<sample><id> G06 </id>

<source> George Johnston: biography </source>

<note> 2000 words </note>

<bl> By Garry Kinnane </bl>

<h> C H A P T E R  XII </h>

<h> Release </h>

     <misc> There was a story Meredith liked of a voyager who, decid+ing to
     quit the sea, shouldered an oar and set off inland from the
     coast, walking and walking until he encountered a man who asked
     him, 'What is that thing you're carrying?'. He knew that was
     where he had to throw away his oar and stop. (CofC 65-6) </misc>

His 'shark bite', as Johnston called it, was not an unqualified
success. It left him weak and depressed for a year afterwards,
short of strength and short of breath, and still underweight.
He was discharged on 21 April 1966, after a stretch of eight
months in the thoracic ward, with restricted movement in his
fingers and an inability to climb stairs.
     Strange, therefore, that soon after Johnston was
discharged, they bought an Edwardian villa that was two-
storeyed, sit+uated in Raglan Street, Mosman, and which cost
around $12,000. The three upstairs rooms were to be occupied by
the children. Johnston was to use the front lounge room as his
bedroom and study, and this adjoined a sitting-room. Clift had
a small bedroom-study towards the rear of the house. It was
nothing like as spacious or beautiful as their Hydra house, but
it was adequate and convenient.
     Johnston continued to see a great deal of Tassie Drysdale,
mostly up at Bouddie Farm. There was more than just jokey talk
between them - Drysdale had had his personal tragedies, too,
after the deaths of his son and first wife - and the experience
of suffering was part of their bond. Bouddie had a constant
stream of colourful visitors - artists, writers, politicians -
and one time when Jack and Pat were visiting him in Sydney,
Johnston decided to take them along to Boud+die to meet the
Drysdales. It proved not to be a good idea. Under the influence
of alcohol, Johnston behaved obnoxious+ly to his brother,
discussing him with Thomas Keneally and others as an example of
Australian working-class culture, listing his virtues and his
'ocker' weaknesses as if Jack was not even in the room. '...
they drove me mad, analysing people,' recalled Jack. 'You'd
think they were the only brains, the only decent people, the
only good people themselves, you know ... I felt dirty
amongst 'em. I was glad to get away ...' Jack was insistent
that Drysdale himself was not a party to the discussion, and
seemed to him 'a decent sort of bloke'. But it cut him that
George led others in the assault.
     Johnston's strength returned sufficiently for him to take
on a commission from ABC Television to write the script for a
profile of Drysdale, which he began during the last months of
1966. It was filmed at Bouddie early in 1967, woven around
Drysdale painting a portrait of Johnston, and in some respects
it conveys as much about Johnston as about the painter. While
Drysdale paints, Johnston's voice-over speaks the narrative in
his husky, light tenor, or talks with Drysdale or Hal
Missingham, who is also in the film. Johnston moves about on
camera, angular, emaciated, graceful, as if his body is
weightless. At one point he discusses the sequel to My Brother
Jack, saying that the 120 pages are all wrong and have to be
done again.
     That 120 pages of draft did in fact bring Johnston
signifi+cantly closer to the finished version of Clean Straw
for Noth+ing. The forty-one pages that survive show that he was
at this stage trying to pick up from where My Brother Jack left
off, and create in chronological order the events of Meredith
leav+ing Helen and taking up with Cressida Morley in a serious
way. It gives an account of their meeting very like the one
Clift was to write in her unfinished novel 'Greener Grows the
Grass', discussed in Chapter IV.
     This draft of Clean Straw for Nothing has a more detailed
account of the first meeting between Meredith, Cressida and
Archie Calverton than in the published version. Calverton,
prior to becoming a dedicated actor, is working in tandem with
a character called Beazley as gag-writers for a radio comedian,
and they generously give up their room at Riordan's Hotel, next
to the 'old tin shed' by the Post Office in Melbourne, so that
the young lovers may spend their first night together. Since in
other parts of the novel Calverton appears to be loosely based
on Peter Finch, it has been sug+gested that Johnston and Clift
met Finch in this way. It is remotely possible: Finch did
travel about a good deal in the mid-1940s, and did mix with
comedy writers such as Fred Parsons and Lenny Lower, who wrote
radio shows. It is more likely, however, that Johnston and
Finch met in Sydney in 1946 or 1947, perhaps in the
Journalists' Club, where Finch often went.
     Once again, in this draft of Clean of Straw for Nothing,
he returned to the memory of those hundreds of thousands of
Chinese refugees returning to their Eastern provincial towns at
the end of the war, some of them after nine years of exile. As
with the memory of the refugees from Kweilin earlier in the
war, the staggering sight exerted a peculiar power over
Johnston. Now, in his present state of illness, and feeling
himself in his worst moments to be an 'exile' from human+kind, he
began to look for an affinity, to connect himself to suffering
that occurred on a massive scale, and to seek in that journey
a reflection, and perhaps a meaning, for his own:
     He had convinced himself that everything fitted into a
     persisting continuity in which nothing had seemed quite real
     since China - since he had flown out of Chungking from the
     grassy, treacherous strip beside the Chialing, climbing up and
     over worn rocks and laboriously terraced paddies to look down
     at the fringe of the plains beyond the confluence of two
     ravined rivers, and to see below them an ant-horde of
     un+countable people disgorging from a central mat of human
     blackness ... a million exiles setting out after nearly nine
     years of war to walk back to homes in distant provinces across
     a devastated land bigger again than his own Australia ...
     nine years ... He had felt a great pity for them and for
     their journey, then eased the heaviness in his soul by
     re+membering that the Chinese, like their earth, had infinite
     capacity for renewal. (Thinking back on this in later years, he
     realized that nine years after that time he had far from
     finished his own journey; indeed, had traversed only half the
     distance to disaster, with the worst for him still to come.)
     Several ideas here were to be developed into important
motifs in the final version - the linking of suffering on an
historical scale with his own private experience of it; the
idea of the journey as one answer to the search for a pattern
in life. The expression 'We are still out on the long journey
from Szechwan' recurs throughout Clean Straw for Nothing like
a refrain that acts as a touchstone for Meredith in his fight
against despair; finally, the period of nine years links the
period of exile for the Chinese with Meredith's own period of
expatriation on Hydra. This is the kind of coincidence that
Johnston was continually digging up. It was clear that what
+ever else it might be, Clean Straw for Nothing was going to be
a highly self-conscious novel, with Meredith's character and
problems right at the centre of things, and no longer sharing
the limelight with a contrasting figure such as Jack was in the
first volume. For the moment he was not satisfied with what he
had written, and was allowing himself to become dis+tracted by
less taxing projects, such as the Drysdale film.
     The rows between Johnston and Clift were if anything
getting worse as he slowly got his strength back, and felt less
concerned about how much he drank. The public humili+ations
went on. At Toni Burgess's house Johnston said of Clift: 'Look
at her standing there like a fucking great praying mantis',
implying, says Burgess, that she had devoured her mate. Clift
would simply weep quietly after such attacks. 'George had
persuaded her that she was responsible for his tuberculosis,'
says Burgess, who winced at the way he could torment her over
the loss of her looks. 'She was never a match for him in the
Virginia Woolf stakes.'
     Burgess became Clift's closest friend in these years.
Ap+palled by what had happened to Clift since the days in the
1940s when they were young mothers together, Burgess re+mained
loyal, affectionate and admiring. But she disapproved of
Clift's neglect of her children, especially Shane and Jason:
'... she returned from Greece addled', Burgess insists.
     ... one moment full of wit and joy, another moment in despair.
     I remember getting up at six a.m. one morning and going to the
     market with her. It was a wonderful morning. We had breakfast
     in a 'truckie' cafe. At one point we saw a Greek or Italian
     woman walking along in front of us and Charmian said [imitating
     her rich, educated contralto] 'Isn't it marvellous: they just
     let all their pubic hair grow. Everybody here shaves it off and
     disinfects themselves. You know what we should do, darling? We
     should let all our underarm hair grow very long, like seaweed,
     stand in the wind and let it blow'. She was a peculiar mixture
     of the fanciful and the real.
     In a different sense it was also true that there were two
Charmian Clifts developing - the one of public success who wrote
novels, television plays and a newspaper column, and with a
public image of great ease and grace and a degree of wisdom
that she passed on to grateful readers. And there was the
unhappy, alcoholic wife, loathing her coarsened body, in a
state of terror every week at the prospect of writing the
column, forcing herself out of bed at 4 a.m. to get it written
before the distractions of the day overwhelmed her. The pub+lic
and distant relatives saw only the first Charmian Clift: close
friends and family watched, helpless and saddened, the decline
of the second.
     For Christmas 1966 Jason returned from his long stay with
the Russos in Victoria. Charmian wrote them a warm letter of
thanks, saying, 'He will always have two families now and be
richer to that extent.' The Russos were also coming to stay
with them over the summer, and Charmian was hoping to have
renovations to the house finished before they arrived, and that
George would be able to get away at times from his involvement
with the Drysdale film, which was occupying his time in these
early months of 1967.
     In February, Johnston wrote to Higham after a gap of about
a year in their correspondence, and explained why he had been
out of touch and doing so little serious writing. The
operation, he pointed out, had gone 'rather worse than we had
expected', and 'difficulties of accommodation', until they
bought the house in Raglan Street, had made him indolent and
depressed. He had not contacted Higham because, he said, 'I
couldn't bring myself to write when I had nothing to say that
wasn't dispiriting.' Clift also had found it imposs+ible to
get any writing done apart from her column. Indeed this period
after Johnston's operation was a disillusioning one generally,
in which much of the gloss of their return and their optimism
about Australia changed. It was probably a reflection of their
own physical and mental depression, for the most part, but they
looked on Australian life from their position of familiarity
with Sydney affluence with an in+creasingly critical eye.
     However, Johnston was cheered during this year by a visit
from Sidney Nolan, for whom Hal Missingham had arranged a large
retrospective exhibition at the New South Wales Gal+lery to
celebrate Nolan's fiftieth year.

</sample>



<sample><id> G11 </id>

<source> Big Fella: Jack Lang and the Australian Labor Party 1891-1949 </source>

<note> 2051 words </note>

<bl> By Bede Nairn </bl>

<h> Lang's Triumph </h>

At the end of 1929 the Labor Party held office in the
Commonwealth, in Victoria - under E. J. Hogan who had taken
over on 12 December - and in Western Australia, under Phillip
Collier. Every government in Aus+tralia was experiencing
extreme pressure from the deepening Depres+sion. In February
1930 in the New South Wales parliament Lang said that `Every
day thousands of men are being sacked by the Government ...
The Premier has not a shilling to jingle on a tombstone'. At
the April 1930 New South Wales Party conference Theodore
forecast a Federal deficit of &pound;3 million.
   But from October 1929 to April 1930 the main issue in the
ALP was the role of Theodore. The great Labor vote in New South
Wales at the 1929 Federal election had been fundamentally the
result of the revival of that State's traditional support for
the Party, helped by the obvious in+ability of the Bavin
government to check economic decline and by the positive and
purposeful opposition provided in parliament by Lang and
several of his colleagues. But Theodore had been formally the
chief organizer of the campaign and much of its success was due
to him. He was a skilful politician with an authoritative
style, feelings of greatness and a firm belief in his destiny
to become prime minister.
   To a degree Theodore was similar to Lang, sharing qualities
of ambi+tion, durability, deviousness and ruthlessness: and
they were both deter+minedly anti-`red'. On the other hand, he
was Lang's intellectual superior. Theodore had the coldness of
self-assurance which, however, complemented his air of
excellence and did not prevent him from col+lecting a circle of
friends and admirers; yet he lacked the ability of Lang to
project a charismatic image to the people at large. Unlike
Lang, Theo+dore was something of an epicurean and did not scorn
the delights of books, conversation and grand occasions; he was
neither a boor nor a bore as Lang was. On balance, Theodore's
achievements as premier of Queensland outweighed his failures,
but he was not universally popular with the labour movement
there.
   He also had the serious handicap, which Lang never had, of
being an obsessive speculator, especially in mining ventures.
This habit reflected his self-centred optimism and often
conditioned precipitate judgements of people and events. And
his yearning to try to make money by company promotion and
investing in shares earned him a vaguely questionable
reputation in the Labor Party and in the business world. From
October 1929 he was under the threat of a Queensland royal
commission into some of his mining deals. It finally commenced
on 30 April 1930.
   Theodore was a cogent speaker and, when stirred, could
approach eloquence in a way Lang never could. But he lacked
Lang's demagogic gifts: above all, he did not have the long and
intimate experience the `Big Fella' had acquired from thirty
years activity in the beargarden of New South Wales Labor
politics. Indeed, Theodore's Queensland associa+tions with the
AWU had produced grave disadvantages for him in New South Wales
and his attempts to overcome them had resulted in at least two
major tactical errors - in 1924 when his review of the
sliding-panelled ballot boxes had not exonerated Bailey, and in
late 1926 when his approach to Lang had backfired on him. At
the same time, Theodore had not placated the influential AWU
power brokers in the Federal branch of the ALP. Both Scullin,
especially, and Blakeley had been preferred to him. When
Theodore eventually became deputy Federal leader Scullin was
firmly at the top. And the 1929 Federal victory con+firmed
Scullin's position.
   But in the first glow of triumph Theodore sensed the
possibility of displacing Scullin. The Herald published a short
but well-informed report over the name of F.A. Percival,
another of its senior political journalists, in which it was
stated that Theodore might make a bid for leadership at the
first party meeting after the election. Percival said that `One
union secretary yesterday described Mr. Theodore as the
greatest Australian political figure since the days of Deakin,
Barton and Reid'. He added that other union officials had the
same view; yet they recognized the great influence of the AWU
in the Federal caucus, and judged that because Theodore had
lost that union's backing he would probably not defeat Scullin.
In the event Theodore did not contest the leadership, and
Scullin was not opposed.
   The most likely interpretation of this incident is that
Percival's report was correct. Theodore realized probably
better than any other politician the difficulties of the
problems that would frustrate the Scullin Labor government. An
inspired report of his possible leadership challenge would have
the dual effect of helping to secure his position as deputy and
give notice that, should Scullin falter, he would be available
and willing to take over. More importantly, Theodore had always
wanted to depose Lang as the head Labor man in New South Wales:
this would ensure maximum caucus support for him in any future
bid for the prime ministership and safeguard his pre-selection
in the Dalley seat - while Lang remained in control of the
State machine it was always possible that one of his minions
would oust Theodore as Labor's candidate there. During the
election campaign Lang and Theodore had avoided each other; and
Theodore, aware of Garden's submission to Lang, had tried
without success to prevent the Labor Council secretary from
speaking at a big election rally in the Domain.
   Theodore had some advantages in the brief trial of strength
with the `Big Fella'. A deputy prime minister and treasurer of
the Com+monwealth was a man of distinction in a Party which,
under Watson, Fisher and Hughes, had contributed much to the
foundation and early growth of the Commonwealth parliament but
which had lacked Federal power since the defection of Hughes in
1916. Theodore's prestige was complemented by his intellectual
stature and repute as a financial expert, and, specifically, by
the expectations he had aroused that he would terminate the
destructive coal dispute, now clearly seen as a lock+out.
   But Theodore had set himself a huge task. The structure of
the ALP was against him. While the Party had been out of office
in the Com+monwealth for thirteen years, it had formed several
governments in all of the States in that time, including three
in New South Wales. This basic fact had retarded the
development of the power and authority of Labor's Federal
branch: the centre of action, particularly evident in the
organ+ization of elections, remained in the States: the Federal
conferences, meeting usually at three-year intervals, were
remote from the rank and file, and lacked the vitality of the
State conferences. The Federal exe+cutive had gained respect
and influence by its intervention in New South Wales in 1923,
and through it the Federal conference had improved its
authority, but that advance had been wiped out by the Federal
capitu+lation to Lang in 1927.
   On the personal level, too, Theodore had challenged a man
who had entrenched himself at all levels of the State Party and
whose populist aura seemed a beacon to follow to escape from
perilous times. Still, against the odds, Theodore made the bid.
He continued to gain some support at the Trades Hall and cut
himself off entirely from the State AWU. The Herald went so far
as to say that the `reds' were split over the two antagonists.
But the coal dispute was Theodore's stumbling block. His
promise to reopen the mines was not redeemed.
   Rowley James, the Labor MHR for Hunter, summed up the
emo+tional and constitutional dilemma plaguing the government
and, at the same time, presented a vital element of the
realpolitik of the lockout. A bold move by Scullin with solid
cabinet backing might just have pro+vided the basis for a
dramatic political solution. `My people', said James in the
Federal parliament on 3 December 1929, `were deserted by the
party which proposed to protect them'; he went on to assert
that the government should have resumed the mines, forcing the
owners to test the action in the High Court; the resulting
political circumstances `would have caused the fall of the
Bavin government ... and the people would have rejected it,
because they would not stand for the coal-owners starving the
miners into submission'.
   James kept the tension at fever pitch on 12 December when he
sought a grant of &pound;25 000 for the miners to tide them
over Christmas - `There are 36 000 of my constituents
absolutely on the verge of starvation'. But Scullin shrugged
off the extraordinary devastation of the Hunter region;
pointing out that there was poverty in many electorates, he
added that there were five thousand unemployed in his own seat
of Yarra, in Mel+bourne; the government, he said, had done all
within its powers and concluded, `we are not a government of
school boys, filled with imprac+tical ideas'. Latham gave
grudging approval. But the famous Lang snarl would have been
activated.
   Under Bavin's strategy non-unionists were recruited to work
some mines in December. On 16 December police with revolvers
and batons confronted pickets at the Rothbury mine near
Maitland, and in the melee a young miner, Norman Brown, was
shot dead. This deplorable incident gave powerful impetus to
the vehement community resentment represented by James: and it
graphically exposed the harshness of the State government's
policy, applied by R. W. D. Weaver, on the coalfields and the
inability of the Scullin government to end the struggle.
   The tragedy generated shock waves that spread from the
Hunter Val+ley throughout the Australian labour movement.
Brown's death symbol+ized starkly the depth of the suffering of
the coal-mining communities. While the Scullin ministry was
hindered by the Commonwealth Con+stitution in its handling of
the dispute it seems surprisingly clear that Scullin himself
was not so understanding of the miners as a Labor prime
minister, especially one with his personal background, might
have been expected to be. But Scullin carried little weight in
the New South Wales Labor Party. Theodore received most of the
obloquy flowing from the failure of the Federal government to
make the daring move in the coal problem that was demanded by
assurances given during the election campaign, and justified by
its result. Whatever its fate, a resolute stroke would have
satisfied clear public opinion and produced a tremendous moral
boost to the labour movement: it also would have strengthened
the Federal government against its conservative opponents,
including the Senate majority, in its crucial early period.
   The day after Rothbury, Lang added to the force of the whip
hand he had over Bavin, who with his minister of mines, Weaver,
was directly responsible for industrial relations in the coal-
mining industry in New South Wales. Weaver had exulted in his
bigotry during the 1923-25 Ne Temere debate, and he remained
one of the most harmfully insensitive and obscurantist members
of the extreme right wing of the Nationalists. Lang scored
heavily against them in a censure debate although he lost the
vote.
   The State Labor Party reacted to the killing of Brown by
persuading Scullin to call an urgent conference on Saturday 21
December at the Commonwealth Bank Buildings in Martin Place.
Graves was in the chair. Scullin, Theodore, Beasley, Francis
Brennan (attorney-general) and other Federal cabinet ministers
attended. Nearly all New South Wales MHRs were there, too, with
officers of the State Party, some MLAs and leaders of the
Miners' Federation. Garden and Crofts, secre+tary of the
Australian Council of Trades Unions, were also present. The
Commonwealth solicitor-general, Sir Robert Garran, and the
secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, M. L. Shepherd,
accompanied Scullin.
   It was clear from the outset that Scullin and his colleagues
had been convinced by his official advisers that the government
had no power to intervene decisively in the dispute. This was
a conservative view of the constitutional problem, and almost
certainly correct, given the compo+sition of the High Court and
the innate intransigence of Australian federalism: the Bavin government and the
mine-owners had immedi+ately appealed to the High Court when Beeby, now a judge
of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court and perturbed by the tremors of Rothbury,
had chaired a compulsory conference on 18 December and next day issued an
interim award for the resumption of work under the old wages.

</sample>




<sample><id> G12 </id>

<source> Lachlan Macquarie: a biography </source>

<note> 2005 </note>

<bl> By John Ritchie </bl>

<h> New Servitude </h>

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered
a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.
I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change,
stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague
space: `Then', I cried, half desperate, `grant me at least a
new servitude!'

<misc> Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre </misc>

The City of London sailed expeditiously to India in 3 months
and 16 days. Of the thirty passengers who messed in her cuddy
one remained at times distant and preoccupied. In shaky health
and out of sorts, Macquarie harboured grudge and grievance:
that he may have damaged his stand+ing in the eyes of the
Commander-in-Chief harped on his mind, as did his unexpected
and peremptory assignment to the East; he was going back in
obedience to the Duke's orders, not by choice; he prickled at
the injustice of being returned after three attacks of the
liver on His Majesty's service had rendered him incapable of
bearing the heat of a vertical sun; he bridled at the ongoing
prospect of inferiors winning promotion over him. He was
unwilling to fathom why he had been spurned and unable to
comprehend why the world seemed determined to heap burdens upon
him. Apart from one battle scare on 27 April, his voyage proved
singu+larly uneventful, except for the calm morning of 21 June
when he sailed the ship's cutter alongside accompanying vessels
in the fleet and spoke with friends, among them Lieutenant-
Colonel Ralph Darling on board the Dorsetshire whose unforeseen
career in some ways was to parallel his own.
     At 7 p.m. on Sunday 11 August 1805 the City of London
anchored safely in Bombay Harbour. Landfall evoked Macquarie's
melancholy. In no hurry to mix with friends, he went to Jane's
tomb and vented his sorrow. His shriving laid bare his
relationship with Elizabeth: that he wanted their engagement a
secret had nothing to do with desire on his part for metal more
attractive; rather, it indicated that his memory of Jane - the
most beloved and the best of wives - had so enmeshed him as to
paralyse his resolve to start anew. A pale cast of thought had
enveloped his enterprise and action. In perfunctory fashion he
visited Bombay acquaintances, drank more than was good for him
and bought lottery tickets without afterwards bothering to
inquire whether he had drawn a prize or a blank. From Jonathan
Duncan he received a warm welcome, one of the best rooms in
government house and the restoration of his former military
secretaryship. In a long and intimate conversation Macquarie
told him about his erstwhile housekeeper and their son, while
Duncan told him of his plan to return to England in 1808 by the
overland route. Cheerfully and almost too readily Macquarie
acquiesced in the governor's wishes: he felt honour bound to
accompany him home and would recommence duties in his old post
as one of Duncan's family upon the cessation of the Mahratta
war.
     On 25 October Macquarie read with gratifying surprise in
a Madras newspaper that he had been promoted on 30 May to a
lieutenant-colonelcy in the 73rd, a regiment that, after
twenty-four years' contin+uous service in the East, had sailed
on 8 September from Calcutta for England under the command of
Michael Monypenny. He was therefore able to join his new corps
immediately and to be reunited with Elizabeth. Instead, he
procrastinated and clutched at straws: he had given Duncan his
word that he would return with him in 1808; he had spent &pound;650
on field equipment which would be wasted if he now left the
country; the war against the Mahrattas, which would involve the
86th, was about to resume once the rains ended; besides, the
news of his promotion was only unofficial. Despite receiving
further intimation of his elevation to the 73rd on 4 November
and despite the arrival in Bombay on the same day of Hastings
Fraser, another colonel for the 86th, Macquarie chose to stay
in India.
     Taking ship on 7 November, he sailed 180 miles north on
the Com+pany's armed schooner, the Vigilant, to Broach on the
Gulf of Cambay whence he rode on horseback 50 miles north-east
to arrive at the fortress of Baroda on the 18th. Six days later
he left in a bullock-drawn hackery, following his detachments
92 miles inland to the frontier station of Dohad. There, from
1 December 1805 to 18 January 1806, he took com+mand of 1300
fighting men, Indian and European, to prepare them for
operations in the Gujarat against Holkar, a Mahrattan warlord
who had the temerity to rebel against British suzerainty. In
donning the habit of authority, Macquarie became energetic,
systematic and masterful. He saw to the fortification of the
camp, had a parade ground cleared of brushwood and forbade the
soldiers from entering the near-by township; he granted
audiences to local killadars, regulated the regimental bazaars
and effected savings in the gram fed to stock; he sought
regular dis+bursements for paying the troops, checked their
clothing and footwear and reported absentees; he dined with the
officers and yarned with the other ranks, introduced tougher
discipline and drilled his division for two hours twice daily.
Inspection followed inspection until the men were licked into
shape. By the time Major-General Jones arrived to supersede
him, the soldiers had been transformed. Then, on 21 January
1806, intelligence came of peace with Holkar. Macquarie's
campaign thus ceased. On the following day he departed, pursued
by auditors' accu+sations that he had broken regulations in
having exceeded his batta and table allowances. In explanation
he declared that the &pound;195 he had drawn for food and liquor in
the seven weeks of his command, if not in con+formity with the
strict letter of the established rules, accorded with their
spirit. 
     On 21 February he resumed a serene routine in Bombay. Days
accu+mulated into unruffled months. He barely found sufficient
of interest to fill seventeen pages in his journal for the
remainder of the year. Even state occasions elicited only his
pejorative asides on their monotonous pomp. His health
fluctuated: in March he complained of his liver, in May of a
fever, in between he was well; he waxed in June and waned in
July. He continued indecisive as to his future. By remaining,
he hoped to be &pound;3000 richer in three years; he thought of
transferring from the 73rd to a regiment in India; he requested
permission from the Duke of York to continue on Duncan's staff
and persuaded the governor to solicit Castle+reagh's influence
on his behalf. While plying in this direction, he tested other
currents. He applied for and received from Fort William the sum
of &pound;250 for his passage home and curried favour with Charles
Greenwood, the army agent and bosom friend of the Commander-in-
Chief, in the hope of exchanging into the Guards. Dreading that
the 73rd, after serv+ing in the East, would be posted to the
West Indies, he was prepared to buy his way out of that
eventuality at almost any price.
     To kill time, Macquarie furled his past and corresponded
with a range of individuals, some of them the darlings of the
gods, others the play+things of their sport. For Harrington in
London, he obsequiously offered to purchase any gift that might
appeal to his lordship's fancy; to Mr Fretz, the quondam Dutch
governor of Point de Galle, he conveyed friendship; to Dr
McGrigor in Yorkshire, he sent regards and the promise to meet
again. He wrote, as well, to his extended family: to Captain
George Jarvis of the 36th on a familiar note without saying
anything of his engagement to Miss Campbell; to Mrs Jane
Maclaine on Mull about her daughters' education; and to his
brother Charles, across the oceans wide and wild, wishing that
he would marry a good Irish heiress. He thought, too, of his
estate and determined to build on Gruline some time after 1808.
Finally, at every opportunity, he endeavoured to advance the
military careers of his family, friends and countrymen by
supporting their claims for pro+motion and, in the fifteen
months from August 1805 to November 1806, he succeeded in
gaining ensigncies without purchase for eight more prot+eges
and had hopes of a further four. He had not forgotten his
cousin John and nephew Hector, but thought it prudent to wait
until they approached the age of fifteen before forwarding
their interests.
     Above all else the calm of Macquarie's forty-fifth year
enabled two men - who differed from him and from one another
in position, tem+perament and style - to affect him
profoundly. Seldom diffident in his own resources, inwardly
diffident about his abilities, Macquarie looked for guidance
from Jonathan Duncan and Charles Forbes, for whom he developed
abiding affection.
     Born in 1756 to tenant farmers of Blairno in Forfarshire,
Duncan was five years older than Macquarie. He shared with him
a similar Scottish background and, like Macquarie, began his
career at the age of fifteen. Sent to Bengal as a clerk in the
East India Company, he served in minor jobs from 1772, learned
Bengali, Dutch and Persian and remitted money annually to aid
his father. His ability and the support of his uncle - John
Michie, a director and chairman of the Company - led to his
appoint+ment in 1788 as Resident of Benares. There his
strictness in curtailing graft and peculation earned him
unpopularity among his personnel, while his efforts to abolish
the practices of geronticide and female infan+ticide by
transporting offenders to Penang incurred the enmity of some of
his native subjects. With the backing of Marquis Cornwallis, in
1794 Duncan received the gubernatorial post at Bombay. Taking
office the following year, he succeeded George Dick who had
openly flaunted his Mahratta mistress and whose incompetence
rivalled his meretricious+ness. Duncan's sixteen-year term as
governor was conspicuous in many ways. Unlike Madras and
Calcutta where the British usually recognized only the most
powerful chieftains, Duncan acknowledged the status of hundreds
of princelets in his presidency, provided they allowed him to
oversee their governments. Those who rebelled, he crushed; to
those who conformed, he brought his brand of order, regularity
and unifor+mity to their taxes, to their ownership of land, to
their laws. Wishing to be seen as the Indians' protector, he
founded new settlements for them, introduced improved methods
of trade and cultivation to them, and raised the status and the
pay of the officials who came from them.
     In Bombay itself this reformer ferreted out extortionists,
embezzlers and those guilty of other corruption. Bringing zeal
to arduous tasks, he stabilized revenues and systematized
customs duties, built granaries, roads and bridges, and had the
streets swept and the sewers cleaned. Little eluded his
observation or escaped his report, his minute or his
signature.Though assisted by a huge staff of secretaries,
clerks and helots, among whom the highest paid did the least
work, Duncan showed phenomenal energy and industry, but his
penchant for minutiae inflated his dispatches to ten times the
length of those written in Bengal. By day and by evening he
appeared in a perpetual state of nervous anxiety; by night,
when he slept, no one dared disturb him. Over his basic good
nature and natural timidity he threw a shield. While gracious
and con+ciliatory towards his subordinates, with his directors'
approbation he held the reins. To him, a disagreement amounted
to disaffection: criti+cism of his conduct constituted an
attack on his authority; the one ruffled his temper, the other
left him mortified. Sir John Shore, who knew him well,
discerned another defect in his clay: Duncan was a poor judge
of character and his partiality to his friends blinded him to
their short+comings, allowing them to continue their roguery.
In 1791 Duncan married Anne Mercer, but they had separated and
in Bombay he lived as a single man. In private he found solace
in the arms of his housekeeper, Mrs Jane Allen, who bore his
son in 1799 and took the child to England two years later.

</sample>


<sample><id> G13 </id>

<source> Migrant shepherd: Ober-Rosbach to Tenterfield </source>

<note> 2005 words </note>

<bl> By E Lloyd Sommerlad </bl>

<h> Chapter 1 </h>

<h> Ober-Rosbach - 1855 </h>

     Johan Heinrich Sommerlad had been thinking of emigrating from
Germany for some time before the day early in 1855 when he set off
for Frankfurt to see an emigration agent. His village of Ober-
Rosbach in the province of Ober-Hessen was no place for an enter+prising 
young man to get ahead, especially when he was one of the
younger sons in a poor family. Ober-Rosbach, now part of Rosbach
v.d.H. (vor der Hohe - in front of the Heights) was an ancient
village with a population at that time of almost 1,000, at the
eastern end of the Taunus Mountains, and some 20 kilometres from
the city of Frankfurt-on-Main.
     Born in 1829, Johan Heinrich was the sixth child of Karl Christian
Daniel Sommerlad (born 1795) who had married Catherine Margretha
Becker in the Lutheran church at Ober-Rosbach in 1818. Karl
Christian himself was not a native of Ober-Rosbach, though there
are records of Sommerlads in the village as far back as 1664 when
the local church chronicles commenced.
     Karl Christian was a small-time farmer, trader and gardener.
The family was poor and it is likely that he rented from landowners
the two or three hectares where he gathered hay and grew fruit and
vegetables. This land consisted of various small plots outside the
town. Like all the local farmers, the Sommerlad family lived among
a cluster of houses in the village, which by this time had spilled
over the mediaeval walls which had fallen into decay - though
remnants of the walls and two towers can still be seen today. The
Sommerlad house (no longer standing) in Hintergasse strasse,
probably built in the 17th century, would have had stone
foundations, oak beams, shingle roof, and walls consisting of mud
daub strengthened by reeds from the river, between the oak timbers.
The house was very small for a big family. Downstairs was the
stable for their two cows and next to it the kitchen. Upstairs were
two bedrooms, so small children no doubt slept several to a bed and
some shared their parents' room. The house had no heating beyond
the kitchen fire. They would have liked cast-iron heating boxes
connected to the kitchen, as in the noble houses, but they could
afford no such luxury.
     Every morning one of the children had to go to the village
foun+tain to carry home buckets of water. The spring water was
clear and fresh; it was brought down from the hills overlooking the
town in wooden pipes to the fountain in the marketplace - built in
1833 and still standing. Other routine jobs in which Johan Heinrich
took his turn were to cut the wood and start the kitchen fire, feed
the hens and gather the eggs, milk the cows and clean the stable.
     The young Johan went to the local municipal school for eight
years. Instruction was rudimentary - reading, writing,
calculations and accounts, the bible being prominent among the few
books available for study. As most children had to help with
farming and harvesting, school hours in summer were from 6 am to 8
am. 
    Like others of his age, Johan Heinrich had to undergo some
military training but his was said to be "slight" on account of his
"bad eyesight". At the outbreak of the German Revolution in 1848,
when he was 19, he was summoned to Baden but obtained a defer+ment
of call-up for one year. During that year the Revolution collapsed.
     The family was religious and regularly attended the Lutheran
church which, with its tiered octagonal steeple, is still a feature
of the town today. A highlight of the church year was the Harvest
Festival at the end of the summer, when the church would be filled
with sheaves of wheat and oats, produce from the vegetable gardens,
grapes and stone fruits and great loaves of bread for the service
of thanksgiving. Sunday was a day of rest as was Christmas Day and
Easter. Most of the village people attended two services each
Sunday.
     Karl Christian Sommerlad was a professional gardener and
worked hard on his few hectares with help from his wife and the
younger members of his family. The cherries, apples, peaches and
grapes from his orchard and the potatoes, cabbages, turnips and
corn from his garden were sold at market. Each evening in summer
some member of the family would sit in the village marketplace
selling fruit and vegetables. But the principal market town of the
district was Friedberg, six kilometres away. So each market day
children of the family left home at 5 am and walked to Friedberg,
pushing a handcart loaded with produce or carrying baskets attached
to a shoulder yoke. The family had no horse - that was only for a
rich man.
     The production of his small orchards and garden, however, was
not sufficient to maintain his family. So Karl Christian took work
wherever it was offered - cutting wood, grafting trees, helping in
the harvest, repairing farm tools and harness.
     The children of the family also had to look for work as soon
as they had left school. Fritz the eldest, was already 13 when
Johan Heinrich*Henrich was born. Then came Heinrich, 10 years older than
Johan, a sister Mariana and Jakob two years his senior. Peter was
two years younger than Johan. Another brother, Christian, and
sister Katharine, died as they reached their teens.
     Traditional crafts and trades were the mainstay of Ober-
Rosbach at this time, apart from its agriculture, and many young
men learned skilled occupations and sought employment as
carpenters, brewers, masons, smiths, butchers, bakers, weavers,
coopers or shoemakers. Girls, whose educational attainments were
generally low, were expected to learn home duties, help in the
fields, work as house+maids, and then marry.
     Fritz Sommerlad became a master shoemaker and Jakob Sommerlad
a stone mason while brother Peter was apprenticed as a cobbler.
Heinrich might have to walk each day for as long as two hours to
find work as a labourer, for which he earned only a pittance. Johan
Heinrich learned from his father the skills of gardening and fruit
culture - experience which stood him in good stead later on. He
scythed and gathered the meadow hay, reaped and hand-threshed
grain, pruned and grafted trees, picked fruit and hoed vegetables.
He worked on the family plots and took casual jobs if he could find
them. He also helped his father make beer from their own barley. In
spare time and bad weather he did weaving.
     Despite his "bad eyesight" Johan Heinrich was a very good
marksman. Sometimes he would hunt in the fields and woods near the
village for a hare, duck, pheasant, or pig and occasionally he shot
a fox. At the age of 20 at nearby Fredericksdorf, he competed with
many seasoned shots in the great annual shooting match. Muzzle-
loading rifles were used, and competitors paid a small fee for each
shot. The target worked automatically; when the bullseye was hit a
gaily dressed figure of a fool shot up in the air. Johan had
occasion for only three shots, as with these he scored two bulls
which beat all his rivals. The prize was a fine fat wether, draped
from head to foot with multi-coloured silk ribbons. The village
people of Ober-Rosbach gave him a noisy welcome on his return.
     As the new year of 1855 dawned, Johan Heinrich pondered that
he would turn 26 in February, and he saw a bleak future ahead of
him. Poverty was widespread in the whole of Hessen, and his family
shared the common lot. He was an ambitious young man and was not
prepared to accept the frustrations of his peasant existence
without trying for something better. He had heard of many of his
fellow countrymen who had migrated to America or Canada and reports
had filtered back of good opportunities for people prepared to work
hard.
     His family was not at all keen that he should migrate. It
would mean one less mouth to feed but one son less to help support
the family. His three elder brothers had already married and left
home. But they could not deny Johan the chance to try and improve
his situation. So he decided to go to Frankfurt to enquire about
emigrating.

<h> Chapter 2 </h>

<h> German Emigration-
Australian Immigration </h>

     The first half of the 19th century was a turbulent time for the
German people. Napoleon's defeat of Prussia at Jena in 1806 marked
the end of the Holy Roman Empire and until 1814, the French
occupied Germany and much of the rest of Europe. The inhabitants of
Ober-Rosbach as in other towns and villages suffered great
hardships and lost many citizens who were con+scripted to fight in
Napoleon's campaigns. After his defeat, there was a regrouping of
the many small German States and Prussia emerged with new strength.
The German Confederation of States was formed, including Austria,
which was in fact, the dominant member. The German States, however,
such as Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, remained independent,
with their own rulers. Frankfurt-on-Main, within the Hessen region,
was a free city and a sovereign member of the German Confederation.
It would not be until 1871 that Bismarck rallied to Prussia, the
rest of Germany and established a united German Empire, (which
excluded Austria) under the Kaiser Wilhelm I.
     Napoleon introduced into the conquered areas new ideas of
popular sovereignty and national rights. The period that followed
his defeat was marked by restlessness and revolt and deep social
conflict. Local grievances, demands for liberal reforms, agrarian
discontent and social distress culminated in the 1848 revolution.
A body representing the aspirations of all nationally-minded
Germans met at Frankfurt in May 1848 and existed for a year. But no
agree+ment could be reached and meantime the revolution failed and
was followed by even more severe repression.
     Political, social and economic conditions combined to make
many Germans so disenchanted with their homeland that they sought
to emigrate. Between 1830 and 1875 two and a half million Germans
streamed across the Atlantic to the United States of America. Apart
from the mass exodus of the liberals and radicals whose hopes were
dashed after 1848, groups of Lutherans fled Germany to escape
religious oppression. In the 1830s the King of Prussia decided to
unite all Protestant churches and a number of other German states
followed suit. The "old Lutherans", in particular, bitterly opposed
the forced unions and refused to partici+pate in the Reformed
Church. Their dissent led whole villages to move together to start
again in the New World where freedom of worship was granted.
     But the greatest motivation to migrate was economic hardship.
There was an explosion of population in Germany during the first
half of the l9th century - it increased by 50 per cent between
1815 and 1850. As yet little industrial expansion had taken place,
especially in small states like Hessen, and consequently there were
few employment opportunities for village labourers and artisans who
moved hopelessly around the countryside.
     Thousands of peasants who had earlier benefitted from land
reforms, were unable to pay their instalments and surrendered or
sold their holdings. In the mid 1840s both corn and potato crops
failed and harvests were bad between 1848 and 1853. In the south
west of Germany, the numerous small holdings of land were 
insuffi+cient to support a large peasant family and desperate poverty 
was widespread. Emigration seemed the best answer and in 1850 alone,
150,000 Germans left their homeland.
     Under these circumstances of over-population and poverty, the
German "small states" encouraged emigration. In Hessen, for
example, a National Society for Emigration was established which
had an office in Frankfurt from 1848.
     Meanwhile, Australia was in desperate need of new settlers and
hired labour particularly agricultural workers. The early settlers
had been given grants of land and assigned convicts to work for
them, but when convict transportation from Britain began to dwindle
and eventually to cease in New South Wales in 1840, this source of
free labour was cut off. 

</sample>


<sample><id> G15 </id>

<source> Williams Woolls: a man of Parramatta </source>

<note> 2002 words </note>

<bl> By M M H Thompson </bl>

<h> Tractarians and other afflictions </h>

Woolls could not have hoped for a greater acknowledgement of
the success of his school at Parramatta than the
repeated commendation it won from Sir George Gipps in his
despatches to England. Ten years spent in the colony and Woolls
could boast a happy marriage, a suc+cessful vocation, and the
friendship of many influential colonists. Having chosen to live
in the rural environment of Parramatta he soon became involved
in many aspects of the society it afforded, in parti+cular its
religious, educational and civic affairs. It needed only the
birth there on 30 November 1842 of his second child, a daughter
to be called Emily, to make him a serenely happy young man
firmly entrenched within the Parramatta community.
   This sojourn in the bowers of bliss came to an end scarcely
18 months later. In 1844, Woolls's thirtieth year, a sequence
of grievous blows struck him. The first came on the 6 March
when William Hall, his father-in-law, died at Black Town. The
irascible 66-year-old missionary had never been well since
returning from the Bay of Islands in 1825. His asthma had
worsened, and in recent years his general health had
deteriorated. Only the attention of his wife and daughter
managed to preserve life in him. Just over four months later,
on 12 July, the sad event of Hall's death was followed by the
most crushing blow Woolls could have suffered, his wife Dinah,
in her 29th year, died in childbirth. She had been married to
Woolls for less than six years. The
incompatabilities*incompatibilities of their backgrounds and
tem+peraments had never been wholly tested by the rigors of
colonial life and their lives together had not been fully
realised. To compound grief further, barely another four months
later, on 3 November, the baby son William born in these tragic
circumstances also died. Thus the family vault in the cemetery
of St John at Parramatta was to receive its first three tenants
within the short space of eight months.
   With his grief trebled, Woolls confronted an ocean of
despair. Where lesser men would have been overwhelmed, Woolls,
unshaken and purposeful, sheltered within his religious faith
and accepted his ordeal. Some consolation tor his grief was
provided by his two daughters, Harriet aged five and Emily aged
two. He also had the additional distraction at this time of
being involved very deeply in community affairs. In particular
his attention was directed to two matters, one concerning the
election of Parramatta's new District Council, and the other,
a proposal then being discussed, to erect a church in North
Parramatta as a memorial to the Reverend Samuel Marsden.
   During the years following Bourke's departure from New South
Wales the institutions that attempted to regulate social and
moral behaviour in the colony were steadily moving towards the
goals set for them by reformist Whig governments. Bourke's era
had been full of promise, but it was during the administration
of his successor Sir George Gipps that many of those high
promises were carried to per+formance. If some colonists were
left to wonder what benefits had actually been derived during
Bourke's term of office, there were many willing to testify to
his virtues and subscribe cash to have their loyal sentiments
recorded in bronze and stone. On 11 April 1842, Gipps unveiled,
before the largest crowd yet assembled in Sydney, the colony's
first monumental work of art. It was the full length bronze
statue of Sir Richard Bourke executed by the British sculptor
and Royal Academician, E. H. Baily. The heroically posed figure
was revealed on its pedestal and plinth with a 300 word
inscription eulogising the merits of the squire from Limerick
who had held the office of colonial governor for six years.
Woolls had subscribed one guinea to the cash fund established
to commission the monument, and the tribute was erected where
Bourke could survey the town with an aristocratic hauteur not
usually associated with a liberal reformer. Bourke had guided
the colony through difficult years. Not only had the problems
of adjusting from a penal institution to a free society
confronted the community but the pressure of reform had
destroyed many of the ideas traditionally accepted in the
fabric of the social order. Woolls, like many of his fellow
colonists, did not shrink from taking an active part in this
process of change. Some of those who lent their support to new
ideas may have done so reluctantly, but they had the wisdom to
see that change was inevitable.
   During the administration of Gipps the anguish of reform
con+tinued. Woolls stated that he was `not much addicted to
politics', but where Parramatta was concerned he did succumb to
the excitement of the hustings. An example of this occurred in
August 1842 with the determination of the townspeople to give
some form of public recog+nition to one of their more worthy
members. On the 27 August 1842, a testimonial meeting was held
in the Long Room at Mrs Walker's hotel to honour the services
rendered to the colony by James Macarthur. He was a true son of
Parramatta. He had been born there in 1798, the fourth son of
the `great perturbator', John Macarthur. For two years since
1840 he had been a member of the Legislative Council, the
nominated body established in 1823 to advise the colony's
governor. The group of respectable townspeople who met at Mrs
Walker's establishment approved of two resolutions giving
evidence of their high regard for Macarthur. Woolls offered a
third resolution for their consideration, proposing that they
should unite with other like-minded colonists, `to contribute
towards an appro+priate testimonial ... as a mark of the
confidence they have in his [Macarthur's] efforts to obtain a
Representative Legislature for the Colony'. A subscription list
was declared open allowing their esteem to assume a more
tangible form.
   Woolls had met Macarthur when he was a master at The King's
School in 1834 and he maintained a high regard for him.
`Amongst the most enlightened and conscientious of colonial
politicians', he wrote. The Parramatta community felt the
influence of the Macarthur family in its affairs long after
John Macarthur had died, and, as with the family of Samuel
Marsden, Woolls, whilst not a family intimate, was a welcome
member of their group of friends. Woolls respected and admired
the early colonial politician:

     Though I did not ... enter into all his political views, 
     I always regarded him as a man of refined manners good    
     intentions, and an earnest desire to serve his country  
     ... as a speaker however, he was not fluent nor did he     
     always know when to leave off.

   Woolls found Macarthur verbose, which apparently was a
failing he suffered from himself. This fault was remarked upon
in the Sydney Morning Herald when it later carried a report on
the election of the Parramatta representative to the new
Legislative Council. This aus+picious event was extravagantly
described by Woolls as `the dawn of liberty in New South
Wales'. The unopposed candidate for Parra+matta in this first
elected body was Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur, cousin to James,
and, like him, a member of the nominated Legis+lative Council.
Woolls was later to say with pride:

     It is with feelings of satisfaction that I look back upon 
    the honour then assigned to me of seconding the nomination 
    of Mr H. H. Macarthur.

     In the lengthy report of the meeting given in the Sydney
Morning Herald of 15 June 1843, the occasion seems to have been
dominated by Woolls's speech. Not even the proposer Dr Anderson
or the candidate H. H. Macarthur, could equal the verbose
Woolls. In an address, punctuated with `loud cheers', and
`great cheers', he congratulated the assembly on the boon of
being now able to elect duly qualified persons as
representatives. Introducing a Latin quotation, he made
appro+priate observations on the new Act which had established
the elective body and, progressing further, he referred to the
Bill of Rights and the learned words of Judge Blackstone. He
dwelt upon the proposed Dis+trict Council to be elected in
Parramatta and offered a few additional remarks on the
suitability of Mr Macarthur as the new member, sen+timents
which the Sydney Morning Herald said provoked `great cheering
which lasted for some time'.
   Less than 12 months later the election for the first
District Council of Parramatta took place. Woolls was to the
fore again, this time proposing the person of Mr Joseph Kenyon
as a suitable candidate. Once more the Sydney Morning Herald
provided its readers with a full account of the event:

     Mr. W. Woolls, at great length, brought forward the merits 
     of Mr Joseph Kenyon, and towards the close of his address 
     gave a very humorous version of an electioneering placard 
     of which the original was as follows:- `Vote for Joe      
     Kenyon, the friend of long pipes and colonial pigtails,    
     and the tried supporter of the yeomanry and the classes'.

Woolls's humorous anecdotes failed to carry the meeting, and on
a show of hands the day went in favour of other candidates.
   One very controversial public issue which agitated the minds
of the colonists during the early 1840s concerned a proposal to
resume the transportation of British convicts to New South
Wales. Transpor+tation had virtually ceased in August 1840, but
two years later a peti+tion for its renewal aroused
considerable opposition. Woolls added his voice to the anti-
transportation faction, doing so at the risk of offend+ing some
of the parents of boys at his school. There were many in the
colony for whom a resumption of the transport system meant a
supply of cheap labour. With pride Woolls claimed that `in
conjunction with other gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood
[he had] prevented the adoption of a measure which in my
opinion would have reflected eternal disgrace on Parramatta'. 
  Thus Woolls made his gestures in the local affairs of
Parramatta. The events were not momentous ones, but to Woolls
and the members of the small community they were very significant. 
During those years when the exciting potential of self-
government for the colony was be+ing gradually realised, the
individuals who were involved in local events were
participating in the processes of history. Even though their
actions were simple, ephemeral, and of no great magnitude, the
individuals concerned cannot bc dismissed by the historian as
unwor+thy of consideration. A man's days are a concoction of
trifling events, and to be given the record of even one of them
is to be provided with the opportunity to glimpse an aspect of
humanity which may be un+obtainable elsewhere.
   Politics and the affairs of local government, however, were
not for Woolls. His interest in civic matters was never more
than casual. The activity he did undertake was consistent with
the efforts of a respect+able young man settling with his
family into the social pattern of the district in which he
lived. As the proprietor of a school with a good reputation in
the community, it behove him to identify himself with the more
conservative groups. Indeed, it is doubtful whether his
back+ground and temperament would have allowed him to do
otherwise. However, he adopted a much more assertive role on
issues which involved his church and his religious beliefs.
   Woolls's godliness had been demonstrated many times in
print. There was, for example, his concern for the low moral
standards that many of his fellow-colonists displayed. Their
drunkenness, immoral habits and lack of religious awareness
inspired his articles and letters in The Australian Temperance
Magazine. That journal provided him with a pulpit from which he
could freely preach. He offered his `Obser+vations on the
Influence of Intemperance on the Intellectual Faculties and
Moral Character' and submitted his thoughts upon the topic of
`Intemperance a Political Evil'. In these and similar articles
Woolls was expressing his ambition to correct the ills of
society, a worthy but futile gesture. Indeed any sober-minded
person would have been aroused to indignation by the spectacle
within the colony of so many examples of degraded humanity. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G16 </id>

<source> A patchwork heritage: thirteen Australian families </source>

<note> 2019 words </note>

<bl> By Sally White </bl>

<h> Ink in the Blood </h>

<h> THE SYMES - A NEWSPAPER FAMILY </h>

   Every morning from Monday to Saturday some quarter of a
million people buy their copy of the Melbourne Age. Tucked away
across two columns some+where in the broadsheet pages is the
mandatory notice: `Printed and published ... for David Syme &amp; Co.
Limited, at 250 Spencer St., Melbourne. Registered by Australia
Post - publication No VBF 1305 and registered as a News+paper at
the British Post Office.'
   No Syme family member works these days in the five-storey
building which faces west over the railway yards, the docks and
the low, elegant curve of the Westgate Bridge. But the Syme
name remains, a daily reminder of four generations' devotion to
news and opinion.
   David Syme was born on 2 October 1827 in North Berwick,
Scotland. His parents, George Alexander and Jean Syme, had
moved from their native Montrose so that George could take up
the post of parish schoolmaster and session clerk of St Mary's
parish. His sons - James, George, Ebenezer and David - were among
the students in the parish schoolhouse. George was a hard
taskmaster, a man of a disciplined but contrary character.
   David later wrote that his father `had no idea that it was
necessary or desirable that his sons should find any pleasure
in their work, or even in their life'. The children had no time
for play. `Cricket, football and such games ... were not for
us. We had no holidays. We commenced our tasks at seven in the
morning and continued them, with short intervals for meals,
till eight or nine in the evening. There was no relief even on
Sundays.'
   When George Syme died, David was barely seventeen. He had `a
sound English education and some knowledge of Latin', but his
father's teaching had not fitted him for a career. James had a
medical practice near Glasgow, George junior was studying for
the ministry in Aberdeen and Ebenezer, a missionary-student
evangelising throughout the Scottish countryside, was soon to
start as an assistant editor on the Westminster Review. David
did not know what to do.
   During a visit to brother James, he was introduced to the
radical theology of Reverend James Morrison. Morrison's
teachings turned him from the orthodox Calvinism of his father
and David determined to study theology, the Scriptures, Hebrew,
Greek and Arabic. But he was an indifferent linguist and still
spiritually troubled. At nine+teen, he appears to have suffered
a nervous breakdown and was sent to Germany to forget study and
take a water cure.
   After a year he returned to Scotland, health restored but
future still unclear. He took a brief job as a proofreader for
a Glasgow paper and then, in 1851, embarked on the Princess
Royal bound for the goldfields of California via Cape Horn. The
insularity of the American prospectors was not to his liking so
he set sail again, this time for Australia in the Europe, a
poorly provisioned and leaky tub.
   On his arrival in crowded Melbourne he had barely enough
money to pay the 5s charge for a night's sleep on a bed on a
tabletop in a Bourke Street hotel. The next day he set off on
foot for Castlemaine.
   The Victorian diggings were kind to him. He made a fair
living in the colony's main fields: Castlemaine, Bendigo, the
Ovens, Beechworth, Daylesford and Ballarat. But his last mining
venture at Mt Edgerton was less successful. He and his partner
appear to have been victims of inefficient claim-staking. A
protracted battle against the alleged `claim-jumpers' finally
petered out in 1856 and the young Scot began work as a road and
bridge contractor for the Central Roads Board.
   During the claim dispute, David had enlisted the support of
his brother Ebenezer who had followed him to Victoria and
become chief editor of the Age. The paper was some+what
curious. Dependent on the advertising backing of establishment
merchants, it still pitched its editorial voice at the working
man. It was a staunch advocate of miners' rights and, in the
aftermath of Eureka, criticised the government's handling of
the agitation.
   Ebenezer Syme was a member of the experimental workers' co-
operative which bought out Henry and John Cooke, the merchants
who first published the Age on 17 October I854. Within two
years, the co-operative ran into trouble. In June 1856
Ebenezer, backed by several liberal-minded citizens, bought it.
Three months later, David brought a small amount of his capital
into the business and the brothers became joint proprietors.
   He used his mining expertise in compiling the mining news
for a weekly edition of the paper specially prepared for
sending to England. He also probably shouldered much of the
day-to-day administration for Ebenezer was busy campaigning for
the seat of Loddon in the first Legislative Assembly of
Victoria. But the paper's finances were shaky and insufficient
to support both brothers. After about a year, David returned to
road building and, presumably, to the wooing of a young
Yorkshire girl, Annabella Johnson. They were married on 17
August 1858.
   Within months of the marriage David was back at the Age.
Ebenezer had been suffering from tuberculosis for some years
and his condition was worsening. David both managed the paper
and took increasing responsibility for editorial content.
Ebenezer Syme died on 13 March 1860. Five days later David
announced the business would con+tinue under the joint imprint
of E. and D. Syme but would be conducted on behalf of himself,
Ebenezer's widow Jane and her three sons.
   The first decade of David Syme's proprietorship required an
application he had not experienced since boyhood. He
breakfasted at 8, read the papers, rode to town and arrived at
the office at 11 a.m. He looked after financial and production
matters before lunch and then went upstairs to the editorial
department where he briefed the three permanent reporters,
edited contributed material, read overseas newspapers and
corrected proofs. The paper went to press at 2 a.m. and David
Syme called for his horse and rode home. He was rarely in bed
before 3.
   Wisely, he did not seek to change the Age's editorial
direction. Its competitor, the Argus, had become the voice of
the squattocracy but the Age, under David Syme, built on the
firm liberal foundations laid by Ebenezer. The campaign for
land reform in Victoria had already been mounted. David Syme
increased its tempo. The difficulties of establishing local
industry had already been noted. Syme publicised protection as
a solution. The movement for constitutional reform had begun;
universal manhood suffrage and the abolition of property
qualifications for membership of the Legislative Assembly had
been enacted; the Age demanded even greater change.
   The vigour with which Syme prosecuted his causes of land
reform, protection and constitutional change won him few
friends among the establishment. When the squatters exploited
loopholes in the Land Act of 1862 to secure - for a mere 100
individuals - some two-thirds of the 1 million acres sold by
auction under the legislation, the Age published lists of the
squatters' dummies and their parliamentary associates. The
government retaliated by withdrawing government advertising for
the paper and introducing a bill that sought substantial cash
sureties from newspaper publishers.
   The merchants, too, were offended by the Age's stand and
tried several times to organise advertising boycotts. David
Syme reacted to the boycott of the late 1860s by dropping the
cover price of the paper from 3d to 1d. The strategy had worked
earlier when, soon after Ebenezer's death, David halved the
paper's original price of 6d in a successful attempt to boost
circulation. It worked again. Within a few weeks, sales had
doubled from the 3d cir+culation of 5000. By the end of 1868,
they had trebled.
   It was the Age's vociferous advocacy of tariff protection
that particularly antagonised the merchants. While David Syme
later claimed the Age was the first newspaper to espouse it and
he was sometimes called `the father of protection', the real
pioneer was James Harrison of the Geelong Advertiser, who had
publicly advocated protection as early as 1852. The Age did not
enter the battle strongly until the 1860s when the chilly
economic climate pre+disposed people to listen to arguments
aimed at restoring Victoria's prosperity. Gold exports were
down, artisans were finding difficulty in getting regular work
and local industry was sickly.
   The squattocracy and the mercantile class, with their tight
control of the Legislative Council, were enraged by Syme's
calls for reforms which included payment of members of
parliament, a breaking of the Council's power to veto the will
of the lower house and non-interference by the British Colonial
Office in Victoria's domestic affairs.
   The Age's sedulous pursuit of extravagance in govern+ment
and corruption in the places of power did nothing to soothe
Syme's opponents. The paper attacked venal politicians with a
venom that kept libel lawyers busy. But its readers supported
the stand. Public subscription and donations from Age employees
paid most of the legal bills. And, by the end of the century,
the Age was selling 120 000 copies. It was the largest
circulation in the country and considerable even by overseas
standards.
   David Syme earned himself a reputation as an attacking
newspaperman, but he was also concerned with building the
colony. He advocated the introduction of compulsory secular
education and pressed for industrial and agricultural
development. He owned several farming properties and supervised
their running in minute detail and, through the Age and its
associated rural weekly the Leader, championed agricultural
innovation. He sent Alfred Deakin to India in 1890 to report on
irrigation projects and supported the plans of his former
agricultural editor, John Lamont Dow, who, as Minister for
Lands and Agriculture, helped extend settlement of the Mallee
wheatlands and gave rural sub+sidies to help establish dairy
co-operatives.
   The first factories and shops legislation of 1885 resulted
partly from the exposure given in Age articles to the de+mands
of the National Anti-Sweating League and to the details of
exploitation of home workers in the clothing and boot trades.
And the Age, unlike its competitors, drew public attention to
the suffering of the unemployed during the Depression of the
1890s.
   It was during that harsh decade that David Syme's health,
never robust, began to falter. In 1891, the Age became
embroiled in the `Great Railways Case'. It alleged excessive
expenditure on railway construction and laid the blame on
Railways Commissioner Speight. Speight sued the paper for
damages which, had they been awarded, would have ruined Syme
despite his growing resources. The pressures of the case, the
hard depression years and the changing tenor of political life
- which saw the rise of party politics and the push for
federation - all contributed to the lessening of David Syme's
fire and personal in+fluence. But his power was still
sufficient to ensure that all Age-endorsed candidates to the
Federal Convention of 1897 were elected. His involvement in
every issue of the paper never flagged.
   David Syme was definitely a man of the nineteenth century.
He was a boy of ten when Victoria ascended the British throne
and he outlived the Queen by only seven years. He was, the
Sydney Daily Telegraph judged, `in a very real sense an
embodiment of the Spirit of the Time'. Inevitably, the end of
the Victorian era and the birth of the Commonwealth of
Australia saw his reputation as the most powerful man in
Victoria dim. However, when he died on 14 February 1908, most
Victorians still knew him as `The Kingmaker'.
   The year he died, the new Commonwealth decided - much to the
Age's indignation - to build the national capital at Canberra,
inside Sydney's sphere of influence. The Victorian heyday of
Victoria's ascendancy was well over.
    Although David was seen as the personification of the Age,
he drew heavily on the talents of his family. His brother,
George, having also given up the church as a calling, edited
the Leader. Ebenezer's son, Joseph Cowen Syme, became business
manager in 1879, a position he held for twelve years before he
sold his third share in the com+pany for a reported &pound;140 000. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G18 </id>

<source> This Australia - Spring 1986 </source>

<note> 2026 words </note>

<h> Rosa and Dolia </h>

<bl> By June Helmer </bl>

European emigres of the 1920s, Dolia and Rosa Ribush had a profound influence 
on Australian theatre and the arts. June Helmer, who still regularly visits
Rosa, is fascinated by her memories.       

<misc> Rosa </misc>
I am in your green calm room with filtered winter sunshine you
talking listening ab+sorbing weaving a pattern of thoughts as
you have woven the abstract carpet fragile flowered china heavy
furniture paintings into harmony bathed in winter sunshine.
Calm descends deeply distance does not exist the night blots it
out there is sun here a light I shut my eyes and see close my
ears to the voice of the ocean and hear your
voice.
Is it that only these lines will convey my thoughts to you?
When I was a little girl I believed if only I look hard enough
and long into the pool I would see through to the other side of
the world.
Now I know that is true but the pool has grown and all my life
looks back at me.
I am grateful for the image of you.
Here - in France - I am in your green calm room.
Lina.

This was for Rosa Ribush from her friend Lina Bryans, written
in Cassis, July 1953.

Rosa Ribush is the widow of Dolia Ribush. Her story is largely
the story of her friendships. She had a great capacity for
friendship with her en+thusiasm, loyalty and irresistible
charm; her fine critical intellect, limitless compas+sion and
generosity.
  The following story is told of her courage, when, even as a
young girl, she stood up for a friend against terrifying odds.
  Rosa's school friend was crippled and could not walk. The
teacher, a cruel sadistic man, called her to the blackboard to
work out a mathematical problem. Non compliance meant a dreaded
black mark. It was Rosa who rose to explain that it was not
possible and insisted that the teacher dictate the problem so
that the girl could work it out at her desk. When it was
completed it was Rosa who returned the paper to the teacher. To
his thunder+ous question `who said you could do that?' Rosa
replied, `my conscience'. `No one else had dared to intervene.
  Dolia Ribush's story is one of two great talents - for
friendship and for theatre. A.A. Phillips, his close friend and
literary adviser wrote: 
  Both were based on the same qualities - simplicity of spirit, 
  wholehearted+ness in action, sensitiveness of imagination and 
  exhilarating joy in life  ... he had the drive of unflinching 
  enthusiasm and the pull of a magnetic personality. It was these 
  two qualities allied to the inheritance of a great tradition, 
  which made Ribush potentially - I say poten+tially - the greatest 
  influence in the Australian theatre of our lifetime. The core of 
  his influence was his intense belief in the value of theatre and
  the in+tense thoroughness that sprang from that belief. He had
  been bred in the Russian tradition - in which art is lov+ed,
  believed in, respected. It has an essential difference of view
  from the British tradition of theatre.

  Dolia and Rosa loved and really under+stood Australia as few
foreigners can. Dolia was a very bubbling person. But the
bubbles never had a livelier gleam than when he was yarning in
a country pub, or savouring the atmosphere of a Test match, or
appreciating the Australianness of We of the Never Never. And
because theatre was the passion of his life, he wanted to see
the richness which he found in Austra+lian life translated into
a play. Such a play was Douglas Stewart's Ned Kelly and the
climax of Ribush's life was the production of that play in
1944. When he died sud+denly in 1947 he was planning to produce
Vance Palmer's Hail Tomorrow.

  Together the Ribushes made an in+valuable contribution to the
artistic life of Melbourne. Rosa reminisces:
  In the 1930s and 1940s our home was the centre of intense
  intellectual artistic and literary activity. Due to Dolia's
  lovable and irrepressible personality and his effervescence as
  a host everyone came to our home. It was `Open Sun+days' like
  a Salon.

  The mingling of friends was marvel+lous. There were Russian
intellectuals like Aaron Patkin, Australian actors, writers,
publishers, playwrights, pro+ducers, lawyers; Irene Mitchell,
A.A. Phillips, Nettie and Vance Palmer; Frank Dalby Davison, Clem
and Nina Christeson, Betty Rowland, Jean Campbell, Brett
Randall, P.D. Phillips and many others; there were the Yid+dish
writers Melech Ravich and Pin+chas Goldhar; artists Lina
Bryans, Jock Frater, William Dargie and Norman MacGeorge;
musicians Jascha, Tossy and Issy Spivakovsky. There was Czech-
born Edouard Borovansky, `Boro' as he was affectionately
called, and dancers from the Russian ballet companies.
  Every Sunday afternoon began with a rehearsal of plays for
those who shared Dolia's passion for the theatre - always
Irene Mitchell and A.A. Phillips and many others.

Rosa took no part in the Sunday re+hearsals (except for special
occas+ions when she would be called on to use her linguistic
skill to shape a Russian text into a more flowing version).
Like a Chekhovian character she would lie in bed, propped up on
her large, Russian, lace-edged pillows, with a great pile of
books on one side and an inexhaustible supply of chocolate on
the other. She would rise after the rehearsal, when the other
guests would arrive. Looking mar+vellous, with eyes sparkling,
she was the perfect hostess, moving from room to room. She
would lead the conversation, let drop a word or two to
stimulate discus+sion or to provoke passionate argument.
`Russian discussions' they were called, when everybody would
speak at once.
  There were also great parties; parties which were dramatic
productions in  themselves. There were parties with a theme:
a Turkish party; a night in Mont+martre; a Persian party or a
gypsy party; each with the appropriate decor and cos+tumes.
Friends would bring friends and every famous name visiting
Melbourne went to Ribush parties. Dolia would cook and prepare
for two days: serving Russian delicacies and vodka that were
rare in those days. Entertainment was mainly talk and the
exchange of ideas but if the party did not last for two days
Dolia was very disappointed. Melbourne had never known such
parties - they added a new dimension to the social scene.
  Rosa and Dolia Ribush had arrived in Melbourne on Cup Day,
1928. For this Russian Jewish couple, educated in the European
tradition and steeped in Rus+sian culture, it was a puzzling
introduc+tion to their new country to find every+thing closed.
Though Rosa had quite a good knowledge of English (Dolia spoke
none), she found it hard to comprehend a strange culture where
everything stopped for a horse race. Despite this, and their
almost penniless and friendless state, they managed to find a
`very cheap boarding house' and began their new life.
  Dolia was born and educated in the part of Russia which was to
become Latvia. He served as an officer in the Russian army in
Petrograd during World War 1. He saw performances of great
plays, he acquired a profound knowledge of Russian theatrical
tradition, the practice of the Moscow Art Theatre and
Stanislavsky's principles (although he did not attend the
Moscow Art Theatre). He had his first theatrical experience as
an actor and producer in Riga. Although his father approved of
his son's involvement in the theatre he insisted on a practical
trade in case of necessity and so Dolia learned the
confectionery business.
  Rosa was born in Libau, a Russian pro+vincial town, also to
become Latvian. After completing her high school educa+tion,
her family moved to Petrograd where she attended the
University, studying history and philosophy. At the same time
she did compulsory work in the passports office and also
indulged her passion for Russian literature and theatre. Like
most young intellectuals of her time, Rosa was initially
sympathetic to the aims and ideals of the Revolution (although
her father was a Czarist) and she heard the Russian greats,
Trotsky, Lenin, Kerensky and Gorki.
  But life became very harsh in Petrograd; idealism turned to
terrorism and the fami+ly, with the help of an American uncle,
returned to Libau. With the uncle's finan+cial assistance Rosa
then went to Berlin, where she lived within the Russian
com+munity whilst studying languages at the Berlin university.
She began to teach Rus+sian and German and worked at an
anti+quarian bookshop without salary because of her love for
fine books. In 1926 she returned to Libau where she and Dolia
were married.
  There was no future for them in Libau so they decided to
migrate to Australia. They left politics behind - what they
brought to Australia was a rich back+ground of Russian culture.
Dolia, with Rosa's help, began to make sweets (although Rosa
had no training in this field) but as soon as the business
began to prosper she turned to the teaching of Rus+sian and
German. Dolia's aim was to make his chocolate factory
successful so that he would be free to devote more time and
money to the theatre.

Dolia's involvement in theatrical entertainment began in 1932
when he participated, with others from the Russian community,
in an Internation+al Evening of Russian music and drama
arranged by Dr Aaron Patkin. Dolia pro+duced, adapted and acted
in Russian sket+ches which were repeated the following month at
the Comedy Theatre as part of Blockheads in Love arranged for
the In+stitute of Pacific Relations.
  It was to take eight more years before he realised his ambition
to produce a major work. On 7 November 1936, his produc+tion of
Maxim Gorki's Lower Depths opened at the Garrick. It was a
revelation to Melbourne theatre goers - nothing like it had
been seen before. Arnold Haskell; the famous balletomane, who
was in Melbourne with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo wrote:
  In Melbourne to my surprise - I went unwillingly - I saw the
  finest amateur performance of my life ... The play was an
  exceptionally difficult one - Gorki's Lower Depths - the
  producer Dolia*Dolya Ribush ... His cast was drawn from every walk
  of life, and he bullied them and sweated them, after a long
  preliminary study of the play, until they behaved like Gorki's
  unfortunate Rus+sians, looked like them, moved like them,
  reproducing every detail of the Moscow Arts Theatre production
  ... 
  Two years later, in November 1938, Dolia produced Chekhov's 
The Cherry Orchard. Nettie Palmer wrote in her diary:
  Rehearsals of The Cherry Orchard are nearing their end. The
  more I watch them the more my admiration for Dolia Ribush
  grows. He's not merely a pro+ducer he's a creator, keyed up in
  every nerve to bring something living out of a void ... Have
  I ever met anyone to whom Art means so much? His general
  methods may be Stanislavsky's but his delicacy and exuberance
  are his own ... everyone of these rehearsals (and they've
  lasted over a year now) has fill+ed me with excitement, a sense
  of being enriched, a deeper belief in what Art can give to
  Life.

