. Some dreadful garment Uneven, too loose and too loud In soft, crazy yarn that twists around the needles ...

"One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world": Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008.(In memoriam)
September 1, 2008... Shukov went off to sleep, and he was completely content. Fate had been kind to him in many ways that day: he hadn't been put in the cells, the gang hadn't been sent to the Socialist Community Centre, he'd fiddled himself an extra bowl of...

To Go Away.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... TO GO AWAY is to unplug busyness, lock up routine, travel for eight hours, arrive at the Grand Hotel des Bains and unpack in a bedroom without a soupcon of trend but with four doors and French windows that...

Australian rules football as secret men's business.(Sport)
September 1, 2008... FOR SOME YEARS Australian rules football has been in the hands of feminist social engineers who wish to establish equity and social justice in the football community. The Australian Football League has submitted to these demands to change the...

Hijacking terrorism studies.(Universities)
September 1, 2008... IN THE REALM OF IDEOLOGY, the war on terrorism is over--terrorism won. Is this assessment too bleak? Perhaps, but seven years after 9/11 the signs are not good. Various commentators have described how "the war of ideas" against terrorism and...

The dubious quest for a national curriculum.(Education)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2008... A general state education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another... in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body....

Images.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... IMAGES The dictionary defines viaduct as a structure which carries a railway or road over a valley. But to me viaduct is the reddish arches beside Pymmes Brook, the cathedral aisle which slopes upwards past the...

Leonski's Grave.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... LEONSKI'S GRAVE West, the jet fighter rising from Hickham Field over the less silver though sunlit ocean is distant enough to be quiet, a leisured, tilting seabird. Here, the grass is light green, island green in the...

Wrong from first to last: the charlatanism of Edward Said.(Culture)(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... IBN WARRAQ is an apostate and a convert--an apostate from Islam and a convert to the glories of Western civilisation. As an apostate from "the religion of peace", naturally he uses a pseudonym. Ibn Warraq displays the enthusiasm of the convert,...

Hell, not heaven.(First Person)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I often used to wish I came from some other family. This is not an uncommon feeling in kids, who can easily become convinced that other people's families are better and more interesting than the one they've been born into....

How Music Is Made.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... How MUSIC IS MADE for Chris You make it and I wonder about it listening to what you navigate and sound in the midst of the orchestra with your clarinet enchanted--though you may not be--by what's around,...

The whirligig of time.(Speech)
September 1, 2008... CHANCELLOR, Provost, Fellows of the Senate, ladies and gentlemen: This occasion is for me a great honour and a great pleasure. The University has played a large role in my life. I cannot, to this day, drive past it and glimpse its towers,...

Man of the world.(Literature)(V.S. Naipaul)(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... HAVING WON the Nobel Prize, V.S. Naipaul has long ago reached that stage in a writer's career when anything he writes will be published. Sometimes, this is a good thing; freed from having to work for a "market", the writer can stop writing for...

Lethe.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... LETHE My father drinks from the spring of forgetfulness. Through the stillness of an afternoon, awash with reminiscence, he pauses, relatives long gone rising to whisper answers in his ear. In his dreams...

The democracy rock.(Devine)(Essay)
September 1, 2008... ONE MORNING when I was twelve my father woke me shortly after daybreak to tell me that the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, had died. My eyes stayed open long enough to note tear stains on my father's cheeks before I fell effortlessly...

Death at Sea.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... DEATH AT SEA You cannot place a cross On waves of words. There is no marker For the many deaths We die in others' mouths.

On the Street.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... ON THE STREET Henry stands on the corner His rug pulled round him tight It kept him warm on his pavement space All last night Now he's wrapped it round him Pulled it over his head And stands there on the...

Cole dresses his mother.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... COLE DRESSES HIS MOTHER Like Elizabeth I in the film with Helen Mirren undergoing a gynaecological examination. The sleeve of her dress comes off, a petticoat is yanked up a bodice divided. So does dresser Cole, aged ...

On David Williamson.(Theatre)(Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot)(Theater review)
September 1, 2008... BEHIND ME the ladies ate Maltesers, in a satirical manner, while talking of crumbling bones and ABC reruns of As Time Goes By. Seats ahead a Lily Brett novel was being waved about and animatedly discussed. We were waiting for the Melbourne...

Looking, but not too hard.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... LOOKING, BUT NOT TOO HARD There's a way to search requiring little effort. In fact it's best to concentrate on not trying hard at all. Like when you're hunting for hens' eggs which never show up at your insistence....

Aboriginal employment and the CDEP.(Australia)(Community Development Employment Projects)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2008... AMONG KEVIN RUDD'S numerous ,promises during his February 13 "Apology' was one concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) employment. "Within a decade", he said, the government undertook "to halve the widening gap in literacy,...

The Australian legend fifty years on.(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... IT CAN'T HAVE TAKEN the first colonials long to realise that the social fabric of the Old World quickly disintegrated on this continent. And it can t have been very long after that that the idea of an Australian attitude was born. Ever since,...

Humpback Whales.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... HUMPBACK WHALES Whalers called their songs the dark liturgy of Lucifer, the grunts and groans of his aggrieved, fallen angels, echoing through the scalloped chambers of the ships. Off Hawaii, long ago, I first...

Meditations After The Supernova.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... MEDITATIONS AFTER THE SUPERNOVA The sun goes supernova and all that remains is beauty. The blue and watery eye of our globe blinks and disappears without an elegy or valediction. Nothing escapes, the masses...

