1 - Eureka Street

~ LORETO ~ ,~ , ~~,:: : 11,;: , Hal lOpen DayA r-eal day rn the school. Prep to Year 12.Wednesday November I. 1995 9am - 3.30pmVCE Art ExhibitionOfficral Opening of the VCE Ar-t ExhibitionWednesday November I. 19953.30pm- 4.30pm.Exhrbrtron dates: I, 2 & 3 November· 19959am - 3.30pm in Senror- GymnasrumFR WILLIAM JOHNSTON SJSpend a day w ith well-known Irish j esu it,Fr William j oh nston SJ, lectu rer at SophiaUniversity in Tokyo, author on prayer, andexpert on Christi an-B uddhist dialogue.Melbourne:Sunday 26 November 1995 11 am - 4pm.BYO lun ch. Xav ier Coll ege Kew(enter via Charles Street),$10 or donation.Further information: Jim Slattery (03 ) 98822977, Gerard Murnane (05 3) 361793or Nick Galante (03) 9853 2346Sydney:Saturday 9th December 1995 1 0.30am - 4pm.BYO lunch. St Ignatius College Riverview,$10 donation. Further information:(02) 882 8232 CLC Officeor Mark Diggi ns (02 ) 418 639 1Presented by Christian Life Community_PSYCHOLOGYcJPINIFEXBeyond Psychoppression:A Feminist Alternative TherapyBetty McLellanOne of Australia's most highlyrespected feminist therapists examinesthe tense relationship between feminismand psychotherapy.ISBN 1 875559 33 7 pb $24.95Will to Violence:The Politics of Personal BehaviourSusanne KappelerEloquent and passionate. A powerful critique of thestructural forces that control our relationships.ISBN 1 875559 45 0 HB $39.95 • ISBN 1 875559 46 9 pb $24 .95Tel. 03 9329 6088 • Fax 03 9329 9238504 Queensberry St (PO Box 212). North Melbourne. Victoria 30512 EUREKA STREET • O cTOBER 1995

Volume 5 Number 8October 1995A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theologyCover: Geraldine Doogue,Gareth Evans and H.V. Evatt.Graphics pp7, 12, 13, 17, 23, 35-36,42-43, 48-49, 51, 54, 57 bySiobhan jacksonCartoon p6, by Dea n Moore.Cartoon p60, by Peter FraserEurel< o Street maga zineJesuit PublicationsPO Box 553Richmond V1C 3 12 1T el (03 )9427 73 11Fax (03)9428 4450CoNTENTS4COMMENT7TAKING LIBERTIESD enis Minns on tolerance.8LETTERS11CAPITAL LETTER12NEITHER A BORROWERNOR A LENDER BEBill Garner on the fate of public libraries.15ARCHIMEDES16HOME TRUTHSMoira Rayner18FRANKLY GERALDINEGeraldine Doogu e gives the Church alecture.23RIGHT ON TRACKPeter Pierce picks them at Rosehill.24REPORTSJim Davidson meets som eindependent thinkers.Jam es Griffin reviews Australian­Filipino relations (p25).26EVANS ON EVATTGareth Evans commemorates H.V. Evatt36STORIESGerard Windsor ponders anti-Semitisismin MTs Laszlo's torte; Trevor Hayrecalls a Ukrainian friendship in SomeDesolate Shade (p42).40NEWMAN IN MANUSCRIPTEdmund Campion reflects on the lifeof John H enry N ewman in the light ofnew manuscript discoveries.48BOOKSPeter Steele reviews two books of discovery,Gm at Southem Landings : AnAnthology of Antipodean Twvel, JanBassett (ed.) and The OxfoTd Book ofExplmation, Robin Hanbury-Tenison(ed.) (p48); Max Charlesworth fossicksin The Modem Catholic Encyclopedia,Richard P. McBrien (eel.) and Encyclopediaof Catholicism, Mich ael Glazierand Monika H ellwig (eds) (p50); JimDavidson reviews N elson Manclela'sau tobiography Long Wall< to FTeedom(p52); Ray Cassin lists the Eleven SavingViTtues, Ross Fitzgerald (ed. ) (p54) .55OPERABruce Williams reviews the CharnberMade Opera production Th e Bunow.57THEATREGeoffrey Milne goes all over theAustralian theatrical shop.59FLASH IN THE PLANReviews of the films: W ateTwmld, Th eSepawtion, That Eye, Th e Shy,D'Artagnan's DaughteT, All Men AmLims, Exotica, Nine Months and TheConfmmist.in the 1995 Daniel Mannix Lecture. 62WATCHING BRIEF34NEW POETRY63Poem s by Peter Porter, Peter Steele SPECIFIC LEVITY(pp39 & 45 ), and Jack Hibberd (p46).V OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 3

C OMMENT: 1A magazine of public affairs, the artsand theologyPublisherMi chael H. Kell y SJEditorMorag FraserConsulting editorMic hael McGirr SJAssistant edito rJon GreenawayProdu ctio n assistants:Paul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes,Catriona Jackson, C hris Jenkins SJ,Paul Ormonde, Tim Stoney,Siobhan Jackson, Dan Disn eyContributing editorsAdelaide: Greg O'Kell y SJBrisbane: Ian Howells SJPerth: Dea n MooreSydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer,Gerard WindsorEuropea n co rrespondent: Damien SimonisEdi torial boa rdPeter L'Estrange SJ (chair),Marga ret Coady, Marga ret Coffey,Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales,Marie joyce, Kevin McDonald,Jane Kelly IBVM,Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJBusiness manage r: Sy lva na Sca nnapi egoAdvertising rep resentative: Tim StoneyPatronsEureka Street gratefully acknowledges thesupport of Colin and Angela C

libraries. Part of the secret is to have a peppering ofbig names. This year the drawcard is Ruth Rendell,whose visit is funded by two publishers, the BritishCouncil and the festival itself. 'She'll fill any hall sowe'll do anything to get her,' ays Clews. Some of thebig nam es, however, are notoriously elusive.'Every year, for many years, we've sent a letterto Susan Sontag saying please come to the nextfestival. She's written back saying she couldn't possiblycome on only twelve m onths' notice. So w e gotclever and invited her to come in two years' time.She tol d us that she couldn't possibly plan so farahead.'Clews has also been keen to attract IsabelAllende.'Apparently she m akes decisions based on herdreams. So her publishers sent her a great delivery ofAustralian fluffy toys, thinking that if she went tosleep with a stuffed koala sh e might dream ofAustralia and com e h ere.'Brisbane's Warana Writers' Week, also held inOctober, is not similarly laced with overseas visitors.According to its director, Wendy Mea d, Warana simplyhasn 't got access to the support that would makethis possible. 'We don't get much h elp from the publishers because they are mostly based in Sydney andMelbourne, ' she says.'There is another side, however. They must beaware down south that most of the young literary prizewinners come from Queensland. Three of the last fourVogel winners are from here. We're proud of our regionalwriters and are quite consciously celebratingthem.'When Mead took over the 1994 program , shebrought to the job 20 years' experience in arts administration.She is aware of a challenge in maintainingthe relaxed atmosphere of Warana while keeping visitingwriters on their m ettle.Australian writers' festivals steer a middle coursebetween the two styles which predominate overseas.At the Toronto festival, apparently, writers wait backstagebefore the curtain rises and they go out to do areading like a singer performing an aria. The readerand writer don' t intersect . But there are otherextrem es: Clews found himself this year at the celebratedHay-on -Wye festival in England and wasastonished at how slap-dash it was.'We sat in badly erected tents which were blowingeverywhere in an English summer ga le. TheWomen's Institute had spelt out "Hay-on-Wye-Literary-Festival"in ivy across the back of the tent.' Clewesmight have added what Eureka Street's editor learnedwhen sh e visi ted it this year: Hay-on-Wye has a fewproblem s adapting to the literary tourists. The 'foreigners'who descend in their thousands to spend timeand money in this tiny village with its famous bookshopsare treated like carriers of a mild form of BlackDeath, and quarantined, as far as possible, in thewindy tents in the paddocks. Don't bother asking thelocal fo r directions!Australian festivals, by contrast, are amiable,often casual occasions. 'We're trying to bring readersand writers together in a way that makes them bothhappy,' says Wendy Mead.Many people do com e to gawk at their favouritewriters. But there's more. Clews says that people whocome for facile reasons som etimes make importantdiscoveries.He speaks of the difficult but important task thisyear of devising panels that deal with history, withthe responsibility of writers and the interplay betweenfact and fiction. These are issues that continue to burn,both in n ewspapers and in books.•Michael McGirr is Eumka Sueet's consulting editor.C OMMENT: 2D OROTHY L EEMissing the pointIT WAS A WARM wee OMc lot " cold Ftidoy night inwinter. A procession of wom en escorted the Professorin. When she reached the front of the hall, a folk-singersang a welcome and a dancer danced, celebrating women's spiritual and theological awakening-an awakening symbolised in the unassuming figure ofElisabeth Schl.issler Fiorenza, Professor of Divinity atHarvard Divinity School, and author of In memory ofher:A feminist theological reconstruction of clJiistianorigins ( 1984), now a classic of ch ristian feminism.After such a beginning, the lecture itself was ananti-climax: prosaic and hard work. The audience,m ainly women, filling the large lecture theatre of thePharmacy College and spilling upwards to the balcony,listened with grave attention, wending their waythrough long sentences, heaped-up

ca tive structures of oppression', the vision n everthelessemerged for the patient Listener: a vision of a communitycommitted to libera ti on a nd radic.:ddemocracy, without hierarchy or priestly caste orstructures of subordination.For Professor Schi.issler Fiorenza, this vision wasgrounded in the notion of a 'discipleship of equals'which, she argued, lies at the heart of the basileia(the kingdom of God) in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.As a Jew among Jews, Jesus formed a movementaround him which included women, the poor, and theoutcasts of society. Equ.J lity and inclusiveness werethe key features of the Jesu s-movem ent. Its challenge5A'1- W ~'< D6t-l'-r WE:Po 5oM f. " SUPRE.!V\~s"COVf..Q.S ?'-.:: .'· 0~,~ fv\D ~was directed agai nst the structures and ethos of Romanimperialism, down to and including the patri

feminist theological discourse) and CatherineLaCugna (God for us.: The Trinity and christian life)have presented the same vision of mutuality and liberationin more personal terms. At the centre of theirwritings is a transformed understanding of the classicalchristian doctrine of the Trinity. For them Godrepresents a communion of persons, a profoundly personalinter-relationship without hierarchy or domination.The language these feminist writers have usedto describe this trinitarian God-all of it ultimatelyinadequate-draws on feminine as well as masculineimagery: God as Mother, God as Lady Wisdom, Hostess,Nourisher. In this alternative feminist vision,Jesus of Nazareth is not just the founder of the movement,but also its living heart. In Jesus, God has becomehuman, ga thering the whole creation intowholeness and freedom, into the love and mutualitythat already exists in God. In this interpretation, Jesusis not just one among m any, and his vision is notUtopian. Jesus of Nazareth represents the incarnationof God, the entry of the Creator into creation. Hisdeath and resurrection are the key-stones of the basileia,the means by which God's beneficent reigncomes to birth: through pain and struggle, throughdeath to life.Without such an understanding of divine presencein creation, Schussler Fiorenza's theological vision,however attractive, finally leaves us at astand-still. The 'dangerous m emory' vanishes, becauseits heart has been cut out, that deep centre sustainingpassion and feeding hope. There are more waysthan one to destroy a m emory: totalitarian structuresand hierarchical caste-systems have undeniably hada spectacular success rate. Yet, by letting go the centreand starving ourselves of the rich content, weemploy a less dramatic but equally effective m eansof achieving the sa me thing: enfeebling the memoryuntil it fades into a desert of ideality and wishfulthinking. Patriarchal, kyriarchal, and hierarchicalstructures unquestionably need to be replaced in thechurch by openness, mutuality, and the sharing ofpower. However, only a belief in the humanity of Godrevealed uniquely in Jesus can establish the basileiain mutuality and intimacy. In the end, women [andm en) need a realistic vision and a living movementgrounded in incarnation, paschal mystery and anembodied spirituality.Professor Schussler Fiorenza has no place for theologyin this sense, no time for the rich resources thatspirituality brings to women's struggle for freedomand elf-esteem . The singing and dancing at the beginningof the session, to m y mind, articulated thatlively, poetic incarnate heart of the gospel which, forall its worth, was ultimately lacking in the lectureitself.•Dorothy Lee is Uniting Church Minister and a biblicalscholar.LTal

LettersHate mailFrom Noel TurnbullPaul Ormonde (Septe mbe r) is characteristicallyperceptive in raising theissue of why Oliver Cromwell 'seem sto remain in Irish m emory even morestrongly and bitterly than the famine'.The question of why Cromwell isso hated - partic ularly when comparedwith any numbe r of Englishmonarchs- has been the s ubject ofmuch research by Toby Barnard.A short summary of his work canbe found in Images of OliverCromwell: Essays for and by Roge1Howell fnr, cdi ted by R.C. Richcmison(Manchester University Press 1993).It seem s probable that the uniquelyvenomous view of Cromwell dateslargely from the 19th century andappears to be a product of the uses towhich the works of Prendergast, Leckyand Froudc were put. The Unionistspro jected their own contemporaryagenda on to Cromwell and provokedan unsurprising reaction.Cromwell was only in Ireland from15 Augu st 1649 to 29 May 1650. Withoutjustifying Drogheda one cannothelp but wonder with Barnard whyCromwell- rathe r than Grey, Essex,Sidney, Mountjoy, Schomberg, Ginkel,Duff or Humbcrt-came to personifyEnglish oppression .As I mentioned to Pa ul Ormonderecently, the most hated Cromwelliancontempo rary was probably Ormonde!fames BuLleT, Dul

T his m outh,courtesy of Pengu in Books,the writer of each let ter wepublish w ill receive, w ithn o offence intended,a copy ofThe Idiotby Fyodor Dostoyevsky.Penguin C lassics,RRP $10.95High Court to recognise that decisionsm ade by persons w it h Iris h backgroundshave shaped Australi an society.Henry B. Hi ggins, Irish-born ofpoor non-Catholic parents, altered therelatio ns hip between capi ta l andlabour when he adopted the ethicalcon cpt of the basic wage.His decision as Presid ent of theArb itrati on Court in 1907 in Th e HarvesterCase when he looked to theneeds of a fa m ily in fixing a wagechanged Australi an society.Exa mples are available fro m ourwri ters, teachers, academi cs, journalists,union leaders, social reformersand indeed all professions.As to finan ce, apart fro m thenumerous ban kers and financiers ofIrish origin one ca n easily point to them em bers of p ublic admin is trationsuch a Sir Henry Sheehan, the son ofa railway worker whose parents migratedfrom Cork. He became ccretaryto the T reasury 1932 and Governor ofthe Commonwealth Ba n k 1938.Bu t, perh aps th e greatest influenceof the Irish immigran t was their habitof entering into so-called ' mixed marriages'so lamented by Bishop Carr inhis reports to the Vatican. Despite theCa t ho I ic hierarchy adopting a moresevere approach to the 'la mentableabuse' than that recom mended fro mRome, the practice continued. Scratcha third-generation Austra lian with anEnglish, Scottish, Italian or Germanname and wi th a bit of luck you'll fi ndan Irish grandmother.Vivian HillDrysdale, VICNot my typeFrom fohn W. DoyleM any popular books printed fortyyea rs ago and more are easier to readthan contemporary ones of the samekind from the sa me publishers.Part of the expla nation m ay betypologica l: in the older books lineswere often et more widely apart, withmore even spacing between words anda thin space bet ween pun ctuationmarks and the words they followed. Inrecent publica tions, colons and fu llstops ca n be almost invisible and quot­

haves and have nots which make secu rity, o nce an a bstract noun, a hugeindus try toda y. C reed a nd its s hadow,poverty, t hreate n the qua lity of life ofthis a nd future gen e rations whose inheritancewill be a de ple te d e n viron ­ment, m esses of dangerous waste,deple ted forms of li fe, so that s urvivalw i II need to be sought before the re canbe quality of life.Austra li a n poverty is the problemrecently documented by Bob Gregory'sdi scussio n pa pe r o n the widening gapin Aus tra li a be tween the rich and thepoor: The M acro Economy and 1 heGrowt h of G lw t lOs and Urban Povert yin Aus tralia (A ddress to the NationalPress C lub, April 26 1995).It is worth wondering why the twothoughtful world summits, the Gen ­e ra l Congrega tion of the Jes u its andt h e United Nations, cam e to diffe rentconclus io n s or didn ' t join forces.Could it be that the social environment of t h e jesuits le d the m to a particulardiagnosis/ T h e more we studypeople

The man behind the curtainA cmiou'fatali'm app

Vi EWPOINTNeither a borrower,nor a lender beBill Garner looks at new regimes for public librariescurious andunfortunate characteristic: T hey arenatural victims. They attract violence.T his has been going on fo r atleast four thousand years. In LlllCertaintimes, libraries try to li e lowand stay very still, but it doesn'twork. They alw

for Mr Kennett to think of postponingthe return of even limiteddem ocracy t o M elbourne C ityCouncil. That it was a notion fromwhich he backed away can give littlecomfort. For him, democracy hasclea rly become sonl.Cthingyou can take orleave.But the libraries issueis especially closelyintertwined with thereform of local govern- - -rJ.--"m ent because it was viathe dem ocratic machineryof municipalgovernment that thefree lending librarieswere introduced in thefirst place. And withoutthat machinery inplace the libraries arel eft undefend edexceptby direct action.Business som etim.es de li versservices effi ciently. But one thingthat business is not efficient at deliveringis democracy. At the Victorianlevel, life under the Commissionershas demonstrated that beyonddoubt. The democratic conceptof 'representation' is rarelyfound in their statements of purpose.In the city of Port Phillip itdoesn't even feature in the new electoralproposals. It just doesn 't fitinto the preferred model of a 'boardof directors' running an enterpriseservicing 'clients'. Commissionersput forward artificially manipulated'consultation' processes as a sop, butthat has now been revealedNfor the charade it is.0 1T H ERE REA LL Y IS a COntradictiOn he re. And yet de m ocra cyremains, at least in lip service, thebasic value system in Australia. Ithas certainly been, until now, anideology to which all parties are com ­mitted. Has the citizenry voted for achange to this?It has been an axiom of democracythat it requires an informed citizenry.Free access to public lendinglibrari es has become a prime indi catorof a functioning democracy. Theyhave becom e repositories of dem o­cratic wi dom and an expr sion ofdemocracy in action.Together with free public ccluca-.iif:7:.=:1!;z,:;r.;,~:~...-...,.;;;~~.. tribute to the developmentof democratic principles' .But, what was obvious in1976 is no longer obvious.The immedia tc question,however, is: will tenderingout the function of librariansenhance cxisti ng libraryservices or will it, by theapplication of commercialcriteria to library operations, inevi ­tably lead to further privatisation,restrictive managem ent practice, andthe global imposition of user-pa ys?By what right do people questionthe government in this matter ? Theyvoted them in. Democracy issa tisfi ed, at least at the statelevel. At the municipal levelit is, dem onstrably, a withdrawableprivilege. Librariesare publicly owned (which,these cla ys, means owned bythe incumbent government).It is the government's responsibilityto manage them efficiently.Trust us, they say,we know what we're doing.But do they? They haven'tpresented any convincing argumentsthat CCT will bebetter for libraries. People arebeing asked to take it on faith.And anything they do is ignoredif it criticises the propo al.Nor are there any precedents. Evenin the Mecca of priva ti sa ti on, theUK, tendering out of librari es wasrejected in prin ciple.Citizens have a special right tobe concerned about the fate of theirlibraries. They belong to them in acon crete w ay which cannot bewritten off as the sentimentalexpression of an ab tract idea of publicownership. Free local publicI ibraries owe their very existence totion, free publicly-funded librarieshave been generally regarded as themost efficient m eans to achieve aninformed and democratically ablecitizenry. This used to go withoutsaying. In 1976 in the Report of theCommittee into PublicLibraries it was stated: 'N oargument needs to be madefor the criticality of the existenceof public libraries ...and the importance of an informedcitizenry, which understandsand is able to concitizenaction.Public lending libraries arc notsome sort of gift of the state. There isn o legi sla tion whi ch requiresmunicipal authorities to providepublic libraries at all. Indeed, hi storically,many municipalities initiall yresisted the idea. That they exist atall is testimony to the hard work anddetermination of small groups ofcitizens, not of the benevolence ofgovernments, state or local.The story of the St Kilda PublicLibrary is just one example. Thereare many others. In 1947, fed upwith the poor service provided bythe pri va tely run subscription librarieswhich were the only places fromwhich books could be borrowed,citizens lobbied the St Kilcla Councilfor a free public library. The suggestionwas rejected out of hand. In1954 the Council again refused. AsAnne Longmire writes: 'The towncl erk prepared long reports whichshowed that a library would be anunwarranted administrative andfin ancial burden'.Clea rly, providing a library wasnot a 'core business' then, and whow ould b e foolis henough to think, inthe present climate,that it might not be sorega rd ed aga in ? In1961 the idea wasaga in re jected. TheCouncil refused toconduct a poll on theissue. In the end itbecam e a bi-partisa npolitica l issue, but itwas only when councillorsactually beganlosing their seats overthe issue that, in 1967,the proposal finall ygo t the nod and thelibrary was eventually opened in1973. It had been a twenty-year struggle.All of this is within living mem ­ory. N o wonder people arc angrythat an un elected body should presumeto change the fundamentalstructure of the library service.But this onl y partl y expl ains theintense passion this issue arouses.Politicians should beware: actuallibntry u age is only the tip f theiceberg. Ju st as the benefi ts of librariesaccrue to a much wider ra nge ofV oLUME 5 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 13