  `Dolia had the music of Russian plays always with him' is how
Irene Mitchell describes Dolia's productions.
  In 1942 Dolia was commissioned by the New Theatre to produce
Distant Point, a play of modern Russia by A. Afinogenev, to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The
cast was a good one, the production, in Dolia's hands,
ex+traordinarily fine. It was artistically a great success but
only the discriminating few enjoyed it and it was a financial
disaster for the New Theatre.
  Dolia then turned his enthusiasm to Australian drama, in
particular to the pro+duction of Douglas Stewart's Ned Kelly.
A.A. Phillips had given him a copy of the play at midnight and
by 8.30 next morn+ing he was telling A.A. Phillips `I must have
it'. He and Arthur Phillips worked on the play, and letter
after letter passed bet+ween them and the author to perfect it
for the stage. A week was spent with Stewart in Sydney revising
the play and after a visit by Dolia, Rosa and Irene Mitchell to
his home in the Blue Mountains, Norman Lindsay drew a complete 
set of stage designs, sets, costumes and characters. 

</sample>
                                                    


<sample><id> G20 </id>

<source> Mavis Singing: the story of an Australian family </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<bl> By Cherry Cordner </bl>

<h> CHAPTER EIGHTEEN </h>

AND SO I WAS.
And so I was sitting under my fig tree, and my world set itself
up around me and became tangible.
  It was the late nineteen-thirties. In official accounts, in
statistics, in history books, the Depression was over. Not in
our street.
  Rather grand furniture you have, someone said. Axminster
car+pets, heavily patterned, with elaborate borders, the
centres loaded with abundant flowers, geometric shapes, in
pinks, golds, silver-greys. The most luxurious available, to
match the art-deco furniture. Curved doors on the Italianate
sideboard, a Florentine mirror above, its elegant oval shape
echoed in the backs of the dining-chairs. Im+ported Belgian
glass on sideboard and dining-table. Dark-blue lounge suite of
plushy velvet with great curved arms. Gold velvet curtains hung
in graceful waves, like a panniered skirt, interspersed with
gold lace drops.
  "Darling, it was a skirt. A ball gown. There I was, just a
girl in an office, and I received an invitation to a ball, a
wonderful, glamorous ball. And I didn't have a dress beautiful
enough to wear. When I was a young girl, an old woman once said
to me, `Never refuse an invita+tion because you don't have the
right clothes. This may be the most wonderful outing of your
life. Always go. Get the clothes somehow. And go anyway. The
men won't notice what you're wearing, and the women don't
matter. Go.'
  "So l bought that dress, and for a night I was a princess.
And when there were no more balls like that for me, why, I
turned it into our sitting-room curtains. Imagine me, in that
gold shimmering skirt. Ah, the music...."
  My parents' bedroom held its breath lest it could not contain
so much furniture. A huge wardrobe, a smaller male counterpart,
both with the ubiquitous curve of glossy veneered doors,
repeated in the dressing-table and bedhead. Generous bevelled
mirrors set at angles so that I could watch diminishing
reflections of myself beckoning from immense distances. Pink-
and-gold teardrop handles on all the doors. The glass top of
the dressing-table covered with a multitude of individual hand-
crocheted doilies.
  "They were all made by your Great-aunt Gert. Poor Gert. I'll
tell you about her another time. But the furniture, dear, was
bought when your father and I were first married, when we had
every+thing."
  All this was part of a world that had shrunk to monochrome.
The house, too small for its contents, was part of the falling
away. Mur+riverie Road, Bondi. Bondi, squalid, faded, falsely
famous. A rented narrow-fronted bungalow. A chipheater in the
bathroom at the end of the back veranda. There was an ice-chest
in the kitchen, and one of my jobs was to listen for the
iceman, for my mother could not hear his bell. It was sixpence
for the block of ice, one block for the weekend, another mid-
week if we could afford it. We used to break small pieces off
the block to suck in summer, until we discovered commercial ice
was full of ammonia.
  Two other cries were heard every week in the street: the
clothes props man with his dispirited horse and mournful wail:
"Clo-o-o-thes pro-o-ps." (We could never help him, because our
old prop never broke.) And the bottle-o, more robust and
cheerful in his call: "Bottle-O-O-O!" He paid twopence a dozen
for bottles, and if I could collect and sell so many, I was
rich. After all, a real ice-cream cone was only a penny.
  There was a knock at the front door. Reaching up with
difficulty I opened it. Standing there was one of those
defeated men, drained face, drained voice, drained hope.
  "Is your mother in, girlie?"
  My mother came from her garden. The two seemed to understand
each other. Why this was so was not explained to me - perhaps
it was presumed I understood, or perhaps I was thought to be
too young.
   "No, there isn't anything for you to do, but come round and
sit in the garden."
  While my mother rattled around in the kitchen, I peered round
the corner at him.
  "Got a play house here under the tree, have you? And the
little pool with the gnomes?" He looked wistfully at such signs
of per+manency. His hands trembled with the strain of many days
searching for work.
  Carefully, I carried the tray out to him. Bread-and-butter
and soup, and afterwards a cup of tea and sixpence in the
saucer. My mother had counted the coins in her purse several
times before she selected the sixpence.
   "Don't just stand and stare at him. It's bad manners," she
whis+pered.
  Later, we took our snack into the garden and she escaped in
her usual fashion. "It was not always like this. When your
father and I were first married, why, we were so prosperous. We
had every+thing. Except a house. I wanted your father to buy a
house, but he always wanted to wait until he could afford
something better. And `until' never came. But take my
grandparents. They lived in a boom time, there in Goolwa...."
  Having grappled unsuccessfully with the concept of time
passing, and these eternally revolving relatives of mine, I
asked my father to explain the present and the past to me. He
did so in his own terms.
   "Imagine a railway journey. You have decided to travel
around all the major centres in the area. As you enter each one
the houses and roads and people become visible. It is as though
they have sprung into existence to communicate with you.
   "You spend some time there, you experience adventures, then
you leave. As the train rushes out of the station and away, it
is as though the town ceases to exist. It has ceased to exist
for you, but it stood before you arrived and it continues on
after you have lost contact with it.
   "So it is with time. Everything has always been and will
always continue to be. With our small egos in our luggage we
travel along as if we were aboard that train. Along the way
certain segments of the journey are illuminated for a brief
time, then blink away into the darkness. Some of us leave with
heavier bags, as we accumulate wis+dom. Others of us, of
course, depart empty-handed."
  Did that explain why sometimes, from the time-train window
one caught glimpses of faces on which not even the expressions
had ever changed - while other faces encouraged speculation on
the extra weight of their luggage?
  Aunt Adelaide, for instance. My Great-aunt Adelaide. The only
one of all those aunts and uncles I had ever seen. I could not
equate the young woman riding on the Goolwa tram with a bag of
tomatoes with the crabbed figure we visited at long intervals.
In the dark sitting-room, overshadowed by the furniture, we
munched biscuits and sipped tea. As a special treat I was
allowed into the pantry to put my hand in the large Arnotts
biscuit tin. I spent most of my time there feeling I had
committed a great sin in being born a child. And surely one day
my fingers would find not a biscuit but a funnel-web spider.
She seemed centuries older than my Grandmother Kate. She was a
witch if I ever saw one, alone in that house in Rose Bay, now
so overgrown with creepers and spiders it was as though she was
a petrified corpse within.
  Her victims, Neilson and Edith, lived on the far side of
Sydney and they too were seen rarely. My parents felt they
could not live up to the expected level of formality; no doubt
Neilson and Edith, in turn, found my parents far too bohemian.
But Neilson visited his mother with undiminished regularity.
One pay packet, two houses, two sets of bills, too little
spinal starch.
  I met my Uncle George. My Great-uncle, George Sprigg.
Clutch+ing at his broken link with us, his wife Gert long dead,
seeking out the only relatives he could claim, borrowing other
people's grand+children. I recall faded Dundreary whiskers, sad
eyes. He seemed immensely tall. But then, I was immensely
short.
  One image of him: dumping his dessert on top of his meat and
eating both together. A remnant of the harsh inland customs of
his youth. Strange. I was never allowed to do this, yet no one
made a comment, or gave him a disapproving glance.
  Another vignette. After my kiss of greeting, he returned to
give a much longer caress to my cousin Jill. Looking over her
head at us all, he explained, `Jill must be my special girl.
Jill has straight hair. We must always take special care of
little girls with straight hair. The world expects that they
should all have curly hair."
  My mother's Ma and Pa, Kate and Walter, were easily
classified. Still bickering, still together, still present at
all our family occasions. They now lived in a small flat in
Rose Bay.
  I never recall seeing my grandfather drinking. 
   "No, he doesn't now," my mother agreed, after I had tried to
compare her stories of the past with the present. "He simply
does not have the money to drink. Your grandma controls the
purse strings now, you see."
  To me, for ever, there is the memory of poetry recitations,
of my grandfather hearing my spelling from my brown spelling-
book. He told me classical myths, showed me the stars in the
night sky, took me for picnics on the beach, and to afternoons
with the archers in the park at Rose Bay. I was the only person
not to judge him, because I was too young to have access to the
evidence. I hope that perhaps it helped to soothe the wounds of
time.
  And Spence. He ricocheted in and out of our lives. Ever the
charm+er, the roving sailor, the affectionate uncle, the loving
son helping his mother with household expenses. No doubt he
would still have liked to wave chamber-pots to shock the
proper, but the responsi+bility of a home and family (he had
married again) somewhat dampened his firecracker exuberance.
  I had not one but two homes, for events in my Aunt Baby's
house were inseparable from my own. My mother and my aunt had
not been parted. A small house in Rose Bay, near my
grandparents, was rented for Baby until she made the decision
to leave Australia. Soon, soon, everyone murmured. Year after
year... Uncle Bill was a figure who appeared at intervals like
an out-of-season Santa Claus, with presents for everyone, and
news of the great technicolour world of the United States. He
brought the latest gadget wizardry. A lemon-squeezer, for
example. All we had ever known were small glass moulds with a
rippled surface on which you impaled the lemon, your success
depending on the strength of your wrist.
  "Are you all watching?" he boomed. "See. A metal lemon-
squeezer. On a stand, You put the glass directly under it. You
put the half-lemon or orange over the inverted cone, you rotate
the handle, down comes the cover and exerts pressure on the
fruit. No strength required, yet behold - complete extraction
of the juice."
   "And then it comes apart for washing." Baby was delighted
with her new toy.
  Surely, we all felt, we had reached the ultimate in
technological achievement .
  The inexorable train pounds ceaselessly over its iron road;
I revisit other moments.
  Holding a packet of Bushells' tea beside her shoulder, Mavis
posed for a photograph. A cheap way of obtaining the services
of a model. Dick used the outline as his guide, and in due
course produced the latest in advertising gimmickry. The whole
window of a grocer's shop could be turned into the panorama of
an Indian tea estate, with an entire community toiling for
Bushells. Cardboard cut-outs of In+dian girl tea-pickers
plucked tea leaves from cardboard cut-out tea plants, the whole
diminishing away to a backdrop of misty tea-covered hills. 
  "See' - she holds me up for a better view.

</sample>




<sample><id> G22 </id>

<source> A riverman's story </source>

<note> 2004 words </note>

<bl> By E M Kelsall </bl>

<h> Chapter 16 </h>

<h> SHARMAN'S SHOW </h>

  Our new home consisted of two rooms with a little hut out the
back, where my brother and I slept. There was just room for a
double bed, shoved hard against a wall papered with Smith's
Weeklys. Many a punch was swung when my brother came home late
from a dance and had to clamber over me to get to his side of
the bed. Mum and the two girls had the other bedroom, and when
Pop was home he had a single bed on one end of the back
verandah. He made this private by tacking hessian to the posts.
The kitchen-dining-lounge room was the biggest room in the
house, but even this became cramped when Mum shifted her old
sideboard into it.
  This sideboard was her pride and joy. Its mirror was
surrounded by shelves and projections of carved wood which
supported all the pretty china that had been broken, down
through the years, and then lovingly stuck together again with
Tarzan's Grip. These looked really beautiful, reflected in the
mirror at night by the kerosene lamp, which had hand-painted
flowers on the bowl.
  Harry, one of the men Pop often worked with in the bush,
moved in next door with his family. They were going through
tough times too, but Harry had an old battered Chevrolet truck
with which he was often able to make a few bob.
  Another mate of theirs named Viv had a Chrysler Plymouth, so
Pop, Harry and Viv approached the manager of the Murray River
Sawmills for a contract cutting wood for the PS Adelaide. The
manager obliged, but stipulated that the wood had to be landed
in an area below Barmah, as this was just about where the
steaming wood loaded on the Adelaide at Echuca would cut out.
  The three battlers piled into the Plymouth and went out to
see what they could find in the way of three or four hundred
ton of wood. They returned home in high glee, for the owner of
Madowla Station and Orange Grove had given them permission to
cut all redgum on the ground for a threepence a ton royalty.
They had further luck when a gang of Italians who had the right
to all the box wood told them they could cut all the box timber
left behind because it would he too thin for footblocks.
  I went with them because I had nothing else to do and worked
like*live a slave for the three of them. I received many
compliments on how well I could swing an axe, but that's all I
did receive - not a penny of pay.
  I decided I'd make a couple of bob by catching crayfish in
the Goulburn River, which we crossed each day at Stewart's
Bridge on the way to work. On the way home we lifted the nets
to find a catch of four very large crays, but discovered we had
nothing to put them in. `Throw the bastards back in', said
Harry. `Not on your life', I said. `They'd be worth two bob.'
So Viv solved the problem by putting them tail-first in the
huge pockets on the inside of each door in the car.
  When we got home we found out it wasn't such a good idea,
because we were confronted by powerful claws waving around.
Harry said, `C'mon Mick, you grab one claw, I grab the other.'
Then, in a moment of doubt, he added, `But don't you miss'. I
did miss, but the crayfish didn't. It swung its free claw over
and clamped on to one of Harry's fingers.
  His anguished screams caused blinds to be pulled back. but in
a conservative little town like Moama no one would venture out
even if a murder was taking place. Harry's profanity was
getting him nowhere so he began pleading with us to `Poke your
finger in his eyes'. Gingerly we tried this but the cray seemed
to have the ability to retract his telescopic eyes. Then Viv
had an inspiration. He grabbed a pair of pliers from the
toolbox and plunged into the door pocket to where he thought
the cray's claw was. Feeling them glide onto an object, he
closed them with all his strength and twisted his wrist. Harry
let out a wild shriek and subsided to the ground sobbing with
the cray still attached to him.
  Pop stomped the cray to death, and only then did Viv discover
it was the top end of Harry's finger that he was trying to
break off. When he recovered enough Harry promised to `do' for
me by kicking me to death, but I overcame this by taking off
for home, giggling like a schoolgirl.
  The next morning Harry had a dreadfully mangled finger, an
injury that would have kept most men away from work. But he
turned up because he knew none of us could drive the truck.
  A few mornings later, as we came in sight of our half-loaded
truck, Harry remarked. `The Dagos are late gittin' out this
morning'. Then he added, `They must be fightin', for they're
standin' apart'.
  One group of four cutters was standing at their campfire, one
with a double-barrelled gun. The two brothers who ran the
business, both huge men, were standing alongside our truck and
when Viv stopped the car they moved toward it. Pop and Harry,
who were sitting on the side nearest them, opened their
windows and when they did both Italians ran at the car
screaming. `I chop you bloody neck off'. They were leaping with
rage with their hands slipping up and down the handles of our
axes.
  I thought Pop and Harry were goners, and couldn't help
feeling glad I was on the other side of the car. Pop was the
coolest in a crisis and began talking calmly, saying, `Cool
down a bit, mate. Let's know what's eatin' you.' Gradually, in
very excited tones they told what was `eatin'' them. They had
kept the wood around the camp for any wet days that occurred,
but we had begun to cut it.
  With the axes and gun in mind we humbly apologised, but the
Italians were unforgiving. They cancelled our previous
arrange+ment whereby we cut any box wood they left behind.
  As the Italians put down the axes and walked back to the fire
Harry began to frantically search the seat and floor of the
car. He couldn't find what he was looking for and was very
disturbed when he told us, `My Gawd, I've swallowed a bloody
lighted cigarette, holder an' all'. He must have, for we never
found it.
  There was no future without the box wood, so we decided to
take a chance and finish off the hundred odd ton by moving
illegally into the forest and cutting without a permit. This
saved us two pounds, which we didn't have anyhow.
  We were driving through the forest in thick fog early the
next morning when Harry frightened the hell out of us by
screaming `Look out!'. Viv did look out, just in time to bring
the car to a halt with its front wheels a few inches away from
a twelve-foot drop into a creek. Viv voiced what we were all
thinking when he said `I think this job's got a jinx on it'. In
similar conditions the next morning, we thought we were
following our tracks out from the night before, but in reality
they were the tracks we'd made in the morning. We all woke up
what was happening too late, and the front wheels went over the
edge. The chassis dug itself into the clay bank and there we
sat, too frightened to move in case the lot went over. Slowly
the two men in the front seat edged out, then hung on the rear
of the car while Pop and I made our exit.
  `Oh Gorblimey, I can't take much more of this', said Harry.
`We're gonna cop it for sure. Look,' he went on, `Me bloody
finger is broken and poisoned, I got a bloody cigarette holder
caught sideways in me back passage, and if I drop off ter sleep
of a night I dream me bloody head's rollin' around the floor of
the car after it's been chopped off by a big Dago. And with me
own axe, too!'
  We never took any notice of his moans, for blokes like Harry
could put you on. If you didn't wake up to them, as Unc once
put it, they'd kid you up country without a swag.
  We cut the amount of wood the boss required, without getting
caught cutting without a licence, but the mill held back the
threepence a ton royalty for the Madowla owners, which meant
they got one pound, five shillings for nothing. What made it
worse was the fact that not a word could be said about it
without us putting our own weights up.
  After they'd cashed their cheque they went to the local and
had a few. Perhaps that's why Harry called me over to the fence
and told me, `You've been a good poor bugger. Here's two bob.
Go to the dance tonight.' The old-time dance held at the Echuca
Fire Station was one bright spot in otherwise dull weeks, where
people of all ages gathered on the Saturday night and enjoyed
themselves.
  There was rarely any misbehaviour in the hall, for no drunks
were admitted, and when a difference of opinion occurred
between men it was usually settled outside. They came from as
far afield as Kyabram - farmers, farmhands, timber workers,
drovers, and an odd businessman. One of the latter was infamous
among the girls. He was pot-bellied and strong as an ox, but
just couldn't dance without getting an erection.
  One unsuspecting young woman accepted his invitation to
dance, and when it was over, returned red-faced, to her seat
alongside my sister. She whispered to her, `That was awful. He
pulled me in close, and after that my feet never got within six
inches of the floor.' Gradually his reputation became known and
none of the girls would dance with him.
  Midweek dances were sometimes held at places like Koyuga,
Moama and Picola. The promoters of the dances - usually tennis,
football and cricket clubs - would hire a furniture van to
take a crowd from Echuca. The van belonged to `Toots', who
stood for no hanky-panky and had a `not wanted on the voyage'
list of people banned from his van.
  At Koyuga one night a dance was held to help raise funds for
a beauty queen. Entries for the `Monte Carlo' were sixpence a
head, and the prize was a small box of chocolates each to the
winning couple. My partner and I won it. I gave mine back for
a lucky spot dance and won it again. All in all I got the prize
three or four times, until the boys started shouting, `Slug up'
(fraud).
  Every now and then one could see a couple slip out of the
hall. On this occasion a young farmer yelled out across the
hall to a girl he'd been dancing with, `Yer better come out
after me. It won't look as bad then.'
  At Moama School of Arts dances, the slipping out was by the
men to the pub across the road. While the police kept a close
watch on the boys who gathered in the entrance hall they never
seemed to see the stream of blokes heading across the road. A
visitor to the dance from Echuca, one of the most inoffensive
of chaps, was standing talking to his mate when he was grabbed
by the collar and the seat of the pants and bundled off to the
lock+up. Old `Fisheyes' had given the nod in his general
direction and a zealous young cop grabbed the wrong bloke. He
proved in court he didn't commit whatever offence it was, and
the case was dismissed.

</sample>



<sample><id> G23 </id>

<source> The pleasure of their company </source>

<note> 2031 words </note>

<bl> By Alister Kershaw </bl>

<h> George Gribble </h>

NOW how old would George have been when we first met? Not very
much over sixty, as nearly as I can calculate. He was in
excellent physical shape, he walked briskly, he held himself
well. Intellectually, too, you might say, he held himself well.
He should have given the impression of being rather less than
his age. However, he didn't. On the contrary. I'm not sure why
this should have been so. Was it perhaps because he spoke with
the intonation and occasionally in the idiom of an upper-class
Edwardian? Or was it because of a certain aristocratic languor
in his manner, or because he was accustomed to express himself
in a meandering fashion which might almost have been mistaken
for a symptom of senescence? Or because he was often vague to
the point of seeming to exist on the astral plane? Whatever the
reason, there's no denying that, in the initial stages of one's
acquaintance with him, he struck one as being distinctly older
than he was.
  One very soon got over this misapprehension. A live+lier
fellow was never born. He was ready to talk until any hour of
the night - you couldn't stop him talking until any hour of
the night - and his conversation was at once erudite and
extremely droll. He was remark+ably receptive to whatever was
new and radical in the arts, he had none of the tetchy
prejudices or morose nostalgia of the elderly. He lived very
much in the present.
  His physical stamina was frightening. On one of his birthdays
- it must have been his seventieth, I fancy - my friend
Deasey and I took him to dinner. George's circumstances were
such that he was rarely able to treat himself to a restaurant
meal. This birthday, we felt, was an event which justified,
which indeed demanded, a certain excess. We drank two or three
aperitifs, we drank two or three bottles of wine, we had cognac
with our coffee. From the restaurant we went to one of the
cafes on the Boulevard Montpar+nasse and ordered champagne.
George had drunk level with us at the restaurant; he now
proceeded to leave us well behind. We ordered another bottle
but we were becoming uneasy. Surely George was forgetting his
venerable age? It was highly imprudent of him to drink as if he
were a youngster like ourselves. We didn't want the festivities
marred by having him keel over with a heart attack.   
  By the time we had finished the second bottle of champagne, 
Deasey and I were ready to call it a day. Anyway, the cafe was 
about to close.
  "So soon?" said George wistfully. "It seems a pity to break
up such an interesting conversation. Isn't there anywhere...?"
  "Well, it's about three o'clock, George. The only places that
are open now are the nightclubs."
  "Nightclubs! Good heavens, it must be thirty or forty years
since I ... Or quite possibly more ..."
  We went to a nightclub. It was daylight when we left George
and stumbled towards our beds.
  Within minutes, it seemed, I was awakened by a knock at the
door. I had the ugliest hangover since the discovery of
fermentation. I could hardly see, I could hardly speak. I
croaked something inarticulate. The door opened. It was George.
He had drunk far more than I and he was at least forty years
older. I looked at him blearily. He was immaculate and full of
bounce.
  "Good God! Did I wake you up?" he said on a note that
conveyed a mild disapproval of such sluggardly habits. "I never
dreamed you'd still be in bed. It's nearly ten o'clock. I just
dropped in to thank you for that invigorating evening."
  Invigorating? What a nerve! That was the only time I ever
hated George.
  Presumably nobody these days has heard of him. Not many
people had heard of him when he and I met in 1947 - nor, if it
comes to that, before then. He wrote plays. They were
characterized by a bland disregard for current taste, as though
Maugham and Coward had never happened, but in their own way
they were pretty good. Marie Tempest thought well enough of his
Masque of Venice to play the lead in it. George could
reasonably have expected to enjoy a modest success in the
theatre.
  The trouble was that he had the most abominable luck. As soon
as a play of his was accepted for produc+tion, there'd be a war
or a general strike or some similar calamity. I wouldn't be in
the least surprised to discover that the Wall Street crash only
occurred because some foolhardy American producer had taken one
of George's plays.
  Through all these mishaps and disappointments, George went on
living his life (it was not always clear how) with the utmost
insouciance, as though he had not noticed his ill fortune or
had not thought it suffi+ciently interesting to merit his
attention. His complete unawareness of the tawdry realities of
everyday exist+ence, his grandiose vagueness, were what the
obituary writers would have called an inspiration to all who
knew him.
  "Y-es, y-es," he said one day when telling me some anecdote
of his youth, "I remember going to the office - "
  "An office?" I interrupted in astonishment, "you, George, you
in an office? But what on earth were you doing in this office?"
  "Oh," replied George with a negligent wave of the hand,
"work, you know, and things of that kind."
  Was there ever a more patrician dismissal of the fatuous and
febrile activity that goes on in offices?
  Unlike most people, I knew something of George before our
paths actually crossed, but only because Richard had talked
about him in his autobiography. Pound, Marinetti, D.H.
Lawrence, Eliot, Herbert Read, H.D., Yeats and loads of other
notables crop up in Richard's memoirs. Somehow, it was the
obscure George who, as I read Richard's account of him, 
pro+voked in me the keenest curiosity.

  One lovely autumn day in Rome (Richard recalled), the gun and
  bells announced noon; and I put away work for the day. At that
  moment, enter George. No, he wouldn't sit down, he was in a
  hurry, he merely wanted to ask ... I forget what. I was engaged
  in removing the oil from the top of a wine-flask for lunch,
  which was being prepared over a charcoal fire. I was conceited
  about this wine, and insisted that George must taste it.
  Protesting that he must leave at once, he sat down on the edge
  of a chair and took a glass. Con+versation started. George grew
  interested, and dis+coursed with knowledge and eloquence,
  gradually and unconsciously settling himself more comfortably
  in his chair. I refilled his glass in spite of his fainter
  clamours that he must go. Presently lunch was put on the table.
  Starting to his feet, George said he must go. This, we said,
  was ridiculous. He had to have lunch somewhere, and how could
  he get it more quickly than when it was served under his nose?
  Still protesting, George shared our frugal meal, and finally
  left about four o'clock. Only later did we discover from the
  reproaches of his wife that George was supposed all that time or
  part of it to be interviewing the Pope or the Prefect of Rome
  or some other bigwig for the American paper whereof George was
  supposed to be Rome correspondent.
  But what wisdom! George was bound to lose the job, so why not
  lose it pleasantly and instructively?

  Such was the delightful sport (in the entomological sense of
the word) who came to visit Richard during the first summer I
spent at the Villa Aucassin. After Richard's depiction of him,
I expected someone rather farouche, an ageing Bohemian. He was
anything but that. He was positively spruce in appearance,
although his clothes were well worn; his shoes were worn, too,
but they were beautifully polished, his hair was neatly cut,
his thin distinguished face impeccably shaved. With our
espadrilles, blue cotton trousers and open-necked shirts,
Richard and I were lamentably down-at-heel by comparison.
  Nobody could have looked more invincibly English than George
although in fact his mother had been Ger+man and he himself,
married to a Frenchwoman, had spent most of his adult life in
France and Italy. If I remember correctly, he had also - with
exemplary lack of success - attended universities in Germany
and the United States as well as in England. He was the most
complete cosmopolitan I ever encountered.
  Apparently he always had been. Immured at one point in his
career in some ghastly English public school, he soon reached
the conclusion ("They would play games all the time") that
enough was enough. Abruptly, at the age of fifteen, with less
fuss than his contemporaries would have made about a journey
from Piccadilly to Wimbledon, and in the middle, as it might
be, of the Michaelmas term, George took off for Ger+many.
"D'you know," he told me, "d'you know, when I got off the train
in - where was it? Trier? Nurem+berg? - anyway, I stepped
right into a weinfest just outside the station. You can't
imagine how reviving it was after having had to swallow so much
ginger-pop."
  George would certainly not have narrated his little story
half as coherently as this. He spoke English, Ger+man, French
and Italian with equal ease, but he could not always make up
his mind which of the languages he ought to be speaking. As a
consequence he would not infrequently switch capriciously from
one to another in midsentence:
  "<note>Foreign words,</note> my dear fellow, <note>foreign words</note> who recently 
published <note>foreign words</note>  ...?"
  On other occasions, this linguistic indecision of George's
would manifest itself differently. He would manage to limit
himself to one language at a time but, as far as his
interlocutor was concerned, it would in+variably be the wrong
one:
  "<note>Foreign words</note>?"
  "I'm sorry, George, but the only word I understood was `Sartre'."
  "<note>Foreign words</note>."
  "George, I don't know Italian either."
  "<note>Foreign words</note> opinion ..."
  "Well, of course, we can always talk French if you insist,
but wouldn't it be more sensible to stick to English?"
  "Yes, naturally, naturally, I can't for the life of me think
why ..."
  Really, one had to admire George's ability to create what are
now called communication gaps. Even when he contrived to speak
a single language, and even when that language was the right
one, he had a most disconcerting propensity to omit the one
word which would have made his meaning altogether clear, while
further compounding the listener's bewilderment by laying a
marked stress on other words where no par+ticular emphasis was
required.
  In a letter recounting a luncheon to which he had taken him,
Richard admirably rendered this aspect of George's verbal
eccentricity. "The old George," Richard reported, "chirruped
over his cups and was mightily content. On the other hand, I
must avow to you in secret that some of his discourses somewhat
baffle me. What is one to make of such statements as this?

  `Oh, ye-es, ye-es, of course - reminds me of something that
  happened - good many years ago now - mos' straw'ny affair -
  never really cleared up - matter of fact, he was a very
  distant cousin of mine - least, so my sisters said - you
  never know - can't remember his name of course - Yvette would
  know - it was before Guy - she was going to have a baby and
  so on - so forth - made a great impression on her - can't
  remember what he did - perhaps he - no, no - anyway,
  something he ought not to have done - it was in the papers -
  can't remember which ones - but you must remember - many
  important people involved - friends of Prince of Wales - ye-
  es, ye-es - so on - so forth - made 'normous impression on
  me - recollect it all perfectly ... '

Difficult as it often was to understand George's elliptical and polyglot conversation (or conceivably in part because of the difficulty) one couldn't have wished for a pleasanter man with whom to pass an evening.

</sample>


<sample><id> G24 </id>

<source> Memory be green: an autobiography </source>

<note> 2024 words</note>

<bl> By Connie Miller </bl>

<h> Chapter Nine </h>

Even in the quiet of home, with Mum and Dad, I still considered
I was making the right move in going to Melbourne. I thought
things out carefully and had to accept that by now there was
little chance of my marrying and having children. Men who had
been really interested in me had been too young or too old, or
their education had been so much less than mine that I hadn't
dared encourage their friendship. And last of all there had
been Wally, a married man. It had left me with mixed emotions
of shame, and sadness, and an unpleasant bitterness.
     During early March I flew to Victoria (on a DC 3 piloted
by Captain Harry Baker, who by then had an Australia-wide
reputation as a skilful pilot), and at Melbourne's Victoria
Barracks I made contact with Naval Headquarters. Through the
Director of Naval Intelligence I was assured of a position in
his department, beginning in April.
     But, not long afterwards, the delight of knowing that was
embittered. Edna Kersten and her small daughter Lee, then a
very pretty five-year-old with her father's dark hair and dark
amber eyes, were staying in Melbourne. Edna's news was tragic.
In the May of 1942 while flying a twin-engined Hudson medium
bomber, Ken had disappeared over the Island of Ambon. He was
the first of several of our friends lost during those war-torn
years.
     Back in Western Australia I called at the Education
Department to argue my way free from the teaching profession.
The Department had moved from the old Treasury Buildings to
Government House Ballroom across the Terrace; American military
authorities were in the former place.
     I packed a few special books, my electric sewing machine,
my radio and clothes in a trunk, and once again set out for the
east. In those days there were changes of train at Kalgoorlie,
Port Pirie and Adelaide because of the changes in railway
gauge. But by 1943 I was quite familiar with the long train
journey between Perth and Melbourne. The Navy Office had booked
me in at the Queen's Hotel on Toorak Road; within days I had
located a small flat in Henry Street, off St Kilda Road.

And so, early in April 1943, I walked through the massive,
blue+stone gateway of Melbourne's Victoria Barracks. My
feelings were naturally a little mixed. I had given up a well-
paid position in a state I knew well, for a wartime job where
I had very little idea of what I was expected to do, and where
I knew no one.
     But any secret dreams I may have had about a Mata Hari
existence or dangerous secret service missions were soon
forgotten. The work was more clerical, I suppose, than anything
else. And recalling the huge posters IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY
NECESSARY? and DON'T TALK, THE ENEMY LISTENS! on practically
every railway station between Perth and Melbourne, I wondered
had my journey been necessary? And had I talked too volubly to
the young man with a slightly foreign accent who had bought me
coffee at Ballarat? Floating about in my mind there were a few
doubts about the step I had taken.
     But life in wartime Melbourne quickly resolved itself into
a highly coloured and never-to-be-forgotten experience. My
flat, one of a group of four on a short street just across Punt
Road, appealed to me because of its price and its nearness to
the Barracks. The adjacent but bigger flat housed half a dozen
WAAFs. Below me lived a gaunt, elderly gentleman and his
equally elderly, but friendly de facto wife. Below the WAAFs
lived a married couple with (to my intense delight) two pre-
school children. Since the man was one of General Blamey's
drivers, we often had a gleaming black Rolls Royce car on the
street outside the flats.
     This in no way hindered operations conducted in a nearby
laneway off Henry Street. There, in a dilapidated tin shed, it
was possible to buy black market beer at (I was told) five
shillings and sixpence a bottle. The shed appeared to be busy
at all hours; as I passed the lane I sometimes heard loud
arguments in progress. Once, when a savage fight erupted
between Australian and American servicemen, police hurried in
with their batons. From then onwards the vice squad
occasionally patrolled the area.
     From the Barracks itself other forms of entertainment
presented themselves. I worked in the Cypher Room on the third
floor of a new brick building that faced Coventry Street, and
which housed navy and air force personnel. From our room, in
particular, we had grandstand views of the many St Kilda Road
activities. The annual Anzac Day processions, all colour and
sound and majesty, proceeded up the broad walk to the Shrine of
Remembrance. There were the even more colourful Communist
processions, their bands thumping out `The International' and
`The Red Flag'. We watched the solemn and incredibly long
cortege of that grand old soldier, Sir Talbot Hobbs.
     At times we had visits from VlPs. The Mountbattens came to
visit us, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Then, to make sure that we
underlings behaved with due decorum, notices were promulgated,
forbidding `persons or parts of persons to be protruded
through, in, or out of doors or windows, or in corridors while
the visitors were moving about near us. And rather than suffer
torture or death at dawn (we were never informed of the
penalty) we obeyed the orders.
     One day, while the English officers of the Pacific Fleet
were with us, a tall, fair, good-looking young lieutenant
breasted our room's counter and blessed us with smiles his
beard couldn't hide. He was Prince Phillip of Greece and
Denmark, later to become the husband of our present Queen.
     My work was interesting. A signal for simple decoding came
in to us as a page of five-figure numbers in orderly columns.
Briefly the process of decoding was a sort of perverted
subtraction from another set of numbers held in the room. The
key to success lay in starting off correctly. After that, care
rather than skill was all you needed. Each number in the
voluminous code books had two meanings, one purely a vocabulary
meaning, the other geographical. It remained with the decoder
to decide which meaning was intended. We smiled when a beginner
used a vocabulary meaning when she should have used the
geographical. A message came in concerning a naval commander
who was known to be a strict teetotaller. It was decoded as:
`Arriving tight, 190030Z.' It should have read: `Arriving
Sydney, 190030Z.' The 190030Z indicated the nineteenth day of
the month, 10.30 a.m.
     Speed in decoding came quickly and it was surprising how
many of the numbers and answers one could memorise. But since
the tables were altered every month, and the code books
frequently, there was little to be gained by memorising.
     The reverse of the process, coding and cyphering, began
with written messages (signals) which were turned into code by
experienced workers. A young lieutenant who later attained very
high ranking wrongly coded a signal calling a certain ship back
to Port Melbourne. It went out to all ships in the same area as
the wanted one. The error was discovered only after a fleet of
vessels began crowding into Hobson's Bay, and a VIP had asked
why.
     Only too frequently the signals came in `corrupt'. Faulty
transmission or frenzied coding had thrown them out. Then you
had to tackle them with a level head, a great deal of
ingenuity, and a fund of patience. Sometimes, after trying for
an hour or more to untangle a signal, we would have to flash
back to the ship or station a message stating, `Code numbers so
and so corrupt. Please repeat.'
     According to their degree of secrecy messages were
labelled Secret; Most Secret; Hush, Most Secret; and Top
Secret. Then, most important and most secret of all, Bigot! Top
Secrets and Bigots were always done in seclusion and handed to
the OIC immediately upon completion.
     Really alarmed when an English officer of the Pacific
Fleet read over my shoulder a Top Secret I was working on, I
questioned him.
    `My dear girl,' he snapped resentfully, `don't you realise
I've been Bigoted for years?'
     There were highlights during those years at the Barracks,
some humorous, some an escape from the stupidity of war, others
fraught with sadness. When Italy capitulated I decyphered the
message we received. I worked over the signal which, word by
word, broke the news, directed Italian ships to various ports
and informed our own navies of action to be taken. Then, often,
a Top Secret message disclosed action to our north, and at the
end of the signal would come the list of the wounded and dead.
My own brother was up there, and Charles Miller, and several
men whom I'd known for many years. It was then agony for me and
for some of the older men with us whose sons could have taken
part in the action. One pre-dawn morning unidentified planes
were reported over Perth. And on the lighter side I recall a
signal forbidding all sailors to leave their trains at
Kalgoorlie - Kalgoorlie possessed numerous hotels.
     Midnight watch will always be a memorable part of my
wartime job. We worked in three watches; the most ordinary one
was morning watch when we worked from 8.30 a.m. till 3.30 p.m.
Afternoon watch began at 3.30 and ended at 10.30. Midnight
watch began at 11 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. At first, setting
out for work just as everyone else was on the way home after a
night's entertainment was rather exciting. Tram passengers
looked at us with a certain amount of curiosity. And then, to
be going home when people were taking in their bottles of milk,
when big, shaggy Clydesdales, their lorries still stacked with
morning papers, were clip-clopping along the streets, did seem
to remind you that your work was important.
     Often, going home during mid-winter, I would cut across
the park opposite the Barracks and into the Botanical Gardens
just to see them in their early-morning white-frosted
loveliness. Twice, when a friendly horse-trainer happened to be
going my way, I had a lift home on a trotting spider. One
morning, having been let out early, I found St Kilda Road being
torn up for repairs. And there, visible beneath the shreds of
bitumen, were blocks of solid, good Western Australian jarrah!
     But there were less happy aspects of midnight watch.
During the war years all windows had to be blacked out at
night. Air-conditioning at the Barracks was unheard of, and
almost everyone in the big Cypher Room smoked. The resultant
smoke haze and odour would have to be experienced to be
believed. Small wonder that by four or five in the morning we
all longed for daylight when we could remove the blackout
shutters and fling up the windows.
     Sometimes messages came in from the Barracks canteen to
say that cigarettes were available. Once it was tinned butter,
without coupons. Sometimes it was chocolates. We gladly gave up
an entire lunch hour or tea break to queue for luxuries such as
those. In those bleak days everyone in Melbourne was hungry for
chocolates. Hoadley's factory was close to the Barracks on
Coventry Street, and when word leaked out that they'd
despatched a carton of Violet Crumbles to our nearest
delicatessen, we raced down to it as soon as possible. Now and
then Hilliers, on Bourke Street, had chocolates for sale. We
moved heaven and earth to join their queues. I used to send a
box of their sweets home to Mum and Dad as often as I could.

Many of my female workmates lived in `residentials' near the
Barracks, mostly old houses with their rooms divided up into
smaller rooms (by plywood partitions), each with a minute gas
ring and a shelf for food storage. In these cubbies groups of friends spent many convivial evenings after afternoon watch, the hilarity and talk fuelled with wartime coffee and butterless toast spread with ersatz jam.

</sample>



<sample><id> G25 </id>

<source> The lotus and the rose: an Anglo-Indian story </source>

<note> 2001 words </note>

<bl> By Gloria Jean Moore </bl>

<h> Chapter 6 </h>

<h> Gloria Jean Thomson Moore, born 1935 (Part One) </h>

"We were egalitarian. We had no capitalists."

  In the previous chapters you have read of the lives of an older gener+ation,
and of their elders. What follows is my view of some of them (those I knew
well). I also reflect the changing face of India and the crossroads Anglo
Indians faced in the last decades of the Raj.
  My early years in India from my birth in 1935 until we left the country
in 1948 were indelible. India was always home. These twelve years were the
last, the death throes, of the largest empire in world history - the British
Raj. For a period of forty years, from the end of the Mutiny until the
beginning of the twentieth century, that empire had gone forward more or
less unchallenged. By the time I was born the challenge had gathered like
storm clouds which were ready to break.
  Reading the reports of administrators of the empire on the eve of its
dissolution, it seems clear they justified their continued presence by
point+ing to the endemic communal violence, usually sectarian, among the
Indian peoples. The Hindu-Muslim question with its bloody conflict loomed
largest as a serious dilemma. If the British left would all order disintegrate?
Could the Indians run the country? The passions of religious strife seemed
to weaken the case of Gandhi and Nehru and the Congress for Home Rule.
  A noble man, the wartime Viceroy Wavell was ready to begin negotia+tions
to hand over power as early as 1943, once his "war machine" on the Eastern
Front with Japan was going well. But apparently Churchill refused to accept
this advice. The Congress leaders were jailed. Mass killings resulted, in
fearful riots among the Indian population. Wavell became one of the most
disliked of Viceroys by the Indians, gratuitously. Churchill represented
the "old guard", who vowed never to surrender to India. They knew, when
it went the power and glory of the British Empire would go with it. More
than anyone, they knew it was their fairest Jewel in the Crown.
  If the British saw themselves as impartial in the quarrel between the
two main groups of Hindus and Muslims, they could hardly be impartial when
the two main groups turned their combined forces against the Raj. The passion
of any conflict is consuming, obscures other more human con+cerns, lingers
for years as charge and countercharge, justification and challenge. Locked
in this conflict for three decades, if anything it was the other minorities
who were better placed to see both sides of the quarrel and when necessary
to mediate on the levels where history is really made, at the level of the
average man and woman in everyday life.
  There may have been many Anglo Indians of the older generation who saw
themselves as altogether English, and passed into that group. Only the rarest
had completely joined the Indian block, for the Indian hierarchies were
self-contained and exclusive. After hundreds of years of life in the 
subcontinent, the core of Anglo Indians stood apart from the British and
Indian groups in a place of their own. Human rights were barely vaunted
at the time. The horrors of Belsen and Auschwitz were yet to be discovered.
The rights of the individual and of minorities were very fragile.
  The Anglo Indian never shared the dedicated, implacable passion of the
Indian Congress supporter against the Raj or any of its British people.
Most could remember a European male ancestor - whole families often still
resembled this strain. There were conservatives who looked askance on Indian
aspirations as "radical", "dangerous", "violent". There were radi+cals who
sympathised with this evidence of Indian political development, who perceived
that the Indians were growing aware politically, and refused to be treated
like so many children. There were many varying opinions.
  Amidst all the strife there were certainly Anglo Indians who could have
been mistaken for Indians by some trigger happy British soldier and there
were others who looked so completely English, that a mob might have attacked
them.
  In microcosm in many homes more universal questions were inflamed by the
strife in the streets, and in the struggle for power. As India was partitioned,
so families were sometimes (if much more subtly) divided in sympathy and
resolve. Personal differences were sometimes tinged with the divisions of
the larger struggle.
  The Anglo Indian could listen to the Indian, moderate passion and keep
sympathy for both - Indian and English. No Anglo Indian was for instance,
a Hindu or Muslim locked in conflict with what was perceived as a foreign
religion. Even nominally, Anglo Indians belonged with the Chris+tian group.
Picture their dilemma when they saw Indians shot down in demonstrations.
They were then accused by cultured Indians of being hypocrites - Christians
in league with rulers who used violence against Indian nationalism. Those
Anglo Indians and Indian Christians who loved the churches and saw them
as a civilising influence in world history resented most deeply the divisions
along the "colour" line and the "race" line, as all Christians became
identified in the Indian mind with imperialist oppressors. It was Gandhi
who was to use the ideal of non-violence, a Christian virtue, as his best
weapon.
  This was the political scene, as I grew up. It became as much a reality
as the first appreciation of nature, and the first lessons learned. My father
brought it into the house. He and his friends discussed every aspect of
the rising nationalism and the waning empire. Oppressed for years by petty
men from overseas who could scarcely write a letter, he identified with
the aspirations of people more oppressed than he was. He worked in the 
rail+ways with Indians who loved him. Yet he was not Indian and disliked caste
and Hinduism.
  My father worked on the assembly of the giant engines for the East Indian
Railways at Jamalpur: by 1890 already 10,000 men worked here. During the
war the huge arsenal at nearby Amjhur, and the importance of keeping the
line of communications open to the Eastern Front, Burma, Malaya and the
North East Frontier of India itself, meant Jamalpur and its lifeline were
vital to the Allied effort. But the life of India went on parallel with
the war, and at Indian festivals or pujas the giant engines were covered
in flower garlands and my father stood before them, garlanded himself, 
surrounded by several hundred of his beaming men. As his daughter, I was
treated like a V.I.P.
  India was and is paradoxical. Despite all the ideas to the contrary, des+pite
the upheaval and political change, we grew up with a secure place there,
where we had lived for generations. Only when we left for other countries
did it become clear Anglo Indians did not matter as individuals, or as
Community. It was a sobering lesson. This rejection some responded to by
keeping alive the link with India. We were to learn more about Indian history
and British India from the vast literature and history written in the aftermath
of the Raj. We would find no mention of our own role, the cru+cial loyalty
which had helped to stem Mutiny, had helped to bring the modern world to
India. In the early days older men had wryly termed themselves "cannon fodder".
An unenviable buffer between colonial rul+ers and subjects, our very existence
in history would soon be lost. We had not regarded ourselves as shadowy
people. We had had many qualities highly prized, but since they occurred
in a minority group no one had bothered to study this. We were egalitarian.
This sometimes militated against the genius, or the aspiring talented. We
had no capitalists.
  We had met very few English people in our years in Jamalpur or Luck+now.
The war brought droves of army men. In all those years only one was ever
invited to our home. He later married a neighbour's daughter, and was Irish.
The distorted popular novels which were to appear about Anglo Indians after
the war, largely fantasies, were incomprehensible. They parodied Anglo Indian
men and women, using their dilemma as the stuff of cheap novels and films.
Here the difficult situation of the Anglo Indians was blamed on them, not
on the prejudices against them for over a hundred years.
  After immigration, many Anglo Indians accepted that one would be hard
put to change the prevailing indifference of the mass to any interest in
India or Anglo Indians. Before that even, some felt drawn to the finer Indians,
fascinating as another culture. But the greater number of Anglo Indians, 
educated in that mould, probably identified with the British and saw themselves
as such, with a unique difference, a bridge into the India they loved.
  In our home, the two worlds were visible in my mother's European looks
contrasting with her Anglo Indian womanhood. In fact she cared more about
us as children than her own image. In looks she represented an empire losing
power. My father on the other hand looked much like his Rajput ancestors
in the distant past, through Sarah his grandmother. A martial spirit in
a twentieth century job, he despised "soft" or "spineless" men. His father
Robert had been brave, born soon after 1857 and Mutiny, in stressing Anglo
Indian rights. My father was brave through the riots leading up to
Independence, in admiring Gandhi, Nehru and the struggle for Indian rule.
He read the "Amritsar Bazar Patrika", an Indian nation+alist newspaper,
my mother calling him "a blessed pundit".
  How much of the clash between cultures fuelled the clash between my parents
was food for thought. They were almost totally different person+alities.
Softer, but able to enlist support in a roundabout way, my mother used tactics
which I increasingly understood as her emotional release, but did not like.
So I swung between sympathy for her and reservations about her "politics".
  All the Thomsons except one of my father's brothers, Victor, came to
epitomise qualities she found hard and unyielding*uyielding - qualities
one usually associated with the British. She talked about this freely to
other people. It was a form of disloyalty which did little to resolve the
problem, and at its base was often deep misunderstanding. This came too
from her lack of hearing. It was impossible to explain things to her as
the years went on. She would get an idea in her head and run away with it,
or say her piece and walk away. She could be exasperating and provocative.
She seemed to like arguments and dissent. Perhaps it was a Protestant trait,
and both had it. Eva McGill had been Scots Kirk, Robert Thomson a Methodist.
Here it was a case of dissenters dissenting. I was drawn in as my mother's
ears and voice, a reluctant A.D.C., throughout my childhood. I ferried messages
between parents on the days when there was silence between them. I had the
ear of my father, who was said to favour me. Prepared to enlist this support,
my mother nevertheless harboured a dislike of me for the very same reason.
As the "go-between" I learned to work for peace and became peace-maker.
It was hazardous. From very young I tried to be judicial. This, my mother
imputed as being "on the Thomson side". I was never to live this reputation
down.
  Our home was a microcosmic reflection of the Anglo Indian dilemma, caught
between two warring contenders for the right to govern, the right to be
the moral power, the right to win the affection of dependants. My brother
Alan seemed inexorably to become his mother's son, and my father seemed
to give up all claim to his affection and respect. This was of course a
tragedy, which it would be an oversimplification to blame com+pletely on
the old-fashioned, harsh discipline handed down from Robert to George Thomson
- though this had its part. It was far more complex than that.
  Such were the undercurrents to our home. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G27 </id>

<source> An entertaining war </source>

<note> 2004 </note>

<bl> By Michael Pate </bl>

During 1942 Australian armed forces were in action in the
Middle East, New Guinea and New Britain fighting important and
decisive battles. It wasn't until well into the year that the
population at large realised the incredible gallantry of the
men who had fought their way up the Kokoda Trail to stop the
Japanese in their tracks for the first time. Ultimately it
dawned on them that the issue at stake had been not just the
defence of Port Moresby and the northern approaches to
Queensland, but the very existence of Australia itself.
     And with our fighting men up there in the stinking jungle
fastnesses of the Islands there were always concert parties.
Often they took entertainment of one form or another to the
troops; more often they bent their backs and risked their lives
at the more dangerous tasks of war.
     During late 1941 and early 1942 Divisional and Lines of
Communication Area Concert Parties came into existence in
Australia. The 2nd Division CP gave its first shows at Walgrove
Camp; the 3rd Division CP was formed by Staff Sergeant (later
Lieutenant) Tom Rothfield in June of 1942; the NSW Lines of
Communication Area CP, known as `The Waratahs', came together
in mid-year also; the Victorian Lines of Communication Area CP
was known originally as `The Yarraroos' and later as `The
Kookaroos'; the Western Australian Lines of Communication Area
CP was `The Walocs'; and without hesitation the Tasmanian Lines
of Communication Area CP dubbed themselves the `Tasmaniacs'.
Other CPs which came into being included the `30 Club' CP which
formed within the 30th Brigade, the New Guinea Force CP, the
Milne Bay Force CP, and the unique `50-50 Show' - a
combination of Australian and American servicemen. CPs were
also formed out of personnel in the 1st, 4th and 5th Divisions,
the 1st Armoured Division (known as `Tanks-a-Million') and 3rd
Armoured Division (`Shells-a-Poppin''). All these units worked
at first under the control and guidance of Australian Army
Amenities Service. Eventually, along with some others which
were formed later in the war and the various CPs which had
served in the Middle East, they were brought together under the
command of Captain (later Major, finally Lieutenant-Colonel)
Jim Davidson late in 1943. Headquarters was moved from a
cramped office in Victoria Barracks to larger, though not more
comfortable, accommodation in some tin sheds at Sydney
Showgrounds. Davidson and his many merry bands of entertainers
were to shuffle in and out of the showgrounds, on their way to
and from the Islands, until 13 May 1944, when they moved into
the old National Film Studios in the Sydney suburb of Pagewood.
It was almost another year after that before the order came
through officially designating them as the 1st Australian
Entertainment Unit.
     But many things were a long way off in those days,
including victory over Japan. Jim Davidson, who had volunteered
in late 1940, returned to Australia from the Middle East in
late 1942. Shortly before Christmas he was ordered to report to
General Blamey's headquarters in Port Moresby. At dawn on
Christmas Day he boarded a flying boat at Rose Bay, Sydney, and
was soon winging his way north to the combat zones.
     In his book A Showman's Story: The Memoirs of Jim Davidson
(Rigby, 1983) he recalled that:

<note> quote </note>

     One of these parties, typical of the rest, was the 2nd
Division CP. It was formed and gave its first shows in
midsummer 1941-42, and received the official imprimatur of
Divisional Headquarters towards the middle of 1942. Throughout
the latter months of 1941 the recall of many thousands of men
to their units brought the 2nd Australian Infantry Division to
nearly full strength. Brigadier-General `Bertie' Lloyd - a
considerate, caring and sophisticated man - provided the
inspiration for the formation of a concert party for the
Division in the first place.
     With the division in training at a camp west of Sydney,
Lloyd very quickly realised that the troops were short of
entertainment. He summoned a number of men (those who had been
professional entertainers or musicians in civilian life) from
various of his units and suggested it would be a good idea if
they could organise some shows for the troops. So this small
group of `pros' put their heads together, gathered around them
a number of other kindred spirits, and on a hot and sultry
summer's night gave a show in the boxing ring at Walgrove Camp.
     Additions and subtractions were later made to the original
complement for that concert, but the nucleus of the 2nd
Division CP, gathered under the guidance of Captain John Allen
and Captain Crosby-Brown, with Lieutenant John Lennigan
(formerly of the WA Lines of Communication Area CP as Officer
in Charge, now Officer in Charge of the unit and baritone
singer) was:

             <note> list omitted </note>

     The 2nd Australian Infantry Division was given final leave
in mid-1942 amidst strong rumours they were destined for New
Guinea. On three troop-ships we sailed out of Sydney Harbour at
1640 hours on Saturday 4 July and were met by two cruisers, one
American and the other Dutch, but instead of turning north the
convoy turned south. An eighteen-day voyage, of which some
fifteen days were spent in high storm as the troop-ships and
escorts battled their way down to the south of Tasmania and
across to Fremantle, saw the Division disembark there and
proceed north up the coast of Western Australia. Both the
people of Western Australia and their newspaper editors had had
their wish fulfilled - troops had been sent to defend the west
against the Japanese.
     The 2nd Division CP was transported by cattle-truck across
the Nullarbor to Perth. Headquartered at Guildford while they
prepared several shows, they were moved up the coast a short
while later to Divisional Headquarters at Geraldton to begin
their first tour of duty. Then known as `The Black and White
Diamonds'- the divisional colour patch being a black-and-white
diamond set on the familiar pale grey AIF background - the
party's first three shows were `Blitz and Peaces', `Turkish
Delight' and `Those Were the Days'. 
     An extract from a letter home to my family at the turn of 
1942-43 gives some impressions of a new recruit to the 2nd 
Division Concert Party:

<note> quote </note>

     Undoubtedly at first the members of the 2nd Division Concert Party had a
fairly easy time of it in and around Guildford with frequent excursions into
Perth, but from the minute they headed up the coast in the latter months of 1942
and headquartered out of Geraldton they were worked to the artistic bone.
     For the better part of the next year the concert party did hundreds of shows
up and down the coast of Western Australia, and inland at such God-forsaken (or
so it often seemed to the members of the party) places as Mullewa, Mingenew,
Moora and Gingin. Only at Dongara, where we could forgo Army rations and gorge
ourselves on the small crayfish for which the little seaside town was rightfully
famous, and at Geraldton where we could go down to the beach and swim and chat up
some of the WAAFs who frequented the beach, did we get a break from the grind of
giving show after show after show. It wasn't exactly in the front line, but it
was hard, demanding, back-breaking, and sometimes a little dispiriting, travail.
     Still, we improved our swimming and our sun-tans. And we were undoubtedly
popular, not only with the girls and the townspeople but also with the troops in
our many audiences. At the end of 1943, after some eighteen months of service,
the concert party returned to Sydney (once again by cattle-truck across the
Nullarbor, at least for part of the way). After a brief leave we found ourselves
heading first to Thursday Island and the various other islands thereabouts,
thence to Dutch New Guinea and back to the Atherton Tableland for another tour of
duty. Another short leave, then we were off to New Britain (Jacquinot Bay and
Wide Bay) and back to Lae and Nadzab for a last tour of duty before the war
ended.
     But in late 1943 that was all a long way off, and for most of that year the
2nd Division CP stepped out on to the stage night after night to give a show to
the troops in Western Australia, wherever they might be, encouraged and downright
pleased by the applause which greeted it every time it performed.
     The day-to-day grind of `touring' never really got into letters home, but
there were any number of lighter moments recorded. Several from that sly,
consummate and discerning observer and wit, Colin Croft, are worth recalling.
     Under the subtitle CONCERT PARTY MATA HARIs, Colin had this to say:

<note> quote </note>

     Before Colin Croft learned the awful truth about the Vicar and his wife, it
is clear they steered him to a sort of religious rejuvenation. It wasn't until
the concert party was much further north at Geraldton, however, that Colin, a
regular church-goer, found another venue for his varied and considerable talents.
As he tells the story:

<note> quote </note>

     In actual fact there was quite a lot to do in Geraldton if a soldier took
the trouble to enquire around, or if he looked up what Army Education had to
offer, which was usually a great deal. For example, many a young soldier's
musical appreciation was greatly enhanced by the various concerts which Army
Education organised. Some fine artists visited Geraldton and performed in the
Town Hall, among them the great Australian pianist and Chopin exponent, Isador
Goodman, long renowned in Sydney especially for his recitals and his connection
with the Prince Edward Theatre (cinema) Orchestra. Colin Croft was totally
enraptured with the fantastic use Isador Goodman made of the piano to amuse and
entertain and, at the same time, influence musical tastes. Going backstage after
a concert to tell Goodman how much he had enjoyed it, Colin was amazed when
Goodman told him that he also enjoyed the work of the 2nd Division CP, which
apparently he had seen perform several times. The whole of the concert party got
more than a little afterglow from Colin's encounter with Isador Goodman that
night!
     Another concert party formed and active from about the time that the 2nd
Division CP first got under way was the Western Australian Lines of Communication
Area Concert Party (known as `The Walocs'), first gathered together in the middle
of 1942. Kevin Caporn, who was with them for some time (and much later in the war
with `The Islanders'), developed a wicked sense of humour during the war and has
honed it even sharper since then. He had this to say about the beginnings of the
Walocs:

<note> quote </note>

      Harry Bluck, one of the original Walocs, in an echo of a fading old
comedienne recalling one of her famous love-affairs (`He threw me a rose from
between his teeth. I kept the rose and threw back his teeth!'), remembers the
time when an ageing fill-in comic was putting his all into his act during a show
for the troops manning the `big guns' - coastal defence artillery - at Rottnest
Island (just off the Western Australian coast at Fremantle). He delivered his tag 
line with such force and passion that he spat his false teeth into the lap of a
colonel sitting in the front row of the audience. In the true tradition of
vaudeville he paused until the hysterical screams of laughter from the troops had
subsided a bit, leaned forward towards the completely horrified officer, and in a
hoarse stage whisper said: `Swing on to me choppers, will ya mate? I'll pick 'em
up at interval.'
     When the 2nd Division CP `played' Rottnest in the middle of the winter of
1943 we made the trip across to the island on a lurching little boat on a bleak,
miserable and rainy day. Having inspected the hall in which we were to give the
show, we decided to set up our gear the next day for the show that night. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G28 </id>

<source> Industry assistance: the inside story </source>

<note> 2008 words </note>

<bl> By Alf Rattigan </bl>

<h> Individuals Get Little Help to Adjust to Economic Change, 1973-1975 </h>

It was not until the IAC Bill had passed through both Houses of Parliament on
12 December 1973 that commissioners, associate commissioners and additional
staff could be selected. Most of these appointments had to be made quickly
because the Government had indicated that it intended to forward to the
IAC early in 1974 a number of important and wide-ranging references relating
to the primary sector of the economy. Also, before any inquiries in the
primary, mining or tertiary sectors were too far advanced it was important,
first, to get all the commissioners to agree on a common economy-wide approach
to assistance to industries and, secondly, to encourage informed public
discussion by explaining the approach, the reasons for it and its likely
effects.
  Immediately after vice-regal assent to the Act was received, the Government
appointed five members of the Tariff Board as com+missioners and one other
member (Watson) as the Temporary Assistance Authority (TAA). The economic
boom made it unlikely that any matters would be referred to the TAA in the
immediate future, so Watson was also appointed a commissioner for six months
to enable him to complete several inquiries he had com+menced as a presiding
member of the Tariff Board. In January Professor Alan Lloyd, an agricultural
economist at Melbourne Uni+versity, and Hylda Rolfe, economist for the
Australian Wool and Meat Producers, were appointed as commissioners.
  In February I recommended that the chief of the Commission's staff (Bill
Carmichael) be appointed as a commissioner when Watson's term finished in
June. If this recommendation was accepted I intended to appoint Carmichael
as executive commis+sioner so that he could provide the close link I wanted
between the staff and the commissioners, and also make a substantial
contribu+tion to the work of the commissioners. In discussing the matter
with me, Whitlam said that Carmichael's appointment was strongly opposed
by Cairns and his advisers - apparently because Car+michael was closely
identified with me and the changes which had been made in the Board's work
in the last decade. Before the ques+tion of a replacement for Watson was
settled, an important political event occurred which affected the outcome.
  The Liberal and Country Party coalition, through their control of the
Senate, forced Whitlam to get a dissolution of both Houses of the Parliament
early in April. An election of 18 May was pro+claimed. The Labor Party was
anxious to get a good candidate for the sixth position on the Party's New
South Wales Senate ticket because the prospect of a candidate in that position
being elected was not very great. P.B. Westerway was selected; he was a
lecturer in government and public administration at the Sydney University,
a broadcaster on public affairs and the general secretary of the New South
Wales branch of the Labor Party. Whitlam agreed to a pro+posal put to him
by the New South Wales Labor Party that if Westerway was not elected, he
would be appointed as soon as pos+sible after the election to a position
on a statutory authority. Westerway did not win a seat in the Senate; he
asked to be made a commissioner of the IAC and was appointed vice Watson. 
Whitlam considered that Westerway was well qualified to become a Comm+issioner 
of the IAC but I was disappointed; the appointee had obtained the position as 
a matter of political expediency; he had not been selected on the basis of 
competency.
  With Whitlam's concurrence, I set out to appoint associate com+missioners
with diverse backgrounds. I had two objectives; to improve the work of the
Commission and to widen the understand+ing in the community of the IAC's
approach to its work. Four full-time associate commissioners were appointed.
They had the fol+lowing backgrounds - editor of the Financial Review; associate
pro+fessor of agricultural economics of the University of Western Australia;
deputy commissioner of the Trade Practices Commission; commercial counsellor
of the Australian Embassy, Japan. The part-time associate commissioners
appointed in the first twelve months included four manufacturers, two graziers,
one farmer, an assistant director-general of the New South Wales Department
of Agricul+ture, a director of the Waite Agricultural Research Institute,
South Australia, a director of a large private marketing research
organ+ization, and a geologist who was a private consultant in mineral
economics.
  The range of work undertaken by the Commission immediately after its
establishment can be gauged from a list of matters referred to the IAC during
its first year. In the primary sector: the dairy industry; rural
reconstruction; the apple and pear industry; the dried vine fruits industry;
bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis slaughter compensation; financing the
promotion of rural products; assistance to new land farmers in Western
Australia; potatoes and potato products; temporary assistance for the
beef-cattle industry; financing rural research; ways of reducing fluctuations
in rural incomes; harvesting and processing fish and shellfish. In the mining
sector: the gold-mining industry; taxation measures and royalty charges
affecting all mining industries. In the tertiary sector: assis+tance to
the performing arts; the publishing industry; the tourist accommodation
industry. In the secondary sector the Commission was heavily involved in
the tariff review but also in a number of important inquiries outside the
review, e.g. industries producing motor-vehicles; aircraft; iron and steel;
tractors; man-made fibre yarns; soap and detergents; tyres; railway and
tramway rolling stock; locomotives; textiles, clothing and footwear.
  Soon after it came into power the Labor Government set up a taskforce
headed by Coombs to report on ways to prune expendi+ture. Late in 1973 it
recommended that the subsidy for the use of superphosphate fertilizers in
primary industries should lapse when the period covered by the existing
legislation ran out in December 1974. In January 1974 Whitlam asked me whether
the Commission could, within a period of two to three months, examine and
report on the question of subsidizing the use of phosphate fertilizers.
He said he wanted the matter determined before the discussions to frame
the 1974-75 budget commenced. I pointed out to him that superphosphate was
used in a number of primary industries, all of which would have to be examined,
and that I would not expect such an inquiry to be completed in less than
ten months. Whitlam was very disappointed with my response. He considered
that payment of the subsidy was unjustified and that the money was needed
for other purposes. On 15 February 1973 his Cabinet decided, without any
public inquiry, to let the subsidy lapse in December 1974.
  The Cabinet decision brought a storm of protests from the farm+ers and
their organizations, who considered it cut across the public inquiry system
embodied in the IAC legislation. The protests con+tinued right through 1974.
A reference on the matter was finally sent to the IAC on 29 January 1975
(and the subsidy was extended to allow time for the inquiry) but the damage
done to the Whitlam Government's relations with the farming community by
that Cabi+net decision was never fully repaired.
  As the IAC commenced its work, the Government announced decisions on several
of the reports which the Tariff Board had signed late in 1973. The report
on domestic appliances and heating and cooling equipment attracted most
attention from the press, the manufacturers, and trade unions. This was
probably because of the types of goods it covered. They included `white
goods' such as refrigerators, stoves, freezers, washing machines and clothes
dryers; `shelf appliances' such as electric toasters, kettles, mixers, frying
pans, irons and shavers; `portable appliances' such as vacuum clean+ers,
floor polishers, and lawnmowers, and larger equipment such as air-conditioning
and commercial refrigeration equipment and water and space heaters.
  The Board found that the local production costs for the goods were generally
more than twice those of other countries with similar standards of living.
The primary reason for the high production costs was the inefficient use
of resources. Too many producers manufactured too great a variety of products
in too many plants. Competition amongst producers was in terms of product
differen+tiation rather than price, and high tariffs had perpetuated this
practice by insulating the industry from import competition. At the time
the inquiry commenced, the average effective rate of duty for goods was
over 50 per cent. The Board recommended rates which would reduce the effective
rate for most of the goods to 25 per cent and for the remainder to 35 per
cent.
  The Government accepted the Board's recommendations on 24 January 1974.
Restructuring of the industry was delayed first by the economic boom and,
when that boom broke later in the year, by the imposition of temporary duties.
But when these were removed a more internationally competitive basis of
production evolved with a reduction in the number of factories and greater
specialization in manufacturing operations.
  
The inter-departmental committee on structural change reported to the
Government in February 1974. It considered that special adjust+ment assistance
could be justified only where a structural change `clearly in the national
interest' brought about by the Government itself was occurring or impending,
and it was clear that such change was beyond the normal adaptive capacity
of the economy, and likely to bring economic hardship or inequity to
individuals and/or firms which was too severe to be accommodated within
the gener+ally available measures.
  The committee considered that in providing help for individuals, the major
concern should be to assist them in obtaining satisfactory employment. It
pointed out that in the context of the 25 per cent tariff-cut in July 1973,
assistance was proposed for individuals through a range of measures
(income-maintenance support, re+location grants, retraining assistance,
early-retirement benefits, special local unemployment relief grants and
family counselling services), but up to February 1974 only income-maintenance
had been asked for. The committee noted `that some of these measures were
currently under consideration in other more general con+texts'. It believed
that income-maintenance was likely to provide appropriate short-term assistance
and would secure acceptance of a government decision to bring about structural
change in most cases. The committee recommended that income-maintenance
be avail+able for up to six months and provide the individual with a weekly
amount equal to his or her average earnings in the previous six months.
  For firms in the secondary sector to be eligible for assistance, the
committee considered that, not only must the structural change have rendered
a significant separate part of the firm's assets in+capable of economic
production, but also that the firm must have taken reasonable steps for
self-help which were unlikely to bring about complete adjustment. The committee
recommended that only two compensation measures be available for firms,
closure compensation and consultancy grants, and said that to widen the
range to include other measures such as loans, interest subsidies, loan
guarantees and grants (other than consultancy grants) would involve the
Government too closely in directing resources into new areas of activity
instead of simply helping to move resources out of existing areas. It believed
that firms and employees should have a choice in deciding on alternative
opportunities and that the Gov+ernment should avoid becoming committed to
firms in the grey area between those able to adjust by themselves and those
which should close down. The report indicated that there was some dif+ference
of opinion amongst members of the committee on the extent and form of the
measures which should be available to firms in secondary industry - the
Department of Secondary Industry maintained the measures should include
loans, grants etc. The com+mittee's recommendations reflected the views
of the majority.
  The committee was of the opinion that measures already existed to facilitate
structural adjustments in the rural sector and made no recommendations
regarding that sector.
  At the policy level, the committee considered that the Govern+ment would
decide whether a particular structural change was desirable and whether
special measures were warranted - in many cases following the receipt of
a report from the IAC. At the admin+istrative level, the committee considered
that arrangements for individuals should be handled by the Departments of
Labour and Social Security and that for firms, there was a need for a body
to determine and supervise payments to individual firms.

