n - Eureka Street

'We are presently in the grip of a powerful, fashionablefetish for economic solutions in education and elsewhere. Inmy view; these need urgently to be balanced by a moredemocratic position. In this, we need to make a clear andfirm restatement of the value that should attach tointellectual independence, academic freedom, institutionalplurality and critical thought. '-Spencer ZifcakSee 'Brave new world', p24

Volume 7 Number 4May 1997A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theologyWhat I object tointensely is any claimby creationists or onbehalf of creationiststhat their viewemerges from a literalunderstanding of theBible. That is mybailiwick andI will defend it.Creationism as aliteral understandingof the Bible is bunk.-Antony CampbellSee 'Creationis1n!CONTENTS4COMMENT7CAPITAL LETTER8LETTERS14THE MONTH'S TRAFFIC18LIFE AND DEATH MATTERSW.J. Uren teases out the knots of theeuthanasia debate as it is being conductedin research surveys.20SCHOOL DAZEWhat is the future of public education?Morag Fraser interviews Ann Morrow,former Chair of the Schools Council.23SUMMA THEOLOGIAEUtterly unbiblical', p30. ;:AVE NEW WORLDCover drawing and drawings pp2,20-22, 24-26, from the fo lio ofSam Thomas, aged 6.Cover design by Siobhan Jackson.Graphics pp9, 10, 18, 23, 28, 30, 38,40 by Siobhan Jackson.Cartoons p 14, 17 by Dean Moore.Cartoon piS by Peter Fraser.Photograph p21, 22 by Bill Thomas.Photograph p45 by Greg Scullin.Eureka Street magazineJesuit PublicationsPO Box 553Richmond VIC 3121Tel (03) 9427 73 11Fax (03) 9428 4450Spencer Zifcak counts the cost of a lossof autonomy in Australian Universities.27INDEFENSIBLE SPENDINGWe're still spooked by the thought ofinvasion, according to Brian Toohey, andpaying big bucks for our paranoia.28ALL A BIT ON THE NOSEPaul Chadwick puts forward a plan for theretention of some diversity in our printm edia. But don't hold your breath ...29ARCHIMEDES30CREATIONISM! UTTERLY UNBIBLICALWhy swap the theological wealth of theBible for the insipid message of creationism,asks Antony Campbell.35POETRYLate Division and Upper East,by Peter Rose.36ENGLAND HER ENGLANDMargaret Drabble talks with MargaretSimons about the country that makesher furious and fuels her novels.38BOOKSAndrew Hamilton reviews Millennium andReformation, Christianity and the World1500-2000 (p38) and Robert Crotty's TheJesus Question (p41 ); Max Teichmann siftsthrough Samuel Hungtington's The Clashof Civilisations (p39); Brian Toohey assessesAgeing and Money (p42); Alan Wearnereviews a quartet of new poetry (p43); andTim Thwaites goes Climbing MountImprobable with Richard Dawkins (p44) .46FOOLS RUSH INGeoffrey Rush had a distinguished stagecareer long before that award, says GeoffreyMilne.48FLASH IN THE PANReviews of the films When We Wem Kings;Blacluocl

I:URI:-KA STRI:-ETA magazine of public affairs, the artsand theologyPublisherMichael Kelly SJEditorMorag FraserConsulting editorMichael McGirr SJAssistant editorJon GreenawayProduction assistantsPaul Fyfe SJ, Juliette Hughes,Chris Jenkins SJ, Siobhan Jackson,Scott HowardContributing editorsMelbourne: Andrew Bullen SJ,Andrew Hamilton SJAdelaide: Greg O'Kelly SJPerth: Dean MooreSydney: Edmund Campion, Gerard WindsorEditorial boardPeter L'Estrange SJ (chair),Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey,Valda M. Ward RSM, Trevor Hales,Marie Joyce, Kevin McDonald,Jane Kelly IBVM,Peter SteeleS), Bill Uren SJBusiness manager: Sylvana ScannapiegoAdvertising representative: Ken HeadPatronsEureka Street gratefully acknowledges thesupport of Colin and Angela Carter; thetrustees of the estate of Miss M. Condon;Denis Cullity AO; W.P. & M.W. Gurry;Geoff Hill and Janine Perrett;the Roche family.Eureka Street magazine, ISSN J 036- 1758,Australia Post Pri nt Post approvedpp349181/003 14is published ten times a yearby Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd,300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond, Vi ctoria 3 121T el: 03 9427 73 11 Fax: 03 9428 4450e- mail: eureka@werple. net.auResponsibili ty for editorial content is accepted byMi chael Kell y, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond.Printed by Doran Printing,46 Indust rial Drive, Braeside VIC 3195.© Jesuit Publications 1997.Unsolicited manuscripts, including poetry andfiction, will be returned only if accompani ed by astamped, self-addressed envelope. Requests forpermission to reprint material from the magazineshould be addressed in writing to:The editor, Eureka Street magazine,PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3 121.C OMMENTJAMES GRIFFINCoup de graceW TC H

order and to curb kleptocrats. There are reasons for this, butcritics of PNG often seem to know more about that countrythan they know of their own. It was always ironic instructingPNG students about 'conflict of interest' when many Australianpremiers had little awareness of it.While identities like Singirok hold out for a political ratherthan a military solution to the Bougainville tragedy, there areothers with faith and heroism toiling away in villages to bringabout 'restorative justice'.Brother Patrick Howley's Peace Foundation Melanesia(formerly, Foundation for Law, Order and Justice) issues amonthly newsletter which is the best record of what ishappening on the ground in Bougainville today. The PFM's logois inscribed 'Peace and Community Empowerment'. BrotherHowley relinquished a distinguished teaching career bothwithin Marist schools and as principal of one of the four nationalupper secondary high schools, to focus on the art of conflictresolution. He has a group of instructors working throughoutthe province.What is surprising is the amount of constructive work beingdone. Obviously most people are sick of war and want peace.This includes even some combatants from among both the BougainvilleRevolutionary Army (BRA) and the pro-governmentResistance. In the North-West of the main island recently, some200 BRA surrendered and handed in their weapons in spite ofthe risk involved, and were seen in Buka town for the first timein years. Along with such hopeful signs, however, are nowanarchic alliances forming when BRA squads fragment. TheyCOMMENT: 2MICHAEL M c GIRR SJcomprise young 'rambos' who were seven or eight when warbegan and are now carrying weapons. They are uneducated-in1988, 90 per cent of Bougainville children were in school-andsusceptible to violent cultism.In the Bana area (population 24,000) on the fringe of theBRA redoubt in central Bougainville, five community schoolsnow cater for most school-age children after having had allschools closed during 1990-96. Adult literacy classes try to copewith those who missed out. Courses in spiritual rehabilitationand reconciliation have been effective, if slow. Brother Howleywrites that 'many people believe the road to peace is for eachvillage to make its own peace, then peace with its neighbours,then with the areas further away until the units are able to joinup into districts'. Bana is moving in this direction. Slow,certainly, but better than being blown away by m ercenary fuelairbombs. Similar community resources are being mobilisedelsewhere with sporadic progress.Bougainville is not yet a black hole. Singirok's decisive andwell-timed action has averted a major disaster, and there i aresourceful quest for peace at village level. The military hasshown it too wants a political solution. It is up to Port Moresbyto provide a framework for this, and that means compromiseover the status of the province.•James Griffin is professor emeritus at the University of PapuaNew Guinea.Brother Howley's work can be encouraged at PO Box 4205,Boroko, N.C.D., Papua New Guinea.Roo QuANTOCK " AM

OPENDRSTeenagePregnancyAbortionSex EducationSexuallyTransmittedDiseasesContraceptionTeenage SuicideCOUNSELLING AND EDU C ATIONAL SERVICES INC.With 100,000 abortions annually in Australia, morethan 1 in 3 teenage girls becoming pregnant, STDsspreading rapidly among young people, teenage suicideat an all time high, it's easy to become despondent.f ilms, TV, Radio, Music and government departments are spendingmillions of dollars promoting lifestyles and programs whichaggravate and even cause related problems cg the "Safe Sex"campaign.What ca n you do?Have faith! And support tltis appeal.Open Doors, is an ecumenical Christian Group involved inresearch, education and counselling in all these issues· and more.Open Doors Counselling and Educational Services• successfully makes educational programs based on traditionalChristian values. We address all these issues, promoting thefamil y, marriage and keeping sex fo r marriage, ancl our programsarc in 4,000 Australian primary and secondary schools.• provide specialist counselling for pregnant women/girls,teenage rs, couples and families on relationship issues· c risispregnancy, marriage, abortion, STDs etc.• publis hes articles in our journal l.ife in Focus which is sentfree to every secondary school and to Australia n media andpoli ticians.• has a special pregnancy loss counselling and researchservice, helping women w ho arc expe riencing grief afterpregnancy loss through abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth.Open Doors has the staff, the programs, the faith and the motiva tion. 13ut we need to raise anextra $500,000 over the next 2 years to main tain existing services ancl to meet increasing demands.-- ---~ ~~ ~~ -~~ l~~~ ~~~ ,-~l~t- ~~- ~~ ~ -C~~ ~: :~C-t~1~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~ :~1 ~:~ ~~~l~~~~~~~ ~~S~ t-C~ ~ -t~~~:~l~:~ :~C~1~: -g~ :: ~~~1~~: ~ :~--Add ress .................TitleChristian NamePlease accept my D Cheque D 13ankcard D Mastercard D Visa Donation for $ ............... .Ca rel NumberD D D D D D D D D D D D D D D DMake cheques payable to Open Doors PO 13ox 610 Ringwood Vic 3134 (Donations arc tax deductible).for information about our counselling ami educational work write or telephone (03) 9870 7044Patrons: Most Reverend G Pell Catholic Archbishop of MelbourneRight Reverend James Grant I3ishop Coadjutor in the Anglican Archdiocese of Melbourne6EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

l~ How~'' "o~~m:i< ~'~~til~~~~ ~:mon '~'·Tho fU•t mund• of publicstrategy now-a piece of cleverness which service cuts, for example, hit rural regions hard. For many a countryshowed him to be like any cynical old politician.town, the closure of a social security office and the closing down offBut even as the strategy has unravelled, making almost every- a labour market program was just another blow in a cycle that hasone look rather unattractive, Malcolm Colston has been delivering seen those towns lose banks and other private sector servicemore to Howard than the extra vote which makes up a Senate institutions, then population, then teachers and policemen.majority. So intense has been the focus on the affair that the Budget In some states this has been compounded by simultaneousprocess has been able to go without any public attention, hardly a assaults at all levels of government. Rural and provincial politisingleleak and not a little Liberal and National Party discipline. cians have had a hard time explaining to their voters that it's all forJust whether, however, this is a good thing depends on how long the greater good.term John Howard's strategies are.Yet many of the economic zealots within government are stillThe first Howard-Costello Budget was a much more public keen to have unilateral tariff cuts, which will have further andprocess, which suited the Government well, even if it did not immediate sectional impacts. Public sector job and program cutsappreciate the amount ofleaking by a public service being set up for are still being planned, without much sign of increased privateserious cuts. First, the cuts could all be Paul Keating's fault, sector activity to pick up the slack or any job creation as privatebecause of the famous black hole: all that Peter Costello had to do, enterprise performs functions hitherto carried out by government.as he gleefully flung away the election sheep's clothing, was to It's within this context that the recent Defence Efficiencypretend that these were austerities forced as reluctant duty upon Review was somewhat bemusing. Its proposed defence efficiencieshim by Labor profligacy and dishonesty.involve the centralisation of a host of defence facilities, with a littleThe leaks, even the unexpected ones, meant that by Budget day base here, a piece of the Army's support services there, a bit of thethe public was well prepared for the bad news and prepared to focus Air Force's infrastructure over there all marked down for closure.on the compensations. Moreover, the Budget was based on doling In those communities, the defence presence meant jobs notout nearly all of the nasty medicine early in the political term, in only forthe servicemen and women butfor a wider community. Yetthe expectation that both the economic and the political cycle the rationales for the cuts were pretty sketchy, not least in a timewould permit successor budgets that proved th e efficacy of the when transport and communications infrastructure are such thatmedicine and delivered some payback for the voters just before alocation doesn't matter much at all. But it was endorsedtriumphal re-election.0by Government without the blink of an eye.Alas, Costello's advisers got some of their own revenue sumswrong and the Government now has its own black hole.NCE UPON A TIME, OF coURSE, the process of locating suchWith so much dogma and credibility focused on balanced or facilities involved some conscious pork-barrelling, just as thesurplus budgets, Costello has another year of tightening, making location of social security offices or community services did.the political equation a closer-run thing. This is the more so given Politicians lobbied hard to do something for their electors. An areathat the source of his shortfall comes from the patchy nature of feeling the pinch, say because of drought, structural change or theeconomic growth and the uneven way it is distributed.collapse of a financial institution, might be given some majorSectors which h ave traditionally fueled business and consumer government project as a piece of conscious Keynesian pumpconfidence,and which traditionally provided jobs growth, have priming and levelling out. Now, it seems, government is consciouslybeen visibly lagging. The retail and the housing sectors are doing stripping itself of just uch powers of intervention. The furtherbadly. The global economy, which the bipartisan architects of the changes to the financial sector recommended by the Walliseconomic market reforms have made so crucial to Australia' committee will take away even more.prosperity, is not looking as well as it did.The zealots would say that the capacity of government toAnd, in part because of the government changes to industrial achieve outcomes by the old levers is now much reduced, becauserelations, job insecurity is inhibiting consumer spending, which is of our vulnerability to international competition, and that marketin turn impairing business confidence. This then threatens that solutions are often better ones than well-intentioned but clumsyresurgence of private sector activity which thefantasists of modern interventions by government. To an extent they are right, but someeconomic theory think will flow automatically once the public of Government's impotence derives from their own strategies.sector is taken off its back.What has this to do with the budget and Malcolm Colston?After the ritual spending slashes of health, welfare and educa- First, the Government is taking a great risk if it thinks that sometion, and with defence still apparently quarantined from any cuts, Budget-day prestidigitation will amaze, delight and persuade evethemost obvious way of making up budget deficits is by attacking ryone. We've had that from Paul Keating and he could not delivertaxation expenditure-the myriad of concessions and deductions either. The more open the Budget process and the more time andavailable for business and families. But many of these are difficult attention given to expectations, the more likely a Budget strategyto justify on equity grounds and the revenue they promise has a will be accepted.great capacity to evaporate. Allow tax concessions for personal And this is even more the case when the electorate is cynical notsuperannuation, for example, and the punters will put their money only about the capacity of politicians to deliver outcomes, butthere; take it away and they will switch it elsewhere, probably suspicious and cynical about the character of the politicians themfasterthan the tax man can catch it. selves. The higher they are, the lower they fall. •It's a difficult juggle, the more so when it is orchestrated aroundthe electoral cycle. But so cocky are some of the players that dogma Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times.VOLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 7

LEITERSNo excuseFrom John EastMichael McGirr's article on sexualabuse within the Catholic educationsystem (Eureka Street, April 199 7) is,I think, a generally fair and compassionateattempt to view this verypainful issue from all sides, and he isnot sparing in his criticism of thoseinstitutional flaws within the Churchthat made exual ab use not only possible but inevitabl e.I was however very disappointedthat one paragraph-something of anapologia for the Catholic educa tionsystem in this country-was highlightedon the inside front cover of thatissue. There were in my opinion otherparagraphs in that article which betterdeserved such prominence. Moreimportantly, I disagree with McGirr'sattempt, in the final sentence of thatparagraph, to blame the whole countryfor the prevalence of sexual abusein the Catholic educa tion system. Thesentence in question runs thus: 'If ali fe of personal privation forced someindividuals into distorted behaviour,then th e whole country is s ubtlycomplicit.'Thi i , I believe, quite unfair, as theproblem lay very much within theinstitutions of the atholic Church, andnot in Australian society as a whole. Ifwe look at the issue from the point ofview of the abuser, then the mainconsideration which kept him (or her)within their life of 'personal privation'was the knowledge of the ostracism bytheir Catholic family, friends andcolleagues which would be their lotupon leaving the order, to say nothingof the threat of ecclesiastical sanctionsif perpetual vows were broken.From the point of view of thevictim, the only adults in whom anabused child could confide-teacher ,parents, parish pri est, family doctorwouldprobably all have been Catholicswho had been thoroughlybrain-washed into believing that theirChurc h and their clergy wereincapable of error. And had one ofthose adults dared to complain to theecclesiastical authorities, they wouldprobably, at best, have been fobbed offwith bl and assurances, or, at worst,have been threatened with loss of livelihoodor denial of the sacraments ifthey did not hold their tongue.McGirr's suggestion tha t thecountry as a whole was guilty of theEurelw Street welcomes lettersfrom its readers. Short letters aremore likely to be published, andall letters may be edited. Lettersmust be signed, and shouldinclude a contact phone number

This month,the writer of eachletter we publishwill receivea Eureka Street T -shirt.Marlon Branda couldn'tmake it look any better.any he lpful, though invented "act"could be justifiably workedaccordingto their cultured and literaryconventions.'Barrett concludes: 'Crossan and hismates are only clearing the ground offundamentalist claims; they need to gobeyond the trifling impedimenta andconsider why all the impedimenta arethere in the first pl ace . ... they are verymuch more than a tiny amoun t of factwith en ormou s dollops of faith.'Barrett does not say where the faithreally fits into the story.The irony for m e is that Barrettmakes h imself fit Adams' criteriaperfectly. H e h as described a view ofgospel form a tion whic h canno treasonably form the ground of faith,except the faith that Barrett claimsfor him self, th at ' this Jesus couldcope with life and its problem s; wenever knew anyone who could copebetter. 'I wonder whether the world is notbetter served by Adams' ' torturedm ind' and 'certain longing' than byBarrett's reduction of Jesus to the goodexample who 'could cope with li fe andits problems.' M y suspicion is thatm ost people would relate better toAdam s than to the Jesu s given inBarrett's analysis.A further irony for m e is that m ydoctorate is in certain aspects ofpsychology and religious symbolism .I rea d fo r this in the theology department of Exeter University, UK, underthe professorship of David Catchpole,one of the current stream of thoseinterested in ' the search for thehistorical Jesu s'. In 'deference' toCatchpole I called one chapter of m ythesis, 'The Search For the Non­Historical Jesus'. One da y the realJesus will stand up as asked.Kim MillerWagga Wagga NSWNo nonsenseFrom fohn DoyleFor some time now I have been tryingto get action about defective signs. Iwant signs that are easy to see and easyto recognise.Signs of th at kind make even ashort journey safe and comfortable.N ow, punctuation m arks and whitespaces are the reader's road signs. Ofrecent years they have increasinglybecom e obscured by the letters aroundthem and increasingly hard to recognisewhen they are sighted. The veryphysical process of reading has becometedious and laborious, even for eyesthat are neither tired nor lazy.Concern for the Republic of Letterssuggests a campaign to h ave allpunctuation marks separated by an enspaceand sentences by an em -space.This simple return to an older, hotmetaltradition would greatly relievestrain and stress, and fit well w ith thewider pitch and wider spacing that ibecoming m ore common in goodbooks and m agazines.John W. DoyleKew, VICNo problemFrom Warren HortonDirector General, National Library ofA ustraliaRobert Barnes' article 'The N ationalLibrary of Au tralia: From Big Bang toBlack Hole' (Eu reka Street, March1997) continues his ca mpaign againstour strategic policy directions. He hasn ow publish ed over 25 articles orletters in the m edia on these issues.Barnes lam ents that h e hasreceived little support in thiscampaign, saying 'equally tragic hasbeen the almost complete silence ofscholarly institutions elsewhere in thecountry. N o academy, learned society,university or library association hasm ade any public statem ent on theN ational Library's collections or electronicpolicies.'There has indeed been little com ­ment. N ot one academic in Australia,for example, subsequently commentedon the lea d article about our collection/accesspolicies in the importantCampus Review weekly issu e of 15May, 1996. The 'controversy' concerningthe National Library about whichBarnes constantly fulminates seemslargely confined to him and a smallgroup of other Canberra users.The Library in its 1993 StrategicPlan Service to the Nation: Access tothe Globe said its role was changing,with a stronger emphasis on collectingmaterial relating to Australia andAustralians, o ur prime collectingresponsibility, w hile continuing tobuild the resource sharing infrastructurefor the Australian library system.The time has passed for us to aspire toa coll ection from all over the world.The growth of the higher educationlibrary system over recent decadesencourages shared collection building,and technology increasingly allows usto acquire m aterial, especially journals,from elsewhere. But we stillspend heavily on m aterial from overseas,including world class Asian andPacific collections. And we cherish oursplendid printed collections.Libraries are changing profoundly.The recent major review of the ANULibra ry commented on the greatgrowth since the 1982 review in thera te a t which knowledge is beinggenerated. While no research library,no m atter how well resourced, nowm eets all its own information needs,technologies are em erging whichpromise greater access to informationirrespective of its physical location.T he review said 'This has impactedon university libraries world wide andh as even led na tiona! libraries toreassess their goals .. . Many, like theNLA, have had to focus more closelyon their primary goal which is to collecton matters directly related to theirown country w ithin a set of fairlyclosely defined interests'.The main thrust of Barnes' arguments is that the National Library hasnarrowed its collecting ambitions overrecen t decades. We w ould describewhat has happened as sensible policychanges refl ecting the opportunitiesand constraints outlined above.LETTING GOAND MOVING ONIndividual or groupcounselling for peopleexperiencing painfullife changesWinsome ThomasB.A . (Psych), Grad. Dip. App. PsychPhone (03) 9827 8785Fax (03) 9690 7904V OLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 9