AN OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE & WORK INANOTHER CULTUREAustralian Volunteers Abroad (AVAs) work in challengingpositions in developing countries. The work is hard but satisfyingand require s skill, adaptability and cultural sensitivity. Salariesare modest but cover overseas living costs. A VAs work in manyoccupations but at present there is a need for applicants in thefollowing field s:• hea lth• community development• agriculture • computer technology• education • science• economics • administrationIf you have professional or trade qualifications and relevant workexperience in Australia , contact the Oversea s Service Bureau orsend in the coupon below.Applications are also welcome from recent graduates forthe Volunteer Graduate Scheme.Applications are being received now for 1996.V"j) Overseas Service Bureau.-----------------------------1YES, 1/'Ne want to find out more about the AVA program. 1IMr / Ms/Mrs/Miss/Dr:Address:Occ upation:P/ code:1 P.O. Box 350 Fitzroy VIC 3065 Phone: 03 9279 1788 u; 1~----------------------------- ~THE EXPERIENCE OF YOUR LIFEr----------------,~@J'Some countrieshave seen the useof systematicsexual violenceagainst women asa weapon of warto degrade andhumiliate wholepopulations'Dr Boutros Boulro\·Gh.th(UN Secretary General}Arnncsty Inte rnatio nal is actingto o utlaw this "we apo n'- forever.... IOIII '"Itkt• IIW, \ ' .tll"t' "''' .,] !-.\0\t'lllrtlt' lll ....]lt 't'''''' tlll\ l.ulutg to 111\t''ll g o~tt· .uul ptllll'h.dltl't '' In tlwi1 ,Uttwd lnttt'' · .di•H\tllg r.qwto llt't \1"1lltt• lllt·lil..~·• ' \II I HI III II ).: 111 !..\t'liJI · t \tlllll ' 'ol\ h,b !Jcl' ll .Ifill·I I

Wh at has changed such that weshould believe that this will now bereversed? But does any librarian,other than one aspiring to a seniormanagerial position, really think thatthey will be better off in terms ofsa lary and conditionsunder a tendered-outarrangement?If such an arrangementis goingto save money, notto mention enablethe su ccessful tendererto rake off thefee, isn't the onlyway this will bedon e by cuttings taff, employingcasuals, increasingwork loads I That'swhat happensever ywh ere else.Does anyone reallythink it won't happen to publiclibraries?The only place librarians can lookto for support in this matter is fromthe public, their borrowers. We havea deep common interest in this. Inthe absence of democratic machineryat the local level, direct citizenaction is now the only gu aranteethat free public lending libraries haveof their continued existence.The issu e is profound. If youviolate free public libraries, you violatedemocracy. But democra cy, weare now being reminded, is not somethingwe can take for granted. It canatrophy unless it is constantly andvigorously exercised.Wh ether democracy survives atthe local, or any, level is ultimately,up to the citizens. The direct attackson democracy being experienced inVictoria are having the effect of reinvigoratingit. The defence of democracyis just beginning and, as thelibrary issu eshows, it can draw ondeep wells. Business may be a wily,infinitely mutable ph enomenon, butdemocra cy, too, can take a thousandfor ms: if it is pushed in at one placeit wi ll certainly pop out at another. •Bill Garner is a Melbourne playwrightand screen writer. Hi s playsinclude Sunday Lun ch, for theMelbourne T hea tre Company.L AST MONTHSR~~~:

Home truthsL '" "'" MOOCconfirmed cases of children who hadbeen t hrash ed, bashed, starved,raped, abandoned or neglected bytheir parents were reported to Australianwelfare authorities. The reportrate went up by 20 % in thefollowing 12 months, and is beingmaintained this year.The rising tide of child m altreatment,and our unwillingness to admitthat we have di sm ally failed toprotect children, is a national disgrace.We have clone enough ficlcllin gwith the system : it is time to trysom ething radically different.'Child abuse' is a generous andimprecise term, covering everything,from torture to nagging, in a context.Over the last couple of decades ourarm y of child protection experts hasbecome much more aware of thepossible harm to children from certainbehaviours, and much m orewilling to describe it as maltreatment:being exposed to severe violenceaga inst others, for in stance,and 'discipline' which causes pain,humiliation and fear.That knowledge has not, however,been transmitted to parents. Accordingto a recent report commissionedby the National Child ProtectionCouncil, but not released, 80 %of their survey believed that it is notharmful to hit a child with yourhand, half believe that 'it is everyparent's right to discipline childrenin any way they see fit ' and almosthalf that no child could be reallydamaged by anything that a 'loving'parent might do. Yet rnost of themalso believed that child abuse is verywidespread across Australia, affecting20 % of fam ilies.T he experts know very well thatchild abuse is a growing nationalproblem . At the same time, knowingthe possibly damaging effects ofremoving children from their naturalenvironments, and (paradoxically)becau se the child protectionsystem s arc so over-taxed by increasingreferrals, child protection workersare in fact intervening less, andT H'N 20,000certainly less zealously, than wasthe case 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Oneexample, in a Victorian case-trackingstudy in 1994, spells it out.Two boys aged three and one hadparents with severe alcohol and drugproblems. They lived with theirMum w ho lived in fear of Dad'ssevere violence towards her. Shewasn' t copi ng: her doctor wasconcern ed a bout verbal a buse,neglect, inadequate medical care andnutrition and developmenta l delay.He referred them to a hospitalwhich released them when it couldfind no immediate evidence of physical abuse. Hospital social workersand the police were alerted becauseof the grave concerns about theirsafety. Welfare authorities refusedto accept a referral 'possibly becauseof the lack of evidence substantiatingthe case'.So the police handed over thekids to the fath er, a m an with criminalconvictions for ph ysical violence,to alleviate the possibility ofemotional abuse and neglect by hisprimary victim.In other words, even the expertsdraw arbitrary lines. They are afraidthat the law won't va lidateintervention because the situationdoesn't fit the increasingly restrictivedefinitions of ' child protection' Ia ws.They are reluctant t o rep ortsuspected abuse because they do nottrust the appropriateness of theresponse.On present research we knowthat no si ngle strategy will com ­pletely protect children from furtherharm , n or enhan ce the generalquality of their lives. We would preferto 'prevent' it, but we don't knowhow, because w e ca nnot predictharm, and onl y have experience oflate intervention .There is a grea t deal of woollys upport for 'primary prevention'progra m.s- pa rental and communitye du ca tion throug h m ediacampaigns. They have their place.We do have a National Child AbusePrevention Str ategy, a nd aCommonwealth National C hildProtection Council, whose job thisis. I have been provoked into writingthis article by reviewing the detailsof such a proposal, which will costmillions: a national advertising campaigntelling us that child abuse is acommunity problem .In the U S, natio nal m ediacampaigns did appear to have influencedexplicit a t t itudes andparenting practices, but seriousabuse and fatalities seemed to increase;in Victoria a 1993 ca mpaignincreased people's tendency to blamethe non-offending parent for theabuse; and Gillian Calvert's reportof the effi cacy of the four-year NSWC hild Sexual Assault Program massmedia campaign found there was aslight decrease in public awarenessof the problem - and a dramatic increasein those favo uring capital punishment-at its end.I looked at this during NationalChild Protection Week and shortlyafter reading that NSW, where 19children died of m altrea tment in thepreceding two years, was to cut itsfunding for services to children andfamilies; and aft er seeing publicityover a leaked report from a Victorianchild protection agency about graveproblems in responding to the huge! yincreased volume of reported abuseafter the introduction of"'{ i{ T mandatory reporting.v v HAT A I!E WE DOING ? Wh y ca n'twe prevent child abuse instead ofpicking up bodies? Our governmentshave, I think, become so accustomedto the 19th century response to abuseand neglect- the criminal justicemodel of surveillance and swooping-that they won't put their resourcesinto an y other response. Thisis how state governments ' protect'children: by authority and threat,yet we prevent child m altreatm entif w e support all children in all families.You don't do that by s noopingon the possibl y 'deviant' ones. T hat'show w e jus tified t he notorious' round-ups' of Aboriginal children.16EUREKA STREET • 0 CTORER 1995

The U.N. Convention on theRights of the Child which Au straliasigned in December 1990, is premisedon the assertion that the child's naturalenvironment is the family,where they may be prepared to livean individual life in society 'in anatmosphere of love and understanding.'The trouble is that many fam ­ili es can't provide it, not becausethey are deviant and uncaring, butbecause they are under stress, homeless,jobless, poor, or damaged bytheir own upbringing, or sick, orisolated, or desperate, or simply uninformed:they don't know what toexpect from their children, and can'tmeet their needs. They need help,not blame.In March 1994 the Minister forFamily Services asked m e to write areport on what the Commonwealth'srole should be in child abuse preven ­tion, while I was acting Deputy Director[Research) of the AustralianInstitute of Family Studies. My reportwas given to the Minister inDecember 1994. It was released inJun e, 1995, on a busy news day, andthe rest is silence.My recomm endations were thatthe Com monwcalth must acceptthat it has primary responsibility toprevent child abuse because it hasaccepted an international obligation,the UN Convention on the Rights ofthe Child, as well as a moral one.Commonwealth policies and programswhich affect children and theircarers arc scattered across portfolioareas, and none of them is predi catedon children's rights. Child care, forin stance, is seen primarily as theright of women, or associated withlabour market programs. There areeven three, distinct, anti-violenceprograms, each calling for a ' nationallycoordinated approach '. Com ­m onwealth policies and programareas have different policy ba ses andpriorities, and often operate independentlyof each other.As it has done for services forpeople with disabilities, and for thesa m e e thica l reason s, theommonwealth must develop a coordinatedchildren's policy, acrosspo rtfolio bo undaries. It shouldestablis h a policy co-ordinationunit- either within a major departmentor reporting to the Prime Minister-suchas the Office of MulticulturalAffairs, which can overseeand report upon it to Parliament.The Commonwealth must get itsact together.There is, I said, little value inmaking a symboli c appointment,such as a Commissioner for Children,unless that office possesses realresources and authority. The Commo nwealth should develop astatutory and administrative basis [a'Children's Services Act', perhaps)for planning and negotiating withthe States for their delivery of children'sand family services, predicatedon the human rights of, not platitudesabout, children.Preventing child m altreatmentis not a job for the police. W e areresponsible for the societal conditionswhich are associated with chil dmaltreatment- poverty, homelessness, social inequalities andinjusti ces, all of which are clearlyassociated with the misery ofchildren.This is the responsibility of theCommonwealth, which delivers socialsecurity, housing and other genericcommunity services, none ofwhich is focused a nd coh erentenough to achieve a 'child abuse prevention ' objective, because theCommonwealth doesn ' t have apolicy about children. When we havea non-a busive society you look atmaintaining non-a bu sive communities,and healthy family environments-parental support, education,and other family-specific policies .There are very few of them at aCommonwealth level, and Stateservices are sea ttercd, inconsistcn t,an d inappro pria t ely channelledthrough child-protection laws.Preventing child abuse is not, Ibelieve, the States' task . Theirtraditional responsibility is to interveneat a much later level, wherepreventive program s have failed andchildren are at risk, or damaged.However, the States' and T erritories'eight, distinct, child protectionsystems, arc forced into serviceas 'gateways' to what child and fa m­ily support system s there may bethrough their different and narrowingdefinitions of 'abuse' or 'risk'.There is not muchpointinintroducingnational definitions or childabuse laws, as many have suggested,unless there are nationally high quality,accessible child and family supportservices which are not coercive,and do not stigmatisc the familiesthat need them.We have failed to prevent ch ildabuse because we have no overview.We arc chained to a 19th centuryresponse which docs not work in2 1st century Australia.If we persist in trea ting children'shuman right to special protectionas some kind of optional 'need',which ca n be addressed whenever astate government has money left overfrom a Casino, or the Olympics, or atoll way, they won't get their entitlementsas human beings. They willbe irreparably damaged and the harmcan never be fully undone. •Moira Rayner is a lawyer and a freelancejournalist.VOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 17

T HE CAROLINE CHISHOLM S ERIES : 9GERALDINE D oocuEFranl

'I have come to bring you life and bring it in abundance': one of the most glorious promiseson offer from Jesus Christ in the gospels. If we really believe that's His legacy to the Church, whydon't we behave as if we do? Why don't we take the risk of jumping in at the deep end, where it'snot comfortable; at the murky area where work-places are evolving; where intimate relationswithin Catholic families are being re-defined; where technology is racing ahead of ethical guidelines;where new trade-offs between development and the environment are being worked out;where wholly different cultures are determining what they share and where they will foreverdiffer?The pace of change, the nature of choice, has overwhelmed me from time to time. I made thedecision to leave a marriage, with my one-year-old child, wrestled with m y conscience, formedfirmly within the Catholic tradition. I set up house and made a n ew family with the man I've nowmarried; put parents and others through a lot; went through a lot m yself. And ten years later, Ihave been profoundly shaped by having stepped outside the rule-book of my Catholic community,which I passionately loved, and still do.I was highly indignant about the degree of change required of m e, and fought like hell. It mayseem odd to you, given that I instigated the major moves, but of course one can n ever plot all thatfollows, when every single arena of life- work, children, parents, one's God even, m aybe especially-seemto becom e quicksand. The God I'd thought would protect m e from confusion seem edstrangely silent, unreachable; certainly not offering refuge. Nothing was safe, not evenmy personal conversa tions with my God.B uT STEP-1\Y-STEP, ING LORIOUSLY, HESITANTLY, I hung on to a tradition and an institution thatmattered to my very bones, and forged som ething new for m yself, at peace with my own conscience.Oddly enough, it was a place where m any of the imageries seem ed rather vague butwhere m y sense of purpose grew. Quite a paradox, but wiser people than I, like Redemptoristmission fathers, sugges t this is a fa miliar pattern, known to people like St Teresa of Avila, amongothers: of less sense of connection with the Di vine, but more sense of activism .I never left the Church, either the formal or informal on e. And while I received considerabl esupport from individual priests, I couldn't say I felt that way abou t the institutional Church. Isimply pressed on regardless. I was conscious that, being in the public eye, I might appear like aclassic Catholic rebel, when in fa ct I felt anything but. I can't rem ember ever h ea ring a sermonwhich proved to me that the priest understood the nature of the titanic internal struggle I fel tm yself to be undergoing. I was just one of m any sitting before him.Which is not to say I haven 't heard some excellent sermons from som e very decent and gam em en, or that I imagine it would be easy for them to m arch, full speed ahead, into some of theseareas. If it was hard for som e of our forebears to talk about politics from that pulpit, just ponderthe challenge posed by fe minism! If Helen Garner is having trouble, pity help yo ur average parishpriest!This brings me to one of my central points: how could an average priest possibly enter debatesthat preoccupy wom en these days, wom en trying to live a life of spi ritual integrity, tryingextrem ely hard to chart their own course and perfect their purpose? Would he even know thelanguage, the nuances, the m omentum that characterises the broad debate am ong wom en ? Howmany modern women would the average priest, or bish op, system atically m eet in the course of aworking m onth ? I m ean meet in the sense of genuinely converse, be exposed to som e of theirdilemmas, 'lock horns', as H . G. [Nelson] would say! Precious few. Are the institutions in place toallow him exposure to m essy debates among his parishi oners? In m y opinion, the answer is no.Of course there are bodies at both parish and diocesan level which m eet regularly. Eachparish is m andated to have a Parish Council or Parish Finance Committee, which often becom esthe proxy Council. There are no figures collected on a widespread basis, but obviously they arcopen to both women and m en and this is always a lay body. Similarly, at the next level, thediocesan bishop is served by a Diocesan Finan ce Committee, almost always m ale, I'm told, whichm eets m onthly. The gender position is usually the exact reverse w ith education committees. Inother words, it reflects roughly the position within the population, of segregated work-a reas. InCardinal Clancy's offi ce, for instance, his Administrator is m ale but his accountant is n ow female, as of fairly recently.Most bishops are peppered with con tant request to 'interact.' So it' not as if they're notexposed to the world of busy-ness. But ironically, it's all done quietly, as if that's an attribute,drawn from humility. I think it's got to be more rather than less obvious.VoLUME 5 NuMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 19