</sample>


<sample><id> G29 </id>

<source> Sweeney on Sweeney  </source>

<note> 2015 words </note>

<bl> By Brian Sweeney  </bl>

<h> CHAPTER TWO </h>

<h> Stanthorpe and Coo-ee Cordials </h>

MY mother was a school teacher. And she was shrewd. She
confided in me that she had refused to be taught how to milk a
cow. She managed to have herself transferred from Roma State
School to the Fortitude Valley State School in Brisbane and in
1924, married my father. She was an ambitious woman and, after
I was born in 1925, the newlyweds moved into a hotel -
Sheahan's in Stanthorpe. My father had a good relationship with
the brewery and John Lonergan, subsequently managing director,
convinced Mr Devoy that he was worth supporting as a publican,
although he was very young.
     Both of them said these early years running Sheahan's
Hotel were the happiest years of their lives - a sentiment
certainly expressed by so many young marrieds of every
nationality. At twenty seven, my father became a civic leader
and a popular mine-host. He was always delighted to be able to
recount how A.B. "Banjo" Patterson spent a holiday with them as
a guest at their hotel. I still own Banjo's collected poems
signed by the poet, for my father. On the other side of the
sheet, a broken-down horse-trainer, George Benn (who had walked
700 kilometres from Cunnanulla leading his horse) was able to
tell me of "Bob's" great kindness to him. George subsequently
was a lead+ing trainer in Brisbane. My father had the
pioneering spirit and, in 1929, with two other partners, he
began the first tobacco-growing plantation in Australia (which
later failed) and begot two more children.
     Eventually, the work of a licensed victualler became too
arduous, especially for my mother. As well, there had been a

strike by the drinkers of the town against a beer price rise.
Miss O'Mara of O'Mara's Hotel (her brother was chairman of the
Brisbane Amateur Turf Club and the Queensland legal man for
John Wren) told me that my father had been leader for the five
hotel-keepers of the town and was fearless and wonderful. After
the strike was over, his business did suffer and, as my mother
did not like the environment of a hotel for bringing up
children, it was decided to change to some other type of
business. Eventually we came to Brisbane. It was early 1931 and
with the Great Depression about to strike it was a most
difficult time for a man, with a wife, three children and no
job.
     For a short time, my father was manager of the Queen's
Arms Hotel at New Farm and his money had almost gone. Then he
had the good fortune to meet in a bar (where else?) two of his
old friends, C.K. Norman and R.F.G. (later Sir Reginald)
Fogarty, later managing director of Carlton &amp; United Breweries
Ltd. Mr Norman's firm was one of the creditors of the Coo-ee
Manufac+turing Company, which made cordials and soft drinks at
a factory beside the Mater Hospital in South Brisbane. The firm
was bank+rupt. Fogarty and Norman said my father should buy it,
and the amount of money needed was &pound;286/6/0. I think my father
only had &pound;20 and he borrowed &pound;260 from my mother's midwife,
Mat+ron Taylor of Finchly Private Hospital, Toowoomba. The
Sweeneys were in soft drinks.
     When I enrolled at the Christian Brothers, St Laurence's
in 1933, it was my sixth different school. There had been a
certain amount of contention as my mother wanted me to go to a
state school and, indeed, I had already been to four of them at
Stanthorpe, Ipswich Road Wooloowin and Coorparoo. How+ever,
here I was at St Laurence's with an octogenarian teacher, the
same man who had taught my father (he was sixty years old then)
at St James, before World War I. Although many of us were in
awe of him (mostly I am sure because of his age), D.D. Quigley
was a dear man. Two things remain with me from my years at St
Laurence's; one, the fact that the relief workers who were
building a football oval for us were paid by the government so
they would not starve; the other, the fact that provided you
were careful, gelignite was not dangerous.
     I spent the next six years with the Brothers, following in
the footsteps of my father. During the whole of my student
time, I did not excel. The question of brains and talent is one
that still puzzles me. Perhaps I was and am mediocre, but I
believe all the early changes of school, and the personal
disruptions of my childhood and youth, made me a certain
mediocrity. (Also, I believe boys who are born late in the year
(in my case, Novem+ber), should begin school a year later.
This, of course, applies to sport and all other matters.)
     As far as sport was concerned, I was of no account. My
father said I had "two left feet", like him. I was endowed with
an excellent voice and, being the eldest, my mother had me
tutored in every conceivable peripheral activity. There were
singing and piano lessons from the Good Samaritan Sisters (Sister 
Bonaven+ture), tap dancing in the city at the G.J. Coles
building, Queen Street, and elocution lessons from Miss
O'Reilly. These elocu+tion lessons made my Saturday afternoons
at Rialto Street, Coorparoo, so dreary. The walk home of over
a kilometre was especially tedious.
     But I did get a big chance in the theatre, when I played
Ginger in Ginger Meggs at the Princess Theatre, Annerley Road.
The building is still there. During the last year or so the
Princess has been taken over by Remm Pty Ltd who have
refurbished it and leased it to the TN Theatre Co. We played
two nights in the theatre and gave one special performance for
the nuns at the Mater Hospital. Twenty-five years later, when
I was introduced to the Honourable V.C. Gair, he said to me at
once, " I remember you playing Ginger Meggs at the Princess
Theatre." Although I have no memory of the success or otherwise
of the play, it was a never-to-be-forgotten experience,
especially the red wig.
     One other event of those years that stays in my mind is
the St Patrick's Day March. Brought up as I was, distanced by
a generation from Ireland and its troubles, one would think
that I would have no interest. But, with people of the calibre
of Mon+signor John English, the silver-tongued patriot, sitting
for hours with my father and grandmother "talking treason", as
they jokingly called it; one is influenced. I was aware, as we
walked down Queen Street four-abreast ("March on the tram
lines!"), that there was an element of dissent. I was not aware
then of the activities of Dr Mannix in Melbourne in 1919, with
his St Pat+rick's Day escort of twenty VC winners. Nor did a
ten-year-old know there was such a thing as the Protestant
Labor Party. It is a sign of the growing together of our
peoples that tolerance is more manifest today.
     The Coo-ee Cordial factory prospered almost at once, so
much so that my father bought a new house at Coorparoo - the
first home he had ever owned. My mother, ambitious as ever,
encouraged RJ to purchase another bankrupt softdrink company.
This company was Owen Gardner and Sons, and had been in
business for 85 years. With considerable advice and help from
his accountant, Thomas Miles, and the financial support of the
National Bank, he took possession of the factory in McLachlan
Street, Fortitude Valley. The takeover day was most eventful
for my mother, as her last child - one of twins to survive -
Fabian, was born. The twins were a harbinger of things to come.
It was 3 February 1935.

<h> CHAPTER THREE </h>
<h> Owen Gardner &amp; Sons </h>

IN 1924, Owen Gardner, a grandson of the founder of the company
of the same name, had taken leave from his busi+ness when he
was twenty four years old. He spent more than six years in the
United States of America and it is said that the cessation of
prohibition caused him to return home. Within a year or so of
his homecoming, he had no business, it was insol+vent. My
father actually concluded the deal to purchase Owen Gardner &
Sons with Gardner in the Inebriates Home at Dun+wich. In
epilogue , it must be said that Owen Gardner remained in the
service of the company until he retired more than twenty five
years later. Many times during that period, I reflected on the
for+tunes of this man. (On one occasion, because of his
attachment to drink, the manager, Les Walmsley, gave him two
weeks suspension.)
     The Gardners had been prominent in Queensland since the
original Owen had arrived in Moreton Bay as a purser on a ship
in 1845. He was taken with the beauty of the district and what
seemed to him to be a place of great opportunity. And so, for
almost forty years, he began various businesses, both in the
city and at Strathpine. He founded the Normanby Rum distillery
in the Pine Rivers district, and had extensive timber
interests. He used to bring the timber and rum in his own
vessel to the city. Before long, he helped bring John Hicks
into business, using his timber to make Hixco furniture. He
built a soft drink factory on the river side of William Street,
but one of the floods in the 1870s caused him to rebuild on the
other side of William Street on a block that went through to
100 George Street, where today the premier of Queensland has
his offices. Gardner was most suc+cessful and public spirited;
for example, he presented the peal of bells to St John's
Cathedral in Ann Street, where they are still in use. When he
died in 1888, he left his heirs an estate of &pound;120,000.
     The take over of this bankrupt business with Gardner was
very different from the Coo-ee Cordial purchase. It involved an
amount of about &pound;4,000 but it meant that my father now owned
his premises. Moreover, he had trucks, machinery, a new staff
of about twenty people and not much cash. Within weeks, there
was a crisis. The manager, a Mr Kirkpatrick, left Owen Gardner
and Sons employ and almost immediately began negotiations with
the opposition, T. Tristram Pty Ltd, and gave them the rights
to bottle our ginger ale. This special product, sold by Owen
Gardner and Sons under the name of Kirks Ginger Ale was the
mainstay of the business. ( In fact, twenty years later, it
still com+prised more than 60 per cent of our total sales.) T.
Tristram began selling Kirks Ginger Ale under the T.T. label.
Consequently, my father immediately placed an injunction on Mr
Tristram, and T. Tristram Pty Ltd.
     I can remember, at that time, there was no peace in our
home. A new baby, Fabian, coupled with the sad death of his
twin, and a new venture which had cost everything, as well as
an impending litigation suit with a much larger company, made
the situation at home very tense. I reckon my father (and I
suppose my mother) had no sleep at all.
     The best legal brains in Queensland were hired. Tristrams
had Mr McGill, KC and Mr Real. We had Mr Macrossan and Mr
McLaughlin. (I later married Mr Macrossan's daughter.) The case
was brought on fairly promptly before Mr Justice Edward
Douglas, and RJ won his case with damages of  &pound;1,000, plus
costs.
     We all know the old adage about winners, how they can
laugh and the losers cry. Suffice it to say that the publicity
given to the litigation helped re-launch Kirks as a brand and
sales increased almost exponentially. The damages of &pound;1,000
were like a real transfusion. Les Walmsley, my father's foreman
(and later works manager), told me that from then on, they
purchased sugar by the ton lot instead of by the bag, bottles
by the 100 gross instead of by the dozen, and all the trucks
had their tanks filled with petrol every night.

</sample>
 

<sample><id> G31 </id>

<source> Journey of a country surgeon </source>

<note> 2027 words </note>

<bl> By Richard Wallace </bl>

<h> GJ in Casualty </h>

It was high summer and the brief holiday was over. Nobody
envied GJ. For the next three months his rostered job was
senior resident in charge of casualty. There were two new
graduates also assigned to casualty. They both dismayed GJ -
one, the worst product of one of the more exclusive private
schools and a persistent name-dropper, seemed little interested
in the hurly-burly of casualty. The other was a lanky,
bespectacled lad, loose-limbed and seemingly double-jointed all
over. He was extremely earnest, totally without humour and was
a walking encyclopaedia of medical knowledge. However, GJ was
uncertain as to whether he had a complete lack of common sense
or was merely green and inexperienced. These two new casualty
residents soon had a chance to prove themselves.
     The heat had been steadily building up. The sun glared in
blazing triumph from a burning sky, and paths, roads and
buildings absorbed and flung back the heat. The temperature was
103 degrees Fahrenheit with the prospect of worse to come. And
the change did come, not a cool change, but a searing north-
westerly wind carrying the dust of the inland right over the
city. In hundreds of small rented rooms, or in tightly closed
little houses, elderly people sat. Hardly any possessed air-
conditioners and few could afford electric fans. So ambulances
began to bring them in to casualty suffering from hyperthermia.
In one day, eight arrived. The next, eighteen. They were all
semi-conscious, confused and murmuring, and their temperatures
were nearly always well over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. One old
man was brought in with a temperature of 109. He was pallid and
looked near to death. He mumbled about the cold yet when you
touched him it seemed he was burning with an inner fire.
     The heatwave lasted for ten days. At the end of that time
forty-two elderly patients had been admitted to the wards.
Three had died. But it was not the heat alone, nor over-
clothing in unventilated rooms that had brought the old people
to hyperthermia and to the door of death. On bedside tables and
on mantel-pieces were the small bottles of tablets the elderly
victims had taken religiously in daily ritual, following the
instructions on the labels. Most of these tablets were either
digitalis, for heart failure, or diuretics, tablets designed to
drain away excess fluid in the body through the kidneys in
people whose weakened hearts could not cope with it. In doing
so, much of the body's natural supply of sodium and potassium
are taken out too. The cramps, tiredness and weakness so often
complained of by elderly people are considered normal and the
sort of thing one just has to put up with at that age. In fact,
these complaints could be due to the tablets. In a searing
heatwave such as that which we were experiencing, sodium was
vital for health.
     If anything, more sodium should be taken to make up for
the loss through the skin in sweating but, as GJ put it, `These
poor things came in as dry as wooden gods and even though they
couldn't eat much they thought they were doing the right thing
by taking their tablets because nobody ever told them they
shouldn't'. So in fact GJ and his team had two problems on
their hands: the first was that of hyperthermia; the second was
that of extreme dehydration.
     To treat simply for hyperthermia and set up an intravenous
saline drip would certainly produce acute heart failure. As GJ
replied to the student who suggested this, `You might as well
just belt them on the head with a mallet'. Balancing the two
conditions was a feat of medical skill. GJ was praised for his
work by the senior physician and for the first time in his
life, appeared to be completely at a loss for words. Blushing
furiously, he tried hard to get away.


But all the rushing of the heat emergency was a bit much for
the Gilded Youth. It didn't fit in at all with his conception
of the practice of medicine. After four weeks he succeeded in
arranging a transfer to one of the quieter parts of the
hospital. He was replaced by Dr Maria Pilar Perez.
     Dr Perez was a recent arrival in the country, a South
American, a refugee from the regime of a military dictator. In
some small way her husband had criticised the government. He
now languished in an obscure provincial gaol. Dr Perez had been
lucky enough to escape with her young son and was filling in
the necessary year of hospital work in Australia before she
could be registered. She said little and smoked incessantly.
Her arrival brought a sudden change in the atmosphere of the
casualty department. Although her training and her work were of
the first order, she was not the sort of person you could talk
to. In her presence we all felt awkward, immature, gauche. Her
dark hair was always swept back tightly and she invariably wore
dark clothes. Despite her gentleness of manner and her soft
voice there was an almost tangible atmosphere of tension around
her. It was as if a rage too deep for verbal expression was
building up in power and ferocity for the moment when it would
burst out. I was too ashamed to admit to myself at the time
that I was deliberately avoiding her. Yet she needed help so
badly. It came as a surprise to realise that this woman with a
face that mirrored the anguish of an El Greco madonna was only
twenty-eight. She had friends who often waited for her to come
off duty, dark-eyed, silent people, people from her own land.
She was a communist.
     Most recently graduated doctors tended to regard the
hospital as the ultimate in every form of medical practice. But
in the hospital one was protected, cloistered. It was easy to
speak, as many did, of medicine as being merely an intellectual
discipline. Protected by the kindness and courtesy of the
hospital, by cleanliness and the all-pervading smell of floor
polish and antiseptic, the harsh features of the world were
ignored or glossed over by medical terms which somehow made
them seem not quite so bad. For example, if somebody happened
to be ill because of mistreatment by a doctor or the improper
use of drugs, we called it `iatrogenic'. Only from casualty
came a faint whiff of the outside world; of the smell of dirt
and of tired unwashed bodies and of sweat. Dr Perez carried
with her the strength of suffering and courage, a silent, dark
knowledge of good and evil. We shied away, like toddlers do
from strangers at the door, not ready to know the wider world.
     Despite the gloom her presence brought, casualty couldn't
help but stay cheerful. The laughter was very genuine when Mr
Henry Bagshaw arrived heralded by the frantic ringing of
ambulance bells. He was a mess. He had the unusual combination
of a fine collection of jagged cuts on his bald head and an
equally dramatic collection of deep cuts on his bottom. All of
these had been bleeding freely so at first he looked much worse
than he really was. He was very angry and kept demanding to see
his wife.
     The full story did not emerge until the following day. It
seems what happened was that Mr Bagshaw, a beer-gutted, bearded
man, had just returned home from the factory. He marched into
the house, kissed his wife and then passed through the house
holding the Sporting Globe, and headed down the winding path to
the out-house toilet. He settled himself comfortably, pulled
out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Then, rising a little,
he flicked the match with skill down into the bowl.
Unfortunately he did not know that his wife had been polishing
the furniture that day and she had made too much furniture
polish. She had poured the excess polish into the toilet bowl,
but, being in a hurry, had forgotten to flush it. The instant
the match hit the bowl there was an almighty explosion and a
great flash of flame. Mr Bagshaw was projected vertically to
the roof where he struck his head violently on the beams, then
with feet upwards and asplay, he landed on the jagged remains
of the bowl. It took two days to cool him down sufficiently for
his wife to visit him safely! But for days he wore a perplexed
expression of hurt - the expression of a man whose world has
come apart beneath him. Nor did it help him to receive from his
mates at the pub, a beautifully ornate `Get Well' card on which
was inscribed the words `Where were you when the dunny blew
up?'.


O'Dockerty in the meantime had commenced duties in the
anaesthetic department. His immediate boss was an elderly,
experienced, and extremely short-sighted anaesthetist who
seemed to spend most of the day mislaying his spectacles,
finding them again in his pocket, polishing them vigorously,
then putting them on and peering through them with a look of
gentle benevolence. But within minutes the spectacles would
start pinching his nose so he would take them off and put them
in a different pocket. Once again he would forget which pocket
they were in and the whole business would start again. O'
Dockerty calculated that he would lose his glasses and then
find them again at least six times in the course of any
ordinary operation.
     For the first few days in the department, all O'Dockerty
had to do was to mix up solutions of thiopentone while the old
anaesthetist probed for a vein discussing all the while the
progress of his vegetable garden. It is doubtful whether the
patients appreciated this rather one-sided conversation but it
did bring an element of normality to the rather frightening
environment of an operating-theatre waiting room. On his third
day in the department, Mick arrived at lunch rather pale. That
morning he had dutifully mixed up two lots each of half a gram
of thiopentone solution. In those days this was the very latest
thing. The idea that an anaesthetic could be given directly
into a vein and work instantly, without all the choking and
gasping that went on with ether or chloroform anaesthetics,
took the medical world by storm. Because of its convenience,
doctors used thiopentone anaesthetics whenever they could and
in far greater doses than would be considered safe today. While
Mick was happily mixing up the thiopentone powder with sterile
water in an enormous syringe, the old anaesthetist, with a
tourniquet around the patient's arm, was gouging for a vein in
the back of the hand. Finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, he
announced that the needle was in place and please could he have
the thiopentone. Time was running short and the surgeon in the
theatre next door was complaining loudly about the inefficiency
of the anaesthetic depart+ment. So he squirted the whole half
gram of thiopentone straight into the needle. Much to
everybody's surprise, the patient still lay awake waiting for
something to happen.
     `Huh, must be a bad batch of thiopentone. Sure you've
mixed it right?' Mick said nothing. `Well, come on, you had
better give me the other lot.'
     So Mick handed him over the other syringe full of half a
gram of thiopentone and in that went too. The patient still lay
wide awake.
     `Am I meant to go to sleep or something?', he asked.
     One of the theatre orderlies had been looking very
intensely at the patient. He suddenly darted forward and
grabbed the tourniquet. `Here, should that thing still be
tight?' and, turning action into deed, he released the still-
tightened tourniquet The anaesthetic was sudden and profound as
one gram of concentrated thiopentone hit the circulation in an
instant. It was such a solid anaesthetic that the patient
remained asleep for two and a half hours after the operation
was completed while Mick nervously measured the blood pressure
every ten minutes and helped the breathing with a respirator
when it became too shallow.

</sample>




<sample><id> G32 </id>

<source> Being different: nine gay men remember </source>

<note> 2012 words </note>

<bl> Ed. by Garry Wotherspoon </bl>

<h> Adrian Finds His Avalon </h>

<h> Adrian Dixson </h>

Perhaps my parents were disappointed when their first and, as
it happened, their only child was a boy. When the doctor asked
my father `what are you going to call the baby?' he replied,
`Shirley.' `That might not be a good idea', suggested the
doctor, `it's a son!' So I became Adrian.
     Father was the eighth son in a family of nine boys and six
girls: Mother the eighth daughter in a family of eight
daughters and one son. All but three of twenty-four uncles and
aunts married and produced families, so I grew up almost the
youngest among dozens of cousins. One of my uncles recalled
that my father was strikingly handsome and very attractive to
women - his early photographs lend support to this claim. The
same uncle was inclined to believe that my father in his mid-
thirties married my mother, not simply because he found her
attractive and charm+ing, but also because she belonged to a
prosperous, well-established rural family tracing its
antecedents in part to the first settlement. At all events I
passed my earliest years - the depres+sion years - in a
secure, comfortable, middle-class Australian environment.
     My earliest recollections are set in a highly organised
subur+ban society where everything and everybody had its
clearly defined place and purpose. Everything happened at its
ap+pointed time: Sunday was church and Sunday School; Monday,
washing and ironing; Tuesday, for baking cakes; Wednesday, we
visited relations; Thursday, cleaning day; Friday, shopping;
and Saturday, tennis in the afternoon and bridge at night.
     The one thing that I missed particularly was the regular
com+pany of other children, but our daily household routine was
far from dull. I was never bored. A seemingly endless stream of
tradespeople crunched up the gravelled tradesmen's entrance to
our back door: the milkman with his trimly painted horse-drawn
cart, the postman, the grocer, the greengrocer, the butcher,
the iceman, the baker, the produce merchant, and the clothes-
prop man all called regularly. `Ragsy', my silky terrier, and
I enjoyed the friendliest relations with the tradespeople and
eagerly awaited their arrival. Each afternoon at five o'clock
we squatted in front of an old horn speaker to listen to our
favourite wireless sessions, `The Fairy Godmother' and `The
Hello Man' on 2CH. Even during the hours of darkness the sound
of footsteps and a passing flash of torchlight assured me that
the local nightwatch+man was doing his regular rounds.
     My father was a quietly spoken, mild-mannered man. Cricket
and antique furniture were his lifelong interests. He entered
gladly into community activities - secretary of the local
Methodist Church, a member of both the local United Australia
Party executive and the local Masonic Lodge. He held a fairly
well-paid position in the Commonwealth Public Service. I could
not conceive of a kinder or more generous father. Unfortunately
we never became very close. Before I was very old I realised
that the sorts of things for which he wanted to feel proud of
me were mostly the things in which I excelled least.
     With dark brown hair, deep green eyes, and a very fair
com+plexion, my mother was an attractive woman. In contrast to
her five elder sisters, who rarely stopped talking, she was a
quiet, gentle person. She delighted in the homely arts of
crochet, flower-arranging, cooking, and playing the piano. In
the years before the war we usually employed one live-in maid
to help run a household which, with frequent visits from
country relations, often numbered seven or eight. I adored my
mother. She was the centre of my world, and the person whose
approval I most earnestly sought.
     My father's mother, Grandma Dixson, lived with us. She was
a stiffly upright and slightly redoubtable lady in her
eighties. In the ten years that I knew her I never once saw her
in anything but black - dresses, shoes, stockings, beads, hats
and gloves. Her long gowns, relieved only by a thin edging of
white lace at collar and cuffs, just touched the floor. With
her long white hair piled up she was a study in quiet dignity.
     On Saturday nights, possibly to mitigate my disappointment
at not being allowed to mingle with the bridge players
down+stairs, I was accorded the privilege of sleeping with
Grandma Dixson. With great glee I clambered into her vast
double iron bedstead with its shapeless, squashy old feather
mattress redo+lent of lavender and musk. My prayers finished,
Grandma would regale me with recollections of her childhood in
Hamp+shire; riding her pony `Fanny'; building snowmen in the
fields at Christmas; visiting her brothers at Winchester
College, and the long sea voyage from London to Geelong via Rio
de Janeiro. Vividly she recalled hiding in the billowing folds
of her mother's crinoline when the seamen playfully chased her
around the deck. Her family had settled in Geelong and it was
here, when she was twenty-five, that she met my grandfather.
They settled on the Murray River where the first eleven of
their fifteen children were born. Later they took up a sheep
property in north-western New South Wales. Grandma played the
church organ in the township five miles away. To get there she
rode side-saddle. `However,' she explained, `by the time I'd
finished serving midday dinner and washing up I didn't have
time to open the five sets of gates between the farm and the
church, so I jumped them!' I listened fascinated as she
described making bread, candles, soap, and even sewing tiny
items of underwear and hats for her large family.
     From a time pre-dating my earliest recollections I found
an immense delight in dressing-up - a delight not altogether
shared by my father who was not favourably impressed when he
returned from church one Sunday morning to discover his five-
year-old son shuffling half way down the street in a pair of
his mother's high heels and long satin dress beneath a pink
flowered parasol. I shall never forget the screech of brakes as
he stopped the car and bundled me in, not at all, as I felt, in
a manner befit+ting my obviously dignified appearance. His
reaction to this incident made me decide that perhaps I'd be
wiser not to wear mother's old silver-beaded wedding dress on
future occasions when I went up the garden to feed the fowls.
     If my penchant for dressing up disturbed my father, he
must have been equally dismayed by my fondness for dolls. I
wanted to own dolls, dress them up, place them in furnished
dolls' houses and, possibly worst of all, tell all the visitors
about them. I daresay father's embarrassment reached its high
point when I led him into a local toy shop and, pointing to a
small brass don+key engine, inquired of the proprietor, `How
much is that dolly's bath heater?' I also revelled in playing
with toy tea sets and sew+ing cards - everything that he felt
a regular boy should eschew.
     Our household was dominated by a strong sense of personal
modesty. In no circumstances did anyone ever appear outside the
bedrooms or the bathroom less than fully clad. For tennis
menfolk wore long white trousers. While I clearly remember
frequent reminders that `children should be seen and not heard'
and `Money does not grow on trees', the rule that people should
never appear less than fully dressed was never stated. Very
likely this topic, like sex, was too distasteful for
discussion. I was never greatly impressed by the oft-repeated
warnings about keeping quiet or being thrifty, but the unspoken
example of personal modesty communicated itself to me with
painful intensity. The very idea of undressing, even partly, in
the presence of others became abhorrent to me. Fortunately I
felt no embarrassment on those rare occasions when I stayed
overnight with my uncle and aunt by the sea and shared a bath
with my cousin Nigel. We both relished the experience.
     Possibly because I was denied any opportunity to see the
adult body, it became for me an object of considerable
fascination. While still of kindergarten age, I remember
standing with my mother on a suburban railway station as a
Scotsman in kilts walked down the steps onto the platform
opposite. I had never before seen a man with bare knees.
Innocently, I asked my mother, `Do you think that Scotsman
might let me play with his legs?' I forget her exact reply, but
it was something like, `No darling, I don't really think so.'
     A few weeks later I discovered a new sensation which
seemed to me to be perfectly harmless. When my father was
seated I lay on the floor beside his chair and wriggled my bare
feet up his trouser legs. I enjoyed the sensation, but it soon
irritated him and he stopped the practice with `Adrian, are you
crazy? Don't be so silly. Go and play with Ragsy.'
     On Sunday afternoons I was bathed, dressed in my best suit
and bow tie, and sent off to the local Methodist Sunday School.
I quite enjoyed Sunday School. In the kindergarten, forty or
fifty little boys and girls sang hymns, listened to stories,
and marched around a circle of tiny chairs before they broke up
into smaller class groups. On one particular Sunday afternoon
our teacher, Miss Bertha Burrows, had prepared for us an Old
Testament story illustrated with a series of flip-over coloured
pictures. The story concerned reapers harvesting wheat, and
when she un+covered the first picture my mouth went dry with
excitement. Here was a field of men clearly stripped to the
waist. Never be+fore had I seen a man wearing so little. Then
I heard Miss Burrows' voice asking, `Adrian, will you go to the
picture please and point out a reaper for us.' `Why me?' I
wondered. `Can Miss Bur+rows read my thoughts?' The shudder of
excitement was so intense to me as my finger touched the navel
of a painted reaper that I felt everyone must have noticed it.
My fears were needless. Nobody else appeared to be the least
stirred by the picture. But I still felt guilty. There must be
something very wrong, I felt, at finding excitement in anything
so immodest as a half-naked body.
     Although my maternal grandmother, Grandma Moresby, never
lived with us, she lived at the opposite end of our street. Her
home, `Broughlea', was much older and larger than our own. Its
wide verandas and spacious grounds, which included a tennis
court, a fowl run, and a large, disused stable, provided an
ideal playground for an imaginative five-year-old.
     Grandma was cared for by a devoted old Yorkshire maid
named Alice, who made just as much fuss of me as did her
mis+tress. Her long black dresses were the only sombre thing
about Grandma Moresby, who always seemed to be smiling. She
never complained if I strummed too long on the piano. Nothing
was ever a bother to her. Her household ran with seemingly
effortless efficiency. Everything from breakfast to supper
happened exactly as it was meant to, at precisely the right
time, and it was always done well. She had been a widow for
five years when I was born and her whole life centred around
her six surviving daughters, one son, and nine grandchildren of
whom I was the youngest .
     Christmas at Grandma Moresby's was the highlight of my
in+fant years. This was one time when I was never lonely. All
my aunts, uncles and cousins descended on `Broughlea'. If my
South African relatives also happened to be visiting Sydney, a
total of fourteen adults and nine children squeezed around
Grandma's extended dining table. A pine tree specially felled
and carted down from Pennant Hills stood in the centre of the
old stable, and we kids danced around it trying to read the
names on the dozens of presents nestling between the glass
balls and tinsel. Being the youngest I was at a slight disadvantage because
I couldn't read the names or reach high enough to examine the presents on
the loftier branches. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G33 </id>

<source> Fossil in the sandstone: the recollecting judge </source>

<note> 2010 words </note>

<bl> By The Honourable Sir Kevin Anderson </bl>

<h> CHAPTER 5 </h>
<h> THE CROWN SOLICITOR'S OFFICE </h>

Before World War Two, there were few bursaries or free places
at the Melbourne University, but each year the Government
awarded five free places to members of the Public Service. I
applied without success a number of times, but in 1934 I
supported my application with a letter which I thought would do
no harm. It began, "I desire to forward herewith my sixth
annual application ..." Perhaps my jibe procured for me an
interview with the Board which deter+mined the five fortunate
applicants for 1935. I found myself being considered, not for a
free place in Law, but for a Diploma of Public Administration.
This puzzled me, as I already had six subjects towards my LL.B.
degree, and a colleague who had not passed in any subject in
Law was being considered for a free place in Law. After the
interview, I called on Cyril Knight, Secretary to the Law
Department, a forthright and powerful man in manner and in
reality, and asked him why he had recommended the other
officer, but had not recommended me for a free place in Law.
     "I recommended neither of you for anything, Anderson," he
said. He was quite furious. "I'll have no one dealing with my
officers without consulting me. Leave this to me. You may go."
He reached for the telephone. "Get me the Public Service
Commissioner," I heard him say as I left.
     The next day it was announced that I had a free place in
Law. Wisdom dictated that I ask no questions.
     I applied for a transfer to the Crown Solicitor's Office
and in May 1935 I was assigned to the Common Law Branch of that
office. There I had a more sedentary job, seated on the ground
floor of the Crown Law Offices which looked out into Lonsdale
Street, where languid traffic occasionally passed, and cable
trams flitted daintily by. The window faced north, the sun was
caressing, and sometimes I slumbered.
     As an inmate of this prestigious building, I began to take
note of some of its distinctive features and was impressed by
the large frosted window above the first landing of the grand
staircase. The window portrayed a classically draped female
holding a tablet, with surrounding scrolls proclaiming Latin
legal maxims. At first, the maxims did not make much impact,
but as time passed and I perused the transparent wisdom of the
ages through which the daylight filtered, I began to appreciate
more the theory, if not always the practice, of the law as
embodied in these maxims.
     At the top of the tableau was the maxim, Lex uno ore omnes
allocutur - The law speaks to all with one voice - perhaps
more appropriate when the window was engraved in the 1880's,
for the High Court was not then in being. On page one of the
book held by the stately female was the maxim, Lex semper dabit
remedium - The law always gives a remedy. Sometimes I wonder.
On the opposite page appeared the boast, Lex nil jubet frustra
- The law never commands in vain. What would statistics show?
Finally, across the base of the statuesque female was the
assurance, Lex deficere non potest in justicia exhibenda - The
law cannot fail in the administration of justice. Cannot?
     Such were my youthful and cynical reactions when I studied
these maxims, but fate later brought me almost daily face to
face with them. I marvelled at their profundity, and was
somewhat concerned lest in some way I should be found wanting.
This confrontation came about when the Crown Law Offices moved
out of the building in the 1970's, and the building was
extensively renovated. The renovations included the
installation of several new courtrooms and six sets of judges'
chambers. And so, for my last six years as a judge, I was the
fortunate occupant of a modern set of chambers. By a further
quirk of fate, my set of chambers was fashioned out of the
north-west corner of the first floor, and included the room
which, years earlier, I had entered unannounced to interview
the Secretary to the Law Department. I did not dream then that
tor six years I would sit in the very spot where he sat when I
first saw him.
     Another feature of the old building was the dungeons,
which were almost underground and contained a number of rooms
where old records were stored. At a time when only the
Licensing Court, the offices of which were on the top floor,
seemed to have any money - licensing fees provided a sure
source of income - it installed a lift from the dun+geons to
the top floor, which also served the Crown Solicitor's Office
and the Crown Law Offices on the ground and first floors. The
dungeons were seldom visited, and two of my colleagues - Scott
Murphy, who later joined the R.A.A.F. and was lost in the
Mediterranean when his plane crashed, and Gordon Leckie, who
was later Secretary to the Gas and Fuel Corporation - decided
to put the dungeons to some sensible use. In the least visited
of the dungeons, they set up a still to make orange liqueur.
Few shared the well kept secret. However, as the process of
fermentation and distillation proceeded, the aroma from the
still flowed gently out into the corridor and was wafted up the
lift well, which acted as a funnel to disperse the fragrance to
all the floors, not least to the top floor where the Licensing
Court, unaware of the source but enjoying the bouquet, stolidly
administered the liquor laws of the State. The ultimate product
would not have won a gold medal at the Royal Show, but, for us
who were privileged to quaff it, its origin and its rarity gave
it added piquancy.

When I went to the Crown Solicitor's Office in 1935, it seemed
that an era was ending. Several of the venerable judges who had
sat on the Supreme Court and County Court Benches for many
years were fading away. Until 1936, there was no retiring age
for Victorian judges, and some continued to sit into advanced
age. Though several exceptions can be indicated, it seems that
judicial office is a passport to old age. There is now in
Victoria a compulsory retiring age of seventy-two years for
Victorian judges appointed after 1936. Some compulsorily
retired judges declare that this requirement testifies to their
"statutory senility". Mr Justice Thomas Smith, upon his
retirement in 1973, is credited with having said, "I recognise
the wisdom of the law which requires judges to retire at the
age of seventy-two, but I deplore the application of it in this
particular case." He remained very active in the law as
Victorian Law Reform Commissioner for a number of years.
     Sir Leo Cussen, after twenty-seven years on the Supreme
Court Bench, had already died in 1933. It is my misfortune that
I saw him only once. He is generally regarded as the most
distinguished judge ever to have sat in the Supreme Court,
admired and revered by all, including Sir Owen Dixon. Cussen
has been described as being "the nearly perfect judge", the
qualification being explained to me by the observation that "No
one can be perfect, but he was as close as one could get."
Before taking to the law, Cussen had been an engineer, so he
had two professions. It was said that he had a photographic
memory and that, having glanced even momentarily at a document,
he could repeat verbatim what was on it. He was regarded as the
epitome of legal learning. It was said that if you could quote
a decision of Cussen in your favour you were far more than half
way to winning, so correct were his judgments considered to be.
He was always courteous; if the occasion arose to chide, he
chided gently. In a case before him which was being bitterly
fought, with sectarian and national overtones, one counsel
commented somewhat offensively that because of the conduct of
the other side, everything had got confused and mixed up "like
an Irish stew."
     "Or, perhaps, Mr Eager, like a Scotch haggis?" mildly
suggested the judge.
     Sir Stewart McArthur, whom I never saw, retired from the
Supreme Court in 1934. Bill Fazio once told me of a plea he
made before McArthur. There were extenuating circum+stances,
but McArthur imposed a severe sentence. Fazio bravely protested
that the judge had not taken into account a particular aspect
of the plea. McArthur agreed that he had not done so, and then
said, "I must not appear to have wrongly sentenced the
prisoner. I did overlook that aspect. I set the sentence aside,
and will release him on a bond to ensure that the wrong
impression is not given." It was fair of him to admit his
oversight, and his granting of a bond in those days could not
be interfered with; but, nowadays, with the Crown having the
right to challenge too light a punish+ment a judge would think
twice before going from one extreme to the other.
     Sir William Irvine was still on the Supreme Court Bench as
Chief Justice in 1935, but he retired at the end of that year,
aged 77 years. He was a man of severe dignity and detach+ment.
Just before he retired, I was instructing counsel in a case
before him. I recall the case, not because of the subject
matter, but because counsel's submissions put the judge to
sleep, and he gently slumbered. Both counsel sat silent for
several minutes until the judge awoke, and then, without
comment, counsel rose to continue his address. Nowadays, a book
is dropped or an argument started between counsel, or some
other device is used to arouse the dormant judge, but that
would not have seemed proper with "Iceberg Irvine", a title
which he acquired in his earlier extensive political career,
in which he had successively been Attorney-General and Premier
in Victoria and Attorney-General in the Commonwealth. He died,
aged 85 years, in 1943.
     Sir William Irvine's successor as Chief Justice was Sir
Frederick Mann, who was already well experienced as a judge,
for he had  been appointed to the Supreme Court Bench in 1919.
Though I saw him often in court, the oc+casions for our meeting
were few, and I recall speaking with him on only one occasion.
His signature was required to some document, and I visited him
in his chambers. He received me pleasantly and chatted with me
about my work in the Crown Solicitor's Office. At that time I
did not know his earlier history, but I have sometimes wondered
since whether, as he chatted with me, his mind went back to the
days when he, too, had been a clerk both at the City Court and
in the Crown Solicitor's Office.
     This was, indeed, the case. He had commenced work as a
clerk in 1888 at the City Court and, after five years, had
exchanged places with Hilary McDonald (later to be a police
magistrate and the father of a stipendiary magistrate and the
grand-father of yet another stipendiary magistrate) who was
then a clerk in the Crown Solicitor's Office. After the ex+
change, Mann pursued his studies, and eventually obtained his
M.A. and LL.B. degrees. Up to that point, there was substantial
coincidence between Mann's progress and my own, though I did
not obtain an M.A. degree.
     Had Sir Frederick been able to divine the future he would
have noticed further coincidences between his career and mine.
He obtained leave of absence to see active service in the South
African war and, on his return to the Crown Solicitor's Office,
he found himself supplanted by another officer who had been
doing his work in his absence and had been promoted. Mann's
salary remained at 200 pounds, and the interloper received 310
pounds per annum. In 1902, Mann left the Crown Solicitor's
Office and went to the Bar, pro+ceeding to the Bench in 1919. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G34 </id>

<source> Full circle: an Australian in Berlin 1930-1946 </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<bl> By Vera Bockmann </bl>

   So that is how Otto and I came to be married in Hamburg
eighteen months after our first meeting.

   Imagine my delight, when at the wedding breakfast at the
Reichshof Hotel I found on the table a small Australian flag
hoisted on a tiny flag-pole. There were other surprises as
well. I had never heard of much less seen a private box in a
restaurant. As we entered the orchestra struck up Mendelssohn's
Wed+ding March. I was startled, but nobody stared. Beyond a
cursory glance, it was of no interest to the diners whatsoever.

   Otto's closest friend Hans Jung with his wife Metta were our
only guests, and if, on that evening, anyone had prophesied
another war between Britain and Ger+many, a war which was to be
so much more devastating than the previous one, we would have
laughed them to scorn. That night everyone was friendly,
stimulating and enchanting. Any misgivings I had about my
parents being so far away were easily suppressed.

   It was our night.

   I found myself hoisting the flag up and down the cute little
flag-pole and gave our guests a demonstra+tion as to how, as
school children in Tanunda we saluted the flag every morning
before entering classes. Little did I realize that this small
emblem was to be my most treasured talisman fifteen years later
during ten days' confinement in our air-raid shelter during the
Battle of Berlin.

   The inhabitants of Hamburg all seemed to have fair hair and
very blue eyes and spoke English fluently. It was easy to
understand their precise and clipped Ger+man. I had been taught
to speak German from childhood but it was rather watered-down-
stuff com+pared with Hamburg German. I felt rather smug when I
found that not only could I converse in Ger+man but reap in
compliments as well. Actually it was my undoing because I did
not take the trouble of lear+ning the grammar until much, much
later. Flattery is so easy to take, and I revelled in the fact
that everyone thought the way I spoke so very quaint.

   In 1929 the Reeperbahn, the cosmopolitan cabaret area in St
Pauli was quite overwhelming as a tourist attraction. Tourists
meant money, and they seemed to have lots of it. With the
harbour full of ships of all nations Hamburg was a mecca for
entertainment. People dined late, watching daring floor shows
or seeking establishments where very good orchestras kept the
diners listening rather than chattering.

   It was the thing to leave at about two in the morn+ing and
go to a cheaper, smaller place where it was quite permissible
to dance on the well-scrubbed table if you happened to feel
like it. There was absolutely nothing riotous about it, law and
order were mysteriously coupled with gay abandon and laughter.
Moreover it would be misleading to say that anyone was drunk.
Probably they had all had as much as they could hold, but they
could hold it. Neither did it seem odd for someone at the table
to suddenly strike up a serious note amid all the hilarity in
order to become involved in a deep philosophical discussion at
three o'clock in the morning. Sleep was something we would have
plenty of time for later.

   It was the era of the saxophone and soft strains of music.
The current favourite was `Ramona'. Hans and I would sing it
walking from the electric train stop to where they lived,
oblivious of the time. We sang it at home and we sang it
sailing on the Elbe and Metta and Otto smiled indulgently.

   Much much later I was in Hamburg again. In the seventies,
neither Otto, Hans nor Metta were alive anymore. And yet they
were there, if not in the flesh.

   Cruising on the Elbe to Cuxhaven, I was reminded of them all
the time in a comfortably nostalgic way. At dusk I made for the
Alster Pavilion and ordered a Furst-Buckler, a very special
ice-cream. I had hardly noticed the orchestra playing until a
saxophone tuned in, an instrument so popular in 1929 but hardly
ever heard in the seventies. My emotions were aroused
im+mediately, augmenting the nostalgia I had sur+rendered to
all day. But I hadn't counted on the sax+ophone quietly playing
`Ramona'. My ice-cream became mingled with salty copious tears.

   Except for the rather damp climate, nothing would have
suited me better than to settle in Hamburg. The harbour made me
feel in touch with the whole world, it was lovely to hear the
sound of so many languages, and I too longed to be
cosmopolitan. But everyone spoke English to me as though they
could smell my passport.

   I had to surrender my passport to the British Con+sulate the
day before we were married. It was an un+comfortable
experience, making me realize that I was losing something very
precious. Being young, I light+heartedly managed to convince
myself that one nation was as good or bad as another, and where
on earth could one find more charming and lovable people than
in Hamburg. Why, even two of Queen Victoria's daughters had
married Germans. Henceforth I would be a German citizen. What
could I know then of be+ing cut off from my own family by war,
to say nothing of the fact that, directly after the war I was
an enemy alien according to Australian rules.

   Maturing in a foreign country leaves its mark on you for
ever, whether you like it or not. It leaves you constantly
groping for a middle way and getting nowhere, very often
finding yourself a misfit, no mat+ter where you happen to be.

   We did not settle in Hamburg as planned because Otto had
better prospects being transferred to the head office of the D
e b e g. This was an abbreviation of Deutsche
Betriebsgesellschaft fur Drahtlose Telegraphie. I considered
myself very smart being able to ripple that off my tongue
without an accent. Well, hardly any! So it was to be Berlin and
Otto had now become a land-lubber. But he never lost the
lilting gait of a true sea-faring man.

   It seemed impossible to find a suitably furnished apartment
at a reasonable price in Berlin so we decid+ed to look around
in Potsdam. By a stroke of great luck we finally found just
what we wanted, at least for a start. Although Potsdam was not
part of Greater Berlin we could get to the west end of Berlin
in half an hour by electric train which ran every ten minutes.
The drawback was that we lived at the other end of Potsdam
which meant five minutes walk to the tram and 15 minutes to the
station. But it was worth it. From the balcony of our apartment
in Kapellenbergstrasse we could touch the enormous lime trees
which lined the street. The apartment was in a huge villa which
was occupied by aristocratic ladies on a sort of `grace and
favour' basis. Their pen+sions were so slender that they were
obliged to sublet. The villa itself had seen better days when
there were lots of servants and a real mistress. All that was
left of the former glory were two stuffed boars in the vast
entrance hall. But in our time, this entrance was pure+ly for
show. There must have been some sort of un+written rule that
this access was for `visitors only', its stair-case had lush
red carpet, even if it was a bit threadbare in places. Then
there was the extremely well-kept garden. The former butler in
pre World War I times also had a `grace and favour' arrange+
ment in as much as he'd been allotted three rooms and kitchen
in the semi-basement, in return for which he was expected to
keep the garden in order. And how he lived up to that trust.
Occasionally he still buttled at weddings in other people's
houses, and a jolly fine figure he cut as he walked through the
garden gate in full regalia, no doubt in anticipation of a good
tip and a few good cigars.

   As a gardener he was a tyrant. Although he never verbally
objected to my walking along the meticulous+ly gravelled paths
he would be after me, covering up my footsteps with his rake.
All the flower beds were edged with a slender strip of lawn
which he virtually manicured. Washing on the line was out - not
even in the back garden, which actually was just as attrac+tive
as in the front and side of the villa. No matter how
impoverished these people were everything was sent to the
laundry. Teenagers visiting their grand+mothers were expected
to carry their bicycles over the paths, while dogs could only
be smuggled into the house when the gardener wasn't looking.
But you could always reconcile him with a good cigar, no
mat+ter how badly your visitors behaved.

   The population of Potsdam seemed to consist en+tirely of
elderly aristocrats. The ladies always wore hats which had
probably been in the height of fashion at the turn of the
century. Lace collars reinforced with whale-bone decorated
their throats, usually fastened with an enormous brooch. As for
their other jewellery no one asked what had become of it. I was
constantly reminded of Mrs. Gaskell's book Cran+ford. But
nothing was ever so Cranfordian as Potsdam. These were families
who had formerly own+ed large town houses as well as country
estates, run by an army of underpaid and overworked servants.
Of course everyone had a title. Some were unpro+nounceable and
grotesque, so was it any wonder that I shied away from using
these titles like a startled horse? Regierungsrat Geheimrat,
top secret privy councillor, it did not make any sense, to say
nothing of the Prussian military titles. It was hard enough to
say Gnadige Frau every time you addressed an older woman but it
was the easiest way out. Later I got a tremendous kick out of
being called a Gnadige Frau myself .

   They still had lots of precious objets d'art which were
hocked when need arose. Costly Dresden china adorned every nook
and cranny, the furniture was massive and rather ugly, oriental
rugs one on top of another, no matter whom you visited. It was
always like being in an antique shop. Yet, I loved these
peo+ple because they accepted me for what I was; no frills. One
was constantly reminded of Prussia and what it stood for. Even
the tram-cars in Potsdam had the Prussian Eagle woven into the
well-worn plush seats.

   One of the first lessons I had to learn was never ever to
put a cup and saucer into the laps of German ladies and expect
them to be happy about it. No mat+ter how simple the fare it
had to be served at a table, preferably a very solid one. But
we grew to respect this Cranfordian spirit of Potsdam and
became very friendly with a family who had five young boys, the
von Gottbergs. They were the grandsons of our landlady and it
transpired that she had long ago mar+ried a Jewish gentleman
with means. But this was not important in 1929. That came
later.

   The father of the young boys was a retired general, quite a
bit older than his half Jewish wife and not at all arrogant,
yet so unlike anyone I had ever met that I was never quite at
ease with him. Otto used to give me hints on how to behave but
in the end I always reverted to being just myself, and somehow
I was ac+cepted. As for the boys, I was like an elder sister
and thought it absolutely fantastic that they went to the same
school as the Hohenzollern princes, the sons of the former
Crown Prince.

   We often went with them to Werder, the lakeside resort with
spectacular views. In Spring the Berliners flocked to Werder to
admire the fruit blossom and get drunk on strawberry wine. Two large
restaurants on hilltops flanked by the lakes of the Havel offered a 
magnificent view. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G35 </id>

<source> My grandfather's house </source>

<note> 2011 words </note>

<bl> By Helen Rutledge </bl>

<h> Chapter 18 </h>
<h> Sydney in Helen's Time </h>

It is a strange feeling to read an account of your home town written by
a mature person looking back to her childhood from another world, decades
later, especially when that person is a writer of no ordinary skill. When
the home town is Sydney, my first thought is `How could she make it seem
so true and yet so ordinary?' My second thought is that it was so true because
it was so ordinary.
  To children and most young people, everything is noticeably ordinary.
They are so conscious of their surroundings that they do not remark on them.
It is not a case of familiarity breeds contempt, but a way of surviving.
  Later, when they go to different and new places, they `remark on' more
than they `notice'. It takes time and knowledge to appreciate what you see
- the difference between a general impression and a particular one or vice
versa. The older one gets the more capable one becomes of both noticing
and remarking because experience helps one to recognise, detect and compare,
and it cannot be helped if the first fresh feelings have disappeared with
youth.
  So, I cannot remember Sydney truly as it was when I was young because
it was just the place where we lived, and familiar things are seldom remarkable
or exciting. Its loveliness we took for granted; perhaps we had to be taught
by artists and writers becoming famous in this century, how beautiful it
is.
  The first really exciting thing to happen to Sydney in my day was the
build+ing of the Harbour Bridge. It was an awakening and an eye-opener.
We watched the arch take shape and wondered if its designers and builders
could possibly have planned it so true that the halves of the span would
meet exactly in the middle. Unforgettable was the marvel and beauty of it
when it did. That stupendous arch was as beautiful and magical as a rainbow
or cobweb, and likewise of short duration. Once tied to its roadway, it
achieved a different kind of splendour, especially at night, but I am grateful
that I saw it 50 years ago when, pylons unfinished, it seemed skyborne over
the water.
  However, that is not a childhood memory, and if I was to recall my most
predominant impression of that early time, it was of the utter sandiness
of Sydney, not just the lovely yellow sands of the comparatively empty beaches,
but the dirty grey sand of the bush, yards and gardens.
  My life-long friend Molly Street married Guy Burnand in 1939 and went
to live in England. For various reasons, she was never able to return to
Australia until 1982. I was surprised when she remarked she could not get
over the `greening' of Sydney. I had never noticed it, or rather, I had
never thought about it. I had seen trees planted along the suburban roads
and I had seen the subdivisions take place of big properties into blocks
of land for sale. I had seen all the new houses built and the owners planting
trees and shrubs on their block. I was so aware of the bricks and hideous
tiles that I never noticed I could hardly see them any more, except when
they piled up into flats.
  Rona used to stand out as a landmark, now it is difficult to see the house
from the harbour or anywhere else. With the splendid water supply and pres+sure
we have today, I find I no longer think of Sydney as being sandy.

<h> The Comet </h>

I once hated dates, and having to learn those of the kings and queens of
En+gland. Two dates I have never forgotten - 1503 and 1714; the years when
two queens died - Elizabeth and Anne. They are very useful dates for houses
and furniture and, or course, the people of their time. In my old age I
treasure dates. Sometimes it is really important to be able to `date'
accurately a doing, a happening or an object.
  My first irrefutable dates are Halley's Comet and the death of King Edward
VII. Comets ever have been considered portents of ill-omen and were greatly
feared by mankind, especially in dark ages when the moon and stars were
the only night lights. Halley's comet was the most fearful omen of all,
and legend+ary in that its 76-year transit meant that many people never
saw it at all and few saw it twice. Because the Norman Conquest of England
was so vividly recorded on the Bayeux Tapestry, the comet's appearance ever
since is sup+posed to be bad news for kings (it was indeed so for King Harold
at the Battle of Hastings and also convinced his army that they were on
the losing side). I remember so clearly being got out of bed, wrapped up
and carried on to the nursery balcony to see this wondrous sight. Because
it was said that every time the comet passed close to the sun, some of its
tail was burnt off, it was sug+gested that Alastair and I should bottle
a bit of its tail. No ordinary bottle was used for this purpose. It had
no neck and its cork was recessed in its base. It was the shape of those
glass paperweights that when turned upside-down send a snowstorm fluttering
on to persons or dwellings. As our bottle was green, perhaps a flower or
a tree was once enshrined in it. For years it glowed like a starboard light
in our nursery cabinet, along with other treasures such as the lead rose
leaves collected after the Leura fire. Where is it now? The day came when
we said, `How silly!' and did not attempt to rescue it when our mother turned
the day nursery into the dining-room and the cabinet and most of its contents
disappeared.
  My other vivid memory was of a day, soon after the comet had passed by,
when my brother and a friend came clattering downstairs, announcing in
cheerfully dramatic voices, `The King is dead.' Alastair and I were not
unpre+pared for this sad event; we had ceremoniously sealed the comet's
tail in our green bottle and, of course we knew that comets were bad news
for kings because of 1066 and all that.
  Equally memorable was a children's party of the Frazers at Caerleon, when
some of my pleasure (if there was any to be had) was spoilt because Lady
Patricia Ward, daughter of our third Governor-General, Lord Dudley, wore
a black cire satin sash on her white muslin dress, her hair tied up with
black bows and her hat had black ribbons to tie it on. She also wore black
patent leather buckled shoes (though she probably wore them all the time).
Always so royalist, I reproached my mother afterwards for a lack of respect
on my part for the late king. My mother, who like everyone else grown-up
was wearing full mourning herself, said it would have been unsuitable (such
a useful and overdone word) and it was different for Patsy Ward as she was
`official'.

<h> CHAPTER 19 </h>
<h> Ginahgulla Road </h>

When I was young, I lived in a world with horses. My father said he was
bad at recognising people, unless he saw a man patting a horse because he
knew who the horse was. When he was courting my mother, he would take her
out in his sulky, with her sister Janet, aged eight, squeezed between them
as duenna, which may have given my mother confidence, but must have been
profoundly irritating to my father.
  When they were married my father added a brougham to his equipages. I
do not remember going out in the sulky, but I do remember the brougham.
I remember much better my grandmother's victoria, with a fur rug to spread
over our knees. The carriage horses were Peter and Paul.
  My parents bought a car before my grandparents did. Theirs was treated
much the same way as the horses and not taken out on Sunday until Janet
learnt to drive the rather fearsome Renault. Osborne, the coachman, never
got out of the habit of leaning forward going up hills to `ease the horses'.
  The Rona paddock was used by Peter and Paul, the Rona cow, our cow and
later my sister Philippa's pony. Our own paddock, in which my father kept
his polo ponies, had been sold.
  Horses did not come back into my life till I married in 1935. At Gidleigh,
my husband's property, there was still a teamster and eight fine draught
horses which took our wool to the railway. When World War II started, we
were fortunate enough to have the horses and carts to do most of the station
work, and men who knew how to use the harness.
  My brother, Alastair, had a skewbald pony called Patch. He and my father
used to ride down to Rose Bay through the scrub where Cranbrook Road is
now. We used to call it Sandy Lane. They would meet Mr Herbert Allen and
his son Dick, who lived close to Rona and who also had a paddock behind
their house, Buyuma, on Victoria Road. They would canter along the beach
together to swim at Farmer's Baths.
  In 1914, the polo ponies were sold, and the nice little groom who could
not read or write, went to the War to be killed. Alastair went to School
at Tudor House, where many of the boys had ponies, and took a pony called
Oswald.
  `They' tried to teach me to ride, but I was frightened to death and
absolutely loathed Patch, a shying little beast, and there is something
very unnerving about a leading rein, however necessary. Philippa learnt
to ride the natural way. She really did not care much for the games we played,
and though I forced her to play with dolls her heart was not in it. In due
course she was given a blue-grey shaggy pony called Bluey, who became her
best friend. Osborne, the Rona coachman, taught her to clean the bridle
with silver sand, use saddle soap and the curry comb, and oil Bluey's hooves.
Bluey was groomed all day when he was not being ridden.
  When Philippa was older she was given a lovely creamy pony which she used
to ride to Centennial Park, where she met friends, until a concrete road
was laid along Victoria Road. Bluey had been given to a cousin, Daisie Osborne
(now Tait), and she and Philippa went on to be successful breeders, especially
Daisie, and owners of racehorses. They both felt that Bluey had started
their education and their continuing delight and love of horses.
  We were geographically limited socially to places within walking distance
and the availability of an escort, as were our playmates. On special occasions
we were taken out in either a hansom cab or a four-wheeler, always, if my
preference was considered, the latter. Hansoms terrified me to death, and
I feared the horse would sit down on Victoria Road (it must have once),
or Edgecliff Hill, or worse still, the wheel would come off catching in
the tram+lines. I was a timid child.
  I do not remember our mothers attempting to enjoy each other's company
while we played, nor were we noticeably supervised*surpervised. Some of
the gardens we had the run of were very large, and when we were wanted,
bells were rung or `coo-ees' called. So we were generally `dropped' and
`picked up'.
  My brother, Alastair, was delicate after a severe attack of rheumatic
fever and was in bed for weeks and kept quiet for months, though we were
not naturally rowdy children. He was not sent to school until he was 12
- a mis+take, my mother thought, as his health improved quickly at Tudor
House. For these various reasons we were used to amusing ourselves.
  We had splendid toys that we loved, and played endless games of our own
devising.  To fill a need I invented an imaginary friend called Molly Deena.

</sample>



<sample><id> G36 </id>

<source> Australian Society - September 1986 </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<h> Literature in the market place </h>

<h> Kate Ahearne looks at anxious moments in the book trade </h>

   `ANYBODY IN BUSINESS IS there to make money.' You probably
wouldn't say no to a few bob for every time you've heard that
trotted out to explain the behaviour of anyone from the corner
milk bar proprietor to the biggest transnational company. But
as a truism about business it has to be one of the most
interestingly untrue. It takes no account, for instance, of why
some families struggle to stay on the land through the hardest
of hard times, or why so many people choose to work in par+ticular 
jobs or businesses when they could do much better financially 
elsewhere.
   If you turn your attention to the book trade, you'll find an
entire industry which operates on all sorts of motivations
other than (or as well as) the making of money.
  Take the writer - the primary producer. (And no doubt there are
dairy farmers around who will appreciate this next bit.) When
you buy a book over the counter, roughly 10 per cent of the
price goes to the author. If the book is a `remainder' (and
there's a lot of them about) the author gets nothing.
  So if you've written a book like last year's Australian
bestseller by Julia Stafford, A Taste of Life which sold 400
000 copies, you're rich. But if it's a biography of an emi+nent
Australian, it might sell 3000-5000 copies, unless it's one out
of the box. At an average of around $25 a pop, the writer gets
$7 500 - $11 500 (less tax and agency fees) for the two years
(minimum) during which they ate, slept and dreamt The Book. If
it's poetry and it's not by Pam Ayres or William Words+worth,
it's probably a print run of 1000 copies or less and in many
cases it has been pub+lished by a small press which can pay
only nominal royalties or none at all.
   Still, it should be pointed out that until recent years, it
was the extremely rare Aus+tralian writer who earned a living
as an author. Ken Methold, who chairs the Aus+tralian Society
of Authors, now estimates that there could be as many as fifty.
Pres+umably by `writing' he means `writing, allied trades and
spinoffs' - workshops, writer-in-residencies, invitations to
read or speak, film rights, and so on.
   For those at the top of the heap there is also a range of
literary prizes to vie for - from the NSW and Victorian
Premiers' Awards ($15 000 each in the top two cate+gories) to
the local and special-interest prizes, which are worth more in
confidence than cash. But you can't eat confidence or a fan
letter that says you have changed so-and-so's life. And
according to figures published in Australian Bookseller and
Publisher, so far this year 1924 new titles have been publish+ed, 
representing a massive 59.3 per cent increase on the same
period last year, which is worrying the hell out of some people
in the industry who read this as the overproduc+tion which
precedes the crunch. It also leaves a lot of writers grinding
away for peanuts to produce a commodity which is a bit like
motherhood - we are all agreed it's a good thing, but are we
prepared to pay for it? Or, is it simply that writers are just
the biggest `scabs' out?
   At one end of the market (financially speaking) we are
prepared to pay - to the extent that, for example, we have
already purchased 200 000 copies of Julia Stafford's More Taste
of Life, and in the last two years we have also snapped up 80
000 of at least seven Readers' Digest titles. And on the import
side, no doubt we have fulfilled our goodly market duty towards
the 10 million copies Jackie Collins sold of Hollywood Wives.
   Actually, there's a myth that's been doing the rounds for
years (and desperately wants re-proving) that Australians are
the biggest per capita readers in the world. It's a myth that
sits unhappily with an industry which now sees itself at crisis
point.
   So what about these `middle-persons' - the publishers,
distributors and booksellers who soak up the 90 per cent of the
cost of a book which doesn't go to the author? What could they
possibly have to whinge about? Aren't they breaking even or a
whole lot bet+ter on all those titles returning that ridiculous
10 per cent to the person who's produced what we think we're
buying? Well yes, barring the amateur and non-profit or co-
operative publishers, they are, unless someone has read the
market wrong or has otherwise bungled. Or unless they have
decided that in the case of this or that book, the prestige
and/or the contribution to culture is worth it.
   But it's not as simple as that. In the past 10-15 years the
non-profit publishers have brought tremendous pressure to bear
on Australian mainstream publishing. On the one hand are
writers like Melbourne lesbian novelist `Emily George', who has
written, published and sold out several print runs of her own
novels in recent years. At the other extreme there are non-
profit publishers like Freemantle Arts Centre Press who,
despite their self-imposed limitation of publishing only
regional writers, have made an enormous impact on the big `L'
Literature end of the Australian market, which has never been
particularly lucrative anyway.

   AND THIS BRINGS US TO A strange phenomenon which seem speculiar*
seems peculiar to the book industry. Books are not like bootlaces,
bread, beer or just about any other commodity. In spite of the
threat posed by television, video and computer technology,
books remain the major repository in our society of wisdom,
knowledge, culture - call it what you like. When the Fraser
government first proposed an across-the-board indirect taxation
scheme the industry mounted a massive campaign. The facts and
figures were there all right, but the Please Don't Tax Books
campaign was heavily into emotive rhetoric. Geoffrey Blainey
went so far as to compare the proposal to a tax on sunshine.
  Not all books fall into this category of course, but enough
still do for the `special case' argument to emerge as the most
crucial whenever the book industry feels itself threatened. And
it also explains why amateur and non-profit presses are not the
only ones putting out money-losing books. Angus and Robertson
Publishers, for instance, runs a poetry list which must have
been losing money for years. Penguin consistently publishes
fiction in small print runs which cannot hope to do better than
break even. This kind of pressure applies not only to publishers, 
but to distributors in competition with co-operative ventures, 
as well as to those writers who need to think of themselves as 
professionals for bread-and-butter reasons. It also spills over 
into the media, where professional freelancers are continually 
in competition with amateurs who give their right arms to get 
into print.
   But more serious right now, if not for the writers
themselves, then for the industry, is what's happening at the
big end of the market. During the past twelve months, the
Australian industry has seen enormous change, brought about
partly by company take-overs. Collins has swallowed Dove
Communications, Rigby has virtually disappeared as a general
publisher, Pan has gobbled James Fraser. The list goes on and
on. In the same period our two largest distributors have shown
significant drops in profit.
   We now have a situation where the Australian publishing
industry is largely controlled by overseas interests, which
many observers fear are much more likely to concern themselves
with the promotion of books originated elsewhere than with what
is really, comparatively speaking, a tiny market for
Australian-originated books. Take, for instance, the recent
promotion of the American writer Victor Kiam's book, Going For
It. Kiam undertook 75 media interviews and speaking engagements
in six days. To my knowledge, no Australian book has ever been
so heavily promoted. Compare the launch of Peter Carey's first
novel, Bliss, which, according to Carey (by no means an
`unknown' at the time) was paid for, not by his publisher,
University of Queensland Press, but by himself.
   And where overseas interests are making noises about
concerning themselves with the local product, the question is
whether they can possibly have any idea about what's good for
Australians, or what Australians really want. And if they can
and do, aren't they more likely to interest themselves in
profits than in the welfare of Australian cultural life or
Australian jobs?

   EQUALLY DISTURBING IS THE FALL in value of the Australian
dollar. On the face of it, this should provide an enormous
boost to the local industry. With overseas titles zooming in
price, Australian titles, theoretically, become cheaper by
comparison - which would be hunky-dory for Australian publishers
if it weren't for the fact that most of the major publishers
are also major distributors for parent companies as well as
their own and smaller local and overseas publishers' titles.
   The devaluation of the Australian dollar has caused a 70 per
cent rise in books from the UK and 40 per cent in US titles. It
is now clear from the Australian Advisory Council on
Bibliographical Services Survey (May-July 1986) that many
libraries are able to buy only half as many books and
periodicals as they were two years ago. While most people
involved in local book production agree that Australian
libraries should be buying a much higher percentage of Australian
books, the ABCS Survey shows no signs of this happening to any
useful degree. And it is by no means clear that companies
distributing local as well as overseas books will shift the
weight of their endeavours to the local product on the strength
of what may turn out to be a hiccough. The prevalent attitude
seems to be `we'll ride it out'.
   On the other hand, many Australian publishers who have
relied for years on cheap Asian printing are now looking more
closely at Australian printers - which would be great for our
printers, had they not been caught with their technological
pants down after the several years during which the battle with
cheap off-shore printers had been fought and lost. The end
result will be to force up the price of Australian books,
dulling that theoretical edge provided by devaluation.
   Then there's the large-scale dumping of overseas remainders
and the current running battle between the Australian
Booksellers Association and the major distributors over whether
bookshops should be able to order titles direct from overseas
to avoid perceived inefficiencies in distribu+tion. Indeed
things are so bad on the distribution front that Kevin Weldon
of the giant Weldon Hardie group is offering to help set up a
co-operative distribution house. And, of course, there is
always the age-old problem, the Big One which of all the
developed countries, Australia alone suffers - a tiny
population spread over enormous distances.
   Perhaps none of this would matter quite so much if the
Australian industry were based on the solid money-making
motivation which underlies almost every other industry. So why
do publishers like Penguin and Angus and Robertson (already in
enough competition, you might have thought, with the plethora
of non-profit publishers) bother to publish their poetry or
their piddly little first novels when they know very well that
most of them are not terrific? There's a desire in there
somewhere to do `good' (culturally speaking) and a desire quite
often to look good. A publishing house can add tone to a big
conglomerate. If Robert Holmes a Court does end up with the
Herald and Weekly Times, he will have, as well as the TV
stations, etc, a nice little book publishing and distribution
empire to add to all that art. What's it matter if you lose a
few thou' now and then? And it's all power and influence.
   Add to that the writers themselves, who are writing for
every reason under the sun. There's the deeply human need of the
once-offer to pass on the findings of a life-long passion. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G37 </id>

<source> Larrikin - Winter 1986 </source>

<note> 2003 words </note>

<h> A sort of grace in acqua profunda - the fiction of Helen Garner </h>

<bl> By Jane Cotter </bl>

It seems Helen Garner can't miss. Her success began in 1977 with Monkey
Grip, the novel of soft fucking and heroin addiction, love and subcultural
angst.
Monkey Grip got the National Book Council Award. It hailed as a consciousness
raiser, praised for its authenticity. It shocked, it depressed, it bored,
it gripped, it was made into a film. Three stylish and relevant nouvelle
followed: the flow of superlatives from reviewers ("bewitching shape and
gleaming surface") became a flood.
Postcards is her latest, stories with the expected high polish and dead
accuracy, more experiments in relevance. Garner continues highly articulate.
She speaks for emotional shapes and corners of her generation (roughly 30-45
now) - mainly urban, postfeminist, multicultural - which hankers for
articulation of itself. Garner fans buy her books as a matter of course,
and those who can't stand her work buy it anyway in case they miss something.
She's been accused of transcribing, copying merely, the more flamboyant
or depressing habits of her generation; and she is thanked for the insights
into them. Most importantly, her style, with its pungent details and resonant
spaces, is sure; capable of sustaining itself under fire, or the dangers
of cultism; and promises further development. Be it noted that she is right
up with White when it comes to tea leaves and rancid fat: and no-one does
a better dunny.
  Her characters know their way round the furniture of their ideologies,
their suburban culture and its various alternatives (whether dope and colonic
irrigation, or Mozart and dogs in the kitchen). Such competence does not
protect, however, against moments of change. Anyone can drown in the deep
water, suffer changing relationships, loss, ideological confusion. Garner's
writing reflects - and perhaps is also a symptom of - a consistent personal
and cultural anxiety. It shows people in hard sexual worlds, unbearable
worlds with junkies, with other people's children, faced with the sheer
difficulty of achieving grace under pressure. I think there are serious
problems in her work traceable to the writer's distance, or lack of it,
from all this; but she is rightly praised at least for showing it.

  "I'm not all that worried about futures. I don't want love anyone forever.'
  `Look - don't get me wrong, he may be a scoundrel, but I really dig him
- apart from anything else, he's a fuckin' JUNKIE.'
  `He's NOT. He's off it. He got off it in Hobart.'
  We stared at each other across the table.
  Everything she knew about junkies was written on her face. I knew it too,
but at that moment I chose to deny it. I stared at her face, gritting my
teeth against the way she loved me. I looked at her thin, long fingers and
kept my eyes on them until I heard her sigh. She stood up and picked up
the coffee cups and carried them to the sink.
  Already too late, too late.
  What harsh lives we lead.