The world we now operate in is quitedifferent to those few years in the late 1960searly 1970s when the Library acquired theSperos Vryonis and some other form ed overseascollections. We have made no similarpurchases for 25 years, and are unlikely to everdo so again, and nor has any other Australianlibrary. This is simply a reflection of reality,and our primary interest has to be Australianspecial materials including manuscripts,pictures and oral history. Acquiring andservicing this m aterial is also a verylabour-intensive activity. Barnes himself says'In retrospect, it could well be argued that thelibrary took on too many responsibilities forits funds to support.'We steadil y cu t back purchasing ofoverseas print material throughout the 1980s,beca use we operate under the same costpressures and economic restraint affectingall other Australian libraries andCommon wealth-funded institutions.The Library has no m ore chance ofavoiding them than any university orother public institution, and to arguewe have failed to convince the Government'we were worth supporting fully'is just fanciful. And we are alrea dy thesecond highest revenue earner for anynational library in the world. We nowhave 500 staff as opposed to 650 in 1985,who by their ingen uity and goodm anagement practices have met grea tlyincreased demands on all our servicesover those years. But we could not goon like this.T he 1993 Strategic Plan reflects verycareful thought about what theLibrary's key strategic priorities should be inthese circumstances. In the case of collectionand electronic access policies, where theissues are far more complex than in past bettereconomi c times and with only print materialto consider, the title accurately refl ects oura mbitions. We still aim to collect printexhaustively for the Australian and worldclassAsian/ Pacific collections, and judiciouslyfrom elsewhere in the world againstthe objective of being 'the world's leadingdocumentary resource for learning about andunderstanding Australia and Australians,linking closely with other sources ofinformation throughout the nation'.The last phrase is important, beca use itreflects the fact that we work in a highly coordinatedenvironment. Australia is extraordinarilywell served now in terms of researchlibrary collections compared to two decadesago, reflecting the great growth in the highereduca tion library system . We spend one inevery 20 of the dollars now spent onAustralian research library collections, ascompared to one in every four 30 years ago,and there is loca tion information for over 20million volumes in over 2,000 libraries in ourABN system. Concentrating on our primecollecting responsibilities in a nationalresource-sharing environment where everyonehas funding problems, rather than anyfoolish pretence we are the only library in theworld apart from the US Library of Congressbuilding a world collection of print materials,is obvious] y sensible.This policy has meant significant cancellationsof overseas print materials. In the caseof seria ls we have in the last two yearscancelled some 13,000 overseas subscriptions,although we still subscribe to som e 13,000titles and acquire another 13,000 by gift andexchange and other methods. We would withstaff decreases probably find it impossible tonow ph y ically process that material anyway,but the decision has to be seen in the contextof electronic developments includingfacsimile and the Internet, and establishmentof dedicated document delivery services. TheAmerican CARL UnCover service alone, towhich we add Australian content, offers 24hour full text access to over 20,000 titles.While it is a minor issue, our subscriptionto Antiquity (w hich is also held in the ANULibrary in Canberra) was not 'discreetly reinstated,aft er protests in the national Press'. Itwas cancelled in error on 27 july 1995 andreinstated on 16 August 1995 . Barnes' letterin the Canberra Times complaining we didnot ubscribe to it was published on 24September 1996. I accept he did not thencompreh end the reinstatement from ourcatalogue entry, but he certainly does now.Barnes says that the user has to meet thecosts, and that such developments are ' noadequate substitute for the traditional library,where the researcher can browse freely in awide range of journals'. We still of course takea huge number of journals, but this is a veryCanberra-based argument. The small group ofCanberra residents vigorously opposing thesechanges, who can of course visit the Library,have never commented on the fact that allinter-library loan use since 1987 has attractedsubstantial charges. We are still exploringways to carry these costs for our prime clientgroup of the serious researcher needing accessto the National Library. However universitylibraries have the prime responsibility ofm eeting the libra ry needs of thei rcommunities.We believe there is a problem in theoverall in take of overseas monographs inAustralian research libraries, although ourpolicies have not caused it. We have beentalking to the academies, university librariesand other interested parties about how thismight be explored.We do strongly support the concept of theDistributed N ational Coll ection, unanimouslyendorsed when first articulated at the Au tralianLibraries Summit of 1988, and since alsotaken up by the Commonwealth Governmentand cultural communities. In the simplest terms this concept argues librariesshould think of the nation's libraryresources as one co llection, comprehensivelyin the case of Australian materialand selectively in relation to therest of the world, and while acceptingevery library has its own prime clientgroup, develop coll aborative resourcesharingpolicies in the national interest.We have been disappointed thatthere have been few contractual collectingagreements to date under thatpolicy, although the informal agreements,as in the health sciences subjectarea for instance, should not beunderestimated.But the DNC concept is far widerthan just co llecting agreements. Itincludes the National Bibliographica l Databaseoperating through ABN of Australian libraryholdings, Conspectus description of coll ections,national preservation strategies, national access,electronic and inter-library loan protocols,and a raft of other collaborative activities wherethere has been notable achievement. It is pleasingthat the N ational Scholarly CommunicationsFomm, whose m embership includes thelearned academies, libraries and other relevantparties, is soon to hold a major forum to furtherinvigorate the concept.It is said that our 'total spending on allprinted material (even including theAustralian collection) has fallen to about $5million a year, or only 9 per cent of theLibrary's budget'. Almost all Australianprinted m aterial is of course acquired freeunder far-sighted legal deposit laws. Wh enthis, overseas free material and TaxationIncentive acquisitions are notionally castedin, our collections budget is the largest inAustralia. And we are a totally self-containedorganisation, with a range of responsibilitiesfar wider than any other Australian library.This is 9 per cent of a 1995/96 budgetincluding $24m for 500 staff, $2m on running10 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

our building, about $6m for asbestos removalfrom the building, $8m paid by other librariesfor ABN, and funding for many other activitiess uch as the National Portrait Gallery,publications and so on.Your rea ders may find it useful to have abrea kdown of our collections expenditurefrom 199 1/92 to 1995/96. This shows a 47.6per cent cut in o verseas expenditure(excluding Asian), a 9.65 per cent increase inAsian expenditure, a 17. 1 per cent increasein Australian printed material (m ost comingfree through legal deposit), and a 42. 1 per centincrease in Australian special materials(manuscripts, oral history, pictorial, m apsetc.) expenditure.There is little point in comparisons overwho spends what on library collections,unless the libraries and their responsibilitiesare broadly similar. The Library of Congressspends less than 9 per cent of its budget oncoll ection s, whi le the Bayeri sche Staatsbibliothek(the Bavarian State Library) haslittle resemblance to us. It does not forexample run any service like ABN, and itcounts its collections intake differently.Barnes in his article and elsewhere hascomplained about our consultative process in1992 for the Strategic Plan, saying we ignoredcriticism then and hid ou r true intentionsabout the collection policies. It is impossibleto refute this beyond saying I do not beli eveeither allegation to be true. We can always dobetter in consulting, but it should be notedthat the December 1993 issue of our NationalLibrary of Australia News, 7,000 copies ofwhich were distributed around Australia,focu sed on th e Strategic Plan includingreprinting the strategic priorities.We are not able for legal reasons tocomment on the WORLD 1 project, includingpossible funding outcomes, during thepresent termination negotiations. But we didnot divert collection funds to it. We arecommitted to full support of the AustralianBibliographical N etwork (ABN) whichsupports over 2,000 Australian libraries, untilthe replacem ent Networked Services Project,which has been strongly supported by theCounsellingIf you or someone you know couldbenefit from professional counselling,please phone MartinPrescott, BSW, MSW, MAASW,clinical member of theAssociation of Catholic Psychotherapists.Individuals, couplesand families catered for:Bentleigh (03) 9557 2595library community, is implem ented. Thiswent to tender in March.T he Council is responsible fo r Librarypolicies, and has not 'been almost totallysilent', since I am its executive member andspea k publicly on its behalf. Recent membershave included people of the calibre of SirNinian Stephen, Sir Anthony Mason,Professor Stuart Macintyre, Rodney Cavalier,Julia Kin g and Geraldine Paton, with am e mber e lected from each house of th eParliament. They hardly match the comment'one wonders whether the Council is anythingmore than a rubber-stamp for decisions madeby the Library's administration'.The Library is very publicly accountable,including to th e Parliament. Most of therelevant material can be found on our homepage at http://www.nla.gov.au and is alsorea dily available in print form.What is depressing in this particulararticle is the denigration by Barnes of theprofessionalism of the many Library staffinvolved in developing the collection, accessand electronic m aterials policies of the lastdecade. Most have le ngthy professionalexperience in the National Library or otherlarge Australian research libraries, and allbring integrity to their work. The Library hascategorically denied the assertion that theyshaped the collection policies to reflect theprevious Government's Asian strategies, butBarnes s till says ' this disclaimer isdi singenuous'. He al so says that 'The Library'scollection and electronic policies have asuperficial plausibility, but they are thedecisions of bureaucrats, not scholars andresearchers.' Our staff are proud to be part ofthe Commonwealth bureaucracy, while alsodriven by professional values . They developpolicy recommendations for the Council inan environment demanding constant change,difficult decisions in h ard economic times,intellectual rigour and the courage to takesignificant risks with technology.The world has changed dramatically in thelast decade. Our values and culture are builton print, but we recognise that technology,including the extraordinary rise of theInternet, gives us undreamt of opportunitiesfor access to the world's information.We must now concentrate on our primarytasks set out in our Strategic Plan, includingthe h eavy responsibility of building theAustralian collections of both print andelectronic materials.The reason that Barnes may have attractedlittle support is that those interested inAustralian libraries understand this turbulentand changing environment. They m ay not anymore than us have all the answers, but theysee little profit in just looking back to thevanished world of a gen eration ago.Warren HortonCanberra, ACTMELBOURNEUNIVERSITYPRESSIn the Midst of LifeThe Australian Respons e to DeathRevised Editi onGRAEME M . GRIFFIN ANDDES TOBINA useful, well-informed compassionatebook on a taboo subject, forprofessional and general readers.From lively stories of colonialburials, mourning etiquette andgravestone epitaphs-to thornyco ntemporary questions. How todeal with grief? What are the practicalities when a relative dies? Doyesterday's rituals meet today'sneeds? Paperba ck $29.95Manning Clark'sHistory of AustraliaTenth Anniversary Limited EditionABRIDGED BYMICHAEL CATHCARTThi s is a limited collectors' edition ofthe abridgement of Clark's sixvolumeclassic. As the narrativeranges from 1788 to the thresho ldof World War II , Michael Cathcartnever loses sight of Clark's sympathiesand understanding. All themagnificence of the original isretained.Hardback in slipcase, $85.0075 YEARS~~MUP1922 1997268 Drummond StreetCarlton South 3053Tel 9347 3455Fax 9349 2527V OLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 11

I WANT TO INVEST WITH CONFIDENCEAUSTRALIANe-thicalAgribusiness orreafforestation.Mining or recycling.Exploitation orsustainability.Greenhouse gasesor solar energy.Armaments orcommunityenterprise.TRUSTSInvestorscan chooseThrough the AE Trusts youcan invest your savingsand superannuation inover 70 differentente rprises, each expertlyselected for its uniquecombination of earni ng s,environmentalsustainability and socialresponsibility, and earn acompetitive financialreturn. For full detailsmake a free call to1800021227lnl'estments in the .\ustralia 11 l:'thical trusts canonll' be made thruuuh the cu rreJII pros{Jeelusregislered ll'ilh the .\uslraliall SecuritiesCo mmission and tll'ailableji·omAustralian Ethicalllwestment Ltdl 'uil 66. Ca nberro Busines.\ CentreBradfield St. IJ0/1'1/er .-\CT lWlAustralianBook Reviewtlze essential magazinefor Australian booksin the May issue:Marilyn Lake on Icons, Saints & DivasIvor Indyk reviews Brian Castro's StepperDon Anderson reviewsRichard Lunn's Feast of All SoulsRobert Adamson onGeoffrey Lehmann's poetryJohn Tranter on Kenneth SlessorNew Subscribers $44 for 10 issuesplus a free bookPh (03) 9663 8657 Fax (03) 9663 8658No confidenceFrom Don LinforthIn the article by Margaret Simons onSenator Cheryl Kernot (Eureka SLreel,March 19971 the Senator is reported assaying that a joint sitting of the Senateand House of Representativesfollowing a double dissolution 'wouldhave the numbers to push througheverything that has been on the tableand hasn't been passed by the Senatebeforehand'.In my reading of Section 57 of theConstitution, the only measures that ajoint sitting can di scuss arc those whichhave been passed twice by the Houseof Representatives and twice rejected (orunacceptably amended or not passed) bythe Senate, with three months' intervalbetween the two presentations tothe Senate. I think these measures haveto be enumerated in the documentationfor the double dissolution.Furthermore, a double dissolutioncannot take place less than six monthsbefore the expiry of a House of Representatives,that means Mr. Howardcannot call one later than October 1998.Don LinforthHampton, VICNo standingFrom H.f. GrantSuccessive Federal Governments fromthe '80s including the present cannotescape the odium attached to th eall eged rorting of pari iamcntary travelall owances especially by Senator MalColston. This is compounded by thedifficulty that the Labor Party is experiencingin regaining its social soul andthe Coalition in trying to find it.T he Language used on the subjectby the Prime Minister, the Leader ofthe Labor party and their coll eagueswas aptly described by George Orwell( 1903-19501, English satirical novelist,essayist and critic in these words:'Po litical language-and withvariations this is true of all politicalparties from Conscrva ti ves to Anarchists-is designed to m ake liessound truthful and murder respectable,and to give appearance of solidityto pure wind.'Equally the late US PresidentHarry Truman who knew andrespected what the public expected ofpoliticians was wont to quote HoraceGreeley ( 181 1-18721, founder editor ofthe New York Times: 'fame is a vapor,popularity an accident, riches takewings, those who cheer today maycurse tomorrow, only one thingendures: character.'Belatedly the Prime Minister hasnow announced that Governmentwould introduce reforms to the systemfor vetting pa rl iamentary travel all owances.Reforms to be effective, however,should be complete and wide rangingand include arrangements outside theParliament or Government that all owan independent committee or tribunalto initiate, investigate and decide oninstances of malpractice relating to allparliamentary allowances andprivileges.Action of this nature would be am ea ns of re-affirming the high principlesand practices which politicians,commonly profess to subscribe onelection to office as well as helping torestore Parliament's standing and theGovernment's credibility.The latter is under siege given the'pain with ga in ' measures in place andin prospect for the thousands of agedand deprived, unemployed, underemployedand low wage earners withoutallowances or superannuation.H.J. GrantCampbell, ACTN o illusionsFrom fohn KerschJust prior to the col lapse of the former,corruption -riddl ed National PartyGovernment of Queensland, legislationwas enacted to grant holders ofPastoral Leases automatic 20-yearextensions.Several people, including myself,strongly rcsi ted its application toleases deemed to be ' multi-livingarea' in size. On ex piry these werethe heritage of many young ruralAustralians to have the opportunityto draw a o ne living-a rea bal lotblock. The enthusiasm for this processwas demonstrated by the 3,000applicants for the best of such blocks,in the Injune area.We were assured by the Partyheavies that the extension would applyonly to aggregations under threeliving-areas. In the finish, aggregationsof up to even seven living-a reassecured the extension (for exampleChatsworth Sth in the Cloncurryregion, Far North Queensland I.The major beneficiary of thisgolden-handshake was the McDonaldfamily with aggregations possibly in12EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

excess of 40 living-areas. It is likelythat the next major beneficiary was theA. A. Company.Can I therefore ask the followingquestions?As the then Vice-President of theQueensland National Party, Directoron the board of A. A. Company andprincipal of the McDo n ald familycompany, did Don McDonald in factdraft the extension legislation ?Now the Federal President of theNational Party, is h e using the currentWik confusion to secure freehold overthis country, as I heard him suggeston an ABC radio interview on April8?Thus completing the rape of theaspirations of many potential younglandholders.John KershMaxwelton, QLDNo can doFrom Fr JM GeorgeFr J Honner (ES, March, 97) recommendedMichael Winter's article, 'ANew Twist to the Celibacy Debate'.Winter reduces early church motivationfor celibacy to 'morbid attitudesto sex' and 'primitive taboo'. Hisviews are not 'new' but are found inold celibacy studies by J.&. A. Theiner(1828), H. Lea (1867), F.X. Funk (1897),etc.French Jesuit historian, ChristianCochini and oth ers, today, wouldreject Winter's reduction in the lightof mainstream celibacy-doctrine andpraxis within the early church.Many early church married laity aswell as married clerics abstained frommarital acts in penitential preparationfor Eucharist. Moreover, just as abstinencefrom food did not imply thateating was m orbidly dishonourable orprimitive taboo, neither did pre-Eucharisticmarital abstinence imply negativitytowards the conjugal act.Indeed the wider church hadreject ed Manichean , Gnostic,Montanist and Encratite h eresies fordenigrating marriage. True! among the85 eastern and western Church Fatherswere some with negative attitudes tomarriage. However those limitedviews did n ot impact upon the abovementioned motivations for abstinence.The early church regarded marriedlay and clerical pre-eucharistic abstinencefrom food, wine and conjugalacts (totally good in themselves) asincreasing the efficacy of liturgicalprayer ('by penance'). Unlike strictrules of fasting, conjugal pre-eucharisticabstinence was merely a 'counsel'for married laity-a matter of personaldecision.'Efficacy-motivation' stood behindpermanent clerical celibacy. The earlychurch understood priests as incontinual mediation for the people.This 'mediation' was seen as more efficaciouswith permanent celibacy. Later,other motives were underlined, forexample, sacerdotal configuration to thecelibate Christ, 'Apostolic origins', etc.Cochini in his OriginesApostoliques du Celibat Sacerdotal,discusses wider issu es, such as thecontroversial Trillion Canon 13 mentionedby Fr Honner. Cochini exposesthe fictitious 'Paphnutius intervention'at Nicaea (uncritically acceptedby Winter). He distinguishes two categoriesof early celibate priests. He alsoclarifies 'Ritual-purity' terminology inits use for old Levitical priesthood andNew Testament presbyterate.The former professor at InstitutCath olique de Paris, the late Jean CardinalDanielou described Cochini['sinitial research as 'a true service to thechurch'. Henri Cardinal de Lubac,another outstanding scholar, describedthis 'serious and extensive research ...as of the first importance'. (Winter'sviews- popular today in scholarlycircles-need to be challen~ed 1 ).John M GeorgeWaverley, NSWNoWikFrom Michael PolyaFrank Brennan's article on Wik{E ureka Street, April1997) is misleading.Even if Aborigines could claim thevalue of the land in compensation inthe event of Native Title being extinguished,the value of the land wouldnot be too great, partly because itwould be generally unsaleable, or onlyto other Aborigines and thereforecould n ot be used as security for a loanand in any case the value would bediminished by the value of compensationthat would be payable to lesseesfor improvements, which in manyinstances would greatly exceed thevalue of the land itself.Native title does create a system ofland tenure akin to that of entailedestates in Europe, which only benefitsthe m ost parasitic and useless strata ofsociety, to wit the hereditary nobility.Michael PolyaWatson, ACTAustralian Options * *Journal of left discussions fo r * *social justice and political change.Issues I-8 have included themes: Unemployment,Privatisation Plunders, Future of Unions, ElectionQuestions, Green. Issues in a Brown. Land,Rich vs Poor, ABC.With writers: Pat Dodson, Belinda Probert, Mary Kalantzis,Hugh Stretton, Ted Trainer, John Langmore, Eva Cox. JackMundey, Ken Davidson, Meredith Burgmann;Next Issue: The Attack on YouthSubscribe NowName/ : ......................... ........ .. .. .... .... .. ... ............................... .Address: .. .............................................................................. ................................................ State!Postcode: ................. .. .. ..Phone: (H) ................................. (W) .................................. ..Email: ... .. .. .. .......................................................................... .I enclose $15 ($10 cone.) for subscription for one year (four issues p.a.)Cash 0 Cheque 0 Credit Card 0Payment by credit card:Please charge my (circle one). Bankcard Visa MastercardNo.: DODO DODO DODO DODOExpiry date: .................. ............. Amount: $ ..........................Signature: ....................................... .................. .Return to: Australian Options, PO Box 431, Good wood SA 5034,L------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------~§jThe Halifax-Portal LecturesThe Second Series of Ecwnenical LecturesSponsored by the Catholic and Anglican Bishops of NSW6th May 199713th May 199720th May 199727th May 1997"The Orthodox Churchesin Australia in 1997"ARCHBISHOP AGHAN BALI OZIAN,Armenian Apostolic Church"The Anglican Communion onthe Eve of Lambeth"(World Wide Ang li can Communion)REv DR BR UCE KAYEGeneral Sem:tary, the General Synod of Australia''The Uniting Church in Australia in 1997''REv DoROTHY McRAE-McMAHONDirector for Mi ssion for the Uniting Church inAustralia"The Legacy of Halifax and Portal"Ms DENISE SULLI VANSecretary of the Bishops' Committee forEcumeni cal and Interfaith RelationsThesday Nights at 7.30 pm-FREE ENTRYSanta Maria Del Monte School Hall, Strathlield, NSW(cnr Carrington Ave and The Boulevarde)Refreshments served at 7.15 pmAnglicru1 Viscount Charles Halifax ( 1839-1934) was involved in mosl questions facingthe Anglican Church of his day. Abbe Etienne Ponal ( 1855- 1926), a French Yincentian,met !he Viscount in 1889. Their friendship led to dialogue about Church reu nion. TI1eMalines Conversations ( 192 1-1926) between Catholics and Anglicans hosted byCardi nal Mercier was their most notable success. TI1ese two men express the spiritthai these current lectures seek to foster.FOR FliRTH ER INFORMATION CONTACT: SR PATRICIA MADI GAN OP,LI AISON OFFICER FOR I':CUMEN lSM. I' OLOlN(; HO USE