I suspect too that the bishops eta] are mostly exposed to people m ore or less like them selves.It was the very criticism hurled at us in the AB C, eight or ten years ago and still is. We knew wewere working extremely hard, giving of our best, but the allegation was that we'd fa iled to seethat our sphere of influence was sh rinkingi we were not being disturbed enough.Does the Church really speak to the practical ethical problem s people fa ce in their moderncommunities? Rarely, I'd say.A couple of 'for-instances'. Where is the bea utiful language emanating from the C hurch,giving n ew codes or benchmarks by w hich an individual, ccking to be good, ca n measure his orher personal conscience when faced with, say, large-scale retrenchment of staffi bei ng part of ahostile take-over that involves assct-s trippingi when a huge executive saluy is on offer concurrentlywith downsizi ngi when the work culture is palpably hostile to any sense of balance withfa m ilyi when survival of the fittest is peddled as a legitimate response to the latest budget cut'When you know that yo u're going to be all-right-Jack but pity help the others.T h is is the stu ff of everyday li fe for contemporary workers. Yet som ehow, the tried-a nd -truem ora l tests-is this greed or dishonesty or uncharity'-sccm feeble, certainly n ot helpful. N ewmeans of describing these old verities n eed to be found so that they arc useful in helping educa tea contemporary conscience.T he C hurch's vo ice m ay well be clear- nay, strident-on sexual morality. But there's a stunningabyss w hen it com es to the murkier areas of business, politics and science. And it's in thesearenas that we so desperately need to rc-cmphasisc qualities like kindness, tolerance, for bearance,to rehabilitate

demand 'wholesale change'. It's bad enough inside the ABC, let alone the Church!But without it, we avoid asking the really obvious question: do we have the best governm entstructure to m eet current needs as opposed to current system s? Is it the most pro-active structureto seek out new relationships with the community?My personal m otto, as a woman of my times, is to construct a life that resembles the past butdoesn 't n ecessarily reproduce it exactly. My aim is to make decisions about this, not just to drift.That's my version of continuity. I have to be prepared, of course, to see m y own children makethe sam e sort of decision and re-invent things I thought were absolutes. That can be hard.But this is a model I'd like to see the Church adopt. To grasp afresh the m eaning of the Latinverb 'tradire'-to hand over. That has been interpreted in the strictest ideological sense of 'repeating'that which went before. I think it could be seen as enabling life within the next generation.Enabling new ways of saying old things: new ways of saying new things . Enabling new stru cturesto em erge, side-by-side if necessary, with old structures, but designed to position theChurch as a sign rather than a sanctuary.FoR ME,THIS IS T H E CORE OF IT . I want the Church to be the convenor of a bold, energetic, questingconversation within a community . I sense from my work in the m edia and plenty of interactionwith the public, that there's a yearning for som e new discussion about mores and codes. And afterthe discussion will come m ore clarity, m y real hope for the next century.But at the moment, the Church is barely there. Not only is the secular community missingits influence, o are those within the Church: it's loss-loss everywh ere, with priests and religiouscommunities fossilised, grappling with a sense of pointlessness. Because life, in all its m essinessand challenge, is elsewhere.The hunger I described earlier is often filled by half-developed notions, with a bias towardself-indulgence and no outward focus, no emphasis on mature fa ith. Feral spiritu ality, as someoneput it to me on Life Matters.As another colleague of mine, Fr Michael Whelan, suggests, our contribution is as much inexemplifying what it m eans to be an h onest search er as it is in candidly and forthri ghtly sharingthe wisdom of our traditions. The more w e are honest about our own doubts, fears, ambiguities,the more respect flows. Because, he suggests, su ch honesty implies great faith.The mood signalled by the Second Vatican Council might be a good guide: 'Let there be unityin what is necessary, freedom in what is unsettled and charity in any case.' (Gaudium et Spes).So how to be a searcher? How to institutionalise this? I believe there must be six featurespresent in anything that is set up: Conversation; Collegiality; Devolu tion of power; Modern-ness,that is speaking in language intelligible to each generation (Vatican II); Regularity; Respect.I want to overhaul the givens about the nature of dialogue between the hierachy and thelaity; I want to see Church governance transformed, drawing from society's models. I want, therefore, to see the Church run by a Board of Managem ent, set up within each archdiocese and modelledon the best-functioning government departments or authorities.In m y plan, the Archbishop or his delegate would always sit as Executive Chairman, amidsta committee of diverse contributors, drawn from the lay and clerical community. I see this as aBoard of Managem ent of the Church in the Community, with the Archbishop having righ t ofveto- I'm not a complete Utopian, nor a fool!I also see the need for sub-com mittees, just as in any good, modern progressive organisation,which operate on a mutual support basis: information and support drawn from the Church'sscholars and officers back to the communities: they, in turn, would inform Church authorities ofissues contested within their sphere.I recognise that Catholic advisory bodi es do exist, but at the behest of the bishop, and, effectively, no-one knows about them. Which brings me back to visibility.I would su ggest that just as the Governor-General does, every single bishop should be conveningregular gatherings at his table, where he listened, in a spirit of co-operation and curiosity,to the conversation or dialectic underway within society; thus informing himself and acting as aconduit for the passage of ideas between people: of being pro-active on behalf of Christ in a breathtakinglysimple way. And I would urge bishops to be game rather than cautious in their invitationlists. And I would never again have a biennial Bishops' Conference without a parallel meeting ofbroader groups, drawn, I'd suggest, from the various Boards of Management.People would be revitalised. The institution would be bolstered. I'm not about tearing downinstitutions. They're invariably the repositories of surprising resources and talents. The Churchwould put itself in the midst of the people whom it must serve, and not be distrustful of them andVOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 21

their experience. The Church would set up a process of listening. For those afraid of the impacton Church as authority-figure, Church as preacher, I say this ca n hardly undermine that: it wouldprobably boost it, by providing it with modern data.And at all times, I would stress the importance of including women as contributors. I did asearch of the Church 's formal bodies and, after considerable effort, found, outside the schools andwelfare organisa tions, no systematic structures to include women. They m ay exist-no-one couldtell me exactly. But it was clear they were at the behest of individual bishops. This won't do. Itmust be much more of a given than that.My own experience of a new structure within the Church is som ething called Spirituality inthe Pub, which I want to briefly discuss. Several of us were dra wn together by john Menadu c, tosee whether there was a need to develop new wa ys of being Catholic.Out of eight m onths of intermittent talking and quite rigo rous debate and mission-statementdiscourse, we came up with a simple, unfussy and modest model of SIP: we wanted Religionin the Pub, but RIP wasn 't quite the image we wanted to send' The idea was to promote a newfo rum, new conversation within the Church, of a kind most of us didn't feel we go t within pari shes.We wanted to talk about issues of relevance to our lives, raw-edged iss ues on which therefrequently was no longer consensus: issues that the Church- in our view- dodged. And sometimesI could quite sec w hy.We foun d that there wa s no short-c ut. There had to be much discussion on them es for theyear. We meet every six weeks or so in a pub in Paddington, and to complete the metaphor, it's inthe Upper Room! It's free . Drinks from the bar. Two speakers: one always representing the institutionalChurch and therefore informed by the tradition; one representing modern dilemmas, ina sense. Our topics have been modern conscience, when is it right to play god-the euthanas iadebate, and consumerism. Our nex t two are the challenge of science, and the ethics of modernwealth creation. We're finishing with the conscience of those arriving from other faiths.It is very convivial, non-Churchy, with a small orga nising committee. Next year, we' ll set anew theme for 1996. Speakers have been extremely willing to p·uticipate, no matter what theirfrantic schedule, bearing out m y view that there arc people of immense goodwill, dying, in fact,for the Church to assume a new sort of leadership ro le in this moral debate and willing to do allthe messy, bureaucratic work of setting this up.It seems to be working and filling a need. It's small, the leaven in the lump, but we're quietlyquite proud of it, and I might add that we've kep t the hierarchy inform ed and have receivedencouragement, notional but significa nt, I believe. It doesn't seck to circumvent or undermineexisting structures. It's an addition, and nails its fla g to the mast: it is Catholic and works withinwhat I'd say are the portals of the Church, whether or not that's on C hurch property.The spirit of Vatican II is alive and well within it. I want to close on som e beautiful wordsfrom The Chmch in the Modem World. You'll have to tolerate the exclusive language/ which is a touch confronting. But the sentiments carry the da y.T IIOUG H MANKIND TODAY IS STRUCK WITH WONDER at its own discoveries and its power, it oftenraises anxious questions about the current trend of the world, about the place and role of man inthe universe, about the m eaning of his individual and collective strivings and about the ultimatedestiny of reality and of humanity. Hence, giving witness and voice to the faith of the wholePeople of God gathered together by Christ, this Council can provide no more eloq uent proof of itssolidarity with the entire human family with which it is bound up, as well as its respect and lovefor that family, than by engaging with it in conversation about these various problems.'For the human person deserves to be preserved; human society deserves to be renewed.Hence, the pivotal point of our total presentation will be man himself, whole and entire, bodyand soul, heart and co nscience, mind and will.'Therefore, this sacred Synod proclaims the highest destiny of man and champions the godlikeseed which has been sown in him. It offers to mankind the honest assistance of the Churchin fos tering that brotherhood of all men which corresponds to this destiny of theirs. Inspired byno ea rthly ambition, the Church seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of C hristHimself, under the lea d of the befri ending Spirit. And Christ entered this world to give w itness tothe truth, to rescu e and not sit in judgm ent, to serve and not to be served-'•This is an edited text of the Catholic Institute of Sydney's Vecch Lecture for 1995, delivered byGeraldine Doogue at the State Library of N ew South Wales.22EUREKA STREET • O cToBER 199S

SPORTING LIFEPETER PIERCERight on trackI n Sydney, it h•d not mined fnt fotty d'Y' and fmtynights. Rosehill racecourse, where I'd not been for half alife-time, baked in record August heat of 3l.3°C. Trackrecords, besides tempers, were at risk.Before travelling there, we visited the superb newMuseum of Sydney. Soon the treasures of the MaritimeMuseum in London would be packed and the 'Fleeting Encounters'exhibition closed. But we were able to view its'Pictures and Chronicles of the First Fleet', together with acornucopia of remains of the earliest years of Europeansettlement in Australia. Here were sets of ships' cutlery,ceramic dolls, pipe stems, coins, accidental survivals likea puppet found in the Macarthurs' cellar. There were alsodocuments seeking to exude authority-suchas the Standing Ordersfor New South Wales-andothers mocking it: the notebook inwhich Frank the Poet inscribed' Athe exhibition was a view of RoseHill, 'a spit upon rising ground ... ordered to be cleared forthe first habitations' as David Collins wrote in November1788 of the farm on fertile land by the Parramatta River.Just under a century later, a proprietary racetrack openedat Rosehill. Coming under the control of the Sydney TurfClub in 1943, it has since made much of limited naturalassets, as I was shortly to be reminded.First to get there. Forget the train, the helpful PR staffof the STC informed me. Take the River Cat. Thus I boardedthe 'Marlene Mathews' at Circular Quay, thence to passbeneath the Harbour Bridge, stop at renovated Luna Park,skim by yacht harbours, jutting apartments, an Olympicsite-to-be and St Ignatius, Riverview, before container terminals,decaying factories and the RAN arms depot edgeddown to the river. By now the boat had slowed to a walk,not only to let sister vessel 'Shane Gould' get by in thenarrowing stream, but because the momentum of catamaransis eroding muddy banks and stirring residues of heavymetal.In an hour we were hard by Parramatta. The STC hadprovided free transport and racebook. To enter the course,the bus travelled four sides of a square, revealing the giantRosehill Gardens sign that proclaims the track's new, presumablyAmerican-style misnomer. Looking back to thecity, one descries the bridge and skyscrapers in the distance,but in the foreground an ugly cluster of oil refinerybuildings. And the track is cramped, with famous out-ofsightstarts for middle-distance races, endlessly turning1200 metre circuit for its great attraction, the Goldendanexhibitedto the embarrassment of• liiRi= the 'principal' clubs.Nevertheless, at RosehillGardens, there was racing to delightuch local sponsors as theRooty Hill RSL and Lidcombe SydneyMarkets clubs. Unfortunatelythe free bus delivered me in time to back I'm A Freak,which missed the tart and ran ncar last. Two races later,top jockey Mick Dittman's mount was second. Remarkably,he had ridden only one Sydney winner in eighteenmonths. That changed, but not before the Premier's Cupwent to Tom Cruise look-alike, 'born-again' Darren Beadman,on Ardeed. Meanwhile in Melbourne, at once despisedSandown, Grand Baie ran an Australian record for lOOOmand the fine grey Baryshnikov won the Liston Stakes fromthe Hayes-trained Western Red and Jeune. With the thanklesstask of inheriting a famous name and stables from fatherand brother, P.C. Hayes not only has the aforementioned two well forward, but also Manikato place-gettersSeascay and Blevic. Watch for them in the spring, andfor Hawkes' Octagonal.And for Flying Spur, a lovely bay colt, last year's GoldenSlipper winner, who showed staying scope by winningthe Peter Pan Stakes, with Dittman up. Back in the glassedinpublic area, signs pointed distractingly to the Longchampsand Chantilly bars. The STC guesses that tradition,in racing as in much else, is mostly in the brand name.After a peerless day, clouds gathered, but no rain fell. Thisis a lucky club. Ask Moonee Valley, which is still hopingthat a newly-laid track will be ready for racing on 1 Octoberand that it can host the Cox Plate, rather than seeing thenational weight-for-age championship go down the road toFlemington, as the smarties have long predicted. •Peter Pierce is Eureka Street's turf correspondent.VOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 23

REPORTJiM D AVIDSONScholars on the looseAT' T

W,.. '"'CANTHE R EG IONJAMES GRIFFIN1NeighboursYOU "ND A w"' w ho will give youa pedicure with a toothbrush', asked the near-sexagenariansquatter from Johland-rhetorically, one hopes, as Australianshave not been so conspicuous in the fl esh trade outsidethe Phillipines yet.N ot that recruiting w ives, even on that basis, is the worstof it. Many m arriages of con venience work benignly enoughfor the brides, and often for their indigent extended families.Bartered brides are not invariably battered.The pits is, of course, not the arranged marrying or thewhorem ongering but the paedophilia. And that will notcease when Australians are blocked from sleaze holidays.The Filipino male has ultimately to look to that, as PresidentRam os indica ted during his recent visit, the first by anincumbent Philippines head of state.There is not much point in exaggerating the degree ofAustralian infamy as Meredith Burgm ann MLC (NSW) hasdone. N or in dressing up as murdered (by Australian husbands)Filipino brides or even branding Ram os as the Philippines''biggest pimp' as was done by som e at the Universityof Melbourne when Ramos was to be given an honorarydegree. Ju st to show there are no facile nostrums, thepresident warned sex offenders that he will now look atapplying the death penalty for 'heinous crimes' to foreignpaedophiles. The demonstratorsmay not relish a situation,where another Australian prime minister feel he has to callanother Asian government ' barbaric' for executing Australians,as happened with Bob Hawke over our drug pushers.It might be wiser to accept the extension of the FederalCrimes Act to sex tourism and the sending of police officersto help with sex and drug surveillance.N othing is going to be simple in our relations with Asiancultures, and the root causes of the m ost exploitative aspectsof the flesh trade are obviously poverty, overpopulation andobscurantism . No doubt Ramos will welcom e any suggestionsas to how these can be quickly overcom e.It seems incongruous that, when we are trying to ga inacceptance as a compatible neighbour in South-East Asia,there should be a muster at a University to protest at a leaderwho was vital to the overthrow of the Marcos kleptocracy.While being much m ore decisive, Ram os retained the confidenceof Cory Aquino and, although a soldier, has uphelddemocratic forms in a country that provides the sort ofbridgehead into Asia that Australia needs. The Philippineshas a predominantly Christian culture (80 per cent Catholi c,9 per cent Protestant, 5 per cent Muslim, 3 per cent Buddhist )and 5 1 per cent understand English (although only one percent speak it at home) .With the fraying of our separate American alliances,w hich forestalled the need for close bilateral securityarrangem ents, the time has com e for increased defence cooperation.While we have no urgent defence issue at present,Chinese activity at the well-named Mischief Reef in thestrategic Spratlys is unnerving in Manila and, in the longterm , a m atter of concern for Canberra. T he sort of antiinsurgencyaid given in the past, that suggested obsessiveanti-Communism and could be construed as a prop forMarcos, can now be seen serving the Filipino interest ratherthan that of a particular regim e. Moreover, Australian racismsuch as was perceived and bitterly resen ted in theGamboa (1948) and Locsin (1966) entry visa cases, has beendispelled by immigration which increased between 198 1 to199 1 from a total of 15,500 to 74,000 (roughly 2: 1 fem ale tom ale), m aking Filipinos the third largest non-Europeangroup after Vietnamese and Chinese.After the inert years of Aquino's presidency, Ram os hasderegulated the financial system, promoted investment inm anufacture and raised the annual growth rate to 5. 12 percent. This is lower, certainly, than in the so-called dragonand tiger states but still very positive. T here are opportunitiesfor increased trade, very much in Australian favour atthe m om ent (over 3 :1 ), but representing only 0.4 per cent ofour total trade. During the Ram os visit a number of dealswere done, including eleven joint ventures in power andwaste-water infrastructure.In 1971 -2 Foreign Secretary, Carlos Romulo, urged acloser relationship between our two countries and noted thepaucity of Philippine studies here. It is extraordinary that solittle literature is generally available. Only the ANU, Canberra,and, very much to its credit, Jam es Cook University,Townsville, have taken our neighbour of nearly 70million people very seriously.ASIDE FROM ARTICLES IN LEARNED JOURNALS, the Only m onographon Australia- Philippines relations published for decadesthat I can recall was edited by two JCU scholars, ReyIleto and Rodney Sullivan, significantly as DiscoveringAustralasia: Essays on Philippin es-Australia Interactions(Townsville, 1993 ). The bibliography provided by the Universityof Canberra's Mark Turner yields much that isinteresting on the Philippines but little of an Australianbent.However, what these essays reveal is a relationshipwhich goes back to the 1850s. when Australia took a quarterof Philippine exports. By 1900, Australia was the fifth largestsource of imports. There was at the time vigorous Filipinoimmigration to N orthern Australia (including T orres Strait)and Papua.Both American hegem ony in the Philippines and theWhite Australia Policy (1901 ) caused a promising relationshipto lapse precipitously from then on. Discovering Australasiaexplores these early relationships and proceeds to asearching examination of the Gamboa cases, a curiousFouca ultian conflation of the press reportage of the activitiesof Juni Morosi and an earlier Filipino victim of 'patriarchaloppression', and an enlightening analysis of currentPhilippine immigration.Perhaps the Ramos visit will inspire other scholars tofollow up these overdue 'discoveries'.•James Griffin is a freelance critic and historian .VOLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 25

Gareth Evans, above,on another occa ion,speal

His father might have ended his days as a countrypublican in the colonies but he had begun them as aschoolboy at Charterhouse, and his father's brother,Sir George Hamilton Evatt, became Surgeon-Generalin the British Army. The Evatts, in fact, wereAnglo-Irish Protestant gentlemen given to producingsoldiers for the crown and parsons for the establishedchurch. Dr Evatt's mother was also of Irish-Anglo­Australian Protestant stock and, by all accounts, aformidable lady who demanded much of her sons andgave them a solid grounding in evangelical Anglicanism.A strong streak of puritanism was to mark Evattfor the rest of his life. In his mid-twenties he marriedthe daughter of a wealthy American.Given that background and his own intellectualbrilliance, it is not too surprising that the young Evattdid not lack confidence. This could show itself inunimportant ways: outraging the Rugby Union gentlemenby bringing Rugby League into the university,for example. (He even flirted with proper football,visiting Melbourne in 1910 with a Fort Street team toplay what was then called Victorian Rules.) It couldshow itself in more important ways, as in 1927 when,after one term in the State Parliament, he publiclydamned his leader, Jack Lang, stood successfully asan independent and was expelled from the Statebranch of the Labor Party complaining of Communistinfiltration.In a prize-winning undergraduate essay whichwas later published, Evatt argued that in Australiathe party differences were minimal: Whig liberalismhad triumphed completely and rightly. In his view,however, there was a division, and it is worth quotinghis youthful description of it: a division 'correspondingto that of minds conservative by nature andminds progressive by nature'. He continued:In all domains of life and art we find one classdesiring to press forward, to experiment, to find inany change a bettering of present conditions, and asecond which clings with veneration to whatever istraditional and ancient, and which distrusts thedangerous and unnecessary proposals of what appearto it a shallow empiricism.There is not much doubt about the side of thedivide on which h e saw himself, but it remains thathe supported conscription in 1916 and, in his essay,he questioned the Labor pledge and Labor caucus solidarityas inimical to true liberalism. Nor was h emuch taken with the notion of employm entpreference for trade unionists.ITIS ALSO TYPI AL OF EvATT that, apparently not fullyextended by the High Court's demands, he turned tohistory in the 1930s with two pioneering books-onedefending Governor Bligh, till then generally seen asa tyrant properly deposed, and the other a defensivebiography of W.A. Holman, generally seen in the Labormovement as a 'rat'. That other great rat in Laborlore, Hughes, was also admired publicly and privatelyby Evatt.Evatt had a brilliant legal career by any standards.From the University of Sydney, he graduatedwith a BA (triple first), obtained an MA (first) and tooka doctorate in laws (which later became hispath-breaking study of the reserve powers,The King and his Dominion Govemors). In1916 he became Secretary and Associate tothe Chief Justice of NSW, Sir William Cullen.He went to the Bar in 1924 and took silkfive years later. In 1930, at the age of 36-theyoungest-ever appointee, and likely to remainso-he was placed on the High Court by theScullin Government. There he served for thenext decade, before succumbing at the age of46 to the siren song of politics- leaving theCourt younger than the age nearly every otherJustice has arrived.As Commonwealth Attorney-Generalafter 1941 he went back frequently to theHigh Court as an advocate-even arguing forthe Government before the Privy Council inthe Bank Nationalisation Case at the sametime as being President of the UN GeneralAssembly in 1948.On the High Court bench, one of Evatt'smost distinctive qualities as a Judge was hisconcern with social consequences and civilliberties; in his own words, h e 'alwayssearched for the right with a lamp lit by theflame of humanity'. His models were Holmesand Cardozo in the United States and LordWright in Britain.The best known example of this wasprobably his dissenting judgment in Chesterv Waverley Corporation-the 'nervousshock' negligence case in which he eloquentlytook the part of the mother whose childhad been drowned in a Council trench, andin which his statement of the law came soonto prevail. In constitutional cases he camedown on the side of the States, more oftenthan the Commonwealth Labor politicianswho appointed him would have liked, althoughmore for reasons of legislative efficacyrather than any conceptual'States' rights'perspective.That he saw legislation as a medium forsocial reform, and had been a member of areformist State Government when the FederalBruce/Page Government was conservative, mayalso have coloured his views.Certainly no Commonwealth power enthusiastcould quarrel with his interpretation of the externalaffairs power in the Burgess case-which eventuallybecame orthodoxy in the The Tasmanian Dam casein the 1980s.Probably theclosest he cmneto a friendship inthe 1ninistry waswith Ja ck Beasley:it is somehowtypical of Evattthat he shouldcultivate Beasley,who rejoiced inthe nicknmne of'Stabber Jack 'and had beenone of the Langgroup whichbroughtdown theScullin LaborGovernment in1931-another'rat'.VOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 27