  This is Monkey Grip. Nora is already hooked on Javo, already out of her
depth. The narrative forms itself from such kitchen `sessions', ordinary,
utterly accurate; all the details of communal living, songs and cooking
and biking the hot streets to the baths, conversations, bed and kids. This
is the language in which Nora strains to read her life, to read Javo in
his restless movements - Hobart, Freycinet, Bangkok - to read her own fluxing
responses to him. The novel's insistently repetitive rhythm thus has its
base in the rhythms of Javo's addiction, but is in a way too a distillation
of all their lives:
  
  "We all thrashed about swapping and changing partners - like a very
complicated dance to which the steps had not yet been choreographed, all
of us trying to move gracefully in spite of our ignorance."

  This passage may serve as an insight to all the fiction.
  Nora tells her own story. The problem is that it's frustratingly long
and serious, particularly as Nora herself finds little in the way of
"choreography". She thinks on hints, in the I Ching, in troubling fantasies,
an acid trip; she dreams of "big airy open houses"; she has transient empathies
with others, and her daughter. Small Grace is one of the stronger characters,
wry, wise, loved, and thoroughly mucked about in spite of her clear needs.
One wonders how creative is her incessant drawing of "beautiful lady's"
with the perennial box of Derwents.
  Though smaller pieces by far, HONOUR &amp; OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN are thankfully
less urgently subjective, and show a more spacious treatment of the way
in which households break up, change, come `together' again. Frank and Kathleen
of HONOUR are trying to separate nicely, but can't relinquish the "domestic
memory", the apparel of a shared past (which includes small daughter Flo
- NB Flo). Frank's new partner, Jenny, who denied all this, is floundering.
In the kitchen the spouses yarn on, while

  "Jenny was left striving for grace, for a courteous arrangement of features
while they recited, delighted in the ring of names without meaning for her.
Frank put his arm round her bare shoulders, but she kept looking at her
beer can and fiddling it round and round, letting her curly hair fall across
her face to shield her. There was a short silence in the room, during which
Flo could be heard splattering the hose against the side wall of the house.
They had opened the door and taken down the blanket as the afternoon drew
on and the sun shifted off the concrete outside the kitchen, but the heat
was still intense."

Typically cinematic this scene, with Garner in full control of all the
elements, including Flo, and the full weight of the unspoken. Three people
at a loss in a unchoreographed situation. The narrative moves in and out
of houses and the various perspectives of the three who are trying to get
it right. Eventually there is a scene between Flo and her parents, this
time in an espresso bar. Flo is "battling for honour" in her turn:

  "I want us ALL to live together, in the same house. Can't we all go back
to Sutherland Street? I KNOW it would work! Oh, can't we?"
She wept bitterly, in floods of grief: she did not touch her face, for she
was sitting on her hands so that neither of her parents might seize one
and sway her into partiality. The tears, unwiped, splashed off her cheeks
and on to the table. The Italian waiter behind the espresso machine turned
his face away in distress, his hands still slinging to the upright handles."

What harsh lives we DO lead. There's no right, or wrong; but still it is
a strong moral pressure that Garner brings to bear. Here the child, desperate,
the (beautiful touch) Italian waiter, our own response, all simultaneously
demand relief. The writer has caused a set scene to become painfully
inevitable. HONOUR's final scene is just as inevitable. Sitting in the park
as Flo plays with dog, the two women open to each other in tentative
friendship. Flo cons them into getting on the see-saw, and the result is
an appropriately uneasy balancing image; but this reader is a bit uneasy
about its slickness. Garner is not immune from slickness.
  This then is her territory. Two, three, more people make a structure,
and when the structure shifts, it loosens, exposing people's needs through
the gaps. Children are points of insight to these gaps, and Garner attends
to the ways people use kids as litmus paper - or catalysts - when they are
confused about themselves. There is Grace waking before dawn in a strange
house - "Draw wit' me, Nora - draw wit' me"; Flo; wild little Wally who
has slept on beaches most of his life with his father - "thin and dirty
with little muscles like string and pearly down in elegant whorls along
his back-bone". Children reflect the present, they provide moments of clear
truth, and they testify to the prevailing anxiety. Someone in postcards
says "I think in an ideal world everyone would have children ...That's how
people learn to love. Kids suck love out of your bones". Put this way, that's
a large responsibility for a child.

  There are no ideal worlds, or ideal collective households. In OTHER PEOPLE'S
CHILDREN, Wally and freckled, stolid, endearing Laurel identify some hard
truths in their various relationships with the adults. Ruth, single parent,
lives with childless Scotty and rock muso Alex. The household's heyday,
when "the kids were everybody's kids" is past; Ruth's and Scotty's needs
are different and unequal, and the strain increasingly puts grace out of
reach. Particularly as the kids refuse to be idealistic.

Garner's capacity to render domestic life and its tiniest privacies gives
such pleasure of recognition that at least one reviewer has compared her
with Christina Stead, whose THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN is the supreme family
novel. Here's a bit more:

  "The institution of Telling Life Stories had gone swimmingly at the old
house, once a week, in each of the bedrooms in turn: the cups of tea, the
packets of Iced Vo-Vos and Chocolate Royals, the knitting, the open fire,
the horror stories that any childhood will turn up. `My father read my mail
and found the contraceptive pills.' `He was driving so fast I thought I
could just open the door and jump out.' `When I got home from school my
mother...' `He came into the bathroom and I was in the bath with my sister
and he said, Who did it?'"

The comparison with Stead is fair comment. What Garner is less clear about
than Stead, is the sheer dangerousness of using childhood as an emotional
haven from reality, an alternative to `tackling the hard truth head on'.
Her large-scale sense of balance is flawed; and it's a problem, because
other people's children sets out to cover all that shared ground of personal
history, childhood and the seductiveness of nostalgia ("whenever Ruth washed
herself with Johnson's baby soap, she remembered when Laurel was a baby").

The men exhibit a sort of childlike defencelesness: Ruth can only hold
the odious Dennis in sleep or sickness (a shadow here of Nora and Javo);
childless Scotty looks at Madigan and sees that "something in the angle
of his leg and foot was child-like to her: Paddle shoes, free milk at
playtime." There might be limits to the pleasure the reader gets from
discovering weaknesses in others, but the characters go on diary-snooping
and trading failings. Without the strong objectivity and structural thrust
of Stead - or something like it - one wonders what holds it all together.

  This problem of overall thematic control is somewhat better addressed
in the children's bach, though it's still the delicacy and accuracy of the
writing that appeals most. Dexter and Athena's household is the most fully
drawn yet; its attractions are freshly surveyed through the eyes of teenager
Vicki, who strays in and stays:

  "Vicki loved their lavatory in the corner of the yard, its shelves made
of brick and timber stuffed with old paper-backs, broken tools, camping
gear and boxes of worn-down coloured pencils. She loved the notes they left
for each other, the drawings and silly rhymes, the embarrassing singing,
the vegetable garden, the fluster under which lay a generous order, the
rushes of activity followed by periods of sunny calm: Vicki was in love
with the house, with the family, with the whole establishment if it.
`Bunker Street is her GOD,' said Elizabeth."  

Bunker Street makes sense to Vicki; but her sister Elizabeth, who is something
in TV and very worldly, lives in a sort of warehouse with only a huge pink
bed, TV, phone, cassettes, - which DOESN'T make sense. Through Elizabeth
(who is loosely associated with the mandatory rock muso Philip), Dexter
and Athena's "establishment" is threatened by "the rough sexual world that
lives outside families".

</sample>


<sample><id> G38 </id>

<source> Australian Society - August 1986 </source>

<note> 2003 words </note>

<h> Dazzling writing </h>

<bl> By Helen Garner </bl>

Eleanor Dark's last novel, Lantana Lane, is republished this month by Virago.
Helen Garner introduces Eleanor Dark's work.

ELEANOR DARK WAS BORN IN Sydney in 1901, to a bookish and political family.
Her father was the poet and man of letters Dowell O'Reilly, who worked as
a schoolmaster and in the Commonwealth Public Service and who was briefly a
Labor MP. About her mother I have no information. The young Eleanor, according
to information provided by A K Thomson in Understanding the Novel: The Timeless
Land, one of those mysterious and useful little cribs one unearths in public
libraries, flourished intellectually from the start: she read at three,
and by seven was writing verse and stories. She was educated at a private
school and went to business college to become a stenographer. She appears
to have taken it for granted that she would become a writer; she published
her first verses at nineteen, and at twenty married Dr Eric Dark, a man
who seems always to have supported her strongly in her work and her ambitions.
  Dark is described, in Thomson's little book, as `an intensely practical
and hard-working woman', a keen gardener, a hiker and bushwalker, who designed
the family's house at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and
who with her husband made a second summer home in a cave. `A rock in the
floor was blasted away,' writes Thomson, `and the floor made of white ants'
nests. Fireplaces were made and rough furniture, and the table was a slab
of rock.'
  Dark's love for the land and her knowledge of it came from a great deal
of serious hiking and mapping of the area, activities which provided the
solid research basis of The Timeless Land and also the wonder and respect
for the ancientness of the country seen, for example, in Return To Coolami:

  ...in the gullies, through a dim green light and on soft earth that gave
  out a damp, rich smell, you might walk under tree ferns whose ancestors
  had been tree ferns before you grew legs and came to live on dry land.

  The few photographs of Eleanor Dark that I have seen, all head-and-shoulders
portraits, show her as broad-faced, with thick dark wavy hair cut shortish,
a wide but rather thin mouth in a most determined set, and very striking,
very large dark eyes which are always turned away from the camera. Her
expression is serious and private.
  LANTANA LANE IS ELEANOR DARK'S last novel. It appeared in 1959. Until
I was asked to write this introduction I had never heard of it. To most
Australians who were at high school in the 1950s, Dark was known as the author
of the fattish historical novel The Timeless Land (1941; part of a trilogy)
which we studied in fifth or sixth form. The strongest memory I had of this
book is an early scene in which an Aborigine stands on the cliffs of Sydney
Harbour (which bore for him, of course, a different name) and watches the
approach of the sailing ships carrying the first European settlers to his
land. It is a scene that the subsequent near-destruction of the Abori+ginal
race makes into an image of piercing irony.
  Eleanor Dark's name returned briefly to public notice several years ago
when a television series was made of The Timeless Land. Writers are accustomed
to being passed over in the hooha that launches TV events, and Dark was
no exception; but it is hard to imagine this old woman, living in the Blue
Mountains, being much interested more than forty years after its publication
in yet another interpretation of her most popular novel as little more than
a colonial costume drama.
  The TV series, using alcohol as the metaphor for racial destruction, touched
lightly on the fatal impact of white settlement on the Aborigines, but paid
little or no attention to the damage which, as Dark points out in her novel,
greed and plunder did to the ancient land with which the Aborigines had
lived in harmony. She uses the image of rape - but rape, it seems to me,
within an already established relationship - when she says of her character
based on Governor Philip:

  He heard them crying out to her insatiably, `Give! Give!' and was aware
  of her silent inviolability which would never give until they had ceased
  to rob.

If this strikes us as modern, we may be equally struck by this account,
also from The Timeless Land, of Carangarang, elder sister of the main
Aboriginal character Bennilong and a maker of songs: she sings,

  ...but the words faded as swiftly as they had been born; smitten with
  fear of her own temerity, she glanced round apprehen+sively upon a ring
  of startled, hostile faces. They said nothing, but she understood their
  condemnation.

Her younger sister, too, made songs that `were not such as men might make... 
To the men she was like a faintly pricking thorn in the foot which they could
not discover.'
  The women novelists of Australia between the 1920s and the end of the
Second World War were no `faintly pricking thorns'. They dominated the
country's fiction output: Dark, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Barnard and
Eldershaw, Dymphna Cusack, Kylie Tennant, and the two most brilliant, Christina
Stead and Henry Handel Richardson, both of whom fled the place and worked
abroad for virtually their entire careers. It is the mark of the ability
of Australians to distort our own cultural history that a novelist like
Eleanor Dark, a critical and popular success for twenty years and twice
a winner of the Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal, should now be
someone whose name produces blank looks, whose books have almost all been
out of print for years, and who is omitted from the Oxford Anthology of
Australian Literature (published 1985 and by any standards a conservative
selection).
  Drusilla Modjeska's important book Exiles at Home (Angus and Robertson,1981)
has brought fresh attention to the women writers, solidly on the left and
subsequently all but forgotten, who dominated the Australian novel of their
time. Dark is one of these writers, but even in Modjeska's book she remains
a shadowy figure.
  In her early novels (Prelude to Christopher, 1934; Return to Coolami,
1936; Sun Across the Sky, 1937; Waterway, 1938) Dark was stylistically some
way in advance of her resident female contemporaries. In my fossicking among
the rare personal reports about Dark, I have picked up an impression that
her early technical adventurousness (time compression, flashback, etc) and
in particular her interest in psychology did not endear her to certain
influential supporters of social realism who were devoted to the establishment
and consolidation of a nationalistic Australian literary culture.
  She may not have found congenial the heavy stress laid on social realism
by Nettie and Vance Palmer and their network of commentators and writers,
but her novels make it abundantly clear that her political sympathies lay
with the left. In The Little Company (1945), the most explicitly political
of her novels, written during the Second World War and reissued now by Virago
with a rich and knowledgeable introduction by Drusilla Modjeska, Dark tackled
crucial questions about the meaning of war and the role of the radical and
the writer in a world whose social and political fabric was being torn apart.
She was never an activist, however, and rarely went to literary or political
functions; it was her husband's name that appeared on the Council for Civil
Liberties masthead.
  A Melbourne historian who interviewed Eleanor Dark ten years ago in his
research for a biography of one of her contemporaries on the left remarked
to me that she was `reflective, and not opinionated, unlike most of the
people I interviewed from the old left whose responses tended to the automatic.
She was easily the most impressive person I interviewed. She was a person
who was still thinking, and who was prepared, if she had no grounds for
opinion, to say nothing at all.' He described her, in her middle seventies
at that time, as `well preserved, fine-boned, without make-up, very attractive,
sitting up there in her beautiful house on the edge of the escarpment,
chain-smoking and looking out the window and thinking before she spoke'.
  But Dark and her husband were branded fellow travellers in a period when
any criticism of Australian society could bring accusations of communism.
They were so harassed for their politics in the fifties that Dr Dark's medical
practice suffered, and they were obliged to leave Katoomba where they had
long lived and worked, and move for a time to a small farming community
in Queensland.
  Then, for most of that decade, Dark's silence.
  Then, in 1959, Lantana Lane, a novel so strikingly different from her
other works as to `make one gasp and stretch one's eyes'.
  IT IS PROBABLY IMPERTINENT TO make ignorant guesses about an artist's
state of mind, but Lantana Lane strikes me as a novel written by a happy
woman. Its tone is light, lively and benevolent. Its humour is benign. Its
observations of human behaviour, while razor sharp, are affectionately knowing,
and informed with an attractive, amused tolerance. Its wit is without malice,
blackness or strain. Its feminism is no more vitriolic than a firm but gentle
chiacking of men in their self-importance and laconicism. It is not a novel
of conflict, of character development, of strain and resolution. It is a
contemplation of a particular microcosmic isolated little farming community
`round the corner from the world'. It is a book written with pleasure by
a mature artist in calm command of her craft.
  The Timeless Land, Dark has said, `necessitated a fearful lot of study
and research and, not being a scholar, I was very tired of that'. Lantana
Lane, on the other hand, clearly springs from personal experience. The only
evidence of scholar+liness here, apart from Dark's superb handling of syntax,
is the easy familiarity the unnamed narrator (who employs a god-like and
gender-hiding `we') demonstrates with certain Great Works of our culture:
The Old and New Testaments, the Arthurian legends, Dr Johnson, Tennyson,
Freud and the works of Richard Wagner. These learned refe+rences are bandied
about with a breath+takingly light-handed cool, and give rise to some of
the book's most hilarious sequences.
  It's a `slow read', as they say, a wonderfully leisurely piece of writing,
as if the easeful sub-tropical climate in which the farming community lives
had affected the prose and structure of the book itself. Into her language
of syntactic formality and wide vocabulary Dark slings sudden coloquialisms
which blast the seriousness sky-high. The loveliest example of this is
the chapter called SOME REMARKS UPON THE NATURE OF CONTRAST with Special
Reference to the Habits and Characteristics of Ananas comosus and Lantana
camara and an Examination of their Economic and Psychological Effect upon
Homo Sapiens. This marvellous dissertation on the uncontrollable tropical
weed, the bushy and massive lantana, in which the scientist's calm detachment
keeps giving way to outbursts of cursing by the tormented farmer, is perhaps
the showpiece of the book, not only for its sparkling language (`the feckless
and slovenly lantana', `the stiff, tough, soldierly pineapples' - this woman
is a mistress of anthropomorphism) but because it is also a dissertation
on the epic struggle of humankind against nature, and because of the tremendous
possibilities of lantana as an image for the human unconscious.
  This last I find specially satisfying and entertaining because of Dark's
early difficulties with the Australian social realist school who turned
their backs on what it no doubt saw as the side alley of Freudianism.
  The beauty of this symbol did not strike me until a friend remarked to
me, while I was reading the book, that her husband had dismissed his own
unconscious by des+cribing it as `a deep dark hole where I throw things
I don't want to think about, and I never see them again'. Dark's phrase
`Throw it Down in the Lantana' sprang to my mind.

</sample>


<sample><id> G39 </id>

<source> Australasian Drama Studies - October 1986 </source>

<note> 2002 words </note>

<h> In defence of melodrama: towards a libertarian aesthetic. </h>

<bl> By John Docker </bl>

The [Wopples] family were now on tour among the small towns of Victoria,
and seemed to be well-known, as each member got a reception when he or she
appeared on the stage. Mr Theodore Wopples used to send his agent ahead
to engage the theatre - more often a hall - bill the town, and publish
sensational little notices in the local papers. Then when the family arrived
Mr Wopples, who was really a gentleman and well-educated, called on all
the principal people of the town and so impressed them with the high class
character of the entertainment that he never failed to secure their patronage.
He also had a number of artful little schemes which he called `wheezes,'
the most successful of these being a lecture on `The Religious Teaching
of Shakespeare,' which he invariably delivered on a Sunday afternoon in
the theatre of any town he happened to be in, and not infrequently when
requested occupied the pulpit and preached capital sermons. By these means
Mr Wopples kept up the reputation of the family, and the upper classes of
all the towns invariably supported the show, while the lower classes came
as a matter of course. Mr Wopples, however, was equally as clever in providing
a bill of fare as in inducing the public to come to the theatre, and the
adaptability of the family was really wonderful. One night they would play
farcical comedy; then Hamlet, reduced to four acts by Mr Wopples, would
follow on the second night; the next night burlesque would reign supreme;
and when the curtain rose on the fourth night Mr Wopples and the star artistes
would be acting melodrama, and throw one another off bridges and do strong
starvation business with ragged clothes amid paper snowstorms.
                      <misc> Fergus Hume, Madame Midas </misc>

  MELODRAMA IS ONE of the most ubiquitous of modern aesthetic forms. It
flourishes in serial form today in television, in Prisoner, Dallas, A Country
Practice, Sons and Daughters, Neighbours and Days of Our Lives. It draws
comedy to it, mixing genres in programs like MASH, Cheers, Happy Days, Family
Ties or Hi de Hi. It flourished in the radio serials. It flourished and
flourishes in a different form in the cinematic language of Hollywood -
which surely now can be recognised as Renaissance-like as an historical
achievement of popular culture.
 
  In this sense, as a living, expanding, vibrant form, melodrama needs no
defending. Yet since it began its march from Paris soon after the Revolution,
taking shape in the aesthetic maelstrom in which also swirled Gothic and
Romanticism, melodrama, in terms of `high culture,' has proved valuable
only a critical swearword, a ready term of disparagement - `it's
melodramatic,' `it's verging on melodrama,' `unfortunately at certain points
it becomes melodramatic,' `by the end it became indistinguishable from a
soap.' Such terms are common in dealing not only with melodrama but with
the fiction it influenced. They provide a nearly two-centuries-old yardstick
for measuring aesthetic weakness, a critical standard of what not to do
compared to what should be in terms of the hierarchy of forms and genres
by which `high culture' orders its preferences, confers value and awards
prestige. Melodrama is usually associated with `sensation' and `popular'
fiction as not culture, literature or art at all, a rule clearly laid down
by Arthur Conan Doyle's Dr Watson, when contemplating the state of aesthetic
knowledge of a new and eccentric friend. In A Study in Scarlet (1887) Watson,
invalided from the British Army in Afghanistan, returns to London to live
on a small pension. He is introduced by a mutual friend to someone who can
help share the cost of lodgings, and at their rooms at Number 221B Baker
Street the underemployed doctor has plenty of time to study his mysterious
companion. He methodically jots down his observations, e.g. `Politics -
Feeble' and `Anatomy - Accurate but unsystematic,' and concludes that Holmes'
knowledge of `Literature' is `Nil' whereas that of `Sensational Literature'
is `immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated
in the century.' `Literature' and `Sensational Literature,' Proper Literature
and Popular Literature - Watson is here but applying a century's conventional
wisdom; as Wilkie Collins, that master of melodramatic mystery novels (to
use Julian Symons' phrase in his Introduction to Penguin's The Woman in
White), had found to his chagrin in preceding decades, the Pall Mall Gazette
observing of The Moonstone (1868) that `a conjuror at a country fair has
as much right to prate about his art.'

  In Australia a similar distinction was and is busily at work. In his essay
in Harold Love's The Australian Stage, `Theatre, Critics and Society
1850-1890,' Ken Stewart heaps praise upon the head of colonial Victoria's
two most prominent theatre critics, James Smith and James Neild. Like a
good Melbourne `cultural elite' should, critics like Smith and Neild saw
themselves, says Stewart, as cultural missionaries for an educated, cultivated
colonial democracy. By guiding, `educating, informing and entertaining the
public about theatrical and literary matters' - for example, in providing
intellectual interpretations of `serious' plays and productions, and encouraging
audiences to see Shakespeare - they could `assist in raising the colonies
to a cultural maturity in which the whole of society might intelligently
share.' This didn't mean they were intolerant of `entertainments' like
melodrama, pantomime, burlesque, variety or sensational effects, for they
could `respond to the vitality of what they theoretically opposed as a
debasement' of true drama. In particular, Neild's guiding aesthetic theory,
his consistent dramatic credo, was one of `close representational realism,'
emphasising unity and actuality, an accurate and credible `picture.' Neild
hoped thereby to encourage in Australia `serious' theatre - a term used
by Stewart wholly uncritically.

  Neild found, however, that what actually attracted crowds to theatre was
indeed melodrama, an unfortunate state of affairs whose literary equivalent
is also generally deplored in Australian literary criticism. In `Australian
Fiction to 1920,' one of the trawling chapters in Dutton's The Literature
of Australia, John Barnes finds he can't land any `works of art' among the
Australian novels of the nineteenth century. He does say that much of Clarke's
His Natural Life is `first-rate melodrama.' Along with the melodrama, however,
the novel reveals a `moral sense, imperfectly and intermittently expressed,
which implies a deeper level of seriousness.' Melodrama for Barnes seems
to have something to do with being theatrical, extreme, and making our flesh
creep. The task of criticism is to scale off a text's use of conventions
like romance and melodrama, and the use of a contorted, sensational plot
devised for its original serial readers, in order to reveal the deeper layers
to do with the `delineation of characters in their relationships' and a
moral sense of reality: the art that might exist despite the genre, in its
interstices, against its grain. Barry Andrews also sets himself this task
when he considers the 1890s stories of Price Warung. Warung's writing
`sometimes succumbs' to those traditional weaknesses of Victorian fiction,
sentimentality and melodrama, for example, in the `rampant melodrama which
pervades every paragraph of "The Strike of '95."' Andrews calls for support
from Brian Matthews, who argues in The Receding Wave that Henry Lawson's
prose increasingly succumbs to romance and melodrama. Andrews is much more
favourable to melodrama in his introduction to Warung's Tales of the Convict
System, where he follows Barnes in saying that Warung's stories are `first-rate
melodrama,' though he thinks as such they're `period pieces,' as if melodrama
has no twentieth-century cultural history.

  Now jump from dramatic and literary criticism to television commentary.
Let's glance quickly at the `quality' Fairfax flagship The Sydney Morning
Herald's `Audio Video Television Records Guide,' which attempts to guide,
educate and inform public opinion about television so that an educated,
cultivated democracy might be achieved, in which the whole of society might
intelligently share. On one occasion in his Fifth Column, Peter Luck, well-known
TV documentary-maker, ruminated on that modern classic of melodrama (along
with The Thorn Birds), the mini-series Return to Eden. Luck is in the same
production company as Hal and Jim McElroy, producers of Eden, though he
considers himself to be on the `fact' and they on the `fantasy' end of the
TV business. He loves trying to embarrass the McElroys at parties by getting
them to tell the story of the heiress, pushed into the jaws of a crocodile,
who returns disguised (an ancient folk theme) to gain revenge on her attacker,
her husband. The story always gains sidesplitting and cocktail-spilling
laughs, but the McElroys have the last laugh, since Return to Eden has swept
the world, including Spain and Poland; has become the highest-grossing foreign
product in American TV history; is in the top ten, along with The Thorn
Birds, of the most-watched TV programs ever in the USA; and now, by popular
demand, has been expanded into a twenty-two-episode series. In Peter Luck's
`fact'-filled eyes, Return to Eden is `comedy not drama,' and he's not at
all impressed - unlike Wilkie Collins and his friend Dickens, who were -
by melodrama's fascination for popular audiences.

  So, two luminous `facts' stare out at us in the two centuries under review:
the continuing and now worldwide popularity of melodrama, and a continuing
hostility to it by those who see themselves as fostering and guarding serious,
quality art, whether it be in the theatre, in fiction, or on television.
What informs this hostility and ridicule is a paradigm, the hegemony of
a critical stance that is as unbending as an old-fashioned law of physics.

  But paradigms are made to be broken.

  In the last decade or so various welcome grounds of defence of melodrama
have appeared. In Australia, as elsewhere, there has been a growing scholarly
interest in illuminating the dark age of nineteenth-century drama as an
age of theatrical vitality, and this work of recovery connects with some
fascinating research into a nineteenth-century British popular culture of
urban ballads and music-hall songs. And in terms of debates about the
differences and interactions of `high culture' and `popular culture,' we
can grab armfuls of helpful concepts from a cultural theorist whose work
is attracting more and more interest, Mikhail Bakhtin; particularly his
critique of the hierarchy of genres and his notions of the `carnivalesque,'
of different cosmologies and conceptions concerning time and space, fate
and destiny, beauty and the body. To discuss melodrama, then, is to raise
questions about `culture' itself and the categories and oppositions by which
we conceptualise it.

<h> Mikhail Bakhtin: Liberator of the Lower Genres </h>

  I have drawn out elsewhere possible relations of Bakhtin's notion of the
carnivalesque with melodrama. Briefly, in his work on narrative in The Dialogic
Imagination and on popular festive forms in Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin
wants to rescue folk motifs and the serio-comic `lower genres' as
philisophically important. The humour of carnival as it took place in the
marketplace in early modern Europe involved inversion, World Upside Down,
the laughing at and mocking of all claims to absolute truth, including its
own. The festive abuse of the marketplace established a temporary utopian
realm of freedom, freedom from usual relations of status and authority.
The grotesqueness of carnival masks and behaviour celebrated the earthiness
of the body, the way its apertures opened onto the world, and so opposed
`high' art conceptions of the body as finished and perfect. And such grotesque
earthiness, in emphasising the body's capacity for fertility and increase,
projected, along with the games of luck and chance, prophecy and
fortune-telling, a notion of fate and destiny as finally non-tragic.
Carnivalesque cosmology sees life as including the tragic and sombre, but
as not finally bound by it, for life is always in a state of incompleteness,
of becoming, of growth and change, of transformation and metamorphosis.

  In Bakhtin's view, for a magic historical moment in early modern Europe
- in Rabelais, Shakespeare and Cervantes - `high' literature and thought
drew on and interacted with the folk spirit and forms of carnival.

</sample>


<sample><id> G40 </id>

<source> The National Times </source>

<note> 2007 words </note>

<subsample><id> G40a </id>

<source> The National Times - January 31 to February 6, 1986 </source>

<h> The getting of greatness </h>

<bl> By Axel Clark </bl>

  WHATEVER happened to the interna+tional reputation of Henry Handel-Rich+ardson?
  When the last volume in her trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony appeared
in 1929, it was greeted with tremendous acclaim in the press, and became
a bestseller in England and America.
  Her first two novels, Maurice Guest and The Getting Of Wisdom, although
not great commercial successes, also received very appreciative reviews
in the English-speaking world and in Europe.
  Prominent critics said she was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th
century, and at different times she was highly praised by famous literary
figures such as John Masefield, H.G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, George Moore,
Hugh Walpole, Somerset Maugham, Dorothy Richardson and Sinclair Lewis.
  But from the 1940s onwards, English, European and American interest in
her work fell away, and now in the countries where she was famous, in the
towns and cities such as Leipzig, Strasbourg, London and Lyme-Regis, in
which she lived for many years, and some of which she used as settings for
her fiction, her name is little known, if not quite forgotten.
  Outside the few universities and other academies offering courses in
Australian literature, her work is given scant serious attention, and the
suggestion that she is a major novelist commonly meets with puzzle+ment
or disbelief. Only in Australia are her works widely read and subjected
to continuing serious critical discussion.
  Now Cambridge University Press has issued the first full-length study
of Richardson by a non-Australian, Karen McLeod, who teaches at Oxford
University and has written her book primarily with non-Australian readers in mind.
  She writes as a polemicist, arguing the case for an author whose work
will be unfamiliar to most of that audience. Consequently, in chapters devoted
to the discussion of individ+ual novels she goes over ground which will
already be familiar to many Australian readers.
  Her argument in these chapters is generally cogent and her views are often
original, notably in the chapter analysing the Fortunes of Richard Mahony
as the account of a marriage, and in her continual advocacy of the view
that Richardson was essentially a European writer, not only in her first
two novels, as most critics allow, but also in her trilogy.
  But Australian readers may be more interested in the later chapters where
McLeod attempts to place Richardson on the "map of English fiction" in the
first 30 years of this century, and to explain the evaporation of interest
in Richardson's novels outside Austra+lia.
  Even at the height of her fame Richardson did not conform to certain English
notions of what an important novelist should be and do.
  She lived and worked more or less as a recluse in England, never seeking
to cut a figure on the literary scene by moving in literary circles,
entertaining and visiting, or contributing to periodicals and literary pages.
  She did not share the predominantly upper-middle-class attitudes and tastes
of the literary set after World War I. In that period, the heyday of modernism,
she was described as "sturdily unmodern"; her novels were easy to read,
whereas Joyce, Pound and Eliot were difficult and obscure.
  In 1929 she was middlebrow: Bloomsbury, Oxford and Cambridge paid little
attention to her work.
  One reason for this neglect may have been that when she became famous
in England she was swiftly elevated to the rank of the Great Australian
Novelist by people out here who had been eagerly awaiting the coming of the
Great Australian Novel, though up until that time her work had been given
little attention in the country of her birth.
  Karen McLeod thinks that once Richardson became known as an Australian
writer, she became a peripheral figure in English litera+ture, and serious
interest in her outside Australia faded as a result.
  McLeod also considers the obvious possibil+ity that interest in Richardson's
novels declined mainly because they weren't particu+larly good.
  But she is very definite on this point: Richardson "cannot possibly be
dismissed as second-rate"; she was "a writer of classical stature - that
is to say, a writer whose work should be included as a matter of course
in any discussion of the fiction of the period."
  She does not stand out on the literary maps of the period as Conrad, Lawrence
and Joyce - the three "volcanic" novelists - stand out. But she "sits
comfortably" among the "classic writers"; her "best work" is "better" than
the best work of Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf, though not E.M. Forster's.
  She has the novelist's old virtues: the capacity to create characters,
and a range that "stretches from wry humour to obsessive passion, and from
broad social observation to a tragic knowledge of the individual's inescap+able
need to be himself." For too long she has been paid too little attention
outside Australia, and now "she deserves to be read".
  It will be interesting to see whether the strong arguments put by
Karen McLeod in this book, together with the recent republication in England
of Richardson's first two novels, attract the attention of many new
non-Austra+lian readers, and if so, whether she will become the subject
of serious critical debate outside Australia as she has been for several
decades inside Australia, and be given the place on the literary map which
McLeod belives she deserves.
  Some of these new readers may find the experience of reading Richardson's
work very rewarding; some may complain of prolixity and tedium, as critics
have complained ever since the publication of Maurice Guest in 1908.
  But I am prepared to bet that most of them will find the novels very
disturbing.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G40b </id>

<source> The National Times - January 24 to 30, 1986 </source>

<h> A certain, gentle, humorous voice </h>

<bl> By Gina Mercer </bl>

PATRICK White says he hopes to live to see Janet Frame with the Nobel Prize
for literature. He names her third volume of autobiog+raphy, the Envoy From
Mirror City, as one of the best books to appear in 1985.
  So what has occasioned White's unusual praise, and the high sales recorded
by the autobiographies of a fairly obscure New Zealand novel+ist?
  First, Frame has led a fascinating life in many ways. Some of her experiences
are the sort most of us have nightmares about, but fortu+nately never have
to go through. Apart from the facts of Frame's life though, these
autobiographies appeal because they are accessible and direct. There is
no sense of Frame writing from the position of "great author". No sense
of her pretentiously recording her literary devel+opment, or that of her
"inner soul", for posterity.
  Rather, a steady, straight+forward voice comes off the page. One which
involves the reader irresistibly as it sets about exploring and question+ing
the experiences it describes. Its tone is consis+tently certain, gentle
and humorous. For example:
  "I completed my first visit to a foreign land by drinking my first bottle
of Coca Cola with as much reverence as if I were sipping wine in church.
One needs to be reminded that in the late...50s Coca Cola had an aura of
magic, of promise, as a symbol to many outside the United States...of all
that was essentially American, generous, good, dollar-flavoured, new-world,
bathed in the glow of a country's morning that was not yet tarnished by
the scrutiny of daylight."
  Here Frame is taking herself back to a time of naivety*naivete, exploring her 
feelings in the 50s, yet with some illumina+tion from her current perspec+tive. 
She is not so much reminding us of what the 50s meant, as reminding, and wondering
at, herself.
  In her first volume of autobiography, To The Is+Land (Women's Press 1984),
Frame describes her child+hood in a small, depressingly conservative town
in the South Island of New Zealand. The Frame family was close-knit, poor
and different.
  An Angel at My Table (Women's Press 1984), the second volume, begins as
Janet Frame leaves home to train as a schoolteacher. It covers the period
when, between the ages of 20 and 30, she spent eight years in mental hospitals,
classified as incur+ably insane.
  How she got into such a situation makes horrifying and fascinating reading.
Frame also describes her sensational release from hospital only a few months
before a sched+uled leucotomy.
  Her third volume, The Envoy From Mirror City, begins a few years after
this miraculous release. It is 1956 and Frame is 32 years-old. Her first
long fiction, Owls Do Cry, has been published amid high praise and controversy.
Her dream of being a writer at last seeming a real possibility, she sets
off on her first overseas journey. The journey is inevitably one of
self-explo+ration. But given her previous experiences, this is no ordi+nary
self being explored.
  In a recent interview, Frame explained that as she wrote each episode
down, she tried to take herself back to how she felt at the time. The
descrip+tion of her first sexual encoun+ter, for example, is both comic
and poignant.
  With her second love affair, the tone changes. There is greater distance
as the young Janet Frame obviously (and amusingly) felt worldly wise, and
quite "experienced" in the second encounter. In this case, El Vici, an
itinerant worker in Andorra had fallen in love with her, and was planning
a life for them which took no account of Frame the writer. 
  "I thought of the day's conversation with El Vici...and felt a chill
alarm...at the prospect of my future life...working in vineyards, or helping
in the fur shop, perhaps living in poverty, trying to take care of los 
crios... Certainly I would be living within the world of the old masters
but in a world where the cherubs cried and wet their nappies, where bunches
of grapes moved and grew and must be picked, in millions, not merely enough
to fill a bowl lit by an everlasting shaft of golden light; where dimly
lit rooms with all their wonderful play of light and shadow must be lived
in, cleaned...and made weath+erproof."
  To escape El Vici, Janet Frame caught a train back to London and never
replied to his pleading postcards. She even bought a return ticket, to convince
him of her good intentions, having first checked to make sure she could
recoup her money if she didn't use the return segment! Here is an honest
and good-humoured depiction of Frame's struggle with the chronic passivity
brought on by her earlier experiences. A struggle with which most women
can identify, and from which Frame finally emerges triumphant.
  Frame's honesty and humour are what make the Envoy From Mirror City readable
and enjoyable. It is the struggle she had to undergo which makes her
autobiographies engrossing.
  One struggle Frame was obviously keen to win was that of abolishing the
image of herself as "mad writer". While in London she admitted her+self
to yet another mental hospital (a brave move consid+ering her earlier
experiences), in order to find out whether she had, or ever had had,
schizophrenia. After weeks of tests, observations, and heated debate, the
London psychia+trists decided:
  "Sir Aubrey gave the ver+dict. I had never suffered from schizophrenia,
he said. I should never have been admit+ted to a mental hospital. Any problems
I now experienced were mostly a direct result of my stay in hospital. I
smiled. `Thank you,' I said shyly, formally, as if I had won a prize."
  All those years of unneces+sary suffering, and yet Frame shows no signs
of bitterness or resentment. Perhaps she is not being completely honest
here, but in this sense I doubt whether any autobiography is complete. Frame
does admit, however, to ambiguous feel+ings at being "stripped" of the
protection (albeit dubious), of the label "schizophrenic".
  At the end of her seven years' travel she feels able to return to New
Zealand to begin a literary mapping of her own country. The Envoy From Mirror
City is circular (who says an honest tale should have no shape?) in that
it ends, as it began, with a sea voyage. The difference is that Frame returns
home as a recognised writer. More importantly, she returns as a woman who
not only accepts, but treasures, her difference from others, and no longer
desperately seeks to "fit in".

</subsample>

</sample>




<sample><id> G42 </id>

<source> 24 Hours </source>

<note> 2018 words </note>

<subsample><id> G42a </id>

<source> 24 Hours - December 1986 </source>

<h> Liszt and the Faust phenomenon </h>

<bl> By Phillip Sametz </bl>

  Goethe's Faust captured the artistic imagination of the 19th century like
no other literary work.
  It contained romance, magic, meta+physics, medievalism, science and seduction,
a wealth of incident, related in a diverse range of poetic forms, and raised
profound issues of humanism and philosphy. It symbolised Western man's restless
search for experience and knowledge. To many composers, it must have seemed
that, wherever they turned within its two volumes, an outlet for their creative
needs could be found.
  Almost every composer of the age was fired to respond to the work (Brahms
excepted), and the theatres and concert halls across Europe were littered
with Fausts of all sorts. So much so that Rossini, who long considered writing
a Faust opera, told a friend in 1858 that he had finally been put off his
`pet scheme' by the craze for all things Faustian.

<h> Goethe's choice </h>

  "Paris is in a positive Faust-fury; every theatre has its own private
Faust. This has spoilt it for me."
  Goethe himself felt that Mozart would have been the man to write the music
for his drama. He was not confident about finding a suitable contemporary
composer for the job. "It is quite impossible ... the repulsive, disagreeable,
dreadful things it would have to contain in places are contrary to this
age," he wrote to an assistant in 1829. "The music must have the character
of Don Giovanni, where gaiety is only on the surface, its depths being
profoundly serious ... Meyerbeer might be capable (of it), but he won't
enter into such a thing."
  The only major work inspired by Goethe's Faust that was ever shown to
the dramatist was Berlioz's Eight Scenes from Faust, which the composer
sent him in 1829. Goethe was puzzled by its experimental qualities, and
showed it to his composer friend Carl Friedrich Zelter. Zelter called it
"the aborted off-spring of a hideous incest", and Goethe did not reply to
Berlioz.
  Despite its faults, admitted in his memoirs, Berlioz was to re-fashion
portions of this work for his "Dramatic Legend" The Damnation of Faust,
a piece which became a major incentive for Liszt to compose his own Faust
work.
  Liszt accepted the appointment of Court Capellmeister to the Grand Duke
of Weimar in 1844 and, at the instigation of the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein,
gave up his career as a travelling virtuoso four years later to settle there.
His industry at court was extraordinary; as well as composing many of his
finest works, he conducted the first performances of, among others, Schumann's
Manfred, Wagner's Lohengrin and Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, and revived
Gluck's major operas at a time when audienes were completely unfamiliar
with them.
  In 1852, Berlioz came to Weimar to conduct a performance of The Damnation
of Faust; Liszt conducted Wagner's A Faust Overture (composed in 1840) on
the same occasion. Berlioz's work impressed Liszt enormously, and he urged
Wagner to expand his overture into a three-movement symphony. But now Wagner
was planning The Ring, and felt that his style had grown beyond that of
his earlier work.
  Liszt's attitude to Goethe was sufficiently wary for him to be reluctant
about writing a Faust work of his own. Familiar with Goethe's Faust since
1830, Liszt told one correspondent in the 1840s: "The worst Jesuit is dearer
to me than all of your Goethe."
  To another, 12 years after the first performance of a Faust Symphony,
he indicated that he was not wholly captivated by the Faust character, either.
  "In my youth, I passionately admired Manfred and valued him much more
than Faust who, between you and me, despite his marvellous poetic prestige,
seemed to me a decidedly bourgeois character. For that reason, he becomes
more varied, more complete, richer, more evocative (than Manfred) ... Faust's
personality scatters and dissipates itself; he takes no action, lets himself
be driven, hesitates, experiments, loses his way, considers, bargains, and
is only interested in his own little happiness. Manfred would not have put
up with the bad company of Mephistopheles, and if he had loved Gretchen
he would have been able to kill her, but never abandon her in a cowardly
manner like Faust."

<h> Spur to work </h>

  In 1854 The Damnation of Faust, now dedicated to Liszt, was published.
The score's arrival at Weimar seems to have spurred Liszt on to begin A
Faust Symphony in earnest.
  Beginning in 1848 and simultaneous with his writing of the work, Liszt
was involved in the creation of his symphonic poems (the thematically linked
movements of A Faust Symphony can be seen as his most substantial development
of their implications). As a result of his pre-Weimar wanderings, however,
his knowledge of instrumentation was sketchy, and he enlisted the help of
Conradi, a composer of farces and operettas, then of Raff, in their
orchestration. By 1854, though, Liszt's confidence had grown and A Faust
Symphony is the first work he orchestrated himself; indeed, he wrote the
Gretchen movement straight into full score.
  The work's full title is A Faust Symphony in three character pictures
(after Goethe): 1. Faust; 2. Gretchen; 3. Mephistopheles. The first version
was written in only two months, between August and October 1854. This version
is very different to that we will hear in the simulcast; it was scored for
small orchestra, without trumpets, trombones and percussion (the Weimar
orchestra contained only 38 players), featured such time signatures as 7/4 
and 7/8, and lacked the choral finale and the "Faust Victorious" music
of the first and last movements.
  Liszt played this version through to Berlioz and Wagner on their respective
visits to Weimar and, acting on their advice, made revisions which gave
the work its present shape. This version was played for the first time in
September 1857, at a ceremony for the unveiling of memorials to Goethe,
Schiller and Wieland. Liszt continued to revise the work, however; 12 bars
were added to the Gretchen movement as late as 1880.
  As his Sonata in B minor (1852) reveals, Liszt could convincingly dismantle
traditional formal structure and build a handsome edifice in its place,
based on its foundations, when his music demanded it; this principle is
applied throughout A Faust Symphony.
  The similarities between the two works have often been drawn, and the
themes of both are manipulated and "transformed" (Liszt's expression), beyond
a point reached by Haydn, Beethoven or Schubert (in his Wanderer Fantasy),
for consistently dramatic ends.
  The sonata deals, obviously, with abstractions. A good performance will
submerge us in an ocean of nameless conflicts - good, evil, tenderness,
passion and grandeur all rise and fall before us, intangible and compelling.
A Faust Symphony is, on the surface, a portrait triptych, but there is little
doubt that Liszt was finally drawn to compose the work because he could
explore in it the very ideas he had dealt with in the sonata.
  Listening to the symphony is rather like watching the characters in a
play develop as they deal with different situations; a theme associated
with Faust's love for Gretchen can become sinister and menacing, that denoting
Faust's impetuousness tender and delicate, as the music progresses. The
work makes it plain that Liszt's formal instincts were dramatic in origin,
and in this respect he not only paved the way for Wagner, whose music dramas
were symphonic at their roots, but also for the tone poems of Saint-Saens,
Tchaikovsky, R. Strauss, Delius and so forth.

<h> Narrative forms </h>

  Yet Liszt's most successful large-scale works do not "tell a story", like
Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel. Liszt was only interested in narrative forms
as they symbolised ideas, and no more compelling orchestral work of ideas
exists than A Faust Symphony.
  The first movement, Faust, is difficult to analyse. Its five themes are
subject to simultaneous exposition and development, and the recapitulation
is fairly condensed. The first theme has been described by Humphrey Searle
as "the first consciously 12-note theme ever written", and it appropriately
presents Faust as thinker and dreamer. (Wagner was to use it in Die Walkure;
it can be heard distinctly in Act 2 as Sieglinde sings "Kehrte der vater
nun heim".) The second theme, announed on the oboe, assumes an astonishing
number of guises throughout the work, so much so that it is sometimes difficult
to recognise without a score. The three successive themes are also subject
to great changes in mood and shape.
  The Gretchen movement is a marvel of delicate scoring, a vision of innocence
only interrupted by the somewhat troubled re+appearance of Faust.
  Goethe's Mephistopheles is the spirit of negation, so Liszt decided to
give him Faust's themes to parody. Mephistopheles "has" Faust, it seems,
and can distort and disfigure him as he pleases. The transformations the
Faust themes undergo are dazzling in their ingenuity, while Mephistopheles
himself is only given one new theme, taken from Liszt's earlier "Malediction"
concerto, where it is marked "Orgueil" (Pride).
  After a series of frenzied passages, Gretchen's theme returns intact (her
purity being beyond Mephistopheles' evil grasp) and leads to the final Chorus
Mysticus, which ends Part 2 of Goethe's Faust.
  Despite Liszt's feelings about Goethe and the Faust character, he reveals
in this piece that he, too, was moved by the universality of Goethe's drama
and its subject.
  But A Faust Symphony is an important work for many reasons: it is a meeting
place for many of the forces at work in 19th century music and one of the
most revealing and masterful works by one of the chief players in the drama
of Western European culture. It is also a vivid precursor of the freedom
in form and harmonic language that would lead to the very collapse of the
musical tradition to which Liszt had contributed so much.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G42b </id>

<source> 24 Hours - November 1986 </source>

<h> How Great Was Weber? </h>

<bl> By Robert Treborlang </bl>

The German composer Carl Maria von Weber was born 200 years ago, on November
18, 1786; and ABC FM will honour him and his music with two programs of
his piano sonatas (11.00pm on Nov 12 and 13) and a special feature, The
Enchanted Wanderer, at 7.45pm on Saturday 15.
  With time and usage, the composers of old tend to assume a "divine" tinge.
Especially with the retreat of religion from our daily lives, beings like
Beethoven, Mozart and Bach acquire the aura that saints must have had in
Byzantine times and dead kings among the Egyptians. They could virtually
do no wrong.
  Was Carl Maria von Weber such a being? In Germany he is certainly revered
with god-like status, being held by many to be the equal of Beethoven. His
Huntsman Chorus, his Invitation to a Dance and several choral pieces are
as much part of the national bloodstream as wurst and knockerl.
  He was also the first to conduct operas with a baton from a conductor's
desk, and he gradually brought about a new seating arrangement of the
orchestra, which is the basis of that still in use today.
  In the rest of Europe, Weber, beside being known as the composer of Der
Freischutz, is also understood to have been the first great breaker in that
tide of national romanticism that swept the continent in the 19th century.
  Outside Europe? Well, you'd have to be a die-hard music lover to know
Weber's name or associate it with the sharp, fox-like features that stare
back from his better known portraits.
  But now that 200 years have passed since Weber's birth, Weber-lovers
throughout the world have official permission to bring their idol that much
closer to deificaiton. No doubt Weber parks, streets, conservatoriums and
factories will spring up.
  Finely wrought plaques perhaps with "C. M. von Weber coughed out his lungs
here" or "In this house the composer Weber had his first great nervous
collapse" will become commonplace. In London too perhaps a memorial will
appear with "On this spot Weber wasted his last remaining days setting to
music a worthless libretto." (Oberon).
  But the image of Weber is also an image of a brilliant energetic young
conductor, a first cousin of Mozart's, who had travelled more than any musician
of his time producing, organising, hiring, firing and composing right
throughout Central Europe.

</subsample>

</sample>



<sample><id> G43 </id>

<source> This Australia - Spring 1986 </source>

<note> 2026 words </note>

<h> New home for film and sound </h>

<bl> By Brian Jeffrey </bl>

Australia's cinematic past is a rich one and the National Film
Archive in Canberra has collected and restored many of our
earliest films. Brian Jeffrey explains the difficult and
sometimes dangerous methods of restoration.

On a blustery wet evening in Octo+ber 1984, a veritable who's
who of the Australian entertainment in+dustry, together with a
few important visitors from overseas, braved the incle+ment
weather to drive in a convoy of vin+tage cars to an imposing
building in the Canberra suburb of Acton. There they joined
some 1000 other guests for an even+ing of celebration which
many hoped would mark the beginning of a new era in attitudes
towards the preservation of Aus+tralia's film and sound
heritage.
     The occasion was the official opening of Australia's
National Film and Sound Ar+chive. Addressing the guests, the
Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, said:
     Australians have expressed their na+tional identity most
     directly and most potently through the screen and sound media.
     That is what has so often made Australian films and sound
     recordings interesting and attractive to people overseas, as
     much as to Australians.
     The establishment of the National Film and Sound Archive is the
     expression in institutional terms of a need, long felt by both
     participants and observers, to guarantee the preservation and
     availa+bility of this fragile but vital heritage. Its
     establishment is a cultural landmark for Australia.     
    So grand was the event it was difficult to believe that
only a year before the film and sound archives had been locked
in a bitter dispute with their former home, the Na+tional
Library of Australia, over alloca+tion of staff and funds.
     The National Film Archive evolved from the National
Historical Film and Speaking Record Library, which was
established in 1937 as part of the then Commonwealth National
Library. Its stated aim was to collect `films of past and
contemporary events of historic interest, or which throw light
on our social deve+lopment; a limited number of scientific and
industrial films including anthropolo+gical films; and films
illustrating the development of film making in Australia'. 
     The staff of the Library's film division, however, was
hard pressed establishing other facets of its operation,
including a central lending library for contemporary films, and
the Archive was largely neglec+ted until the late 1950s when a
determined effort was made to build it up. Letters were sent to
every town clerk in Australia asking for publicity about the
Archive in local newspapers and on radio; every pro+bate office
and fire commissioner received a letter asking that any film
material be brought to notice before it was destroyed or
otherwise disposed of, and the Archive's staff gave radio talks
about the work. Unfortunately, this effort had dis+appointing
results; material did not pour in as the Library had hoped and
most leads proved fruitless. 
     Rod Wallace, a former principal librar+ian in the Special
Collections at the Na+tional Library, now retired, was involved
with the Film Archive almost from its in+ception. Recalling the
early years, he told me: 
     One must remember, of course, that public attitudes to
     historical material were very different then from now,
     par+ticularly in the film world. A great deal of priceless old
     nitrate film was un+doubtedly destroyed in spite of all our
     efforts.
     While the task of rounding up old footage was an arduous
one, the problem of preserving the recorded films was no less
daunting. Storage of the highly in+flammable film has always
been a prob+lem. Rod Wallace recalls:
     For many years we occupied an old ex+plosives depot some
     miles out of Canberra, in the bush near the Mugga Quarry. When
     we had to vacate that site, the nitrate was jammed into a small
     explosives shed near another quarry on O'Connor Heights. From
     there, it went to an ammunition shed - next door to the
     explosives! - at Duntroon Royal Military College, then to a
     wooden shed at Harman Naval Station, and finally to the only
     proper vault we ever had, behind the Austra+lian War Memorial.
     But in the War Memorial vault it was so cold in winter that we
     could only work for a quarter of an hour before we'd have to
     come out and sit in the sun for a while.
     In 1972 the nitrate holdings were trans+ferred, yet again,
to an explosives shed in the Sydney suburb of St Marys. They
re+mained there until 1981, when the Archive acquired a modern,
air-conditioned storage vault of its own at Mitchell, a Canberra
suburb, to house the most valu+able and delicate items in its
huge collec+tion.
     During this entire period, the nitrate holdings were being
transferred to modern acetate film as quickly as finances would
allow, since the nitrate is not only highly inflammable but
also deteriorates chemically to the point where it becomes
worthless.


In the early days, established preserva+tion procedures, such
as they were, sometimes proved inadequate and a certain amount
of ingenuity was called for. One item recovered, Raymond
Long+ford's feature film, The Romantic Story of Margaret
Catchpole (1911), presented special difficulties. Rod Wallace
recalls:
     The first two reels were found in the possession of a
     schoolteacher in Terang, Victoria. He gave them to us to copy
     and we were naturally delighted to have even two reels of this,
     Long+ford's second film. But a period of ex+treme frustration
     ensued as we tried all available laboratories seeking to have
     a negative made from the precious reels. I can recall
     telephoning one laboratory and pleading with them to have a try
     even if it cost more than usual. But none of the laboratories
     could get the badly shrunken film through their printers .
     Our troubles were mentioned to a good friend of the Library, Mr
     Alf Harbrow, who was a film pioneer. For the cost of raw film
     stock only, he offered to turn an old projector into a printer
     and print the film frame by frame in his home. It was a heroic
     offer since there were over 10 000 frames.
     Two months later we had our negative which, considering the
     state of the original, was much better than we had hoped. Not
     only had Mr Harbrow printed it frame by frame, but he had risen
     at 3 am on an unknown number of mornings to avoid the summer
     heat's effect on the developing solution which he kept cool in
     the bath!
     As confidence in the Film Archive's work grew, and
attitudes changed, film companies began to donate prints of
their films or sell them at cost price on condi+tion they were
not shown commercially. An early donation of great significance
was that of some 600 000 metres of Aus+tralian newsreels made
by Cinesound and Movietone over the 23 years to 1951. The film
was donated by the directors of the production companies
concerned.
     In addition to the films themselves, the Archive collected
stills, scripts, documen+tation and memorabilia relating to the
cinema not only in Australia but also in other countries. At
the time the collection passed to the National Film and Sound
Archive, it contained 55 000 film and television productions,
500 000 stills, 30 000 posters and 6000 film  scripts.
     The National Sound Archive had its genesis in 1973, when
the National Library took over the bulk of a private
col+lection - some 30 000 recordings - as the basis of a
national collection and ap+pointed its former owner, Mr Peter
Burgis, to guide the Archive's future development.
     For many years the Library concen+trated on gathering as
many recordings as it could, regardless of their content or
origin. Peter Burgis made regular field trips to search through
unwanted material from radio station record libraries and dusty
corners in secondhand shops, just as he had done when putting
together his original collection. Other material flowed in from
record producing and manufac+turing companies, members of the
Federa+tion of Australian Commercial Broadcast+ers, and private
individuals.
     Like his contemporaries in the Film Ar+chive, Peter Burgis
has many a story to tell about `hits and misses' associated
with building up the national collection almost from scratch.
     During one field trip I visited the George Patterson
     Advertising Agency in Sydney and discovered, way down in the
     `dungeons' below street level, a col+lection of several hundred
     recordings of drama and musical programmes from the 1940s and
     1950s, including a number featuring Jack Davey, Bob Dyer,
     George Wallace and similar per+sonalities, and various wartime
     pro+grammes. The collection was retrieved with the cooperation
     of the agency and today is considered one of the best the
     Archive has acquired.
     On another occasion in the mid 1970s I was told by the manager
     of a large pro+duction company in Melbourne that I was too
     late; they'd already sent the company's large archive of some
     seven tonnes of recordings to be melted down by a firm which
     could reclaim a certain chemical from them. While we were
     drowning our sorrows over a cup of tea in his office, he
     realised that, although the other company had been supposed to
     make progress payments as the recordings were melted down, he
     couldn't recall hearing from them. So he rang them and
     discovered that because of pressure of other work, the melting
     down hadn't even been started, although the recordings had been
     stan+ding ominously close to the smelter for six months!
     Needless to say, I collected them shortly afterwards.
     One collection I missed, however, con+sisted of 20 000 to 30
     000 transcrip+tion recordings of programmes from Australian
     radio's `golden days'. It was broken up for use as a base for
     road construction shortly before I enquired about it.
By the beginning of this decade, the mass of material collected
by the then Music and Sound Recordings Section of the National
Library - which included 100 original music manuscripts 65,000
music scores and 350 000 sound recordings - threatened to
swamp avail+able resources. Less than 1.5 per cent of the sound
recordings had been cata+logued, for example, and it was
estimated that a five member task force assigned to assist
temporarily would take 14 years to get the situation fully
under control. Even more disturbing was the absence of a
preservation programme to safeguard the collection's many
fragile items, a signifi+cant number of which were
deteriorating beyond redemption. Members of the public were
disappointed to discover that resources would not permit
liberal access to the collection, especially for recrea+tional
listening.
     Public concern over the condition of both the film and
sound archives mounted until pressure forced the Government to
act. The Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, an+nounced at the 25th
Australian Film Awards in September 1983 that the Gov+ernment
had decided to support the Na+tional Film Archive `to guarantee
the preservation of Australia's film heritage'.
     Despite the early emphasis on the well-being of the film
archive, staff of the sound archive supported the groundswell
in the hope, correctly as it turned out, that both archives
would be seen as inter-related and that what was good for one
would in+evitably be good for the other. The sound archive was
hardly forgotten for long, especially after the Canberra Times
of 7 October 1983 reported that the National Library
administration was considering disciplining Peter Burgis, over
a letter he had sent the Prime Minister in which he publicly
criticised the condition of the col+lection .
     In April 1984, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Barry
Cohen, announced the Government's decision to establish a
Na+tional Film and Sound Archive, to make it administratively
independent of the Na+tional Library and to provide it with
in+creased resources in the form of staff, funds and equipment.
A few months later, he announced that the Archive's new home
would be a handsome neo-classical building classified by the
National Trust which, at the time, housed the Institute of Anatomy.
     The building's art deco features are an ideal complement to 
the Archive's treasures, and already its heavy wood and glass
display cabinets house memorabilia, posters and various items 
associated with both the film and sound collections.
     Obviously, the Archive's separation from the National Library 
did not solve all its problems overnight; limited resources and 
the need to meet a variety of short term demands associated with 
the move to its new headquarters continue to impose restrictions 
in access to its collections.

</sample>


                

<sample><id></id>G45

<source> Artlink - June/July 1986 </source>

<note> 2024 words </note>   

<h> Australians an endangered species </h>

<bl> By Phillip Adams </bl>

Phillip Adams is the Chairperson of the Australian Film
Commission amongst many other interests and occupations.

The Scenario is Australia in the 1980's. 
The cinemas are showing Soviet titles, the bookshops are filled
with the outpourings of Soviet writers and intellectuals. The
newsagent is full of Soviet versions of Time and Newsweek, and
Soviet sex magazines, (if that's not a contradiction in terms);
the radio plays little else but Russian songs, the overwhelming
majority of drama on the telly has SovexportFilm on the
credits, and they are punctuated by commercials run by
advertising agencies plagiarising Soviet originals, which isn't
surprising when 95% of the agencies have their head offices in
Moscow or Leningrad. When you go shopping to buy a suit which
bears a sturdy resemblance to Nikita Kruschev's, you pay your
bill with a plastic card bearing the insignia Soviet Express.
You work for a Soviet-owned multinational, your government
provides military bases to the Kremlin, and despite some
pretence to political autonomy, toes the Soviet line.

     Since 1806 Australians have feared a Russian invasion. It
was in that year that the first vessels from the Tsar's navy
hove into view in Sydney Cove, on their way to Antarctica and
Alaska, and they caused some consternation  among the colonists
when they fired a polite salute to King George. Ever since, the
cry `The Russians are coming!' has been as familiar in this
land as coo-ee, and our rising paranoia encouraged us to send
troops to the Crimea, would you believe, and to build Fort
Denisons and gun emplacements on every coastal promontory.
     But while we've been waiting for the Red Terror or the
Yellow Peril, in its various manifestations, we have been taken
over by the world's most powerful culture, and without a shot
being fired, except for those shots that were fired beside the
invaders at people designated our common enemy. And we've
welcomed the invaders as liberators. We've dragged enough
Trojan Horses through the streets for a Moomba procession or
the Melbourne Cup. And nobody says this is part of a
conspiracy. The American takeover of our cultural, commercial
and political lives is a consequence of their prodigious
energies, the extraordinary capacity of a vital people.

     But enough is enough. Where the British Empire was
established with musket and gunboat, America's empire has been
achieved with the friendly persuasion of comedian and crooner,
by film stars and flim-flim men from Hollywood. Through
cultural osmosis they have replaced our dreams with theirs
giving us a comprehensive iconography which we now firmly
believe is our own. It's an extraordinary irony that Humphrey
Bogart and Hemingway, for example, feel `right' whereas there's
something exotic and slightly unconvincing about a Jack
Thompson or a Patrick White. American culture is in our
bloodstream, and our neurons, whereas our own arts seem
artificial, awkward and anxious. We have to convince ourselves
that our culture is legitimate or even necessary, given the
totally successful subversion of American ideas, ideals and
idioms. We'd like to believe we've rid ourselves of the
cultural cringe, when it simply isn't true. What we have is a
chip-on-the-shoulder culture, rather gauche and defiant, a
contradiction in cultural terms. It's like trying to force your
way into a dixieland band with a didgeridu.
     In the BBC's Pennies from Heaven Denis Potter reminded us
that people in every western society measure their lives in
American pop songs, that their arias are the songs of Al
Bowley and Rudy Vallee of Crosby and Presley. The more
sophisticated amongst you might add an Edith Piaf or the
coquettish lyrics of Noel Coward, or some rugged verse from
Redgum, but our music is largely Tin Pan Alley or Broadway,
Motown or US movie themes, and while we might finish up at a
film festival admiring Wertmuller, like as not, certainly for
my generation your first cinematic enthusiasm was Weismuller.
Last year in Zimbabwe I was discussing the phenomenon, the
threat of globalism, with a black minister in the quasi-Marxist
government and we discovered we'd spent our respective
childhoods cheering Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan films, me at
Hoyts Rialto in Kew, and he in a jungle clearing, a little
black boy applauding the efforts of an overweight white man
while he subjugated eye-rolling parodies of African
tribespeople.

     The question must be asked - is there any point in
defending our national or regional or local cultures against
the American juggernaut? There's not a kid on earth who isn't
perfectly happy to accept Spielberg and Lucas as their Pied
Pipers; hardly a television audience that won't laugh at MASH,
and you could argue that America's cultural vitality and its
global relevance has come out of the melting pot mentality that
has lured film makers from Eisenstein to Beresford, from Milos
Foreman to Peter Weir, in to that Californian melting pot.
American show business has after all always been a product of
reluctant ex-pats, of enforced immigration. On the one hand the
vitality that gave it everything from jazz to breakdancing,
from ragtime to rock, came from the marketing of slaves, while
Hollywood was created by the people fleeing the pogroms of
Russia and Eastern Europe. It was such depths of experience and
despair, the desire to survive and to celebrate that gave
America the flair and the feeling that made much of the world
respond so readily and happily. We surrendered to the
seductions of American culture and little by little we lose our
authenticity and our sense of ourselves.

     Only one major art form it seems to me held out against
Americanisation by osmosis - and that WAS painting. Australian
literary and cinematic myth-makers owe a considerable debt to
the Nolans and Boyds who filled reluctant art galleries with
those sun-drenched paintings when the rest of the artists in
the other art forms were crying in their beer about the
fierceness of Australian philistinism, and Sidney Nolan did not
yield to the temptation of putting one let alone two Kirk
Douglases into his legendary canvases.
     So does it matter a tuppeny damn about a national or
regional culture? Are such things anachronisms*anarchronisms,
sentimental fantasies, farts in a global windstorm?
     A few months ago I was having lunch with the Minister for
Science and Technology from Norway (I thought he was a
socialist, he turned out to be a conservative, but that was
only one of my mistakes...) I said `I know nothing about your
country.' He said `It's very like New Zealand in population and
topography and size...' I said 'How splendid! We'll soon have
a vacancy for a country about the size of New Zealand in a
local treaty, and if Oslo was willing to replace Wellington
would your prime minister be willing to sign the ANUS treaty?'
While considering this invitation he made a prediction I found
somewhat chilling - namely that the two discrete Norwegian
languages would disappear by the end of the century. Why?
Because of the DBS phenomenon, the Direct Broadcast Satellites,
bobbing in geo-stationary orbit over Europe, beaming out
American programmes 24 hours a day, ignoring national barriers,
flouting copyright conventions, orbiting counterparts to pirate
radio stations. `Every day,' he said `the children of Norway
learn another one or two American words.' The process seems
irreversible. And similar fears were expressed in most of the
countries of western Europe. I remember fighting to get Sesame
Street on in Australia. I first saw it in Prague of all places,
and was quite touched by it - not by the chanting of alphabets,
but by seeing black and white children playing together. A few
months after it was on air I heard my own children replacing
terms like garbage with trash, and biscuit with cookie, and
make no mistake a cookie and a biscuit are very different
things. A biscuit is a moral milk arrowroot, a cookie is a
rather more voluptuous creature.

     If you add to DBS a plethora of new technologies, the
process of cultural levelling seems inevitable. The
colonisation of Coke and General Foods, General Motors and IBM
must be triumphant, and if it happens won't it be a little like
the destruction of those earlier imperialists, the Christian
missionaries, of the cultures of Oceania, of New Guinea, of the
Australian aborigines? Won't it tend to leave people without a
sense of identity, without a centre? There are undoubtedly
advantages to a world that shares the same iconography and
language, that speaks a sort of cathode esperanto through the
success of American soapies. (Incidentally I met Princess Di,
and I said `I know your mother-in-law's favourite programme is
Kojak, what's yours?' She said `Charles and I never miss
Dynasty.' I said `Why.' She said `It's such good escapism....')

     Anyway there are obvious advantages if we all have this
inter-galactic homogeneity in which the values and beliefs of
the denizens of the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills become the
aesthetic, the philosophy, and the mindset of billions. The
last Oscar ceremony was telecast to mainland China, in one of
Comrade Deng's more aberrant moments, for once you let in the
movies you change everything, from the dress to the diet to the
nature of human relationships. It's not only Ronald Reagan who
confuses films with reality, recycling dialogue from Dana
Andrews as true life anecdotes in his presidential addresses.
The confusions between cinema and society have been growing
exponentially for fifty years. In the thirties Hollywood
gangsters modelled themselves on Cagney and Bogart, who in turn
were modelling themselves on Hollywood gangsters. In Colorado
Springs, the base for strategic air command where every day for
the last thirty or forty years the failsafe bombers have headed
across the Bering Straits, the `Ops' Room where the Third World
War will be run from, or one of them, was designed by the
scenic artist from 20th Century Fox. The uniforms of the air
force academy nearby which is the intrepid birdman's version of
West Point were designed by Cecil B de Mille.

     If you scale that down to some of the fascination
interactions in our country I remember watching Number 96 and
knowing of the interaction with the general public in
Australia. The writers used to devise a perversion a month and
put it in the script only to find that it would be
enthusiastically embraced. One of the most spectacular was
`snowdropping'. For those of you who don't practise it, you hop
over the fence and knock knickers off a rotary clothes line.
Within minutes of snowdropping being dramatised in the
programme there was hardly a rotary hoist in the nation that
was safe from predators. When the producers would write out a
character or three from the show because they were asking for
too much money (they'd bomb a bit of the building) they'd get
letters from literally dozens of people asking if they could
move in.

     I have friends in America who were seriously experimenting
with the idea of marketing dreams direct to the public. Instead
of relying on one's own feeble imaginings for nocturnal
fantasies, be they wet dreams or nightmares, you'd be able to
pick up signals from a digital pillow, fanasmagoric images
produced by the best rock clip teams.

     So the tentacles of globalism, both the hardware and the
software are only beginning to embrace us, and overwhelmingly
its values and its fashions are coming from a few square miles
in California, aided and abetted by such talented ex-pats as
Weir, Beresford, Schepsi, Armstrong and Miller.
     I'm not entirely convinced that the battle is lost. It's
fascinating to look at a society like Britain which
counterposes, at least on television a vigorous local culture.
It places strict limits on the amount of American television
that the networks are permitted to screen. In the light of the
anxieties of Norway's minister for science, I find it
comforting that after 60 years of radio and forty years of
television, the regional accents of Britain survive. They laugh at Lucy
and Bilko and Mary Tyler Moore and MASH but they still maintain some of
their idiosyncracies, most particularly the specificity of the way they
speak. 

</sample>


<sample><id> G46 </id>

<source> Artlink - June/July 1986 </source>

<note> 2067 words </note>

<h> Swifties </h>

<bl> By Meaghan Morris </bl>

1. `Our orthodoxy is made up of narrations of `what's going on'.
Michel de Certeau, `The Jabbering of Social Life'.

2. ` ... while poor old fellows like myself, who've been battling
on, working our pants off for twenty years, get overlooked.' 
Arthur McIntyre, `Pop Goes The Easel'.

3. `In short, the right to slowness is an ecological problem.'
Roland Barthes, `Day By Day with Roland Barthes'.