more remarkable was that during their staythe verdict acquitting the police officerscharged with the bashing of Rodney Kingsparked the LA riots. Naturally the restaurantwas packed when the evening newsbroadcast came on the TV. The hum gaveway to an uncomfortable silence as footagewas shown of people wandering the streets,randomly firing guns, and of the near-fatalassault of a truck driver pulled from his rig.It wa hard, then, not to notice that thegroups of sailors were split into racial groupsm ore often than not. Half an hour later theunease was gone and joviality returned. Butthe ghost of som ething past was there.The American military make it clear totheir charges that when at rest in a foreignport they are being watched and thereforemust be on their best behaviour. At leastthis is what Michael told me, a 20-year-oldfrom Milwaukee with whom a m ate and Iplayed pool in a Bondi bar. His friendsdrinking in the corner joined in and we talkedabout Vegemite and topless bathing and thedifficulties of speaking English in Japan.Michael was a terrible player, but that'sunderstandable when you consider that poolis not the ideal hobby for a sailor. He spentm ost of the time inspecting the pockets foran invisible plastic coating. Somehow theconversation turned to poverty and crimein American cities. H e shrugged at som ewell-intended but naive remark of mineand said that a young black man in theinner city feels taunted by the constant andvisible police presence. 'They think you'vedone somethin' ', he said, 'so you m ay aswell go ahead and do it'.On the Tuesday after Easter the USSIndependence pulled out of port. At thetime, Prime Minister H oward was inBeijing meeting with Li Peng and otherdignitaries. N ewsreports that evening ofthe concerns the Chinese leadership hasover our defence ties with the US weremarried with images of the aircraft carrierleaving Sydney Harbour.There is a black American rap groupcalled Public Enemy and they have an albumentitled 'It takes a nation of millions tohold us back'. -Jon GreenawayMoclz worlzIs there anyone among you who wouldhand bis child a stone when heasked for bread! Wlw would hand hischild a scorpion when sheasked for fish !Since the Prime Minister's announcement in February of compulsory work forthe dole, few details h ave em erged that tellus what the cheme will entail for jobseekers. Lack of detail on the program'sdesign and funding has resultedin delay of the proposed legislationin the Senate and its referralto a committee for review .What does this kind ofmake-work have to offer unemployedand young unemployedAustralians? Similar schemeshave been propose d andknocked back since the mid '80swhen the Hawke Governmentput up its 'CommunityVolunteers Progran1' for unem ­ployed youth. As political diversionsor vote winners, these schem espromise the low-cost political quick fix . Asa solution to the problem of unemployment in disadvantaged regions of Australiathey are little more than popularist strategiesfeigning a lasting commitment to themost vulnerable m embers of the community.In its m ost positive light, work for thedole could provide som e minimal benefitsto 'clients' and their local communities.Voluntary work undertaken freely andwillingly by individuals can serve to relievework tests for short periods in regions wherejobs are just not available. It can addressmotiva tiona! needs and help people participatemore fully in local life. It could evensecure a small number of jobs over them edium term. Typically, however, this kindof schem e has an extrem ely low capacity togenerate employm ent. Worse, it risks dam ­aging the employ m ent prospects ofindividuals by failing to provide thenecessary level of training and support towin secure and gainful employment at thesame time as exacerbating an image of thelong-term unemployed as being work-shy.Talking PointsStar trek theologyT he June 1997 edition of Pacifica, entitledFeminist theology: the next stage, is bein g guestedited by Dorothy Lee and Muriel Porter, andfeatures the works of a number of promjnentinternational theologians-some of them men.H ere is the list: Elaine Wainwright, PatJi ciaMoss, Dorothy A. Lee, D eni s Edwards,Graeme Garrett, Elisabeth Schi.i ssler Fiorenzaand Maryanne Confoy.Between them they tackle subj ects ran gingfrom the 01igins of women's asceticism throughevolution to a study of' the Procrustea n bed ofwomen's spirituality'.You can orderthe June volume by writingto The Manager, Pacifica, PO Box 271 ,Brunswi ck East, VI C 3057. T he cost is $20.AspiringSt Paoick's Cathedral in Melbourne is cutTentlythe focus for centenary celebrations that includea number of splendidly curated exhibitionsand a seri es of lectures. Professor Marga retM anion wiJJ be giving one of the Centenarylectures on Tuesday May 20 at Spm. On June17 it will be the turn of Gerard O 'Collins SJ.Michael McGirr SJ desc ribes the WilJjamWardell exhibition tlus month (see p5).Wardell, architect of the Cathedral, is also partof the focus of a new Life of the Cathedral,wtitten by biographer Thomas Boland.Fr Boland maintains th at the great neo­Gothic building does indeed have enough lifein its stones to justify the title. T he photographfrom the book, reproduced above, givesyou some idea of th e extent, and daring, of therestoration enterprise.If you are in Melboume do drop into theCathedral and see the res toratio ns andexhibitions for yourself. They are spectacular.V oLUME 7 N uMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 15

The CambridgeCompanion tothe BibleHOWARD CLARK KEEBoston UniversityERIC M. MEYERSDuke University, NorthCarolinaJOHN ROGERSONUniversity of Sheffieldand ANTHONY J. SALDARINIBoston CollegeThe Cambridge Companion to theBible is unique in that it provides,in a single volume, in-depth informationabout the changing historical,social and cultural contexts inwhich the biblical writers and theiroriginal readers lived. The authorsof the Companion were chosen fortheir internationally recognisedexpertise in their respective fields:the history and literature of Israel;post-biblical Judaism; biblicalarchaeology; and the origins andearly literature of Christianity. TheCompanion deals not only with thecanonical writings, bur also withthe apocryphal works produced byJewish and Christian writers. Thehistorical setting for the entirerange of these biblical writings isdepicted and analysed in this volume,with abundant illustrationsand maps to assist the reader invisual ising the world of the Bible.253 x 177 mm c. 624 pp. 14 linediagrams 148 half-tones 14 maps0 521 34369 0 Hb $75 00~CAMBRIDGE~ UN!VloRSITY !'HESSIn the most likely of circumstances,this proposal will breach the Government'scommitm ent to place job seekers in realjobs. The looming perils of work for thedole make a sizeable litany for the disadvantagedjob-seekers and for the depressedregions towards which this scheme is targeted.The compulsion of a significantnumber of people into the scheme wouldundermine any positive features of truevoluntary work by deploying unemployedpeople as cheap labour, by reducing incomesupport entitlements to earned 'handouts',and by destroying any notion of a mutualobligation which underpins our society'scompensation for unemployment throughthe income support system.In addition, the scheme could easily beused to exclude people from active supportin the form of employment assistance andaccredited education and training whichare essential for accessing real jobs. It risksundercutting and replacing volunteers (thatis voluntary volunteers) and low skilledworkers in local communities and couldeasily spark industrial unrest and act tofurther vilify the unemployed. And thescheme will do absolutely nothing toenhance the skills base of depressed regionaleconomies if it is not supplemented bysubstantial, accredited, competency-basedtraining and integrated with robust industryand regional development strategies.Finally, the enforced involvement ofsocially marginalised and possibly disgruntledunemployed young people on 'touristwelcoming committees', m eals on wheelsservices, or in military training could causedamage to the young person, the industryconcerned and to the recipients of services.The destructive potential of such programsshould be obvious.The work for the dole proposal mayindicate the Government's difficulty indelivering on its promise of real jobs. Thereis still no sign that large corporations willstop retrenching or that small business willemploy greater numbers.Is the Government now sending themessage that it is short of an innovativestrategy to tackle 'the greatest single issuefacing Australia'?It is a real concern that the divisivemessage, inadvertently communicatedthrough this proposal as a policy positionon youth unemployment, is that thisGovernment is getting tough on' dole cheats'on behalf of the 'honest tax paying citizens'of Australia. This at a time when securejobs providing adequate pay and conditionsare most needed. - John FergusonTimorouson TimorPortugal cannot pretend that the events of1975 did not occur and that it is in effect inthe position of seeking to protect rightsover resources to which it has a legitimateclaim. It clearly is not: it is a displacedcolonial power. Nothing more- Oral submissions to t he InternationalCourt of Ju stice by the Australian Governmentrepresentative 1995 .Timorese people have Portuguesecitizenship so they have no refugee status:we can't have a phoney campaign aboutrefugee status from people who enjoy thecitizenship of Portugal-Paul Keating, 10 October 1995.I believe the position of the cuuent(Labor) Government in claiming that someEast Timorese asylum seekers are Portugueseis simply absurd and hypocritical.-Alexander Downer, March 1996.L EAsT TIMORESE, like Banquo's ghost,manage to return at inconvenient momentsin Australian Foreign Affairs. To the layobserver there may be little to question instating that someone from East Timor canbe a refugee. What about the Dili massacre,human rights reports and other evidence?Of course they can be refugees. However,for the Government, the question posessome difficult issues of refu gee law. Theris a case before the Federal Court nowworking through this complex matter.To qualify as a refugee, you mustestablish certain criteria. The definition isfrom the 1951 Convention Relating to theStatus of Refugees and it states that a refugeeis a person who:Owing to a well-founded fea r of beingpersecuted for reasons of race, religion,nationality membership of a particularsocial group or political opinion, is outsidethe country of his nationality and is unabl eor, owing to such fear, unwilling to availhimself of the protection of that country.So why is there a problem for theTimorese? The issue is one of nationality.The Refugee Convention is about protectingthose people who are not protected by theirown country. The theory is that a countryhas the duty of protecting its own citizens,so if it fails to do so, then other countriesinherit that duty. If a person has more thanone citizenship, then they ought to seek the16 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

protection of each country for which theyhave citizenship before seeking protectionfrom elsewhere. This is where the Timoreseare caught, as the Australian Governmenthas formed the view that the Timorese areentitled to citizenship from the former colonialpower Portugal.Indonesia invaded the Portuguese colonyin November 1975 and Australia was one ofthe first countries to recognise de factoIndonesian sovereignty over East Timor on20 January 1978. Australia then recognisedde jure sovereignty by Indonesia in February1979. However, the UN has not officiallyrecognised Indonesian sovereignty and Portugalremains the responsible authority inthe UN. Portugal claims it is still the dejure authority and that Indonesian rule isillegal. This claim may be legally interestingbut in reality, there is no doubt who isin charge in East Timor: there are manyIndonesian troops asserting who rules.Portuguese law on citizenship is quitecomplex, just to add a further confusion. In1974, the left-wing government in Portugaleffectively abandoned the colonies in Africaand Asia. After a brief civil war in EastTimor, the invasion by Indonesian troopssettled who was in charge on the island.Depending on the interpretation of Portuguesecitizenship law, some Timorese bornduring the time of colonial rule may beeligible for a Portuguese passport. Somehave taken this option and gone to live inPortugal. Until recently, Australia had ahumanitarian resettlement program whichhelped resettle in Australia Timorese whohad fled to Portugal. This year sees the endof that humanitarian program.The matter is further muddied by a casein the International Court of Justice.Australia and Indonesia signed a treaty todistribute rights for exploration in thepotentially oil-rich Timor Gulf. Portugalsued Australia in the International Courton the grounds that Australia should haveincluded Portugal in the treaty discussions.The Court is a means for nations to resolveissues without resorting to the military,however countries can decide not to acceptthe jurisdiction of the court and also ignoreits rulings. Australia accepted thejurisdiction of the Court but Indonesia didnot, so the case which affected the Timoresewas between Australia and Portugal.In the case, Australia argued that Portugalhad no legal or other right to claimsovereignty or rule over the territory asIndonesia had been in charge since late1975. Portugal had no authority to claim torepresent the people of the Island. TheAustralian position was clear: Indonesia isin charge in every t est of sovereignty.However when it came to determiningwhether East Timorese were refugees, theAustralian Government said that the peoplewere entitled to Portuguese citizenship, sothey should seek asylum in Portugal, notAustralia. Obviously we are interested inprotecting rights of mining companiesrather than rights of people.An interesting factor is that Australia isseeking to rely on a former colonial power inan era when European colonialismis nearly finished. AfterHong Kong returns to Chinain July, Macau remains as thelast place of European Colonialismin Asia. It is curiousthat in this post-colonial era,Australia is arguing that aformer colonial power shouldbe allowed to extend citizenshipto its former subjects,without consulting the people.The Timorese have neverhad the chance of self-determination,and given thechoice, one wonders if theywould elect to be a Portuguesecolony. Nevertheless,Australia, itself a formercolony and colonial power, isprepared to rely on the outdatedconcept of colonial ruleto avoid a difficult diplomaticincident.Currently around 1800 East Timoreseare awaiting the ruling of the Federal Courton this vexed issue. Whatever the decision,it is likely that the loser will appeal to theHigh Court for a final ruling. Such a decisioncould be at least a year or more away,if the High Court agrees to hear the case.Already the people have been waiting for adecision since late 1995, in legal limbo. TheTimorese community is not a large or richcommunity. More than 7000Timoresehavesettled in Australia.Since 1975 it is estimated that 200,000Timorese, a third of the population, havedied because of Indonesian rule. Theremainder have been heavily traumatisedby a long war and numerous incidents ofhuman rights abuses. Torture of suspectedindependence m ovem ent supporters iscommon practice, as are instances of extrajudicialkillings. Psychologists who haveexamined Timorese people report high instancesof trauma. We are now adding tothis trauma by forcing them to wait longer.If the Timorese are excluded on thebasis of nationality, then we will not evenneed to consider their claims of torture andpersecution by the Indonesian authorities.This will be convenient for Australia'sdiplomatic links with Indonesia, but atragedy for these people.There are also historical links betweenAustralians and East Timorese. During theSecond World War, East Timorese peoplevaliantly hid Australian service personnelfrom the Japanese. Many Timorese diedrather than give up the Australian soldiers.1~15 IS M'( SECOND t;.XIOCU·not-l-1HE: rll

0 NM"c" 25, 1997 the membm olthe Commonwealth Senate voted, 38 to 33,to confirm the resolution of their colleaguesin the House of Representatives that thePrivate Member's Euthanasia Bill shouldbecome law.The Bill, introduced into the LowerHouse six months previously by Liberalback-bencher Kevin Andrews, had been approvedby 88 votes to 35 in the House ofRepresentatives.The effect of the Senate vote was tooverturn the Northern Territoryvoluntary euthanasia legislation, TheRights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995,which had been approved with a narrowmajority by the Territory's parliamentarianson May 25th, 1995.The debate which attended the passingof the Andrews' Bill, in both theLower and Upper Houses was complicatedby the following factors:• the support given to the Bill by boththe Prime Minister and the Leader ofthe Opposition;• the whole question of States' andTerritories' rights,• the inadequacies of the NorthernT erritory legislative drafting;• the wider implications that the TerritoryAct might have for the continuingaccess of the Aboriginal community tohealth care;•the distinction between private moralityand public legislation;• the posturings of some of the proponentson both sides.T he way in which variou s responseswere represented in the media confused theissue even further. But those who listenedto the parliamentary hearings and thediscussion in both Houses were on thew hole impressed by the qu ality of thedebate. The manner of our dying, especiallyin this age of m edico-scientific technology,is obviously a matter that concerns usgreatly. The fact that there were over 12,000submissions to the Senate Committee isabundant evidence of this.At the height of the debate on February17th, 1997, three of the m ost outspokensupporters of the N orthern Territory legislationand of active voluntary euthanasiapublished a research study on 'End-of-lifeETHICSW.J. U RENLife and death mattersDecisions in Australian Medical Practice'in the Medical Journal of Australia. T heywere Dr Helga Kuhse and Professor PeterSinger, from the Monash University Centreof Human Bioethics, and Professor PeterBaume, from the School of Community Medicineat the University of New South Wales.They based their study on the 24 itemsof a questionnaire which replicated onecirculated origina lly to medicalpractitioners in the Netherlands by theRemmelink Commission in 1990 and 1995.Questionnaires were mailed to 3000Australian doctors who might possibly beinvolved in m aking end-of-life m edicaldecisions. There were 1918 responses ( 64percent) of whom 1361 hadattendedanonacutedeath within the last 12 months. Thisfield was further narrowed 'by excludingdoctors who in respect of that death had nocontact with the patient until after thatdeath or where the death had been suddenand totally unexpected'. Of the remaining111 2 doctors, 800 doctors reported m akinga decision either intended to shorten life orforeseen as probably or certainly shorteninglife. The other 3 12 doctors did not makesuch a decision .In analysing the responses from these1112 doctors the authors of the researchdrew as a 'main finding' that 30 per cent(±3.3 per cent) of all Australian deaths werepreceded by a m edical decision explicitlyintended to hasten the patient's dea th:doctors prescribed, supplied or administereddrugs with the explicit intention ofending the patient's li fe in 5.3 per cent(±lper cent) of these deaths, and withdrewor withheld life-prolonging treatment withthe explicit intention of not prolonging lifeor of hastening death in 24.7 per cent (±3 .1 percent) of these deaths.Further, 'in 22.5 per cent ('3. 1per cent)of all Australian deaths, doctors withheldor withdrew treatment from patients withoutthe patient's explicit request, with theexplicit intention of ending life' (M[A,17 February 1997, p195) . TheseAustralian figures, it was furthermaintained, are in the range of 50per cent higher than the figures forcorresponding categories"""J"'"' in the Netherlands..1. HE CONCLUSION DRAWN by the authorsof the study from their analysis of thesurvey was that one of the reasons whysome Australian doctors may be choosingintentionally to end the li ves of theirpatients without consulting the patientsthemselves, was that existing Australianlaws prohibiting euthanasia maymake doctors 'reluctant to discussm edical end-of-life decisions with theirpatients lest these decisions be construedas collaboration in euthanasia or in theintentional termination of life'.The authors are then, in effect, arguingfor a relaxation of the existing laws topermit active voluntary euthanasia. This,they say, will ensure that patients would beconsulted by their doctors, where possible(i.e. if they are competen t) both before lifeprolongingtreatment is withdrawn or withheldwith a lethal intention, and beforeanalgesic drugs were administered in suchquantities that the hastening of death wasnot only intended but virtually inevitable.This line of argument may well seem tobe more than a little paradoxical. One isinclined to subsume: if this is what ishappening when there is no legislationcondoning active voluntary euthanasia, willnot the practice of all forms of euthanasiabecome even more prevalent if it is legalised?The authors of the study argue to thecontrary. Not only will such legislation,they say, promote the autonom y of those18 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

patients who spontaneously and explicitlyrequest euthanasia (active voluntaryeuthanasia), but it will also reduce the incidenceof non-voluntary and involuntaryeuthanasia, that is, euthanasia without, oragainst, the explicit wishes of the patient.For doctors will then not fear to bring up thesubject of euthanasia with their patients,the authors claim, and so patients will beconsulted rather than bypassed when thesedeath-dealing decisions are taken . Nonvoluntaryand involuntary euthanasia willthus either be eliminated or become voluntaryand full autonomy will be maintained.Which of these two arguments houldwe accept?If we look to the study, we find thatthere were 234 doctors who decided not totrea t their patients either by withholding orby withdrawing treatment and in each casewith the explicit intention of hasteningdeath. When asked in item 15 of the questionnaire,'Why was the (possible) hasteningof the end of the patient's life by the lastm entioned act or omission not discussedwith the patient?', two replied that thepatient was too young, 55 said that thepatient was unconscious, and 28 said thatthe patient was demented, mentally handicapped,or suffering from a psychiatric disorders(i.e. 85 or 36 per cent were in effectnon-competent). In29 of the remaining 149cases the doctors replied that 'the actionwas clearly the best for the patient or thediscussion would have done more harmthan good'. Even more significantly, in 109cases (47 per cent) the doctors 'didnot answer the question'.HOW FROM THESE FIGURES did the authorsof the study conclude that, if euthanasiahad been legal, the doctors who did not as amatter of fact discuss their lethal intentionswith their patients, would then havediscus ed the matter with their patients?It is, to say the least, a very moot point.It seems to assume that the 47 per cent whodid not provide an answer to the foregoingquestion were unwilling to disclose to theMonash Cen tre for Human Bioethics, aknown supporter of the active voluntaryeuthanasia legislation, the real reason fornot discussing with their patients theirlethal intentions in withdrawing or withholdingtreatment, and that the real reasonwas th e fear of th eir decision beingconstrued as 'collaboration in euthanasiaor in the in tentional termination of life.'T his seem s very coy on the part of thesedoctors, and especially so when apparentlythey had no hesitation in admitting quiteopenly to the explicit intention to hastendeath. This coyness can only cast gravedoubts on the conclusion drawn by theauthors from the survey.Nor is the conclusion any more cogentlyvalidated when the survey addresses thecohort of 99 doctors who admitted toadministering large doses of opioids with atleast a partial intention of hastening death.In 22 of these cases the doctors reportedthat the patient was non-competent (young/unconscious/demented). In 20 cases theaction was said (by the doctor) to be clearlythe best for the patient, or discussion wouldhave done more harm than good. But onceagain the 'did not answer the question'cohort constitutes about half the responses(51 :52 per cent). If euthanasia had beenlegal, the authors conclude, then these doctorswho did not, as a matter of fact, discusstheir intentions withtheir patients wouldthen have discussed their intentions withtheir patients. How they feel authorised toconclude this is a mysteryWhat the survey does show, however,(and I leave to one side here the criticismsthat have been made of both the originalRemmelin k and more recent Monash questionnairethat they conflate 'intending tokill' with 'foresight of death' and 'hasteningdeath' with 'not prolonging life') is thatactive voluntary euthanasia and physicianassisted suicide (that is with the explicitrequest from the patient) in Australia as inthe Netherlands, is accompanied by at leasteight times the incidence of non-voluntaryor involuntary euthanasia.Perhaps, this is because we do not have alaw clearly legalising active voluntaryeuthanasia to the exclusion of all other fom1s.Perhaps, the reason why the incidenceof non-voluntary and involuntaryeuthanasia in the Netherlands is significantlyless than it is in Australia is becausethey do have some form of legal condonationwhile we have none.Bu t the survey, at least as published in theMedical fomnal of Australia, does not supportthe authors' stated conclusion that if euthanasiawere legalised in its active voluntaryfonn, the incidence of non-voluntary andinvoluntary euthanasia would be reduced.All the figures seem to show is thatgranting autonomy to some in activevoluntary euthanasia is accompanied by alarge denial of autonomy to others in nonvoluntaryand involuntary euthanasia. •W.J. Uren SJ is a bioethicist and lectures inm oral philosophy at the United Faculty ofTheology, Melbourne.AUGUSTINIANSSharing life and ministry togetherin .friendship and in communityas religious brothers and priests.'You and I are nothing but the Church ... Itis by love that we belong to the Church.'St AugustinePlease send me information aboutthe Order of St AugustineNAME ........................................................... .AGE ........... PHO E ................................. ...ADDRESS ..................................................... ..................................... P/CODE .................. .The Augustinians Tel: (02) 9938 3782PO Box 679 Brookvale 2100 Fax: (02) 9905 7864V oLUME 7 NuMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 19