Speaking in 1965 of Dr Evatt's term on the HighCourt, the then Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick,said this:To the decision of such of these cases in which heparticipated, Herbert Vere Evatt made great contributions.His judge ments in many of them provideforceful and lucid expositions and applications ofthe law. Many of such judgem ents examine andrelate to each other in a masterly fashion theprecedents of the past with which he made himselfso precisely conversant as he applied himself sounstintingly to the pursuit of the answer to theproblem which each case in its turn posed fordecision. They disclose extensive and penetratingscholarly research which illumines the aspects ofthe law with which they deal. These judgem entswill long be used by students and teachers of thelaw, by practitioners and by courts of law ... I they)expressed views of the law which were well inadva nce of his Honour's time and received acclaimfrom lawyers throughout the British Commonwealthincluding the Privy Council.This was a very gracious tribute from Barwick,given not only all their obvious differences of outlook,but also their person al history. David Man'sbiography of Barwick retails a story from their da ysat the Sydney Bar together which says much abouttheir respccti vc personalities. Evatt believed that logicwould carry the weight of his argument, and neverworried much about whom he was appearing before.Barwick, by contrast, believed in working the man,and urged Evatt to study a particular earlier decisionof the judge in question about which- whatever itsm erits- the judge was inordinately fond. Evatt ignoredBarwick's suggestion. Inevitably the judge asked hirnwhy h e was not relying on his earlier decision. Evattreplied that his junior had not drawn his attention tothe case. At that point, Barwick said 'Go tobuggery' and left the court.STORIES LIKE TH IS, OF WHIC H THERE ARE MANY, are perhapsthe reason why Evatt found himself som ethingof a political loner when, after stepping down fromthe High Court bench and entering Federal parliamentin 1940, he becam e a member of John Curtin's Governmentin 1941. While he had made some friends inthe lcftish artistic and literary worlds of the time,mainly through his wife, Mary Alice, he was too highlystrung, abrasive and egotistical for much in the wayof political fri endships. Probably the closest h e cameto a friends hip in the ministry was with Jack Beasley:it is som ehow typical of Evatt that he should cultivateBeasley, who rejoiced in the nickname of 'StabberJack' and had been one of the Lang group whichbrought clown the Scullin Labor Government in193 1- another 'rat'. Despite courting m en as diverseas John Wren in Melbourne and Clarrie Fallon in Bris-bane, he did not have a personal power base in theparty when he arrived in the Federal Parliament, andnever subsequently acquired one.Evatt entered the NSW Parliament as the memberfor Balmain in the 1925 election when the LangGovernment took power on a platform of extensivesocial and labour market reform. He managed thepreselection hurdle partly by relying on the thenmulti-member character of constituencies, whichmade it rather easier; and secondly by making a successfulpitch for trade union support by writing a seriesof influential articles about the victimisation ofworkers after the 1917 railway strike. He immediatelyearned Lang's displeasure by defying the party's conventionson seniority and nominating himself forAttorney-General- he obtained two votes in caucus.He was, nonetheless, an energetic contributor to theLang Government's pioneering social legislation. Thiswas the first government in the world to provide pensionsfor widows on a non-contributory basis, throughthe 1925 Widows' Pension Bill which the Oppositiondescribed as 'the most soul-destroying, poisonous bill'.Seventeen years later the Commonwealth introducedsimilar national legislation. Evatt played a large partin framing both bills. His drafting skills were alsoapplied to the 1926 Workers Compensation Bill whichhe piloted through the NSW Assembly and the 1927Family (Child) Endowment Bill, the model for Com ­m onwealth legislation in 1942.Evatt returned to politics, becoming the Federalm ember for Barton in August 1940, with the help ofan invitation from the ALP's National Executive, andhis willingness to contest a UAP-hclcl seat wh en noone in a safer seat would withdraw for him. WhenCurtin formed a government in October 1941, Evattbecame both Attorney-General and Minister for ExternalAffairs.Even with the preoccupations of the war, whichsaw Evatt work to a schedule that even modern ministerswould regard as extraordinary, he retained hiscommitment to social reform through legislation. Thedefence power allowed the Commonwealth the latitudeduring the war to manage the economy in areaslike labour m arket regulation and prices policy. Evatt,keen to build on these gains, led the efforts of successiveLabor governments to extend the Commonwealth'speacetime powers. Ever the legalist, he sawconstitutional reform as the m eans fo r this: between1944 and 1948 he proposed and supported five m easuresfor amendment of the Constitution, only one ofwhich, on social services in 1946, was su ccessful. Themotif of most of the proposals was post-War recon ­struction, retaining or building on powers which Canberrahad exercised in wartime, although Evatt alsoadded to the wide-ranging reform proposals of the 1944referendum a proposal for constitutional guaranteesfor freedom of speech, expression and religion.Evatt's passion for civil liberties was actuallynever more fin ely demonstrated than in the battle he28EUREKA STREET • O c TOBER 1995

led not in favour of a constitutional amendment butagainst one-the 1950 referendum on the abolitionof the Communist Party. It is worth mentioning thisachievem ent-which I would regard as the finest ofEvatt's political career- at this point, although to doso is to jump forward in time to his period in Opposition. When the Menzies-Fadden Governm ent waselected in 1949, it was against the backdrop of fearsof a world communist revolutionary m ovem ent, andthe new Government's first m ajor legislative initiativewas the 1950 Communist Party Dissolution billwhich, once passed, was immediately subject to aHigh Court challenge. Under fire from conservativesand some in the ALP, Evatt accepted the brief for theWaterside Workers Federation, one of the plaintiffsm ounting the case alongside the Communist Party.The High Court held the act was ultra vires the CommonwealthParliament. Menzies then called a doubledissolution, was re-elected, secured control of theSenate, and announced a constitutional referendumto overcome the High Court decision. Throughout anintense and bitter campaign, Evatt brilliantly, tirelessly-andalmost single-handedly-dwelt on the potentialfor abuse if government could ban a politicalideology, condemning resort to totalitarian m ethodsto fight totalitarianism . His argument eventually wonthe day in enough States to defeat the referendum. Itwas a wonderful victory for Evatt, but it came at ahuge political cost: the m antle 'defender of communism', reinforced when he leapt hea dlong into thePetrov affair three years later, was to hurt Evatt badly,in subsequent polls and in the internal politics ofthe Labor Party. But as Justice Michael Kirby has written,this 'libertarian warrior's ... leadership in the defeatof the referendum campaign, against all odds, wasa wonderful and lasting contribution to the politicalethos of this country'.If the referendum campaign was Evatt's finestdomestic political achievement, it was as foreign ministerthat he made his most enduring contribution tothe course of Australian history, and to Australia'splace in the world. I think it is accurate to describehim as Australia's first genuine internationalist. AlthoughJohn Latham and Stanley Melbourne Brucewere both seen in Geneva as fri ends of the Leagu e ofNations, there were no Australian political leadersbefore Evatt, and have been very few since, with anythinglike his commitment to the building of cooperativemultilateral institutions and processes toaddress both security and developmentobjectives.F O REIG N MINISTERS HAVE T O DEAL with governments,personalities, circumstances and policies in constantflu x, and their lasting monuments tend to be few.Evatt's successor, Percy Spender, was a lucky exception,leaving behind him after only two years in thejob both the Colombo Plan and the ANZUS treaty. InEvatt's own eight years in office, there are really onlytwo lasting monuments that really stand out, but whatsignificant landmarks they were! The first was toswing Australia behind the Indonesian Republic andcontribute significantly to its effective independencefrom the N etherlands. And the other was his contributionto the founding of the United Nations. Evatt'scontribution to the San Francisco onJerence of 1945was the stuff of which legends are made-especiallyin his fight for the rights of the smallerpowers against the grea ter in the roles ofthe General Assembly and the SecurityCouncil, and in his faith in the UN as anagent for social and economic reform andas a protector for human rights.The Big Three- the US, the SovietUnion and the UK-were interested in asuccessor to the League of Nations as aninternational peace-keeper only if it mettheir needs, was their creature and threa t­ened them with no embarrassm ent. It wasthe Big Three-supplem ented by this timeby China-wh o drafted a charter fo r aUnited Nations. It was the Big Five-bythis time with France included- who invitedthe other forty-five states then comprisinginternational political society todiscuss their draft at San Francisco. If asmall power like Australia wanted to seechanges made to that draft charter, itwould clearly have to force those changeson very reluctant, not to say intransigent,grea t powers. And the grea t powers o organised the conference as to stack the oddsagainst small power impertinence. Theconference lasted for three m onths- andit comprised some four commissions,twelve technical committees of the whole,a steering committee of the whole, an executivecommittee and a host of sub-committees!It was in that maelstrom that Evattmade his marl

gardcd as a procedural question) and also peaceful settlementprocedures where they were parties to disputes.Evatt accepted that the wartime great powerconcert bad to underpin a post-war system , but hewanted the veto limited to decisions on the impositionof sanctions against aggressors. Although Evattis perhaps best rem embered for his fight on the vetoquestion, he was in fact locked out of much of thepoliticking on that question, and the fight tended tobe carried by liberal elem ents in the large UnitedSta tcs delegation unhappy with the prospect that eveninvestigation or discussion of an issue could be vetoed.In any event, h e and those who thought likehim lost the fight: the Soviet Union, which fearedWestern usc of the United Nations against it, wasimmovable, and the great powers retained virtually ablanket veto right.Evatt's greatest success was in forcing very reluctantgreat powers to accept a wide role for the entireUnited Nations m embership in the GeneralAssembly. The great powers would have m ade of theAssembly a talking shop, and one limited to vaguegeneralities at that. In

He had other reasons, though. One was that Australia,a barely emerging British dominion at the time,had made its presence felt at the 1919 Paris PeaceConference in which the League of Nations was established,but had later drifted back to the margins ofinternational society. He saw the survival of the UnitedNations and Australian busyness in its councils asnot the only way of keeping Australia involved in internationalaffairs, but as one very important way-aview to be shared by his conservative successors.The other reason was that Evatt, while aware ofthe need for regional security arrangements and of theunequal distribution of power among states, was neverqui tc the complete devotee of power politics. In hisview, states like Australia could exercise influencethrough the quality of their representatives, by thevalue of their ideas, and by the persistence of theirdiplomacy-and that is very much a view I share.Evatt's conviction that Australia's nationalsecurity interests would be served by developing aninternational system of security through the UnitedNations clearly has a resonance in contemporaryAustralian policy. I can't put the point more succinctlythan it was made in our 1994 Defence White Paper:Our national interests arc served by ensuring theexistence of effective UN mechanisms for conflictprevention, management and resolution. As amiddle power, we ha ve a particular interest infosteri ng an orderly international system in whichagreed norms of conduct constrain the use of force,and in supporting international institutions whichgive us important opportunities to shape thatsystem. We support UN and other multinationalpeace-making and peace-keeping endeavoursbecause we consider that institutions which areeffective, and arc seen to be so, in crises today arcmore likely to be effective in helping to protectAustra lia's interests should they be challenged inthe future.It is interesting to observe that Australia's recentproposals to strengthen the UN's role as an instrumen t of co-operative security seem to have struck aparticular chord with countries such as Argentina,Brazil, the Nordics, Poland, Japan and Jordan, whoshare our interest in building an international systemwhich does not rest olcly on nco-realist theoriesof 'great power balance'. Evatt, writing in 1948,pointed to the explanation for this:The truth is that Great Powers arc inevitablypreoccupied with questions of prestige and spheresof influence, whereas lesser powers whose interestsin la sting peace are just as great, if not grea ter, arcmore detached in their outlook on many issues andarc in a better position to make an unbi ased judgmenton the justice of any proposed settl ement.For Evatt, the UN was to be an agent of collectivesecurity, based on the concept that its memberstates would agree to renounce the use of forceamongst themselves and collectively come to the aidof any member attacked by an outside state,or by a renegade member. I have argued, bycontrast, that the central sustaining idea forcontemporary efforts, in the UN and outsideit, to maintain international peace and securityshould be the larger one of co-operativeewrity. This concept embraces not just collectivesecurity, but two other ideas as wellcommonsecurity and compreh ensivesecurity-which have been current in thinkingabout international security cooperationfor some time. Common security was firstarticulated as a concept in the 1980s:essentially it is the notion of states findingsecurity with other , rather than againstthem. Comprehensive ecurity is simply thenotion that security is multidimensional incharacter, encompassing a range of political,economic,social and othernon-military considerations as wellas military capability.C0-0PERATIVE SECURITY IS A USEFUL TERM notonly because it brings these three approachestogether, but does so in a way which emphasisesprevention and at the same timeencompasses the whole range of responses tosecurity concerns, both before and after thethreshold of armed conflict has been crossed.At one extreme this would involve long-termprograms to improve econ omic and socialconditions which are likely to give rise tofuture tensions; at the other it would include enforcementof peace by full scale military means.Evatt in fact did foreshadow in his own thinkingsome of these 'new' concepts in arguing, as he did, atSan Francisco for a Charter that paid more than lipservice to economic and social issues, not just for theirown sake but because these represented the root causesof conflict.A priority theme of our activity at the UN in recenttimes has been to urge that the Secretary-Generaland member states give greater weight to preventiveapproaches, by putting more priority on preventivediplomacy and addressing the underlying causes oftensions and disputes through peace building-bywhich we m ean both international laws, regim es andarra ngements on the one hand, and on the other handin-country strategies aimed at economic and socialdevelopment and institution strengthening. All thiswould have met Evatt's approval, not least becauseof his lawyer's faith in international arbitration andother legal procedures for the peaceful settlement ofinternational disputes.Partypolitickingwas alnwstentirelybeyond hiln,and it may bethat hisineptitudehere 111ade thegreat Laborsplit of the1950s worsethan it needhave been.VOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 31

At San Francisco, Evatt was acutely conscious ofthe balance to be struck between establishing aneffective world body, necessitating the backing andparticipation of the great powers, and at the same timekeeping within bounds the extent of the influencewhich those powers would wield through the organisation. This remains a pressing issue in 1995. A featureof the period of Security Council activism sincethe end of the Cold War has been the concern of manycountries about domination of UN decision-makingby the fiv e permanent members of the Council, andmore specifically by the three Western members, theso-called P3. One result of these concerns is that, forthe first time since 1945, there is now a real possibilitythat new Permanent Members will be added tothe Council. Australia has strongly supported such achange. Our reasoning is drawn from the same pragmatic national self-interest that inspired Evatt; we donot aspire to permanent m embership ourselves butwe have a strong stake in an effective Security Council.To retain legitimacy and a guarantee of internationalsupport in responding to the range of new anddifficult situations which now confront the internationalcommunity, the Council must represent thebroad range of interests and perspectives of UN m em ­ber states, and it must reflect the rea lities of power atthe turn of this century, not those prevailaing fifty years ago.NE OF THE C RUCIAL ELEMENTS in any expansion ofthe Security Council's permanent membership is theveto power. The fact is that those who have it cannotbe forced to give it up- indicating how far-s ightedEvatt was in trying to remove the great powers' abilityto veto Charter amendment. But if the veto wereextended to all serious aspirants for permanent m em ­bership, we would have an unworkable Coun cil, withup to ten countries able to block UN decision-making.One alternative approach would be to revive Evatt'sown proposal that the veto be excluded in its applicationfrom all aspects of peaceful settlement procedures,or even confined solely to Council action takenunder C hapter VII (that is, the enforcement provisionsof the C harter) but no doubt that is an even morequixotic aspiration.I expect it will take considerable further n egotiationbefore the question of Security Council structureis resolved. The point here is, as Evatt would haveappreciated, that som e compromise will have to bestruck if there arc to be new permanent m embers at atime w hen the overall UN m embership will not supportan unqualified extension of the veto power.But th e point is also that both the overallmembership (the majority of whom, like Australia,want an effective, representative Council), and theexisting permanent members (who will otherwise facethe risk of erosion of the authority of a key body inwhich their influence is wielded), have reasons to findsuch a compromise.It was not only the global but regional securityenvironment that occupied Evatt's attention at SanFrancisco. He had no illusions that the UN could offerany absolute guarantee of protection against armedthreat to Australia, and recognised that if collectivesecurity was found wanting, Australia would need to'fall back on regional arrangements and ultimatelyupon those of its own defence forces and those of itsallies'. His starting point was to seek to keep the U .K.and the United States engaged in maintaining securityand order in the South West Pacific.Evatt's insistence on including specific langu ageon co-operation on economic and social issues in theCharter was m otivated by the Labor Government'sgoal of maintaining full employment after WWII.Under the terms of the UN Charter as it eventuallyem erged, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)shares with the General Assembly responsibility forthe UN's promotion of international economic andsocial co-operation. Largely due to his persistence, UNmember states pledged to take 'joint and separate actionin co-operation with the [UN] orga nisa tion' forthe achievement of goals specified in Article 55 ofthe Charter, including 'higher standards of living, fullemploym ent and conditions of economic and socialprogress and development'. Indeed this undertaking,in Article 56, became known at San Fra ncisco as 'theAustralian pledge'.Some Americans, including Nelson Rockefeller,then a State Department adviser, suggested at the timethat Evatt wanted language in the C harter whichwould allow the Government in Canberra to use theexternal affa irs power to legislate on matters outsidethe federal powers listed in the Austnllian Constitution-an interesting forerunner to some of the claimswe hear to this day from sceptics and cynics on theOpposition benches ' But it is far more likely that Evattwas sticking to a brief which reflected the co mmonpolicy assumption in Australia at the time, which wasthat full employment in Australia would largely dependon the major economics' w illingness to pursuethat obj ective.One of the few positive effects of the paralysis ofthe UN Security Council during the Cold War wasthat the social an d economic goals set out in Article55 beca me for the most part central concerns of theUN. Ironically, one of the exceptions was full employment,as multilateral co-operation on employment policies and related financial and trade policywere discussed in the International Labo ur Organisation,the international financial institutions and theOECD rather than the UN itself. In contrast, the UN'srole in such Article 55 areas as technical developmentassistance, poverty alleviation, children's welfare,refugee problem s, international health and humanrights has been very substantial- and the memberstates' pledge in Article 56 has taken a very concreteform through support for multilateral aiel funds andprograms and through bilateral assistance.32EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1995