Religion in a secular society.(Religion)
September 1, 2008... THE JUDGMENT that we live in a secular society may reflect an historical aberration, a modern phenomenon, and largely an exclusively Western phenomenon, the recent judicial difficulties of Turkey's ruling AK Party notwithstanding (but I will...

Deakin and the centralising tendency.(The Constitution)(Alfred Deakin)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2008... IT HAS BECOME NORMAL, after any decision of the High Court affirming yet another claim by the Commonwealth that it possesses a heretofore unrecognised legislative power, for commentators, and even some High Court judges, to complain that this...

Self-Defence.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... SELF-DEFENCE (hommage a John Whitworth) Lady poets do not always wear their hair in braids Nor fornicate with fly-by-night directors. Nor do they ride like Boudicca and lead their men on raids While wearing golden Kevlar...

Nude or naked: Bill Henson's world.(Art)(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... AS THE AUSTRALIAN art world is a little chafing dish in a world of bubbling cauldrons, it seemed improbable that an artist s work could become fodder for broadsheets and tabloids, radio and television--for weeks on end. Those who knew of the...

Jeffrey Smart and the voyage to Europe.
September 1, 2008... NOW IN HIS EIGHTY-SIXTH year, Jeffrey Smart has lost none of his bravura, mischief and wit. For evidence you need look no further than his sell-out exhibition of twenty-six recent paintings, which occurred in Brisbane in May. Smart is a living...

Bad Day.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... BAD DAY the headache tree just hit me with a branch

Stealing doctors from the poor.(Health)
September 1, 2008... THE HEALTH WORKFORCE in Australia is made up of over 420,000 professionals employed across many categories of health provider. From the late 1980s to the late 1990s the Australian government capped the number of medical training places due to...

Hatred in the Balkans.(Film)
September 1, 2008... THE NIGHT THE NEWS of the capture of former President of Serbian Bosnia, Radovan Karadzic, reached Australia, SBS's Dateline ran footage of both Karadzic and army commander Radko Mladic in conversation with SBS's cameraman/producer David Brill....

Elwood and Morton.(Short story)
September 1, 2008... Elwood Campbell was a decent bloke and a nice guy and all that, no harm in him, but he was on the slow side. I won't say he was thick, because I don't think he was, but information could take a long time to percolate through to him. He didn't...

They've Changed the Guards.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... THEY'VE CHANGED THE GUARDS (for Jocey) We smile at the guards and they smile back, as our buggy crosses the forecourt and cameras outside the gates click. I introduce you to Security as my Sister. In the State...

Flood.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... FLOOD Fields lie buried beneath this water, a shimmering expanse a boat could pole across avoiding only bare trees marooned above the ripples and terns bobbing like exotic bait to lure the unwary eye. ...

On the side of the bullies.
September 1, 2008... On Burchett, by Tibor Meray; Callistemon Publications, 2008, $24.95. THIS BOOK by the well-known Hungarian author Tibor Meray has an unusual genesis. Meray and Wilfred Burchett worked together as propaganda journalists behind the communist...

Poems of quiet magic.(Poems 1980-2008)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Poems 1980-2008, by Jan Owen; John Leonard Press, 2008, $29.95. JAN OWEN'S WORK deserves to be better known outside the small world of poetry enthusiasts. Her new collection, Poems 1980-2008, contains selected poems from five previous...

The Mallee pioneers.(The Other Side of Sunset: Memories of One of the Last True Pioneer Settlements in Victoria)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... The Other Side of Sunset: Memories of One of the Last True Pioneer Settlements in Victoria, by Campbell Curtis; Campbell Curtis, 2008, $27.50. WE HAVE ALL heard stories of a lucky boot dislodging a clod of earth, to reveal a shining gold...

Double Standard.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... DOUBLE STANDARD If we were to praise the sex organs of animals with the ecstasy we raise for those of plants laughter's deluge would raze and render us poor poets wordless within days.

Pelican.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... PELICAN Aloft, transcendent, autocrat of the air, earthlings scanned, precise and smirking he comes in to land.

Portent.(Poem)
September 1, 2008... PORTENT The day has yet to begin and the kookaburras are already laughing.

Some Hollywood good guys.(God, Man, and Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ )(Book review)
September 1, 2008... God, Man & Hollywood." Politically Incorrect Cinema from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ, by Mark Royden Winchell; ISI, 2008, US$28. THE HOLLYWOOD FILM has been dominated by two eras of political correctness. The first...

Jews in the time of Jesus.(Judaism in Transition 175 BCE to 150 CE: Christian and Jewish Perspectives)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Judaism in Transition 175 BCE to 150 CE: Christian and Jewish Perspectives, edited by James S. McLaren; The Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria), 2008, $14.95. THIS LITTLE BOOK touches only briefly on Jesus, to history and posterity...

With spirits afloat.(A Political Rake's Progress: Verses Born of Frustration in Public Life and Joy in Private)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... A Political Rake's Progress, by John Hyde; Access Press, 2008, $30. POETRY CAN STRIKE without regard or respect for occupation. Among those generally acknowledged as among the greatest poets have been an actor-manager, a German professor,...

Paleo persuasions.(Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America's Culture War)(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America's Culture War, by Sam Francis, edited by Peter B. Gemma; FGF Books, 2007, US$21. THE CONTEXT of a book can matter as much as its content, and this is such a case. It's a work that invites conservatives to...

Church parade.(Ryan)(Essay)
September 1, 2008... THE POPE LEFT SYDNEY a few days ago, and I sit here still astonished by the extraordinary nature of his visit. I hadn't much considered it beforehand, beyond perhaps the trivial thought: "What a nuisance for Sydney--another total traffic...