jTHE N ATIONSchool dazeA nm""'A< A"'"" in po\itic•lconsideration, Australian schooling is nowan almost daily concern. And it is changing,particularly in the public sector, where 70per cent of Australian children are stilleducated.The rhetoric that accompanies the changesis revealing. On the one side the watchwordis 'choice'. The Federal Ministerfor Schools,Dr David Kemp, is a proponent of choice, asarc many of the State Ministers. The otherview of the state and future of Australianschooling is less positive. In late April,Opposition leader Kim Beazley warnedagainst 'theAmericanisation of our schools'.And he wasn't referring to a preference forNikes or hamburgers.The irony is that both politicians arctalking about essentially the samephenomenon: deregulation of the system,an acceleration in the number of privateschools being established in Australia, anda shift away from a thorough-goingcommitment to a state-funded and nurturedpublic system.Ann Morrow was Chair of the SchoolsCouncil for the National Board of Educationand Training between 1991 and 1996.'Choice' is not the word to put a smile onher face. Morrow is deeply concerned aboutthe future of Australian education, andpublic education in particular. Under therubric of increased choice, educationphilosophy is changing, she argues, and wehave not yet grasped how much.'Basically, for the first time in oureducational history, people are seriouslydoubting the commitment of theirgovernments in Australia, federal and statelevel, to the maintenance of a strong publiceducation system.'It is the lack of public debate thatconcerns Morrow most.'My view is that if indeed it is the policyintention of governments to diminishgreatly either the quality or the scale of thepublic education system, and if, because itis being clone by stealth, that is what theysucceed in doing, the impact on our societywill be immense.'It will be social, and we can see theoutcomes of similar sorts of policies in theUnited Kingdom, under Thatcher. You secthe exacerbation of the gulfs that exist inevery society between those who have andthose who have not. I passionately believethat while education can't solve all thesocial ills, it is the best vehicle that we haveavailable to us to deal with intergenerationaldisadvantage.'Morrow is Catholic-educated. Some ofthe passion she caught from the Brigiclinenuns who taught her and who did little todiscourage the activist they were raising.She understands what 'choice' meant toCatholics during the state aiel debates. Shealso understands what contributiongovernment money made to Catholic parishschools after the Kannel Report hadinvestigated funding and conditions in theChanges in educationphilosophy and publicschool funding affect thewhole community, notjust the children whoattend public schools.But how much do weknow about the changes~Ann Morrow,former Chair of theSchools Council,talks to Morag Fraser.early '70s. Peter Karmel [subsequently Vice­Chancellor of the Australian NationalUniversity and a long-time education policyshaper] said that Catholic parish schoolswere the slum schools of the Australiansystem and something had to be clone.Morrow explains:'Earlier, Menzies had provided sciencelaboratories to schools that needed them,including independent schools, so therewas a precedent that had been set in termsof the federal governm ent providing fundingfor non-government schools. As a result ofthe Kannel investigations, funds were madeavailable on the basis of need across thesystem, and the Disadvantaged SchoolsProgram, established as a result of theKarmel work, provided funds for scholswith concentrations of need.'The Schools Commission was set up asa result of the Karmel Report. It subsequentlybecame the Schools Council.Morrow chaired it for five years. Under theministry of John Dawkins, the Council lostits funding role. But Morrow argues that itsimportant function was as a watchdog, notas the body that 'doled out the dough'.'People wanted to mourn the loss of thefunding function of the Schools Commission(which then became the Schools Council).I didn't think it was a bad thing that wedidn't have that function. I'm a bit oldfashionedabout accountability: I think thatthe allocation of public resources is bestcarried out by the department/ public20 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

servants that are accountable to the electedrepresentative who is elected to make justthose sorts of decisions. So that didn't worrytne.'But the Council had an important rolein providing advice to the FederalGovernment on medium and long-termpolicy directions in relation to schools. Ourdemise was not unexpected because wewere targeted for abolition by Fightback!One, and although other things in Figh tback!One were changed, that never was. So itwas not unexpected that, when Dr DavidKemp became Minister for Education, theSchools Council went. What I think is disappointingis that he's not seen fit to replace itwith some sort of similar mechanism.'Morrow describes herself as a politicalrealist. She has been around educationpolitics long enough to understand thatnew brooms will want room to sweep. TheHoward government planned to makeradical changes to schools policies, as newgovernm ents will. What Morrow is worriedabout are the social implica tions of the newderegulation of the system and the way inwhich deregulation was effected.'When the legislation was presented inthe Parliament it was omnibus legislation,that cleverly wrapped up in the sam e Actthings as disparate as ongoing Commonwealth/public financial support forindependent and Catholic schools, andthese new ideas like the abolition of theNew Schools Policy.'Th e N ew Schools Policy wasintroduced in 1986 as a way of ensuringthat funds from the public purse would beallocated on the basis of a number ofplanning requirements. After 1986, if youwere planning to set up a new non -governmentschool, you weren't allowed toput it next door to the existing governmentschool or the existing parish school.You had to demonstrate that you weren eeded, you had to demonstrate thatyou were viable, you had to have~ a certain number of students.'.1. HAT PROCESS AND THE administrativescrutiny that went with it has, as Morrowputs it, 'all gone out the window now'.What the governm ent did before Christmaswas to deregulate, totally, the environmentfor the establishment of n ew n ongovernmentschools.Morrow is precise about the terms ofthis new environment and exactly wherethe burgeoning new independent sector fits:'We should call them publicly supportednon-government schools because many ofthem get up to 80 per cent of their recurrentexpenditure paid from government sources.That is not always known. They are beingprovided with more generous levels offunding than at any time in our previouseducation history, and thereby providinginducements for people to leave the publicsystem and go to the nongovernmentsystem.'MORROW CERTAINLY HA S NO inprincipleobjection to funding for independentschools. But priorities concern her. Andto keep scrutiny of the priorities an issue inthe public forum, she is now gearing up fora campaign, through the establishment ofthe Australian Schools Lobby.'Our Australian Schools Lobby, whichwe set up to draw public attention to thesepolicies, is not opposed to public fundsgoing to non-government schools. We arenot a part of the old DOGS [Defence ofGovernment Schools]movement. We haveno problem with the accommodation thatwas reached. We had no problems with thatas long as the funding system remained fairand as long as governments continued tobelieve that, whatever assistance was givento non-government schools, their majorresponsibility and priority in a democratic'The collaborative arrangements inmanufacturing, in factories, in industryand business, are what generateproductivity. Give people the problem,give them ownership of the problemand support them to sort it out.Why won't we do this in schools?'society where education was mandatory,(and where even to this day 70 per cent of allfamilies are still using governm ent schools)was to ensure that the public school systemremained free (in the sense of tuition beingfree), remained accessible, so that kidscould actually get to the schools, andremained secular. Which is not to say thatwe oppose government schools attendingto the spiritual needs of their students. Butwe believe that for the schools to be reallyaccessible they have to be accessible withoutreligious test.'Morrow has som e personal experienceof accessibility 'without religious test'. Shewas one of very few girls educated at theBrigidines' Kilbreda College in Melbournein the 1950s who was not a Catholic. (Thenumber of n on -Catholic students inCatholic schools h as increased exponentiallysince the 1950s). She tells a storyabout her father's reaction when, as the onenon-Catholic in her Matriculation class,she won the Christian Doctrine prize.'The traditional prize was a Catholicmissal, and my father, who was a butcher,says he was up to his elbows in pickle whenthe phone rang, and the person whoanswered said that it was Mother someone.He took his hands out of the pickle andwent to the phone. The Principal, MotherMargaret Mary, said, in her perfect Irish­Australian voice, " Mr Woodwaarrd, yourdaauughter has, on her m erit, woonn theChristian doctrine prize in Year 12. Nowthis is an unusual situation because she'sthe only non-Catholic in the class, so thetraditional prize is a Catholic missal, andsince Ann is a non-Catholic we don't thinkthat she will have any use for a Catholicmissal. Would you prefer that we boughther a King Tames version of the Bible?"'Dad said no, he would not.'The next question was, "Will you allowher to accept the prize?" "If she's won theprize on h er m erit, of course she can acceptit!" Then cam e the discussion about theKing Tames version. Dad said, "If the prizeis always a Catholic missal then that'swhat she should get."'So I went up on speech night and got aCatholic missal, which I've still got. Andthere was much rejoicing!'Such accommodation is not always thecase in newly established religious orindependent schools, however good or broadthe intentions of their founders. And it isthe bulk of students- the ones whoseVOLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 21

It is in the application of policy aboutcriteria for school closure that some of thestrains in the new system show up.'Benchmarks' for viability that apply topublic schools are not enforced for newindependent schools.'If you close a school', Morrow argues,'-say it's the East Meadows Primary Schoolin Victoria for example-because it hasn'treached the government's benchmark ofviability, that is, 175 students, but then youallow it to reopen as a non-governmentschool with 25 students, what are people tomake of this?'The Victorian Government's benchmarkof viability for a Commonwealthschool is 20 students. Their benchmark ofviability for a government school is 175students. For that reason governmentschools are being closed down and reopenedas Common wealth-funded religiousschools.They might be fundamentalistChristian schools, they might be Muslimschools-there are a whole range-that isnot my worry. The worry is that they areschools with religious test.'There is an associated issue of teachingstandards. Morrow sees problems ahead forsome of the new religious schools beingopened because they are being staffed bynew teacher educa tion graduates who arestruggling. 'This I know,' she says.The subject of teachers brings a glint toher eye. Morrow taught for some yearsbefore she moved into education administration.And she reverts to type withoutundue provocation. Teachers, particularlyteachers in cash-strapped public schools,have her sympathy and understanding.'I think that they are thoroughly demoralised.And why wouldn't you be? You arenot allowed to make a reasonable move infavour of a pay claim; they are still paidabysmally for the sort of responsibility thatwe put on them'.But you won't get any union speechesfrom her. Morrow is no enemy to change inteaching structures, but she does think thatchanges should occur in collaboration.'If there's one thing coming out of themanagement literature,' she claims, 'globalm an agem ent literature, it's that thecollaborative arrange m ents in manufacturing,in factories, in industry andbusiness, are what generate productivity.Give people the problem, give them ownershipof the problem and support them tosort it out. Why won't we do this in schools!'Why indeed.•Morag Fraser is the editor of Eurelw Street.neolJohn Hanner culls the theological cropL nR MALONE, APART FROM WATCHING the occasional film, has been the faithful andcreative editor of Compass, an Australian Review of topical theology, since 1972. Compasshas just celebrated its 30th year in print, and Peter's expansive editorial for the summer1996 edition sensitively surveys not just the history of Compass, but also Australiantheology over the last three decades.•The same issue of Compass includes John Ayers' 'Burnout as a spiritual ideal'. Aveteran missionary, Ayers makes a case for burning the candle at both ends. He concludesthat 'only hungry, humiliated and passionate people can survive or, better, help otherssurvive in desperate times.' His thoughtful article, against the tide of some contemporaryspiritual direction, calls for a careful reply.•Some burnout leads to departure from 'religious' [as those in vows call it) life. Edwardvan Merrienboer, in the January-February 1997 Review for Religious, offers a reflection onthose who leave religious orders. An assistant to the general of the Dominicans from 1983-1992, van Merrienboer notes, among the several typologies of those who move on, onegroup marked by a loss of heart and hope. Unlike other types, members of this group, hesuggests, might have been ill-served by their communities. And if that upsets you, in thesame issue you can read 'Inner Work with Your Anger'. Hmmm.•Veronica Brady's 'Towards an Australian Spirituality' appears in the 1996 volume ofStudies in Spirituality, an annual from the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen. Sheexplores our experience of exile through the writings of Patrick White and Judith Wright.At footnote 2, however, the type-setting gremlins have, with their usual inexplicableexactitude, changed Eberhard Ji.ingel's name to 'Jungle'. Those who have attempted dearEberhard's dense writings will know why we smile at that one. Australian writing alsofeatures in the Baltimore-based Catholic International. The February 1997 edition focuseson the Australian Catholic Bishops' 1996letter, 'A new beginning: eradicating poverty inour world', a document which might have made more impact in Australia than it did.•Congratulations to Neil Ormerod on the publication of his critique of correlation inthe December 1996 Theological Studies. The method of correlation, prevalent amongtheologians, could be defined as resting on the fusion of original revelation and present-dayhuman experience. Ormerod argues, however, that it is impossible to grasp the presentsituation without the higher-level control of meaning that comes from theology. In thesame issue of Theological Studies there is a very important piece by David N. Powerentitled 'Roman Catholic Theologies of Eucharistic Communion: A Contribution toEcumenical Conversation'. Power, one of the outstanding eucharistic theologians of ourtime, adds weight to the great, posthumous work of Edward Kilmartin, published inTheological Studies in 1994, on 'The Catholic Tradition of Eucharistic Theology'. Withintercommunion so strongly desired by so many both within and without the RomanCatholic Church, one hopes and prays that the writings of Power and Kilmartin might soonbear fruit. Their arguments for a broader practice are sensible, thorough, and compelling.•Those who already intercommunicate globally might consult John J. O'Keefe, 'TheVirtual Classroom: using an electronic discussion group to teach theology' in Horizons,Fall1996; and Stephen D. O'Leary, 'Cyberspace as Sacred Space: communicating religionon computer networks' in AAR: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Winter1996. O'Keefe reports on the success of his class on Godtalk, at Creighton University inOmaha, developed around an electronic discussion page. O'Leary notes at length thevariety of religious activities that now occur on the web. In the light of recent events inCalifornia, what he has to report is particularly apt. Developing Walter J. Ong's outlook onimagination and the transcendent, O'Leary argues that computer networks will play anincreasing role in the religions of the future.•Finally, I note that Fr John Henner has been writing letters to AD2000 on the'monstrous regiment of women' that he fears may take over the Archdiocese of Adelaide.The author is the venerable patriarch of the Australasian Hanners. I suspect, however, hewould not read Melanie May's 'Going to Hell and Rising Up: reflections on being in theChurch and being feminist', Quarterly Review, Spring 1997; nor the January 1997 issue ofBiblical Interpretation, edited by J. Cheryl Exum, devoted to 'Reading Gender andGendering Reading'; nor, indeed, the Jm1e 1997 issue of Pacifica, on 'Feminist Theology:The Next Stage'.•John Honner SJ is editor-in-chief of Pacifica: Journal of the Melbourne College of Divinity,chaplain at Newman College, and a lecturer at the United Faculty of Theology in Melboume.VoLUME 7 NuMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 23

THE N ATION: 2We are moving to a syste1n that rewards intellectualBrave new worldThere is no cause to be complacent about cherished notions of academic freedom,Uautonomy and integrity: they are up for grabs, argues Spencer ZifcakNIVERSITIES, IF THEY ARE ANYTHING, are about In 1987, John Dawkins introduced his Greendialogue. They are, or should be, the institutional Paper on Higher Education which presaged majorembodiment of open, diverse, plural and critical changes to the conception and funding ofdiscussion.universities.The aim of government policy was toThey rest, or should rest, upon the conviction 'promote further growth in higher education in a mannerthat knowledge will advance best where facts, inter- consistent with the nation's economic, social andests, beliefs and values are tested, exchanged and cultural objectives.' However, it was clearly thebrought into conflict. Only in this way will scholars economic focus that was uppermost in the Laborengender novel appreciations and generate informed government's mind.judgments. Of course, free speech and uncoerced The higher education system was to play a criticalcommunication are essential to this process. It is for role in restructuring the Australian economy. As farthat reason that academic freedom and institutional as possible, economic and educational objectivesindependence have been regarded so highly. They are would be synthesised. The universities' primary taskthe core values in university life.would be to produce a highly skilled and competentAcademic independence means that, as far as workforce. To achieve these objectives, a new,possible, a university avoids external orthodoxy or competitive environment was created. Universitiesownership. Academic freedom means that new and which best met the government's priorities would bedifferent ideas are encouraged and that intolerance rewarded with increased funding. Those that did notshould have no place. I think it true to say that free would be left behind. This policy was vigorouslyspeech remains active and alive in the university. I pursued. It has produced a number of importanthave worked in many contexts in both public and educational consequences.The first is that professional courses haveexpanded at the expense of the humanities andsocial sciences. Business-related courses, forinstance, have expanded at a rate that is threetimes higher than the average for all other coursescombined. Law schools have grownexponentially. Professional schools are, of course,significantly more dependent on the fields theyserve than are liberal arts schools.conformity, with acade1nics as willing participants in goalsthat have been set not principally by philosophy or sciencebut by government. In so doing, the space available forasking questions and challenging conventional wisdomshas begun to shrink. Instead, we tend to favour inquirydevoted to getting and keeping market share.private sectors. But I have never felt freer to expre smy views, which are often critical of governments ofall persuasions, than I do working in this environment.Nevertheless, having said that, there are, I think,storms on the horizon for uncoerced dialogue in theAustralian university. Indeed, som e of the bad weatherhas already arrived.Three examples illustrate the point: the relationshipbetween education and economic development;alterations in the style of university management; andrecent changes in university funding.So, university-based professional schools findit difficult to challenge conventional practice withoutleaving their students at a disadvantage in thejob market. Further, because they are dependenton the good opinion of the field, occupationalschools have become less willing to make sharpcriticisms of professionals or their work.In a time of drastic fiscal cutbacks, growthin the professional sphere comes at the cost of declinein the non-professional arena. In recent years, it hasbecome far more difficult, therefore, to insist uponproviding a general, liberal education to inform andtemper narrower professional specialities. In hardtimes, students will not pay for a liberal educationand businesses and professions rarely appreciate itsvalue. With declining enrolments, arts facultieseverywhere are losing their role as cultural and criticalcentres, as the prodders of the professional andmercantile conscience.24EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

A similar picture emerges with research . BeforeDawkins, universities had significant amounts ofmoney to distribute for research at their discretion.Their diversity, autonomy and culture, guaranteedthat a substantial proportion of this money would beallocated for basic research, that is for research whoseimmediate practical application is uncertain butwhich, because it is rooted in curiosity, critique anda love of discovery, may produce major breakthroughsin the longer term.The n ew Dawkins regime, h owever, reduceduniversities' discretionary research funds and centralisedthe allocation of research money in the AustralianResearch Council. The Council's priorities are clearlyfor applied rather than basic research, forresearch with m easurable, economic and socialb en efits rather than for research that isspeculative and conjectural in nature.The overall effect of this, as seen in othercountries, was summarised in a 1987 OECDreport: 'Greater reliance on project funding hasincreased the pressures on the scientificcommunity to obtain more rapid pay-offs, toaugment the visibility of its research efforts andto avoid the risks inherent in the explorationof underlying principles and phenomena.'In other words, we are moving to a system thatrewards intellectual conformity, with academics aswilling participants in goals that have been set notprincipally by philosophy or science but bygovernment. In so doing, the space available for askingquestions and challenging conventional wisdomshas begun to shrink. Instead, we tend to favour inquirydevoted to getting and keeping market share.In response to the new, competitive pressures,universities everywhere have sought to streamlinetheir administrations. University governance hastraditionally been collegial and quasi-parliamentaryin nature. It has becom e increasingly corporate andmanagerial. Flat management structures characterisedby numerous faculties and schools, and by academicand administrative leadership from within thosefaculties and schools, have been replaced by streamlinedhierarchies with narrow spans andStight m ethods of control.TRATEGIC DIRECTION, IN PURSUIT of COmpetitiveadvantage, comes from the centre with the Vice Chancellorat the apex of the new managerial system .Professors have become middle managers, cedingadministrative and academic leadership progressivelyto a proliferation of Pro-Vice Chancellors and Deans.Influence over senior appointments and promotionshas been reposed in fewer and fewer academic andadministrative personnel. Criteria for appointment andpromotion have been wedded ever more closely toDawkins-type criteria. The dollar amount of researchand consultancy funds acquired has assumed increasingimportance as budgets are cut and pruned.With all this, comes the risk that if one is not'onside' or 'relevant', or 'financially productive', one'scareer opportunities may be retarded. There is nowless reward, less encouragement and less time forthinking, criticising and contributing to public andpolitical discussion.Similarly, contract h as replaced tenure as thefoundation of academic appointment. This is no doubtan employment practice that is flexible, economic andefficient. But its potential cost to academic freedomshould not lightly be dismissed.Jus t recently, the Victorian Governmentannounced an inquiry into University Governance.In introducing it the Minister, after tipping hisUniversities are, therefore, under very heavypressure to become 'cust01ner-driven businessorganisations' to use the vapid words and impoverishedvision of the current federal Minister for Education.forelock to academic independence, made one of hisagendas plain:'The relationship of business and industry touniversities is closer than every before. Because theyhave a role in developing a highly skilled workforceand research infrastructure, so essential to our State'srequirements, it follows that business and industryshould have a formal and direct involvem ent inuniversity governance and management.'.In short, to m eet economic need and to respondto competitive pressure, universities have m ovedquickly from rep res en ta ti ve, collegial forms ofgovernance to more corporate, managerial andindustry-driven styles. Given the external pressuresto which they must respond, this has been inevitable.But something of the spirit of social inquiry andcollaborative deliberation has died in the process.I m entioned previously that all this had been badweather. The recent changes to university funding,Vanstoniana as they have come to be known, representthe storm .The Senate recently passed the Government'schanges t o the Higher Education ContributionScheme HECS). These raised the level of studentcontributions by 30 per cent to 100 per cent, tobetween $3000 and $5000 per annum. The changesalso reserve 25 per cent of university places for studentswho can pay full fees in advance.These reforms will, I think, have three immediateeffects.(i) Students from disadvantaged backgrounds willbe det erred from pursuing tertiary study or, if n otthat, will b e deterred from pursuing moreV OLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 25