The 'pledge' in Article 56 has come to be one of thefeatures of the UN that distinguishes it from theLeague of N ations. It has been the basis for initiatinga range of programs and a variety of roles that havehelped the UN endure its setbacks and retain the faithof m ember states when the League failed to do so. Amajor debate is currently taking place-in which Australiais a central participant- about the UN's role ineconomic and social development, and about makingECOSOC a more effective body for developing andimplementing programs for international co-operationin a more co-ordinated and effective way.A further element of continuity in our foreignpolicy from Evatt's period as Foreign Minister is ourcommitment to the promotion of human rights. AsPresident of the UN General Assembly in 1948, Evattpresided over the adoption of the Universal Declarationof Human Rights.This was much more than a symbolic act for him:throughout his career there was evidence of his basicattachment to civil and political and economic, socialand cultural rights. In the 1920s in the NSW Parliament,he introduced abolitionist legislation andargued for minimum labour conditions. At San Francisco,he backed Jessie Street's efforts to obtain gen ­der equality within the UN as part of the Charter. Asa lawyer h e defended freedom of speech in numerouscases, with the struggle over the Communist Partydissolution act no more than the icing on the cake inthis respect.The Universal Decl aration remains the foundationfo r the standa rds of human rights andfundam ental freedoms accepted by the UN MemberStates-the basis for the six major human rights instrumentsand all the machinery and expert bodiesassociated with them . T wo Australian s, ProfessorPhilip Alston and Ju stice Elizabeth Evatt- Dr Evatt'sniece- serve with distinction on two of these bodies,the Committee on Economic, Social and CulturalRights and the Human Rights Committeerespective! y.D R EvAn WAS NOT CONTENT, however, with establishingand articulating standards in the UN; healso sought effective ways of implem enting them . In1947 Australia proposed that an International HumanRights Court be established. T his was an idea wellahead of its time, and even in 1988 when we revivedthe idea on the occasion of the 40th anniversary ofthe adoption of the Universal D eclaration, the notionof a single supervisory body was too bold for many.Several developments since, including the establishment of tribunal to consider extrem e and outrageoushuman rights violations in the former Yugoslavia andRwanda, and the growing realisation that six paralleltrea ty bodies is a cumbersome arrangement, suggestthat the option of a single body to m onitor observanceof basic standards may be an idea whose timehas com e.As we all know, Evatt's career after his days asforeign minister, which ended with electoral defeatin 1949, was not a very happy one for him or his Party.Opposition was not his forte. Parliament was nothis preferred forum. Dom estic politics did not comeeasily to him, although no one should ever forget hisinspired leaders hip of the constitutional referendumcampaign in 1951. Party politicking was almost en ­tirely beyond him, and it may be that his ineptitudehere made the great Labor split of the 1950s worsethan it need have been.Probably we will never know to what extent declininghealth contributed to his difficulties in thoseyears. By the time he retired from politics and becameChief Justice of N ew South Wales in 1960his condition certainly was sad indeed.E vAn's MEMORY HAS lEEN TARN ISHED in this countrybecause of events in the 1950s and the embarrassm entsof his final years in public life. But for all the controversyand criticism he generated, Evatt was one of thedefining figures in our nation's history. It is an ambiguouslegacy, true, for those of us in the Labor movement.His setbacks as Labor leader in the 1950s andhis contribution to the ALP split contributed mightilyto keeping the Party out of power for twenty- threeyears. But on the m ore positive side, Evatt has left uswith an invaluable legacy in our law, our institutionsand elem ents of our policy, because of his vision fo rAustralia as a social democracy, because of his fightagainst a proposal for constitutional change whichwould have worked tragically against this country'sfundam ental freedoms, and because of his far-s igh tedpursuit of our interests in collective secu rity and international co-operation.It is above all the Eva tt of Sa n Francisco who deservesto be rem embered, and remembered with bipartisanpride. As Paul Hasluck, who worked with himat San Francisco (and had very mixed feelings indeedabout his personal qualities), wrote: 'at the conclusionof the San Francisco Conference ... Evatt ... wasrecognised as a fi gure of m om en t on the world scene'.At the conclusion of the Conference, the AmericanSecretary of State, Edward Stettinius, declared that 'noone had contributed more to the Conference than MrEvatt'. The Peruvian delegation went so fa r as to movea resolution that the small powers 'pay homage to theirgrea t champion, Mr Evatt'. And the New York Timessaid of him, in perhaps the finest tribute of all, thatthere were two kinds of power, that exercised throughcrude national muscle and coercive m ethods, and thatpurveyed by the force of ideas, argument and intellectualeffort, and that Herbert Vere Evatt epitomised thelatter.•Gareth Evans is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leaderof the Government in the Senate. The 1995 MannixMemorial Lecture was delivered by Senator Evans atMelbourne University in August, 1995.V OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 33

PoETRYIllacera to spiri toThe Tenor Is Too CloseDon't visit a focLOry or an abattoirsif you wish to enjoy pasta OT pori< chops.Om tenor's stumpy, stout and spilLing as he sings.No wonder Doriano, who ran jOT Italyat the Olympics, whispus to us softly,'Jl povero, che bwuo'. Mozart was smallbut wther vain of his goodlool

P oETRYBones and BlancmangeEven the title is old-fashion edwherenow do they save that pink or brownsoft pudding baked from anowroot,so over-s weet you welcomedunsieved lumps and cocoa grain !Fafner's N eedleworkI wanted to control the universebut now I'm buried in a mass of notesand night by night m y dreams are getLing worse.That selfish genius took m e from a m ythancll

Mrs Laszlo's torteAs A CH'W I WAS A MONocunu>Ac CATHouc-"well "' thowugh-going Austmlhn_ Apupil only ever at a Catholic school, discouraged from roaming and making friends in the neigh ­bourhood, I had the barest experience of a system of belief or a tribal identity other than my own .'Barest' is, in fact, too strong. What could I claim? I retrieved balls from the boarding house nextdoor, and the owner, Reg Thompson, had no religion that I could see. He was a gentle, sunspottedsingle m an who chatted to m y m other through the fen ce. I rem ember their relaxed, animatedfaces in their brief moments of idling, and their easy hanging on the boundary wire. Bu t Ihad little to say to Reg Thompson and I hardly ever entered his boarding house. He had chara ctersand long- term residents there-John Long with a beard and a constant girlfriend and a m otorbike,and elderly Anne who also had a beard as well as terrible arthritis and a red setter. But it was mybrothers, who grew up in the 1960s, who got to know these people. Reg Thompson was simply anon-Catholic: when his niece was married at All Saints, Woollahra, I was stood ou tside the porchto watch her em erge from her bridal car.At school, in the regular spin of the competitive sporting year, I brushed past numerous non­Catholic boys. Only once, however, did I witness what I presumed was the clash of beliefs. I waswatching a cricket match at Rivervi ew. It was aga inst Kings . A group of the visitors, alreadydismissed or waiting their turn to bat, were passing remarks about what were then called boxes,but are now referred to as protectors. One imaginative boy suggested it was useful to have a boxin place if your girlfriend turned up to watch you. The boys amused them selves with other angleson this possibility. Then a Jesuit scholastic strode over and withered them . 'This sort of talkmight be acceptable at Kings,' he said, 'but it certainly has no place here. Keep it at least till youget hom e.'Twice I was jolted less predictably by an alien world. My sister and I were staying with agrea t-aunt in Crookwell, and as part of her policy of divide and pacify, m y aunt had me spend aday out on the property of some friends of hers, Anglicans. My Auntie Peg's own fa ther was Irish,but she affected a disdainfu l and sceptical air towards things Irish and notably the Church and itspastors. Her husband was the Catholic doctor in the town, and either in spite of or because of thatshe had such fri ends as the Carters, long- time graziers on 'Lake Edward'.My day's outing was extraordinary. I witnessed two events and they both dazed me. I saw alamb being born-violently, with the help of human hands.'Where did it come out of?' asked my sister later that night. 'The tail? ''Yes,' I said.'I thought so.'The second event was no less destabilising. Dinner was ea ten in the middle of the day, in thedining room of the old hom estead, and Walter Carter, gra zier and fath er and husba nd, sat at thehead of the table. When the dishes had been brought in and the roast set before him, he bowed hishea d and said Grace and everyone else, his wife and his three sons and the m en working on theplace, bowed their heads and listened. I was shaken. My own family didn't say Grace. Nor didanyone else-Catholics-that I ever had a m eal with . We had our prayers, and maybe there werespecial occasions like a First Communion breakfast, but not just at an ordinary m eal. Grace wastaken as said, as it were. Now here were people I liked, warm, kind people, practising their ownreligion, having a service-and I had never seen a service before. I was confused and awed. I didn'ttell m y sister about Grace.It was m y mother who was responsible, inadvertently, for th ese sudden arrivals at lookoutsinto other worlds. One school h olidays she boo ked m e in to tennis lessons at some courts inBellevue Hill. The teacher was a lea thery, late- middle-aged pro with that requisite ability to fliphalf-volleys over the net at you all day without error and without pause. He was the real thingcouldhave been an uncle of Hoad or Rosewall. I knew none of m y fellow pupils, and in betweenm y own turns on centre court I said little to them, nor even took much notice of them. Many ofthem however, knew one another and talked freely, and there were girl as well a boy , and athe morning wore on I moved closer to the circle. I remember only one thing, one word, of whatI heard. I was looking for the topic, for a way into their gro uping, and a very ordinary boy said,without either subservience or contempt, that Rabbi someone or other had said something or36EUREKA STREET • O CT O BER 1995

other. Another boy, or maybe a girl, responded to him and quoted the Rabbi again-or perhaps itwas another Rabbi-and the conversation went on while people came and went to face theirquota of the white balls springing endlessly over the net. I only heard the one word, but I pausedon the edge of the group, tense, not wanting to intrude, knowing in fact that I could not get inthere in any case. A shiver of awkward fearfulness flickered inside m e: I did not want to beexposed. I did not belong here.There was one boy at school, at Riverview, called Zions, and somewhere, sometime, I hadheard he was Jewish. But I saw no manifestation of this; he w as one of u s, a Riverview boy, as hisfather had been before him. He was less distinctive than Albert Chan or Thaddeus Zlotkowski,and even they, because they shared the conversation and the religion of the rest of us, were onlyintermittently marked off by their features or their name.So m y experience of those outside my tribe was minuscule. Yet there were beliefs or prejudicesI could inherit or acquire about such people. Enough of the old saws and rhymes had their place inthe ragbag of my childhood. I caught niggers by the toe and didn't put coins in my mouth becausean old Chinaman had held them God knows where, and I heard from other boys that a m eanperson was a jew. I learned slabs of The Merchant of Venice. I watched Fagin entering hell. I readChums and I go t its sense of the flotsam and jetsam of the human race. Yet these stained charactersnever stepped out of the confines of folklore and idiom and actually visited m e. I did not meetJews or blacks any m ore than I met Tuaregs or Huns, and the stereotype was the only representativein m y imagination.So I thought, in hindsight, it _was fai~ to acknowledge that during my child- ~::%%hood there was JUSt a Whiff of anti-Senutism 111 the au. I said this to my m other. ~ ~~-i6i~m1!2:::3a:;;lc2oz::zi~~'Not from your own family,' she retorted sharply. ;:::~ ~'Well rhymes and jokes,' I said._/

I understood Mrs Laszlo from The Scourge of the Swastilw. My father showed a special respectfor Lord Russell of Liverpool's account of the crimes tried at Nuremberg. It was in with theother war books, Enem y Coast A hea d and Boldness Be My Friend and Carve Her Name WithPride, and w e all read them. But it was The Scourge of the Swastika I went back to m ost often, Isuppose for the photographs. Mug shots of the major criminals, and bodies being bulldozed, and,m ost m emorably, naked wom en running past guards, captioned 'photograph taken from a capturedGerman soldier. ' These were Jews.Otherwise it was the Scriptures. I presumed that was the definitive book on the Jews. Thegospels were what I knew best, and I knew en ough of the scholarship of the time to understandthat the Gospel according to Matthew recorded the promises to the Jews. It recorded the prom ises,and their fulfilment- in Christ. Matthew was the set text for on e full year at school, and Iheard his account of the passion of Christ every Palm Sunday each year of m y life.Numerous phrases were known to m e, but there was one that made m e shudder, even asa boy. The Gospel that plotted, with su ch relentless precision, God's squaring off eachpromise to the Jews, had one terrible verse: 'The whole people answered Pilate and said,"His blood be upon us and upon our children ".' The force of this temptation of fa terocked m e. It was the whole people, not just the chief priests or some representativewho had assumed the fearful responsibility. It was not just on their own behalf theywere wagering such stakes. Even worse it was not just for their descendants but fo r theirchildren. Their children. They were shouting this challenge in a work that detailed allthe other contracts between God and them selves and that ticked off every one as havingbeen observed to the letter.Mrs Laszlo was their child. From the vantage point of the 1950s, there was no doubtthis last contract had also been carried out. Whether the text might ever have been thejustification or the goad I had no idea. It never crossed m y mind to ask. All I saw wasthat God had been dared and God had taken up the dare. This text was the word of God,the inspired account of the only story that really m attered. It recorded with absolutesimplicity the price tha t the Jewish people had accepted for the execution of Christ.I w ould have regarded as mad any idea that Mrs Laszlo had deserved what happenedto her. In any case no one ever suggested it to me. I lived untroubled by any contradictionin a guiltless person's wearing the mark of Cain. I was born with original sin on m yown soul. I did not know whether that was a Jewish belief too, but the Jews' own historyseem ed to me an illustration of the same doctrine. These were a people before any of them wereindividuals. The Old Testament made that clear. Jerusalem was destroyed and the entire peoplewent to Babylon, into captivity, because there was a contract between God and a people, and thepeople had broken it. Ezeki el had said it was a proverb in the land of Israel that 'thefath ers have ea ten sour grapes, and the children 's teeth are set on edge'.SHOLARSHI P HAS MOVED ON. Ezekiel says further that the Lord has no truck with the old proverb;rather, the man who has sinned is the only one who will die. David slays the killer of Sa ul forshedding the blood of the Lord's anointed, and Matthew seizes on that; death is the just fate fo rthese latter-day slayers of the Lord's anointed. Had Matthew's 'whole people' really renouncedthat right to be heard one by one? Had Matthew libelled them for his own sectarian purposes? Idon't know. If, as a schoolboy, I got some echo of what the scholars of the day were saying, thetruth is that now, as a middle-aged adult, I am further away from what is being said. I would notbe atypical, and such ignorance is not easily rectifiable. To access the story now is on e step, tobelieve it another step again. All scholarship, all history is threatened by our greater readiness toprove what is wished for. As the least, surely, of its oppressions, the Holocaust has been a terribleburden to the Christian conscience. No scholar can come up with an interpretation of the gospelthat sees anti-Semitism as anything but an aberration. Better condemn the very men who wrotethe gospels. These are the Christian straits of faith, hope, charity, and of justice and integrity.My Jewish people, when I began to meet them, were not a theological dilemma. Instead theyshared the turbulence and illogicality of m y own blood . There was one unaccountable quirkabout Mrs Laszlo. Every year sh e ga ve us her torte on the same plastic tray. It was a rectangul arkerbed obj ect, violently pink. There were stacks of identical ones in Woolworths at Double Bay.But Mrs Laszlo was forever anxious about this tray. She fretted till it was returned to her. Thenshe sent it out again the following year under her individual, and priceless, torte. As a boy, evenlater, I could never understand all that.•Gerard Windsor's most recent book is Family Lore.38EUREKA STREET • O c TOilER 1995

P oETRYThe Mortality Sub-CommitteeTh e Mortality Sub-Committee has been in sessionlonger than anyone can rem ember.For reasons opaque even to the Chair,sundry faces grow dim befor edisappearing, but so far there's always been a quorum.Though nothing has ever been said on the matter, tacitlyit's understood that a dress-code prevails;the ultra-bosky look- all wreaths and fig-leavesreportedas having prevailed onceis no longer comme il faut. Power-dressingin fi eld-grey and cyanide-blue is the vogue,accessories running to onyx and sable.Many of the m embers affec t a dapper air,committees being, as is welllmown,the zone of control in an unceTtain world.Recurrently, it's incumbent on this groupto addmss submissions from such othaquarters as the Commission fm the Testingof Mowle, or the Ad-Hoc Wml

THE CHURCHT , o"co"" mSOME LETTERS OF JohnHenry N ewman inMelbourne has given alocal focus to the sesquicentenaryof hisconversion to theCatholic church inOctober 1845.Researching Newman's influence in Australia,Michael McGirr SJ, editor of Austl'Olian Catholicsmagazine, found a cache of previously unsuspectedNewman material in a Melbourne flat. Handed downthrough the family of the Cardinal's sister, the manuscriptswere unknown to Newman sch olars untilMcGirr's journalistic legwork brought them to light.The gem of the find is a short note to his onetimedisciple and brother-in-law, the ReverendThomas Mozley. Married to Newman's sister Harriett,Mozley was vicar of Cholderton on the SalisburyPlain. With only 200 souls, the parish allowed himtime for journalism. He edited the Newmanist magazineBritish Critic, wrote lea ders for The Times andwas Times correspondent at the first Vatican Council.In 1843 the Mozleys took a long holiday in France,their first experience of the Continent. French Catholicismbowled Thomas Mozley over. Withoutwarning, he informed his wife that he was returningto England in order to become a convert. At this news,John Henry Newman mshed down to Cholderton fromOxford and talked his brother-in-law around.Ironically, two years later he himself would make themove he had counselled Mozley against.The Melbourne manuscripts have a note, writtenin an arthritic hand, which refers to this irony:Dear Tlom] Mlozley]I o ught to have reminded myself that before Ibecame a Catholic I hindered you from becoming on e.This leads m e to say that I think my second judgementin all respects a better than the firstYours aff[ectionatellyJHNNewman inmanuscriptEdmund Campion looks at the ironiesof private life uncovered in the letters ofthe great public churchmanOn the reverse another hand has written: 'thelast', i.e. the final letter from Newman to his onetimedisciple. Judging from its watennark, the letterwas written in 1884. Its contents were already knownfrom a copy kept by Newman. The publication ofMozley's reminiscences of his Oxford days had led toa rift between them, because N ewman judged thatMozley's m emories of his family were full of errors.Nevertheless, he continued to refer to Mozley as anold friend.Two unpublished letters from 1852 point to asharper rift. They are Newman's replies to Mozley'sannouncement of the sudden death of Harriett. Brotherand sister had not seen ea ch other for nine years.Upset at h er husband's leanings towards Rome,Harriett blamed John for unduly influencing himalthoughin fact he had dissuaded the vicar of Choldertonfrom converting. When N ewman himself tookthe path to Rome in 1845, her decision to have nothingmore to do with her brother was total. They neverspoke or corresponded again.Harriett's dismay at her husband's proposa l toconvert flames out in letters to her sister Jemima,published in 1962. The Melbourne cache includes herdiaries from 181 5 to 1851, but they reveal little of herinner thoughts. One turns in vain to the volumes for1843, the year of Mozley's near miss, or 1845, John'sconversion year. Instead of inner, personal life, overthe years her spidery handwriting in thin ink recordsin these diaries the daily rounds of a vicar's wife. Thereare pencilled tallies of how few hours of sleep sh eachieved each night and what medicine she was taking.Ill health was a feature of this quiet life.Nevertheless, Harriett's death shocked her brother.It came at the end of the week of one of his earlytriumphs as a Catholic, the 'Second Spring' sermon.Preached to the first synod of the restored hierarchyof England and Wales, the sermon is a marvel of Englishprose and ecclesial optimism, written in a singleday. Then came the news of Harriett's death. Althoughhe was invited, as things stood he decided not to attendher funeral. But letters to intimate friends register hisshock, as well as his regret at the distance time had40EUREKA STREET • O c TOIIER 1995