First, a note of explanation about my topic. I won't be talking
today about the questions of quotation, appropriation, image-theft
or `nomadology' that the programme suggested an `Art in the Fast
Lane' forum might take up. When this forum was being organized, the
speakers were all asked to supply a title and a brief outline of an
argument. The first thing to emerge from the responses was that we
had each taken up, in different ways, the `fast lane' aspect of the
general proposition, rather than the theme of `quotation'. I feel
obliged to explain why my own paper will mostly ignore that theme.
   I assume that what links quotation-appropriation-nomadology-
fast-lane-etc ... together is a more general notion of rapid
turnover in art and ideas. It's the hit-and-run metaphor of
contemporary action - the Grab What You Need, Hit The Road Jack,
imperative. When thinking about this metaphor, and the romance of
criminality that often accompanies its use (a romance deriving from
that very sedate classical motif of the artist as thief, the
Promethean figure of the fire+stealer), it occurred to me that what
those of us who do criticism were really being asked to do here
was, at one level, either to practise or to debate criticism as a
form of minor crime: criticism as a con-job, as a shifty art of
promotion, a process of pulling swifties. `Art in the Fast Lane',
then, as a forum about speed and fashion, and the impact of both on
people's ways of working.
   I did think about using the term `quickies' for this problem;
but then realized immediately that there is a fascinating abyss
between proposing to pull a swiftie, and offering an audience a
quickie. I'll back off, if I can, from the back seat image. But I'd
like to maintain the distinction by saying that the whole matter of
art and quotation, art and appropriation, seems to be swiftly
receding - fortunately - some way behind us on the fashion highway,
and this is one good reason for not doing a quickie about it.
   I say `fortunately', because I think that when the issue of
quotation is taken seriously (which it really hasn't been here by
criticism, though it has by the work of some artists), then the
problems it poses are likely to form part of the landscape as we
move for a very long time to come. Because `quotation' is a problem
about history, about art's history, and about history in art. It's
a long duration problem, one better dealt with slowly, and one that
shouldn't be trivialized. So it's a sort of road safety measure to
refuse to do a quickie about it: particularly since a serious
consideration should begin by starting to wonder about differences
between procedures of quotation, reference, allusion, pastiche -
and what these differences might mean in visual terms. What would
it mean, for example, to claim that a particular art+work was a
`literal' quotation of a set of verbal theoretical propositions
about quotation?
   Rather than trying to zip through these difficulties in fifteen
minutes, I want to make four brief points instead about the image of
the fast lane itself. 
1. I agree with George Alexander's suggestion that a certain
strategic slowness may be a useful response to rapid turnover.
   However I'm not convinced that the image of a multi-lane
highway, with streaming into `fast' and `slow', is at all
appropriate to what's been going on in Australian art and art-
debates during the past year or so.
   I'm happy to stay with the images of the road and of movement.
But rather than the highspeed purring, zooming and revving sounds
associated with super-highways, what I hear sounds more like the
squeal of brakes, the ominous bumps announcing yet another
punctured tyre, and the sickening thuds from proliferating potholes
that let you know (whatever the Bicentennial Authority billboards
might say) that there's not enough money being spent on the road.
   Besides - while we do have, of course, our superhighways
(including that wide fast lane in the sky), there's an archetypal,
imaginary Australian road that is something different from a
superhighway and allows the problem of rapidity to be restated in
different terms. This imaginary road isn't a multi-lane highway.
It's a patchy bitumen job: two sides, single-lane, a fading line
along the middle and sudden death at every bend. Or it's a dirt
highway: no sides, no lanes, no line, maybe no bends; and sudden
death in the heart and eye of every driver seeing that other car,
that little cloud of dust moving up in the distance, slowly closer
and closer at a speed sustained and with indecision prolonged until
the very last moment when someone must decide whether to move over,
and who is going to make the move. There's an Australian film about
that, called Running On Empty, and I think it flopped at the box
office.
   In fact, anyone who still remembers Australian films may also
remember that from Backroads to Buddies, from The Cars That Ate
Paris to Mad Max III, the classical, imaginary Australian road is
fast all over. Or rather, it's unpredictable all over. There you
are on the road, pottling along happily ... but you never know when
some maniac is going to hove into view, wipe you out at worst, or
just run you right off the road. Driving in those conditions seems
to me to bear some relation to the experience of trying to work
regularly at any level, in any capacity, in Australian cultural
activities.
   Some of the most poignant and perfect images of life and art on
Australian roads are on show at this Australian Festival, in the
`peculiar South Australian ceramics' show, Skangaroovian Funk. I
mean Margaret Dodd's ceramic cars: for example, her Ravaged Holden,
its pink seats ripped out and laid askew alongside the wasted
wreck; and her Blue Cloud, in which an unknown lifetime of love and
obsession clings to one sacred, battered object. 
   To mention those films, and the work of Margaret Dodd, is to say 
that there is a great deal of Australian art that already talks about 
speed, culture and our landscapes, and that it can be useful to use 
that art as a point of departure rather than the equally available 
image of the zippy international racer, hair now neatly slicked back 
and down as the sports car heads for the horizon.
2. So to make my second point, an argument against the use of rapid
change in fashion to block movement and hog the road, I'll begin
from one of the apparently inexhaustible founding texts of
Australian culture, `The Drover's Wife' by Henry Lawson. 
   The following quotation, I should stress, is also a quotation from
Helen Grace's film Serious Undertakings, in which almost the same
bit of text appears; and it's also a tribute to some of the themes
of Margaret Dodd's film, This Woman Is Not A Car: 
   All days are much the same to her; but on Sunday afternoon she 
   dresses herself, tidies the children, smartens up baby, and goes 
   for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old perambulator 
   in front of her. She does this every Sunday. She takes as much care 
   to make herself and the children look smart as she would if she were 
   going to do the block in the city. There is nothing to see, however, 
   and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this 
   track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you are 
   a bushman. 
   This text reminds us that a lack of stability and fixity, the 
condition of journeying on all dressed up without being able to
fix a point in your mind, is not necessarily only a problem for
those who scramble to be in the newest and fastest car. It's also
an older and enduring problem of one's relationship to `landscape',
in the sense that any context does impose certain conditions
(though without determining all possible responses). Bruce Petty
spoke earlier at Artists' Week about the effect of sameness and
monotony in much contemporary cultural activity, the feeling that
no matter how you dress or where you go, you're always going to the
same event. This may be one of the effects of speed today, as it
was of isolation for the drover's wife.
   One difference, however, between Lawson's story of movement and
contemporary problems (in relation to which I've used the Lawson
quotation as an allegory) is that Lawson has a figure who can fix
points in the sameness: the bushman (`You might walk for twenty
miles along this track without being able to fix a point in your
mind, unless you are a bushman'). The bushman's skill in fixing
points is the product of a practice, and a knowledge. If today, in
art, point-fixing still goes on, then it does so in the terms
described by Helen Grace in her paper on the arbitrary creation of
temporary value. No single figures (critics, curators, artists) `do
it': it is a process that takes place through a number of
institutions.
   Nevertheless, a lot of sanctity is attached to the ideal of the
point-fixer. To appear to be the one to define for others `where
we're going' or `where it's at' or `what's going on' - the very
definition of orthodoxy in Michel de Certeau's terms, orthodoxy
which is no less orthodox for being strictly ephemeral. - to assume
this appearance is today the stake of much critical and artistic
competition, rivalry, gaming. If for Lawson's bushman, the capacity
to fix points comes from a long familiarity with the same place
that makes it always full of differences, the mythology of fashion
today requires that anyone in the race must always be seen to be
one step ahead of any single point on the long road to nowhere in
particular, and away from wherever we were.
   I agree with Peter Schjeldahl that you can't stop fashion, or
stop the creation of orthodoxy through breathless gossip and
posing. I also agree that it's repressive, as well as pointless and
futile, to try to stop fashion - particularly since fashion
(including breathless gossip) is one of the few immediately
accessible sources of creativity, replenishment, hope and gaiety
that most people have in our lives.
   At the same time, there is a related activity which seems to me
to be, in this context, a form of bad, hostile driving manners - a
terroristic act of hogging the road. This is what happens every
time that an artist, a writer, a critic or indeed a curator turns
the proposition `you can't stop fashion' round, and uses fashion,
or claims about fashionability, in order to stop new things, other
things, or old things, from happening or continuing. This is the
use of the myth of speed to stop movement, regulate flows, block
the road. It often happens, oddly enough, through the use of the
little word STILL: ... `are you STILL doing that ? ... '
   I think that Peter Schjeldahl did it himself a couple of times
in his lecture, with throwaway lines about the theatre on at this
Festival, and about post-structuralist and deconstructive
criticism. It's the `that was way back then' way of not-addressing
issues, and so not moving on from them. It is particularly popular
in Australian arts journalism, and is one of the reasons why that
journalism is so drearily repetitive, and so earnestly behind the
times. Australian experimental filmmakers in particular have suffered from that
sort of treatment; not only from local critics who deem it an argument to
declare new work `dated', but also from overseas visitors (I'm thinking in
particular here of a film talk by Derek Malcolm of The Guardian) who described
Australian films as `behind the times' - as though they can only see work in a
new place by stating that they themselves are coming from somewhere else. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G48 </id>

<source> Reflection and metaphor: recent works of Alun Leach-Jones  </source>

<note> 2003 words </note>

<bl> by Christopher Gentle </bl>

Leach-Jones is often mistakenly perceived
to be a formalist because of his fascination with
pictorial problems. In fact he uses abstract
language to explore fundamental philosophical
concerns as his recent Romance of death
series illustrates.

   HAVING migrated to Australia from Britain in 1960, Alun Leach-
Jones has established himself as an important Australian artist
over the past twenty-five years. He has an impressive record of
exhibitions both in this country and overseas and has been included
in important group exhibitions and collections around the world. In
Australia he has been influential not only as a distinguished
teacher but by example and through the quality of an increasingly
large body of work that he continues to generate. It is not unusual
to see direct references in student work but it is certainly a mark
of respect when this occurs in the work of quite mature artists as
sometimes is the case.
   However there are still misconceptions about Leach-Jones's
paintings by those who fail to read beyond the first level of his
work and see him purely as a decorative col+ourist, concerned only
with technicalities and the formal problems of painting. Ironi+cally, 
this is a criticism which Leach-Jones himself levels at much of 
recent Australian art. Part of the problem of interpretation can
be traced back to that period in the 1960s when `New Abstraction'
was the blanket title for a number of quite disparate young artists
who were conveniently but incor+rectly grouped together under the
then popular banner of colour-field painting. Leach-Jones was among
them.
   Yet there were aspects of his painting that distinguished him
even then. The work was authoritative and the technical mastery
over the intricacy of his images bore evi+dence of a patience and
dedication that has remained a hallmark of his career. As Patrick
McCaughey wrote in 1973, `At a period when the notions of
professionalism assumed fetishistic importance for younger
Australian artists, Leach-Jones seemed the most professional of
them all'. He seemed also to have a grasp of and familiarity with
the concepts of current European and American movements that was
uncommon in his Australian peers. He has continued to nurture these
associations by frequently exhibiting and working abroad.
   As one acutely aware of his European beginnings he has a greater
affinity with the intensity and intellectual vigour manifested in
those arenas rather than the necessarily narrower cultural
environment in his adopted country. For, unlike many migrant
artists (and native ones for that matter), he has not fallen under
the spell of either the many geographical wonders of this ancient
and arid continent or of the local folklore, white or black. He
retains a strong sense of his own Celtic heritage and philosophies
rooted in the European tradition of the great Masters and is quick
to pay homage to Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard and
most especially to Henri Matisse. In the late 1950s and early l960s
when the post-war Americans had such an impact on con+temporary
modernist philosophy, Leach-Jones found an affinity with Hans
Hofmann and Josef Albers and inspiration in Robert Motherwell. It
is no surprise then that his work should reflect this international
outlook.
   Leach-Jones's work bears ostensibly little evidence of
Australian influence except, almost inevitably, in his colour and
light and sense of space and scale - his paintings are all large.
The sharp, wide-ranging tonal patterns and high keyed, brilliant
colour celebrated with such virtuosity are any+thing but Celtic,
although there is a delight in ornamental and complex pattern.
There are no soft tones, no Welsh slate-greys; in their place are
sparkling coastal blues and greens and the pinks and gold of late
Sydney afternoons.
   However, one should beware of drawing the obvious conclusion
that such references are inherent in Leach-Jones's colour because
he has never been a literal painter in that sense. For him the
figurative image must inevitably entrap the viewer, arresting the
fundamental process of communication and impeding the
interpretation of the symbol. Janine Burke, writing about Leach-
Jones in 1976, suggested in some detail that the works can be
approached on three levels: on a purely literal and associative
level which is the most readily accessible, as allegories or
pictorial parables and finally as symbols. If one is to traverse
these levels, and this is not always easy, the artist main+tains
that the distraction of realist imagery is best removed. He
believes that, `If you could get rid of external reality it would
be much easier to deal directly with feeling and experience'. With
this in mind it is not difficult to see why Leach-Jones relates to
art forms other than painting. Indeed much of his inspiration comes
either directly or indirectly from composers and writers: `I see
books as a whole set of intellectual tools which keep you striving
and functioning, just like looking at other art, listening to
music, reading poetry, literature and criti+cism, it's just to
remind you of what the goals are, what the standards are ...' And
it is not only from the works that he draws inspiration. The
writers, poets, musicians, the individuals themselves serve as
models in their dedication, intellect and ethics.
   Although Leach-Jones is broadly regarded as an abstract painter
concerned largely with developing a difficult, for+mal visual
language, he sees himself simul+taneously using that abstract
language to explore and express the human condition especially in
his more recent works. He contends that it is not enough to produce
`adequate decoration' no matter how skil+fully. For art must carry
ideas and feelings and create dialogue to communicate
mean+ingfully. It signifies Leach-Jones's commit+ment to these
ideals that he characteristi+cally produces work in series in which
he patiently develops and expands his ideas. The series is
completed at a stage where the concepts are overtaken or a natural
impasse is reached, a point at which development ceases. 
   On the other hand, Leach-Jones has always been ready to
experiment and never reluctant to delve into the unknown.
Con+sequently, there have been some quite sudden changes in his
style over the years due to the discovery of new materials and
procedures - or in direct response to environmental changes. For
instance, Leach-Jones's work was visibly affected by his move to
Sydney from Melbourne in 1977: while they maintained a classical
order these paintings broke out from the confines of the strict
regime embodied, for example, in the earlier Noumenon series. The
inhibiting rigidity of the symbols was relinquished along with the
reference to three dimensional form. The new works became freer and
higher keyed.
   In 1980 Leach-Jones was invited to live and work in Berlin as
Artist in Residence with the German Academic Exchange Service where
the groundwork for the current series of paintings was laid. The
Romance of death - the generic title for these paintings - seem an
unlikely denotation for works which are brimming over with action,
colour and light. The title is in fact Leach-Jones's esoteric
reference to a number of personal characteristics and experiences.
His perception of himself is of a melancholic and introspective
personality which he attributes to his background and heritage. He
is certainly a romantic as most artists must be, but his romance is
tinged with a melancholy and natural pessimism. He enjoys listening
to twentieth-century British music and reading poetry, Welsh poetry
in particular, which reflects this sensibility.
   It seems that Leach-Jones has reached now a stage where is more
relaxed and reflective and has gained the confidence that comes
from consistent success. That he is able to define and accept
personality traits is significant, as knowing oneself is very much
part of the art process. We are wit+nessing the artist maturing and
coming to terms with himself and his fundamental nature.
   In Europe the pressure of world pol+itics and threat of the
nuclear holocaust is more acutely*accutely felt, as is the memory of
his+torical disasters. These events, or personal histories for
instance, might well prompt a consideration of our inevitable
mortality. This is not in itself a morbid preoccupation.
Historically, reflections on death and on life have often been
synonymous; in the work of nineteenth-century German romantic
painters and the Pre-Raphaelites it became a romantic obsession.
Leach-Jones deals with it in purely modernist terms with not a
whiff of sentimentality. The English ecclesiastical historian John
McManners argues that `the attitude of men to the death of their
fellows is of unique significance for an understanding of our human
condition ... the knowledge that we must die gives us our
perspective for living ...'. And J. D. Enright in his
introduction to The Oxford Book of Death suggests that `... to
talk at all about death is inevitably to talk about life'.
   Leach-Jones continues to be fascinated with the pictorial
problems of contempor+ary painting as he addresses these larger
issues and in the latest works we see the results of his
persistence in honing and refining the solutions he has developed
to marry these concerns. The biggest change in his work is his
restriction of colour essen+tially to the primaries and for the
first time black becomes a major element. This is in sharp contrast
to the immediately preced+ing works where not only are the colours
exotic but the artist also introduced ground glass, sand and a
highly reflective metal flake. Large areas of these materials were
interspersed with flat areas of paint and it is indicative of his
skill that Leach-Jones was able to bring these otherwise
unsympathe+tic materials together and make them work with the
painted shapes to create unified and strikingly beautiful
paintings. The reasons for using such unconventional materials lay
in his attempt to endow particular non-referential structures with
a visual strength that would, in Leach-Jones's words, `be as
powerful and arresting as a realistic image of the figure'.
   One suspects that the artist thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of
the inherent difficulties and, like all true craftsmen, has a deep
affection for his materials. It might be said that this was his
infatuation with a sequined*sequinned whore to whom he then lent
respectability*respectiability. In Romance of death no. 8 he goes
further and introduces neon into the work. It is his first attempt
to do this and although the painting is successfully resol+ved it
is still a somewhat tentative approach to the problem of marrying
a direct source of light with the light-reflective surface of
paint. The solution was not fully to integ+rate them, one over the
other as it were, but to place them side by side, the relationship
being cemented by the neon lines echoing the direction, movement
and colour of the rest of the painting. The neon lines also clearly
imply an extension of the work beyond its physical extremities, as
do the painted areas. This applies to most of the latest works,
whereas the forerunners were neatly stabilized within the frame
having their own built-in border. Now, the explo+sive energy which
emanates from the centre of the picture projects beyond the frame,
propelling and carrying the shard-like forms with it. The forms
were previously contained and stabilized within the picture but, in
the latest works, shapes are allowed to break through and beyond
the frame. The overall effect is one of energy and vital+ity. This
is enhanced by the contrasting tonal pattern and the point is
emphasized further by the use of a white outline around every
shape, giving them edges like razor blades. This device gives a
sparkling effect to the painting and at the same time drags the eye
along the edges and in sharp turns through the painting from shape
to shape. There is nothing haphazard in this: Leach-Jones is a
sophisticated creator of shapes, and the complexity of the works
encourages lengthy analysis and reflection. Despite their apparent
gaiety the recent paintings are formally severe and paradoxically
suggest an underlying disquiet, a sense of foreboding. Perhaps they reflect
the darker side of the throbbing metropolis of any great city, visually
exciting places where one is also constantly aware of danger. 
  The colours are particularly evocative in the Romance of death paintings.

</sample>



<sample><id> G49 </id>

<source> Arts and Australia </source>

<note> 2014 words </note>

<subsample><id> G49a </id>

<source> Arts and Australia - Spring 1986 </source>

<h> Aboriginality in the art of Byram Mansell </h>

<bl> by Martin Terry </bl>

Considered somewhat beyond the artistic pale by his
contemporaries, it is time to reassess Mansell's contribution,
through his interest in Aboriginal art themes and styles,
not only to the development of a uniquely Australian art form,
but also to an appreciation of Aboriginal culture.

   WITH AN ever-increasing number of exhibitions and publications
the art of Sydney in the 1940s and 1950s is becoming more
thoroughly documented and understood. As part of this reappraisal
a timely retrospective exhibition of the art of Byram Mansell, who
died in 1977, was held at the Wool+loomooloo Gallery, Sydney in
1985.
   Mansell, born in 1894, grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs, the
son of a factory owner. From 1911-1912 he studied engineering at
Sydney Technical College which, being over+looked by Lucien Henry's
waratahs and other Australian motifs, would have been his first
experience of the applied arts being combined with Australian
themes. In 1914 he studied at night at Julian Ashton's Art School,
followed by a period in 1921 at the Academy of Art, Honolulu. He
later attended the Academie Julian in Paris in 1922, before
returning to the United States of America where he settled in Los
Angeles.
   Little is known of this period, although like most living in Los
Angeles hope to do, he worked for the film studios and as an
interior designer. On the basis of sketches now in the Australian
National Gallery, and The songbird, reproduced in the June 1926
issue of ART in Australia, it is possible to speculate that these
interiors, rather than being in fashionable proto-modernist style,
were of a more retrospective kind, examining Art Nouveau and the
work of Tiffany and others.
   Mansell returned to Australia in 1930 and while executing the
occasional interior commis+sion, such as some native flora
decorations for the Wintergarden Theatre (circa 1939) at Bris+bane,
he would have probably remained a rather obscure personality, had
it not been for his discovery of the power of Aboriginal art.
   His interest in the Aborigines was not in itself exceptional;
Aborigines had after all featured in the art of Australia's white
culture since Sydney Parkinson portrayed Two of the natives of New
Holland advancing to combat.
   However, it was another matter to be interested in aboriginal
art. Margaret Preston is often credited with being the first white
artist to be impressed, her article, `The application of Aboriginal
designs', being published in 1930. Preston's awareness however was
perhaps more fortuitous than inspired, for coloured reproduc+tions
of Aboriginal art had been available from at least 1904 when The
Northern Tribes of Central Australia by Baldwin Spencer and F. J.
Gillen had been published. The Arunta by the same authors was
published in 1927 and in 1929 the exhibi+tion `Australian
Aboriginal Art' was held at the National Museum of Victoria. The
catalogue con+tained many illustrations of Aboriginal art, two
being in colour.
   While Preston was to travel to Central Australia, Mansell saw no
particular reason to eschew Killara for the primitive safari.
Rather, the specific inspiration for him was a set of photographs
sent him by Charles P. Mountford, leader of an ambi+tious
expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948 which was sponsored by the
Commonwealth, the National Geographic Society and the Smith+sonian
Institute. Its two-volume report was published in 1956. From about
1949 however Mansell was absorbed by Aboriginal art themes,
responding not only to their blend of narrative power and design,
but also to Aboriginal art's ability to both represent and express
spiritual values. As he explained, `Every Stone Age paint+ing tells
a story and every design has a meaning, meanings that western
artists are often unable to express.'
   Aboriginal art in the 1950s also became increasingly appreciated
in nationalistic terms, as something ancient and indigenous opposed
to the internationalism of the period. A contem+porary article
discussing Mansell felt that `Australia is coming, largely through
this new art form, to a realisation that the Aborigine has a
cul+ture of his own, well worth the white man's study, even among
the distractions of the atomic age'.
   Mansell himself in discussing a barbecue set that had been
commissioned for an American's `Australiana room' remarked that `It
is important to the growth of Australian culture that we strive to
develop typical Australian arts and crafts. Otherwise in the next
century or so we shall find the influx of old European arts and
crafts being sponsored here by New Australians will swamp our
national culture'.
   The isolationist theme was echoed by Joseph Burke who contended
that, `With a Stone-Age culture surviving on her soil, and proximity
to tribal societies on the north and east, Australia need not look,
like Europe, to the museum for the inspiration of the primitives'.
   Mansell was to express his new-found interest in paintings,
murals and decorative arts. He had been painting professionally
since about 1921 when, in Honolulu, he executed flower paintings on
glass and lacquer. In the mid-1930s his work reflected the more
conservative qualities of Australian art - Elioth Gruner-like
portrayals of Palm Beach and Heysenesque studies of the Macdonald
Ranges. These stylistic uncertainties were resolved by the
discovery of Aboriginal art.
   Mansell executed few large works although his 1949 Sulman entry
was an exception. It demonstrates not only his use of various
styles - X-ray figures with the more representational treatments of
the Oenpelli region combined with Western perspective - but the
literalness of his approach, the legends that fascinated him being
carefully and comprehensively described.
   Mansell's affection for Aboriginal art led him to work with
ersatz Aboriginal materials. In his smaller works he used a parrot
feather as a brush, natural pigment (red from Bowral, yellow from
a local railway cutting) and cactus juice as his binding agent.
(The Prickly Pear Commission ordered him to destroy his well-tended
speci+mens.) These works have an attractive, taut, graphic power,
a simplicity of conception and richness of colour which was ideal
for the expression of Mansell's beliefs.
   The most public acknowledgement of Mansell's interests was the
extensive number of mural commissions he received. Murals at their
best are an equal blend of architecture and art and today, when
they are used almost solely as doctrinaire instruction, the
extensive use made of them in the early 1960s seems almost
touch+ingly naive. Mansell was popular with Sydney's local
councils, executing murals for the Lindfield Library, Willoughby
Council Chambers and a park in Camden.
   His murals were also seen further afield. In 1953 Aborigines
fishing at the Kosciusko Chalet was entered in the Sulman Prize.
(Eric Smith was awarded the prize for a work at Berrima Gaol in
1956.) A large mural, measuring over five by seven metres, based on
legends about Taree, was constructed for the local Commonwealth
Bank and, while there, Mansell executed a decor for the Elite Cafe
In 1957 Mansell was commis+sioned to do another mural, painted on
caneite, of Yondi raising the sky - the legend of the boomerang for
the Boardroom of the Hebrew University.
   Mansell had been Australia's first Boy Scout, enterprisingly
founding his own troop: 1st Bellevue Hill. Mindful perhaps of the
Scout Guild motto `Always a Scout', he gave, in 1966, the mural
Kangaroo Hunt (91.44 x 182.88cm) to a sister organization in
Denmark.
   In similar vein was his Gift to Australian Youth for the Sydney
Police Boys' Club at Wool+loomooloo, 1961. Its swarming Aboriginal
motifs and animated atmosphere is a fine demonstra+tion of
Mansell's mural style and his ingenuous hope that a familiarity
with a clarified, accessible expression of the atmosphere of
Aboriginal art would be of cultural value to contemporary
Australia.
   The third aspect of Byram Mansell's career was his interest in
the decorative arts. He had been interested in fabrics at least
since 1930 when he opened a textile studio in Elizabeth Street,
Sydney, but his most attractive work is from the 1950s. His
scarves, a number of which were exhibited at David Jones in 1953,
run through a range of styles, from an emphasis upon floral motifs
to representational views of Aboriginal life, the spearing of fish
for example, and other more abstract motifs. Others are in a looser,
semi-X-ray style, blending with the attenuated linearity of Mimi
figures to produce in a fishing scene one of Mansell's most
handsome fabric designs.
   Like the best designers of the period such as Frances Burke who
also used locally-inspired motifs, Mansell realized that the fabric
medium required a boldness of design and colour to be effective and
that the designs needed to be integrated with the medium, not
applied to the surface. These principles were used in his other
excursions into the decorative and applied arts such as the
intarsia panels for the Common+wealth Bank in Martin Place, coffee
tables and a wide range of ceramics where grass, trees and leaves
were abstractly suggested. Later his ceramics designs became more
eccentric with, for instance, tiled planters like crazy paving and
rather peculiar mushroom-capped ceramic fountains.
   Mansell's wide-ranging interests are sug+gested by his tapestry
Legend of the boomerang, made in France, a Mulga wood table of his
design and a silk square Sky and the boomerang, repre+senting
Australia, which was given to the Queen.
   Mansell adopted a popular course. He was happy to be interviewed
by Pix and Woman's Day and felt no embarrassment at executing work
for the Albury-Sydney Express, or the Empress of Australia. Like
his contemporary, Douglas Annand, he was considered somewhat beyond
the artistic pale and was until recently unrepresented by public
institutions.
   In contrast to Preston's carefully crafted asides, Mansell's
interest in Aboriginal art was direct, largely unmediated by
theories. It is an uncomplicated view of a complex culture but
largely in keeping with the temper of his time, a period, for
example, when a white artist, Alistair Morrison, could design a
catalogue cover for the important exhibition `Art of Australia
1788-1941' in Aboriginal style, or Gert Sellheim could create
Aboriginal-like postage stamps. It would be a pity if some of the
criticism levelled at Mansell in his own day became a retrospective
habit that paid no attention to his sincere efforts to encourage an
appreciation of a much neglected art.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G49b </id>

<source> Arts and Australia - Spring 1986 </source>

<h> John Martin </h>

<bl> by Royston Harpur </bl>

The injection of `content' into the works of
John Martin, a committed modernist, has produced
a powerful body of work concerned with politics
and metaphysics, but retaining great
internal integrity.

   I FEEL PAIN for young artists today. The territory of modernism
has largely been conquered, there is no longer much unmapped
territory, the ground has pretty much been covered. As modern
painting completes its task, younger artists are reduced, by
arriving so late historically, to adding paragraphs or footnotes of
great refin+ement, rather than whole chapters to the body of
modernist art.'
   `While it is sometimes said in defence of figura+tion that
abstraction demands of the viewer too much predisposed sympathy, in
fact abstraction has suffered throughout its history from the
nervous efforts of those abstract painters who try too hard to
rationalize or justify the sympathy one would naturally grant them
with the result that direct experience of the art itself is
smothered in a deluge of information.'
   John Martin is a mid-career artist firmly committed to the path
of Modernism and so must grapple with the problems expressed in the
two statements above. The result of this grap+pling is a powerful
body of work, particularly in recent years. An artist whose work
deserves far wider recognition, he is only now becoming more widely
known since he began exhibiting on a regular basis at the Mori
Gallery in Sydney.
   As a formalist, his early work was influenced by the `Greenberg'
painters of the 1940s and 1950s, a not untypical apprenticeship for
a young painter emerging in Sydney in the late 1960s. His work was
large, open and post-painterly, with perhaps some special reference
to Clyfford Still. After an extended period of work+ing in England
in the early 1970s he returned to Australia to live in the Hunter
Valley region of New South Wales. This allowed him the use of very large
studios; an intense period of self-examina+tion and work commenced. 

</subsample>

</sample>


<sample><id> G50 </id>

<source> Mapped but not known: the Australian landscape of the imagination </source>

<note> 2003 words </note>

<h> Landscape and the Australian imagination </h>

<bl> By Bruce Clunies Ross </bl>

After about two hundred years of settlement, white
Australians have created an urban (and suburban) civilisation
around less than half the coastline of the country. Most of the
population lives there and has done for three generations or
more, for within the confines of the coastal strip, Australia
was a rapidly urbanised country. This littoral civilisation is
predominantly outward-looking. Australians generally consider
themselves to be part of Western civilisation, and enjoy its
benefits. The problems of distance which influenced early
settlement in Australia, and can be traced in its culture, seem
to have been solved. Improvements in communications now keep
Australians in touch with the metropolitan centres of the West,
and instead of regarding their culture as a delayed reflection
of European, or latterly, American culture, they can regard it
as part of the international Western civilisation spreading
across the globe. Some Australians may feel that they have more
in common with people in New York or San Francisco, or even,
perhaps, Hamburg, Milan or London, than with the hinterland at
their backs or the rural Australia depicted in much of the
literature and painting.
   This advanced state of communications seems sometimes to
induce a certain forgetfulness and blindness. Only the
disjunction of the seasons can now account for the slight gap
between the first appearance of a style on the Cote d'Azure or
in Los Angeles, and its reappearance on Maslin's Beach, but it
is easily forgotten that only in the last twenty years - the
creatively active lives of many Australian artists now in their
prime - have cheap air travel and electronic communications
narrowed the gap between urban Australia and the rest of the
Western world. Gaps still exist between the coastal cities of
Australia and the sparsely populated hinterland, and these
may even be increasing. The excitement of suddenly catching up
with the rest of the world is inclined to blind us to the most
obvious fact about Australian geography, apparent from any map
of the country, which is that urban civilisation has a very
slender hold on the place. To argue that because most
Australians live in cities, rural images are less culturally
relevant than a cosmopolitan outlook is, besides being literal-
minded, to deny the true geography of Australia; it is to
ignore the vast hinterland, and

       the three quarters of our continent
       set aside for mystic poetry.

Most Australians may never experience this, but it is doubtful
whether their imaginations remain untouched by it. Urban
Australia might be part of Western civilisation, but it is also
where civilisation runs out. It is commonly agreed that
Australia has no ruins, but this is false. In addition to the
geological ruins in Australia, there are, around the interior
edge of the continent, within the one-inch run-off isopleth,
north of Goyder's line in South Australia, in the North-West,
and elsewhere, many historical ruins which are equally telling.
They mark the points where civilisation advanced too far and
was forced to retreat. Randolph Stow uses images of such ruins
in Tourmaline, and they give us reason to doubt whether
civilisation is a progressive movement which will conquer the
world. Beyond them, there are large areas of the Australian map
still marked "No Significant Use," which means, of course, that
they have so far resisted civilised encroachment.
   The hinterland, or wild Australia, is the source of the most
pervasive images. Even in many of the films made in the last
decade when metropolitan conceptions of Australia have been
prominent, the starring role has been taken by the great
Australian landscape. A common image in these films is of human
beings against a natural background which influences the way
they are perceived and identified, and the directors who use
these images are, of course, only picking up a traditional
Australian topos of man (or woman) in a landscape. A slightly
earlier film by a British director, Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout,
actually captures the strange distinction of Australian
geography by sharp cutting between images of urban and wild
Australia.
   There is, of course, a difference between the Australian
landscape, and the images of the place which Australians carry
around in their heads and which are refracted in Australian
art. The landscape of Australia is extraordinarily varied; art
does not aim at a scientific account of this variety in the
manner of geography. It is affected by geography, but
subjectively, with the individual's sense of place. Australian
art - notably painting, but not only painting - suggests that the
land itself is a powerful element in the common experience of
Australia. Varieties of landscape have been represented by
artists working out of particular places, like Les Murray's
poems centred on the north coast of New South Wales around
Bunyah or Thea Astley's stories set in the tropic zone of
Queensland, but not all repre+sentations of the Australian
landscape are quite as specific as these and neither of the
examples cited is merely descriptive. Les Murray's images of
Bunyah are the focus of a broad vision of Australian geography
which was already apparent in an early poem like "Noonday
Axeman," where the axeman is placed on the fringe of human
settlement, poised between the encroachment of twentieth-
century metropolitan civilisation and the silent wilderness
beyond the farms rising to the foothills. Thea Astley's
narrator in Hunting the Wild Pineapple is preoccupied with
drawing maps which are both descriptive and metaphorical. The
title of the first story in the book is enough to suggest its
mode: "North: Some Compass Readings: Eden"; all the
connotations of those words are explored in the story, both to
show how the spirit of the place has taken possession of the
characters and as metaphors to reveal their feelings and
emotional interactions.
   Murray's poem is interesting because it reminds the reader
of a central fact about Australia, which is that half the
country, or more, remains untamed, and is perhaps untameable:

      After the tree falls, there will reign the same silence
      As stuns and spurs us, enraptures and defeats us,
      As seems to some a challenge, and seems to others
      To be waiting here for something beyond imagining.
      .............................................. 
                                    It will be centuries
      Before many men are truly at home in this country ...

This is not to suggest that the inland is quite unknown, or
that isolated individuals have not been able to survive in it,
but it will never be "landscaped" on the scale of the United
States, for example. Implicit in Australia is a natural mystery
more powerful than the civilisation around its fringes. From
the beginning of white settlement, this has been somewhere
around the centre of the country, and people have disappeared
into it. Although we know more about the centre now, it is
still the "Never-Never." The mysterious untamed country is both
literally and metaphorically at the centre of Australia. It is
not surprising, therefore, that it has generated the most
persuasive and powerful images of Australian landscape, or that
it should be present in the minds - or imaginations - of
Australians who have no direct experience of it.
      There are those who deny the geographical peculiarity of
Australia, and who look at it from an essentially metropolitan
perspective. Some will deny that it will never be developed,
and they are probably right. Where exploration and agriculture
failed, tourism will succeed. People now go to look at the
mystery at the heart of Australia - and will do so
increasingly - despite the fact that tourism destroys the
very thing they go to experience. Yet tracts of the "Never-
Never" will remain useless and inaccessible to miners and
tourists for a long time yet, and it is precisely these
attributes of uselessness and inaccessibility which
characterise the ultimate image of Australian landscape. It
will always be "out where the dead men lie," beyond the reach
of civilisation.
   During the two centuries that whites have occupied the land,
their culture has evolved out of the clash between European
civilisation and antipodean geography, and the geography has
proved the more powerful. This helps to explain the prominence
of landscape images in Australian culture and the persistence
of a rural legend in an urban society. It is sometimes
suggested that a preoccupation with the land and country life
is a sign of culture in a colonial stage. This is a patronising
metropolitan misconception which rests on the assumption that
man can sustain dominion over nature. The white invasion of
Australia represents a subtle challenge to this assump+tion.
   To judge from the way landscape was depicted in the first
hundred years or so, the optimistic view that the land could be
humanised was strong. In painting, pastoral visions of
Australia were predominant, though literature was more
ambivalent.
   For a long time, in the minds of Europeans, Australia was a
remote place on the map; a subject for fantastic antipodean
legends and fiction. It was roughly defined by a few charts of
disconnected coastline. Those who had visited this coast mostly
found it desolate and useless; the very antipodes of European
landscapes and natural environments. The first settlers found
some of these preconceptions confirmed.
   There is an interesting resemblance between some of the
earliest visions of the country and modern Australia. A map of
civilisation in Australia (see the maps of settlement and rural
population, in Learmonth, Regional Landscapes of Australia)
would look something like the old navigators' charts; a few
disconnected strips of close settlement around the coast. The
actual lines on the early charts may not coincide in many
places with the map of civilisation, but the effect is the
same; the known, and now the civilised, lie on the outskirts of
an island-continent once unknown and still untamed.
   Remoteness, desolation, uselessness and a sense of being on
the edge of the unknown have been latent in the idea of
Australia from the beginning and they contribute to that
quality of indifference with which the environment is supposed
to confront its white inhabitants. This is a one-sided affair,
because the invaders were unable to be indifferent to the
environment. Part of their heritage was a European, and
especially English, love of landscape, and they tried to love
Australia, and sometimes succeeded, or succeeded in shaping
plots of it into something they could love.
   As Bernard Smith has shown, the earliest perceptions of
Australia were filtered through European preconceptions, and
there is plenty of evidence for this in the records of songless
birds and scentless flowers and the like. It was, as a European
scientist discovered one hundred and fifty years later,

     a matter of eyes. Mine were still English eyes, and as  
     such simply could not see Australia. English eyes have    
     set ideas about trees and about light and distances. They   
     can appreciate the jungle, because for all its exotic      
     show the jungle is only an exaggerated wood. Its trees,     
     though bizarre, are in essence what trees should            
     be - trunks supporting a leafy mass which breaks the light    
     and casts a shadow. But among the gum-trees English eyes   
     are as good as blind.... The thin grey foliage is carried 
     at the end of the branches high against the sky; the     
     fierce Australian light pours through it and floods the   
     grass, the earth, and the trunks and limbs of the trees   
     themselves, washing away the colour and leaving a         
     monotone of bright yellowish grey. In time (the process    
     in my case took a month at least) the eyes adjust          
     themselves, taking on, so to speak, a pair of               
     physiological dark spectacles which make allowance for       
     the glare and reveal the bush as it really is.

Francis Ratcliffe, a scientist dependent upon his powers of
observation, was alert to what was happening to him. It was
likewise the early scientific draughtsmen, according to
Professor Smith, who were better able to avoid European
preconceptions and produce more accurate representations of the
environment they discovered in Australia.
   But the quotation from Ratcliffe suggests that it was not
simply a matter of eyes. 

</sample>




<sample><id> G51 </id>

<source> Australian Marxist Review - March 1986 </source>

<note> 2017 words </note>

<h> There's nothing new about the Accord </h>

<bl> by Jack McPhillips and Anna Pha </bl>

   Although the wage restricting purposes and effects of the
ACTU/ALP Accord are main features of that document and are
widely known to workers, the concepts on which it is based are
even more important and their implica+tions wider.
   These concepts include:
      &bullet; wage levels are the main and even the sole cause of
price inflation;
      &bullet; as such they are responsible for economic instability
and even economic crisis;
      &bullet; workers are responsible, at least to a substantial
degree, for economic difficulties and consequently have a
responsibility to assist overcome those difficulties;
      &bullet; workers (labour) and their employers (capital) share
common interests in the development of a capitalist economy and
in overcoming its difficulties;
      &bullet; capitalism is an acceptable social-economic formation
and must be preserved;
      &bullet; there is need for collaboration between labour and
capital.
   There is really nothing new in those concepts. They are
standard for rep+resentatives of capital, they have been
frequently adopted and acted upon by governments of Social
Democracy, such as the current Labor Government in Australia
and have, upon occasions, been adopted by some of the leading
bodies and persons in the trade unions.
   They have always been opposed and resisted by genuine
communists.
   Those supporters of the ACTU/ALP Accord who claim uniqueness
and exceptionalism for that document are unaware of or ignore
certain facts of history.
   As far back as 1927 the concepts of common interests and
collaboration between employers and union organisation were
advanced in a formal man+ner by employers in England and
accepted and acted upon by the British Trade Union Congress.
   In November 1927, Sir Alfred Mond - later Lord
Melchett - acting on behalf of a group of employers, addressed
a letter to the General Council of the TUC inviting
representatives of that body to join him and his capitalist
col+leagues in discussing certain problems marking the then
current conditions in the British economy.
   His letter said : "The movement towards industrial
cooperation has recently received a great accession of strength
and there seems to be general agree+ment that a useful purpose
would be served by a consideration of certain fun+damental
factors in industrial reorganisation and industrial relations
... The necessity of every action being taken to achieve the
fullest and speediest measures of industrial reconstruction,
therefore, impels us to seek the immediate cooperation of those
who are as vitally interested in the subject as ourselves. We
believe that the common interests which bind us more power+ful
than the divergent interests which seem to separate.
   "The prosperity of industry can in our view be fully
attained only by full and frank recognition of facts as they
exist and an equally full and frank determina+tion to increase
the competitive power of British industries in the world's
mar+kets... That can be achieved most usefully by direct
negotiation with the twin objects of the restoration of
industrial prosperity and the corresponding improvement in the
standard of living of the population". (Trade Union Docu+ments
by W. Milne-Bailey published by G. Bell &amp; Sons Ltd, London,
1929, pages 253-4.)
   The address by the President to the Trade Union Congress in
that same year (1927) contained the following:
   "We all know - employers as well as Trade Unions - that the
vexatious, toilsome and difficult period through which we are
passing is a transitional period. Much fuller use can be made
under these conditions of the machinery for joint consultation
and negotiation between employers and employed. Dis+cussion on
these lines would bring both sides to face with the hard
realities of the present economic situation, and might yield
useful results in showing how far and upon what terms
cooperation is possible in a common endeavour to improve the
efficiency of industry and to raise the workers' standard of
life. We should not be deterred by allegations that in entering
into such discus+sions we are surrendering some essential
principle of Trade Unionism". (Ibid. page 252.)
   Those discussions did take place over a period and were
formalised at con+ferences which made decisions and issued
documents.
   On July 4, 1928, "The Conference on Industrial
Reorganisation and Indust+rial Relations" adopted a "Scheme" and
said:
   "This Conference is convinced that the most valuable and
helpful element towards seeking a means of preventing disputes
lies in the main objective of the Conference - the strengthening
of good relations between organisations on both sides and their
recognition of joint industrial responsibility. This Con+ference 
believes that a broader acceptance of the responsibility of 
industry as a whole for the avoidance of stoppages of work 
should be developed". (Ibid. page 258)
   The Annual Report of the General Council to the Congress in
1928 referred to what was called "The Mond-Turner Conferences".
It referred to the difficult circumstances of the time and set
out three courses which were available to the trade union
movement. Two of those courses were based on concepts of the
class obligation of the unions. The third course was stated as
follows:
   "The third course is for the Trade Union Movement to say
boldly that not only is it concerned with the prosperity of
industry, but that it is going to have a voice as to the way
industry is carried on, so that it can influence the new
developments that are taking place. The ultimate policy of the
movement can find more use for an efficient industry than for
a derelict one, and the unions can use their power to promote
and guide the scientific reorganisation of industry as well as
to obtain material advantages from that reorganisation. Faced
with the situation that now prevails in this country, the
Council has taken the view that the third course was the only
one it was possible to take if the Trade Union Movement was to
endure as a living, constructive force". (Ibid. page 427)
   Two years after these noble (?) concepts were developed the
workers of Britain were unemployed by the hundreds of
thousands, impoverished and feeding from charity soup kitchens.
   That was not the fate of Lord Melchett or the TUC leaders
who developed the concepts of "common interests" and class
collaboration.
   But almost 60 years after "Mondism", the same concepts upon
which that infamous scheme was based are enshrined in the
ACTU/ALP Accord -.Mark I and Mark 11 - and the same class
collaboration proposals are being advanced and acted upon by
sections of the employers and sections of the trade union
leadership.
   In fact, the very views enunciated by the British trade
union leaders in 1927 and 1928 are being repeated today in
Australia by union leaders supporting the Accord.
   Attempts at this process of class collaboration were made,
in the form of proposals for a "Industrial Peace Conference",
by Prime Minister Chifley and subsequently by Prime Minister
Menzies. Both attempts were rejected by the unions.
   But "Mondism" did not die. It was revived in varying forms
in several Euro+pean countries and in Britain in the 1970s.
   A widely used means of implementing the principles of
"Mondism" is the so-called Social Contract. A symposium on
trade union problems organised by the World Marxist Review in
April 1982 and involving representatives from several forms of
social contracts which had operated in Luxembourg, Denmark and
Austria.
   A report of that symposium contained in World Marxist Review
No. 12 of 1982 contained this observation on the experience in
Austria:
   "They (Government, business and union leaders) take joint
decisions on the main social and economic problems, bypassing
the elective organs. In politi+cal terms, `social partnership'
binds the trade unions to participation in spreading the
deliberate lie about there being some kind of community of
interests between capital and labour. In economic terms, it
serves capital, because it imposes on the trade union
leadership a renunciation of the use of the militant potential
of the working people in the struggle for their own economic
interests. With the `social partnership' policy is closely
connected the limitation of democracy in every sphere of trade
union activity. Its main principle is the cutting short of any
mass action in order to provide the leader+ship with the
conditions for conciliatory activity". (page 56.)
   The WMR discussion revealed that the unions of Luxembourg
allowed themselves to become involved in social partnership
when the economic out+look was relatively favorable. They
adopted "...an institutionalised system of trilateral
cooperation enacted legislatively. They agreed to a collective
con+tract, a so-called zero contract, which is (was) in force
until the end of 1983 and which says (said) that until then the
trade unions will (would) not demand any wage rises, provided
wages are automatically adjusted to the growth of prices. But
indexation has been abolished by the Government and the crisis
has induced the employers to go back on these obligations...
all these events have forced the trade union leadership to
recognise the futility of the model based on `social
partnership' and to resort to measures of protest...". (WMR,
No. 12, 1982, pp 57-8)
   The WMR discussion revealed that Denmark had an incomes
policy, in many respects similar to the ACTU/ALP Accord, which
sought to improve international competitivity and to create
conditions necessary to attract more capital investment, and
thus more new jobs. The outcome of their incomes policy,
according to the representatives of the Danish trade unions at
the symposium, and based on government statistics was a fall of
12 per cent in real wages of workers who were members of the
Central Association of the Trade Unions of Denmark and those of
Government employees dropped by 24 per cent.
   The Danish representative went on to say:
   "Consequently the characteristic thing about Denmark is that
the offensive by capital was being supported and encouraged by
the social democratic government . . .
   " Higher wages or new jobs' - that is how the employers'
union, the Cent+ral Association of the Trade Unions and the
Government see (saw) the alterna+tive on the eve of the 1983
wage-rate bargaining, but everyone knows that the restraint on
wages did not create additional jobs and that on the contrary,
the number of unemployed since 1979 has doubled. In 1981, of
the 1.5 million unionised wage workers, 700,000 i.e. nearly one
half, variously resorted to the unemployment aid in fund. The
number of unemployed averaged almost 300,000, to which should
be added 100,000 persons who have more or less voluntarily left
the labour market". (WMR, No. 12, 1982, pp 57-8)
   The experience of workers in Britain with forms of social
contracts is dis+cussed and to some extent documented in a
publication dealing with the ACTU/ALP Accord and published by
the South Australian Institute of Teachers (SAIT). Titled The
Prices And Income Accord SAIT Kit and dated July 1983 this
publication reproduces material from British publications 
deal+ing with the period of a social contract under Labor
Governments in the mid '70s. It also includes other sources of
information dealing with the Accord and a commentary by a South
Australian SAIT activist, Clare McCarty.
   The material from the English publications and Ms McCarty's
personal observations reveal a striking similarity between, and
in some respects an identity between, the activities and
statements of leading figures in the British labour movement
and persons similarly placed in the Australian movement.
   Ms McCarty points to the fact that in Britain the concept of
"social contract" was developed by the Labour Party as far back
as 1965 and observes:
   "In fact the ideas and rhetoric from 1965 onwards are
amazingly similar to what we are hearing in Australia now. The
results were devastating to the British working class".
   She says: "It (the Social Contract) began officially with a
statement of intent from George Brown, just after Harold Wilson
(now Lord Wilson) had come to power in 1965. The statement of
intent on `Productivity, Prices &amp; Incomes' was meant to `Ensure
that the benefits of faster growth are distributed in a way
that satisfies social need and justice'".
   Despite these noble intentions that plan was dead at the end
of twelve months. It was followed, under the same Government, by other schemes
said to be aimed at controlling wage levels and prices. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G52 </id>

<source> In Future - July/August 1986 </source>

<note> 2016 words </note>

<h> Living by our wits </h>

<bl> By Barry Jones </bl>

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY have changed the quality, length and direction of
life in the past century far more than politics, education, ideology or
religion. Ford and Edison shaped human experience more broadly and enduringly
than Lenin and Hitler. Modern war would have been impossible - even unthinkable
- without modern technological capacity.
  Nevertheless, the sheer pervasiveness of scientific and technological
develop+ment and its impact on how people live, and their capacity to make
appropriate individual or collective choices, has been either ignored or
considered too late to influence outcomes significantly.
  In the past twenty years there have been many examples of technological
change where social implications were virtually ignored until after the
technologies had been adopted.
  Three examples illustrate the point: the expansion of car-based cities,
the adoption of efficient contraception (especially the pill), and television
as a major time absorber.
  The relative merits of the `dispersed city' model versus the `compact
city' model were never argued out in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth
in the 1960s. Australian cities just grew like Topsy. It was only in the
mid-1970s, ten or fifteen years too late, that politicians, journalists
and social planners began asking why Australia had such serious problems
with road capacity, freeways, pollution, congestion, excessive comm+uting
time and distance, why there were featureless, physically divided and
under-serviced suburbs with little life or occupation of their own. But
were these problems avoidable? Could they have been recognised in advance?
Why were they never addressed? What options were open? How were spending
priorities determined as between roads and schools and sewerage? Who made
the basic decisions? Did they have a vested interest? 
  The contraceptive pill has had revolutionary and liberating effects on
women and will be seen as a turning point in social, economic and political
history. Nevertheless, although its impact on changing labour force composition
should have been obvious, there is little contemporary evidence that this
was ever examined or discussed. The implications for future job choice (and
education) were ignored. But wasn't it always obvious that there would be
a relationship between reliable contra+ception and women being employed
in the future as crane operators, engineers, pilots and army personnel?
Were `worst case' scenarios examined for potential adverse side effects
on the users?
  The prospect of television was welcomed in the 1950s as a major force
for education and stimulation. How has it worked out? In practice it has
had a far more sedative than stimulatory effect. It is now a greater time
absorber for children than school, and for many adults, absorbs more time
than work. The impact of television on journalism, forcing newspapers even
further into the entertainment and gambling business, should have been
recognised, but was not: similarly the contrast between classroom experience
which is demanding, static and often boring, and television, which is
non-demanding, variegated and aimed at instant gratification. What are the
social implications? What has been the education response? Were the issues
ever argued over? Were there any options then? Are there now?
  The role of the Commission for the Future is to raise levels of community
understanding about the issues and to empower people, both individually
and collectively, to make appropriate decisions for themselves. The philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote that the aim of philosophy is to `show the
fly the way out of the fly bottle'. The Commission should have a similar
aim - to empower people to feel first that they ought to be able to have
a judgement and second to have confidence in their own judgement.'
Fear of freedom?
  This does raise the question of whether people feel so incapacitated by
the rate of change that they actually prefer to have others make the
fundamental decisions for them. I suspect this is widespread and, as Eric
Fromm said, there is a `fear of freedom' because freedom means responsibility
and exercising judgment. But the 20th century feudalism - the urge to 
subordinate personal judgment to somebody else - is still a powerful
cultural and psychological factor, especially in the working class. But
to what extent is this fear imposed, or is it inherent?
  It will be argued with some justice, that as with public libraries, the
greatest users of the Commission will be those who need it least, that is
the people who have already begun to work out the implications for themselves,
while the most seriously alienated will remain out of reach. The Commission
will need to develop close working links with various `mediating structures'
- local government, the trade unions, parliament, the bureaucracy, churches,
journalists, welfare and voluntary organisations, members of political parties,
schools and TAFE, and with businesses as well to anticipate their clients' 
needs, provide materials as required and to act as a clearing house for 
information.
  The Commission will not be a planning body, attempting to make decisions
in science-related areas or to recommend policy: that is the task of the
government and relevant departments. Nevertheless the Commission will make
an indirect contribution through its publications. But the Commission will
attempt to act as a guide for the perplexed, to provide road maps or consumer
handbooks for those who want to work out where they are going and what to
do when they get there, or how to change directions and objectives.
  The Commission will not be into `futurology' and if its name suggests
that, this is regrettable; but there is no convenient alternative synonym
for `future'. It will not be into astrology or teacup reading either. But
it will be into options.
  As I will argue below, there are intractable problems in trying to predict
quite fundamental outcomes like the future size of the labour force due
to technological change. Will there be more jobs or less? I don't know and
I doubt if the Commission will either. What will the future jobs be? That
will depend on whether the trend lines of the past thirty years continue
or not, but continued growth of service jobs seems overwhelmingly likely.
The `human services' sector already employs as many people as manufacturing.
  However, the Commission ought to be encouraging debate about future options
such as:-
&bullet; What are possible income/leisure/work trade-offs - and who makes the
decisions? 
&bullet; Whether `disposable time' - that is not forced, unwelcome inactivity but
the capacity to choose freely how we live - is the true measure of wealth
and freedom or whether this concept threatens our traditional value systems
too deeply.
&bullet; Whether we can `work less and live more', or whether the `work ethic' and
the habit or subordination is programmed into human nature and is both
psycho+logically and even physiologically necessary. Is the question of
alternative economic support central to this, or is it a side issue?
&bullet; Whether there should be mass or individual solutions in scientific related
social areas. It is clear from some of the bitter attacks on the Commission
that many people feel threatened by the idea that long held value systems
may be questioned in debate. It may reflect too a prevailing anti-intellectual
phase in Australian public life.
  The Commission will not be pushing a line - but promoting discussion of
fundamental science-related issues so that citizens come to realise, perhaps
for the first time, that there are choices to be made about how we `live,
move and have our being'. The great flag debate, an area in which the
Commission will not be active, is an illustration of how people have been
disturbed by questioning something which was taken for granted for decades.
  Another priority of the Commission for the Future will be to raise levels
of community understanding in areas which are perceived to be enormously
threaten+ing and alienating to many people, especially the unskilled. To
them science has the image of Dr. Strange+love - something that can threaten
make them feel that the world is controlled by forces well beyond their
comprehension. The age of science has also seen the revival of creationism,
astrology, tarot cards and superstition.
  The appalling violence at Milperra in 1984 and at the Heysel Stadium in
May 1985 should serve to remind us of the consequences of what frustration,
alienation and misdirected energy can wreak. The causes and results of violence
are subjects that we tend to look away from as a community. Technology-related
alienation may lead to the `fire next time': we should not rely on the excuse
that we have not been warned.
  There are no bodies in Australia directly addressing these problems -
although there are counterparts in other countries:
&bullet; The US Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future;
&bullet; The New Zealand Futures Trust;
&bullet; The Science Council of Canada;
&bullet; The GAMMA Institute of Montreal;
&bullet; The Netherlands Scientific Council;
&bullet; The Swedish Secretariat for Futures Studies.
Issues for all Australians.
  The following issues, all scientifically and technologically based, will
change the direction of our society radically but their importance is only
dimly recognised. If we do not evolve appropriate personal and community
responses, somebody else will impose them on us.
1. Australia as an `Information Society'
  The concept of a society/economy in which brain power replaces muscle
power/raw materials/energy as the major economic determinant still has a
shocking novelty to many people who should know better. Tell people that
more Australians are employed in the collection, processing and dissemination
of information broadly defined than in farming, mining, manufacturing and
construction combined and they just won't believe it - even though the figures
prove it.
  The significance of an `information economy' has taken a long time to
begin penetrating parts of the national consciousness and still has not
done so in the bureaucratic and political sectors, trades unions and employers.
Canada has devoted time and thought to its implications through its Science
Council and the GAMMA Institute and New Zealand's Commission for the Future
did good work on it.
  To many Australian decision-makers, `information' is simply equated with
hardware, computer capacity, and mere number crunching.
  The human and software implications have been totally ignored.
  So has the potential for a reconfiguration of political power. Is information
to be vertically integrated, controlled from the top and used to shore up
existing power structures? Or can there be a horizontal model - with democratic
access, strengthening the periphery relative to the centre, empowering the
individual against the mass organisation, the one against the many?
  This is a very dangerous question. When are we to begin debating it? This
is not an issue to which the Australian print media have devoted much space:
to the press the information revolution means news about the computer industry
and supplements promoting hardware.
  When the corpus of knowledge is doubling every few years, how can access
to decision-making power (=information) be shared around? Is it impossible?
Is it worth attempting?
  Jeremy Campbell's Grammatical Man (Pelican, 1984) is particularly valuable
on `information' as the central factor that links together computers,
biotechnology, language theory, evolution and philo+sophy.
  The Commission for the Future can play a vital role in the evolution of
a National Information Policy. Because of its broad social, educational
and economic implications both individually and nationally, encouraging
public debate on the implications of an information society - its benefits
and threats - must be the Commission's first priority.
2. Computers, robots numer+ically-controlled machines and education.
  What are the implications of developing an `Information Society' for
education? Should our schools be increasingly specialised, computer related
and science oriented? Or is this the time for greater emphasis on general
education, complementary to technology, aimed at promoting personal
development, including literacy and the arts? The question is absolutely
fundamental and must be addressed now. It is a subject of enormous concern
for parents. I find little evidence that it is being addressed. Michael
Kirby is one of the rare public figures to raise it. 
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  Is AI a threat to natural intelligence? Will the sheer complexity of modern
science - and the difficulty of providing adequate or appropriate linkages
with the community at large - lead to the develop+ment of a technocracy
and rule by an elite? 

</sample>
                      



<sample><id> G53 </id>

<source> In Future </source>

<note> 2009 words </note>

<subsample><id> G53a </id>

<source> In Future - September/October 1986 </source>

<h> Paths to revitalising Australian industry </h>

<bl> By Senator John Button </bl>

In 1984, the Australian economy was enjoying strong growth. Emp+loyment
was rising solidly. Infl+ation and interest rates were falling. Profits
were expanding. Business invest+ment was showing improvement.
  Today, the scene is quite different. The world economy is undergoing
significant adjustment. Major trading nations blocs have reacted to their
domestic industry difficulties by mounting increased trade barriers and
other defensive strategies.
  The serious balance of payments position in which Australia now finds
itself draws attention to the long-term structural problems of the Australian
economy.
  Historically, Australia as a trading nation has relied on the agricultural
sector and more recently the mining sector as the basis of national wealth.
In 1986 we find ourselves with a hard pressed agricultural sector, and with
a mining sector, the products of which are subject to depressed international
commodity prices.
  The problems of some sectors of the rural industry are not short-term and
are not likely to be solved by short-term responses to vociferous demands. 
Basically, those longer-term problems stem from enormous changes in 
agricultural technology, resulting in increased crop yields and productivity 
generally, and consequent self-sufficiency and indeed surplus food supplies 
in many countries where it might never have been anticipated 10 or 15 years 
ago.
  Similarly, while the mining sector can be anticipated to be a strong
contributor to Australia's export performance for a number of years, structural
changes in economies, such as Japan; new and changed technologies; and
substitution of materials for existing commodities suggests caution in
over-optimistic predictions about too great a reliance on that sector in
the medium to long term.
  The fastest growing sector of world trade is in manufactured goods, and
that is the area in which technological innovation appears to be having
the greatest impact. Services are similarly a fast-growing sector of world
trade.
  In Australia, 20 per cent of our exports consist of so-called manufactured
goods and only ten per cent consist of elaborately transformed manufactures.
  There are, of course, obvious reasons for this, and there are obvious
consequences of that fact. This is well illustrated by the apparent slowness
of the Australian economy in responding to the marked devaluation of the
Australian dollar - the so-called `J curve' effect. A devaluation of this
order should undoubt+edly place large sections of Australian industry in
a highly competitive position. Whether advantage can and will be taken of
that enhanced competitiveness depends on a great range of factors including
the structure of industry, traditional man+agement attitudes and habits,
and the extent of imported inputs.
  Or, to make this point in a different way, the consequence of a marked
deval+uation in an economy such as Sweden or Germany would be likely to
produce a fast J curve effect. In an economy such as Asutralia's, with current
world trading conditions in agricultural products and commodities, the effect
might have been assumed as predictably slow and relatively weak.

<h> The focus on industry </h>

In the circumstances - dramatically ill+ustrated by recent events to which
I have referred - but which were nonetheless apparent well beforehand, it
is therefore not surprising that there has been an increased focus on
Australian industry.
  The manufacturing sector is important to any economy, despite the world-wide
decline in the proportion of people directly employed in the sector since
the 1960s.
  It provides a significant source of national wealth creation which can
finance both better living standards and greater investment for the future.
A strong manufacturing sector strengthens other sectors of the economy by
using inputs from the primary sector, requiring services for management
and production and by creating products which can be utilized, serviced or
complemented by the rest of the business sector. Both directly and indirectly
it provides a diversity of job-skill opportunities and has the capacity
to contribute to exports, the area where the greatest opportunities for
growth in demand now exist.
  In examining the topic Paths to Industry Revitalisation, I should refer
in passing to one path which we followed in the past and which still entertains
a nostalgic attraction for some.
  During the halcyon days in which we relied so heavily on agricultural
and commodity exports, the policy environ+ment in which Australian
manufacturing industry developed was one of satisfying the domestic market
behind high protective barriers. This insulated this section of Australian
industry from world competitive pressures, from the changes which were taking
place in the world manufacturing economy and particularly from necessities
of good mangement, innovation, product development, research and development,
and attention to design quality and marketing skills.
  Most importantly, those years were characterised (particularly in the
1970s) by:
 &bullet; poor levels of investment,
 &bullet; a rapidly declining performance in research and development,
 &bullet; minimal concentration on sustained export activity and increasing
fragment+ation of Australian industry - in each case in marked
contrast*contract to trends in other countries.
  If that path had an attraction about it, perhaps it was that it was downhill
all the way, the legs felt good: the mind nurtured dangerous illusions.
  The policy environment was wrong, the incentives were wrong, the pers+pective
was wrong.

<h> Industry revitalisation </h>

Largely as a result industry revitalisation is a totally accepted and perceived
need in the 1980s and the path is uphill dealing with issues such as
investment, export orientation, R &amp; D fragmentation. The issue is
muscle-building for the legs rather than relaxation - concentrating the
mind on realities and future goals rather than illusions.
  The role of government in the revitalisation of industry is only one part
in the tripartite drama involving also management and workers.
  The prime role of government in revitalisation is to provide an environment
within which industry can prosper and grow. Such an environment obviously
demands favourable macro-economic conditions and growth in demand.
  There are a multipicity of issues requiring attention including an
apprec+iation of the importance of inter-sectoral relationships in the
Australian economy. 
  But secondly there is a need to appreciate that the process of 
revital+isation is one which is not going to take place overnight. The 
important thing is to recognise that the steps on the path have to be
purposeful and in the right direction.

<h> A checklist for improvement </h>

Some of the issues which constitute a sort of checklist of matters which
have to be addressed in providing an environment for improved performance are:

<h>1. Investment </h>

Increased investment is an imperative of industry revitalisation. Whether
we attain that will be determined by anticipation of future profits which
is in turn by anticipation of future profits which is in turn determined
by a range of issues including taxation, continuity in the policy environment
and capacity for capital utilisation.

<h>2. Technology </h>

The capacity to have the best available technology will depend on investment
and the capacity to use it will depend on work+force skills, good management
and innovation.

<h>3. Exports </h>

Increased exports are not only a necessity in improving Australia's trading
position, they are for many industries a corollary of advanced technology
which enhances productive capacity in a small market such as Australia -
a market which, all other things being equal, has a limited absorption
capacity.

<h>4. Fragmentation </h>

A fragmented industry structure in a small market invites competition which
weakens rather than strengthens the base for exports.

<h>5. `Value-added' </h>

The pursuit of value-added in Australian industry is necessary. Firstly
in respect of those raw materials which we have traditionally exported and
new industrial materials, and secondly in those industries where we have
advantages in terms of particular expertise or potential for expertise
(processed minerals, optical fibres, biotechnology).
  These are some of the most important items on any such checklist, they
are clearly amongst the most crucial but there are many others including
a stable industrial relations environment, work force skills and increased
flexibility in accommodating structural change.
  These major issues are being addressed through a range of policies including
deregulation of the financial system, changes to taxation, agreement with
the states for abolition of state purchasing preferences, admission of foreign
banks, establishment of a venture capital market, and improving the R &
D incentives.
  In short, the environment in which business makes investment decisions.
  Structural adjustment policies have been introduced in to key industries
which have displayed the characteristics of industrial decline such as steel,
shipbuilding, motor vehicles and currently heavy engineering. Similar policies
have been pursued in sectors of primary industry.
  Positive forms of assistance are provided to encourage industries to look
for wider opportunities made available by expansion and a greater degree
of competitiveness, rather than have them concentrating on defending a declining
share of a restricted domestic market.
  An example of this is the move towards bounty assistance in some areas,
and away from an excessive reliance on negative measures such as tariff
protection, computers, robots and machine tools are examples of where this
more positive approach has been applied.
  Finally, a major question which affects revitalisation of Australian industry
is the need to bring about significant changes in attitudes within Australian
industry about a whole range of matters which influence success - quality,
design, marketing, delivery and cost control measures - most importantly
a positive approach to grasping opportunities.

<h> Developing a productive culture </h>

There is an even greater need to change community attitudes towards industry
to encourage a greater understanding of the importance to Australia's future
of developing a productive culture. As part of this important path to industry
revitalisation, the Australian government has chartered the Commission for
the Future to develop a strategically targetted community education program
to assist the development of a productive culture which encourages an
innovative, and forward thinking community.
  Generations of Australians have grown up as shop window voyeurs staring
goggle-eyed at the goodies imported from countries where cleverer people
have addressed with diligence the problems which we are confronting today.
Sustained by the everlasting mythology of the resource boom variety the
need to address these issues has received little broad community recognition.
  Changing those attitudes, that variety of cultural cringe, is not going
to be easy and the Commission for the Future has a large and significant
task. Having a productive culture means being in a community which ensures
that education and training in the work place, formal and informal education
sectors incorporates notions of productivity as fundamental to our community's
standard of living.

</subsample>


<subsample><id>  G53b </id>

<source> In Future - November/December 1986 </source>

<h> The passing of a Golden Age </h>

<bl> By Peter Kirby </bl>

In the Australia of the fifties, sixties and early seventies, few, if any,
were contemplating making the unemploy+ed work for their unemployment benefits,
dramatic reforms of our education and industrial relations systems, or very
large expenditures on labour market programs.
  In particular, the deficiencies in our institutions and systems for educating
and training the young did not matter much. A buoyant labour market took
care of the problem.
  The common experience for teenagers on leaving school was to go into full
time employemnt. Of the total employ+ment of teenagers only 8 percent was
in part-time work. Even after the major expansion of post-secondary education
in the sixties, and a long period of rising retention in secondary schools
and increasing participation in higher educ+ation, a majority of teenagers
still went to full-time work after leaving school.
  The changes to our circumstances since the early seventies would not have
seemed credible to us just over a decade ago.
  The world has become far more competitive for Australia. The loss of the
overseas markets, increased inter+national competition, technological
dev+elopments, low birthrates, reduced immigration and an ageing population
among other things, have shown up a number of deficiencies in our systems,
institutions and approaches for educating and training Australians.
  We can see that through all the changes we have preserved an educaiton
and training ideology which was so beautifully summed up for us in the 1985
OECD report on our youth policies:
&bullet;  "A system founded on the dangerously obsolete notion of an econ+omy
requiring a small majority of prof+essional and skilled trade workers and
a large majority of semi-skilled and un+skilled workers."  
  Today some of the most pressing educational needs involve people outside
of the formal education structures, who have no prospect of getting in.