expensive programmes of study.(ii) Students from privileged backgrounds willbe able to purchase their place in the coursesof their choice.(iii) Universities themselves will now bepressed into competition with each other, notonly in a market for governmental funds butalso in a new market for fee-paying students. Universitiesare, therefore, under very heavy pressure to become'customer-driven business organisations' to use the vapidwords and impoverished vision of the currentfederal Minister for Education.AS WE TRAVEL DOWN THIS market-driven road, anumber of worrying consequences will, I think, ensue.First, these reforms will exacerbate the alreadyexisting trend in universities to respond to economicdictates. In difficult economic conditions, the demandfor business and professional courses will continueto increase. Degrees will be pursued as tickets to jobs.Universities, in order to preserve their competitiveposition, will respond accordingly. It is for this reasonthat managers from within and without are nowslashing and burning the humanities and the classics.Many feel regretful, but money talks.Secondly, the 10-15 per cent decrease in universityoperating grants-the 4 per cent cut in operatinggrants compounded by an 8- 12 per cent pay rise-willforce universities and academics to seek ever widersources of external, private sector funding. Professorshave already becom e middle managers, soon they willalso be entrepreneurs. Taken to its logical conclusion,this will lead us to Professor Mal Logan's (untilrecently Vice Chancellor of Monash) heretical visionreported last year in the Weekend Australian(December 7, pS) . If h e was cited correctly, hissolution to the problems of under-funded faculties andresearch units appears to be partial privatisation.Instead of just getting rid of these faculties, he said:'Say OK, you have 12 or 18 months to generateenough revenue yourselves in a strategic, sensible waythat does not affect the quality of what you do andthat money can be used to increase your salaries.'Greater reliance on private sector generosity maywell produce more financial institutions but it takes onlya moment's refl ection to discern its potential impacton academic autonomy and intellectual freedom. Virtuousbenefactors exist, but they are few and far between.Thirdly, the inequity upon which this newsystem is borne will, in my view, tear imperceptiblyand insidiously at the fabric of Australian democracy.As we rob the weaker in society of their entitlementto good education at secondary level and to highereducation at tertiary level, w e deprive them of oneessential m eans of taking part in public debate anddeliberation and of equal opportunity in contributingto the formulation of the economic, social and culturalpolicies that affect them . We shall have free speech,but it will be exclusive not inclusive.It was Professor Mal Logan who cast himself as aheretic. In fact what he proposed fell comfortably withinthe main currents of modem economic orthodoxy. Butthere is another vision, nowhere better expressed thanby Professor Peter Karmel thirty years ago. Far sightedthen, and genuinely heretical now, Kannel said:'I do not hold that the main virtue of educationreposes in its economic consequences. Quite thereverse. I should tonight advocate a greater educationaleffort in Australia, even if its sole economic consequenceswere to reduce national production ... I shoulddo this since I believe that democracy implies nothingless than making educational opportunities as equalas possible and that the working of democracy dependson increasing the number of citizens with the capacityfor clear and informed thought on political and socialissues. Moreover I hold that the areas of expandedactivity which education opens should be m ade aswide as possible.' Some economic aspects of education,The Buntine Oration, Australian College ofEducation, Canberra, 18 May, 1962. (Publish ed byCheshire)We are presently in the grip of a powerful,fashionable fetish for economic solutions in educationand elsewhere. In my view, these need urgently to bebalanced by a more democratic position. In this, weneed to make a clear and firm restatement of the valuethat should attach to intellectual independence, academicfreedom, institutional plurality and criticalthought.For the university to claim the nam e, we need tostep beyond economic objectives and professionalroutine into som ething more lively, radical andparticipatory. To quote Edward Said in the 1993 BBCReith Lectures:'I would go so far as saying that the intellectualmust be involved in a lifelong dispute with all theguardians of sacred vision or text, whose depredationsare legion and whose heavy h and brooks nodisagreem ent and certainly no diversity.Uncompromising freedom of opinion and expressionis the secular intellectual's main bastion. Toabandon its defen ce or to tolerate tamperings withany of its foundations is in effect to betraywthe intellectual's calling.'SHOULD, BY ALL MEANS, advance economically.But in the process we should remember always thatthe autonomous university is not principally a meansbut an end- that the intellectual's calling is notprincipally to conformity but to critique.•Spencer Zifcak is Associate Professor of Law and LegalStudies at LaTrobe University.This is an edited version of a talk given to theVictorian Council of Civil Liberties/CommunicationsLaw Centre/Free Speech Committee Forum on FreeSpeech in Australia, held in Melbourne, 8 December1996.26EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

THE N ATION: 3BRIAN TOOHEYIndefensible spendingL , H owARD GovceNMWT HAS discoveced ' newthreat to national security in order to justify spendingbillions on high-tech weaponry. Not only is the threatfar worse than anything imagined at the height of theCold War, it is so insidious that it is no use trying tolook for potential enemies in the guise of individualcountries.The n ew threat is growing prosperity in our neighbourhood-something only the naive see as a goodthing for all concerned. Not only is economic growtha bad thing for Australia's security, it now turns outthe Cold War was really a good thing. Although theseviews may seem rather eccentric, they are presentedas self-evident truths in the 'Strategic Settings' sectionof the Defence Efficiency Review conducted by aformer Defence D epartment scientist, Dr MalcolmMcintosh, assisted by the former National Party Senatorfor Queensland, John Stone.N evertheless, the Defence Minister,Ian McLachlan, strongly endorsed theMcintosh Report when it was releasedin mid-April, especially its recommendation for increases in militaryspending which could soon consume an extra $600million a year, or considerably more than the entirebudget for the ABC. McLachlan says he has a shoppinglist of over 40 new weapons systems, headed byn ew early warning and control aircraft. Buying fourof these planes would undoubtedly be of use if theRAAF needed to choreograph a dogfight over Darwin,but it would also leave no change out of $2 billion.McLachlan also wants to modernise the F1-11 bomberswhich a former deputy head of the Defence Department,Alan Wrigley, has recommended b escrapped on the grounds of cost. An F1-ll boring ahole in the sky burns more than $30,000 worth offuel per hour- more than many people earn in a yearin a 'real job'.Australia has by far the most capable blue waternavy and airforce in the immediate region. InvadingAustralia would be a staggering task. Only the UScould do so at present, and then only with grea tdifficulty. Even assuming the desire, no one in theregion would be remotely capable of doing so fordecades to come. Nor is there any plausible evidencethat the dangers posed by lower levels of military conflicthas increased.Yet the Mcintosh Report asserts that 'the risk ofa conflict threatening Australia's vital interests ... hasgrown in recent years'. The main support for thisclaim is the bald assertion that the 'end of the ColdWar has made our regional strategic circumstancesmore complex, uncertain and demanding'. Even if thisw ere true-and there is n o evidence that it is-Mcintosh does not bother to explain why it follows thatthe region has become more dangerous for Australia.For a start, the prospect of global nuclear war has receded,to our benefit as well as that of the rest of the globe.Oblivious to the irony, m any of the sam e peoplewho once saw the Cold War as a rationale for moremilitary spending today claim that it was really astabilising influence now sorely missed. This isnostalgic nonsense. The supposedly benign balanceimposed by the Cold War did not stop the terriblelosses suffered in the Korean or Vietnam wars, nor invarious wars on the Indian sub-continent. Indonesiastill invaded East Timor. China attacked Vietnam. Fora while, ~e was som e prospectthat ~ commumst reg1mes. might have em erged in------- Indonesia, Malaysia,'~" ·/"-~ ~ The Philippines and else­""t,...._,.~~:J--~~where. Now there isnone.Is Mcintosh seriously suggestingthat Australia's strategic circumstanceshave deteriorated as a result? The answer is yesand the culprit is economic growth in the region.According to Mcintosh, 'As our relative economicposition declines, it will become h arder for Australiato retain the relative military advantage on which oursecurity from armed attack has ultimately depended'.As a result, much more spending on weaponry isneeded 'if we are to remain confident thatwe could defeat any credible attack' .W HJLE IT IS TRUE THAT CAPABILITIES of our neighboursare growing, a good case can be made-in the absenceof anns control agreements-that this actuallyimproves our overall strategic circumstances.Mcintosh, however, takes us back to the days in whichAsia was seen as a 'dead frontier', to borrow the titleof a book by Graeme Cheeseman and Robert Bruce inwhich all our neighbours w ere lumped together as athreat.Few would argue that Australia has becom e lesssecure because the US has bought a new version ofthe Stealth bomber. Yet Mcintosh assumes that ourstrategic situation has deteriorated because Singaporeis getting a new air-to-air missile, or Malaysia isbuying much better submarines in order to counterthe threat obviously created by the far superiorsubmarine capability being acquired by Australia.For a Government supposedly committed to 'fiscalconsolidation', rarely has a proposal for such profligatespending being presented on such flimsy grounds. •Brian Toohey is a freelance journalist.VOLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 27

POLICY-MAKING SEEMS againto be paralysed by the problem of fusing thegeneral with the particular. General policyneeds to balance the pressures of technologicalconvergence and globalisation withthe aims of diversity and localism. But theparticular is simple: who gets Fairfax?The public interest will not be served ifnew policy is built around answering thatquestion. N or will debate aboutthe genuinely difficult issues createdby technological and marketdevelopm ents be assisted by pretendingthat the fate of Fairfax isnot a prime consideration.The better approach would bet o ackn owl edge, openly, theFairfax issu e, and deal with itseparately. Let m e suggest thatthe major print sector of the mediabe declared 'm ature', and crossmediarules be tightened to preservethe di versity that is left. Thenthe generic rules governing concentrationand fo reign ownership might beable to be eased with good effects. But theproposal would require that the FederalGovernment first overcom e its aversion toregulation in order to do other deregulation .In last month's Eureka Street I tried toshow som e of the potential complexities ofchanging the cross-media rules. I suggestedthat at least one guiding principle forParliament's forthcoming revision shouldbe to improve the variety of sources ofindependent content in the media. Thiswould result in genuine diversity instead ofthe crude multipication of channels thattechnology spawn s.Dealing with the Fairfax problemis central to Australia's variety ofmedia sources. The three major Fairfaxpapers-the Sydney Morning Herald,Age and Financial Review-compriseone quarter of the remaining metropolitandailies of Australia.In 1992, a parliamentary inquiryconcluded that that m arket was matureand not contestable. The majorpublishers have behaved as if awarethat the barriers to fresh competitorsare insurmountable. Since 1987, 14metropolitan daily and Sunday papershave been closed, leaving m onopolydailies in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobartand Perth. Over a similar period, coverTHE M EDlAPAUL CHADWICKAll a bit on the noseprices of papers and magazines increasedwell in excess of the consumer price index.The following table gives a sense of theextent of concentration in the print m ediaby showing the proportion of totalcirculation controlled by the leadingpublisher in each category of publicationand the share of its nearest rival.In the non-daily country print media,Category Leading Publisher Nearest Ri valpublishing the same person's opinion in manyoutlets, thus displacing alternative opinionsin each. (This trend is evident in other media:see Commercial radio since the cross-mediarevolution Communications Law Centreresearch paper, March 1997.)Fairfax comprises one of the very fewsubstantial news and opinion ga theringoperations in Australia. (Another, theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation,is being reduced in size andscope.)Metro dailiesSundaysSuburbansRegional dai liesNews Ltd 66.9%News Ltd 76.4%News Ltd 4 7.9%APN (O 'Reilly) 30.9%Fairfax 21. 6%Fairfax 22.5%Fairfax 15.4%News Ltd 22 .2%Circulation of newspapers isin long- term decline, but their roleas agenda-setters and as basicsources of information on w hichother m edia feed remains central.Think of how many radio talk backsessions originate fro m anewspaper article.Magazi nes (top 30) Packer 45.8% News Ltd 26 .1 %Source: Communications Update,Communications Law Centre, February 1997.Rural Press, controlled by Joh n B. Fairfax,has grown to dominance in recent yearswith 98 regional papers and 23 otheragricultural magazines. It holds the thirdlargest share of regional daily newspapercirculation, 15.6 per cent.The variety of sources of content withinthe large ownership groups shrinks as theypursue economies of scale. Newsrooms aretrimmed or closed; journalists are 'let go', andwith them go their contacts and stores oflocal knowledge; the output of those whoremain is networked throughout the group'stitles, breeding formulas and diminishinglocalism; the cost of columnists is spread byDiversity is fundamental to thepublic interest dimension of m ediapolicy. On diversity grounds alonecontrol of Fairfax should be keptseparate from control of other existing mediaoperations, whether print or electronicm edia. Concern for diversity at a local levelrequires that monopoly regional papers notbe controlled by those who also controlmedia in the same market.Parliam ent should amend the crossmediarules in the Broadcasting ServicesAct to incorporate a new category of 'maturenewspapers' in which those who own orcontrol radio, free TV, pay TV or a telecommunications carrier may not hold morethan two per cent or exercise control.Mature newspapers could simply belisted in a schedule to the act, which shouldinclude at least the rem aining capitalcity,national and regional dailies.Alternatively, the act could define a'mature newspaper' as: any newspaperpublished in English more than once aweek with (a) an average circulationwhetherpaid or free-of at least100,000; or (b) no competing newspaperproduced for the same market.At least 20 per cent of the circul a­tion of the newspapers and of its competitorif a competitor exists, must bewithin the licence area of the relevantelectronic m edia outlet in order for theircomm on ownership to be prevented.This is a tighter rule than the existingcross-m edia schem e. The tolerance28 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

is two per cent because experience showsthat when it is 15 per cent the owners moveto 14.9 per cent and push h ard for change.The rule would operate in addition tocompetition law, just as the current crossmediarules do.The aim of the proposed rule is toquarantine the surviving daily press ofAustralia from the pressure for ever moreintense concentration. The justification isthat the surviving papers, under separateindependent control, are vital to 'diversity'in the sense that daily newspapers are keycontributors to the variety of sources ofinformation and opinion circulating incommunities.The proposal would not prevent aneasing of rules governing electronic mediaif Parliament were to be convinced thattechnology really will end technicalscarcity-the traditional justification forregulation of broadcasting and telecommunications.Existing cross-media holdings involvingmature newspapers could be grandfathered(i.e. preserved under the previous arrangements)conditional on the holders of thoseinterests not moving to a position in whichthey could exercise control if theyn cannot now do so.L oTESTS THAT THE PROPOSAL would be'mogul-specific' should be met head on.The motive is not to target anyone becauseof who they are, but because of what theyalready hold. It is a consequence of theintensity of concentration. The pond is sosmall and the few fish so big that anychange in the conditions affects them .Yes, the effect would be to prevent KerryPacker's PBL from moving to control Fairfaxunless it sold its television interests.Equally, Rupert Murdoch's N ews Corporationcould not control the Seven Networkwhile it retained its newspapers. KerryStokes could not keep Seven and acquirethe Herald-Sun or Daily Telegraph. APNand Rural Press would be unable to increasetheir concentration in the bush by era singinto other m edia there. Optus or a privatisedTelstra could not control Fairfax.These results can be justified on soundpublic interest grounds.Let Kerry bellow.This time, the representatives of thepublic need not, must not, give way. Toofew have had too much for too long. •Paul Chadwick was Victorian coordinatorof the Communications LawCentre from 1989 to March 1997.L= MONTH ~~~l~!!D~~~~Y. , ~' S!~:;~~ w h

THEOLOGYANTONY F. CAMPBELLA ' A Bmcc emoN,

I do not begrudge scientists their complaint that creationists distort, misunderstand, andmisapply science in the presentation of their creationist views. It is the right of scienti ts to defendtheir bailiwick.What I object to intensely is any claim by creationists or on behalf of creationists that theirview emerges from a literal understanding of the Bible. That is my bailiwick and I will defend it.Creationism as a literal understanding of the Bible is bunk.Literalism can be a bit of a red herring. I take the Bible as literally as it wants to be taken-butit is not always easy to determine how literally it wants to be taken. For example, it could be asavage distortion of meaning for a passage of lyrical poetry to be taken literally. (Quotations andverse numbering are from the New Revised Standard Version.)How beautiful you are, my love ...Your eyes are doves ...Your hair is like a flock of goats .. .Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes ...Your lips are like a crimson thread ...Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate ...Your neck is like the tower of David,built in courses;on it hang a thousand bucklers,all of them shields of warriors.Your two breasts are like two fawns ...Song of Songs 4: 1-5Pity help the lover if this description of his beloved were to be taken literally. It disclaims anyliteral interpretation; it is entirely metaphor and simile.Literalism can be a red herring in creation issues. In Genesis 1, for example, the days of creationare almost certainly to be understood literally as twenty-four hour days, with evening and morning.The account culminates in sabbath, and sabbath was a twenty-four hour day. The issue for Genesis 1 isnot the nature of the day, but whether the text is best understood as an inspired description of whatactually happened. Decisions about literal meaning can be difficult, but when the biblical textgives us multiple and clearly conflicting images about a topic such as creation, we know for certainthat we are not being told what happened. That will surprise no one seriously familiar with biblicaltexts.If creationists are one day proved to be right in their views, I will be surprised but I wouldsubmit to the evidence. The only thing that I am certain of is this: creationism is not supported bythe biblical text. The biblical text itself is the best evidence for that.n Creation in Psalms 74 and 89r salm 74 is a community lament, with an appeal to God's creative power in the middle of it.God is a mighty fighter who deals summarily with the opposition forces:You divided the sea by your might;you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.You crushed the heads of Leviathan;you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. (vv. 13-14)Leviathan and the sea and the dragons are all figures of chaos in the mythology known to usfrom the ancient Near East. Under different guises or names, they will recur in the texts of Job andIsaiah. There should be no doubt of the power and universality of the creator God in Psalm 74:Yours is the day, yours also the night;you established the luminaries and the sun.You have fixed all the bounds of the earth;you made summer and winter. (vv. 16-17)Why does Israel appeal to a God of raw power in this psalm? Because 'the enemy has destroyedeverything in the sanctuary' (v. 3). 'How long, 0 God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile yourname forever?' (v. 10). Under such circumstances, what the singer of psalms wants from God ispower, raw power, the sort of power that can shatter God's foes and encourage God's friends, thepower displayed in shattering the forces of chaos at creation.I do not begrudgescientists theircomplaint thatcreationists distort,misunderstand, andmisapply science inthe presentation oftheir creationistviews. It is the rightof scientists to defendtheir bailiwick. WhatI object to intenselyis any claim bycreationists or onbehalf of creationiststhat their viewemerges frorn a literalunderstanding of theBible. That is mybailiwick and I willdefend it.Creationism as aliteral understandingof the Bible is bunk.VOLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 31

Psalm 89 is in essence another community lament. It begins with a portrayal of God, 'feared inthe council of the holy ones, great and awesome above all that are around him' (v. 7). So it hymnsGod's power in creation:Decisions about literalmeaning can bedifficult, but when thebiblical text gives usmultiple and clearlyconflicting imagesabout a topic such ascreation, we know forcertain that we are notbeing told whathappened. That willsurpnse no oneseriously familiar withbiblical texts.SYou rule the raging of the sea;when its waves rise, you still them.You crushed Rahab like a carcass;you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours;the world and all that is in it- you have founded them.The north and the south- you created them;Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name. (vv. 9-12)Here we meet the sea again and the new figure of Rahab, along with theenemies of God. At this point, the evocation of divine power does not emergeout of the powerlessness of Israel; that finds expression toward the end of thepsalm. It emerges out of the psalmist's desire to find words and images to expressthe unique supremacy of Israel's God. Yet it is not divorced from Israel's need ofGod's supremacy and power.Creation in fob 7, 9, and 26EVERAL TIMES IN THE BOOK, JoB APPEALS to the image of the creator God. The image is that of theraw irresistible power of the mighty fighter.Am I the Sea, or the Dragonthat you set a guard over me? ( 7: 12)God will not turn back his anger;the helpers of Rahab bowed beneath him.How then can I answer him,choosing my words with him? (9: 13-14)By his power he stilled the Sea;by his understanding he struck down Rahab.By his wind the heavens were made fair;his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.These are indeed by the outskirts of his ways;and how small a whisper do we hear of him!But the thunder of his power who can understand? (26 :1 2-14)In these passages, we meet Sea, the dragon (in Hebrew, Tannin), Rahab, and 'the fleeingserpent'-all figures in the combat myths of creation.Job is no stranger to the most sublime literary language of creation. See, for example, eith erthe immediately preceding verses here (26:6-11) or the magnificent imagery of Job 38-41, in God'sdiscourse from the whirlwind.Why then does Job use this combat-creation language and imageryz Because, in his conflictwith his friends, Job paints an image of a God of irresistible and aggressive power. Job is livid withanger against this God:What are human beings, that you make so much of them,that you set your mind on them,visit them every morning,test them every moment?Will you not look away from me for a while,let me alone until I swallow my spittle?If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?Why have you made me your target?Why have I become a burden to you?Why do you not pardon my transgressionand take away my iniquity? (7: 17-2 1)At this point in his journey, Job feels attacked by God; and he resents it. The helpless state ofthe creature confronting the creator God is what Job feels and what Job would like to be freed from:'How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him?' (9:14) . Job's plea to God: 'Withdraw32 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

your hand far from me, and do not let dread of you terrify m e' ( 13:21 ).The book of Job draws on the language of creation by combat and the image of God as mightyfighter in order to convey Job's frustration at his inability to meet God on even terms, as one princeto another (cf. 3 1:3 7).Creation in Isaiah 27 and 51ISAlAH 51 REFLECTS THE AGONY OF EXILES who long tO return home. The agony finds words in poetrythat is both plea and promise.Awake, awake, put on strength,0 arm of the LoRD!Awake, as in days of old,the generations of long ago!Was it not you who cut Rahab in pi eces,who pierced the drago n?Was it not you who dried up the sea,the waters of the great deep;who made the depths of the sea a wayfo r the redeem ed to cross over?So the ransomed of the LORD shall return,and come to Zion with singing .. . . (5 1:9-11)Here again, we m eet Rahab, the dragon (Tannin), and the sea (and the deep that was covered bydarkness in Gen 1 :2). Almost like a modern film-maker, Isaiah blends the image of the sea, driedup in creation, into the image of the sea divided at the exodus. So creation blends into salvation.The pow er of the God who subdued Rahab and the dragon is the power at God's disposal for thesalvation and return of those in exile-the return to Zion with singing.Isaiah draws on this imagery of awesome power because of the exiles' n eed to have faith in aGod who has the capacity to bring them home.Elsewhere in the book of Isaiah, the prophecy points to a future time when God will restoreorder to creation. The passage, Isaiah 24:20-27:1 , begins by pointing to the future wh en God 'willpunish the h ost of heaven' (24:20) and 'the moon will be abash ed, and the sun ashamed' (24:23).The passage ends with imagery that is by now familiar:O n that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleei ngserpent, Leviathan the twi sting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. (27: 1)Before w e m oderns are too easily dismissive of primitive m ythology, we need to be aware thatthese combat images occur in some of the m ost sophistica ted literature of our Bible: Isa iah, Job,and Psalms. The power of God is celebrated as creator, magnificently superior to the forces ofchaos: the dragon, the serpent, the sea; Leviathan, Rahab, Tannin- the en emies of God. This iscreation faith used for maximum theological effect.ACreation in Genesis 2CTUALLY, THE TEXT WE ARE LOOKING AT is Gen 2:4b-25. 'Genesis 2' is a comfortable shorthand;and 'Gen esis 1' will be a similar shorthand for Gen 1: l-2:4a. Genesis 2 is the text of the co-operativeartist, we might almost say 'artisan '. The God of Genesis 2 is a working God:Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground ... . (2:7)Similarly, in pursuit of a partner for the man:Out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the fieldand every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to sec whathe would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature,that was its nam e. (2: 19)'Every animal' and 'every bird' would have used up a lot of 'ground' and surelyleft a weary God. Yet it i the God of Genesis 1 who will rest on the seventh dayfrom all the work that he had done-who hardly 'w orked' at all (cf. Gen 2:2).A lot of people forget the major differences between this account of creationand the account in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, of course, everything is created,including the earth and its vegetation, birds and beasts, man and woman. Yet inJob is no stranger tothe most sublimeliterary language ofcreation. See, forexample, either theimmediately precedingverses here (26:6-11) orthe magnificentimagery of Job 38-41,in God's discoursefrom the whirlwind.Why then does Job usethis combat-creationlanguage and imagery~Because, in his conflictwith his friends, Jobpaints an ilnage of aGod of irresistible andaggressive power. Job islivid with angeragainst this God ...VOLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 33