put between them. In Melbourne the fair copy of apoem he dedicated to Harriett in 1830 attests to thebond between them which had once been close.The poe m and Harriett's diaries came toMelbourne with her only child, Grace, who marriedin 1864 and emigrated with her husband, WilliamLangford . Grace Langford wrote two unremarkablenovels and was known as a pianist. She kept in touchwith the family back in England. Visiting Englandagain 1890, she wrote to h er famous uncle, nowCardinal Newman, asking to see him. His reply, whichis in Melbourne, was the las t letter he ever sent.Written for him at his own dictation, it is signed shakilywith his initials. With the letter is a k eepsakevolume of the Cardinal's religious poem s, again withhis initials and hers and the elate in his shaky handwriting.When she visited him in August 1890, Newmanhad not seen his niece for 47 years. They sat upstairsin the Birmingham Oratory and h e held h er hand,which made h er sorry she hadn't taken off her glove.He asked about her father's w ritings and spoke of herson's growing reputation and other things she couldn'tquite fo llow . She told the Cardinal that years ago inRom e she had m et on e of his old friends, Maria RosinaGiberne. Miss Giberne fell ill and Grace Langfordhad nursed her through her illness. Thiskindness touched him deeply, h e said.GRA CE WAS UN LI KELY TO HAVE KNOWN that manyyears earlier her Uncle Frank had fallen in love withthe bea utiful Maria Giberne. Twice he had asked herto marry him and both times h ad been rejected. Anartist who has left candid sketches of the N ewmanfa mily at home, Maria was infatuated, not with Frank,but wi th John. She followed him into the Catholicchurch, aft erwards making her living as an artist inRom e; and in 1861 she joined a French convent, apparentlyat Pope Pius IX's suggestion. Sh e was JohnHenry Newman's grea test fa n and she had a tendencyto be proprietorial about him. For his part, he wasalways gentle with her; yet he could becom e testywhen she seem ed to be wanting to collect souvenirsof him. He worried about her well-being in a Frenchconvent, writing solicitous letters about her healthand the need for a good dentist (he had dental problemshim self). On his way bac k fro m being made acardinal in Rom e the old man proposed detouring tovisit Maria at Autun; but an attack of pneumonia andbad weather forced him to return directly in the careof a doctor. Her disappointment can only be imagined.After the interview with his niece Grace,Newman went off to bed. That night h e took a badturn, w hich developed into pneumonia. A day later,he died. So the Australian Grace Langford was thelast person to speak to him, apart from his fe llowOratorians. Indeed Michael McGirr has uncovered ajocular family tra dition which suggests that Grace wasthe carrier of the virus that finish ed him off.Grace Langford's collection of Newman familymaterials includes a handful of letters from a seconduncle, Frank. Four years junior, he grew up in the shadowof John, who put him through Oxford. In academichonours Frank outstripped his brother, taking a doublefirst. At his graduation the whole assembly stood andcheered, som ething unknown since Sir Robert Peelhad taken his degree. But Frank had to abandon anOxford career because he began to have religiousdoubts. H e could not accept the Thirty Nine Articles.H e was travelling in an opposite direction to John.Over the years their relationship would become distant but courteous.L EAVING OxFORD, HE SET OUT as a Plymouth Brethrenmissionary to Persia. He was not a success there. Sohe returned to England and teaching, in time becomingProfessor of Latin at University College, London,a post he would hold for 25 years.Frank N ewman was a man who took up causes.Religiously, he m oved closer and closer to unbelief,ending his days on the outer reaches of Unitarianism .H e was a dedicated vegetarian, who liked to hand outraisins and walnuts to sch ool children in hopes ofwinning their interest; and he swapped recipes for nutcutlets and vegetable soups with their adepts. Hisdress sense was eccentric: in winter he would cut aheadhole in a rug, which he wore as an overcoat. Hisunpublish ed letters to his niece Grace in Melbournerehearse many of these enthusiasms. He attributeshis good health, for instance, to lifelong teetotalismand two decades of vegetarianism . He was an opponentof British imperialism and suspected Qu een Victoriaof conniving with politicians to enlarge her ownglory. He distrusted the military, who were happy towaste millions on war while people were in wan t.Frank's strongest sympathies were with victims ofVictorian society. Englan d's policy in Ireland, whichpauperised the people, enraged him . He saw that wars,which brought fa m e to generals a nd politicians,brought only grief to ordinary soldiers and their fa m­ilies. He wanted Australia to strike an inclepenclen tline in the world, not allowing English politicians todetermine foreign policy. Above all, he urged Grace,Australians should keep clear of European conflicts.They should know that England, fo r all its promises,would offer no h elp if trouble ca me to these shores.Michael McGirr's discovery of the Newman manuscriptsis a happy fi nd in this sesquicentenary year.The 1845 conversion has encouraged commentatorst o n otice tha t John H enry N ewm an was a trueecumenist before the word was known. H e saw thepresence of the Holy Spirit on both sides of the Reformationdivide. Yet the Melbourne papers are a reminderalso that behind this public achievem ent there wasconsiderable personal pain.•Edmund Campion's most recent book is A Place InThe City, published by Penguin.V OLUME 5 N UMllER 8 • EUREKA STREET 41

STORYTREVOR HAYSome desolate shadeI REMEMmTHE n" ' mmnuE went roundWoodville High that Leon's dad was coming to sortout one of the teachers after a particularly brutalcaning. A stupid idea, really- Leon needed no one todefend him, and would rather have had his handsshredded than create any impression that some gutlessteacher bad the power to make him acknowledgepain. Leon always stared unflinchingly, menacingly,into the eyes of his lictor, no matter how many cutshe got, while the rest of us held our brea th and eventhe room next door fell silent to count the strokes.Still, it was an exciting rumour, full of impotenthope for all of us, that one of these sadists would gettheir com e-uppance. Leon's dad was reputed to beabout six foot four and sixteen stone, with many grea tscars of h

as an actor, and h e had a way of carrying himself, evenwhen h e was barely thirteen.We were in Ma cbeth together once. H e wasMacduff, I was Malcolm and w e had a sort of pact, a'clare', solemnisecl over a bottle of Southwark on theoval, that we'd only learn our lines to a certain pointand then extemporize. The theory was that an audiencewould accept anything if it was delivered withenough conviction. 'Let us seek out some desolateshade and there weep our sad bosoms empty', it allbegan, authentically enough. I think w e might havepulled it off if only the prompter hadn't become desperateand tried to make himself beard above us.On Saturday mornings, after staying over at hisplace, and being stuffed to vomit-point with some kindof fat-marbled sausage, giant pickles and boiled cabbageby his mother ('Eat' Eat m y boy! Empty stom ­ach no good for that, Australia best place in world forfood! ') and having vodka surreptitiously pressed uponme by his father, (' You reckon for Aussie boy orangejuice better for brea kfast time, eh l O.K. Sure, I knowtruefor that maybe, but orange juice and vodka just flike this country-put together, little of this, little of ·that, everybody he-ppy!') I always felt terribly relieved :to escape the clutches of the exotic and go hom e tomy familiar world of the Port Adelaide Football Club,N orwood Town Hall dance, pie floaters at Cowley'sPi e Cart and an es ky of ice-coated beer. Leon's Saturdayworld, by sharp contrast, was the local soccer club,the Polish Club dance and an csky of beerin Pukhala's shed.F oR YEARS WE MET OCCASIONALLY at the Strathmore.Once I wrote a poem, which I called 'Blowin' in theWind', aft er Dylan. I showed it to Leon during one ofthese Friday sessions. He crumpled it savagely in hisfingers, flung it to the fl oor and snarled 'Is this youridea of som e sm art fuckin' jokel' I was bewildered,but then the penny dropped. He thought it was abouthim, although it was supposed to be a mildly satirical,self-deprecating thing about m yself and theromantic poses and gestures he wa s forever scourgingme fo r. Of course I couldn't retreat or deny, oreven explain. I could only try to stand m y ground. Sobegan the custom ary joust, in which Leon would usehis audience as a favourite weapon. After about thirtyseconds of glowering sideways at me and flicking h iseyes up and down m y b ee as if issuing a public challengeto a schoolyard fight, he bent down and retrievedthe piece of paper from the aluminium m oat than ranround the foot of the bar. He passed it to Kaspersky,Pukhala and the others, who shrugged their shouldersinnocently and said'What's all this about? ''Ask the poet here', said Leon, with one of histerrible, corrosive sneers. 'I am only poor Ukrainianboy from Croy-don Park, English no good, idiot-bastard-cunt-rubbishN ew Australian English! Ask thiseducated teacher's college Aussie boy.'The others joined in with a ch orus of CroydonPark pidgin. I steeled myself to act as if nothing hadhappened, as way down the end of the bar, someonein a blue singlet yelled out 'Hey, what the fuck's thisall about? Who wrote this shitl'Later that night, in Pukhala's shed, I told Leonangrily it was about m e not about him. He just said'Are we really fri ends?' and I have never been quitesure just what he meant.Leon was conscripted in 1967. I had a letterdescribing the Tet offensive of 1968 when I was atPuckapunyal m y elf,undergoing 'all that kindergartenstuff' as he calledrecruit training (all verywell for him, it frightenedthe tripe out of m e) .Around the middle of 1968he w as discharged withsom e kind of w ound.Again the rumours fl ew.He'd been 'stitched up' byCong, h e'd been in a'shit-hot' bar-room brawlwith a pack of Yanks ... Infact, he'd cut himselfsom eh ow while on ' hygiene'duty in the Officers'Mess, and spen t a fe wweeks in the base h ospital at Vung Tau, before beingsent back to Keswick Barracks in Adelaide.We continued to meet on and off for m any yea rswhile I was teaching in Adelaide. He go t to knowJenny and we would occasionally m eet him and Larrieafter work in the Strathmore- in the Lounge, ofcourse. They spent some weekends with us at Po rtN oarlunga, which h e loved, and he gave me a realtongue-lashing about my perverted priorities when wemoved to Melbourne in 1972. A few years later wewent to his w edding. There must have been a wagonof vodka for every man, wom an and child in the receptionhall that night; there w ere fa ces fit to burst,like shiny red balloons, and everywhere people singing,dancing and shouting.Naturally there were incidents, quarrels, recriminations,dark historical enmities, and a near-riot atthe end when a certain traditionally-distrusted familywas accused of liberating vodka intended for drinksback at Croydon Parle Leon saved the day. He mounteda table, sending the glasses and jugs fl ying, andmade an impassioned speech in his native tongue. Suddenlythere wasn 't a dry eye to be seen in the hallnoteven mine, although I had n o idea what h e wassaying. Then he folded his arms imperi ously, droppedto his knees and whirled on one leg like a cossack,until the hall itself was spinning with joy.He and Larrie stayed with us in Melbourne for afew clays of the honeymoon and he made Jenny laughV o LUME 5 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 43

and laugh with his strutting aboutlike a peacock and his wonderful,preposterous guffaw, like a crossbetween the King of Siam and OilcanHarry. He could alternate betweena fa ce like a sunbeam andthat dreadful, belligerent look heu sed t o give m e, but I alwaysthought I understood his act. Still,around that time I began to wonderif h e'd crossed the line som e­how. One day when he launchedinto one of h is tirades, I said 'Whothe helJ are you talking to now? Isthis o ne of your per fo rmancesyo u've had sa ved up since we lastm et ?' For th first and last time,to my astonishment, he apologisedto m e, and said, in a quiet, puzzledtone 'You were right to pullme up like that. SometimesI just forget'.0NE DAY IN 1978, when I wassitting in m y office, Jenny rang totell m e that Leon was dead. Somemental trouble, it had been goingon for some time, he'd lost hi s job,pu t himself into care a couple oftim es, then gone into decline, takenan overdose of som ething mixedwith alcohol and been found dea dat hom e one afternoon. We wentto the fun eral. I was horrified towalk into the Ukrainian OrthodoxC hurch in the Port Road and findan open coffin, and Leon in a suit,staring at the ceiling. His foreheadwas swollen and square-looking,his nose m ore aquiline than I remembered, and sallow skin wasstretched taut over the bones of hisface, like a canvas. Somehow I hadnot really believed that h e wasdead. For the last time, h e hadforced m e to an irrevocable admission.His m other was crazy withher unutterable pain and grief, anchoredin the world only by theweight of two women who heldher by the arms and wept for her.She would not let them close thecoffin lid when it was time to goto the cemetery, but propped itopen again and again to m oa n andbabble over Leon, and fuss with hissuit. As I stared at this spectacle,bruised and shocked in a way I ca nn ever describe, a man standingnext to m e, an 'Aussie' who hadapparently ju st wandered into thechurch out of respectful curiosity,addressed m e very softly. I supposehe assumed I was a fellow outsider.'Eh, n1ate,' he said, 'excuse 1nc,but was this church built by, youknow ... out of funds coll ected bythe N ew Australians, like?'I was a pall-bearer. As we carri ce! the coffin out- m e, Babovich,Ka spersky and Pukhala-Leon'sdad caught m y eye with the saddest,most eloquen t look I haveever seen . At first there was a m o­m entary glimmer of the old mischief,of recognition, of all thosenights at the h ouse in CroydonPark, of his pride in Leon and hiseducated Aussie friendi then thecast of grief as his mind returnedto the dread present, and fin all y ahelpless, pleading look, as if to say'You have com e back. Can't he?'At the cem etery , I tried to bethe last to withdraw my hand fromthe coffin, to bea t out a little signalfor Leon on the lid with my fi n­gers, but Babovich, Kaspersky andPukhala all had the sam e idea. Weall let go awkwardly, together.Lurie gave m e a letter beforewe left the Cheltenham cem etery.He'd written just before he died,but the letter hadn' t been posted.He said he'd wanted to talk to meabout som e problem s, and tried toring, but h e must h ave had thewrong number and 'an irate lady'had insisted she had never beardof m e. In the letter h e called m ehis 'dear friend' and added 'dicl youever think you'd hea r me say that?'I often hear him say it. •Trevor Hay is a freelance writer.ReadingsJESUS OF THE APOCALYPSEby Barbara ThieringA FURTHER HISTORY OF JESUS THE MANUNLOCKED IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION.In a work of remarkable research and scholarship.Barbara Thiering has set out in her latest book tounravel the mysteries that have long surroundedthe elaborate and elusive complexities of the Bookof Revelation. 'It was not'. she writes. 'about visionand apocalypse. but about the profoundlyimportant history of the Christian movement fromAD 1 to AD 114.'338 Lygon StreetCarlton 3053Tel (03) 9347 6633Fax (03) 9347 1641ISBN : 0 86824 5569RRP: $39.95710 Glenferrie RoadHawthorn 3122Tel (03) 98191917Fax (03) 9818 4060153 T oorak RoadSouth Yarra 3141Tel (03) 9867 1885Fax (03) 9820 1809Limite d Offer:offer ends 31/10/95269 Glenferrie RoadMalvern 3144Tel (03) 9509 1952Fax (03) 9509 4957MAIL ORDERS WELCOME. PLEASE ADD $4.00 FOR POSTAGE AND PACKAGING.44EUREKA STREET • O CTOBER 1995

POETRYPalmsShould you come up from the sea one da y and wonderwhem they are going in their reveries,the wind sliding between their fronds, and the earthdappled to match their m otion: or,if your snarling transpmt shudders at last and is quietin what for once is not a mirage,and you hear instead their susurration, puzzledat what might be on their minds: relax.Th ey are as eva in a brown study, plumingthem selves upon them selves.Somewhere along the line, they caught the Arabianfragm ent of sapien ce. 'It is goodto know the tmth, but better to speak of palm trees',and have k ept faith as bes t they may.They do not ignore their human m entors, who tell them ,'you bathe your feet in water, yam h eadin fire', and who echo love-stmck Solomon,'This thy stature is like to a palm-tree'.So many older sisters of the vine,they muse on fruit and pleasure.Tru e, they will lend them selves to victoriesarunna's fling at the tape, a Ca esar'sbrisk clip through the dying, a pilgrim's displayedsprig on the hatbrim- but their heart'snot in it. Th e wind orch estrates their saying,as Odysseus to Nausicaa,'I am stunned in spirit: even so is the palm'.A phoenix every one, they are fe arlessamidst the burning and, watch ed or unwatched, they flourish:unbowed, greening, and flaming.Peter SteeleBlack DogGet a Laplander to tell things as they are,and in time out will com e m urmursof the Dog of God, which proves to be the bear,'strong as ten m en, and smart as a dozen '.For all that even th ose children of fortitude l

P OETRYJACK HlBilERDEigh t poems following BaudeloirefmDinny O'Heam eJ Chris Wallace-CrabbeL'Ennen1iMy youth to m y mind was a sombre stmm ,gmys spasmodically lit by bolts of sun.Rain, thunder, mOTe win, demolishedall but som e bright red fruit in its gmden.Now that I'm awme of a late autumn,I suppose I should snolch shovel ond adze,attempt lo fix this waterlogged domain,where crevices, deep as groves, are bunowing.For who can tell! Perhaps its rinsed-out earthholds sufficient tilth, nutrition,to feed the daffodils of my dreoms.NeveT. NeveT. Time eats life away:the obscure enemies that chew at om heartsfeast on blood, bloat unrelentingly.SpleenI'm like the l

P oETRYJA K HIBBERDLe Parfu1nEpigraphe pour un livre conda1nneReader, beneath a roof of vines,sunny, prudent, irreproachable chap,fling this sullen bool< away,it Teel

BOOKS: 1P ETER STEELESouthern lightsGreat Southern La ndings: An Anthology of AntipodeanTravel, jan Bassett, jed. I, Oxford Uni ve rsit y Press AustraliI YY.'i. JSIIN () I

down the sa me, and retiring ditto.Such a woman, to a studious man,was inva luable. He fe lt he mustpossess her for his very own, andthey were married. 'I would guess that, as many peoplein the past who learned the clementsof writing took it for gra ntedthat they then should write, most ofwhat was written was a mess-justas most drivers, conversationalists,and cooks settle for mediocrity, againon the hestertonian principle thatif a thing is worth doing it is worthdoing badly.Such worthies have fo und noplace in thc315 pages of Grea t SouthernLandings, which, life being short,is just a well. [tis an expertly clipped,m ounted, introduced and arrayedsa mpler of what people have had tosay when they have for a whileemerged from that invisible Arkwhich continues to cruise the oceansor the air, the dominant physicalreali tics of our exceedingly odd I ittleplanet.For reasons which need puzzleno Australian, the dust jacket isadorned, handsom ely, by a post­Nolan, post-Tucker 1994 paintingby Garry Shead, in which cockatooscry about a wcll-kitted-out man whois tilting towards a bay: behind hima woman is holding on to her hat.God knows what Pope Zachariaswould make of it all. I have, however,a uspi cion that Dante would give itall a thumb -up, accompanied bythe eq uivalent, in the dolce stilnuovo, of 'She'll be right! ' After all,it was his business, if it could bebrought off, to get at least selectedmembers of us into Paradise. •The Oxford Book of Exploration,Robin Hanbury-Tc nison (cd.),Oxford Un iversity Press,paperback edition, 1994.lSI\ 0 19 282396 S RRI' $22.95A llOOKISHCH ILD in harmlessPerth during the Fifties, I becameaware of some intricacies by readinga dead but vivid language, Latin.'Explorator', the dictionary said, 'aspy: a scout.' I stared with refreshedinterest at local monuments to Australianex plorers. What, I wondered,had they spied out, what maskingsurface had they peeled back, andhow were they agents of disclosure?Their burly frames and spade- likebeards had nothing to say in rep ly.These da ys, of course, the airwould be thick with replies, m ost ofthem reverberant with political agenda. The main thing divulged by thisor that explorer would be personal orsocietal compulsion . Red-eyed, darkhearted,white- nostril led, they wouldstalk or clump or blunder throughsava nnah, desert, taiga, sierra, notchingup territorial conquests, blazingmasculinist trails, striking out forthe Fatherland or the Motherland,and mapping their own psychic terrainseven while they put bread inthe cartographers' mouths.It may be so. And any reader ofRobin Hanbury-Tcnison's aggregationof explorers over the ccntu rieswill find plenty of material to bolstersuch a view of things. Although,surely, the last sort of personalityo ne would wantduring prolonged explora ­tion would be the excitable,the whole affa ir must usual ­ly be driven by tight-woundpassion. Hanbury-Tenison,himself a much-exposed explorer,is just the man tofinger the spirit's energies.These, sometimes, have todo with personal resolutencss,but often with the' spying' propensity, the reportbearing,especially if it isoddities or frailties whicharc to be spied out.Hence, for instance, theopenings of many of the passages hequotes from his restless ensemble.William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscanfriar, en route to a TartarKhan in the middle of the thirteenthcentury, muses on ' the Tebet, apeople in the habit of eating theirdead parents, so that for piety's sakethey should not give their parentsany other sepulchre than their bowels.'In 1872, the distinguished Englishnaturalist Alfred Russell Wallace,taking stock of the accomplishmentsof those he knows best, hoversbetween humility and complacencywhen he says that 'During thelast century, and e pecially in thelast thirty years, our intellectual andmaterial advancement has been tooquickly achieved for us to rea p fullbenefit of it. ' Dr David Livingstoneheof the presumption-offers us thehearte ning reminder, 'It is wellknown that if one in a troop of lionsis killed the others take the hint andleave that part of the country.' AndTheodore Roosevelt, out of politicsat fifty-four, and tackling Brazil toavert boredom, reports, 'On 27 February19 14, shortly after midday, westarted down the RiverofDoubtintothe unknown' (things turned out wellenough- the river was later named'Ri o Roosevelt'.)Not the first or last to have madelittle jokes about the ways in whichOUP can slice across human behaviours-thepre cnt volume refers toworks on Card Games, Fly-Fishing,Nursing, and Sailing Terms- I amthe first to grant that there are manyways of slanting in to the heart of thehuman affair. The Oxford Bool< ofExploration docs this with efficiency,V OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 49