</subsample>

</sample>



<sample><id> G54 </id>

<source></source>

<note> 2026 words </note>

<h> Taking on economically rational man </h>

<bl> By Eve Smith </bl>

BEING POOR IN AUSTRALIA ISN'T much fun: you don't starve, but you may go hungry
from time to time; you won't go naked, but the clothes you have will rarely be
what you would choose; you may live in a public housing estate in a fringe area
if you are lucky, but it is more likely that you will move through poor but
expensive private rental accommo+dation; you don't have outings and holidays,
and you often miss out on what other people around you take for granted. Poverty
is relative, but painful.
  For at least one in five children in Australia, the right to live in a rich
country is a very limited right. They are the new poor, the children of
pensioners and beneficiaries who seem to have lost their claim to a fair share
of Australia's ample resources. And it's the government that makes them poor
and, more importantly, keeps them poor.
  The social security system in Australia was developed to cope with an affluent
country and full employment. The only people seen to be in need of community
support were those who were prevented by age or infirmity from supporting
themselves in the workforce. Unemployment was a temporary condition. Married
women were kept by their husbands, children by their fathers. Widowhood was a
calamity which led the State to assume the role of husband and father to allow a
few deserving women to claim government support for their child rearing.
  The poverty inquiries of the 1960s and 70s identified aged people as the real
poor, and governments moved to correct this. Retirement income moved slowly from
means tested, narrowly targetted welfare to broader, adequate support for most,
with an assumption that in the fullness of time advanced age alone would entitle
someone to a pension. Both major political parties had a universal aged pension
as part of their platform. Reforms of the early '70s - introducing*introducting
a pension for the over 70s, removing the means test and easing the income test -
clearly signalled an intention to move from a `safety net' to a `retirement
entitlement'.
  These changes were argued on the grounds that the aged were entitled to a
reasonable living standard, and that one should not penalise those who had been
frugal by providing for themselves. David Ingles (AS, March 1986) has clearly
shown the demise of this concept, and its replacement by an income related
super+annuation scheme. This works to the advantage of workers over those out of
the workforce, and of the higher paid over lower paid. Even in retirement
inequality will persist, and be officially encouraged!
  These changes bode ill for those whose poverty comes not from age, but from
the recession of the last decade, the restructure of the labour market and, as a
result, women's limited earning power. The new poor of the '80s are the victims
of the feminisation of poverty: those families where men are either not present
or can no longer provide for their families. In lone parent families, families
where neither parent can find work and those where a parent is incapacitated, the
children have become the new poor.
  Unfortunately, the capacity to help these families and children out of poverty
is likely to be inhibited by the increased conser+vatism of the body politic.
The last three years' changes in social expenditure policies indicate the strong
possibility that future changes will further trap the poor, albeit while perhaps
slightly improving the cash available to some.
  A series of somewhat tattered swallows are signalling a dry summer of welfare
changes: moves that deny the right of access to benefits and replace this with
an obligation to prove penury as the only basis for support from the public
purse. So far we have seen cost savings through the abolition of the universal
pension for those over 70s, the abolition of family allowances for full-time
students in post-school training, and the implementation and extension of the
income tested family allowance known as the family income supplement. In the
area of community services, a major change has occurred with the switch of child 
care funding emphasis from an operational subsidy to a fee relief system. Other
straws in the wind are the narrow escape from the re-introduction of university
fees on an income tested basis, and the often touted possibility of demolishing
the universal family allowance system.
  The only advantage that such systems have is that they reduce public
expenditure, and allow for tax reductions for high income earners. They do this
by imposing extremely high effective `tax rates' on the poor and those on the
edge of poverty, so that these pay for the benefits to the rich.
  In looking at the options that should be considered by the current review of
social security support for families with children, it is necessary to emphasise
a couple of little-known facts about the Australian economic system: the first
is that we are a comparatively low tax country, with a smallish public sector as
a proportion of gross domestic product compared with most of our OECD peers; the
second is that we are one of the few countries in the world that pays the bulk
of our social security payments from general revenue, rather than from social
insurance payments. Therefore the options of being mean or generous are an
integral part of government policy.

THERE ARE A COUPLE OF CHARAC+ters around who I heard argue the issues of tax and
economic policy on radio recently. They are Economically Rational Man, known as
ERM for short, and Economically Viable Equity, known as EVE. Rather than the
intricacies of equations determining what the right answers are, it seems that
social security policies tend to reflect people's value positions. These two
represent the differing viewpoints.
  ERM is the character that most economic texts study. He believes that people
are narrowly self interested. They will select the option which immediately
maximises profit. His perception, like those fathers of the discipline of
political economy such as Malthus, Adam Smith and Co. is that personal profit
drives us all and therefore the market place is the arena for all transactions.
He has many friends in Canberra, on both sides of politics. They are determined
to chop government spending so that the entrepreneurs can be bribed to create
wealth.
  His views on reform are neatly encapsulated in a quote by Jim McClelland in a
recent article on the present Federal government in the Sydney Morning Herald (4
March): "The essence of conservative governments is the right of postponement of
social amelioration. Today is never the right time to improve the lot of the
masses. Today's problem is keeping the economy on an even keel so the conditions
will be created under which society can afford such improvement." Or, as it was
put more succinctly by the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, "Jam
tomorrow" but never today.
  EVE has a somewhat more optimistic view of human society. She realises that an
assumption that we only do things for immediate financial gains doesn't hold for
the roles most women perform. They take the responsibility for children, the
infirm and the distressed because these people need care. If ERM's hypothesis
can be so easily refuted, it can't be held to be universal. She feels that
people are prepared to give up immediate benefits to themselves for the broader
good, and also to ensure their society is worth being part of. She thinks
unfettered markets, which have no human element, create social systems based on
fear and greed.
  She freely admits her antecedents are Godwin and Keynes and the architects of
the welfare state, who came out of the Depression with a commitment to
eradica+ting poverty. She still has the dreams of the '60s and '70s, and can't
see why these should be superseded by the nightmares of the last century! After
all, Malthus was wrong and the vice and greed of the masses has not brought us
undone.
  ERM's friends around the boardroom lunch table discuss the way that the tax
system is ruining their enterprises, making it unprofitable to make more money. 
They find it more profitable to move as corporate raiders on borrowed tax 
deductible funds, than put their capital into new enterprises. They mention to 
the PM that these government controls inhibit their ability to move money around, 
and gently threaten non-co-operation unless government spending is cut. ERM pops 
back to the office and studies briefs on ways that a family allowance cutback 
would reduce the deficit.
  EVE drops in on her friend down the road who has just seen a job advertised
for a nurse. She would love to go back to work as the marriage is a bit*but
shaky and money and outside interests would both help. She starts to count the
costs. On two salaries she will pay full price for day care for both the
children - about $9,000 per annum. They will lose the family income supplement,
the rental rebate, the secondary allowance and TEAS for the two older
stepchildren. She tots it up, adds the costs of going to work, the loss of the
dependent spouse rebate, and realises that the nursing job may actually leave
them no better off than existing on her husband's low single income. EVE checks
the calculations, they are right and watches her friend rage that her attempts
to lift the family from poverty are taxed inexorably away by the withdrawal of
piecemeal means tested allowances.
  Another friend living on the pension drops in and shows how she worked out
that a possible part time clerical job would cost her almost all her wages. Her
child care would be subsidised but the loss of pension and ancillary benefits
mean that 30 hours work would actually leave her with less that $20 per week
extra! Both women are trapped by a combination of the withdrawal of income
tested payments and the low wages most feminised jobs attract. Unfortunately EVE
hasn't access to the government, so she writes a letter to the paper which is
not published.
  ERM pursues his quest for cutting the welfare budget. He suggests that those
on pensions be denied access to TEAS; he also points out that some pensioners
earn their annual allowable income in a few weeks, and suggests that they be
penalised on a weekly basis on their income; he also supports the income testing
of family allowances, but writes a defence of the dependent spouse rebate as an
appropriate reward for men who need home-cooked meals. He also updates the brief
on the cuts to the highest income tax brackets, expected next year.
  He then goes home to his wife's ministrations, and works on his investment
portfolio. His tax relief on superannuation together with the non-taxable share
investments is making his retirement look a very attractive financial
proposition.
  EVE spends the day on the phone trying to find child care for a friend who has
been offered a place in the full time TAFE course, starting on Monday. The local
centres tell her that the minimum fees under the new system of subsidy would be
about $18 per week, because the centre's fees are over the federal limit. Katie
is in tears of rage because she can't afford that on the pension. 
 
THESE VIGNETTES ILLUSTRATE that the value positions and political access of the
groups concerned are more likely to affect the outcome of debates than any
rational economic argument. There is no doubt that the framework the government
has set, with promised tax cuts, restrictions on the size of the public sector
and the deficit, and the folk panic engendered around the supposed blow out in
welfare expenditure, are all likely to condemn the poor to further poverty.
  Yet a rational debate on the effectiveness and efficiency of the present
payment system should lead to the exploration of other options for changes to
the income security system. Irwin Garfinkel, a recent visitor to Australia from
the University of Wisconsin, has worked over the years on a proposal to
alleviate the problems of children dependent on welfare mothers.

</sample>



<sample><id></id>G55

<source>  Australian Society - February 1986 </source>

<note> 2008 words </note>

<h> The gang of twelve </h>

<bl> By David Brown &amp; David Neal </bl>

<misc> Sensational reporting of `show trials' has
obscured the real issues of judge and jury </misc>


   SHOW CASE trials like those of Lindy Chamberlain, Justice
Lionel Murphy, Norm Gallagher, Brian Maher and Roger Rogerson
have placed the jury trial system at the centre of media and
public attention. Statements by jurors, politicians, judges,
academics, and journalists - in particular on the Chamberlain,
Murphy and Gallagher cases - have provoked spirited debate
about the institution dubbed, by historians `the gang of
twelve'.
   Widespread disquiet over the Chamberlain verdict led to
doubt about the ability of juries to deal with complex
scientific evidence, with an implication that such cases should
be taken away from the jury. In the overtly party political
atmosphere of the Murphy case, by contrast, criticism of the
verdict was, according to sections of the media and some
judges, a general attack on one of our most revered
institutions. In both the Gallagher and Murphy cases jurors
responded to the public controversy by giving media accounts of
their deliberations. This proved too much in some quarters: the
Director of Public Prosecutions threatened contempt proceedings
against a Sydney radio station if it broadcast further juror
statements and the Victorian government legislated against
juror disclosures. Jury trial assumed sacrosanct status and
further discussion was smothered. While it was generally agreed
that the jury was a good thing, to discuss why this might be
the case - apart from the fact that it is a centuries old
institution - became a sort of sacrilege.
   Somewhere in the sensationalism surrounding these cases the
possibility of serious discussion about the rationale for the
jury trial has been frustrated. Claims that the Murphy and
Gallagher cases were political met with sharp rejoinders that
stressed the independence of juries and the legal system in
general.
   Partly, the discussion was based on confusion about the
meaning of `political'. In the general sense of `political' -
having to do with the distribution and exercise of public power
- jury trials and the legal system are very clearly so. Legal
ideology feeds the confusion over this issue by presenting the
law as technical, value free and capable of mechanical
application.

   "The political significance of the jury trial remains as 
   great as ever. It is more important than ever to argue   
   not merely for retention, but for a radical expansion of   
   popular, democratic participation in the administration    
   of criminal justice."
   Yet the legal system is shot through with discretion at
every stage and the belief that the politics of cases like
those of Murphy and Gallagher do not effect the exercise of
these discretions is myopic. Jury trials and the legal system
must be seen as part of the political system; debates about
their operation must involve discussion of their politics and
their relationship to other social and political arrangements.
   Trial by jury is not sacrosanct*sacrosant. It does not have
to rely simply on its longevity as justification. But in its
past lie the reasons for its continued political significance:
a past not narrowly circumscribed by legal history, but located
in political and social history, in struggles between governors
and governed over the criminal law's power of life and death.
This history - so conspicuously absent from the recent
Australian debate - leads us to call not merely for retention of
jury trial but for its expansion.

   THE first thing to be said about the great jury debate is
that it has a whiff of hypocrisy about it. Those who assert the
sanctity of the jury trial must explain why, in terms of its
frequency, jury trials are very nearly extinct.
   In New South Wales, for example, only 0.9 per cent of
`major' criminal cases are decided by juries. In nine out of
ten potential jury cases the defendant pleads guilty. The vast
majority of criminal cases never concern a jury at all; they
are dealt with by magistrates in the lower courts. This is why
we refer to Chamberlain et al as `show trials'.
  But the rarity of jury trial should not be confused with its
immense symbolic significance. Legal ideology and popular
commonsense images of the operation of the criminal justice
system derive overwhelmingly from jury trials in higher
criminal courts: `adversary justice' and `due process', the
impression of strict adherence to procedural propriety, the
battle over the exclusion of evidence, the drama of the trial,
and the solemnity and ritualism revealed in Rumpole. The
ideology of justice is constructed in such a way that the
denial of that ideology in the operation of the summary justice
production line - where the vast majority of cases are heard by
judge alone - can be accomplished with scarcely a murmur*murmer. A
veritable sleight of hand occurs between the two tiers of
justice. What Doreen McBarnet in her study of British
magistrates' courts calls an "ideology of triviality" operates
in summary courts, for:

the position is turned on its head. The 98 per cent     
becomes the exception to the rule of `real law' and the    
working of the law comes to be typified not by its      
routine nature, but by its atypical, indeed exceptional       
[higher court] form. Between them the ideologies of          
triviality and legal irrelevance accomplish the            
remarkable feats of defining 98 percent of court cases       
not only as exceptions to the rule of due process, but       
also as of no public interest whatsoever.

   The demise of the jury has been accomplished by stealth
rather than by denigration or frontal attack. Paradoxically
this has been accompanied by constant affirmation of its
significance. The curtailed jury system has resulted partly
from a massive expansion of new summary (non-jury trial)
offences, and increased powers for magistrates to
deal with cases which formerly could only be tried by judge and
jury. In addition a range of specific practices - the pervasive
police `verbal', police control over pre-trial interrogation
outside effective review, plea bargaining and a host of
situational pressures (time, delay, the effective presumption
of guilt, denial of bail, etc) - combine to secure the
overwhelming number of guilty pleas upon which the criminal
justice system depends.

   THE right to trial by jury can be traced to Magna Carta,
which provided that:

no free man [sic] shall be taken and imprisoned or      
disseised of any free tenement or of his liberties or    
free customs or outlawed or exiled, or in any other way   
destroyed, nor will we go upon nor send upon him, except  
by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the 
land.

   McBarnet quotes an English case from 1699 which refers to
the fundamental privilege of English citizens "to be tried by
jury, which privilege has been secured to us by our ancestors".
Seen this way the jury trial became one element in the
historical struggle between a judiciary claiming pre-
parliamentary authority grounded in the Magna Carta, and
parliament exercising its prerogative to create summary
jurisdiction by statute. Juries have stood the test of time in
that struggle - about eight centuries in England. Governments
have not liked them. They rightly thought that juries could not
be relied on to convict in certain sorts of cases. London
juries in the eighteenth century repeatedly refused to convict
the champion of liberty, John Wilkes. Juries in country areas
in the same century refused to convict for poaching. The
government responded and made poaching a summary offence. The
tactic prompted the great contemporary commentator, William
Blackstone, to lament the imminent demise of the jury.
   The English government - no believer in the sanctity of
juries - did not trust the jury system in some of its colonial
possessions, nor does it today in the case of Northern Ireland.
Withdrawal of jury trial for certain offences became one of the
factors precipitating the American revolution. The absence of
jury trial for the first forty years in New South Wales became
a sore grievance which filled the more politically serious and
astute press of early Sydney. Our forebears saw jury trial as
a fundamental political inheritance, a counter to governments
hand picking courts in which the same government brought
prosecutions, and an analogue to the right to vote (also denied
to them).
   More recently, Margaret Thatcher's government has found that
juries could not be counted on to convict its political
enemies. In 1985 an English jury acquitted the civil servant
Clive Ponting of charges under the Official Secrets Act that he
had divulged secret information about the sinking of the
Belgrano in the Falklands War. This was despite a virtual
direction from the judge that they must convict. A jury
acquitted a number of striking English coal miners charged with
riot and unlawful assembly arising out of a picket at the
National Coal Board offices. These victories came as quite a
fillip to British civil liberties groups who had seen
significant reductions in common law rights and liberties by
judges and magistrates sitting without juries during the
strike. Towards the end of the year a jury embarrassed British
security forces by acquitting several Cyprus-based British
servicemen charged with passing secret communications to the
Russians. The jury apparently believed that abuses committed by
the members of the security forces during interrogation of the
defendants had produced untrue confessions.
   These instances demonstrate the potential of juries to place
checks on "power's all intrusive claims", as the historian E.P.
Thompson has put it, not only in cases actually brought to
court, but on countless other occasions when agents of the
state forebear because they know they could not convince a
jury. The selection of jurors from the population at large, on
a transient basis, means they are much less likely to be swayed
by `reasons of state' than those holding permanent state
positions. This of course is the very reason why governments
have sought to avoid the jury by creating summary offences.
   So here is our first major point: it is important to
understand the jury in terms of politics and the organisation
of power rather than simply by*be reference to its practicality,
rationality, expertise, economy or efficiency as a legal
institution.
   This leads to our second major point: the significance of
the jury in terms of popular democratic participation in the
criminal justice system. Stated baldly, jurors are supposed to
apply rules of law articulated for them by the judge to the
facts of the case. Their job is also to decide what those facts
are. But such a bald statement does no justice to the
complexity of the task.
   In the first place, the distinction between the law and the
facts is notoriously fluid and often exploited by judges to
usurp further the remaining functions of the jury. Secondly, it
will often be very difficult for anyone to determine what the
facts are, especially when witnesses' accounts contradict one
another. Ultimately, arriving at the facts depends on
assessments of credibility, a task for which juries are as well
fitted as, or perhaps better fitted than any other device.
   Of course, rules of law are often complex, technical and
expressed in the arcane language of the law. The evidence given
in a trial is elicited according to the protocols of the law of
evidence and procedure, pre-trial investigatory practices,
legal ethics and etiquette, and dramaturgical devices. The
discourse produced by these protocols and practices is quite
different from popular, everyday speech.
   These factors are often quoted against juries. However,
lawyers and judges rather than juries are the source of many of
these problems. Much can be done to alter these and other
practices - denying access to transcripts, failure to exploit
new communication technology to present evidence, refusing
jurors a right to comment on or qualify the verdict, improving
representation of minorities, examining the grounds for
exclusion (such as prior criminal record), improving
remuneration, information, physical conditions, etc) which so
constrain the jury's the democratic role and keep it
subservient to the control and directions of the judiciary.

   BUT even this does not fully state the complexity of the
jury's task.  

</sample>


<sample><id> G56 </id>

<source> Larrikin - Autumn 1986 </source>

<note> 2004 words </note>

<h> The great woodchip swindle </h>

<bl> By Greg Buckman </bl>

The ALP has sold out to Tasmania's woodchip industry. On December 16 last
year, the federal minister for primary industry, John Kerin, announced the
decision on the renewal of Tasmania's woodchip licences after 1988. It gave
the woodchip companies almost everything they wanted. The government decided
to renew the licences for 15 years after 1988 with five-yearly reviews.
  
The decision was one of the most important ever to be made about the
environment in Australia. It will affect a massive area of forest both in
Tasmania and on the mainland, it involved the biggest opposition the
environment has ever had to tackle in Australia, and it was a vital test
of political attitudes in Canberra.

Nearly all the contentious national-estate forests will have logging-plans
drawn up for them as each area comes on line for the companies. These plans
will have to be sent to Canberra, and they will probably be rubber-stamped.
An export volume of 2.889 million tonnes of woodchips per annum was approved.
Although the woodchipping of crown rainforest and of a few other very
insignificant forests elsewhere in the national estate was banned, less
than one percent of the forests which the companies were asking for were
actually excluded. The premier of Tasmania Robin Gray, and the company
executives, were very pleased with the decision. New forestry operations
south of Farmhouse Creek and in the Lemonthyme Valley started last summer.
The decision does not materially affect domestic pulpwood or sawlog logging.

Many people fought hard to save some of Tasmania's wilderness forests. We
were up against very mighty opposition, much stronger than any opposition  
that conservationists had previously taken on in Australia. From the very 
start it was a David-and-Goliath battle. The battles that the environment 
movement have fought in the past, such as Fraser Island, the NSW rainforests, 
Daintree, the Gordon-below-Franklin dam and the end of commercial whaling, 
all involved a hostile state government and/or industry which was fairly 
localised or which simply proposed a new development in an area where they 
did not have any existing investment or dependence.
  
As well as taking on a hostile state government and opposition in the woodchip
issue we also took on two of Australia's largest conglomerate companies,
Petersville-Sleigh and North Broken Hill (one of the Ranger uranium partners).
Their Tasmanian woodchip operations have been going for 15 years, they earn
over $120m each year, they represent a massive investment in mills and
machinery and they directly employ more than 1300 people. We were a threat
to these companies' big profits and their very substantial corporate power.

Another significant source of opposition to conserving our forests existed
among bureaucrats in Canberra. Most of the staff in the Department of Primary
Industry and in the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Environment were
right behind the woodchippers. Ironically one of the strongest supporters
of the industry among the Canberra bureaucracy was one Robin Bryant whose
father, in the Whitlam government, had been*veen minister for Aboriginal
affairs and then minister for ACT. Canberra bureaucrats can present an
influential lobbying force which is never forced to hear the opinion of
the electorate.

The campaign against woodchipping was always a hard one to fight. We had
only about a year to fight it, in contrast to the six years that went into
the Franklin campaign. It was also a complex issue. We were confronted by
the challenge of having to learn a lot about a complicated industry in a
short time. We also had to go through the demobilising motions of making
a authoritative submission to the environmental-impact study on woodchipping.
The EIS itself, and the complex nature of the issue*ussue, often made it
difficult to mobilise public support through a clear and simple message.
Although we managed to encourage hundreds of people to make angry submissions
to the EIS, the EIS process was something the public could never totally
identify with and it made it hard for us to switch from presenting a complex
and well argued case in the EIS to making a concise and forceful message
that could be understood by the media and the public. To some extent one
could also question whether it was worth our while getting involved in the
EIS process at all. The EIS process is a farce, because it was always going
to be a whitewash. We may have been better advised to release our own
alternative EIS and to have completely boycotted the companies' EIS.

One of the most positive aspects of the campaign was the level of public
opinion we enjoyed. An opinion poll commissioned in Brisbane, Sydney and
Melbourne in October 1985 revealed that more than 80 percent of Australians
were opposed to the logging of Australia's native forests for export as
woodchips to Japan. Surprisingly, public opinion against woodchipping was
also very strong in Tasmania. In December another opinion poll revealed
that 83 perent of Tasmanian's wanted 10 percent or more of the forests sought
by the woodchip industry protected for its wilderness and recreational values.
We never enjoyed public opinion as strong as this in the Franklin campaign
- many people who wanted the dam built were hostile to woodchipping.
Woodchipping is an issue which directly affects nearly every Tasmanian.

The challenge for us now is to convert this overwhelming public opinion
into public feeling. We need to mobilise this opinion. Unfortunately we
need to reduce this public opinion to the one equation that politicians
can understand: clearfell our forests and you clearfell your votes.

The most cynical aspect of the whole woodchip decision is that it was
undemocratic. The ALP gave into the voice of an elite group of boardroom
executives who didn't even live in Tasmania and who convinced many people
that many forest workers would lose their jobs if the greenies got their
way. The reality is that ANM and Forest Resources have retrenchment plans
for hundreds of their employees despite being almost totally unaffected
by the licence decision. Decisions like these reveal how deficient the process
of democracy can be in this nation.

If democracy isn't working properly then it's mostly the fault of politicians.
The woodchip decision revealed some harsh realities about political opinion
in Canberra and in Hobart. It revealed a political apathy about wilderness
that may well be with us for a long time.

The two groups of Canberra politicians who traditionally have been very
supportive of wilderness are the Democrats and the left wing of the Labor
Party. Many other politicians have also been very supportive but the Democrats
and the left of the Labor Party have provided the greatest support.

Many Democrats took a keen interest in the woodchip issue. Early in the
campaign Senator Don Chipp went on a flight over woodchipping forests in
Tasmania; and Senator Norm Sanders maintained an uncompromising anti-woodchip
voice.

As the issue developed, the Democrats considered doing some horse-trading
over an oil-drilling bill that Gareth Evans was keen on, and which the
Democrats had previously blocked in the Senate but didn't feel strongly
about. The Democrats initially sought support for the bill in return for
a good decision on woodchips. When the negotiating became public and the
bill came before the House of Representatives well before the woodchip decision
the Democrats became worried about the propriety of horse-trading and decided
to support the bill. In the process the Democrats gave away their bargaining
power. The Democrats weren't prepared to stick their necks out to save our
forests. Similarly, when the members of the Wilderness Society went to see
the Democrats' deputy leader and heir apparent, Senator Janine Haines, she
said she had no particular feeling about woodchipping but went along with
the party line. This was a disappointing response from a possible future
leader of a party that tries to solicit green votes.

The left wing of the Labor Party, who had been instrumental in getting their
party's support for stopping the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, was very interested
in the issue but was not prepared to stand up to the pro-woodchip forces
in the party. They relied a lot on the supposedly pro-conservation reputation
of Mr. Kerin but in the process were sold out by him. It's hard to avoid
the conclusion that both the Democrats and the left of the Labor Party,
while still having a lot of feeling for wilderness, are nowadays not prepared
to take courageous steps to preserve it. More than ever before a bold and
colourful new force is needed in Australian politics to defend the security
of our beautiful land.

When Mr. Kerin's final recommendation went to cabinet on 15 December, the
two leftwing members of cabinet, Brian Howe and Stewart West, put up a weary
fight as did Senator Gareth Evans. Environment minister Barry Cohen put
up some argument in favour of keeping the conservation vote, and Tasmania's
only cabinet member, Senator Don Grimes, went right along with Mr. Kerin.
During the debate we did receive some surprising support from parts of the
right wing of the NSW branch of the Labor Party, a right wing that's hostile
to woodchipping in NSW.

In Hobart nearly all the state branch of the Labor Party endorsed the wholesale
destruction of our forests: their policy was almost identical to the Liberals'.
Only Peter Patmore, and to a lesser extent Bob Graham and Andrew Lohrey,
gave significant support to preserving our national-estate forests.

Mr. Kerin in the end put a lot of faith in the Forestry Commission, which
is little more than a puppet of Mr. Gray and the woodchip industry. The
Forestry Commission never even tried to preserve an independent image.

The most important political aspect of this decision is that it showed that
the Labor Party and the Liberal Party have closed ranks. They might as well
write the same environment policy. When it comes to putting runs on the
board, the Liberals under Malcolm Fraseer did just as much for the environment
as Bob Hawke's Labor Party has done. The Liberals stopped the export of
sand from Fraser Island, they stopped commercial whaling in Australia, and
they established the first stages of the Barrier Reef and Kakadu national
parks and put them on the World Heritage list. Mr. Fraser also refused Mr.
Gray's request to withdraw the nomination of western Tasmania for World
Heritage listing. The Hawke government by comparison stopped the
Gordon-below-Franklin dam and proclaimed stage two of the Kakadu and Great
Barrier Reef national parks which were all 1983 election promises. The Franklin
in hindsight was a neat piece of political expediency by the Labor Party.
Both Mr. Hawke and Ken Wriedt (the leader of the opposition in Tasmania)
still put part of the blame for the Labor Party's poor performance in the
8 February state election onto the Gordon-below-Franklin dam.

Neither the Liberal Party nor the Labor Party will take a responsible stand
on Australia's wilderness. The decisions on Daintree and woodchipping have
shown that the Labor Party, like the Liberal Party, will not stand up to
hostile state governments or big business. Very very few politicians in
Canberra care about wilderness. The great weapon we have against this apathy
is public opinion. We shall have to work hard to develop that opinion.

We never appreciated how strong the pro-woodchip feeling was in Canberra.
We dropped our call for a public inquiry into the woodchip industry, believing
an inquiry would not necessarily gain us any ground. With hindsight we can
see that it would probably have unsettled the confidence of the woodchip
industry and would have given us more time to build the campaign.

We also never completely resolved the question of whether we should go for
a strident anti-woodchipping line or for a more moderate policy of no logging
in the national estate. Those who supported the moderate line, which we
eventually adopted, argued that it was more saleable than a strong line
and that a strong line was socially irresponsible and anyway wouldn't preserve
much more really natural forest in Tasmania.

</sample>
                   


<sample><id> G57 </id>

<source> Larrikin - Autumn 1986 </source>

<note> 2019 words </note>

<h> The Australian Democrats a feasible alternative? </h>

In December 1975 Malcolm Fraser and the Liberals crashed their way into
government. When Fraser announced his new ministry, Don Chipp, the MHR for
Hotham, was left out. Chipp had been a minister or shadow minister more
or less continuously since 1966. Following his rejection from the Fraser
ministry he became increasingly disenchanted with the Liberals, a feeling
that had been growing in him for some time.
  In March 1977 Don Chipp resigned from the Liberals. At the time he wanted
to make a complete break from politics. Following his resignation, however,
he was approached by many people who saw the opportunity to create a new
force in Australian politics. He attended a series of enthusiastic public
meetings which were filled with people who were dissatisfied with the two
major parties. They came from all sorts of backgrounds. They were fed up
with Fraser's autocratic brand of big-business conservatism and still had
bitter memories of Gough Whitlam's perceived uncontrolled style of sweeping
social change. Two of the most significant groups behind the people who
were calling for a new political option were the Australia Party and the
New Liberal Movement. From early in 1977 the two groups had had joint meetings
with a view to creating a new party. In May 1977 the Australian Democrats
were officially launched at a triumphant meeting in Melbourne.
  The philosophies and policies of the early Democrats were a little vague.
Their most clearly defined policy was that they would work towards the
protection and development of small business. The early Democrats also
emphasised a new type of political morality upon which would build their
party. All their elected members signed a pledge that they would never block
supply in the Senate. Everyone who belonged to the Democrats had an equal
say in policy formulation and in the election of office-bearers, and no
Democrat P.M. would be caucused into voting on legislation in a way with
which they did not personally agree.
  The Democrats were founded on a very genuine foundation of idealism: they
really wanted to provide a viable alternative that would inspire people.
  The Democrats are now nine years old. They now have 11 membes of various
parliaments including seven people who hold the balance of power in the
76-seat Senate.
  The last decade in Australian politics has been a time of volatility and
change. It saw the end of Australia's most colourful and progressive
government, under Gough Whitlam. It saw the Fraser Liberals gain the two
largest parliamentary majorities ever enjoyed by any government in Australia,
and it saw the Labor Party under Bob Hawke bounce back with a new cautious
and neo-conservative approach to governemnt. The two major parties are now
virtually identical on many significant issues, and there is increasing
evidence that John Howard will eventually be forced to drop his new dry
fundamentalist policies.
  Over the last decade the feelings of Australians towards their environment
and towards the future of the world generally has also changed. The 1983
election saw the single issue of saving the Franklin River emerging at the
ballot box as few single issues had ever done before. During the long campaign
for the 1984 federal election, the emergence of the Nuclear Disarmament
Party made nuclear disarmament a vital issue.
  Australia's first single-issue peace MP, Jo Vallentine, was elected to
the Senate in the 1984 election.
  The convergence of the two major political parties and the growth of broad
environmental and social awareness in Australia have completely changed
the political landscape for the Democrats. They can no longer stand halfway
between the major parties. In recent years they have increasingly pursued
the vote of people who care about our environment. Their 1984 election
advertising read similar to the cry of the European Greens with the slogan
"You can save the world".
  The Nuclear Disarmament Party scared the Democrats. For the first time
there was a very significant threat to their existence. Senator Chipp could
recognise the sincerity of people like Peter Garrett but still felt a deep
sense of betrayal and was suspicious of anyone who appeared sympathetic
to the fledgling movement. Jo Vallentine took a Senate seat from their party
secretary, Jack Evans.
  Many people in the peace movement claim that the Democrats took up the
peace issue only when they recognised its electoral popularity. This is
not really true. In his book Don Chipp, the Third Man (published in 1978)
Chipp recalls his disgust at the quality of the first uranium debate in
the House of Representatives at the time of the Fox inquiry in 1976. The
Democrats have been asking questions in the Senate about disarmament and
uranium mining since they first took up seats in that chamber.
  What is true is that the Democrats are not hugely interested in pushing
peace at a grassroots level, and their membership is generally ambivalent
about peace. In mid-1984 the Democrats held a referendum among their membership
about a proposed hardening of their peace policy. The referendum took place
at the time when the federal government was doing an about-face on its uranium
policy. Only 260 of the Democrats' approximately 2500 members returned
ballot-papers, and of them about 40 percent were opposed to a hardening
of the policy.
  Much of the suspicion about the Democrats flows from their image of being
a group of disillusioned Liberals'. Again this reputation isn't really deserved
although most Democrat MPs have a conservative background, including a few
who have been successful in small business. Only Senator Chipp has actually
been a long-standing member of the Liberal Party.
  Internally the Democrats are very much torn between their emphasis on
protecting small business and their emphasis on pushing general environmental
issues. Among the seven Democrat senators Don Chipp and Michael Maklin seem
to have a strong personal commitment to the environment. Senator Norm Sanders
as the Democrats' new spokesperson on peace and environment has brought
a new healthy and uncompromising voice to the green side of the party, which
the Democrats are slightly uncomfortable with.
  Most of the other party-senators seem to be most identified with the
safeguarding of small-business. Senator Dan Vigor has a background in computer
consultancy and Senator John Siddons is the son of the founder of the tool
manufacturer Siddons industries.
  For people who looking for a party that is totally committed to pushing
ecological and social issues, the Democrats' policy of being a watchdog
for small business makes them reserved about the major direction of the
party. The great difficulty for the Democrats is that there are only limited
ways they can make progress on ecological issues because generally government
policy on this type issue never has to be enshrined in legislation. But
many matters that affect small business do make their way into legislation,
such as tax-bills which the Democrats have the potential to alter through
holding the balance of power. This means the Democrats can point to many
tangible successes on small-business issues but to few if any on ecological
issues.
  There are two major ways the Democrats could make more progress on
environment-related issues. All of the Democrats could get into more grassroots
campaigning, not just questions in parliament and statements to the media,
and the Democrats could also use their balance of power more effectively
by trading support for certain bills which the coalition opposes in return
for better government decisions on the environment. The Democrats are not
keen on pursuing either path.
  The fact that the Democrats only have about 2500 members is evidence of
the fact that they do not seek a lot of non-voter institutional support.
Only Norm Sanders and Don Chipp really put a lot of time into things like
taking part in environment marches and public meetings.
  The Democrats are loath to use their balance of power in a radical way.
When the woodchip issue came up last year the Democrats were being asked
by the ALP to support an oil drilling bill which they had earlier rejected
but about which they did not particularly*particulary care. The Democrats
began to do some horsetrading, and the Labor Party said they would support
the bill in return for a good decision on woodchips. The Democrats decided
to support it and give away their bargaining power. Many of the Democrat
Senators were worried that it just wasn't proper to trade support across
issues. To many folk outside the Democrats, however, it seemed obvious that
some of the nation's most magnificent trees were more important than the
interests of oil companies. Horsetrading could get out of control and would
need to have sensitive parameters if it weren't to have a destabilising
effect, but the Democrats don't appear willing to explore trade-offs.
  Don Chipp, now 60, is the second-longest-serving member of federal
parliament. There is much speculation that he may soon step down as leader
of the Democrats and give the reins to Senator Janine Haines, the deputy
leader. If this happens the Democrats may retreat even further from being
a genuine green party.
  Janine Haines is 40. She entered the Senate in 1977 by filling a vacancy
left by Steele Hall, a former premier of South Australia. Hall is now a federal
Liberal backbencher on the west side. She was a key figure in the New Liberal
Movement. She has a keen interest in women's issues but does not have much
personal interest in peace and ecological issues. During last year's woodchip
campaign she said that she had no personal feeling about woodchipping but
went along with the party policy. If she were to become leader there is
no doubt that the Democrats would still get behind environmental issues
but Janine Haines would probably not have a lot of personal enthusiasm for
the green side of the Democrats.
  The Democrats do do some very important and useful things but they are
seen by an increasingly large number of people in alternative Australia
as lacking colour and a real determination to change people's awareness
about the direction in which this planet is heading. Their bitterness towards
the NDP did nothing to dispel their image as career-politicians. Only Senator
Sanders really stands outside the passive mould in which a lot of people
put the Democrats. There is no doubt that the Democrats genuinely want to
change the world: they are very sincere and caring people but their means
are often seen as being at odds with their ends.
  The distance between the Democrats and the more radical ecology groups
and the overall survival of the Democrats themselves will come to a head
at the next half-Senate election. The Democratic Labor Party and the Democrats
have both shown that there is room in the Senate for a third party but there
will continue to be intense competition over the next few years over who
that third party should be. 
  A half-Senate election is due by early 1988. At that election six Senate
seats in each state will fall vacant unless a double dissolution is called.
In late 1984 the federal government increased the number of Senate seats
for each state from 10 to 12 to keep the overall number of Senate seats
at roughly half the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It
has been claimed by some of the Democrats that this increase was a ploy to
squeeze out third parties because an even number of seats in each half-Senate
election means that there will be no leftover seats for a third party to
pick up. This is probably being paranoid; constitution demands that the
ratio be 1:2. The Democrats managed to pick up two seats in the 1977
half-Senate election and three seats in the 1980 half-Senate election when
there were only five seats available in each election. Six seats should
give them a better chance than before if they poll well. It is equally valid
to argue that six seats means there are now two leftover seats instead of
one. 
  To gain a seat at the next election, if a double dissolution is not called,
will require about 14.5 percent of the vote.  

</sample>



<sample><id> G58 </id>

<source> Larrikin - Spring 1986 </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<h> Whither Australia's culture? - the bicentenary and beyond </h>

<bl> By Roddy McLean </bl>

   Returning from a pilgrimage to the Tasmanian wilderness,
Roddy McLean rejoined society only to find the archetypal
expressions of community Australianness quite foreign to his
own experiences in wild Australia. Why are a sweaty marathon-
runner, an exclusive millionaire's yacht crew and an
approbatory drug salesman (of the nicotinic variety) such
powerful emblems of our national pride? What does this mean for
our collective sense of nationhood during the approaches to our
Bicentenary? And where do our natural heritage and native
cultures fit into the picture? The author probes some of these
questions and offers his vision for 1988 and beyond.

In 1988, little more than a year away, we will commence the
celebration of an event that has changed the face of a
continent. In 1788, three men-of-war, six convict ships, three
store ships and a thousand people sailed into Port Jackson to
become, in Mitchell's time-honoured phrase, the "harbingers of
mighty changes".
   To the southern continent we have brought the refinements of
European culture, the ideals of parliamentary democracy and
individual freedom (although these have come a long way since
1788), the world s most influential language, first-class
communication systems and the material benefits of one of the
globe's most affluent societies. We have also brought large
scale deforestation and environmental degradation, high rates
of species extinction, facilities that are threatened with
nuclear obliteration and, over much of the country, the
uncaring destruction of a unique human culture.
   Just what will we be celebrating in 1988? Should we be
celebrating at all?
   I am of the opinion that, if there is something to
celebrate, then it ought to be a vision of the future rather
than an echo of the past. Let's face it, we didn't get it all
right or, to be more precise, our antecedents didn't get it all
right. We made mistakes but, then, when you start life as a
repository for the undesirables of an alien land and culture it
naturally takes a while to get yourself sorted out. Australia
is still sorting itself out and the process is far from
complete.
   The theme for the 1988 bicentenary ought to be "What makes
Australians unique", but with an optimistic view to the future
rather than a backward glance to the slightly unfortunate
origins of our European culture.
   Deek's heaving chest, never-say-die legs and dripping
moustache are the marks of a great athlete and a great man. But
is he uniquely Australian? The technological brilliance and
downright guts of Bondy's America's Cup winners are legend. But
are they uniquely Australian? And Hoges, our she'll-be-right-
mate-crocodile-man-next-door-type hero, is thought of around
the world to be to Oz as Blueberry pie is to the USA. But is he
uniquely Australian? True, they are all Australians, and good
ones too. I have a lot of admiration for all of them. But how
many of them represent attributes that are unique to Australia?
The answer is ... none.

The nation's self-perception in the late 1980's is that we
recognised, a long time ago, that we possessed a cultural
cringe. Whether that interpretation was, in fact, justified is
open to strident debate but there is no doubt that it was
generally held in Australian society. In coming to a solution,
however, we went in quite the wrong direction.
   Our solution was, in essence, "beat 'em at their own game".
By and large, we belonged to a European society far-removed
from its cultural source. The accepted yardstick for cultural
development in Australia was that of Europe itself and, later,
North America. We spent far too little time on introspection or
on ascertaining the values of our native land. So we absorbed
and mimicked the culture and art forms of Europe - the
painting, the music, even the literature. Some of our
obsessions were even narrower, such as our embrace of the
British Empire - like a child to its mother's skirt.
   To prove how loyally British we were, we fell over one
another (literally) to lay down our lives on their
battlefields. We passionately learned their summer pastime -
cricket - and then beat them ... at their own game. We out-
Pommed the Poms and thought we had come of age. But we had
simply learned their games and played by their rules. Our
adulation of cricket is indicative of much of our cultural
malaise.
   Even in fairly recent times, our cultural cringe led us to
build a monstrous and magnificent structure devoted to an art
form which, once we had mastered it, would lead us onto a new
platform of national development. We would then become
respected around the world as civilised ... what? ... oh yes,
Europeans! So we built an Opera House. A fine building it may
be but, as one of Australia's most famous landmarks, I find it
sad that it was devoted to the pursuit of an art form that
bears little relevance to the real Australia, the land of
eucalypt and wattle. As Europeans, we are as entitled as any
other European society to bask in what some would see as the
glory of Europe's finest music. But are we Europeans or
Australians?

We still adhere to the cultural cringe because we are
failing to support the home-grown traditional and novel art
forms of this nation. That, of course, creates a vicious
circle. It is time that we set our own rules and looked to the
rest of the world, especially Europe and North America, to
recognise not how similar we are to them, but how different we
are. In this era of commercialised mass read American culture,
it is all too easy to be the same as the rest. We can listen to
the same mass-produced music, watch the same mass-produced
television shows or videos and eat the same mass-produced
foods. We will soon be changing from Europeans into Americans
without even realising it. But Australians .....?
   The sources of inspiration which will lead to the genesis of
a new Australian self-image are, in my opinion, twofold: our
traditional cultures and our unique natural heritage. Both are
being largely bypassed in the Bicentenary.
   Australia is not two hundred years old. Neither is its human
culture of that vintage. The origin of our black people is lost
in the mists of the Dreamtime, so distant that we cannot pin-
point it at all. Culturally, Australia is an ancient land, far
more ancient than most of Europe. We have, on our doorstep, a
people whose stories, dances, songs, outlook and whole way of
life are totally unique. The Aboriginal concept of self and
culture ties them more closely to the skin of this land than
almost any Caucasian who has lived here since 1788. They are
linked to Australia, not as a child to its mother's skirt, but
as plants to the soil. Each nourishes the other. I cannot
imagine Australia without its Aboriginal people. Can you?
   Were I an Aborigine, I would be quite insulted at the whole
concept of a Bicentenary, in truth I feel very hesitant about
it as a non-Aborigine. Australia's human culture is at least
two hundred times as old as we European descendants like to
think. But, given that the razzamatazz is going to happen
anyway. we ought to ensure that it stresses the importance of
Aboriginal culture in the creation of a new Australian
identity. 
   There is a traditional non-Aboriginal culture in Australia
which has also felt the ravages of time sapping its strength.
Based somewhat upon the folk-life of the British Isles, the
music, dance and literature of the bush has nevertheless
stamped its undoubted individuality on our cultural history.
Challenged by the passiveness of the music-hall and, later, by
the twanging whines of American country and western music, it
has nevertheless survived and is now undergoing a revival.   
Bush dances have sprung up all over the nation, in city and
country, and folk festivals have become a focal point for the
celebration of Australia's folk culture. Singer/songwriters
such as Eric Bogle and Judy Small, to name but two, have
developed and enhanced the traditions with their own
contributions to our cultural heritage. The song And the band
played Waltzing Matilda has become famous around the world as
a portrayal of Australia through the eyes of an Australian. The
rest of humanity, you see, respects us for our uniqueness.

   The next stage in the future development of Australia is the
blending of the traditional Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art
forms, with obvious input also from modern novel and
multicultural sources. While some Aborigines may baulk at the
idea of cultural fusion, there is no doubt that non-Aboriginal
society would greatly benefit from the trading of modes of
artistic expression. Of course, this has already happened in
many instances. Xavier Herbert's classic contribution to
Australian life, Poor Fellow My Country, could never have
achieved the power it did without the author's deep love and
understanding of the Aborigines. Albert Namatjira and the
contemporary music group Gondwanaland are others that have
fused the cultural outlooks of two societies to achieve a
result that is uniquely Australian. Herbert's alter ego in Poor
Fellow My Country, Jeremy Delacy, lamented that the Whites and
the Blacks had not inter-married to produce a new uniquely
Australian hybrid race. I do not agree with him. Cultural
interchange ought to be able to occur without the necessity for
genetic interchange. I am glad that there are still tribes of
full-blood Aborigines living on their tribal lands. They will
continue to inspire us and give us unique insights into their
ways of interpreting and celebrating life, so that we can
create a new Australian culture in parallel to theirs. 
   In the context of encouraging the vitality of Australian
Aboriginal society, it is highly desirable that by the time we
reach 1988 we have in place a comprehensive and meaningful
system of Land Rights. It is only in this way that we will
establish our bona fides as a nation that has come to terms
with itself. All over the world, people chop down trees, grow
crops, farm sheep and cattle, dig out minerals, drink beer and
build cities. The Aboriginal relationship with the land,
however, is uniquely Australian. We have so much to learn from
them.
   Of course, Land Rights already exist in a meaningful sense
in some States. But in our own State, Tasmania, there are none,
and the Gray government has stated its determination to refuse
Land Rights to Tasmania's Aborigines. If this situation
persists, why should we expect Aboriginal participation in the
1988 celebrations? We may well find ourselves highly
embarrassed by their understandable antipathy to any event that
might be interpreted as a celebration of European dominance
over Australia's original inhabitants.
   In the areas where the Aborigines were exterminated or
dispersed, notably most of the highly-populated zone east of
the Great Dividing Range, the challenge is slightly different.
The Aboriginal people who lived in this region undoubtedly had
an effect on the natural landscape and ecosystems.

In the last two hundred years, much has changed. Many
natural ecosystems have been destroyed and many others are
faced with extinction or with reduction into small pockets that
are likely to be consigned to long-term extinction. The amount
of wilderness left in the east, with the exception of far north
Queensland and western Tasmania is surprisingly little.
   By 1988, we ought to have in place a national system of
wilderness reserves to ensure the long-term preservation of
original natural Australia untouched by the unsympathetic hands
of modern civilization. Wilderness areas are essential, not
only as baseline standards against which to measure the effects
of two hundred years of European settlement, but also as a
great source of inspiration to the Australian human-spirit.
That inspiration will ultimately be expressed in our art forms
and culture.
   Our native plants, animals, natural ecosystems and landscapes are
totally unique to us. Nobody else has them. Let us cherish them
for ourselves and for the world.

</sample>



<sample><id> G59 </id>

<source> Quadrant - November 1986 </source>

<note> 2029 words </note>

<h> For whom the bell tolls  or, hunting the media snarks </h>

<bl> By Edwin Morrisby </bl>

<h> Sixty Seconds </h>

There is a British television director called Anthony Thomas. He has won
a num+ber of awards and chooses his images brilliantly but seems less concerned
with facts. You will probably remem+ber his Death of a Princess.
  Interviewed about it he said:
  The problem with an ordinary documentary is that people don't say important
  things when the cameras are rolling. Cameras change people and they lose
  their naturalness. By using actors to say the words you end up with a
  more truth+ful picture.
  Which prompted The Times to devote an editorial to Mr Thomas' views on
this matter. "It exploited," the leader writer stated,
  the atmosphere of mystery and romance with which many aspects of Saudi
  society are sur+rounded, in order to compile a salacious detective story
  falla+ciously presented as fact.
  This is not the first time such a thing has happened in British televi+sion.
During the 'sixties similar mis+givings were expressed in the columns of
The Times about some of Granada's World in Action programs. Has the complaint
now spread to Australia?
  On the night of Sunday July 27th I watched 60 Minutes. One of the seg+ments
was a report by Jeff McMullen on the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.
After viewing this story I wrote a letter to the program's editor.
  I began with the statement that McMullen, by positioning himself on the
parapet of what appeared to be a belvedere and announcing that he was about
to meet a secret informant, had aroused my suspicions. I went on to say
that I had filmed in every East+ern European country (including Albania)
and that I knew from first-hand experience the sorts of restric+tions placed
on foreign camera crews. The minders (read KGB or its equivalent) are never
very far away, a point McMullen himself made when talking to two Ukranian
women about the disaster. I said it was very unlikely a visiting fireman
would find an informant. A resident correspondent, perhaps.
  I also queried the location of the alleged interview. I said that, although
the Dnieper was wide at Kiev, it was not so wide as to be boundless. My
guess was that the belvedere was either near Yalta or Sochi on the Black
Sea, something that was reinforced by McMullen closing the story among a
group of Young Pioneers evacuated there from Kiev.
  Where did the mysterious voice-over of the informant come from? (We never
saw him, needless to say.) I suggested it might be the tape of one of those
radio hams in contact with the West at the time of the dis+aster. Or,
conceivably, it might have been a Russian or Ukranian emigre in Sydney.
  In conclusion I remarked that, if my suspicions were correct, 60 Minutes
had taken some initial steps along a very slippery slope. Two days later
I had a reply from no less a per+son than Gerald Stone, the Executive Producer.
  
Dear Mr Morrisby,
  We note your letter suggest+ing, in essence, that 60 Minutes went to Actors'
Equity in Syd+ney to get a voice that we then pretended was a secret Soviet
source. We further note your proof that, in your experience, it would be
unlikely that any secret contact would approach a visiting fireman.
  One good working definition of paranoia is that it takes mali+cious fantasy
and turns it into reality. Thus, having posed your suspicions that a program
of the stature of 60 Minutes would present to its audience such a blatant
lie, you then go on to condemn us in these terms: `60 Minutes has taken
some steps along a very slip+pery slope.'
  The only thing that seems to be sliding, in this instance, is your powers
of reasoning. I must admit, though, your memory is still very good - that
structure was on the Black Sea. If you had listened to what McMullen was
saying, instead of concocting silly conspiracy theories, you would have
heard him state clearly that his secret source was from the area between
Kiev and Chernobyl. He further stated quite clearly that our team did not
apply to, and would not have been allowed to, visit that area. McMullen's
commentary placed us firmly in the Black Sea area where, as he stated, many
thousands of Chernobyl-Kiev area residents had been temporarily housed.
  You might be interested to know that Jeff McMullen has had three assignments
inside the Soviet Union and was in a much better position than most `visiting
fireman' to pick up contacts.
  So, next time you feel like creating conspiratorial fan+tasies, please
leave us out of them.
  <misc> Cordially,
  Gerald Stone
  Executive Producer </misc>
Mr Stone doth protest too much, methinks. Fortunately, a friend of mine
taped the program.
  McMullen opens interviewing Adamov of Gosradio in Moscow. He then says:
"But listen to this secret conversation with an ordinary Rus+sian. Was there
great panic in Kiev?"
  The unidentified man says there was. His English is good though Americanised.
He has a thick but not heavy accent. McMullen goes on to explain that he
and his crew had not been permitted into the area around Chernobyl and adds:
"We were told that about a quarter of a million peo+ple from the Chernobyl
area had been evacuated to these Ukranian towns to the south."
  Pace Gerald Stone, this does not place him "firmly in the Black Sea area"
though I will admit Odessa lies to the south of Kiev and is both a Ukranian
city and on the Black Sea. The only time McMullen places him+self firmly
anywhere is in the closing sequence when he films some child+ren singing
and says: "This group was evacuated to what they call a Young Pioneers'
Camp on the Black Sea."
  Now to the bit about the belve+dere. McMullen says:
  To get away from the minders and hear uncensored com+ments, you've got
to find a very safe place. I've had to climb up here to get a chance to
tell you what's really going on. We've had either the KGB or local police
looking over our shoul+der every time we tried to speak to Russians in public
about the Chernobyl accident ... One man who lived between the city of Kiev
and the Chernobyl reactor has taken a great risk to meet us secretly to
tell us what he's seen. We won't be show+ing his face because he's afraid
of the consequences for himself and for his family.
  This happened in the Soviet Union? I am incredulous. Not only would the
authorities prevent a for+eign camera crew trying to talk to ordinary Russian
citizens, they would keep that crew under constant surveillance. There are
per capita 43 times as many police of one sort or another in the USSR as
there are in Australia: 43 more pairs of eyes watching every move everyone
makes. And when that crew lugged cameras, tape-recorders and gear up to
a high place overlooking the Black Sea you can be sure those eyes were there.
It is a pity the cameraman didn't zoom out to a wide shot. You would have
seen them standing somewhere below McMullen but probably out of earshot.
  This still does not solve the prob+lem of where the voice-over of the
secret informant came from. I still stick to my "conspiratorial fan+tasies"
but there are a number of people who know the truth - the cameraman, the
sound recordist, the editor among them and, of course, McMullen.
  Does Gerald Stone?

<h> Bad Weekend </h>

  There is only one word to describe Anna-Maria Dell'oso's pieces in The
Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend magazine and that is twee. I tried
a few others on for size - mawky, gushy, vapid, maudlin, schmaltzy, banal,
prolix, etc. - but someone who calls her companion "my dearest person" deserves
twee. It is dated, I admit, but so is Ms Del+l'oso's prose.
  Let us look at a few examples:
  "I decided to go north to the wuthering colds of the Orkney Islands."
Now there is no such adjec+tive as "wuthering". Without doubt she intended
to imply that she was as au fait as the next lady with the Bronte sisters,
though I would have thought members of the Mills &amp; Boon stable more her
mark. Wuther+ing Heights was set on the moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
While bare and sometimes windy, they are never really cold. Dampness is
their abiding feature.
  In the same article she refers to "a shabby London winter". "Shabby,"
of course, means "faded from wear or exposure" and, by extension, "contemptibly
mean or ungener+ous". Neither sense can be applied to a season. Seasons
are seasons - good, bad, hot, cold, wet, dry - but not faded or ungenerous.
  On another occasion discussing the Chambers-Barlow hangings, she has this
to say: "a shabby", (correct usage this time) "helpless end that demonstrated
to plump middle-class Australia how cheap life is in an Asia which it has
so often exploited for that very reason". Is that so? Why wasn't I taught
at school about the Australian empire in Asia where coolies and other lesser
breeds were starved or worked to death so that their Australian masters
could amass great wealth and enjoy the good life?
  Later she treats us to some instant philosophy. "Animals know aggres+sion
but violence is peculiarly human." Not true. There is such a thing as a
rogue elephant. Not to mention bears with sore heads. A type of walrus is
noted for its violent behaviour. And in the insect king+dom there have been
many instances of what can only be called cruelty by one insect to another
actually filmed.
  And what are we to make of:
  Even around the city streets we are never far from ancestral memories
of the whip and lash, that we are descended from people who never wanted
to be here.
Speak for yourself, madam. At most perhaps 10% of Australians are of some
convict descent. Seldom during Australia's first fifty years (the major
period of transportation) did the con+vict population comprise more than
forty per cent of the total. The ances+tors of most Australians migrated
here of their own free will. They may, indeed, have not liked what they
saw but they only had them+selves to blame. Not overseers.
  Ms Dell'oso can be trendy when it suits her, women's lib. trendy that
is. Writing about learning to ride a bike, she notes that "I was forced
quickly to balance in the air on pain of a thousand accidental hysterectomies"
and claims that when she fell off, it "almost induced labour pains".
Hysterectomies and labour pains? Well, you can't have one without the other,
to further muddle the metaphor.
  But she is at her best when dipping into purple prose. The bush is "a
force that blew through the organ pipes of my soul. Jagged edges, glint+ing
liquids, cold, high and wild - so wild it was ancestral to violence and
impassive to the fur and claw of mammalian fear." The last two lines are
meaningless as far as I can determine.
  The city, on the other hand, evokes this image: "as soulful as the crooked
back streets of Newtown on a rainy day". Soulful they are cer+tainly not.
Mean maybe.
  Beverley Nicholls rides again.
  Yet, in all fairness to Ms Dell'oso her film criticism in The National
Times on Sunday reads much better. More controlled, at times even astringent.
Some may well see these strictures as a way of using a sledge hammer to
crack a nut, a young (she is only thirty) and defenceless nut. They would
be the gentlemen among us.
  But Ms Dell'oso does expose herself to the public each week. And will+ingly.
Which brings to mind that say+ing attributed to Harry S. Truman about heat
and kitchens.

<h> SBS: The Sheltered Workshop </h>

  In the sheltered workshop known as SBS something approaching panic set
in after the Budget Day announcement that the service was to be merged with
the ABC on January 1st, 1987. It was not so much the prospect of being absorbed
by a larger organisation but rather of hav+ing to come face to face with
the fact of professionalism and the lack of it at SBS.

</sample>

    

<sample><id> G60 </id>

<source> Social Alternatives - April 1986 </source>

<note> 2007 words </note>

<h> A rural renaissance? Towards socialist agriculture for Australia. </h>

<bl> By Geoffrey Lawrence </bl>

   Australian agriculture is in a state of disarray marked by
commodity price fluctuations, increasingly severe cost/price
press+ures, conflicting and often contradictory government
policies, and market instability. The `family farms' are
decreasing in number and a high proportion of those remaining
are uneconomic. Poverty and pollution are as familiar as
prosperity and profit in an industry which is both economically
vulnerable and environ+mentally damaging.

   To date little has been done to inform the farming
community, or the general public, of the social and economic
costs of continuing with capitalist agriculture; virtually
nothing has been done in the way of examining alternatives to
the present system. Yet the future shape of agriculture and
rural society should be a topic of vital concern to those
seeking to develop a rational and humane social system in
Australia.

   It is not my intention to provide a criti+que of the
existing system of agricultural production but, rather, to
focus upon the possibilities for the development of a socialist
agriculture highlighting those groups which may support a major
change in agricultural policy.

<h> Features of a Socialist Strategy </h>

Although there remains fundamental, and often bitter,
disagreement about the structure and operation (and, indeed,
the political likelihood) of a future socialist Australia,
there are a number of basic propositions to which most of those
who consider themselves part of the socialist movement would
agree. These include the desirability of the replace+ment of
the capitalist system of economic and social organisation with
a socialist system, the liberation of wage workers from what
are judged to be oppressive and exploitative conditions of
capitalist production, and the establishment of a worker state.
In an ideal-typical sense socialism has, as some of its goals:

&bullet; eventual abolition of the private ownership of property
(with ownership being vested in the state);
&bullet; utilisation of the so-called forces of production (technology
and knowledge) for the benefit of all;
&bullet; overcoming specific problems such as environmental pollution,
unemployment, poverty, and sexual inequality (pro+blems seen to
arise from the capitalist accumulation process and the
capitalist relations of production);
&bullet; development of the capacity for worker participation and
eventual self-management in decision-making; and
&bullet; removal of the unnecessary division between mental and manual
work, and between town and country.

   These goals would have to be give prime consideration in the
restructuring of agriculture and of the wider social sys+tem.
Other policies would need to address the particular problems
currently generated by capitalist agriculture.

<h>(a) Overcoming Existing
Inequalities </h>

Most people would agree that in a country as rich as Australia
there should be no poverty or unemployment. Yet unemployment,
one of the major deter+minants of poverty, continues to grow in
rural towns and in the cities and its social effects are
widespread and profound.

   Country areas are characterised by demand deficiency
unemployment - there is simply no work available for those who
are seeking it. Unemployment in the rural occupations such as
farm labour+ing, shearing and property manage+ment, has
increased fourfold in the past ten years, while the number of
job vacan+cies has decreased by half over the same period.

   At the beginning of 1984 some 42,000 people were looking for
farm work. This corresponds to a rate of unemployment in the
rural sector of about 26% - well over double the national rate.
The situa+tion has not improved. During 1984 a further 7,000
rural workers lost their jobs and it was predicted that, with
falling incomes in agriculture, at least another 4,000 jobs
would be lost during 1985. Over 40% of all unemployed
Australians live outside the big cities. Rural youth and
married women are two groups severely penalised by the lack of
job opportunities in rural areas. Disguised unemployment among
females has reached a level as high as 30% in some parts of
NSW.

   A radical analysis of unemployment is based upon the
realisation that capitalism requires a "reserve army" of 
unem+ployed persons who can act to dampen the effects of wage
demands, particularly in periods of capitalist expansion.
Should the unemployment problem worsen it will be imperative
for socialists to promote the desirability of work alternatives
including a shorter working week, job sharing, more accept+able
life-style options (including multi+ple occupancy of rural and
urban properties) and state-initiated employ+ment
opportunities. These options will be crucial for rural
Australia where the rate of unemployment is higher, the
duration of unemployment longer, and the effects of
unemployment arguably more severe, than in metropolitan areas.

   Socialist agricultural policy would have to deal with the
problem of poverty amongst farmers. Up until this year the farm
poverty level has wavered between 15% and 20%. With
predictions by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) of a
further erosion in farm incomes for 1985/6 it is more than
likely that one in five farmers will remain below the poverty
line. As the first step in the transition from capitalism to
socialism the small (often inefficient) farmers disadvan+taged
under existing state policies could be paid an income
supplement to bring them up to a reasonable standard of living.
University of New England sociologists engaged in the Henderson
Poverty study recommended the intro+duction of a "farm
household relief scheme" to allow cash payments to farmers
whose incomes fell below the poverty line. But others have
argued that this "welfare" solution is out of touch with
farmers' attitudes regarding the acceptance of charity.

   One of the more sensible suggestions to aid the poor, and
ageing, farmers was proposed by a Melbourne academic. A central
funding agency would be estab+lished to purchase the farm, pay
off debts and provide*povide an annuity or pension to adult partners
who chose to live and work on the farm. The pension would be
indexed to the cost of living but be reduced by a certain
percentage on the death of either partner. In this way the farm
couple would have full control over the property until the
death of either partner, at which time the person remaining
might continue to run the pro+perty or could, while retaining
the house and a small living area, hand over the farm to this
government agency which provided the pension. Upon the death of
both partners the farm would become the property of the state.
While this pro+posal has gained conditional support amongst
some policy analysts, it would, as a move toward increased
state inter+vention in agriculture, directly challenge the
operation of free market forces in rural property exchange.
Furthermore, despite the recent rallies and political protests
of `middle' rural Australia, the non-metropolitan poor do not
have a strong voice . As one commentator noted there is "little
political mileage in... (solving) country Australia's ugliest
festering problem."
   Rural, and for that matter urban, unemployment would need to
be tackled by an integrated programme of indus+trial
decentralisation and regional development. Urban centres,
overcrow+ded and economically inefficient in terms of public
utility expenditure have grown in size, not because of the
desires of workers but because of the needs of capital. Some
State governments have recognised that without population
reduction the cities will continue to pro+duce pollution, crime
and an increasingly restrictive lifestyle for their
inhabitants. Not surprisingly, a survey of attitudes of Sydney
residents revealed that 51% those surveyed would have preferred
to live in a smaller city, or in the country. Surveys have also
shown a strong reluc+tance of rural dwellers to leave the
coun+try for the city. Yet there is nothing inevitable about
the growth of cities or the movement of people from rural to
urban areas. These trends have been caused by the decision of
capitalists to locate industries where they can obtain maximum
profits. But, on the basis of the continuing social malaise of
urban centres and the obvious desires of people to move to
centres providing a better lifestyle, a socialist government
could, and should, introduce policies which aim to relocate the
population. In the Aus+tralian context this would mean the re+
development of many of the country towns which have become
rundown as farmers have left the land. The socialist state,
exhibiting a higher degree of con+trol over productive
resources, would be able to "match" jobs and people thereby
improving employment prospects for rural and urban dwellers
alike.

   An ambitious regional development policy may look towards
eliminating institutions such as the States, and many of the
small and inefficient local govern+ment organisations. Regional
policy, determined by elected councils of workers in the best
position to judge and co-ordinate regional and local needs,
would allow for the operation of a grass-roots system of
resource allocation. this would be an obvious way to
decentralise power and encourage participation by the rural
populace. It would aid in regional self-determination and allow
for the implementation of local solutions for local problems. A co-
ordinated develop+ment plan would ensure that suitable
industries were located where rural unemployment was a major
concern, even if some expenses were involved in sub+sidising
the growth of those industries. Under socialism the interests
of those currently suffering poverty and unem+ployment could be
placed ahead of profit criteria in the allocation of resources
and in general policy decisions.

<h>(b) Promoting Syndication </h>

A coherent regional development policy embracing job-creation
schemes and devolution of state administrative powers would
only be part of the answer to the problem of rural poverty.
While assisting the poor and unemployed in rural towns it may
not solve farm poverty. So, on a broad front, the regional plan
could encourage the development of co-operatives, allowing
farmers to share skills, knowledge and equipment. Regional
bodies could provide financial assistance to those who wished
to pool their resources - that is, to help those who were
willing to join a farm syndicate. A large proportion of farmers
may not need much encouragement to take this step. Although
there are presently less than 20 full-production syndicates
operating in Australia, it appears that syndication reduces
plant capital costs, enables pro+duction increases, and reduces
average yield fluctuations. In one survey far+mers who had
joined syndicates said that while they lost some individual
decision-making powers, they gained from involve+ment in co-
operative work and enjoyed their increased independence from
con+tinuous on-farm duties. Syndication removed job pressure and
enabled credit borrowing at a higher level. It allowed for
rational development planning and helped to spread the risks,
and skills, of farming. Importantly, those participating found
that gains outweighed any losses - some+thing corroborated in
a number of over+seas studies. As one agricultural commentator,
not given to radical thought, has suggested, " if agriculture
is to maintain its present vital role in the Australian economy
co-operation offers about the only feasible road to follow . .
. I can see no long term future in Australia for the individual
farmer who stand alone, reliant solely upon his resources of
land, capital and labour."

   For those farmers voluntarily joining such co-operative
ventures the state could underwrite any short-term adjustment
difficulties. The socialist state could, as a preliminary step
in the development of sound regional agricultural economy, aid
the co-operatives by providing seed var+ieties and animal types
which promised the best results. The state could selec+tively
discriminate between, and encour+age the use of, those chemical
inputs which were least harmful to the environ+ment. The
cost/price squeeze, presently the curse of farming, could be
averted by state purchase of machinery for co-operatives, and
the subsidisation of those pesticides and fertilisers which had
been proven safe for farm use. The state could also encourage
diversification in agricul+ture by promoting research, and
eco+nomic management policies, designed to develop an
ecologically sound and effi+cient commodity "mix".

   Research funding may be re-directed toward wind and solar
generated power to meet farm energy requirements, and towards
biological control of pests and insects. Extension workers, as
cadres of the state, could promote the adoption of socially
desirable agricultural practices and engender the ideas of co-
operation among farmers. In the regional context this would lead to the
development of agricultural self-sufficiency in many pro+ducts, and the
export of other products which the region, for climatic or soil rea+sons,
could best produce.

</sample>


<sample><id> G61 </id>

<source> Social Alternatives - 1986 </source>

<note> 2026 words </note>

<h> The "Queensland system: analysis and response" </h>

<bl> Dan O'Neill with Ross Fitzgerald
based on a talk by the former </bl>

     If one thinks about what happens here in Queensland one quickly
becomes aware that although we are supposed to have a
Westminster system of government, in effect we don't. Some
peo+ple recently have been tempted to call the Queensland
system nascent fascism or to speak about the distinction
between per+sonal and military dictatorships, thinking for
example of the Marcos regime as a personal dictatorship or of
the Chilean regime as a mixture of personal and military
dictatorship. People have begun to speak about Queensland in
this way with some justifica+tion.
     We have a system of government in  Queensland which nobody
has yet suf+ficiently analysed. There has not been  a
significant book or article analysing  how government actually
works in Queensland and why the system here significantly
differs from the rest of Australia. There are twelve
com+ponents of the situation that would need to be taken into
account in such an analysis. If one goes through these
components, each of them suggests a different way in which
there has been a growth in central power in the State. Put them
altogether and one has the makings of an analysis not just of a
per+sonal rule that has broken decisively with democracy, but
of a system that is no longer democratic.

     These twelve dimensions are dialec+tically interrelated so
that the growth in dominance of one of them is linked all the
time to conditioning factors of the others that allow the
Queensland system to continue.

<h>1. Parliament and the power of Cabinet </h>

Firstly there is the phenomenon of parliament and the way it
works. While the underlying factor is the gerrymander and
malapportion+ment, if one looks at parliamentary procedure in
Queensland there is obviously no pretence of conven+tional
procedure in, for example joint party committees, the number of
parliamentary sittings and so on. Also the extremely powerful
Cabinet is not significantly related to the Parliament so much
as to other bodies that are rather more difficult to identify.
In particular it would seem the underlying structural
relationship is one of Cabinet to the mining industry. Although
Queen+sland is often looked upon as a State in the grip of the
rural back-blocks, one can analyse the whole pheno+menon of
rural politics in Queen+sland as a kind of surface show that
has to go on in order that real power continues being co-
ordinated, not with the most rear-guard elements of Australian
capitalism, but with the most forward-looking elements of
transnational capitalism. The fractions of capital that really
have access to Queensland Cabinet are very cleverly disguised
by pop+ulism. However it is not just a dis+guise, because in
many ways pop+ulism really is believed in by those whom the
circumstances of power have thrown up as crucial spokes+men. It
is almost as if the Premier and other National Party `bucolic
types' have been sweated out by the pores of a complex
conjuncture of forces.

<h>2. The press </h>

An important dimension in Queens+land requiring analysis is the
lack of responsibility of the press. It has been obvious since
the time of the dominance of the premier's influen+tial media
adviser Alan Callaghan, "Mr X", that the local press has
gradually come to serve less and less the function of
ventilating a critical body of information and of leading
(rather than `merely reflecting') public opinion in Queensland.
Hence the famous Bjelke-Petersen quote about `feeding the
chooks'. By and large, with a few noble individual exceptions,
the Queensland press functions here at times almost like  a
kind of publicity agent or PR exer+cise for the government. It
certainly does not perform a very critical func+tion. As a
consequence, Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd (proprietors of The
Courier Mail, The Sunday Mail and the Telegraph) are in
considerable part responsible for the current political
situation.