It is a sad daywhen we allowourselves to bepersuaded toabandon all thistheological wealthand believe thatwhen we take theBible literally wefind so insipid amessage ascreationism.Genesis 2, these are created again-vegetation, birds and beasts, the man and the woman. Theorder is strikingly different. In Genesis 1, man and woman are created together and are created last( 1 :26-27). In Genesis 2, man and woman are created separately, with the man created at the beginningof the account and his incompleteness brought to partnered completion in the creation of thewoman at the end of the account (cf. 2:7 and 22). Not only is the order different, but the images ofthe beginning are as different as night and day. Genesis 1 begins in the dark and the wet: 'darknesscovered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters' ( 1 :2). Genesis2 begins in barren dryness, with no plant and no herb and no water, 'for the LoRD God had notcaused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground' (2:5). Notice the assumptionthat we humans would till the ground, long before there is any talk of sin. The initial situation isbarren and dry; it is evocative of the searing light of the desert sun.What do we make of a text like this? The co-operative labouring God is not one of the staplefigures of Israelite theology. It may be that the biblical narrative is portraying Israel's (and our)distancing from intimacy with God. This is the God whose nearness allowed the first humans tohear 'the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze' (3:8). Astory of increasing distance between creature and Creator needs to start with a creation story ofintimacy and co-operation.ACreation in Genesis 1ND so WE COME TO THE TEXT so BELOVED of those who talk about creationism. Into the darknessof the formless void and the windswept deep, God by the sheer power of proclamation launchesbrilliantly symbolic light (1:3). There are many activities of God in the chapter: God sees, Godseparates, God calls, God makes, God commands the waters and the earth, God creates, and Godblesses. Above all, God says.This is the account of the majestic proclaimer. At every stage, there is the basic proclamation,'And God said'. No matter how many activities God performs-separating, making, commanding,creating, blessing- the overarching statement is always: 'And God said'. There is no question hereof God forming anything from the ground. The earth is commanded to bring forth vegetation (v. 11)and living creatures of every kind (v. 24- although in v. 25 God makes the animals). There is noquestion of God bringing his creation to the man and talking with him about it and its names. Godcreated humankind in God's image and likeness. That is the closest we com e inthis account to intimacy. The God of Genesis 1 is a majestic and distantproclaimer.What can never be overlooked is that all the activity of creation is fittedinto six days, thanks to a couple of activities on the third and sixth days. So theseventh day is empty and God is able to hallow it as the sabbath day. It is a greatpity that we have no English word to convey the identity of 'resting' and 'sabbath'.Twice our English translations note that 'God rested' on the seventh day (2:2and 3). The H ebrew word that is translated 'rested' is from the verb shabat andcan be heard to say: 'And God sabbathed'.Here Israel's scriptures open with a statement that the God of all creation,the Lord of heaven and earth, the God responsible for all that we can see andtouch, this God is a God who sabbathed on the seventh day. And only Israel inall the earth observed sabbath. Israel might be defeated and overwhelmed by themightier political powers of its day, but Israel encountered its God in its sabbath.Everything that Israel saw- from the light and sky to the earth and sea, theplants and trees, the sun and moon and stars, the birds and beasts-everything reminded Israel ofthe God who created by majestic proclamation and then sabbathed, rested on the seventh day. Andonly Israel in all the earth observed sabbath. It is a faith statement of the highest order. Deuteronomysays: 'What other great nation has a god so near to it as the LoRD our God is whenever we call tohim?' (Deut 4:7). Genesis 1 says: what other great nation has a God who has created the heavensand the earth and who sabbaths as w e alone do l In an unstable and insecure world of exile, Genesis1 stood as a faith statement affirming stability and security in the power of God.It is a sad day when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to abandon all this theological wealthand believe that when we take the Bible literally we find so insipid a message as creationism. •Antony F. Campbell SJ is professor of Old Testament at the Jesuit Theological College within theUnited Faculty of Theology, Melbourne. His publications cover Pentateuch and D euteronomistichistory. The images are derived from Jan Breughel's Jonas rising out of the mouth of the whale.34 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

Late DivisionP OETRYI am in East Melbourne again,born next door at the cocktail hour Jtwelve hours' nemesis thena leaky lung. All of us were bornin some vicinity-two namessuffice for this struggle. Whenthey flung those Catholic bellsfor my brother our motherthought she was in heaven.Merely a king had died.Long we k eep on going back:infant, chorister, lover,now the duteous friend.But it feels late tonight,too chill for martinis' shockand brio. Hunched in scarveswe tack through terraced streets,almost afraid of the wind,m eet the poet who will read to us,complaining of laryngitis.Beyond the park, the bells of statesummon late representativesand the brilliant Princess tollsfor smokers in cummerbunds.Bolting like truants,cashmered staffers quit Parliamentvia the royal entrance,though the bells go on ringing.It's late, very late nowin the galvanic Writer's Centrewhere four of us have gatheredmorecasks than aesthetes.Upstairs has been rented outfor a Self-esteem Workshop.During breaks in the urban ariaswe hear them moving aboutlike confident roof-rats.They leave before us, looking bullish.Upper EastSomething could have shattered in that hour Jannunciations of an epochin its glamorous cloister,Sander's bewildered Prussians,too lined for all these happenings.Perhaps it was the mirror of the floor,m ercurial decor, the waya gallery appropriates air,sends it back rarefied,more expensive. At your approach,so rhythmic only avatars heard,half Manhattan purred through a door,keen to attest to mandatory black.The oils, sensing somethingmore transgressive than catalogue prose,thickened, intensified,two strangers were tantalizedin that temple of exposure,impatient for the licence of lobby,approbation of a red dottheway an elevator guru,launching his rocket of Art Deco,overlooks the importunate real.Peter RosePeter RoseV OLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 35

INTERVIEWMARGARET SIMONSEngland, her EnglandIN MA>cAm D"'""''s !""'novel, The Witchof Exmoor, a character with the tellingname of Will Paine escapes life inBritain, and emigrates to Australia.He is one of the people Drabblesees as having been dealt a particularlypoor hand in life. Heis black. He has been to jailforselling m arijuana to themiddle classes. He is a perpetualvictim.But Drabble saves him,and she saves him by sendinghim h ere. In the self-conscious,ironic style that Drabbleconfesses she now finds unavoidable,her disembodied narrator refl ects on what should happento Paine. 'If we send him far away, out of sight and out ofmind, as we sent our convicts of old, may he survive and knowthe good life? We dispatch him now not to hard labour but tothe fan tasy of a good life with a decent wage. Will they let himin ? Will they turn him away at Immigration? He is not veryblack. Fly bird. Fly, cryptic bird. Take thy flight, thy Qantasflight.'The book does not examine or criticise this image ofAustralia as land of hope and opportunity (albeit apparentlystill with White Australia policy), nor did Drabble want toquestionit when she was in Australia recently .During a brief stay in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney,she took a walk into the bush, and was thrilled to see a foxsitting in the middle of the path. But then Drabble, as sheadmitted, knows best about Britain, and her perspective remainsintensely English, even when she is most furious with her homecountry. In an interview with Eureka Street she referred withoutirony to Australia as a 'n ew country'.She talked of how nostalgia is ruining England, and wassurprised and depressed to hear that nostalgia exists here toonostalgiafor the picket fence and the heritage colours.Looking backwards, she says, is England's disease, and weshould not copy it. It is the function of Australia to be forwardlooking, and hopeful. 'You have no need to look back for imagesof what to be. You can make your own and do what you wantwith them. You have now world-class film, world-classliterature. You can go your own way.'She is furious with her home country for failing to seize thefuture. 'Amongst the literary world all this backward lookingnostalgia has resulted in a kind of irony that is almost like apoison. There is an ironic attitude to everything you do and saythat undermines and undercuts. Irony is fine if you write as wellas Martin Amis. It's not fine if you are just spewing out literaryjournalism saying how dreadful Martin Amis is.'Drabble says The Witch of Exmoor, (or ofEastwick, as one veyr over-excitedcommentator dubbed it) is anirresponsible novel. She playswith the characters' lives, allowingthem to sin, and to die.These are liberties she has neverfelt very comfortable allowingher characters before.The irresponsibility, shesays, is largely a reaction to herlong foray into biography. Whenshe wrote The Witch she had justemerged from five years' work ona biography of her mentor, AngusWilson, a writer she admired, who diedof poverty in his 70s.The sadness of this work, plus the chore of having to beexact with dates and facts, meant she let herself loose on TheWitch with a sort of savage anger.It is part of what she describes as a shift in her fiction froman exploration of the internal life, to an engagem ent with theexternal and the political.'As I get older, I find I see people less as individuals, andmore as examples of sociology,' she says. 'I am in the uncomfortableposition of having solved a lot of m y own therapyproblems and now I am trying to solve the therapy problems ofthe nation, and you just can't do it. They won't come to sessions.'In The Witch, h er main characters come from a selfsatisfied,morally bereft middle-class family, plagued by theirmisfit and now ageing mother, Frieda, who after alifetime as a social historian has 'dropped out' .AS BEFITS PARODY AND MORALJTY TALE, surnames like Palmer,Paine, and D' Anger, signal the characters' functions in thenarrative, and Drabble's remorselessly bleak vision of anEngland that has lost all ambition for a just society.A lot of this focuses around how people eat. Drabble, likea true witch, begins with a spell 'Let them have everythingthat is pleasant'. Her characters are gathered around a table ina kitchen with that ultimate symbol of wealthy nostalgia, anAga, having ea ten home-baked bread, and meats, fruits andcheeses gathered from throughout the world.But this is the England of the homeless, and the hungry. Itis a country mired in its own history, and in its own waste.Earlier, Frieda has shocked her offspring by inviting them to afamily dinner, and offering them a fast food company's beefburgers,which sh e tells them, have been made from 'gristle,fat, chicken scraps and water from cows' heads'.36 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

Drabble's anger with England runs deep, but she claimsnot to know why she ends up writing novels about it. Thepolitical novel is virtually dead, she believes.'You might as well whistle in the wind. I don't know whyone feels compelled to go on doing it, although perhaps if onecan write something that makes people say "ouch" if theyrecognise themselves, perhaps that is worth doing.''Th ere is an enormous amount of journalism in print andon television now that has taken over some of the role of thenovelist. It has taken over the role of Dickens for example. Ifyou wanted to talk about prison reform these days you woulddo a documentary, not write a novel. The downside of that isthat you get soundbites from politicians who don't want to betruly concerned, and the whole debate tends to getreduced to that.'DRABBLE RESENTS BEING REGULARLY DESCRIBED as a Hampsteadnovelist, with all its implications of chardonnay socialism. Sheis, she claims, a Yorkshire woman from the working class. Herfather's family used to run a sweet factory. Drabble's sweetsused to be quite famous. Her mother left school early and wasa 'very poor' dressmaker.Yet to a reader from the 'new world' Drabble seems to comevery much from the middle-class, intensely Englishenvironment she critiques. Self-consciously, she talks abouther use of the Aga as a symbol. 'It's not that I am against Agas.I love Aga cooking. Some of my best friends have Agas .... ' Butthe Aga is part of the unwillingness to leap forward into thefuture.She says England doesn't want to give up 'playing in theruins, or reconstructing them for television serials'. Englandwon't embrace Europe. The English media are outraged whenEurope won't buy British beef because of mad cow disease.'There is this quite unexamined belief that British beef simplymust be the best-'Her disappointment is born of a realisation that the hopesand dreams of the 60s, when she was a young woman, are notto be realised. 'I kept thinking the setbacks were temporarytheoil shock, Thatcher-and that we would get back on trackagain, but we are not. Things are just getting worse.'Instead of feeling we are moving into something new wefeel we are at the end. It may be something to do with all thistalk about the millennium ... there was actually a headline inThe Evening Standard recently saying "Labour Party Ruins TheMillennium". It was a wonderful headline but all it meant wasthat Labour were not going to commit themselves to buildingsome huge fun park if they got in at the next election.'Almost in spite of herself, Drabble isn't without hope. Hernovel is full of magical and mythic symbols: a deer jumpsthrough a window. In dreams, the animals talk. The landscapehas strange myths attached to it, and the myths are of moralrenewal and hope.Asked about this, Drabble initially says 'Oh well, I wasjust having fun. It doesn't mean anything,' but pressed, shecontinues: 'Maybe the novel is almost on the edge of whathappens when, as you get older, you give up being completelysure that all religion is nonsense, and all mysticism is nonsense.Maybe there is another layer of meaning ... This seemsto have more relevance as I get older and it links back to mychildhood dream that animals could talk.'There is something going on beneath the surface. We doour best to cement it down and shame it and build it over, butmaybe it will leap forth and save us. I don't like to say thatbecause it sounds, well, it sounds mad, but I know when I amwriting there are images that remind me ... You feel that MrMajor and Mr Howard can't be all there is, that there must besomething beyond, some better future.'Since the publication of The Witch, Drabble has struck upan improbable correspondence with a journalist called Horatioon a small local paper in Devon.It all began when her fax machine spewed out an articleheadlined 'Drabble, your Novel is Drivel'. 'I thought, why ismy agent sending me this. I don't need this.'But it turned out not to be the feared review, but an articlefrom the Devon Post, objecting to five lines in the book whereshe describes a local town as ugly. Horatio stirred up a campaignon the issue, in which local luminaries spoke out on the beautiesof their town.Drabble is rather pleased. 'We've got to know each otherquite well, Horatio and me,' she says. 'But it is a hole, thattown, nevertheless.'•Margaret Simons most recent novel is The Truth Teller (Reed).Photograph of Margaret Drabble, below, courtesy Penguin.... --••1·-~•..,...••~..•.. ....... -~ .;. ~'~···~~•••••l~.~ ••••••·'· 6 ....VOLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 37

BooKsA NDREW H AMIL TONThe thousand year itchReformation, Christianity and the World 1500-2000, Felipe Fernandez-Annesto & Derek Wilson,Bantam, London, ISBN 0593 027493, RRP $39.95Millennium, A history of the last thousand years, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Simon and Schuster,New York, 1995. ISBN 0 684 82536 8 RRP $32.95T HE STYLES IN WHIC H HISTORY is tOO, were hindered and helped by bothwritten are legion. For Herodotus, tosides in equal and indistinguishablewrite history was to tell the storiesm easure. The authors argue thatwhich created t h e tribe. For theories that attribute decisive influ-Thucydides it was to sit in judgment:ence on the shaping of the desirable orspeeches, narratives and commentaryundesirable features of modernity ofshowed how nations could rise or falleither protestant or catholic ideas oweaccording to their fundamental m oralmore to residual religious prejudicegravity of their leaders. For Manningthan to dispassionate reflection. FromClark, it was to uncover the mythsthe authors' perspective, too, the plightwhich m ade events worth remember-that each group of churches faces ining.the contemporary world is the same:ForFernandez-Armestowhowroteto re tain christian identity andthe very successful Milleniwn and co-commend christian allegiance in theauthored Reformation with Derekface of a changed cultural world.Wilson, t h e style of h ist ory isIt is charac teristic of such atelevisual. He uses documentary technique who has a more restricted view. In the case perspective to believe that the differencesfamiliar in sports commentary: the shot of of Millennium, this correspondent is one which divide protestant or catholic fromground and city seen from the air-balloon, whose view is centred in Europe or the their fellow members and unite them withthe dental technician's close-up of Shane Atlantic ocean .Warne's face as an appeal is turned down, The early chapters of the book deal withand the voice of Tony Grieg naming the Islam, Chinese, Cambodian and Africancash value of what we have seen.kingdoms, arriving only later in Europe,Themovementfromthepanoramicshot suggestively described as a small promontothe closeup sets local events into a broader tory of Asia. The book argues that thecontext, encourages a feeling of superiority Atlantic centre of civilisation which hasover the protagonists who know only their developed only relatively recently with theimmediate surroundings, and builds trust dominance, first of Europe and later of thein the commentator w ho possesses both United States, is a temporary phenomenondistant and close perspective. It establishes which will be replaced by the more typicalthe dramaticironyby whichweknowbetter configurations of centres of power aroundthan the actors in the drama the nature of the Pacific.the events which they compose.The conversation partner within Reformationis the Christian who still looks atBoth Reformation andMillenium switchfrom the intimate particular event to a the Reformation from within the perspectiveof a church shaped by earlier polemic.universal perspective, accompanied by theconfident authorial voice. Millenium The authors argue that such a perspectiveintroduces the conceit of a galactic museumkeeperto whom a thousand years and a impulses that drove both Reformers andignores the similarities between thesingle world are a trifle, and who must Catholics and between what the kinds ofselect carefully for preservation a few m onuments from this tiny space. Reformation strains of Christendom gave expression tochurch that each tried to establish. Bothinvites the reader to look at the events of the powerful desire for reform and forthe Protestant Reformation and the response personal conversion that animated lateto it from a perspective that goes back to the medieval christendom. Both adapted to themedieval church and extends to a present pressures of a changing world in similarwhere the differences between catholic and ways: in power, neither side tolerated theprotestant are marginal.other; when out of power, each dem andedAs in television documentaries, the toleration.larger view presupposes a debating partner Scientific and commercial revolutions,m embers of the other tradition, will bemore important than those which dividechurches from one another. Approaches toworship, discipline, doctrine and relationswith society mark divisions within churches,but create en emies and alliesIacross church boundaries.N R EFORMATION AND M ILLENNIUM, the broadvision is complemented by the personaland particular anecdote. Each chapter beginswith the observation of a single person or alocalised event. These anecdotes introducethe broader argument of the chapter andgive it weight. It is perhaps significant thatmany of these narratives introduce travellersbetween cultural worlds: they supportthe presumption that the localised can beappreciated accurately only from a distance.In television, the movem ent from theuniversal to the particular case encouragesappalling arrogan ce on the part of thecommentators. In R eformation, thistendency is modified by joint-authorshipand the self-knowledge of the writers, andalso by their resistance to any deterministaccount of history. The tone of the writingdisplays the assured firmness of the DailyTelegraph or the Specta tor, but with anadditional touch of modesty.The limitations inherent in m oving38 EUREKA STREET • MAY 1997