and without too much irritatingecono my. The paperback's excerptsrun for 520 pagesi and a I though somearc a little m ore than a bonne bouche,others go a dis tance with theirfreq u ently-exerted a nd alwaysengaged autho r s. It is b y n owcommonplace, som etimes abused,to di stinguish between the (a dmirable)'traveller' and the (a t best tolerated) 'tourist'. N obody in this volumei a tourist, and I do ubt wh ethera single one of t he m h ad travelinsurance.In most cases, Lloyd's would havebeen mad to take the m oney. T hestrong impression on e has, readingthese excerpts, is t hat what is being'spied o ut' is in large m easure theterrain of the individual will- notan agenda C

those companions of my childhood, count of the Christian spiritual life.the guardian angels. One rather gets On 'fundamentalism ', however,the impression that, despite Wim we are provided with an embarrass-Wenders, the angels are on the way m e nt of riches. Being large lyout. The article also notes the 'fa- American productions both encyclomousquibble over the number of pedias give a good deal of interestingange ls that ca n dance on a pin'. But, details about the local varieties. (Agiven the sophisticated medieval recent alarming statistic claims thatconcept of a ngels-th ey a rc there are some ten million 'bornnon-material beings and therefore aga in' fundamentalists in the U.S.)not in space or time-the quibble Neither article, however,w as n o t even a mentions w hat might bequibble but, as our politi- ca lled 'magisterium' fundac~an s are prone to say, a\ mentahsm 111 the Romannonsen c. \ CathohcChurch where the0jzpszssmw verba of the ' mag-N 'coNSCIENCE', !lot h encyclo- tstenum' are held by some,pedias deserve an Honours 2A mark who should know better, tow1th, perha ps, theG lazicr-Hellwigarttcle (by Vm- ~cent McNamara) slightly ahead. ~'Both entries give short shrift to ·the idea that our consciencesca n onl y be 'informed' if theyare in accordance with the teachingof the C hurch. As McNamarasays, ' the injunction to informco nscience can only be anotherway of saying that fidelityto the moral call entail a sincereeffort, according to one'scapacities, to find the truth'. StThomas Aquinas held indeedthat if on e conscienti o us lybelieved that Jesus Christ wasnot God one was morally obligednot to be a Christian.Having done a good deal of readingof and about the remarkable early14th century philosopher-mystic,Meister Eckhart, I looked to see howboth encyclopedias treated him sincehe has recently undergone a reappraisaland been reinstated (at leastby scholars) as an 'orthodox' Christianthinker.But both entries on Eckha rt,while adequate on his historicalbackground, arc disappointinglyobscure on his teaching and say nothingabout his remarkable dialoguewith the beguines and other religiouswomen in the Rhineland inthe early 14th century . The women,to put the matter crudely, suppliedthe religious ex perience and Eckhart,a former professor of the Faculty ofArts at the University of Paris andmuch influenced by his Dominica nconfre res Albert the Great a ndbe literally true. One ge ts the impressionthat it is taken for gra ntedthat we must interpret the words ofscripture, but that the words of themagistcrium on sexual morality, cclib

BooKs: 3JIM D AV IDSONA timely lifeLong Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown &WCompany, Grea t Bntam, 1994 ISBN 0 3 16 90965 3 RRI' $35.00HEN H E WAS IMJ>R ISONELJ on began- as surely as Peter ConradRobben Island, no one symbolised declared himself born on reachingthe plightofblackSouthAfrica more Westminster Bridge. The book rcthanNelson Mandela. In its final fleets this in a sudden access ofyears, the question of his releasebecam e the truest test of the intentionsof the white South Africangovernment. Here was a man who,while conscious of the precedent setby N ehru (a phrase of whose providesthe kernel of this book's title),had also something of the moral forceof Gandhi; but being up against muchtougher opponents than the British,a preference for non-violence had tobe constrained by tactical effccti veness.This autobiography- begun injail, and then smuggled out- has apastoral, almost patriarchal opening,as though Mandela is deliberately presenting an exemplary life. Hisgiven na m e, Rohlihlahla, m ean s'shaker of trees', or troublemaker;there is a mythic singularity abouthim from the beginning. But apartfrom being nostalgic for a lost, innocentTranskci upbringi ng- understandablegiven the circumstancesof his writing- there is also the factthat the young m an was slow to findhimself. Brought up in the bouseholdof the regent of Thcmbuland,and from a famil y that had traditionallysupplied the chief's counsell ors,he was ed ucated at Methodist institutionsand then went on to thefamous Afri ca n tertiary co ll ege, FortHare. At this stage- conducting bibleclasses in nea rby villages,

was after this that the poli ce bega nto isolate, torture and beat up theirprisoners.Shortl y aft erwards Mandcla W

BooKs: 4R AY C ASS INGoody GoodiesLThe Eleven Saving Virtues, Ross Fitzge rald (ed.), Minerva,Melbourne 1995 . JSilN l 86330 463 0, RRP $14.95OM LEHRER, THAT URBANE sau- self becom es suspect because, werist of thefabled '60s, once remarked are told, fid elity is the trait thatabout people who complained of dif- separates people into an Us and afi culty in 'communicating' that the Them, or rather into various kindsvery least they could do for the rest of Us and Them. The only kind ofof us was to shut up. I had a similar fid elity that Lord deems acceptablereaction to many of the essays in is that which may be shown to anthis companion volume to Fitzger- 'inner sense of our unity' with all ofaid's earlier collection, Th e Eleven suffering humanity, a fid elity thatDeadly Sins ( 1993 ). If this assembly transcends our dubious partial loyofthe wise has nothing more inter- alties.esting to tell us than that virtue is am ore difficult achievem ent thanvice, then we could better seek guidanceelsewhere.Some of the contributors blamethe elusiveness of virtue on dismalaspects of the Western religious inheritance.Thus Gerard Henderson,writing on affection, compares hisCatholic and Jansenist upbringingwith the Congregationalist and Calvinistnurturing of Bob Hawke. Itseem s, however, that the columnistand the politician were not seededequally with the Augustinian pessimismthat inspired both Calvin andJansen; for while little Gerard waslearning at his mother's knee that hewas 'yet another maggo t in the sightof the Almighty', the man who woulde I, then, failed to be fullybe Prime Minister was being assured human if I feel a greater sense ofby his parents of his membership in obligation to my own daughter, growingup happy and healthy in Austral­the elect.The gi t seems to be that all this ia, than I do to, say, an orphaned,perverse religiosity, Catholic or Protestant,ca n produce a level of self­never be more present to me thanailing child in Saraj evo, who canobsession that stunts the capacity her fl eetingly glimpsed fa ce on thefor affection (though we are never television news? And does the factallowed to doubt that Henderson's that I feel a greater obliga tion to them aturation imbued him with a virtuous self-knowledge apparently from acknowledging that the childchild I hold in my anns prevent medenied to Hawke). All right. A plague on the other side of the world is aon Calvin, Jansen and their disciples victim of great injustice, and so hasfor spawning the likes of Gerard a claim on my compassion, too?Henderson and Bob Hawke. Now Most people- rightly, I thinkwouldsee no moral confusion inwhat was that about affection ?Gabrielle Lord, treating of fideli ­ answering 'yes' to the first questionty, goes one better than the virtueplays-hard-to-get motif fa voured by they would find something profound­and 'no' to the second. Moreover,her fellow essayists. The virtue it- ly inhuman in the conduct of a personwho abandoned his own child inorder to rush off to Sarajevo to help achild in greater need. And, aft er alittle reflection, they might evensuggest that a parent w ho could notrecognise which child had the priorclaim on his loyalty would probablyonly pay lip-service to wider loyaltiesan yway. Such a the loyalty wefeel when we recognise an 'innersense of our unity' with the rest ofsuffering humanity, for example.That is one reason why we needvirtues like loyalty: exercising themteaches us what it m eans to be partof a web of mutual obligation, andhence part of what it means to behuman. And the fact that sometimesour loyalties are misdirected, wi thdisastrous con sequences, h a rdlyproves that the virtue itself is phoney.It just emphasises how importantit is that we learn to get it right.Loyalty is a better name for theUs-and-Them virtue than Lord 's 'fidelity',which is most often used insexual contexts these days. But it isnot the oddest misnomer in The ElevenSaving Virtues. Trevor Jordan, forexample, writes about 'truth' ra therthan honesty. The nature of truth isindeed a vexed philosophical qu estion,but one does not have to be asceptic about the po siblity of moralknowledge to recognise that the questionof what it m eans for som e claimto be true must be resolved differentlyfrom the question of what it mea nsfor a person to act truthfully. Jordan'saccount wavers between bothqu estions, which does not help himto shed much light on either.The problem is partly an editori ­al one. Ross Fitzgerald decreed w hichtopics the va ri o us contributorsshould write about, and in his introductionmatches each virtue with anopposing vice from The Eleven DeadlySins. 'Truth' is opposed to 'hypocrisy',which suggests that honestywas what Fitzgerald really had inmind. But there is a deeper problemin this juggling with names, for onereason why som eone might blu rhonesty into truth is if truth itself isunderstood, in Nietzschean term s,as something that can only be constructed,not discovered.To be fair to Jordan, his essayackn owledges this postmodern predilectionfor unmasking the makers54EUREKA STREET • OCTOBER 1995

O PERAof truth claims. And so me of theother contributors to this co llectionrevel in it, especially Michael Slurkey,on wisdo m, and Philip Nielsen,on humility. But Nielsen's topicoffers greater opportunities for playingNictzschean games than anyother in the collection, beca use historicallyhumility has always haddetractors who maintained that itwas an innovation am ong virtues,and a barrier to human fl ourishing.Again, it has usually been supposedto be Christianity's fault. Thehumility encapsulated in the Beatitudesof the Sermon on the Mount,whi ch Hume and Bentham deridedas a 'monkish' virtue, was about theemptying of the self, a shedding ofegoi tic concerns. It seemed quitedifferent from the humility thatAristotle had advocated, w hichamounted to havi ng a proper senseof self-worth. There h ave beenthose- Aquinas, for instance- whodid not think that the two notionswere so very far apart after all, but itis a long argument and not to besettled here or in TheEleven Saving Virwes.ARI STOTLE, WHOSE UNDERSTAND­INC of virtue and of truth i antitheticalto Nietzsche's, and whose writingsanimate most of the contemporaryphilosophical efforts to revivevirtue ethics, gets an occ

confronts Kafka with images fromhi s childhood (' the music-box/ itsballerina/ trapped forever/ in herm aze of mirrors'). Kafka finds thisunbearable: 'I died there', he concludes.Gra du ally a pattern mightemerge . Kafka, victimised by hi styrannica l father, lacerated by thebrutality of the world around him,retreats into what he hopes will bequite literall y an inner sanctum. Butit is no use. In another of Horton'swonderful images, the wall of theburrow is pierced with many eyes.O ne by one the eyes drop out of thewall and bounce at Kafka's feet. Andthen there is Milena, who loves himand tries to reach him, who tormentshim as the dead are tormented inThe Waste Land This pattern however,is not presented, as it might bein realistic drama, as a psychologicalcase stud y. In that model, here isKafka and over there is hi Problem .This thea tre is non-therapeutic: peopleare what they are, exhibited 'as ifa magic lantern threw the nerves inpattern s on a screen'.The local complexities of thework are enough to tax even thealert audi ence for Chamber Made.But there is plenty of encouragementto persevere, because, in co n­trast to the Moderns, these creatorsdon't cast the audience as humblerecipi ents of the Artist's Vision, noris the tone all that solemn. Ev eryproduction by Douglas Horton offersimmediately accessible thea tri ­ca l pleasures; here, for exa mple, thecat and the ca binets. Acting and si ngingwere, as usual, strong and disciplined. It is hard to single out performerswhen the musical texturesarc so clo ely interwoven- the threeperson chorus, for exa mple, has justas tricky a job as the soloists-however,I particul arly ad mired TyroneLandau's negotia tion of thehigh tenor of the Ghost.BRECI-IT, T H E. MOI)E.RN, SOm etimespeered into a postmodern future. Heta lks abou t (but did not practise) atheatre in whi ch, in stead of all theclements contributing to 'an orga nicunity' (a GesamLlwnstwer]{ or whatever)each would keep its independence.Words could say one thing,music another, the costumes a third.Th e Burrow is this kind of work.Ali son CroggO n's libretto is imagistic:fragments, moments, detachedphrases-they coalesce here andthere, but they do not clump whichleaves the audience free to connectin different ways. Mich aelSmctanin's music avoids illustrationof the text. There is little 'word ­painting', nor are there immediatelyrecognisable feeling-codes, swellingtunes for the afflatus of love, and soon. For the most part, the words aredeclaimed, which gives them achance to be heard in their own right(or would have, if the sound mix hadbeen more precisely calculated).T h e sound of the music ischaracteristicall y dark and bony,generated by an ensemble whichomits the higher strings and emphasisesthe more blatant sounds extractablefrom woodwind and brass.It is dominated by percussion (includingpercussive keyboards), analmost constant, often po undingmomentum . This basic sound isenriched in a variety of ways. Thechorus, for example, can provide animbus around the solo lines andsome special effects, such as an in ­visible second voice at a point whereKafka imagines two Milenas. Declamation, in the vocal line, is relievedby lyrical passages, with longe r, slower-moving lines held aga inst the rapidchatter of the band. The effect issom etimes like the chorale tunes inBach 's ca ntatas, a sturdy line festoonedwith colour and movement.If the music docs not 'express thefeelings of the characters', what docsit do ? Wh ere docs all the poundingenergy come from? What conn exionhas it with the Kafka world I Musingover these ques tions I rememberedthis co mment: 'Mu ical expressionlies in the rhythm; and in the rhythmlies all the power of music.' And,from the same writer:Thus, whil e words and actionsexpress the most detailed andconcrete clements of fee ling, musichas a much higher, wider and moreabstract goa l. Music becom es, in away, the m oral atmosphere whichfi ll s the space in whi ch thecharacters of the drama portray theaction . It expresses th e fate thatpursues the m, t he hope w h ichanimates th em, the ga iety w hi chsurrounds the m, the felicity whichis in store for them, th e abyss inwhich they a rc to fa ll. ..W AT THE TEXT RE.VEALS is howKafka's various efforts at control orevasion keep breaking down, exposinghim to intolerable anxiety. Perhapswe could think of the music asessentiall y conveying this ' moral atmosphere', and that makes sense ofits anxious, violent, conflict-riddenelements. That is what li es underKafka's careful, infinitely preciseprose and his obsessive] y orderedworki ng life. Bu t the music, at leastto m y cars, is also full of an energythat comes from desire, an essentiallycreative energy. (There arc similari ­ties with Messiaen.) If this is so, wecan see where the director's freedomcomes from . Not having to potherabout with subtexts and meaningfulpauses and the rest of it his contributioncan play off against the music:hence the jauntiness of some of thestaging, its clement of wit and surprisecorresponding to that aspect ofKafka 's own prose.So where is Kafka? The answeris, everywhere: onstage, as personatedby Mr Tcrracin i; in the wit andstyle of the taging; lamenting andrejoicing in the pit. What we have inThe Burrow might be thought of, ifthe term is not too dry, as

site dramaN """"' CON"mm,ON inDarwin, especially with anyo ne overthirty, begins with C yclone Tracy.While it is difficult to see muchevidence of the 1974 cyclone devastationin Darwin today, it certainlyappears to have had a long-term effecton the town 's theatre practice.Whether beca use of some deep-seateelpost-Tracy claustrophobia, or because of a lack of proper thea tres,Darw in audiences get to sec theatreproductions in som e of the mostinteresting out-door locations.O n a lengthy tour of the ci ty Iwas shown a dozen open-a ir or emiopen-a ir venues that have been usedfo r thea tre productions in recentyears. T hese included the wide sandsof Minclil Beach, a ga rden with am agnificent old ban ya n tree, the ru ­ins of the old Palmers ton Town Halland those of a war-time oil storagefacility, a disused, huge water storagetank on the site of the presentDarw in High School, a World War IIgun gurret on East Point, a basketballcourt and three amphithca tres.There is even a tiny amphitheatre,in the courtya rd of a YMCA backpackers'hostel (seemingly purposemadefor Elizabethan-s tyle dra ma),another in the Botanic Gardens (ratherlike Melbourne's Mycr Bowl) andyet another in the grounds of theMuseum and Art Gallery of theN orthern Terri tory.It was in this la st location that Isaw the Darwin Thea tre Compan y'srecent production of Shakespeare'sAs You Lihe It, and a thoro ughlydelightful experi ence it wa s. T o ca llit an amphitheatre as such is a bit ofan overstatem ent, but it is a lovelyga rd en, with a natural slope (onwhich was built bleacher-seating forabout 160) and good tree plantingsproviding a suitabl e ' tiring- house'area for the actors as well a diversityof entrance and exit points. The sitewas beautifully explo ited by dircctorTomPauling (w ho doubles as NTSo li citor Genera 1 by day) and designerJoanna Barrkrnan. Add a starlitsky and a naturally pure acousticand yo u have a venue to die for.Hav ing seen this pastora l com edy insuch an idyllic setting, it's easy toimagine the effectiveness of Shakespeare'swa r pl ays in th e broodingatmosphere of the old gun gurrct orof indoor/outdoo r plays like A Winter'sTale and A Midsummer Night'sDream in the Town Hall Ruins.Pauling's production was a relativelyorthodox one, unencumberedby m odernist interpretational frills,and his cast (a mix of older and youngeractors) ga ve the play a good, clearrendition. The costumes, which inopen-air venues ca rry the main bu r­den of the designer's statement, werea mix of children's storybook RobinHood for the Forest of Arden andKing Arthur m ediaeval for the courtcharacters. It worked well enough,a] though the much-mentioned 'Winterand rough wea ther' cold of theexiles' bitter experience was a bithard to cop.The DTC's annual dry seasonShakespeare productions arc always'pro-a m ' affairs and they are almostinvariably given out of doors. Theyarc also almost always packed out:Pauling estimated that As You LikeI t would have played to 101 per centcapacity!Next up, the companyembarks on fully-professional productions of D avid William son 'sSa nctuary and Michael Gow's SweetPhoebe. These will have their Darwinseasons indoors in a rebuilt historicm incrs' exchange) and will tourwidely t hrough the Territory.Elsewhere in town, the Bo ugai n­villea Festival and Fringe Festiva lwere in full swing. Some of the Festivalevents were presented in theDarw in Perfor ming Arts Centre (apurpose-built, indoors thea tre com ­plex with a 1001 -sea t prosceniumarchPl ayhouse and a new 298-seatflexibl e Studio thea tre) w hich ismainly used fo r touring productionsfro m clown south as part of th eext ensive N orthern Au stralia nRegional Performing Artsr-r Centres Association..1. HETEN-YEAR-OLDCorrugatcdlronYouth Thea tre's August producti on,Branded, also did a sold-out seasonto an extraordinarily mixed audience-onefar too large to have beenco mposed of jus t parents a ndfri ends-in a community yo uth centrein suburban Nightcli££. The showwas about the effects on a dcbutantrock band of the twin scourges ofV OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 57

teen life: substance abuse (specifically,alcohol) and sexual activityand it was wri ttcn and directed byCorruga ted Iron's Artistic Director,Maggie Miles. I fo und the primaryemphas i on the dangers of alcoholconsumption a shade didacti call yheavy-handed at first, but in a townw hose alcohol in ta kc is the highestin the nation (road-trains of frighteningproportions di stribute theirloads of grog daily throughout theTerritory from the very wharf wheresuch innocent peopl e's merrymakings