<h>3. The demise of the Liberals </h>

This has been a long and com+plicated process but which now
looks as though it is fairly decisive. It is almost as if the
requirements of Queensland politics demand cer+tain criteria
from Liberal party `leaders' at radical variance from those
usually connected with leadership. Moreover, because of the low
level of manufacturing in Queen+sland and the lack of an
important capital city there has never really been the economic
and demographic basis for a strong Liberal Party in Queensland.

<h>4.The demise of the ALP opposition </h>

It seems clear that the ALP over a number of years has not been
able to function as an effective opposition. In the main, the
party has been factious, male-dominated, anti-intellectual and
anti-principle. This is connected to the whole trend within the
ALP and its links to Aus+tralian capitalism, so that federally
the ALP seems to be orienting itself more and more towards
becoming an anti-ideological, `consensus' body like the
American Democrats.

<h>5.The reorganisation of the public service </h>

This is a complicated story because the facts are hard to fully
explicate. In Queensland the public service, instead of
functioning as a semi-independent body reflecting about the
long-term interests of the whole structure of civil society,
has become more and more instrumental over the last 15 to 20
years. At least three elements need to be examined: (a) the
growth in power of the Premiers Department which started off as
a fairly small department, but now engrosses more and more
power, (b) the establishment in 1971 of the Co-Ordinator
General's Department and (c) the establishment in 1974 of the
Priorities Review Committee. Through such bodies and through
the more recent filching away of the Treasury's functions from
the Liberal Party, and by connecting these with the dominance
of the Premier in the Cabinet, one gets powerful tools created
within the public service that can be geared into all these
other centralising elements.

<h>6. Control of the police </h>

This is an increasingly significant factor. Especially after
the struggle in 1976 between the police union and Ray Whitrod -
the `reforming' commissioner - the police have become more and
more of a para-military force in Queensland. It is indeed
fortunate that the Premier has not got the national power of
using the army. The more one examines how the police is used in
Queensland the more it seems to serve a function intermediate
bet+ween a police force like the London Police and the
military. (Elements of the judiciary in Queensland also give
the appearance of having been politicised.)

<h>7. Decline in power of the trade unions </h>

In the wake of the SEQEB issue and in the wake of recent and
impending anti-union legislation there is little need to
underline this fact. Because trade unions are changing
struc+turally in an even more dramatic way in Queensland than
in the rest of Australia and in other capitalist countries,
this throws up a different kind of leadership within
Queens+land trade unions. Although many people would attack the
present leadership as though it was some sort of personal
deviation that leads to their not pushing industrial struggles
very hard, and not being as militant as traditional trade union
leadership, it makes more sense to take a structural analysis
and see the emergence of what could be called `9 to 5' trade
unionism in the Queen+sland leadership. This is another factor
which breaks all sorts of ideological and traditionary links
with the organised working class movement.

     While the above are seven `institu+tional factors,
there are five highly significant cultural factors that are
related to these factors.

<h>8. The rise of general influence of a extreme right-wing </h>

This right-wing, much in the style of American right-wingism,
has got access in a big way to the ear of Queensland ministers:
the Educa+tion Minister for example strongly believes in
creationism. Then there is the direct influence of Rona
Joyner's organisations, like STOP (the Society to Outlaw
Por+nography) and CARE (the Commit+tee Against Regressive
Educa+tion), and pressure groups like the Creation Science
Foundation, plus their powerful indirect influence through
media, schools and other state institutions.

<h>9. Continuing nullity of the liberal professions in Queensland </h>

At least since the nineteenth cen+tury, one phenomenon*phenomon
of our Anglo-Saxon culture has been that throughout society the
professions have acted as an unofficial non-commissioned
officers rank of a more liberal and enlightened conception of
civil society. This is entirely lack+ing in Queensland.
Although perhaps not dramatically evident in places like
Sydney, Melbourne and Adel+aide, the professions there have not
yet severed their links as strongly as they
have in Queensland, with the traditions of scholarship and with
the general humane aims of the cul+ture that has come down to
us from the Greeks and Romans. If one looks for the influence
in a supervisory way on the general process of society,
particularly of the legal profession in Queensland, where are
the great civil libertarian lawyers in Queen+sland, where is
the tradition of defence of the public interest? While one
expects even less from bodies representing doctors, dentists,
accountants and so on, in general the professions as a distinct
kind of estate within society have not shown much social
responsibility in Queensland.

<h>10. Linked to this there is the almost complete absence of </h>

Brisbane intellectual life. In other Aus+tralian cities there
is what might be called an urban intellectual machine which
functions in the society and which constitutes centres of
intellec+tual life outside the tertiary insti+tutions. Over
many years in Queensland the centres of intellec+tual life have
only been the univer+sities. However they have not ful+filled
that function very well. Within the academy it has been left to
signifi+cant minorities, particularly at times of upsurge like
the late 1960s and early 1970s; these minority groups have been
the real centres of intellec+tual life in Queensland society.

<h>11. Impotence of public opinion </h>

Apart from simply being the result of the above, hard work by
signifi+cant elites goes into making sure that public opinion
continues to be impotent. There is evidence that in a
calculated way things are done in such a style that possible
outcries are diminished. If one looks for exam+ple at the
timing of the significant destructions of public buildings in
Queensland there is evidence here of political will as well as
the general apathetic state of things.

<h>12. Apathy of the educational insti+tutions </h>

From the middle of the Whitlam period, there has been a decline
in the function of the educational institutions as centres of
dissent and of intellectual conscience. While this is connected
with an international situation of capitalist recession, in
Queensland one can cite evidence of that actively being
fostered, not only by the recent attack on the student unions,
but by a creeping dominance of the State Government within the
educational sector. For example, it wasn't too long ago that
academics at Queensland universities were required to submit
reports on their study leave that would eventually wind up
being read by members of Cabinet. The disgraceful decision by
the University of Queensland in 1985 to award Sir Johannes
Bjelke-Petersen an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree is a powerful
symbol of the supine role of tertiary institutions in
Queensland (but see later).

     The consequences of these twelve dimensions which have
resulted in marked growth in central power in Queensland are
that many people feel a despair about possibilities of reform.
Thus the right to vote is experienced as nearly meaningless,
the right to strike has been taken away, and the right to
assembly is under continual threat. This, of course, is not a
new phenomenon. Errol O'Neill's April 1986 play `Popular Front'
dramatically analysed the present situation as hav+ing emerged
from the whole post-war period: it was a Labour Government
under `Ned' Hanlon that brought in the Act that is still used
as the main vehicle for barriers on the right of free speech
and assembly and the denial of other basic civil liberties.

     One upshot of this is the privatisa+tion of resistance and eventually,
in many people, various forms of tuning out of whole areas of public life
- either going away physically to some place like New South Wales or Victoria
or South Australia or effectively going into a sort of psychic sleep or
into various illusions disguised as realism, includ+ing joining the ALP.

</sample>


<sample><id> G62 </id>

<source> Social Alternatives - 1986 </source>

<note> 2015 words </note>

<h> Is the old right now new? </h>

<h> The state, the family and sexual repression in Queensland </h>

<bl> By Neil Thornton </bl>

"Look governments can do anything, you can do anything you like."

   The mainstream New Right combines a strident affirmation of
individual freedom in the economic sphere with moral
authoritarianism, the state enforcement of morality and
especially sexual morality in defence of the traditional,
nuclear patriarchal family. In its stress on economic
individualism the Queensland Nationals' political rhetoric has
pretensions as a model for the Australian New Right, and
leaders of the Liberal and National Parties both federally and
in other states have pointed to the Queensland government's
economic pronounce+ments and policy initiatives as the wave of
the future.

   Yet rhetoric aside, it is evident that in their
implementation of economic policy the Queensland Nationals are
not a front runner for the New Right. There have, admittedly,
been some recent deregulatory moves, especially an assault on
the trade union move+ment and an apparent drive toward
deregulation of the labour market, most conspicuously displayed
in fostering the use of contract labour in the State
electricity industry. But such deregulatory flourishes have had
no impact on the Government's well entrenched developmentalism
- its `agrarian socialism' and its systematic economic
intervention by way of providing infrastructure for mining,
mineral processing and tourism. What is more, certain of the
Government's so-called `deregulatory' moves have required the
selective use of state intervention as, for instance, in the
case of the electricity industry where, although Government
policy has eroded the working conditions of employees of the
South East Queens+land Electricity Board and also facilitated
the employment of contract labour, collective bargaining has
not been allowed to determine the outcome. Instead, the
Government removed the State Industrial Commission's
juris+diction over the electricity industry, substituting
control by a creature of its own (the Electricity Authorities
Industrial Causes Tribunal) thereby retaining strategic control
by tampering with the judicial apparatus.

<h> The Market and the Family </h>

   Queensland is not a flagship for the New Right in the
economic sphere, not yet anyway. But the picture is
dramati+cally different if one looks at the other strand of
mainstream New Right ideology and practice, that of social
morality and especially sexual morality. Here it begins to look
as if the Queensland brand of old-fashioned moral conservatism
might soon become part of a gathering repressive wave - the old
could well become the new.

   The New Right ideal of the economy is reactionary: its aim
is to revive the kind of relatively individualist economy found
in Western nations prior to the advent of the state-centred
welfare economies of this century. New Right ideology of the
family is likewise reactionary: the ideal is to somehow
recreate the type of nuclear, patriarchal family which is
presumed to have coexisted with an earlier, pre-welfare-
capitalist economy.

   For those who are familiar
   with and have to endure the
   Queensland style of moral
   conservatism it may already
   be apparent that it represents
   an ideological model and a
   corresponding set of public
   policies which might well be
   the best thing on offer in
   Australia as a base in reality
   for the aspiring ideologues of
   an Australian New Right.

   In mainstream New Right thinking the economy and the family
are complementary: a free market economy is envisaged as
providing the most appropriate institutional context for the
healthy family life which is, in turn, most apt for sustaining
a market economy. The family is pivotal in the division of
labour and the passing on of private property; it reproduces
the work force and transmits and reinforces the preferred
social and sexual morality. Furthermore -
   The focus on the family is critical to the right. It
   personalises and privatises social and economic problems thus
   removing them from the sphere of government action and
   spending. At the same time it legitimates the use of private,
   individual solutions while still providing a structure for them
   in the institution of the family so that order, not anarchy
   prevails.
Even though, in New Right thinking, the free market system is
best able to provide the institutional setting for stable
family life, there has nevertheless arisen within contemporary
capitalist societies in the West a tide of humanism and moral
and sexual permissiveness which threatens to undermine the
cohesion of family life and weaken thereby the very foundations
of free market capitalism. Hence the need for a morally
interventionist state in order to protect family life:
   Maintaining the solidarity and cohesion of families by non-
   market means is seen as an essential prop for a free market
   economy.

   So it is that one finds in
   mainline New Right ideology
   two interconnected strands:
   individualist economic think+
   ing accompanied by moral
   authoritarianism and state-
   backed moral and sexual
   repression.

<h> The Family, Sexual Morality and the Permissive Society </h>


   For the moral conservative, sexuality is a natural or God-
given, instinctual part of our lives intended primarily as a
medium for reproducing the species. Sex should be confined
within the quasi-sacred domain of the patriarchal nuclear
family: outside that realm it is illicit, socially and
economically dis+ruptive and so properly subject to moral
repression extending to state-enforced proscriptions. Political
posturing about `individual freedom' masks an underlying
commitment to the duty of the state to make the personal
political, that is, to intervene in the so-called private or
personal sphere of conduct where and whenever necessary to
maintain the inviolability of family life.

   Social and legal developments
   which weaken the obligations
   of family life or which
   encourage sex outside
   marriage are perceived as
   tending to undermine the
   foundation of the prevailing
   social order.

   The overwhelming threat to family life (in this New Right
perspective) is the `permissive society' which was ushered in
during the sixties when in Western nations there began a period
of increasingly rapid social and personal change revolving
around the ways in which people experience and live out the
sexual side of their lives.
   To the new Moral Right, it is mainly the permissiveness of
the sixties that set in train the recent decline in traditional
values. Mrs. Thatcher is a typical exponent of this line:
   We are reaping what was sown in the sixties . . . The    
   fashionable theories and permissive claptrap set the scene   
   for a society in which the old virtues of discipline and   
   self-restraint were denigrated.
   For more than twenty years the National-dominated
governments ruling Queensland have been trying with
considerable though far from complete success to stop the
permissive tide flowing north and polluting the purer moral
waters of Queensland while the rest of Australia (with the
partial exception of Tasmania) was being inundated by the
permissive wave. Now that the moral tide is beginning to turn
against permissiveness inter+nationally, it may well be that
here in Australia we are to see at least some currents of
Queensland's old style moral conservatism trickling down south
as they are taken up by Australia's version of the new Moral
Right.

<h> The Queensland Family and Sexual Conservatism </h>

   Queensland's sexual conservatism is a carry-over from an
earlier rural economy in which the model of personal/economic
life was the family farm. In that economy built around
pastoralism and farming the standard productive unit was the
small to medium size rural property. Rural holdings like this
were essentially family enterprises, in which production was
carried on by father and sons, supported by mother and
daughters caring for hearth and home and, at busy periods of
the year, sometimes lending a hand with the sowing or
harvesting or management of sheep or cattle. There was thus a
close, mutually supportive connection between the `productive'
economy and the domestic economy - the integrity and cohesion of
the family was essential for efficient production on the
`family farm'.
   With increasing modernisation and diversification of the
Queensland economy, the nuclear family came to have a less
decisive function in overall economic production, but for
several reasons a family-fixated conservatism has continued to
be dominant in the political culture of the state. First,
despite the relative decline of the agrarian sector,
manufacturing is still relatively undeveloped, and the middle
classes remain less significant in size and influence as
compared with the other mainland states. Secondly, the minerals
industry, though economically important, has not been labour-
intensive, and so has had only a superficial cultural impact on
Queensland. Factors such as these, then, go some way towards
explaining the cultural paro+chialism of Queensland.

   To these must be added the policy decision of successive
Queensland governments:

   Those governments have
   employed all the authority
   they could muster to try to
   sustain a family-oriented
   conservatism and to insulate
   Queenslanders from the trendy,
   permissive morality of
   mainland southern states.

   Senior members of National-dominated governments have been
elderly men from rural constituencies, almost invariably
steeped in provincial moralism. Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen,
in particular, is an authori+tarian rural populist who
identifies the wishes of `the people' with the prevailing ethos
in the Nationals' rural strongholds. Those who conduct the
affairs of the state in Queensland, and especially the
inordinately influential Premier, are bent upon containing the
threats to Queensland's familial moral purity posed by urban,
southern-based permiss+iveness. Use of the state apparatuses in
enforcing their brand of rural morality is validated not merely
by insisting upon the harm which permissiveness causes to
traditional, family life but also by reference to the tenets of
religious fundamentalism, and by a populist appeal to the
attitudes of `the people' (which is to say some people) or to
what they like to call `community standards'.

<h> The State Enforcement of Sexual Morality </h>

   Nowhere is the Queensland
   Government's selective use
   of state intervention to
   buttress a conservative social
   and moral order more evident
   than in the areas of sexual
   morality canvassed in the
   rest of this paper - abortion,
   AIDS, contraception, child sex,
   the gay movement, pornog+raphy, 
   prostitution.

   It would require a book-length study to document fully the
systematic and persistent character of the sexual
authoritarianism practised by Queens+land administrations even
over the last decade. All that it is possible to do here is to
point to the implications of this sexual repression by looking
at one or two of its more overt and worrying manifestations in
each of the areas of sexual morality just mentioned.

<h> Abortion </h>

   Abortion is seen by moral conservatives with deep religious
convictions as being against the will of God (being `murder' of
the unborn soul), as undercutting the procreative rationale of
sexual intercourse and as interfering with the customary
authority of the father. Abortion has been and continues to be
of great concern to religiously inclined adherents of the Moral
Right. For them the state is duty bound to enforce religious
precepts by interven+ing in family life so as to protect the
`unborn child', encourage procreation and ensure the integrity
of the family. There is a confluence between Catholic belief
and fundamentalist Protestantism on this issue. In Queensland
the Right to Life Association has for some time been extremely
active in petitioning the Queensland Government to legis+late
against abortion and to close down existing abortion clinics.

   A recent notorious instance of the Queensland Government's
sexual authoritarianism was the police raiding of fertility-
control clinics in Brisbane and Townsville in May, 1985. During
the raid on the clinic in the Brisbane suburb of Greenslopes
(operated by Dr. Peter Bayliss) the police forcibly seized
20,000 patient records. In a subsequent District Court case Dr.
Peter Bayliss and Dr. Dawn Cullen were charged by the Crown
with unlawfully procuring an abortion and Dr. Bayliss was charged
with having caused grievous bodily harm. Both were acquitted on
all charges.

   These raids and the ensuing court case illustrate well how
far the Queensland Government is prepared to go in its efforts
to try to uphold an oppressive sexual morality. The raids were
the culmination of a concerted political campaign going back at
least six years. During the period of the National-Liberal
coalition (some of whose members were also members of the Right to
Life Association) there had been an attempt to bring down
legislation which would have made an abortion even more difficult
to obtain in Queensland and which proposed severe penalties for
offending women and doctors. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G63 </id>

<source> The Pack of Women </source>

<note> 2077 words </note>

<h> The ladies who lunch </h>

<bl> By Robyn Archer, Diana Manson, Deborah Parry, Robyn Stacey </bl>

   FIRST, let us look at that other women's movement, which has
been growing in direct opposition to feminism. These are the
Women Who Want To Be Women, the anti-feminist activists
(sometimes frivolously dubbed as the Women Who Want To Be
Doormats); they have the active support of fundamentalist
Christian organisations, and the intellectual support of right-
wing political organisations. In Australia and the United
States, in particular, the movement is made up of extremely
competent, articulate and sophisticated women, as well as
seemingly unsophisticated, naive and artless churchwomen of
indeterminate middle age. They are internationalist in their
perspectives and political organisation, sending emissaries
from one country to another to help fight the good fight
against liberal abortion laws, pornography, liberal educational
philosophies, relaxed prohibitions on male homosexuality, and,
in their latest campaign, reproductive technologies and genetic
experimentation (for example, test-tube babies and other
techniques which involve creation of human embryos).

   They are fighting on the terrain marked out by feminism, and
in some cases using the language of women's liberation, but
their basic assumptions about women, men, sexuality and society
are the complete reverse of those of feminists. 
   At this point it's good to pause and take stock of the opposition, 
and look at the reasons why many women feel compelled to say, before
making some brave statement about how they have faced and
overcome pressures from men, `I'm no women's libber, far from
it, but ... I believe in equality, a fair go.'

   Why does feminism seem so threatening, and sometimes such an
impenetrable system of ideas, styles, ways of living that it
puts women off? And how, at the same time, does it appear to
the Women Who Want To Be Women to be part of a great government
supported conspiracy against decent living and the future of
the Christian family? What is it about feminism, or the
condition of women's lives, that makes this movement for
women's liberation seem to embody so many people's worst fears?
   The right-wing women, the Women Who Want To Be Women, share
many of the insights of feminists into women's condition, but
draw completely opposite conclusions about what is to be done.
So, for example, they will agree with radical feminists that
the root cause of women's inferior position is male sexuality
and violence, that the world is a dangerous place for a woman.
But their solution is to insist on upholding the rules of the
traditional marriage and family structure. In the traditional
respect paid to motherhood, they see women's hope for safety.
Conventional roles for women and men offer certainty for
everybody, reduce the pressure on men who feel their manhood
threatened by newly strident women, and thereby lower the
potential for sexual violence. Conventional women's roles are
important to society and civilisation, because women are the
tamers of violent men, the instillers of respect for women and
authority in their children, and the pivot of the family, that
`haven in a heartless world'. So in a very real sense they see
any analysis of the stunting effects of traditional female
roles as an attack on women's security. Theirs is a
fundamentally pessimistic view of human nature, which has us
hovering on the brink of barbarism, any change in the balance
of forces likely to precipitate us over the edge. Men's
potential for violence needs to be restrained by the virtue of
good women. `Bad' women, such as prostitutes and sexually
promiscuous girls, are thrown to the wolves as a sort of
hostage to fortune - these right-wing women often promote the
theory that although it is regrettable, prostitution is
necessary for the overall health of society because it provides
`outlets' for sexually deprived or perverted men, who would
otherwise prey on `innocent' girls and women.

Notions of innocence which should be rewarded figure prominently 
in the social analysis of these women, and surfaced particularly 
strongly in the panic over AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). 
One of the most consistent themes in public discussion of AIDS has 
been the concern that the disease will spread into `the general 
population' - i.e. instead of killing mainly homosexual men it will 
spread to `innocent', although sexually promiscuous, heterosexuals. 
Human society is seen as comprising only the basically good and 
decent people; others are quite literaly outside society from the 
point of view of fundamentalist moralists. And therefore quite 
properly beyond the concern of the good and decent, whose own 
security is put at risk by having any dealings with them, their 
poisonous and contagious views, their life-denying lifestyles.

   It's a view of human society which has many superficial
resemblances to ecological theories about how living organisms
coexist in nature, using ideas of fine balance, the fragility
of that balance, the irreversibility of any damage done.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why this type of reaction to
feminism has such a wide appeal, even to people not
particularly religiously oriented - the feeling of living on the
brink, of only just keeping at bay an overwhelming pessimism,
is characteristic of these times of high unemployment, nuclear
arms escalation, and worldwide social and political upheaval.
   The link with religious feelings is easy to explain. As
Andrea Dworkin says, `religion shrouds women in real as well as
magical grace', honouring motherhood, honouring submission to
the will of God, honouring obedience to clearly laid-down rules
of sexual and moral conduct. With the proviso that it only
applies to good women, religion does say that `women are
wonderful'. Women are the creators and nurturers of life - and
that, say the Women Who Want To Be Women, ought to be enough
for any womanly woman.
   And the Women Who Want To Be Women can be very astute. They
rely on ideas about female solidarity, all women sticking
together, and throw these up against the supposed selfishness
of feminists. With absolute accuracy they point out that
working conditions and wages for women are on the whole
appalling, that women in the workforce will face the double day
of paid work and housework, that they will be undervalued by
the men they work with or for, that they will be burdened by
the guilt of leaving their children with strangers, that most
areas of `women's work' in the paid workforce are deadend
jobs without much personal satisfaction. And
this is the bargain that the feminists want you to make, they
say, to give up the pleasures of a true woman's life in the
family for a life of drudgery outside.
   And on another tack, one which throws you completely off
guard if you think of these women only as puritanical
moralists, the Women Who Want To Be Women have also scored
against feminism by alleging that feminism promotes joyless,
loveless sex, or turns women against sex and men altogether.
They argue that feminism is earnest and moralistic, and in
books like The Total Woman extol feminine sexual playfulness
(within marriage, of course) as the foundation of a happy
marriage and a satisfied man.
   The key to all their perceptions of the good, and campaigns
against the bad, lies in whatever promotes traditional family
values, respect and reverence for women, and restraint of
aggressive men.
   As Andrea Dworkin put it, in her book Right Wing Women, the
movement offers women `safety, shelter, rules, form and love' in
exchange for submission and obedience to their essential
feminine natures. The movement has `succeeded in getting women
as women (women who claim to be acting in the interests of
women as a group) to act effectively in behalf of male
authority over women, in behalf of a hierarchy in which women
are subservient to men, in behalf of women as the rightful
property of men, in behalf of religion as an expression of
transcendental male supremacy. It has succeeded in getting
women to act effectively against their own democratic inclusion
in the political process, against their own civil equality,
against any egalitarian conception of their own worth.'
   So, in the United States, the campaign by right-wing women's
groups against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) succeeded on
two main grounds. First, they argue that ERA would mean that
women would be forced into conscription into the armed forces
on the same basis as men. Second, they argued that ERA would
force women to have abortions. How did they manage to convince
a majority of voters that an amendment to the Constitution
which would have enshrined women's rights in the law of the
land would have had the reverse effect, of taking away
fundamental freedoms from women?
   Basically, they were successful by arguing that the only
guarantee of women's rights is a strong family-based society.
They argued that the state intrudes on people's freedoms, and
therefore any state-supported campaign for women's equality is
just another way for the state to take control away from
families. If some selfish women campaigning for abortion rights
succeed in repealing the laws against abortion, and having
their right to abortion written into the law, it's just a short
step further to total control of women's reproductive lives; a
right to abortion will turn into compulsory abortion.

<note> QUOTE </note>

   It is fascinating, but chilling too, to see how in the
political thinking of the Women Who Want To Be Women,
feminists - who think of themselves as being in opposition to
state control of women's lives, male control of women's lives,
church or medical control of women's lives - loom up as the
causes of the oppression of women, the allies and agents of the
state. And how the very act of analysing a problem somehow
creates that problem: if feminists point out how marriage is
often a state of unhappiness for women, they are blamed for
that state of affairs. If feminists campaign for better
treatment and childcare facilities for single mothers and their
children, they are accused of forcing women into dependence on
the state. In the thinking of the right-wing movement,
feminists create the problems by suggesting that there are
alternative ways of organising society, which do not require
men and women to conform to the roles laid down for them in the
traditional family structure.
   Far removed from the traditional values of the Women Who
Want To Be Women are the Ladies Who Lunch, the women of leisure
who are the apostles of an exaggerated ideal of femininity,
dedicated to fashion, style and narcissism. They are impatient
with the `stridency' of feminism, bored with the effort of hard
thinking about the position of women; cynical about the motives
of women who campaign for the rights of other women; and above
all, determined to preserve an ideal of femininity which is all
about being clever, sexy, and manipulative. They deplore the
ugliness of what they think is a `feminist look' - like not
shaving your legs, or not wearing makeup. Although they are not
in any sense an organised movement, their influence is great,
because in a confused sort of way most women's magazines are
speaking their language, while at the same time putting out a
modified version of self-determination inspired by feminism.

   A note on language: feminism has been fighting on the
linguistic front since the beginning. One of the earliest
distinctions made was between `lady' and `woman' . `Lady' is
typically used to describe a woman who conforms to the model of
femininity current at the time - and hence, in feminist analysis,
is an honorific which disguises a lack of a real respect for
the woman underneath. Sometimes, too, `lady' carries definite
overtones of contempt, probably carried over from its
association with the idle rich. `Woman', on the other hand,
positively resonates with strength and warm feelings, and
sisterhood - even though it has a multitude of contemptuous uses
too, such as `get into the kitchen, woman!' or `I'll get my
woman to make you some dinner.' So using `lady' in a feminist
context means a deliberate irony is intended.
   The privileges of femininity include a high permissible
level of self-indulgence, in clothes, ornamentation, attention
to one's body, cooking and food; as well as permission - to
gossip, to care intensely about relationships, to be emotional,
frivolous at times; to leave hard decisions to other people; to
be evacuated first (with the children) from burning buildings
or hi-jacked planes; to leave sexual initiatives to the man; to
have an honourable excuse for failing to have a satisfying
career. 

</sample>



<sample><id> G64 </id>

<source> Australian Society - January 1986 </source>

<note> 2000 words </note>

<h> Cultures and illiteracies  History? We're making it </h>

<bl> By Humphrey McQueen </bl>

`CULTURES and illiteracies': both nouns in my title are
deliberately in the plural.
     By introducing terms such as `nouns' and `the plural' I
run the risk of joining those commentators who claim that
stand+ards in our schools have fallen, and who demand a return
to the basics, to the three Rs and to grammar. In fact, they
have been arguing this for many years. As far back as 1920,
staff at the University of Queens+land complained that students
could not write clear sentences; I have collected a file of
similar complaints spread over the sixty-five years since then.
     It is possible that there has been a per+sistent decline
in literacy and that the accusers have always been correct. Yet
a little historical knowledge suggests that the perception of
rising illiteracy could prove to be a research topic in its own
right. Instead of wondering why the middle classes were forever
rising, historians could ask why literacy is always declining.
     My worry is about a different kind of illiteracy, what I
shall refer to as `cultural illiteracy', which is far more
destructive and at least as prevalent as is grammatical
incompetence. Surely it matters less that children misspell
Shakespeare's name than that they are denied the chance to
revel in his plays. For as Ben Bowyang put it, "If R-O-N-G
don't spell wrong, what do it spell?"
     Everyone reading this piece will know the meaning of
`noun' and of `the plural'. If that was not so, I should be as
alarmed as Professors Kramer and Chipman. What is less certain
is whether readers will respond to the reverberations of
Matthew Arnold and his Culture and Anarchy in my title
`Cultures and Illiteracies'. How confident can we be that it
will continue to be possible to convey our comprehen+sion of
Culture and Anarchy to teenagers, as readily as we can instill
them with the rudiments of grammar?
     I hold no brief for Matthew Arnold. Rather I want to
underline the importance that cross references play in every
under+standing. Language is not a chain of inert blocks. Always
and everywhere, language overflows with metaphor, myths and
half remembered meanings. To be deaf to those echoes is to be
less than literate.
     As well as recalling the name of Matthew Arnold, my title
will have revived thoughts of C. P. Snow and F. R. Leavis
disputing `the two cultures', one scientific, the other humane.
Specifically, Snow lamented the illiteracy of arts graduates
who were pleased that they did not know the second law of
thermodynamics.
     The topic of scientific literacy is too vast to deal with,
and too important to pass over, so I will confine my remarks on
this matter to praise for one author and for one teacher.
     The author is Stephen Jay Gould, pro+fessor of biology,
paleontology and the history of science at Harvard. His best
known books are collections of the monthly essays which he
writes for Natural History. The epithet `natural historian' is
the one that suits him best. His essays revive the nineteenth
century manner of broaching some great question of existence
through the investigation of a particular phenomenon. One
collection draws its title from a study of the Panda's thumb.
Gould begins with a visit to the zoo to observe the Giant Panda
which the Chinese had just donated to the United States. Five
thousand words later he concludes with a disproof of the
existence by God by demolishing the argument from design.
     `Natural historian' has a fustiness about it and yet it
deserves to be treasured. Natural history offers a path between
the discipline of history and what is currently labelled
environmental studies. It also leads away from the shortcuts
associated with sociobiology.
     Another of Gould's books is relevant to my theme. In The
Mismeasure of Man, Gould cuts into the controversies
surrounding culture-free IQ testings. He argues that
intelligence is the capacity to operate in a culture. Cultural
illiteracy is alarming because it disables the intelli+gence,
dismembers the memory and dis+regards the imagination.

THE teacher whom I want to remem+ber was a Mr Oliver who taught
me a good deal more than chemistry because he never confined
himself to the `periodic table'. In telling us how the world
worked, he always asked why any specific piece of knowledge had
been discovered. For instance, we learnt that in the presence
of a catalyst, hydrogen and nitrogen will combine under extreme
temperatures and pressure to form ammonia. This process was
named after a German scientist, Haber, Mr Oliver went on to
tell us. Haber had devised the catalyst in 1913, just in time
to let Germany go to war without needing to worry about being
cut off from the Chile saltpetre which it would otherwise have
required to make explosives. On looking back, I realise that my
Marxism and my interest in history both got more stimulus from
chemistry than from learning history itself, although religious
instruction was more formative than either history or
chemistry. We were denied the option of biology; if I had not
had other sources of information I would have left school in
the belief that the `sex act' had been passed by parliament.
     My final digression is towards `multi+culturalism'. Again
there is no space to treat this in depth. While I am delighted
by the displacement of anglo-celtic dominance, I do worry when
ethnic*ethic groups are encouraged to preserve the cultures of
their places of origin. Apart from the perpetuating of
oppressive social practices that such preservation might
entail, there is the impossibility of treating culture as if it
were an object. Cultures are ever changing sets of practices
and to survive at all they must always be giving up and taking
in. Unless cultures are seen in that active way,
multiculturalism will be a pernicious nonsense. The definition
of cultures as ceaseless remaking is central; if culture is
identified with `artefacts' then it is impoverished and
illiteracy increases.
     Multiculturalism has highlighted one brand of illiteracy.
The writing of Austra+lian history has been weakened by the
inability of most scholars to speak or read the languages of
non-English peoples. The Aborigines suffer most from our
illiteracy. Not only do we not attend to their languages but we
impose our concepts on their most crucial beliefs. The terms
`Dreaming' and `the Dreamtime' contain almost nothing of the
Aboriginal experi+ence. Rather, they express our borrowing from
Freud, plus our inability to compre+hend the intimacy of the
Aborigines' connections with the natural world. `Dream' is what
Europeans do when we are asleep. `Dreaming' is our wholly
mislead+ing attempt to convey what Aborigines do when they are
most alert. Moreover, the term `the Aborigines' is a
simplification. If ever there was a polycultural world, it was
that of the tribal Aborigines.
     The Chinese and Pacific Islanders have had their
experiences ignored or distorted because their written sources
were closed to the bulk of academic historians. Similarly,
Greeks, Serbs, Italians and German settlers were often
marginalised by historians who tried to recount the practical
marginalisation of these groups without possessing their
languages. The 1934 disturbances in Kalgoorlie, for example,
were much more than race riots. Political divisions were at
least as important, as were disputes between Anglo-Saxons and
the `dagoes', who included left-wing Croats as well as pro-
Mussolini Italians. The Anglo-Saxons were split between
radicals who supported the Croats and the racist Australian
Workers Union who wanted all `wogs' off the goldfields.
     Countless stories will not be told for as long as
Australian history is monolingual. Language is the pivot of
every culture.

DIGRESSIONS, said Tristram Shandy, are of the essence, and so
I trust that this introduction has been sufficiently
digressive. If so, we are better equipped to ask how and why
the clock of cultural illiteracy has been overwound.
     Too often traditions are identified with what has already
happened. We fail to see that they too are living experiences,
constantly being reshaped even by those who approach them in
the spirit of pious emulation. To attend to traditions is not
merely to pay homage to the departed. It should be, as Eliot
observed, to recognise what is already alive.
     One of the most consistently engaging of historians, Eric
Hobsbawn, has co-edited a volume on The Invention of Tradition,
showing, for instance, that clan tartans were established only
in the 1840s and popular devotion to the British mon+archy
after the 1870s. These essays have a double effect. They
undermine the power of those who want to deploy `ancient'
practices in order to sustain their contem+porary rule Those
usurpers, the Shah of Iran and the Emperor of Abyssinia, 
at+tached themselves to royal households with a thousand years 
of lineage. More impor+tantly, by indicating that many
`traditions' are of quite recent origin, we are reminded that
the social order changes, and that its traditions are invented
by people - in the case of clan tartans, by the needs of
woollen manufacturers.
     Another recurrent enemy of cultural literacy is the cult
of self-expression which has devastated the visual arts and
poetry. One teacher recently reported that a very bright
student of creative writing refused to believe that Tennyson
deliberately wrote in iambic pentameters*pantameters. Surely,
the student pleaded, those measures flowed naturally from his
essential being, arriving on the blank page to stand forever
uncorrected? As her teacher added, there comes a moment when
students bent on self-ex+pression have to be told that what is
wrong with their work is that they are boring. The way to
escape from the tedium of ourselves is to steep our souls in
life, and in what has gone before us. Traditions, then, help to
set us free by encouraging us to add to them, and thus to
redirect them.
     Australians face a further illiteracy because our cultural
systems have been dominated by British and later by US
organisations. The British garrison of professors, bishops,
school principals and editors is no longer self-perpetuating,
though its remittance men and pensioners still encumber a
disproportionate percen+tage of our cultural offices, as do
second and third rate North American doctorates in the social
sciences. At the commercial level, there has been the control
of book publishing, film distribution and television
programming by British and US corpora+tions. The cumulative
effect of this occupation has been to stifle both critical and
creative work about Australia.
     There has been a significant lessening of this overseas
domination during the past fifteen years. None the less, a
colonised mentality survives. Australian literature continues
to struggle for its life within the English Department at the
so-called Aust+ralian National University. Basic facts about
Australian culture are far from being common property. One
journalist reported a lecture on `The Antipodean Manifesto';
another transcribed the Jindy+worobaks as Virginia Warradaks.
     Substantial problems arose when each generation of
Australians tried to write, paint, sculpt, make music and
produce films in ignorance of what had been attempted or
achieved. That ignorance left them open to overseas models and
it debilitated their confidence. Writing and painting did best
because, from the 1890s, there were the traditions of Streeton
and Lawson to follow, to reject and to incorporate. Few of the
film makers who started around 1969 had seen much work by
Longford, Hurley or Hall, let alone heard of the McDonagh
sisters. Today, films and television series are supplying the
stories about our past that the formal educational system has
failed to convey.
     The visual historian, Ernst Gombrich, has lamented the
decline in `the tradition of general knowledge'. He observed
that general knowledge had had its snobbish edge, that the
matching of Greek drama+tists with their plays was one way of
excluding people from conversations. The other side of general
knowledge was that it made children aware that there were
innumerable*innummerable civilisations and zones for them to
explore. A single question and answer could momentarily
illumine the mind to the existence of Toltec society. General knowledge
tests quickened curiosity for more than this or that name, date and place.

</sample>



<sample><id> G67 </id>

<source> Fabian Newsletter - August 1986 </source>

<note> 2028 words </note>

<h> Poverty: Australian style </h>

<bl> By Graham Hill </bl>

  Australian society is not egalitarian. There are inequitable disparities
in wealth and opportunity. It is estimated that the richest 2,500 Australians
own as much as the poorest 2 1/2 million, and that the top 5 per cent of
Australians own one half of the nations's personal wealth.

  Australian affluence contrasts with Aus+tralian indigence. There are at
least 2 1/2 mil+lion people living in poverty in Australia. One in six
households are struggling to cope with a below poverty line income. A 1982
survey conducted by the Australian Council of Social Services of low income
families showed that they often missed meals and had inadequate diets, the
chil+dren skipped days at school because of lack of clothes, and they relied
on charities and emergency aid for day to day expenses.
  The Victorian Emergency Relief Com+mittee has admitted that every day
more than 1,000 Victorians approach them to beg for emergency food, clothing
and furniture. 
  The waiting lists for public housing are now longer than after World War
2, one quarter of the nation's youth are unem+ployed and the number of children
living in poverty is moving towards one million.
  It is a continuing disgrace that eleven years after the Henderson Inquiry
into Pov+erty, many more people have been allowed to slide into the mire
of impecuniosity. Since 1975, the number of Australians liv+ing in poverty
has more than doubled.

<h> Who and Why? </h>

The face of poverty has changed dramati+cally since the Henderson Report
of 1975. Family poverty and long term unemploy+ment have now taken over
from the poverty of the aged as the focal issue. Bishop Peter Hollingworth,
Executive Director of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, recently wrote that
`The easiest path to poverty these days is to have a couple of kids, get
retrenched or separate from your spouse. It is almost inevitable.'
  Single parents and their children com+prise the largest component of the
poverty statistics. The NSW Council of Social Ser+vice estimates that
parenthood means poverty for 250,000 sole parents on pen+sions or benefits
and nearly 800,000 chil+dren. Over 90 per cent of supporting parents are women 
and 85 per cent of this group are dependent on social security incomes.
  Since their introduction in 1976, Family Allowances have declined in real
value by 23 per cent, representing a substantial loss to the disposable
incomes of all families with children. The overall value of child re+lated
benefits has been eroded 22.4 per cent by inflation over the last decade,
leaving low income families reliant on social se+curity, to fall further
behind.
  Single parents receive the family income supplement and a childrens allowance
of $16 per week which purports to cover the costs of housing, feeding and
clothing a child, but spent on food alone this benefit allows a mere 77c
per meal. It is ironic that foster parents receive a larger allowance of
$25 to $30 a week.
  Another group suffering poverty in sub+stantial numbers are aged pensioners.
It is not difficult to understand why when it is remembered that the $102.00
weekly pen+sion is used by many of our less fortunate senior citizens to
pay rent, leaving only negligible amounts for food, clothing, heat+ing and
transport.
  Government statistics show 575,000 Australians are registered unemployed.
These same figures reveal that a third of the unemployed have been out of
work for more than a year, and more than half of these are still jobless
after two years.
  Unemployment benefits and entitlements were originally designed only for
temporary relief, and so are well below pension levels, causing the poverty
of our long-term unem+ployed to be particularly severe.
  Professor Ronald Henderson initially de+fined the poverty line as being
the situation when a take-home pay for a wage-earner with a dependent spouse
and two children, is lower than the minimum wage plus child endowment.
  Two years ago only an unemployed, chil+dless married couple would have
received a sufficient pension to escape Professor Hen+derson's definition
of poverty. Currently there is no category of welfare receipient en+joying
a level of economic welfare that is acceptable by community standards.

<h> Welfare Reforms </h>

Single mothers so often find themselves among the ranks of the poor because
the scarcity of affordable childcare facilities precludes their entry into
the workforce. Whilst women's labour force participation is a crucial factor
in alleviating poverty in low income families, it assumes monumen+tal
importance for struggling single parent families. An increase in community
funds allocated to improving and extending ac+cess to childcare would be
a major step in escalating the assault on poverty.
  As a matter of human decency all child-related welfare payments need to
be in+dexed to movements in the consumer price index.
  Another positive step in the battle against Australian poverty would be
for the Federal Government to means test family allow+ances enabling the
saved dollars to be redis+tributed to low income families.
  Acting upon the recommendations of the Henderson Poverty Inquiry in 1976,
the Fraser Government introduced family al+lowances in order to ensure that
the tax transfer system achieved some equity in dis+tinguishing between
those with, and those without children. The family allowance represented
an acknowledgement by the government that regardless of income, those with
children incur greater expense than those without. Whilst this ideal is
con+ceptually true, the fiscal austerity of 1986 demands that family allowances
be means tested so that the limited dollars available can be targeted to
those who need them most.
  Last year $1.3 billion of the welfare budget was wasted on the dependent
spouse rebate. The yearly dependent spouse rebate is allowed to married
taxpayers sup+porting a dependent spouse and is valued at $1,030 for those
with children, and $830 for those without.
  Since higher income earners tend to be more able to afford the luxury
of a depend+ent spouse than less affluent couples, the rebate has served
to redistribute tax rev+enue away from those in greatest need. The dependent
spouse rebate should be phased out and replaced by a means-tested pay+ment
made directly to the spouse.
  Social Welfare is more effectively al+located through direct payments
rather than tax concessions. A cash payment en+ables the government to ration
scarce wel+fare resources more fairly whilst ensuring that the target group
actually receives the benefit. The revenue saved by abolishing the dependent
spouse rebate would be bet+ter directed to poor families with children and
those couples who suffer poverty as a result of one partner's unemployment.
  One of many meritorious proposals from the Australian Council of Social
Service has been the suggestion to create a childrens allowance. This plan
would rationalise Government payments to families by com+bining the family
allowance, dependent spouse rebate, supplementary allowance for children,
family income supplement, the secondary allowance scheme and other minor
complementary schemes to form a childrens allowance of between $30-$40 weekly.
  The allowance would be paid to families that had successfully undergone
a means test based on the principal income coming to the household. It is
fairer to means test on principal family income rather than total family
earnings because the latter would create a `poverty trap' by discouraging
wives from supplementing the family fi+nances by taking employment. The
pro+posal suggests that the allowance be paid at an equal level for each
dependent child under 16 years of age.
  The term `poverty trap' describes the pre+dicament caused by a combination
of means-tested social welfare and high mar+ginal tax rates that leave welfare
recipients financially disadvantaged if they attempt to find employment.
Those pensioners and un+employed gaining part-time work to sup+plement their
below poverty line incomes, find themselves facing a marginal tax rate of
50 per cent, as every dollar earned over $40 per week reduces their pension
by 50c. To this cost disincentive must be added other work expenses such
as new clothing, transport, childcare and the loss of pen+sioner concessions
including the healthcard for beneficiaries. For many social se+curity
recipients employment is simply not worthwhile.
  The most obvious way to overcome this problem is to raise the allowable
income for pensioners and beneficiaries. This reform should complement,
rather than be used as a substitute for the ALP's pre-election com+mitment
to lift the basic pension rate to 25 per cent of average weekly earnings.
 
<h> Economic Recovery </h>

There is little doubt that Australian poverty would be substantially reduced
if the policy prescriptions outlined in preceding para+graphs were co-ordinated
into a compre+hensive anti-poverty programme involving increased expenditure
and rationalisation of the social security system. Although social welfare
reforms are a crucial factor in providing short-term relief to the privations
of being poor, the role of economic growth in generating employment
opportunities to permanently eliminate poverty, should not be overlooked.
  Welfare lobby groups tend to dismiss the benefits of economic growth because
of the past three years experience combining un+precedented rates of growth
with increasing hardship for the poor. Many welfare advo+cates believe that
the tidal wave of eco+nomic recovery will ultimately pass still leaving
abyssal chasms of poverty in its wake.
  This dismal view ignores the lessons of economic history and contradicts
interna+tional experience where growth and recov+ery have provided jobs
for the unemployed, lifted real wages, and towed the poor into the ranks
of the middle class. If Australia could consistently maintain an annual
eco+nomic growth rate of 5 per cent, the nation would double its total output
(GDP) every 14 years and banish unemployment to the history books. The
associated increase in real income would augment Treasury cof+fers enabling
the government to raise pen+sions to a standard of decency well above the
poverty line.
  A further motive for aiming to achieve economic recovery and abundant
job op+portunities is linked to the increasing budg+etary strain of welfare
payments. On current trends our welfare system could col+lapse sometime
in the 1990s. The booklet entitled `Welfare Forecasts 1985-2000' es+timates
that by the end of the century as many as 3.5 million Australians could
be dependent on some form of social security benefit. Over the past ten
years the cost of providing single parent pensions has in+creased from $127.2
million to $1.21 bil+lion. Concurrently, Australia's ageing population
increasingly strains our welfare system as the ratio of taxpayers to pen+sioner
deteriorates. The number of aged pensioners is expected to rise 1.2 per cent
over the next twelve months to total 1.372 million recipients. 
  Almost everyone would agree that the pension is insufficient financial
remunera+tion for our senior citizens to enjoy security, dignity and
independence in their retire+ment, yet a mere $1 per week increase saps
the Federal Budget by $150 million. Simi+larly, in fulfulling its pre-election
commit+ment to raise pensions to 25 per cent of average weekly earnings,
the Government will need to find an extra $1 billion.
  If these tasks of fiscal management ap+pear difficult now, our greying
population will make them near insurmountable prob+lems in twenty years.
Compare the 22.2 per cent of GDP currently devoted to welfare spending with
research undertaken by the Anglican Mission of St. James and St. John
estimating that to maintain government benefits and social security at present
levels by the year 2000 will require a welfare commitment of 35 per cent
of gross domes+tic product!
  This frightening scenario depicts Aus+tralia floundeing into the next
century with a punishingly expensive welfare sys+tem providing inadequate
support for mil+lions of below poverty-line recipients. The importance of
job creation and full employ+ment in averting this predicament cannot be
overemphasised.
  The path of economic recovery is the only route for us to traverse if
our aim is the permanent elimination of poverty. Since it is the poor who
invariably suffer the most during economic downturns, a government that
did not pursue policies designed to pro+mote recovery could not claim to
be waging a war against poverty.
 
<h> A Social Priority </h>

The Australian nation should regard the elimination of poverty as its foremost
social challenge. Economic growth aspiring to full employment is the currently
adopted long term approach, but in the interim decade the fate of 2 1/2
million needy Australians hinges upon community acceptance of the humanitarian
ideals in the provision of welfare.
  The looming danger is that the economic divisions within our society will
become permanently entrenched as they have in those overseas nations where
conspicuous materialism exists in vulgar contrast to squalor and deprivation.

</sample>


<sample><id> G68 </id>

<source> Quadrant - July/August 1986 </source>

<note> 2017 words </note>

<h> Demons of the New Right  The fearsome pupdawk </h>

<bl> By Hal Colebatch </bl>

THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES, the dries, the New Right, call them what you will
(though in fact the three terms mean quite different things to those who
care about correct usage), have been making themselves unpopular with a
couple of our leaders lately. They were attacked firstly by Liberal Senator
Chris Puplick in an address to the 18th Young Liberal National Convention
on 9th January this year, and by the Leftist Labor Minister John Dawkins,
in a speech at the presen+tation of awards to the doubtless very meaningful
Inter+national Youth Year's probably equally meaningful "Australian Young
Writers' project" on January 26 (Australia Day, as it happens).
  As anyone acquainted with the styles and mental attitudes of the two
statesmen would guess, Senator Puplick's contribution was more generally
palatable than that of Mr Dawkins (not necessarily, I fear, very extrava+gant
praise). Senator Publick's sallies issued forth from the great, wet, throbbing
heart of neo-Gladstonian liber+alism, while Mr Dawkins' more strident
pronouncements had a decidedly twentieth-century ring about them, with echoes
of gramophones not too far in the distance. As appropriate for one who is
reported to have described his recreation as "hating Liberals", Mr Dawkins'
speech dripped with self-righteous hatred. Senator Puplick's, on the other
hand, merely dripped.
  The two speeches were, however, similar enough in content for remark.
Bernard Shaw once identified the Chesterbelloc. Have we here found some
antipodean, bunyipish, creature called a Pupdawk? (I imagine it as hybrid:
a kind of fat, damp puppy, incongruously joined to a scrawny, vulture-like
neck, topped by a beak squawking for food - what food, we can guess - and
gawking with small, beady eyes at real and imagined enemies. Its nest, or
burrow, is, of course, the State).
  Well, not really. There are differences. But a set of common preoccupations
can be identified. Senator Puplick's speech contains a lot one cannot disagree
with. "As a party we (Liberals) enter 1986 apparently buffetted on many
sides. Our electoral fortunes have not been high recently; the political
initiative does not appear to be with us," he begins, presumably for the
benefit of any Young Liberal who hadn't noticed. Certainly no-one could
have disagreed with that at the time. He continues:
   Daily, the so-called gurus of the New Right, the Hugh Morgans and his
   female Doppelganger, failed Liberal Advisor Katherine (sic) West, berate
   us for failing to adhere to their visions of Australia's future, developed
   behind the protected walls of subsidised industry and cloistered academic
   tenure.
  This is a little odder. Hugh Morgan and Katherine West are not
interchangeable in argument or point of view. Hugh Morgan's industry was
not particularly protected, and though I am open to correction here, I
understand Katharine West is not tenured.
  After, as far as one can gather, attributing victory in the First World
War to the ANZACS:
   The set-back at Gallipoli marked not the end of an engagement but the
   birth through fire of a new, bolder, more confident spirit, one which
   was to lead to eventual victory in that conflict and to victories in
   many subse+quent battles ...
I would have thought the entry of the Americans into the war, the British
and French efforts, and the losses sustained in Ludendorf's final offensive
had something to do with it, but perhaps I should be wary of disagreeing
on such matters with one who, in the same speech describes himself as "an
historian by training"), Senator Puplick continues that "Certainty and unity
of purpose must be our touchstones".
  Even, one wonders, at the risk of being wrong? "What I want," Senator
Puplick continues,
   is to get back to ... genuinely liberal basics and cut out a lot of the
   dry rot with which we have become infected of late. Above all, I wan*want
   to restate and revitalise in contem+porary terms the essentials of Menzian
   liberalism.
If Senator Puplick is going to use naughty phrases like "dry-rot", as a
sally, however silly, against the so-called "dries", he should be made aware
of what he is doing. He is, in fact, playing what might be a very harmful
game. To bracket the "dries", that is, broadly speaking, a group of economists,
political commentators and politi+cians who believe that it is important
to make politically unpopular economic decisions for the long-term benefit
(or rescuing) of the Australian community, with the "New Right" is simply
wrong. 
  Furthermore, and as it should not be necessary to tell a politician of
Senator Puplick's experience, to toss around terms like "New Right" really
benefits no-one but the Left, as the Left is very well aware. There is no
doubt that today the members of the political and cultural Left, with the
very considerable resources at their disposal, are embarking on a deliberate
and strategic campaign to categorise, and thereby damn, all opposition as
the "New Right", or some such closely-related term, dragging in spurious
fascist and other undemocratic associations. I have a draft paper by a leading
Left-wing academic which goes into some details of the strategy for bringing
this about.
  Senator Puplick really should realise what is going on in Australia at
the moment. It is becoming a new, and in many ways a nasty place, and it
is probably time that Liberals stopped their squabbling and pointless claims
about who are the true heirs of Menzies - who retired from politics before
many of the present generation of Young Liberals were born.
  However, he quotes, as an essential of Menzian liber+alism, a speech from
the great man to the 1964 Federal Council (other factions can - and do -
claim other fragments from The Works as supporting their position. In a
party not notable for its religiosity, it all has an amusingly hagiological
air): "We have no doctrinaire political philosophy." (Indeed, indeed. By
about 1982 the Liberal Party's worst enemy could hardly have accused it
of having a doctrinaire political philosophy, or perhaps of having a political
philosophy at all.) "Where government action or control has seemed to us
to be the best answer to a practical problem, we have adopted that answer".
(Indeed this is also true. The Telecom monopoly, the postal monopoly,
loss-making government shipping and railways, the two-airline monopoly,
statutory marketing boards, tariffs, tens of thousands of regulations and
an ossified, legislation-guarded and now utterly inappropriate and destructive
wage-fixing system, all owe either their origins or their
all-too-long-continued survival to various Liberal governments' action or
inaction.)
  Senator Puplick describes in Standard Austrobabble various things which
must not be privatised as serving "vital social functions in maintaining
the unity and integrity of Australia as one nation where services ought
to be available, even if they have to be subsidised...", meaning, apparently,
"transport, communications and banking".
  In this quasi-mystical evocation of Australian unity, the Puplick approach
is not too dissimilar from the Dawkins one. Dawkins, however, is more deeply
and stri+dently in the traditions of Nationalist and Socialist mysticism.
"Roads, railways, airlines, telephones, mail, electricity, water supply,
hospitals," he declaims, "without them there would not be a nation, and
they have been provided and maintained by the collective will of the people!"
(Emphasis added.) Dawkins continues, as evidence of the evil of privatisation,
that
   Australia Post has been turned around from a loss of $65 million in 73/74
   to an operating surplus of $32 million last year. In 9 of the past 10
   years it has met all its operating costs and internally generated funds
   for half its capital expenditure.
He does not elaborate that Australia Post has achieved this remarkable feat
by the simple monopolist method of increasing prices at about twice the
rate of inflation and cutting services: in ten years the cost of an ordinary
letter went from 7 cents to 33 cents (soon to be increased to 36 cents),
while mail deliveries have gone from 11 per week to 5. Similarly he describes
Telecom as "self-financing".
  Since Telecom's government-enforced monopoly enables it to make a profit
of about $1 billion a year on trunk-calls alone, it is self-financing indeed.
Neither Mr Dawkins nor Senator Puplick seems aware that Canada's
privately-owned telephone system provides a similarly dispersed population
with a service that was about 20 per cent cheaper than Telecom's in 1983.
But we shall return to Mr Dawkins later.
  Senator Puplick defends the Telecom monopoly not with assertions about
the economics of the issues (which despite copious literature available
and the services of their own research staff and the Parliamentary Library
neither seems much acquainted with), but rather emits a cloud of gentle
Austrobabble about their unity and integrity and
   ... Our fellow Australians who live in remote parts of this continent
   where they provide the backbone of our economy, produce the bulk of our
   exports and contribute to the standard of living of we comfortable city
   folk are entitled to our support and are entitled to access to decent
   facilities ...
(But why not give this support through, for example, tax-relief rather than
hidden cross-subsidies?)
  Senator Puplick then moves on to attack "another modern shibboleth, the
`small government' fetish". There needs to be, he says, "more law, not less".
He wants law to protect the workers at Mudginberri and Dollar Sweets, to
protect small businesses from monopo+lies (but not, presumably, government
communications and transport monopolies, which maintain the unity and integrity
of Australia), laws to protect battered and abused "kids" (a matter for
prosecutions brought by the RSPCA, one would have imagined*imagines) and
laws to keep drunks off the roads and drug pedlars off the streets. (It
is, however, arguable that in all these areas laws already exist but are
not always properly applied.)
  He also wants laws to prevent the uncontrolled seizure of private property
by the State (which could be better done by removing legislation which gives
the State such rights) and, most oddly: "If we want to protect our privacy
from ID cards and the like we will need more laws not less." (Why not protect
our privacy from ID cards simply by not having them - or anything like them?
I understand Senator Puplick, very commendably, voted against compulsory
Identification Cards on the Parliamentary Committee investigating the matter,
and one hopes that he will not be advocating a consolation prize for Big
Brother such as that which has been suggested of computerising with a common
data base, all State birth, death and marriage records.) "And do you say
then," he continues, "that smaller government is the answer to all our ills?"
(Apart from the fact that he seems to have confused small government with
ineffective or undirected government, as many Liberals have before him,
I would say that it is probably the answer to a great many of them.)
  Like Mr Dawkins, he takes the case he sees against the dries and/or the
New Right to absurdly reductivist terms: those who want smaller government
lack compassion; unlike Menzies they do not wish to protect the poor and
weak. He is sure that in today's climate some of his parliamentary colleagues
would have abused the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke as a "Tory
inter+ventionist". 
  Actually a desire to reduce the role of government in the economy and
human affairs does not always equate with a desire to see people die in
gutters. It may be argued that such an outcome is likely to be a result
of more government intervention, more economic rigidity and more Etatism
rather than less.(Such has been the case in New York, where government
intervention in rent-fixing has ended the building of cheap rental
accommodation, causing a population explosion of homeless people who really,
literally, do die in gutters, and in Africa where government price-fixing
has destroyed agriculture, etc., etc.) And who seriously believes that any
future Australian governing party would really abolish social welfare?
  It would be tedious, as well as distasteful, to go through the whole of
Mr Dawkins' speech, with its gamut of shrill and predictable demonologising
and hatreds. Here is a small but adequate sample of the full, rich (or rather,
poor) nutty flavour from near the bottom of page 3:

</sample>



<sample><id> G70 </id>

<source> The National Times </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<subsample><id> G70a </id>

<source> The National Times - February 7 to 13, 1986 </source>

<h> Computers let the camera lie </h>

<bl> By Frank Walker </bl>

THE old adage that the camera never lies has never really been true. Various
techniques from throwing Frisbees across the sky to look like UFOs, to
superimposing negatives, have long put a lie to that.
  But the electronic age has made reality redundant. From now on we are
going to have to doubt everything we see on film and on photographs.
  A new generation of com+puters has emerged that can change photographs
so that it is extremely difficult to tell them from the real thing. Until
now photographs have been changed by superimposing negatives, cropping,
cutting and pasting, or painting directly on to the print.
  The new computers take an image of the print, convert it into digital
data, and put it on a screen. The artist can then move the images around,
changing colours and making people or objects disappear and reappear at
will.
  When the artist is finished, the image is put back into the computer and
a print comes out at the other end of the process.
  The pictures shown here were done on two devices: the $200,000 British-made
Quan+tel Video Paintbox used mainly for fashioning televi+sion logos, and
the $2-million Crosfield Electronics pagina+tion system also from Britain.
  Both have been in Australia for 18 months or so, but the operators are
still finding new ways of using the equipment, testing the boundaries of
what is possible. Colours of houses, dresses, and eyes can be changed at
will. Wrinkles, fat, or blemishes can be wiped away from film stars at a
flick.
  One operator, who did not want to be named, said a car company last year,
for an advertisement, wanted to use a spectacular photo it saw in a European
book of a rally car going around a mountain road. Unfortunately the car
was not their make.
  The operator said it used the machine to "paint" in the characteristics
of the wanted car over the image of the original. To cover over prob+lem
areas, dust and flying stones from the wheels were added. A group of people
were standing too far away so the machine simply moved them closer.
  "You should never believe anything you see any more," said Terry Fitzell,
an operator on the Crosfield system at Mansfield Reproductions in Sydney.
"Even publicity photos of movie and TV stars come to us with bloodshot eyes
and pimples. We remove them with the machine. One of the worst examples
we get is the Queen Mother. She has terrible brown teeth. We paint them
white so no one can see."
  For a cigarette advertise+ment a parachutist jumped out of a plane with
the brand name on the top of the parachute and the photogra+pher snapped
away from the plane as he drifted down on a blue lagoon with a sandy beach.
But the parachutist was in the top right corner of the picture, exactly
where the advertiser wanted to run words.
  Using the Crosfield, the operator shifted the parachut+ist to the bottom
left corner and doubled his size for good measure. "It saved them about
$30,000 as they didn't have to re-shoot the ad. Mind you, we could have
done it on the machine without them flying to the lagoon in the first place,"
said the operator.
  The Quantel Video Paint+box is a smaller machine used mainly for video
advertising and television logos. For mov+ing pictures the artist has to
retouch every frame of the sequence.
  According to the marketing director of Quantel in Austra+lia, Haydn Deere,
the poten+tial of the machine is limited only to the expertise of the artist
working it. He admits the potential of the machine is "frightening".
  "You can really kiss good-bye to photos as evidence of anything. I have
seen whole battle sequences put on film that never happened. In one
demonstration, they had the image of a tank, put it on a background, and
frame by frame made it move across the screen. It was only when the turret
moved that it looked artificial, but that is only limited by the talent
of the artist."
  In a TV advertisement that would be shown in America, a Hawaiian beach
scene inad+vertently had a topless woman bather revealing all. No prob+lem
for the Paintbox. Frame by frame, they painted a bikini on her. The only
question was what colour they wanted.
  Deere is aware there is a strong ethical question involved in these machines,
but he says that is up to the people who use them.
  There are 10 Video Paint+boxes in Australia, seven of them in television
stations. Sometimes they are not used just for station logos. One artist
who used to work for Channel Nine said the face of a mountain was moved
slightly on the Paintbox for a short sequence in a mountain+eering documentary
so that it was clearer what the climber was doing.
  The Video Paint Brush Company does contract work on its Paintboxes in
Sydney and Melbourne. "Six months is a long time in this business. We are
doing things we wouldn't have thought of a year ago, and who knows what
we will be doing in a year," says Sydney manager Stephen Smith.
  The senior designer, Michael Murray, is an artist by trade. He said he
could not only change the colour of people's eyes on the machine, he could
make them blink.
  In 10 minutes of playing around on the machine, he gave Neville Wran a
beard and made Bob Hawke bald, simply by shifting portions of Wran's sideburns
over his cheeks and gradually extend+ing Hawke's forehead.
  It would be difficult to pick it as a forgery as actual parts of the
photograph as recorded on the computer were moved rather than painting on
the beard or forehead. The only way to tell is to pick repeti+tions of the
"cloning" patterns of the parts of the photograph.
  The Paintbox and the Cros+field are only two of the new machines in the
rapidly devel+oping field of digital retouch+ing. The Israeli-made Scitex
machine and the West Ger+man Chromacom, for instance, also turn photo+graphs
into computer data for printing, making photo and graphic reproduction quicker
and cheaper.
  The benefits of the new technology are obvious. They are opening up new
and exciting possibilities in photo and graphic reproduction such as record
covers, pop videos, and eye-catching mag+azine covers. Computer enhancement
of photographs has helped examine the explo+sion of the Challenger Space
Shuttle and exposed fake photos of the Loch Ness monster and UFOs.
  But they bring with them a moral dilemma: How far can one go? The temptation
to "improve" images or even fake them is now so much greater.
  As the machines improve and become more widespread, it will become more
and more difficult to tell the adulterated image from the unadulterated.
It might be that news maga+zines and newspapers will have to make public
declara+tions that they will not alter or change their photographs.
  Even a magazine world-fa+mous for its photographs, National Geographic,
has suc+cumbed to temptation (see picture). A director of the printing and
engraving sec+tion in Washington said the decision to move the pyramids
was out of "aesthetic reasons" and every effort is made to avoid this sort
of thing. "But the main point when using this type of technology is not
to alter the meaning of the photograph. We certainly didn't do that."
  "The only other changes we ever made to photographs was to tone over the
genitals of naked natives. This is a family magazine, after all. But we
don't even to that any more."
  In a letter to a disillusioned reader, the editor-in-chief of National
Geographic, Bill Garrett, said: "The effect was the same as if the
photogra+pher had moved over a few feet. More important (to this issue)
is how much did the use of a telephoto lens move the pyramids? How much
did the colour change because of a filter? Were the camels there naturally
or were they brought there for the picture...?"
  National Geographic, of course, isn't the only one to have fallen to
temptation. Company annual reports in the US have appeared with a company's
new building sur+rounded by trees rather than the car parks which were in
the original photo. A 1982 photo book called Idylls of France reportedly
removed unsightly telegraph poles from a rural scene and litter from a stream
bed from the original photos.
  In Australia the ethics of retouching photographs were examined when the
Sydney Daily Telegraph ran a photo of Gough Whitlam sitting alone at his
desk shortly after the 1975 sacking. The caption said: "Mr Whitlam, a lonely
figure in the Federal Caucus room." In fact, the photo was taken at a press
conference and a secretary in the back+ground had been painted out.
  The photographer was suspended from Parliament for two weeks and the paper
apologised, saying it was an error.
  However, over at the Syd+ney Morning Herald photo+graphs appeared in the
early 1970s on Anzac and Remem+brance days showing an old digger with jets
flying over his head. This was done by superimposing one photo over another,
both taken on the same day but impossible to get in the same frame.
  The news editor at the time, David Bowman, stopped this practice, saying
he thought a photograph should only have in it what was captured in the
lens.
  The National Times pho+tographer, Lorrie Graham, whose work has been
pub+lished in books, magazines and newspapers around the world, says there
is little satisfaction for a photogra+pher in "stooging" a photo.
  "It is usually only for the benefit of editors and the written word that
photos are changed. Photos themselves have never been sued, only the captions
have. But if this practice of forging photos ever happened in newspapers,
the lawyers would have more money than they can handle."

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G70b </id>

<source> The National Times - January 31 to Feebruary 6, 1986 </source>

<h> Getting fit </h>

<h> The minimal guide to health and fitness  </h>

<bl> Edited by Deborah Smith </bl>

DOUBLES tennis - the social game in which you trot around the baseline,
and make the occasional lunge at the net - can kill you. That is, if it
lulls you into believing that you're doing enough exercise for the week.
You're not.
  If doubles tennis - or working around the house, gardening or taking the
dog for a stroll - is all the exercise you're getting, you are below the
fitness threshold. You might be having fun, but you're not helping yourself
to stay alive.
  On the other hand, the daunting vision of sweating, straining joggers
must be responsible, too, for setting back the health of the nation. Only
the very determined will survive to become serious joggers if they start
running when fairly unfit. It is hard to keep up enthusiasm until it becomes
enjoyable.
  Fortunately, it is a misconception that jogging is a must.
  But there is a threshold of regular exercise that has to be reached before
you can feel smug that your health is benefiting significantly by your effort.
For a start, it must be vigorous. Also, as a rule of thumb, it is necessary
to exercise for at least twenty minutes, three times a week.
  How vigorous must you get? As a minimum, your heart should be beating
more than 120 times a minute. Overdoing it can be dangerous. If you can't
talk, or whistle while you exercise, slow down. For greatest improvement
to your fitness, keep to a range between 70 to 85 per cent of your maximum
heart rate. (roughly 220 minus your age.)
  The longer your exercise sessions, the fitter you'll become. But beyond
an hour, the rewards drop off.
  Some people argue they get enough exercise during the day, doing work
around the house or labouring. Feeling exhausted each evening reinforces
this thinking. But these bouts of perhaps quite strenuous activity are not
the same as getting fit.
  Certainly, like doubles tennis, keeping busy prevents muscles from wasting
away and burns up calories, both valuable in preventing weight gain.
  But, for your heart to benefit, the activity must be sustained, aerobic
exercise like bicycling or jogging.

</subsample>

</sample>


<sample><id> G71 </id>

<source> The National Times - February 28 to March 6, 1986 </source>

<note> 2020 words </note>

<h> The liberation priests </h>

Nuns and priests defying the military in Manila this week have given new
impetus to the debate on liberation theology. It is a debate which has divided
the Catholic Church In Australia, and led to B. A. Santamaria's claim that
the Church has become a "major ally of the Left". Now, in the year of the
Pope's visit to Australia, conservative elements have called for a boycott
of Project Compassion, the annual Lenten appeal, because of its support
for left-wing causes. 