easily from the broad to the narrowperspective, however, become evident inthe authors' prejudices. Telling anecdotesare found to illustrate the dangers of downmarketworship or of compromise with thesecular, and they seem to make a conclusivecase. But anecdotes can equally be found toillustrate the disadvantages of formalistliturgy and a clerical construction ofreligious identity. In assessing work of thiskind, then, the reader trusts the good senseof the authors' general historical judgmentand not the epiphanic value of the particularexample.The large question, however, which thismethod raises is whether it can do justice tothe Reformation and to the churches thathave come out of the Reformation tradition.Those involved on both sides of theReformation conflict were passionately involvedin issu es that have shaped the lifeand faith of their successors. T o adopt abroader perspective, then, could be seen asrem oving oneself from the tradition ofwhich one is part.The point can be illustrated by a literaryconceit in the Spiritual Exercises of IgnatiusLoyola, devised in the early 16th century. Itinvolves a movement from large to smallfocus typical of television technique.Ignatius begins with the broadest viewhe can imagine: the persons of the HolyTrinity look down on the whole earth, seeinghuman beings sinning and going to hell,and decide to rescue them. The focus isthen narrowed: to Galilee, to Nazareth, andto a small house and finally to a small roomwithin where the angel speaks with Mary.The m editation is designee\ to lead thosewho pray it to feel and respond out ofgra titude to Jesus Christ.Ignatius is convinced that both the largeand the small picture matter. The scenewith Mary and the angel is not only anexample of the larger truth of God's care,but expresses it and even makes itseffectiveness hang in the balance. In themeditation, too, the viewer of the scene isalso a participant, whose respon se of recognitionand involvement also matter. Ascommentator, Ignatius is concerned not togive information but to allow response.This movement was characteristic ofboth sides of the Reformation. It involvedthe appropriation of a large story, itsembodiment in the smaller human storie ,and a personal response leading to commitment.The link between large story, individualcase and the reader's response ensuredthat there is no space for dramatic irony.The characteristic Reformation stylewas weakened, however, by subsequentintellectual habits and traditions. Even inIsaac Watts' great hymn, When I survey thewondrous era s, influenced as it was by theimagery of N ewtonian physics, the focushas switched to the larger picture and theresponse is of a more contemplative kind.The world is conceived on a cosmic scale asthe realm of nature or the orb. A faithfulresponse is necessarily contemplative.The flowering of the detached intellectualstyle can be found in Paley's style ofapologetic, parodied in Dostoyevsky'sBrothers Karamazov. By now the largeperspective can obliterate embarrassingaspects of the smaller picture. Seen from farenough away, this is the best of all possibleworlds, against which the individual storyof injustice or suffering does not count or isa beneficial part. The proper human responseis to recognise the justice and propriety of itall and appreciate the ideological commentaryupon it. Its secular form is economicrationalism .This change of intellectual style isreflected in television documentaries andalso perhaps in these two books. The way inwhich the small picture is seen in relationshipto the large, and the proper response ofthe reader or viewer, are points at issue, andBooKs: 2M AX T EICHMANNmake the large scale treatment of theReformation problematic for those whosetradition includes it.If this is a problem, it will be felt onlyby those who live consciously on eitherside of the Reformation tradition . For them,there will be two ways of handling it. Thefirst is the ecclesiastical way: to identifythe large story of God's love with thechurch or with reformation doctrine andto identify the correct response as one ofacceptance of the reformation principle orthe church in all its structures. In this casethe smaller picture of human experienceand the ways in which it has changedculturally will be unimportant and evenideologically suspect.The second way is to return to somethinglikethe Ignatian image: a large pictureof God's love, total commitment to thesmall picture of human dignity, and aresponse that takes the large and smallpictures seriously within a modest church.Those who take this latter view willfind much to stimulate them in Reformationand Millennium.•Andrew Hamilton SJ teaches early churchhistory at the United Faculty of Theology,Melbourne.Jigsawing the worldThe Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order,Samuel P. Huntington,Sim on and Schuster, 1996. ISBN 0 684 811642 RRP $39 .95Amass of undifferentiated and, in many cases,DES I RE TO CREATE ORDER out of a finally, one hopes, predicting the outcomesof these interactions, and describing whatapparently conflicting elem ents, such as the most likely shape, composition andsocial forces, institutional aggregations, condition the overall system will be in, say,value system s, is a recurring aspiration for 50 years hence.man.Sam Huntington has just given us a newWe don' t like ch aos, unexplained political model of the world with which tochanges, rogue e l ephants. W e like play, and has provided much subsidiarypredictability, crave explanations, and the material on particular issues, at least asconversion of the unfamiliar to the familiar. illuminating as the unpacking of his mainIn international politics, one way of them es. These include immigration (pp 198-doing this is to construct a model of the 206); human rights and democracy (pp192-global system, (which is changing as you 8) and faultline wars (chapters 10 and 11 ).go ); identifying what we think are its core Other systemic analyses haveelements, and examining them in some concentrated upon the states system, withdetail, then charting the often volatile nation states as the main actors. Orinteractions between these elements. And economic/technological forces as theV OLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 39

engines of change, with nations just fallinginto line, adapting, even disappearing in theface of these almost abstract, value-freedeterminants. Then there is the battle ofthe ideologies model, which until recentlyh elped many people to structure theirworlds.Huntington chooses another tack. Hismain actors are civilisation s, each with itsunique cultural core, based on language,history, consanguinity, religion, artisticinsights and traditions. He suggests, that,as now, there are nine main actors: Western,Latin, American, African, Islamic, Sinic,Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, Japanese. Therehave been others-Toynbee listed 23-mostof whom have now disappeared. Some ofthe current nine may go the same way.Thus the African, partly inchoate, butunmistakably different, despite its takingon Christianity, Islam, Western artefactsand culture, is in every kind of trouble.North Africans seek to escape to Europe,the Centre seem intent on destroying themselves,with a little help from the West; inthe South, Mandela's countrymen now havean HIV positive rate of 12 per cent, expectedto reach the Zambian rate of 30 per cent. Towhere might they wish to escape?Latin America is increasinglyentwined with the US, and may finishas an exotic extension, especially withthe spread of Protestantism (Americanversion ). But the merger may notwork.The Sinic and Islamic societies heregards as the great m overs and shakers,as we go into the next millennium. TheOrthodox Christian world is under allkinds of external and internal pressuresand could come to include many basketcase countries. Th e Hindu civilisation withits exten sive diaspora, has grea t potential,fo r growth, and for self-destruction. Itspopulation is now almost a billion, andcould double in another thirty years if Indianwomen maintain their present fertility rateof 3. 8 children per mother. And the prospectsof the take-over-sudden or creeping-ofHindu fundam entalism, and nationalism,seem s substantial.The West he sees as in decline- indeedits decline from, say, 1914 has been a steadyone, accelerated by two utterly disastrousfratricidal wars; but decline masked by thepost-war boom, the prodigies of Americannew technology, and the worldwide exporttrade in American mass culture. Huntingtonthinks the technology can be acquired,adapted and transformed-as it has beenwithoutcausing the recipient countries toroll over and become democrats, humanrights advocates, Americans manque, orderivatives of the US econom y. Far from it.Nor is American culture dissolving othercultural systems- only reactivating themto reassert their own cultural origins. Onthe other hand, the only hope for the Westto continue to cohere, and to exert its presentconsiderable influence upon the world, isfor America to remain powerful, proactive,and to preserve its own Western cultureand heritage. If America falls down, declinesor becom es entrapped in its own social/political problems, the future of the West,as anything other than a backwaterin the great contest ofcivilisations, seem s bleak.TO THESE CIVIL ISATIONS : forHuntington, a civilisation is the highestcultural groupings of people andthe broadest level ofcultural identity peopleh ave, short of thatwhichd i s -t i n -guisheshum a n sf r o mother species. It isdefined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion,customs, institutions ... and by the subjectiveidentification of people. People havelevels of identity: a resident of Rome maydefine himself with varying degrees ofintensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic,a Christian, a European, a Wes terner.Civilisations are 'the biggest "we" in whichwe feel culturally at home as distinguishedfro m all the other "thems" out there'. Hequotes Bozeman: 'Political systems are transientexpedients on the surface of civilisation,and, the destiny of each linguisticallyand morally unified community dependsultimately upon the survival of certainprimary structuring ideas around whichsuccessive generations have coalesced andwhich thus symbolise the society's continuity'.Virtually all the major civilisationsin the world in the Twentieth Centuryei ther have existed for a millennium or, 'aswith Latin America, are the immediateoffspring of another long-lived civilisation'.As are we- except that elem ents inAustralia wish to deny that, and proposethat we become, or already are, part of Asia.In Huntington's terms, there is no suchthing- no such thing as Asian civilisationrathera number. No such thing as theAsian culture, or come to think of it, theAsian econom y. Whereas one can speak ofEurope in this way.Th e author sees Universalism as aWestern disease, that is, our insistence thatthese is or should be a universal m orality,religion, political ideology, culture oreconomy. Few others have believed thiswhereaswe have never stopped. So, he says,'th e image of an emerging universallyWestern world is misguided, arrogant, false,and dangerous'. Partly because such a worldcould only be created by force, and maintainedby force and fraud. The Christianswould have done this-had they thepower-as would have the communists.We may have st arted a fash ion.Huntington quotes Mahathiraddressing an assembled Europeanh eads of government last year. 'Europeanvalues are European values; Asianvalues are universal values'. Huntingtoncomments: as Asian and Muslim civilisationsbegin to assert the universalrelevance of their cultures, Westerners willcome to appreciate the connection betweenuniversalism and imperialism, and to seethe virtues of a pluralist world.The n earest thing to a universal civilisationh e allows is the Davos Culture.'Each year about a thousand businessm en,intellectuals, and journalists from scoresof countries m eet in the World EconomicForum in Davos Switzerland, [they] ... areemployed by governments, corporations,and academic institutions with extensiveinternational involvements, and travelfrequently outside their own countries.They generally share beliefs inindividualism, market economics, andpolitical democracy. Davos people controlvirtually all interna tiona! institutions,m any of the world's governments, and thebulk of the world's economic and militarycapabilities.'But Hedley Bull pointed ou t ' thiscommon intellectual culture exists only atthe elite level: its roots are shallow in manysocieties. It is doubtful even at the40 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

BooKs: 3diplomatic level if it embraces what wascalled a common moral culture or set ofcommon values.' Not needed, surely! Greed,power, and delicious inequality are whatit's all about, isn't it1The latest Western essay in economicforce and fraud- the global market, FreeTrade Crusade-is in essence anotherarrogant Imperialist project out of an oldWestern- in fact Anglo-American stable.Intentionally disruptive, like all crusades.Huntington pours cold water on multiculturalismas social engineering, as againstan attitude. Most countries aren't adoptingit- rather the contrary-and those whohave, mainly Western, appear divided and ifanything weakened by it. In a peaceful,tolerant world such experiments wouldperhaps be okay-but such is not our goodfortune. Just ask Israel.The author singles out two types ofperhaps aberrant states: ' torn' nations and'cleft' nations. Torn nations have anidentity, hence a policy direction, problem.Is Turkey part of Europe? Or a m ember,even the leader of a revived Turkic block?Uniquely Turkey; or an actor in the newFundamentalist m ovement ? DifferentTurks give different answers. And Australia,he says, could becom e another. The elitesare pulling us one way, the restwant us to stay put.CLEFT NATIONS CONTAIN a number ofseparate communities-unable or unwillingto cohere for many common purposes.France is starting to become one such, withthe Muslims and their supporters on oneside, other Frenchmen on the other. TheRussian republics since the fall are treadingthe sam e path. (I suspect Australia has alwaysbeen a cleft nation, heavily disguised).Huntington is not a relativist. Hebelieves Western values are superior toothers, certainly worth defending and maintaining,but only like ly to becom eubiquitously acceptable-if they ever areovertime. So the stand and deliver tacticson human rights some of us are advocating,can only motivate our neighbours to dig in,becom e more modern but less Western.So, it is the West versus the Rest. Theyare many, but further from one anotherthan they are from us- despite Mahathir.We can play the balance, 'the honest broker'like Britain did in Europe. But we have toknow who we are, and stop apologising. Forno-one else is listening.•Max Teichmann is a Melbourne writer andreviewer.ANDREW H AMILTONJesus Christ, media starT HE PROBLEM WITH WHIC H Robert CrottyThe Jesus question: The historical search, Robert Crotty,HarperCollins, Blackburn 1996. ISBN 1 8637168 15 RRP $24.95intersections of politics, economics, scholdealsis that of Christmas and Easter. Not arly territoriality, individual possessiveness,the events which the feasts commemorate, and the m eeting of faiths make fascinatingbut the holiday time they provide for the reading. It supports the more common viewm edia they occasion. At those times when of academics as muddlers imbued with athe flow of news slows, the atavistic voice richly human mixture of motivations andof religion calls faintly from the thickets, energies, rather than as devious conspirators.and the latest and most shocking unmask- My reservations with the book lay withing of christian origins proves irresistible. the last chapter in which Crotty depicts asCrotty explains to an interested but a gaping chasm the gap in sensibility createduninitiated reader the genesis of these radi- by the Enlightenment. According to hiscal reconstructions of Jesus, and provides account, before the Enlightenment, peoplethe background needed to evaluate them . had no difficulty in thinking mythicallyHe recounts the change in attitudes to and so in appreciating the documents of thethe Bible as a historical document, the N ew Testament as religious documents.resultant attempts to fix the historical face After the Enlightennent, they studied themof Jesus, and the methods of analysis that as historical documents whose main interhavebeen used. Then h e turns to the est was their access to the real, historicalhistorical and cultural contexts within and authoritative face of Jesu s.which Jesus lived and the new documents Crotty argues that the proper way tothat bear on the origins of Christianity: the read the document is as myth and not asDead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi history. Only a literary reading can bringtexts. He outlines some new accounts of out the power of the underlying m yth.Jesus, that illustrate how this background This account has much to recommendis brought into play, and concludes by it. It emphasises the primarily religiousarguing for a literary reading of the Gospels. character of the documents of the NewHe concludes that the search for a histori- Testament and the passing significance ofcally accurate account of Jesus is fruitless, any reconstruction of Jesus. But the way innot least because it distorts the purpose of which the Scriptures function in a christianthe documents themselves. This purpose community on their own terms seems tohe identifies as the transmission of the presuppose a reading that transcends them yth of Jesus-the belief that his story literary, and one that sees the story of Jesusreveals the m eaning of human life.Christ as invested with actuality.Crotty describes clearly and attractively Actuality implies, and has alwaysthe attempt to reconstruct the historical implied, more than verisimilitude and thelife of Jesus. He writes succinctly, develops belief that a text illuminates the meaninghis argument in a leisurely and logical way, of life. It assumes that there is someand illustrates his account with helpful correspondence between the events ofdiagrams. Thisisa model of popularteaching. Scripture-both those that are historicalHe is also scrupulously fair in narrating and those that transcend history in ourcontroversial events and in expounding the definitio ns of his tory-and what hasarguments of writers who develop the most happened in our world.threadbare of theses. His courtesy This rudimentary historicity may bechallenges a less charitable critic: I was difficult to define and has certainly oftendistracted by the fantasy of N eville Cardus been overstated in the recent past. But it iscondescending with his habitual port and implied in christian reading of the Newstilton hospitality of mind to an episode of Testament, and precludes any divorceGladiators.between the his t orical and literaryI enjoyed particularly his account of the imagination. •discovery and publication of the Dead Seascrolls, in which critics have often detecteda conspiracy to hide the shocking conclusionswhich flow from the discoveries. TheAndrew Hamilton SJ teaches early churchhistory at the United Faculty of Theology,Melbourne.VoLUME 7 N uMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 41

BooKs: 4BRIAN TOOHEYThe superannuation highwayAAgeing an d Money, Dian a Olsberg, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1997 ISBN 1 86448 047 5 RRP $24.95geing and Money has the great giving me any money nowadays. He says managers who handle the contributions onvirtue that its author is an 'insider' in the it's his super and he's going to spend it behalf of the members of various supersuperannuation business who doesn't insist himself. He goes out a lot, plays golf and sch emes and their trustees. Compulsorythat the Labor Government's decision to has lunch with his friends. He's cut my contributions mean that the funds managersprivatise the age pension is an unqualified housekeeping money right back, and I don't now have access to a guaranteed flood ofsuccess. even have money to buy myself lipstick money from people who would not normallyAs a former Executive Director of the any more. go anywhere near the share or bond markets.Australian Institute of Superannuation One intriguing aspect of the new super Olsberg argues that leaving investmentTrustees,DianaOlsbergisoptimisticabout scheme is that- d espite b eing so allocation entirelyinthehandsofthemajorthe new system. If all goes well, it should, regressive-it was introduced at the behest funds managers can lead to contributors'she believes, deliver greater financial of the union movement. Low income 'assets being sold backwards and forwards,freedom for retirees as well as fund the sort earners who could previously expect to get inflating the market and transaction costsof investment needed to make allwithout the benefits of productiveAustralians better off. Over time, itinvestment. These powerful institucouldeven lead to a new era oftions have an adverse effect on oureconomic democracy in which ordinaryemployees have a much largergovernment to slow down theOne super schem e reportedly hired several national economy, pressuring thefunds managers only to discover that theysay in the business decisions whicheconomy at the slightest hint ofhelp shape our society.had been selling the same parcel of BHP higher inflation'.But Olsberg is also well placed to shares to each other ... m embers had paid out Although Olsberg did not givesee some of the shortcomings thatbrokerage and m anagem ent fees for thespecific examples, one super schemelook like becoming en trenched underreportedly hired several funds managersonly to discover that they hadthe Howard Government. From her privilege of owning the same number of BHPperspective, trustees surrender too shares. No new productive investm ent been selling the same parcel of BHPmuch control over investment eventuated but the funds managers and the shares to each other. At the end of thedecisions to professional funds managerswho concentrate excessively onday, m embers had paid out brokeragebrokers went away happy.and management fees for the privilegeshort-term speculative share trading.of owning the same number of BHPOlsberg also recognises thatprivatisation shifts the burden of fundingretirement incomes onto people who canleast afford it. Unless there is a continuingtop-up from the social security system, shewarns that many people will face a roughtime in their old age. She also sees a largegap between the reality facing most peopleand the message conveyed by an advertisingcampaign from one funds manager which'shows a greying, but still youthful looking,60-year-old man walking along a sundrenchedbeach,arm-in-arm and lookingadoringly at a glamorous young woman inher mid-thirties'.The more likely outcome is that anolder woman will be stuck at homestruggling to get a fair share of her partner'ssuperannuation. As Olsberg points out,spouses with no income of their own haveno legal entitlement to their partner's superwhereas they would have had access to thejoint pension. She quotes a 67-year-oldwoman who says:I can't get the pension because Jim has gotvery good superannuation. But he begrudgesan age pension funded from a moderatelyprogressive tax system are now expected toprovide for their own pension via super. Asa result, money which could have gone intotake-home pay now goes into super contributions.Not only are the contributionsequivalent to a flat rate tax, the tax concessionsoverwhelmingly benefit the well-offeven after the Howard Government'ssurcharge.For traditional equity considerations toprevail, the system needs to be turned on itshead so that any tax subsidies go only tothose at the bottom of the scale. The levelof contributions also need to be cappedbelow the proposed 12 percent of income sothat ordinary employees don't find it evenharder to make ends meet during theirworking lives. ( Olsberg focuses on the difficultiesfor part-time employees, but six percent should be more than ample to replacethe age pension for someone in continuousfull-time employment.)Although the poor do badly, the newsystem has created a bonanza for the fundsshares. No new productive investmenteventuated but the funds managers and thebrokers went away happy.Olsberg's other complaint is typified bythe intense pressure exerted by the financialmarkets a couple of years ago for a threepercentage point rise in interest rates inorder to throttle a non-existent threat ofinflation. Fortunately, the then Reserve BankGovernor, Bernie Fraser, refused to bow tothis pressure. Otherwise the economy wouldalmost certainly have been plunged backinto recession and hundreds of thousands ofcontributors would have lost their jobs.Olsberg looks forward to the day whencontributors take a much keener interest inhow the super money is invested. As shewrites, 'What happens to the money in oursuper funds may well be the key to oursuccessful ageing in the 21st century andthe health of our nation as a whole'.The hope is for far more attention to bepaid to ensuring that the money is investedin a manner which takes account on ethicaland environmental considerations as wellas the nation's long-term prosperity. But42 EUREKA STREET • M AY 1997

she also recognises that trustees areconstantly reminded that the easiest wayto discharge their fiduciary duties is tohand the investment decisions over toprofessional funds managers who prefer todismiss any namby pamby stuff about'socially responsible investment' and focusP oETRYALAN W EARNEinstead on short-term performance.Little wonder the financial markets stillhave trouble believing the riches the unionmovement have delivered on a plate! •Brian Toohey is a columnist with theFinancial Review.Murray and other riversThe Wild Reply, Emma Lew, Black Pepper, 1997. ISBN 1 876 04413 6 RRI' $15.95Accidental Grace, Judith Beveridge, University of Queensland Press, 1996.ISBN 0 7022 2872 9 RRP $18.95Subhuman Redneck Poems, Les Murray, Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996.ISBN l 875 989 08 0 RRP $16.95IDogstown, Lee Fuhlcr, Eaglemonr Press, 1996. ISB 0 646303279 RRP $20.00AM ONLY INTERESTED in promoting those in Lew's sombre lyrics. There's a chillingvolumes of verse that seem an adventure portrait of Hitler and h enchmen, at homefor the reader. All of these four volumes in Berchtesgaden, a reminiscence of weirdlyhave adventure (though the adventure may black humour from (I think) a Chinesenot be the one the poet had in mind). N one woman politician, love poems, landscapes,plays safe. Take this, for example, from evocations of the European past. The toneEmma Lew's 'How Like You'?mightbeconsistantlyintense(thoughneverbleak) but the subject matter covers considerableimaginative territory.How like yo u, cholera,to worry over the health of strangers.And you have let your sweetheart gohungry,while your legend crossed the country,a surprise visitor playing Cupid,keeping the happy happyfrom gues t wing to portrait gallery,prickly wilderness to deepest ci ty.Like many a Lew poem it smoulders andblazesi it stares straight at you, ready toseduce, ready (even better -or worse) tospook . 'Oh my Godl' you ask, 'Where's thewoman taking u s this time?' Disarmingstuff. Most poets can juxtapose at times,but few can do it like her.With Ramona Barry and Cassie Lewis(who have yet to appear in volumes) Lew isas formidable a new Australian poet as anyin the nineties. Were she a writer of prosefiction (damn refu ge of the contemporaryover-rated) she would be in line for a callfrom Vogue or The Good Weekend, pleasedto announce her appointment as the latestfad goddess. Luckily good verse requiresmore brain power: though that doesn't meanyou can't just soak mind and imaginationI need to knowthe truth aboutthe elevator crash,I can't wait orthe pain will goback into its house.Listen, I amthe doctor of thistheatre. Emotions,reactions-they'remy business.I'll say they are.Judith Beveridge must believe there isan audience beyond h er pages, one to courtand respect: so much of her poetry is socareful, though never cautious or paranoid.Indeed the poems often seem so neat thatyou almost expect each line to start inupper case, and her stanzas of three or fourlines to launch into a formal rhyme sch em e.Too careful? Well they never exactly wobble,and just sometimes a poem has to wobbleia reader has to think 'Oh no, he/sh e's goingto fall off the tight rope this time!' Still,who needs wobbling when you have theselines from 'The Elephant Odes':You have never fosteredthe fractious, uppity jaunt of theca mel,or the lubricious saunter of the horse.You haven't become solitaryand depraved like the rhino,that crazed commando, stalking outthe shadows,plotting its aristocracy from a tooth.You have never become mean like themuleiyou have never given in to buffoonerylike the hippo,or to melancholia like the moose,or to asceticism like the yak,or to hubris li ke the lionor to anorexia nervosa li ke the giraffe,or to peccancy like the pig.Not even to obsequiousnesslike the jackal howling bwana bwanaat dea th for a corpse.Now Beveridge m ay look as though she'splaying safe. But no, sh e's showing off.Nothing wrong with that: all the best poetsdo it. It's not the total of what they do butit sure plays an important part. 'Yes,' thereader is advised, 'I am doing somethingdifferent with words that you can't do. Bythe way, hope you like the result.' And wedo: it helps to create literature.Much of this volume concerns itselfwith travel and much with the animalkingdom. Journey poems n eedn't bejourneym an poems and Beveridge's piecesset in India are not some verse equivalent toNational Geographic. The animal-basedpoems, though, dem and many re-readings.'The Elephant Odes' is the best poem inEnglish featuring that beast since ThomasHood's 'Remonstratory Ode', a piece ofcrazed tragi-comic weirdness-a fineexample of showing-off. Hood shouldn't beser;ously invoked when assessing Beveridge.But Elizabeth Bishop can be, not just becauseboth Bishop and Beveridge focus somuch of their work on travel and animalsbut because both treat their work and audiencewith respect, 'showing off' withoutanyone thinking they do.Les Murray is our foremost lightningrod: the poet who should have the craft 'sspruikers crying 'Here, non-poetry world,is on e about whom it is impossible to beneutral. Is he our Dante or merely a kind ofarty John Laws? Buy now and see what thefuss is!'Of course the poet doesn 't help and norshould he: preacher and hectorer, celebratorand despiser, Murray's ceuvre is as erraticVOLUME 7 N UMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 43