Splash for cashWaterworld, clir. Kevin Reynolds(Hoyts). Sometime in the futur theea rth is covered by water and theremaining humans struggle to surviveon small floating atolls contendingagainst the hostile elementsand constant attacks by sea piratesknown as Smokers. A drifter calledMa riner (Kevin Costner) stops at onesuch atoll for supplies. The inhabitantsdiscover he is a mutant andimprison him. When the atoll is attackedby Smokers he escapes withthe help of Helen (Jeanne Tripplchorn) and her adopted daughter Enola(T ina Majorino). However, Enolahas a secret that Deacon (DennisHopper)- the quasi-religious leaderof the Smokers- wants. On her backis tattooed a map showing the wayto Drylancl. Got the picture!Waterwmld is reported to haveco t nea rly US$200 million. G iventhe elaborate sets, non-stop actionand wonderful photography by DeanSemmler, it's obvious where most ofthe money went. Unfortunately thisis just one more post-apoca lypsemov ie, and, frankly, there are muchbetter, and cheaper, examples of thegenre- Mad Max for one.The really disappointing thingabout Waterworld is that the underlyingstory of competing views ofhow the world came to be covered bywat r (was it crea ted thus or is it thercs ul t of some past ecological disaster?),and the idea of a people, illsuiteel to their environment, sea rchingfor the 'promised land', form thebasis for what could have been agrea t story. But Waterworld fai ls inits attempt to combine mythologyand action- so successfully clone inthe Stars Wms trilogy- and we arcleft with nothing more than a futuritic chase mov ie.•-Tim StoneySplit EndsThe Separation clir. Christian Vincent(independent cin emas). So manyfilms pose simple qu estions to whichthey give simple answers ye t sometimesyou can walk out of a film lesscertain of things than when yo uwalked in, and be happy to do so.The Separation is such a film.It is the anatom y of a very modernbreak-up. Pierre (Daniel Auteuil)and Anne's (Isabelle Huppert) relationshipdoesn't fail because of trauma,violence or circumstance, butbecause of ebbing passion. Isabelle isthe fir t to realise and accept thatthe fire has gone, however Pierreseeks to retrieve what has been lost,and in doing so becomes resentfuland confused. He seeks the counselof his fri ends Vi ctor (Jero m e Deschamps)and Claire (Karin Viarcl )when he discovers Anne is seeinganother man. As they drift apartAnne is more impervious and Pierremore desperate. Their 18-month-o ldsonbecom es a relic of their love andthe only thing which they are mutuallyd sirous of. Anne gets to keepthe boy, and Pierre is left to ponderwhat went wrong.The Separation is about the painof breaking up and there is a sense ofinevitability about the way Pierreand Anne hurt each other in spite ofthemselves that questions if there isom ething essentially masochisticin human nature. At times the storyis arduous but it is always self-assured,and it doesn't take the softoption of providing easy answers atits conclusion.•-Jon GreenawayAn eye fullThat Eye, The Sl< y dir. John Ruane(independent cinemas). Anyone whogoes looking for comedy in a graveyard in the way that John Ruane didin Death in Bnz nswicl< isn't shy of achallenge, but Tim Winton's ThatEye, The Sky was never going to bean easy project for even as resourcefula director as Ruane. I was remindedof something Paul Theroux saidabout the filming of his novel Th eMosquito Coast: it took h..im fiveminutes on his own to think up theidea of an ice factory in an equatorialjungle and it required an entire Hollywooddepartment to build it. Wintonwrote That Eye, The Sky in amatter of weeks. Its fresh ness andintensity survive any number of rereaclings.The film cost some millionsa nd i s a tam e experie nce bycomparison. It is eluded by the delicate shifting of religious experiencesand the hunger for a spiritual vocabulary which are burnt like rubberonto the pages of the book.But let's be fair. John Ruane relishesa story and tells it to effect. OrtFlack (Jamie Croft) is a 12-year-oldwhose fath er, Sam (Mark Fairall) isincapacitated in a road accident nea rtheir homestead. A stranger, HenryWarburton (Peter Coyote) appearsfrom nowhere to help Ort's mother,Alice (Lisa Harrow) with the burdenof a sick husband. He shows thefamily more open ways of living butat the same time makes impositions.Ort learns how to live in a worldwhich seems to expand and contractat the sa me time. The film has anarrative drive which lets it rideover som e of its own awkwardness.And it has a wonderful scene in achurch.•-Michael McGirrEureka StreetFilm CompetitionTell us what might have beengoing through Marlon Branda'smind during this bongo solo andwe'll send you $30.00- enoughfor two movie tickets and anindustrial-sized box of jaffas. Sendentries to: Eureka Street Filmcompetition, PO Box 553, Richmond3121. The winner of theAugust competition was AnnetteLyons of Glen Iris, Victoria, whowas spot on with Lana Turner'sreal name-Julia Turner. Notmuch difference really.V oLUME 5 N uMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 59

One's old manD'Artagnan 's Daughter, dir BertrandTavernier (independent cinemas)You'd think that just about everytwist imaginable has been wroughton Al exandre Dumas' famous tale ofchivalry and deceit, but Tavernierand scriptwriter Michael Lcvianthave com e up with a new chapter,and plenty of swashbuckling actionand tongue-in-cheek humour, to padout the adventures of the famousMusketeers.Eloise D ' Artagnan (SophieMarceau) has been cloistered in aconvent since, as a young girl, shewas l eft th ere by h e r father.Inadvertently, she uncovers a plot toassassinate the soon-to-be-crownedKing Louis XIV, and so sets out tofind her estranged father and seekhis help in exposing the conspirators.D' Artagnan (Philippe N oirct) hasbeen dismissed from the King's servicein disgrace and, understandably,doesn 't have much interest in assassinationplots. But the spirited coaxingof Eloise brings him out of retirementto gather the Musketeers forone final adventure before arthritisand haemorrhoids disqualify them .D'Artagnan 's Daughter is ariotous, slapstick period piece, withMarceau st rong, confident a ndprcdictabl y feisty as the heroine. Butit is the Musketeers, D' Artagnan,Porthos (Ra uol Billcrcy), Athos (Jcan­Luc Bidcau) and Aramis (Sami Frey),who stir their ageing bones, romanticm emories and by now not-so-deftswordsrnanship to ensure that justiceis done.•-Tim StoneyTall taleA ll Men Are Liars dir. Gerard Lee(Hoyts, Greater Union). After seeingthe fi lm my friend said 'It's Shakespeare'-andshe was right! 'Liars' isa cross-dressing, feel good com edyin the vein of As You Lil

eluctant father, bumbling his waythrough an ideal existence in SanFrancisco, complete with reel Porscheand weekends in the country.Cute smiles and Englis h publicschoolboy charm are in abundanceas he tries to com e to terms with thepregnancy of his partner Rebecca whoi desperate to start a family. Sam'sefforts are not helped by chance encountersw ith the chaotic Marty andGail Dwyer whose uncontrollableoffspring represent all he loathesabout family life.On the other side of the coin, hisfriend Sean Fletcher !Jeff Goldblum),the ultimate bachelor, is fe el up withshallow and m eaningless relationships,and urges him not to lose whathe has with Rebecca. As he grappleswith the choices presented to himhe is embroiled in a series of comicscenarios that aim to give the funnybone a good ol' whack.Unfo rtunately they miss themark. The fi lm consists of one jokestretched over an hour and a half anda pile of cliches topped off by theentirely predictable rush to hospitalat the ending. T here is som e comicrelief provided by Robin Williams asthe Russian veterinarian-cum-obstetricianin charge of the birth buteven he only m anages to elicit theodd titter.In essence Nine Months is anattempt to handle child-birth in theway Four Weddings and a Fun eraldealt with marriage but fai ls in theattempt.•- Jon GreenawayCounsellingIf you or someone you knowcould benefit fromprofessional counselling,please phone MartinPrescott, BSW, MSW,MAASW, clinical memberof the Association ofCatholic Psychotherapists.Individuals, couples andfamilies catered for:St Kilda, (03) 9534 8700Bentleigh (03) 9557 2595Let's danceThe Conformist, clir. Bernardo Bertolucci(independent cinemas). This1970 adaptation of an Alberto Moravianovel was not only its director'sfinest film, but also provided a selfreferencingtitle fo r his most n otoriousone. For it is here that we get tosee the first tango in Paris-and fortunately,it has nothing to do withthe tedious erotic groanings of anageing Marlon Branda.The dancers are played by DominiqueSanda, who exudes a bisexualslinkiness that rolls Dietrich, Bacalland Garbo into one (I don't just m eanthat she look good in trousers andknows how to wield a cigarette), andStefania Sandrelli. The former is thewife of an Italian philosopher whohas fl ed Mussolini's Rome for Paris,and the latter is newly married tothe Conformist of the title, an aristocratcraving middle- class normality(Jean-Louis Trintignant). Oncehe studied under the philosopher,but now he has been sent to Paris tokill him.Other filmmakers of the '60s andearly '70s tackled the relationshipbetween political and sexual repression(Visconti with his lurid TheDamned, Pasolini with the coprophiliacmire of Salo) but in TheConformist Bertolucci displayed afinesse that his conte mporarieslacked, and that he himself was tolose when he returned to similarthemes in the bloated, unwieldy1900.The film's success is partly dueto superb performances by Sanda andTrintignant, but above all it is atriumph for the visual imaginationsof Bertolucci and his director of photography, Vittorio Storaro (whoworked with Coppola on The Godfatherand Apocalypse Now, and restoredThe Conformist for its newrelease). This is essentially an architecturalfilm: its stylised sets, designedby Vittorio Scarfiotti, conveymore forcefully than words evercould the shrinkage of individuals inthe grim public spaces and rituals oftotalitarian states, and it centrepiecedance, the tango, reminds usthat there are also rituals that liberaterather than repress.•- Ray CassinTHE AUSTRALIAN AIDSFUNDI A CRY FROM UGANDA ITHE AUSTRALIAN AIDS FUND, an agency of M elbourne'sCatholic Social Services, ca res for people strugglingto live w ith HIV/ AIDS through its unique supportedaccommodation projects- San Michel (for men) andRoseh aven (for women and children) in Vi ctori a.We're seeking to respond to an urgent appea l we'vereceived from the Bishop of M asa ka in Uganda-one ofth e world 's most AIDS-devastated nations, with morethan 11 % of its national population infected.The Bishop is seeking US$70,000 and w ith it he' ll movemou ntains!US$25,000 would meet th e costs of training 76 communityworkers to provide counselling serv ices and hea lthca re to HIV/AIDS sufferers and give each a bi cycle fortran sport.A seedfund of US$45,000 would provide for 150,000children and youth (aged 4-20 yea rs) who have beenorphaned by AIDS and are most vu lnerable to it.The money would be used for sma ll income-generatingprojec ts on a revo lvi ng loa n bas is and would alsocontribute to school fees.(Th ere is no free educa tion in Uga nda.)ALMOST ONE MILLION OFUGANDA 1 S YOUNG PEOPLE AREAIDS INFECTEDAl l donations will be forwarded IN FULL to theBishop via intern ational bank transfer.If you ca n .. . please respond to:UGANDA APPEAL,c/- THE AUSTRALIAN AIDS FUNDPO BOX 1347FRANKSTON, VICTORIA 3199V OLUME 5 N UMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 61

Show 'n' hell timeI ST AS OTHER RWGlONS HAVE THEm TRUE'"'"""'' thehheretics and their infidels, so the great ersatz religionof television has its true and false viewers. And, justas the same individual can waver between faith, heresyand unbelie( so are most of us both true and falseviewers, moving from time to time between one stateand the other. The switch between truth and falsehood,moreover, is like the channel selector on aremote control: as often as not it is tapped idly, withoutmuch previous reflection on the part of the viewer.It is easier to describe the false viewer first, for itis always easier to define an heretical deviation thanto formulate orthodox doctrine. Television is watchedfalsely when we treat it as a kind of miniature cinemain the corner of the living room, something thatwe switch on deliberately because we want to watcha specific program. And yes, that's how we would alllike to be all of the time, for it would be evidencethat we did not really need the religion's cathode-rayconsolations but could enjoy them or not, as wepleased.Television's true believers, however, confess thatits essential nature is not to be switched on, but to beleft on. We watch it truely when we think of it not asa series of discrete programs, connected by advertisements,but as a series of electronic stimuli that grabour attention from time to time, and among whichthe advertisements are as likely to absorb us as manyof the programs. The people who pay large sums ofmoney to buy advertising time on television understandthis, of course, but they do not always understandthat television audiences are not merereceptacles for whatever message it is that the advertiserhas to push.True viewers, as defined above, may be more passivethan false ones. But, just as the evangelistharanguing a congregation is likely to lose street credby proclaiming that there's not much difference betweenJesus and Satan anyhow, so too can the trueworshippers of television sniff out the heretics amidthe great throng of advertisers clamouring for theirattention. The worshippers know that all those electronicstimuli are there to provoke as well as toentertain, but how willing they are to be provoked,and what they are prepared to find entertaining, dependson much more than what the advertiser thinksthey ought to see. Simply, there are some things thatpeople don't want to see.You know what I mean. If only the Transport AccidentCommission of Victoria and its counterpartsin other states did, too. It's always the moralisers whotransgress most when it comes to belabouring us withthe reality that humankind cannot bear very muchof. And the road-safety evangelists have sinned mostgrievously. They were not the first to fall, of course,for the Grim Reaper AIDS commercials of some yearspast probably prepared the way for the notion thatthe best way to change people's behaviour is to scarethem witless. Since there is no hard evidence that theReaper and his ludicrous bowling ball did much at allto change sexual practices (I do not suggest that otherAIDS awareness campaigns have been ineffectua!L onemight have thought that evangelists for other causeswould have avoided adopting similar tactics.Alas, it has not been so.r')'""'.l. HE TRANSPORT AcciDENT CoMMrssroN began itsBrueghelian portraits of the damned with an inebriateddriver who maimed his girlfriend and so got beatenup by her mother in the hospital casualtydepartment. Oh, and who can forget Tracey's friend?Tracey was her best friend, you know, and she killedher. Then there was the young couple who foolishlydrove all night to reach an outback holiday destination,only to run into the side of a truck in the earlymorning, and several carloads of young people whoovertook when it was not safe to do so, thus endingup splattered all over the freeway. All these sequenceswere considered shocking, but all got cautious approvalbecause the message is so important, after all.So far the sights were gruesome enough, but wewere being shown results. The horror meter switchedup a notch when we actually got to watch people die.Remember the car carrying two teenage girls, beingpursued by a car carrying two teenage boys? The girlsran a red light at an intersection and struck anothercar. We watched as the woman who had been drivingthis car convulsed in her death agony, while a babycried in the back seat. Finally, we have been privilegedto see a small boy run on to the road in front ofa speeding car, and then get crumpled under itswheels. The front and the back wheels, one bumpafter the other.The problem with all this escalating horror, ofcourse, is that it becomes counter-productive. Peopleturn off-literally, if they are false viewers, emotionallyif they are true ones. The road-safety evangelistswill defend themselves by pointing out how manythey have 'saved'. But we'll never really be sure thecredit is theirs, will we?•Ray Cassin is a freelance writer.62EUREKA STREET • 0 TOBER 1995

Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 37, October 1995Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVMACROSS1 Curious crimes affect m e in a hypnotic way. (8 )5 Having libelled the politicians, except the leading lady leftist s,I produced something suitable for the table. (6)9 His ducal horse-drawn carriage had a rough journey to reach this river inQueensland. (8)10 The experts at Vatica n II, for instance, would to som e extent whisper it,I think. (6)12 Brown boy riding a bay? Could be on the east coast. (6)13 If seal be broken, is schem e possible? (8)15 Wonderland girl leaps up to go to a town like this. (5, 7)18 Go east three times and make a call to take part in this sport requiringmap and compass. ( 12)23 Film has been revised Adult Only-OK? Rang to find out if it was aboutthis animal. (8)24 Recently dead ? (6)26 So m e fl ower cultivator chided the intruders for touching this bl oom . (6)27 Could be aunt's account. (8)28 Difficult to make om elettes in su ch a deprived state. (2, 4) Solution to Crossword no. 36, September 199529 Turn a weapon on a conservative politician; he's of little value. (8)DOWNlThe Marylebone Cri cket Club awarded a Bachelor of Engineering to Stan,the cricketer. (6)2 Could be nasty about a hundred if it is considered too few. (6)3 And French learn about consequences that arc everlasting. (7)4 Edge along gradually to the small island. (4 )6 Actors' assistant uses the shelves. (7)7 If cooked brains be a delicacy, the Queensland city ta kes the ca ke! (8)8 When I' m unusually sleepy, Greek letter reminds m e of this disease. (8)11 Lock back from French course. (7)14 Dull pain for boy in river in Hades. (7)16 & 26-across. Concoct m etropolis flower for symbol of Queen sland. (8, 6)17 Yearn for salt (the chemical) within bounds, and aspire to reach the very top. (8)19 National Education Association circle is closing. (7)20 A Ro yal Academician returns for profit, but fails and falls. (7)21 Your sheep or mine, perhaps ' Australia rides on its back. (6)22 One could possibly deny South Yarra is in a major city. (6 )25 Beautiful boy fri end loses m ore than half his handsom e quality. (4)Su bscribc ...to a contradiction in terms ...THE SYDNEY REVIEW• The reader's tabloid• An independent quality free-circulation monthlyof opinion, affairs, the arts and new writing(a\'ailable free at d es i g nated Sydney o utlets only)... for only $24 p.a.- Box 700, Darlinghurst, ~S \\ 20 I() -M y Eureka Street has got to be around here som ewhere!V oLUME 5 N u MBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 63

&Aurora BoolzsSpecial Book OfferAustralian Religious Diary1996The Australian Religious Diary includes Anglican, EasternRite, Jewish, Lutheran, Muslim, Orthodox, Roman Catholicand Uniting Church days, as well as the complete Sunday anddaily Christian lectionary. It is hardcover, illustrated byAustralian religious artists and covers 13 months from thefirst Sunday in December.Emeka Street has eight copies of this superb diary to give away, eachworth $24.95 . Mark your envelope 'Eurelw Street October Giveaway', putyour name and address on the back and send it to PO Box 553, Richmond,3121.Share your goodWill. ..The Jesuits are committed to aChristian faith th at seeks to builda more j ust world.To continue tbei r work both here andoverseas with:• Youth• Refugees• A borigines• Prisoners• The Homelessthe Jesuits rely on the generoussupport of donors.You ca n help sustain these efforts bymaking a beq uest in your Will.For further information contact:Fr Daven Day S.J.130 Power StreetHawthorn , VIC 3 122Telephone (03 )8 18 1336THE DEATH OFWILLIAM GOOCHA History~s AnthropologyGREGDENINGGreg Dening, the prizewinningauthor of MrBligh's Bad Languageexplores the wayshistorians weaveinterpretation andmeaning into the fabricof history itself. Amasterly look at thesubtle shades ofhistorical enquiry.RRP $29.95I h '-.W I LL I AMGOO C HPaperbackMelbourne University Press