<bl> DEBRA JOPSON reports </bl>

WHEN YOU enter St Paul's, the Catholic bookshop in Sydney's Castlereagh
St, there is an equal number of bookshelves devoted to Jesus Christ and
Social Justice. There are tracts on Marx and the Bible.
  In Canberra, playwright Ron Evans is expanding his play already seen by
local theatre-goers, The Red Priest, with the help of the subject, Father
Brian Gore, the Columban missionary who now preaches nuclear disar+mament
and redistribution of wealth as he travels Australia, having got out of
a Philippines jail.
  In once reliably conservative Adelaide, the church is setting up its own
social justice political wing with the approval of Archbishop Leonard Faulkner.
  In Melbourne, The Catholic Worker, once informally banned in the archdiocese
because of its liberal views, has been revived with a Eureka flag masthead
as an alternative to the more conservative Advocate.
  Sydney's Catholic Weekly has had a series of editorials which would make
an alternative liberal paper extraneous. Christa McAuliffe's death in the
space shuttle explosion, the Weekly says, should be seen with hope because
it delays Star Wars. The position of the latest Extraordinary Synod of Bishops
in Rome, which could be interpreted as condoning some aspects of "liberation
theology", is "a blow for those who believe in `Christ-capitalism'," it
opines.
  In the words of B. A. Santamaria, head of the National Civic Council,
writing in his News Weekly recently: "The Catholic Church in Australia,
of course, is not communist controlled. Such a statement would be a total
absurdity. But ... it has permitted itself to be transformed into a major
ally of the Left."
  Santamaria's theory is that left-leaning university-educated intellectuals
have taken over the social justice wing of the Catholic Church - of whose
thrust out of the sacristy and into politics he was one of the main architects.
They are now disseminating Marx+ist and quasi-Marxist views which are filtering
through the seminaries and schools.
  The closely-aligned right-wing Newman Graduates Association agrees and
has called for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), the
church's politically involved social action wing, to be disbanded.
  Association president Patrick Newman called it a mouthpiece for "atheistic
commu+nism"; his deputy, Father Terence Purcell, charged it with "choking
left-wing political views down people's necks."
  So far the deepest the attacks have bitten is that the Catholic Bishop
to the Armed Forces, Bishop Geoffrey Mayne, has resigned from his position
as one of the three bishops on the commission and plans to put to the Bishop's
Conference in May that its charter be changed.
  And those who have been ever vigilant of communist infiltration in the
Catholic Church have asked their fellow Catholics not to give to Project
Compassion, the annual Lenten appeal for money for the poor usually held
in every church up to Easter Saturday - this year from February 12 to March
29, because some of it goes to left-wing causes. Australian Catholic Relief
(ACR), which last year received about $2.4 million as administrator of Project
Compassion, will not know until money rolls in from all parishes at the
end of Lent how successful the boycott has been.
  Project Compassion and the CCJP still have the backing of the mainstream
of the church.
  Answering Santamaria's charges that Catho+lics were giving money thinking
it would go to the poor and hungry when in fact about a quarter of a million
dollars annually goes to the CCJP, the Catholic bishops put out a statement.
"We affirm the value of the development education programs financed through
Project Compassion and request Australian Catholics to continue their
whole+hearted support for both the CCJP and Project Compassion," they said.
  Australian Catholic Relief itself has come under attack for sending funds
to Filipino grouups like Task Force Detainees, said to be an auxiliary of
the National Democratic Front (a communist organisation) and Australia-Asia
Worker Links, which was launched by communist unionist John Halfpenny.
  Father Boberg, parish priest of Berowra, NSW, has claimed ACR's development
pro+grams in Kampuchea and Vietnam amount to "supporting comunism in South-East
Asia with Catholic money."
  And a writer in Quadrant, John Whitehall, has claimed that liberation
theology, that powerful brew born of Marxist study and Latin American
oppression, has seeped into Austra+lia, leading to a "blind spot" to Marxist
tyranny. "The Philippines and Vietnam are good examples. The Philippines is 
being dissected under the glare of theologians' attention while Vietnam and 
all its persecution is being ignored," wrote Whitehall.
  He points to Father Brian Gore, the West Australian-born Columban missionary
jailed in the Philippines for allegedly murdering a Negros mayor until the
trumped-up charges were dropped, as the personification of the
Aussie-turned-revolutionary through libera+tion theology.
  Since he returned to Australia less than two years ago, Gore has been
travelling the country speaking against nuclear disarmament and for
redistribution of wealth, among other issues.
  He has talked at the same forums as radicals like the president of the
PLO-affiliated General Union of Palestinian Workers, Allam Tahboub.
                     
  The attacks on the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Australian
Catholic Relief and Gore appear to be part of a wider international battle
in a Church which likes to keep its skirmishes in-house, but has not been
able to contain them as the institution still reels from the fallout of
the overhaul it got at Vatican II 21 years ago.
  The Church's left and right wings are still arguing about how far Vatican
II's commit+ment to social reform can be taken.
  In Latin America, some took it as far as becoming "guerilla-priests" and
headed for the hills to fight with rebel forces. The more cerebral,
particularly Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez, married Marx with the scriptures
to breed liberation theology and forge a "Church of the Poor".
  As American academic Penny Lernoux puts it in her book the Cry of the
People about the struggle for human rights there: "What the Latin American
theologians find particularly attractive in Marx is his suggestion of the
relationship between experience and theory - that if man has sufficient
understanding of his reality, he can improve that reality and himself and
that this new situation in turn influences, changes and educates him.
  "But an acceptance of Marx the sociologist need not imply support for
a Marxist ideology, much less communism, which the liberation theologians
reject as a political system incompatible with Christianity."
  With Catholic pragmatism, opposing fac+tions hail statements from Rome
on the issues as backing their own positions and quote various Popes to
support their viewpoints.
  A much-quoted document by German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger called
"Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation" looks like
a poke in the eye for the Latin Americans and their followers.
  But the outcome of the recent Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome was
seen as a win for the liberation theologians overall.
  Sydney's Catholic Weekly journalist Cliff Baxter said: "The Synod is a
great body blow to the right wing. Cardinal Ratzinger has been asked to
write a complementary work on liberation theology, pointing out its
advan+tages." Baxter claims it would be a mistake to see the likes of Father
Brian Gore as "the attractive aberrant". He places him firmly in the
mainstream. 
  
  GORE himself, who hardly fits the old image of the priest, swearing like
a trooper and happy to declare, "I'm not a Catholic, I'm a Chris+tian,"
told this reporter, "Liberation theology is a result of groping with the
problem of poverty, but I hate being called a liberation theologian.
  "It's more getting your act together a bit better in the fight against
evil; which is the repression of people by social, political and economic
structures."
  How far liberation theology has affected the Church in Australia is difficult
to say.
  Head of Sydney University's School of Divinity, Dr Barbara Thiering, an
Anglican, says women in Australian churches have embraced it because it
tosses out the idea of God as a pervasive male figure.
  Uniting Church minister Dr Allan Loy, who teaches electives on liberation
theology at Sydney University, places it firmly in Latin America and says
Australians are trying to forge their own theology.
  Dr Rowan Ireland, an academic who speaks regularly at church gatherings
on Latin American Theology, told this reporter: "I find it difficult to
share the concern Mr Santamaria has, I still think basically most clergy
are terribly conservative.
  "There is a minority of aging parish priests who would read theology books
and that minority would know about the theology of liberation. One of the
reasons for the general conservatism of these male clergy is relative to
the population at large, they're aging. Some of the figures on that are
fairly hair-raising."
  What is more likely to shake the parish priests into looking for new roles
is the drop in church attendances, said Ireland, a senior lecturer in sociology
at La Trobe University.
  "Thinking of the role of the Church and the priest is forced on them every
day. That is much more of an impulse toward getting to know other theologies
than being undermined by the universities."
  Father Bruce Duncan, of the missionary order, the Redemptorists, which
is active in Latin America and the Philippines, said: "The main thing is
it has permeated all of theology, giving it a flavour and a new range. The
concern for social justice, peace and develop+ment have gone beyond what
you would call liberation theologies."
  Duncan points to the Catholic Church's backing of the fight for a just
wage as an example of its historical concerns for social justice in Australia.
  "The reason it seems so new is that the split in the Labor Party, in Catholic
Action and between the Syd+ney and Melbourne churches made it too hot a
potato to handle and so for 20 years, the debate flagged."
  He believes the Catholic Church's apparent paralysis in Nazi Germany is
still affecting a lot of its members "knowing it is not enough to be opposed
to dictatorships; the Church must go up-front in opposition."
  A lot of Australian Catho+lics still have a "cold war mentality" but Marxist
think+ing has had a big effect, even in the Vatican.
  "Pope John Paul II brought a strong Marxist influence into his writings
because he came out of a situation where he was constantly debating with
Marxism," said Duncan.
  Politically, the church has an international perspective because, "It
realises in many countries, it is the only major institutional actor which
can speak out against oppression. Sometimes there is either a revolutionary
option or a complete cave-in to a dictato+rial regime."
                      
  In Brazil seven years ago, I was shocked to walk into a Catholic church
in the north+ern coastal city of Recife to find an economic pie chalked
on a blackboard showing how the concentration of money in the hands of the
rich had doomed the rest to poverty.
  It was a slice of political education in a church which in other parts
of South Amer+ica, had seemed only to offer nauseating displays of
jewel-encrusted Marys amid dire poverty.
  In Pinochet's Chile, a spokeswoman for the Vicari+ate of Solidarity, in
a small office alongside Santiago Cathedral (for safety pur+poses), brought
out the list of desparecidos, or "disappeared ones", and talked of how the
"basic Christian communi+ties" set up on the land "conscientised" the people
in ways of overcoming social injustice.
  She also had a clipping of a pro-Government newspaper with a photo of
a telephone line outside the Vicariate cap+tioned "Direct Link to Mos+cow".
  In Australia, which Duncan describes as "the most secular country in the
world", the Church is not such a mighty political force and is anyway seen
as conservative, produc+ing mainly right-wing Labor politicians in the past.

</sample>
 


<sample><id> G72  </id>

<source> God Weekend </source>

<note> 2000 words </note>

<subsample><id> G72a </id>

<source> Good Weekend - December 1986 </source>

<h> Saturday night fever, 1986 </h>

<bl> By Anna-Maria Dell'oso </bl>

WE HAILED the taxi outside the picture theatre. It was late
on a hot Saturday night. We were grateful to spot a Vacant sign
in a madly occupied city. Above the movie billboards, an almost
full moon added her light to the fluorescent lunacy in the
streets. Above the frenzied flashings of the pub discos, the
moon seemed to laugh.
   Below it was Saturday night fever. Herds of suburban boys
drifted along the pavements chomping hamburgers and french
fries, followed at 10-second intervals by herds of suburban
girls tottering on ankle-breaker stilettos.
   There was something touching about their brash and giggling
search for each other but, mysteriously, they never met. The
city seemed full of these male and female gangs whom not even
the moon could bring together.
   The cabbie, a young bloke with calm eyes, leaned over to
open the back door. We fell into the back. I eased off my
shoes. The screams of the post-movie crowds vanished. The last
I was to see of that Saturday night was a couple rapping on the
back windscreen as they crossed the road and a drunk who opened
his arms on the road divider, performing his pain-wracked aria
Oh Ya F-ing Bastards Ya Bastards, Ya F-ing Bastards I'll Kill
Ya.
   For, once the taxi revved up, I was in the Twilight Zone.
The driver was a player of strategic games with human flesh and
blood. He hurled the cab suicidally into the headlights of the
night. The air seemed acrid with emergency, soaked in the
peculiarly Australian emotional state of Aggro. We could almost
smell the cabbie's hatred of any object that stood between him
and pressing the gas pedal. The speedometer oscillated between
120 and zero km/h as he sped and braked on small city stretches
between lights. The cab snorted between lanes, sniffing for
openings, the slightest crack of bitumen an opportunity to
screech and burn.
   From above, it might have looked like a 20-cent Space
Invaders game in which one is casually interested in how long
the little green space shuttle can survive until the computer 
tolls for thee. Inside the renegade taxi, however, the driving 
felt about as theoretical as a violent assault and more 
pathological than the New York cab ride in After Hours. Too 
frightened to protest in case we rattled the cabbie's concentration 
and blew our Last Coins, we alighted in shock, noting the cab number.
   When we rang the taxi base to warn them of their metered Mad
Max, we were referred to a pathway of bu+reaucratic letter-
writing and statutory declarations. It seemed the Tron driver
was no big deal, just an average example of Saturday Night
Aggro.
   Perhaps cab drivers are particularly vulnerable to the onset
of this violence that flares during public good times, such as
New Year's Eve, the Grand Final and the end of the working
week. Indeed, taxis are part of the escalating frustrations of
Saturday nights. Since random breath-testing, they have become
as rare as vampires but as essential as blood. I dread the
hour-long hassle for the cab, as I pull on my tights and feed
the cats with one hand while I hang on to the phone with the
other, wincing through the canned music and trying to get a
better commitment than "a short delay" from the operator.
   After 30 minutes of anguish, I run out into the street where
gangs of concert+goers are hassling occupied taxis at the
lights. Yet, no matter how frazzled I feel, I wouldn't swap
seats with the cabbies. Some of the most acid wit this side of
Dorothy Parker is spilled over the taxi radio waves. I have sat
red-faced at the back of a cab cringing for Driver XXZ as he is
publicly flogged by the radioman's multi-lashed sarcasm.
   On Saturday nights, the cabs are as tense as a headmaster's
office.
   Perhaps I'm suffering inner-city burnout but I am convinced
that Saturday nights are becoming more feverish. Despite the
predictions that the video-cassette recorder would turn
Saturday nights into a cottage industry - that folks would play
their VCRs at home as the Victorians tinkled around the parlour
piano - the streets of the city are crammed. People's need to
congregate around the movie palaces and computer games halls is
more than economic or for amusement. Saturday night is a
traditional release of tribal tension. In another culture, the
fiesta and mardi gras might bring out the drunken babbling joy
in people, a kind of outrageous party. Lately, however, the
overwhelming emotion in our city streets seems to be Aggro, a
strangely pain-filled reaction to fun.
   To judge from the beery-teary faces in the streets, few
people are having the much-advertised Good Time. A happy drunk
is hard to find. Waiting for a bus after the movies in the
middle of George Street, I see a man run out from the crowd. He
has a knife in his hands and he is weeping and bellowing
"Heyyy! ... HEYYY!" From across the street, it sounds
curiously like a sobbing little boy. Yet the stainless steel
stabs the air. "Heyyy! ... HEYYY!" Passers-by look at him
bewildered. Is it a movie, or a publicity stunt? He is
virtually standing under Stallone's machine-gun poster for
Cobra. More people turn. Panic crackles across the street.
   I realise that I am frightened, that I have backed into the
glass door of McDonald's. Suddenly the man finds his enemy,
flicking the knife at him. There is an exchange of bellows and
they disappear into Chinatown.
   I think, as I wait for my bus, of friends, waitresses in an
inner-city cafe, who are convinced that Saturday nights and the
full moon are a deadly combination when severe outbreaks of
Aggro infect even the mildly sloshed. Down George Street, a
young bloke with a ripped shirt and a can of Tooheys is
dragging his plump girlfriend by the arm. She is crying and
staggering on heels and ripped stockings. Suddenly, he pushes
her away and stalks off yelling: "Get lost, Maureen - I toldya,
just piss off, til ya lose some weight ..." As the girl
staggers after him, I am infected by a fit of Aggro. "Don't do
it," I scream after her, "he's not worth it!"
   Embarrassed, I decide to walk. At the lights, two girls are
taunting an "Animal Bus" of men too full to propel themselves
home. A cab pulls up with a tired-looking driver playing a
Frank Sinatra cassette. I judge his battered Valiant as
incapable of a human Space Invaders game down Parramatta Road.
As I hop in, a creature from the Animal Bus pours beer over the
windscreen and then throws the can at pedestrians. I promise
myself that next Saturday night I will stay home and wash my
hair.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G72b </id>

<source> Good Weekend - December 1986 </source>

<h> A new leaf </h>

THE WEEKS before Christmas are a wild time for people who
are addicted to paper. Suddenly, the audio-visual world that
stopped writing generations ago with the invention of the
telephone is scrabbling around in its old drawers looking for
a pen and paper. Even people who were allergic to English at
school and never learned to type find it is the one time of the
year for a commit+ment beyond the STD pips. Phone conversations
are like hot-house flowers: expensive and beautiful but they
don't last. People still like to put themselves on the ruled
line.
   Christmas is the season for airmail letters from friends
burning Australian dollars to keep warm overseas. Foreign
stamps and packages arrive on the door+step, as well as cards
and photographs of friends' new babies accompanied by notes
scrawled on bits of paper stained with banana-mush. As if to
put this seasonal scribble in its place, the computer retailers
wage their most savage war against paper at Christmas,
displaying their Apples and IBM packages with advertising
designed to make parents feel guilty about depriving their
children of the New Literacy where the screen is mightier than
the pen.
   Despite a six-year liaison with com+puters (apart from a
dose of repetitive strain injury, I have got along with mine
tolerably well), my hands still itch for paper and a thin-
nibbed fountain pen.
   An emotional taboo prevents me from writing home to Mamma
and Papa on the WordPerfect system. Buying a box of floppy
disks can never replace the pleasure of the stationery shop.
While the department stores provoke desires that only lead to
misery for those with little money at Christmas, the stationers
provide a sensual but affordable world of onion-skin papers,
boxed deckles, Japanese envelopes, French crayons, packets of
coloured drawing pins and Mickey Mouse pencil sharpeners.
   During times of depression, spending an hour in the
stationery shop is better than a Valium. It is especially
effective after a weep and a hot bath.
   When I was broke in New Zealand, an afternoon in Whitcoulls
was about the only entertainment I could afford. After
inspecting the embossed writing pads and the calligraphy pens,
I would indulge myself by choosing a 6B lead Copperplate pencil
or a single Derwent or perhaps a sheet of parchment-textured
flamingo paper and a black envelope lined with matching tissue.
Later, in my room of the old house I shared with student
flatmates, I would light beeswax candles, burn incense and,
with Elton John's Yellow Brick Road playing in the corridor, I
covered centimetres of the flamingo paper in a letter to
Melbourne. It felt as luxurious as splashing myself with a vial
of perfume.
   It is difficult to know exactly why boxes of paper-clips and
Chinese diaries of all sizes should fill a depressed person
with hope. All I know is that the phenomenon is similar to
spending an hour in a hardware store, checking out the masonry
nails, the picture hooks, superglues and extension cords,
without necessarily wanting to buy any - it seems enough to
know that they are there. Perhaps a mind out of sorts with
itself is soothed by seeing solid proof that there are methods
of fixing things. Or perhaps the hardware and the stationers
are so comforting because they supply the practical bits to the
drill of endless possibilities.
   All the sharpened pencils, the diaries of years yet to be
lived, organised, timetabled - the future is a tabula rasa and
suddenly it seems possible to scratch anything upon it. Unlike
looking through bookstores, where you're liable to be
overwhelmed by a feeling that it's all been said before,
stationery gives you the hope of turning over a new leaf.
   A floppy disk, with its black secrets, does not inspire the
same born-again joy of the blank foolscap page. Floppy disks
feel creepy; they have neurotic names such as Xidex, Verbatim
and Perfection. They are highly strung, sensitive; we mustn't
handle them with our hot, greasy human paws; the room must be
cool, we must store them in a special box, remove coffee cups
from their vicinity, shield them from magnetic rays and
virtually pull down the blinds and tuck them into bed at
nights. Even so, it is impossible to know when they'll betray
you by corroding, by springing bugs and scrambling your work.
   On the other hand, there is a receptivity about writing
paper that makes it the ultimate User Friendly material. Simply
touching a piece of paper stimulates creativity, the desire to
draw and scribble. Butchers' paper recalls childhood afternoons
when inspiration never ran out. A blank computer screen has
come to mean that one is either at work or in trouble and even
when the computer plays games it goes running to its program at
every human deviation, like a wimp to its Mamma. Paper,
however, has an intimate quality that is exploited by the
makers of teenage diaries. It handles secrets, fantasies,
poetry, nasty sniping bits of gossip, chats, reminders and
confessions that no one - least of all the MS-DOS
program - should see.
   It feels perverted to write a journal on screen.  

</subsample>

</sample>



<sample><id> G73 </id>

<source> Good Weekend </source>

<note> 2018 words </note>

<subsample><id> G73a </id>

<source> Good Weekend - June 1986 </source>

<h> Dante's car park...where fools rush in </h>

<bl> By Robert Haupt </bl>

I WENT shopping the other day. "So!" I hear you exclaim, closely followed
by "what?" Well, it is always a change for me. I shop, all right, but I
don't go shopping.
  Somewhere, some time, possibly during my brief, compulsory attendance
at Sunday school, someone implanted in me, as it was implanted in us by
the thousands, that shopping is ... well, dodgy spiritually*spirtually,
part of the soil of commerce, I suppose, and certainly not to be undertaken
for its own sake. (This idea never took off in America, where shopping and
religion have become intertwined and more genuine reverence may be found
at the mall than at the shrine.)
  So I generally sidle into stores, hope no one is looking and make a purchase
so abrupt that the salesperson goes round-eyed at my certainty. "Are you
sure you don't want to look at the others?" they will ask as I demand the
pair of slippers in the window, counting our the money as I talk. It is
a sort of smash-grab where you pay, a giving of money with menaces.
  But this time it was different. This time we were going to do it properly:
in the suburbs, where they know how to go shopping. And it was only a short
drive to the nearest Vast Shopping Centre. You know the VSC, there's probably
one near you. Actually, I'm not sure it isn't all the same one, right down
to the last bar of canned music.
  Only a short drive it was, as I say, to the VSC. Once within its portals,
however, it was a very long drive, oh a long and wearisome drive indeed:
so many kilometres did we cover inside this retail maze that I feared we
would have to stop the car for an oil change.
  When Dante wrote his Inferno, he had only Hell to work with. Imagine what
a terrific work of art he would have come up with had he known of the
multi-level carpark. There, instead of the sinners being arrayed in circles
while the tortures are inflicted on them, they move in endless circles through
a concrete purgatory assailed all the while by unbearable noise, unbreathable
fumes, impossible monotony.
  Through the smoke and gloom, you see the pallid, haunted faces peering
through the foggy windows of Range Rovers, men and women with corrugated
foreheads hunched in their seats.
  The procession would stop from time to time, leaving one staring at a
blank concrete wall or sniffing the exhaust of a machine called Bronco or
Mustang. After an unendurable delay, the crawl would begin again as you
always knew it would: torture without end may not be allowed to finish.
  Each of the countless levels of the multi-storey car-hell is the same
as the others. Occasionally, a glaring sign will go by saying"Liquor Pick-Up"
or "Ezy-grow Garden Care Centre" but there's no way of remembering where
you saw them or even, after a while, when.
  It occurs to you that you entered this concrete car-canyon a young man
full of hope. You believed - poor fool - that it was going to be simple:
drive in, stop; get out, shop.
  Ah, folly! The VSC doesn't want clear-eyed, un-disoriented people as its
shoppers. It has no use for people just in off the street. It wants you
the way it gets you: broken by noise, smell, delay, anxiety, boredom and
all that circling.
  When it gets you after such a torture, it knows it has got you. Just as
a victim of brainwashing must be given a new identity to cling to after
his old one has been broken down, so the VSC inserts its ersatz reality
into minds made blank by half an hour (or was it half a lifetime?) in Dante's
Car Park.
  And what a world it is, retail! Lights, mirrors, lights in mirrors, mirrored 
reflections of lights in mirrors, all is dazzle and glitter after the sensory 
deprivation of Dantes. Vistas sweep; paths beckon; cash registers go pip, pap, 
barp against the engulfing flow of Music to Buy By. You hear a man demand, "I 
know it is a copy but is it a real copy?" and you begin to wonder whether the 
chintz is fake.
  Is it by accident with the VSC that the contrast is so great between outside
and within? Or is it cleverly, even fiendishly, designed to make the real
outside seem grim so that the tawdry inside seems glam? The owners of VSCs
would no doubt say that all they do is concentrate their resources on the
point of sale but if that were really true wouldn't they provide that most
useful, most scarce resource of all - the sales assistant who knows something
about the goods on sale?
  And who are the owners of these mausoleums of merchandise, anyway? It's
always a consortium of companies with names like Selvac and Martran with
interlocking directorships and branch offices in the Cayman Islands. The
principals are as hard to find as their principles are easy to understand.
  Principle No. 1: don't give 'em what they want, make 'em want what you've
got to give 'em.
  Principle No. 2: when in doubt, install more mirrors.
  Principle No. 3: who needs more than two principles?
  While they go off to coffee in their Rollses, we load the fruits of this
Age of Wonders - the finest commodities Taiwan can offer - into our Holdens
and bring them home, where they never quite look the same. 
  Why is it, after going shopping, I feel like taking a bath?

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G73b </id>

<source> Good Weekend - June 1986 </source>

<h> I'd talk to you if I weren't feeling dormey </h>

<bl> By Robert Haupt </bl>

HAVE you ever sat down to think? Don't evade the point by saying that you
can think perfectly well  standing up - you know what I mean. I'm talking
about breaking off from what you're doing, making some space in your day
and actually THINKING. I'll bet you haven't done it since you were a child.
  As we know, most good thoughts arise unbidden and hardly anything worthwhile
comes to mind when we want something to come to mind. In exactly the same
way as we best see something faint (Halley's Comet, say) by not looking
directly at it, so the thinking part of our brain tends to work better when
we're not conscious of thinking: not so much lateral as peripheral thinking.
  So much of the national thinking is done under the shower that I wonder
whether we mightn't be better at solving this country's problems if we returned
to the - longer, more thought-provoking - bath. 
  Personally, I'm a walking thinker: cogitation on the hoof, so to speak.
As I was thinking my way along a desolate footpath in the rain the other
day, wondering at how many shades of grey there are, my mind was run over
by a train of thought coming the other way: how few colours there are! 
  Add them up for yourself: blue, red and yellow, that's three; with black
and white, five. Don't you think that's a bit meagre?
  Don't we deserve more? Oh, I know you can mix them together and get shades
of fawn, chartreuse and aquamarine, not to mention puce. But imagine the
range, the sheer scope and variety of colours we would have if we had a
decent number of basic colours, 12, or 30, or a round 100.
  Imagine what a flag competition we'd be having then! None of this
green-and-gold and red-white-and-blue. There would be entries in unimaginable
hues, each more extravagantly gorgeous than the last.
  Advertising would have more to work with. No more the boring round from
red to blue, to green and white and back to red again, with the occasional
detour to black.
  Our cigarette boxes and soap-powder packets would put the rainbow to shame.
  Oh, the rainbow. With 10 times as many bands, it would fill the sky, bringing
wonder and amazement to the millions of people all over the world who are
too poor to have colour brought to them by television.
  Other fruits of nature would be given astonishing allure - none of them
more so than fruit itself. I can't tell you what exactly you'd find on our
greengrocer's shelves but you can bet that it wouldn't be green. 
  In fact, I can't tell you anything about these extra colours I have in
mind, for the simple reason that the words don't exist with which to describe
them. 
  We only know what green means once we've seen a cucumber, or a Melbourne
tram.
  Indeed, I don't know how I can be sure that what I think of as green isn't
what you think of as another colour entirely, crimson, perhaps, or an
outrageous shade of peach. 
  You and I agree that Melbourne trams are green (not the orange ones, silly!)
only by agreement that the colour which trams are is green. Get inside my
eyes and have a look and you might be absolutely startled. 
  I can think of names - blange, for instance, for a colour that leaves
you feeling warm and treacly (as, after listening to Kamahl sing); streer
for something cold, yet velvety. But the names don't really help. Notice
how I've described the indescribable by talking, not colour, but emotion,
temperature and texture.
  Colours loosely suggest such things.
  So if we had some new colours what kinds of associations might they have?
Banality is pretty well catered for already, what with fawn and beige and
various unalluring shades of green.
  But what about pomposity?
  If we had a new colour, one that was rich and not particularly pleasant
- something like a new purple - is it too much to hope that it might become
associated with all things overblown and self-important?
  And that people might be purged of that affliction merely by the display
of the colour?
  Our emotions might become better known to us if there were more colours
to identify them with.
  Take the feeling of temporary impatience with another person, the wish
not to be with them at this moment.
  If there were a colour to express such a feeling that was neither the
blue of despair nor the brown of distraction, much disappointment might
be avoided: "I'd like to, normally," we would say, "it's just that I'm feeling
dormey."
  Perhaps I'm over-optimistic. Science, isn't likely to come up with new
colours for this world - it seems to be a problem as much with the receiver
as with the transmission, the eye being as unable to switch on to a new
colour band as my television set is to pick up SBS.
  And if any new colours were to be captured miraculously from a far galaxy,
no doubt they would be pressed into use decorating disposable-nappy ads
long before they could be attached to something as pure as an emotion.
  So there they are, some stray thoughts picked up from a rainy day.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G73c </id>

<source> Good Weekend - May 1986 </source>

<h> When it comes to truth pollies dish out Clayton's </h>

<bl> By Robert Haupt </bl>

DEMOCRACY is the system that lets you know when a nuclear reactor blows
up. The other one keeps the whole thing secret until the geiger counters
go off their dial a thousand kilometres away, revealing that the radioactive
clouds had at last drifted into a democracy. It was not the West that began
using Chernobyl for propaganda purposes; it was the Soviet Union, by refusing
to disclose the accident when it happened.
  When we get a clear-cut incident like this, we can see that democracy
is comparatively good: not only less evil but more efficient, too. The trouble
is, you can't go on for ever basking in the reflected glory of comparisons.
Life is indeed a wonderful thing compared to the alternative but you've
got to get on with the chancy business of living it: glad to be alive, sure,
but knowing that to be alive can be sad.
  And when you look at what democracy is, rather that what it isn't, you
find that it is difficult to admire.

</subsample>

</sample>


<sample><id> G74 </id>

<source> The Bulletin </source>

<note> 2033 words </note>

<subsample><id> G74a </id>

<source> The Bulletin - August 12, 1986 </source>

<h> Lionel Murphy's last stand </h>

<bl> By John Stackhouse </bl>

THE TWO-YEAR drama involving Justice Lionel Murphy will now inevi+tably
end in tragedy. On Friday, the 63-year-old High Court judge, stricken with
terminal cancers, engaged in a crushing public exchange with the Chief Justice,
Sir Harry Gibbs, then ended his long isolation from the bench by marching
in with his brother justices and taking the seat he had not occupied while
facing criminal charges.
  Murphy's action effectively put an end to the legal and political
contro+versy that has surrounded him, the parliament and the court since
news+paper publication of the illegal New South Wales police phone taps
two-and-a-half years ago. The taps were on the telephone of Sydney solicitor
Morgan Ryan. Murphy's was identified as one of the voices on the tape and
al+legedly he became involved in con+spiring to influence the outcome of
criminal matters involving Ryan.
  A trial, before Justice Henry Cantor in the NSW Supreme Court found him
guilty and Murphy was sentenced to 18 months in jail. But the appeals court
threw out the verdict and the sentence and ordered another trial. At that
trial, Murphy chose to make an unsworn statement from the dock di+rect to
the jury, a course which drew unprecedented criticism from the legal
estab+lishment. He was acquitted and discharged.
  But last May, before Mur+phy could resume his seat on the bench, the
government was told his brother judges would go on judicial strike. Prime
Minister Bob Hawke ordered rush legislation to be drafted for an investigation
by three retired judges into his fitness to occupy the bench.
  On Friday, Murphy broke the news he was suffering from bowel and liver
cancer in their secondary stages. "There is no cure and no treatment," he
said in a press statement. "The advice is that in the absence of a remission
I shall not live very long. At the moment, I am not in any pain and I feel
quite well. My medical advice is that I am able to resume sitting on the
court. I have chosen to spend what por+tion I can of the limited time available
in doing as much judicial duty as I use+fully can."
  Murphy also said he would not at+tend any more hearings of the parlia+mentary
inquiry. He ended the state+ment like a battler: "Despite the medi+cal advice,
I have not given up hope."
  Before the court resumed, Gibbs took the unusual step of issuing his own
press statement. He recorded Murphy's notice that he intended to "exercise
his constitutional right to sit on the court notwithstanding that the
parliamentary commission of inquiry has not yet made its report".
  Gibbs went on: "It is essential that the integrity and reputation of any
jus+tice of this court be seen to be beyond question. That being so I regard
it as most undesirable that Mr Justice Mur+phy should sit while matters
into which the commission is inquiring remain un+resolved and before the
commission has made its report."
  After the Gibbs statement, Murphy retaliated. He made public a letter
which he had sent Gibbs earlier empha+sising his "constitutional right to
sit until death, resignation or removal... It is not for the Chief Justice
or any jus+tice to decide whether it is undesirable for any other justice
to sit on the court. It is improper for one judge to publicly express an
opinion on the desirability of another to continue as a justice or to exercise
his functions as a justice. This is at the foundation of the indepen+dence
of the judiciary."
  Murphy also took the chance to pin on Gibbs the responsibility for panick+ing
the Hawke government into setting up the parliamentary inquiry after Murphy's
acquittal on the conspiracy charges. He claimed: "In May the gov+ernment,
through two ministers, in+formed me that you had said that if I re+sumed
sitting the court might or would go on strike. I now know that most members
of the court had not even con+templated such a course. However, I have not
heard any public denial by you."
  After this exchange, Murphy's en+trance to the court had the effect of
making the inquiry irrelevant. He clearly had the govern+ment's support.
Before flying to London, Hawke said while Gibbs was entitled to his opinion
"it is clear it is a dif+ferent one to mine". At the same time, the acting
Attorney-General Gareth Evans announced the govern+ment would pay Murphy's
in+quiry costs, estimated at about $500,000. Friends do not expect Murphy
to remain on the bench very long. By sit+ting on Friday and again this week,
he has made his point and in the eyes of his support+ers has vindicated
himself. His action closes his career and also a chapter in the his+tory
of the court.
  Murphy's letter to Gibbs underlines a little understood point. As he was
apppointed before changes in judicial tenure in 1977, Murphy is a judge
for life. Gibbs as Chief Justice must retire at the age of 70 in a few months.
  Now, inevitably and tragi+cally, the government will make two appointments
to the court which will substan+tially change its balance, from con+servative
to liberal and from favoring state diversity to centralism. In his last
sittings, in fact, Murphy's liberalism and centralism may well influence
the way the commonwealth's powers are exercised as a result of cases that
have been sitting on the back burner because of difficulty in convening
a full court in Murphy's absence.
  Former Senate president Justin O'Byrne said at the weekend: "I accuse
his accusers of sentencing him to death by the substantial pressures they
have placed upon him." A legal admirer said: "I have no doubt the disease
was caused by the unrelenting campaign against him. There is a collegiate
ideol+ogy in the law which is overwhelmingly conservative. Anyone who steps
out+side the consensus is automatically a traitor."
  Outside the emotional context of the weekend's events, medical opinion
is divided on whether pressures on an in+dividual can or cannot trigger
cancer. Although the question is controversial, there is a strong body of
anecdotal evi+dence to suggest stress does.
  As another friend said: "During these two years or more Lionel has bot+tled
up his stress. To the people around him he has exuded unruffled good hu+mor
and has never let himself seem to be depressed. He never let it out or seemed
to give the stress any relief." Murphy will live on in Labor legend and
ensure that he becomes a martyr to the changes the Whitlam era brought about
in Australia.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G74b </id>

<source> The Bulletin - September 30, 1986 </source>

<h> Kakadu compromise has no future </h>

<bl> By John Stackhouse </bl>

KAKADU National Park may warm the inner glow of conservation and earn us
points in arenas such as UNESCO. But economically it has Australia by the
throat.
  The Hawke government compro+mise last week that blocked develop+ment in
two-thirds of the park (com+pounding the Fraser government's shilly-shallying
before it) means that because of lost export income the Aus+tralian dollar
is cheaper internationally than it could have been and interest rates,
correspondingly, are a few points higher. These fundamentals also have a
carry-through effect on the economy, far beyond the ideologies that have
driven Kakadu thinking so far.
  Economically, the decision rules off a medium-term fix to our foreign
ex+change problems. The Northern Terri+tory Department of Minerals and En+ergy
last week put a value of $5 billion on the exports Australia has forgone
in the last decade by not developing known resources in Kakadu. Taken to
a monthly rate of about $40 million, this would have helped to knock our
trade deficit figure below the dollar-hurting level of $1 billion monthly.
  However, according to the Northern Territory Chamber of Mines, had nor+mal
development taken place, instead of being shelved, this figure might have
doubled. Consequently the whole panoply of the Hawke-Keating defence of
the dollar might have been less daunting to the average Australian's home
mortgage. In a little-reported es+timate, the chamber put the figure on
known value of minerals locked in by the government's decision not to allow
further development in Kakadu's stages one and two at between $70 and $100
billion. This is roughly equivalent to our international debt.
  The figure, however, is essentially speculative because, since Aboriginal
land rights legislation and the founda+tion of the national park, the work
necessary to prove the existence of the ores on which it is based has not
been allowed.
  But the knowledge of the basic geol+ogy and hence the mineralisation ex+ists.
The theoretical work shows that the deposits which established Kakadu as
the world's most important uranium province were dis+covered because they
broke the surface. To the west of the proved deposits, on the flood plain
which has been estab+lished only about 1500 years, the sand and the mud
and the buffalo wallows have dusted over what otherwise would have been
a surface-cropping mineralisation that is a mirror of the ones already
discov+ered. Had exploration and development gone ahead, the mines now in
operation and selling at world market prices of the time would probably
have earned double, or about $1 billion a year over the past decade - say
about $80 mil+lion a month. This would cover a remarkable hole in our trade
deficit.
  But Kakadu is not only a theoretical negative in the big scene of Australian
econ+omics. It is a hole in the ground as far as day-to-day government
expenditures and revenues are concerned.
  Given the 19,000 square kilometres size of Kakadu when stage three is
added, sheer maintenance of the park involves a major drain on govern+ment
finances - about $7 million a year. The Australian National Parks and Wildlife
Service which literally owns Kakadu has operated in the past as though the
taxpayers' purse is bot+tomless. But this sort of area costs a for+tune
merely to maintain. Conservation+ists complain that the money the com+monwealth
is spending is inadequate for major works, such as controlling erosion,
buffalo and pigs, and noxious weeds.
  But under the new commonwealth regime, the user pays and projects such
as Kakadu will have to cover their costs. The revenue-earning alternatives
are tourism (which the service has been embracing recently) or royalties
from mining. Mining has got to be the way to go. The potentials of Kakadu's
miner+als are so great that the mining compan+ies have been remarkably patient.
  The sell-out of the miners began in the early days of the Whitlam
govern+ment. In late 1973, the then Northern Territory Minister, Rex Patterson,
tried to set up a deal with Northern Territory mining applicants. 
  Patterson said Canberra proposed (in February 1974) to introduce in the
Northern Territory assembly legisla+tion providing for national parks and
for the issue of new rights allowing for prospecting in those areas. This
was Patterson's specific promise: "I am authorised by the government to
assure you that if you applications for renew+al of licences are approved
only in re+spect of areas outside the boundaries of the proposed park you
will, upon com+mencement of the new legislation, be issued with fresh licences
... (for) the areas within the park boundary to which your current renewal
applica+tions relate."
  Two things then happened. The miners accepted the government's word as
being not only that of Patter+son but also his successors (which was a
disastrous mistake). They also learned never to trust the government's word
again. Along the way, the situation be+came complicated even more by the
Aboriginal land rights issue.
  Companies like BHP and Geopeko (the exploration arm of Peko Wallsend)
started to work their way through the maze and succeeded. BHP as the oper+ator
for the gold prospect of Corona+tion Hill (which is at the southern end
of what is to be Stage three of Kakadu) went to the Aboriginal custodians
rather than through official channels and scored a notable victory. In the
Coronation Hill case, the Northern Territory Sacred Sites Authority ruled
against development. The custodians, taking outside advice, withdrew their
original endorsement of the hill as a sacred site on clear (and necessarily
se+cret) evidence that the site they identi+fied with was 50 kilometres
distant.
  In the Peko case, the company nego+tiated over a period with custodians
of areas it was interested in and got an agreement inviting them into what,
for a long time, has been part of the first stage of Kakadu.

</subsample>

</sample>


<sample><id> G75 </id>

<source> The Bulletin - July 22, 1986 </source>

<note> 2017 words </note>

<h> Change strikes the manors of the Western District </h>

The grim realities of modern agriculture are having their impact on Victoria's
upper crust Western District - Australia's richest farming region. NIGEL
AUSTIN explains how a region that rode tall on the merino's back is coping
with drastic changes.

THE CHILL winds of Victoria's West+ern District winter blow an instant mes+sage
to the mind on leaving the stately Woolongoon homestead; the nearby lakes
and low lying, flood prone land are a further reminder of the area's gen+erous
climate.
  The Weatherly family's Woolon+goon property lies in the middle of the
most fertile, broad expanse of farming land in Australia, yet land prices,
based on its productive potential, are cheaper than anywhere else. In recent
decades the region has failed to make the large productivity gains achieved
in newer farming areas. When modern technol+ogy enabled the plough to push
further north and west into those regions, arid land prices escalated.
Unfortunately, in the Western District water-logging re+mains a serious
impediment to greater profitability. Now, however, industry leaders believe
Australia's most re+nowned agricultural region is on the verge of a
breakthrough that will see an explosion in cropping.
  James Weatherly, 44, owner of Woolongoon, believes it is unfortunate that
the Western District has become a victim of its own image - it has held
the region back. Some people living there and others in urban areas have
mis+takenly regarded it as the last bastion of the squattocracy era. The
two storey Woolongoon homestead is part of the false image. It was built
for past genera+tions and represents a huge mainten+ance burden. "You don't
realise the hard work involved in its upkeep," Weatherly says. Like the
homestead, the neat bluestone entrance and narrow bitumen road leading to
the former are a legacy of bygone days. 
  The post-war years have seen a rapid erosion of the district's wealth.
Numer+ous small towns like Caramut, Pens+hurst, Hexham and Coleraine are
dy+ing. The number of farmers is falling rapidly, the workforce is shrinking;
only the size of farms is increasing.
  Since its settlement 150 years ago the Western District has invariably
re+flected the health of Australian agricul+ture, shared its secrets, nursed
it through bad times and occasionally held the nation's power in its cradle.
The flat, windswept plains were in turn the starting point for much of
Aus+tralia's rural settlement, the stud stock farm for the nation and the
financial strengths behind many early develop+ments. Until recent years
the Western District was the richest farming region in Australia, its large
sheep and cattle populations enjoying a climate that rarely failed to provide
an abundance of feed.
  The high cost nature of agriculture has held the district back. The Victorian
Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs says it is producing far below
its capability. Yet in the years ahead it will have the ability to recapture
some of its past prosperity. The department be+lieves cropping holds the
potential to reshape the pattern of agriculture in the region. Rapid advances
in technology and new crop varieties are the main fac+tors behind this promised
escalation.
  The new technology is expected to increase wheat yields from an average
of 1.8t a hectare to 7t a hectare. It is typical of productivity increases
which have carried Australian agriculture from generation to generation,
through gloom and boom to its position as the most efficient, unsubsidised
producer in the world.
  The Weatherly family is typical of the Western District landowners whose
families have held land for several gen+erations. Grandfather William bought
the land back in 1893 in the aftermath of the great bank crash after selling
a parcel of BHP shares. The family pros+pered. James' father, William, assumed
control and in the years immediately after World War II the Weatherlys,
like most in agriculture, enjoyed a golden era.
  "The wool boom came in the early 1950's, farming was a way of life and
people made a lot of money," Weatherly says. "My contemporaries went to
public schools and then after school a lot went to universities in England
or New Zealand for further education. We had 16 on the staff in the mid-1960s
and that was after the real wool boom.
  "I remember the general feeling when I left school that if someone wasn't
too bright, then stick them on the land and they would make plenty of money.
But the old way of life has gone and people who tried to maintain it have
left the area. We're probably still fortunate in the standards we enjoy
and the homesteads we live in compared to other parts of Australia. But
you can be deceived by appearances, a lot of people appear traditional and
con+servative, but few don't have a modern approach to running their
properties."
  Weatherly can remember his child+hood when Woolongoon ran just under one
sheep to the acre (0.4ha). It is now nearly 4 sheep to the acre. Woolongoon
has dramatically lifted its productivity in the past 10 years. Shearing 26,000
sheep it cut 760 bales of wool this year compared to just 480 bales from
24,000 sheep in 1976.
  "If we were achieving the same pro+duction as 10 years ago we would be
finished," Weatherly says. "But we're starting to push production gains
pretty hard now. Sheep are still the mainstay. Like my parents say, sheep
will always make you a quid, cattle sometimes and horses never. For all
that it's very kind country, there are few droughts and it will carry a
family for generations. You don't make big forturnes, but it's pretty hard
to go broke."
  Woolongoon has slashed its staff in the past 20 years. Weatherly runs
the property with only five full-time men. Jobs such as shearing, mulesing
and fencing are now performed by contrac+tors - a more productive way of
em+ploying people because of the large additional costs involved in a
perma+nent work force, he says. He thinks the cost-price squeeze has probably
hurt farmers in the Western District more than in other areas. "And every
time they put a new tax on it's the smaller blokes trying to make a go of
it who get hurt."
  Weatherly says in future farmers are just going to have to be more
produc+tive with what they are presently run+ning. Wool has a big advantage
in not having to compete with overseas sub+sidised products as most other
rural commodities must. He can't see deer or goats taking over in the Western
Dis+trict.
  However, Weatherly believes crop+ping, especially oilseeds, leasing of
land and contract machinery owner+ship will become more important.
  Robin Ritchie, owner of the nearby Blackwood property at Penshurst, is
one of the few descendants of a pion+eering family of the region to still
own the land taken up by his forebears. James Ritchie started Blackwood
in 1841, only seven years after the Henty family became the first farmers
in the Western District at Portland. "My de+scendants came to Australia
to better themselves from Scotland, where they had been tenant farmers.
They were successful and to some extent I consid+er myself a trustee of
the land from one generation to the next. I didn't buy it, I didn't earn
it, I inherited it - if you like, I chose my parents well.
  "We're making about 5 percent re+turn to capital from sheep, which isn't
good enough. But if all you were in farming for was the return on capital,
then you mightn't be in farming. An+other reason I continue is because it
is the industry I know. Yet I think if I hadn't been born at Blackwood I
wouldn't have gone farming."
  Ritchie says a possible reason his family has survived while many others
haven't is that there have been only four generations compared to six for
many other families. But Blackwood is a great deal smaller than it was and
keeps get+ting smaller. Ritchie believes that with+out primogeniture there
just isn't going to be a continuation of families in agri+culture.
  "I think it is astounding that hardly any of the original families are
left. One of the reasons is a number of people go+ing on to the land are
not being edu+cated well enough. Too few people are looking at agriculture
commercially. They are looking at it still as a way of life and farming
land in Australia is not performing because of that. In the long+er term
farming will go on attracting people who like the life or who just drifted
on to the land after school with+out making a specific career decision.
  "Another reason is the after tax cli+mate is not adequate to encourage
people to invest in a particular project and make it perform. In a recent
list of Australia's wealthiest 250 people, only 5 percent were exporters
- 20 percent were import competing and 75 percent trade protected. Not until
after tax profits are arranged so they encourage export industries will
the `bright boys' go exporting."
  Ritchie says he could increase pro+duction at Blackwood by 15 percent
or more, but if he did he would only be re+warded with increased taxes.
Ritchie says part of the problem is the mentality that believes success
means maintain+ing one's financial position, while the metropolitan view
is that success means growth.
  More merino sheep, less crossbred sheep, less beef and dairy cattle and
less hay making are part of the Western District's future, Ritchie says.
"But there is no guiding star up there telling us what to do. Wool is the
only thing we can see.
  "There is one resource in south-western Victoria near Portland, Port Fairy
and Peterborough about which no one is doing anything. It is hot ar+tesian
water coming to the surface from more than 1000m below the surface. There
is an opportunity to find a prod+uct - like flowers, orchids or seedlings
- that is dependent on warmth. I don't think it will be one of the older
Western District families who will use it. Maybe it will, but it's more
likely to be some+body with entrepreneurial skills."
  Ritchie also believes the Western District is going to learn a lot more
about cropping, especially in well-drained areas, because of its ability
to grow higher yielding crops and close+ness to ports.
  Bill Gardner is leading the technol+ogy battle to introduce cropping from
the Crops Research Institute in Hor+sham. He says higher rainfall zones
like the Western District have considerably more scope to improve cropping
yields than arid areas. The Mallee has reached 75 percent of its potential,
while the Western District has achieved only 20 to 30 percent of its potential.
  The present Western District wheat yield is 1.8t a hectare, while better
farm+ers average 2.2 to 2.5t. Gardner says there is no reasons why wheat
yields can't be lifted to 7t a hectare. "About one million hectares could
be cropped to wheat in the Western District if we can develop the drainage
technology and develop the correct management procedures," Gardner says.
"I would expect the wheat belt to contract to the higher rainfall areas
in the next 20 to 40 years because that is where the produc+tivity gains
will be achieved."
  Gardner says the aim is to achieve a yield increase of 2t a hectare which
would be more than adequate to repay an investment of $1000 a hectare for
subsurface drainage. It would also be tax deductible and with that sort
of in+crease would be well and truly justified. Rape seed would be an even
more prof+itable crop to grow, he says. Drainage would be achieved by
underground plastic pipes, mole drains and even raising the soil into beds.
Higher yield+ing varieties of wheat from overseas are being trialled with
considerable prom+ise. The use of nitrogen, lime and crop rotations would
be an integral part of the new cropping system, according to Gardner.
  "Once we drain the soil there is really no limit to what can be grown,"
Gardner says. "One farmer has already installed subsurface drainage. When
the system is proved I would expect it to snowball."
  He adds: "As the cost of producing wheat increases, and it has always
in+creased faster than prices have risen, you must lift productivity to
survive.

</sample>



<sample><id> G76 </id>

<source> The Bulletin - July 15, 1986 </source>

<note> 2006 words </note>

<h> Pope John Paul's Australian Church: uncertain, confused  </h>

When Pope John Paul visits all state capitals and Canberra from November
24 to December 1 he will find the Catholic Church suffering a leadership
crisis and his flock in a spiritual malaise. TONY ABBOTT analyses the state
of the Australian Church which has four million adherents while PETER BLAZEY
reports on the marketing of the Pope.

WHEN POPE John Paul II arrives for a six-day visit in November he will be
accompanied by fanfare and formality far surpassing that of any recent royal
tour. The cheering crowds and the Hollywood touch of the tour organ+isers,
however, will make little impact on the serious difficulties confronting
the Catholic Church in Australia. Ac+cording to conservatives, the Pope
will not have time to hustle the local bishops into shape. According to
progressives, the Pope will not have time to listen to what the Australian
people are really saying.
  The Pope is undoubtedly a great leader yet he often appears to be lead+ing
in different directions at the same time. His personal experience of nazi
occupation and communist rule has given him a yearning for freedom, yet
he is utterly devoted to the Church's age-old hierarchical structure. He
is a scholar of considerable standing, yet his total dedication to traditional
Cath+olic teaching renders him deeply un+sympathetic to "progressive"
theo+logians. He was a major actor in the Church-state intrigue that 
constitutes Polish politics, yet he has consistently opposed political 
alignment by the Church and an official political role for priests. He 
is a man of immense person+al warmth and charm, yet his views on human 
sexuality strike many as inhu+mane.
  The respect and even fear which he inspires in governments as diverse
as those of the Soviet Union - whose in+terest in his death, if not actual
involve+ment in the 1981 assassination attempt, is obvious - and the Northern
Terri+tory - which is said to have objected to his planned visit to Alice
Springs and putative talk on land rights - demon+strates the moral authority
of his heroic if contradictory personality. Recently described by Prime
Minister Bob Hawke as "quite an outstanding man" and "remarkable by any
standards", the Pope will need all his gifts to lift the local Church which
displays, according to Patrick O'Farrell, professor of his+tory at the
University of New South Wales, "little conspicuous vitality".
  The most obvious sign of institution+al stagnation is the chronic shortage
of priests. In metropolitan Sydney, for in+stance, the number of active
priests un+der 75 has fallen from 314 in 1976 to 243 today. By 2000, it
is estimated that the number will have fallen by more than 50 percent to
113 which will be sufficient to staff only 58 percent of ex+isting parishes.
  Additional duties have exacerbated the heavy pressures on men who are
de+prived of family life and often lack pro+fessional recognition. A paper
pre+sented to the Australian bishops' con+ference in 1984 and reported in
the National Council of Priests newsletter claimed that religious reform
and so+cial change meant that priests were suf+fering a "sense of powerless,
meaningless, self-estrangement and isolation".
  As one senior priest puts it, there is a widespread view, even among
Cath+olics, that entering the priesthood "is the waste of a life". In a
28-page paper presented to the Australian bishops in 1984, Dr Grove Johnson,
then rector of St Patrick's Seminary in Sydney, said that the "crisis of
the priesthood" was the "deepest crisis facing the Church". Johnson claimed
that trainee priests' lengthy isolation in seminaries risked producing "loyal
and devoted mem+bers of the clerical club ... at the ex+pense of truly human
development" and that this was contributing to the Church's alienation from
modern cul+ture and inability to speak with the world. There is no reason
to believe Johnson has changed his views.
  The crisis of the priesthood is ac+companied by a crisis of the laity
- regular Mass attendance is estimated to be down from more than 50 percent
of Catholics only 10 years ago to fewer than 30 percent today. The recent
fining of a devout Christian who refused to let his house to an unmarried
couple, the ineffectiveness - except in Queensland - of Christian priests
over the screen+ing of the allegedly blasphemous film Hail Mary and the
refusal of half of the 1983 federal Labor ministry to take the oath of office
on the Bible are ominous straws in the wind.
  In recent decades all Christian de+nominations have struggled to come
to terms with a society that is comfortable and well-educated and therefore
indif+ferent to religion and sceptical. This ad+justment has been hardest
for the Cath+olic Church which used to pride itself on its rejection of
much of the modern world. The Roman Catholic Church which emerged from the
Reformation and which endured until 1965 was called by its leading theorist
"as clear and palpable a reality as the Kingdom of France or the republic
of Venice". The Church of those days found its most peculiar expression
in the Sylla+bus of Errors of 1864 which con+demned the proposition that
the Pope "can and ought to reconcile and adjust himself with progress,
liberalism and modern civilisation". But since the Vatican Council of the
early 60s the Church has been struggling to do just that - to re-express
its ancient faith in ways that fit the "signs of the times".
  In Australia, the problem of changing religious identity has been compounded
by a collapse of Catholic social identity. Until 1950, Australian Catholicism
was overwhelmingly Irish and underprivileged and the natural af+finity of
religion, race and class was re+inforced by a shared preoccupation with
the principal means of getting ahead in a hostile world - Catholic education.
Since then, increasing afflu+ence has eroded the Church's social prestige,
ethnic diversity has dissolved Irish solidarity and state aid has de+prived
ordinary Catholics of the need to struggle together to preserve the schools
which are the embodiment of the faith. It is no longer clear what Aus+tralian
Catholicism is about.
  The old Catholic edifice of schools, hospitals and parishes is still there
but its purpose is less certain. Conserva+tives deplore the passing of the
Latin Mass, Roman collars and fish on Fri+days. Radicals demand women priests,
married clergy and freedom from Papal interference. The vast majority stand
hesitantly in the middle wel+coming the greater humanity of the modern Church
but sensing, too, its loss of co+hesion and bravura.
  The old order is passing away but the shape of the new is by no means
clear. Are the bishops determined to re+build a powerful social insti+tution
or are they prepared to let the institutional Church dissolve into a loose
associa+tion of like-minded seekers after spiritual truth? Does the Church
possess divine truth and the unique means to sal+vation or is it just another
benevolent group in a plural+ist society? The breakdown of Catholic
self-confidence - if permanent - will have a pro+found effect not just on
the nation's four million Cath+olics but on Australian cul+ture generally
in which Catholicism has long been the most organised Christian force.
  While the manpower crisis will prove most immediately fatal to the Church
as it has been known, the fundamental crisis is one of leadership. The
leadership structure of the Roman Catholic Church is often misunderstood.
An organisation "flow chart" would probably start at the top with the Pope
and proceed downwards through bishops and priests to the laity (which includes
religious brothers and sisters). The Pope's pre-eminent pos+ition, however,
is not due to his more exalted office - he too is a bishop - but to the
fact that the bishop of Rome has traditionally been regarded as the guardian
and repository of the Catholic faith. The other Catholic bishops derive
their cathol+icity from their "commun+ion" with the bishop of Rome. The
Church is certain+ly hierarchical but at the top of the local hierarchy
is not the Pope but the local bishop. The Pope exercises power over the
Church in Australia indirectly through the bish+ops whom he appoints and
directly through the universal rules which he establishes for the maintenance
of the Cath+olic faith.
  For most of this century the worldwide Catholic Church seemed to be a
benev+olent papal dictatorship. This appearance was due to the relative
unanimity of Cath+olics rather than to the disci+pline of Rome. When the
Church is riven with wide+spread and serious differ+ences, as has been the
case since the Vatican council, the practical power of the Pope is severely
circum+scribed.
  The Catholic Church is not so much a papal Church as a bishops' Church.
As successors of the apostles, the bishops are responsible for all Church
activities within their dioceses. Never+theless, the rules and instructions
em+anating from Rome, the necessity to consult before making certain
deci+sions, the need to ensure the support of priests and to avoid alienation
of the people, are important legal and practi+cal constraints on episcopal
leadership.
  Effective leadership in the Church depends upon the leadership qualities
of individual office-holders. The power of popes, bishops and priests largely
depends upon their ability to inspire and persuade. In the case of Australian
Catholic churchmen, this ability seems extremely rare beyond that small
and diminishing group of Catholics who are prepared to do whatever "father"
says. The Australian bishops are men whose formative years were spent in
an en+closed clerical world which fostered team spirit and prudence but
not hu+man warmth, worldly wisdom or cre+ative imagination. It is not
surprising that they have shown more concern for shoring up a crumbling
traditional structure than enthusiasm for construc+tive engagement with
the world. 
  According to Bob Santamaria, the task which the Pope has set himself and
to which his extensive travels are di+rected is the restoration of a clear
sense of what it means to be a Catholic. Santamaria, whose control of the
anti-communist Catholic Social Studies Movement in the 50s is said to have
earned him the status of "lay-bishop", believes that the Pope's task in
Aus+tralia, no less than elsewhere in the Western world, is to reassert
traditional doctrine against its critics among priests, nuns and even bishops.
  For Santamaria, traditional doctrine is what is laid down in scripture,
the creeds and the texts of Church councils as authoritatively interpreted
by suc+cessive popes. This, however, is not as simple as it sounds. There
are religious disputes to which Catholicism has no authoritative answer.
In the 17th cent+ury there was a virulent controversy be+tween the Jesuits
and the Dominicans over whether man was capable of good+ness without the
help of God. Ultimate+ly, the Pope proclaimed that both views were permissible.
Then there is the problem of papal pronouncements which seem wrong. Who
today would accept without qualification the state+ment of Pope Boniface
VIII in 1302 that it is "absolutely necessary for sal+vation that every human
creature be subject to the Roman pontiff"?
  A great deal of what the man in the pew would call "traditional doctrine"
is criticised by Catholic scholars who be+lieve that religious truth ought
to be ex+plained in a rational way if possible and that religious strictures
ought to be judged by the spirit rather than by the letter of Church law.
Thus the German Hans Kung, critically examining the Gospel, explains the
resurrection of Jesus as a mystical experience of the disciples and the
virgin birth as an edi+fying fable designed to enhance the aura of an
extraordinary personality; the American Charles Curran, claiming that the
ultimate Christian imperative is love, justifies contraception, abortion,
homosexuality, masturbation and other Catholic taboos in limited
circum+stances; and the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, writing in the context
of massive institutional exploitation and op+pression, deprecates Church
structures that seem wedded to corrupt establish+ments.
  The question is: Can these thinkers and those with similar views in every
nook and cranny of Australian Cath+olic life sustain their objections to
the traditional understanding and remain Catholic? A "yes" answer implies
that Church teaching is essentially pro+visional, subject to the advance
of hu+man reason; a "no" implies there is nothing new to be learnt. Not
surpri+singly, the Pope himself is having an each-way bet.

</sample>



<sample><id> G77 </id>

<source> The Bulletin </source>

<note> 2002 words </note>

<subsample><id> G77a </id>

<source> The Bulletin - July 1, 1986 </source>

<h> Photography - a stormy tale of two cities with different views  </h>

The art of photography in Australia is suffering because of rifts between
its leading exponents in Melbourne and Sydney. Some people, reports JOHN
BAXTER, can't even agree on what the word "photograph" means.

IF A SINGLE event encapsulated the divisions in Australian photography,
it was a lecture given recently at Sydney's Australian Centre for Photography,
when Oxford's Michael Weaver, one of the busiest international experts,
spoke on New Yorker Robert Mapplethorpe, a show of whose work curated by
John Buckley was shortly to reach the centre.
  Weaver detailed Mapplethorpe's preoccupations: New York's homosex+ual
underworld; blacks, bikers and bi-sexuals and the androgynous charms of
muscle-pumper and performance artist Lisa Lyon. Two other recent interests
of Mapplethorpe's, portraits of New York celebrities and some unaccountable
im+ages of flowers, Weaver dis+missed as passing phases, of little interest.
Those in his audience who had already seen the show exchanged amused glances.
Buckley's choice was very thin indeed on gay erotica, heavy on port+raits
and flowers. But then, it had been curated in Mel+bourne, and that - to
the Sydney audience - said a great deal.
  Rifts between New South Wales and Victoria, between individuals, factions
and gal+leries, between rival schools of curating and scholarship, even
between definitions of the word "photography" characterise the Australian
photographic establishment. "Australian photography grew through a
proliferation of factions," one Sydney cu+rator told me. "Rather than reading
and looking at other people's work and develop+ing as artists, new
photog+raphers budded. There are some people who haven't changed their ideas
about photography in 15 years."
  For almost that long, the Australian Centre for Pho+tography has been
in the cen+tre of the battle, sometimes part of the debate, sometimes the
cause of it. Favoritism, incompetence and confu+sion are just some of the
charges lev+elled both from outside the organisa+tion and within its own
ranks.
  The Australian Institute for Photog+raphy, as it was then called, accepted
an extensive brief when it was founded in 1974. It promised not only an
exhibi+tion space and an archive of dis+tinguished local artists, but also
- in a nod to then fashionable conceptions of access - classes for a public
which the new accessibility of cameras had turned on to photography.
  Hopes that the centre would flourish when it moved in 1981 to a building
in Sydney's Oxford Street suavely refur+bished by Don Gazzard (whose offices
discreetly occupy a space behind it) weren't realised. Dobell House was
neither large enough to fulfil the cen+tre's grandiose aims nor small enough
to escape notice and criticism.
  The photographic classes paid their way but from the start centre exhibition
policy was erratic, salaries low and div+ision within the ruling executive
bitter. New director Christine Godden was less than popular, and after her
stormy ousting in 1982, subsequent weak ad+ministrations culminating in
a director+less 10 months did nothing to revive confidence on the part of
the staff, the public or the office of the Minister for the Arts and the
Visual Arts Board whose contributions keep the centre afloat.
  Nor were Sydneysiders happy to hear news of a sec+ond Australian Centre
for Photography being planned in Melbourne. Decades of bitter interstate
rivalvy bubbled to a boil.
  There was plenty to be bit+ter about. Sydney had been the national capital
of pho+tography until the war. In the 60s, as photography first bur+geoned
as an art and trendies took down the Drysdale prints to replace them with
images by Max Dupain and David Moore, it was still Sydney that made the
run+ning. When the Bilsons hung Grant Mudford architectural prints on the
walls of Berowra Waters Inn, photography's star was seen as patently in
the ascendant.
  But if Sydney had the tra+dition of photography, Mel+bourne had the movers
and shakers. Victoria's National Gallery set up our first major photographic
collection in 1968. It has flourished under curator Jennie Boddington. Some
criticise her perchant for collecting photo-journalism and quantities of
re-printed images, useful as educational reference but anathema to those
who prefer to see photography as one of the "fine" arts. But Boddington
is unrepentant, popu+lar - and influential.
  Melbourne also nurtured the major photographers of the 70s, including
Bill Henson, whose austere nudes and shadowed interiors have made him, with
expatriate Mudford, our most famous photo artist abroad. It also produced
Paul Cox, later to switch to film-making, and Warren Breninger, whose
portraits, "manipulated" with colored ink, crayon and pen+cil, presaged
the style that would smuggle photography into the fine art galleries.
  Melbourne could also boast the greatest of the rad+icals, Carol Jerrems,
whose outrageous reportage of sex+ual liberation from the inside set her
stamp on the 70s. Even before her death at 31 in 1981, images like the 1972
Vale Street, with its bare-breasted girl flanked by two truculent male
companions after what was presumably a night of sexual excess, had become,
as an Australian National Gal+lery catalogue acknowledged recently, "an
icon".
  But Jerrems' liberalism died with her. Breninger and Henson dominated
the end of the decade, along with fellow manipu+lators like Micky Allen.
With them at the helm, photography sailed into a twi+light zone where images
mated with art and propaganda. Photographs were collaged, or accompanied
by hectoring texts taking up more space than the pic+tures. Feminist
rhetoriticians like Helen Grace found photography a use+ful pulpit for their
ideas. An image by Christine Godden, in a 1982 Lady Fair+fax show at the
NSW Art Gallery com+bined stills and Godden's naked and bruised torso with
a shakily hand+written text detailing the assault in which she sustained
the injuries. It was the dernier cri of the style which has since languished
in favor of a new in+terest in figurative work and landscape.
  Sydney today lags behind both Vic+toria and Canberra. The Australian National
Gallery has the most space and money for photography, ranking sixth among
the world's galleries in its purchasing budget. An annual $250,000 is earmarked
for overseas work while local images are acquired, mainly un+der grants,
of around $12,000 from Kodak and Philip Morris. Major shows are not relegated
to some ghetto in a garret, but hung on the ground floor ad+jacent to the
Pollocks and Rothkos.
  By contrast the Art Gallery of NSW has only $24,000 a year for local and
foreign acquisitions. Photography oc+cupies a basement between ethnogra+phy
and education. Rebuilding will shortly re-site the gallery in a larger cor+ner
of the lower ground floor but any improvement in photography's mar+ginal
status seems unlikely.
  The gallery has yet to recover the credibility lost in a 1983 scandal
when respected local photographer Max Pam offered to sell a collection of
images of Asia. The price was a philanthropic $700, about $36 a print, but
though di+rector Edmund Capon endorsed the purchase, the governing body
vetoed it on doctrinal grounds. Why, they quer+ied, when a painter was
represented by only two or three pictures, should a photographer have hundreds?
Curator Gael Newton was forced to decline Pam's offer. "I could never look
him in the face again," Newton says. "No other collection was ever offered
to the gallery after that."
  The Pam pictures went to a de+lighted Art Gallery of South Australia and
following further debacles, New+ton departed for Canberra to curate the
ANG's mammoth Bicentennial survey of Australian photography.
  In Sydney today, exhibition of pho+tography outside the Art Gallery of
NSW is patchy and occasional. Since the collapse of Sydney's Images Gal+lery
only a few fine art dealers handle photographic work. Curatorship in such
shows is erratic, where it exists at all. The Print Room did Robert McGarlane
proud in a 1985 retrospec+tive with a celebrity-studded launch and glossy
brochure. But a recent show of period glamor portraits by William Buckle
at Josef Lebovic offered the dis+mal sight of a wall of prints hung
edge-to-edge under the catchpenny title Buckle's Beauties. In the same week
an important group of historical photo+graphs was hung in the lobby of a
Sydney hotel, while some murky snap+shots taken by the touring Footsbarn
Theatre Company sullied the lobby of the Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf
Theatre. All were announced in the press and reviewed as "exhibitions".
  Though organisations like the Mitchell Library have huge un+catalogued
collections of photographs, there are neither the funds nor the ex+pertise
to assess them.
  The appointment of ex-Australian National Gallery curator Martyn Jolly
to the Australian Centre of Photogra+phy is a hopeful sign of a new deal
for Sydney photography. The other is the controversial choice of Denise
Robin+son, late of Melbourne University Union's George Paton Gallery, as
di+rector. Robinson acknowledges that her background is not in photography
but in fine arts. And being from Mel+bourne is, she agrees, no help in this
chauvinistic field. She is diplomatic about NSW arts funding practices,
but what she has to say about Victoria offers a clue.
  "The Victorian Ministry for the Arts has a lot to answer for," she charges,
"in terms of the way it has centralised cul+tural production in Melbourne.
It insti+gates projects: it doesn't look for them to come from outside.
There's not enough debate within it: there's not enough input from the
community and interested groups."
  Beyond the problems of winning government support for the embattled centre,
Robinson hopes for sponsor+ship, a dialogue with other visual arts, even
an assault on foreign audiences - though most still tend, she finds, to
view Australia either as an exotic Nirvana or a primitive outpost of Empire.
The French are preoccupied with a roman+tic view of Aboriginal life, while
audi+ences at a forum on an Australian show she curated at the 1984 Edinburgh
festi+val quizzed the artists seriously on whether they had studios. Before
Aus+tralian photography is accepted over+seas, she suggests, local artists
will need a strategy to bypass such intellectual tank traps.
  With this problem added to those of a duplication of resources, a want
of central planning and a bewildering lack of standards, it's no wonder
many of our photographers view the future as through a glass, darkly.

</subsample>

<subsample><id> G77b </id>

<source> The Bulletin - September 16, 1986 </source>

<h> The appalling talent of the volatile Ken Russell </h>

<misc> JOHN BAXTER profiles the unpredictable British film and opera director who
is visiting Australia to direct Madame Butterfly at Melbourne's Spoleto
Festival </misc>

WHEN Ken Russell was a young direc+tor for the BBC TV series Monitor in
the 60s, producer Huw Weldon sent him to make a film on Old Battersea House,
a private museum of PreRaphaelite art in suburban London maintained by a
Mrs Stirling, the sister of painter Evelyn de Morgan. "She was 99 then,"
Russell reminisced, "dripping with white furs and jewels, and wearing an
enormous hat. She could walk only with the help of two sticks and the place
was so dark a servant followed her around with a lamp, and illuminated the
pictures. Mrs Stirling had a guided tour all memo+rised. `My sister was
at work on this painting of Azrael the Angel of Death when a frog hopped
in and looked at it and hopped out again. &Pound;400 worth of lapis lazuli on
that picture ...' and we went on through these huge rooms. People are always
saying my films are bizarre but they pale beside reality."
  People are always saying Ken Rus+sell is bizarre, but he too pales beside
reality. The experience of spending a year in his almost continuous company
while writing a book about him was an experience the years have not dimmed,
and his arrival to direct Puccini's Mad+ame Butterfly for Melbourne's Spoleto
Festival of Three Worlds brings it back in a rush.
  Russell in 1972 had never directed an opera, though in the course of that
year he would open negotiations with Peter Maxwell Davies to stage his
Tav+erner at Covent Garden, with the young Derek Jarman designing.
  It could have been a land-mark. I still have the sketchbook Jarman gave
me, with its epicene costumes of men/women, and apes dressed as car+dinals.
And Russell had announced - with what seriousness it's hard to say - that
his plans included flayed bullocks on the walls and nuns and monks forni+cating
in the aisles.  
                                              
</subsample>

</sample>

</section>