as any poet's in contemporary Australia.Me, I'd rather read Adamson, Lehmann,Pi 0, Beaver and a battalion of etceteras ...and yet, when he cultivates that most delicatebloom, a fine poem ('Burning Want' ora number of 'The Sand Coast Sonnets) I amwilling to forgive him his 'controversial'verse-almost.For his much discussed 'The Beneficiaries','A Stage of Gentrification', and 'ForHelen Darville' are, like Murray's responsesto the AIDS epidemic of a decade back,mean little squibs, devoid of charity, possessedof a kind of perverse hubris thatdem ands God's total backing. They challengeas John Manifold at his most Stalinistchallenged (though Manifold had more art)proclaiming: 'I am right: God/history/ nameyour poison is with me the bard''With their pompous, !-told-you-so fingerwagging they out-do any school-ma'amfemocra t.Those poems and the man's endlesspronouncements on anything that is goinghad an intriguing effect on my reading: Itrod very carefully. When progressingthrough the poem s I enjoyed (e.g. 'WaterGardening in an Old Farm Dam' and 'BelowBronte House') I kept fearing- 'The man'snot going to spoil this one with an injectionof slop-ideology, is he?' And, guess what?Often he didn't. An interesting experience,almost as interesting as the poems. Oh, h e'sa small dose poet, though. Bailed-up withtoo much, I felt like someone caught in thecompany of a babbling, paranoid yet smug,village crank. The babbling I can understand(it's a common enough verse fault ofmine) and the paranoia I must accept andforgive. But the smugness? It perfumes toomuch of Subhuman Redneck Poems fromthe title and dedication through to the blurb.Still, the Murray kind of erraticism is adecided adventure. He often reminds me ofthat fine American Poet James Schuyler.A creator of large scale extravagantcelebrations of life and living in the arty/gaycommunities of '60s through to '80s NewYork City, Schuyler also concocted hideouslytwee, lovey-dovey pieces, little betterthan greeting-card kitsch. How could he?Because he did, because like Kipling, likeMurray, the bad and the good propped eachother. They had to: it was the full package.Lee Fuhler is probably the first Romani­Australian poet and although this might bea substantial 'hook' for his career he hasenough passion and potential to transcend'hooks'. Sure, Fuhler could do with someediting, an amount of workshopping and asubstantial reading list, but here at bedrockis how a passionate man can write verse:few gimmicks, no preaching, above alldevoid of the smug. The background tomuch of the poetry is simple, though notsimplistic: a young man of a non-Anglo­Celtic working class background comes outof outer suburbia (Doveton, Dogstown, aBattlerville that even the most wellmeaning coalition MP could only imagine).Heading towards the bigger smoke he getsa rough time and gives a rough time (mostoften to himself). Yet he is capable ofBooKs: 5TIM THW AJTEScelebrating the natural world and the humanworld, love, family, and all those crutchesto get you through life. Which is what poetshave done since the beginning.Fuhler's pieces are lean, plainspeaking,and at times risk being wooden, but theyare devoid of cliche and, best of all, theydon't con.At the centre of the volume, is a suite ofpoems in Romani, with accompanyingtranslations; h ere the book truly com esinto its own, for we are in the realm of thatmost 'ethnic' of 'ethnics', the stateless,almost invisible 'ethnic', and we are lookingat these wonderful feeling/soundingwords: bango and mandi, wavva and lavs.Now that is an adventure. Would it bepossible, I wonder, for Fuhler and perhapsanother poet, to be commissioned, one day,to compile an anthology of Gypsy verselOf course behind such feel-goodery liessomething much darker: creeping up on thereader are Fuhler's m editations on the halfa million dead in the Romani holocaust. Itmight help in her education for a copy of'Dogs town' to be sent Helen Darvill e's way.On second thoughts, no. Some of the poemsmight start appearing under her name. •Alan Wearne is a poet and author of theverse novel The Night Markets.Pealz scienceThese and other booksare avai I able fromThe JesuitBookshop,PO Box 553,Richmond 3121ph (03) 942 7 7311,fax (03) 9428 4450Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins, Viking (P~:nguinSCH~nc~:L 19% ISIIN 0 14 02.6.i02 0 RRI' $ 19.9SIN ".CONDA" ;cHom, when I hm c•mcwho h•ve "'d p

selection, but that they have both done soalready several times during Earth's history.In the course of giving his answer,Dawkins provides a wonderful illustrationof the aesthetics in science-that importantingredient that non-scientists so oftenmiss. For science, like art, is all aboutresponding to pattern, be it in frogs' legs ormusical notes. Scientists react to patternsby trying to explain why they exist, and thisoften leads non-scientists to assume(wrongly) that the beauty of the pattern islost in the process or has been overlooked.Nothing could be further from the truth.For the scientist, the knowledge of whatlies behind the pattern only enhances itsimpact.The point of this book is to show howour natural world could have arisen throughnatural selection alone. Part of the explanationlies in asking the right question. That'swhere the metaphor ofthe title comes in. Asa pinnacle of evolution,an eagle's eyeseems an improbable(if not impossible)point for an animalwithout eyes to reach.But, Dawkins argues,this is like lookingfrom a valley floorstraight up a cliff faceto a jagged peak andconcluding you arefaced with an impossibleclimb when,around the back of themountain, there is infact an easier route upgentle slopes to reachthe same point.What most peoplefail to comprehend,when talking of evolution,is the vastness of the time scalesinvolved-thousands of millions of years,even more in terms of generations for mostorganisms. Over that span of time, even aone in ten thousand chance can be quite agood bet. And those are the sorts of oddswith which natural selection works.If a gene or collection of genes for longerlegs confers on an organism a one-per-centbetter chance of leaving offspring because itis better at escaping predators, then thosegenes have a one- per cent better chance ofbeing passed on to future generations. Oversurprisingly few generations, Dawkinsshows, longer legs will occur in perceptiblymore and more of the population- andevolution by natural selection has occurred.But from that point, things rapidlybecome much more complicated becausethe capacity to leave offspring depends notsolely on the ability to escape predators,but on a constellation of other heritablefactors as well. Things also become muchsimpler because all those factors takentogether simply resolve into whether anorganism's children will live long enoughto leave children of their own, and pass onthe family genes.Using computer models, the biology ofspider webs, the uses and development ofwings and eyes, the design of computerviruses, the shape of snail shells, and theevolution of symmetry, Dawkins proceedsto tackle a series of misconceptions aboutnatural selection, such as the assumptionthat because natural selection acts upon arandom assortment of genetic change, itHakea seed pod. Photograph: Greg Scullinmust itself be a random process and couldnever produce an organ as beautifully'designed' as an eye. Nothing could befurther from the truth. The last chapter, onthe interaction between figs and the waspswhich pollinate them, is as beautiful andcomplicated an example of the subtlety ofevolution by natural selection as you couldever wish to explore.But while the journey up MountImprobable may be a fascinating ramble, itis not all easy going, and the climb is notassisted by some curious and irritatingeditorial decisions. Given the standardgeneral perception that science-based booksare going to be 'hard' to read, why print sucha volume in such a small point size withlarger than normal spacing between thelines. Not only does this make the bookphysically more difficult to read (howeverclear the imprint), but also it makes itappear stark and clinical, rather thaninviting.For some reason, measurements in thebook have not been standardised, and switchbetween imperial (feet and miles) and metricunits (metres and cubic centimetres), hardlyguaranteed to put the many people who areuncomfortable with numbers at their ease.In fact, the general lack of feel for audiencecaused me to wonder whom the author hadin mind while writing the book. There is anair of preaching to the converted, which isodd in a book published under the name ofsomeone who holds the foundation chair inpublic understanding of science at OxfordUniversity. Some explanations, for instance,are overly detailed andlong-winded-particularlyin the section onthe spider webs, whereDawkins tells us that theeditor actually made himcut back his explanation.That comment, alongwith several others ofsimilar ilk, only serve toirritate the reader.The above annoyancescan be laid at thefeet of the editor, but heor she is not entirely toblame for Dawkins'unfettered and unabashedpolemicism. Attimes it would be pleasantto be treated morelike an adult, and havealternative argumentpresented not simply asstraw men to knock over.But these irritations are small comparedwith the general worth of a book whicheffectively cuts the ground from under thefeet of creationists and so-called 'creationscientists'. Climbing Mount Improbablegives good, clear, logical arguments as towhy evolution by natural selection is asufficient explanation for the diver ity oflife we see around us. It also provides apicture of complexity, beauty and 'rightness'worthy of a Creator. As Dawkinsdemonstrates, fundamentalist explanationsare generally simplistic both in science andtheology.•Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer.V OLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 45

N ow THH G

done their homework on his c.v.-evendredging up memories of a 1981 film byGillian Armstrong called Starstrucl

The greatestWhen We Were Kings, dir. Leon Cast(independent). Ali says 'I'm so fast, lastnight I killed the lights and got into bedbefore the room went dark', the room full ofmedia erupts with laughter, and his eyesgleam as he looks at the list of blackmusicians who will perform in a three-dayconcert before the fight. Don King is standingnext to him, wearing a grin that looksbolted on. The charismatic man of principleis next to the charlatan and mastermanipulator and the watching world is inthe middle.All through this documentary the vieweris presented with conflicting images: thedefiant celebration of African-Americanculture in Kinshasa hosted by Zaire's tyrantMobuto Sese Seko; the glitz of the wholepageant juxtaposed with the simple lifestyleof local blacks; the brash confidenceof Ali in the face of the widely-held beliefthat he would be annihilated by the enormousGeorge Foreman as Ken Norton andJoe Frazier had been before him.It is the story telling of George Plimptonand Norman Mailer, pulled along by theiropen affection for the man, that gives thisfilm a glow. Spike Lee is included to tell ushow important Ali's politics were to thegeneration, particularly his refusal to go toVietnam, but Lee wasn't there and he has tolike Ali-George Plimpton and NormanMailer don't. (It was a relief to hear NormanMailer describe the brilliance of Ali's tacticsin the ring with verve, something he didn'tachieve in his book on the fight.)Ali's spirit is so intoxicating that itwould be hard for even those most ferventlyopposed to boxing not to be upliftedby this film. It is such a classic tale set inbizarre circumstances played out by themost extraordinary of men. He was scaredbut he forced himself to win.It's sad to contemplate Alias he is today compared towhat he was. That fight washis pyrrhic victory-if he hadlost, he most probably wouldhave retired but instead hecontinued to fight. Bycontrast it helped turn GeorgeForeman from a vicious thuginto a most disarming andaffable gentleman.-Jon GreenawayHard placeBlackrocl

him. Caine plays Victor Spansky, a Cockneyex-con, whom Gates needs for hisunderworld knowledge.The two veterans act the younger ones(Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez) right off thescreen, and look as though they'rethoroughly enjoying doing so. SometimesCaine's hamminess is obvious butNicholson 's slickness is believable: he is anepicurean monster, after all.To reveal too much of the plot wouldspoil it, but there are echoes of other things,better things, that go beyond the Hitchcock­Chandler span, to hint at Hamlet-ish thingslike a stepson who hates his stepfather,who in turn has a guilty secret. But Jason isnot exactly indecisive, and Alex didn't killSuzanne's late husband.In the end of course, you look mainly atJack Nicholson when he's on screen becausehe's magnetic. And that's a good enoughreason to see a not-too-bad sort of thriller.-Juliette HughesShot in the darkTrigger Happy dir. Larry Bishop (independent).Directed by the godson of Frank Sinatra(which means Sinatra is the Godfather), thisis a consistently funny black comedy aboutgangsterism. Bishop must have had histongue firmly in his cheek when he claimedthat the film is a religious allegory, as it isbasically a spoof of films of the Tarantinogenre, violent but played for laughs.Vic (Richard Dreyfuss) has been putaway because he went crazy after his girlfriendGrace, (Diane Lane) left him. Duringhis enforced absence, in a mentalinstitution, his criminal activities havebeen supervised by his first lieutenants,Ben (Gabriel Byrne), Jake (KyleMcLaughlin), and his number one fast gunMicky (Jeff Goldblum). In his absenceMicky has been providing Vic's girlfriendGrace with extraordinarily warm supportwhile two-timing her sister, Rita (EllenBarkin). No one is really looking forwardto Vic's return and one way or another Vichas some scores to settle.The film was shot in 30 days and hasbeen described as being 'made on a shoestring',although the US film industry seemsto feature longer and thicker shoe lacesthan our own industry. The cast is a Who'sWho of Hollywood, with stars appearing inminor roles for free, presumably in homageto the director's Godfather. The result is a13 dead-body movie that in the context of atotal cast list of 22 (including bit players)really threatens to make demands on theinterchange bench.Although littered with dead bodies, thiswry movie never dwells on the violence,and its attitude to death is best summed upwhen a hit-man says to his victim, 'We'veall got to die sometime, but you're going tobeat the rest of us to the finish line'. Filmedin garish colour, with over-the-top sets, thefilm has a feel of a stage play. The castseems to have fun and things improve aftera particularly grotesque performance byBurt Reynolds is sensibly terminated.-Gordon LewisPay homageThe Castle, dir. The Frontline Team(Village). This film has been dismissedas a slap-dash affair, puttogether in a rush in order to capitaliseon the creative roll theFrontline crew are on at themoment. Since it was filmed in 11days the seams were always goingto show. And for the first half itappears the criticisms are accurate.But then it gets funny-very funny.The Kerrigan family are happilyensconced in their quarter-acreblock surrounded by all of suburbia'sicons. Darryl (Michael Caton)Sal (Anne Tenney) and their fourkids have all the special qualities offleecy-lined moccasins at a bowlingalley. Darryl reckons their lifeunder the powerlines and by theairport is as good as it gets, and they loveeach other in a strange sort of way: even theeldest son Wayne, in jail for armed robbery,is not out of their affections. So when theyreceive a notice from the council that theirland is to be compulsorily acquired so theairport can expand, the Kerrigans and theireccentric neighbours decide to put up afight that goes all the way to the HighCourt.The Castle is ambivalent about its subject-HomoUgbootus. It satirises its simpleand tasteless life yet applauds itsresilience. It is a bit patronising, but uttertwits have that ability to be far more noblethan those of us restrained by the inhibitionsof mainstream life.The court scenes are great fun with theinput of Tiriel Mora playing the haplessKerrigan family solicitor Dennis Denutoand Charles 'Bud' Tingwell as LawrenceHamill, the retired constitutional lawyerwho rallies to their cause. The Castle willcatch those of you with ympathies forpeople who are perfectly content with theirlittle slice of bugger-all.- Jon GreenawayFar from HolyRelic dir. Peter Hyams (Hoyts, GreaterUnion, Village). What elements go towardsplacing a movie into 'the absolutely nothingto recommend it' category? Let's see: gruesomemurders investigated by a divorcedlieutenant (Tom Sizemore) fighting forcustody of a dog; a bright young bike-ridingevolutionary-biologist (Penelope AnnMiller) occupying high moral ground overscheming, mean-spirited Asian scientist.Or I could mention the mildly corrupt mayorwith his busty wife, or the voodoo ceremonyto create the animatronic beast, but whyspoil your clear view by smudging it withsilliness I suggest you don't see.I would love a film that allowed thefemale lead to have a higher degree inscience, the savvy to save the world (or atleast a small part of it) and be on the coolerside of the science v. superstition debate.But why is it that this film 's woman has toallow the beast to lick her breast gratuitouslybefore she shoves the explosive thing in hisgob? I mean pleeeese.I, for one, am looking forward to theinteractiveanimatronics features where theaudience can knock off the offensiveboneheads with whom they are supposed tosympathise. A joy stick with every movieticket, rah, rah. No wonder people areflooding to the video arcades.-Siobhan JacksonV OLUME 7 NUMBER 4 • EUREKA STREET 49

WH •NSP>RED nM

Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 53, May 1997Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVMACROSS4. One's to appear in the procession! Bliss! (8)8. Dog goes back round everyone, conducting a poll, perhaps. (6)9. I quit Hanoi, moving in the direction of an island in the EnglishChannel, in a vessel whose passengers are exclusively couples. (5,3)10. Vehicle in need of repair follows another in the control ofa dictator. (8)11. The University of Sydney initially enters the 'Return of Latin' debate,and is prepared to set it up. (6)12. Not being synthetic, the investigation into Latin literacy could becalled 'latinacy', to coin a term! (8)13 . Is intemperate about quantity of medicine in the mixture. (8)16. Ghost coming back, as the French would say. (8)19. Main issue Capone saw as occuring regularly-like the Spring! (8)21. Sailor on land route would rather go overseas. (6)23. InN ew York the 'Moral Hundred' made the claim for ordinarinessasrepresentative of the majority. (8)24. Draw back from the gale, as the boat moves in that direction. (8)25. He counts sheep, perhaps, as he seeks 'fresh fields and pasturesnew' ! (6)26. Often people keep the score in their heads. (8)Solution to Crossword no. 52, April 1997DOWN1. Appreciating the view, perhaps, vain gull lost left wing? (7)2. From noble idol it is possible to trace pedigree. (9)3. It made the disciples drunk, it seemed, on 4-down. (6)4. Writer with note on price for Sabbath celebration. (9,6)5. Made concrete-got it? (8)6. Does Sally start on her medicines? (5)7. Somehow rate its performance though scratched! (7)14. One could blow up and rubbish a distinguished come-back! (9)15 . The sailor, when 21-across, may look forward to this arrival. (8)17. The current recession. (3-4)18. Maybe he likes his birds to be more decorative. (7)20. A beard can create friction. (6)22. Somehow I don't understand, the rumour came from France. (2,3)Please send two free copies ofEureka Street to:Name .... ..... ... .... ... ......................... .... ... .Address ............................................... ... .. ..... .. .............. ..... Postcode .............. .My name is ........................................ .Address ... ................................ ........ ... ............................... Postcode ... .... ...... .Tel ... ..... .. .. ........... .. .. ..... ................. .

EURI:-KA SJRI:-ET &ACELEBRATIONOFFOOD AND WINEERIC ROLLSu pSpecial book OfferA Celebration of Foodand Wine:of flesh, of fish, of fowlEric RollsThere are few things more festive than exquisitely cooked meal.Eric Rolls, historian, poet and bon-vivant, draws the reader intohis celebration of food and wine with anecdotes and observationsthat are the pithy counterpoint to his recipes. The first in a seriesof three, of flesh, of fish, of fowl will tease your palate while itgratifies your mind.Thanks to University of Queensland Press, Eureka Street has ten copies of ACelebration of Food and Wine, each worth $29.95, to give away. To enter send anenvelope marked 'Eureka Street May book offer' to PO Box 553, Richmond 3121.INvJESUITPUBLICATIONSANDI VITATOURSTATI0NDISCOVER THE JEWELS OF ITALYROME- ASSISI - FLORENCE8 days all-inclusive escorted tour to Italywith Qantas, returning at your convenienceSpecial offer $3999*** Departures 18 June 199723 July 19973 September 1997October 1997Stay in leading four star and three star hotels - Enjoy traditionalItalian food and hospitality - Travel in luxury air-conditioned coachesSpecial features for Catholic travellers:• Papal a ud ience/visit St Peter's• Vatican Museum/Catacombs• Santa Croce-The Church of the Holy Cross• The Basilica and tomb of St Francis of Assisi• The Cross of St Francis• The Tomb of St Clare• The Duomo of Florence Santa Maria dei Fiori• The Religious Centre• Daily Mass with Jesuit Tour Chaplai n• Twin share hotel accommodat ion•• Go on and ex plore other parts of Europe and return at w ill• Go to london and return to Australia from there for an extra $150 •For further information ring Anne on 1300 300 552ISSN 103604